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Oral Answers to Questions
(2 years, 6 months ago)
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Claire Coutinho (East Surrey) (Con)
Robbie Moore (Keighley) (Con)
Mrs Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)
The Minister for Europe and North America (James Cleverly)
The UK has been steadfast in its diplomatic support for Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister travelled to Kyiv on 17 June to meet once again with President Zelensky. They discussed the situation on the ground, and the Prime Minister announced a major training programme for the Ukrainian armed forces to help sustain them in their heroic defence of their people and their homeland. The United Kingdom will continue to strengthen the hand of our Ukrainian friends to finish the war on terms that President Zelensky has laid out.
Claire Coutinho
I commend the Secretary of State, the Prime Minister and the entire team for all their work on diplomacy in Ukraine. We can all be very proud of it. I was pleased to see that the leaders discussed ending the blockade of grain in the south. Will the Minister update the House on how those discussions went?
James Cleverly
The House, and indeed the whole world, should be under no illusion: it is Russia that is blocking Ukraine’s grain exports in an attempt to cripple Ukraine’s economy and use hunger as political leverage. We support the United Nations’ efforts to negotiate a safe corridor for exports by sea and we are engaging internationally to call on Russia to end the blockade. Only Russia can lift the blockade. Ukraine’s ports are vital for global food supplies, and we will keep supplying the weapons that Ukraine needs to bring the war to a successful conclusion.
Robbie Moore
Last Sunday afternoon, I spent a couple of hours meeting a Ukrainian family who have moved to the Worth valley in my constituency under the Homes for Ukraine scheme. They are so incredibly grateful for the work that the Government are doing, but they did reiterate that we cannot rest until full Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity is restored in Ukraine and until Putin fails. Will my right hon. Friend update the House on recent conversations that he has had with global allies on how we can take a co-operative approach with international partners to ensure that that happens?
James Cleverly
I thank my hon. Friend and his community for hosting Ukrainian refugees. Praise is due in every corner of the House for our constituents doing just that. I assure him that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and other Ministers in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and other Departments, as well as officials at every level, are engaging with our international friends and allies on this issue. It will be raised at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting, the G7, the G20 and the NATO meeting in Madrid. I also assure him that the UK will not rest in its support of the Ukrainian Government and the Ukrainian people, and we will not rest in advocating on their behalf with the international community.
Mrs Sheryll Murray
What resources is the Department making available to assist Ukraine with prisoner of war swaps?
James Cleverly
My hon. Friend makes an incredibly important point. With your indulgence, Mr Speaker, I will reassert the position that the Ukrainian Government have confirmed. Foreign nationals fighting as members of their armed forces must be treated as prisoners of war—that includes the British nationals captured by the Russian forces—and all prisoners of war should be treated in accordance with international humanitarian law, including the Geneva convention. We will of course continue liaising with the Ukrainian Government on the treatment of prisoners of war and any negotiations they might have with Russian forces on the issue.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for the responses he has given to hon. Members. We as a House of Commons stand united with the people of Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression. May I ask the Minister sincerely what assistance the British Government and NATO allies are giving to the people and Government of Ukraine to tackle Russian disinformation?
James Cleverly
The hon. Gentleman makes an incredibly important point. When I speak to my Ukrainian counterpart and others facing direct or indirect Russian aggression, they often bring up disinformation and cyber-attacks. This is a theatre of war, and the integrated review, which was published last year, recognises that. I assure him that we will continue working closely with our friends and allies to counter disinformation and to help them defend themselves against cyber-attack as well as physical attack.
Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)
All our hearts and support are with the people of Ukraine, but the conflict is having a significant impact worldwide. Particularly affected are people in east Africa, where grain shortages have coincided with the most dangerous drought in 40 years, cuts to aid and covid-19. Save the Children and Oxfam report that one person is dying of hunger every 48 seconds in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia. Will the Minister commit to front-loading future resilience funding to bring forward funds now to prevent a famine?
James Cleverly
The hon. Lady makes an incredibly important point. As I said in my earlier answer, Vladimir Putin is using hunger in the global south as a weapon of war and as a point of leverage. It should be noted that the 25 million tonnes of grain currently stuck in Ukraine is equivalent to the yearly consumption of the least developed countries in the world. She is absolutely right to be focused on this issue. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has said that we will prioritise our humanitarian response in future funding for the Department, but I can assure her and the House that it will remain a priority for the Government.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
It is very clear that Putin is indeed the using the starvation of the world’s poorest people as a tool of war. As we seek to fight back against Putin and use all diplomatic powers, does the Minister agree that it would be easier to build a coalition against Putin across the developing world in particular, and of course morally right, if we reversed the cuts to international aid or kept them?
James Cleverly
The hon. Gentleman is conflating two fundamentally different issues. The world should be clear that it is Vladimir Putin alone who is creating these problems with his blockade of grain exports from Ukraine. He could turn on the tap of food to the global south tomorrow, and we demand that he does. We will continue to work with our international partners, including the United Nations, to try to facilitate those grain exports, but the world should be clear that it is down to him and that the Russian blockade of the Black sea and Sea of Azov ports is creating that hunger. He should be held accountable for it.
Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
I agree with much of what the Minister has had to say. The shadow Foreign Secretary and I met a delegation of Ukrainian MPs last week and heard at first hand the devastating impact Russia’s illegal actions are having on civilians across Ukraine. May I bring the Minister back to a point I have raised with him a number of times? We need to stay the course in our support for Ukraine, and the whole world needs to stay the course with Ukraine. That will involve substantial costs. Will he look again at not only freezing Russian assets but their seizure and repurposing to ensure that we can support humanitarian and reconstruction efforts in Ukraine?
James Cleverly
The hon. Gentleman and I often disagree—that is the nature of being in different parties—but on this issue he is absolutely right that there is a unanimity of voice across the House. I can assure him that we are looking at the issue he raises on seizures and repurposing the value of those seizures. Nothing is off the table. The pain and suffering being inflicted on the Ukrainian people by Putin and his faction must be paid for, and paid for by them.
Alyn Smith (Stirling) (SNP)
I echo the comments that Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office staff and the diplomatic core worldwide do a great job under difficult circumstances, but they are being undermined by talk of politically motivated appointments at home, job losses across the civil service as a whole, and the cut to the 0.7% commitment on aid, a manifesto commitment now betrayed. Surely now is the time to reverse all that talk and actually support civil servants doing tough jobs in tough times?
James Cleverly
I thank the hon. Gentleman for the praise he gives to our civil servants both here in the UK and across the world. He is absolutely right: they are doing a fantastic job. I can assure him that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and my ministerial colleagues across Government Departments liaise with them regularly. They are highly focused, highly motivated and absolutely determined to help deliver the UK’s Government priority, which is to support the Ukrainian people and support the people across the world who are being impacted by the food shortages Vladimir Putin is creating. They are doing so in a way that makes me and the whole House proud. I have no doubt that they will continue to do so.
Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)
The Minister for Europe and North America (James Cleverly)
The UK condemns in the strongest terms the targeting of civilians and regularly raises this issue with the Government of Iran. We welcome the fact that those responsible for the plot against the conference in Paris in 2018 have been held to account. The Belgian courts have convicted four individuals, including Asadollah Assadi, who received a 20-year sentence. We continue to work with the international community to ensure that all countries, including Iran, abide by international rules and norms.
Dr Offord
I am trying to hide my disappointment in the answer. Asadollah Assadi orchestrated a planned terrorist attack in mainland Europe that would have resulted in mass casualties, including five Members of the British Parliament, including me. At the Munich security conference earlier this year, the Iranian Foreign Minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, met his Belgian and Swedish counterparts for private talks, which included seeking a petition for the release of Assadi and others through prisoner swaps. It would have been ironic if those of us who oppose the joint comprehensive plan of action had been victims, as the terrorists were using resources that came from the sanctions. May I ask the Secretary of State again to meet with her Iranian counterpart to make it clear that any future JCPOA must ensure human rights in Iran and must ensure that terrorism activities are relinquished across the region, including those aimed at mainland Europe?
James Cleverly
I am not able to speculate on the context of bilateral talks between Iran and other countries. The UK’s position is absolutely clear: the behaviour of Iran in a whole number of areas is unacceptable. We raise this regularly, and I know that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has raised our concerns about the Iranian Government’s behaviour on numerous occasions. We will ensure that we continue to call on the Iranian Government to abide by international rules and laws and to respect human rights at every level, including the right of criticism on the international stage.
Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Vicky Ford)
Colombia is an FCDO human rights priority country and UK Ministers and senior officials regularly raise human rights issue as well as specific cases of concern with the Colombian Government. Most recently, my noble Friend Lord Ahmad discussed human rights and the security situation in Colombia in his meeting with President Duque on 12 April, and I raised it with Vice-President Ramírez in February.
Mary Kelly Foy
I am sure that the Minister will join me in congratulating Colombia on electing a new Administration committed to peace and human rights under Gustavo Petro.
According to human rights groups, on 28 March the army killed several civilians in the village of Remanso, in Putumayo, with outgoing President Iván Duque later praising the attack and describing the victims as armed dissidents. Given that the Colombian military has a history of killing civilians then falsifying the record, what steps are the Government taking to ensure that a proper investigation is carried out?
Vicky Ford
We congratulate Gustavo Petro on his election as President. We look forward to working with him on many shared priorities after his inauguration in August. He has made it very clear that he is committed to the peace process with the FARC. I also congratulate Colombia on a peaceful election.
Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)
Bilateral relations between the United Kingdom and Colombia have gone from strength to strength in recent years, particularly in areas of mutual concern such as trade and investment, tackling drug crime and the environment. Will my hon. Friend assure me that we will continue that same high-level engagement with the new Colombian Administration?
Vicky Ford
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have very many areas of shared interest with Colombia, such as trade and the environment. Tackling drug crime is also a major issue. Colombia is a key partner to the UK and Latin America. We will continue to work closely together on a broad range of issues, and we look forward to working with the new President Petro after his inauguration in early August.
Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)
Colombia is once again the most dangerous country in the world in which to be a trade unionist, so when the Minister and the Government engage with President-elect Petro and his new Government will they ensure that the peace process, which is focused on the Government and the FARC, also includes the civil society and trade union groups on which we have perhaps taken our eye off the ball?
Vicky Ford
The hon. Member makes an important point about protecting civil society. Peace in Colombia was always going to be a difficult challenge, but we have been a leading advocate of that peace process. We will continue to prioritise support for the Colombian Government, and the new President has made it clear that he is committed to the peace process with the FARC, so we will continue to work with them.
Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East) (Lab)
I have just returned from Colombia as part of a delegation funded by Justice for Colombia, details of which will shortly be declared in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Gustavo Petro’s victory in Colombia’s presidential election should provide new impetus towards the full implementation of the peace agreement in that divided country, but the UK Government have sat idly by as violence against social activists and indigenous peoples has raged on across the country. As the penholder for Colombia at the United Nations, the UK has a responsibility to play its part, so will the Minister commit to changing course and working with the new Administration to finally bring this appalling violence to an end?
Vicky Ford
I absolutely refute the idea that the UK has been standing by. To date, we have spent more than £69 million through the conflict, stability and security fund. This is supporting the implementation of the peace agreement, and it has been supporting the Government’s rural developments, reintegration programmes and transitional justice mechanisms and strengthening the security and participation of communities in conflict-affected areas. We have also put in over £240 million of international climate funding in the past decade. That is helping to stabilise particularly vulnerable environmental areas by tackling environmental crime and the issues that affect local people. We will continue to prioritise that work, because stability in Colombia is vital for the whole of Latin America.
Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Elizabeth Truss)
It is vital that we continue to back Ukraine. This is about freedom and democracy in Ukraine, and it is also about freedom and democracy in Europe and across the world. That is why we are determined to provide more weapons, impose more sanctions and back Ukraine in pushing Russia out of its territory.
Anna Firth
I am pleased that my right hon. Friend mentioned sanctions. Last week she announced a new wave of sanctions, including against Patriarch Kirill, a very public and vocal supporter of Putin’s war. Can she confirm that we will continue to put pressure not just on Putin but on his supporters until Putin fails and Ukraine succeeds?
Elizabeth Truss
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I am proud that the United Kingdom has sanctioned more individuals than any other nation. We have to keep increasing that pressure. Last week we sanctioned Patriarch Kirill, and we also sanctioned the Russian children’s rights commissioner, who has been involved in the barbaric treatment of Ukrainian children. We will continue to impose sanctions and to stop importing goods from Russia until we see Russia fully withdraw from Ukraine.
Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)
The new head of the Army was very clear this week when he said that the UK must be
“capable of fighting alongside our allies and defeating Russia in battle.”
Does the Foreign Secretary believe that our defence capability, which is a key arm of UK foreign policy, has all the resources it needs to do that?
Elizabeth Truss
It is very true that we face a much more insecure Europe and a much more insecure world, and it is right that we are increasing defence spending. We are increasing our capabilities, particularly in areas such as cyber, but we are also making sure that we have fully trained and efficient armed services, not just to be ready but to ensure that we are training up Ukrainians, for example, and helping our allies, particularly on the eastern flank, who face that direct threat from Russia.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)
The harvest in Ukraine is going to have to start in the next few weeks. The problem is that there are 25 million tonnes of old crop filling up all the stores, so there will be nowhere to put the new crop. It will have to be piled on the fields, and the Russians will seize it and use it as a weapon of war to buy influence around the world. What more can my right hon. Friend do to ensure that there is international passage for that grain out of Odesa and other ports?
Elizabeth Truss
We are doing all we can to secure the export of that very important grain from Ukraine. My hon. Friend is right to say that we have only a number of weeks to be able to achieve that. We are backing the UN plan, but we are also doing what we can with our allies to provide safe passage and to make sure that Odesa is fully defended. Tomorrow, I will be travelling to Turkey to talk to people there about how we could do more to get the grain out of Odesa.
Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)
Part of any diplomatic support for Ukraine must include a strategic diplomatic support package for Ukraine’s neighbours in Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. When I spoke to the Polish Defence Secretary a couple of months ago, he detailed what he felt was a very lonely station on the frontline beside Ukraine. Will the Foreign Secretary update us on how he may not feel that way now?
Elizabeth Truss
We are working very closely with Poland on our joint defence support, and we are working with Poland and Ukraine on helping Ukraine get NATO-standard weapons. We are also backing Poland, our Baltic state friends and others, including Moldova, particularly through NATO and the bolstering of the eastern flank. We have the NATO summit coming up next week and the UK is pushing hard for more support in the eastern area of Europe.
Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Vicky Ford)
We are closely monitoring the difficult human rights situation and the lack of progress towards post-conflict accountability in Sri Lanka. It is important that the current economic situation does not distract from human rights. We urge the Sri Lankan Government to engage meaningfully with United Nations Human Rights Council resolution 46/1. We continue to raise our concerns in international forums, including by doing so at the UNHRC on 4 June.
Elliot Colburn
The economic crisis on the island has indeed led to increased militarisation in Sri Lanka. The Rajapaksa Government are falling apart and, as we speak, a draft bail-out is being asked for from the International Monetary Fund. As chair of the all-party group on Tamils, and on behalf of Tamils in Carshalton and Wallington and around the world, may I urge my hon. Friend to ensure that the UK does what it can at the IMF to ensure that any bail-out is attached to human rights conditions, similar to the GSP Plus—generalised scheme of preferences plus—arrangement, so that Tamils can have the peace and justice they have been waiting so long for?
Vicky Ford
I thank my hon. Friend for the work he does in this area. I reiterate that it is really important that the current very challenging economic situation does not distract from efforts to improve human rights. Although the articles of the IMF do allow for conditionality linked to economic policy or to tackling the balance of payments, there is no provision to impose political-linked or human rights-linked conditionality in the IMF process. Therefore, we will work with fellow members on international debt forums on a solution to the country’s debt problem, as well as continuing to lobby the Sri Lankan Government and working in other international forums on human rights.
Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. Later this week, Commonwealth leaders will meet in Kigali for the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting, and this will include Sri Lanka. We expect the Government to voice their concerns about the long-term peace and justice issues, but pressing economic matters will also threaten stability, both within Sri Lanka and in the region. Will the Government go above and beyond what the IMF is offering and recognise the role of the Commonwealth now to step into the leadership gap and support Sri Lanka’s people with access to food and medicines, by helping to bring economic stability as soon as possible to this great friend of the UK?
Vicky Ford
The hon. Lady is absolutely right to say that Sri Lanka is a great friend of the UK. Indeed, our Prime Minister spoke to his Sri Lankan counterpart on 30 May and has underlined the UK’s continuing support for the people of Sri Lanka during their economic difficulties. He has offered UK support through multilateral organisations such as the World Bank and IMF, and international forums such as the Paris Club. We have a very significant voice on international debt forums and we are working closely with Paris Club members and multilateral organisations to find solutions to the debt crisis.
Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)
Stephen Farry (North Down) (Alliance)
The Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Elizabeth Truss)
We have been clear with the EU that the Northern Ireland protocol needs to change in order to uphold the Belfast/Good Friday agreement, ensure that we have a free flow of goods from east to west, and protect the north-south relationship. Our preference is for a negotiated solution, but in the absence of the EU being willing to change the protocol, we are pressing ahead with legislation.
Hilary Benn
I am grateful for that reply, but on the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill—which, we note with interest, has not yet found a date for its Second Reading—is there any precedent where the United Kingdom has cited the legal concept of necessity for overriding a treaty that it has freely entered into? We should bear in mind that in this case not only did the Government negotiate and sign the Northern Ireland protocol, but the Prime Minister at the time described it as being
“in perfect conformity with the Good Friday agreement”—[Official Report, 19 October 2019; Vol. 666, c. 583.]
Elizabeth Truss
We are clear that our legislation is both necessary and lawful, and have published a Government legal statement laying out exactly why that is. Our priority as the United Kingdom Government is the Belfast/Good Friday agreement, and we know that the Northern Ireland protocol is undermining that agreement. We have not seen the institutions in Northern Ireland functioning since February, and we know that the issues caused are baked into the protocol—namely the customs provisions and the VAT provisions—so we do need to change that.
As I have said, we remain open to negotiations with the EU. That is our preferred course, but they have to be willing to change the issues that are causing real problems for the people of Northern Ireland.
Stephen Farry
The business community in Northern Ireland is clear that they want to see mutually agreed solutions, and that those are the only way in which they can protect their access to the EU single market. The key ingredient in all this is trust and partnership. The Minister’s Bill is entirely counterproductive in that respect, so what is her strategy for getting back around the negotiating table with the European Union to find those mutually agreed outcomes?
Elizabeth Truss
We are very open to negotiations with the European Union, but they have to be prepared to change the protocol itself. The problems we have with customs and people in Northern Ireland not being able to access the same VAT benefits as people in Great Britain are baked into the protocol itself, and the legislation we have introduced, with green lanes and red lanes, protects the EU single market. It does not make the EU any worse off, while at the same time enabling free-flowing trade from east to west.
We need to achieve both of those things. I want to do so through negotiations, but we have been trying for 18 months; as yet, the EU have refused to change the protocol itself, and we simply cannot allow the situation to drift. We cannot allow more trade diversion, and we cannot allow the undermining of the Belfast/Good Friday agreement.
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
I hear what my right hon. Friend says about negotiating. We all agree that a negotiated settlement would be the best solution, but there is no point in negotiating with somebody who does not have a mandate to agree with any of the negotiation points being put to them. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is up to the European Commission to change the mandate of its negotiator, Commissioner Šefčovič, so we can have those negotiations and come to an agreement, and so that the people of Northern Ireland can live safe and secure in the knowledge that we are coming to an agreement on this issue?
Elizabeth Truss
My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we want a negotiated solution. We have been part of those negotiations for 18 months, but fundamentally the mandate does not allow for the solutions that will help restore the primacy of the Belfast/Good Friday agreement and get rid of the unacceptable frictions that we are seeing in east-west trade. I suggest that Opposition Members direct their calls for negotiations towards the European Union and the goal of securing a new mandate. I think that would be a better use of their time.
Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)
The protocol Bill introduced to this House last week breaks international law. It risks the integrity of the Good Friday agreement. It divides the UK and the European Union at a time when we should be pulling together against Putin’s war on our continent, and it risks causing new trade barriers during a cost of living crisis. It is not even enough to get the Democratic Unionist party to commit to return to Stormont. Will the Foreign Secretary now quit posturing for Back Benchers who have lost confidence in the Prime Minister, and get back to the hard work and graft of negotiating a practical way forward?
Elizabeth Truss
I am afraid to say that nothing the right hon. Gentleman has just said is accurate. The fact is that our Bill is legal, and we have laid it out in a legal statement. We are putting forward solutions—a green lane and a red lane—that protect the EU single market as well as allowing goods to flow freely around the United Kingdom.
We are very prepared to have those negotiations with the EU, but, at present, we have a negotiating partner that is unwilling to change the issues that are causing the problem in Northern Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman should go to Northern Ireland to see the impact that is having on businesses, hauliers and traders who are facing this customs bureaucracy. It is fundamentally undermining the Good Friday agreement.
Alyn Smith (Stirling) (SNP)
I will confess some puzzlement over this. The EU has negotiated a variety of changes to refine the protocol. There are dispute resolution mechanisms within the protocol. There has been a number of opportunities for talks. I have read this idea that the Government need to invoke necessity when there are already other ways of fixing this. That is garbage from start to finish.
In what possible sense can the Government claim that this illegal Bill, which they have brought forward but not scheduled, is a sensible way to resolve the situation when the EU is ready and open for talks? Most people in the Northern Ireland Assembly support the protocol. I counsel the Foreign Secretary that this is also a grievous miscalculation, because it has massively undermined trust at a point when trust is utterly fundamental to resolving this matter.
Elizabeth Truss
The hon. Gentleman is wrong. We have been very open to negotiations for the past 18 months, but the EU has been unwilling to change the protocol. He can read last week’s comments of Vice-President Šefčovič that these customs procedures have to remain in place. The fact is that it is the customs procedures—the bureaucracy—that is preventing trade between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. We are seeing trade diversion towards north-south trade and away from east-west trade, and it is undermining the Belfast/Good Friday agreement. That is why it is necessary that the UK Government act. The hon. Gentleman should focus his effort on getting the EU to change its negotiating mandate so that we can have a real negotiation.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Vicky Ford)
I start by reflecting on the very sad disappearance of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira in the Amazon region of Brazil. Our thoughts are with their families. I offer thanks to all those involved in the search and rescue operation that was trying to find them. I pay tribute to both men and their commitment to improving our understanding of the Amazon, to its peoples and to the challenges currently faced there. Both men have left a strong legacy of defending and supporting the rights of indigenous peoples in Brazil.
Attacks on environmental activists and indigenous rights defenders in Brazil have increased in recent years, and we raise that regularly with the Government.
Kerry McCarthy
I thank the Minister for that response and I echo her comments about the tragic killings of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira, but they are not alone. In 2020, at least 182 indigenous activists and 20 environmental campaigners were killed in Brazil. It is the relentless drive to develop the Amazon rainforest that is behind these murders. What are the Government doing to put maximum pressure on the Bolsonaro Government to reverse that trend, but also to reduce our complicity in this through our supply chains and the involvement of British companies in financing this?
Vicky Ford
We regularly engage with indigenous leaders and civil society organisations. We are in regular contact with Brazil’s national foundation for indigenous people. We are absolutely committed to defending and promoting the human rights of all and we continue to monitor very closely developments around indigenous rights in Brazil and raise concerns with the Government. We have already committed £259 million to help protect the Amazon, with £3 billion more of further funding committed at COP. We have also made it clear that trade should not be at the expense of the environment, climate commitments or, indeed, the concerns that the hon. Lady raises.
Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)
It is thanks to journalists and environmentalists such as Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira that record deforestation, mining and logging, predatory fishing and drug trafficking have been exposed. Dom and Bruno were not on some travel adventure in Brazil, as has been suggested; like others who have been killed over the years, they were doing their job to report on the environmental damage taking place in Brazil that ultimately impacts on us all.
Will the Government work with other international authorities to have the case investigated in a swift, transparent and independent manner, without any interference—not just to seek justice for the families of Dom and Bruno, but to protect future journalists and environmentalists in their important work?
Vicky Ford
My hon. Friend is right that the case should be investigated. We are grateful to the Brazilian authorities for their help and engagement to date. There has been very close contact between, for example, the local and national police with our embassy team on the ground. It is really important that those who committed this heinous crime are held to account.
Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)
I put on the record my condolences to the family of Lancaster-born Dom Phillips. What steps is the Department taking to support Dom’s family through diplomatic means at this difficult time?
Vicky Ford
We have been in close contact with members of Dom’s family. We will continue to give consular support to them at this time and through the next processes related to this tragic event.
Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Elizabeth Truss)
The use of rape and sexual violence in conflict is a war crime, and I have made tackling it a top priority. The UK is campaigning for it to be treated as a red line on a par with the use of chemical weapons. We will host a conference against sexual violence in November.
Marco Longhi
We have had terrible reports of rape and sexual assault by Russian troops in Ukraine. What steps is my right hon. Friend taking to ensure safe and effective evidence collection, so that those responsible can be held to account?
Elizabeth Truss
We have seen appalling reports of atrocities and the use of rape and sexual violence. We launched the Murad code earlier this year, which sets the global standard for safe evidence collecting. We have dispatched a team from the United Kingdom to the region to help with that evidence collection—by interviewing witnesses and survivors and preserving and collecting images and videos, for example.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Near Upper Committee Corridor there has been an exhibition in the last few days showing the experiences of young women and girls who have been raped and sexually abused in Myanmar, Syria and Nigeria. What the perpetrators of those awful crimes need is accountability. Can there be someone who will take the evidence and ensure those people know that some day they will go to prison, or even worse? They will receive that in the next world, but let us make sure they get it in this world.
Elizabeth Truss
Through the International Criminal Court and the work we are doing on evidence collecting, we are working to make sure that the people committing those appalling crimes are held to account—not just in Ukraine, but more widely around the world. That is one of the key aims of the conference we are hosting in November. We are also increasing our budget for women and girls development aid, specifically to tackle sexual violence.
Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)
I place on the record my deepest respect for and thanks to our wonderful development and diplomatic staff, who do a fantastic job in very difficult circumstances. I visited Afghanistan this month, which was truly heart-rending. It appears that my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) and I are the only British MPs to have visited. I wonder why the Foreign Secretary has failed to visit, one year since the fall of Kabul. She knows that protecting development gains for women in Afghanistan is fundamental, given that millions are facing starvation, new restrictions and the loss of livelihoods.
Rather than hosting a summit, maybe the Foreign Secretary can explain what she meant when she said that
“we are restoring the aid budget for women and girls back to its previous levels and we are also restoring the humanitarian aid budget.”—[Official Report, 8 March 2022; Vol. 710, c. 191.]
Given that she failed to give an oral statement to the House on her 10-year international development strategy, will she make a statement to the House on when she plans to reverse the £1.9 billion in aid cuts to women’s programming that have proven so damaging to women and girls and to our reputation abroad—or is she following the Prime Minister’s lead of chasing headlines and not delivering?
Elizabeth Truss
I utterly condemn the appalling actions of the Taliban in reversing women’s and girls’ rights. We are doing all we can together with our international counterparts, including hosting a pledging conference to secure more support for the people of Afghanistan. As I have said, we are restoring the women’s and girls’ budget back to £745 million a year, and we are also ensuring that the humanitarian budget is greater so that we can tackle these issues around the world.
Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)
The Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Elizabeth Truss)
This Thursday I will be heading to Kigali for the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting. In a world where freedom and sovereignty are being threatened by aggressors, the Commonwealth is more important than ever. It represents a third of the world’s population and about 30% of the votes at the United Nations. The British Government will be backing Kamina Johnson Smith, the Jamaican Foreign Minister, as the new Secretary-General to ensure that the Commonwealth delivers for all its members in areas such as trade, investment and defending democracy.
Anne McLaughlin
In answer to an earlier question about Sri Lanka, the Under-Secretary, the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford), said that she would continue to lobby the Sri Lankan Government, but that Government, and their military, are populated in part by people who are credibly accused of war crimes in a civil war that ended more than 10 years ago. The Americans thought that there was enough evidence to impose economic sanctions on some of those individuals. Is lobbying really the best that she can do?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Vicky Ford)
On Sri Lanka, let me start by absolutely emphasising again that violence against peaceful protesters is unacceptable. We absolutely condemn the violence we see happening at the moment and we are urging everybody towards calm. We will continue to work to make sure that we support the country through funding from our conflict, stability and security fund, which has supported peacebuilding, and we continue to respect the independence of the prosecutor when it comes to investigating war crimes of the past.
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con)
Vicky Ford
We were disappointed that last week’s flight was unable to depart, but we are not deterred from doing the right thing in delivering on our plans to control our nation’s borders. We are providing further information to the Court. It would not be appropriate to comment on individual cases at this time. However, we strongly believe that this project meets our obligations under both national and international law, and the Home Secretary has made it very clear that we will do what it takes to deliver this new partnership.
Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)
As the Secretary of State knows, 10 days ago I visited Afghanistan. Millions face starvation. One widow whose husband was murdered during the Taliban takeover explained that she was so desperate for money that she had considered selling her kidneys so that she could eat. Meanwhile, conflict continues to rage across the world in Yemen, Lebanon, Ethiopia, Mali and of course Ukraine. Given the scale of the conflicts across the world and the hunger crisis being driven across the world, why is humanitarian aid down by 35% on pre-cut levels? Why are we the only member of the G7 cutting foreign aid, and what impact will this have on our national interests and reputation abroad?
Elizabeth Truss
We are a major donor of humanitarian aid. On the Ukraine crisis, we are the third largest donor in the world. Through our international development strategy, we are committing £3 billion-worth of humanitarian aid over the next three years.
Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)
Vicky Ford
Prior to Russia’s terrible invasion, 68 Ukrainian candidates were shortlisted for interviews for those really special Chevening scholarships. Obviously, those interviews could not take place, but I am absolutely delighted to give those brilliant, talented and often young people some good news: they will all be offered scholarships. That will treble the number of Chevening scholarships offered to Ukraine. For those who are unable to take up their scholarships, if, for example, they are defending their country, they will be able to defer.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
Elizabeth Truss
I assure the hon. Lady that we are working hard to secure Alaa Abdel Fattah’s release. Lord Ahmad has met the family and I am seeking a meeting with the Egyptian Foreign Minister who is due to visit the United Kingdom shortly, where I will raise this case.
Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)
Elizabeth Truss
My hon. Friend is absolutely right; that is a vital issue. We are seeing attempts by Russia to destabilise the western Balkans. I recently visited Sarajevo, as has the Minister for Europe and North America, to do what we can to support the country through greater investment, so that there are alternatives to malign investment, and to make clear our support for security in the nation.
Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)
The Minister for Asia and the Middle East (Amanda Milling)
As it happens, after this session I will be travelling to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, which will obviously be a good opportunity to explore a number of different issues and our bilateral relationship with Israel.
Sir Gavin Williamson (South Staffordshire) (Con)
Vicky Ford
This is a terrible tragedy. So far this year, we have provided more than £72 million of additional support to countries in the region, which is helping about 8 million people. We played a vital role in convening a roundtable in Geneva that raised about $400 million. Last week, I wrote to the president of the World Bank to urge it to mobilise further funding urgently. I will meet representatives of the Disasters Emergency Committee later this week to discuss further steps.
Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)
My constituent Godwin Suh from Bafut in Cameroon, who now lives in Nottingham, came to see me. He described the political violence that, as anglophones, he and his family have suffered. His brother is missing, his nieces and nephews have been hospitalised, and lately his house there has been badly damaged by Government forces. Will the Minister for Africa meet me and Godwin to hear more about the human rights challenges that many face in north-west and south-west Cameroon?
Vicky Ford
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right; the human rights situation in north-west and south-west Cameroon is really concerning. There have been recent incidents with tragic civilian casualties. I would be happy to meet and discuss it with him.
Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)
I welcome the statement last week that we are talking to our international partners about a Marshall fund for Ukraine. I previously suggested that we should consider not only seizing the assets of sanctioned Russians, but monetising them, either by putting a lien on them or by outright sale. Clearly, that would need to be done in conjunction with partners. Has my right hon. Friend considered that?
Elizabeth Truss
We are working with our allies and Ukraine on a new Marshall plan to help reconstruct Ukraine after the appalling war. There will be a Ukraine recovery conference in Lugano in the coming weeks, at which the United Kingdom will put forward our offer. We are looking at how we can seize Russian assets to help fund the rebuilding of Ukraine, which is something we are working on across Government and with our G7 partners.
Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
A recent report by the Hong Kong Watch non-governmental organisation found that five Hong Kong officials and six lawmakers complicit in the ongoing human rights crackdown currently own property in the UK, so will the Government now commit to using the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Act 2022 to sanction these Hong Kong and Chinese officials?
Amanda Milling
We remain deeply concerned about the appalling human rights violations in China and about the deterioration of rights and freedoms in Hong Kong. We keep all evidence on potential designations under close review, guided by the objectives of the relevant sanctions regime, but it is not appropriate to speculate about future sanctions and designations as to do so would reduce their impact.
Dame Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)
It is vital that we do not forget the painful lessons we learned in the wake of Hurricane Irma in 2017, a key component of which is always to have a naval presence in the region ahead of hurricane season. Will the Minister please assure me those preparations are already being made?
Amanda Milling
The Department co-ordinated a cross-Government hurricane exercise earlier this month as part of its review of plans to ensure the UK provides a rapid and effective response this year. Officials also hosted a pre-hurricane season conference in May. Having visited Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands and the Cayman Islands, I totally understand the importance of hurricane preparedness. I reassure my hon. Friend that I met the Minister for the Armed Forces last week to discuss how our Departments can work together on an effective and appropriate response in the event of a major disaster.
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)
Is the Foreign Secretary aware that the FCDO has set an annual budget limit for the Independent Commission for Aid Impact that will prevent it from carrying out the workplan to scrutinise UK aid that it previously agreed with my Select Committee? Will she look into this, please?
Elizabeth Truss
I am very happy to look into it and to discuss it with the hon. Lady.
Craig Tracey (North Warwickshire) (Con)
I recently took over as chair of the all-party parliamentary group for Latvia, and it was a pleasure to meet my opposite number from the Latvian Parliament, Rihards Kols, last week to discuss the importance of our future work together. Does the Minister agree that, now more than ever, it is important that we strengthen even further our long-standing relationship with countries such as Latvia that share a common set of values and principles with the UK?
The Minister for Europe and North America (James Cleverly)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on taking up his position. The UK enjoys close diplomatic, security and economic relations with Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. I recently went to Estonia, and my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has also been to the region and taken part in the three seas initiative that co-ordinates a number of workstreams in the Baltic and other parts of eastern Europe.
Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)
Since the illegal revocation of articles 370 and 35a, it has become absolutely clear that the right-wing Modi Government are bolder than ever before in their persecution of Kashmiris and minority groups in India. Most worrying, however, is the acceleration in their use of arbitrary arrest and detention of political and human rights activists, including Yasin Malik and hundreds of others, under the illegal Public Safety Act, which takes away any right to due process, yet the UK Government remain silent once more. Does the Foreign Secretary think it is right to continue negotiating a trade deal with the right-wing Modi Government, even at the expense of the blood of innocent men, women and children?
Elizabeth Truss
We are very clear that it is for the Indian and Pakistani Governments to find a long-term solution to Kashmir.
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
Canada is a key partner, and this morning I met the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta, Nathan Cooper, who is keen to emphasise the potential for Alberta to help the UK through its present energy crisis. What is the Foreign Secretary doing to further deepen our relationship with Canada?
Elizabeth Truss
Canada is one of our closest allies. It is a fellow member of the G7, NATO and the Commonwealth, and we will shortly be joining it in the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership. I speak regularly to my Canadian counterpart, and we are looking together at how we can bolster our energy security, in areas such as the one that my hon. Friend mentioned but also in the area of nuclear co-operation.
Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)
On Sunday, Francia Márquez, an internationally recognised environmental and human rights campaigner, made history by becoming the first black woman to be elected Vice-President of Colombia. Colombia is the most dangerous place in the world to be an environmental activist. Will the Minister commit herself to working with Francia Márquez and her new colleagues to ensure that the social and environmental rights of Colombia’s indigenous population are protected, and that UK aid for environmental programmes prioritises the protection of activists?
Vicky Ford
We work in Colombia on projects to promote peace and stability and also on projects to promote the environment and tackle climate change, and we will continue to do so.
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)
The solution to the inflationary crisis that we face, driven by high energy prices and a lack of supply, is primarily international. What is my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary doing to challenge OPEC’s position of not intending to take action to increase supply? That strikes me as the single most important thing that the British Government could do to tackle the crisis internationally.
Elizabeth Truss
As my right hon. Friend says, we need to tackle energy supply. In the long term, that means more renewables and more use of nuclear energy, but in the short term, it does involve looking at oil and gas. My colleague the Energy Secretary is working closely with his counterparts, particularly in the Gulf region, and I also have frequent conversations with them. We do need to see supply increase in order to lower global process.
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
Will the Minister please update the House on the cases of the British citizens Morad Tahbaz and Mehran Raoof, who are still in Evin prison in Iran?
James Cleverly
I can assure the House that the UK Government remain completely committed to securing the full release of British dual nationals held in Iran. That passion has not been diminished. I assure the right hon. Lady and the House that we will continue to work on this with as much alacrity and passion as ever we have.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
On the issue of the Northern Ireland protocol, can the Foreign Secretary give an assurance to businesses in Northern Ireland that are adversely affected by the east-west trade to which she has alluded that that problem will be solved as a result of her Bill, along with other political problems that will also be resolved as long as she proceeds with the Bill?
Elizabeth Truss
I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we are proceeding with the Bill. We are also proceeding with close consultations with business on the precise design of the red and green lanes to ensure that it works for companies in Northern Ireland and Great Britain, and also in the Republic of Ireland and the European Union, so that we can deliver the Bill as intended, freeing up east-west trade but also protecting that very important north-south relationship.
Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)
Bangladesh and northern India are facing some of the worst floods for 100 years. Many of my constituents are extremely worried about family and friends, especially in the Sylhet area. Can the Minister assure us that the Government will take action in respect of humanitarian aid, particularly when it comes to food, water and sanitation?
Vicky Ford
I will certainly raise that with the Minister responsible, Lord Ahmad.
Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)
When I led the Joint Committee on Human Rights delegation to Strasbourg last week, we were repeatedly told that threats made by the United Kingdom to withdraw, or even just disengage, from the European convention on human rights risked giving succour to eastern European states, including Russia, which do not have the same respect for human rights and the rule of law that the United Kingdom has historically had. Will the Foreign Secretary tell the Prime Minister to tone down his veiled threats to leave the convention, and tell her more excitable Back Benchers to back off?
Elizabeth Truss
I honestly thought that the hon. and learned Lady would welcome the fact that the UK led in kicking Russia out of the Council of Europe and holding it to account.
Bills Presented
War Pension Scheme and Armed Forces Compensation Scheme (Public Inquiry) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Owen Thompson presented a Bill to establish an independent public inquiry into the administration of the War Pension Scheme and of the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme by Veterans UK; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 16 September, and to be printed (Bill 51).
Ministerial Code (Enforcement) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Owen Thompson presented a Bill to make provision about the enforcement of the Ministerial Code; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 16 September, and to be printed (Bill 112).
Ministerial Interests (Public Appointments) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Owen Thompson presented a Bill to require a Minister to make an oral statement to Parliament if a person is appointed to a paid post by them, in whom, or a company in which, that Minister has a personal, political or financial interest.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 16 September, and to be printed (Bill 113).
Opposition Day
Access to GP Services and NHS Dentistry
(2 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House notes that primary care is in crisis, with people across the country struggling to access GP services and dental treatment; believes that everyone should be able to get an appointment to see a doctor when they need to and has the right to receive dental treatment when they need it; is concerned by the Government’s failure to remain on track to deliver 6,000 additional GPs by 2024-25; and therefore calls on the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to urgently bring forward a plan to fix the crisis in primary care, meet the Government’s GP target and ensure everyone who needs an NHS dentist can access one.
Mr Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to open this debate on the future of primary care, access to GPs and access to dentists. It is a particular delight to see the Secretary of State here. I so enjoyed our exchange of letters last week that I cannot wait to repeat the exchange in real life.
Primary care is the front door to our NHS—for most of us, the general practitioner is the first port of call when we are worried about our health—but after 12 years of Conservative mismanagement and underfunding of our health service, the front door is jammed. Patients are finding it impossible to book GP appointments, serious conditions are going undiagnosed, patients are waiting longer than is safe for treatment, with backlogs building up and greater pressure placed on the rest of the health service, and millions of people are waiting more than a month to be seen, often in pain and discomfort.
Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
My hon. Friend has made an excellent beginning to his speech. What is his view of my local hospital, where, instead of 350 people daily, we have 710 people coming into accident and emergency at the North Middlesex Hospital? What response does he have to that kind of demand? Where is it going to lead if people cannot see a GP? They are going to end up in A&E.
Wes Streeting
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight that problem. If the front door of the NHS in primary care is jammed, people end up presenting in A&E. As I shall outline in my speech, this is not only a great inconvenience and burden to patients; it comes at an additional cost to the NHS and we all pay the price for that in every respect.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
At the GP practice in Norton in my constituency, it is almost impossible to get an appointment on the phone. I have dozens of cases of individuals unable to access vital care. One tried 196 times. The Care Quality Commission has not inspected this practice since 2015. Does my hon. Friend agree that it ought to be doing so now?
Wes Streeting
Even in the context of the pressures that we see right across primary care—I think every GP practice would acknowledge they face challenges—the case my hon. Friend has just described sounds extreme. We cannot allow the decade or more of mismanagement we have seen from this Government to excuse that kind of care, or indeed absence of care, for patients, and that brings me on to the next point I want to make.
We know why patients are forced to wait: Conservative Governments have cut 4,500 GPs over the last decade, they have closed 300 practices since the last election and they have failed to provide any meaningful reform of the system. The public are sick and tired of waiting. Public satisfaction with GP services stands at the lowest level on record as patients become ever more frustrated with not getting an appointment when they need one, or in a manner to suit them.
It says so much about the NHS at the moment that, while we have the lowest level of patient satisfaction since 1997, when we ask the public whom they trust, nurses and doctors are right up at the top of the list. The public understand that the staff who work in the NHS are trying to grapple with the biggest crisis in its history. Of course, the Government will want to pin that simply on the pandemic, but that does not explain why we went into the pandemic with NHS waiting lists already at record levels, with 100,000 staff vacancies in the NHS and with a decade or more of under-investment, leaving us ill-prepared for the pandemic—or, in the words of the Culture Secretary, “found wanting and inadequate”—but also now struggling to get the recovery from the pandemic that we need to build the health and care service we need for the future.
John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
The shadow Secretary of State says that we need GP reform. What kind of reform does he have in mind? What does he think should be the right balance between in-person, online and telephone consultations?
Wes Streeting
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I will conclude my speech by talking about what a Labour Government will do, but let me answer his direct point about the range of options through which people should be able to access their GP. I value patient choice. Thinking back to my experience of accessing NHS services last year—as many people know, I did quite a lot of mystery shopping on the NHS—I had a range of interactions with GPs. Some were face-to-face. Some interactions at my GP surgery were not with my GP but with a nurse, which was entirely appropriate and much appreciated. Some of my engagements with my GP were over the telephone. I also had a video consultation with a dermatologist. I really valued that flexibility and range of approaches.
I think that the future for primary care has to be different courses for different horses. Of course, people should have a right to see their GP when they want to see their GP—I am clear about that—but there is also a range of ways in which we can offer more flexible access to GPs, particularly for working people who do not necessarily want to traipse down to the GP surgery in the middle of the afternoon if it is something that could be dealt with over the phone or on a video call.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
The shadow Secretary of State is making a powerful speech. I commend in particular the point he made that people still trust their doctors. They are desperate to see them, even if it is online. A 74-year-old constituent of mine contacted me and said that he asked for an online appointment but it would take him 30 days to get there. He appreciates that the issue is not with GPs but with the Government’s lack of planning for the number of GPs who can provide that service in Oxfordshire.
Wes Streeting
The hon. Lady makes a powerful point. How is it that the NHS can be one of the largest employers in the world—it employs 1.2 million people—but does not have a workforce plan and strategy that says, “This is the workforce need that we have today, this is what the workforce need will be in the foreseeable future and, in the longer term, this is how we need to change the shape of the workforce to take into account advances in medicine and modern technology, and the changing demographics of our society”?
We gave the Government the opportunity to commission such a report when we debated the Health and Care Bill. It was supported on a cross-party basis, including by the Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, the right hon. Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt)—sadly, he is not able to be with us at the moment—yet the Government voted against it. What is it about the ostrich mentality of the Secretary of State and his ministerial team—or, I suspect even more, that of the Treasury—that they would rather bury their heads in the sand, pretend there is no problem with workforce and not even count the numbers of doctors and nurses needed because they worry that the Treasury might face up to the reality of what they need to provide?
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
Is it not the case that, in the pandemic, the Government fundamentally misunderstood the connection between the health of the nation and its economic success? All the argument the shadow Secretary of State makes about the NHS workforce and what they can achieve for our country shows that the Government are still making the very same mistake.
Wes Streeting
I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend, who understands well the link between the health of the nation and the health of the economy. Given the labour market challenges in this country, it is simply not acceptable that we are losing so many people who could be in the labour market to ill health. We are also losing so many people from the labour market who are caring for relatives, because there is a disproportionate burden on families. Who disproportionately bears the burden of that care? It tends to be women, so we are losing a whole tranche of women from the labour market who could be contributing to the growth of the nation and the economy.
Several hon. Members rose—
Wes Streeting
I will give way one more time and then I need to make some progress.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is not just about GPs and surgeries; it is about dental access as well. In my constituency and across the whole of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, dentists are prepared to take private care and monthly care, but they will not take NHS patients. As poverty levels and prices rise, dentistry is at the end of the queue. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that dentistry is at crisis point and that Government intervention is absolutely critical?
Wes Streeting
The hon. Gentleman is right to describe the state of dentistry and I will be getting my teeth into that issue very shortly.
[Hon. Members: “Groan!”] It had to happen at some point. I had to get it in at some point. Let me touch on the other issue he mentions, which is about inequality and inequality of access.
The system in primary care is entirely unequal. Some areas have twice as many doctors as other parts of the country, with as many as 2,800 patients fighting over one family doctor. Patient safety is being put at risk. Last week, the BBC revealed the scale of the crisis in GP surgeries with its investigation into Operose Health. Patients who can get an appointment are seen by less qualified staff, standing in for GPs without supervision. Patient referrals and test results were left unread for up to six months: private profit placed above patient safety. When the Health Secretary was asked about that last week, he said:
“we expect local commissioners to take action.”—[Official Report, 14 June 2022; Vol. 716, c. 140.]
Well, it is not good enough to sit back and wait for others to act. Is an investigation happening? Can he tell us? If not, why on earth has he not launched one? [Interruption.] The Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the hon. Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield), from a sedentary position, talks about the last Labour Government. When are the Conservatives going to wake up to the fact that they have been in government for 12 years? Twelve years! It is remarkable. Twelve years they have been in government.
Wes Streeting
Perhaps the hon. Lady could tell us why they want to run away from their record of 12 years.
Felicity Buchan
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He makes grand statements in support of the NHS, but I am afraid his actions do not support the NHS. He has backed these train and tube strikes today, which have meant that in my constituency patients cannot get to hospital, and nurses and doctors cannot get to their places of work. Can we have better action, rather than words?
Wes Streeting
I am very, very grateful to the hon. Lady for that intervention. Our party has been clear: we did not want to see the strikes go ahead. We believe the strikes could have been averted if the Government had shown responsible action. The absolute brass neck of the Secretary of State! It is one thing pretending they have not been in government for the last 12 years; now they are pretending they are not in government today and that, somehow, it is down to me, the shadow Health Secretary. Somehow, if I had uttered the magic words, “Don’t go ahead,” the RMT would have said, “Oh no, the shadow Secretary of State for Health has spoken now. We better put a stop to it.” [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. I want to help a little bit. We do not want to open up a debate that is not down for today. We have got a little bit carried away. The hon. Member for Kensington (Felicity Buchan) got in, and I was quite right to allow a response, but I think we have heard enough now.
Wes Streeting
Thank you, Mr Speaker.
I was about to quote the great political philosopher, Jonn Elledge, who, in response to what the Secretary of State said, commented on Twitter that we are
“all as ants before the might of the all powerful shadow health secretary”.
When is the Health Secretary going to wake up to the fact that he is in government, he has responsibilities, he is discharging the greatest crisis in the history of the NHS and he is doing nothing about it? Instead of lecturing the Opposition, when is he going to show some leadership and get on with governing?
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
The “Panorama” programme also exposed the fact that GP practices are being hoovered up by the private sector. Operose Health now owns 70 practices, with more than 600,000 patients. That exposes the fact that there is now a value to GP patients lists and that they are being sold on. They are collected by GPs, free of charge and then, as they are amassed in great number, they are sold to the private sector. Is my hon. Friend, like me, concerned about that practice?
Wes Streeting
I wholeheartedly agree with the point my hon. Friend makes. It is simply not good enough for the Minister to keep on talking about what the last Labour Government did. If she does not agree with the situation described by my hon. Friend, which is happening on her watch, why does she not legislate? If she is incapable of governing, she should make way for people who can govern.
Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)
I commend my hon. Friend for the tone of the speech that he is making, because it is vital that we stand up for our NHS, which the Government are failing to do. They seem happy to let everybody be angry with their GPs and about their inability to seek the medical help they need, but very unwilling to do something about it. Is this argument not really one to be had with the Government entirely? They should be making sure that we have sufficient GPs to treat the people in this country.
Wes Streeting
I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend; it is the trend with this Government to seek division, sow division, pass the buck, devolve the blame and not take responsibility for anything. What Opposition Members would not give for just one day of being able to govern in the interests of the people in this country! This Government want to give the appearance of being in office but not governing at all. That is what is happening on their watch. If that is not bad enough, against a difficult economic backdrop, with scarce resources, not only is the way in which they manage and govern bad for patients, but it is squandering taxpayers’ money.
Wes Streeting
I will give way in just a moment. The problems in general practice are storing up problems for the rest of the NHS; as we have heard, people are presenting in accident and emergency because they cannot see a GP. That failure is costing the taxpayer dearly. A GP appointment costs the NHS £39, but a visit to an urgent care centre costs it £77 and a visit to the emergency department costs it £359. The Government’s failure to invest in new GPs may be penny-wise but it is pound-foolish. It is wasting money and inconveniencing patients, and it is not the way to manage the NHS. One of my constituents wrote to me yesterday to say that if she wants a same-day appointment for her baby, her GP sends her to A&E. She wrote:
“I was sent to A&E to check a newborn baby’s suspected ingrown toenail that had no sign of infection. How is going to A&E for a non-urgent matter a good thing for anyone.”
Yet that is what our constituents are forced to do, because they cannot get a GP appointment. I hope the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham can give us some insight as to why.
Dr Johnson
As part of that, I suggest that the hon. Gentleman remembers that GPs take 10 years to train. He is right to say that we have been in government for 12 years, but most of the current GP shortage is because the previous Labour Government did not train those GPs at the time. One of the first things the Conservative Government did was to set in train the opening of five medical schools to increase the number of medical students. We had enough doctors but they do take 10 years to train. The reason I stood up to intervene on the hon. Gentleman was to say that one of the challenges that doctors—I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, as a doctor—and members of staff face is being abused in a surgery. I wonder whether he would like to apologise for some of the comments he has made on social media—
Mr Speaker
Order. Interventions are meant to be questions. I know that the hon. Member is down to speak. I would not want you to use up your speech now; I want you to save something for later.
Wes Streeting
Let me first say in response to the final point the hon. Lady made that there is absolutely no excuse for abusing NHS staff whatsoever. Most people in this country do not blame NHS staff for the state of the NHS; they place the blame squarely where it belongs, with the Government who have been in power for the past 12 years. Her first point would be more powerful if we did not have 1,500 fewer full-time equivalent GPs now than we did when her party came to power. Her point would have been more powerful if her party had not whipped its MPs to vote against having a workforce plan for the NHS, but I am afraid that that is what it did. Conservative Members cannot run way from their choices and decisions, and from the fact that they have now been in government for 12 years and there is no one else to blame but themselves. In communities right across the country, we now see the consequences of their mismanagement.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)
I regret to inform the hon. Gentleman that the situation in Wales is not much better, but I do not want to make a party political point. Will he commend the potential role that pharmacists can play in alleviating pressure on GPs? I have an excellent pharmacist in my home village of Pen-y-Groes, which provides an invaluable service for the communities in my area.
Wes Streeting
I wholeheartedly agree with the hon. Gentleman’s point about the importance of looking at primary care as a whole and the really powerful and valuable contribution that community pharmacies can make, alleviating pressures on other parts of the primary care system, particularly general practice.
Communities across the country are experiencing those problems; let me take one place at random to illustrate the scale of the challenge. Today, after a decade of Conservative mismanagement, the city of Wakefield has 16 fewer GPs than in 2013. In fact, Wakefield has not seen a single additional GP since the Prime Minister promised 6,000 more at the last election, and since Wakefield has been served by a Conservative MP—albeit, thankfully, no longer—it has seen three GP practices close, with some surgeries so short-staffed that 2,600 patients are left to fight over one family doctor. Last month, patients in Wakefield were able to book 25,000 fewer GP appointments than in November 2019, the last month in which they were served by a Labour MP. The only good news for general practice in Wakefield in recent years has been that Simon Lightwood, an NHS worker and brilliant candidate in Thursday’s by-election, has successfully campaigned to save the King Street walk-in centre. [Interruption.] They don’t like it. Conservative Members shout in protest and point the finger at us, but they have been in government for 12 years.
Richard Fuller (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman is talking about problems, but his motion does not include one solution. He has now been speaking for 20 minutes, and he has not outlined one solution. If he wishes to be taken seriously as a politician, will he now turn to some solutions to the problems he has outlined?
Wes Streeting
It is certainly true that I am saving the best until last in my speech, but the hon. Gentleman may have missed the point I have made repeatedly, which is that the NHS—an organisation that employs more than 1.2 million people—needs a workforce strategy. It needs a proper analysis of what its workforce needs are today, the workforce needs of tomorrow, and the future shape of the workforce. We gave Government Members the opportunity to vote for that; the hon. Gentleman voted against it, and he wants to lecture me about being taken seriously as a politician. Who is he trying to kid? I do not know how the hon. Gentleman voted, because it was a secret ballot, but the fact that a majority of Government Members voted to keep the current Prime Minister in office means that they are not in any position at all to lecture anyone else on who is and is not a serious politician.
Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)
I am very grateful to the shadow Secretary of State for giving way. I have in front of me figures from the House of Commons Library on the increase in GPs per 100,000 population between September 2015 and April 2022, which show an 8% increase for Wakefield.
Wes Streeting
I notice that the hon. Gentleman has played the old trick of selecting figures from a specific set of years, but nothing he has said contradicts the facts that I have outlined. In any case, the people of Wakefield will draw their own conclusions on Thursday when they go to vote. The fact is that the Government have had more than enough time to reform general practice in this country, and they have no one other than themselves to blame for the crisis we are in.
Since the Conservative party has been in government for the past 12 years, I thought I would take a trip down memory lane to remind us, the House and the British people exactly what they have been promising since they were first elected in 2010. The 2010 Conservative party manifesto promised that GP surgeries would be open 12 hours a day, seven days a week. The Government failed to deliver that—maybe they blame their coalition partners, although I do not think the Liberal Democrats would have disagreed with GP surgeries being open for that long—so they promised the same again in 2015. That time, they set themselves a deadline of 2020, and guess what? They missed that, too.
In 2015, they promised that everyone over the age of 75 would get a same-day appointment—another promise broken. They said they would hire 5,000 more GPs by 2020—another promise broken. In 2019, they promised 6,000 more GPs, but the Health Secretary has already admitted that he is on course to break that promise, too. They promised 50 million more GP appointments a year, but as the British people know from their experience, appointments are down. That is today’s Conservative party: over-promise and under-deliver, never take responsibility, and leave patients paying the price.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
This morning, one of my constituents contacted me to say she was standing outside her GP practice at 7.15 am in order to secure an appointment. She said that she was successful in securing an appointment, but a number of people who were also standing outside did not. Does my hon. Friend remember the Health Secretary promising that people would have to do that in order to secure a GP appointment?
Wes Streeting
I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend. This is the problem: they overpromise and underdeliver. If they will not hear it from me, Mr Speaker, let us remind ourselves of what some of the Secretary of State’s colleagues have said. The hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), who is in the Chamber, said in Prime Minister’s questions only last week:
“At one of my surgeries, which has double the recommended number of patients per GP, the bowel cancer diagnosis of a 51-year-old father of four was missed and is now terminal.”—[Official Report, 15 June 2022; Vol. 716, c. 283-4.]
Earlier this month, the hon. Member for Telford (Lucy Allan) read a letter from a constituent to the Health Secretary. It said:
“Trying to get basic healthcare is a joke in Telford. Maybe I would be better off in…a third-world country”.
If the Secretary of State is not going to listen to us, he should at least listen to his own side. Before Conservative Members leap to the defence of their Government’s record, they should probably go back and check the record to make sure that they had not agreed with us in the first place.
As for dentistry, 2,000 dentists quit the NHS last year, around 10% of all dentists employed in England. It is an exodus under the Government’s watch. Four million people cannot access NHS dental care and cannot afford to go private either.
Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. My constituent, Ellie Cokeley, wrote to me. She works as a receptionist in a local dental practice and gets hundreds of calls a week from upset members of the public who are unable to find an NHS dentist. She said that it feels greatly unjust that the poorest in our society are being forced to pay huge amounts for vital dental care or, worse still, having to continue without any at all. Are the Government not failing people in this country when it comes to the care of their teeth? It is vital that we get more dentists in the system.
Wes Streeting
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Some places, such as Somerset, are dentistry deserts because the remaining NHS dentists are not taking on new patients.
Several hon. Members rose—
Wes Streeting
I will give way first to my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), then to my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier) and then to the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone).
Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)
My hon. Friend mentioned Somerset, but can I also mention Sunderland, to keep up the alliteration? In Sunderland, we cannot find an NHS dentist and the few good ones we have are now turning to private practice to make it work. It is an existential crisis in dentistry—it really is at breaking point. Does my hon. Friend agree that the blame lies squarely with the Conservative Government, with backlog Britain, and that this is the effect on our constituents?
Wes Streeting
My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the state of dentistry. It is not alliterative, but I suspect that my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch has similar points to make.
Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
A constituent of mine told me that she had a terrible toothache, rang 111 and was assigned to an emergency dentist. The system worked, but does my hon. Friend agree that that that costs the taxpayer so much more money? My hon. Friend talks about overpromising and underdelivering, but with dentistry the Government have not even promised anything and they are underdelivering.
Wes Streeting
My hon. Friend knows exactly what she is talking about. Of course, there is no one better in this House to make the point about the waste of public money. That is the outrageous thing about all of this. People are paying more and getting less. Their taxes have been put up, justified in the name of the NHS, but the money is not being directed in the right way to deliver better care. In fact, the Government admit that even with the investment they are putting in, people will be waiting longer for care and that is a disgrace.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
I thank the shadow Secretary of State for giving way. He is very civil. Can I also go down memory lane? We have had a Government of a rather different colour in Scotland since 2007, and today I have constituents coming to me and saying, “I cannot get on an NHS dentist’s list”. That echoes the point made by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). Does the shadow Secretary of State agree that in the event of the present Government sorting this situation out, they would do well to share what they did with the Scottish Government? And in the event of a change of Government after the next general election, will the shadow Secretary of State commit to giving advice to the Scottish Government?
Wes Streeting
This is the thing that the First Minister of Scotland does not want to acknowledge, but for all her noise, bluff and bluster she knows full well that a Labour Government here in Westminster would be good for the people of Scotland. The investment and reform that we would put into the NHS to deliver the same kind of results as the previous Labour Government did would be good for the people of Scotland. I look forward to the day when I can phone the Scottish Government to give them some advice and I look forward to the day when the Governments in Westminster and Edinburgh are Labour Governments delivering for people across the United Kingdom.
The hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) mentioned the trip down memory lane. The Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the hon. Member for Lewes, regularly blames Labour for what is happening in dentistry. That is because of something that happened 16 years ago: it was a contract that was put in place by the last Labour Government, which we committed to reform in our 2010 manifesto. Unfortunately, that manifesto was never implemented. The tragedy is that the Conservative manifesto that promised reform of the dentistry contract was not implemented either.
In 2010, the Conservatives promised to introduce a new dentistry contract. In 2017, they also promised to introduce a new dentistry contract. What is the Minister’s policy today? She promises to introduce a new dentistry contract. She must make up her mind: either, the current contract is so good that every time she tries to change it, she cannot find a way of improving it, or, the Minister’s Department, her Secretary of State and her Government are so incompetent, so distracted, or so indifferent, that they simply cannot get the job done. It is no good their blaming the Labour party for the problems in NHS dentistry. They have been asleep at the wheel for 12 years. They have failed to do anything to improve the service, and now 4 million people cannot access a dentist. The consequences are severe.
Let me tell the Health Secretary about a constituent of my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper). She tells me that this constituent cannot get a dentist appointment anywhere for an unbearable toothache, and that they are in too much pain to sleep through the night. When they contacted a dentist, they were told that they would have to wait two years for an appointment. They wrote in an email:
“I am in such agony that I took Ibuprofen, drank whisky and tried to pull it out myself with plyers, but they kept slipping off and it was agony.”
What kind of country have we become when the most common reason for children to go to hospital is to have their teeth extracted? We have 78 children going to hospital every day to have their teeth extracted. [Interruption.] There is no point Members arguing from a sedentary position that it is because of fizzy drinks. That is their approach all the time. The system is broken, so let us blame the patients. It is absolutely outrageous. DIY dentistry in one of the richest countries on the planet, and their answer is to blame the patients. They should get real. This is so far from that original promise of the NHS, where care is provided to all who need it, when they need it.
To be fair to the Health Secretary, he has been in the role for just under a year, and, on that note, I would like to wish him a happy anniversary this Sunday for one year in the job. But I am afraid that that is where the niceties end, because I will now run through what he has said and done in his year in charge. He had a big media splash on “league tables for practices” to pressure them into doing more face-to-face appointments and then he backed down. He achieved great headlines on “nationalising GPs” in January—imagine the excitement—but there has been no action since. He talks about bringing the NHS into the Netflix age. Has he ever actually used the NHS app? I cannot even book a GP appointment through the app because my GP is not on it. Why is it still not available to every patient as a way to book appointments? I visited Israel recently—I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests—where it has embraced the technological advances in medicine over recent years to massively improve access to healthcare for patients.
I was talking to a start-up, which is developing an app that tracks the recovery of stroke victims, and notifies them when they need to see a physio. I then showed the staff what the NHS app can do and what it cannot do and they laughed. In some senses, the Health Secretary had a point: the NHS is not as modernised as it needs to be to deliver for patients, and nowhere is that more true than in primary care. It is an analogue service in a digital age. Patients should not have to wake up at 8 in the morning and wait on the phone for an hour for an appointment. They should not be told to expect a call back, but given no indication as to what time that will be, and then be considered a missed appointment if they do not pick up because they are at work, or are busy, or are picking up the kids and doing everything else that people do between nine and five.
People have never been so well-informed about their own health. We carry around with us devices that can measure our exercise, our heart rate, how well we sleep, and so much more. Yet our healthcare system puts none of this to use and keeps all the pressure on GPs.
Let me conclude by outlining some of what a Labour Government would do to address this crisis—[Interruption.] I am not surprised that Conservative Members are excited; they must be as fed up as we are. First, we would take immediate practical steps to boost the number of GPs available. Why have the Government sat idly by while doctors are forced to retire early, for no other reason than that the cap on their pension contributions means they pay a financial penalty for staying on? Let us change the rules to keep the good doctors we have. Why is it that, at the last count, 800 medicine graduates had not been able to find junior doctor posts? Let us get them to work immediately—
The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Sajid Javid)
That is rubbish!
Wes Streeting
It is rubbish, but it is his record.
Why is it that so many people are accessing NHS services because of a failure to invest in social care, where staff can be recruited and deployed a lot faster? On the dentistry contract, the last Labour Government acknowledged that the 2006 contract was not good enough, which is why we put the reform of that contract in our 2010 manifesto. The difference is that we will not wait 12 years to deliver the promise after the election of the next Labour Government. Those are just some of the practical steps that we would take immediately and that the Government could take immediately.
Let me tell the House about some of the fundamental issues we would fix. First, mental health services in this country are in such a state that GPs are seeing more and more of their own cases present with mental ill-health. A Labour Government would recognise that there has been a surge in mental ill-health following the pandemic and we would not leave it to overwhelmed GPs to see them. That is why we have committed to recruiting 8,500 new mental health professionals, including specialist support in every school and mental health hubs in every community. We would pay for that by ending the charitable status of private schools and closing the tax loopholes enjoyed by private equity fund managers—and do not tell me the Health Secretary does not know where they are; he was using them before he became a Member of Parliament.
That policy—[Interruption.] Conservative Members are funny. They ask for our policies but they do not like it when we provide the answers, because we have them and they do not. That policy, which would put mental health hubs in every community and support in every school and speed up access to treatment for everyone in our country, would help to reduce pressure on GPs and to deliver better mental health treatment in every community and faster access to a GP for everyone else who needs to see them. It also tells you something about the choices we would make and the priorities we would have as a Labour Government: better public services enjoyed by the many, paid for by closing tax perks for the few.
I know that there is lots of cynicism about politics. We have a Prime Minister who wants people to believe that we are all the same, that things cannot change and that his shambles of a Government are the best that Britain can do. All I would say to the people of Britain is this: judge them on their record and judge Labour on ours. They have been in power now for 12 years. They delivered the highest NHS waiting lists in history, before the pandemic. They delivered record staffing shortages in the NHS with 100,000 vacancies, before the pandemic. They delivered cancer care that worsened in every year since they came to office, before the pandemic. Now they tell us that patients will be paying more and waiting longer.
The last Labour Government were in power for 13 years, and we delivered the highest patient satisfaction in the history of the NHS, the lowest waiting times on record and more doctors, nurses and new hospitals. There were no threats of strikes in the NHS when we were in government because staff could see the difference we were making and so could the patients. We did not get everything right—nobody is perfect—but Labour’s record on the NHS is one that this Government could not even begin to touch. The longer we give the Conservatives in power, the longer patients will wait. Well, people are sick, and they are tired of waiting. This Government’s time is up.
The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Sajid Javid)
I welcome this chance to come to the House to discuss primary care and dentistry, but I have to say that the audition by the hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) did not go very well. I hope that he can see the irony—some might even say the hypocrisy—of his sudden interest in access to public services, today of all days. It is thanks to the strikes that he has been so vocal in supporting the fact that people right across the country cannot make their appointments, that GPs and dentists cannot get to work and that patients do not have access to the treatments they desperately need.
Several hon. Members rose—
Sajid Javid
I will take some interventions in a moment.
The hon. Gentleman has had every opportunity to do the right thing, to put patients first and to condemn these unjustified and reckless transport strikes, yet at every turn he has chosen to back his union paymasters.
Catherine West
The Secretary of State speaks about opportunities. In this House, we had a number of opportunities to get workforce reform, workforce numbers and a plan for our health service into the Health and Care Act 2022. Why did he miss those opportunities?
Sajid Javid
We are seeing record investment in the workforce, and we are seeing record increases. For the first time ever, the NHS is also coming up with a 15-year long-term workforce strategy, which I hope the hon. Lady welcomes.
The Government have always been on the side of patients and the people who care for them. I pay tribute to everyone working in primary care and dentistry for the difference they make day in, day out to their patients’ lives. I know that the pandemic has brought some unimaginable pressures, and equally I know that many of those pressures have not gone away now we are living with covid.
The hon. Member for Ilford North talks as though he does not know where the pressures have come from—as though he has had his head under a rock for two years. The NHS has said it believes that between 11 million and 13 million people stayed away from the NHS, including their GPs and dentists. Rightly, many of those people are now coming forward for the treatment they need—and I want them to come forward.
John Redwood
When the Secretary of State does the much-needed manpower review, will he ensure that a fast-growing area such as Wokingham with lots of new houses gets proper provision for that growth? Will the manpower plan also address how we recruit the doctors we have authority to get?
Sajid Javid
I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend’s important point. In fact, I met my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) about that last week, and I agree with them both.
Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)
Last month, a constituent contacted me who had developed severe dental pain. He phoned 40 dentists and not one of them could take him on as an NHS patient. It got so bad that he phoned 111 but was told that he was not eligible to see an emergency dentist. What advice would the Secretary of State give to someone in those circumstances? Many other hon. Members on both sides of the House will be able to tell similar stories. In the end, my constituent had to pay to go private, but that should not have happened. Why are our constituents being placed in that position?
Sajid Javid
I am sorry to hear about the right hon. Gentleman’s constituent. If he will allow me, in a moment, I will come on to the pressures that dentistry is facing and, most importantly, what we are doing about them.
Those pressures have come about for two reasons. First, there was a fear of infection, which was understandable in a context where 10 minutes in a dentist’s chair during the pandemic could have meant 10 days in self-isolation or, perhaps, worse. Dental practices were almost uniquely at risk of spreading covid, so their activity was rightly severely constrained across the world—not just here in England and across the UK—by the infection prevention rules that were necessary at the time. Despite all the innovations in dentistry over the last few years, dental surgeries do not have a Zoom option.
Secondly, the British people stayed away because of their innate sense of responsibility during the pandemic. As all hon. Members saw in their constituencies, people understood our critical national mission. Our GPs were doing their duty vaccinating people in care homes and in thousands of vaccination centres up and down the country, protecting the most vulnerable and working hard to keep us all healthy and safe.
When omicron struck—we all remember that period, which was not that long ago—I stood before this House and asked GPs to stop all non-emergency work once again. I did not take that decision lightly, but we were faced with a stark choice of having more lockdowns or accelerating our vaccine programme. We chose to accelerate, with help from all corners of the NHS and with the backing, at that time, of the hon. Member for Ilford North. I remember him standing at the Dispatch Box pledging his full support for that effort and rightly stating that the Government were acting
“in the best interests of our NHS, our public health, and our nation.”—[Official Report, 13 December 2021; Vol. 705, c. 795.]
He recognised that it was the right thing to do then; he has now conveniently changed his mind. I wonder why.
Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)
But people like Mark in my constituency cannot find an NHS dentist. This is not about covid; it was happening before covid. The investment just is not there. He is in pain; he is in agony. The Secretary of State needs to step up, step in and get things right.
Sajid Javid
We are putting record amounts of investment into the NHS, including more funding into dentistry—I am about to come on to that right now—which will help with those pressures.
Clive Efford
Covid is just a pathetic excuse, because even if it was the sole reason, the Secretary of State should have been planning for when we came out of it, but nothing he has said explains why we had record numbers of patients on waiting lists even before covid started.
Sajid Javid
I think that many people working across the NHS will be listening to the hon. Gentleman and realising that he has no idea about the pressures that covid has created for everyone working there, especially those on the frontline.
Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
Excuse me for raising this issue, but I want to draw attention to the fact that there has been news released that the Secretary of State’s Government have declined to introduce mandatory reporting of complications resulting from mesh. In the context of problems with waiting lists, and wider issues, if we do not introduce a mandatory reporting scheme to identify problems with a medical product, more people will end up requiring medical intervention and medical treatment, so I urge the Government to look again at their declining to introduce mandatory reporting.
Sajid Javid
The hon. Lady raises an important issue. That is why the Government commissioned an independent report. We have responded to that report. We are still listening to what hon. Members such as herself and others are saying on this important issue, and then we will do a follow-up of the report within a year, so that will be later this year. I know that she will take an interest in that.
Paul Bristow (Peterborough) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that a lot of the issues with primary care services are about leadership? In my constituency, we have the brilliant Thistlemoor surgery with Dr Neil Modha and Dr Azhar Chaudhry, who serve 29,500 patients, 80% of whom do not have English as a first language. Same-day, face-to-face GP appointments are the norm in that practice. In contrast, a Thorney surgery has just temporarily closed a surgery in my constituency due to a lack of admin staff, which is not the fault of the admin staff themselves. Will he back my campaign to make sure that that GP surgery is open again serving local people as soon as possible?
Sajid Javid
My hon. Friend is campaigning passionately for primary care services in his constituency, and he points to some fantastic practices. I congratulate all the people involved in delivering that and support him in his work with his local commissioners to make sure that they are getting even better local primary care.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend recognise that the crisis in NHS dentistry, which affects my constituency as it does his, well predates the pandemic, and indeed goes back to at least 2006 when the then Labour Government changed the way in which dentists are paid? Will he undertake to look at the units of dental activity system, which disincentivises dentists from providing dental work particularly in the most disadvantaged communities?
Sajid Javid
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right in his analysis, and I can give that undertaking. I will say a bit more about that in a moment.
If the hon. Member for Ilford North wants to talk about funding for the NHS, I am happy to oblige. Under the last NHS long-term plan, before the pandemic, we made a historic commitment of an extra £34 billion a year. Because of the pandemic, we then necessarily put in £92 billion of extra funding. At the last spending review, we increased funding still further so that the NHS budget will reach £162.6 billion by 2024-25, supported in part by the new health and social care levy.
We have made sure the NHS has the right level of resourcing to face the future with confidence, but we must also be alive to the consequences. The British people expect every pound spent to be spent well, and they expect us to be honest with them that every extra pound the hon. Gentleman calls for will be a pound less spent on education, infrastructure, housing and perhaps defence. I believe in a fair deal for the British people, and especially for our young people. We will be making plenty of changes alongside this funding.
Jonathan Edwards
One of the major problems we face in Wales and across the UK is the need to replace retiring GPs and dentists. There has been a welcome increase in the number of international medical graduates training in Wales, but the British Medical Association informs me that very few GP practices and dental practices in Wales are registered as skilled worker visa sponsors. Will the Secretary of State raise this with the Home Office to see what can be done to help GPs and primary care practitioners retain those international graduates to work in Wales and across the UK, if they so decide?
Sajid Javid
We are working with our colleagues in the Home Office on this and other skills and healthcare issues, so I can give the hon. Gentleman that assurance. He talks about the major problem he is facing in Wales, and that major problem is a Labour Government. I hope he agrees—[Interruption.] He is nodding.
Look at the performance of Labour in Wales, whether on health or education: the median waiting time for outpatients in Wales is almost double the median waiting time in England. People in Wales are waiting more than three years, whereas the longest wait in England is more than two years. Thanks to the covid recovery plan we set out in this House a few months ago, the number waiting more than two years has been slashed by more than two thirds in just four months, and it will be almost zero next month.
Thousands of people in Wales are waiting two or three years. In fact, one in four patients in Labour-run Wales are waiting longer than a year. In England it is one in 20, which is far too high and will be lowered, but in Wales it is one in four. It is not surprising the hon. Member for Ilford North had nothing to say about his colleagues in power in Wales.
Sajid Javid
I would like to hear what the hon. Lady thinks of the Labour Government in Wales and their abysmal performance when it comes to healthcare.
Kate Hollern
There is much better performance from the Welsh Government than from the UK Government. The Prime Minister promised 6,000 more GPs, which has not happened.
I wrote to the Secretary of State about Blackburn having only 33 GPs per 100,000 people, whereas the south-west has 73. I wrote to him about a young man whose cancer was misdiagnosed, but I have not had a response. I would say Wales is doing much better than the Secretary of State.
Sajid Javid
That is a very strange comment about the hon. Lady’s colleagues in Wales. Either she does not know or she is deliberately saying something she does not quite believe. Perhaps I can make her aware of the facts in Wales, where the number of people waiting more than two years for treatment currently stands at more than 70,000. That is more than three times the figure in England. That is more than three times the figure in England. It is at 70,000, and the hon. Lady seems to be very comfortable with that. I am surprised—it tells us all we need to know about Labour’s ambitions for government if she thinks that is acceptable.
Sajid Javid
Maybe the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) can tell us whether she agrees with her hon. Friend the hon. Member for Blackburn (Kate Hollern) on Wales.
Sarah Champion
The Secretary of State knows we are having a debate about the whole UK, but I am asking him specifically about England and his responsibility. Can he answer the original question from my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Kate Hollern), which was about the Prime Minister’s 2019 commitment to 6,000 extra GPs? We know there are 1,000 newly qualified foreign GPs who are about to be deported by his Government, plus students who are unable to complete their studies because this Government are not providing them with the money for the final years. Under the management of the Secretary of State’s Government in the last decade, we have lost 4,500 GPs. Can he talk about what he plans to do to replace them?
Sajid Javid
I am happy to talk about that. Because of the record funding this Government have put in, both pre and post pandemic, we are seeing record increases in the workforce across the NHS. When it comes to GPs, since March 2019 we have seen an increase of some 2,389. On top of that, we have seen a further increase of more than 18,000 full-time equivalent staff working in other important primary care roles. That is in England—I am talking about England numbers.
Of course, we are working hard towards the targets we have set. We are also seeing more GPs in training in our medical schools than ever before, with more medical schools operating than ever before. I hope the hon. Lady will welcome that result and that investment.
Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)
We are talking about GP and dentistry services today, but the wider primary care family includes community pharmacy and ophthalmology, the vast majority of which are not NHS providers but operate under contract providing NHS services. In my excellent right hon. Friend’s second year in the Health Secretary job, will there be a ruthless focus on the wider primary care landscape? When it comes to prevention, surely those people must be the front door of the NHS to ensure that the system is sustainable in the long term.
Sajid Javid
Yes, absolutely. I know my hon. Friend speaks with great experience in this area. I am just about to come on to some of the changes we will be making to primary care, which I am sure he will welcome.
Andrew Selous
When the Secretary of State goes back to the Department, will he have a quick look at how it is that, in Leeds, north-east Lincolnshire, Fylde and Wyre and Stockport in the past six-and-a-half years, we have increased the number of GPs by between 18% and 22%? I am curious to know whether there are any lessons we can draw from those areas for the rest of the country. Will he ask his officials to look into that to see whether there are useful points for us?
Sajid Javid
I will, and I will get back to my hon. Friend on that issue with more detail. I hope he welcomes the investment we are seeing and the record numbers of doctors and GPs in training.
Richard Fuller
I know my right hon. Friend is coming on with some more ideas, but from talking to GPs across my constituency, one of the issues I have found is that, as we have diversified primary care staff beyond GPs to paramedics and others, the role of what might be called receptionists and telephonists has moved far more into triage. It is now a more complicated role. Is he attracted to the idea in the Policy Exchange document of creating an NHS gateway to provide more medically qualified staff at that first point of entry to GPs, but on a nationalised basis, available via internet, telephony and the cloud?
Sajid Javid
Yes, I am. I have seen the report my hon. Friend refers to and have discussed aspects of it with its authors, so the short answer is yes.
Sajid Javid
I will later.
In terms of the changes we are making, let me first turn to primary care. The hon. Member for Ilford North, in his motion today, is calling on me to
“urgently bring forward a plan to fix the crisis in primary care”,
as he puts it. That is his motion. He is probably too busy supporting the strikers to have read my speech to the NHS Confederation last week. Had he bothered to listen to or read what I said in that speech, or the similar words from Amanda Pritchard, the chief executive officer of NHS England, he would have heard me acknowledge that our current model of primary care simply is not working. I have made no secret of that, or of my desire for change.
We are now working on a plan for change and, based on today’s motion, I will be glad to count on the hon. Gentleman’s support when we bring those plans forward, because what he has asked for, we are already doing. Our plans, for example, include a much bigger expansion in what our fantastic pharmacists can do. In fact, on the very day that I made that speech in Liverpool, we also announced a new pilot scheme to allow people with signs of cancer to be assessed and referred by pharmacists. That is yet another example of how we are working hard to enhance the role of our brilliant pharmacists and thereby freeing GPs to spend more time with their patients.
Imran Hussain
Thus far, if I have got this right, the Secretary of State has told us that there have been record levels of investment across our NHS services, including GPs and hospitals, and that any minor concerns that have arisen are because of the covid years. Does he think that the British public have been asleep for the last 12 years? Does he think that the British public will buy this? The stark reality on our streets—the Secretary of State may want to go and have a look—is as dire as it has ever been.
Sajid Javid
As I said—I am glad that the hon. Gentleman was listening—there have been record levels of funding in the NHS, and, as we set out in our spending plans, that will continue. But that is no thanks to the hon. Member for Ilford North and his colleagues, who all voted against that record funding. They wanted to deny those resources to their constituents. He should reflect on the impact of that had their wish gone through the House.
On the changes that we are making, we are going further, from improving telephone services to letting others such as nurses and pharmacists complete fit notes. Appointment numbers are already exceeding pre-pandemic levels—for example, in April, GPs and their teams were delivering 1.26 million appointments per working day. That is a phenomenal achievement, which the hon. Gentleman should be commending, not castigating.
The hon. Gentleman raised Wakefield and primary care. He was using dodgy numbers, so he was corrected by my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire. He also gave out further dodgy information by somehow claiming that the King Street walk-in centre was under threat. I do not know if you have seen this in the by-elections, Mr Deputy Speaker, but the Labour party has a history of just making things up and creating fake news to scare local people. That is the respect that they show for local people. The walk-in centre has never been under threat. The local clinical commissioning group has confirmed that it has never been under threat. If he had any decency, he would stand up and withdraw his remarks. I give him that chance.
Wes Streeting
I would have thought that the Secretary of State would have learned by now that it is silly to give way to me when he makes these facile points. It is absolutely the case that the walk-in centre’s future was in jeopardy. It is absolutely the case that Simon Lightwood campaigned to save it. If that is what Simon Lightwood can achieve as a candidate, imagine what he will do as Wakefield’s next Labour MP.
Sajid Javid
The hon. Gentleman is now using the past tense. A moment ago, he claimed that it was under threat. He clearly has no issues with giving false information in this House. The truth is that, if Wakefield wants a better future, as everyone in Wakefield deserves, only one by-election candidate can provide that, and that is Nadeem Ahmed.
We intend to go much further to build a truly 21st-century offer in primary care. That includes Dr Claire Fuller’s independent review, which I found to be extremely valuable, and the changes that will stem from that as well as the many others that we will bring forward shortly. We will work with the population and the profession alike. The hon. Gentleman was right to focus on the importance of the profession, but he did forget to mention, as I referred to earlier, that since March 2019 we have more than 2,380 additional GPs in primary care, record numbers of doctors in training and more than 18,000 additional primary care professionals.
Let me turn briefly to the important steps we are taking in dentistry. Urgent care has been back at pre-pandemic levels since December 2020, and the 700 centres for urgent care that we set up to provide treatment for patients during this difficult period have helped thousands of patients across the country. At the start of this year we put an additional £50 million into NHS dental services, which boosted dental capacity by creating 350,000 extra appointments. Dentists are currently required to deliver 95% of pre-covid activity, and we are planning to return to 100% shortly. I commend all the dentists who are already achieving that.
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
The Secretary of State referred to an additional £50 million. As he knows, the way in which that was framed made it difficult for dentists to draw down the money. Will he tell the House how much of it has been drawn down and used?
Sajid Javid
I do not have the exact figures to hand, but I know that millions of pounds were drawn down and used to deliver tens of thousands of appointments across the country. That made a huge difference to a great many people.
Greg Clark (Tunbridge Wells) (Con)
The urgent care centres are an important innovation, but it is also important for them to be accessible throughout the country. There are seven in Kent, but the one nearest to my constituents is 33 miles away. Could my right hon. Friend intervene with the NHS in the south-east to bring about a more even distribution?
Sajid Javid
My right hon. Friend’s point is important and well made, and I will look at the issue closely and get back to him, if I may.
As we have already heard today—but it is such an important point—the challenge for NHS dentistry predated the pandemic. It is not just about the number of dentists in England, but about the completely outdated contracts under which they are working, which were signed under a Labour Government. [Interruption.] Labour Members do not like it, but it is true. These contracts mean that we are operating almost with one hand tied behind our backs. They do not incentivise prevention, they hold back innovation, and they mean that hard-working families cannot get the dental services that they deserve. However, we will now be changing that; our work with the sector, along with the work of Health Education England on recruitment and retention, will be vital for the future.
Sajid Javid
I will in a moment.
If there is one thing that unites all our work on primary care and dentistry, it is this. We are shifting to a new mode of operating—one that is about helping the whole population to stay healthy, not just about treating those who ask for help. We need to get to a place where we are healthier for longer, because freedom is hollow without our health.
Our new Health and Social Care Act 2022 is an important step in that ambition. Statutory integrated care systems will be responsible for the funding to support the health of their respective areas—not just treating people, but helping people to stay healthy in the first place. The Act also allows us to make safe and effective public health interventions such as water fluoridation, and we will set out further plans for that shortly.
Prevention, personalisation, people and performance: those will be our watchwords for modernising NHS services. They will sit at the heart of everything to come, from the health disparities White Paper to the update of the NHS long-term plan. While the Opposition continue to go off the rails, we remain firmly on track, laying down our plans to deliver a truly 21st-century offer for the profession and, most of all, for patients.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. As Members can see, there is a great deal of interest in this debate. I am not imposing a time limit now, although I—or whoever occupies the Chair after me—will obviously be free to do so later, but some discipline in this regard would be very useful. We will start with Paul Blomfield.
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
A range of important issues has been raised by those on both Front Benches and in the interventions on them, but I want to focus specifically on NHS dentistry issues.
We have all had so many constituents contact us, and I would like to share a small selection of mine. One new resident to the city said:
“I moved to Sheffield earlier in the year. I am unable to register for an NHS dentist. I am being quoted waiting lists of eighteen months just for a check-up.”
Another wrote:
“My partner has been trying to get into a dentist for a check-up for around 18 months. We have rung every dentist within a 6-mile radius to be told they are not taking on NHS patients…and he will need to go private.”
One woman wrote to me:
“I have a MATB1 form entitling me to free dental care whilst I’m pregnant and for a year after birth. Unfortunately, I can’t use this as I can’t find an NHS dentist”.
A young mother told me:
“We’re told dental care is important and that we should get our children seen early and regularly. We moved to Sheffield in December 2020. I started to look for a dentist. I’ve been on a waiting list for a year with no progress.”
Another parent told me:
“Our son was referred for NHS orthodontic treatment by his dental practice in February 2019 at the age of 12. He has now been on the waiting list for 35 months and will turn 15 next month. He still has not had an initial assessment appointment.”
Lilian Greenwood
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way; the Secretary of State seemed to forget to do so. Does my hon. Friend share my concern that, even before the pandemic, the No. 1 reason for hospital admission among children aged five to nine was tooth decay? Is that not a shocking indictment of the failure to address health prevention and care for children and their teeth, and is it not a bit galling for the Secretary of State to suggest that this is the fault of the last Labour Government, when before the pandemic his Government had already been in power for 10 years?
Paul Blomfield
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, and she is absolutely right about how that highlights the crisis we are facing in NHS dentistry. That exists right across England, and it was interesting to hear comments from other nations, because significantly less is spent on dentistry in England than in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland. The Secretary of State blames everything on the contract, but the cuts to dentistry have been deeper than in the rest of the NHS, with spending a quarter less than it was in 2010, and I am not surprised that he made no mention of that.
Last Wednesday, I met our local dental committee to discuss the problem—dentists who are committed to their profession and to NHS provision, and who want a solution—and following our discussion, they commissioned a survey of waiting lists across the city. Some 37 practices responded, which is about half of the city’s providers, but only one practice could offer a waiting time shorter than a year. For 29% it was up to two years and for 32% more than two years. The most significant number was that 35% of practices were unable to add any patients to their waiting lists.
Across England, the number of dentists providing NHS services fell from 24,700 in 2019-20 to 21,500 now, which is a fall of 15% in just two years—
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Maria Caulfield)
indicated dissent.
Paul Blomfield
I see the Minister shaking her head.
However, there is provision for those who can pay. Healthwatch reported last year:
“Whilst some people were asked to wait an unreasonable time of up to three years for an NHS appointment, those able to afford private care could get an appointment within a week.”
That is adding to health inequalities, and it is not because dentists are reluctant to take on NHS patients, but because the system discourages them from doing so. We have patients wanting NHS dentistry and dentists wanting to provide it.
It is true that there are flaws in the 2006 contract. It is based on units of dental activity using figures from the two years prior to its imposition, which are now massively outdated. It contains huge discrepancies in remuneration rates between practices doing the same work. There are penalties through clawback for underperformance for reasons beyond the control of practices, but no reward for overperformance. I see the Minister smirking, but she has been delivering this contract, and the Government have been operating within it for 12 years. There are limits on how much NHS treatment a practice can provide. That is because of quotas and the way that providers are contractually obliged to spread their NHS work. Dentists have a disincentive to take on new patients, who are more likely to have greater treatment needs, because the fee-per-item system was replaced with a system in which the same is paid for one filling as for 20.
Paul Blomfield
As the Minister is nodding, let us review the position as regards the contract. Back in 2008, the Select Committee on Health declared the system not fit for purpose. The then Health Secretary, Alan Johnson, responded by ordering a review of the system. In 2009, the Steele inquiry reported, and in 2010, we committed to reforming the contracts, but 12 years on, nothing has happened.
Ministers also blame covid. Clearly, it has had an impact; there was a backlog of 3.5 million courses of dental treatment after lockdown, and patients are inevitably presenting with bigger problems and increased need, which means longer appointments and extra work, for which dentists get no remuneration. The Ministers sitting on the Front Bench have presided over this flawed system. In quarter 4 of 2021-22, 57% of practices faced financial penalties for being unable to meet the targets that those Ministers effectively imposed; the problem is due to the additional infection prevention control requirements and the lack of adjustment to the remuneration system.
We have reached a tipping point for NHS dentistry. Unless the Government act, the number of complaints that all Members of Parliament are getting will only grow. More practices will move to a private model, which will add to the difficulties, because the system does not work for them.
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)
NHS services are devolved, but many concerns about them are shared across the UK. Some of my constituents have concerns about the price of NHS dentistry offered through private dental practices, and about transparency in how final costs are calculated. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, particularly given the economic climate, practices must give cost breakdowns before treatment begins, so that patients can budget and understand what they are paying for?
Paul Blomfield
We need transparency, and that starts with a new structure for remunerating dentists—a structure that no longer disincentivises them from taking on NHS patients, and that does not push them towards private care. If we do not make those changes, the system will get worse. Some 50% of NHS practices have already reduced their NHS commitment, and 75% are planning to reduce further their contracts. Patients will face frustration and all the pain involved in not accessing help when they need it. As others have commented, children’s oral health will be severely damaged. It is a disgrace—it shames the country—that last year, hospitals in England carried out almost 180 operations a day on children to remove rotting teeth, and it cost the NHS more than £40 million. Those problems will impact those children throughout their life. Poor dental health is linked to endocarditis, cardiovascular disease, pneumonia, premature births and low birth weights, all of which add strain and cost to the NHS.
The good news is that there is an answer, but it is in the hands of the Government. We need to restore adequate funding to dentistry in England, and we need a commitment that the long-promised contract reform will take place. It must be real reform, and not tweaks at the edges. Otherwise, we face the slow death of NHS dentistry.
Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)
With regard to access to GP services, there is a significant challenge that must be met head-on. The solution must address patients’ ongoing concerns, involve long-term strategic workforce planning, and respect, not abuse, the GPs themselves.
The issue that I wish to focus on is access to NHS dentistry, which after 18 months retains the unenviable and scandalous position of being No. 1 in my postbag. It is quite clear that the situation is replicated for colleagues across the House. Access to NHS dentistry is a problem that has been brewing for a long time. It can be likened to a house built on shallow and poor foundations, which—with the earthquake of covid—have led to the house falling down.
The impact on people is profound: millions unable to find a dentist; thousands in agony, resorting to DIY tooth extraction; as yet untold numbers of undiagnosed mouth cancers; children suffering and having whole mouth replacements; and the poorest hit hardest. The solutions are fivefold: a secure, long-term funding stream; a strategic approach to recruitment and retention; replacement of the dysfunctional NHS dental contract; a prevention policy promoting personal oral healthcare from the cradle to the grave; and transparent and full accountability through the new emerging integrated care systems.
To be fair to the Government, measures have been put in place to address the crisis. Locally in Lowestoft, funding has been provided for an established dentist to attend to emergencies. The practice has responded heroically and prevented the system from collapsing. A new long-term NHS contract has been awarded to Lowestoft-based Dental Design Studio. That is welcome, although given that it was not possible to commission similar contracts elsewhere in Suffolk and Norfolk, there is concern that demand for NHS dentistry across the region will continue to outstrip supply, and that the new service could have a large and unserviceable catchment area.
The Government’s announcement in February of a £50 million dental “treatment blitz” was welcome, but there is concern that the take-up of that funding has been limited because dentists have been too overstretched to take on the extra work. In the long term, the fact that the feasibility of establishing a dental school in Norwich is being considered is also very much welcomed.
Those initiatives are a step in the right direction, but the underlying causes of the dentistry crisis are yet to be tackled. In May, the Association of Dental Groups’ report highlighted the emergence of dental deserts across the country, where there is almost no chance of ever seeing an NHS dentist. There is a real risk of them merging to form an area of Saharan proportions. The British Dental Association is concerned that the negotiations to reform the NHS dental contract framework are yet to begin in earnest.
I have mentioned the importance of prevention. Back in February, I attended an event in Lowestoft at which community dental services and Leading Lives—a Suffolk-based not-for-profit social enterprise—launched a toolkit to help improve the oral health of young people with learning difficulties. Leading on from that, Lowestoft Rising, which promotes collaboration between statutory authorities and the voluntary sector, got together with local councillors and supermarkets to buy toothbrushes and toothpaste for primary school students. The initiative is to be applauded, but the feedback that I have received is that so much more could have been done if the group had not had to pay 20% VAT; surely this is a Brexit dividend that is looking us right in the eye.
As we have seen with the zero rating of women’s sanitary products, we now have more flexibility to vary our fiscal regime. If necessary, such a VAT exemption could apply to children’s dental products in much the same way as it does to children’s shoes. Children’s toothpaste and toothbrushes are distinct and different from those products used by adults. Such a strategy would embed good oral healthcare at an early age, and help to prevent the traumatic and expensive whole mouth replacements that hospitals increasingly have to carry out. Such a policy could form part of the new long-term plan for NHS dentistry that is so badly needed right across the country, and which I look forward to the Government rolling out at the earliest possible opportunity.
Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab)
I put on record that my husband is a senior manager in the NHS.
Dr Claire Fuller was commissioned by the Government to lead a national review of primary care. In her introduction to that review, she says that
“there are real signs of…discontent with”
general practice,
“both from the public who use it and the professionals who work within it.”
Every day, more than 1 million people benefit from primary care professionals and, by Dr Fuller’s own admission, primary care teams are over-stretched “beyond capacity”. Sadly, we have not heard anything today from the Secretary of State to address that issue.
GPs have been working in local communities for over 100 years. The concept has not changed: GPs are still based in their local community, with the only difference being that the buildings they work in are much more modern. GPs have now moved to a triage system, creating the perception that it is difficult to get a face-to-face appointment, and for some of my constituents that perception is reality. Bookable appointments have now moved to a longer lead-in time, from three to four weeks in advance to seven to nine weeks in advance. Nationally, there were half a million more appointments in January this year than in January 2020, but the number of GPs is roughly the same, despite the Government’s promise in February 2020 that they would recruit 6,000 more GPs by 2024. More than two years down the line, we are simply no further on.
People are frustrated and angry that they are being contacted by GP surgeries to book in for a health check, yet cannot get to see their GP when they feel unwell. While it is undoubtedly important for GPs to carry out health checks, which can enable interventions, that cannot be at the expense of routine appointments. Those health checks are on an enhanced service contract, meaning that the GP is paid for every patient who takes them up. That is in addition to their normal contractual obligations, so it is no wonder that patients are frustrated. At the NHS Confederation last week—the gathering of more than 5,000 senior NHS managers and staff—which the Secretary of State said he attended, the single biggest area of concern was workforce.
We must ask ourselves why the guidance from NHS England predominantly concentrates on emergency care, rather than urgent care. It talks about how many people are waiting in accident and emergency, how many ambulances are delayed, and how many people cannot be discharged on time. Those are all important subjects, but that emphasis diverts people’s attention from the important point that the part of the NHS that deals with 90% of patient needs, GPs, only receives the crumbs off the table: 9% of the budget. It is time for the Government to deliver on their promises to recruit more GPs. The biggest threat to the NHS is crippling workforce shortages. If those shortages are not resolved, the Government will eventually start saying, “The NHS is failing.” That will, in turn, lead to the hedge funders coming in and taking over.
Our NHS staff are underpaid, undervalued and under-resourced, and are then blamed by this Government—this Government who have been in power for 12 years. Meanwhile, patients are struggling to get GP appointments and, often, when they call 111, they are advised to present themselves at A&E. This Government are hellbent on turning the NHS into the national hospital service, rather than the national health service. The model of primary care must change, and change for the better, to enable our constituents to access GP services in a timely and appropriate manner. Quite frankly, nothing less is good enough.
Richard Fuller (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Paula Barker). My observations are based on having, in the past six months, spoken and spent mornings with the people at about 11 of the 13 GP networks in my constituency and on some of their observations, which I have shared with the Minister previously.
Part of the issue in my area is that the population has grown so significantly. Since 2000, the number of patients per GP has gone up by about 40% in the constituency, which puts on significant pressure, which GPs are responding to, primarily by recruiting other direct care professionals, such as paramedics and various qualified nurses. That has a role in providing support to deal with the problems, but it has not overcome them. Significant efforts are being made to enable my constituents to contact their GP. One interesting issue in those observations was that the practice’s choice of phone system had a significant effect. Practices that chose system A—I will call it that, as I do not want to say a bad word about a particular practice or phone system—would find that the response for the customers, the patients, was terrible. In effect, when 10 people were waiting, the 11th caller got a signal that the number was no longer obtainable. So they would then go to the practice. This was just after covid, so they would go to the practice, try to get in and there would be a big sign on the door saying, “No entry”. These very easy-to-understand problems cannot be solved by the Government but they have a direct impact on people’s experience of primary care.
However, there are aspects that can be affected by the Government. One of the biggest concerns in my area has been the level and pace of housing development and the absence of an infrastructure-first policy. Can the Minister update the House on her conversations with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities about implementing infrastructure-first? It means that, before a large housing development can take place, the GP services and the school places need to be there. We should not have people moving into their new houses on some of these estates and then finding that there are no GP places, school places and dentists. This was a manifesto commitment of my party and we should be putting it into law.
The comments by the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) about dental contracts also go for GP contracts. There seems to confusion in the NHS—the Minister is clear that this is not really a Government responsibility—about whether there is value to the partner model among GPs, or whether we should be moving to a salary model and saying, essentially, that we are not going to pay extra for partners. This is an area where the Government need to set some direction of travel. It is an important direction to set for the NHS. I have my views, but I would be interested to hear whether the Minister believes that is something she can do.
Something that has been on my mind this week particularly has been the sclerotic process in NHS Estates and in other groups for getting primary care facilities built. The BBC’s “Look East” yesterday carried a story about the new primary care facility being built in Biddenham in my constituency. Eight years since it was first planned, we are hoping—fingers crossed, Madam Deputy Speaker—that that building will be commenced. That is because a lot of people had an interest. The GPs, the CCG, NHS Estates, the local authority, the housing developer and the developer of the facility all had an interest, but who was making the decision? The NHS needs to recognise that in the provision of services it has to be clear on who is saying yes, when, where and how.
I am grateful to the Minister for saying she will conduct a review of the impact, had infrastructure-first been in place. In my constituency, there is a cramped surgery in Great Barford that could move to a perfectly good, agreeable building opposite that would provide better facilities. Arlesey has had a significant increase in population. I visited its GP practice just two weeks ago. There is no air conditioning, and the doors mean someone could walk in on a GP during their session with a patient. The facility needs upgrading, so we need a decision. I am told that my local authority, Central Bedfordshire Council, has the money ready to convert a site in Biggleswade to primary care, yet the NHS decision process is not making that happen. These planning processes need urgent attention from the Government if change is to be made.
We have talked about the diversity of primary care roles, which is one of the Government’s positives, as they have said they will increase the number of roles such as emergency care nurses and other types of nurses and paramedics. We saw the Government’s “Data saves lives” paper this week, on how the better use of data can assist in providing solutions. I take the shadow Secretary of State’s criticism of the NHS app. I was going to say it is 19th century, but it is certainly 20th century in its user-friendliness. What is the plan not only to harness data but to make it accessible and to put power in the hands of the patient?
People can do things with their health information, such as tracking how many steps they take each day. Diabetics can track information on testing. This is a world of improvement that empowers individuals in primary care. The first port of call in primary care provision is each of us managing our own healthcare. What better way to do that than following examples from the rest of the world through NHS applications?
Will the Minister update the House on the use of artificial intelligence and big data, particularly when it comes to pre-emptive screening? The Government are making a welcome investment in screening centres, but how are we harnessing all this medical data to the task of improving healthcare at a preventive level, rather than later in the day?
My hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) has left, but he is absolutely right that the Government are on the right course in opening up more points of presence for primary care by bringing in pharmacies and screening centres, so that each of us can choose where we want to go to get some of the services we want. It is important that legislation and regulation follow as permissive an approach as possible. Let us focus regulations on the patient and patient choice, not on the provider and provider restrictions.
Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller). His points on planning resonated with me as a Lancashire MP. Where we see large expansions of housing that do not go hand in glove with expansions in GP practices, school places and public transport networks, it is hard to get buy-in from the current population in those areas for that expansion, with patients already struggling to get GP appointments.
When I was collecting my thoughts for this debate, I was worried that I might fall into the trap of talking about the huge number of constituents who get in touch with me daily about their frustrations with GPs and dentists, so I will begin by paying tribute to the GPs and dentists who work in my Lancaster and Fleetwood constituency. Having worked very closely with them for seven years, it is clear they are working to the best of their ability in a system that is, frankly, broken.
I will single out one GP in particular. It is always risky to start naming GPs because there will be someone I miss, but I pay tribute to Dr Mark Spencer. When he recognised the health inequalities, the differences in life expectancy and the increased number of cancers and other conditions among his patients in Fleetwood compared with patients in the rest of the borough of Wyre, he started an initiative called Healthier Fleetwood, which has the buy-in of our town, to promote healthier living and exercise. It is for that work that Healthier Fleetwood was awarded the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service last month. I congratulate all the volunteers at Healthier Fleetwood and Dr Mark Spencer on having the initiative and foresight to do that. He established it because of those health inequalities, which are exacerbated when access to primary care is made difficult. The reality is that record numbers of people are waiting for care and waiting longer than ever before. When we say that people are waiting longer for care, it is important to remember that people are waiting in pain and in discomfort, and with conditions that become more severe and more difficult to treat.
Frankly, Tory mismanagement has left England with 4,500 fewer GPs than we had a decade ago. That is in stark contrast to what was promised in the 2019 Tory manifesto, which talked about 6,000 more GPs. Instead, we have 4,500 fewer. It is no wonder that patients are getting frustrated. Many of my constituents at the Lancaster end of my constituency started a Facebook group when they became frustrated with the telephone system of one medical practice in Lancaster. A lot of such issues are down to the fact that there is just not enough capacity to meet demand in that part of my constituency. My constituency feels like two stories. I get far more complaints and grumbles from the Lancaster end of my constituency about struggling to access GP appointments than I do at the Fleetwood end, and that is reflected in the number of GPs recruited.
When patients cannot access GP appointments, they are directed to urgent care or accident and emergency. That is financially illiterate. The cost of a GP appointment is roughly £39. If we direct someone to an urgent care centre, it is £77. If they end up at A&E, it is £359. By not funding and supporting primary care, and by not recruiting and retaining the GPs we need, it is costing the NHS more to deliver healthcare and making it more frustrating for my constituents.
Turning to dentistry, I spoke last week to a nursery teacher in my constituency who teaches a class of three and four-year-olds. They had been learning about dental hygiene and they were given a little toothbrush and toothpaste. She talked about their experiences of going to the dentist. She told me that hardly any of those three and four-year-olds had been to a dentist. That concerns me deeply, but it ties in with what I am getting in my mailbag as a constituency MP: constituents are struggling to get NHS dentists for their children. Adults, too, are struggling to get NHS dentists. One of the most obvious ways people fall out of having an NHS dentist is when they move house. I have many people who moved to live in my constituency from other parts of the country and tried to find an NHS dentist. Years and years later, they are still left waiting. I have examples of parents of school-age children who are still on NHS waiting lists to see an NHS dentist.
One of the most difficult advice surgery appointments I have ever had to sit through was when a constituent put on the table in front of me the teeth he had pulled out of his own mouth. That will, frankly, stay with me forever, but it should never have got to that point. As a result of that case, I have raised the issue of access to NHS dentistry many times in this Chamber, including at Prime Minister’s questions. Last year, 2,000 dentists quit the NHS.
The number of nought to 10-year-olds admitted to hospital for tooth extractions is going up. I looked up the statistics for my own area. There were 30 children in Lancaster and 40 children in Wyre under the age of 11 who had been admitted to hospital for tooth extractions. Of those children, 30 were five years old or younger. I have to say that we are getting something dreadfully wrong when it comes to NHS dentistry and access to NHS dentistry. If we do not get it right for children and babies, we are storing up a lifetime of health issues that will become more and more expensive to deal with and have a knock-on effect on wider health.
To wrap up, the Culture Secretary recently admitted that a decade of Conservative mismanagement had left our NHS “wanting and inadequate” before covid hit. It seems that the Conservatives are now breaking their promise to hire the GPs we need and they are overseeing an exodus of NHS dentists. Those who cannot afford to go private are resorting to DIY dentistry or are being left in pain. Frankly, the longer we give the Conservatives in office, the longer our constituents will wait in pain.
David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)
All the GP surgeries in my constituency have worked incredibly hard throughout this period. I saw some of that up close when I was volunteering with the vaccination effort in the weeks that I could. The entire period has been a complete whirlwind for them, and they went straight back into there being a huge demand for appointments. I commend them for what they did during covid and what they are doing now.
The job of an MP is to not just champion but challenge. As every other Member of the House has, I have heard complaints about the difficulty of getting GP appointments, which I need to raise with surgeries. Those complaints are about getting an appointment at all, getting a face-to-face appointment, getting through on the phone, or—more for dentists than GPs—being able to register.
We know that the covid pandemic is a huge part of that problem, because we asked the public to stay at home and protect the NHS, which they did almost to a fault. I remember Ministers at the Dispatch Box, as the pandemic went on, pleading with people to come forward if they thought they had something. Understandably, however, people did not want to burden their GP or hospital. They are now rightly coming forward, and they may have had hospital treatments delayed again because of the backlog, so they are going to their doctor instead.
Sometimes, my constituents are unhappy about not getting face-to-face appointments; they dislike eConsult and telephone appointments. I have used eConsult successfully, and I think it and telephone consultations have a place, but as a GP at one of my surgeries said, the risk with both of those is that GPs do not see the thing that the patient has not come in about. A patient may come in about their leg, and while they are there, the GP says, “Can I just have a look at the thing on your neck?”.
Emma Hardy
I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman’s point about GPs not being able to identify the issues that people have not come in for. Another thing that doctors can notice at face-to-face appointments is that someone is a victim of domestic abuse or violence.
David Johnston
I completely agree; the hon. Lady has made an important point. Sometimes, what people present with is not the biggest issue in their lives, and a skilled practitioner can uncover that.
As has been touched on, the issue is partly about telephone systems, bizarrely, as I will come on to, but it is also undoubtedly about a shortage of GPs. The Government have a grip on that: we have 1,500 more GPs now than in March 2019; 4,000 more trainees have taken up training places this year compared with 2014; and we have a health and social care levy which, as has been touched on, the Labour party opposes but which provides £12 billion a year to the health and care system, so there is more money to improve telephone systems and face-to-face appointments. Looking at the data this morning, we had 2 million more face-to-face appointments in April this year than in April last year, but we are still below pre-pandemic levels.
The complaints I get about dentistry are more about not being able to register anywhere. There is a particular issue with the promise that we make to pregnant women about being able to see a dentist, because even they cannot get registered. I met the Minister about that recently. The issue there is less about a shortage, as it is with GPs, and partly about the contract; there seems to be cross-party agreement that the 2006 Labour contract needs to be changed. I am also pleased that the Government will allow more internationally qualified dentists to support the dental system here.
There are two things that we need to get better at. One of them was touched on by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller). My constituency has also seen a huge growth in housing—we have two housing developments in Didcot alone, which will house 18,000 people—and the promised GP surgeries for these increased populations never arrive. As my hon. Friend said, we must get better at putting in the infrastructure first and at planning for the increased populations.
I shall finish on the second thing. Some Members may know that I worked in social mobility before I became an MP, running charities for disadvantaged young people. Unfortunately, the medical profession is the most socially exclusive profession in the country. Only 6% of doctors are from a working class background. A person is 24 times more likely to become a doctor if they have a parent who is a doctor. That is worse than politics, worse than the media, worse than the law, and worse than any other profession that we can think of. There are many reasons for that. It is about the allocation of work experience, how the recruitment process works, and the fact that 80% of applications to medical school come from 20% of schools. There is a whole range of things.
The young people with whom I worked were eligible for free school meals. A very high proportion were from ethnic minorities. Medicine was the profession that they most wanted to get into. It was the most popular profession. On the one hand, we have a shortage of GPs, and, on the other, we have this incredible talent pool that finds that it cannot get into the profession.
One thing the Government might consider, as well as how we get the infrastructure in first, is how we make what is a hugely popular profession more accessible for certain groups of young people with whom I used to work, because, at the moment, they simply do not get into it in the numbers that they should, and, if they did, they might help with this GP shortage.
Stephen Morgan (Portsmouth South) (Lab)
I am grateful for the opportunity to raise the issues affecting my constituents in this important debate. Sadly, those issues are now becoming frustratingly commonplace for far too many people in Portsmouth, as record numbers of people are waiting for care, and waiting longer than ever before.
According to research by the Nuffield Trust, published in The Times last month, the figures are stark. Portsmouth is the worst affected area in the country, with just 40 GPs per 100,000 people. Meanwhile, one of the key GP practices in my city, the Guildhall Walk Healthcare Centre, closed in September last year, impacting more than 8,000 patients, many of whom are my constituents. Another GP service at the John Pounds Centre in Portsea also remains closed. I have raised concerns with local decision-makers about this, but it is clear that Government intervention is urgently needed to deliver the GP services that my constituents need and deserve.
It is a similar story with dentistry. A recent report from the Association of Dental Groups found that Portsmouth, at 42, has the seventh lowest number of NHS dentists per 100,000 in the country. Local Tory Ministers have claimed that the additional £6.8 million of piecemeal funding for dentistry in the region will help, but during the local dentistry forum that I convened with practitioners and representatives of the British Dental Association, they made it clear that it does not even begin to meet the scale of the challenge. They also underlined that there should be changes to rules and regulations on recruitment and retention to tackle this problem, as we have seen with NHS GPs.
I would welcome confirmation in the Minister’s response to the concerns raised by my constituents during my various lobbying efforts that reforming the NHS dental contract is under way, and that the BDA will be involved in its development. However, this cannot just be tinkering around the edges. My constituents need real action, and they need it, now.
In a survey that I conducted to hear the views of Portsmouth people, one respondent told me:
“I’ve had the same dental practice since I was born and now I don’t have a dentist at all because he went completely private due to Government contracts. I’m on universal credit and I can’t afford to pay private. My daughter is almost two years old and has never seen a dentist. It’s just shocking.”
Another said:
“My children and I travel to Watford every six months for our dental check-ups. There is no option to register with an NHS dentist in Portsmouth. I just hope none of us ever need emergency treatment.”
Possibly one of the most shocking examples of how bad things have got is that one Portsmouth resident had to resort to pulling out two of his teeth with pliers, after struggling to find an NHS dentist. In 2022, in one of the richest countries on the planet, no one should be forced to take such action because NHS services are hanging by a thread.” Portsmouth is now not just a dental care desert: it is a healthcare hell. It is time for the Minister to take her head out of the sand, listen to the people of Portsmouth, intervene to clear the backlog, develop a workforce strategy and finally deliver the NHS services my constituents expect and now desperately need.
Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)
NHS and care services have been under significant pressure over the last few years, due to the pandemic and now in restoring services as we open up. That includes dentist and GP services. I thank all of our NHS and care workers for all that they do and, especially, for all that they did during the pandemic.
Many of my constituents have contacted me because they are struggling to get GP appointments or to register for a place at an NHS dentist locally. I have been supporting many of my constituents to get access to GP services and to get into NHS dentists locally. That is something that we must address. The Government are prioritising £36 billion of additional investment to help to improve our health and social care services, which is very welcome. Primary care must be a key part of that investment and the improvements we need to see. I hope that, particularly with the reforms we are making in the NHS and the development of integrated care systems, we will see far more joined-up local healthcare that focuses on providing the seamless services patients need.
We also need to improve some of the quality issues. In some surgeries in Stoke-on-Trent we see very good quality of care, but the picture is far from uniform. We must also see the CQC taking a greater interest in issues of quality, such as whether someone can actually get an appointment, and not just the issues of safety that it focuses on at the moment.
Bringing decision making to a more local level for primary care will also ensure we can provide more joined-up and coherent health care services in our communities. For far too long, patients have struggled to access the healthcare they need, and both GP and dentist services have buckled under the strain of ever growing demand. Many GPs in Stoke-on-Trent have often raised with me the increasing challenges they face with greater demand for services and the increasing complexity of physical, mental health and wider social issues patients are presenting with. We need to fix the pressures we see in the system to create a healthcare system that shifts the balance far more towards prevention and earlier intervention. Whether it is physical or mental health, the more we can take action sooner, the better the outcome for the patient and the less likely more intensive and costly healthcare will be needed in the future. To achieve that, we must see the NHS collaborating far more with wider healthcare partners, including pharmacies, local charities and others who have much to give in terms of preventive healthcare, especially for mental health. We very much need that support so that those GP and dentist services can improve.
I also support the work being done through primary care networks, which is bringing together key health professionals—not just GPs—to support GP services and patients. In North Staffordshire, we need to see the development of the four proposed integrated care hubs, especially in Longton, with the development of the next phase of the new Longton health centre. My hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller) made a point about the problems and processes in developing new buildings and new NHS assets. We have seen significant challenges in doing that, and it feels as though we have been talking about the issues for years. We have had consultation after consultation, but we seem no further forward. We have talked long enough about wanting to deliver those improvements, and we need to now get on and deliver them. They will bring all the local community NHS services together on one site, providing far greater healthcare services at the centre of the community and more walk-in services. I hope the Longton site might also include one of the new community diagnostic hubs—it is important that we deliver those across the country.
Those improvements to local community healthcare services will have the significant benefit of helping to ease the pressures on the Royal Stoke University Hospital as well as on local primary care services. This is not just about more money; given the record increases in the amount we are putting into the NHS and social care, it is vital that we continue to focus on the health and care workforce—something that comes up regularly when I talk to many of the healthcare professionals in the trust that runs the healthcare services in Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire.
Obviously, we cannot train new doctors and nurses overnight; it can take five years or more to do that. However, we are making good progress, with 4,300 more doctors and over 11,800 more nurses than this time last year. We also have 72,000 new nurses in training. We must build on that.
We must build and deliver the improved health and community health services that our communities need, and continue to attract more people to work in our health and social care system, creating more and more integrated healthcare services and supporting GP and dentistry services to meet the future health needs of our constituents.
Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab)
It goes without saying that GP surgeries play an essential role in our communities and in our NHS. They are often the first port of call for anyone in need of medical help, and it is the hard work of GPs that ensures we can all obtain advice, medicine and referral to other services. However, like much of the NHS, GP surgeries are overstretched, under-resourced and understaffed, due to more than a decade of Tory mismanagement.
Frustratingly, my constituents in Coventry North West are suffering the consequences of that. Constituents contact me every week, telling me about the difficulties they face in trying to access their GP. Like so many of the GP surgeries discussed today, surgeries in my constituency are made up of dedicated health and administrative staff who have been stretched often to breaking point and simply do not have the capacity, resources or staff they need to serve their patients.
I will focus on one example—a constituent who reached out to me about their 2-year-old daughter. Their daughter is non-verbal, has recently been having nosebleeds and is exhibiting symptoms of head trauma. Each day, my constituent wakes up and joins a queue to try to access a GP appointment. Even though they are often on the phone for hours, they are still not able to book an appointment. In fact, they have not been able to speak to anybody at all at the surgery. My constituent is understandably concerned for their child’s health and, like many others, is desperate to see their GP.
The difficulties facing our GP services are having a knock-on impact on the rest of the NHS. Patients unable to see their GP are more likely to request an ambulance or visit A&E. In the west midlands, we have seen ambulance waiting times skyrocket to more than 8 hours for some people. Another constituent raised a case where the patient had to wait more than two hours for an ambulance to arrive, even though they were experiencing a heart attack. If the Government do not get to grips with the scale of this problem, the entire NHS will have to pay the price.
Before being elected as the Member of Parliament, I worked in the NHS as a full-time cancer pharmacist, and I still regularly volunteer as a pharmacist at my local hospital, Coventry University Hospital in Warwickshire. That has provided me with first-hand experience of the dedication and hard work of everyone who works in our fantastic NHS.
It is important that the Government finally deliver a plan that lives up to the dedication of NHS staff, providing GPs and others with the resources they need to do their job. That is what our GPs deserve and it is what my constituents in Coventry are desperately asking for.
Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
I draw the House’s attention to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. The debate is about GPs and dentists, and I will deal first with GPs. I pay tribute to the GPs who work in my constituency, and in particular those at the New Springwells practice and at Caythorpe and Ancaster medical practice, which have outstanding CQC ratings. I also pay tribute to the GPs who delivered the vaccine service. Not only did they work during covid with its challenges, but they delivered a vaccine service as well. They are a very hard-working, admirable group of people.
I agree with the Opposition that much of the overall problem with the NHS is a workforce problem. That is true. There are too many staff overall, and not enough of them are directly delivering or improving clinical care. We have expensive, very highly trained clinical decision makers being asked to do admin tasks that take them away from the clinical tasks that we are paying them for and which we need them to do. That contributes to our longer waiting times. So we need to increase the number of doctors.
The Opposition are making a big point about 12 years, but it takes 10 years to train a GP, and it takes longer than that to train a consultant. So, actually, the shortage was created during Labour’s time in government and we are trying to fix it. That is indeed why the number of medical schools has been increased by five. I am pleased that one of them is in Lincoln, just outside my constituency. It is training a new generation of doctors who will provide services locally—people predominantly stay where they train—which will help the people of Lincolnshire to have more access to doctors. However, the Government should go further. In the year when we had challenges with A-levels caused by covid and more people than expected got the grades required to get into medical school, places were exceptionally increased. There are challenges with that—only so many people can get around a bedside and a patient will be happy to have only so many people listen to their heart or feel a lump or bump or suchlike—but, nevertheless, it has been managed for one year, and I think that it could be managed for more. The best thing that the Government could do for the health service in that regard would be to massively increase the number of doctor places. At the moment, we are turning away keen, enthusiastic potential young doctors doing their A-levels because places are so oversubscribed, but then we find that we have a shortage. That surely cannot be right.
I turn to ease of access. The Secretary of State mentioned making it easier for people to be referred into secondary care, which of course is a good thing, but we need to ensure that training is in place for that. Since I became a consultant, we have seen the number of patients referred into secondary care increase rather rapidly—certainly in the department that I work in—but the quality of referrals has not always been right, and undoing an unnecessary referral can be more time-consuming than just seeing the patient. We need to be mindful of the need to have clinical decision makers doing what they need to do and, as such, if we are to broaden the scope of people making referrals, we need to ensure that either referrals are done with specific guidance or that training is provided so they are good-quality referrals, and not those that add to waiting lists.
On dentistry, we have heard much talk about children having whole-mouth teeth extractions. Clearly, that is a horrific thing to happen—it is unimaginable, really, that a child needs to come into hospital to have all their teeth removed. I look to the Minister to tell us what she doing about that, because it is not, as some have suggested, all the Government’s or the NHS’s problem. In part, it must be about diet, teeth brushing and dental care—whether the teeth are being properly looked after—as well as potentially fluoride enhancement of water and the availability of dentists. Several stages need to be looked at in a more holistic way to prevent these children from having to go through such an awful experience.
In Lincolnshire, NHS dental care is good, but the service’s availability is relatively poor. In the last two years, only 41% of adults in Lincolnshire have seen an NHS dentist, and less than a third of children saw an NHS dentist in the last year. The Minister will be aware that I had an Adjournment debate on the topic in October. I thank her for her engagement with me since and for her support in identifying potential solutions, as well as local dentists, the local dental committee, Professor Juster from the University of Lincoln and Health Education England for their time. They are just some of the people I have met to discuss Lincolnshire’s dental issues and how we can improve care.
The first thing to be solved is, of course, the dental contract. The contract was created by Labour in 2006, but I agree that we have had time and should probably have sorted it out by now. I raised that with the previous Secretary of State when I was on the Health and Social Care Committee in the previous Parliament. The contract pays for units of dental activity. There are three levels covering wide ranges of levels of care. Why Labour signed off on a contract that created such variability in both the value of a UDA and the amount of work required to be paid for one, I do not know, but it is human nature for someone to expect to be paid more if they have done more work, and that someone given the option of earning more for doing the same work will choose to do so. There, fundamentally, are the problems we have with the NHS contract. I look forward to hearing what the Minister is doing on that. I understand that she is in negotiations with dentists at the moment. I hope that she will be able to update the House on progress and that it will be good progress.
The second issue is geography. We know that our medical students predominantly stay where they train, and there is no dental school in the east midlands or in East Anglia. I am grateful to Health Education England and Ministers for discussions about solutions to this following my question at Prime Minister’s questions. There are a number of ways of resolving it. In the longer term, a dental school at Lincoln University would be a good way of ensuring that we have locally grown, locally trained dentists. The university is very supportive of that in the discussions, and indeed we have the support of all Greater Lincolnshire Members of Parliament for ensuring that this goes ahead.
I appreciate that it will take time to plan and deliver that, so in the meantime we need more dentists locally. The Minister and I have recently been talking about centres of dental development. The principle of a centre of dental development, which I would like to see in Sleaford, is that postgraduate training is delivered. It is attractive work for the sake of recruitment. People want to work at a centre because they get to deliver training and it is a more attractively remunerated job, but also, the postgraduate people being trained are immediately delivering care. Such a facility could be up and running within 18 months to two years and actively delivering care to my constituents, which is what I am looking for. I am particularly keen to see a centre located in Sleaford, because we have relatively few NHS dentists. We have great local schools, we have a fabulous community and we have great rail links, both north-south and east-west. What progress is the Minister making on these proposals?
Does the Minister have any update on what progress is being made on support for military families? I have a number of RAF bases, including RAF Cranwell, in my constituency. People who have moved around from place to place find that they have dropped off the list in one area and are struggling to get on to one in another. We have a covenant that says that we will ensure that people who are serving in our armed forces, and their families, are not disadvantaged, but clearly in this regard they are. I would be grateful for those updates from the Minister.
Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)
The Conservatives have been running our health and social care system into the ground for years. Covid has made an already bad situation worse, but it was already bad, and my constituents—patients and healthcare professionals—can really feel it. A constituent who is a professional chauffeur needs to provide regular medical assessment certificates to keep his job, but his GP is not doing them right now, so my team have had to work hard to make sure that his employer will not sack him.
Some of my constituents have managed to see their GPs. One has had a referral for chronic back pain, another for a diagnosis of breast cancer that needs treatment, but having had those appointments they then discovered weeks later that the referral letters were never sent. Another constituent who had a contraceptive implant has had some very severe side effects and wants to have it removed, but she cannot get an appointment. A constituent who contacted her GP to say that she was having suicidal thoughts was asked to fill out a form.
I was so concerned about these reports that I have been to visit our GP surgeries in St Albans. From the other end of the spectrum, it is incredibly shocking. The very second the phone lines open in a GP surgery, there are flashing lights on its big screen. At one minute past the time that its phone lines open, there are hundreds and hundreds of calls on the electronic board. Many of those phone calls are from very distressed callers who are in pain and very concerned. Many of the people at the counter—the receptionists at the other end of the phone—are receiving verbal abuse, and we know that GPs are receiving abuse in their surgery rooms behind closed doors as well. The BMJ suggests that violent incidents in GP surgeries have doubled in the last five years.
One of the GP surgeries in my constituency has now employed somebody on a full- time basis to do one job: to chase the local hospitals to send the letters so that the GPs can get the results that their patients need. We have heard Members across the House talk this afternoon about how fantastic it would be if we could use big data and if our constituents could become expert patients and use all the information collected on their phone, but frankly, at the moment, we are starting from a basis where we cannot even get a letter from a hospital to a GP surgery. It feels as though the entire system is creaking at the seams, and that is even before we get to the postcode lottery of the number of patients each GP has, or the length of appointments.
Members across the House have talked about the planning system and the fact that lots of new homes are often built in areas without the infrastructure to go with them. I wholeheartedly sympathise with the calls for new homes, but it seems crazy in the circumstances that clinical commissioning groups are not even statutory consultees for planning applications, for local plans or even for permitted development. It should be a priority for this Government to change that and make sure that CCGs have the right resources to respond to planning proposals.
Then we have the problems with dentists. Like many other Members use, I have constituents who have raised these problems. I have mothers with MAT-B certificates who cannot get dental treatment. I have parents whose children are developing gum disease, but they cannot get an appointment with their dentist. I have couples who have moved to St Albans and, because they have moved, cannot get an appointment with the dentist. The list goes on and on.
I have challenged the Minister before about the Government’s announcement earlier this year that they were going to give £50 million to dentists to create some emergency catch-up appointments. When the Secretary of State was challenged on this earlier this afternoon, he said that that £50 million had resulted in tens of thousands of new appointments. That was news to me. Earlier this year, I submitted a number of written parliamentary questions. I asked the Government how many dental practices had achieved the quarter 3 targets to make them eligible for this £50 million. The answer was that the Government did not hold that information centrally. I asked the Government how many expressions of interest had been received by the deadline of 3 January. The answer was that the Government did not hold that information centrally. I then asked the Government how many of those who had offered to carry out this urgent dental practice had been accepted. Again, the Government said that they did not hold that information centrally. So what has happened to that £50 million? How much of it has been drawn down?
Maria Caulfield
The hon. Lady will know, because she raised this in oral questions, that dentists return that data in quarters. We will have that data from the dental community by the end of June, and we will then be able to answer her questions. She knows that; she is making a political point here.
Daisy Cooper
I am genuinely incredibly grateful for that answer, because when I challenged the Minister on this last week I did not receive that answer. I am grateful to receive that response. I submitted a letter to the Minister—I think it was in April—and attempted to come to some drop-in events that were cancelled, so I am pleased to hear that that data will be provided by the end of June. However, my constituents in St Albans have seen absolutely zero appointments created from that money. Every dental practice has said that because of the way the funds have been set up, it has been impossible for them to apply for them. A number of other Members have raised that point.
The truth is that the Government have failed to recruit the GPs that we need. We have a retirement time bomb among our general practitioners, and we know that dentists are leaving NHS work as well. We need to see a serious plan from the Government so that everybody who needs to see a GP or a dentist can actually see one.
Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
Before I turn to the main substance of my speech, I want to take advantage of the presence of the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the hon. Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield), who is sitting there waiting to sum up the debate, by raising a few points further to my earlier intervention on the Secretary of State. They concern the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency and the mandatory logging of mesh complications, which was a recommendation in the Cumberlege review. It has been more than a year since the most recent review, so I think that the Secretary of State may have been a little confused when, in his response, he referred to what was happening a year later. We have just learnt that the MHRA will continue the yellow card system, and will not be introducing mandatory reporting. I am keen to hear the Minister’s response to that point.
As joint chair of the all-party parliamentary group on endometriosis, I am also keen to hear from the Minister when we will see the women’s health strategy. Although that is not specific to the debate, it does relate to GP services. I should also like to hear her response to the anecdotal news I have been hearing that more appointments for gynaecological procedures are being cancelled than appointments for any other operations, and that gynaecological elective procedures are the least likely to take place. Again, it seems that there is a real issue surrounding women’s health.
I hope that the Minister will be able to address those issues of the women’s health strategy, endometriosis and mandatory reporting, but I will now turn to the main substance of my speech on access to GP services. Hull has only 40 GPs per 100,000 patients, which is one of the lowest proportions in the area. I want to draw attention to what two of my constituents have said. One, a gentleman called Rob Grimmer, told me about the birth of his granddaughter Nova. That was wonderful news, but unfortunately the family were unable to contact a GP surgery or get through to 111 when they needed to, and eventually they had to take the baby to A&E for treatment. The good news is that the baby is fine, but I am sure that Members can imagine the trauma involved. I have been a new mum myself, and I know that going to A&E with a new baby must be terrifying and very upsetting. I should like to hear from the Minister why we are seeing so many mums and babies having to go to A&E to obtain support.
Another constituent, a gentleman called Steven Draper, said that he waited three weeks for his grandson to see a GP. His grandson is only eight years old. What I really want the Government to take on board in this debate is the impact on children, and particularly on children’s education. If a child is repeatedly not feeling well and is unable to gain access to the services that they need, they will miss more school. The Department for Education says that attendance is very important and that it wants children to be back at school—Ofsted and a member of the Social Mobility Commission have also stressed the importance of attendance—but that does not seem to be joined up with children’s problems in accessing dental treatment and GP appointments, which lead to their having time off school.
I remember that when I was a primary school teacher there was a “brush bus”—I am not sure whether anyone else encountered one of these—which visited the school so that children could learn about the importance of brushing their teeth. There were even giant teeth in the classroom, which the children loved, so that they could see which bits get missed out during brushing. The problem is not just cuts in dental services, but cuts in public health provision, prevention measures and education. Long before the pandemic, we saw public health information services go.
Having teeth removed when a child is very small has an impact on that child’s education, not just in terms of time off but in terms of speech and language, and it will therefore affect phonics. It has a knock-on effect. I must emphasise to the Minister that we need to get this right. We are failing children when it comes to dental treatment. Indeed, we are failing people from cradle to grave, because we are also failing those at the other end of the spectrum.
This is another issue of which the Government should have been fully aware. They should have understood that people were ageing before the pandemic and that older people’s requirements are different. A few decades ago, most people in care homes had false teeth, which actually made them easier to look after, especially if they were dementia patients. I raised in Parliament, three or four years ago, the specific issue of dental care for people in care homes, particularly those suffering from dementia, who can find the whole procedure very traumatic while not understanding what is happening to them. This problem has existed for a long time, since way before the pandemic. There should have been plans that recognised that people were ageing, and ageing with their teeth, and would therefore continue to require dental treatment.
We are reaping what the Government have sown in the net spending cut of 25% between 2010 and 2025. We are reaping what they sowed in the five years before the pandemic, when the number of practices providing NHS dentistry fell by more than 1,200. I have huge sympathy for dentists and GPs in my constituency, and I want to add my thanks for everything that they do.
I was contacted by a local dentist about how she had been feeling. It was quite an upsetting letter. She had been pregnant and on maternity leave for part of the pandemic, but while she was pregnant she was trying to do her job in the middle of it. She was obviously worrying about her own baby, and she told me that she was having to give up being an NHS dentist because it was just not working out.
In her letter to me, she says:
“The Government have only offered £50 million in time limited funding which amounts to £40 a week per dentist. After a decade of savage cuts, it is no more than a sticking plaster of no consequence to the wider issues. I am likely going to go private this year despite enjoying helping high-need patients due to the Government’s poor contract and lack of funding.”
With respect, it is a bit odd for the Minister to blame the Labour party for not changing the dental contract when the Conservatives have had 12 years to look into it. I hope the Minister will urgently address the issue before more dentists step away from practice. That dentist had 3,200 patients in her practice, which means 3,200 more people now looking for support and help.
Unlike my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith), I have not had a gentleman present me with his teeth, but I have had some really upsetting cases. A lady, who was pregnant and unable to access any other free NHS dental entitlement, said to me:
“Being entitled to free NHS dental care when you’re pregnant clearly isn’t an option any more. I think the situation needs to be addressed as I am sure it is not just in my area in Hull.”
She is absolutely right. Why is it that pregnant women are given free dental treatment? It is because pregnancy is likely to have an impact on teeth, so the lack of access to free treatment is storing up problems in the long run. I have had countless emails from people telling me they have been struck off their dentist’s list due to not attending during a period of illness. Someone else told me that despite the swelling in her mouth causing immense pain, she had been dismissed as a patient and told that there was a six-to-12-month waiting list even if she was accepted again. Another who needs dental treatment and whose dentist had passed away told me:
“I complained to the ombudsman service. The ombudsman has today telephoned with the news that they are so overwhelmed with complaints that they are only allocating caseworkers to cases where death or serious injury has occurred. Even the ombudsman service cannot cope with the incompetence and failure that we have in the NHS dental service.”
Another gentleman wrote to me about how he broke his tooth in July 2021 and was still waiting in pain to have it removed in February 2022. The list of people who have contacted me to say they cannot find a dentist goes on and on. We are storing up more problems for the future. Someone else contacted me to say that their one-year old son—aged one, children are meant to have a dental check whether they have teeth or not—is unable to get a dental appointment. If we do not treat people when they are younger, we will create more problems in the future. Mismanagement of our NHS and our public finances, because of a lack of preparation and things not being thought through, means that everything costs more in the long run,
Our dental services are in crisis. We are facing a collapse that will take years to put right. Waiting lists, delays, cancellations and shortages are the real growth areas in Conservative backlog Britain. My constituents, along with those in the rest of the country, have had enough.
Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)
According to the Association of Dental Groups, only a third of adults and half of children in England have access to an NHS dentist. As we have heard, the top reason for children being admitted to hospital is tooth extraction. It is 2022, not 1922. Back in 1947, when the NHS and NHS dental services were brought about by the then Labour Government, many of us naively thought that they would be around for ever, that we would always be able to access those services when we needed them. Unfortunately, we now see the return to the poverty-linked ill health that we saw in the 1940s.
As MPs, we hear heartbreaking stories. There was the Salford man with a badly infected tooth who could barely afford to live, let alone pay for private dental treatment. He could not find an NHS dentist who would take him on. He said to me that, had it not been for the fact that he was on anticoagulants, he would have pulled his own teeth out with a pair of pliers. There was the Salford woman with countless abscesses all over her jaw, and no money to go private. She was in acute pain and putting her life at risk from a spreading infection. She had been trying to get on an NHS waiting list for a dentist for over five years. There was also the Salford mother living on the breadline, yet forced to borrow and scrape together the money to go private. She told me that she had to pay £100 just to get on a dentist’s list. There are thousands of stories like this.
Recently, I asked the Government what data they held on the number of people trying to access an NHS dentist in Salford, such as the stories I had heard from my constituents. The Government confirmed that they held no data for my constituency or even across Greater Manchester. Frankly, that is staggering.
So what is at the heart of the decline of NHS dentistry? The British Dental Association details that chronic underfunding and the current NHS dental contract are to blame for long-standing problems with burnout, recruitment and retention in NHS dental services.
On funding, in real terms, net Government spend on general dental practice in England was cut by over a quarter between 2010 and 2020. The £50 million that the Government have announced—as we have already heard today, it is difficult to access that at the best of times—will not even touch the sides given the amount of funding cut from NHS dentistry.
On the contract, the system in effect sets quotas for the number of patients a dentist can see on the NHS and caps the number of dental procedures they can perform in any given year. If a dentist delivers more than they have been commissioned to—say, to try to help a desperate patient in need of urgent care—that dentist is in effect punished. Not only are they not remunerated for the extra work done, but they have to bear the cost themselves of any materials used, laboratory work and other overheads.
It is no wonder that morale among NHS dentists is now at an all-time low, and we are facing an exodus of dentists from the NHS. We are seeing NHS dentistry deserts popping up all over the country, where constituents such as mine in Salford can only dream of trying to get on an NHS dentist’s patient list. Around 3,000 dentists in England have stopped providing NHS services since the start of the pandemic. Staggeringly, for every dentist quitting the NHS entirely, 10 are reducing their NHS commitment by 25% on average, and 75%—75%—of dentists plan to reduce the amount of NHS work they do next year.
It is clear that we face a dental crisis and that the Government must urgently address it. There are a number of actions that I hope the Minister will take. First, they must reform the NHS dental contract with a decisive break from units of dental activity, a greater focus on prevention and the removal of perverse incentives.
Secondly, the Government must provide adequate levels of protected NHS dental funding to ensure investment in new and existing NHS dental services, and they must guarantee the long-term sustainability of NHS dentistry for all who need it.
Thirdly, NHS dentistry must be given the status it deserves. That means sitting right at the heart of local NHS commissioning, rather than being treated as an afterthought—a luxury service, as it were, which is how many seem to perceive it.
Finally, the Government must build and properly fund historic public health commitments to prevention. As we have heard—from Conservative Members, actually—this is a crisis in NHS dentistry, but many of the factors that contribute to this crisis are directly related to poverty, people’s diets and the amount of money they have to spend as a family on oral health and hygiene.
We are in the midst of a cost of living crisis as well as a dental crisis, and the Government need to be doing far more to support families to make sure that they have enough to live on and a decent range of food that provides them with the nutrition they need in order to have healthy teeth. We naively thought that poverty-related ill health, rotting teeth and gum disease had been consigned to the history books when NHS dentistry was established in 1948, but this Government wind the clock back day after day and those afflictions are now back with a vengeance. NHS dentistry hangs by a thread. The Government have a moral duty to stop the rot today because rotting teeth come from a rotting Government. I hope that the Minister will change my mind.
Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)
For many people living in Bradford, being unable to get an appointment with their GP for days or weeks, or being unable to see an NHS dentist at all, is one of the most depressing issues they face—if not the most depressing. Although such a scandal in our healthcare system is of course unacceptable anywhere, the harm that it is causing in Bradford, where we face especially stark health inequalities and where people are dying a decade earlier and facing a higher rate of preventable diseases, is particularly damaging.
It seems that the Government either do not understand or just do not care. Earlier, the Secretary of State opened for the Government. According to him, we have had record levels of investment, the Government are now planning many initiatives, and any concerns were entirely a result of the two years of covid. Of course, everybody in this Chamber would accept that the NHS, GPs, dentists and all the health services faced pressures during covid. I do not think anyone is denying that. The Secretary of State said to the shadow Minister, “You supported us during that period”. Of course we did. We were a responsible Opposition and of course we ensured that any pressures during a very difficult period could be alleviated. But to say that the issues have suddenly resulted from that period is simply untrue, and Ministers know that it is untrue.
The second assertion—those who were in the Chamber will recall that I pressed the Secretary of State about his record investment in the NHS—was that of course there was record investment, but let us look at that investment. Let me go to my district, to Bradford, and see the record investment that Ministers and the Secretary of State want to boast about. Frankly, they live in some parallel universe, because we do not see the effect that they come here and tell us about. In Bradford, one of the most deprived districts—more than 50% of the deprivation in my constituency is in all the top 10 deprivation indices—child poverty is now at a record high because of those on the Government Benches. Nearly 50% of children in my constituency today live in poverty because of the draconian, ideological cuts made by this Government over the past decade. I have said this in the Chamber many times: people who live in the inner cities are likely to live 10 years less than if they live in the leafy suburbs, which are far more affluent and, frankly, get more investment.
What does the record investment that the Secretary of State and Ministers tell us about equate to in Bradford terms? They tell us that, on average, we will get £4 per patient more than the rest of the country, even though we have the levels of deprivation, poverty and health inequalities that I have gone through. But actually the situation is worse, because even that £4 of investment that they tell us we are getting is fudged figures and smoke figures, because in real terms, if inflation was to be counted, we are getting £3 million less than we had before this Government came to power. On average, we have more than 2,800 patients per GP, whereas the national average is 2,100 patients per GP. If anywhere should be seeing this record investment, it should be in places such as Bradford, but are we seeing it? How does that equate? The hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper), who is no longer in her place, talked about the stark reality on the ground. This is why I say that Ministers are living in a parallel universe, because the stark reality on the ground is not as they see it. Most people simply cannot get GP appointments. People start ringing first thing in the morning and are on hold for hours on end. Many people will then have to wait until the next day. Getting through to a GP practice on the phone takes days on end.
Sarah Owen (Luton North) (Lab)
When the Minister comes to her feet, I am sure she will say that X number of people have been able to access a GP, but have they been able to access their own GP? We have heard time and time again from health professionals how important continuity of care is. Does my hon. Friend agree that this is not just about seeing any old GP—it is about someone seeing their own GP?
Imran Hussain
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, who makes the point that I was coming on to raise. Her Luton constituency is not dissimilar to mine. With a single GP having 2,800 patients, it is obvious why those patients are not getting to see their GP. I could spend a long time in this Chamber going through constituency cases that I have recently dealt with. Indeed, I have done that in the past and those cases are on the record. Let me cite just one case today. An elderly lady in her 90s had to go to hospital and was then told to go to see her GP. Her son tried day after day to make a simple GP appointment for her. She had multiple health needs. My office had to intervene and even we were unable to secure a GP appointment for her. People are having to go through this ping-pong of not getting a GP appointment and then going to A&E as they have nowhere else to turn.
I am grateful because I did ask the Health Secretary about Bradford and urgent treatment centres, and he did favourably say that he would arrange a meeting with the Minister for Health, the hon. Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), who joins us now, at precisely the right time. I look forward to that meeting because that is a way through and I am grateful for that offer. But the reality remains that the Government’s promise—or the points the Secretary of State made earlier today—is not apparent on the streets. People continue to suffer, they cannot get GP appointments and they have nowhere else to turn. That point has been made eloquently by a number of Members.
At least, after days and weeks of trying, people are able to get an appointment with a GP. Many Members have talking about issues with joining an NHS dentist. There is more chance of finding gold bricks on the street, or of finding the parallel universe that Government Ministers live in, than there is of getting on to the list of an NHS dentist. People simply cannot get NHS dentists, and we have heard accounts today of how they are being forced to carry out DIY operations at home, without anaesthetic or any medical care—I have come across such cases in my own constituency—because they have no other option. Frankly, as the fifth largest and richest economy in the world, it is shameful that people are having to resort to DIY treatment at home. Again, that is happening on this Government’s watch.
I have been in this place since 2015, and every time we have a debate about NHS dentists or GPs, Tory Members refer back to the Labour Government of 12 years ago. I remember that when I was growing up, under a Thatcher Government, GP practices were back-to-back houses on terraced rows without adequate facilities. The last Labour Government brought in record investment, gave us state-of-the-art health centres, and reduced health inequalities and child poverty. That was all under a Labour Government, but Tory Members cannot pretend that the Labour Government of 12 years ago are somehow responsible for the issues we face today. The Whips are not in their place, but I say to the Tory Whips, “Please do your Members justice and remove that line from the long-standing script you have for them”, because it is becoming embarrassing when Tory Members stand up and say, “12 years ago, there was a Labour Government, so it must be all their fault.” They can use that line for a year or two, but unfortunately, in nobody’s world can they use it for 12 years. Tory Members need to start understanding that.
Can we expect any more from this Government? This is a Government who believe people choose to be poor—they have said so in this very House and on TV. This is a Government who believe people should work extra hours and do more, and that those who are forced into poverty are not forced, but have chosen poverty. The reality is that this is a Government who could not care less about people in Bradford who continue to suffer. [Interruption.] The Minister chunters from the Front Bench; she will have time to address those points when she responds.
Maria Caulfield
I would be interested to hear the hon. Gentleman’s opinion on the position in Wales, which was set out in the Secretary of State’s opening remarks. Wales faces exactly the same pressures, and its waiting times are actually worse than England’s. What is the hon. Gentleman’s reason for why the Welsh Labour Government are in exactly the same position as this Government?
Imran Hussain
Again, the first defence is “Labour 12 years ago”; the second defence is “Labour in Wales”. The point about Labour in Wales has already been appropriately addressed, but the Minister’s job is to address those issues in England. Rather than address those issues, she thinks that saying “What about Labour in Wales?” somehow provides a cover, an umbrella, and a defence against the incompetence that exist across our health sector. That does not wash with the British public, because they have not been asleep for the past 12 years. They have noted the devastation that the Tory Government have caused in our communities, and the back-door privatisation and ideological agenda they have brought to our health service. I have said it before, and I will say it again: people will repay them with interest at the ballot box.
Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)
It is a great honour to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain). I have received a steady stream of complaints from my constituents in Bedford and Kempston about excessive GP and dental waiting times. They are angry, frustrated and bewildered that the system is failing them, but there is also a sense of fear that the NHS they knew and loved is no longer there for them.
For over a decade, Opposition MPs have warned about the impact of underfunding the NHS and of the harmful top-down reforms; and about what would happen if the Government failed to take seriously the recruitment, retention and training problems for GPs and dentists. We expect an announcement on dental contract reform before the summer recess, but we need more than short-term quick wins to reform that fundamentally flawed contract. For patients across the country to see any real difference in the level of access to NHS dentistry, we need genuine, meaningful contract reform, yet formal negotiations on such reform have yet to begin.
Over recent months, I have met GPs across Bedfordshire, who have all made it clear to me that there is a crisis in general practice. In Bedford, there is only one GP per 2,500 people, which makes it one of the places worst hit by GP shortages in the whole country. Those shortages are leading to staff burnout and poor retention, and unfortunately are hitting patients in need of care hardest. Surgeries are being assimilated into trusts to try to rectify those issues, but as GPs take on more acute care from hospitals that face their own backlogs, surgeries are seeing increased demands from patients.
Worryingly, we are also seeing escalating levels of verbal and physical abuse directed at GPs, dentists and surgery staff. Much of the current narrative, which is actively encouraged by those on the Tory Front Bench, is that GPs are hiding behind remote appointments and are working part time. That is not true; the truth is very different. GPs who are considered part time often find themselves in their surgeries covering full-time hours due to the growth in administrative work.
GP bashing only leads to more doctors and their staff leaving the profession. With too few doctors available to treat patients, that combination has led to growing waiting times for patients to access appointments. The BMA says that doctors are feeling a sense of “moral distress”, because they cannot give patients the care and support they deserve.
Now that covid restrictions have eased, it is, of course, vital that in-person appointments are there for those who need them. By enabling some remote consultations, many surgeries aim to clear the backlog of appointments more quickly and free up capacity to treat patients who need physical appointments. Covid accelerated and exposed the existing crisis, but the Government know that we were well on our way to this point before the pandemic.
The Government may be trying to patch the funding holes with emergency money, but too often they fail to invest in sustainable long-term plans, such as the well-thought-out Kempston health hub bid that they rejected. We urgently need a convincing plan to get to grips with the serious workforce crisis and get the NHS back to how it was under the last Labour Government.
Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)
People are struggling to get GP and dentist appointments, and this is a crisis of the Government’s own making. In their 2019 manifesto, the Conservatives promised 6,000 more GPs in England by 2025 but, in his evidence to the Health and Social Care Committee last November, the Secretary of State said when asked about this target:
“I am not going to pretend that we are on track when clearly we are not.”
Dr Richard Vautrey, chair of the BMA’s GP committee, said at the time:
“The bottom line is we are haemorrhaging doctors in general practice. While more younger doctors may be choosing to enter general practice, even more experienced GPs are leaving the profession or reducing their hours to manage unsustainable workloads.”
Recent statistics show there are now fewer than 6,500 GP practices in England, compared with more than 8,000 in April 2013. As of April 2022, there were the equivalent of 1,622 fewer fully qualified, full-time GPs in England than in 2015. All this has happened on the Conservatives’ watch.
The lack of access to GPs has implications for patient safety. We know early diagnosis is important, but it cannot happen if people cannot see a doctor. People who cannot get an appointment, or who face long waits to get one, are at risk of not getting the referral they need, which can lead to health problems down the line. Those who are able to get an appointment but are seen by a GP who is suffering stress and burnout due to the pressures of the job are also put at increased risk.
A poll of nearly 1,400 GPs by Rebuild General Practice in March found that 86% of those surveyed say they do not have enough time with patients, and it found that GPs are seeing, on average, 46 patients a day. This is a matter of great concern, as the safe maximum number of daily appointments, as recommended by the BMA, is 25. Doctors are seeing nearly twice the safe maximum number, which is bad for patients and unfair on very hard-working GPs.
People in Wirral West tell me they have ended up going to A&E because they cannot get an appointment with their GP, which puts more pressure on an already stretched A&E. A recent study by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine showed that, in 2021, an average of 1,047 people a day were waiting more than 12 hours in A&E from their time of arrival, which is wholly unacceptable. People need to be able to access GP services when they need them, both for their own health and to keep the pressure off A&E.
The Conservatives are overseeing an exodus of dentists from the NHS, which is forcing people to choose between paying to go private and going without dental care at all. Research by the British Dental Association shows that around 3,000 dentists in England have stopped providing NHS services since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, and that for every dentist quitting the NHS entirely, 10 are reducing their NHS commitment. It also shows that 43 million NHS dental appointments have been lost since the start of the pandemic, which is equivalent to well over a year’s worth of NHS dentistry in pre-covid times. This enormous backlog continues to grow.
The British Dental Association is clear:
“NHS dentistry is facing an existential threat and patients face a growing crisis in access, with the service hanging by a thread.’
A constituent, a dentist in Wirral, has told me that people from Manchester and Lancashire are calling the practice to ask if they can register. The Government have told me that there are no geographical restrictions on the practice a patient may attend, which completely misses the point. Services should be available locally. Who wants to travel for an hour, two hours or longer when they are in desperate pain and need to see a dentist urgently?
Shockingly, 50 children in Wirral under the age of 11 were admitted to hospital for tooth extraction last year. That is bad enough, but the figure is much higher in many parts the country. The Conservatives’ failure to fix this crisis is putting the oral health of children at increased risk. No child should have to end up in hospital because they are unable to get the dental treatment they need.
The Government need to come forward urgently with a plan to fix the crisis in GP access and dentistry. Failure to do so has serious and painful implications for patients.
Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab)
In the time that I have this afternoon, I will focus on the incredible difficulties my constituents have had in accessing NHS dentistry. As others have said, the pandemic has intensified problems in our dental healthcare system, but the architecture for those problems was in place long before the pandemic. We have heard from the British Dental Association that more than 43 million dental appointments were lost between April 2020 and April 2022, including more than 13 million appointments for children.
Helen Hunter, chief executive of Healthwatch Calderdale, which serves my constituency, has argued that the pandemic has made
“a significant problem even worse”.
At a national level, dentistry is now the No. 1 issue raised with Healthwatch. Almost 80% of people who get in contact with the organisation say that they find it difficult to access dental care, with the General Dental Council saying that almost a quarter of the population—24%—report having experienced dental pain in the last 12 months.
Healthwatch Calderdale has been relentless in its campaigning on this issue. In August last year, it contacted every dental practice across Calderdale to establish whether it was willing to accept new NHS patients, whether it would register a child and whether it was offering routine appointments. Every dental practice told Healthwatch that it could not currently register a new NHS patient of any age. When neighbouring Healthwatch Kirklees did the same, it had the same outcome.
As others have said, having people get in touch with us, as MPs, because they cannot find a dentist is one of the most difficult issues that we are asked to contend with from a local casework perspective. As things stand, there is simply nothing we can do to help people. We speak to the CCG, we call the dentists, we speak to NHS England and we write to Ministers, but the capacity is not there because the system is so broken, and no amount of pleading from local MPs can fix it for someone in need.
One constituent rang more than 30 dental practices, each of which told them that it was not accepting new NHS patients. My constituent could find no available practices in Halifax and none across Calder Valley. There was not even a dental practice available in Huddersfield or Bradford. We have already heard a passionate argument from my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain). People are encouraged to look further afield, but those practices are overwhelmed with their local demand, so going further afield does not solve the problem. When we have made representations on behalf of patients in Halifax, we have been advised to search for practices in Leeds, Barnsley and Wakefield. Members can imagine making that kind of journey to get to a dentist. Parents of children, for example, are asked to book appointments that do not impact on the school day. For them to be asked to travel 20 miles to try to speculatively get an appointment is just not good enough.
I recently met Rachel Dilley, chief operating officer of Town Hall Dental, which has dental practices in Calderdale, to gain a better understanding of the problems that they are experiencing. Town Hall Dental has had to set up a charity alongside its private and NHS work to help to fund dental treatment, check-ups and the vital oral cancer checks that dentists undertake. That is all necessary, but it goes underfunded. I commend Town Hall Dental for its charitable and fundraising work, but that should not be necessary.
In my desperation to get Government to act, I started a petition on my website for constituents, calling on the Government to improve NHS dental care provision in Halifax, so that residents can access care easily and locally. The petition has more than 500 signatories, and I will be presenting it in the Chamber in the days to come.
One local parent said to me:
“I have been making weekly phone calls to all Calderdale dentists in an attempt to (at the very least) get my children into a dentist as I value oral health greatly. However, I am yet to be successful in my goal which is becoming quite time consuming, as I now have a three year old daughter that has never even visited a dentist and 4 other children who have been without a check up in 5 years. That is half a decade with zero dental care.”
Another constituent got in touch to tell me that, since they had had no luck finding a nearby practice that would take NHS patients, they were forced to make a five-hour round trip to the Berkshire dentist that they had been registered with prior to moving to Halifax.
Such long waiting periods are also undermining what is functioning within the system. One constituent had to wait five years just for braces. When they finally got their braces, the orthodontist informed my constituent that they would need four teeth taken out. Having tried everywhere to find a dentist, my constituent told me,
“if I don’t find one, I won’t be able to keep my braces on.”
It is just madness. Another of my constituents, who was already dealing with mental health challenges, had been in pain and needed urgent medical treatment. Her friend got in touch to tell me that she was sent to A&E and advised she needed to see a dentist. She ended up seeing an NHS dentist in Elland for treatment, but they would not see her on the NHS and told her she had to pay for private treatment. Her friend could not believe that that could be allowed to happen, saying:
“How can this be the case when a young lady with mental health issues and no savings, in a medical emergency, needs to seek help from me, her friend to pay for urgent dental treatment”?
During the pandemic, I organised a roundtable discussion with local dentists, who shared with me the perverse ways in which NHS contracts are broken down into units of dental activity. The UDA system is just not functioning. If we needed any further confirmation, data from the BDA reveals that around 3,000 dentists in England have stopped providing NHS services since the start of the pandemic. Perhaps even more worryingly, for every dentist leaving the NHS entirely, 10 are reducing their NHS commitment by 25% on average. A BDA survey from May 2022 shows that 75% of dentists plan to reduce the amount of NHS work they do next year, with almost half planning to change career, seek early retirement or enter fully private practice.
That is where the current, broken contract system has got us. I urge the Minister, if she believes in being able to see a dentist on the NHS, to scrap the current system, start again and find a way to make the contracts work. One third of people see a dentist privately, but 71% of those people say they do not do so through choice. As the cost of living crisis continues to affect families, more and more people will be priced out of private treatment by inflation and rising bills and living costs.
My hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) earlier described this as an existential crisis, and it very much is. I say to the Minister, “Please, please fix it.”
Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab)
There are many issues that my constituents are experiencing when trying to access GP services, but I will focus my remarks on the crisis affecting dentistry across England and the impact that is having on people in Durham. I want to start by paying tribute to the dentists, dental nurses and other key workers in practices in County Durham and across the country.
Sadly, despite the brilliant work of dental workers, NHS dentistry is on the brink of collapse. Whether in Bowburn, Brandon or Pity Me, my constituents are struggling to access the dental services they need and deserve. Four in five people who contact Healthwatch say they have found it tough to access timely dental care, while tooth decay, as we have already heard, is currently the most common reason for hospital admissions among young children. In County Durham, 245 children under the age of 10 were admitted to hospital for tooth extraction between 2020 and 2021. Thousands of children are currently in pain, distracted as they learn, in pain as they eat and struggling to sleep because they cannot access vital treatment. Let that sink in.
Why is it so difficult to access NHS dental appointments? Because dentists are being driven away from NHS dental services en masse. A recent poll of dentists in England found that 45% had reduced their NHS commitment since the start of the pandemic, while 75% were likely to reduce their NHS commitment in the next 12 months. Alongside that, an alarming 87% of dentists say they have experienced symptoms of stress, burnout or other mental health problems in the past year. In total, 3,000 dentists have moved away from NHS work completely since the start of the pandemic.
As the British Dental Association has said,
“This is how NHS dentistry will die”.
The warning is not sensationalist; it is the reality that dentists and their patients in Durham are facing. This crisis is entirely avoidable. It is certainly not the fault of our rail workers striking today, as the Secretary of State would like us to believe—utterly disgraceful. What planet is he on when he talks about record funding? That is certainly not the case for NHS dentistry, which has faced cuts unparalleled to the rest of NHS services. In real terms, the Government’s net spend on general dental practice in England was slashed by over a quarter between 2010 and 2020, while the Government’s £50 million injection into dentistry will fund less than 1% of the appointments we have lost since March. In fact, the British Dental Association estimates that it would take £880 million a year to restore dental budgets back to the level when Labour left office.
Let us be clear: these issues will hit the poorest in our society the hardest. For many, the fees for private dental treatment are simply unaffordable. As one desperate constituent put it to me, “I can’t afford private treatment, so what on earth am I supposed to do?” There will be terrifying delays for children, adults and the poorest among those in County Durham, and I am sure across the whole country. Children in deprived areas are already three times more likely to have hospital extractions, while oral cancer, which kills more people than car accidents in the UK, is significantly more likely to affect those in our poorest communities. Dentists are frequently the first to spot health problems. Without access to regular appointments, our least well-off constituents will continue to be more likely to develop serious health problems than the wealthiest in society.
I take this opportunity to remind the Minister that it is the Government’s job to reduce health inequalities, not widen them. As elected representatives, we are responsible for protecting and improving access to key public services for our constituents. It is time the Government stopped treating dentistry as an afterthought and urgently took action to widen NHS dentistry. For my constituents in Durham, this crisis in healthcare is very much at the forefront of their minds.
Feryal Clark (Enfield North) (Lab)
I thank Members from across the House for their contributions this afternoon. I want to praise some of the powerful contributions we have heard during the debate.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) raised the absolutely ridiculously long waiting lists for NHS dentists in his constituency. It is worrying to hear that pregnant constituents cannot even register with a GP, let alone see one. Shockingly, he mentioned the children in his constituency, one of whom has had to wait 35 months to see an orthodontist. He rightly pointed out the issues with the dentist contract, which is disincentivising dentists to take on NHS patients, and reminded us of the last Labour Government’s commitment to reforming it.
We heard from the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous), who set out the NHS dentistry crisis in his constituency. He rightly set out that many dentists are simply not drawing down on the £50 million Government funding that the Minister says is being used. He set out, in comments I really welcome, the issue of our crumbling primary care assets. I thank him for raising the issue of the NHS app and I could not agree with him more. When are the Government going to move the app into the 21st century? Finally, he mentioned that patient choice is really important. I welcome those comments.
We then heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith), who mentioned the huge number of constituents who are frustrated with their current lack of access to primary care. She mentioned her constituent Dr Mark Spencer, who set up Healthier Fleetwood to tackle health inequalities. I, too, send my thanks to him. She also mentioned that demand is not being met in primary care, and she rightly mentioned the Government’s financial illiteracy, with patients being forced to go to A&E instead of having their demand met in primary care.
On dentistry, my hon. Friend set out how children in her constituency cannot access NHS dentists and the shocking experience of constituents who are resorting to DIY dentistry, as was raised by many hon. Members. She rightly set out that the Government are getting it very wrong. She also set out the Government’s shocking record on GP recruitment and the exodus of NHS dentists. Most shockingly, she mentioned the number of children aged zero to 10 years old who are admitted to hospital for tooth extractions in her constituency in just one year: 30 in Lancaster and 40 in Wyre, of whom 30 were aged five or younger. If that is not a wake-up call for the Minister, I do not know what is.
So many shocking incidents and examples—too many to mention—were raised today, and I thank all hon. Members for sharing their constituents’ experiences. Primary care is in crisis—I know it, Members across the House know it, and the public know it—but the Government continue to bury their head in the sand.
As we have heard from right hon. and hon. Members, our postbags are packed with letters from constituents who are desperate for someone to listen to them. There is the person who cannot get an appointment to be prescribed the medicine they need to manage their chronic pain. There is the person with MS who cannot get an appointment to be referred to a specialist whom they desperately need to see. There are the patients in Wakefield, where every day a child under 11 is taken to A&E for tooth extraction because they cannot see an NHS dentist.
We have heard Ministers come to the Dispatch Box time and time again to lay the blame of primary care’s problems at the door of the pandemic. No doubt, it has had an impact, and we should pay tribute to our amazing NHS staff who have done admirably in the face of an immense challenge, but blaming everything on the pandemic will no longer cut it.
Going into the pandemic, the Government’s preparations were “wanting and inadequate”—not my words, but those of the Culture Secretary. When the argument is not even washing with the Cabinet, how does the Minister expect the public to believe it? After a decade of Tory mismanagement, we went into the pandemic with record waiting lists and staff shortages of 100,000. It is not just that the Tories did not fix the roof when the sun was shining; they dismantled the roof and removed the floorboards. The impact of that became plain for all to see.
The Government promised to recruit an additional 6,000 GPs by 2025, yet we now have more than 1,500 fewer full-time equivalent GPs than when records began in 2015—that was in the Minister’s response to one of her colleagues in April. Given that we have heard from the Royal College of General Practitioners that the average cost of GP appointments is £40 and that an A&E visit is £359, that is not just an access problem but financially untenable. Even the Secretary of State admitted that the target is beyond reach. With a fifth of GP practices having closed or merged since NHS England was formed in 2013, the pattern is becoming clear. The Government have been completely incapable of delivering for more than a decade, creating not a covid backlog but a Conservative backlog.
On dentistry, the situation is a national scandal. Over a third of adults and half of children do not have access to an NHS dentist and, with paying to go private simply not an option for most, we have children being admitted to A&E for tooth extraction on a daily basis and others choosing to take matters into their own hands with DIY dentistry, as we have heard from hon. Members on both sides of the House. In Wakefield, as of 2020, almost a quarter of children have tooth decay before the age of three—double the national average of 11%. How on earth can that be tolerated in 21st-century Britain? Thanks to this Government’s complete inability to come up with a solution, we are not just facing a return to Dickensian Britain; we are already there.
I am sure that the Minister, when she responds, will roll out her usual line about the crux of the issue being the 2006 dental contract, and how this is all Labour’s fault. I am sorry, but after 12 years of Tory Government that simply will not wash. The issue of access is only getting worse, with figures obtained by the British Dental Association showing an overall drop of 22% in the number of patients seen by NHS dentists in England from March to April. In the Minister’s own constituency the figures was 34%. How can she expect dentists across England to have confidence in her when she clearly does not even have the confidence of those in her own patch? If that is not evidence that dentists are leaving the NHS or cutting their commitment, having no confidence that her promised reforms will ever be delivered, then what is? If her idea of tackling the problem is to run scared from even talking to dentists at a conference, then there really is no hope.
This must change. We need a Government who listen. We need a Government who act. Quite frankly, we need a Government who care. This Government have run out of road, have no ideas left and are holding our country back. A Labour Government will give our NHS the staff, equipment and modern technology it needs to deliver for patients. It is time for the Conservative party to move out of the way and let us get on with the job.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Maria Caulfield)
It is a pleasure to close this debate after a wide range of speeches. First, I will put my hands up and acknowledge that there are challenges and difficulties in primary care and dentistry. We heard that from Members from Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, which shows that all the devolved areas of healthcare are facing exactly the same challenges.
I start by thanking all those in primary care and dentistry for going above and beyond, and not just during the covid pandemic but as we are coming out of it, whether that was dentists providing urgent treatment under difficult infection control measures, or GPs delivering millions of vaccinations while continuing to see patients. We are now seeing not only the routine number of patients we would usually see, but the two years’ worth of patients who stayed at home and protected the NHS, as we asked them to do.
Despite the Opposition’s protests, we are making progress and record numbers of patients are being seen—higher than ever before. We are seeing 1.3 million patients per working day in primary care. That is a 44% increase since last year, and 63% of those are seen face to face. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (David Johnston) said, that is 2 million more face-to-face appointments than this time last year.
There are record numbers of GPs, despite what Opposition Members have said—nearly 36,000 full-time equivalents, which is 1,400 more than in March 2019. We are going further, with 4,000 more trainees taking up GP training this year, providing more GPs for the future. We have delivered 30 million extra GP appointments, as part of our manifesto commitment to deliver 50 million more GP appointments. As an indication of the scale of the record numbers of patients coming through the system, we are seeing 11,000 cancer referrals a day, which is a record high.
How are we supporting GPs? We had the £250 million winter access fund, which helped deliver a cloud-based telephony system that some practices took up, which is transforming how patients can get through to their practices. If practices did not take up that offer, NHS England is rolling out the system across the country, so I urge them to look into it because it delivers better capacity, allowing patients to get through to make their appointments. It bought extra hours to pay for staff to do more shifts and see more patients, and it paid for more physical space in practices.
We have delivered 13,000 of the additional 26,000 roles pledged in our manifesto—paramedics, practice nurses, primary care pharmacists, physios and OTs working in primary care. We are tackling the bureaucracy that GPs face, and laid a statutory instrument to address fit notes to allow professionals other than GPs to return people to work. We have developed the pharmacy consultation system, whereby 111 or GP receptionists can refer people directly to a pharmacy for first-line care. We are developing a renewed GP contract, opening up access at weekends and in the evening. We are expanding community pharmacy with our work on Pharmacy First to deal with minor ailments, blood pressure checks and discharge medicine services.
We are also tackling the infrastructure problem through the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill whereby health and local government will work hand in hand to tackle the issues my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller) raised. We are also delivering—
Maria Caulfield
No, I will not.
We are also delivering zero tolerance to abuse through the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. Labour talk the talk, but it was those of us on the Government Benches who voted to double the maximum sentence for those who abuse our emergency care workers. Labour actually voted against giving the Bill a Third Reading. That tells us all we need to know.
With the time I have left—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. If the Minister is not giving way, she is not giving way.
Maria Caulfield
I am not frit, but I am conscious that another debate follows this one. I did not want to play politics, but if Opposition Members want to, I will give them politics.
The Labour party is against everything and for nothing. We have not had one suggestion from Labour or the Lib Dems. They are full of complaints without a single solution. We know that the shadow Secretary of State was busy over the weekend deleting his past misdemeanours, but he cannot delete Labour’s misdemeanours with the NHS. As Davina McCall would say, let’s have a look at their best bits. There are the PFI contracts that they mysteriously introduced—£1.4 billion a year is still going to private investors because of the deals made under a Labour Government. Full Fact confirmed that £57 billion will be spent in total on those PFI deals.
Moving on to the 2004 GP contract negotiations, evening and weekend cover was taken away, handed to primary care trusts and given to private companies. Changes to the law in 2007, voted for by Labour Members, allowed bigger businesses to buy up GP practices, resulting in the evidence we saw on “Panorama” last week. The top hit is the 2006 Labour dental contract—
Maria Caulfield
The hon. Gentleman may say, “Here we go,” but Opposition Members acknowledged this afternoon that the Labour contract was causing the problems. We are getting on with dealing with that.
My hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) asked what progress is being made. We put the negotiations to the BDA on 24 March and made a final offer—[Interruption.] They don’t want to listen, Madam Deputy Speaker; they don’t care. We put the final offer to the BDA on 20 May, and we are waiting to hear back. We are reforming the dental contract, which perversely disincentivises dentists to take on NHS work.
To correct the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan), he did not host that dental summit; it was my right hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt), who invited me. The summit came up with a solution, and I am meeting her team so that we can work on that and take it forward.
In addition to the dental contract, we are reforming how we take on dentists from overseas. We consulted the GDC, which recently ran a consultation, and we will be laying legislation to give it powers to allow dentists to come here more easily—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. I can hear what Members are saying, and it is just not right. It is simply rude when we are supposed to be listening to the Minister.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)
And I think she could do better.
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. You are not saying anything while you are sitting down—nothing! I call the Minister.
Maria Caulfield
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Labour Members do not want to hear about the work that the Government have been doing. They are just too busy criticising.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson) also mentioned the work that we are doing on centres for dental development. We are already working in places such as Cornwall to start training more dentists in those areas. In Norfolk and Norwich, we have met representatives from the university. The meeting was led by local MPs who brought people together to set up centres. We have also been working in Lincolnshire as well.
We are empowering the dental workforce by changing and upskilling dental technicians, dental nurses, and dental assistants to be able to take on more work. We are also tackling the issue of clawback.
You would think, Madam Deputy Speaker, that this is just an issue in England. If we look at Labour-run Wales, we find that the Community Health Councils have acknowledged that Wales is also facing a crisis of access to GPs, and that patients are waiting more than an hour to get through on the phone only to find that there are no appointments left.
The number of dental practices in Wales has fallen—from 1,500 in 2019 to 1,389 last year. In the past year alone in Wales, there was a 71% drop in courses of dental treatment. Why is that happening under a Labour Government? [Interruption.] I have given the answer. Opposition Members are too busy talking, Madam Deputy Speaker. They do not want to hear the answers.
Opposition parties need to be honest with the public. Whether we are talking about Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, we are all facing the same challenges. [Interruption.] No! There is a Labour-run Government in Wales and an SNP Government in Scotland. [Interruption.] The Opposition continue to play politics, but we are getting on with the business of reforming and making those changes. They have no solutions, no answers and no ideas. It is this Government who are delivering the changes. We are being honest with the British public that we will face challenges, but we are making the changes to improve access to both dental and primary care services.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House notes that primary care is in crisis, with people across the country struggling to access GP services and dental treatment; believes that everyone should be able to get an appointment to see a doctor when they need to and has the right to receive dental treatment when they need it; is concerned by the Government’s failure to remain on track to deliver 6,000 additional GPs by 2024-25; and therefore calls on the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to urgently bring forward a plan to fix the crisis in primary care, meet the Government’s GP target and ensure everyone who needs an NHS dentist can access one.
Adviser on Ministerial Interests
(2 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
18:47 - The House divided: - Ayes: 161 / Noes: 252 - Question accordingly negatived.
Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That the following Standing Order be made:
“(1) Following any two month period in which the role of Independent Adviser to the Prime Minister on Ministers’ Interests remains unfilled, the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee shall appoint a specialist adviser, entitled the Adviser on Ministers’ Interests, whose role shall be to advise the Committee on the effectiveness of the Ministerial Code and on any potential breaches of that Code.
(2) The Adviser may initiate consideration of a potential breach of the Ministerial Code, and shall consider any such potential breach referred to him by the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee.
(3) When considering potential breaches of the Ministerial Code, the Adviser may advise the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee on the appropriate use of its powers to send for persons, papers and records in order to secure the information needed to consider any such potential breaches.
(4) The Adviser shall submit a memorandum to the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee reporting conclusions relating to a potential breach of the Ministerial Code.
(5) The Adviser shall have leave to publish any memorandum submitted to the Committee under paragraph (4) which has not been published in full and has been in the Committee’s possession for longer than 30 sitting days.”
What a pleasure it is to open this debate, especially as it is with the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General. I will call him my right hon. and learned Friend now because I see him more often these days than I see my friends. It is always a pleasure to stand opposite him. Hopefully, he will be able to give us some answers today, so that we can build on that friendship.
The truth is that, to lose one ethics adviser is an embarrassment, but to lose a second, just days after the Prime Minister’s anti-corruption tsar walked, too, means that it has become a pattern—a pattern of degrading the principles of our democracy; a pattern of dodging accountability; and a pattern of demeaning his office. The Prime Minister has now driven both of his own hand-picked ethics advisers to resign in despair—twice in two years. It is a badge of shame for this Government and it should be for the rogue Prime Minister, too. If he was capable of feeling any shame, Lord Geidt has described the resignation as a “last resort” that
“sends a critical signal into the public domain.”
Well, he has certainly sent that signal, Madam Deputy Speaker. In his damning resignation letter, Lord Geidt spoke of the “odious” and “impossible” position that he had been put in. He said that the Prime Minister had made a “mockery” of the “Ministerial Code” and that he would play no further part in this. It was not about steel at all; it was about this Prime Minister’s casual and constant disregard for the rules. Lord Geidt could not stomach it any longer, and I do not blame him. To this Prime Minister, ethics is a county east of London.
The truth is that the Prime Minister behaves as though it is one rule for him and another for the rest of us, because that is what he thinks. Scandal after scandal has hit him and his Government. His previous adviser on ministerial interests, the respected Sir Alex Allan, resigned when the Prime Minister chose to excuse the Home Secretary despite the fact that she had breached the ministerial code by bullying civil servants. Sir Alex could not stand by and condone bullying, and the Prime Minister was more than happy to. After losing his first independent adviser, it took five months to appoint a new one—five months during which ministerial misconduct was left unchecked, creating a huge backlog of sleaze and misconduct by Tory Ministers. Lord Geidt himself complained about this backlog.
This House should not tolerate a repeat performance. We cannot endure another five months with no accountability in Downing Street. We cannot endure another five minutes of it. Since Lord Geidt resigned, the Government have refused to confirm if or how his ongoing investigations will continue. I hope my new right hon. and learned Friend the Minister can tell us today whether the investigation into the shameful allegations of Islamophobia experienced by the hon. Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani) will now be concluded. She was due to meet Lord Geidt on the day that he resigned, but the Government have been silent on the issue and have failed to say anything about what will happen when any further suspected breaches of the ministerial code occur.
Take, for example, reports that the Prime Minister, while Foreign Secretary, tried to make an inappropriate appointment to his own office. He reportedly spoke to his aides about a taxpayer-funded position—just another case of dishing out jobs to those close to him. Lord Geidt has suggested that such allegations are ripe for a new investigation, and I agree. As everyone knows, I love a letter, but who should I write the request to? There is no ethics adviser in place to hold Tory Ministers to the standards the British public expect. We all know that Ministers will not do it themselves. Under this Government, more rule-breaking is simply inevitable, unfortunately. Lord Geidt has already said that his role was “exceptionally busy”.
Sir Jeremy Wright (Kenilworth and Southam) (Con)
I happen to agree with the right hon. Lady that there should not be a long gap before the appointment of a new independent adviser, but let me put something else to her. Two weeks ago, when she opened a debate on a similar subject, she prayed in aid extensively the Committee on Standards in Public Life, of which I am a member, as she knows, and she did so rightly, in my view. Does she accept, though, that she cannot do that today, because her motion does not accord with what the Committee on Standards in Public Life has said? We believe that the ministerial code must remain the property of the Prime Minister because that is how it derives its authority, and it therefore makes sense that the adviser should give advice to the Prime Minister and not to any Committee of Parliament, however eminent. How is it that the Committee on Standards in Public Life was so right two weeks ago but wrong now?
Angela Rayner
I commend the work of the Committee on Standards in Public Life and its report, which I absolutely agree should be implemented in full, but that is not what has happened: it was cherry-picked in what the Government have done with the changes to the ministerial code. This is an emergency measure because we cannot carry on for months and months without the adviser being present, as I am sure the right hon. and learned Gentleman agrees. I hope the Minister comes to the same conclusion. I have written to him and had a response today in a written answer about when the appointment will be made. I understand the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s position and what he is saying, but I say categorically that I absolutely agree with the report and want to see it implemented in full.
Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)
I have sympathy with the thrust of the right hon. Lady’s motion in that we do not want a long delay, and I am sure the Government have sympathy with it, too—I am sure the Prime Minister would like to appoint as soon as possible—but the rest of her motion seeks to create a new Standing Order. Traditionally in this House, the Procedure Committee would advise on Standing Orders, so would she be amenable, should the Opposition motion pass today, for the Procedure Committee to look at this as a matter of priority, given the timelines involved?
Angela Rayner
I thank the hon. Member. The thrust of what I am trying to do today, and hon. Members need to understand this, is just to have some probity, standards and ethics we can all agree on. One of the things I think is very damaging, and this has been very damaging for all hon. Members of this House, is conduct that the public out there see as inappropriate not being scrutinised and dealt with. This does not just affect the Prime Minister; it affects each and every one of us in this place, so I am happy to continue further dialogue to ensure we get to such a point. However, this is about making sure that something happens now, because we have seen conduct and standards from this Prime Minister that, quite frankly, I have never seen before from any Prime Minister of any political persuasion.
David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)
In response to the point made by the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Aaron Bell), I accept that the Procedure Committee does have a role—and I was a member of the Procedure Committee—but given that Brexit was supposed to be about Parliament taking back control, there is absolutely nothing at all disorderly about the motion on the Order Paper for Parliament to take control and set up its own Standing Order. The right hon. Lady is right: the problem is that the Prime Minister’s behaviour will almost certainly start to be interpreted as a plague on all our houses, and that is why Parliament must support this and must vote for this motion tonight.
Angela Rayner
This is about us trying to make sure that we do take back control, and also that we gain the respect of the public. Quite rightly, when they elect us and bring us into this place, they expect us to have the highest standards. Especially when we create the laws that they have to follow, they expect us to have the highest possible standards.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
Of course, the resignation of yet another ethics adviser will do little to quieten public concerns that there is something very rotten at the heart of this Government. Next week, I will be presenting a ten-minute rule Bill that would make lying in politics illegal and give our constituents confidence that we are serious about forcing a change of culture within our political system. Does the right hon. Member agree with me that the present culture is corroding trust in politics and democracy?
Angela Rayner
I absolutely agree with the right hon. Member that trust is being corroded in politics, and I do not like that. I do not like that for any of us hon. Members in this place, because I believe that the vast majority of Members who come to this place do so for great public service. Therefore, when hon. Members do not behave to the standards I think the British public expect of us, that actually makes it difficult for all of us. The hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) mentions the procedures of this place, and sometimes it is challenging for the public when they see people “inadvertently mislead” the House. The public do not always see it as “inadvertently misleading” the House, and therefore they do not understand exactly why we have such a debate on that matter.
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
Would my right hon. Friend accept that the debate between an independent appointment and an appointment by the Prime Minister has been cast into a different light by partygate, by the appointment of somebody’s girlfriend for £100,000, by the breach of international law with the Northern Ireland protocol and even by what has happened on steel tariffs? Therefore, there is a compelling case for independence or at least for Parliament to decide on those issues, not the Prime Minister, who people, frankly, do not trust for good reasons.
Angela Rayner
Absolutely. During Lord Geidt’s time as ethics adviser, he was swamped—swamped—with allegations of ministerial misconduct. During his session with the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, referring to the ministerial code, Lord Geidt said that
“as you look through the calendar, a great deal of the year has potentially had the Prime Minister in scope.”
It is astonishing that we are in these circumstances, but we are where we are.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesperson has refused to confirm when the independent adviser will be replaced, or even if the independent adviser will be replaced at all. It is pretty clear that, if the Prime Minister had his way, he would dispense with the nuisance of transparency and the annoyance of accountability altogether.
Sir Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
I agree with the right hon. Lady about the need to appoint a new adviser but I have looked carefully at her motion, which talks about an adviser. What would the status of that adviser to the Committee be? Would they be an employee of this House? If they were an Officer of this House, there would be an obvious conflict between their duty to Parliament and any involvement they might have in Government affairs. Does she not see that that is quite a problem that needs to be addressed by her and the motion?
Angela Rayner
I do not see the wording of the motion creating a conflict or causing problems in that way. It will allow us to have the scrutiny and probity that we need, because the Government at the moment are not forthcoming in giving us the assurances that I have tried outside this place to get on whether we are going to get a new adviser. That is the thrust of what I am trying to do today. I can see that Members are passionate about this issue, and I am happy for them to work with us to try to get there. I am sure that my friend the Paymaster General would be willing to do that as well. We all want to see standards in public life, and Ministers of the Crown in particular need to have that authority when dealing with matters of office so that the public can have confidence in them. That is what this motion is about today.
David Linden
Does the right hon. Lady understand the irony of Conservative Members complaining about a conflict of interest when the Prime Minister’s own chief of staff, whom he appointed, is simultaneously an MP, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and the chief of staff—a role that is traditionally undertaken by a civil servant?
Angela Rayner
This is part of the problem. We all need to have confidence that processes are being followed and that there is accountability. Nobody is above the law in this country, but the Prime Minister seems to think that he can be. It is astonishing that we are in those circumstances.
Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)
I thank my right hon. Friend for introducing this debate. I think the point she was making very well earlier in response to questions from Conservative Members who have been good lawyers in their previous life is that the thrust of what she is trying to do today is to suggest that we all in this place want to do better, and that we are willing to look at ways to do better. If the thrust of this motion does not meet that high standard, it is open to Conservative Members who have experience and expertise in this area to suggest other ways of doing this, perhaps by bringing forward amendments, and to work with the Opposition in that way. I think she is saying that that is something she welcomes.
Angela Rayner
The last time the Paymaster General was sent here to defend the indefensible, he claimed that the Prime Minister’s recent changes to the ministerial code represented
“the most substantial strengthening of the role, office and remit of independent adviser since the post was created in 2006.”—[Official Report, 16 June 2022; Vol. 716, c. 429.]
He must think I was born yesterday. Removing any reference to honesty, integrity, accountability and transparency is not strengthening standards; it is cherry-picking parts of the recommendation and watering it down before our very eyes. Within hours of the Paymaster General saying those words at the Dispatch Box, No. 10 was already refusing to repeat his commitment to that system—a system that the Prime Minister himself had put in place just weeks before.
Now the Government do not even deny the plans to abolish the role of the independent adviser entirely. Today, the Minister answered my written question about his plans to fill the post and said that the Government were “taking time” to consider the matter. Just how long does he expect us to give him? Should we expect half a year of sleaze and scandal without accountability? For more than a year, the Prime Minister used Lord Geidt as a human shield, citing his independence and integrity as the Government desperately staggered from one scandal to the next. Now the Culture Secretary takes to the airwaves to mock and belittle him. That is what they do to decent people. Conservative Members who continue to prop up this Prime Minister and keep his self-preservation society afloat would do well to note that. That is where this House must come in.
Labour’s proposal today would put this Prime Minister into special measures, where he needs to be. If he fails to appoint a new independent adviser, the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee will have the power to appoint one. We will give the Committee the proper powers to launch investigations, to send for papers, persons and records, to report on breaches and to make its judgments public. This Prime Minister has ridden roughshod over the rules. He will not show any regard to ethics, but this House can do that today. The motion before us is a limited, simple measure to address any refusal by the Prime Minister to enforce the ministerial code by allowing Parliament to step in.
Of course, we would like to go much further, which is why we backed the package of recommendations from the CSPL as the first step in our plan to clean up politics. We want to see full independence granted to the adviser to open his or her investigations—without that, it is left to the whim of the Prime Minister. As I said, the Prime Minister cherry-picked the CSPL recommendations and conveniently chose not to introduce this crucial one. While he maintains the power of veto over the independent adviser, there is an inherent risk that he will overrule his own adviser. Today, it is time to show the Prime Minister that he is not above the rules and for this House to draw a line in the sand. If the Prime Minister will not appoint an ethics adviser, we must do so. I commend this motion to the House.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Michael Ellis)
I thank the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) for choosing today’s motion. It is a great pleasure, as always, to appear on the other side of the House from her, and I will endorse the opportunity she gave to call her a friend likewise.
The Government remain steadfast in their absolute commitment to upholding standards in public life and the critical role of the ministerial code in supporting those standards. It is on account of that commitment that the Government cannot support today’s motion, for the simple reason that it attempts, by proxy, to change the British constitution by the back door; what it does, without consultation or consideration, would be unreasonable. What would be unreasonable is for any Opposition party to say all this on what is, as they know, a national strike day, when many Members are hindered from attending this House, because Labour Members are on the picket lines for a strike caused by Labour’s union backers.
I have set out repeatedly and exhaustively in recent weeks that the Government fully recognise the importance of the ministerial code and its role in maintaining standards in public life. What we wish to do, therefore, is to protect the code. It sets out the Prime Minister’s expectations of his or her Ministers, detailing the standards of conduct in public life expected of those who serve government and the principles that underpin them. The code has performed this role for successive Prime Ministers since it was first published by the Conservative Prime Minister John Major as “Questions of Procedure for Ministers” in 1992, 30 years ago. Throughout that time, it has been an evolving document. It is customarily issued—it is customarily released or re-released—when warranted, by the Prime Minister of the day to reflect changes and to update the guidance. So this business about what is said in the foreword of the document is, frankly, a red herring. What is said in the foreword is very often a reflection of the current affairs at the time the document was released. What it is not is a reflection of the contents of the document, which are as they were before.
Since 2006, recognising the need for independent support on the application of the code, the Prime Minister of the day has appointed an Independent Adviser on Ministers’ Interests to provide independent advice on how Ministers manage their interests and to assist with the investigation of alleged breaches of the code. But if Labour’s motion were to succeed, it could mean in the future a Labour-chaired Committee choosing one of the Prime Minister’s advisers or a Conservative-chaired Committee choosing a future Labour Prime Minister’s advisers. That would lead to dysfunction and, frankly, gridlock, and it would be entirely impractical and unconstitutional. It simply would not work.
David Linden
The right hon. and learned Gentleman spoke about the fact that the code was designed under John Major in the 1990s, although John Major’s Government were not exactly without scandal and sleaze, so perhaps it is time to revisit that. Given his knowledge of history, can he think of any Prime Minister who has lost not one but two advisers on the ministerial code since the days of John Major?
Michael Ellis
There are exceptions in every case and, of course, we know that in the past 30 years Prime Ministers of all political parties have decided for themselves when Ministers have their confidence and when they do not. The Government are very grateful to all those who have served in the role of independent adviser since 2006. It is a challenging role, and increasingly so today. Let me repeat my particular thanks to Lord Geidt for his contribution to the office, but the Prime Minister has also made it clear that the resignation of Lord Geidt and the issues that he and PACAC raised last week demand a moment of reflection. They demand some consideration. Frankly, we think it is right to step back and take some time to consider what we have heard from the former independent adviser and from this House. This is a complex matter and one that touches on Executive functions and the royal prerogative in relation to the appointment of Ministers. As I have said before to this honourable House, we cannot have a situation where we expect any Prime Minister of any political party not to have confidence in a Minister that he or she has serving in their Cabinet. It is crucial that each Minister has the confidence of the serving Prime Minister.
Sarah Owen (Luton North) (Lab)
The Paymaster General talks about exceptional times, but unfortunately this is not exceptional behaviour from this Prime Minister. This is not the first time that we have heard allegations that the Prime Minister has sought to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money on his girlfriends. Just look at his time as Mayor of London. Does the Paymaster General not agree that this is a pattern of behaviour and the role of any new ethics adviser should be, for a start, to get the Prime Minister out of the gutter and find some ethics in the first place?
Geraint Davies
The Minister mentioned that the ministerial code and the guidance change with the times, but is it reasonable to delete references to integrity, objectivity, accountability, transparency, honesty and public interest? Obviously, these are enduring values and they cannot just be airbrushed out by a PM who chooses to break all the rules for his own self-interest.
Michael Ellis
I respectfully advise the hon. Gentleman to read the document he is quoting. First, those lines were only included in the foreword of the document since August 2019. They are still within the body of the document. What it says in the foreword is very often topical and should not be taken as inclusive of every item that follows in the substantive document.
Sir Robert Buckland
Further to that, are not the Nolan principles set out in annex A to the ministerial code? All this nonsense about their removal is factually wrong. However, will my right hon. and learned Friend commit today to do the process of the appointment of a successor to Lord Geidt as soon as reasonably practicable?
Michael Ellis
My right hon. and learned Friend is absolutely right about the code. I think it is annex A, and it may even be 1(c), although I may be wrong. The foreword is a topical document and how and by whom Lord Geidt is replaced are being worked through in detail.
The Government have only very recently made a number of significant changes to the remit of the independent adviser and to the ministerial code, and those changes were made in response to recommendations from the Committee on Standards in Public Life, as the former Attorney General, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright), mentioned only a few moments ago. They represented the most substantial strengthening of the independent adviser’s role and office during the lifetime of that post. The role has been strengthened and increased substantially. I will not run through all the details of those changes again. In the light of last week’s events, it strikes us as reasonable to not rush in, but pause and reflect on how to do it properly.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
If the changes that the Government recently brought forward are so significant and substantial, why do they feel it is necessary to have a pause for reflection again now, so soon?
Michael Ellis
Those are two different things, as the right hon. Member knows. We are talking about strengthening the role of the independent adviser, on which we had time to reflect and which we then did.
In no way do I suggest that the Government do not regard the role with the utmost importance; we do. In no way do I suggest that something of this importance will be left unaddressed; it will not. All I suggest is that we take a period of time to assess how best to perform that function. I appreciate that the motion allows a limited period of time, as it does not take effect until the independent adviser role has been unfilled for two months, but that timing presents two issues.
First, two months, with a deadline of 14 August, is simply an unduly short period to recruit for a role of such significance and sensitivity. Secondly, the motion allows for no time to think about how the role is delivered. By proposing the creation of a sort of shadow adviser on Ministers’ interests, the motion simply demands the same model again without consideration of any alternative options. It also unwisely, if I may say so, innovates to expand the remit of an existing Committee without considering the impact that that will have on the operation of the ministerial code. As I said, the Government think that the time is right to reflect on this matter more carefully.
Michael Ellis
In a moment; I will just make some progress.
Let me move on to the detail of the motion, which is constitutionally rather important. It is predicated on a misplaced worry about the Government’s intentions, and that anxiety has created a jumble of misguided ideas. First, the creation of the new specialist adviser position stands directly at odds with the principle of separation of powers and the necessary distinction between Members and Ministers of the Crown. It would be an extraordinary shift of power from the Executive to the legislature, which would upset the long-established balance in that aspect of the United Kingdom’s constitution. It would be a reckless change that has not been thought through.
Her Majesty’s Government would not dream of appointing advisers to this House—that is for the House to do, and Mr Speaker would rightly protect the legislature’s independence—but the Opposition want the legislature to interfere with the independence of the Executive by appointing one of its own advisers. Effectively, that is a recipe for gridlock and confusion.
It is a fundamental constitutional principle that the Prime Minister of the day, as head of Her Majesty’s Government and the sovereign’s principal adviser, has sole responsibility for the overall organisation of the Executive and for recommending the appointment of Ministers. The Prime Minister, not Parliament, advises Her Majesty on the appointment of her Ministers. In turn, the Government of the day are accountable to the Commons and must command its confidence. That is our system. The ultimate responsibility for decisions on matters of ministerial conduct is therefore, quite properly, the Prime Minister’s alone, who draws his authority from the elected House of Commons. As an elected politician, those are matters for which he or she is accountable to Parliament and, ultimately, the electorate.
Flowing from those arrangements, the ministerial code is the Prime Minister’s document. It belongs to the Prime Minister and sets out the standards of behaviour that he expects from his Ministers. Likewise, the appointment of others to advise on the ministerial code is a matter for the Prime Minister. It would be similar to me appointing an adviser to the Leader of the Opposition, which would, of course, be absolute nonsense and would not be accepted by the Opposition.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)
As a member of PACAC, I would of course welcome being able to have further advice, but the Minister seems to have misinterpreted that issue. The motion proposes to appoint an adviser not to the Prime Minister, but to a Committee that can make independent judgments on the conduct of different areas of the Executive. The International Development Committee has an independent auditor who reports to it on the functions of the Department. Other Committees have independent people who report to them on the functions of the Executive. There is no suggestion in the motion that it would be an adviser to the Prime Minister, or that it would take away from the Prime Minister’s responsibility to do the hiring and firing. The Minister has misread the motion, has he not?
Michael Ellis
The intent of the motion, as the hon. Gentleman well knows, is to stymie the Prime Minister’s power to have his own Ministers. [Interruption.] He knows full well that that is the intention behind this reckless motion, which seeks by proxy to turn those constitutional principles on their head, and would surely be a recipe for constitutional gridlock and confrontation. Hon. Members should perhaps consider for a moment what would happen under this new regime when the Prime Minister of the day disagrees with the parliamentary adviser. If the Prime Minister were to disagree with that adviser, he would be put under pressure to not have one of his own Ministers.
Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)
I heard the point made by the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle). Could the Minister clarify that, if that Select Committee should wish to appoint an adviser, it does not need a motion of the House to do so?
Michael Ellis
Clearly, it is for that Select Committee to decide how it conducts its own affairs, but certainly as far as this motion is concerned, it would be unconstitutional. Rather than allowing the Executive to reflect on the role of the independent adviser, this motion is preoccupied—as I think the House knows—with immediate and short-term considerations seeking to capitalise on a current vacancy, which the Opposition are seeking to do for politically expedient reasons, without taking full account of the constitutional implications. The now repealed Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 is a prime example of what happens if one alters critical parts of the constitution without care.
According to the motion, referring back to what the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) said, it would be for the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee to appoint an individual to the new position of adviser on Ministers’ interests—not “adviser on the Committee’s interests”, but “adviser on Ministers’ interests”—and it would be for PACAC to refer matters that that Committee believes warrants consideration to its new adviser. With or without PACAC, that adviser would be able to instigate consideration of a matter, so the motion is an attempt to give the impression that powers have been transferred from the Executive to the legislature.
Given its novel character, perhaps it does not come as a surprise that the proposal stands in direct contradiction to the principle acknowledged in the code of conduct for MPs and the associated guide to the rules. That current document, which the House has approved, clearly states that
“Ministers are subject to…guidelines and requirements laid down by successive Prime Ministers in the Ministerial Code”.
The guide to the rules clearly recognises that those requirements
“are not enforced by the House of Commons”.
The Opposition are seeking to reverse that agreement by the House.
The challenge to constitutional norms is not confined to the operation of the Executive. The motion also proposes to change the way in which Parliament and its Committees conduct their work.
Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)
My right hon. and learned Friend is absolutely right when he quotes the code of conduct. However, without an ethics adviser to the Prime Minister, we as Members of this House are held to higher standards of behaviour through the code of conduct than Ministers are, including the Prime Minister. What can my right hon. and learned Friend tell us about how, going forward, the Prime Minister and the Government intend to ensure we can expect all Ministers to be held to the highest possible standards, just as we in this House are?
Michael Ellis
I can certainly say to my hon. Friend that those sorts of questions are being worked through now in detail.
As I said, the challenge to constitutional norms is not confined to the operation of the Executive. The motion specifies that
“the Adviser may advise the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee on the appropriate use of its powers to send for persons, papers and records”.
The power of Select Committees to send for persons, papers and records is delegated to Select Committees from Parliament itself, and exercised by Members of this House as directly elected representatives. Although Select Committees already have the ability to appoint specialist advisers, introducing a requirement to appoint an adviser whose remit includes advising the Committee on how to use its powers would be different, unusual and undesirable. Although Select Committees may wish to draw on the advice of experts from time to time, this expertise does not ordinarily extend to advising Committees on how to use their historical powers to gather evidence.
Geraint Davies
I am listening carefully to the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s argument, but does he accept we are in unusual territory? The conduct and behaviour of the Prime Minister himself have been called into question, supported by the evidence. It would therefore seem inappropriate for the Prime Minister to appoint his own ethical adviser. Given that we have an independent judiciary, does the right hon. and learned Gentleman not think we should investigate the possibility of an independent appointment through the judiciary to enforce ethical standards in our democracy?
Michael Ellis
I am in the business of protecting our judiciary from becoming politicised, which would be a danger with the hon. Gentleman’s suggestion.
Select Committees already have a vital role to play in scrutinising and holding the Executive to account, which is why the Standing Orders provide the power to send for persons, papers and records. The creation of this new position would not augment the powers held by Parliament and its Committees but would serve to undermine the fundamental principle of the separation of powers.
As I have outlined, the House has previously acknowledged that Ministers are necessarily subject to an additional set of standards over and above that of Members. Providing a role for Parliament to initiate investigations into potential breaches of the ministerial code would be constitutionally irregular and would pre-empt the review that is currently being undertaken.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Is it not the case that a number of Select Committees already conduct pre-appointment hearings for people directly appointed by the Prime Minister? Those Select Committees can already say whether they recommend or do not recommend appointment. The Prime Minister can go against a Committee’s recommendation if he wishes, but it will be on the public record. There will be a paper trail so everyone knows what has happened, and light and fresh air will be let in to abolish the darkness of corruption. Would this proposal not do that if it were implemented?
Michael Ellis
No.
The creation of an adviser with the power to initiate consideration of a potential breach of the ministerial code is different, and we can safely predict it would open the door to a wave of frivolous and vexatious complaints. We have to think about that and the reputation of this House because, now and across all future Administrations, there would be no downside in political opponents throwing in complaints like confetti. The Opposition of the day would not face tit-for-tat complaints, because they are not Ministers.
As we saw with the failed Standards Board for England in local government, a culture of petty complaint would undermine not strengthen confidence in democracy, which is precisely why such arrangements need to be thought through, to consider and avoid the unintended consequences that will ultimately afflict both sides of the House.
Sir Robert Buckland
My right hon. and learned Friend is being generous in taking interventions. I agree about the importance of balance between the Executive and the legislature. May I press him on the need for a mechanism to appoint a successor to Lord Geidt? I understand that he cannot give us dates or commitments, but can I have an assurance that a successor will be appointed as soon as practicable?
Michael Ellis
What I can say to my right hon. and learned Friend is that the matter is being given very careful and full consideration. I hope that answers the point.
John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)
I am gravely concerned about what I have just heard. A number of us were given to understand, before the debate began, that the Government were willing to say that there is a strong commitment to finding a replacement for Lord Geidt in short order. I have not heard the Minister say that. Will he please make that very clear right now?
Michael Ellis
I do apologise if I have not made that clear; I thought that I had. I can confirm that that is the position.
Let me conclude by reassuring hon. Members that it is the Government’s intention to act swiftly. I emphasise that to hon. Friends around the House. We will act swiftly to undertake a review of the arrangements in place to support the ministerial code and ensure high ministerial standards. During that period, the process of managing ministerial interests will continue in line with the ministerial code, which sets out that the permanent secretary in each Department and the Cabinet Office can provide advice to Ministers and play a role in scrutinising interests. The latest list of ministerial interests was published just two weeks ago, and the Government’s publication of transparency information will of course continue unaffected.
Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)
I want to clarify what the Minister said in that last passage. His own Back Benchers seem very keen to establish on the record in Hansard that the Government have given them some sort of undertaking that they will act swiftly to appoint an adviser, but what the Minister said there was that he would act swiftly to institute a review. Which is it? Are the Government going to act swiftly to institute a review, or to appoint an adviser? I think that might affect how his Back Benchers vote this evening, so he needs to be clear.
Michael Ellis
It is very kind of the hon. and learned Lady to be interested in how the Back Benchers vote, but she ought to be concerned about her own party in that regard. The reality of the matter is that I have made my position perfectly clear: the position will be dealt with in good time. The how and when are being worked on—[Interruption.] I cannot be any clearer than that.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
May I gently say to my right hon. and learned Friend that he will appreciate that, whether we like it or not, this issue of ethics is proving to be a bit of an Achilles’ heel with the Government. It is in the interests of the Government to have a replacement to Lord Geidt as quickly as possible. I have heard what he has said in response to a number of interventions, and so it may be me, but could he say once again for the record that an adviser in this important area of the mechanism of government will be appointed as swiftly as possible? A review of the terms of reference is ancillary.
Michael Ellis
Whether it be the phrase “as soon as reasonably practicable” or “as soon as possible” is somewhat immaterial, but I think I have made it clear. I am trying to emphasise that, while the how and when are to be worked out, the Government will work with every possible expedition.
On this motion, I would say it is in the Government’s interests and intentions to bring their review or the arrangements into play efficiently and in good time. As my hon. Friend says, it is in the Government’s interests, but it is also in the interests of the whole House, because the matter of ethics and standards is of relevance to all of us. Frankly, Labour’s high moral tone is perhaps not quite appropriate when its members find themselves under police investigation in Durham—
Michael Ellis
My friend intervenes from a sedentary position, but was she or was she not having an Indian meal in Durham? It is something of a korma, korma chameleon, one might say.
Karin Smyth
If we could return to the matter in hand, we are trying to establish whether the Government are swiftly moving to instigate a review, or swiftly moving to appoint. When Lord Geidt came before the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee in May 2021, he told us that his name had been “alighted on” by the Prime Minister. Can the Paymaster General tell us whether the Prime Minister will be alighting on a new name, reviewing the alighting on of a name, or reviewing an open application process? Can he give us a little bit more about that?
Michael Ellis
The Prime Minister intends to appoint a new ethics adviser. We will announce how that is to be done, who it is and how it works in due course, but it has to be done properly to ensure that Parliament and the public have confidence. This motion pre-empts that review process and unnecessarily seeks to hold the Government to an entirely arbitrary timetable. We firmly believe that it is better to undertake this work with proper diligence and attention than to conclude it in haste, without proper consideration of the issues raised by Lord Geidt and the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee. It is for those reasons that the Government would oppose the motion.
David Linden
The Minister’s repeated reference to “in due course” has piqued the interest of those of us familiar with the work of Sir Humphrey Appleby. Will he go a little further and define what “in due course” means? For example, would it be before the conference recess, or the summer recess? [Interruption.] Maybe his Parliamentary Private Secretary is telling him right now.
Michael Ellis
I think that the hon. Member knows what “in due course” means, and, if he does not, he will have to work it out.
Labour chose this debate on a day when the Labour rail strike is in progress. It is utilising its valuable time in the Commons not to discuss policy—Labour Members do not discuss policy because when they do, they lose—as it would rather talk about personality, and I am surprised that it chose this debate at this time when half of its Members are apparently on the picket lines.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
Well, there we have it, in the Minister’s own words, as clear as he could possibly be: it is abundantly clear that the Government have absolutely no intention whatsoever of moving speedily to replace their ethics adviser. If all the crowd on the Conservative Back Benches are prepared to be taken in by that rubbish, God help them when they have to try to consider some of the important issues of today.
We have heard from the Minister that there will be a review into the arrangements about the appointment of an ethics adviser. Why could he not have come to the Dispatch Box to state exactly and clearly what he intends to do, instead of mucking around with all of that rubbish and nonsense, skipping through God knows how many hoops and dancing on the head of so many pins? That would have been more useful to the House. We have had to listen to something like half an hour of unmitigated rubbish, and now we know that they will do nothing other than create some sort of review about how they will take the matter forward.
I do not know where to start when it comes to considering the ethics of this Prime Minister and Government. This is a Prime Minister with the ethics of Caligula and a Government with the morals of the last days of the Borgias. How the Prime Minister is still in place after all of this must go down in the history books as one of the great mysteries of early 21st-century politics. When the book is written and that feature film is eventually released, people will ask, “Did all of that seriously happen? Surely this must be a fictional account of this particular Conservative Government?”
There has never been a Prime Minister quite like it. He is a weird combination of privilege, narcissism, nastiness and naivety all wrapped up under the bumbling facade that he has carefully concocted to make his multitude of sins evaporate in front of our faces. He is about the worst Prime Minister to be in place at the worst possible time. No one has been more ill-equipped to run a community council, far less the Government of an advanced developed nation and democracy in western Europe. If there is one Prime Minister who is in need of ethical advice and the assistance of a moral compass, it is surely this Prime Minister. Far from doing away with the post—that plan is abundantly clear—the Government should be spending half of the UK’s GDP on creating an army of ethical advisers just to get on top of what is going on in the Government.
I have to say that, like the Culture Secretary, I was a little bit surprised to find out that we actually had an ethics adviser. I would not be surprised at all if the Prime Minister had an adviser for hedonism and partying hard, but ethics? He must be keeping his several successes in the course of the past few years hidden beneath a particularly big bushel. I do not know if he was a bit distracted when the Government were breaking the laws that they themselves created, distracted when they were threatening to break international law, distracted when they oversaw a culture at No. 10 that partied so hard that people were physically sick, got into fights and then abused the staff who were there to clean up, or distracted when the Government attempted to prorogue Parliament unlawfully and who continue to put their own cronies and donors in the House of Lords. But I suppose it gets to the stage where enough is enough even for the most patient, distracted and forgiving adviser, and the recognition finally dawns that this is an impossible task beyond the realms of human wit.
It comes as absolutely no surprise that the Government feel they can function quite adequately without an ethics adviser in place. They have been through two in the course of the past few years. Neither felt that they could make any real difference to the ethics and behaviour of this Prime Minister. That leads me to ask: what would an effective ethics adviser to this Prime Minister actually look like? They would need the ability to turn a blind eye and stomach some of the worst possible behaviour at the worst possible time. They must be able to take the abuse and disparaging comments from some of the Prime Minister’s friends, such as the Culture Secretary who, in her usual measured and respectful way, calls the current Lord Geidt “Lord Geddit” and says that voters do not care what he was or what he did. As part of the recruitment drive for the next ethics adviser, the Culture Secretary encouraged potential applicants for the post by saying that the public “don’t give a fig” about the job. Now, watch the great and good run forward to try to claim that particular prize.
James Wild (North West Norfolk) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman is making a typically measured speech himself. In talking about ethics and standards, can he confirm whether the SNP Westminster group still has a zero-tolerance approach to sexual harassment and inappropriate behaviour? A leaked recording this weekend would indicate that that is no longer the case.
Pete Wishart
Obviously, I am not going to discuss any sort of leaked information that has been passed on to the press. What I will say to the hon. Gentleman is that if he is sitting in a glass house with a big rock, it is probably best not to throw it in any direction. I remind him that I was on the Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme and put together the report that is now in place; one of the most successful initiatives we have had to tackle abuse in this place. I will take great pride in the fact that that was part of the arrangements concerning that.
I will finish with the Culture Secretary. Once she has finished her tenure in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, which hopefully will be short-lived, she could maybe go on to become an international diplomat or peacemaker, given her ability to say the right things at the right time on issues that require sensitivity and care, just as she has in the last few weeks.
In an attempt to save face and further discredit Lord Geidt—this is perhaps one of the most concerning pieces of spin from the past few days—the Government were able to develop a narrative that his resignation was nothing to do with the appalling behaviour of the Prime Minister but a misunderstanding about steel. Because of the Government’s remarks and the spin from the Government’s friends in the newspapers, Lord Geidt felt it necessary to write a second letter to clarify exactly why he resigned. He said that it was nothing to do with steel, and that steel was an absolute and utter distraction. He said it was instead about being asked to approve deliberate breaches of international law given the Government’s
“widely publicised openness to this”.
Joanna Cherry
The Minister seemed very reluctant to confirm that a new adviser will be appointed anytime soon. Does my hon. Friend think that that is probably because the Government have it in mind to breach several international treaties in the coming months and it would be very awkward for them to have an adviser in place who would be advising them against that or possibly resigning because of their plans to do so?
Pete Wishart
My hon. and learned Friend is coming to the right conclusions about the Government’s indecision and apparently clear intention of not having an ethics adviser put in place at the earliest possible opportunity. A number of things are coming up—I will mention a couple of them—in the in-tray for any adviser to consider, some of which will greatly concern Members of this House.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman would agree that further delay and dilly-dallying in the appointment of an ethics adviser does nothing whatever to restore public confidence in our Government?
Pete Wishart
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely and utterly right. I do not think that, in my 20-odd years in the House, I have seen it in such a dilapidated condition, when public trust in the activities of the House, the way in which we do business and the way in which we conduct ourselves has been so badly misunderstood and misinterpreted by the public. It is incumbent on the House to start to try and put these things right.
Let us get back to our good friend Lord Geidt. I do not know what it was in his comments that he had been left in
“an impossible and odious position”
and that he could not be
“party to advising on any potential law-breaking”
that led to any misunderstanding about his intention to resign from his role, and the real reasons why he eventually got around to it. Perhaps he had to be got rid of because it was he who had previously investigated the controversy over how the Prime Minister had funded the refurbishment of the flat above No. 11 Downing Street.
My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) referred to several issues that might require the attention of a future independent ethics adviser, but surely the one at the top of his inbox would be our emerging concern that the Prime Minister was seriously considering appointing his now wife to the role of special adviser in the Foreign Office. That is a matter that I think the House will have to return to in due course, and consider properly. Although Lord Geidt concluded that the Prime Minister had not broken ministerial rules in respect of the prime ministerial flat, the Conservative Party was later fined £17,800 for the improper declaration of donations.
So Lord Geidt is gone, and I have the impression that Downing Street is not particularly upset about that, but what is to be done? I have no problem with the Labour party’s motion, and I will support it; the only thing that I would say to Labour Members is that I would not give them the chance to try and find an independent adviser on the Government’s ethics. In any event, I think that it should be a matter for the House. I accept that some of these issues are relevant and pertinent to Government activity and business, but surely the House should have some sort of say, through the function of its Committees, in who does the monitoring and how that person is appointed. The present system has not worked particularly well in the case of the last few independent advisers. I think that we would need to find someone with the attributes of Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Columbo and George Washington combined to perform this role effectively.
In Scotland, of course, we have our much neater and easier way out of this midden, and that is to simply leave all of you to get on with it in your own time and in your own way. I have no idea what Scotland has done in its history to deserve governance such as this, but believe me, Madam Deputy Speaker, my colleagues and I are doing everything possible to ensure that the situation will be rectified. When it is right that we put forward the case for independence—as we will, and we will convince the Scottish people of its merits—all we need to do is to get the Scottish people to turn on the Parliament channel and observe what is happening in the House. That will increase their enthusiasm, and cause them to rush towards the cause of independence. The choice for them will be whether to be governed by these privileged Etonian spivs with their “one rule for them” approach to government, or to become a self-governing nation run by the people who care most about Scotland—the people who live and work there.
Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)
It is a pleasure to be called to speak in the debate.
The motion in the name of the Leader of the Opposition is deeply flattering to me—presumably—and to the Committee that I have the great pleasure of chairing. I appreciate the Opposition’s confidence in us, but would gently encourage them to have more confidence in themselves rather than deferring entirely to my Committee.
In the exposition with which he responded to the deputy Leader of the Opposition, my right hon. and learned Friend the Paymaster General remarked that the motion was unconstitutional, and I have to say that perhaps it is. However, I increasingly find that the Government themselves advance all sorts of propositions that could be described as unconstitutional in the first place, not least the assertion by some members of the Cabinet that we now have a quasi-presidential system of government. That, I imagine, would be news to Her Majesty. I might ask whether the reading of choice in the Cabinet is indeed Dicey and Bagehot nowadays, or perhaps something a little lighter.
The Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee has not requested these powers, but I understand the sentiment behind them. It is the imperative to appoint a new adviser to the Prime Minister on ministerial interests, which, if I am to decipher what my right hon. and learned Friend said earlier, is something that they are keen to do.
I will, if I may, briefly reflect on what happened last week. Lord Geidt appeared before the Committee on Tuesday. He went through an astonishing transformation, it seems, over the course of that week—those who may have been a little critical of his appearance on Tuesday were regarding him as a great national folk hero by Wednesday. I am sure that he was touched by that change of heart. None the less, he certainly had a difficult time, not on the basis of him as an individual—a man of flawless reputation, I might advance, with a distinguished record of public service not least to Her Majesty—but probably because he was defending a sticky wicket. He found the need to bring clarification to the motivation behind his resignation in a letter to me on Friday. It is clear that Lord Geidt is not a political creature, but that is exactly the kind of quality that is needed in the independent adviser.
It should not go without challenge in this House when Ministers appear in the media, but some unhelpful perceptions have been created. I am afraid to say that the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport was wheeled out on the radio on Friday—presumably for the nation’s entertainment rather than its edification. Her appearance was quite astonishing. I agree with her on one thing though. Let me paraphrase what she said. “Never heard of him”, she said. That is quite right. I do not think that the independent adviser to the Prime Minister on ministerial interests should be heard of, because the sort of the work that they undertake should be done thoroughly, but discreetly. It should never capture the public imagination—I think that that is more of a reflection of the times in which we are living, which, largely, are of our own making.
I would further question why my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, felt the need to observe that Lord Geidt had been complaining about the amount of work that he had to do. Well, we know what could be done about that perhaps. All I would say in praise of my right hon. and learned Friend on the Treasury Bench is that he is a complete contrast to the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, and I welcome his sensible and considered approach to these matters and indeed the emphasis that he placed in, I think, the urgent question last week, which was that it was vitally important to have such a position filled.
On the question of whether people care, I think that, yes, they do care. The British public are, on the whole, capable of having two thoughts in their minds at once. Yes, they are able—by their own painful experience quite often—to understand the cost of living crisis. Yes, they are entirely able to have empathy and grave concern about the situation in Ukraine, but they are also able to judge the Government on whether they think that they behave—not perfectly, because that is not what people expect—with at least an adequate degree of propriety. I say to colleagues that we might gently remember the Standards Committee report from the autumn, which I thought would have shown that, for many, this was an area of interest that the public thoroughly understood.
I shall conclude briefly, the House will be relieved to know, as this matter does not really need a great deal more from me. Why do we have an independent adviser? It comes from a 2006 recommendation from the Committee on Standards in Public Life. There are practical reasons why these advisers are necessary. It is that they can give objective advice to the Prime Minister of the day. In fairness to the Prime Minister of the day, or the Prime Minister at any time, they have a difficult role in forming a judgment on close colleagues and, indeed, even friends. They need to be able to draw upon and be able to back up their decision with that advice.
I completely support the idea that the Prime Minister has ownership of the “Ministerial Code”. It is his code, and it is right that it should be so. We should not be upsetting that constitutional principle. However, we need to make sure that there is an adviser, with the Prime Minister as final arbiter, in a way that allows for that transparency in the difficult decisions that they make.
So, although personally deeply touched by the Opposition’s confidence in me, and indeed in the illustrious members of my Committee, I am afraid that I will not actively support their motion, which I know will upset them dearly. But as the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) and I go back an awfully long way, to the time when she was union representative at Stockport Council and I was a mere humble councillor for the Hazel Grove ward, I trust that she will take what I have said in the spirit that it is intended. I look forward to hearing the rest of the debate.
Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg), the Chair of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, of which I am one of the so-called illustrious members and very pleased to be a part.
Only two weeks ago, I spoke in another debate about the importance of standards in political life and how important they are to my constituents. At that time, the Government were trying to move us on, and that has not worked terribly well, but the issues that we are talking about today are important and do matter to our constituents. I said then, as a member of the Committee, that not many members of the public knew about our work—the long hours of deliberation, reports and inquiries, and how we had a certain Lord Geidt coming before us shortly. I ended up by saying that because of how our constitution now works and how the Government have behaved, all roads lead back to the chap at the top of the structure. The culture emanates from there, including the non-attendance before Select Committees, the late publication of documents, and the many other examples that were outlined in that debate—so here we are again.
As well as reviewing the evidence that Lord Geidt gave to the Committee last week, it is worth reviewing his post-appointment hearing evidence taken on Thursday 13 May 2021, his name at that point having been alighted on by the Prime Minister following the resignation of his predecessor. In that session, we explored the lessons from Sir Alex Allan’s resignation and the issue of independence and advice. In response to questioning led by my colleague and friend, in this regard, the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price)—she is in her place—who asked about recognising that we all have a view on and understand what is good and bad behaviour and what is constitutionally appropriate, Lord Geidt said:
“As I have heard other people say recently, good behaviour is a very difficult thing to legislate for. I join those who suggest that it really needs leaders—of course, the Prime Minister, Parliament and civil servants—to set the necessary example. I hope very much that the work that I do in this role, which is described as “adviser”, will be in the service of advising the office of Prime Minister in the furtherance of that behaviour, taking the Ministerial Code as its point of reference. I agree with you that rules are absolutely not sufficient to stimulate good behaviour.”
We fast-forward to earlier this year and the warnings that Lord Geidt was then moved to give, in the strongest terms he possibly could, in the introduction to his annual report. Before our session last week, on 14 June, I was not sure which Lord Geidt would be before us. Were we to get the one who appeared before us in May 2021, believing, as a chap of the system, I think it would be fair to say, that the system had worked, that his predecessor’s resignation showed that it worked, that updates to his terms of reference gave the independence that was necessary, and that leaders, crucially from the top, set the necessary example; or were we to get the one who was the author of the annual report? Following a fairly intense session of questioning on a number of different issues in the inquiry, we clearly found out just the very next day which Lord Geidt we now had.
Our post-appointment session in May 2021 focused on the issue of wallpaper. Our last session was about a number of things, including the legal advice on the breaking of international agreements. That really is quite a leap, isn’t it, in only a year? I asked particularly about the leaking of legal advice on the breaking of the Northern Ireland protocol. We know that that advice has been leaked. We know that it is a serious breach of the code. We know that this has a profound impact on the UK’s constitution and domestic politics as well as on our international standing. We know that the legal advice is disputed. We know that the doctrine of necessity is extreme. We heard again this morning from experts on international law quite how unusual the new doctrine of necessity that we now have in the protocol is.
In a series of questions, which I am going to refer to, I asked Lord Geidt about where this advice had been leaked from—essentially, whether it was from the Prime Minister or from the Attorney General. I asked him whether he had been asked to investigate that situation. I said that
“we do have a recent leak with regard to the legal advice on the Northern Ireland protocol”,
and asked him whether that constituted “a relevant example” for him to investigate. Lord Geidt said:
“It may well do. You will recall that my new powers are squeaky new and I have not either been asked to or, indeed, pressed my own interest in giving advice in that example.”
I asked Lord Geidt if the Prime Minister
“has not asked you to investigate why that legal advice was leaked”.
Lord Geidt said, “No, he had not.” I asked if the Attorney General was asked how the advice had been leaked? He asked me, “Have I asked?” I said yes, and he said, “No, I have not.” I said:
“But your new powers do allow you to ask”
the Attorney General. Lord Geidt responded:
“I think that my new powers would allow me, unrestricted, to ask questions of the entirety of Government and others.”
I said:
“You raised the issue of the leak”—
he had done that earlier—
“The leak is clearly very serious… I would suggest it breaches the ministerial code, point 2.13. Would you agree?”
Lord Geidt said:
“I have not formed any advice and I have not brought an inquiry to bear on the situation.”
I then asked if he thought it breached the ministerial code. He said:
“Again, I would want to ensure that I could consider that fully before reaching a determination. By the way, as you know, the determination is then only advice to the Prime Minister.”
I asked:
“Have you looked at reaching a determination before?”
and he said, “In this case, no.” We would seem to have been going round in circles.
Part of that emanated from some correspondence from the shadow Attorney General, my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry). She had written to Lord Geidt to ask for advice, and he said he had responded to her, but that had not been received at the time. She has now received an answer, and again we are somewhat going round in circles. Lord Geidt responded to her finally, saying: “In the event of an allegation of unauthorised disclosure of information by persons unknown, it is open to the Government to commission an internal leak investigation where the Government in the circumstances considers it is appropriate, but that would be a matter for the Government to take forward and would not, at least in the first instance, be a matter for the independent adviser.”
We are left on a circuitous route of trying to understand where a very serious leak has occurred. It is a clear breach of the ministerial code that seems to be no one’s job to investigate or move forward. That is simply one example of the very many outstanding breaches of the code now lurking behind the doors of Downing Street. Where do we now go? Ideally, we would like to return to decency in politics. This motion provides an interim solution. As I said when I intervened earlier, it is up to other hon. Members in this place to come forward with other solutions if they do not think this solution is suitable. The Government are being given a window, should they wish to take it, to do something decent.
Our Committee, as the Chair has outlined, has a long list of current inquiries and a future work programme. We are not particularly looking for extra work, and this is clearly a matter for the Government under our constitution. However, I know that Parliament takes this seriously, and Parliament can and will step up. We will find a way through this to bring decency back into our politics. Again, at the end of these very long days, our commitment is essentially to our constituents. This is being taken seriously by a number of Members of the once great Conservative party. Our commitment remains on the Opposition Benches, and we will continue to pursue bringing back good standards of government, despite what the Prime Minister wishes to happen.
Alberto Costa (South Leicestershire) (Con)
At the outset, I should like to remind the House that I am a member of the Committee on Standards and of the Committee of Privileges. Accordingly, I will keep my comments short and away from any specific incident or series of incidents, or any particular personalities involved or alleged to have been involved, in any particular case or cases. My comments this afternoon relate to our constitutional arrangements and why I am unable to support the Opposition’s motion.
I have long championed enhanced standards in this place. I have been instrumental in putting forward proposals to develop our standards processes, and ensure that both complainants and those complained of are given a fair, transparent hearing, with a good appellate system. But I think the comments of my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General should be carefully listened to by all Members of the House. He rightly referred to the separation of powers, an issue that I regularly raise on the Committees on which I serve. It is useful for the House to remind ourselves of what we mean by “separation of powers”. It may be trite of me to do this, but some Members have come to me stating that they do not believe that the UK has any separation of powers, so it is important to remind the House of what we mean by separation of powers.
There are, of course, three arms to the British state—three organs of the state: this place, with the House of Lords and the sovereign in Parliament, which is the legislature, whose principal role is to make law; the judiciary, which comprises the courts and tribunals across the whole of the UK, whose principal function is to enforce the law that we make; and the Executive, who are of course a creature of this legislature, but are separate from it. They are separate from it and have their own staff, whom we call civil servants. Civil servants are loyal to the Government of the day and act impartially, but they are not neutral; they are there to further the democratic and legitimate aims of the elected Government of the day.
Part of our democratic and constitutional arrangements is that the Prime Minister of this country, the Head of Government of this country, has very limited defined powers, but one of them is patronage: choosing his or her Cabinet, choosing those who serve the Government. That includes choosing those who are operationally independent of government but part of the Government. That includes a very large number of people. This place also appoints individuals who are called “operationally independent” of the House, but who are officers of the House. Given that we are having a discussion on standards, let me say that the most obvious office holder who is a creature of the House of Commons—the office is created by this body—is of course the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. Notably, the other House of the British legislature has its own Commissioners for Standards, separate from the officer of this House.
So it is imperative that in order to consider how Members might vote on this motion, we clearly understand the delineations of the separations of power. That is why the comments made by the able Minister at the Dispatch Box were absolutely correct; it would be utterly irresponsible to pass a motion that would create confusion and create the very opposite of what we want to see, which is transparency. What would happen is that the legislature would, in effect, be given authority over another arm of the state. We would not dream of appointing a House of Commons adviser on standards to the judiciary, would we? Would we impose our standards on day-to-day operations of the judiciary? That would be absurd. In fact, it would be dangerous.
Jackie Doyle-Price
I share in some of what my hon. Friend is saying, but we are talking about Ministers who are both simultaneously Members of this House and members of the Government. The fact remains that Back-Bench Members of Parliament are subject to more scrutiny through the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards than we have in the current situation with Ministers responsible to the Prime Minister through the ministerial code, unless there is some transparency through a process through an ethics adviser. Will my hon. Friend comment on that?
Alberto Costa
I welcome my hon. Friend’s intervention because it allows me to clarify what I consider to be an error. The right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) said that we must have a system of conduct that affects each and every one of us, but we do: all members of the Government are Members of this House or of the other place, and they must abide by a code of conduct. That code of conduct is adjudicated on by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards in this place and the commissioners for standards in the other place, as well as the respective Committees on standards.
Most importantly, I should add that, under our system, the de facto sovereign body—the supreme governing body—of our country is this place, ultimately, Ministers are accountable to all hon. Members when they are at the Dispatch Box, and so is the head of Government. Under our constitution, if the head of Government loses the confidence of this House, they lose the role. That is the ultimate conduct check that our system allows for. Any moves to change that system, whatever the intentions might be—they might be noble—ought to be properly debated and consulted on, and must be cross-party in approach. It would be highly irresponsible to force through such a motion, which seeks to fundamentally alter our British constitutional arrangements vis-à-vis the Executive.
David Linden
I would contend that the motion is more an issue of House business than necessarily of the constitution, but we may disagree on that. I want to go back to what the hon. Gentleman said about this place not interfering with the judicial system. Is it not the case that many Conservative Back Benchers, although perhaps not him, would be quite happy to see, for example, the Supreme Court taken out of the equation because it has become unnecessary, unyielding and not helpful to the Government? Are the Government not guilty of trying to interfere with the judicial system?
Alberto Costa
I understand why the hon. Gentleman makes that point, but the counter-argument to that is that this is the locus and the forum for having thorough debates. When the Government of the day make proposals in respect of our legal system—of course the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament are wholly in control of the Scottish legal system, which is another great legal system of the United Kingdom—our respective Parliaments are the arenas to discuss, debate, vote on, challenge and scrutinise them. This motion and this short debate do not begin to scratch the surface of the scrutiny required in those sorts of debates, so hon. Members who are thinking about voting for this motion ought to ask themselves whether this short debate is justifiable in terms of length and scrutiny before making such a change.
I re-emphasise the Minister’s point about the accountability of the individual appointed. At present, as I said, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards is an officer of this House and is not accountable to the other place or to the Government; she is accountable to us—this House of Commons. It is wholly unclear in the motion whether, in appointing an adviser, that adviser would hold the same authority as an officer of this House. Would that individual also acquire the right to conduct investigations under parliamentary privilege? Would they have the power to command any witness to appear before them and demand the disclosure of evidence? Exactly what is meant by an “adviser to the Committee”?
PACAC is a distinguished Committee, and it has a distinguished Chair in my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg), but exactly what sort of powers does the motion suggest should be given to that putative standards commissioner? That is what I think the motion entails: it creates another standards commissioner.
John Penrose
Does my hon. Friend agree that one worrying thing about the motion is that there is no end date to the adviser’s position, once established? Were the adviser to be in place and then the Prime Minister were to appoint his or her own adviser, we would have two different advisers, one advising the Committee and one advising the Prime Minister, potentially arriving at different conclusions from the same facts.
Alberto Costa
Indeed, and of course that emphasises the political motivation behind the motion, which is to create mischief and the very opposite of transparency. It would just create the opportunity to castigate the Executive of the day. I say gently to the Opposition that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. We have a mature democracy in our country, and whoever wins at election time—whichever party holds a majority in this House—becomes the Government immediately. There is no transition period. With this motion we would be seeking to fetter that Executive, and particularly the Head of Government, preventing them from undertaking their important constitutional duties.
For those reasons, and many more that would come out if we had a proper debate on the motion and proper scrutiny of it, I believe that it is deeply misguided. I encourage all Members to put aside party politics and vote it down.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)
We have heard a good discussion today and a good speech by the hon. Member for South Leicestershire (Alberto Costa), although I do worry that he was dancing on the head of a pin in some of his constitutional reflections.
It is as simple as this: the public have lost trust in the Prime Minister, and 140-plus of his own Members of Parliament have lost trust in him on these matters. Add that to the number of Opposition Members, and a majority of Members do not trust him. This House therefore has a duty to act. That is the constitutional reality, and all the other academic waffle is for the birds. What is important is good behaviour—the system relies on that. The Prime Minister has not behaved as well as he should have done, and his colleagues know that.
It might well be that some actions are excusable, and that they are not all sackable—I mean breaches of the ministerial code rather than the Prime Minister’s behaviour —and that is why we need a fair and just system to make that determination. At the moment, the danger is that the public just damn us for everything. Small, vexatious issues are brought up about a Member delaying the registration of an interest here or there, and of course those administrative matters require slaps on the wrist, but they are not resigning issues. The public conflate those issues with serious misbehaviour, whether it be corruption such as trying to appoint friends or family, law breaking or sexual assault.
This place realised that marking our own homework on sexual assault was not good enough—the public will not accept that, however much we dance on the head of a pin about it as a constitutional issue. We therefore had to come up with a hybrid system. Members could have an input and act as a reality check, but the independence of the system had to be guaranteed, complaints had to be investigated and outcomes had to be public. That is what we need in this situation. More importantly, we need a commitment that independent advisers will be appointed and listened to.
The fact Lord Geidt had to clarify his resignation letter because the Government manipulated his words to try to condemn him for resigning over steel tariffs, which he said was not the case, shows the depths to which this Government will go. In that clarification letter, he agreed that
“When the Prime Minister is asking his own adviser to advise on the Prime Minister’s conduct it really doesn’t work.”
How do we, as a Parliament and as the people who fundamentally decide on the Prime Minister’s conduct, get our advice? How do we get the information we need, bearing in mind that the Prime Minister’s consideration is behind closed doors? We know about this only because Lord Geidt felt he had to resign.
The motion is probably imperfectly worded, and it could probably be improved and tweaked. Our constitution is evolving, and it can always be improved and tweaked. Not only should the Prime Minister have an adviser—I would welcome it if he appointed one—but Parliament should have an adviser and a watchdog so we can decide whether we continue to have trust in the Prime Minister and the Ministers he appoints. That is perfectly constitutional, and those who are trying to make out it is not are misguided. It might not be useful politically, it might be a distraction and it might be unnecessary if we improved the whole system—
Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
With a new Prime Minister.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Yes, if we had a new Prime Minister who obeyed the rules and if trust returned because people believed there is good behaviour, I could buy the political argument that Parliament having an adviser might be unnecessary, but we currently have a situation in which a Minister was sacked because of Islamophobia, a breach of the ministerial code. There is meant to be an investigation, but we are none the wiser. The Prime Minister is one of the main witnesses in that investigation, and he will determine how his own witness evidence is balanced against other witness evidence. Surely everyone can see there needs to be independence in the process.
The witness evidence should be balanced and released to the public, even if the Prime Minister still makes the final decision. Surely we can all agree that one of these stages should be made public. As much as people want to talk about the separation of powers, the separation of legislation, law enforcement and deliberation on whether the law has been broken is a fundamental principle of justice in this country.
We currently have a situation in which the Prime Minister writes the rules, the Prime Minister or his proxy starts the investigative process and the Prime Minister determines whether the rules have been broken. That is a fundamental breach of any sort of natural justice, and it is not fair on Ministers who are stitched up for technical breaches, not fundamental breaches, and are sacked for no good reason, while other Ministers who have done the same thing are not sacked because it is politically expedient. That is not fair or natural justice for Ministers, either. It does not protect them.
I am not saying the motion is a perfect solution, but there needs to be a process. Having a process in which a parliamentary Committee can make recommendations is not new. We currently have a system in which certain appointments made purely by the Prime Minister go through Select Committee appointment hearings. I sit on the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, which is being offered the opportunity to have greater responsibility, and it already does that in a number of areas, and other Committees do it, too. Our recommendations can be ignored, but at least they are made in public. The motion would make no change to that constitutional provision, but it would make ministerial appointments and abidance by the code open and fair. The motion makes no change to that constitutional provision, but it would make ministerial appointments and abidance by the code open and fair. I do not think that it is unreasonable. I do not think that it is unreasonable to support the motion, but more fundamentally, it is not constitutional and is only necessary because the Prime Minister has acted badly.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. Just a gentle reminder that we still have quite a lot of speakers to get in before the wind-ups start, so below 10 minutes is best—as the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) did, after catching my eye.
John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow such illustrious members of a series of Committees, all of which focus on this area and all of which have shown the importance and critical nature of the issue that the motion is trying to address—[Interruption.] I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will turn my phone off.
The debate also shows that there is a high degree of cross-party unanimity on the central importance of having somebody in the position of the independent adviser on the ministerial code. It is absolutely essential that everybody, from all parties, who has spoken so far has started from that fundamental principle. Everybody agrees with it. That was why I was delighted at what was said. I think we got there in the end, but I hope that when my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister winds up, with the leave of the House, he will take the opportunity to repeat his comment, which we prised out of him after a number of interventions: that he and the Government agree that a successor to Lord Geidt must be appointed, and must be appointed as promptly as possible. I think he wants a degree of flexibility about the process through which that happens and should the role be split, for example, between people so that we ended up with a panel or something like that. I think he wants the flexibility to allow those changes to be introduced, but the principle that there should be somebody or some group of people—
John Penrose
Let the record show that the Minister is nodding vigorously. It is essential that we get on the record the principle that the role must be pursued and continued. I think that he has said that already, but I hope that he will take the opportunity to make that clear again in his concluding remarks. It is essential that that is clarified, because a number of us were expecting it to be made clear and I hope that we have heard it and will hear it being made clear again.
An awful lot of the concerns that led the motion to be tabled in the first place would be greatly allayed by such a clarification. People are worried, as there have been briefings in the press saying a successor to Lord Geidt might not be appointed at all, and that it might not be an important position to fill in future. I think that the Minister has already said, and I hope that he will repeat, that that is not true, it is not the way that the Government are thinking and that there will be successors appointed to make sure that that crucial role is filled. It is vital that it is filled, because it is independent, and because the independent reports are made public, it provides not just the Prime Minister but everybody in this Chamber, more broadly in society as a whole and in the press with an independent set of facts on which to proceed, to say, “This happened, this did not; this is serious, that is not,” and from which we can all start our conversations, discussions and debates about essential items of probity, integrity and, ultimately, honesty from a shared base of fact.
I venture to make a suggestion to my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister as he goes around trying to find the successor to Lord Geidt. A number of people have said that that might not be terribly easy at the moment and I have a couple of gentle suggestions that might make it a simpler and easier succession. It might be easier for the Prime Minister to find successors if he were to upgrade the role further than the power enhancements that have already been made. I think he should consider two further enhancements of the role. The first is that the adviser or advisers, whatever format the thing takes—[Interruption.] Sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker. I definitely turned my phone off, but it keeps coming on.
The problem is that at the moment, the adviser believes that they must resign if their advice is not followed. I do not think that is the right approach at all—just take the case of Chris Whitty, who was advising the Prime Minister throughout the pandemic. If he had had to resign every single time his advice was not followed, he would have been resigning every week and we would not have got anywhere. Advisers advise; Ministers decide.
John Penrose
I will give way in a second.
This is an advisory post, and if the adviser’s advice is not followed, they may decide they want to resign if they are fed up, but they should not feel constitutionally required to do so. [Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. The hon. Gentleman needs to bring his remarks to a close, but we will take one intervention.
Jackie Doyle-Price
I hear what my hon. Friend is saying, but the difference is that ultimately, Chris Whitty’s advice was based on policy. What we are talking about here is behaviour, and whether there are breaches of the ministerial code. That brings the whole area of ethics into much sharper focus.
John Penrose
I take my hon. Friend’s point. All I am saying is that it should not be axiomatic and automatic that the adviser should feel they have to resign every time their advice is not followed. Their advice is made public and is clear, and therefore it should not be automatic that they have to stand down.
Equally—this is also crucial—Lord Geidt said that he did not feel he could offer an independent set of advice on the behaviour of the Prime Minister, alone among all Ministers. Lord Geidt would have felt able to, and did, offer advice independently to the Prime Minister about other Ministers’ behaviour, but he felt he could not do so when the Prime Minister’s behaviour was in question. That is clearly wrong: there should be no free passes for any Minister, up to and including the Prime Minister, and in the same way that the adviser should not feel duty-bound to resign if their advice is not always followed, they should feel able to offer public advice on whether or not the Prime Minister has erred and strayed. If the adviser’s role is improved in those two ways, I believe that finding a successor to Lord Geidt will be a great deal easier, because the role will be a great deal clearer and more practical to fill.
I will just add one further point about the motion. It seems to me that it does not actually confer any extra powers on PACAC, and the Chairman of that Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg), has already said that he is delighted and honoured to be offered these opportunities, but would politely decline them anyway. He does not want this set of powers, and is politely declining the offer that is being made. Because the motion does not offer any extra powers, it would be perfectly acceptable, constitutional, and within the rules of this House for PACAC itself to launch an inquiry into the ongoing discussions and investigations, should it wish to do so. If it felt the position was not being filled fast enough, it could fill that gap.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
PACAC has requested a number of times that Sue Gray come in front of our Committee, and we have been declined that opportunity through being blocked by the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State. Is that not a problem of parliamentary scrutiny that this motion might help to prevent?
John Penrose
As I read the motion, it does not confer any fresh powers on the Committee, and therefore it would not solve the problem that the hon. Gentleman has rightly pointed out. There may be a broader question about whether some people can be compelled to come in front of Select Committees—not just PACAC, but others as well—but this motion does not solve that problem either and therefore, I am afraid, will not move the ball down the pitch at all.
None the less, Madam Deputy Speaker—with apologies for my phone misbehaving throughout—there is an essential point here that I think everybody agrees on. A successor to Lord Geidt must be appointed. I think we have heard that one will be appointed; I hope we will have that reconfirmed in words of one syllable, and while we can allow the Government a little bit of time to decide precisely how and in what form that successor will be appointed, it must be a proper replacement, ideally with the additional powers I have described.
David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)
When the lawyers are out in force on the Government Benches—with all the references to learned and right hon. and learned Members—you can tell that the Government find themselves in a bit of a sticky situation. I have a degree of sympathy with the Paymaster General, who, if he is not the Minister for “Newsnight”, is definitely the Minister for crisis who has to make statements and answer urgent questions in the House.
We all know that the Prime Minister likes to compare himself to Churchill. On one of his recent holidays, he posed while painting in the exact same way as Winston Churchill. People can compare this Prime Minister to a number of things, but in style of government he is probably more like Lloyd George, who was arguably one of the most centralising Prime Ministers. Many people will be familiar with the garden suburb—these days, they call it the flat suburb, but at least the flat has much nicer wallpaper!
The garden suburb aroused particular hostility, even more so than the activity of Sir William Sutherland and undercover deals with the press and trafficking of titles and honours in return for contributions to Government or party funds. It is funny how history reinvents itself. Critics have also quoted Dunning’s famous resolution against Lord North’s Government in 1780 that the power of the Prime Minister was “increasing and ought to be diminished”. That gets to the heart of the debate, which is symptomatic of a wider presidentialisation of government. To be fair to the current British Government, this is not new—Tony Blair, for example, was keen on sofa government, and there is the idea that Cabinet government started to break down.
One reason why the House feels the need to step in and take control of the situation is that the current Prime Minister is like no one we have dealt with before. Most of us would accept that he has been described by his own colleagues as a bit of a slippery pig that can get out of situations. I do not doubt that, and I would not be surprised if the Prime Minister survives and leads the Conservatives into the next election. There is a great irony, which I will come back to at the end of my remarks, about our reliance on Tory MPs to remove him. This is a Prime Minister who has not played by the rules; perhaps learning from the effects of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, he has tried to clip the wings even of the Treasury. The desire to centralise more and more power to No. 10 was the reason the right hon. Friend Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid) stood down as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and it is something that the House should be mindful of.
The Tories would do well to support the motion. I see this as an issue not of tinkering with the constitution but fundamentally as one of House business. The motion delegates powers and tasks to a Select Committee of the House. I know very well the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg) and had the privilege of serving on a Committee with him in my first Parliament. I will have no difficulty trusting the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee to fulfil these functions. In many respects, the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) is dancing on the head of a pin somewhat, because he knows fine well that the Minister has not given the undertaking that the Government will move—
John Penrose
I thought I heard it. The hon. Gentleman might not have heard it, but with any luck we will both hear clarification later.
David Linden
I respect the Paymaster General enormously but it will take a lot for him to reassure me about the Government’s role on ethics.
When I asked the Paymaster General earlier to define “in due course”, he was not able to say that the appointment would take place by the summer recess or the conference recess. We might—who knows—have a general election in October. I would not be surprised if the Government ended up not appointing an adviser. As they have said before, they are tired of experts. I think they see the role of an adviser as a hindrance, particularly at a time when they will almost certainly have to break international law, albeit in a “very specific and limited way” as the Government like to do in their legislation.
I find some of the contributions I have listened to in this debate a little jarring, with people talking about accountability and respecting the importance of democracy. Let us not forget that this Government have increasingly taken recently to appointing people who are essentially failed election candidates to the House of Lords.
Look at someone such as Malcolm Offord, now Lord Offord, who is now a junior Minister in the anti-Scotland Office. He has given money to the Conservative party, he has not had to have the inconvenience of going through an election and was appointed as a junior Minister to the Scotland Office. Or there is Ian Duncan, a former Tory candidate against my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart). He could not beat my hon. Friend in an election, but he got into the House of Lords anyway. Zac Goldsmith, a friend of the Prime Minister and his wife, who failed in the last election to be elected to this House is in the House of Lords as a Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Minister. When the Tories start to talk about accountability, we should be slightly aware of the context, because it is not a particularly good one.
I have one suggestion I want to pursue. The Government seem to think that the way out of this is talking about an office of the Prime Minister. That is a half-baked suggestion. I do not disagree with having an office of the Prime Minister, but if we are going to have one, they should have something akin to what they have in New Zealand. At the moment, the office of the Prime Minister is merely a rebuttal in a press release; it will create a new office with a new permanent secretary, but who will it be accountable to?
We in this place trust that the Prime Minister is accountable every now and again to the Liaison Committee, but we all know that the Liaison Committee, with the greatest of respect to my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and North Perthshire on the Front Bench and the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg), is largely an opportunity for Select Committee Chairs to grandstand. If we are going to have an office of the Prime Minister, there must be a mechanism through which we can hold it to account. That is why I think the idea is half baked.
Mr Carmichael
In terms of accountability, does the hon. Gentleman agree that where an allegation of impropriety is made against a Minister and is investigated, as a matter of principle the outcome of that investigation, whatever it is, should be published?
David Linden
In short, yes I do.
The final point I want to make is that, while in many respects this is a very noble motion before the House and I will happily vote for it tonight, there must be a realisation in this place that with the current holder of the office of Prime Minister, politics has changed enormously, and we as Members of the House of Commons are going to have to get used to that. This is a Prime Minister who has defied all the norms of politics, who has now outlived Trump and may go even further.
I ask Members of this House to remember who the current Prime Minister is. I know I cannot refer to him by name, but on issues of racism he wrote:
“It is said that the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies”.
In 2018, he compared Muslim women to “bank robbers” and “letter boxes” and said he would ask a person with a niqab to remove it before speaking to him. He wrote that single mothers were to blame for producing a generation of,
“ill-raised, ignorant, aggressive and illegitimate children”.
In 2002 he said in a book:
“If gay marriage was OK…I saw no reason in principle why a union should not be consecrated between three men, as well as two men, or indeed three men and a dog.”
The point is that this Government can have all the advisers on ethics they like, but I am fairly sure that if another one is appointed, they will have to resign again. The issue here is not necessarily the role of an adviser for ethics; the issue is that we have a Prime Minister who has no ethics.
We find ourselves in a remarkable situation where, as the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) just mentioned, a majority of people in this House do not have confidence in the Prime Minister. Remarkably, members of my party are told we cannot have a second referendum on independence, but for hon. Members on the Conservative Benches, the only opportunity they have to remove the Prime Minister is a second vote in a year’s time. That irony is lost on nobody.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
In order to give all the remaining speakers equal time, I need colleagues to stick to about seven minutes.
Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)
I shall endeavour to do so, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I have quite a lot to say on this, because I am so disappointed. The ministerial code really does matter, and it says everything about the leadership and culture of our style of Government that some of the responses to Lord Geidt’s resignation from some quarters of the Government have been rather disappointing. It is really important that everyone in public service abides by the rules of the game. That is what maintains respect and honour in all our institutions.
There are a few messages that I would like to land. The end does not justify the means, and, taking back control does not mean pleasing yourself, must be clear principles. Those two principles need to be looked at in the context of Lord Geidt’s resignation, because he has been clear that he was, in effect, being asked to give the Government a bye to wilfully break their international obligations under law. That is not acceptable, and, frankly, that should not be acceptable for any self-respecting Conservative Member of Parliament, because if there is one thing that we do believe in, it is constitutional propriety. It is about upholding the law, and that is central to the ministerial code. It is really important that we sustain that.
We are the Conservative party, the party of Margaret Thatcher and Churchill, not the party of Donald Trump. That is exactly what we are talking about. If such law breaches are sanctioned—even if there are the best of motives, such as to save our steel industry—I am afraid that sets a precedent for people to use law breaches for much more malevolent intentions. It should be in the DNA of Conservative Members, for whom constitutional propriety is so important, to ensure that we play by the rules of the game, however politically inconvenient, because there is always more than one route to achieve an outcome.
This is fundamentally not British behaviour. If there is one thing in the British DNA, it is a belief in fair play and upholding the rules. Our global reputation is built on our respect for the rule of law and how we have exported that around the world. It is incumbent on all of us to ensure that we uphold the most important standards.
I remind Conservative colleagues that also central to the British brand is belief in free trade, but Lord Geidt felt compelled to resign—he was being asked to turn a blind eye to waiving our obligations in respect of the WTO—on an issue that seems to be the complete antithesis of the ethos underlying why we left the European Union in the first place. The world expected us to be free traders, yet our actions fly in the face of that.
It is essential that the Government, in taking the matter forward, look at who should be the next ministerial adviser—although anybody would be taking a massive reputational risk in taking the job without being offered some very clear guarantees. Perhaps the biggest question mark facing our credibility in government right now is not about policy but about our behaviours. We have had two years of one story after another, with perhaps the most notorious being partygate, and that has led the public substantially to conclude—the jury were already out on us anyway—that we do not live in the real world and, “It is one rule for them and another for the rest of us”. We need to reboot public confidence by actually respecting our obligations under the law and maintaining that the ministerial code is important. Central to that is upholding the law.
My request to the Government is really to take stock. We have seen not just the recent resignation of Lord Geidt —actually, we have lost two advisers on ethics—but the Greensill scandal, which also raised issues about how the ministerial code applies to outgoing Ministers, who are still obliged to abide by it even though there is no sanction to deal with them. We have heard evidence in PACAC from Lord Pickles, as chair of the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, that the volume of inquiries that he is getting is rather more than the small honorarium that his members are asked to deal with.
Essentially, we have got a regime that relies on everybody behaving appropriately. When everybody knows what represents good behaviour, and everybody is prepared to behave and to do the right thing, we can get by with a light-touch regulatory regime. The romantic in me thinks that we still can, but, day by day, that confidence is being diminished. I do not want to see any kind of statutory regulation of Ministers under the ministerial code, but if we are going to avoid that, it is incumbent on the Government to seize and recognise the difficulty that our current standards regime is in. I ask the Government in all sincerity to properly reboot this and have a proper look at the ministerial code.
By way of illustration, when I became a Minister, the ministerial code was given to me as a flimsy photocopy at the bottom of my first box. No importance was set on it, yet the code should come from the top. We expect the principles of the code to be in the DNA of all our Ministers when they are delivering their obligations and undertaking their duties. This is not just a little bit of PR to say, “Aren’t we all doing terribly well?” This is fundamental to how we should operate our Government, and we need to really articulate that message and have a proper regime for overseeing that.
The Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee will always be here, and we will still shine some light on those issues that we are not very happy about. In fact, we have probably spent more time looking at these things than we ever intended to, being rather more interested in constitutionally nerdy positions than in ferreting out scandals, but I would much prefer that we had far less material in that regard. Institutions such as PACAC and the Committee on Standards are still here. We do not need to go down the road of statutory regulation, but we do need the Prime Minister and all Government Ministers to recognise that the rule of law and upholding the law are not just optional extras; they are essential.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
May I say at the outset that Lord Geidt is a personal friend of my family? I do not wish to go any further than that, other than to say that I should like, along with everyone else here, to express my thanks for all that he has done.
What is at stake here, as the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) admirably hinted, is the issue of trust, and I want to give an example of how this works in practice. My predecessor bar two was Robert Maclennan. Bob was first elected in 1966 with a majority of 64 votes. After that, as the elections went by, he increased his majority and stayed as the Member for Caithness and Sutherland and latterly for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross until he retired. What is interesting about Bob’s career is that he changed party twice. He was elected as a Labour Member in 1966. He was then a founding member of the Social Democratic party and was one of the few SDP Members to hold his seat in 1983. He subsequently joined the Liberal Democrats, and that was what he was when he retired. That is most unusual for a politician, but the reason he held his seat was that he was trusted. He was known to be a man of integrity, decency, kindness and diligence. So, trust is crucial in what we are talking about this evening.
We describe ourselves with pride as the mother of Parliaments, but when I have talked to people in my constituency in the last few weeks, they have said, “Can you trust anything that is said in that place? How do you feel about it?” That saddens me greatly, because if we are to be the mother of Parliaments, and if we are to stand up for democracy across the world, we need to know that we do things absolutely by the book and with absolute integrity. If there is any hint that we do not, that damages the reputation of this place, and I regret that massively. I find myself in agreement with the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle), who is no longer in his place. He also came to the nub of the issue when he said that this is about trust and about being seen to do things properly.
If I were to find myself in deep trouble and in a court of law, I would have no hesitation in hiring the services of either the Minister or the hon. Member for South Leicestershire (Alberto Costa), because I am certain that those august gentlemen would provide me with a most eloquent defence and probably get me off. But we are being looked at by the general public, and the general public are not fools. They are more than capable of coming to conclusions about people. Is this person—he or she—telling the truth? Is this person to be trusted or not? Let me give the House one good Conservative example of somebody who I believe was trusted: John Major. He was seen to be a straight guy and a straight Prime Minister. So trust is there. What I say to the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General is this: be careful. Be careful about clever arguments. Be careful about the use of words that can have all sorts of different meanings, because the British public has no time for that whatsoever.
I agree with other Members. I very much hope and expect that the Minister will clarify exactly what he means about the appointment of a new ethics adviser. That is essential. It sounds a bit apocalyptic but let me say it: I believe the nation is watching right now and at stake is the reputation of this place. If we take it seriously then it matters absolutely not just how we do things or how we are seen by our electorate or the country, but across the world. I await and I hope.
Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
The origins of this debate are more than six months old and lie in the farce that was the investigation into the refurbishment of the Downing Street flat. I call it a farce not because I want to undermine Lord Geidt—I cannot hold a candle to the Prime Minister in doing that—but because it is clear that he was led a merry dance by the Prime Minister in the first place, when the Prime Minister failed to disclose a series of crucial WhatsApp message between himself and Lord Brownlow.
The accidental omission of those messages in the “dog ate my homework” style that must have been forged in the gilded halls of Eton made sure that Lord Geidt was pretty embarrassed that he had been taken for a fool in that way. He said as much in the second letter he wrote to the Prime Minister about the investigation:
“It is plainly unsatisfactory that my earlier advice was unable to rely on the fullest possible disclosure of relevant information.”
That is a very polite way of putting it. The nub of it is when he wrote that
“this episode demonstrated insufficient regard or respect for the role of Independent Adviser.”
That was a very clear warning sign about where this was all heading. What did we get then? The Prime Minister, without a hint of irony, wrote back to Lord Geidt and said:
“I very much value your work as my Independent Adviser. The role is critical for the effective government of this country.”
That strikes me as quite a contrast to the position six months later.
It is still not entirely clear, despite what the Minister said, whether the Government believe an ethics adviser is necessary. Even worse, the Culture Secretary said this week that nobody gave “a fig” about him resigning. Well, I certainly disagree with that view most profoundly. Where I find more common ground with the Culture Secretary is when she said that Lord Geidt was always complaining that he had too much work to do. I can well believe that with this Government and this Prime Minister, anyone concerned with ethics would certainly have a heavy workload. Perhaps we need two ethics advisers in future. We find ourselves in a position where six months ago the ethics adviser effectively put the Government on notice that he was very unhappy with the way he was being treated.
Last month we had the annual report from Lord Geidt in which he states:
“It may be especially difficult to inspire that trust in the Ministerial Code if any Prime Minister, whose code it is, declines to refer to it. In the case of the Fixed Penalty Notice recently issued to and paid by the Prime Minister, a legitimate question has arisen as to whether those facts alone might have constituted a breach of the overarching duty within the Ministerial Code of complying with the law.”
There is a pattern here. As with the missing WhatsApp messages, anything inconvenient is ignored in the hope that it will eventually go away. But of course the Prime Minister could not ignore such a clear signal in the report. We need not have worried, because he wrote back to Lord Geidt and said he did not think he had broken the ministerial code and how silly it was for any of us to think that actually breaking the law might also be a breach of the ministerial code. All of us can see the benefits of being judge and jury, and why robust checks and balances need to be in place.
On the resignation letter, Lord Geidt said that an intention to breach the ministerial code deliberately in advance
“would be to suspend the provisions of the code to suit a political end”
and that would make a mockery of the code. I agree with him, but I think we reached the point of mockery of the code when the previous adviser resigned after his recommendations were also ignored. We cannot pretend that what Lord Geidt said there is anything other than a damning statement. For the Prime Minister’s own ethics adviser, appointed by the Prime Minister, to walk away after having his patience tested repeatedly, having warned repeatedly that trust was being eroded, is a state of affairs that should send a shiver down all our spines. Every single one of us in this place who is concerned about the probity of Government, who thinks that it is our job to uphold the law, not to break it, should see that statement as the ringing of the loudest of loud alarm bells.
The ethics adviser is not there to provide cover for the Prime Minister who wants to bend the rules. The ethics adviser is not there to be ignored when the advice proves inconvenient, and the ethics adviser is not there to be made a fool of. They are there as a safeguard for the wider responsibility, which we all have, for the way that politics is done. None of us is here for ever, but while we are here, we need to remember that we are the guardians of democracy. What we say and where we set the limits of adherence to the rules while we are here matter because they become the starting point for the next generation to work from.
If we do end up in a position where the Government of the day decide that an ethics adviser is no longer needed, or we never get to a point where one is appointed, even though, six months ago, it was said to be a critical position, where does the conversation go after that—to a further erosion of the safeguards that any mature democracy needs? Let us be clear: we do need those safeguards, because democracy is fragile and it cannot be taken for granted; it has to be cherished and defended by us as its guardians. Every watering down of the rules, every reduction in transparency, every erosion of accountability have to be fought against because many Governments want—to coin a phrase—to take back control. Most Governments, however, also have a respect for the rules, understand their place in history and know that having clear rules to which everyone is accountable is the glue that holds our democracy together.
When we have a Government with a track record like this one, it really is up to us to push back against that. Whether it be breaking the law in a specific and limited way, trying to wriggle out of treaties signed, changing the way that the standard rules operate, or excusing breaches of the “Ministerial Code”, this Government have shown, time and again, that they do not think that they need to abide by the rules. However, rules do matter. The rules about how our politics is conducted should be there long after we have all gone and they should not be jettisoned because it is convenient for the Government of the day to do so.
Parliament should be the beacon of fair play. It should be an example for others, both in this country and abroad, to look at and say that, yes, democracy is a good thing, and that it can change people’s lives for the better. Not all politicians are self-serving, but when we see a bending of the rules, the ignoring of them, or the changing of them to suit a short-term political agenda, those looking in on this place can rightly say, “Who are you to lecture us about responsibility? Who are you to tell us about showing leadership?”
Leadership is what this is all about. Those at the top need to behave with honour, to respect conventions and to recognise their wider responsibility to the body politic. That is all put at risk when those in power do not see the importance of that, and the weaknesses in our unwritten constitution become all too apparent. That is when our democracy is diluted, and with a Government who, because of the size of their majority, grow contemptuous of the need for probity and bit by bit dismantle the safeguards that we need, we enter this dystopian world where newspaper stories mysteriously disappear and the Prime Minister tells the world that no rules were broken when they clearly were.
This motion tonight will not reverse the dark path down which we are already heading, but it will slow it a little, and with persistence and, dare I say it, a little more courage from the Conservative Benches, we might begin to reverse it. We owe it to ourselves and to the democratic ideals in which we must all at one time have believed to do just that.
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
Two ethics advisers gone, two months gone—and all the Paymaster General can offer us is a review. No one needs an ethics adviser more than the current Prime Minister. I studied maths, philosophy and economics at university and am therefore intrigued by how many times the Prime Minister is economical with the truth. Ethics is about right and wrong. It is about truth and falsehood. We heard in partygate about a Prime Minister who made the rules and broke the rules. He said that he did not understand the rules and that he did not know how they applied. We do not know whether he was guilty, innocent or drunk.
The situation is that we simply cannot trust the Prime Minister. That is the view of the great majority of MPs. Only 211 Tories voted with confidence in him, so more than two thirds of the nation’s MPs have no confidence in the current Prime Minister for what he has done.
Talking of ethics and philosophy, Kant’s categorical imperative—I know Members will be thinking of this—states
“act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can… will that it become a universal law.”
In other words, if you are going to have a party, everyone should party, and if they should not, you should not. It is not that complicated. According to Aristotle,
“We are what we repeatedly do.”
So what does that make the Prime Minister? At virtually every Prime Minister’s Question Time, he gets up and says that there are half a million more people in jobs than there were before the pandemic—although the Office for National Statistics says that there are 512,000 fewer people in jobs—because he inadvertently forgets to include the self-employed. Was that, in fact, an inadvertent mistake, or was it a piece of choreographed rhetoric to lead people up the garden path? There is a long list of things of this kind which undermine our democracy, this place, and politics in Britain.
Of course, ethics is about outcomes as well. People say, “Haven’t we done well on covid?”, but 170,000 people are dead thanks to the policies here, which led to the highest death rate in Europe. People say that the economy is all right, although ours was the worst recovery in the G7, and about 8 million people are hungry and in food insecurity. There is not really any accountability, other than the democratic process. We have just seen the Government provoke an unnecessary rail strike by demanding cuts in wages and jobs. There are alternatives to this. Germany, for instance, is saying that it will give everyone a public transport ticket for a month for €9 to boost the economy and jobs, rather than picking fights.
We have parliamentary privilege here, which means that there are limitations on what the courts can do when we breach the rules. The dampening and watering down of the rules here is therefore problematic, as is, of course, the attack on the judiciary itself. The all-party parliamentary group for democracy and the constitution published a report commissioned by the Rowntree Foundation and prepared by the Institute for Constitutional and Democratic Research. We found that there had been a sustained attack on the courts by Ministers through the media. That is undermining and chilling even the Supreme Court, which has reversed seven of its decisions in the last two years. This was, of course, getting back at the judges, because they had made various decisions about giving us the right to vote on the Brexit deal. They made the Prime Minister return when he tried to abandon democracy.
What we are seeing is the weakening of internal laws governing the behaviour of politicians here, and, at the same time, an attack on the courts themselves. Meanwhile, there is an attack on international law. The withdrawal from the Northern Ireland protocol undermines our reputation abroad: it means that people such as the Americans do not want to have trade agreements with us. There is an attack on our democratic values and rights, such as the right to peaceful protest. There is an attack on human rights, as we are seeing in Rwanda, and an attempt to pick a fight with the European Court of Human Rights itself, a forerunner to withdrawal from the European convention on human rights—which, of course, was set up by Winston Churchill.
In the round, what we are seeing is a Prime Minister corroding and eroding the rules that govern our behaviour and our ethics, alongside an attempt to disengage from controls that may be applied and to which all countries and all people elsewhere are subject. So we cannot be trusted. “Values” of this sort feed into the hands of people such as Putin, who hate the democracy, human rights and rule of law that we are now undermining.
Lord Geidt has said that the Prime Minister has made a mockery of the ministerial code. He has said that we have broken international laws in the form of World Trade Organisation rules. We urgently need a replacement. No doubt some people will suggest that Lord Ashcroft might be the person whom we need. After all, he revealed David Cameron’s relationship with a pig, did he not, and indeed revealed the current Prime Minister’s relationship with the lover whom he offered a £100,000 job. [Laughter.] People may find these things funny, but they are of course true.
We do need to uphold higher standards here, and, in particular, the Prime Minister should and does not. It is imperative that we get a replacement, and it is imperative that in the interim, at least, we introduce some sort of system. That is what this motion aims to do, and I fully support it.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I call the shadow Minister, Fleur Anderson.
Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)
This could have been a very quick debate. The Paymaster General could have stood up at the beginning and just given us a date for when it would all happen—when the adviser would be reappointed, with a lovely timetable attached—and we would all have been happy and could have left it at that. However, I am now, to be honest, more concerned about what is going to happen than I was at the beginning of the debate.
Labour has called this very important debate today because the whole of our ministerial standards system is unravelling before our eyes. Corruption does not arrive in any country unannounced or with a big bang; it creeps and corrodes, and honour and trust, once lost, are very hard to win back. That is what is at the heart of this debate. This Labour motion would put the Government into special measures and ensure that the ethics adviser is recruited as soon as possible and the post is not ditched. We are concerned about the Paymaster General’s comments about pausing and reflecting, and about having a review instead of appointing. We want to know that a very clear decision will be made about this adviser position, because otherwise ethics and integrity will slip away.
The Prime Minister is leading the way in being unethical and breaking the rules, and that is why the person whose role it is to hold Ministers to account, to investigate breaches and to stop the rot felt that he had no choice but to resign. The motion calls for urgent action to appoint an ethics adviser because otherwise, quite simply, we do not trust the Government to appoint at speed. We do not trust what Ministers will do without this oversight. We have heard that a review will be conducted before the appointment “in due course”. That is very concerning. We know that for this Government it is one rule for them and another for us.
I thank all Members for their excellent contributions, including agreement on both sides of the House that we need this urgent appointment. My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth), who is a member of PACAC, the Committee focused very much on today, outlined the evidence given to it by Lord Geidt on issues from wallpaper to the Northern Ireland protocol to leaks by Ministers under investigation, and the need to bring decency back into our politics. My hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle), also a member of PACAC, said that it is quite simple: the Prime Minister has lost the trust of the people and of his own MPs as well. He highlighted the circularity of the process by which the Prime Minister appoints the adviser, and then has to look into evidence given by himself about himself and to be the judge of it. The system does not work; it needs to change.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) talked about how difficult Lord Geidt’s position has been and the fact that he said six months ago that there had been insufficient respect for the role of the adviser. Then there were the fixed penalty notice warnings from the adviser, setting alarm bells ringing, as is still the case, that bit by bit probity is being ignored and it is a dark path we are heading down. That is the dark path we want to stop with our motion today. My hon. Friend the Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) pointed out that Aristotle said:
“We are what we repeatedly do.”
He talked about the Prime Minister’s corroding of our rules and ethics, the weakening of internal laws, and the attack on international law as well.
We have a cost of living crisis. My constituents and the British public are worried about how they are going to pay the bills, feed their children and get to work. They have to know that Government Ministers are acting in the public’s best interests and not in their own interests. They have to know that Government Ministers are not acting in the interests of their families or friends, or party donors, or pub landlords, or their own wives. They have to know that they are acting with impartiality, with no fear or favour.
I realise that the position of the independent adviser will not be an easy position to recruit for, as many hon. Members have said. It will be a tough job description to put together and a tough job advert to write. Last time it took five months to appoint a replacement ethics adviser, and now Downing Street has been hinting at not reappointing one at all. That is why we have tabled the motion today. The outcome of the review could be not to appoint and that will be unacceptable.
Labour’s motion puts an essential backstop in place, so that if the Prime Minister cannot get his act together in two months’ time, the cross-party Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee will appoint that adviser. That adviser will be given the powers and information that they need to investigate potential breaches of the code by Ministers, and that adviser will report to the Committee, so that there is transparency, honesty and integrity.
Without anyone in post, with the ethical vacuum that we currently have, there will be no one for Ministers to give their full list of interests to that may be thought to give rise to a conflict. There will be no one to investigate possible breaches of the ministerial code—and there could be many. There will be no one to advise the Prime Minister on the code, which is particularly worrying, given the Prime Minister’s seeming lack of literacy in the code, and no one to complete investigations that have been started, such as the allegations of Islamophobia by the hon. Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani).
Senior civil servants are also worried. Dave Penman, general secretary of the FDA, the senior civil servants’ union, said,
“confidence in the process has been severely damaged. If the prime minister does not intend to replace Lord Geidt, then he must immediately put in place measures to ensure a civil servant can, with confidence, raise a complaint about ministerial misconduct.”
We cannot just leave a vacuum at the top—it is far too worrying.
Labour would introduce a stronger standards system. We would appoint at speed, but we would go further. We have called for the expansion of the scope of the statutory register of lobbyists, a ban on MPs taking up lobbying jobs for five years after leaving office, and the establishment of an independent integrity and ethics commission with actual powers, not in hock to the Prime Minister.
The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport said that voters “don’t give a fig”. They do give a fig. A recent poll showed that 74% of the public think that the Prime Minister is untrustworthy. That is up by 30% in the past two years. Another survey, conducted on the day Lord Geidt resigned, found that nearly 70% of the public believe that the Prime Minister behaves in an unethical way, with 46% thinking he behaves “very unethically”. This is unacceptable. I would counsel the Minister and his colleagues not to insult the British electorate. They do give a fig about honesty; they do give a fig about integrity.
I want to end by asking several hugely important questions that the Minister failed to answer in his opening speech, but I am sure he will come to now. First, can he confirm whether ongoing investigations launched by Lord Geidt will now be completed? Can he confirm whether there would be an interim position or role holder for the ethics adviser if the recruitment process is not completed within two months? When will the replacement be appointed? Can the Minister assure us that there will not be another five-month gap? When is “due course”? Is it September or October? Is it Christmas? Is it next year? And who is holding Ministers to account in the interim? “Wait and see” is not an acceptable answer. With no ethics adviser in place and no obvious backstop, Ministers are free to do as they please without consequence. It is a blank cheque for bad behaviour. While the cat’s away, the mice will play. This may be an attractive position for the Government, who have always found the rules to be incredibly inconvenient, but it is not attractive and not acceptable to the British public.
I commend the motion to the House.
Michael Ellis
With the leave of the House, I would like to close this debate.
As set out by the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) in her opening remarks, and for the reasons I explained to the House in my opening remarks, the Government will not be supporting the motion. The Labour party has called the debate to throw mud, but I would caution that those who throw mud often find that some of it sticks to themselves. I would also caution and place on record that the Government remain absolutely steadfast in their commitment to upholding the standards in public life that we all respect, to the critical role that the ministerial code plays in standards in public life and to supporting those standards. On account of that commitment, the Government cannot support today’s motion, which would, counterintuitively perhaps, by proxy, weaken the ministerial code. As I said earlier, it would at the same time change the British constitution by the back door, without consultation and without consideration.
On the appointment of a new adviser, can I answer with this word: yes. The Prime Minister intends to appoint a new ethics adviser and we will announce how that is to be done and who is to do it in due course. But it does have to be done properly and in a way that will ensure that Parliament and the public have confidence in it. I think that I may be asked what “in due course” or “in good time” means. It means doing it right, and getting the right people to come forward, to be interviewed and to go through the process. It means actually getting it right, not just responding to the latest headline. It means making a process that might actually work in the longer term.
Michael Ellis
I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, but he knows exactly what is meant by this.
David Linden
I am very grateful to the Paymaster General for putting on record that the Government do intend to appoint an adviser, but can I just push him a little further and ask him to say whether that appointment will take place before, say, the conference recess?
Michael Ellis
The answer is a very simple one: the process will be done properly. It will be done in a way that will give confidence to the system; it will be done in a way that the House, Ministers and everyone concerned will be confident in. So it is not possible to give a particular date for it. After all, it is only a matter of days since this situation came about. What is meant is clear: we are still considering this carefully, and we remain fully committed to making sure that all Ministers, including the Prime Minister, whose code it is, are held to account for maintaining high standards of behaviour and behaving in a way that upholds the highest standards of propriety, as the public rightly expect.
Karin Smyth
I think that what the Minister is trying to say is that what has gone wrong is either the process of appointing the last two advisers, or indeed the last two advisers—both of which seem to me to be dishonourable things to say, if I may say so—rather than the fact that both have resigned because of the behaviour, as they have admitted, of a Minister and the Prime Minister.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. I do not think the hon. Lady was implying that something dishonourable had been said. If she was, I would want her to withdraw that.
Michael Ellis
I think the hon. Lady misunderstands the position, which I have made perfectly clear and will repeat. This is about getting the process henceforth right—a process that will have the confidence of this House, the Prime Minister, Ministers and everyone else. It is right to consider these things carefully and take time to reflect on them before taking a decision on how best to fulfil the Prime Minister’s commitment. It is the Prime Minister who has made a commitment to ensuring rigorous oversight and close scrutiny of ministerial interests. As I have said, we are looking at the best way to carry out this function, given some of the issues raised recently and set out in our plans. But I could not be clearer when I have given the single-word answer “yes” on the Prime Minister’s intention to appoint a new ethics adviser. We will announce how that will be done and who is to do it in due course. We will make sure it is done properly to ensure that Parliament and the public have confidence.
In the meantime, the Labour party, when its rail strike is in progress, has chosen today of all days to discuss this matter. I suppose half its Members are on the picket lines at the moment, blocking hard-working people from going about their daily business. They debate this matter for the umpteenth time and the umpteenth hour—so much so that my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) says that she sees more of me than of her friends. The feeling is mutual, although I think she has far more friends than me, except on the Government Benches, where I have a lot more friends, of course, because the Prime Minister wins elections. He does not talk about personalities; he talks about policies. On policies, this party and this Government win.
Mr Carmichael
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way eventually. I am sure that we all share his aspiration to have a process in future that commands public confidence, but he has not yet mentioned what it was about the previous system that did not command public confidence. What was it?
Michael Ellis
I will leave that to the right hon. Gentleman’s already active imagination, but I would say that not everything is a conspiracy. He should bear in mind the responsibility that he and his party have for ensuring that this country’s railway system is working correctly and is not subject to industrial action. Why not support the people of this country in doing that? The red herring that he focuses on is symptomatic of where we are with this debate.
I have made it clear that Labour’s motion seeks to confuse the constitutional position of this country; it confuses the powers of the Executive with those of the legislature. We propose to move on and appoint an ethics adviser, as I have said. We will ensure that an announcement is made as to how it will be done and who will do it in due course, but I emphasise that it must be done properly. In the meantime, I respectfully caution the Opposition to get their Members off the picket lines and to support the people of this country, which is what this Conservative Government will continue to do.
Question put.
Business without Debate
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
With the leave of the House, we shall take motions 2 and 3 together.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),
Local Government
That the draft Local Government (Exclusion of Non-commercial Considerations) (England) Order 2022, which was laid before this House on 25 May, be approved.
Energy
That the draft Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Alarm (Amendment) Regulations 2022, which were laid before this House on 11 May, be approved.—(Marcus Jones.)
Question agreed to.
Committees
Madam Deputy Speaker
With the leave of the House, we will take motions 4 and 5 together.
Ordered,
Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee
That Matt Vickers be discharged from the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee and Sara Britcliffe be added.
Petitions Committee
That Katherine Fletcher be discharged from the Petitions Committee and Scott Benton be added.—(Sir Bill Wiggin, on behalf of the Committee of Selection.)
Petition
Battersea Funfair Disaster: Child Trauma Support Services
(2 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)
This year is the 50th anniversary of the Battersea funfair disaster. I want to start by remembering the victims, their families, and the survivors. I also want to pay tribute to and thank two of the survivors, Hilary Wynter and Liz Haigh-Reeve, for their tireless campaigning to have the tragedy recognised and remembered.
The Big Dipper rollercoaster was the main attraction of the Battersea Park funfair which opened as part of the festival of Britain. Tragically, on 30 May 1972, a carriage of the rollercoaster broke loose and plummeted backwards through a barrier killing five children—Alison Comerford, Thomas Harmer, Shirley Nash, Debora Robertson and David Sait—and leaving 13 injured. The disaster is one of the deadliest rollercoaster crashes in history. However, it has largely been forgotten and there has been no justice for the victims, their families and the survivors.
To mark the anniversary of the disaster, I attended a special memorial ceremony together with families and survivors in Battersea Park where a plaque was unveiled and a tree was planted. That is the first step to creating a new legacy and a permanent memorial.
There is another silent tragedy associated with the incident, on which I will focus the rest of my speech. It is something that I am determined to change. Survivors have spoken about the devastating impact that childhood mental trauma has had on their lives. As one told me,
“bones are mended, physical injuries fixed, but the dreadful damage to our mental health goes untreated.”
Damage from trauma is not necessarily skin deep: some wounds penetrate through to our minds, leaving lasting damage that can be just as debilitating. Although the funfair and the big dipper are long gone, some of the survivors of the disaster still struggle to go to Battersea Park, and have been unable to shake off their horrific memories of that incident. I am sure many survivors of other tragedies, such as Hillsborough, the Manchester Arena terrorist attack and the Grenfell Tower fire, have been through similar experiences.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I commend the hon. Lady on securing this debate on childhood trauma support services. I would mention helpfully to her, and probably to the Minister as well, that we in Northern Ireland have faced 30 years of a terrorism campaign during which many young children, women and men have lost their lives. Such trauma can last way beyond the time that it happened. Does the hon. Lady agree that some discussions with the responsible Minister in Northern Ireland might be helpful when it comes to devising a policy and a strategy to address trauma and child mental issues, which I know she wishes to see?
Marsha De Cordova
The hon. Gentleman is right: we can all learn, and it would be useful for the Minister to say whether she would like to meet Ministers in Northern Ireland to look at what works well.
Childhood trauma can have a lifelong effect, and can have lasting consequences for a child or young person’s development, including psychological, behavioural and emotional problems. Those problems can occur into and throughout adulthood, presenting related challenges in many aspects of that person’s life. According to the UK Trauma Council, childhood trauma refers to the ways in which some events and experiences are so extreme that they overwhelm a child’s ability to cope. Many different experiences can lead to such trauma: for example, physical or sexual abuse can be traumatic for children. One-time events like the tragedies I have mentioned can take a psychological toll on children as well. Ongoing stress such as the effects of the pandemic can also be traumatic for a child, even if it just feels like everyday life to an adult.
We know that the pandemic has had a huge negative impact on children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing. The Children’s Commissioner’s Big Ask survey found that one in five children was not happy with their mental health, and that figure rose to two in five for some groups. Childhood trauma does not have to involve experiences that are directly related to the child: for instance, watching a loved one endure major issues can be extremely traumatic, as has been highlighted by the impact of the cost of living crisis on children’s mental health. According to the Childhood Trust’s latest report, 47% of children surveyed felt stressed, 21% of parents said that their children smiled less, and most concerningly, 9% of parents claimed that their children had started self-harming. The results of that report should worry us all, as all those types of trauma will affect children’s development and wellbeing.
The Government need to invest in mental health services to ensure that children who experience trauma today do not face the same painful ordeal that survivors of the Battersea funfair disaster have gone through over the past 50 years. Spending on children’s mental health remains behind investment in adult mental health services. It is worrying that children and young people’s mental health services are among the most under-resourced and that the quality of care varies between different parts of the country. A BBC freedom of information request revealed that 20% of children are waiting more than 12 weeks to be seen for mental health support. That is why I was pleased to secure this debate on better provisions for children’s mental health services and childhood trauma.
The Government need to correct the historical underinvestment in children and young people’s mental health and the postcode lottery of services and support provision. To do that, they must create a comprehensive child mental health strategy, and childhood trauma services must be prioritised as part of that. The UK Trauma Council has called for the Government to invest in the development and delivery of specialist trauma provision so that children and young people have access to the support that they need. It also called on the Government to equip all professionals who work with children and young people with the skills and capacity to support those who have experienced trauma.
Labour has already set out its plan on tackling the mental health crisis, which includes giving adequate funding to mental health services. We have also committed to radically expanding the mental health workforce, including, crucially, investment in children’s mental health that includes putting open-access mental health hubs for children and young people in every community and ensuring that a full-time mental health professional is in every secondary school and a part-time professional is in every primary school.
Labour’s focus on early intervention is so important, because it can prevent the ongoing effects of trauma into adulthood. It would ensure that children are properly supported and resolve problems before they escalate. I will therefore ask the Minister about the Government’s plan for children’s mental health services and, specifically, childhood trauma care. When will her Government introduce a comprehensive child mental health strategy that includes prioritising trauma and investment in the development and delivery of evidence-based trauma service provision? How are they ensuring that children’s mental health services are a high priority in the NHS? That includes increased investment.
The Government have made £139 million available to support children and young people’s mental health in the community, but we need to see more investment. How are the Government working with professionals in contact points including in schools and the third sector so that children can access support when problems emerge?
Much work also needs be done to ensure that every child and young person gets the support that they need for their mental health and wellbeing. We need to step up as a society and be more ambitious in our call for better support for children and young people’s mental health. More funding and resources will be an investment in our children’s future. It is time for the Government to act and listen to the voices of children and young people, especially those suffering from trauma. If we do not act now, when will we?
The Minister for Care and Mental Health (Gillian Keegan)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova) on securing the debate. I must admit that I was not aware of the tragic events that unfolded 50 years ago, on 30 May 1972, and I am sure that others were not, either, so it is fantastic that she secured the debate to remind us all. However, I discussed it with my husband when I got home last night. At the time, he was a 10-year-old boy growing up in London. He was very much aware of what happened and he vividly remembers it. What should have been a happy day in Battersea Park, on the bank of the River Thames, resulted in five children losing their lives and a further 13 being injured, and it shocked many more. I very much hope that the survivors’ campaign for a permanent memorial in Battersea Park is ultimately successful, so that that terrible event is never forgotten—maybe that is the plaque the hon. Lady referred to, or maybe there is something else that they are still campaigning for.
Undoubtedly, many affected by the Battersea funfair disaster will have suffered from what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder, but let us not forget that PTSD was not even added to the International Classification of Diseases until the ’80s, and guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence was not published until 2005. Events have taught us that people affected by any traumatic incident must be able to access timely mental health support when and if needed, but I am not sure there was the same understanding all those years ago.
Luckily, PTSD can be successfully treated even when it develops many years after a traumatic event. The treatment depends on the severity of symptoms and how soon they occur after the traumatic event. The hon. Lady reports that survivors of the tragedy remain concerned that mental health support for children who have suffered trauma has not changed much since 1972. I too would be very concerned if that was the case, but I must respectfully disagree with that assessment.
If a child has witnessed or experienced a traumatic event, it is quite natural for them to be stressed, upset or frightened. That should not usually last beyond four weeks, but if it does, it may indicate post-traumatic stress disorder and it is then important to seek help via their GP. There are now some really effective treatments, including cognitive behavioural therapy, for children and young people who are experiencing the effects of trauma.
To respond to the hon. Lady’s specific question, NHS England and NHS Improvement have issued guidance on responding to the needs of people affected by incidents and emergencies, which stresses that plans for incidents and emergencies must provide psychosocial and mental health care for people affected, since early intervention for people at risk of developing mental health problems may reduce their severity and chronicity and, ultimately, related costs.
In general, psychological support can be accessed four to six weeks after the event for those who are exhibiting signs of needing professional help, as per NICE guidelines. Those who require urgent support may be referred to services sooner than that, and it is important to ensure that messaging about support services is appropriate. Not all people need psychological support, and many recover over the course of time without specific interventions, but it is still important that such people continue to look after their health and wellbeing after a traumatic incident. That includes getting enough rest, eating well, returning to their routine and staying connected with others.
Marsha De Cordova
I just want to ask about the support that is available via NHS England and ensuring that it is available, as the Minister says, within a four to six week period. Can she assure me that that is actually happening? Is there any evidence base to ensure that children who experience trauma or post-traumatic stress disorder are getting that support in a timely fashion?
Gillian Keegan
Yes, and of course we always try to ensure that, as the targets we put in are worked throughout the system, those targets are met. That is why we measure those things. Maybe it would be helpful to the hon. Lady if I gave some recent examples. In the wake of the Manchester Arena terrorist attack, which sadly affected many children and young people, the Greater Manchester Resilience Hub was set up to provide a central point for mental health advice for those directly affected, including children and emergency responders. The hub worked with other agencies to develop packages of care.
In response to the tragic fire at Grenfell Tower, more than £10 million has been spent on treating the mental health of those affected. In the year after the fire, 2,674 adults and 463 children were screened for symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, and the St Charles Centre for Health and Wellbeing was opened up so that those affected could be treated in dedicated therapy suites. I hope the hon. Lady will recognise that we have seen a dramatic change in both attitudes towards mental health since the days of the Battersea disaster, and the NHS services available to support people with their mental health.
Jim Shannon
I am very encouraged by what the Minister has just said. In my intervention on the hon. Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova) I suggested some contact with the authorities in Northern Ireland, which unfortunately have a long 30 years’ experience of trauma, especially among children. Has that happened?
Gillian Keegan
I have not met my counterpart in Northern Ireland but, having heard the hon. Gentleman’s intervention, I sent a WhatsApp message to request that a meeting be set up, because it is probably long overdue. We can learn a lot from each other, and I am always keen to learn from anyone I can.
Over the past 50 years, we have seen the transformation of NHS mental health services for children and young people. From the passing of the Mental Health Act 1983 and the establishment of mental health trusts to more recent developments including the Time to Change campaign, which between 2007 and 2021 helped to improve the attitudes and behaviours of some 5.4 million people towards those living with mental health problems, these are all important steps along the way towards destigmatising mental health.
The publication of the five-year forward view for mental health in 2016 made the case for transforming mental healthcare in England. The implementation of the “Transforming children and young people’s mental health provision” Green Paper from December 2017 has seen the introduction of senior mental health leads and mental health support teams in schools and colleges. We regularly talk about that programme, and I am sure it will make a massive difference to young people, particularly those affected by the pandemic. The 2019 NHS long-term plan commits to expanding and transforming mental health services in England so that an additional 345,000 children and young people will be able to access NHS-funded specialist mental health treatment by 2023-24.
We are continuing to build up those services and the staff, as in some cases demand outstrips supply. As part of this work, we have all-age 24/7 urgent mental health helplines in all areas of England so that people experiencing a mental health crisis, or those worried about someone experiencing such a crisis, can speak to a trained professional. The helplines were established during the pandemic, so they are a relatively new addition to the landscape, but I am sure they are very welcome because many people have sought these services.
We are also accelerating the coverage of mental health support teams in schools and colleges from the 287 currently in place to over 500, covering around 35% of pupils by 2023-24. There are currently 16 mental health support teams operating in or planned for south-west London, so they have already started to roll out.
Our hard-working NHS community mental health services treated over 420,000 children and young people in 2020-21, an increase of around 95,000 on the previous year, so we can see there has been a massive increase in demand for these services, which is why we are working very hard to try to build up the mental health workforce.
Although none of us wishes to see a repeat of the events in Battersea Park and the many things that have happened since, not only in mental health but in safety, I assure hon. Members that the NHS will always be there to support the survivors of such tragedies. However, it is important that we never forget. I am therefore grateful to the hon. Member for Battersea for securing this debate and for making us all aware of something that happened. This issue is important to her constituents, and this debate will ensure that we all remember the tragedy and learn from the events of that day.
Question put and agreed to.
Online Safety Bill (Thirteenth sitting)
Tuesday 21st June 2022
(2 years, 6 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 21 June 2022 - (21 Jun 2022)
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 5 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 5 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 10 / Noes: 4 - Question accordingly agreed to.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 5 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 5 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 5 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 5 / Noes: 9 - 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 the sitting. I understand the Government wish to move a motion to amend the programme order agreed by the Committee, so that the Committee’s session at 2pm on Thursday will not take place.
Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)
I beg to move,
That the Order of the Committee of 24 May 2022, as amended on 26 May 2022, be further amended, in paragraph (1)(h), by leaving out “and 2.00pm”.
In the light of the rail strike on Thursday, I am grateful to the Opposition Front Bench for agreeing to the suggestion that the Committee does not sit that afternoon.
The Chair
Because this motion has not been agreed by the programming sub-committee, it may only be proceeded with if everyone is content. Does anyone object to the motion?
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 118
Penalty for failure to comply with confirmation decision
The Chair
We now come to amendment 135 to clause 118, with which it will be convenient to discuss amendments 136 to 138. All these amendments have been tabled by Carla Lockhart, who is not a member of the Committee. Would any Member like to move the amendment? I see no Member wishing to do that.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Clause 119 stand part.
Government amendments 154 to 157.
Clauses 120 and 121 stand part.
Alex Davies-Jones (Pontypridd) (Lab)
Bore da, Ms Rees. It is, as ever, a pleasure to serve under your chairship. I rise to speak to clauses 118 to 121 and Government amendments 154 to 157.
As we all know, clause 118 is important and allows Ofcom to impose a financial penalty on a person who fails to complete steps that have been required by Ofcom in a confirmation decision. This is absolutely vital if we are to guarantee that regulated platforms take seriously their responsibilities in keeping us all safe online. We support the use of fines. They are key to overall behavioural change, particularly in the context of personal liability. We welcome clause 118, which outlines the steps Ofcom can take in what we hope will become a powerful deterrent.
Labour also welcomes clause 119. It is vital that Ofcom has these important powers to impose a financial penalty on a person who fails to comply with a notice that requires technology to be implemented to identify and deal with content relating to terrorism and child sexual exploitation and abuse on their service. These are priority harms and the more that can be done to protect us on these two points the better.
Government amendments 155 and 157 ensure that Ofcom has the power to impose a monetary penalty on a provider of a service who fails to pay a fee that it is required to pay under new schedule 2. We see these amendments as crucial in giving Ofcom the important powers it needs to be an effective regulator, which is something we all require. We have some specific observations around new schedule 2, but I will save those until we consider that schedule. For now, we support these amendments and I look forward to outlining our thoughts shortly.
We support clause 120, which allows Ofcom to give a penalty notice to a provider of a regulated service who does not pay the fee due to Ofcom in full. This a vital provision that also ensures that Ofcom’s process to impose a penalty can progress only when it has given due notice to the provider and once the provider has had fair opportunity to make fair representations to Ofcom. This is a fair approach and is central to the Bill, which is why we have not sought to amend.
Finally, we support clause 121, which ensures that Ofcom must state the reasons why it is imposing a penalty, the amount of the penalty and any aggravating or mitigating factors. Ofcom must also state when the penalty must be paid. It is imperative that when issuing a notice Ofcom is incentivised to publish information about the amount, aggravating or mitigating factors and when the penalty must be paid. We support this important clause and have not sought to amend.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Chris Philp)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once again, Ms Rees, and I congratulate Committee members on evading this morning’s strike action.
I am delighted that the shadow Minister supports the intent behind these clauses, and I will not speak at great length given the unanimity on this topic. As she said, clause 118 allows Ofcom to impose a financial penalty for failure to take specified steps by a deadline set by Ofcom. The maximum penalty that can be imposed is the greater of £18 million or 10% of qualifying worldwide revenue. In the case of large companies, it is likely to be a much larger amount than £18 million.
Clause 119 enables Ofcom to impose financial penalties if the recipient of a section 103 notice does not comply by the deadline. It is very important to ensure that section 103 has proper teeth. Government amendments 154 to 157 make changes that allow Ofcom to recover not only the cost of running the service once the Bill comes into force and into the future but also the preparatory cost of setting up for the Bill to come into force.
As previously discussed, £88 million of funding is being provided to Ofcom in this financial year and next. We believe that something like £20 million of costs that predate these financial years have been funded as well. That adds up to around £108 million. However, the amount that Ofcom recovers will be the actual cost incurred. The figure I provided is simply an indicative estimate. The actual figure would be based on the real costs, which Ofcom would be able to recoup under these measures. That means that the taxpayer—our constituents —will not bear any of the costs, including the set-up and preparatory cost. This is an equitable and fair change to the Bill.
Clause 120 sets out that some regulated providers will be required to pay a regulatory fee to Ofcom, as set out in clause 71. Clause 120 allows Ofcom to impose a financial penalty if a regulated provider does not pay its fee by the deadline it sets. Finally, clause 121 sets out the information that needs to be included in these penalty notices issued by Ofcom.
Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)
I have questions about the management of the fees and the recovery of the preparatory cost. Does the Minister expect that the initial fees will be higher as a result of having to recoup the preparatory cost and will then reduce? How quickly will the preparatory cost be recovered? Will Ofcom recover it quickly or over a longer period of time?
Chris Philp
The Bill provides a power for Ofcom to recover those costs. It does not specify over what time period. I do not think they will be recouped over a period of years. Ofcom can simply recoup the costs in a single hit. I would imagine that Ofcom would seek to recover these costs pretty quickly after receiving these powers. The £108 million is an estimate. The actual figure may be different once the reconciliation and accounting is done. It sounds like a lot of money, but it is spread among a number of very large social media firms. It is not a large amount of money for them in the context of their income, so I would expect that recouping to be done on an expeditious basis—not spread over a number of years. That is my expectation.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 118 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 119 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 120
Non-payment of fee
Amendments made: 154, in clause 120, page 102, line 20, after “71” insert:
“or Schedule (Recovery of OFCOM’s initial costs)”.
This amendment, and Amendments 155 to 157, ensure that Ofcom have the power to impose a monetary penalty on a provider of a service who fails to pay a fee that they are required to pay under NS2.
Amendment 155, in clause 120, page 102, line 21, leave out “that section” and insert “Part 6”.
Amendment 156, in clause 120, page 102, line 26, after “71” insert—
“or Schedule (Recovery of OFCOM’s initial costs)”
Amendment 157, in clause 120, page 103, line 12, at end insert—
“or Schedule (Recovery of OFCOM’s initial costs)”.—(Chris Philp.)
Clause 120, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 121 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 122
Amount of penalties etc
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss:
Government amendment 158.
That schedule 12 be the Twelfth schedule to the Bill.
Alex Davies-Jones
Labour supports clause 122 and schedule 12, which set out in detail the financial penalties that Ofcom may impose, including the maximum penalty that can be imposed. Labour has long supported financial penalties for those failing to comply with the duties in the Bill. We firmly believe that tough action is needed on online safety, but we feel the sanctions should go further and that there should be criminal liability for offences beyond just information-related failures. We welcome clause 122 and schedule 12. It is vital that Ofcom is also required to produce guidelines around how it will determine penalty amounts. Consistency across the board is vital, so we feel this is a positive step forward and have not sought to amend the clause.
Paragraph 8 of schedule 12 requires monetary penalties to be paid into the consolidated fund. There is no change to that requirement, but it now appears in new clause 43, together with the requirement to pay fees charged under new schedule 2 into the consolidated fund. We therefore support the amendments.
Chris Philp
I have nothing further to add on these amendments. The shadow Minister has covered them, so I will not detain the Committee further.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 122 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule 12
Penalties imposed by OFCOM under Chapter 6 of Part 7
Amendment made: 158, in schedule 12, page 206, line 43, leave out paragraph 8.—(Chris Philp.)
Paragraph 8 of Schedule 12 requires monetary penalties to be paid into the Consolidated Fund. There is no change to that requirement, but it now appears in NC43 together with the requirement to pay fees charged under NS2 into the Consolidated Fund.
Schedule 12, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 123
Service restriction orders
Alex Davies-Jones
I beg to move amendment 50, in clause 123, page 106, line 36, at end insert—
“(9A) OFCOM may apply to the court for service restriction orders against multiple regulated services with one application, through the use of a schedule of relevant services which includes all the information required by subsection (5).”
This amendment would give Ofcom the ability to take action against a schedule of non-compliant sites, while still preserving the right of those sites to oppose the application for, and/or appeal through the courts against any, orders to block access or support services.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 51, in clause 125, page 110, line 20, at end insert—
“(7A) OFCOM may apply to the court for service restriction orders against multiple regulated services with one application, through the use of a schedule of relevant services which includes all the information required by subsection (6).”
This amendment would give Ofcom the ability to take action against a schedule of non-compliant sites, while still preserving the right of those sites to oppose the application for, and/or appeal through the courts against any, orders to block access or support services.
Alex Davies-Jones
With your permission, Ms Rees, I will speak to clause stand part and clauses 124 to 127 at the same time. Labour supports clause 123, which outlines the powers that Ofcom will have when applying to the court for business disruption measures. Business disruption measures are court orders that require third parties to withdraw services or block access to non-compliant regulated services. It is right that Ofcom has these tools at its disposal, particularly if it is going to be able to regulate effectively against the most serious instances of user harm. However, the Bill will be an ineffective regime if Ofcom is forced to apply for separate court orders when trying to protect people across the board from the same harms. We have already waited too long for change. Labour is committed to giving Ofcom the powers to take action, where necessary, as quickly as possible. That is why we have tabled amendments 50 and 51, which we feel will go some way in tackling these issues.
Amendment 50 would give Ofcom the ability to take action against a schedule of non-compliant sites, while still preserving the right of those sites to oppose the application for—and/or appeal through the courts against any—orders to block access or support services. The Bill currently requires Ofcom to seek a separate court order for each service against which it wishes to take enforcement action in the form of blocking access or services. That is the only effective mechanism for overseas websites. UK-based services will be subject to enforcement notices and financial penalties that can be enforced without having to go to court. That creates a disadvantage for UK sites, which can be more easily enforced against.
Given that there are 4 million to 5 million pornographic websites, for example, the requirement for separate court orders will prevent Ofcom from taking action at scale and creating a level playing field for all adult sites. Under the Bill, Ofcom must take action against each offending website or social media company individually. While we acknowledge that the Government have stated that enforcement action can be taken against multiple offending content providers, in our opinion that is not made clear in the Bill.
Moreover, we are concerned that some pornography websites would seek to avoid the Bill’s requirements by changing their domain name—domain hopping. That was threatened last year when Germany moved to issue a blocking order against major providers of internet pornography. That is why Ofcom must be granted clear enforcement powers to take swift action against multiple websites and content providers in one court action or order.
This group of amendments would also provide clarity and ease of enforcement for internet service providers, which will be expected to enforce court orders. Labour wants the Bill to be genuinely effective, and amendments 50 and 51 could ensure that Ofcom has the tools available to it to take action at pace. We urge the Minister to accept these small concessions, which could have a hugely positive impact.
Amendment 51 would give Ofcom the ability to take action against a schedule of non-compliant sites, while preserving the right of those sites to oppose an application for an order to block access or support services, or to appeal through the courts against any such order.
It will come as no surprise that Labour supports clause 124, which sets out the circumstances in which Ofcom may apply to the courts for an interim service restriction order. We particularly support the need for Ofcom to be able to take action when time is not on its side, or where, put plainly, the level of harm being caused means that it would be inappropriate to wait for a definite failure before taking action.
However, we hope that caution is exercised if Ofcom ever needs to consider such an interim order; we must, of course, get the balance right in our approach to internet regulation more widely. I would therefore be grateful if the Minister could outline his understanding of the specifics of when these orders may be applied. More broadly, Labour agrees that Ofcom should be given the power to act when time demands it, so we have not sought to amend clause 124 at this stage.
Labour also supports the need for Ofcom to have the power to apply to the courts for an access restriction order, as outlined in clause 125. It is vital that Ofcom is given the power to prevent, restrict or deter individuals in the UK from accessing a service from a non-compliant provider. We welcome the specific provisions on access via internet service providers and app stores. We all know from Frances Haugen’s testimony that harmful material can often be easily buried, so it is right and proper that those are considered as “access facilities” under the clause. Ultimately, we support the intentions of clause 125 and, again, have not sought to amend it at this stage.
We also support clause 126, which sets out the circumstances in which Ofcom may apply to the courts for an interim access restriction order. I will not repeat myself: for the reasons I have already outlined, it is key that Ofcom has sufficient powers to act, particularly on occasions when it is inappropriate to wait for a failure to be established.
We welcome clause 127, which clarifies how Ofcom’s enforcement powers can interact. We particularly welcome clarification that, where Ofcom exercises its power to apply to the courts for a business disruption order under clauses 123 to 126, it is not precluded from taking action under its other enforcement powers. As we have repeatedly reiterated, we welcome Ofcom’s having sufficient power to reasonably bring about positive change and increase safety measures online. That is why we have not sought to amend clause 127.
Kirsty Blackman
Thank you for chairing this morning’s sitting, Ms Rees.
I agree with the hon. Member for Pontypridd that these clauses are necessary and important, but I also agree that the amendments are important. It seems like this is a kind of tidying-up exercise, to give Ofcom the ability to act in a way that will make its operation smoother. We all want this legislation to work. This is not an attempt to break this legislation—to be fair, none of our amendments have been—but an attempt to make things work better.
Amendments 50 and 51 are fairly similar to the one that the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children proposed to clause 103. They would ensure that Ofcom could take action against a group of sites, particularly if they were facing the same kind of issues, they had the same kind of functionality, or the same kind of concerns were being raised about them.
The Chair
If no other Members wish to speak to amendments 50 and 51 and clauses 123 to 127, I will call the Minister to respond.
Chris Philp
Let me start with amendments 50 and 51, which were introduced by the shadow Minister and supported by the SNP spokesperson. The Government recognise the valid intent behind the amendments, namely to make sure that applications can be streamlined and done quickly, and that Ofcom can make bulk applications if large numbers of service providers violate the new duties to the extent that interim service restriction orders or access restriction orders become necessary.
We want a streamlined process, and we want Ofcom to deal efficiently with it, including, if necessary, by making bulk applications to the court. Thankfully, however, procedures under the existing civil procedure rules already allow so-called multi-party claims to be made. Those claims permit any number of claimants, any number of defendants or respondents and any number of claims to be covered in a single form. The overriding objective of the CPR is that cases are dealt with justly and proportionately. Under the existing civil procedure rules, Ofcom can already make bulk applications to deal with very large numbers of non-compliant websites and service providers in one go. We completely agree with the intent behind the amendments, but their content is already covered by the CPR.
It is worth saying that the business disruption measures—the access restriction orders and the service restriction orders—are intended to be a last resort. They effectively amount to unplugging the websites from the internet so that people in the United Kingdom cannot access them and so that supporting services, such as payment services, do not support them. The measures are quite drastic, although necessary and important, because we do not want companies and social media firms ignoring our legislation. It is important that we have strong measures, but they are last resorts. We would expect Ofcom to use them only when it has taken reasonable steps to enforce compliance using other means.
If a provider outside the UK ignores letters and fines, these measures are the only option available. As the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Pontypridd, mentioned, some pornography providers probably have no intention of even attempting to comply with our regulations; they are probably not based in the UK, they are never going to pay the fine and they are probably incorporated in some obscure, offshore jurisdiction. Ofcom will need to use these powers in such circumstances, possibly on a bulk scale—I am interested in her comment that that is what the German authorities had to do—but the powers already exist in the CPR.
It is also worth saying that in its application to the courts, Ofcom must set out the information required in clauses 123(5) and 125(3), so evidence that backs up the claim can be submitted, but that does not stop Ofcom doing this on a bulk basis and hitting multiple different companies in one go. Because the matter is already covered in the CPR, I ask the shadow Minister to withdraw the amendment.
Alex Davies-Jones
I am interested to know whether the Minister has anything to add about the other clauses. I am happy to give way to him.
Chris Philp
I thank the shadow Minister for giving way. I do not have too much to say on the other clauses, because she has introduced them, but in my enthusiasm for explaining the civil procedure rules I neglected to respond to her question about the interim orders in clauses 124 and 126.
The hon. Lady asked what criteria have to be met for these interim orders to be made. The conditions for clause 124 are set out in subsections (3) and (4) of that clause, which states, first, that it has to be
“likely that the…service is failing to comply with an enforceable requirement”—
so it is likely that there has been a breach—and, secondly, that
“the level of risk of harm to individuals in the United Kingdom…and the nature and severity of that harm, are such that it would not be appropriate to wait to establish the failure before applying for the order.”
Similar language in clause 124(4) applies to breaches of section 103.
Essentially, if it is likely that there has been a breach, and if the resulting harm is urgent and severe—for example, if children are at risk—we would expect these interim orders to be used as emergency measures to prevent very severe harm. I hope that answers the shadow Minister’s question. She is very kind, as is the Chair, to allow such a long intervention.
The Chair
In a Bill Committee, a Member can speak more than once. However, your intervention resolved the situation amicably, Minister.
Alex Davies-Jones
I welcome the Minister’s comments about clauses 124 and 126 in answer to my questions, and also his comments about amendments 50 and 51, clarifying the CPR. If the legislation is truly to have any impact, it must fundamentally give clarity to service users, providers and regulators. That is why we seek to remove any ambiguity and to put these important measures in the Bill, and it is why I will press amendment 50 to a Division.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Alex Davies-Jones
The Minister and his Back Benchers will, I am sure, be tired of our calls for more transparency, but I will be kind to him and confirm that Labour welcomes the provisions in clause 128.
We believe that it is vital that, once Ofcom has followed the process outlined in clause 110 when issuing a confirmation decision outlining its final decision, that is made public. We particularly welcome provisions to ensure that when a confirmation decision is issued, Ofcom will be obliged to publish the identity of the person to whom the decision was sent, details of the failure to which the decision relates, and details relating to Ofcom’s response.
Indeed, the transparency goes further, as Ofcom will be obliged to publish details of when a penalty notice has been issued in many more areas: when a person fails to comply with a confirmation decision; when a person fails to comply with a notice to deal with terrorism content or child sexual exploitation and abuse content, or both; and when there has been a failure to pay a fee in full. That is welcome indeed. Labour just wishes that the Minister had committed to the same level of transparency on the duties in the Bill to keep us safe in the first place. That said, transparency on enforcement is a positive step forward, so we have not sought to amend the clause at this stage.
Chris Philp
I am grateful for the shadow Minister’s support. I have nothing substantive to add, other than to point to the transparency reporting obligation in clause 64, which we have debated.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 128 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 129
OFCOM’s guidance about enforcement action
Chris Philp
I beg to move amendment 7, in clause 129, page 114, line 3, at end insert—
“(aa) the Information Commissioner, and”.
This amendment ensures that before Ofcom produce guidance about their exercise of their enforcement powers, they must consult the Information Commissioner.
If I may, in the interest of speed and convenience, I will speak to clause stand part as well.
The clause requires Ofcom to issue guidance setting out how it will use its enforcement powers in the round. That guidance will ensure that the enforcement process is transparent, it will cover the general principles and processes of the enforcement regime, and it is intended to help regulated providers and other stakeholders to understand how Ofcom will exercise its powers.
Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
Clause 129(4) states that the Secretary of State will be consulted in the process. What would be the Secretary of State’s powers in relation to that? Would she be able to overrule Ofcom in the writing of its guidance?
Chris Philp
The hon. Member asks for my assistance in interpreting legislative language. Generally speaking, “consult” means what it suggests. Ofcom will consult the Secretary of State, as it will consult the ICO, to ascertain the Secretary of State’s opinion, but Ofcom is not bound by that opinion. Unlike the power in a previous clause—I believe it was clause 40—where the Secretary of State could issue a direct instruction to Ofcom on certain matters, here we are talking simply about consulting. When the Secretary of State expresses an opinion in response to the consultation, it is just that—an opinion. I would not expect it to be binding on Ofcom, but I would expect Ofcom to pay proper attention to the views of important stakeholders, which in this case include both the Secretary of State and the ICO. I hope that gives the hon. Member the clarification he was seeking.
Alex Davies-Jones
As we know, clause 129 requires Ofcom to publish guidance about how it will use its enforcement powers. It is right that regulated providers and other stakeholders have a full understanding of how, and in what circumstances, Ofcom will have the legislative power to exercise this suite of enforcement powers. We also welcome Government amendment 7, which will ensure that the Information Commissioner—a key and, importantly, independent authority—is included in the consultation before guidance is produced.
As we have just heard, however, the clause sets out that Secretary of State must be consulted before Ofcom produces guidance, including revised or replacement guidance, about how it will use its enforcement powers. We feel that that involves the Secretary of State far too closely in the enforcement of the regime. The Government should be several steps away from being involved, and the clause seriously undermines Ofcom’s independence—the importance of which we have been keen to stress as the Bill progresses, and on which Conservative Back Benchers have shared our view—so we cannot support the clause.
Chris Philp
I repeat the point I made to the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton a moment ago. This is simply an obligation to consult. The clause gives the Secretary of State an opportunity to offer an opinion, but it is just that—an opinion. It is not binding on Ofcom, which may take that opinion into account or not at its discretion. This provision sits alongside the requirement to consult the Information Commissioner’s Office. I respectfully disagree with the suggestion that it represents unwarranted and inappropriate interference in the operation of a regulator. Consultation between organs of state is appropriate and sensible, but in this case it does not fetter Ofcom’s ability to act at its own discretion. I respectfully do not agree with the shadow Minister’s analysis.
Kirsty Blackman
Apologies, Ms Rees, for coming in a bit late on this, but I was not aware of the intention to vote against the clause. I want to make clear what the Scottish National party intends to do, and the logic behind it. The inclusion of Government amendment 7 is sensible, and I am glad that the Minister has tabled it. Clause 129 is incredibly important, and the requirement to publish guidance will ensure that there is a level of transparency, which we and the Labour Front Benchers have been asking for.
The Minister has been clear about the requirement for Ofcom to consult the Secretary of State, rather than to be directed by them. As a whole, this Bill gives the Secretary of State far too much power, and far too much ability to intervene in the workings of Ofcom. In this case, however, I do not have an issue with the Secretary of State being consulted, so I intend to support the inclusion of this clause, as amended by Government amendment 7.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Alex Davies-Jones
I beg to move amendment 57, in clause 130, page 115, line 4, leave out “18” and insert “6”
This amendment changes the period by which the advisory committee must report from 18 months to 6.
The Chair
With this, it will be convenient to discuss the following: amendment 58, in clause 130, page 115, line 5, at end insert—
‘(6) Following the publication of the report, OFCOM must produce a code of practice setting out the steps services should take to reduce disinformation across their systems.”
This amendment requires Ofcom to produce a code of practice on system-level disinformation.
Clause stand part.
Alex Davies-Jones
Clause 130 sets up a committee to advise Ofcom on misinformation and disinformation, which is the only direct reference to misinformation and disinformation in the entire Online Safety Bill. However, the Bill gives the committee no identifiable powers or active role in tackling harmful misinformation and disinformation, meaning that it has limited practical purpose. It is also unclear how the advisory committee will fit with Ofcom’s wider regulatory functions.
The remaining provisions in the Bill are limited and do not properly address harmful misinformation and disinformation. If tackling harmful misinformation and disinformation is left to this clause, the Bill will fail both to tackle harm properly, and to keep children and adults safe.
The clause risks giving a misleading impression that action is being taken. If the Government and Ofcom proceed with creating the committee, we need to see that its remit is strengthened and clarified, so that it more effectively tackles harmful disinformation and misinformation. That should include advising on Ofcom’s research, reporting on drivers of harmful misinformation and disinformation, and proportionate responses to them. There should also be a duty on Ofcom to consult the committee when drafting relevant codes of practice.
That is why we have tabled amendment 57. It would change the period by which the advisory committee must report from 18 months to six. This is a simple amendment that encourages scrutiny. Once again, the Minister surely has little reason not to accept it, especially as we have discussed at length the importance of the advisory committee having the tools that it needs to succeed.
Increasing the regularity of these reports from the advisory committee is vital, particularly given the ever-changing nature of the internet. Labour has already raised concerns about the lack of futureproofing in the Bill more widely, and we feel that the advisory committee has an important role and function to play in areas where the Bill itself is lacking. We are not alone in this view; the Minister has heard from his Back Benchers about just how important this committee is.
Amendment 58 would require Ofcom to produce a code of practice on system-level disinformation. Again, this amendment will come as no surprise to the Minister, given the concerns that Labour has repeatedly raised about the lack of provisions relating to disinformation in the Bill. It seems like an obvious omission that the Bill has failed to consider a specific code of practice around reducing disinformation, and the amendment would be a simple way to ensure that Ofcom actively encourages services to reduce disinformation across their platforms. The Minister knows that this would be a welcome step, and I urge him to consider supporting the amendment.
Kirsty Blackman
I want to briefly agree with the sentiments of the Opposition Front Bench, especially about the strength of the committee and the lack of teeth that it currently has. Given that the Government have been clear that they are very concerned about misinformation and disinformation, it seems odd that they are covered in the Bill in such a wishy-washy way.
The reduction of the time from 18 months to six months would also make sense. We would expect the initial report the committee publish in six months to not be as full as the ones it would publish after that. I do not see any issue with it being required to produce a report as soon as possible to assess how the Act is bedding in and beginning to work, rather than having to wait to assess—potentially once the Act is properly working. We want to be able to pick up any teething problems that the Act might have.
We want the committee to be able to say, “Actually, this is not working quite as we expected. We suggest that Ofcom operates in a slightly different way or that the interaction with providers happens in a slightly different way.” I would rather that problems with the Act were tackled as early as possible. We will not know about problems with the Act, because there is no proper review mechanism. There is no agreement on the committee, for example, to look at how the Act is operating. This is one of the few parts of the Bill where we have got an agreement to a review, and it would make sense that it happen as early as possible.
We agree that misinformation and disinformation are very important matters that really need to be tackled, but there is just not enough clout in the Bill to allow Ofcom to properly tackle these issues that are causing untold harm.
Dan Carden
When I spoke at the very beginning of the Committee’s proceedings, I said that the legislation was necessary, that it was a starting point and that it would no doubt change and develop over time. However, I have been surprised at how little, considering all of the rhetoric we have heard from the Secretary of State and other Ministers, the Bill actually deals with the general societal harm that comes from the internet. This is perhaps the only place in the Bill where it is covered.
I am thinking of the echo chambers that are created around disinformation and the algorithms that companies use. I really want to hear from the Minister where he sees this developing and why it is so weak and wishy-washy. While I welcome that much of the Bill seeks to deal with the criminality of individuals and the harm and abuse that can be carried out over the internet, overall it misses a great opportunity to deal with the harmful impact the internet can have on society.
Chris Philp
Let me start by speaking on the issue of disinformation more widely, which clearly is the target of the two amendments and the topic of clause 130. First, it is worth reminding the Committee that non-legislatively—operationally—the Government are taking action on the disinformation problem via the counter-disinformation unit of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, which we have discussed previously.
The unit has been established to monitor social media firms and sites for disinformation and then to take action and work with social media firms to take it down. For the first couple of years of its operation, it understandably focused on disinformation connected to covid. In the last two or three months, it has focused on disinformation relating to the Russia-Ukraine conflict —in particular propaganda being spread by the Russian Government, which, disgracefully, has included denying responsibility for various atrocities, including those committed at Bucha. In fact, in cases in which the counter-disinformation unit has not got an appropriate response from social media firms, those issues have been escalated to me, and I have raised them directly with those firms, including Twitter, which has tolerated all kinds of disinformation from overt Russian state outlets and channels, including from Russian embassy Twitter accounts, which are of particular concern to me. Non-legislative action is being taken via the CDU.
Kim Leadbeater (Batley and Spen) (Lab)
It is fantastic to hear that those other things are happening—that is all well and good—but surely we should explicitly call out disinformation and misinformation in the Online Safety Bill. The package of other measures that the Minister mentions is fantastic, but I think they have to be in the Bill.
Chris Philp
The hon. Lady says that those measures should be in the Bill—more than they already are—but as I have pointed out, the way in which the legal architecture of the Bill works means that the mechanisms to do that would be adding a criminal offence to schedule 7 as a priority offence, for example, or using a statutory instrument to designate the relevant kind of harm as a priority harm, which we plan to do in due course for a number of harms. The Bill can cover disinformation with the use of those mechanisms.
We have not put the harmful to adults content in the Bill; it will be set out in statutory instruments. The National Security Bill is still progressing through Parliament, and we cannot have in schedule 7 of this Bill an offence that has not yet been passed by Parliament. I hope that that explains the legal architecture and mechanisms that could be used under the Bill to give force to those matters.
On amendment 57, the Government feel that six months is a very short time within which to reach clear conclusions, and that 18 months is a more appropriate timeframe in which to understand how the Bill is bedding in and operating. Amendment 58 would require Ofcom to produce a code of practice on system-level disinformation. To be clear, the Bill already requires Ofcom to produce codes of practice that set out the steps that providers will take to tackle illegal content— I mentioned the new National Security Bill, which is going through Parliament—and harmful content, which may, in some circumstances, include disinformation.
Disinformation that is illegal or harmful to individuals is in scope of the duties set out in the Bill. Ofcom’s codes of practice will, as part of those duties, have to set out the steps that providers should take to reduce harm to users that arises from such disinformation. Those steps could include content-neutral design choices or interventions of other kinds. We would like Ofcom to have a certain amount of flexibility in how it develops those codes of practice, including by being able to combine or disaggregate those codes in ways that are most helpful to the general public and the services that have to pay regard to them. That is why we have constructed them in the way we have. I hope that provides clarity about the way that disinformation can be brought into the scope of the Bill and how that measure then flows through to the codes of practice. I gently resist amendments 57 and 58 while supporting the clause standing part of the Bill.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Chris Philp
The clause allows Ofcom to confer functions on the content board in relation to content-related functions under the Bill, but does not require it to do so. We take the view that how Ofcom manages its responsibilities internally is a matter for Ofcom. That may change over time. The clause simply provides that Ofcom may, if Ofcom wishes, ask its content board to consider online safety matters alongside its existing responsibilities. I trust that the Committee considers that a reasonable measure.
Alex Davies-Jones
Labour welcomes the clause, which, as the Minister has said, sets out some important clarifications with respect to the Communications Act 2003. We welcome the clarification that the content board will have delegated and advisory responsibilities, and look forward to the Minister’s confirmation of exactly what those are and how this will work in practice. It is important that the content board and the advisory committee on disinformation and misinformation are compelled to communicate, too, so we look forward to an update from the Minister on what provisions in the Bill will ensure that that happens.
Chris Philp
The shadow Minister has asked how this will work in practice, but as I said, the internal operation of Ofcom obviously is a matter for Ofcom. As Members have said in the recent past—indeed, in the last hour—they do not welcome undue Government interference in the operation of Ofcom, so it is right that we leave this as a matter for Ofcom. We are providing Ofcom with the power, but we are not compelling it to use that power. We are respecting Ofcom’s operational independence—a point that shadow Ministers and Opposition Members have made very recently.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 131 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 132
Research about users’ experiences of regulated services
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Alex Davies-Jones
We support clause 132, which ensures that Ofcom is required to understand and measure public opinion concerning providers of regulated services, as well as the experiences and interests of those using the regulated services in question. The Bill in its entirety is very much a learning curve for us all, and I am sure we all agree that, as previously maintained, the world really is watching as we seek to develop and implement the legislation. That is why it is vital that Ofcom is compelled to conduct and arrange its own research to ensure that we are getting an accurate picture of how our regulatory framework is affecting people. I stress to the Minister that it is imperative that Ofcom consults all service providers—big and small—which the CBI stressed to me in recent meetings.
We also welcome the provisions outlined in subsection (2) that confirm that Ofcom must include a statement of its research in its annual report to the Secretary of State and the devolved Administrations. It is important that Ofcom, as a regulator, takes a research-led approach, and Labour is pleased to see these provisions included in the Bill.
We welcome the inclusion of clause 133, which extends the communication panel’s remit to include online safety. This will mean that the panel is able to give advice on matters relating to different types of online content under the Bill, and on the impacts of online content on UK users of regulated services. It is a welcome step forward, so we have not sought to amend the clause.
Dame Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)
I want to make one short comment about clauses 132 and 133, which are really important. There is no intention to interfere with or fetter the way that Ofcom operates, but there is an obligation on this Committee, and on Parliament, to indicate what we would expect to see from Ofcom by way of the clauses, because they are an essential part of the transparency that we are trying to inject into the sector.
Research about users’ experiences is hugely important, and such reports contain important insights into how platforms are used, and the levels of misinformation and disinformation that people are exposed to. Ofcom already produces highly authoritative reports on various aspects of the online world, including the fact that three in four adults do not think about whether the online information that they see is truthful. Indeed, one in three adults believes that all or most information that they find online is truthful. We know that there is a significant gap between consumers perception and reality, so it is important to ensure that research has good exposure among those using the internet.
We do not often hear about the problems of how the online world works, and the level of disinformation and inaccuracy is not well known, so will the Minister elaborate on how he expects Ofcom to ensure that people are aware of the reality of the online world? Platforms will presumably be required to have regard to the content of Ofcom reports, but will Ofcom be required to publicise its reports? It is not clear that such a duty is in the Bill at the moment, so does the Minister expect Ofcom to have a role in educating people, especially children, about the problem of inaccurate data or other aspects of the online world?
We know that a number of platforms spend a great deal of money on going into schools and talking about their products, which may or may not entail accurate information. Does Ofcom not have an important role to play in this area? Educating users about the changes in the Bill would be another potential role for Ofcom in order to recalibrate users’ expectations as to what they might reasonably expect platforms to offer as a result of the legislation. It is important that we have robust regulatory frameworks in place, and this Bill clearly does that. However, it also requires users to be aware of the changes that have been made so that they can report the problems they experience in a timely manner.
Dan Carden
I agree with the right hon. Member for Basingstoke that these are important clauses. I want to put them into the context of what we heard from Frances Haugen, who, when she spoke to Congress, said that Facebook consistently chose to maximise its growth rather than implement safeguards on its platforms. She said:
“During my time at Facebook, I came to realise a devastating truth: Almost no one outside of Facebook knows what happens inside Facebook. “The company intentionally hides vital information from the public, from the U.S. government, and from governments around the world.”
When we consider users’ experiences, I do not think it is good enough just to look at how the user engages with information. We need far more transparency about how the companies themselves are run. I would like to hear the Minister’s views on how this clause, which looks at users’ experiences, can go further in dealing with the harms at source, with the companies, and making sure a light is shone on their practices.
Chris Philp
I welcome the support of the hon. Member for Pontypridd for these clauses. I will turn to the questions raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke. First, she asked whether Ofcom has to publish these reports so that the public, media and Parliament can see what they say. I am pleased to confirm that Ofcom does have to publish the reports; section 15 of the Communications Act 2003 imposes a duty on Ofcom to publish reports of this kind.
Secondly, my right hon. Friend asked about educating the public on issues pertinent to these reports, which is what we would call a media literacy duty. Again, I confirm that, under the Communications Act, Ofcom has a statutory duty to promote media literacy, which would include matters that flow from these reports. In fact, Ofcom published an expanded and updated set of policies in that area at the end of last year, which is why the old clause 103 in the original version of this Bill was removed—Ofcom had already gone further than that clause required.
Thirdly, my right hon. Friend asked about the changes that might happen in response to the findings of these reports. Of course, it is open to Ofcom—indeed, I think this Committee would expect it—to update its codes of practice, which it can do from time to time, in response to the findings of these reports. That is a good example of why it is important for those codes of practice to be written by Ofcom, rather than being set out in primary legislation. It means that when some new fact or circumstance arises or some new bit of research, such as the information required in this clause, comes out, those codes of practice can be changed. I hope that addresses the questions my right hon. Friend asked.
The hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton asked about transparency, referring to Frances Haugen’s testimony to the US Senate and her disclosures to The Wall Street Journal, as well as the evidence she gave this House, both to the Joint Committee and to this Committee just before the Whitsun recess. I have also met her bilaterally to discuss these issues. The hon. Gentleman is quite right to point out that these social media firms use Facebook as an example, although there are others that are also extremely secretive about what they say in public, to the media and even to representative bodies such as the United States Congress. That is why, as he says, it is extremely important that they are compelled to be a lot more transparent.
The Bill contains a large number of provisions compelling or requiring social media firms to make disclosures to Ofcom as the regulator. However, it is important to have public disclosure as well. It is possible that the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton was not in his place when we came to the clause in question, but if he turns to clause 64 on page 56, he will see that it includes a requirement for Ofcom to give every provider of a relevant service a notice compelling them to publish a transparency report. I hope he will see that the transparency obligation that he quite rightly refers to—it is necessary—is set out in clause 64(1). I hope that answers the points that Committee members have raised.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 132 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 133 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 134
OFCOM’s statement about freedom of expression and privacy
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Alex Davies-Jones
As we all know, the clause requires Ofcom to publish annual reports on the steps it has taken, when carrying out online safety functions, to uphold users’ rights under articles 8 and 10 of the convention, as required by section 6 of the Human Rights Act 1998. It will come as no surprise to the Minister that Labour entirely supports this clause.
Upholding users’ rights is a central part of this Bill, and it is a topic we have debated repeatedly in our proceedings. I know that the Minister faces challenges of his own, as the Opposition do, regarding the complicated balance between freedom of speech and safety online. It is only right and proper, therefore, for Ofcom to have a specific duty to publish reports about what steps it is taking to ensure that the online space is fair and equal for all.
That being said, we know that we can and should go further. My hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen will shortly address an important new clause tabled in her name—I believe it is new clause 25—so I will do my best not to repeat her comments, but it is important to say that Ofcom must be compelled to publish reports on how its overall regulatory operating function is working. Although Labour welcomes clause 134 and especially its commitment to upholding users’ rights, we believe that when many feel excluded in the existing online space, Ofcom can do more in its annual reporting. For now, however, we support clause 134.
Chris Philp
I welcome the shadow Minister’s continuing support for these clauses. Clause 134 sets out the requirement on Ofcom to publish reports setting out how it has complied with articles 8 and 10 of the European convention on human rights.
I will pause for a second, because my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley and others have raised concerns about the implications of the Bill for freedom of speech. In response to a question he asked last week, I set out in some detail the reasons why I think the Bill improves the position for free speech online compared with the very unsatisfactory status quo. This clause further strengthens that case, because it requires this report and reminds us that Ofcom must discharge its duties in a manner compatible with articles 8 and 10 of the ECHR.
From memory, article 8 enshrines the right to a family life, and article 10 enshrines the right to free speech, backed up by quite an extensive body of case law. The clause reminds us that the powers that the Bill confers on Ofcom must be exercised—indeed, can only be exercised—in conformity with the article 10 duties on free speech. I hope that that gives my hon. Friend additional assurance about the strength of free speech protection inherent in the Bill. I apologise for speaking at a little length on a short clause, but I think that was an important point to make.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 134 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 135
OFCOM’s transparency reports
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Alex Davies-Jones
Again, Labour welcomes clause 135, which places a duty on Ofcom to produce its own reports based on information from the transparency reports that providers are required to publish. However, the Minister will know that Labour feels the Bill has much more work to do on transparency more widely, as we have repeatedly outlined through our debates. The Minister rejected our calls for increased transparency when we were addressing, I believe, clause 61. We are not alone in feeling that transparency reports should go further. The sector and his own Back Benchers are calling for it, yet so far his Department has failed to act.
It is a welcome step that Ofcom must produce its own reports based on information from the provider’s transparency reports, but the ultimate motivation for the reports to provide a truly accurate depiction of the situation online is for them to be made public. I know the Minister has concerns around security, but of course no one wants to see users put at harm unnecessarily. That is not what we are asking for here. I will refrain from repeating debates we have already had at length, but I wish to again put on the record our concerns around the transparency reporting process as it stands.
That being said, we support clause 135. It is right that Ofcom is compelled to produce its own reports; we just wish they were made public. With the transparency reports coming from the providers, we only wish they would go further.
Chris Philp
I have spoken to these points previously, so I do not want to tax the Committee’s patience by repeating what I have said.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 135 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 136
OFCOM’s report about researchers’ access to information
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Alex Davies-Jones
Again, Labour welcomes clause 136, which is a positive step towards a transparent approach to online safety, given that it requires Ofcom to publish a report about the access that independent researchers have, or could have, to matters relating to the online safety of regulated services. As my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South rightly outlined in an earlier sitting, Labour strongly believes that the transparency measures in the Bill do not go far enough.
Independent researchers already play a vital role in regulating online safety. Indeed, there are far too many to list, but many have supported me, and I am sure the Minister, in our research on the Bill. That is why we have tabled a number of amendments on this point, as we sincerely feel there is more work to be done. I know the Minister says he understands and is taking on board our comments, but thus far we have seen little movement on transparency.
Chris Philp
In this clause we are specifically talking about access to information for researchers. Obviously, the transparency matters were covered in clauses 64 and 135. There is consensus across both parties that access to information for bona fide academic researchers is important. The clause lays out a path to take us in the direction of providing that access by requiring Ofcom to produce a report. We debated the matter earlier. The hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South—I hope I got the pronunciation right this time—
Chris Philp
The hon. Lady made some points about the matter in an earlier sitting, as the shadow Minister just said. It is an area we are giving some careful thought to, because it is important that it is properly academically researched. Although Ofcom is being well resourced, as we have discussed, with lots of money and the ability to levy fees, we understand that it does not have a monopoly on wisdom—as good a regulator as it is. It may well be that a number of academics could add a great deal to the debate by looking at some of the material held inside social media firms. The Government recognise the importance of the matter, and some thought is being given to these questions, but at least we can agree that clause 136 as drafted sets out a path that leads us in this important direction.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 136 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 137
OFCOM’s reports
Alex Davies-Jones
Briefly, before I hand over to my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South, I should say that Labour welcomes clause 137, which gives Ofcom a discretionary power to publish reports about certain online safety measures and matters. Clearly, it is important to give Ofcom the power to redact or exclude confidential matters where needs be, and I hope that there will be a certain level of common sense and public awareness, should information of this nature be excluded. As I have previously mentioned—I sound a bit like a broken record—Labour echoes the calls for more transparency, which my hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen will come on to in her new clause. However, broadly, we support this important clause.
I would like to press the Minister briefly on how exactly the exclusion of material from Ofcom reports will work in practice. Can he outline any specific contexts or examples, beyond commercial sensitivity and perhaps matters of national security, where he can envision this power being used?
Chris Philp
I welcome the shadow Minister’s support for the clause, once again. The clause provides Ofcom with the power to publish relevant reports about online safety matters to keep users, the public and Parliament well informed. Again, clearly, it is up to Ofcom to decide how it publishes those reports; we will not compel it.
On the question about confidential material that might be withheld, the relevant language in clause 137 looks, to me, to precisely echo the language we saw previously in clause—where was it? Anyway, we have come across this in a previous clause. When it comes to publishing material that can be excluded, the language is just the same.
I would like to make it clear that, while, obviously, this decision is a matter for Ofcom, I would expect that exclusion to be used on a pretty rare basis. Obviously, one would expect matters that are acutely commercially sensitive to be excluded—or redacted—to address that. If there was very sensitive intellectual property, where it would prejudice a company’s commercial interest to have all of that intellectual property exposed, I would expect Ofcom to exercise the exclusion or at least redact what it publishes.
However, because transparency is so important—it is a point that the Committee has made repeatedly—I would expect these exclusions to be used sparingly, and only where absolutely necessary to deliver issues such as the commercial confidentiality or IP protection. Then, it should be used to the minimum extent necessary, because I think that this Committee thinks, and Parliament thinks, that the disclosure around these reports and the reports about breaches—mentioned in the clause I was trying to reach for previously, which was clause 128(4)(b) and (5)(b); perhaps Hansard would be kind enough to clarify that point to make me look slightly more articulate than I in fact am—should be used only very carefully and very rarely. The Committee should be clear on that, and that the bias, as it were—the assumption—should be on the side of disclosure rather than withholding information.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 137 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 138
Appeals against OFCOM decisions relating to the register under section 81
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Barbara Keeley
Good morning, Ms Rees. It is a pleasure to serve on the Committee with you in the Chair. Clause 138 allows companies to make appeals against Ofcom’s decisions regarding the categorisation of services within categories 1, 2A or 2B.
We have argued, many times, that we believe the Government’s size-based approach to categorisation is flawed. Our preference for an approach based on risk is backed up by the views of multiple stakeholders and the Joint Committee. It was encouraging to hear last week of the Minister’s intention to look again at the issues of categorisation, and I hope we will see movement on that on Report.
Clause 138 sets out that where a regulated provider has filed an appeal, they are exempt from carrying out the duties in the Bill that normally apply to services designated as category 1, 2A or 2B. That is concerning, given that there is no timeframe in which the appeals process must be concluded.
While the right to appeal is important, it is feasible that many platforms will raise appeals about their categorisation to delay the start of their duties under the Bill. I understand that the platforms will still have to comply with the duties that apply to all regulated services, but for a service that has been classified by Ofcom as high risk, it is potentially dangerous that none of the risk assessments on measures to assess harm will be completed while the appeal is taking place. Does the Minister agree that the appeals process must be concluded as quickly as possible to minimise the risk? Will he consider putting a timeframe on that?
Clause 139 allows for appeals against decisions by Ofcom to issue notices about dealing with terrorism and child sexual abuse material, as well as a confirmation decision or a penalty notice. As I have said, in general the right to appeal is important. However, would an appeals system work if, for example, a company were appealing to a notice under clause 103? In what circumstances does the Minister imagine that a platform would appeal a notice by Ofcom requiring the platform to use accredited technology to identify child sexual abuse content and swiftly take down that content? It is vital that appeals processes are concluded as rapidly as possible, so that we do not risk people being exposed to harmful or dangerous content.
Chris Philp
The shadow Minister has set out the purpose of the clauses, which provide for, in clause 138 appeal rights for decisions relating to registration under clause 81, and in clause 139 appeals against Ofcom notices.
I agree that it is important that judicial decisions in this area get made quickly. I note that the appeals are directly to the relevant upper tribunal, which is a higher tier of the tribunal system and tends to be a little less congested than the first-tier tribunal, which often gets used for some first-instance matters. I hope that appeals going to the upper tribunal, directly to that more senior level, provides some comfort.
On putting in a time limit, the general principle is that matters concerning listing are reserved to the judiciary. I recall from my time as a Minister in the Ministry of Justice, that the judiciary guards its independence fiercely. Whether it is the Senior President of Tribunals or the Lord Chief Justice, they consider listing matters to be the preserve of the judiciary, not the Executive or the legislature. Compelling the judiciary to hear a case in a certain time might well be considered to infringe on such principles.
We can agree, however—I hope the people making those listing decisions hear that we believe, that Parliament believes—that it is important to do this quickly, in particular where there is a risk of harm to individuals. Where there is risk to individuals, especially children, but more widely as well, those cases should be heard very expeditiously indeed.
The hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South also asked about the basis on which appeals might be made and decided. I think that is made fairly clear. For example, clause 139(3) makes it clear that, in deciding an appeal, the upper tribunal will use the same principles as would be applied by the High Court to an application for judicial review—so, standard JR terms—which in the context of notices served or decisions made under clause 103 might include whether the power had been exercised in conformity with statute. If the power were exercised or purported to be exercised in a manner not authorised by statute, that would be one grounds for appeal, or if a decision were considered so grossly unreasonable that no reasonable decision maker could make it, that might be a grounds for appeal as well.
I caution the Committee, however: I am not a lawyer and my interpretation of judicial review principles should not be taken as definitive. Lawyers will advise their clients when they come to apply the clause in practice and they will not take my words in Committee as definitive when it comes to determining “standard judicial review principles”—those are well established in law, regardless of my words just now.
Barbara Keeley
There is a concern that platforms might raise appeals about their categorisation in order to delay the start of their duties under the Bill. How would the Minister act if that happened—if a large number of appeals were pending and the duties under the Bill therefore did not commence?
Chris Philp
Clearly, resourcing of the upper tribunal is a matter decided jointly by the Lord Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Justice, in consultation with the Lord Chief Justice, and, in this case, the Senior President of Tribunals. Parliament would expect the resourcing of that part of the upper tribunal to be such that cases could be heard in an expedited matter. Particularly where cases concern the safety of the public—and particularly of children—we expect that to be done as quickly as it can.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 138 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 139 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 140
Power to make super-complaints
Kirsty Blackman
I beg to move amendment 143, in clause 140, page 121, line 1, after “services” insert “, consumers”.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 144, in clause 140, page 121, line 2, after “users” insert “, consumers”.
Amendment 145, in clause 140, page 121, line 4, after “services” insert “, consumers”.
Amendment 146, in clause 140, page 121, line 5, after “users” insert “, consumers”.
Amendment 147, in clause 140, page 121, line 6, at end insert “, consumers”.
Amendment 148, in clause 140, page 121, line 7, after “users” insert “, consumers”.
Amendment 149, in clause 140, page 121, line 14, after “service” insert “, consumers”.
Amendment 150, in clause 140, page 121, line 18, at end insert “, consumers”.
Amendment 151, in clause 140, page 121, line 19, after “users” insert “, consumers”.
Amendment 152, in clause 140, page 121, line 25, at end insert—
“‘consumers’” means individuals in the United Kingdom acting for purposes that are wholly or mainly outside the trade, business, craft or profession of the individuals concerned.”
Kirsty Blackman
The Committee has been flexible about grouping clauses should it make sense to do so. I ask that the Committee allow me to speak to this set of amendments alone. It does not make sense for me to discuss these amendments and amendment 77 at the same time. If I could separately discuss amendment 77, as it says on the Order Paper, then I would appreciate that.
This group of amendments specifically relate to consumer protection. It is the case that online fraud facilitated through social media platforms and search engines is one of the most prevalent forms of crime today. Reported incidents increased significantly during the pandemic, and often resulted in victims losing life-changing amounts of money. In addition to the financial impact of being scammed, there is the emotional and physical impact. We know it has a significant effect on people’s mental health. I am glad that the Government listened to the Joint Committee and the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, and changed the legislation to include fraud.
Amendment 143 is about expanding who can make super-complaints, in order to reflect the expansion of the Bill to include fraud. The Bill does not leave a lot of the details around super-complaints to be made in secondary legislation. These amendments specifically allow groups that are acting on behalf of consumers, or those who are making requests on behalf of consumers, to make super-complaints. I am not sure that if somebody is acting on behalf of consumers that fits into the definitions of users of the service and people representing users of the service. Perhaps the Minister can convince me otherwise. If consumers are losing significant amounts of money, or where there is risk of significant numbers of people losing significant amounts of money—for example, where a search engine allows fraudulent advertising to be the top result—including “consumers” in the Bill will allow organisations acting on behalf of consumers to take action. It may be that the Minister can give me some comfort in this, and let us know that organisations acting on behalf of consumers would potentially—if they meet other criteria—be able to put forward a super-complaint.
I understand that there are other methods of complaining—it is possible for other complaints to be made. However, given the significant increase in the risk to consumers in the past few years, it would seem sensible that the Minister give some consideration to whether this is adequately covered in the Bill, and whether consumers are adequately protected in this section of the Bill, as well as in the additional flawed clauses that the Minister added between publication of the original draft Bill and the Bill that we have before us today.
Barbara Keeley
The Bill currently specifies that super-complaints can be made back to Ofcom by bodies representing users or members of the public. The addition of consumer representatives through the amendments is important. Consumer representatives are a key source of information about harms to users of online services, which are widespread, and would be regulated by this legislation. We support the amendments, which would include consumers on the list as an entity that is eligible to make super-complaints.
Chris Philp
Clearly, we want the super-complaint function to be as effective as possible and for groups of relevant people, users or members of the public to be able to be represented by an eligible entity to raise super-complaints. I believe we are all on the same page in wanting to do that. If I am honest, I am a little confused as to what the addition of the term “consumers” will add. The term “users” is defined quite widely, via clause 140(6), which then refers to clause 181, where, as debated previously, a “user” is defined widely to include anyone using a service, whether registered or not. So if somebody stumbles across a website, they count as a user, but the definition being used in clause 140 about bringing super-complaints also includes “members of the public”—that is, regular citizens. Even if they are not a user of that particular service, they could still be represented in bringing a complaint.
Given that, by definition, “users” and “members of the public” already cover everybody in the United Kingdom, I am not quite sure what the addition of the term “consumers” adds. By definition, consumers are a subset of the group “users” or “members of the public”. It follows that in seeking to become an eligible entity, no eligible entity will purport to act for everybody in the United Kingdom; they will always be seeking to define some kind of subset of people. That might be children, people with a particular vulnerability or, indeed, consumers, who are one such subset of “members of the public” or “users”. I do not honestly understand what the addition of the word “consumers” adds here when everything is covered already.
Kirsty Blackman
Will the Minister explicitly say that he thinks that an eligible entity, acting on behalf of consumers, could, if it fulfils the other criteria, bring a super-complaint?
Chris Philp
Yes, definitely. That is the idea of an eligible entity, which could seek to represent a particular demographic, such as children or people from a particular marginalised group, or it could represent people who have a particular interest, which would potentially include consumers. So I can confirm that that is the intention behind the drafting of the Bill. Having offered that clarification and made clear that the definition is already as wide as it conceivably can be—we cannot get wider than “members of the public”—I ask the hon. Member for Aberdeen North to consider withdrawing the amendments, particularly as there are so many. It will take a long time to vote on them.
Kirsty Blackman
I thank the Minister for the clarification. Given that he has explicitly said that he expects that groups acting on behalf of consumers could, if they fulfil the other criteria, be considered as eligible entities for making super-complaints, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendment proposed: 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.—(Alex Davies-Jones.)
Kirsty Blackman
I beg to move amendment 77, in clause 140, page 121, line 9, leave out subsection (2).
This amendment removes the tests that complaints have to be of particular importance in order to be admissible.
When I first read clause 140, subsection (2) raised a significant number of red flags for me. The subsection might be reasonable if we did not have giant companies—social media platforms particularly—that significant numbers of people across the UK use regularly. Facebook might be counted as a “single regulated service”, but 85% of UK residents—57.1 million people—had a Facebook account earlier this year. Twitter is used by 28% of people living in the UK, which is 19 million users. TikTok is at 19%, which is significantly less, but still a very high number of people—13 million users. I can understand the decision that a super-complaint picking on one certain company might be a bit extreme, but it does not make sense when we are considering the Facebooks of this world.
If someone is making a complaint about a single regulated service and that service is Facebook, Twitter, TikTok or another large platform—or a new, yet-to-be-created platform—that significant numbers of people use, there is no justification for treating that complaint differently just because it is against a single entity. When a complaint is made against Facebook—I am picking on Facebook because 85% of the UK public are members of it; it is an absolute behemoth—I would like there to be no delay in its being taken to Ofcom. I would like Ofcom not to have to check and justify that the complaint is “of particular importance”.
Subsection (2)(a) states that one of the tests of the complaint should be that it “is of particular importance” or, as subsection (2)(b) notes, that it
“relates to the impacts on a particularly large number of users of the service or members of the public.”
I do not understand what
“large number of users of the service”
would mean. Does a large number of the users of Facebook mean 50% of its users? Does it mean 10%? What is a large number? Is that in percentage terms, or is it something that is likely to impact 1 million people? Is that a large number? The second part—
“large number…of members of the public”—
is again difficult to define. I do not think there is justification for this additional hoop just because the complaint relates to a single regulated service.
Where a complaint relates to a very small platform that is not causing significant illegal harm, I understand that Ofcom may want to consider whether it will accept, investigate and give primacy and precedence to that. If the reality is that the effect is non-illegal, fairly minor and impacts a fairly small number of people, in the order of hundreds instead of millions, I can understand why Ofcom might not want to give that super-complaint status and might not want to carry out the level of investigation and response necessary for a super-complaint. But I do not see any circumstances in which Ofcom could justify rejecting a complaint against Facebook simply because it is a complaint against a single entity. The reality is that if something affects one person on Facebook, it will affect significantly more than one person on Facebook because of Facebook’s absolutely massive user base. Therefore this additional hoop is unrealistic.
Paragraph (a), about the complaint being “of particular importance”, is too woolly. Does it relate only to complaints about things that are illegal? Does it relate only to things that are particularly urgent—something that is happening now and that is having an impact today? Or is there some other criterion that we do not yet know about?
I would very much appreciate it if the Minister could give some consideration to amendment 77, which would simply remove subsection (2). If he is unwilling to remove that subsection, I wonder whether we could meet halfway and whether, let us say, category 1 providers could all be excluded from the “single provider” exemption, because they have already been assessed by Ofcom to have particular risks on their platforms. That group is wider than the three names that I have mentioned, and I think that that would be a reasonable and realistic decision for the Government—and direction for Ofcom—to take. It would be sensible.
If the Government believe that there is more information—more direction—that they could add to the clause, it would be great if the Minister could lay some of that out here and let us know how he intends subsection (2) to operate in practice and how he expects Ofcom to use it. I get that people might want it there as an additional layer of protection, but I genuinely do not imagine that it can be justified in the case of the particularly large providers, where there is significant risk of harm happening.
I will illustrate that with one last point. The Government specifically referred earlier to when Facebook—Meta—stopped proactively scanning for child sexual abuse images because of an issue in Europe. The Minister mentioned the significant amount of harm and the issues that were caused in a very small period. And that was one provider—the largest provider that people use and access. That massive amount of harm can be caused in a very small period. I do not support allowing Meta or any other significantly large platform to have a “get out of jail” card. I do not want them to be able to go to Ofcom and say, “Hey, Ofcom, we’re challenging you on the basis that we don’t think this complaint is of particular importance” or “We don’t think the complaint relates to the impacts on a particularly large number of users of the service or members of the public.” I do not want them to have that ability to wriggle out of things because this subsection is in the Bill, so any consideration that the Minister could give to improving clause 140 and subsection (2) would be very much appreciated.
Barbara Keeley
We support the SNP’s amendment 77, moved by the hon. Member for Aberdeen North. The super-complaints mechanism introduced by clause 140 is a useful device for reporting numerous, widespread concerns about the harm caused by multiple or single services or providers. Subsection (1) includes the conditions on the subjects of super-complaints, which can relate to one or more services. However, as the hon. Member has pointed out, that is caveated by subsection (2), under which a super-complaint that refers to a single service or provider must prove, as she has just outlined, that it is “of particular importance” or
“relates to the impacts on a particularly large number of users of the service or members of the public.”
Given the various hoops through which a super-complaint already has to jump, it is not clear why the additional conditions are needed. Subsection (2) significantly muddies the waters and complicates the provisions for super-complaints. For instance, how does the Minister expect Ofcom to decide whether the complaint is of particular importance? What criteria does he expect the regulator to use? Why include it as a metric in the first place when the super-complaint has already met the standards set out in subsection (1)?
Chris Philp
I think the Committee, and the House, are pretty unanimous in agreeing that the power to make super-complaints is important. As we have discussed, there are all kinds of groups, such as children, under-represented groups and consumers, that would benefit from being represented where systemic issues are not being addressed and that Ofcom may have somehow overlooked or missed in the discharge of its enforcement powers.
I would observe in passing that one of the bases on which super-complaints can be made—this may be of interest to my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley—is where there is a material risk under clause 140(1)(b) of
“significantly adversely affecting the right to freedom of expression within the law of users of the services or members of the public”.
That clause is another place in the Bill where freedom of expression is expressly picked out and supported. If freedom of expression is ever threatened in a way that we have not anticipated and that the Bill does not provide for, there is a particular power here for a particular free speech group, such as the Free Speech Union, to make a super-complaint. I hope that my hon. Friend finds the fact that freedom of expression is expressly laid out there reassuring.
Let me now speak to the substance of amendment 77, tabled by the hon. Member for Aberdeen North. It is important to first keep in mind the purpose of the super-complaints, which, as I said a moment ago, is to provide a basis for raising issues of widespread and systemic importance. That is the reason for some of the criteria in sections (1)(a), (b) and (c), and why we have subsection (2)—because we want to ensure that super-complaints are raised only if they are of a very large scale or have a profound impact on freedom of speech or some other matter of particular importance. That is why the tests, hurdles and thresholds set out in clause 140(2) have to be met.
If we were to remove subsection (2), as amendment 77 seeks to, that would significantly lower the threshold. We would end up having super-complaints that were almost individual in nature. We set out previously why we think an ombudsman-type system or having super-complaints used for near-individual matters would not be appropriate. That is why the clause is there, and I think it is reasonable that it is.
The hon. Lady asked a couple of questions about how this arrangement might operate in practice. She asked whether a company such Facebook would be caught if it alone were doing something inappropriate. The answer is categorically yes, because the condition in clause 140(2)(b)—
“impacts on a particularly large number of users”,
which would be a large percentage of Facebook’s users,
“or members of the public”—
would be met. Facebook and—I would argue—any category 1 company would, by definition, be affecting large numbers of people. The very definition of category 1 includes the concept of reach—the number of people being affected. That means that, axiomatically, clause 140(2)(b) would be met by any category 1 company.
The hon. Lady also raised the question of Facebook, for a period of time in Europe, unilaterally ceasing to scan for child sexual exploitation and abuse images, which, as mentioned, led to huge numbers of child sex abuse images and, consequently, huge numbers of paedophiles not being detected. She asks how these things would be handled under the clause if somebody wanted to raise a super-complaint about that. Hopefully, Ofcom would stop them happening in the first place, but if it did not the super-complaint redress mechanism would be the right one. These things would categorically be caught by clause 140(2)(a), because they are clearly of particular importance.
In any reasonable interpretation of the words, the test of “particular importance” is manifestly met when it comes to stopping child sexual exploitation and abuse and the detection of those images. That example would categorically qualify under the clause, and a super-complaint could, if necessary, be brought. I hope it would never be necessary, because that is the kind of thing I would expect Ofcom to catch.
Having talked through the examples from the hon. Lady, I hope I have illustrated how the clause will ensure that either large-scale issues affecting large numbers of people or issues that are particularly serious will still qualify for super-complaint status with subsection (2) left in the Bill. Given those assurances, I urge the hon. Member to consider withdrawing her amendment.
Kirsty Blackman
I welcome the Minister’s fairly explicit explanation that he believes that every category 1 company would be in scope, even if there was a complaint against one single provider. I would like to push the amendment to a vote on the basis of the comments I made earlier and the fact that each of these platforms is different. We have heard concerns about, for example, Facebook groups being interested in celebrating eight-year-olds’ birthdays. We have heard about the amount of porn on Twitter, which Facebook does not have in the same way. We have heard about the kind of algorithmic stuff that takes people down a certain path on TikTok. We have heard all these concerns, but they are all specific to that one provider. They are not a generic complaint that could be brought toward a group of providers.
Chris Philp
Would the hon. Lady not agree that in all those examples—including TikTok and leading people down dark paths—the conditions in subsection (2) would be met? The examples she has just referred to are, I would say, certainly matters of particular importance. Because the platforms she mentions are big in scale, they would also meet the test of scale in paragraph (b). In fact, only one of the tests has to be met—it is one or the other. In all the examples she has just given, not just one test—paragraph (a) or (b)— would be met, but both. So all the issues she has just raised would make a super-complaint eligible to be made.
Kirsty Blackman
I am glad the Minister confirms that he expects that that would be the case. I am clearer now that he has explained it, but on my reading of the clause, the definitions of “particular importance” or
“a particularly large number of users…or members of the public”
are not clear. I wanted to ensure that this was put on the record. While I do welcome the Minister’s clarification, I would like to push amendment 77 to a vote.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill (First sitting)
Tuesday 21st June 2022
(2 years, 6 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 View all Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 21 June 2022 - (21 Jun 2022)
The Chair
Good morning, colleagues. I have a few preliminary announcements. Hansard would love to have any speaking notes emailed to them at hansardnotes@ parliament.uk. Keep your phones and devices on silent please. Date Time Witness Tuesday 21 June Until no later than 10.10 am Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser, UK Research & Innovation Tuesday 21 June Until no later than 10.50 am Tracy Brabin, Mayor of West Yorkshire; West Yorkshire Combined Authority Tuesday 21 June Until no later than 11.25 am Professor Mairi Spowage, University of Strathclyde Tuesday 21 June Until no later than 2.40 pm Greater Manchester Combined Authority; West Midlands Combined Authority; Solace Tuesday 21 June Until no later than 3.20 pm Professor Graeme Atherton, University of West London; We’re Right Here; Institute for Public Policy Research Tuesday 21 June Until no later than 4.00 pm Local Government Association; County Councils Network; District Councils Network Thursday 23 June Until no later than 12.15 pm Royal Town Planning Institute; Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors; Savills Thursday 23 June Until no later than 1.00 pm National Association of Local Councils; Neighbourhood Planners London Thursday 23 June Until no later than 2.30 pm Andy Street, Mayor of the West Midlands Thursday 23 June Until no later than 3.10 pm Create Streets; Heritage Alliance; Royal Institute of British Architects Thursday 23 June Until no later than 3.55 pm Wildlife and Countryside Link; ADEPT; CPRE Thursday 23 June Until no later than 4.15 pm Town and Country Planning Association Thursday 23 June Until no later than 4.45 pm Chartered Institute of Housing; National Housing Federation Thursday 23 June Until no later than 5.15 pm Onward; Centre for Policy Studies
Today, we will first consider the programme motion on the amendment paper. We will then consider a motion to enable the reporting of written evidence for publication, and then a motion to allow us to deliberate in private about our questions, before the fun and games of the oral evidence sessions. In view of the time available, I hope we can take these matters formally without debate, but that is entirely up to you.
Let us deal first of all with the programme motion. I call the Minister to move the programme motion, which was discussed yesterday by the Programming Sub-Committee for the Bill.
Ordered,
That—
(1) the Committee shall (in addition to its first meeting at 9.25 am on Tuesday 21 June) meet—
(a) at 2.00 pm on Tuesday 21 June;
(b) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 23 June;
(c) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 28 June;
(d) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 30 June;
(e) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 5 July;
(f) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 7 July;
(g) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 12 July;
(h) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 14 July;
(i) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 19 July;
(j) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 6 September;
(k) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 8 September;
(l) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 13 September;
(m) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 15 September;
(n) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 20 September;
(2) the Committee shall hear oral evidence in accordance with the following Table:
(3) proceedings on consideration of the Bill in Committee shall be taken in the following order: Clauses 1 to 13; Schedule 1; Clauses 14 to 24; Schedule 2; Clauses 25 to 30; Schedule 3; Clauses 31 to 53; Schedule 4; Clauses 54 to 74; Schedule 5; Clauses 75 to 83; Schedule 6; Clauses 84 to 87; Schedule 7; Clauses 88 to 91; Schedule 8; Clauses 92 to 97; Schedule 9; Clauses 98 to 100; Schedule 10; Clauses 101 to 113; Schedule 11; Clauses 114 to 133; Schedule 12; Clauses 134 to 137; Schedule 13; Clauses 138 to 144; Schedule 14; Clauses 145 to 160; Schedule 15; Clauses 161 to 164; Schedule 16; Clauses 165 to 184; Schedule 17; Clauses 185 to 196; new Clauses; new Schedules; remaining proceedings on the Bill;
(4) the proceedings shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at 5.00 pm on Tuesday 20 September. —(Stuart Andrew.)
The Chair
The Committee will therefore proceed to line-by-line consideration on Tuesday 28 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.—(Stuart Andrew.)
The Chair
Copies of written evidence that the Committee receives will be made available in the Committee Room and will be circulated to members of the Committee 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.—(Stuart Andrew.)
The Chair
Q
We will now hear oral evidence from Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser, chief executive of UK Research and Innovation. Before calling the first Member to ask a question, I remind all Members that questions should be limited to matters within the scope of the Bill and that we will stick to the timings in the programme motion that the Committee has just agreed. For this session, we have until 10.10 am. Dame Ottoline, you are very welcome. Would you introduce yourself for the record?
Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser: It is a pleasure to be here. My name is Ottoline Leyser. As you said, I am the CEO of UK Research and Innovation, which is the main public sector funder for research and innovation in the UK. We invest about half of the public sector research and innovation spend, right across the UK.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Neil O'Brien)
Q
Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser: Goodness, that is a big question. My interest and expertise are particularly around the R&D aspects of the Bill. One of the really encouraging and exciting things going on across the Government at the moment is the attempt to tackle some of these huge cross-cutting issues, and levelling up is very much one of those things. That absolutely requires concerted, co-ordinated action, right across the Government, through virtually all the Departments, in a way that is aligned and co-ordinated and which really delivers on very broad priorities. Levelling up is a really good example. Net zero is another one.
Those kinds of things require different ways of working. This Bill is one framework in which that kind of joined-up thinking can be set out and embedded in the way in which government works. Yes, I think it absolutely has the opportunity to deliver on the ambitions set out in the White Paper. That depends very much on the alignment between the mechanisms and framework set out in the Bill and the missions element that is core to pushing forward the White Paper agenda.
Neil O'Brien
Q
Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser: Absolutely. Research and development has an important role to play in the levelling-up agenda, in the context of economic regeneration right across the country. What we see at the moment is huge disparity in all kinds of measures, but one of them is total factor productivity across the UK, and R&D-intensive business and industry are critical to generating those high value-add activities that support economic growth across the UK, bringing with them a whole variety of high-quality jobs. One of the things that is important to emphasise is that innovation-led growth is not just about jobs for innovators; it is a huge ecosystem of activity that goes around that, which will provide economic growth and high-quality jobs and opportunities for people in local innovation clusters right across the country.
That is the goal. The role that UKRI needs to play is critical in that. We have this extraordinary opportunity, with the formation of UKRI four years ago, of bringing together all the disciplines and all the sectors. In the same way as I mentioned that cross-Government co-ordination is needed, cross-R&D co-ordination is needed to deliver some of the activities. We span the whole system in UKRI, so we can build back better aligned investment that can support open economic growth—as I said—right across the UK. We need that balance, co-ordinating across different inputs, to drive growth which is led by R&D and innovation. That is multiple things, some of which are in my remit and some of which are certainly not—that is another key point.
The co-ordination locally is important, but in the broader national context—that is also important. This is not about fragmentation; in fact, it has to be the opposite of fragmentation. While local empowerment and local choice are critical, that has to be embedded in a much wider national context. We cannot have a situation in which, across the country, every region decides that it aims to specialise in the same thing. That would obviously be incredibly counterproductive for everyone. That balance between national co-ordination and local empowerment is critical across my kind of investment and across the broader range of leaders as set out in the White Paper.
Neil O'Brien
Q
Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser: It is good to have those kinds of clear targets and goals. That is helpful. I think it is a long-term ambition, and that is another critical element of both the Bill and the missions, having those clearly articulated long-term goals to steer towards. The SR element of it is obviously much more rapid, and made in the context of the rising R&D budget across the SR, so I think it is achievable.
From my point of view, it is important to stress that our spend distribution does not meet the target from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. There is the broader Government target for the whole of investment, of 30% and 40% set out in the missions, and then there is a specific BEIS target of 55% outside the greater south-east. Our spend does not meet that at the moment—we are only part of the BEIS spend—but the critical element from that point of view is that in our open competitions for funding, we have flat success rates across the country. The news that we are investing more in the greater south-east than outside that area is because we do not receive the applications.
A lot of what we need to do is capacity building. We need to think hard about how we support the excellent research and innovation that we see right across the country to galvanise and bid into our schemes, making sure that the schemes we put forward are equally open to everyone right across the country and that the targeted interventions that we put in place, of which there are some—they are only going to be a small proportion of our overall investment—are carefully considered in the context of the wider capacity-building activity to drive up opportunity for everyone right across the country.
There is excellence everywhere, however, and we can see that, for example, in parts of the recent research excellence framework. One hundred and fifty-seven universities across the UK made submissions to have their research assessed in that exercise. There is world-leading research in 99% of them, according to the assessment process, which can lead activity. Harnessing the benefit of that will be critical to the levelling-up agenda and to the wider economic recovery from the pandemic that we need to drive.
Getting back to your question—are those the right ambitions?—I suppose I am inherently more in favour of outcome and output ambitions than I am of input ambitions but, none the less, I think having those clear targets behind which we can align our activity in UKRI and more broadly across Government is very helpful in embedding this agenda right across everything that we do. That will be critical to success.
Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)
Q
Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser: That is quite a difficult question to answer. At the moment, things are very challenging right across the country. We have the inflationary pressures caused by a combination of the tail of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. That has come on the back of the pandemic, which also caused a lot of economic and social shockwaves across the country. Both those things, if anything, amplify disparities for a whole variety of reasons. Because of those factors, it would be difficult to argue that things are getting better.
Having said that, and looping back to what I said at the beginning, I am very encouraged by the ambition—reflected in the Bill and the White Paper—to take on some of the really big, long-standing and multifaceted problems; to get to the root of them and tackle them through this concerted, aligned action. That is not typical, because we have tended to work in silos when dealing with particular aspects, which does not work as well as integrated, concerted actions. A lot of the important problems, such as health inequalities, are multifaceted, and we do not solve them by simply looking at, for example, the health system. I am encouraged by the new approaches that are being taken to try to address some of the problems, but I do not think they are yet biting.
Alex Norris
Q
Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser: I think that, because these are really long-term missions, writing them into the Bill has a lot of risk. As we have just discussed, maybe the missions are not ambitious enough in some contexts; as time moves on, that gap might widen and it may be important to increase the ambition in a mission. There need to be embedded mechanisms to keep under review the success of the missions and then to increase them, for example, if that is the appropriate response, or to respond to an entirely new opportunity that was not envisaged when the missions were set. So not writing the missions into the Bill is actually a sensible approach.
Having said that, I agree with you that the whole point about missions is that they have to be really clear, identifiable and quantifiable targets that we are driving towards through multiple, concerted actions, and there has to be continuous monitoring of the progress being made. That has to be a key element of how the missions are run. I would absolutely hope that there would be external scrutiny, as well as transparency in the publication of the progress towards these goals, and then at least parliamentary scrutiny, which I am sure will be rigorous, of that progress and of the actions that need to be taken if the progress is not as robust as one would like.
Should there be some completely independent external body? In the spirit of the missions, only if it has a really clear purpose and remit beyond what can be achieved through the transparent publication of progress towards the targets and the scrutiny that there will already be on those targets. I agree that what is happening needs to be really clear, as does what needs to be done if progress does not happen fast enough. There are many options for how that is achieved and I am sure the Committee will have the expertise to make choices about which of those options is preferable.
Alex Norris
Q
Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser: This is a topic of tremendous interest in UKRI: how do you build clusters of activity that create self-sustaining positive feedback cycles that really grow things, anchored in a place? A lot of work has been done examining this over the years, in many places. As usual, it is a combination of factors. In many cases there is a lot of evidence that anchor institutions seed a lot of that activity, be that an excellent university, some kind of prime industrial presence or an excellent research institute—for example, a public sector research establishment or a catapult. Some kind of anchor activity fuels a critical element of the cycle, which could be on the research side or the innovation side, or hopefully a combination of the two. That is one of the key components.
The other absolutely critical element is about people—skills and people. A local environment anchors people there by providing the kind of living and working environment that attracts people to a region. Anchor institutions contribute to that, but so does the skills environment—the skills, training and opportunities that are available. For me, joining all those things up is particularly important. In the context of people, such an environment is one in which people go for a particular reason for a particular job, but the opportunities around that environment are such that there are other jobs that are also exciting.
It is about getting that dynamic mobility of people between, say, the university sector, the SME sector—small and medium-sized enterprises—and the more prime business sector, with people moving around and all the allied activities needed to fuel that, such as the local policy and the investment communities that go with that. Joining all that stuff up in the local ecosystem, through strong leadership locally—a critical element—and those key anchor institutions, provides exciting opportunities for people to build a whole variety of careers, working through that ecosystem.
Those are the key ingredients, and UKRI obviously has a role in supporting several of those, but they can only be successful in the context of that broader alignment between local leadership and the wider attractors needed in a local environment to bring people in and keep them there: transport networks, cultural institutions—those kinds of things.
Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)
Q
Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser: I am not sure exactly which funding you are referring to. From the point of view of the funds that are being allocated through UKRI, as I mentioned earlier, the funds that are explicitly placed—targeted—are not a very large proportion of our overall funds. For me, the key goal is to think about it in the context of the capacity-building element that I said is so important. There should be local empowerment and local consideration about what would be the best interventions in those places.
We have run the strength in places programme for a while, and it has run on a fully open competition. One of the advantages of fully open competitions is that they provide an equal opportunity for everybody to begin with, which is good. On the other hand, they are slower and more bureaucratic, in that you have to run the open competition. There is an interesting balance to be struck between that process and the ability more rapidly and fluidly to allocate money to places, so that they can use the money in a way that targets their local priorities.
We are in the process of working out how best to work to deliver the new funds that have come through the recent spending review, which are being targeted specifically at three regions. Those regions were selected based on evidence that that kind of injection of cash could really drive the capacity building that I described. There are very high-quality objective measures of how you can consider that capacity in different places and, therefore, the impact of the funding that goes in. I would absolutely agree with you that it is really important, in the context of a levelling-up agenda, that funding is seen to be allocated fairly with the opportunity for everyone to access the benefits of those funds.
Patricia Gibson
Q
Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser: I am specifically interested and involved in the funds associated with R&D investment, and the important thing about R&D investment is that there has to be the ability to use it effectively locally to drive and build local capacity in R&D activity. That has got to be the governing choice. It is clear that simply transferring money to places that are most in need of levelling-up, with the instruction that it should be spent on R&D, is not an effective way to tackle the specific, targeted issues in every region. As an accounting officer for this money, I have to deliver value for money, and that value for money has to be based on the ability of regions to use that money effectively to drive their capacity building in R&D activity. Wider investments should be made on different criteria, but for R&D investment it has to be R&D criteria.
Patricia Gibson
Q
Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser: UKRI is deeply engaged with the devolved Administrations on R&D investment. We have regular meetings and are working very hard to ensure that everything we do right across our investment portfolio, quite independently of the levelling-up agenda, is properly sensitive to the variation in need across the UK. Actually, we in UKRI have a lot to learn in the context of the incredibly successful activity going on in all the devolved Administrations on thoughtful, targeted investment, making use of the multiple streams that are available to drive up local economic growth.
I visited Northern Ireland fairly recently, where they have done a fantastic job of increasing the R&D intensity in a very effective way through this kind of careful, concerted investment in particular areas that are a focus for Northern Ireland. I absolutely agree that deep consideration of the devolved Administrations is very important, both in making sure that what we do supports the whole the UK, and in learning from very successful interventions in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland.
The Chair
I call Tim Farron. Will you bear in mind I have another question after you? Thank you.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
Q
Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser: As I said previously, I completely agree that this is a multifaceted problem that has to be thought of in a joined-up way, which is why the overall approach set out in the Bill is good. My role is CEO of UKRI, so I am not in a position to provide any expertise or advice on how to solve the housing problems, but I would hope that you would have the opportunity to ask those who are able to address that question to give evidence to the Committee.
Tim Farron
Q
Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser: Again, the specifics of that question are well outside my area of my expertise. From an R&D point of view, I hope I have been stressing all along that the key to success is specificity—it is understanding local regions and therefore understanding what the bottlenecks are to their growth and targeting investment very specifically in the context of those bottlenecks. That obviously requires really deep local knowledge and local empowerment.
I am absolutely in favour of careful consideration of local needs in the investments that are made. That is very much how UKRI is going about thinking about our R&D investments. I would hope that that approach is considered more widely, because I do not see how one can tackle these problems unless it is through putting in place specific, targeted, well thought-through locally aligned interventions.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
Q
Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser: As I have said, this careful alignment of multiple interventions is crucial precisely because if one rushes in with a particular input, its knock-on consequences are not always foreseen, and we need to be able to respond to them and adjust accordingly. It is critical to think hard upstream about the aligned series of investments being made, and to monitor and feed back, so that where the evidence begins to grow and the chosen interventions have some of those knock-on and unforeseen consequences, they are identified and rectified before things get dug in too deeply. Exactly as you say, growing those clusters is very much about creating the right ecosystem and the right sets of interactions between the different parts. That drives positive feedback and sucks in additional investment in the virtuous cycle that we are all seeking to build. That is critical.
The answers are very specific and depend on the particular element of the overall system that you are looking at. From our point of view, we are really keen to ensure that our investments build synergy between local specialisations and growth, and national capability and capacity. It is important that our investments outside the greater south-east do not in any way undermine the extraordinary powerhouse that the greater south-east is for our R&D activity, and that, rather, those two things are synergistic with one another and that the skills and specialist areas developed in particular parts of the UK work in synergy with activity in other parts of the UK. That local-national map is critical to ensure that we do not drive the negative consequences of interventions, which, as you have highlighted, are a risk.
Rachael Maskell
Q
Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser: These are long-term problems to fix, and they need multiple concerted and co-ordinated interventions. To me, a critical element is getting long-term cross-Government commitment to drive this through to completion. That is a very hard thing to achieve in the context of our parliamentary democracy, because those interventions will last over multiple Parliaments and everybody has to be behind them. That challenging aspect is, I hope, deliverable through the combination of the Bill and the mission statements, but, as we discussed earlier, it will require relentless focus on the missions, and accountability for delivering them through successive Parliaments.
The Chair
Professor Leyser, thank you so much for your evidence, and in particular for the kind things you said about Northern Ireland—not that I am biased in any way whatsoever.
Examination of Witnesses
Tracy Brabin and Ben Still gave evidence.
The Chair
We will now hear oral evidence from Tracy Brabin, Mayor of West Yorkshire. Should I say welcome home, Tracy, or welcome back? The panel has until 10.50 am. For the record, will you please introduce yourself formally?
Tracy Brabin: Hello everybody. It is good to be back, even if it is virtually. I am Tracy Brabin, the Mayor of West Yorkshire, and I am joined by—
Ben Still: Hello everybody. I am Ben Still and I am managing director of West Yorkshire Combined Authority.
Alex Norris
Q
Tracy Brabin: Thank you so much, Alex. Let me open by saying how welcome the Bill is. Finally, we have got to a point where it feels like it is going to be a real thing. The mission statements are also very welcome. I chair the M10, which is the group of Mayors around the country, and we are very positive about this next step and the opportunities for us to work with Government to really understand what devolution is about. The idea of more Mayors across the country joining the M10 is incredibly welcome.
When it comes to more powers, I think there is a more fundamental question: where do we want to get to with this Bill, and what is the strategic relationship that we want to build with Mayors and with Government? If we are taking powers from Whitehall and giving them to regions and elected Mayors, what freedoms are we then giving to those Mayors to deliver? In the Bill, there seems to be a focus very much, and quite rightly, on the accountability of Government, but there does not seem to be that equivalence of the accountability of Mayors to deliver.
We have said all along, in every meeting we have been in with Ministers, “We can help you deliver on your missions.” For example, on climate change, we have met the Government and the M10 has met the Government to talk to them about more powers and how we could help hit the zero carbon target of 2050. In our region, our target is 2038, so we could be outliers for Government to help deliver. However, there is not that detail and that understanding of who is going to deliver these outcomes. I think the Committee will wrestle with that over the next few months. Whose responsibility to deliver the outcomes?
I have always said that the way to level up in West Yorkshire is to have that London-style transport system, which is one of the mission statements. Unfortunately, the integrated rail plan meant that we were not able to benefit from the billions of pounds of investment that would come with that strategic project. It is really important, as an attractive region to international investors and inward investment, that we have a skilled workforce. At the moment, we are a bit hamstrung on delivering the types of skills we need in an agile way in response to business, because we are being told by Westminster, “This is the project; this is what you have to deliver” without the understanding of the complexity of delivering skills training for those furthest away from going back to college.
On climate change, we have to get away from the beauty contests and the way we have to bid for funding for projects—for example, for electric vehicle charging points. We have to be given the autonomy to help the Government to deliver on their mission statements. There are a number of points there, Alex, but we will get into a little bit more detail as we go further into the session.
Alex Norris
Q
Tracy Brabin: I have been pretty blessed in that the combined authority has been in existence since 2014. Although we took a wee while to get to the actual landscape and the footprint of a combined authority, we got there. It has been incredibly efficient, because I landed in a position where a lot of work had already been done to set up the mayoral combined authority. Now, that is not the same across the country. When our colleague Dan became Mayor of South Yorkshire, that infrastructure was not set up. We are, I would hope, one of the most efficient and progressive MCAs; that is my target—to be the most progressive MCA in the country.
Certainly, there is lots that we are already doing that is reflected in the Bill. For example, there is the extra scrutiny. We were determined to ensure that we had proper scrutiny in place, so we went from one scrutiny committee to three. We also pay our scrutiny members for their time. However, the Bill could go further and have that commonality across the regions—really investing in our scrutiny members and allowing them to meet remotely. The current expectation that people have to meet in a room means that quorum is sometimes challenging. During covid, we managed to make it secure—and look at us now, doing governmental business remotely. I would really hope that this Bill could ensure that we could have that scrutiny locally, and delivered in a more modern way.
Fundamentally, the idea, for us as a combined authority—we are five regions with Labour council leaders—is that we have a combined mission of delivering for the people we represent and who elected us, but there is a challenge in that when we come to the Government with our vision, there is this beauty contest and these funding streams. There is also a churn of Ministers and a churn of ideas from Ministers. It would be really empowering to have a direct relationship with the Treasury and could get the funding pot, with the delivery assessed on the outcomes. We could then have extra scrutiny from not just our own colleagues here in West Yorkshire but, potentially, the Public Accounts Committee and Committees like yourselves. We could be part of the outcome story, rather than just waiting for the Government to open up the floodgates on things we have to bid for, in which case it is all about the scrutiny of the process rather than the outcomes.
Ben Still: The partnership for an MCA to be successful must be deep, and there must be a strong sense of shared endeavour. As the Mayor has said, the five West Yorkshire leaders and the Mayor work very hard to develop that sense of shared endeavour. We can see that in the fact that the combined authority has specific sub-committees dealing with individual sectors, each of which is chaired by one of those local authority leaders.
We also have cross-party representation on the combined authority, so that—I think we will come back to this theme—ideas and policies that are developed through the CA can stand the test of time and be long term, as was discussed with the last witness. We completely agree that the long-term nature of these policies means that they have to be sustained over successive Parliaments and successive mayoralties.
Tracy Brabin: It is unusual to have cross-party membership of the combined authority. In parallel, we have our local enterprise partnership board, which is one of the most diverse in the country. We have a strong relationship with that LEP board too. As I say, the structures are here in West Yorkshire to deliver. The history of delivery is there from previous funding streams, where we have delivered and spent every penny—
The Chair
Tracy, I am going to have to cut you off, because we need slightly shorter answers. I will ask the Minister—who does not believe in “churn of Ministers”—to ask you a question.
Neil O’Brien
Q
Clauses 60 and 61 will simplify and streamline the processes for setting up new combined authorities. West Yorkshire is lucky, because it already had a combined authority from 2014. From your own experience of getting the mayoral combined authority set up and from the wider experiences of the M10 group, could you say anything about the complexity and time taken to set up new combined authorities? I appreciate that people are full of enthusiasm and want to get on with it, but that, at the moment, they have to go through some quite laborious processes to get going. What was your experience of that? Do you welcome provisions that would simplify and speed up the process of getting going with CAs?
Tracy Brabin: My role really started on election day—I was not here setting up the office and the CA. However, going forwards into combined county authorities and other models, I hope that whatever learning you get from that will come back and refresh our modelling, so that we can learn from these new MCAs and CCAs. Ben, would you like to add to that? You were here; you did it!
Ben Still: Briefly, there is a set of processes that we and the other CAs had to follow. The provisions in the Bill to simplify those processes are welcome in the sense that the statutory tests still need to be met; that is the important thing, I suspect. For us, though, the combination of the will on both sides—both locally and within the relevant Government Departments—to go through the processes at pace and to work collectively is just as important as the steps we need to go through.
Neil O’Brien
Q
Tracy Brabin: I would say wholeheartedly that the mayoral model is better. It is a single point of contact; it is a point of contact with Government. The Mayor is a champion, advocate and ambassador for the region, and somebody that can work collectively on strategic priorities. The role is not just local but national—and, I would suggest, international—to raise the profile of a region. It is great that Government are understanding and getting behind devolution. It really, genuinely is the way forward for our region.
Neil O’Brien
Q
Tracy Brabin: I cannot tell you. The gift that keeps on giving is the fact that I also have responsibilities for police and crime. It means we can take a public health approach to everything we are doing, getting people in the room or on Zoom from housing and transport, and—via the integrated care system—people from health talking about health inequalities that impact on crime. It is a really brilliant tool to address some of the greater challenges across West Yorkshire. There are obviously lots of different versions, and only Andy Burnham and myself have those powers, but they are really useful.
For example, they help us to deliver my commitment to the safety of women and girls across West Yorkshire. It feeds into everything, including transport. We have the safety app that allows bus users to feed back on whether women and girls feel safe travelling. On skills, we are able to support 750 more police officers and staff, and to work with the chief constable to try to find a pipeline of diverse young people wanting to go into the police. It is a really great strength.
I would say that giving police and crime commissioners and our teams in-year funding pots, with different expectations and timeframes, is incredibly difficult to handle. I hope that we can get multi-year pots of funding to do bigger projects that have a greater impact.
Neil O’Brien
Q
Tracy Brabin: It is helpful that we have real strength in our leaderships, because they are really experienced leaders. We are all focused on delivering for the people of West Yorkshire, and it has not come to a point where it has been down to my vote. We get a consensus before we go to a vote, and the opposition members on the CA are very helpful, because they provide the check and challenge to get us to a point of compromise so that we can bring everybody with us in delivering for the people of West Yorkshire.
Tim Farron
Q
Tracy Brabin: Affordable and sustainable homes are a priority for me, because it is personal—I grew up in social housing. My commitment to the people of West Yorkshire was to deliver 5,000 affordable and sustainable homes. Over the years, we have seen the number diminish, partly due to right to buy and partly due to the lack of funding. I am able to work with the councils and push them to get to further building target, which has been really helpful. The brownfield fund for housing has enabled us to really focus on the spots that blight our communities, and to work with developers.
For the first time, the West Yorkshire housing associations have all come together under one umbrella to deliver on my housing pledge and to help us get there, but it is still a challenge. Although the £22 million extra in the Bill for brownfield housing is welcome, it comes with the same strings attached and the same expectations from the Government, but with less time to deliver. There is an expectation that we have more freedom, but we need to get away from the strings that hold us back from delivering.
Let us not forget that we have areas in West Yorkshire where the housing stock is really low cost, and we are trying to square the circle of how we build more when we have the Government’s expectations about market failure. We have met Homes England since I became Mayor. I am very interested to see how that relationship develops and how we can work more closely on affordable housing, because the need in our region is growing exponentially. The lists of people waiting for a secure and affordable home are far too long. Ben, I do not know whether you want to talk more technically.
Ben Still: Thank you, Mayor. There is a lot in the Bill that could potentially be helpful to local authorities in unlocking and developing land. The issue that we face in West Yorkshire is much more about the viability of housing sites than about pressure on land and so forth. This is a good example of where the Mayor working in partnership with the local authorities is not just about the legislative provisions, but about the strength of the partnership. The Bill does not change the fundamental relationship between local authorities and Mayors with regards to who is responsible for the delivery of housing.
Tim Farron
Q
Tracy Brabin: What may help more is the strategic planning, which I understand has not been agreed because the planning was going to be changed from Government, so we do not have clarity on our strategic planning powers. It would be incredibly helpful if we got some conclusion on that.
Ben Still: I might add that the common theme in many of our answers is that what is needed is not necessarily additional powers, but the freedom to work with local authorities to deliver the right solutions in the right areas. That is what we will be looking for in the Bill as it progresses, namely the ability to take local decisions within a guiding framework.
Tracy Brabin: May I add a supplementary point? The city region sustainable transport scheme—the big transport fund of nearly £900 million—has felt as if it is really heading in the right direction. It is really progressive that it is multi-year. It is money that we can really deliver; it is long term, and it is about local freedoms. However, in implementing it, we are getting check and challenge from Government about, for example, whether we can have silver bins in a particular project or a grass roof on a train station.
It is really important when the Committee is looking through the Bill to identify how Government can enable Mayors to make those decisions and trust them to deliver, because if we focus on outcomes rather than processes, then I think we can deliver for Government and be challenged as to whether we have delivered against the 12 missions once those schemes have been approved.
Rachael Maskell
Q
Tracy Brabin: Thank you, Rachel. I would say that poverty is everywhere. It is not one region over another; it is everywhere. And poverty is expensive. Our mission in West Yorkshire—I know that other Mayors share this mission—is to close that disadvantage gap, to close the wage gap between the highest earners and the lowest, and to close the health inequalities that blight some of our communities. Some of our communities were extremely badly hit by covid, particularly in West Yorkshire, because of various circumstances, and it will take us a long time to recover.
However, Rachel, in direct response to your point, I would say that transport really preoccupies most of the Mayors—how can we make sure that we can get our talented people to opportunity? We have seen the HS2 Bill being laid before Parliament, and how frustrating it is for the people of West Yorkshire to see so much investment going into one side of the country, when we know that levelling up and tackling poverty are both absolutely about making sure that people can get to good jobs, and to colleges and to skills training, and so on.
As the M10, we work together to try to improve transport. Collectively, for example, Andy Burnham, Steve Rotheram and I work on buses, which is the transport system that the majority of people in West Yorkshire use. We are reducing bus fares, capping single trips to £2 and making it £4.50 for a daily pass. We are doing what we can to make sure there is more money in people’s pockets and that transport works. However, it is more than a structural problem, Rachel, in that transport has to work, and Government must invest. I know that it is one of the mission statements, and I know that Government want to do it, and we can help them to do it.
Rachael Maskell
Q
Tracy Brabin: That is right. When there is a mayoralty in North Yorkshire, I think it will be really powerful for us all to work together collectively for team Yorkshire. It is something that I am really looking forward to. On whether that delivers more, perhaps Ben wants to come in.
Ben Still: Only to say that the legislation that underpins the creation of CAs was based around the model of the functional economic area. Yorkshire and the bigger geographies have more complex overlapping functional economic areas. In our devolution deal we looked at broader options, including looking at the Yorkshire level, but ultimately the discussions with Government came back to focusing on the functional economic areas around the metropolitan area of West Yorkshire. That is the geography that the legislation works most effectively on.
Tracy Brabin: But we do work with and fund a number of schemes with York.
Ben Still: Which is why I suspect the county combined authority model is not based on that legislation.
Rachael Maskell
Q
Tracy Brabin: It is not necessarily about further fiscal powers. It is about being free to deliver what our community needs with the powers that we have currently without continually having to go back to government for sign-offs and cheques and challenges when government can give us the money to deliver.
There are other powers that I would need. For example, we were talking just before this call about the precept and how Mayors have the opportunity to impose a precept, but it does feel that it has to be around something that impacts on people’s lives and around policy. For example, Andy Burnham uses his precept to have free bus travel—I think it is for the under-25s or under-19s. A precept adds cost for local people and the mayoralty. What we should be doing in the MCA is saving Whitehall money, because we are delivering on the things that it would normally deliver from Whitehall and Westminster.
Going forward, there are lots of discussions about fiscal powers, and there is work that we are doing in the M10 to look at that. Do you want to come in, Ben?
Ben Still: Only to say that the move towards an outcome framework, as the Mayor has previously mentioned, with a multi-year funding settlement—perhaps through a spending review process directly with Treasury, rather than through individual grants agreements with individual Departments—would be a significant step forward for us and a better reflection of proper devolution.
Robbie Moore (Keighley) (Con)
Q
Tracy Brabin: The accountability is the election, so I suppose it depends on whether people believe that I have delivered on my 10 manifesto commitments. More seriously, I think I would be open to more accountability from Government. If you give us the freedom to work directly with the Treasury and then focus on outcomes, we will be accountable to Government. In this Bill, it does not feel like there is that focus on outcomes and assessment of delivery against expectations.
Ben Still: When we became a mayoral combined authority from a combined authority, one of the things that we did in preparation was to increase the number of scrutiny committees that exist in the CA, so we have three—up from one—scrutiny committees that look at the work of the combined authority and have both pre-decision and post-decision scrutiny capabilities. The Bill mentions paying scrutiny members to get better attendance and so on, which we welcome, but we already do that in West Yorkshire. The issue for us is the high levels required for scrutiny committees to be quorate, so we would welcome more flexibility in that regard.
Robbie Moore
Q
Tracy Brabin: In West Yorkshire, my Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime is Alison Lowe. She is accountable to me, and fundamentally I am accountable to the public for police and crime outcomes. My role is to hold the chief constable to account on behalf of the public, and Alison and I have been doing that together. We are fortunate in West Yorkshire to have an outstanding police force, which is working closely with us to deliver on our manifesto commitments, including recording misogyny as a hate crime and getting greater diversity in the police force to reflect the communities we serve.
It works really well here that Alison and I work closely together to deliver, and there is no tension between our expectations for our communities. I mentioned the Venn diagram; we are able to overlay our desires to make people’s lives better and easier in West Yorkshire through my other responsibilities, and through police and crime.
Robbie Moore
Q
Tracy Brabin: It certainly works for us, so I would suggest so. It is convenient and straightforward, and we work together as a team. It is working here.
I would add, though, that there is some differential between the terms and conditions of Mayors and those of deputy Mayors. For example, Alison will be getting a pension and maternity rights, but Mayors get none of those, because they are paid differently. The terms and conditions that we fight for for our constituents are not in this Bill. The M10 has been discussing that issue with the Government, because without pensions and rights the role may not be attractive to young people or people who want to start a family. I would hope that the Bill might address that.
The Minister for Housing (Stuart Andrew)
Q
I want to return to planning. We share an ambition, in that we obviously want the right houses in the right places for our population. Much of the Bill is about community-led planning—that is, ensuring that communities have a say in where houses should be built, so that we can improve support for development within communities. How would that marry up with a strategic approach that was perhaps done by Mayors? I often describe planning as something that people feel happens to them, rather than them being engaged in it. If Mayors around the country had lots of strategic planning rights and powers, is there a danger that we might negate the chance of improving community involvement in the planning system in order to build the houses we need?
Tracy Brabin: It feels to me that there are already those checks and balances for local communities. When there is an option for a warehouse or the building of homes and so on, the public and communities have an opportunity to reject that planning. Obviously, local plans are a responsibility for local councils, but for me what would be interesting with the strategic planning is to support local councils when they have a vision. For example, in Stockport in Manchester, the council has a vision to bring together greater investment and a bolder planning opportunity, working with communities. Maybe it would be cross-border and difficult to navigate, so the Mayors could be helpful there.
Of course, it is important for the public to have a voice in what their communities look like, but we would hate to get into a situation where communities that are happy with their village could block much-needed housing from their community. It is important that we keep the conversation going, though. I know our local councils do everything they can to work with communities to get the right outcomes, but we do need more social and affordable housing in our region. There is a role for the Mayor to play in that, and the strategic plan would help.
Ben Still: To add to what the Mayor has said, the strategic planning covers a variety of topics of which housing is one. There is probably a role for Mayors from mayoralties and combined authorities to join up when looking at things like strategic infrastructure such as transport, broadband and so on, where it makes sense to plan across individual local authority or unitary authority areas. As the Mayor said, the local authority is the planning body and it has that process with communities. The Bill has a number of aspects that might strengthen that.
The Chair
Any other questions? No. That brings us to the end of the session. Tracy—Madam Mayor—thank you for your enthusiastic evidence. Ben, thank you for coming along for your evidence, too. It is most appreciated.
Tracy Brabin: Thank you, and good luck everybody.
Examination of Witness
Mairi Spowage gave evidence.
The Chair
Hello and good morning. We now come to oral evidence from the director of the Fraser of Allander Institute. Would you like to introduce yourself for the record?
Mairi Spowage: I am Professor Mairi Spowage and I am the director of the Fraser of Allander Institute, which is in the economics department at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. For those of you who are not familiar with the institute, we are an economic research institute which in the past focused very much on the Scottish economy, but over the past decade or so has moved more across the UK, particularly focusing on regional economic policy, the measurement of economic outcomes and wider societal outcomes at devolved and regional levels.
The Chair
Thank you very much, professor. We have until 11.25 am for this session. I will start with Patricia Gibson.
Patricia Gibson
Q
Mairi Spowage: We did quite a lot of work last year through the first iteration of the levelling-up fund on the sorts of metrics that were used to determine the highest priority areas. The UK Government made it clear in their criteria for which projects would be funded that that was not be the only thing that would be taken into account and that there were other issues they would look at around the strategic fit. In particular, in the first round there were a lot of criteria about how quickly certain pots of money could be spent. For community renewal, it had to be spent by March 2022; for levelling up, it was over a number of years. There were quite strict criteria that would be applied. In addition, there was the requirement that projects or packages of projects also be supported by local MPs.
I am most familiar with the Scottish projects, but the series of projects across the UK that were funded were not necessarily in the areas that were identified as highest priority using the metrics that had been set out. I suppose it is for the UK Government to say why that is the case and why the particular projects were funded, as I am not familiar with all the projects that did not get funded, for example.
It will be very important throughout this process and in the future, and for the shared prosperity fund as well, to set out clearly why the projects being funded are likely to achieve the outcomes set out in the levelling-up White Paper and broader outcomes around the funds. That will ensure these investments actually lead to the sorts of changes that the UK Government desires. They should then set out why a project will move the metrics they have chosen to measure the success of the fund. It will be very important to have clarity on why the packages of projects that are being funded will actually help achieve the outcomes.
Patricia Gibson
Q
Mairi Spowage: It is a really good question. There has been a challenge around indices of multiple deprivation for many years. In general, they are used within the devolved nations to distribute funds, whether looking at how different things are invested in in health or education or what targets are set for universities. They are generally used in the devolved nations.
The issue with the indices of multiple deprivation is that they are not comparable across nations. While they rank areas within each of the nations, they do not say anything about how a particular output area or data zone in Scotland compares to one in England, both because they are just relative ranks within a country and because different metrics are used and different methodologies are adopted.
We said in one of the papers we published last year that perhaps a body like the Office for National Statistics might wish to consider how we can say something sensible about relative need on multiple dimensions of deprivation right across the UK. Given the ambitions of the UK Government, their levelling-up agenda and the way they are choosing to fund that as a replacement for EU funding, there is a clear policy need for that sort of tool now. It is very difficult for the UK Government to use the current indices of multiple deprivation across the UK, because you cannot compare between nations.
Patricia Gibson
Q
Mairi Spowage: There is a danger, depending on the sorts of the projects that are funded through the levelling-up and shared prosperity funds, that in devolved areas UK Government aims for what these projects might achieve will come into conflict with the aims of the devolved Government. It would make sense for the UK Government to engage with the devolved Governments, and indeed regional governments in England through combined and mayoral authorities, at the point at which they are making decisions.
It is made clear in the criteria around the shared prosperity fund that the local plans to be set out by areas across the country need to be cognisant of local strategies such as the national strategy for economic transformation in Scotland. They do set that out in the criteria for what the plans are going to fund, but I always think it makes sense for collaboration between different layers of government to ensure that the projects funded do not come into conflict with any ambitions that the Welsh Government, Scottish Government or the Northern Ireland Executive—when it can form—have for economic development in their nation, particularly when talking about spending in devolved areas.
Patricia Gibson
Q
Mairi Spowage: Through the Bill, my understanding is that the UK Government have to publish regular updates on the progress that they are making towards the missions that it sets out and the metrics chosen to measure success. There is quite a lot of work to do to ensure that those metrics cover the whole of the UK on all the different missions. There is a significant amount of investment—I believe that the ONS is looking to try to do that better, but it is not for me to say whether an independent body should be set up to monitor what is, after all, a UK Government policy agenda that they can legitimately pursue.
Neil O’Brien
Q
Mairi Spowage: Yes, if and when digital connectivity is of sufficient quality it will present a lot of opportunities for the rural economy. We still hear in parts of Scotland that it is a barrier to remote working. It would be hugely transformative for lots of areas, particularly of rural Scotland, but I am sure that lots of other rural parts of the UK would say the same. It would be transformative in terms of the connectivity of people working from home, perhaps for businesses in population centres but also for businesses that are operating in these areas, to have a more reliable connection. It could be extremely transformative to those areas.
We have heard from some of our work with businesses that to a certain extent it can also work the other way. Businesses based in remote and rural Scotland are employing people in the big population centres, but sometimes having to pay them more money because they are more likely to command higher wages in those areas, particularly in this very tight labour market that we have at the moment.
Improvements in digital connectivity present huge opportunities for rural Scotland. As much as there is quite a lot of focus on transport connectivity through the levelling-up funds, investment UK-wide—particularly in rural areas—in digital connectivity is one of the areas where we could get the biggest bang for our buck in transforming the economy and reducing regional inequality, particularly when we look at the population outlook if current trends continue in rural areas.
Neil O’Brien
Q
Mairi Spowage: That is a great question, and one that policy makers in Scotland have been grappling with for a long time, particularly given the quality of our universities in Scotland and their international prowess in research and development. We seem to have an issue between the development of the ideas, the start-up, and the translation of that into commercial opportunities that can be scaled up into medium-sized businesses. In Scotland, we often find those opportunities are lost, particularly to the south-east of England, because the infrastructure is there to scale up that business to the next step. I think the sorts of investments that you are talking about, not just in Glasgow but in other locations in Scotland, will be really important. We have to think about how we take all of the great advances that have been made in academia in Scotland and turn them into commercial opportunities, have them scale up and feel that there is the infrastructure and capacity in Scotland so that they do not have to move or be bought by companies outwith Scotland.
Neil O'Brien
Q
Mairi Spowage: Yes, I would be very supportive of that. We can see in the sorts of metrics that are used—not only those related to indices of multiple deprivation but educational outcomes or transport connectivity—that some of them are focused on England-only measures; sometimes they are GB only. We do not want to fall into the trap of, in some cases, using GB and UK inter-changeably here. It is really important that we think about the metrics that we are going to use to capture the reduction in regional inequalities across the UK. Wherever possible, we should invest in developing UK-wide measures.
In some cases I can see that there are data sources in the devolved nations that are very similar to those being used for England. I think there is work that could be done to develop more consistent measures right across the UK, for which, as I said earlier, there is a clear policy need for the UK Government’s programme.
Alex Norris
Q
Mairi Spowage: I am not here to speak for the ONS, but I am a fellow, so they ask me and a group of other expert academics for advice on their work programme. They have published a subnational data strategy, which was worked up not just by the ONS but across the Government’s fiscal service, to think about how we can develop more sophisticated metrics across the UK to capture different levels of needs and progress. That would be to support not only the levelling-up agenda but things more broadly. In partnership with the Department for Levelling Up, the ONS is looking to develop more metrics across the UK. Some of that will be working closely with the devolved Administrations to develop data sources and think what might be comparable.
We have done a significant amount of work with the Economics Statistics Centre of Excellence. We published a paper recently on developing a suite of sub-national indicators across the UK. We made recommendations there, which included working closely with the devolved Administrations to develop data that was consistent across the UK, particularly on educational and environmental outcomes. A recent example would be something like fuel poverty, which is obviously a live discussion. It is measured differently in all four nations of the UK, so it is very hard to compare differential rates of fuel poverty in different parts of the UK at the moment.
Alex Norris
Q
Mairi Spowage: It is always difficult to come up with a set of metrics that everybody is going to agree with. One of the most challenging things, particularly if you compile them in an index, is how you weight them together, which things you give most prominence to, because if you are weighting metrics that are more focused on, perhaps, income deprivation and you are focusing less on rurality, you will get quite a different allocation of resources from the one that you will get if you are giving more weight to lack of connectivity, or rurality, than income deprivation. That is just one example. Most of the indices of multiple deprivation have income and employment, education, health, crime, and access to services, as well as housing. The weights that you give to these things can be contentious and, depending on the weight that you give to things, there can be quite a different outcome in your allocation.
It is obviously possible to come up with a consensus on things like the indices of multiple deprivation. The different nations show that you can come up with something that broadly everybody agrees is sensible, but even with the indices of multiple deprivation, which are well established, policy makers in rural areas would say that they do not capture rural disadvantage very well at all, because the geographic areas that tend to be used for rural areas are very large and do not capture pockets of deprivation within rural areas. Even with those established metrics, people in rural areas have argued for many years that they do not serve them well. I think it is difficult to get a consensus, but there is a good basis to start from, in terms of the long-established 20 or 30-year discussions about indices of multiple deprivation and how to measure that across the UK.
Alex Norris
Q
Mairi Spowage: Yes, I think that is possible. In terms of the sorts of metrics that we could use, it will be important that the metrics used capture the outcomes of what we are trying to achieve and not just inputs or outputs, but I do think it will be possible, and I agree with you that it makes much more sense, when we are thinking about whether the interventions that we are pursuing are making progress on the outcomes that we are interested in, to look at those as a suite or a dashboard of indicators, rather than trying to come up with some index overall. Yes, absolutely, it should be possible to come up with a suite of indicators that are broadly agreed upon. However, there are things like the Scottish national performance framework, trying to measure the 11 national outcomes that the Scottish Government have set out through consultation with Scottish public life and communities about what is important. Just be aware: 81 indicators are used to capture that, and having 81 indicators makes it quite difficult to say overall whether we feel we are progressing to the sort of Scotland that we want to see. It can be difficult to come up with something that is comprehensive enough and that does not become unwieldy.
Tim Farron
Q
Mairi Spowage: It is a massive problem. For all the businesses we talk to on a regular basis right now, it is their No. 1 issue. They are very concerned about their energy, fuel and input costs going up hugely, but their biggest problem is sourcing staff, particularly businesses in rural areas. It means that they do not open as much in many cases, particularly when we talk to hospitality businesses—they are not serving non-residents for dinner, or they are not opening on all days of the week. That seems to be quite common across the Scottish businesses we talk to on a regular basis, so it is an absolutely huge problem.
What is causing it? Well, for many years, there has been a movement—within Scotland at least, which I am more familiar with—from rural to more urban areas. In Scotland, there has been movement from most areas to Edinburgh and its surrounds, to be honest. That is projected to continue. If it does, that has some pretty huge consequences for rural areas. Obviously, housing plays into it as well, with young people in an area being attracted away, perhaps to study, but also for employment, and not being able to afford to buy houses in the local area. Certain parts, particularly the highlands, have huge issues with second-home ownership dominating particular settlements.
Those are all issues. With some of the pressure valves that we used to use a lot in rural areas in Scotland around EU labour, it is not quite the same situation any more, so we are not seeing the same supply of labour from that sort of source that we did in the past. That definitely seems to be causing issues, particularly in hospitality and social care.
Tim Farron
Q
Mairi Spowage: I suppose some of things we have talked about—improved digital connectivity, improving transport connectivity—are likely to make some areas seem more accessible than they were before, particularly when that might connect people to employment centres. Investing in connectivity, both digital and transport infrastructure, is likely to improve the situation for rural areas. However, we also have an issue with labour supply, and the outlook for population overall for areas like Scotland is not good in the aggregate, as well as having to think about the issues of digital and transport connectivity.
Tim Farron
Q
Mairi Spowage: It is difficult, because we have had a very strange couple of years, and the data tend to be very lagged at the sub-UK level for us when understanding what the impacts might be on regional growth. The leading indicators we have, on payroll employment, wages and things like that, suggest that lots of areas of Scotland seem to be lagging behind other areas of the UK, but some of that is in relation to the oil and gas industry in the north-east, which right now is the poorest area of the UK in wage growth, since pre-pandemic. There are interesting things going on in the north-east, because of the oil and gas industry. The highlands and islands of Scotland also seem to be lagging behind a bit in wage growth and payroll employment growth. So, not yet, I think, is the answer. This is one of the challenges with sub-UK statistics, which I hope that any investment in statistics might deal with—we have to wait so long to find out what is happening in economies across the UK.
The Chair
Any further questions, colleagues? No. Professor Spowage, I thank you for your evidence. It is much appreciated. Thank you for giving us your time and expertise today.
That brings to a conclusion our morning sitting.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Miss Dines.)
Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill (Second sitting)
Tuesday 21st June 2022
(2 years, 6 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 View all Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 21 June 2022 - (21 Jun 2022)
The Chair
Welcome back. We are in public session and the proceedings are being broadcast. I encourage you to switch any mobile or electronic devices to silent. I welcome the fourth panel of witnesses. We will now hear oral evidence from Eamonn Boylan, chief executive of Greater Manchester Combined Authority; Laura Shoaf, chief executive of West Midlands Combined Authority; and Joanne Roney OBE, president of SOLACE and also chief executive of Manchester City Council. They are all joining us via Zoom.
Before calling the first Members to ask questions, I remind you all that questions should be limited to matters that are in scope of the Bill and that we must stick to the timings in the programme motion that the Committee agreed this morning. This session will last until 2.40 pm. I find that with larger panels we should try to direct our questions to a specific member of the panel, otherwise one questioner could end up taking all of the session. I also encourage our panellists to be pithy in their answers, but if one of your colleagues has had a question directed to them and you think there is something really important that you need to say, please do indicate and say it because it will add to the evidential value.
I have already introduced the panel. For the sake of time, I will call our first questioner, Tim Farron.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
Q
Laura Shoaf: I can probably speak only from our perspective as an area that has a Mayor. I will reflect on what we have seen so far in the first and second term. The elected Mayor model has worked really well in our area and has been a success for accountability, which is critical. As devolution continues and more powers are devolved, the mechanisms need to be in place to ensure accountability. In our experience, that works quite well by having an elected Mayor.
Tim Farron
Q
Laura Shoaf: I think one of the principles of devolution is that they should be unique to each place. I would not necessarily suggest that one model would work absolutely everywhere. If devolution is to work, in our experience it must be meaningful to the place, and it must be something that reflects democracy and accountability in that place. I do not think there is a one size fits all answer to that, but I would reiterate that in our experience, with our Mayor, that has been a very powerful role to rally around and it has yielded great results.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Neil O'Brien)
Q
Eamonn Boylan: Thank you. We were very pleased to be identified as one of the three innovation accelerator areas in the White Paper. We have been working very hard on developing a broader approach to innovation through an organisation imaginatively called “Innovation Greater Manchester”. We see the innovation accelerator as being effectively the fuel in the tank that can drive that forward.
It is fair to say that there needs to be a clear concentration on those areas where individual city regions can be globally significant and competitive, rather than having a broader approach. They need to be very clear that the purpose of the innovation accelerator is to improve not only the performance of business and employment in a particular location, but to drive prosperity for the UK as a whole.
There is a need for longevity in terms of the commitment, to make certain that the innovation agenda can be rolled out, developed and properly evolved over a period of time, but also concentration on those areas where, quite clearly, particular places have a significant, if not unique contribution, to make.
Laura Shoaf: I will do my best not to repeat the exact same answer, but we have another organisation, the aptly titled “Innovation West Midlands”. I reiterate all the points that Eamonn has just made and a point I made slightly earlier, which is that places have different areas of expertise. We want not to spread the jam so thin that it doesn’t make a difference in any one area, but to really invest and be very precise in each area, especially where there is a comparative advantage.
Neil O'Brien
Q
Laura Shoaf: It has really been transformational. As an officer, I was working in the region before there was a Mayor, then in a Mayor’s first term and now in a Mayor’s second term. I would reflect on the fact that the role, with its accountability and ability to galvanise and be a figurehead, has grown over time. It definitely evolves alongside a region.
For us, with our Mayor, we have seen the ability to come together as a region, to make cohesive arguments, to attract a lot more inward investment and to be able to work at scale, if you take something like brownfield land, where we have been able to operate at regional level, so we can have a regional impact, then being very careful not to do what is already done very well locally. I often describe it as two plus two plus make five, instead of four. That is exactly what we have seen through the model to date.
As you can tell, my background is not from this country, but this model is well understood and recognised in other countries when trying to attract inward investment from abroad. It is a model that is understood, works well and helps make it easier, if that makes sense, to drive some of those big conversations.
Neil O'Brien
Thank you. Eamonn, would you add anything to that?
Eamonn Boylan: I would certainly echo Laura’s final comment about the international potency of the mayoral model, which is proving to be a real strength. We led the field with the creation of the first combined authority, which has been in operation since 2010. The first mayoral election was in 2017, so they had a lot of experience of working prior to having a Mayor, with strong local leadership provided—particularly by the city of Manchester.
I think the Mayor has had the transformative effect that Laura has described, not only in respect of areas where there is a very clear power vested in the Mayor, but also where the Mayor’s influence and use of soft power can be quite useful in helping to galvanise change and support and amplify activity. The example I would use in the Greater Manchester case is the work we have done collectively on street homelessness and rough sleeping, which has been very successful. A huge of amount of work has been done by individual local authorities, but it has also been galvanised by collaboration through the office of the Mayor. It is a very powerful office and tool for us to use both locally and internationally.
Neil O'Brien
Q
Eamonn Boylan: It would be difficult to make CPO slower. Aiming to accelerate it is very welcome. The flexibility around the application of CPO to support a wider range of purposes is also welcome. I think we need to recognise that initiating a CPO is quite a high-risk activity for a local authority. Therefore, we would need to be certain about the legislative framework within which we were working, but certainly the principle of acceleration of CPO and its broader application is something we would generally welcome and would certainly seek to make use of.
Laura Shoaf: I will just pick up on the point about pride in place. Pride in place is a key goal that is outlined as part of the levelling-up agenda. I think that being able to speed up the delivery of projects where a compulsory purchase order is needed will bring clarity and help us to deliver pride in place. That is just one other aspect that I think is important.
[Sir Mark Hendrick in the Chair]
Joanne Roney: I will come in with three quick points to support Laura and Eamonn. Among the wider society of chief executives—who represent the views from up and down the country, including places that do not currently have combined authority or mayoral models—there is a welcome for these additional powers. The first point is that whatever replaces the existing CPO system needs to simple and inexpensive. The current process is very costly.
Secondly, there is a bit of a concern around capacity in local authorities to take advantage of these new powers. Talking with my Manchester hat on, one of the things we do in Greater Manchester is shared capacity between the 10 local authorities through the combined authority, but that capacity point to take effective new powers is important. Thirdly, we would like to see the revoking of permitted development rights to go alongside CPO powers to make the maximum impact in some of our communities.
Neil O'Brien
Q
Laura Shoaf: We have certainly seen it work well elsewhere, including in Greater Manchester. Initially, the combined authority did not have full support to transfer those functions in 2019. What I would suggest that we need to do now is look at the timing of the deal and of Royal Assent, and how we could align governance around that. We would need to look at the issues around co-termination and there would probably be quite a bit of work to make sure that it was something that the entirety of the region would get behind.
Neil O'Brien
Thank you, Laura. Unless Eamonn wants to add anything on that point, I am probably finished.
Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)
Q
Your two combined authorities are seen as very much at the forefront of devolution to combined authorities and Mayors. Much of what we talk about in the context of the Bill is about how to push the rest of the country up to having similar levels of responsibility. What more do you want yourselves? What more do you want to build on your current settlement? Where might devolution go in the future for you?
Eamonn Boylan: We have significant ambition for further devolution and we are working to develop propositions that we will be discussing with officials over the coming weeks in response to the Government’s call for us to step forward with a trailblazer devolution deal, which was contained in the White Paper. The asks would be for greater power and influence in areas such as housing, transport, skills—you will be unsurprised to hear that—because we believe that there is a need for us to be able to shape local skills offers and opportunities to the local jobs market more effectively than currently happens.
The other major ask we have, consistent with a number of other places and some recent think-tank reports, would be for a greater degree of certainty over the funding framework and the outcomes framework that we agree with the Government over a period of time, whether that is a spending review period or some other period. At the moment, we are hampered by the number of separate and completely bespoke competitive processes that we go through to resource an awful lot of our activity. Having greater certainty over funding—not necessarily more funding, although that would be welcome—and greater flexibility over its deployment, for which we would be very willing to be held directly accountable to yourselves in Parliament, would be the real goal for us and a real step forward in terms of the current devolution journey.
Alex Norris
Q
Laura Shoaf: In a lot of ways, our position is very similar. Again, there is a big focus on skills and a want to go further and faster to have more control over budgets and particularly to look more at employment support and careers. It is similar for transport and housing, but for us, it is very specifically housing retrofit, as we have some of the worst levels of fuel poverty in the country. Another area that is slightly more bespoke to the West Midlands is around digital inclusion, where we have some quite unique circumstances.
We are also interested in flexibility. I would reiterate all the points about funding simplification, funding certainty and funding flexibility and the willingness to be held accountable, and how important it will be through this process to have transparent and accessible local and regional data so that we know whether we are levelling up. That is something we are really keen to work with the Department on. In general, more certainty around funding, which is simplified, and, please, more accountability. Like Greater Manchester, our Mayor is keen to be accountable and held accountable for delivering.
Joanne Roney: The point I would make is that the devolution settlement needs to be alongside the multi-year local authority funding settlement and sustainable funding for the wider social infrastructure issues that we are trying to tackle, which Laura mentioned.
To pick up that point about fragmented funding, in 2020 the Local Government Association recognised that 448 different grants were paid to councils, with different initiatives and different timescales on them. When at a combined authority level we are trying to tackle delivery of some of those big, wider ambitions, as outlined in the 12 missions, I think that stability and flexibility of funding for local authorities and the wider public sector plays into the mix to make the effect of the devolution changes that we want. So, core funding for public services, alongside the devolution asks, is important.
Alex Norris
Q
Joanne Roney: Capacity is a huge challenge for local government and for my members, up and down the country. That is capacity in terms of not only workforce and expertise but stable funding. As Eamonn said, it is not necessarily more money, but an understanding of the long-term planning that we need, and multi-year settlements so that we can start to work collectively.
To answer the question about how my members feel about doing more, as Eamonn said, in Greater Manchester we have been at the forefront of working together, as 10 local authorities, with these wider ambitions, for a considerable amount of time. One of the key features of Greater Manchester’s original devolution deal was public sector reform. We were very mindful of the fact that we think we can do more collectively, in particular in that space around prevention, to start to make best use of public sector resources.
My members would say, “More power to devolution to Greater Manchester,” and that, importantly, the resources, reform agendas and public sector expenditure should be dealt with at the lowest possible level to get the changes we need to make the difference to coincide with the 12 missions. That is what they would say.
Alex Norris
Q
Eamonn Boylan: The measures contained in the Bill in respect of CPO are eminently sensible and supportable. There will always be issues—this goes back to Joanne’s point about certainty of funding—with the availability of funding and the ability to manage what is still a complex legal framework, but the reforms set out in the Bill are an essential prerequisite for making CPO more applicable and useful in delivering place-based regeneration.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
Q
Joanne Roney: We have gone around the loop on a number of these different measures for a considerable time. If the outcome is to deliver more affordable housing, I think the challenge is still the variances between different parts of the country and the ability to deliver affordable housing because of the value of the land and the cost of build. So I am not sure that that will necessarily fix it, but then I am not sure that section 106 fixed it either. I think we should be having a different conversation—about how we provide affordable housing in different areas.
I will call on my colleague Eamonn to help me here, because one of the successes of the combined authority has been the revolving housing investment fund that we have used and the different models we have created to try to get better value out of all our developments and translate that into affordable housing numbers. We have had a range of success, but some of that has come from the ability to use flexible funding that we already have to support some schemes.
Overall, I think we would support the proposal in the Bill, but we need to do more to look at affordable housing provision in different parts of the country, and different innovative and flexible ways to drive value in order to provide truly affordable homes.
Eamonn Boylan: I echo Joanne’s comments, but I will just make the point—I know a number of Committee members will be well aware of this—that section 106 is far less potent in northern parts of the country than in others because of the issues around viability, particularly where we are dealing with brownfield land. Most of my brownfield land has the periodic table underneath it, and therefore the costs of remediation are significant.
We really welcome the Government’s initiative on the brownfield land fund, which has really helped us to unlock development, but section 106 or a replacement levy will not provide us in the north with sufficient resource to deal with the challenge of affordable housing. We need to go beyond that. That is part of the devolution ask that we will be making around how we might work more effectively with Homes England in delivering programmes—particularly on affordable housing, and particularly on affordable low-carbon or zero-carbon housing, which is a very significant challenge.
Laura Shoaf: I mentioned earlier that one of the things we wanted to do in a trailblazer devolution deal was to look at how we can use the housing and brownfield funding that we have more flexibly, to address some of the wider regeneration challenges but also to help us to increase levels of affordable housing. The brownfield funding, as Eamonn said, has demonstrably made a difference in our ability to assemble sites, to remediate sites, to bridge the viability gap and then, ultimately, to do what we all want to do, which is to deliver more housing, affordable included.
Rachael Maskell
Q
Eamonn Boylan: At the risk of repeating myself, one of the keys to unlocking significant urban regeneration is certainty of funding and confidence in the longevity of any funding source. I will use the example of Ancoats, which used to be a no-go area in Manchester but is now regarded by some as the coolest urban neighbourhood in western Europe. The platform for delivering that was laid by investing public money through derelict land grant 15 years before the major acceleration in housing development took place; the market took that time to recover post-recession and to move forward. It is not only the availability of resource; it is our ability to invest at the right time in order to trigger affordable and sustainable growth and leverage very significant private sector investment.
In answer to your question about whether we think there are places where the Bill could go further, we think the review of Green Book evaluation methodology needs to be pushed forward in order to take more account of some of the affordability and viability challenges we face. I have a long catalogue of projects in both housing and other areas where we have failed the Green Book benefit-cost ratio test at individual project level but not been allowed to apply it at the programme level, where overall we could have made it stack up. I think flexibility around the application of some of those rules would be really helpful in enabling us to move forward.
Joanne Roney: May I can come in on the back of that to give an example? Ancoats, as Eamonn said, is one of the successes in Manchester. I am currently dealing with the north and the east of the city. The north of the city has 15,000 homes to be built across a range of sites involving a range of different Government Departments.
I completely support the idea that the Bill could go further in helping us with land assembly and doing more to encourage, through grants, brownfield land to be acquired and remediated, but there is also something about simplifying the process through a partnership with Homes England so that I do not have to produce a business case for Homes England, for the Treasury and to access individual grants. There has to be a more efficient way to do large-scale regeneration of swathes of land that needs to be brought back into use and put to greater purpose. That is key for the devolution asks for Greater Manchester, particularly in respect of that partnership with Homes England.
Rachael Maskell
Q
Eamonn Boylan: We have had to deal with sequential challenges in terms of development, control and planning for a number of years. It is fair to say that we would need to be reassured that there was sufficient cognisance of the timing of the planning of projects at a major or national level so that they can be properly accommodated in local plans and so that local plan considerations can inform the way in which those plans are brought together.
One thing in the Bill that is of slight concern to us is the reference to it being possible to have only one local plan at any one time. We have done a lot of work over the past six years to develop a spatial framework for all of Greater Manchester, incorporating nine of the 10 boroughs. That was supported by the development of local plans that were entirely consistent with it but overarchingly governed by that strategic framework. We just want to make certain that there is a transitional arrangement that will enable us to protect that position as we move ahead, because it has held us in good stead as we have moved forward over recent years.
Laura Shoaf: I do not know that I have much to add. We do not have a regional spatial framework in the West Midlands and we are not a planning authority, so this might not be the best place for me to make a useful comment. Joanne might have a view.
Joanne Roney: I am not sure that I disagree with anything Eamonn said. Broadly, we welcome the introduction of additional tools and powers that help us to deal with compliance and anything that can help existing sites to be built out. I think Eamonn has mainly covered the other points that I would have made about seeking the approach to continue to get the complexity out of the system, particularly in respect of the production of local plans.
Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
Q
Eamonn Boylan: One thing in the Bill that we very much welcome the principle of is the notion that the infrastructure levy is effectively extracted once value has been created. That will make it much easier to calculate an appropriate levy, particularly on a complex, multifaceted scheme.
The issue for us would be, if the income from the levy is delayed until after development has been completed, what are the arrangements that enable me to fund the infrastructure up front? That is needed to enable the development to take place in the first instance. It would need to be linked to the availability of things like the brownfield land release fund or, potentially, borrowing powers to enable us to invest in the infrastructure on the basis of a levy replenishing the borrowing at a later date. The principle is a good one, and I am sure it will be welcomed in the development community, but we need to find a way of making certain that it does not work in a way that prevents us delivering infrastructure in a timely way to enable schemes to come forward.
Laura Shoaf: I reiterate that there is still a lot to unpack and still a lot to understand about what it will mean in practice. We keep coming back to certainty and simplicity being the two things that really help enable us to get big, new-generation projects off the ground. I reiterate Eamonn’s point: anything that can be leveraged into some sort of pump priming to help to give both certainty and consistency would be genuinely very welcome.
Joanne Roney: I would just add that generally, across the UK, we are supportive of the infrastructure levy being non-negotiable, which is a strong statement to make, and of it being determined at a local level, which will take in those regional differences that Eamonn and I mentioned earlier—the viability in different places. There is a lot to welcome in this, but the detail needs to be worked through.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Eamonn Boylan: I will not pretend to you, sir, that I can have absolute confidence that we will avoid disputes over valuation. We have it at the start of projects now and we have had it at different stages. It will be essential to have established prior to the signing of formal agreement with the developer or developers that we have an agreement on the valuation methodology to be used at the point at which the levy is to be calculated—to try to remove some of that risk. That is certainly what we would hope.
Joanne Roney: I think the move to viability assessments increasingly being made public to planning committees helps to bring transparency and clarity to value early on in the discussions, as part of the planning process. We would want to build on that, so that we try to avoid those arguments. I am sure they will be there, but it is how they get resolved.
The Chair
As there are no further questions, I thank the witnesses for their evidence. We will move to the next panel: we have two witnesses virtually and two present in the room. If Members wish to remove their jackets, please feel free to do so.
Examination of Witnesses
Professor Graeme Atherton, Rich Bell, Sacha Bedding and Dr Parth Patel gave evidence.
The Chair
We will now take oral evidence from Professor Graeme Atherton, head of the Centre for Inequality and Levelling Up at the University of West London; Rich Bell and Sacha Bedding from the We’re Right Here campaign; and Dr Parth Patel from the Institute for Public Policy Research. We have until 3.20 pm. Will the witnesses please introduce themselves for the record?
Dr Patel: I am Parth Patel. I am a fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research, where I lead the programme of work on democracy and justice. I am also a doctor in the NHS.
Rich Bell: I am Rich Bell. I am the campaign manager for We’re Right Here, a campaign for a community power Act. Our campaign is supported by a number of national policy organisations, including Power to Change, New Local and Locality, but it is driven by community leaders who are pursuing a range of social missions in their community, all of whom believe that their work would be easier if public institutions were designed for them to do things with, rather than designed to do things for them. Sacha is one of our six leaders.
Sacha Bedding: Hi, I’m Sacha Bedding. I work for a small, estate-based charity in the Dyke House area of Hartlepool. The charity is called the Wharton Trust, but we are better known locally as the Annexe. We are a community anchor organisation; I think that would be the best description of us. I am here on behalf of my colleagues in the We’re Right Here campaign.
Professor Atherton: My name is Graeme Atherton. I am based in the University of West London, and I head the Centre for Inequality and Levelling Up, which is a research centre at the university focused on developing policy-relevant research on geographical and broader forms of inequality. The centre was launched just over a year ago.
The Chair
I understand that Government Members started the questioning last time, so I ask Alex or Matthew to start.
Alex Norris
Q
Rich Bell: Our basic sense is that there are positive individual measures in the Bill to strengthen the agency of local authorities and communities, but we have some worries about the way that local leadership is conceived of in the Bill. Andy Haldane, who led the Government’s levelling-up taskforce, said that if we are to make a reality of levelling up, local governance has to be a team sport involving local government, local finance, community organisations and local people, yet local leadership seems to be conceived of, both in the levelling-up White Paper and in the Bill, as being restricted to elected metro Mayors, potentially county mayors and governors. We do not think that that fulfils the need for meaningful control at community level. Giving people control of the services, spaces and spending decisions that shape our places will be absolutely pivotal to fulfilling levelling-up missions related to pride in place—as will local leadership, obviously.
Alex Norris
Q
Sacha Bedding: Teesside is well known for what our metro Mayor, Ben Houchen, is doing. If you were to ask people in my community what that means to them—the purchase of an airport; the decarbonisation of industry; carbon capture and storage—they would say that they are good things, and the macroeconomic circumstances arising out of them could be a positive, but it feels as though they are a million miles away from having an impact on their life. When we talk about local leadership, I would like us to move beyond the sub-regional. From a Westminster perspective, that is more local, but from a community perspective, to really feel for those people in left-behind neighbourhoods, of which ours is one, it needs to be most local leadership. Giving people agency and control over more decisions, more often, would be beneficial.
The Bill is a start, and a step in the right direction. As Rich says, there are elements that you can get behind, but probably more needs to be done, so that people can feel that they benefit from some of the levelling-up opportunities in the paper.
Alex Norris
Q
Dr Patel: At their simplest, questions of constitutional reform and devolution are questions about whose voice is heard, which we should not detach from the question of who has a voice in the first place. There is minimal engagement in Bill with local politicians at certain scales, or with community and civil society organisations and citizens. There are some allusions to public consultation, but without much detail about what it involves. That is a problem, because when you are implementing a tier of local governance without having come bottom up, there is a risk that the link between the citizenry and this new tier of state will be weak. Then you get low political engagement, of all sorts, and local opposition to certain new tiers of government, and it feels like a wasted opportunity.
At the same time, clauses 43 and 45 grant the Secretary of State new powers to impose a combined county authority, change the constitution in a CCA or impose a mayoralty unilaterally—with a public consultation, although that is not quite defined. That purely top-down approach to constitutional reform risks being at best a little bit of a waste and at worst democratically not very legitimate.
Alex Norris
Q
Professor Atherton: One of the first things is that the missions differ significantly in precisely how they can be measured. For some missions, you see targets that one could see progress against in a quantitative way; for others, that is less so. Consistency across the missions would seem a good starting point. Then, if we are indeed to look for progress, there need to be quantitative and possibly other measures alongside each mission.
Inevitably, one of the challenges with levelling up is that the White Paper is so broad and encompasses so many different policy areas. We found over 120 different policy targets or policies mentioned in the White Paper, alongside £250 billion-worth of spend. Refining that down to a number of missions will be difficult. First, you need to make the missions consistent, and there needs to be a rationale for why certain things are included as missions and others are not. For instance, we consistently have things on skills, but not on other aspects of education—we have things for younger groups, at primary level, but not for those at a level between the two.
The important point is: what is and is not the mission? In defining it and looking for progress, we need to be as precise as we can be for each mission. We should possibly go beyond the time scale in the White Paper, and look at what happened prior to that, because although the medium term is good, you need to consider the short, medium and long-term progress you are looking to make on the missions.
Tim Farron
Q
Dr Patel: It is an excellent question. I cannot call on a precise study that will give me an exact scientific answer to what you are asking. The thing about health outcomes is that they are a point of convergence for a whole array of economic, social, cultural and political factors, including access to public services of all kinds, not just health services. That is why health outcomes are quite a good thing to look at. Within the 12 missions, it is sort of the mission of the missions. The other 11 all basically feed into whether or not we achieve the health mission, so it is a good thing to look at. There are no two ways about it: public services are a key determinant of health distributions and health patterns, and they make a massive difference to cancer outcomes, for example. At the same time, they are not the be-all and end-all. The local economy matters, and things like pride in place and social relations also matter.
Zooming out a little bit, do I think this Bill and the proposed funding pots around it will achieve the health mission? The evidence tells me I should be sceptical. A really good example is if we look at east and west Germany in 1990, when there was a four-year life expectancy difference between east and west Germany. Two decades later, that had closed to three months. In those two decades, we saw radical constitutional reform, sweeping political change, €2 trillion of investment and a massive upgrade in public services and access to the services you described. In relation to that, what this Bill proposes is certainly more symbolic than substantial, and that is where my scepticism originates.
Tim Farron
Q
Dr Patel: That is another brilliant question. There is a huge cut-across here with what has been going on with NHS reforms over the past two or three decades. It is almost as though we have had some of the issues again—the problem with top-down structural reform and how, ultimately, it does not really make a difference. Structures are important, but people really care about outcomes.
I would encourage people to compare what has being going on with the integrated care system reforms, and to think about the priorities, legislative and non-legislative, between those new institutions; the ICS boards operate at the same sort of size as a mayoral combined authority. I for one have definitely encouraged the ICSs to have a much stronger conversation with combined authorities about how they can work together to ensure that services can be delivered to the hardest-to-reach populations. There are certainly places that are doing that quite well. Often, it comes back not just to governance, but to resourcing. By that, I do not just mean money; I mean personnel. The public sector is anaemic in a lot of places, and that is a huge barrier beyond a legislative one.
Tim Farron
Q
Rich Bell: I think the destiny of communities is significantly shaped by their level of control over planning decisions. One thing we are at once encouraged by and slightly disappointed by in this Bill is the proposal regarding the neighbourhood share. This is the idea that 25% of the infrastructure levy could be controlled by either a parish council or a neighbourhood planning forum. That currently applies in the case of the community infrastructure levy, but not in the case of section 106. I think it is a very positive step on the Government’s part to extend that neighbourhood-level control over the investment of developer-generated public money—to devolve that directly to neighbourhoods. Unfortunately, parish councils are predominantly found in wealthy and rural areas. A report produced for the Department then known as the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government by academics at the University of Reading concluded something very similar on neighbourhood planning forums just a few years ago.
We would suggest that members of the Committee should consider whether the Bill could be amended to expand the definition of a “qualifying body” on page 264. We would ask Members to introduce a clause amending the Localism Act 2011 that expands the range of organisations to whom that neighbourhood share could be passed. It should be possible for local authorities to designate community anchor organisations, such as the Wharton Trust in Hartlepool, as local trusted partners who could work with that local authority to spend that not insignificant amount of public money.
Neil O'Brien
Q
Rich Bell: We were very encouraged by the detail of this proposal. We were very pleased to see that the Bill defines high street use in a way that recognises the use of high street premises as a communal meeting space. It is incredibly important that the legislation recognises that high streets are not just drivers of local economies; they are the sites of the bumping spaces and the meeting places that stitch together our social fabric. It is similarly positive that the Bill’s local benefit condition recognises the social and environmental benefits of high street premises as well as their economic benefits.
We encourage the Government to consider how they can shape accompanying regulations to ensure that local authorities feel that they have permission to work with social enterprises and local community organisations, and to shape their own criteria for high street auctions, so that those community organisations can gain access to high street sites. As I say, we were encouraged by the detail.
Sacha Bedding: High streets are absolutely about pride. There is nothing worse than seeing boarded-up places. The opportunity for local ownership and activity will help. People are full of ideas on how to do that. I will not go on too long; we absolutely agree with what Rich said, and there will be any amount of ideas, not just focused around retail, on how people can help make their high streets thriving places again.
Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)
Q
Rich Bell: My only comment would be to say that it seems incredibly important, when taking what is a pretty radical step in promoting sub-regional devolution across England, to do so in a joined-up way which involves dialogue with all the national Governments across the UK. That said, I would say that the problem in the Bill is not the lack of emphasis on sub-regional and national devolution; the problem is the lack of emphasis on devolution at the most local level, as Sacha said, and the complete absence of genuine community leadership.
Patricia Gibson
Q
Rich Bell: I suspect that this is a question that Graeme and Parth will be able to answer slightly better. As a campaign, we certainly see a case for some sort of independent body that would be charged with assessing the suitability of the levelling-up missions and, crucially, the metrics against which they are measured.
Something we are calling for, as part of our proposal for a community power Act, is the creation of a community power commissioner to assess the Government’s performance in upholding the rights of communities. We would say that there is something unique about the Bill in its emphasis on local leadership and on issues of social infrastructure and social capital, and we would like to see particular attention paid to those elements of this agenda when it comes to shaping the metrics and assessing the suitability of the missions.
Dr Patel: On the first part of that question, the mission quality, I think that some of the missions are excellent and some are not. Not every mission is equal. That is the top line. Despite the domains being about right as a package, some of the missions are quite narrow—education and skills, for example. Some of them are quite vague, the living standards one in particular, and some of them are probably just a bit too easy to achieve—even with a do-nothing approach, you would probably end up hitting that mission. Having said that, some of the missions are excellent, like the health one. We could dwell on that a little more.
The second half of your question was about accountability. I strongly welcome the reporting to Parliament. Particularly given recent trends in the use of secondary legislation and in the bypassing of Parliament in the Brexit negotiations and the covid legislation, it is nice to see the parliamentary scrutiny mechanism used. It is great that the Government will be doing that. Having said that, I do not think that that in itself is adequate, or at least it is on the low end of ambition, when accountability frameworks might have been useful.
In addition to the political accountability that Parliament will give by something being brought before Parliament each year, a further step would be independent scrutiny. There is the council here, but it is still at the behest of the Government and it will not have analytical power, capability or policy expertise, or the quantitative expertise, to be able to provide this really rigorous scrutiny that you would want around the missions, akin to what we have for climate progress—we have the Climate Change Committee, and the Office for Budget Responsibility or even the National Infrastructure Commission. If we had an institution like that, if the council—which has no statutory footing for levelling up—were turned into an independent institution with a statutory footing, with that coming some resource to hire the policy experts that you need, that would be excellent.
You would then have the political accountability mechanism, as well as the technocratic accountability mechanism. One might be better placed to do an annual progress report and the other to do an annual delivery plan, but those two mechanisms together would be the gold standard to ensure accountability and progress on the missions.
Patricia Gibson
Q
Professor Atherton: Yes. I agree, particularly on the issue of independence and scrutiny. Transparency is important as well, if we are going to construct what is most desirable, which is some form of independent scrutiny. If you look at the Bill, it is weak in that area, with regards to how the missions are scrutinised. That has to be done in a transparent way, whatever approach is taken. We have already seen in the distribution and levelling-up funds some issues regarding transparency and clarity in those areas. I would also say that we would have to consider how the ability is set in the Bill to change the missions. There is something of a contradiction to consider there in that the missions are meant to be long-term challenges.
In the White Paper, there is significant attention placed on the nature of missions—why we have missions and how they will make a significant difference to how we deliver on this agenda. However, in the long-term element, there is at the same time the ability set in the Bill to change the missions, and I think how that is done needs to be transparent. If we consider the time limits, from my understanding of the Bill, they can be changed quite frequently, possibly after only a small period of implementation, which would suggest that we could have a scenario where we move from mission to mission.
That kind of devalues the concept of the missions altogether. We have to consider what the missions are adding to the mix. Overall, they have a possible powerful role to play. The way the policy is constructed is to have lots of other different policies moving towards levelling up. Having a mission is a way of tying that together in some way, so I think that is quite welcome, but for them to work, they have to generally be constructed as different from a policy target—i.e. a mission. Therefore, it implies longevity, scrutiny, transparency as well as clear metrics around progress and, as I said before, consistency across the nature of what the missions are.
Patricia Gibson
Chair, perhaps we could let Sacha come in on that if he wants.
The Chair
Quickly, because we have a number of people who still want to speak, and we are running a bit short on time. Sacha, do you want to come in on that?
Sacha Bedding: No, it’s fine.
Stuart Andrew
Q
We have a significant number of neighbourhood planning groups and neighbourhood plans around the country. However, there are areas—particularly more deprived areas—that have not developed those. The Bill provides for the neighbourhood priority statements to introduce a simpler way for communities to think about how they want to improve their place. Do you see any issues around that area in the Bill that need to be looked at again? Is this a real opportunity for such groups to formulate how the needs of their communities are delivered on the ground for those towns and areas?
Rich Bell: The creation of neighbourhood priority statements, which allow people at the local level to very clearly set out their priorities, and having those accounted for in local plans, is definitely a positive step forward, and we really welcome that. The point we would make is that community anchor organisations work in a way so as to unlock the capacity that is already present in communities. We would suggest that drafting them into this work could actually be key to addressing the geographic disparity in current levels of neighbourhood planning, particularly as research by the Communities in Charge campaign has demonstrated that the sorts of organisations we are talking about—community anchor organisations that seek to address local challenges in holistic ways that are truly reaching the community—are actually more likely to be found in areas that we would describe as deprived.
Clearly, there are challenges around how you ensure those organisations are acting with legitimacy. We think that the Government’s pledge to bring forward community covenants in their White Paper is potentially a game changer in that respect. We see that as a means of working through the challenges of a public body investing a degree of authority in a community organisation that is not on a statutory status. We would suggest that as long as you are working through the intermediary organisation in the form of the local authority, and as long as the Government provide guidance and regulations to ensure that that local authority is ensuring the community organisation has the trust of the whole community before it invests that power, it is a neat and relatively easy quick fix to what might otherwise be a problem by which the Bill would wind up deepening inequalities in control and power rather than resolving them.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Rich Bell: I think we certainly agree with the comments that were made by many Members on Second Reading about the seeming primacy of the national management policy and the way in which the Bill seems to grant the Secretary of State the power effectively to overrule local communities. That does not seem to be in the spirit of the levelling-up agenda as we understand it.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Sacha Bedding: Only to say that the consequence of that would be more disillusionment, and it needs rectifying. If people are really to have a sense of agency and ownership of their own place and feel that it has been levelled up, they need to feel that they have the power to stop that happening. That needs teasing out in a thoughtful way, so that those powers that we hope will pass down to communities are enshrined and do not depend on the largesse of other people in more significant positions of power.
Darren Henry (Broxtowe) (Con)
Q
Professor Atherton: Definitely, when it comes to transport linkages, localism is really important. If we are to take this blank sheet, ambitious approach, we need to ask what model works for particular communities and areas. The modes of transport that we are looking to implement may differ in different areas, and that is really important. This is an area that fits with our previous discussions about where we put decision making at a local level with regards to what sort of innovative transport solutions we could achieve.
We need to be mindful also of being cognisant of the net zero agenda. If we are talking about transport innovation with regard to missions, we have the opportunity to do that in a way that is consistent with the societal commitment to reducing our carbon footprint. Those things are really important.
On the international comparison, there is a need for greater work across the missions on understanding where we see things that work in a comparable nature. It is one thing to look at other countries and say, “Well, X has worked here, but is area X fully comparable to some of the areas that we know face the greatest socioeconomic challenges?” We cannot just pick and choose the things that we want to implement. When we look at evidence of innovation and success, it has to be comparable. Localism is also really important in forming innovative solutions, especially where transport is concerned.
Darren Henry
Q
Rich Bell: I was going to suggest Sacha. I do not know whether he has anything to add.
Sacha Bedding: Of course, when the buses stop running at 6 pm in Hartlepool, it would be good to look at how we can enable transport infrastructure to improve. I am sure that if Mayor Houchen could have a Tees Valley metro system across the area, there would be opportunities for the connectivity between, say, Hartlepool and Redcar, which is an hour trip rather than 15 minutes across the bay. The scale of what is required to get us anywhere near the standards in London is huge, but we should broadly welcome the idea.
I was interested to see in the paper that the amount of public transport used by people in the north-east was significantly higher than in other parts of country, probably because car ownership is so low. It is about what lies behind those statistics. We need to make it as easy as possible for people to use public transport. At the moment, our solution appears to be electric scooters, but I am not convinced that that is necessarily the right way to level up.
Darren Henry
Q
Dr Patel: I have two quick points. Talking about London-style transport has been causing quite a lot of confusion—I do not quite see what that means. Is it ambitious enough? The London Mayor has more power than other devolved leaders around this country, but from an international perspective it is hard to think of a mayor of a major city who has fewer powers than the London Mayor. Only 8% of revenue is controlled by the London Mayor, and Whitehall still dominates about 70% of revenue streams in London. That is the first question: there is an inherent tension between devolving the power to run public services but not devolving the power to generate revenue to fund those public services. That is a tension that we will see again and again until the question of fiscal firepower is taken seriously.
On the second point, about what a fair comparison is, it is unfair to compare Glasgow to London or Newcastle to London, because London is this mega-city—it is one of a few cities in the world—so Tokyo is a fair comparison. Comparing Newcastle to London is an unfair comparison because they are fundamentally different in population size, economy and all sorts of things. Newcastle should be compared with Leipzig or Lyon—small or medium-sized towns with good, strong public transport that is organised in a way very different from the London transport system. Those are my two points.
The Chair
Final question from Sarah Atherton. We are running close to time, so can your question be quick, Sarah?
Sarah Atherton (Wrexham) (Con)
Q
Rich Bell: We welcome the spirit of street votes. They seem like a very sensible step forward to allow people to exercise a bit of agency at the neighbourhood level. We do not think they are anything near equal to the challenge that is before us. To emphasise the scale of the challenge we face, last year Demos asked people whether they would prefer to have more of a say over how money is spent in their area or rather have more money: people were twice as likely to say that they would prefer more say and less money than that they would prefer less say and more money. That speaks to how stark the situation has become.
There are various measures that we think could be taken to strengthen the ability of communities to exercise control over planning in their local areas. One that we would strongly recommend that the Committee considers is building into the Bill a community right to buy like that which is currently in law in Scotland. We would see that as a very sensible progression of the current measures.
Sarah Atherton
Sacha, do you have any comments?
Sacha Bedding: No, that’s fine.
Sarah Atherton
Q
Sacha Bedding: The strengthening of the Localism Act would be hugely helpful, as would longer timeframes for us to get our act together—if you give us six months and a developer comes in and already has money in the bank, the developer is always going to win. It is about levelling up the opportunity to take control of assets, because if you control the assets, you are halfway there. There are other things that can be done. For instance, give us 12 months rather than six months—that type of simple approach. Level the field between local communities—certainly in our left-behind places—to give them longer to get together, because it will take longer. Be patient with them and help them build their capacity to do this, because there is an overwhelming desire for it. When you talk about taking back control and levelling up, that resonates, because they have so little control.
The Chair
Order. I am sorry, but we have run out of time for questions to this panel. On behalf of the Committee, I thank the witnesses for their evidence.
Examination of Witnesses
Councillor James Jamieson, Councillor Tom Oliver and Councillor Sam Chapman-Allen gave evidence.
The Chair
I think we have some technical problems with some of the witnesses, but we have Sam Chapman-Allen, chair of the District Councils Network. Would you like to introduce yourself, Sam?
Cllr Chapman-Allen: Sorry if there is a bit of a lag; I am down in Australia at the moment, at a local government conference. I am Councillor Sam Chapman-Allen, the leader of Breckland Council in Norfolk. I am also chairman of the District Councils Network for England. I represent 184 district councils across the country, and we serve 22 million people, which is 40% of the population, covering 68% of the country’s area. In turn, we provide support to 40% of businesses across the whole of England. I do not know how brief you want me to be, Chair.
The Chair
Thank you—that is fine. We are just a bit anxious about the other two members of the panel not being able to connect yet. I will throw the questions open to the Government side first.
Neil O'Brien
Q
However, it is the Government’s intention to have a strong role for lower-tier authorities once those combined authorities are created. I wonder if I could pick your brains on what sorts of things your members might want to combine powers on as voting members of those new CCAs or through joint committees, for instance as a single local authority devolution deal. What sorts of powers would your members potentially want to combine powers on, and to what end?
Cllr Chapman-Allen: Thank you for the question. Initially, I think we need to talk about the scale of ambition that local authorities and leaders are trying to achieve. The levelling-up framework sets out the clear positions of levels 1, 2 and 3 for what can be devolved within those nine vanguard areas. For me particularly, those six are in those two-tier areas.
Neil, you spoke about the county councils and unitary councils being enablers for the CCA and what districts would be willing to support moving forward. I think it is important to say that district councils in some areas where these deals are being suggested are being more ambitious than those counties and unitaries. Therefore, whoever is willing to be most ambitious should ensure that they have a seat around the table, but in turn ensuring that no sovereign body has those powers and/or responsibilities removed. There should be opportunities for districts, with those key enablers around business support and planning and growth.
Having spoken to colleagues across the country, but particularly in my area of Norfolk, which is one of those areas, I think we would be willing to have conversations with those that want to share strategic opportunities in the wider planning piece, be they in local planning, master planning, the duty to co-operate —although that is a blight, it is being diluted as we move forward, which is important—our housing challenges and how we support each other to ensure that our housing policies support residents in our localities and, in turn, how we deal with inward investment, to ensure that, regardless of where you want to land in a county locality, you have the same opportunities and support on business rates, business rate exemption and that planning process.
However, it is important that those individuals and sovereign councils buy into being a part of that CCA. In turn, they have to be a constituent part. We are talking about combined authorities, so district councils need to be combined in the decision-making process. There should absolutely not be a veto. I do not think that any individual in that combined authority should have the opportunity to veto, but if they are relinquishing some of that sovereignty through partnership and collaboration, they should have an equal say in how policies, strategy, spend and projects come forward.
Neil O'Brien
Q
Cllr Chapman-Allen: The frameworks and structures around MCAs already exist. Some individuals in Whitehall cite failures of governance in some of those MCA structures. We do not necessarily need to throw the baby out with the bathwater as we try to recreate a CCA. We can actually use the existing framework and governance structure, and tweak them to ensure that we are delivering for residents and businesses across our localities and communities.
It comes down to the bottom-up position. Localities and sovereign councils absolutely see the opportunities presented in the levelling-up framework and the Bill, but we have to make sure that we are able to help in shaping those opportunities moving forward. District councils across the country collaborate with each other through partnerships every single day. In my locality in Norfolk, we have a shared waste partnership across three councils—it is one of the biggest waste partnerships in the country—and, of course, as the collection authority across the whole of the county of Norfolk, all the district councils provide a set framework for how we collect that waste.
That district collaboration in some statutory service provision—be it waste, planning, housing, or homelessness —occurs not just in Norfolk, but across the whole of the country. We just have to make sure that we lift that to the new body—whether it is an existing MCA or the new CCA—which will be able to help shape the agenda as we move forward and ensure that there is equal say at the table on policy and spend.
Matthew Pennycook
To clarify, Chair, will we not be able to get the other witnesses in?
The Chair
It is looking iffy at the moment. If they do not appear, we can have a brief discussion about how to address it at the end of the sitting.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Cllr Chapman-Allen: There are two parts to that question. One is that, across the whole of the country, regardless of which tier of government deals with planning, we have a shortage of planning officers. That, sadly, is the nature of the beast, with their desire to work in the private sector, where incomes will be greater.
For us in district councils, for those who have not got a rural locality basis—that ability for residents to interact with their council—through poor broadband provision, I think the proposals for digitalisation for planning is the real positive. As for how district councils will operate that, we are already in the vanguard of that AI—artificial intelligence—and how we interact with our residents on digitalisation.
The trial that has already taken place across the country has been really successful. Both we and the Department have learnt a great deal from it. As long as the outlay, with some capital support, is forthcoming in the Bill, to ensure that we are able to uplift our software and our hardware, I think it should be a seamless transition. However, we have to ensure that we build that into our capital programmes and into the activity of our staff, so that we can deliver it and, in turn, train up how our council officers operate and, more importantly, ensure that the public understand how they begin to interact and use that new digital service.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Cllr Chapman-Allen: There will be legacy licences for some existing software. They will have a lag time to run out or, depending on the Government’s position on this, if there is a hard reset date, there will be a revenue cost to the authority. That needs to be picked up as it moves forward. However, I do not think that it will be a challenge, because the uniformity for residents on planning—in particularly for developers and individuals applying with planning applications—will allow the smooth understanding of how to interact with their local planning service.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Cllr Chapman-Allen: I am not completely sighted on that clause, but in the wider sense of the LGA and DCN’s position on the proposed rules moving forward, this must be a bottom-up approach. As we have said time and again, in order for growth to take place, communities have to see the benefit realisation, whatever that is, whether for infrastructure, design or the specification of units we are building. As long as residents see the benefit to their communities, the policies that are forthcoming to date are in line with what we were expecting; with what we asked for back in the planning consultation in August 2020. That said, there will be nuances in every location across the country that will sit outside the NPPF, in which local planning policies from local plans must have that flexibility to support local needs and desires, and therefore those sorts of outputs.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Cllr Chapman-Allen: I do not necessarily think this is a position around culture and morale. Being a planning officer is one of those specialist trades in a district council, no different from an environmental health officer or a health and safety officer. It takes years to get to the standard required to undertake that duty and that requirement.
The challenge we face is that framework and that position, and the fact that we are competing with the private sector. So, particularly for those districts that surround the M25, it is immensely easy for those planning officers to transit in between and to commute into London. For those districts that are in rural locations, some of those challenges on connectivity, and on access to health and education, make it a career choice sometimes for people as to whether they want to reside in those locations.
Of course, the new agile lifestyle post covid presents some further opportunities, but it once again comes down to pounds, shillings and pence. We are stuck between a rock and a hard place. We can always pay more for planning officers, but sadly we are not able to get 100% cost recovery on planning applications. So, in response to your question, we could go further to ensure that district councils and others that deal with planning matters could get 100% cost recovery and therefore pay a higher value for those planning officers to deliver that service.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Cllr Chapman-Allen: Yes, there is, but I will put back on the health warning that with planning the clue is in the name—we need to make sure that we are planning for our communities for the next 10, 15, 20 or 30 years, and not being reactive. Also, this cannot be a top-down exercise for what we are trying to achieve. Every one of our locations, in our communities and in your constituencies, has its unique beauty, its unique opportunities and its unique challenges. Therefore, those local plans must be derived locally. As much as the national planning policy framework sits at a national level as the umbrella, I do not think it should necessarily dictate completely how we deliver planning locally for us.
Stuart Andrew
Q
Just touching on the local plans, obviously at the moment we have about 39% of England covered by local plans, which means that there is a significant area not covered by them. Clearly, the Bill is trying to simplify the process of developing local plans. What has been the reaction your members of to the measures in the Bill to try to achieve that, and are there any other suggestions they have made that they think would be helpful, so that we can get more local plans in place within a much shorter timescale than we are currently experiencing?
The Chair
Just before you answer that question, Sam, can I just bring it to the Committee’s attention that we have now been joined by Councillor James Jamieson, chair of the Local Government Association, and Councillor Tim Oliver, chair of the County Councils Network. Welcome to the sitting. I am sorry that you have had those technical problems, but we are glad to see you here. We are just partway through a question from the Minister, Stuart Andrew, at the moment. I will bring you both in and we will obviously tailor some of the questions towards you both as the sitting progresses.
Cllr Chapman-Allen: Thank you, Chair. Stuart, the answer is twofold. Local planning is an immensely complicated process—that to-ing and fro-ing with the planning inspector makes it immensely challenging. I think it comes back to the previous questions: “Is this a top-down exercise? Do we need a very clear framework for what planning is?” But planning derives from that local position.
If we are being really clear and setting clear parameters for what local communities need to deliver through that formula of housing growth, challenge if it cannot be delivered, and allow those local communities to move forward and deliver upon that in a set timeframe, then we will expediate that. In my local authority in Breckland, we delivered a local plan, confirmed in December 2019. We are already out for review again, at vast cost, vast expense and vast frustration for our communities, when actually we should probably only be tweaking some of those local policies.
The sad fact is that some of those locations that you mentioned, which do not have a developed local plan, are now in the challenge around nutrient neutrality and an inability to deliver those plans, and of course the duty to co-operate places a further burden on those councils to provide that local plan.
In answer to your question, really briefly—sorry to waffle—make the timeframe shorter; allow that local drive to come from the bottom up; ensure that the national planning inspector supports those local policies, not a top-down approach; and I think you would see expediated local plans and adopted local plans across the country.
Stuart Andrew
Q
I want to turn to the infrastructure levy. The intention behind this is that it is non-negotiable, to try and reduce all the time that planning officers seem to spend on negotiation. Are the measures welcome? On the development of the infrastructure statements that local planning authorities have, do you see the opportunity for greater working between county and district councils in agreeing, as part of a local plan, the sort of infrastructure that is needed within those communities ahead of development being granted?
Cllr Jamieson: Thank you and apologies for my technical problems. On the infrastructure levy, I do think that is a helpful move. All too often, developers use viability as an excuse to increase their profits, or landowners to increase the value of their land. Really, where there is a significant uplift in the value of land as a result of receiving planning permission, it is only right and fair that that bonus of increase in value should go towards providing the essential infrastructure that is needed to support that development, whether that is roads, schools or soft infrastructure, such as health and community support. We welcome the community infrastructure levy as a simpler mechanism and one that will be applied to more developments, both commercial and housing.
One of the issues we have raised many times is the fact that developments of fewer than 10 houses do not pay anything. Quite clearly, that is all very positive. Of course, there are parts of the country where the land value uplift is not sufficient to provide the infrastructure, and that needs to be addressed and will have to be addressed by funding from Government. However, in areas where it is—yes, we welcome the fact that it is simplified. Of course, Sam just mentioned some of the other issues, such as nutrient neutrality, which is yet another imposition on development, so we need to be cognisant when we look at the infrastructure levy of the other levies and costs that are put on the land.
Stuart Andrew
Q
Cllr Oliver: Many thanks, and my apologies too for the technical issues. We absolutely welcome a simplified community infrastructure levy and section 106 arrangement. At the moment, CIL is administered by the district and borough council, and the county council, in normal circumstances, would make an application for a part of that funding. It would be helpful for the Bill to provide clarification on how that infrastructure levy should be used. It is a levy to enable infrastructure support to facilitate housing and development. I know that part of the suggestion in the Bill is that 25% of that infrastructure levy would be set aside for parish councils, but, to your point, I would hope that there would be early conversations between all three tiers of local government, where they exist, as to how that levy should be spent for the benefit of the community.
The Chair
Thanks Stuart. Just before I bring in Tim Farron, I will give both Neil and Matthew the opportunity to ask a question to the other two panellists, who unfortunately were not present earlier. Neil, have you got any brief questions? I will then bring in Matthew.
Neil O’Brien
Q
Cllr Jamieson: First, in broad terms, we welcome the move to enable every part of the country to have devolution. Previously it has been very much city focused and, of course, most of the country is not in cities, so we welcome that fact and the ambition that everywhere should have a devolution deal.
Obviously, simplifying the process is always welcome, provided that there is a fair and reasonable consultation, and involvement of all relevant parties. Clearly, we should not ride roughshod over various parties. However, as ever with devolution, we think devolution should be led by devolving and not by restructuring. That is one of the issues that has happened in the past, and we need to ensure it does not happen this time. There needs to be genuine devolution from Whitehall down to the local level, at which point we will find much greater acquiescence at the local level when it comes to how to come up with a structure that works.
When we first start talking about restructuring and then about devolution, I am always concerned that we should devolve the powers down and then look at what is the best way, on a local basis, which will be different across the country, to deliver the outcomes from that devolution. I would emphasise—Neil, I really appreciate the work that you are doing—that we certainly believe that far more can be done on a place basis than on a Whitehall basis in local devolution, simply because if I am in the north of England or Northumbria that is very different from Cornwall or central Bedfordshire. We have different priorities and issues, and that can only be done at the local place level, so the more that is devolved, that is clearly better. I emphasise devolution first, and then restructuring to match the powers that are devolved to us.
Neil O’Brien
Q
Cllr Oliver: Thank you very much. The County Councils Network and my members are hugely supportive of the intentions set out in the Bill. We see this very much as an opportunity for the two thirds of the country that are not currently able to benefit from any devolution deal.
We see this as the devolution of powers from Parliament down to local government. The complications that exist at the moment will be taken away by the Bill. I think we will see members embracing the opportunity to have a devolution deal. In terms of the CCA, only 50% of my members would need that, where they have an adjoining county authority or unitary authority. The other 50% could benefit from a simple devolution deal.
My understanding is that this is not about the organisation of local government, either overtly or through the back door. This is about the flow down of powers from central Government to local leaders, where those leaders are clearly identified, and then the county level engaging with all our partners. This is as much about delivering the health system, and the integration of health and social care, as it is about any tier of local government. It is important that the process is simple, straightforward and quick. If at all possible, we want to get on with this. Then it is for the county authority to engage with the other two tiers of local government, if those exist, and to work out how best to deliver that.
I am very supportive, as is the CCA. I am grateful to the Minister for clarification on some confusion around clause 16. That seems perfectly workable and reasonable, so I very much support the direction of travel.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Cllr Jamieson: The key thing is that we are all immensely supportive of digitisation; it is the way to go. We do not want paper. In fact, one of the things that we saw during covid was that a number of local authorities moved to remote working and digitisation anyway, which made the process so much easier.
This is something that we are supportive of. I think Sam is right that we need clear guidelines, the relevant capital support and clear technical things, such as, “How will the system work?” and “What are the data protocols?”, because we want a very clear system that works for everyone. As ever, I think we are all slightly nervous about big IT projects, but this should work, with proper engagement with local government to ensure that we do it in the right way.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Cllr Oliver: Yes, I agree with both James and Sam. Obviously, planning is largely in the remit of the district and borough councils. In an ideal world, I would hope to see some sort of spatial development strategy, or the ability to create that. The duty to co-operate has not worked particularly well, and, where we are creating CCAs and county deals, it would be very helpful for there to be some input, at least, from a county-wide perspective. In terms of the digitalisation, I would leave that to the other two and I agree with what they said.
Tim Farron
Q
If we take it as a given that, particularly in the rural communities that many district councils serve, there is a collapse of the private rented sector into the Airbnb sector and a massive growth in second home ownership at the expense of permanent occupied dwellings, do you think that this Bill gives you any additional powers that help you to push back against that? What additional powers would you like?
Cllr Chapman-Allen: The relaxation for local authorities to tax second homes for council tax purposes had a really positive impact. We are seeing that across those communities in which second home ownership is immensely high. For communities such as yours, Tim, that Airbnb community is a challenge. First, it removes those rental properties from the market for long-term tenants. Secondly, it creates a really fluid community, and sometimes there are risks of antisocial behaviour related to that. There could be more strengthening for those local authorities to place conditions on new builds and new properties to ensure that the type of mix and tenure, and/or usage around holiday homes and/or Airbnbs, could be strengthened.
That said, we have the existing legacy problems for coastal communities, market towns and cathedral cities already. I would not necessarily want to suggest that we change that through this Bill now. We need to ensure that we are working with those landlords positively, as with housing providers and housing legislators, to ensure that they understand the challenges they face, but more importantly, the challenges that the communities face.
We have a long way to go. Over the last 12 months, there has been a lot of change for landlords. Sadly some of those have now vacated the market because of the changes in regulations, and policies required of them. We must ensure that we have a suitable housing mix across the country, and those who want to and do rent have an important part to play. Therefore, landlords have an important part to play in that process. I would not necessarily want to over-regulate so that landlords no longer want to operate in that market. However, there is a challenge around Airbnb and there is further work we can do to support the Government in implementing some legislation on that.
Tim Farron
Thanks. James?
Cllr Jamieson: I agree with Sam on the issue of second home owners—I think that is a helpful move. Airbnb is a slightly separate issue that needs to be thought through because there is a whole range of issues associated with it. It is not just about taking it out of the market. As Sam alluded to, it is a potentially antisocial issue; it is a transient nature; and it potentially puts more pressure on local authorities. It is more about how we manage that type of property, which is something we are very keen to have a conversation about—on enforcement, on ensuring that the accommodation is suitable, and on things like a potential tourist tax. I am not quite sure the solution to Airbnb is part of the levelling-up White Paper. It is potentially a separate issue that we need to look into quite carefully.
However, you were right when you alluded to the fact that housing just costs far too much in far too many parts of the community. In your area, Tim, and in the south-west and coastal communities, housing is being soaked up by holidaymakers and second home owners, with not enough homes available for people who want to work there. There are manifest stories of people wanting to go on holiday—to, say, Cornwall—but the pub has to shut because it cannot get any staff, because they cannot afford to live there.
Tim Farron
Q
The Chair
Could you answer quickly? We have one more question—possibly two—and we are running very short on time.
Cllr Jamieson: Our view is that we have excellent local government leaders. There is a role for Mayors, but it should not be essential to have a Mayor everywhere. There are plenty of powers that could be devolved to the existing structure without the need for a Mayor. As I said, there is nothing against Mayors; they are absolutely appropriate in certain places. We think it should be the choice of the local area as to the best governance arrangement for them.
Tim Farron
Q
Cllr Oliver: I support that. I understand and agree with the Government’s desire to have a single accountable leader. However, I think that in the case of a county council leader, that person already exists. I know that my residents know exactly who to write to if they have any issues, particularly on potholes. We do not necessarily need to have a directly elected Mayor or leader to deliver the devolved aspects and benefits that will come with the Bill. We respect the Government’s position, but we do not see that as an absolute prerequisite.
The Chair
Okay. A couple of words, Sam?
Cllr Chapman-Allen: Thank you. In response to Tim’s question, I would say that, once again, it comes back to the bottom-up position. We are sovereign bodies in our own right. We work in partnership across our localities, whether through public sector leaders’ boards or leaders’ forums, and we can already operate in that structure. The past two years, with the pandemic, have proven that collaboration.
In direct response to Tim’s question, the risk is that, as we move forward, there are powers being devolved, and actions and functions—particularly around local enterprise partnerships—that are moving away to a single person who is not elected for that role directly. We should be using existing structures, arrangements and collaboration to deliver on behalf of Government. Coming back to James’s point, we do not actually quite know what is being devolved from Government yet.
The Chair
Greg Smith, you have half a minute for a question and half a minute for an answer.
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
Q
Greg Smith
Let’s go to Councillor Jamieson, who is chairman of the Local Government Association.
Cllr Jamieson: I represent localism, and I think it is all about localism. The Government need to be very clear about their objectives. Setting national targets and then blaming councils when houses are built and forced through on appeal by the Planning Inspectorate is slightly disingenuous.
The Chair
Order. I am afraid that that brings us to the end of the time allotted for the Committee to ask questions in this afternoon’s sitting. On behalf of the Committee, I thank our witnesses for their evidence. The Committee will meet again at 11.30 am on Thursday in this room to hear further oral evidence. Thank you all for attending.
Public Order Bill (Seventh sitting)
Tuesday 21st June 2022
(2 years, 6 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Public Order Act 2023 View all Public Order Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 21 June 2022 - (21 Jun 2022)
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 6 / Noes: 8 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Chair
I have a few preliminary reminders for the Committee. Please switch electronic devices to silent. No food or drink is permitted during sittings, except for the water provided. Hansard colleagues would be grateful if Members emailed their speaking notes to hansardnotes @parliament.uk or, alternatively, passed their written speaking notes to the Hansard colleague in the room.
New Clause 1
Offence of interference with access to or provision of abortion services
“(1) A person who is within a buffer zone and who interferes with any person’s decision to access, provide, or facilitate the provision of abortion services in that buffer zone is guilty of an offence.
(2) A ‘buffer zone’ means an area with a boundary which is 150 metres from any part of an abortion clinic or any access point to any building or site that contains an abortion clinic.
(3) For the purposes of subsection (1), ‘interferes with’ means—
(a) seeks to influence; or
(b) persistently, continuously or repeatedly occupies; or
(c) impedes or threatens; or
(d) intimidates or harasses; or
(e) advises or persuades, attempts to advise or persuade, or otherwise expresses opinion; or
(f) informs or attempts to inform about abortion services by any means, including, without limitation, graphic, physical, verbal or written means; or
(g) sketches, photographs, records, stores, broadcasts, or transmits images, audio, likenesses or personal data of any person without express consent.
(4) A person guilty of an offence under subsection (1) is liable—
(a) in the first instance—
(i) on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 6 months, or
(ii) to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale, or
(iii) to both; and
(b) on further instances—
(i) on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 2 years, or to a fine, or to both; or
(ii) on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months, or to a fine, or to both.
(5) Nothing in this section applies to—
(a) anything done in the course of providing, or facilitating the provision of, abortion services in an abortion clinic,
(b) the operation of a camera if its coverage of persons accessing or attempting to access an abortion clinic is incidental and the camera or footage is not used for the any of the purposes listed in subsection (3), and
(c) a police officer acting properly in the course of their duties.”—(Dr Huq.)
This new clause would introduce areas around abortion clinics and hospitals (buffer zones) where interference with, and intimidation or harassment of, women accessing or people providing abortion services would be an offence.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
I beg to move, That the Clause be read a Second time.
At the last count, 35 other right hon. and hon. Members, from seven parties, including at least one Member of every party of England and Wales, had signed up to the new clause. I do not know whether the number has gone up since then.
We have talked quite a lot in Committee about what could happen. We have talked about what could happen if someone was carrying, as I am today, a bike lock— I thought I would have to cycle in; I cycled part of the way, to the house of another Member who gave me a lift the rest of the way—and whether I could be criminalised for having that on my person. Could two little old ladies from the Women’s Institute be arrested for linking arms? The new clause, though, addresses what is actually happening every day, up and down our country, at abortion clinics.
Some of the fanciful stuff we have talked about, such as members of Extinction Rebellion gluing themselves to trains, or the blocking of the A40 in my constituency, which I have spoken about, are pretty rare and the exception, not the rule; but every day, women are unable to make their way into abortion clinics to have a perfectly legal procedure. It has been legal in this country since 1967 or 1968, I think—for more than 50 years, anyway. There is disruption not just to the women who use the clinics, but to users of the public highway and local residents. The figures are there—the Home Office has done the crunching—and they show that tens of thousands of women, at a number of locations, are affected every year.
I have previously ventilated this issue through a ten-minute rule Bill and a letter to the then Home Secretary, Amber Rudd. Loads of MPs from both sides of the House signed up to those, because they know, as do their local police forces, what a waste of time it is for the police to have their people tied up in adjudicating between two groups of protesters. There are two groups. There are the anti-choice people, and then there is a group in my constituency called Sister Supporter; its members, who wear pink hi-vis vests, want to escort women into the clinic. There is friction, and the police, who should be fighting crime, are tied up there.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
My hon. Friend mentioned the impact of the people outside the clinics on the people going into the clinics, and the obstruction of the pavement and passers-by, but does she agree that there is a difference between the two? As we have discussed in Committee, protests that cause people inconvenience are legitimate, but there is quite a difference between that and the harassment of people making a possibly difficult life choice. Does she agree that there is a difference in the impact on people, and that protesters could hold a protest without being close to the clinic?
Dr Huq
My hon. Friend makes a really good point. When is a protest not a protest? These women are subject to harassment. There is a time and place for protest. If someone wants to attack legislators, they should protest here, or they could protest at the Department of Health and Social Care, wherever that is now—I know it is not in Richmond House anymore, because my office is there. There are legitimate places where people can hold a protest without shaming individual women and rubbing their noses in it. We have heard how these things are filmed and put on Facebook Live, and the new clause takes that into account.
The Minister has chided me on this before, but last time there was a Labour amendment on this issue, it also concerned anti-vax protests. The former Minister for vaccines used to have a Friday call with all of us that was very popular, and he pointed out that stuff has been done in law to stop those protests. This is not dissimilar. We said after the horrible Sarah Everard episode that women should be able to go about their lawful business, to use the public highway and to walk down the street without being impeded by others. Some people would describe what is happening outside clinics as a protest; the people doing the “protesting” would say they were holding vigils and offering advice to the women, but there is a time and a place for that, and it is not at the clinic gates when women are making the most difficult decision of their life, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East said. They are not doing it lightly, and it may be for all sorts of reasons, such as fatal foetal abnormality.
Other jurisdictions have similar legislation. The French legislation brackets the offence with causing psychological distress, and the amendment is lifted from British Columbia. Several American states have such an offence, as does Australia. I have given the example of Ealing before, and I am proud that my local authority was the first to set up a public spaces protection order, or PSPO. Ministers have told me, “Well, councils can do that,” but that order was set up in 2018, and only three other councils in the country have done the same, although new locations for such action are popping up all the time. The Minister might not understand, but my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East and the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central, will know that walking past certain unpleasant things will send a shiver down a woman’s spine anyway. Imagine how that might be magnified when they face a difficult medical procedure. Women can sometimes be uneasy about using the public highway; such activity adds a whole new dimension.
As I say, only three other councils have used a PSPO. Why have other councils not done so? Because setting them up is time-consuming and clunky for local authorities, who have quite a lot on their plate. In Ealing, we have the west London Marie Stopes clinic. It is not just my constituents who use it; women come from all over the country, and women from Ireland historically have used it. We are lucky in Ealing: protesters are moved away from the clinic gates. They are moved only 150 metres away, because there is a main road boundary there. We could be flexible about the limit; it could depend on where the clinic gates are, and where women have to pass. As a mother, I have taken little ones past these groups. We are not just talking about protests; there can also be gruesome images of foetuses and 3D dolls. I have been asked, “Mummy, what’s that?” People who are not even using the clinic have had to divert and use other roads so as not to pass that distressing scene.
Other councils have not followed Ealing because doing so is very resource intensive. We had this situation for 24 years in Ealing before the council took the imaginative route of using antisocial behaviour order byelaws; that is what PSPOs are thought of as being. The order is only temporary; it lasts three years before it has to be renewed, and a huge burden of evidence is needed. There is the principle of consistency before the law. We are lucky in Ealing, but this should not be a matter of luck. People should have equal protection under law, wherever they live, and there should be such restrictions for every clinic. I understand that Birmingham has two clinics, one in the north and one in the south; sometimes the protest gang will be at the north clinic, and sometimes at the south one. The element of uncertainty needs to be eliminated. Life has enough uncertainties as it is.
We are often told in Committee, “There is sufficient legislation.” Opposition Members have at times asked the Government, “Why do you want to create a new offence? There is sufficient legislation out there. These people can be stopped.” In this instance, it is proven that there is not sufficient legislation. Whenever I have ventilated the issue, the idea of taking action has been popular on both sides of the House. As constituency MPs, we all know about the complaints we get in our postbags when a street becomes unusable and police are tied up in dealing with unnecessary stuff. I was discussing this offline with a Committee member who I cannot see in his place today. He has an issue with abortion, but this is not about abortion at all; it is not about the number of weeks before which a person can have an abortion, or about being anti-abortion or pro-abortion. It is just about people not having a protest within the buffer zone, however many metres wide we define that as being. People can make their protest in a way that does not interfere with women’s right to walk into the clinic and have the procedure.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East pointed out, having an abortion is a huge, difficult decision, and women should be informed of the pros and cons and their choices by medical professionals, counsellors and family members. These things should not happen in the street, in a pressurised environment, and in a distressing and confrontational way that is about trying to bring on all these feelings of guilt and shame.
This issue is just not going away. The number of protest sites is growing year on year. The stuff going on across the Atlantic, where Roe v. Wade is being revisited, is very regressive. I do not want us to take a polarised position in Britain. As I have said before in this Committee, the Ealing decision has been challenged at every level—in the High Court, the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal—and it has always won. Judges have seen that someone having a medical procedure has a right to privacy that trumps freedom of belief, thought, conscience and expression. The two do have to be balanced, and people can have their protest, but not in a way that interferes with women’s right to use the public highway, and to have a procedure to which they have been legally entitled for decades—for longer than my lifetime. All the medical opinion supports this approach; it is supported by the British Medical Association, all the royal colleges, the nurses and midwifery people, and even good old Mumsnet, who are not normally seen as militant crazies.
I think I have said my bit for now. As I say, this measure was massively popular when it was a ten-minute rule Bill, and that was at the height of covid, so not everyone was in the building, but I think the numbers in support of it were crushing. If there was a free vote on the measure, I think that the House would support it. The Government should adopt it; they can then show that the Sarah Everard case was not in vain, and that something has been done for women and girls, even though there are zero mentions of the issue in the Bill.
Mrs Natalie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
I agree with the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton that the new clause is not about abortion rights. This is a Public Order Bill about the right to protest, the extent of active protesting that seriously disrupts others, and where the balance lies.
The public order subject matter of new clause 1 has been debated previously and was the subject of an in-depth review by the Government in 2018. That review engaged with more than 2,500 people and organisations, and it concluded that national exclusion zones of the type proposed in new clause 1
“would not be a proportionate response, considering the experiences of the majority of hospitals and clinics, and considering that the majority of activities are more passive in nature.”
I note the evidence submitted to the Committee by a Mr Damien Fitzgerald, who described in the following way the activity we are discussing:
“Peaceful pro-life vigils are not ‘protests’…Pro-lifers at peaceful vigils do not behave in a harassing or intimidating manner. They are simply praying and making it clear that help is available.”
That description was echoed in the findings of the Government’s review:
“The main activities reported to us that take place during protests include praying, displaying banners and handing out leaflets.”
The review went on to say that there were
“relatively few reports of the more aggressive activities described.”
Those examples included
“handing out model foetuses, displaying graphic images, following people, blocking their paths and even assaulting them.”
Such behaviour is entirely unacceptable and should, like all such activity on any issue, be tackled robustly.
There are existing laws to address personal intimidation and assault, as the then Home Secretary set out at the time of the review. There are also laws that allow local authorities to introduce local exclusion zones, where they believe that to be right. I note what the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton says about Ealing Council’s order, which has been in place since 2018. I therefore suggest that new clause 1 is wholly unnecessary for addressing the harm that has been outlined. It can be addressed, and indeed is being addressed, under current laws.
On balancing those rights, I note that new clause 1 is considerably wider in scope than the Ealing order. I would be grateful if the hon. Lady explained the reasoning behind the significant widening in the new clause. In particular, the Ealing order relates specifically to protests approving or disapproving of abortion services, but the new clause would criminalise only those who disapprove of abortion services. It seems that any person who wishes to facilitate the provision of such services within the buffer zone, for example by providing a physical or verbal presence in the zone, would not be criminalised by the new clause. That is a considerable difference from the approach taken in the Ealing order.
The Ealing order specifies that the people who are to be protected are service users—the women seeking the services—and those who work in the abortion clinics, but not protesters. Under the Ealing order, where there is a protest and a counter-protest at the same site, all protesters are treated equally, but that is not the case under subsection (1) of the new clause. It favours one side of a protest over another. That is an issue on which the Committee has heard evidence; I will come to that in a moment.
The Ealing order limits the offence to interfering, intimidating, recording or photographing service users or members of staff in the controlled area. New clause 1 contains no such limitation, which raises the question of whether a protester could be criminalised for photographing a counter-protester—not a member of staff or service user—when both are in the buffer zone, or indeed when one is in the buffer zone but the other is outside it.
On “seeks to influence” in subsection (3)(a), I draw the Committee’s attention to the evidence we received from Martha Spurrier of Liberty, who said:
“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.”––[Official Report, Public Order Public Bill Committee, 9 June 2022; c. 74, Q143.]
The new clause seems much broader than the Ealing order, and I would be grateful if the hon. Lady could explain why in detail.
Subsection (2) of the new clause specifies that the buffer zone boundary should be 150 metres from any part of the abortion clinic, or any access point to the site. The hon. Lady stated in evidence:
“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.”––[Official Report, Public Order Public Bill Committee, 9 June 2022; c. 73, Q143.]
I think she expressed a similar view just now.
The map of the area covered by the Ealing order shows that it has a highly unusual shape. It is a fat T; it covers a long strip of main road along the top, and a section of the park in which the clinic is situated. Reports, including from the BBC, refer to it as a 100-metre buffer zone, rather than a 150-metre one. I would be grateful if the hon. Lady clarified the basis for that, and her understanding of how the measures would operate in different locations. Is it intended, as the drafting suggests, that the buffer zone be a 150-metre circle around the site, or does she envisage a more site-specific approach being taken, as was the case in Ealing? She referred to Ealing, but the new clause does not provide for a site-specific or case-by-case approach.
Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)
Thank you for allowing me to speak, Mr Dowd, despite my being a couple of minutes late. I am sorry, but I could not find room 10; I could find rooms 9 and 11 but not 10. I thought I was in a Harry Potter plot.
Anne McLaughlin
Yes, but it does not have a number outside. I was unable to be here last week due to a diary clash, and I apologise for that, although I advised the Committee.
I recall that the previous week the Minister and others in the debate and here today suggested that there is some hypocrisy going on. That is my reason for saying a few words today. I want to explain why they are wrong in their assessment. That said, the measure applies to England and Wales only, so I will abstain in any vote because, as most colleagues know, the SNP does not vote on matters that do not directly impact on their constituents. However, I will put my name to a motion similar to this at the SNP conference later this year.
The position is not hypocritical, because there is a world of difference between somebody being harassed, as the Minister puts it, by protesters, and being told an airport is not doing enough for climate change. There is a world of difference between that and somebody being told with words, verbally, on a poster, or implied by presence, “You are killing your child. You individually are responsible for the death of your child.” That is what those protesters are saying.
I know women who have had abortions, and even those certain from the outset that it is absolutely the only and right choice for them, wrestle with their conscience, and they live with that decision forever. The guilt is there already; they do not need somebody else to make them feel even more guilty, yet that is what the protesters do. Even the ones who silently stand and pray quite often have posters with pictures of foetuses and the message that abortion is murder. It is cruel in the extreme.
Nobody changes their mind once they have got to the clinic. Nobody who turns up at the clinic and who is attacked by someone verbally, on posters or by their presence, stops and says, “Wait a minute—you are right. I am killing my child. I am going to cross the road to you and ask for your help.” That does not happen. It is fine for people to have those views and want to offer assistance, but not at that stage and in that way. That is why it is completely different from any other type of protest talked of in the Bill. I am sorry that I cannot vote for it. That is not much good for the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton, though others are not going to vote for it anyway. However, I do want to voice solidarity, because I support the gist of what she is trying to do.
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
Given the contributions so far, I will be brief. I want to add to what the hon. Lady has just said and to try to explain that this different, because it stops people getting the medical support that they need.
I have had cause to walk into the abortion clinic in Streatham. On that occasion, I was not getting an abortion but, I promise, if I had been what I saw would have made me feel very scared, guilty and inclined not to go in. Although the protesters were not shouting and yelling, they were judging. For many women—people—that judgment means they want to run away. It was worse when we came out than when we went in. The protesters do not know what has gone on inside, so the judgment when you come out is 10 times worse than when you go in, because the protesters think that you have committed murder. This is a very different matter; it is about getting medical attention that you are entitled to. It is about your legal duty to—
The Chair
May I stop the hon. Lady? I remind hon. Members not to use the second person singular and use “you”. The occasional use of “you” is okay but we are now in the territory of multiple uses. Will people please stick to the protocol?
Sarah Jones
Forgive me, Mr Dowd. That was wrong of me. I am going off script, which is why I did that.
We heard in evidence from Liberty that it is supportive of this new clause, because these behaviours are harassment. Even if it is not verbal, it is definitely harassment. I have felt it myself, so I think that this is a very different order of thing. It is in the same category as the kind of debates we have had about people being prevented from getting their vaccines.
I will leave it there. I am very happy to support my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton, as many Members from across the House have done. There is a genuine debate to be had. My hon. Friend is doing an excellent job of keeping this conversation going; it is important that we continue to have it.
The Minister for Crime and Policing (Kit Malthouse)
Given the comprehensive nature of the speeches, not least that of my hon. Friend the Member for Dover, I will keep my remarks short. During the course of the Committee’s debates, it has been interesting to hear how Members have tried to strike a balance between the competing rights that we acknowledge exist in society.
The hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton put her finger on what is basically the entire point of the Bill when she asked, “When is a protest not a protest?” I think we can all agree that there is a case for the rights of the individual to be balanced when anybody faces harassment—people screaming at them, pretending to be protesters; effectively any sort of verbal assault—whether that is on entering an abortion clinic or, indeed, in the case of the women protesters in Bristol at the weekend. These are different situations where we, as democratic politicians, have a duty to try to balance the competing rights on display.
The hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton has campaigned passionately on this issue; I salute her for her indefatigable pursuit. Her new clause is very similar, if not identical, to one she tabled during the passage of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. The remarks made at the time by the Minister responsible for the Bill—the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins)—are essentially the same as our position now. We believe that a suite of existing offences can handle this harassment, as the hon. Lady knows. The Public Order Act 1986 makes it an offence to display images or words that may cause harassment, alarm or distress, attracting six months’ imprisonment or a fine. It also means the police can impose certain conditions on protests.
Kit Malthouse
I will give way in a moment. We also have the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, which makes it an offence for someone to pursue a course of action that they know will amount to harassment of someone else; again, this offence attracts six months’ imprisonment and/or a fine. There are also the PSPOs, which the hon. Lady talked about. We have three in operation—Ealing, Richmond and Manchester—that have successfully put an end to some of those harmful protests.
The hon. Lady can respond at the end to the points that have been raised. Before she does so, however, I would just say that there are some difficulties with the scope of her new clause, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dover pointed out. It goes much further than existing PSPOs and covers private dwellings and places of worship that fall within 150 metres of a clinic, as well as other premises where the behaviours she has described would not have the impact of interfering with access, but could be criminalised. That, I am afraid, would be disproportionate. As my hon. Friend said, it would also include doctors in surgeries within 150 metres of a clinic who offer advice to patients about abortions. That too would be disproportionate.
We believe that the argument the hon. Lady made strengthens the case for locally driven responses that take into account local facts, issues and circumstances, rather than a nationwide blanket ban. As my hon. Friend said, we reviewed this matter in 2018, with a further review in 2020. We will continue to keep it under review, particularly by engaging with the National Police Chiefs’ Council and local authorities as they see these events unfold.
Based on the evidence, we have concluded that it would not be proportionate to introduce a blanket ban. Obviously, none of the provisions in the Bill that we have talked about so far has imposed a blanket ban. They are all about imposing conditions when a protest crosses the line, as the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton says, into being something else—into being a crime. As the hon. Member for Glasgow North East knows, it is possible to impose such conditions in Scotland; we would like to mirror that in England and Wales. The hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton voted against Second Reading on the basis that the Bill would curtail the right to protest, but here we are with a new clause that puts a blanket ban on protests, rather than placing conditional controls on them that would essentially seek to balance competing rights.
We understand the intentions behind the hon. Lady’s new clause, and see her passionate campaigning. I know that she has support from across the House, and that the issue will emerge again, but for the reasons that we have set out, I am afraid that I urge her to withdraw the new clause.
Dr Huq
There is quite a lot of stuff to respond to there. There has been quite a lot of whataboutery. I will start with the hon. Member for Dover. She made a large number of points, and I did not want to stop her flow, because she was reading out her speech so nicely, but there were some misunderstandings. The new clause is not identical to the Ealing order. I think that I explained that the new clause is based on the British Columbia provision, and I am happy to work with the Government to iron out any wrinkles in it. The distance of the boundary of the buffer zone should depend on the situation of the clinic. I understand that the Streatham clinic is in a cul-de-sac, so the buffer zone there would be different.
The Ealing PSPO came in relatively recently, in 2018, whereas the protest there has been going on since the ’90s. A great number of people thank me for the PSPO, and say that they can now use the pavement. The hon. Lady described BPAS in east London. I do not know the lay-out of that clinic, but she says that it is in a doctor’s surgery. Unusually, in this country, these services tend to be provided in stand-alone clinics. It is different in Scotland, where they are often provided in a hospital.
Dr Huq
Let me finish what I am saying. There are two main providers: BPAS and Marie Stopes, which runs the West London clinic in my constituency. They have stand-alone clinics, and these services are all that the clinics provide. The east London clinic is not known to me. I advise the hon. Lady to take a trip to the Marie Stopes in Maidstone, the nearest one to her, and look at the evidence logs. Getting the PSPO involved presenting the evidence logs.
The Chair
Order. Hon. Members must ask the person speaking if they will give way, and should not carry on talking if the other person is still talking.
The Chair
No. To be absolutely clear, when a Member is speaking, and someone wants to intervene, they ask if the Member will accept the intervention. If the Member carries on speaking, they have not agreed to the intervention. Could we follow that process? Otherwise, things will get chaotic.
Mrs Elphicke
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way. That is not what I said; I wanted to clarify, because I think that there has been a factual misunderstanding. I was describing the location of the BPAS centre, and mentioned the things around it—a doctor’s surgery, a school, a midwifery clinic. I was not saying that the BPAS centre sits in a doctor’s surgery.
Dr Huq
I think there has been plenty of misunderstanding of our two positions. I think that there are about 77 clinics across the country, including in Streatham and Bournemouth. Three local authorities have orders in place; that is a tiny number. I wanted to ask the Minister whether he knows how many prosecutions there have been under the Public Order Act 1986 and all the other bits and pieces of legislation that he cited. I think it is pretty much zero. Again, there was whataboutery; it was said that the new clause would criminalise people unnecessarily. [Interruption.] Yes, exactly; that stuff.
The Chair
Order. Can we let people speak? I do not want shouting across the Committee. If people want to intervene, they need to ask to intervene.
Dr Huq
Thank you, Mr Dowd.
We have heard hypotheticals about the new clause criminalising x, y and z. It has been pointed out that these people are passive and very nice—they hold rosary beads, or whatever. There have been zero prosecutions in Ealing, because these people are actually quite law-abiding, and they have simply moved their protest to the other side of the road. They are complying with the law—I think there was one warning at the very beginning. As I say, the order has been renewed once, in 2018.
My worry is that we are going down a very American sort of route. There are very well endowed groups, largely from across the Atlantic, that fund things such as the research and statistics we have heard. There are several of those groups. There is one called 40 Days for Life that is active every Lent, which shows how these protests are sometimes sporadic. That is why it would be wise to have a consistent approach—I call it consistent, not blanket—where, under the rule of law, every woman has that protection, not just if they live in Ealing, Richmond or Manchester. Every Lent, 40 Days for Life pops up and does a 40-day running protest. Again, that is something that should not be there, but we do not know.
It is claimed that these protests are passive and that the protesters are only praying. I have been trying to explain how that can be intimidatory and psychologically disturbing to women. How many times do we sometimes cross to the other side of the road or go the other way because some bloke looks a bit dodgy? I am disappointed that the hon. Member for Dover, as a sister, did not understand that—although the Minister, as a robust bloke, might not get the same feelings walking down the street that we do. The French version talks about psychological distress, as well.
The hon. Member for Dover described it as peaceful, but that is utterly subjective—it can be quite sinister and chilling to see these people with their rosary beads. The entire thing is designed to affect a termination and to individually shame women. That is what it is about. My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central, the shadow Minister, described this experience of running the gauntlet and the onslaught that people can feel, and she was going to a clinic as an observer. She was not even a user. There are examples from America of women staff of these clinics having had their cars booby-trapped. It is really quite alarming. We are going down that road.
We seem to be stuck in a groove in 2018. We have been told there was a review in 2018, but when I have asked questions about this, the Home Secretary has even said that it is under constant review. So what is going on? Have the Government shut the lid—“It was done in 2018; sorry, go away”—or is it under constant review? This issue is dynamic, and it needs to be looked at.
The conclusion in 2018 was that things are not bad enough. How many women are we saying need to be affected? How bad does the threshold have to be? It does not happen at every clinic all the time, but it could happen at any clinic. That is what we should look at. We are talking about 100,000 women a year, and there are other Members with clinics in their seats. The hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) and I are very misaligned on Brexit and loads of other issues, but he is my cosignatory on this new clause.
There is just so much I could say. The last time there was a vote on this issue was my ten-minute rule Bill, the Demonstrations (Abortion Clinics) Bill, which passed by 213 votes to 47. The hon. Member for Glasgow North East was saying that the SNP will vote against it. If Members had a free vote, it would be very different. We have seen with the Northern Ireland abortion stuff—
Anne McLaughlin
We will not be voting against it. We will just be abstaining on it because it is our principled stance not to vote for it. I certainly support it.
Dr Huq
I totally get what the hon. Lady is saying. Subject to Supreme Court review, Northern Ireland is about to introduce protections for women using these clinics along these lines. Scotland is very sensibly consulting on this and having a serious conversation. Soon it could be only England and Wales that are in this invidious situation. All the other countries of the Union are going the right way on this.
What I meant is that the hon. Member for Glasgow North East said that the SNP will vote against it. When offered a choice, when not subject to whipping, Members who have clinics in their seats know the trouble caused to ordinary clinic users—to ordinary street users—all the time.
Dr Huq
My ideal would be to sit down with the Government to make something better. I will not press the new clause to a vote today, because I think it can be improved—I take those points—so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 2
Hostility towards sex or gender
“(1) After Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986 insert—
‘5A
Offences aggravated by sex or gender
(1) An offence under section 5 of this Act is aggravated by sex or gender where the offence is—
(a) aggravated by hostility toward the sex or gender of the victim,
(b) of a sexual nature, or
(c) both of a sexual nature and aggravated by hostility toward the sex or gender of the victim.
(2) A person guilty of an aggravated offence under this section is liable on summary conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months, or a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale, or both.
(3) It is not a defence under this section that a person did not believe that there was any person within hearing or sight who was likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress if a reasonable person in possession of the same information would think that there was a person within hearing or sight who was likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress.
(4) An offence is “aggravated by hostility towards the sex or gender of the victim” for the purposes of this section if—
(a) at the time of committing the offence, or immediately before or after doing so, the offender demonstrates towards the victim of the offence hostility based on the victim’s sex or gender (or presumed sex or gender); or
(b) the offence is motivated (wholly or partly) by hostility towards members of a group based on their sex or gender.
(5) In this part, gender has the same meaning as in the Gender Recognition Act 2004.’
(2) Part 3A of the Public Order Act 1986 (Hatred against persons on religious grounds or grounds of sexual orientation) is amended as follows—
(a) In the heading for Part 3A at the end insert ‘or grounds of sex or gender’.
(b) In the italic cross-heading before section 29A at the end insert ‘and hatred on the grounds of sex or gender’.
(c) After section 29AB insert—
‘29AC
Meaning of “hatred on the grounds of sex or gender
29AC In this Part “hatred on the grounds of sex or gender” means hatred against a group of persons defined by reference to their sex or gender.’
(d) In the italic cross-heading before section 29B at the end insert ‘or hatred on the grounds of sex or gender’.
(e) In section 29B(1) at the end insert ‘or hatred on the grounds of sex or gender’.
(f) In section 29C(1) (publishing or distributing written material) at the end insert ‘or hatred on the grounds of sex or gender’.
(g) In section 29D(1) (public performance of play) at the end insert ‘or hatred on the grounds of sex or gender’.
(h) In section 29E(1) (distributing, showing or playing a recording) at the end insert ‘or hatred on the grounds of sex or gender’.
(i) In section 29F(1) (broadcasting or including programme in programme service) at the end insert ‘or hatred on the grounds of sex or gender’.
(j) In section 29G(1) (possession of inflammatory material) at the end insert ‘or hatred on the grounds of sex or gender’.”—(Alex Cunningham.)
Brought up, and read the First time.
Alex Cunningham
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The new clause was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), to whom I pay tribute for her tireless campaigning on this issue. Last year, when we were debating the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, I and my Labour colleagues on the Bill Committee spoke at length about how the Government were missing a golden opportunity to take robust action to protect women and girls from the violence and harassment that they face every day. Sadly, however, the Government chose to miss that opportunity, instead pushing the Bill through without any consideration of the steps that they could take to ensure that women and girls were able to go about their lives without worrying about their safety.
You can imagine, Mr Dowd, how pleased I was last week when, about to present my private Member’s Bill on the Floor of the House, I heard the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), a few Bills ahead of mine, presenting his Protection from Sex-based Harassment in Public Bill to make provision against causing intentional harassment, alarm or distress to a person in public when the behaviour is done because of that person’s sex. I do not know whether he was seeking some form of review or specific action, but clearly there is support for such measures in all parts of the House. It is time for the Government to put aside all the talk about acting on misogyny and to accept the new clause. Furthermore, given the Minister’s speech in the debate on new clause 1, I feel somewhat encouraged that he, too, is ready to take some action.
Last week I received a letter from the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle, who is the Minister for ending violence against women and girls. She provided an update on the Government’s response to the end-to-end rape review. She ended her letter by saying:
“Thank you for your engagement on these crucial issues. Violence against women and girls is a global problem and it is our collective mission to support victims and bring perpetrators to justice. I look forward to working with you to address these crucial issues and bring about the transformational change that victims deserve.”
I found that message extremely heartening because she is, of course, correct that we need to work together in all parts of the House as a collective to improve the dire outcomes that women and girls face when seeking justice. I hope the Minister will share that sentiment, engage positively with the substance of the proposed new clause and accept that it should be included in the Bill.
I know that the Minister will be aware of the scale of the problem, which affects women and girls across the county on a daily basis. Some 66% of girls in the UK have experienced sexual attention or sexual or physical contact in a public space. That gets worse with age: a report by UN Women UK published in January 2021 showed that in a poll of 1,000 women, 71% had experienced sexual harassment in a public space. That figure rose to 97% for women under 25. That harassment, intimidation and abuse never shows up in formal crime statistics, not because it is not serious enough, but because women do not think that going to the police will help.
House of Commons Library data shows that half a million crimes against women go unreported every year, and women are less likely than men to report abuse to the police. Research shows that two thirds of women experience abuse or harassment in public places, but 80% of them do not report those crimes to the police as they do not believe they will be addressed or taken seriously.
There are two reasons why it is so important that these supposedly lower-level offences are taken seriously by the police and the criminal justice system. First, those who perpetrate violence against women are often repeat offenders whose violence and abuse shows a pattern of escalation. That is not to say every misogynist who shouts at women in the street goes on to violently attack women, but many of those who do carry out such attacks start by throwing verbal abuse. If we can identify, monitor and—where necessary—restrict those who commit the early offences, we will be better able to prevent the all-too-familiar pattern of escalation before it has dire consequences.
Secondly, by letting these offences go unregistered or unpunished, we are sending a message about how seriously—or not—we take violence against women and girls. If someone is abused because of their sexuality, ethnicity or religion, the law rightly says that the abuse—based on who someone is—is unacceptable. Unfortunately, the law does not say the same thing if someone is abused simply for being a woman or a girl.
We all recognise that more needs to be done to tackle misogynistic abuse, but if we do not act, we are endorsing a legal system that is permissive of such abuse. If we do not act, we are endorsing a system that sees women repeatedly targeted but then choosing not to report the crime because they—too often rightly—suspect that it will not be treated as seriously as it should. I cannot repeat that fact enough: until we demonstrate that the law is on the side of women and girls, most of them will not report the abuse, which we ought to recognise as crimes.
The proposed new clause would be a crucial first step in tackling the harassment and abuse that women and girls face every day. It would, in simple terms, put in place harsher sentences for those who commit abuse or harassment motivated by misogyny or misandry. Sentences would be set at the same level as intentional harassment, allowing courts to recognise the higher degree of culpability that these crimes should carry. It would, for the first time, recognise that there is something particularly damaging about targeting someone solely because of their sex, in the same way that we do if someone is targeted for other aspects of their identity.
During the passage of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 in the other place, the Minister there said that the Government would bring forward a consultation on public sexual harassment. That was some time ago, but I am afraid there are two reasons why I do not think that is an appropriate solution. First, a myopic focus on sexual harassment ignores other harassment that women and girls face on a daily basis. If the focus is narrowed to only behaviour that is explicitly sexual or for the purposes of sexual gratification, conduct such as ripping off a Muslim woman’s hijab would not be covered.
That would be counterproductive, because it would suggest that such behaviour is somehow less serious than sexual harassment, and it would prevent the police from gathering crucial information about patterns of offending. Instead, we need to adopt the approach that the new clause takes and recognise that, at its root, sexual harassment is about power and hostility, and we should treat it as such. We should not separate out sexual abuse from sexist abuse; we should treat them as symptoms of the same underlying problems.
The second reason is that we all know that a Government consultation is absolutely no promise of action. Indeed, the Government’s own adviser on sexual harassment has said that both she and the Home Secretary are supportive of action, but the idea is being vetoed by those higher up in Government. Given how few people are able to overrule the Home Secretary, the Minister will forgive me if I am sceptical that a Government led by the current Prime Minister will take action on sexual harassment without being pressed to do so.
Even putting those misgivings aside, this is not an issue that can wait for the slow cogs of Government policy making to engage. If we do not take the opportunity that the new clause offers us, it could be years before we have another opportunity to act. In that time, millions more women will experience this behaviour and not report it because they know our legal system does not treat it with the seriousness it deserves. I appreciate that we are yet to see the detail of the Protection from Sex-based Harassment in Public Bill, in the name of the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells. Whatever measures he may succeed in introducing, however, it could be a year or more before they take effect. We can take out the uncertainty now and prevent further delay.
Proposed new subsection (2) is aimed at those who may never carry out a violent or abusive act themselves, but who may encourage others to do so. Encouraging racial or homophobic abuse is already a criminal offence, and rightly so. As we have seen across the world, and during the tragic events in Plymouth last year, there are people out there who seek to stir up hatred of women for no reason other than that they are women. That is clearly unacceptable, and I was pleased that the Law Commission recommended last year that we bring our laws into the 21st century and tackle the stirring up of misogynistic and misandrist hatred.
I am sure the Minister will say that the Government are considering very carefully what the Law Commission has said and will respond in due course, but we know that when it comes to radicalisation, every day can make a difference. Every day that the Government delay is another day in which poisonous ideologies, such as so-called incel culture, have a chance to spread further and do more damage to the fabric of our society. This new clause would enable us to skip the inevitable delays of Government going back and forth over an issue when the right course of action is clear to us all, and immediately tackle those who seek to spread such hate. I know that the Government may act eventually in this area, but I appeal to the Minister and other Government Members to put an end to it all—end the talk about the issues I have raised, end the delay in taking action and back the new clause.
Anne McLaughlin
I certainly support properly acknowledging and tackling crimes motivated by sex or gender, but this new clause applies to England and Wales only, so I will abstain, in keeping with my party’s aforementioned stance. However, I think it would be useful for Members to look at the report commissioned by the Scottish Government on misogyny, entitled “Misogyny—a Human Rights Issue”. The independent working group was headed up by Baroness Helena Kennedy QC from the other place, and the report was published on International Women’s Day, 8 March—also my birthday, if anybody wants to put that in their diary. The recommendations were described by the First Minister as “bold” and “far reaching”. It would be great to have both Governments working together on this.
I offer my solidarity with the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) and the hon. Member for Stockton North, who has just given a really good speech, on the issues that they are trying to tackle with the new clause. I could say a lot more about misogyny—we all could—but I think he has covered it really well.
Kit Malthouse
The matter of whether and where sex or gender fits into hate crime legislation was, as the hon. Member for Stockton North has said, subject to significant deliberation during consideration in the previous Session, only six weeks ago, of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. Before that, it was widely discussed during consideration of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021. Both Houses had an opportunity to express their views and come to a settled position, and I am afraid that I do not believe matters have changed since then. The hon. Gentleman has cited some distinction between new clause 2 and the previous attempts of the hon. Member for Walthamstow to amend the law in this area, but the essential issue remains the same. I suggest that we should consider hate crime laws in the round, rather than seeking to pick off individual items in a piecemeal way.
Let me deal first with the new clause’s proposed new section 5A to the Public Order Act 1986. To put it into ordinary language, it is an attempt to introduce a new offence of public sexual harassment. I remind Members that during debate on the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act in the previous Session, the Government committed—as the hon. Gentleman has said—to launch a consultation before the summer recess. I can confirm that that remains our intention. We are finalising those plans now, so given that undertaking, I am a bit surprised that the hon. Member for Walthamstow has tabled this new clause, as its effect would be to pre-empt that consultation. I have my views on the intrinsic merits of new clause 2, but it would be fairer and better for us to wait for that consultation to run its course and then draw our conclusions from it.
The other part of the new clause would amend part 3A of the Public Order Act, which deals with what could be described in shorthand as hate speech offences. The hon. Lady has in the past cited recommendation 23 of the Law Commission’s review, which does, in a basic sense, endorse the notion that those offences be extended to cover sex or gender. However, I am afraid that that overlooks a crucial detail: while the Law Commission dedicated just over 10 pages to that extension, it dedicated more than 70 pages to the need for those offences to be fundamentally reformed. The new clause does nothing to contribute to such reform, but root-and-branch change is needed, given that these are hate speech offences. They have the basic potential to significantly chill free speech, and are an area of law in which public consent for change must be carefully considered. The Law Commission noted that those offences represent
“some of the most controversial aspects of hate crime laws.”
There are also issues with the current legislation that we first need to grapple with. The Law Commission noted that the legal defences for people accused of those crimes are currently unclear, and certain terms used in the legislation are legally ambiguous. Most importantly, it tempered all proposals to expand the law with a condition that doing so must be coupled with provisions that make clear what is not criminal. For each characteristic added to the law, those so-called free speech provisions would clarify that merely offensive speech on topics related to such characteristics is not in itself a crime. The Law Commission noted that, particularly in relation to gender identity,
“without such protection, activists would seek to test the limits of the extended offence.”
The new clause does not account for those free speech protections. More broadly, it does nothing to reform the existing provisions as the Law Commission proposes; it only adds to the statute book, whereas the Law Commission suggests repeal and replacement.
In short, any reform of these laws would need to be comprehensive. If it is not, we risk compounding the problems in the law that the Law Commission identified and potentially harming free expression rights. We would essentially be building on very shaky foundations. The Law Commission found that one change is usually interdependent with another. As the hon. Member for Stockton North has said, the Government are actively considering all of the Law Commission’s recommendations, and I can assure the Committee that we are putting the final touches on the Government’s response to all 34 of the Law Commission’s recommendations and will publish that response shortly. I think it would be wiser for the Committee and, indeed, the House to wait for its publication. We do not think it is wise to put the cart before the horse, so I encourage the hon. Gentleman to withdraw the new clause.
Alex Cunningham
First, I know that the hon. Member for Glasgow North East cannot change the policy of the Scottish National party on the hoof, but I ask her to think about her sisters in England and Wales. Moreover, I do not think it is necessary for the Government to look at anything that has been brought forward by the Scottish Government or any other organisation, because the evidence on this issue is staring us in the face. We do not need additional evidence to prove that this sort of change in the law is needed.
The Minister mentioned how we have talked about these issues in the past while debating this or that Act, or this or that review. We have talked about it till the cows come home, but nothing has actually happened—there has not yet been any change in the legislation. He said that the Government are still hoping to launch their consultation ahead of the summer recess. On Monday we will be five weeks away from the summer recess. While the Minister says that they are still hoping for this, that does not give him very much time, especially if he does not actually know when it is going to start happening. Now is the time for action. He said that the Law Commission says that the law in this area is unclear. I am inviting the Committee to make it clear today by supporting the new clause. For that reason, I will be pushing it to a vote.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
Mrs Elphicke
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
I move the new clause on behalf of my hon. Friends the Members for Thurrock and for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard). Right hon. and hon. Members will be more than aware of the disruption and danger caused by offences involving locking on and obstructing major roads, which have caused gridlock and stopped emergency services getting through during recent severe protests.
New clause 3 seeks to ensure that the particular and additional harm of preventing emergency services—police, ambulances and the fire service—is included as an aggravating factor in the primary offences considered for conviction under clauses 1 and 3 of the Bill, rather than relying on a separate offence. The new clause would provide a more effective and appropriate reflection of the total harm caused by the additional seriousness of blocking emergency workers getting to people in need. I am grateful to the Committee for its consideration of the new clause.
Sarah Jones
I will keep my comments very brief. As the hon. Lady has said, the new clause would create an aggravated offence when someone in the course of locking on or obstructing major transport works impedes an emergency worker in exercising their function.
We did not support the clauses that new clause 3 relates to—those being clause 1, “Offence of locking on” and clause 3, “Obstruction etc of major transport works”. We will not be supporting the new clause today, but we believe very strongly in the principle of emergency workers being able to exercise their functions. In other parts of the Bill, we have talked about adding emergency workers to the list of critical national infrastructure necessary for the country to function as we want it to. Although we are sympathetic to the principle that emergency workers are crucial and need to be exercising their functions in any way they need to, we will not support it today because it is attached to parts of the Bill that we do not support.
Kit Malthouse
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Dover. We all sympathise with the intentions of the new clause, initially tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys. It is completely unacceptable that a small minority of individuals cause significant disruption, and it is even more unacceptable when that disruption strays beyond delaying or inconveniencing the public and into interfering with the emergency services. We all remember well the scenes of ambulances stuck in traffic on the M25, and thank God that there was no major fire that the fire service needed to get to, or a worse incident. Such behaviour is unacceptable and the new clause seeks to ask the courts to account for this behaviour when convicting individuals for obstructing major transport works and for locking on in particular. I applaud my hon. Friend’s support for the new clause.
As I have said previously, however, acts that obstruct emergency workers from exercising their functions are sadly not new and are—happily, perhaps—already illegal under existing law. The Emergency Workers (Obstruction) Act 2006 already makes it an offence to obstruct without reasonable excuse an emergency worker such as a police officer or paramedic from responding to an emergency. It also provides an offence of hindering someone assisting an emergency worker in responding to an emergency. Anyone found guilty of those offences faces an unlimited fine.
Given that there are existing legal remedies, we do not believe it necessary to legislate to direct courts to consider using the maximum penalties available to them when sentencing individuals convicted of locking on or obstructing transport works in those scenarios. Courts can already consider a whole range of aggravating and mitigating circumstances presented to them by the prosecution and defence when deciding whether to convict a defendant and impose a sentence proportionate to their crime. When assessing cases relating to the two offences mentioned in new clause 3, courts may wish to consider impeding emergency workers as an aggravating factor, but that is a decision for them. While we understand the intention behind the new clause, we hope that my hon. Friend will withdraw it at this stage.
Mrs Elphicke
I am grateful to the Minister for his comments and ask him to consider in greater detail whether the action is sufficient. This was a probing new clause, which I spoke to on behalf of my hon. Friends the Members for Thurrock and for Blackpool North and Cleveleys. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 8
Publication of data about use of stop and search powers
“(1) The Secretary of State must publish data about the use of the stop and search powers under sections 6 and 7 within three years of—
(a) if sections 6 and 7 come into force on the same date, the date on which they come into force, or
(b) if sections 6 and 7 come into force on different dates, the later of those two dates.
(2) The data published under this section must include—
(a) the total number of uses of stop and search powers by each police force in England and Wales, including whether the powers were used on suspicion or without suspicion,
(b) disaggregated data by age, disability, ethnicity/race, sex/gender and sexual orientation of the people who have been stopped and searched, and
(c) data relating to the outcomes of the use of stop and search powers.”
Brought up, and read the First time.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 9—Review of the use of stop and search powers—
“(1) The Secretary of State must appoint an independent reviewer to assess and report annually on the use of the stop and search powers under sections 6 and 7.
(2) In carrying out their review, the person appointed under subsection (1) must—
(a) consider the impact of the use of stop and search powers on groups with protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010, and
(b) consult such civil society organisations as appear to the person appointed under subsection (1) to be relevant.
(3) The person appointed under subsection (1) must ensure that a report on the outcome of the review is sent to the Secretary of State as soon as reasonably practicable after the completion of the review.
(4) On receiving a report under this section, the Secretary of State must lay before Parliament—
(a) a copy of the report, and
(b) the Government’s response to the findings.
(5) The first report under this section must be completed no later than one year after the date provided for under section [publication of data about use of stop and search powers](1).”
Dr Huq
These new clauses are authored by my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova) and address clauses 6 and 7 of the Bill, on stop and search. New clause 8 would make it mandatory for the Home Office to collect data on how stop and search is going—demographic data on who it affects, how old they are and what ethnic group they are from. New clause 9 would create a new position of an independent reviewer, who would then assess the use of the powers.
Over the past few days and weeks, we have heard how this Bill criminalises protest tactics and potentially drags more people into the criminal justice system. My hon. Friend and I would say that it is people from black and minority ethnic communities who will suffer the most. They are already over-policed and targeted by the authorities. There were the notorious sus laws in a former age. It took quite a lot of good will between the police and the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), to ease tensions, but now I feel that we are going backwards here.
Sarah Jones
I rise to support my hon. Friends the Members for Ealing Central and Acton and for Battersea on the sensibleness of the new clauses.
Requiring the Secretary of State to publish data, and requiring the establishment of an independent reviewer to assess and report annually, seems to me to be the very least that the Government should be doing when they are bringing in such a broad range of powers. We know that there is significant concern—we have debated it at length—about the extension to protests of stop and search in both its forms, including suspicionless stop and search. There are organisations and representatives of the police who are worried about the potential disproportionality of those parts of the Bill. The College of Policing and the inspectorate have all looked at stop and search and said that it can erode trust between the police and local communities and that it is disproportionate. My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton listed the stats on that.
Publishing the data is an easy thing to do, and I hope the Home Office would do it anyway. Establishing an independent reviewer is easy to do—Lord Geidt may be free. There will be other good people who could do the job. With such a significant expansion of police powers, it really would be alarming if we did not do those things. I hope the Government will consider new clauses 8 and 9.
Kit Malthouse
I will speak first to new clause 8. The Home Office continues to publish extensive data on the use of stop and search to drive transparency, as the hon. Lady for Ealing Central and Acton requested. In 2021, for the first time, we collected and published data on the age and gender of all individuals stopped and searched, alongside our long-standing collection of data on ethnicity. That allows us to create a clearer picture on how stop and search is used and how best to build on the existing trust and confidence held between the police and the community they serve.
I want to make it clear that, as with all stop and search, nobody should be stopped and searched under the new powers because of their ethnicity or on the basis of any other protected characteristic. I know that the hon. Lady did not mean to imply that the police operation of stop and search is, as she said, “racist” at the moment. There are complicated reasons that sit behind the disproportionality in stop and search, which undoubtedly exists in some parts of the country, that we need to be conscious of and address. However, she will also be aware that there are safeguards in place, including the use of body-worn video and statutory guidance in code A of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, and those safeguards will also apply to the new powers in the Bill. Data on their use will be collected and published, broken down by age, gender and ethnicity—including the outcome of the search—as it is for existing stop-and-search powers.
Sarah Jones
I want to make the point that we do not actually know what causes the disproportionality. That is why the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the College of Policing are going to do a lot of work in that space. We do not have the answers, so we do not definitively know what is causing it. A lot of people suspect it is racism in the police force; a lot of people think it might be other things. We do not actually know.
Kit Malthouse
The hon. Lady is making exactly my point. I am afraid that the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton did use the word “racist” regarding the operation of stop and search. I was refuting that as a conclusion that may be drawn. There are complicated reasons behind the disproportionality in stop and search, and we all have a duty to try to understand what they may be.
Sometimes, there are statistical anomalies. There is a well-known anomaly in Dorset from a couple of years ago where a couple of drug dealers travelled down to deal drugs and they were stopped and searched. They happened to be from a BME background. Even though they were the only two people who were stopped and searched during that period, that stop and search and their apprehension as drug dealers meant that someone was 40 times more likely to be stopped and searched in that part of Dorset if they were from a BME background.
There are lots of complicated reasons that we need to understand about the disproportionality, and I am not downplaying the significance of it. As somebody who has fought crime in London during my political lifetime, I am very conscious of the impact it can have. I have sat and worked with all communities across London, particularly those affected by very serious violence, to understand the impact of stop and search. I have to say that body-worn video, in particular, is making a huge difference.
On new clause 9, I agree with the hon. Lady that independent oversight of the use of intrusive powers is essential. We all expect the police to use their stop-and-search powers as they see fit and to scrutinise their use of powers to ensure they remain focused, legitimate, proportionate and necessary. However, it is also true that having an independent body increases accountability and enhances the service officers are giving to the public.
I am pleased, therefore, to remind the Committee that we are fortunate to have two independent bodies that already perform that vital task. First, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services inspects forces on their use of stop and search as part of their annual inspections, and makes recommendations for improvement where needed. That allows the public to see whether their local force is meeting the high standards we expect. Forces should be able to explain their use of stop and search, including any disparities, to HMIC and the public, and we expect forces to respond to the inspectorate’s recommendations with alacrity.
Secondly, the Independent Office for Police Conduct provides a function through which complaints about police use of stop and search can be investigated. It is also able to issue recommendations to which forces are legally obliged to respond. As the “Inclusive Britain” report set out, the Government also recognise the importance of scrutiny by local communities. We are already enhancing these safeguards through the development of a national framework for community scrutiny of stop and search.
I know the hon. Lady will join me in praising the hard work of those two independent bodies in scrutinising police powers, and indeed the hard work of the police in using stop and search over the past couple of years to remove about 50,000 knives from the streets. I hope I have offered her some reassurance that we are conscious of our duty to deal with disproportionality, and that the existing safeguards and structures, as well as the new powers in the Bill, will be aligned with respect to that responsibility. On that basis, I hope she will withdraw the new clause.
Dr Huq
I hear what people have said, but the new clause would make the publication of data mandatory. The Minister has said that there are statistics around, but the new clause would make that a targeted, mandatory thing, given the huge increase in stop-and-search powers. He said that I called their application at the moment racist, but I spoke, in fact, about revelations and allegations. That would be flushed out by having statistical data that we could see—is it the case or not? There is this whole whataboutery point; people are saying, “This will criminalise a whole load of people, and it will be black and ethnic minority people who are hit hardest by it.” Let us publish the data and see.
As for the independent reviewer, we have that with other things, such as terrorism. In the interests of openness and transparency, we should be overseeing these things. The Minister talked about the IOPC, but it takes years for a complaint to go through it, whereas this measure would mean an ongoing, dynamic process of collecting figures. Yes, nobody should be subject to racist stop and search, but Members should look at the figures, which cause one to think, “Oh, what’s going on here?” Let us have the data.
Question put and negatived.
New Clause 9
Review of the use of stop and search powers
“(1) The Secretary of State must appoint an independent reviewer to assess and report annually on the use of the stop and search powers under sections 6 and 7.
(2) In carrying out their review, the person appointed under subsection (1) must—
(a) consider the impact of the use of stop and search powers on groups with protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010, and
(b) consult such civil society organisations as appear to the person appointed under subsection (1) to be relevant.
(3) The person appointed under subsection (1) must ensure that a report on the outcome of the review is sent to the Secretary of State as soon as reasonably practicable after the completion of the review.
(4) On receiving a report under this section, the Secretary of State must lay before Parliament—
(a) a copy of the report, and
(b) the Government’s response to the findings.
(5) The first report under this section must be completed no later than one year after the date provided for under section [publication of data about use of stop and search powers](1).”—(Dr Huq.)
Brought up, and read the First time.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
Question negatived.
New Clause 10
Guidance on locking on
“The Secretary of State must by regulations issue guidance to police forces about the protest technique of locking on, which includes—
(a) examples of best practice, and
(b) detailed guidance on addressing new and developing forms of locking on.”—(Sarah Jones.)
Brought up, and read the First time.
Sarah Jones
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
New clauses 10, 11 and 12 are in similar vein, and are about checks and balances to go alongside the legislation about which we have significant concerns. New clause 10 would mandate the Secretary of State to issue guidance to police forces on the protest technique of locking on, including the sharing of best practice and detailed guidance on addressing and developing forms of locking on.
Kit Malthouse
The new clause introduces a requirement on the Home Secretary to issue statutory guidance to the police on responding to lock-ons. While we agree that the Government should guide the police in the exercise of their powers, the police already have specialist teams trained to remove protesters from lock-ons. These teams continually develop their knowledge and training to keep pace with innovations in locking on, and I believe that the police themselves are best placed to develop guidance on the matter. Given that, I ask the hon. Lady to withdraw the new clause.
Sarah Jones
I thank the Minister for his comments. We suggest that the College of Policing and the National Police Chiefs’ Council would develop the detail—we do not suggest that us legislators would do that—but I am happy to withdraw the new clause because he has said that there will be significant guidance. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 11
Consolidated protest guidance
“(1) Within three months of Royal Assent to this Act, the Secretary of State must by regulations issue guidance which consolidates into a single source—
(a) the College of Policing’s authorised professional practice for public order guidance,
(b) the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s operational advice for protest policing, and
(c) the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s protest aide memoire.
(2) The Secretary of State must regularly review the guidance and, if appropriate, must by regulations issue revised consolidated guidance.
(3) The consolidated guidance must include specific updated guidance about the protest technique of locking on.”—(Sarah Jones.)
Brought up, and read the First time.
Sarah Jones
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The new clause makes provision for consolidated protest guidance, bringing together the College of Policing’s public order authorised professional practice, the NPCC’s operational advice for protest policing and the NPCC’s protest aide-mémoire. The guidance must also include specific updated guidance about the protest technique of locking on. Similarly to the previous new clause, new clause 11 would help the police—in what we think is a broadly-defined piece of legislation—gather the guidance and equip themselves with the statistics necessary to do their job to the best of their ability. If the evidence sessions pointed to anything, it was that at the top of the police, there are good practices of introspection. They talk about and share good practice and want to scrutinise what is done well and what is done badly. The new clause merely puts that in law.
On training, Matt Parr believed that more could be done—although he was complimentary in some areas. The Minister talked about the specialist forces. He highlighted that that was patchy. When it comes to provisions on the policing of protests in this legislation, the NPCC remains concerned about some aspects of the document’s commentary, which it felt were open to misinterpretation. For that reason, we think it would be better to have that clarity in the law, which the new clause seeks to do.
Kit Malthouse
Although I recognise the hon. Lady’s intent on the issue, I struggle to see the benefit of the new clause. Protest guidance is the responsibility of the police and the College of Policing. She referred to a recommendation from Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services on the policing of protests. The College of Policing is responsible for setting standards, providing training and sharing good practice for police forces. It is best placed to implement the recommendation. In fact, the college has already acted on it, and an updated public order authorised professional practice can be found on its website. The APP has consolidated guidance and links to other relevant guidance. I understand that it will be continually reviewed and updated.
Given that the effect of the new clause is already in place, we will not be supporting it. The inspectorate has sensibly recommended that the updating and management of national protest guidance is done by the College of Policing. It is the body with the knowledge and expertise to provide guidance to police forces. We do not see what benefit placing that obligation on the Government would bring, so I ask her to withdraw the new clause.
Sarah Jones
Although we will not press the new clause to a vote, I hope that I have put on the record the Labour party’s concern and our expectation that the Minister will come back to discuss with us the guidance that will be issued to ensure that the Bill is implemented as effectively as possible. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 12
National monitoring tool
“(1) The Secretary of State must develop a consistent national monitoring tool, accessible by all police forces, to monitor the use of or requests for specialist protest officers across England and Wales.
(2) Data collected under this section may be used to evaluate capacity and demand for specialist protest officers across England and Wales.
(3) The monitoring tool must be accessible on a national, regional and local basis.
(4) The monitoring tool must include—
(a) examples of best practice from policing protests across the United Kingdom, and
(b) data on how many trained officers have been required for any protests during the period in which monitoring took place.”—(Sarah Jones.)
Brought up, and read the First time.
Sarah Jones
I beg to move, That the Clause be read a Second time.
The new clause would require the Secretary of State to develop a consistent monitoring tool that is accessible by all police forces to monitor the use of, or requests for, specialist protest officers across England and Wales. Data that is collected may be used to evaluate capacity and demand for specialist officers. The tool, which must be accessible nationally, regionally and locally, could include examples of best practice from policing protests and data on how many trained officers have been required for any protest during the monitoring period.
I will not go into more detail than that, as the new clause speaks to arguments that we have already made for new clauses 10 and 11.
Kit Malthouse
In effect, the new clause brings back a clause that was initially tabled to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act in January 2022 on Report. As the hon. Lady said, it would require the creation of a monitoring tool.
As the Government stated in the House of Lords in January, such a tool is not necessary. The National Police Co-ordination Centre, which is known as NPoCC and is part of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, already co-ordinates and monitors the use of and requests for protest removal-trained officers across the UK. Furthermore, following recommendations by the inspectorate, the police’s national public order and public safety lead is already working on an evaluation of the requirement for specialist protest officers.
On the sharing of best practice, the College of Policing has, as I have said, updated the existing authorised professional practice on public order and public safety policing. That resource is easily accessible to all forces and will help them to understand best practice when policing protests. On the basis that this House should legislate only when it is strictly necessary, and that such work is already under way, I ask the hon. Lady to withdraw the motion.
Sarah Jones
It is slightly alarming that the Minister fails to understand the concept of checks and balances to ensure that such a serious and significant piece of legislation is properly implemented, but I will not divide the Committee. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 13
Injunction to prevent serious disruption to effective movement of essential goods or services
“(1) Upon an application by a person under subsection (4), an injunction may be ordered by a Judge of the High Court against ‘persons unknown’ in order to prevent a serious disruption to the effective movement of any essential goods or any essential services occasioned by a public procession or public assembly.
(2) The ‘persons unknown’ may be—
(a) anonymous persons taking part in a public procession or public assembly who are identifiable at the time of the proceedings; and/or
(b) persons not presently taking part in a public procession or public assembly protest but who will in future join such a public procession or public assembly.
(3) The conditions under which such an injunction may be granted are as follows—
(a) there must be a real and imminent risk of a tort being committed which would result in a serious disruption to the effective movement of any essential goods or any essential services;
(b) a method of service must be set out in the order which may reasonably be expected to bring the proceedings to the attention of the ‘persons unknown’;
(c) the ‘persons unknown’ must be defined in the order by reference to their conduct which is alleged to be unlawful;
(d) the acts prohibited by the order must correspond with the threatened tort;
(e) the order may only prohibit lawful conduct if there is no other proportionate means of protecting the effective movement of essential goods or essential services;
(f) the terms of the order must set out what act or acts the persons potentially affected by the order must not do;
(g) the terms of the order must set out a defined geographical area to which the order relates; and
(h) the terms of the order must set out a temporal period to which the order relates, following which the order will lapse unless a further order is made upon a further application by the applicant.
(4) An applicant for an injunction to prevent serious disruption to effective movement of essential goods or services may be—
(a) a local authority with responsibility for all or part of the geographical area to which the proposed order relates;
(b) a chief constable with responsibility for all or part of the geographical area to which the proposed order relates; or
(c) a person resident in, or carrying on a business within, the geographical area to which the proposed order relates.
(5) ‘Serious disruption to effective movement of essential goods or services’ includes a prolonged disruption to—
(a) the effective movement of the supply of money, food, water, energy or fuel;
(b) a system of communication;
(c) access to a place of worship;
(d) access to a transport facility;
(e) access to an educational institution; or
(f) access to a service relating to health.”—(Sarah Jones.)
Brought up, and read the First time.
Sarah Jones
I beg to move, That the Clause be read a Second time.
The clause makes specific provision for an injunction to prevent serious disruption to the effective movement of essential goods or services, and sets out the circumstances in which an injunction may be granted against “persons unknown”. Those circumstances are based on the principles set out in paragraph 82 of the Court of Appeal’s 2020 decision in Canada Goose UK v. Persons Unknown. The clause also sets out the parties that may apply for such an injunction. They are:
“a local authority with responsibility for all or part of the geographical area to which the proposed order relates; a chief constable with responsibility for all or part of the geographical area to which the proposed order relates; or a person resident in, or carrying on a business within, the geographical area to which the proposed order relates.”
The new clause uses the definition of “serious disruption” that was introduced in the House of Lords during the later stages of the passage of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. I put on the record again my disagreement with the definitions of serious disruption— which include “noise”—in subsections 12(2C) and (2E) of the Public Order Act 1986, which section 73 of the 2022 Act inserted. We have had significant debates on that issue, and I will not rehearse them again, but I will quote the right hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), who said in a letter to the Prime Minister:
“No genuinely Conservative government should have supported the recent ban on noisy protest—least of all when basic human freedoms are facing the threat of extinction in Ukraine.”
Although the definition of “serious disruption” is not perfect, the Opposition welcome the fact that a definition has been put in the Bill to replace the original provision, which would have left the Secretary of State to decide what serious disruption means. It is right that this definition remains subject to a power to amend these provisions. As the right hon. Member for Maidenhead said:
“It is tempting when Home Secretary to think that giving powers to the Home Secretary is very reasonable, because we all think we are reasonable, but future Home Secretaries may not be so reasonable.”—[Official Report, 15 March 2021; Vol. 691, c. 78.]
New clause 13 focuses on the definition in proposed new subsection (2A)(b) to section 12 of the 1986 Act, as inserted by the 2022 Act. It puts into statute the case law principles from the Canada Goose case, which allowed injunctions to be taken out against “persons unknown”, so these ideas are not new. The new clause puts into statute what already exists in case law, so if the Government oppose it, they are opposing existing case law decided by the judiciary.
The new clause allows local authorities, affected residents or business owners and chief constables to work together to prevent the kinds of serious disruption we have seen in the Just Stop Oil protests, protests against HS2 and in actions by Insulate Britain. The definition of “persons unknown” includes
“persons…who will in future join such a public procession or public assembly”,
So this new clause is putting into statute a law that already exists.
It is not necessary, as we have argued throughout the Bill Committee debates, to bring in unnecessary and complex new offences when there is a raft of existing laws that the police, local authorities and businesses can use to deal with protest that disrupts essential goods and services.
Subsection (3) sets out
“the conditions under which such an injunction may be granted”,
and it is clear that
“the acts prohibited by the order must correspond with the threatened tort”.
That word was new to me but I now understand what it means, although I will not go into it now. Also, there
“must be a real and imminent risk of a tort being committed which would result in a serious disruption to the effective movement of any essential goods or any essential services”.
Police officers have told us that some of the most effective measures they use in the face of potentially serious disruption are injunctions. The NPCC protest lead, Chris Noble, said:
“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... 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.”––[Official Report, Public Order Public Bill Committee, 9 June 2022; c. 8, Q7.]
How long it can take public and private authorities to get injunctions in place is a problem, and we acknowledge that they are costly, but the cost of responding to seriously disruptive protest must fall somewhere and there is a conversation to be had about that balance.
Nicola Bell, regional director of Highways England, said that
“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”.––[Official Report, Public Order Public Bill Committee, 9 June 2022; c. 28, Q57.]
HS2 said that
“injunctions do serve as a relatively effective deterrent to unlawful…activity by some groups of protestors”.
The courts take them seriously, the judicial oversight ensures that the powers are not misused and they can have faster enforcement processes than for individual offences.
HS2’s written evidence, talking about its route-wide civil injunction, said:
“Whilst, if granted, it is hoped that the route-wide injunction will significantly reduce disruption to the project caused by trespass and obstruction of access, it is unlikely to eliminate the problem.”
The police tell us they are frustrated by private companies and public authorities not acting fast enough to seek injunctions, and therefore leaving the responsibility to tackle disruption to the police, instead of taking on the responsibility themselves.
If people are in trouble, it is fairer that they have their eyes open to that possibility beforehand. For similar reasons, a clear injunction about what specific actions a person may not take is likely to be a better deterrent than criminal offences which are vaguer than a specific injunction.
I want to leave sufficient time for the Minister to make his points, but an injunction warns a person beforehand what they must not do. If they breach the injunction, they do so in the knowledge that it could lead to proceedings against them, so it is fairer. For similar reasons, a clear injunction about what specific actions a person may not take is likely to be a better deterrent than criminal offences, which are vaguer than a specific injunction.
It may also be easier to prove a breach of an injunction than to make good a criminal charge, so it may also be a more efficient way to enforce protection of vital infrastructure. We think this is a route that exists already and is there in case law, and so we have put it on the face of the Bill.
Kit Malthouse
As the hon. Lady said, new clause 13 looks to create a framework that allows local authorities, chief constables, residents, and business owners in an area to apply for an injunction to prevent serious disruption to the effective movement of essential goods or services. She quite neatly illustrates the problem with prescriptive definitions, but has created a new one with the notion of “prolonged”. I am not sure how long she thinks prolonged should be. Nevertheless, these are naturally definitions that we have in the past left to the courts.
We agree with the hon. Lady that injunctions have an important part to play in the response to the criminal protests, as we have seen this past year. However, we are not clear what she is trying to achieve with the amendment. As we have seen with Insulate Britain and Just Stop Oil protests, injunctions can already be taken out by businesses and local authorities to prevent protesters from causing serious disruption to the effective movement of essential goods or services. Unlike the proposed new clause, the wider measures already in the Bill change the status quo, providing greater protection against the guerrilla activism that we have seen from recent protest groups.
We recognise the need to ensure better co-ordination of injunctions. However, the new clause does not address this challenge. We have heard the calls from the Opposition on this, and the Government are exploring what more can be done at a national level to protect key infrastructure and prevent disruption to the flow of essential goods and services. The clause as it stands does not deliver meaningful change. It creates a definitional problem of its own. Given that, I urge the hon. Lady to withdraw her amendment.
Sarah Jones
I am grateful to the Minister for saying that he is exploring what more can be done and for accepting that injunctions have a role to play. I suspect that members of the other place may want to return to this at another stage, so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
Title
Amendment made: 24, in title, line 2, leave out “delegation” and insert “exercise”. —(Kit Malthouse.)
This amendment is consequential on NC4.
Bill, as amended, to be reported.
Online Safety Bill (Fourteenth sitting)
Tuesday 21st June 2022
(2 years, 6 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 21 June 2022 - (21 Jun 2022)
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 5 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 5 / Noes: 10 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 10 / Noes: 5 - Question accordingly agreed to.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 5 / Noes: 10 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 5 / Noes: 10 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 5 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 153, in clause 141, page 121, line 32, after “140” insert
“, which must include the requirement that OFCOM must respond to such complaints within 90 days”
Clauses 141 and 142 stand part.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
Good afternoon, Ms Rees. The importance of an effective complaints procedure has been argued strongly by many people who have given oral and written evidence to this Committee and indeed by Committee members. It is welcome that clause 140 introduces a super-complaints mechanism to report multiple, widespread concerns about the harm caused by services, but the lack of redress for individuals has been raised repeatedly.
This is a David and Goliath situation, with platforms holding all the power, while individuals are left to navigate the often complex and underfunded internal complaints systems provided by the platforms. This is what the London School of Economics and Political Science has called the
“current imbalance between democratic, ‘people’ power and the power of platforms.”
As we argued on new clause 1, there is a clear need to consider a route for redress at an individual level. The current situation is unsatisfactory for people who feel they have been failed by a service’s complaints system and who find themselves with no source of redress.
The current situation is also unsatisfactory for the regulator. Kevin Bakhurst from Ofcom told the right hon. Member for Basingstoke during our evidence sessions:
“Those individual complaints, although we are not going to be very specific in looking at individual pieces of material per se, are very useful to alert us where there are issues around particular types of offence or harm that the platforms are not seen to be dealing with properly.”––[Official Report, Online Safety Public Bill Committee, 24 May; c.9-10, Q9.]
An external redress process was recommended by the Joint Committee on the draft Bill and has been suggested by multiple stakeholders. Our new clause would make sure that we find the best possible solution to the problem. I hope the Minister reconsiders these points and supports new clause 1 when the time comes to vote on it.
As I have argued previously, organisations will not be able to make full and effective use of the super-complaints system unless the platforms risk assessments are published in full. The Opposition’s amendments 11 and 13 sought to address that issue, and I am disappointed that the Government failed to grasp their importance. There is now a real risk that civil society and other groups will not be able to assess and identify the areas where a company may not be meeting its safety duties. How does the Minister expect organisations making super-complaints to identify and argue that a service is causing harm to its users if they have no access to the company’s own analysis and mitigation strategy? Not including a duty to publish risk assessments leaves a gaping hole in the Bill and risks undermining the super-complaints mechanism. I hope that the Minister will reconsider his opposition to this important transparency mechanism in future stages of the Bill.
For powers about super-complaints to be meaningful, there must be a strict deadline for Ofcom to respond to them, and we will support the SNP amendment if it is pushed to a vote. The Enterprise Act 2002 gives a 90-day deadline for the Competition and Markets Authority to respond. Stakeholders have suggested a similar deadline to respond for super-complaints as an effective mechanism to ensure action from the regulator. I urge the Minister to consider this addition, either in the Bill with this amendment, or in the secondary legislation that the clause requires.
Clauses 141 and 142 relate to the structures around super-complaints. Clause 141 appears to be more about handing over powers to the Secretary of State than insuring a fair system of redress. The Opposition have said repeatedly how we feel about the powers being handed over to the Secretary of State. Clause 142 includes necessary provisions on the creation and publication of guidance by Ofcom, which we do not oppose. Under clause 141, Ofcom will have to provide evidence of the validity of the super-complaint and the super-complainant within a stipulated timeframe. However, there is little in the Bill about what will happen when a super-complaint is made, and much of the detail on how that process will work has been left to secondary legislation.
Does the Minister not think that it is strange to leave it up to the Secretary of State to determine how Ofcom is to deal with super-complaints? How does he envisage the system working, and what powers does he think Ofcom will need to be able to assert itself in relation to super-complaints? It seems odd to leave the answers to those important questions out of the Bill.
Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)
I appreciate the support from the Opposition in relation to amendment 153. I want to talk about amendment 153, but also about some of the issues there are with clauses 140 and 141—not so much 142. Clause 140(3) allows the Secretary of State to make regulations in relation to working out who an eligible entity is for making super-complaints. The Minister has helpfully been very clear that the definition is likely to be pretty wide—the definition of groups that are working on behalf of consumers is likely to be wide. The regulations that are made in this section are going to be made under the draft affirmative procedure. Although secondary legislation is not brilliant, the affirmative procedure will allow more scrutiny than negative procedure. I appreciate that the Minister has chosen—or the people drafting the Bill have chosen—that way forward for deciding on the eligible entity.
I am concerned that when it comes to clause 141(1), the regulations setting out how the complaints process will be made, and the regulation level, will be done under the negative procedure rather than under the draft affirmative procedure. I have got the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee memorandum, which tells us about each of the delegated powers of the Bill, and the justification for them. I understand that the Department is referring to the Police Super-complaints (Designation and Procedure) Regulations 2018, which were made under the negative procedure. However, I am not convinced that in the Policing and Crime Act 2017 we were left with quite so little information about what would be included in those complaints. I think the justification for the negative procedure is not great, especially given the concerns raised about the over-reach of the Secretary of State’s power and the amount of influence they have on Ofcom.
I think clause 142 is fine; it makes sense that Ofcom is able to make guidance. I would have liked to see the regulation part involve more input from parliamentarians. If there is not going to be more input from parliamentarians, there should at least be more in the Bill about how the complaints procedure would work. The reason we have tabled amendment 153 is to ensure that Ofcom provides a response. That response does not have to be a final response saying, “We have investigated everything and these are the findings.” I understand that that may take some time. However, Ofcom must provide a response to super-complainants in 90 days. Even if it were to provide that information in the terms laid out in clause 141(2)(d)—whether a complaint is within clause 140, or is admissible under clause 140 or whether an entity is an eligible entity—and we were to commit Ofcom to provide that information within 90 days, that would be better than the current drafting, which is no time limits at all. It is not specified. It does not say that Ofcom has to deal with the complaint within a certain length of time.
A quick response from Ofcom is important for a number of reasons. I expect that those people who are bringing super-complaints are likely to be third sector organisations. Such organisations do not have significant or excessive budgets. They will be making difficult choices about where to spend their money. If they are bringing forward a super-complaint, they will be doing it on the basis that they think it is incredibly important and it is worth spending their finite funding on legal advice in order to bring forward that super-complaint. If there is an unnecessary delay before Ofcom even recognises whether the complaint is eligible, charities may spend money unnecessarily on building up a further case for the next stages of the super-complaint. They should be told very quickly, “No, we are not accepting this” or “Yes, we are accepting this”.
Ofcom has the ability to levy fees so that it can provide the service that we expect it to provide as a result of the Bill. It will have a huge amount of extra work compared with its current work. It needs to be able to levy fees in order to fulfil its functions. If there is no timeline and it says, “We want to levy fees because we want to be able to respond on a 90-day basis”, it would not be beyond companies to come back and say, “That is unrealistic—you should not be charging us extra fees in order for you to have enough people to respond within a 90-day period to super-complaints.”
If Ofcom is to be able to levy fees effectively to provide the level of service that we would all—including, I am sure, the Minister—like to see to super-complainants who are making very important cases on behalf of members of the public and people who are being harmed by content online, and to give Ofcom that backing when it is setting the structures and levying the fees, it would be sensible for the Minister to make some commitments about the timelines for super-complaints.
In earlier clauses of the Bill, primacy is given to complaints to social media platforms, for example—to regulated providers—about freedom of speech. The Bill says that they are to give such complaints precedence. They are to deal with them as important and, where some content has been taken down, quickly. That precedence is written into the Bill. Such urgency is not included in these three clauses on super-complaints in the way I would like to see. The Bill should say that Ofcom has to deal with super-complaints quickly. I do not mean it should do that by doing a bad job. I mean that it should begin to investigate quickly, work out whether it is appropriate to investigate it under the super-complaints procedure, and then begin the investigation.
In some cases, stuff will be really urgent and will need to be dealt with very quickly, especially if, for example, it includes child sexual abuse images. That would need to be dealt with in a matter of hours or days, rather than any longer period.
I would like to see some sort of indication given to Ofcom about the timelines that we are expecting it to work to. Given the amount of work that third sector organisations have put in to support this Bill and try to make it better, this is a fairly easy amendment for the Minister to accede to—an initial response by Ofcom within a 90-day period; we are not saying overnight—so that everyone can be assured that the internet is, as the Minister wishes, a much safer place.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Chris Philp)
As we have heard, the super-complaint process is extremely important for enabling eligible entities representing the interests of users or members of the public to make representations where there are systemic problems that need to be addressed. I think we all agree that is an important approach.
Clauses 140 to 142 set out the power to make super-complaints, the procedure for making them and the guidance that Ofcom will publish in relation to them. The shadow Minister raised a few questions first, some of which we have touched on previously. In relation to transparency, which we have debated before, as I said previously, there are transparency provisions in clause 64 that I think will achieve the objectives that she set out.
The shadow Minister also touched on some of the questions about individual rather than systemic complaints. Again, we debated those right at the beginning, I think, when we discussed the fact that the approach taken in the Bill is to deal with systems and processes, because the scale involved here is so large. If we tried to create an architecture whereby Ofcom, or some other public body, adjudicated individual complaints, as an ombudsman would, it would simply be overwhelmed. A much better approach is to ensure that the systems and processes are fixed, and that is what the Bill does.
The hon. Member for Aberdeen North had some questions too. She touched in passing on the Secretary of State’s powers to specify by regulation who counts as an eligible entity—this is under clause 140(3). Of course, the nature of those regulations is circumscribed by the very next subsection, subsection (4), in which one of the criteria is that the entity
“must be a body representing the interests of users of regulated services, or members of the public”.
That speaks to the important point about consumers that we touched on this morning. As the hon. Lady said, this will be done by the affirmative procedure, so there is enhanced parliamentary scrutiny. I hope that makes it clear that it would be done in a reasonable way.
Kirsty Blackman
I am sorry to try the Minister’s patience. I think that we are in quite a lot of agreement about what an eligible entity looks like. I appreciate that this is being done by the affirmative procedure, but we seem to be in much less agreement about the next clause, which is being done by the negative procedure. I would like him to explain that contrast.
Chris Philp
Let me move on to clause 141 and amendment 153, which the hon. Lady spoke to a moment ago. Let us first talk about the question of time limits. As she said, the regulations that can be made under the clause include regulations on the time for various steps in the process. Rather than setting those out in the Bill, our intention is that when those regulations are moved they will include those time limits, but we want to consult Ofcom and other appropriate bodies to ensure that the deadlines set are realistic and reasonable. I cannot confirm now what those will be, because we have not yet done the consultation, but I will make a couple of points.
First, the steps set out in clause 141(2)(d)(i), (ii) and (iii), at the top of page 122, are essentially procedural steps about whether a particular complaint is in scope, whether it is admissible and whether the entity is eligible. Those should be relatively straightforward to determine. I do not want to pre-empt the consultation and the regulations, but my expectation is that those are done in a relatively short time. The regulations in clause 141(2)
“may…include provisions about the following matters”—
it then lists all the different things—and the total amount of time the complaint must take to resolve in its totality is not one of them. However, because the word “include” is used, it could include a total time limit. If the regulations were to set a total time limit, one would have to be a little careful, because clearly some matters are more complicated than others. The hon. Member for Aberdeen North acknowledged that we would not want to sacrifice quality and thoroughness for speed. If an overall time limit were set, it would have to accommodate cases that were so complicated or difficult, or that required so much additional information, that they could not be done in a period of, say, 90 days. I put on record that that is something that the consultation should carefully consider. We are proceeding in this way—with a consultation followed by regulations—rather than putting a time limit in the Bill because it is important to get this right.
The question was asked: why regulations rather than Ofcom? This is quite an important area, as the hon. Member for Aberdeen North and the shadow Minister—the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South—have said. This element of governmental and parliamentary oversight is important, hence our having regulations, rather than letting Ofcom write its own rules at will. We are talking about an important mechanism, and we want to make sure that it is appropriately responsive.
The question was asked: why will the regulations be subject to the negative, rather than the affirmative, procedure? Clearly that is a point of detail, albeit important detail. Our instinct was that the issue was perhaps of slightly less parliamentary interest than the eligible entity list, which will be keenly watched by many external parties. The negative procedure is obviously a little more streamlined. There is no hard-and-fast rule as to why we are using negative rather than affirmative, but that was broadly the thinking. There will be a consultation, in which Ofcom will certainly be consulted. Clause 141(3) makes it clear that others can be consulted too. That consultation will be crucial in ensuring that we get this right and that the process is as quick as it can be—that is important—but also delivers the right result. I gently resist amendment 153 and commend clauses 140 to 142.
Kirsty Blackman
Some Acts that this Parliament has passed have provided for a time limit within which something must be considered, but the time limit can be extended if the organisation concerned says to the Secretary of State, “Look, this is too complicated. We don’t believe that we can do this.” I think that was the case for the Subsidy Control Act 2022, but I have been on quite a few Bill Committees, so I may be wrong about that. That situation would be the exception, obviously, rather than the rule, and would apply only in the most complicated cases.
Chris Philp
The hon. Lady is suggesting a practical solution: a default limit that can be extended if the case is very complicated. That sort of structure can certainly be consulted on and potentially implemented in regulations. She referred to asking the Secretary of State’s permission. Opposition Members have been making points about the Secretary of State having too much power. Given that we are talking here about the regulator exercising their investigatory power, that kind of extension probably would not be something that we would want the Secretary of State’s permission for; we would find some other way of doing it. Perhaps the chief executive of Ofcom would have to sign it off, or some other body that is independent of Government.
Kirsty Blackman
Sorry, I phrased that quite badly. My point was more about having to justify things—having to say, “Look, we are sorry; we haven’t managed to do this in the time in which we were expected to. This is our justification”—rather than having to get permission. Apologies for phrasing that wrongly. I am glad that the Minister is considering including that point as something that could be suggested in the consultation.
I appreciate what the Minister says, but I still think we should have a time limit in the Bill, so I am keen to push amendment 153 to a vote.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 140 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 141
Procedure for super-complaints
Amendment proposed: 153, in clause 141, page 121, line 32, after “140” insert
“, which must include the requirement that OFCOM must respond to such complaints within 90 days”—(Kirsty Blackman.)
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Alex Davies-Jones (Pontypridd) (Lab)
As we know, clause 143 introduces a power for the Secretary of State to set out a statement of the Government’s strategic priorities in relation to online safety matters. Given that the power is similar to those that already exist in the Communications Act 2003, we do not formally oppose the clause. We welcome the fact that the Secretary of State must follow a consultation and parliamentary procedure before proceeding. It is vital that transparency surrounds any targets or priorities that the Secretary of State may outline. However, we want to put on record our slight concerns around the frequency limitations on amendments that are outlined in subsections (7) and (8). This is a direct interference regime, and we would appreciate the Minister’s reassurances on the terms of how it will work in practice.
We also welcome clause 144, which sets out the consultation and parliamentary procedure requirements that must be satisfied before the Secretary of State can designate a statement of strategic priorities under clause 143. We firmly believe that parliamentary oversight must be at the heart of the Bill, and the Minister’s Back Benchers agree. We have heard compelling statements from the right hon. Member for Basingstoke and other colleagues about just how important parliamentary oversight of the Bill will be, even when it has received Royal Assent. That is why clause 144 is so important: it ensures that the Secretary of State must consult Ofcom when considering the statement of strategic priorities.
Following that, the draft statement must be laid before Parliament for proper scrutiny. As we have said before, this is central to the Bill’s chances of success, but Labour firmly believes that it would be unreasonable for us to expect the Secretary of State to always be an expert across every policy area out there, because it is not possible. That is why parliamentary scrutiny and transparency are so important. It is not about the politics; it is about all of us working together to get this right. Labour will support clause 144 because, fundamentally, it is for the Secretary of State to set out strategic priorities, but we must ensure that Parliament is not blocked from its all-important role in providing scrutiny.
Chris Philp
I thank the shadow Minister for her broad support for these two clauses. Clause 143 provides the power, but not an obligation, for the Secretary of State to set out a strategic statement on her priorities for online safety matters. As the shadow Minister said, it is similar to powers that already exist in other areas. The clause links back to clause 78, whereby Ofcom must have regard to the strategic priorities and set out how it responds to them when they are updated. On clause 144, I am glad that the shadow Minister accepts the consultation has to happen and that the 40-day period for Parliament to consider changes to the draft statement and, if it wishes to, to object to them is also a welcome opportunity for parliamentary scrutiny.
The Government have heard the wider points about parliamentary scrutiny and the functioning of the Joint Committee, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke mentioned previously. I have conveyed them to higher authorities than me, so that transmission has occurred. I recognise the valuable work that the Joint Committee of the Commons and Lords did in scrutinising the Bill prior to its introduction, so I am glad that these clauses are broadly welcome.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 143 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 144 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 145
Directions about advisory committees
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Alex Davies-Jones
Labour supports the clause, which enables the Secretary of State to give Ofcom a direction to establish an expert committee to advise it on a specific online safety matter. As we have said repeatedly, it is vital that expert stakeholders are included as we begin the challenging process of regulating the internet. With that in mind, we need to ensure that the committee truly is expert and that it remains independent.
The Minister knows that I have concerns about Ofcom’s ability to remain truly independent, particularly given the recent decision to appoint a Tory peer to chair the organisation. I do not want to use our time today to make pointed criticisms about that decision—much as I would like to—but it is important that the Minister addresses these concerns. Ofcom must be independent—it really is quite important for the future success of the Bill. The expert committee’s chair, and its other members, must be empowered to report freely and without influence. How can the Minister ensure that that will genuinely be the case?
Subsection (4) places a duty on an advisory committee established under such a direction to publish a report within 18 months of its being established. I want to push the Minister on the decision to choose 18 months. I have mentioned my concerns about that timeframe; it seems an awfully long time for the industry, stakeholders, civil society and, indeed, Parliament to wait. I cannot be clearer about how important a role I think that this committee will have, so I would be grateful if the Minister could clarify why he thinks it will take 18 months for such a committee to be established.
That said, we broadly support the principles of what the clause aims to do, so we have not sought to amend it at this stage.
Chris Philp
I thank the shadow Minister for her comments and questions. She raised two substantive points on the clause; I will address those, rather than any wider issues that may be contentious.
The first question was about whether the advisory committee would be independent, and how we can be certain that it will not be unduly interfered in by the Government. The answer lies clearly in subsection (3). Paragraphs (a) and (b) make it very clear that although the Secretary of State may direct Ofcom to establish the committee, the identity of the people on the committee is for Ofcom to determine. Subsection (3)(a) states very clearly that the chairman is “appointed by OFCOM”, and subsection (3)(b) states that members of the committee are
“appointed by OFCOM as OFCOM consider appropriate.”
It is Ofcom, not the Secretary of State, that appoints the chair and the members. I trust that that deals with the question about the independence of the members.
On the second question, about time, the 18 months is not 18 months for the committee to be established—I am looking at clause 145(4)—but 18 months for the report to be published. Subsection (4) says “within” a period of 18 months, so it does not have to be 18 months for delivery of the report; it could be less, and I am sure that in many cases it will be. I hope that answers the shadow Minister’s questions on the clause, and I agree that it should stand part of the Bill.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 145 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 146
Directions in special circumstances
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 10—Special circumstances—
“(1) This section applies where OFCOM has reasonable grounds for believing that circumstances exist that present a threat—
(a) to the health or safety of the public, or
(b) to national security.
(2) OFCOM may, in exercising their media literacy functions, give priority for a specified period to specified objectives designed to address the threat presented by the circumstances mentioned in subsection (1).
(3) OFCOM may give a public statement notice to—
(a) a specified provider of a regulated service, or
(b) providers of regulated services generally.
(4) A ‘public statement notice’ is a notice requiring a provider of a regulated service to make a publicly available statement, by a date specified in the notice, about steps the provider is taking in response to the threat presented in the circumstances mentioned in subsection (1).
(5) OFCOM may, by a public statement notice or a subsequent notice, require a provider of a regulated service to provide OFCOM with such information as they may require for the purpose of responding to that threat.
(6) If OFCOM takes any of the steps set out in this Chapter, they must publish their reasons for doing so.
(7) In subsection (2) ‘media literacy functions’ means OFCOM’s functions under section 11 of the Communications Act (duty to promote media literacy), so far as functions under that section relate to regulated services.”
This new clause gives Ofcom the power to take particular steps where it considers that there is a threat to the health and safety of the public or to national security, without the need for a direction from the Secretary of State.
Alex Davies-Jones
As we all know, the clause as it stands enables the Secretary of State to give Ofcom directions in circumstances where it considers that there is a threat to the health or safety of the public or to national security. That includes directing Ofcom to prioritise action to respond to a specific threat when exercising its media literacy functions, and to require specified service providers, or providers of regulated services more generally, to publicly report on what steps they are taking to respond to that threat.
However, Labour shares the concerns of the Carnegie UK Trust, among others, that there is no meaningful constraint on the Secretary of State’s powers to intervene as outlined in the clause. Currently, the Secretary of State has the power to direct Ofcom where they have “reasonable grounds for believing” that there is a threat to the public’s health or safety or to national security. The UK did not need these powers before—during the cold war, for example—so we have to ask: why now?
Chris Philp
So far as I am aware, the phenomenon of social media companies, to which media literacy relates, did not exist during the cold war.
Alex Davies-Jones
It did not, but there were examples of disinformation, misinformation and the spreading of falsehoods, and none of these powers existed at the time. It seems weird—if I can use that term—that these exist now. Surely, the more appropriate method would be for the Secretary of State to write a letter to Ofcom to which it had to have regard. As it stands, this dangerous clause ensures the Secretary of State has the power to interfere with day-to-day enforcement. Ultimately, it significantly undermines Ofcom’s overall independence, which we truly believe should be at the heart of the Bill.
With that in mind, I will now speak to our crucial new clause 10, which instead would give Ofcom the power to take particular steps, where it considers that there is a threat to the health and safety of the public or national security, without the need for direction from the Secretary of State. Currently, there is no parliamentary scrutiny of the powers outlined in clause 146; it says only that the Secretary of State must publish their reasoning unless national security is involved. There is no urgency threshold or requirement in the clause. The Secretary of State is not required to take advice from an expert body, such as Public Health England or the National Crime Agency, in assessing reasonable grounds for action. The power is also not bounded by the Bill’s definition of harm.
These instructions do two things. First, they direct Ofcom to use its quite weak media literacy duties to respond to the circumstances. Secondly, a direction turns on a power for Ofcom to ask a platform to produce a public statement about what the platform is doing to counter the circumstances or threats in the direction order—that is similar in some ways to the treatment of harm to adults. This is trying to shame a company into doing something without actually making it do it. The power allows the Secretary of State directly to target a given company. There is potential for the misuse of such an ability.
The explanatory notes say:
“the Secretary of State could issue a direction during a pandemic to require OFCOM to; give priority to ensuring that health misinformation and disinformation is effectively tackled when exercising its media literacy function; and to require service providers to report on the action they are taking to address this issue.”
Recent experience of the covid pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine suggests that the Government can easily legislate when required in an emergency and can recall Parliament. The power in the Bill is a strong power, cutting through regulatory independence and targeting individual companies to evoke quite a weak effect. It is not being justified as an emergency power where the need to move swiftly is paramount. Surely, if a heavier-duty action is required in a crisis, the Government can legislate for that and explain to Parliament why the power is required in the context of a crisis.
Kim Leadbeater (Batley and Spen) (Lab)
It is really important to make sure that the Bill does not end up being a cover for the Secretary of State of the day to significantly interfere with the online space, both now and in the future. At the moment, I am not satisfied that the Secretary of State’s powers littered through the Bill are necessary. I share other hon. Members’ concerns about what this could mean for both the user experience and online safety more broadly. I hope my hon. Friend agrees that the Minister needs to provide us—not just us here today, but civil society and others who might be listening—with more reassurance that the Secretary of State’s powers really are necessary.
Alex Davies-Jones
I completely agree with my hon. Friend. We talk time and again about this Bill being world leading, but with that comes a responsibility to show global leadership. Other countries around the world will be looking to us, and this Parliament, when they adopt their own, similar legislation, and we need to be mindful of that when looking at what powers we give to a Secretary of State—particularly in overruling any independence of Ofcom or Parliament’s sovereignty for that matter.
New clause 10 provides a viable alternative. The Minister knows that this is an area where even his Back Benchers are divided. He must closely consider new clause 10 and recognise that placing power in Ofcom’s hands is an important step forward. None of us wants to see a situation where the Secretary of State is able to influence the regulator. We feel that, without this important clause and concession, the Government could be supporting a rather dangerous precedent in terms of independence in regulatory systems more widely.
Kirsty Blackman
I want to talk about a specific example. Perhaps the Minister will be able to explain why the legislation is written this way around when I would have written it the opposite way around, much more in line with proposed new clause 10.
Snapchat brought in the Snap Map feature, which that involved having geolocation on every individual’s phone; whenever anyone took a photo to put it on Snapchat, that geolocation was included. The feature was automatically turned on for all Snapchat users when it first came in, I think in 2017. No matter what age they were, when they posted their story on Snapchat, which is available to anyone on their friends list and sometimes wider, anyone could see where they were. If a child had taken a photo at their school and put it on Snapchat, anyone could see what school they went to. It was a major security concern for parents.
That very concerning situation genuinely could have resulted in children and other vulnerable people, who may not have even known that the feature had been turned on by default and would not know how to turn on ghost mode in Snapchat so as not to post their location, being put at risk. The situation could have been helped if media literacy duties had kicked in that meant that the regulator had to say, “This is a thing on Snapchat: geolocation is switched on. Please be aware of this if your children or people you are responsible for are using Snapchat.”
Chris Philp
Is the hon. Member aware of a similar situation that arose more recently with Strava? People’s running routes were publicly displayed in the same way, which led to incidents of stalking.
Kirsty Blackman
I was aware that Strava did that mapping, which is why my friends list on Strava numbers about two people, but I was not aware that it had been publicly displayed. There are similar issues that routes can be public on things such as Garmin, so it is important to keep a note of that. I did not know that that information was public on Strava. If Ofcom had had the duty to ensure that people were aware of that, it would have been much easier for parents and vulnerable adults to take those decisions or have them taken on their behalf.
My reading of the clause is that if Ofcom comes across a problem, it will have to go and explain to the Secretary of State that it is a problem and get the Secretary of State to instruct it to take action. I do not think that makes sense. We have talked already about the fact that the Secretary of State cannot be an expert in everything. The Secretary of State cannot necessarily know the inner workings of Snapchat, Strava, TikTok and whatever other new platforms emerge. It seems like an unnecessary hurdle to stop Ofcom taking that action on its own, when it is the expert. The Minister is likely to say that the Secretary of State will say, “Yes, this is definitely a problem and I will easily instruct you to do this”—
Kirsty Blackman
The Minister will get the chance to make a proper speech in which he can respond.
It could be that the process is different from the one I see from reading the Bill. The Minister’s clarifications will be helpful to allow everyone to understand how the process is supposed to work, what powers Ofcom is supposed to have and whether it will have to wait for an instruction from the Secretary of State, which is what it looks like. That is why proposed new clause 10 is so important, because it would allow action to be taken to alert people to safety concerns. I am focusing mostly on that.
I appreciate that national security is also very important, but I thought I would take the opportunity to highlight specific concerns with individual platforms and to say to the Minister that we need Ofcom to be able to act and to educate the public as well as it possibly can, and to do so without having to wait for an instruction.
Chris Philp
Let me start by addressing the point that was raised by the hon. Member for Aberdeen North on Ofcom’s power to issue media literacy advice of its own volition, which is the subject of new clause 10. Under section 11 of the Communications Act 2003, Ofcom already has the power to issue media literacy guidance on issues such as Snapchat geolocation, the Strava map location functionality that I mentioned, and the other example that came up. Ofcom does not need the Secretary of State’s permission to do that, as it already has the power to do so. The power that new clause 10 would confer on Ofcom already exists.
Alex Davies-Jones
The Minister says that Ofcom can already use that existing power, so why does it not do so?
Chris Philp
That is obviously an operational matter for Ofcom. We would encourage it to do as much as possible. We encouraged it through our media literacy strategy, and it published an updated policy on media literacy in December last year. If Members feel that there are areas of media literacy in which Ofcom could do more, they will have a good opportunity to raise those questions when senior Ofcom officials next appear before the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee or any other parliamentary Committee.
The key point is that the measures in new clause 10 are already in legislation, so the new clause is not necessary. The Secretary of State’s powers under clause 146 do not introduce a requirement for permission—they are two separate things. In addition to Ofcom’s existing powers to act of its own volition, the clause gives the Secretary of State powers to issue directions in certain very limited circumstances. A direction may be issued where there is a present threat—I stress the word “threat”—to the health or safety of the public or to national security, and only in relation to media literacy. We are talking about extremely narrowly defined powers.
Kirsty Blackman
The Minister said “a present threat”, but the clause says “present a threat”. The two mean different things. To clarify, could he confirm that he means “present a threat”?
Chris Philp
The hon. Lady is quite right to correct me. I do mean “present a threat”, as it is written in the Bill—I apologise for inadvertently transposing the words.
Is it reasonable that the Secretary of State has those very limited and specific powers? Why should they exist at all? Does this represent an unwarranted infringement of Ofcom’s freedom? I suppose those are the questions that the Opposition and others might ask. The Government say that, yes, it is reasonable and important, because in those particular areas—health and safety, and national security—there is information to which only the Government have access. In relation to national security, for example, information gathered by the UK intelligence community—GCHQ, the Secret Intelligence Service and MI5—is made available to the Government but not more widely. It is certainly not information that Ofcom would have access to. That is why the Secretary of State has the power to direct in those very limited circumstances.
I hope that, following that explanation, the Committee will see that new clause 10 is not necessary because it replicates an existing power, and that clause 146 is a reasonable provision.
Alex Davies-Jones
I welcome the Minister’s comments, but I am not convinced by his arguments on the powers given to the Secretary of State on issues of national security or public health and safety. Parliament can be recalled and consulted, and Members of Parliament can have their say in the Chamber on such issues. It should not be up to the Secretary of State alone to direct Ofcom and challenge its independence.
Chris Philp
I understand the shadow Minister’s point, but recalling Parliament during a recess is extremely unusual. I am trying to remember how many times it has happened in the seven years that I have been here, and I can immediately recall only one occasion. Does she think that it would be reasonable and proportionate to recall 650 MPs in recess for the purpose of issuing a media literacy directive to Ofcom?
Alex Davies-Jones
I think the Minister has just made my point for me. If he does not see this happening only in extreme circumstances where a threat is presented or there is an immediate risk to public health and safety, how many times does he envisage the power being used? How many times will the Secretary of State have the power to overrule Ofcom if the power is not to be used only in those unique situations where it would be deemed appropriate for Parliament to be recalled?
Chris Philp
It is not overruling Ofcom; it is offering a direction to Ofcom.
Alex Davies-Jones
Yes—having direct influence on a regulator, overruling its independence and taking the stance directly themselves. The Minister has made my point for me: if he does not envisage the power being used only in unique circumstances where Parliament would need to be recalled to have a say, it will be used a lot more often than he suggests.
With that in mind, the Opposition will withhold our support for clause 146, in order to progress with new clause 10. I place on record the Labour party’s distinct concerns with the clause, which we will seek to amend on Report.
Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
I add my voice to the concerns that have been raised about the clause, and about the powers for the Secretary of State that are littered throughout the Bill. This comes on top of the scandals around the public appointments process that we have seen under this Government—even around the role of chair of Ofcom, which they tried to hand to a former editor of the Daily Mail, Paul Dacre. Earlier this year, Lord Grade was appointed for a four-year term. He is on £140,000-odd a year. The Secretary of State is responsible for appointing the whole board of Ofcom. I really do wonder why, on top of the power that the Government hold in the appointments process, they need the Secretary of State to have the claims to intervention that the Bill affords her.
Chris Philp
I have nothing further to add.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 146 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 147
Secretary of State’s guidance
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Alex Davies-Jones
It seems that our support for the clauses has run out. Clause 147 enables the Secretary of State to give guidance to Ofcom relating to its exercise of its statutory powers and functions under the Bill. It also allows the Secretary of State to give guidance to Ofcom around its functions and general powers under certain provisions of the Communications Act 2003. While we appreciate that the Secretary of State must consult Ofcom before issuing, revising or replacing guidance, we feel that this level of interference is unnecessary.
The Minister must recognise that the clause allows for an incredibly granular level of interference by the Secretary of State in the day-to-day functioning of a supposedly independent regulator. It profoundly interferes with enforcement and once again broadly undermines Ofcom’s independence. Civil society and stakeholders alike share our concerns. I must press the Minister on why this level of interference is included in the Bill—what is the precedent? We have genuine concerns that the fundamental aims of the Bill—to keep us all safe online—could easily be shifted according to the priorities of the Secretary of State of the day. We also need to ensure there is consistency in our overall approach to the Bill. Labour feels that this level of interference will cause the Bill to lack focus.
Ultimately, Ofcom, as the independent regulator, should be trusted to do what is right. The Minister must recognise how unpopular the Bill’s current approach of giving overarching powers to the Secretary of State is. I hope he will go some way to addressing our concerns, which, as I have already said, we are not alone in approaching him with. For those reasons, we cannot support clause 147 as it stands.
Chris Philp
We are introducing a new, groundbreaking regime, and we are trying to strike a balance between the need for regulatory independence of Ofcom and appropriate roles for Parliament and Government. There is a balance to strike there, particularly in an area such as this, which has not been regulated previously. It is a brand-new area, so we do not have decades of cumulated custom and practice that has built up. We are creating this from the ground up—from a blank sheet of paper.
That is why, in establishing this regime, we want to provide a facility for high-level strategic guidance to be given to Ofcom. Of course, that does not infringe on Ofcom’s day-to-day operations; it will continue to do those things itself, in taking decisions on individual enforcement matters and on the details around codes of practice. All those things, of course, remain for Ofcom.
We are very clear that guidance issued under clause 147 is strategic in nature and will not stray into the operational or organisational matters that should properly fall into the exclusive ambit of the independent regulator. There are a number of safeguards in the clause to ensure that the power is exercised in the way that I have just described and does not go too far.
First, I point to the fact that clause 147(8) simply says that
“ OFCOM must have regard to the guidance”.
That is obviously different from a hard-edged statutory obligation for it to follow the guidance in full. Of course, it does mean that Ofcom cannot ignore it completely—I should be clear about that—but it is different from a hard-edged statutory obligation.
There is also the requirement for Ofcom to be consulted, so that its opinions can be known. Of course, being consulted does not mean that the opinions will be followed, but it means that they will be sought and listened to. There are also some constraints on how frequently this strategic guidance can be revised, to ensure that it does not create regulatory uncertainty by being chopped and changed on an unduly frequent basis, which would cause confusion.
Kirsty Blackman
I have a question about subsection (4)(b), which says that the guidance can be replaced more frequently than once every three years. I understand subsection (4)(a)—that is fine—but subsection (4)(b) says that the guidance can be changed if
“the revision or replacement is by agreement between the Secretary of State and OFCOM.”
How will those of us who are not the Secretary of State or Ofcom know that there has been an agreement that the guidance can be changed and that the Secretary of State is not just acting on their own? If the guidance is changed because of an agreement, will there be a line in the guidance that says, “The Secretary of State has agreed with Ofcom to publish this only 1.5 years after the last guidance was put out, because of these reasons”? In the interests of transparency, it would be helpful for something like that to be included in the guidance, if it was being changed outside the normal three-year structure.
Chris Philp
It is better than being in the guidance, which is non-statutory, because it is in the Bill—it is right here in front of us in the measure that the hon. Lady just referred to, clause 147(4)(b). If the Secretary of State decided to issue updated guidance in less than three years without Ofcom’s consent, that would be unlawful; that would be in breach of this statute, and it would be a very straightforward matter to get that struck down. It would be completely illegal to do that.
My expectation would be that if updated guidance was issued in less than three years, it would be accompanied by written confirmation that Ofcom had agreed. I imagine that if a future Secretary of State—I cannot imagine the current Secretary of State doing it—published guidance in less than three years without Ofcom’s consent, Ofcom would not be shy in pointing that out, but to do that would be illegal. It would be unlawful; it would be a breach of this measure in the Bill.
I hope that the points that I have just made about the safeguards in clause 147, and the assurance and clarity that I have given the Committee about the intent that guidance will be at the strategic level rather than the operational level, gives Members the assurance they need to support the clause.
Question put, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Alex Davies-Jones
I will be brief. The clause is incredibly important. It requires the Secretary of State to prepare and lay before Parliament annual reports about their performance in relation to online safety. We fully support such transparency. That is all we want—we want it to go further. That is what we have been trying to say in Committee all day. We agree in principle and therefore have not sought to amend the clause.
Chris Philp
I could not possibly add to that exceptionally eloquent description.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 148 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 149
Review
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Alex Davies-Jones
As we know, the clause compels the Secretary of State to undertake a review to assess the effectiveness of the regulatory framework. The review will have to be published and laid before Parliament, which we welcome. However, we note the broad time limits on this duty. We have heard repeatedly about the challenges that delays to the Bill’s full implementation will cause, so I urge the Minister to consider that point closely. By and large, though, we absolutely support the clause, especially as the Secretary of State will be compelled to consult Ofcom and other appropriate persons when carrying out its review—something that we have called for throughout scrutiny of the Bill. We only wish that that level of collaboration had been accepted by the Minister on the other clauses. I will not waste time repeating points that I have already made. We support the clause.
Chris Philp
I welcome the shadow Minister’s support for this review clause, which is important. I will not add to her comments.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 149 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 150
Harmful communications offence
Kim Leadbeater
I beg to move amendment 112, in clause 150, page 127, line 28, at end insert “and;
(b) physical harm that has been acquired as a consequence of receiving the content of a message sent online.”
This amendment would expand the definition of harm for the purposes of the harmful communications offence to incorporate physical harm resulting from messages received online.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 113, in clause 150, page 127, line 28, at end insert “; or
(b) physical harm resulting from an epileptic seizure, where the seizure has been triggered by the intentional sending of flashing images to a person with epilepsy.”
Kim Leadbeater
I move the amendment in my name and will speak to amendment 113, which is in the name of the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard).
The amendment would put into effect Zach’s law in full. Zach, as many Members know, is an amazing, energetic and bright young boy from my constituency. I had the absolute pleasure of visiting Zach and his mum Clare at their home in Hartshead a few weeks ago. We chatted about school and his forthcoming holiday, and he even invited me to the pub. However, Zach also has epilepsy.
Disgustingly, he was trolled online a few years ago and sent flashing images by bullies, designed to trigger his condition and give him an epileptic seizure, a seizure that not only would cause him and his family great distress, but can be extremely dangerous and cause Zach significant psychological and physical harm. I know that we are all united in our disgust at such despicable actions and committed to ensuring that this type of unbelievable online bullying is against the law under the Bill.
On Second Reading, I raised the matter directly with the Minister and I am glad that he pointed to clause 150 and stated very explicitly that subsection (4) will cover the type of online harm that Zach has encountered. However, we need more than just a commitment at the Dispatch Box by the Minister, or verbal reassurances, to protect Zach and the 600,000 other people in the UK with epilepsy.
The form of online harm that Zach and others with epilepsy have suffered causes more than just “serious distress”. Members know that the Bill as drafted lists
“psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress”
as a qualifying criterion of the offence. However, I believe that does not accurately and fully reflect the harm that epilepsy trolling causes, and that it leaves a significant loophole that none of us here wish to see exploited
For many people with epilepsy, the harm caused by this vicious online trolling is not only psychological but physical too. Seizures are not benign events. They can result in broken bones, concussion, bruises and cuts, and in extreme cases can be fatal. It is simply not right to argue that physical harm is intrinsically intertwined with psychological harm. They are different harms with different symptoms. While victims may experience both, that is not always the case.
Professor Sander, medical director of the Epilepsy Society and professor of neurology at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, who is widely considered one of the world’s leading experts on epilepsy, has said:
“Everyone experiences seizures differently. Some people may be psychologically distressed by a seizure and not physically harmed. Others may be physically harmed but not psychologically distressed. This will vary from person to person, and sometimes from seizure to seizure depending on individual circumstances.”
Amendment 112 will therefore expand the scope of clause 150 and insert on the face of the Bill that an offence will also be committed under the harmful communications clause when physical harm has occurred as a consequence of receiving a message sent online with malicious intent. In practical terms, if a person with epilepsy were to receive a harmful message online that triggers their epilepsy and they subsequently fall off their chair and hit their head, that physical harm will be proof of a harmful communication offence, without the need to prove any serious psychological distress that may have been caused.
This simple but effective amendment, supported by the Epilepsy Society, will ensure that the horrific trolling that Zach and others with epilepsy have had to endure will be covered in full by the Bill. That will mean that the total impact that such trolling has on the victims is reflected beyond solely psychological distress, so there can be no ambiguity and nowhere for those responsible for sending these images and videos to hide.
I am aware that the Minister has previously pointed to the possibility of a standalone Bill—a proposal that is under discussion in the Ministry of Justice. That is all well and good, but that should not delay our action when the Bill before us is a perfectly fit legislative vehicle to end epilepsy trolling, as the Law Commission report recommended.
I thank colleagues from across the House for the work they have done on this important issue. I sincerely hope that the amendment is one instance where we can be united in this Committee. I urge the Minister to adopt amendment 112, to implement Zach’s law in full and to provide the hundreds of thousands of people across the UK living with epilepsy the legal protections they need to keep them safe online. It would give me no greater pleasure than to call at Zach’s house next time I am in the area and tell him that this is the case.
Dean Russell (Watford) (Con)
May I praise the hon. Member for Batley and Spen for such an eloquent and heartfelt explanation of the reason why this amendment to the Bill is so important?
I have been campaigning on Zach’s law for the past nine months. I have spoken to Zach multiple times and have worked closely with my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Suzanne Webb) in engaging directly with Facebook, Twitter and the big platforms to try to get them to do something, because we should not need to have a law to stop them sending flashing images. We had got quite far a few months ago, but now that seems to have stalled, which is very frustrating.
I am stuck between my heart and my head on this amendment. My heart says we need to include the amendment right now, sort it out and get it finalised. However, my head says we have got to get it right. During the Joint Committee for Online Safety before Christmas and in the evidence sessions for this Bill, we heard that if the platforms want to use a loophole and get around things they will. I have even seen that with regard to the engagements and the promises we have had.
Kirsty Blackman
I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman would consider a belt and braces approach as the best way forward? We could have it in the Bill and have the other legislation, in order that this will definitely protect people and companies will not be able to wriggle out of it.
Dean Russell
That is an excellent point. I have yet to make up my mind which way to vote if the amendment is pressed to a vote; I do not know whether this is a probing amendment. Having spoken to the Epilepsy Society and having been very close to this issue for many months, for me to feel comfortable, I want the Minister not just to say, as he has said on the Floor of the House, to me personally, in meetings and recently here, that the clause should cover epilepsy, and does seem to, and that he is very confident of that, but to give some assurance that we will change the law in some form.
Kim Leadbeater
I am incredibly grateful for the hon. Member’s comments and contribution. I agree wholeheartedly. We need more than a belief and an intention. There is absolutely no reason why we cannot have this in black and white in the Bill. I hope he can find a way to do the right thing today and vote for the amendment.
Dean Russell
The phrase “Do the right thing” is at the heart of this. My hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt) presented the Flashing Images Bill yesterday. A big part of this is about justice. I am conscious that we have got to get the balance right; stopping this happening has an impact for the people who choose to do this. I am keen to hear what the Minister says. We have got to get this right. I am keen to get some assurances, which will very much sway my decision on the vote today.
Caroline Ansell (Eastbourne) (Con)
At the risk of following my earlier voting pattern, I am also very much with the hon. Member for Batley and Spen in spirit. I could not do the subject any more justice than she has, describing this appalling online behaviour and just how damaging it is. I am a member of the all-party parliamentary group on epilepsy and have lived experience myself.
I want to highlight the comments of the Epilepsy Society, which I am sure is following our work this afternoon. It welcomes many of the introductions to the Bill, but highlights something of a legislative no man’s land. Clause 187 mentions physical harm, but does not apply to clause 150. Clause 150 only covers psychological harm when, as we have heard described, many seizures result in physical harm and some of that is very serious. I know the Minister is equally committed to see this measure come about and recognises the points we have demonstrated. The hon. Lady is right that we are united. I suspect the only point on which there might be some difference is around timing. I will be looking to support the introduction and the honouring in full of Zach’s law before the Bill is passed. There are many other stages.
My understanding is that many others wish to contribute, not least the Ministry of Justice. My hope, and my request to the Minister, is that those expert stakeholder voices will be part of the drafting, should it not be the case that supporting the amendment presented today is the very best and strongest way forward. I want to see recognition in law.
Chris Philp
Amendment 112 is clearly very important. As my hon. Friend the Member for Watford pointed out, I have already said that I believe that clause 150 goes a long way to address the various issues that have been raised. Since my hon. Friends the Members for Eastbourne and for Watford, and the hon. Member for Batley and Spen have been raising this issue—my hon. Friends have been lobbying me on this issue persistently and frequently, behind closed doors as well as publicly, and the hon. Member for Batley and Spen has been campaigning on this publicly with great tenacity and verve—the Government and the MOJ have been further considering the Law Commission’s recommendations, which I referenced on Second Reading. Subsequent to Second Reading and the lobbying by the three Members who have just spoken—the hon. Member for Batley and Spen, and my hon. Friends the Members for Watford and for Eastbourne—I can now announce to the Committee that the Government have decided to enact the Law Commission’s recommendations, so there will be a new and separate standalone offence that is specific to epilepsy for the very first time. I can firmly commit to that and announce it today.
Kim Leadbeater
I genuinely appreciate the Minister’s comments, but why would we spend more time doing other pieces of legislation when we can do it right here and right now? The amendment will solve the problem without causing any more pain or suffering over a long period of time.
Chris Philp
One of the pieces of legislation that could be used is this Bill, because it is in scope. If the hon. Lady can bear with me until Report, I will say more about the specific legislative vehicle that we propose to use.
On the precise wording to be used, I will make a couple of points about the amendments that have been tabled—I think amendment 113 is not being moved, but I will speak to it anyway. Amendment 112, which was tabled by the hon. Member for Batley and Spen, talks about bringing physical harm in general into the scope of clause 150. Of course, that goes far beyond epilepsy trolling, because it would also bring into scope the existing offence of assisting or encouraging suicide, so there would be duplicative law: there would be the existing offence of assisting or encouraging suicide and the new offence, because a communication that encouraged physical harm would do the same thing.
If we included all physical harm, it would duplicate the proposed offence of assisting or encouraging self-harm that is being worked on by the Ministry of Justice and the Law Commission. It would also duplicate offences under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, because if a communication caused one person to injure another, there would be duplication between the offence that will be created by clause 150 and the existing offence. Clearly, we cannot have two offences that criminalise the same behaviour. To the point made by the hon. Member for Aberdeen North, it would not be right to create two epilepsy trolling offences. We just need one, but it needs to be right.
Chris Philp
In a second.
The physical harm extension goes way beyond the epilepsy point, which is why I do not think that that would be the right way to do it, although the Government have accepted that we will do it and need to do it, but by a different mechanism.
I was about to speak to amendment 113, the drafting of which specifically mentions epilepsy and which was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard), but was the hon. Lady’s question about the previous point?
Kirsty Blackman
My question was about the announcement that the Minister is hoping to make on Report. I appreciate that he has committed to introduce the new offence, which is great. If the Bill is to be the legislative vehicle, does he expect to amend it on Report, or does he expect that that will have to wait until the amendment goes through the Lords?
Chris Philp
That is a good question, and it ties into my next point. Clearly, amendment 113 is designed to create a two-sentence epilepsy trolling offence. When trying to create a brand-new offence—in this case, epilepsy trolling—it is unlikely that two sentences’ worth of drafting will do the trick, because a number of questions need to be addressed. For example, the drafting will need to consider what level of harm should be covered and exactly what penalty would be appropriate. If it was in clause 150, the penalty would be two years, but it might be higher or lower, which needs to be addressed. The precise definitions of the various terms need to be carefully defined as well, including “epilepsy” and “epileptic seizures” in amendment 113, which was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys. We need to get proper drafting.
My hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne mentioned that the Epilepsy Society had some thoughts on the drafting. I know that my colleagues in the Ministry of Justice and, I am sure, the office of the parliamentary counsel, would be keen to work with experts from the Epilepsy Society to ensure that the drafting is correct. Report will likely be before summer recess—it is not confirmed, but I am hoping it will be—and getting the drafting nailed down that quickly would be challenging.
I hope that, in a slightly indirect way, that answers the question. We do not have collective agreement about the precise legislative vehicle to use; however, I hope it addresses the questions about how the timing and the choreography could work.
Kim Leadbeater
We have talked a lot about the Epilepsy Society this afternoon, and quite rightly too, as they are the experts in this field. My understanding is that it is perfectly happy with the language in this amendment—
Kim Leadbeater
Amendment 112. I think that the Epilepsy Society feels that this would be covered. I am also confused, because the Minister said previously that it was his belief and intention that this clause would cover epilepsy trolling, but he is now acknowledging that it does not. Why would we not, therefore, just accept the amendment that covers it and save everybody a lot of time?
Chris Philp
Representations have been made by the three Members here that epilepsy deserves its own stand-alone offence, and the Government have just agreed to do that, so take that as a win. On why we would not just accept amendment 112, it may well cover epilepsy, and may well cover it to the satisfaction of the Epilepsy Society, but it also, probably inadvertently, does a lot more than that. It creates a duplication with the offence of assisting or encouraging suicide.
Chris Philp
No, it is not a bonus, because we cannot have two different laws that criminalise the same thing. We want to have laws that are, essentially, mutually exclusive. If a person commits a particular act, it should be clear which Act the offence is being committed under. Imagine that there were two different offences for the same act with different sentences—one is two years and one is 10 years. Which sentence does the judge then apply? We do not want to have law that overlaps, where the same act is basically a clear offence under two different laws. Just by using the term “physical harm”, amendment 112 creates that. I accept that it would cover epilepsy, but it would also cover a whole load of other things, which would then create duplication.
That is why the right way to do this is essentially through a better drafted version of amendment 113, which specifically targets epilepsy. However, it should be done with drafting that has been done properly—with respect to my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys, who drafted the amendment—with definitions that are done properly, and so on. That is what we want to do.
Dean Russell
Having been involved on this Bill for quite a while now and having met Zach, I know the concerns that the Epilepsy Society have had. For me, we just need the Minister to tell us, which I think he has, that this will become law, whatever the vehicle for that is. If we know that this will be an offence by the end of this year—hopefully by summer, if not sooner—so that people cannot send flashing images to people with epilepsy, like Zach, then I will feel comfortable in not backing the amendment, on the premise that the Government will do something, moving forward. Am I correct in that understanding?
Chris Philp
Yes. Just to be clear, in no world will a new law pass by the summer recess. However, I can say that the Government are committed, unequivocally, to there being a new offence in law that will criminalise epilepsy trolling specifically. That commitment is categoric. The only matter on which I need to come back to the House, which I will try to do on Report, is to confirm specifically which Bill that offence will go in. The commitment to legislate is made unequivocally today.
Caroline Ansell
I welcome the Minister’s announcement and that commitment. I particularly welcome that the new offence will have epilepsy in the title. People who seek out those who may be triggered and have seizures to cause this harm use all sorts of tags, organisations and individuals to deliberately and specifically target those who suffer from epilepsy. It is therefore wholly right that this new offence, whether in this Bill or another, cites epilepsy, because those who would seek to do harm know it and call it that.
I have not had the privilege of meeting Zach; however, thanks to this online world, which we are experiencing through this legislation as the wild west, I was able to see the most beautiful tribute interview he did with his mum. He said that if the change were to be made and offence were to be recognised, “we win.” He is so right that we all win.
Chris Philp
My hon. Friend makes an extremely powerful point that is incapable of being improved upon.
Kim Leadbeater
It is wonderful that we have such consensus on this issue. I am grateful to colleagues for that. I am very concerned about the pressures on parliamentary time, and the fact that we are kicking this issue down the road again. We could take action today to get the process moving. That is what Zach and his family want and what other people who have been subjected to this hideous bullying want. Without a firm timeframe for another way of getting this done, I am struggling to understand why we cannot do this today.
Chris Philp
The progress that the campaign has made, with the clear commitment from the Government that we are going to legislate for a specific epilepsy trolling offence, is a huge step forward. I entirely understand the hon. Lady’s impatience. I have tried to be as forthcoming as I can be about likely times, in answer to the question from the hon. Member for Aberdeen North, within the constraints of what is currently collectively agreed, beyond which I cannot step.
Amendment 112 will sort out the epilepsy, but unfortunately it will create duplicative criminal law. We cannot let our understandable sense of urgency end up creating a slightly dysfunctional criminal statute book. There is a path that is as clear as it reasonably can be. Members of the Committee will probably have inferred the plan from what I said earlier. This is a huge step forward. I suggest that we bank the win and get on with implementing it.
Dean Russell
I appreciate that there will be differences of opinion, but I feel that Zach should be smiling today whatever the outcome—if there is a vote, or if this is a probing amendment. When I have chatted about this previously over many months, it has been a real challenge. The Minister quite rightly said that the Bill already covered epilepsy. I felt that to be true. This is a firming up of the agreement we had. This is the first time I have heard this officially in any form. My message to Zach and the Epilepsy Society, who may well be watching the Committee, is that I hope they will see this as a win. With my head and my heart together, I feel that it is a win, but I forewarn the Minister that I will continue to be like a dog with a bone and make sure that those promises are delivered upon.
Chris Philp
I think that is probably a good place to leave my comments. I can offer public testimony of my hon. Friend’s tenacity in pursuing this issue.
I ask the hon. Member for Batley and Spen to withdraw the amendment. I have given the reasons why: because it would create duplicative criminal law. I have been clear about the path forward, so I hope that on that basis we can work together to get this legislated for as a new offence, which is what she, her constituent and my hon. Friends the Members for Watford and for Eastbourne and others have been calling for.
Kim Leadbeater
I appreciate the Minister’s comments and the support from across the House. I would like to the push the amendment to a vote.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
The Chair
Amendment 113 was tabled by Paul Maynard, who is not on the Committee. Does any Member wish to move the amendment?
Amendment proposed: 113, in clause 150, page 127, line 28, at end insert “; or
(b) physical harm resulting from an epileptic seizure, where the seizure has been triggered by the intentional sending of flashing images to a person with epilepsy.”—(Kim Leadbeater.)
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Clauses 151 to 155 stand part.
Clause 157 stand part.
Barbara Keeley
Part 10 of the Bill sets out three new offences involving harmful, false or threatening communications. Clause 156 includes a new offence on cyber-flashing, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd will speak shortly.
For many years, charities have been calling for an update to the offences included in the Malicious Communications Act 1998 and the Communications Act 2003. Back in 2018, the Law Commission pointed out that using the criminal law to deal with harmful online conduct was hindered by several factors, including limited law enforcement capacity to pursue the scale of abusive communications, what the commission called a “persistent cultural tolerance” of online abuse, and difficulties in striking a balance between protecting people from harm and maintaining rights of freedom of expression—a debate that we keep coming to in Committee and one that is still raging today. Reform of the legislation governing harmful online communications is welcome—that is the first thing to say—but the points laid out by the Law Commission in 2018 still require attention if the new offences are to result in the reduction of harm.
My hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen spoke about the limited definition of harm, which relates to psychological harm but does not protect against all harms resulting from messages received online, including those that are physical. We also heard from the hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire about the importance of including an offence of encouraging or assisting self-harm, which we debated last week with schedule 7. I hope that the Minister will continue to upgrade the merits of new clause 36 when the time comes to vote on it.
Those are important improvements about what should constitute an offence, but we share the concerns of the sector about the extent to which the new offences will result in prosecution. The threshold for committing one of the offences in clause 150 is high. When someone sends the message, there must be
“a real and substantial risk that it would cause harm to a likely audience”,
and they must have
“no reasonable excuse for sending the message.”
The first problem is that the threshold of having to prove the intention to cause distress is an evidential threshold. Finding evidence to prove intent is notoriously difficult. Professor Clare McGlynn’s oral evidence to the Committee was clear:
“We know from the offence of non-consensual sending of sexual images that it is that threshold that limits prosecutions, but we are repeating that mistake here with this offence.”
Professor McGlynn highlighted the story of Gaia Pope. With your permission, Ms Rees, I will make brief reference to it, in citing the evidence given to the Committee. In the past few weeks, it has emerged that shortly before Gaia Pope went missing, she was sent indecent images through Facebook, which triggered post-traumatic stress disorder from a previous rape. Professor McGlynn said:
“We do not know why that man sent her those images, and I guess my question would be: does it actually matter why he sent them? Unfortunately, the Bill says that why he sent them does matter, despite the harm it caused, because it would only be a criminal offence if it could be proved that he sent them with the intention of causing distress or for sexual gratification and being reckless about causing distress.”––[Official Report, Online Safety Public Bill Committee, 24 May 2022; c. 58, Q105.]
The communications offences should be grounded upon consent rather than the motivation of the perpetrator. That is a clear omission in the Bill, which my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd will speak more about in relation to our amendments 41 and 42 to clause 156. The Government must act or risk missing a critical opportunity to tackle the harms resulting from communications offences.
We then come to the problem of the “reasonable excuse” defence and the “public interest” defence. Clause 150(5) sets out that the court must consider
“whether the message is, or is intended to be, a contribution to a matter of public interest”.
The wording in the clause states that this should not “determine the point”. If that is the case, why does the provision exist? Does the Minister recognise that there is a risk of the provision being abused? In a response to a question from the hon. Member for Aberdeen North, the Minister has previously said that:
“Clause 150…does not give a get-out-of-jail-free card”.––[Official Report, Online Safety Public Bill Committee, 7 June 2022; c. 275.]
Could he lay out what the purpose of this “matter of public interest” defence is? Combined with the reasonable excuse defence in subsection (1), the provisions risk sending the wrong message when it comes to balancing harms, particularly those experienced by women, of which we have already heard some awful examples.
There is a difference in the threshold of harm between clause 150, on harmful communications offences, and clause 151, on false communications offences. To constitute a false communications offence, the message sender must have
“intended the message, or the information in it, to cause non-trivial psychological or physical harm to a likely audience”.
To constitute a harmful communications offence, the message sender must have
“intended to cause harm to a likely audience”
and there must have been
“a real and substantial risk that it would cause harm to a likely audience”.
Will the Minister set out the Government’s reasoning for that distinction? We need to get these clauses right because people have been let down by inadequate legislation and enforcement on harmful online communications offences for far too long.
Chris Philp
Let me start by saying that many of these clauses have been developed in careful consultation with the Law Commission, which has taken a great deal of time to research and develop policy in this area. It is obviously quite a delicate area, and it is important to make sure that we get it right.
The Law Commission is the expert in this kind of thing, and it is right that the Government commissioned it, some years ago, to work on these provisions, and it is right that, by and large, we follow its expert advice in framing these offences, unless there is a very good reason not to. That is what we have done—we have followed the Law Commission’s advice, as we would be expected to do. The clauses replace previous offences—for example, those in the Malicious Communications Act 1998—and update and improve those provisions in the form we see them in the Bill.
The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South, asked a number of questions about the drafting of the clauses and the thresholds that have to be met for an offence to be committed. We are trying to strike a balance between criminalising communications that deserve to be criminalised and not criminalising communications that people would consider should fall below the criminal threshold. There is obviously a balance to strike in doing that. We do not want to infringe free speech by going too far and having legitimate criticism and debate being subject to criminal sanctions. There is a balance to strike here between, on the one hand, public protection and where the criminal law sits versus, on the other hand, free speech and people expressing themselves. That is why clause 150 is constructed as it is, on the advice of the Law Commission.
As the hon. Member set out, the offence is committed only where there is a “real and substantial risk” that the likely audience would suffer harm. Harm is defined as
“psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress.”
Serious distress is quite a high threshold—it is significant thing, not something trivial. It is important to make that clear.
The second limb is that there is an intention to cause harm. Intention can in some circumstances be difficult to prove, but there are also acts that are so obviously malicious that there can be no conceivable motivation or intention other than to cause harm, where the communication is so obviously malfeasant. In those cases, establishing intent is not too difficult.
In a number of specific areas, such as intimate image abuse, my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke and others have powerfully suggested that establishing intent is an unreasonably high threshold, and that the bar should be set simply at consent. For the intimate image abuse offence, the bar is set at the consent level, not at intent. That is being worked through by the Law Commission and the Ministry of Justice, and I hope that it will be brought forward as soon as possible, in the same way as the epilepsy trolling offence that we discussed a short while ago. That work on intimate image abuse is under way, and consent, not intent, is the test.
For the generality of communications—the clause covers any communications; it is incredibly broad in scope—it is reasonable to have the intent test to avoid criminalising what people would consider to be an exercise of free speech. That is a balance that we have tried to strike. The intention behind the appalling communications that we have heard in evidence and elsewhere is clear: it is in inconceivable that there was any other motivation or intention than to cause harm.
There are some defences—well, not defences, but conditions to be met—in clause 150(1)(c). The person must have “no reasonable excuse”. Subsection (5) makes it clear that
“In deciding whether a person has a reasonable excuse…one of the factors that a court must consider (if it is relevant in a particular case) is whether the message is, or is intended to be, a contribution to a matter of public interest (but that does not determine the point)”
of whether there is a reasonable excuse—it simply has to be taken into account by the court and balanced against the other considerations. That qualification has been put in for reasons of free speech.
There is a delicate balance to strike between criminalising what should be criminal and, at the same time, allowing reasonable free speech. There is a line to draw, and that is not easy, but I hope that, through my comments and the drafting of the clause, the Committee will see that that line has been drawn and a balance struck in a carefully calibrated way. I acknowledge that the matter is not straightforward, but we have addressed it with advice from the Law Commission, which is expert in this area. I commend clause 150 to the Committee.
The other clauses in this group are a little less contentious. Clause 151 sets out a new false communication offence, and I think it is pretty self-explanatory as drafted. The threatening communications offence in clause 152 is also fairly self-explanatory—the terms are pretty clear. Clause 153 contains interpretative provisions. Clause 154 sets out the extra-territorial application, and Clause 155 sets out the liability of corporate officers. Clause 157 repeals some of the old offences that the new provisions replace.
Those clauses—apart from clause 150—are all relatively straightforward. I hope that, in following the Law Commission’s advice, we have struck a carefully calibrated balance in the right place.
Barbara Keeley
I would like to take the Minister back to the question I asked about the public interest defence. There is a great deal of concern that a lot of the overlaying elements create loopholes. He did not answer specifically the question of the public interest defence, which, combined with the reasonable excuse defence, sends the wrong message.
Chris Philp
The two work together. On the reasonable excuse condition, for the offence to have been committed, it has to be established that there was no reasonable excuse. The matter of public interest condition—I think the hon. Lady is referring to subsection (5)—simply illustrates one of the ways in which a reasonable excuse can be established, but, as I said in my remarks, it is not determinative. It does not mean that someone can say, “There is public interest in what I am saying,” and they automatically have a reasonable excuse—it does not work automatically like that. That is why in brackets at the end of subsection (5) it says
“but that does not determine the point”.
That means that if a public interest argument was mounted, a magistrate or a jury, in deciding whether the condition in subsection (1)(c)—the “no reasonable excuse” condition—had been met, would balance the public interest argument, but it would not be determinative. A balancing exercise would be performed. I hope that provides some clarity about the way that will operate in practice.
Barbara Keeley
That was about as clear as mud, actually, but let us leave it there.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 150 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 151 to 155 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 156
Sending etc photograph or film of genitals
Alex Davies-Jones
I beg to move amendment 41, in clause 156, page 131, line 15, at end insert—
“(za) B has not consented for A to share the photograph or film with B, or”.
This amendment makes it an offence to send an image of genitals to another person if the recipient has not given consent to receive the image.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 42, in clause 156, page 131, line 20, at end insert—
“(1A) A person consents if the person agrees by choice, and has the freedom and capacity to make that choice.”
This amendment is linked to Amendment 41.
Alex Davies-Jones
With your permission, Ms Rees, I will also speak to clause stand part.
Labour welcomes the clause. We see it as a positive step forward that the Government have committed to creating a new offence in certain circumstances where sending a photograph or film of a person’s genitals to another person will cause distress or humiliation. However, the Government have missed a huge opportunity to accurately capture the problems caused by sharing intimate images online. I will come to that shortly in addressing amendments 41 and 42.
We know that the act of sending unsolicited genital images—cyber-flashing, or sending dick pics—is a huge problem here in the UK. Research from Bumble has shown how disproportionally the issue affects young women. The statistics are shocking and speak for themselves. A whopping 48% of millennial women said that they had been sent an unsolicited sexual image in the last year alone. I must pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Basingstoke, who we all know shared her own experiences of cyber-flashing relatively recently. She is not alone—not in this House or in the country.
I have my own experiences, as do friends, colleagues and even my staff members, and we all share the same concerns about the prevalence of cyber-flashing. The Minister does not need to be reminded of it; he knows of the extent of the issues. We heard compelling evidence only a few weeks ago from Professor Clare McGlynn and Nima Elmi from Bumble, among others.
Labour firmly believes, as Professor McGlynn has outlined, that cyber-flashing is problematic because it is non-consensual conduct of a sexual nature. Distributing these images is not in and of itself wrong, but doing so without the consent of the recipient is. The non-consensual act breaches women’s rights to sexual autonomy, to be treated with dignity and to be free from sexual violence, regardless of the motive of the perpetrator.
We know that men’s motivations for cyber-flashing are varied and overlapping. They include misogyny, causing distress, sexual gratification, humour, boosting status among peers, sexual intimidation, and transactional motivations. Yet there is no evidence that the harms experienced by women are worse when offenders have the specific motivations identified in motive-based proposals, such as causing distress.
For example, a woman may be sent unsolicited penis images while on public transport, making her feel threatened and fearful for her safety, regardless of whether the sender intended to cause her alarm or was simply trying to impress his friends as a bit of banter. That is why the consent approach really is crucial, as I will now discuss in relation to amendments 41 and 42.
Amendment 41 would make it an offence to send an image of genitals to another person if the recipient has not given consent to receive that image. Labour recognises that there are two main options when drafting a new cyber-flashing criminal offence. The first is what we are trying to achieve with these amendments—a comprehensive consent-based offence requiring proof of non-consent. The alternative, as currently proposed by the Law Commission, is far too limited. It offers a motive-based offence, which applies only on proof of specific motives on the part of the offender, such as to cause distress, alarm or humiliation, to get sexual gratification, or to cause distress by being reckless. This is hugely problematic for women and girls across the country, and the Minister must recognise the message this sends to them.
Proving a motive behind an offence as simple as merely sending a photograph is nigh on impossible. If we really want to see systemic change in attitudes to women and girls, we fundamentally should not be creating laws that place the burden on the victim. A consent-based offence, as in our amendments, covers all forms of cyber-flashing, regardless of the motives of the sender. Motive requirements create an unjustified hierarchy of abuses and victims, and they do not reflect victims’ experiences. Requiring proof of specific motives will make investigations and prosecutions more difficult.
We know from police and victims that investigations and prosecutions for sharing sexual images without consent, such as revenge porn, are not taken forward due to similar motive requirements. How, therefore, can the Minister think that the provisions in the Bill related to cyber-flashing go far enough? Will they actually create change? I mentioned on Second Reading our genuine concerns about the levels of misogyny that have become far too normalised across our communities and within our society as a whole.
The consent-based offence provides a much better foundation for education and prevention projects. It sends the message that all sexual activity should be grounded in consent. It better supports education about online activities, with a focus on consent-based practices, and makes clear that any taking or sharing of sexual images without consent is wrong, harmful and criminal. Those are all positives.
The stakeholders are calling for a consent-based approach. The Opposition want the same. Even the Minister’s own Back Benchers can see that the Bill fails to capture and address the real harms women and girls face online. The Minister can likely sense my exasperation. It comes from a place of genuine frustration. I cannot understand how there has not been any movement on this from the Government side.
My final point—and indeed plea—is to urge the Minister to consider what is going on internationally on this issue. He will know that a consent-based cyber-flashing offence has been adopted in Texas and is being debated in other US states. Consent is easily obtained and criminal charges easily avoided. It is important to remember that avoiding being charged with a criminal offence is straightforward. All the sender needs to do is ask, “Would you like to see a picture of my genitals?” It is as simple as that. I am sure even the Minister can agree on that point. I urge him to genuinely consider amendments 41 and 42. There has been no movement from the Minister and no concessions thus far as we have scrutinised the Bill, but he must know that the Bill is far from perfect in its current form.
Kirsty Blackman
I would like to make a couple of comments. The shadow Minister mentioned education and prevention projects, which are key. In Scotland, our kids’ sex, health and relationship education in schools teaches consent from the earliest possible age. That is vital. We have a generation of men who think it is okay to send these images and not seek consent. As the shadow Minister said, the problem is everywhere. So many women have received images that they had no desire to see. They did not ask for them, and they did not consent to receive them, but they get them.
Requiring someone to prove the intent behind the offence is just impossible. It is so unworkable, and that makes it really difficult. This is yet another issue that makes it clear that we need to have reference to violence against women and girls on the face of the Bill. If that were included, we would not be making such a passionate case here. We would already have a code of conduct and assessments that have to take place on the basis of the specific harm to women and girls from such offences. We would not be making the case so forcefully because it would already be covered.
I wish the Minister would take on board how difficult it is for women and girls online, how much of an issue this specific action causes and how much pain and suffering it causes. It would great if the Minister could consider moving somewhat on this issue in order to protect women and girls.
Dame Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)
I want to make sure that the record is clear that while I did receive a dick pic, I am not a millennial. That shoes how widespread this problem is. My children would want that on the record.
Research done by YouGov showed that half of millennial women have been sent a photo of a penis, and that nine in 10 women who have ever received such a picture did not want to have it sent to them. To anybody who is trying to—I do not feel anybody today is—advocate that this is a small issue or a minority problem, the data suggest that it is not.
For the record, I think the reason I was sent that picture was not sexual at all. I think it was intimidatory. I was sitting in a train carriage on my way into Parliament on a hot day, and I think it was sent as intimidation because I could not leave that carriage and I had, in error, left my AirDrop on. Okay, that was my fault, but let us not victim blame.
I very much welcome the Minister’s approach, because he is the first person to take forward a series of new offences that are needed to clarify the law as it affects people in this area. As he was talking, I was reflecting on his use of the word “clarity”, and I think he is absolutely right. He is rightly looking to the Law Commission as the expert for how we interpret and how we get the most effective law in place.
Although we are not talking about the intimate image abuse recommendations in this part of the Bill, I draw to the Committee’s attention that I, and others, will have received an email from the Law Commission today setting out that it will bring forward its recommendations next month. I hope that that means that the Minister will bring forward something concrete to us about those particular offences in the coming weeks. He is right that when it comes to cyber-flashing, we need to get it right. We need to make sure that we follow the experts. The Law Commission was clear when it undertook its review that the current law does not adequately address these issues. I was pleased when it made that recommendation.
A great many people have looked at these issues, and I pay tribute to each and every one of them, though they come to slightly different conclusions about how we interpret the Law Commission’s recommendations and how we move forward. Professor Clare McGlynn is an expert. Bumble has done work on this; my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Fay Jones) has done a great deal of work too, and I recognise her contribution.
The offence is particularly pernicious because it is as prevalent as indecent exposure. It is right that the offence is recognised in the Sex Offenders Act 2003 as a result. As the hon. Member for Pontypridd said, it is another form of gendered crime online. On the evidence of harm that it causes, she referenced the evidence that we got from Professor McGlynn about Gaia Pope. That was particularly concerning. I do not think any of us in the Committee would argue that this is not the most serious of offences, and I commend the Minister for bringing forward a serious set of recommendations to tackle it.
Chris Philp
I thank the Members who have contributed to the debate. Rather like with the provisions in clause 150, which we discussed a few minutes ago, a difficult and delicate balance needs to be struck. We want to criminalise that which should be criminal, but not inadvertently criminalise that which should not be. The legal experts at the Law Commission have been studying the matter and consulting other legal experts for quite some time. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke said in her excellent speech, their recommendations have been our starting point.
It is probably worth making one or two points about how the clause works. There are two elements of intention, set out in subsection (1). First, the act of sending has to be intentional; it cannot be done accidentally. I think that is reasonable. Secondly, as set out in subsection (1)(a), there must be an intention to cause the person who sees the image alarm, distress or intimidation.
I understand the point that establishing intent could, in some circumstances, present a higher hurdle. As we discussed in relation to clause 150, we are, separately from this, working on the intimate image abuse offence, which does not require intention to be established; it simply requires lack of consent. I was not aware, until my right hon. Friend mentioned it a few moments ago—she was ahead of me there—that the Law Commission has given a timeframe for coming back. I am not sure whether that implies it will be concomitant with Ministry of Justice agreement or whether that will have to follow, but I am very pleased to hear that there is a timeframe. Clearly, it is an adjacent area to this and it will represent substantial progress.
I understand that it can sometimes be hard to establish intention, but there will be circumstances in which the context of such an incident will often make it clear that there was an intention to cause alarm, distress or humiliation.
Alex Davies-Jones
So he cannot possibly know how it feels to receive one. I appreciate the comments that he is trying to make, and that this is a fine balance, but I do see this specific issue of sending a photograph or film of genitals as black and white: they are sent either with or without consent. It is as simple as that. What other circumstances could there be? Can he give me an example of when one could be sent without the intention to cause distress, harm or intimidation?
Chris Philp
It is a fair question. There might be circumstances in which somebody simply misjudges a situation—has not interpreted it correctly—and ends up committing a criminal offence; stumbling into it almost by accident. Most criminal offences require some kind of mens rea—some kind of intention to commit a criminal offence. If a person does something by accident, without intention, that does not normally constitute a criminal offence. Most criminal offences on the statute book require the person committing the offence to intend to do something bad. If we replace the word “intent” with “without consent”, the risk is that someone who does something essentially by accident will have committed a criminal offence.
I understand that the circumstances in which that might happen are probably quite limited, and the context of the incidents that the hon. Member for Pontypridd and my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke have described would generally support the fact that there is a bad intention, but we have to be a little careful not accidentally to draw the line too widely. If a couple are exchanging images, do they have to consent prior to the exchange of every single image? We have to think carefully about such circumstances before amending the clause.
Dame Maria Miller
I have to say, just as an aside, that the Minister has huge levels of empathy, so I am sure that he can put himself into the shoes of someone who receives such an image. I am not a lawyer, but I know that there is a concept in law of acting recklessly, so if someone acts recklessly, as my hon. Friend has set out in his Bill, they can be committing a criminal offence. That is why I thought he might want to consider not having the conditional link between the two elements of subsection(1)(b), but instead having them as an either/or. If he goes back to the Law Commission’s actual recommendations, rather than the interpretation he was given by the MOJ, he will see that they set out that one of the conditions should be that defendants who are posting in this way are likely to cause harm. If somebody is acting in a way that is likely to cause harm, they would be transgressing. The Bill acknowledges that somebody can act recklessly. It is a well-known concept in law that people can be committing an offence if they act recklessly—reckless driving, for example. I wonder whether the Minister might think about that, knowing how difficult it would be to undertake what the hon. Member for Pontypridd is talking about, as it directly contravenes the Law Commission’s recommendations. I do not think what I am suggesting would contravene the Law Commission’s recommendations.
Chris Philp
I will commit to consider the clause further, as my right hon. Friend has requested. It is important to do so in the context of the Law Commission’s recommendations, but she has pointed to wording in the Law Commission’s original report that could be used to improve the drafting here. I do not want to make a firm commitment to change, but I will commit to considering whether the clause can be improved upon. My right hon. Friend referred to the “likely to cause harm” test, and asked whether recklessness as to whether someone suffers alarm, distress or humiliation could be looked at as a separate element. We need to be careful; if we sever that from sexual gratification, we need to have some other qualification on sexual gratification. We might have sexual gratification with consent, which would be fine. If we severed them, we would have to add another qualification.
It is clear that there is scope for further examination of clause 156. That does not necessarily mean it will be possible to change it, but it is worth examining it further in the light of the comments made by my right hon. Friend. The testimony we heard from witnesses, the testimony of my right hon. Friend and what we heard from the hon. Member for Pontypridd earlier do demonstrate that this is a widespread problem that is hugely distressing and intrusive and that it represents a severe violation. It does need to be dealt with properly.
We need to be cognisant of the fact that in some communities there is a culture of these kinds of pictures being freely exchanged between people who have not met or communicated before—on some dating websites, for example. We need to draft the clause in such a way that it does not inadvertently criminalise those communities—I have been approached by members of those communities who are concerned.
Chris Philp
The hon. Member for Pontypridd says from a sedentary position that they have given consent. The consent is not built into the website’s terms and conditions; it is an assumed social norm for people on those websites. We need to tread carefully and be thoughtful, to ensure that by doing more to protect one group we do not inadvertently criminalise another.
There is a case for looking at the issue again. My right hon. Friend has made the point thoughtfully and powerfully, and in a way that suggests we can stay within the confines of the Law Commission’s advice, while being more thoughtful. I will certainly undertake to go away and do that, in consultation with my right hon. Friend and others.
Nick Fletcher (Don Valley) (Con)
I am pleased the Minister will go away and look at this. I am sure there are laws already in place that cover these things, but I know that this issue is very specific. An awful lot of the time, we put laws in place, but we could help an awful lot of people through education, although the last thing we want to do is victim blame. The Government could work with companies that provide devices and have those issued with the airdrop in contacts-only mode, as opposed to being open to everybody. That would stop an awful lot of people getting messages that they should not be receiving in the first place.
Chris Philp
My hon. Friend makes a very powerful and important point. Hopefully, people listening to our proceedings will hear that, as well as those working on media literacy—principally, Ofcom and the Government, through their media literacy strategy. We have had a couple of specific tips that have come out of today’s debate. My right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke and my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley mentioned disabling a device’s airdrop, or making it contacts-only. A point was also made about inadvertently sharing geolocations, whether through Snapchat or Strava. Those are two different but important points that the general public should be more aware of than they are.
Alex Davies-Jones
I wholeheartedly agree with the Minister’s comments. This is a gigantic step forward that is long overdue, and we wholeheartedly welcome the new offence being created, but, as he rightly pointed out, it is important that we get this right and that we make the measure as strong as possible so that the legislation causes direct and meaningful change.
To us, the issue is simple: “Do you want to see my genitals, yes or no?” We will push amendment 41 to the vote.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Barbara Keeley
We have argued that changes to the legislation are long overdue to protect people from the harms caused by online communications offences. The clause and schedule 13 include necessary amendments to the legislation, so we do not oppose them standing part of the Bill.
Chris Philp
The clause cross-references schedule 13 and sets out amendments to existing legislation consequential on the communications offences in part 10. Schedule 13 has a number of consequential amendments, divided broadly into two parts. It makes various changes to the Sexual Offences Act 2003, amends the Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Act 2008 in relation to the Malicious Communications Act 1988, and makes various other changes, all of which are consequential on the clauses we have just debated. I therefore commend clause 158 and its associated schedule 13 to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 158 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule 13 agreed to.
Clause 159
Providers that are not legal persons
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to consider:
Government amendment 159.
Clauses 160 and 161 stand part.
That schedule 14 be the Fourteenth schedule to the Bill.
Alex Davies-Jones
Labour supports clause 159, because it is vital that the Bill includes provisions for Ofcom to issue a penalty notice or confirmation decision when the provider may not be a legal person in the traditional sense. We have repeatedly maintained that it is central to the success of the Bill that, once implemented, it properly and sufficiently gives Ofcom the relevant powers, autonomy and independence to properly pursue providers of regulated services and their wrongdoings.
We recognise the complexity of the service providers’ business models and therefore agree that the Bill must be broad enough to ensure that penalty notices and confirmation decisions can be given, even when the provider may constitute an association, or an organisation between a group of people. Ultimately, as we have made clear, Labour will continue to support giving the regulator the tools required to keep us all safe online.
We have already raised concerns over Ofcom’s independence and the interference of and over-reliance on the Secretary of State’s powers within the Bill as it stands. However, we are in agreement on clause 159 and feel that it provides a vital tool for Ofcom to have at its disposal should the need for a penalty notice or confirmation decision arise. That is why we support the clause and have not sought to amend it.
Government amendment 159, as we know, ensures that if the provider of a service consists of two or more individuals, those individuals are jointly liable to pay a fee demanded under new schedule 2. As I will come on to in my comments on clauses 160 and 161, we welcome the provisions and clarifications around liability for fees when the provider of a service consists of two or more individuals.
As with clause 159, we welcome the clarity of provisions in the Bill that confirm actions to be taken where a group of two or more individuals act together. It is absolutely right that where two or more individuals together are the providers of a regulated service, they should be jointly and severally liable for any duty, requirement or liability to pay a fee.
We also welcome the clarification that that liability and joint responsibility will also apply in the event of a penalty notice or confirmation decision. We believe that these provisions are vital to capturing the true extent of where responsibility should lie, and we hope they will go some way to remedying the hands-off approach that service providers have managed to get away with for too long when it comes to regulation of the internet. We do, however, feel that the Government could have gone further, as we outlined in amendment 50, which we spoke to when we addressed clause 123.
Labour firmly believes that Ofcom’s ability to take action against non-compliance en masse is critical. That is why we welcome clause 160 and will not be seeking to amend it at this stage. We also fundamentally support clause 161, which contains provisions on how joint liability will operate.
We will speak to our concerns about supply chains when we debate a later clause—I believe it is new clause 13 —because it is vital that this Bill captures the challenges around supply chain failures and where responsibility lies. With that in mind, we will support clause 161, with a view to the Minister understanding our broader concerns, which we will address when we debate new clause 13.
Finally, schedule 14 establishes that decisions or notices can be given jointly to both a regulated provider and its parent company. We particularly support the confirmation that all relevant entities must be given the opportunity to make representations when Ofcom seeks to establish joint liability, including on the matters contained in the decision or notice and whether joint liability would be appropriate.
As we have made clear, we see the provisions outlined in this schedule as fundamental to Ofcom’s ability to issue truly meaningful decisions, penalties and notices to multiple parties. The fact that, in this instance, service providers will be jointly liable to comply is key to capturing the extent to which it has been possible to perpetuate harm online for so long. That is why we support the intention behind schedule 14 and have not sought to amend it.
Chris Philp
The shadow Minister has set out clearly the purpose of and intent behind these clauses, and how they work, so I do not think I will add anything. I look forward to our future debate on the new clause.
There is one point of correction that I wish to make, and it relates to a question that the hon. Member for Aberdeen North asked this morning and that is germane to amendment 159. That amendment touches on the arrangements for recouping the set-up costs that Ofcom incurs prior to the Bill receiving Royal Assent. The hon. Member for Aberdeen North asked me over what time period those costs would be collected, and I answered slightly off the cuff. Now I have had a chance to dig through the papers, I will take this opportunity to confirm exactly how that works.
To answer the question a little bit better than I did this morning, the place to go is today’s amendment paper. The relevant provisions are on page 43 of the amendment paper, in paragraph 7(5) of Government new schedule 2, which we will debate later. If we follow the drafting through—this is quite a convoluted trail to follow —it states that the cost can be recouped over a period that is not less than three years and not more than five years. I hope that gives the hon. Member for Aberdeen North a proper answer to her question from this morning, and I hope it provides clarity and points to where in the new schedule the information can be found. I wanted to take the first opportunity to clarify that point.
Beyond that, the hon. Member for Pontypridd has summarised the provisions in this group very well, and I have nothing to add to her comments.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 159 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 160
Individuals providing regulated services: liability
Amendment made: 159, in clause 160, page 133, line 6, after “71” insert
“or Schedule (Recovery of OFCOM’s initial costs)”.—(Chris Philp.)
This amendment ensures that, if the provider of a service consists of two or more individuals, those individuals are jointly liable to pay a fee demanded under NS2.
Clause 160, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 161 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule 14 agreed to.
Clause 162
Information offences: supplementary
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Alex Davies-Jones
Labour supports the intention behind clause 162, because we believe that only by creating specific offences will the messaging around liability and the overall message about public safety really hit home for those at the top in Silicon Valley. We welcome the clarification on exactly how Ofcom will be able to exercise these important powers, and we support the process of giving notice, confirmation decisions and subsequent penalties. We see the clause as fundamental to the Bill’s overall success, although, as the Minister will recall, we feel that the Bill could go further in addressing broader offences beyond those around information practices. However, that is a debate for another day.
In this clause, we believe that the importance and, indeed, the power of information notices is crystal clear for service providers to see, and Labour fully supports and welcomes that move. That is why we will support clause 162 and have not sought to amend it at this stage. We welcome the clarity in clause 163 around the process that applies when a person relies on a defence in an information offence. We see this clause as sitting alongside current legal precedents and are therefore happy to support it.
We fully support and welcome clause 164. We believe it is central to the entire argument around liability that the Minister knows Labour has been making for some time now. We have heard in Committee evidence sessions some truly compelling insights from people such as Frances Haugen, and we know for certain that companies are prone to covering up information that they know will be received unfavourably.
Chris Philp
Once again, the shadow Minister has described the various clauses in this group. They speak, as she said, to the important and very strong measures around information offences. It is so important that where someone fails to provide the information that Ofcom requires, not only is there a liability on the company to pay very large fines or have their service cut off, as we discussed earlier, but individuals have criminal liability as well.
Clause 162 gives further information about how information-related criminal offences operate and how criminal proceedings can be brought against a person who fails to comply with an information notice or a requirement imposed when Ofcom exercises its powers of entry and inspection. Clause 163 goes further to explain how defences to accusations of criminal offences can operate, and it is helpful to have that clearly set out.
Clause 164 allows for corporate officers of regulated providers to be found liable for offences committed by the provider under the Act. For example, corporate officers can also be found liable for information offences committed by their company. That is extremely important, because it means that senior personnel can be held liable even where they are not named by their company in an information response. That means the most senior executives will have their minds focused on making sure the information requirements are properly met.
Clause 165 provides further information about how information-related criminal offences will operate under the Bill when the regulated provider is not a legal person—when it is, for example, a partnership or an unincorporated association. I hope the clauses give the specificity and clarification required to operate the personal criminal liability, which gives the enforcement powers in the Bill such strong teeth.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 162 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 163 to 165 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 166
Extra-territorial application
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Alex Davies-Jones
Labour welcomes clause 166, which specifies that references to regulated services and Ofcom’s information-gathering powers apply to services provided from outside the United Kingdom as well as to services provided from within the United Kingdom. While we recognise the challenges around internet regulation in the UK, we live in a global world, and we are pleased that the legislation has been drawn up in a way that will capture services based overseas.
We feel the Bill is lacking in its ability to regulate against content that may have originated from outside the UK. While it is welcome that regulated services based abroad will be within scope, we have concerns that that will do little to capture specific content that may not originate within the UK. We have raised these points at length in previous debates, so I will not dwell on them now, but the Minister knows that the Bill will continue to fall short when it does not capture, for example, child sexual exploitation and abuse content that was filmed and originated abroad. That is a huge loophole, which will allow harmful content to be present and to be perpetuated online well into the future. Although we support clause 166 for now, I urge the Minister to reconsider his view on how all-encompassing the current approach to content can be as he considers his Department’s strategy before Report.
Clause 167 outlines that the information offences in the Bill apply to acts done in the United Kingdom and outside the United Kingdom. We welcome its provisions, but we feel that the Government could go further. We welcome the clarification that it will be possible to prosecute information offences in any part of the UK as if they occurred there. Given the devastating pressures that our legal system already faces thanks to this Government’s cuts and shambolic approach to justice, such flexibility is crucial and a welcome step forward.
Chris Philp
Last week or the week before, we debated extensively the points about the extraterritorial application to protecting children, and I made it clear that the Bill protects people as we would wish it to.
Clause 166 relates to extraterritorial enforceability. It is important to make sure that the duties, enforceable elements and sanctions apply worldwide, reflecting the realities of the internet, and clause 166 specifies that references to regulated services in the Bill include services provided from outside the United Kingdom. That means that services based overseas must also comply, as well as those in the UK, if they reach UK users.
The clause ensures that Ofcom has effective information-gathering powers and can seek information from in-scope companies overseas for the purposes of regulating and enforcing the regime. Obviously, companies such as Facebook are firmly in scope, as hon. Members would expect. The clause makes it clear that Ofcom can request information held outside the UK and interview individuals outside the UK, if that is necessary for its investigations.
Clause 167 explains that the information-related personal criminal offences in the Bill—for example, failing to comply with Ofcom’s information notices—apply to acts done inside and outside the UK. That means that those offences can be criminally prosecuted whether the perpetrator is based in the UK or outside the UK. That will send a clear message to the large global social media firms that no matter where they may be based in the world or where their services may be provided from, we expect them to comply and the enforcement provisions in the Bill will apply to them.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 166 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 167 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Steve Double.)
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World Press Freedom Day
(2 years, 6 months ago)
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Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered World Press Freedom Day 2022.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. In the 21st century, speaking truth to power is an increasingly dangerous business. While we have in our minds the war in Ukraine and Russia’s atrocities in that country, I want to start the debate by remembering the eight journalists who, as they have gone about trying to show the world the truth of Russia’s atrocities in that country, have been murdered in their line of work. Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff, a French journalist working for BFMTV, was killed on 30 May 2022. Mantas Kvedaravičius, a documentary film maker, was killed on 2 April. Maks Levin, a photo reporter for Reuters, was found dead on 1 April. Oksana Baulina, a journalist for The Insider, was killed on 23 March. Brent Renaud, a documentary film maker, was killed on 13 March. Oleksandra Kuvshynova was killed on 14 March. Pierre Zakrzewski, a journalist for Fox News, was killed on 14 March. And Evgeny Sakun, a media assistant for the Kyiv Live TV channel, was killed on 1 March.
They are among the 29 journalists and two media assistants who have lost their lives in their line of work this year so far. There have been eight in Ukraine and eight in Mexico. There are also atrocities against journalists and suppression of journalists’ voices elsewhere in the world, particularly among the freedom movement in Hong Kong, and in Ethiopia, where commentary on the brutal civil war has been banned by the Government. These people are trying to inform the world and inform the communities that they serve of the truth of what is happening, and for it they are losing their lives.
When we had the debate last year on World Press Freedom Day and also strategic lawsuits against journalists, I mentioned the case of Catherine Belton, and it is nice to know that people do listen to these debates when we gather together in Westminster Hall. In that case, the person who listened to it was a public relations representative, working for Roman Abramovich, who wanted to call me in to speak about what a great humanitarian he was and why some of the issues raised in Catherine Belton’s book, “Putin’s People”, did not accurately reflect those issues as he saw them. They say a week is a long time in politics. A year is an eternity, and the work of journalists such as Catherine Belton highlighting the activities of Russian oligarchs such as Roman Abramovich has now come to much fuller attention and, as a consequence of the war in Ukraine, some of these issues are taken much more seriously now than they were a year ago.
We now take much more seriously the web of networks and influence of highly wealthy people, particularly oligarchs from countries such as Russia, and the way they have sought to suppress commentary and suppress the active work of journalists to hold them to account. It is right that, under the sanctions regime, the use by such people of London lawyers and London PR firms has been restricted, but we must recognise that that has also been a considerable issue in the suppression of free speech and a free press brought about by wealthy people using British courts to close down British journalists speaking truth to power. The Government want to bring in new legislation, particularly with regard to strategic lawsuits and the abuse of the courts to silence commentary in the press. It is important that we consider a wide range of issues, such as the need for a proper register of people who work for foreign Governments but work in the UK without declaring that interest, as we create a much better legal framework for journalists to operate in.
Since the outbreak of war in Ukraine, we have also been reminded of just how vital our own news-gathering services are. I was pleased to see the Government award an additional £4 million to the BBC World Service to support its commentary on the war in Ukraine and political relations in Belarus and in Russia in particular. Even though the Russian Government have sought to close down British reporting and the BBC in those countries, we have still been able to help people to access the news from the BBC through alternative routes. Some people are using, and have been shown how to use and download, VPNs—virtual private networks—so that they can still access BBC services from within Russia without the knowledge or sight of the Russian Government. The use and the ability of our infrastructure to report news, to share news and to get truth to people around the world is increasingly important, and it is right that we continue to support strongly the World Service and the work of British journalists around the world.
We are seeing an important change in the UK as well with the introduction of the Online Safety Bill, which is currently before Parliament, and in the Queen’s Speech, the commitment from the Government to bring in competition legislation in the digital environment is very important as well. First, with regard to digital competition, it is right that all journalists and news organisations have a fair opportunity to reach their audiences, and that all those organisations have the right to be fairly compensated for the use of their media.
One of the biggest acts of suppression of journalistic voices in the past 20 years has been the demonetisation of media as a consequence of the aggregation of social media platforms. It is much harder for newspapers to make money as they used to, by selling advertising to place against news stories to pay for the journalism that goes into reporting them, if they cannot be remunerated. The way in which social media platforms aggregate news by allowing people to share stories but not sharing any of the data or information about that news and information with the journalists and the news organisation that created it in the first place has taken a lot of money out of the market.
We have all seen our own local news organisations hollowed out. They are much smaller than they used to be and can employ far fewer journalists. That has affected national as well as local media, and we should take that issue very seriously. The introduction, through competition legislation, of a news bargaining code, similar to the one already created in Australia, will be hugely beneficial to media in this country. It will mean that the big tech platforms such as Google and Facebook will have to make a contribution to the news organisations whose content they profit from but do not currently share the benefits of that profit with.
The code has been introduced in Australia with considerable impact. It is enabling news organisations to hire journalists again and to beef up their reporting capability in a way that they could not have done before. Canada is looking at introducing such legislation, and it will be welcome if we do that in the UK, too.
The second point about the Online Safety Bill is the protection of freedom of speech and the journalism that can exist within it. The Government have been asked, through the report of the Joint Committee that I chaired, to create a provision that journalistic content from a recognised news organisation should be presumed to have a right to be carried on platforms. It should not be for major social media platforms to become the editor-in-chief of what the free press can write about. There is a great danger that if platforms decide to strike down news content because they disagree with it, that content will not reach the audiences for which it is intended.
In the modern world a media organisation cannot not use services such as Facebook and YouTube to reach their audiences. There should therefore be a presumption that the news content produced by a recognised news organisation has the right to reach its audience, whether it is in line with the platform policies of a company or not. News content should have such an exemption because there are already existing routes to complain or take action against legitimate content when it is there. Ultimately, a news editor is legally responsible for all the coverage that they endorse and place in their publication. There are complaints procedures that people may use if they are unhappy with a story that has been written.
Ultimately, the mark of journalism is that people put their name to what they write. People are accountable for what they say and the stories that they tell to the world, and they can be challenged. Much of what is called journalism that exists on social media often does not correspond to those aspects at all. It is often produced by nameless, faceless people and organisations that do not exist, who seek to hide their identity in order to spread lies and disinformation. We have struggled to hold such people to account for the stories that they tell. In fact, a report and study produced by the Centre for Countering Digital Hate during the pandemic traced back most of the anti-vax disinformation in the world to just 12 sources that used their platforms to propagate disinformation around the web.
So we have to think about how legitimate journalism, written by credible journalists, can have the opportunity to reach an audience when it is competing not just against the forces of demonetisation, taking away the revenue that it should generate from producing good stories, but also against a wall and sea of disinformation that is propagated online. One way in which we can protect that is by ensuring that the news organisations are recognised, that they have a right to be carried, and that when their stories are there and are carried they can be challenged or disagreed with, not just struck down.
In the report of the Joint Committee that I chaired on the Online Safety Bill, we recommended that there should be a presumption to carry. The Government have said that they are interested in introducing special provisions in the Online Safety Bill requiring an online media platform that sought to take down a piece of journalistic content that it disagreed with from a recognised news organisation to give notice to the news company before doing so, and a period of time for an appeal process would be allowed. However, I think we can and should go further and say that there should be a presumption to carry, so that proper journalism from accredited news organisations can reach the audiences that it deserves.
It is now more important than ever that people have the opportunity to be challenged by issues that they disagree with, and that the funnels of social media through which people consume news, which tend to give people more extreme versions of what they agree with, can be challenged with alternative opinions. One of the benefits we have seen from the very brave work that journalists are doing, particularly in a war zone such as Ukraine, is that it is becoming harder and harder for states to suppress real news and information within their countries. The Ethiopian Government cannot cover up the atrocities that are taking place on a daily basis in Ethiopia, because of the way in which citizen journalists and others bring such information into the public domain. Similarly, film from within Ukraine about what is really happening on the ground and in cities such as Mariupol—reported by journalists some of whom I named at the beginning of the debate—cannot be suppressed when people can bring it to the world. We should be opening up those channels and making sure that their voices have a right to be heard.
Sir Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con)
I had not intended to intervene in this debate, because I am afraid that I have to leave. My hon. Friend will understand that I cannot comment on the Online Safety Bill; I am chairing it in Committee, so I am not allowed to speak about it. Before he sits down, will he pay tribute not only to the people who we see on “ITV News”, “Sky News” and “BBC News” every night from Ukraine and who are incredibly brave, but to the cameramen and soundmen behind them, who are unseen and unheard but equally brave?
Damian Collins
My right hon. Friend makes an extremely important point. As I said at the start, 29 journalists have died, as have two media assistants—exactly the sort of people he refers to. They work together on the frontline, and without the work of those production assistants, the stories that people seek to tell simply would not be heard, because they would not reach their audiences. It is absolutely a team effort. My right hon. Friend is right to say that sometimes we focus on the journalist we see on the screen, but they are just one person in a team who are integral to bringing that truth and that story to the world, and we should remember them as well.
The flashpoint of a war brings home the importance of truth and news. It brings home the reality of the suppression of free media in a world in which we seem to have an increasing number of authoritarian Governments, more restrictions on media and reporting, and a greater challenge to democracy. There is a lot more to being a democracy than holding elections, and the ability of people to speak truth to power, to challenge Governments with information that they do not want to hear, and to tell their stories is increasingly important. We have to acknowledge the fact that democracy is in retreat in many parts of the world. The first sign of that retreat is the suppression of the free press, which is why our ability to discuss that today in this House is so important.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)
The debate may last until 11 o’clock. I am obliged to call the Front-Bench speakers no later than 10.27 am, and the guideline limits are 10 minutes for the Scottish National party, 10 minutes for Her Majesty’s Opposition, and 10 minutes for the Minister. Damian Collins will have two or three minutes at the end to sum up the debate. Until 10.27 am, we are in Back-Bench time. Five very distinguished Back Benchers are seeking to contribute. I do not wish to impose a time limit, but if everybody keeps themselves to about eight minutes, everybody will have an equal share of the debate. The individual who will lead by example is Kenny MacAskill.
Kenny MacAskill (East Lothian) (Alba)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone, and I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins). His speech was not just wide-ranging, but remarkably interesting and erudite. I congratulate him on bringing all those aspects to our attention, and I concur with him.
We are in difficult times, and it is important that we hold power to account so that the truth will out. To do so, we need to ensure that those who seek to expose it—often benevolently, and certainly under difficult circumstances—are protected. That is why I pay tribute to those whom the hon. Gentleman mentioned, but I would also put on record the Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was sadly murdered by Israeli Defence Forces not that long ago. I was glad to see on Al Jazeera at breakfast time this morning that the matter is being pursued by the news organisation at the International Criminal Court.
The comments I want to make relate to our own country because we are not immune—either in the UK or, indeed, in Scotland. We are in a better position with regard to what is happening in Israel with the Palestinians and those who seek to report on that, and we are in a better position, obviously, with regard to what is happening in Ukraine, but we are by no means a paragon of virtue and we must ensure that we uphold the standards here, which brings me to the case of Julian Assange. I know that others will be commenting on it. The case is important because Mr Assange has brought power to account. He has exposed war crimes, as well as a lot of other malevolent actions—not simply by the United States of America, but by other Governments, including our own, but also, as I will go on to describe, the Government of Sweden.
I read with interest the book, which I think all MPs were sent, by Nils Melzer, “The Trial of Julian Assange”. I did not know of Mr Melzer before that, but he is the UN special rapporteur on torture. He narrated his journey to his conclusions about Julian Assange, and spoke out vehemently against what had happened. I share his position.
When I first heard of Julian Assange, I was surprised. There was reporting of a sexual misdemeanour in Sweden, a country I know well. One of my best friends in Edinburgh was the Swedish consul general, who I still keep in touch with although he has returned to Sweden. My son studied for two years in Gothenburg—not at the Chalmers University, which is a legacy of Scottish immigrants, but at the University of Gothenburg. I was and remain a big fan of Swedish social democracy, and indeed of Olof Palme. Surely this could not have happened in Sweden. Surely Sweden would not be involved in anything that was duplicitous or wrong. The sad thing is that it was. Clearly, Sweden has now exonerated and the investigation of Mr Assange there has come to an end. I have to draw the conclusion that Mr Assange exposed the fact that the Swedish security services were narrating that they were doing things and co-operating with the USA in a manner that their Government did not know about and probably would not have approved of, which may have had something to do with it.
What occurred with regard to Mr Assange in Sweden was shameful, and the United Kingdom is being both supine and sadly complicit in his return to the United States. He has committed no offence in the US other than to expose its war crimes. The US has given an assurance that it will not execute Mr Assange, but we know from the attitude of the US that he is unlikely to see the light of day from a federal prison if he is sent there, and given his current state of health he is unlikely to survive. It is simply unacceptable that we should have had the ongoing UK Government collusion, through the Ecuadorian embassy, with the US, and indeed even the US contemplating a hit job—to put it in its parlance—upon Mr Assange in this country.
Equally, we have to challenge some of the media reporting in this country. I, too, was shocked when I saw Mr Assange looking like some wild man of Borneo, being brought out of the Ecuadorian embassy. That did challenge people’s assumptions about who this person could be—somebody so dishevelled and who could appear like that. How could anybody possibly have any faith or trust in him?
Only when I read the book did I realise that Mr Assange had been detained, that the Ecuadorian Government had changed, that their attitude had changed, and that they had refused to allow in any cleaning equipment, as well as refusing him access to scissors or shaving items. Mr Assange looked like that, not because he chose to appear in such a way, but because he was deliberately set up so that when he was forced out of the Ecuadorian embassy his looks would leave people aghast and turn them against him. That was deliberate manipulation of the media, which is just as bad as a failure to report the truth.
I am conscious of time. I would have liked to say that my own country was exempt. I served for 20 years as a defence agent in Scotland and was proud of Scotland’s distinctive criminal justice system, and indeed its legal system. I also served for almost eight years as Justice Secretary, but something has gone fundamentally wrong, not with regard to Julian Assange, but with the situation of Craig Murray.
Craig Murray has spent almost six months in a Scottish prison for a reporting offence, while others who did similarly were not punished or even brought before the court. I shall leave that matter aside, as Craig Murray will seek to raise it with courts in Europe as appeal in Scotland is precluded, but the logic of Lady Dorrian, the presiding judge, in the actions taken by the prosecutors in Scotland was fundamentally wrong. They took the view that the mainstream media were all perfect—given what I have mentioned about Mr Assange, I have to wonder about that—but that bloggers were in a different category and should be treated differently. As the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe said, we are in a changing world. There are obviously issues with Twitter and social media platforms, with anonymous sources. The points made about those who post anti-vax content are quite correct; such material cannot be given any basis, support or substance. However, Mr Assange was quite clear in his facts. They were checked; everything was there. Mr Murray was doing something not dissimilar to what others had done, and yet he was singled out and picked on.
Her ladyship seemed to be suggesting that no cut or guarantee could be given, and that somehow the mainstream press were to be protected. Given that most incidents of people seeking recompense through claims for damages have involved the mainstream press, not bloggers such as Mr Murray and Mr Assange, that raises questions.
There has to be acceptance that society moves on. Just over 100 years ago, papers were closed down by the British Government because they were viewed as subversive during world war one. They became mainstream, because the Independent Labour party was elected to power. The paper that was the voice of the Independent Labour party was subscribed to by my parents. The logic of Lady Dorrian would be that that paper could not be a legitimate enterprise because it was not part of the mainstream press. It was legitimate almost immediately after the two weeks that it had been closed down. It had been legitimate because it had been bought by many before then.
Things move on and we live in a world where people do not buy newspapers. I say that with some sadness, as I am a fan of paid papers, and write for them. People go to online sites, and those who write for online sites and are legitimate—not the chancers putting up disinformation —require protection. It is right to challenge this situation. We must ensure we protect the media and truth throughout the world, but we must look to ourselves. The case of Mr Assange is a shame upon the United Kingdom, and the case of Craig Murray is a shame upon the current Government and judiciary in Scotland.
Mr John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) on securing the debate, on the second attempt, after Prorogation got in the way last time. As he said, we had this debate last year, when a great number of concerns were expressed. Since then, the freedom and safety of journalists have deteriorated markedly. The World Press Freedom Day global conference this year set the theme of journalism under digital siege. Sadly, since then, it is no longer under digital siege. Journalists are being killed simply trying to do their job, while displaying enormous courage in doing so.
The good news is that last year I lamented the fact that the United Kingdom was 33rd on the list of countries for press freedom, when I said we should be doing much better. I am pleased that this year we have been ranked at number 24. To some extent, that is not because of dramatic improvement in this country, although there has been improvement. It is more due to the disastrous deterioration in a large number of countries across the world.
I want to highlight some of the things we have done in this country. I was responsible for drawing up the national action plan for the safety of journalists, which has now been emulated in a number of countries. We talked to journalists, the National Union of Journalists, the Society of Editors, the News Media Association, the police, the prosecuting authorities and campaigning organisations, such as Reporters Without Borders and Index on Censorship, to draw up a strategy to improve the safety of journalists in the UK. We also issued a call for evidence, which had 360 responses and showed that a high proportion had encountered threats, violence or intimidation. One in three female journalists in the UK do not feel safe doing their job.
There is clearly still work to do, but measures are being taken. I entirely agree with my hon. Friend’s comments about the Online Safety Bill. It is an important measure, but we need to make sure that legitimate journalistic content is protected in the Bill. I welcome the measures already taken, but I think more could be done. I also strongly welcome the measure the Government are considering to counter SLAPPs—strategic lawsuits against public participation—which are used by rich oligarchs to try to suppress investigative journalism. I also welcome the measures to establish the digital markets unit, which, as my hon. Friend rightly says, will seek to try and right the balance between the big tech platforms and the news organisations on which they feed but to which they give little remuneration.
The UK’s record is generally good. I am also proud that this country was one of the founders of the Media Freedom Coalition across the world, with 50 countries now signed up to the global pledge. I lead the UK delegation to the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe Parliamentary Assembly. We will meet for the annual conference in Birmingham next month and I am delighted that the motion I have tabled on the safety of journalists will be debated there.
My hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe was right in saying that there are a large number of countries where journalism is quite a dangerous profession. In many cases, journalists have suffered intimidation, violence, imprisonment or sometimes even death. I want to concentrate on two countries in particular. The first is Ukraine, where journalists are displaying incredible bravery. My hon. Friend was quite right to name the eight who have sadly been killed during the course of the conflict. However, it is not just since the Russian invasion that journalists have been under threat.
I want to highlight one organisation, called Ukrayinska Pravda, or Ukrainian Truth, which was set up by two journalists in 2000. Since then, it has expanded and recently published a leaked list of more than 100,000 names of Russian military personnel inside Ukraine, as well as inventories of oligarchs’ yachts. It has fought corruption in that country. I want to put on record that the news organisation was founded by two people, Olena Prytula and Georgiy Gongadze, to expose corruption. In September 2000, Gongadze disappeared. Two months later, his beheaded body was discovered in farmland near Kiyv. Prytula was urged to flee. She did not; she carried on and established a relationship with another journalist, Pavel Sheremet. In July 2016, he too was murdered—assassinated when her car exploded while he was driving. Journalists have been working in Ukraine against corruption and against the Russian influence for a number of years. In doing so, they have too often paid the price with their lives.
The other country where media freedom has now almost been extinguished in its entirety is Russia itself. We know through Justice for Journalists that there were something like 24 attacks on journalists in the last few years, as well as 78 non-physical attacks, and Russia has now passed new laws that make it almost impossible for legitimate journalism to take place. It is now a crime even to describe what is happening in Ukraine as a war, and journalists are being imprisoned. As a result, independent journalism has been snuffed out. The Russian people are denied the ability to access the truth, because at the same time, Russia has closed down access to international social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, with the result that Russian people are dependent entirely on state-run and state-controlled media.
Most recently, Russia has retaliated against the work of independent journalists seeking to expose the truth of what is going on. I am one of the Members of this House—I have no doubt that others in this debate are also included—who are on the list of parliamentarians who have been sanctioned by Russia and are no longer allowed to visit the country. That list has now been extended to include 29 British journalists, and I have no doubt that Richard Sharp, Tim Davie, Clive Myrie, Nick Robinson and Orla Guerin will be almost flattered to find that they are on that list, in the same way that we almost regard it as a badge of honour to have been identified by Russia as people who speak out against the appalling abuses that are taking place in that country and which they are inflicting on Ukraine. It is not just the BBC but Cathy Newman of Channel 4, Sophy Ridge of Sky, John Witherow, Chris Evans and Kath Viner: some of the most distinguished journalists in Britain are all now banned, like ourselves, from visiting Russia.
I fear that media freedom is suffering very seriously across the world, but no more so than in Russia and Ukraine. The purpose of the debate is to cast a spotlight on that, and I hope that we will continue to do so each year as long as those abuses take place.
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) on securing a debate to mark World Press Freedom Day 2022, albeit a little delayed by Prorogation last month.
A lot has happened in the world over the past year, such as the withdrawal from Afghanistan and Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. For those stories and many more, if we are interested we have a wealth of detail at our fingertips on mobile phones, laptops, physical newspapers and magazines on almost any issue. Whether light-hearted, serious, international or closer to home, there will be a series of articles available to bring readers the story.
It can be easy to forget the work that goes into each article—the research, investigation and writing itself. More than that, journalists may put themselves in great danger to report a story—often, the stories of the greatest importance that most need bringing into the light of day for public consumption. I want to speak about a woman who paid the ultimate price in the name of journalism. It is still a largely male-dominated field and the achievements of women in the industry are no small success. This story feels quite important in the light of the current situation in Ukraine. I have said before that the crimes of Putin or the Russian state must not be unfairly attributed to every Russian citizen: this story highlights the power of Russian journalists perfectly, should they choose to use it.
In addition to her career as a journalist, Anna Politkovskaya was a dedicated human rights activist. She made her name covering Russian political events, most notably during the second Chechen war. Her reporting of what was happening in Chechnya was award-winning, highlighting many human rights abuses by Russian military forces and the pro-Putin regime. She painted a picture of the brutal conflict and the atrocious acts both throughout the war and after it—torture, abductions and murders. She was highly critical of Putin and the federal security service in Russia, foreseeing how unchecked power would worsen freedoms and human rights in the state. She urged western Governments to consider how they welcomed Putin’s involvement in the war on terror in the aftermath of 9/11. She exposed high levels of corruption in his Administration.
Anna’s work was groundbreaking, but her career was not without difficulties. She was blacklisted from Kremlin news conferences, the target of a campaign of death threats and was victim of a poisoning on a trip to negotiate a hostage situation, in an attempt to prevent her reporting. In 2001, while investigating a story in Chechnya, Anna was detained, beaten and humiliated by Russian troops, before being subjected to a mock execution. I cannot imagine the terror she must have felt but, a resilient woman, Anna did not let it show.
Anna was assassinated on 7 October 2006. She was found dead in the lift in her block of flats, having been shot several times at close range. Most likely it was a contract killing, but no one has ever been held to account for it. Anna’s desk at Novaya Gazeta, the outlet she worked for, was never re-allocated. Instead, it became a shrine and a memorial to an incredible woman. Her legacy has inspired the next generation of female journalists and truth seekers in Russia. Anna’s bravery and that of women like her—Lyra McKee, Marie Colvin and so many others who paid a similar price—is commendable.
In the UK, we might feel we have excellent practices when it comes to press freedom, and we do have it better than many others, but the UK ranked only 33rd in the 2021 world press freedom index, putting us firmly in the yellow category of satisfactory, but definitely with room for a lot of improvement.
As other Members have raised, last week the Home Secretary ordered the extradition of Julian Assange to the US—a decision that has been widely criticised. There are real questions about what that means for press freedom. I understand that Mr Assange has some time to appeal, but while he exercises that right, he remains detained in the high-security Belmarsh prison, despite not being a violent or high-risk offender.
Strategic lawsuits against public participation are a mechanism used against journalists, media outlets, whistle blowers and academics, as a bully tactic to prevent publication or remove publicly available information. They are open to abuse in order to censor matters of public interest. Several states in the US have already removed SLAPPs, with campaigns for federal legislation under way. The EU is considering its options. I would like to see the UK set a gold standard for journalistic integrity and press freedom, and learn from nations such as Norway and Finland, which sit right at the top of the index. I hope the Minister will be able to speak to how that might be done.
While there might be some room for growth here at home, that does not stop us from using our voices to advocate for greater press freedoms in the countries that need it most. There are currently at least 127 journalists detained in China—it is the largest detainer of journalists in the world. According to statistics from Reporters Without Borders, seven reporters and one media assistant have been killed in Ukraine this year. Let us not forget the contributions of those journalists: Maks Levin; Oksana Baulina; Brent Renaud; Oleksandra “Sasha” Kuvshynova; Pierre Zakrzewski; Evgeny Sakun; and Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff. They lost their lives ensuring the world would see what was happening on the ground.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) for setting the scene so well, as well as all the other Members who have contributed so far and those who will follow. I look forward to hearing the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton) and also the Minister’s response. I declare an interest as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group for international freedom of religion or belief. How important World Press Freedom Day is; it is a day on behalf of those who have had their human rights abused and been subject to persecution. The APPG that I am privileged to chair stands up for those with Christian beliefs, those with other beliefs and those with no beliefs. We believe very passionately that everyone across the world has a right to worship their god as they wish. It is the press across the world that highlight those things and enable us in this House to be aware of what takes place.
We speak for those in China, in Hong Kong—we have spoken about Hong Kong before—and in Myanmar, where we know that unbelievable atrocities are taking place because the press have highlighted them. In Iraq and Iran, the press have shown the marked persecution that takes place with the Yazidis and Baha’is. We had an event on Kashmir in this House last week—the hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) attended—which I visited in 2018, and I know that it is the world press that highlight the issues there and make us aware of them. I hope that, if God spares me, I will get a chance to go back to Pakistan in September to understand where things are four years on. I think of where, across the world, Hindus and Muslims have their rights violated, as well as the Sunnis, the Sikhs—and the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia. There are so many examples. We know of those things because of the world press.
I want to put on record my thanks to the press for doing the job that they do. I associate myself with the comments of the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe, as well as others who have mentioned individuals who have stood up for press freedom across the world and have given their lives as a result. The roll of honour in Ukraine illustrates the impact that the commitment to world press freedom can have on the lives of those who stand up for it. These are really important matters.
I totally understand the concerns that members of the public have with the press—that, rather than sticking to reporting the news, members of the press sometimes seek to create a news agenda. I have seen that in operation more than I would like, and never more so than on the issue of Brexit. I am a Brexiteer—that is no secret. I know you are, too, Mr Hollobone; others present may or may not be. Nevertheless, any knee-jerk reaction to restrict press freedom can only be detrimental to the cause of democracy. I will defend and uphold that to the best of my ability and with all my energy and commitment.
I may not like the way the BBC reports the news. That is probably the truth. A recent example of that was when the BBC decided not to cover the 12 July parades in Northern Ireland live, as it has done in previous years. I think of the people who are elderly, vulnerable and housebound, who are unable to attend but very much look forward to the live coverage on 12 July. I wrote to the BBC Northern Ireland interim director, Adam Smyth, on the matter, but, I have to say, his answer was totally erroneous and wrong. He has not grasped or fully understood the issues. The BBC does sometimes fall down when it comes to fully illustrating the issues.
However, we are very pleased that the answer has come in the form of GB News, which has offered to cover the parades. It just so happens that Arlene Foster, former First Minister of Northern Ireland, features prominently on that channel. With the rise of more online options for news, perhaps the days of the press shaping the news, rather than reporting it, will come to an end. I am pleased that there is at least an answer on that matter.
The rise of the so-called online journalists, many of whom—I say this with great respect—seem to be either bullies or trolls, seems to call for some regulation. However, that must be all it is: regulation, not restriction. There is a fine line there. I am sure the Minister will give us some idea of the Department’s thoughts on that. We must ensure that those who identify as journalists and seek to live under the freedom of press banner also abide by the code of conduct that the press should be under. It is a delicate balance to find, but one that we must certainly take the time to find and get right.
We are living in a world that attempts to say, “If I hate your speech, it is hate speech,” but that is not always the way that I see it. I have a very clear point of view that is, in many cases, a religious and moral point of view. I strongly uphold and adhere to my point of view, and it is my right to have it. It is also somebody’s right to have a different opinion, but it is not their right to say that I am guilty of hate speech, just as I am not saying they are guilty of hate speech. It is about freedom. I absolutely refute the principle of “If I hate your speech, it is hate speech”; we must be careful with personal censorship. I must and will defend the right of the press to report as they choose, in so much as it is factual—even if, sometimes, it might be biased. It is about getting it right.
“Be careful with your words”—I have tried to follow that idea my whole life. Like all Members present, I try to pick my words carefully. Words can destroy, change the mood of a debate and turn into actions on the streets that we do not want. We must always be incredibly careful about what we say. Freedom for one is freedom for all. That is my opinion, and the opinion of all present. I know, certainly, that it is as clear in the mind of the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Leeds North East, as it is in mine. It is worth fighting to achieve that.
As chair of the APPG on international freedom of religion or belief, I am convinced that we need the world press and the freedom it has to give examples of how the world is and to report on countries and dictatorships and what those in power are doing against people of a different religion when they should not. For that reason, I am happy to support what the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe put forward. I want to put forward that point of view and have it on the record.
Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)
It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) on securing this crucial debate. It is always a pleasure to follow a speech by such an assiduous Member of Parliament as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon).
I will confine my comments to the particular case raised in detail by the hon. Member for East Lothian (Kenny MacAskill), and referred to by the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier). It is the case of a journalist who, as we hold this debate, is in Belmarsh maximum security prison, in our country, and who has been languishing there for a number of years: Julian Assange. On World Press Freedom Day, it would be strange not to reflect on a journalist who is in prison in our country—a political prisoner—when the Home Secretary has signed a warrant for his extradition to the United States of America where, because of his journalism, he could be incarcerated with sentence of up to 175 years.
Julian Assange exposed war crimes and human rights abuses in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay that were carried out in our name. It is precisely because, as a journalist, he exposed those crimes, carried out in our name, that he is being extradited to the United States. That has a chilling effect, not only on Julian Assange, whose human rights have been abused—he has languished in Belmarsh prison, alongside convicted terrorists and dangerous people who have been convicted of very serious crimes—and his family, but on other journalists, because by choosing this course of action, powerful politicians in the United States and our own Home Secretary have sent a warning to journalists in our country and around the world. They have made an example of Julian Assange, so journalists who may come into possession of information, such as that revealed by Julian Assange about Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, may think, “If I reveal this as a journalist, what will happen to me? Will my fate be the same as the horrific fate of Julian Assange?” It is an act of intimidation by the US Government and our own Government, not only against Julian Assange but against other journalists, including budding journalists in our society and people growing up with the ambition to be journalists.
Julian Assange worked with The New York Times, Der Spiegel, Le Monde and El País. He was invited to our country by The Guardian newspaper. What he revealed was in the best traditions of journalism and whistleblowing, because it is really important that we know what is done in our name. That is part of the democratic function of journalism. Reporters Without Borders, the International Federation of Journalists, the National Union of Journalists and Amnesty International have spoken out against the action taken against Julian Assange as a journalist. John Simpson, famous for his fantastic work over so many decades with the BBC, said:
“Journalists in Britain and elsewhere will be very worried by the decision to extradite Julian Assange to the US—both for his own well-being & for the precedent it creates for journalism worldwide.”
I am known for being on the left of this Parliament, but this is not an issue that is confined to concerns among those on the left. For example, the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) has spoken in detail about the case and said recently:
“Sadly I do not believe Mr Assange will get a fair trial. This extradition treaty needs to be rewritten to give British and American citizens identical rights, unlike now.”
Others from the world of journalism who do not share my politics—people such as Andrew Neil and Peter Hitchens—have spoken out against the decision, which should concern us all.
It is important to reflect upon the fact that Amnesty International has not raised concerns about this issue lightly. The secretary-general of Amnesty International has labelled the case “Politically motivated and unjustified” and said that it
“undermines press freedom, the rule of law, and the prohibition of torture.”
Reporters Without Borders and the International Federation of Journalists, to which I referred earlier, along with press freedom groups Article 19, Index On Censorship and the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, as well as our very own National Union of Journalists, issued a joint declaration, stating that Julian Assange
“is being prosecuted for exposing US rendition, unlawful killing and the subversion of the judiciary. And the UK government is allowing extradition proceedings to continue.”
The declaration makes the point that
“The prosecution of Julian Assange was a political decision taken by the Trump administration”,
and that it
“creates a dangerous legal precedent, allowing any journalist in Britain to be prosecuted and extradited.”
Even the executive editor of The Washington Post has felt compelled to comment on the case, saying that it is
“criminalising common practices in journalism that have long served the public interest.”
That should concern us all.
When we look at the extradition treaty that has been used to sign off the extradition of Julian Assange to the United States, we should be concerned about the fact that when it was brought to Parliament in the first place, assurances were given that the intention was to exclude extradition for political matters or for so-called political crimes. It was made clear in this place that that was the intention, so it seems to me and to others, including the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden, that the spirit of that extradition treaty and the intention behind it have not been honoured by the Home Secretary’s decision to extradite Julian Assange.
At the end of the day, people have different views on Julian Assange as an individual—I view him as a hero who has exposed war crimes committed in our name; others take a different view—but people’s view of Julian Assange should not matter in relation to this issue. What matters is the implication for his human rights and the message that it sends to journalists around the world. If we believe in press freedom—as we do—and if we believe that journalism is not a crime and that exposing war crimes is not a crime, and if we want journalists to be able to practise their honourable trade without fear or favour, we should speak out against the extradition and speak out in favour of Julian Assange.
Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)
We now come to the speeches from the Front Benchers. I call Steven Bonnar for the Scottish National party.
Steven Bonnar (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Hollobone. I thank the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) for once again securing this important debate on World Press Freedom Day. Every year it seems to get that bit more important.
Mantas Kvedaravičius, Oksana Baulina, Oleksandra Kuvshynova, Pierre Zakrzewski, Brent Renaud, Maks Levin and Yevhenii Sakun—war has always claimed the lives of those brave enough to report on it, and sadly Ukraine is no exception. The list of names of murdered journalists that I have just read out will unfortunately grow longer, as Vladimir Putin’s futile but deadly war continues.
In last year’s debate, we heard about journalist Roman Protasevich. He had been hauled off a plane by Belarusian forces. Sofia Sapega, his girlfriend, was arrested last month and faces trial behind closed doors for the crimes of “inciting social hatred” and “violence or threats”. She is 24 years of age and faces six years in a Belarusian prison—another victim of Lukashenko and his cowardly regime.
Outside Europe, the killing of journalists continues with the same wretched fervour. Juan Carlos Muñiz is the seventh journalist to be murdered in Mexico this year. Mexico is perhaps the most dangerous country for journalists to operate in that is not an actual warzone. The persecution of journalists is endemic there. In the 10 years since investigative reporter Regina Martínez was suffocated in her own home, 100 reporters have been killed in Mexico.
The reason why journalists are murdered, whether by oppressive regimes or criminal gangs, is always the same: fear—fear of the truths that they want to tell. There may be no more noble cause than pursuing the truth and rooting out corruption around the world, especially in cases of extreme and grave danger. In countries where journalists are persecuted, it is so important that the judiciary defends them. If the perpetrators of these crimes are given impunity, it can only embolden them.
UNESCO’s “World Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media Development” report states that
“85 percent of the world’s population experienced a decline in press freedom in their country”.
Britain, which sits at No. 33 in the world press freedom index, must do better both domestically and abroad. I would never wish to belittle horrific events abroad, but I caution the Minister and ask her to pass this on to the Prime Minister: every time politicians, leaders and Governments are equivocal with their use of the truth, it weakens our institutions.
Mr Whittingdale
The hon. Member is right to say that No. 33 was a poor placing for the UK but, as I indicated, we are now up to No. 24. There has been an improvement.
Steven Bonnar
I am happy to take that point on board. I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will agree that there is still vast room for improvement.
I commend journalists for their tireless work domestically in exposing criminality right at the heart of Government—in Downing Street. Regardless of how much politicians try to wiggle from the truth, journalists should keep pushing for it, even when those whose job it is to investigate criminality seem reluctant to do so.
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (John Nicolson), who is unfortunately unable to attend the debate. I wish to impart some of his sentiments, based on his vast journalistic experience. He has done a bit of foreign affairs correspondence and anchored some dramatic moments—none more memorable than the horrors of 9/11. He was on air when the twin towers were attacked and had to find the words to describe the unspeakable brutality and cruelty of the unfolding events. He said:
“I kept my cool, I think, during the hours of live broadcast, but I wept when I got home. Some of the images that we could not show that day, such as the people jumping from the towers, will be forever seared into my mind. However, my work has mostly been confined to political correspondence—a safe place for journalists, even at Westminster.”—[Official Report, 27 May 2021; Vol. 696, c. 203WH.]
There have been so many killings of journalists that it seems almost invidious to single out individuals, but we all remember Marie Colvin, the celebrated Sunday Times correspondent who was killed when Assad’s troops, who were almost certainly targeting her, shelled the building in Homs where she was sheltering as she covered the Syrian regime’s atrocities.
Perhaps not so well remembered is Scotsman Malcolm Rennie, from Barrhead near Glasgow. In 1975, he was tortured and shot by the Indonesian military in East Timor, alongside four Australian-based journalists. Campaigners claim that the UK Government were reluctant to look into the unlawful killings because of important arms sales to Indonesia. In the nearly four decades since, successive British Governments have tried to keep clear of the case, arguing that the murder of Malcolm Rennie and his colleagues is a matter for Australia to investigate. In those four decades, successive UK Governments—under both Tory and Labour leadership—have continued to supply the Indonesians with arms, such as Hawk jets, Alvis Scorpion tanks and other lethal warfare. Like Mr Rennie, each and every one of the journalists was brave and fearless. Armed with only a pen, microphone or camera, they were killed carrying out their duty: reporting the truth.
As we have heard, the threats to journalists take many forms. The spread of disinformation through social media and attacks on professional journalism are perhaps the most insidious new ways. The lies disseminated by the likes of Putin and Assad in order to spread disinformation about the murder of journalists and political opponents, to disguise their responsibility for chemical gas attacks and to blacken the name of—among others—the White Helmets are amplified online by the malevolent and the naive. Here today, as we honour the journalistic craft, I hope that whatever our politics, we parliamentarians resolve to affirm the right of journalists—whether at home or abroad—to scrutinise and examine, and to probe and uncover, without fear or favour.
Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Hollobone. I want to start by thanking the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) for securing such an important debate and for not giving up when the previous date was cancelled because of Prorogation. Freedom of the press is a right that we celebrate in our country, but sadly it is still severely limited across the world. In the hon. Member’s opening comments, he very appropriately remembered not only the journalists who have been killed for telling the truth about Russia in Ukraine, but others among the 29 journalists and two assistants who have been killed thus far this year. It is a tragedy.
The hon. Member mentioned the wealthy people using our British courts to try to silence journalists with whom they disagree—a shocking but true fact. He also mentioned the hollowing out of local and national media in the United Kingdom through the loss of advertising revenue, partly because of the rise of social media. He rightly said that the protection of journalistic content should be part of the Online Safety Bill, and I certainly support that. Finally, he mentioned something even more important: journalists who publish in their own names are truly accountable for what they write and are often exposed to the risks involved. The truth in news is vital to freedom and democracy.
We then heard from the hon. Member for East Lothian (Kenny MacAskill) , who mentioned Shireen Abu Akleh, who I too will talk about shortly, and Julian Assange. He concentrated on Sweden’s treatment of Assange and his condemnation of Assange’s extradition to the United States, which was mentioned by other hon. Members as well. The hon. Member, who is the former Justice Secretary of Scotland, also mentioned Craig Murray, whom I have met, his treatment in Scotland and the media’s attitude.
We then heard from the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier), who talked about the achievements of so many women journalists in what is still a male-dominated profession. She made an important point. She mentioned the tragic story of Anna Politkovskaya, who was murdered on 7 October 2006 in Moscow at the age of just 48—a brave woman journalist, who was murdered for what she published and the truth that she found and exposed. The hon. Member suggested that the UK should outlaw SLAPPs and also mentioned that 127 journalists are currently detained in China.
After that, we heard from my dear friend, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who as we know is the chair of the all-party parliamentary group for international freedom of religion or belief. He mentioned China, Hong Kong, Myanmar and the persecution of religious minorities and the journalists who expose those abuses. He said that we know about the persecution of religious minorities only because there is freedom of the press. When that is clamped down on, we no longer hear about the appalling abuses of religious minorities. He rightly said that any restriction of press freedom is an attack on democracy.
Then we heard from my neighbour and hon. Friend the Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon), who concentrated on the case of Julian Assange, currently in Belmarsh prison as a political prisoner. He mentioned the support for Assange from across the political spectrum and the condemnation of his extradition to the United States, speaking of its chilling effect on other journalists in the UK and around the world. He said that the Assange case was “an act of intimidation” against all journalists, and the fact that so many politicians and journalists, of all political views, condemned it said a lot about why what is happening to Assange is totally wrong.
Just last month, the killing of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and the disgraceful scenes at her funeral served as a stark reminder of the threats journalists face every single day and that many pay the ultimate price simply for doing their jobs. Shireen’s death was also an attack on the freedom of the press and the independence of journalists working around the world. As we have heard from right hon. and hon. Members today, it was sadly not an isolated incident. It is vital that the UK acts urgently to protect journalists who are increasingly under threat and puts diplomatic pressure on those who choose to violate their fundamental rights.
Today I shall focus my remarks on one of our country’s most influential institutions abroad: the BBC World Service, which reaches 465 million people every single week. It is a vital part of this country’s soft power and international influence. However, we have seen journalists at the BBC World Service in Russia and Ukraine under constant threat, with their journalistic freedoms severely limited. In the face of those threats, the United Kingdom must support the BBC in using its considerable influence to extend British values around the world. It is firmly in our interests to act.
The BBC has provided reliable information to the Russian people as Putin continues to wage his illegal and unprovoked war, which he claims to do in their name. We certainly welcome the £4.1 million in emergency funding provided to the BBC World Service so that it can continue its vital work in Ukraine and Russia, but that money took far too long to arrive. The UK must act far more urgently if we are to protect journalists abroad, particularly when we have such an important tool in Britain’s armoury against Putin’s misinformation.
The Russian public deserve to hear the truth about Putin’s illegal war. Whether they work for the BBC or not, the courageous journalists who report from some of the most dangerous areas of the world should not be threatened as a result of providing that service. The limiting of the BBC in Russia is part of a series of measures as part of which President Putin has weaponised his own laws to target independent journalists. The worrying amendments to the law on foreign agents, which expanded the grounds for designating individuals as “foreign agents”, was rightly condemned by the Venice Commission as constituting
“serious violations of basic human rights, including the freedoms of association and expression”.
It is not just Russia that has introduced restrictive legislation. We should apply diplomatic pressure to every country that seeks to undermine the work of journalists. Across Council of Europe member states, many journalists are detained as criminals, with the vast majority in Turkey. I urge the Minister to raise that at the earliest possible opportunity with her Turkish counterpart.
In Afghanistan, a ban on foreign media has formed part of the crackdown to prevent reporting from several media outlets. The Taliban’s attempt to censor the media has led to a huge reduction in the number of media organisations in the country. Will the Minister tell us whether the UK has any plans to help those organisations to continue to report from that country?
It is extremely disturbing that 98% of jailed journalists are local people imprisoned by their own Governments and that 70% of jailed journalists imprisoned globally were arrested on so-called anti-state charges, including, appallingly, terrorism. We all have to do more to bring such appalling repression to an end. Across the House, we must also put an end to the increase in dangerous rhetoric, with journalists who do not agree with one’s political opinion being labelled as enemies. That simply contributes to the problem, as we have seen not only in Turkey but across the world in countries as diverse as the United States and Iran.
The UK must play its part in protecting journalists who deliver high-quality, independent and accurate information to the public at home and abroad. It is completely unacceptable that journalists face so many threats, as we have heard from both sides of this room today. The freedom of the press is an essential part of any democracy, and we all have a responsibility to help to extend the freedoms we enjoy in this country to the rest of the world.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Vicky Ford)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. Like other hon. Members, I will start by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) for securing this really important debate. I am grateful to him and all the other members of the all-party parliamentary group on media freedom for their dedicated commitment to this cause.
Thriving independent journalism is one of the cornerstones of democracy but, as such, journalists are a common target for those who want to disrupt, disturb and devalue it. Reporters across the world are being intimidated, arrested or even killed, but now more than ever we need journalists to speak truth to power, to counter misinformation and to highlight wrongdoing. The UK is, as ever, a vocal champion of media freedom and of the journalists who do this important work. As my right hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale) reminded us, we must also always remember the camera operators and others behind the scenes who support the journalists in this vital work.
Like many of us here today, I want first to discuss the appalling and tragic situation in Ukraine. There is an old adage that the first casualty of war is truth, and Mr Putin’s war is built entirely on untruths. The Kremlin has used disinformation and propaganda to create a false pretext for its invasion, to obscure the truth of what is going on on the ground and to cover up potential war crimes. Despite the clear dangers that they face day after day and night after night, brave journalists are putting their lives on the line to expose the truth of Russia’s abhorrent actions. Elected officials, civil society activists, journalists and religious leaders in Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine have disappeared. Russian forces have attacked and abducted journalists. We have seen credible reports of torture.
My hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) and the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) reminded us of the names of some of the individuals who have laid down their lives in Ukraine. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders, 12 journalists have lost their lives since the war began.
Russia’s abuses also continue at home. The Kremlin’s brutal crackdown on independent media and dissenting voices continues, with journalists who refuse to stick to the script facing up to 15 years in prison. It is vital that the facts, and alternative perspectives to Kremlin propaganda, remain available. We will continue to support Russian independent media, including by providing them with the tools they need to continue their work. On 10 March, with our partners in the Media Freedom Coalition, we issued a statement condemning the brutal crackdown and calling on Russia to respect journalists’ rights. We are giving the BBC World Service more than £4 million in emergency funding for its Ukrainian and Russian language services. We have extended our existing £9 million project to support media freedom in Ukraine with an extra £1 million of urgent support. We have provided journalists on the ground with protective gear and medical equipment, to help them to work as safely as possible. We are also using our programme funding to support media freedom in Belarus, where dozens of journalists, bloggers and media workers are under arrest or in jail, and websites of reputable media outlets have been declared extremist by the Belarusian regime.
Unfortunately, as many Members present have noted, these attacks on media freedom are also happening in many other countries. Like the many colleagues who have mentioned it today, we were all appalled to see the recent death of the Palestinian-American al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh while reporting on the west bank and to see those really awful scenes at her funeral. Her death is a tragedy, and the UK has joined calls for an impartial and transparent investigation.
At this sad time, I would also like to reflect on the disappearance of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira in the Amazon region of Brazil. I offer my thanks to all those who have been involved in the search-and-rescue operation to find them. I would like to send my condolences to Dom’s family, whom we continue to support. I pay tribute to both men and to their commitment to improving our understanding of the Amazon, its people and the challenges currently faced there. Both men have left a strong legacy of defending and supporting the rights of indigenous people in Brazil.
Across the world, from 2016 to the end of 2021, 455 journalists were killed either in the course of their work or because of it; almost nine out of 10 of these killings are unresolved. The voices of many thousands more have been stifled by threats, harassment, online censorship and vague security laws that outlaw criticism of authoritarian regimes. Every day our network of embassies and high commissioners works to protect media freedoms through engagement and lobbying, as well as by offering direct support for threatened journalists. Much of that work, quite rightly, happens away from the spotlight, but we do also take a strong public role in promoting media freedoms around the world.
The hon. Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton) asked me about some specific countries. In Turkey, we have concerns about media freedom, and we have long encouraged the country to protect freedom of expression—it is essential to the long-term health of democracy. Our diplomats engage in regular dialogue with civil society, and regularly attend high-profile trials, including those of journalists and human rights defenders. We do that alongside some EU member states and other like-minded missions as a sign of how firmly we support the individuals affected.
In Afghanistan—such a challenging country—we are concerned about the increasing restrictions on freedom of expression. Censorship and self-censorship have worsened. There have been detentions and threats against journalists, human rights defenders and civil society activists. We are working with international partners to hold those responsible to account, including, in March, through the renewal of the mandate for the UN mission in Afghanistan to strengthen human rights monitoring and reporting functions. Afghanistan’s membership of the Media Freedom Coalition is also under consideration.
Back in 2019, we co-founded the Media Freedom Coalition with Canada to speak out against attacks and to hold to account those who harm journalists. The coalition has highlighted problems in so many countries, from Myanmar to Belarus. Alongside UNESCO, it set up the global media defence fund, to which the UK has contributed £3 million over the past three years. During that time the fund has supported more than 3,000 journalists, 490 lawyers and over 120 civil society organisations.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe clearly pointed out, today’s media face other threats that we must urgently address. Global newspaper advertising revenue has fallen by half in the last five years, and many outlets are closing, leaving news deserts, where there are no local sources of trustworthy news. Through our support to the BBC World Service and others, the UK has given more than £500 million in the past five years to support independent journalism and the free flow of information across the world. We will be supporting the BBC World Service with more than £90 million per year over the next three years so that it can continue that work. During our presidency of the G7 we secured strong commitments to improve the assistance G7 members give to independent media globally.
To have any influence abroad, we also need to set an example at home. We have made good progress in our national action plan for the safety of journalists since it was launched over a year ago. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) mentioned, the UK has risen nine places in the global press freedom index since last year, to number 24 out of the 180 countries in the 2022 index. The index is a valuable tool for evaluating media freedom around the world, and tackling the threats faced by journalists.
My hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe, and others, mentioned the new Online Safety Bill. It will create new protections for news publishers and journalistic content when shared online on other platforms. That is important, so I thank Members for mentioning the Bill. Many Members also voiced their concerns about SLAPPs. Recent events have accelerated the need for action to ensure oligarchs and anyone who wishes to silence free speech cannot abuse the rule of law. The Government are absolutely determined to move quickly on that issue. We have already consulted on reforms that are designed to tackle the challenges SLAPPs pose to free speech and to our legal system. We are considering the most appropriate reforms to pursue as a matter of urgency.
I conclude by quoting the great American journalist Walter Cronkite, who once said:
“Freedom of the press is not just important to democracy, it is democracy.”
Recent events in countries such as Ukraine, Belarus, Myanmar and others mentioned today reaffirm the vital role that independent journalism plays and the real threats reporters face every day. I think I can speak for all Members here today and across the House of Commons when I thank all the courageous journalists working so hard to bring the truth to light. The Government will continue to support them and stand up for them and their colleagues around the world.
Damian Collins
I thank the Minister and all right hon. and hon. Members for their participation in this excellent debate. A number of cases have been raised relating to media freedom and the suppression of journalism around the world, and it is right that those cases have been heard in the debate today.
I do not wish to repeat what Members have already said, but in closing I note that since the debate we had last year and today’s debate, the Nobel Committee awarded its annual peace prize to two journalists: Dmitry Muratov and Maria Ressa. It was reported this morning that Mr Muratov has sold his Nobel peace prize medal for £80 million and will donate that money to charities supporting the victims of the war in Ukraine.
Maria Ressa, whom it has been my pleasure to meet on several occasions, gave evidence to the Joint Committee on the Online Safety Bill last year and I close with the remarks she made in her Nobel lecture last year, when she collected her peace prize. She summed up the essence of what we have been discussing when she said:
“Without facts, you can’t have truth. Without truth, you can’t have trust. Without trust, we have no shared reality, no democracy”.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered World Press Freedom Day 2022.
SEND: Carshalton and Wallington
(2 years, 6 months ago)
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Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered SEND services in Carshalton and Wallington.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. In addition, I will speak about the special educational needs provision at the London Borough of Sutton and its arm’s length company Cognus.
Every child deserves access to good education and the support that they are entitled to, for the best start in life. But for too many children and their families in Carshalton and Wallington, getting that access is a daily fight because of a Lib Dem-run council that does not seem to care about the most vulnerable children in our borough. Every single week at my surgery, a parent, carer or family member raises complaints about getting their child access to the support that they are entitled to when fighting for an education. They have shown me the countless emails, meetings, phone calls back and forth with Cognus and even with councillors responsible for running the service, but I hear the same story week on week. Messages are going ignored, support gets refused and parents are having to escalate cases up to the tribunal and/or the ombudsman in order to get support.
The problems with SEN provision in Sutton have been well documented. In 2018, concerns were raised by the Care Quality Commission about Sutton’s SEND department, and by Ofsted, which delivered a damning inspection report. The report found that there had been insufficient progress made on implementing the 2014 reforms, poor communication and over-optimistic self-evaluation, among other issues. It was estimated that approximately 700 children had been unlawfully rejected for education, health and care plan—EHCP—assessments since 2015. In any other council, at the very least, the lead member would have resigned, but all have remained in post and the same councillor remains in charge of the service today. What was the Lib Dems’ response to the Ofsted report? No humility, no shame and no remorse for the pain that they had caused children and their families. Instead, they called for Ofsted to be abolished.
Since 2018, the council has claimed that it has improved its service, that Cognus is working well and that it has the backing of the majority of parents in the borough, but that is not reflected in reality for parents in Carshalton and Wallington. It was around that time that a local mum Hayley Harding set up the Sutton EHCP Crisis group. She has amassed the backing of hundreds of local parents and families who have been through similar situations as she has. I pay tribute to Hayley—I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), who is Hayley’s MP, does too—and to the hundreds of campaigners who have been battling for their children to receive access to the support to which they are entitled.
The struggle to get EHCPs has continued for many parents since 2018, despite what the council might claim. Sutton Council and Cognus have been the subject of many local and national media scandals since 2018, most notably when Sutton shamefully appeared on a BBC “Panorama” exposé in 2020. Did that spark a change in attitudes at the council and Cognus? I am afraid it did not, and the parents’ fight has continued.
Last year, a shocking set of Cognus board minutes were leaked. The unredacted copies reveal a shocking truth. Not only was Cognus in a dire financial situation, with a loss of £717,000 a year, despite Sutton consistently appearing as one of—if not the—highest-funded boroughs for SEND, the council is aiming to save money by cancelling around 200 children’s EHCPs by the end of the year. Did that revelation start the winds of change for parents? No. The unredacted minutes were there for the world to see, yet the council and Cognus denied their contents. Let me just emphasise this point: printed official minutes were obtained, and the response from the council and Cognus was to deny that what was printed in them was true. That is absolutely shocking.
In 2022, four years on from the Ofsted report, it appears that no lessons have been learned. Just a few months ago, the Department for Education’s own figures showed that Sutton, once again, was found to be the highest rejector of families applying for EHCP assessments in the country. Almost half of all children were rejected. To put that into perspective, the national average is 23%. That comes back to what the 2018 Ofsted report initially found, when it took particular aim at the leadership of the service—in other words, the Lib Dem councillors in charge of running it.
Since 2018, I have seen countless examples of the council setting itself against parents and families of children with special educational needs and disabilities. Not only do parents struggle to get an EHCP in the first place, but the plans that are issued are often completely inadequate. For example, parents have shown me obviously copied and pasted EHCP plans. Many of them had not even bothered to change the child’s name from the plan it was copied from, meaning not only is the wrong child named on the plan, but it has the wrong support in it.
That leaves parents and families spending months, even years, fighting with the council and Cognus all the way to a tribunal and/or the ombudsman to get what they deserve. This is not a group of parents deliberately trying to make trouble for the council. The figures show that around 90% of cases are found in the parents’ favour. While the council is wasting taxpayers’ money, taking families through expensive proceedings such as this, rather than providing the support they are entitled to, the children are left in the middle, not getting access to the support that they need. This is a real mark of shame on Sutton and cannot be allowed to continue. If councils such as Sutton’s continue to turn against families of children with special educational needs and disability, the frameworks must be in place to support the families.
I know the Government recognise that, which is why they conducted a review into SEND. I have a few questions for the Minister about how the SEND review will support families of children with SEND in places such as Carshalton and Wallington. I want to know how the SEND review will make it easier for families to raise disputes and have them resolved more quickly; what mechanisms will be put in place to ensure that councils comply with their statutory obligations; and how, overall, the SEND review aims to change the negative experience that many families have of fighting for their children’s education. Children deserve the best possible start in life. I look forward to hearing how the Government can help achieve that.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Will Quince)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) for securing this important debate on special educational needs in his constituency of Carshalton and Wallington, and the London Borough of Sutton more generally.
I will start by saying that I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend when he says that every child deserves access to a good education—in fact, I would go further and say a world-class education. It concerns me greatly to hear how many parents in his constituency are having to fight the system just to get their child or young person the support they deserve. That is not right, and I will say more about how we plan to change the system, in particular the adversarial nature of it, which he pointed out.
My hon. Friend raised the poor implementation of the 2014 reforms in Sutton. He is right to do so, though it is sadly not an issue that is exclusive to Sutton. I will come on to that in a moment. He also referred to the work of local mum Hayley Harding, who is inspirational. I have had the pleasure of meeting her, and join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to her for the important work she does in supporting other parents and campaigning for change in this area. I can assure my hon. Friend that I have listened. I hope that the SEND Green Paper, which I will come to in a few moments, reflects that listening exercise.
My hon. Friend talked of the struggle to get education, health and care plans. He is right to raise that point, and I will say more in a moment about our proposed changes as part of the review. He concluded with a number of important questions about the SEND review and the Green Paper, which I will now address. Before I do that, though not wanting to embarrass my hon. Friend, I will say this. It is important that his constituents know how hard, and how passionately, he has campaigned on this issue. To be frank, I cannot walk down a corridor in Westminster and pass my hon. Friend without him raising either a local SEND case or this issue more generally. I appreciate that I am biased on the issue, but in my view a council’s greatest responsibility is to its children, particularly the most vulnerable and disadvantaged, which is why his testimony about Sutton depresses me greatly. We need to change the system.
I know how hard my hon. Friend works to ensure that every child in his constituency—as well as children across Sutton more generally, when he works with other MPs—has access to the world-class education they deserve. I commit myself to continuing to work with him to hold Sutton Council to account and to ensure that it treats the education of vulnerable and disadvantaged children as seriously as he does, and indeed I do.
Let me turn to the specific points and questions that my hon. Friend raised. First, I will cover funding. Although my hon. Friend, and indeed parents, will want to hear more about our ambitious plans for reform of SEND and alternative provision more generally in the Green Paper, I am conscious of the fact that they will also be concerned about the here and now, especially if they have children with SEND who are in the education system. Importantly, we are increasing the high-needs budget for children and young people with the most complex needs by £1 billion this year, 2022-23. That brings it to a total investment of £9.1 billion. That unprecedented increase comes on top of a £1.5 billion increase over the past two years.
Let me turn specifically to the London Borough of Sutton, which will attract an increase of 12.5% per head of its two-to-18 population this year, compared with the previous financial year’s allocation. That brings its total high-needs funding allocation for 2022-23 to £52.6 million. Alongside that is our capital investment programme. We very much recognise the need for more special school places, so we have secured £2.6 billion to build or create around 33,000 additional SEND places. We are pump-priming that by investing early, so £1.4 billion of that allocation will be spent this year. Although we do not have exact figures for Sutton, I am conscious of the fact that there is a need for special places across London. I will be able to update my hon. Friend at a later date as to those plans.
Let me turn to the SEND review and the Green Paper. I will briefly touch on why those reforms are so desperately needed. My hon. Friend has set out many of the reasons for them, but they are first about outcomes, which are just not acceptable at present. It is not acceptable that we have so many children and young people with SEND who are falling behind their peers.
When I meet with parents and carers, and with children and young people with SEND, they tell me that, too often, they feel unsupported by the system, locally and nationally and, as my hon. Friend mentioned, too many parents feel that they have to fight, fight and fight just to get their child or children the education and support they deserve. They tell me that the system is too adversarial, and that that is not helped by the culture in local authorities, which my hon. Friend mentioned in relation to Sutton, especially when it comes to tribunals, as he pointed out.
I am told of a lack of SEND support in mainstream settings, of needs not being identified and met early enough, of a postcode lottery and, as we know, of significant local authority deficits. There is a lack of join-up between local health systems and the education system, as well as insufficient clarity about what parents and children should be entitled to. As my hon. Friend pointed out, there are poor accountability and redress mechanisms in the system, which means that parents feel powerless.
All the above and more are why the Government committed themselves to the SEND review in September 2019. Despite a delay largely caused by the pandemic, the Green Paper was published in the first quarter of this year. The consultation is now live, and we have extended the deadline for submissions to 22 July. I would encourage everyone to take part. Although we have set out a clear plan, and aspiration and ambition, we need those with lived experience and experience of SEND up and down our country to take part and ensure that we get it right.
Given the negative experiences of his constituents and the issues that he, and indeed I, set out, my hon. Friend rightly asked how the Green Paper and the review will bring about the change we all desperately want to see. My aim is to create a more inclusive education system, with excellent local mainstream provision, that will improve the experience and outcome for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities and, importantly, those who need alternative provision.
How do we intend to achieve this? At its heart, it is about ensuring every child gets the right support, in the right place, at the right time, tailored to their individual needs. We will establish a single national SEND and alternative provision system, setting out clear standards that will be underpinned by the introduction of a national framework. We will provide targeted support for children and young people, where required. Using that £2.6 billion, we will make available excellent specialist provision and alternative provision support for those children who have more complex needs.
We will set out clear roles, responsibilities and accountability measures. We will standardise and digitise EHCPs, making them more accessible to parents and those who advocate for and support them. We will strengthen mediation arrangements so that individuals can work through disagreements with their local authorities at an earlier stage, trying to take the adversarial nature out of the system.
We will establish new SEND partnerships at a local level that will require local areas to co-produce an inclusion plan with parents locally. We will introduce new local and national inclusion dashboards that will strengthen accountability and transparency.
Importantly, we will improve initial teacher training, as every teacher teaches children or young people with SEND, but many tell me that they do not feel confident in that role. If we are to identify early and get children and young people the support they need as early as possible, that starts with highly skilled teachers who have the confidence to teach those with SEND. To help us with that, we will introduce a new SEND national professional qualification.
As I mentioned, these plans are backed up by our £2.6 billion capital investment programme and by learning from the lessons of the 2014 reforms. The ambition and aspiration of the 2014 reforms were right, but sadly the implementation was poor, as evidenced by my hon. Friend. We know that the implementation in Sutton was nowhere near as good as it should have been. Sadly, we see that replicated in other local authorities up and down the country. That is why we are determined to get implementation right as part of these reforms, and we are investing an additional £70 million specifically for implementation. It is important to repeat that the consultation is now open and live until 22 July. I encourage as many people as possible to take part, and it is available on gov.uk.
Finally, my hon. Friend rightly focused on accountability, especially by local authorities. With the support of the Department of Health and Social Care, we have commissioned the Care Quality Commission and Ofsted to develop a new area SEND inspection framework, which will be launched in early 2023. Its overarching aim is to give a greater role to the views and experiences of children and young people with SEND, their parents and carers. The public consultation for that is also currently live and can be found online or through Ofsted.
In closing, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington for his support for this incredibly important agenda. He has raised important concerns, and I hope he knows that I and the Government are not just dedicated but determined to continue to listen to children and young people with SEND, their parents, their carers and all those who advocate for them in the system. I hope my hon. Friend feels assured that the work is under way and that he feels confident that we are committed to delivering changes within the SEND system, both locally and nationally, so that every child and young person across our country, regardless of the challenges they face, is able to achieve their full potential.
Question put and agreed to.
Sentencing: Repeat Offenders
(2 years, 6 months ago)
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Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the sentencing of repeat offenders.
It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. Attendance at today’s debate is affected by the debate in the main Chamber on access to GP services and NHS dentistry, but there is plenty to get our teeth into with the issues that we will be discussing over the next 90 minutes or so.
My initial point is that the Government are failing to deliver an efficient and effective criminal justice system. Instead of defending the indefensible and playing down law-breaking in Downing Street, the Justice Secretary should tackle the crime wave caused by repeat offenders, who are menacing our communities. The criminal justice system is failing communities at every level, and the Government are also failing our police, Crown Prosecution Service, Prison Service and probation service, thereby compromising public safety.
I must declare my interest: I was honoured to be invited to, and to speak at, the Prison Officers Association annual conference in Eastbourne last month, where I heard from numerous prison officers about ever worsening conditions in our jails. I am also a member of the justice unions parliamentary group, which is a coalition of the Prison Officers Association and its sister unions, including Napo, which is the probation officers union; the Public and Commercial Services Union; the University and College Union, which represents prison educators; and the Police Federation of England and Wales.
Before I continue, it would be remiss of me not to take this opportunity to thank the exceptionally hard-working neighbourhood police teams who serve my constituency of Easington in County Durham. From the many conversations we have had, I know that they are frustrated, and I share their frustrations. Recruits join the police service to serve their community, to be on the streets and to protect the public. They do not expect to spend hours on the telephone effectively handcuffed to the desk, waiting for the overworked and understaffed Crown Prosecution Service to return charging decisions. While police officers are tied up with administrative tasks, the community clearly loses out, because the officers are not available to tackle the issues on the streets. Added to the mix is the loss of 20,000 police officers since 2010, which—make no mistake—was a political choice by the Conservative Government. I welcome moves to restore police numbers, but it will take many years, if not generations, to recover the years of lost experience.
Police officers work under challenging circumstances on the frontline, and they pick up the pieces when repeat offenders are released back into the community. In a letter to the Minister dated 9 June, I outlined the case of a prolific offender who has been charged more than 100 times with various offences. When he recently went to court, he was handed a community sentence—a non-custodial sentence—and a £10 compensation order, which is being paid at 25p a week. The victim is understandably disgusted and said he lacks confidence and faith in the criminal justice system.
James Daly (Bury North) (Con)
I completely agree with what the hon. Gentleman says on the facts that I have heard about this matter. He can accuse the Government of many things, but the sentencing function is for the independent judiciary or magistracy; it is not the responsibility of the Minister. There is much to be discussed on a political level, but certainly not sentencing policy and what sentences are imposed in such circumstances.
Grahame Morris
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and what he says is reasonable. I have just been reading a book about the former Director of Public Prosecutions and his early career; he is now the leader of the Labour party, I believe. [Laughter.] He was at pains to provide sentencing guidelines in discussions with Ministers—Conservative Ministers, I might add—to try to address some of these issues. I do not think that Ministers can completely wipe their hands of responsibility.
I will elaborate some of the related issues and explain why prison is not as effective as it might be, although it is an important alternative, particularly for serial offenders. As I said, the victim of the particular crime that I referred to has completely lost confidence in the system and has said that he would not give evidence in future, because he thought that the sentence that was given was inappropriate—in fact he said that it was laughable.
When a case goes to court and the outcome is an affront to justice, it is the police who experience the fall-off in public confidence. Members might be aware that YouGov regularly conducts a survey in which it asks the public whether they have confidence in the police’s ability to deal with crime in their area. The trends are very worrying; 47% of the public lack confidence in the ability of the police to tackle crime, compared with only 43% who are confident in the police. Overall, the number of people who believe the police are doing a good job—nationally, and not in County Durham; I think we have an outstanding police force—has fallen from 75% to 53% in the last two years. I hope that sets alarm bells ringing for Ministers.
The failure is systematic. When I presented my Prisons (Violence) Bill in the previous Session of Parliament, I warned that offenders often left prison more damaged and more dangerous than when they arrived. The out-of-control levels of prison violence make rehabilitation in the current circumstances practically impossible. That leads to more reoffending, at a cost of tens of billions of pounds a year to the criminal justice system, as well as causing misery for millions of victims and their loved ones, who have to live with the consequences of even more crime.
That situation is more than an appalling waste of both public money and people’s lives; it is nothing less than a crime against our communities, and I must say that the Government are complicit in it. The Conservative Government and all Ministers are responsible, first, for the devastating cuts to the budgets of the Prison Service during the coalition years of austerity. It was those cuts that triggered the escalating level of violence in prisons. For example, the number of prison officers was cut by a quarter. That meant that a massive amount of experience, held by experienced prison officers, and of that most precious resource, which prison officers refer to as jailcraft, was taken out of the system at a stroke. The vacuum that was created was quickly filled by prisoners who had become more experienced than many officers on the landings of our prisons. The vacuum has also been filled by violence.
Despite recent recruitment drives, the Prison Service has lost almost 90,000 years—I repeat, almost 90,000 years—of prison officer experience since 2010. That is a shameful statistic, but it just gets worse every year. As the experience of the prison officers who are in charge of our prisons goes down, violence goes up; there is a direct correlation. In turn, that leads to even more officers leaving the service. Not surprisingly, the retention rate for prison staff is at a record low, as of course is their morale.
It has not helped that this Government have raised the retirement age for prison officers to 68. Frankly, for prison officers—both men and women—who are grappling with young and fit criminals, 68 is far too old. It is a cruel policy, which we have discussed on many occasions in this place.
The Government consistently ignore the advice of their own experts. The Prison Service Pay Review Body has proffered advice that prison officers should be given a proper pay rise. Ministers have ignored experts for three years running, and we are currently waiting for them to respond to this year’s pay review body recommendations.
The Government broke our Prison Service when they robbed it of resource, in the name of austerity, and now they need to fix it if they want to have any chance of reducing reoffending. The Government have also broken our probation service with a failed privatisation experiment. They took an award-winning service, envied and held up as a model and example around the world, and smashed it—fragmented it into little pieces, each to be run for private profit.
Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)
I had the opportunity to visit Thorn Cross prison on Friday and meet the excellent governor, Richard Suttle, who showed me around the site. I was struck by the number of employers now based in the prison, helping young people who are about to leave to find work. The hon. Gentleman talked of reoffending. The Government have taken significant steps to ensure that, when young people in particular leave prison, there is a work-based route for them. Does he acknowledge that that makes a significant difference to the number of people returning to prison?
Grahame Morris
That is a good and sensible point, but I draw the hon. Member’s attention to the report of the Select Committee on Education, chaired by the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon). That is quite scathing about the opportunities provided by the education service in prison.
Andy Carter
The Committee visited the same prison I did, and highlighted the outstanding work at Thorn Cross. Businesses such as Timpson ensure that, when people leave prison, they have a solid job to go to. That work starts inside the prison. I acknowledge many of the comments in that report, but Thorn Cross was highlighted as one prison with an outstanding performance of reducing reoffending.
Grahame Morris
That must be one of the prisons on my list to visit, though I hope not as an inmate. I received numerous invitations from prison officers when I was in Eastbourne. I held a surgery for prison officers to raise concerns, anonymously if they wished, and there is a catalogue of issues to be addressed. Prison education is certainly one of those, but that is normally delivered by members of the UCU, the prison educators, who have an unenviable task, which I will come to in a moment.
I want to continue my point about the role of probation. In the complex jigsaw of the criminal justice system, there are vital elements: the police; magistrates; the Crown Prosecution Service; prison officers; the prisons themselves, which should be properly staffed and resourced; probation and prison educators. Those are all important elements of that mosaic. Probation officers play a vital role that is largely unrecognised in reducing reoffending. That is what their jobs are all about and how we gauge their success. They perform a vital public service, protecting our communities from crime, while helping ex-offenders to develop the skills they need to turn their lives around.
By introducing a profit motive into probation—a mistake since acknowledged—the previous Government betrayed the highly skilled and priceless work done by probation officers with many years of experience, leaving their pay, terms and conditions at the mercy of private firms, which tried to reduce their role to little more than a tick-box exercise. That led to a flood of resignations, with people leaving the system, and all the problems we saw as a result.
Even now, two years after the Government admitted defeat and announced a full reintegration and renationalisation of probation, the service is still in the midst of a recruitment and retention crisis, very similar to the one in prisons. Napo has told me about the workload crisis facing its members. Many probation officers are working over their recommended offender management levels—the number of cases they have to look after—by between 20% and 50%, and in one case, by over 90%. The staffing and workload crises in probation have had terrible and tragic consequences in the past. It is no wonder that the mental health of many probation officers is at breaking point.
The Government have put the public at serious risk from reoffending by trying to run prisons and probation on the cheap, and undermining the pay and terms and conditions of those critically important workers in the process.
James Daly
The hon. Gentleman is being very generous in giving way. I have the greatest of respect for him, but I am failing to follow what he is trying to say. I assume that on behalf of his constituents he is saying that we need to impose more custodial sentences on repeat offenders. If that is the case, he is arguing that we should send more repeat offenders into a custodial environment. He is then arguing that we need to do something different in the custodial environment. Rather than using generic figures, will he tell us precisely what he disagrees with in terms of Government policy being implemented in prisons to aid the rehabilitation that we all seek?
Grahame Morris
The hon. Gentleman has got the thread of my argument precisely. I am not arguing in a contrary fashion, because I believe that repeat offenders—people involved in serial offending—need to be incarcerated for the protection of the communities and themselves. However, I do feel that in prisons, over a number of years now, the resources have not been made available to effectively prevent reoffending by offering alternatives and rehabilitation to those people who are incarcerated. I hope I can go on to develop that argument, but it was a good point, and I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention.
The greatest tool to tackle record rates of reoffending must be effective rehabilitation. At the heart of rehabilitation is education, which is desperately needed by so many prisoners. Prison education is a complete mess; that has been confirmed by independent inspectors, by the Education Committee, which is highly respected, and by Ofsted. The Government have announced plans for yet another shake-up, promising a new prison education service—I hope the Minister will say something about that. Unfortunately, details are still very thin on the ground. Ministers have had little to say about teachers, who, it might be thought, would be central to any new strategy to turn around the current, failing system. The Education Committee’s report said:
“Poor pay, lack of career development, unsafe working environments and no time or respect to do a quality job has left the recruitment and retention of qualified and experienced prison educators at crisis point.”
I hope that the Minister will listen, if not to me, then to the Education Committee, which is chaired by a Conservative, the right hon. Member for Harlow.
The problem is the Government’s ideological obsession with running key services, including the criminal justice system, for profit. Four giant prison education providers compete for business while cutting all sorts of corners to maximise profits. According to the union sources I have spoken to, pay and terms and conditions can vary widely. Any serious plan for fixing our broken prison education system should start with standard contracts across the whole sector, plus a pay rise to bring wages up to comparable roles outside. I do not want to go into the details of the issues that have been highlighted to me, but there are things that I hope will be included in the new prison education strategy, which the Minister might refer to when he responds.
Prisons are simply not fit for purpose. In the main, that is as a result of this Government’s savage cuts and poor treatment of the workforce—and all of us are paying the price. However, I believe that prison can and must work. A custodial sentence for a repeat offender provides the community with respite from their offending. In the communities that I represent, which in the main are fairly poor, a relatively small number of prolific offenders cause havoc and cause the majority of crime and antisocial behaviour.
Dr Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on bringing this debate today. He rightly talks about being tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime, which is a Blairite mantra; I am sure that we are all Blairites in that respect today. Does he agree with me that in respect of stopping reoffending, there is a particular challenge with the number of people in prisons who are dependent on opioids and other drugs, and that it is important that we get the right planning in place for those people when they are released from prison to make sure that issue is tackled, because it is a root cause of reoffending?
Grahame Morris
A whole section of my speech was on the need to reform drugs policy. Quite frankly, many of the most prolific offenders are linked to organised crime gangs and their links with the illicit drugs trade. I have done quite a bit of work as vice chair of the drugs, alcohol and justice all-party parliamentary group and I was heartened by the report published by Dame Carol Black in her review of drugs policy. She highlighted the need to divert resources into that area and quoted some quite interesting figures, showing that
“a cohort of around 300,000 heroin and crack users drive nearly half of all acquisitive crime and homicides. Spending an average of £40 to £50 per day on drugs, these users cycle in and out of prison”
in a kind of revolving door. The hon. Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter) is right; that is a huge issue that we, and the Government in particular, need to address.
It is important that we address rehabilitation and proper prison education. There are some good models where they work very well. When the criminal justice system fails, it fails communities such as mine, which suffer from crime, antisocial behaviour and all the things that go with that. The Conservatives have portrayed themselves as the party of law and order and they like to claim that tag. However, the reality is that if we look at the prison system and the amount of reoffending, the Conservatives are the party of crime and chaos.
Cutting police funding by £1.6 billion since 2010 means it is not surprising that the number of people saying they have never seen a police officer on foot patrol has doubled in that time. I look forward to making the case and standing on a manifesto at the next election setting out Labour’s commitment to community policing. Multi-agency neighbourhood police hubs will deliver not only responsive policing but, more importantly, preventive policing. Highly visible policing may have an up-front cost and seem expensive, but effective policing can deliver significant savings further down the line in the criminal justice system. More importantly, effective and preventive policing creates happier, healthier and safer communities, reducing the number of crime victims.
In conclusion, I have some questions to put to the Minister. Twelve years after taking office, when will we have more police officers, police staff and community support officers than in 2010? The 20,000 promised at the last election was, in my opinion, an admission of failure—that the cuts had gone too deep. For our prisoner officers, my ask is this: what action is the Minister taking to tackle prison violence and allow prisons to reform, rehabilitate and educate offenders? Why are the Government refusing to measure the level of violence against prisoners and staff as part of their new key performance indicators, as I called for in my private Member’s Bill in the last Session? We want prisons to reduce reoffending and not hold offenders only for a defined period.
On the causes of crime, can the Minister deliver a practical and sensible solution to disrupt organised crime gangs and break the cycle of offending and reoffending with a reform of drugs policy? We need to overcome misinformation and political dogma to focus solely on cutting crime and the causes of crime.
Several hon. Members rose—
Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)
Order. I have been lenient as the hon. Member made a very powerful speech, but he has ranged wide in terms of the subject. We are discussing the sentencing of repeat offenders. I know Mr Mangnall will be very well behaved.
Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)
You will wish you had not said that, Sir Gary, but thank you for chairing this debate. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.
It is welcome that the Government have committed to 20,000 new police officers and that we are on target to meet that number. It is interesting that in areas like ours, Sir Gary, such as the South Hams, we have 170 new officers and are due 217 more by the end of 2024, which we are also on target to meet. We have local initiatives such as the councillor advocates scheme, set up by our police and crime commissioner, Alison Hernandez, that help local parishes engage with the police to ensure better representation and visibility and a better ability to disrupt crime networks. Such structures will make a difference and, hopefully, alleviate the problems of crime in rural areas.
Andy Carter
We have similar experiences in Cheshire. The police and crime commissioner, John Dwyer, reported just this week that Cheshire is in line to have more officers than ever before in the history of the force by the end of March—a commitment that the Government made and are delivering on. Does my hon. Friend accept that although we often hear about having more police on the beat, many crimes are committed online and behind closed doors? The real value of having forensic investigators working behind the scenes is paying off with higher arrest rates, particularly in areas such as child exploitation.
Anthony Mangnall
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The nature of policing has changed and we have to be clear about how we tackle crime. I do not expect to see as many officers on foot patrol, but I expect to see more of them driving about. Sir Gary, you did say that this debate is about sentencing, so I will get back to that topic. First, it is about crime prevention, and secondly—the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) touched on this—it is about people who repeatedly commit crimes and find themselves with unduly lenient sentences, such as his constituent.
It is not for Members of Parliament to stand in this place and decide what a sentence should be, but perhaps the Minister will clarify what the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act will do to enhance sentencing, because our understanding was that we would have the opportunity to be more stringent when it comes to those who repeatedly commit crimes. I do not want to take up a significant amount of time, but I do want to talk about one way in which we can deal with repeat offenders, which is rehabilitation.
There are three programmes that are relevant to where we are from, Sir Gary. The first is LandWorks, a local organisation in south Devon that works with those who are at risk of going to prison or are coming out of prison and likely to reoffend. It does it in three ways: engagement through a market garden, through pottery and through woodwork. It is a hand-holding exercise for those leaving prison to ensure that, from leaving prison to re-entering society, there is an opportunity to help them to re-enter and ensure that recidivism is not just something that we presume will happen.
I have visited LandWorks and I have asked the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), to visit. The Minister answering the debate today is of course welcome anytime in south Devon—it is amazing how many Ministers want to come down over the summer, so he could take a quick holiday and a jaunt to that extraordinary organisation that works to reduce reoffending. It helps the police and the Prison Service, who feel helpless, by ensuring that we do not have more and more prisoners going back in. As a Conservative, I believe passionately that we should have a tough stance on crime but I also believe that the purpose of prisons is rehabilitation and that people deserve a second chance, so we have to find a balance between those two positions.
The second group I will reference is Pathfinder, which has been launched with the police. It is an evidence-based intervention that reduces harm and reoffending and can hold offenders to account for their actions. The scheme integrates offenders and the police, so that they can work together to ensure that offenders do not go down the predicted path of reoffending and are held to account through targets and checklists that they must fulfil. Strict adherence to the programme is already showing some successes.
The third initiative is NHS Reconnect. I recently met someone who was working intimately with the NHS Reconnect service who made the point that after they had left prison they never thought they would be able to get a job in something as big and as brilliant as the NHS. NHS Reconnect is the perfect example to show, as my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter) said, how businesses and public organisations and institutions can play a role. If we can help offenders to find a way into those schemes and structures, we can divert them from the predicted course, and that is where we have to focus.
Using those three initiatives—Landworks, Pathfinder and NHS Reconnect—we have the opportunity to disrupt the chain, the concept and the belief that reoffending is the natural course after leaving the prison system. The statistics accurately prove that crime in our part of the country is going down; I am sorry to keep referring to south Devon but, anecdotally, I am sure there are similar examples across the country, and in fact the statistics prove that. With the police and others coming up with innovative schemes, such as the councillor advocate scheme, we have a way to disrupt.
Grahame Morris
I am a great believer in statistics and often quote them, but my constituent told me that he, and others in the same boat, would not report crime in the future because of his terrible experience in the criminal justice system and because he is dissatisfied with the outcome.
Anthony Mangnall
I absolutely accept the hon. Gentleman’s point. I am not for a second saying that everything is rosy, but when we look at the crime statistics there are some positives to be taken away. That is not to say that there is not more work to be done; complacency can never have any foothold in our legal or police systems, or in the system of support against reoffending.
I have taken up more time than I expected, but I finish by asking the Minister, can the 2022 Act be improved in relation to the points raised? Will he also speak about the prison strategy White Paper that is coming forward? My hon. Friend the Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter), who is no longer in his place, mentioned the drugs strategy. As I understand it, the drugs strategy was launched in 2021 and we have made £780 million available for it, of which £120 million will be made available to prisoners. Is there any interest in expanding that? Will the Minister report back on how that scheme is working and operating, and whether it has an impact on reducing reoffending?
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate, Sir Gary, and to follow the hon. Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall). Either he follows me or I follow him, and I am happy to be following in his footsteps on this occasion in making my contribution, which will back up what he said.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) on introducing the debate in such a knowledgeable, factual and detailed way. I am here simply because the subject of the debate interests me and my constituents. To be fair, things are slightly different in Northern Ireland, where some of the people who walk the streets in Northern Ireland after having offended happen to be in positions of Government. It distresses us greatly that those people did not get their just deserts and do due time in prison for their crimes, but I digress. I understand that those issues are not the purpose of today’s debate.
Many constituents come to me and express concern about someone who is a repeat offender and, unfortunately, continues to repeat offend. Some of the cases that we have seen are particularly harrowing. There are different levels of crime, and I understand that there are different levels of punishment as well. That is reflected when the courts—
James Daly
The hon. Gentleman is clearly going to develop his points in respect of this issue, but the title of the debate is somewhat troubling, in that repeat offenders receive two types of sentence. One is a custodial sentence, and the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) has spoken about the rehabilitative measures that are required within the custodial environment but not touched on licence conditions. Secondly, the vast majority of reoffenders are sentenced to non-custodial disposals, so their contact with the prison system is less important than what is happening in the community. I would be very interested to hear from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) on those two separate strands of sentencing.
Jim Shannon
I will try to develop my points and, I hope, answer the hon. Gentleman’s question. I look forward in particular to his contribution to the debate.
With regard to my party colleagues, I am ever mindful that this is a devolved matter and therefore what we do in Northern Ireland is not the responsibility of the Minister here, but this Minister, when he replies to our contributions, always does so with knowledge and also with help to try to develop the requests that we put in for his attention.
It is no secret that I am a firm believer in strict, fair prison sentences. The sentence should fit the crime: that is where I am coming from. I fail to understand and see the reasoning behind overly lenient prison sentences for repeat offenders, which appear only to normalise the concept of repeat criminality. The issue here lies with the word “repeat”. As legislators in this House and, indeed, for the Assembly back home and for the other devolved Administrations, we must do all we can to ensure that there is no repeat offending. That is ultimately the goal that we are all trying to achieve, and that may be done, as the hon. Member for Totnes described, with the schemes that those coming out of prison can get involved in to take them away from a past that we hope they will not return to.
Lady Chief Justice Dame Siobhan Keegan, from back home in Northern Ireland, recently revealed that from March 2022 there would be harsher sentences for those repeat offenders guilty of abhorrent domestic abuse crimes. That is one of the types of crime that I am thinking of when I say, in relation to repeat offending, that the punishment should fit the crime. I fully support the Lady Chief Justice’s statement. There is no doubt that that is a step forward. But there should be no allowance for repeat offending in the first place. The Department of Justice revealed that adults released from prison had a proven reoffending rate of 38.6%, which is a huge amount of criminal reoffending. In addition, a large number of criminals getting off charges with no lessons learned and a mere smack on the wrist is not acceptable. The general public deserve protection and they want to see justice.
There is also the very strong argument from the side of the victim of crime—I will often speak up for the victim of crime—in relation to harsher sentencing. Whether we are talking about a burglary, assault or something considerably more serious, there is a victim who must be protected and assured of a fair, decent sentence. Repeat victimisation has become a major issue as a result of repeat offending. Sexual assault and robbery were among the crimes with the highest percentage of repeat offending—often against the same victims. Those figures alone emphasise the real need for harsher sentencing at the beginning to ensure the protection and safety of victims.
There will not be many of us who do not know or cannot give an example of a case from our own constituency in which the person who carried out the crime gets out of jail—I am thinking particularly of cases of sexual assault—and suddenly is walking around the neighbourhood where it took place. I tell you what, Sir Gary: if I were a victim, I would feel pretty disturbed, angry, annoyed and concerned that the person was able to walk round the countryside, the town, the lanes and the villages where the crimes took place. I want to see protection for the victims.
I will ask the Minister this question—if, of course, it is within the remit of this debate, Sir Gary—because I am very keen to find out what the intention is. When it comes to offenders getting out after carrying out crimes, there should be an onus on us to notify the victims that they are returning. Indeed, it would be better if a person did not return to the village where they carried out a despicable crime, but we must make sure that protection is there. We have often heard about assailants getting out and being able to wander close to the family home of the person they assaulted.
There is a debate to be had about how we treat petty crimes, such as public drunkenness, using a mobile phone while driving, or underage drinking or smoking. The hon. Member for Easington has raised before the call for community service and electronic tagging for petty crimes, and I support that. For petty crimes, the right thing to do is not to be harsh when trying to pull people away from a life of crime and point them in the right direction. Although I agree that the statistics on reoffending must be looked at to see if that is a beneficial form of punishment, we must consider stronger prison sentences if there is reoffending for petty crimes. As has been stated, lessons must be learned, as there is always the potential to be a victim.
The Northern Ireland Audit Office has undertaken work to develop a strategy to stop adult reoffending—the Minister, having looked into all these issues thoroughly, will be aware of it. This will ultimately rehabilitate offenders so that they do not reoffend after completing their sentence. It has shown considerable success.
Difficulties at home, financial issues, deprivation, or problems with alcohol, drugs or mental health can result in a continuous negative pattern of behaviour, which repeatedly brings people back into the system. People with mental health issues need to be rehabilitated and helped beyond prison. Repeat offenders are responsible for 75% of all offences recorded per year—a truly astonishing figure.
Although justice is a devolved matter, there must be more collaboration between the Departments to tackle repeat offending. I ask the Minister, has there been any contact with the devolved Administrations, in particular the Northern Ireland Assembly, to exchange ideas? I am a great believer in the idea that we can all learn from each other—I will do that to the day I die. We can do things better when we talk to those who have a system that works.
To conclude, there are ways to tackle repeat offending that reflect the callousness and intensity of the crime. For example, I believe that sexual assault cases should be harshly sentenced to start with, as community service does not reprimand the evil of assault. However, for petty crimes there are other ways to teach people the difference between right and wrong and keep them on the straight and narrow—to use a biblical term—and to ensure that they stay away from the wrong path. The issue remains what steps we should take when lessons are not learned from a certain kind of punishment. I always try to make a contribution from a Northern Ireland perspective, but I would also echo the comments of other hon. Members and I look forward to their comments.
James Daly (Bury North) (Con)
I congratulate my friend the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) on bringing forward this important debate, which, as I said to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), can be viewed from a number of different viewpoints.
I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and declare an interest as a practising solicitor. I was a criminal defence solicitor for 16 years. During the halcyon days of the Labour Government under Tony Blair, I was in court every day and in police stations every evening, representing the reoffenders we have been talking about. I am sure the hon. Member for Easington has not come here just to engage in political point scoring, and he will not want us to get into a debate about this, but I could go through a whole raft of statistics from when I was practising before the courts under the Labour Government. Reoffending was rampant.
This will be my last point, because I do not want to get into this, but I do not know how Labour or any Labour politician can actually challenge a Government Minister when their leader has such an appalling record as Director of Public Prosecutions. There was a fall in conviction rates for serious sexual offending and other sexual offending. We should come to these issues without the political preening and look at what we can do to make things better.
I can tell the Members present that we could have been having this conversation back in 2001, when I first stood up in the magistrates court. The first mitigation I did was completely by luck—I was making it up as I went along. I got there at 9 o’clock in the morning and my new employer said, “Court starts in 45 minutes—off you go.” The first person I represented was a shoplifter. I did not know what to say, having had no experience of these things. It occurred to me that it would be a novel idea if the court was able to impose a sentence of a job and a home. I had no background training whatsoever, having done no criminal law during my training contract. I just had a feeling, at some point, that I would go into criminal law. I thought it sounded interesting. The feeling I had during that first mitigation has never left me: the way to tackle offending, certainly with repeat offenders, is by the state bringing as much stability to their lives as possible. That is an incredibly difficult action for the state.
Sentencing is a bespoke exercise. The idea that the Government impose sentences that are routinely put and that everybody—whether they are in Totnes, Easington or Bury—gets the same sentence in the same circumstances is utterly ridiculous.
Andy Carter
My hon. Friend knows that I sit as a magistrate. My hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) said that Members of this House do not necessarily sentence, but I actually do sentence. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Daly) is absolutely right. One of the greatest debates that benches of magistrates have is on the appropriate sentencing for the offender they see in front of them. Rehabilitation activity requirements and courses to help people understand the issues they face—on drugs, alcohol and dealing with conflict—are incredibly valuable and can form part of a sentencing package. As my hon. Friend says, it is right that magistrates have a full range of sentences available to them to ensure that the punishment fits the crime that an offender has been convicted of.
Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)
Thank you, Mr Magistrate, for the reminder that interventions should be slightly shorter than that.
James Daly
Thank you, Sir Gary. I agree with everything that my hon. Friend said. When we look at reoffending rates, we must look at what we are talking about, because we cannot talk in the generality. When I first appeared before the courts, I was representing up to 10 shoplifters a day. My hon. Friend has been on the bench for a long time, so he will know that that was the nature of repeat offending—drug-related acquisitive offending at a relatively low level.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
I am interested in the hon. Gentleman saying that he represented 10 shoplifters a day. When I visit shops nowadays, they tell me they are deeply frustrated that shoplifters are allowed simply to walk out of the store because nobody is interested in ensuring that they are caught and taken through the court system. Does he share that lament?
James Daly
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that point. I am sure the Minister will confirm that I have that conversation with him on a regular basis. It is an important issue. The level of offending that I saw when I initially practised has vanished from the courts. I do not know where it has gone; I do not think it has disappeared into the ether. All constituency MPs know that shoplifting is still a prolific issue, but it is not appearing before the courts.
When we get down to the issue of repeat offending, perhaps the nature of the offending that appears in a sentencing exercise has changed. Where do we look for that offending? What specifically categorises it? I have to say that I do not agree with what the hon. Member for Easington says, although I understand why he said it in terms of categorising the offending as organised crime. That is a very general description of what we are talking about. Organised crime tends to be very high-level offending. When I look at reoffending rates, I look at the offences where it is a prolific problem, such as domestic violence and serious sexual offending; all of those offences, which have very specific different motivations and reasons why they are committed, are the ones that I look at. I only make the point that we cannot debate this issue in the generality. We cannot say that one sentencing option or one rehabilitative model is going to suit every single option.
We then get to the question—I raised this with the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon)—of how to deal with repeat offenders: with a non-custodial sentence or a custodial one? I think every hon. Member would agree with the hon. Member for Easington that, in the circumstances he spoke about, the gentleman should be sent to prison. I represented people who had committed 400 offences. What do we do with them after 400 offences? Everything has been tried. Every sentence that had ever been invented had been tried by many of my clients, and had failed spectacularly. What do you do with them? They have to be sent to prison, because if it is highly unlikely for a sentence to be carried out or for an offender to take part in the requirements, that sentence cannot be imposed.
The drug rehabilitation part of non-custodial sentences is not as straightforward as people suggest. All the offenders I have represented, save those who had serious mental health issues, have understood that they should not be doing what they were doing. They know the difference between right and wrong—it is not a moral question. In many circumstances, it is a question of addressing their substance problem or opioid problem. When courts impose drug rehabilitation orders, we cannot simply take a wand out and hit somebody over the head and suddenly everything is okay. For the orders to be successful, there has to be planning, work and stability in their lives. For an offender who is living on the street, with very little money, a drug rehabilitation order may seem a sensible sentence because that is what the problem is, and that is why the offence has been committed, but we should not impose a sentence if we know it is going to fail, even if it addresses the root cause of the problem.
On non-custodial sentences, I agree with the points that were made about the probation service—I think we have got back to a better place, but we cannot simply talk about terms and conditions and how extremely important they are, and all the other things that the hon. Member for Easington referred to. This is about the interaction of the individuals, in the circumstances that they face on bail. It is those that are going to decide whether a sentence is successful or not.
In the custodial environment, there is a real debate about what we view as success in what people are offered, and that is not just about violence. Most of the reoffenders I represented were not violent individuals—they were not going into prison and that was sending them on to a different scale. It was about how the fundamental stability issues were addressed, particularly employment. I hope the Minister will comment on this point, because the Government are doing some really good work in looking at the root causes of offending. They are putting a lot of money into job creation and education, which we should not just brush aside. Some really positive steps are being taken.
Some other measures are really showing the Government’s innovative approach to sentencing policy. They were not around when I was practising. Alcohol abstinence tags have a phenomenally high rate of success. Many domestic violence offences are committed by people who are drunk or who have serious alcohol problems. Alcohol abstinence tags, whether part of the sentence or the licence conditions afterwards, are showing real success and we should—“celebrate” seems the wrong word for a sentencing exercise—at least acknowledge that good policies are being put in place.
There is also GPS tagging, which is about making sure that the justice system knows where a person is after they are released. If a burglar is coming to the end of their sentence and there is a concern about what they might do next, if they are GPs-tagged and silly enough to commit an offence, they will be arrested and put back into the court system as soon as possible. There is some really good work in this area. There is integrated offender management, which brings all the services together to produce a bespoke package to help offenders who are struggling with their lives.
The picture is complex. This problem has been around for a long time. Over many years, including under the Labour party, community rehabilitation orders have sadly been spectacularly unsuccessful, but that is not a reason for us not to keep on trying to use modern technology to learn from some of the things that have happened in the past and to have a real debate about how we can affect individual lives. Not everyone is the same. Each person we rehabilitate and bring back into a life where they are not committing offences is a success. That should not be viewed in the thousands, but in each individual success. We are all committed to doing that, while also, getting back to the original point, sending people to prison for sentences that are lengthy enough to deter reoffending behaviour.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for a second time, Sir Gary, despite the 10 years you tell me you have been in the role. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame Morris)—a fellow north-east England MP—on securing the debate. I believe he captured powerfully the frustrations that victims have with a criminal justice system that is crumbling on the Government’s watch. Before I go on, I want to pay tribute to the police, prison officers, probation officers and all the others who work so hard under very difficult circumstances.
My hon. Friend the Member for Easington recognises that the Government are soft on crime and, as he reports from his constituency, are letting criminals off and victims down. He mentioned the ludicrously small fines that offenders are receiving in his constituency and how one offender with a hundred offences ended up with a community service order. I am sure the Minister will want to comment on whether that is appropriate.
The hon. Member for Bury North (James Daly) mentioned that many people receive sentences that simply do not work, and that many simply ignore the courts and get away with it. According to Labour’s research, the number of uncollected court fines has now reached £1.2 billion in the last five years, and that includes more than £50 million of unpaid compensation due to victims directly. Can the Minister tell us what he is doing to collect some of that money? A billion pounds would be enough to pay the salaries of more than 19,000 additional police officers—not far shy of the number of officers that the Government have cut. I know that the Government plan to replace them and that some progress is being made. I welcome that, but we are in a situation where we are replacing experienced officers with inexperienced officers. Nevertheless, the Minister will be pleased to know that my nephew, Lewis Cunningham, is going to be one of those new police officers when he starts working for the Yorkshire force in the autumn.
The public rightly feel that the police are no longer visible on their streets. That is why we would try to put this right with our community police hubs. Some of those officers would also play a crucial role in our new neighbourhood prevention teams, bringing together community support officers, youth workers and council staff to tackle the causes of repeat antisocial behaviour currently blighting our communities. My hon. Friend the Member for Easington is right that being tough on crime and on the causes of crime is as valid now as it was during the days of the last Labour Government. It was nice to hear the hon. Member for Bury North celebrate his full employment under the last Labour Government, when we had a fully resourced and proper justice system. The policies we have announced in this Parliament show that our party is still committed to those guiding principles.
However, it is not just in the detection of repeat crime that the Government are letting victims and communities down; it is also in effective sentencing that properly acts as a deterrent, a prison system that properly rehabilitates defenders and a probation system that properly protects the public by reducing reoffending in communities themselves.
We have heard some positive things about prisons. The hon. Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter) mentioned the importance of education in the prison system and where it can work well. My own home prison in Stockton, Holme House Prison, does it best and has some fantastic facilities, yet even there prisoners are still spending far too long in their cells and are not really making full use of the facilities available to them.
What do we have? Under this Government, our prisons have become colleges of criminality. Repeat offenders, many of them on short sentences, leave prisons more addicted to drugs than they were when they entered, because prison drug abuse is up an astonishing 500% since 2010. Despite that, there has been only a fractional increase in the number of mandatory drug tests, so addiction grows. Drugs are rife in prison because the detection of contraband is so poor.
The Ministry of Justice is especially wasteful at times; it has thrown £140 million of taxpayers’ money down the drain in the past year. That includes £6 million on prison drug scanners that are picking up on average only 12 items of contraband each month because they are used so sparingly. They are not really a waste of money; if they were being used effectively and on a daily basis, we would be in a stronger position. It is no surprise that addiction causes problems in communities after prisoners are released if they are not accessing the types of rehabilitative programmes that they need while in custody. The number of NHS alcohol and drug treatment programmes started by inmates fell dramatically between 2015 and 2020, with 7,000 fewer places taken up.
The hon. Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) talked about rehabilitation. Rehabilitation is the answer, but it needs to be properly resourced. Reoffending in our communities can only be stopped by making prisons work. A Labour Government would do that by putting a greater focus on rehabilitation and ending the explosion in drug use, which fuels further crime when inmates re-enter society.
Anthony Mangnall
Going back to the point about the resources put into rehabilitation, the hon. Gentleman is right up to a point, but the private sector also plays a significant role in preventing reoffending. Does the hon. Gentleman see that there has to be a bit of quid pro quo from both the private and public sectors on this issue?
Alex Cunningham
I agree. I think employers should play a greater role in prisons and we should encourage more of them in. However, we need to provide the right environment for employers. Many years ago I was employed by National Grid, which had a scheme working in partnership with prisons—I think forklift truck drivers were the main output from one prison in the south. Those people did not reoffend—or very few of them did—because they worked with the employer while they were still in prison, they had day release into the workplace and then they got a job afterwards. That is the real answer: education followed by a job.
We know that community service sentences have enormous potential for reducing reoffending as an alternative to short prison sentences, which, under this Government, only entrench offending behaviours. A large body of evidence suggests that community orders are more effective in reducing reoffending than short sentences. Under this Government, community sentences are being set up to fail because the Government do not seem to care about stopping repeat offending at source.
The number of hours of community service was falling significantly even before the pandemic, but has now fallen to less than 1.5 million, from over 5 million five years ago. Public trust in community sentences is flagging because those schemes have stopped being seen to be viable. The number of offenders completing a community sentence has fallen by a quarter in the past five years because offenders are breaching the terms of their sentences, often by not turning up.
Labour has proposed a better way forward. The public need to see that justice is being done in their communities. That is precisely what Labour’s community and victim payback boards would do, by providing publicly available data on the work that offenders are doing, determined by the communities and victims affected. We have put the victims of crime and the communities blighted by it at the centre of unpaid work schemes through existing safer neighbourhood boards. Another reason for the failure of community sentences, particularly where repeat offenders are concerned, is down to the fact that judges no longer trust that they will be delivered. The fault with that lies in the problems experienced by the probation service, which this Government have created with the service’s disastrous privatisation in 2014.
James Daly
I would be astounded if the hon. Gentleman had any evidence to back up the claim that judges do not trust community sentences. I do not know whether he has seen the Government’s work on community payback, which is extremely visible and effective. It is essentially already doing what he has just said.
Alex Cunningham
I accept that some progress has been made in this area, but we have a long way to go if we are to make it effective for many more people in the system. That is an illustration that the Government have belatedly realised their error and are starting to put things right. There are still worrying hangovers, such as recruitment and retention, from the previous system of community rehabilitation companies.
The rate at which probation officers are leaving the service has increased by a quarter since 2015. Resignations have consistently outstripped retirement and other reasons for leaving the service over the past five years: 60% of all leavers are choosing to walk away. The causes cited by some include high workloads, stress and poor pay, given the nature of the work and the rising cost of living. My hon. Friend the Member for Easington talked of some of those issues.
The workloads of existing staff have now reached unsafe levels. That is reflected in the alarming growth in certain serious further offences in recent years; that is, offences committed by repeat offenders who are the subject of probation supervision. I am sure the Minister will tell us how we are going to reconfigure the probation service, to ensure that we can put that right. SFOs for murder were higher in the three years to 2020 than they ever have been—surely, the most severe form of repeat offending that there is.
The public have a right to be concerned about these serious violent crimes in their communities, because this Tory Government have shown time and again they are not capable of dealing with the issue. There is no better example than repeat knife crime. The Government promised in 2015 to lock up repeat knife offenders, but almost half of repeat offenders avoided jail in 2021, and knife possession offences across England and Wales have increased by a fifth since the Conservatives came to power. The Minister and I spent a considerable length of time in Committee for the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill Act 2022. I hope the measures it introduced will have the effect that the Government hope. Of course, many of the provisions have yet to be enacted.
The root of the problem with repeat offending is the neglect of youth services and youth offending teams, which could be preventing offending by engaging young people, instead of leaving them to their own devices and the influence of others who drag them into crime. That neglect has resulted in enormous rises in the scale and cost of violent youth crime, which now stands at more than £11 billion under this Government. Being soft on repeat offending and soft on its causes blights communities and costs taxpayers. Labour has shown it will tackle reoffending and repeat offending head on, and bring security to our communities. That is what my hon. Friend the Member for Easington wants.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (James Cartlidge)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Sir Gary. I note your background as a solicitor, albeit not a criminal one, and that you served as a Minister under our Department’s predecessor in the Lord Chancellor’s office.
I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) and congratulate him on bringing forward this important debate on a topic that, despite the turnout, creates great interest on all sides. I think there is a lot of consensus on the key points. I am aware of his letter and was waiting for the debate to respond. If I do not cover any points today, I can return to them in writing. He knows, as has been said by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Daly), that when it comes to specific cases, it is a constitutional fact and convention that we have an independent judiciary, and Ministers do not comment on individual sentencing decisions. That is an incredibly important point.
The hon. Member for Easington finished his speech with a few specific questions. I will start by answering those before going into the body of the speech on reoffending. He asked about prison officer and police officer numbers. Between October 2016 and December 2021, the number of prison officers rose from 17,955 to 22,156—an extra 4,201 full-time officers. That in itself is a way of improving their safety. There are also specific measures, such as rolling out pepper spray in the adult male estate, which we will be doing to protect officers, and the introduction of 6,000 body cameras across the estate.
On police officers, in response to the hon. Gentleman’s question I am pleased to confirm that we are at 13,500. I was pleased to hear from my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter) about the number of extra officers in Cheshire. My hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) mentioned the number in South Hams. Perhaps most importantly, we heard from the Labour Front-Bench spokesman, the hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham), that Lewis Cunningham has joined that number and will be serving on the frontline. We all pay tribute to him and are grateful to all those officers. I join the hon. Member for Easington in paying tribute to those who serve in our communities to bring law and order to our streets.
I want to comment on what my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North said It probably will not be known to most hon. Members that he was my Parliamentary Private Secretary until a few days ago. The baton has now passed to my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory), and that brings the great advantage that he is now able to speak on Ministry of Justice matters. He has great experience as a criminal solicitor, as we have heard.
The hon. Member for Easington spoke with great passion, particularly on the case that has blighted his constituency. But a fundamental fact is that the proportion of offenders released from custody who reoffended within 12 months fell significantly from 51.5% in 2010-11 to 42.2% between April 2019 and March 2020. That significant fall was seen in both adults and juveniles.
We have a strong record in tackling reoffending, but we recognise that reoffending rates are still too high across England and Wales. In 2020, 80% of offenders cautioned or convicted had at least one previous caution or conviction. That is far too high. In many cases, repeat or prolific offenders commit low-level crime, continuously revolving in and out of the criminal justice system. We also know that they often have high levels of complex and interweaving needs that drive their offending: roughly 61% of prolific offenders have coexisting needs of accommodation, employment and substance misuse. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North saw that on his very first day as a criminal solicitor, and my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South will have seen it many times in front of him on the bench.
This Government understand the concern and harm caused by repeat offending, as described by the hon. Member for Easington. As I am sure Members will appreciate, this is a complex issue. There is no easy answer. There is certainly no magic wand, as my hon. Friend for Bury North said. We are committed to action and I can reassure the House that we are pursuing an extensive package of measures to tackle it, which I will set out.
Turning first to the sentencing framework, sentencing in individual cases is wholly a matter for the independent judiciary. However, it is the responsibility of Parliament to ensure that the courts have the sentencing framework they need to sentence offenders appropriately.
Turning to the PCSC Act, my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) asked how it would affect the subject of the debate. Under the Act we made several changes to legislation to deliver our manifesto commitments and ensure that the worst offenders spend longer in custody. The Act also introduces specific measures designed to tackle repeat offending. For example, the law provides for minimum sentences for certain offences known to have a large community impact, including threat with or repeat possession of a knife, a third conviction of domestic burglary and certain class A drug trafficking offences.
We heard the concern that too many offenders were receiving sentences below the minimum term. Indeed, in 2020, at least 50% of adults convicted of a third domestic burglary received a sentence below the minimum prescribed by Parliament. I can confirm that the PCSC Act, which just received Royal Assent, changes the law to ensure that courts may depart from the minimum sentence only in exceptional circumstances. I believe the word imputed is “particular” circumstances. My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South, who sits as a magistrate, knows that that sort of wording is very important and we feel it will have an impact.
We are clear that delivering public protection is not just about better use of custody. Evidently, not all offences warrant a custodial sentence. Lower-level offending is often better handled via a non-custodial sentence. To that end, our sentencing White Paper set out our plans for tougher, better monitored and more effective community sentencing options that can tackle prolific offending by providing appropriate punishment, while also addressing the underlying drivers of offending and offering support for those who want to turn their lives around.
Going further, the PCSC Act enables closer supervision of certain offenders and introduces the option for tougher and more flexible use of electronically monitored curfews to better reflect the punishment intended, better support rehabilitation and better protect victims. It also reforms criminal records disclosure to increase the number of ex-offenders able to find work, which we know plays a crucial role in reducing reoffending.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North referred to the extremely positive data that we have seen on increasing the rate of employment among those leaving prison. I think that a two-thirds increase in the number of people who left prison between April 2021 and March 2022 who were still in employment six months after release is a very positive development indeed.
The PCSC Act also introduced powers to pilot problem-solving courts, which will combine supervision and multi-agency interventions with regular court-based reviews of progress overseen by a single judge or dedicated magistrates, with clear, consistent and graduated consequences for non-compliance.
However, this process is not just about sentencing options. The PCSC Act also reforms adult out-of-court disposals, to allow the police to deal swiftly, proportionately and appropriately with low-level offending and to reduce the burden on courts. Under our new framework, cautions must have conditions attached, to enable the police to target the cause of the offending behaviour and to refer people into appropriate support services. Basically, to date there have been quite a number of out-of-court disposal options, including those that are effectively a warning. What we are moving to with the PCSC Act is two sets of out-of-court disposals, which is a much simpler system that is more unified across the jurisdiction, and—importantly—there will always have to be an action associated with a particular disposal.
I turn to our sentencing framework. This is an essential element of tackling repeat offending, but we are clear that criminal justice agencies must also be armed with the tools they need to manage challenging offenders effectively.
The hon. Member for Stockton North asked about probation. As he is aware, in June 2021 we launched a new unified probation service across England and Wales. Unification of the probation service, underpinned by increased funding of £155 million per annum to recruit additional staff, will help to reduce overall case loads, enable robust management of offenders in the community and support better public protection. That means that we can supervise offenders with rigour and discipline, as well as enforcing the consequences of non-compliance.
Our “Beating crime plan”, launched in July 2021, announced our refreshed integrated offender management scheme, which is another crucial element in our efforts to tackle repeat offending. Under the scheme, over 9,000 persistent and problematic neighbourhood crime offenders across England and Wales are subject to intensive supervision by the probation service and the police, who work together with partner agencies to keep those offenders accountable and support them to reform.
|Another form of community order that we have heard about is unpaid work. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North spoke about this activity, which we call community payback, and the hon. Member for Stockton North, who speaks for the Opposition, spoke about his party’s plans in this regard. Just to be clear, we are investing an additional £93 million over the next three years to allow us to increase community payback delivery, up to 8 million hours a year—I repeat, up to 8 million hours—with a particular focus on delivering more outdoor projects that improve public spaces and, crucially, allow the public to see justice being done. Seeing justice done is a core, common-law principle that underpins our system, which is why the visibility of offenders who are out there clearing a canal or scrubbing graffiti off a wall is so important, and I hope that I have set out how we intend to go much further.
The hon. Member for Easington made a very good point when he cited a particular statistic. Heroin and crack cocaine addiction is linked to almost half of all acquisitive crime—he used that exact figure—including burglary, robbery and theft, and drugs are associated with almost half of all homicides. As set out in our 10-year drugs strategy, which was published in December 2021, this Government will invest £780 million over the next three years in drug treatment services, including £120 million to support offenders to engage with treatment. We are very much looking at the big picture when it comes to drugs.
Of course, we also know that alcohol is another key driver of offending. To that end, last year we introduced another innovative use of electronic monitoring, which is using alcohol tags to monitor offender compliance with alcohol bans in community sentences. In the first year of their use, we have seen over 3,500 alcohol banning orders being imposed, with over 97% of days monitored being alcohol-free. I repeat: 97%.
Building on that success, last week we completed our roll-out of alcohol monitoring on licence across England and Wales, allowing us to deploy this intervention across the criminal justice system. Over the next three years, around 12,000 offenders will wear an alcohol tag.
Andy Carter
Will the Minister talk about the changes to Friday release that have been announced? Having visited several prisons, it has always struck me that there are virtually no support services for prisoners when they are released into the community on Fridays. What was the thinking behind the changes?
James Cartlidge
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and he is absolutely right about the impact of the changes. He will be aware that our hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mark Jenkinson) will introduce a private Member’s Bill to tackle this very issue. As we bring that Bill forward—hopefully with support from all parties—it will address my hon. Friend’s point.
On the matter of release, the hon. Member for Strangford asked a specific question: how do we notify the victim when the perpetrator is being released? I cannot comment on the arrangements in Northern Ireland, but we have a victim contact scheme in our jurisdiction. Where an offender receives one year or more in custody, bereaved close relatives and victims of serious sexual and violent offences are automatically referred to the scheme, so that they can choose to receive information on the following: first, when the offender is released or considered for release or conditional discharge; secondly, if the prisoner moves to open conditions; and thirdly, what the court sentence means for the offender’s detention in prison or hospital. We recognise that the point of release is a key moment to help offenders turn their lives around, which is why the issue of Friday release is important. As such, our prison strategy White Paper outlined our ambitious plans to ensure that prison leavers have the accommodation and employment support they need on release to help them to stay away from drugs and crime.
The hon. Member for Easington asked about prison education, and I can confirm that we set out our plans in the prison strategy White Paper to deliver a prison education service within this Parliament and to raise numeracy, literacy and skills in order to secure jobs on release. I have already highlighted the real progress that we are making in securing employment for prisoners, and we will change the law to enable them to undertake apprenticeships for the first time. In combination with our commitment to support prisoners to engage with community treatment ahead of release, we are confident that the measures will help reduce reoffending.
Specifically in relation to female offenders, who are more likely to commit low-level offences, we are delivering on our commitment to pilot a residential women’s centre. This will offer an intensive residential support package in the community for women at risk of receiving short custodial sentences, supporting them to address the underlying causes of their offending behaviour, including drug, alcohol and mental health needs, and to move on to settled accommodation. Last month, we announced that the first residential women’s centre will be in Swansea. The centre will now be subject to planning permission, but it will run as a pilot for five years and has received £10.6 million of spending review funding.
Once again, I thank the hon. Member for Easington for securing the debate. As I said, this is a matter that greatly concerns all our constituents. There is a lot of consensus about the measures that need to be taken, and I assure him that the Government understand the issue and are committed to tackling the harm caused by repeat offending.
Grahame Morris
I thank the Minister not only for what he has said, but for his tone and for being so constructive in responding to the debate. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham), my good friend the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), the hon. Members for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall), for Warrington South (Andy Carter) and for Bury North (James Daly), and the hon. Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter), who is not in his place. We have had some excellent and constructive speeches and interventions, and I am pleased that the Minister has taken them on board. I have learned a new word: recidivism. I cannot say it, but I know what it means.
The Minister is absolutely right to suggest that there is no single medicine or antidote to the problems that we are facing. We need a combined approach—a broad-spectrum antibiotic—to deal with the multifaceted issues that we face in tackling reoffending. I was heartened by what he said in relation to the additional moneys that are being channelled through the Prison Service to tackle the issue of drugs and alcohol.
I would also like to highlight that, apart from in Durham—we all know it is the centre of the universe for initiatives and policing schemes—there are some excellent police-led, out-of-court disposal and drug diversion schemes. There is Checkpoint in my area, Turning Point in the west midlands, and the drug education programme in Avon and Somerset. They have all delivered early interventions that have diverted individuals away from the criminal justice system and reoffending, and into drug education, support and treatment. I make a plea to the Minister that these schemes should be expanded.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the sentencing of repeat offenders.
Equality of Opportunity: South-East Wakefield
(2 years, 6 months ago)
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Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered increasing equality of economic opportunities in south east Wakefield.
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Gary. I thank the House authorities for allowing me to raise a very important matter that relates to my constituency. I am aware of a certain event in another part of Wakefield on Thursday. Members will no doubt be listening carefully to ensure I avoid mentioning such matters, and I undertake to do so. I am most concerned to raise issues affecting the part of my constituency that I have described as south-east Wakefield. It is more or less, but not entirely, coterminous with the constituency of Hemsworth, which I have represented for over 26 years now.
Prompted in part by Government rhetoric about levelling up, I want to show how areas such as the one I represent are desperately in need of a new deal. Let me first tell Members about a conversation I had the other day with a young man named Zac Gaskell, 12 years old. He came along to see me with his dad Lee. Zac is an elected member of the Youth Parliament for our area. It was a great privilege to meet him. I asked him how he had come to be elected and what was in his manifesto. He said, “Well, the most important thing is that people in power need to listen to the voices of young people. After all, we—young people—are the future.” I agree with him; I am sure we all do.
The truth is that opportunities for young people in south-east Wakefield are severely limited. The situation is becoming dire. Having carefully read much of the Government’s information about levelling up, I have come to the conclusion that there is something missing. If we are going to talk about levelling up, what the country needs is some kind of analytical tool to guide us and by which we can measure the success or failure of the Government in achieving greater equality of economic opportunity for areas such as south-east Wakefield.
I believe there is such an analytical tool, lying easily to hand, that the country should use. These days, we call it social mobility. It used to be assumed that the next generation—the Zacs of this world—would get a better life than our generation. I think that is probably what brought most of us into politics: the idea that we could improve the way the country and the world operate. Some people call it the British promise, and we often now call it social mobility. With an increasingly centralised Government focused around Whitehall and the Cities of Westminster and London, it is no longer the case that this British promise of a better life will be delivered for areas such as south-east Wakefield.
Areas like mine are being held back. I want to show why, and speak about how and what we might do to think about changing the life chances of people I represent. My constituency is among the least socially mobile in the whole of England. There are 533 constituencies in England and mine is the fourth worst for social mobility; we are the 529th out of 533 seats. The Government have acknowledged the wider problem. I think that is why the idea of levelling up has been developed, and why the Government have appointed a Social Mobility Commission and now a social mobility tsar.
If the Government cannot offer assistance to a constituency like mine, we know that the model they are using does not work. What is curious about the commission is that the whole lot of them resigned back in 2020, as Members may remember. The commission said that inequality in Britain is
“now entrenched from birth to work.”
Certainly, that is a description of the area I represent. The new social mobility tsar, Katharine Birbalsingh, has said that working-class kids should maybe not aim so high. Indeed, last week she said that we should stop fixating on getting poor children to university—an extraordinary thing to say—and encourage them instead to celebrate “smaller steps” up the ladder. That is just not good enough. Is that the best that the Government’s appointee can say to Zac and his friends? “Don’t aim high, Zac. Take a few small steps. That is maybe all you can expect.”
What does such advice mean in practice? It means that a child born into a certain group in my constituency or elsewhere will likely die in the same social group that they, their parents and grandparents were part of. The ability to move up the ladder is negligible in an area like mine, and the situation is getting worse. Social mobility and deprivation levels are interconnected. My area is becoming more deprived as this Tory Government have gone on, not less. For example, we are now the 111th most deprived of the English constituencies. In 2015, we were the 130th, so we have declined by 19 positions. That is probably not surprising given that deprivation is growing, and it relates to the lack of social mobility in our area.
I pay tribute to the people in my area. They work hard; they were the miners who powered and lit our country, and did all the things necessary in the worst conditions imaginable at work. They are wonderful people. I guess we all think that about our own constituents, but in my case it is the truth. There are many companies in my area, some led by ex-miners, that want to help. They are exemplary, and rooted in the local community. Many leaders of those companies have a social conscience and want to bring social mobility back to life, give local people more opportunities and reverse the trends in deprivation, but they desperately need help and support.
I hope the council will put in bids for levelling-up funds that could help locally. If we are successful, it is to be welcomed, but if we are going to give the kids in Wakefield a chance, we need the Government to address the issues that are interconnected with deprivation and a lack of social mobility. I want briefly to touch on four or five of those issues. The first is productivity. These day, we measure productivity per head by something called GVA—gross value added. In Yorkshire and the Humber, gross value added per worker is just over £21,000, whereas in London it is £48,000, so the productivity per head in Yorkshire as a whole—it is slightly worse in my constituency—is £27,000 a year less than for workers in London, and that is because of lack of investment. Without investment, work will be less productive, and if the productivity of each worker is lower, we can therefore expect wages to be lower.
Average pay in Hemsworth is £495 a week. In the Prime Minister’s constituency, it is £728 a week. On average, the workers in Hemsworth in my constituency are paid £12,000 a year less than those in the Prime Minister’s constituency. What is worse is that earnings in Hemsworth have grown by 6% since 2010. In the UK, that growth in wages was 22%—almost four times more. I relate that back to the lack of investment in productivity. We are falling further behind. We can see the problems in our area, both chronic and acute, and we desperately need investment.
That brings me to my third point: the need to be mobile in an area where the place of work is no longer the local village. I represent 23 former colliery villages, and the work used to be located in each village. Now that work has gone, people have to travel some distance to get to decent employment, but the problem is that a quarter of people in my constituency do not have access to a car, and public transport—including rail and bus routes—is being cut back. I deliberately placed my office in a station, so people who do not have a car can get there, but the train service is being cut to that very station. From May this year, Northern Rail has cut services, including the links to Sheffield and Leeds, where there are jobs.
The same has happened with buses. I guess all of us who represent rural areas know that the bus services are in decline—in my area, severe decline. Seven routes with weekend timetables have been cut and 29 routes with weekday timetables have been affected. On top of that—perhaps because of it—transport spending in Yorkshire is a third of that spent per head in London. If we compare the £906 per head spent in London to the £300-odd in Yorkshire, that means we need £86 billion overall to be on par with London. How will we get geographic mobility, and the connected social mobility, if so many people do not have cars and public transport is reduced as I have described?
The Minister may have something about High Speed 2 in her briefing notes, but the eastern leg—through Yorkshire, up to Leeds—has been cut, although I think £100 million has been left to see whether we can build an inter-urban link between Sheffield and Leeds. The fact is that HS2 would drive a corridor as wide as two motorways through my constituency, but provide no stations or halts there. We would have all the pain, but none of the gain. HS2 is not a solution. We need proper interconnectivity, and I am sure many other Members would say the same about their constituencies. In areas with declining social mobility and increasing deprivation, public transport is imperative.
That brings me to a further point about the cuts as a result of austerity. Since 2015, Wakefield Council has suffered cuts of £57 million in real terms. The Minister may say, “Well, there is £20 million in levelling-up funds,” but that £20 million, which would be welcome, is being funded by the very cuts suffered by the public services in our area. It is not as though this is new money; it is money that has been recycled from cuts.
The cuts to school funding in our area are particularly painful. My constituency has lost almost £400 per pupil. When the social mobility tsar says to kids in my area, “Just take a few steps, but don’t dream of going to university,” the truth is that only small steps are possible because of cuts to schools. I take exception and offence to the advice given to people like Zac.
My final point is about digital exclusion. We all know that the economy is changing before our eyes and a new industrial revolution is well on its way, with more to come with artificial intelligence and all the other prospects available to us, but connectivity to the internet, which is so important to building a lively cultural and economic life in a constituency, is restricted in the south-east of Wakefield. The broadband speeds are among the worst in the whole country. Three quarters of communities in my area are in the worst 30% of areas for broadband connectivity.
The average download speed in Hemsworth is 52 Mbps, but in the Prime Minister’s constituency it is twice as high at 107 Mbps. It is not acceptable that communities should be left behind in this way by public transport, cuts and the other things I have described. Wherever we look, we are being held back. We need an active Government who will: secure investment; increase productivity; address the problems of geographic mobility as a result of the cuts to public transport; restore the service cuts, particularly in schools, which I feel passionate about; and invest in broadband. We need a Government who will offer real opportunities to local business leaders who want to root themselves back in the community, who recognise the value of a loyal and hard-working workforce, and who want to give people a chance to restore the kind of life they had before the mines were closed all those years ago. All those steps could and would improve opportunity in our area. I just hope the Government are listening, although sometimes I doubt they are.
Let me finish on a bigger question. South-east Wakefield has issues that require active government, not the small government that the Chancellor is always rabbiting on about. That is also the case in many other communities across the country, especially in the wake of the covid pandemic, but the issues I have described show how chronic and acute the problems are in south-east Wakefield. That ought to lead us to pose a bigger question: can the current neoliberal economic model and the ossified, over-centralised state frameworks really deliver social justice? I do not believe they can.
Levels of inequality are now verging on the obscene in parts of our country. The richest people in society have increased their wealth by £700 billion since the crash, yet for people in my constituency, wages and salaries are declining or stagnating. The cost of living is skyrocketing and public services are becoming overstretched. Within this national context, it is perhaps unsurprising that areas like mine have been held back for so long. Although the idea of levelling-up money is to be welcomed—we will bid for it and I will engage with it—we need to recognise that nothing less than a full-scale economic system change and proper devolution of power will do, so that people who make decisions can understand their impact on local people. That does not happen now.
Long ago, I came to the conclusion that the economic, cultural, political and social distances between decision makers here in the capital and areas such as south-east Wakefield are so vast as to ensure that there will be no progress towards social justice in our area without radical change. That is because the decision makers are so remote from life as it is lived by the people I represent. I represent middle England, right in the middle of the country—people who work hard, play by the rules, pay their taxes, and yet are being left behind. I leave this final thought with the Minister: can she convincingly say to the young people of my area, like Zac, that the status quo, with all its structural problems, can really offer the change that south-east Wakefield requires? I do not believe so.
The Minister for Local Government, Faith and Communities (Kemi Badenoch)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. I congratulate the hon. Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) on securing this debate and thank him for raising this important subject. His passion for securing the best possible future for his constituency is shared by the Government. I was interested to hear what he had to say about his constituents Zac and Lee. In answer to the question that he just asked, I would say yes; not just the status quo, but our levelling-up agenda will deliver for his constituents and across the country. I will go on to explain that in a moment.
I want to address the hon. Gentleman’s point about the social mobility commissioner. I am going to hazard a guess that the hon. Member did not listen to her speech. I did, and I am afraid to say that his quotation was a misrepresentation of her remarks. I am not sure in which outlet he read it, but what she actually said was that we need to stop obsessing about getting people into Oxford and Cambridge; that there is a rags to riches version of social mobility that assumes people have to go right from the bottom straight to the top, like Dick Whittington, instead of taking steps up the ladder; and that that attitude denigrates lots of good jobs such as teaching and skilled professions. I think that is something that the hon. Gentleman would probably agree with. I am very supportive of the social mobility commissioner and I think he would find her speech interesting. She is a very clever woman, who understands social mobility more than most. I encourage the hon. Gentleman to read her state of the nation report when it is released—I think, by the end of this month.
To answer some of the points raised, it is best to go back to the beginning and why we are having these debates. Levelling up is at the heart of the Government’s agenda. We set out a clear commitment to unlock economic prosperity across all areas of the country, including Wakefield and Hemsworth. It is about providing momentum to address long-standing regional inequalities, which the hon. Gentleman clearly articulated, to enable people to pursue life chances that have previously been out of reach. To quote the White Paper, “Stay local, go far.” His point that work in previous times was in the village—so that people did not have to commute—and that that does not work for today’s society was well made. That is something we recognise. Those structural inequalities will not be addressed by simply spending more money. We need to do better.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned issues for rural constituencies. I represent a rural constituency, and I know that the Government have been funding a lot of schemes to provide mobility for those people who are cut off. I asked for information and was told that there is a fund that is devolved to the Mayor of West Yorkshire. She has £1.4 billion for transport improvements across West Yorkshire. I encourage the hon. Gentleman to speak to her to address some of these issues. As he said, not everything can be done in Whitehall, and I hope he can work with her.
Some £370 million has been provided to West Yorkshire Combined Authority for projects aimed at improving and investing in public and sustainable transport, and that covers Wakefield as well. I know that not all of Wakefield is in the hon. Gentleman’s patch, but that is something he should speak to the Mayor about. I do not know the specifics—I suspect these are in the city—but projects include cycle routes from Wakefield Kirkgate rail station and improved access to Wakefield bus station. As he said, where those buses come and go is not just about the stations, but the communities that they pass in between.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned local government funding cuts. As Minister for local government, that is something I hear from Opposition Members again and again, and I will repeat what I always say: nobody likes cuts, certainly not this Government. We had to make them because we were compelled to by the financial situation we found when we came into government, which was left by the previous Labour Government. We are fixing many of the problems, which we have not been able to fix for a very long time. I hope the hon. Gentleman will see that when I talk about the funding we are providing to his area.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned broadband, and I recognise some of the points he made. I want to let him and his constituents know that the Government have invested heavily over a number of years through the Building Digital UK programme and other funding streams. Some 99% of West Yorkshire will have access to superfast broadband by October of this year. The vast majority of the region, including Wakefield, already has access to superfast broadband, with speeds of at least 30 megabits per second. If he does not find that in Hemsworth, he should write to my colleagues at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, so that they can pick that up specifically. I do not know enough about that programme to provide more information, beyond what I have just said.
Levelling up is about enabling local places to determine and support their own economic priorities. It is not just about the Government handing out money and telling areas what to do. The hon. Gentleman will be aware that there was a devolution deal with West Yorkshire, and I talked about the funding that has gone to the metro Mayor, Tracy Brabin, who was elected last year. But in addition to that investment fund, the devolution deal includes a range of powers and funding streams, which are now transferred to the mayoral combined authority, including for the adult education budget and transport, as well as responsibility for the police and crime commissioner. We are handing powers closer to the people in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency.
Since Mayor Brabin’s election the Government have awarded £830 million of additional funding for sustainable transport schemes across West Yorkshire, demonstrating the difference that clear and visible leadership can make to local economies. Building on local priorities, we are also providing West Yorkshire with £217 million from the towns fund, £50 million of which is in Wakefield, and more than £72 million through the first round of the levelling-up fund, which I know the hon. Gentleman is aware of—he referred to the £20 million for Wakefield. The previous local growth funding, which amounts to £695 million for West Yorkshire, has also enabled the Wakefield South East Gateway, which will deliver 2,500 new homes on the City Fields development, as well as the completion of the Wakefield waterfront. I hope the hon. Gentleman agrees that this funding demonstrates the scale of the Government’s commitment to working with Mayors, local MPs and other local leaders to deliver for their cities, towns and villages. I encourage him to work with Tracy Brabin to ensure that this large investment programme really benefits all parts of Wakefield, including south-east Wakefield.
The hon. Gentleman said that his constituency would need £86 billion to level up to London, but it is not a fair comparison. He mentioned that his is a rural constituency. What we need to do is make sure that areas are able to develop as much as they should within the parameters around them. Not everywhere can have 8 million to 14 million people, tube networks and so on, and I do not think that his constituents would necessarily want that.
I mention the levelling-up fund specifically because I have been told that there has been additional funding from the getting building fund, which has supported two enterprise zones, at Langthwaite and South Kirkby business parks—both in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency —to stimulate business growth and create local employment opportunities. I am sure he welcomes the multimillion-pound cross-Government investment to expand the unique Production Park—the live events campus in his constituency —which is supporting local people into good-quality apprenticeships and jobs in this growing creative industry. On the same site sits the new Backstage Academy, which will provide the next generation of live industry and media professionals. It is delivering degree-level education to over 200 students, with an industry focus so that more than 90% of students have secured employment before they complete the course.
The £4.8 billion we are investing through the levelling-up fund is providing the tools for local areas across the country to invest in their infrastructure, improve everyday life by regenerating their town centres and high streets, and invest in cultural and heritage assets. As the hon. Gentleman said, Wakefield was successful in securing £20 million through the first round of the fund, to support the expansion of the Tileyard North development and to transform a derelict site with a new cultural offer celebrating Wakefield’s heritage. This will bolster Wakefield’s position as a growing hub for the creative industries and bring with it good-quality jobs.
In the levelling-up fund prospectus, we recognise the crucial role of MPs in championing the interests of their communities and understanding local priorities. That is why we expect bidding authorities to consult local MPs fully as part of their bid development, with MPs able to officially endorse in writing one priority bid for their local area. That ensures that MPs have a hugely positive role in shaping bids, perhaps helping to broker a local consensus on what their area really needs. I note the work the hon. Gentleman is undertaking with Wakefield Council in shaping a local bid for his constituency, to be submitted in July, and I wish him luck. I am sure that he and colleagues across the House will make the most of this opportunity to represent their constituencies.
It would be remiss of me not to mention the opportunities presented through the two town deals awarded to Wakefield, providing combined Government investment of over £50 million. I recognise that these are not directedly targeted on the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, but the benefits will flow—they do not stop at local government boundaries or town boundaries. I hope that these investments, particularly in Wakefield’s urban centre, will lead to a stronger and more resilient local economy across the wider area.
Given that the hon. Member for Hemsworth and I are on different sides of the House, we will disagree on many things, but I want him to know that this is an agenda that we in the Government care very much about. We will reflect on the points he has raised and continue to pursue this agenda. We will engage with our West Yorkshire partners to inform our decision making, because we believe that all parts of the UK should have the means to shape their future positively.
Question put and agreed to.
Community Pharmacies
(2 years, 6 months ago)
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Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the future of community pharmacies.
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair this afternoon, Sir Gary. As a member of the all-party parliamentary group on pharmacy, I am pleased to introduce the debate and glad to see so much support from Members who obviously, like me, recognise the huge value that our pharmacies bring to the NHS, patients and the public generally. I hope everyone here agrees that England’s 11,200 pharmacies play a crucial role in providing important healthcare, life-saving medicines and an increasingly wide range of clinical services to their local communities. Not only that, but as the most accessible providers of healthcare, pharmacies are key to reducing health inequalities: 89% of the population are less than a 20-minute walk from their nearest pharmacy, increasing to 99.8% in the most deprived areas, such as mine. It is fair to say that pharmacies understand their communities to a significant extent—sometimes more than the traditional health services—and as such are ideally placed to engage with the most marginalised and vulnerable groups in our communities.
The wider public appreciate the easy accessibility of pharmacies, which by their very nature are located at the heart of every community throughout the country. Throughout the pandemic, not only did community pharmacies remain open and continue to offer their full range of services, but they played a huge role in the vaccination programme, delivering an astonishing 24 million jabs. They also distributed some 27.6 million covid lateral flow tests and initiated a pandemic delivery service that ensured that 6 million vulnerable patients could access their medicine.
I think I am correct in saying that all Members present today would like to put on record their thanks and express their appreciation for all pharmacists, pharmacy dispensers, pharmacy technicians, medicines counter assistants, delivery drivers and administrative teams, who worked so hard during that difficult time to maintain the public’s access to the pharmaceutical services that they relied on. We, and the whole country, owe them a debt of gratitude. But we must also recognise that it is not just about thanking staff; it is also about recognising that the conditions they work in are crucial to the maintenance of a good service, whether a member of staff works in a larger or a smaller pharmacy provider.
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. The point he is making appears to be twofold: first, as well as responding to need, pharmacies can have a role in preventive medicine; and secondly, we now need to shout louder about that. Pharmacies did a heroic job during the pandemic and they continue to do so, but I am not sure that everyone knows as much as he clearly does about what we can do with and at a community pharmacy, and this debate serves the purpose of telling them.
Peter Dowd
The right hon. Gentleman makes a really valid point, and I will talk about some of that later. We have to recognise that, despite pharmacists trying to help people, they sometimes got dreadful abuse. We have to help them and protect them from abuse. That is part of addressing their working conditions. Vacancies in the sector are not caused simply by a shortage of pharmacists. It is also about which part of the space pharmacists work in. In other words, if I were a pharmacist, I would ask, “Do I like the conditions, pay and terms of my work?” If the answer is no, people move on.
Pharmacies are not just a shop; they are a healthcare setting and should be treated as such. They are a crucial part of the NHS ecosystem. I suspect that that is why a pharmacist needs to be on site all the time—this is not just a shop operating within a transactional context. Aside from covid, pharmacies are doing an incredible amount of work for their local communities every single day. In the most recent flu season, in 2021, pharmacies mobilised to deliver the biggest flu vaccination campaign on record, administering 4.85 million doses—over 2 million doses more than in the previous flu season, representing a 75% year-on-year increase.
The recently commissioned NHS blood pressure check service has already meant that 100,000 people have had their blood pressure checked in a pharmacy. Anecdotally, pharmacy representatives say they are already hearing that these checks have picked up cases of extremely high blood pressure in patients, who have then been referred on for treatment. This is a very highly valued healthcare intervention, which will save the NHS money in the long run, because it is cheaper to prevent disease than it is to treat it. More than that, however, I am convinced that these interventions will save lives.
Those two services on their own demonstrate pharmacy at its best. PwC estimates that the sector contributes around £3 billion in net value to society as a whole, and it works every day to improve the health and wellbeing of our local communities and our constituents. That is surely why we have the NHS in the first place.
What is the current financial health of the sector? It is no exaggeration to say that the community pharmacy network is under huge strain and that pharmacy staff and businesses are coming under increasing and, indeed, unsustainable pressure. Pharmacy funding is currently flat, with the total available funding envelope fixed at £2.592 billion. In practice, the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee reports that this means that real-terms funding is decreasing year on year, as inflationary pressures, rising business costs and increasing workload are not taken into account in that funding deal. Despite all that, many pharmacies have remained open, albeit under extremely difficult economic conditions.
However, the PSNC says that some businesses are reaching the limits of what is possible in terms of remaining viable, and that is already having an impact on patients. A recent survey on pharmacy pressures, conducted by the PSNC, found that 90% of pharmacy businesses are now unable to spend as much time with patients as they did before. Perhaps more worryingly, 92% of respondents said that patients were beginning to be negatively affected by the current pressures on their pharmacy. Despite pharmacies being a significant part of the NHS family—on average, at least 90% of their income comes from the NHS—pharmacy funding has not received the annual funding growth of 3.4% per annum that the rest of the NHS has been afforded.
Those in the sector feel that it is time to put things right. Indeed, the PSNC recently submitted a funding bid to the Department, making the case for extraordinary economic circumstances to be taken into account. When the Minister responds to the debate, I hope she will update Members on whether a funding increase will be granted to the sector.
The PSNC also estimates that the sector has had to make efficiency savings of between 37% and 50% in order to manage the funding squeeze and to keep providing the services it is contracted to deliver, but how much more pressure should we expect it to operate under? Do we want a bare-bones network that delivers only the very basics for patients, or do we want a vibrant, innovative sector that is constantly looking to the future to find new ways of working and providing a personalised and consistently high-quality service for patients, and that is fully integrated with other areas of healthcare and able to be consistently relied on in the future, as millions of people relied on it during the pandemic? Members can certainly guess what my preference is.
One thing is for certain: maintaining the status quo is not an option. So what does the future of community pharmacy look like? I would like to see pharmacies evolve into the go-to healthcare settings for help with minor ailments. There is no need for otherwise healthy patients with minor conditions to continue to see their GP. The truth is that they can get the same expert advice from their local pharmacist, who can exercise their clinical judgment and sometimes even prescribe medicines or offer an over-the-counter treatment at half the cost to the NHS. Indeed, the PSNC estimates that if this policy was rolled out nationwide, the NHS could save a staggering £640 million.
What is more, there would perhaps be no need for people to queue in a waiting room or to visit multiple locations. Pharmacies could be a single go-to place for diagnosing, advising on and supplying medicines for the treatment of minor ailments. As we all know from when we go abroad, that system works in Europe and much of the developed world, so why not here? It would be potentially game-changing for the future of pharmacy and more widely for primary care. I hope the Minister will comment on what plans, if any, the Government have to commission a service of that nature.
Aside from minor ailments, pharmacies are well placed to deliver much of the prevention agenda set out in the NHS long-term plan. They could and should be at the forefront of promoting and supporting self-care. Future services could include a national emergency contraception service, or even the treatment of minor injuries. Pharmacies could also offer help and support to manage long-term conditions. For instance, they could offer a whole host of valuable services for supporting patients with asthma, such as an inhaler technique service or annual asthma reviews. Community pharmacies could do even more than they already do to review patients’ medication and ensure that it is being taken appropriately. That is all extremely important, from a patient perspective.
For the population that is otherwise healthy, pharmacies could play an increased role in promoting health and wellbeing, and in preventing and reducing further healthcare demand in the first place. After all, healthy people do not often visit hospitals or GPs, but they probably pass by pharmacies on the high street regularly. I certainly do. Pharmacies could conduct NHS health checks with enhanced patient follow-up, and they could use personalised wellbeing plans to help people to make healthy lifestyle choices. Pharmacies could also replicate their success with the flu and covid vaccination programmes by expanding into the provision of others such as the shingles and pneumococcal vaccine and NHS travel vaccinations.
When it comes to what pharmacies can do to improve patient outcomes, the possibilities are endless. I know at first hand that, given the capacity and a good working environment, pharmacists and their teams are ready and willing to take on and promote all those new services, but that has to be put into the context of wider deliverability. Let me use one example. Amanda Pritchard, the NHS chief executive, recently announced funding for high street pharmacies to identify signs of early cancer, and for subsequent referrals and follow-up by clinical radiologists. That is a good initiative. Nonetheless, as Anne Brontë wrote,
“there is always a ‘but’ in this imperfect world”.
Workforce and equipment issues are obstacles to a successful roll-out, given that the radiology system is already under pressure. What about an audit and a replacement programme for our increasingly outdated and, in some cases, obsolete imaging equipment? There are no plans to tackle the annual 7% increase in complex imaging demand and no plan to meet the workforce demand, with a 30% shortfall in clinical consultant radiologists. That figure is going up, and there are backlog issues.
The only question is whether the Government will now enable the community pharmacy sector to fulfil its potential by supporting the range of possible services, and by providing it with appropriate support and funding. I sincerely hope that the answer will be yes.
Several hon. Members rose—
Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)
Order. The Front-Bench spokespersons are due to begin at 5.10 pm. There are four other Members who wish to speak, so you each have six minutes.
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
I will be mercifully brief, given the overture you have just offered the whole gathering, Sir Gary.
I want to do three things. The first is to endorse the comments of the hon. Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd) about the significance of community pharmacies. As I said in my brief intervention, that was drawn into sharp focus during the covid pandemic, when people began to realise quite the extent to which pharmacies and pharmacists are among the unsung heroes of the NHS. They provide services that are both proactive, in preventive medicine, and also reactive. They are often the first port of call when people seek medical advice.
The second point I want to make is that we should be saying much more about pharmacies. Indeed, it is important that we do, so that people know they can access those services. The point about celebrating the role of community pharmacists is not just to congratulate them on all they do, although that is worthy in and of itself, but to spread the word and evangelise about what they do to people who are not taking advantage of those services. I think particularly of the preventive services that the hon. Gentleman highlighted, which deal with things such as diabetes and blood pressure. We must ensure that there is early detection and diagnosis of conditions, so that people can be referred to other elements of the NHS and dealt with promptly. These are all aspects of the role of pharmacies, which deserve to be better known for the good that they can do.
My third and final point is informed by my visit to Holbeach community pharmacy, where I met staff in anticipation of the consideration of these matters, which I know the House takes seriously. Last week, I also met a pharmacist to discuss what more can be done. As the Government’s long-term health plan says, NHS England and the Government need to work together to see how the advantages of community pharmacies can be cemented and expanded. In saying that, I offer a word of warning: we should not see pharmacies as an alternative to GP services. We are having a debate in the main Chamber—almost as we speak—on those pressures, and I do not think that any of us would want to say that pharmacies should replace GP services. There is an overlap, but they are distinct aspects of healthcare. I know the Minister will want to reflect on that, and perhaps she could comment on it today. That is my caveat, but it is none the less important that the Government and NHS England look at how the services provided by community pharmacies can be cemented and built on.
The secret of this debate, if I may put it that way, can be expressed in two words: “pharmacies” and “community”. These pharmacies must be sufficiently accessible and plentiful—particularly in areas such as the ones that you and I represent, Sir Gary—so that people can gain all the benefits I have described, as close to home as is reasonable. There has been a trend in public services during my lifetime, including my political lifetime, towards centralisation and obliging people to travel further for the things they need to service their wellbeing. It needs to be reversed by the Government, who need to think much harder and more clearly about this issue. We need public services to be accessible to those who need them. That is particularly salient for the most vulnerable of our constituents, who find travelling more challenging.
Let us have more community pharmacies, more distributed services and more cottage hospitals—more things happening within communities. Community is the second part of what the hon. Gentleman has drawn to our attention today. It is the lifeblood of a healthy society that services the wellbeing of all, thereby adding to the common good.
Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab)
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd) for securing this important debate. He gave a detailed opening speech, so I will aim not to repeat the points that he has made.
I thank all pharmacists, pharmacy technicians and assistants for their hard work and dedication, and for their contribution to delivering first-class patient care in the community. As right hon. and hon. Members have said, community pharmacists are not just an integral part of our healthcare system; they are at the heart of our communities. After all, 1.6 million people visit around 11,400 pharmacies in England every day.
I would like to take the time to make two brief points on the future of community pharmacists. Before being elected as the Member of Parliament for Coventry North West, I worked in the NHS as a full-time cancer pharmacist, and I still regularly volunteer locally at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire as a pharmacist in cancer care. In my role, I have seen and experienced at first hand the vital role that pharmacists play in their communities.
Community pharmacists can dispense medication, deliver vaccinations, write prescriptions and consult on medication, to name just a few responsibilities. Above all, they are dependable and dedicated individuals who are excellent at providing medical knowledge and support for the communities that they work in. It is therefore deeply frustrating to hear about the steady erosion in the availability of community pharmacies.
Data from the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee, which will be providing constituency-based information at a drop-in event in Parliament on Tuesday 5 July, paints a very grim picture. Since 2016, 639 pharmacies have closed across England, and nine of them were lost in my city of Coventry. All the while, communities have needed quick medical support more than ever. We have heard in today’s Opposition day debate, and time and again from our constituents, about the crippling difficulties facing GP services.
The Government claim that they are doing all they can about the rising crisis in accessing GP appointments. However, that cannot be the case, as they have been ignoring the roles that community pharmacists can play in combatting this escalating crisis. Those were evident throughout the covid-19 pandemic, when pharmacists played a substantial role in the vaccine roll-out and in providing advice and support to patients during the three lockdowns. The pharmacy sector boasts a highly trained and clinically skilled workforce, who, according to the PSNC, could free up up to 40 million GP appointments each year. The Government need to make full use of that potential. Ministers should take another look at the role that pharmacists can play in supporting our GP services, rather than simply allowing pharmacies across the country to close for good. Smarter thinking here has the potential to make a massive difference; it could help to reduce waiting times, clear backlogs in the NHS and improve the availability of GPs. It would certainly make a big difference in my constituency of Coventry North West.
My second point, which has been raised briefly, is that we must put in place stronger protections for pharmacists in the workplace. Community pharmacists have reported that they do not feel safe in their workplace because of increasing levels of violence and abuse. A survey conducted by the Pharmacists’ Defence Association demonstrated the scale of the problem, with only two in 10 pharmacists reporting that they feel safe all the time at work. A follow-up survey in April showed that 44% of responding pharmacists have experienced physical or violent abuse in the past month, and that 85% have experienced verbal or racial abuse in the past month. That is disgraceful. Nobody should face that level of abuse in their place of work. Pharmacists and pharmacy teams need to feel safe. The Government must do all they can to ensure that adequate risk assessments and preventative safety measures are put in place, as well as taking a zero-tolerance approach when incidents occur.
I hope that the Minister takes into consideration the points I have raised today. The maintenance of community pharmacies and the wellbeing of pharmacists and their staff must be top priorities for this Government. Pharmacists play a crucial role in keeping their communities healthy, and the Government must do everything they can to ensure that they are protected and supported. I therefore hope that the Minister will look at how to better utilise community pharmacists to address the wider problems facing the NHS, and take immediate steps to protect pharmacists who are facing unacceptable abuse in the workplace.
Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Sir Gary. Community pharmacists have long been one of the unsung heroes of our NHS. Indeed, I would go as far as to say that they are a keystone species of the NHS, serving as a minor injuries unit and providing a vital prescribing service and essential healthcare out of hours for so many people around the country. They are also our most accessible form of healthcare. Their contribution throughout covid-19 was perhaps the best example of their heroic and accessible work. Community pharmacies were the first to step forward during our world-beating vaccine roll-out programme. Millions of people, just like me, had both their first and second jab from their local community pharmacy. Many of us regularly visit our pharmacies for covid tests, travel jabs, flu vaccines and a plethora of other essential healthcare services.
One of the less well known but most inspirational initiatives that community pharmacies have been involved in during the covid pandemic is their support for women experiencing domestic abuse. The Government-backed, pharmacy-led Ask for ANI scheme was a lifeline for many abused women. They could go into a pharmacy and ask for “ANI”, which was the codeword for getting a safe space to raise this important and personal issue.
It is their community nature that makes those pharmacies so valuable. Being on every high street, and having a smaller number of patients than a GP or medical centre, means they can be truly local and embedded in the area. In my constituency of Southend West, we have 18 brilliant pharmacies, each serving an average of 5,162 people. They thus serve a whopping 93,000 people a year. I am delighted that the Government have already recognised the important role that pharmacies play. Earlier this month, the NHS chief executive announced that community pharmacies will be funded to spot early signs of cancer and trained to refer people directly for scans and checks without seeing their GP. That is so welcome and important. Every Member of Parliament will be receiving a welter of emails complaining about access to GP appointments. The Valkyrie surgery, in my constituency, is clearly struggling to cope with the demand for appointments, and it is certainly not the only one struggling in Southend West.
Enabling people to access specialist services without going through a GP will massively ease pressure on GP services. It will also ease the pressure on our beleaguered accident and emergency services, which are crumbling under the pressure. Southend Hospital is safe for around 50 people going through A&E every day, but it is, on occasion, having to cope with 150 people. The obvious solution to those twin problems is to upskill our community pharmacies and ensure they have the funding and training they need to take the burden off our GPs, ambulances and hospitals.
Pharmacies already save 619,000 GP appointments every week; that is 32 million every year. The services they provide also save around 3.5 million people every year from visiting A&E and walk-in centres. We must go further to transform our pharmacies into an even more vital community resource. In Southend West we have the brilliant Belfairs pharmacy, run by an inspirational pharmacist called Mr Mohamed Fayyaz Haji—known locally as Fizz. Fizz provides a great range of services, including cholesterol and blood pressure checks, health advice and prescribing. He has recently acquired further premises so that he can expand into even greater levels of primary and community care, from ear syringing through to community phlebotomy, and to earlier diagnosis measures such as measuring prostate-specific antigen levels for prostate cancer, as well as electrocardiograms and ultrasound screening for sports injuries and pregnant women. That is exactly the sort of care that we want to be championing and supporting to ease the pressure on our other services. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister would like to join me in applauding Fizz’s efforts in Belfairs. That is a model for community pharmacy care around the country.
That sort of expansion is obviously not free. I applaud the fact that the Government are already investing in this area. I welcome the community pharmacy contractual framework, which will provide £2.5 billion annually. It is providing clarity and certainty about funding for the first time. I also welcome the new commitment for an additional £15.9 million to support the expansion of frontline pharmacy staff, providing people like Fizz with the training that they need to develop the skills of their staff for the benefit of everybody in the local community. I want to see this continue and for our pharmacies to be able to offer routine medical check-ups and routine injections and to be able to spot the early signs of serious illnesses and refer patients straight on to specialist departments in our local hospital.
In conclusion, pharmacies already provide a huge range of local services and they deserve greater recognition for the essential work that they do. The Government are already doing great work. I would like to see the Government go further with upskilling pharmacists, easing the pressure on our NHS and creating a healthier society all round. Pharmacies, especially in Southend West, are keen to be part of this mission and offer more to their local communities. I welcome every step to empower them to do just that.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Thank you, Sir Gary. It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. First, I congratulate the hon. Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd) on setting the scene so very well. This subject is something that I am sold on. It is something that I fully endorse, as others have done. We all see the real benefits of it. I have a great interest in the topic. I believe that community pharmacies are an untapped resource that we need to unlock with clever funding and foresight. Over the years, I have worked closely with a number of pharmacies in my constituency of Strangford and have been impressed by the expertise and the potential that is ready to be unlocked.
Pharmacies were involved in covid-19 jabs. They do flu jabs, blood pressure tests and asthma checks, as the hon. Member for Bootle mentioned. Staff can look out for signs of illness and can, if necessary, refer people on—because they know the limitations of the service as well—and that is a good thing. I got the girl from the office to send through details of some of the things that they can do right there and then; people do not have to go to A&E to get these things done. Pharmacies can deal with athlete’s foot, diarrhoea, haemorrhoids, head lice, groin infections, threadworms, thrush, earwax, mouth ulcers, scabies and verrucas. Staff can deal with all those things, at the initial stage, in pharmacies. Although some of those things are probably fairly personal, pharmacies do have the ability to deal with them.
During my time in the Northern Ireland Assembly, I was a strong advocate for what was then called the minor ailment scheme. Although that may still be in operation to a small degree, the potential for more is at our fingertips. The enthusiasm and energy that local pharmacies have really excites me. I get extremely excited about the potential, about what could happen, when I speak to owners such as James McKay of McKay Pharmacy in Newtownards to hear of the schemes that he has ready to go—making space for community physio and nutritionist provision in tandem with the local GP surgery that has premises abutting the pharmacy. There is scope for a real community facility—with much more provision than perhaps pharmacies, with their space, can provide—and that needs to be progressed and replicated.
I was not surprised to read that, on average, pharmacies undertake more than 58 million informal consultations per year. I had to get malaria tablets for a trip to Nigeria just a few months ago. In the past that would have meant a trip to a Belfast private doctor to get a private script, at a large cost. But this was a matter of popping down to my local pharmacy, answering some questions and getting the malaria tablets. Last week, I had a bit of toothache. Again, I went down and spoke to the lady. She gave me the tablets; she gave me the gum rub, and there and then seemed to have solved the problem. Similarly, I believe that those informal consultations prevent an additional 70,000 people from needlessly attending A&E or an NHS walk-in centre every week. Yet community pharmacies receive no specific funding for holding such consultations. That needs to change. I look to the Minister, as I always do. She understands these issues extremely well and, more often than not, she has the answers to the questions we ask.
Delivering minor ailment care through community pharmacies rather than GPs could result in a 53% total cost reduction to the NHS. The cost of providing 40 million minor ailments GP appointments per year is £1.2 billion; it would cost just £560 million to transfer those appointments to pharmacies as a community pharmacy consultation service. Those significant savings cannot be ignored. In this day and age, when finances are important, it is important we look at these issues. It is not simple, straightforward maths and is more than just a number exercise.
We must understand that community pharmacies are ready and willing, and local GP practices are calling out for pressure on surgeries and treatment rooms to be relieved, as well as that on accident and emergency departments. This change makes sense. It has been shown to work in the past and will work again in the future. Let us make the most of the expertise we have and take the pressure off our GP practices where it is possible to do so. We need to get treatment and training in place and get the right people doing the right things.
The future of community pharmacies is intrinsically linked with that of the NHS. We need to work smart as well as expecting them to work hard, and get the minor ailments scheme in a funded and good position. This is a tremendous opportunity to do something good with our health service, in a way that we save money and also deliver better care across the whole community. Everyone of us here today is excited at the possibility of what could happen. I am sure when she responds the Minister will give us some encouragement. I know one thing: if this happens, we all gain.
Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)
We move to our Front-Bench speakers. I call Steven Bonnar.
Steven Bonnar (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Gary. I thank the hon. Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd) for leading this debate, on a topic that is vitally important to every community across the four nations of the UK.
Local pharmacies are a lifeline for their communities and a vital part of our primary healthcare system. They are our most accessible point of contact with our NHS and are invaluable in keeping our constituents and our communities healthy and happy. In Scotland, community pharmacies are playing a commendable role in ensuring that millions of people can and do have their minor ailment needs addressed quickly without needing to go to their GP or a hospital.
The Scottish Government know that good quality healthcare is the cornerstone of a decent society and we will always strive to provide that for the people of Scotland. That is proven by the fact that every single prescription in Scotland is free, unlike here in England where charges apply. Currently, the charge is £9.35 per item—not per prescription, but per item. I know the Minister has said before that prescriptions are free to those who need them, but if she thinks people are not choosing how sick they can become, because of their finances, she is mistaken. The UK Government should follow the lead of the Scottish Government and abolish prescription charges in England. I will continue to ask for that for as long as I am here.
The cost of living crisis is hurting working families more and more each day, and it is only right that the first step to a future of fairer, more equitable healthcare practices in our pharmacies is for the UK Government to remove the charge that is associated with entering a pharmacy in the first place. The SNP appreciate the huge effort that the pharmacy profession has shown in response to the covid-19 pandemic and recognise that it further emphasised the role of all pharmacy team members as a key part of the health and social care workforce.
In July 2020, the Scottish Government introduced the NHS Pharmacy First service. I know the Minister is a massive fan. It is part of our NHS recovery plan to look to expand the range of common clinical conditions that can be treated by community pharmacists, avoiding unnecessary GP appointments and backlogs. That removes huge pressures from our GPs and our accident and emergency services and allows the public, from rural areas to inner cities, to access treatments more easily.
I am proud to note that across my constituency of Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill a number of pharmacies have gone over and above to enhance their practices and strengthen their clinical workforce to meet the demands of local people. Mackie’s pharmacy in Moodiesburn recently won the pharmacy of the year award for its dedication and revolutionary contributions to the technological advancement of pharmacy services throughout the covid-19 pandemic. Stepps Pharmacy has implemented a fantastic robot dispensing tool, making it more convenient for my constituents to obtain their prescriptions at any time of the day, to suit their busy schedules. Robertson’s Pharmacy in Coatbridge has been serving the community for generations. The North Road pharmacy in Bellshill has created
“vital relationships with local GP practices to reduce the pressures on the appointment system, and ensure that small ailments are seen to quickly and easily with a walk-in service. This includes late-night and weekend openings, ensuring local people are able to access services at their convenience.”
I place on the record my sincere thanks to all of them, and to every pharmacy across the constituency, for their ongoing work in our communities.
The development of pharmacists as independent prescribers, for example, demonstrates their evolving role and how they can be better utilised in the future. We heard from the hon. Members for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi) and for Bootle (Peter Dowd) about the difficult circumstances, including violence, that pharmacy staff often face. That is an important point, and it is why I am so proud of the Scottish Government’s Protection of Workers (Retail and Age-restricted Goods and Services) (Scotland) Act 2021. So far, this Government have resisted action in this area. I urge the Minister to think again about that, and to discuss it with the Justice team.
We also heard from the hon. Member for Southend West (Anna Firth) and the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), who outlined the array of services on offer from pharmacies, such as treatments for asthma, diabetes and allergies, assistance with medication, and medical advice on minor injuries. I thank all Members for their excellent contributions to this valuable debate.
Empowering pharmacists to utilise their clinical skills benefits both patients and the overall health service, and it must always be encouraged. Community pharmacists have the skills and the desire to play a much bigger role in primary care delivery, and they need the support to be able to do so. Eight years of real-terms decreases in funding, coupled with the increasing demands of the last few years, have meant that instead of taking on more clinical services to relieve pressure on GPs and accident and emergency departments, many pharmacies have had to limit or even reduce their offerings. In some cases, pharmacies are closing down.
To ensure that our community pharmacies have a bright future, I ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to take forward the recommendations of the all-party parliamentary pharmacy group, provide future-proofed funding against inflationary pressures and ensure that the level of support given to our pharmacies is always sustained. I also ask that the Pharmacy First approach is rolled out in England and Wales, and that the example of the Scottish Government in placing importance on primary care facilities is implemented here too.
Finally, to ensure the future of our community pharmaceutical practices, I ask that our healthcare professionals are given the pay increases that they deserve as recognition of their outstanding work during the pandemic and in the light of ever-increasing backlogs. The Scottish Government have been able to achieve much with less and less funding guaranteed through Barnett consequentials, so there is no excuse for the UK Government not to ensure the same for patients here in England. The future of our community pharmacies lies in the practices of responsible Governments. It is increasingly obvious that this UK Government need only look north to Scotland if they require inspiration.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. I add my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd) on securing the debate, and I congratulate him and Members across the House on putting forward a compelling argument for supporting our community pharmacy sector and increasing its role in the provision of localised community healthcare.
We have heard from Members from across the House that community pharmacies are the cornerstone of our local areas. For many people, community pharmacists are the most accessible healthcare professionals in the NHS, and their work is invaluable. We have heard that more than 89% of the population is estimated to have access to a community pharmacy within a 20-minute walk, but, as my hon. Friend rightly pointed out, access is significantly higher, at 99%, in areas of the highest deprivation.
We have always known that community pharmacies are important, but it was felt acutely during the pandemic. Community pharmacies helped to administer 24 million covid vaccines and were at the forefront of our response to the virus. In 2020-21, they delivered more than 4 million flu vaccinations—an increase of 75% on the year before. Indeed, as the hon. Member for Southend West (Anna Firth) pointed, community pharmacies carried us through the pandemic and reacted with extraordinary speed to a virus that shut down the rest of the country. It is therefore essential that we not only protect this vital community resource but equip it for the future.
As has been noted throughout the debate, there are two broad areas of concern within the sector, and I would appreciate the Minister’s assessment of them. The first relates to resources. Despite the additional demand for services, there has been no increase in funding for the pharmacy network since 2014, and there have been cuts of around £200 million since 2016. The current framework, agreed in 2019, has not been adjusted, despite the covid-19 pandemic, and we have seen central Government’s failure to adapt. This has resulted in pharmacies being unable to meaningfully invest in staff and has been detrimental to infrastructure development as well as innovation.
What is perhaps most worrying, however, is that an EY study in 2020 found that 40% of the large pharmacy chains sampled were operating at a loss. That is not sustainable, and unless action is taken, we could see pharmacies shut and that vital point of access for people close. I think there is consensus across all parties, including from the Minister, that we want to avoid that, so I would be grateful if she could outline what steps the Government are taking to better support community pharmacies and what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of fiscal pressures on the sector. Furthermore, has the Department of Health and Social Care made any assessment of the additional pressures that the pandemic has placed on pharmacies? Will that inform the next community pharmacy contractual framework?
The second issue I would like to focus on is strategy and workforce. That will not come as a surprise to the Minister, given the Opposition day debate in the main Chamber earlier. There has been a distinct lack of overarching Government strategy when it comes to workforce planning over the past decade, including in relation to community pharmacies. The community pharmacy model that the NHS needs has drastically changed, as have the needs of patients. As far as I am aware, there has not been any strategy outlining the Government’s ambitions for the sector. Instead, we have seen short-term thinking, a real-terms funding decline and radio silence on the future of this vital resource. That needs to change, and I impress on the Minister the urgency of working with her DHSC colleagues to develop a strategy for community pharmacies that is fit for the future. Crucially, it needs to address the workforce issues that have been reported by parts of the sector, particularly in rural areas, where the increase in patient demand is putting pharmacies under more pressure.
I understand that the Government will argue that extra resource is going into the NHS, but we must not get into the trap of taking community pharmacies for granted, and we need to build a resilient, innovative and adaptive service for the future. We must utilise community pharmacies to tackle the key issues of our time. For example, many pharmacies already offer a range of services geared towards tackling health inequalities, but the local commissioning structures mean that access is not equal throughout the country. There is a real opportunity for central Government to step in and to ensure that no matter where people live, they can access weight-management services, emergency contraception, smoking-cessation services and much more.
Community pharmacies are already embedded in communities. They are trusted by local people. We need, therefore, to ensure that the Government give full support to the sector. Every Member who has spoken would wholeheartedly support the Minister to make sure that happens.
Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)
I kindly ask the Minister to leave 30 seconds for Mr Dowd to speak at the end.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Maria Caulfield)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. I thank the hon. Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd) for securing this debate. He is pushing at an open door, as I am a huge supporter of community pharmacists.
The evangelising of my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) is definitely working. Community pharmacies are front and centre of the changes we want when developing primary care. Of course, they are already a central part of the NHS, delivering vital primary care services at the heart of every community throughout the country and ensuring that patients have timely access to medicine. That is one of the lesser elements of the services we have talked about, but it is an important element that keeps patients well and out of hospital, enables them to get discharged safely and prevents readmission.
Community pharmacies are offering more services and they are accessible to all. They are key in providing self-care support, thereby allowing individuals to manage their own healthcare needs and, in turn, increasing capacity for the NHS overall. Community pharmacists are an easily accessible and trusted part of the NHS: a team of highly skilled, qualified, experienced healthcare professionals. There are more than 11,000 community pharmacies across England, 80% of which are around a 20-minute walk from most people’s homes. I am committed to making the best possible use of their resources and talent.
As many Members said, we saw the clear difference that community pharmacies made during the covid pandemic. They stepped up to implement a medicines delivery service for shielding and isolating patients. They implemented Pharmacy Collect, making lateral flow tests widely available to the public. At the height of the vaccination programme there were more than 1,500 community pharmacy-led covid vaccination centres. There is no doubt that they stepped up to the mark and showcased what they could offer.
We have a clear vision for community pharmacy. In 2019, we agreed the landmark five-year deal, the community pharmacy contractual framework, which commits to £2.592 billion of funding for the sector. It also sets out a joint vision for the Government, NHS England and the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee for how pharmacy services will support the delivery of the NHS long-term plan. We are in negotiations for year 4 of that deal, so I am limited in what I can say about the funding, but I can reassure Members that the PSNC is negotiating hard and we want to work with it to expand services. Obviously, it is keen for funding to be attached.
Sir John Hayes
It is vital that, as the Minister described, the service is integrated. GPs must continue to offer out-of-hours services, weekend services and, most salient of all, face-to-face encounters with their patients. Services do a great job but that does not mean that GPs should not do all those things.
Maria Caulfield
Absolutely—it is not an either/or situation. We have enough capacity and patients to expand community pharmacy services, but that does not mean that we do not also need to support GPs and other primary care providers.
I thank the team at the Department of Health and Social Care; often, their work is not recognised, but they are working hard to develop some of the services that we have talked about. The community pharmacy consultation service went live in November. Patients can dial 111 and be directed to a community pharmacist for help with minor ailments or medication. We have extended that to GP surgeries, so now a receptionist can make an appointment at the local pharmacist for minor illness consultations.
It has been estimated that 20 million appointments in general practice alone do not require a GP—that does not mean we do not need GPs—and pharmacists can look after those conditions. The introduction of the scheme has been slightly slower than we would have liked, so there is work being done to help to overcome some of the barriers to referrals, because once they see their community pharmacists, patients have a positive experience.
In addition, the discharge medicines service enables hospitals to refer discharge patients to community pharmacists for support with their medicine. The evaluation of this service indicates that for every 23 consultations, one readmission is prevented. Where patients are readmitted, their stays are reduced by six days on average, which I think we can all agree is of huge value. We also have the blood pressure check service, which enables people with high blood pressure to be managed by their local community pharmacist, offering blood pressure checks.
We also have the stop smoking service to enable patients who started their stop smoking journey in hospital to continue with a community pharmacist, and we are looking at developing the role of community pharmacy teams, because it is not just the pharmacist who has clinical knowledge and skills. We are working in a number of areas to upskill the whole community pharmacy team so that they can deliver more and use their skills in a better way.
As has been mentioned, we now have NHS Direct cancer referrals, which community pharmacists will be able to take. Just to reassure the hon. Member for Bootle, we have 160 community diagnostic centres, which will be increasing the capacity to do some of those diagnostic tests, and we have already had 1 million visits to those centres. We are not just expecting pharmacists to refer into existing services; we are expanding the routes for diagnosis as well.
My hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Anna Firth) beautifully told the story of Ask for ANI. It is so vital that a woman can go into a pharmacist, just say those few words and get help—they might not be able to go to a GP practice, because sometimes the help they are asking for might be more obvious.
We also have the minor ailments service, which is being rolled out throughout the country, so pharmacies are delivering more and more. The hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Steven Bonnar) knows that I am a pharmacy first supporter. I hate to admit it, but Scotland has taken the lead in that, although we are not afraid to learn lessons if that means learning from what Scotland has done.
On the Fuller stocktake and the future of primary care, just to reassure colleagues, we are not just looking at how general practice looks in the future; community pharmacy will also play a key part in that model. With the integrated care system set to go live on 1 July, we are working with those who will be making commissioning decisions in local communities to set out how that future will look.
We are considering all options for community pharmacy and how we build on the progress we have already made. It is important to say that although we have made progress, there is a lot more that can be done. We are developing new standards for the initial education and training of pharmacists, which are set to be implemented shortly, so that from 2026 all newly qualified pharmacists will be able to be independent prescribers—an essential skill that will help to deliver and develop the service further. For those who are not currently prescribers but would like to be, Health Education England is supporting the existing pharmacy workforce to undertake the required training and upskilling, and £15.9 million of funding support has been made available.
We are also looking at the use of patient group directions, because pharmacists have specifically asked for that, so there are a number of measures in place. We are listening to the community pharmacy community, and where we can make changes quickly and easily, we will.
Just to touch on the issue of violence, I want to be really clear that there is zero tolerance for abuse and violence against community pharmacists—and, indeed, against all primary care staff, whether receptionists, GPs or community pharmacists themselves. I also want to put on the record our thanks to the hon. Member for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi) for her work in the NHS as a pharmacist and the experience she has brought to this debate. I reassure hon. Members that we are on a clear journey and we will be supporting community pharmacy going forward.
Peter Dowd
I thank the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), my hon. Friends the Members for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi) and for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne), and the hon. Members for Southend West (Anna Firth), for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Steven Bonnar).
I think we have reached a degree of consensus. I hope we can move forward with that consensus and that if we revisit this issue in six or 12 months, we will have made significant progress. I also thank the Minister for certain of the reassurances she gave. When we come back, let us review this and see how it is moving on, because that is our job, and I know that the Minister recognises that.
Written Statement
(2 years, 6 months ago)
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MOD Climate Change and Sustainability Strategic Approach: One Year On
(2 years, 6 months ago)
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The Minister for Defence Procurement (Jeremy Quin)
Defence is already being impacted by climate change. We must face the reality of operating in a changing world and adapt accordingly. In doing so, we will need to preserve our capabilities and operational advantage.
Against this backdrop. I launched the Ministry of Defence’s climate change and sustainability strategic approach (CC&S), in March 2021, to build on existing work and to form the basis of our response. Defence has made substantial progress in delivering the approach’s initial action plan. In the last year we have:
Commenced the process of expanding our force development scenarios to capture the dynamic nature of the environment in which we will operate in the future to ensure maintenance of our operational capability.
Engaged with allies and partners to build a shared understanding, exchanged methods and approaches to response to how climate change is reshaping the global security landscape.
Developed a sustainable support strategy to reduce the vulnerability of UK Defence while maintaining or improving our capability, productivity and efficiency. This includes six specific initiatives on: operational self-sustainment, resilience of the supply chain, reducing the lifetime impact of defence commodities and an operational energy and fuel strategy on how we power our ships, aircraft and vehicles in the future.
Established a Defence Suppliers Forum CC&S Steering Group to build a common understanding with industry partners of the scale and approach to our collective decarbonisation challenge.
Updated our built estate policy and standards for new builds to a higher standard of energy efficiency mitigating future energy cost and resulting in lower carbon emissions.
Commenced the next phase of the development of a natural capital asset register for the rural estate, development of a woodland masterplan and work with our tenant farmers through the DEFRA Environmental Land Management Scheme.
Appointed a director of climate change and sustainability to co-ordinate activity and, drawing on expertise across the services, to drive delivery across defence and a non-executive director for sustainability to the Defence Safety and Environment Committee to provide an external challenge on the delivery of our approach.
Established a growing network within Defence of over 1,000 members to help identify opportunities and embed our sustainable ambitions.
Expanded the living lab concept exemplified at RAF Leeming to test and prioritise de-carbonisation and wider sustainability interventions as well as looking at the skills need.
This work now needs to be expanded to fully adapt how Defence operates and if needs be, fights in the changing environment and supports its capabilities. We have made a start on what needs to be a systemic and ongoing campaign.
[HCWS121]
Grand Committee
Arrangement of Business
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Geddes) (Con)
If, as is quite likely, there is a Division in the Chamber, the Committee will adjourn as soon as the Division Bells are rung and resume after 10 minutes.
Covid-19 and the Use and Scrutiny of Emergency Powers (Constitution Committee Report)
(2 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Drake
That the Grand Committee takes note of the Report from the Constitution Committee COVID-19 and the use and scrutiny of emergency powers (3rd Report, Session 2021-22, HL Paper 15).
Baroness Drake (Lab)
My Lords, in June 2021, the Constitution Committee published its report COVID-19 and the Use and Scrutiny of Emergency Powers, following a broader inquiry into the constitutional implications of Covid-19 chaired by my esteemed noble friend Lady Taylor of Bolton. The social, economic and health implications of the pandemic were profound, the constitutional impact significant. The committee examined the emergency powers sought by the Government, and the extent to which they were used and how. We wanted to determine if there were lessons to be learned for future uses of the emergency powers, their safeguards and the processes for scrutinising them. We addressed four main dimensions: the legislative approach taken and parliamentary scrutiny afforded; co-ordination between the UK Government and the devolved Administrations; the impact of rapid changes to the law on the public and public authorities; and lessons learned. Inevitably, for any Government, national responses to such a fast-moving crisis can sometimes be sub-optimal. However, any Government must be open to learning lessons to inform future contingency planning. Witnesses told us that much could be done differently the next time.
I turn to the legislative approach taken and parliamentary scrutiny. The pandemic unquestionably necessitated a swift response from the Government. Two Acts of Parliament were used by the Government to make regulations: the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984, and the Coronavirus Act 2020. However, scrutiny by Parliament was significantly restricted due to the procedures in the 1984 and 2020 Acts and Covid-driven changes to parliamentary proceedings. A large volume of new legislation came into effect as secondary legislation, much through public health regulations placing unprecedented restrictions on ordinary activities and freedoms, often without parliamentary approval. Of the 425 Covid regulations by the end of the 2019-21 Session, 398 were subject to the “made negative” or “made affirmative” procedures, and 86 were made using the urgency procedures under the 1984 Act. Regulations under the 2020 Act were more targeted on matters such as business tenancy forfeiture and local government elections.
The Government relied on the powers in the 1984 Act, rather than the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, and rather than incorporating a Covid-specific lockdown power in the Coronavirus Act 2020. Either of these latter two options could have resulted in greater parliamentary scrutiny and legal clarity. As a committee, we took the view that, if the use of the Civil Contingencies Act was not considered practically desirable, the Government should have voluntarily subjected themselves to comparable parliamentary scrutiny safeguards in pandemic-related legislation. We recommended that Parliament be consulted on any future draft legislation prepared on a contingency basis to address a potential emergency, ensuring that it provides for sufficient parliamentary scrutiny.
I turn to co-ordination between the UK Government and the devolved Administrations. Joint action was necessary to respond to a UK-wide crisis. The Coronavirus Act 2020 was the product of collaboration, passed with the consent of all three devolved legislatures. In the early stages, the First Ministers of Scotland and Wales and the First Minister and Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland were invited to attend COBRA meetings. Ministers from the devolved Administrations attended meetings of five new ministerial implementation groups—MIGs—that looked at aspects of the coronavirus response. The different Administrations’ Chief Medical Officers and Chief Scientific Advisers met regularly, sharing information. The chairs of the Scottish and Welsh advisory groups on SAGE outputs were also participants in SAGE.
As the UK moved out of the first lockdown, however, although co-ordination on some devolved areas continued, such as scientific advice, procuring equipment and virus testing, intergovernmental co-operation appeared to decrease significantly. Each Administration started to take independent decisions about lockdown restrictions. On 10 May 2020, the Prime Minister announced the change from “stay at home” to “stay alert” but did not make clear that it applied to England only. This change was apparently made without informing the devolved Administrations. The UK Government set out three phases for easing lockdown restrictions in England. The Northern Ireland Executive set five, the Scottish Government four, and the Welsh Government opted for a traffic light system.
By early June 2020, both COBRA and the MIGs ceased to meet, replaced by two new Cabinet committees. Neither included representatives from the devolved Administrations. Yet the Cabinet Manual makes it clear that this is permitted on an exceptional basis to deal with an emergency response. Differences arose between parts of the UK on the countries exempt from quarantine restrictions and the international travel restrictions. This strained intergovernmental co-operation contributed to a lack of clarity about what rules applied where, causing difficulties for enforcement and compliance.
There is much to learn from the pandemic period to inform improving intergovernmental working. The Secretary of State, Michael Gove, recognised this when he
“described the pandemic as ‘a learning process for everyone’, raising broader questions about ‘making sure the whole devolution settlement works’. He said the UK Government intended to address this through reforms to intergovernmental mechanisms”.
Can I ask the Minister what consideration has been given to how the new intergovernmental relations arrangements could be deployed in the event of another national emergency similar to that created by the pandemic?
Turning to the impact of rapid changes to the law, the Constitution Committee noted that legal changes introduced were often set in guidance, or announced during media conferences, before Parliament had an opportunity to scrutinise them. The law was sometimes misrepresented in these public-facing forums, leading to a lack of clarity about what was legally enforceable. This posed challenges for the police and local government, sometimes leading to wrongful criminal charges. Guidance and media statements, when used appropriately, can enhance access to the law by simplifying legal complexity in a format that is easy to digest, but the committee found that, throughout the pandemic, government guidance and ministerial statements failed to set out the law clearly, mis-stated the law, or laid claim to legal requirements that did not exist.
Sometimes, public health advice was incorrectly enforced by the police as though it were law, and public authorities incorrectly suggested that guidance had the force of law. The report contains the detail of our findings but, as an example, on 23 March 2020, the Prime Minister announced the first England-wide lockdown in a televised address. The following day, the then Secretary of State for Health stated:
“These measures are not advice; they are rules. They will be enforced, including by the police”.—[Official Report, Commons, 24/3/20; col. 241.]
The announcement caused confusion about their meaning, with one police force threatening to search individual shopping baskets in supermarkets to check for non-essential items.
The UK Government’s website included the headline rules:
“Stay at home. Only go outside for food, health reasons, or work (but only if you cannot work from home). If you go out, stay 2 metres … away from other people at all times. Wash your hands as soon as you get home.”
The first instruction was a simplified explanation of a legal obligation. The second and third instructions were public health advice. The chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council later had to clarify that the two-metre rule was not a legal requirement enforceable by police. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee also expressed concern that the distinction between legislation and guidance had been unclear, citing further examples.
New strains of the virus and spikes in infections made urgent legislative changes necessary, but sometimes seemingly non-urgent measures were introduced at short notice. In other cases, the urgency appears to have resulted from a lack of preparedness. The repeated repeal and amendment of Covid regulations added to confusion as to what restrictions applied at any one time. For example, on 2 and 3 September 2020 the “protected area” covered by the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Blackburn with Darwen and Bradford) Regulations were amended twice in 12 hours. The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Wearing of Face Coverings in a Relevant Place) (England) Regulations 2020 were amended by three different statutory instruments made on 22 and 23 September 2020. The “all tiers” regulations were amended by eight further statutory instruments between December 2020 and March 2021.
In summary, legal uncertainty, short notice of new measures, and repeated amendment and revocation of secondary legislation combined in certain instances to undermine parliamentary scrutiny and made it difficult for public authorities tasked with enforcement to understand the law. Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary reported:
“At times, the introduction of, and variation to, new legislation and guidance affected the police service’s ability to produce guidance and to brief staff. This inevitably led to some errors or inconsistencies in approach.”
The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee recommended that an evaluation of how information about which instruments were superseded or had lapsed could have been provided more effectively. In our report, we strongly recommended that government information
“during a public health emergency conform to”
certain
“essential conditions to enable people … to understand the law”,
one such being
“A consistent approach to use of the terms ‘advice’, ‘guidance’, ‘recommendation’, ‘rules’ and ‘restrictions’”,
because those descriptions clearly did not have the clarity that people needed, and that in enacting any further restrictions,
“the Government should be guided by the principles of certainty, clarity and transparency”.
Finally, as to lessons learned, the Government used a wide range of emergency measures to respond to the pandemic, many introducing significant curbs on civil liberties and businesses. Scrutiny of these regulations by Parliament was significantly restricted. The chair of the public inquiry into the handling of Covid says that public hearings are unlikely to begin before 2023. Can the Minister give an indication of how long the inquiry will take? We recommended a review of the use of emergency powers by the Government, and their scrutiny by Parliament. It should take place in advance of the public inquiry, not after, so that the review can inform both the public inquiry and the planning for future emergencies. Can the Minister tell us the Government’s position on this recommendation from the committee?
It is unquestionable that the Government faced an enormous challenge with Covid-19, and the first responsibility of any Government is to protect their citizens. However, I refer to a conclusion that we made:
“All governments should recognise that, however great or sudden an emergency … powers are lent, not granted, by the legislature to the executive, and such powers should be returned as swiftly and completely as possible, avoiding any spill over into permanence.”
That conclusion is probably still valid while we wait to see the outcome of the various reviews that the Government are engaged in. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Baroness Foster of Oxton (Con)
My Lords, the use of emergency powers is defined in the report as follows:
“Emergency legislation may be necessary in exceptional circumstances, but its use should be limited given its significant constitutional consequences.”
In addition:
“All governments should recognise that, however great or sudden an emergency may be, exceptional powers are lent, not granted, by the legislature to the executive, and such powers should be returned as swiftly and completely as possible, avoiding any spill over into permanence … . The vast majority of these regulations became law before being laid before Parliament; in other words, before members of either House”
had the chance to see them. The question is: did this need to be the case, notwithstanding the urgency with which we were required to act?
What is clear is that we can never implement emergency powers in such a cavalier fashion in future. The consequences of lockdowns on health, both physical and mental, and on so many vulnerable adults and children were appalling. Despite many scientists being aware of the effects that would take place, they said nothing. This led to millions of people waiting for treatment, some dying prematurely through lack of referral. Even now, all this time later, we are left with accident and emergency clogged up trying to sort out the mess.
The financial cost to the economy of three lockdowns was £370 billion, with many small and medium-sized businesses going bankrupt and many in the private sector losing their jobs. Thankfully, many have managed to find jobs—which will not do them much good today, if we look at the appalling actions taking place across the country.
Although I criticise my own Government, which of course I can do, while acknowledging the challenges of the decisions they had to make, I would certainly not allow the opposition parties off the hook, because too often, as far as I am concerned, this situation was turned into a political football. If it had been left to many of them, I suspect we would still be in lockdown.
My second point is on school closures. This was never necessary. Sweden and many other countries kept children in school not only for academic purposes but because it meant that their parents could carry on working to prevent the economy closing down. The huge issue of safeguarding was paramount but many children fell through the net, as we have seen from so many recent horror stories concerning child abuse and even murder. We can never allow a situation like that to happen again, where, in fact, many of the trade unions decided who could attend school and who could not.
Finally, there is much in this report to welcome. I hope that one of the most critical lessons will be regarding scrutiny, which has been raised, and making sure that Parliament can properly scrutinise measures and ensure legal clarity where necessary. The blur between guidelines and legally enforceable procedures and requirements left many police forces not even understanding the difference.
I hope nothing like this will happen again in our lifetimes, but if it does we need to have an open and frank debate. We must always be the order of the day, and I hope that, for once, lessons will be learned so that we can deal with future emergencies in a much more grown-up and responsible way, with all countries across the United Kingdom adhering to one set of regulations, while avoiding some of the knee-jerk fear- mongering by too many in the media and in medicine who did nothing to calm a most difficult situation. I hope I never witness anything like that again.
Baroness Bryan of Partick (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Select Committee for another excellent report. While it is a shame that it has taken so long for it to be considered, many of the issues raised remain very relevant and have constitutional implications that are very much alive and unresolved.
The report rightly identifies that, by its very nature, a global pandemic cannot be contained within borders; there had to be joint action and intergovernmental collaboration. But the report quite rightly states, in paragraph 92:
“A core principle underpinning the UK’s devolution arrangements is the respect that the UK Government and the devolved administrations must show for each other’s areas of competence.”
It notes that communication and co-ordination had been “close and effective”, while at other times that had been “less evident”.
One important lesson is that during the time when the First Ministers participated in COBRA there appeared to be successful co-ordination. What made this effective was a commitment to a shared approach and shared decision-making. Once this broke down, the result was confusion and a lack of trust. We have to ask why, at this point, a joint ministerial committee was not tasked with continuing the collaboration.
The House of Commons Scottish Affairs Committee recommended that there be regular intergovernmental meetings, but this was not accepted by government. With hindsight, this was a missed opportunity that could have built bridges between those making decisions —rather than barriers, which broke down co-operation.
Living in Scotland, I was aware of the confusion among businesses and individuals as to which rules covered the whole UK, which were Scottish regulations and which applied only to one local authority area. The First Minister of Wales, Mark Drakeford, called the situation “utterly shambolic”. It was particularly difficult for people living and working across borders.
I believe the main reason for confusion is the asymmetry of the UK. When the Prime Minister speaks on national television, is he speaking as the Prime Minister of the UK or as the equivalent of the First Minister of England? He does not generally make that distinction, so it is not surprising that others, including the London-based media, do not acknowledge it either.
During 2021 we saw tensions between the devolved Governments and the UK Government, but also between English regions and the Government. Central government imposed different regulations on different regions at different times. Because of the varying devolution deals, this resulted in different levels of support and compensation. It has been suggested that this has raised interest in and support for more regional devolution. Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, has argued that all parts of the north need substantial regional devolution. He suggests that the House of Lords needs to be an elected senate of the nations and regions.
The committee’s recommendations have been enhanced by its more recent report, Respect and Co-operation: Building a Stronger Union for the 21st Century. I very much look forward to being able to discuss that report—I hope without such a long wait. We have yet to see whether the new structures for intergovernmental relations will contribute to more effective systems of collaboration.
I am sorry that the Government’s response to the report did not cover the sections on co-ordination across the UK, including relations between central and local government. The worry is that, unless there is an acknowledgement that each part of the governance of the UK should be treated with esteem and not simply be subjected to the vagaries of central government, the tensions that occurred in response to Covid will happen again and contribute to the growing lack of trust.
Can the Minister give any explanation as to why there was no response to the concerns raised in recommendations 16 to 20? Could he also say what lessons have been learned from the way in which decisions were taken during this period? Finally, will he share his thoughts on the views expressed by Andy Burnham about regional devolution and a second Chamber of the nations and regions?
Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)
My Lords, I am the other Member of this Committee who was a member of the committee whose report we are considering. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, for the careful way in which she introduced our report and highlighted the particular matters on which the Minister is being asked to reply.
For myself, I begin by referring to the Government’s response, which I have read with great care and much of which I found reassuring, but two or three points arise out of it that I might mention briefly. The first arises out the paragraph where reference is made to our recommendation 6 that, among other things:
“The pre-legislative scrutiny of what became the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 provides a clear model”
for the approach to pre-legislative scrutiny. I am not sure that the response really picks up the point we were trying to make. It refers to “changes” to the Civil Contingencies Act, but it does not recognise that the way that Act was dealt with was a model. It also raises a question, on which the Minister might feel able to reply, as to whether it is proposed that changes should be made to that Act in the light of the experience of the Covid crisis. That might be desirable, but it would be interesting to know whether changes are in prospect.
The other paragraph that is worth mentioning is on our recommendation 38. It does not quite pick up the point we sought to make. Our recommendation was that
“all future ministerial statements and Government guidance on changes to … restrictions clearly state the geographic extent of the new requirements.”
The response deals with the Covid-19 guidance but does not mention ministerial statements. It is right to say that the guidance, on the whole, was clear—it was written down and made it clear to which part of the UK it referred—but the ministerial statements from time to time did not make it clear that they referred only to England and Wales. That is a matter of concern for the reasons already mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Bryan of Partick. Those are the only two points in the response, apart from the third point, that might require further comment.
The third point is the one that the noble Baroness, Lady Bryan of Partick, mentioned, which is that there is no mention in the response of chapter 3 of the report. It is that chapter on which I wish to concentrate, for that reason among others. The chapter was of particular interest to me because, like her, I spent the period when we were in lockdown at home in Scotland. That meant that, especially during the early days, when we sought information about what was going on and what we should do, I found myself trying to obtain it from two sources.
First, there were daily briefings from Downing Street, usually at about 5 pm, which were initially presented by the Prime Minister and, later and more frequently, by the Secretary of State Mr Hancock, against a backdrop of union flags. As has already been mentioned, that tended to suggest that what was being said there applied to the union as a whole. But we also had briefings from St Andrew’s House in Edinburgh, which appeared on BBC Scotland, usually just after midday, and were invariably conducted by Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister. I believe that similar briefings were being presented from Cardiff by the First Minister for Wales, Mark Drakeford, and from Northern Ireland by the appropriate Minister. In their case, if there were flags, they were appropriate to the parts of the UK to which they related.
There is a question there about whether it is right that, where statements are being made that apply to England and Wales only, they should be set against a background of the union flag without making it absolutely clear that they apply to England and Wales only. Not to do so is the product of confusion.
I take these briefings as a starting point because they were a powerful demonstration—as we say in our report, “unprecedented” in its intensity—of devolution in action. In paragraph 85 we refer to “particularly visible” devolution arrangements in Scotland, and in paragraph 115 to a “dramatic increase in awareness”. As we know, health and education are devolved in Scotland, as they are in Wales and Northern Ireland, so here was the First Minister in each case fulfilling their constitutional roles when they were telling those in those parts of the United Kingdom how they should react to the emergency.
It was clear to us in the evidence we received that the level of co-ordination was good to begin with. There were cases when we really understood that what was being said applied to both nations and that there had been proper discussions between the relevant Ministers and their advisers. The messages from both were consistent with each other: you must stay at home, we were told. That message applied across the United Kingdom, and rightly so, and was promulgated on road signs and so on.
However, as our report points out, there came a later stage, as we began to relax from the lockdown, when different guidance and rules were promulgated north and south of the border. This was because the different Administrations were taking different decisions, looking at the needs and demands to protect the health service, which were different depending on which part of the UK you lived in and as to what needed to be done. We had different rules about the number of people who could gather, where they could go and so on.
In the evidence we received there is a suggestion that, in this situation, co-ordination was not as effective as it should have been. The United Kingdom took a lead in the co-ordination of vaccine development and procurement, much to its credit and to the benefit of all throughout the UK. That was a definite benefit of co-ordination when it was needed, but there seemed to be an increasing disregard, particularly in Whitehall, for the need to co-ordinate the way that restrictions were being adjusted and promulgated. Reference has already been made to the “stay at home” message being changed to “stay alert” in England and Wales, but not in the devolved Administrations; and to research by a school in Cardiff about the extent of the failure to understand the situation in Wales in the light of that change of message.
I do not want to further elaborate the point about confusion, which the noble Baronesses covered very effectively, but I ask the Minister to think about whether there is any value in reflecting on the way the devolved Administrations reacted to the situation according to their own rules and guidance. My impression is that there was less changing of the rules in Scotland than there was in England and Wales. The “rapid changes” referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, were not reflected in the way that this was handled in Scotland, so there may be lessons that could be learned from looking across the border.
There is another matter that we do not with deal in our report, but for which I can draw on my own experience: there were, and still are, problems for those who live in Scotland about obtaining proof of one’s Covid vaccination status in a form that would be acceptable outside Scotland. This is because NHS Scotland has its own system, which can be accessed by a mobile app, distinct from the system used in England. I have no doubt that they are very similar, but the fact is that they are different systems.
The result is that there have been times when people have travelled abroad, taking the Scottish app with them, only to find that it is not acceptable in France, for example, or any other place where you need to establish your status. I personally found, when I went to Italy in the recess, that the information on my NHS Scotland app was not acceptable to the airline I was using, although it was acceptable when I went to its desk. This situation is being overcome gradually, but I suggest that someone should have a look at the way these two apps failed to interact with each other so that there will be less uncertainty for people travelling abroad—particularly from the devolved Administrations —as to whether their vaccine status would be properly recognised.
Leaving these points aside, I invite the Minister to reassure us that the Government have noted carefully what we say about the practical difficulties that were created for members of the public by the divergences that emerged—occasionally accidentally—between the UK position in England and Wales and the position in the other devolved Administrations. There certainly were occasions when the need for co-operation was overlooked in Westminster when rules were being made or relaxed. I accept, and fully recognise and understand, that there were policy differences that made this difficult, especially in the later stages when it was quite clear that the Prime Minister was conspicuously keener than the other Administrations to lift restrictions to get the economy going. Nevertheless, the fact that they existed means that there were occasions when the rationale behind the differences was not apparent to members of the public.
This report and the forthcoming inquiries are all about lessons for the future. There is much else in the report that needs to be considered carefully, but there is a message here, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bryan, made clear, about devolution and the necessity of close co-operation at a ministerial level, as well as between officials. That was plain to see in the early stages, but, as I mentioned, it seemed to be increasingly absent as time went on. “Respect and co-operation” is the key message; it is the way in which we are best guided for living with devolution and maintaining the strength of the union, which is so important in the current climate. I hope that the experience of the pandemic will help to reinforce that message about co-operation and the need for it right across the board, to the benefit of everyone in all parts of the United Kingdom.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I congratulate the Constitution Committee on this excellent report. I certainly recommend that it is read widely in the public sphere because it is important to try to assimilate what happened and to learn lessons. However, before I recommend that it is read, I might have to issue a warning because, despite my long-standing hostility to “Generation Snowflake”-like trigger warnings, I must say that reading the report brought me out in a rash of post-traumatic stress disorder. All those bad memories that I tried to supress were brought to the fore with my horror at the ease with which civil liberties were suspended and intrusive legislation transformed the minutiae of everyday life. This was something I would rather forget, but we cannot forget it. The unprecedented attack on the freedom of ordinary activities for which, overnight, we needed permission to do anything—from walking outside to visiting loved ones in hospital or having a pint with mates—is something that we do not actually want to remember, but should never, ever forget, because we should never, ever repeat it.
The fact that public life was closed down has totally discombobulated society. The report reminded me of all those last-minute changes. I remember when the rule of six regulations were published only 30 minutes before the law came into force, making it a criminal offence to have more than six people gathering outside, because I was organising to have six people gathering outside; I was the seventh and did not know what to do. There was a sense of confusion and panic.
The report notes:
“1 in 5 … did not know what Tier their area was in”.
I never understood the tier system; I got completely confused. It says that
“only 12% knew the correct amount of time a person is required to self-isolate”
if they tested positive, and that
“53% … did not know whether they were allowed to visit other parts of the UK”.
We all felt disorientated at all these things. Family Zoom calls—maybe it was just my family—were full of angst and arguments about what we were allowed and not allowed to do. In other words, the stuffing was knocked out of spontaneous interactions and everybody became totally preoccupied with trying to decipher the runes of what we were and were not allowed to do by the law.
This might not be a constitutional matter, but it matters for the constitution. Individual agency of grown-up decision-makers, and taking responsibility, became the collateral damage of what this report describes. The confusion and conflation between guidance and law was particularly damaging, as described in the report, which says that
“‘guidance’, ‘guidelines’, ‘rules’ and ‘restrictions’”
were used
“interchangeably, in reference to … legal requirements and public health advice”.
Worse, as Kirsty Brimelow QC rightly notes, we had the added confusion of the police being equally unclear and often acting on the messaging of announcements by the Home Secretary or the Prime Minister at press conferences, rather than on the law. As for the consequences of some of this, I think this has undermined confidence in the police as an impartial, trusted body implementing the law. It has also undermined trust in the law itself if it can become such a shape-shifter, with hardly anybody knowing what it was.
I also fear that the use of the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 to push through so many of the most draconian measures has damaged the reputation of public health advice more generally. One thing the report does not note is the use of the behind-the-scenes, behind-the-backs-of-the-public devices that we use to soften up public opinion in relation to law changes. It is worth reading Laura Dodsworth’s book A State of Fear, which includes the minutes of SAGE meetings and the discussion on the use of behavioural psychology and nudging, so that the public would be faced with the worst-case scenarios and scared enough to comply with behaviour changes backed by legal force. Rushing laws through, justified by fear, obviously leads to a lack of scrutiny. It has been bad for the constitution that we have allowed fear to push through law.
Moving on, I agree with the report that the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, with its triple lock, would have been a better piece of legislation to use than the Coronavirus Act 2020, which completed its passage through both Houses of Parliament in just three sitting days. Of course, we all know and understand that these legal changes were made in the context of the very real and justified sense that this was an unprecedented health emergency at the start of 2020, but it is the job of the Government to keep society calm. Hyperactive lawmaking, hyped up by using fear, is the wrong approach.
It was not just the Government. While Parliament was complaining about not having scrutiny over the Government, many people on all sides in Parliament went along with this hyped-up, over-the-top, disproportionate fear-mongering. This in turn created a mood of permanent emergency. Even post the vaccine, the misuse of Section 45R of the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act, using the urgency clause for which there is no objective definition, created an atmosphere in which there was no constraint over what could be done. It makes me very nervous now, when I hear people declaring endless emergencies: the climate emergency, the energy emergency, the cost of living emergency. You think, “Oh my goodness; they’re going to bring in emergency legislation for all that, and we’d be locked down for that too”. Some are advocating that we do just that, so I am not exaggerating.
There is a good quote in the report from Professor Hickman:
“Once the true emergency abated … proper legislation should have been put in place. Parliament could and should have insisted on protections such as the ability to amend regulations”.
But Parliament did not, and that is what should have happened. I note that some of us, even if it was a minority, advocated such an approach at the time—not afterwards, as in the report—and were vilified for doing so. Lord Sumption spoke out very early on but was treated as a pariah. When I arrived in this place, I raised certain questions about the legislation; I did so rather anxiously as I was new and arrived here during lockdown. I was treated like a wide-eyed loony libertarian for suggesting a sunset clause in certain legislation and for querying things such as Covid passports. In the House—would you believe it?—a Minister added me and other Members of the House of Lords to a list of Covid deniers for raising this. I felt nervous raising questions or being critical—being not cynical but sceptical.
There is no mention in the report of free speech. You cannot have a constitution report without noting that, although no laws were brought in to attack free speech during this time, free speech suffered by behind-the-scenes methods. I look forward to at least having a discussion about the forthcoming Bill of Rights, which will apparently put free speech as a core societal value; we need to protect it.
This is not over yet by any stretch. I worry that the Government have got a taste for the extensive use of secondary legislation and a lack of checks on executive powers. The new Schools Bill, which I am following at the moment, has rightly been criticised as a power grab to, to quote the noble Lord, Lord Baker, increase
“the powers of the Secretary of State and the Department for Education in a way unprecedented since 1870.”—[Official Report, 23/5/22; col. 689.]
Talking of schools, it is only now that we are admitting, as the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, mentioned, the devastating impact of school closures on young people. We should never forget the human cost of these constitutional changes.
It is interesting to note that, at the moment, there is a panic about those pupils who have not returned to school. That might have something to do with the fact that they were told that school was not so important after all; we locked the gates and education became a secondary matter. Guess what the Government’s response to the increased non-attendance of children at schools is? It is to bring in illiberal legislation that threatens to fine parents. I worry that the legislative track we were on is not over yet.
I make my final point as baroness of Buckley, which is in north Wales; I could not but mention the impact of the legal divergence between the four parts of the United Kingdom. The whole constitutional decision to have legal divergence was completely unnecessary and created a fragmented mood in the country. The mood was almost competitive between the different jurisdictions. My very own north Walian leader, Mark Drakeford, wanted to prove that he was harder on lockdown than anyone else, and Nicola Sturgeon was competing with the UK Government. There were massive arguments in our family about what was an essential good or not, because we lived one mile apart on either side of the border between England and north Wales. If you went on a train, you had to dodge between having your mask on or off as you went down the track. It was ridiculous.
Legal divergence was also bad for scientific advice. If the Welsh jurisdiction said that its science showed one thing, and one mile away the science showed something else, why would any member of the public trust anything that was proved to be scientific evidence? The whole thing became, to be frank, farcical.
Tensions were exacerbated when the country faced a big challenge. Legal divergence has been hugely bad for the union in general and, as I said, was unnecessary. It would have been far better to have had a UK-wide response that we all united around.
Having said all that, I hope there is never a UK-wide response like this again, because I say: never again. This report gives us ample evidence as to why we should think that.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the committee for its report and my noble friend for her excellent introduction. What I recall most about the pandemic—I appreciate that, because it is such a void in our lives, it is very difficult to remember what we did—was the strength of our communities. Our communities and the people within in them were so determined to support and care for each other. That is something I had not seen before in my lifetime. Perhaps Members who were alive during the war may have seen it. It was that resilience that I was most impressed by; people were determined to care for each other and those most vulnerable in our communities, and we should not forget that.
My noble friend’s introduction highlighted four key themes. The first is on why the Government chose the legislation they did, particularly the 1984 Act and the use of the Coronavirus Act 2020, rather than others that were available to them. I think we all appreciate that with fast-tracking of legislation and the extensive use of secondary legislation, essential checks on executive power are lost and the quality of law suffers. There is no doubt about that. Emergency legislation is never an acceptable alternative to effective government planning for periods of crisis.
The second theme, which all noble Lords have referred to, is to do with the fact that, although the four Administrations in the United Kingdom clearly demonstrated that they were capable of working together, the pandemic created political tensions. One example that the committee highlighted—one I was very familiar with—is how rules on face coverings on public transport in one part of the UK created difficulties when you crossed the Severn Bridge, and things like that. Clearly, that led to confusion.
The third theme is lack of clarity. There were a number of occasions when government publications and statements did not distinguish between public health advice and legal requirements. Rules were identified by the Government as having legal effect without any law having been made—for example, guidance about exercising once per day. My noble friend Lady Bryan highlighted that this confusion created strains on the relationships between the UK Government and certain local government leaders within England during the pandemic. We should not forget that there was obvious public confusion. One study, conducted when the tier regulations were in force, found that one in five did not know what tier their area was in, leading to extensive confusion.
The final theme of my noble friend’s introduction was that no Government should be frightened of learning the lessons, and I will return to that in a moment.
As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, highlighted, the committee recommended that Parliament be consulted on any future draft legislation on a contingency basis to address a potential emergency. That is what we are all looking for, because it provides for the most sufficient parliamentary scrutiny.
The pre-legislative scrutiny of what became the Civil Contingencies Act provided a clear model for that. The Government’s response to the committee’s report merely stated that the Government will “endeavour to provide opportunities”. That is not a sufficiently clear commitment. I hope the Minister can reassure us that it will be more than an endeavour; it is a principle that we all want to ensure is taken on board. I hope he can be a lot clearer in his response today.
On learning the lessons, I read the Covid-19 inquiry final terms of reference, which have just been published. The Constitution Committee recommended that a review of the use of emergency powers by the Government, and the scrutiny of those powers by Parliament, should take place in advance of that inquiry, and for very good, obvious reasons. The results of that could then inform the public inquiry and any planning for future emergencies. I hope that the noble Lord can reassure us on that point and that the Government will consider committing to undertake a full-scale review of emergency powers, as recommended, in time to inform the public inquiry.
Of course, no one knows when the next pandemic or national emergency will occur. Despite what I heard from the previous speaker, I have no doubt that there will be one, and we need to be better prepared. That is one of the most important lessons that we can learn. I hope that the Government will commit to an expedited review of the CCA, because that would also allow for fuller parliamentary scrutiny.
As we have heard, the Government introduced a large volume of new legislation in response to the pandemic. Because the Government chose not to use the Civil Contingencies Act, some argue—I am inclined to that view as well—that they evaded the Act’s important constitutional safeguards and that, as a result, parliamentary oversight of significant policy decisions was limited. A Law Society Gazette article in 2020 argued that the CCA represented a legal landmark:
“It updated and consolidated laws which enabled public authorities to prepare for, and respond effectively to, emergencies”.
That is the key theme that we should focus on. How do we ensure that public bodies and people responsible for safeguarding our communities are better prepared in advance for something that we know will come to hit us again?
The first of two points in my conclusion is on the committee’s recommendation on sunset clauses. I have read the Government’s response on that. There is a strong case for ensuring that when we bring in these special powers, there is no keeping them on for longer than is necessary. I understand that the Government have been rescinding these powers as we go on, but some still remain. We need a clear commitment that in future the Government will adopt the principle of presumption in favour of sunsetting regulations. I think that will reassure us all about the taking of emergency powers.
I will conclude on the question of confusion. One of the committee’s recommendations was that the Government adopt alternative drafting practices to make the regulations more accessible to members of the public and lawyers alike. It asked that the Government should set out in the Explanatory Memorandum, first, the regulations being amended; secondly, the substance of the amendments being made; and, thirdly, the reasons for the amendments, following a practical approach that would ensure that people understood what they were about.
The Government’s response to the report did not appear to acknowledge the case for improvements in drafting the Explanatory Memorandum, so what does the Minister think will be necessary in future national emergencies to ensure less confusion among the public—and perhaps even a less confused Prime Minister? Surely improvements to the drafting of future Explanatory Memorandums will be a critical part of that.
Ultimately, we hope that the national inquiry will ensure that we all learn the lessons, but I do not want us to forget that the most important lesson for all of us is the importance of community and supporting each other.
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Lord True) (Con)
My Lords, I thought that the way the noble Lord, Lord Collins, opened and closed his speech was totally appropriate. Some of the finest moments in these terrible times—which, to agree with my noble friend Lady Foster, none of us wishes to see again—involved the sense of solidarity, togetherness and defiance which is a great part of human character. All those things were there, along with the great dedication of the public servants and the responders who served in every part of these islands, whatever the nature of their Government of the time. That part of this experience was a great good, and one that we should carry with us; perhaps we forget it rather too often. I am grateful to the noble Lord for reminding us of that.
I begin by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, and the Lords Constitution Committee for the comprehensive reports—not just this one, but the three reports—published during its inquiry into the constitutional implications of Covid-19. It is absolutely right that regulations made by Governments—every Government—are thoroughly scrutinised. Such scrutiny improves the legitimacy of, and respect for, legislation in wider society. It is a fundamental part of the principles of our historic democratic polity. I acknowledge and own the duty on behalf of the Government.
Although the most recent report from your Lordships’ committee was published in June last year and responded to in writing by the Government in October—not in every respect satisfactorily, I hear; if I fail to respond satisfactorily I will take away and reflect on what I have heard in the debate—I very much welcome the report and the fact that the Committee has taken the opportunity to debate this important issue today. I am grateful to all noble Lords for their contributions. I candidly acknowledge the importance of the points made by so many in the debate.
The coronavirus pandemic had an unprecedented global impact that severely affected public health, the economy and society in sometimes devastating and disorienting ways, as the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, described. The Government, faced with an unprecedented and unknown enemy, took early and decisive action by introducing a range of measures to combat the virus, increase testing, support detection, reduce transmission and engage in research to improve our understanding of the virus.
Legislation was needed to make this work possible, and that legislation had to be addressed swiftly. When the virus started, I was not even a member of the Government; I was in retirement, living happily in Italy, rather bemusedly reading reports in the Italian newspapers of towns in the north of Italy being eccentrically cut off by the Italian Government because this virus had arrived. Some time later, I found myself being presented with comprehensive legislation to deal with a virus that, we then knew, represented a profound threat of loss of life.
Having moved from being a private citizen to being a Minister who was partly responsible, I was struck by the enormity of some of the measures put forward. My reaction was that they would be severely contested and challenged in Parliament, because of their enormity and gravity, only to find that there was swift and general agreement across the parties to take these pieces of legislation through. It is important to remember that context: legislation had to be developed very rapidly.
I will provide a brief summary of these pieces of legislation. Although they are well known to your Lordships present, they are worth placing on the record in Hansard. The Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 was designed to give the Government appropriate powers in the event of a serious public health situation. These powers, set out in Part 2A of the Act, were added following the global SARS outbreak in 2008. As many noble Lords have said, this was the main legislation used to deliver the Government’s response to Covid-19. It enabled the public health response to the pandemic and the rapid implementation of restrictions, including local and national lockdowns. I will come on to the variations later. This public health Act was the legal basis for many of the measures essential to limiting social contact, including the “stay at home” order in March 2020, which has been referred to, subsequent national and local lockdowns, measures requiring face coverings and isolation, and those on international travel.
It was felt that the fast-moving, urgent and often unpredictable nature of the pandemic—that was how it was seen—necessitated the use of the emergency procedure under Section 45R of the 1984 Act in a number of instances. Regulations made using the emergency powers in Section 45R were not always debated before they came into force, but they required debate and approval within 28 days or they would lapse. Parliament specifically approved the Secretary of State’s ability to use Section 45R to cover an emergency such as the pandemic. The decision to use it was deemed necessary based on the urgency of the situation with the rapid progress of the virus at the time and the transmission risk that the statutory instrument was designed to tackle.
The “made negative” procedure, which allows a measure to become law without debate, under Section 45Q of the 1984 Act, was also used in a number of instances. For example, travel regulations made under Section 45Q were made under the negative procedure, so were not debated before they came into force. That has been the subject of complaint and comment in your Lordships’ debate and is noted in the report.
For nationally significant Covid-19 legislation made under the public health Act, including that implementing national lockdowns, the Government have sought to provide a vote in Parliament ahead of any regulations coming into force, but this was always subject to the urgency of the situation, to parliamentary timetabling and to the sitting of Parliament. Parliamentary approval is needed to approve any regulations made using the emergency procedure within 28 sitting days, otherwise they would cease to have effect. Inevitably, the fast-moving and urgent nature of the pandemic led Ministers, at the time, to use the “made affirmative” procedure in a number of instances and the “made negative” procedure for travel-related regulations.
The other instrument that is the subject of this distinguished report, the Coronavirus Act 2020, came into force on 25 March 2020—a month after I returned to join the Government—and has played a critical role in the Government’s Covid-19 response. That Act was introduced during a period of extreme uncertainty, when the future course and potential impacts of the pandemic were unknown. It was designed to be a facilitative and supportive piece of legislation, creating a framework to supplement the public health measures enacted via the public health Act.
The Coronavirus Act did not introduce lockdowns or restrictions. Some have commented that, in their belief, it might have, but it did not. It enabled action in five key areas: increasing the available health and social care workforce; easing and reacting to the burden on front-line staff; supporting people, including through setting up the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, which supported 11.7 million jobs, and the Self-employment Income Support Scheme, which protected the livelihoods of nearly 3 million individuals; containing and slowing the virus; and managing the deceased with respect and dignity.
Sunsetting is an interesting and important concept in legislation. The temporary provisions within the Act had a two-year lifespan from when the Act was passed by Parliament. These sunset provisions ensured that the Government had the necessary powers to respond to the pandemic for a proportionate amount of time. The Government removed powers throughout the pandemic as and when they were no longer needed. Thanks to the progress made in the fight against the virus, the Government were able to expire 20 non-devolved temporary provisions in the Act early and suspended a total of four provisions which have since expired. The majority of the remaining temporary non-devolved provisions expired at the end of 24 March 2022. The Government have extended just five temporary provisions within the Act for up to six months beyond 24 March.
I was asked about co-ordination across the United Kingdom. This was a theme of the debate; many noble Lords—the noble Baronesses, Lady Drake and Lady Bryan, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, and others—raised this question. The noble and learned Lord referred to what he thought was a failure to respond to chapter 3 of your Lordships’ report. The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, came at this from a slightly different direction from other noble Lords.
The UK Government determined the lockdown rules that applied in England, while the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government and the Northern Ireland Executive were responsible for introducing and lifting restrictions in their respective parts of the United Kingdom. This is the result of devolution arrangements that have been in place for more than 20 years. Yes, they became particularly visible during the Covid-19 pandemic, but the way to proceed in each of the jurisdictions was a matter for the Administration there.
I slightly took issue with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope. I understand the point he was making when he was complaining about a union flag being displayed behind the Prime Minister. The union flag is the flag of our United Kingdom. There are many people in Scotland and every part of this kingdom who have been proud to go out to serve and, indeed, shed their blood under the union flag. I do not believe that one needs to apologise for the display of that flag by the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
That said, the Government have been determined to work collaboratively with the devolved Governments. Working together on health and social care is ingrained in the values of our National Health Service and our social care sector, and your Lordships’ committee is right to ask and press about this. The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care continues to have regular engagement with the devolved Governments’ Health Ministers to deliver responses that benefit people across the whole of the United Kingdom.
Between March 2020 and May 2022, 65 United Kingdom Health Minister forums were held, and there was further engagement at junior ministerial level. This engagement included sharing information, resolving issues and progressing areas of mutual concern in responding to and recovering from the pandemic. Key issues of discussion in these meetings have included: vaccine development; the national testing programme, including testing resilience; social care; review of the Coronavirus Act; Covid certification; and winter planning and recovery. On Covid certification and the app, again, it is a matter for the Scottish Government if they wish to design an app. Of course one would wish that there were joined-up relations; this is what the United Kingdom wishes to see.
Ministerial engagement and intergovernmental communication are ongoing. That has been underpinned by ongoing engagement between civil servants across numerous policy areas. It has also included conversations between the Chief Medical Officers, as well as joint devolved government representation on key programme boards within the UK Health Security Agency to co-ordinate various programmes.
People ask why, therefore, there have been such different approaches to Covid across the United Kingdom. Ministers and officials from the United Kingdom Government have worked closely with the devolved Governments to ensure a co-ordinated approach to the response to Covid-19 across the United Kingdom. Although many, and perhaps even I may regret the differences in public health approaches in reflecting and responding to different local circumstances, this diversity is a strength of our devolved systems. This has always been asserted by many in your Lordships’ House and many in our nation, and has been delivered by successive Governments.
In July 2020, the United Kingdom Government reaffirmed their commitment to frequent engagement with the devolved Governments on areas of shared interest. To take up a point directly asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, following the review of intergovernmental relations the Secretary of State for the Department of Health and Social Care will continue to engage regularly with counterparts through the interministerial group on health and social care. The group will continue to consider and discuss matters relating to health and adult social care policy and strategic policy developments between the portfolio Ministers leading on these issues within the United Kingdom Governments.
I was also asked about the Covid inquiry. The Government are very grateful to the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hallett, for leading such a full and extensive consultation on her terms of reference and producing a detailed set of proposed refinements to the draft terms of reference. She has published a set of proposals. Under the Inquiries Act, the Prime Minister must also consult the devolved Administrations before finalising the inquiry’s terms of reference. That will be done and, once these steps have been taken, he will publish the final terms of reference and the formal work can begin. The Prime Minister is considering fully the noble and learned Baroness’s proposals, is consulting the devolved Administrations and will publish the terms of reference.
I was asked when the inquiry will start and finish. It would be presumptuous of a mere Minister of the Crown to dictate to the chair of such an important inquiry. It will begin its formal work once the terms of reference are finalised. From that point, the process, procedure and timing of the inquiry stages will be for the independent chair to determine. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hallett, has set out that her investigations will begin once these terms of reference are finalised. She said that she intends to gather evidence throughout this year, with public hearings beginning in 2023. She has made it clear that she will do everything in her power to deliver recommendations as soon as possible.
I acknowledge that lessons must and will be learned for us all. The Covid inquiry has two key aims: to understand the facts and to learn lessons from the pandemic. Although the timing is up to the chair of the inquiry, those are the fundamental things we must all address. It is expected that government departments also conduct post-legislative scrutiny on government legislation within three to five years of the Act obtaining Royal Assent. This will be another opportunity for further lessons to be learned.
Nothing is perfect, and certainly Governments are not perfect. In this extraordinary situation throughout the pandemic, to aid parliamentary scrutiny, the Government maintained a constant dialogue with parliamentarians, making regular Statements in both Houses. Since March 2020, in both Houses, the Department of Health and Social Care has led on 56 Oral Statements, 14 general debates, five Lords debates, 113 SIs, 53 Oral Questions, 28 Lords Topical Questions and so on. This engagement with the House was supplemented by regular No. 10 press briefings—about which some have complained—including direct questions from members of the public.
I agree that here too there are lessons to be learned, and your Lordships’ report will be a document of lasting relevance. The Government will always endeavour to provide opportunities for pre-legislative scrutiny. We firmly believe that decisions are made stronger through scrutiny and debate. Any changes to the public health Act or other emergency legislation, such as the Civil Contingencies Act, will be subject to parliamentary scrutiny.
In conclusion, I thank your Lordships again for your valuable contributions in this debate. As we move forward from the response to Covid-19 it is crucial that we learn lessons wherever possible and ensure that our democratic values and our love of liberty are upheld. I reiterate my thanks to the Constitution Committee, which produced these reports, and those who have continued to uphold the values of this House in scrutinising the work of the Government. Any Government is stronger for facing your Lordships’ House.
The Government remain fully committed to ensuring that Parliament has ample opportunities to scrutinise the actions taken during the pandemic and our continuing approach to emergency legislation. Emergency powers and temporary legislation must always be used with the utmost discretion. They should be effective but proportionate to the circumstances that present themselves. That is the challenge that your Lordships’ Constitution Committee has added to; that is the affirmation I make from the Dispatch Box.
The Government will continue work to ensure that the correct legislative vehicles are in place to deal with any emergency scenario that presents itself. This includes retaining the Part 2 powers in the Civil Contingencies Act as an option of last resort while keeping other options with which to react to specific issues. Any changes to legislation, powers or the processes by which we use them will always be subject to parliamentary scrutiny, and the Government, whatever their past failings and whatever the difficulties of the situation we went through, achieved many things for this country in responding to this unprecedented pandemic and led us through difficult circumstances into what we hope are better times. We will always endeavour to provide opportunities for pre and post-legislative scrutiny.
Baroness Drake (Lab)
My Lords, I thank everyone who has contributed to a really important debate, in terms not only of efficiently dealing with a national crisis of huge relevance to its citizens—I am sure this will not be the only one—but of integrity around a Government and a Parliament in how they go about protecting citizens in that emergency.
I am very grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, for his contribution, and particularly for stressing the importance of pre-legislative scrutiny in any amendment of the legislation. The Minister referred to any changes to legislation being subject to parliamentary scrutiny, but the Constitution Committee puts a powerful case as to why that should also include pre-legislative scrutiny. Again, I thank the noble and learned Lord for the importance he placed on the need to ensure that we work with the devolved Administrations across the UK so that we can deal with UK-wide emergencies as efficiently as possible. I thank everyone who contributed.
I will reflect on some of the points the Minister made. He took us in some detail through the 1984 public health Act and how it operated. Although I do not disagree with a lot of what the Minister said, there are two or three key messages from the Constitution Committee. The Act could have been added to by incorporating a lockdown power in the Coronavirus Act. It was not that the emergency procedures needed to be used—quite clearly there were several cases where they did need to be. The question was whether it was an emergency in every instance that they were used.
I absolutely acknowledge that a Government faced with the challenges that this Government were faced with need to move with speed on regulations, but that raises the bar for the expectations of the level of confidence that people need in the scrutiny of those actions taken by government.
On going forward with pan-UK working with the Administrations, I welcomed the Minister’s comments in respect of the initiatives being taken by the Secretary of State for Health. The Constitution Committee also produced quite a large report on the whole issue of governance within the UK, Respect and Co-operation. In a sense, the response in an emergency is part of a wider governance structure that applies, so I hope some of our recommendations in that report will also apply.
In conclusion, there is no question but that the Government faced an enormous challenge. They had to respond quickly and to protect their citizens. In an emergency, Parliament transfers to the Executive so that they can move at the speed necessary to do that, but the efficiency with which the Government deploy those powers is therefore so critical. The extent to which they are open to checks and scrutiny on the deployment of those powers becomes even more important, and that was the thrust of the Constitution Committee’s report. What are the lessons learned, and what is the experience that informed those lessons, so that the preparedness for the next emergency—I hope we never have one—and the confidence in the level of scrutiny and checks are there? However, I thank the Minister very much for his response.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Geddes) (Con)
My Lords, before the next Motion for debate is called, I advise the Committee that the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, is unable to take part due to technical communication problems.
Equality Act 2010: The Impact on Disabled People: Follow-Up Report (Liaison Committee Report)
(2 years, 6 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Deech
That the Grand Committee takes note of the Report from the Liaison Committee The Equality Act 2010: the impact on disabled people: Follow-up report (2nd Report, Session 2021–22, HL Paper 60).
Baroness Deech (CB)
My Lords, I have had the privilege of being involved with disabled people’s rights since 2015. I say privilege in a personal sense, because albeit that there are 14.6 million self-reported disabled people in the UK—22% of the population—what we discovered on our committee was that, unless we are very lucky, as we get older we are all likely to suffer from mobility, sight and hearing problems without necessarily identifying as disabled, and yet in need of the adjustments made for disabled people. In the seven years of my involvement with disability, my arthritis has progressed and I completely empathise with step-free access, for example.
I know that the Minister is a caring and compassionate person, but I have to tell her that my involvement with disability rights has also been the most disillusioning and disappointing issue I have faced in my years in this House. What I have to say now will explain that. In sum, there has been hardly any progress: no central champion in the Cabinet; no will to be proactive rather than reactive; and always jam tomorrow, not jam today—witness the National Disability Strategy. Shockingly, I have to report that in January a High Court judgment, in the case of Binder v the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, found that the strategy was unlawful because a proper consultation involving specific proposals to be put to disabled people was not carried out.
There is no strategy and the Government have not, as far as I am aware, started the process to reconsult and create a fresh strategy that takes account of what disabled people need and want. Rather than moving forward with disability rights, the Government have gone backwards. Moreover, it is an affront to parliamentary sovereignty that major parts of the Equality Act 2010, from 12 years ago, are still not in force.
The disability committee was fortunate and grateful that our report of 2016 was chosen for follow-up by the Liaison Committee, and we are appreciative of the boost that gave to our recommendations. The Government’s response, however, is almost entirely unsympathetic. I enumerate it here theme by theme. In the follow-up report, we expressed the hope that the Inter-Ministerial Group on Disability and Society and the ministerial disability champions would drive our recommendations forward. I have to confess that I do not understand the difference between the two groups but, in any case, there is little published information about the interministerial group. It is reported that it met three times and then lapsed. I see that the Government are advertising for regional stakeholder chairs of disability groups; that seems to me to be spreading tomorrow’s jam even more thinly so that it leaves no taste at all. Can the Minister tell us the difference between the two groups, whether they are functioning and what has been reported from them?
We made recommendations about government leadership in this field. In their response to our 2016 initial report, the Government said that they were committed to creating a public service ombudsman combining local government and parliamentary and health remits. It was announced in the Queen’s Speech in 2015. We saw that as an opportunity to support the Equality and Human Rights Commission and disabled people’s organisations, and secure compliance with the Equality Act 2010, but the Government now say that they are not bringing forward this legislation. Yet they have announced a new ombudsman for private landlords. Why should that have priority, and will it do anything for disabled tenants?
Coinciding with the Liaison Committee review, last summer the Government announced a National Disability Strategy. We immediately expressed the view that this new venture should not displace or put aside the need to implement recommendations already made, in favour of setting up new targets. The strategy is now null and void because of the High Court judgment I referred to. Where is the programme for starting again on consultation and creation, this time taking account of the recommendations in our report rather than setting them aside in favour of vague future promises?
Maybe the reason why disabled people are not heeded is that there is no Cabinet voice for them. We recommended that the Minister for Women and Equalities should be a stand-alone, full-time role with the right to attend Cabinet. This was dismissed as a matter for the Prime Minister’s choice. Who holds the role of Minister for Women and Equalities currently? It is Liz Truss, who is, as we know, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Not even a superwoman, which no doubt Ms Truss is, could possibly carry out the exceptionally onerous job of Foreign Secretary while also concentrating on women and equalities. With all due respect to her competence, this is farcical.
We also recommended that the Minister for Disabled People be made a member of the Cabinet’s social justice committee. This mirrored a recommendation by the Commons Women and Equalities Committee. The social justice committee was set up about 10 years ago on the understanding that a cross-department attitude was needed. While Wales and Scotland have similar committees, the English one was disbanded in 2016 without its duties being redistributed to other committees. Why was this done? Who in Cabinet is leading on disability rights issues? What committees are taking these on?
As an aid to achievement of disability rights, we recommended that the public sector equality duty in Section 149 of the Equality Act be amended so that the public authority would be under a duty to take proportionate steps towards the achievement of disability issues. The way the PSED works now tends to be passive rather than proactive. The Government rejected our recommendation on the ground that it would involve opening up the Equality Act as a whole to amendment. They feared that such an alteration would lead to court litigation concerning actions that claimants alleged should have been taken and whether they were proportionate. The Government have left this untouched. Our 2016 criticisms remain. The wording of the PSED means that a public authority can make no progress at all towards the aims of the general duty and yet be judged compliant with it by the courts.
On a similar theme, we recommended that regulations should change so that public authorities would be required to develop and implement a plan of action setting out how they will meet the requirements of the PSED in all their functions. The Government pushed this into the long grass, commenting only that it would be considered in any future work to review the specific duties placed by the PSED on public authorities.
Perhaps the most egregious of all the failings to implement the Equality Act relates to Section 36, which would mandate reasonable adjustments to the common parts of buildings, paid for by the tenant, where needed for disability access. In 2016, we said we could not understand why another review was needed. Six years later, still nothing has happened, and again we recommended that Section 36 be brought into force within six months. The Government’s response was to refer to difficulties the Scottish Government had faced in implementing equivalent provisions, and to say that a consultation was imminent. When is this consultation? What is the timetable? Why is it necessary? How can the Minister defend non-implementation of a section of an Act 12 years after its passage? Is this not an affront to the legislative work of Parliament?
Disabled people’s access to sports grounds is a well-known problem. The noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, has tried to improve matters with his Accessible Sports Grounds Bill, which would have given local authorities a discretionary power to refuse a safety certificate to large sports stadia that were not accessible. It did not get through the Commons. The Government’s response was that existing legislation was sufficient to ensure access to sports stadia for disabled fans. It is a delicate issue because legal action can be initiated only by an individual, and no single fan wants to upset his club and come into conflict with it. While there has been some progress and recognition of the issue, a recent survey by Level Playing Field found that many disabled fans suffered abuse and that there was a poor level of staff disability awareness, inaccessible public transport and general access barriers at stadia. In 2015 the Government set out a sports strategy promising action and said that they would work with the football and safety authorities to improve the situation. But there are no metrics of success. What progress can the Minister tell us of in the last seven years?
I expect the Government will tell us that the number of disabled people in work has increased, but the gap between disabled and non-disabled working people remains the same. The figures look better only because more people are identifying as disabled and more people are in work. The Government’s aim to help disabled people into employment will be thwarted if public transport is not accessible, but Section 163 of the Equality Act, which would make taxi licences conditional on compliance with accessibility regulations, remains uncommenced after 12 years.
In addition, we recommended that the accessibility requirements apply to private hire vehicles. The Government did not accept our recommendations. They have launched a consultation on taxi and private hire vehicle best practice and have said that, at some time in the future, they will legislate to mandate disability awareness training for all drivers. When will the Government take the steps necessary to ensure that every disabled person can get into a hired vehicle and get to work? The new Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles (Safeguarding and Road Safety) Act, passed in May, is not relevant to disabled people, as it is, as it says, about reporting safeguarding and other dangerous issues relating to drivers.
Not just disabled people, but all citizens, need to be able to access justice to enforce their rights. Even where litigation can be afforded, it may present particular challenges to disabled individuals, who may find barriers to understanding and navigating their way through the legal system. We recommended that the costs should be mitigated by implementing qualified one-way cost-shifting in claims concerning discrimination under the Equality Act. This means that a successful defendant cannot recover their costs from the losing claimant, except in precise circumstances. It makes bringing reasonable legal action less of a costly risk.
Costs have an adverse effect on the rights of disabled people to enforce their legal rights. The Government said last year that they were considering the issue. Can the Minister tell us what progress has been made in amending the Civil Procedure Rules to achieve this? Can she explain future plans and timetables, given that a commitment has been made to do this? Our recommendation was that it be achieved within six months.
In general, disabled people need legal aid to enforce their rights, especially as it is for the individual to take action, and it is a brave and well-resourced individual who embarks on this. We salute the handful who have taken their issues to court. Legal aid may be available for legal advice concerning unlawful discrimination. Income thresholds qualifying for the help with fees remission scheme have changed in line with inflation, but not capital thresholds.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission launched an inquiry in May 2021 to examine whether legal aid enables people who raise a discrimination complaint to get justice. We do not know the result but, whenever it comes, it is intended to inform the Government’s review of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012. What progress has been made, if any, are the Government changing the Lord Chancellor’s guidance on legal aid in discrimination cases?
All in all, this is a sorry tale: no progress in implementing the 2010 Act; barriers to getting justice; poor treatment of sports fans; difficulty in getting transport to work and elsewhere; and a general sense that the Government prioritise the supposed interests of business over the needs of disabled people for adjustments and support. This has the effect of putting a large segment of the population out of the job market and out of contact with their fellow citizens. Why do the Government not have more empathy with them? Do Ministers not look at their ageing relatives—and indeed colleagues in this House—and realise that, in the fullness of time, they too will be in wheelchairs, on Zimmer frames, hard of hearing and worse still? They should act now to uphold parliamentary sovereignty as expressed in the Equality Act and for the sake of justice for a large segment of the population. I beg to move.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Young of Cookham) (Con)
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Winchester, is taking part remotely. I invite her to speak.
Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD) [V]
My Lords, I welcome the chance afforded us by the Liaison Committee taking the Equality Act 2010 and Disability Committee report of 2016 out of the long grass and producing its report, published last July. I was a member of the Equality Act 2010 and Disability Committee and I endorse all the comments of our admirable chair, the noble Baroness, Lady Deech.
It really is quite shocking that so little has improved for disabled people since our report, which was careful not to advocate remedies that would involve large spending commitments. It is telling that the Liaison Committee reserved its most damning criticism for the Government dragging their feet on bringing into force Section 36 of and Schedule 4 to the Equality Act 2010, which include provisions on reasonable adjustments to the common parts of buildings such as blocks of flats. If those components of the Act had been brought into force, those responsible for the common parts of buildings, such as a landlord in a leaseholder block of flats, would, after consultation, have to agree to reasonable adjustments, the cost of which could be entirely met by the disabled person.
A good example, which is worth quoting, is given in the report:
“An elderly leaseholder has a flat on the second and third floor. There is absolutely no reason why she cannot live independently, save that she has mobility issues. She wants to install a stair lift … She asks the freeholder for permission. The freeholder says no. She offers to pay the installation costs and all the running costs herself”.
The freeholder, quite legally, still says no.
The Government have announced their intention to bring this section of the Equality Act into force. Indeed, in the National Disability Strategy, published nearly a year ago and foreshadowed in the Liaison Committee’s report, they say:
“We will take immediate steps to … extend disabled tenants’ rights on accessibility”.
Now, we are told, it will happen in due course, with no timescale given. The Liaison Committee is not impressed. It says:
“The Committee finds it objectionable that parts of the Equality Act, now over 10 years old, are still not in force. It is an affront to Parliament that its will expressed in legislation has been ignored or set aside by the executive.”
The Government’s response points to the consultation, saying that any change has “significant implementation issues”. Yes, I am sure it does, but a way must be found to improve the housing stock for all disabled people as a matter of urgency. After all, we are told in the National Disability Strategy that nearly half of all disabled respondents had difficulty getting in and out of where they live. I do not know whether yesterday’s Statement on private rented housing will address this point.
I remind the Government that there are 14 million disabled people in the country and that this figure will increase in future years, so more accessible housing is crucial. If levelling up means anything, surely it should mean using the power of the law to make sure that disabled people do not lose out in basic ways such as being able to live, travel and enjoy leisure activities that are accessible. Will the National Disability Strategy make a difference? It is full of commitments to this and that to try to improve the lives of disabled people, but without concrete proposals with timescales, and updates on progress, it is difficult to get excited.
What is needed is someone with a driving ambition to find solutions to some problems that have been left unresolved for far too long. That person should first ask disabled people themselves what should be done.
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
I am up to speak slightly earlier than I expected. It is a shame that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Blackburn has found himself trapped in a previous debate in which he spoke: that is why he is not here. I am also sad that the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, is not with us. She and I fought together, as it were, on these issues for many years and I was looking forward to seeing her again. I welcome the debate and compliment the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and her committee. I share her disappointment and that expressed in the report, and the disappointment in the inadequate government response to the impact follow-up report.
I decided, as one of the government team which helped to put the Equality Act on the statute book in 2010, to delve back into Hansard to get a flavour of what we were aspiring to, and what was said by those participating in the debate then, who worked hard to put this important document on our statute book. It took a year to write that Bill. I attended meetings with counsel and others on behalf of the then Leader of the House for a year in the writing of that Bill, because it was a consolidation Bill and a very large and important piece of legislation.
When it came to your Lordships’ House at the end of the end of 2009, we discussed it through the spring—
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
I was reminiscing about the passage of the Equality Act 2010. We miss some of those who took part then and, in today’s debate, we miss perhaps most of all the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton, who is not able to be with us. I am sure all noble Lords wish her well and look forward to her return.
It is clear, if you look at the record of the passage of the Equality Act, that there was a great deal of optimism and of consensus, which allowed the Bill to be improved and amended as it went through your Lordships’ House. For example, on employment, the Labour Government responded to disability organisations and others by bringing forward amendments that addressed the compelling evidence of disabled people being discriminated against once employers were aware of their disability. They prohibited the use of pre-employment questionnaires, except in prescribed circumstances, thus stopping the inhibition of people with disabilities or mental health problems applying for jobs.
That is a good example, as we knew the words in the Act would and should tackle the discrimination faced—in this case disability—and therefore were very important. Being a practical politician, because it was in the run-up to a general election, there was an agreement to put measures in the Act that would need the new Government—in whatever form they took—to pick them up and implement them. In some cases, it was simply changing “may” to “must”. For example, I believe it was the coalition Government that, quite late on, approved the change of “may” to “must” on the monitoring of wage discrimination in companies of, I think, over 500 people. That was done long after the Act was passed.
This follow-up report builds on the recommendations of the March 2016 report by the House of Lords Select Committee on the Equality Act 2010, that I think the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, also led. What we saw, when we put the Act on the statute book, is that it created a positive duty to anticipate the needs of and make reasonable adjustments for disabled people. The issues that have been discussed today say that,
“in the context of services, the objective of the duty is to, so far as is reasonably practicable ‘approximate the access enjoyed by disabled people to that enjoyed by the rest of the public. The purpose of the duty to make reasonable adjustments is to provide access to a service as close as it is reasonably possible to get to the standard normally offered to the public at large’. The duty is contained in section 20 and comprises three requirements … to: avoid putting disabled people at a substantial disadvantage where a provision, criterion or practice would put them at that disadvantage compared with people who are not disabled—for example, adjusting a ‘no dogs’ policy for visually impaired people … remove, alter or provide means of avoiding physical features where those features put disabled people at a substantial disadvantage compared with people who are not disabled—for example, providing a wheelchair ramp alongside stairs … provide an auxiliary aid where disabled people would, but for the provision of that aid, be put at a substantial disadvantage in comparison with people who are not disabled—for example, providing an induction loop for hearing impaired people.”
As noble Lords have said, those duties are really very clear, so the shame of this is that they have not been fully enacted 12 years later. I can see that the disability organisations are both disappointed and disheartened by that. For example, on Section 36, no reasonable explanation was given to the noble Baroness’s committee about the continued delay. I quote from the report:
“The Committee could find no reasonable explanation for the delay in bringing section 36 into force in 2016, and the evidence received in 2021 paints a similar picture … asked why the Government had failed to commence this section of the Act, Catherine Casserley said: ‘I really do not understand why the provision has not been implemented’.”
Further down in the evidence section, when asked about Section 36, Melanie Field, who is an absolute veteran of the 2010 Act and worked with us all the way through it, said:
“We often draw government’s attention to the need to implement that provision, and we hope that progress will be made.”
I would like to ask the Minister when. When will progress be made? It really is shameful that it has not been made already.
Turning to making the public sector equality duty more effective, can the Minister expand on the statement and the Government’s answer to recommendation 8 about the public sector equality duty? There, the Government note that amendments to Section 149 will be considered or the Act will be replaced in the future. Can the Minister give the Committee the likely timetable for bringing forward the amendments? Can she please tell the Committee whether the Government intend to replace the Equality Act altogether, and when they intend to do that?
I draw specific attention to the report’s challenge that the Government do not produce data on their interministerial group on disability and society, so it is unclear whether it still exists or not. I ask whether it does in fact exist and, if so, in what form. If it does, will the Government commit to publishing data on it regularly so that it is embedded at the heart of government decision-making—as disabled people have demanded quite rightly and as they need? Do the Government intend to follow up on the recommendation that the Women and Equalities Minister becomes a full-time Cabinet-attending post?
As the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, said, the court challenge suggests that the national strategy for disabled people was not legal because the consultation did not take place in a proper fashion. I echo the question: when will we see a new strategy and how will the proper consultation take place? This draws particular attention to the lack of trust in this area. This report, the one before it and this debate show that there is a lack of trust in the Government’s commitment to disabled people and the reforms that are required, many of which are very straightforward. When the Prime Minister called the strategy a “down payment” in February 2022, when it was first launched, you could almost see the eye roll across the whole disability sector. I would like the Minister to go back and re-establish trust, which has been eroded, and work out how best to do that.
The last words I say should go to the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, because, during the debate in 2016 on the impact of the Equality Act on people with disabilities—led by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech—she said, quoting Sir Bert Massie:
“‘It is now ... 35 years since disabled people called for the right to be treated as equal citizens. Yet the Government still wants to ... talk and meet. It is no wonder disabled people are ... becoming increasingly angry. The Government’s tepid response to the Committee’s report clearly demonstrates a deep lack of understanding and concern about Britain’s disabled people’.
I am afraid that this just about sums up how the committee and disabled people feel about the Government’s disability agenda”—[Official Report, 6/9/16; cols. 980-81.]
today.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Stedman-Scott) (Con)
My Lords, I thank the committee chair, the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and other members of the committee for calling for this debate on a very important subject for our society. I hear the strong and impassioned points that have been made; there have been some forceful interventions and relevant questions that I will address in this closing speech.
I take the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, about re-establishing and rebuilding trust and, in my role as Minister for Women and Equalities in this House, I start by answering noble Lords’ questions and then offer a meeting to see if we can start to rebuild that trust as we go along.
I ask noble Lords to be in no doubt of this Government’s determination to promote the interests of disabled people and increase their participation in the labour market and wider society. This is even more important as society recovers from Covid and faces a number of post-pandemic challenges. This Government are committed to disability policy that supports all areas of life, and to taking action to create a society that works for everyone so that we can build back better and fairer for all. Our aim is to transform the everyday lives of disabled people across the country, through delivering long-term change through practical plans.
Since the start of 2022 alone, our wider work to support disabled people is having a real impact. We have supported two landmark pieces of legislation, the British Sign Language Act and the Down Syndrome Act, which have both been granted Royal Assent in the last few months. The BSL Act came about, with widespread support across government, from a Private Member’s Bill put forward by Rosie Cooper MP and with the help of personalities such as “Strictly Come Dancing” winner Rose Ayling-Ellis and of deaf people’s organisations. It promotes and facilitates the use of BSL, with legal recognition as a language of England, Scotland and Wales—a recognition that I know has been awaited for many years.
The Act provides a specific duty on the DWP Secretary of State to prepare and publish a British Sign Language report. This describes what each ministerial department has done to promote and facilitate the use of British Sign Language in its public communications. The Act specifies that these public communications should include: any public announcement that a government department makes about policy or changes to the law; the publication of any plan, strategy, consultation document or consultation response, or any explanatory or supporting materials; and its use of press conferences, social media or a government website to publicise any of its activities or policies.
The Act places a duty on the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to issue guidance on the promotion and facilitation of BSL, which will be developed together with D/deaf BSL users as part of a non-statutory board of BSL signers. We hope to produce this guidance in 2023. A BSL advisory board will bring to bear the perspectives and priorities of those with lived experience, from BSL signers living across England, Scotland and Wales. It will be established in autumn 2022 with a broad remit to advise the Government on matters related to BSL, including how to increase the number of BSL interpreters and to review how the DWP might work to ensure that the Access to Work fund helps BSL users.
The Down Syndrome Act is an enabling framework to give a voice to people with Down syndrome. This will ensure that local government meets the needs of people with Down syndrome to ensure they receive better services now, and to transform their future experiences across social care, healthcare, education and housing services.
I know that the noble Baronesses, Lady Thornton, Lady Deech and Lady Thomas, raised issues relating to Section 36 of the Equality Act 2010. In the six months since the Government responded to the Liaison Committee’s report, I am pleased to update this Committee on important progress on an issue in which the Liaison Committee, and before it the 2015 Select Committee, took a close interest—namely the commencement of the remaining parts of Section 36 of the Equality Act.
As many noble Lords know, commencement will enable a disabled tenant or leaseholder to require their landlord to make reasonable adjustments to the common parts of their homes—for example, entrances, hallways and stairs. I am aware that progress has been slower than all noble Lords would like, because we have been looking at the cost implications of implementation and how it fits with wider leasehold law and practice. However, on 9 June, the Government launched a consultation on implementation. This is important because disabled tenants and leaseholders are being given a real voice in how the detail of the policy is being shaped.
Regulations will be needed to set out some of the detail prior to commencement. Feedback from the consultation will be key to this. For example, we are asking all interested parties whether they would like a specified structure for reasonable adjustment agreements and further views on how works might be fairly financed. Via GOV.UK, we are offering a variety of formats to help people understand what switching on the provisions means and to enable views to be fed back as easily as possible. We are keen to give maximum opportunity to those affected by this change to feed in their views, so the consultation will last 10 weeks.
The noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Winchester, raised accessibility to buildings and housing. We are also assessing disabled people’s needs in the built environment more generally. In June 2021 we commissioned research, as part of a full review of Part M of the building regulations, on the prevalence and demographics of impairment in England and the ergonomic requirements and experience of wheelchair users and disabled people. The research is looking at the size and layouts in toilets and the range of facilities needed to suit our population. Work is under way to develop robust data and evidence to help government consider what potential changes can be made to statutory guidance covering access to and the use of buildings.
As part of the review, government consulted from 8 September to 1 December on options to raise the accessibility of new homes, recognising the importance of suitable homes for older and disabled people. The consultation proposed whether to wait to see the full impact of recent planning policy changes on the use of the optional technical standards, or whether and how changes could be made by either mandating a higher standard or reconsidering the way existing optional standards are used, including set proportions for wheelchair user homes.
This is a technical and important piece of work. We have analysed all the responses, which have been comprehensive and have helped inform our work on how best to raise accessibility standards of new homes. We will set out our plans in due course. Evidence gathered will help government consider what changes can be made, including reviewing and potentially tightening the regulatory framework to deliver accessible new homes and updates to statutory guidance.
Our planning rules already mean that councils must consider the needs of older and disabled people when planning new homes. We have also given councils guidance on options they should consider, such as housing with improved accessibility, to enable older and disabled people to live more safely and independently.
The noble Baroness, Lady Deech, raised private hire vehicles. The committee’s report, and noble Lords’ contributions to this debate, raised accessibility to taxis. On 28 March we launched a public consultation on the updated best practice guidance document aimed at local licensing authorities, incorporating strengthened recommendations on the provision of an inclusive service. The consultation closed yesterday, and work is now starting to assess the views of stakeholders.
A wide range of stakeholders responded to the consultation, and we will consider their responses carefully before finalising the guidance. We hope that, once published substantively, the guidance document will support licensing authorities to ensure that the taxi and PHV services they regulate provide a genuinely inclusive and accessible service, meeting the needs of those who rely on it.
In the meantime, the Government remain committed to improving the experience of disabled taxi and PHV passengers—a commitment the committee welcomed in its report. Subject to parliamentary time, we will legislate to mandate the completion of disability awareness training by taxi and PHV drivers as part of national minimum standards. We also recently supported the Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles (Disabled Persons) Bill, which gained Royal Assent on 28 April, introducing improved rights for disabled people travelling by taxi and PHV. Together, we hope these measures will allow more disabled people to use this vital mode of transport with much greater confidence.
I am sure that noble Lords will also want to know what advice and support is available to disabled people concerned about taxis, and indeed the full range of service provision across the economy. The Government sponsor a free helpline, the Equality Advisory and Support Service, which provides support and advice to anyone in England, Scotland or Wales who feels they may have suffered discrimination. It receives approximately 35,000 contacts per year, of which about 70% are queries relating to disability. This means that the government helpline assists in more than 24,000 disability-related issues a year.
The EASS works closely with organisations such as Disability Rights UK to ensure that its services are widely accessible to those with a range of disabilities, offering: a textphone system alongside the main telephone number; British Sign Language via a video conference call that a deaf individual can access via the EASS website; video calls to individuals who are visual learners within the autistic spectrum who would find it difficult to process advice via voice channels; a webchat service that offers an accessible route for people who choose to type rather than use the telephone; documents in accessible formats such as large print alongside different font options, colours and sizes, which are posted to individuals; documents in Braille; and an email, transcript or audio file of a call or advice for individuals who find it difficult to recall information provided.
Finally, government services are working for disabled people across a range of other important areas, including the following.
As more disabled people are starting new jobs, there has been an increased number of people applying for support through Access to Work. We have delivered improvements to the Access to Work programme to meet this increase in demand.
The autumn 2021 spending review has allowed the Department for Education to deliver an additional £1 billion for children and young people with more complex needs, including those with a disability, in 2022-23, bringing the total high-needs budget next year to over £9 billion.
In collaboration with ACAS, BEIS launched an online advice hub in July 2021, containing clear, accessible information and advice on employment rights for disabled people.
The DfE contributed £9.3 million in the 2021-22 financial year to fund the training of more educational psychologists, increasing the number of trainee educational psychologists each year to over 200.
The Rail Delivery Group and the Department for Transport have introduced a new Passenger Assistance app, with over 80,000 users of the app supported to receive over 400,000 different forms of assistance.
To make housing more accessible, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities published a new National Model Design Code in July 2021, setting out comprehensive guidance on the design of homes and neighbourhoods for local planning authorities. The guidance emphasises the importance of designing new development, including public spaces and play areas, in a way that creates safe, inclusive, accessible and active environments.
To support people in court proceedings, the MoJ brought a new revised victims’ code into force in England and Wales on 1 April 2021, which set out enhanced rights for disabled people, as well as other victims.
The Cabinet Office has launched an enhanced programme of disability and access ambassadors, expanding to include 19 ambassadors, senior business leaders who help to ensure businesses are doing all they can to support their disabled customers.
BEIS published a consultation on making flexible working the default in September 2021. Flexible working can be particularly valuable for those who need to balance their personal lives with their working lives, including those with caring responsibilities. The consultation closed on 1 December, having received over 1,600 responses.
The Department of Health and Social Care’s adult social care reform White Paper, People at the Heart of Care, published in December 2021, reflected the needs of disabled people.
I will try to answer some of the specific questions that noble Lords raised. Both the noble Baronesses, Lady Deech and Lady Thornton, raised the issue of the disability strategy, in particular in relation to the judicial review. The national disability strategy set out our ambition to improve the lives of disabled people. We are disappointed by and strongly disagree with the High Court’s finding, and the Secretary of State has sought permission to appeal its declaration. While awaiting a decision on permission to appeal from the Court of Appeal, we are required to take steps to comply with the court’s declaration. We will do everything we can to limit the impact of this ruling on disabled people but, to ensure compliance with the court’s declaration, we are obliged to pause a limited number of policies which are referred to in the strategy or are directly connected to it. We remain committed to improving opportunities and outcomes for disabled people as we await the outcome of the appeal.
As I said, in less than a year, we passed the British Sign Language Act and the Down Syndrome Act. Our intent is still to create more opportunities for disabled people to participate and thrive; to protect and promote the rights of disabled people; and to tackle the barriers that prevent disabled people from fully benefiting from and contributing to every aspect of society.
The noble Baroness, Lady Deech, raised issues about the progress of legislation in relation to the public service ombudsman. The Government do not anticipate bringing forward legislation at this time. Should the Government take forward any ombudsman reform, we would run a full public consultation, including responses from equalities and disability organisations.
I have already referred to many of the things the Government are doing in taking leadership of these issues, and I am very happy to say that the ministerial disability champions were appointed in summer 2020 at the request of the Prime Minister to help drive the development and delivery of the national disability strategy. The champions meet quarterly through the year; during the development of the national disability strategy, it was set out that the Minister for Disabled People will continue to chair a quarterly meeting of the champions to drive progress.
Noble Lords raised the status of the role of the Minister for Women and Equalities, and how that needs to be a Cabinet post. I am unable to give noble Lords any good news on that. All I can say is that, as well as it being the prerogative of the Prime Minister to determine who sits in Cabinet, I will do my best in my role in the Lords to support all disabled people, and I will work as hard as I can. My colleague, Chloe Smith, Minister for Disabled People, is equally committed and, as I said, it would be good for us to meet after this debate to see what progress, if any, we can make.
The noble Baroness, Lady Deech, raised the point of the Cabinet social justice committee. Again, the Cabinet and its committees provide a framework for Ministers to consider and make collective decisions on policy issues, covering the full range of government business, including issues of equality and fairness.
The noble Baroness, Lady Deech, raised the issue of sports and accessible facilities. The Government’s sports strategy
“commits us to work with the football authorities to ensure that all clubs meet their legal obligations under the Equality Act 2010 to provide reasonable adjustments to accommodate disabled spectators.”
We expect all sports and clubs to take the necessary action to fulfil their legal obligation under the Equality Act 2010 to make “reasonable adjustments” so that disabled people are not placed at a substantial disadvantage when accessing sports venues.
The noble Baroness, Lady Deech, raised the public sector equality duty. It has very wide application, applying to all functions of most public bodies, to the public functions of other organisations and to every protected characteristic in the Act. It is often added to other grounds as part of a claim for judicial review, although a requirement to take all proportionate steps would be a positive duty. Inevitably, claims made against public authorities for failing in this duty would be setting negative, and possibly counterfactual, terms that the authorities should have taken this or that step—or, indeed, several successive steps—but had failed to do so. Arguments in the courts would focus on actions that had not happened and whether they would have been proportionate if they had happened. Adoption of the 2009-10 Bill amendment, as a way of moving to an outcome-focused duty, would, therefore, not simply be a shift in policy terms but raise potentially significant issues for legal bodies. The Government, therefore, take the view that the amendments to the public sector equality duty set out in Section 149 of the Equality Act should, in due course, be considered if or when any more general decision is taken to revise or replace the Act in future.
The noble Baroness, Lady Deech, also raised the issue of access to justice and the legal aid system. The Government remain committed to ensuring that access to justice is a reality for disabled people in exercising their rights and are continuing to carefully consider the issue. This includes examining the possibility of consulting on the feasibility of a potential pilot scheme testing the advantages and disadvantages of extending cost protection to disability claims. This is a key issue on which we aim to set out the way forward in the coming months.
The noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, raised the issue of disabled people’s access to housing. I have already referred to that in my closing speech, but the Government have consulted, as I said. We will wait to see the outcome of the consultation. Again, the consultation is part of a full review of Part M of the building regulations. Evidence gathered will help the Government consider what changes can be made, including reviewing and potentially tightening the regulatory framework to deliver accessible homes and update statutory guidance.
The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, asked what accessible support and advice are available for disabled people who face discrimination. As I said, the Government sponsor a free helpline, which works in the ways I already described: textphones, sign language and video calls for those who need it.
We will continue to be ambitious to deliver meaningful policies to improve disabled people’s lives, and we will continue to ensure that the voice of disabled people is properly heard. We will continue to work closely with disabled people and disabled people’s organisations.
Baroness Deech (CB)
My Lords, I thank all those who have joined this debate. The absence of certain members of our committee who are disabled is really rather poignant and illustrates just how difficult it is for disabled people to participate, whether it is by video or whether they cannot get here on public transport. I know that several of them would have wanted to be here.
I very much welcome the Minister’s offer to meet, and I apologise to her most sincerely for not having spotted her email of about a week ago offering a meeting. Had we had one, our speeches would have been a bit less like ships passing in the night. I would very much like to take up her offer and look forward to working with her, because I know that she cares about this. We have seen her attitude in various welfare matters, and I know her to be a caring person who wants to do the right thing by disabled people.
I welcome the Government’s efforts in sign language. When we heard witnesses in our committee six years ago, some people managed to come and give evidence in sign language and interpretation was provided—however, at very great expense. Anything that improves the ability of people who use sign language to get their message across and be heard is very welcome.
I welcome the fact that a consultation has been launched on Section 36, on new homes and, I think, on various other things too. An awful lot of consultation is going on, and I must remind the Minister that the judgment in the Binder case said that a consultation should not just be vague and unspecific; it should put forward specific proposals that the Government are making, in order that there be a specific response from disabled people. The court also said that disabled people and all their various organisations should be consulted. I hope that we are not back again in future saying, “Another consultation has gone wrong”. I urge the Minister and all her assistants to make sure they get those consultations, of which she mentioned about half a dozen, right according to the judgment in the Binder case.
I also hope that consultations will not hold things up. We would like a date of commencement of, for example, Section 36 and when new homes will be required to be accessible. There was a little bit too much use of the words “commitment” and “subject to parliamentary time”. Those phrases always raise red flags with me.
On sport, I have to respond that sports stadia do not know exactly what is required of them under the Equality Act. There is a need to be more specific, which is why the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, put forward his Bill. They are bound by the Equality Act to make “reasonable adjustments”; it would seem by past practice over the last few years that either they do not know or they wilfully do not know.
Finally, it is disappointing that some of the responses that the Government gave in their answer to the Liaison Committee’s report, for example on PSED, are still there. The main flaw in the approach is the lack of a strong champion in the Government and of a strategy. I hope that, one day, we will have both of them. In the meantime, I thank the Minister and I look forward very much to having a meeting with her very soon.
House of Lords
Water Companies: Sewage Discharge Monitoring
(2 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have, if any, to require water companies to monitor the volume of sewage discharged into water courses and not just the frequency of such discharges.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)
My Lords, I refer noble Lords to my entry in the register. The volume of storm overflow discharge is not directly proportional to its harm as the concentration of sewage in discharges depends on the volume of rainwater it is mixed with. Therefore, we have taken a more effective approach to place a duty on water companies in the Environment Act to directly monitor the impact of discharges on water quality upstream and downstream of overflows. This monitoring system will identify harm from storm overflows and ensure that water companies are held to account through enforcement action.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
I thank the Minister for that response, but the Environment Agency has already said that there has
“been widespread and serious non-compliance with the … regulations.”
How can it be expected to act if water companies do not have to measure the intensity of polluting sewage being discharged. Of course there is a cost, but we have always known that more investment is essential to tackle this problem. The Commons Environmental Audit Committee has already recommended installing these monitors, so why are the Government siding with the water companies against the interests of the public, who are rightly outraged at this ongoing scandal?
Lord Benyon (Con)
The Government are very much not siding with the water companies. The level of storm overflows into our rivers is totally unacceptable. That is why we are publishing on 1 September this year our storm overflows plan, which will give details of how we will monitor this. We have measures within the Environment Act which give new legally binding targets and measures which we will bring into force. We have the 25-year plan commitment and our strategic policy statement for Ofwat, which gives a very clear direction. We also have our requirements to the Environment Agency on enforcement, which will hold water companies that break the law to account.
The Duke of Wellington (CB)
My Lords, as the Minister has just said, the Government recently published a draft of what they describe as the storm overflows discharge reduction plan. That draft was published and consultation was invited. In that plan there is a target of reducing discharges of sewage over the next 18 years by only 40%. Does the Minister agree that the public expect a much more ambitious target than that?
Lord Benyon (Con)
The public are right to feel very strongly about this and we try to reflect that in the priority we give to this. The target will be to concentrate on bathing waters and special environmental waterways, such as chalk streams. They will be the Government’s absolute priority and by 2035, under our plans, we will have eliminated nearly all outflows into those waterways.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, does my noble friend accept that if he introduced Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010, the amount of discharge would be immediately reduced? What plans have the Government got to do so?
Lord Benyon (Con)
From memory, I think that Schedule 3 refers to water companies being statutory consultees. I am very happy to follow that up with my noble friend in the near future.
Lord Oates (LD)
My Lords, is the Minister aware that last year South West Water discharged raw sewage into rivers and beachfronts 43,000 times over a period of 350,000 hours, including for 3,709 hours into the River Otter in Honiton, for 1,872 hours into the River Exe in Tiverton, and for 1,482 hours into the River Axe in Axminster? Will the Government end this scandal by imposing a sewage tax on water company profits to fund necessary upgrades, and will they ban water company bosses claiming bonuses until that is done?
Lord Benyon (Con)
I think that was a very good choice of geography. The noble Lord will accept that this is an absolute priority for this Government. People who live in that part of the world, in places such as Tiverton and Honiton, are right to want a Government who will clean this up, but who have a plan to do it without raising their bills to unaffordable levels. That Government are this one.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
We have better policies than Labour, do not worry.
I am really sorry to hear that these volume monitors are so expensive, but let us remember that the water companies are not short of a penny or two. For example, Liv Garfield, the CEO of Severn Trent, has just been paid £4 million a year; Anglian Water has just today paid shareholders a £92 million dividend; and of course £72 billion was paid out in dividends by water companies, while also raising bills by 31% and cutting investment in infrastructure by, in some cases, almost 40%. These are all facts and figures from Feargal Sharkey, and I thank him very much. Can the Minister tell me how much these volume monitors cost?
Lord Benyon (Con)
I cannot tell the noble Baroness precisely. I can tell her that, 11 years ago, the then Water Minister was quite stunned to discover that we knew of only 10% of sewage outflows into rivers. He required all water companies to identify them and, by the end of next year, we will have identified 100% of them, with real-time monitors, so that the public will know. I know who that Minister was, because it was me.
Lord Watts (Lab)
My Lords, the Minister has just said that he found out about this 11 years ago. What have government and the regulator been doing since then? Quite frankly, I think the regulator needs sacking and the Minister needs sacking. Perhaps if he brought my good friend Feargal Sharkey in as a regulator, things would happen.
Lord Benyon (Con)
The noble Lord is not the only person who refers to Feargal Sharkey as his friend. He is someone I know and worked with when I sat on the board of River Action, which was set up to clean up rivers such as the Wye, part of which is ecologically nearly dead. That is why there is an absolute priority in my department and in this Government to make sure we are making these changes and restoring our rivers.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
My Lords, have my noble friend or his department seen any assessment of the impact on rivers or consumers if, as some in this House want, the water companies were nationalised?
Lord Benyon (Con)
I have. An independent piece of research said that water bills would be considerably higher if we had not privatised all those years ago. We know that if water companies were in public ownership, the heads of those utilities would have to sit in the queue behind the health service, education, the police and all the other priorities of public spending, and our environment and water customers would get the crumbs at the end of the queue.
Baroness Bryan of Partick (Lab)
My Lords, as somebody who drinks water from Scottish Water, I am pleased to tell noble Lords that it is of excellent quality, our water bills are very reasonable, and the water is owned by the people who use it. I would like to follow up the question from the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, because I do not think the Minister gave him an adequate answer. It is not good enough to say that the Government are prioritising one type of water over another when by the time most of us here will be long gone, we will still have only a 40% reduction in sewage in our water.
Lord Benyon (Con)
I very much hope that I and the noble Baroness are spared until 2035, so that we can see that priority waters—those for public bathing and those which we mind desperately about, such as chalk streams and other very special environmental ecosystems —are prioritised. That is what we are intending to do. Our ambitions are both high and achievable.
Baroness Boycott (CB)
My Lords, the Minister mentioned the River Wye, yet the rivers in the west of England are largely polluted through industrial chicken farms. Can the Minister enlighten the House on what regulation the Government might take to stop this form of pollution?
Lord Benyon (Con)
The noble Baroness is absolutely right that the problem does not just exist with water companies. Agricultural activities in certain parts, particularly the Wye and Usk catchment, are detrimental to water quality. We have to make sure that, for the phosphates that are run off from the chicken and poultry farms in that area, there is more join-up to protect waters. This is not just an agricultural issue; it is also a planning issue. There is an added problem, in that that river catchment runs across Welsh and English boundaries, and so we have to work with the devolved Government as well.
New Homes Commitment
(2 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Young of Cookham
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they remain committed to building 300,000 new homes a year.
The Minister of State, Home Office and Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Lord Greenhalgh) (Con)
Delivering new homes and regenerating left-behind communities are central to our levelling-up mission and we remain committed to our ambition of delivering 300,000 homes a year. We have made progress, with more than 2 million additional homes being delivered since April 2010. Over 242,000 homes were delivered from April 2019 to March 2020, which is the highest level for over 30 years.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
I am grateful to my noble friend. The Construction Industry Training Board has forecast that we will need an additional 266,000 construction workers over the next three years if demand is to be met—and that is in an industry already facing shortages. What action can my noble friend take to see that those numbers are met? If there is to be a shortfall in output, can he ensure that that does not fall on the affordable sector of the market?
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My noble friend is right that there has been a recent report by the CITB, but I point out that that shortfall is for the whole of the construction industry, not just housing. We have significant cross-government intervention and investment in skills, and the CITB made £110 million available in training grants to support 14,000 businesses. However, we continue to recognise—this was picked up by the Federation of Master Builders—that there are stresses and strains in terms of labour and materials. The Government are working hard to overcome these.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)
My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of the National Housing Federation, which estimates that we need 90,000 social homes a year in England. Can the Minister tell us how the Government will ensure that their reforms in the planning system contained in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill will help deliver that much-needed social housing?
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, there is a real commitment to build more social housing, including more affordable housing. As the noble Baroness knows, the programme is for some £11.5 billion, with a target of double the number of social rented homes in this particular grant period than the previous one. The Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill recognises that, in order to get the housing, we need the infrastructure in place and must ensure that neighbourhoods have mixed communities at their heart. That is what the Bill is planning to do.
Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, can the Minister tell us that all the new houses will be built with a high level of insulation, the quality of which is properly inspected, and will not be fitted with gas boilers but will be heated by renewable energy?
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, we recognise that in order to meet our net-zero commitment we need to implement the future homes standard, which comes in, I believe, in 2025. Building regulations will reflect that ambition to ensure that we build not only more homes but more sustainable homes that use heat pumps and other devices to meet that target.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interest as a member of the Ebbsfleet Development Corporation board. Does my noble friend agree that many public bodies would be willing to get on with delivering homes if they had access to the brownfield infrastructure land fund? Nearly three months into the financial year, can my noble friend say when the allocations from that fund will be announced?
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, £550 million has been allocated to seven mayoral combined authorities. However, we recognise that we need to announce the availability of funding for smaller brownfield sites, which will happen very shortly.
Lord Best (CB)
My Lords, the Minister will know that half of all the affordable housing that is produced annually within the 300,000 target comes from the planning obligations on housebuilders. Can he reassure the House that the planning reforms in the levelling-up Bill will not diminish the amount of affordable housing that housebuilders have to produce, since we need to double the output of affordable housing and not halve it?
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
I can give an assurance that the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill recognises the role of building more housing, including more affordable housing. We are trying to ensure that there is a more transparent approach to the levy. There is reform around the current community infrastructure levy to get that right and to make sure we get a proper contribution to affordable housing in the coming years.
Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate (Non-Afl)
My Lords, has there been a detailed assessment of the decision by Mrs Thatcher to sell off council houses 40 years ago in the light of chronic shortages of houses for sale and rent at affordable prices? Are the Government positively encouraging local authorities to increase their public housing stock?
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, we can prima facie assess that 2 million people chose to buy their own council home and are now homeowners as a result. We make no apology for that. We want to make sure that, in spreading the ability for housing association tenants to buy their own homes, we design the scheme in a way that enables the homes sold to be replaced on a one-for-one basis, which I think everyone can get behind.
Lord Lilley (Con)
Can my noble friend confirm that an unbelievable 1 million people were given the right to come and settle in this country last year? Even if we assume that 300,000 return or emigrate, can he confirm that the remainder—even if they occupy houses at twice the density of the indigenous population—will use up half of the houses we build every year?
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, I recognise that this has been a very welcoming country. We have welcomed refugees from Afghanistan and there has been the very successful programme of welcoming British Hong Kongers to this country. We make no apologies for that. We recognise that there is a need to hit our new-build housing targets and that those will be homes for people who have come to this country for a better life, but we need homes for the younger generations as well.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
My Lords, the housebuilding index produced by the Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply found that, last month, residential construction slowed to levels last seen during the first Covid lockdown. What assessment has the Minister made of the impact this will have on house prices and private rents?
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
I do not recognise the cataclysmic drop since the pandemic. We hit a record number, as I pointed out, in 2020-21; there was a slight falling back, but all our internal assessments are that we will see a rebound and that the dip this year will not be pronounced or continue into the mid-decade. Hitting 300,000 is a stretching target, but we will see increasing numbers in the years to come.
The Lord Bishop of Blackburn
My Lords, is it possible for a developer to pay the local authority a certain sum of money to be relieved of its responsibility, and for that local authority then to use the money elsewhere? I hear that is happening in other parts of the country.
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
My Lords, I do not recognise that you can discharge your responsibility. That is almost describing a bung—I do not think that happens. If there is an affordable housing requirement, you can choose to discharge that off-site, but you still have the requirement to deliver it. We see that in some areas where there is very high-value housing; it is simply more economic to build it elsewhere. I do not recognise that, but if the right reverend Prelate has specific examples, I am happy to look into them.
Viscount Waverley (CB)
My Lords, it is said that pressure on housing supply is often at the expense of regional and national economic development, and that government departments work on their own strategies in silos to the detriment of the broader strategy. Can the Minister give assurance that this is not the case and that he will take up the cause if evidence is presented to the contrary?
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
I recognise that we cannot look at housing in isolation; we need to get investment in the infrastructure and other factors to allow for growth. It is a good start to have had a £10 billion investment in housing supply since the start of this Parliament, but there is also investment to enable brownfield sites to be built out rather than the—sometimes easier—greenfield sites. We want to see brownfield development and that requires infrastructure, and the money is in place to do precisely that.
Lord Naseby (Con)
My Lords, is it not time that we had a meaningful new towns project which would benefit both owner-occupation and social housing throughout the United Kingdom?
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
I think we need to find ways of coming up with new town projects but to do that we need the infrastructure, the transport, the roads and the rail, and that is why we recognise that a programme just to build homes is not enough. We need to get that in the round, and we are taking it forward as part of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill in this Session.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I was very pleased to hear the Minister say enthusiastically last night that we need more affordable housing and social housing, and that the Government were happy to look at ideas. There are currently 500 projects for community land trust homes, creating 7,000 new homes around the country. Will the Government look at how they can encourage further this model of providing homes in perpetuity, of a structure and type decided by local communities for local communities?
Lord Greenhalgh (Con)
I think there is quite a degree of interest in how community land trusts can operate; Coin Street is an example, and I believe there are other examples in Watford. We are happy to take all ideas, including how we can use community land trusts as a vehicle to deliver more affordable housing.
Spousal Visas: Processing Times
(2 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Burt of Solihull
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to reduce the processing times for spousal visas for the spouses of British citizens from in excess of 24 weeks.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, the Home Office is currently prioritising Ukraine visa scheme applications in response to the humanitarian crisis caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Staff from other government departments, including the DWP and HMRC, are being surged into the department to help with Ukraine work and to enable normal visa routes to return to normal service levels in due course.
Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)
My Lords, it is very commendable that the Government are pouring additional resources into processing Ukrainian visas, but can I ask that they do not lose sight of the over 18,000 families, split apart and waiting for spousal visas, who have no certainty that the recently increased 24-week timeframe will even be the maximum time that they will have to wait? What measurable steps are the Government taking to reduce this backlog, and when does the Minister expect the fast-track system to be reinstated?
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
I concur with the noble Baroness that we will not lose sight of that, but what we will also not lose sight of is that in many instances it is life or death for the Ukrainian people. I totally appreciate that other people are having to wait, and we are going to return to normal processing as soon as we can in due course.
Lord Coaker (Lab)
My Lords, we agree with the prioritisation with respect to Ukraine, but the fact of the matter is that, whether it is passports, asylum applications or, now, spousal visas, the story at the Home Office is backlog after backlog after backlog. The Government’s response is to say that over the next few months they will come forward with plans for reductions of 10% in staff. What does the Home Office say to those people waiting for spousal visas, separated from their partners for six months at a time? What does it say to those people waiting for spousal visas who have given up their jobs on the basis that they expect to get them? It is not good enough. Prioritise Ukraine, but not at the expense of everything else.
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
The noble Lord has neatly gone on to passports. Across March, April and May, HMPO processed approximately 3 million passport applications, with 98.5% of those processed within the published processing time of up to 10 weeks, and 91% processed within six weeks. It was not a backlog; it was the sheer volume of processing that needed to be done. In terms of workforce reductions, I have made the point before that every organisation should look at becoming leaner and more efficient. That certainly will not be to the detriment of any of the HMPO or processing surges that we see at the moment, where we expect to have the appropriate number of staff for processing.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)
My Lords, are the Government aware that the Russian Government are using the delays as a form of propaganda by saying that it is the fault of the Ukrainians that other countries cannot get their visas, and that this propaganda is being specifically targeted at South Africa, India and other countries? That information came to me at a meeting I had with five Ukrainian MPs recently.
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
The noble Baroness underlines that to have the Ukrainian visa scheme as a priority is absolutely the right thing to do.
Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)
My Lords, my noble friend has answered a question on the length of time for inquiries to be made and for decisions to be taken. This appears to be the case throughout administration in relation to passports, as well as in relation to these matters. If we are now going to totally rely on the number of weeks in which we have to deal with matters, surely we are at risk of cutting corners. Is it not really rather important that we be more concerned with the thoroughness and fairness of the examination that takes place before a decision is taken?
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
My noble friend is absolutely right. Of course, those thorough processes were some of the things that noble Lords were asking us to cut corners on right at the beginning of this process. We have not, and we are proud of the thoroughness of our processes.
Lord Paddick (LD)
My Lords, the Minister of State for the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and the Home Office told the House on 7 June that there were 19,000 outstanding applications under the Ukrainian visa scheme. Can the Minister update the House on that number? Can she tell the House what the knock-on effect has been in terms of the number of outstanding applications for other visas?
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
On the Ukrainian visas, I think there have been 188,000 applications, and I know that 130,000 have now been issued.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, before the Minister returns to the Home Office this afternoon, will she encourage colleagues to go and see the exhibition that opened yesterday, sponsored by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and Rehman Chishti MP, in the Upper Waiting Room between both Houses of Parliament? It highlights those who have been caught up in violence in Afghanistan, and the Rohingya, Yazidis, Nigerians and many others, so that we understand the plight that many women especially face when they become refugees, contrary to the caricature that is often made of those seeking asylum.
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
The noble Lord points to the vulnerability of women. We have seen that very much during the flight from Ukraine; they are our most vulnerable. Again, that is why we have prioritised the visas and why we do not want women to take journeys across Europe to perhaps be at the behest of people who would not wish them any good.
Viscount Waverley (CB)
My Lords, notwithstanding everything that has already been said today, is the Minister aware that a drift back to Ukraine from countries such as Poland is starting, and that a direct train service from Warsaw to Kyiv—with a change of undercarriage at the border—has started to be reinstated, and that even the economic development agency based in Kyiv, on behalf of the Ukrainians, is now starting to get back into business to work out how it is going to advance the economic development of that country?
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
The noble Viscount brings both good news and bad news. The good news is that the Ukrainians are desperate to get back to normal, but I say that with a note of caution, because I hope they are not going back to face further danger.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)
My Lords, if a private company could produce its product only with a six-month wait, competition would move in to take over its market. Has my noble friend any plans to ensure that this happens with the delivery of these important services?
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
I say to my noble friend, as I have said to other noble Lords, that I hope that normal visa services, in terms of delivery times, will return in due course, but we are prioritising the Ukrainians at the moment.
Lord Scriven (LD)
In answer to my noble friend Lord Paddick, the Minister answered the first part of his question. The second part was: as a result of Ukraine, what is the detriment in the number of outstanding applications from other people waiting for visas? Could the Minister please answer that part of the question?
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
The noble Lord and the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, are absolutely right that it is to the detriment of other visa schemes— student and spousal visas, for example—and, as I said, we hope to get them back on to a more normal footing in due course.
Lord Roberts of Llandudno (LD)
My Lords, what preparations are in process to counteract the effects of climate change and the greatly increased number of people who will have to leave their homes and their areas because of the new weather conditions?
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
That is a very interesting follow-up on spousal visas. But the noble Lord does have a point there, in the sense that we will see a lot more global migration, which needs to be tackled globally.
British Baccalaureate
(2 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Lexden
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the main recommendation of The Times Education Commission, published on 15 June, which calls for the introduction of a British Baccalaureate.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Times Education Commission and the Members of this House who have contributed to it for their insight and ideas. Over the last 10 years, the Government have transformed the quality of academic and technical qualifications, ensuring that they support all young people to achieve their full potential. That is why, with the further reforms currently in train, we have no plans to introduce a new British baccalaureate at age 18.
Lord Lexden (Con)
My Lords, have the Government noted the chorus of praise that greeted this report and, in particular, its recommendation for a British baccalaureate uniting academic and vocational study? Do the Government agree with the president of the Royal Society, who has said that:
“Given the breadth of support for the commission’s report, it is surely time for a cross-party approach to implementing a genuine reset of education”?
Will the Government now rise to this challenge, surely one of the most urgent of our time, which the current Schools Bill, to which my noble friend referred, seems to rather evade?
Baroness Barran (Con)
We think we have led, since 2010, a major reset of education in this country, with relentless focus on quality, clarity of purpose and good progression outcomes, and I commend to my noble friend the schools White Paper, which covers both our legislative and non-legislative actions.
Baroness Blackstone (Ind Lab)
My Lords, the Minister’s reply was extraordinarily complacent and very disappointing. I cannot understand how the Government can have such a closed mind to a sensible suggestion of the kind that the Times Education Commission has made. Is she not aware that no other OECD country has such a specialised curriculum for their able 16 to 18 year-olds? Surely it is now high time to look at this again and try to come up with a more sensible solution where young people have the opportunity to study a wider range of subjects, rather than being confined to just three as is the case with A-levels at the moment.
Baroness Barran (Con)
I thoroughly hope that I did not give the noble Baroness the sense that the Government are complacent. We are not complacent. She need only look at the measures we are taking in relation to technical education, I hope, to demonstrate that. Obviously, every country has a different education system. We have worked to build the best system for our children. We believe that it plays to our strengths and recognises the structure of the school system we have, rather than one that other countries have.
Baroness Coussins (CB)
My Lords, will the Government accept the Times education commission’s recommendation that bursaries for trainee language teachers be restored to the same level as for science and maths, given the current shortfall of well in excess of 50% for the recruitment of language teachers?
Baroness Barran (Con)
The noble Baroness has highlighted the issue of the shortage of modern languages teachers. She will be aware that we have taken a number of actions in this regard, including putting them on the shortage occupation list.
Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)
Another great point in the education commission’s recommendations—forgive me if I read it out—is this:
“An ‘electives premium’ for all schools to be spent on activities including drama, music, dance and sport”,
which are so sadly missing in state schools these days,
“and a National Citizen Service experience for every pupil, with volunteering and outdoor pursuits expeditions to ensure that the co-curricular activities enjoyed by the most advantaged become available to all.”
What a brilliant idea. How will the Government take this forward?
Baroness Barran (Con)
The Government are already taking it forward. The department is investing around £115 million a year in cultural education over three years, on top of schools funding. We are also publishing a national plan for music education, thanks to the great leadership of my noble friend Lady Fleet, and will publish a cultural education plan in 2023. We are supporting the national youth guarantee in relation to citizenship opportunities.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, does my noble friend not accept those famous words that, without vision, the people perish? We have vision in this report from the Times. Will my noble friend at the very least —because many do think that the Government are complacent—talk to the Leader of the House about having a full day’s debate on that commission?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I would be happy to talk to the Leader of the House about my noble friend’s idea.
Lord Flight (Con)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that the main problem is that people have to specialise too early in this country? When many of us were doing O-levels, the standards were closer to today’s A-levels, so we have the problem that you cannot specialise when the quality of the teaching you are relying on is not high enough.
Baroness Barran (Con)
I can say to my noble friend that we have worked incredibly hard to reform both academic and, more recently, technical qualifications. I proudly wear my T-level badge, although it is slightly upside down. More importantly, there is a perception that one can do either academic or technical qualifications. In our response to the consultation on level 3 qualifications, published in July last year, we set out the groups of technical and academic qualifications that we will fund and how they can be combined.
Baroness Blower (Lab)
My Lords, although the Times education commission’s report is an extremely good piece of work with very good recommendations, other bodies were looking at the shape of our education system, particularly assessment, at the same time. So, although I wholeheartedly endorse the notion of having a day to look at this commission, it would pay dividends if the Government met all the commissions that have reported on the shape of our curriculum and assessment, and we thereafter debated all of them. I hope that the Minister agrees.
Baroness Barran (Con)
The Government engage with all the key stakeholder groups in this sector. We value enormously the expertise that they hold. However, I remind the House that attempts were made to deliver a broader 14-to-19 diploma but were not successful.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lords, the commission’s report comments on the importance of bringing out the best in teaching. Teach First has transformed the quality of teaching in some areas by attracting top-quality graduates into our schools. Would the Government consider a programme of Teach Last, to use the skills of those who retire early or want to give back to their communities after another career?
Baroness Barran (Con)
My noble friend will be pleased to know that there is such a programme, Now Teach, and that the Government have been active in supporting it.
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
Last week, the Minister said at the Dispatch Box that it is not government policy to open further grammar schools, yet we read in the papers that new selective schools are on the cards as a way of soothing Tory Back-Benchers. Can the Minister confirm whether what she said last week was correct or whether the department is looking into new grammar schools?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I think the noble Baroness has seen from the Schools Bill and from the schools White Paper what our policy is in this matter.
Baroness Whitaker (Lab)
I make a plea to all those also asking the Government to take the baccalaureate more seriously. I declare an interest in that my eldest son took the baccalaureate because he was really distressed by the narrowness of A-levels. One advantage which has not been mentioned is that it can be internationally reciprocally recognised, so that children who emigrate or whose parents move for a job will not have to retake extremely alien examinations. Does the Minister not think that this is an advantage worth having for our children?
Baroness Barran (Con)
On the international recognition of our qualifications, the noble Baroness is right. We want an outward-looking and confident group of young people who seize opportunities all around the world, but certainly A-levels are extremely well regarded internationally, and we believe that T-levels will follow.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report drew heavily on the work of anthropologists and sociologists. One aspect of the IB is that there is a theory of knowledge course, which looks not just at individual subjects but at how they intersect and divide between each other, and the challenge of acquiring reliable knowledge in an information age—referring to the media literacy question that we had yesterday. Therefore, is this cross-sectional, cross-disciplinary, systems-thinking approach not something that we urgently need across our education system?
Baroness Barran (Con)
The noble Baroness makes an interesting point. We agree that there is very much of value in the panel’s report, but one of its points is that there is an artificial dichotomy between knowledge and skills. All the evidence supports this. A knowledge-based curriculum stimulates critical thinking and inquiry skills, and those can be taught only in the context of solid subject content.
Public Procurement (International Trade Agreements) (Amendment) Regulations 2022
(2 years, 6 months ago)
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Abortion (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2022
(2 years, 6 months ago)
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17:35 - Division on Baroness O’Loan’s amendment - Ayes: 28 / Noes: 181 - Baroness O’Loan’s amendment disagreed.
Lord Caine
That the Regulations laid before the House on 19 May be approved.
Relevant document: 3rd Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (special attention drawn to the instrument)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Northern Ireland Office (Lord Caine) (Con)
My Lords, in opening this debate I first acknowledge and express my respect for the deeply held views that many noble Lords hold and will continue to hold on this subject. For my part, since becoming a Member of your Lordships’ House in 2016, I have never taken a position on the moral rights or wrongs of abortion; indeed, I have not previously voted on the issue. Therefore, rather than reopening the ethical debate about abortion, which has been discussed on previous occasions including during the passage of the 2020 framework regulations, I wish to focus on the legal obligations on the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and the Government and how these regulations will address them.
The origins of these regulations were the decision taken by both Houses of Parliament in 2019 to support an amendment to the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Bill brought forward by the honourable Member for Walthamstow, Stella Creasy, in the other place, in respect of access to abortion services in Northern Ireland. Noble Lords will recall that this took place during the period of nearly three years from 2017 to 2020 when Northern Ireland was without a functioning Executive or Assembly. The effect of her amendment, which subsequently became Section 9 of the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act, was to place a clear statutory duty on the Government to ensure access to services that are compliant with the report in 2018 of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women—or CEDAW for short.
I remind noble Lords that the amendment was passed by a majority of 332 to 99 in the other place, and a vote to amend that amendment in this House was rejected by 138 votes to 39. The size of these majorities indicated the clear will of Parliament to address these issues and ensure access to services in Northern Ireland in line with those available in the rest of the United Kingdom. As a result, since April 2020, access to a limited range of abortion services has been available in Northern Ireland; the latest figures I have show that between 31 March 2020 and 31 January 2022, 2,794 such abortions took place.
I take this opportunity to put on record my thanks to the medical professionals who have ensured that women and girls have had some local access to abortion services in Northern Ireland up to this point, and the organisations that have supported this work. I do not underestimate the huge efforts that have been made, and I have deeply been impressed when meeting, as I have on a number of occasions, clinicians and organisations who have helped to sustain the limited services currently in place.
Despite their best efforts, however, these services still fall far short of what is required by law, with women and girls still unable to access high-quality abortion and post-abortion care locally in Northern Ireland in the same way as women in the rest of the UK. The reasons for this are very clear. Following New Decade, New Approach and the restoration of devolved government in Northern Ireland in January 2020, it was always the Government’s expectation and preference that the Executive, with the relevant legal powers, policy and operational expertise, would take forward the commissioning of abortion services and ensure that they were embedded in the health and social care system in Northern Ireland. Yet, despite having had every opportunity to do so, and extensive engagement by the UK Government to see how best we could support delivery, the Executive have failed to act.
As a result, women and girls in Northern Ireland continue to be placed in vulnerable situations, which we cannot allow to continue. Many of them are still forced to travel to Great Britain to access services, with 371 making the journey in 2020 despite the difficulties attached to travelling during that period. Figures released just today show that 161 made the journey in 2021. I know from my discussions with clinicians in Northern Ireland that the limited services on offer are stretched to breaking point. This is clearly an unacceptable state of affairs. Despite being given the time, space and encouragement by the Government to do so, the Executive have not ensured the provision of services required by Parliament in 2019.
In the spring of 2020, the Government introduced, and Parliament approved, a framework for the Department of Health in Northern Ireland to deliver services, yet services were not commissioned. In March 2021, the Government introduced, and Parliament approved, the Abortion (Northern Ireland) Regulations. These provided the Northern Ireland Secretary with a power to direct that action be taken where it is required to implement the recommendations in paragraphs 85 and 86 of the CEDAW report. In July 2021, the Northern Ireland Secretary did indeed direct the Department of Health to commission and ensure the full provision of abortion services by no later than 31 March 2022, yet services were still not commissioned.
It is approaching nearly three years since the executive formation Act was passed. Section 9 continues to place the Government under a duty to implement the CEDAW recommendations and ensure that women and girls have access to services. We now have no alternative but to take all necessary actions to ensure that this happens.
In his Statement, therefore, on 24 March this year, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland committed to return to Parliament and make regulations after the Northern Ireland Assembly election which took place on 5 May, if no progress was made towards the delivery of services. He has now made the regulations that are before your Lordships today and they were agreed in the other place last week, in order to make sure that the will of Parliament is respected and his legal duties upheld.
In response to arguments made that these regulations ignore the devolution settlement and make constitutional changes via secondary legislation, I would remind noble Lords that the devolution settlement does not absolve us of our statutory duty to uphold the rights of women and girls in this context. I therefore hope that noble Lords will support these regulations without amendment to the approval Motion.
The Government have not taken these decisions lightly. We remain fully committed to protecting the Belfast agreement in all its dimensions and to the institutions it establishes, including devolved government. In this instance, however, as I have just said, the devolution settlement does not absolve the Government of the clear statutory duties placed upon them by Parliament. This Government’s actions up to this point reinforce that position and our desire to work with the devolved institutions. Indeed, it was only once it became clear that this deadline would not be met that on 24 March, my right honourable friend made a commitment to return to Parliament and make regulations on abortion should they be necessary. As a result, these regulations were laid before this House on 19 May.
Turning briefly to what they contain, they remove the need for the Northern Ireland Executive Committee to approve services before they can be commissioned and funded by the Department of Health in Northern Ireland. The regulations do this by providing that directions under the Abortion (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2021, which require action to be taken to implement the recommendations of the CEDAW report, must be complied with irrespective of whether the matter has been discussed or agreed by the Northern Ireland Executive Committee. Further, they confer on the Secretary of State the power to do anything that a Northern Ireland Minister or department could do for the purpose of ensuring CEDAW compliance. For the purpose of determining what a Northern Ireland Minister or department could do, any need for Executive Committee approval will be disregarded.
The effect of this is to ensure that the Department of Health will have no further barriers to commission and fund services. Even at this stage, it is our clear preference that the Department of Health should drive forward the commissioning of abortion services without further delay and that, as a devolved matter, funding remains the responsibility of the Northern Ireland Executive. To that end, we continue to engage with the Minister of Health and his department, but this requires an absolute commitment by the department to provide services, or the Northern Ireland Secretary will use his powers in these regulations to commission services himself. To ensure that we have all the information required in those circumstances, a small team has been established in the Northern Ireland Office to work alongside the Department of Health to take this forward.
I recognise that this is a sensitive and personal issue for many people, and we have heard many differing views in this House on previous occasions, as well as from Members of the Northern Ireland Assembly, in relation to abortion services. Yet this sovereign United Kingdom Parliament has also made its views crystal clear and placed a binding statutory duty on the Secretary of State to ensure access to properly commissioned services. In their absence, caused by a refusal on the part of the Executive to take this forward, women are currently forced to choose to travel or to resort to unsafe and unregulated measures.
A number of the clinicians I have met over recent months, who are struggling to provide these services without proper support, tell me of the very difficult situations into which women are being forced by a lack of safe, local, high-quality healthcare services. This is despite the fact that the law is in place to ensure that safe, properly regulated services are provided. We have a statutory duty in Section 9 of the executive formation Act to change this situation and ensure that CEDAW-compliant services are available. That is what these regulations will finally provide in Northern Ireland, and I commend them to the House.
Baroness O’Loan
At end insert “but that this House regrets that the Regulations (1) disregard the statutory role of the Northern Ireland Assembly and ignore the devolution settlement, and (2) make substantial constitutional changes via secondary legislation”.
Baroness O’Loan (CB)
My Lords, as the Minister said, there has been and continues to be very significant opposition to the imposition of the extreme abortion regime in Northern Ireland by this Government. It was done in July 2019, in circumstances that beggared belief. It left Northern Ireland with abortion law that goes further than that which applies elsewhere in the UK and that has been, and continues to be, rejected by the vast majority of people in Northern Ireland. Notwithstanding that opposition, the Northern Ireland Government have been acting in compliance with the 2019 Act and the 2020 regulations—I will deal with this in a minute.
The process by which we in Northern Ireland are governed is provided for in the Northern Ireland Act 1998. In its third report, the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee of your Lordships’ House stated that these regulations
“allow the Northern Ireland Assembly Executive Committee to be bypassed”.
The Executive Committee is provided for in Section 20 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998. Section 20(3) and (4) provide:
“The Committee shall … have the function of discussing and agreeing upon … significant or controversial matters”
and those that cut across the responsibility of more than one Northern Ireland Minister. Accordingly, the Ministerial Code requires Northern Ireland Ministers to bring such matters to the attention of the Executive Committee. Abortion is a significant, controversial matter.
On each occasion when draft regulations have been presented to Parliament following the passing of the executive formation Act, they have extended abortion provision in Northern Ireland; it happened in 2020, in 2021 and now, in 2022. Despite the fact that a duly elected and appointed Northern Ireland Minister of Health is in office and working, we see an attempt to bypass him and give the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland powers that are not available to Northern Ireland Ministers or their government departments. All of this is inconsistent with the existing statutory provisions for government in Northern Ireland and with the international obligations of the British Government under the 1998 Good Friday/Belfast agreement.
Ignoring the expressed views of the people prior to the passing of the Abortion (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2020, Northern Ireland now has an abortion law that goes far beyond what was legally required by the formation Act 2019. Regulations provide that abortions can be carried out up to 12 weeks, permitting abortion of any baby, for any reason, including on the grounds of its sex. This provision is not consistent with the UN CEDAW report, on which the 2019 legislation was based. CEDAW has said that sex-selective abortion should not happen because it perpetuates negative stereotypes and prejudices towards women. I believe that it is not permitted in the rest of the UK.
Abortion can be carried out up to 24 weeks if one nurse or doctor certifies that
“the continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk of injury to the physical or mental health of the … woman which is greater than if the pregnancy were terminated”,
taking into account her “actual or … foreseeable circumstances”, such as poverty. Again, this is much wider than in the rest of the UK.
Abortion can be carried out in Northern Ireland up to birth, if it is
“immediately necessary … to prevent grave permanent injury to the physical or mental health, of the pregnant woman”,
if two doctors or two nurses certify that the termination is necessary to prevent such injury and if there is a
“substantial risk that … the child … would suffer from such physical or mental impairment as to be seriously disabled.”
This would include babies with Down syndrome or cleft palates. Again, this is much wider than in the rest of the UK.
As the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, said in 2020, speaking of babies with disabilities, this
“promotes and perpetuates disability discrimination.”—[Official Report, 15/6/20; col. 1981.]
So in Northern Ireland we have babies’ lives being terminated because of their sex or their disabilities, among other reasons.
In 2021, the Abortion (Northern Ireland) Regulations gave expansive powers to the Secretary of State, allowing him, for the purposes of implementing the recommendations in paragraphs 85 and 86 of the CEDAW report, to direct that action must be taken by Northern Ireland Ministers, departments, the Regional Health and Social Care Board and the Regional Agency for Public Health and Social Well-being. However, it is a discretion, not a duty. It says he “may” act. He does not have to act, and if he does not act, there will be no successful challenge.
Now we have the 2022 regulations. First, they disregard the statutory role of the Northern Ireland Assembly and ignore the devolution settlement. Secondly, they make substantial constitutional changes by way of secondary legislation. It is not the case that the Northern Ireland Assembly is in breach of its legal obligations to implement CEDAW. It is work in progress. Many changes have occurred. Abortion has been decriminalised in most situations, as required. Abortion is now available in Northern Ireland. The Minister has access to figures, which I could not find when I checked again this morning, and he has told us that there were 2,794 abortions in Northern Ireland in the last year and that in the previous year there were 1,345. These figures represent a 60% increase on the number of those who went to England and Wales for abortions in 2019.
The exclusion zones mentioned in the CEDAW report have now been provided for in law, in a Bill that was passed by the Northern Ireland Assembly and is currently, I believe, subject to legal challenge. As I have said previously, the Secretary of State is not in breach of his obligation. He has a discretion, not a duty, and this is work in progress.
I now address the first issue: that the regulations disregard the statutory role of the Northern Ireland Assembly and ignore the devolution settlement. The democratically elected Northern Ireland Assembly, acting in accordance with its constitutional processes, did not choose to legislate further or to commission directly abortion services that are otherwise provided. Abortion is available; 2,794 abortions in our small area is evidence of that. The Northern Ireland Assembly could have done so but it chose not to.
Your Lordships know that the history of Northern Ireland is tragic. After decades of war, the Good Friday/Belfast agreement of 1998 provided for the process of government within Northern Ireland. The arrangements that we have protect the rights of citizens by providing for the Assembly and the Executive, comprised of the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister, who are joint chairs, and eight other Ministers. Their job, as the Government’s website says, is to exercise executive authority on behalf of the Northern Ireland Assembly and to take decisions on significant matters and issues. Health is, as I have said, one of the matters that have been devolved to Northern Ireland. The Government’s website says:
“This means that local politicians, instead of MPs in Westminster, make key decisions on how Northern Ireland is governed.”
It is most regrettable that after our last election in May, there is as yet no sitting Assembly and no Executive. However, in the absence of the Assembly, Ministers in office before the election continue to hold office and have decision-making powers. There is a working Minister of Health, Mr Robin Swann MLA of the Ulster Unionist Party. He has massive responsibilities. Our health service has been described as “broken” by the director of the Royal College of Nursing and as “extremely broken” by a leading ED consultant and many others. We are short of some 7,000 medical and nursing staff.
There were 2,794 abortions last year. In April 2021, more than 300,000 people, almost 20% of our population, were waiting for a first consultant appointment. On 31 March 2022, 156,270 patients were waiting, having seen a consultant, for a diagnostic test and 50.7% of patients were waiting more than nine weeks for a diagnostic test to find out whether they have conditions which may be very serious or even life threatening. Some 29.6% of patients have been waiting more than 26 weeks for a diagnostic test. Only 43% of all cancer patients start treatment within 16 days of an urgent GP referral for suspected cancer.
We have amazing cataract waiting times. I declare an interest because I have cataracts and am awaiting surgery, but the waiting time is four to five years. However, you are not allowed to go on the waiting list until your eyesight is so bad that you cannot drive. You wait, with deteriorating sight, until you cannot drive, and then you wait another five years.
Just yesterday, Minister Swann published an action plan setting out a programme of reform for the delivery of stroke and orthopaedic services. Northern Ireland has 25,526 people waiting for orthopaedic treatment. I declare an interest as I am on the list. They can expect to wait four or five years for surgery that will give them mobility, without which their physical and mental health will in all probability decline further.
Abortion has been made available within the law. As Minister Swann has stated:
“My Department does not dispute that women in Northern Ireland are legally entitled to abortion services. The legal advice that was received by my Department states that the Abortion (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2020 do not require my Department to commission the relevant services. Registered medical professionals can now terminate pregnancies lawfully.”
There is, as the Minister said, nothing in the legislation thus far that requires the independent commissioning of abortion services. Rather, they are made available through normal procedures.
Abortion is a costly business and profitable for those who provide the services. UK health reports that it costs £500 for the abortion pills you can take up to nine weeks of gestation, rising to about £800 for an abortion up to 18 weeks and about £2,000 after that. The Minister and his department are working hard to try to resolve the massive problems faced by our health system across the board.
If passed, these regulations would fundamentally alter the principles of the Good Friday/Belfast agreement, which created a sophisticated process for decision-making. As I state in this amendment, they
“make substantial constitutional changes via secondary legislation”.
They would allow the Secretary of State to bypass the Northern Ireland Assembly and the Executive Committee entirely. They are not in any way limited. However, the Northern Ireland Ministerial Code makes clear that the Northern Ireland Act ensures that significant and controversial issues are for the Executive to decide.
The regulations give broad, sweeping powers to the Secretary of State effectively to act as a Northern Ireland Minister without having been appointed as a Minister in accordance with the provisions of the Good Friday agreement and the Northern Ireland Act 1998 and without any accountability to the people of Northern Ireland. Effectively, they would allow the Secretary of State to take command away from the duly elected and appointed Minister of Health in the areas of abortion services and all the other areas mentioned in paragraphs 85 and 86 of the CEDAW report, from the Minister for Justice and, in education, the Minister of Education. The regulations would give the Secretary of State all the powers of those Ministers to allocate resources and do anything a Minister or department could do, and to provide financial assistance for the purposes of ensuring that the CEDAW recommendations, which we brought into domestic law, are implemented.
If these regulations were passed, the Secretary of State would be able to take these decisions in isolation, having no regard to the impact of his decisions on the allocation of resources for neurology patients, cancer patients, orthopaedic patients, patients with cataracts and other eye problems, and patients in all other areas of medicine. The Minister of Health is in office and working to try to manage the impact of Covid on our broken health service. Undoubtedly, brave decisions need to be made to secure greater efficiencies and allow more people to be treated more quickly; however, there is no need for the drastic, unaccountable powers over elements of government that would be given to the Secretary of State were these regulations to be approved.
Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I give my whole-hearted support to the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, and thank her for tabling it. This is a free-vote issue, of course, and the proceedings here today are of huge interest to the people in Northern Ireland. There are not many controversial issues in Northern Ireland that can be defined as neither orange nor green and cannot be interpreted by anyone as sectarian. This is one such issue. On a lot of Northern Ireland political issues, I am sure I probably would not agree with the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, but this issue unites people across faiths and communities with different identities in Northern Ireland.
Up until 2019, as the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, has said, Northern Ireland had the right to decide its own laws on abortion. Then, some politicians here in Westminster decided that they could overrule the hard-won devolution settlement, and their campaigning was pretty tireless. But for me, this goes to the heart of whether devolution is to be meaningful. The Belfast/Good Friday agreement is meant to be the basis of all political decisions in Northern Ireland, and these regulations—and indeed the whole way the abortion debate has been handled by the Secretary of State—are, I believe, driving a coach and horses through that agreement.
I hope that Members of your Lordships’ House will actually take away the word “abortion” and not talk about abortion itself and their own personal views on the rights and wrongs of abortion, because this is much more fundamental. This is a fundamental constitutional change being proposed by regulation. The Secretary of State presented the regulations in the other place as changing the Northern Ireland Act in a limited and specific way, but that is simply not the case. These regulations set a precedent. They go right against the constitutional guarantee and give the Secretary of State power to make any decisions he sees fit, ignoring the will of the people of Northern Ireland.
Back in 2018, the Secretary of State said:
“it would not be appropriate for Westminster to seek to impose its will, or to be the arbiter of an issue that has long been devolved to the people of Northern Ireland.”—[Official Report, Commons, 5/6/18; col. 220.]
What happened? Why has he changed his mind? He has done a complete U-turn, and perhaps the reason is that he was being held prisoner by so many women actively campaigning on this issue. Now he wants to be the Minister of Health in Northern Ireland, or perhaps the Permanent Secretary of the Department of Health.
I genuinely think that the way this whole issue has been handled is shameful, and even more shameful when there are so many other crucial issues in Northern Ireland that the Government have chosen not to push forward. When it suits Her Majesty’s Government, they want devolution and they believe in devolution. When it does not suit them, they take away devolution, and that is what this is about today. Forget the issue of abortion: this is about the constitutional sabotage of devolution and the 1998 Act.
Baroness Suttie (LD)
My Lords, I speak in favour of the regulations before us this afternoon. As others have said, abortion is always a complex and highly emotive issue that is ultimately a matter of conscience for noble Lords. But in the debate this afternoon I think it is important to try to hold on to the facts and acknowledge why we are once again having to debate these issues. As the Minister set out in his opening remarks, we are debating these regulations because the Northern Ireland Department of Health has failed to make progress on implementing the 2020 regulations.
The 2020 regulations sought to bring Northern Ireland in line with the rest of the United Kingdom on reproductive rights for women and to ensure that the whole of the United Kingdom met its international requirements through CEDAW. I am very pleased that the Minister acknowledges the importance of adhering to our international legal obligations. In essence, we are debating two issues: the United Kingdom’s adherence to international treaty obligations, and the provision of equality of access for women in Northern Ireland to the same levels of reproductive healthcare as women can access in the rest of the United Kingdom.
For those colleagues who are concerned about the potential impact of these regulations on the devolution settlement in Northern Ireland, as a very firm believer in devolution, I believe that these are an exceptional set of circumstances that should not create a wider precedent. It would of course have been hugely preferable for the Northern Ireland Executive to have fulfilled their responsibilities directly following the adoption of the regulations in April last year. In that respect, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan. However, once again, Northern Ireland finds itself without a functioning Executive, so it is currently not possible to make progress in this regard.
The international treaty obligations in CEDAW were signed by the United Kingdom as a whole, so the Government in Westminster have a duty to ensure that the whole of the United Kingdom implements them in full. This debate is really about implementing a law that has now been in place for over two years. It should not be about reopening or unpicking what should be a settled matter. A woman’s right to choose in Northern Ireland remains in a precarious position. The reality is that women continue to be forced to travel to England for abortion services; some women, in certain parts of Northern Ireland, continue to purchase unsafe abortion pills.
Whatever one’s personal view on abortion, surely this is an unacceptable position. There is an urgent need to see consistency of services and rights to reproductive health across Northern Ireland. For this to be possible, it is important that the commissioning process be concluded as soon as possible, to ensure that services are fully accessible to all who need them. Can the Minister reassure us that the necessary funding will be made available, and give an indicative timetable for this to be concluded?
In summary, these regulations are about ensuring that every part of the United Kingdom adheres to our international treaty obligations, so that every woman in Northern Ireland will finally be entitled to the same level of reproductive healthcare as women in the rest of the United Kingdom. I therefore urge noble Lords to support these regulations and to reject the amendment to the Motion from the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan.
The Lord Bishop of Blackburn
My Lords, I am conscious that it is not commonplace for Prelates to comment on matters that extend to Northern Ireland only. However, what made me reluctant to speak on this matter is the same driving force that has brought me to speak—the fact that this was, and should be again, a devolved matter. My desire and aim today is not to speak around the rights and wrongs of the matter but to state my discomfort that this debate is happening in this place at all.
I believe the mandate for decision-making on this matter lies in Northern Ireland, with the newly elected Executive. I would much rather see increased efforts towards their establishment than our making decisions on their behalf. Much was said in this place, and in print and online media, about the fact that the regulations we seek to amend today came through this House and the other place when there was no sitting Executive in Northern Ireland. I was one of those frustrated at the timing, and I feel that it happened when there was no sitting Executive precisely because they would never pass such legislation. It was imposed, and these regulations continue to impose on Northern Irish people in what I believe is an unacceptable way.
The point could not be made more clearly than in the first proposed amendment in the regulations before us:
“The fact that a matter has not been brought to the attention of, or discussed and agreed by, the Executive Committee of the Northern Ireland Assembly is to be disregarded”.
I am no stranger to legal language, but this does not make good reading. On top of this, we are also asked to support amendments which place financial demands on the devolved health service to fund decisions thrust upon it.
For these reasons, I am happy to see the amendment expressing regret from the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan. I fully support it, because no word can better describe how I feel about these regulations coming to this place than “regret”. I am happy for those in Northern Ireland to disregard my comments if they are considered unhelpful or unsolicited, but for this House to put into statute that the views of the Northern Ireland Executive should be disregarded in this way seems to me wholly wrong.
Baroness Deech (CB)
My Lords, it is my firm belief that arguments about devolution are being used to disguise the fact that we are actually talking about human rights. The European Court of Human Rights has held repeatedly that access to abortion law is a human right. We do not always like it—only a week ago, some people were up in arms because the European Court of Human Rights put a spoke in the attempt to send people to Rwanda—but we have accepted it. Whether one likes it or not, there is a human right to abortion which women have been denied for a very long time in Northern Ireland. One would be more sympathetic had Northern Ireland not apparently made a mess of its health system—and of course, one recalls that not so long ago, illegitimate newborn babies were put in baby homes and taken away from their mothers. I cannot accept this excess care for the embryo when the actual live baby is then taken away from its mother.
Northern Ireland is clinging to us through the Northern Ireland protocol. It is only right that it should not have its cake and eat it. Northern Ireland must accept abortion; it is a human right. I strongly support the Motion before us, and I hope that we will not amend it.
Lord Morrow (DUP)
My Lords, I commend the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, on bringing this amendment to the Motion before your Lordships’ House today. In the event that she presses it, I assure her that my colleagues and I will support her.
I have set out my views on the 2020 abortion regulations and 2021 regulations before your Lordships’ House on earlier occasions. My opposition to the 2020 regulations is well known. The Secretary of State himself said in the other place last week that they
“go beyond what is in Great Britain”.—[Official Report, Commons, Delegated Legislation Committee, 16/6/22; col. 3.]
In April 2021, I said:
“The union has worked hitherto because Parliament has recognised that it cannot be used to impose a uniformity that undermines the key distinctiveness of the component parts.”
I said then that I thought that the 2020 and 2021 regulations
“do not provide grounds for overruling devolution or, more fundamentally, the understandings that make it possible to argue for the relationship that exists between the UK’s four component parts.”—[Official Report, 28/4/21; cols. 2269-70.]
I feel that even more strongly today.
It is extremely regrettable that we find ourselves talking about implementing the 2020 regulations, which were opposed by 79% of those who responded to the Government’s consultation in 2019 and which were not made with any involvement of the devolved Assembly and, as a result, any accountability to the people of Northern Ireland—citizens who have not been granted the right to decide their own abortion law through the representative process. My firm belief that this should be a matter dealt with by the Executive and the Assembly remains true.
Today we are discussing the 2022 regulations, which are already in place and give zero accountability to the people of Northern Ireland and fundamentally alter the Belfast agreement. Whether you agree with the 2020 regulations or not, the methods being used by the Government should make us all stop, pause and ask, “Is this the way we want our democracy operating?” For instance, would this be acceptable in a Scottish or Welsh context? I suspect not.
There is recognition by all three devolved Administrations that there are some matters that need to be dealt with centrally in a united manner; for instance, defence spending. The Northern Ireland Act 1998 recognised that there are times when it is appropriate for the Minister to direct the Executive, but these are narrowly defined in Section 26 as situations of national security or public safety, or where an action is needed under international law. We know that the Northern Ireland Office believes that the 2021 regulations do not fit any of these Section 26 criteria. It said that very explicitly last year in the Explanatory Memorandum, and it was for that reason that the Secretary of State gave himself new powers of direction.
The 1998 Act also acknowledged that matters that are significant to the Northern Ireland community are for the Northern Ireland Executive to decide. The law and policy on abortion fit this criteria, so, rightly, decisions in this area are for the Executive and not for the Minister of Health to make alone. Last year, the Minister took powers to make directions; this year, he has gone further in two respects: first, by saying he can make directions without any reference to the Executive, and secondly, by acting as if he were the Minister for Health and/or the Department of Health. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee said that these regulations give “extensive powers” to the Secretary of State, powers that have no accountability to the Northern Ireland electorate. This is a fundamental constitutional change proposed by regulation powers that the Minister confirmed last week he intends to exercise “relatively soon”.
These regulations set a precedent that we need to consider very carefully. They override the constitutional agreement that certain matters should be for the Executive and override the narrow criteria when the Secretary of State can act.
There are political questions to ask about why the Secretary of State is deciding to act now on this issue, when there was no action from the Government to make important decisions for Northern Ireland when the Assembly was suspended for three years. There are very practical questions to be asked and answered. The Secretary of State has made it clear that he intends to take these powers relatively soon, but when he does so how will his powers work alongside those of the Northern Ireland Minister of Health? Who will officials be responsible to and how will they take instructions from Westminster? What if there are conflicting instructions? How will the decisions the Minister says he is going to take affect the budget in the Northern Ireland Executive, and particularly other services that come under the Department of Health? What consequential budget decisions will need to be made by the Minister of Health because of the decisions made by the Secretary of State? How long will the powers last? Will these decisions be ongoing? Will the Minister of Health be constantly looking over his or her shoulder, wondering what decisions the Secretary of State may make in future years that could impact spending on policy?
In the other place, the Minister argued that questions about the budget were irrelevant because there had been a generous 2021 spending review settlement with more funds allocated to Northern Ireland than at any time since devolution. Really? I wish to draw your Lordships’ attention to the fact that over the period 2019-20 to 2024-25, the settlement will have been a real-terms increase of only 0.8%. I quote these figures from the 2021 spending review document. Since then, inflation has significantly increased, so it is right that the Northern Ireland Executive are cautious about spending, especially when that increase is compared to the 2.3% real-terms increase for Scotland and a 2.8% increase for Wales. Given this low increase, the Secretary of State may indeed find himself needing to use Regulation 5 to give grants or loans, and it is not clear how the Northern Ireland Executive will be able to fund any repayments. Nor is it clear how there will be transparency, or whether these decisions are good for the rest of the block grant or represent good value for money—a key Treasury principle. These are not theatrical questions. The Department of Health will be facing them very soon.
In summary, these regulations are counter to the devolution settlement. They set a precedent that should be a concern to the other devolved Administrations and will allow actions by the Secretary of State without any democratic accountability. Finally, this decision by government to push ahead with this issue further destabilises the devolution settlement.
Lord Robathan (Con)
My Lords, the moral dilemma of abortion is a fraught and complex one in which I do not intend to get too involved. In this country, it raises great passions; in the United States of America, it brings about conflict and leads to shootings, which I think we all regret. But it is the termination of life.
Personally, I believe that abortion is often necessary; it may be necessary for a great many reasons. However, I hope we would all regret that last year in the United Kingdom there were more than 200,000 abortions—I think that is right—which means that abortion has just become an extension of contraception, with all the dangers to mothers’ lives, apart from anything else, that go with it.
Although I may regret that, this debate is nothing to do with the morality of abortion. As we have just heard from several speakers, this is to do with the devolution of power to Northern Ireland. Some eight years ago, I worked in the Northern Ireland Office for a year. Devolution is very important. We know there are issues with it, but either we have devolved health to Northern Ireland or we have not. It seems to me that this is a matter of great principle. Notwithstanding any crusades in the House of Commons by one or two people, such as Stella Creasy, this is a matter that must be decided by the people of Northern Ireland. We should not be going there.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, I fully support the amendment to the Motion introduced by my noble friend Lady O’Loan. I strongly endorse the remarks made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Blackburn, and the noble Lords, Lord Robathan and Lord Morrow.
I say gently to my noble friend—for she is my noble friend—Lady Deech that, among the 30 articles of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, there is no right to abortion. Article 3, on the other hand, guarantees the right to life itself. All the other rights are worthless without that paramount right to life.
It is fitting that this debate is taking place around an amendment that regrets this Motion because there is so much to regret in what Parliament is being asked to agree. We should register our profound regret for every life that will be lost because of this decision, at suborning the devolution settlement, and for measures that set aside ethical proprieties and are deeply flawed and frankly questionable, not least on the grounds of workability. These regulations are about more than just how abortion services are commissioned in Northern Ireland. They raise serious questions about devolution and highlight key constitutional challenges that go beyond abortion and should be of grave concern to your Lordships’ House, as we have heard. That is where I want to begin.
Today, the key question for your Lordships is this: should the constitution of this country be set aside on the basis of regulations alone, particularly when the regulations in question are vague and fail to set out how and when the power that they confer will be exercised?
I care about this deeply for a number of reasons. I led a delegation to see John Major when he was Prime Minister and urged him to make abortion a devolved matter—an argument that he accepted, as did Tony Blair. That delegation included leading figures from each of the constitutional parties then in the House of Commons, drawn from across the political divide. Indeed, for many years, I have been a parliamentary spokesman on Northern Ireland; I have come to respect and admire the people of Northern Ireland. I passionately believe that their voices deserve to be listened to, and that power-sharing through devolution holds the key to its future.
Each constituent part of the United Kingdom is permitted by virtue of devolution to take decisions that best meet the needs and political outlook of that part of this nation. The people of Northern Ireland have consistently elected to their Assembly people who take a different view concerning abortion than that expressed in other parts of the UK. Although attitudes and voting patterns in Northern Ireland may well change, the new Assembly has been elected only recently and this question is yet to be put to it. The clear constitutional imperative remains: devolved issues should be decided only by the devolved Administrations, who have been given the power to set policy and law for their area. It is arrogant in the extreme to overturn that principle, especially on an issue that is, for millions of people, not a marginal question but, as I have said, about the very right to life itself.
Regulation 2 permits the Secretary of State simply to bypass the Northern Ireland Executive and the Assembly. The Explanatory Memorandum states that
“a direction given under those Regulations must be complied with irrespective of whether any matter has been brought to the attention of, or discussed and agreed by, the Executive Committee of the Assembly.”
Even if a way forwards is agreed by the Northern Ireland Executive, or indeed the recently elected Assembly, the Secretary of State can simply make any direction he sees fit, even if it is in direct contravention of the decision made by the Executive or Assembly. Even if a majority of elected representatives in Northern Ireland disagree, they will be duty-bound to follow the decision of the Secretary of State. That cannot be right, and as a parliamentarian committed to the principle of devolution, I contest, as I have done in previous debates, this high-handed decision. Surely it would not be tolerated if it was in Scotland or Wales, and it should not be tolerated in Northern Ireland either. To set aside devolution and all it entails by statute would be bad enough, but to do so through regulation, regardless of whether it is technically legally permissible, is troubling indeed.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, it is impossible to have a pick-and-mix constitution. I approach this entirely from a constitutional point of view. My views on abortion are similar to those expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, in his very thoughtful and thorough speech, but I do not want to follow him along that road.
As a democrat and a constitutionalist, I accept that abortion is entirely legal within England. I accept that it is entirely legal within Wales and Scotland. I accept, although I deeply regret it, some of the legislative moves on the gender issue that are being made in Scotland. All those years ago in Parliament I opposed devolution for Scotland, but that is over and done with. We are where we are. Therefore, we accept that the United Kingdom is united with the United Kingdom Government on the great issues—foreign policy, defence, et cetera. However, if we accept that we have devolution, it cannot be pick-and-mix devolution. Therefore, it is wrong for us to dictate to the people of Northern Ireland, whose views, so far as we can assess them, as referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, a moment or two ago, indicate that they do not want this. We may think that is benighted. Many of your Lordships may think that it is wrong and would be entirely justified in taking that view.
But we have devolution. It is very important indeed that Northern Ireland gets its act together. We would not be debating this today had there not been three years without a proper Assembly and Executive in Northern Ireland, and we are now in another period where we do not have a functioning Executive. As one who loves Northern Ireland and got to know it fairly well when I was chairman of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee in another place, I deeply regret this. I would say to my many friends in Northern Ireland that they should, please, get their act together—but we in this United Kingdom Parliament should not take back powers that we have devolved. That is what we would be doing; indeed, it is what we have done already.
Let us not forget that Northern Ireland has a much longer history of devolution than any other part of the United Kingdom, going back 100 years. We have decided that Northern Ireland should have autonomy in certain areas; for example, it should be responsible for its education and its health. I greatly admire my noble friend the Minister; he has done a great deal for Northern Ireland and relations within the United Kingdom, and he is a man with whom I do not disagree lightly. However, in all conscience—fundamentally this is both a constitutional issue and an issue of conscience—I cannot accept what the Government are asking us to do today.
I suspect a significant number of your Lordships will take a different view—that, of course, again, I respect —but I come back to where I started. If you have devolution, and devolve certain things to the constituent parts of the United Kingdom, you cannot mix and match. You have to be consistent with your principles. I believe that the only way of being consistent with our principles in this is not to support what my noble friend advanced but to support the line taken by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, in her amendment.
Lord Clarke of Nottingham (Con)
My Lords, I did not think I would sit and listen to more than about 10 minutes of this debate, as I expected to hear a very familiar argument about the morality and legality of abortion, on which my views were long ago established. I have always been in favour of legalising abortion. Indeed, I am quite liberal and tend to go the liberal end of a woman’s right to choose. However, I have found myself listening to a very challenging debate that is not on that subject at all; it is on the question of what should be within the scope of the powers that we have devolved to the constituent parts of the United Kingdom.
The speeches have been extremely eloquent, if I may say so humbly and without being patronising; there have been some very moving speeches. However, I am not sure that they altogether satisfy the case for opposing these regulations. We are debating what the exact scope should be of what we have devolved to the different nations of the United Kingdom.
Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (DUP)
I commend the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, on her amendment. I can assure her that if it is pushed to a vote, I will be very happy to support it. I would like, however, to correct the noble and learned Lord, Lord Clarke, who has shown a somewhat inaccurate knowledge of what is happening in Northern Ireland. He said that there is one region within the United Kingdom where there is no abortion law. In actual fact, the very opposite is the truth: we have the most liberal abortion law of any region of the United Kingdom. If the noble and learned Lord wants to speak on the issue, it is best that he reads up on the reality of the situation, because his speech a few moments ago showed a total lack of knowledge of the reality on the ground in Northern Ireland in respect of abortion.
Lord Clarke of Nottingham (Con)
The availability of the service is much more restricted in Northern Ireland. If I said that the issue was the legality in Northern Ireland, that was a slip. There is no doubt that access to abortion is much more restricted in Northern Ireland than in the rest of the United Kingdom—that is the whole point of this debate.
Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (DUP)
But what he said was somewhat different—however, I want to move forward. I acknowledge that this is a very sensitive matter and different sides have deeply held views on it throughout the Northern Ireland community. The Secretary of State acknowledged that to the Seventh Delegated Legislation Committee in the other place last Thursday, but he then deliberately and defiantly—given the views held by many hundreds of thousands of people in Northern Ireland—sought to push through his regulation.
The Secretary of State also acknowledged that these regulations “go beyond” what is in Northern Ireland, in spite of the Government never having asked the people of Northern Ireland to give their express democratic opinion on this matter through the ballot box. Over the years, Northern Ireland has taken an approach to the protection of the unborn that is different from any other region of the United Kingdom—but that was regarded to be part of the beauty of devolution. This difference reflected the views of the people of Northern Ireland, which is what democracy is supposed to do: reflect the views of the people whom politicians serve.
The Secretary of State reminded the committee that “emphatic votes” on this ethical issue in 2019, 2020 and 2021 showed the will of the House of Commons to “implement abortion services” in Northern Ireland. That is factually correct, but this matter was devolved to Stormont—yet, in 2019, a group of MPs, none of whom were or are accountable to the people of Northern Ireland, decided to cast aside the devolution settlement and take it into their own hands. Sadly, their decision was aided and abetted by Members of your Lordships’ House. This happened in spite of the fact that we are daily told that the Belfast agreement must be upheld at all costs—yet, at the whim of the Secretary of State, to placate Sinn Féin and its fellow travellers, the fundamental principles of this international agreement have been altered. The protection of the unborn, which was cherished by the people of Northern Ireland, has been swept aside.
Earlier I noted that the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, said that this is being done because of “exceptional” circumstances. That is interesting, because in Grand Committee tomorrow we will debate another devolved issue, in the Identity and Language (Northern Ireland) Bill, so where does this all stop? Is there any real reason for a devolved Government? Is this House really saying, “If you don’t do what we want, we will take the power from you. We will override your decision and make it for you”? So much for those who profess to believe in the Belfast agreement and devolution.
Lord Bellingham (Con)
Would the noble Lord agree that it would perhaps be better if HMG waited until the devolved Assembly and Executive got going again before a final decision is made?
Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (DUP)
I accept that we long for the devolved Administration to be set up in Northern Ireland, but we all know the reason why that is not happening at the moment. It is because of the forcing of the protocol upon the people of Northern Ireland, yet the heart of the Belfast agreement is that there has to be an acceptance and a willingness from all within the community of Northern Ireland, both the unionists and the nationalists, but the will of the unionist population has been totally swept aside. Therefore, we are ensuring that the will of the people—
Lord Cormack (Con)
It would appear that a majority of the people of Northern Ireland do not wish to see the protocol swept away—amended yes, but swept away most certainly not—and that is not a devolved issue. The noble Lord reprimanded my noble and learned friend Lord Clarke, and I must gently reprimand him to get his facts right.
Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (DUP)
Not one unionist representative within Northern Ireland supports the protocol. If the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, knows one, perhaps he wants to tell us who they are, and I will accept his—
Lord Cormack
A majority of people recently elected to the Assembly accept the protocol.
Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (DUP)
The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has missed the point of the Belfast agreement. There must be a majority of unionists and a majority of nationalists. I am pointing out to the noble Lord—and I am not going to be deflected from the real issue that is before us we are talking about abortion—but I have to say to him, that as far as the protocol is concerned, and I emphasise it again, not one unionist representative returned to the Northern Ireland Assembly is there to support, or give support, or give credence to the Northern Ireland protocol.
Indeed, the damage to the Belfast agreement is clearly seen because Regulation 2 spells it out for us:
“the Executive Committee of the Northern Ireland Assembly is to be disregarded when determining what a relevant person could do for the purposes of paragraph (1).”
I trust that everyone understands that under this regulation the opinion of the Northern Ireland Executive is to be totally ignored, totally disregarded. Such is the arrogance of those who bring forth these regulations. Indeed, the present difficulties in establishing a new Executive in Northern Ireland are due to many law-abiding people in Northern Ireland feeling that their concerns have been disregarded, undermined and ignored.
This statutory instrument simply adds to such alienation and does grave damage to the restoration of devolution. The Northern Ireland Act 1998 makes it clear that on matters that are significant and cross-cutting, the Executive must take the decision and it cannot be left to an individual Minister to decide. I know that the powers granted to the Northern Ireland Executive are not limitless and that the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland does have power to intervene and directly administer. However, that power is also limited and is there to ensure that decisions taken are compatible with international law, having regard to the protection of public order or the vital issue of national security.
These regulations change the very substance of the Belfast agreement and the Northern Ireland Act. These regulations permit the Secretary of State to have absolute power without scrutiny or accountability. When the Minister replies perhaps he can tell us where the power of the Minister of Health stops and the power of the Secretary of State begins. If the Secretary of State commands a civil servant in the Department of Health to do something and the Minister of Health gives a contrary command, whose decision does the civil servant obey? Does this not put civil servants in direct conflict with their Minister?
Baroness Barker (LD)
My Lords, this has been a very wide-ranging debate, and I think it is important that we focus on the decisions that we are being asked to make today. I begin by commending the Minister for the clear, factual exposition of how we came to be in the position that we are in today. We are here debating these regulations because of a catalogue of failure of elected politicians in Northern Ireland and of officials to do something very basic: to ensure that any woman who needs or wishes to have an abortion can access it in Northern Ireland—for the avoidance of doubt, to coerce anybody to have an abortion in any part of the United Kingdom is against the law—and there has been a failure to do that.
I recommend that people read in Hansard the clear and factual way in which the Minister put forward the history of where we are and contrast that with some of the allegations made by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan. In her wide-ranging speech she made some very serious allegations. She said that in Northern Ireland there is abortion to term. She did not give any evidence that that has happened. She said that there is abortion on the grounds of sex. She knows that any healthcare worker who did so would be in contravention of their professional ethics. Again, she did not give us any examples. Noble Lords can contrast the evidence behind the two cases that have been made.
On what the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, said about picking and choosing, we do not, as a united kingdom, pick and choose the parts of international agreements that we uphold. It is important that having signed up to an international agreement to protect women and girls we throughout the United Kingdom stick to that.
The noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, characterised providers of abortion services as people seeking to profit from other people’s misery. That is a world away from the work being done by organisations on a charitable basis to make sure that the current, wholly inadequate provision is, so far as they can possibly make it, accessible to all women in Northern Ireland. They know, because they meet them on a daily basis, that women who do not have money cannot get themselves to Great Britain, as 161 did last year, to get the care that they need; and 40 of those women were of under ten weeks’ gestation. It is quite clear that the provision of service is utterly inadequate. That is why it is important that the commissioning of services happens—the commissioning that we have been told the Northern Ireland Health Minister wishes to wash his hands of.
I say to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Blackburn—who I do not think has been involved in our discussions before—that I would take greater notice of the great constitutional outrage were it not for the fact that people such as the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, and the noble Lord, Lord Alton, have opposed every attempt to ensure that women anywhere have access to safe abortion. The views of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, are extremely well known. I can now almost write his speeches for him. I know that they will always include a reference to some poll that somebody has paid somebody to do to come up with the answer that he hopes they will find.
The important thing that nobody has said in all this is that the political failure in Northern Ireland has been particularly hard on women and girls, perhaps because of the non-sectarian consensus that the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, alluded to. It is right that today we take this measure, which the Government have drafted in as narrow a way as they can, to make sure that the women and young people who have always been weighed down by the politics of the past in Northern Ireland have some hope for the future.
I hope that we will reject the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, and that we will put this measure on the statute book as it deserves to be.
Lord Dodds of Duncairn (DUP)
My Lords, a lot has been said in this debate already and I do not intend to prolong proceedings unnecessarily, but I want to add a few comments about this set of regulations, because the most important aspect of it is the constitutional implications. This is a highly sensitive and emotive issue, and we have seen that on display in your Lordships’ House this afternoon. People have very strong feelings on both sides—I certainly know which side I am on. I believe that both lives matter.
That being said, I think that the issues that have come to the fore in relation to the breach of the devolution settlement of Northern Ireland—the precedent that that sets, the breach of the Belfast agreement—raise very serious issues. The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, was absolutely right. On whatever side you come down on any particular issue, if it is a matter that has been devolved, then the devolution settlement should be respected.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Clarke, referenced that it was perhaps not foreseen that this type of situation could arise, but I have to say that these matters were foreseen at the time of the Belfast agreement in 1998 and indeed at the time of the restoration of devolution in 2007, because on those occasions the issue of abortion was deliberately referenced and discussed and made a devolved matter. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, referred to leading a delegation to a previous Prime Minister in which there was a cross-party, cross-community consensus that it should be a matter for the Northern Ireland Assembly. Therefore, it was entirely foreseen and foreseeable that Northern Ireland could legitimately have a different position from the rest of the United Kingdom. The argument that this needs to be a position which is the same across all four countries of the United Kingdom does not stand up to scrutiny or to the history of this matter and the very delicate balance of the Belfast agreement.
There is an alarming tendency—without discussing the merits of particular issues—to be very selective about the Belfast agreement as amended by the St Andrews agreement in 2007 whereby it now appears to be the view that majoritarianism is a good idea in Northern Ireland, but somehow for 99 years majority rule in Northern Ireland was unacceptable. We have not had majority rule in Northern Ireland since 1972 with the collapse of the old Stormont Parliament. For half of Northern Ireland’s existence, it has not been there.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
My Lords, it is on days such as today, as the Minister may agree, that there is a feeling of déjà vu. I think he is the third Minister I have faced at the Dispatch Box on this issue, and the debate has been very similar to previous ones. I thank him for his very measured tone and the detail in his speech introducing this matter. I will not repeat the legislative background; noble Lords who have spoken both for and against will have heard what he said.
I suspect that there is a great deal of regret from the Minister in bringing this forward, because it is quite clear from the beginning of this debate—I looked up my previous speeches over three or four years—that Ministers were doing everything they could to encourage and support Northern Ireland to provide the services itself. There has certainly been no indication at all from the Government, as far as I am aware, that they wanted to be in this position. They wanted Northern Ireland to ensure that there was provision of services in the way the law requires.
I also thank the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which has not been mentioned so far, which looked at the detail in its very helpful report. I hope the Minister’s department and other departments will take note of the comments made about the inadequacy of the Explanatory Memorandum. I have raised this kind of issue previously in the House. However, I commend the responses; once it was prompted by the committee, the department provided better, fuller and more detailed answers to the points raised. I hope it will become the norm that Explanatory Memoranda will provide more detail than we saw in this one, as the information was provided only later when the committee asked for it.
As we have heard, this is an issue where feelings run deep, as is any issue regarding abortion. It is significant that a number of the speeches made about the constitutional position of devolution came from Members who have already expressed a deep-rooted opposition to the principle of abortion taking place. In some ways, I commend the noble Lord, Lord McCrea, because there was an honesty in his speech, which, as he saw it, was about the rights of the unborn child, not the constitutional issues. For him, this is a matter of principle; he thinks that abortion should not take place and was quite honest about it. He did not deal with the wider issue, which the Minister dealt with in his speech and will no doubt deal with again at the end.
We heard noble Lords refer to the debate on Roe v Wade taking place in America; the noble and learned Lord, Lord Clarke, made a wise intervention on this point. There is always a danger that you end up in a ridiculous situation whereby, because of the actions of politics, women living in one state move to another or travel elsewhere to access services they were previously able to access in their home state.
That is what is happening in Northern Ireland. The noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, said that abortion is available in Northern Ireland. Nobody is suggesting that no abortions have taken place. The Minister never made that point. The point is that, as previously agreed by your Lordships’ House, the provision of services is inconsistent, sporadic and not available to everybody who requires them. The noble Baroness shakes her head, but if that were not the case we would not need to be here today. As I said, time and again, the Government have provided opportunities for the Department of Health to bring forward proposals for the provisions required, as we have debated previously, but that has not happened.
I welcome the fact that the Government are still engaging with the Department of Health to ensure that there is still opportunity for services to be provided. However, I am conscious that, from what he and the Secretary of State in the other place have said, there is no intention to delay this matter further. I think the Government recognise this; as the Secretary of State said, “I fully suspect that we will have to provide these services.” Can the Minister say anything about the timescale? That would be helpful because this debate has been rather long and drawn out; there is an appetite for change.
A lot has been made of opinion polls and the views of people in Northern Ireland. I think the Minister will rely on them in his response, but I would point out that the 2019 internet poll, referred to several times, showed the majority of people not supporting the question about the imposition of changed abortion legislation by the Westminster Government. However, a 2020 poll showed that only 16% of people in Northern Ireland thought that no change to current abortion legislation was needed. A lot can depend on how the question is asked, but the idea that there is no appetite for change is wrong. Indeed, in the other place, Stephen Farry spoke about a vote in the Northern Ireland Assembly—he thought it was at the beginning of March—when a Private Member’s Bill that sought to adjust some of the existing legal provisions around access to abortion was defeated by a majority of MLAs. There is movement in Northern Ireland now and there are different views; we should take account of all of them.
We will support the regulations because it is the right thing to do. I welcome that the Minister has recognised the deep-seated views on this issue. However, in addition to my question on timescales, I have a second question about the extraneous services around abortion services. They are not a stand-alone provision. The provision of sexual health services and the whole wider landscape of reproductive sexual health is really important. I want to be assured by the Minister that, alongside the provision of abortion services, advice on contraception and sexual health will be provided. These things come as a package; they are not something to be seen in a vacuum. I hope the Minister can say something about that and about education on these issues, because that will be extremely important going forward. As I say, we should not see these services in a vacuum.
I thank the Minister for the way in which he presented his case. The noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, will decide whether she wishes to put her amendment to a vote. If she does so, we will not support her; we will support the Minister.
Lord Caine (Con)
My Lords, I thank everybody who has participated in the debate on these regulations, and I am grateful to the number of noble Lords who expressed support for what the Government are bringing forward. We have heard a wide range of strongly held personal views, and varied contributions on all aspects of the regulations. The noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, referred to a sense of déjà vu; I think it was the late Viscount Whitelaw, when he was Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, who referred after one meeting to “déjà vu all over again”. I take on board the comments of the noble Baroness regarding the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, and I can assure her that my officials have returned to the committee with a number of additional pieces of information, which I am assured have been included in the Third Report, so I do take that very seriously indeed.
I shall take the opportunity to address a number of the points raised by noble Lords in quite a lengthy debate, although I fear that if I respond to every single point raised, the Chief Whip might come to the House tomorrow to cancel the Summer Recess, but I will do my best.
A number of noble Lords, not least the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, whom I know has very deeply held views on these subjects, have made heartfelt contributions on the provision of abortion services and the framework established in 2020, and the framework regulations introduced then. I appreciate and understand the views that have been expressed but, as the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, pointed out, Parliament has already decided on a number of occasions that abortion services must be provided in Northern Ireland, and by large majorities. Noble Lords referred to the 2020 framework regulations. I would just remind noble Lords that those regulations were passed in your Lordships’ House by 332 votes to 29, which is some indication of the will of the House on those issues. The focus of the Government, and of these regulations, is to ensure that Parliament’s decision, expressed on a number of occasions, to give women and girls access to abortion services in Northern Ireland, is properly and fully implemented. Although abortion is an extremely emotive subject, as the noble Baronesses, Lady Deech, Lady Suttie, Lady Smith and Lady Barker, made very clear, we must not lose sight of the fact that it is women and girls in Northern Ireland who are at the heart of these issues, and it is unacceptable that there are women and girls in any part of our United Kingdom who cannot access basic healthcare and whose access to services has been delayed for far too long. I agree with my noble and learned friend Lord Clarke of Nottingham, whose very wise speech I strongly commend.
Parliament has decided that women and girls in Northern Ireland should be able to make individual, informed decisions, with proper patient care and the provision of information and support from medical professionals, based on their own health and wider circumstances, similar to women and girls living everywhere else in the United Kingdom. I think that is very much the right decision.
I should like to reiterate that, as was made clear by a number of noble Lords, so many women in Northern Ireland are placed in a difficult situation by the lack of regulated commissioned abortion services. I referred in my opening speech to the very large numbers who still have to travel to Great Britain to access care, or have to access unregulated services in Northern Ireland. With the greatest respect to the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, the position cannot simply be dismissed as work in progress; it cannot continue in this way, as the noble Baronesses, Lady Barker and Lady Smith of Basildon, made absolutely clear.
A major theme of a number of noble Lords this afternoon has been the constitutional position and the importance of respecting the devolution settlement in Northern Ireland. I agree entirely with that, although I cannot avoid sharing the suspicion of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, that some—not all, I hasten to add—seek to use the constitutional argument as a screen for the fact that they oppose abortion in all circumstances. It is interesting listening to people invoking the Belfast agreement, some of whom have never supported it at all and others who have recently pronounced it dead. I assure noble Lords that I, for one, am a strong supporter of the Belfast agreement and have been since 10 April 1998 when that historic agreement was made. I have repeatedly said in this House and elsewhere that I regard it as the bedrock of all the progress that has been made in Northern Ireland over the past 24 years. I do not wish to see anything that puts the agreement and its success in jeopardy.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Blackburn suggested, I think, that we are only making these regulations now because the Assembly is not sitting, and we can. I think I explained in my opening remarks the circumstances in which these regulations originated. The Assembly was not sitting, we had an amendment to the Executive formation Bill and since then, we have been working alongside the Executive, the Department of Health and the Minister of Health for a number of years, but we have simply made no progress. Therefore, it is not a question of doing this because we think we can do it at this stage; we have really run out of road on this issue.
A number of noble Lords referred to the pick-and-mix nature of devolution. I certainly do not wish to pick and mix when it comes to the devolution settlement— I think my noble friend Lord Cormack used that phrase. The fact is that Government and the Secretary of State remain under a statutory duty to provide access to abortion services. It is wrong to suggest that he is not under a statutory duty—indeed, he is found to be in breach of his statutory duties in court. He is in no way absolved from the duties imposed upon him by the executive formation Act 2019 by the restoration of devolved government in 2020, as I said in my opening remarks. Lord Justice Colton, in his decision in the judicial review brought by the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, said the following:
“The clear will of Parliament was that if there was no Executive Committee established by 21 October 2019 then the relevant duties and powers come into existence without extinguishment consequent on events thereafter.”
It is clear that the Secretary of State remains under the obligation and duties that Parliament imposed upon him nearly three years ago.
Notwithstanding this, we have been repeatedly clear about our desire—as the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, reminded us—to continue to work with the Executive, the Department of Health and the Assembly to ensure that these regulations are implemented effectively and in a way that works for Northern Ireland, consistent with the obligations on the Secretary of State that I have outlined.
The noble Lord, Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown, asked about the accountability of the Secretary of State. Of course, as a Minister of the Crown, the Secretary of State will continue to be accountable to this sovereign Parliament of the United Kingdom, as will I in your Lordships’ House.
The noble Lord, Lord Dodds of Duncairn—I normally refer to him as my noble friend, because he is—asked about the team of experts that has been set up in the Northern Ireland Office. They are civil servants from the Department of Health and Social Care who are experts in these matters and have been seconded to the Northern Ireland Office for these purposes.
Returning to the Northern Ireland Executive, more than two years after the framework regulations were put in place, it became abundantly clear that the Department of Health was not progressing this issue and that even if it did, it would be blocked once it reached the Executive Committee. Our clear preference is that the Executive should drive forward these services. To that end, the Secretary of State has formally requested confirmation from the Northern Ireland Minister of Health that they will do so. Therefore, even at this late stage and with these regulations, there is still an opportunity for the Minister and the Department of Health to take forward the commissioning of services without the intervention of the Secretary of State. We are not, however, prepared to allow the provision of services to be delayed indefinitely.
The noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, asked about a timeframe, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie. I cannot give an exact timeframe, as I am sure they will appreciate, but we are not prepared to let this run for much longer. The Secretary of State would not be taking on these powers if he was not prepared to intervene fairly quickly, but at this late stage there is still an opportunity for the Department of Health to take this forward. We hope that will be the case but if not, the Government are prepared to act very quickly.
A number of noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, and the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, asked about funding. The regulations enable the Secretary of State to make provisions about funding, but I reiterate what has been said and in doing so disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Morrow. The funding settlement in last autumn’s spending review was the most generous in the history of devolution in Northern Ireland—indeed, across the whole United Kingdom. It would be a devolved matter, and it would be for the Northern Ireland Executive and the Department of Health to provide funding.
Parliament made a clear decision in 2019, passed by large majorities, to place a duty on the Government to provide access to CEDAW-compliant abortion services in Northern Ireland. In 2020, the Government delivered a set of regulations to enable that to happen. I reiterate that the regulations were passed by a very large majority in your Lordships’ House. That was over two years ago. At every stage we have sought to ensure that services were delivered through the proper devolved channels, but we have been unsuccessful in so doing. The powers these regulations grant provide a mechanism to unblock the political obstacles which have been placed in the way of their delivery, in order that the Government can satisfy obligations placed upon them in 2019 and uphold the will of this sovereign United Kingdom Parliament. I therefore urge noble Lords to reject the amendment in the name of the noble—
Lord Dodds of Duncairn (DUP)
I am very grateful to the Minister for giving way. On a point of factual accuracy, he and others have referred to 2,793 abortions in Northern Ireland, but the latest figure given by the Minister of Health in Northern Ireland is, as of 13 June, 3,459. Can the Minister undertake that, once he has set up this team of experts, it will give up-to-date advice to the NIO on the factual position? There is quite a big difference between the figure cited today on the record and the actual figure as given by the Minister of Health in Northern Ireland, who is the Minister responsible.
Lord Caine (Con)
Of course—I am very happy to give my noble friend that assurance.
In conclusion, I urge noble Lords to reject the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, should she seek to test the opinion of the House, and I urge your Lordships to support these regulations.
Baroness O’Loan (CB)
My Lords, I thank all those who have spoken in the debate today, particularly those who have spoken with me on my amendment to the Motion. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, I should like to provide a clear exposition of some of the facts raised today. I cannot answer all the points made without keeping your Lordships for too long.
The regulations are loosely and badly drafted. They give rise to a large number of questions, which the Minister has not answered. The devolved Government have acted in accordance with the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Act and the 2020 regulations. People do not have to buy unsafe abortion pills; they get them from their doctor now. Abortion is now available. The noble Lord, Lord Dodds, said that there have been over 3,500 abortions. If there had been no specific commissioning of health services, these women could not have obtained abortions in Northern Ireland without paying for them. However, the fact that they were able to obtain their abortions under the health service means that they have been commissioned by the health services. Northern Ireland abortion services are provided and paid for by Northern Ireland.
Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill
Tuesday 21st June 2022
(2 years, 6 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Act 2022 View all Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 16-I(a) Amendment for Committee (Supplementary to the Marshalled List) - (20 Jun 2022)
“General principles relating to product security
(1) The provisions in Part 1 of this Act should be read alongside the general principles relating to product security as outlined in subsection (2).(2) The principles are—(a) in regard to the security of internet-connectable products and products capable of connecting to such products, manufacturers, importers and distributors have a duty of care towards their customers to secure their privacy and safety;(b) customers are entitled to have a reasonable expectation that manufacturers, importers, and distributors make sure their consumer connectable products meet minimum cyber security requirements before they are placed on the UK market;(c) manufacturers, importers, and distributors should be able to demonstrate an understanding of emerging security threats and a proactive, ongoing support programme to mitigate these risks and ensure that their products are safe by design.(3) In making regulations under Part 1 of this Act the Secretary of State must have regard to the principles outlined in subsection (2).”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would introduce a set of principles relating to product security into the bill.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, I rise to move Amendment 1 in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones, who is sadly unable to be here today. Should your Lordships feel at times that I am going on a bit long, just think of the alternative: it could have been both of us.
I should first say in the spirit of co-operation that the aim of this amendment is wholly positive; it is designed to firmly support the intentions of the first half of this Bill—support which we heard right across your Lordships’ House at Second Reading. While introducing this part of the Bill, the Minister set out a clear need for improved security. He told us:
“The average UK household now has nine internet-connected devices, and over 50% of all UK households purchased an additional consumer connectable product during the pandemic.”
The danger to individuals is getting worse. As the Minister also said:
“In the first half of last year alone, we saw 1.5 billion attacks on connectable products—double the figure of the year before.”
With this rise in connectable devices, the Minister said:
“Thousands of people in the UK have been victims of cyberattacks.”—[Official Report, 6/6/22; col. 1033.]
I suggest that this is understating the situation—it must be tens if not hundreds of thousands—but frankly, we just do not know.
This is an international business, which preys on poor security and badly configured devices. Further, our household devices can be co-opted by sophisticated criminal or political hackers to present significant threats to our national infrastructure. That is why this part of the Bill is important; I think we all agree on that. For a connectable device to be secure, it needs to be set up right but then supported throughout its active life to meet the changing environment of security threats. We are all used to updating our laptop security regularly, but how many times have we updated other household-connectable devices? A baby alarm, for example, is never updated.
At Second Reading, I described my fruitless search within the Bill for a definition of the security support that a consumer might reasonably expect for consumer-connectable products in the house. This Bill takes the secondary-legislative route. Rather than set out what consumers should legally expect in terms of through-life product security support, we were promised some SIs, and we heard what the focus would be.
In a letter sent last week, the Minister gave the Government’s reasons for choosing those three areas; I will come back to them briefly. He wrote:
“we are starting with a focus on the three security requirements that will make the most substantial change to consumer device security at a proportionate cost to business”.
But why just these three? The Bill is heavily based on the Code of Practice for Consumer IoT Security, in which 13 security issues were highlighted. To be clear, the first two—“No default passwords” and
“Implement a vulnerability disclosure policy”—
match those of the Minister. Interestingly, on the third one, there is a big difference in language between the Bill—which mentions providing transparency on how long, at a minimum, the product will receive security updates—and the code, which says, “Keep software updated”.
But there are 10 other major areas. I will not list them, but the fourth is:
“Securely store credentials and security-sensitive data”.
The eighth is
“Ensure that personal data is protected”.
Why are those two not as important as the other three? I cannot fathom why those have been left out and the previous three selected. So, given the choice of 13—the Minister can look them up—what was the logic in choosing just those three and dropping the fourth and eighth in particular?
There is also the issue of changing technology. Without a set of principles, the Government’s aim is to chase technological development with a string of statutory instruments, simultaneously keeping up with the world’s most innovative companies and pitting their ingenuity against the world’s top criminals. Life is moving fast—for example, a recent issue of Wired announced the beginning of the end for passwords:
“At Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference yesterday, the company announced it will launch passwordless logins across Macs, iPhones, iPads, and Apple TVs around September of this year. Instead of using passwords, you will be able to log in to websites and apps using ‘Passkeys’ with iOS 16 and macOS Ventura. It’s the first major real-world shift to password elimination.”
On that basis, this legislation will be partially obsolete before it is enacted.
I have one further technical problem for the Minister to explain. Once again, different bits of government are moving in parallel. A seemingly entirely different exercise—a consultation on app security and privacy interventions—was published in May this year. The suggested interventions include
“a voluntary Code of Practice for App Store Operators and Developers that is intended as a first step.”
Other possible future options set out in the document include
“certification for app store operators and regulating aspects of the Code to help protect users.”
The document then says:
“These proposals link into the National Cyber Strategy through requiring providers of digital services to meet appropriate standards of cyber security and developing frameworks to secure future technologies.”
No mention of this legislation is made.
So where does a connected device end and an app start? Where does the Bill stop and this new code of practice start? If I install my temperature control system, it will involve connected hardware and an app; which of these two pieces of government activity will cover my system, and how are they connected? The Government have not joined this up, and, once again, two things are going on with no connection to each other.
So, I borrowed some of the Code of Practice for Consumer IoT Security for this amendment, which sets out some of the principles. Proposed subsection 2(a) sets a simple obligation for “manufacturers, importers and distributors” to demonstrate a “duty of care”. Proposed subsection 2(b) sets out that
“customers are entitled to have a reasonable expectation that manufacturers, importers, and distributors make sure their consumer connectable products meet minimum cyber security requirements before they are placed on the UK market”.
Proposed subsection 2(c) calls for
“manufacturers, importers, and distributors … to demonstrate an understanding of emerging security threats and a proactive, ongoing support programme to mitigate these risks and ensure that their products are safe by design.”
The Minister would be hard-pressed to argue against these—and his planned SI on accessibility vulnerability is close to proposed subsection 2(c) anyway.
I would like to hear that the Government recognise the benefits that having clear principles in the Bill can deliver. I am sure that the Minister can see these benefits. Secondly, I am not proprietorial over the exact wording. We can use the time between Committee and Report to fine-tune and wordsmith those principles, but I hope that this is a constructive and helpful start.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
My Lords, I restate these Benches’ support for Part 1, which introduces a range of important powers and processes relating to the security of consumer-connectable products, including smart TVs, smartphones, connected baby monitors and connected alarm systems, all of which we use in our day-to-day lives. For me, the legislation that we seek to improve today is much needed and needs to move with the times and the way we live. For example, in 2006 there were just 13 million of these devices but in 2024, there is likely to be more than 150 million in the UK alone—a huge projected rise.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Fox, for introducing this sensible amendment, and to the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, whose name is also on it. It seeks to introduce or suggest some guiding principles relating to product security. For me, the key principles are that manufactures, importers and distributors have a responsibility and a duty of care to meet minimum cybersecurity requirements and look forward to emerging security threats. It seems wise and sensible to include these, so I hope the Minister will take them into account. As the noble Lord, Lord Fox, said, the exact wording of the amendment does not have to be used; it is about the principles. Indeed, it is about not just principles but practice: the message given to consumers as well as to manufacturers, importers and distributors.
I know that in other legislation the Government are often nervous about using the phrase “duty of care”, but, as the Minister knows, there are very real concerns about data collection and privacy. I suggest that this is the very least that consumers should be able to expect. While it may be said that the other principles are not necessary to include, there have been several cases of manufacturers knowing about, yet failing to act on, significant security flaws. I feel this is something we need to guard against.
The Earl of Erroll (CB)
My Lords, I want to say just a couple of words because, having read this and listened, I think the amendment has a very good point. I like the concept of a duty of care, because if we do not have that, who are we worrying about? In fact, Clause 7, on “Relevant persons”, is all about the manufacturers, importers, distributors, et cetera, with nothing about the customer, the poor person who is going to get hit by it. It is a very good idea to put that in at the beginning, setting down some principles and duties, because the other trouble is that by the time that we have done all these bits and pieces, made the regulations and the provisions, we are always acting after the event. What we need is a bit of proactivity, and we get that in this suggested new clause, because manufacturers, importers and distributors would have to make sure that products met certain minimum requirements. They would need to understand what “emerging security threats” there were; in other words, thinking ahead to the next stage and not just saying, “Oh, well, it complied with those things last year”, by which time the horse has bolted and we are far too late. So, I like it.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay) (Con)
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Fox, and, in his absence, the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, for their Amendment 1 and for the wholly positive intention with which it has been tabled. I was grateful to have had the opportunity to talk to them about it before Second Reading as well. As the noble Lord set out today, he has argued that customers deserve some high-level principles setting out the security protections they should expect when purchasing consumer-connectable technology. In fact, Amendment 1 goes further, as noble Lords have noted, and would require manufacturers to owe their customers a “duty of care” to protect them. We are not as keen as the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, on that.
The first problem we have with a duty of care is that it could give consumers a false sense of security. If consumers buy well-designed technology products which meet the best standards, it considerably lowers risk, but with cybersecurity there is no such thing as zero risk: the most aggressive and well-resourced hacker will find a way. Somebody may have a quality product, but have they secured their wi-fi router? Do they have some legacy technology on their network? Manufacturers of a single device do not control the whole range of apparatus which constitutes the attack surface so cannot always provide an absolute security warranty, and they cannot always predict the next attack vector.
The second problem we have is that we have learned that the security of devices is best served by standards rather than principles. If one sets standards, one can send a device to a laboratory and assure oneself that those standards have been met. If one sets principles, that does not apply. That is why the Bill is designed to give force to standards. Those standards, developed here in the UK and now adopted by Governments and jurisdictions across the globe as well as by international standards bodies, are widely recognised significantly to lower risk for consumers.
Of course, we believe that the responsibility for the security of connectable products most effectively lies with the manufacturer. We expect manufacturers to take security seriously, to implement measures to develop and maintain an awareness of the security of their products, and to be up front with customers about the security support they can expect. We have tried voluntary compliance, with our code of practice which was published in 2018. We now need mandatory requirements, and that needs specific security requirements that can be independently assessed. The legislation must enable the Government to keep pace with market dynamics and the changing technological landscape—as the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, said, it is important that we move with the times. The flexibility to be able to set different security requirements for manufacturers, for importers and for distributors is key to this.
Amendment 1 in the form drafted would place an equal weight on the duties of each of these three groups to secure products. Compelling the Secretary of State to have regard to this general duty could constrain the Government’s ability to set specific security requirements in the future. Crucially, these principles could restrict the use of powers in this part of the Bill, working against the Government’s ability to bring this regime into force and impeding our ability to keep that regime future-proof. I should also say to noble Lords that industry and consumer groups have not raised the need for general principles such as this. Our efforts to engage and communicate our intentions have been clear, and the requirements we have set out for the relevant persons have been widely understood and are in line with international standards.
The noble Lord, Lord Fox, asked why the Government have chosen these three specific security requirements rather than others. During the consultation in 2019, we explored a number of options including mandating that all consumer-connectable products meet all 13 guide- lines in the code of practice. They are all important, but the majority of respondents supported the option that the top three security requirements represented the most appropriate baseline, by balancing the important requirements that are testable, being applicable across a range of devices and creating the right incentives to improve security in these products. That is why the Government are initially mandating the implementation of security requirements that will make the most fundamental impact on the risks posed by insecure consumer-connectable products for consumers, businesses and the wider economy.
The noble Lord also asked about where products end and apps begin. The powers in Part 1 allow Ministers to set out requirements that include products and software. The proposals in the consultation he mentioned relate to those who operate app stores. So, while I acknowledge the good intentions behind it, I hope I have been able to set out why the Government feel that this amendment—
Lord Fox (LD)
I thank the Minister for giving way. That does not answer the question of where an app starts. If I am downloading Nest for my heating system, I am getting it from an app store, so where is the regulation coming? Is it the app that is coming from the app store, or is it the connectable device law that is coming through here? In which case, I think some explicit connectivity between the apps that run the connected devices needs to be written into the Bill.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
Perhaps, if the noble Lord is happy, we can explore this. The example he gives, as he knows, includes software and technology. Perhaps we can have a detailed discussion where we can work through some of those examples. I would be very happy to talk to him about them because on the question he poses the line is drawn in a different place depending on the product and its nature.
The Earl of Erroll (CB)
The Minister talked about standards a moment ago. If we are going to rely on standards, who is writing them? I presume that he is talking about British standards; to write a standard will take a year or two. I hope that the Government are going to fund it. We got no help from them in trying to fund stuff around age verification, even though that was core to the Digital Economy Act. If we are going to elevate it to an international standard, that will take another year or two, so we will not see any action for a long time if we are going to rely on externally written standards. I have chaired two BSI standards so far, and it does not happen just like that.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
Some of the standards in this area have been set in the UK and have already been adopted by other jurisdictions, so I hope that we can give the noble Earl some reassurances. While I acknowledge his point about the time it takes for these to be adopted internationally, in some areas the UK is setting the way, and these are being picked up across the globe.
As I said, while I note the good intentions behind Amendment 1, these are the reasons why the Government are unable to support it. However, I am very happy to pick up the questions about apps and products with the noble Lord and others who wish to join that conversation. I hope that, for now, the noble Lord will be content to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, while that was a relatively disappointing response, I am pleased that we can have the discussion about apps. I thank noble Baroness, Lady Merron, and the noble Earl, Lord Erroll. I think he put his finger on it. If we are to keep pace with the speed of change only through a standards regime without making the companies delivering these products in some way responsible—whether through a code of practice or a duty of care, I am not quibbling—there is no way that a standards regime can keep pace with the innovative speed that international crime is running at on cybercrime.
The idea that we can chase this down the road is wholly wrong. I ask the Minister to sit down with the department and perhaps we can come up with a different way of doing it. I am totally agnostic about how we go about it, but some sense that we are not just chasing this needs to be in this Bill, otherwise it is going to be after the fact. That said, I am happy to beg leave to withdraw Amendment 1.
Lord Bassam of Brighton
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment strengthens the duty on the Secretary of State to publish regulations introducing security requirements.
Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)
My Lords, I am happy to move Amendment 2 in this group and will speak also to Amendment 4. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Fox, for signing up to our Amendment 2. Part 1, as we have said, represents a step in the right direction on product security. The Bill is, as is increasingly the case with this Administration, a general framework Bill which will have much of the detail filled in later by regulations—a point that the noble Lord, Lord Fox, among others, has persistently made, and we have made from our Benches.
Noble Lords might say that Amendment 2 is a rather crude way of discussing the processes and timescales attached to the regulation-making powers in this part of the Bill but, as was mentioned in the previous group, we need much more information about when these regulations are going to be brought forward. Have some already been drafted? If so, can we see them in advance of Report and certainly before Third Reading? If not, why not? Do any of them need to be consulted on, and if so, what implications will this have on the implementation of new rules and systems? This is, as we have heard before, a time-critical Bill so the regulations are time critical as well and, we argue, need an early airing.
Colleagues in the Commons expressed concern that it has taken too long to get to this stage. We, too, regret that the Government have not worked to introduce some of these measures at greater speed and that more of the detail is not in the legislation, a point which the noble Lord, Lord Fox, eloquently made earlier. Surely it would have been possible to do this, given that the Bill was carried over from the previous Session.
Turning to Amendment 4, it
“seeks to place certain product security minimum standards, including the prohibition of so-called ‘default” passwords, on the face of the Bill.”
We think this is an important amendment. I credit Which? as where it draws its inspiration from. It is right that we have some core security principles in the Bill. We know that the Government have form on overpromising and underdelivering. Surely these important security matters should not be left to the whim of the Secretary of State at an undetermined point in the future. This process provides a perfectly good opportunity for us to enshrine the requirements in primary legislation, whether in the form of Amendment 4 or Amendment 5 or something else. We believe that there is a strong case for action
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 3 and 5 and in support of the other two amendments in this group. All these amendments refer to Clause 1 and seek to add some specificity to its general nature. The first amendment in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones is Amendment 3. This inserts a new paragraph (c) into Clause 1(1), adding the text
“children where they are not primary users of products but are subjects of product use”.
Why is this necessary? Here I am indebted to a report on cybersecurity, the UK Code of Practice for Consumer IoT Security produced by the PETRAS National Centre of Excellence for IoT Systems Cybersecurity. Noble Lords may be aware of this group; it has a very strong record in this area. It is a consortium of leading UK universities dedicated to understanding the critical issues of the privacy, ethics, trust, reliability, acceptability and security of IoT. I commend this organisation to the small number of noble Lords in this Chamber interested in this area.
This report highlighted, among other things, the importance of children’s connected toys receiving the necessary scrutiny, due to the implications of embedded cameras and microphones, with the aim of ensuring the child’s and the parents’ protection and right to privacy. Such devices include a wide range of everyday artefacts with internet connectivity intended for use by children or in caring for them, such as interactive toys, learning development devices and baby or child monitors.
These connected toys and tools have the potential for misuse and unauthorised contact with vulnerable minors. The British Toy & Hobby Association has responded by offering a range of guidance notes and by interpreting the code of practice, but with SMEs manufacturing most of these devices, there is much more to be done to ensure that those organisations are sufficiently informed and equipped to produce and market toys that are secure.
Security is not straightforward, as the Minister has already pointed out. While these devices offer a range of advantages through their connectivity, they also potentially expose children and their families to risks that have not yet been fully articulated to many of the consumers who are buying these toys.
A real-life example is that the toy giant Mattel launched Hello Barbie. The Minister may be familiar with it—I do not know. This was as far back as 2015. It was a very innovative toy which it launched with a start-up business called ToyTalk. The principle of this toy was that it could converse using internet connectivity with speech recognition, so as well as talking it could listen. Hello Barbie also allowed parents to log in later and eavesdrop on their children’s conversations with their toys. I will leave your Lordships to decide the ethics of that.
But this connectivity raised some concerns, primarily around who could listen in and record these devices and store conversations and behavioural and location data, and for what purpose this data could be used. Toys like these are now prevalent and they raise significant questions about the appropriate support and guidance for the toy manufacturers, which understand an awful lot about conventional safety—they know how to make physically safe toys—but do not have a track record on developing informationally and data-safe toys because they have never been asked to do that before. This is a new venture for them, and it requires a totally new set of skills and standards, as the Minister might say.
As technology evolves hacking is increasing in sophistication, so it is necessary to keep moving forward. The challenge for cybersecurity in remaining ahead of the risks is inevitably a technological one, and the Minister may remember that the Hello Barbie toy, having been launched and lauded for its security, was ultimately found at some point to have serious security issues. Even that toy, from a very large manufacturer, fell foul of the progress of information crime.
Nevertheless, it is clear that today some toy manufacturers are releasing connected toys without adequate safety and security features. This is a competitive and dynamic marketplace—a lot of it is to do with price—and first movers are rewarded. In addition, the skillset and knowledge base, as I have just said, for conventional toy safety is mismatched with these new toys and we need to find a way of addressing that divergence. This is going to require investment and new learning and will not happen unless the toy manufacturers are required to do it.
Secure software development and cybersecurity are novel demands on this sector. However, the fact remains that these toy manufacturers are potentially placing consumer safety and privacy at risk. It does not matter whether this occurs due to the immaturity of the sector, market pressures or the lack of sectoral attention to the problem.
In the view of the Petras report,
“there are no indications that this will be addressed through market forces. Instead, the certainty of legislation to maintain standards would level the playing field and make clear for SMEs where they need to invest to make their toys market ready.”
Thus, more than the technological challenge of staying ahead of hackers, what is salient here are the challenges to the implementation of basic security features in manufacturing such as basic authentication and encryption, without which children’s safety and security is at risk.
This amendment explicitly places child security front and centre in this Bill. In other legislation involving the internet and digital issues, such as the Online Safety Bill, the Government have imposed more onerous duties on those delivering services to children than to adults. This amendment would be entirely consistent with that approach—very much in the spirit of understanding that our children and young people are more vulnerable and therefore need more protection from harms.
I turn next to Amendment 5. The eagle-eyed among your Lordships will spot that it is very similar to Amendment 4, proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, and set out very elegantly by the noble Lord, Lord Bassam. In fact, I would suggest that, largely, its construction is better than ours because they managed to do the same thing in fewer words. I will speak to Amendment 5 but my comments apply to Amendment 4 as well.
Amendment 5 seeks to ensure that:
“Regulations under this section must include provision that all security requirements specified in accordance with this Act are included as essential requirements in statutory conformity assessments and marking procedures under the Radio Equipment Regulations 2017 … and in any other such assessments and procedures applicable to relevant connectable products.”
I am speaking to the spirit of both these amendments. Amendment 5—similar to that of the noble Lord, Lord Bassam—follows on from the advice and help of Which? I thank that organisation, which has really been at the forefront of the consumer issues involved. In essence, the amendment picks up on three of the issues that the Minister tells us will be dealt with in SIs as soon as the Bill becomes an Act, but it takes the rather stronger approach of placing them in the Bill.
Paragraph (a) of proposed new subsection (2A) goes further than the general principle in specifying that passwords are not to be weak. As Which? explains, many smart products push the user to create a password themselves, rather than use a default password. However, they then allow weak and easily guessable passwords to be created, meaning that the risk of compromise stays high.
One of the outcomes of this amendment would be the introduction of a requirement for responsible password policy guidance to be adopted by the industry to ensure that security liability is not simply passed from the device manufacturer to the consumer. The Bill and associated guidance should be amended to clarify that every individual device must have a unique or user-set password that meets effective complexity requirements.
Paragraph (b) of proposed new subsection (2A) seeks to avoid the risk of disclosures going into a black hole or taking many years to fix. The Bill and associated guidance should be amended to make clear what is required of manufacturers, importers and distributors on provision of disclosure policy information, particularly around vulnerabilities. The appointed regulator should also clearly define and distribute a risk assessment framework for vulnerabilities that removes any sense of subjectivity and ensures that the response is effectively mandated.
Paragraphs (c) and (d) of our proposed new subsection concern the length of time a product is supported. The Government should introduce mandatory minimum support periods for smart products and consider whether these periods should reflect how long consumers, on average, continue to use such products. There is a precedent here. New ecodesign and energy labelling requirements came into force in England, Scotland and Wales in 2021. They include a requirement for electronic display items, including televisions, to be provided with firmware and security update support for a minimum of eight years after the last unit of a model has been placed on the market. A consistent approach to support periods for a range of products therefore needs to be considered, and it has already been considered in this other legislation.
Customers need absolute clarity on the support period manufacturers will offer, so that they are able to make more informed purchasing decisions. There must be a clear definition of what the “point of sale” means and how this relates to the definitions of “supply” in Clause 55. Without clearer specifications on what form the transparency requirements will take, there is a risk that this information could be hidden, obfuscated or even mislead. This amendment is designed to probe the Government’s thinking on these very important issues.
Finally, and very briefly, as a signatory to Amendment 2, I give it my full support.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
I am very grateful to noble Lords for setting out the cases for Amendments 2, 4 and 5. Since January 2020 the Government have been clear on introducing security requirements based on the three guidelines to which I referred in the previous group.
The commitment to set requirements has been made in response to consultations, published strategies and indeed to the Explanatory Notes to this Bill. Our notification to the World Trade Organization also contained reference to some of these documents. We have put manufacturers, trade bodies and industry representatives on notice. Supply chains are long and surprises unwelcome, so the Government have been very clear on whither we are heading.
Amendment 2 would remove any discretion the Secretary of State has to make regulations. I appreciate that the intention behind tabling it is to explore this issue, and I hope I can assure noble Lords that it is not needed. The regulations will be made, and swiftly. Indeed, we have already consulted on them, in 2020, which I hope gives noble Lords some reassurance that we intend to move swiftly in this area.
Amendments 4 and 5 would insert specific security requirements into the Bill. As several noble Lords mentioned at Second Reading, it is important that technology regulation enables the Government to respond to changes in threat and technology, and to the regulatory landscape. That is precisely why the Bill does not contain details of the requirements that the Government have assured industry they will set out.
Lord Fox (LD)
Perhaps the Minister should consult whoever drew up the legislation that managed to mandate that televisions should be updated for firmware and software for up to eight years after they have stopped being manufactured. Clearly, those people managed to find consensus among the industry—or decided to ignore consensus—and deliver something. If it can be done for electrical display devices, such as televisions, I do not see why it cannot be done here if there is a will to do it. However, I think the Minister is telling us that there is no will to do it.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
The noble Lord referred to mandatory minimum support periods for electronic display items and the Ecodesign for Energy-Related Products and Energy Information Regulations 2021. It is not quite correct to say that those requirements are applicable. They ensure that the last available security update continues to be available for at least eight years after the last unit of a product has been placed on the market but the requirement does not ensure that manufacturers continue to provide new security updates over that period to ensure that the product remains secure in response to changing threats.
Lord Fox (LD)
I did not say that those requirements are applicable; I implied that they are analogous. Frankly, the fact that there is some mandating of security support after the product has stopped being manufactured is a heck of a lot better than the situation for all the connectable devices we are currently talking about, where there is no requirement at the moment.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
I do not think that they are quite analogous. As I say, it is about the requirement to keep the last available updates available to consumers for eight years rather than evolving them. We do not yet consider that there is sufficient evidence to justify minimum security update periods for connectable products, including display equipment—certainly not before the impact of the initial security requirements is known.
It is important to stress that, as consumers learn more, they will expect more. This will drive industry to respond to market pressure. If the market does not respond to this effectively, the Government have been clear that they will consider the case for further action at that point, but we think that consumer expectation will drive the action we want to see in this area.
Amendment 3, tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Fox, refers to children. All noble Lords will agree, I am sure, that protecting children from the risks associated with connectable products is vital. I assure noble Lords that the security requirements we will introduce are designed with consideration for the security of all users, including children, alongside businesses and infrastructure. The Bill already gives the Government the flexibility to introduce further measures to protect children, whether they are the users of the products or subject to other people’s use of a product. We therefore do not think that this amendment is necessary as this issue is already covered in the Bill.
The Bill, and forthcoming secondary legislation, will cover products specifically designed to be used by or around children, such as baby monitors and connectable toys; they include Hello Barbie, which I was not familiar with but on which I will certainly brief myself further. However, we recognise that the cyber risks to children are not limited to the connectable products in the scope of this Bill; indeed, a lot of the issues referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Fox, were about the data captured by some of the technology, rather than the security of the products themselves. That is precisely why the Government have implemented a broader strategy to offer more comprehensive protection to children—including through the Online Safety Bill, to which the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, referred.
I hope noble Lords will agree that Amendment 3 is not needed to make a difference to the Bill’s ability to protect children from the risks associated with insecure connectable products—this is already provided for—and will be willing either to withdraw their amendments or not move them.
Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)
My Lords, this has been a useful and interesting exchange.
In my lordly world, “may” and “must” are sort of interchangeable; they were a useful peg on which to hang our discussion about the statutory instrument nature of this piece of legislation. I am somewhat reassured by what the Minister had to say about that, and acknowledge that some of the regulations were brought forward and consulted on at an earlier stage. However, we on this side of the House—I am sure that I speak for the noble Lord, Lord Fox, as well—want to see increased transparency throughout this process. So much of what is in front of us will be in secondary legislation; it is essential that we, the industry and the sector are properly consulted so that we understand exactly what we are dealing with. I make that plea at the outset.
I was pleased to hear what the Minister said about children as the primary users of particular products. I am glad that we have got beyond the “Peppa Pig” world that the Prime Minister occasionally occupies and are giving this issue proper, serious consideration. It certainly needs to be that way.
I am not entirely convinced by what the Minister said on Amendment 4. I look at our amendment; it is pretty basic, actually. It is hard to argue against setting out a particular prohibition in legislation. The ones that we have picked out for prohibition and restriction are quite important and essential. Of course, the Minister is right that those subjects will change and technology will overtake the words we use. We understand that point but we are trying to secure some basic minimum standards and protections here. Clearly, we will retreat with our amendment and give it some further thought before Report, but we may need some further persuasion on this. That said, I am quite happy to withdraw Amendment 2 and not move Amendment 4.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would mean regulations with the power to deem compliance with security requirements were subject to the affirmative resolution procedure, as recommended by the DPRRC.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, in his response to the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, talked about transparency. The Minister said that he hoped we were reassured by the presence, and indeed the draft, of particular regulations. More specifically on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, we would be reassured if the Minister were prepared to share those drafts with Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition and those of us on this Bench, but the Minister has set his face against pre-publishing draft regulations so that we can have a chance. That trust will come if we are trusted in this process, but it does not come for nothing.
I rise to speak to these—whatever the collective noun for amendments is; perhaps a raft or a shedload—amendments, all of which are around delegated powers and secondary legislation, and to move Amendment 6. As we have discussed, in Part 1,
“The core provision is clause 1, which allows the Secretary of State to make regulations specifying the requirements that are to apply for the purpose of protecting or enhancing the security of internet-connectable products made available to consumers in the UK. The security requirements can be applied to … relevant persons.
Clause 3 allows the Secretary of State to make regulations providing that a relevant person is to be treated as complying with the security standard if specified conditions are met. No limits are imposed on the circumstances in which this power would be capable of being used. Subsection (2) provides that the specified conditions may include, “among other things”, compliance with specified standards. But this does not limit the circumstances in which this power may be exercised.
The explanation for the power is given in paragraphs 20 to 22 of the memorandum. The point is made that improving the security of connectable products is a critical global issue”—
which we have discussed,
“and therefore it is likely that many other countries and international standards bodies will introduce standards similar to or aligned with the security requirements imposed under this Bill. The purpose of the power is to allow products which meet these alternative standards to be excepted from the regime under this Bill, provided that those standards achieve equivalent security outcomes and do not weaken the regime established by the Bill.”
Are noble Lords still with me? The Bill’s
“powers will also facilitate mutual recognition agreements and therefore help the UK to avoid placing an undue burden on industry by restricting the free flow of international trade.”
I think we all can see this. I agree with the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee,
“that this provides a reasonable explanation for the power contained in Clause 3, it does not explain why it is considered necessary or appropriate for the power to be at large and not limited so that it can only be used where a product is subject to an alternative security regime imposed outside the UK”
and that the Minister needs
“to explain whether the failure to limit the powers in this way is inadvertent; and, if not, why (whether by reference to technological change or otherwise) it is considered necessary to draw the powers more widely than indicated in the memorandum.
Regulations under Clause 3 are subject to the negative resolution procedure. That is based in part on the fact that the regulations will not reduce the effect of the legal framework. But that assumes that other international standards will apply instead.”
This amendment puts forward the DPRRC’s recommendation that
“the affirmative resolution procedure is more appropriate if the width of the regulation-making power is to be retained.”
The alternative is for the Government to narrow that regulation power.
Amendment 9 focuses on regulations under Clause 9(7), which are subject to the negative resolution procedure. This amendment implements the DPRRC recommendation that
“the affirmative resolution procedure is more appropriate if there are to be no limits on the circumstances in which the duty under clause 9 to provide a statement of compliance may be waived.”
Then we have tabled an amendment that removes Clause 9 altogether. Clause 9 is designed to take power to except manufacturers from the duty to provide a statement of compliance. The clause
“requires manufacturers to provide a statement of compliance when a product that is subject to security requirements is made available to the UK. Subsection (7) of clause 9 confers a power by regulations to provide that a manufacturer is to be treated as complying with this requirement if specified conditions are met.
The explanation in the memorandum links this power to the power in Clause 3 to treat a relevant person as complying with a security requirement.
‘Where the government has recognised another standard as being equivalent to compliance with a security requirement using the provisions of clause 3(1), it may be appropriate under certain conditions, for instance where the government has entered into a mutual recognition arrangement with another regime, for the duty to ensure that a product is accompanied by a statement of compliance to be waived for relevant persons in relation to products that meet that standard.’
However, this limitation on the circumstances in which the power will be used is not reflected in clause 9(7) itself, which simply confers a power to treat the manufacturer as complying with the duty to provide the statement of compliance ‘if specified conditions are met’, without any indication of or limit on what those conditions might be.”
As such, the purpose of giving notice of our intention to oppose the question that Clause 9 stand part of the Bill amendment is designed to get to the bottom of the issue and to get the Minister to explain whether the failure to limit the power, as described in the memorandum, is inadvertent; and, if not, why it is necessary to draw the power more widely than indicated in the memorandum.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful, as ever, to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee for its very helpful report on this Bill. It would be fair to say that, in general, this Bill has fared better than most Bills, so that gives some comfort. Nevertheless, it is also true to say that the committee has raised a number of concerns and has put forward a very helpful range of recommendations, which are encapsulated in this suite of amendments. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Fox, for his detailed canter through what might be called a veritable feast of amendments.
As I say, this group of amendments very much reflects the concerns of the committee. I should also put on record that as the amendments were tabled at a relatively late stage, these Benches have not signed them. I say to the Minister that there is nothing to deduce from that, because I can confirm that we hope that he will take the concerns that are seriously and sensibly set out in this group and will look at revising the scope of procedures relating to certain powers when it comes to Report stage.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
The feast of amendments in this group aim to implement the recommendations of your Lordships’ Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. We welcome the committee’s report and are considering its recommendations, as we always do. It will infuriate the noble Lords who have asked detailed questions when I say that, ahead of setting out our response to the committee, I will not be able to cover all the issues they have pressed the Government on today. I am happy to say that we will set out our response in writing ahead of Report. Perhaps once we have done that, and noble Lords have seen the Government’s full thinking in their response to the committee, it might be helpful for us to speak in detail.
The legislation has been designed to protect people, networks and infrastructure from the harms of insecure consumer connectable products, while minimising the unnecessary regulatory burden on businesses. It does so in the context of rapid technological and regulatory change, evolving cybercriminal activities and a growing impact on people in businesses, all of which require us to ensure that the legislation can evolve quickly and effectively. The UK, as I have noted, is leading the world with its approach to regulating connectable products. As other jurisdictions increasingly turn their attention to this important issue, we will use this flexibility to achieve alignment with equivalent regulatory regimes, avoiding unnecessary duplication. These powers, and the others conferred by the Bill to make delegated legislation, are crucial for it to remain effective. We have carefully considered the number, scope and necessity of these powers, and believe we have struck the right balance between the need for that flexibility and the importance of Parliamentary scrutiny, which noble Lords rightly stressed again today.
We welcome the report of your Lordships’ committee and are considering its recommendations. I am afraid I cannot, at this stage, pre-empt our response, which has to be made while considering the recommendations’ impact on the broader framework. We will return to these matters on Report, and I am very happy to have a detailed conversation with the noble Lords about our response after we have responded to the DPRRC.
The noble Lord, Lord Fox, focused on Clauses 9 and 11. I am happy to confirm that nothing about how the powers are drawn in Clause 9 is inadvertent; this was our intent. Clause 9 contains four delegated powers; they will be used predominantly to provide administrative detail deemed too technical for primary legislation. For example, they will explain what must be included as a minimum in a statement of compliance, what steps must be taken to determine compliance, where appropriate, and for how long a manufacturer should keep a statement of compliance. They will also provide flexibility to respond swiftly to changes in the market. In addition, the delegated powers in this clause may be used in the future to provide that the statement of compliance is equivalent to certain product markings, or external conformity assessments, such that a manufacturer may be deemed to have provided a statement of compliance where such markings or assessments have been made or completed. This is dependent on regulatory changes to product markings and on the development of the assurance sector for product security.
At this stage, and awaiting our response to your Lordships’ committee, I hope noble Lords will agree that it goes without saying that the Government feel these clauses should stand part of the Bill.
Lord Fox (LD)
I sort of thank the Minister for his response, which is really no response at all. He did say that it would infuriate me and he is fairly accurate about that.
As correctly noted, I am merely a cipher for the DPRRC, a very serious committee that does not produce these reports lightly. The point it is making, particularly on Clause 27, is front and centre to this Bill. Who is going to enforce it? Who decides who will enforce the Bill, and how will Parliament know if the Secretary of State decides not to tell it, under the current regulations? These are very serious matters and not ones that your Lordships’ House should step back from. I am sure that the Minister will, on reflection, understand that the DPRRC has a very important point to make. The others are important points, particularly around Clause 3, but the Clause 27 piece is absolutely central to the future of this Bill. That said, I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 6.
Lord Bassam of Brighton
“(5A) For the purposes of subsection (5), a person who provides an online facility through which a distributor makes a product available in the United Kingdom is also a distributor.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment brings online marketplaces which allow relevant products to be listed for sale within scope of the security requirements outlined in the Bill.
Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)
My Lords, Amendment 7 is also in the name of my noble friend Lady Merron. This amendment, as the notes to the Bill’s amendments set out, brings online marketplaces which allow relevant products to be listed for sale within the scope of the security requirements outlined in the Bill. We wish to express again our gratitude to Which? and others for their work in relation to online marketplaces, including, but not limited to, Amazon and eBay, which facilitate the sale of many of these products.
Research suggests that a significant number of products listed on online marketplaces could have security and privacy risks. This is prior to the introduction of the new rules for producers, importers and distributors, but it does highlight the importance of ensuring that marketplaces are subject to at least some of the new measures. Following Second Reading, the Minister kindly wrote to noble Lords, as he promised he would, and suggested that in many cases these websites will fall under “at least one” of the categories and, even if they do not, earlier parts of the supply chain will be subject to the new duties. On that basis, the Government say they will not explicitly bring marketplaces within scope of these measures but will keep the matter under review. It is disappointing that the Minister decided to rule out this change without even having this Committee debate. I hope the Minister’s response will go into more detail than the letter, and he will outline exactly what this review process will look like. Importantly, if it becomes apparent that obligations need to be imposed on these businesses, can he outline the process for achieving this? Can it be done under existing powers, or would it require an additional, albeit simple, piece of primary legislation?
This may not be a gaping hole in the Bill, but it does feel like a gap that needs to be addressed. We hope the Government will be persuaded of that in the run-up to Report stage. It is important because we do not often get legislation on this subject and we do not often get the opportunity to deal with issues such as this. I say to the Minister that we need considerable reassurance on this point because of that very fact. The Minister may say that it is all going to be down to regulations. That is not really a complete answer but we look forward to hearing his response.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 8 in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones. These are two ways of doing the same thing so I support the spirit of Amendment 7, about which we have just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Bassam.
This amendment adds the following wording to Clause 7:
“Any person who is a provider of an internet service that allows or facilitates the making by consumers of distance contracts with traders or other consumers for the sale or supply of a relevant connectable product is to be regarded as a distributor for the purposes of this Act, if not a manufacturer or an importer of the product.”
This amends the language that defines a distributor in the scope of the Bill. Online marketplaces are a mainstream form of today’s retail. Which? research in 2019 found that more than 90% of the UK population had shopped through an online marketplace within the month it was polling. That has increased during the pandemic. However, its research also consistently highlighted how online marketplaces are flooded with insecure products. It has previously demonstrated issues with the lack of legal responsibility of online marketplaces for the security and safety of products sold through their platforms.
The Government have recognised the problem, in their response to the call for evidence on product safety, that current safety rules were designed to fit supply chains as they operated before the world of internet shopping. In the realm of product safety, the Government have acknowledged that this can result in the peculiar situation where no actor is responsible for ensuring product safety. This has resulted in organisations such as Electrical Safety First repeatedly finding unsafe and non-compliant products listed on online marketplaces. Therefore, the traditional conception of actors in the supply chain is now outdated.
The Bill defines “distributor” as
“any person who … makes the product available in the United Kingdom, and … is not a manufacturer or an importer of the product.”
At present, it seems unlikely that certain online marketplaces, including eBay, Amazon Marketplace and Wish.com, will be included within the scope of that definition of distributors in the Bill. This will leave, without overstating it, a sizeable gap in the regulatory scope of this market.
Given the amount of insecure tech readily available on online marketplaces, it is paramount that these platforms are given obligations in the Bill to ensure the safety and security of the products sold on their sites, regardless of whether the seller is a third party. However, the Clause 7(5) definition of “distributor” in terms of making products available on the market is in line with existing product safety law, so we know that certain marketplaces are not classed as distributors and hence not obligated to take action. Amazon Marketplace, Wish.com and eBay are marketplaces where other people are selling; this is the issue.
This amendment seeks to expand the definition of distributors in Clause 7 to include appropriate online retailers, such as listings platforms and auction sites, including eBay, Amazon Marketplace and AliExpress. I feel sure that the Minister did not intend for the legislation to miss these marketplaces out; rather than risk this loophole going any further, we will work with the Minister and Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition to come up with some wording that absolutely iron-clads the Bill to ensure that these sorts of marketplaces are also included.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
I am grateful to noble Lords for speaking to their amendments in this group, both of which seek to make online marketplaces a “distributor”. It is vital that all products offered to consumers are secure, including those listed through online marketplaces, and we want to ensure that this is achieved in the most efficient way.
The explanatory statement for Amendment 7 suggests that products listed on online marketplaces might not be protected by the security requirements set out in the Bill. I reassure noble Lords, particularly those who tabled Amendment 7, that the security requirements will need to be met for all new connectable products offered to consumers in the UK, including those offered through online marketplaces. These marketplaces often act as a manufacturer, importer or distributor and, in those cases, they are subject to the same duties and security requirements as those three types of economic actor. If, however, the online marketplace does not fall into one of these three categories, the manufacturers, importers and distributors of those products are all still fully responsible for complying with security requirements.
Lord Fox (LD)
This has piqued my interest; how does this exercise relate to the Bill? This process of dealing with the online acquisition of unsafe products would seem to be what the Bill is doing front and centre, so what is that process? How do the two connect?
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
They are complementary; the new product security framework sits alongside existing legislation on product safety, which is why we want to conduct a review of the safety framework and publish the consultation. I am certainly happy to write and endeavour to explain.
The noble Lord asked whether products sold through online marketplaces fall into a gap in the Bill. The Bill requires in-scope products offered for sale through online marketplaces to customers in the UK to be as secure as in-scope products sold, for example, in physical stores. We are mindful of the variety of services offered by different online marketplaces. Some act only as advertising platforms, while others facilitate transactions and store and ship products on behalf of the seller. As noble Lords have noted, this changes all the time. This must be carefully considered to ensure that businesses can comply with their legal obligations and that any regulation is necessary, appropriate and proportionate to provide the best protection to consumers.
Lord Fox (LD)
I am sorry to keep popping up; being a practical person, I will try to give the Minister a scenario and, if he cannot answer straightaway, he can write. I have bought a product through an online auction that turns out to be unsafe; I go back to the auction site, which tells me, “Not my problem. You have to return to the international manufacturer which made this product”, which turns out to be a brick wall and nothing comes back. First, is that online auction site correct in handing me over to the international manufacturer, which turns out to be a dead end? Secondly, if that site is correct, to whom do I go? Do I go to my local council trading officer or to the person who, under Clause 27, has been mysteriously made the enforcer for the Bill? I may or may not know who they are. How do I seek redress, and from whom?
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
I will try answer the noble Lord’s question, and I am happy to write with further detail. Products sold on online marketplaces are covered by the Bill. All products sold to customers in the UK will have to comply with the security requirements set out under this framework. Where a product is sold on a third-party online marketplace, the seller will be responsible for ensuring that it is compliant. Third-party sellers who sell new products directly to customers on those platforms will also be covered under the “distributor” definition. I will happily write to the noble Lord with further detail ahead of Report but I hope that, for now, that goes some way towards addressing his question.
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, I would be grateful if my noble friend included me in his replies and letters. Is he aware of the lamentable performance of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs when it comes to trying to enforce VAT in similar circumstances, and the enormous difficulty it has had with third-party sellers operating out of the Far East in particular? It is extremely difficult, and the volume of VAT lost runs into the billions. This is a large-scale enterprise and it will easily channel a large volume of unsatisfactory products into the UK if we do not take effective action.
I hope that the Government, in their new consultation, which I look forward to learning about, will be taking a robust attitude towards the platforms. For instance, it is entirely unsatisfactory that there should be a way in which unsafe toys can get into the hands of children at Christmas, and for which there is no effective means of prevention or redress. In other jurisdictions, these online marketplaces have proved amenable to a forceful approach by government. I very much hope that we will be joining in with that.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
I am happy to include my noble friend in the replies and the letter I send. This touches on work which falls under the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and the points he raised, of course, fall to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. We will make sure that, having consulted officials there, we provide some details of the work those departments are doing as well.
Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)
My Lords, I am looking forward to the correspondence on this; I fancy that the noble Lord’s civil servants will have a tricky job on their hands. I do not think I quite got a response to what the nature of “being kept under review” really meant, but I await word in the future.
I have been reading the Explanatory Notes, as the Minister will probably be unhappy to hear, and I can see the difficulties. In trying to ensure that the legislation is focused, rightly, on the producers, manufacturers, importers and distributors, it is hard to work round that and not capture people who are simply installers of a product. On the other hand, there are circumstances where installers are primarily responsible for the effectiveness and working of the product, and if it was not for the way they install it, it would not be effective. The terms of the contract are such that it makes that difficult.
I can see the difficulty here, but for now I am happy to withdraw our amendment. In doing so, we are equally supportive of the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Fox, because the two are contiguous in their formulation.
Ukraine: UK and NATO Military Commitment
(2 years, 6 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Coaker (Lab)
It is the start of Armed Forces Week, so I begin by thanking them for all they do. We also reiterate our full support for the Government’s actions in Ukraine.
In continuing this support, the Prime Minister said last Friday that we would offer to train 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers every three months. Can the Minister say when this will start and give more detail of the plan? For example, where will they be trained—in the UK or another NATO country?
We also know that the Ukrainians have asked for more weapons. Can the Minister explain the Defence Minister’s remarks in the other place? He said that the Prime Minister and Defence Procurement Minister met yesterday morning to discuss
“escalating the supply of NATO standard equipment”.—[Official Report, Commons, 20/6/22; col. 558.]
New contracts are also under discussion. Can the Minister say more about that and explain what it means?
The new head of the Army is also reported to have said that we need an Army capable of fighting Russia in battle. Can the Minister clarify those remarks? Were they actually said and if so, what was meant? Is that accurate? Whatever he meant, a reduction in our Army of a further 10,000 soldiers is not in our interest or that of our allies, is it? The Government need to rethink this.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Baroness Goldie) (Con)
First, I echo the noble Lord’s sentiments of gratitude to our Armed Forces. I have already participated in one of the services, up in Scotland, and I did so with a great sense of pride. I also thank him for his constructive approach, as ever, to matters in Ukraine.
On training, on which the Prime Minister’s announcement was very welcome, the UK is considering several options outside Ukraine to roll out the training programme, and that could include locations in the UK and other locations in Europe. The UK plans to provide basic infantry training to new or entry-level conventional recruits of the armed forces of Ukraine. The noble Lord will be aware that the Treasury has made £1.3 billion in operational support and capability available for Ukraine. This fund is expected to contribute to the first stage of the training initiative.
The noble Lord asked about the placement of contracts. His colleague the noble Lord, Lord Reid of Cardowan, raised this last week and I shall write to him, but I can say to the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, that there is of course constant engagement. The department is fully engaged with industry, allies and partners to ensure that all equipment and munitions granted in kind are replaced as expeditiously as possible. But I am afraid that, for operational, commercial and security reasons, I cannot provide any further information at this stage.
The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, raised the question of the size of the Army. It is important not to impute to the Chief of Defence Staff anything he did not say. My understanding is that he did not make some simple, binary arithmetical comparison—big is good, smaller is bad. In fact, I think in his remarks he reflected exactly what we established and identified in the integrated review, reflected in the Command Paper and then fleshed out with Future Soldier. Some very interesting comments have been made in the House about this issue, but I was particularly impressed by two contributions in the debate on the humble Address, one by the noble Lord, Browne of Ladyton, and the other by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Houghton of Richmond. They were incisive and analytical and I commend these speeches to your Lordships.
Lord Campbell of Pittenweem (LD)
My Lords, may I begin by associating myself with the expressions of gratitude to our Armed Forces? May I also say that, sooner or later, the Government will have to grasp the nettle and admit that the tasks before land forces in particular will not be carried out effectively by the numbers contained in the integrated review? It will happen sooner or later, but the sooner it does the quicker it will be possible to see how additional land forces can be properly deployed. I wonder whether the Minister sees what I see. I see a war of attrition, with Russia now temporarily outgunning Ukraine and doing so by grinding out painful and bloodletting progress at a terrible cost to forces on both sides. Does she accept that Ukraine can survive only if the supply of weapons from the United Kingdom and others in NATO matches that of Russia in quality, quantity and capability? Will she tell the Prime Minister to tell that to the meeting of NATO Heads of Government next week?
Baroness Goldie (Con)
With the greatest respect to the noble Lord, who, as he knows, I admire hugely, I disagree with his analysis. With the biggest investment since the end of the Cold War, the Army will reorganise; it will re-equip to become more integrated, active and lethal as a high-tech force fit for the threats of the future, not the battles of the past. As people increasingly recognise, what we do with the Army and how we do it in the future is not based simply on boots on the ground, but on a much wider understanding of how we are smarter and cleverer—finding better equipment and using technology. In that respect, we can operate in a much more agile and resilient fashion.
I say to the noble Lord that the nature of the conflict in Ukraine is certainly arduous and worrying; I think everyone accepts that it will be of long duration. But I would also say to him that the UK has been a singular contributor in leading the charge to help Ukraine defend itself, and we welcome those within and outwith NATO supporting that endeavour. The NATO summit on 28 June will be an important occasion because NATO will agree the new strategic concept and set the direction of the alliance for the next decade. Much of that will be informed by what has happened with this barbarous and illegal invasion of Ukraine by Russia.
Lord Balfe (Con)
My Lords, I shall use three quotes from yesterday’s debate. First, Tobias Ellwood, who put down the Question, said:
“But Russia is not losing and Ukraine is not winning”. ––[Official Report, Commons, 20/6/22; col. 556.]
Secondly, the new head of the Armed Forces said that we must be
“fighting alongside our allies and defeating Russia in battle”.
Thirdly, the Secretary-General of NATO said that this could take years. I should like to ask the Minister: where are we actually going? Last week in the Duma, there was discussion about the Suwałki Gap, the strip of land running between Lithuania and Poland that links Kaliningrad to Belarus. What happens if the Russians decide to force the Suwałki Gap? They would not be fighting Ukraine, but the Lithuanians are very anxious to implement all the sanctions and Kaliningrad is becoming more or less isolated. I should like to think that our forward planning stretches beyond Boris Johnson and the end of next week, and that we are looking seriously at ways in which this conflict could be gradually edged-up in a way that it would be very difficult for NATO to respond to with unity.
Baroness Goldie (Con)
I do not agree with my noble friend’s somewhat dismissive commentary on how the UK has responded to this. I think, by universal assent, the UK has played a pivotal role in coming to the aid of and supporting Ukraine, which knows that it has in us a solid and reliable friend. I say to my noble friend that within the whole Baltic area there has been a bolstering of the enhanced forward presence, to which the UK has been an important contributor. That has been a necessary response. As I said to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Pittenweem, what we are witnessing is quite simply an illegal and barbarous invasion by President Putin of an innocent sovereign state.
It is interesting that, within the Baltic area, Sweden and Finland now seek to join NATO. I assume they are motivated by the sense of comfort and reassurance that the alliance will bring them if they are able to become members. That is a matter for hope and optimism.
Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)
My Lords, I wish to associate myself with the expressions of gratitude to our Armed Forces and our veterans. Yesterday in the other place, Leo Docherty, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence People and Veterans, in answering this Question spoke about the Government’s
“absolute resolve to meet our NATO commitments”
and said that they are doing that by delivering
“at pace the technological and military revolution necessary to make ourselves more lethal, agile and deployable around the world than ever before.”
He went on:
“For too long, the measurement of our military capability has been about men and vehicles in garrisons, rather than our ability to project power”.—[Official Report, Commons, 20/6/22; col. 558.]
The Minister knows that I think that is the right approach. Why then, on 15 June, did the MoD slip out, under cover of a Written Ministerial Statement, the Defence Artificial Intelligence Strategy and its accompanying document on the ethics of military AI? When will the Secretary of State or the Prime Minister come to Parliament to explain how this strategy will, in the words of that Statement,
“transform the culture of defence”—[Official Report, Commons, 15/6/22; col. 13WS.]
and to answer questions about it?
Baroness Goldie (Con)
As ever, I appreciate the noble Lord’s interest in these matters. Indeed, the Defence Artificial Intelligence Strategy was published on 15 June. It is an important development; on artificial intelligence, we as a department want to be effective, efficient, trusted and influential. As for when there will be an opportunity to question the Secretary of State in the other place—or, for that matter, to question me in this Chamber—I will make inquiries about what the intention is for parliamentary procedure. I shall try to ascertain whether there is a likely date for a Statement. Personally, I think it would make for an interesting and very useful debate in this Chamber.
Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill
Tuesday 21st June 2022
(2 years, 6 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Act 2022 View all Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 16-I(a) Amendment for Committee (Supplementary to the Marshalled List) - (20 Jun 2022)
“Amendments to consumer protection legislation
(1) In section 9(3) of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 (goods to be of satisfactory quality), after paragraph (e) insert—“(f) compliance with security requirements.”(2) In Schedule 2 to the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 (S.I. 2013/3134), after paragraph (x) insert—“(y) where applicable, confirmation of compliance with all security requirements as set out in regulations made under section 1 of the Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Act 2022.”(3) In section 2(2) of the Consumer Protection Act 1987 (liability for defective products), after paragraph (c) insert—“(d) in relation to a relevant connectable product within the meaning of Part 1 of the Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Act 2022, any person who is a distributor of the product within the meaning of that Act.””Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would clarify the relationship between proposed provisions in this Bill and those already in law under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 and other consumer legislation. This would include defining a security issue as a fault for the purposes of consumer law and ensuring the liability for a defective connectable product is properly defined.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, this group contains two amendments that have been tabled by my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones, and I rise to move Amendment 14 and to speak to Amendment 14A on his behalf and my own. These are probing amendments to understand consumer law with this and other legislation.
It seems that the Government’s intention is that consumers will be entitled to redress under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 for breaches of the product security requirements in Part 1 of this Bill and the requirements of related future secondary legislation where breaches amount to a product not being of satisfactory quality as described or fit for purpose. However, for clarity, this will require the specific inclusion in this Bill of amendments to the CRA and other related consumer legislation. So I ask the Minister to clarify how redress will work in practice. As Which? has strongly urged in relation to the current consultation on reform of consumer law generally, collective redress should also be available for groups of consumers that have suffered breaches of the CRA relating to product security.
To help your Lordships, let us look at a typical scenario where the consumer reads a report about a security issue with a product that they own and considers it insecure and hence faulty. They try to take the product back to the retailer as redress, as per CRA 2015 rights, but under the CRA, after the first six months of ownership, the burden falls on them to prove that the fault was not of their making. It is unclear what burden of proof would be required at this stage for the consumer to get redress for security faults as described in this Bill.
The CRA places the primary obligation on retailers—as “traders” concluding contracts with consumers—not manufacturers, to remedy products found to be in breach. Due to the unique nature of security faults, it is currently unclear whether a retailer would have the ability to verify reports of faults to facilitate effective redress. Experience has shown that it has been hard when reporting security issues to retailers, and that can often result in pushback. There is a risk that the consumer will find it very hard to enact their CRA rights in practice to get redress on insecure products. In that regard, proper legal guidance for what classifies a security fault is absolutely vital for redress to work effectively.
At present, it is unclear how security updates—and hence a commitment to fix security faults that occur with smart products—interact with the CRA 2015. For example, a manufacturer could claim that it will provide four years of updates on a product at the point of sale but then renege on that; perhaps because it has gone out of business or some such reason. The product then develops a security fault that the manufacturer will not fix. It is unclear what the consumer rights would be in this scenario.
Moreover, it is unclear if the Bill effectively waters down consumer rights under the CRA. If the manufacturer claims that it will give four years of support in which it will fix security faults, how does this impact on a claim that a consumer may have under the CRA to have faults addressed—which they may be able to bring for up to six years from when they purchased the goods? If the Government are not willing to mandate minimum support periods for at least six years, this could become a commonplace problem to consumers seeking redress. The Bill must make it clear how it interacts with the CRA 2015 and associated consumer legislation in a way that gives maximum protection to consumers and does not water it down.
Finally, under the CRA 2015, after the first six months of ownership, the burden falls on the consumer to prove that a fault was not of their making. Consideration should be given to extending this period and making it easier for consumers to obtain redress for insecure products. The 2019 EU sale of goods directive has extended the burden of proof in EU member states to one year—extendable to two years by member states—from delivery of the goods. For goods with digital elements supplied on a continuous basis, the burden of proof for conformity is on the seller in relation to any non-conformity that becomes apparent during a minimum of two years, or the period of supply where longer than two years, effectively providing a minimum of two years of security support. The directive also has specific provisions requiring sellers to keep consumers informed about and supplied with updates, including security updates. Similar protections should be introduced for UK consumers.
So there is a whole heap of issues here, and these two amendments try to get some clarity. Amendment 14 seeks to clarify the relationship between the provisions proposed in the Bill and those already in law under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 and other consumer legislation. This would include defining a security issue as a fault for the purposes of consumer law and ensuring that the liability for a defective connectable product is properly defined. Amendment 14A would ensure that the provisions of the Bill will not conflict with any existing legal rights regarding the enforcement of consumer law, ensuring that redress for defective connectable products can be sought by individual consumers, as opposed to solely leaving the redress procedure to the designated enforcement body to ensure compliance.
We await detailed exposition on all this, either now or in a letter from the Minister. I beg to move.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Fox, for tabling these amendments, which seek to clarify how the new measures in the Bill will interact with existing consumer legislation. In a practical sense, they are about how comfort can be given to the consumer and redress made available where necessary.
We in your Lordships’ House know that consumers have had to fight hard over many years to secure important statutory protections, including rights of redress when products do not live up to the standards that people rightly expect of them. I say to the Minister that the new measures in the Bill are certainly welcome and will improve certain aspects of the consumer experience, but it is also right to probe how this new regulatory regime interacts with consumer rights and protections enshrined elsewhere.
I feel that Amendment 14 seeks to update the state of play to refer to compliance with security requirements, but that needs to be an area where consumer protection is enshrined in legislation. To me, it goes with the sweep of the Bill, which is to bring us into today’s world and able to cope with the new and constantly evolving situation. Amendment 14A is also interesting, in that it seeks to maintain the right of individual consumers to seek redress in relation to defective connectable products rather than leaving these matters to a particular enforcement body or to collective legal action.
We would appreciate it if the Minister could clarify some of these matters in the Bill itself. If that does not prove possible, this is another area where we would very much like rather more information to be made available by the department so that we can seek to protect the rights and interests of consumers.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay) (Con)
I am grateful to the noble Lord and the noble Baroness for probing through Amendments 14 and 14A as tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Fox. The amendments seek respectively to amend consumer protection legislation and clarify the relationship between this Bill and consumer protection legislation.
The Consumer Rights Act 2015 requires goods and services to be of a satisfactory quality, and the Consumer Protection Act 1987 imposes liability for defective products. Breaches of this Bill that meet the criteria of these Acts already entitle consumers to the protections they provide. This Bill focuses on the supply chain and what it needs to do to protect and enhance the security of products and their users. The security requirements will relate to processes and services, not just to the hardware of a product as the product safety framework does. It is not appropriate to retrofit the security requirements of this Bill’s regime into the existing framework of consumer protection legislation, which was generally designed to ensure that consumers have rights when products are unsafe—although, as I said, I appreciate the probing nature of these amendments.
Some security requirements will require ongoing action from manufacturers after they make a product available. It would be inappropriate to require traders to confirm one-off compliance with such requirements before contracts become binding. I acknowledge that existing consumer rights legislation will not always enable consumers to seek redress for breaches of the security requirements. I reassure noble Lords that this is not a gap. The evolving technological landscape means that the threats to consumers change, and we need flexibility to protect and compensate customers where that is necessary. The Bill, together with existing consumer rights legislation, already offers this.
The Earl of Erroll (CB)
The Minister said earlier that the whole point of the Consumer Rights Act was about unsafe goods. I think that he means “unsafe” as referring to physical harm. Actually, a major security breach could render serious physical harm to someone because having all their money removed from their bank account could affect their mental state and result in the breakdown of their marriage, suicide, failure of business, all sorts of things. Therefore, it may have just as damaging physical effects on someone, though not immediately apparent. Although they are different they are equally unsafe, so this has more merit than he is suggesting.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
At the risk of a philosophical debate on the nature of security versus safety, I accept some of the points that the noble Earl makes. There are distinct differences between our approach to product security and existing product safety as set out in consumer legislation, but I will address myself to that philosophical point in the letter, if I may. For now, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw Amendment 14.
Lord Fox (LD)
I hope that the Minister will take some time to read my speech in Hansard and address the issues that I have raised, because there are some specific points that have not been touched.
A lot of this has come from Which? whom I thank for its help. Which? is an extraordinarily experienced organisation, with some of the country’s most experienced consumer lawyers dealing with the sharp end of customer consumer problems. The fact that it has gone to the trouble of raising these issues should raise a red flag. It is not doing it out of mischief or political intrigue, but because it cares about the future of consumers. For that reason, the department needs to take this seriously.
If the Minister requires a meeting with Which? I am sure that I, the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, or the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, will be very happy to broker one. We could then go through some of these consumer issues. This is an organisation dedicated to protecting the needs of consumers. It has gone to the trouble of flagging up this and several other issues. For that reason, for the future of this Bill, it would be very sensible to take Which? seriously.
That said, I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 14.
Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom
“Offences under the Computer Misuse Act 1990: defence
Notwithstanding anything contained in the Computer Misuse Act 1990, it is not an offence for a person (“A”) to test the conformity of a relevant connectable product with all or any of the security requirements, without consent of the person entitled to control access to the product (“B”), where—(a) A reasonably believes that B would have consented to that testing if B had known about the the circumstances of it, including the reasons for performing it,(d) A is empowered by an enactment, a rule of law, or an order of a court or tribunal, to carry out the test, or(c) the test was necessary for the detection of crime.”
Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom (Con)
My Lords, Amendment 16 proposes a statutory defence for ethical hackers. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and to the CyberUp campaign, for their help. Again, I declare my interests as chairman of the Information Assurance Advisory Council, chairman of the Thales UK advisory panel and chairman of Electricity Resilience Limited.
The Computer Misuse Act 1990 criminalised unauthorised access to computer systems. The methods used by cybercriminals and cybersecurity professionals are often identical, which is one of the things that makes the drafting of this amendment rather problematic. Usually, criminals do not have permission for what they do, and cybersecurity professionals do, but I am told by the CyberUp campaign that there are occasions on which that permission is difficult or impossible for a cybersecurity professional to get.
At Second Reading, I cited the case of Rob Dyke, who has been through a legal tussle with the Apperta Foundation, which has since been in touch with me to put its side of the story. It is clear that it feels strongly that it was right to pursue Mr Dyke until he gave undertakings that allowed it to drop its litigation. I do not know the rights and wrongs of that, but the Apperta Foundation supports the principles put forward by CyberUp for a legal defence for offences under the Computer Misuse Act.
In any event, the Government are carrying out a review into the 1990 Act. CyberUp’s submission to it sets out that many in the cybersecurity profession do not know whether what they are doing is legal. This is because legislation in 1990 came in before much of what now happens with computers had been thought of—so it inevitably created ambiguities. In the 1990 Act, no consideration was given—I remember because I was there—to web scraping, port scanning or malware denotation, and people are not sure that they are legal. Some of us are not sure quite what they are.
This is why there needs to be certainty for cybersecurity researchers; they need to be able to do things for the public good. We cannot rely on the National Cyber Security Centre for everything, because even the Government cannot keep up with the speed of technological development, as has been mentioned. The CyberUp campaign recognises that legislation also cannot keep up with the speed of change, so it has helped with drafting this amendment not with a view to seeing it enacted—my noble friend will resist it for a number of good reasons—but with a view to eliciting from the Government a statement about how they are getting on with this aspect of the review of the Computer Misuse Act.
One suggestion that the CyberUp campaign makes is that
“legislation to mandate the courts to ‘have regard to’ Home Office or Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport … guidance on applying a statutory defence that would, ideally, be based on the framework”
of principles. This includes, first, the prospective benefits of the Act outweighing the prospective harms; secondly, reasonable steps being undertaken to minimise the “risks of causing harm”; thirdly, the actor demonstrably acting “in good faith”; and fourthly, the actor being “able to demonstrate … competence”. Here we may come back to the standards/principle discussion that we had on the first group.
So I expect my noble friend to reject this amendment, but I should be grateful if he could say where the Government’s thinking on the matter is.
Baroness Neville-Jones (Con)
My Lords, I speak in support of this amendment. My noble friend has just said that he doubts that the Government will adopt it, but, like him, I want to know where their thinking has got to.
The Computer Misuse Act is one of the first bits of legislation passed in the cyber era. It is old and out of date, and it is fair to say that it contains actively unhelpful provisions that place in legal jeopardy researchers who are doing work that is beneficial to cybersecurity. That is not a desirable piece of legislation to have on the statute book.
Last year, before the consultation that closed over a year ago, I corresponded with my noble friend Lady Williams. The common-sense reading of her reply was that the Home Office was quite aware that the Computer Misuse Act needed updating. I confess that I am a bit disappointed that, a year after the consultation closed, there still has not been a peep from the Government on this subject—either a draft or a statement of intention. It would be good to know where the Government are going, because it is quite damaging for this legislation as it stands to remain on the statute book: it needs modernisation.
Like my noble friend, I recognise that actually getting the drafting right is tricky and complex. Drafting language that strikes the right balance is not all that easy. But inability to find an ideal outcome is not a good reason for doing nothing, so I live in expectation, because the best must not be the enemy of the good. If the Government do not intend to produce legislation that updates that Act, I should like to see something in this legislation, taking advantage of it, at least to move the dial forward and protect ethical hackers to a greater extent than is the case at the moment.
If the Government are concerned about our drafting, I am sure we would be willing to listen to suggestions on a better formulation. In the absence of that, perhaps the Minister will say when and how the Government intend actually to modify a piece of legislation that has served its time and now needs to be superseded.
The Earl of Erroll (CB)
My Lords, very quickly, I remember well during the passage of the Computer Misuse Act and the Police and Justice Act 2006 trying to tidy up language about hacking tools and so on. It became very complicated and no one could quite work out how to do it, because the same thing could be used by baddies to do one thing and by good people to help maintain systems, et cetera. In the end, I think it went into the Act and they just said, “Well, we won’t prosecute the good guys”. Everyone felt that was a little inadequate. I do not know quite what we are going to do about it but it needs to be looked at. Therefore, this is a good start and I would welcome some discussion around it, because we need something in law to protect the good people as well as to catch the criminals.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, this amendment is countersigned by my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones. I know he will be very disappointed not to be able to speak to this, because it is an issue he feels particularly strongly about, as do I. Also in their absence are the auras of the noble Lords, Lord Vaizey and Lord Holmes, who spoke at Second Reading on this issue—it is a shame they are not here, but I think they have been ably replaced by the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, and the noble Earl, in their speeches. I will try not to duplicate the points that have been made by the three speakers before me. At the heart of this, as the noble Baroness confirmed, is the need to address the UK’s outdated Computer Misuse Act to create fit-for-purpose cybercrime legislation to protect national security. Clearly, that is not easy, as she pointed out, but that does not mean we should not do it at some point.
The Computer Misuse Act, as we know, was created to criminalise unauthorised access to computer systems or illegal hacking. It entered into force in 1990, before the cybersecurity industry as we know it today had really developed in the UK. Now, 32 years later, many modern cybersecurity practices involve actions for which explicit authorisation is difficult, if not impossible, to obtain. As a result, the Computer Misuse Act now criminalises at least some of the cybervulnerability and threat intelligence research and investigation that UK-based cybersecurity professionals in the private and academic sectors are capable of carrying out. This creates a perverse situation where the cybersecurity professionals, acting in the public interest to prevent and detect crime, are held back by the legislation that seeks to protect the computer systems: it is an anomaly.
As noble Lords will know, under the guidance that will be introduced following the passage of the Bill, manufacturers of consumer-connectable products will be required to provide a public point of contact to report vulnerabilities. This could be an important step forward in ensuring that vulnerability disclosures by cybersecurity researchers are encouraged, leading to improved cyber resilience across these technologies, systems and devices.
Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)
My Lords, this has been a far more interesting debate than I initially surmised it would be—
Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)
No, I give credit where it is due. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, on his amendment because the issues that he raised and the questions posed by the noble Lord, Lord Fox, in particular, are legitimate ones.
Although this is not the place to amend or change the Computer Misuse Act 1990, as the noble Lord, Lord Fox, said, it certainly is the place to raise concerns. After all, we are talking about product security and safety. It is vital that we have appropriate safeguards in place to prevent and, if need be, punish cyberattacks and other forms of hostile behaviour online.
However, as we seek to make smart devices safer, clearly there is a role for researchers and others to play in identifying and reporting on security flaws. They need to be able to do this within the safe zone of concern, knowing that they are not themselves going to be captured by those who are responsible for cybersecurity. As I understand it, exemptions exist in similar legislation to ensure that academics and other legitimately interested parties can access material relating to topics such as terrorism. The amendment before us today raises the prospect of granting a similar exemption and defence in this particular field.
I am conscious that the noble Lord, Lord Fox, raised the spectre of auras in the form of the noble Lords, Lord Vaizey, Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Holmes of Richmond—as well as the intent of the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, who is of course very knowledgeable about the business of security and has had both professional and political responsibility in that field. However, I think that, when those auras and his own say that this is an issue of concern, we as the Official Opposition reflect that concern.
I hope that the noble Lord will engage with the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, and others following Committee on this—I am sure he will—because it is a very important subject. A campaign backed by such an esteemed cross-party group of colleagues in the Committee and in another place cannot be entirely wrong. The Computer Misuse Act 1990 is the framework we have got, but it is right that it is reviewed and that something fresh is brought before us to protect us from cyberattacks in the future.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom for representing the other three signatories to this amendment. I was glad to meet him and the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, to discuss this yesterday.
The role of security researchers in identifying and reporting vulnerabilities to manufacturers is vital for enhancing the security of connectable products. The good news is that many manufacturers already embrace this principle, but there are also some products on the market, often repackaged white label goods, where it is not always possible to identify the manufacturer or who has the wherewithal to fix a fault. The Bill will correct that.
As noble Lords have noted, there are legal complexities to navigate when conducting security research. The need to stop, pause and consider the law when doing research is no bad thing. The Government and industry agree that the cybersecurity profession needs to be better organised. We need professional standards to measure the competence and capabilities of security testers, as well as the other 15 cybersecurity specialisms. All of these specialists need to live by a code of professional ethics.
That is why we set up the UK Cyber Security Council last year as the new professional body for the sector. Now armed with a royal charter, the council is building the necessary professional framework and standards for the industry. Good cybersecurity research and security testing will operate in an environment where careful legal and regulatory considerations are built into the operating mode of the profession. We should be encouraging this rather than creating a route to allow people to sidestep these important issues.
As noble Lords have rightly noted, the issues here are complex, and any legislative changes to protect security researchers acting in good faith run the risk of preventing law enforcement agencies and prosecutors being able to take action against criminals and hostile state actors—the goodies and baddies as the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, referred to them. I know my noble friend’s amendment is to draw attention to this important issue. As drafted, it proposes not requiring persons to obtain consent to test systems where they believe that consent would be given. That conflicts with the provisions of the Computer Misuse Act, which requires authorisation to be given by the person entitled to control access. As the products that would be covered by this defence include products in use in people’s homes or offices, we believe that such authorisation is essential. The current provisions in the Computer Misuse Act make it clear that such access is illegal, and we should maintain that clarity to ensure that law enforcement agencies do not have to work with conflicting legislation.
The amendment would also limit the use of such a defence as testers would still be subject to the legal constraints that noble Lords have described when reporting any vulnerability that the Government have not banned through a security requirement. If a new attack vector was identified that was not catered for by the security requirements, the proposed defences would have no effect. The amendment would not protect those testing products outside the scope of this regime, from desktop computers to smart vehicles. If we consider there to be a case for action on this issue, the scope of that action should not be limited to the products that happen to be regulated through this Bill. None the less, the Government are listening to the concerns expressed by the CyberUp Campaign, which have been repeated and extended in this evening’s debate.
The Home Secretary announced a review of the Computer Misuse Act last year. As my noble friend noted, the Act dates back to 1990. I do not want to stress too much its antiquity as I am conscious that he served on the Bill Committee for it in another place. His insight into the debates that went into the Bill at the time and the changes that have taken place are well heard. The evidence which is being submitted to the review is being assessed and considered carefully by the Home Office. It is being actively worked on and the Home Office hopes to provide an update in the summer.
I hope, in that context, that noble Lords will agree that it would be inappropriate for us to pre-empt that work before the review is concluded and this complex issue is properly considered. With that, I hope my noble friend will be content to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom (Con)
My Lords, I was six at the time. It has been a useful debate and I thank all those who have taken part. I am particularly grateful to my noble friend Lady Neville-Jones, who made it quite plain that we understand the problems in the way of the Government in legislating on this but we are getting impatient. With everything that is going on in the world, out-of-date cybersecurity legislation is becoming more dangerous day by day. That said, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“Rights in occupation
(1) The electronic communications code is amended as follows.(2) In paragraph 21 (test to be applied by the court), in sub-paragraph (4), at the end insert “the terms of any existing agreement, and any other method of statutory renewal available.””Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to ensure that any new agreements which are made with reference to Clause 57 of the Bill and using paragraph 20 of the Electronic Communications Code must have regard to the terms of the existing agreement to ensure continuity and fairness.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, once again I am a substitute for the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones—
Lord Fox (LD)
I know. I rise to move Amendment 17 in his name. I am grateful for the tuition that I have also had from the noble Earl, Lord Lytton—more about him shortly. Unfortunately, we are missing his huge expertise, but do not worry, I will be here to channel some of his thoughts.
This amendment seeks to ensure that any new agreements made with reference to Clause 57 and using paragraph 20 of the Electronic Communications Code must have regard to the terms of the existing agreement to ensure continuity and fairness. It aims to address outstanding concerns with the way rights are assigned when there are operators in occupation at a site. This is a complex issue and I am aware that the Minister and his colleagues at DCMS have been grappling with it as the Bill has been developed, but it is vital that the Government get this right.
The issue that the Government are trying to address was brought about by a confusion in the 2017 code. There have been some issues where operators have been prevented from getting the code rights they need to support their networks because they are already in occupation of the land and they cannot grant themselves rights.
The Government’s original consultation response and the first draft of the Bill tried to address this by changing the definition of “occupier” in the Bill. This was at Clause 57 in the original Bill. The stated policy intent made it clear that the change is intended only to address the issue that we have outlined and to ensure that when operators are in occupation of land they are able to obtain new code rights.
However, it was made clear to the Minister and his colleagues at DCMS that the original draft would in fact have much greater implications and would potentially allow operators to misuse Clause 57 as it was originally set out to modify or cancel agreements mid-term. This would be in the operators’ interest, since they could break a contract that had been agreed in good faith and move the new contract on to a new valuation basis under the 2017 “no scheme” provisions for consideration.
The Government tried to address this by removing the original draft of Clause 57 and replacing it with the new Clause 57 that we have before us today. Instead of changing the definition of “occupier” in the Electronic Communications Code, it creates a more specific code right to deal with the underlying problem.
Lord Fox (LD)
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, we are coming to the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954.
The residential security of rent control caused a seizing up of the private rented sector for the next 25 years. This is something that the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 avoided doing in the business sector by providing security of tenure, but on market rental terms. The word of warning here from the noble Earl is that Government should be careful what they wish for and how they go about any significant transition in dealing with human sentiment against actuarial robotics, and be aware of whose voices they lend their ears to.
There are apparently three routes to lease renewal: the 1954 Act, which the noble Earl believes is effectively overwritten in some instances by the 2017 code revision; the immediate pre-2017 code for non-LTA leases; and the situation that pertains for agreements following the 2017 changes. This seems a recipe for confusion, and if the noble Earl is confused, where does that leave the rest of us?
There is a lot of detail in quite a short amendment, but this is an issue. I understand, and I think my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones and the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, understand, that there needs to be some clarity over which measures apply where, and whether the Government really want to sanction wholesale renegotiations of the nature that the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, has set out. I think that is a law of unintended consequence, and it will slow down the implementation of what we want to be implemented rather than allow it to happen more quickly.
The Earl of Erroll (CB)
My Lords, I would add that I completely trust my noble friend Lord Lytton on these affairs and issues. I have talked to him, particularly when discussing burying fibre and things like that, and he knows a lot about it.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
My Lords, this is of course the first of a number of amendments that deal with Part 2 of the Bill. The amendment refers to telecoms infrastructure. This is far from the only debate that we will have on broad issues around property rights, operators, access to land and so on but, as a general point, it is worth restating our belief that this country needs access to better digital infrastructure. Our concern is that the Government have not been hitting their targets for the rollout of gigabyte-capable broadband. There have also been issues around the rollout of 5G technology. Although we want to see decent infrastructure, we also want to see fairness in the system, and that is what this amendment speaks to. It seeks to ensure a degree of continuity and fairness as new agreements are made to replace existing ones.
The principles cited by the noble Lord, Lord Fox, and in the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, are reasonable. Again, they are principles that I am absolutely sure we will return to next week, as we have ever-more detailed discussions about rents, dispute resolution and so on.
As has been outlined in this debate, the court is not currently bound to consider the terms of an existing agreement. This feels like a significant oversight. Perhaps the Minister can inform us about what actually happens in practice and what will happen in practice. Both operators and landowners have, or should have, certain rights and responsibilities within this process. I look forward to the Minister’s response to Amendment 17 and to moving some of our own amendments during day two of Committee.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
As the noble Baroness says, this begins to anticipate some issues to which I know we will return on the second day of Committee, but it is useful to begin them tonight.
Amendment 17 seeks to insert a new clause after Clause 57 of the Bill. Its purpose is to add an extra element to the test at paragraph 21 of the code, where an operator enters into a new agreement because of the provisions in Clause 57. This is likely to be in circumstances where an operator in occupation of the land on which its apparatus is installed has an existing agreement but wishes to seek an additional code right. The code currently provides that operators in exclusive occupation of land are unable to obtain additional code rights until their existing agreement is about to end or has ended. This is because the code currently provides that only an occupier can grant code rights, and the operator clearly cannot enter into an agreement with itself.
Clause 57 remedies this position and allows an operator to obtain code rights where it is in exclusive occupation of the land. The test at paragraph 21 of the code is often referred to as the public interest test and sets out what a court must consider when deciding whether to impose a code right on a landowner. Paragraph 23 then sets out how the court should determine the remaining terms of the code agreement. Clause 57 simply gives an operator the ability to obtain a new code right or rights that they do not already have. The clause does not allow an operator to force changes to its existing code agreement or to compel the other party to modify any of its terms—for instance, to attempt to reduce the amount of rental payments. Furthermore, the clause does not enable an operator to bring an existing agreement to a premature end in order to take advantage of more favourable terms. Any existing code agreement that the operator has will be expected to continue and operate alongside the agreement relating to the new code right.
Amendment 17 seeks to expand the test at paragraph 21 so that the court also has to consider the terms of any existing agreement and any other method of statutory renewal available. We are, however, of the view that the court can already take such matters into consideration when deciding whether to make an order under paragraph 20 of the code, and again when applying the test at paragraph 23 to determine what terms the code agreement should contain.
This is a topical issue. Clause 57 rectifies an issue in the code that currently prevents operators who are in exclusive occupation of the land being able to obtain new code rights. As I said, three cases have touched on this issue, all of which were heard in the Supreme Court earlier this year, and the Supreme Court is due to hand down its judgment tomorrow.
At present we believe that Clause 57, as drafted, achieves its intended objective, but we recognise that this is a complex and technical area, on which the noble Lord, Lord Fox, valiantly conveyed the expert view of the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, and it is imperative that any unintended consequences are avoided. We will of course look closely at the Supreme Court’s judgment and carefully consider whether further amendments are needed, engaging with interested parties as required to ensure that the aim of the clause is fully realised.
I too am very conscious that the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, with whom we have already had some discussions on this and broader aspects of the Bill, will want to join those discussions, so I am sure he will be following the official record. But I am very happy to meet the noble Lords who have spoken, as well as the noble Earl, to discuss this issue in further detail, particularly once we have seen the judgment. For now, I urge the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Fox (LD)
I thank the Minister for his response, during which he said that the department is of a view. When I was speaking for my part, rather than for the noble Earl, I made it clear that there were quite strong opinions that that view might not be correct. Three cases are to be judged tomorrow, before this Bill is enacted, so although it may have some relevance, it will potentially —and in the views of the people we have spoken to, almost certainly will—end up back in the courts.
We share the objective of the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, that the rollout be accelerated, not inhibited. We also share the view, as expressed in the not very veiled threat in the part of my speech on behalf of the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, about what the 1963 rent Act did, which was clog up the system. We do not want to do that—we cannot afford to clog up the rollout. There are strong suspicions that, without giving the legal certainty we need to avoid getting tangled up in the courts, we will be back there again, notwithstanding the judgments of tomorrow. That said, I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 17.