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Oral Answers to Questions
(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Nick Fletcher (Don Valley) (Con)
Dr James Davies (Vale of Clwyd) (Con)
Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)
Caroline Ansell (Eastbourne) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Brandon Lewis)
Mr Speaker, I thank you and the team at the Houses of Parliament for the unveiling this morning of the plaque recognising Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson.
We cannot allow the Northern Ireland protocol to continue to prevent the free movement of goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which is why we have introduced legislation that will allow businesses to trade freely again. We are providing reassurance for business by continuing to operate the standstill arrangements, and we will work with businesses on the details of any new models.
Nick Fletcher
Does the Secretary of State agree that trade between our Union is of the utmost importance and that we should do all we can in this place to make sure it is not hindered in any way?
Brandon Lewis
Absolutely—the Government are steadfastly committed to Northern Ireland’s integral place in the United Kingdom. We will never be neutral on the Union. The proposed legislation we recently introduced will fix the practical problems the protocol has created in Northern Ireland, avoiding a hard border, protecting the integrity of the UK and safeguarding the EU single market.
Dr James Davies
Businesses based in Great Britain, such as the Snowdonia Cheese Company in my constituency, tell me that while it is possible for them to trade with Northern Ireland, doing so can be very involved, costly and restrictive. The current application of the Northern Ireland protocol is therefore hampering business growth and success. Will my right hon. Friend confirm how businesses like Snowdonia Cheese stand to benefit from the provisions in the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill?
Brandon Lewis
My hon. Friend makes an important point on why the Bill matters. Freedom to move products within the UK’s internal market without impediment is critical. The proposed legislation will enable businesses to trade freely once again by delivering new green and red lane arrangements. It will remove unnecessary costs and work for businesses trading within the UK, while ensuring the necessary checks are done, quite properly, for goods entering the EU.
Alexander Stafford
Will the Secretary of State confirm that the Government will continue to work closely with businesses to ensure that we address all their needs, so that trade with Northern Ireland and Rother Valley boom?
Brandon Lewis
Absolutely. My hon. Friend is right. We want to see trade booming across the United Kingdom and for the United Kingdom. We will continue to work closely with businesses. The purpose of the secondary legislative powers in the Bill is to allow us to flesh out precise technical details in our proposals, working with business, who we will always engage with, to ensure that our solutions work and deliver for them and for the people of Northern Ireland. We will be doing that with them, as well as with other stakeholders, both in Northern Ireland and Great Britain, over the next months to ensure that the new systems address their needs.
Caroline Ansell
As my right hon. Friend says, there are huge opportunities for trade within the Union, including with spaceports in Cornwall and Scotland. Given Northern Ireland’s expertise and strength in the manufacture of spacecraft components, can my right hon. Friend assure me that when it comes to procurement, businesses in Northern Ireland are as well placed as any to bid for these—I cannot resist this—stellar opportunities?
Brandon Lewis
My hon. Friend is always fired on rocket-powered fuel when asking direct questions like that—and I am afraid that, no, I cannot top that.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Northern Ireland has real expertise in advanced engineering, manufacturing and aerospace. It is right that we take measures, in taking the Bill through, to ensure that businesses across the United Kingdom—and yes, from my point of view, obviously, predominantly those businesses in Northern Ireland—can absolutely benefit from the opportunities that are there for the UK, bringing UK businesses together in a global way that can see their business grow and create more jobs.
Claire Hanna (Belfast South) (SDLP)
The Government claim that their protocol Bill is designed to protect the Good Friday agreement, while being in the middle of a demolition derby of its core values, creating regression and polarisation that will take us years to fix. The Secretary of State should know that the Human Rights Act is a cornerstone commitment of the Good Friday agreement. What legal advice has he received and what representations has he made to Cabinet colleagues about the compatibility of the Bill of Rights and the 1998 agreement that he is charged with protecting?
Brandon Lewis
The hon. Lady is absolutely right. It is important that we deliver and protect all aspects of the Belfast/Good Friday agreement; I have made the point several times at the Dispatch Box over the past couple of years that we have to ensure that we protect all three strands, not just one. I am pleased that the hon. Lady recently said:
“I do not love the protocol”.—[Official Report, 15 December 2021; Vol. 705, c. 374WH.]
There is no doubt that there are a lot of challenges for businesses, so I hope that she will support the Bill, which seeks to fix those challenges.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
The latest business to report disruption to its supply is a photo-framing business in Newtownards whose supplier has said that the profit margin is not worth the hassle of sending its order, so it has been cancelled. That is another of the 200 companies that trade between England and Northern Ireland; the tale is repeated for businesses in every postcode. The Government must do the right thing and restore our position, not just constitutionally but financially for businesses. Will the Secretary of State give a date for the withdrawal Bill’s Second Reading?
Brandon Lewis
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will appreciate that I cannot confirm the exact date at this point, but we have introduced the Bill and he can be reassured that the Government are committed to resolving the problems with the protocol, restoring the primacy of the Belfast/Good Friday agreement and restoring sovereignty and territorial integrity for the whole United Kingdom. It is imperative that we ensure that people in Northern Ireland have the same benefits, laws and courts as everybody everywhere else in the United Kingdom. I have been very clear that, as part of that, we want to ensure that we deliver strand 1, which means the reformation of the Northern Ireland Executive as soon as possible.
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
Even a fool now knows that Brexit has damaged UK trade and GDP, but do the Government have any assessment of the GDP gain and the benefit to business that the protocol has given Northern Ireland, especially as it is the only part of the UK outside London to record growth, and the only part of the UK inside the single market? It is no coincidence that it has seen growth.
Brandon Lewis
I am sure that if the hon. Gentleman does a bit of research, he will see that it is actually quite a complicated picture. It is good to see Northern Ireland growing back quickly: with a larger proportion of the economy in Northern Ireland based on the public sector, and with the phenomenal support that the Chancellor has put in, that is to be welcomed. We want to see Northern Ireland’s economy growing; it was struggling before covid. We are making sure to put that support in, but I have to say that that would be even easier were it not for the protocol, which is preventing some of the Chancellor’s measures from benefiting the people of Northern Ireland.
Mr Speaker
I call the Chair of the Select Committee on Northern Ireland Affairs.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
Given that so much policy that affects and benefits business is devolved, is not the best support that politicians of all stripes could give Northern Irish business to get Stormont back up and running?
Brandon Lewis
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We all want to see Stormont back up and running. It is important that we see all the Ministers back with their full powers. We have caretaker Ministers in place now, thanks to legislation that we passed recently, but having Stormont making spending decisions, getting money out the door and supporting businesses and people in Northern Ireland is the right thing to do.
Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Brandon Lewis)
I have regular discussions with Cabinet colleagues about issues affecting Northern Ireland more widely, including the Northern Ireland protocol.
Justin Madders
The Secretary of State will be aware that the Northern Ireland Business Brexit Working Group, which represents 14 industries, released a statement last week stating that
“there are significant concerns about the introduction of an all-encompassing dual regulatory regime.”
I understand that dairy farmers have similar concerns. Having heard about those issues, can the Secretary of State tell us what consultation the Government did with businesses before introducing this regime?
Brandon Lewis
We are in continual engagement with business. We have had more than two meetings a month with the wider group, and the Minister of State and I have made more than 30 visits to businesses that are members of those groups. We are in constant communication with business. It is important that we design the details in conjunction with business to ensure that businesses that are doing well and sectors such as dairy that benefit from the economy across the island of Ireland do not lose out. We must also ensure that we deliver for the businesses that are so detrimentally affected by the problems with the EU’s implementation of the protocol.
Craig Williams (Montgomeryshire) (Con)
The EU is rightfully focused on protecting its own single market, but may I respectfully request that we first and foremost protect the single market of the United Kingdom? Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the practical and durable solution set out in the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill will do just that?
Brandon Lewis
My hon. Friend is spot on, as ever. Our legislation will restore the balance inherent in the objectives of the protocol, avoiding a hard border, protecting the integrity of the United Kingdom and safeguarding the EU single market. It is right that we are doing the right thing by the businesses and citizens of Northern Ireland, who are businesses and citizens of the United Kingdom and the UK internal market.
Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)
When the Government introduced the United Kingdom Internal Market Bill, the Secretary of State was quite honest about his lawbreaking, and here we are again. The man who resigned over his actions, the former head of the Government Legal Department, says that the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill is “next-level” lawbreaking. Based on this Government’s track record, why should anyone believe what the Minister claims about this Bill’s legality?
Brandon Lewis
The hon. Gentleman tends to make a habit of standing at the Dispatch Box and taking the side of the EU over the UK, which is disappointing: what he should be doing is supporting the UK economy and supporting businesses and people in Northern Ireland, who want to see a resolution. We have set out a package in this legislation that is within the law and delivers for the people of Northern Ireland by delivering on what should be the priority for all of us: the Belfast/Good Friday agreement, in all three strands.
Peter Kyle
The Secretary of State mentions the Good Friday/Belfast agreement, but the Foreign Secretary argues for unilateral action on the protocol because it does not have the necessary support in one of the communities in Northern Ireland. I say that the EU must show more flexibility and listen to the Unionist concerns, but if cross-community support is so important to the Government, can he confirm that the current plans also have the support of the nationalist community?
Brandon Lewis
The hon. Gentleman talks about the Belfast/Good Friday agreement, but his tweets in the last couple of weeks have highlighted that he has possibly not even read it; I suggest that he at least gets equipped with who the signatories to the agreement are, so that he understands who the co-guarantors are.
We are focused on delivering all three strands of the agreement. One thing that has been common and clear from the leaders of all the parties in Northern Ireland is that, in one form or another, they all—nationalists and Unionists—want to see changes to the Northern Ireland protocol. They all acknowledge that there are problems with it and that it is not working for businesses and citizens in Northern Ireland. Eventually, if we are not able to get an agreement with the EU, we will have to take forward measures to secure a resolution of the problems that all those people and businesses are outlining. We would rather do that by agreement with the EU, but it is right that we take action.
Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson (Lagan Valley) (DUP)
The EU has threatened to remove access for Northern Ireland businesses to the single market. To police this, it would have to create a hard border on the island of Ireland; that is the only consequence of its actions. Does the Secretary of State agree that such a threat from the EU indicates that, far from wanting to protect the Good Friday agreement and peace and stability in Northern Ireland, it simply wants to punish Northern Ireland businesses because the UK Government want to protect the UK internal market?
Brandon Lewis
The right hon. Gentleman makes an important point. It is right that we are looking to deliver on all three strands of the Belfast/Good Friday agreement. We will never be looking at any sort of infrastructure; there cannot be a hard border on the island, in the same way that there should not be a hard border between east and west. That is the issue of the three strands. We recognise that the EU’s focus is on its single market. We recognise that we will ensure that its single market is protected, but we will defend all three strands of the Belfast/Good Friday agreement.
Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson
The Secretary of State will be aware that the former Prime Minister Tony Blair has stated that the protocol presents a real risk to the Good Friday agreement. Does he agree that the agreement and the political institutions can operate only on the basis of cross-community consensus and not the majority rule that some in this House are now advocating? Does he also agree that in order to achieve that cross-community consensus, the Government need to proceed with legislation that will resolve the real difficulties that the protocol is presenting for the people of Northern Ireland and our place in the Union?
Brandon Lewis
Yes; the Government have been clear that we are determined that the political settlement in Northern Ireland is based on respect and understanding between all communities and the consent of those communities. The protocol is clearly undermining that, and that has to be resolved. That is what we are seeking to do through our legislation. We would like to get an agreement with the EU, but we need to move on and get this legislation in place as we have been unable to secure that agreement with the EU, in order to protect the internal market of the UK, the people and businesses of Northern Ireland and all three aspects of the Belfast/Good Friday agreement.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
The Government invested a great deal of good faith in signing the protocol and they were entitled to expect the same good faith in return. It is now pretty clear that the protocol, in practice, has not proved to be compatible with the Good Friday agreement. Will the Government now consider triggering article 16, particularly given the casual, if fleeting, use of that measure by Ursula von der Leyen?
Brandon Lewis
My right hon. Friend makes an important point about how the EU has already triggered article 16, for example, to create disruption with the vaccine roll-out during covid, which highlighted how it views the north-south potential and the potential of the Belfast/Good Friday agreement. We are determined to resolve the issues overall. As we have said previously, we do not want to trigger article 16. We take nothing off the table, but we are very clear that our proposed legislation resolves the issues that the protocol is creating and it is the right move to take.
Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Brandon Lewis)
Our preference remains to resolve the problems with the protocol through talks. Our door remains open to discussions, but the EU has so far not been willing to make meaningful changes to the protocol, which are necessary to deliver the solutions needed.
Gavin Newlands
I thank the Minister for that answer, but the Government walked away from negotiations. By rejecting negotiation in favour of lawbreaking and, in doing so, disregarding the wishes of the majority of MLAs, businesses and the Northern Irish public, the UK Government have utterly destroyed the trust that not only the EU had in the UK, but that Ireland and the United States had too. Trust is easily lost and hard won, so how do the Government plan to be seen as a good faith partner in international negotiations ever again?
Brandon Lewis
Last year, we published a Command Paper that set out solutions, with which the EU has never properly engaged. It did publish its ideas in October, which the business community in Northern Ireland said did not work. We have continually been in engagements and negotiations with the EU. It has been clear that it is not willing to show the flexibility needed to resolve the protocol issues, which is why we have introduced this Bill.
The hon. Gentleman might want to look back at Hansard to see the statement from the Foreign Secretary when we introduced the Bill. We are very clear, as I have said today, that we will continue to negotiate with the EU. We would like to seek a resolution by agreeing with the EU, but it is right that we table this legislation at this point as well to resolve the issues.
Martin Docherty-Hughes
Belfast harbour has reported levels of trade and increase in turnover of profits of 17% to £73.3 million from 2021, with pre-tax profits up 13% to £34 million. Can the Secretary of State advise the House why their Government would jeopardise 25.6 million tonnes of cargo, a 9% increase on the 23.5 million a year earlier, which was up by 5% on the previous record levels of 2019, by unilaterally changing the Northern Ireland protocol?
Brandon Lewis
The hon. Gentleman should read the full article, because then he would realise that, between the easements, the standstill and the grace periods, we are not actually fully implementing the protocol let alone the other business that Belfast harbour takes in that has nothing to do with the protocol. What we do know is that—
Mr Speaker
Order. Mr Docherty-Hughes, I think those whippets that you own need a little walk. That is where you will be going shortly.
Brandon Lewis
I will leave the hon. Gentleman to read the article, so that he can realise just how wrong his question was.
Dr Neil Hudson (Penrith and The Border) (Con)
Many of the issues related to trade and movement of goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland are plant and animal-related. What progress have the Government made in trying to secure an arrangement between the UK and the EU on veterinary and sanitary and phytosanitary matters? That would address these issues and also enhance the UK’s biosecurity.
Brandon Lewis
My hon. Friend makes an important point. One frustration with this failure by the EU to see the flexibility that we need is that, by resolving some of these issues, we could have avoided the need for us to legislate and to take this period of time to resolve things. Our legislation will resolve all of these issues and create a method that not only protects the EU single market, but, importantly, works for businesses, works for citizens, and works for all three aspects of the Good Friday agreement, dealing with those very issues that he raises.
Jacob Young (Redcar) (Con)
One of my predecessors in Redcar was the political giant Dr Marjorie Mowlam, most notable for her work in securing the Belfast/Good Friday agreement. Can the Minister confirm that any arrangement we reach with the EU in relation to the protocol will take account of and address the issues that are disrupting the delicate balance of that agreement?
Brandon Lewis
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is important that we respect the balance in that agreement. It is important because it has given us peace for 24 years, and that is where our focus is.
Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)
I have to remind the Secretary of State that it was this Government who signed up to the trade and co-operation agreement and the Northern Ireland protocol as it currently stands. It might not be necessary to try to renegotiate had more time been given over to this Chamber to allow Members to scrutinise it before it entered into law. Does the Secretary of State regret the decision taken by the Government to curtail the amount of parliamentary time available to Members to scrutinise that before Brexit was done?
Brandon Lewis
I think the hon. Gentleman is arguing to go back in time and take even longer to get Brexit done. I am not sure the British public or anybody would thank him for that, but of course the business of the House is generally agreed through the usual channels; that is always the case.
Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)
Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)
The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Conor Burns)
The challenges faced by the public across the United Kingdom in terms of the cost of living are the dominant issue facing British politics. The Government are acting decisively to ensure that we provide support to the most vulnerable households. The biggest thing we could do in Northern Ireland would be to restore devolved Government, so that we have a Government who can act for the people of Northern Ireland, as the Government of the United Kingdom are acting in England, Scotland and Wales.
Liz Twist
The Minister will be well aware that the energy price cap does not exist in Northern Ireland, leaving households vulnerable to the price hikes of up to 33% we have seen in recent months. The Treasury said in May that it was urgently working to step in to provide direct support due to the lack of an Executive. Can the Government now lay out how the £400 energy discount will be delivered in Northern Ireland?
Conor Burns
We are very clear on this. The way that it should be delivered is through restored devolved Government in Northern Ireland, and the impediment to that, as the hon. Lady will know, is the interpretation and application of the Northern Ireland protocol. As I have said clearly to Members from the Democratic Unionist party, that is a matter for the United Kingdom to negotiate with the European Union, or we can take legislative measures in this House, as we are doing. They should be back in Government delivering for the people of Northern Ireland on the mandate delivered in May.
Chris Elmore
An Ulster Bank report last week contained the worrying result that Northern Irish firms are the least optimistic of any firms in a UK nation or region about activity in 12 months’ time. What further support can the Government offer to businesses in Northern Ireland that are struggling with this Tory cost of living crisis?
Conor Burns
As the hon. Gentleman knows, this is an international challenge that has been exacerbated by the situation in Ukraine and Russia, and the Government are delivering decisive action and interventions to help people through this incredibly challenging situation—probably the most challenging situation that we have faced for a generation. In Northern Ireland, we have New Decade, New Approach funding, city and growth deals, the levelling-up agenda and the community shared ownership funding. We are making a plethora of interventions in Northern Ireland to make life for ordinary people better than it is already.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
I have listened to one of the most able members of the Government and his thoughtful response. If the problem really is the Northern Ireland protocol, how on earth are we going to get the EU to see sense?
Conor Burns
My hon. Friend asks some of the most devastating supplementary questions. We are very straightforward on this: we are simply saying to the European Union—I have been explaining this on behalf of the Prime Minister in the United States—that goods that are moving within the United Kingdom’s internal market and destined for sale and consumption in Northern Ireland, and that will never see dawn or dusk in the Irish Republic, pose absolutely no risk whatsoever to the integrity of the European single market. I spent time two weeks ago with Tony Blair, who has produced an amazing report that says that the European Union needs to find the room to move. Vice-President Šefčovič needs to be given a broader mandate. I say to my hon. Friend that it absolutely remains the determination of the Government to reach a conclusion on the protocol in negotiation, friendship and partnership with the European Union.
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
Because of the Barnett formula—something that the SNP would do away with for Scotland—our whole United Kingdom, including Scotland and Northern Ireland, will benefit from the £81 billion household support fund, including £14 million for Northern Ireland. Does my right hon. Friend agree that this will help the most vulnerable households in Northern Ireland?
Conor Burns
As almost always, my hon. Friend is absolutely right.
Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Speaker. Last week, I met Jonny Petrie, chief executive of Ulster Rugby, about the club’s plans to apply for levelling-up funding to improve sporting facilities, including for community clubs across Northern Ireland, that would support the health and wellbeing of local people. Will the Government commit to considering funding development of these facilities so that Northern Ireland can attract major sporting and cultural events that would deliver much-needed tourism, jobs and money to the people of Northern Ireland?
Conor Burns
I am delighted—[Interruption.] Thank you for that thunderous welcome back to the Dispatch Box. I am happy to say to the shadow Minister that we will absolutely do that. Only yesterday I was in Carrickfergus with the son-in-law of an hon. Gentleman on the Benches opposite seeing a new 5G pitch. We are absolutely committed to levelling up. As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has made clear, levelling up is the mission of this Government. It is not about north-south; it is about improving life opportunities in communities across the whole of the United Kingdom, especially in Northern Ireland.
Mr Speaker
That must be the loudest cheer any Minister has had—well done, Minister!
Before we come to Prime Minister’s questions, I would like to point out that British Sign Language interpretation of proceedings is available to watch on parliamentlive.tv.
Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)
The Prime Minister (Boris Johnson)
To mark Windrush Day, today sees the unveiling of a national monument at Waterloo station that acknowledges the Windrush generation’s outstanding contribution to British society and will also be a permanent place of reflection.
As part of Armed Forces Week, I was delighted to host a reception yesterday in Downing Street. Members across the House are immensely proud of our armed forces and we thank them and their families for their service to our country.
I know the House will welcome the deal that we have signed with Moderna, which will see it build new facilities in the UK, including around £1 billion of new investment in research and development.
This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in this House I shall have further such meetings later today. I will be travelling thereafter to the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Rwanda, and I will then be attending the G7 leaders summit and the NATO summit, Mr Speaker, so a full budget of news for you there.
Chris Elmore
May I associate myself with the Prime Minister’s comments in relation to the armed forces and other comments?
Has the Prime Minister ever considered the appointment of his current spouse to a Government post or to any organisation in one of the royal households? Be honest, Prime Minister—yes or no?
The Prime Minister
I know why Labour Members want to talk about non-existent jobs in the media—because they do not want to talk about what is going on in the real world. I am proud to say that we now have 620,000 more people in payroll employment than before the pandemic began, which would never have been possible if we had listened to the Leader of the Opposition.
Julie Marson (Hertford and Stortford) (Con)
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to champion this type of approach, which makes a real difference to people’s lives and people suffering from mental health issues, helping them to find a route back into work. That is why we are commissioning more initiatives through funds such as the life chances fund, helping those people in society who face the biggest barriers to have happy and productive lives.
Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)
Can I join the Prime Minister in his comments about Windrush, and pay tribute to everyone who is serving and has served in our armed forces? Can I also pay tribute to everyone standing for election tomorrow and in particular the plucky Conservative candidate for Wakefield? He is standing, even though his own colleagues think he is so useless that they held a vote of no confidence in him. Does the Prime Minister hold any personal interest in seeing if the public will vote for a Tory who even his own side do not think is up to it?
The Prime Minister
I have absolutely no doubt that the people of this country, and the people of Wakefield and of Tiverton and Honiton, would much rather vote for a solid Conservative Government than a Labour party and its enablers and acolytes in the Liberal Democrats—the karma chameleons of British politics—when the leader of the Labour party has not even got the gumption to speak out against the rail strikes that have caused so much damage to the people in the north of this country and up and down the country. There is unbelievable silence from the leader of the Labour party.
Keir Starmer
The Prime Minister has obviously not been to Wakefield recently. He has crashed the economy and he has put everybody’s tax up. The last Tory he sent up to Wakefield was convicted of a sexual assault. That is not much of a pitch, Prime Minister. Talking of people not up to the job, while the Transport Secretary spends his time working on his spreadsheet tracking the Prime Minister’s unpopularity, thousands of families have had their holiday flights cancelled, it takes forever to renew a driving licence or passport and now we have the biggest rail strike in 30 years. If the Prime Minister is genuine—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. Both sides, let us calm down. We have only just started. The problem is, it will go on forever, and nobody wants that, I assure you, whoever is speaking or asking questions.
Keir Starmer
If the Prime Minister is genuine about preventing strikes, will he tell this House how many meetings he or his Transport Secretary have had with rail workers this week to actually stop the strikes?
The Prime Minister
This is the Government who love the railways and who invest in the railways. We are putting £96 billion into the integrated railway plan. I am proud to have built Crossrail, by the way, and we are going to build Northern Powerhouse Rail, but we have got to modernise our railways. It is a disgrace, when we are planning to make sure that we do not have ticket offices that sell fewer than one ticket every hour, that yesterday the right hon. and learned Gentleman had 25 Labour MPs out on the picket line, defying instructions—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. I want to hear the Prime Minister’s answer, even if some Members do not. I think they ought to show some respect to the Prime Minister.
The Prime Minister
There were 25 Labour MPs and the shadow deputy leader out on the picket line, backing the strikers, while we back the strivers.
Keir Starmer
I am surprised the Prime Minister is giving me advice about my team. If I do need advice, let us say, about a £100,000 job at the Foreign Office, I will ask him for a recommendation.
There you have it, Mr Speaker. The Prime Minister of this country and his Transport Secretary have not attended a single meeting, held a conversation or lifted a finger to stop these strikes. But I did note that on Monday they found time to go to a lavish ball, where the Prime Minister sold a meeting with himself for £120,000 to a donor. If there is money coming his way, he is there. When it comes to the country, he is nowhere to be seen. Rather than blame everyone else, why does he not do his job, get round the table and get the trains running?
The Prime Minister
We are making sure that we do everything we can to prevent these strikes. As the right hon. and learned Gentleman knows, it is up to the railway companies to negotiate—that is their job. We spent £16 billion looking after the railways throughout the pandemic. That has cost every household £600. We know why he takes the line he does; we know why he will not condemn the strikes; and we know why, even now, he does not have the gumption to call out his MPs who are going out to support the pickets. The reason his authority is on the line in this matter is that the Opposition take £10 million from the unions. That is the fee that he is receiving for the case he is failing to make.
Keir Starmer
The Prime Minister cannot help himself. There is a huge problem facing the country, and all he is interested in doing is blaming everyone else. Can he not hear the country screaming at him, “Get on with your job!”? While he blames everyone and anyone, working people are paying the price. This week, his Chief Secretary to the Treasury said that there is a “society-wide responsibility” for people to take a pay cut. At the same time, his chief of staff, the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay), is trying to change the law to get bankers’ bonuses increased. So come one, only one of them can be right: is it his Chief Secretary to the Treasury, who says that every worker needs a pay cut, or is it his chief of staff, who says that every banker needs a pay rise?
The Prime Minister
Actually, under this Government, 5 million public sector workers are getting a pay rise. We have increased the living wage by £1,000 and we have increased universal credit so that people get £1,000 more. Thanks to the fiscal firepower that we have, we are putting £1,200 more into every one of the 8 million most vulnerable households in the country. That is what we can do because of the tough decisions that we have taken. But meantime, what we are also trying to do is cut the cost of transport, which is a big part of people’s weekly outgoings, by reforming our railways. That is what we are trying to do, but the right hon. and learned Gentleman is standing with the strikers and lifting the cost of transport for everybody. That is the reality.
Keir Starmer
The Prime Minister’s chief of staff says that removing the cap on bankers’ bonuses is
“reflective of the new approach”.
Pay rises for city bankers, pay cuts for district nurses—that is the new approach. I did not see that on any leaflets in Wakefield. But this has not come from nowhere, because according to the Financial Times, on 7 June last year, the Prime Minister was directly lobbied for the cap to be lifted. Rather than help working people, he has rolled over on bankers’ bonuses, has he not?
The Prime Minister
What we are actually doing, thanks to the decisions we have taken, is putting more money into the pockets of people up and down the country—£1,200 more for the 8 million most vulnerable households. The reason we can do that is because we took the tough decisions necessary to come out of the pandemic faster than any other European country. That is why we have unemployment at or near record lows. None of that would have been possible if we had listened to the right hon. and learned Gentleman. We have more people now in payrolled employment than we had before the pandemic began. That is what the British people know, and that is what this Government will continue to deliver.
Keir Starmer
Fifteen tax rises, high tax, low wages, low growth—that sums the Prime Minister’s Government up. Working people are paying more tax under this Government, and now they are told to take a pay cut. He is having meetings about increasing bankers’ bonuses, but he cannot find time for a single meeting to end the strikes crippling the country.
It is Armed Forces Week. Under this Prime Minister, those serving our country are facing a real-terms pay cut. Why are his Government more focused on increasing bankers’—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. Mr MacNeil, your voice is not quiet—it is like mine; it carries. The best thing to do, if you want it to carry, is to try standing on the Terrace for a while.
Keir Starmer
It is Armed Forces Week. Under this Prime Minister, those serving our country are facing a real-terms pay cut. Why are his Government more focused on increasing bankers’ pay than the pay of those who are running the country?
The Prime Minister
How absolutely satirical that the right hon. and learned Gentleman should talk about our support for the armed forces when we have increased our funding for our armed forces by a record sum since the end of the cold war, and when eight of the shadow Front Bench team—eight of the shadow Front Bench—actually want to get rid of our nuclear deterrent, including the shadow Foreign Secretary. [Interruption.] Yes, it is true. We are helping people up and down the country: £1,200 will be coming into the bank accounts of the 8 million most vulnerable households. The cut in national insurance will be coming into their bank accounts as a result of the steps my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has taken. But what we are also doing is reforming our systems so that we cut costs for people up and down the country; reforming our energy markets, building a new nuclear reactor every year rather than one every 10 years; getting people off welfare into work—half a million people off welfare into work—because we have cut the time people are waiting on benefits; and cutting the costs of transport for working people by delivering reforms. We are doing that while they are out on the picket line, literally holding hands with Arthur Scargill. That’s them: it is worse than under Jeremy Corbyn. This is a Government who are taking this country forward; they would take it back to the 1970s.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knares-borough) (Con)
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend knows exactly of what he speaks, and we are doing just that. We are reforming train driver training to make entry into the sector simpler, while continuing, of course, to make sure that we meet vital safety requirements.
Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP)
May I associate myself with the remarks of the Prime Minister and the leader of the Labour party as we mark Armed Services Week? We thank all our service personnel for the services that they give.
On Windrush Day, we celebrate all those who have made Scotland and the UK their home. My party backs calls for a major commemoration for the 75th anniversary next year so we can properly mark the valued contribution that those who came here have made.
This morning, it was revealed that UK inflation is now at a 40-year high. Families right across these islands are seeing their incomes squeezed as prices rise, bills soar, and Tory cuts and tax hikes hammer home. After 12 years in government, the Tories have left the UK economy in the doldrums and pushed millions of people into poverty, so can I ask the Prime Minister: does he think his Government bear any blame for the fact that the United Kingdom is doing so much worse than our European neighbours?
The Prime Minister
Actually, as I think the whole House knows and the whole country knows, we have a global inflationary problem, but this Government have the fiscal firepower to deal with it. That is, I think, of benefit to the whole of the United Kingdom, including Scotland, as we have seen throughout the pandemic, and I think it is a matter of fact that taxes are actually highest of all in Scotland.
Ian Blackford
Well, actually, that is not true. Of course, the Prime Minister can make all the excuses he likes, but the fact is that the UK economy is lagging behind on his watch. If he looks at France, inflation is less than 6% there. This morning’s report from the Resolution Foundation and the London School of Economics is the latest in a string of devastating reports on the outlook for the UK economy. The report could not be clearer. The Tory Government’s disastrous Brexit is driving wages down, pushing inflation up and will make us poorer over the next decade, but instead of reversing course, the Prime Minister is recklessly threatening a trade war at the worst possible time. Will he finally come to his senses and negotiate an economic agreement with the EU, or is he going to wilfully—wilfully—push the UK into recession?
The Prime Minister
Nobody wants a trade war, nor is there any need for one. I am afraid the right hon. Gentleman is underestimating what this country is currently achieving—not just the Moderna investment, but record venture capital investment in this country, which has now overtaken China as a venue for venture capital investment, to say nothing of what we are getting in tech, and of course the benefits of that are being felt throughout the whole of the United Kingdom.
John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)
The Prime Minister
I thank my hon. Friend for an excellent piece of lobbying. Certainly, the Department for Transport is working with Transport Scotland on the possible extension of the Borders railway to Carlisle. On the A1, a decision is to be made later this year.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
It has emerged that there is a backlog of 23,000 applications under the Afghan relocations and assistance policy, with just two of 3,000 applications for refuge by Afghans who worked for Britain having been processed since April. At the same time, since December, staff working on the ARAP scheme have been slashed by a quarter. This is an incredible betrayal of the Afghan people who put their lives on the line to work for our country. I still have casework, including many people from the Chevening Alumni, for example, who have been promised support since September, so can I send those cases to the Prime Minister? Will he put more resources into the scheme? Will he lift the cap on the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme so that we can finally do our best for the people of Afghanistan?
The Prime Minister
I am afraid that the hon. Member is underestimating what the country is already doing for the people of Afghanistan. On Armed Forces Day, we should celebrate Op Pitting, which brought 15,000 out. Of course, I am happy to look at the cases that she wants to raise, and we will do our best for them and for their families, but the House should be in no doubt of the generous welcome that we continue to give to people from Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine and Hong Kong. We have a record to be very proud of.
Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)
Mr Speaker
Order. Can I just say that other Members do want to get in and, the longer the question, the fewer of them will get in? Your friendships will dwindle if you carry on like that.
The Prime Minister
I can tell my hon. Friend very briefly that it is 13,576 more police officers, with 200 more in Cheshire. They are also cutting neighbourhood crime—already by 31%—and our streets are getting safer as a result.
Stephen Farry (North Down) (Alliance)
The Prime Minister
If the hon. Gentleman will just wait for the Justice Secretary’s statement, which follows shortly, I think he will find that he is in error in what he said.
Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is probably the best Member for Rother Valley we have ever had. I thank him very much and we are going to continue our agenda of levelling up across the whole country, through all the difficulties this country has faced, which will get young people across the country, including in Rother Valley, into good jobs for generations to come. That is our ambition.
Kate Osborne (Jarrow) (Lab)
The Prime Minister
If the hon. Lady wants to support the working people of this country, I suggest she gets off the picket line, has a word with her party leader and supports the travelling public of this country, who want to see a reduction in their transport costs, which this Government are delivering.
Chris Green (Bolton West) (Con)
The Prime Minister
We can all be proud of the way we have reduced CO2 emissions in this country, but plainly it makes no sense to be importing coal, particularly for metallurgical purposes, when we have our own domestic resources.
Colleen Fletcher (Coventry North East) (Lab)
The Prime Minister
That is probably the first sensible question from the Opposition Benches, and I can tell the hon. Lady that we do actively support gigafactories because I believe they can be a huge advantage for the UK economy. That is why I am proud to see one now in Blyth, and we are working with the authorities in the west midlands, in Coventry, to make sure we also get a successful result there.
Sir Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)
The Prime Minister
I know how much my hon. Friend cares for the students in his constituency and I can tell him that no exams have been cancelled as a result of the strikes so far. We expect schools and colleges to have contingency arrangements in place to manage disruption. If students arrive late, schools should allow them to take the paper, and exam boards will determine if that paper can be marked based on how late the student has arrived. I am also told that if a student misses an exam completely, the school can apply for their grades to be calculated from the other assessments they have completed in that subject. I hope that is helpful to my hon. Friend.
Sir George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)
The Prime Minister will be aware of the problems that arose in Paris at the European cup final. Does he agree that both the French and UEFA authorities’ attempts to blame Liverpool fans for the failure to keep order at the stadium has been comprehensively disproved, and will he ensure that the French failure to police the event is roundly condemned?
The Prime Minister
I think the whole House will have seen how those initial accounts of what took place were completely debunked and proved to be incorrect in respect of the Liverpool fans, and I think it was right that the French authorities and, I think, UEFA issued a full apology for what had happened.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
The Prime Minister
I think my right hon. Friend should wait for my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister to say a little about that in just a moment, but I can tell him that when it comes to the Rwanda policy that we are pursuing, that policy has not been ruled unlawful by any UK court or, so far, by any international court, and we will continue with that policy.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
The father-in-law of my constituent Ibrahim is a former Supreme Court judge in Afghanistan. He successfully prosecuted and put behind bars hundreds of terrorists associated with the Taliban, al-Qaeda and ISIS. Seven months after he submitted his ARAP application, there has still been no progress, and he is living in hiding. His only option is a perilous journey to Pakistan, where, if his visa is refused, he will be deported back into the hands of the Taliban. Will the Prime Minister meet me and the former judge’s family to see how we can save the life of a man who I have no doubt has helped to save hundreds of British lives?
The Prime Minister
I thank the hon. Lady for raising that case. It does sound extremely meritorious. I will make sure that she has a meeting with the Ministry of Defence, which runs ARAP, and that we do our best to expedite that application as fast as we can.
Dr Ben Spencer (Runnymede and Weybridge) (Con)
The Prime Minister
As soon as parliamentary time allows, we will introduce legislation to change the inflationary index used in the calculation of the annual pitch fees to the consumer prices index. I am told that the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities has undertaken research on the impacts on residents and site owners of a change in the 10% commission that is currently paid on the sale of a park home.
Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)
I am sure the Prime Minister is as thrilled as I am that you, Mr Speaker, signed the Wellbeing of Women menopause workplace pledge last week to show support for women in this place. Will the Prime Minister follow that example and ensure that women in England have better access to treatment by introducing a single annual payment for hormone replacement therapy now, rather than making them wait until April 2023, a full 18 months after the payment was first promised?
The Prime Minister
I thank the hon. Lady very much for raising a very important issue that is understood keenly in all parts of the House. I know that my right hon. Friend the Health Secretary is accelerating the work of the HRT taskforce to give people up and down the country the reassurance and the treatment that they need.
Dean Russell (Watford) (Con)
I was incredibly grateful to the Prime Minister for coming to Watford to launch my initiative to train 1,000 mental health first aiders in awareness more than a year and a half ago. Since then, it has been delivered successfully by Watford and West Herts chamber of commerce and many amazing volunteers. I know that the Prime Minister understands the importance of mental health and wellbeing, but, sadly, bullying can have a long-lasting effect on it. Today, the Diana Award is raising awareness of bullying in schools and online with its “Don’t Face It Alone” campaign. Will the Prime Minister please join me in encouraging any young person experiencing bullying to speak up and speak out?
The Prime Minister
I congratulate my hon. Friend on his own campaign on this issue. I think everyone understands that bullying is an appalling experience, and something that we should not tolerate in our society. I am delighted to see so many colleagues—so many hon. Members—wearing their blue ribbons today. We should all speak out against bullying, but we should also make sure that we give everyone the courage to speak out against it.
Bill of Rights
(2 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Speaker
Before I call the Deputy Prime Minister to make his statement, I have to say to him and the Government that I am extremely disappointed that, once again, an important Government policy has been presented to the media before being presented to this House. Why the BBC and Sky News are more important, I will never know. I say again that this is simply not acceptable.
One thing that did not change in the recently revised ministerial code is this important statement:
“When Parliament is in session, the most important announcements of Government policy should be made, in the first instance, in Parliament.”
Yet again, the media have been the first to know.
I am glad the Deputy Prime Minister is making this statement, but he should have done so before speaking to the media. I would certainly have granted an urgent question, and I thank Mr Bone for tabling one just in case the statement had not been forthcoming. The Government should be aware that I will always do this in similar circumstances. I have to say that I nearly granted both, and I do not want to be put in that position again, so please respect this House and respect Members of every political party. They are elected to hear things here, not via the news.
The Deputy Prime Minister (Dominic Raab)
We strived to make sure we kept within the trammels of what had been in the consultation document, but I heed your advice as ever, Mr Speaker.
With your permission, Mr Speaker, I will make a statement on the publication and introduction of a UK Bill of Rights as we take the next steps to fulfil our manifesto commitment and deliver human rights reform across the country.
We have a proud tradition of freedom under the rule of law in this country, and I remind hon. Members on both sides of the House that it dates back centuries to Magna Carta, not just to 1998. This Bill of Rights, published today, is the next chapter in the evolution and strengthening of our human rights framework, and it is available online and in the Vote Office.
I now turn to the key strands of our reforms. First, as I said when we launched the consultation back in December, the UK intends to remain a state party to the European convention on human rights. It is a set of common-sense principles, and the problems we have encountered stem from its elastic interpretation and expansion, absent meaningful democratic oversight, particularly as a result of the procedural framework set out in the Human Rights Act.
The key objective of our reform is to reinforce quintessential UK rights such as freedom of speech, the liberty that guards all the others. We will also recognise the role of jury trials, mindful of how they operate in different parts of the United Kingdom. Jury trials are not prevalent on the continent, but they are very much part of this country’s heritage and pedigree. These liberties are part of our proud history, but they are also critical to strengthening our place in the world as an open, vibrant and rambunctious democracy.
We will also strengthen the separation of powers in this country, affirming the supremacy of the Supreme Court and making it explicit that UK courts are under no obligation to follow Strasbourg case law and, indeed, are free to diverge from it. I am proud of our world-beating judiciary, and what is the point of a Supreme Court if it bows in subordination to a European court?
We have seen the goalposts on human rights shift over time through expanded judicial interpretations, licensed by the Human Rights Act, which has tended to magnify overweening rulings from Strasbourg, although it is worth noting in fairness that there has been more judicial restraint in Strasbourg on occasion in recent times. Nevertheless, what ebbs may flow, and we will ensure in our Bill of Rights that any expansion of human rights law—as opposed to its interpretation—is subject to proper democratic oversight by elected Members in this House. Our reforms to sections 2 and 3 of the Human Rights Act in particular will squarely address the flaws in the current framework.
We will be crystal clear that when it comes to the laws of the land, and the legitimate, necessary and constructive dialogue we have with Strasbourg, it is Parliament that has the last word. Much has been said by the judiciary in Strasbourg about an age of subsidiarity, with greater respect for the will of domestic democratic institutions, particularly since the 2012 Brighton declaration, which the UK spearheaded to promote reform. Our approach is crafted with that in mind in order to facilitate that dialogue between the UK and Strasbourg, and to avail ourselves of the margin of appreciation within the bounds of the convention. Equally, as a matter of basic democratic principle, we will reaffirm and reinforce the democratic oversight and control exercised by this House.
Our Bill of Rights sets out a range of important reforms, including a permissions stage in the UK courts to assert greater checks over frivolous claims at an earlier stage, reflecting the Strasbourg Court itself, which has an admissibility stage. We have included provision to ensure that the behaviour of anyone claiming a breach of their human rights is taken into account when our courts consider compensation; it is a principle of law in this country that those who come into equity do so with clean hands, and I think that should be reflected in human rights claims.
We will expressly provide for greater weight to be given to Parliament’s determination of the public interest, as set out in primary legislation, when considering the interpretation of rights in order to ensure that we are better equipped to protect the public. That will reinforce our ability to, for example, deport more foreign national offenders, particularly those claiming ever more elastic interpretations of article 8 on the right to family life to frustrate the deportation process.
Our Bill of Rights will ensure that we can deliver our reforms to the parole system, so that when it comes to finely balanced assessments of risk in decisions on the release of potentially dangerous offenders, public protection is the overriding priority. It will also prevent well-meaning but counter-productive and onerous straitjacket regulatory burdens from being placed on our public services as a result of rulings determined by lawyers in court rather than regulation on such sensitive matters being set by elected lawmakers in this House. That is particularly important with respect to finely balanced assessments of social policy, and matters with a financial impact—the bread-and-butter issues that it is for this Parliament to decide.
We have consulted and engaged widely across the whole United Kingdom, and will continue to do so. This is a UK-wide reform, but we want to work with all the devolved Administrations on these essential reforms, so we will be seeking legislative consent motions—noting, nevertheless, the status of the Human Rights Act as a “protected enactment” under the devolution settlements, meaning that reform, replacement or revision can take place only from Westminster.
Our Bill of Rights will strengthen our proud tradition of freedom, demarcate a clearer separation of powers, ensure greater respect for our democratic institutions, better protect the public, and restore a healthy dose of common sense to the justice system, which is essential for commanding greater public confidence. Ultimately, it will make us freer and help to keep our streets safer. I commend this statement to the House.
Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)
I am sure that the whole House will join me in sending our deepest condolences to my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North (Steve Reed), who, following the death of his father last week, cannot be here today.
This is a very dark day for victims of crime, for women, for people in care—for everyone in this country who relies on the state to protect them from harm. This is not a Bill of Rights; it is a con. The Lord Chancellor knows this because he has been working on it for more than a decade. We know from the Queen’s Speech that the Bill will take away the duty of the state to protect everyone from harm by removing the positive obligations set out in the Human Rights Act. It will force victims of crime seeking justice to schlep to Strasbourg, creating endless delays and red tape.
Sir Peter Gross and the review panel do not think the Human Rights Act undermines parliamentary sovereignty or that the UK courts are undermined by the European Court, so why proceed with this Bill? Because this Government look to pick a fight to cover up their own failures, and then find someone else to blame. We have seen a succession of Conservative Members blame the European Court to deflect from their bungled and unworkable asylum policy. Shamefully, some have even demanded that the UK withdraw altogether from the European convention on human rights. For members of the party of Churchill, who inspired the convention, to want to do away with it altogether is quite something. I gather that the Deputy Prime Minister does not want to withdraw from the European convention, not least because he knows it would fatally undermine the Good Friday agreement and peace in Northern Ireland, so will he condemn members of his own party who have made that dangerous and reckless demand?
Labour Members are proud of the gift that Churchill gave to the world in the universal declaration and in the European convention that followed, but we are prouder still that it was a Labour Government who, in 1998, brought rights home from Strasbourg. The Human Rights Act is held up around the world as an exemplar of modern human rights legislation, which is why the European Court very rarely overrules our judges, as the review panel recognised in its report. It is a beacon of hope for people in countries where basic human rights are trampled over by strongmen and dictators. There is no better example than Ukraine, where the rights of millions are being crushed under the jackboot of Vladimir Putin. What stunning hypocrisy from this Government to preach to others about the importance of defending rights abroad while snatching away British people’s rights at home. This is a Government gimmick by a party that seeks headlines for botched policies and then blames others when they fail.
The answer to fixing the mess that this Conservative Government have made of the immigration and asylum system is not to take away British people’s rights given to them by the Human Rights Act. That Act has allowed people to object when doctors put “do not resuscitate” orders on their bed without their consent. It has allowed people with learning disabilities imprisoned in locked units to be reunited with their families. It has allowed families affected by major disasters such as Manchester or Hillsborough to seek justice when public bodies have let them down. It has allowed elderly married couples in residential care to object when care home managers try to separate them, and it has allowed victims of rapists such as John Worboys to force the police to investigate cases of rape.
This Bill of Rights con is not just an attack on victims of crime whom the state has failed to protect; it is an attack on women. Women have used the Human Rights Act to challenge the police when they have either failed or refused to investigate rape and sexual assault cases. We saw that in the case of John Worboys, who is thought to have assaulted more than 150 women. It should come as no surprise that this Bill has been brought forward by a Conservative Government who have effectively decriminalised rape. [Interruption.] Last week’s scorecard showed pitiful progress on the record low—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. People who have been wanting to catch my eye will not do it by shouting when somebody is speaking.
Ellie Reeves
Last week’s scorecard showed pitiful progress on the record low rate of convictions under this Government. The typical wait for cases to complete in court has reached three years, and a fifth have seen waits of four years—and that is if the case even gets to court. The number of rape trials postponed at a day’s notice in our Crown courts has risen fourfold. It is no wonder that rape survivors are dropping out of their cases in droves. Will victims even bother to report their case at all when they learn that the Deputy Prime Minister’s Bill of Rights will stop them forcing our under-resourced police to investigate? It says everything about a Lord Chancellor and a Government who are soft on rape, soft on rapists and hard on survivors, that they want to take away the final backstop available to victims to get justice. Women will be in no doubt that this is a Government who let off rapists and let survivors down, and today is the proof.
The Bill will see enormous amounts of red tape for victims of crime seeking justice. It is an attack on women and it undermines peace in Northern Ireland. It is the hallmark of a party out of ideas that can no longer govern.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
Order. May I just say to the Front Benchers that there are times given, so can we please stick to them? I do not want to stop Ministers or shadow Ministers, but I will in future. You must stick to the allocated time.
The Deputy Prime Minister
I join the hon. Lady in what she said about the hon. Member for Croydon North (Steve Reed). I extend my sympathy and my condolences to him.
I listened very carefully to what the shadow Justice Minister said. I think I disagreed with everything she said, but then again, she said very little about our Bill of Rights. When she gets a chance to read it, I look forward to debating it with her further. May I just correct a couple of the obviously flawed things she said? She talked about whether or not we will leave the European convention on human rights. When she gets a chance to read the Bill of Rights, she will see that not only are we staying a part of the ECHR, but that it is incorporated in the Bill of Rights. I have to say that the comparison with what Russia or Putin does shows, I am afraid, a lack of a moral compass on the Labour Benches, not the Conservative Benches.
The hon. Lady then diverted into a monologue on a very serious subject in relation to rape. Let us be absolutely crystal clear: there is absolutely nothing in the Bill of Rights that will do anything to weaken the protections of victims; far from it in relation to the deportation of foreign national criminals, the release of dangerous rapists, and what we do inside our prisons. It will strengthen our protection of victims and public protection. Again, for the record, on such a serious issue—I agree with the hon. Lady on its importance—she might get her facts straight. The volume of rape convictions has increased by two thirds in the last year alone. I am working very closely with the Home Secretary, the Attorney General and the Director of Public Prosecutions, and we are absolutely determined and restless to go even further and faster.
I suspect, however, that that was really a distraction from the fundamental issue, which is the Bill of Rights and human rights reform to get the right balance. The hon. Lady and the Labour party are blind to the flaws in the Human Rights Act in the way that its architects are not. Jack Straw said back in 2007 that he wanted to rebalance the rights set out in the Act, adding explicitly that responsibilities should play a role. They are all in here in our Bill of Rights. He went on to say, in an interview in December 2008, that
“There is a sense that it’s a villains’ charter”.
Mr Speaker, I have not used that language, but I will just say how far the sense of critical self-evaluation on the Labour Benches has gone when the hon. Lady cannot talk about anything that could possibly be reformed.
The model we have taken is based on a textbook that I read back in 1999, written by a very learned authority. He said, on the relationship between the UK and Strasbourg—the hon. Lady mentioned that, not with any specific points—that the role of the Strasbourg Court is
“primarily concerned with supervision and its role is therefore subsidiary to that of domestic authorities”.
Subsidiary, not superior. It has no role unless the domestic system for protecting human rights breaks down altogether. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil) asks from a sedentary position who the author is. It was the leader of the Labour party, the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), in his seminal textbook on the subject. All I would gently say is that I think he made a more convincing lawyer than he does a politician.
This week we have seen Labour shadow Ministers line up with picketers against the public. Today, the shadow Justice Minister has confirmed that the Labour party will stand in the way of our common-sense reforms that will ensure a better balance of human rights, so that we can stand up for victims—it is always against that when it comes to sentencing or extra police recruitment—deport more foreign national offenders and safely incarcerate the most dangerous people in our prisons. Whenever Labour Members are asked the big questions, they duck. Yet again, the Labour party is showing it is simply not fit to govern.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
Thank you for your statement earlier, Mr Speaker. I think the vast majority of Members of this House agree entirely.
I congratulate the Secretary of State on his statement. The issue is really very simple: this sovereign Parliament makes laws and our courts interpret them. We should not have the judicial creep of a European Court not interpreting laws, but making new laws. I am willing to support the Bill, but if in practice it fails, will the Secretary of State be willing to support my private Member’s Bill, the British Bill of Rights and Withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights Bill?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I thank my hon. Friend for his tenacity in all these matters. I always listen to him, and I will study his private Member’s Bill. He makes two points. First, there is really no point in having a Supreme Court if it is subordinate to Strasbourg in the interpretation of law. He must be right about that, and our Bill of Rights will expressly address it.
My hon. Friend’s other point is more subtle, but very powerful. I remember our jointly participating in many debates on prisoners’ voting rights, a very clear example of the goalposts shifting. When it comes to legislative functions, it ought to be a point of common agreement across the parties that those matters must be for hon. Members, who are accountable to our constituents, to decide in this House.
Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)
This Bill of Rights and the removal of the Human Rights Act are the culmination of multiple pieces of legislation that have gone through this place in the past year. They are all about one thing: removing human rights from human beings. First, the Government came for the refugees with the Nationality and Borders Act 2022; they told them that their lives did not count. Secondly, they came for those who need to question decisions made about their lives by public bodies, including this Government; the Judicial Review and Courts Act 2022 stopped them being effectively able to do that. Then they went for the voters with the Elections Act 2022, and what do you know? The voters they were targeting were the ones least likely to vote Conservative—the sensible ones, in other words.
The Government then went after the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities with the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. They told them that their way of life was unacceptable—well, it is not unacceptable to us. When the Government did not get their way on public order with that Bill, they repackaged it and brought it back in the Public Order Bill, which will take away the rights of anybody to fight for the rights of anybody else. Who would go to a protest when they could be stopped and searched without any suspicion?
It is all about one thing: removing human rights from human beings. This policy, the culmination of it all, is about removing everybody’s human rights. Human rights are not about one group of people, the group the Secretary of State likes to pick on; they are about everybody living on these islands.
I will ask three quick questions and leave the rest to my colleagues. First, why is there a lack of prelegislative scrutiny? What are the Government so afraid of? Secondly, why is the Secretary of State telling people that this policy will bring rights home, when it will actually force people to go to Strasbourg to get justice? Finally, the Scottish and Welsh Governments have made it clear that they are completely against the policy in its entirety. We have a tale of two countries: Scotland is embedding human rights law in all its legislation, while this Government are stripping it away completely. How would the Secretary of State advise the people of Scotland who want to retain human rights law in their legislation to vote in next year’s independence referendum—yes or no?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I thank the hon. Lady, but clearly I disagree. First, no country has been more big-hearted when it comes to those fleeing persecution, from Hong Kong British nationals overseas to the 17,000 who were evacuated out of Afghanistan and the 125,000-plus visas in relation to Ukraine. The hon. Lady talks about standing up for those people; when our Prime Minister addressed the Ukraine Parliament, Union Jacks were flying and people were singing “God Save the Queen” in towns and villages across the country.
When it comes to protecting human rights, we should be big-hearted, but we should also stop the trade in human misery across the channel, which is a real threat to human rights. We should also make sure that we stand up for victims—the hon. Lady does not seem to care too much about that—in relation to the deportation of foreign national offenders. That is something that I think the people of Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland all agree on. Why would the hon. Lady not support common-sense reforms and a rebalancing of the system to allow us to stand up for victims, stand up for the public and remove serious foreign criminals?
Sir Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
I welcome this statement, which builds on the work that I and Sir Peter Gross did with his important review. Sir Peter’s balanced committee did not say that all was well with the Human Rights Act 1998. There were issues to be dealt with, and in accordance with our manifesto commitment to update the Act, the Bill of Rights is timely. Does the Deputy Prime Minister agree that, over and above domestic action that we can take to reform and improve legislation, there is a strong case for international work to be done—on the same basis as the work we did in Brighton 10 years ago—in order to deal with issues such as extraterritorial jurisdiction? That is a common concern not just in this country, but among our judges and many other member states of the Council of Europe.
The Deputy Prime Minister
I pay tribute to my right hon. and learned Friend for the painstaking groundwork he did in the Ministry of Justice, and to Sir Peter Gross and his panel. All that work substantially influenced the shape of the reforms that we are able to announce today; they would not have been possible without the hard work that my right hon. and learned Friend put in. He is right to point to the 2012 Brighton declaration, because the Strasbourg Court under Róbert Spanó—its latest President, who is Icelandic—has talked about shifting from an age of a living instrument to an age of subsidiarity. People talk about our relationship, and it is important that we stick to the convention, but it is also important that the European Court follows its own strictures.
My right hon. and learned Friend mentioned extraterritorial jurisdiction. I will certainly follow up on his advice, as the issue is also addressed in the Bill of Rights. Again, I thank him for his contribution.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
The Deputy Prime Minister is right about the priority that must be given to public protection, but may I urge him to proceed with care in reforming parole arrangements? Ministers have already taken measures that will give them a veto over the transfer of prisoners serving indeterminate sentences to open conditions, and he will know that there are real concerns that, as well as being procedurally unfair, such measures may increase the risk to public protection. Will he reassure the House that he will make public protection a priority over political gimmickry?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I thank the hon. Lady for what she has said. I certainly agree that public protection is our overriding concern. The proposals for parole reform that we have published for consultation make it clear that, in the context of convicted murderers, rapists, terrorists and child killers, we want to ensure that there is a ministerial check in finely balanced cases where there is genuine risk to the public and to public confidence but it is hard to predict. If we agree on the principle of putting public protection first, I hope she will agree that that should command cross-party support.
Dame Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
I am frankly disgusted by what the shadow Minister had to say. To suggest that right hon. and hon. Members on the Conservative Benches would be soft on rapists—she sits there shaking her head now—is a shameful thing to say, and it undermines women’s confidence in our judicial system across this country. Does my right hon. Friend agree that, given the centuries of experience in our UK judicial system, we can be incredibly confident that it is able to represent the interests of everybody in this country? Does he share my sadness that so many on the Opposition Benches would throw away our sovereignty to anyone else who would have it?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I agree entirely with my right hon. Friend. She is right that there never seems to be an opportunity to throw away the powers and authority that we have in this House that the Opposition do not grasp with total alacrity.
Rape is such a sensitive issue, and we have seen convictions increase by two thirds. There is a whole range of other work, including Operation Soteria, pre-recorded witness evidence under section 28, and the disclosure reforms that my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins) is looking at. We ought to be trying to build on the progress that we have made, not do it down, because that is the stuff that undermines women’s confidence in the justice system. We know there is a longer road—[Interruption.] Hold on. We know that there is much more to do, but that work is not going to get done with the hyperbolic language used by the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves).
Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)
As acting Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, I wish to remind the Secretary of State that we have completed two in-depth, unanimous cross-party reports, which concluded that the Human Rights Act is working well and does not need to be repealed or replaced. Indeed, that was the conclusion of the independent review, which the Secretary of State commissioned and then ignored.
When we visited Strasbourg last week, we were told that UK Government Ministers have given repeated assurances that the UK will remain in the ECHR, and I was pleased to hear the Secretary of State reiterate that assurance this morning. However, the Prime Minister did make some veiled threats in the opposite direction last week. If we are to stay in the ECHR, it needs to be done with integrity. We cannot pick and choose which convention rights we want to observe or for whom we want to observe them. Does the Secretary of State appreciate that the United Kingdom’s disengagement from the ECHR—make no mistake, Mr Speaker, that is what this Bill is about—risks giving encouragement to populist Governments in eastern Europe who have scant regard for human rights or, indeed, the rule of law?
The Deputy Prime Minister
No, I am afraid I do not agree with the hon. and learned Lady, not least because I do not see how she can sustain the argument that we are dislocating ourselves when not only are we remaining a state party, but it is in the Bill of Rights as well.
I pay tribute to the work of the hon. and learned Lady’s Committee. I appeared in front of the JCHR on 8 December. The noble Lord Wolfson appeared on 2 February, and I am attending again on 20 July. We will pay great respect to the role of the Joint Committee, but, of course, we know that there are likely to be objections and we will try to assuage those held by her and her members as best we can.
Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend accept that there will be many who will be extremely glad that he has now introduced his Bill of Rights? It means, as he said just now, that our Parliament and our judges will have the last word. We look forward to seeing the text of the Bill, and we trust that it will ensure that the European Court in Strasbourg will never again be able to frustrate the United Kingdom’s right to deport illegal immigrants and, at the same time, override our own judges.
The Deputy Prime Minister
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the long-standing work that he has done, on the constitutional dimension in particular. I can give him the direct assurance—I have a copy of the Bill of Rights here and it is also available in the House—that we address squarely the issue that he raises. We want to make sure that elected Members from both sides of the House have the last word when it comes to resetting or expanding the laws of this land.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
This morning, the distinguished legal commentator, Joshua Rozenberg, summed up this Bill not as the biggest constitutional tour de force in more than 300 years or the apex of the Justice Secretary’s career, but as a ragbag of restrictions. It will undoubtedly cause harm to many thousands of our citizens, especially those who are the most vulnerable and have suffered discrimination by an unchecked state. It will also cause harm to this country’s hard-won reputation as a champion of international law. As a constitutional document, is it not a damp squib and a legal nonsense that sets up confusion and conflict between domestic and European courts?
The Deputy Prime Minister
May I gently say to the hon. Gentleman, of whom I am quite fond and with whom I have debated these issues many times, it cannot be both ripping up human rights and a damp squib? May I suggest that he reads what people have to say on this—including Jonathan Fisher QC, who has written a very thoughtful piece about reform; Lord Sumption, a former justice of the Supreme Court; and John Larkin, a former Attorney General in Northern Ireland? He might get a slightly more sober analysis.
Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend for the letter that he wrote to the Justice Committee this morning. In it, he said “The Bill will prevent human rights from being used as a way to bring claims on overseas military operations”, but does he recall that some of the gravest crimes of the Iraq war were revealed only through recourse to the Human Rights Act, enforced in our domestic courts? I think particularly of the systematic torture of detainees by British soldiers in Basra which was revealed in the Baha Mousa case only because of the Human Rights Act, after the Ministry of Defence had declined to investigate. Can he provide reassurances to the House that the new Bill of Rights will not operate to suppress such serious human rights abuses coming to light in the future?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I understand my hon. Friend’s point. Of course, we need to have proper accountability when anything goes wrong. The professionalism of our armed forces is second to none, but mistakes can happen and there needs to be accountability. The reality is that we have the international law of armed conflict, which is designed to do that. It has been unhelpful, and indeed has created legal uncertainty, to layer an extra tier of human rights obligations on top of that. It has created uncertainty as to the state of the law, and huge uncertainty for our armed forces. We will make sure that there is the accountability that she seeks, but we will also deal with the extraterritorial jurisdiction, which, frankly, has encouraged litigation and many spurious claims, as well as the ones that she mentioned.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
Paragraph 2 of the human rights chapter of the Good Friday agreement provides that
“The British Government will complete incorporation into Northern Ireland law of the European Convention on Human Rights…with direct access to the courts, and remedies for breach of the Convention”.
Can the Justice Secretary tell the House whether the Bill constitutes a unilateral repudiation of that, or is that something that he has negotiated with the Government of Ireland?
The Deputy Prime Minister
The right hon. Gentleman is wrong, although he is right to reference the Belfast agreement. We remain a state party to the convention. Not only that, but the ECHR remains incorporated into UK law through the schedule. [Interruption.] He is chuntering from a sedentary position; I genuinely enjoy debating these issues, as we have on many occasions. If he reads the Bill, I will be very happy to address any other questions he has.
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
The Secretary of State and Attorney General are to be commended for taking seriously the task of taking back control of our ancient legal entitlements from unelected, unaccountable foreign judges, and of rooting them in the people’s Parliament here in Westminster. In doing so, will he challenge the assumptions that underpin the Human Rights Act, which are that rights are more important than responsibilities and that injury to interest is more important than duty? That is the fundamental issue. Will he challenge and, at last, dock the long tail of Blairism?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I thank my right hon. Friend for, as ever, the colourful and eloquent way that he presents the issue. When it comes to collective interest, social policy and finely balanced judgments around public protection, I do think that adjudication in court by lawyers, rather than a broader discussion and debate among elected Members of Parliament accountable to their citizens, is a mistake. We will protect the fundamental freedoms that make this country great—they existed long before the Human Rights Act and they will exist long after. He is right about the balance between protecting individual liberty and freedom under the rule of law, of which I am immensely proud, and making sure that elected Members of this House can protect the public, take finely balanced judgments on social policy, and take judgments that affect the public purse.
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
Many of our constituents have seen the benefits of human rights, such as the bereaved unmarried widows who had to take the Government to court to make sure that their children were not ignored when it came to pensions, or the women in Northern Ireland who are counting on us to support the statutory instrument to make sure that they have the human right to choose what happens to their own body and to have an abortion. They will be reassured by the Deputy Prime Minister saying that we will remain signatories to the European convention. Can he confirm to his colleagues, who might want to think about the implications of that, that because we will remain signatories and bound by the convention, the European Court of Human Rights will remain the ultimate judicial decision maker on human rights in this country? He is not getting rid of Europe; he is just wasting our time.
The Deputy Prime Minister
The hon. Lady is right about the first point, but wrong about the second. That is clear from the Bill of Rights.
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
My right hon. Friend started by talking about the 2012 declaration on subsidiarity. He will remember that that flowed directly from action in this Chamber to push back against prisoner votes, of which I think he was a major part. We have not seen the detail of this Bill of Rights, but there are two Conservative tests for it. First, the Conservatives do not believe in an overmighty state, therefore the state has to be curbed by an independent body. Secondly, our fundamental freedoms, such as free speech, jury trial or, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Laura Farris) mentioned, freedom from torture, are not the gift of the state but the birth right of our citizens. As such, they all have to be protected by powers vested in an independent judiciary. At the end of the day, the test will be whether the Bill of Rights delivers better protection for those things than the European process.
The Deputy Prime Minister
My right hon. Friend is too generous: he was really the architect of the campaign to defend this House’s prerogative to decide on prisoner voting. Interestingly, he did that with Jack Straw, the architect of the Human Rights Act, but my right hon. Friend is right to say that it was this House that pushed back in 2012 and sought the Government to ensure that the Strasbourg Court was reflecting and following its mandate, which was at the heart of the Brighton declaration process.
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right in his tests, and I hope I can reassure him on this. When he gets a chance, as I know he will, to study carefully the Bill of Rights, which is now available, he will see that our fundamental freedoms are not being trashed, but that they are being preserved and safeguarded. He will see that judicial independence is being strengthened, because the Supreme Court in this country ought to have the last word, to cherish and nurture this country’s common law tradition, which is ancient.
Finally, my right hon. Friend missed one point, but I hope he agrees with me on this. In broader terms, beyond individual rights, there is a whole realm of public policy—whether it reflects collective interest, social policy, the public purse or public protection—on which it must be this House and its elected Members, who are responsible to our constituents, who have the final word.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the Secretary of State share with me the level of support he has for this legislation from the people who will make it work—the lawyers, judges and other professionals? I am not a lawyer, but because I have campaigned with the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) on miscarriages of justice, I have mixed with a lot of lawyers; I have to say that I am worried about the number of lawyers who do not understand the reason for the Bill at this moment.
There have been three Queen’s Speeches with a promise for a royal commission into the justice system, but that has never appeared; it has not gone anywhere. The last thing I want the Secretary of State to remember is that the justice system is in a mess. The barristers are on strike, we cannot get criminal lawyers to represent anyone and the fact is that the Department of Justice has had the biggest cut in budget since 2010 of any Department.
The Deputy Prime Minister
I enjoy engaging with the hon. Gentleman, but he is simply wrong. We have had the biggest increase for over a decade in the spending review, so he is simply wrong on the facts, but I am happy to write to him on that.
On lawyers, of course different lawyers will take different views, but I do not think there are any greater authorities than Lord Sumption, the former justice of the Supreme Court, or Jonathan Fisher QC— [Interruption.] He is shaking his head, but he has just asked me to point him in the direction of some lawyers and I am giving him the most authoritative ones that have recently written on this subject. Jonathan Fisher has written about this today, and there is also John Larkin, the former Attorney General for Northern Ireland. If the hon. Gentleman peruses those opinions and that recent commentary, he might get the reassurance and clarity he needs.
John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
This Parliament is the main guarantor of our rights and liberties; it created them in battles over many centuries for the benefit of us all. Would not this great role be strengthened if our Supreme Court were indeed supreme and not answerable to foreign courts that do not understand the mood of the British people and what they expect of their legislators?
The Deputy Prime Minister
My right hon. Friend is absolutely correct. I know that when he gets a chance to peruse the proposals, he will find those principles and that spirit reflected in the Bill of Rights, and I look forward to discussing these matters with him further.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
The Secretary of State has asserted that 70% of successful human rights challenges are brought by foreign nationals who cite a right to family life in the first instance when appealing deportation orders. Can he give the House the source of that assertion?
The Deputy Prime Minister
The consultation document gives hon. Members the precise source; it was published back in December.
Damian Green (Ashford) (Con)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on resisting the siren voices in this House and outside telling him to withdraw from the European convention on human rights altogether. His decision to stay in it is in the best traditions of pragmatic, sensible, one nation Conservatism. Will he also confirm that the permission test he talked about to stop frivolous uses of human rights legislation simply inserts into the British courts a right already available to the Strasbourg Court under article 35 of the convention?
The Deputy Prime Minister
My right hon. Friend is correct on all those points. This is a principled and pragmatic reform. It retains membership of the European convention. I have heard various arguments against that, but looking at what we would gain from leaving the ECHR, because of the UN convention against torture, which we are party to, and various other conventions, it would not solve all the problems. It is not the magic wand that some people suggest it is; I say that with great respect. We have made sure that within the bounds of the convention we can get the maximum leeway—the maximum marginal appreciation—in the way that my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) suggested.
On the permissions test, it is extraordinary that people have criticised doing something that the Strasbourg Court itself does. Making sure that whether they are trivial or frivolous claims, we have a filter early on to make sure that there is significant disadvantage, would, I think, just feel to many of our constituents like old-fashioned common sense.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
The UK Government’s scrapping of the Human Rights Act shows a callous disregard not only for the essential universality of human rights but for devolution in Wales too. The Human Rights Act is woven directly into Wales’s constitutional settlement. Changes to the Act will undermine our efforts to promote human rights and equality. When—when, not if—Wales refuses legislative consent to this erosion of human rights, will the Minister use legalistic bully-boy tactics to trample on our democracy too?
The Deputy Prime Minister
No, of course not. The right hon. Lady talks about “callous disregard”. Conservative Members, certainly, want to stand up for victims of crime who do not understand why, based on the most elastic interpretations, foreign national offenders who have committed some of the most abhorrent crimes cannot be deported.
On parole, I think of the victims I have met recently. I do not want to politicise this, but they expect us to stand up for them. As regards protecting not just those within the prison regime but the public from serious ideologues spreading their poison or those who commit terrorist offences, we should stand up for the public, not for the criminals.
Mr David Jones (Clwyd West) (Con)
My right hon. Friend made it absolutely clear in his statement, and has indeed reiterated in his answers since, that the Government intend that the United Kingdom shall remain party to the European convention on human rights, so it is hard to see the reason for the confusion on the part of the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves). Does he agree that judges of the United Kingdom Supreme Court are more than qualified to determine issues arising under that convention and that the intervention of a supranational court is not always necessary or welcome?
The Deputy Prime Minister
My right hon. Friend is absolutely correct. The irony, with regard to case law, is that there is nothing in the European convention that requires the doctrine of precedent, which does not apply in the continental system—let alone in the Strasbourg Court—to somehow be transported, in relation to European case law, to the UK. That is not required. I have been very clear, when we have these debates and when we look at the text of the convention, that I am very proud of the judiciary we have in this country.
Speaking as Lord Chancellor and as a member of this Government, of course there will be difficult decisions, and from time to time Governments do not agree with them, but we have a judiciary renowned the world over and they should have the last word when it comes to interpreting the law of the land. It is extraordinary that Labour, which changed the name of the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords to the Supreme Court, would abrogate those rights and that authority.
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
We know that the Supreme Court has reversed seven of its decisions in the past two years thanks to the bullying of the Government—[Interruption.] Check the record. So if we remove the protection of Strasbourg, do we not have a situation where things that are regarded as human rights abuse and illegal in Europe will become permissible in Britain? If it is okay to have rights not applying in the UK, is it okay for other countries not to apply certain rights, such as in eastern Europe and Russia—in which case human rights become optional instead of universal, and Winston Churchill would turn in his grave?
The Deputy Prime Minister
The hon. Gentleman betrays a fundamental lack of trust in the UK judiciary that I do not share. He talks about a lot of false premises that a cursory reading of the Bill of Rights will clarify.
Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)
As a former journalist, I firmly believe that freedom of speech is an indispensable British value. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that this essential right will be protected and safeguarded by this very welcome Bill?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I thank my hon. Friend who, as ever, nails a very important part of why the Bill of Rights is a human rights enhancing innovation. If he looks at section 4, he will see that not only do we prize free speech but we are reinforcing its role in protecting journalistic sources and balancing the rights to free speech and privacy. We do not want to see continental-style privacy laws creeping through the back door, and we have seen some evidence of that of late. We want to make sure that the tradition of openness, transparency and accountability is preserved, and the Bill of Rights is explicit on this at various points.
Other countries may disagree. There is a pluralism on human rights that is often lost in debate, but our tradition is to preserve freedom of speech because it is the liberty that guards all the other freedoms we cherish.
Stephen Farry (North Down) (Alliance)
I do not think the Justice Secretary has fully thought through the implications for mutual extradition arrangements across Europe, including those under the trade and co-operation agreement. It is important to stress that the Good Friday agreement applies the full effect of the convention, not the convention in name only. Does he understand that confidence in the new policing and criminal justice arrangements in Northern Ireland, including on legacy cases, is very heavily predicated on full adherence to the European convention?
The Deputy Prime Minister
The hon. Gentleman raises an important point, which is why I hope I can squarely give him the reassurance that we are not only remaining a state party to the convention but that it is properly enshrined in the Bill of Rights. That ought to answer all the consequential questions he raises.
Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)
From what I can see, this very focused intervention is about making it easier to kick out rapists and people who have broken the law and to stop people arriving here illegally. The elephant in the room is border control, which the people of this country have repeatedly voted for and is bitterly opposed by the Opposition, whatever they say.
Does the Lord Chancellor agree that the Bill of Rights is so important because it will enable us to control our borders and deliver the Rwanda policy, and that it should be expedited? I do not mind doing all-nighters, and I do not mind staying up until 2 am. I think most people in this country who want border control would want this Bill of Rights because they can see how it links to that.
The Deputy Prime Minister
I share my hon. Friend’s restlessness to proceed with all due speed, because we have been talking about this for a long time. I wrote about it in a book in 2009, and it was in our 2010 manifesto. The consultation process is important, and we had a 12-week consultation on the consultation document, which included clauses. We are publishing it now, but there will be space for further scrutiny by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, the Justice Committee and others, including Lords Committees. It is important to garner cross-party support to ensure we have the scrutiny that will make our reform more robust when it enters into force.
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)
The Justice Secretary wrote recently that all
“UK citizens should be able to enjoy the same essential protections.”
I return to the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin). Will all the human rights that the Justice Secretary wishes to cover in his Bill apply to all people in the UK or only to UK citizens? Should not human rights apply to everyone?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I will give the hon. Lady an illustration. We have an international obligation not to make people stateless, so I do not think UK citizens are in precisely the same legal position as a foreign national offender. I think most people think we should have freedom under the rule of law and that we should be consistent in applying the law, but that people who have been welcomed to this country should come here through lawful routes and that people who commit serious crimes in this country should be removed. That is common sense, and I think the people of Scotland will not understand how hon. Members who purport to represent them can stand in the way of such a common-sense measure.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
I am reassured by the intentions behind this Bill of Rights, and by two things above all: by the Justice Secretary’s absolute commitment that we will remain party to the European convention on human rights, and by what the former Supreme Court judge Lord Sumption wrote at the weekend:
“modifying its operation here need not mean abrogating human rights. We can have all or any of the rights in the convention under ordinary domestic legislation”.
However, will my right hon. Friend help me to understand why he is proposing not to apply interim measures on courts in the UK and make them non-binding, because surely this would be a breach of international law, and would it not be better instead to focus on winning an appeal against any interim measure that the Government do not agree with?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who is always sensible and judicious about these matters. On interim orders, he may recall that rule 39—which is the basis—is a rule of procedure of the Strasbourg Court, it is not part of the convention and the rules of procedure are supposed to govern only the internal workings of the Strasbourg Court. Indeed, that is not just my view—it was the Strasbourg Court’s view until 2005. It is not right that a judicial institution abrogates a power, whether at home or abroad, that has to be given to it by the legislators of state parties or Members of Parliament here. Therefore, we will be clear about the impact on the UK courts and under UK law. The Bill of Rights is right to address that squarely. It is a good example of the creeping, shifting goalposts, which are contrary to any democratic oversight, and that is important. Finally on that point, I want to be careful not to impinge on matters subject to legal proceedings, but, as a matter of principle, it cannot be right that the High Court, the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court address these issues and see no realistic risk to those being removed, but have that trumped by the Strasbourg Court on a vague basis.
Mr Speaker
Order. Could the Deputy Prime Minister look this way now and again? That would be helpful. If not, it is hard to hear him.
Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)
Two things do not surprise me today : the continuing utter disrespect shown to you, Mr Speaker, as Chair of this House, and the utter dearth of historical knowledge on the Government Front Bench and among their Back Benchers. I remind them that there is no such thing as UK law. There is the law of England and Wales, the law of Northern Ireland and the law of Scotland. On the point the Deputy Prime Minister made, I wonder whether, in his next discussion with the Justice Minister of Ukraine, which is a signatory to the convention and a defender of the convention against the Russian Federation, he will say which parts of the convention he thinks Ukraine should leave.
The Deputy Prime Minister
May I give the hon. Member some reassurance? First, the Human Rights Act is a protected enactment and a precise example of UK-wide application. I have met the Justice Minister of Ukraine, and I will tell the hon. Member what he said. He said “Thank you” from the bottom of his heart for everything that this country has done on sanctions, for our support for Ukraine’s military and for the role that we are playing, alongside the Attorney General, in supporting the International Criminal Court prosecution and investigations on the ground in Ukraine to hold the commission of war crimes in Ukraine and hold those responsible to account.
David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
My constituent Mr Lindop, who is trying to recover his kidnapped children from Poland, will be one of many who will be pleased to hear the Government’s continued determination to uphold these international standards.
When I visited the European Court of Human Rights last week, I heard from the UK judge, who was interviewed for his post by Members of this House, that the UK continues to have the lowest number of cases per capita referred to the Court and the lowest number of cases per capita to go against it of any country that is a member of the convention, and that our commitment to upholding the rule of law provides enormous moral authority for our international leadership role. With that in mind, will my right hon. Friend confirm once again that, with this new Bill of Rights, the UK will continue to uphold the highest possible standards of human rights and continue to be an example to other member states?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I thank my hon. Friend for the way in which he expressed and articulated his point. He is absolutely right. People talk about the UK’s record and, of course, we have one of the highest levels of compliance with the ECHR compared with many of our European friends and partners. However, rarely but on occasion, there will be moments of mission creep where the goalposts shift. Prisoner voting was an example where we said, “Actually, that is not something that Parliament would accept.” I was the Justice Minister in 2015 who went to the Committee of Ministers and said, “We believe in staying in the European convention, but we feel that the ruling is wrong on principle. We are not going to give prisoners the vote.” We will maintain our high standards of compliance, but when it comes down to it, the final word must stay with this House on critical issues of national importance.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement today. At present, for many Christians, the UK courts have dealt more harshly with cases such as that of wearing a cross in work than the rulings of Strasbourg. Can the Secretary of State confirm that the right to have a religion and freedom to live our belief, inasmuch as it is not harmful to others, will be protected in the Bill of Rights, and our right to speak the name of Jesus and respectfully preach the gospel will be upheld?
The Deputy Prime Minister
The hon. Gentleman is right. He alludes to the harm to others principle and the great John Stuart Mill tradition of liberty in this country, and that is precisely what has infused the Bill of Rights. I think he will see the principles that he has articulated reflected in the Bill of Rights, and I look forward to continuing to discuss the details with him over the weeks and months to follow.
Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)
I was one of those who shared the frustrations of my constituents in Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke when we saw the Rwanda flight grounded and the deportation of foreign national offenders frustrated, which is why I was one of those who openly said that we should withdraw from the European convention on human rights. However, having engaged with my right hon. Friend, and I am very grateful for his time, I am satisfied wholeheartedly that this Bill of Rights and reform of the interpretation of the European convention on human rights with our UK Supreme Court is the appropriate way to go. I am happy to cede, therefore, that on this argument I was wrong—something that I know does not happen in this place very often. So can I get reassurances from my right hon. Friend at the Dispatch Box for the people of Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke that this Bill of Rights will help the deportation of foreign national offenders and illegal economic migrants who come from safe mainland Europe?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I think that was an almost unprecedented intervention, but wholeheartedly welcome. My hon. Friend fights very tenaciously, but he also engages very forensically. I can give him the reassurances. I think the right thing to do is for us to discuss the Bill of Rights, the particular provisions and how they will apply, but certainly in relation to rule 39 interim orders, it is squarely addressed in the Bill of Rights.
Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)
We all support human rights, but my right hon. Friend will agree that human rights have been given a bad name in the past by cases brought by people, often offenders, who have shown absolutely no regard for the rights of others. Rights go along with responsibilities, so could my right hon. Friend set out how the Bill of Rights will make sure the courts address responsibilities as well as rights?
The Deputy Prime Minister
One of the ways in which the courts can do that is to make sure—for example, when it comes to compensation—that, where someone has done harm or contributed to their own harm while claiming breaches of human rights, that is something the judges can take into account at the remedy stage. Of course, that is a principle of law in this country already. We often say—I remember studying law as a graduate—that there is a principle that those who come to equity must come with clean hands. It must be right, it must be consistent and I think for many people it is just common sense that we apply that principle in the context of human rights claims.
Mrs Natalie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
Over 11,000 people have made the dangerous cross-channel journey this year alone, and it is undoubtedly the case that the decision of the European Court of Human Rights that led to the grounding of the Rwanda flight has raised considerable concerns in my constituency of Dover and Deal that it will simply encourage the people traffickers—people who have no respect for the rights of others, including to human life, or the laws of our land. So can my right hon. Friend expand on how this Bill of Rights will ensure that there is not such overreach by the European Court of Human Rights in future?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I think many people, but I suspect particularly my hon. Friend’s constituents, will think the real threat to human rights is allowing, and not cracking down on, this trade in human misery. She asked about how we will reform the relationship with the Strasbourg Court. First, it will be by freeing the UK courts to diverge from Strasbourg case law, and being clear that they do not need to take it into account. Secondly, it will be by making sure, in the way I have already articulated, that there is the equivalent of a democratic shield, as we relied on in relation to prisoner voting, but reinforced and made clearer, so that when it comes to the shifting goalposts, whether under judicial interpretation at home or abroad, Parliament has the last word. Finally, it will be in relation to rule 39 interim orders, and she will find all those expressly and explicitly addressed in the Bill of Rights.
Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)
There has been much talk of Winston Churchill and the authorship of the original convention by British Conservative judges. The fact is that the text of the original convention is absolutely fine, and it is the application and extension of the convention’s original meaning by Strasbourg judges over the decades since that is the problem. I therefore very much welcome the commitment to raise the bar for article 8 judgments.
I also welcome the commitment to give UK judges the right to diverge from Strasbourg case law. My concern, however, is that some UK judges do not want to diverge from Strasbourg case law. In fact, in some cases they want to go further; I think of Baroness Hale, of blessed memory to Members here. Can my right hon. Friend assure me that we will genuinely be free of Strasbourg case law, and is it worth thinking about strengthening the obligation on judges to disregard Strasbourg cases that do not apply in our context?
The Deputy Prime Minister
First, if my hon. Friend reads clause 3 of the Bill of Rights, I think he will find that all his concerns are addressed squarely and fully; I urge him to have a look and come back to me.
My hon. Friend made another important point about people talking as if the European convention was the exclusive authorship of Churchill and the United Kingdom. That is a perverse and neo-imperial reading of history that is totally at odds with the way in which the European convention was negotiated, which was by a mixture of European countries, including the UK—we were centrally involved—and other countries with a civil law background. The convention reflects a mix of those traditions. As a result, it is unobjectionable, but the challenge has come in relation to interpretation and application. My hon. Friend’s points are valid, but the idea that the convention was a British creation is almost neo-imperial myth making.
Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)
People in Stoke-on-Trent are sick and tired of human rights laws being abused by serious criminals and illegal migrants. Will my right hon. Friend confirm to my constituents in Stoke-on-Trent South that the British Bill of Rights will restore the authority of this House and British courts?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I can give my hon. Friend and his constituents precisely that assurance. The Bill is not anti-human rights. We are strengthening our tradition of freedom, including freedom of speech. It is pro judges; we want our Supreme Court to have the last word on the law of the land, when it is interpreted. It is also pro democracy, and that is the bit missing from the other side’s critique. We believe that, when the goalposts shift, it is elected Members—accountable to his, my and everyone’s constituents—who must have the last word on the law of the land.
Scott Benton (Blackpool South) (Con)
The residents of Blackpool were absolutely furious at the European Court’s move to block the first removal flight to Rwanda last week. They desperately want that policy to work and will warmly welcome the measures outlined by the Deputy Prime Minister today. What assurances can he give them that the reforms will allow our relocations policy to be a success?
The Deputy Prime Minister
There is no silver bullet that can solve that issue and the small boats issue. Even pulling out of the European convention will not provide a silver bullet. However, I can reassure my hon. Friend—I am happy to talk him through this—that, when it comes to deportation of foreign national offenders or public interest in removals more generally, there will be respect and greater deference to primary legislation passed by this House. In addition, our approach to rule 39 interim orders will mean that we can give him and his constituents the assurances they need.
James Daly (Bury North) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. It is rather curious that he is being criticised for acting on the democratic mandate given to him by millions of our fellow citizens who voted on our manifesto. Millions voted, in both the Brexit referendum and the general election in 2019, for control of our borders and to prevent illegal immigration. It is the job of courts to interpret the will of Parliament, not to invent law themselves. Therefore, the Bill of Rights will not only protect the fundamental rights that we all enjoy; it will give the democratic voice of the British people a role in the decision-making process.
The Deputy Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. In a democracy, we command, rule and govern by consent. We are at risk of losing public confidence in our immigration controls if we cannot take the common-sense measures that they expect. We are also at risk of losing public confidence in human rights if we do not restore a healthy dose of common sense.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. We now move on to the statement from the Minister for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency.
EU Retained Law
(2 years, 5 months ago)
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The Minister for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency (Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg)
With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will make a statement about EU retained law.
Earlier this year, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister set out that:
“The United Kingdom’s uncoupling from the rules, regulations and institutions of Brussels was never simply about the moment of our departure; the act of Brexit was not an end in itself but the means by which our country will achieve great things.”
Now that we have left the European Union the sovereignty of Parliament has been restored and we are free once again to legislate, regulate, or deregulate as this sovereign Parliament redux pleases. As we maximise the benefits of Brexit and transform the UK into the most sensibly regulated economy in the world, we must reform the EU law we have retained on our statute book. Only through reform of this retained EU law will we finally be able to untangle ourselves from nearly 50 years of EU membership.
In September 2021 my predecessor the noble Lord Frost announced a review into the substance of retained EU law. The purpose of the review was to catalogue which Departments, policy areas and sectors of the economy are most saturated by European law—law that was imposed upon us in a time when Parliament was unable to refuse consent. The road to reform remains a long one; not all Brexit freedoms can be grasped at once. I am pleased to report that Whitehall fired on all cylinders to complete this review. As a result, Members across the House can properly appreciate the extent of EU law on our statute book and the extent of the opportunities that reforming this law provides.
In the 2022 “The Benefits of Brexit” announcement, the Prime Minister committed to making the outcome of this review available to the public. It is right that the public know how much retained EU law there is and that they should be able to hold the Government properly to account for reforming it. The public have already shown great interest in the EU law that remains on our statute book, as evidenced by the huge amount of correspondence I received in response to my request for details of EU legislation that still burden them—and I am grateful to readers of The Sun and the Sunday Express for their many replies. I am also encouraging some competitiveness between my right hon. Friends in the Cabinet, and hope that this spirit will inspire rapid reform, with returns published every quarter by Departments.
Therefore, I am pleased to announce that today we publish an authoritative catalogue of over 2,400 pieces of legislation, spanning over 300 individual policy areas. This catalogue will be available on gov.uk through an interactive dashboard. It will be updated on a quarterly basis so the public can “count down” retained EU law as the Government reform it. I commend the Cabinet Office officials who developed this dashboard; it is a fascinating resource in its own right, and is of both political and—in my view—historic constitutional importance.
The pertinence of publishing the dashboard today should not be missed. Six years ago tomorrow—that day of legend and song—the United Kingdom voted decisively to leave the European Union. The public voted to take back control, and while it took some time to get there—two general elections and some constitutionally fascinating parliamentary prestidigitation between 2017 and 2019—the Prime Minister has delivered such control in spades. His Brexit agreement, which guaranteed regulatory autonomy for Britain, means that the publication of this dashboard offers the public a real opportunity: everything on it we can now change.
The author E. M. Forster once said
“two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety, and two because it permits criticism.”
Therefore, as I did earlier this year, I am inviting the public from across the country—whether in Wakefield or in Tiverton and Honiton, or in other places selected at random for the purposes of illustration—to once again share their ideas of reform and to look further into pieces of retained EU law that have an impact on their lives. By using this dashboard, the public can join us on this journey to amend, repeal or replace retained EU law. Together we will make reforms that will create a crucial boost to productivity and help us bring the benefits of growth to the whole country.
Of course, Her Majesty’s Government are legislating to seize the opportunities of Brexit and have been since 2020. From introducing our points-based immigration system and securing the integrity of the United Kingdom’s internal market to boosting growth and innovation by allowing gene-edited crops and recognising high-quality professional qualifications, we are already showing—among others—the benefits of Brexit to the British people.
There are countless other opportunities for reform ahead of us. Members will know that the recent Queen’s Speech was full to the gunwales with the opportunities of Brexit, ranging from financial services to agriculture, data and artificial intelligence, transport, energy, and restoring sense to human rights law. This Government will work to develop a new pro-growth, high-standards regulatory framework that will give business the confidence to innovate, invest, and create jobs.
Those are the big, headline-grabbing issues, but the dashboard is, I hope, an opportunity to tackle hundreds of matters. They may seem marginal on their own, but all these measures in the margin will combine to usher in a revolution: not a French- style revolution with blood running in the streets and the terror of the guillotine, but a British-style revolution whereby marginal improvements move inch by inch so that soon we will have covered the feet, and the feet will become yards, and the yards will become chains and then furlongs and miles, until the journey is complete. With inflation running high, we need to search everywhere—under every stone and sofa cushion—for supply-side reforms that will make products and services cheaper, will make things easier for business, and, ultimately, will grow the economy and cut the cost of living.
The dashboard, therefore, is the supply-side reformer’s El Dorado, and, naturally, I am pointing to the treasure trove of opportunity that this publication represents. It highlights unnecessary and disproportionate EU regulations on consumer goods, such as those regulating the power of vacuum cleaners—why should that trouble Her Majesty’s Government?—and the expensive testing requirements mandated by REACH—the regulation on the registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals—for the plastics that make up items we use every day, requirements that shut out the newest and most innovative materials. Thankfully, we left the EU before it decided to mandate what sort of phone chargers we can have, a typically short-termist and anti-innovation measure which will only have a long-term negative effect for consumers.
The dashboard includes the overbearing reporting requirements which add costs to businesses and slow down progress, whether by building new developments in areas that need housing the most or by making it more expensive to hire people at a time of a labour shortage and to respond to militant strikers. We will continue to work with Departments to cut at least £1 billion of business costs from EU red tape to secure greater freedoms and productivity. Ensuring that we have the right regulation is crucial. Excessive and unnecessary regulations which burden business or distort market outcomes, reduce productivity, pushing up prices and negatively affecting everyone’s cost of living. Using our new-found freedom to address the over 2,400 retained EU pieces of legislation on our statute book, the Government will be able to remove and amend regulation that is not right for the UK. This will make a real difference to the process of reducing the number of unnecessary EU regulations that contribute to the cost of living.
Some—perhaps dozens—-of these rules we might wish to maintain. That will be a decision for the Queen in Parliament, our Parliament, rather than the European Commission. We will preserve retained EU law that is required for our international obligations. We will preserve high standards, such as those for water, and we may even be able to go further in some ways to move ahead of the European Union.
The publication of this dashboard will mark a pivotal step towards reform of our statute book and those 2,400 pieces of retained EU legislation, ahead of the introduction of the “Brexit Freedoms” Bill. That Bill will allow the United Kingdom to take the next step in reclaiming the sovereignty of Parliament. It will address the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, which preserved and incorporated too much EU-derived law at too high a status, giving much of it the same status as an Act of Parliament. That is clearly mistaken, and means that many changes to retained EU law require primary legislation.
Undoing this vandalism to our constitutional order policy area by policy area would dominate the legislative agenda for Parliaments to come, which would affect the Government’s ability to deliver more fundamental domestic reforms and the opportunity for the UK to reap the benefits of Brexit. The “Brexit Freedoms” Bill will create a targeted power to allow retained EU law to be amended in a more sustainable way, and will go with the grain of the British constitution. This will help us to deliver the UK’s regulatory, economic and legal priorities.
Ahead of the Bill’s introduction, I invite Members to review the dashboard themselves, and to delve into the legislation that affects the communities that they serve.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I call the shadow Minister.
Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for advance sight of his statement.
This appears to be simply a vanity project. It is quite extraordinary that on a day when inflation has topped 9%, when the cost of energy is soaring, when families are facing massive pressures and wondering how they will put food on the table, and when prices are rising at the fastest rate in 40 years, the Government’s offer to the British people is a digital filing cabinet of existing legislation that the right hon. Gentleman describes as “marginal”—his own word.
While the Government plan to cut 20% of civil servants, the Minister for so-called Government efficiency is running his own make-work scheme in the Cabinet Office, creating tasks for it to satisfy his own obsessions. How much has this exercise cost the taxpayer? How many civil service hours? Perhaps we could have a running meter counting them up on the dashboard so that we all know. What is the expected number of users among the general public? Is the dashboard even active? I am an eager beaver, but I could not find it on gov.uk this morning.
The reality is that gimmicks do nothing to address the real challenges that the public face today. For all the Government’s talk about changes that we can make outside the EU, they still refuse to make the one concrete change that the Labour party has demanded for months, with the overwhelming support of the British people, and the Prime Minister himself has promised: the removal of VAT on home energy bills.
Other changes that are now possible post Brexit and which Labour has called for but the Government have refused include a ban on the import of fur; the imposition of VAT on private school fees to fund a transformation in the provision of mental health; and the introduction of US-style bans on the import of goods from China produced using slave labour. Those are all changes that the Government could make right now, but they were not mentioned in the right hon. Gentleman’s lengthy oration.
As for the regulatory changes that the Government propose, I have not heard a single example today of a specific change that depends on the passage of the planned Brexit freedoms Bill, nor have we heard an example of additional changes that will follow in due course as a result of that Bill. What is that Bill for? In the absence of any answers, it is only right that we are cautious about what the new legislation will mean and whether it could be used as a mechanism to fast-track changes that could, for example, impinge on the devolution of powers to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, threaten workers’ rights or threaten the environmental protections and food standards that the British people were repeatedly promised would be maintained post Brexit.
It is also vital that we ensure that any changes proposed under the legislation are subject to the proper processes for scrutiny, consultation and impact assessment. Anyone in doubt about why that is necessary need only look at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport’s proposals, included in the paper “The Benefits of Brexit”, to ditch the UK’s current data protection standards. That one move, which has been confirmed in recent weeks, would jeopardise tens of billions of UK exports that depend on the ability to sell services online to EU customers quickly and easily. However, there has been no mention whatever of that threat, let alone a full assessment of its impact, and it did not feature today. That is all further evidence of a Government entirely driven by rhetoric and increasingly detached from reality.
Could it be that the dashboard is designed not only to satisfy the right hon. Gentleman’s obsessions, but to distract members of the public from the Government’s shambolic handling of the Northern Ireland protocol? All this self-congratulation comes from a Government who are now trying to convince people that what they described as their flagship achievement was not a negotiating triumph, but a deal so flawed that they cannot abide by it. Not only is their Northern Ireland Protocol Bill a blatant breach of international law, but it risks the integrity of the Good Friday agreement, risks causing divides across Europe when we should be pulling together against Putin’s war on the continent, and risks causing trade barriers in a cost of living crisis. We need negotiation, graft and statecraft, not unilateral action or gimmicks.
Those are just some of the very real and serious problems that will affect the lives of ordinary people in the UK and beyond for years to come. The dashboard that the right hon. Gentleman described will provide little comfort. A Labour Government would make Brexit work by unleashing the potential of British businesses and entrepreneurs so that we can lead the world in new industries. We would seize the opportunities of the climate transition to create well-paid, secure jobs in all parts of the country. Rather than pursuing vanity projects, the Government should focus on the real problems facing the British public.
Mr Rees-Mogg
The hon. Gentleman was kind enough to thank me for an advance copy of my statement; it is a pity, then, that he did not read it, because so many of his questions were answered there. He wants to know what the purpose is—the purpose is supply-side reforms that are essential for dealing with the cost of living crisis. [Interruption.] He quotes “marginal”, so he did pay attention to one thing, but he then wrenched it out of context to use it in a way that shows he was not following the argument. Each individual item is marginal, but cumulatively they are fundamental. That is how we have supply side reforms.
There are endless obstacles in the way of doing business—hundreds and thousands of them—and our job is to find them, expose them and remove them and to have a Bill that makes that simple. If you had to have primary legislation to remove every stone from your shoe, Madam Deputy Speaker—no doubt they are very elegant shoes that no stone would dare enter, but nonetheless, should a stone enter and we needed primary legislation to remove it, that brave stone would remain there almost permanently. What we are doing is speeding up the process so that stones may be removed from shoes.
Then the socialists complain that the agreement was not up to scratch. Bear in mind that at that point the Labour party still did not want to leave the European Union. It was still arguing about things such as a second referendum. Labour Members did not want to follow what the British people had voted for, and now they want slavish acceptance of EU laws. Have we not had a socialist recently calling for the single market to be where we should end up again? That is where they want to be: under the yoke of Brussels, ignoring the referendum and the will of the British people.
The hon. Gentleman also thought that this dashboard should be released before my statement to Parliament. Some people may remember that I used to be Leader of the House, and in that role I was regularly hearing from Mr Speaker about information being given out before it had come to the Floor of the House. I see my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) nodding—he would be the first to raise a point of order.
I am glad that there are a few socialists in today, rather than being on picket lines. It might be that when they are on their picket lines, they could read a bit of “Erskine May” and the Standing Orders of this place to understand that things are meant to be announced here first, which is what we are doing.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
May I congratulate my right hon. Friend on having made this statement? It is quite right that we need to get on with this. To those who complain about not having absolutely everything done now on the Floor of the House by primary legislation, I say that so many of these rules and regulations were imported without so much as a single element being dealt with on the Floor of the House, so we need to ensure we get this in balance.
Can I press my right hon. Friend on general data protection regulation rules? One of the problems we have is that many charities, small businesses and start-ups face real cost problems and regulatory detail problems that they cannot cope with, and they have cried out for changes to be made. Will he confirm to me that this is one of the areas that the Government will look at to make sure that those charities, companies and individuals do not face anything like the terrible bureaucratic mess that is the regulations today?
Mr Rees-Mogg
My right hon. Friend makes two very good points. The first is that it is important to note that most of these laws came in using the section 2(2) power under the European Communities Act 1972. The vast majority were not subject to a parliamentary process, despite the diligence of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), the Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee. When we asked for debates on the Floor of the House in that Committee, they were often not given, and the debates that were held in Committee could not refuse or block a European law—even the ports directive, which everyone was united against. This great flood of regulations came in without so much as a by-your-leave from this House, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) is right to point that out.
My right hon. Friend makes a good point on GDPR, and it is worth bearing in mind that Australia has a general exemption from GDPR for smaller businesses. Whether we can go that far, I do not know, but I will certainly take his point up with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I call the SNP spokesperson.
Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)
I know that the Minister speaks with passion as a Brexiteer, as I speak with passion as a remainer—at least we can both having conviction in our belief, unlike those who have slightly changed their minds. As I listened to his statement, replete with the usual—forgive me—flim-flam about Brexit Britain being liberated from the European yoke, I found myself wondering whether he really believes that this Palace is the only place capable of promulgating rights and laws. From listening to him speak, and from what we know about the Brexit freedoms Bill, it is almost as if those on the Government side have forgotten that there are other legislatures across these islands that have a role in making laws and that may wish to express an opinion on whether the laws and rights that we accumulated during our membership of the European Union should be snatched away by whatever whimsy this Government are attracted to in a given week.
Given that Scotland’s governance and destiny cannot be decided without the sovereign will and consent of the people of Scotland, not this place—this Government continue to ignore us at their peril—could the Minister tell us whether the Government will seek a legislative consent motion from Pàrlamaid na h-Alba, and from other devolved legislatures, and if so, whether they intend to respect the decisions of those Parliaments? We need to ask the question: do we actually live in a United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, or in a greater England, where the wishes of only one of the constituent nations need to be respected in order for such Bills to be carried?
Mr Rees-Mogg
I agree with the hon. Gentleman that he and I have been consistent in our views on this matter, and therefore it is interesting, as always, to cross swords with him. He brings us to an important issue, because obviously where there are devolved consequences from laws coming back from the European Union, the power to amend will be with the devolved authorities. We have already seen a great flow of power from Brussels to the devolved Administrations so that the Scottish Government have received powers. The United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 provided a great swathe of extra powers to the devolved authorities, and that will continue under this Bill and will provide benefits for all the devolved authorities to take back control for themselves. We will indeed ask for legislative consent motions, which is the habit of this Government. I cannot promise whether they will be granted; in that instance, he will be more influence than me.
Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
May I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the enormous progress he is making with respect to the freedoms Bill, and the opportunities that it will give the United Kingdom to regain its sovereignty, its self-government and its democracy? Does he agree, given his experience and having been a member of the European Scrutiny Committee for many years, that one of the most extraordinary aspects of EU retained law is that for about 50 years the laws were made by majority vote in the Council of Ministers—Ministers of other countries—behind closed doors and without even so much as a transcript, unlike in this House, so people did not even know the basis, let alone who had actually voted for them? Does he not regard that as so extraordinary that he would be surprised if anyone could possibly justify legislating for a country in that way, and particularly for a country such as the United Kingdom, with its freedom and democracy? It is completely unacceptable for it to have continued for so long?
Mr Rees-Mogg
I entirely agree with my hon. Friend that the way legislation was made in Europe was entirely undemocratic. It was unscrutinised and then became our law automatically, and if we did not turn it into our law properly, we could be told to jump to by the European Court of Justice. The situation was entirely unsatisfactory. However, because we are a democracy and we believe in the rights of Parliament, we are ensuring that the process of reversing that is done in a proper parliamentary manner, and I hope that he will play his part in that manner.
Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)
It was widely reported that the right hon. Gentleman wanted to introduce a sunset clause under which all EU retained law would disappear after four years unless Government Departments had decided that they wanted to keep it. However, having listened carefully to his statement, it seems to me that he has suffered a defeat at the hands of his Cabinet colleagues—we should pay tribute to the Environment Secretary, who I think described that approach as “messing around”. If the right hon. Gentleman is serious about trying to remove constraints on businesses, what is he going to do about the barrel-load of red tape, cost and bureaucracy that has fallen on British businesses since the beginning of 2021 when they are trying to export to the EU? That has had a huge impact, especially on small businesses, some of which have just given up trying to sell goods to Europe.
Mr Rees-Mogg
I am delighted that the right hon. Gentleman is talking about sunsets. I think I once called him the high priest of remain. Yesterday, there was a marvellous picture of the latest sunset over Stonehenge, where those who like the sunsets coming late had all gathered to celebrate the longest day. I am surprised that the high priest of remain was not there joining in on the celebration.
On the right hon. Gentleman’s question, he will have to wait and see what the Bill has to say about that. He mentioned EU regulation. This great lover of EU regulation does not realise where the blame lies. The EU runs a fundamentally anti-competitive closed market, which was affecting us. It was making goods and services in this country more expensive because we could not trade freely with the world. Now the EU is applying its regulations to us—that is what we are getting out of. That is the economic opportunity: to be free from all of that which slowly strangles the European economy and to have an economy that can grow globally.
John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend for all that he is doing to advance UK prosperity and growth, including this Bill. The common fisheries policy sunk many of our fishing boats. Can we have a policy to replace that fleet? The EU policy ripped up many of our orchards with grants. Can we have some UK money and a policy to replant our trees? The EU imposed VAT on us and has left us with a burden on our energy. Now surely is the time to use our freedoms and cut VAT.
Mr Rees-Mogg
My right hon. Friend is right: it is one of our freedoms. In his spring statement, the Chancellor announced some amelioration of VAT. I will ensure that my right hon. Friend’s suggestion is passed on to the Chancellor.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
As someone who supported Brexit, I welcome the statement today and the fact that the Government are going to monitor and identify ways in which we can make our economy more dynamic, more innovative and more competitive. But as a Unionist, I have concerns about the statement. The regulatory freedom that is being sought cannot apply to many aspects of law in Northern Ireland, and Northern Ireland will still remain under the dead hand of EU regulation, which will smother innovation and entrepreneurial dynamism. Will the Minister give an assurance that, in order for the freedoms that he is announcing today to apply to the whole of the United Kingdom, the Government will make every effort and take every step to remove the dead hand of the protocol?
Mr Rees-Mogg
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman and share a lot of his views on this matter. It is fundamental that the benefits of leaving the European Union are for the whole of the United Kingdom. I am pleased with the Bill that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has introduced, and I hope that it will go towards ameliorating the problems that have arisen. Our single united country cannot be ruled by the dead hand of the Brussels bureaucracy, as we voted to leave as a single nation.
Angela Richardson (Guildford) (Con)
Can my right hon. Friend confirm that it remains a priority for this Government to use our newfound Brexit freedoms to develop a pro-growth, high standards regulatory framework that gives businesses such as mine in Guildford the confidence to innovate and invest?
Mr Rees-Mogg
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. What we need is regulations that work rather than ones that require a lot of form filling. The Procurement Bill has been introduced in the other place, and that will replace 350 EU regulations with one British law. That is what we must be aiming at. We are not moving to the wild west. We are not going to have no regulation. However, our regulation must be understandable, simple to effect and accountable to this House. The best check on regulation is Members of this House coming forward and saying, “I seek redress of grievance for my constituent who is being harmed by this regulation.” The Minister at the Dispatch Box is then put on the spot and has to go back to his or her office and ask, “Why are we doing this to the Great British people?” That is how our democracy works, and that is how we must make regulation work.
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
The Minister is right that it makes a refreshing change from the practice of his colleagues that he came to this House first to tell us about the dashboard, but he might have tried to see whether it works on a mobile phone, because it does not. I know that he is not a fan of being able to simply charge one, but he might accept that most of the British public who want to use the dashboard will have one. No matter—with some assistance, I have been able to log on to the dashboard and I can see that on the list of items that he has put up for grabs are the length of maternity leave and the duty to pay statutory maternity pay. He said in his statement that everything on the dashboard “can now change”. Will he assure the thousands of women in this country who rely on the protections of maternity leave and maternity pay that they will not change? If so, what is the point of this? If not, will he be honest that it is really about reinventing the Beecroft reforms?
Mr Rees-Mogg
The dashboard worked perfectly well on an iPad, so I would have thought that it was not beyond the wit of Members of this House to get it to work. In many cases, the protections that we have in employment law in this country predate the European Union or we are ahead of the European Union. That is true of maternity rights, where we are ahead of the base rights in the European Union under our own law. To say, “Are we going to repeal bits that are not even EU law, but domestic law?” is missing the point of the statement.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
Over a long time in this House, I have noticed that when the Government have done something well, the number of Opposition Back Benchers present for a statement is very few. I spy no Liberal Democrats at all—DUP Members are here, of course—and just four Labour Back Benchers were here at the start of the statement. They do not want to be here to listen to Brexit opportunities and the savings and benefits to this country. The able Minister said that there will be quarterly reporting, which I hope he will come to the House to do. Will he publicise that in advance, so that Liberal Democrats and Labour Members will know not to attend?
Mr Rees-Mogg
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his wise and witty suggestion.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)
The Minister mentioned in his statement that he hopes that today’s proposals will reduce the cost of living, but is it not the case that the British Government’s post-Brexit policy is leading to reduced investor confidence and weakening the currency, which further fuels inflation? Would not a responsible Government, given the serious problems faced by households across the UK, stop shredding European regulations and rejoin the single market?
Mr Rees-Mogg
No. The hon. Gentleman knows that I will not agree with that suggestion, because it would negate the referendum where a majority of people in Wales voted in favour of leaving, as did the majority of people in England. This is about reducing costs and taking burdens off. The single market is an extraordinarily regulatory organisation that boosts the costs of services and manufactured goods. To go back into it would make life more expensive and make things worse for British consumers.
Mr David Jones (Clwyd West) (Con)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his statement and say how much I welcome the publication of the dashboard, because it no doubt provides a revealing snapshot of the extent to which the body of United Kingdom law has been infiltrated by frequently undemocratically formulated EU law. I echo the words of the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson): the big exception is Northern Ireland, which is continuing to receive a stream of laws because of the Northern Ireland protocol. I urge the Government to press ahead with the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, which is urgently needed.
Mr Rees-Mogg
This is beginning to sound like business questions. I will make sure that his request is passed on to my right hon. Friend the Lord President of the Council.
Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)
Small and medium-sized enterprises are the backbone of the British economy: they drive forward innovation and they create jobs, but they do not have huge departments to help them with the mountain of red tape that is suffocating them because of the Government’s botched Brexit. Can the Minister set out specifically what his plan is to reduce that mountain of red tape so that those SMEs can be supported rather than crushed by the form of Brexit that he supports?
Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)
Is it my right hon. Friend’s view that most of the bureaucracy placed on British businesses that are trying to export comes from the requirements made by other EU countries? They seem to be making it a lot harder for us to export to them than we are making it for them to export to us.
Mr Rees-Mogg
Yes. I am grateful to my hon. Friend, because that is a very important point. Free trade benefits the receiver of free trade. Just because the EU makes it harder for us to export to it is no reason to retaliate in kind. All that does is make things more expensive for our consumers and our businesses. That is why, on 1 July, we will not impose the full set of controls that the EU imposes on us. We are looking to a single trade window by the end of 2023, which will lower the barriers to trade from around the world and improve the fluidity of our borders. Why? Because that benefits our economy, even if we do it unilaterally, and that is fundamentally important. The EU has never understood that, and it is why it is such a high-cost area.
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)
I thank the right hon. Member for the statement. I am a member of the European Scrutiny Committee, to which he gave evidence on this subject a couple of months ago. The Treasury has announced reforms to the Consumer Credit Act 1974 as part of this package. In the current economic climate, it is imperative that vulnerable consumers be adequately protected, particularly when it comes to credit agreements. Will the Minister confirm how the Government expect to ensure full consultation with traditionally hard-to-reach groups?
Mr Rees-Mogg
I do not know if the hon. Lady will particularly want a compliment from me, but she is one of the most assiduous attenders in this House. She fights for constituents who face difficulties, holds Ministers to account, and ensures that people’s concerns are brought to this House, and while I may not agree with her overarching political philosophy, that is what we Members of Parliament are here to do. We are the champions of hard-to-reach people; we hold Governments to account; and we ensure that the result is included in Bills as they make their way through Parliament. The hon. Lady, dare I say it, is a model of how this can be done.
Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)
I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend for giving a summary masterclass, in his usual way, of what the Brexit freedoms Bill will mean. I think that the British people have not realised how we got to our legislative framework; there is primary legislation in this place, directives, regulations, and the override of the European Communities Act 1972. Nobody can be sure of the position, be they manufacturing something, providing services or doing anything else—this goes for anything that moves—because we do not have consolidated legislation that says, “These are the rules on the manufacture of paper,” for instance. That cannot be fair. Does he agree that this proposal will be a refreshing opening up of our legislative framework, so that we can make it better, more streamlined and, most importantly, accountable to this place and the British people?
Mr Rees-Mogg
Yes, indeed. Putting the information online, and opening it up to people—including, of course, to Members of Parliament—will make it much clearer where the blockages, obstructions and difficulties are for businesses. Once we know where they are from the detail of the legislative instrument, it becomes much easier to remove them.
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
It is increasingly clear that the right hon. Member’s ministerial title refers to the political opportunities that the Government see in reopening Brexit wounds as often as possible. His pointless statement today ignores the wishes of the British people, who want the Government to stop banging on about Brexit and start tackling the issues that they face in their daily life. It ignores the wishes of business, although we know what the Prime Minister’s view is of business—it is summed up in a four-letter expletive. Was not the Minister’s Cabinet colleague, the Environment Secretary, right when he said that “messing around” with retained law wastes officials’ time,
“costs businesses money and is unlikely to make much difference”?
Mr Rees-Mogg
As it happens, my right hon. Friend the Environment Secretary has been extremely helpful in this process, so the hon. Gentleman should not believe everything he reads in second-tier publications. This is not about opening wounds. It is the Labour party that always wanted to oppose what the people had voted for. It thought its voters did not know what they were doing. It treats its electors with contempt and the results were reaped in December 2019. This is about getting the advantages from Brexit. This is about the agenda set out in the 2019 manifesto, but also in 2016 at the time of the referendum, of how we benefit from leaving the European Union. We do not now want slavishly to follow the diktats of the EU. That would be a way of losing all the advantages. This is the way of making the economy more efficient, getting supply-side reforms, and making goods and services cheaper.
Mr Marcus Fysh (Yeovil) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. It is great that we are finally moving forward with the task of optimising conditions here in the UK for businesses and individuals. Does he agree that this is an essential part of moving on with the process? A number of times I have had friends who might have voted to remain say to me, “What was the point of this? Show us what the point was, because we want to change things now. We actively want to change rules in the City and in agriculture.” Will he drive this forward with every effort?
Mr Rees-Mogg
My hon. Friend hits the nail on the head. Both of us represent rural constituencies in Somerset and one of the great advantages of Brexit is taking away the red tape that ties our farmers and simplifying processes to make it easier for them to get on with the business of farming. It is not surprising that a very large number of retained EU law Acts are within the auspices of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, because that has been a primary responsibility of the European Union. We need to be able to clear away the thicket to make life easier. He is absolutely right.
Stephen Flynn (Aberdeen South) (SNP)
They remove our businesses from a single market of 500 million people. They remove our collective right to live, work and travel across the European Union. They are delivering the slowest economic growth in the entire G20—aside from Russia, of course. And what do we get in return? We get an interactive dashboard and potentially more powerful vacuum cleaners. The right hon. Gentleman makes a compelling case for Scotland to choose a different path, does he not?
Mr Rees-Mogg
There is a compelling case for Scotland to remain within the United Kingdom, which is what people voted for in 2014. There seems to be a remarkable short-sightedness about the length of a generation, which as I understood it was going to be the period before there was another vote. What we have done is what the British people voted for. The truth about the SNP is that whenever the people in the United Kingdom vote, they do not give the result the SNP wants, so the SNP goes off in a sulk and wants them to vote again and again and again in the hope that one day they might give the right answer. But life is not like that. We have had the referendum and it is all about proper opportunities. If the hon. Gentleman is so keen on Europe, just look at the spreads on bonds in the eurozone at the moment. Would he really want to be in an organisation that has that degree of fragility in its bond market?
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Minister very much for his statement. Northern Ireland’s section on the dashboard should be incredibly simple. The Northern Ireland protocol has given the EU the final say without any elected input from Northern Ireland. I welcome the Minister’s statement today, but I would love to welcome the statement that allows Northern Ireland to operate as part of the United Kingdom in terms of our own legal place, so will he confirm the date for the withdrawal legislation, which I believe he is very eager to give but perhaps some of his colleagues are less so?
Mr Rees-Mogg
I was sorry not to see the hon. Gentleman in the Chamber earlier when we unveiled the shield to Sir Henry Wilson. I understand that he was, of course, in Westminster Hall, but it is about the only time I have ever been in this Chamber without his beady eye looking down upon me. He is, of course, right. We want the benefits for the whole of the United Kingdom, as the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) said, too. This is a United Kingdom activity. The whole of the United Kingdom left the European Union and we cannot allow Northern Ireland to be a satrapy of the EU.
Bill Presented
Bill of Rights Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Secretary Dominic Raab, supported by Secretary Brandon Lewis, Secretary Alister Jack, Secretary Simon Hart, the Attorney General and James Cartlidge, presented a Bill to reform the law relating to human rights.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time tomorrow, and to be printed (Bill 117) with explanatory notes (Bill 117—EN).
Social Security (Additional Payments) Bill: Allocation of Time
Ordered,
That the following provisions shall apply to the proceedings on the Social Security (Additional Payments) Bill:
Timetable
(1)(a) Proceedings on Second Reading and in Committee of the whole House, any proceedings on Consideration and proceedings on Third Reading shall be taken at today’s sitting in accordance with this Order.
(b) Proceedings on Second Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion four hours after the commencement of proceedings on the Motion for this Order.
(c) Proceedings in Committee of the whole House, any proceedings on Consideration and proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion six hours after the commencement of proceedings on the Motion for this Order.
Timing of proceedings and Questions to be put
(2) When the Bill has been read a second time:
(a) it shall, despite Standing Order No. 63 (Committal of bills not subject to a programme order), stand committed to a Committee of the whole House without any Question being put;
(b) proceedings on the Bill shall stand postponed while the Question is put, in accordance with Standing Order No. 52(1) (Money resolutions and ways and means resolutions in connection with bills), on any financial resolution relating to the Bill;
(c) on the conclusion of proceedings on any financial resolution relating to the Bill, proceedings on the Bill shall be resumed and the Speaker shall leave the Chair whether or not notice of an Instruction has been given.
(3)(a) On the conclusion of proceedings in Committee of the whole House, the Chair shall report the Bill to the House without putting any Question.
(b) If the Bill is reported with amendments, the House shall proceed to consider the Bill as amended without any Question being put.
(4) For the purpose of bringing any proceedings to a conclusion in accordance with paragraph (1), the Chair or Speaker shall forthwith put the following Questions in the same order as they would fall to be put if this Order did not apply:
(a) any Question already proposed from the chair;
(b) any Question necessary to bring to a decision a Question so proposed;
(c) the Question on any amendment, new Clause or new Schedule selected by the Chair or Speaker for separate decision;
(d) the Question on any amendment moved or Motion made by a Minister of the Crown;
(e) any other Question necessary for the disposal of the business to be concluded;
and shall not put any other questions, other than the question on any motion described in paragraph (11)(a) of this Order.
(5) On a Motion so made for a new Clause or a new Schedule, the Chair or Speaker shall put only the Question that the Clause or Schedule be added to the Bill.
(6) If two or more Questions would fall to be put under paragraph (4)(d) on successive amendments moved or Motions made by a Minister of the Crown, the Chair or Speaker shall instead put a single Question in relation to those amendments or Motions.
(7) If two or more Questions would fall to be put under paragraph (4)(e) in relation to successive provisions of the Bill, the Chair shall instead put a single Question in relation to those provisions, except that the Question shall be put separately on any Clause of or Schedule to the Bill which a Minister of the Crown has signified an intention to leave out.
Other proceedings
(8) Provision may be made for the taking and bringing to a conclusion of any other proceedings on the Bill.
Miscellaneous
(9) Standing Order No. 15(1) (Exempted business) shall apply to proceedings on the Bill.
(10) Standing Order No. 82 (Business Committee) shall not apply in relation to any proceedings to which this Order applies.
(11)(a) No Motion shall be made, except by a Minister of the Crown, to alter the order in which any proceedings on the Bill are taken, to recommit the Bill or to vary or supplement the provisions of this Order.
(b) No notice shall be required of such a Motion.
(c) Such a Motion may be considered forthwith without any Question being put; and any proceedings interrupted for that purpose shall be suspended accordingly.
(d) The Question on such a Motion shall be put forthwith; and any proceedings suspended under sub-paragraph (c) shall thereupon be resumed.
(e) Standing Order No. 15(1) (Exempted business) shall apply to proceedings on such a Motion.
(12)(a) No dilatory Motion shall be made in relation to proceedings to which this Order applies except by a Minister of the Crown.
(b) The Question on any such Motion shall be put forthwith.
(13)(a) The start of any debate under Standing Order No. 24 (Emergency debates) to be held on a day on which the Bill has been set down to be taken as an Order of the Day shall be postponed until the conclusion of any proceedings on that day to which this Order applies.
(b) Standing Order No. 15(1) (Exempted business) shall apply in respect of any such debate.
(14) Proceedings to which this Order applies shall not be interrupted under any Standing Order relating to the sittings of the House.
(15)(a) Any private business which has been set down for consideration at a time falling after the commencement of proceedings on this Order or on the Bill on a day on which the Bill has been set down to be taken as an Order of the Day shall, instead of being considered as provided by Standing Orders or by any Order of the House, be considered at the conclusion of the proceedings on the Bill on that day.
(b) Standing Order No. 15(1) (Exempted business) shall apply to the private business so far as necessary for the purpose of securing that the business may be considered for a period of three hours.—(Dr Coffey.)
Social Security (Additional Payments) Bill
Wednesday 22nd June 2022
(2 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Social Security (Additional Payments) Act 2022 View all Social Security (Additional Payments) Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Committee of the whole House Amendments as at 22 June 2022 - (22 Jun 2022)
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
I must inform the House that the reasoned amendment in the name of Kirsty Blackman has not been selected.
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Dr Thérèse Coffey)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
The cost of living challenge facing many families right now is being driven by forces beyond their control. The aftershocks of covid on global supply chains, and Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, have caused a hike in prices and a spike in bills, particularly for energy costs. As a result, household budgets are being stretched further than at any time in recent memory, so just as we did during covid, the Government are stepping up at this challenging time to help families who are feeling the strain. It is because we got the big calls right that we have the fiscal firepower to take decisive and direct action to help millions of people across the country.
Although we have always been clear that the Government cannot cover every situation or solve every problem, we are providing financial support to every household to help relieve some of the pressures that people are under, and to help them cut costs across their household expenditure. Approximately four in five households—all those living in band A to band D homes—are receiving a £150 discount on their council tax, with millions already benefitting from the money landing in their bank accounts, and all households that are domestic energy customers will get £400 towards their energy bills this autumn, in the form of a grant with nothing to repay. We are, however, principally targeting help at those who need it most, helping ease the squeeze for those on low and fixed incomes, who we know spend a higher than average proportion of their income on energy.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)
There is an issue with people who live in park homes—I have a few sites in my constituency—because the energy rebate does not make it through to them. Are the Government looking at innovative ways of addressing the issues faced by those individuals and households?
Dr Coffey
My understanding is that the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, my right hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng), is aware of that particular channel. I am led to believe that a solution is being developed so that people will benefit from that cost even if they do not receive the money directly, because a lot of park home owners do not pay their energy bills directly. I know that my right hon. Friend is aware.
Returning to what we are doing to help people, we are providing a direct cost of living payment of £650—split into two payments of £326 and £324—to over 8 million families who already get help through means-tested benefits. This includes people on universal credit, income-based jobseeker’s allowance, income-related employment and support allowance, income support, working tax credit, child tax credit and pension credit—both guarantee and savings credit recipients. On top of that, we are providing a £150 payment for approximately 6 million people with disabilities who are on qualifying benefits, and giving 8 million pensioner households an additional £300 alongside their winter fuel payment. Combined, that is extra support of at least £1,200 this year for the majority of households that are least able to absorb rising costs, which takes our total support package to £37 billion.
Sir Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
I just want to check one point. At the moment, about 150,000 working-age people who receive universal credit have their benefits limited by the benefit cap. Am I right to say that these additional payments are not constrained at all by the level of the benefit cap?
Dr Coffey
Yes, that is the case. I was planning to cover that later. For the record, I will still make that point.
Our household support fund administered through local authorities in England and the money given to devolved Administrations are further avenues for people to seek help with the cost of essentials. From October, the Government are adding an additional £500 million to the fund, extending support through the winter. That equates to an additional £421 million in England and £79 million for the devolved Administrations, and that will take total funding for this UK-wide household support to £1.5 billion.
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
One group of people who receive universal credit and are in some difficulty are those who lose some of their universal credit because they received a universal credit advance for the first five weeks. Some 92,000 households in that situation in Wales are getting about £60 a month less, and that comes to a total of about £5 million being denied to them. I hope that the Secretary of State is prepared to reconsider her position on that. Obviously, that is not in the Bill, so she has taken a decision in the short term, but I press her to reconsider.
Dr Coffey
The hon. Gentleman is incorrect in saying that money is denied to people. The whole point of receiving an advance is that there is phasing and, instead of receiving 12 payments in a typical calendar year, 13 payments are made. We extended that recently so that people can choose whether to have 25 payments over 24 months. It is not a case of people being denied.
The Social Security (Additional Payments) Bill before the House is a short Bill of 11 clauses that gives us the powers necessary to administer payments to families on means-tested and disability benefits. As one-off new benefit payments, they will be delivered by the UK Government to eligible households right across the United Kingdom in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The timing of such payments will vary, starting with the first payment of £326 for DWP means-tested benefit claimants from 14 July. The second payment will arrive in the autumn for those eligible. Those on tax credits who do not receive DWP means-tested benefits will get each instalment later to avoid duplicate payments.
People not eligible in time for the first £326 payment because they were not getting a qualifying benefit in the month before the announcement may get the second £324 payment if they have a qualifying entitlement to a benefit in the month before the next eligibility date. We have deliberately not included the next eligibility date in the Bill to try not to change claimant behaviour. Instead, there is the power to set a date through regulations.
Those on qualifying disability benefits will get their £150 as a single payment from September. Where eligibility for any of these cost of living payments is found retrospectively—for example, someone who had applied for personal independence payment but not yet been awarded it—people will still receive that disability cost of living payment; it will just be at a later date.
Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)
In opening, the Secretary of State alluded to the fact that 6 million disabled people would qualify for the additional disability support payment of £150. Does she acknowledge that some disabled people—particularly those in receipt of disability living allowance, PIP or attendance allowance—who no longer qualify for the warm home discount since her Government changed the rules, will lose out? In effect, they have taken away £150 through the warm home discount, and the additional £150 really does not do anything to meet the extra costs for people who have already lost out.
Dr Coffey
The warm home discount is not relevant to the Bill, but I understand the point. It is the policy of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, but I do not know that the intention was—[Interruption.] I am trying to answer the hon. Lady’s question. My understanding of the policy rationale is that because PIP is not means-tested—it is not income-based—a decision on warm home discount eligibility was made to include many more households on the basis of income rather than PIP eligibility. I am sure that she will welcome the fact that we have included £150 in this legislation.
These one-off tax repayments do not count towards the benefit cap and will not affect existing benefit awards. They will provide a budget boost for millions of the lowest-income households right across the United Kingdom.
Dr Coffey
No, I will not.
This Government have supported and continue to support those most in need. I am proud of our record of lifting people out of poverty.
Anyone listening to Opposition parties could be forgiven for thinking that poverty was going up. The fact is that in 2021 there were 1.2 million fewer people in absolute poverty, before housing costs, than when we came into government in 2010. Between 2019-20 and 2020-21, every measure of poverty, whether absolute or relative, saw a reduction in poverty. In terms of statistics, on absolute poverty, our preferred measure, the number of working-age people in poverty is down by 100,000, the number of children in poverty is down by 200,000, and pensioner poverty is down by 200,000.
We know from the latest available data that for most families the best way out of poverty is through work.
Dr Coffey
I will not take any further interventions from the hon. Gentleman, because he has already intervened. I am sure that if he wants to contribute to this debate he will have put in to speak.
In 2019-20, children in households where all adults were in work were about six times less likely to be in absolute poverty than children in a household where nobody works. That is why our economic priority during the pandemic was to protect, support and create jobs through the furlough scheme and the many other measures we took as part of our plan for jobs.
Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)
The Secretary of State will of course know that her figures on absolute poverty and relative poverty are disputed by the various stakeholders who work in this field. One of the issues that is concerning people with regard to poverty is the failure to uprate benefits this year along the lines of this year’s levels of inflation. She has rightly said that pensions and benefits such as disability benefits and universal credit—and, hopefully, the minimum income guarantee and pension credit—will rise in line with inflation this September. She is coming under some pressure on that now. Can she give us a guarantee that she will not resile from that position?
Dr Coffey
The right hon. Gentleman may not be aware that I cannot make any declaration about the rises in benefits; I can only point to our policy in terms of, for example, the triple lock for pensioners. That is because I am required by law to undertake a review of the benefits once a year and I have not yet done so. I am sure that he will judge us on past performance, especially in following the regular legislation.
The unemployment rate is now below the low level we saw before the pandemic—close to the lowest since 1974—and we have more people on payrolls than ever before, but we are not resting on our laurels, particularly with a record number of vacancies in the labour market. We want people to get into work and to boost their incomes, which is why we launched the Way to Work scheme, quickly connecting claimants with employers looking to fill vacancies. Having turbo-charged jobcentres into super, almost dating, agencies in the way that they match people looking for work to people offering work, I am confident that we will achieve our target to move half a million people into jobs by the end of the month. There are hundreds of thousands more people benefiting from a pay packet, along with the prospect of a better job tomorrow and a future career.
Mr Richard Holden (North West Durham) (Con)
Will the Secretary of State confirm that the payments in this Bill, to almost 25,000 of my constituents, are on top of the support that has already been put in place, with the £1,000 that families will benefit from through the taper rate, the living wage rise and the £330 that most of those in work will get through raising the national insurance threshold, meaning that tens of thousands of people in North West Durham will be better off as a result of these changes and showing that we are providing support now, just like we did during the pandemic, during the cost of living issues due to international factors such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?
Dr Coffey
My hon. Friend is right to point out the additional measures. I do not know exactly how many people in his constituency will be affected, but I rely on his excellent local knowledge as a great constituency MP. Absolutely—I am setting out additional measures to those that he has outlined.
The Bill will deliver one-off additional payments responding to the challenges faced by people in every part of our country over the coming months. I thank the usual channels and the House more broadly for agreeing that it can make its necessary progress today. Its provisions are intentionally straightforward and will enable a straightforward approach for claimants, with no complicated forms, no bureaucracy and nobody having to make an additional claim, as payments will automatically go into people’s bank accounts.
The actions in the Bill will boost the budgets of millions of stretched families in every part of the United Kingdom, helping them through the cost of living challenge. I commend it to the House.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I call the shadow Secretary of State, Jonathan Ashworth.
Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)
Let me begin by being clear with the Secretary of State: we do not intend to divide the House. We understand that the Government need to put in place the architecture to make these arrangements swiftly. None the less, we want to put on the record a number of points, on which I hope Ministers will provide some clarity in their response to Second Reading and throughout proceedings today.
Like many Members, the message that I am hearing up and down the country could not be clearer: for many of our constituents, these are the toughest times that anyone can remember. More than a decade of underwhelming economic growth has meant that today the cost of living is skyrocketing and pay packets are failing to keep pace with inflation. By next April, wages will be worth £2,000 less in real terms than in 2020, with real pay in the UK falling at the fastest rate for 20 years, leaving household finances stretched to breaking point. Prices are up in the shops and the cost of petrol is through the roof. Energy bills are sky-high, and the lifting of the price cap later this year means that they will increase further. Families everywhere are saying, “Enough is enough!” It should be no surprise that today’s statistics show a 12% increase in those with council tax arrears.
The Secretary of State took great care to explain why she is taking action to help those in need now, and the measures are welcome as far as they go, but the House has to understand that the future is bleak: energy market expert Cornwall Insight is warning that the energy cap could rise by a further £1,000 in October; inflation is at 9.1% today, with worse on the way; the cost of living will rapidly rise further; pensioners will see the value of their pensions and savings attacked by inflation; and working families will be left desperate to protect the value of their wages from the ravages of inflation—and the edict of Ministers tells them to take a pay cut.
Ministers hope that interest rates and tax increases will dampen demand in the economy, and thereby slow economic output. Pain today and pain tomorrow is their policy to get inflation under control, even though the Office for Budget Responsibility warned, following the spring statement, that we are heading for the biggest fall in living standards since the 1950s, with more children set to be pushed into absolute poverty. Labour was clear that taking no action following the spring statement would have amounted to the wilful impoverishment of many of our constituents—a price that we never believe is worth paying. We therefore proposed a windfall tax on North sea gas and oil producers to help families and pensioners, and we are pleased that after some months the Government finally listened to our representations.
We recognise the extra support that the Government are allocating today, but in reality this legislation—important though it is—is a short-term sticking plaster because of a series of long-term policy failures to grow our economy sufficiently, and to address the longer-term problems and hardship that have been growing over the last 10 years due to attacks on social security and unfair pay settlements.
Jonathan Edwards
Does the shadow Secretary of State agree that missing from the Bill is any support for unpaid carers, and does he share my hope that the Government will bring forward proposals in the near future to help that group?
Jonathan Ashworth
The hon. Gentleman anticipates a point I am going to make, which is why now is a good moment to turn to the specifics of the Bill. I want to raise a number of points that I hope Treasury Benchers will address throughout proceedings this afternoon, particularly regarding how the Bill impacts on four groups: the self-employed on universal credit; disabled people and carers; pensioners; and larger families.
First, on the self-employed who claim universal credit, the minimum income floor will reduce universal credit payments for some self-employed people to zero. Could the Minister clarify, in responding to the debate, whether self-employed universal credit claimants whose UC payments are zero purely because of the minimum income floor will be entitled to these cost of living payments?
Secondly, on how this impacts on disabled people, the disability charity Sense has warned today of the increasing numbers of disabled people pushed into debt as a result of the rising cost of living. Those on the Treasury Bench must surely understand that many disabled people have needs that make heating and electricity to power equipment particularly central to their wellbeing, so that economising on energy can bring severe hardship.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova) raised a few moments ago, disabled people on non-means-tested benefits will get £150 as a minimum, and indeed those on means-tested benefits will get the £650. I appreciate that the Secretary of State says this is a responsibility of the Business Secretary, but Ministers did recently change the rules on the warm home discount scheme so that 290,000 people on disability living allowance, PIP and attendance allowance are no longer eligible.
For people on PIP, that means that the Government are giving £150 to them after it was taken off them through the changes to the warm home discount scheme. This is robbing Peter to pay Paul, and it suggests that one hand of Government does not know what the other hand of Government is doing. How can that be justified?
Marsha De Cordova
My right hon. Friend is making an excellent point, and he probably articulated it even better than I did. Does he also agree with me that the whole premise of DLA, PIP and attendance allowance is to help meet some of the extra costs faced by disabled people? The Secretary of State has stated that this is a different Department—it is BEIS—but she must none the less acknowledge the purpose of these benefits, and taking away one payment and giving some money back with another is actually going to leave nearly 300,000 disabled people worse off.
Jonathan Ashworth
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I can assure her that she speaks with an eloquence on these matters that I rarely muster, and I thought she put her points powerfully.
Even though many disabled people have been given an additional £150, for many of them that will not cover the additional cost of inflation when applied to disability-related benefits. For example, for those on universal credit, the supplement for someone unable to work or engage in work-related activity rose by about £240 a year less than if it had been uprated in line with the consumer prices index. In addition, someone receiving the daily living component of PIP is worse off by £185 on the standard rate and by £274 on the enhanced rate as a result of the sub-inflation upratings later this year.
That is one of the reasons why many people out there are particularly concerned that the Secretary of State—I understand that, in legislation, she has to review these matters—and the Government may well resile from their commitment to inflation-increase benefits and pensions this September.
Equally, the hon. Gentleman who sits for a Welsh constituency that I cannot remember, and I am not sure I can pronounce it either—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) raised carer’s allowance, and people claiming carer’s allowance will not get any extra support. Carers often have higher energy bills because of their caring responsibilities, yet people in receipt of carer’s allowance—remember that they provide care for at least 35 hours a week and earn less than £132 a week—are likely to be hit hard without additional support. Why were carers left out of this package?
Thirdly, I want to talk about pensioners. We have 2 million pensioners in poverty, and the number is rising. The Prime Minister promised that pensions would keep pace with wages and prices, but, without any thought as to how hard pensioners are finding it to make ends meet, Ministers broke that promise by removing the so-called triple lock. That meant a real-terms cut of about £500 in the basic state pension—the biggest real-terms cut, I believe, for about 50 years. I was pleased to see Ministers commit to honouring the triple lock for next year, but we can see the pressure Ministers are coming under and we hope the Secretary of State does not break that promise for the next financial year.
We also need clarity from Ministers on whether the standard minimum guarantee of pension credit will be uprated in line with the consumer prices index in September. Pensioners on pension credit will receive the £650, as the Secretary of State knows, but pension credit uptake is not what it should be. If we could drive up the uptake of pension credit, Loughborough University estimates than an extra 440,000 retirees could be lifted out of poverty. With approximately 850,000 pensioners not claiming pension credit, a huge number are set to miss out. Failing to do more to increase pension credit uptake could mean that two thirds of the poorest pensioners will not get the extra £650.
I recognise that the Minister for Pensions and Financial Inclusion—the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), who is not in his place—has been leading a campaign to drive up the uptake and has even been ballroom dancing with Len Goodman. However, the Bill’s impact assessment, which the Government have published today, shows that 1.4 million pensioners are benefiting, but in the second round it is estimated that 26,000 fewer payments will be made to pension credit recipients. Can the Secretary of State or the Minister responding to the debate—the Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Macclesfield (David Rutley)—explain why that is and what it says about the success, or otherwise, of the Government’s pension credit take-up campaign?
Families with children are poorly served by flat rate payments. Families in the bottom half of the income distribution with two or more children spend twice as much on food, essential household goods and services, clothing, footwear and transport. Families with three or more children are likely to spend an additional £500 on energy, but the support on offer is not adjusted for size of family.
We recognise that the cost of living payment, combined with the £150 council tax rate, will provide £1,200 for working-age households in receipt of means-tested benefits. However, that will not cover the whole increase in energy bills, especially as further large increases in the price cap, perhaps of £1,000, are expected in October. Nor will it provide much mitigation of the wider price food rises.
Let me spell it out. We know that there will be another rise in gas and electricity prices, possibly of £800 to £1,000, for a family who have already faced an increase of £850. That family will therefore need to find at least £1,650. They will get the council tax deduction of £150; they will get the energy bill loan, turned into a grant, of £400; and they will get £650, paid in two instalments, supposedly to cover the year ahead. That is £1,200 in total, which will still leave them £450 worse off because of the energy price rises this year. As that comes on top of last October’s £20-a-week cut in universal credit, that family’s standard of living will be down by £1,450 on last year—£28 a week. That is even before we take into account the food shopping bill, which Kantar has today predicted will go up by at least £380. The Governor of the Bank of England has warned of “apocalyptic” increases in food prices.
Surely more Government action is needed. Ministers will retort that they are helping families to find employment; employment should indeed be the best defence against the rising cost of living, but under this Government, 8 million people in work are in poverty and are picking up food parcels for their families because of low pay and family circumstances. Some 2 million working families are on universal credit and have suffered similar losses to those who are out of work: they have lost the £20 uplift, they faced a real-terms cut in universal credit in April, and their wages are being outpaced by inflation, even after the national living wage increase.
I recognise that the Minister will respond that the Chancellor has reduced the UC taper rate and increased the work allowance, and that those with the highest earnings who qualify for universal credit gain the most from the reduced taper. However, for those with very low earnings, the gains are much less than the losses elsewhere. A lone parent with two children would lose £1,200 if they were not working, but would lose £1,300 if they were working 10 hours, nearly £700 if they were working 20 hours and £400 if they were working 30 hours. These families have already lost substantial amounts, and the package that the Chancellor has announced does not make up for it. Those examples are not exceptional. They will have a familiarity to every Member who speaks to their local food bank or citizens advice bureau. The problem is that the flat payment system takes no account of family size or special needs.
I hope the Minister addresses those points this afternoon, because we need more than quick fixes to protect the living standards of our constituents and tackle the chronic injustices of poverty. We entered the living standards crisis not just on the back of years of underwhelming economic growth, but after years of cutting, freezing and restricting access to social security, which left us with a threadbare system and an explosion in food bank, baby bank, bedding bank and fuel bank usage. The real-terms value of out-of-work benefits is the lowest for years. We have seen the pernicious two-child policy, caps on support, inadequate help with housing and council tax, and real-terms cuts to universal credit—real-terms deductions to the amount that people on universal credit are forced to grapple with.
That is why child poverty is rising on its way to 5 million, with half a million more children destitute and 500,000 children going without a decent bed at night. The outcry from our communities forced the Government to take short-term action, but we need a long-term plan to rebuild social security, grow the economy, raise living standards, and defeat child and pensioner poverty, so that the victims of poverty can participate fully in society. That is what I am determined to build.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I have now to announce the result of today’s deferred Division on the Abortion (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2022. The Ayes were 215 and the Noes were 70.
[The Division list is published at the end of today’s debates.]
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con)
Thank you for calling me so early in the debate, Madam Deputy Speaker; it is a great privilege.
There will be no surprise that I welcome this Bill, which will help millions of families during these very difficult times. The Labour party thinks that the only way to help families is to just keep increasing benefits, but working-class people in places such as Ashfield are a bit more savvy than that. They realise that we make families better off by increasing opportunities through the job market, and education and training, which leads to promotion and better job prospects.
For the purposes of this debate, we need to go back in history a bit, to the end of the ‘90s, when Tony Blair came into government and introduced something called the tax credit system. Although at the time it seemed an incredibly kind thing to do, we are now feeling the unintended consequences. It has damaged businesses and damaged the prospects of millions and millions of people throughout the UK. I will give the House a good example.
A friend of mine refused to work more than 16 hours for over 10 years because she was a single parent. However, that backfired when her daughter got to 18 and my friend lost all her tax credits, her child benefit and her child support. Now we have a lady in her 40s who has, overnight, just lost half her weekly income, and she is stuck in a low-skilled, low-paid, minimum-wage job. She has never upskilled, despite her employer wanting her to upskill for years and years, so she has missed out on that career development, which could have led to a better job and less dependency on benefits, all because she did not want to work more than 16 hours a week.
This Government are trying to fix things like that with the universal credit taper, which will now allow people like my friend to work more hours and get a better paid job without it affecting their income as much as it would have affected hers all those years ago. That is the way to tackle poverty and help to people achieve their goals, but what Labour did is trap people—millions of people—into just having 16-hour—[Interruption.] Opposition Members can shake their heads and chunter away, but it is true. I know hundreds of people in Ashfield who were trapped in 16-hour-a-week jobs, and what good has it done them, years later? Ten years later, they are still in a minimum-wage or living-wage job, they have not upskilled and they have not moved any further, and they lose all their benefits when their children leave school. That is not progress.
The answer that the Labour party had, when all these people were stuck in 16-hour jobs and we could not get them to work a full-time job, was simple: open the floodgates and import cheap foreign labour, which is what happened. Twenty years later, we have a failed migration policy and a failed benefits policy, which has led to millions of people being trapped in a poverty cycle. We have spent the last 12 years trying to put right this mess and it is not easy when people are trapped in a poverty cycle —[Interruption.] Lots of Members on the Opposition Benches are grinning, but I will crack on.
Our benefits system in the UK is very generous—[Interruption.] It is generous. I will give an example. If my friend was a single parent now, living in Ashfield with two children and working 16 hours a week on the living wage, she would be getting £18,000 a year in universal credit and £6,000 or £7,000 a year in wages, which is an income of about £24,000 a year. She would not be paying any income tax, which is a bonus. To have that sort of income, a person would have to earn about £30,000 a year, which is a good wage in Ashfield.
Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)
If the hon. Gentleman thinks that is very generous, how does it compare with benefits systems across the EU, for example, that are significantly more generous?
Lee Anderson
I will tell the hon. Lady what is generous: a single parent, like my friend and I were all those years ago, getting £24,000 a year for working 16 hours a week. [Interruption.] The hon. Lady can shake her head, but I think that is a pretty generous payment. That person would not be paying any income tax. Come to Ashfield and ask if £24,000 net is a good income. It would be a struggle to find people who are earning that sort of income so, yes, it is a generous income.
As we level up the country, we need to level up the skills of people who are trapped in this life of benefit dependency caused by the Labour party—I will stick to my words. In the meantime, this caring Government realise that families need extra support, which is why we are providing £37 billion to support families. Remember this is taxpayers’ money. There is no magic money tree, so hard-working people are having to pay for this.
This Bill will ensure swift action by providing the power to make two cost of living payments of £650 to 8 million households throughout the UK. This is real, targeted help for real, vulnerable people. The £200 rebate on energy bills has been doubled to £400, and it is now a grant, so it will not be paid back. The living wage is up, the national living wage is up, the universal credit taper rate is up and national insurance has been cut, so 70% of those who pay national insurance will pay less and more than 2 million people will pay no national insurance at all. We are doing all we can to ensure we help to keep people’s head above the water by spending more than £80 billion on universal credit and legacy benefits, which now represent 3.8% of our GDP.
We cannot keep asking the hard-working taxpayer to put their hand in their pocket to pay more and more. We must all do our bit. Although I welcome that the Bill will get immediate support to families, we must all work hard to make sure every single person in this country has the chance to support themselves. The benefits system should be there to help people in their hour of need; it should not be a way of life.
If it were left to Labour, everyone would be sat at home feeling sorry for themselves, but I am different. I want people to have a good job, to earn more money and to enjoy the fruits of their labour.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I call the SNP spokesperson, Kirsty Blackman.
Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to speak for the SNP on the Social Security (Additional Payments) Bill. The Chancellor announced this uprating a number of weeks ago, having dragged his feet for so long. He announced the energy loan at the Budget, after announcing it earlier in the year, with a “Ta-da! Look at this! This is wonderful. We are giving you all this.” It was never sufficient. We called immediately for the energy loan to be a grant and for it to be increased.
The big announcement at the Budget was, “Hey, look, you can have cheaper solar panels!” That does not help my constituents, who are literally unable to buy food. We called for these changes then, and the Chancellor waited and waited until the end of May to make this announcement.
It has been a few weeks since the end of May, and we saw this Bill only last week. Parliamentarians have been able to scrutinise this Bill for only one week. The Government, or the Secretary of State, may say that this is because the Bill is so complicated, but they had weeks beforehand in which to decide what it would look like, and they have had weeks since the announcement in which to present it and give us an opportunity to see it. We should not be doing this in a single day. I appreciate that there is a tight timescale and that the Bill must be put through now in order for the payments to be made; what concerns me is the time during which we have not been able to scrutinise it effectively.
My other concern about process involves the money motion. It is drawn as tightly as possible. No doubt when we reach the Committee stage the Government will say what they say in every Finance Bill Committee: “All the amendments are about having reports. All the Opposition want are reports, rather than any actual changes to the Bill.” However, such a tight money motion makes it impossible for us effectively to put forward the asks that we have and to make it clear that this is wholly insufficient and that there are massive changes that we want to introduce.
Nevertheless, I congratulate the House on the fact that we are actually debating spend. That is very exciting—it is wonderful—because we never debate spend. We get the estimates for five days a year, or is it three? For a handful of days a year, we are allowed to debate those. To be fair, we are now allowed to debate spend, but it does not happen. We have the Budget, and then we have the Finance Bill. The Finance Bill is entirely about taxation: it is not about spend. We do not get the opportunity to debate and scrutinise spend properly, so it is very nice to get the chance to do so today—albeit with a money motion that is so unbelievably restrictive that we cannot put forward any amendments that make any sense or assist our constituents in any way.
Before I proceed, I want to thank Chris Mullins-Silverstein and Linda Nagy, who have been incredibly helpful in putting stuff together very quickly to enable me to make a speech that makes sense—or, I hope, largely makes sense.
This is the situation in which we find ourselves. As we heard from the right hon. Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth), in October, energy bills will be up by £1,500 for the average household, which is far more than the amount that the Government propose to provide for people—and that is before we take into account the other increases that we are seeing. According to the Office for National Statistics, pasta is up by 50%, bread by 16% and rice by 15%. I pay tribute to Jack Monroe for the huge amount of work she has done on the “Vimes Boots” index, which allows inflation to be measured not just in the way in which it has historically been measured, but in a way that relates to how people shop—the people at the lowest end of the income spectrum, who count every single penny in the supermarket to work out whether they can possibly afford what they have put in their baskets. Inflation for those lowest-income families has increased by significantly more than inflation for the families who are earning more. It is even worse for disabled householders, who are seeing even more significant increases in energy bills, and the same goes for pensioners.
I was delighted to hear the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) suggest that things are very generous. He cannot have the same inbox as me. According to my inbox, things were dire before Brexit, dire before covid, and dire before the massive increase in inflation that we are seeing now, and they have only got worse. The fact is that the impact of Brexit has increased our food prices. Less migration means less money for the Government to spend, while net migration reduces net public sector debt and increases the amount that the Government have to spend. The former Chancellor George Osborne’s Red Books make that explicit. It is clear that he was seeking to crack down on migration, and that doing so would reduce the amount of money that the Government had to spend. It costs money for us to reduce migration. It means that we will have less to spend on people who stay here, who live here, who work here.
The announcement that this is a £37 billion package is genuinely a joke. In the Government’s calculation of the £37 billion, they have included the fuel duty changes. A significant number of my constituents, especially the poorest, do not drive. They are impacted by the price of supermarket vans having to drive around and small businesses’ costs increasing, but the fuel duty does not make a difference to their daily lives. They do not fill up their fuel tanks because they do not have fuel tanks. They cannot afford cars. So including the fuel duty rise in the £37 billion is ridiculous. Including the freeze on alcohol duty is one of the cheekiest things I have ever seen in this place, and I was here all the way through the Brexit debates. The Government cannot include an alcohol duty freeze and say that they are helping with the cost of living. “We are helping the poorest people to save money on their alcohol.” People who cannot afford pasta are not helped by freezing alcohol duty.
These things that are being included in the £37 billion are listed on the factsheet on the Government’s website, by the way. The £37 billion also includes lots of already planned stuff. It includes what has happened with national insurance, and it includes things that were put in place when the Government thought that increasing benefits by 3.1% in April 2020 was sufficient. It includes a massive chunk of that. The Government cannot stand up and realistically say that this is a £37 billion package, because it is not. These are not the positive changes that my constituents and people across Scotland and the UK want to see.
I am pleased to hear that disabled people are getting an additional amount of money. That is a good move by the Government, but it does not take into account the increased costs that disabled people are seeing, including the massive increase in scarcity affecting gluten-free diets, for example. More disabled people have specialist diets than people who will not get the £150 increase. Disabled people spend more time at home, and it is the same for pensioners. The increases that are happening for those two groups are not sufficient to cover the increases they are facing in their energy costs, particularly, and in specialist diet costs.
Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)
I am listening very carefully to the hon. Lady’s arguments, and she is making some important and useful points, but I have to disagree with her. She cannot honestly stand up here this afternoon and almost dismiss this enormous sum of expenditure that the Government are making by saying that it is not sufficient and that she wants more. Perhaps she could explain where all this extra resource is going to come from. I personally believe that the Chancellor of the Exchequer listened and took on board arguments that many of us were making earlier this year about the rising cost of living, and that he has done everything possible to make his pounds go as far as they can in providing relief to those on low incomes.
Kirsty Blackman
The Chancellor of the Exchequer did listen to the arguments that were made, and I absolutely welcome the fact that he came back and said, “What we did before was not enough.” I do not know if he actually said that, but he said that he was going to do more and bring forward more. I am pleased that we are discussing this today, and I am pleased that these increases are happening, but I am making the case that the additional payments that are being made do not cover the cost of living increases. I do not think they are sufficient. and I do not think they will assist our constituents who are already struggling. The right hon. Member asked where the money would come from. We have always said that the windfall tax should be applied more broadly than just to oil and gas companies. We have always said that it should be for all those who made excessive profits during covid. Why should the Amazons and the Sercos of this world get away with making so much money during the pandemic and not have the Government look at that?
The reality is that the UK Government do not have to run a balanced budget. That is how the UK Government budget works. The Scottish Government have to run a balanced budget by law; the UK Government do not. There is far more flexibility in the budget than the Chancellor explains. When he stood up on 27 May, he was already looking at an additional £30 billion of fiscal headroom in the next few years, compared with his earlier projections and targets—compared with what he had hoped to get. There was already extra space, before he made the decision to introduce the supplementary tax on oil and gas companies. There is money there to do the additional payments and the additional requests that we are asking for today.
The UK Government have failed in a number of places. For example, they have failed to keep the triple lock for pensioners. They failed to keep the universal credit lifeline. They failed to implement a pension credit take-up strategy. They failed to come forward with cost of living measures as early as they should have during the course of the Budget. They have failed to scrap the evil sanctions regime. They have failed to produce a strategy to tackle child property. They have failed to bring in a minimum child maintenance payment. They have failed to uprate benefits by anywhere close to inflation this year. They have failed to scrap the rape clause. They have failed to bring in a real living wage that people can actually live on. They have failed to bring forward the long-promised employment Bill. They have failed to end the Department for Work and Pensions vicious loans clawback.
In contrast, the SNP Scottish Government running that balanced budget is delivering for people in Scotland. In Scotland, we are mitigating the bedroom tax. We are doubling our game-changing Scottish child payment. We are uprating benefits by double the level that the UK Government are. We are paying carer’s allowance supplement to people who are carers. We are paying £200 child winter heating assistance to families with severely disabled children and young people. We are increasing our school clothing grant, which is not available across the board in England and is at the discretion of local authorities here. We are offering 1,140 hours of childcare to all eligible children, no matter their parents’ working status. We are providing five new benefits worth up to a maximum of more than £10,000 by the time a first child turns six. That is £8,200 more than that provided in England and Wales. We are also providing additional money for subsequent children that is significantly in excess of the amount being provided here.
I therefore have some calls for the UK Government. I would like the UK Government to now uprate all social security benefits by 10% and backdate that to April 2020. The Chancellor stood there and said that uprating benefits would be less than the additional payment he is making—I want him to do both. This is a sticking plaster. Giving this additional one-off payment does not solve things for next year. It does not undo the fact that this year’s increase was woefully insufficient.
I would like the UK Government to make an additional £25 a week uplift to universal credit and to extend that to all legacy benefits to undo the harm done by cancelling the £20 a week increase last year. I would like them to cancel the rape clause, the two-child limit and the bedroom tax. There is only so much mitigation that the Scottish Government can do within our balanced budget.
I would like the UK Government to produce a child poverty strategy and to make tackling child poverty a national mission, as it is in Scotland. I would like the UK Government to bring in the long-promised employment Bill. They promised 28 times that they would bring in an employment Bill in the Queen’s Speech, and no employment Bill appeared in the Queen’s Speech. I would like them to match Scotland’s commitment to dignity and respect for those claiming disability benefits. I would like them to bring in a real living wage and to scrap the ageism in the pretendy living wage.
From day one of the Chancellor’s energy loan, which he announced earlier this year, we called for it to be a grant, rather than a loan. In May, the Chancellor U-turned. He changed it from a loan to a grant and he increased it, like we had asked. Now, we must see a U-turn on the five-week wait for universal credit. We must see that payment become a grant for those who get universal credit. We must not see those payments being clawed back.
The UK Government have 85% of the powers on social security. They have all the powers that relate to energy, all the powers that relate to the minimum wage and all the powers that relate to national insurance. We are being failed time and time again by the UK Government. We have asked for these measures to be devolved. We have amended things for these measures to be devolved. We have voted for these measures to be devolved. We have called, at every opportunity, for devolution of employment law, for devolution of energy, for devolution over the minimum wage, and for devolution over national insurance. The UK Government refuse. The UK Government are continually refusing and clawing back powers from the Scottish Parliament—in their United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020, for example. The Brexit Freedoms Bill is set to remove powers from this Parliament and centre it even more in the Executive than it already is. This is not the way to run a democracy.
People are struggling. Even with these payments on the horizon, people still struggle to see how they will get through the year. The only choice is for Scotland to become an independent country. Only by having the full powers of independence will we be able to protect people and help them through the cost of living crisis, in contrast to the UK Government who refuse to do so.
Sir Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
I am very pleased that the Bill is in front of us. The Select Committee has been clear in the past few weeks that, without a big measure on this kind of scale, low-income families would be in very serious trouble indeed in the coming months. I echo the tribute that has just been paid by the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) to Jack Monroe and her campaigning on this. She gave very compelling evidence to the Select Committee at our meeting on 9 March.
The package that has come forward has been widely welcomed. We put out a call for evidence on the cost of living in May. In response, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation said that,
“the package provided much-needed support for households, which will protect many of them against rising costs over the coming year.”
Citizens Advice welcomes the targeted support to low-income households and hoped that it would
“start to reverse the worrying trends we have seen in our data, including record-breaking food bank referrals.”
Unlike the previous announcements, this May package is properly targeted on low-income families, as it needed to be. The Resolution Foundation described it as offsetting
“the poor targeting of previous announcements.”
It also described it as “serious redistribution”. It is, I think, a serious response to a serious problem. I also welcome the Chancellor’s change of heart over the windfall tax to fund some of the help that is needed.
However, we need to be clear: the reason the Bill is needed is that the system for social security uprating has failed. It is a long-standing system. There is nothing new about the way it is done, but the unforeseen burst in inflation means that it simply has not worked this year. On this occasion, the decision has been taken to replace adequate uprating with ad hoc payments from the Treasury, which will certainly help us through the next few months. We need now to rethink the uprating system to make sure that it does not let us down again.
Jonathan Ashworth
I have a question for my right hon. Friend, the Chair of the Select Committee. Is he aware that, in 1976, the then Social Services Secretary, Barbara Castle, came to the House and uprated benefits and pensions for a second time in a year—there was a cost of living crisis then as well. The policy of the then shadow Secretary of State, Norman Fowler, was that uprating should take place twice a year. I wonder whether the Select Committee will consider the arguments that were made in the 1970s.
Sir Stephen Timms
My right hon. Friend makes a very important point. The Select Committee will certainly be looking at that. We are conducting an inquiry later this year on the question of the level of benefits, and the issue of how benefits should be uprated will certainly feature. I am intrigued to learn that the Secretary of State was able to do that in the 1970s given that we have been told that the IT systems in the 2020s cannot cope with it. I am certainly interested in seeing more on that.
Stephen Crabb
The right hon. Gentleman is making an interesting and important point about how we do upratings. I urge him not to get drawn too far down the path of looking at the system in the 1970s, which was in very different circumstances. There is an issue about the timing of uprating and the figures that are used to calculate it, but the bigger practical issue is the different IT systems and the plethora of different benefits that are still in play. Does he agree that we need to find a way to rationalise and simplify them?
Sir Stephen Timms
That would help—just modernising the old systems would help, and I will say something about that in a moment.
We are getting ad hoc payments from the Treasury to tide us over. The Secretary of State rightly spelled out to the Committee the downsides of one-off ad hoc payments such as those that the Bill enables. In oral evidence in February last year, she told the Committee that there were higher risks of fraud attached to one-off payments and that they can make it difficult for claimants to budget effectively—both quite telling points. She said that one-off payments were not
“one of the Department’s preferred approaches”
for providing that financial support. She noted:
“There are some challenges about fraud”
and that there would be difficulties if people claiming tax credits received a one-off payment and then moved to universal credit shortly afterwards. On the question of what might work best for claimants, she told us:
“Previous experience would be that a steady sum of money would probably be more beneficial to claimants and customers, to help with that budgeting process.”
I think she is right; it is not ideal for the Treasury to provide lump sums instead.
Why was proper uprating not done in this case? The Chancellor pointed out that legacy benefits cannot be quickly uprated because they are run on antiquated IT systems, as the right hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb) referred to, so uprating takes several months. The Chancellor told us that that was why he was unwilling simply to uprate benefits: it could have been done quickly for universal credit, as we discovered in the pandemic, but not for legacy benefits.
In an earlier debate, I recall the shadow Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) brandishing a document from an IT company, perhaps Oracle, about the front end that it had built for the Department’s legacy systems, which it said enabled changes to be made to them more quickly. I wonder whether the Minister, in closing, could tell us the truth behind that claim about the front end that had been provided. I know that the Department has certainly commissioned such front ends for the legacy systems over a long time, so I am interested to know why, notwithstanding what that brandished document said, it is apparently still the case that uprating takes four or five months. Are front ends in place? Why have they apparently not made faster changes possible?
In our June 2020 report on the Department’s response to coronavirus, the Select Committee recommended an increase in the speed with which changes could be made to legacy benefits. We said:
“People will be claiming legacy benefits until at least September 2024, the Government’s most recent estimate for completing the rollout of Universal Credit. It is simply not tenable for the Department to continue to operate antiquated systems that prevent Ministers from making timely changes to the rates at which legacy benefits are paid. We recommend that the Department work to increase the speed with which changes can be made to legacy benefit rates.”
In its response in September that year, the Department said that it
“recognises the need to be able to respond to events flexibly which is why we are investing in Universal Credit which is more agile than the systems that support legacy benefits.”
While substantial numbers of people depend on legacy benefits, the Government surely need to keep the systems that support those benefits fit for purpose. They are clearly not fit for purpose at the moment, and that ought to be addressed.
Kirsty Blackman
On that note, the new systems that we have created in Scotland under Social Security Scotland are doing exactly what the right hon. Gentleman asks. It has the ability to make those extra payments, because we set up the systems. Does he agree that the Government need to just invest to sort that out for many thousands of people?
Sir Stephen Timms
It certainly does need to be done. I am pleased to tell the hon. Lady that on Monday the Select Committee will visit Social Security Scotland and that our vice-chair, the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills), who is in his place, will be part of that group. We look forward to that visit.
The reason why benefit uprating has not worked this year is, of course, the six-month gap between September, when the inflation figure forms the basis of uprating for the following year, and April, when increases take effect. In response to our call for evidence on the cost of living, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation called on the Government to
“commit to a much shorter timeframe for annual uprating between measuring inflation and uprating accordingly, to ensure benefit uprating genuinely reflects inflation for the year in question.”
Lloyds Bank Foundation told us that the Government should
“consider uprating benefits in line with inflation in the autumn to ensure they more accurately reflect the true cost of living.”
That sounds like what was done in the 1970s. The Legatum Institute also suggested reducing the delay between CPI measurement and the application of uprating as well as introducing a mid-year uprating review. Citizens Advice called for a more sustainable, responsive uprating approach, which means
“addressing the lag between benefit uprating decision-making and implementation and the exclusion of the benefit cap from wider uprating.”
It says that while the one-off payments to be made under the Bill
“are more generous…for some households than if uprating had been brought forward”,
there are problems. For example, as we were reminded by my right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State, the one-off payments are the same amount regardless of family size. They also have cut-off dates, which risks arbitrarily excluding people from support.
Flat-rate payments being irrespective of family size appears to be pretty unfair to larger families. Overall, the package is somewhat more generous than early benefit uprating would have been, but it is less generous for larger families. The justification for that is not clear.
The North East Child Poverty Committee told us that
“a flat-rate £650 payment for all households on means-tested benefits, regardless of household size, additionally fails to recognise the clear link between family size and essential outgoings, with many larger families (already at much greater risk of poverty, a situation compounded by the two-child limit) facing intolerable financial pressures as a result of rising household bills.”
I will make one final point. One great advantage of the Chancellor’s package for low-income families, compared with a straightforward benefit uprating—I was grateful to the Secretary of State for confirming this—is that the benefit cap does not apply. It is striking that when it appears that the headline rate of social security benefits is likely to be raised by perhaps 10-plus per cent. next year, there is no indication at all about the benefit cap being lifted at all. That means that the growing number of families whose benefit has been capped will receive no increase in their income at all at a time when inflation is likely to be over 10%.
In evidence to the Select Committee, the Child Poverty Action Group Told us that
“the Government has made a welcome commitment to increase benefits in April 2023 in line with prices. However, not all price-related elements of the system are included in the annual uprating exercise and the benefit cap means a substantial minority of claimants—an estimated 150,000—will see no increase at all and face another real terms cut to their benefits.”
At a time when inflation is so high, surely at least the level of the benefit cap must be reviewed. Will the Minister give us any encouragement that it will be, ahead of April next year? For now, and in the context of the Bill, it is welcome, and quite a significant precedent, that the benefit cap will not apply to these additional payments.
Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)
It is vital that we provide additional support to those in receipt of disability and means-tested benefits who are covered under this Bill, but in itself it is not an adequate response to the depth and breadth of the cost of living crisis we are currently experiencing. The Chancellor is already hammering families with an £800 tax hike this year, more than wiping out measures in this Bill for those who will benefit from it. The national insurance rise and the freezing of income tax thresholds are unfair tax rises, making the cost of living crisis worse for millions of families across the UK by decreasing employees’ take-home pay. Households are facing the highest tax burden in 70 years; the typical family will see a hit of £1,200 a year through a combination of Conservative party tax rises and soaring energy prices, according to the Resolution Foundation. We welcome the Bill’s provision creating the £650 payment, but call for it to be paid in full in July instead of being paid in two instalments in July and October, because people need that support right now—although more support might still be required in the autumn.
The simplest way for the Government to help people right now would be to scrap the tax hikes to which I have referred. What we most want is an emergency VAT cut. Cutting VAT from 20% to 17.5% for one year would save families an average of £600; it would put money back into people’s pockets right now, boosting the economy and supporting struggling businesses. The Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts that the Treasury is due to take in an extra £8.6 billion in VAT due to inflation, which is £430 per family, so we think the Government could afford to fund that.
Cutting VAT would help to address spiralling inflation as well as keeping costs down for families. A similar VAT cut in 2008 boosted retail sales by about 1% and aggregate expenditure by 0.4%; that shows the difference it could make to struggling businesses right now. At the time of that same VAT cut in December 2008 inflation fell from 4.1% to 3.1%, and a similar saving right now could make a huge difference to struggling families.
In addition to the welcome targeted support announced in this Bill we would like the £20 uplift to universal credit restored. We accept all the arguments that that was an emergency measure, but this is also an emergency. The Government said at the time that higher wages are a better option than benefit increases, but we have seen just this week the tension caused between the historically high rate of inflation and the downward pressure the Government would like to maintain on employee wages, and this debate will be played out in many different circumstances across the summer and into the autumn. The Government’s argument that wage increases are the route to restoring household finances will come under considerable pressure, so I encourage them to think about that £20 a week uplift once more, because it would provide some of the poorest households on UC with an additional £1,000 a year, and we all know from our postbags what a difference that would make to the very poorest in our constituencies.
Much as we welcome the measures in the Bill, some of the most vulnerable groups in our society are not going to receive any additional support in facing the cost of living crisis thanks to these measures. The Government must look at that again. Several Members across the House have mentioned unpaid carers, and I want to add our contribution on that. They have once again been forgotten by the Government, who have provided no additional support despite the invaluable role unpaid carers play; it is difficult to calculate the additional pressures there would be on our care system if they did not play that role. As has been said, unpaid carers face additional costs as a result of their caring responsibilities. Those claiming carer’s allowance are being excluded from the list of eligible benefit recipients, leaving hundreds of thousands of unpaid carers, including 40% of working-age carers in receipt of carer’s allowance, without any additional support as a result of this Bill.
Millions of vulnerable adults and children depend upon the efforts of our country’s carers, yet as we see time and again, their voices are not being heard by the Government and again they are being excluded from support; they are being abandoned by the Government. The Liberal Democrats will keep championing the cause of unpaid carers, and I really impress on the Government the need to do more for those families.
Another issue that has been raised by a number of right hon. and hon. Members is families with multiple children in poverty. A flat-rate payment does not take into account the number of people in a household, which means that larger households, particularly those with more children, will face the squeeze much more severely. Of course, it is much more likely that a larger household will be made up of more children, so it is children who will suffer the most from having a flat-rate payment. Families in the bottom half of the income distribution with two or more children spend twice as much as equivalent families without children on food, essential household goods and services, clothing, footwear and transport, which leaves larger families in an especially vulnerable position when it comes to the level of inflation that we are seeing. The presence of younger children in a family exacerbates the prevalence of poverty due to the increased financial pressures that come with caring for a young child. Families with under-fives are therefore especially vulnerable.
My team recently met representatives of Little Village, a baby bank organisation that operates mainly in London. They told me that they are expecting to support an additional 1,000 families this year, and that they helped over 6,000 last year. Families cannot just go along to the baby banks; they have to be referred by education, health and social care professionals. These are only the families that have been identified by authorities as being most in need, so we know that the real impact of the cost of living squeeze on families with young children is likely to be much more widespread. Little Village staff told me that pregnant women are skipping meals in order to feed their toddlers, and that families are cutting toes out of their baby onesies to avoid having to buy new ones. This is what families are already having to do to deal with the cost of living crisis. The total number of children in poverty is predicted to rise to 5.2 million by 2023-24—an increase of 1.1 million children. We really need to do more to recognise the size of the households that are being targeted by some of this help.
I also want to mention rural communities and rising fuel prices. The Liberal Democrats want to see an expansion of the rural fuel duty relief scheme. It is currently available only in a handful of remote areas of the UK, but we know that the huge price rises in petrol across the country are having a disproportionate impact in areas where people cannot switch to public transport, particularly the most rural areas. The Government should immediately think about extending the rural fuel duty relief scheme where public transport options are limited, which would include Devon, Cornwall, Shropshire, Cumbria and some parts of Wales, and they should double the relief to 10p a litre. We are seeing real impacts on the rural economy because people are limiting how much they are driving, which affects not just local businesses and the rural economy, but young people accessing educational and employment opportunities. This is something that the Government really must address as a matter of urgency.
I want to take the opportunity to raise the case of my constituent Edna Price, who lost her right arm in a horrifying industrial accident some 45 years ago. Most of her income since then has come from her industrial injuries compensation fund, but this is not a qualifying benefit. For Edna, it causes a number of practical, everyday problems. The income that she earns from the fund is not large, but because it is income from that particular source, and not from pension credit or a qualifying source, she regularly misses out on some of the other, non-financial benefits that are offered to people who are on qualifying benefits. I have written to the Department about Ms Price’s case and would really welcome the opportunity to speak further to the Minister, because Edna will miss out again on this benefit, even though she already struggles to afford her fuel bills. I would very much welcome the opportunity to talk further to the Minister about how my constituent can potentially qualify for some of the other targeted benefits, to supplement her industrial injuries compensation.
I am pleased that the Chancellor is using the social security system to target this payment to households most at risk of hardship. I make the point again that it is a much more effective method than the use of council tax banding to calculate who is eligible for a rebate. In my constituency I think we have, out of all constituencies in the UK, the sixth-highest average house price, which causes residents who live in social housing in my constituency quite a few issues. They are on very low incomes, but the properties they live in often attract a high council tax band valuation, not least because the valuations were done back in the early ’90s on much narrower value bands than I think we would think about using if they were to be done again today.
Too many of my low-income constituents are living in houses that do not qualify for the council tax rebate, in particular those in a number of socially rented homes in the Kingston Borough part of my constituency. When they were valued back in 1991, they were assigned a market value based on the privately sold homes around them. I am thinking of a particular estate in north Kingston with very small homes that house particularly vulnerable people. Those homes have been valued too highly to qualify for the council tax help with fuel bills. If there is anything the Minister can say in summing up, or that we could hear in due course from the Chancellor, on how that could be addressed, I would be very grateful. I wrote to the Department on this issue back in March and I have not had a response. As I say, in a constituency like mine with high housing values, it is a big issue for my low-income constituents.
I would like to close by saying that we welcome the measure in the Bill, but there is still so much more to do and so much more that the Government can do not just in spending, but in thinking about the way they identify people in need of assistance. I welcome the opportunity to hear more about that in due course.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I am sorry you have had to wait, Mr Mills.
Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)
I am grateful, Mr Deputy Speaker. I was not planning to speak, but I have been tempted to say a few words.
There is a danger, in a debate where we have a quite a small audience, that we think that despite spending billions and billions of pounds, this is a small insignificant thing and not one of the biggest spending items the Government have tried to put through in rushed legislation in history. We should recognise that the Government have responded to a probably unprecedented crisis in a very generous and creative way. Those of us who have been wrestling with this issue for the last few months—almost the same crowd were here for the benefits uprating debate in February, pleading for more help and for a more generous uprating—would never have believed that we would see this level of support and ingenuity, given all the financial turmoil the country has been through in recent years. We must give the Government credit for what they have tried to do to help people through what we all hope is a relatively short-term blip, rather than a long-term, sustained problem.
With the £150 through council tax and the £200 loan via energy companies, that certainly seemed to be the original plan: we were hoping we could get people over a few months of a spike, and then things would get back to normal. We have to recognise now that that is not likely to be the case. We will have to have a much higher rise and one that is perhaps sustained for a longer period, unless some very happy events happen around the world and the situation starts to reverse more quickly than everybody seems to think.
For the next few months, the Government need to think about what they are trying to do and where they are trying to get to. The strategy may be to pass this money out on a one-off basis until next year’s upratings, which we hope will have taken into account inflation so that people with income from benefits and pensions will be able to match the raised outgoings and we will have solved the problem. However, I am not convinced that that will be the case if inflation remains at 9% or 10% for a long period. In April, we will be giving people inflation based on the year to September 2022. There could be another 5% of inflation before we get to March and we may well be back in this position in a year’s time.
Some clarity from the Government on the long-term plan would be helpful. We—the Select Committee and others—have been calling for a while for the Government to do some work to rebase benefits and ensure that key household compositions are provided with enough to meet the cost of living so that the increases will maintain that situation. Otherwise, there is a danger that in the next financial year, even with the uprating, people will get less than they had with this year’s benefits plus the one-offs. In that case, people would be worse off in a year’s time, even though their benefits would have gone up, because they would not have gone up by quite enough. We would be back in a similar crisis, needing more one-off payments in the next financial year—repeating those made in this financial year. That does not strike me as a long-term, sustainable way of running a welfare system.
Huge congratulations to the Government for what they have done in the legislation to get us—I hope—through this problem, but they now need to step back and work out the long-term, sustainable way of delivering welfare at a level that meets the essential living standards that we expect it to. I do not think we can get there through haphazard one-offs and increases that are not based on real-terms inflation at the time such provisions are made. A second uprating in a year may be one way of mitigating that. In fact, it would probably help the Government, because when benefits are uprated, there is often a taper, meaning that not everybody gets the full amount, which could result in a bit of cost saving. The Government could also make use of the taper to be more generous at the lower end of the earnings spectrum, with a higher base amount, and less generous at the higher end, accepting that some people would not get the full amount. We are asking not necessarily for huge amounts of extra spending, but for more targeted and better use of the systems that are in place.
It is interesting that in February we were told that the Government could not possibly use any inflation number that was less than six months old because the systems could not cope, yet we now appear to have managed to come up with some ideas in late May and will make the first payment to people about seven weeks later, in the middle of July. That suggests that when there is a will and desire, things can be done at less than six months’ notice. I hope that that will be built on when we get to next year’s uprating, when we could at least try to creep the inflation number from September to December, so that it is only three months out of date by the time we get there.
On ingenuity, the Government’s one-off help payments now involve: a payment by councils, reverse-engineering the council tax system; effectively a payment by energy companies for what was the loan and is now the gift; a payment through the welfare system; a payment through the tax credit system; and a payment that I think is the winter fuel allowance being increased for the year. That is quite a creative way of spreading the workload to make all those payments, but it produces a complicated system, whereby people do not really understand what help they have from who and why, and when they should have had it and if they have received the right amount.
Now that we have some more time to plan, if there are any future rounds—I hope we do not need them, but if we need them, we ought to have them—I would hope that we could find a way of such payments being made through one mechanism, or at least one for benefits and one for pensions. Having a multitude of mechanisms risks people missing out, because they just do not know who they should be checking with, or what they should be claiming and chasing.
It will be far more beneficial to my constituents if they get the first of these payments in the middle of July, as sadly many still have not had the £150 through the reverse running of the council tax system because the council still does not have the approved form to put on its website for people to fill in. That means it cannot make the payment to those who do not pay by direct debit; people still are not receiving the support we wanted them to have in April, and it will probably be a good few weeks before they get it.
There is much to welcome in the legislation. We should not be mealy-mouthed in our praise for the Government, as this is exceptional support at an exceptional time. I hope that we can do what we did through the pandemic: rush things out at the start, and then think them through and develop better systems if we have to do a re-run as the crisis continues.
Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)
This has been a short but useful debate. The Opposition will not oppose or seek to delay these payments, because any measure that puts money into the pockets of people on low incomes is to be welcomed, but it is important that we put on record some concerns about how the situation has come about.
The cost of living crisis hammering millions across the country comes on top of 12 years of a squeeze in living standards for people who have needed to draw on social security at various points to support their income. We went into the pandemic with child poverty rising for larger families, by the relative poverty measure; even by the absolute measure that the Government prefer, larger families are deeper in poverty. That is a consequence of years and years in which parts of the social security system such as tax credits and universal credit were either frozen or uprated by only 1%, even before we take into account the impact of the various caps and deductions.
As a result of the poor state of the social security system in 2020, the Government felt that they had to respond by introducing the £20 uplift, the impact of which can be seen from this spring’s poverty statistics. Of course, we want as many people as possible to do well in employment and receive a rise in real wages so that they do not have to draw on means-tested benefits, but many people need support, particularly families with children. When it is adequate, that support has a real and profound impact on child poverty.
Having lost the £20 uplift last autumn, we are in the midst of a sudden and dramatic surge in inflation: the CPI rate is now at 10 times the level of spring 2021. That has left a large proportion of the population struggling with their bills. In particular, those on the lowest incomes face the lived choice between eating, putting food on the table for their children, heating their homes when it is cold, covering their rent, putting school uniforms on their children’s back, and other essential costs. It remains true that if someone is on a low income, their costs are higher. We know, although it is not built into Government policy, that the poorest pay a premium for their goods and services, and they face the highest inflation. As a consequence of the changes in Government policy and the loss of the £20 uplift last year, the number of children living in poverty will be even higher when we measure it next year.
At every stage, the Government have been on the back foot and running to catch up—a point that my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms), who chairs the Work and Pensions Committee, and the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) both made powerfully. When we debated the uprating, it was already in the context of rising inflation; we discussed the possibility of uprating benefits at a more up-to-date level that reflected real-world price rises, but it was found that that could not happen. There were a set of measures, including assistance with council tax, that were poorly targeted and difficult to administer. Weeks later, the Government had to come back with a larger package of measures than would otherwise have been required.
If the Government had been able to update social security this spring to be more in line with inflation, additional assistance would undoubtedly have been needed, but we would not have required the same level of emergency package. Importantly—this is the central point—pensioners and families would have had an income in their pocket, week by week, so that they could plan and manage their finances. That would undoubtedly have been a better way for households to cope with the rising crisis than having to manage one-off emergency payments from different sources. Many of those families, because they did not get that assistance in April, even though it is only a few months later when the first of these payments will be made, will have found themselves in debt—in financial difficulty—in the interim. The debt that families get into is itself expensive. There cannot be many Members who have not been dealing with constituents who have come to them because they are facing bailiffs at their door, or are caught in payments schemes that have left them struggling with very high repayments, because of the difficulties that they have got into.
It is simply not the case that one-off payments were the only way of delivering timely support to families on means-tested benefits. While welcoming, as I said, any support—and it is a large package of support that we are considering today—it is clear that this approach is still going to lead to a lot of rough justice that would have been mitigated had a broader package of support been put in place, when there was time, through the mainstream social security system.
Entitlement to the one-off payments is triggered by receipt of one of the means-tested benefits in the month leading up to one of the qualifying days. This means that people’s circumstances in just two months of the year are taken into account, so families who have the same income and face the same cost of living pressures over the course of the year could wind up being treated very differently depending on the point of the year at which they are dipping into an application for a means-tested benefit. Some will receive the initial support and some will not. The problem is that people’s circumstances change all the time, not just in two months of the year, and the numbers involved are very large. For example, every three months about 1 million people of working age leave employment, becoming unemployed or economically inactive. At the moment, an even larger number move into new employment. However, it is the scale of the churn rather than the net outcome that is important. Similarly, there are about 150,000 starts on universal credit every month, the great majority due to changes in family circumstances. With families moving on and off benefits the whole time, a one-off payment that is tied to just two dates in the year is inevitably a crude approach to matching funding to need.
I am particularly concerned about how people with fluctuating incomes will fare under this policy. The Bill provides that only people in receipt of a benefit payment of at least 1p in the month leading up to the qualifying day are entitled to the one-off payment, but universal credit is supposed to adjust to fluctuations in income on a monthly basis. Some people will be entitled to no payment in one month and payment in the next month, depending on their earnings. Indeed, one of the selling points of universal credit was that people would not have to make a new claim every time their earnings fluctuated above and below the cut-off level. It therefore seems inevitable that large numbers of people, employed and self-employed, with low and irregular incomes will be denied help under this policy in a completely arbitrary way.
The Government need to clarify what steps they intend to take to mitigate this risk. Is it really necessary to insist that only people who have actually received a payment in the month leading up to the qualifying day should receive help? Should all self-employed people whose universal credit is reduced to zero in one of those periods, solely due to the operation of the minimum income floor, be excluded from support? We have also heard about the limitations of these measures in terms of adjusting to family size. That is one of the critical ways in which delivering directly through universal credit, and indeed legacy benefits, was preferable and more sensitive to the needs of families.
Emergency and one-off measures such as those in this Bill have a place in exceptional circumstances, but they do not give people living desperately precarious lives the security they need. They do not, in many cases, match individual circumstances as the social security system does, however imperfectly. Any and all measures that help us to relieve hardship in these difficult times are welcome, but overall our social security system needs to be more fit for purpose, just as the wider economy needs to be more fit for purpose—more resilient and more productive, with decent and secure employment opportunities and investment in the future.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (David Rutley)
I thank those who have contributed to this debate. I echo the points made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to stress the importance of this urgent legislation to support people up and down the country. The sharp increase in the cost of living is a challenge shared across the globe due to the aftershocks of covid on global supply, amplified by Russia’s unacceptable invasion of Ukraine. This Bill is the flagship component of our bold package of cost of living additional payments which have been designed to help people to cope with increased costs.
We are grateful for the support of Opposition Front Benchers in facilitating the speedy progress of the legislation. It is vital that these payments get to the people who need them. I am also very grateful for the contributions that have highlighted that these are a serious response to serious challenges, such as those made by the Chair of the Select Committee, the right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms), as well as by my right hon. Friend the Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb) and my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills).
The support provided through this Bill is timely and comprehensive, and we are taking significant steps and targeting resource to support those in greatest need. The spirit of this Bill is in line with the approach that the Government have taken since the start of the pandemic, which has been shown to deliver for the people of this country in challenging times. We will continue to work hard to help people on low incomes get the support that they need.
We have worked hard through the vaccine roll-out, through the dedication of amazing people, to reopen society, and our economy has responded positively. There are record numbers of people in payroll employment, unemployment is just 3.8%, which is around the lowest level since the 1970s, and there are 1.3 million vacancies, which we are working diligently with employers and communities to fill. My hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) will be pleased to know that, given his focus on work.
With all the work going on to help get people into work and progress in work, we recognise that people do need additional support in dealing with the cost of living challenges. That is why the Chancellor has set out his generous package, with another £15 billion of targeted support, which brings our total package to £35 billion this year alone. Of these additional payments, a particularly important one is the means-tested benefit that will provide a £650 one-off cost of living payment. It will be paid in two instalments to recipients entitled to qualifying means-tested benefits or tax credit. The first starts on 14 July and the second, of £324, later in the year. The hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) asked if there could be one payment. I understand the point she made, but we have consciously staggered the payments to help people on low incomes with their budgeting, which I hope she will welcome. The other important element of the Bill is providing disability cost of living payments of £150, which will go to 6 million people in the United Kingdom and will be paid in September.
We have deliberately kept the rules of the additional cost of living payments as simple as possible, because that is the way we can ensure that we develop the systems and processes required to make the payments at pace. I pay tribute to the hard work of officials across the Government to make that possible.
There are a number of contributions in the debate to which I need to respond. The benefit cap was raised by the right hon. Members for East Ham and for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) and also by my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley. We have kept the payments very simple both for those receiving them and for Government systems. They are tax-free, they will not impact on benefit entitlement or the benefit cap, and they will be paid to people without the need for paperwork. They will be paid into people’s bank accounts.
The hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) made points about uprating. Of course, as the Secretary of State said in her speech at the start of the debate, there will be an annual review of benefits and pensions for the tax year 2023-24, which will commence in the autumn as per convention.
Some hon. Members have highlighted the legacy systems and pensions, and asked why we cannot do uprating more frequently. I think we know that the legacy systems are not that agile. Of course, what we are trying to do and working very hard to do—recognising how flexible universal credit is and how resilient it has proven through the pandemic—is to move people through to universal credit by the end of 2024.
Sir Stephen Timms
I want to go back to what the Minister said about the benefit cap, and I welcome the point he made. Does he recognise that, in a very high inflation environment, there really is quite a compelling case for looking again at the level of the benefit cap for next year alongside the other benefit uprating matters?
David Rutley
There is a statutory duty to review benefit cap levels at least once every five years, and this will happen at the appropriate time. When the Secretary of State decides to undertake the review, she will consider the national economic situation and any other matters she considers relevant at that moment in time.
I reiterate that carer’s allowance is not a means-tested benefit. Nearly 60% of working-age people on carer’s allowance will get the cost of living payment as they are on means-tested benefits or disability benefits. Carer’s allowance recipients will benefit from the £400 per household universal support being provided to help with the cost of energy bills.
People who receive carer’s allowance may live in a household that will benefit from the Government’s support package. For example, they may live with someone who receives a means-tested benefit, a disability benefit or tax credits. If so, the household will benefit from the cost of living payment.
The hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) has asked me in a number of debates why this measure does not more fully reflect different family sizes and formations. The challenge is trying to get these payments out as fast as possible. To do that, we need to get the payments out to “single benefit units,” as they are described, and households. The important thing to highlight is that most low-income families will be able to receive the £150 council tax support and the energy bill support, on top of the work allowance taper and the increase in the national living wage.
It is not possible to distinguish between those who have a permanent increase in their earnings and those whose earnings are temporarily fluctuating. If a UC claimant’s income subsequently falls, they will return to having a positive award after the cut-off date, and they may be eligible for the second payment.
The right hon. Member for Leicester South talked about the minimum income floor, which ensures we do not prop up unproductive employment or self-employment indefinitely. There is a start-up period to protect newly self-employed people. Beyond that, having a minimum income floor is the right policy. If it means there is a nil UC payment, the claimant would not be entitled to the means-tested payment. However, they would get the £400 energy payment and the £150 council tax rebate, and they would potentially be eligible for the household support fund. It is worth recognising that there are paid employment opportunities out there, given the high level of vacancies.
We have heard about the take-up of pension credit, and I am sitting next to the expert, the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman).
David Rutley
Whatever we want to call him, he will take this forward with aplomb, that is for sure.
There was a serious question about why the number of means-tested benefit recipients will fall in the second cost of living payment period, and it is because the projections reflect mortality rates. However, they do not reflect the important work many of us are doing to raise awareness, so hopefully many more people will claim it.
I think I have now answered most of the questions. The hon. Member for Richmond Park asked about industrial injuries disablement benefit, on which I would be more than willing to talk to her separately. We should not underestimate the additional payments from the household support fund to help people with the cost of essentials. The Chancellor announced another £500 million in his latest statement, and it will be available from October 2022 to March 2023.
In England, the £421 million household support fund will be administered by local authorities, and the devolved Administrations will receive £79 million through the Barnett formula. Importantly, there will be new guidance to local authorities on this latest extension of the household support fund to reflect the fact that some people who are not able to secure these additional payments will be able to go to their local council to secure support.
Kirsty Blackman
Some household support funds ran out months earlier than expected. Does the Minister expect the new funds will be sufficient and will last as long as they are supposed to last?
David Rutley
The current tranche of household support fund is on top of all the other benefits we have talked about. As we have said, these are substantial additional support payments that are being made available, and the £500 million on top is there to help those people who have further needs with the cost of essentials. Further guidance will be made available.
We are working at unparalleled pace to get money into people’s pockets. It is vital that we meet the deadline for Royal Assent by 30 June, after a fast-tracked passage, so that we do not create a strong risk that we fail to make payments in July. We want to make sure that the most vulnerable people in our society—people on low incomes, people with disabilities—get the payments and support that they need. As I have highlighted already, this payment package in total comes to £37 billion this year alone. The Bill helps to deliver key elements of the support package to those who need it most. I strongly support these measures and commend the Bill to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read a Second time; to stand committed to a Committee of the whole House (Order, this day).
Further proceedings on the Bill stood postponed (Order, this day).
Social Security (Additional Payments) Bill: Money
Queen’s recommendation signified.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 52(1)(a)),
That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Social Security (Additional Payments) Bill, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of:
(1) a sum not exceeding £326 to anyone who is entitled, in respect of 25 May 2022, to—
(a) universal credit or state pension credit,
(b) an income-based jobseeker’s allowance, an income-related employment and support allowance or income support, or
(c) working tax credit or child tax credit;
(2) a sum not exceeding £324 to anyone who is entitled, in respect of a day after 25 May 2022 and not later than 31 October 2022, to a benefit mentioned in paragraph (1);
(3) a sum which, together with any sum paid as mentioned in paragraph (1) or (2), does not exceed £650 to anyone who receives a working tax credit or child tax credit of at least £26 in the tax year 2022- 23;
(4) a sum not exceeding £150 to anyone who is entitled, in respect of 25 May 2022, to—
(a) a disability living allowance,
(b) a personal independence payment,
(c) an attendance allowance or a constant attendance allowance,
(d) an adult or child disability payment,
(e) an armed forces independence payment, or
(f) a mobility supplement.—(Michael Tomlinson.)
Question agreed to.
Social Security (Additional Payments) Bill
Wednesday 22nd June 2022
(2 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Social Security (Additional Payments) Act 2022 View all Social Security (Additional Payments) Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Committee of the whole House Amendments as at 22 June 2022 - (22 Jun 2022)
The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Nigel Evans)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Clauses 2 to 11 stand part.
New clause 1— Assessment of bringing forward the second qualifying day—
‘The Treasury must publish, no later than six weeks after the day in which this Act is passed, an illustrative analysis of the impact of this Act on household incomes if the second qualifying date was no later than 1 October.’
New clause 2—Assessment of cost of living support package—
‘(1) The Treasury must publish, no later than the next fiscal event after the day on which this Act is passed, a full and detailed analysis of the impact of this Act on households.
(2) The Treasury may include in the analysis the effect of support for households announced in February 2022 in response to recent energy price rises.
(3) The analysis must include an estimate, based on the latest available reliable data, of the impact on household incomes of—
(a) payments made under this Act to households on mean-tested benefits,
(b) payments made under this Act to recipients of disability benefits.
(4) The analysis must show impacts across all deciles of household income distribution—
(a) in cash terms, and
(b) as proportion of net household income.
(5) The analysis must take into account where relevant differing policy contexts in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
(6) The analysis must include an assessment of the impact of this Act on households of different types, including singleparent families, larger families, and pensioner households.’
New clause 3—Payment date—
‘The Secretary of State and HMRC must seek to make all payment due under this Act no later than 14 July 2022.’
New clause 4—Review of distributional effects—
‘The Secretary of State and the Treasury must make a joint assessment of the distributional effects of this Act on—
(a) rural communities;
(b) families eligible for free school meals;
(c) unpaid carers; and
(d) households in each income decile
no later than six weeks after this Act is passed and must lay a copy of the assessment before both Houses of Parliament.’
David Rutley
We have had a useful debate on Second Reading and I welcome the chance for more detailed examination of the Bill in Committee of the whole House. We had an extensive debate, with some probing questions, so I will endeavour—with the support of the Opposition Front Bench and your permission, Mr Evans —to move as fast we can through the Committee stage.
Clause 1 will ensure that the £326 and £324 cost of living payments totalling £650 will be made to an individual or couple who have a qualifying entitlement to a social security benefit or tax credit. The clause also sets out the qualifying benefits and tax credits. Where a claimant is entitled to both a qualifying social security benefit and a tax credit, the social security benefit will be the qualifying benefit for the purpose of receiving a cost of living payment.
Clause 2 sets out who is eligible for the two payments that make up the £650 cost of living payment. It ensures that only those with the entitlement to a positive payment or award in respect of the passporting social security benefit or tax credit will receive a cost of living payment. The aim is to ensure that we target payments to those on the lowest incomes. The clause also defines the relevant eligibility period in relation to the qualifying days set out in clause 1.
Nigel Mills
The Minister will be aware that there are some situations in which an employer pays a month’s wages late, wages are paid on a four-weekly cycle and two payments are made in a month, rather than one, or a one-off bonus is paid in a certain month. Those situations could mean that someone who ordinarily gets a UC payment in a month has a month in which they are entitled to nothing. If that happened to be the month that was used for the qualifying payment in this situation, the person would miss out on the whole £326. Would the Minister be tempted to use a two-month period, so if someone gets at least 1p in either month they would get the £326, rather than risk the strange one-offs that could wipe out someone’s monthly payment?
David Rutley
I understand the point that my hon. Friend makes. We have already talked about fluctuating earnings. The important thing here is that we have had to define these eligibility periods to be able to get the payments out speedily, and we have also made sure that there is a protection mechanism. There is a wider package of support that is available other than just the £650 cost of living means-tested benefit. There is also the further funding of the household support fund, which will help these individuals.
Clause 3 addresses the situation in which a person has a qualifying entitlement to a social security benefit or a tax credit more than once. It ensures that, where the person is entitled to both universal credit and another social security benefit, they will receive the cost of living payment as a result of their entitlement to universal credit only.
Where a claimant is entitled to both a qualifying social security benefit and a tax credit, the social security benefit will be the qualifying benefit for the purpose of receiving a cost of living payment. Where a person is entitled to both child tax credit and working tax credit, but not a qualifying social security benefit, they will receive the cost of living payment as a result of their entitlement to child tax credit only. That will ensure that a person does not receive duplicate cost of living payments irrespective of whether they have a qualifying entitlement to more than one passported social security benefit or tax credit.
Clause 4 places a duty on Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to make a cost of living payment to people whose entitlement to qualifying tax credits only becomes apparent at a later date. The clause will ensure that those people will not miss out, which is a point that has been raised by others in this debate.
Clause 5 places a duty on the Secretary of State to make a disability cost of living payment of £150 to 6 million people who receive eligibility benefit in respect of 25 May 2022. This disability cost of living payment will support disabled people with the additional costs they may face. The clause also sets out the eligible benefits, or the qualifying benefits, for this particular additional payment. To be eligible, the person must have been entitled to a payment of one of these benefits in respect of 25 May 2022.
Clause 6 confirms that the administration rules used for each cost of living payment are the same as the benefit or payment that conferred the eligibility. Clause 7 provides for co-operation between the Secretary of State, the Department for Work and Pensions and HMRC in the delivery of cost of living payments. The scale and scope of the measure also require collaboration with other colleagues across government. Together, the bodies set out in the clause ensure that the intended recipients of the cost of living support are paid. There is a need to have data sharing to minimise the risk of duplicate payments and to support operational delivery.
On clause 8, some important points have been raised on this already on Second Reading. It ensures that the cost of living payments are disregarded for the purposes of tax and social security. I can confirm that the cost of living and the disability cost of living payments are exempt from tax. Payments will not affect a person’s entitlement to social security benefits or tax credits, either as capital or as income. I can also confirm that the payments will not be subject to the benefit cap.
Nigel Mills
When my hon. Friend says that they will be disregarded as capital, does that mean that, if somebody quite prudently puts the money in the bank and saves for their high energy bills in the winter, that would not take them over the £16,000 savings limit for universal credit? Effectively, they could ignore not just the receipt of the income, but that part of their savings as well if they were to treat them in that way.
David Rutley
Just to clarify, yes. That is the important thing. The clause ensures that every person who is entitled to a cost of living payment receives every penny, as all Members across the Chamber will want to see.
Clause 9 sets out the definition and interpretation of certain terms used in the Bill. Clause 10 explains the procedures for laying the regulations, previously referred to under the powers contained in clause 1(4), to specify the qualifying day for the second cost of living payment, which will be no later than 31 October, and clause 6(5), to apply and disapply regulations around the administration of payments, including overpayments and recovery, as is required. These provisions ensure that regulations made under the Bill can enable the efficient delivery of the second payment in the autumn. Finally, clause 11 defines the territorial extent of the Bill, whose provisions extend to England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. This ensures that the payments will be payable throughout the United Kingdom.
Ms Buck
I thank the Minister for that introduction. There is clearly no need for me to cover the points that we discussed on Second Reading, but I will make a few comments about new clauses 1 and 2.
As the Minister said, the Bill as drafted states that the second qualifying date is to be no later than the 31st of October, which allows for a span of several weeks during which the date could be set. In her introductory remarks, the Secretary of State talked about the need to keep that open because of the potential behavioural impact. It would be helpful if the Minister told us a little about why the Department reached that conclusion.
As we know, families and household are looking for clarity. We expect the energy cap to rise significantly again in the autumn, and there is real fear and anxiety in the country about what energy price inflation, and general inflation, are doing to household incomes. People are looking for certainty, and the sooner they are able to know exactly when their qualifying period will be and when the payment will be made, the better it will be for those families. It would also be helpful for us to know what the implications are of a qualifying date that could be one month early, so as to cover the span of options for that date. Although, we will not be seeking to press these amendments to a vote, can the Minister advise on whether he will be able to pick up that point and come back to us with answers?
New clause 2 would address the distribution and the equality impact assessment. We have indeed had some analysis from the Treasury, and we have had some looks at the economic distributional impact and the decile impact. As we would expect from measures heavily directed towards means-tested benefits, they are indeed progressive, and that is absolutely right, but the single most important topic that we discussed in the short Second Reading was the downside of single payments that are household unit payments and therefore do not reflect differences in household composition. The impact assessment does not give us that information, and it is critical that we have it, so I will press the Minister on the point. We need a much fuller assessment of what the Treasury expects to be the impact of a reliance on single payments, rather than an accurate updating within the benefits system. We also need, as soon as possible after the first payments have been made, an assessment of the actual impact in terms of the distribution.
Household composition is probably the single most important of the areas of analysis that we need to track. It is the one that is worrying people the most and where the disparity between a direct payment through the social security system and a one-off payment is most marked. We want to see analysis that looks at different recipient groups and at the impact on pensioners, on people with disabilities, on families, on single people and on working people of the distribution of the payments as they go out. It would be helpful also to look at how different working groups are affected, such as the self-employed, who we have discussed, and working households as opposed to households on out-of-work benefits.
The other area on which I will spend a couple of minutes in the context of analysis is the various payments that have been distributed through local government and how we can look at their impact. The Minister has repeated that his principal aim was to try and get benefit payments out as quickly as possible to those who need them most. In fact, the February announcement of the distribution of income through local authorities, through council tax, does the exact opposite. As I am sure he is aware, local authorities have had to go to the considerable length of writing to every household that pays council tax other than through direct debit, wait for them to respond, wait for them to provide information confirming who they are and their entitlement, and then to send the payment out. That of course means that large numbers of people reliant on that £150 have not yet had it, and it is likely to be weeks and weeks still before those families actually get the payment.
The payment requires people to deal with official correspondence, and I do not know whether Ministers have seen some of the letters that have gone out from local authorities, but I certainly have, and I struggle to understand them. A number of those forms have gone out without any reference to people on council tax support, for example, so people do not know that they are likely to be covered by the scheme. It is important therefore that we understand a distributional impact of the household support funds and of the distribution of funds by local authorities.
The Government have been keen to stress the value of those schemes, that they are locally sensitive and that local government has an important role to play in delivering them. That may be the case, but as the Opposition have said all along, it is undoubtedly a more complex and bureaucratic system for delivering help into people’s hands than uprating and delivering that directly through the social security system. Given what we know about inflation and energy costs soaring and the likelihood that we will have to return to this place to consider more emergency support later in the year, it is critical that we understand exactly how the delivery of the Government’s support package affects people, who it affects and whether it is the best way to provide help to people in need.
Kirsty Blackman
I have a few things to say about the specifics of the Bill and the points that have been raised in the debate. I understand the Minister’s point about the second qualifying date and the Secretary of State’s earlier point about not wanting to make clear what that is. I will not argue with that, but I have a question about the timelines for the payment.
We had a qualifying date of 27 May and we are looking at the payment being made on 14 July, which is a significant lag. If there is a similar length of time between the second qualifying date and that additional payment, people may not get it until nearly Christmas. The Minister was clear that the support is being given in two payments partly to help with budgeting, and people would like some certainty about the dates on which the payments will be made. I will not press him on the qualifying date; as I said, I do not necessarily disagree with the choice to not publish that now and to bring it forward through negative delegated legislation, which makes some sense.
The other issue for people relates to the other payments that they may be able to receive. We have heard from the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) that people have not necessarily received a council tax payment and do not know when they might receive that money. For people who are struggling now, it would help to have some certainty about when the payments will come. I do not think the legislation has even been brought forward for the £400 for energy bills; I am not aware when that will happen or when those dates will be. The Government are saying that there will be £1,200 for some families, and it would be really helpful for people to know when they are likely to receive that potential income so that they can plan.
On the negative resolution that will be brought forward to set the second qualifying date, I assume that we are not likely to see that until after the summer recess. If the Minister can confirm that that is the case, it would be helpful for us to understand that. If he cannot do that, that is fine.
The hon. Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) talked about people who get two payments in a month, because they are paid on a four-weekly basis or because they receive bonuses or anything of that sort. It would be helpful if the Minister, when he sets the second qualifying date, tries to ensure that it is not in a cycle that will disadvantage the same people twice. If the date means that people whose universal credit is paid on a cyclical basis—for a significant number of people, it is clear that there is a regular cycle every three months—lose out on the £324 and the £326, even though they are regular universal credit claimants over the year, I would be concerned that the Government were not doing that in the right way. The hon. Gentleman’s suggestion of doing it over a two-month period would probably have been a better way to do it than the way that the Government are proposing. As was stated, if further additional cost of living payments need to be made to people in future, perhaps it would be helpful for the Minister to consider that.
In the context of making payments too quickly, the Minister mentioned the recovery of incorrect payments and how that might work, or need to work. He said that if payments are made too quickly, people might receive a payment that they are not entitled to and then it would need to be clawed back. Given how he phrased that, I am slightly concerned that we might end up with people through no fault of their own receiving payments in error that they think they are entitled to, who then have them clawed back from future payments from the DWP. We have seen that over the years with tax credits and how people are still paying back legacy benefit overpayments that they received, and we have seen the pain and suffering that that can cause people.
David Rutley
I am grateful for the contributions made; I will respond to them briefly. On Scottish qualifying benefits, yes, individuals will be able to receive the £150. As for the second payment, we are having to be careful in setting out the details definitively because of fraudulent behaviour. We certainly saw that with other payments made during the pandemic, so, now that we know the levels of fraud going on around benefits, we cannot be as explicit as perhaps we might have been. However, I assure hon. Members that consideration of the regulations on the second payment will take place after recess.
The other point made was about the timing of cycles. That is important, and we will do everything that we can to ensure that the cycles do not align, so that people who may not have been able to qualify for the first payment will be able to qualify. It will be difficult, because we are moving at extreme pace and with huge volumes of claimants, but we will do everything we can to assist those individuals.
It is not often that the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) says things that I completely support and agree with, but she did on this occasion. All of us, and particularly the Government, need to do a lot more on communication about these payments. There are lots of them, and they are targeted, so there is a duty on us to communicate clearly when these things are going to happen. However, there are reasons why we cannot be as clear on the timing of the second payment.
I understand the point made by the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) on household composition. Sometimes, it would be great to have more data in these situations, but we have produced an impact analysis—that is not always the case in these situations—to ensure that colleagues can understand what is available for their constituents at constituency level. We have also seen the distribution analysis that looks at comparator groups. That is really important data, and I think that it helps to paint a pretty broad picture of how these payments will help vulnerable and low-income families across the United Kingdom.
The household support fund will indeed ensure that we can provide support to people with the cost of essentials. It is vital that local authorities do the work and report back to Government on the work that they have been doing. I hope that, with those points, I have made the case for hon. Members not to press their new clauses.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 1 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 2 to 11 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
The Deputy Speaker resumed the Chair.
Bill reported, without amendment.
Third Reading
4.50 pm
David Rutley
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
I thank the DWP Bill team and the cross-Government officials who have stood up to deliver this legislation and the payment mechanisms at pace. I also thank the House authorities, parliamentary staff, Clerks, Doorkeepers and Members across the House who have participated in today’s debates.
The Bill reflects the Government’s commitment to supporting low-income households and disabled people across the United Kingdom. Due to the current economic circumstances, many people need additional support to alleviate the financial pressures caused by the cost of living challenge. That is why this Government are providing a significant package of support worth £37 billion this year alone. It includes a £150 council tax rebate in England, £400 of support through the energy bills support scheme, a £650 cost of living payment for people entitled to qualifying means-tested benefits, a £150 disability cost of living payment for people entitled to a qualifying disability payment, and £300 in additional support for pensioners through a top-up to winter fuel payments. In practice this means people in receipt of UC or another qualifying means-tested benefit could receive £1,200 in additional support, which could increase to £1,350 if an individual also receives a qualifying disability benefit.
The Bill provides the Government with the necessary powers to administer the £650 cost of living payment and the £150 disability cost of living payment. These payments will provide targeted support to 8 million people including some pensioners and 6 million disabled people. We want to ensure these payments are in people’s bank accounts as soon as possible. We intend to begin phasing in payments from 14 July, subject to the Bill securing Royal Assent on 30 June.
This Bill is a further demonstration of the action this Government are taking to support people across the country and I commend it to the House.
Jonathan Ashworth
I join the Minister in thanking the Clerks, the Bill team and Members across the House who have spoken, and I thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for guiding us to what looks like an early finish with skill, as always. I also thank the Minister for the courtesy with which he has responded to the queries Members have raised; I did not always agree or get the answer I wanted, but I appreciate the way in which he engaged, with great detail and politely endeavouring to answer all points.
As I said on Second Reading, we do not intend to stand in the way of this Bill at all; we totally understand the need for the Secretary of State to make arrangements for these payments to be delivered swiftly, although we believe that the Government should have acted sooner. The result of not acting sooner has been considerable anxiety and hardship for many of our constituents, many of whom have already had to grapple with the £20 cut to universal credit and other measures such as the pernicious two-child policy over many years.
Many Members have raised the various hard edges still in place because of the flat-payment nature of the legislation. One way of dealing with that would have been by bringing forward a benefit uprating, and it is curious that Ministers told us that that was not possible, given that it was done in 1975 by the then Secretary of State for Health and Social Services, Barbara Castle, who said that two upratings in a year would be introduced because of exceptionally high rates of inflation. If they could do it in 1975, it is curious that we cannot do it 40-odd years later. The position of the Conservative party in those days was that uprating should happen twice a year. That was Norman Fowler’s position.
I was grateful to the Secretary of State for what she said in response to my question about the uprating for next year. With respect to the triple lock and the uprating of other pensions, we have heard from the Chancellor that they will be uprated in line with figures in September, but we can see the pressure that is being put on the Government by some voices in the media and so on. The Secretary of State said that those matters would be reviewed, as per the legislation. I hope that does not turn out to be a get-out clause for the Government on the triple lock and benefit uprating later this year. We will be watching these issues like a hawk.
Our big worry, although we will not stand in the way of the Bill, is that the Government still have no serious plan to deal with the ravages of inflation. There has been debate across the Chamber today about the second payment, but with inflation where it is today, that second payment, if paid in November or December, would, by my rough calculation, in real terms lose value from the £324 that the Government are legislating for to about £307 because of the levels of inflation. I fear that, unless the Government get a grip of inflation, they will have to come back to the House with an autumn statement or another emergency Budget, to pursue other measures to help some of the poorest and most vulnerable in our society.
We will not divide the House tonight. We welcome the legislation as far as it goes, but I fear that further help will be needed very soon.
Kirsty Blackman
I also join in the thanks, particularly to the Clerks’ team, who have been incredibly helpful, as ever. I expect nothing less, and have never received anything less from the House of Commons staff; they are always excellent. I also echo the Minister’s thanks to all those in DWP and HMRC who will be working so hard; we appreciate the additional work that it will mean, and has already meant, to get these things in place. We are massively supportive of all those staff who will be doing a really difficult job, and potentially working an awful lot, in order to pull this off. That is massively appreciated.
The provisions in the Bill, although welcome, although additional and although they go towards the cost of living, do not cover the cost of living increases that our constituents face. They do not even cover the energy price increases, never mind the inflation on the most basic foods which people just have to buy. You cannot get away without buying pasta, rice or bread. People are stuck with the massive price increases in those foods; they have to buy those things. There has already been a time lag—people are not getting the payments today, although I appreciate that they are getting them quickly—and people will already be feeling the squeeze and struggling. The £326 on the horizon is great; it is helpful, but it is not enough. It does not provide the level of support that uprating benefits in April could have provided, which would have helped with that squeeze resulting from the cost of living.
The one really big thing that the Government could do today to make a massive difference to people’s lives would be to put up the pretendy living wage to a real living wage—a wage that people can actually live on. That is reserved to Westminster—the Scottish Government do not have the powers to do that—and it would make a difference to people. The hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) was talking about the hard work that his constituents do and the amount of money that people get on benefits. The thing is that 40% of the people on universal credit are in work. A huge number of the people going to food banks and their children are in households with at least one parent in work. I get that the Government want to get people into work, but people are in work and still cannot afford to live. They still have to have this top-up from the Government. The Government can help to fix that problem by increasing the minimum wage to a real living wage and giving it to everybody who is over 18, removing the inherent ageism.
The other thing that the Government have missed and failed on in this Bill relates to people who have no recourse to public funds. Those people are, by definition, missed. That is the intention of what the Government are doing, but we can see that the most destitute, desperate people in our society are those who have no recourse to public funds. The Bill fails to provide support to anybody who is not on the gateway benefits or to anybody who is struggling but does not fit into the criteria. This is particularly acute when people have no recourse to public funds. We are seeing children literally starving because their parents have no recourse to public funds. Some of these cases involve people who are fleeing domestic abuse and are not eligible for the destitution domestic violence concession because they are, for example, an EU citizen or because their partner was a student. There are a lot of problems with this.
Another thing that is missing is that we do not know when we are going to get the legislation on the pensioner cost of living payments. If the Minister could let us know when that legislation is coming, that would be very helpful. Could he also let us know when we are going to get the energy bills support scheme legislation? This Bill is only part of the package. We have been discussing the whole package, but this legislation only brings in a bit of it. The right hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb) asked me earlier where the money was going to come from to pay for all this, but we do not yet have any legislation on the charges that are going to be made on the energy companies. If we could just have had a timeline for when we could expect that legislation to come in, we would not have been in this situation, with this Bill appearing a week before we go through every single process in the Bill. MPs need longer to look at these other pieces of legislation that are coming through, and if the Government could do anything to ensure that we get even slightly more time to scrutinise the legislation as it comes in, that would be appreciated. As I have said, I thank the Government for bringing forward this package, but it is not enough. They need to go further, and they need to uprate benefits and backdate that to April, but we welcome this package.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.
Business of the House (Today)
Ordered,
That, at this day’s sitting—
(1) the Speaker shall put the questions necessary to dispose of proceedings on the motion in the name of Mark Spencer relating to the Speaker’s Conference not later than one hour after the commencement of proceedings on the motion for this order; such questions shall include the questions on any amendments selected by the Speaker which may then be moved; and the business may be proceeded with, though opposed, after the moment of interruption; and
(2) Standing Order No. 41A (deferred divisions) shall not apply to either the business relating to the Speaker’s Conference or to the business relating to the Committee on Standards.—(Michael Tomlinson.)
Speaker’s Conference
(2 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Leader of the House of Commons (Mark Spencer)
I beg to move,
That this House considers that it is desirable to consider the employment conditions of Members’ staff in order to ensure a more inclusive and respectful working environment, and accordingly agrees that the following Order be made:
(1) There shall be a committee to be known as the Speaker’s Conference which shall consist of the Speaker, who shall be Chair, and up to 14 other Members appointed by the Speaker.
(2) The Speaker shall appoint one or more of the members of the Conference to act as vice-Chair in his absence.
(3) The Conference shall consider and make recommendations upon the contractual arrangements for the employment of Members’ staff.
(4) Notwithstanding any Standing Order of this House, the Conference shall conduct its proceedings in such manner as the Speaker shall determine.
(5) The Conference, and any sub committees thereof that the Speaker shall appoint, shall have power—
(a) to send for persons, papers and records, to sit notwithstanding any adjournment of the House and to adjourn from place to place;
(b) to report from time to time;
(c) to appoint legal advisers, and to appoint specialist advisers either to supply information which is not readily available or to elucidate matters of complexity within the committee’s order of reference.
(6) The Conference shall produce its first report to the House, which shall include a description of the principles underpinning its work, no later than 31 October 2022.
(7) The quorum of the Conference shall be five.
(8) This Order shall have effect until the end of the current Parliament.
I bring forward the motion on behalf of Mr Speaker to establish a Speaker’s Conference to consider and make recommendations on the employment conditions of members of staff in order to ensure a more inclusive and respectful working environment. The treatment and safety of those who work on the estate is paramount, and I pay tribute to Mr Speaker for bringing this matter to the forefront of our attention today. I commend him for working across parties and across the House to make sure that this motion was brought before us in the House today.
As all Members will be aware, under our current system, individual MPs are responsible for the employment of their own staff. This is a long-standing practice. The Speaker’s Conference will be able to consider whether this remains appropriate. I do not seek to answer that question today, and I do not think this is the moment to debate it, but, should the House agree to today’s motion and the accompanying memorandum from the Clerk of the House, the conference will approach this task without any preconceptions.
Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)
Paragraph 6 stipulates:
“The conference shall produce its first report to the House…no later than 31 October 2022.”
In view of the fact that there are two scheduled parliamentary recesses between now and that date, does my right hon. Friend not think that that is rather ambitious?
Mark Spencer
I thank my right hon. Friend for that question. That would be an interim report. It is my understanding that Mr Speaker would draw the Committee together, and establish a narrative and what it is looking at. I think the report would be an early opportunity for Members to get a sense of the Committee’s direction of travel.
Hon. Members will be aware that Speaker’s Conferences are not common. I think the most recent one was in 2008, which is before I and many other Members were elected to this place. It was established to look at the representation of women, ethnic minorities and disabled people in this place. It proved to make progress in that direction. I hope that this Speaker’s Conference will be as effective as the 2008 conference. It will be a Committee of the House of Commons, so it will have the powers and legal protections that that entails. That will ensure that it can secure any evidence it needs and that evidence will be given to it freely.
Angela Richardson (Guildford) (Con)
On paragraph 5(a), which talks about powers, is it my right hon. Friend’s understanding that Members of Parliament and current members of staff will be fully consulted in that process?
Mark Spencer
I would fully expect that the Speaker’s Conference will take representations from Members. Once we are aware of which Members are on the Committee—I encourage my hon. Friend to make representations to the Whips Office if she wants to be considered—all Members will be able to feed into the process.
The Speaker’s Conference will include Mr Speaker and 14 other Members. Mr Speaker will appoint those Members with regard to party representation. He will have full discussions with party representatives to give them the opportunity to feed those names in. As the motion sets out, the Speaker’s Conference will have the powers enjoyed by all other Select Committees. As I said to my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight), it will report its preliminary findings no later than 31 October. As was the case with the Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme, which was set up for the employment of Members and staff, it is ultimately a matter for this House to decide how we progress.
I pay tribute to my predecessors, my right hon. Friends the Members for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) and for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom), who made great strides in establishing the ICGS. It provided a dedicated independent mechanism for the handling of complaints of bullying, harassment and sexual misconduct.
The Speaker’s Conference will be an opportunity to improve the working culture and to continue to make progress in that direction. The Government have made it clear that there is no place in this building or in this Parliament for bullying, harassment or sexual harassment. As Leader of the House, I am determined that we do all we can to ensure that that does not happen. With cross-party support, working together in this House, I think we can make great progress.
Should the House agree to establish the Speaker’s Conference, I would like to take this opportunity to wish Mr Speaker well in his endeavours. It will be a beneficial change, promoting positive working environments. I offer the House my full support in its progress.
Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)
I, too, very much welcome the motion on the Speaker’s Conference and thank Mr Speaker for his leadership on this matter. It offers us all an opportunity to consider the employment conditions of Members’ staff. This is the right time to be doing that, following another damaging few months for the reputation of this House when we have had serious allegations and convictions against some Members. It is not a very large number, but it is important that we ensure we are providing good working practices for all Members’ staff. This is a really important step forward.
Since Gemma White’s report into the bullying and harassment of MPs’ staff, the House has made a lot of progress in how we employ, manage and treat our staff, providing them with a form of redress, complaint and assessment of those complaints, but we now need to take further steps. For instance, we have had the establishment of the Members’ Services Team, to whom I pay great tribute. I have always found them to be extremely helpful and approachable, and they are a fount of knowledge. I urge colleagues who may not have come across the team to make use of the fact that they are camped out in the Portcullis House atrium every day. They offer a friendly face, and help awaits. Members now have access to a range of best practice employment guides, and the opportunity to attend regular workshops. Again, all Members are encouraged to use the service, but we need to build on it and strengthen our structures and processes.
I want to place on record the fact that some Members have expressed concern that the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority will be the body that ends up employing Members’ staff. The point of the conference is to look at all reasonable options, but it is important to put on record that my understanding—I am not speaking on behalf of IPSA—is that IPSA has expressed reservations about whether that would be appropriate. I certainly feel that, at the moment, we have other options to consider, which is what the conference is for.
In response to the question from the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight) and the Leader of the House’s answer, I reiterate that the motion specifies the date of the first report—not the second, third or final report—as 31 October, but it is important that the House is able to debate the reports at regular intervals and to scrutinise the work being done. As the Leader of the House mentioned, the Speaker’s Conference will have cross-party membership. It will take on Select Committee powers and will have the power to require evidence, witness statements and information to be prepared for it in the same way as a Select Committee, which I think is right. The Leader of the House also mentioned—I would echo this—that the previous Speaker’s Conference marked a point on which we have made much progress, because having a Speaker’s Conference on increasing diversity in ethnic and gender representation in this place has been followed by a marked increase in all of the above. I feel that this bodes well for the next Speaker’s Conference.
The House of Commons is a beacon for democracy around the world. I feel that we have in our hands the opportunity to make it also a model workplace that is at the forefront of workers’ rights, with strong protections in place for all our staff, because future generations should inherit a safer and more inclusive Parliament where everyone has somewhere to turn, and where staff are able to fulfil their potential in every single team across this House.
Dame Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s motion and his support for the Speaker’s Conference. By definition, organisations are completely dependent on the individuals who comprise them, so having good employment conditions and a respectful working environment is essential to make sure that we attract the best people to this place. We need to get this right not only because it is important for our staff in constituency offices, but—going to the point raised by the hon. Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire)—because it is important for the way Parliament is viewed. It is really important that we are viewed as being the best place in the world for democratic freedoms and rights, and for putting in place the best legislation possible. Having the best people here, and treating them well, has to be part of that.
I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House will wholeheartedly agree that issues to do with employment law are incredibly complex and difficult, which is why I was particularly pleased to see that paragraph 5(c) of the motion states that there is a power to appoint legal advisers. I hope that the Committee does that and gets the best legal advice, because it is very easy for all of us to think that we know how to change things, but we have to make sure that there are no unintended consequences as a result of any lack of expertise. Although a number of Members are experts in employment law in their own right, independent advice will be important.
The other important factor to consider is that things have changed hugely in the past two years: not only did an enormous number of new Members of Parliament come to the House in 2019, but covid has resulted in a huge spike in the constituency work that our offices undertake. In recognition of that, IPSA has increased the funding for constituency work, but my office staff have drawn it to my attention that there is not necessarily more space for them, particularly if they are located in London. It will be important for the conference to look more broadly at the conditions in which our staff work, as well as at anything to do with their employment contracts.
Most importantly, these are matters for Members, and Mr Speaker is absolutely right to constitute a committee of Members to look at it. I would argue that we should be looking at many other issues, and perhaps a little more regularly; the last Speaker’s Conference came together in 2008. Employment practices in the outside world change regularly, and hon. Members have to ensure that we stay abreast of those changes. We are in control of how this place is run, as we are often told, but we do not always have the methods to bring in the necessary changes. House Committees meet, but they do not necessarily cover all the issues—they certainly do not cover issues relating to Members’ staff—and there is no way for those Committees to co-ordinate and work together. I hope that the Speaker’s Conference will look at that.
I have a few comments for the Leader of the House, one of which my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Angela Richardson) has already covered. First, we must ensure that there is consultation with Members and staff; that is not explicit in the motion, but it must be implicit. Secondly, IPSA must be required to work with the conference, because it is essential that it has a central role in providing, in an accurate and timely manner, the information that members of the conference need.
Thirdly, the Leader of the House may not be aware that the Administration Committee, under the extremely expert chairmanship of my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker), is undertaking an inquiry into, among other things, the issues for Members who leave this place, voluntarily or otherwise. In the evidence that we have so far taken, we have all been struck by how often the treatment of staff has come up as a real, deep concern among Members leaving this place. That includes the treatment of staff by IPSA, I have to say, and even the treatment of staff more generally in the House.
I hope that the Leader of the House will therefore use his good offices to ensure that the conference looks carefully at the findings in the Administration Committee’s report, as well as at other matters that have been set out. We would be letting our staff down if we did not try to ensure that the two things complement each other and that there is a read-across.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
I thank the Leader of the House for moving the motion. I congratulate Mr Speaker on considering the issue and ensuring that we all have the opportunity to consider the environment and working arrangements for staff members in this House. This is a key time for that, for many reasons that have already been given—not least that there are 650 Members and we are all pretty different in how we arrange our offices and our staff complements.
It has always struck me that many of us—I include myself—came to the House with no experience whatever of managing staff or making sure that we have a staff complement who are available and ready to do very complex and demanding work. That work has only got more demanding over the past two years, so a service that could take account of everybody across the House would be welcome, not just for Members of Parliament but for staff.
I welcome the fact that the conference will take the form of a Select Committee, a format that is very familiar to the House. In the Members’ survey, I think the Select Committee process came second for satisfaction because of how Members relate to the Select Committee structure. I am glad that the conference will be able to work on that basis, which will give it the opportunity to get a whole range of evidence; I am sure that it will consider many requests to give evidence and will hear from the widest range of voices.
The motion reads:
“That this House considers that it is desirable to consider the employment conditions of Members’ staff”.
The key word is “consider”—so important that it is clumsily included twice in one sentence—but this is what it is about. No decision has been made. The conference is a Committee that will consider all the different aspects of the issue. It is incumbent on all Members to ensure that their views are heard, so I urge them to get in touch with the Whips and the Members who will be serving on the Committee.
The conference is a good innovation, which the whole House will welcome. There is a huge opportunity for whoever is on the Committee and all the political parties of the House to design and craft the type of working arrangements that best suit the unique environment in which we all work.
I welcome the conference, and look forward to working with it as a member of the House of Commons Commission and to looking at its considered work when we see its first report in October.
Mark Spencer
I will respond briefly. I thank hon. Members for taking the trouble to turn up today and for contributing. I also respond on behalf of Mr Speaker in saying that, yes, the conference will have the powers of a Select Committee, so of course it will consult with Members. I am sure that Mr Speaker will read the debate in Hansard and take on board many of the comments made by hon. Members.
I specifically pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller), who has done a great deal of work in this area and has a lot of expertise to offer. Whether she is a member of the Committee or a witness appearing before it, I am sure that the Speaker’s Conference will take note of her expertise, which will be of huge benefit.
On the remit of the Committee, I do not want to box Mr Speaker in. I want to allow the Committee to establish what it looks at and in what order, and I am sure that will be brought forward and agreed in due course. I am delighted to commend the motion to the House and am grateful to Members who have contributed to the debate.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
I am certain that Mr Speaker will be paying extreme attention to all that has been said in this short debate.
Question put and agreed to.
Committee on standards
Ordered,
That, in accordance with Standing Order No. 149A, Victoria Smith be appointed as a lay member of the Committee on Standards for a period of six years, with immediate effect.—(Mark Spencer.)
Petition
VAT on Defibrillators
(2 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Ruth Edwards (Rushcliffe) (Con)
It must be every parent’s worst nightmare. Last September, Dylan Rich—a talented 17-year-old footballer from Rushcliffe—was playing in a FA youth cup game between his club, West Bridgford Colts, and Boston United at the Colts’ ground in Regatta Way. Out of nowhere a couple of minutes into the match, he suffered a cardiac arrest and collapsed. His brave mother Anna performed CPR on her own son. Dylan was treated with a defibrillator at the scene and an ambulance arrived within 10 minutes. He regained cardiac output and was stabilised in intensive care, but tragically he died three days later in hospital.
Words cannot express the depth of sorrow that his death has caused—to his family, his friends, and the community at West Bridgford Colts. In their tribute to him, the Colts said:
“Dylan was one of those players that team mates love for his commitment, coaches for his attitude and adaptability, and supporters for his reliability. A fantastic club player.”
Tributes followed from Nottingham Forest and Notts County. Ahead of their World cup qualifier against Poland, the England players held up a shirt with “For Dylan” printed on it.
But the tribute that his family and his club most want is to increase the number of defibrillators across the UK, to make them cheaper for communities to buy, and to increase people’s awareness and confidence in using them. Until Dylan’s death, I had never looked at the figures for the scale of cardiac arrests. Sudden cardiac arrest is one of the leading causes of death in young people, and almost never has any prior symptoms. Officially, about 32,000 sudden cardiac arrests occur in England every year. When combined with figures from across the UK, it is estimated that the true number is as high as 60,000. There is an important caveat to this figure: it only includes incidents where resuscitation was attempted. In the UK, only 8% of people survive an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.
Cardiac arrest can happen to anyone. This was brought home to us again in Nottinghamshire last month, when 13-year-old Samuel Akwasi collapsed from a cardiac arrest during a Young Elizabethan football league game and tragically later died in Queen’s Medical Centre. In fact, only yesterday, as I was writing this speech, I read of an assistant referee, Andrew Jarvis, who suffered a cardiac arrest while officiating at a game in Mansfield last August. Mercifully, he survived. He says he was saved by good-quality CPR, the football club’s defibrillator, and the quick arrival of the air ambulance team.
On average, as I said, a person in the UK has an 8% chance of surviving a cardiac arrest if it happens out of hospital, but this is vastly increased to as high as 70% if a defibrillator is used within the first three to five minutes of the cardiac arrest occurring. Conversely, survival rates drop by 10% for every minute of delay after this time. This further highlights why it is essential to have a defibrillator on every sports pitch and street corner possible—because these machines save lives. Average survival rates for out-of-hospital cardiac arrests vary across the country, ranging from 0.6% to 25%. The Government are doing so much to address regional inequality across the country, but we must also address regional inequality in defibrillator access and survival rates.
The main barriers to accessing defibrillators have been shown to be cost and awareness. In a survey by Vitreous World, 42% of people said that cost was the main barrier to owning a defibrillator, while 62% of people do not know how to use one and 27% are worried about how to do so. Defibrillators vary in cost, but the average unit is about £1,250. This is a considerable expense to many community groups, charities and sports clubs, especially considering that a sizeable portion of it, 20%, is VAT. Clearly, £1,250 is a lot of money for organisations raising funds through cake sales, individual donations and raffles. Some charities are exempt from paying VAT on defibrillators: not-for-profit hospitals, charitable institutions that provide care or medical or surgical treatment for disabled people, and rescue or first aid services. However, most sports clubs and community groups do not qualify.
There are several options for reducing the cost of defibrillators. The first is to apply a zero rate of VAT to all defibrillators in line with that already applied to a range of medicines and medical products, including prescription medicines and drugs. A blanket rate would be a simple and straightforward solution to cover anyone and any organisation wanting to buy a defibrillator.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the hon. Lady for securing this debate. I declare an interest, as I presented the Automated External Defibrillators (Public Access) Bill on Monday, when you were in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker, and it will be heard on 9 September. I encourage the hon. Member for Rushcliffe (Ruth Edwards) to come along to support the Bill, if at all possible.
I understand that children’s car seats, children’s travel systems and other safety protections have a reduced 5% rate of VAT. Should not this reduction, at least, be replicated for lifesaving defibrillators? As I know from my constituency, this would save lives.
Ruth Edwards
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his Bill, and I would be delighted to join him on 9 September. He has come up with an excellent option that is not on my list.
I accept there are many good candidates for zero-rate or reduced-rate VAT, one of which the hon. Gentleman has just outlined, and I am sure the Minister will say that the Government have received £50 billion-worth of requests for VAT relief since the EU referendum, which is a valid point. Our tax base funds the public services on which we all rely, including NHS treatment for victims of cardiac arrest, but surely these lifesaving devices should be a higher priority than, say, e-books, of which I am a great fan but they cannot save a life in the event of cardiac arrest.
There is a good argument that, as paper books already have a zero rate of VAT, extending it to e-books is a necessary tidying up of the system to avoid any legal challenges. That is not 100 miles away from the situation with defibrillators, where some charities benefit from zero-rate VAT but others do not. Surely, whatever the purpose of the charity, the purpose of using a defibrillator is the same.
Another option is to widen the scope of organisations that can purchase a defibrillator without paying VAT. Instead of just covering charities with care, medical, rescue or first-aid missions, could not all charities, not-for-profits and community groups be allowed to purchase a defibrillator without paying VAT? After all, businesses can currently claim back VAT on defibrillators as part of their VAT return forms. Such an approach would direct savings to the people who need them most, while not setting a precedent for the blanket removal of VAT on a specific item. It also simplifies what is currently a confusing landscape in which people are not sure whether they are eligible for this VAT exemption.
Or perhaps we can set up a fund for charities and community groups, either to claim back their VAT or to aid them in buying defibrillators. Maybe a pot of money could be announced in the Budget—I am getting my bid in early. I am sure the creative and clever minds at the Treasury can come up with all sorts of options, and I place on record my huge thanks to the Minister, who I know has asked her team to do just that.
Whatever model we go for, the end we need to achieve is making community defibrillators more affordable, especially at a time when people’s finances are increasingly stretched. Whatever route we choose, we need to publicise it and use the opportunity to address the lack of knowledge and confidence in defibrillator use. I identify with this, as I did not know how to use one until Trent District Community First Responders and Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service kindly offered to train me and my team. In fact they are training all sorts of groups across Rushcliffe, and it would be great if we could offer defibrillator and CPR training to Members and staff here in Parliament. When I asked, I was told there was no course I could do.
Parliament provides many other courses. We have media training, diversity and inclusion training and courses on how to use the Library, and I am told I can be tutored in any foreign language that might be useful for my work. All these are important, but none would teach me how to resuscitate a constituent at my surgery whose life is hanging in the balance.
Any of the proposed options I have discussed would be most effective alongside a big push to increase defibrillator training and a publicity campaign to raise awareness. Many people want to learn how to use a defibrillator and save a life, and many more can already use one and want to share this knowledge with others, so why do we not help to bring them together?
I have one final thought on how to maximise the impact of such a campaign. At present, it is a legal requirement to have firefighting equipment in places of work, residences and public buildings—everywhere really. What people need to have depends on the type of premises, but fire alarms, extinguishers and exit signs are all pretty universal. However, there is no legal requirement to have a defibrillator kept at a place of work. Why not? Some 80% of people believe that defibrillators should be mandated in workplaces, but only 30% of people have a defibrillator in their workplace.
Increasing access to defibrillators is not just the right thing to do; it also makes financial sense. Patients who have had early defibrillation have a significantly reduced stay in hospital and are far less likely to need treatment in intensive care. The average hospital stay is significantly less for survivors when a defibrillator is applied within the three-to-five-minute window and they spend less, if any, time in intensive care. Figures may differ from hospital to hospital, but on average an intensive care unit bed is about £2,300 more expensive per night.
In addition, patients who have a defibrillator used on them quickly have fewer ongoing health problems due to lack of blood and oxygen circulation to vital organs such as the brain. This means they require far less ongoing treatment. In short, we estimate that reducing the cost of defibrillators and increasing the number available for people to use in the community will save the NHS tens of millions of pounds, which is much needed to reinvest as it deals with the elective backlogs brought on by the pandemic.
In conclusion, I first raised this issue in Parliament at Prime Minister’s questions back in March, and I would like to thank both the Minister and the Prime Minister for the priority they have given to this issue since. They both met my constituents Peter Stanbury and Paul Wilson, who are respectively the chairman and the coach of West Bridgford Colts, and I know the Treasury has been working on a number of options to take this forward. I would also like to thank Peter and Paul for coming to see me in my surgery and making me aware of this issue, and for the incredible work the Colts have done to raise money to buy more defibrillators for their training ground.
I would also like to thank Dylan’s family—his mum Anna, his dad Mike and his sister Lucy—for allowing us to tell Dylan’s story and for backing the Colts’ campaign at what must be the darkest time of their lives. Sudden cardiac arrest can tear through the life of any family with devastating results. I am delighted by the energy and commitment the Government have shown to working on this issue, and I hope we can now agree on the best way forward and give it the green light, so that we can get on with delivering these life-saving changes.
I would just like to leave the House with a message from Dylan’s mum Anna, who wrote to me this morning to say:
“I think it helps to emphasise the importance of community defibrillators, in the sense that we did get an output back on Dylan. Sadly, it was ultimately the time he was without adequately oxygenated blood to his brain that led to his death. Without the defibrillator, I don’t think we would have left the football pitch.”
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
I was not aware that the hon. Lady wished to take part in the debate, but we do have a little time. Has the hon. Lady asked the permission of the Minister and the proposer of the debate?
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Lucy Frazer)
indicated assent.
Jill Mortimer (Hartlepool) (Con)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and forgive me. I still have my training wheels on, and there is definitely more I have to learn. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Ruth Edwards) and congratulate her on securing this important debate.
Five days ago, on 17 June, my constituents Pam and Bill Shurmer marked the first anniversary of the loss of their son Daniel to cardiac arrest. Daniel was only 43 years old, a keen sportsman and soon to be married. Pam and Bill decided to make something positive come from their tragic loss, and set up DS43 in Daniel’s name. They set about ensuring that no one in Hartlepool will ever be more than 500 metres away from one of these lifesaving defibrillators. In just a year, they have been amazing. They have raised in the region of £60,000 and have installed 27 defibrillators. The 28th is going in next week, and they have plans to install a further 10.
Abolishing VAT on these life-saving machines would cost a negligible amount for the Treasury, but would make a huge difference, inducing people to purchase them and put them in places of work, communal spaces and local businesses, making them more accessible for all throughout our communities. Pam and Bill are right: no one should ever be more than 500 metres away from a life-saving defibrillator.
Pam, Bill and Daniel were already well known throughout Hartlepool, but through their campaign and fundraising, Pam and Bill have become true pillars of our Hartlepool community. I am proud to know them. They are truly special and an inspirational couple. I wish I could have met their wonderful son. I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to them in this place for all the work that they have done in Daniel’s memory. I have spoken to the Minister and I know that she understands how vital these life-saving machines are. I urge her to consider all options to make them more widely available for everyone in our communities.
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Lucy Frazer)
It is a privilege to respond to this Adjournment debate on behalf of the Government. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Ruth Edwards) on securing this evening’s debate. As we have heard, this follows last year’s tragic death of her constituent, Dylan Rich, at the age of just 17. It is also terrible to hear of the tragic death of Danny, the son of Bill and Pam Shurmer.
I commend my hon. Friends for the energy with which they are campaigning for a change in policy. As my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe mentioned, she and I met the Prime Minister and the representatives from the West Bridgford Colts Football Club in March to discuss this issue. What she has said has touched all of us, and I wish to express again my condolences to Dylan’s family, who themselves have campaigned extremely hard on this issue, as well as to Pam and to Bill.
I have heard my hon. Friend’s argument and those of others here this evening. In answering the debate, I will briefly outline the Government’s thinking and approach. Let me begin by saying that we appreciate the importance of this issue. Automated external defibrillators—or AEDs—save lives. Understanding that, we have sought to boost their provision in many different ways. The Government encourage organisations across England to consider purchasing a defibrillator as part of their first aid equipment.
Many community defibrillators have been provided in public locations, including in shopping centres, through national lottery funding, community fundraising schemes, workplace funding or charities. The Government have also previously provided significant direct funding for the purchase of AEDs. In the 2015 Budget, the Government announced a £l million grant to support the purchase of public access AEDs. This was followed up by a further £1 million at the 2016 Budget. These schemes were operated by the British Heart Foundation. After the first round of funding in 2015, the foundation announced that more than 700 additional AEDs had been installed across the UK.
In addition, from May 2020, the Government have required all contractors refurbishing schools, or building new ones, through centrally delivered programmes to provide at least one AED. As things stand, there are already more than 43,000 registered AEDs in England.
The Government have also worked with the British Heart Foundation to develop “the circuit”, a national defibrillator network, which records information on unregistered AEDs, such as those in shops and restaurants. The circuit is now live in 13 of the 14 ambulance services across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. This information is available in a centralised network for easy access in emergencies, meaning that ambulance services can find AEDs when they are most needed. The system also sends out reminders to make sure that AEDs are maintained and emergency-ready.
Meanwhile, the NHS Long Term Plan, published in January 2019, includes a section on cardiovascular disease and AEDs. The NHS has committed to developing a national network of first responders and access to AEDs, which will save roughly 4,000 lives a year by 2028.
Tax relief also has a part to play. VAT is not charged on AEDs donated, for example, to the NHS, rescue and first aid charities, and charities caring for disabled people. Local authorities and taxable businesses can also recover VAT on AEDs. The point of all of this is to say that there are existing reliefs, as well as historical funding and other initiatives, which are significantly improving access to AEDs up and down the country.
My hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe made a point about extending VAT relief. As she said, we have examined the specific merits of zero-rating AEDs. We are conscious that pass-through of a VAT relief on AEDs to consumer prices is likely to be low. Evidence on pass-through of VAT reliefs generally suggests that where markets are concentrated—as they are for AEDs—pass-through tends to be significantly less than 50%. In other words, a new zero rate would not necessarily lead to a reduction in prices. Instead, businesses might choose to absorb the tax relief as profit. If we are to take this step, we need to be sure that zero-rating AEDs would represent genuine value for money and make a real difference in expanding public access to AEDs.
As my hon. Friend recognised, we also have a wider responsibility, at a time of economic challenge, to minimise pressure on the public finances. However, I am grateful to her for all the work she has done, and continues to do, to bring this issue to public attention. I also recognise the campaigning work done by Pam and Bill, who are grieving the sad loss of their son, Danny. Therefore, notwithstanding the point I have made about VAT, I want to be clear to Members here today that, as we remember Dylan and Danny, we will continue to look at what more the Government can do to expand access to AEDs. The Prime Minister has therefore asked the Department of Health and Social Care to examine whether there are ways to further expand public access to defibrillators, and I have spoken to the Minister responsible—the Minister for patient safety—about this very issue. Like my hon. Friends the Members for Rushcliffe and for Hartlepool (Jill Mortimer), we know that AEDs save lives.
Question put and agreed to.