Westminster Hall

Tuesday 28th February 2023 Westminster Hall

Tuesday 28 February 2023

[Carolyn Harris in the Chair]

Eating Disorders Awareness Week

Tuesday 28th February 2023 Westminster Hall

09:30

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Eating Disorders Awareness Week.

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Harris. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting the debate, and all colleagues across the Chamber who have supported it.

Across the United Kingdom, an estimated 1.25 million people have an eating disorder. That includes binge eating disorder, bulimia, anorexia and other specific feeding or eating disorders—indeed, any disorder that avoids or restricts the intake of food. Left undiagnosed and untreated, eating disorders can be a silent killer. Anorexia has the highest mortality rate of any mental illness, and results from one study have shown that a third of people with binge eating disorder are at risk of suicide.

[Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)]

Increasing awareness and our understanding of the causes of eating disorders are crucial to providing the right care. Eating disorders are still hugely misunderstood. Does the hon. Member agree that Ministers must fund more research on that, because just 1% of mental health research funding is directed to eating disorder studies?

[Wera Hobhouse]

I completely agree. Indeed, the all-party parliamentary group on eating disorders inquiry on research funding found how crucial it is, and in particular that eating disorder research should be ringfenced. Some progress has been made, and the eating disorder charity Beat has made good progress on the issue, but more research needs to be done.

For too long, sufferers have been left feeling trapped and alone. Here in Parliament, we have been raising the alarm for some years about this rising epidemic, which still needs more urgent action from the Government. However, I want to acknowledge the good working relationships the eating disorders APPG has had with various Ministers. I hope that will continue, and that today’s debate helps us to make progress together.

The theme for this year’s Eating Disorders Awareness Week is eating disorders in men. Eating disorders do not discriminate. Many people think that eating disorders affect only women, but at least one person in four affected by an eating disorder is a man, and 89% of men and boys aged 16 to 18 in my county of Somerset worry about how they look. Those experiences are often overlooked.

Toxic stereotypes are pervasive, and half of respondents to a recent survey of men’s experience carried out by Beat did not believe that someone like them would develop an eating disorder. One male sufferer in five has never spoken out about their struggle. That is why the debate is so important. We must encourage men to speak up and get the help they need.

Other rigid perceptions of eating disorders persist. Eating disorders are frequently misunderstood and viewed as a lifestyle choice. Contrary to popular belief, eating disorders are most common among people with severe obesity. Too many people are still being turned away from treatment because their body mass index is too high. To imply that someone seeking help for an eating disorder is not skinny enough is a terrible mistake that can lead to added suffering, and I commend Hope Virgo for her tireless campaign, Dump the Scales, which has made a significant difference.

Owing to those perceptions, people with eating disorders face a postcode lottery in trying to access specialist treatment. Beat has found large inconsistencies in the availability of treatment for binge eating disorders. Only 12 of the 51 providers in England that responded to Beat’s freedom of information request offered all three services for binge eating disorders recommended by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.

In some areas, treatment for people with bulimia is being rationed according to the frequency of binging and purging episodes. In others, treatment is simply not available. The Somerset and Wessex Eating Disorders Association, also known as SWEDA, has seen a 150% increase in people seeking help for eating disorders compared with pre-pandemic figures. Its children’s service has been overwhelmed with young people and their parents desperately trying to get support.

Eating disorders can take years to recover from, and many children and young people need to continue their treatment into adulthood. Young people miss out on so many educational and social opportunities. These years are stolen from them, and that is not to mention the potentially irreversible effect on their physical health. Again, this affects girls and boys, men and women—eating disorders do not discriminate.

[Sir George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Lady for securing this important debate. She will be aware that the variation of eating disorders called T1DE—type 1 diabetes with disordered eating—is a growing problem that affects young men as well as young women. The right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) and I have been co-chairing an inquiry into that variation of eating disorders. I will not pre-empt what our report will say, but one thing is clear: professional support, both psychological and physical, is vital to these young people, who could otherwise end up seriously ill if they do not take their insulin—in some cases, it is fatal.

[Wera Hobhouse]

I thank the right hon. Member for his intervention. As I mentioned, eating disorders manifest themselves in different forms. We need to increase our understanding of the different types of eating disorders, and much more specialist treatment needs to be available to cater for people’s different needs. I thank him for mentioning that specific form of eating disorders among people who are suffering from diabetes.

As I mentioned, eating disorders result in years being stolen from young people, and they can take many years to recover from. Some of the figures are just staggering. A third of people with eating disorders recover fully, a third never really recover, and a third get worse. For the third that never really recover, it is a lifetime sentence of a life that is not as good as it could be. That is why early intervention and understanding the symptoms of eating disorders are so crucial. The earlier someone receives intervention for their eating disorder, the more likely they are to make a full recovery. The longer symptoms are left untreated, the more difficult it is for the person to recover.

Healthcare should focus on prevention before cure, and early access to the right treatment and support can be life-changing. Some 75% of SWEDA’s staff and volunteers have lived experience of an eating disorder, which is another aspect of this issue that is so important: we need to hear from more people who have lived experience of an eating disorder. Their speaking up and leaving behind the stigma that is still associated with eating disorders is so important, and I commend everybody who has come forward and talked about their lived experience. I understand how difficult that can be, but we need them to do it. All those working for SWEDA say that they wish they could have accessed help long before they were offered it. That is why such organisations are so important: they offer specialist therapy and support to people with eating disorders and body image issues before they become ill enough to need more intensive treatment.

However, those organisations cannot cope on their own. Waiting times for eating disorder patients are out of control, and waiting lists for children’s eating disorder services have doubled since March 2020. From 2021 to 2022, only 61% of urgent cases started treatment within a week—well below the current NICE standard of 95%. I hope the Minister will be able to respond to that. For adults, there are not even targets in place. The Independent has revealed that more than 80,000 adults with eating disorders are waiting to be seen for therapy—a record number—while just 30% of adults got treatment within four weeks of their referral. Again, I hope that the Minister will refer to adult eating disorder services, where we do not have any waiting list targets or targets for support. It is very important that adult services get the same support as children’s services, where we have made progress because there are targets.

Data from the eating disorder charity Beat showed an average delay of three and a half years between someone’s eating disorder symptoms emerging and their accessing treatment. That is simply not good enough. Targets are crucial if we are to tackle this epidemic. An access and waiting time standard for adults would provoke significant extra funding and focus. If we want to encourage people to seek help, we need to give them a guarantee that they will be seen.

Having clear standards can facilitate service improvements. Standards introduced in 2015 for waiting times for children and young people’s eating disorder services have been crucial in driving service improvements. However, similar standards have been lacking in adult services. Shockingly, sufferers are reaching the point of emergency hospitalisation before they can access care. Again, that is not good enough. It also costs a lot more money if we reach people only at that crisis point.

Clinicians have reported a significant increase in the proportion of young people first presenting when they are already severely ill. NHS figures show that hospital admissions for people with eating disorders in England have risen by 84% in the past five years. For children and young people, there was a 35% increase in the past year alone—and among men and young boys, hospital admissions have risen by 128%. There is an increasingly alarming picture that eating disorders in men and boys are being overlooked and not treated early enough. That is why today’s debate is so important.

Tragically, people are losing their lives. Take the terribly sad death of Zara Taylor after two years of struggling to get the right treatment for her eating disorder. An investigation by the Health Service Journal found that at least 19 lives were lost to eating disorders in England over the past five years. At least 15 of those were deemed avoidable and resulted in coroners issuing formal prevention of future deaths reports. Coroners described patients’ safety risks being missed or poorly managed because of limited knowledge of eating disorders among doctors and health professionals, and delays in accessing appropriate treatment. That is why it is so important to have more research into eating disorders, and focus on the more specialist and rare forms of eating disorders. Those same failings were among the key issues identified five years ago by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman in its report “Ignoring the Alarms”. Surely, we need to do more and to do better.

I was disappointed that the Government decided against publishing a 10-year cross-Government mental health and wellbeing plan for England. Instead, they have developed and published a major conditions strategy that would include mental health alongside other groups of conditions, including cancers, cardiovascular disease and dementia. That is not helpful. Compared with physical health, mental health has been a Cinderella service; for years, we have been asking for parity. If everything is put together again, we run the risk of losing special attention to mental health.

Can the Government not see that for targeted and varied issues we need targeted and varied strategies? I point them to Hope Virgo’s eating disorder manifesto, which calls on the Government to implement an evidence-based national eating disorder strategy, with a plan outlining how they will tackle the huge rise in people affected by eating disorders.

I want to single out Hope Virgo for her tireless campaign. She has made such progress in helping us to understand what it is to suffer an eating disorder and access services. She has continually engaged with us and Government in order to achieve improvements. She has done fantastically well. The strategy that she calls for should integrate obesity and eating disorder prevention plans, given the overlapping factors between the two. The Government should also look at reforming treatment approaches. I hope they are looking seriously at Hope Virgo’s manifesto and strategy.

A recent University of Oxford study found that using the integrated CBT-E—enhanced cognitive behaviour therapy—approach over the current in-patient approach reduced readmission rates for people with anorexia by 70% over a year. That means that we need to treat this as a mental health condition first and foremost, and to treat people’s physical health as a result of the mental health issues. If we do not tackle the mental health issues, we will not cure the physical problems.

The strategy should also include better training. According to Beat, 20% of medical schools do not include eating disorders in their teaching at all, while those that do provide less than two hours on the topic. Training should be compulsory in order to spot early signs of eating disorders. Many participants in a 2021 Beat survey reported having a negative experience when they first sought help from a GP. There are many brilliant practitioners in the NHS delivering excellent care, but I want every doctor to complete their training with the knowledge and skills to best support people with eating disorders.

The crisis in the NHS has decimated mental health services. Staff shortages are growing. According to the National Audit Office, between 2021 and 2022, 17,000 staff left the NHS mental health workforce. The Royal College of Psychiatrists 2021 workforce census shows that since 2017 there has been a 30% increase in the number of vacant or unfilled consultant posts in England. That is not good enough. How we can encourage specialists into services is a big question that the Government need to answer.

Eating disorder psychiatry has one of the highest numbers of vacancies, with just 28 full-time consultants. We need significant investment in staff retention. The RCP’s members report high workloads and poor work-life balance. NHS trusts should be supported to meet important improvement targets for retention. I hope that the Government will keep their commitment to publish an NHS workforce plan and that they will bring that forward early, along with adequate investment.

Mental health services need proper funding. This financial year, only 13.8% of local health spending has been allocated to mental health services, although mental illness accounts for 21.3% of the total disease burden in England. The money spent on young people’s eating disorder services has not kept up with the number of young people who need treatment. I support the NHS Confederation’s call for £12 million of additional funding to be made available over the next year to get children and young people’s eating disorder services back on track.

The funding that is provided needs to reach frontline services. An inquiry by the APPG on eating disorders, which I am proud to chair, found that 90% of the additional NHS funding given to clinical commissioning groups for children’s services did not reach the services to which it was pledged. We wrote to CCGs at the time, and the answers that we received were not satisfactory. The Government must ensure that their funding pledges are not empty words and that money is getting where it is needed. A one-off boost for children’s mental health services is not enough. Soaring demand for underfunded services will lead to children missing out on care.

We are all aware that the NHS is in crisis. We hear harrowing stories about ambulance and A&E delays, but the impact on mental health services has received little attention. I hope that today’s debate will make a difference and that we will hear more about the crisis in mental health service provision.

The Liberal Democrats firmly believe that physical and mental health should be treated equally in the NHS. Eating disorders are an epidemic. The sooner we realise that, the sooner we can treat them with the attention they deserve. No one should be condemned to a life of illness, nor should anyone be dying from an eating disorder in 2023.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Carolyn Harris (in the Chair)]

Order. Members should be aware that I intend to begin calling the Front Benchers at 10.28 am. I call the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, Caroline Nokes.

09:48

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Harris. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) on having secured this important debate and thank the Backbench Business Committee for having agreed to it.

I will not repeat the statistics, because the hon. Member for Bath covered them brilliantly. She highlighted the scale of the problem and the fact that it is growing more among young men; of course, Eating Disorders Awareness Week 2023 particularly highlights the challenge for young men. I will focus on some constituency cases that I have come across recently, and on some areas where we can do better to raise awareness in order to start to tackle the root causes, thereby hopefully helping future generations of young people.

I say young people, and we all know that eating disorders are most likely to impact on 17-year-old girls, but the stark reality is that they can endure into much later life. I remember meeting groups of women in this place who were well into their 40s and still suffering from eating disorders. That is not to paint too negative a picture, because we know that people can recover from eating disorders. With the right support and, crucially, early intervention, eating disorders can be tackled successfully. However, we also know that more and more people are suffering from eating disorders in this country today and that covid exacerbated that. Being locked down in our own homes, confronted with image after image on social media, undoubtedly contributed to the problem.

[Margaret Ferrier]

Social media algorithms will serve to those with eating disorders more and more content that encourages harmful and dangerous behaviours. That is particularly worrying for younger and adolescent sufferers. Does the right hon. Member agree that platforms cannot be allowed to continue to profit from that via advertisements, and that the Online Safety Bill provides the perfect opportunity to address that?

[Caroline Nokes]

That was exactly what I was going to ask the Minister: can we please make sure that the online safety legislation is used as a tool to oblige social media platforms to clean up their acts when it comes to profiting from legal but undoubtedly extremely harmful forms of advertising to people who are already suffering from very serious medical conditions? When it comes to eating disorders—specifically anorexia nervosa, which is the most lethal mental health condition there is—we have to make sure that we do not trivialising or dismiss them, regarding them as something that happens only to young girls and they get over it. The stark reality is that eating disorders kill more people than any other psychiatric illness.

We have seen from the evidence provided to all Members by the Royal College of Psychiatrists the increase in incidence, but we also know that waiting times are up hugely. I return to my initial point: early intervention is crucial. When somebody with an eating disorder asks for help, that is the time to give it to them, not 12, 24 or even more weeks later. We know there is a huge challenge with transfers from children’s to adult services. Too often, sufferers will fall through the cracks and be forced to go back to the beginning of a waiting list.

I want to highlight the case of one of my constituents— I will not give her name—who is currently suffering from a severe eating disorder and has been for years. She had been in children’s services for years but recently turned 18, which brought with it the challenge of finding her appropriate support. She is currently in an adult mental health bed in a secure ward. The stark reality is that she and two other girls in the area covered by the Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust were competing for the one bed available at Leigh House, which is the Hampshire-based specialist support unit for eating disorders. There we have it: an 18-year-old in an adult secure mental health unit, and a real challenge among clinicians to decide whether they will try to treat the physical symptoms of the eating disorder or the mental health conditions, and whether a mental health condition should take precedence over the physical problems.

I then heard from the trust that my constituent was having to be transferred every single day to be force fed with a tube because staff in the mental health unit were not able and did not want to do that. I believe that at just 18 someone is still a child. We know that with eating disorder sufferers development is often slower and young people are more childlike. Yet they are effectively forced to live in an adult mental health ward while suffering from a severe eating disorder and needing specialist help. Furthermore, training is crucial and support for staff who treat people with eating disorders is equally so. It is incredibly gruelling and, in no uncertain terms, a hideous process to have to force feed someone. We cannot imagine the impact that has on staff.

On social media content and algorithms, what does the Minister believe we can do to better protect young people? What can we do to give them the tools they need to be more resilient and to understand, when they are being pushed social media content, what is good and what is not—what is harmful and what is less harmful? I am proud to have stood repeatedly in this Chamber and called for personal, social, health and economic education to be a mandatory part of the curriculum, and proud that a Conservative Government have achieved that, but we also need to ensure that teachers are better equipped to teach PSHE, and I repeat my call for it to be mandatory up to the age of 18. It is not good enough to say that young people have to stay in education—school or college—or training until they are 18 but not to equip them with crucial life skills between 16 and 18. I get that the good colleges will do that, but many will not, so I ask the Minister to work with her colleagues in the Department for Education to ensure that the highest possible quality PSHE is delivered by teachers who feel and, indeed, are equipped to deliver it.

I want to talk briefly about stigma. I am conscious that this Eating Disorders Awareness Week we are highlighting eating disorders in boys and men. Stigma is still a huge challenge and it is undoubtedly worse for men and boys. When we look at the statistics, we see that one in five does not ever even say to anybody else that they think they might be suffering from an eating disorder. How on earth can someone get help if they cannot even talk about it?

It is incredibly difficult for young men to find their way in the world. They are under massive pressures through body dysmorphia or through the images they see, which are wholly unrealistic and unachievable. There are fitness apps on which the proponents will be taking significant amounts of steroids to achieve a physique that is, to be frank, virtually impossible for the ordinary person—the ordinary man—to achieve, and we know that over-exercising is every bit as much a part of eating disorders as not consuming calories. I am particularly aware that we need to find mechanisms to support young men, through the education system, so that they recognise the challenges around over-exercising, the dangers of steroid abuse and, frankly, the wholly unrealistic male body image that is being promoted to them.

I visited April House in Southampton, a specialist over-18 eating disorder unit, years ago now. That is to my shame: I should go back and say hello again. What was striking was that in a room of women, there was one man, and his particular problem was running. Every single day, he was running a marathon, and he could not rest mentally unless he had run those 26 miles every single day. Let us all just imagine what that was doing to his body and how incredibly weak and damaged he was by it. If we do nothing else today, let us encourage more men to speak up, encourage people to be braver, and ensure that we speak with a united voice from this Chamber. This is not a party political issue; it is absolutely a cross-party issue that we have to do more to support eating disorder sufferers.

09:57

[Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)]

I am delighted to participate once again in this debate in Eating Disorders Awareness Week.

An eating disorder is a cruel and distressing illness both for those who live with the disorder and for their families, who are so often at a loss as to how best to support their loved one who is experiencing the illness. As we have heard, an eating disorder can affect anyone, regardless of gender, age, ethnicity or social background, and the impact of this serious mental illness, affecting 1.25 million people across the UK, is profound. The causes are complex, and there is no quick fix to resolve this condition. There is no doubt that, as we have heard, the gap between the onset of the illness and the start of treatment is simply too long. While family members shrink into the grip of the illness before the eyes of loved ones, families are left feeling helpless to understand what is happening and how best to provide the support that is so obviously needed.

One innovation, or new measure, that has not helped the charities and those on the frontline seeking to support people living with this condition or in danger of developing an eating disorder is calorie information on menus, which has become mandatory in England. Although we all understand the good intentions behind it, I believe it is a misguided measure. The eating disorder charity Beat is urging the Scottish Government not to follow suit on that, for very understandable reasons.

My first knowledge of the issue of eating disorders was through the story of Karen Carpenter, who died at the age of 32 in 1983 because of illness related to her eating disorder, and then Lena Zavaroni, a Scottish singer and entertainer who died in 1999 at the age of 35 because of issues surrounding her long battle with anorexia. Both those young, beautiful and very talented women spent almost all of their short lives battling with this condition, and they ultimately lost their lives to it.

Those are two very high-profile examples of deaths from eating disorder. Many people will have heard their stories and about their struggles. Sadly, it is the case that, for anyone who develops this condition, the mortality rate is frighteningly high: it is the highest mortality rate of any mental illness. As we have heard today, eating disorder does not come alone; it is accompanied by other mental health conditions such as depression, self-harm and obsessive behaviour.

[Wera Hobhouse]

Is it not also important that we look at athletes? We have heard that a lot of eating disorders are combined with over-exercising. It is important that we look at those highly successful and high-performing people, who are in danger of developing an eating disorder.

[Patricia Gibson]

Indeed. We have talked about the overlap and common ground between eating disorders and obsessive behaviour. That territory certainly includes issues such as athletes who are very conscious of body image and how to maintain it.

We have heard that eating disorders are often incorrectly, and perhaps almost exclusively, associated with young women. Stereotypes around the disorder mean that often men who are living with this condition can be deterred from seeking the help that they need. They can also have their difficulties and struggles misdiagnosed. That is why this year’s Eating Disorders Awareness Week theme is eating disorders in men. In fact, one in four people with eating disorders are men, and it is important that we raise awareness around that so that people understand this is not restricted to women.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

Even though men are in the minority of those affected, an important issue, and one that I too struggle with in my gender, is that many males, and young males, fail to get help, and fail to admit and acknowledge their problems. That is not the case in every other walk of life—if the car is not working, we take it to the garage; if the television is not working, we get the TV repair man—but we sometimes struggle to get males to understand that if help is needed, they should seek help and get it.

[Patricia Gibson]

Other health statistics show that men are notoriously poor at asking for the help they need, which is why they often have undiagnosed conditions. The creation of a gender stereotype around eating disorders makes it all the more difficult to break the barriers if young men develop this condition or are in danger of developing it. We need to be aware of that.

I am glad that the Scottish Government have made available support to the eating disorder charity Beat, to help to provide additional support and services across Scotland for those who are affected by this cruel illness. All medical courses in Scottish universities are discussing with Beat how to deliver, or are already providing, further training on this complex condition, of which we need to continue to develop our understanding.

Those living with the condition and their families have seen this illness tighten its grip on individuals and families who were already struggling with it during the covid pandemic. Many of those affected were left to the mercy of the awful online forums, which advise those living with the condition on how best to avoid food without family members noticing. In preparation for this debate I checked, and those online forums still exist. They are still operating and advising people how to fool their families into believing that they are eating when they are not—that is simply appalling. It is absolutely disgraceful that such sites can be hosted with apparent impunity, effectively promoting self-harm, which can and often does lead to death. When the Minister responds, I really hope she will address that.

This is a very serious condition. We work to try to remove any websites that host hate speech or incite hatred of any kind; these forums are equally dangerous, in my view, and they ought not to continue. They have been in operation, to my knowledge, for at least 20 years. There seems to have been no progress in tackling them. The takeaway for me today is that the Minister should at least tackle that element of the problem, while we all work together to try to improve treatment and diagnosis for those affected.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Carolyn Harris (in the Chair)]

Order. I have to impose a five-minute limit on speeches.

10:05

[Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) for securing the debate and other Members who have spoken. I also pay tribute to Members who are not with us today: the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), with whom I have worked on this topic, and my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher), who has valiantly led a campaign to recognise the need for a men’s mental health strategy. We have very much a cross-party agenda on the issue. I am pleased to work with those colleagues from the red wall, from the deep red flag of the hard left and from the deep orange of the hon. Member for Bath.

This is a totally cross-party issue, as we have heard, because this condition affects all our constituents and all our constituencies. It affects people of all ages and, of course, of both sexes. I recognise and agree with the points that have been made about unhelpful stereotypes. Some stereotypes are, of course, helpful in the sense that they point to a general truth, from which there will be many exceptions.

I spent most of my career before Parliament working in prisons, where there is a clear difference between how the two sexes express the distress that is caused by incarceration. Men tend to externalise their distress through fighting and violence against others; women internalise their distress through self-harm. Those are generalisations—there are many women who fight and men who self-harm—but they have some validity and are relevant to how we approach this particular mental condition.

There are different ways in which men and women and girls and boys express distress and mental health conditions. The fact is that the outworking of eating disorders is in many ways the same: extreme ill health and enormous distress to the sufferer or patient. I recognise the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) about the distress experienced by the staff who work in eating disorder clinics. It is a very distressing condition.

As we have heard, a quarter of eating disorder sufferers are men and boys. The sources are complex—not being an expert, I do not want to stray too far into this—but it is worth acknowledging that it seems to be generally agreed that the source of eating disorders, and anorexia nervosa in particular, is a need for control. There is, of course, a perfectly healthy desire to be fit and healthy. It is appropriate that people want to control their appetites—we, not our appetites, need to be in charge—but we see that healthy desire to manage one’s health, fitness, food intake and exercise regime spilling over into a different sort of control, which itself becomes controlling. We become slave to a different sort of appetite.

I want to speak up for the men who come forward and identify themselves as suffering from eating disorders. That is a very brave thing to do. The other stereotype that we have discussed, which is entirely true, is that not enough men talk about mental health and their own mental health conditions. As we have heard, a fifth of male eating disorder sufferers have never spoken about their condition to anybody. We therefore need to raise awareness. I pay tribute to Beat, Hope Virgo and other campaigners for their commitment during this Eating Disorders Awareness Week to the cause of men’s mental health and eating disorders in men.

We know that the result of not coming forward early is that diagnosis comes later, and therefore treatment is so much harder. It is also disappointing to read in the research that the majority of men who receive treatment for eating disorders or ask for help are disappointed with the service they receive. I dare say that that is the same for women. There is obviously a fault in the provision of services.

What to do? I endorse the points that have been made about the need to raise general public awareness, which is the purpose of this debate as much as anything. People need to be able to recognise the signs and symptoms in their loved ones and friends, school friends, students and colleagues. We need more training for doctors, particularly GPs, to recognise the symptoms and signpost to good treatment. We need more services before hospital, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North said, and we need more acute services. I pay tribute to the Cotswold House unit at the Savernake Hospital in my constituency, which is a tremendous in-patient unit. In practice, it is under-resourced, because there are not enough beds, as my right hon. Friend said.

I will end with this point: crucially, we need more support for step-down services. It is not enough just to get somebody back to the appropriate weight. It can take months and months for people to be healthy again and to be free of treatment, so we cannot just say, “You get the acute treatment, then you’re back to health, and you’re free.” We need to support people for many months more, and we need more provision in the community for that step-down service.

10:10

[Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Harris. I thank the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) for securing the debate and for all her work on the APPG, which I am proud to be a member of.

I want to start by recognising the amazing work carried out by eating disorder specialist NHS workers and campaigners in my city and around the country, who continue to provide life-saving care and vital early intervention under increasingly difficult circumstances. Recently, I spoke to frontline workers about the situation in Sheffield, and what they reported was extremely concerning. Numbers of referrals are still up, having increased every year since 2015. The South Yorkshire Eating Disorders Association—also known as SYEDA—has a four to five-month waiting list for its services, which it fears is deterring people from seeking help.

The tsunami of eating disorders that health workers warned the Government about during the pandemic is not going away; if anything, it is getting more severe. That is because this crisis is not new. In 2017, the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman for England published a damning report, which concluded that

“NHS eating disorder services are failing patients”.

Yesterday, six years later, the same ombudsman concluded that urgent action is still needed if the Government are to prevent more people from dying—a stark condemnation.

What needs to change? First, services must no longer be forced to choose between investing in early intervention and emergency support. NHS figures show that hospital admissions for people with eating disorders have risen by 84% in the last five years. Meanwhile, more than 8,000 adults are waiting to be seen for therapy—the highest figures since records began. Early intervention is the most effective form of treatment, so it is no surprise that, as it becomes harder to access, the number of critical cases is increasing. Investing in early intervention would be transformative for patients and services.

Next, we must increase training for all healthcare professionals. On average, UK undergraduate medical students receive less than two hours on eating disorders. I welcome the fact that the ombudsman is now encouraging pharmacies to take part in training programmes, as they play a crucial role in preventing more harm.

Finally, we must be consistent in having a fully funded access and waiting time standard for adults seeking help, as we now have for children. We also need a treatment pathway specifically for avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder so that people are not left undiagnosed and untreated. That needs to be commissioned through the NHS.

But we cannot stop there. To truly address the crisis, we need a root-and-branch review of eating disorder provision. We need a holistic approach, with preventive, community-based, tailored support centred around the needs of each individual patient. We need to adopt innovative forms of treatment and to launch well-funded research programmes into the most effective treatment.

This crisis could, and should, be an opportunity to rebuild our approach to how we support and treat the 1.25 million people in the UK who suffer from an eating disorder. I therefore urge the Minister to look at the transformative work groups such as SYEDA are doing to help build an alternative framework for care nationally.

I want to turn now to an issue that has been raised with me and that I have written to the Department about. I have been hearing worrying reports from eating disorder specialists, researchers, medical staff and parents of young people about the rising use of restraints on children with eating disorders in general medical wards by staff with no training in mental health. I have heard harrowing stories of staff having to close the entire ward just for one patient because the use of restraints is so disruptive and distressing. In other cases, I have heard of security guards being brought in to restrain patients because the staff were not trained to provide this sort of care.

The use of restraints and restrictive interventions can have long-term consequences for the health and wellbeing of patients, as well as a negative impact on the staff involved. I have also heard that these interventions have been used far too early and without following guidance, such as that from NICE.

Under section 6 of the Mental Health Units (Use of Force) Act 2018, medical staff are required by law to record the use of restraint in all medical settings, but the Act does not apply to patients being treated for a mental health disorder in general medical settings. I am extremely concerned that that means that we do not know how prevalent the use of restraint is for children currently stuck in a medical ward awaiting a tier 4 bed. I hope the Minister will consider applying the recording requirements that apply to the use of restraints in mental health settings to patients who are currently in non-mental health settings. Will they meet me to discuss this further?

In my city, Sheffield Children’s Hospital has recognised this as an issue and has already started recording restraint, recognising the difference between the services it provides for mental health and non-mental health conditions. That is so important. It is a national scandal waiting to happen that people are being forcibly restrained when it is not needed.

10:15

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

It is a genuine pleasure to serve under your guidance this morning, Ms Harris. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) on securing this debate, which she has led very well. It has been a helpful debate, and I associate myself with the comments that everyone has made. I also add my thanks to Beat, Hope Virgo and all the others leading the campaign to increase awareness and improve provision for people suffering with eating disorders.

Eating disorders are, of course, a range of mental health conditions that have a physical consequence, with maybe two thirds of those suffering from them having a physical illness as a consequence of their mental health condition. It is a privilege, and deeply moving, to work alongside, support and serve sufferers and their families in my communities in Cumbria. I feel deeply affected by not just their struggle with their condition but, sometimes, their struggle to access the services they need.

As has been mentioned, covid has had an impact on the prevalence of eating disorders, with something like a 55% increase in referrals during that period, and an increase of more than 80% in the number of hospital admissions, and I want to remark on what we do in response to those admissions. In our communities in Westmorland, anybody needing tier 4 hospitalisation for an eating disorder will be placed in a bed in Manchester, Edinburgh or Darlington if they are lucky and there are sufficient beds in those places. In many cases, as the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake) mentioned, people—often young people—end up hospitalised on the wrong kind of wards, where they are supported by lovely, wonderful people who are just not trained to support them. Therefore, the experience not just of that person in their suffering, but of the people caring for them and the other people—often young people—on those wards, is harrowing, deeply distressing and inappropriate.

As has also been noted, it is worth mentioning that the use of BMI as a measure to decide whether someone can access services is dangerous and foolish. We would not say to a person with cancer, “Come back when you have more cancer”—we would treat them.

[Caroline Nokes]

This will be a very brief intervention. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about BMI—we really have to move away from it. It gives a misleading impression of wellbeing. Can we please remember that it is designed for a Caucasian male’s body type? We know that the majority of sufferers of eating disorders are women.

[Tim Farron]

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for a helpful intervention. That is absolutely true. We would not say to a person who presented with cancer, “Come back when your tumours have spread.” If someone is presenting with an eating disorder, we need to believe them and allow them to access the right support immediately. That needs to be changed urgently.

At the other end of the spectrum, at tier 1, and particularly for young people, what are we doing to build resilience so that people do not develop eating disorders in the first place? In Cumbria, there is nearly nothing in terms of provision for adults, while we spend a grand total, through our public health, of 75p per child and young person on tier 1 resilience support, and that is for all mental health conditions, not just eating disorders. We need to prevent people from getting into these circumstances in the first place—for their sake and for everyone else’s.

Let us be positive: it is important to welcome the access waiting time standards. They are a good thing. However, they are mostly not being met. In north Cumbria, 26% of routine referrals of young people and 11% of urgent referrals of young people are not being treated in that timescale. In south Cumbria, 23% of routine referrals are not being seen within the four-week standard. While there is better news for those meeting the standards for urgent referrals, the total declared for Morecambe Bay hospitals trust is 12 individuals with an urgent eating disorder need. That is baloney. I personally know more people than that who are struggling, which tells us either that the data is faulty or that it is hard to get into the system because BMI is used as a gateway to access those services.

More generally, this speaks of a lack of parity when it comes to care, treatment and taking seriously issues relating to mental health, particularly where young people and eating disorders are concerned. If one of our young people were to break their leg on a football pitch on a Saturday afternoon, they would be straight into hospital and the healing process would begin that day. If something invisible in them breaks, it could be weeks or months before they get support, or it could never come. It may come dangerously, or even fatally, too late, and that is wrong.

What are our collective asks? We need increased awareness. It is right that we focus on men, who are less likely to come forward and yet make up a huge proportion of those in need, but help should be there for everyone, and I urge people to come forward and access it. We also need more support for families, who are massively hit by the consequences of eating disorders for their loved ones.

We mentioned the waiting time standards for young people and children—I am glad we have them, although I wish we met them—but there are no standards for adults, and it is about time that there were. Research funding needs to be increased so that we can understand the causes and cures and tackle this range of diseases head on. We need to be utterly intolerant of dangerous images and things that lead people into this dangerous area and cause such ill health.

Medical training needs to be improved so that we can refer our referred accurately. We need to tackle the BMI gateway. When tackling obesity, for example, we need to remember that there is a danger of things such as like calorie references being well-intentioned but counter- productive. We need to ensure that money allocated to integrated care boards for eating disorder support is actually spent on that. Finally, services must be commissioned adequately and close to home.

10:22

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is always a pleasure to speak in Westminster Hall, and I thank the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) for securing this essential debate. She has made it her passion in the House—in Westminster Hall and the main Chamber—to highlight these issues, and I commend her for that. Her enthusiasm and energy for the subject are worth noting. This is an emotive issue and, like other hon. Members, I have recently been fighting a case for a constituent who needed in-patient care and could not be seen in Northern Ireland.

According to a report published by the Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority in its review of eating disorder services in Northern Ireland, approximately 50 to 120 people develop anorexia nervosa and 170 people develop bulimia nervosa every year in Northern Ireland. That is a significant number. Thanks to the office of former Health Minister Edwin Poots, and thanks to his energy and commitment, a young woman who was a constituent of mine at the time went to St Thomas’s across the way. He saved her life—I have no doubt about that at all. Her mum and dad were extremely concerned about her, and I was concerned because I know the family very well. Today she is a married woman with two children and she has a life like everybody else because action was taken. That is a true story and shows what can be done. In another case—I know the mother and the young girl herself well, but I will not mention any names—my constituent needs advanced help.

We want to address the issue of stigma, discrimination and shame. It is clear that eating disorders are becoming more prevalent, and there are a number of reasons why people believe that is the case. I have heard of those who blame filters on social media, which make vulnerable people believe that a flat stomach, perfect abs and enhanced proportions are real. As the hon. Member for Bath said, that mostly affects men, but some girls want that as well. Others have highlighted that eating disorder forums accessible on the internet and on social media give tips on how to eat as little as possible.

I had a parent tell me before Christmas that a school classmate pledge was the reason why her daughter dropped to 6 stone at a height of 5 feet 9 inches. The classmates decided that none of them would eat Christmas dinner and that they would weigh themselves several times a day. That is peer pressure. Again, that illustrates what the hon. Lady has said in this important debate. This parent said her daughter went to the GP and was found—at 14 years of age—to have damaged her heart and to be in danger of starvation, yet she felt the schoolyard pressure to fit in with other dieting 14-year-olds. We need to get things in place because boys and girls could destroy their health, or even kill themselves, if they do not have access to mental health services. The mental health aspect is really important.

[Mr Gregory Campbell]

My hon. Friend is outlining some harrowing cases from his constituency. Does he agree that some progress has been made in the wider context of the debate but that, as in other walks of life, we need to ensure that more progress is made to get to a better place?

[Jim Shannon]

I thank my hon. Friend and colleague for that intervention. Yes, I fully agree. As always, and I say this not because he is my friend and colleague, he brings wise words to Westminster Hall. I thank him for that.

On mental health, it is also known that early recognition and early treatment are associated with improved outcomes, so it is vital that all healthcare professionals are able to identify those at risk. There is an onus on them to do that, and patients should be able to access care quickly.

However, this is not simply a disease of young girls or indeed of young people in general. As others have said, one person in four with an eating disorder is a man, and the eating disorder charity Beat launched the United Kingdom’s biggest survey to date of men’s experience of eating disorders. Of those who took part, one in five had never spoken about their struggles—that happens—and four in five felt that raising awareness would help more men get treatment sooner. I ask the Minister, what has been done to promote awareness and to signpost available help—not simply for worried parents, but for worried brothers and sisters and for family members and friends who can see that things are not going well for their loved one?

I read an article on the National Eating Disorders Association website with the heading “Nine Truths about Eating Disorders”. I am not sure whether I have time to mention them all, but I will do my best—I will talk really fast, and nobody will be able to understand. [Laughter.] No, I am not going to do that.

The article states:

“Many people with eating disorders look healthy, yet may be extremely ill… Families are not to blame, and can be the patients’ and providers’ best allies in treatment.”

The third point, which I want to emphasise, is that an

“eating disorder diagnosis is a health crisis”—

that is what it is, and we should be under no illusion that it is anything else—

“that disrupts personal and family functioning.”

The article continues:

“Eating disorders are not choices, but serious biologically influenced illnesses… Eating disorders affect people of all genders, ages, races, ethnicities, body shapes and weights, sexual orientations, and socioeconomic statuses… Eating disorders carry an increased risk for both suicide and medical complications”

Others have mentioned that. The article goes on:

“Genes and environment play important roles in the development of eating disorders… Genes alone do not predict who will develop eating disorders.”

The ninth and last truth is:

“Full recovery from an eating disorder is possible. Early detection and intervention are important.”

I want to finish on this point. I am thankful for Eating Disorders Awareness Week, but I say with the greatest respect to the Minister—it goes without say that I greatly admire her, and we are dear friends—that we need an action plan. Will she put her shoulder to the wheel and implement what is necessary to effect change in the way we fund this area and approach this killer, because it is just that? Will she do so as a matter of urgency?

10:28

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

It is pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Harris, and I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), who has campaigned tirelessly on the issue and brought the debate to the House today.

The hon. Lady talked about the focus on men and why that focus is important—one in four of those affected by an eating disorder is a man. We have heard some statistics today, including that there has been an increase of 128% in hospital admissions of men for this issue, so it is right that we should highlight it this morning. We have also heard that men are notoriously poor at asking for help, so it is important that we have so many male MPs here this morning, speaking out and raising awareness.

I want to talk about the BMI issue, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron). I remember having my BMI measured during a health screening process at my previous place of work. At the time, I was six months pregnant, but I was a slim six months pregnant.

[Jim Shannon]

You are still slim.

[Carol Monaghan]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that comment. However, I was told that my BMI showed that I was obese. I said, “I’m not obese, I’m pregnant”, and they said, “No, you are obese. You’re showing up as obese.” And they gave me a leaflet on obesity. It seemed that I could not break through that mindset. Those carrying out and promoting these tests sometimes have absolutely no understanding of what obesity is about. I was able to speak up for myself quite capably, but there may be others for whom it is different, so I totally agree with the comments about BMI.

The hon. Gentleman talked about the importance of intervention and how it makes such a difference. He spoke about a young lady in his constituency who is alive today because of an intervention to help her. All of us have to hear those types of stories.

I am a teacher by profession, and over the years I worked with a number of young people who had eating disorders. It was interesting that most of them wanted to get better; they understood that there was an issue. It was often high-performing young people, as well; eating disorders represented an element of control for them. We saw that early intervention made such a difference for them. It was important that teaching staff and other people in a young person’s life were able to recognise the signs early on, and did not put them down to, “She’s just doing a bit of extra exercise”, or, “He’s just trying to achieve that body.”

Unrealistic expectations are put on young people. We have heard from a number of Members this morning about the impact of social media. I would add that some TV programmes also have an impact. I will name one in particular: “Love Island”. It shows beautiful young people with perfect bodies wandering about all day, scantily dressed. If young people aspire to those unrealistic standards, it is not good for anyone. The producers of such programmes need to take responsibility for their impact.

The NHS digital survey asked children and young people aged between 11 and 19 a number of questions, including, “Have you ever thought you’re fat when other people said you were thin?”, “Have you ever made yourself deliberately throw up?” and “If you eat too much, do you blame yourself?”. The responses were really worrying. Among 11 to 19-year-olds, 12.9% screened positive, meaning that they answered yes to two or more of those questions. Among 17 to 19-year-olds, the screening positive figure was 60%. If that is what young people are thinking, then we are at crisis level.

The waiting times to receive help are too long. We heard from the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake) about a 2017 report on eating disorders that referred to patients being failed, and how that situation really has not improved. We also heard harrowing stories about patients being restrained, which I think all of us here were quite disturbed by.

The right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes), who is Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, talked about the impact of shortages in services on those affected by eating disorders, and mentioned that it would not do young people any good to be treated in adult services. We must provide appropriate treatment in appropriate settings.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) talked about two very prominent women, Karen Carpenter and Lena Zavaroni. I will talk about a colleague of mine who had an eating disorder. She was getting over it when, sadly, she had a heart attack and died. We do not talk enough about the long-term impact of eating disorders on physical health. We know that the heart is affected by them.

As time is short, I will scoot through my speech and get to the asks. First of all, we need action on social media companies that target vulnerable individuals. We also need the removal of calories from menus; their inclusion was aimed at tackling obesity, but unfortunately the message is hitting the wrong people. We need better input to mental health services, and we absolutely need signposting for families who are going through the trauma of having a family member suffer from an eating disorder.

Finally, I thank the hon. Member for Bath once again for securing this debate, and for giving us all an opportunity to speak about the issue this morning.

10:34

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

What a pleasure it is to close for the Opposition with you in the Chair, Ms Harris. I thank the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) for bringing forward this debate; I am honoured to be part of it again. It is a shame that we have to be here every year talking about this issue, but it is a testament to how seriously we take it. We will be here until we see the issue resolved.

This is normally the point at which I mention a few comments from Labour Members and say, “Didn’t they do well?”, but every single contribution and intervention was valuable. I learned new things on a topic that I thought I already knew very well. I hope that this debate will not just be filled with words about what needs to change, but that there will be something tangible—some action—at the end.

Across the UK, as many as 1.25 million people are living with an eating disorder. That is a staggering number, if we actually think about what that means. We have heard about the considerably high mortality rates; anorexia claims the most lives of any mental illness. With timely and appropriate treatment, people can go on to live healthy and fulfilling lives, so how many of those deaths are avoidable? That is the truth that we have to face.

I welcome the fact that we have opportunities in this place to mark Eating Disorders Awareness Week, but we have to do so much more all year long to challenge the stereotypes and assumptions that so many people still hold about eating disorders. It is so important to remember that eating disorders can manifest themselves in a variety of ways—through people eating too much or too little, or even restricting what they eat. To echo what has been said, we must never forget that eating disorders can affect people of any age, gender, ethnicity and socioeconomic background.

We have heard that one in four people with eating disorders is a man. It is staggering that it is still so difficult for boys and men to come forward and talk about their issues with eating. In my work in A&E, I see younger and younger people—especially boys—talking about their struggles with food and body image. They often cite social media and peer pressure as the source of those struggles.

I always like to thank the charity Beat for its incredible work. It works so hard to combat the negative stereotypes and misleading perceptions of eating disorders, which are sadly all too common. As was said eloquently today, people experiencing an eating disorder can often find themselves in mental health hospitals. To pick up on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake), about the use of restraint, I have written to the Minister on that topic. I look forward to having a meeting about it, and to seeing the end of the inappropriate use of restraint. Mental health in-patient settings must be a place of safety, where patients and their loved ones can expect to be treated with dignity and professionalism. However, that is clearly not always the case.

For the families of those with eating disorders, the situation is crippling. They have an all-encompassing fear of the unknown when it comes to what their loved one will eat that day. They are concerned that they may have to give up their job, or even not care as much for their other children because they are obsessed with what one child is eating. They know that the child could lose their life at any moment.

It has been agonising to listen to the recent reports of the death of 19 eating disorder patients in in-patient settings; serious concerns were raised about their care. Lives should not be needlessly lost because of poor care and a lack of understanding of eating disorders. My heart goes out to their friends and families. Far too many families—not just the families of those with eating disorders—have lost loved ones in mental health hospitals. How many more people will lose their life before the Government get a grip on safety in in-patient settings? We need a Government who will get serious about mental health and eating disorders. As we have said time and again, access to proper treatment can be life-changing. Prevention is important, and early intervention provides the best chance for recovery. Think of those families who have lost loved ones, knowing that it could have been prevented, and that we in this place have not yet done enough to save these lives.

Targets on accessing treatment are being routinely missed. In 2016, a clear standard was set that 95% of children and young people experiencing the most urgent eating disorder cases should receive treatment within one week. Since then, however—I accept that the Minister has not been in post that entire time—the Government have missed the target; I hope the situation will improve. Disappointingly, only 60% of urgent cases were seen within one week last year. That means that four in 10 children and young people were not seen at the point of desperation. Children and young people are being left on lengthy waiting lists, unable to access support. Meanwhile, their families are helpless, and are trying their best to support their children without vital help from mental health professionals.

[Wera Hobhouse]

Does the hon. Lady realise the mental health impact on those who see a sufferer suffering and not getting the intervention they need? Families see what is happening to their loved one. They are waiting with them, and their mental health is deteriorating at the same time.

[Dr Allin-Khan]

Without a shadow of a doubt, not investing in a person with a mental health need often has a knock-on impact on four, five or six members of the family. Ultimately, we then need to use more mental health resources to serve their needs as well. It makes no economic sense, and no moral sense either, so I thank the hon. Member for her intervention.

The strain that an eating disorder places on an entire family is immense. As I say, parents often have to stop working to care for their child around the clock. How can the Government continue to fail young people with mental health needs? This cannot go on. For how long do the Government think it is acceptable for young people to be stuck on waiting lists for mental health treatment? Eating disorder psychiatry and child and adolescent psychiatry are two of the three psychiatric sub-specialties with the highest consultant vacancy rates. Where is the Government’s workforce plan? Patients are suffering.

After more than a decade of Tory mismanagement, patients are being failed, waiting lists are soaring and services are struggling to cope. I do not like to make eating disorders a political football—they are not—but the truth has to be told: the Government have failed thus far on their commitment. If they cannot get a grip and improve services, Labour will. We stand ready with a bold plan to recruit 8,500 additional staff in order to provide mental health treatment within a month for all who need it. Labour will put prevention and early intervention at the forefront of our approach to mental health. We will place a mental health specialist in every school, and we will place an open-access mental health hub for young people in every single community. The Government can no longer continue to neglect mental health services.

10:43

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Maria Caulfield)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Harris. I thank the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) for securing this important debate. Both as an MP and as chair of the all-party parliamentary group, she has long been a champion of those with eating disorders.

Improving treatment for eating disorders is a key priority for the Government and a vital part of our work to improve mental health overall. We have heard from right hon. and hon. Members from across the political divide about how urgent this issue is and how many of our constituents are affected by it. It is national Eating Disorders Awareness Week, and raising awareness is an important part of improving the outcome for those suffering with this serious and often life-threatening condition. It can affect anyone of any age, gender or background.

As has been mentioned numerous times, Beat has done tremendous work in this space. It estimates that 1.25 million people live with an eating disorder in the UK. Of those, one in four is a man. I am really pleased that this year’s national Eating Disorders Awareness Week is focusing on eating disorders in men. I think that every Member who spoke in the debate covered the fact that men are often reluctant to come forward and ask for help. There is a stigma around eating disorders, particularly for men. It is important that healthcare professionals recognise that this is also an issue for men, so that if a man or a young boy seeks help, that is taken seriously.

It is vital that we recognise that these issues affect men, so that we can break down the stereotypes and help men to speak up and get help, because having an eating disorder is devastating, and not just for the individual. As the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) highlighted, it can also be devastating for those around them, whether family or friends. We know that recovery is possible, which is why it is so important that people come forward to ask for help and support, and get timely access to the right treatment that can save their lives. That is why, under the long-term plan for the NHS, we are investing £1 billion extra in community mental healthcare for adults with severe mental health illness, which includes treatment for eating disorders. The extra funding is being used to enhance capacity for new and improved community eating disorder teams, covering the whole of England.

Hon. Members have raised concerns about long waiting times in their communities. Integrated care boards, which were set up in July, now commission services. We will hold them to account for their timelines, but hon. Members can also hold their local commissioners to account. The funding is given to them for mental health services. We do not dictate how it is spent, because that will be different for different communities, and the prevalence of eating disorders will be different in different parts of England. We expect commissioners to commission those services and to ensure capacity and timeliness for their local population, but if Members of Parliament feel that is not being done, we are happy to meet them to discuss how we can improve things locally.

Since 2016, investment in children and young people’s community eating disorder services has risen every year; there has been an extra £53 million per year from 2021. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) highlighted, the pandemic continues to have an impact on the mental health and wellbeing of many people, and has caused a large increase in demand for eating disorder services. Services were almost closed, or certainly severely reduced, for nearly two years during covid, and covid itself had an impact, and there is now a tsunami of people coming forward. Data shows that the number of children and young people entering urgent treatment for an eating disorder in 2021 increased by 11% on the previous year, to over 2,600, and in the year before that it increased by 73%, from around 1,300 to close to 2,400, so there are more referrals than ever before.

A number of Members, particularly my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North, mentioned online safety. I reassure colleagues that we are working with Ministers from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport on the online safety legislation, but also on other issues, because there is so much work that needs to be done to ensure that online influence is reduced where it is causing significant harm.

To return to the funding being made available, this is the first Government to really put mental health on the same footing as physical health. I am proud that we are creating parity of esteem, not just in planning services but in funding services. As part of the £500 million covid recovery plan funding for the mental health recovery action plan, we have invested an extra £79 million to expand young people’s mental health services, which has allowed 2,000 more children and young people to access eating disorder services. We have delivered this, with over 4,000 more young people entering treatment for an eating disorder than did in the previous year.

A number of Members talked about setting targets for children. We have indeed set targets for children’s eating disorders services. For adults, NHS England has consulted on setting a target for mental health services. I am particularly keen for that to be introduced as quickly as possible. I am meeting NHS England’s clinical lead for mental health services in the coming days and hope to be able to update Members on progress on that, because what gets measured gets done. While we may not be meeting the target for children yet, because of the sheer scale of demand, at least we have a target, and we know which parts of the country can and which cannot meet it, and I am keen that we do the same for adults.

The issue of BMI was raised, and I take the points made extremely seriously. Let me be clear: rejection for treatment on BMI grounds should not occur. If there are instances where that has happened, I am happy to address them; that practice is not in line with any guidance, including National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidance, so it should not be happening. If there are examples of it happening, we are very keen to hear about them. If it is happening at a local level, I urge hon. Members to contact their local commissioners to find out why, because the guidance does not recommend that practice at all.

The hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake) raised the issue of restraint, which I was concerned to hear about. We introduced new legislation in 2018 on restraint in mental health in-patient settings. If there are loopholes in that legislation, I am very keen to look at them. Restraint should not be happening at in-patient mental health settings, but if someone is outside of that setting and it is happening, we need to look at that. The rapid review across in-patient mental health settings is looking at the safety of those services. We will be looking at the results of that review in the coming weeks. I am clear with hon. Members that this Government sees mental health services as a priority.

[Sir George Howarth]

The Minister may recall that I intervened on the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) about the problem of type 1 diabetics with eating disorders. Is the Minister aware of the two trials taking place, one in London and the other in Bournemouth in the west country? Once an evaluation of the success of those integrated approaches is available and published, will she undertake to look at it, because it could have some indications as to how to treat other kinds of eating disorders as well?

[Maria Caulfield]

Absolutely; I will look out for the results of those trials. I am keen that we use evidence-based medicine, and if something has proven to be effective in clinical research, it absolutely needs to be rolled out. An hon. Member touched on the lack of research into eating disorders. The National Institute for Health and Care Research does have funding available, so I would encourage clinicians, researchers and charities that want to undertake research into eating disorders to apply for funding for those trials. We need more research into eating disorders, particularly around men and high-risk groups, such as diabetics.

[Wera Hobhouse]

Will the Minister respond to the concern raised that Government money had been made available but did not reach the frontline, as a freedom of information request by Beat showed? How do the Government intend to tackle that and ensure that money reaches frontline services?

[Maria Caulfield]

The Government have made huge amounts of funding available, for both mental health and eating disorders. More funding than ever before has gone into those services, but that funding needs to reach the frontline. That speaks to my point about local commissioners: where funding is given to a particular area, commissioners are supposed to use that money to commission services at a local level. If that is not happening in some parts of the country, then I am happy to meet with those commissioners and Members of Parliament to find out why.

We want to ensure that funding is going to the frontline to make the difference that we need it to. We are the first Government to prioritise mental health, and the first to set targets for eating disorder referrals. We are the first Government to set a standard of recruiting 27,000 additional mental health workers. We have started to roll out mental health teams in our schools, and when I spoke to the Royal College of Psychiatrists yesterday, for the first time it said that it had filled all its training posts in the last year.

We are making significant progress, but patients need to feel that. That is the next step. I am happy to work with the hon. Member for Bath and the APPG on eating disorders to make sure that is happening on the ground, because, as someone said, it is great to talk about it, but we need to see the impact for patients.

I hope that reassures right hon. and hon. Members about how seriously we take this issue. I look forward to working with everyone across the House to make eating disorders a bigger priority for clinical work. Good progress has been made, but there is a lot more to do.

10:54

[Wera Hobhouse]

It has been a real pleasure to listen to all the contributions today; I thank everyone who contributed to the debate. It was wide-ranging, reflecting the wide-ranging issues associated with eating disorders, from body image and social media to access to services, waiting times and the need for early intervention and diagnosis, as well as the need for research funding and more specialists in the field.

This is a cross-party effort to eradicate the epidemic of eating disorders. The good news is that eating disorders can be treated and full recovery is possible, but we need to do a lot more to make that happen. We need to increase our knowledge about the many different types of eating disorder. We need many more specialists and specialist services, and mental health and physical health services need to be integrated, as has been made clear today. Eating disorders are a mental health condition, as well as a physical health condition. If the two are not treated together, then we are failing patients.

Eating disorders do not discriminate; we must encourage everybody to come forward to seek help, especially boys and men. That was the main topic of the debate. Early diagnosis and treatment can make a life-saving difference. As we have heard many times, men do not like to come forward or talk about physical problems, but it is important for men of all ages to come forward and seek help.

I thank everybody who contributed, particularly those tireless campaigners, including Hope Virgo, who has been mentioned several times, and the eating disorder charity Beat. Without their tireless efforts, awareness of eating disorders and treatment would not be what it is today.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered Eating Disorders Awareness Week.

UEFA Champions League Final 2022: Independent Review Findings

Tuesday 28th February 2023 Westminster Hall

11:00

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the findings of the independent review report on the UEFA Champions League Final 2022.

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Ms Harris. I declare that I am a proud member of the Spirit of Shankly football union.

I want to start by paying tribute to the magnificent efforts of the Liverpool supporters who saved lives through their actions in Paris. They also fought for the truth regarding the events that took place there and refused to be beaten by the lies and smears of UEFA and the French Government, which were straight from the Hillsborough playbook. We need to remember that this could have happened to any set of fans in Europe.

“Due to the late arrival of fans, the match has been delayed.” That was the message on a screen in Stade de France that made so many of us feel physically ill when we saw it. Lies were once again relayed to a watching world after so many of us had just experienced our worst day in football since Hillsborough, all because of the disgraceful organisation by UEFA and the French authorities. We knew immediately that another cover-up was in motion. After all, we had been here before.

I was sent this by Nick Braley, a Hillsborough survivor:

“As a Hillsborough survivor, I naively expected the policing to be focused on safety, especially given Paris’s history of terrorist attacks, including one at the Stade de France just a few years ago. Instead, I was met with complete disorganisation, aggressive and violent policing which resulted in my being kettled and ultimately bounced along a line of riot shields of Parisian police officers. Thirty-three years ago, I escaped a life-threatening crush at Hillsborough and now I faced a situation where one slip or trip and I could have again witnessed deaths at a football match. These things happen. People make mistakes and they need to learn from them, only here, again, I had to observe the police and authorities invent a pack of lies as they tried to pass the blame onto innocent people rather than take responsibility for their own failings. Thirty-three years ago, the police did all they could to fabricate a false narrative and here we are with the French authorities doing exactly the same. Please don’t let them do this, make them take responsibility and please ensure that lessons are learned for the safety of all future sporting fans.”

That is why this report matters so much to so many people.

Eight months since it was commissioned by the general secretary of UEFA, the report into what really happened at the UEFA champions league final in Paris on 28 May has finally been published. To my eternal relief and to the relief of thousands of Liverpool and Real Madrid supporters who experienced the horror that evening, it is a world away from the UEFA-led cover-up that we saw on the evening of 28 May. The report places the blame correctly and firmly at the doorstep of those responsible for the game, which could have led to countless lives being lost. The report is clear: the fans bear no culpability. The investigation panel concludes that the “overarching organisational failures” by UEFA and the French authorities were at the root of what went so terribly wrong that evening.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The hon. Gentleman has a love for the beautiful game and a love for Liverpool, and I commend him for that. Even though I am not a Liverpool supporter, I very much enjoy that. Does he not agree that the fact that there was no loss of life was only by the grace of God and that this should not lead to UEFA being excused from making amends to those fans whose experience was traumatic and for whom the beauty of watching the beautiful game has been forever tainted by fear and anxiety? Will he further agree that a mea culpa—a simple apology—will not be acceptable to any of the fans, the hon. Gentleman or me?

[Ian Byrne]

I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman.

The report exonerates Liverpool supporters of any blame or responsibility. In fact, it backs up the statements made by so many supporters, including myself, when I stated that if it were not for the efforts and understanding of the Liverpool supporters that night, people would have died because of the failings of UEFA and the French authorities. I thank the chair of the panel, Dr Tiago Brandão Rodrigues, and the members of the panel: Mr Ronan Evain, Ms Amanda Jacks, Mr Frank Paauw, Mr Daniel Ribeiro, Mr Kenny Scott, Mr Luís Silva, Professor Clifford Stott and Mr Pete Weatherby.

[Sir George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is bearing powerful witness to those events and what has subsequently happened. Does he agree—I am sure he will—that UEFA and the French authorities now need to be held accountable for their failures to properly manage that event, and for all the ensuing risks that he so powerfully described?

[Ian Byrne]

I agree 100% with my right hon. Friend, unsurprisingly.

I thank the panel for their diligence and tenacity in seeking the truth and laying the foundation for justice. Their work is beyond reproach, and they collectively deserve the thanks of every single football supporter in Europe, because, when implemented, their recommendations will make the European game safer for all. The importance of supporters leading the fight for the truth to be laid bare in the report is incalculable, but this was a truly collective effort.

I place on record my thanks to Liverpool football club and Professor Phil Scraton for pulling together witness statements to inform the panel and for their ceaseless support. Thanks must also go to the many journalists across the world who have done so much to aid the quest for truth. So many have contributed, but I personally thank David Conn, Dan Austin and Rob Draper in the UK and Pierre Etienne Minonzio from L’Equipe. What a difference it made to have excellent journalists who sought to find the truth—unlike in 1989, when the gutter press printed lies and smears.

The panel report pinpointed many organisational failures, but I will reflect on some of the most damning. The UEFA model for organising was defective, in that there was

“an absence of overall control or oversight of safety and security.”

That is an astounding failure, for which those responsible must be held accountable. The French policing operational strategy was based on the lies and smears of the Hillsborough disaster. It is inexcusable for a major police force to base its operational strategy for policing a huge global event—including the use of tear gas and pepper spray on innocent supporters and its failure to protect supporters from local gangs—on old smears and lies. To date, there has been no apology or acknowledgment of its errors. Without that, how can anyone have confidence in the ability of Paris to safely hold a global sporting event again?

UEFA presented to the French Senate inquiry a completely misleading view of what it knew of safety problems at previous events at Stade de France. That was unacceptable. UEFA and the authorities also sought to deflect responsibility; the report highlights that

“The public response of UEFA in the aftermath of the problems on the night and in its subsequent evidence to the Senate was striking in its orientation to protect itself.”

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

UEFA’s initial response to the report said that it was committed to learning from the events, as my hon. Friend has quite rightly said, and co-operating closely with supporters groups, among others. Some parts of the report spoke about the impact on disabled people of UEFA’s failings at last year’s final. One of the recommendations said that there should be,

“fuller and more proactive engagement with disabled supporter organisations and the respective clubs to determine needs and requirements”.

Does my hon. Friend agree that UEFA must come through on that recommendation and should regularly report on its progress in that area?

[Ian Byrne]

Absolutely. I thank my hon. Friend and I will touch on that point in a minute, because we have the fantastic Ted Morris from the Liverpool Disabled Supporters Association in the room.

The report states:

“It was a serious error for UEFA to assume it could avoid accountability for a foreseeable near disaster at its flagship event”.

That statement is utterly damning. Now that we have the report, what happens next? Two of the foremost campaigners for the truth about Paris are Joe Blott, the chair of the Spirit of Shankly and the Liverpool Supporters Board, and Ted Morris, from the Liverpool Disabled Supporters Association. They are clear about what should happen next. I am proud to have Ted Morris sitting in the room with us. Joe Blott said:

“UEFA and all authorities must now accept all 21 recommendations cited in the report and act upon them. They must apologise for the lies and smears they used to shift responsibility from themselves to innocent fans and they must formally retract the untrue statements made about supporters. UEFA must ensure that this never happens again and do everything in their power to enable all supporters to attend football matches secure in the knowledge that their safety is paramount and will not be compromised.”

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that what is most worrying about these events is that they were entirely foreseeable, given what had happened at European football matches involving numbers of different sets of fans in recent years? Does he worry, as I do, that the lessons will not be learned as speedily as we want them to be, precisely because attention was not paid to the near misses and evidence that something like this could take place until it was too late?

[Ian Byrne]

I thank my hon. Friend for that point, which is painted clearly in the report. I wholeheartedly agree with everything she just said.

Ted Morris says:

“We do not seek recrimination or blame; that is for others to address. We do, though, ask UEFA to take on board the panel recommendations and make the necessary adjustments to allow disabled supporters to follow their chosen team in Europe, without having to overcome so much prejudice and navigate to so many hurdles.”

I want to finish by asking the Football Association, which abandoned Liverpool supporters in 1989, not to back the vested interests of UEFA, but instead to back the interests of supporters. As our representative at UEFA, in 2023 the FA must save the game and its supporters. We need the FA to provide leadership and show courage to ensure that our demands regarding Paris are met in the halls of UEFA. The FA must heed the findings of the report and act upon them, for the sake of English football and its supporters.

I urge the Government to keep the political pressure on President Macron and Aleksander Čeferin of UEFA to ensure a full apology is made and that the report’s recommendations are met. The Government have a duty to Liverpool supporters and to all football supporters in the UK to ensure that this never happens again. Nothing can erase the dreadful events of that night in Paris. We know of at least two Hillsborough survivors who have taken their own lives since Paris, with thousands of others traumatised. The impact of the actions of UEFA and the French authorities cannot be overestimated, but we must hope that lessons have finally been learned, and that no supporter will ever have to go through what we did. That would be a fitting legacy for the many who suffered that night in Paris.

11:12

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Stuart Andrew)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Harris. I, too, thank the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne) for securing time for this incredibly important debate, and for his ongoing efforts, and those of other hon. Members, to bring these important matters to light.

I know the personal impact that these events have had, as the hon. Member rightly mentioned. Tribute must be paid to Liverpool supporters for their actions in Paris and their continued commitment to ensure action is taken. The hon. Member is right to highlight the horrible memories of that day that the debate will have brought up. I recognise my duty and that of the Government on the safety of not just Liverpool fans but football fans in general.

I add my thanks to all those involved in the independent report, including the panel. It is clear in the report that Liverpool fans were subjected to appalling mismanagement of an event that should be a highlight of any football supporter’s life of following their club. Immediately after the conclusion of the final, the Government made that very point and were clear that UEFA should launch an independent review to understand what took place. I welcome the outcome of that review, which draws on the evidence of fans who were present at the match and reflects their experiences. It should not have been needed, though.

It is clear that the mistakes that were made in organising the final were nearly disastrous. The expert panel concluded that the behaviour of Liverpool fans was a key reason that that mismanagement was not fatal. I commend their action and welcome the judgment of the report that the fans behaved faultlessly under extreme pressure and duress. As I am sure hon. Members will agree, those supporters should never have been put in to that position. It is vital that lessons are learnt from this near-disaster and that action is taken to prevent it from happening again.

UEFA has recognised that it made a series of mistakes in its handling of the event and has apologised to fans who attended. In consultation with the Football Association, my Department is in touch with UEFA to understand how it intends to respond to the review and to press for timely action in response to the report’s specific recommendations. I welcome UEFA’s commitment to implement the recommendations, its engagement with fans’ groups last week and the further apology offered by its general secretary. It is vital that UEFA continues that dialogue with supporter organisations and that an action plan is published as quickly as possible. The Secretary of State will meet with the French Sports Minister in the coming weeks to discuss the French Government’s response to the independent review.

[Alison McGovern]

I thank the Minister for what he has just said. Through him, I also thank all UK Government officials and Ministers who made themselves available on the day to deal with the difficult situation. I am full of admiration for our diplomats and UK Government officials, who responded so quickly. On that point, will the Minister explain the link between the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Foreign Office? European football competitions happen all the time, and our ambassadors and diplomatic teams need to be aware of that and offer support to UK sports fans when they travel to Europe.

[Stuart Andrew]

I assure the hon. Lady that colleagues in the Department regularly engage with colleagues in the Foreign Office. In fact, in the run-up to the World cup, I met with Foreign Office Ministers and the Qatari ambassador, because we were seeking reassurances that fans would be safe when they travelled to Qatar. We have regular engagement, and I can assure the hon. Lady that we will continue to do so.

Government Ministers met their French counterparts at the time of the final, as the hon. Lady just mentioned. The meeting was to understand how the French Government intended to respond to their part in the mishandling of the event and to refute their assertions that Liverpool fans were at fault. Ministers made it clear then that an independent review was needed to establish the facts of what happened. The Secretary of State will further press French Ministers on the action that her Government will be taking in response to that review.

The Government will also reflect on the lessons that can be learnt from the horrific events witnessed in Paris last year. That will inform planning for the UEFA champions league final in 2024 at Wembley, as well as our UK and Ireland bid to host Euro 2028. The UK has a strong record of hosting safe and successful major international sporting events, and we will continue to ensure that the measures we already have in place to support safe spectator experiences continue to be aligned with the highest international standards.

In September 2019, London successfully secured the rights to host the UEFA champions league final in 2023. That was postponed to 2024 because of covid. Around the world, it will be the biggest club football match of 2024 and one of the most-watched sporting events.

[Ian Byrne]

I thank the Minister for his response to far. I impress on him the importance, whoever ends up in that final—I hope it is Liverpool—of fans having a voice in the shape of that final and proper engagement. They are the ones who go to matches and have the experience, and they do not get listened to enough. We did not get listened to in Paris, and our voices are often not heard, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) mentioned. It is important that the Government commit to ensuring that, whoever is in that final, the supporters will be sat down at the organisational table and listened to.

[Stuart Andrew]

I am not aware of whether that happens, but I will absolutely make a personal commitment to ensure that we look into it. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to say that we should ensure that the voices of fans are listened to, so I will take that forward.

As we saw when delivering the event in both 2011 and 2013, the 2023 champions league final will generate employment and volunteering opportunities in the events and hospitality sector. It will also enable a significant source of income for many businesses, but fan safety will be the priority for the Government, and we will continue to work with the police, the FA and all other relevant stakeholders to review any further action that is necessary to maintain the welfare of supporters. I can give hon. Members my personal commitment that I will look into this issue very carefully.

I thank hon. Members for their contributions to the debate. I thank the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby for his work in highlighting the experience of Liverpool fans at the champions league final last year, and for pushing for more action to improve the management of major sporting events. No supporter should ever have to go through what fans were subjected to on the night of last year’s champions league final. The Government will work with all relevant stakeholders to ensure that the recommendations of this important report are implemented, and I will be happy to continue engagement with hon. Members to make sure that that is delivered.

Question put and agreed to.

11:21

Sitting suspended.

South West Water: Performance

Tuesday 28th February 2023 Westminster Hall

[Sir George Howarth in the Chair]

00:00

[Simon Jupp (East Devon) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the performance of South West Water.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir George. I am delighted to have re-secured this important debate; colleagues will know that it was postponed from 8 February because of the President of Ukraine’s visit to Parliament. The debate is an opportunity for colleagues from across the south-west to debate the quality of our local water company and hold it to the highest possible standards.

I put pen to paper ahead of this debate after a stroll along Sidmouth beach on Sunday. The water was glistening in the sunshine as I wandered from where I live near the Byes along the River Sid to the seafront and around to Jacob’s Ladder. We must do all we can to protect our rivers and coastline, and it is in that spirit that I secured the debate, because all is not well in our waters.

Excess rainwater and sewage are ending up in our rivers and the sea from storm overflow discharges from combined sewer overflows, or CSOs. Those mechanisms are meant to be emergency safety valves to stop sewage backing up into our homes and streets but, to put it simply, the infrastructure cannot cope with the growing population and heavier storms. Our sewage systems are old, many of them dating back to Victorian times, and water companies have been relying on storm overflows far too often, without adequately addressing the issues behind their continued use. South West Water needs to invest more in infrastructure to protect the public from poor water quality, rather than protecting its company bonuses.

In recent years, a spotlight has been shone on storm overflows and CSOs. Water tourism is booming across our region, including windsurfing in places such as Exmouth and Sidmouth in my constituency. However, there is another reason why people have finally started talking about the issue: the Conservative Government have put in place a plan to improve our water, giving us all an opportunity to hold water companies to account.

Last summer, the Government published their storm overflows discharge reduction plan, which requires water companies to deliver their largest ever environmental infrastructure investment—£56 billion in total. For that, I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) and my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow). We have a plan in place, and I and other colleagues present will not be shy in holding South West Water to the highest standards.

Of course, in a perfect world, we would stop sewage spills completely and immediately. Sadly, that is virtually impossible in the short term; because of the pressure on our water infrastructure, we would risk the collapse of the entire water network, and the eye-watering costs involved mean we would need not just a magic money tree, but a whole forest. The people of East Devon are already facing the challenge of high inflation driven by Putin’s war in Ukraine. Energy bills are impacting the cost of living across the south-west, including in my constituency, and fuel and food prices have shot up over the past year.

The Government cannot in good conscience legislate to let water bills reach astronomical levels—they are already high enough, especially in the south-west—but some of our political opponents seem to think otherwise. The Liberal Democrats have accused Conservative MPs of voting to pollute our waters and seas. That is frankly ridiculous. Why would any of us vote to put sewage in the sea? I live by the sea in Sidmouth, and I love where I live. I am calling on South West Water to invest in infrastructure in our town and across East Devon.

[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

It is not only ridiculous; it is incorrect. The legislation we have passed is the first ever to address this issue, and it is leading to meaningful action. Let us be clear: it is incorrect to suggest that any Member of Parliament voted to allow sewage to flow into our rivers or on to our coastline.

[Simon Jupp]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I am proud that the Conservative Government introduced the Environment Act 2021. It is a landmark piece of legislation that provides a domestic framework for environmental protections following our departure from the EU. It places statutory obligations on water companies to upgrade our Victorian sewerage infrastructure, and my Conservative colleagues and I fully supported the Bill so that it could become law. Let us not forget that this is the first Government in history to crack down on sewage discharges.

Political argument and debate have been pushed aside for taunts and jibes by people who really should know better. Claims have been misinterpreted and twisted in often vicious ways with, I am afraid to say, dark consequences. Those present will know that that has led to colleagues facing threats and abuse in the street and on social media. I was really upset to hear that one hon. Member recently received faeces through their letterbox as a result of this politics. That is unacceptable, and any Member here today who repeats those claims should be ashamed of themselves.

We all want healthy seas and rivers, clean bathing waters and thriving coastal environments and marine species, but previous Governments have ducked and dived on the issue for far too long—including, dare I say it, the Liberal Democrats when they were in coalition. Brushing aside attempts to muddy the water, a key reason that this issue receives so much more publicity now is that we finally have the data to hold our water company to account. In 2016, the proportion of storm overflows monitored across the network was 5%. By the end of the year—or perhaps sooner—that figure will reach 100%. We are getting a fuller picture of when and for how long each storm overflow operates.

I urge the Minister to ensure that water companies—not just those in the south-west, but across the country—maintain those monitors and fix any faults immediately. We deserve the full picture all year round. If they do not do so, the Environment Agency should step in with enforcement action—and if it needs resource, so be it. New data is shining a spotlight on the performance of water companies. We have stronger legislation, an ambitious timeframe with an eye on the cost of living, and a revolutionary level of data.

Colleagues have gathered here today to discuss the performance of South West Water in particular. I do not need to remind them that the company is currently rated one star for environmental performance by the Environment Agency; it is the joint worst in England. I know that colleagues of all political colours here today are disappointed and frustrated by that. Our communities in Devon, Cornwall and parts of Dorset and Somerset deserve so much better.

As politicians, we must do what we can to hold the leadership of South West Water to account. I have met the company many times since my election as the MP for East Devon in 2019. It is always keen to talk, and for that I praise it. Some colleagues will remember our meeting with the chief executive in Westminster in December, which I chaired. We were told that South West Water’s overflows halved from 2021 to 2022 across the bathing season. That was positive news, and not before time, but last summer was particularly dry—the Environment Agency declared an official drought across our whole region—so it may be that mother nature had the most influence on that reduction.

South West Water must be clear and transparent about its progress on its plans to reduce storm overflow discharges. It is launching an updated website with better and more timely information, which is welcome, but it did not take that decision off its own back. The Government’s storm overflows discharge reduction plan stipulates that water companies should publish information in near real time. That is further evidence that it is Conservative policies put in place by this Government that have introduced the framework that demands that water companies buck up their ideas.

However, it is not just in the corridors of Westminster that the companies have their feet held to the fire. I am pleased to be working alongside stakeholders in East Devon, including Sidmouth Town Council and many others, and I continue to press South West Water urgently to fix specific local problems as and when they crop up. I secured compensation for residents in Clyst St Mary in my constituency after foul flooding overtook the entire place, despite South West Water at first refusing to pay compensation. That was not company policy, but it certainly should be now.

Engagement between politicians and South West Water is an important first step. Under powers granted by the Environment Act, the water regulators can launch criminal and civil investigations into sewage spills. Ofwat can fine companies up to 10% of their annual turnover, which is potentially hundreds of millions of pounds, and the proceeds will now be channelled directly into work to improve water quality. That is another major step, which I very much welcome and I know that colleagues will too.

It is important to note that, as a result of those policies put in place by a Conservative Government, South West Water was fined £13 million last year alone because of missed targets. Although such financial penalties are indicative of the company’s poor performance to date, they prove that the regulator now has some teeth.

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

My hon. Friend has rightly outlined that one of the reasons we can have this debate and there is so much focus on this issue is that monitoring has increased so significantly. This situation has not just started in the last few years; it has been happening for decades, if not since the 19th century. It is just that we now know what is going on.

[Simon Jupp]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point.

I know that colleagues are awaiting the outcome of Ofwat’s investigation into water company sewage treatment works and Ofwat’s separate enforcement case against South West Water. However, we do not need an investigation to tell us that awarding massive bonuses and handing out lucrative payouts to shareholders at the same time as releasing sewage 42,000 times into our waters is grotesque. The south-west deserves so much better, and water companies such as South West Water must demonstrate a link between their performance and their generous bonuses, through Ofwat’s licencing conditions.

Given South West Water’s low environmental performance score, I am sad to say that I struggle to see why bonuses even exist within the company. We pay the highest sewerage bills in the country; our money should not be used to reward failure. The Government subsidise water bills in our region by £50 per household every year. Despite huge pressures on our public finances, that Government support will continue thanks to Conservative lobbying. However, the support is discretionary on public finances. That is why I have called on South West Water to commit to funding the support itself should it ever be withdrawn by the Government. I am sad to report that South West Water has so far refused to make such a commitment.

Colleagues will be aware that the Government recently accepted an amendment to the UK Infrastructure Bank Bill that sought to ensure that water companies set out costed and time-limited plans to reduce discharges before they receive funding from taxpayers. The Government listened to the arguments that were made and agreed. We are not playing politics with pollution; we are making sure that water companies clean up their act.

As we can see from this debate, this is clearly a cross-party issue, and I am pleased that the Government are working on it with all parties. We have the legislation, the investment plan and the means to hold water companies to account. We need South West Water to continue to step up, to invest and improve our sewage infrastructure, and to stop the sewage discharges.

I am proud that this Conservative Government have launched the toughest ever crackdown on sewage spills. Under the Environment Act, water companies are forced to embark on huge investment to update our Victorian sewage infrastructure. As I say, we are enforcing that with bigger fines of up to 10% of a company’s annual turnover, with the money raised ringfenced to improve water quality.

As I have said in this debate many times, we are holding South West Water to account. Many of us in the Chamber are working with local councillors and campaign groups to deliver better services for our constituents, improving our bathing waters, protecting our natural environment and maintaining the vibrancy of our coastal communities.

I look forward to hearing colleagues’ contributions as we debate the performance of South West Water. For me personally, its performance to date can be summed up in one word: shameful.

14:43

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir George, and I congratulate the hon. Member for East Devon (Simon Jupp) on his contribution.

Like other Members, I received an email ahead of the debate from Pennon Group, which owns South West Water. It reads:

“We wanted to provide you with the most recent information so that you are able to have an informed debate”.

Although that could be thought of as an act of kindness on the part of the water company and Pennon Group, I for one would rather be informed by what my constituents are writing to tell me about than by what a lobbyist suggests I should think. I will be informed by constituents and bill payers.

Since my election last June, the comments and complaints have flooded in. We have heard that South West Water has permitted sewage to flood out on to our beaches and into our rivers. I am pleased that the Minister is present, because I want her and South West Water representatives to hear about some of my constituents’ experiences.

Just this month, an Axminster constituent wrote to me:

“I’d like to know why our water bills are going up when SWW are performing so badly and why it’s okay for the CEO to get such massive bonuses. We don’t get to choose our water supply like we do for other utilities and SWW has been given a free pass to rip us off. We’ve been told for years our bills are high because of ageing pipes and the size of our coastline, so why did the CEO of SWW get such a large bonus when we have such high bills?”

A second constituent wrote to me in January, after the cold snap, to explain how their access to water had been disrupted by burst water pipes. The constituent, who is from Seaton, wrote:

“I simply have to write to express my disappointment and disgust over the lack of care and co-operation shown by South West Water. If SWW are serious about customer care and ‘saving every drop’ then SWW would be making more of an effort to actually monitor those leaks which are reported to them but they are not responsible for. As a paying customer all we ever seem to get from the SWW leak team is ‘It’s not our problem.’ Surely you have a duty of care for your paying customers?”

Those are just samples of the correspondence that I have received from constituents, as I am able to bring only a few examples to bear today, but I will add one more. In December, a constituent from Beer wrote:

“Why is it that South West Water is able to charge rates that provide for update and maintenance of the sewers and drains and yet only spend 37% of their allocated budget on doing this? Is it because Pennon used some of this budget to return over £1 billion to shareholders last year? When will the government get to grips with the individuals running the water companies and pass legislation to stop the destruction of the environment from the continual discharge of untreated sewage, even in dry conditions?”

All this shows the huge discontent among our constituents, who have simply lost faith in South West Water’s ability to properly deal with the situation at hand. We are seeing sewage dumped in our rivers and on our beaches over thousands of hours, putting at risk not only the health of the public but our wildlife and biodiversity. The scale of the problem should not be understated. People feel that they are being ripped off by a company that continues to hike bills but pays out huge bonuses and large shareholder dividends while it fails to perform even its most basic functions effectively. It is clear that the company is not being run for the benefit of south-west communities and that the current regulator, Ofwat, lacks the teeth to properly police its actions.

We heard from the hon. Member for East Devon that the regulator has some teeth. If that is true, the Government permit them to be kept in a glass on the bedside table. The company is not being run for the benefit of our constituents. My message to South West Water is simple: fix the problems, focus on delivering a quality service for our constituents, and do not pat yourselves on the back for a job done so shoddily.

14:48

[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Simon Jupp) on leading the charge for Devon MPs by raising this matter with South West Water and Ministers. He has ensured that we are up to date about what is going on and what needs to be done to address this issue.

I start from a position that so many of us share across the south-west and, indeed, the whole country: we suffer under an antiquated, Victorian-era system that needs to be modernised and improved quickly. We need to encourage our water companies to offer us not just words and reports, but meaningful action on the ground. It is with huge disappointment that I follow the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Richard Foord), who did not offer a single suggestion as to what water companies can actually do.

[Richard Foord]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Anthony Mangnall]

The hon. Gentleman has had his chance to give his speech.

In the course of my remarks, I will point out some of the flaws, but also some of the things we expect water companies to be doing in our constituencies. I hope South West Water and all other water companies will be listening to the debate, because today we can set the standards. Today we can set out our knowledge of what is being done across the country, and ensure that the standards are in place, and that the fines and action are taking place.

Where is South West Water to date? It is absolutely right that it has met its mains repairs and unplanned outage performance commitment levels; it is absolutely brilliant to hear that it was the top performer for internal sewer flooding performance; and it is quite welcome to hear that its sewer collapse performance and prevention was better than its commitment. Those are all welcome steps, but it is not just about recognising successes: it is about seeing the failures, talking about them and seeking to address them, and it is absolutely right that we talk about those failures today.

The first failure is that water supply interruption performance targets were not met. South West Water also did not meet the deadband score for the compliance risk index, which measures the risk of companies not meeting the requirement of drinking water quality regulations. Perhaps most egregious of all, South West Water’s pollution incidents performance was the second poorest in the country. The company has a customer satisfaction rating that is 78.4% poorer than the median of other water companies—it is ranked with one star. If we are concerned by the actions South West Water is taking, we should also be concerned about how it is viewed by the public. We must ensure there improved confidence in water companies to address and tackle the issue with meaningful results to ensure we see improved water systems, cleaner waterways, enhanced monitoring, and meaningful action from the ground up to enhance wildlife biodiversity.

According to the email we received from South West Water, which by all means is not the only source of information sent to Members of Parliament ahead of the debate—in fact, there was a great deal more—we should reflect on the fact that South West Water has delivered on 80% of its 44 operational delivery metrics and is now looking towards 100% monitoring, but although it talks about bathing water status, it does not necessarily go far enough on our rivers. The company talks far more about keeping our beaches clean, when many of us who are wild water swimmers, such as myself, like to swim in rivers all year round and are deeply concerned about the monitoring systems that are in place.

South West Water has invested billions of pounds over the last two decades to protect and enhance the rivers and coastal waters of the region, but the problem is that people do not recognise it; they do not see it or know it, and too often they do not feel it. That is one reason that I am taking matters into my own hands in my constituency in south Devon. Not only have I met representatives of South West Water and had conversations with them about their new WaterFit programme, which is due to go live in the coming weeks, with a new website specifically designed to give up-to-date, real-time, understandable and digestible information to members of the public about the quality of our water; I will also be getting representatives of South West Water to come to Brixham on 30 March and to Totnes on 27 April to discuss their plans to ensure that action is being taken, so that people can have some confidence and understanding about what needs to be done.

It is clear that a pollution incident reduction plan is working in respective constituencies across the south-west, but we must be able to show that there is an increasingly downwards trend in pollution. My hon. Friend the Member for East Devon was right to say that last year was a dry year, and therefore we must take the data with which we are presented with a pinch of salt, but let us use this opportunity to speed up the way in which our water companies deliver their projects.

I have three suggestions as to where we might go. The first is about where we are building. There is a shortage of houses across the south-west. There are a huge number of development projects across our countryside and rural areas attached to towns, but all too often we are building staggering amounts of houses but are not taking into account the infrastructure. When the infrastructure is not taken into account, hundreds of new homes flood our sewerage networks, meaning that they can no longer cope so pollute our waterways and beaches as a result. It must be a stand-alone policy that for any development plan to go forwards, the infrastructure must already be in place, rather than leaving it to chance.

Secondly, it is absolutely right that Ofwat should be able to issue sizeable fines, but all too often the fines take too long to implement, and there is a certain level of opaqueness around where they end up. It must be clear and certain that fines from water companies are put back into ensuring that waterways, beaches and coastlines are clean, and that the process happens in a speedy manner.

[Richard Foord]

The hon. Member suggests that some solutions should be offered by other parties. I will give him one: scrapping Ofwat. It has been found to be a toothless regulator, which the Government have permitted to be toothless. The hon. Member should advise the Government to get a regulator with teeth.

[Anthony Mangnall]

There was no question there. If the hon. Gentleman could not be bothered to put that point in his speech, that is hardly my problem.

Let us use the body that we have in place, and ensure that that leads to meaningful action; that can happen. If the fines we want to see water companies pay for failure of duty can be issued, we can restore confidence in the network by seeing that money go back into the system. We need the regulator to be enforced with teeth for meaningful action. Scrapping it and then looking for a replacement, which is inevitably what will happen, will not lead to any better levels of responsibility from water companies.

In my constituency, I have seen £5.3 million invested in our waterways. It is clear that more money will be needed and invested. We need to ensure that monitoring is 100% all year round, and that we keep an eye on that. Some of us swim all year round, so we want to see that the monitoring is in place. I am acutely aware of campaigns across my area—from the Friends of the River Dart groups to those on our beaches such as Surfers Against Sewage—to ensure that bathing water status is protected.

This is an important issue on which the Government have taken meaningful action. We must be clear about the progress we have made to date. We cannot click our fingers and ensure that things happen immediately, because this takes time. Not only would it be impossible to click our fingers and say to a water company that it must do everything immediately; it will lead to serious implications for the existing network, with flow back to people’s houses.

We must be clear about that. The steps that we have set to 2030, 2035 and 2050 are the right steps. They are measurable, with report indicators to come back to Government to justify their actions. Through those mechanisms, we can hold the water companies to account to ensure they are delivering on time, at speed and at price —and that they are not pushing that back to consumers.

We all want to protect our coastlines, which is why the Environment Act 2021, the Agriculture Act 2020 and the Fisheries Act 2020 contain enforceable legislation to ensure that we look after our waterways, enhance biodiversity, and keep this a green and pleasant land to live upon.

14:57

[Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Simon Jupp) for this timely debate. It is clear from the contributions across parties that we all feel strongly that this issue must be gripped and grasped.

The water industry is fairly heavily regulated. It has Ofwat, the economic regulator; the Environment Agency, the environmental regulator; and the Drinking Water Inspectorate, the drinking water regulator. The key is to make those regulators work effectively together, and to understand the underlying problems. As has been explained, finding a problem and imposing a penalty is not enough. We have to ensure that the problem itself is rectified.

South West Water did not perform well under Ofwat. The December 2022 report, which my hon. Friend the Member for East Devon referred to, set out that South West Water had fallen below its commitment level in five separate areas: customer satisfaction; the number and duration of water supply interruptions; water quality; the second highest number of pollution incidents in the country; and treatment work compliance, resulting in the £13.3 million fine.

Given that Ofwat set other targets, one asks why those have not been met and acknowledged. There is an allowance for investing in improvements, and South West Water had the second lowest investment. Given that it has some of the biggest problems, why is it the second lowest spender? It spent only 46% of its allowance—why? It is incumbent on South West Water to explain that to us. I certainly hope Ofwat will dig a little deeper into the reasons and look at what we might do differently to ensure the right level of investment. As has been said, the Environment Agency, the second regulator, looked at six metrics, and South West Water got only one star—the lowest rating—on environmental performance.

My hon. Friends have already set out what the Government have rightly done to shine a light on the problems and inadequacies, and to put in place a remedy, but we need more than just fines. We need to unpick how we will drive forward the change that is needed and understand better the cause of the problem. We regularly blame the low settlement figure on privatisation, given the geography of the south-west, but other than the continuing Government contribution to our water charges, for which I am extremely grateful, I am not aware of any work that has been done to look at the underspend. Is that argument justified, and how can that investment be put back? South West Water may well say that it cannot be done, but until we know what the figure is, we cannot assess its responsibility since privatisation and identify where more help needs to come from the Government. Ultimately, although our water is in private hands, it is a public good. It may be that the Minister can help me by providing some figures on that.

The second thing we clearly have to look at post privatisation is the role of the shareholder. Do we feel that, in this case, the shareholders have been complacent? What happened to corporate governance? What happened to the obligation to be concerned about businesses’ impact on their environment? What happened to their social responsibility? It seems very strange that there is a tick in the box in South West Water’s accounts, yet there are these incredible shortfalls.

[Richard Foord]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Anne Marie Morris]

I will not.

We then have to ask whether the three regulators were asleep on the job. Why is it only now that the Conservative Government have shone a light on the problem that they have suddenly woken up and begun to take steps? Further work needs to be done.

Are there some peculiarities about the geography of the south-west—its size, our farming communities, which inevitably lead to a degree of run-off, and the housing developments? As has already been explained, the challenge is that our water company has no ability to say, “No, the system we currently have cannot accommodate this new housing.” We know that there is pressure for housing and that we need that housing, so where should the responsibility lie for making the right investment so that the water and sewage system is fit for purpose? It seems that there needs to be a much greater investment obligation on the developer; it should be obligated to work with the water company to ensure that that investment can be made in the context of the existing infrastructure.

South West Water has clearly recognised that much more needs to be done. Like my hon. Friends the Members for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) and for East Devon, I have had regular meetings with South West Water. We are at the point where South West Water is listening and, as my hon. Friend the Member for East Devon made clear, the level of investment has gone up significantly. The question is: is it enough? We ought to look closely at the numbers—the investment that has been put in, how that falls short of what could have been put in as agreed with the regulator, the rewards for shareholders and the bonuses for executives. Does it feel right? Does it pass the smell test? Right now, the jury is out.

[Richard Foord]

On that point about investment, will the hon. Lady give way?

[Anne Marie Morris]

I am afraid not. Remember that one of the key shortfalls was the lack of communication. South West Water’s communication has definitely improved. The WaterFit app, which my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes referred to, will be one of the first in the country, and it would be a good start. I understand that there is also now a programme for interaction with schools, and young people are asked for their views about the right way to improve water quality. All that is very good, but communication has to be converted into action. We need to look at where we go from here. South West Water is a private company, but it is for public good.

[Richard Foord]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Anne Marie Morris]

I am afraid not. When we looked at some of the shortfalls in the railways, the Government stepped in, because they recognised that the sector was not working. I give credit to the Conservative Government for going above and beyond anything that had been done before. Is there yet another step that needs to be taken to ensure that the public get the quality of water they need and deserve, given its significant impact? It is what we, as human beings, are mostly made of, and it is a key driver of our health and wellbeing. It matters fundamentally. This issue has been of great interest to the Minister, and she is to be credited for the work she has done. Does she think the Government could look at going further, alongside what they could do by working further with the three regulators, to improve water quality in the south-west?

15:08

[Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once more, Sir George. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in the debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for East Devon (Simon Jupp) on securing it and for raising such important issues in his opening remarks. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Richard Foord) on raising important points, and I welcome him as a new friend to the Opposition Benches.

In a nutshell, we have a water crisis in this country. People up and down England are simply and rightly sick and tired of the impact that sewage discharges continue to have on our streams, rivers, seas and local economies. They are sick and tired of leaks, burst pipes and poor-quality water. It is clear to all of us that Ministers need to get a grip of this crisis—sooner rather than later.

Today, we have had the opportunity to look at and address the evidently poor performance of South West Water. Colleagues will know that Ofwat—the regulator—and the Environment Agency publish annual reports measuring water companies’ performance against their performance level commitments and environmental obligations. In their most recent reports covering performance in 2021, both regulators gave South West Water their lowest performance rating. As we have already heard, that is a matter of huge concern for the hon. Member for East Devon. It is also of concern to my right hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) and my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard). They who would have liked to have been here but, due to prior commitments, they are unable to attend.

South West Water was also criticised for a lack of capital investment, as has been mentioned. Across the water sector, poor planning, a lack of investment and neglect of our vital infrastructure has left us with a system that leaks more than a trillion tonnes of water every year and spills raw sewage into our natural environment hundreds of thousands of times a year. As a result of Ofwat’s assessment, South West Water will be required to pay a fine of £13.3 million in the form of lower bills for consumers. The repeated and unacceptable failures of water companies are devastating whole regions in England, our coastlines, and the livelihoods and health and wellbeing of our people.

[Richard Foord]

Let me show the scale at which this affects the region. Does the hon. Lady know that there are more than 350,000 hours of dumping in South West Water’s areas, including on to our prestigious blue-flag beaches, three of which are among the 10 most affected beaches in Devon?

[Ruth Jones]

I did know those figures, but I am grateful that the hon. Gentleman has put them on the record so that I do not have to.

Last week, we had an urgent question in the House from the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes). Again, we had Ministers making empty promises and the same old tired excuses. The failure of Ministers to act means that the water companies know that they can laugh all the way to the bank. Why? Simply because the Government are not stepping up to show the required leadership. All the while, local people are suffering, whether that is because they cannot enjoy their local beauty spots or take a walk down the river, or because of the effect on the coastal businesses that are reliant on seasonal tourism to provide jobs, opportunities and livelihoods.

[Anthony Mangnall]

I can think of 56 billion reasons that show that the Government have acted on this issue: they have required £56 billion of investment from our water companies. I will not be the first to defend water companies, but does the hon. Lady not think that goes further and faster than the action any other Government have taken in the last 20 years, let alone the last 50 years?

[Ruth Jones]

I gently say to the hon. Gentleman that there has been 13 years of Tory government.

[Anthony Mangnall]

Is that enough?

[Ruth Jones]

I am just saying to him that it has been 13 years, and what have we seen? We have not seen the improvement we need, which is why we are scrutinising the situation. That is our job and we will be doing that diligently.

Local people are on the frontline. They are the folk who have to manage the effects of Tory Ministers’ inaction, which is important because water shortages are exacerbating over-stressed and polluted water suppliers. The system is creaking at the seams with over 1,235 Olympic-sized swimming pools-worth of water leaks last year alone. Plugging the leaks will require £20 billion of investment and Ministers must make the water companies, including South West Water, act now.

The hon. Member for East Devon talked about what the Environment Agency can do and its need for more resources. I am glad that he has recognised that need because a lack of resources has left the Environment Agency unable properly to scrutinise the practices of water companies. I hope the Minister will to touch on how she thinks the scrutiny of their practices can be improved.

It is unforgivable that rivers in England are essentially being used as open sewers. Not one river is in a healthy condition, with none meeting good chemical standards and only 14% meeting good ecological standards. That is the record of 13 years of Tory government. The people of the south-west deserve action but, more than that, they need and deserve clean water. The Minister’s Department is full of brilliant civil servants, but, with a lack of ministerial direction, no progress has been made on delivering good ecological status in 75% of English water bodies by 2027.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for East Devon for bringing this matter to the House and I say to him that, in the Labour party, he has an ally in calling for action and real change. Under a Labour Government, we will see the water companies held accountable and services improved. We are watching, and we are waiting for action. If the Tory Ministers will not act, they need to get out of the way, because we will.

15:15

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your leadership today, Sir George. Of course, I would like to begin by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Simon Jupp) for bringing the subject of the performance of South West Water to us today. I know that many colleagues have been waiting to express their views, and we have heard them very clearly from Members today. There are others, I know, who could not make it, but who would very much reiterate some of the things that we have heard. I also must thank my hon. Friend for approaching the issue in an incredibly measured way. It is very serious, so I thank him for that.

As hon. Friends and Members will know, I make absolutely no secret about my disappointment with the poor performance of South West Water and the impact that it has had on the environment. It is very serious, and I met with the CEOs of all of our lagging water companies—basically those with poor performance—back in December, and had a specific meeting with the chief executive officer of South West Water in January. I have made it very clear that we need to see rapid improvement in their performance. We have all the data, whether it is about pollution incidents, storm sewage overflows, leakage, and so forth, so, rest assured, I am in really regular contact over this issue, and I do think we are making some progress.

The data is stark. South West Water has been one of the worst-performing water companies due to its high levels of total pollution incidents, which were, as has been pointed out, significantly above the industry average for total pollution incidents in 2021. It is completely unacceptable in this day and age, and I have made it very clear that urgent steps must be taken to tackle that.

I did want to say, though, that, actually, there are some positive actions being taken by South West Water, and indeed all of our water companies. We need them to be effective, and doing the job they are there for, to provide clean and plentiful water. I must say that I welcome South West Water’s steps to deliver its WaterFit project. That is a £45 million shareholder investment launched in April 2022 to reduce storm overflow discharges, alongside its existing £330 million investment in waste water.

I recognise, also, its success in putting in 100% of its event-duration monitors to track storm sewage discharges in the south west. That is something that we have asked all water companies to put in, but it is ahead of the game, so we will know exactly what is happening. Data is all, in this situation.

I would also say that it is all very well for Members of the Labour party to stand up there, and be seen to be more righteous than others, but, in fact, their record on putting in any kind of monitoring was virtually non-existent. Some 5% of monitoring for storm sewage overflows went in place in 2016, started by this Government. It is 90% covered now, and it will be at 100% by the end of this year, so we will really be able to see what is going on, and then action can be taken.

[Ruth Jones]

I thank the Minister for giving way. While we all agree that data is crucial, there is the “So what?”—never mind the Ofwat—question. With all the data, what are the Government doing about it? It is action, not data, that we need.

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank the hon. Lady for that. I was going to mention it later, but what I was going to say was that it is a shame that the Labour party does not actually look at what is going on. It has been referred to by all of our colleagues. In the water industry we have the most significant project and spend that has ever taken place, directed by this Government, to tackle this whole issue once and for all. I am happy to share the very extensive list of things that are taking place and that will set us absolutely on the track we need to be on.

Also, however, I am a little concerned that we do not want to mislead the public. There are some wonderful bathing waters around the south-west and I, too, love swimming off the coast there. Last year, 93% of our bathing waters, which are mostly off the coast, were classed as good and excellent. That is an excellent record, and it has only improved under this Government. We should not forget that. Obviously, we have to make them all perfect, but this Government have a good record.

To go back to the Labour party, it is all very well for Labour Members to spout on about what they would do and what we are not doing, but the EU took the Labour Government to court over the state of water and they still failed to act. We need to look back at others’ records—we are the Government putting things right.

South West Water has now committed to reducing its average number of discharges through overflows to 20 per year by 2025. That is definitely a step in the right direction, but the public clearly want to ensure that that happens, and we will be on its case. I have also been assured that by continuing on its current trajectory, the company will deliver the absolute lowest number of pollution incidents in the sector by the end of this year. Innovative solutions are being brought forward to include drought resilience in the south-west, which has also been touched on. That is clearly very important.

To be clear, we need our water companies to improve in the way that we need them to, and to be successful, because we want them to stand as successful businesses that people want to invest in. We need that huge investment in the industry, so we want to see the companies operating correctly. That is why we have all the strict measures and Ofwat as the competent regulator, which I will get on to in a minute. Where performance does not improve, the Government and the regulators will not hesitate to hold water companies to account, including South West Water.

The Environment Agency is focusing on South West Water permit compliance. It is prioritising high-spilling storm overflows for investigation. South West Water has now installed the event-duration monitoring I mentioned on all its sites, bar six or seven complicated ones, which will be under way. Since 2015, the Environment Agency has brought 56 prosecutions against the water companies more broadly, securing fines of more than £142 million. As the House is aware, following South West Water’s guilty pleas, on 29 March it will be sentenced for 13 criminal offences that took place between 15 July 2016 and August 2020. It is certainly being held to account.

Ofwat, as the economic regulator of the water industry, will play its role in holding companies to account for not meeting their commitments. Rightly, since South West Water has been shown to be such a poor-performing company, Ofwat required it to present its improvement plan setting out steps to improve performance. As touched on today, South West Water will have to return £13.3 million to customers as a result of not meeting water performance commitments, including those on pollution incidents.

The hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Richard Foord) made a blatant comment along the lines of, “Let’s get rid of Ofwat”, but that is too simplistic. As was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris), we need to ensure that the regulator, too, is functioning absolutely to its right capacity. Given that, in our strategic policy statement last summer, we put the environment at the top of the agenda, Ofwat has to ensure that clean and plentiful water is provided, and to demonstrate that that is not have an adverse impact on the environment. Customer service is obviously right up there as well.

In 2019, Ofwat asked companies to link executive pay to delivery for customers—yes, we might have thought that that was there already, but it is now. Similarly, Ofwat is exploring ideas and other options relating to dividends and pay. That includes changes to companies’ licences or ensuring that fines for misdemeanours come out of dividends and do not impact customers. I think that is what my hon. Friend was getting at. This is all on the radar, and she is absolutely right that it has to be fully functioning.

[Anthony Mangnall]

I apologise for interrupting the Minister because she is making an excellent speech, but it is worth making this clear for anyone watching from across the south-west. Last year Ofwat and the EA launched what is, I think, the largest criminal inquiry into water companies. Will the Minister reassure me and all our constituents that when fines are issued, they will be clearly presented to the public, people will know exactly where the fines are going, and there will be an uplift in the quantity of those fines?

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. That was coming later in my speech, but I will touch on it now because customers are rightly asking those questions. We are determined to improve the water environment, and that is why we announced at the end of November that we would channel future revenues from fines and penalties handed out to water companies that pollute rivers and the sea into projects that will improve the water environment. That seems to be extremely popular, and it is the right thing to do. We will announce further details later in the year. We are also consulting on raising the whole bar to a fine of £250 million and, for the EA, civil sanctions. As has been said, Ofwat already has the power to charge a water company 10% of its turnover, and the EA has unlimited fine powers through the criminal courts for taking action, so strong powers are already there; they just need to be used.

Contrary to what the shadow Minister and the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton say, this Government are taking crucial steps to improve the whole water landscape, particularly the transparency of storm overflow operations, and to require water companies to make major investments in this area. Last week the Secretary of State asked water companies to get back to her with clear plans for every storm sewage overflow and the upgrades, starting with the ones in bathing water areas and those near our highly protected nature sites, because it is of critical importance that we do not pollute those waters.

I have mentioned that monitors are going in, which will mean we have 100% cover by the end of the year. As my hon. Friend the Member for East Devon said, we want those monitors to go in, and water companies will have to show clear plans of where they are going and when they are in. The monitors are for what we call event duration. The first ones will show how long the overflows are used, so we will have that data, and there is a requirement to publish near-real-time information about how often they operate, so we will have all that clear information. Water companies will also be required to put in monitors to monitor the water quality both above and below storm sewage overflows. That will determine what is in the water, which is information we need. We will consult on that shortly. You will see, Sir George, the picture I am building of a comprehensive list of work.

I want to be absolutely clear, particularly to the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton, that, as several colleagues have said, nobody in this Government voted to legalise sewage discharges into water courses. In fact, the Government put forward a raft of new laws to reduce the use of storm sewage overflows through our landmark Environment Act 2021. I hope we will get over the misinformation that has been spread, which has genuinely not helped anyone at all.

Independent fact-checkers have shown that a lot of the Liberal Democrat information that has been put out there has been incorrect and has not been credible. In fact, the plans that the Liberal Democrats suggest would not have stopped or banned sewage discharges; would cost up to £20,000 per household, which is absolutely unrealistic; and would take 1,000 years to raise the billions of pounds that they say is needed. I hope I have been clear that that is not credible.

The Government have put in place sensible, costed plans to tackle the issue, including in respect of storm sewage overflows, and we have introduced powers that allow us to direct underperforming water companies. We have in place a really comprehensive package. The improvement of water quality remains an absolute Government priority, and that is backed up by the comprehensive package we have announced.

[Richard Foord]

If the Government are so very keen on holding water companies’ feet to the fire, why did it require a Liberal Democrat amendment to the UK Infrastructure Bank Bill for the development of costed, time-limited plans to be a condition for the lending of Government funding to water companies for investment in infrastructure?

[Rebecca Pow]

That is a bit of a red herring, because all the things I have just outlined involve costed plans and the monitoring of plans. Water companies will now have to produce drainage and sewage management plans. Previously, they had to produce only drainage plans, but now they have to produce sewage plans, so we will know what comprehensive infrastructure is required.

My hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) touched on the important issue of housing. We must ensure that the development that we all need and the housing that people want are linked up correctly to our water system. A lot of work has been going on in that respect, and I am sure that my hon. Friend welcomes the fact that what we call sustainable urban drainage systems, or SUDS, will now be mandatory. The right to connect surface water to public sewers will be conditional on companies putting in sustainable urban drainage systems. That will help to separate the storm water so that it does not go down our sewage pipes. That has been talked about for a long time—it was one of my pet subjects when I was a Back Bencher—so I am delighted that the Government are making it a reality.

The hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton read out lots of gruelling letters from his constituents, but it is quite interesting that South West Water has just introduced a scheme called WaterShare+. One in 14 households in the south-west have become shareholders in South West Water, so they will be able to play an active part in holding their water company to account and making sure it is a socially responsible business. I believe South West Water is taking note of what comes its way from its customers. It needs to put it right, and I genuinely hope it will.

All water companies must clean up their act, and the Government have demonstrated that we have the most comprehensive plan in the history of the water industry to make that happen. We will work with the water companies and Ofwat to make sure that happens, but will not hesitate to take action using all the powers now available if we do not see the improvement that we need.

15:33

[Simon Jupp]

I thank the Minister for her laser-like focus on water quality in the south-west. Her efforts are very much appreciated, and it is good to know that the Conservative Government are sorting out solutions, not criticising from the sidelines.

The hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Richard Foord) echoed concerns that I have heard from constituents in Sidmouth, West Hill, Ottery St Mary, Budleigh Salterton and Exmouth. My hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) outlined the steps he is taking to work with his communities to ensure that South West Water is held to account. Importantly, my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) highlighted the need to back up fines with investment to solve the problems that cause the fines in the first place. The hon. Member for Newport West (Ruth Jones) rightly made a plea for plugging the many leaks across the south-west. I know that South West Water is listening to this debate; it should know that we are watching closely.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the performance of South West Water.

15:35

Sitting suspended.

Police Training: Entry Routes

Tuesday 28th February 2023 Westminster Hall

14:47

[Sir George Howarth (in the Chair)]

I will call Dr Kieran Mullan to move the motion, and I will call the Minister to respond. As is the convention for 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered police training entry routes.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir George. I am grateful for the opportunity to discuss an area of policing that is important to all our constituents: the question of how we recruit people into the police.

Why is how we recruit people into the police so important? It is because our model of policing—policing by consent—has at its core the idea that our police forces are not separate from us; they are us, drawn from our communities and all parts of our society. I am proud to have grown up as a policeman’s son, and the fulfilment I know that job gave my dad was based on serving the public. It is a job that requires resilience, courage and a strong belief that injustice should be stood up to. It is not enough just to think that criminality is wrong; police officers need to feel a calling to stand against people who undertake it. When other people look the other way, police officers have to be willing to run headlong into conflict and confrontation. I was honoured to follow my dad’s footsteps and volunteer as a special constable, and that experience, along with speaking to people across the policing family, helps to inform my views.

Policing has no doubt changed. We ask our police forces to think more about prevention, to engage with young people and to try to get them onside, rather than just to keep them in line. Although others and I would argue that good beat police officers have always built good relations with their communities—it was not necessarily called stakeholder engagement before, but it happened none the less—this is a much more distinct formal part of the role.

There is no doubt that the crime we have been fighting is changing. Often the person stealing now is not stealing from a shop, mugging people or burgling homes, although these things still go on, and they are not from the local community. They are stealing from behind a computer, often in another country. However, we should not overstate the change and forget the fundamental need for the police to be active in communities and neighbourhoods, and to be among people. They need to be on the high street at 1 pm and 1 am, on housing estates, outside pubs and outside football matches, and vital to doing that effectively is ensuring that police officers reflect their local communities.

However we change the structure of policing going forward, there will always be times when the police need to turn up in numbers and with force, with people happy to step out of the office and on to the frontline. That is why I and more than 100 Back-Bench colleagues were concerned about plans to end the recruitment of men and women to our police forces unless they had or wanted to get a degree. I thank the Cheshire police and crime commissioner, John Dwyer, and other police and crime commissioners who are similarly concerned about this issue. I am absolutely delighted that the Home Secretary responded to those concerns positively and stopped that happening, but that is just the first step in what needs to be a concerted effort to ensure that policing always remains open to as wide a range of people as possible, while looking to ensure that policing and its people move forward with changing demands as patterns of criminality change.

Cheshire Chief Constable Mark Roberts, Northampton-shire Chief Constable Nick Adderley and Stephen Mold, the police, fire and crime commissioner for Northampton-shire, were among those who feared the demise of the traditional non-degree entry route, and they expressed their views clearly in a piece they wrote for The Times earlier this month. They accepted that

“recent events have reinforced that change is necessary and that a more robust approach to recruitment, development, vetting…is needed.”

However, they argued in the article that

“it is crucial that the non-degree route remains”,

adding that

“the public want to see the most effective, trained and competent police service possible”.

I agree: we need the best possible people from all walks of life and different backgrounds. Everyone should feel that they have an opportunity to join the police and succeed. As I said, police forces need to reflect the populations they service.

The reality is stark: tens of millions of people do not have degrees. A blanket decision that the entire future police population should have them would create a force potentially divorced from the experiences and lives of the people they seek to police. A degree-only police force would, by definition, not reflect the population. Those who advocated that introducing degrees would attract a different sort of recruit were right, but there are two sides to the coin. No matter the actual content of a degree and whether it is more or less academic than people expect it to be, calling for one will inevitably put off people as well as attract them.

At a time when we are prioritising concerns around representation, identity and the trust between police and communities, it is crucial that we remain receptive to individuals from diverse backgrounds and walks of life joining our police forces. Speaking to those involved in police recruitment across different parts of the country, I have heard how the degree route has certainly attracted new and different interest, but there has been a lack of interest from existing groups, too. The impact may be different in each area—there is no one size fits all—and that is why a mandated national approach would have been wrong.

In my time, I met many special constables who had years of experience on the beat as effective police officers. It would be misguided to insist that they need a full degree to transition to being regular officers. Similarly, there will be people from other walks of life who could more readily be transitioned into the job than through the degree-only routes: former members of our armed services stand out, and police community support officers are another example.

It is essential that training and education remain integral components of the profession. In fact, I join others in urging the college to consider awarding professional educational credits for various type of training that officers undertake throughout their careers, which include, but are not limited to, law exams, public order training, firearms training, supervisory roles, child protection, cyber specialisms and other unique skills. By providing educational credits that lead to a level 6 qualification—that is, a degree—over time, we can motivate and incentivise new recruits to strive for recognition and reach their full potential, if that is how they want their career to progress, and they can do it in a manner and at a pace of their choosing. That can be important for some people—for example, those who have childcare responsibilities and want to flex the way in which they progress their qualifications.

It is misguided to attribute the recent differences in training experience and diversity statistics solely to the use of newer models of entry. It is likely that there are a wide variety of factors at play, because all sorts of elements of police recruitment focus and approach have changed at the same time. There is no reason to think that similar improvements could not have been achieved through the traditional entry route. I understand that forces that made the transition to degree-only have seen recruitment success in the short term, but I would caution against concluding that it works as well in the long run. Are we confident about the long-term retention of those recruits? I have heard from existing officers that some of those recruits are perhaps keen to get a degree in policing as a stepping-stone, or that the job in the long run turns out not to be what they expected. The need for many officers to be focused on the frontline means that policing will always be a relatively flat organisation, without room for high-flying promotions for everyone. Are we confident that all our new recruits understand that?

I must add that I have taken into account the concerns that alternative entry routes can lead to police officers being away from the frontline for extended periods. By upholding traditional entry routes, chief constables can adapt a more balanced approach to recruitment, which can allow them to mitigate that short-term impact at the same time as increasing police numbers.

There are some concerns about creating a two-tier system, but I do not think that that view holds water. In my experience, police officers are comfortable with the job being one that presents different opportunities for different people. Many officers never take their sergeants exam or think about being a detective, and they are just as valued as those who take the exams and seek to progress their careers in different ways. That is the nature of policing—it always requires many people who are happy to step up and deliver on the frontline. That is why I and others were so concerned, and why I welcome the steps that have been taken.

I encourage chief constables who may have felt that the change was inevitable, and that they did not have a choice, to take the opportunity to make their views known. I encourage the college to revisit the issue, with a fresh perspective and in listening mode. Flexibility is often a positive thing. I hope that we can use this opportunity to continue to help policing move forward in a way that allows our police forces to be drawn from and within the communities that they seek to serve. I look forward to seeing how the proposals develop, and I know that my Back-Bench colleagues will follow developments closely.

[Sir George Howarth (in the Chair)]

Before I call Darren Henry, I remind him that the Minister needs to be left with enough time to respond to the debate.

16:08

[Darren Henry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir George. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Dr Mullan) for securing this Westminster Hall debate and allowing me to speak.

Policing is a profession that I admire greatly. Police officers dedicate their lives to ensuring that we as citizens feel safe in our own communities. As a veteran, I believe that the commitment and values of police officers are similar to those of people who serve in the armed forces. As the roles have very similar purposes, it is inevitable that a lot of the skills learned and developed are directly transferable.

This similarity made me realise that we need a clear and accessible route to encourage veterans to enter the police force, so last year I organised a meeting with my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Leo Docherty), who was then Minister with responsibility for defence people and veterans; my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse), then Minister for Crime and Policing; the police and crime commissioner; and the chief constable of Nottinghamshire police. At that meeting, we all discussed this military-to-police scheme.

The military service leaders pathway to policing course was the result. It allows individuals leaving the armed forces and serving in their resettlement period to join a 12-week programme that fast-tracks them to the second year of the police constable degree apprenticeship. Nottinghamshire police has its first cohort in training from the Royal Navy, the Army and the Royal Air Force. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich for securing this debate, because we need to make sure that as many people as possible are aware of the police training entry routes. We also need to continue to seek new entry routes into the police force where possible.

16:10

[The Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire (Chris Philp)]

As always, Sir George, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I thank and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Dr Mullan) on securing this important debate. Essentially, I have little to add to his comments. I agree with everything that he said about the importance of policing reflecting the communities that it serves, and the importance of making sure that people from all backgrounds can access policing, serve the public and keep us safe.

This is a good time to pay tribute to the police officers who serve our communities up and down the country with bravery and dedication. I am sure that the Members here will want to join me in thanking police officers for their service, which often involves them putting themselves in the line of danger, as we saw with the tragic incident of the Police Service of Northern Ireland officer who was shot just a short time ago.

Turning to more positive news, I am pleased to say that our programme to recruit additional police officers is going well. By 31 December last year, we had recruited 84% of our target of 20,000 extra police officers to be recruited by March. As I have said to the House previously, we are on track to have a record number of police officers in England and Wales by next month—more police officers than we have ever had at any point in our country’s history. I am sure that our constituents will be very happy to hear that.

Of course, it is important to make sure that police officers represent the community more broadly. Of the new officers recruited by December 2022, 43% were female, which is a substantial increase from the previous figure of 36%, and 11% were from ethnic minority backgrounds, which is an increase on the 8.3% of the current workforce who are from ethnic minority backgrounds. The diversity of the police workforce is improving.

Regarding entry routes, I completely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich. He acted as a very passionate and powerful advocate on this issue a few months ago, expressing his concern that we would lose the initial police learning and development programme or IPLDP—the so-called “ippledip” entry route—whereby people could join the police without a degree, and without having to obtain a degree. My hon. Friend and others expressed concern that the change would limit the accessibility of policing, and that we would lose people who had the potential to become very effective and capable police officers. The Home Secretary and I listened to those concerns, which is why the Home Secretary announced just two or three months ago that the IPLDP entry route would remain open, alongside, of course, degree-based entry routes, until such time as the College of Policing has developed a new and improved replacement non-degree entry route. It is doing that work at the moment. We are doing that because we completely agree with the points that my hon. Friend made in his excellent speech.

Both my hon. Friend and my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Darren Henry) referred to the armed forces. I strongly agree that drawing from the armed services for policing is a good idea. As my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe said in his excellent speech, the values of both services are very similar. I pay particular tribute to the police and crime commissioner for Nottinghamshire, Caroline Henry, who worked with my hon. Friend, my predecessors and the previous Minister for the Armed Forces—my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Anne-Marie Trevelyan)—to establish the pilot scheme that is now running. I believe that work is under way with the College of Policing to expand that scheme and take it nationwide. I will certainly do everything I can to ensure that happens as quickly as possible. It is an excellent route, and we should do everything we can to facilitate and encourage it.

Questions were raised around whether the officers being recruited are likely to be retained. I am pleased to say that survey data from the new officers is generally positive. Between 70% and 80% of newly recruited officers have had a positive experience and, critically, intend to make policing their long-term career. We cannot be complacent—we have to ensure that they have a good experience—but that survey data encourages us to believe that the people we are recruiting view policing as a long-term career, and have had a positive experience of it so far.

[Dr Mullan]

I recognise those statistics; they paint an initially positive picture, and I do not want to take away from that. For me, the question is whether those officers will still be there in five years’ time. It is not so much about whether they are setting themselves a goal, and want to stick around in the short term. Will they be there five or 10 years from now? That is my concern.

[Chris Philp]

It is certainly our intention for those recruits to commit to long-term careers in policing. We do not want a fast turnover; we want them to build their skills. Policing offers a number of opportunities. People tend to start in emergency response or on neighbourhood policing teams, but there are a huge number of interesting specialisms that can be developed thereafter, whether they become a detective in the criminal investigation department or a specialist in investigating a particular type of crime, or undertake firearms training. That is besides the regular career progression that comes through promotion.

We are keen to ensure that all police officers are valued and looked after. That is why I chair the Police Covenant Oversight Board. The police covenant is rather like the armed forces covenant; it ensures that serving and retired officers are properly looked after, for all the reasons my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich referred to in his speech and question. I completely share his views.

This is an important issue. We will have a record number of police officers in the near future. I am pleased that both the entry routes that we have discussed are open; that is right. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for assiduously, energetically and persistently lobbying and campaigning on this topic. His personal intervention made a real difference in securing a change of policy and keeping the non-degree entry route open, when it had been previously decided that it would be closed down. He can take that away as a personal accomplishment.

I look forward to working with hon. Members from all parties to ensure that the police force, having reached record numbers, maintains them, and continues to serve and protect our constituents the length and breadth of the country.

Question put and agreed to.

16:18

Sitting suspended.

Leaseholders and Managing Agents

Tuesday 28th February 2023 Westminster Hall

16:29

[Sir George Howarth (in the Chair)]

We are expecting a Division at any moment. When it is called, there will be a 15-minute suspension to enable Members to go and vote, but if there are two votes, there will be a 25-minute suspension, so do the maths.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered leaseholders and managing agents.

I am grateful to present this debate under your chairmanship, Sir George, because I know that you have significant involvement with your local leaseholders in Knowsley, for which they are very grateful. Saying the word “leasehold” to any Member of Parliament is likely to begin a long conversation on one of two things: fire safety or service charges. I could have phrased that better: it would be more accurate to say “unsafe homes caused by fire safety defects” and “rip-off service charges by unscrupulous managing agents”.

For many people, the issue of leasehold crystalised after the tragedy of the Grenfell Tower fire and the subsequent purgatory that hundreds of thousands of residents throughout the country found themselves living through as they waited to have their own buildings’ fire safety defects remediated. They are still waiting. It was about much more than cladding and EWS1 forms. Residents who found that their homes had been constructed without internal fire stopping, or with inappropriate materials or inadequate fire doors, were unable to sell their property and move on with their lives because construction companies, project managers, surveyors, developers, freeholders, building control, the National House Building Council and managing agents all sought to pass responsibility among themselves. Nobody wanted to pick up the bill for remediation.

In truth, the debate about a wholesale reform of leasehold goes back much further. In the modern era, it starts almost exactly 50 years before 14 June 2017, with the Leasehold Reform Act 1967, which gave qualifying long leaseholders of houses the statutory right to buy the freehold of their homes. In 1969, a problem arose: the Lands Tribunal ruling in Custins v. Hearts of Oak Benefit Society noted that the 1967 Act treated the open market for the reversion of the lease as including marriage value. That is why the Government promptly and rightly reversed that decision with section 82 of the Housing Act 1969. They did not wish to artificially increase the cost for people wishing to buy the freehold of their own home.

To see the injustice of marriage value, one need only to consider the price difference on the open market between a leasehold flat with a 125-year lease and the same flat with a share of freehold. The difference is nil, yet the first is on a yo-yo tender, whereby an owner, such as the Duke of Westminster, sells for the full market value, only to receive the entire property back at the end of the lease, allowing him to sell it all over again or, more often, to receive a large payment to extend the lease when the reduction in the term risks being so short that no lender will advance a mortgage on it and the property becomes unsaleable by the leaseholder, who sees the value of their asset diminishing to zero.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for introducing this debate. May I, through him, point out that it is not just the traditional landlords, but some great charities? Wellcome went to the first-tier tribunal to get a judgment, but that decision should have been made by Parliament, not highly expensive lawyers arguing in court, given that it risked a knock-on effect on every other residential leaseholder who wants to extend their lease.

[Barry Gardiner]

I am most grateful to the Father of the House, who is also co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on leasehold and commonhold reform, for his knowledge, his campaigning over many years and his intervention.

In the Housing Act 1974, which still related only to houses, and the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993, which gave leaseholders the right, if more than 50% of them wished to, to purchase the freehold interest in their block, the concept of marriage value was sadly reintroduced. Marriage value has been at the heart of many of leaseholders’ problems for more than half a century, simply because the freehold title of the property is worth more to them than to anyone else by virtue of the fact that they live in it. The law allows the freeholder to benefit from that asymmetry and impose considerable extra costs on any leaseholder who wishes to purchase or extend the lease on their home. When the Government come to legislate for leasehold reform—they have promised to do so and I look forward to that—I trust that they will understand that it is that fundamental injustice that has kept leaseholders prisoner to the vagaries of their freeholder and, often, the outrageous services charges imposed by their managing agents.

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing such a vital debate. Here we are again. The National Leasehold Campaign—

[Sir George Howarth (in the Chair)]

Order. The Division bell has gone. If the hon. Member finishes his intervention, he might get a response when we come back, but he should be brief.

[Mike Amesbury]

Isn’t it time to abolish, rather than polish, the leasehold system?

[Sir George Howarth (in the Chair)]

Order. The sitting is suspended. If there is one Division, we will suspend for 15 minutes; if there are two, it will be 25 minutes.

16:36

Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.

16:46

On resuming—

[Sir George Howarth (in the Chair)]

Order. I think most people have now returned, so we can restart if people are ready to do so. Barry Gardiner was about to deal with an intervention from Mike Amesbury.

[Barry Gardiner]

Indeed, Sir George. My hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) is no stranger to witty epithets, and his suggestion that we should stop polishing and start abolishing was absolutely right.

Before I turn to some egregious instances of service charges and call out by name some of the managing agents that have played fast and loose with the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, which provides that service charges must be “reasonable” and that services and works must be carried out to “a reasonable standard”, I wish to acknowledge some of the individuals who have championed the cause of leasehold reform over many years.

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

Does the hon. Member agree that part of the problem is that rogue agents and freeholders believe they can act with impunity, and that it is incumbent on us to ensure that the regulations are in place to hold them to account and penalise them when they behave in an immoral way? They include Block Management, an agent in Ipswich, and Railpen, which is a freeholder that has behaved in a gross fashion and let down in a most egregious way almost 100 of my constituents.

[Barry Gardiner]

I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman has managed to get those condemnations on the record. I am sure that his constituents will be most grateful, as I am, for his doing so. He is right. The trouble is that the law is there: it is the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, which makes it clear that unreasonable charges should not be levied, and that services and works have to be done to “a reasonable standard”. It is all there in statute; the trouble is that it is not enforced and that the mechanism for enforcement has gone awry, as I will come on to.

I already paid tribute to the Father of the House, whose long-standing campaign on this issue is an inspiration to us all. He co-chairs the all-party parliamentary group with my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), who has also done so much on this issue. Not with us at the moment is my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), the Chair of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee, who has done a huge amount over the years.

It is about not just those in this House; outside of the House there are many more. I pay special tribute to Charlotte Martin, who founded, with Nigel Wilkins, who is sadly no longer with us, the campaign against residential leaseholds, and who did so much, with Neil Mulcock, to usher in the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002.

[Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con)]

While the hon. Gentleman has a glass of water, I want to ask whether he agrees with the comments that my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt) made about Railpen and the terrible impact it is having on leaseholders’ mental health up and down the country, including in the constituency of Stevenage. There have also been issues with the building that started the original campaign, as highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith).

[Barry Gardiner]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. He highlights something that is really important to us all: the mental health problems that this issue causes. It is not just a financial issue; it has both physical and mental health implications.

There was one more person to whom I was going to pay tribute. If I left her out, I would be in deep trouble, because it is my own head of office, Jackie George, who keeps a database of more than 7,000 leaseholders in my constituency and who keeps in touch with them regularly.

In 2017, the then Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid), committed the Government to act on leasehold abuses. Specifically, he committed them to legislate to prohibit the creation of new residential long leases on newly built or existing freehold houses, other than in exceptional circumstances; to restrict ground rents in newly established leases of houses and flats to a peppercorn; to address loopholes in order to improve transparency and fairness for leaseholders and freeholders; and to work with the Law Commission to support existing leaseholders. The Government said that would include making buying a freehold or extending a lease

“easier, faster, fairer and cheaper”.

In April 2018, the Government announced that managing agents in the sector would be subject to regulation by an independent body and that a code of practice would set out minimum standards for key areas of activity, including service charges. In October 2019, the then Minister for Housing, the right hon. Member for Tatton (Esther McVey), confirmed in a written statement the Government’s intention to take forward those measures. In 2020, the Law Commission published its report and recommendations.

It is not good enough to say that the Government have been busy with other priorities. Since 2017, we have had seven Secretaries of State and nine Housing Ministers, yet leaseholders are still being ripped off.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I hope to give the hon. Gentleman a chance to clear the frog in his throat, and I congratulate him on securing the debate. Does he agree that the current arrangements, whereby there is no limit on the amount paid in service charges, insurance, ground rent and forfeiture charges, have left leaseholders at the mercy of the unscrupulous? Although we must allow the free market to prevail, that does not preclude the House and the Minister introducing and implementing fit-for-purpose regulation to protect the average leaseholder, who wants a fair bill for a fair service. That is not too much to ask for.

[Barry Gardiner]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Leaseholders are not asking for special favours; they simply want equity and justice.

The Government’s survey reported that more than 70% of leaseholders regretted buying a leasehold property. In London, and in my constituency of Brent North, the leasehold model accounts for more than 90% of properties sold. I do not believe that my constituents should have to wait a moment longer for basic rights over their own homes, the right to manage, and the right not to be subjected to unreasonable and sometimes fabricated service charges and then bullied into submission by managing agents who threaten legal proceedings and, ultimately, forfeiture.

For my constituents and millions like them throughout the country, the delay is imposing financial penury and severe impacts on their mental and physical health, as the right hon. Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) said. The impacts include those on the residents of Williams Way in my constituency of Brent North, from where one resident wrote to me saying:

“My wife cried last night when I shared a few things about all of this. Management fees have increased: £5,600 in 2020 to £8,400 in 2022—I cannot afford to pay this significant increase. That is a 50% increase. Water storage has increased from £564 in 2020 to £1068—an 89% increase. The insurance premium charged at £5,820.76 in 2021 increased to £20,726.23 in 2022—a staggering 256% increase. A detailed explanation has not been provided.”

Hallmark Premier Estates is the managing agent there, but it is not providing a premier service—just as it is failing to do in Parkside Place in Barham village, where the insurance premium, which was £22,738 in 2021, has risen 108% to £47,415. No wonder I was told yesterday that the landlord would be replacing Hallmark as the managing agents for “unspecified reasons”.

One leaseholder in Lawns Court said:

“I have lived in my flat for 39 years, but I find I can no longer struggle to keep it - the service charges for my one-bedroom flat have risen from £1600 per annum to over £5000 per annum. That is a 212% increase.”

The managing agents there are Aldermartin, Baines & Cuthbert.

At the Living City development in Colindale in my constituency, leaseholders were advised in March last year that after the constant failure of the communal hot water supply to the building over three successive winters, they would receive a rebate on their service charge, only for that offer to be countermanded in October last year. Residents noted that their insurance cover appeared to be paying for associated commercial units, and found that the premium had been increased by 100%. Lift maintenance is also charged, conveniently, on a day rate rather than a job rate: the lift fails, and a day rate is charged to fix it. Strangely, it fails again the following day, and another day rate is charged to fix it again—and so on, day after day, until astronomical charges have been incurred, with the managing agents able to take a management fee every time, of course.

I have written to all these managing agents, challenging them to justify their service charges and other fees, and to none have I been writing longer than Freshwater and its associated companies—at the last count more than 150 linked under the same beneficial ownership. It is because of Freshwater that in 1999 I launched my original campaign for what became the 2002 Act. One of its leaseholders wrote to me from Barons Court in my constituency, saying:

“Dear Barry, every double bed apartment now costs £6000 up from £2600 per year a 130% increase in service charge and we had to pay for the Waking Watch. The management company will not tell us how much commission they receive from the insurance premiums. We arranged our own fire tests and paid for critical remediation work.”

The name of the company FirstPort is well known to many Members. Since 2013, my constituents in Chamberlayne Walk have been challenging unreasonable service charges by FirstPort management services. I say unreasonable but, in fact, the word “fraudulent” is closer to the truth: it even charged for the management of surrounding land that it did not own and was not its to manage. One resident wrote to me about a typical example of its practice, saying:

“I was charged £1725.88 for internal and external decorations (painting of the windows). My windows are UPVC - no redecoration was required.”

Another wrote to tell me:

“The back fill of the stack pipe which causes water to come up into my kitchen sink and has flooded my kitchen on many occasions is still an issue after 15 years of reporting it.”

Yet another person explained:

“My flat is a one-bedroom flat, one of the smallest on the estate and I was charged £2861 for redecorations - almost double the costs levied on the larger 2-bedroom flats this matter remains unresolved.”

FirstPort’s response to those and the more than 500 more complaints like them that I have received is to make no response and ignore things for as long as possible—for months and years, not days and weeks. There is a lack of accountability and transparency over what the residents are charged for and whether the costs are reasonably incurred and reasonable in amount. There is a total failure to provide leaseholders with a breakdown of service charges. Many of my constituents can wait more than 20 months for accounts to be finalised.

Even when FirstPort admits that refunds are owed to the leaseholder because of double counting, overcharging or charging for services not provided, the requests for the return of the overpayments are often ignored, or the returns can take many months to be made. FirstPort also charged multiple administration penalty charges of £60 each when someone queried the costs. One resident ended up being billed for more than £400 of admin charges and was then browbeaten into paying because of the threat of legal action.

In 2019, Nigel Howell, the then chief executive, conceded to me that it was unlawful for his company to impose late penalty fees on leaseholders who had disputed their charges—but not all leaseholders have been refunded. Nigel Howell also confirmed to me that his company had charged costs for areas not under FirstPort’s management and promised that a 20% refund would be given in the following year’s accounts. Strangely, Nigel Howell was removed from his post as chief executive.

After years of suffering, one brave, resilient resident finally took FirstPort to the tribunal. FirstPort sought to rely in its defence on two factors: it tried to rely on the payments made by leaseholders—in other words, by paying up they had intimated consent; and, especially ironic given the FirstPort practice of delay, it tried to rely on the length of time the leaseholder had taken in bringing the challenge to the tribunal.

On Friday 13 January, the last working day before the hearing, I received the following email in my office from my constituent at 5 pm:

“They are settling all of the claim. Their lawyers harassed me all week and made the offer on Friday afternoon, just hours before the hearing this Monday. They did not want this case heard as they have been lying to Barry. They owe money to 202 families.”

Of course FirstPort did not want the case heard in public: section 27A(5) of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 states that

“the tenant is not to be taken to have agreed or admitted any matter by reason only of having made any payment.”

Tenants often pay expressly disputed service charges to avoid the risk of forfeiture and preserve their home and the value of their lease.

Of course FirstPort did not want that in the public domain, but it now is, and 200 other families have now been given heart that it is possible to take FirstPort on and beat it. Already, 42 other leaseholders on the estate have signed up to a class action. But the point is that this should not be happening. A code of conduct for managing agents will not do any good. The 1985 Act already provides that service charges must be reasonable and services and works must be carried out to a reasonable standard. The problem is the whole imbalance of power between the leaseholder and the freeholder.

Leasehold tribunals were intended to be a cheap, efficient way of resolving normal disputes between reasonable people without enormous legal costs, but landlords have intimidated leaseholders by engaging vast arrays of lawyers and threatening them with forfeiture and bankruptcy. There is a way to end this misery, but it is not with a new code of practice. Companies do not obey the existing primary legislation; they will not abide by a new code of practice. The way to end this misery is not with the safety regulator. Company law allows companies to avoid their obligations, go into administration while the directors set up new companies and repeat their scams all over again. This misery will end only when we have an end to leasehold. Our country has put up with a feudal system of land tenure for almost 2,000 years. It is time it stopped.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Sir George Howarth (in the Chair)]

Order. I am going to impose a five-minute limit on speeches, in order to get everybody in.

17:05

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner). I agreed with pretty much everything he said. I am delighted to speak in this debate, because the issue is so pertinent to constituents in Warrington South. I am keen to hear from the Minister about progress on the promised reforms to leasehold that we expect to see announced in the King’s Speech.

My noble Friend Lord Greenhalgh, when he was the Minister responsible, made a promising start to the process when he brought in the first stage of leasehold reform, to crack down on exploitative freeholders by removing escalating ground rents. Now it is time to ensure that the next stage of reform delivers for those who are currently trapped in the leasehold system.

The north-west has one of the highest proportion of leasehold dwellings in the country, next to London. The most recent statistics for 2019-20 put the proportion at around 31%—the highest region outside of London. Throughout my time as the Member of Parliament for Warrington South, residents have raised issues regarding leasehold time and again. There are issues in Chapelford, Edgewater Park, Chaise Meadow—I could list endless developments in Warrington South that have been built over the past 20 years under the leasehold system and where problems have been raised.

Although I of course welcome the Secretary of State’s proposals to address the problems associated with leasehold sales, I say to the Minister that there is a growing worry among many of my constituents that the difficult situations they find themselves in may not be completely addressed by what we have heard so far. The constituents I talk to are concerned about those who have purchased properties in the past 20 years or so and are stuck with problems of ever-increasing service charges, although they receive very little for those charges, as the hon. Member for Brent North said.

If anything, the problems are growing and getting worse. That applies in particular to those who purchase leasehold houses rather than flats. Colleagues may recall that I raised this issue in a speech in the Christmas Adjournment debate, with particular regard to Steinbeck Grange in my constituency. I pay tribute to Mike Carroll, one of the residents who lives there, who was the first constituent to contact me when I was elected. He has persevered for about 14 years in trying to tackle this problem. He has said that it has affected his life so significantly that he has occasionally had to think hard about how to continue with the fight. He has been browbeaten at every opportunity and has required a tremendous effort to keep going.

Residents not only have to pay fees but run into difficulties when they try to approach the freeholder. They are faced with complicated, protracted processes, in which they cannot even get information about the leaseholds for their homes without having to spend money. If those constituents are trapped in leasehold, it makes selling those properties incredibly difficult. A number of solicitors have approached me in Warrington to say that they had been asked to act for people buying the properties and had advised them not to. Developers had then recommended solicitors who disappeared overnight, so that the process could go through. That strikes me as a real scandal.

The Competition and Markets Authority looked at this situation for two years and did not really conclude anything. I say to the Minister that that was a missed opportunity for a deep dive into what is going on, not just with developers but with freeholders. Will he ensure that the proposals that the Department brings forward in the next Session address these problems? It is vital that people wanting to get out of leasehold can do so without facing extortionate fees that either leave them trapped in leasehold indefinitely or result in their being short-changed when they leave the system.

That legislation is desperately needed. I want to see a solution, my constituents want to see a solution, and I sincerely hope that the Department will take heed of that when they present their leasehold reforms in the King’s Speech.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Sir George Howarth (in the Chair)]

Order. I am going to have to start calling the Front Benchers at 5.23 pm, so I will reduce the speaking limit to three minutes.

17:10

[Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir George. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) for securing this important debate. In my three years as a Member, I have had to speak on this issue so many times—I have joined long-standing Members in the queue of MPs talking about it—so this almost feels like déjà vu. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter), who outlined many of the issues we are seeing up and down the country.

I will focus on the role of managing agents in the building safety crisis, which has impacted so many of my constituents in Vauxhall since the Grenfell tragedy—and, six years later, it is still happening. Just yesterday, I held an online surgery with a group of leaseholders whose managing agent has raised their annual service charge from £1,000 a year to over £30,000 a year. When I saw the email come into my inbox, I replied straightaway, because I could not believe those figures. That staggering increase was justified by fire safety problems but the agent will not even disclose the details of the defects to the leaseholders. I ask Members to pause for a second and think about what it would be like to receive such an email. Imagine the stress of being charged a thirtyfold increase in the middle of this cost of living crisis without any proper explanation.

The sad reality is that that case is not even rare. Since becoming an MP three years ago, I have had many constituents come to me in desperation because their managing agents are refusing to share the basic information about their building—somewhere they call home and have to sleep every night. The issue has been exposed by the cladding scandal. Agents were commissioning EWS1 inspections on behalf of freeholders, leaving leaseholders unable to sell their flats and liable for thousands of pounds of fire safety problems that they did not cause. Many agents would not even publish those reports.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

In my constituency of Twickenham, we do not have many high-rise blocks of flats, but we have quite a lot of low-rise blocks. I have had two cases come to me relating to two different blocks of flats in Twickenham, in which managing agents have wrongly commissioned fire safety assessments for buildings under 18 metres. In one case, the report has been shown to be flawed. The residents cannot sell their homes; they are trapped. In the other block, residents are potentially being charged up to £800,000 for remedial works that are not needed.

[Sir George Howarth (in the Chair)]

Order. Interventions should be brief, particularly given the time pressure.

[Florence Eshalomi]

I thank the hon. Lady for making that important point. That is the real insult that leaseholders face up and down the country: being forced to pay for the management of a block, even if the agent is not providing a worthwhile service. It is a slap in the face.

The sums we are talking about are not cheap; most end up being hundreds of pounds every year for leaseholders. We have to be clear that not all managing agents are like this; some are professional and diligent, and a number of them do a lot of great work. But the fundamental problem is that, whether agents are good or bad, leaseholders have no power to hold them to account. They do not even have a proper regulatory body that they can appeal to to enforce standards. Current arrangements leave leaseholders on the hook for almost everything, without having a say in how their building is managed.

The root of the conflicting motivations at the heart of this issue is the managing agents’ role. The problem is that, ultimately, they are not employed by the people who are paying—the leaseholders. We need freeholders to be accountable, and we need to ensure that they take responsibility.

I will leave my remarks there, but I hope that the Minister will hear the pleas from Members this afternoon. Instead of giving us warm words and telling us that he has heard us, he needs to outline a concrete plan for what he and the Department are going to do to empower leaseholders in a system where managing agents can be properly held to account, and we need a clear timescale for that work. My constituents in Vauxhall and leaseholders up and down the country cannot afford to wait any longer.

17:14

[Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate, and I am grateful to the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) for securing it.

We have spoken about leaseholders in this House for a number of years now, and one of the things that I always try to get across is that leaseholders are mentally, physically and financially broken. We talk about stuff in these debates, but they have lived it. I remember that during covid, when everybody was being told to stay at home, these leaseholders were being told to stay at home—and to keep their children at home—in buildings, flats and apartments that they had been told were unsafe and could burn down at any moment. When everybody else was being told to stay home in order to stay safe, they were being told that the safest thing for them to do was to get out. These people have been completely through the mill.

We have secured huge concessions from the Government, with over £10 billion in the Building Safety Act 2022. We have been back and forth, and I am delighted that the campaign led by many people in the Chamber, and by my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith), was successful in persuading the current Secretary of State to work with us to help to support these leaseholders. But what frustrates me is that, some years on, there are tenants still trapped in buildings such as Vista Tower in Stevenage, where the freeholder is Railpen. We know what is wrong with the building, and the Government have the money there to help to fix it. Why has it not been fixed? What is the delay? The building is there, and we know that—allegedly—it needs these works for it to be safe. The freeholder and the management agents need to work with the tenants to get the work done, but there are just delays. Leaseholders up and down the country are still trapped.

There is this weird combination of management agents, freeholders and leaseholders. We are talking about leasehold reform. My understanding was that, under the Building Safety Act, the freeholder was the backstop if nobody else was going to be responsible. If we are going to abolish freehold, we cannot be in a position whereby freeholders and management agents can just wait out all the current leaseholders, so that they then become responsible for all these bills in the future. We need to ensure, when we talk about leasehold reform, that leaseholders are at the heart of it. Leasehold reform should be for leaseholders, not to try to tidy up some property laws, or for freeholders, management agents or vested interests.

I would love to meet the Minister and officials to talk about how we can get the buildings that are out there at the moment made safe, so that leaseholders can all feel as though the jobs are being done.

17:17

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair today, Sir George.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) for introducing the debate and setting out clearly why leaseholders are at the mercy of freehold managing agents who—unsurprisingly—put the interests of the freeholder above all else, from ignoring building defects to rinsing the leaseholders through service charges. That can be done through the padding of bills, the use of preferred contractors, commissions and organising buildings insurance.

I can recall one example in my constituency where the insurance company for a block of flats just happened to operate from the same address as the managing agents and the freeholder. Under what other contract would someone be expected to pay all the costs but not actually be able to see the terms of the contract? Yet that is what we see with these insurance deals. Thankfully, that is being investigated by the Financial Conduct Authority. This may well provide us with yet another payment protection insurance-style scandal.

This is another outrageous example of the way that the dice are loaded against leaseholders, and the fact that anyone can set up as a property manager in this unregulated sector is unacceptable. Although leaseholders have the option, of course, of going to court to dispute charges, they will never get their legal costs back, even if they are successful. There could be the most egregious charges, and they could be thrown out of court as totally unreasonable, but it is still the leaseholder who ends up paying the bill for that legal action.

I also think that estate management companies on new-build estates, whether they are leasehold or not, need to be tackled, because the opportunities to inflate charges exist there almost as much as they do in a block of flats. Much as with leasehold itself, I do not accept that these arrangements are needed at all. The fact that developers choose not to pay a sum to the local authority for the financial commitment that is needed to maintain communal areas, instead saving themselves money by passing on the charge to homeowners, is another example of the rapacious nature of many in this sector. Not only do they make a saving at the start of the development, but they create an additional income stream by charging for communal services.

This situation will not end well. Sooner or later, residents who pay for the same service twice—once through their council tax and once through their service charge—will demand an end to this double-charging. However, as with leasehold, the guilty parties will have long since left town. These residents have even fewer rights than those in leasehold properties, but the central issue is the same: a system that puts power in the hands of those who have no business being involved with these people’s homes at all.

Finally, on leasehold more generally, the linking of ground rents to the retail price index is becoming a real issue, with inflation so high. It even makes some of the outrageous ground rent doubling clauses seem reasonable in comparison, and it is putting people in real hardship.

It is five years since we were promised that this feudal system of ownership would be ended, yet millions of people are still trapped in leasehold. We repeat our plea yet again—I am sure the Minister will hear this time and again today—for the Government to please get on and deliver the work of the Law Commission so that we can say goodbye to leasehold once and for all.

17:20

[Apsana Begum (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

In the interest of time, I will keep my remarks short and go straight into an example.

In the first quarter of 2022, one of my constituents paid just under a whopping £1,000 in electricity bills for a one-bedroom flat. She is obviously extremely concerned about how she will afford her bills when the energy price cap rises again in April. The electricity account is held by the freeholder of the building, which is a private company, and it is a commercial account. My constituent, who is a leaseholder, wishes to change her account type—indeed, she says that the majority of the units are residential anyway—but she is facing difficulties.

In particular, the energy provider has said it cannot have direct relationships with the leaseholders unless individual meters are installed. The managing agent has confirmed that the cost of installing individual meters would be passed on to the leaseholders and would be around £1,000 or £2,000. However, building-wide energy efficiency improvements are generally understood to be the freeholder’s responsibility. As a leaseholder, my constituent can make some energy efficiency improvements to her home, but at the very least she needs permission from the freeholder for major works.

Again, the leaseholder is trapped in this bureaucratic quagmire between an opaque rock and an even more oppressive hard place, thwarted by complex buck-passing that ends up with them being financially liable or financially disadvantaged, without rights or agency. That is because, essentially, a residential building of leaseholders is run almost entirely at the landlord’s discretion. I understand that leaseholders can dispute decisions and costs, which can amount to millions of pounds, but they will never get their legal costs paid, even if they are successful. On the other hand, the landlord almost always gets their legal costs paid as administrative charges under the lease. I repeat that the system does not work for residents.

Appointed managing agents have failed significantly, over and over again, to point out building defects in new blocks of flats. The truth is that there is a clear commercial incentive for building defects not to be highlighted. Indeed, if one were cynical, one might believe that a prime task of a developer-appointed manager is to ensure that the defects of a building are not revealed within the timescale of the warranty, after which date the cost can be placed on leaseholders’ shoulders.

In my constituency of Poplar and Limehouse, people view the Westferry Printworks debacle and the history of controversy as illustrating systemic priorities that lie in serving billionaires rather than the interests of local people. I appeal to the Government to put local people in need at the heart of their planning and housing agenda, and once and for all to end the scandal of leasehold for millions who have bought their home but do not feel like they own it.

17:23

[Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir George. I start by declaring an interest: my wife is the joint chief executive of the Law Commission, whose work I intend to cite in my remarks.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) on securing this really important debate. He has a long-standing interest in the matter and, in opening the debate, he made a powerful case both for regulating managing agents and reforming the leasehold system. I also thank the hon. Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter), the right hon. Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) and my hon. Friends the Members for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) and for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum) for their excellent contributions. Above all else, they served as a valuable reminder of the scale and scope of the problem that we are considering this afternoon.

There are, of course, good managing agents who work hard to ensure that the residents they are responsible for are safe and secure and their homes properly looked after. However, the case for doing more to protect leaseholders from poor service and, indeed, exploitation at the hands of unscrupulous managing agents is as watertight as they come. We have heard numerous specific examples in this short debate of the kind of abuses that leaseholders across the country are routinely subject to by their managing agents. It is clear that relying on incremental improvement and the sharing of best practice to improve matters is simply not good enough. Government action to address those practices and improve the lives of leaseholders is necessary and long overdue.

The Government clearly recognise that there is a case for properly regulating managing agents, along with other property agents. As my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North mentioned, in 2018 the Government tasked a working group, chaired by the noble Lord Best, with bringing forward detailed recommendations on how a new regulatory framework should operate. The working group’s final report, which made a series of proportionate and sensible recommendations, was published in July 2019, yet in the intervening 43 months the Government have seemingly done nothing to implement the recommendations.

The Government’s failure to act on the recommendations has had very real consequences. The burdens that homeowners have long laboured under because of the dysfunction of the property agent market and the inherent flaws of the leasehold system have become more acute over recent years as a result of the building safety crisis and surging inflation, the combination of which has pushed many already hard-pressed leaseholders to the brink of financial ruin.

Time is short, and I will finish by touching on the issue of leasehold reform, because the deficiencies of the leasehold tenure are often the root cause of the abuse and poor service that so many homeowners experience at the hands of their managing agents. Although we may wish ultimately to go further than the Government in important respects, Labour is committed to fundamentally reforming the leasehold system, and we will support in principle any legislation that comes forward to that end. Significant reform is therefore dependent only on whether and when the Government will finally publish the second part of their legislative agenda in this area. Despite being announced two years ago, there is still no sign of a Bill.

I would therefore be grateful if the Minister could provide answers to the following questions. Will the promised second leasehold reform Bill definitely be in the King’s Speech later this year? Will the Government make available the necessary time to ensure that it receives Royal Assent before the end of the Parliament? Will the Bill include all the recommendations made by the Law Commission in its three residential leasehold and commonhold reports of 2020? Will the Government commit to ensuring that the Bill receives prelegislative scrutiny by the Select Committee, so that we get this important legislation right? I hope that the Minister can answer yes to each of those simple and straightforward questions and give concerned leaseholders watching the debate the reassurance they so desperately seek.

17:27

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Lee Rowley)]

Thank you for the opportunity to talk about this hugely important topic today, Sir George. I congratulate the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) on securing the debate. We have covered a significant amount of ground. I am not sure that I can do justice to the issue in the seven or eight minutes that I have if I am to allow the hon. Member a few moments to comment at the end, but I will try to cover as much as I can.

I am grateful to all hon. Members who have contributed. As hon. Members will know, there is a significant overlap between the people who are in the Chamber today and those who have stood up for their constituents and taken their concerns to the Department over the last few months. As hon. Members will know, we have been in correspondence on a number of occasions, and I am grateful to them for highlighting issues, particularly in my part of the portfolio, around building safety, in the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. I am grateful for their time and the efforts that they go to on behalf of their constituents in both those areas.

We have discussed two broad areas today. One is the broader situation with regard to leasehold and the reforms that are coming in, and the other is the more specific question of building safety. I will try to take those in two buckets, if I may, then talk about some of the specific points that hon. Members have raised. As numerous hon. Members have highlighted, we made a series of commitments from 2018 onwards on leasehold in general. Reform in this area is necessary, is important and needs to happen. That covers a number of things raised by the hon. Member for Brent North, and other matters.

As my predecessor, the noble Lord Greenhalgh, indicated, the Government have committed to abolishing marriage value at the earliest possible opportunity. On service charge transparency, the Secretary of State has highlighted the fact that we are absolutely committed to providing more information, for exactly that reasons that the hon. Members for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum) and for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) indicated: the importance of transparency in those discussions, so that people know what they are paying for when they are given bills and charges.

I have heard the comments about managing agents. We recognise that, as in all systems, particularly ones where there are multiple individuals and entities involved, there are people who are exemplars and who do things well, there are people who do things less well, and there are people who do things badly. It is important that we call out bad practice and we take the opportunities where we can and where it is proportionate and reasonable to do so, both now and in the future, to be able to reduce the propensity for bad practice. I know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities will make that clear when we bring forward more information about our proposed leasehold reforms in due course.

In answer to the questions raised by the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook), while I cannot anticipate what will be in the package, we are committed to bringing forward those reforms. We have said that we want to undertake reform in this Parliament. There is still time to do that and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will provide more information in due course, when he is able to do so.

[Andy Carter]

This is a brief intervention. I have invited many of my hon. Friend’s predecessors to Warrington South. None have made it, because they have not been in position for long enough to get there. May I extend an invitation to him to come and meet some of the leaseholders who are facing problems in Warrington South, so that he can hear directly from them before the final piece of legislation is put forward?

[Lee Rowley]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his kind invitation to the north-west. I will speak to the Housing Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean), who has been in post for a couple of weeks, because she is taking forward these specific points on leasehold and I want to ensure the right conversations are had with the right people.

I will respond to a few points on building safety, for which I am responsible in the Department; I am happy and keen to hear more about the issues that have been raised. Important points about significant increases in insurance were made, which we recognise and understand. The Association of British Insurers was asked to look at the issue a number of months ago and find a solution. I meet the Association on a regular basis—I did so most recently at the end of last week—and I will continue to do so. We hope that it will be able to bring forward a scheme on insurance in the coming months.

There was reference to lending. I hope hon. Members are starting to see a change with regard to building safety. I met all six big lenders before Christmas and we have come to an agreement with them through UK Finance. The market should now start to become more functional and successful again. I am receiving data from each of the banks on a regular basis—indeed, just a couple of days ago, I looked at the data I received from Santander and Barclays—in order to understand what is going on and how we can separate out, as much as we are able, the challenges that are known, understood and need to be remediated over a number of years, so that people can live their lives and get on with making choices about where and how they want to live. I welcome views from hon. Members in the months ahead about whether they have seen those changes.

I am conscious that I need to conclude in about two minutes. On building safety, my right hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) has been a stalwart; I give him huge credit for making progress on the issue with colleagues across the House, irrespective of their party. He made a vital point about lived experience; people have seen this, lived it and breathed it for many years. As the responsible Minister, I have tried to make visits. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt), who is no longer in his place, indicated, I visited Cardinal Lofts and spoke to residents. I went to Wicker Riverside in Sheffield within a few weeks of becoming Minister, talking to leaseholders and people who were at the forefront; I appreciate the challenge and difficulty they face. That is reason why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is keen that we make progress. From the work we are doing on Vista Tower, my right hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage will know how important it is for us to call out bad behaviour and for us to make progress.

Finally, the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi) raised a case where charges have increased exponentially. Without knowing any of the detail, I would be very happy to receive additional information on that. I would be very happy, in principle, to come and visit, or to speak to those leaseholders. It is important, as a Minister, and for the Department, that we look at the macro level, at the changes and how that is occurring, and check that it is working in individual areas, so I would be very happy to see more information on that.

To conclude, these are hugely important issues that affect people’s lives, so I absolutely appreciate the points that have been made regarding both leaseholds and the reforms needed in general. I understand the urgency, and I hope that we can say something more corporately on that soon, particularly on building safety. We need to make progress on remediation, on top of the good progress that we have already made, but there is a long way to go. While I am in post, I am committed to trying to make as much progress as possible so that the people who are affected can get on with living their lives again, as we all want them to.

17:35

[Barry Gardiner]

I am very grateful to all hon. and right hon. Members who have spoken in this debate. It is clear that there is a compelling case for wholesale reform in this area. The hon. Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter) has done himself no harm in Steinbeck Grange today, I am quite sure, but the point that he made is one that we all share. It was ably made by the right hon. Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) as well. He said that that resident had said that he had to reassess his life.

For so many people, that is what is happening. Millions of people in this country are having to reassess their lives and the possibilities that they thought were open to them—even on changing jobs—trapped in their own homes, unable to sell, unable to move to a new job, or trapped in a one-bedroom home, unable to have any more children. Their plans are on hold. Their lives are on hold.

It is really interesting to hear the case that my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi) made about a 3,000% increase in service charges. I am glad that the Minister has agreed to take up that case and look into it further, because it is astonishing.

There are two key points that I want to follow up. The first is the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), who talked about the scandal of managing agents often being at the centre of a web of companies all linked to the same beneficial owners.

In Wembley Central Apartments in my constituency—I am not sure that I will get this entirely right—St Modwens and Sowcrest were the joint developers. Sowcrest sold to a Canadian company, which then sold to Wembley Central Ltd, which is established in Jersey. They claim that it is for them to do the remediation work on the building, yet Sowcrest was the original freeholder and the developer itself. Those are the sorts of entangled webs that we are dealing with here.

With that, I look to the Minister to do all that he can in government to bring forward the legislation. I hope that it conforms to the four points—the four challenges—that my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook), speaking from our Front Bench, mentioned. We all look forward, ultimately, to seeing an end to this appalling practice.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered leaseholders and managing agents.

17:37

Sitting adjourned.