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Oral Answers to Questions
(1 year, 7 months ago)
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Mark Fletcher (Bolsover) (Con)
Robin Millar (Aberconwy) (Con)
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Dominic Raab)
We have a comprehensive package of measures under way to improve support for victims of rape, and I can tell the House that in the last year, adult rape convictions rose by 65% over the previous year.
Mark Fletcher
I thank the Secretary of State for that answer. A constituent recently raised with me concerns about registered sex offenders being able to change their names while in prison, which causes immense concern to the families and loved ones of victims. What steps are being taken to ensure that, in such cases, offenders are not able to walk away from their crimes?
Dominic Raab
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I can tell and reassure him that governors are under no obligation to accept requests for a change of name. Public safety is the most important consideration. When a change of name is recognised, probation records are updated, police are notified, and victims and others affected would also be notified.
Robin Millar
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s answer. In particular, I welcome the opening of a new rape crisis line offering essential support to victims. Does he agree that such a service should be made available across England and Wales, and will he ensure that it is promoted across England and Wales?
Dominic Raab
My hon. Friend is absolutely right and I thank him for raising that. It is critical for victims of rape across the United Kingdom. The new 24/7 support line is available to victims aged 16 or over in England and Wales. There is also a steering group, working with central Government and the Welsh Government, that has oversight of the service. I think it is a great example of what the UK Government are delivering for the people of Wales.
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)
The independent inquiry in child sexual abuse highlighted how victims are repeatedly failed by inconsistent application of the victims code, demonstrating the desperate need for legislation. Will the Government listen to the inquiry and commission an inspection of compliance with the victims code in relation to victims and survivors of child sexual abuse? When will the victims Bill be introduced?
Dominic Raab
I thank the hon. Lady for raising that important point. She will know that the victims Bill has gone through pre-legislative scrutiny—I am poised to respond to the Chair of the Select Committee—and it will address all the issues that she raises. I hope that it will have the full-hearted, full-throated support of those on the Opposition Benches.
Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)
One of the better ways of supporting rape victims is to ensure that when the rapist comes up for parole, the families of victims and the victim themselves are informed that parole is being considered. In the case of Andrew Barlow—the so-called “Coronation Street rapist”, who was convicted of many rapes—that has not happened. The Parole Board is now recommending that he be released. What will the Secretary of State do to ensure that in such cases, the parole system works properly and effectively?
Dominic Raab
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to raise that case. That notification should happen. I will take this up and write to him afterwards. That support for victims right through the process, including for the parole of the perpetrator of such a serious offence, is important. I also gently say that I would welcome the support of the Opposition when we introduce our parole reforms so that we have stronger ministerial oversight of the release of the most dangerous offenders. The Opposition cannot keep talking tough while not supporting the action that we are putting through this House.
Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)
The significant rise in the number of rape convictions is extremely encouraging. As the Secretary of State will know, at the heart of that success, and indeed of support for rape victims, lies a new operating model: Operation Soteria. Can he update us on how many police forces and Crown Prosecution Service areas have now adopted that new operation, and when does he expect the 100% roll-out so that we can see that kind of rise across the whole country?
Dominic Raab
I have to start by paying tribute to my right hon. Friend for the exceptional job that he did working on this issue in the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice. The increase in rape convictions—we are restless to go further—is in no small part due to his efforts. I believe that Operation Soteria is ready for a June national implementation, and Ministers in the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice are liaising with all the outstanding police forces to make sure they are signed up. Again, I thank him and pay tribute to him for the work he did.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
Rhianon Bragg was ambushed and held at gun point for eight hours by former partner Gareth Wyn Jones after years of physical and verbal abuse. He was imprisoned in August 2019. Rhianon and I called for his parole hearing to be held in public, but the Parole Board insisted that the perpetrators’ rights override those of the victim. In the meantime, appallingly, it turns out that Ministry of Justice staff sent a dossier containing intimate details about her, including a clinical psychologist’s letter, to her abuser in prison over 10 months ago. Does the Secretary of State consider that there should be circumstances in which a victim can appeal a Parole Board decision to hold hearings in private? Does he agree that this breach of GDPR means that it is in the public interest for decisions about Jones’s release to be held in public?
Dominic Raab
I thank the right hon. Lady for raising that very important and sensitive case with me. I cannot talk about the details, but I will write to her with the answers to the questions she has raised. All I would say more generally is that she will know that we had the first public parole hearing recently, which is part of the increase in transparency that I have introduced across the board, but in particular for parole hearings. We also have that extra check on the release of dangerous offenders, particularly murderers, rapists, terrorist offenders and child killers. I hope it will have her full support when we come forward with legislation to apply that ministerial veto.
Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)
The Operation Soteria report on the handling of rape cases was quietly released just before Christmas. It reports of explicit victim blaming, botched investigations and serving officers claiming sexual offences should not be a priority, and those are just a few takeaways from its 191 pages. It is a dark stain on this Government. We still have no victims Bill and no Victims’ Commissioner, so what is the Secretary of State actually achieving in post?
Dominic Raab
I will tell the hon. Lady exactly what we are doing. We have introduced a 24/7 rape support line. We have rolled out Operation Soteria in the way that my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) mentioned. We have introduced section 28 pre-recorded victim evidence across all Crown courts in England and Wales. It is precisely because we are driving forward Operation Soteria and dealing with some of the challenges in the past, particularly between police and prosecutors, that we have seen a step change. What she does not refer to is the increase since 2019, with an almost doubling of the number of police cases referred to the CPS. She does not refer to the increase by two thirds in the number of adult rape cases charged by the CPS since 2019. She does not refer to the near doubling of the number of adult rape Crown court receipts. We are restless to go forward, but she should not downgrade the efforts we are making, because that can only deter more victims from coming forward, and I do not think that is what she wants.
Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)
I thank my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin), for her fantastic work in this role, and in particular on the defence of human rights. On that theme, the former Victims’ Commissioner, Dame Vera Baird, recently highlighted the dangers of the Lord Chancellor’s so-called Bill of Rights, arguing that it would harm women,
“affect victims of violence against women and girls and their ability to drive the police to do better”
and
“absolutely shatter any positive impact from the victims’ bill”.
Will he now listen to victims and their representatives and abandon his plans, which undermine them?
Dominic Raab
That critique is total and utter nonsense. There is not a shred of substance to it. The Bill of Rights will actually help victims of crime, not least by enabling us to deport more foreign national offenders. I look forward to bringing the victims Bill forward and having support from all Members on the Opposition Benches.
Stuart C. McDonald
That answer completely misunderstands how important convention case law has been in helping to protect victims of violence against women and girls. Even worse, in various December appearances, neither the Secretary of State nor the Prime Minister could bring themselves to rule out complete withdrawal from the European convention altogether, which would be a disaster for victims. Is this a reflection of the political weakness at the heart of Government that his ex-colleague Claire Perry O’Neill alluded to in her article yesterday, or will he come to the Dispatch Box now and categorically rule out the appalling idea of withdrawal from the convention?
Dominic Raab
The hon. Gentleman will know that our plans for a Bill of Rights retain membership of the European convention, but we have said that withdrawal is not off the table forever and a day for the future, and that remains the Government’s position.
Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)
Dr Neil Hudson (Penrith and The Border) (Con)
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Edward Argar)
My right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister has regular meetings with Cabinet colleagues and others to ensure a joined-up approach to tackling crime, including rural crime. Rural crime has a huge impact on those individuals and communities affected, which is why prevention, policing and prosecution are all vital to tackling rural crime, which remains a priority.
Daniel Kawczynski
I thank the Minister for that answer. I raise the question on behalf of Councillor Dan Morris and Stuart Jones, who are both farmers in my constituency. Does my hon. Friend agreed that rural crime is often linked to organised crime groups who target and exploit rural communities across a range of crime types, such as organised plant and livestock theft, burglary targeting firearms, fly-tipping and poaching? Sentencing needs to reflect the serious organised criminality involved in these offences.
Edward Argar
My hon. Friend highlights a number of crimes that particularly impact rural communities—crimes highlighted in the National Police Chiefs’ Council strategy on rural crime. It is important that the courts have appropriate sentences available to them. Although sentencing in individual cases is a matter for the judiciary, sentencing guidelines are clear that offending that involves a high degree of planning or that is committed for profit, as is often seen in organised crime, will attract tougher sentences.
Dr Hudson
Rural and wildlife crime sadly continues to affect our local communities, from theft of farm machinery, fly-tipping and vandalism to the distressing theft of animals and animal cruelty. These are just some of the issues facing rural areas. Cumbria has the excellent Cumbria farm watch and horse watch schemes—partnerships between people and Cumbria police. What reassurances can my hon. Friend give my constituents that the Government are supporting the police and communities in the fight against rural crime?
Edward Argar
My hon. Friend is right to highlight the work going on in Cumbria. I pay tribute to the work of the police and crime commissioner Peter McCall and Cumbria police to tackle rural crime through Operation Lantern. Alongside Government investment in 20,000 more police officers nationally, we are supporting the police through the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 by introducing new hare coursing offences and supporting the private Member’s Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith) to prevent quad bike theft.
Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)
Fly-tipping has doubled in Barnsley during the last year, costing the local council nearly £200,000 to deal with. What discussions has the Minister had with colleagues across Government to ensure that fines and sentences for fly-tipping are a strong enough deterrent?
Edward Argar
The hon. Lady is quite right to highlight a rural crime that blights both rural and urban communities, but predominantly rural communities including mine in Leicestershire. We have regular discussions with colleagues in both the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities about issues such as this. I am happy to meet her in due course if she wants to highlight any cases.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Minister for his answer to those questions. Back home in Northern Ireland the Ulster Farmers Union, in which I declare an interest as a member, have regular meetings with the Police Service of Northern Ireland to put invisible markings on machinery and to have visibility on tractors. One of the big problems is machinery from Northern Ireland and from the UK mainland going down to the Republic of Ireland. Has the Minister had any opportunity to talk to the Garda Síochána to work across the border to ensure that those criminal gangs involved in machinery theft are curtailed?
Edward Argar
I have not had any direct discussions with the Garda on this matter, but in looking at the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s rural crime strategy I have seen the work being done in Northern Ireland to highlight exactly the issue that the hon. Gentleman raises—both marking and the challenges around farm machinery. If he wants to write to me with further details from his constituency perspective, I would be very happy to receive that.
James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con)
Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mike Freer)
In the Crown court, the outstanding caseload has reduced from 60,400 in June 2021 to about 57,300 cases at the end of March 2022. However, the caseload has increased again, primarily due to the Criminal Bar Association action, which has now stabilised. We are taking action across the criminal justice system to bring down backlogs and improve waiting times for those who use our courts. That includes such things as increasing our judicial capacity and investing a significant amount of money across the criminal justice system.
James Sunderland
Could the Minister outline how he intends to reduce backlogs in the family court, in order to minimise the impact on families and children both in Bracknell and beyond?
Mike Freer
The issue of family courts is particularly pressing because of the impact on families and children. That is why we are investing a significant amount of funding by increasing the number of fee-paid judges, sitting days and judges who are able to sit, and we continue to invest significant sums in family mediation vouchers, to keep families and children out of the court system.
Peter Aldous
The backlog in court cases is causing enormous personal distress and anguish. My constituent originally in 2018 reported an historical rape. The trial has now been postponed four times and is currently scheduled for this June. I shall write to my hon. Friend providing full details of the situation, but can he leave no stone unturned in eliminating the backlog very quickly, as in such historical cases, justice delayed really can mean justice denied?
Mike Freer
My hon. Friend raises a very important point. While I cannot talk about a specific case, the allocation and listing of cases is a judicial responsibility, and I can reassure him that the judiciary continue to work to prioritise cases involving custody time limits, as well as those involving vulnerable complainants and witnesses, domestic abuse and serious sex cases. The judiciary are incredibly sensitive to the need to ensure that the most vulnerable complainants and victims get their day in court as fast as possible.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
The civil legal aid review finally announced last week is an admission that cuts brought in by the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 have left the civil courts, which the Minister did not even mention, in a dysfunctional state, with a third of providers out of business and longer and longer delays in proceedings. The timetable for the review takes its implementation beyond the general election, which is another abdication of responsibility for the chaos in the courts that this Government have caused. Should they not bring forward either the review or the general election?
Mike Freer
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments. Reform of all parts of the justice system is a priority, but within the spending envelope that we are operating in, we have to spend the money where we can get the best return for our investment. If he has some serious options for how we could spend the money better, I am all ears.
Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
Like the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous), I have seen extraordinary situations with cases of serious sexual assault where the court case has been listed three years after the attack, in one case, with the victim saying, “I just want to give up and get on with my life.” This is a real challenge. Will the Minister outline what he is doing to get more judges in place, which is one of the brakes on this? When the Public Accounts Committee looked at this, we concluded on the evidence that, even with the interventions he has outlined, the Ministry will only be back on target from where it was with the backlog before covid by about 2024-25.
Mike Freer
The hon. Lady raises an important point. There are a variety of reasons why cases can be delayed. It is not just about the availability of the judiciary; sometimes it is the availability of defence and prosecution. There is a particular focus on trying to improve the number of cases that do not come forward because they are incomplete and not ready, and there is a massive campaign to improve the number of available sitting days and courts, but the most important thing is the massive recruitment of 1,000 judges for our criminal justice system.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Speaker; it is kind of colleagues to respond in that way.
Some months ago, the Government took the welcome decision to raise the retirement age for justices of the peace from 70 to 75. However, the question of reinstatement for those previously caught by the 70 age limit has been left, I believe, to local regions, rather than a wider cohort being allowed to go back on the bench, even if they are willing to travel. Can more flexibility be put into this system, so that people can be reinstated under those circumstances?
Mike Freer
It is my understanding that this issue is subject to the oversight of the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chief Justice. I understand that it is very firmly on their radar and that they will use their discretion as appropriate.
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
Has the Minister seen the Law Society’s five-point plan to get rid of the backlog, including investing in buildings and staff and properly funding legal aid? If he has not, will he sit down with the Law Society? These people are at the heart of our justice system.
Mike Freer
I have seen the plan and I have sat down with the Law Society. The Lord Chancellor and I continue to have fruitful discussions to address the particular issues that the Law Society has raised.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
It is always someone else’s fault. I have listened to the Minister trying to talk up progress, but both he and I know it is not good enough. I can understand the anxiety in Government over the failure to make any real impact—at the current rate of progress, the backlog will continue into the next Parliament, if not beyond. The Minister will agree that it is bad for victims, staff and defendants and, above all, is a failure of justice. What will he do to reassure our dedicated court staff that he will get the disastrous common platform IT system sorted out? Will he confirm how much extra taxpayers’ cash is being thrown at the system to get it right?
Mike Freer
I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that the common platform is not a disaster. In fact, I have taken a specific interest in ensuring the roll-out is appropriate and that users are actually engaged.
Mike Freer
I have spoken to staff, who said that yes, there are teething problems—that has been admitted—but they are fully committed. They understand that the common platform is a good programme and will work. We are listening to the staff to make sure it works. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman shakes his head. If he wishes to revert to legacy systems that will collapse and make things even worse, he is welcome to make that argument.
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
Stephen Morgan (Portsmouth South) (Lab)
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Edward Argar)
In May, we published our landmark draft Victims Bill and a wider package of measures to improve victims’ experiences of the criminal justice system. The Bill will enshrine the overarching principles of the victims code in primary legislation, increase oversight of criminal justice agencies’ treatment of victims and enable improvements in the quality and consistency of victim support services. The Bill will be introduced as swiftly as parliamentary time allows. Alongside those measures, we are more than quadrupling the funding for victim and witness support services by 2024-25.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
The reality is that victims are not being supported. My constituent, Mr Singh, is subject to identity theft. He and his family have been held by Border Force, his immigration status is in jeopardy, his family are being placed in danger and his health records are in utter chaos. Various Ministers, Secretaries of State and one of our recent Prime Ministers have all promised action, yet not one of them has bothered to honour their word. Will anyone in this Government help Mr Singh?
Edward Argar
The hon. Lady and I have worked together on previous cases. While I suspect that some elements of what she is referring to come under other Departments, hence her involving the Prime Minister and others, I am happy to meet with her to see if there is something I can do to assist.
Stephen Morgan
Only 1.5% of recorded rapes result in a charge, compared with 5.4% of all other crimes. Does the Minister accept responsibility for this, and for so badly letting down victims?
Edward Argar
We all have a shared desire to improve victims’ experiences, particularly in cases of rape and serious sexual offences. The rape review action plan set out the steps we are taking, and we are seeing continued increases and improvement in respect of total police referrals, receipts for a charge, CPS charges and Crown court receipts. There is more still to do. We are ambitious to go further, but we are making good progress and we will continue to focus on this.
Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)
I thank the Lord Chancellor for meeting with Claire, the mother of Sharlotte-Sky, before the Christmas recess to hear about the pain and anguish she has suffered through the criminal justice system in order to get justice for her daughter, who was tragically killed in Norton Green in 2021. As the Lord Chancellor heard, the problem with this case is around the taking and testing of blood when it comes to death by dangerous driving. Can we have a review to ensure that blood can be tested regardless of consent to speed up answers for victims and help police to find answers to those problems quicker?
Edward Argar
I apologise to my hon. Friend for not being able to attend that meeting as I was caught in another meeting. My right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor has related that meeting to me, however, and I know that he and we reflect carefully on the points made in it.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
Feryal Clark (Enfield North) (Lab)
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Damian Hinds)
There was an unprecedented short-term rate of growth in the requirement for places in adult male prisons in October and November, and Operation Safeguard creates a contingency to maintain headroom should it be needed. Meanwhile, we press on with our programme of estate modernisation and expansion.
Clive Efford
I am grateful for that answer. The Prison Officers Association says that the lack of staff is exacerbating the crisis in prison places. The Police Federation says that Operation Safeguard puts its members and the public in danger. Napo says that there is a link between the lack of prison places and the workload crisis, which is leading to an increase in the number of recalls. If Operation Safeguard fails, where on earth will the Government go next?
Damian Hinds
As I said, Operation Safeguard is a contingency that provides additional headroom; we are not currently housing prisoners in cells as a result of Operation Safeguard. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to identify that physical capacity is one side of the coin and staffing is the other, which is why we are putting so much emphasis on recruitment and retention in the prison service.
Feryal Clark
Napo has said that the insufficient capacity to hold prisoners is directly linked to staffing and workload crises in probation, as my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) said. Does the Minister agree with Napo’s view that there is a workload crisis in probation services? If so, who caused it?
Damian Hinds
That is similar to the point of the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford). Of course, all the services are linked, but as with the Prison Service—it is a fact across many different occupations in the public and private sector—there is a very tight labour market with high rates of employment and low rates of unemployment by historical standards. Recruitment is a challenge, but we are putting a huge emphasis on recruitment into the Prison Service and probation, which fundamentally drives workload. The other side of that is, as always, making sure that we retain staff.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
I do not blame my right hon. Friend for triggering Operation Safeguard—in the circumstances, it was sensible—but he would not have needed to if the 12% of the prison population who are foreign national offenders had been imprisoned in their countries of origin. The top three groups are made up of 1,300 Albanians, 800 Polish nationals and 750 Romanians. Can we have more compulsory prisoner transfer agreements so that those people are sent to jail in their own countries?
Damian Hinds
My hon. Friend is correct that there are a large number of foreign national offenders in our prisons, and facilitating the movement back to their home country is important. We have had the prisoner transfer agreement with Albania since May 2022, and we are looking at more.
Kate Osborne (Jarrow) (Lab)
Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)
Navendu Mishra (Stockport) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mike Freer)
The outstanding case load in the Crown court in Newcastle upon Tyne was 1,598 at the end of June 2022. In Birmingham, the outstanding case load in the Crown court was 1,748 and in Manchester, the outstanding case loads in the Crown courts were 1,271 and 1,259 at the end of June 2022. As I have said in previous answers, we are taking action across the criminal justice system to bring down the backlogs and improve waiting times for those who use our courts.
Kate Osborne
The Minister says that it is not a disaster, but the courts backlog has undeniably been made worse by the common platform system that Crown Prosecution Service members have been taking strike action over. It is a £300-million-plus IT scandal that has been dubbed “Horizon mark 2”; workers at my local court say that it is driving them to despair and judges have said that the system is not fit for purpose. Can the Minister confirm what cost-benefit analysis was done before making such drastic changes? What is being done to tackle the fundamental flaws in the system?
Mike Freer
First, I do not accept the characterisation of the common platform system. The hon. Lady forgets to mention the number of legacy systems that were on the verge of collapse, and they needed to be replaced. The members of staff I have spoken to accept that, while all IT roll-outs have teething problems, it is a worthwhile programme and will deliver benefits. If the hon. Lady would like to have the full implementation and benefits laid out in the business case, I will share what I can. On the ability to address the specific issues raised by members of staff, the programme team do on a regular basis engage with staff, and log all the issues and suggestions made by members of staff so that they can be resolved quickly.
Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
Every Crown court centre in the country is affected by backlogs, which are rising to crisis proportions once more. The Government rightly resolved the issue of the availability of defence counsel by increasing defence fees, but now the issue is the continued and repeated unavailability of prosecution counsel. Since our system requires equality of arms—barristers of equal seniority and ability to prosecute and defend—is it not important that the Secretary of State and his junior Minister support the Attorney General in getting increased funding from the Treasury for equivalent prosecution fees so that we have a joined-up system?
Mike Freer
My hon. Friend raises an incredibly important point, and I share his concern about ensuring that all elements of the criminal justice system, whether solicitors or barristers, are paid and rewarded appropriately for their efforts. There is a continuing debate about how we can invest in the whole criminal justice system so that it runs smoothly for all those involved, but especially for victims. I am very happy to discuss the details with my hon. Friend next week, I think, in the Justice Committee.
Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
While the Lord Chancellor is busy scrapping the Human Rights Act 1998, the criminal justice system is on its knees. The numbers of duty solicitors and criminal legal aid firms continue to fall at an alarming rate, yet the Government refuse to follow the recommendations of their own review of criminal legal aid, which has only worsened the courts backlog. What steps are being taken by the Government to improve staff recruitment and retention to ensure justice for victims and help reduce the courts backlog?
Mike Freer
I am very happy that the hon. Gentleman and I are meeting later today, when we can have a more detailed conversation, but the Bellamy report, which he alluded to, has been implemented. There are some elements we still want to work on to avoid any perverse incentives, but the investment this Government have made in the criminal justice system of £138 million will in our view bring the stability that he seeks.
Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)
John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Dominic Raab)
The proportion of persons released from custody employed at six months from their release rose by almost two thirds over the last year, and we are delivering the further measures set out in our White Paper because we know this has a huge impact in cutting reoffending.
Rob Butler
I thank the Secretary of State for his answer. Key to reducing reoffending is prisoners getting jobs when they are released from custody, and key to prisoners getting jobs is having employers that are willing to take on ex-prisoners, who often prove to be extremely diligent and conscientious workers. What progress are my right hon. Friend’s Department and HMPPS making to encourage more employers, including other Government Departments, to recruit ex-prisoners and so contribute to cutting crime?
Dominic Raab
I thank my hon. Friend, who has been a doughty campaigner on this issue. He is right about the Government, who are a significant employer and can show a lead. I can tell him that we have committed to recruiting more prison leavers to civil service roles, with nearly 200 offered or filled across Government. I am pleased to say that, in the Ministry of Justice, we have offered or filled almost 100 of those roles—not that I am competitive.
John Penrose
It is great to hear that more offenders are finding jobs after being released. Will the Secretary of State undertake to publish the outcomes and success rates of all publicly commissioned programmes to prepare offenders for work, together with an independent evaluation of their effectiveness and value for money from the evaluation task force, so everyone can learn what works and what does not, taxpayers can see whether they are getting value for money, and ever more offenders can get a second chance to put their lives back on track?
Dominic Raab
I thank my hon. Friend, who is absolutely right to focus on the data. We are doing this because it gives offenders a chance to turn their lives around, but we also know that getting offenders into work can cut reoffending by up to 9 percentage points, which keeps our streets safer. We publish a range of data—there is the justice data lab, and we review international evidence—and we will certainly publish as much as we can on the Government’s website so the analysis he talks about can take place.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
But the Secretary of State must know that staff shortages in the probation service are leading to dangerously high levels of workload for the existing staff, who are then leaving in droves, creating a vicious circle against rehabilitation, putting staff at risk and also potentially the public. It has led to the chief inspector of the probation service saying his service is in crisis mode. What is the Secretary of State going to do to break this vicious circle?
Dominic Raab
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that the people who work in the prison and probation services are critical to driving down reoffending. We have an independent pay review body that looks at these things, which we have supported and engaged with precisely to make sure we get the balance right. We have increased funding for the probation service by an additional £155 million a year to help recruitment, and the reforms we have introduced since 2010 are working. We have reduced the overall reoffending rate from 31% under Labour to 25.6% under this Government.
Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Speaker.
To protect the public, prisons must rehabilitate as well as punish, but under the Conservatives they have become colleges of crime: offenders going in clean but leaving as drug addicts; enrolment in rehabilitation programmes down nearly 90%; and the percentage of prisoners released with jobs to go to halved since 2010. When will the Government finally get a grip, fix our broken prison system, and keep the public safe?
Dominic Raab
I am afraid I do not accept that litany of spin. The fact is that crime—[Interruption.] No, I will tell the hon. Lady what the facts are. Excluding fraud and computer misuse, crime has been slashed by more than half since Labour left office, violent crime is down by half, and reoffending is five percentage points lower than when Labour left office. On employment, for offenders leaving prison within six months there has been an increase in one year alone since I have been in the job by two thirds. We are restless to go further. We have appointed all the chairs to the employment advisory boards in 92 prisons, we have appointed 66 out of 92 prison employment hubs, and we have appointed 91 of our 92 prison employment lead roles, which are all going to get offenders into work and drive down reoffending.
Kate Osamor (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mike Freer)
The Government recognise that convictions based on joint enterprise appear to affect ethnic minority groups disproportionately. However, the Crown Prosecution Service can only apply the law when making charging decisions and plays no part in the decision making on individual joint enterprise cases. Data is collected on the ethnicity of defendants who are prosecuted and convicted of a criminal offence, but not on whether the crime was part of a joint enterprise. However, we are considering whether such data could be collected as part of the common platform programme.
Kate Osamor
I thank the Minister for his response but research by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies suggests that the doctrine of joint enterprise is routinely applied in a racist way leading to many miscarriages of justice. Assessing why it disproportionately targets ethnic minority communities, especially young black men, is only the first step; what is needed is urgent action. Will the Minister tell us what he is doing to right historical wrongs and prevent future miscarriages of justice due to joint enterprise?
Mike Freer
What I can do is confirm that the Government have of course implemented many of the recommendations of the Lammy review. I understand how passionately the hon. Member feels about this, so I would like to sit down with her and go through some of the specific issues she wants discussed in more depth, rather than talk across the Dispatch Box; I think that would be more fruitful and practical and I hope the hon. Member will accept my invitation.
Maggie Throup (Erewash) (Con)
Dean Russell (Watford) (Con)
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Dominic Raab)
We are committed to ensuring faster throughput in immigration and asylum tribunals to support the Government’s priority to combat dangerous small boats crossing the channel.
Maggie Throup
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the quickest way to end the use of hotels such as those in my constituency as temporary accommodation centres is to speed up the processing of immigration cases and, when cases are rejected by the courts, for the Government to act swiftly to remove failed claimants from the UK?
Dominic Raab
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is part of the solution, and I am working closely with the Home Secretary on that. Our aim, working together, is to eliminate the backlog of people who claimed asylum before June 2022 by the end of this year. We will support the Home Office in delivering that so that we can end the use of hotels by 2024. Part of that is about the throughput, so we are doubling the number of decision makers in tribunals from 1,270 to 2,500. Digital can also play a role. Overall, we are driving forward that process to the ends that she describes.
Dean Russell
Further investment in the immigration process is welcome. However, last year we saw a stark increase in the number of people attempting to enter the country illegally in small boats. That is unsafe for those genuinely in need, unfair on those who moved to this country through safe and legal routes and unacceptable for the working people of the UK, including those of Watford, who foot the bill. As one of the Government’s priorities for the new year, will my right hon. Friend set out what practical steps are being considered, including by the Justice Department, to ensure that we have the most effective border in the world by 2025?
Dominic Raab
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He will have heard what the Prime Minister said about the five pledges, one of which is to end the small boats coming across illegally. I mentioned what we are doing with the Home Office to get the backlog down in the immigration tribunal. My hon. Friend will know about the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, and the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister have also talked about further measures being brought forward shortly. Of course, the Labour party has opposed every single one of those measures. It is no surprise that, in 2010, the last Labour Government left a record backlog of asylum claims. We are the ones fixing that mess.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Dominic Raab)
The Government were elected with a manifesto to reform human rights. We have published the Bill of Rights, and we will bring it forward for Second Reading as soon as parliamentary time allows.
Munira Wilson
The Human Rights Act, which protects so many of our freedoms and basic rights and our access to justice, helped secure an inquiry into patient safety for families at Mid Staffs and empowered victims of the black cab rapist to ensure that the police were held to account when those crimes were not properly investigated. My constituents, the Secretary of State’s constituents and the wider public do not want the Human Rights Act to be ripped up. Is not the truth that, yet again, his shameful pet project to do so and replace it with a Bill of Rights has been shelved by the Prime Minister?
Dominic Raab
I thank the hon. Lady for at least giving me the opportunity to rebut some of the myths that are flying around. The truth is that the terrible situation at Mid Staffordshire was not brought to light as a result of a case under the Human Rights Act. It was the result of questions raised, campaigns and issues raised by hon. Members in this House. Of course, nothing in the Bill of Rights would affect any of the important expectations that people such as victims and patients have. What it will do is strengthen free speech and help us to deport more foreign offenders. She should get behind it.
David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Dominic Raab)
Since the last oral questions, we have published our rape review progress report, which shows that adult rape cases charged and cases received at the Crown court were up by 65% and 91% respectively compared with 2019. We have launched a 24/7 support line for the victims of rape so that we can be there to provide the support they need in their hour of need.
Today, I can announce to the House that, by the end of March, we will have installed 83 new X-ray scanners at 44 prisons to stop the inward flow of contraband.
David Johnston
I have been supportive of my constituent Sharon Gaffka’s campaign on spiking. She was spiked twice and has more than 1,500 testimonies of people aged 14 to 64 who have had the same experience. Will my right hon. Friend update me on the discussions he has been having with the Home Office about punishments and prosecutions so that we can stamp this crime out?
Dominic Raab
I thank my hon. Friend for his consistent campaigning on such an important issue. He will know that spiking is already a criminal offence with a maximum sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment. The primary barriers to prosecution that we have identified are suspect identification and the gathering of sufficient evidence. We are taking a range of practical measures to address that, such as reclassifying gamma-hydroxybutyric acid—the so-called date rape drug—from class C to class B, investing in projects such as safer streets and the safety of women at night fund to protect women, and working with the police to produce a forensic strategy to ensure that we have stronger prosecutions and law enforcement in this area.
Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)
There were a quarter of a million violent assaults inside prison over the last decade. Last year alone, over 8,000 weapons were found inside prison. Does the Secretary of State accept responsibility for the fact that violence is now rife in our prisons?
Dominic Raab
I do not accept that categorisation. What I would say is that we have introduced a whole range of measures, from drug testing to X-ray scanners, and we are now seeing enforcement picking up contraband which, frankly, was not being dealt with before. Last year, the hon. Gentleman criticised the funding we are putting into X-ray scanners. I wonder whether he will now withdraw those remarks.
Steve Reed
I wonder whether drug testing is working, because drug abuse in prisons has shot up by 400% since the Conservatives came to power. Last year, crack cocaine was found being manufactured in cells inside Sudbury prison. Rising violence, rising drug abuse—does the Justice Secretary admit that the Government have lost control of our prisons?
Dominic Raab
No, and as I announced just a few moments ago we are introducing more scanners so that we detect, pick up and stop the flow of contraband into prison, whether drugs, mobile phones or weapons. We also have a step change in the approach to drug treatment. For example, we have fewer heroin addicts dumped on methadone indefinitely, and more drug recovery wings and more incentivised wings for substance-free living. That is the way to sustainably get offenders off drugs, and it also links in with all the work we are doing to get offenders into work.
Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con)
Dominic Raab
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I can tell him that domestic burglary has actually fallen by half since 2010, and the Metropolitan police’s operational tenacity is one element of that. On sentencing, the maximum sentence is 14 years. That is obviously an individual decision for judges, but I can also tell him that since 2010 the average sentence has increased by nine months, from 22.6 months to 31.6 months. There has been a step change and an increase in sentences for burglary, as well as the measures we are taking on police and law enforcement.
Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab)
Dominic Raab
This is an important issue, and I am grateful to the Select Committee for raising it. We want the number to come down, but the right way to do that is not to let out offenders who have been deemed dangerous in the past based on legislation passed under the Labour Government that would not apply now. Therefore, we are taking every measure to ensure offenders can pass the threshold and satisfy decision makers that they are safe to be released. We will release the response to the report shortly.
Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Damian Hinds)
I am delighted to hear that result and I totally agree with my hon. Friend on the importance of youth offending teams. They have been a great success since 2010 in reducing the number of under-18s who are locked up. They are fundamental to helping to put young people on a better path and stopping them getting on to the path of incarceration and reoffending.
Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)
Damian Hinds
We are also locking up fewer women and that is right where it is possible to avoid incarceration. We are investing large amounts of money into an increased accommodation offer. I will absolutely look at the particular project the hon. Lady mentions and am happy to discuss it.
Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)
Dominic Raab
I thank my hon. Friend for raising the matter. I pay tribute to her and to the family, who are very much in my thoughts. She will know that we have an extra power, which we introduced in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022; it is quite a confined power, but I will undertake to look at it in this case. Of course, I would make the broader point that when we introduced these measures to protect victims and the public, again, the Labour party voted against them.
Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)
Dominic Raab
The hon. Lady raises a critically important point. Of course there is nothing in our Bill of Rights that would impact on the healthcare that disabled individuals or communities would receive.
Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Edward Argar)
We are determined to reduce any unnecessary bureaucratic barriers that make it harder for our police, and our criminal justice system more broadly, to work as effectively as possible. Although I am not aware of any discussions about the specific issue that my hon. Friend mentions, or about the section 29 exemption for policing under the DPA, I am aware that the Police Federation is doing some work on the issue. If he is willing to write to me with more details, I am very happy to look into the matter further.
Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)
Dominic Raab
I pay tribute to prison officers for the amazing job that they have done—particularly through the pandemic, but also more generally. We often pay tribute to frontline emergency service workers, but prison officers in particular are out of sight, out of mind. That is why it is so important that we followed the recommendations of the pay review body. I can tell the hon. Gentleman that since 2016 the number of full-time prison officers has increased by 3,662.
James Daly (Bury North) (Con)
Despite IPP sentences having been abolished more than 10 years ago, 2,926 IPP prisoners were still in custody as of June 2022, of whom 608 were 10 years over their original tariff. Does my right hon. Friend agree that many of those people are locked in prison as a result of mental health conditions that they have developed while in custody, rather than because of the threat that they pose to the public?
Dominic Raab
My hon. Friend has raised the issue with me a number of times, and I respect his view. Of course, we have repealed the IPP legislation, but we are dealing retrospectively with the backlog of cases. I can understand some of the issues that he has raised; I think the right way to approach them is to ensure that offenders who can be released safely get the support, training and rehabilitation that they need to convince decision makers that releasing them is safe. That is the approach that we take, but I am very mindful of the issue and am continually looking at what more we can do.
Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)
Too many women and girls are victims of violent crime, yet the Government have still not delivered the long-promised victims Bill. They have also failed to appoint a Victims’ Commissioner since last September. Victims need support and the Government are letting them down. Why do the Government not prioritise victims?
Dominic Raab
I hope I can reassure the hon. Lady: we are funding victims to the tune of quadruple the level under the last Labour Government; we will appoint a new Victims’ Commissioner shortly; and the victims Bill will be coming forward as soon as parliamentary time allows. I hope the hon. Lady will also recognise the 24/7 rape support line, the increase to more than 1,000 independent sexual and domestic violence advisers, the roll-out of section 28 and the work that we are doing through Operation Soteria.
Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)
My last meeting of 2022 was probably the most important, because I met our police chief and police commissioner to discuss rape victims in Essex. The number of prosecutions is rising but it is still far too low, and one of the factors that put women off is the long court delays. As more judges are recruited, will the Government please ensure that they focus on rape cases, so that 2023 can be the year in which women who have been raped know they will have access to justice?
Dominic Raab
My right hon. Friend is right. In June last year, we announced—this is on top of the measures I have already mentioned—enhanced specialist sexual violence support in three specific Crown court locations where there is a high throughput of rape cases: Leeds, Newcastle and Snaresbrook. As I said earlier, we have already increased the number of rape convictions by two thirds, and we are restless to go much further in 2023.
Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
Under this Government, an abysmal one in 100 reported rape cases results in a charge. The Government say that they want to return to 2016 charging levels, but at this rate we are never going to get there. Labour has been calling for specialist rape courts and legal advocates for victims. When will the Secretary of State finally take the action that is needed to secure justice for as many victims as possible?
Dominic Raab
I thank the hon. Lady for raising this issue, which comes up at every session of Justice questions. In fact, the conviction rate in rape cases has risen in the last year, from 68% to 69%. The hon. Lady asked about specialist rape courts; I have just mentioned the three specialised fitted courtrooms that we have introduced in the areas with the highest throughput of rape cases to achieve exactly what she is asking for.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
In February, it will be four years since my private Member’s Bill became the Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration Etc) Act 2019, obliging the Government to introduce regulations giving coroners powers to investigate stillbirths. During Justice questions on 18 October, I asked the Minister why nothing had happened, and asked for a meeting to make progress on the issue. Three months on, still nothing has happened. Why not?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mike Freer)
My hon. Friend is right—he has raised this matter before—and I shall be happy to sit down with him and find out what the logjam is so that we can move this forward for him.
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)
It is simply unacceptable that drug dealers are able to continue to peddle their trade so easily behind bars. Last year, there were 17,700 cases of drugs being found in prisons, an increase of well over 411% since the Conservatives came to power in 2010. Who exactly does the Secretary of State blame for this failure in law and order?
Dominic Raab
The hon. Gentleman is right to raise the importance of checking and stopping the flow of drugs and other contraband into prisons. He should speak to the shadow Justice Secretary, the hon. Member for Croydon North (Steve Reed), who, when we introduced £100 million of investment in X-ray scanners last year, said that it was a waste of money.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
The Secretary of State will be aware of the existence of public spaces protection orders in some council areas. Is he also aware of a scandalous event that took place in Birmingham just before Christmas? A woman standing alone, quietly and with no protest material, outside an abortion clinic which was closed was arrested by police and asked what she was doing. When she said that she was quietly praying in her head, she was arrested and taken to a cell, and, while being questioned by police, was asked what she was praying about.
Dominic Raab
I do not know the facts of that case. If the hon. Gentleman would like to write to me, I will make inquiries to the extent that I am able to do so.
John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
In answer to Question 11, asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor), what the Minister seemed to say was that he was willing to assess the racial disparities in joint enterprise prosecutions once the data was available, which it is not at present but which it will be in the near future. Am I right to draw that conclusion?
Mike Freer
What I said was that the issue was complex, and that I would be happy to sit down with the hon. Member for Edmonton to go through the exact details and the exact concerns, rather than addressing such a sensitive issue across the Dispatch Box, so that we could have a meaningful discussion and see whether we could find a way forward to resolve the underlying issues.
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
Five years ago, the Right Rev. James Jones reported on the experience of the Hillsborough families. My constituents and I are waiting for the Government to introduce a Hillsborough law that will change the way in which justice is delivered in this country. When will that happen? We are sick of waiting.
Dominic Raab
With regard to the independent public advocate, I am very sympathetic and I want to make an announcement on that shortly. I reassure the hon. Lady that we have been working hard across Government to get the right answer ready, to be able to provide her with the reassurance that she needs.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
My constituent, a victim of historical child sexual exploitation, has had her case postponed three times since she reported her abuse back in 2019. Each time it is cancelled, she relives the trauma that she experienced, and this has been made worse by the clerk of the court saying that only important cases were being prioritised. What percentage of historical CSE cases are delayed for four years and responded to so insensitively?
Dominic Raab
This is an acutely sensitive issue and if the hon. Lady wants to write to me about that specific case, I would be happy to look into it. Of course, listing decisions and things like that are made by the judges independently in those particular cases.
Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)
I have previously raised the case of a man who, after pleading guilty to sexual abuse, was given permission to go abroad on holiday. The Secretary of State asked me to write to him, but in the response from the Minister, the central point of concern about bail conditions was not addressed. Will the Secretary of State or a Minister say whether, in general terms, they think it is appropriate for sex offenders to go on holiday? I do not. Do they?
Dominic Raab
I would want to put public protection first and foremost, but of course it will all depend on the circumstances of any individual case.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
Speed is compromising scrutiny in the magistrates court when it comes to the issuing of warrants to fit prepayment meters. In one court, 496 cases were signed off in just 3 minutes and 51 seconds, including cases involving children, disabled people and people experiencing fuel poverty. What steps will the Minister take to ensure that magistrates scrutinise every single application?
Mike Freer
I appreciate that this is a sensitive issue for families and people who can be very vulnerable. Obviously the judiciary is independent, but I will raise those concerns with the judiciary to see if I can find out the details, and stress the importance of getting it right and not rushing justice.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
What advantages does the Secretary of State see in convening a special international tribunal to try offences committed in Russia’s war on Ukraine, including the crime of aggression?
Dominic Raab
We are doing a huge amount to support the Ukrainian authorities with domestic trials. We are also one of the large group of leading countries referring the situation in Ukraine to the International Criminal Court, and in a couple of months I will be convening a meeting here with the Dutch Justice Minister and getting countries together to ensure we can avoid any impunity for Putin’s illegal and disastrous war.
Windrush Lessons Learned Review: Implementation of Recommendations
(1 year, 7 months ago)
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Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if she will make a statement on the progress in implementing the recommendations of the Windrush lessons learned review.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Miss Sarah Dines)
Since the injustices of Windrush came to light, there has been a concerted effort across the Home Office to right the wrongs suffered by those affected. That work continues, and the Department is making sustained progress on delivering on the recommendations of the Windrush lessons learned review of 2020 and the commitments made in the comprehensive improvement plan of 2020. In her report last year, the independent reviewer Wendy Williams concluded that 21 of her recommendations had been met or partially met. She acknowledged that the scale of the challenge she had set the Department was significant and that change on that scale takes time.
We have made progress in delivering against Wendy Williams’s recommendations. In October 2022, the Home Office established the Office for the Independent Examiner of Complaints, and Moiram Ali was appointed as the independent examiner following a public appointment recruitment process. The Home Office has also held over 200 engagement and outreach events across the country, and the Windrush help teams have attended over 120 one-to-one surgeries to help people apply for documentation.
As of the end of October 2022, the Home Office has paid out or offered £59.58 million of compensation to Windrush victims. The “Serving Diverse Communities: Acting on Our Values” learning package was launched across the Home Office in June 2022, starting with recommendation 24 on learning for senior civil servants and recommendation 29 on diversity and inclusion. The learning package for recommendation 6 on the history of the UK and its relationship with the rest of the world has been designed and is undergoing final review prior to implementation.
I am pleased that the independent reviewer of Windrush progress has concluded that there are several areas in which very good progress has been made, but she rightly holds the Home Office to account for areas and recommendations where sufficient progress has not yet been made. She concludes that there can be “no doubt” that the Department has risen to the “daunting challenge” she set us.
We know there is more to do. Many people suffered terrible injustices at the hands of successive Governments, and the Department will continue working hard to right the wrongs and to deliver a Home Office worthy of every community it serves.
Stephen Kinnock
The reality is that this Government’s treatment of the Windrush generation is surely one of the most shameful episodes in our post-war political history. The Windrush community played a pivotal role in rebuilding Britain. We all owe them a debt of honour and gratitude but, instead, consecutive Conservative Governments have treated them with utter contempt. First, they were victimised under the hostile environment policy, and then they were let down by a poorly administered compensation scheme, under which just 1,300 people have been awarded compensation when the Government originally estimated that 15,000 should be eligible. Now it is reported that the Government are set to betray the Windrush generation once again by U-turning on their commitment to implementing all 30 recommendations in Wendy Williams’s lessons learned report.
In September 2021, the then Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel), restated her aim to put right the wrongs of this sorry affair, yet today we find the Government are rowing back on some of their commitments, including by refusing to hand additional powers to the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration and by scrapping reconciliation and community events.
Why are the Government so terrified of scrutiny? Their toxic combination of incompetence and indifference is failing the Windrush generation, just as it is failing the country as a whole. Given that Wendy Williams says that only eight of her recommendations have been implemented, will the Minister tell me today how many of the Williams recommendations have been implemented and how many the Government are ditching, as is widely reported by the media?
Why have thousands of the Windrush generation still not received any compensation at all? On the 75th anniversary of the Windrush landing, are the Windrush generation being betrayed by this Government once again?
Miss Dines
This Government are absolutely not betraying the Windrush generation. Successive Governments of all colours have failed to step up to the mark, but this Government are stepping up. The Windrush generation are rightly identified as British and have the right to be in this country, and this remains separate from the many narratives that have been written.
The hon. Gentleman knows that the Government do not comment on leaks. What I can say is that we have matched the scale of Wendy’s challenge with the scale of our ambition and delivery. Wendy acknowledges that our ambition to achieve genuine cultural change requires ongoing reflection, which is what we are doing. The Home Office has provided regular updates on the good progress, and the statistics bear out the hard work that is happening.
I am afraid that the narrative is simply not quite right. I remind the House that 4,558 claims have been received, and the total compensation offered is £59.58 million, of which more than £51 million has already been paid. Fifty-nine per cent. of claims have a final decision and, as a lawyer in my previous profession, I know that that is quite a high number. The Government are absolutely committed to righting this injustice.
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
It is worth noting that the Wendy Williams review looked across a catalogue of issues that affected the Windrush generation. I was particularly struck by the fact that the first case listed in her initial report was from 2009. So this is not just something that has occurred in the past 10 years. On the commitment to implementing the review’s recommendations, it was very clear, certainly from my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel), that the Government were absolutely committed to putting them all in place to rebuild the confidence of the Windrush generation. Could the Minister reassure me that that commitment remains and will be taken forward?
Miss Dines
I suggest that the commitment is clear to many, but there is clearly more work to be done. It is refreshing to see the amount of engagement locally that there has been. The casework reflects that. The other thing I wish to mention is that these things evolve, as they should. Dramatic changes have been brought in to make sure that the new system brought in by the Government is even more generous than before. There are many new aspects to this. For example, the introduction of new living costs allows compensation to be awarded to close family members for losses that were not previously covered under the scheme. The Government are doing more, as they should. The introduction of preliminary payments for close family members allows for part of a compensation payment to be paid earlier in the process. There needs to be more change, but we are effecting this and the Government’s commitment is unswerving—my hon. Friend is correct on that.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
Whitehall sources have been quoted in The Guardian as saying:
“The Williams review is not set in stone”.
It would be a betrayal of that review and of those affected if there is to be no migrants commissioner, no reconciliation events and no extra powers for the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration. The Windrush compensation scheme has been painfully slow, with at least 23 people known to have died while their claims were being processed. So will the Minister confirm that none of the planned changes will affect the already ineffective compensation scheme and that the claims still outstanding will be concluded at the earliest opportunity? What confidence can those who do us the honour of coming to these islands for sanctuary, for work, for study and for love have in this Government when the UK Tory Government ignore the terrible injustices of Windrush, fail to learn the lessons and double down on attacking their fellow human beings?
Miss Dines
The hon. Lady should not believe everything she reads in the paper because there is no end date to Wendy Williams’ appointment, she continues to review and the Government take her views very seriously. I do not accept the premise of the “delay”. These issues are dealt with sensitively. It is important not to have a knee-jerk reaction and rush. Detailed, fundamental work needs to be done and Members must judge the “delay”—or the progress, as I would rather say—by the fact that there is a 59% success rate and so much money paid out. What is important is that the engagement, which has improved over the past three to six months, has meant a dramatic increase in the number of those taking up the scheme. There is always more to do and the Government will not say that they are doing everything right, but they are 100% committed and I do not accept that there is delay or a willingness to ditch, as is implied, the independent reviewer, whose work is so important.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
The previous Home Secretary rightly energetically embraced the Wendy Williams findings and pursued the recommendations. Notwithstanding those individual recommendations, Wendy Williams said that at the heart of what must change was the Home Office’s culture
“to recognise that migration and wider Home Office policy is about people and, whatever its objective, should be rooted in humanity.”
What evidence is there that that is changing and will change substantially? Is there a risk that the current problems with the migration backlog have deflected attention from dealing with the Windrush problems more urgently?
Miss Dines
The Government are very committed, as Members can see from the level of engagement. Where massive mistakes were made, where cultural change is needed, there is evidence, as Wendy Williams acknowledges, of change in attitude and culture, which has been seen with those hard workers in the civil service who deal with these claims. However, we must not conflate the issues of the Windrush generation, who are rightly identified as British and have a right to be here, with the enforcement of policies for individuals who have no right to reside in this country. That distinction has to be clear. Caseworkers will need to continue to be empathetic in the way they deal with our citizens and progress has been made.
Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
The Home Affairs Committee has spent a great deal of time looking at the Windrush scandal and the work of Wendy Williams, including a visit to the compensation scheme unit in Sheffield, because we remain very concerned about that scheme and we reiterate our call for it to be given to an arm’s length body outside the Home Office. Very worrying are reports that the Government are planning not to take forward the recommendations on the migrants commissioner or the recommendations on the extension of the powers of the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration, who is currently the only inspector in Government who cannot publish his reports without the permission of the Home Office, and only one out of 23 of his reports has been published on time. That comes alongside the delays in the appointment of a new modern slavery commissioner. Can the Minister confirm today that the particular recommendations around the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration will be taken forward quickly by the Government?
Miss Dines
I do not accept that there is any delay or difficulty in rising to the challenge but, as the right hon. Lady knows, the Government cannot comment in relation to leaks. The Government must be judged on what they actually do, not on worries about what journalists say might be happening. Let us wait a modest amount of time to see what the Government actually do. We must judge the Government’s record on delivery, not on speculation in The Guardian.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
Do the Government intend to deal with these claims on a strictly first-come, first-served basis, or are they able to exercise discretion in favour of claimants who may be more aged, more frail, but who may only have put in the claim somewhat later in the cycle?
Miss Dines
I thank my right hon. Friend for that interesting question. It is something that is worth while reviewing and I will make sure that he gets a detailed answer. What I can say is that there is an ongoing system of improvements. Glitches in terms of whether family members are entitled to money, or whether people are being dealt as appropriate for their age are serious issues. I would like to get back to him with some more detail on that.
Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)
Happy new year, Mr Speaker.
The Minister talks about how refreshing it is to see the engagement of local people. These local people are desperate. Their lives have been stripped away from them. It is not refreshing; it is actually disheartening. Can the Minister confirm whether the Windrush scheme will remain open, and whether additional resources will be used? At the moment, there is an 18-month delay. I am not sure about the 59% figure to which she refers. Is it the ones the Government have dealt with, or is it the ones in the pipeline in the 18-month delay? I do not know what the West Indian community have done to this Government to be treated so cruelly, so harshly and so heartlessly.
Miss Dines
I do not accept that this Government are treating those applying under the scheme cruelly or harshly. On the contrary, while this Government have made mistakes, as have successive Governments, they are doing all they can. Various improvements have raised the minimum payment from £250 to £10,000 per applicant. That is not treating people with disrespect. That is rising to the challenge.
Brendan Clarke-Smith (Bassetlaw) (Con)
The Minister mentions some of the issues that have been faced by the Windrush generation. Can she update the House on the work of the cross-governmental working group and on how that has gone about addressing some of these issues?
Miss Dines
This has been an opportunity for learning. The cross-governmental work has been very valuable. On commitment, I reiterate that there has been a change in culture. Wendy Williams accepts that there has been a massive shift among those working in the community and the caseworkers. That cross-governmental work will continue in the months ahead.
Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)
The former Home Secretary promised to implement all 30 recommendations in the Wendy Williams review. It seems that we need to remind the Minister that it was a Government review, so why is that promise now being broken; it is like shifting sand? Is it therefore correct to say that the Government can no longer be trusted and have run out of time?
Miss Dines
This Government can be trusted. Again, I remind the House that the Government do not comment on leaks. That is simply not acceptable. On an issue as important as this concerning the rights of our citizens, it is simply not good enough to accept what is written in The Guardian without judging on the facts.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
I am sure that we are all pleased to hear from the Minister that the Government remain committed to implementing all the Williams recommendations. Presumably, therefore, the Home Office has a plan for the implementation. Can the Minister tell the House what the target date for completion of that plan is?
Miss Dines
The whole point of this work is that there is not a target finish date. That would be against the principles of continual improvement and continual financial assistance for successful applicants. It would be wholly wrong to say that we are stopping it; we are not. We are continuing and there is no target end date. We continue to work at pace.
Kate Osamor (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)
In the progress update that Wendy Williams published, she made it clear that the Department was at a tipping point: it could either drive forward and achieve lasting cultural changes, or abandon any commitment to change. Well, we have our answer. What does the Minister think of Wendy Williams’ conclusion that a failure to drive change would mean that it was just a matter of time before we faced another difficult outcome like the Windrush scandal?
Miss Dines
The Government greatly respect and take seriously what Wendy Williams says. There is no question of abandoning this change in culture. The change has been fundamental within the Government. It is across all Departments, not just the Home Office, because these issues attach to all Departments. The change has been dramatic and that has been refreshing to see, but there is still more work to be done, which is why Wendy Williams will continue on this most valuable work.
Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)
If the Government are indeed still committed to the recommendations of Wendy Williams, then, obviously, the Minister can have no problem in coming to the Dispatch Box to confirm that there will be a migrants commissioner. Can she tell us when we can expect the migrants commissioner to appear and to be appointed?
Miss Dines
On that issue, I will have to write to the hon. Gentleman in relation to the timings. But I can reassure him that there is a huge commitment here, and no one should be under any misapprehension that the Government do not take the matter seriously. The issues along the way will be addressed. I am pleased with the progress that we have made but, as I have said, there is more work to be done. This is not a case of harping on; it is a case of looking at how we can best help people in the future.
Mrs Paulette Hamilton (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
Before Christmas, I asked the Home Office how many of my constituents in Erdington had applied to the Windrush compensation scheme. Shamefully, the way the Government record applications means that they cannot tell me. Now we hear that Ministers are abandoning most of the recommendations of the Windrush review. Can the Minister tell me, a child of the Windrush generation, why the Government are intent on pretending that the Windrush scandal is now behind us?
Miss Dines
I remind the hon. Lady of what I said a little while ago. The Government are not finishing a project; they do not have an end date. They continue to work on it. They are certainly not abandoning people who are part of our community and as British as everyone here. The number of claims received by the scheme was 4,558, so there is statistical analysis and proper knowledge of what is happening with the scheme. But I welcome the hon. Lady’s input. I would meet her at any time, as would the Minister who holds the brief, to discuss that further. I am very grateful to her for her question.
Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)
Five years on from the outrage of the Windrush scandal and the hostile environment, these reports of scrapped commitments and the cases of so many of my constituents, who are still harassed and persecuted by this Home Office, make it clear that this Government never had any intention of cleaning up the hostile environment towards migrants and minorities in this country. At the very least, will the Minister accept the reality that the Windrush generation, migrants and minorities have lost all confidence in this Home Office and this Government?
Miss Dines
I respectfully suggest that the hon. Gentleman is mistaken. I have been a junior Minister in the Home Office for just a few months, but I have not witnessed that hostile environment he speaks of. Mistakes have been made historically, but I have witnessed civil servants working together to put right this wrong. I will work hard to make sure that we continue, so that each and every citizen of our country is treated with fairness in the same way.
Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)
Human rights are universal: no class of person present in this country should be exempted from human rights protection, regardless of whether they are a British citizen. In our 11th report, “Black people, racism and human rights”, the Joint Committee on Human Rights said:
“We expect the Government to fulfil its promise to implement the recommendations from the Windrush Lessons Learned Review…as a matter of urgency.”
That was more than two years ago. Can we take it that the delay in implementing the regulations and the reports that some of them are now to be ditched are indicative of the fact that the Government are unconcerned whether their forthcoming immigration legislation is human rights compliant?
Miss Dines
It is absolutely not the case that the Government have not treated these issues with urgency. When we deal with serious issues, we have to have a rapid but detailed and reliable response. We cannot just rush ahead with something that will not work. This is about a large transformational programme of the Home Office and the fact that it has dealt with people in an unacceptable way in the past. This Government are committed to doing everything that is right. I simply do not accept that the Government are abandoning the recommendations. We are working through them very hard, and Wendy Williams has accepted that and said the Government have stepped up to the plate, to use an American form of words. There will be more work done, but the commitment is already there.
Feryal Clark (Enfield North) (Lab)
The Minister talks about engagement, so can she please confirm why the Home Office is now refusing to hold reconciliation events despite having promised to do so?
Miss Dines
I understand that that was part of the argument put forward in the seemingly inaccurate article in The Guardian. The level of engagement has been incredibly high, and engagement is a key part of delivering the review. Home Office officials are actively engaging with internal and external organisations and staff at all levels, including unions, support networks and the Department’s race board, to ensure that the findings of the review are implemented. Across the whole community there have been many engagement exercises, but, again, it is not appropriate to comments on leaks or news articles that may not be accurate.
Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
One would think from the way the Minister is speaking that this was an urgent question on an article in The Guardian. This is an urgent question about a Home Office that, as the Home Affairs Committee and the Public Accounts Committee have both repeatedly pointed out, failed to recognise the pattern of behaviour despite many flags in the system, introduced a compensation scheme that then did not deliver, had to review the compensation scheme and is now goodness knows where. One of the recommendations from the Public Accounts Committee was that more work be done to identify people from Commonwealth countries other than from the Caribbean who were also impacted. Can she update the House on progress on that?
Miss Dines
It is regrettable that some of the work the Home Office has done has not been acknowledged. There has been a sea change. Things have changed. The process has been improved and there is a constant system of review; even since the August changes were made, more work has been done. I mentioned earlier the introduction of preliminary payments for close family members, which allows for part of a compensation payment to be made far earlier, meeting one of the core concerns of close family members about receiving that assistance and money. The commitment is definitely there. It has been suggested that this has now become a UQ on The Guardian, but that is because of the fallacious and inaccurate information in The Guardian that has seemingly led to these questions being asked.
Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
The Minister mentioned the compensation scheme, as she believes it to be an outstanding example of success. That is not the view of the Home Affairs Committee and it is not the view of my constituents applying to the scheme, who have had the most appalling experience, from the tone of the correspondence to the delays in receiving responses and the paltry sums offered for absolutely appalling travesties of justice. The Windrush scandal was the most egregious breach of trust. The full acceptance and implementation of the Wendy Williams recommendations is the bare minimum that the Windrush generation have the right to expect. Will the Minister confirm that the Home Office remains committed to implementation in full?
Miss Dines
This is about progress. I am very clear that we must compensate members of the Windrush generation and their families for the losses and impacts they suffered. Those impacts were the result of a scandal that arose under Governments of varying colours, and we must put that right. I simply do not accept the suggestion that there is no serious effort being put into implementation. I do not say everything has been a success; mistakes have been made, but improvements are also being made. We have offered and paid out almost £60 million. That is an extremely good start. It is not enough, but it is the way forward, and Wendy Williams has acknowledged that there has been significant change.
Sir Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
Will the Minister give the House a clear assurance that the Home Office will appoint a migrants commissioner?
Miss Dines
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that question. I will have to check and write to him. That is not in my brief, but I am enjoying this urgent question and listening to Members across the House. That information will be sent to him shortly.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Can the Minister outline how she will apply the lessons of Windrush to the attitude of some on immigration—specifically on allowing people to work here and help to fill the gaps in industries? One of the recommendations and suggestions of the Wendy Williams review is that people should be entitled to bring their families and build a life while also building this nation, as those who came over in the Windrush generation did before them. Can the Minister confirm that that is truly the case?
Miss Dines
I can confirm that this Government are committed to treating people fairly and to putting right historical wrongs in such a way that progress is made at pace and without unnecessary delay. The Government must do what we can to protect our borders, but we must also look at those who are legitimately here. That is an ongoing process; it is a very specialist area, and the Government are committed to a change from historical wrongdoings in how people have been treated. This is a growing area, and from what I have experienced, the Government are committed to assisting those who are lawfully in this country.
Industrial Action
(1 year, 7 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Grant Shapps)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement on industrial action and minimum service levels.
Nurses, paramedics and transport workers are called key workers for a reason. They truly are the lifeblood of this country; every person sitting in this Chamber is grateful for the work they do and I know everyone will agree that we cannot do without them. The Government will always defend their ability to withdraw their labour.
However, we also recognise the pressures faced by those working in the public sector. Yesterday I invited union leaders in for talks across Government, and I am pleased to say we have seen some progress. We want to resolve disputes where possible, while also delivering what is fair and reasonable to the taxpayer. At the moment, all households are struggling with the repercussions of high inflation caused by covid and Putin’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine, and the Government are absolutely focused on tackling that.
Granting inflation-busting pay deals that step outside of the independent pay review settlement process is not the sensible way to proceed and will not provide a fair outcome. We will instead continue to consult to find meaningful ways forward for the unions, and work with employers to improve the process and discuss the evidence that we have now submitted. In the meantime, the Government also have a duty to protect the public’s access to essential public services. Although we absolutely believe in the right to strike, we are duty-bound to protect the lives and livelihoods of the British people.
The British people need to know that when they have a heart attack, a stroke or a serious injury, an ambulance will turn up, and that if they need hospital care, they have access to it. They need to know not only that those services are available, but that they can get trains or buses—particularly people who are most likely to be the least well-off in society.
I thank those at the Royal College of Nursing, who, during their last strike, worked with health officials at a national level to ensure that safe levels of cover were in place when they took industrial action. They kept services such as emergency and acute care running. They may have disagreed, but they showed that they could do their protest and withdraw their labour in a reasonable and mature way. As ever, they put the public first, and we need all our public services to do the same.
A lack of timely co-operation from the ambulance unions meant that employers could not reach agreement nationally for minimum safety levels during recent strikes. Health officials were left guessing the likely minimum coverage, making contingency planning almost impossible and putting all our constituents’ lives at risk. The ambulance strikes planned for tomorrow still do not have minimum safety levels in place. That will result in patchy emergency care for British people. This cannot continue.
It is for moments such as this that we are introducing legislation focusing on blue-light emergency services and on delivering on our manifesto commitment to secure minimum service on the railways. I am introducing a Bill that will give the Government the power to ensure that vital public services will have to maintain a basic function, by delivering minimum safety levels to ensure that lives and livelihoods are not lost. We are looking at six key areas, each of which is critical to keeping the British people safe and society functioning: health, education, fire and rescue, transport, border security and nuclear decommissioning. We do not want to use this legislation, but we must ensure the safety of the British public. During the passage of the Bill, we intend to consult on what an adequate level of coverage looks like in fire, ambulance, and rail services. For the other sectors covered in the Bill, we hope to reach minimum service agreements so that we do not have to use the powers—sectors will be able to come to that position, just as the nurses have done in recent strikes.
That is a common-sense approach, and we are not the first to follow it. The legislation will bring us in line with other modern European countries such as France, Spain, Italy and Germany, all of which already have these types of rules in place. Even the International Labour Organisation—the guardian of workers’ rights around the world to which the TUC itself subscribes—says that minimum service levels are a proportionate way of balancing the right to strike with the need to protect the wider public. The first job of any Government is to keep the public safe, and unlike other countries, we are not proposing to ban strikes, but we do need to know that unions will be held to account.
Opposition Members who object to minimum safety levels will need to explain to their constituents why, if they had a heart attack, stroke, or life-threatening illness on a strike day, there were no minimum safety standards in place—[Interruption.] I can see that they do not want to hear it, but they will also need to explain why their leader, the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), has already promised—without hearing any of these details—to stand in the way of this legislation and to repeal minimum safety levels, which are in the interests of their constituents, are in place in every other mature European democracy and neighbouring country, and would protect lives and livelihoods in this country. That is the difference between a Conservative Government who take difficult decisions to protect the welfare of our nation, and the Opposition, who too often appear to be in the pay of their union paymasters. I commend this statement to the House.
Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)
I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and declare that I am a proud member of a trade union.
I will start by tackling the Secretary of State’s comments. The first thing that comes to my mind in this debate and in what the Secretary of State said is what happened to my constituent Bina, who waited more than an hour for an ambulance—who died waiting for an ambulance. That was not on a strike day; it was because of the disastrous chaos we have in the system under this Conservative Government. In the past few months, we have seen ambulance workers go on their first major strike in 30 years, and the first ever strike in the history of the Royal College of Nursing. Teachers, pharmacists and civil servants—among others—are balloting as we speak. His Government offer no solution because they have caused the problem.
The economic crisis made in Downing Street has left working people facing an economic emergency of sky-high inflation and recession. I notice that in his opening statement, the Secretary of State did not even mention—let alone apologise for—the fact that the Government crashed the economy. Nobody wants to see these strikes happen, least of all the workers who lose a day’s pay. How are the Government responding to a crisis of their own making? Not with any attempt to reach a serious long-term solution in the public interest, but by playing politics and promising yet another sticking plaster.
The Secretary of State claims that he made progress yesterday, but the read-out from trade union representatives was dismal. Is there any chance of a deal this year? Where is the consultation he mentioned for a meaningful way forward, or was that all for show? That is the implication of his other proposal—his sacking nurses Bill. It is an outright attack on the fundamental freedom of British working people. How can he say with a straight face that this Government will always defend the ability to strike? Can he tell us whether he stands by his article in The Telegraph last summer, in which he listed yet more plans to attack that basic right? Does he deny that he considered banning some key workers from joining unions at all? So much for levelling up workers’ rights. Where is the Government’s promised code of conduct on fire and rehire, and the long-abandoned Employment Bill that they promised would tackle insecure work?
The Secretary of State goes in one breath from thanking nurses to sacking them. That is not just insulting but utterly stupid. There is no common sense about this at all. He says that he recognises the pressures faced by key workers, but he knows that the NHS cannot find the nurses it needs to work on the wards, and that the trains do not run even on non-strike days such is the shortage of staff, so how can he seriously think that sacking thousands of key workers will not just plunge our public services further into crisis? The Transport Secretary admits it will not work, the Education Secretary does not want it, and the Government’s own impact assessment finds that it will lead to more strikes and staff shortages.
The Secretary of State says that he is looking into six key areas. What do other Ministers think about that? Will they have to disagree on that, too? He is scraping the barrel with comparisons to France and Spain, but those countries, which he claims have these laws on striking, lose vastly more strike days than Britain. Has he taken any time at all to speak to their Governments or trade unions to learn any real lessons from them?
The Secretary of State quotes the International Labour Organisation—I am surprised that he even knows what it is—but he will know that the ILO requires compensatory measures and an independent arbitrator. Are those in his Bill? The ILO also says that minimum service levels can happen in services only when the safety of individuals or their health is at stake. That does not include transport, Border Force or teachers, as he proposes.
Excess deaths are at their highest levels since the pandemic peak. The public are being put at risk every day because of the Government’s NHS crisis and staffing shortages. The Secretary of State is right that his Government’s duty is to protect the public’s access to essential services, but livelihoods and lives are already being lost. We all want minimum standards of safety, service and staffing; it is Ministers who are failing to provide that. Does he not accept that trade unions and workers already take steps to protect the public during action? He singles out ambulance workers. Paramedics agreed to operate life and limb deals on a trust-by-trust basis, as he knows, to ensure that the right care continues to be delivered. He should know that service levels were at 82%, with ambulance workers consistently leaving the picket lines to make sure that emergency calls were responded to. He is threatening to rip up that protection, and for what?
Let us look into what this is really all about: a Government who are out of ideas, out of time and fast running out of sticking plasters; a Government who are playing politics with nurses’ and teachers’ lives because they cannot stomach the co-operation and negotiation that are needed; and, a Government desperately doing all they can to distract from their economic emergency. We need negotiation not legislation, so when is the Minister going to do his job?
Grant Shapps
It is almost as if covid and the pressures on the NHS never occurred, according to the Opposition. I am pretty sure I heard this straight. It is almost as if Putin did not invade Ukraine, force up energy prices and force up inflation, and it is almost as if the right hon. Lady does not think that the rest of Europe is going through exactly the same thing. I was just reading an article in The Guardian saying exactly that—that other health services are experiencing exactly the same problems.
If we are going to have a sensible debate and start working from the facts and then have a discussion, we ought to acknowledge that covid and the war in Ukraine have had a huge impact on health services here and around the world. Then we can go on to have a sensible conversation about balancing the right to strike. As I said at the top of my speech, it is a right that we fully respect and fully endorse. We believe it is part of the International Labour Organisation’s correct diagnosis of a working economy that people should be able to withdraw their labour, but that should not mean withdrawing their labour at the expense of our constituents’ lives. The right hon. Lady talks about how the ambulance service, in her words, has been reasonable and offered back-up on a trust-by-trust basis if people have heart attacks and strokes, but heart attacks and strokes do not accept or work to the boundaries of trust borders. They work nationally, and so to manage the ambulance system, we need to know that each and every one of our constituents is protected. To deny and to vote against legislation that brings in minimum safety levels to help our constituents is to attack their security and their welfare.
Brendan Clarke-Smith (Bassetlaw) (Con)
With the Opposition completely unable to control their own MPs and stop them from joining picket lines or to give a straight answer on whether they support the strikes, we can clearly see which Members of this House are on the side of the public. Does my right hon. Friend agree that what we have today are fair and proportionate measures equivalent to what is already in place in a number of other European countries, such as France and Spain?
Grant Shapps
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is worth the House reflecting on the fact that the police were banned from striking in 1919, and that agreement has been in place for more than 100 years. It would have been possible for a Minister to come to this Dispatch Box and say that we would do the same with ambulance workers and perhaps with firefighters, but that is not what we are proposing today; we are proposing to bring ourselves in line with other modern European economies. It makes every bit of sense to ensure that if strikes are going to occur, our constituents’ lives are protected with minimum safety levels. Frankly, it is extraordinary that anyone would argue against.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
This Government have already created the most restrictive and anti-trade union laws in Europe. This new right-wing culture war stinks, and they are using ambulance cover as a pretext to attack workers’ rights. It was the Tory membership that gave us a Prime Minister who tanked the economy overnight, put people’s mortgages up and gave us high inflation, yet it is the Tories who continue to demand that public sector workers take the hit to balance the books.
Everyone can see the irony of the Tories clapping key workers and now giving them a pay cut and threatening them with the sack for future action. Does the Secretary of State really think that ordinary people support Tory plans over the nurses? Does he realise that the public can see Pat Cullen and Mick Lynch destroying their arguments and soundbites? Does he understand that train commuters, who already suffer from appalling service, will be raging when they find out how much money train companies are making from strike days, paid for by taxpayers? How much money has been paid to train companies that could have gone to workers instead?
It has not been easy for the Scottish Government, but they have negotiated better pay settlements for Police Scotland, train crews and NHS workers. It is something that the Royal College of Nursing would be willing to discuss with the UK Government. Those actions were commended by the unions, but not even acknowledged by Labour. There are no ambulance strikes in Scotland, and that has been done within a fixed budget and negotiations with one hand tied behind our back. Now, despite working with the unions, Scotland is to have the same anti-worker or anti-union legislation imposed on it, against the wishes of the Scottish Government. It is an imposition made easier by the Labour party agreeing with the Tories that workers’ rights should remain with Westminster and not be devolved to Scotland. We do not want to be part of plans designed to sabotage workers’ rights. This situation has clearly shown once again that if Scotland is to become a fairer, more equal country that respects workers’ rights, the only way to do so is to become a normal independent country.
Grant Shapps
The hon. Gentleman tries to push the argument that somehow this legislation will take us out of step with other European countries, and I have already explained that it is we who are out of step with what already occurs elsewhere in Europe. If we go beyond Europe, he will be interested to hear that in Australia, Canada and many states in America, blue-light strikes, as we would call them, are banned entirely. We are taking a moderate, sensible approach. I would have thought that the hon. Gentleman would wholeheartedly support protecting his constituents in that way. While we are taking lectures from him about how the Scottish Government handle these things, I could not help noticing that Scottish primary school teachers are on strike and secondary teachers go on strike in Scotland on Wednesday.
Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)
Strikes have a disproportionate impact in rural Britain, where there are no other modes of public transport. The nearest alternative hospital may be more than 60 miles away and ambulances have already travelled far further to get there, and that is without mentioning the vacancy rates in public services, which are so high due to our housing crisis. Can my right hon. Friend confirm how these measures will help support rural communities?
Grant Shapps
My hon. Friend is right. These so-called forever strikes, which have continued for month after month on the railways, are particularly hurting rural communities. It is easy sometimes for people to imagine that those affected will just sit at home on Zoom or Teams and have those conversations. That view of the world is much easier for someone in a desk job, perhaps in management. It is much harder for someone in a rural community or for a hospital porter or cleaner who needs to get to the hospital. The very people being hurt most by these strikes that never seem to come to a conclusion on the railways are the hardest-up in society. This Government will stand behind them with minimum service levels.
Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)
One minute the Secretary of State is clapping the key workers, and the next he is sacking them. What is really behind this legislation? Only time will tell, but why is he looking to criminalise the great key workers who brought us through this pandemic, and whose only crime is to demand decent wages and terms and conditions, as well as a safe environment for themselves and the general public?
Grant Shapps
I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman is an enthusiastic supporter of everything that the unions do, and they are an enthusiastic supporter of the hon. Gentleman. [Interruption.] Perhaps not all of them. But if one of his constituents has a heart attack, stroke or serious accident on Wednesday, I do not understand why he would seriously have an objection to a national level of agreed safe services? That is what we propose and I am surprised that he would vote against the safety of his own constituents.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend try to impress on Opposition Members, who keep referring to this as an anti-union measure, that public support for the unions will be endangered if they do not preserve minimum services for people whose lives are at risk?
Grant Shapps
My right hon. Friend makes an excellent point. We are trying to correct a problem that is very current. Ambulance workers and the unions have not provided a national level of guaranteed safety for the strike that is due on Wednesday. Right hon. and hon. Members on the Opposition Benches could help us get that in place across the economy, particularly in vital services, so that even though we take this primary power, we never need to use it. That would be the ideal solution. Why do they not help us bring safety to their constituents, which would help both them and the unions?
Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)
The Secretary of State has said that he supports the right to strike—by banning workers from striking. Does he not see the ridiculous position he has got himself into? The whole point of having an assessment of policy is to find out whether it will work. When the Government are told that their policy is bonkers, the sensible thing to do is to bin it. Where does he think declaring war on working people will end?
Grant Shapps
As I have mentioned a couple of times at the Dispatch Box, the hon. Gentleman will need to explain his position to his friends and colleagues in countries as radical as France and Spain, where they have these rules in place and act already. On the impact assessment, which is a point that has been made several times, including from the Opposition Front Bench, the final impact assessment—which will come through primary legislation, with secondary legislation in the form of statutory instruments to bring it into place—is yet to be published, so he is wrong about that as well. How can anyone seriously argue that guaranteed rescue by ambulances of somebody who is seriously ill could have a harmful impact? It is simply beyond belief.
Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)
Coming back through Heathrow recently, I spoke to someone who works there who praised the armed forces for the incredible job they did covering Border Force, and told me how the process worked without any problems at all, and what a sad reflection it was on the public service that they could not do the same thing. Does my right hon. Friend agree that Opposition Members, the unions and many who work in the public service seem to have forgotten that we spent £400 billion safeguarding their jobs, their futures and their careers?
Grant Shapps
I pay tribute to the Army, who did fantastic work. The Army has a no-strike clause already, along with the police. Once this primary power has been taken, it will be for Secretaries of State, including the Home Secretary, to determine and consult in other areas for secondary powers to bring in minimum service levels. Most people working in the public service are doing a hugely valuable job. They are trying to do their best, and many are frustrated by their radical union leaders who often lead them up the garden path.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
The right hon. Member asked whether we acknowledge the impact of covid and Ukraine. Of course we do—we live with it every day. All our constituents live with it every day. All those working in the NHS and the ambulance service live with it every day. He says that the British people need to know that an ambulance will turn up when they have a heart attack, a stroke or a serious injury, and that they will have access to hospital care. Does he not agree that a better way of ensuring that is to deal with the actual problem: to invest, recruit and retain staff in the NHS and the ambulance service, and provide the service that is being cried out for not just by us but by those people? Rather than tinkering about with what cannot solve the problem, fixing it might be a better way.
Grant Shapps
The hon. Lady is right in the sense that we have seen huge backlogs because of covid. We are hiring a lot more nurses as a result—thousands more since 2019. We are also funding the healthcare system more than ever in history with some £168 billion. As the Prime Minister described in his speech last week, bringing down those waiting lists is his No. 1 priority. We are doing all those things as well, but it is undeniable that not having a minimum safety level in place during strike days puts lives at risk. This Government will take the responsible decision to prevent that from happening in future.
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con)
It is important to remember that public sector workers are employed and paid for by the great British taxpayer. I sympathise with some of their demands, but does my right hon. Friend agree that their first loyalty should be to the British taxpayer, not some power-crazed union barons who fund the Labour party and have, in the past, paid off Labour MPs’ mortgages?
Grant Shapps
I pay tribute to those in the NHS: there is a very good reason why, when the public sector in this country got a zero pay rise last year because of covid, over 1 million people in the NHS did receive a pay rise. At the moment it is worth about £1,400 per individual. I appreciate that in these times, with Putin’s evil war and the impact that has had on inflation, everyone would like more money as a pay rise, but the Government must consider what that would do to people’s taxes, to interest rates and to mortgage rates. We would get into a circle where we are never able to get inflation down. Inflation is the biggest evil of all. We are taking sensible steps to address it. That lot over there simply want to roll over and not address the difficult problems.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
With the Royal College of Emergency Medicine highlighting more than 300 excess deaths every single week, where is the Government’s minimum service level agreement to the public? The best way to avert a strike is to negotiate. Within the Secretary of State’s legislation, what obligations will there be on Government to enter meaningful negotiations, and how does he describe “meaningful”?
Grant Shapps
I want to pick up the hon. Lady on those figures, because the NHS itself says that it does not recognise those numbers. When we have a strike such as the one on Wednesday by ambulance workers, there is no way that she or anyone else in this House can realistically argue that people will somehow be better off without a national minimum safe level of service. That is what we will focus on, and that is why she and Opposition Members should support this Bill.
Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)
My right hon. Friend was right to mention other European countries, but he could have added to that list South Africa, Argentina, Australia and Canada, all of which are members of the International Labour Organisation and have minimum service levels in essential services. In every single case, the ILO has reviewed the MSL and determined it to be a necessary and proportionate restriction of the article 11 right to strike. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the British people are entitled to exactly the same lawful protection and to have their basic needs met at times of industrial action in essential services?
Grant Shapps
It is worth reminding the House that my hon. Friend is an acknowledged expert in employment law. I am grateful for her thoughts and clarification that the International Labour Organisation says that the legislation is compatible with article 11. I have been able to sign off the European Court of Human Rights compatibility on this measure. As she rightly points out, it is not just friends and neighbours in Europe but around the world where strikes are, in many cases, banned—not what we are proposing—and minimum safety levels are in place. There is nothing illegitimate about what we are doing. It fits with the ILO, and who signs up to the ILO? The TUC and many other unions besides.
Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
Every single concern that the Secretary of State and all those on the Government Benches have raised so far is already covered by existing legislation, because trade unions are legally obliged to provide life and limb cover. That is the existing law. Will the Secretary of State tell us what the difference is between that and his proposed legislation? That will be the test of whether the new legislation is an attack on workers.
Grant Shapps
The hon. Gentleman raises a good point, which I am pleased to answer. When strikes are taking place tomorrow and we are not able to get a simple answer to the question of what the national level of emergency cover will be for people in the most urgent situations—heart attacks, strokes and other life-threatening ailments—that is why we need minimum safety levels. When for many, many months, some of the poorest in society have been unable to go to work to earn their own living, perhaps as a cleaner or a hospital porter, that is why we need minimum service levels on our railways. I very much hope he will see the point and help to represent his constituents who are being prevented from earning money or, indeed, from being safe, should they have an accident tomorrow.
Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
Last week I met Daniel Jobsz, who runs the Wardrobe Bar and Kitchen in the City. He did not open last week; he said there was no point, because of the rail strike. Before Christmas, he lost tens of thousands of pounds because people were cancelling, as they could not come into central London because of the rail strike. UKHospitality calculates that around £1 billion of business was lost in central London because of the rail strikes. Does my right hon. Friend agree that, while it is right to protect the right to strike, there must be legislation in place to protect businesses in other sectors, such as hospitality, and to protect workers from job losses?
Grant Shapps
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and it brings me on to an important consideration, which is the disparity between the public sector settlements on offer and the average in the private sector at the moment, which has typically been lower. It is right that, as a responsible Government, we have to balance off all these different considerations across the economy. It is right that we consider those running small businesses—tea rooms, pubs and the services sector—in this balance, which is why minimum service levels, as well as minimum safety levels, are right for this economy.
Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)
I have listened carefully to what the Secretary of State has had to say, and however he tries to dress it up, this is part of an alarming authoritarian drift. We have an attack on the democratic right to strike, an attack on the democratic right to vote through attempted vote rigging, with the introduction of voter ID, and an attack on the democratic right to peaceful protest. Is the Secretary of State not ashamed to be a member of the most authoritarian Government in Britain in living memory?
Grant Shapps
I have heard some stuff at this Dispatch Box, but the idea that this is the most authoritarian Government—has the hon. Gentleman seen what happens in truly authoritarian states, particularly in Marxist states? It is a ludicrous claim about British democracy. Actually, he can help, with his many union links, because all we are saying is that we will take powers to ensure that the minimum safety level exists. We are saying at the same time that we do not need to use these powers; we simply need to get agreement for his constituents and for all our constituents that on a strike day, an ambulance will be able to turn up because national levels have been agreed. That is it, and he should get on board and support this.
Angela Richardson (Guildford) (Con)
Last week, rail users in Guildford trying to get in and out of the constituency, including key workers, were completely cut off because there were zero trains. At no point have the Opposition condemned widespread strike action that disrupts the public. Will my right hon. Friend join me in asking the Opposition to back the measures we are putting forward, to keep the public safe and to keep our economy going and growing?
Grant Shapps
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We are on the side of people who are working hard, who are trying to get on with their lives and livelihoods, and who are concerned about their lives when it comes to emergency services. Who are Opposition Members interested in? Not once have I heard them condemn these strikes, which have been inflicted on people’s lives month after month—not a word from the Opposition. When we try to bring in even the most moderate and considerate legislation, which simply says that we will ask for a minimum safety level, what do they do? They object to it and attack their own constituents in the process.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)
Order. May I gently remind Members that Mr Speaker has determined that anybody who came in five minutes after the start of the session will not be called?
Colum Eastwood (Foyle) (SDLP)
I know that the Secretary of State likes to fly around in his own private plane, but I can tell him for a fact that while he has been doing that, many nurses in my constituency have been accessing food banks. This Government seem very uncomfortable with nurses standing on picket lines but totally relaxed about them lining up to get food for their families at food banks. If this Government are serious about stopping the strikes, surely now is the time to pay these essential workers properly.
Grant Shapps
I would be interested to hear from those on the Labour Front Bench whether it is their policy to pay a 19% pay rise and, if so, whether they can explain how they will raise the extra money. Will it be extra taxation? Will they be putting it on borrowing, with all the hikes in interest rates, mortgage rates, car loans and the rest of it that that would bring? That is the question they need to answer, and the more they waffle around the subject, rather than bringing forward serious measures to limit the impact of these strikes at the most serious point—the life and death point—the less they will get the respect of the general public.
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to bring forward these proportionate measures, and not least in the urgency with which he seeks to protect the safety and lives of all our constituents at risk from strike action. Children have suffered in these strikes; many children in Buckinghamshire use the railways to get to school. Does he agree that when the consultation comes forward, the ability of children to get to school on the railways must be included in the minimum service levels?
Grant Shapps
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. We have talked about workers getting to work and people losing their salaries because of these strikes, but children and their education are also being impacted. That is a crying shame, particularly after two years of covid and having to study from home, and now they are being put through this again when there is a decent offer on the table for the railways. When union bosses have actually put this offer to their members—the Transport Salaried Staffs Association, for example—they accepted it, and it was a very similar offer to the ones that the RMT and other unions refuse to put to their members. We just need some common sense from these unions and, I hope, a little pushing from Opposition Members.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)
Can the Secretary of State not just for once acknowledge the stress levels of workers—postal workers, rail workers, health workers and teachers—who have had 10 years of frozen pay and 10 years of reducing living standards and are going through enormous stress at work, with many leaving the teaching and nursing professions as a result of it? Nobody is likely to vote to take strike action unless it is an act of desperation; they do it because they want to get decent pay for themselves, their loved ones and their families. Can he not for once face the issue of the poverty that people face, rather than trying to bring in draconian laws to prevent people from taking effective action to remedy the injustice that they are facing?
Grant Shapps
It is obviously not true that there has been a pay freeze for 10 years. The right hon. Gentleman stands there and makes that claim, but as I just mentioned, because the NHS was under huge pressure during covid, 1.2 million nurses and workers in the NHS were provided with an uplift of £1,200 last year, with £1,400 proposed this year—at the time, inflation was low—even though the rest of the public sector was not receiving pay increases. He talks about stress for public sector workers, and I recognise the hard work and the hours that they put in, particularly in the NHS, which is why we have expanded by many thousands the number of nurses, for example, but what about the stress for people who cannot get to work because of these strikes and have not been able to for months? What about the stress for people who are waiting for an ambulance when we do not have nationally agreed safety levels in place? That is the stress I am also worried about.
Chris Loder (West Dorset) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that when unions such as the RMT reduce their customary referendum period from 14 to six days to force through a false ballot result to strike and then go to strike straightaway, against what are necessarily the wishes of all members, this is an important statement to make and an important piece of legislation? Will he confirm how promptly he will bring forward this Bill?
Grant Shapps
The Bill is being introduced today. My hon. Friend is absolutely right about this. We have seen that the RMT has not put the offers to its members, which, as I mentioned before, is a real problem. When the TSSA put an almost identical offer to its members, it was accepted and the strike was therefore over. Any attempt not to allow members to see the full range of what is being offered is wrong. Because members have not seen the full offer, they will be unaware of the different elements of that offer. It has not been formally put to them—that is something the unions can change immediately. I very much hope that they do so.
Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)
I noticed a moment ago that the Secretary of State said that striking workers were in danger of pushing up interest rates. I remind him that many of those people are on strike because they cannot afford their mortgages or rent as a result of the hike in interest rates caused by his colleagues’ economic incompetence. I imagine that many essential workers are in receipt of the sort of wage that the Secretary of State would not get out of bed for in the morning.
On the legality of the legislation, the TUC general secretary has said that forcing workers who have democratically voted to strike to work and sacking them if they do not comply would almost certainly be illegal. Is that not right? Can the Minister really say that the detail of his Bill will comply in every respect with the United Kingdom Government’s obligations under both the ECHR and international labour law? On the detail, Minister, what is the position?
Grant Shapps
I do not know whether I am correcting myself or the hon. and learned Lady, but I was not saying—I did not mean to say, at least—that striking workers pushed up interest rates. It is inflation that pushes up interest rates. If we paid a 19% increase across the economy, we would have to borrow the money; we would then have more borrowing and more debt and, therefore, higher interest rates. Everybody would pay more on their mortgages and car loans. Businesses would pay more. That is the quite simple maths that I would have thought we have tested to destruction. It would not make sense to go ahead along those lines.
The hon. and learned Lady asked specifically about the ECHR, and I can confirm that the Bill is ECHR-compliant. My hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Laura Farris), who is no longer in her place, talked about employment law and how the Bill fits with the ILO and the ECHR; I have been able to sign that declaration. I can further confirm that there is proof of this, as many neighbouring countries already do exactly the same thing, which is also compliant with the ECHR.
Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)
I proudly put on the record my entry on the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as a former teacher and a former trade union member and representative for the NASUWT. I am very worried seeing teachers going on strike, because it is the pupils who will suffer most, particularly disadvantaged pupils from areas such as Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke. While I am a huge admirer of the incredible work that teachers do, they are sadly being cajoled out of the classroom by baron bosses in unions such as the “Not Education Union”, led by Bolshevik Bousted and Commie Courtney, along with their Labour mates, to make sure that kids continue to suffer. What can we do to ensure pupils will not be victims any further?
Grant Shapps
Minimum levels of service in education and elsewhere will of course help. Again, I want to stress to the House that we do not necessarily want or wish to introduce legislation in all these areas; that will be a matter for the House in secondary legislation and for further consultation. I very much hope, though, that this legislation gives the unions and some of their supporters in this House the opportunity to stop and think about whether minimum safety is appropriate in their particular areas. I very much hope that teachers will hold back from the threshold of strikes, which would be damaging to them and to pupils.
Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)
Nurses’ pay down 20%, teachers’ pay down 20%, firefighters’ pay down 12%, junior doctors’ pay down 26%—these are the consequences of 13 years of Tory rule. Let us be honest and talk about the real problem here: it is not workers going on strike, but the Tory Government and the economy they have built, which forcers workers to strike. This new anti-worker law would make things even worse, sacking teachers and nurses for striking for fair pay. Surely the easiest, safest and fairest way of guaranteeing minimum service provision is to pay nurses, firefighters and paramedics a decent wage with good conditions and the resources to do their jobs. Why will the Secretary of State not do that instead?
Grant Shapps
The hon. Lady might want to inquire of Members on her Front Bench—most of them are gone now, but one or two are still here—whether they would support a 19% pay increase. If they would, nice as that would be to do, how would they explain it to their constituents and to the financial markets as interest rates rise? If they would spread that across the entire economy, what would the impact be on the economy at large? Those are the simple but, unfortunately, difficult decisions that need to be made in government. Frankly, Labour’s failure to answer those basic questions is why it is not ready to run this country.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is not often I get called to speak before halfway through, but I am very pleased to have been called. The sentiments expressed inside this Chamber about seeking a solution do not appear to match the negotiations outside of it. As the Secretary of State will know, for many NHS staff, this is about not just money, but safety on the wards. Many nurses have stated that they would be happy with additional staff to lighten the load along with a modest pay rise to cover the cost of living. Will the Secretary of State indicate what assessment has been made of safety on the wards in the light of ongoing action? Will the Secretary of State guarantee safety and a cost of living wage increase?
Grant Shapps
Of course, one reason that we have employed tens of thousands more nurses and doctors is to help to relieve the pressure post covid. We all understand that, given what happened with covid and what is now happening with flu, which is the worst it has been for 10 years, we are seeing particularly strong pressures on our hospitals. The point I am making today is that none of this is helped by the uncertainty. It is fine for workers to withdraw their labour—it is obviously a last resort, but we understand it—but please, give us an indication or a guarantee of where the safety level will be, and do so on a nationwide basis. In fairness to the Royal College of Nursing, it has done that. The ambulance unions, I am afraid, have not. We invite them to do so.
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)
The Government’s failed industrial relations approach has led to the worst strikes in decades. Sadly, they have often sought to scupper talks by throwing in last-minute spanners. Now, they propose going from clapping nurses to sacking nurses. The Secretary of State will be aware that the Transport Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill’s impact assessment stated that imposing minimum service levels could actually lead to an “increased frequency of strikes”. What exactly has changed in the past two months since that was published?
Grant Shapps
First of all, no one is talking about sacking nurses. I have just checked the figures: we have more than 44,000 more nurses since 2010, and more than 34,000 more doctors. There has been a big increase even from 2019. Nothing in the Bill we are announcing today is about getting rid of nurses, any more than any employment contract has to be followed. It is worth remembering that the pay that is on offer is as a result of the independent pay review body—bodies that the unions themselves called to be set up 20 years ago—being put into action.
I have heard union bosses make the point about last-minute spanners, which is completely untrue. I seem to be living rent free in Mick Lynch’s head at the moment—I have not even been close to these negotiations. The deal on the table is the same discussion that has always been there. Rather than parroting those lines, the hon. Gentleman might do better to check the facts and encourage the unions to put these offers to their members.
David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)
When the Tory party spoke about taking back control, none of us thought that would mean suppressing votes with voter ID legislation, a policing and crime Act that curbs the right to protest, a House of Lords with unelected clerics and a Government who are withdrawing the basic fundamental human right to strike. How much longer will this Government continue to claim that this silly little island is a functioning democracy?
Grant Shapps
I am pretty sure the hon. Gentleman has been in the Chamber from the beginning, otherwise you would not have called him to speak, Mr Deputy Speaker. He will therefore have heard me say, not once or twice but three times now, that this legislation is compatible with the International Labour Organisation rules that the unions themselves sign up to and many of our European neighbours follow. I am struggling to follow the hon. Gentleman’s argument that this is somehow unfair, undemocratic or against international law.
Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
From the way the Secretary of State is speaking, one might think he is the knight on a white charger coming to rescue the system. Let us be clear, however, that it was this Government who froze pay in the public sector and then increased it below inflation, and this Government who reduced recruitment in the national health service, particularly among nurses, where we have a recruitment gap of 40,000. What we are actually hearing is chickens coming home to roost, isn’t it? He ought to take responsibility as a Minister in this Government.
Grant Shapps
I simply make the point that it is not the case that we have frozen recruitment, because we have 44,000 more nurses, not fewer—that is an increase rather than a decrease. It is also not the case that we have frozen pay, other than during the aftermath of the financial crash, which as I recall happened under the Labour party and we had to pick up the pieces, and through covid, although not all the way through covid, as I mentioned. Last year, even while the rest of the public sector was experiencing a pay freeze, we made an exception for NHS workers and paid them more, so the hon. Lady’s narrative is simply not true. Again, if the Opposition are saying that they would pay 19% more, I do not understand where that money would come from and whose taxes would be raised to pay for it and the increased interest rates.
Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)
I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. It is astonishing: I did not realise that, when we were making the comparison with France and Spain, we were talking about Franco’s Spain and the Vichy regime in France. Many elements of the laws in this country already do not comply with ILO regulations; we are one of the most restrictive anti-worker countries in the world—that is a fact.
I and my constituents would like the Government to stop blowing up the talks with the trade unions, as they did against the NHS over the weekend, with Unite reps coming out of that meeting in a worse state, or against the RMT by dropping driver-only operation into the talks. The Government could end the strikes in multiple sectors; instead they have upped the ante to wage war on working people who are suffering because of their rancid governance.
Grant Shapps
At least we know where the hon. Gentleman stands: against the instructions of his Front Bench, it is on the picket lines. He is one of the people who has helped to extend the rail strikes. Driver-only operation has been in there from the outset and there has been no change in that at all. It makes perfect sense and operates on the line that my constituency is on. It causes no problems and is a safe way to operate. It is the kind of modernisation that would help to bring this industrial dispute to a close. I did not follow his point about Franco and the Vichy Government. Spain and France have moved on a bit from that and seem to manage to have minimum safe levels of service on strike days under the International Labour Organisation.
Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)
The Secretary of State opened his statement with warm words about our key workers, but he will be acutely aware that the longer the Government refuse to address their fair pay demands, the more staff morale will be depleted and the more people will leave the service, which will exacerbate the staffing crisis that the unions have highlighted as part of their demands. Does he not see that standing there and lecturing about safe staffing levels when healthcare workers across the UK are saying that staffing levels are unsafe is frankly ridiculous? The way to ensure staffing at all times is to pay our healthcare workers properly.
Grant Shapps
Of course we want to see healthcare workers paid, and I meant the words that I used at the top of the statement. Hon. Members will remember that my father was ill during covid, so I experienced the NHS at its best and most heroic while it was struggling to serve people under almost unbelievable pandemic circumstances. I absolutely agree with her about the incredible work that NHS staff do. There is a pay offer on the table that has not been invented by the Government—it has come from the independent pay review body. The Government have accepted in full and in every circumstance the recommendations of the independent pay review bodies this year. Those who say that we should ignore the independent pay review bodies need to explain why and where they will find the money to do that so that it is fair to other taxpayers.
Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)
This statement is an attack on fundamental employment rights. More than 12 years of Conservative Government failure to invest in vital public services has led to nurses, ambulance crews, civil servants and transport workers taking industrial action. I stand in solidarity with them. If the Government wanted to protect the levels of public services, they would give them the funding and staffing that they need instead of running them down. Why are the Government determined to run down our public services and national health service? Why will Ministers not engage in proper negotiations to end the disputes?
Grant Shapps
In the politest possible way, I think that once we have been going for an hour, some of the questions that were written in advance and possibly even handed out by the unions have been categorically disproved—as I have explained many times, this is not against international law or the ECHR, for all the reasons that I have already covered—but they continue to be read out as if they are a new contribution. Those questions ignore the basic fact that there is another side to the issue, which is the safety of the hon. Lady’s constituents and ours. Tomorrow, when there is an ambulance strike and the unions refuse to commit to national safety levels with the management of the trusts, everyone’s life will be more at risk than it should be. It is perfectly reasonable to introduce what happens throughout much of the rest of the world, and certainly our European neighbours, and to have minimum safety standards in place so that we can protect the public.
Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab)
The Government intend to use minimum service levels to force workers to work against their wishes, which undermines their legitimate disputes and imposes servitude on workers. The safest level of provision is to pay our firefighters, nurses, teachers, paramedics and rail staff a proper decent wage and to give them the appropriate resources to do their jobs effectively. Why does the Secretary of State need a new law to help the Government to effectively drive down the wages of the key workers in vital services who he clapped during the pandemic?
Grant Shapps
The hon. Lady described people as working in “servitude” if there are minimum service levels, but I point out to her that they would be paid for that servitude. At Network Rail, the average worker is on £46,000 of servitude and the average is £62,000 of servitude for train drivers. If we are going to have a serious debate about minimum service levels, I should say that they are designed to ensure that school kids can get to school again; that office workers, who may be on lower pay, can get to their job; and that the constituents of Members across the House can be guaranteed minimum safety levels during a strike tomorrow. The idea that that is somehow enforcing servitude is absolute nonsense.
Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab)
I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Government Members talk about hard-working members of the public, but will the Secretary of State acknowledge that trade union members are also hard-working members of the public? Will he confirm whether the reported £320 million has been paid to the train operators during these strikes because they are indemnified? How much of that £320 million would it have taken to settle the strikes? We have heard a lot about safety measures today, so when will the Government stop trying to force through driver-only operated trains, and when will the NHS get the workforce strategy that it desperately needs?
Grant Shapps
The Minister of State, Department for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) reminds me that driver-only operated trains were introduced under the Labour Government. They are entirely safe; as I mentioned, they operate on my Govia line and I have never had a single constituent come to me to say otherwise. The hon. Lady asks whether trade union members are hard-working; I absolutely agree that they are. Many of them work extraordinary hours, as I already said, particularly in the health context but across the economy.
A responsible Government have to balance the pay in the public sector with the pay in the private sector and across all elements of the economy, which is why we have the independent pay review bodies. Unless the Opposition are now trying to destroy the independent pay review bodies and say that we should ignore them and go beyond what they say, I do not see a better alternative.
The hon. Lady fundamentally misunderstands the way that the railways operate in this country: the receipts are collected and the train operating companies simply receive the money for operating the service.
Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
Last week, my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) and I proudly supported picketing workers at Glasgow Central. Not only did we not have to ask for permission, but nobody was photoshopped out of the photograph. Avanti West Coast and TransPennine can barely deliver a minimum service as it is. The Smith commission could have devolved employment rights to ensure that the right to strike was sacrosanct and fire and rehire was banned, but Labour blocked it. Mick Lynch has said that Scottish Ministers “want to resolve” issues, but “politicians down here” want to “exacerbate” them. Is it not therefore the case that Scottish workers will be fully protected only with independence?
Grant Shapps
Well, I never expected that contribution from the SNP Benches. I should just point out to the hon. Member that I would never knowingly remove the former Prime Minister, whom I served enthusiastically, from anything I put out. He makes a point about Scottish independence, somehow shoehorned into a statement about minimum safety levels, but his constituents will be among the first to benefit when there are national strikes and we are able to run a minimum safe level of service, for example, between ambulances and the hospitals.
Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)
The measures outlined today represent a profound attack on the right of key workers with whom the Government are still in active negotiation. The Government’s strategy is clear: when they cannot get what they want through negotiation and compromise, they simply legislate to get their own way. However, does the Secretary of State accept that these proposals risk breaching human rights legislation and potentially even modern day slavery law? Will he concede that the public interest would be better served by addressing the legitimate grievances of the nurses, firefighters, teachers and rail workers who are now in dispute, rather than by curbing their democratic right to take industrial action?
Grant Shapps
How many times—I am going to check the Hansard record afterwards—do I need to explain that the ILO says itself that it is perfectly proper to have minimum safety levels in place? Many of our European neighbours already have that in place. Many other countries—Australia, Canada, parts of America, South Africa and elsewhere—actually ban strikes in blue-light services. We ban them ourselves for the police, but I am not even proposing going that far. All I am saying is, “Please tell us if you’re going to withdraw your labour, and let’s agree a minimum safety level.” I do not think there is anything unreasonable about that whatsoever, and I have to say that I am shocked that the Labour party does.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as a proud member of the GMB and Unite the union.
The reality is that the Government have refused for months to discuss pay with nurses, they have failed to avert the transport strikes and they are now introducing these shoddy plans to distract from their own failure to negotiate. I know the Secretary of State said earlier that he does not knowingly erase the former Prime Minister from his tweets, but that is exactly what he did recently, so perhaps he should spend less time on Photoshop and more time on the day job—sitting down and negotiating.
Grant Shapps
That was a slightly stretched question, but I think the basis of it was quite straightforward. As I have mentioned, it makes perfect sense to have a situation where we can guarantee national minimum safety standards for our constituents, and I am interested in what the hon. Gentleman would say to his constituents tomorrow when they may or may not be able to call an ambulance, depending on the trust he is in, about the failure to support such standards. I do not think his constituents should suffer from a postcode lottery, and I am prepared to legislate to make sure that does not happen, even if he does not want it.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
In the five years I had the privilege of leading the third largest council in Scotland with a workforce of 20,000, we had our share of industrial disputes. Every single time the unions came to us well in advance, and they told us what parts of services they wanted to exempt from industrial action, because they cared as much for the welfare of vulnerable people as we did. Is it not the case that if the Government cared half as much about education as teachers do, if they cared half as much about the health service as nurses and ambulance drivers do, and if they cared half as much for a decent public transport service as train drivers do, this bullyboy legislation would not be needed? The enemies of the health service are not on the picket line; they are on the Government Front Bench.
Grant Shapps
SNP Members make it sound as if they did not have any industrial strife. I think it is fantastic if the unions and the management get together to resolve these things—that is exactly what we want to see happen—but the reality is that, where it does not happen, strikes evolve sometimes. This legislation is about making sure those strikes are less damaging, particularly when it comes to people’s health and the security of the nation. The hon. Member makes his point as if they do not have strikes in primary schools and as if secondary schools in Scotland, where this is devolved, are not going on strike on Wednesday. The reality is that sometimes strikes do break out and, when they do, we want to make sure the public are properly protected.
Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)
Just before Christmas, I went to the ambulance station in Warrington, which is in the North West Ambulance Service NHS Trust. I spoke to workers there who have withdrawn their labour—paramedics, ambulance workers. They have done that with a heavy heart and as a last resort. They have done that because they are fighting for a fair deal, because their mortgages have gone up and the food bills have gone up. By the way, while I was there, they were providing a minimum level of service—I saw the ambulances going out, and rightly so, to deal with critical care incidents—so the current arrangements actually facilitate that. This is very un-British: it is a fundamental attack on the democratic right to withdraw one’s labour. How many teachers are going to be sacked, how many ambulance workers are going to be sacked, how many social workers are going to be sacked and how many rail workers will be sacked for standing up for their right to strike and withdraw their labour?
Grant Shapps
The answer to the question is none. I have not seen a single police officer sacked or a member of the Army sacked, and they have no-strike deals. We are not proposing no-strike deals here; we are simply saying, I think very reasonably, that the level of emergency service provided by the fantastic workers—and I accept what the hon. Member said about people going on strike with a heavy heart—in his particular ambulance trust should be provided to all Members across the House, no matter where they are. In the case tomorrow, the union has failed to agree that with the management. I rather hope that he and Members on the Opposition Front Bench will join us in persuading people to provide that minimum safety level. If not, they will need to explain to their constituents why they are failing to vote to support the safety and security of their own constituents’ lives.
Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)
I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as a proud member of Unite and the GMB trade unions.
During the pandemic, my constituents and I stood on our doorsteps and clapped our key workers—we clapped the nurses at the Royal Lancaster Infirmary and the Blackpool Victoria, and we clapped the postal workers working out of our delivery offices in Lancaster, Fleetwood and Garstang—and now this Government are putting more effort into putting those workers’ jobs at risk than into trying to resolve the strikes. It is clear that the Secretary of State is obsessed about the ongoing strikes. I can assure him that many of the workers who are losing days and days of pay are upset, too. Can I try to help him and suggest that he puts more effort into sitting down with trade unions and finding a resolution than into trying to stamp on workers’ rights?
Grant Shapps
As the hon. Lady will know, various different unions have been invited in, there have been discussions across the different sectors and we are doing everything we can to encourage a settlement. I do need to gently point out to Opposition Members that this is not a Government who have ignored the independent pay review bodies, come up with our own number and, say, halved the amount of money that was suggested should be paid. We have actually accepted in full the recommendations of those independent pay review bodies, so we are actually following the science and following the evidence. She is wrong to suggest, and to continue frightening people by saying, that their jobs could be at risk. Nobody’s job is at risk. I have already explained that we are hiring more, particularly nurses and doctors, and this legislation will simply say that, if we cannot get there voluntarily across the country—not just, for example, in the constituency of the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury), but everywhere—we will have legislative power to make sure we are able to require minimum safety levels for everybody, not just some.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
Teaching staff at my daughter’s school are on strike today and staff at my son’s school are on strike tomorrow, and I fully support their right to do so. We all know the Scottish Government’s budget is constrained, having been short-changed and underfunded in the face of soaring inflation. What discussions has the Secretary of State had with the Chancellor to ensure a fair funding settlement for the Scottish Government so that Scottish public sector workers can get the pay rise they deserve to deal with the Tory cost of living crisis?
Grant Shapps
All of us want our kids to be able to get to school, and the example in Scotland demonstrates that strikes occur regardless of who is in power at a particular moment, but the hon. Member and those on the Opposition Front Bench are wrong to suggest this is a UK problem that does not affect other parts of the world, because exactly the opposite is the case. We are in this situation and have this level of inflation because of the war in Ukraine, because Putin illegally invaded his neighbours’ country, because it pushed up energy prices, and because that pushed up inflation. It makes all of us poorer when that happens. If Members think the solution is simply not to worry while people’s livelihoods and safety are put at risk, that will be up to them to decide when they vote. This party will be voting to ensure people’s security and safety no matter which strikes come next.
Kate Osborne (Jarrow) (Lab)
The Minister’s proposals criminalise workers for taking action in legitimate disputes, threatening to turn the clock back on workers’ rights by 200 years. The Tolpuddle martyrs were criminalised for withdrawing their labour and deported to Australia, as were the seven men of Jarrow for protesting about their working conditions. These proposals would see NHS, education and other key workers sacked for the same crime. Workers need a pay rise, not a P45. When will Ministers put our country first and invest in, not attack, key workers?
Grant Shapps
The hon. Lady is wrong on several fronts. First, it cannot be criminal if in fact that is a law that this House has passed. Secondly, it is no more criminal than breaching an employment contract; that is the level of, as she describes it, criminality. Is this going to be the line—is this how they are going to explain things to their constituents on the doorsteps over the next few days or weeks when ambulances are not necessarily going to turn up in one area and may in another? If their only answer is, “We didn’t think we should put in place the same measures that exist in countries such as France, Spain and Italy,” may I suggest that, rather than raving on about criminalisation, which is utter nonsense—nobody is criminalising anything— she simply agrees that minimum safety levels are a proportionate, sensible and modern way to go about things and she should support that?
Beth Winter (Cynon Valley) (Lab)
As the TUC says, public sector workers have experienced the longest pay squeeze in 200 years, with workers losing out on £20,000-worth of wages due to pay not keeping up with prices since 2008. Now, when we are experiencing historically high inflation, the Government want to both reduce real-terms pay and legislate to enforce it. Is it not the case that the Government are proposing yet another authoritarian, draconian act to enforce their attack on our living standards?
Grant Shapps
The questions from Labour Members have remained remarkably consistent throughout, and I am not sure whether they have been handed out by their Front Bench or their union paymasters. But the fundamental facts are that the independent pay review bodies decide on the level of pay and the Government have accepted that in full. If these questions are being handed out by Labour Front Benchers, they will need to explain what they plan to do with the independent pay review bodies. Are they now going to routinely ignore their advice, which is not something we have done? Are they going to tell their constituents that they will not have a minimum safe level of service if they have a heart attack or a stroke, or are they going to pay the 19%, in which case they need to explain to their constituents why their tax is going up, why inflation is going up further and why interest rates are going up as well.
Points of Order
(1 year, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate
Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. As someone who spent 33 years on the frontline in the NHS, I am disappointed that I have not been able to contribute to this debate and highlight that actually the biggest challenge to all four NHSs and patient safety is protection of the workforce. That is because—
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. This is an endeavour to extend the question time. I may be green as a Deputy Speaker but I am long in the tooth in the Chair. The Speaker has made it absolutely plain that hon. Members, on either side of the House, must be here at the start of the question session in order to participate.
Mr Deputy Speaker
The hon. Lady is fully aware that she was not here; she will take her seat please.
Dr Whitford
That was due to the change to the sitting for the previous business. Should we not have a bell warning for when sittings change?
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. That is a matter that the hon. Lady may wish to raise with Mr Speaker, but it is not a question for me now.
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
Further to that point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker.
Mr Deputy Speaker
If it is the same question, it will be the same answer.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
On a serious issue, when the Government are going on about market forces, except when it comes to workers, we need some notice when things are changed in this place, because at the moment the start of things is pretty chaotic. We should have a bell ringing to give at least a five-minute warning so Members know when things are changing.
Mr Deputy Speaker
The hon. Gentleman has been in this House for a very long time indeed—perhaps not quite as long as I have, but he has been here for a very long time—and he knows perfectly well that it is an hon. Member’s duty and responsibility to be here on time when the session starts. He was not here.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)
I have to notify the House, in accordance with the Royal Assent Act 1967, that His Majesty has signified his Royal Assent to the following Act:
Finance Act 2023.
Bill Presented
Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Secretary Grant Shapps, supported by the Prime Minister, Secretary Steve Barclay, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Secretary Suella Braverman, Oliver Dowden, Secretary Gillian Keegan and Secretary Mark Harper, presented a Bill to make provision about minimum service levels in connection with the taking by trade unions of strike action relating to certain services.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time tomorrow, and to be printed (Bill 222) with explanatory notes (Bill 222-EN).
Elected Representatives (Codes Of Conduct)
Tuesday 10th January 2023
(1 year, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Elected Representatives (Codes of Conduct) Bill 2022-23 View all Elected Representatives (Codes of Conduct) Bill 2022-23 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate
A Ten Minute Rule Bill is a First Reading of a Private Members Bill, but with the sponsor permitted to make a ten minute speech outlining the reasons for the proposed legislation.
There is little chance of the Bill proceeding further unless there is unanimous consent for the Bill or the Government elects to support the Bill directly.
For more information see: Ten Minute Bills
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to provide for a statutory code of conduct for Ministers of the Crown; for a statutory code of conduct for Members of the House of Commons and members of the House of Lords; for a statutory code of conduct for councillors in England; and for connected purposes.
Many, if not most of us, on all sides of this House became Members of Parliament because we wanted to help improve the lives of our constituents and all citizens across our great country and its nation states. As MPs, we have duties set out in our now updated codes of conduct, which also apply to Ministers and the Prime Minister. In addition to upholding the law and the general law about discrimination, these duties include:
“to act in the interests of the nation as a whole”,
with a “special duty” to our constituents; recognising the trust that has been placed on us as elected representatives; and to
“always behave with probity and integrity,”
including in our use of public resources. Within these duties we have the “General Principles of Conduct”, often referred to as the Nolan principles, which apply to all aspects of our parliamentary and public life: selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership. But, as we know, too often over the last few years we have seen a small minority of Members pay scant regard to these duties and principles, even wilfully ignoring them.
The scandals of the last few years are not the issue of just one Administration. The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, who is responsible for regulating the Members’ code, was initially set up in 1995 to investigate the cash-for-questions affair, and there have been other scandals since then. These have usually resulted in changes to the Members and ministerial codes, as well as the business appointment rules which regulate the so-called “revolving door” employment between the public and private sector of former Ministers and senior officials.
The impact of these abuses cannot be underestimated. It may be a tiny minority who bend or break the rules, but we all become tarred by the same brush, corrupted by association. According to polling by Compassion in Politics, four in five people have no respect for politicians and 40% of parents would be concerned if their child expressed a desire to become a politician. Office for National Statistics data shows that only one in three people trust the Government and two in three think politicians are only out for themselves. Let us pause for a moment to consider what that tells us about the health of our democracy and the prospects for democratic engagement in Britain today and in the future.
Many hon. Members will have experienced at first hand the extreme effects of the steady disintegration in our social fabric. Too many voters have become apathetic; some have become actively hostile. Hate, intolerance and violence are all products of the escalating distrust and increasing disdain with which the public view the political class. Part of how we restore confidence in politics and politicians is by actively demonstrating that all elected representatives will abide by the rules and principles set out in our codes of conduct.
I want to acknowledge the role and work of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and their office in regulating the Members’ code. I also recognise the work of right hon., hon. and noble colleagues on the Committee on Standards, the Committee on Privileges, the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee and the Committee on Standards in Public Life. I also pay tribute to their lay members. Those Committees’ recent reports and recommendations for changes to strengthen the various codes of conduct will, I believe, help in that regard. However, there is a need for much more significant reform in the accountability systems that regulate Parliament’s conduct. The current systems are spider’s webs, built up over the past 400 years or so, which interact and overlap. Inevitably, there are still issues.
My Bill cannot deal with everything that is needed for a whole-system reform, but it could tackle the most serious and urgent issues, the first and most egregious of which is the Prime Minister’s remaining the arbiter of the ministerial code. The terms of reference for the new so-called independent adviser to the Prime Minister on Ministers’ interests, appointed on 22 December last year, have not changed since the previous adviser under the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson). They still fail to give independence and autonomy to initiate new investigations into breaches of the ministerial code or to publish the findings of any investigations. That has to change.
My Bill proposes that, as in Northern Ireland, the ministerial code, including the seven Nolan principles, are put in statute, and that an independent commissioner on ministerial standards is established as a statutory office. His or her role would be: to advise the Prime Minister on all aspects of the ministerial code; to undertake investigations, both independently and referred, into potential breaches of the code; to appoint a panel of parliamentarians and lay members to take part in such investigations; to publish the findings of such investigations; and to make recommendations regarding sanctions for any breaches. He or she would also have the power to make a statement on ethical matters of general public interest affecting Ministers.
The second issue is how Members of Parliament are held to account outside of election time. The October 2022 code of conduct procedure set out what the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards can and cannot do to hold MPs to account on potential breaches of the code. It defines other regulatory systems that hold Members to account—for example, expenses are for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, and conduct in the Chamber is obviously the domain of Mr Speaker—but paragraph 17 expressly prohibits the Commissioner from investigating allegations solely about breaches of the seven principles of public life. Although it has been argued that that is because principles are not judiciable, for me, there is a gap. My Bill proposes that the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards should also become a statutory office and that, under their purview, in addition to investigating Members for potential breaches of code of conduct rules, Members could be investigated for serious and serial breaches of the seven principles of public life.
Thirdly, I turn to the important role that our local councillors play in our communities and in our democracy as a whole. Again, the vast majority of councillors work tirelessly at trying to make a difference in their communities, but unfortunately a minority use their positions for their own purposes and threaten our democracy as a result. Although there is a requirement for councillors to have a councillor code of conduct under the Localism Act 2011, such codes vary greatly between different local authorities. My Bill proposes a standardised statutory councillor code of conduct, which includes the Nolan principles and is accompanied by a statutory accountability system.
Finally, we need to review how our parliamentary system, and the elective representatives within it, are regulated in a way that reflects the modern, inclusive, empowering democracy that we want to become in the 21st century and beyond. Polling by Compassion in Politics found that 76% of people believe that they should have the right to influence our codes of conduct. As such, my Bill proposes that an independent ethics commission of constitutional legal experts is established by Parliament to advise on system reforms. The ethics commission would also work with a citizen’s assembly to come up with final recommendations to Parliament.
As co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for compassionate politics, I have argued for the need to reform the culture of our politics. The Prime Minister and other Ministers and Members have talked about the need for compassion in politics. Good policies can come only from good politics. That must start with the conduct of those in high office. As such, I hope that the Government will support my Bill.
Finally, I extend my thanks to Matt Hawkins from Compassion in Politics, George Hulme in my office and Jolyon Maugham of the Good Law Project. I commend the Bill to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That Debbie Abrahams, Kim Leadbeater, Caroline Lucas, Layla Moran and Dr Dan Poulter present the Bill.
Debbie Abrahams accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 24 February, and to be printed (Bill 223).
Stamp Duty Land Tax (Reduction) Bill
Tuesday 10th January 2023
(1 year, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Stamp Duty Land Tax (Temporary Relief) Act 2023 View all Stamp Duty Land Tax (Temporary Relief) Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Committee of the whole House Amendments as at 10 January 2023 - (10 Jan 2023)
16:20 - The Committee divided: - Ayes: 184 / Noes: 311 - Question accordingly negatived.
16:36 - The House divided: - Ayes: 14 / Noes: 310 - Question accordingly negatived.
16:50 - The House divided: - Ayes: 308 / Noes: 170 - Question accordingly agreed to.
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Victoria Atkins)
I beg to move amendment 1, page 1, line 2, leave out subsection (1) and insert—
“(1) This section makes modifications of Part 4 of the Finance Act 2003 in relation to any land transaction the effective date of which falls in the period (“the temporary relief period”)—
(a) beginning with 23 September 2022, and
(b) ending with 31 March 2025.”
This amendment provides that the relief from Stamp Duty Land Tax provided for by the Bill is only to apply until 31 March 2025.
The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Sir Roger Gale)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment (a) to amendment 1, after “transaction” insert
“(except in relation to additional dwellings)”.
This amendment is intended to remove the relief from stamp duty land tax for second homes (see Amendment 15 to leave out subsection (3)).
Amendment (b) to amendment 1, leave out “31 March 2025” and insert “31 March 2028”.
This amendment is intended to extend the temporary relief from Stamp Duty Land Tax so that it expires at or around the time as the frozen thresholds for Income Tax, Inheritance Tax and National Insurance are due to expire.
Government amendments 2 and 3.
Amendment 15, page 1, line 13, leave out subsection (3).
This amendment is intended to remove the relief from stamp duty land tax for second homes (see Amendment (a) to Gov 1).
Government amendments 4 to 12.
Clause stand part.
Government amendment 13.
Clause 2 stand part.
New clause 1—Comparison of temporary and permanent relief—
“(1) The Chancellor of the Exchequer must, within three months of this Act receiving Royal Assent, publish an assessment of the change in Government policy on stamp duty land from—
(a) the Plan for Growth published on 23 September 2022, to
(b) the Autumn Statement published on 17 November 2022.
(2) This review must include—
(a) an assessment of the costs of implementing the change in policy referred to in subsection (1) for the Government, the property industry, and homebuyers;
(b) an assessment of any wider costs and impacts of the change in policy referred to in subsection (1) on the housing market; and
(c) what measures the Government is planning to ease the impact on tax revenues, home purchases and the housing market of the reduction in stamp duty land tax coming to an abrupt end on 31 March 2025.”
This new clause would require the Government to publish a review of the change in Government policy to make the relief in this Bill temporary instead of permanent.
New clause 2—Review: first-home buyers—
“The Chancellor of the Exchequer must conduct a twice-yearly review of the impact of this Act on the number of people buying their first home and must publish a report of this review at six-month intervals.”
This new clause is to ensure that a regular report is made on the impact of the proposed Act on the number of people buying their first home.
New clause 3—Review: second homes in National Parks and Areas of Natural Beauty—
“The Chancellor of the Exchequer must publish an annual report on the impact of this Act on the number of second homes in National Parks and Areas of Natural Beauty.”
This new clause would require that an annual report is published on the impact of the Bill on the number of second or subsequent homes in National Parks and Areas of Natural Beauty.
New clause 4—Review: house prices in rural areas—
“The Chancellor of the Exchequer must publish an annual review of the impact of this Act on house prices in rural areas.”
This new clause would require that an annual review is published on the impact of the Bill on house prices in rural areas.
New clause 6—Review: availability of affordable housing and the private rented sector—
“The Chancellor of the Exchequer must conduct an assessment into, and publish a report on, the impact of this Act on the housing market, including (1) the impact on the availability of affordable housing and (2) the private rented sector.”
This new clause would require the Chancellor of the Exchequer to conduct an assessment into the impact of the Bill on the housing market, including the availability of affordable housing and the private rented sector.
New clause 7—Report on effect of temporary relief—
“(1) The Chancellor of the Exchequer must, three months before expiry of the temporary relief period, publish an assessment of the impacts of the temporary relief provided by this Act.
(2) This assessment must include an assessment of the impacts on—
(a) the volume and value of housing transactions on the housing market,
(b) any wider costs for the Government, property industry, housing market and/or homebuyers, and
(c) tax revenues.
(3) The assessment must make a recommendation as to whether the temporary relief period should expire or whether the House of Commons should consult on extending it or making it permanent.”
This new clause would require the Government to publish an assessment of the impacts of the temporary tax relief and a recommendation before the temporary relief period comes to an end.
Government amendment 14.
Victoria Atkins
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger.
At the autumn statement, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor set out set out how the Government are dealing with the global economic challenges that we face. The consequences of Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine and the covid-19 pandemic mean that we must be fiscally responsible while supporting the economy and encouraging our businesses to grow and our constituents to thrive. We need a balanced approach to support our objectives, which includes helping people get on to and move up the housing ladder—and indeed to downsize.
Victoria Atkins
It is very soon, but because it is my right hon. Friend, I will certainly give way.
Sir Desmond Swayne
My hon. Friend is most generous and kind. Those of us who voted with enthusiasm for the Bill’s Second Reading on the grounds that there was to be a permanent change for the benefit of those people wanting to get on to the housing ladder are somewhat discomfited by the fact that Government amendment 1 will make it merely a temporary measure to assist those who want to do so. We want them to be permanently assisted. Can she reassure me?
Victoria Atkins
I very much understand why my right hon. Friend raises that point. I know he took a great interest in the autumn statement and listened carefully to the submissions and oration of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt). We had to take some difficult decisions in the course of the autumn statement to ensure that our approach to the economy is fiscally responsible. This is one way in which we hope to stimulate the housing market in the next two years in the difficult economic circumstances we find, but thereafter we are confident that the economy will improve and we will be able to return to the status quo as it was before 23 September. However, the broader picture about reducing the taxation burden on our constituents still stands. Indeed, I hope my right hon. Friend listened with great interest to the Prime Minister’s speech last week in which he made it clear that that is our ultimate goal.
Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
On 17 October, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer told this House that this particular element of the mini-Budget relating to stamp duty land tax would be retained. It was on that basis that the Bill was introduced in the House. It was only a month later that we had the autumn statement when the Chancellor of the Exchequer went back on what had been said earlier.
Victoria Atkins
Again, my hon. Friend puts his finger on the point as to the very, very fast-moving economic conditions we have faced in the last few months. He will recall the autumn statement and the great detail the Chancellor went into in terms of ensuring that our approach is fiscally responsible. We had to acknowledge and react to the conditions as we found them then. We are confident that the sunset clause in the Bill will enable us to support our constituents. Indeed, it is happening at this very moment in time, because, of course, we brought in the measures as soon as possible immediately after the original announcement. They are helping, for example, first-time buyers get on to the housing ladder.
Victoria Atkins
I will take one more intervention, and then make a little progress.
Barry Gardiner
I am very grateful to the Minister. I listened carefully to what she was saying about global economic circumstances, in particular Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the effect that that has had on people in this country through their energy bills. She will know that the Government set a target for a 78% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2035. To achieve that, will she consider looking at whether stamp duty might be raised up or put down in accordance with the energy performance certificate ratings of properties, perhaps providing a way for households to benefit financially but ensure that they meet the Government’s target?
Victoria Atkins
That is an interesting suggestion. At first blush, my mind goes immediately to the complexity of such a scheme, particularly given our proudly antique housing stock—certainly in my constituency, with beautiful farmhouses and market town high streets that are many, many hundreds of years old. I therefore think it unlikely—I will be honest with the hon. Gentleman—but he is always welcome to write to me. I will make this point: the Government’s very real progress over the last decade, on drastically cutting our carbon emissions, with the help of industry, homeowners and members of the public, should be acknowledged. Dare I say it, if it is not unparalleled across the world, we are certainly in the top few. What is more, we have tried, through measures such as VAT zero rating on energy-saving materials, to encourage homeowners and others to plug gaps and make their homes more energy efficient. So, I do not think stamp duty is the way to help, but certainly the Government have already put in place measures to try to help us meet our very, very ambitious climate targets.
The last few years have, frankly, been tough on us all and we want to help people take that next step in their lives to buy a new home. The Bill cuts stamp duty land tax for first-time buyers and other homeowners to reduce the upfront cost of moving home. It is because we want to help people as quickly as possible that the rates are already in force, helping our constituents.
The provisions in the Bill apply only to purchases of residential property in England and Northern Ireland, as land transaction taxes have been devolved to Scotland and Wales.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
Sir Roger, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.
The Government’s proposal in the Bill will do some marginal good, reducing the cost of buying for some people. The danger is that it meets the needs of a very small number of people. The overwhelming majority of people living in my constituency who cannot afford a home are not in the waiting room, shall we say, to be able to access a new home on the basis of this change. If we think, for example, that £250,000 constitutes the price of an affordable home, we are not in touch with reality—certainly not in the Lake district and the rest of Cumbria. I do not propose to vote against the Government’s proposal, because I can see how it could do some good at the margins, but if we were really bothered about the fact that most people cannot afford to be a first-time buyer with a home of their own, we would be tackling the lack of development of new council homes, social rented homes across the board and shared ownership, and we would be looking at making better use of the current stock.
The reality is that whatever benefit the stamp duty cut might have brought to families has already been quashed and exceeded by the additional cost they will have to bear through mortgage interest rate increases resulting from the Government’s failures. I am told that in the financial markets, those who are in the know refer to the increased mortgage costs, which dwarf any benefit that the stamp duty may bring to new homeowners, as the moron premium—I promise you that those are not my words, Sir Roger. That is the consequence of a very foolish decision that this Government made just a few months ago.
That is not to say that there is no benefit in what the Government are choosing to do. However, my new clause 3, which—with your permission, Sir Roger—I shall move today, would give the Government the opportunity to recognise that there are unintended consequences. We know that because they have already happened. We all remember that in July 2020, when the current Prime Minister was Chancellor of the Exchequer, there was a stamp duty holiday for purchasers of properties of a value of up to £500,000. The impact on the Lake district was instant and catastrophic: 80% of all new house sales in our community were in the second home market. Some 84% of properties in Elterwater, and more than 50% of properties in Coniston, are not lived in. Communities that were already on the margins might have lost enough full-time occupants that they cannot sustain a local school, post office or bus route or have any community life whatever.
There have also been consequences for our workforce. We are all rightly focused on the impact of the massive pressures on our health and social care services; in the lakes, they are under even more pressure because the homes that care workers and health workers once lived in are no longer available to them. That possibility has been wiped out, partly because of a well-intended but poorly informed decision that the current Prime Minister made as Chancellor in July 2020. We have learned that lesson, so there is no excuse for the Government to act without thinking about the unintended consequences and making some attempt to mitigate them.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)
I agree fully about areas of high housing pressure where people in local communities cannot buy their own home. May I commend to the hon. Gentleman what we have done in Wales? The Welsh Government have brought in a land transaction tax to replace stamp duty, which is a devolved matter, as the Minister said. Under that system, anybody who buys a second or third home pays a premium on that tax, which comes out of the first property as a disincentive to buying more than one home. Furthermore, in areas of high housing pressure, local councils can choose to treble council tax; indeed, my county council, Carmarthenshire, has announced that it will double council tax on second homes.
Tim Farron
Yes. Most of our good ideas were somebody else’s first, so there is no harm whatever in looking at what devolved Administrations such as the Welsh Senedd Government have done. There are positives there from which we could learn, but it is also good to learn from our own mistakes—and the Government made a well-intentioned mistake two and a half years ago, with a very damaging impact on the lakes, on many other rural parts of England and across the United Kingdom.
Let me ram home what that means. It robs us of the life of our communities and the services on which we rely, but it also robs us of a workforce. That means fewer people working not only in social care or health, but in our hospitality and tourism industry. The lakes are the second biggest visitor destination in the country, with 20 million visitors a year, but with a very small population. The workforce that services all the folks here and the many others who holiday in the lakes have nowhere to live any more. We are in the terrible situation of facing a recession nationally but, bizarrely, having more tourist demand in the lakes than we can meet. We cannot meet that demand because we do not have the workforce, and one reason is that the Government have been negligent in providing and ensuring enough affordable homes for people in our communities.
I support the Opposition amendments that would ensure that the stamp duty cut is not available for the purposes of buying a second home; I think that is wise. My new clause 3 would place a responsibility on the Secretary of State to look every year at the policy’s impact on the number of second homes bought, not just in communities like mine but across the country.
The Government know what is happening. The evidence is before their eyes: their temporary stamp duty cut in 2020, a well-intentioned attempt to boost the economy at the beginning of the pandemic, had the immediately negative consequence of hollowing out communities in my area in Cumbria and in Northumberland, the west country and other parts of the UK. I am not theorising; it has already happened. My communities were badly hit by a well-intentioned but foolish Government policy. Why would the Government not accept new clause 3, which would allow them to do something about a policy that is positive on the whole, but that they know has a negative consequence on communities such as mine?
We will not vote against the Bill. We recognise that it does some good, although we think it is a bad use of public money. We could do so much more with that money by investing it in affordable homes for local families, ensuring more council homes and making sure that we tackle inequalities in rural communities in particular. We reckon that there is a marginal benefit from the Government’s policy, but there is a disbenefit for communities such as mine. Will the Minister take new clause 3 on board and agree simply to review the situation year on year, to prevent communities such as mine in the lakes, the dales and the rest of Cumbria from being hollowed out? Otherwise, they will be turned into ghost towns, their workforces will be eradicated and no young people will be able to set up a home there—all because of a decision with an unintended consequence of which the Government cannot now claim to be unaware.
Several hon. Members rose—
The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Sir Roger Gale)
Order. The shadow Minister may be slightly perplexed as to why I did not call her first, but the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) had indicated to me that he wished to press new clause 3 to a Division, so I thought it might be helpful for her to hear his arguments before being called to speak.
Abena Oppong-Asare (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)
Thank you, Sir Roger. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship this afternoon. I was not perplexed at all.
When we debated the Bill on Second Reading in October, the stamp duty cut that it seeks to introduce was one of the last few measures to have survived from the Tories’ reckless mini-Budget in September. As we said at the time, we oppose the stamp duty cut because it would not be the right way to spend public money and would not be responsible. On the back of 13 years of economic stagnation, our economy has just suffered long-term damage from the Tories’ recklessness at the end of last year. We made it clear that spending £1.7 billion a year on the proposed stamp duty cut simply could not be justified.
In October, as hon. Members may remember, there was a last-minute flip-flop in parliamentary business. Four days before we were due to debate all stages of the Bill, the Leader of the House announced that we would debate only its Second Reading. No reason was given for that last-minute change to parliamentary business, so we speculated that the decision might have been intended to give the new Prime Minister and his Chancellor the chance to change their mind about these stamp duty changes. That is indeed what has happened.
Rather than reversing the stamp duty cut altogether, however, the Government’s amendments seek only to impose a time limit on it. Ministers could have used the breathing space since last October to do the right thing and scrap the stamp duty cut, but instead the Chancellor proposes only a partial U-turn. Government amendment 1 will amend clause 1, imposing a sunset date of 31 March 2025. The Government’s other amendments, which are consequential on that change, include an amendment to the name of the Bill.
The Opposition remain opposed to the stamp duty cut. Even if Government amendments 1 to 14 are agreed to, the Bill will still represent a failure by the Conservatives to spend money wisely.
We are not talking about a small amount of money: the Government’s own figures make the Bill’s price tag clear. Even if the stamp duty cut is time-limited, it will still cost taxpayers £3.2 billion. We are serious about spending public money wisely, and the Government should be as well. For that reason we will vote against the Bill on Third Reading even if it has been amended, but before we reach that stage we still want to use this Committee stage to interrogate the Government on some of the detail, and to urge them at least to amend its provisions if they are not willing to drop it entirely.
Sir Christopher Chope
The hon. Lady seems to be obsessed with the issue of second homes. What about the point she made earlier about the number of young people becoming home owners, which has declined so dramatically since 1987? In 1989, 51% of 25 to 34-year-olds owned a home; now about half that number do so. What are the Opposition going to do about it?
Abena Oppong-Asare
In fact, the statistics quoted by the hon. Member show that the Bill will not help people. It will not help first-time buyers, and it is not just Labour Members who are saying that: the Resolution Foundation has provided statistical evidence that it will not help them. We want to help first-time buyers as well, but this is not the right solution. It will be mainly second and additional homes that benefit. Our two amendments would amend Government amendment 1 to remove the relief for buyers of additional dwellings, and would remove clause 1 (3), which raises the threshold for them. They would prevent the Bill from giving relief from stamp duty to buyers of second homes. I hope the hon. Member will support our proposals, particularly our amendment to enable first-time buyers to get on to the ladder as he wishes them to do.
As I have made clear, we do not believe that this stamp duty cut is the right or responsible way in which to spend £3.2 billion of public money, but if the Government are not willing to cancel the cut altogether, I urge Conservative Members at the very least to support our amendment to prevent second home buyers from receiving a £2,500 tax cut.
New clause 1, which Labour has also tabled, requires the Chancellor to be up front and transparent about the costs of the partial U-turn on the stamp duty cut, and to set out the measures that the Government will take to mitigate the impact of the abrupt end of the stamp duty relief at the end of March 2025. We know from the Government’s policy paper on this tax change that His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs will have to incur costs in the region of £300,000 to change IT systems, and about £2.4 million in extra staff costs. That is ridiculous. Through new clause 1, we aim to push Ministers further by asking them to set out specifically the costs of implementing their U-turn
“for the Government, the property industry, and homebuyers”,
as well as
“any wider costs and impacts of the change…on the housing market”.
We are also asking them to set out the measures they are
“planning to ease the impact on tax revenues, home purchases and the housing market of the reduction in stamp duty…coming to an abrupt end on 31 March 2025.”
We know from Government amendment 12 that Ministers are introducing measures to ensure that transitions that straddle the end of the temporary relief benefit from the reduction, but the question of the impact of ending the stamp duty relief goes much further than that. In 2016, the Office for Budget Responsibility published a paper on property tax changes and forestalling when transactions are brought forward to benefit from lower tax rates. The OBR found that in each historic case that was analysed, the preannouncement of an upcoming tax increase led to a sizeable forestalling. Forestalling is therefore expected to be an important issue in relation to the end of the temporary stamp duty cut, and we urge the Government to set out the measures they are planning ahead of that. If they are not willing to accept our new clause 1, I urge the Minister to set out the detail that we request, either at the end of the debate or subsequently in writing.
When our country is suffering the consequences of 13 years of low growth and of the Conservatives’ economic chaos at the end of last year, now is not the time to be spending £3.2 billion on this tax cut, particularly when hundreds of millions of pounds will go to the buyers of second homes. We urge Members in all parts of the Committee to support our amendments to remove the tax cut for second-home buyers, and to join us in opposing the Bill on Third Reading.
Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)
I think that the Government have made a number of admissions today about the importance of property taxes, and stamp duty land tax in particular. During the covid period we used a reduction to try to stimulate the market and keep it afloat, for good reasons. I heard what was said by the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron). There are often flipsides, downsides and unintended consequences from tax changes, but the implicit admission from the Minister was that lower stamp duty encourages market transactions. In my mind that has to be a good thing, because property sales refresh housing stock. I imagine that the first thing any of us who are lucky enough to own a property will do when we purchase it is to do stuff. We might improve the bathrooms—or whatever we fancy, if pockets are deep enough—but those transactions that we make with local builders and others add to the local market. They add jobs, and there are VAT revenues and profits for B&Q and elsewhere. This all comes with it.
A trap that the Liberal Democrats and the Opposition Front Bench fall into is that they do not see tax as a game of chess. Too often we—the Treasury included—see tax as a one-step move: if we do this, it will create just that. It is far more complicated than that, because there are other outcomes in terms of economic activity that are not always recognised. But the strict admission by the Government Front Bench today is that lower stamp duty makes the wheels turn, and that has to be to the good.
We are currently seeing a modest reduction in house prices, so this type of measure to reduce stamp duty is very much to be welcomed, but I have a rather more long-standing objection to SDLT and to this form of capital tax generally, but most particularly to SDLT, because it stops labour mobility. If one of my constituents, someone with a family, were offered a job elsewhere in the country, the most natural thing would be to sell their property and move to that new area. But when they are faced with a stiff bill for SDLT, they have to be doubly or triply sure that this is the right move, because it is likely to cost tens of thousands of pounds. It worries me that people are not taking up roles elsewhere because they need to be absolutely sure. What probably happens is that they take a rental property elsewhere to get a feel for the area and find out whether the job is right. That is not helpful for their family life in the longer term.
The Government Front-Bench team made another admission this afternoon. Not surprisingly, the Minister announced with great fanfare the very good news that in vast areas of the country, the majority of transactions will fall outside of stamp duty. That is particularly true for those buying a property for the first time. We often talk about tax, and people’s idea of fairness will probably be different depending on where they sit in this House, but can it really be fair that a constituent in South Thanet who is trying to purchase a modest property will face this SDLT charge just because they are in Kent in the south-east, whereas someone buying the self-same kind of property in another part of the country will not pay that tax at all? I am not entirely sure of the fairness of that. I would rather that everyone paid a similar amount in a property transaction, possibly based on the size of the property.
Another area that I have discussed with many colleagues over the years, including at a few roundtables, is retirement mobility. Too often, people who have lost their partner, a husband or wife, are stuck in their old property. We are very much aware of the cost of heating that type of property. They do not have the ability to do more work to increase their annual income, and they are stuck in a property that is too big for them, with all those memories of old. They realise that they really ought to move somewhere smaller that is more energy efficient and closer to services. However, if they live in an area of the country that is expensive, they might find an ideal property that is smaller and has all those good things, but there will be a very big SDLT charge.
I know the thoughts of older people, because I have had these discussions with my father and friends, and when they look at the potential bill just for doing the right thing through retirement mobility, they often say, “Do you know what, I’m not prepared to pay it. I’m just not going to pay £10,000 or £20,000 or whatever the price may be to do the right thing.” They do not want to pay that much to move somewhere more appropriate for older living.
I implore the Minister to receive a document from me and to have a conversation about the concept of a downsizing relief for older people. It could be fixed to retirement age, when people’s ability to earn has gone because they have retired. Perhaps they could get some credit, such as free stamp duty, for doing the right thing in moving to a smaller home, which is sensible for them, the family and everyone else. In so doing, they would be releasing those bigger homes for the families who need them.
Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)
I rise to speak to new clauses 4 and 6, which I tabled, and to support new clauses 2 and 3, which were tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron).
The housing crisis has been discussed at length today and at many other times in this place, and Members are well aware of the pressure that second and luxury home ownership is placing on communities where existing residents are struggling to buy their first home. In rural parts of Britain, including North Shropshire, our villages are at risk of turning into retirement villages and our tourist hotspots are almost becoming ghost towns at certain times of the year. That is having a hugely negative impact on rural skills and the rural economy, as both pupils and people of working age are in increasingly short supply.
The economic climate has changed, but house prices in rural Britain have risen fast in recent years. Figures from Hamptons, the estate agent, reveal that rural house prices rose by 14.2% in 2021, compared with just 6.8% in urban areas. The property website Property Road estimates that there are 132,000 fewer young homeowners in rural England than in 2010. I do not want to bore the Committee with facts and figures, but eight in 10 respondents to a Country Land and Business Association survey said that the lack of affordable housing had priced out first-time buyers in rural areas.
Although efforts to help first-time buyers in all areas of the country are welcome, the experience of the previous temporary stamp duty reduction in 2020 suggests that there is a risk of distorting the market and achieving the opposite. During that period, rural areas saw soaring house prices, with those trying to sell in Shropshire reporting intense competition and competitive bidding, unseen, for their home. That is all very well for those who were trying to sell, but it was bad news for anyone trying to buy a home at the same time and disastrous for anyone trying to get a foothold on the housing ladder.
Meanwhile, genuinely affordable housing—housing costing less than £250,000—remains in desperately short supply. Market prices have risen so much in recent years that it is putting intense pressure on social housing and the private rented sector, with social housing waiting lists spiralling and thousands of families being forced into temporary bed-and-breakfast accommodation. We all know this is far from ideal for anyone who needs a place to call home, but it is totally unsuitable for families whose children need the security of a stable school and home environment. People who came here under the Ukrainian and Afghan refugee schemes, and whose family sponsorship has come to an end, are now the responsibility of their local authority, and they are also being forced to spend time in unsuitable temporary accommodation.
The potential for an accidental house price distortion makes it much harder for local authorities and housing associations to replace stock sold under the right to buy, because they are unable to retain 100% of the proceeds. I tabled new clause 6 to require the Treasury to consider the impact of these measures on the housing market, and specifically on the availability of private rented and affordable housing, because people who are priced out of those sectors are adding to the ever-increasing waiting lists for social housing.
New clause 4 would require specific consideration of the housing market in rural areas in response to the recent trend of house price growth in these areas outpacing the house price growth in urban areas, which is exacerbating the issues we have seen across the country. We simply cannot ignore the housing crisis any longer. All policy should consider the possibility of unintended consequences and mitigate that risk. These reports would better inform policy, and I urge the Minister to consider their inclusion so that we do not cause an unintended problem.
I briefly turn to second homes, although I cannot improve on the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale. Suffice it to say that second home ownership is hollowing out villages in some parts of the country on weekdays and during the winter, and it is driving up house prices for everyone, meaning that many people cannot afford a first home. In a country with a housing shortage, the Government should strongly discourage empty second homes. The hon. Member for South Thanet (Craig Mackinlay) made an excellent point on that issue.
I support new clauses 2 and 3, which would require the Chancellor to consider the impact of the Bill on the number of first and second home buyers, such that it can be amended if necessary, and specifically to consider the worst-affected areas, which are our national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty.
I broadly support any measure that encourages home ownership, but I fear that this temporary cut in duty, at a time when the Treasury can ill afford it, will be counterproductive for first-time buyers, particularly in rural Britain. New clauses 4 and 6 would allow the impacts to be fully understood, to confirm whether I am right and to make sure the policy is well informed.
Sir Christopher Chope
Happy new year, Sir Roger.
In speaking to my amendment (b) to amendment 1 and my new clause 7, I share with the Committee my dismay at the way in which the Government, with their amendments, are transforming this Bill, which originally introduced a permanent tax reduction. The Bill will now increase tax permanently by about £1 billion a year from April 2025.
On 17 October, the new Chancellor confirmed that the mini-Budget’s provisions on stamp duty land tax were safe, yet in his autumn statement, one month later, he announced:
“I will sunset the measure”.—[Official Report, 17 November 2022; Vol. 722, c. 846.]
That is an extraordinary use of language, because it does not fit the definition of a sunset clause set out on the UK Parliament website:
“A provision in a Bill that gives it an expiry date once it is passed into law. Sunset clauses are included in legislation when it is felt that Parliament should have the chance to decide on its merits again after a fixed period.”
I assumed, wrongly, that by introducing a sunset clause, the Government would give this House an opportunity to reconsider the situation before the advent of that sunset period.
That is why I tabled new clause 7, which states:
“The Chancellor of the Exchequer must, three months before expiry of the temporary relief period, publish an assessment of the impacts of the temporary relief provided by this Act.”
That would meet the concerns raised by the hon. Members for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) and for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan). New clause 7 continues:
“(2) This assessment must include an assessment of the impacts on—
(a) the volume and value of housing transactions on the housing market,
(b) any wider costs for the Government, property industry, housing market and/or homebuyers, and
(c) tax revenues.
(3) The assessment must make a recommendation as to whether the temporary relief period should expire or whether the House of Commons should consult on extending it or making it permanent.”New clause 7 would be a proper sunset provision that enables this House to return to the issue before the change is made permanent, but the Government amendments do not embrace that at all.
How does this Bill fit with what the Prime Minister said on 4 January? In quite a long speech, his only reference to taxation was:
“as soon as we can, the Government will reduce the burden of taxation on working people.”
Today, six days after that speech, the Government are asking us to increase the burden of tax on working people with effect from April 2025.
We have also heard in the interim that the Government will forgo the receipt of about £1 billion from the sale of Channel 4, yet as recently as 18 July 2022, when responding to the consultation on that issue, the Government announced that now is the right time to pursue a change in ownership of Channel 4. Why, one might ask, is now the right time both to increase taxes and to abandon asset sales?
Stamp duty land tax is targeted at homeowners and those who aspire to home ownership. Like my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Craig Mackinlay), I am opposed to stamp duty land tax because it is arbitrary, clunky and unfair in how it applies in different parts of our country.
For example, if someone lives in Christchurch and the average price of a house is £405,000, that does not mean that they are better off. It means they have to spend more money on the borrowing costs in order to buy an average house for themselves and their family. Someone living in the Minister’s constituency, where the average house price is only £200,000, would have lower borrowing costs and would not have to pay any stamp duty land tax.
Victoria Atkins
This is precisely why the Government are so committed to levelling up. Although I know how beautiful my hon. Friend’s constituency is, having had the pleasure of visiting it, in my beautiful corner of England, we do not, sadly, have the transport links that other constituencies have. It is precisely this drive for levelling up, which I know Conservative Members are united on, which may help with some of the issues he sets out so eloquently.
Sir Christopher Chope
I am grateful to the Minister for that intervention. It comes down to how we define, “levelling up”. The point I am trying to make is that, if somebody is buying an average house in Christchurch, or in her constituency of Louth and Horncastle, it should not make any difference in terms of taxation whether the house is going to cost £405,000 or £200,000. Why should the person buying a house in Christchurch who wants to become a teacher or an NHS employee in the area not only have the burden of having the higher house price—she has referred to some of those issues—but have to pay £10,000 in SDLT for the privilege of moving into the Christchurch constituency to purchase an average-priced house? I do not see any justice in that at all. In levelling up, we should be putting those two categories of person on the same level when it comes to their liability for paying transaction taxes.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet made the suggestion, which I have also made, that we should scrap SDLT. If we want to have a transaction tax, we should introduce one based on, for example, the size of a property, because that would be neutral; it would really be levelling up across the country. Obviously, it would be more popular with some people than with others, but it would certainly be very popular with my constituents and it would meet the criterion of levelling up.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
It might be very popular in Christchurch, but it would be very unpopular in Wellingborough and it seems totally unfair to me.
Sir Christopher Chope
This is the challenge, because some people think that this would adversely affect them. When we were looking at whether we should change the domestic rating system, we always faced the problem of the people who were going to be worse off, who were always the losers and who were going to complain. I accept that, were this to be implemented in the way I am canvassing, it would create some losers who would be unpleasantly surprised. That leads me to my belief that SDLT and stamp duty should be abolished altogether. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] That is an issue on which we, as real Conservatives who believe in a homeowning democracy, should be able to agree—and it seems from that response that we can agree on it—rather than dividing again in trying to find an alternative to an already unsatisfactory tax.
Let us remind ourselves that, in the 1980s, when we had the beginnings of the property-owning democracy revolution, with more than 50% of people in the 25 to 34 age group being homeowners, we had a stamp duty regime where the maximum rate to purchase any house was 1%. Since this process started under the Blair Government and continued with the coalition—the Treasury is always seeing this as a cow to be milked for taxpayers’ benefit—the proportion of people able to afford to buy their homes has declined significantly. So the challenge I make to the Government, and I hope the Minister can respond to this, is: if we put stamp duty back to 1% as a maximum, what would that do to increase the number of transactions in the housing market, which, as others have said, is ostensibly the Government’s agenda?
On 23 September, HMRC’s policy paper “Stamp Duty Land Tax Reduction” set out the following policy objective:
“This measure is part of government’s commitment to support homeownership and promote mobility in the housing market, in turn supporting economic growth. Increased property transactions also add to residential investment and spending on durable goods.”
Unfortunately, that was withdrawn on 28 November. It would be interesting to know whether that policy objective has been retained by the Government even though the HMRC policy paper has been withdrawn. Another paper issued on 23 September was “The Growth Plan 2022”, which I thought was great, as did many of my constituents. Paragraph 3.30 of the plan stated that the changes to SDLT would
“take 200,000 homebuyers, including 60,000 first-time buyers, out of SDLT entirely.”
Today, however, we are discussing a proposal by the Government, by way of amendments to the Bill, that would put those 200,000 home buyers, 60,000 of them first-time buyers, back into SDLT. Do we really want to do that? Do we really think it will help to move the housing market, boost growth and help people to have the mobility to get to new jobs?
This is not just about people being able to move to a new job by moving house; we also need to think about the damage to the environment being done by the large number of people who are now, having no alternative, being forced to engage in long-distance commuting. Last week, I visited a school in my constituency. The teacher showing me around has been driving regularly from Wales to do a great teaching job in the Christchurch constituency. Fortunately, she is about to move into the constituency, but that is after many, many months of that long-distance commuting. That is highly undesirable. It is bad for the environment and bad for the people involved, because it means that they are sitting behind the wheel of a car for far too long during the working week.
Stamp duty land tax is targeted against homeowners and it will have an adverse effect on labour mobility. Yet the Prime Minister, in his speech on 4 January, was complaining—I agree with him on this—that a quarter of our country’s labour force is inactive and, in this Bill, he is introducing an additional tax on the very mobility that he should be espousing. As my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet has said, SDLT is a tax on downsizing: it makes it much more difficult for anyone to receive a significant return by selling a larger house and purchasing a smaller one.
My biggest complaint, though, is that the provision hits hardest those for whom homeownership is least affordable. The latest figures, produced by the House of Commons Library in December, show that, in Christchurch, the average house price is now 11.8 times earnings. The national average in England and Wales of eight times is bad enough, but why are we imposing that extra burden on those buying houses in places such as Christchurch? The latest figures from the 2021 census show that the dream of a homeowning democracy espoused by generations of Conservative politicians since Margaret Thatcher, and first raised in 1975, is not one of this Government’s priorities.
Sir Christopher Chope
I think it is very sad and embarrassing that His Majesty’s loyal Opposition should be crowing at that statement.
Mr Perkins
Just to clarify, I am not remotely crowing. I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. This Government have hugely failed on allowing people to buy their own homes. It is a national disgrace. I support what he is saying; I am not remotely crowing.
Sir Christopher Chope
I accept that I used the wrong expression in suggesting that the hon. Gentleman was crowing. But may I set out the basis on which I have these concerns? In the Prime Minister’s speech on 4 January, there was not one mention of the word “housing”, let alone any mention of the expression “home ownership”. Why is that? We obviously have a real crisis in housing and home ownership on our hands. We are facing a potential fall in house prices this year—predicted by Oxford Economics to be about 12%, but who knows? Having stamp duty land tax, even at temporarily reduced levels, will mean that the burden of the reduction in house prices will be borne by those people trying to sell to a greater extent than would otherwise be necessary, because potential purchasers will have to budget for making SDLT payments to the Government.
You can tell, Mr Evans, that I am very concerned about the Bill. When I see that the Prime Minister has declared that the people’s priorities are the Government’s priorities and that we will rebuild trust in politics through action, all I can say is that I do not believe that the new measures in the Bill accord with the people’s priorities because I think those priorities are for a permanent reduction in stamp duty land tax and even, potentially, the abolition of that tax, rather than reintroducing it at a higher level in 2025.
When I was talking earlier today to a member of the Government’s Treasury team, I was told that one reason why my amendment (b) could not be accepted by the Government was that it had not been cleared by the Office for Budget Responsibility. I ask rhetorically, “Who is in charge?” Are we really saying that the Office for Budget Responsibility is able to forecast things to the extent of £1 billion here or £1 billion there? I do not think it can, and if that is the best that the Government can do in arguing against amendment (b), I hope they will think again about whether to accept it.
Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)
When this Bill was previously before the House, on 24 October last year—indeed, on the day we last changed Prime Minister, so it was under a different Treasury Minister—I asked the Treasury to analyse the potential harms caused by excessive second home ownership and holiday lets. I thank the Minister for her ongoing engagement on this issue, as well as the rest of the Treasury team. I have spoken to them on numerous occasions about the many complex taxation issues causing an imbalance in our housing market in constituencies such as mine, which I hope we can take steps to address in the coming months.
We know that when stamp duty was last reduced post pandemic, it generated a surge in short-term holiday lets and second home purchases. Indeed, 25% of purchases in my North Devon constituency during that period attracted the higher rate of stamp duty as an additional dwelling. However, we have no information on what proportion might have been long-term buy-to-let landlords. Alongside the many challenges in our North Devon housing market, we have seen a 67% decline in private rentals, with a surge in section 21s enabling landlords to take advantage of the tax inequalities between long and short-term rentals.
We desperately need to find a way to encourage buy-to-let landlords. The complexity of paying the 3% levy for an additional dwelling is, in many ways, a distraction from a Bill designed to help first-time buyers in particular on to the housing ladder. The removal of stamp duty saves thousands for anyone buying their first home—up to £425,000 at this time. When the numbers are fully analysed, in this legislation the maximum benefit to somebody buying an additional dwelling is just £2,500. We need to be just a bit realistic about whether that will be a large enough sum to motivate a change in behaviour in people who are buying additional properties—their second, third or fourth home.
For more than two years now, I have stood up in this House and asked for steps to be taken to tackle the housing crisis in North Devon. The Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill has now been amended to reflect the concerns of constituencies such as mine. Indeed, it is good to see Conservative-run councils in Devon and Cornwall taking steps to adopt measures in that Bill to double council tax on second homeowners. It is disappointing that Lib Dem-run North Devon Council has not taken such steps, but I remain optimistic that it will.
I very much hope that the paper I have submitted to the Treasury on behalf of Conservative colleagues—it includes many suggested changes to the tax system to tackle the imbalances between long and short-term rentals, and to continue making it easier for local families to buy and rent in places where they grew up or where there are huge numbers of job vacancies for them—will pave the way to looking more closely into the matter. I hope that the Treasury team’s door will remain open to MPs to meet and tackle this issue.
Victoria Atkins
May I place on the record my personal appreciation of the intensive work that my hon. Friend has put into this issue on behalf of her constituents and the wider south-west? Many south-western MPs are concerned about this issue, including—dare I say it—hon. Members from the Whips Office, who cannot stand up and speak. I am extremely alive to the issues that she raises. I wonder whether she would do me the favour of coming to see me at the Treasury over the coming months so that we can discuss further the issues in her constituency and the interesting ideas she has put forward.
Selaine Saxby
Nothing would give me more pleasure than to go back and speak with the Minister about these matters. We all worry about why the NHS is struggling to recruit. I can quite definitively tell people here today that the public sector struggles to recruit in North Devon because of the housing crisis.
We on the Conservative Benches are keen to tackle this issue. Yesterday’s cross-party drop-in session was hugely helpful. We heard from the officials behind the legislation, as well as from the Minister. It is just a shame that Opposition Members did not turn up—not one of them. They have tabled a number of amendments to the Bill, but do we really need to put reviews into legislation? One cannot help but wonder whether such amendments are politically motivated rather than aimed at delivering real change to constituencies that urgently need their housing markets to be rebalanced.
Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)
It is an honour and a delight to follow my hon. Friends the Members for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) and for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope). May I say at the outset that I completely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch that you should be Sir Nigel, Mr Evans? If I call you Sir Nigel, will I have as much time to speak as my hon. Friend?
It is a pleasure to speak because, as the chair of the Back-Bench Treasury committee, I have done a lot of work on stamp duty policy, and I have had a slightly perverse interest in stamp duty for the last decade or so and written various policy papers and research reports on it. We all support raising the level of home ownership. In fact, rates of home ownership started to decline under the previous Labour Government. There is a home ownership gap of about 5 million people who want to own their own home but cannot. I will support all measures—well, pretty much all measures—to increase home ownership. Clearly, we are teetering on the brink of recession and need to promote economic growth, so I very strongly support the broad thrust of the Bill in cutting stamp duty to help people get on to and up the property ladder and to stimulate economic growth. I have some reservations about the proposal being temporary and about it applying to second properties.
I will address some of the key themes of stamp duty policy. We have heard various calls today—not least from my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch—to abolish stamp duty outright, and in fact, I have called for that before. But it is not just Conservative MPs who think that stamp duty should be abolished outright; the Institute for Fiscal Studies, on whose advisory council I sit, talked in its magisterial work on taxation policy—the Mirrlees review—about all the damage of stamp duty and called for it to be abolished.
Lord Macpherson, a former permanent secretary at the Treasury, gave evidence fairly recently to the Treasury Committee, on which I sit, about tax policy. He highlighted all the damage that stamp duty did to the economy, for many of the reasons that my hon. Friends the Members for Christchurch and for South Thanet (Craig Mackinlay) set out earlier. Lord Macpherson certainly would not be sad to see its demise.
I want to raise a slightly more nuanced point than the outright abolition of stamp duty, which would lead to a big problem with revenue, as it raised £14 billion last year in total—about £4 billion for commercial property and £10 billion for residential. That would be a hole. My more nuanced argument is that people buying houses to live in are overtaxed, but people buying properties either as second homes or for investment are undertaxed. Exactly 10 years ago, in 2013, I wrote a paper arguing for a higher rate of stamp duty for people who are buying homes not to live in. Fundamentally, homes are for living in. Two years later, the Government introduced that policy. It is now the additional premium. I do not think the Government introduced it in the right way and there are all sorts of problems with it, but I will not go into detail on that now. The stamp duty regime at least recognises the difference between people buying properties for investment or as second homes as opposed to people buying properties to live in as their homes. That tilts the property market in favour of those buying homes to live in, which is welcome.
Tim Farron
I apologise for intervening on the hon. Gentleman in his good, interesting speech. He said that it is possible for stamp duty purposes to distinguish between a second home and a first home. That means it would clearly be possible to distinguish between second homes and first homes for planning purposes, which would give local authorities the power to ensure that they protect a minimum number of homes for local families. I gave the Government the opportunity just before Christmas to vote for an amendment to do that—why does he think they did not do so?
Anthony Browne
I thank the hon. Member for that intervention. I must admit I do not know the reasons behind that, but it clearly is possible, at least from a taxation point of view, to distinguish between homes for investment and homes for living in. From a planning point of view, there are probably other considerations.
Anthony Browne
There may be many reasons.
The capital gains tax regime already distinguishes between homes for investment purposes and homes for living in. People do not pay capital gains tax on the home they live in, but if they do not live in it, they do pay. The reason that people buying homes are overtaxed has been laid out by many colleagues, so I will not overlay that, but clearly we need labour mobility and for people to be able to live in appropriate housing. If we overtax housing, we end up with lots of people living in inappropriate houses, not least the home hoarders at the end of their working lives and the empty nesters whose kids have gone and who live in too big a house and do not want to move. That has a damaging impact on labour mobility, as people want to move around the country. It is the most economically damaging tax.
The reason I say that people buying second homes for whatever purpose or homes for investment are undertaxed is that stamp duty is a transaction tax. All other transaction taxes—we can argue about whether VAT or excise duty on petrol are transaction taxes—are flat-rated. People pay the same rate, whatever the value. We pay 20% VAT whether we are buying something for £10, £100 or £100,000. Stamp duty, however, is a progressive transaction tax, with a lower rate at the bottom end that progressively goes up, as it is designed now. That zero rate and lower rate for lower value properties is for social reasons. It is basically to help first-time buyers get on the property ladder, which is welcome, and to help people get up the property ladder. That is a valid social reason to have progressive stamp duty, but that reason does not apply to people buying second homes or investment properties. There is no reason to have a graduated stamp duty to help property investors get on to the property investment merry-go-round.
Sir Christopher Chope
Does my hon. Friend also agree that somebody in Christchurch who is having to buy an average priced house at the cost of £405,000—as compared with someone in Louth and Horncastle, who can buy the same house for £200,000—should not be taxed double, in a sense, in addition to having to pay a higher mortgage?
Anthony Browne
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. He proposed earlier that stamp duty should be based on the area of the property; I have some reservations about that for economic efficiency reasons. One of the considerations of taxation should be the ability to pay. If someone is buying a house for £400,000, clearly they will be able to pay a bit more tax than if they were buying a house for £200,000. But if the Government follow my proposal to get rid of stamp duty on residential properties altogether as an objective, his constituents will not have to pay any stamp duty whatsoever. They will pay the same stamp duty as the people buying houses in Louth.
Victoria Atkins
It is a pleasure to rise after the stirring final sentence of my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Anthony Browne). I thank Members around the Chamber for a really interesting and constructive discussion that has sometimes veered, dare I say it, into almost a philosophical debate about the very existence of stamp duty, markets, supply and demand and principles of economics. It has been a fascinating debate, and I thank all Members, particularly my hon. Friends the Members for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope), for South Thanet (Craig Mackinlay) and for South Cambridgeshire, for putting forward their long-considered thinking on this particular tax. In the interests of frankness, I have to manage expectations and say at the Dispatch Box that we have no plans to abolish stamp duty land tax, precisely because it raises billions of pounds a year, but I suspect that will not stop my hon. Friends.
My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch asked a specific question about a flat rate of 1%. I had hoped to be able to answer it in this debate, but I am not able to, so I undertake to write to him. He and others across the Committee raised the very important issue of housing supply. This affects affordability in all our constituencies, including areas that have popular tourist destinations such as the constituencies of the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) and my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, and also city centres. That is why, as part of our work over the last 12 years, since spring 2010 more than 800 households have been helped to purchase a home through Government-backed schemes including Help to Buy and the right to buy. We operate a range of relevant schemes that make home ownership more affordable, including the lifetime ISA, and those are important precisely for the reason that has been argued so cogently by Members: the housing market has at times raced ahead of local incomes and affordability.
Colleagues across the House raised the issue of building new properties, which has been a subject of debate when considering other pieces of legislation before the House. I hope Members will be pleased to hear that in 2019-20, almost 243,000 additional dwellings were delivered—that is a net figure—which was the highest in nearly 30 years, and the Government are on track to meet their commitment to deliver 1 million additional homes across this Parliament. Colleagues also raised the very important issue of the supply of new affordable housing, which is a priority for the Government. In the spending review of 2021, we confirmed £11.5 billion of funding for the affordable homes programme from 2021-22, which is the largest cash investment in affordable housing for a decade, providing up to 180,000 new homes across England.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet brought his expertise as a chartered accountant into the Chamber; he is on another matter of House business and apologises for not being able to be here now. He raised the issue of retirement downsizing. The point I will make—and I hope to repeat it to him in person—is that the measures set out in the Bill will also help those who are looking to downsize. If someone is moving from a property in, say, the second tranche of tax down to one that is zero-rated, they of course will be able to benefit from that. It will reduce the stamp duty charge for movers by up to £2,500.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire came up with a great many ideas, which I know he will continue to raise with me through his chairmanship of the Conservative Back-Bench Treasury committee. I take his point about other taxes being involved in the average purchase of a home, such as, we hope, when people are able to buy furniture and make the changes we all want to make when we purchase our next home. I hope that measures such as the energy-saving materials VAT exemption will help in some of those instances. However, I appreciate his point about the lever that stamp duty can apply.
Before I move on to the Opposition amendment, I want to reiterate that the Bill as it stands will mean that 43% of transactions—our constituents buying their homes—will not involve stamp duty. It will also mean that 98% of first-time buyers in several regions will pay no stamp duty. Again, I hope that addresses some of the issues raised.
The hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asare) urges us to support Opposition amendment (a). To put it into context, there were about 1,025,000 residential transactions in the year 2020-21, of which around 237,000 related to additional property transactions, which includes not just second homes but buy-to-let properties. I will come in a moment to the significance of the rental market in this debate. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) set out so starkly, there are real issues in the housing and rental markets in particular parts of the country, and we want a national tax to help across England and Northern Ireland.
The Opposition amendment would remove purchases of additional property from the scope of the Bill and the temporary cut to stamp duty land tax, which we argue would have an impact on rental supply and, in turn, tenants. Through the 3% surcharge in the Bill, we are ensuring that those who purchase additional homes—in other words, both landlords and those purchasing second homes—will still pay stamp duty. Those buyers are not exempt from stamp duty; they will all continue to pay stamp duty, because the 3% surcharge will continue to apply to all of them. As I described, a sliver of properties within the £125,000 to £250,000 price range are affected. Even with that sliver, the maximum saving possible for those purchasing additional properties is £2,500.
I want to put this amendment into the context of the private rental sector. The 4.4 million households in the rental sector remain a vital part of the housing market. Renting is the long-term housing reality for many. While we would very much like renting to be a stepping stone to people buying their own homes, we have to understand that, in certain parts of the country, the markets are so hot that for many people, including those people we would love to encourage to be first-time buyers, renting their home is the reality. We must therefore ensure that the measures we take do not imperil or endanger that market, particularly when households are struggling with the cost of living. Further constraints on rental supply will mean higher costs for tenants. My hon. Friend the Member for North Devon set out the significant impact on and decline in the long-term rental market in her constituency. We understand from Zoopla data that rental prices in the country increased in August by nearly 12% year on year. We argue that accepting this amendment would make that situation worse.
We understand the impact of second homes on some of our most popular tourist destinations, such as the south-west. In fact, we are taking practical measures to address that.
Through the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, we are setting a new council tax premium on second homes of up to 100% and strengthening the existing premium on empty homes of up to 300%. That means that someone with a second home could face an additional council tax bill of nearly £4,000.
Tim Farron
To follow up on that, is it not right to say that people who have second homes pay additional council tax only if those homes are empty and unfurnished, so a very small percentage of those who have second homes will be affected? Does the Minister understand the evidence that the 2020 stamp duty cut fuelled a second home boom? On that basis, why has she done nothing to listen to rural communities such as mine about that and to mitigate it in some way by accepting my amendment or that of the Opposition?
Victoria Atkins
If I have understood the hon. Gentleman correctly, he has misunderstood the measures in the Bill, which introduces a premium on second homes of up to 100% and a strengthening of the existing premium on empty homes. I appreciate his point about empty homes, if people are moving or returning to their second homes, but that is not the scenario everywhere—indeed, in my constituency, I can think of examples where that is not the case. We are trying to use practical measures so that local communities can decide how to deal with it through council tax.
I was talking about complexity. We want to ensure that the system is as simple as possible for taxpayers, which is why we have the consistency of rate bands between the standard rate and the rate for additional dwellings.
Amendment (b), which was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, seeks to extend the period from 31 March 2025 to 31 March 2028. It is important that the Government maintain a commitment to fiscal responsibility and that requires difficult decisions, as I have set out. The Chancellor was clear about that in the autumn statement, and I hope that the ministerial team have been clear about that when we have spoken at the Dispatch Box. The Government will continue to take difficult decisions to get the public finances on a sound footing and to get debt falling in the medium term.
We therefore announced that the stamp duty cut will end in March 2025 as part of that commitment. It will remain in place until then to support the property market through what we all acknowledge are difficult times. We believe that we have struck the right balance between ensuring support for the jobs and businesses associated with the housing market and the Exchequer cost.
The remaining amendments tabled by hon. Members on both sides of the Committee refer to reports and reviews, if I may summarise them in that way. As my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire reiterated, it is a fundamental principle that we are loth to include reporting and reviewing requirements in primary legislation. In any event, we do not believe it to be necessary, because the Government already publish a wealth of data on those matters. For example, HMRC publishes data on property transactions and stamp duty land tax receipts, including data on the use of first-time buyers’ relief. To help hon. Members to understand what that means for our constituents who are first-time buyers, the Bill will mean that they can access up to £8,750 in relief. It is a great shame that Opposition Members propose to vote against that relief.
The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities also publishes the English housing survey. Data on property prices, including at a local level, is published through the Land Registry. The Government published a summary of the measure’s impacts, including on the Exchequer, in November’s autumn statement. I hope that hon. Members who have asked for that data and those reviews will look at that wealth of information and draw their own conclusions.
I thank hon. Members for this debate, which I very much welcome, but I commend the Bill to the Committee. I particularly commend the Government amendments to enable first-time buyers in our constituencies to get on to the housing ladder, and to help other constituents move up the housing ladder and continue to thrive in our country in the next couple of years.
The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Nigel Evans)
Before I put the Question, I should just say that I am anticipating three votes: two in Committee and one on Third Reading. The first vote will last for 10 minutes and the two subsequent ones will last for eight minutes each, so if I were you I really would not go anywhere after voting in the first Division.
Amendment proposed to amendment 1: (a), after “transaction” insert
“(except in relation to additional dwellings)”.—(Abena Oppong-Asare.)
This amendment is intended to remove the relief from stamp duty land tax for second homes (see Amendment 15 to leave out subsection (3)).
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Sport in Schools and Communities
(1 year, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Stuart Andrew)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered sport in schools and communities.
I am really pleased to open this general debate on this important topic. We will all agree that sport has a vital role to play in all of our lives, through its power to be a force for good that brings communities together and as an important tool in improving the health of the nation. The topic of today’s debate brings together multiple areas of work from multiple Departments and arm’s length bodies, which is why I am so pleased to be joined by my right hon. Friend the Minister for Schools, who will be closing this debate. The work of both of our Departments, as well as many others, contributes to the overall Government mission to support everyone, especially children and young people, to be able to enjoy sport and be more active. As a Government, we are fully committed to supporting sport in schools and communities.
I wish to take a moment briefly to reflect on the power that sport has to bring us together. Last year, we again saw so many unforgettable moments that transcend beyond just the single match or competition, such as the fantastic success of our Lionesses winning at Euro 2022. That inspirational tournament was a truly ground-breaking moment for the sport and has supercharged interest in the women’s game.
We also hosted the Commonwealth games in Birmingham that saw more women’s medals awarded for the first time and truly showcased the fantastic region of Birmingham and the west midlands. We saw success at the men’s T20 world cup and at the rugby world cup. We also hosted a fantastic rugby league world cup tournament here in the UK, with victory for our fantastic wheelchair team. I was very lucky and fortunate enough to be there and see that fantastic victory in person.
The benefits of participating in sports and doing regular exercise are well known. Undertaking regular exercise helps mitigate a wide range of health conditions, both physical and mental, vitally easing the pressure on our NHS. For example, sport and physical activity directly prevents 150,000 cases of heart disease and stroke and 900,000 cases of diabetes per year.
Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)
I am delighted to see both my right hon. Friend and the Minister for Schools on the Front Bench. My only regret is that a relevant Minister from the Department of Health and Social Care is not here, as they also put money into the PE and sport premium. Can the Minister reassure us that the Department of Health and Social Care are as engaged in this agenda as are the Departments for Education and for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport?
Stuart Andrew
Absolutely. I am happy to confirm that. One thing on which I am focused, and I know that my right hon. Friend the Minister for Schools agrees with me, is that we do work across Government, as there are benefits for all Departments in getting this area of work right.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
The Minister opened this debate by recognising all the brilliant English and British sporting achievements in 2022. I am sure that he will join me in congratulating the four Lionesses who were honoured in the new year’s honours list, which was much deserved. I wish that it had been the whole squad, but we will leave it at that. He will recall that I led a Westminster Hall debate last November on girls and women’s participation in sport following the Lionesses’ success. He promised to work with the Department for Education on ensuring that every child gets at least two hours PE a week. I would welcome an update on those discussions. Perhaps the Minister might mention that in his wind-up.
Stuart Andrew
I will certainly join the hon. Lady in congratulating those members of the team who were awarded honours in the new year’s honours list. Indeed, since that Westminster Hall debate, both the Secretary of State for Education and I have met with members of the Lionesses team and gone through further details. We hope to make more statements certainly by April of this year, because we recognise the importance of the suggestions that she has made.
Paul Holmes (Eastleigh) (Con)
The Minister has mentioned a number of great sporting moments over the past year. May I put it on record that one of the great sporting moments was the stance that he took over Qatar, and that many of us appreciated that stance?
My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) mentioned the PE and sport premium for schools. I have seen the advantages that that brings to disadvantaged children in my community. Can my right hon. Friend confirm whether the Government intend to continue funding that project? If he cannot confirm that now, will he write to me, because that project really does make a difference to those in local communities in my constituency of Eastleigh.
Stuart Andrew
I appreciate the kind words that my hon. Friend said at the start of his intervention. He is right to highlight the success of the PE and sport premium funding, which is exactly why the Government have doubled that funding. We are considering the arrangements at the moment for the academic year 2023-24, and I hope that we will be making an announcement as soon as possible.
John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Does the Minister agree that a good way of promoting sport within the public sector and in public facilities is a joint use of facilities between schools and the wider community, so that, with the right maintenance and support staff, those facilities can be used at weekends and during the holidays?
Stuart Andrew
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. Our Departments are working on that; it is going well in some areas, but we need to see it improve right across the country so that those great facilities are available to as many people as possible.
Stuart Andrew
I will take one more intervention and then I really must crack on.
Kim Leadbeater
The Minister has made some excellent opening remarks and there have been some excellent interventions already. Less than half of all children currently meet the daily guidelines for sport and physical activity, but 54% of children would like to do more of it. I hope the Government will commit to giving PE and physical literacy the focus and time in the curriculum that it needs, with properly trained and resourced staff who can inspire pupils to embed sport and physical activity as lifelong habits and, in the long term, to save our NHS.
Stuart Andrew
The hon. Lady is right to identify that the earlier we get people involved in sport, the longer they will hopefully continue to participate and live healthier lives. That is why we are working on developing the sport strategy, as part of which I will be working with my colleagues across Government to ensure we are maximising every possible opportunity to get people into sport and physical activity.
Stuart Andrew
I will do once more, but I am conscious there is not much time for Back Benchers to speak.
James Sunderland
The active lives survey published recently showed that in Bracknell only 41% of children are classed as being active. We are not entirely sure why that is; we are working with schools to try to remedy the issue, and with the fantastic sporting facilities in schools locally I am confident that we will do so. One issue raised by teachers is that the annual sports premium is only ever announced late in the financial year. Will Minister please make sure that we get early notification of that funding so that schools, teachers and clubs can plan ahead for the forthcoming year?
Stuart Andrew
This is the moment where I am glad that my right hon. Friend the Schools Minister is sitting by my side, so he can hear those messages and take them back to his Department. To be fair, he is already aware of those issues and will consider them when future announcements are made.
Sport also has the power to bring communities closer together through fostering social cohesion. It gives young people essential leadership and teamwork skills and has the power to tackle loneliness, reduce inequality, increase youth engagement and tackle youth violence. It is an essential part of a healthy and happy life. Research commissioned by Sport England shows that for every £1 invested in community sport there is a return of £4 in wider social economic value. That is why as a Government we are so committed to ensuring that everyone across the country has access to high-quality provision.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
Will the Minister give way on that point?
Jamie Stone
The Minister is being very generous. I represent the most remote part of the UK mainland, and young people in Wick High School and Thurso High School find it very difficult to travel to Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Perth to participate. It is tough on school finances and tough on family finances. I understand completely that sport is devolved, but I hope that the Government are going to look at some scheme to help parents and children in the most remote parts of England to access sport so that they are not disadvantaged because of inequality—and, since he mentioned cross-Government working, could he then share that best practice with the Scottish Government?
Stuart Andrew
Always happy to give advice to the Scottish Government. The hon. Gentleman is right to highlight those points and that is exactly what we will focus on in the sport strategy. There are hard-to-reach areas, more rural areas and areas of deprivation in other parts of the country too, so that will be a focus of the strategy that we are currently developing.
Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the Minister give way just one more time?
Stuart Andrew
I am just going to carry on a bit, because I am conscious that we do not have much time and many Members want to take part.
We know that there are significant disparities across the country, from Southall to Sunderland, and we are committed to tackling them. I make clear that it is my personal priority to do so. Through our arm’s length body, Sport England, we invest more than £250 million of public and lottery funding annually. Over the past 12 months, 19.2% of Sport England’s local-level investment has been for projects in indices of multiple deprivation or IMD 1 areas, providing direct support to organisations and communities in the areas that need it most.
Having the right facilities of the right quality is fundamental to a strong sporting community. That is why we are acting to deliver the facilities that every community needs, right across the UK. We are investing a total of £230 million between 2022 and 2025 in all four home nations. That includes an existing £18 million annual commitment in England, delivered via the Football Foundation in partnership with the Football Association and the Premier League. We hope that that investment will build or improve up to 8,000 facilities across the country, especially in the most deprived areas, and not just for football—40% of our investment will deliver facilities that support multiple sports. We are also investing £30 million, together with the Lawn Tennis Association, to renovate and repair thousands of public park tennis courts.
We are also working to ensure that major events have a significant and lasting impact on the communities in which they are held. During the summer, I was fortunate enough to visit the new facilities at Leigh Miners Rangers, which benefited from £350,000 as part of the rugby league world cup social impact programme. It is a thriving community hub that was galvanised and reinvigorated by that tournament. We recognise that we need to maintain progress, and, as I say, we will publish this year a new sports strategy that will set out how we will continue to support people, no matter who they are or where they are from, to enjoy the benefits of participating in sport.
Seema Malhotra
Will the Minister clarify whether the strategy he is referring to will be the updated school sport and activity action plan, which has been an area of concern, and whether there will be time for consultation before that plan is published so that voices can be heard as part of its development?
Stuart Andrew
The sport strategy that I am referring to is the wider, cross-Government one, but there will be the other report that the hon. Lady refers to. The Minister of State, Department for Education, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Nick Gibb) will be able to give a bit more of an update about that in his closing remarks. Now that is dodging a question!
Ensuring that those from hard-to-reach communities get opportunities to play sport is really matters to me personally, and I look forward to working with Members across the House to make progress in this area.
Kim Leadbeater
I thank the Minister, who is being extremely generous with his time. He makes some valid points about community facilities. Yesterday, the Government announced changes to the energy bill relief scheme. I am really pleased that they are committed to providing additional support to organisations such as libraries and museums, but can the Minister tell the House why sport and leisure centres were not included on that list? Swimming pools in particular face incredibly high energy bills. Many are threatened with closure or have already closed, including Batley baths and recreation centre in my constituency, which is, sadly, temporarily closed. Those are hubs in the community, so this is not just about physical wellbeing but about mental wellbeing, social cohesion and lots of other things besides. Can he confirm whether that will be looked at and whether the Government will be able to provide such facilities with the support they need?
Stuart Andrew
I am acutely aware of the concerns of many hon. Members about leisure centres and costs. Of course, the scheme that was announced initially has helped a great deal in that area, but to recognise the importance of the matter, I am holding a roundtable with some interested bodies in the coming weeks to look at it in more detail and see what else we can do.
As a Government, we are focused on how we can support our children and young people to become more active. Quite simply, sport and physical activity are a lifelong habit that needs to be carefully nurtured. We are committed to ensuring that every child, regardless of their background, has access to and benefits from quality sporting opportunities. Dealing with this challenge has never been more important than when we are coming out of the pandemic. Some 2.2 million children—or 30%—are not meeting the chief medical officer’s guidance on levels of activity. I was pleased to see in the latest active lives survey for children, which was released in December, that children’s activity levels have recovered to pre-pandemic levels. There were particularly significant increases in the activity levels of teenage girls. Although that positive progress should be applauded, we know that more work needs to be done to ensure that every child realises the benefits of being active and playing sport.
We are taking action to tackle that challenge. In partnership with colleagues from the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Education, we continue to invest £320 million per year in the PE and sport premium to provide dedicated funding to primary schools to deliver high-quality PE provision. We also continue to fund the school games programme as a vital tool to encourage children to compete in competitive sport.
Damian Collins
I am grateful. I declare my interest as a trustee of the Sports Trust in Folkestone and Hythe, which delivers a lot of primary school sport activity. Does my right hon. Friend agree that, in encouraging best practice, it is important to look not just at levels of activity in and out of school, but at the improvement in academic attainment in schools that do a lot of sport? It has much wider benefits than just physical health, including academic attainment.
Stuart Andrew
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The benefits of physical activity are widespread, as I mentioned at the beginning. He is right to highlight that point, and we will make sure to consider it as we develop the strategy.
Last year, we saw how sport has the power to inspire. The fantastic success of the Lionesses marked a step change for women’s sport in this country, and we are fully committed to ensuring that all girls have equal access to provision within schools and to looking at how PE can deliver that. As a Government, we are committed to publishing an update to the school sport and physical activity action plan this year, which will set out our ambitions and next steps to support more children to take part in sports.
In conclusion, I welcome this debate on such an important topic. As I have set out, we are already taking action, and as we look to publish our sports strategy later this year, and the updated school sport and physical activity action plan, we will set the blueprint for how the Government will continue to support more people to enjoy the benefits of sport and then take advantage of the many benefits that we know it brings for everybody.
Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)
Happy new year to everybody. It is the first time I have spoken in the House this year. It is a pleasure to be here on behalf of the Opposition. I agreed with much of what the Minister said. Sport and physical activity are essential elements of a modern, healthy, successful society, and keeping active is vital for personal physical health and mental health and for the social development and wellbeing of young people. We know that physically active children are happier and have higher levels of academic achievement than their less physically active peers.
Sport and exercise bring people together and have the power to build healthier, happier and more connected communities. Sport is not just about the benefit to individuals; it can be harnessed to tackle many of the important challenges we face as a society, whether it be loneliness, health inequalities or high rates of mental ill health. Getting people fit saves the NHS money and reduces pressure on public services. Sport can extend and save people’s lives. It is not just about taking part in sport; it is about sharing the joy of it. Watching sporting events together brings the nation together.
Today’s debate comes as we look back on a fantastic year for British sport. As we have heard, whether it was Wimbledon, the Commonwealth games, the rugby league world cup or the football World cup, we came together in support of our national sports stars. The Lionesses’ stunning success at the women’s Euros was a special highlight. We have given them our admiration and they give us inspiration. Our top athletes can be fantastic role models for our young people and ambassadors for their sports. With the right Government intervention and support, major events can help us build a lasting legacy and get more people involved in sport.
Today’s debate also comes two days after the Public Accounts Committee published its report, “Grassroots participation in sport and physical activity”. It found that the Government
“lacks a compelling vision for integrating physical activity into everyday life”.
The report confirms what the National Audit Office report told us last year. We were promised a golden age of British sport after the 2012 London Olympics, but the Government have squandered that legacy. Adult participation in sport fell in the first three years following the 2012 games. Ministers abandoned plans to track the legacy of the 2012 games in 2016, so we cannot make any judgments about any legacy delivered from the £8.8 billion that was spent on the games.
Labour urged the Government not to repeat the same mistakes with the Birmingham Commonwealth games, but again, according to the Public Accounts Committee, the Government
“has no mechanisms in place to monitor the long-term participation legacy from the Commonwealth Games.”
We cannot afford to keep making the same mistakes, so we look forward with eagerness to the publication of the Government’s new sports strategy, but I have to ask where it is. We were told last summer that it would be published in the summer, alongside all the other Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport papers that were promised and delayed last summer, including the media Bill, the gambling White Paper and the White Paper on football governance. If we want to protect the clubs that sustain our communities, we need to get on with the recommendations of the fan-led review of football.
Kim Leadbeater
The shadow Minister is making some excellent points. He is right that time is pressing. We need action now. We will all have fantastic community sports clubs in our constituencies that are struggling because of the cost of living and energy bills. Grassroots sports clubs are at the heart of our communities. Does he agree that the Government must commit to provide them with the funding and support that they desperately need at this time?
Jeff Smith
I absolutely agree. My hon. Friend anticipates my remarks. We need to support those grassroots sports clubs through the cost of living crisis and get on with ensuring that the bigger professional football clubs have a framework that protects them and the communities that they support and thrive in.
Jonathan Gullis
Carol Shanahan, the co-owner of Port Vale football club, regularly raises with me how the funding model in a football pyramid works. If we moved to a model where 70% of the combined Premier League and English Football League TV rights went to the Premier League and 30% went to the rest, that would have a massively positive impact and enable grassroots clubs to see longer term investment. Does the shadow Minister agree that the Government should urge the EFL and the Premier League to do that?
Jeff Smith
I certainly agree that we need a better way of distributing finance down the pyramid. In her report, the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) left it for the FA and the EFL to come up with a formula. That is the right thing to do at the moment, but they are taking their time. They need to come up with a formula that does what the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) says and get money down the pyramid.
We are told that the sport strategy is delayed because of ministerial changes. I very much like the Minister; I hope he maintains his job despite the current ministerial merry-go-round in the Tory party. But if that is the problem, given the chaos in Government, I wonder if we will see the sport strategy before the next election. Once again, Tory party chaos gets in the way of Government action.
We need action. Currently, over a quarter of adults are classed as inactive, along with almost a third of children and young people. There are stark divides in the level of physical activity between different demographics and communities. The covid pandemic has not helped. There are now 1.3 million more inactive adults than before the pandemic. Worryingly, the people who are less active are those living in deprived areas, women, young people, over-75s, disabled people, those with long-term health conditions, and people from black, Asian, and other minority ethnic backgrounds. In many of those groups, activity levels have fallen more sharply since the pandemic. Those disparities start early. Some 35% of children in the least affluent families do fewer than 30 minutes of activity a day, compared with 22% of children from the most affluent families.
How do we tackle this issue? We need schools and community sports clubs to be able to step up and narrow the gaps, but in the last 10 years, state secondary schools in England have lost over 36,000 hours of PE from the curriculum. The national curriculum states that every young person is entitled to experience high-quality PE, but over the last decade school accountability has been increasingly focused on core academic subjects. PE is often neglected in favour of other subjects.
As we have heard, funding for PE and school sport is too often made available only on a short-term basis, with decisions coming at the last minute, leaving schools unable to plan for the long term. We are losing PE teachers: there are 2,700 fewer in England now than in 2011. By ending tax breaks for private schools, the next Labour Government will recruit thousands of new teachers, create a new entitlement to ongoing teacher training and reform the narrow progress measures that deprioritise physical education in the curriculum.
Children and young people’s physical activity rates have now recovered to where they were before the pandemic, but that was not a great place. Fewer than half of children meet the chief medical officer’s guidelines to take part in an average of 60 minutes or more of sport and physical activity a day. There is a physical activity gender gap: girls start being less active than boys from the age of five.
Labour believes that the Lionesses’ victory last year should represent a turning point for women in sport, inspiring more girls to play football in particular and sport in general. According to Sport England, less than two thirds of all schools currently offer equal access to girls’ football in PE lessons. Labour will introduce an equal access guarantee for school sport, instead of the current situation where girls can be taught “comparable” sporting activities, which reinforces traditional barriers and stereotypes for girls and women. We have to let children and young people explore a range of sports from a young age.
Kim Leadbeater
It is excellent to hear Labour’s plans, but I go back to the point that we need action now. The Prime Minister said last year said that he
“would love to see all schools provide two hours of PE a week”,
that he would “tighten accountability” around the primary school PE and sport premium, and that he would ensure Ofsted looked at sport. Ultimately, unless we have healthy children, it does not matter how good they are at maths, science or anything else. That is why we have to value PE on the curriculum more than we do. Will my hon. Friend join me in calling for the Minister to ensure that the Government view PE on the curriculum as a priority?
Jeff Smith
Absolutely. My hon. Friend is an expert on these issues, and I agree with every word she said.
I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the hard-working volunteers and community organisations that kept sporting activities happening as best they could through the pandemic and who do a fantastic job week in, week out, keeping our local sports clubs going. I also pay tribute to local authorities, which provide much of our sporting infrastructure. Without local authority sports facilities, many people would struggle to access sport, but local government has been the hardest hit part of the public sector over the last 10 years, and it shows. I remember the pain of having to close local leisure centres because of Government cuts in 2011. A high proportion of our local sport and leisure facilities are at the end of or beyond their operational life and in desperate need of renovation. Councils do not have the resources for this, and we need to give councils the ability to keep sport alive in our towns and cities.
Grassroots sport in our communities is now under more threat from the cost of living crisis. Soaring energy bills are hitting gyms, leisure centres and especially swimming pools. Operators are facing bills that are up to 200% higher this year compared with the last normal operating year, 2019, and costs are set to increase by another 240%. Even before the energy crisis took hold, Swim England warned in 2021 that nearly 2,000 pools could be lost by the end of the decade. One in four councils has potential plans to close leisure facilities, and over 40% need to make cuts to physical activity services. The District Councils’ Network says that seven in 10 councils are considering scaling back their leisure services in response to these financial pressures.
Munira Wilson
I completely agree with what the hon. Gentleman says about the strain on council finances. Councils often run swimming pools, but Hampton pool in my constituency—recently voted one of the country’s top seven heated lidos—is totally community run, by a charitable trust. It is not run by the local authority, so it does not have that level of security, and given that it has been left out of the energy bills discount scheme update that was announced yesterday, it is under a lot of financial pressure. I welcome the fact that the Minister will hold a roundtable, but it is important to recognise that not all swimming pools are run by local authorities.
Jeff Smith
The hon. Lady makes a really important point. The announcement of the new energy bills discount scheme yesterday came as a massive disappointment to the sector. There is no mention of sport and leisure facilities, no acknowledgment in the scheme that certain services such as swimming pools are particularly energy-intensive—they are not on the list of energy-intensive sectors—and no offer of bespoke support. To quote Huw Edwards, the chief executive of ukactive, the new scheme
“will fail to give thousands of pools, leisure centres, and gyms the support they need to avoid further service restrictions, closures, and job losses.”
Ukactive says that 40% of council areas are at risk of losing their leisure centres or seeing a reduced service before the end of March this year, so the support that has been offered past that point will come too late for many.
I have to ask the Minister, what are the Government going to do to save these vital community assets? I look forward to the roundtable and hearing what he develops from that, but are they content to see pools and leisure centres close up and down the country? How does he plan to boost physical activity rates and sporting participation when the Government’s lack of support will lead to closures and price rises? It is not just councils that are feeling the pinch. Over a quarter of adults across the UK think they will need to cut back on their own sport and physical activity because of rising costs, so will the sports strategy, whenever we see it, contain plans to save our leisure facilities?
A decade on from the 2012 Olympics, despite the success of our brilliant athletes and the best efforts of our community volunteers, physical activity is flatlining, school sport is declining and facilities are under threat. The Government have failed to make the best of sport as a vital element to prevent ill health and boost the economy. Those failures will cost us all more in the long run, piling pressure on public services. The Government should use this debate as an opportunity to set out what they will do differently to promote PE in schools, address the inequalities in opportunity and participation, ensure we have the pools, gyms and leisure centres we need and to build a proper legacy for the money we have spent and the brilliance of the sporting heroes who inspire us. It is time for the Government to raise their game.
Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)
I refer the House to my various sport-related entries on the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. When David Cameron rang me in May 2015 to ask me to be his Sports Minister, I asked if I could have school sport in the portfolio. When he said no, because he had already appointed that Minister—who, for the record, turned out to be an excellent Minister—I replied, “Well, I have already failed.” While I do not believe that I failed as Sports Minister, I was never going to succeed in getting the absolute best results in children’s activity because I did not have responsibility for the part that introduces children to sport and physical activity in the first place.
That remains the case for ministerial responsibilities today—we have two excellent Ministers on the Front Bench, so this is no criticism of them—as was noted in the Public Accounts Committee report published over the weekend. I will be honest: it was a tough read. I am very proud of the sports strategy, published in 2015, which aimed to rejuvenate flatlining participation. While it did do that to some extent, it was perhaps not to the level we would have all hoped. As the Committee notes, part of that is due to the lack of delivery in other Departments, not DCMS. It also notes that the one cross-departmental group that tried to ensure progress of delivery ceased after I left in 2018. I encourage the Government to revive these important checks as part of the new sports strategy, which I am sure will be a welcome refresher of the now seven-year old strategy.
School sport underpins long-term success in the nation’s physical and mental wellbeing. We need a bold and ambitious plan that starts at reception and builds appropriately and consistently throughout formal education. With a son in year 2, I have never had more insight into the challenges teachers face in delivering the curriculum along with the additional demands we in this place put on them. However, the needs of the curriculum and the benefits of physical exercise complement each other, not compete against each other. Schools with good PE outputs often have good educational attainment levels. Statistics show that physical health improves mental health, concentration levels, happiness, behaviour, confidence and resilience.
The challenge is, how does sport fit into the school day, and how is it funded? I hope the Minister can deal with the latter point today and pledge to confirm the funding for school sport for the next academic year at the earliest opportunity. If we want decent provision, it is essential that it is planned well in advance. Our children need activities that give them a thirst for movement. They want and need variety that is not always about competition. Planned expenditure is vital for this and, in turn, will enable school day planning. I share the Youth Sport Trust’s view that PE should be a core subject, but also that wraparound care could be more active. We often cite the difference between state and private provision. Facilities is obviously a point of difference, but so is the type of after-school offering. This has to be funded, so let us fund it. It is not misspent public money, for it will save the taxpayer in the long run by mitigating the poor physical and mental health that costs the NHS so much.
Although I have referenced the need to provide non-competitive sport, it would be remiss of me not to mention the success of the Lionesses and their subsequent letter to, as it turns out, both the former and current Prime Ministers about the delivery of football to girls. Currently, only 67% of schools offer football equally to girls and boys. Not every girl wants to play football—this girl did, although I was not allowed to—but how would they know if they were not even being offered it? Without an introduction in school, few will independently seek out clubs, so the pipeline of talent is blocked before it really starts.
The FA has three asks with which I totally agree: a minimum of two hours of PE a week, Ofsted inspections of school sport, and long-term funding for PE and school sport—Ministers have already heard interventions from hon. Members on that point. Without that, we will continue to see only a trickle of progress, rather than the flow that should follow such an almighty national team success. This point also applies to women’s rugby and cricket.
To turn briefly from education to health, we need to grip the social prescribing revolution and use physical activity more. There are excellent examples of link workers signposting people to physical activity, which does not have to be sweaty but could be walking or joining the local ramblers. It is good for people’s physical and mental health, and for tackling loneliness, for which the Sports Minister also has responsibility.
To give an example, a friend has just been diagnosed with early osteoarthritis. The doctor’s response was to suggest calcium, which she cannot take because of the post-breast cancer pills that she takes. No one has suggested that she should do strength training or low-impact exercise such as walking or tai chi, which are proven to support bone strength. I could speak about the social prescribing of physical activity for ages, but since neither Minister present is responsible for the public health through physical activity budget or policy, I may well put in for another debate. It is yet another example of the PAC’s point about disjointed policymaking on sport.
On community sport—I appreciate that I am rushing now—there is much to celebrate in our communities. Active Kent & Medway continues to fund sporting initiatives and projects across my constituency, as well as the rest of the county. Medway Council continues to fund free swimming for under-16s and over-60s. At the other end of the constituency, I recently had the pleasure of opening a brand new bike pump track in Snodland. We have many committed volunteers around the constituency who provide some form of activity, competitive or otherwise, for my constituents week in, week out.
All those facilities and initiatives will help to drive up participation across communities in Kent and Medway, and to improve physical and mental wellbeing, but they need more support, as well as that recognition and celebration. We need planning, however, to be more conscious of the need to integrate physical health and wellbeing into its thinking—something that I know the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care also believes in. We build large estates without giving any thought to integrating physical and mental health, or we build an estate next to a woodland and then put a road through the middle that makes it entirely inaccessible to people. We have to think more about that.
As other hon. Members have, I will briefly raise financial support for leisure trusts and facilities, such as swimming pools, although I appreciate that falls outside the remit of either Minister. Such community facilities use a significant amount of energy. Many are still feeling the after-effects of covid-19 and are now being affected by the rise in the cost of living. I would therefore be grateful if the Sports Minister could clarify what discussions he has had, and whether he can bring forward the roundtable that he suggested might happen in a couple of weeks. These are now urgent asks from those facilities.
I stand by my opening comments: the Sports Minister can do only so much to get the nation fit and healthy, because success is reliant on other Departments delivering better school and community sport. I accept that my sports strategy is outdated; it did what it needed to do at the time, but it certainly requires a bold, ambitious refresh. Given that I am sure it is being worked on at pace, I look forward to seeing it published soon and I hope that what it sets out will improve the physical health and wellbeing of the nation.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Before I call the next speaker, this debate needs to finish at 7 o’clock and I need to get the wind-ups in as well, so my advice is to speak for a maximum of six minutes. I would rather not set a time limit, so colleagues should be conscious of each other.
Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch). I entirely agree with what she said about the problem of how many of the things covered by DCMS, as I know from sitting on the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, also fall under other Departments and they therefore do not get the action they sometimes need. That is a problem for DCMS that the Government need to look at across the piece.
I am very pleased to be able to take part in today’s debate about the importance of access to sport in schools, and the importance of sport not just in already established communities, but in creating new communities. I am a big believer in the power of sport to bring people together, and also in the health benefits of regular exercise, both mental and physical. It is so important that children have access to sport in school—to a range of sport—and that that access is equitable and fair, whether for children who want to go on to compete at the highest level, to do such things in their spare time for fun or to do so as part of their school curriculum.
For a start, getting involved in sport and playing sport has incredible health benefits. That does not mean people going out and setting records; it means people going out on their own or with friends to keep fit. These regular sessions are so important in keeping people healthy. Whether it is the Saturday park run with family, Sunday netball or Monday night football, having such an opportunity and getting people out with friends or with clubs is so important.
Access to sports is also really positive not just in engaging local communities, but in creating them. It is such a good way for people to connect with others who have similar interests, in a supportive environment and where people can learn from each other, make friends and get to know others in their local community. They might have been dragged there by a friend who did not want to go on their own, or perhaps they were inspired by someone they saw doing sport on TV.
That brings me to my next point. As has been mentioned by a number of speakers, the Lionesses had an incredible win this summer, bringing football home. The feeling the country got from such a victory was not that it was a remarkable miracle, but that it was the result of the hard work of many people over years and years. It is the result of incredible leaders in the game such as Baroness Sue Campbell at the FA, Barbara Slater at the BBC and Alex Scott on TV. It is also the result of volunteer coaches up and down the country going out at weekends to give girls the chance to play, and having to fight for pitch space, resources and attention. We must not forget the huge commitment and sacrifices that family members make in supporting our young people. This was shown most recently so clearly by Sunderland’s own Jill Scott, who said in a recent visit back to her youth side of Boldon girls, near Sunderland, that she does not think she would actually have gone on to play for England without the support of her coach. It is people such as her coach, Paul—we must pay tribute to them—who do so much work to give opportunities to young people outside the school setting.
That brings me to two further points. First, so many leisure centres and sporting facilities that such teams rely on are under threat from rising energy costs, as many people have mentioned, and there are so many at risk of shutting. I would be interested to know what more the Government are going to do to support this vital sector. Secondly, there is still massive inequality in access to sports for boys and girls. According to the FA, only 67% of schools offer football equally to boys and girls, which is just up from the 63% when the letter was published in the summer, but this drops to around 41% in secondary school. I have to say that things have improved massively since I was at secondary school in the 1970s, when girls were not allowed to play football and when the sports we played depended on the likes and dislikes of the sports teacher. Things have improved, but not enough. How are we supposed to inspire the next generation of Lionesses if our girls simply do not have access to the same opportunities as boys? There is so much lost potential.
After their win in the Euros final, the Lionesses wrote to the current Prime Minister and the previous Prime Minister, saying that
“we see this as only the beginning…We want every young girl in the nation to be able to play football at school…This is something that we all experienced growing up. We were often stopped from playing. So we made our own teams, we travelled across the country and despite the odds, we just kept playing football.”
They said they wanted their legacy to inspire a nation, and they have inspired a nation, but this is a big opportunity to make a huge difference. I want to echo their calls for change. I want to ask the Government what they are doing to heed these calls and properly invest in girls’ sport to level the playing field not just in football, but in all sports. It is what the Lionesses deserve, and it is what our young girls deserve.
Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott), who spoke about inspiration. I want to talk a bit about the value of PE and sport in schools, before turning to a few issues in my constituency.
There has been a change in culture. Like the hon. Lady, I recognise that there has been some improvement since I was at school. In the 1980s, sport seemed to be all about competition: those who could be brilliant at sport got the support, and those who could not, like me, did not get that support and were not that interested, and the sport teachers were not that interested in them. Indeed, my sports and PE teachers might be slightly horrified to see me speaking in this debate, but as schools Minister I saw how sport can inspire children in all sorts of schools and settings to achieve and engage, whether, in my constituency, at the Aspire alternative provision academy—where they have a fantastic partnership with our local professional rugby side, the Warriors, which I will of course mention—or at the amazing Perryfields pupil referral unit. I was delighted to see that the head of the unit very deservedly featured in the recent new year’s honours. At break times at the unit, all the teachers and staff go out and play football with all the pupils, helping them to engage and feel accepted.
We have seen some welcome improvements in recent years in terms of activity and sport, some from the Government, some from outside and from the teaching sector. The Daily Mile, for instance, is particularly popular in primary schools; it is great for young minds, getting people out and active and helping children to concentrate in class.
The Minister mentioned the doubling of the sports premium, which was of course very welcome, but I join in the many calls we have heard for more consistency, transparency and clarity in that funding. In a recent meeting of the Worcestershire Association of School Business Management, one of the burning issues they raised with me was the very short notice they had to implement the funding that comes for the PE premium. They said that if they had greater certainty they would be able to do so much more. The holiday activities and food programme has been a brilliant intervention to support both activity and healthy eating, but the demand I consistently heard from the sector, which I echo for my right hon. Friend the Minister—my predecessor and successor on the Front Bench—is for consistency and clarity in funding.
I held a meeting today, thanks to the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra), in which the point was made that the problem is not necessarily the scale of funding for sport in schools, but rather the timing and certainty, to enable schools and the people who work on sport to make their plans. With that in mind, I urge the Minister to bring forward the school sport and activity action plan, which has been promised since 2019. I know from my time in the Department that it was a priority that my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince) was working on, and I hope the Minister can reassure us that it will be coming forward soon and he will set out plans for a multi-year funding settlement.
I want to touch on the importance of schools being able to work with local professional sports clubs. During my time at the Department we had a fantastic visit to Blackpool, where we saw the value of sports mentoring by Blackpool FC for children in alternative provision. We heard today from Alan Watkinson, the PE teacher who helped inspire Mo Farah—we may hear more on this from the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston—and his suggestion of a national network to drive forward the approach to sport is worth exploring.
Sports and PE activity can also make a contribution to attendance and children’s engagement in schools. It is no secret that my predecessor as Chair of the Select Committee, and now a Minister in the Department, my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), was passionate about bringing back in the ghost children—making sure we can get children back into school. It is logical that children who might not perhaps be able to engage with academic subjects will engage better if they have the opportunities that come from sport. As my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) said, physical activity often complements academic performance. Used in the right way, sport can boost the confidence of children in school, and be an aid to concentration and an inspiration to those children.
I want to touch briefly on the situation in Worcester, where we are extremely fortunate to have a huge range in the community and professional sporting offer, with rugby union and cricket right at the top of that. There is, of course, football—we have the wonderful Worcester City FC—fantastic hockey, basketball and netball facilities and a university that is trying to put itself at the forefront of inclusive sport, looking at what we can do with wheelchair sport and so on, which can be a brilliant inspiration to children of all abilities and with all needs. We also have the headquarters of the Royal Life Saving Society. I join the hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater) in her call for more help for community swimming pools, because it is so important for children to have the opportunity to learn life-saving skills as well as basic swimming skills.
With the sports Minister in his place, I want to wrap up with a final plea—I cannot resist—on the plight of the Worcester Warriors, which I have addressed many times before. I will not detain the House for long about that, but I remind him to keep doing everything that he can to secure the future of professional rugby in Worcester at Sixways, because it does so much to support community sport and community inspiration for sport, including in our schools.
Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a great pleasure to speak in the debate and to follow the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) and other colleagues. I think there will be a fair amount of consensus in this debate. Sport in our communities and in schools has had a renewed focus through the pandemic and after it, with sport and physical activity being so important for mental and physical wellbeing, which is critical to all of us and to our communities. I emphasise the point made in an intervention about the importance of health and of the Department of Health and Social Care team being actively and prominently part of the debate and strategy. It is disappointing that a Minister from the DHSC is not in the Chamber.
I thank organisations from my constituency, where there are a lot of grassroots sports and football clubs, including Bedfont Sports, the Eagles, CB Hounslow United and Hanworth Villa FC. I also thank our PE teachers. We do not always talk about the interface of confidence in physical activity in school building confidence to take part in physical activity outside school. Indeed, it can also work the other way around.
My own story is that when I was growing up I had friends at school involved in the local athletics club. Athletics and sport were not a big thing in my family; I suspect that is common in families who have not had a tradition of sport. However, I started going to Feltham athletics club, the same place where Mo Farah trained—I was there a number of years before him. The first time that I went to an athletics meeting, I did not realise that people were going to play sport and have a competition—I went to the first athletics meeting thinking that it would be a meeting and that we would all be sitting around. As it was, because nobody else had really turned up, I had to take part in everything for Hounslow. That was probably the only time in my life when I would have ever won—I did win—medals and trophies for taking part in javelin and shot put. It was one of those things where you do not know what you do not know until you have the confidence to take part and somebody walks through that journey with you.
Kim Leadbeater
My hon. Friend makes a really valid point, and I think that other hon. Members have said likewise. Can we all take this opportunity to pay tribute to key people within society, including the PE teachers and sports coaches who are working day in and day out? They can often be the only person a young person feels comfortable working with and speaking to, and they are often the inspiration that gets them through some difficult times.
Seema Malhotra
I thank my hon. Friend for that point. She has reminded me of the story of a young boy who was pretty much suicidal after the impact that the lockdown had had on his mental health, and of the support and camaraderie that his local football club gave him, including the coaches, who became in loco parentis. I also acknowledge the point made by the hon. Member for Worcester about the link between physical activity and wellbeing and educational attainment. That area really needs to be highlighted as well as the purpose for having a sports strategy at all.
I want to talk about the Schools Active Movement and its role in effectively utilising PE and sport to enhance the lives and development of young people. I thank the hon. Member for the meeting that we had today with Alan Watkinson, who was a co-founder of the Schools Active Movement and who also runs Sport Impact in Hounslow. There are a number of serious challenges that affect young people for which physical activity is part of the solution: childhood obesity, deteriorating mental health, deteriorating physical literacy—not a term we use enough—and the growing gap in children’s physical and mental wellbeing between affluent and deprived areas.
The Schools Active Movement, through school sports partnerships and their equivalents, has had huge success in supporting schools, but it faces significant challenges. It talks about the sector having different pots of funding. That is helpful and important, but the lack of an overall coherent strategy is having a significant impact on effectiveness in achieving the best outcomes for young people. Local organisations have to spend too much time and resource fighting to access funding, and ensuring it is spent strategically and effectively. Schools, and particularly those without an active school sports partnership, are struggling to know what, strategically, to spend the funding on.
The lack of a coherent strategy on infrastructure and the year-to-year funding announcement is seriously affecting the ability to attract trained staff and to plan ahead. I heard one example of somebody who was trained and playing a really important part in local school sports. They could not, with the cost of living crisis, cope with the lack of certainty and left their role to become a postman—a really sad result. On the impact that can be achieved locally, Sport Impact supports schools to take a strategic approach. Its training has built teachers’ confidence to teach sport. From almost 50% of teachers lacking the confidence to teach PE, more than 50% are now highly confident and none are lacking confidence.
Finally, to mention the asks that have been shared with me, one is the urgent need to maintain present infrastructure to protect the value of games organisers and the national network, and with confidence about funding. The second is to work together on planning for the future, consulting on the updated school sport and activity action plan, and a central role for a national network, like the Schools Active Movement, to play its part within an updated school sports strategy.
Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)
This is an area I am particularly passionate about. If, when I was younger, my ability had only matched my enthusiasm, I would have had a career in sport and would not be stood here now.
We are very fortunate to have two of our most effective and best Ministers here, who can make things happen, so to be helpful—the Whips know how helpful I am—I have a shopping list. Get your pens ready! At this stage, the Whips had probably better cover their ears, because my first ever rebellion was successful. It was on the sports premium.
The former Labour Government introduced the sports premium at the time when they had secured the Olympics. The £150 million a year funding was under very real threat. Before the Labour Government had introduced it, only two out of five school children were regularly active. By the end of the programme, it was still two out of five. It therefore seemed obvious that it had not moved the dial. What the Government had not appreciated, however, was the impact on the other three out of five children who had been doing absolutely nothing before. They were still not doing enough, but they were now certainly doing more than nothing. Rightly, the Government made a U-turn, not only securing the £150 million but doubling it to £300 million. That has now gone up to £320 million. I join everyone who is encouraging a long-term commitment to see that in place. It is important because we know that only 42.2% of young people are active for 60 minutes or more a day. It is frightening to think—heaven knows!—how little, if anything at all, 22.7% are doing.
For schools, part of the problem is a lack of PE teachers. The previous speaker, the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra), highlighted a lack of confidence, so I welcome the changes to the initial teacher training. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Minister for Schools, because my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) and I raised in a recent Westminster Hall debate an offer from the Professional Footballers’ Association, which supports thousands of ex-footballers—male and female—in looking at their next career. It is keen to encourage teaching as one route and is offering to support some of the associated costs. To the Minister’s credit, he met us very, very quickly and his team are working with the PFA. Hopefully, that will lead to an increase in people who have confidence and knowledge, in PE and in other areas of teaching.
I also want to see school facilities being opened up. That was my big ask when I raised the matter with the Prime Minister during the negotiations in our latest leadership “X Factor” contest last year. There are some fantastic sports facilities in all our communities, but some of them are under lock and key or, if they can be accessed, come at a huge cost that prices out volunteers willing to give up their time. When I was younger, people—or maybe it was just my parents—thought nothing of sending their children 16 miles away for the day without having them report back, but I am a parent now and people are understandably very conscientious about keeping sight of their children and making sure that they play in safe areas. Gardens are one third smaller than in the 1960s, so we need every last good, safe facility to be open.
Frankly, any group that can provide constructive activities, which predominantly means sport, should have access to school facilities. It should be free, because as taxpayers we have already paid for it. In planning new schools, we should look to integrate sports facilities that would benefit from dual use, particularly those that have specific design needs. It is very difficult for gymnastics clubs to find buildings with sufficient rooms and parking, and the same goes for athletics tracks and many other sports facilities.
We should encourage sports camps. In my constituency, the Draycott sports camp regularly attracts more than 250 children—slightly more girls than boys—during school holidays. It is incredibly popular, not just with children but with parents fretting about what on earth to do with their children during the holidays. Mark Draycott, who set the business up and is also a teacher, benefited from a favourable deal with the school that made it open and accessible, and from having the skillset to engage those who are not involved in competitive sport—it is a fun sports camp. He has helped to shape some of the early thinking around the holiday activities scheme, which I want to see continuing to be expanded. I pay tribute to St Andrews Parish Council and Haydon Wick Parish Council, which topped up the four hours provided through the Government scheme to ensure that all children on free school meals had a full day of access.
I turn to communities. I put on record my thanks, which I am sure all hon. Members will echo, to the thousands of volunteers and professional staff who provide the opportunities for people to get involved. We all know of them through social media. I know that we all believe everything that is on social media: yesterday I saw a picture of a drenched child and his parents, who were saying, “Thank you so much for making these opportunities in all weathers.” I pay personal tribute to Roy Heather, a long-standing and much-respected volunteer at Swindon Supermarine football club, who sadly we lost last year. He was a true gentleman and typified everything that is good about the voluntary sports sector.
I know that there is an appetite for more in the area. I host an annual summer activities fair in front of my office, where lots of different teams, clubs and organisations, but predominantly sports clubs, come forward and say to parents, “I know you have to entertain your children for six weeks—this is what we can do to help with that burden.” Hundreds of parents and children come along and sign up for different activities. I encourage all colleagues to do something similar.
I turn to planning. As my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) said, we need to ensure that there is sufficient usable space. In Swindon, where we have had loads of new housing developments, we make sure that that is a given. Green, usable lungs are incredibly popular.
We need to make sure that sports facilities promised are delivered. In Tadpole Garden Village, perhaps unsurprisingly, the developers are doing that last, not at the beginning. All play parks need to be accessible; as part of the disability commitments, we are going to make that happen. I pay tribute to Becky Maddern and Mums on a Mission for supporting me. As I say, let us look at sports with particular design needs and make sure that the right facilities are put in place. On leisure centres, I echo hon. Members’ comments about support with energy costs: it is really important that we do so and that we share best practice. There are lots of success stories where we are empowering sports groups and community groups to take ownership of facilities so that they can secure grants or charitable status and benefit from volunteers and their extra enthusiasm and motivation. We should champion that.
Finally, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford for pushing forward the fan-led review. We need to make sure that its recommendations happen and that we preserve what we are so good at in this country.
Ben Bradley (Mansfield) (Con)
It is a pleasure to take part in the debate. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) for giving me a mention in his speech, and for the ideas that he contributed about engaging sportspeople in teaching. The premise on which our meeting with the Minister was based, for me, was the issue of male role models in teaching. I thank the Minister for his time, and I hope we can take that discussion forward.
I am pleased to be able to speak about the importance of schools. I am a self-confessed sports fanatic, or was until work and children got in the way of a life which, as a young person, I spent largely on a hockey pitch or in a gym. I therefore value the role that sport plays in people’s development, and their education in particular. I think it is too often undervalued by Governments of all stripes, given its benefits to health and wellbeing. My hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins), who is no longer in the Chamber, mentioned the benefits to academic achievement, which are well researched and, I think, well understood.
Sport, particularly team games, encourages the social development of young people, and indeed teamwork is becoming more and more important in the workplace. All who have engaged in sport understand the highs and lows it can bring and the character, growth and resilience that come from that—the ability to deal with life. Sport builds discipline and determination, which is hugely important, and any funding that is spent on it is an investment in the development of independent, resilient, competitive young people who will be assets to our economy in the future. There are also massive health benefits, and I think the Department of Health and Social Care should spend much more time, energy and investment on sport as a preventive measure.
As we heard earlier from my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch), this starts in our schools, which are the access point for so many young people. It is important to recognise that there is a great deal of work to be done. I want to focus some of my comments on the facilities mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon, behind school gates and so often locked away. Many communities do not have the basic sports facilities that they need. Research conducted by the Football Association has shown that 150,000 matches are called off every season because the pitches are not good enough to play on, and that the quality of one in three grassroots pitches is not high enough. I am pleased that the Government have sought to address that with funding for grassroots football facilities, and I look forward to the development of that project. In fact, there is significant funding for football, but sadly that is not true of other sports. I declare my interest as a hockey player.
Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman was right to make that important point about the huge benefits of sport in boosting the confidence and increasing the ambition of children and young people. As for the point that he has just made, does he agree that many grassroots football clubs are prevented from progressing because their pitches and other facilities are not good enough, although the young people and their teams may be excellent?
Ben Bradley
The hon. Gentleman is entirely right. Not just pitches but other facilities such as clubhouses provide a social space, and investment in them makes a great difference in leading people to come back every week to engage in sport, as well as attracting volunteers.
As a hockey player, I despair when I see AstroTurf pitches, in particular, fall into disrepair. The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport needs to do some work on its understanding of what hockey pitches are publicly available and what their purpose is. When I asked, pre-covid, about the availability of hockey pitches in my constituency, the Department came back with a big list of 5G football pitches, on which hockey cannot be played—although that did not seem to be understood. In fact, no hockey pitches are available in my constituency, much to the frustration of North Notts hockey club, which is currently homeless. There does not seem to be the necessary understanding of the sport or the problem. Can the Department ensure that we have Football Foundation funding for multi-sport pitches that are genuinely multi-sport, and that some can be used for hockey as well?
One way in which to increase the number of sports facilities across the country would be ensuring that schools are able to open their facilities for public use. Nearly 45% of state-funded schools do not have that public access, which is a huge missed opportunity when it comes to grassroots sport. I know the Government are seeking to address the problem, but that seems to have been going on for a long time, and the situation has become worse post covid. I could give numerous examples, in Mansfield and across Nottinghamshire, of pressures on school budgets leading to the closure of sports facilities to the community.
As I said earlier, North Notts hockey club is currently homeless. In fact it has been homeless for 18 months, because the school pitch that it used to use is no longer available. I understand that schools want to prioritise education, given their limited funding, and cannot be expected to subsidise a leisure centre, and I think the community understands it as well—we all have sympathy for those schools—but the outcome is that football, basketball, hockey and other local classes and clubs are now without facilities. Those facilities are shut, just like 45% of other facilities, every night and every weekend. The nearest hockey pitch is 30-plus minutes away. For a club the size of North Notts, that is not viable, and it is really struggling. That cannot be good enough. I have tried to find solutions in recent months. I have even offered to fund things, and brokered discussions to no avail. The school will not act on this, although I am still trying, and the district council’s leisure trust will not run it. It remains shut, to the detriment of communities.
If we want to almost double the number of community sports facilities available nationally, the simplest way is surely not to build new ones but to ensure that the ones that already exist are open and available for use outside those hours. My right hon. Friend the sports Minister mentioned the strategy to fund and focus on hard-to-reach areas. This is a hard-to-reach area, and this is something that could be done.
I do not want to repeat what colleagues have said, as I am conscious of the time, but I reiterate the call for support for district council leisure centres, particularly swimming pools. That is a huge challenge, and I know that the Minister is committed to making some changes. I also stress the importance of the PE premium. An early, long-term decision on that would be hugely welcome, because an annual one-year settlement creates a hand-to-mouth existence for schools that do not know where they are going to be in September. We would not want or accept that for core school funding and we do not want or accept it for sport either, because sport should be part of the core curriculum. It can boost academic outcomes, and it can boost the Government’s overall aims in education. This should not be an either/or.
In conclusion, there is a huge amount to be gained from improving access, including equal access for girls, for those with disabilities—Mansfield is the home of powerchair football, a fantastic sport that is well worth going to watch—and particularly for disadvantaged communities, which often have the least access to high-quality provision and facilities. Sport provides a massive opportunity to learn and develop. It makes for more rounded, resilient and independent young people. It is an investment in our young people, but it is always undervalued. I hope that the Government will recognise some of the themes and challenges that have been raised today and act on them in the coming months.
Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley), and hugely reassuring to see two very competent Ministers on the Front Bench listening to every word we say. It is also a pleasure to follow all the other excellent speeches that have gone before.
I am delighted to be called to speak in this debate because throughout my school days sport was a crucial outlet for a young boy, then a teenager, who was dyslexic and found academic study truly onerous and at times terrifying. I was fortunate to be educated in the private sector, where time was both granted and available for sport. In addition, we had the sports fields and support staff to ensure that a range of activities could be provided. It is my view that where the private sector leads successfully, the public sector should follow or certainly learn. Sport must not be a privilege; it must be available to all.
On that note, what has always baffled me is why the school day in this country ends at 3 pm. Too often, children return to empty homes or roam the streets aimlessly until their parents get home. Surely this mid-afternoon gap could easily be taken up by sport, especially in spring and summer terms. It is regrettable that both political parties have been guilty of selling off their playing fields over the years. Thankfully, since November 2016 schools have had to seek the consent of the Secretary of State to do so, and there is rightly a strong presumption against any sale.
Sport at school, for every pupil, is a gift that keeps on giving. Away from the two modern scourges of social media and the mobile phone, friendships are cemented, working as a team is understood, youthful exuberance is channelled, discipline is instilled, skills are gained and courage is tested—for it does take courage to fall on a loose rugger ball with the opposition bearing down on you. Crucially, one learns to win magnanimously and to lose gracefully. These are building blocks for life, quite apart from keeping fit. It is extraordinary that while PE is compulsory in the national curriculum, the Education Act 2002 prohibits the Secretary of State from prescribing an amount of time to any sport, although Ofsted recommends a minimum of two hours a week. That is just over one football match a week. I do not think that is nearly enough, personally.
I commend the many parents who selflessly give of their time to take their children to out-of-school activities. Unfortunately, many children do not have that sort of support. All too often, they end up doing virtually no physical activity at all. It is regrettable, but inevitable, that obesity among the young has risen, leading to a serious lack of self-esteem and the risk of being bullied. Well organised sport in school helps to tackle obesity and to improve behaviour, attendance, mental health and, as we have heard, academic achievement.
I fully accept that extending the school day and supporting sports such as cricket, rugby and football, and more, would need more funding, and I appreciate that a range of financial initiatives have gone a long way towards achieving this, but sports education, though compulsory, is given only two hours a week, when it should be a core subject like maths, English and science.
I can think of no better investment in the young than teaching them so many of the basics of life. The disciplines required on the sports field, whatever the sport, are no different from those required off the sports field. I was fortunate to learn the significance of physical fitness and good health at school. Once adopted, it stays with us for life.
Sara Britcliffe (Hyndburn) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. Whether it be football, cricket or rugby, sport has been a key driver of social and community development in Lancashire. We have fantastic grassroots clubs, boxing facilities and tennis courts in my constituency of Hyndburn and Haslingden, and I have been working closely with schools and community clubs since I was elected in 2019. There are a few general issues I believe we need to address to further help schools and communities provide sporting opportunities.
The first is space, and that applies both to schools and to grassroots clubs. In a 2019 Department for Education survey, half of educational establishments said that the key barrier to providing more physical activity is space and facilities. I see this in my constituency, with schools such as The Hollins in Baxenden needing dedicated sports hall provision so that they do not have to travel elsewhere. The Hollins is eagerly awaiting an announcement on the next round of funding for the school rebuilding programme, as it is currently having to hold GCSE exams in the sports hall, meaning that classes of children have to sit in the changing rooms because they are unable to do anything during that period.
If we are to tackle childhood obesity, surely it starts by instilling a love of sport at school. In an era in which more than 80% of 10 to 15-year-olds have their own smartphone and more than 40% have their own games console, we are fighting an uphill battle. We also need to ensure our community clubs are fit for purpose and have the facilities they need.
Scott Benton (Blackpool South) (Con)
My hon. Friend is correct to highlight the importance of capital investment in new facilities. In Blackpool, we will benefit from a new £6.5 million sports facility at Revoe, thanks to Blackpool football club and the towns fund. Does she agree that this will not only deliver regeneration but help to achieve other levelling-up outcomes such as improved health and wellbeing?
Sara Britcliffe
I completely agree with my hon. Friend. I believe the Government’s focus on sport and grassroots clubs is key to the levelling-up agenda.
It is vital that we ensure local authorities are prioritising green spaces for grassroots sport, and it is equally vital that local authorities inform grassroots clubs of relevant grant funding pots for which they may be eligible. These clubs often rely on dedicated volunteers who simply do not have the time or resources to navigate the complicated system of grants, loans and awards.
Hyndburn is a shining example of how the Government, local leaders and communities can work together to improve the sports offering. To that end, we have seen a £1 million investment in Accrington Stanley Community Trust, which will provide pitches and facilities to grassroots clubs long into the future. We have also seen the community ownership fund allow for the reopening of Clayton community centre, which houses Clayton boxing club, fitness classes and dancing. There has been a £450,000 investment in Hyndburn Leisure to reduce health inequalities, as well as separate investment in our tennis courts.
I wish, briefly, to touch on professional sport, which is key. Hyndburn has a fantastic community club in Accrington Stanley FC, which competes in the third tier of English football. The club gives thousands of year 3 children free team shirts every year, instilling in children a love of their local club and of football. It also provides great joy to many supporters who go to the games week in, week out to socialise with their friends and watch sport. It is essential that we safeguard community assets such as Accrington Stanley.
The Minister will not be surprised to hear me plug the fan-led review. I believe that the measures it sets out will help to promote sustainability in the English football pyramid and that the review’s implementation would see more clubs such as Accrington Stanley orientating towards their fans and investing in their communities. I will leave my comments on the main point of the fan-led review, but let me say that I welcome the Minister’s engagement in that and his continued support throughout.
Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)
It is sad that sometimes these types of debates are not the ones that make the news headlines, as they should do; this debate shows great consensus across the House on the importance of this issue. I concur with a large amount of the comments that have been made, but let me add my two pennies’ worth.
In my brief time as the Minister for school standards, I was delighted to have the physical education and sports premium under my brief. One thing I instructed the officials that I worked with about was the importance of getting beyond the one-year funding settlement that always comes late in the academic year, meaning that teachers have already got curriculums planned and people recruited. It is essential that we not only announce such funding well before the Easter break—that is the very least we should do—but start to move towards a three-year to five-year funding agreement.
The Department for Education has done that extremely successfully with the holiday activities and food programme, which has been a real success in local areas such as Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke, where we have the Hubb Foundation, led by the co-owner of Port Vale football club, Carol Shanahan, and one of its former professional footballers, Adam Yates. It has been serving more than 500,000 school meals to those on free school meals and providing thousands of opportunities each school holiday break to young people, particularly disadvantaged people. It engages with the schools to make sure that the young people on the pupil premium or on free school meals are the ones going to the clubs. It helps by using registers to find out what the engagement levels are.
I completely agree with my hon. Friends the Members for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) and for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) about school buildings sitting empty and idly by in our communities, despite being the beating heart of many of them. I was a teacher and I always found it shocking that a building that has the required safeguarding, security, kitchens and sporting facilities remains closed for six or seven weeks during the summer holiday—that is simply not right and we must do much more on this. Surely with small amounts of funding going into schools, we could make those facilities available at a cost whereby, working with volunteers, they can deliver or maintain things. There would be a hugely beneficial impact.
Let me give an example. The Government’s town deal funding for Kidsgrove of £17.6 million meant that we invested nearly £250,000 in the King’s Church of England Academy Kidsgrove, a secondary school, to put in FIFA-standard 3G Astro pitches. We had an agreement that the community would have access to those facilities in the evenings and at weekends. Not only is that generating income for the school; it has created a new job in the process, and it has meant that hundreds of people from across the local area are now descending on Kidsgrove, as the sporting facility sits right next door to Kidsgrove sports centre. As part of the town deal funding, it got nearly £4 million to reopen what is a vital community facility. That is creating a sports hub in an area where, sadly, childhood obesity is at about 28%, according to the latest figures I saw.
Those facilities are great for the local community and we are grateful for the Government funding. This is an example of how it can be spread across the local area. I want to thank Councillor Simon Tagg, the leader of Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council; the Kidsgrove sports centre community group, which is ably led by Mark Clews and others, including Dave Rigby, Ray and Councillor Gill Burnett; and Councillor Paul Waring, who is now the leader of Kidsgrove Town Council and has put money from the town council budget into the sports centre to make sure that the facility thrives.
Of course, as the sports Minister has heard already, leisure centres, particularly those with swimming pools, have to be included in any support for energy usage. I do not want this fantastic community facility, which was refurbished and reopened at the end of last summer, to have to temporarily or, God forbid, permanently close because of energy prices that are not its fault. They are not anyone’s fault, other than Vladimir Putin and his vile campaign against the people of Ukraine. We need to make sure that we re-encompass those facilities, so I implore my right hon. Friend to speak with Ministers in the Treasury and in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to include those facilities in the support for energy usage. I will gladly work with any colleague across the House to continue that campaign and have our voices heard.
We are also looking at facilities within our local communities. I have mentioned the Kidsgrove Sports Centre and the 3G astroturf pitch at the King’s School, but the Kidsgrove town deal meant that we installed a pump track such as the one my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) mentioned. The pump track was a new concept to me, but it has been my biggest success to date. Funding of £100,000 has created one of the largest such tracks in the UK. It was built by local contractor Clark & Kent, which has professional BMX bikers and former Team GB Olympians such as Kyle Evans working for it. This facility, which is free for the community to use, is on an old abandoned site at Newchapel Rec, which had some mud tracks built by the local community. People from as far away as Scotland and Cornwall have been emailing me to say what a great facility it is. Again, that is great for our local community.
When the Levelling Up Parks Fund was announced by the Government, I thought that a mistake had been made because Stoke-on-Trent was not included. I have got used to hearing Stoke-on-Trent being announced as somewhere receiving funding from this Government. So I am going to let the sports Minister lobby his colleagues in the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and tell them that they must have made a mistake, that we are going to have a round 2 and that Stoke-on-Trent is going to get, I hope, around half a million pounds. I want to have a pump track revolution across my local area to make sure that we install more in places such as Middleport Park, building on the work by the Middleport Matters Community Trust, led by Vicki Gwynne and her amazing team, and building a facility not only to get people physically active, but engaged in learning softer skills, which are so important. We need to ensure that the BMX track in Norton and Ball Green is brought back into use, which councillors Dave Evans, Carl Edwards and local community champion Jenny Taylor have been long calling for. These projects are very important.
I cannot end my remarks without mentioning Port Vale football club’s tremendous day out at Wembley, albeit at the expense of my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley): we thrashed them at Wembley to get promoted to League One, thanks to Carol and Kevin Shanahan’s revolution of that football club. There is a massive engagement now in football. Stoke-on-Trent North is home to Stoke-on-Trent Ladies in Smallthorne, Port Vale Women and Milton United football club, which has ladies and girls teams as well. A revolution is taking place in Stoke-on-Trent to get young people, particularly girls, invested in sport.
I agree that PE must become a core compulsory part of the curriculum. Two hours is the bare minimum that should happen. We need to make sure that Ofsted is properly inspecting that and that we have the right people going in to teach it. Teachers in primary schools are overworked already. We need to give them the support that they need to focus on the curriculum and use the expertise of sports stars—retired and perhaps amateur. Perhaps we could get Phil “The Power” Taylor out and about in schools around Stoke-on-Trent, which is his home. Let us make sure that that can thrive. For me, sport was a life saver—quite literally. I have openly talked about my own mental health struggles, having attempted twice to take my own life. Having a sports team and a fantastic sports coach in Mr McCollin at Princethorpe College taught me discipline and structure. He brought me into a community, which was that team. He taught me those soft skills, although I accept that I do not display them very well in this Chamber, Madam Deputy Speaker. My mother would like to see them more.
If we are to truly educate not just bright minds, but great people, sport has an important role to play and I hope that we can go further. I welcome the Minister’s announcement of an incoming sports strategy. I hope that the Minister for Schools will be announcing very shortly that PE and sports premium and working towards a multi-year settlement further on.
James Daly (Bury North) (Con)
Madam Deputy Speaker, if by chance you had been at the Cricket Asylum at Sowerby Bridge at 2 pm on Sunday, you would have witnessed an epic quarter-final between the Northern Star Sixers and King Cross under-11s. I will not go into the result, but it benefited one of my children. What was heart-warming was the conversation that I had with the coaches of King Cross. King Cross is a cricket team based in the centre of Halifax. The HX1 postcode of Halifax had three teams going back over the 100 years. For various reasons, those three teams have disappeared. The centre of Halifax has a diverse population of people of different backgrounds and heritages, which is something to be celebrated, and a large south Asian population have made it their home. In 2018, Calderdale College began to run cricket lessons to see whether anybody there would be interested. Some young kids from the HX1 area, who had never played cricket before and never been offered the opportunity to get cricket coaching, went along.
Those cricket lessons continued at Calderdale College and enthused those young people, many from a disadvantaged background, with the idea that, “Yes, this is something we love.” Over time, the cricket club developed and in 2022 there was a public advertisement saying, “Please come to King Cross rugby club in the centre of Halifax, because we’re thinking about starting a cricket team.” Some 90 kids turned up from the HX1 postcode, from King Cross, and King Cross cricket club was born. That same cricket club plays in the indoor cricket league that my son plays in. It has five teams and young people who are a credit to their parents and to what the club is doing. It has devoted people from within the community, parents and families, there supporting those teams.
Those young kids have a purpose, they love their cricket and they are achieving something. Obviously, the starting point was Calderdale College, but that hub has thrived because of community. The three clubs that disappeared have been replaced by a new club that has taken over a facility, has not asked the state to be the answer to every prayer or asked for a huge handout, but has done it for itself. Cricket is now back and thriving in the centre of Halifax and those are the lessons we must learn.
I will confine my remarks in the time I have to community, rather than schools, which many of my colleagues have already talked about. We are utterly complacent in this debate about where we are with community sport. We often talk in generalities in this place, thanking everybody for what they do, and that is all very well, but we have a major problem with participatory sport in the community.
I will take football as an example. Anywhere in the country, I could go and find hundreds of under-10s, under-11s and under-12s teams; I would not be able to move for teams at that level, and people are committed to those teams. By the age of 14 or 15, participation has dropped off a cliff. In Huddersfield, where I was brought up—although I am the proud MP for Bury North—in the under-11 age group there are 90 cricket teams. For under-17s and under-18s there are only six. Something significant is happening and I still do not know what.
We can all say, “Oh, the kids have got lots of other things to do,” but they are not doing any other physical activity. In the old cliché, the old man that I am might say, “They are sitting in their bedrooms watching social media,” but something happens—[Interruption.] I am an old man. Something happens to the initial flames that were set, the things that were making young kids play sport at that age. For the sports I am talking about, it causes participation to jump off a cliff.
Another thing we should take from this debate is what it says about us as a society. I will give an example. Bradley Mills cricket club in Huddersfield was formed in 1875. It survived two world wars and the great depression, and thrived in a disadvantaged area. It was central to the community over 100 years. Somehow, in the 1990s, the society that 50 years earlier had seen that club as part of the heart of the community and of the links that bound people together disappeared, and people could not be bothered anymore. That club, which offered an outlet for young people in that area of Huddersfield, disappeared.
When I was young, my dad played football in the Huddersfield league. The best team in that league, every year, was Brackenhall. Brackenhall is a disadvantaged area of Huddersfield, and the club gave an outlet to young people who had challenges in their lives. There were no state hand-outs, just local people in that area supporting a club. That club has now come to an end.
I could point to numerous other examples, as I am sure other colleagues could, of clubs, especially in working-class areas, that are vanishing before our eyes. When we go to middle-class areas and see 100 or 150 young kids playing cricket on a Friday night, we kid ourselves that cricket is thriving. I nearly want to cry when I go and watch Radcliffe cricket club, which is in the Bury South constituency—[Interruption.] I will bring my remarks to an end, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I just want to make this point. Radcliffe cricket club was where the great Gary Sobers played. Looking back at pictures of Radcliffe cricket club from the 1940s and 1950s, it was a wonderful place at the heart of its community and encouraged community and physical participation. It now struggles to raise one team, let alone anything else. So as we congratulate ourselves and expect the state to suddenly put in a lot of money to make everything all right, there are some fundamental questions about why community sports that thrived over 100 years are now dying in many areas.
Stephen Morgan (Portsmouth South) (Lab)
I thank Members from across the House for their powerful and impassioned contributions to this good-spirited debate. It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to conclude the debate as shadow schools Minister knowing that sport has a key role to play in ensuring that every child in our country succeeds and thrives, no matter their background or where they are from.
Those on both Front Benches kicked off the debate by making powerful and insightful comments. The Minister with responsibility for sport, the right hon. Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew), spoke about the many health benefits of sport and rightly praised the success of the Lionesses last year as an inspiration to us all. The shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith), spoke about how sport can save lives, save the NHS and save public money. Yet the Government’s legacy on investing in sport has been limited, and the publication of relevant strategies remains long overdue.
The hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) brought her usual expertise and guidance on these issues. I put on the record my thanks to her for her tireless work on the fan-led review. I know that Pompey fans are grateful for her efforts and I very much look forward to working with her as she continues that work.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) spoke about how sport brings people together, and about the importance of equal access to sports and local facilities in communities. My hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) spoke about how confidence in sport leads to confidence in life.
As a number of Members have said, we do not have to look back any further than the Lionesses’ fantastic victory in the Euros last summer to see the massive impact that sport can have on our nation’s schools and communities. Not only can it boost the morale of the nation, but it can inspire millions to believe that they can achieve whatever they want if they put their minds to it. As we have heard, sport brings people and communities together, boosts mental health and physical wellbeing, provides employment and opportunities to many, and, for Britain, can be the means by which our nation’s traditions, culture and brilliance are broadcast to the world.
We should not forget the many grassroots organisations that do so much to boost sports participation across the country, as a number of Members have said. Last week, I visited Pompey in the Community, which does tremendous work using the power of football to bring people together, working alongside local schools to transform the lives of children in my city.
Jonathan Gullis
I suspect that a lot of Labour Front Benchers will be in Stoke-on-Trent ahead of the upcoming local elections and afterwards, so the hon. Gentleman should be aware that there is a great company called Bee Active in Tunstall. If he wishes to visit, I will happily visit alongside him, but if he wishes to avoid the Twitter trials of being caught and photographed with me, I would more than accept that. Bee Active is a fantastic contributor across Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire. It is a fine company that delivers the quality PE and sports premium that we urgently need.
Stephen Morgan
I am actually in Stoke next week, so perhaps we could meet up and visit that project—I would be delighted to do so; perhaps for reasons other than what the hon. Gentleman might expect.
Last season across Portsmouth and the surrounding areas, more than 35,000 directly benefited from Pompey in the Community programmes providing sporting opportunities to many who would otherwise not receive them. Nor should we forget the fantastic efforts of PE teachers and school support staff, who go above and beyond to build up young people’s confidence and encourage them to get active. Unfortunately, as we have heard, many such schools, grassroots organisations and leisure facilities now face major challenges from the cost of living crisis. Energy costs are increasingly eating up budgets, as my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington said. With more and more people struggling to pay for services, such as gyms and swimming pools, we sadly have already seen some sporting facilities shutting down, as my hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater) raised during the debate.
As has been pointed out by others in the debate, the 2012 London Olympics were meant to leave a legacy of increased sports involvement in schools and communities across the country, but according to a new report by the Public Accounts Committee, those promised benefits have failed to occur, with adult participation in sports actually falling in the first three years following the games. The report concludes that the Government
“lacks a compelling vision for integrating physical activity into everyday life”,
and the problem is not just with adult participation. According to official Department for Education statistics, the number of PE teachers has fallen by 3,000 in the past decade, while the number of hours taught has fallen by more than 36,000. That equates to an 11% fall in the hours of PE taught. That is why a Labour Government would boost the number of PE hours taught by hiring 6,500 more teachers and reforming the Government’s narrow progress measures, which can lead to physical education being cut out of the curriculum.
Stephen Morgan
I will make some progress. Labour would also capitalise on the momentum behind women’s sport following the Lionesses’ inspiring Euros victory and introduce an equal access guarantee for school sport, so that boys and girls have access to the same sports at school, rather than comparable sporting activities, which reinforces traditional access barriers for girls and women.
In conclusion, from Lewis Hamilton to Beth Mead, Andy Murray and many others, British athletes have delivered previously unthinkable success in recent years. These athletes are role models for our children and ambassadors for their professions, inspiring millions to take up sport and pursue their dreams. However, a decade on from the 2012 Olympics, the leadership of our athletes has been let down by the Conservative Government, with participation flatlining, sport in schools declining and school facilities forgotten. While our nation’s athletes continue to flourish, the Government’s performances increasingly flatter to deceive. Hopefully this debate provides the Government with a much-needed team talk to spark them into life to provide the vision for boosting sports participation across the country that we so desperately need.
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Nick Gibb)
This has been an excellent debate with some excellent speeches by my hon. Friends and by Opposition Members, including the hon. Members for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) and for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra). May I start by paying tribute to the sports Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) for the important stand that he took in Qatar during the World cup? My hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Paul Holmes) made that point, too. I have to say that when I saw my right hon. Friend there, I found it extremely moving. I pay tribute, as the whole House does, to his courage in standing tall.
Sport has a vital role to play in all our lives, and there is an important role for schools to imbue a lifelong love of playing sport and taking part in regular physical exercise. It is clear from hearing Members from all parts of the House speak today that we share a commitment to ensuring that more children take part in PE and sport. I have to say to the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan) that we are exceeding our target for recruiting PE teachers. Last year, we exceeded that target by 143%. We recruited 1,521 teacher trainees in PE, far exceeding the target of 980 trainees. We have exceeded the target for PE teacher trainees for at least the past 10 years.
School is where many children and young people first have the chance to participate in sport. High-quality PE and sport in all schools is important to ensuring that every child and young person has the opportunity to take part in a range of sports. It can equip them to continue that engagement into their later lives, as a way of staying fit and active and enjoying the wider benefits that sport brings. That is why physical education is a compulsory subject within the national curriculum from key stage 1 to key stage 4. The PE national curriculum aims to ensure that all pupils develop the competence to excel in a broad range of sport and physical activities, exercise for sustained periods of time and engage in competitive sport and activities leading to healthy active lives.
My hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) highlighted the important link between competitive sport and young people’s confidence, resilience and determination. My hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch)—the former Sports Minister—made an excellent contribution, demonstrating her experience and passion for sport. She also made an important link between sport and wider cognitive benefits. She is right that sport supports other aspects of school life, including improved attainment, mental wellbeing and personal development.
My hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) made the important point about the link between schools with high levels of sport and academic attainment. For example, at the Northampton School for Boys, which has high levels of academic achievement, as well as providing an excellent PE curriculum for key stages 3 and 4 that exceeds two hours per week, it has made PE compulsory for all sixth-form students. In its timetable, Northampton School for Boys offers a variety of sport in winter, including rugby, health and fitness, basketball, hockey and swimming. In the summer, students take part in athletics, cricket, tennis and softball.
In addition to the PE curriculum, the school provides impressive extracurricular sport where children can attend sports clubs before and after school, during lunchtime and at weekends. There are 76 clubs meeting every week during the winter and 54 during the summer. The school has inter-house competitions in addition to the PE curriculum and extracurricular sport. There are typically 50 competitions a year at that school, in which every year group and form class is included. The school ensures that 100% of its student body is represented in at least two competitions annually.
A number of Members raised the issue of two hours of sport a week. Schools are free to organise and deliver a PE curriculum that suits the needs of all their pupils. The Department does not set curriculum time requirements for any subject, but we know that many schools already provide a minimum of two hours of PE and sport to pupils each week. I will look at how to support all schools to do so, supplemented by a good range of extracurricular opportunities.
The DFE school workforce census data for the 2021-22 academic year indicates that PE and sport account for around 8% of all teaching hours in secondary state-funded schools. A rather old 2015 Youth Sport Trust survey found that the average number of minutes of PE per week in state secondary schools was just under two hours, at 118 minutes for key stage 3 and 114 minutes for key stage 4.
The Government continue to fund the primary PE and sport premium, referred to on a number of occasions during the debate. With an additional £320 million of funding to primary schools confirmed for the current academic year, that now totals over £2 billion since 2013. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey said, we doubled that figure from £160 million several years ago. The PE and sport premium supports primary schools, special schools and hospital schools to make additional and sustainable improvements to the quality of PE, school sport and physical activity that they provide. The Government are considering arrangements for the primary PE and sport premium for the 2023-24 academic year and beyond. That funding will be announced as soon as possible.
I note the exaltations from my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) for early notice to enable better planning. I also note the passionate advocacy for early notice by my predecessor—I should say my other predecessor—my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis).
My hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield raised the issue of the shortage of community facilities. The Government are seeking to address the lack of quality space for grassroots support through our multi-sport grassroots facilities programme. The Government have committed to delivering the facilities that every community needs. We are investing £205 million between 2022 and 2025 on top of an existing £18 million annual commitment in England as a step towards that ambition. A mixture of projects were selected for their ability to deliver improved facilities. My hon. Friend will be pleased to know that £43 million has already been provided in 2021-22 to improve grass and artificial pitches, changing rooms and floodlights, to make a real difference to communities across the country.
Jonathan Gullis
I just want to make a brief point on community facilities. My frustration in the experience with Kidsgrove Sports Centre was that because we wanted to refurbish an existing building, Sport England was willing only to put in about £150,000. Had we tried to find a new site, we could have got £12 million for a brand-new facility; but we managed to build one for £7 million. Will the Minister engage with the sports Minister about how Sport England could be smarter in using taxpayers’ money more wisely to invest in community facilities and refurbish where we can, rather than spending more money by building new ones?
Nick Gibb
My hon. Friend makes an important point, and it has been noted by myself and the sports Minister.
The sports Minister outlined the £230 million to build or improve community sports facilities. Alongside those community facilities, facilities on school sites represent an important resource for pupils and their families. Schools use their playing fields and gyms to introduce pupils to a range of sports and physical activities through their PE lessons and a variety of structured extracurricular activities.
My hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) made an important point about the wider use of school facilities. The Department is building on the new funding for sports facilities by providing additional support to schools to open their sports facilities outside the core school day, at weekends and in holidays. Phase 3 of the opening school facilities programme aims to connect schools to national and local sporting organisations that can offer children and young people more opportunities to access extracurricular activities.
Ben Bradley
I appreciate my right hon. Friend’s engagement on this subject recently with my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon and me. He mentions funding for opening up grassroots facilities, which is gratefully received and often important. In the case of North Notts Hockey Club, which I raised earlier, all that is needed is a padlock with a code on it so that they can let themselves in. It is outside, and they are insured. This is about getting schools to want to open up these facilities to communities. They can do it. Will he consider what direction he might be able to give to help that happen?
Nick Gibb
My hon. Friend makes an important point. I was influenced by the meeting we had recently with my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon about how we can engage new people to teach PE in our schools. He also makes an important point about how we can use taxpayers’ money cost-effectively to widen the availability of community facilities.
The Government also support physical activity and sport outside the school term, through the £200 million-a-year holiday activities and food programme. All local authorities in England are delivering that programme. Taking place in schools and community venues across the country, the programme provides disadvantaged pupils and their families with enriching activities including sport, as well as with healthy food.
We have heard how the brilliant Lionesses are aiming to inspire a generation to take up football. We want all girls to participate in sport, and that is why the Department for Education is funding SLQ Sports Leaders to deliver the “Your Time” programme, which gives girls aged eight to 16 access to competitive sport and leadership opportunities. Almost 1,000 girls have already enrolled in the programme’s second year to train as sports leaders and lead events and competitions for their peers. They are supported in their online training by inspirational sportswomen including England netball player Layla Guscoth and World Triathlon Series winner and Commonwealth games champion Jodie Stimpson.
The latest annual data from the Active Lives Children and Young People survey, released in December, has been very encouraging. The data shows that the proportion of children who are active has increased by 2.6% compared with the last academic year, bringing activity levels back in line with those seen pre-pandemic. That will be due to the efforts of schools, families and communities. There is still further to go, and schools have a central role to play—in particular, in ensuring that pupils benefit from high-quality PE lessons taught by confident and knowledgeable teachers. I join the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston and the shadow sports Minister, the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith), in paying tribute to the work and commitment of PE teachers.
The Government published their cross-Government school sport and activity action plan in July 2019, and we have committed to publish an update to the plan this year, to align with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport’s new sport strategy. The update will provide details on further action to help all pupils play a wide range of sport, both in PE lessons and through extracurricular activity. This is a Government who are committed to sport in our schools, and I thank all Members for taking part in this important debate.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered sport in schools and communities.
No. 52 Barrhead circular route
Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)
I rise to present a petition that declares opposition to the proposed withdrawal by McGill’s Buses of the No. 52 Barrhead circular service.
The petition states:
The Petition of residents of the United Kingdom,
Declares opposition to the proposed withdrawal by McGill’s Buses of the N052 Barrhead Circular service, notes that the N052 Barrhead Circular service provides transport to local schools, access to shops and supermarkets, local community facilities including library, leisure and GP services, as well as other local amenities; further notes that it is a lifeline for the isolated, disabled, elderly and those who do not own a car; and further notes that the withdrawal of this service will adversely impact upon those who can least manage without this bus route, making them less able to connect with family, services, education and community.
The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to encourage McGill’s to review this decision with a view to continued delivery of the N052 Barrhead Circular, appreciating its importance to the local community.
And the petitioners remain, etc.
[P002791]
Strangford Lough: Tidal Wave Energy
(1 year, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is indeed a pleasure to speak in the Adjournment debate—only this time not as one who asks for an intervention, but as one initiating the debate.
Several hon. Members rose—
Jim Shannon
For once, I can give way—to my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) first.
Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important Adjournment debate. As he travels from his home to his office along the Portaferry Road, he will know of not only the picturesque beauty of Strangford lough, but the energy there that could and should be captured. But is my hon. Friend prepared for the tidal wave and potential tsunami of interventions that may come in this debate?
Jim Shannon
I like to think I am well prepared for most things. Whenever those interventions come, I will be happy to give way.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman has mentioned intervening, and it is a great pleasure to intervene on him. Does he not intend to intervene on the Minister at the end?
Jim Shannon
I will probably see how the debate goes; there may perchance be an opportunity.
Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)
I will allow the hon. Gentleman to carry on, but I just wanted to let him know, as a good friend to me and to many in this House, that although I have only seen the title of this debate—I have yet to hear the content—he has my full and absolute support for whatever he wishes to have.
Jim Shannon
That is the sort of support I am always looking for. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and the other Members for their interventions too.
I am pleased to introduce a matter that is of some interest to myself and, I suspect, should also be of some interest to those across the west coast of Scotland, England and Wales. For us in Northern Ireland, and specifically the constituency of Strangford, to have the opportunity to be involved in tidal energy would be a key development.
I thank Mr Speaker for granting me this Adjournment debate. I know that the Minister will be aware of the energy crisis we are in, but I will give a bit of background. I look forward to hearing from the Minister, who is always very kind; his response was very helpful in the debate we had in Westminster Hall, and this debate carries on from that. I am aware that some of the current crisis is due to the war in Ukraine, and we all understand the difficulties that has caused to supply and price. I just make these comments to introduce the debate on tidal wave energy for Strangford lough.
I know that every representative in this House will share my experience of people ringing up for referrals to food banks and, increasingly, people asking for help with gas and electricity. While I welcome the help for households, which is months behind in delivery in Northern Ireland, by the way, I have real concern that every energy payment arriving in people’s accounts may be used for other things.
To give a bit of background to why this debate is important, someone in Northern Ireland who pays for their gas can top up by only £49 at a time, which means 12 individual trips plus booking a taxi. Added together, that underlines why Parliament is debating tidal energy in Strangford tonight and why we must make the long-term consideration of our secure energy supply a priority.
My office was fortunate to have a wonderful conversation with Professor Roger Falconer, emeritus professor of water and environmental engineering at the Hydro-environmental Research Centre of Cardiff University. He helped us by clearly putting forward some relevant information, so the conversation was illuminating and incredibly informative. He powerfully underlined that, if we invest long term in our facilities, our energy security can be home-sourced through the wonderful natural resources that God has blessed this country with. I have long believed that, so it is nothing new—I have always supported the idea of tidal wave energy in Strangford lough—yet the professor succinctly showed that the potential that I wish to highlight in Strangford and the Province applies UK-wide, including on the west coast of Scotland, England and Wales. It can be a clean energy solution, which we all know is the end goal.
As I have said in the House previously, we can depend on the sun rising and setting, so we can depend on the tides. The tidal potential of Strangford lough is incredible, as it is on the entire west coast of the United Kingdom. I am pleased to see that the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) is present, because he always brings knowledge to such debates. I am sure that he will intervene at some stage and give us his thoughts on the way forward for the islands.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
Go on then—the hon. Gentleman knows that we have a shared interest. Does he agree that, essentially, the exciting prospect of tidal power is that it offers an opportunity to get a baseload of renewable energy, not just because of the predictability, but because when it ebbs somewhere, it flows somewhere else? It does not suffer from the intermittency of other renewables.
Jim Shannon
How wise and true those words are. The right hon. Gentleman sets the scene for what I will say next.
Wind turbines are popping up as a quick fix. Undoubtedly, when the wind is blowing, that is tremendous, but we cannot tell in advance when the wind will be blowing. We can pinpoint the tide for decades in advance, however, as the right hon. Gentleman said. The ebb and flow of the tides at the mouth of Strangford lough is stronger than many on the west coast of Scotland and certainly the best in the Province. Professor Falconer highlighted in a lovely way that the highest energy use in Wales comes at half time when the England and Wales rugby teams meet. His view is that the peak tidal time could determine match times to subsequently make use of energy usage planning, which is imperative.
For that to happen, however, the Government must decide to invest, and that is my call today. They should invest not simply in Strangford’s potential, to which the title of the debate refers, but in the UK-wide tidal potential to which the right hon. Gentleman referred. The ability to plan decades in the future is attractive in any policy, which is why I once again draw the Minister’s attention to the need for long-term investment in a clean, sustainable energy source that is not affected by goings on around the world.
There are two types of tidal energy: tidal turbines or streams, and tidal ranges. With a current of more than 2.5 metres per second, Strangford lough has obvious potential for a tidal stream, which is why there was a trial there with the 2008 SeaGen project. I was a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly then, as were some of my hon. Friends, and a member of Ards Borough Council. It was an incredibly successful pilot scheme, but it never seemed to go anywhere. Energy prices have risen, however, which makes the scheme more possible and acceptable.
The trial was commissioned by Marine Current Turbines, a subsidiary of British tidal energy company Siemens. It was an investment at that time of some £12 million. The project involved the installation of two 600 kW turbines producing 150 kW of electricity to the grid in July 2008. SeaGen generated electricity at its maximum capacity for the first time in December 2008. Without doubt, the scheme has produced 5 GWh of tidal power since its commissioning, which is equivalent to the annual power consumption of 1,500 households.
I am given to believe that the mouth of Strangford lough, with the ebb and flow of the tides in the narrows, could reliably hold up to 20 turbines. I am not saying that it should hold 20 turbines, but it could do so because of the flow of the tides there. That is enough energy for half the households in Northern Ireland to be cleanly supplied, and it is worth looking at. Indeed, I believe it cannot be ignored as the potential is truly enormous.
We know that wind turbines are easy to install once planning is passed, but they provide very moderate energy, and the density of water means that tidal energy is infinitely preferable. In my opinion, the tide in Strangford lough must take its place in the long-term provision of energy, and for this it needs investment. We need money put not simply into short-term wind turbines, but into engineering in the sea that can and will meet needs in the long term.
The second type of energy is tidal range, with a dam being built in tidal lagoons and suchlike. One example is the west Somerset lagoon, which has been strategically located on the southern coast of the Bristol channel basin between Minehead and Watchet to take advantage of the world’s second highest tidal range. It can generate the maximum energy possible while minimising the environmental, economic and visual disturbance, in that it provides coastal protection against storms and sea level rises, and has other environmental protections.
The West Somerset lagoon can generate 6.5 TWh per year of energy, which is equivalent to the energy needs of over 2 million medium consumption homes, according to Ofgem. Again, this shows what can be done, and if it can be done there, I believe it can be done elsewhere. Such a scheme could deliver continuous power with tidal phasing as well. This could, with short-term storage added to the scheme, deliver firm, continuous power. Here we have something that has been proven to be successful in the West Somerset lagoon, that the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland believes to be successful in his constituency and that I believe could be extremely successful in Strangford lough in my own constituency.
It is my considered opinion that tidal range and tidal streams complement each other, and we should look holistically at our tidal regions to determine the best use of tides in such areas. To this end, my ask to the Minister —as he knows from the debate we had in Westminster Hall, but I will ask him again—is to consider putting in place a tidal taskforce to adequately evaluate not only our potential, but how we can practically begin the process of harnessing this power in co-ordination with marine conservation. We can do it, and it has been proven it can be done, and if it can be done in Strangford lough, I believe we can deliver the green energy that can supply many homes across Northern Ireland—not just in my constituency of Strangford, but indeed across the whole Province.
Talking about this in the House is necessary, but setting up a stand-alone dedicated taskforce to deal with this is just as vital as the funding stream that needs to be given to projects including Strangford lough and wider UK concerns. While tidal streams can be built quickly and the energy produced quickly—and this is tremendous for Strangford lough—the potential of the tidal range in Strangford lough and other areas will take greater planning and long-term strategy. Now more than ever, we have the wake-up call that we must fix this in the short term, but also invest in the long term. The time for planning the new Hinkley C was 10 years ago, and I do not want to wait 10 years for this House to be looking back and asking why we did not invest in tidal range, which has the potential to provide the same amount of energy output in a much safer way.
While the cost of tidal energy may be similar to other massive energy products, such as Hinkley, its safety is much greater. Indeed, for long-term investment, the life span of a project such as the one I am suggesting to the Minister is double that of Hinkley at 120 years, with the turbines being replaced after 60 years. I know that long-term investment is needed, but I believe that our children will thank us for it, as they will have sustainable energy for generations to come. I honestly do believe that now is the time to make this investment. I am aware, as I am sure the Minister will be, that there is international interest in Strangford lough, with Canadian companies looking into this possibility. Now is the time for this House to show willingness to put investment and commitment where our mouth is, and to invest in long-term projects with a guaranteed return.
I want to pay special thanks to the Queen’s University biology station at Portaferry, which is much involved in this idea. I met it way back in the summer to discuss it. It has many pilot schemes for energising and taking advantage of the ebb and flow of the narrows in the water of Strangford lough. It has many ideas, but we keep coming back to the SeaGen pilot scheme of 2008. Its findings clearly show that the project is financially sustainable.
There is also interest in this matter from Minister Gordon Lyons at the Department for the Economy. He understands the issue and has been keen to move it forward, and his civil servants have been actively involved. There is some concern that when it comes to money from Westminster, Scotland and Wales seem to have had some advantage while Northern Ireland has not. There is now an opportunity to ensure that Strangford lough and its tidal wave energy are financially supported.
I know that if Strangford lough were eligible for the second round of tidal energy and tidal lagoons, the project would not be delivered in my time in this House, but we have to start somewhere and tonight is a good time to start. The longevity of the project would be a legacy, not of Jim Shannon because Jim Shannon does not count—
Jim Shannon
What does matter and what does count is the people of Strangford—my constituents. That is the point I want to make. The legacy will be for them—for all the households in Strangford and all the people across Northern Ireland—so it is very important. This will be inspired, perhaps, by a Government and a Minister who are determined to look at the long term and invest in clean, renewable energy that is as dependable as the sun rising and setting, and which can be planned for decades in advance. I said that at the beginning of the debate and I say it again.
To continue to ignore this potential would, I believe, be tantamount to ignoring our obligation to future generations, who will be repaying the billions of pounds we give for energy assistance this year alone—and we thank Government for that—and who would much prefer to pay off something that their children can benefit from. Now is the time, and I am asking the Minister to respond with a UK-wide, Government-guided and funded investment plan incorporating Strangford lough and other potential areas as a matter of urgency.
I extended this intervention to the Minister previously and, as he knows, I will do so again now: I invite him to come to Northern Ireland. He said he would endeavour to put that in his diary for this year, and I again invite him to come to Strangford. We will visit the Queen’s University Belfast biology station and meet some of the people there, and I hope they will convince him and help this debate progress from an Adjournment debate on 10 January 2023 to something more. Not only will that benefit us in Strangford; it will benefit everyone down the whole west coast of Scotland, England and Wales as well.
With that, I thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for your time and look forward to hearing from the Minister. I thank Members for their interventions, and I look forward to delivering for the people of Strangford; they really are the best people in the whole world.
The Minister for Energy and Climate (Graham Stuart)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). As I look around the Chamber, I am taken back to that Westminster Hall debate to which he referred; it feels like the gang is back together. This is an important debate, and I am pleased to see that he continues to be a champion for his constituents on the subject. I also see colleagues who were at that debate, including the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), who led it.
I will touch on energy support, which the hon. Gentleman referred to. After Putin’s barbarous invasion of Ukraine, we saw people’s energy bills soaring, and they were forced to turn their minds to the meter before turning up the thermostat in their homes. In that context, the Government were and are determined to do all they can to help the people of this country, including those in Northern Ireland.
In December, I was delighted to announce that all households in Northern Ireland would receive a single, one-off £600 payment to help with their energy bills. Payments will start this month. The funding has been provided to the energy suppliers to go out to those families. I hear the points that the hon. Gentleman made about the practicalities of that. In a market for which we are not normally responsible, we were determined to find a way to reach them, and we did that. I pay tribute to my officials who put in an astonishing amount of work to stand that up and get it going. That payment comes on top of the package of unprecedented assistance with energy bills that the UK Government have already provided, including the energy price guarantee, which has reduced the energy costs of every family, and the energy bills discount scheme, which has reduced them for every business in Northern Ireland as well.
As the hon. Gentleman rightly highlighted, we are here not just to think about the short term and this winter, but to look to next winter and all the winters to come, as we seek to build a secure energy supply that drives up growth, drives down bills and meets our net zero ambitions. The best way to do that is by investing in affordable, reliable, clean energy, because energy security and net zero go hand in hand.
The Government take their net zero commitment absolutely seriously. If we are to accelerate away from fossil fuels, rolling out renewable energy is fundamental. That is why, in last year’s British energy security strategy, we reaffirmed our commitment to renewables. That means making the absolute most of the opportunities that our geology and geography afford us to deploy transformative technologies, as the hon. Gentleman highlighted. Of course, tidal is an element of that. Tidal stream energy is a home-grown industry with considerable promise to deliver affordable, clean, secure energy for households and businesses across the country. I could not be more proud of the fact that we are leading the world in deploying offshore wind, which is another technology. Off the coast of my Beverley and Holderness constituency, there is the biggest wind farm in the world, joining the second, third and fourth largest windfarms in the world, with all of them generating energy from the high winds of the North sea.
Of course, with Britain being Britain, the weather can change from windy and sunny to still and cloudy in seconds. Even when that happens, we can still rely on the tides, as the hon. Gentleman rightly said. Tidal energy provides an opportunity to boost the resilience and diversity of our renewable energy system. It is an area where, with a raft of brilliant developers designing and building tidal stream devices in the UK, we currently lead the world. As he rightly said, let us not blow the opportunity that that provides us.
We have Europe’s foremost tidal and wave energy testing centre in the constituency of the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland: the European Marine Energy Centre in Orkney. We also have new marine energy hubs developing across the country, from Morlais on Anglesey to the Perpetuus Tidal Energy Centre on the Isle of Wight in England. Thanks in large part to £175 million in innovation funding for wave and tidal power research provided by successive Governments, as of last August our waters were home to half the world’s total deployment. Thanks to the extensive support afforded by the renewables obligation mechanism, in 2018 we were able to build the largest tidal stream generating array in the world in the fast-moving waters of the Pentland firth.
The Government remain open to considering well-developed proposals for harnessing the tidal range energy in the bays and estuaries around our coastlines, including, as the hon. Gentleman said, up and down the west coast. That includes barrage schemes and other alternatives. Any such proposal would need to demonstrate strong evidence of value for money in the context of other low-carbon technologies, as well as details of its associated energy system benefits and environmental impact mitigation strategies, before the Government could take a view on its potential or on the funding models appropriate for exploration. Revised criteria for a well-developed proposal will be published in the energy national policy statement which is coming out very soon.
Jim Shannon
In the last portion of my contribution, I referred to a Canadian company—I understand the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland is aware of it, too—which is keen to harness the tidal water movement of the narrows. I am a great believer that when we move forward, we can have partnerships between Government and independent companies to deliver that. Companies are in the business of making money and the Government are in the business of producing green energy, which I think they want to promote. Is that one of those things where the Minister could be instrumental in being positive and helpful?
Graham Stuart
That leads me naturally on to our system. What we try to do across all technologies, places and companies is to create an architecture that is fair, transparent and predictable—as much as that is possible. It therefore does not depend on me being sold on any particular company or solution, but allows, through decent mechanisms, the best to rise to the top. That is very much our aim.
Much of the success of tidal stream to date is down to contracts for difference, which the Government have produced and which I am delighted about. This is our flagship mechanism for supporting the cost-effective delivery of renewable energy, ensuring that the nation’s tidal stream innovators have the opportunity to bring down the costs of the technology and learn the lessons from being the first in the world to deploy it at scale. I am sure that Members were, like me, delighted that last year the Government established a ringfenced budget of £20 million for tidal stream developments in pot 2 of the fourth contracts for difference allocation round. This saw four tidal stream projects win contracts totalling 40 MW at a strike price of £178.54 per MWh. To put that into perspective, only 36 MW of tidal stream was deployed worldwide between 2010 and 2020. This is the first time that tidal stream power has been procured at this scale.
Mr Carmichael
I was beyond delighted. I am on the record as having congratulated the Government many times on the commitment in AR4. We are seeing not just public money going into tidal stream, but private finance, and that really is the proof of the pudding. What we need now, though—I think the Minister knows where I am going with this—is a commitment to continue that in AR5. He has seen already what is possible with that ringfenced pot, but we need to keep it going.
Graham Stuart
Further information—we released some information before Christmas—for AR5 will come out shortly ahead of the launch of AR5, which of course has now been moved on to an annual basis, giving further confidence, I hope, to the market.
The energy transition must involve each and every part of our United Kingdom. As an integral part of the UK, that of course means Northern Ireland where, energy being a devolved matter, contracts for difference do not actually operate. However, in the Northern Ireland energy strategy, Northern Ireland set out a path to net zero energy and to meet 70% of electricity consumption from a diverse mix of renewable sources by 2030. The Government are committed to supporting Northern Ireland to succeed in that. If we are to get it right, places like Strangford lough will be critical.
I thank the hon. Member for Strangford and all those involved for their support in making the pilot project a success. Strangford lough is a world first: a commercial-scale tidal energy project that by September 2012 had produced 5 GWh of tidal power since its commissioning in 2008—equivalent to the annual power consumption of 1,500 households.
Strangford shows that tidal can work; it was a major demonstrator in that sense. It shows that it is safe, too: I am delighted that Strangford lough has had no major impact on marine life, for instance. That is why we have provided it with £5.2 million of funding, in addition to £500,000 from Northern Ireland Electricity under its Smart scheme. In 2011, the project qualified to benefit from the marine renewables deployment fund, after passing the UK Government’s operating performance criteria.
It is not just Strangford lough; we continue to invest in renewable energy across Northern Ireland. Through UK Research and Innovation, we have provided Artemis Technologies with £33 million from the Strength in Places fund to drive the decarbonisation of maritime transport. Last year, Wrightbus secured an £11.2 million investment from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to develop a low-cost hydrogen fuel cell technology and create a hydrogen centre of excellence—all part of a £54 million package.
In conclusion, it is clear that this Government are taking action on all elements of energy in Northern Ireland. We are bringing energy bills down right now, and we are harnessing the power of clean, secure, affordable energy to build an economy that is fit for the future. That includes a sound track record of supporting the tidal stream industry, where we are on the cusp of commercialisation. With excellent export potential, we are ready to lead the world, and I am confident that the tidal stream industry will continue to develop across every corner of the United Kingdom as we work together to bring green growth to each one of our countries.
In the seconds that remain, I want to go back to the questions that the hon. Gentleman asked. One was about the tidal taskforce, which I am happy to discuss further with him. Having a taskforce for everything is not necessarily the right thing; I want to make sure that we have the right architecture. We will see what happens with the CfDs and make an announcement in due course, but assuming that we get the broad architecture right, given the state of tidal stream—I will leave leadership for the moment—I am hopeful for the future.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned a visit. I would be delighted to accept, in due course—