Grand Committee
Supported Housing
(1 year, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the case for providing more supported housing, given its impact on homelessness prevention, health and well-being.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)
My Lords, I have no interests to declare as I recently stepped down as chair of the National Housing Federation. In that role, I was fortunate to visit a large number of supported housing providers and was incredibly impressed by their work. The tragedy is that there is not enough of it. When I think of what can be achieved for those who benefit from supported housing and the savings to the public purse, it is heartbreaking that we do not do more.
A definition might be helpful. Supported housing is accommodation provided alongside support and supervision to help people live as independently as possible in the community. It might be a shared house for people with learning disabilities, a hostel for people who have experienced homelessness or specialist housing for people transitioning out of psychiatric care. Housing associations are the main providers, with more than 400,000 of these homes.
I feel so passionate about this because I have seen that good-quality, suitable supported housing can have significant positive—indeed, life-changing—outcomes for the people it supports. Research has shown that it also plays a key role in relieving pressures on the NHS and social care, criminal justice and housing systems, saving the public purse around £940 per resident per year. I will say a bit more about this, look at some of the challenges facing this service and highlight some potential solutions that I hope the Minister can respond to.
Earlier this month, research was published by Imogen Blood & Associates in partnership with the Centre for Housing Policy at the University of York. It was commissioned by the National Housing Federation and a number of housing associations to understand better the ways in which supported housing supports and interacts with the NHS, social care, the justice system and other public services and its impact on homelessness, health and well-being. Significantly, the research found that good-quality supported housing is shown to aid its residents in building healthy relationships, higher esteem and independence and in developing a greater sense of agency over their lives. It shines a light on how supported housing relieves pressures on the social care, health, criminal justice and housing sectors, ultimately lessening demands on the public purse.
The complexity of need of those living in supported housing is striking. It offers a more person-centred package that can offer greater safety or security than mainstream housing, because multiple needs can most effectively be met as part of a combined housing and support package. The report’s survey of service users found clear evidence to back up this approach; 84% of respondents who had at least five identified needs had made some progress during their stay in supported housing.
The impact of supported housing on homelessness prevention cannot be overlooked. Short-term and transitional supported housing plays a key role in reducing and preventing high-risk forms of homelessness. In 2019-20, housing associations housed more than 57,000 former homeless households, nearly 35,000 of which had been found to be statutorily homeless. Of course, as people benefit, they can move on to independent tenancies, but often that is not possible and they have to stay longer than necessary because there is no affordable and suitable housing. In her response, I hope the Minister will say something about this wider problem facing the country.
The research is also clear that supported housing makes a substantial contribution in helping residents to access primary care and specialist treatment and diagnosis from partner services to maintain their health and well-being. One in four residents across all types of schemes has a physical or sensory disability or a limiting long-term health condition. Effective partnership working with the NHS and social services is therefore critical. Supported housing enables hard-to-reach individuals to access timely preventive healthcare, reducing avoidable emergencies and admissions.
This point was amply demonstrated by the Adult Social Care Committee in its recent report on the state of the adult social care system in England. It called for
“a fundamental rethinking of how we understand, approach and design social care”,
including
“the solutions offered by accessible and inclusive housing”.
I am a member of the committee, so excellently chaired by my noble friend Lady Andrews. Our report sets out what we think needs to change to make this possible—
“to enable every citizen to live a ‘gloriously ordinary life’, regardless of their age or disability.”
Indeed, it is being debated today in the Chamber as we speak. I hope we will have the Government’s response soon.
It will be obvious by now that there are challenges. Despite its significant benefits to the NHS, social care, criminal justice, and housing systems, supported housing is hindered by a lack of government investment and focus. Supported housing in the social rented sector operates on very tight margins and inflationary pressures are pushing up the cost of all aspects of managing schemes.
One of the biggest challenges facing supported housing has been the reduction in funding over time. This is amplified by cuts right across the public sector, especially for local authorities. Inevitably, rationing has followed, with social care resources concentrated on the highest-need individuals. A procurement-driven, contractual relationship between local authorities and the supported housing sector has led to a lack of long-term security for providers. In the absence of a national strategy and a secure funding stream, a shift towards localism has led to a fragmented approach. As local authority spending on housing-related support has reduced over the past decade, there has been an increase in non-commissioned provision. Profit-seeking landlords have been able to exploit this part of the market by providing dangerously inadequate housing and support services for vulnerable people.
The noble Lord, Lord Best, who I am delighted has chosen to speak in this debate, will bring forward the Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Bill for its Second Reading after the Easter Recess. I strongly support this legislation’s intention to drive rogue landlords out of the supported housing market. However, alongside improved regulation must also come greater security of funding for good providers so that rogue operators cannot exploit this unmet housing need.
I will conclude by touching on some of the potential solutions to the challenges facing supported housing. In their 2021 White Paper, People at the Heart of Care, the Government made a welcome commitment to make
“every decision about care a decision about housing.”
To turn this commitment into a reality, supported housing must play a critical and enhanced role. First, this could be achieved through substantial investment in social housing to improve the short-term supported housing sector’s ability to move people into suitable independent tenancies. I would be grateful if the Minister could set out what the Government are doing to deliver this much-needed social housing.
The Government could also ring-fence the long-term revenue funding for housing-related support to ensure that spending matches, at the very least, the £1.6 billion per year allocated in 2010. Revenue funding for support would help local authorities to commission more effective and better-quality supported housing, as rogue landlords are driven out of this market. What assessment has the Minister made of current levels of revenue funding for support and its impact on supported housing providers?
Gathering better data about the profile and needs of people living in support housing would allow providers, local authorities and central government to deliver better policy solutions for vulnerable and marginalised groups. Does the Minister agree that there is a clear need to improve data and information about the supported housing sector?
Finally, the Government could secure a quick win by allocating the £300 million committed in the Department of Health and Social Care’s strategic housing fund, so that supported housing can continue to support the NHS and social care services. Can the Minister tell us if, and when, this will be done?
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Baroness for initiating this debate, which complements the one taking place in the Chamber. We are also grateful to her for raising the concerns of many housing associations and their clients, who come under the broad umbrella of “supported housing”. Many of these groups are vulnerable: they are rough sleepers, refugees, young offenders and those recovering from alcohol and drug issues.
I remember going to visit, nearly 50 years ago, the first women’s refuge in Chiswick, run by the formidable Erin Pizzey. I listened to the problems that confronted her: it was not just that the local residents were not entirely happy about the refuge but that Hounslow council was trying to close the operation. Principally, she had to juggle a range of revenue streams simply to keep the show on the road.
Since then, we have had a whole variety of funding regimes. In the consultative Funding Supported Housing policy statement, the funding regimes were summed up with some beautiful Civil Service-speak:
“Funding for supported housing is complex and comes from a variety of sources, with ‘housing’ costs and ‘support’ costs being met separately.”
I pause there because none of the institutions from which some of the residents have come—young offender institutions, prison or NHS in-patient support for drug addiction—has to grapple with separate funding regimes. Indeed, those running them would be horrified if they had to do what the voluntary sector has to do and run the organisation using a whole range of streams.
In my view, the most successful regime was the supporting people regime, introduced in 2003, with £1.8 billion ring-fenced for local authorities to support people who wanted to live independently. Since then, we have progressively moved away from that regime. In 2009, the ring-fence was removed, despite warnings from the Select Committee down the other end that this would expose “electorally unpopular” groups. Once the ring-fence was removed, the institutions and support organisations had to compete with more electorally popular bids for local authority funds.
We have now arrived at the position that the noble Baroness explained, where exempt housing benefit meets the management costs of these projectsand the top-up for the extra support comes from the local authorities. Both those legs are subject to criticism. As the noble Baroness explained, the top-up has been progressively squeezed, with the pressure on local authorities leaving no support for the one-to-one help that is often needed for these clients and with the exempt housing benefit being exploited, as was explained. The noble Lord, Lord Best, may talk a little more about the less scrupulous providers, who come to the local authority armed with lawyers to argue their case. If care is provided in some of those institutions, it comes out of the universal credit of the person claiming, not out of the other resources.
The basic question for the Minister is: is she satisfied with the current regime and how it is working? If not, is she prepared to look at options for reform? There is some concern, which we heard, that where we are at the moment is not the optimum way of running supported housing.
Lord Best (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, for initiating this debate and I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham. I declare a strong interest in the debate as the sponsor in the Lords of the Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Bill, the Private Member’s Bill from Bob Blackman MP, which has cleared its House of Commons stages and comes to your Lordships’ House with the backing of government next month.
The supported housing story is one of two halves: first, the story of supported housing brilliantly provided for very vulnerable and homeless people by highly effective and sensitive teams from housing associations and charities; and, secondly, the story of the ghastly, so-called “supported” housing, exploited by some unscrupulous private operators. These two extremes require contrasting responses: first, a significant boost to the wonderful work being done by some exemplary non-profit and charitable bodies; and, secondly, some fierce regulation, diligently enforced, to rid the country of appalling private providers abusing the system to make substantial, undeserved profits at the expense of both the taxpayer and people in desperate need of somewhere to live.
The National Housing Federation and the reputable providers have given strong support for weeding out the private operators who have discovered a loophole enabling rents to be paid by housing benefit, often for overcrowded and substandard properties, without regard to the local housing allowance ceilings, by claiming untruthfully to supply proper care and support. One MP in the debate on Bob Blackman’s Bill suggested that returns on this investment are more profitable than dealing drugs. Mostly the activity is not commissioned by the local authority, but councils have been forced to make use of these lettings by a shortage of genuine supported housing. It is clear that a robust regulatory regime is overdue and the forthcoming Bill is intended to put this right.
Nevertheless, I see the danger that much-needed regulatory measures, if handled without sufficient care, could make life more difficult for commendable providers. This comes at a time when we need the proper provision of supported housing to be boosted following loss of funding from the old supporting people grants, to which the noble Lord, Lord Young, referred, and while the freeze on local housing allowances means that the option of normal private renting is increasingly unattainable. The worst possible outcome from new regulation would be to deter action by the bona fide organisations by adding excess cost or bureaucracy. Already there are anxieties that this vital sector has been diminished by cost pressures over recent years and its insecure and inadequate funding means that any deterrent to continuing to provide good supported housing could be disastrous. We absolutely must not throw out the baby with the bathwater.
The forthcoming Bill does not rigidly prescribe the new regulatory system but rather enables this to emerge from consultation with an expert new advisory panel. I hope that this approach will ensure that a licensing regime emerges with national standards that can end the abuses while enabling growth in this Cinderella sector to produce more of the superb supported housing projects that are clearly so badly needed.
The Lord Bishop of Leicester
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for securing this debate and bringing to the Committee’s attention the excellent report by Imogen Blood and the University of York for the National Housing Federation.
I would like to use this opportunity to highlight in particular the work of one organisation in Leicester, with which I have had the privilege of working. I will highlight some of the points made in the aforementioned report and also in Homeful, a report by Professor Jo Richardson of De Montfort University in Leicester.
For several years, One Roof Leicester operated a night shelter, providing emergency accommodation for those who would otherwise be sleeping rough. Indeed, it was credited as running the first interfaith night shelter in the UK; for three months, it rotated between multiple places of worship. It then began to offer supported housing for people experiencing homelessness, and the outcomes have been so positive that it has now moved over fully to that model.
As the Housing First approach suggests, once people have a safe and secure place to call home, they are in a much better position to engage with support services. But to also help residents navigate the complexity of the various different agencies and services that they might need, each One Roof Leicester resident has a key worker who helps them access benefits, housing, employment or training, and health services. Residents are also supported by local volunteers, who offer befriending and practical help. This means that residents feel they have a community where they belong, as a well as a physical home.
All of this makes it possible for residents to get back on their feet and live independently. Between 2020 and 2022, 32 of One Roof’s residents successfully moved into their own accommodation, and 100% of them have been able to maintain their tenancy. Those numbers would be higher if it were not for the shortage of social housing, as the National Housing Federation report highlights. Years-long waits for council-owned properties and the impossibly high cost of privately rented accommodation mean that residents stay with One Roof longer than they need. That, in turn, means that people whose lives could be changed by that one-to-one support have been turned away. Just last Monday, three people looking for a space with One Roof were turned away; it is clear that the need is great.
We are doing what we can in my diocese. I have the honour of chairing the city’s homelessness charter, which brings together agencies, charities and businesses with an interest in ending homelessness so that they can work together more effectively. A couple of our churches in Leicester are also making plans to build or convert accommodation for people who would otherwise be homeless. But there are limits to what the charity, voluntary and faith sector can do without government support.
The Government are in a position to increase the social housing stock with capital investment and by ensuring that new developments dedicate at least 10% of the stock to affordable housing. By creating a ready supply of housing for people to move into from supported accommodation, that sector can achieve transformational outcomes for more and more people. The Government can also make joined-up working par for the course at local level through strategic use of their funding. The disadvantages and challenges that our most vulnerable citizens face rarely sit neatly within disciplinary silos, so it is vital that housing, justice, health and social care work together effectively, ideally following a Housing First approach.
It is fiscally sensible to invest more into social housing and supported accommodation. The Everybody In campaign of 2020 showed the strides that we can take against homelessness when there is the will and resource. Knowing that we can do better for our most vulnerable citizens, it is morally imperative that we do so.
Earl Effingham (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick of Undercliffe, for proposing this debate. I am sure that everyone in this Room would agree that we should do everything in our power to ensure that people living in this country have a roof over their heads as a bare minimum.
The Government are trying to put an end to rough sleeping by the end of this Parliament, and this is a goal we should all be aiming for. One of the key ways we can achieve this goal is with supported housing, which provides crucial help to some of the most vulnerable people in our country. It can have an enormous positive impact on an individual’s quality of life, from their physical and mental health to the way they interact with everyone they encounter on a daily basis. We could actually say that good-quality and suitable supported housing saves lives. If individuals are able to access this, it protects them from rough sleeping and keeps them off the streets. This reduces their chances of ending up in hospital, undertaking criminal activity or using social services, which in turn helps to reduce the pressure on that type of support for others who are also in need.
Achieving such a system which works has multiple positive knock-on effects. Research shows that, every year, around 50,000 people are moved on to live independently from transitional supported housing. Around half of those people will have had a previous history of homelessness. We owe it to them to give them another chance of independence and a helping hand.
Supported housing provides the kinds of additional services that people in need acutely require. It can act as a one-stop shop to greatly help individuals move onwards and upwards with their lives. It links them up with their local GP. It helps them attend health appointments more consistently. It helps them engage professional help, whether for mental or physical conditions, and it helps them apply for benefits. In short, it gives them the kind of support that they desperately need to get their lives back on track and the kind of support they may never have previously experienced due to their circumstances.
Aside from the basic premise of an individual’s right to have a roof over their head, supported housing creates an environment where people can experience joy and fulfilment. How many of us take pleasure in preparing a meal for family and friends, enjoyed around a table where conversation flows and relationships blossom? That is exactly the kind of caring environment people experiencing homelessness should benefit from, and it is one that supported housing can provide.
Once the essentials have been covered, supported housing can help with what for many is the ultimate goal: help with job applications, which will enable them to stand on their own two feet, feel a sense of achievement and be able to live in their own accommodation one day and enjoy a happy and fulfilling life.
The community benefits speak for themselves, but from a financial perspective it also makes sense because of the additional cost it takes away from the state through reduced pressure on services. As we currently experience the cost of living crisis, supported housing plays an even more important role than before in helping people who are struggling and in need of assistance.
If the Government can commit to providing adequate funding for the sector, this will maintain the current level of support and will allow the development of new schemes which are needed to meet growing demand. I hope that, together, we can work to ensure that this hugely important area receives the focus and attention it deserves.
Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl)
My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Earl and I thank my noble friend for her leadership in this debate.
Homelessness is not just about people sleeping rough on the streets. The lack of affordable, quality homes means that families and individuals endure poor-quality, privately managed, often cramped and unsanitary accommodation. For people with physical disabilities, there is often dangerously inadequate and unfit housing which is not sufficiently monitored, causing untold strain on their mental health and physical well-being.
I speak from two perspectives. The first is experience of leadership in a local authority and managing a housing association which provides an excellent quality of accommodation. The other is recently supporting a vulnerable adult on a journey through the maze of supported living.
If the system works well and a person is discharged into good-quality provision, it can be transformative, as noble Lords with far more expertise than I have said, with life-changing outcomes, an impact on individuals’ health and well-being and a reconnection to social interaction in the community—even a transition to independence.
While those are ideals, it is not the experience of many whom I have come across during the past 18 months, whether the supported accommodation is run by an independent residential care home or by a private landlord contracted to a local authority with a portfolio of housing that is often poorly, and sometimes wholly dangerously, adapted and managed. Frankly, I do not know how such accommodation has passed the inspection standards to meet the statutory duty of care.
Many individuals are stuck with desperate needs, with local health and social services simply overwhelmed because of a lack of funding, social workers, occupational therapists and other professionals, without whom many remain unnecessarily in extremely costly residential care homes. For example, lack of co-ordination between services in Medway meant that an individual who had recently had an amputation, and following positive rehabilitation in London, was placed back in Medway in costly yet wholly unfit accommodation where he was not able to properly access the toilet or shower facilities for three months, scraping his hands every time he tried to access his bedroom when leaving his kitchen or toilet.
This young man experienced 17 falls in three months trying to access the toilet over a very unsatisfactory ramp and without the promised level of local authority support, which the local authority was supposed to be paying for. As a result, he ended up in hospital for a further six months. Harrowingly, he then went back to a residential home for another very expensive batch of rehabilitation. It is a vicious circle: a process in which an individual in desperate need is not able to effect or influence change.
Due to a reduction in funding packages for supported housing, many residents are transitioning directly from a residential home or hospital into somewhere not fit for human habitation, let alone for people with complex physical needs, where local authorities are constrained with funds and have to work within the boundaries of the housing benefit cap.
I ask the Minister what consideration has been given to people accessing the good-quality homes that are often lying empty in an area when the same authorities are forced to pay thousands to residential homes and charlatan landlords who profit from their misery. It is not compassion we should talk about today but statutory duty of care and the obligatory standards we would set for ourselves.
Baroness Thornhill (LD)
My Lords, I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak in this debate, introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick of Undercliffe. Her excellent opening speech, as well as the short but on-the-button contributions from other noble Lords, have really laid bare the fact that this is indeed a very complex, multifaceted area, and we have a long way to go.
I hope the Committee will forgive me if I spend my four minutes taking a slightly different angle. My very first experience of supported housing came when I was standing for election for the first time back in the early 1990s. Some noble Lords will remember that this was the era that saw the start of care in the community.
A housing association had bought a pair of semis in my road and was turning them into supported housing for adults with learning difficulties. I was shocked and disappointed to find that some of my neighbours had decided “We don’t want that sort of people here”. They were banging on my door telling me that if I wanted their vote, I had to get it stopped. There were very nasty public meetings. The council stood its ground and granted the planning permission, and I lost the election.
However, I learned a very valuable lesson. People in my parents’ generation had been used to “that sort of people” being locked up in Victorian gothic institutions and they had massively entrenched views about the worth of such citizens and where they should live.
I am pleased to say that the residents moved in and one of the first things they did was to invite the neighbours to a barbecue. A good time was had by all and it was the start of a positive relationship with the home.
Would it not be good if I could say that that attitude has long gone? But it has not. Throughout my 16 years as mayor, some of the most acrimonious meetings were about the following: a drug rehabilitation clinic, a homeless shelter, accommodation for ex-prisoners and a women’s refuge. Yes, decent, civilised and, one might say, respectable middle-class people were screeching, shouting, swearing and baying for blood like film extras in a medieval hanging scene. Each meeting is etched in my memory.
I am left wondering whether this is at the heart of why vulnerable people across a wide spectrum of needs are very much the forgotten of the housing world. Think Grenfell Tower—they certainly felt forgotten; not seen and not heard.
It is clear from numerous reports and research that things are far from well in this part of the housing world, as articulated by noble Lords. There are many questions, but the one that struck me forcibly in those early days was: why should every local authority not have to provide for these vulnerable groups? Clearly, some opt out and find different ways to do so, particularly in two-tier areas where the upper tier has the duty to advise, support and provide the strategy, but the district council is not always obligated to work with this and provide accommodation in their local plan, so—guess what—some do not provide it. Guess why. It is because the attitude of, “We don’t want those sorts of people in our area” is still alive and well, often disguised as, “There’s no need for this here. We don’t have those sorts of problems”.
Is this why unscrupulous people feel that they can exploit and abuse such people? Who is checking up on them? Who gives a damn? The accounts given to the DLUHC committee last year made for difficult reading but did not surprise me. If some of our residents are regarded by some as the flotsam and jetsam of society, does that not make it easier to ignore them, at best, and, at worst, to assault and rob them? I hope the Minister will be able to tell us that quick wins will be had, loopholes will be changed and plans for long-term change are, at least, on the table. Finally, I am sure that she has got the message about the need for social housing. I apologise for going over time.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, I too thank my noble friend Lady Warwick of Undercliffe for securing this important debate, and all noble Lords who have participated. I also thank the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the National Housing Federation and Shelter for their exceptionally helpful briefings, and, of course, our brilliant Library, which, as ever, has provided us with a comprehensive, relevant and balanced briefing.
Many of us in local government care passionately about supported housing and genuinely understand the importance of having safe, secure and stable accommodation accompanied by support tailored to individual needs. However, we often feel that we have been trying to deliver this for years with both hands tied behind our backs. We make the case over and again that, for vulnerable groups such as older people, those with learning or physical disabilities, families at risk—including the homeless—those who have been in the criminal justice system, people with complex needs that may include drug or alcohol dependency, those with poor mental health and those fleeing domestic abuse, a safe, secure and affordable home is the starting point for supporting their other needs.
We should also take note of the overwhelming evidence that providing these groups quickly with the housing and other support they need has the potential to save the public purse billions, as it prevents more expensive interventions having to be used, as comprehensively outlined by my noble friend Lady Warwick, the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, and other noble Lords.
It is fair to say that there are some fantastic examples of just what can be achieved all over the country, and it is to the enormous credit of local government that it has delivered some of these innovations in spite of the truly unprecedented cuts in local government funding and unfunded inflation experienced in recent years. The problem now is that we see a patchwork approach to this instead of what we want to see, which is excellence delivered everywhere.
I will give a couple of examples from Stevenage, which I know best, but there are great examples all over the country, including the one that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester kindly outlined about One Roof Leicester. We are developing new residential accommodation for older people, based on their ambitions and aspirations articulated during our consultation process. Sheltered housing will be located alongside extra care facilities so that people do not lose their community connections, neighbours, shops, faith groups and so on when they need more support. There will be on-site provision of health, podiatry, chiropody, hairdressing and so on—all available for them.
Our “No More” service started as a support project to help those with complex needs sustain tenancies, providing one-to-one support from a caseworker. Following the pandemic, it extended to incorporate a new range of housing under our housing first project. Using a combination of modern-method-of-construction buildings, new builds and regenerated homes, we are making sure that people have a roof over their heads and are supported by a package we have negotiated with the adult care team at the county council.
Lastly, for domestic abuse victims, we have our safe space accommodation. The noble Lord, Lord Young, clearly articulated the need for this, and kindly referred to the supporting people funding programme, which provides fully equipped homes for abuse victims and their families which have everything they need, even if they flee with nothing but the clothes they stand up in. They receive support from our team and initially occupy under licence but, in some cases, we are able to convert to a permanent tenancy if that proves in the interest of the victim.
However, there remain structural, financial and, occasionally, legal challenges to making the best provision for those who need supported housing. With support provision being under the remit of adult care and the NHS, as well as voluntary and community sector providers, and housing sitting with the district council, this becomes very complicated in two-tier areas and, I suspect, not much less complicated in areas with unitary government. The National Housing Federation reports that nine out of 10 supported housing residents have complex needs and at least one health condition or disability; half of them have more than one of these conditions.
Financing is always a challenge. With housing authorities still facing considerable difficulties, with receipts taken from right to buy by government and rent levels capped, it takes herculean efforts to fund the innovation we need to see in supported housing. Does the Minister have any idea what further steps the Government can take for financial incentives to deliver supported housing?
We had a useful, thoughtful and helpful debate in Committee of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill about what the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, described as a challenging planning environment. In response to a question in your Lordships’ Chamber this morning, the Minister indicated that she would be open to amendments to LURB to encourage supported housing provision. We would be interested whether she has any further thoughts on that this afternoon.
I will conclude—I could go on about this all day but will try not to. We know that there is an unmet need for supported housing, alongside all the other community aspects that can improve physical health and well-being. Sadly, the important role of all of these in public mental health is under great pressure following years of austerity cuts, as outlined by many noble Lords. We believe that this is short-sighted and only puts far more cost pressure on acute services. Let us pick up the innovation already under way in local government so that everyone who needs it has the supported housing provision best suited to their needs, leading to, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester mentioned, the transformational outcomes that we all want to see.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Baroness Scott of Bybrook) (Con)
My Lords, I am very conscious that I do not have an awful lot of time. I will get through as much as I can and, if I do not answer everything, I will write to noble Lords.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick of Undercliffe, for securing in such a timely manner this important debate on supported housing and its impact on homelessness prevention, health and well-being. I also thank all noble Lords for their considered and insightful contributions. I have a personal interest in this sector. My daughter, Sarah, who has been physically handicapped from birth, has just moved into wonderful supported housing in Winchester. It has transformed her life. She thought that she could not continue to be independent, but she is and has that support. However, noble Lords are absolutely right that funding for supported housing is more difficult and can be more expensive for people. We must consider this; as the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, said, there are good facilities but there are also some bad ones.
The reach of supported housing is wide, providing vital support for many people to live independently. These include older people, people experiencing homelessness, people with disabilities and those with mental ill health. There are many good providers, but there are others that we need to deal with.
The Government see supported housing as key to the delivery of successful outcomes in areas of utmost importance, including rough sleeping, domestic abuse, and adult social care, as we have heard. Not least through the Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Bill, the Government are committed to ensuring that there is supported housing for those people not just in numbers but of good quality into the future. We are hearing horror stories about what is happening in the sector.
I am grateful to the National Housing Federation for commissioning its important research on the impact of supported housing on homelessness prevention, health and well-being. Its key findings include the finding that, were it not for supported housing, there would be an increase in homelessness and more need for in-patient care and prison places. The research also highlights the importance of pathways from supported housing, as we heard, and the difficulties that may be experienced by some people when moving on—there was a lot of talk about moving on, which is an important issue.
As I said, the Government are very aware of having enough accommodation for people, not only supported housing but accommodation afterwards. That is why two things are happening: there is £11.5 billion in the affordable homes programme, which includes a necessity for local authorities to look at housing for older, disabled and vulnerable people in their areas. Our planning rules, which will be strengthened through the LUR Bill, mean that, in councils’ local plans, they must consider the needs of these people, which is perhaps an important change in attitude.
Socially rented homes often serve the needs of the most vulnerable in society, and, as I said, the Government recognised this in the levelling-up White Paper. We want people who need help to live independently to be able to access supported housing, but, where possible, they should also be able to move forward with their lives and into general housing in a timely way.
There is evidence that the demand for supported housing is growing, particularly among certain cohorts. Research by the London School of Economics in 2017 projected that, by 2030, the amount of supported housing needed in England for older people and people with learning disabilities would increase by 35% and 55%, respectively—that is a big increase. However, national data is outdated and needs to be improved, which is why the department has commissioned research to provide an up-to-date estimate of the size, cost and demand of the supported housing sector. The findings are expected to be published at the end of this year, and they will be important in further policy development in this sector.
In the longer term, and subject to Royal Assent, strategic planning and licensing measures in the Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Bill—which the noble Lord, Lord Best, will ably lead through the House—will enable further opportunities for data collection to support national and local decision-making on supported housing. Taken together, these steps will build a better national picture of the need for, and supply of, supported housing into the future, as I said.
The Government encourage new supply of supported housing through capital subsidy—I mentioned the £11.5 billion affordable homes programme—alongside the Department of Health and Social Care investment in supported housing through the care and support specialised housing fund. But, as noble Lords said, we know that supported housing is more than the bricks and mortar of a building; it is about the critical support services that come along with the home, to enable people to live independently.
Funding for housing-related local support services is through the wider local government settlement. This will perhaps be difficult for anyone in local government to take into account, because they are under so many pressures, but local government got £59.7 billion in England this year, and much of that was for use in adult social care.
But the integrated care systems coming together in areas are also key to this, because that is where we can look at the joined-up health and care services—the council working with the health community—to see where we can keep independence. I have to say that it is also probably where we can look to save money locally, or at least get more service than is currently there, by keeping people independent in really good accommodation, such as supported housing. So that is an opportunity to have those conversations locally in integrated care partnerships.
Supported housing is, and will continue to be, an integral part of achieving the Government’s manifesto commitment to end rough sleeping by the end of this Parliament. However, as I have said, we do not care just about the amount but about the quality. That is why the Government are backing the Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Bill from the noble Lord, Lord Best. We look forward to its Second Reading on 21 April. The Government will support it wholeheartedly.
I just make it clear to the noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, that care homes are separately regulated under the CQC. They are not supported housing, but some forms of housing with care—such as extra care or supported living—are. It is quite a complex issue and it is important that we understand that. That is why the Bill from the noble Lord, Lord Best, is so important: it covers the regulatory bit of the supported housing that the CQC provides at the moment in care homes.
The noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, talked about poor housing that is not fit for purpose. Again, I ask that we make time for the Bill from the noble Lord, Lord Best, because that is an important part of taking that forward.
We have talked about moving-on accommodation; I think that I have covered everything that noble Lords have asked, but I will go through Hansard. We recognise the benefits of supported housing and what it can deliver for not only residents but wider society. The Government are committed to ensuring that supported housing is available and provides good-quality support—quality is important—and accommodation for all those in our communities who need it.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
Before the noble Baroness sits down, may I raise a point about the funding that has gone to upper-tier authorities in two-tier areas for adult social care? There is no requirement for those authorities to passport any of that to the housing authority, which is a really big issue. We can deliver what we can with the funding that we have in district authorities, but there is no requirement on those other authorities to pass that funding on. That is something that the Government may want to think about.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
I take that into account; I will look at it and come back to the noble Baroness.
Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl)
Also just before the noble Baroness sits down, as a former social worker, I understand the differences very well. The point that I was trying to make—perhaps in a rush—is that there is a transition from residential healthcare via social services. Local authorities have some responsibility for ensuring that people are placed properly.
Performing Arts
Baroness Featherstone
To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to support the performing arts sectors throughout England.
Baroness Featherstone (LD)
My Lords, I am certain that the Minister and Secretary of State are both fully aware that cultural recovery post Covid in the regions of England is well behind London. In this debate, I am expecting the Minister to list the things that the Government are doing in terms of the performing arts, such as tax reliefs, the culture recovery fund and culture places—they are indeed needed and most welcome. He may point to pots of money available for projects such as town funds, levelling-up funds and so on. However, as Eliza Easton of PEC and Nesta asked:
“How can levelling up funding (which requires competitive bids) make up for the huge decline in the day-in-day-out revenue funding which used to come through local authorities?”
Moreover, the funding pots that are available just do not touch the sides of the massive cuts to local government funding of 30%. Local authorities are, or were, the biggest funders of cultural activity across the whole of England, and they have been comprehensively kneecapped. They fulfil the most obvious of place-based actors, as they are in every place.
In its recent report, Cornerstones of Culture, the Local Government Association makes it clear that there is a vital need for a sustainable, multi-year funding settlement to enable local authorities to support the arts. The report reveals a £2.4 billion funding gap. It rightly argues that greater collaborative work between councils and cultural partners, combined with place-based funding from the Government, is crucial for sustaining the ecology of art and culture in the UK, and that a shift towards place-led approaches that enable a greater diversity of communities, cultural providers and practitioners to shape local decision-making is vital.
Absolutely nothing that the Government are doing slows or reverses the decline in teachers of dance, drama and music, or in teaching hours or position in the curriculum—nor does it solve the apprenticeship levy or the much-needed support for work-based training for young people and for people already in the industry and freelancers. It does not deal with the potential decimation of music hubs—out to consultation—nor is there support for our small music venues, which are closing down at the rate of one a week. That is where real people meet locally for real music. It is where Ed Sheeran and Adele started—it is where local talent begins. I understand that Minister Lopez is to meet the music industry about support for small venues, so let us hope that it is not just a meeting but a catalyst to actual support. Some government pressure would not go amiss on the industry itself to step up.
Mid-scale touring is also under pressure and threat. What are the Government doing about support for it? The whole touring ecosystem has been shaken. Yes, tax credits will help a bit, but they will not help most of the mid-scale touring. Then there is the scarlet pimpernel of promises—the eternally missing manifesto pledge of a £90 million arts premium, which is nowhere to be seen. We were told that it was to fund enriching activities for all pupils. Rishi Sunak, now Prime Minister, promised £25,000 on average for each secondary school to invest in arts activities in his March 2020 Budget. Then teachers were told that the funding would arrive in September 2021. When it did not, the Schools Minister said that the arts premium was subject to that year’s spending review. But—guess what?— when the spending review arrived, Rishi Sunak made no mention of the arts premium.
The performing arts are vital for all sorts of reasons, not just economically but in terms of well-being and community; they help with depression and anxiety and building bridges between cultures and worldviews. In other words, they are a vital part of the existence of a civilised society, which no one should be denied. Ministers can regularly be heard to chant that very same mantra, paying verbal homage but without willing the means and the action to achieve the ends.
We need a new deal to ensure the maintenance of performing arts in England, one that will ensure that we re-establish higher numbers of students taking and learning performing arts subjects across the country. At the heart of this diminution of the performing arts—I am sure the Minister will correct me on this—seems to be a systemic reductionist approach by the Government by deed and by word. We see it in the choice of EBacc subjects, the slashing of 50% of funding for university arts courses and the reduction in the number of our brilliant teachers of drama, dance and music, together with, as I mentioned before, a reduction in teaching hours of those subjects and their position in the curriculum. It is exacerbated by perpetual derogatory references to those vital subjects, describing dance and other creative subjects as “low value”, “non-priority”, “dead-end” and so on.
The government message that only a knowledge-based curriculum is valid has resulted in 66% of educators reporting a decline in the uptake of, for example, dance qualifications for students aged 14 and over. Music, dance, performing arts, art and design, as well as media studies, have seen their subsidy fall from £243 per full-time student per year in 2020-21 to £121.50 —more than halved. Drama teacher numbers have fallen by 20% and drama hours taught by 15%. There are 9% fewer music teachers, and one in seven music teachers have left the profession.
This Government’s school reforms have caused pupils to move away from subjects such as dance, music and art. We need both STEAM and STEM. I ask the Minister where it is that everyone, no matter what their background, can be enthused, imbued, uplifted, find talents, and enjoy and expand their horizons culturally? It is school. If it is not school, it will be who your parents are, what your parents earn and where your parents live—and that is not very levelling up, is it?
When it comes to apprenticeships—such a great way to bring young people into the working world of performing arts—the apprenticeship levy is not fit for purpose. Under the current system, firms have to set aside 0.5% of their payroll for apprenticeships. However, many employers say that they are unable to use the funds, which are taken by the Treasury if not used within two years, because the condition imposed is that businesses are not allowed to fund any courses that are shorter than one year in duration. This means that they are often unable to use the funds because many performing arts opportunities are of less than one year; they are much shorter. It is not fit for purpose, so please just change it.
Then there are the music hubs, where the proposition that they should be reduced from 116 to 43 is out to consultation until tomorrow. How can the Government go on about levelling up when these sorts of retractions are proposed? Chris Walters, the MU national organiser for education, has said, quite rightly, that
“the Government’s rationale for wanting fewer hubs has never been clear, and its updated rationale remains a list of untested assertions”
and that if the reduction goes ahead, it is
“likely to cause a great deal of disruption with no guarantee that children will receive better music education”.
All in all, it is quite a bleak picture for the performing arts across England.
I understand that there is to be a new cultural education plan, chaired by the superb noble Baroness, Lady Bull, but can the Minister confirm whether that review will enable actual curriculum changes? Will it outsource the cultural curriculum away from the school estate and timetable? I am really concerned about that, because if it is so, it will be a nail in the coffin of every child being able to take part in dance, drama and music—literally, a death knell.
There is also to be a music education plan in 2024—I wait more in hope than expectation—and, of course, the all-important creative industries sector vision. Given that the new Secretary of State highlighted the creative industries as a
“key growth sector for the UK economy”—
I could not agree more—at the opening of Creative UK’s Creative Coalition Festival this year, expectation is running high.
I have had very little time to present the case for so many parts of our performing arts under threat—I did not have time to touch opera and many others. It was literally a gallop through, when each deserves its own debate. I look forward to the Government’s response and hope that all the issues that I have raised will be fully addressed.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
I welcome the opportunity to participate in this debate and thank the noble Baroness for securing it.
As noble Lords will be well aware, last year music, performance and the visual arts contributed an estimated £11.5 billion to the UK economy and, importantly, provided priceless joy and entertainment to millions across England.
No doubt a lot of focus in the debate will be about funding but before I turn to that I too want to talk briefly about the immensely positive impact performing arts have on the well-being of those of us who are lucky enough to experience them. I put myself in that category: there is no feeling or adrenaline rush quite like the one you get at the end of a great concert or show. Personally, I particularly enjoy musical theatre and never tire of Les Mis—but I will not admit on the record how many times I have seen it.
Having said that, we know that too many people in communities across the country do not get the opportunity to go to the theatre or to hear live music and be inspired, entertained and challenged by that experience. So it is important that there is a sustained focus in government to support, encourage and expand access to the performing arts and creative sector more broadly; otherwise, the critical support provided to the performing arts through the culture recovery fund during the pandemic will have been in vain. That saw more than £1 billion given to over 5,000 cultural organisations across England. For many, that support during Covid was crucial to their survival.
In north-west Norfolk, Westacre Theatre received £158,000, which it described as a lifeline that enabled it to
“survive turbulent times and carve a sustainable and exciting future”.
Based in a small village, the theatre provides a year-round programme of in-house productions, visiting companies, concerts, cinema screenings, and so much more. It runs youth workshops, providing opportunities in rural Norfolk for young people who might otherwise not get them to act on stage in a theatre and experience the thrill of live performance.
It is to be welcomed that support for the performing arts has continued post the pandemic. In this month’s Budget, for instance, the Chancellor extended the higher rate of theatre and orchestra tax relief.
Obviously, Arts Council England plays a central role in supporting arts and culture in this country but, as we heard from the noble Baroness, it is just one piece of the funding jigsaw. Through a variety of initiatives and funding streams, not least in relation to the levelling-up agenda, the Government should be, and are, supporting the performing arts to extend access and opportunity for people to both enjoy and take part in them to all regions in England.
One such example can be seen in King’s Lynn, which successfully secured £25 million from the Government’s towns fund. Some £8 million of that funding has been allocated to refurbish St George’s Guildhall—something that had not been done for years and for which the local community had been campaigning for a long time—and develop a new creative hub. As noble Lords may know, the Guildhall is Britain’s oldest continuously working theatre, and one in which Shakespeare is believed to have performed.
The project aims to build on this important cultural heritage and develop an arts and culture centre, with the Guildhall at its centre, in the very heart of the town. Importantly, it will increase participation for young people through its educational programmes. I welcome such developments as, for me, extending the educational, economic and social benefits that come from culture is, and should be, a core part of the levelling-up agenda.
I would be grateful if my noble friend could set out what further plans the Government have to extend opportunities to young people, particularly from disadvantaged backgrounds, to get more involved in the performing arts.
Of course, it is not just taxpayer funding that supports the performing arts. Private sector investment and involvement are crucial if we are to continue to see the sector thrive. A great example of what can be achieved with local determination is Festival Too. In 1985 a group of businesspeople got together to put on a free music event to complement the established King’s Lynn Festival. The budget that year was £5,000. This year the budget will be £140,000, with the money for the event raised from local sponsorship, fundraising events, and bucket collections during the event. It is held over three weekends, is entirely free, features well-known and local music acts, and attracts around 60,000 people. It is a fantastic local initiative and, having been last year, I can thoroughly recommend it to all noble Lords.
Another oft-cited example of how government has successfully leveraged private investment into the arts is the tax incentives that have helped our film and television industry to become world leading. Shepperton Studios is currently on course to complete an expansion project that will see it become the second-largest studio complex in the world by the end of this year, with long-term leases signed with Netflix and Prime Video. In February, Buckinghamshire Council approved plans for a 1.4 million square foot expansion at Pinewood, which will deliver 21 new purpose-built sound stages, a backlot filming space and a training hub, creating more than 8,000 new jobs, importantly, and injecting £640 million into the economy. Having been fortunate enough to see first-hand the sets for “No Time to Die” on a visit there, I know how huge the existing site already is and what a vote of confidence such an expansion is for the UK’s film industry, with all the benefits for the wider creative and performing arts sector that will flow from it.
Although I am perhaps more positive than the noble Baroness and believe that there is a bright future ahead, there can be no room for complacency; I completely accept that the performing arts and broader creative sector continue to face an array of challenges. Can my noble friend give us any update on the progress and likely publication date of the creative industries sector vision, which I know is keenly awaited?
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, on the helpfully wide view of her opening speech. I am grateful for briefings from the Independent Society of Musicians, Equity, UK Music and the Music Venue Trust. There are so many concerns now facing the performing arts—indeed, all the arts—that it is difficult to know where to start. Therefore, with six minutes, we will be necessarily selective.
Only four weeks ago, the three BBC English orchestras and the BBC Singers were unthreatened, highly regarded public assets—we should emphasise the word “public”, because if the BBC Singers are saved, and that is still an “if”, but end up being supported by private money, they will not be the same much-loved people’s choir that they have been for almost 100 years. That is a step backwards, not forwards. The huge outcry against the BBC’s decision has taken some by surprise; not just the classical music world has protested but, tellingly, much of the rest of the arts sector, which understands that an attack on classical music is an attack on all the arts because of the ecology that exists within them. It is the same principle that, if we diminish the arts in London, we diminish the whole country. That is why, in levelling up, robbing Peter to pay Paul is no solution.
We are getting mixed signals from the BBC over how significant budgetary constraints have been in this decision-making. However, the Independent Society of Musicians points out that the £1.5 million cost of the BBC Singers is a mere 0.04% of its broadcasting expenditure. Although the BBC’s finances are undoubtedly being squeezed by central government, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that there is an ideological component to these decisions—or a serious mistake has been made. The cuts are unnecessary and need to be reversed. The performing arts are a huge part of the significance of the BBC and are massively important for the country. As regards expenditure, the BBC needs to understand better where its real priorities lie. It says that it wants to concentrate on music education, but what is the point of that if there are no jobs to go to?
As has been pointed out, music hubs are being cut from more than 150 to about 40 and will cover a wider geographical area. Music should be brought properly back into schools and, ideally, every student would have the same opportunities. That means removing the EBacc and Progress 8, which have been largely responsible for the 40% fall in GCSE arts subjects between 2010 and 2022, with a 40% fall in A-level music entries over the same period. Numbers of hours taught for arts subjects, numbers of specialised teachers and teacher recruitment have all seen significant reductions, to the point that some secondary schools now have no music teachers at all, while the subject is replaced by an EBacc one.
Moreover, if the performing arts are not to be the preserve of the rich, significantly more money must be spent on these subjects in state primary and secondary schools. That should include free instrumental tuition across the whole of the UK. The shortage of workers with technical and behind-the-scenes skills in theatre is not just about the better-paid film industry poaching them; it is also about drama in all its aspects not being understood within schools as an exciting and viable career path. The current accountability measures have a lot to answer for.
In terms of touring, I ask the Government to continue to make representations to the US Government with a view to scrapping the planned 250% increase in the filing fees for certain US visas, which would be prohibitive for emerging artists and orchestras. Following Brexit, this would be a double whammy for many new artists—particularly when you consider that they need to accrue the points that European tours enable in order to tour the US. A survey by the #LetTheMusicMove campaign found that 70% of artists and managers said that they would not be able to tour the US with these changes.
Very little has happened to better enable music touring in Europe. The major problems around visas, work permits, carnets, CITES and merchandise remain. The Government could do much more both domestically and in talks with Europe, including negotiating a visa waiver agreement. Indeed, in evidence to the European Affairs Committee on October 11 last year, the noble Lord, Lord Frost, said:
“I do not see why we could not agree a narrow visa waiver arrangement covering defined categories such as musicians and actors … If the relationship warms up … these things are possible.”
Now that the Windsor Framework has passed through Parliament, there is no excuse not to do so.
Finally, I mention the importance of grass-roots music venues, which the noble Baroness has referred to, and the disturbing statistic that one music venue closes every week. High energy bills have hit all the arts, but smaller local live music venues are hugely important for the pipeline of talent. The Music Venue Trust recommends that tickets sold for the larger stadiums should contain a contribution to the grass-roots circuit in the same way that Premier League football supports the smaller clubs. It also asks for such venues to be included within the energy bills discount scheme and that VAT be removed from cultural ticketing, which would make a huge difference to this sector and be of considerable help to emerging artists. The arts sector has been grateful for the extension of tax relief to theatres, galleries and orchestras, but it would be more helpful still if the music element of the orchestra relief was widened to include other music artists.
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, for securing this debate and share the concerns of many other noble Lords about the challenges facing BBC musicians and the need to support small venues and touring programmes. The case has been made eloquently.
I am also grateful for the Library briefing, but I note that it begins—as has already been quoted—
“In 2022 music, performance and visual arts contributed an estimated £11.5bn to the UK economy.”
Have we really reached the point where we primarily describe the arts by the financial contribution that they make? Can we not imagine a world where the House of Lords Library produces briefings which say that, in the past year, 39,000 people had their minds opened and changed because of the plays they saw at the National Theatre; scores of people entered into the grim reality of migrants because they went to something at the National Theatre and then came back and signed up to some campaigning organisation to support them; and 40,000 people felt that they touched eternity in that breathtaking silence at the end of the Rachmaninoff “Vespers”? Can we not somehow talk about enriching the human soul? That is surely what it is about. We cannot and must not measure the performing arts primarily in financial terms but in the way that they expand our imaginations, unlock our sympathies and confront us with alternative realities that take us out of our comfort zones and demand that we engage with them.
In the few moments that I have to speak, I want to focus on one specific section of the performing arts: church music. The world has never considered the UK to be an especially musical nation—others can sometimes be rather rude about us. Yet, when you look back over the past 150 years, you can see that many of our greatest composers—Gurney, Vaughan Williams, Elgar, Howells, Walton, Parry, Stanford, Tavener, Rutter and so on—started out singing in church choirs. Most of them did not come from privileged backgrounds. Often their fathers were church organists and their earliest compositions were hymns and anthems. Without church music, most of them would never have become composers. That tradition continues today among popular contemporary musicians, such as Ed Sheeran, Annie Lennox and Chris Martin of Coldplay—he was a chorister in the Exeter Cathedral Choir.
Take our Anglican cathedrals, which currently employ over 100 professional musicians and are involved with 4,000 choristers. Catholic cathedrals, other large churches and some Oxbridge colleges also employ more than 100 professional musicians. The National Schools Singing Programme, run by the Roman Catholic Church, has already expanded into 27 of the 32 Catholic dioceses, reaching more than 17,000 children in 175 schools. The Royal School of Church Music engages huge numbers of people through the “Voice for Life” scheme, designed to help people discover what their voice can do. The RSCM medal scheme takes choristers step by step through the various singing exams. A new initiative, Hymnpact, is a scheme designed to connect churches and schools, which is being piloted in my own diocese.
The St Albans Cathedral chorister outreach programme was developed in partnership with the Hertfordshire Music Service. Funded by Sing Up, the national singing programme, it was designed to encourage church choristers to work with primary school-aged children to enjoy singing. It has so far worked with more than 80 primary schools in west Hertfordshire, involving more than 6,000 children. The results have been so impressive that my own cathedral, in partnership with the Hertfordshire Music Service, continues to fund it even though the funding stream has officially ended. It has now been running for over 15 years. Two or three primary schools join the project every term for 10 weeks of singing teaching in schools, with up to about 90 children, followed by a concert in the cathedral to sing with the choristers at the end of the project.
None of this is funded by the state. In some limited cases, it has been helped with some seed-corn funding to get it going. It is absolutely right that in this debate there will be calls for proper long-term funding for professional musicians, actors and dancers. I support that. We need a long-term settlement which will enable this vital area not just to survive but to flourish and grow in our nation. However, at the same time, I ask the Minister: will he and his colleagues take a fresh look at the whole breadth of the creative and performing arts? There are many areas where, with some modest but consistent grants, we can see quite extraordinary results in our performing arts, such as what is happening through grass-roots singing in our churches and schools right across this land.
Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)
My Lords, I cannot demur from anything I have heard thus far. I thank the noble Baroness for instigating this debate. I declare my interests as a composer, a broadcaster and—the right reverend Prelate will be pleased to hear—an ex-chorister at Westminster Cathedral.
Drawing on my broadcasting experience, at least 50% of the people who come through my door, as it were, to be interviewed were turned on to music by an inspired teacher at school. A lot of young people go on to be choral scholars, for example, or to play in pop groups, which brings in incredible revenue.
When we have mentioned our concerns about the lack of music in schools, the Minister has always in the past quite rightly talked about the hubs. I accept that they have done a great job but, if they are going to be cut, our concerns will increase still further. Musicians at the moment are beginning to feel as though they are at the wrong end of a coconut shy: so many things have hit us. I understand that, in order to level up, as the noble Baroness and I would like, it is terribly important that we take the arts to underprovided areas. People will have to suffer; there will have to be cuts. It is true with the BBC as well, but the problem is that the arts are somehow always the first port of call for people wanting to make cuts.
With great respect to the right reverend Prelate, I will say one thing about money. It is important that we get into context that we are not asking for charity. Of that £11.5 billion that has been mentioned often, the Government’s stake, as an investment, was 4%—my very kind accountant worked this out for me this morning—and, even with the National Lottery money, it becomes 6%. So investment in the arts is very profitable for this country, which is why I worry about the future of music, if young people will not be there to people our choirs and orchestras and to become teachers.
The noble Baroness mentioned an important point: in schools, you now tend to get peripatetic teaching for an instrument, or music classes, if you are well off. If you are not, you will probably not get anything. I subscribe to various charities, such as the London Music Fund and Future Talent—I have even provided instruments—and one realises what a difference it makes. I remember going into Wormwood Scrubs prison and places like that, as a member of the Koestler Trust—I mentioned this in my maiden speech in 2013. I managed to get a guitar for a prisoner, who wrote to me afterwards and said, “You’ve no idea how this transformed my life. To be honest, if I’d had this means of expression when I was 19, I don’t think I would now be serving life for murder”. I realise that that is a rather dramatic point, but it is important if you broaden it, because there is a social dividend. It is not just about money, as the right reverend Prelate mentioned, although obviously that is important; it is about having a more cohesive society. The arts bring us together and make us listen to each other. If we are singing in a choir or playing an instrument, we have to listen, which is one of the first ways of getting young people to behave well and understand the nature of listening and giving.
I will say a little about why we are all so worried about certain groups such as the BBC Singers and the ENO—Sir James MacMillan has written about this. Nowadays, we do not think that the visual arts—Francis Bacon, Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, for example—are terribly difficult to process; we all love them. Millions of people go to Tate Modern. New music is more difficult: as it moved away from tonality—although it has moved back in many ways—a lot of people felt totally out of touch, which is why you need expert groups such as the BBC Singers, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the London Sinfonietta and the Britten Sinfonia, because they are the adventurers that are pushing the way forward.
I will make two points, which are more about asking the Minister to pass this on to his colleagues. First, in order to take the arts wider, somewhere like Reading Gaol is a wonderful example of a place that could be used as an arts centre. People have marched locally. This was Oscar Wilde’s great triumph in adversity, which he overcame by writing the wonderful “Ballad of Reading Gaol”. The area around there cannot be developed, for lots of architectural reasons. So that is a question for the Ministry of Justice.
Secondly, cabotage means that, if people have the visas, which are beginning to come through, they can arrive at a third location and have no instruments to play. I wrote to the office of the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, about this and I was promised a written reply that I have not received yet. If the Minister could chase that up, I would be very grateful.
Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury (LD)
My Lords, I start by thanking my noble friend for this important debate.
We applaud the concept of levelling up but the delivery is most important—I think this is what the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, was saying—and an essential part of that is the performing arts sector. The year 2023 marks the 75th anniversary of local authority spending on the arts. I echo my noble friend’s big ask: how can levelling-up funding make up for the decline in the revenue which used to come through local authorities—which understand the needs and asks of their local communities?
I am a trustee of the Lowry in Salford, a prime example of the important contribution local culture can make to levelling up. Not so long ago, the Salford Quays were derelict, disused docks; now they are a thriving, creative hub. What was behind this regeneration? It was an artist, who inspired a gallery and a performing arts centre within a great building, with a mission to involve, include and inspire the local community—since the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, likes musical theatre, I ask her to come to the Lowry. Most importantly, there was a city council which had the foresight and the commitment to achieve this, its vision. What a result. I argue that without the Lowry there would have been no move to Salford by the BBC, no expansion into Salford by ITV, and no MediaCity. The local mayor and local council continue to be intrinsically and intimately involved. So will the Government take note of the excellent LGA report Cornerstones of Culture, already mentioned, which recommends a return to local decision-making when shaping cultural provision?
As my noble friend Lady Featherstone, the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, and the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, said, engagement with the arts starts at school. But STEM, not STEAM, has been the Conservative mantra, totally ignoring the fact that there should not be a choice between arts and science—they are symbiotic. The Government say that arts subjects are not “strategic priorities”, the same Government whose industrial strategy prizes the creative industries—of which the performing arts are integral—as a priority sector. Yet they persist with the STEM-obsessed EBacc. As Grayson Perry correctly predicted some years ago:
“If arts subjects aren’t included in the Ebacc, schools won’t stop doing them overnight. But there will be a corrosive process, they will be gradually eroded … By default, resources won’t go into them”.
That is what is happening.
There is another problem: the very different approach to cultural education in the state and private sector; the private sector recognises the benefits and offers art courses in abundance. The noble Baroness, Lady Evans, touched on the inevitable consequence: research by the Creative Industries Policy & Evidence Centre has found that people from more privileged backgrounds are twice as likely to be employed in the cultural sector, which means less diversity in every sense. The UK’s creative workforce does not adequately reflect the diversity of the UK population.
I join my noble friend Lady Featherstone in welcoming the appointment of the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, as chair of a new cultural education plan, and I hope that when she and her team deliver a solution to righting these wrongs—which I am sure they will—the Government will listen. I join others in asking the Minister when the Government will finally make good on his party’s manifesto pledge of the arts premium. Here I say to the right reverend Prelate that if we do not make the point that the arts bring money in, the Treasury does not listen. I also ask the Minister, to echo the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, again, when the creative industries sector vision—another Scarlet Pimpernel, to steal my noble friend’s analogy—will see light of day? It was first announced in February 2022 to be published that summer, but that is quite a long time ago.
As mentioned by my noble friend Lady Featherstone, there is a threat to touring. The ability to tour is essential to the performing arts, both economically but also in building careers and expanding audiences. We face a particularly serious problem in Europe due to Brexit—again, mentioned by the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, and the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley—with cost issues and complicated paperwork over visas, carnets and cabotage. Since reopening agreements with the EU appears no longer to be out of bounds, does the Minister agree that it is time to negotiate a cultural touring agreement with the EU, and that this is urgent? Then there is the loss of Creative Europe funding, and support via the EU structural funds. The UK shared prosperity fund has been set up to cover that gap. Can the Minister update us on what proportion of successful bids and local investment plans will help our cultural organisations?
Finally, the Prime Minister, when Chancellor, said:
“For any country, there are probably a few things that you are world-class at … For us, in the UK, the creative industries, arts, culture is something we are genuinely world-class at”.
This may not remain the case unless the problems mentioned today are addressed, and swiftly.
Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)
My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter. She always puts her finger on the point and makes it well. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, on her robust and trenchant opening speech, because she has opened up a debate that we will need to continue having extensively.
This week, Paul O’Grady died, and there have been lots of tributes to him—I pay my personal tribute. He was a performing artist, who excited people about the world of art and culture in a different way that many of us found very enjoyable. I particularly liked the contribution from the noble Baroness, Lady Evans. I have now found something that she has in common with my wife: a love of a good musical—I was struggling before, I must confess.
It has not been long since our last debate on the arts, but plenty has happened in the intervening weeks. English National Opera has been given a one-year funding reprieve, and we expect news of a longer-term package shortly. A survey of the ENO Chorus by Equity, however, suggests that an overwhelming majority of performers would leave should the organisation be relocated out of London, as most have children in schools in or near the capital and spouses whose jobs are London-based. It is a serious problem for the ENO, and I hope that there is a solution to some of those issues. Perhaps the Minister can shed some light on it.
We have also had the BBC’s announcement of plans to wind down BBC Singers, prompting a significant public backlash and a U-turn. Wigmore Hall has announced its latest schedule, including a trio of “low stimulus” classical concerts to ensure neurodivergent audiences can access live music. However, another downside is that the closure of the Oldham Coliseum has been confirmed.
There have been missed opportunities too. The Chancellor’s Budget extended existing tax reliefs for theatres, orchestras, museums and galleries for a further two years—a move which of course we welcome—but there was nothing for grass-roots venues. I recently asked Ministers why they did not give some form of tax relief and got a very interesting reply from the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, who told me:
“A tax relief for grassroots music venues is not currently under consideration.”
In a reply given to me the same day, the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, said that that the Government were
“committed to supporting our grassroots music venues, which are the backbone of our world-leading music sector”.
Those two comments and observations do not seem altogether to be in the same place.
Many venues are reporting gradual improvements in visitor numbers, which is important, but many are still unable to operate at capacity, either because some people remain reluctant to attend live performances following the pandemic or because the cost of living crisis means that they simply cannot afford to spend that part of their income. At the same time, many venues are facing high energy and other costs, exacerbating issues around attendance figures. Can the Minister outline what work the department does with cultural organisations and venues to keep track of ticket prices and sales and trends in audience numbers and behaviour? How are the datasets used to assist with policy-making? Is that something that his department gives fair consideration to?
One area where more discussion and support may be needed is live music. We have heard today about problems with visas, cabotage and so on for those wishing to travel abroad, and we know that the number of music venues is beginning to shrink—the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, referred to that: one venue a week. That is a serious issue. I know that in my own city a number of venues have disappeared.
We are lucky in the UK to have a vibrant music scene and to export artists’ work across the globe, but while venues such as the Manchester Arena have a full programme and strong ticket sales, smaller venues are not necessarily doing so well. We have seen an explosion in the number of new large music venues in recent years, which is a good thing, with a number planned for London and several other major UK cities, but many are asking what those venues are doing to ensure that they have new headlining acts—ideally, acts from a diverse range of backgrounds, rather than those who start their career on an elevated platform—in the coming years and decades. If we do not do more to stimulate smaller venues, the acts that develop and improve the quality of their performance in them, becoming niche and then broader-based and mainstream, we will not have performers in the bigger venues in years to come.
Whether it is theatre, dance or music, we need to ensure that there are opportunities for people to get involved, be spotted and work their way up. Some of that work is down to production companies, but a lot of it is down to education. I was delighted that education was brought to the fore of the debate today. I do not know about others, but when I was at school, my interest in the arts was greatly enhanced when, aged 15, I saw Judi Dench perform at the Aldwych Theatre. It was part of my curriculum.
To conclude, we want to see the performing arts continue to flourish. This requires a long-term, strategic approach. The noble Baroness, Lady Evans, put her finger on it: we need to see the Government’s plan. I hope that the Minister can help us with that today so that we can begin to see the development of meaningful help for grass-roots organisations and venues.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay) (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for securing the debate today and to all noble Lords who have spoken for their thoughtful contributions.
The past two or three years have been a turbulent time for the performing arts. I was appointed Arts Minister, the first time round, towards the tail end of the pandemic, as we were starting to emerge from those very difficult months. It has been a privilege to see the resilient and adaptive way in which the sector has responded, welcoming people back across its thresholds, and I have been very proud of the part the Government have played in supporting these sectors that are incredibly important to not just our economy but our lives.
The Government’s commitment to the performing arts is demonstrated to the tune of billions of pounds through the range of support that we have made available over the past three years; the £1.5 billion culture recovery fund and the recent tax reliefs in the Budget, which have been mentioned, being key elements of it. I am also delighted that the Arts Council’s next national portfolio investment programme, which kicks in next week at the start of the new tax year, will see a record number of arts organisations—almost 1,000—receive funding from the taxpayer.
This programme will invest over £400 million a year over the next three years in creative and cultural organisations right across England and will see more organisations funded in more parts of the country than ever before. It is a larger funding pot, and annual funding for organisations in parts of the country which have previously been neglected will increase substantially. We will see a particularly increased investment in 78 places—areas designated as Levelling Up for Culture Places—which were previously overlooked for arts funding, which will collectively get £43.5 million each year. That is an important thing and I look forward to seeing the arts transforming the lives of people and communities across England in the coming years, particularly in those areas which are benefiting anew.
As a number of noble Lords mentioned, at the Budget earlier this month the Chancellor extended the higher rates of theatre tax relief, orchestra tax relief and museums and galleries exhibition tax relief. These higher rates were brought in to help those vital sectors bounce back from the pandemic, but we know that the tail effects of the pandemic still endure and that there are new challenges, not least the rising cost of energy, so extending them for a further two years will help offset those ongoing economic pressures and boost investment in our cultural sectors. I am sure I am not the only person on the Association of British Orchestras’ email list. It sent its spring update this morning. I think it is worth quoting what it says:
“The higher rate of relief will help unlock new growth, protect and generate employment in the sector, increase access to culture and opportunity across the country and boost music export potential”.
I completely agree.
The changes the Chancellor made at the Budget are estimated to be worth £350 million over five years—a strong sign of the Government’s faith in and support for our cultural sector. In addition to that support, last week we announced that more than 70 cultural projects across the country will receive a share of £60 million of taxpayer subsidy through the Government’s cultural investment fund. That funding will help to level up access to arts and culture for everyone, no matter where they live. It will support organisations to upgrade venues and incorporate new technology so that they can best serve their local community and the wider country. It will help museums, cultural venues and public libraries to carry out essential maintenance, improve access and drive economic growth.
I was pleased to visit King’s Lynn with my noble friend Lady Evans and her husband to see one of the recipients of a previous round of funding: True’s Yard Fisherfolk Museum, which has strong links to her successor as Leader of your Lordships’ House. Successful recipients in the latest round include Basildon Borough Council, which is receiving £4.5 million to turn empty properties in the town centre into a creative hub, aiming to support over 200 start-ups over the next 25 years in the film, TV, gaming and animation sectors. Colchester Library is receiving more than £300,000 to transform part of the library into an interactive learning and play space for children and families. There are examples right across the country: Cannon Hall in Barnsley; the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent; Sunderland Museum; Morecambe Winter Gardens; and the Guildhall building in Walsall, to name just a few.
Noble Lords are right to stress the importance of venues big and small. I am glad that the Music Venue Trust’s work has been mentioned. The noble Baroness is right that my honourable friend Julia Lopez is meeting that organisation very soon. I attended the briefing that it held in Parliament—or rather above the Red Lion pub—in the autumn, to hear about its proposals to give local communities a share in the venues that are so important. I certainly agree with what the noble Baroness and it said about the importance of those venues to emerging artists as well as to communities and the people who go to enjoy them.
I also agree with what the right reverend Prelate said about the importance of church music. Last week I was celebrating with friends at St Bartholomew the Great, which celebrated its 900th anniversary last Saturday, along with a beautiful new composition by John Rutter. If the right reverend Prelate has not heard it, he can listen to it on “Sunday Worship” on the BBC Sounds app, along with some wise words from his right reverend friend the Bishop of London.
My noble friend Lady Evans is right to point to some of the other funds, such as the towns fund—which the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, was kind enough to mention too. The Government’s flagship £4.8 billion levelling up fund is also supporting access to culture and the performing arts across the UK. The second round of the fund, announced in January, made 31 awards to projects with culture and heritage at their heart, totalling £546 million. Thanks to that, dancers, bands, classically trained orchestras and many more will be able to perform in state-of-the-art spaces across the country, such as the currently empty Assembly Rooms in Derby, which are becoming a working theatre; the new theatres in Colne town centre; and the much-loved Hexagon theatre in Reading, which has received £19.1 million for its rejuvenation.
I will certainly take the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, about Reading Gaol to colleagues at the Ministry of Justice. I was aware of the project and agree with what he said about both the culturally important history of that institution and its potential. As requested, I will chase up a response to his letter from my noble friend Lord Ahmad.
I want to touch on what the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, and others said about the BBC orchestras and singers. Noble Lords will understand that I must stress that the BBC is operationally and editorially independent, so it is for it to devise its strategy and to take decisions on this matter. However, I recognise what they and many people around the country have said about the importance of the BBC orchestras and the BBC Singers to so many listeners, viewers, performers and communities across the country. I welcome the BBC’s announcement that it will undertake further work to decide on the future for the BBC Singers, and to do so in discussion with the Musicians’ Union. I also welcome the update that it is engaging with the Musicians’ Union and other BBC unions about its proposals regarding the English orchestras.
The BBC is, of course, required to deliver its remit as set out in the royal charter and agreement, which includes the BBC’s mission to serve all audiences through the provision of impartial, high-quality and distinctive output. It should prioritise using the £3.8 billion that it gets from licence fee income as necessary to deliver that remit.
The noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, rightly took the opportunity to raise international touring. It is only hours since we voted on the Windsor Framework, but he is right to point to that landscape. As he knows, the Government are committed to supporting our creative sector to adapt to the new circumstances. He knows that the vast majority of member states offer visa and work permit-free routes for musicians and creative performers, and we encourage member states to align their requirements more closely with the UK’s own generous rules—but those discussions continue.
On the United States of America, Julia Lopez met representatives of the American Embassy here in London on 16 March to raise that issue, and we continue to engage with them on that. We know how important it is to the UK music industry and its concerns.
In my closing moments I will address skills and education, which featured heavily in noble Lords’ speeches. My noble friend Lady Evans and others asked about the creative industry sector vision, which is due to be published in the coming weeks and will set out how to remove barriers to growth and address skills gaps and shortages—one of the shared priorities for the Government and the sector over the next decade. A key part of that work is ensuring that young people, no matter where they are and no matter what their background, have opportunities for high-quality cultural education, which is why we are working with the Department for Education on the cultural education plan, chaired by the excellent noble Baroness, Lady Bull. We will make an announcement shortly on the other members of the panel and the terms of reference. However, we are looking at education in the round—not just in schools and colleges but the work that cultural professionals can do to make sure that we give people across the country, whatever their background, the opportunities to share in the best practice that we see. More details will follow shortly.
I also point to the next phase of the discover creative careers programme, which we launched in February, targeting schools in 77 areas across England to engage and inspire children and young people to pursue a creative career. As the noble Baroness mentioned apprenticeships, we point to the work that we are doing in partnership with the Arts Council and Greater Manchester Chambers of Commerce to co-fund a flexi-job apprenticeship scheme across the north of England, focused on the business administration and creative skills needed for the sector, which will create 50 new apprenticeships in the first year, and the new Power Up Agency, which is being launched in three pilot areas across the north-east, north-west and Yorkshire to secure placements with employers.
On music hubs, the DfE has published a rationale for its proposal to move to fewer hubs covering wider areas, which aligns with the approach taken by similar initiatives and infrastructure, such as teaching school hubs, multi-academy trusts, local enterprise partnerships, Sport England’s active partnerships and more. Both the Arts Council and the DfE are inviting feedback on their proposals and inviting people to look at what is proposed for their local area and how that will best serve children and young people. The survey is open until five o’clock tomorrow, so I strongly encourage people to make their views known about it. I certainly make my views known about a desire to meet our manifesto commitment on the arts premium as soon as possible. Of course, the effects of the pandemic and the need for schools to help children catch up on missed teaching time are noted.
Briefly on data, the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, is right. One happy effect of the pandemic is that organisations have been communicating more with their loyal audiences. They capture data, because places that were ticketless have for a period asked people to book in, and they know more about their audience. They are sharing it with each other and talking to the Arts Council. I certainly have very interesting conversations with them about the additional insights that it is giving them into audiences as they return.
With grateful thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, I may have to consult her speech and see which other areas I will need to follow up on afterwards.
Transport: Investment Plans
(1 year, 8 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Berkeley
To ask His Majesty’s Government how bus and rail passengers will benefit from the investment plans for the transport network announced on 9 March.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to have the opportunity to talk about this subject today. I promise that I shall say something different in the next debate, which has been fixed for the first day when we come back after the holiday. It is a mistake—I do not know whose mistake it is—but I shall make sure I do not repeat myself, and I am sure the Minister will not either.
I was persuaded to put down this subject for debate because of the launch by the Secretary of State on 9 March of a big investment plan in
“transformational transport schemes over the next 2 financial years across the country”.
I thought that was rather good, but when I looked into it, I had the feeling that there is lots of talk and lots of big figures—which we hear not just in transport but from many other people—but I want to question whether those schemes actually happen on the ground, where people want them to happen.
On the £40 billion over two years, it was confirmed in a Written Answer I received, HL6611, that it was the same budget over two years, and that included an extra £200 million for potholes—I am sure that is welcome. As for the rest of it, is the transformation growth or a cut? On the railways, the Midland main line electrification to Sheffield has been cancelled or postponed. For major roads, the statement says that they have cut £8 billion. We can have opinions on all this, but is it “transformational”? I am told that active travel has been cut by £3 billion, and lots of bypasses are referred to in the press release as being cut.
On buses, which are really important and on which I want to concentrate to a large extent today, the Confederation of Passenger Transport says that grants will now be 20% lower in real terms than they were 10 years ago. It may be that HS2 is mopping up all the budget, but leaving that aside, do all these cuts deliver for the customers?
I want to explore what the customers want, who they are and how they will benefit—this is transport customers all the way through. People need to travel—short, medium and long distances, and several times a day sometimes—to school, college, work or shopping, and sometimes once a year for a holiday. They also need to travel for important things such as doctors and hospitals, to visit friends or for caring et cetera. They are very similar to the needs that the NHS provides for. Many of those transport journeys are pretty essential.
We can walk, cycle or use scooters—I will leave that aside—but public transport is what everybody else will use for distances greater than the smallest ones if they do not own a car or cannot afford to run it. It needs to be safe, affordable and reliable.
It is always my impression when travelling around Europe that the charges and reliability of public transport are very much better than in this country. Some of it is very cheap. It seems to be the best way of getting around safely—and towards net-zero carbon—but we do not seem to care so much about those with no access to a car.
I welcome the Government’s new bus plan, as far as it goes, but to some extent it is another short-term fix. It does not enable people to plan where they might go to school, shop, work or live, and it does not cover all of England. When people want to use buses, they need certainty. The Transport Committee report published this morning commented of the bus service improvement plans:
“Local areas were asked to be ambitious, but the Department has not matched this level of ambition in the funding it has made available, pitting local areas against each other for a share of an inadequate pot.”
It also says that half the country has missed out. I hope that is not the case; perhaps the Minister has an answer to that.
One really bad example of the failure of buses is the community transport Dial-a-Lift funding in Northern Ireland. I know that the Minister is not responsible for transport there, but she could advise her colleague who is. They have cut the funding for Dial-a-Lift completely from the end of April and all the staff have probably been given the sack. This is because of the trouble with the Windsor Framework; I will not go into that, as we heard plenty about it yesterday, but it is a serious problem.
I will give an example. A young single mother in south-east Fermanagh has a 52-mile journey to hospital with her acutely ill six year-old son. She has no money or car; there is no public transport and the taxi service is a £60 to £65 fare. What happens to the child if she does not get there? A female wheelchair user had the same problem; a return fare in a taxi would cost £100. Previously, community transport provided all this. I have a bit of experience of this in Cornwall. The community transport people are really good; they are an essential part of the lives of people who do not have a car and cannot afford one. They reminded me that the Northern Ireland scheme was set up 25 years ago, which is a significant date in the Northern Ireland calendar. I hope the Minister can follow that up with her colleague and make sure that it does not happen here.
Our real challenge is in spending money on the railways, which I will not say much about. The National Audit Office has suggested that there needs to be a reset button on Euston; I suggest it should be a “Delete” button and send everyone to Old Oak Common, which everyone knows is a much better place. The key for railways is that there needs to be a much greater improvement in the services that people want to use every day to get to work, school, shopping or whatever. I have always had an ambition that this country would have a network of local services in the Midlands and the north as good as what we have in the south-east of England. But we do not have that yet, or any budget for it. It is very sad that HS2 seems to be swallowing all the money.
In conclusion, we need a long-term bus strategy. Who will provide it? That will depend on the next election. The Labour Party has produced some really excellent ideas about who should own it. The key is that it should be reliable, affordable and properly funded, delivered locally but with one consistent policy, and not dependent on how well the local authority has submitted its application—they are strapped for cash and time. It needs to provide a service for those who need it and do not have a car or do not want to use one—it is good for the environment, anyway. We need a long-term plan for the railways in the Midlands and the north, as many of us have said for a very long time.
I wonder whether some of the problem with transport is that politicians—we are all politicians—whether local or national, need to understand the needs of their electorate for local, cost-effective public transport and to put their regular daily journeys into a better state, rather than going once a week or once a month to places such as London.
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for securing this debate. It is a vital area for us. Those of us who live in the south-east of England are aware of the huge strains that are being put on ordinary people’s lives day by day, and on our businesses, through the problems with our transport system, not least with public transport.
I am also aware that this matter touches so many other areas of concern at the moment, such as our desire to work for a net-zero carbon future and the question of how we can get people off the roads as much as possible and on to good, fast, efficient public transport. I am aware that this means having a long-term policy on active transport; we need to work out how to get a sea change in what we expect and what we can offer. I was therefore pleased to hear the announcement by His Majesty’s Government of the provision of additional funding for transport in the recently published Statement. However, as has already been pointed out, it raises an awful lot of questions, not just about what was in it but what was not in it.
I declare my interest as president of the Rural Coalition. I want to focus my comments mainly on the rural dimension of public transport policy. Nearly 10 million of this country’s 67 million people live in rural areas—one in six of us. Sadly, there was little in the Government’s announcement to bring cheer to rural inhabitants. I and others who care about rurality and the long-term sustainability of the countryside entirely accept that we cannot expect anything like the levels of public transport and roads that our urban colleagues take for granted.
However, it is deeply disappointing that the recent Statement made no specific mention of buses and bus routes, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, pointed out. In my diocese of St Albans—which is, compared with many shire counties, not that rural; by and large, we have large villages and are pretty much a commuter county—buses provide a vital lifeline to rural communities, especially for those on low incomes, pensioners and those with disabilities who cannot drive themselves or afford disabled-friendly vehicles. Therefore, such people are almost entirely reliant on rural bus routes to carry out their daily activities. According to Age UK, one in three older households in rural areas have no access to a vehicle, leaving them entirely reliant on bus routes or expensive taxis—if they can get a taxi. We moan in our urban areas that it is sometimes difficult to get a taxi; it is much worse in rural areas where, sometimes, there simply is no taxi available.
These bus routes continue to be relied on by our rural communities, with statistics showing that over a quarter of bus passenger journeys in England outside London are made in rural areas. It is therefore very concerning to see the steady reduction in rural bus services. Since 2017, there has been a 56.5% reduction in bus mileage in Hertfordshire, and many of our “lifeline” routes such as the 84 service between Potters Bar and New Barnet have been phased out and only partially replaced.
Funding for rural transport has long been an issue. Most rural bus routes are not commercially viable if it is simply left to the market. They tend to be used by fewer people and to involve much longer journeys. They are not sustainable without local government support. Further, as noted by the Government’s Statement, the pandemic has, certainly in the short and medium term, reduced the number of passengers hugely. The problem with cutting bus services is that the chance of rebuilding them as we try to emerge into whatever new society we are to have will be difficult; it is more or less being forced on people.
I am grateful that His Majesty’s Government have been funding the £2 cap on bus fares in England; I note that this was extended for a further three months recently, and for that we are grateful. However, as transport economists have been quick to point out, if and when the subsidies come to an end or are removed, it is likely that hundreds of rural bus services will be cut.
One of the major concerns for rural areas is the Government’s Bus Back Better strategy, which requires that local authorities develop a local bus service improvement plan and apply for funding. Of the 79 local authorities that submitted those improvement plans in 2021-22, only 31 are set to receive central government funding to deliver their plans. The Campaign for Better Transport has highlighted that this strategy leaves out rural authorities, which have often much smaller transport teams and advisers and simply lack the resources and expertise to successfully apply for and win government funding. That is an extraordinary irony, whereby the communities most in need of government support do not have the capacity or the skills to apply for it, with some notable exceptions.
Good public transport networks are vital to all communities. As we are trying to work out a long-term strategy for sustainable rural communities, we need those networks to allow people to connect to their workplaces, families, local shops, doctors’ surgeries and so on. A report by KPMG estimated that for every £1 invested into local communities for bus networks, you could expect to see an economic return of £4.48. Therefore, I conclude by asking the Minister: what steps will His Majesty’s Government take to ensure that rural authorities are not left out of the local bus improvement plan funding in future?
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for again giving us the opportunity to debate important transport issues, and I am grateful for the topic today. By virtue of the Statement of 9 March being a Written Statement, it was slipped out in a way that suggested that it was not an important one, but of course it was.
HS2, which is Britain’s big on-again, off-again project of the 21st century, is once more in serious doubt as a proper project. The delays hollow it out. It seems that it will be truncated at both ends. Let us start with Euston. Will the Minister clarify exactly what the plans are here? There was discussion that suggested that there would be long delays to the completion of Euston. There was a suggestion that it might terminate at Old Oak Common, which was probably not a bad idea to begin with but, since Euston is now a building site, it is really beyond the point where it is sensible to think that it is not going to be the terminus. But having cast doubt on whether HS2 would eventually go to Euston, the Prime Minister earlier this week suggested that it would. But the latest evidence, as the NAO points out, is that it will not be ready until 2041, or even 2043. That is a long time to live in a building site.
The NAO also points out that costs have ballooned, and refers to £1.5 billion spent on land purchases and preparation work—but £100 million was written off because the original Euston designs were scrapped. The NAO is scathing about the dither and delay that has led to a doubling of costs. We would welcome clarification.
There is also the fact that it is clear now that HS2 is unlikely to go beyond Birmingham, which basically turns Birmingham into a part of the commuter belt for London—hardly the economic reset for the north of England that was intended. With the state of rail services in the north of England currently beyond dire, it is unacceptable that there is no hope in sight of a decent long-distance railway service—which, as we all need to emphasise, would in turn take pressure off existing lines and enable them to work more effectively.
Of course, there is also the Department for Transport document that is doing the rounds which makes it clear that the delays to HS2 as a whole will increase costs and cause job losses. It also casts doubt on whether HS2 will even call at Stafford, Macclesfield and Stoke. The Government have now had time to reflect on that document, on which they refused to comment because it was leaked—but no one suggested that it was a forgery. It is damaging investor confidence, so I invite the Minister to clarify the Government’s intentions, for the economic good of the north of England.
Another issue that I have raised before in this respect is the Barnett consequential for HS2 funding. Scotland and Northern Ireland were awarded Barnett consequential money but not Wales, the reason apparently being that Wales was going to benefit because HS2 was going to Crewe and would improve services in north Wales. But HS2 is not going to Crewe—or it is unlikely to go there while we are still active politicians. Therefore, it is really time to look at this again in all fairness. Even if the Government will not give Barnett consequential money to the Welsh Government, they need to invest a very large amount of money in Welsh infrastructure directly. We are talking about £5 billion-plus that Wales is missing out on.
The vast majority of passengers travel by bus, which was not mentioned on 9 March. Noble Lords who have spoken so far have made some excellent points. Bus passenger numbers outside London have been in freefall for many years, with a 15% reduction between 2009 and 2019 in the number of bus routes—and that was intensified in the pandemic. The market has failed; there is little competition for new routes and fares have increased beyond inflation. Buses are so important because they are relied on by the poorer, the younger, the older, the disabled, and by women rather than men. They unlock education for young people and jobs for the unemployed. In other words, they are fundamental to levelling up—as well, of course, to decarbonisation and improved air quality.
Bus Back Better is a good strategy but, unfortunately, there is no strategic funding to go with it. I add to the points made already about the importance of a review of the way in which bus funding is allocated. These separate pots of money, subject to the bidding process, are chaotic and are no way of improving bus services. They discourage bids from those local authorities where bus services are already skeletal or non-existent. There needs to be a much more comprehensive approach and support for those areas that are no longer in a position to improve bus services because they do not have any.
The Department for Transport does not have a good record of picking winners. Bus operators have no certainty for the future, and neither do local authorities. This morning, during Oral Questions, the Minister accepted that the June cut-off date for current funding was a problem. This needs to be addressed, and very soon. I am sure that the Minister will point to lower passenger numbers, but we have to accept that we have gone beyond being able to point to Covid as the ongoing cause of this problem. There is lots of evidence that passengers have not returned because of reduced services and poor reliability. A more strategic approach is needed in order to overcome that.
Before I finish, I do not know if the Minister will have had time to look at the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s 35th report but, as a member of that committee, I would like her to take note of its recommendation that the Government need to look beyond a review of concessionary bus fares and beyond Covid at other aspects of why people are not using the buses.
I again thank the noble Lord for doing something that we all should have done, which is to put a focus on the importance of passengers. We talk too often in this House about the infrastructure, without emphasising passengers at the heart.
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
My Lords, I too thank my noble friend Lord Berkeley for securing this debate. Bus networks across England are fundamentally broken, and railway operators are breaking records for delays and cancellations. The Statement on 9 March does not solve this. In fact, there was no mention of buses at all. The bus network is used by twice as many people as use trains, yet a lack of reliability across England is holding back the economy and causing misery for millions.
I therefore begin by asking the Minister: does she agree that this is a result of Britain being the only country in the developed world where private bus operators set routes and fares with no say from the public? Fares have consistently risen twice as fast as wages since this Government came to power. While we can all recognise the value of the £2 bus fare cap in England, its time-limited nature, and the fact that many providers have chosen not to take part in the scheme, means that it falls far short of expectations.
Only a new system that gives local communities a say over routes and fares can make the network fit for the future. Mayors across England have been using their devolved powers and funding to bring down the cost of living and put more money in people’s pockets. With greater authority, they could achieve so much more. Will the Minister therefore bring forward new legislation to devolve further powers across England, put the public back in control of the public transport they depend on and end the ideological ban on municipal bus companies?
I was chairman of London Buses for two years, during which time I came to realise what buses mean. More than any other form of transport, they are engines of social change. They carry the old, the young, the poor and the weak. We should be debating not profit but the value they bring to communities, in particular their weakest parts.
On the future of the railways, the Government have again rewarded failure by handing Avanti West Coast an extension. It is the worst-performing operator on the rail network, but its problems are not isolated—TransPennine Express has caused misery across the rail network, with dozens of cancellations every day. After more than a decade of this Government, railways in the north and the Midlands are broken.
Despite fares rising, performance remains unacceptable and promised investment is not being delivered. The scaling back of Northern Powerhouse Rail, coupled with the scrapping of the eastern leg of HS2, is a betrayal of the promise made to the north. This scheme alone could have sparked a rail revolution and created tens of thousands of jobs. Given that the Government based their decision not to go ahead with Northern Powerhouse Rail on seat capacity and time savings, will they now commission that independent assessment so that the north can finally get the rail network it deserves?
Among the minor updates and tinkering in last month’s Statement, the most significant announcement was the confirmation that HS2 is delayed and set to cost the taxpayer even more. This latest announcement appears to confirm that HS2 trains will stop at Old Oak Common for up to 10 years. Is the Minister aware that the Government’s own review and assessment found that this would evaporate time savings, detonate the business case, overwhelm the Elizabeth Line and cost £30 billion in growth?
The railway has now been in chaos, to a greater or lesser extent, for at least a decade. We need to grip its challenges. The Government have a plan with Great British Railways. It seems to me that it is the only plan in town, so why cannot we get ahead with it, to a position where we can hold a single body to account for the railways and their improvement?
A £1 billion cut to the active travel budget was confirmed as part of the announcement, as well as the mothballing of major roadbuilding schemes. What assessment have the Government made of the impact of this on rail and buses? Does the Minister expect that it will increase demand?
The piecemeal announcements on 9 March fall far short of people’s ambition for buses and rail. We need the Government to put passengers back at the heart of our railways and bus networks and build the infrastructure fit for the century ahead, unlocking jobs and growth. I hope the Minister will reflect on the comments made during this debate and that the Government will reassess their investment plans.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Vere of Norbiton) (Con)
My Lords, I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed. As ever, I will reflect carefully on those contributions. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for once again giving noble Lords the opportunity to discuss buses. It is a subject close to my heart, and I think we all agree that we want the same thing; we are dealing with how, on the pitch that we are on, we can achieve the sorts of services that we would like to see.
Let me start by commenting on the announcement on 9 March. Essentially, the £40 billion set out in that Statement was the capital investment for transport over the next two financial years. Sometimes it is easy in transport because the figures get very big very quickly, but it is a significant amount of money that we are going to invest in our transport systems—that is across all modes—and it does not include the further funding that is committed for revenue support in terms of the services as well.
I shall try to focus my reflections today on rail, both high-speed and traditional, and local transport. I accept that there were some comments on active travel and roads, the responses to which I may put in a letter after the debate—certainly, the figure given for the reduction in active travel funding I just do not recognise.
When we restated the amount of funding that will be forthcoming in the next two financial years, we did so in the face of two quite significant challenges. The first is the overall decline in the number of passengers on the railways and on buses, as well as a change in the nature of travel, because fewer people are going to work —indeed, we have seen a welcome rise in the amount of leisure travel taking place. The second is financial. There has been significant inflation within the construction sector. That is not a homogeneous situation; some things are inflating at a higher rate than others, and it is time to reflect on the impact of that inflation and to consider how we can de-risk the investments that we want to make.
The Transport Secretary’s statement set out which sections of HS2 the Government are prioritising to deliver as planned and which sections need to be rephased to take into account that inflationary pressure on the cost base. Cost estimates for each phase of the programme will be published. His announcement clearly requires officials to work through the consequences with HS2 and the supply chain to firm up the information that we have.
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
The six-monthly updates will continue to be laid before Parliament as they have been previously. We will of course endeavour to put in every single update as much information as we have at that time. We will not have all the information immediately, because various things will be worked through at a different time.
We confirmed that the first stage of HS2 will be delivered as planned between Old Oak Common and Birmingham Curzon Street by 2033. Sometimes, I am mildly disappointed by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, making comments such as “serious doubt about the project” and “unlikely to go beyond Birmingham”. I am not sure where such observations have come from, because we have been quite clear in our plans.
On the rail system more generally, as the Secretary of State said during his Bradshaw address,
“operating the railways is currently financially unsustainable and it isn’t fair to continue asking taxpayers to foot the bill”.
We have to be very careful about the costs, thinking particularly about the depressed revenue that we are seeing at the moment.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
Can I invite the Minister to look carefully at the National Audit Office report?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
I will of course look very carefully at the National Audit Office report. I do not know that it is saying that it believes that the line is unlikely to go beyond Birmingham; again, I would not know where its evidence would come from for a statement such as that.
We have an opportunity to improve the rail and local transport networks and to adapt to the needs of passengers today. There is a rare chance of some sort of redesign so that the system is fit for the future, because, as I said at the outset, I think all noble Lords want the same thing.
I will now turn to comments about HS2. The Transport Secretary has been very clear that Old Oak Common will act as a temporary London terminus while Euston is completed, but I do not think that any noble Lord should be under the impression that this will somehow be substandard. It will be probably the best-connected and largest new railway station ever built in the UK; it will have 14 platforms—six high speed and eight conventional—and it will be a transport superhub, providing connections to Heathrow via the Elizabeth line and, of course, high-speed rail services through to various parts of the country.
It was already planned that Euston would open later than Old Oak Common. However, we have decided not to proceed to full construction of Euston station in the next two years, which is the period that the Statement looked at, due to affordability and profiling issues. There is an opportunity to look again at the Euston station design to ensure that it is affordable and delivers for both the local community and passengers.
Following this debate, I will set out in a letter as much as I can about the phasing for the different elements of High Speed 2, including going to Crewe and beyond. It is important to put that on record.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her offer to write a letter. Will she also comment on the lack of a firm design for not the station itself but the approaches to Euston? My information is that there is no option that is actually safe to build, and that is quite critical.
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
I will certainly include that in the letter. I do not have anything with me today.
I turn now to buses, which, as many noble Lords have pointed out, are the absolute backbone of our public transport system. The national bus strategy, which we published back in March 2021, is a long-term strategy. It is important to understand the role of the BSIPs—bus service improvement plans. We asked all local transport authorities to prepare one, which they did, and we used them to look at how to prioritise funding. To a certain extent, there was no bidding process: we did not ask for bids but to review all the bus service improvement plans.
Noble Lords may ask themselves, “Where did these bus service improvement plans come from? Who inputted into them?” We were clear in the national bus strategy that they must have the input of local people; there had to be a passenger board, or whatever they wanted to call it. Listening to the input of local people and businesses allows the bus service improvement plan to have local accountability. I have heard two different things today: that we need to give more powers to local authorities but also that national government should take control of the bus network, as some noble Lords have suggested. Local accountability is really important.
Funding is absolutely key. The Government are spending an additional £3 billion. This is the largest investment in buses in a generation, and it is on top of funding that still goes out to local transport authorities or bus operators to support fares, such as the bus service operating grant of £250 million a year, and the concessions payment of about £1 billion a year. Local transport authorities also get funding in the block grant for tendered services. Unfortunately, some local authorities, particularly rural ones, decide not to use that money on tendered services. That is a disappointment, and local people should be holding those councils to account for those things.
Therefore, with the bus service improvement plans and subsequently the enhanced partnerships, which are a partnership between the transport authority and the bus operator taking into account what has been said by the passengers, that is how bus networks are planned locally. So it is not quite right to say that it is left to the market, because local transport authorities have quite a significant amount of leverage over the bus operators in agreeing what the enhanced partnerships should say, and 75% of enhanced partnerships have now been “made”—that is, they are in existence. Of course, if the enhanced partnership is not working or it is not what the local authority wants to do, it is at liberty to start franchising, and we know that places such as Greater Manchester have already done that. So there are many ways in which local transport authorities can exert power over the bus network to provide what their local people want.
I accept, as I did earlier today in the Oral Question, that the funding is short term at the moment, until 30 June, and that there is an enormous amount of analysis to be done: the impact of the £2 bus fare cap will be important—but also some of the BSIP funding, the revenue side of it in particular, is being used to support fares in places such as Manchester, Liverpool, West Yorkshire and Lancashire, so that will be important. The capital spending from BSIP will take slightly longer to come in, because that is all about bus priority, bus lanes and all those sorts of things, so we need to give that a little more time. However, the market is still in transition, so we are analysing where we are and looking at what any long-term future support might look like.
I know that the right reverend Prelate is a great champion of rural areas, and he was concerned that rural authorities would not have the resources to be able to do the BSIPs that we ask them to do. In fact, we gave them the money to provide the resources for that. We gave them £23 million to work up their BSIPs and enhanced partnerships and, subsequently, we gave all the local authorities that were not successful in getting funding—about half of them—£11 million to make sure that they could roll out the bus service improvement plans that they had. There are many things that they could do to improve services which do not necessarily require funding.
The right reverend Prelate will have heard me speak before about demand-responsive transport in rural areas—the bus fare cap is very good for rural areas, particularly on longer routes—and the BSOG really supports fares in rural areas as well. In addition, community transport is important in rural areas, which is also taken into account in any BSIP.
I am very conscious that I have 45 seconds in which to do rail. I recognise the expertise of the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, in this area and his great interest in rail, and from a DfT perspective we recognise that performance needs to improve across the system. We have had numerous conversations about Avanti and TPE, and we know the impact of removal of rest-day working there. However, at the heart of it are the passengers, and GBR, the transition team for Great British Railways, is looking at that 30-year vision for our railways. We continue to invest billions of pounds in our railways for the sorts of local railways that the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, wants to see. Now we have to look through the RNEP, make the correct decisions based on current passenger numbers, which again are not the same all over the country—some areas are seeing higher passenger return then others. Therefore the RNEP is being reviewed by Ministers at the moment and that will be published; the investment will continue, and that is part of the £40 million.
I note that I have gone over my 12 minutes. I know that there are many things that I have not been able to cover but I will certainly write a letter. Once again, I am always grateful to talk about railways and local transport—both subjects that are very close to my heart.
Prison Officers: Retirement
(1 year, 8 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Earl Attlee
To ask His Majesty’s Government what are their reasons for setting a retirement age of 68 for newly recruited prison officers; and what assessment they have made of whether that retirement age is appropriate and in the public interest.
Earl Attlee (Con)
My Lords, after a debate about prison overcrowding initiated by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, in September 2017, I decided to take a very close interest in the UK’s prison system, because it is quite clear that there is a lot of room for improvement. One of my first actions was to read the 1991 report of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, about the riots at Strangeways prison and elsewhere. No one who has read that report could fail to be struck by the risks that prison officers manage on a day-to-day basis and the extraordinary physical and moral courage exhibited by prison officers during those riots. It is clear to me that a 68 year-old prison officer is far too old to deal with physical challenges of this nature, no matter how good their jailcraft is.
In February 2020, I produced a paper that proposed drastic reform in respect of prolific minor offenders. I ran it as an amendment in your Lordships’ House, and it was well received. However, during my researches, as your Lordships would expect, I detected a number of other problems, such as the “potting” of prison officers by prisoners, which is just one example of why prison officers are special and need to be treated differently. Another problem that came up was Friday release, which is where large numbers of prisoners tend to be released on a Friday, when other agencies are not in a good position to help a newly released prisoner, and when those prisoners are at their most vulnerable. Along with my noble friend Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, I ran suitable amendments, and I am pleased to say that the Government are supporting a Private Member’s Bill that will address this problem. So we do have good news from time to time, and I am grateful to Ministers.
During my researches into our prison system, my admiration and respect for prison officers went only one way: upwards. We charge them with looking after often the most objectionable members of society that we can possibly find. The source of the current problem—although not the cause—is that, in his 2011 review of public sector pensions, the noble Lord, Lord Hutton of Furness, left prison officers off a list of “uniformed services” that he proposed to protect from the state pension age rise to 68, insisting that, for the Armed Forces, police and firefighters,
“where pension age has historically been lower to reflect the unique nature of their work a pension age of 60 is appropriate”.
I understand that a retirement age of 65 has already been conceded in negotiations, although I think that is already too old for practical reasons. I do not believe that a retirement age of 68 for a prison officer is appropriate or in the public interest. I am honoured to debate this Question with my noble and learned friend Lord Bellamy, and I look forward to his answers and having many more debates with him about the prison system.
In my time, I have served for over 40 years in the reserves, I have undertaken international aid operations in the Balkans and Rwanda, and I have undertaken military operations in the Balkans and the Middle East. But I am now 66 and, although my brain seems to work reasonably well, my body cannot do what it used to be able to, even five years ago. It would be absolutely out of the question for me to perform the duties of a prison officer. Can any noble Lord honestly picture me attempting to exercise control and restraint of an 18 year-old prisoner? If I cannot do it, even with my background, why should I expect prison officers to do it when they are even older than I am? That is why it is morally wrong to have a retirement age of 68 for our prison officers.
When the noble and learned Lord, Lord Stewart of Dirleton, answered my Oral Question on this matter last June, he claimed that prison officers worked in a controlled environment compared with firefighters and police officers. Anyone who thinks that prisons are a controlled environment should go away and read the Woolf report. During my investigations in the Prison Service, I quickly lost count of how often the alarms went off and all available prison officers had to pitch in to control an incident. Most prisons and custodial institutions are inherently violent places, but the skill, courage and fortitude of the prison officers are what limit the frequency and severity of incidents.
The other argument that I expect my noble and learned friend the Minister will advance is that prison officers do not make anything like the pension contributions that police officers and firefighters do. That is true, of course, but the reason is that the low pay of a prison officer makes such contributions unaffordable. I understand that the POA would be quite happy to make greater contributions, but only if the pay was increased. Prison officers are prohibited from taking any form of industrial action. That being the case, Ministers need to be very careful to ensure that they are not abusing this restriction and underpaying and underrewarding prison officers—and I think that they are underpaid. There is very good evidence: the retention rate of newly recruited prison officers. Unfortunately, the retention statistics are terrible. There will be a variety of reasons for this, but mostly it will be the terms and conditions of service.
The pension age of 68 sends a signal that the Government, Ministers and, indeed, the public simply do not care about prison officers. If that is the message we are sending, why are we surprised that junior prison officers walk away and take a much easier job—say, in a warehouse? The Prison Service desperately needs experienced prison officers, but Ministers are failing to retain them. Rather, resources are being wasted on training newly recruited prison officers, who quickly leave, while the Treasury quietly calculates the notional savings from full pensions not being paid out—but those savings will of course not arise for decades.
There is another fatal flaw in treating prison officers as mainstream civil servants. Understandably, prison officers have to undergo regular fitness tests. There are two issues with this. The first is that the process results in early retirement for some very experienced prison officers whose jailcraft is so refined that they hardly ever need to resort to control and restraint—an own goal if ever there was one. The second is that it makes it very hard to stay working as a prison officer until 68. In fact, it is almost unachievable. For instance, last year I was very ill and, if I was a prison officer, I would have had to retire. In any case, I would almost certainly fail any reasonable agility test because my joints are giving up due to a misspent youth. However, if I was an ordinary civil servant, and with the nature of my illness, I could have continued working to 68 with only a few minor adjustments. It is much easier for a mainstream civil servant than a prison officer to achieve the retirement age of 68, and that cannot be right. I have heard that Ministers are, in correspondence, comparing prison officers with ratings on Royal Fleet Auxiliaries. I will have to follow that up with my Defence hat on, because 68 is far too old for that role as well.
I have realistic expectations about what the response from my noble and learned friend the Minister will be this afternoon. It would be good if Ministers could go away and privately have a hard think about whether the current policy makes sense. I do not believe that it is morally right, and nor do I think it is correct in practical terms.
Lord Balfe (Con)
My Lords, I do not have extensive experience of the prison estate, so I do not come here with that hat on, but I do have a background in the trade union movement stretching back to when I was 16 years old, and I was for some years the trade union envoy for David Cameron when he was Prime Minister. Our aim at that time was not to convert the trade union movement, because its leaders are not going to suddenly say, “I’d like to support the Conservative Party”. Our job—or my job—was to make clear to them that something like one-third to 40% of serving and active trade unionists voted for the Conservative Party, and that we were not their enemy but wanted a constructive relationship with them. That is what motivates me to be here today.
The current Prime Minister has made it very clear to me—most recently, last Monday night—that he wishes to have a good relationship with the trade union movement. Obviously, we cannot give it everything it wants any more than we can give anyone else everything they want, but we can have a good and civilised relationship with it. As such, I am sure the Minister and many other people would agree that having a pension age of 68 is rather high. Indeed, I see from today’s papers and releases that Mel Stride, the Pensions Minister, is looking again at whether and when we should move to the age of 68. I think that is a jolly good idea.
My noble friend Lord Attlee has made reference to the pension contributions and pay, and he is absolutely right. I served for many years as a trustee, and indeed as a chair, of pension funds. A rate of contribution of 5.4% is, frankly, laughable. In the pension funds that I ran, we were looking at 12%, 13% or 14%. That is not far out of line with the police at 12% and the fire brigade at 14%. However, to achieve those contribution rates, you must have the salary to back it up. Those contribution rates cannot be paid from the current salaries, and the whole system really needs a good look at.
As I often do when I come to debates like this, I looked up on Wikipedia the Minister’s background and saw that he began his career in the Monckton Chambers. Walter Monckton was widely regarded in the TUC as probably the best Minister of Labour since the war. He was the Conservative Minister of Labour from 1951 to 1955, and his approach was based on industrial peace, talking to the unions and trying to reach a common accord within the resources of the state and the demands of the union. So, the Minister comes—as we would say in my horse racing part of the world—from a pretty good stable. I hope that some of the atmosphere of the Monckton Chambers is still within him these many years after.
I realise that a Minister can ask only for a certain amount, and a Minister in the Lords is doubly constrained, to an extent, so I have a very simple but, I believe, acceptable request. Will the Minister ask his responsible ministerial colleague to initiate informal talks with the POA to ascertain whether there is enough common ground to resume official discussions on just the retirement age in the rejected Liz Truss package of December 2016?
I am told that, of the three elements in that package, the retirement age was rather dominated by the pay increase issue. If we could manage to sort that out and set it aside, there may be some room for moving forward. To quote one of my early heroes, Harold Wilson, I am sure that “talks about talks” could be quite useful in this regard. I hope that the Minister, given the new atmosphere that is coming from No. 10 and our desire to have a good relationship with the trade union movement, will find himself able to agree to my modest request.
Lord Thomas of Gresford (LD)
My Lords, I strongly support the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, in his suggestion that there should be fresh talks about this issue. That is a sensible suggestion and I hope the Minister will take it up.
My father was a policeman. He retired in his mid-50s with the rank of chief superintendent, after 30 years’ service, on full pension. He told me that throughout his police career he had drawn his baton only once: in 1933, when called upon to charge a crowd of miners on strike at Bersham Colliery, near Wrexham. The only person hurt was a reporter from the Wrexham Leader, who had foolishly stuck his head over the hedge to see what was going on and was clacked, as we say, as the PCs passed. Apropos of nothing, the pit was later the film set for “The Corn is Green”, starring Katharine Hepburn in 1979.
I mention this because in the prison inspectorate’s May 2022 report on Berwyn Prison, only two or three miles away from Bersham, it is recorded in paragraph 3.20 that
“During the previous 12 months, batons had been drawn seven times”
to control prisoners, that an
“incapacitant spray … had been drawn and used once”,
and that this was an improvement on the position in 2019, when batons had been drawn 26 times.
I have referred to Berwyn Prison on a number of occasions in this House because it is close to my home. Opened in 2017, it remains the largest prison in the UK, and is the second largest in Europe, with a capacity of over 2,000 places—although I have to say that it has always been underoccupied and understaffed. It suffers from a drug problem, to the despair of the Crown Court judges in north Wales.
Last May’s report says that, at the prison,
“The rate of violence was falling, although it remained comparatively high when set against comparator prisons.”
It continues:
“Among the key challenges facing the prison was the need to recruit and retain staff … There was some evidence … that staffing pressures were undermining local morale, but crucially, the shortage was impacting the quality of staff-prisoner relationships and the pace of regime recovery.”
There was some improvement on figures dating from 2019, which I have previously referred to in the House. At that time, 90% of the staff were less than two years in post. In this report, it is noted that there was
“a severe shortage of band 3 officers, probation and health care staff”,
which
“affected the delivery of some services.”
I have discussed this situation with a very experienced prison officer from Parkhurst prison on the Isle of Wight. He told me that a lack of experienced prison officers at Berwyn prison was to be expected. He told me, “We watch each other’s backs as prison officers, and you will not get experienced officers into a prison staffed by rookies.”
There you have the background to this debate. Violence, or the threat of violence, is always there, yet the Ministry of Justice requires a prison officer to serve into his late 60s in a job which is probably beyond his physical capabilities. Of course, if he fails his annual physical test, the prison officer is allowed to retire but does not get his full pension. That saves the MoJ money—the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, has already covered that point—but it leads to poor recruitment and retention. It is said that the pool of labour to man Berwyn prison in north Wales has been exhausted, and the Prison Service has to look elsewhere, outside of Wales. I should include women, since there have been 18 instances of improper sexual conduct between female staff and prisoners, some of which have attracted heavy prison sentences on the women.
The Ministry of Justice refuses to equate prison officers with policemen or firefighters. It says that officers in those uniformed services make a higher contribution to pensions—again, the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, has referred to this; it is 15% as opposed to 5%—but of course they are paid significantly more than prison officers. I am sure that prison officers would welcome the same pay and conditions for the risks to personal safety which they constantly run. They are in the same position as police officers and are not allowed to withdraw their labour. Consequently, their bargaining position is open to exploitation by the Lord Chancellor, and that is what has happened.
Why was the Ministry of Justice the first to accept cuts to its funding and why does it remain incapable of persuading the Treasury to fund services for which it is responsible? As I recall, it was a grand gesture by the noble Lord, Lord Clarke, who wanted to be the first in Cameron’s Government to clutch austerity to his bosom. The consequence is that we have a justice system which is starved of funds, collapsing courts and barristers on strike. The backlog of cases is a disgrace which denies victims justice. On the other side of the coin are its responsibilities. The Prison Service is failing in safety, in combatting drugs and, most importantly, in providing adequate rehabilitation, all through the lack of trained and competent staff. It is easy for Dominic Raab to say that he will not address the question of the pension age when prison officers cannot strike. His legacy, I am afraid, will be failure.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)
My Lords, I open by agreeing with the three previous speakers. The noble Earl, Lord Attlee, closed by asking for a “hard think” about this situation. The noble Lord, Lord Balfe, asked for informal talks to start with the POA, and that request was supported by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas.
I thank the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, for securing this debate. He has shown dogged determination to secure justice and dignity for prison officers. I know that the POA union is extremely grateful for everything he does in this place for its members, who, let us face it, have one of the toughest and most dangerous jobs that we ask public servants to do.
We have heard some of the statistics, but I shall go over them again. Violence in prisons, especially against people working in them, has increased in recent years. The latest ONS safety in custody statistics, published January, show that there were 20,872 assault incidents in the 12 months to September 2022, up 11% from the 12 months to September 2021. In the most recent quarter, assaults were up 5% to 5,590 incidents.
It was recently reported that civil servants at the probation service’s HQ are being redeployed to work in prisons because of the staffing crisis there. An HMPPS spokesman said:
“We are temporarily moving around 90 qualified staff from desk-based roles to help frontline colleagues in prisons and probation.”
My first question for the Minister is: what action will the Government be taking immediately to address insufficient staffing in our prisons?
As the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, said in introducing this debate, newly recruited prison officers cannot draw their full occupational pension until they are getting on for 68 years old, depending on their date of birth. As he said, the POA has argued that this increased pension age is one reason why many younger officers are leaving the occupation. In recent evidence to the House of Commons Justice Committee, Mark Fairhurst, the national chair of the Prison Officers’ Association, said:
“If I join now as an 18-year-old recruit, I have to work for 50 years on the frontline before I can access my full pension, because our retirement time is now 68; it is related to the state pension. We must be the only uniformed frontline service in the entire country that expects staff to work in what I class as the most volatile, hostile workplace environment … That is not practical, and it puts off a lot of people.”
As we heard from the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, a 2011 report by the noble Lord, Lord Hutton of Furness, proposed that some uniformed services—namely the police, firefighters and the Armed Forces—should be exempt from the rise in the retirement age to 68. The decision excluded prison officers from the uniformed services that were spared the retirement age rise. This omission has never been explained or justified; it is a cause of anger and resentment among prison officers. This omission was then enshrined in law with the Public Service Pensions Act 2013 despite its apparent conflict with the Prison Act 1952, which grants prison officers
“all the powers, authority, protection and privileges”
of the police.
In 2016, as part of a prospective deal negotiated by the then Secretary of State for Justice, Liz Truss, the retirement age for prison officers would have been reduced by up to three years from 68 to 65. This was voted on by the POA’s members but was rejected by 65% of those polled. Since then—this is another point made by the noble Earl, Lord Attlee; in fact, by all the speakers in this debate—Conservative Ministers have argued that any lowering of the pension age for prison officers would
“mean that their pension contributions would have to increase.”
Of course, prison officers would be quite happy to make a greater contribution if their salaries were comparable to those of the other uniformed services.
Another point, which has not been made, is that reports by the Prison Service Pay Review Body have continued to raise the pension age as a concern, arguing that it is
“far too old to cope with the physical and mental demands of being an operational frontline Prison Officer.”
I quote again the POA’s national chair, Mark Fairhurst, who told the Justice Committee this last month:
“Lord Hutton neglected to include us as a frontline uniformed service. He classed us as civil servants who are deskbound. We are not. We are unique. We face violence every single shift. The police do not. They might go through the entire week dealing with pleasant people, and of a weekend they have to deal with a bit of violence when the pubs spill out. We deal with violent people every single shift, and we are expected to do that in our late 60s.”
In concluding, my question for the Minister is this: do the Government recognise that it is more difficult for men and women in their late 60s to control and restrain people who may be only a third of their age? Can the Minister show any evidence that prison officers at this age are able to do this work?
I think all noble Lords have asked for talks to be reopened. This is a difficult issue; it will not go away, and I will listen to the Minister’s answer with interest.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Bellamy) (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, for tabling this Question and all noble Lords who have spoken this afternoon. I will try to explain the Government’s position but, before I do so, it is right for me to highlight and pay tribute to the vital role that prison officers play in keeping the public safe and rehabilitating offenders. Prison officers and probation staff are vital key workers; many go above and beyond the call of duty to keep safe the public, their colleagues and those committed to their care. One is hugely impressed by the commitment of prison staff, who work in the most challenging of circumstances.
I will first make a clarification regarding a phrase used in the Question and at times this afternoon: the “retirement age” of 68. This is the age at which the state pension is fully payable, so we are not talking about a retirement age; we are talking about the age at which a full pension is payable. Nothing prevents anyone retiring before 68; many in the prison service retire before that age and very often return part-time or do other jobs. We are talking about the state pension age and the fact that, in line with the rest of the Civil Service, prison officers at the moment qualify for the full pension at that age.
I should say to noble Lords, although I am not fully apprised of the details, that I think there is a Statement today about the fact that the Government are considering the point at which to introduce the age of 68. There is talk of deferring the introduction until after the next general election in 2026, having regard to changes in life expectancy following the pandemic and other factors. However, this afternoon, let us continue with the hypothesis that we are talking about a difference between the state pension age which applies to all prison officers and the whole of the Civil Service, as compared to the lower pension age that applies to police officers and firefighters. I think I can leave out of account the armed services because we are probably in general agreement that that is a different case, for fairly obvious reasons.
It is also worth recording that, as I understand it, as of today, about half the prison service in bands three to five, who joined before 1 April 2015, are on legacy pension arrangements of one kind or another. In those cases, their retirement age may well be 60 or 65, depending on the legacy arrangement in question. It is perfectly correct that the full pension age refers to recruits joining after 1 April 2015, and it is likely to be between 65 and 68, depending on the precise date of birth of the individual in question. As noble Lords have observed, that results from the reforms proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Hutton, in the Hutton report in 2011, subsequently enacted in the Public Service Pensions Act 2013.
The answer to the first part of the Question as tabled is that 68 is the full pension age because this is the age which applies to the Civil Service generally, which comprises hundreds of thousands of people, and reflects the recommendations of the noble Lord, Lord Hutton. It is quite true that his recommendation 14 proposed an exception for the uniformed services, but he defined uniformed services as the Armed Forces, police and firefighters. He suggested in those cases that the normal pension age should be 60, which was in fact an increase from 55. But he did not, as has been pointed out, include prison officers.
In effect, the thrust of this Question is whether prison officers’ retirement age should be reduced from that which applies across the public sector now to that of police and firefighters. For various reasons, the Government’s position is that such a reduction is not appropriate in the present circumstances—or, to put it another way, the Government are not yet persuaded that such a reduction is appropriate. I deliberately put it in that slightly softer way because I entirely accept the comments that have been made that the Government would wish to have a constructive relationship with the trade unions and, particularly, with the Prison Service. I will come back to the questions that have been asked in that regard.
The short answer to the Question that has been posed is that despite the very persuasive points that have been made by noble Lords today, the Government do not currently consider that the job of a prison officer, very demanding though it is, is sufficiently comparable with that of a firefighter or a policeman to justify a downward reduction in the qualifying age for full pension.
Firefighters have exceptional fitness requirements much more stringent than those for prison officers. They do life-threatening work. Similarly, the work of police officers, generally speaking, involves a higher degree of risk of fatality or serious injury. Since the noble Lord, Lord Hutton, did not include prison officers, it would not, in the Government’s view, be appropriate to reopen that issue.
Certain general points arise in this respect. The first is that in most western societies such as this one, the general trend is to raise the pension age. We know that that is happening as a result of longer life expectancy, ageing populations and falling birth rates. Looking at it for a moment in a global view, any responsible Government concerned with controlling public expenditure in the future would have to think very hard before reversing the trend—actually lowering a pension age. We have seen the opposite problem in France, where they are trying to raise a pension age. Fortunately, we have not had the same problem in this country. But, in current circumstances, to reduce the pension age would be going against the grain of wider economic trends and demands. That is a first point.
A second point, if I may make it—and I would be interested to know whether noble Lords agree—is that we are, as a society, moving away from the idea of a job for life, or that you start a career and continue in that career, like the distinguished examples given by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, of his father and by the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, from his long career in the trade union movement: starting at 16 and remaining typically in that same occupation for many years. These days, people move around a great deal. The expectation that today someone of 18 would think of remaining with the Prison Service until he is 68 would be open to question, frankly, because modern youth, certainly the ones that one knows of anecdotally in one’s immediate circle, do not really think in those terms.
So the Government are cautious about acting on the basis that someone at the age of 20, deciding whether to join the Prison Service, is at all focused on whether their full pension would be payable in 2071, 2068 or 2063. In the Government’s view, that is not the kind of thing that affects recruitment or retention. So that is a further general point in relation to the impact—which is probably contestable—that this pension age has on the decision of a recruit to either join, or stay in, the Prison Service. These are rather detached points, and the cause and effect that has been raised is not entirely persuasive in the Government’s view, to put it as softly as that.
Thirdly, the issue of the contributions was raised. Under the standard Civil Service pension scheme, the employee rate is about 4.6%, and there is an employer contribution of 27%, which is pretty generous, compared to police and firefighter schemes, where the rate is between 12% and 14%. It is possibly the case that there is link between pay and pensions, and one has to look at them as package, as it were. In 2017, and on an earlier occasion in 2013, the Government considered, and negotiated with the prison officers, a package that would have involved a lower pension age but also had various points about pay and conditions. The POA voted on the package, and it was rejected.
So it is not as if the Government have not done anything in this respect; they have addressed questions of pay and pensions. The 2017 negotiations—they might be the Liz Truss negotiations to which the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, referred—did not reach agreement. The Government would say that that was not for lack of trying on the Government’s part, because a package was sufficiently agreed by the parties to be put to a ballot, but the ballot did not work. My noble friend Lord Attlee said that a retirement age of 65 had been “conceded” in the negotiations but, if I am correct, that would have been in the context of the wider package. I do not think that anything, as such, has been conceded separately as an appropriate retiring age for prison officers.
I will pick up the remaining points. I entirely accept my noble friend Lord Balfe’s suggestion that the Government desire a constructive relationship with the Prison Service. I am not in a position to commit the Prisons Minister to discuss this with the Prison Officers’ Association as a separate point, but the Minister is in constant touch with it, and I am sure that this, among other issues, will come up.
On this particular issue, there is a slight complication at the moment as a result of the McCloud judgment, which has thrown in some doubt the 2015 pension reforms as regards the younger members of the various pension schemes. There is a question about whether there is an age discrimination issue in those reforms. That is currently under consideration by the Cabinet Office, and, as I understand it, a remedy will be duly developed across the Civil Service to deal with that judgment. That may change the landscape a bit, but I think a detailed discussion of pensions should probably take place when that remedy is clear—or is announced or agreed, whatever the situation is—and would probably need to take place in relation to discussions about pay as well.
In relation to pay, the Minister for Prisons, my colleague Minister Hinds, has only today been giving evidence to the Prison Service Pay Review Body. Prison officers received a pay award last year, which has been welcomed. There are some signs of improved recruitment and retention. We have an extra 4,000 officers compared with 2017. Retention is still an issue in some prisons, but not in all prisons; some parts of the country have no trouble at all in recruiting and retaining prison officers. In general, the retention rate on average—I mean the rate of those not retained—is around 15% annually. Across both the public and private sectors, the national average is about 14% and in the Civil Service it is about 12.5%, so it is not completely out of line. But that is an average, and there is not a problem everywhere; it is only a problem in some cases. There are very focused efforts on trying to improve that situation, but the Government are not persuaded that there is a real link between the ultimate pension age at which the full pension is payable and the problems of retention and staffing in prisons. I think that they are due primarily to other factors and not the pension issue, although I accept that the pension issue has some symbolic value.
However, this is a difficult issue, and the Government would not wish to indicate that the position is for ever closed. It depends on what the remedy is that comes out of McCloud and further discussions. I would not presume for a moment to be able to replicate or follow the magnificent example of Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, who was mentioned earlier as a very fine Minister of Labour in the 1950s Conservative Government, but I hope that we find a way to move forward constructively with all parties on this question.