Westminster Hall

Tuesday 11th July 2023 Westminster Hall

Tuesday 11 July 2023

[Derek Twigg in the Chair]

UN High-level Meetings in 2023

Tuesday 11th July 2023 Westminster Hall

09:30

[Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered UN high-level meetings in 2023.

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. Most of, if not all, the pressing global challenges we face today are not confined to a single continent or country. We have all seen that—including recently with covid-19—when global challenges arise, and the consequences of those challenges are felt more widely than ever before. To face the challenges effectively, we need to use key international forums to incite support among world leaders for solutions that can save millions of lives and improve the lives of billions more.

The UN is a testament to the power of collective global resolve and the only place where 192 countries come together daily to deliberate on pressing global issues. The General Assembly is the main policy making and representative body of the UN, and it regularly calls for high-level meetings on topics of global importance. In that context, we are here for today’s debate.

In September, the UN will host three HLMs on global health topics. The first, on Wednesday 20 September, is focused on pandemic preparedness and response, or PPR. This will be a topical discussion given the recent covid-19 pandemic. On Thursday 21 September, a meeting is being convened on universal health coverage, or UHC—the principle that all people should have access to the full range of quality health services they need, when and where they need them, without financial hardship. Finally, on Friday 22 September, the UN will discuss tuberculosis. As co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on global tuberculosis, I am particularly interested in the outcome of the final meeting, but all three HLMs are incredibly important for advocates of global health.

The topics being discussed at the UN later this year are all multifactored, and an all-society approach involving more than just the health sector is needed to resolve the issues. The HLM is the mechanism through which to convene all sectors, under the leadership of Heads of Government, to agree a plan of action that all states can implement. Precisely because the meetings call on Heads of Government to engage, they are a powerful mechanism for change. The HLMs fall in the same week as the UN General Assembly, which means many Heads of State will be around the UN, and many will be attending those important meetings. I sincerely hope that the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary show that the UK is resolved to tackling PPR, UHC and TB by personally attending all three HLMS later this year. Can the Minister confirm whether they will attend?

Briefly, I will touch on the PPR and UHC meetings before turning to TB. The PPR meeting is a new HLM that aims to improve the governmental and multilateral capacities required successfully to identify and contain a new pandemic. Moving beyond the health sector, the HLM will look at financing, social protections, educational support, and research and development requirements to address future pandemics. The meeting is an important opportunity for member states to commit to the necessary fiscal and policy changes required to prevent a future pandemic.

The UHC meeting follows on from a meeting held in 2019. The 2023 meeting provides countries and stakeholders with the opportunity to reinvigorate progress towards delivering health for all. According to the latest global monitoring information, UHC progress is not on track, and the covid-19 pandemic has taken the world further from the 2019 targets. They include progressively covering 1 billion additional people under UHC with a view to covering all people by 2030. The HLM also sought to stop the rise of catastrophic out-of-pocket health expenditure, and eliminate impoverishment due to health-related expenses by 2030. Catastrophic costs are felt particularly acutely in the TB sector. Nearly 50% of people who receive a TB diagnosis will face catastrophic personal or household costs as a consequence. Concrete action is needed to strengthen equitable health systems, including public health functions that are critical for PPR and TB.

Finally, the UN is holding a follow-on HLM for TB, with the first being held in 2018. That was the first time that TB issues were discussed on such a significant international stage. The 2018 political declaration included a number of targets, which member states agreed to pursue: a commitment to provide treatment and diagnostics to 40 million people, including 350,000 children; a commitment to increase overall global investment in TB to $2 billion per year; and a commitment to end all stigma and forms of discrimination associated with TB.

[Sir George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Does he agree with the director of Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Professor David Lalloo, who has said:

“As academics, public and global health experts and healthcare professionals, we see the close interrelationship between tuberculosis, pandemic preparedness and response, and universal health coverage”?

Does my hon. Friend also agree that this high-level talk is a good opportunity to take that agenda forward?

[Mr Sharma]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his important intervention. I agree and will cover those points later in my talk, but I want to put that aside for now. Yes, it is internationally known and accepted that this is an opportunity that every state should take on board.

Those ambitious targets were widely welcomed by civil society groups and TB stakeholders, but the impact of the covid pandemic significantly limited progress. Few of the TB targets were met, and the 2023 HLM is seen as a key opportunity to regain momentum towards eradicating TB by 2030, in line with sustainable development goal 3.3.2.

TB is one of humanity’s oldest diseases. It is caused by bacteria that most commonly impact lungs, but it can spread to other parts of the body. TB is spread from person to person through air droplets, with most TB infections showing no symptoms at all. In fact, 25% of the world’s population is estimated to have latent, or inactive, TB. TB becomes transmissible only when it is activated, which can be triggered by a range of health or social factors,

TB is a disease of poverty. It is more prevalent in poorer communities and can be linked to socioeconomic factors such as lower-quality housing, overcrowding and limited access to health services. TB is closely linked to other health issues, including malnutrition and HIV status. Even in high-income countries, TB is often found in migrant communities; people with alcohol, drug or mental health issues; homeless communities; or people with a history of prison.

What is most frustrating for people like me, who have been involved with TB for a long time, is that TB is both preventable and curable. Yet each year, more than 1.6 million people die from TB, including nearly 400,000 children. A lack of political will and inadequate funding continue to limit our ability to eradicate TB. All countries need to do more. There is only one existing TB vaccine. Although the BCG is effective against some serious forms of childhood TB, it provides little protection against the most infectious and deadly forms of adult TB.

There are several promising vaccine candidates in the pipeline. Six vaccine candidates are in phase 3 of the clinical development process—the final phase before the vaccine can be regulated for public use. In fact, just last month, Wellcome and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced funding to advance TB vaccine candidate M72 through a phase 3 clinical trial. M72 could become the first new vaccine to help prevent pulmonary TB, a form of active TB, in more than 100 years.

Promising vaccine candidates have emerged before and have fallen short, so we need to continue to finance and increase investment in TB research and development to find new vaccines. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has previously supported the development of new TB vaccines through product development partnerships. However, new PDP funding has been paused in recent years. Can the Minister provide the House with an update on when we might expect new or renewed PDP funding?

We also need more new treatments for TB. According to the Treatment Action Group, the UK met 96% of its fair share contribution towards TB research and development in 2021—about £30 million—with fair share measured as spending at least 0.1% of overall research and development expenditures on TB. That funding was used to support innovation at some of the UK’s most prestigious research institutions, including the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. Although the UK might be stepping up to the challenge, it is clear that not all countries are paying their fair share. Will the Minister outline what more the FCDO can do to support UK research and development, especially in the context of TB, and encourage all countries to pay their fair share towards TB R&D?

One of the biggest concerns for TB stakeholders is antimicrobial resistance. TB is a complex bacteria and strains have become resistant to modern antibiotics. One third of all deaths due to complications from antimicrobial resistance in 2021 involved drug-resistant TB. We have some tools to tackle drug-resistant TB, but they are incredibly expensive and are not readily available to all who need them. Medicines such as bedaquiline have cut treatment times for drug-resistant TB in half, but even the UK is struggling to access them. What are the Government doing to increase access to bedaquiline in the UK and abroad?

People with TB also suffer high levels of stigma and discrimination. TB is often associated with factors that can themselves create stigma: HIV status, poverty, drug and alcohol misuse, homelessness, a history of prison, and refugee status. Fear of discrimination can mean that people with TB symptoms delay seeking help, making it more likely that they will become seriously ill. Stigma around TB can also make people reluctant to stick with their course of treatment for fear of being “found out”. By taking treatment irregularly, people risk developing drug resistance.

The TB community has not sufficiently contested the views that reinforce TB stigma. Such an approach has previously delivered positive outcomes in the context of HIV. Countries and donors need to implement locally managed, gender-responsive and well-financed TB programmes to help overcome the stigma and discrimination associated with TB infection, so can the Minister tell the House what the FCDO is doing to help eliminate the stigma and discrimination experienced by many TB-affected actors?

Although TB is getting its own high-level meeting in September, it also has implications for both pandemic preparedness and universal health coverage. Strengthening health systems to better detect and respond to respiratory infections is crucial to PPR, as experts agree that it is likely that the next pandemic will be respiratory in nature. TB programmes are well placed to help identify new respiratory pandemics, as they are already actively involved in the treatment, diagnostics and surveillance of respiratory diseases. The ability to respond effectively to new respiratory pathogens relies on strong infection prevention and control infrastructure, an experienced and well-compensated health workforce with expertise in managing complex respiratory infections, and access to the latest medical tools and equipment.

Much of the infrastructure needed to respond to the TB epidemic already exists. However, as we saw during the covid-19 pandemic, such programmes are quickly repurposed to respond to emerging pandemics, with significant negative impacts for people with a TB infection. More needs to be done to strengthen TB programmes, surveillance and diagnosis as the fundamental pillar of PPR. Does the Minister believe that greater investment in TB programmes, diagnosis and surveillance will help the world prepare for the next novel pandemic?

UN high-level meetings on global health matters used to be unheard of. The HIV/AIDS HLM in 2001 was the first ever global health-focused HLM. Another was not held until 2011, but this has changed over the last decade. There are now years when multiple global health issues are discussed simultaneously, as is the case this year. It is a direct response to the number of global health issues that have impacted on the world over the last 10 years. The UN recognises that a new approach is needed to help address the barriers holding back progress in global health. The upcoming high-level meetings are a perfect opportunity to reinvigorate momentum and encourage global action to face the challenges of the 21st century together.

09:48

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg. I thank the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) for securing this important debate. It is very well timed, as Ministers are agreeing the statements that will go forward to the three high-level meetings on universal health coverage, pandemic prevention, preparedness and response, and tuberculosis, which will all be happening in New York during the same week in September. As co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for water, sanitation and hygiene, I will focus my remarks on the issues of water sanitation and hygiene as they pertain to the three high-level meetings, and on how we can mark the huge step change ahead by using the meetings to galvanise global commitment to improve health and wellbeing for all and accelerate progress towards universal health coverage globally.

The timing of this debate is very important, because the meetings will result in a number of political declarations that are currently being negotiated by member states. I know that the UK public want to see our Government taking a leadership role in the high-level meetings in order to bring about change in people’s lives, both in the UK and across the world. I thank the Minister for Development, the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), for recently attending a joint meeting of the all-party parliamentary groups for water, sanitation and hygiene, on HIV and AIDS, on malaria and neglected tropical diseases, and on global tuberculosis to talk about a lot of issues that will be discussed at the high-level meetings.

We are so grateful in this country for the NHS, whose 75th anniversary we celebrated just last week, but as we are increasingly entwined in health globally, progress in the NHS can only be helped by progress around the world. The pandemic showed us that in the most stark way. Universal health coverage, which includes water, sanitation and hygiene, will not only save many lives in countries around the world, but save lives here and mean that we are less at risk from future global health disasters.

Two thirds of healthcare facilities in the world’s least developed countries, and half of those globally, do not have access to hygiene facilities. To put that in perspective, if my local hospital or GP surgery did not have running water it would be closed down, yet half of facilities around the world do not have that access to safe water. One result is that every minute a newborn dies from infection caused by a lack of safe water and an unclean environment. Healthcare workers and patients increasingly turn to antibiotics in the absence of clean water, resulting in the misuse of antibiotics and increased resistance.

Antimicrobial resistance directly caused 1.27 million deaths globally in 2019 and contributed to an additional 4.95 million. That makes it a bigger killer than HIV/AIDS or malaria. By 2050, the death toll is predicted to have climbed to 10 million deaths annually. The UK Government have predicted that antimicrobial resistance will be the leading cause of death in the UK by 2050. The Lancet has called it an “overlooked pandemic”. But it can be addressed right now through increased water, sanitation and hygiene in healthcare facilities around the world, which would save lives immediately: it is a good value-for-money investment and could be the huge step change that we need to see.

The common thread running through all three high-level meetings is the need to prevent and treat infections effectively. Infection prevention and control, and the vital necessity of water, sanitation and hygiene, are essential to preventing infections in the first place. Treatment is, of course, important, and if the infections are bacterial, antibiotics are vital, so we need to protect the antibiotics that we have.

Recently, the APPG for water, sanitation and hygiene and the APPG on antibiotics produced a report called “Prevention first”. We took evidence from the World Health Organisation and experts around the world about the need to curb the spread of antibiotic resistance. We found that a lack of hygiene means that doctors and nurses are unable to wash their hands before and after touching patients; new mothers are unable to clean themselves or their babies; and health workers and patients do not have a safe and hygienic toilet in their healthcare facilities. That causes repeated disease outbreaks, which need to be treated with antibiotics, contributing to that resistance around the world.

Not only would greater water, sanitation and hygiene save lives immediately, but it would buy us time to develop new drugs and protect our scientific investments. It has the power to achieve safer primary healthcare services and improve health outcomes. There are lives that could have been saved by the simple act of washing, having clean water and being cared for in a clean environment by people who have washed their hands, yet women are still giving birth in environments that do not have clean water, and healthcare workers are suffering disproportionately as a result. Ensuring that all healthcare facilities in the 46 least developed countries have access to reliable water, sanitation and hygiene will cost the equivalent of just 3% of health spending in these countries. That can be a key topic at the high-level meetings.

Investment in global WASH should be seen as an insurance policy to protect UK public health, the NHS and our scientific investment, because most resistant infections treated by the NHS originated elsewhere in the world, particularly in low and middle-income countries. Tackling that problem is critical to UK public health and protecting our NHS. Healthcare-acquired infections already cost the NHS at least £2.1 billion a year, and that cost will go up as infections become increasingly resistant to antibiotics. Better alignment on antimicrobial resistance action between the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the Department of Health and Social Care could maximise our impact on UK and global health outcomes.

In a world of so many seemingly intractable problems, it is clear that with more investment, action and political resolve in the high-level meetings we can solve the financing gap for WASH in healthcare facilities by the end of the decade. Healthcare leaders can afford to collectively mobilise the annual $355 million in domestic financing and $600 million in external financing needed to support those countries. That would save millions of lives and make universal health systems dependable. There is a clear price tag, and it is not unaffordable. We must adequately fund WASH in healthcare facilities to tackle antimicrobial resistance.

As a result of the previous high-level meetings and lots of in-country work by local campaigns, many countries have costed roadmaps for WASH in healthcare facilities in place and ready to be funded. They have worked out exactly what needs to be done, but political leadership in those countries and by the UK and other allies is urgently needed. The UK Government have led on the issue previously and are well placed to drive it globally.

The UK Government recognise the necessity of improved WASH services globally to promote global health, but the steep decline in UK bilateral aid for WASH—a cut of about 80%—raises concerns about the UK’s commitment to the sector. For most of our constituents, it is a no-brainer that the UK Government should fund aid for clean water services and hygiene, but the UK Government are not backing their commitment up with financing.

I have several questions for the Minister as we face these three important high-level meetings on universal health coverage, pandemic preparedness and tuberculosis. The first is simple: who is going? Who will be representing the UK Government—representing us—at each of the high-level meetings? I and many others here and across the country hope that there will be high-level attendance at the meetings.

Secondly, will the Government prioritise WASH in healthcare facilities in meetings with peers from low-income countries during the high-level meetings to encourage domestic investment in that area as a cost-effective, high-impact investment to advance global health security and strengthen progress towards universal health coverage?

Thirdly, will the Government identify opportunities to host bilateral meetings or small roundtable events around the high-level meetings to bring together like-minded donor Governments, global health initiatives and private finance partners to discuss investment and actions to achieve universal access to WASH in healthcare facilities? We must show leadership in the actions we take around the high-level meetings.

Finally, will the Government make antimicrobial resistance and WASH in healthcare facilities a key priority within the UK’s negotiating points and ministerial speeches at the three high-level meetings? Will they protect and strengthen WASH in healthcare facilities language in the political declaration documents?

I am grateful to be able to raise the issues that matter to constituents across the country. We have an important opportunity ahead. With several weeks to go before these meetings, now is the time to build these issues into achievements so that we can be proud of the UK’s leadership at the meetings in September.

09:59

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) for securing this important debate on the upcoming UN high-level meetings on tuberculosis, pandemic preparedness and response, and universal health coverage.

The year 2023 marks the halfway point for the implementation of the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals, which were adopted in 2015 and are intended to be met by 2030. They include promoting good health and wellbeing, eliminating hunger and poverty, and advancing gender equality. In April, the United Nations Secretary-General warned that

“we have stalled or gone into reverse on more than 30 per cent of the SDGs.”

He called upon all states to

“recommit to seven years of accelerated, sustained, and transformative action”.

I fear that the UK Government are failing in respect of these vital goals, both domestically and internationally. UK bilateral health aid in 2021 was down £620 million—39%—on 2020. That decrease was partly due to reduced levels of spend on the health sector in response to covid-19, but it also reflects wider reductions in the UK aid budget. Domestically, this Government’s programme of austerity—their cutting away of the welfare state and essential services, including the underfunding of our precious and world-renowned NHS—has meant that since 2011, increases in life expectancy have slowed after decades of steady improvement. Inequalities in life expectancy have recently widened: between some of the wealthiest and the more deprived areas of Liverpool, there is a difference in life expectancy of 20 years. One in three people in my great city are experiencing hunger at this moment. As constituency MPs, we are also witnessing at first hand the decimation of local primary care services. The Park View medical centre in West Derby is currently facing closure, a matter that I will be raising with the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the hon. Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien), in the House today.

I want to say a few words about the United Nations high-level meeting on tuberculosis, which the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine has carried out significant work to combat globally. In 2021, 10 million people fell ill with TB and 1.6 million people died. TB diagnosis rates fell by 18%, which indicates not that cases are falling but, worryingly, that fewer cases are being detected by health systems. Alongside that, 450,000 new cases were diagnosed of multi-drug resistant TB—strains of TB that are resistant to modern antibiotics—yet multi-drug resistant TB treatment dropped by 17%, which indicates a reduction in diagnosis and detection.

Improving access to and quality of primary health care, including increasing the capacity, capability and equity of the health workforce, is crucial to delivering universal health care, reaching more people with TB and ensuring outbreaks of novel pathogens can be detected quickly. TB is both preventable and curable, yet people are still dying from TB because of a lack of political will and a consequent lack of funding to address the epidemic. Analysis also indicates a significant fall in TB diagnosis in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic. As the World Health Organisation says, funding is less than half of what is needed.

Senior governmental engagement with the UN high- level meetings is vital to ensure that they are successful. Will the Minister please provide an update today on his engagement with the drafting of the political declarations for the three upcoming United Nations high-level meetings? Will he update us on his engagement with the TB high-level meeting process to date and outline what more the FCDO can do to support UK research and development, especially within the context of TB? Finally, can the Minister explain why the Government have taken the disastrous political decision to cut international aid spending and why they have relentlessly pursued an austerity programme domestically, all of which is profoundly impacting the health and wellbeing of millions of people in the UK and around the world and preventing progress towards the crucial United Nations sustainable development goals?

10:01

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) on securing the debate. I recognise his long-standing commitment to international development issues, universal healthcare and global justice, demonstrated in today’s debate, in his co-chairmanship of the all-party parliamentary group on global tuberculosis and in his work on other important issues.

The first debate that I led in Westminster Hall, in June 2015, was on the negotiation and implementation of the sustainable development goals. That debate reflected the general tone of consensus and optimism that there was at the time about the future in the UK and at a multilateral level. Progress had been made toward the millennium development goals; there was a sense of the kinds of intervention that were really making a difference to driving down poverty, improving water and food security and boosting access to health and education; and appropriate funding was starting to be leveraged, not least as a result of UK leadership and the cross-party consensus around meeting the ODA spending target of 0.7% of GNI. Eight years later, however, things are very different indeed.

The UN high-level meetings in September this year must focus minds and galvanise political will if we are to have any hope of meeting the SDGs or of reversing the decline that has begun to happen in some areas. As other hon. Members have said, the sequence of high-level meetings around the UN General Assembly in September indicates at the very least that there is a recognition by world Governments that more action is urgently needed to end tuberculosis, deliver universal healthcare and improve prevention, preparedness and response to pandemics. We have all just lived through one of the greatest global healthcare challenges of recent decades, and we are still living with the ongoing impacts of the covid-19 pandemic on our health services, on the ability of the international community to respond to such crises, and on our response to other diseases and health challenges.

As the points that have been made in this debate suggest, the spread of tuberculosis is perhaps the largest of those challenges, not least because it encapsulates so many aspects of the other two areas of focus for the high-level meetings. TB has overtaken covid to become, once again, the deadliest of all infectious diseases. That is, at least in part, a factor of the lack of access to basic healthcare and sanitary provision in so many parts of the world. The rise of drug-resistant TB raises the prospect of widespread infections, perhaps even to epidemic, pandemic or endemic proportions.

None of the solutions to these challenges is rocket science. If we were prepared to spend political and financial capital, we would be able to address the challenges and make more rapid progress towards all the sustainable development goals. Key interventions at a community level, ideally community-led, in developing countries and here at home can make some of the biggest impacts.

As the hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) rightly says, access to water, sanitation and hygiene is a basic human right that ought to be respected. It is demonstrably effective in reducing the spread of disease and therefore reducing reliance on antibiotics and the growth of antimicrobial resistance in relation to TB and a range of other diseases. I fully endorse the report that she highlighted, and I congratulate all those involved in producing it.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

There has been a consensus in this debate that resources need to be directed at trying to prevent pandemics and get rid of as many diseases as we can. One of the proposals to be considered at the high-level talks is transferring some decision making—the declaration of pandemics, for instance—from nation states to the World Health Organisation. I think that that would be a huge loss of sovereignty and a mistake, particularly as the World Health Organisation is dominated by China and has a huge amount of funding from Bill Gates. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that transferring sovereignty to the World Health Organisation would be a mistake?

[Patrick Grady]

With the greatest respect to the hon. Member, I think that that is a point more usefully directed at the Minister, because it is the Government who represent the United Kingdom at the World Health Organisation. I am a believer in popular sovereignty; I would like Scotland to be an independent member of all those international, multilateral institutions, ensuring that the voice of the people of Scotland is heard in those negotiations. There has to be accountability within international mechanisms, and countries that sign up to international treaties ought to do so on the basis of consensus. They should be prepared to implement their commitments. If more Governments were living up to their commitments, perhaps we would not find ourselves in this position.

I understand that the issue that the hon. Member raises is of concern to a number of constituents; I have heard similar concerns myself. It is important that the Government are able to respond to those concerns, and that when international treaties are entered into, full transparency and accountability are built in.

There are interventions that we already know work, without having to reinvent the wheel: access to water and sanitation is one of them; food security is another. Driven by small and sustainable farmers, food security improves nutrition, which improves educational outcomes and boosts gender equality. That helps societies to grow and develop overall, and ultimately generates tax receipts that can be invested back into health and other social services. In all that, there are important lessons to be learned in the way that the world has sought to tackle other challenges, not least HIV/AIDS. Indeed, the ongoing fight against HIV should not be forgotten in these meetings.

At a higher level, investment in research and development and new technologies can help to combat and control the spread of disease. The hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne) spoke about the work that institutions do in his constituency; similar work is going on at the University of Glasgow, and all the institutions work together on many of these issues. Regrettably, we still live in a world where more money is invested in treating hay fever and male pattern baldness—I have some experience of both—than the diseases that affect the poorest and most vulnerable around the world. Global Justice Now points out that between 1945 and 1965, when TB was a significant problem in western countries such as ours, eight different anti-TB drugs were discovered, but once TB was no longer a significant problem in the global north, development stalled, and no new anti-TB drugs were developed between 1965 and 2012. Even today, just 4% of newly approved pharmaceutical products are for neglected diseases that affect low and middle-income countries. That has to start to change, and perhaps there is also a role in that for the WHO and other multilateral organisations.

From today’s contributions, it is clear that none of the actions or outcomes needed from the high-level meetings is particularly novel or surprising. Various Members have made a good case for the levels of funding that are needed, and the Government, rather than yawning, need to listen to them. There was a habit, especially among the Government’s predecessors, to announce money—£100 million for this, £1 billion for that—but those were just nice round figures. United Nations agencies and international stakeholders have analysed what is actually needed to meet the research goals, meet the delivery objectives and set targets for the amounts to be funded. That is what the Government ought to focus on. The question at all these meetings is whether world leaders will step up; for us here today, that means whether the UK Government are prepared to step up.

Of course, the Government would be stepping up, regrettably, from a lower standing than back in 2015, when the SDGs were first negotiated. Indeed, the UK helped to lead the negotiation process, but it has now taken a back seat. By the admission of the Minister for Development, the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), the UK is no longer the development superpower that it used to be, and it is trying to stretch a significantly reduced aid budget that has been further diminished by the smash-and-grab raid on FCDO resources perpetrated by the Home Office to fund its failing and unlawful anti-asylum policies.

That is the first big and clear ask for the Minister today: the Government simply need to put more money into the system and get back on track to 0.7% as quickly as possible. Within that, they have to prioritise the most effective interventions. They have to recognise the importance of the multilateral system and the effectiveness of initiatives such as Gavi and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, especially where work is delivered at a community level and with community empowerment and involvement in decision making. The Government have to be committed to a genuinely universal rights-based approach to the provision of healthcare and pandemic preparedness. Flexibility has to be built into trade and intellectual property, for example, so that profit never comes before people and the planet. There must also be a recognition of digital rights, privacy and the security of individuals’ data. In all of that, there has to be political leadership. Like every other Member who has spoken today, I would be grateful if the Minister could suggest who the Government will send to the meetings. Will it be a Secretary of State, or at the very least the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield, who speaks on development issues in Cabinet?

Finally, I am always encouraged by the number of constituents who raise global justice, access to healthcare, tackling poverty and the sustainable development goals with me. People in Glasgow North and across Scotland want to play their part in building a world where everyone has the opportunity to flourish free from hunger and disease, and right now they do not see the UK Government stepping up to help to make that vision a reality. That is why more and more of them are realising that an independent Scotland would have its own representation at these high-level meetings, and that it could set 0.7% as a floor, not a ceiling, for aid spending. Perhaps they will conclude that the best way for Scotland to play its part will be to take its own place as an independent member of a community of nations.

10:14

[Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East) (Lab)]

As always, it is a pleasure to speak in a debate with you in the Chair, Mr Twigg. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) on securing the debate because it could not come at a more important time in the history of humanity. We have heard from three excellent Back-Bench speakers today plus the Scottish National party spokesperson, the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady).

Our first speaker was of course the person that tabled this debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall, who said that the pressing global challenges are not limited to any continent or nation. That is at the basis and heart of our discussion. In his excellent speech, he also said that the UN is a testament to the power of global human resolve and that that is the context of the debate. The dates of 20, 21 and 22 September are key; they are the foundation of this debate and are very important in the future history of human global health.

My hon. Friend is the chair of the APPG on global TB and he gave an excellent exposition of the importance of tackling tuberculosis. He explained that many Heads of State and Government will be present at the three meetings. Will the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the Minister for Development be there? I await the Minister’s response. My hon. Friend emphasised that 192 UN member states need to commit to the delivery of health for all and that nearly 50% of people who receive a TB diagnosis will experience catastrophic consequences for them and their families. That is an extraordinary statistic. He underlined that by reminding us that tuberculosis is one of humanity’s oldest diseases and that it is a disease of poverty, closely linked to other factors of poverty. It is preventable and highly curable, but the lack of worldwide political will is preventing us from wiping out the disease, which is a threat to global human health.

We then heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) , who is an expert in issues of water sanitation and hygiene and is co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for WASH. I have heard her speak before on these issues—one great thing about our Parliament is the number of experts across the House who understand and know their subjects so well. I was delighted to hear my hon. Friend talking about the issues because she knows what she is talking about. She said something very important: this is a matter of strong interest to all our constituents across the country. I have had loads of emails about the subject, as we all have.

We then heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne) who talked with passion about his city and again emphasised that this is not just an academic issue—this is not a matter for UN high-level meetings alone. It matters to our constituents and that is why we are here today. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) is normally in this Chamber; this is the first debate I have taken part in for years without him being present. I hope someone will pass that message on to him. We have heard some excellent contributions, and I have certainly increased my knowledge of the issues. I hope we all have.

As we have heard, the UN will hold three high-level meetings in the week of the UN General Assembly this year. In our polarised world, with conflict raging on the edge of Europe, I think it is important that we reach consensus wherever possible. That is why dialogue on tackling tuberculosis, preparing for the next pandemic and ensuring universal health coverage is vital to our collective human future. Given that those issues could have impacts on every corner of the globe, it is important that the meetings succeed and result in a political declaration that member states can agree and properly implement. That collective work starts today—here in the House of Commons.

Perhaps the closest issue in our own memories and to our own interests is pandemic preparedness. The covid-19 pandemic impacted everyone across the UK and almost everyone across the world. We know that in our country 212,000 people tragically died as a result of the virus, that many businesses were forced to close, that children lost millions of hours of teaching time and that NHS waiting lists remained far too long. It is worth reminding colleagues that it did not have to be that way and that the mismanagement of the pandemic’s aftermath by this Government has played a part in the problems that continue within our country.

The UK was badly prepared for a pandemic. NHS waiting lists were at record levels even before covid-19 came on the scene and at that time we already had 100,000 staff shortages in our health service and 112,000 vacancies in social care. Such a complete lack of readiness for an earth-shattering event such as the covid-19 pandemic must never be allowed to happen again.

Even after the Government had been warned in 2016 that the NHS was not prepared for an influenza pandemic, they continued to reduce stockpiles of personal protective equipment and the number of hospital beds. With that in mind, does the Minister believe that this Government are best placed to negotiate a political declaration on pandemic preparedness with our allies and colleagues at the United Nations, and what assessment have our allies made of our lack of preparedness for the covid-19 pandemic?

Labour is committed to putting the UK on a better footing at these high-level meetings by championing our domestic agenda and our NHS. The next Labour Government will deliver a new 10-year plan for the NHS, including one of the biggest expansions of the NHS workforce in our history. That includes doubling the number of medical school places to 15,000 a year, training more GPs, more nurses and more health visitors each year. We will also harness our excellent life sciences and improve technology in order to reduce preventable illness.

Secondly, the meeting on universal health coverage is welcome and a long-overdue follow-up from the 2019 meeting, which is another impact of the covid-19 pandemic. Universal health coverage is not on track and targets have not been reached. As we in the UK have the luxury of our NHS, which guarantees free treatment for all who need it, we have a huge part to play on the international stage on universal health coverage. Our history shows that the UK can be a leader in reducing healthcare-related poverty and can work with the world’s most vulnerable people to ensure that they also have access to free medical treatment in their own countries. Again, given this Government’s complete mismanagement of our NHS, does the Minister believe that his Government’s failures put us in a good place to take the lead on such issues at the United Nations?

Finally, I want to touch on the global fight against tuberculosis, which my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall so carefully and brilliantly explained. TB is still a global killer. In 2021, it killed 1.6 million people, even though fewer people are now diagnosed with the illness. However, the more that TB spreads globally, the more it may have an impact on these shores, as many speakers have outlined. That is why it is vital that we assist those countries that are struggling in the fight against TB, particularly Bangladesh, the Congo, Pakistan, Sierra Leone and Uganda, among many others. What steps is the Minister taking to ensure that we play our part in tackling TB abroad and what benefits does that have for us at home?

As the shadow International Development Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill), made clear in a previous debate on these issues, the task of negotiating an effective international treaty on pandemic preparedness will be a historic task, but we simply must achieve it. Such a treaty will save hundreds of thousands of lives in the future and will provide the foundation for sustained global economic recovery. We need to show our allies and fellow members of the United Nations that we in the United Kingdom are seriously committed to tackling these issues, and I believe that that work starts here. That is why this Government must urgently get a grip of the many NHS crises that have engulfed our country over the last 13 years.

10:24

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Leo Docherty)]

It is a pleasure to have you in the Chair today, Mr Twigg.

I am very grateful to all right hon. and hon. Members who have spoken today, particularly the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma), who secured this debate. I also pay tribute to him for his work as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on global tuberculosis.

Of course, I am standing in for and answering on behalf of the Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), who is the Minister for Development. I think that he has engaged previously on these issues with the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall.

As the hon. Gentleman outlined in his commendable speech, as we look ahead to the three high-level UN meetings in September, the debate provides us with a valuable opportunity to highlight the UK’s leading role in working with others to address global health challenges. I am grateful for the contributions made by all Members this morning.

The meetings will focus on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response, universal health coverage, and tuberculosis. They will be a hugely important opportunity to maintain momentum on global health following the covid-19 pandemic and at this critical mid-point for the sustainable development goals. Of course, that will not be easy. Global health is now more than ever bound up with geopolitics, but we will nevertheless be ambitious in our aims while being aware of the challenges involved in negotiating across all member states.

Several Members have asked about prime ministerial attendance. We place huge importance on these meetings, and we will ensure that there is extremely high-level UK representation. I cannot yet confirm who will attend on behalf of His Majesty’s Government as the process is ongoing, but we recognise that this is an extremely high-level and important moment for global health, and we are therefore ambitious.

Let me turn to the content of the three substantive meetings. First, it is vital to achieve and maintain UHC at home and across the world, and strong, resilient and equitable health systems are at the heart of our approach. The hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) asked about the integration of WASH. We are supporting WASH within UHC through the international taskforce on WASH in healthcare facilities, our new WASH systems for health programme, and bilateral programmes in Malawi and Nepal. We have also integrated WASH in the UK action plan for antimicrobial resistance, recognising its role in responsible antimicrobial stewardship. I hope that attends to some of the hon. Lady’s questions.

People’s eyes are open to the need for robust, equitable health systems following the pandemic, so now is the time to raise global ambition. We are pushing hard for firm global commitments to achieving UHC by 2030, with country-led commitments to take tangible steps forward. We have three priorities here. The first is to prioritise universal coverage of quality primary health care, which is instrumental in ending the preventable deaths of mothers, babies and children. The World Health Organisation estimates that scaling up primary health care could save 60 million lives.

Secondly, nobody should be pushed into extreme poverty because they cannot afford to pay for healthcare, although that was the case for 381 million people in 2019, even before the pandemic struck. It is our priority that a commitment to reversing that trend is made at the meeting. Thirdly, we are working hard to secure commitments on steps to tackle the global shortage in health workers, which is predicted to stand at some 10 million by the end of the decade.

Alongside those objectives, we will continue to press for other UK priorities. Those include championing and protecting sexual and reproductive health and rights, and promoting joined-up action across nutrition, water, sanitation and hygiene, as I mentioned, as well as climate and the environment, to support good health.

Let me turn to the meeting on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response. We must act on the lessons of covid-19 to protect future generations, and we will use the meeting to drive forward that vital commitment. Again, we have three priorities here. The first priority is to recommit states to the negotiations in Geneva on a legally binding pandemic instrument, which is due to be agreed in mid-2024. An ambitious instrument could transform global health security by delivering the changes necessary to withstand health threats.

Let me address concerns about the instrument head-on: nothing we agree will impact on the UK’s sovereign decision making on issues such as lockdowns or domestic vaccine roll out. The Government believe that a new instrument could help to speed up the sharing of information among member states on potential pandemic threats, and help to set out the “rules of the road” for future responses.

We also need to increase the financing available for pandemic preparedness. That is one of the best investments we can make, given the extraordinary costs of responding. The UK is therefore a proud investor in pandemic preparedness, including through the new pandemic fund, which will invest in products in lower income countries to improve their resilience to future health threats. We are pressing the multilateral development banks, including the World Bank Group, to do more to stretch their balance sheets in that area. We also want national Governments in low and middle-income countries to put more of their tax receipts into strengthening health systems and supporting universal health coverage and pandemic preparedness. Our third priority is to drive efforts towards a global commitment. We will be drawing up a playbook for responding to future pandemics, so that our successors have a guide to follow when the next one strikes.

Tuberculosis has been a significant theme of the debate. We will use the TB high-level meeting to galvanise a global political commitment to end that disease by the end of the decade. Work toward that goal was, of course, severely off track even before covid, and we have now seen two successive years of rising cases and deaths. TB kills more people than any other infectious disease, and drug-resistant TB is a leading cause of deaths related to antimicrobial resistance. A successful TB declaration at the meeting would incorporate quantitative targets and mechanisms for accountability, and commitments on financing and action. We have made good progress in pushing for a strong declaration, with clear targets and accountability mechanisms, to be adopted at the high-level meeting. We are working hard to secure high-level political attendance at the September meeting, especially by leaders of countries with high incidence of TB. We want to secure game-changing new commitments to action on the provision of TB services and investment in research and development.

We remain committed to championing progress on universal health coverage so that everyone everywhere has access to the essential health services they need without risk of financial hardship, including following a TB diagnosis. We want to ensure that, in the TB high- level meeting and the declaration, countries recommit to tackling the stigma and discrimination faced by people with TB. The UK is providing £1 billion over the next three years to the Global Fund, which will help to save more than 1 million lives around the world and will tackle TB stigma and discrimination.

Of course, the covid-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of continued investment in infectious disease research and development, as well as public health capacity, such as surveillance laboratories. It showed the importance of existing public health infrastructure when responding and adapting to new infectious disease outbreaks, which will be another theme at that meeting.

On product development partnerships, currently we are planning the FCDO’s future investment in global health research. As part of that, we will renew our investment in that area, including in product development partnerships and other organisations. We expect to announce more details during the latter half of 2023. Of course, the UK continues to play a world-leading role in research and innovation to combat TB. We are a strong supporter of product development partnerships and a world leader in life sciences. We are keen to see a global increase in the funding for TB research, so we are encouraging those who can do more to do exactly that.

The hon. Member for Ealing, Southall asked about Bedaquiline. The UK supports work to develop new treatments for TB and improve global access to them. Our funding for the TB Alliance supported the development of a new drug regime that includes Bedaquiline for treating drug-resistant TB. We will lay the foundations for ambitious outcomes at next year’s high-level meeting on antimicrobial resistance.

The three high-level meetings in September are a hugely important opportunity to maintain momentum on global health following the covid-19 pandemic and at this critical juncture for the sustainable development goals. We will push for the meeting on universal health coverage, to revitalise a national political commitment to delivering that goal. We will focus on ensuring that the meeting on preventing and responding to pandemics drives strong engagement and outcomes, particularly towards the negotiation of a legally binding international instrument in Geneva.

We will use the meeting as an opportunity to reignite the political commitment to get us back on track towards ending tuberculosis, backed by targets and mechanisms for accountability. In all of these meetings, we will place a clear emphasis on strengthening health systems, which is vital to achieving our aims.

10:35

[Mr Virendra Sharma]

I am thankful to everybody who contributed to this morning’s debate, which is very important not only here but also for what is going to happen in September. I am thankful to the Minister, too, although many questions need further clarification and I will certainly follow up later.

One thing everybody wanted to know is who will be going to the meetings. The Minister is not clear about that yet, but there are only two months left, and at that level diaries cannot be changed quickly. I hope we will find out who is going sooner rather than later, because that will give people like me and many non-governmental organisations an opportunity to approach or write to those individuals and find the best ways to represent our points of view.

My second disappointment is perhaps not appropriate, but I am a bit disappointed not to have had more contributions from Government Members this morning. I am not saying they are not interested, but that could have further strengthened the argument we are making.

I thank you, Mr Twigg, for your calm and patient approach to taking the debate through. Again, I thank all who contributed.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered UN high-level meetings in 2023.

10:37

Sitting suspended.

Renewable Energy in the East of England

Tuesday 11th July 2023 Westminster Hall

09:30

[Derek Twigg (in the Chair)]

I will call Peter Aldous to move the motion and then call the Minister to respond. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention for 30-minute debates.

[Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered renewable energy in the East of England.

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Twigg. The transition to a zero-carbon economy in which the UK’s energy supply is in future sourced from low-carbon and renewable sources, puts the east of England right in the vanguard of the UK’s energy system. Last year, East Anglia’s renewable and low-carbon energy portfolio powered the equivalent of 32% of UK homes. The Opergy Group of energy advisers estimates that by 2035 that figure could rise to 90%. That dramatic transformation— I do not think it wrong to describe it is a revolution—presents our region with a once in a generation opportunity to drive inward investment, create exciting and enduring careers, and play a major role in delivering the UK’s net zero goals.

With wages in the east of England relatively low compared with those in other regions, and with pockets of deprivation, particularly in coastal areas such as my constituency of Waveney, it is vital that we grasp this opportunity. In many respects, a good start has been made, with energy companies setting up bases in the region, such as ScottishPower Renewables in Hamilton Dock in Lowestoft; new training facilities being provided by East Coast College at the energy skills centre in Lowestoft and at the eastern civil engineering campus in Lound; and EDF partnering with the Suffolk chamber of commerce to ensure that local businesses have every opportunity to be part of the supply chain for the construction of Sizewell C.

Up until now, the process has been developer led, with each developer focused on the delivery of their own individual projects. That is no criticism of them; they have simply been responding to the rules of the game laid down by the Government. That approach, however, is no longer viable. The scale of the planned development is such that a more strategic approach is needed. The Government need to recognise the enormity of the task they are asking the eastern region to perform, and they need to put in place the necessary policies, and provide the necessary resources, so that we can help them to meet their statutory targets.

We need a laser-like focus on delivery, which requires the Government to work in partnership with business, councils, and universities and colleges. Adopting such an approach gives us a good chance of delivering for the east, providing people with the skills to take up the new jobs, giving local businesses the opportunity to be part of strong and vibrant supply chains, and putting in place the necessary infrastructure. Infrastructure, whether in our ports or in the transmission networks that run through our region transporting electricity, hydrogen and water, is critical. If it is inadequate, we will fail in our objectives.

I shall focus on three technologies: offshore wind, nuclear and hydrogen. I shall set out the changes that I believe need to be made to the national energy policy framework, what we need to do to provide the necessary enabling infrastructure, and the investment that is needed in schools and training. Generally, Government energy policy has served the UK well over the past decade in promoting low-carbon energy technologies. In today’s geopolitical environment, however, with other countries—in particular the US and the EU nations—seeking to attract investment from globally footloose investors, the UK’s policy framework needs some adaptation to continue to be attractive. Keith Anderson, the chief executive of ScottishPower, writing in The Sunday Times this weekend, said of the US:

“We can’t possibly hope to outspend them. What we can do is outsmart and outpace them.”

That is the approach that we should have in mind when considering amendments to the Energy Bill.

With regard to nuclear, we are moving very much in the right direction by passing the Nuclear Energy (Financing) Act 2022 last year and creating Great British Nuclear this year. The Sizewell C project is gathering pace, and every effort should be made to fast-track early construction works, to make opportunities for significant local job creation.

In offshore wind, the Energy Act 2013 and the contracts for difference mechanism have served the UK well, and the industry is a major British success story, but the policies now require adaptation. Measures that should be considered include an increase in the contracts for difference budget, which RenewableUK has called for, to reflect increased supply chain costs and higher interest rates. In addition, a permanent investment allowance should be introduced for clean energy generators. Such capital allowances would support the growth of clean energy supply across East Anglia and throughout the UK.

The southern North sea currently hosts 37% of the UK offshore wind portfolio, with over 5 GW of capacity. That is due to expand to 15 GW, taking into account projects that are already in the pipeline, but nothing else is planned for after those projects have been delivered. If nothing is done, investment off the East Anglia coast could fall off a cliff edge after 2032. That is a disincentive to continued investment. To address the problem, the East of England Energy Group, Opergy, Cefas, the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult and other partners are developing proposals with the Crown Estate that involve innovative proposals for seabed and marine habitat restoration integrated with subsea energy storage, which, importantly, do not require new grid connections. When they come forward, I urge my right hon. Friend the Minister to give them full consideration.

The UK’s hydrogen strategy is still in its early stages and is very much focused on industrial clusters. It must be structured in such a way that it can evolve to kickstart investment across more dispersed regions like East Anglia, where there is enormous potential for the industry and where we have three anchor assets. First, there is the Bacton gas terminal in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Duncan Baker), which can be a piece of strategic national infrastructure for transporting hydrogen around the UK. Secondly, we have Freeport East at Felixstowe and Harwich, which can play a major role in decarbonising the international freight logistics and transport sectors. Thirdly, there is the region’s primary industry, agriculture, in which hydrogen can serve three purposes: as fuel for tractors and combines; for producing fertiliser; and for heating and air-conditioning in the chicken-rearing units that are found across the region. To enable the hydrogen sector to grow, my sense is that we do need the hydrogen levy, as well as a contracts for difference mechanism for hydrogen.

At the moment, the enabling infrastructure required to support these projects, which in international terms are enormous, is woefully inadequate. The Government need to recognise the role being taken on by the east of England of hosting various power stations in the funding made available and by adopting a strategic approach to the provision of utility networks. To date, the process has been piecemeal, with each development being left to secure its own connections. We now need a much more joined-up discussion on future energy infrastructure. That could involve an independent strategic network architect working with the Government, private sector grid operators and project developers to plan the long- term future grid options and connectivity across all utilities, including electricity, hydrogen, water and digital communications.

The Government are beginning to put in place the jigsaw pieces required to enable such an approach to be pursued, with an amendment to the Energy Bill reforming Ofgem’s remit and the Government’s electricity networks commissioner, Nick Winser, due to publish his report on expediting grid development in the coming weeks. A consultation on community benefits is also under way. National Grid is consulting on the Norwich to Tilbury grid proposals, which would provide 180 km of new pylon infrastructure across Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex. Understandably, there has already been much opposition to the proposals, although National Grid has rightly emphasised that it is very much in listening mode. The detailed design of the proposal is a debate for another day and for those MPs whose constituencies the route runs through to lead. There will also of course be a public inquiry.

That said, I shall lay down some possible guiding parameters. First, it is important that the communities that house such infrastructure get a fair deal. There should be an enhanced package of benefits, and Government should look to overcome the technical obstacles that prevent discount electricity prices from being offered to local communities. Secondly, as well as National Grid, it is important that UK Power Networks, as the local distribution network operator, is included in the discussions. In doing so, we can explore ways of adapting the plans for the national grid so as to help to unlock investment and job creation opportunities in the region, which are currently constrained by inadequate power supplies. Thirdly, in the detailed design of the layout of such routes, it is important that steps are taken to mitigate the impact on high-quality and environmentally sensitive landscapes, undergrounding cables where necessary, and using newer pylon designs, such as the T-pylons being installed in the south-west.

It is important to comment on port infrastructure. Freeport East in Felixstowe and Harwich will play a role on the global trade stage, and ports such as Lowestoft will play a bespoke role in securing the transition to low-carbon energy. Associated British Ports has exciting investment plans for its £25 million Lowestoft Eastern Energy Facility, but to make that commitment, it needs clarity and certainty on future offshore projects. A small ports grant, a reinvigoration of the local enterprise zone or a fiscal measure, such as a revenue guarantee, would help, acting as a catalyst for that development.

Skills should be the topic of a dedicated debate, with another Minister from another Department being beamed down to take the place of my right hon. Friend the Minister. To a certain extent, we had that debate last week with the estimates day debate on further education colleges and lifelong learning, during which colleagues from across the House emphasised the need for a significant increase in revenue funding. The construction and operation of such a wide variety of energy generators presents the east of England with a great opportunity to provide local people with the skills required for the exciting new jobs that are emerging.

Some great initiatives have been put in place by inspirational local leaders, such as Stuart Rimmer, the principal of East Coast College, who has brought together energy colleges and trainers from all around the UK in the national energy skills consortium to share best practice. In addition, the coastal energy internship programme, supported by the Ogden Trust and founded by John Best, has made great strides over the past eight years in enabling students to undertake energy internships during the summer months. Given the volume of future energy and infrastructure projects in the east, we need much greater investment in energy-related skills right across civil, electrical and mechanical engineering. Skills can only be addressed locally, in places such as Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth, but there is a desperate need for much greater national and regional co-ordination and investment funding. Local skills improvement plans will help, but I believe the Department for Education made a major tactical and strategic error in not approving the eastern region’s bid for the Institute of Technology.

In conclusion, the energy transition presents the east of England with a once-in-a-generation opportunity to spread economic growth and prosperity right across the region, reaching areas that have felt overlooked and forgotten for too long. A lot of people are working incredibly hard locally to make the most of the opportunity, but as matters stand, I fear we will not realise its full potential. To do so, we need to pursue a strategic approach. Government must provide the necessary resources and work with local government and business to set up a delivery taskforce. If we do that properly, we can lay down a global exemplar of how to carry out the net zero transition, which will not only benefit East Anglian people, but can be replicated across the UK and around the world.

11:16

[The Minister for Energy Security and Net Zero (Graham Stuart)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg, and to conclude this debate, which was so brilliantly set off by my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous). As you will recognise, Mr Twigg, it is rare to hear, especially in a short debate such as this, such a wide-ranging, deeply thought-through and comprehensive speech as the one that we have just heard from my hon. Friend. His grasp of the key issues in the energy space is remarkable, and it is grounded not only in his constituency, but in the wider region he represents.

My hon. Friend will be aware of the important role of offshore wind, as he highlighted, and other renewables in delivering secure, domestically generated energy, and of the boost they provide for economic growth, although I am sure he will also allow me to set out the Government’s position. The policies set out in the British energy security strategy and endorsed in the “Powering Up Britain” papers, which I announced to the House on 30 March 2023, include bold new commitments to super-charge clean energy and accelerate renewable deployment. My hon. Friend suggests that we have the opportunity to be a global exemplar. Not to diminish the—for the most part—accurate and properly based challenges he set out, but we already are the global exemplar. We have cut our emissions by more than any other major economy on earth since 1990. We took the position—a rather parlous one, when we think about it—just 13 years ago, when less than 7% of our electricity came from renewables. That is now well over 40%. In some senses, we are a victim of our own success, which has created some of the grid pressures that he rightly highlighted.

Turning to coal, I am the co-chairman of the Powering Past Coal Alliance, an international grouping of countries and organisations committed to ending the use of coal in power production. Nearly 40% of our electricity came from coal as recently as 11 years ago, in 2012. Next year that figure will be zero. We are a global exemplar, although I share my hon. Friend’s frustration when he asked whether—despite all the jobs that have been created and our success in leading—we have harnessed all the economic benefit. Have we embedded the industrial capability that we could have for the long term? If I had a mission in this job, apart from delivering and helping to facilitate this extraordinary transformation, it would be to do so in a way that leads to the long-term, high-paid jobs that my hon. Friend is so right to challenge the Government to work towards.

Wind overtook gas as our largest source of electricity during the first three months of this year, delivering more than a third of our entire electricity supply for the first time. I am proud of that. As my hon. Friend has said, the east of England plays an important role in supporting our offshore wind ambitions. Just last year, our contracts for difference scheme allocated support for a further 7 GW of offshore wind capacity, the majority of it located in the North sea and supported through the east of England. Since 2014, we have more than doubled our solar capacity in east England to more than 2 GW, with a further 1 GW of shovel-ready capacity and 2 GW more in planning.

This Government have driven that change. We have introduced the landmark Energy Bill, which is currently passing through the House, which contains measures to accelerate the rate of deployment of offshore wind farms, reduce the time it takes to get planning consent, and reform environmental regulations to streamline processes, while maintaining protection of the marine environment, but doing so in a more strategically joined-up way—a thread running through my hon. Friend’s excellent speech. He may or may not be aware that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is running the marine spatial prioritisation programme, which, on a cross-purposes analysis, aims to optimise the use of our seas and manage competing priorities on the seabed. It is, in conjunction with my Department, leading on exactly the kind of strategic overview that my hon. Friend rightly highlighted.

We recently concluded our consultation on making changes to the national policy planning framework in England—again, as part of pulling together a more strategic approach. When designated, local authorities will be better able to respond to the views of their communities when they wish to host onshore wind infrastructure. Offshore wind developers in East Anglia will also be required to consider co-ordination of their infrastructure before submitting a planning application for any new network infrastructure. My hon. Friend rightly highlighted the project-based, linear approach and the need for a more co-ordinated and coherent one. [Interruption.] I am being given further “refreshment”, which is always marvellous.

Where communities such as those in the east of England host this infrastructure, we want to thank and, to be fair to them, also reward them for doing so, as my hon. Friend said. Our consultation on guidance on community benefits for transmission network infrastructure closed a couple of weeks ago, and I hope to be able to share the results later in the year. We have also just closed our consultation on developing partnerships for communities who wish to host new onshore wind infrastructure in return for lower energy bills. My hon. Friend also picked up on that.

Finally, I want to discuss network infrastructure, which, as my hon. Friend said, is an essential component for driving renewable deployment, and we need to build it more quickly. In Great Britain, around four times as much new transmission network will be needed in the next seven years as was built since 1990. The timescales for delivering transmission network infrastructure are currently 12 to 14 years, often far longer than the time taken to deliver the generation being connected—and we all recognise that having wonderful, new, low-cost, brilliantly planned generation is no good if we cannot get the electrons where they need to go. The lack of network capacity is already a challenge, as around 5% of wind generation is currently curtailed, meaning its output is reduced because there is not enough capacity on the network to transport it. This could increase to between 15% and 20% in the mid-2020s, as wind generation increases further.

In order to accelerate the delivery of network infrastructure, we appointed Nick Winser as the electricity networks commissioner, who is tasked with advising on how we can halve the timeline for delivering new electricity transmission infrastructure. His report will be published imminently, and the Government will respond with an action plan later this year. We will also come forward with a connection plan at the more local level, precisely because of the central importance of sorting out our transmission.

Placing all new infrastructure offshore is not a feasible option, as ultimately the electricity needs to get to where the demand is, which is of course onshore. Therefore, even with offshore cables, infrastructure such as substations are required onshore at landing points. To support faster delivery of transmission and better co-ordination, the holistic network design, or HND, developed by the electricity system operator, sets out a blueprint for the connection of groups of offshore wind projects to the grid—again, picking up on my hon. Friend’s central point about the need for a more strategic and coherent approach, informed, as it will be, by high-level spatial strategies.

This is the first time that connections and transmission reinforcements have been considered together for multiple projects, and it is revolutionising the way that we design our network infrastructure. Considering multiple projects together has allowed opportunities to co-ordinate infrastructure while balancing impacts on the environment, communities, cost to consumers and deliverability of the infrastructure.

Of course, as my hon. Friend has said, concerns have consistently been raised about the proposed infrastructure in East Anglia. I would like to reassure the House that the Department is working closely with developers, transmission operators and National Grid ESO to explore voluntary options to minimise infrastructure where possible, while also recognising that timely delivery of projects in the east of England will be key to achieving the 2030 ambition for offshore wind.

In the limited time that I have left, I will try to briefly review some of the points that my hon. Friend made and consider whether I can make any reasonable response to them. He mentioned the revolution, and that is what is going on; indeed, we need to tell the story to the nation about how we are rewiring this country. If people look around even the most beautiful landscapes, they will see things that they usually do not notice because they are just so used to them—major pieces of industrial infrastructure that were required to create the foundations for the wealthy and successful country that we are. Nevertheless, we will need to rewire things. Even with the best will in the world and strategic planning, co-ordination and minimisation of impacts, as well as a real focus on good design principles, there will be impacts, and we need to let people know that delivering net zero will require them.

My hon. Friend touched on the fact that we have been developer-led, project by project, which is very much changing. He also mentioned the focus on delivery, and on skills and jobs. I co-chair the green jobs delivery group, which is the high-level Government and industry body that is looking to get the information from the engineering specialities that he mentioned, so that information can be shared with the Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education, who also sits on that body, to make sure that education programmes are better aligned with and support the kind of revolution that is required.

My hon. Friend also mentioned the CfD budget. When he talks about that, I think he is probably talking more about the administrative strike price, as we call it in our jargon-world. That is the top level that we will pay, whereas the budget is the amount that we will commission. We always keep that price in mind, and obviously we recognise that there are financing costs, supply chain squeezes and inflation. However, those things are very much taken into account when we design these policies. We cannot always get everything right, but the industry always tells us that we have allowed insufficient funds for this type of work and typically predicts, ultimately, rather less generation coming through than actually occurs. However, we are now operating on an annual basis, so that we can better respond to those issues.

My hon. Friend also talked about hydrogen and the role of the east of England in being able to deliver it, not least in Bacton, Felixstowe and the agriculture sector. Like him, I am very excited about hydrogen. If we can properly harness our unique renewable resources and do things correctly in a co-ordinated fashion, we will not only have low-cost electricity, but we will become a leader, certainly in the European context and perhaps globally, in the production of green hydrogen. Of course, we are also blessed—he did not mention this—with 78 gigatonnes of carbon storage; we have the vast share of Europe’s carbon storage potential, and we can host carbon storage for our neighbours, too.

My hon. Friend is quite right to highlight all the opportunities in these sectors, and he is also right to congratulate people such as Stuart Rimmer at East Coast College and John Best for the internships he has supported. He is also correct that not only do the Government need to get the overall frameworks right, but we need to facilitate and support local authorities, communities and individuals to play their part. If we get this work right, we will not only deal with the environmental challenges, but reinforce our industrial strength, and grow and strengthen the prosperity of this country. That process can be led, to a great extent, from the east of England.

Question put and agreed to.

11:29

Sitting suspended.

Business Banking Resolution Service

Tuesday 11th July 2023 Westminster Hall

[Mark Pritchard in the Chair]

14:30

[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Business Banking Resolution Service.

It is an extraordinary pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard, and to welcome the Minister, shadow Ministers—the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) and the right hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie)—and an extremely able Parliamentary Private Secretary, the hon. Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall), who will no doubt pass notes diligently.

I hope to outline how and why the Business Banking Resolution Service has failed to restore trust between small and medium-sized enterprises and their lenders, or to resolve a meaningful number of complaints. I also hope to outline alternative proposals that might achieve those goals. According to “Scale up to level up”, a 2021 report by the all-party parliamentary group on fair business banking, 73% of small businesses would rather grow more slowly than borrow. That is a worrying trend that needs to be reversed.

Empowering businesses to borrow with confidence can only be good news for our economy. A healthy SME lending market depends on trust and confidence that things will be put right if they go wrong. As has been stated in this place many times, most transactions between businesses and their financial service providers, including the majority of commercial lending, are neither regulated nor covered by consumer protection laws. The power imbalance between SMEs and banks and other large financial firms leaves small businesses vulnerable to poor treatment. It is, therefore, vital that SMEs have access to independent and effective dispute resolution services when they are in dispute with their lenders. The Treasury Committee’s 2018 “SME Finance” report was clear on that:

“We must introduce a system for dispute resolution and redress that gives the UK’s SMEs the confidence to engage with financial services providers, safe in the knowledge that they are not vulnerable to exploitation and mistreatment.”

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

I congratulate the hon. Member on securing this debate. Support for the BBRS is limited; many have stated that a new alternative resolution scheme should be created. Does the hon. Member agree that any new scheme should seek not to burden the tribunal system, by requiring parties first to seek agreement through mediation services?

[Mr Wragg]

The hon. Lady makes a valid, important and sensible point. I will touch on a suggestion towards the end of my remarks.

In the course of its inquiry, the Treasury Committee considered the long-standing and very large gap in provision of a financial dispute resolution service for SMEs, between those eligible to refer a complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service and those with access to enough money, appropriate legal representation, and sufficient courage and time to be able to sue their bank. A similar shortfall was identified in the APPG’s “Fair Business Banking for All” report.

[Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)]

We should not underestimate the hon. Member’s point about the unreasonableness of expecting those who find themselves in that situation to have huge amounts of courage. I want to make that point on behalf of my constituents who have huge amounts of patience, courage and grit to right what in their case has been a very significant wrong. They would absolutely like to see an independent tribunal service. They describe the current system as a shambles and I do not disagree with them. Their trust is completely shattered by any measure. All of the resolution processes have failed. Does the hon. Member agree that there are people all over the UK who deserve significantly better?

[Mr Wragg]

Absolutely so. The courage of those small and medium-sized business owners is not to be underestimated. I have dealt with constituents whose cases go back decades. They have had more than patience; they have had the utmost resilience. Many would have given up by now, but such is the injustice—the wrongs that we need to right—that we must, on their behalf, respond with similar courage.

The expansion of the remit of the Financial Ombudsman Service in 2019 to include more SMEs and increase the maximum award level narrowed the gap to some extent, but did not close it. Neither has the gap been plugged successfully by the ad hoc redress schemes established by banks in the years following the 2007 financial crisis for those impacted by scandals such as the interest rate hedging product mis-selling, the mistreatment of small business customers by the Royal Bank of Scotland Global Restructuring Group and the HBOS Reading fraud.

The schemes that have been set up have all been heavily criticised for, among other things, a lack of independence and overly restrictive eligibility criteria. It was against that backdrop that the BBRS was established as a voluntary initiative to the specifications of, and funded by, seven participating UK banks. It was intended to help rebuild trust among the SME community by resolving historical and contemporary disputes between banks and those businesses. It thereby filled a gap in dispute resolution and redress.

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

Does that list extend to Lloyds bank? I have a constituent who is a reasonably successful property developer and was encouraged by Lloyds bank to take out larger and riskier loans. He took independent advice, only to find that the person advising him was on commission from Lloyds bank. The ultimate outcome was that he was foreclosed upon, and his life was ruined. That example shows, in all its gory colour, that the current system of resolution is not working.

[Mr Wragg]

I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman highlights one of many cases across our constituencies. I perfectly well understand his constituent’s sense of injustice. Hopefully this debate will at least give us an idea of the way forward.

The BBRS followed from the Walker review, commissioned by UK Finance, which identified a gap in dispute resolution and recommended that a voluntary scheme be established. It recommended action to deal with legacy disputes and contemporary complaints by providing speedy resolution for larger SMEs’ ongoing financial complaints. A proposal to set up a financial services tribunal was made at the time by my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) and the Treasury Committee in its 2018 report. The Treasury Committee report noted strong cross-party support for the proposal. For a number of reasons, including a lack of parliamentary time and the significant costs involved, the Walker review did not support the creation of a tribunal.

The BBRS was also established to ensure the excesses of the financial crisis were not repeated, and that record keeping and data flows about SMEs can be used to monitor bank behaviour and culture, and can provide an early warning system for customer mistreatment. That was a key purpose of the Walker review, beyond providing a new mechanism for dispute resolution.

A 2019 letter to Stephen Jones, the then CEO of UK Finance, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, made Her Majesty’s Government’s position on the nascent scheme abundantly clear. It stated:

“If it transpires that the scheme is not bringing resolution to a meaningful number of complaints…then I would expect there to be further discussions around the scope of and eligibility for the backward-looking scheme.”

That gets to the nub of the issue.

[Margaret Ferrier]

Despite forecasts that more than 60,000 legacy cases would be eligible for review, take-up and financial payouts have been minimal. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that further action must be taken to support businesses in bringing forward legacy claims, and that there should be a six-year time window?

[Mr Wragg]

As ever in these debates, the quality of interventions is superb. The hon. Lady pre-empts exactly what I was going to say. If she will forgive me, I will come on to that in a moment, but her point is perfectly valid.

It may not surprise anyone following the story closely to learn that the BBRS has failed to resolve a meaningful number of complaints. By the former Chancellor’s standards, I think it is fair to say that the BBRS has been an abject failure and has certainly not given UK SMEs confidence to engage with financial service providers.

As just mentioned by the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier), it was estimated by the then chief executive of UK Finance that more than 60,000 historical complaints would be eligible for review. However, by May of this year, the BBRS had made direct adjudications on just 28 cases resulting in financial awards. In that same time, it has been involved—whatever “involved” means—in the award of 56 financial settlements between banks and claimants. That includes cases where the dispute has resulted in a settlement following, but not necessarily because of, the involvement of BBRS. Even being generous, the BBRS has been involved in a maximum of just 84 financial awards in nearly two years out of an estimated potential of 60,000. Plainly, the quantity of resolved cases is very disappointing, to say the least.

Naturally, that raises questions about value for money. The BBRS cost more than £40 million to set up. By May of this year, according to its own data:

“Substantially more than £1 million of financial awards have been made to SMEs as a result of BBRS intervention so far”.

In other words, a maximum of between £1 million and £2 million has been paid out since the launch of the BBRS. Bear in mind that it cost £40 million to set up. Would it not have been easier to simply divide that £40 million and dish it out randomly? The BBRS has proved to be very poor value for money.

The primary issue behind these abysmal figures is the design of the scheme itself. Heavily restrictive eligibility criteria have locked out and timed out almost all credible claims from businesses, and there is no indication of any willingness from the BBRS or the banks to address this. The chair of the BBRS SME liaison panel—an advisory body set up to give SMEs a voice within the service—resigned in March this year, stating:

“The very low numbers of cases resolved by the BBRS and the banks suggest an inflexible system, and I do not detect the necessary willingness and imagination within the existing system to resolve this.”

Another fitting quote from an unnamed source close to the scheme was reported in The Times in May 2022. They eloquently put it as follows:

“Saying BBRS needs an overhaul is like saying that a tank that’s been blown up could do with a service. It’s completely defective.”

The specific concerns about eligibility are fourfold. First, the current point of valuation of turnover is the date at which the complaint was first made by the SME to its bank. This allows the bank to artificially distress companies’ assets to below £1 million, and therefore out of the scope of the BBRS, before the complaint is made to the bank. Instead, the point of valuation of turnover should be made at the point at which the bank’s alleged act or omission initially occurs.

Secondly, complaints eligible for the Financial Ombudsman Service are not eligible for the BBRS. However, the FOS has a wider purpose than strictly to resolve disputes. There may be a peripheral element of a historical SME claim that either qualifies it for consideration by the FOS or has been the recipient of such consideration. In this case, the applicant would be precluded from the BBRS, although it may meet the other criteria.

Thirdly, eligibility regarding size of business thresholds is too strict. Property developers, landlords and others cannot meet the current BBRS eligibility minimum business size criteria, even if they set out to do so. Fourthly, on balance sheet limits, currently businesses are assessed on gross business assets rather than net business assets. This is restricting and illogical, because it is not representative of the true size of the business, as it includes the costs that are due to be deducted from the balance sheet in the short term.

As I have already alluded to, the chair of the advisory SME panel resigned earlier this year after proposals put forward to reform the eligibility criteria were consistently rejected or ignored. This prompted the BBRS to unilaterally dissolve the panel. As I said at the time, this was a rather shocking and cynical move. The BBRS established an advisory panel to feed SME concerns about the service back to the BBRS. The concerns raised were ignored, and the proposals were rejected out of hand. When it appeared that the panel might be publicly critical, the panel was shut down. For those now unrepresented SMEs, that must have felt like a complete stitch-up.

The BBRS is indeed winding down—though I question whether it ever got into swing. The historical complaints process closed in February, and the contemporary complaints process will continue only until the end of this year. The reason that I am here—I surmise that colleagues are here for the same reason—is to put it to parliamentarians that the process has been a failure. We simply cannot make the same mistakes again. As I hope I have illustrated, the BBRS has been a waste of time and money and has certainly not resolved a meaningful number of disputes. If anything, many SMEs’ experiences with the BBRS have served only to further erode their trust in the financial services sector.

As has been suggested in the past, a financial services tribunal, with a statutory footing, could be the solution. I commend the idea to my hon. Friend the Minister. Such a body would be modelled on employment tribunals and be a genuinely independent organisation with legal teeth. The creation of a tribunal would have a dramatic effect on the power imbalance inherent in disputes between businesses and large financial institutions, echoing the transformation in employer-employee relationships brought about by the introduction of employment tribunals. That must be accompanied by an amendment to section 138D of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, to enhance the legal rights of SMEs. Those changes will be significant in ensuring that SMEs have access to justice. Indeed, as the Treasury Select Committee stated in 2018:

“Taken together, these changes will ensure that the UK’s small businesses will no longer be denied justice, as so many have been in the past.”

Ultimately, the BBRS has failed to achieve its aim of providing meaningful redress in a fair and independent way. As an alternative, the proposal for a financial services tribunal, endorsed by the Treasury Committee and by the all-party group on fair business banking, which I have the pleasure of co-chairing, must be seriously considered. We owe it to the brilliant SMEs in each of our constituencies to create a lending environment in which they can thrive and drive our national economy forwards.

14:47

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I congratulate the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg) on bringing this debate before us. He is absolutely right: businesses need access to a proper, functioning dispute resolution service, but I fear that the BBRS is not it. He was also absolutely correct that redress cannot be left only to those with the time, money and patience—or, as he said, the bravery—to sue the banks. The hon. Lady the Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) made the most salient point that barely a few dozen of the 60,000 legacy cases that were potentially liable to be investigated or taken up by the service have been resolved. That is a problem.

[Andy McDonald]

Are we assuming that those legacy cases fit the criteria set out by the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg)? Many of our constituents will be nowhere near those criteria, but their lives and businesses lie in tatters. Are they not included? Are they not in anybody’s thinking, in terms of the resolution that they deserve?

[Stewart Hosie]

They ought to be in people’s thinking. The figure of 60,000 is commonly used. Of course, the eligibility criteria include that they must not be eligible for the FOS scheme, as was very properly referred to by the hon. Member for Hazel Grove. However, let us assume that it is a big number, in the tens of thousands, and let us hope that, at the very least, businesses do not fall through the cracks between this service and the FOS. It would be a different problem entirely if people were not eligible for any kind of access to at least one of the redress systems.

The hon. Member for Hazelgrove laid out a bit of the background. I want to go through some of that again briefly, given that it is quite important in terms of what the Government may choose to do next. The BBRS was set up in 2018 to help SMEs resolve disputes with their banks free of charge. Many high street banks, including Lloyds, NatWest and HSBC, took part in the scheme, and it has been operating—although I use that word loosely—since 2021. It was created after a spate of banking scandals involving the mistreatment of thousands of companies, including, as we know, the Royal Bank of Scotland’s GRG, and similar operations at other banks in the aftermath of the 2009-10 financial crash.

The eligibility criteria, which have been mentioned, are that the dispute must have occurred after 1 April 2019, and that the SME must have an annual turnover of up to £10 million per annum and a balance sheet of up to £7.5 million, and must not be eligible to take the complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service. Many stakeholders have noted that the scheme has not been successful in helping SMEs to resolve their disputes, despite costing—as we have heard—tens of millions of pounds to set up, which was paid for by the industry. One of the main issues with the scheme is the narrow eligibility criteria for SMEs to use the service. The recent figure was only 35, but even 50 or 60 would still represent a tiny fraction of the number that could be resolved.

[Margaret Ferrier]

When the Business Banking Resolution Service was introduced, it was marketed as an accessible service. However, data shows that, by March last year, only 776 businesses had registered with the BBRS. Does the right hon. Member agree that this suggests that either the Business Banking Resolution Service was difficult to use or, alternatively, the service was not publicised effectively?

[Stewart Hosie]

It could be a combination of both, although it is instructive that Andy Agathangelou, the founder of the Transparency Task Force, called the BBRS an “abysmal failure” that is not “fit for purpose”, so I certainly think that the opaqueness and lack of advertising might be significant factors in how few businesses have sought to use it and what happened to those that did. He also said that some small businesses are “convinced” that the BBRS is

“a mechanism through which banks have found justification for not making payments”.

Even if that is not true, if the perception among the SME community is that the service, which was put in place to resolve their disputes, is being used for contrary purposes, that alone would be a huge problem for the BBRS.

[Kirsten Oswald]

My right hon. Friend is making a very helpful speech. The point he is making feeds into the wider point about the huge imbalance in power, influence and resources that exists between the banks and those seeking redress. On his point, the behaviour of some banks has been quite shameful—I am speaking from my own casework here—so whatever happens from here on in, it is imperative that new arrangements are fair, genuinely independent and transparent, so that businesses can be confident that they really are going to work.

[Stewart Hosie]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and that imbalance in power and resources was writ large in the BBRS executive’s unilateral decision in March to dissolve the SME liaison panel, after rejecting its numerous proposals to expand the eligibility criteria. It is a law unto itself. The liaison panel came forward with ideas to make things work better, but instead of them being taken on board and actioned—if they were appropriate—the panel was unilaterally shut down. The voice of SMEs to the panel has effectively disappeared, and that was after the SME liaison panel’s chair resigned because it was “difficult to make progress”.

That short list should be cause for concern enough for the Government, but let us take a look—I give great thanks to the all-party parliamentary group on fair business banking for this—at the list of headlines that this shambles has generated: “Business Banking Resolution Service a ‘real failure’”; “‘Cynical’ closure of bank redress adviser panel prompts anger”; “New £23m Business Banking Resolution Service has yet to pay any compensation”; “Bank redress scheme ‘is completely defective’”; “Lawyer Cat Maclean quits ‘completely defective’ banking compensation scheme”; “Business Banking Resolution Service ‘done on the cheap’”, with £40 million invested and it does not work; and “Banking redress chief earns £1m despite paying only five claims”—at that point.

If I were the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, I would be deeply concerned. The process has failed. Businesses are not getting the service or the redress that they need and deserve. The headlines are absolutely diabolical. It appears that few lessons have been learned from the financial crash, or if they have, they have been forgotten. I will ask the Minister two questions and then make one final brief observation. How will the Government ensure that we widen the criteria for businesses to be able to use the service, and what mechanisms will they put in place to allow SMEs to properly, fairly and quickly settle disputes with the banks?

My final observation goes back to the financial crash. We remember the actions of RBS, GRG and a variety of comparable outfits. Instead of restructuring those businesses to allow them to thrive, prosper, trade and grow again in the future, there was a perception—backed by some fact—that the banks were looking at asset-rich, cash-poor businesses to raid and pillage. From my time on the Treasury Committee, I am happy and confident to say that. The perception among the business community is that businesses were there to be raided by the banks, rather than helped. Trust between businesses, particularly small ones, and the mainstream banks broke down entirely. If I were the Government, I would be deeply concerned, looking at the headlines that have already been generated and the self-evident failure and lack of transparency within the BBRS, that it may not take an awful lot more for businesses to once again lose trust in the high street banks. I hope that the Minister will comment on that in his response.

14:57

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Pritchard, and I thank the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg) for securing this timely debate.

Small and medium-sized businesses are the lifeblood of our economy and our communities, as I am sure everyone will agree. The smaller companies driving growth and creating jobs in every part of the UK deserve to be able to fairly resolve disputes with their lenders, and the BBRS was designed to do just that. That is why some of the issues with the BBRS, which we have heard about today from Members across the House, are so concerning and deserve to be looked at by the Treasury.

The BBRS emerged from the Walker review in 2018, after the Government chose not to accept calls from both the Financial Conduct Authority and the Treasury Committee for formal regulation of SME lending. In their 2018 response to the Treasury Committee’s report on SME finance, the Government gave several reasons for not accepting those calls and to justify their view that an ombudsman-style approach to dispute resolution was preferable to a statutory body. First, a statutory body and regulation could negatively impact SMEs’ ability to access finance. Secondly, there would be no real difference in how an ombudsman or a statutory body would make adjudications. Thirdly, an ombudsman would represent a less costly process for SMEs. Fourthly, an ombudsman would be able to arrive at decisions more quickly. Finally, a statutory body would require primary legislation—a response not proportionate to the problems faced by SMEs.

I hope that the Minister will address this question, five years on and in the light of the issues raised today. Does he believe that his Government’s reasoning still holds, that the cost of a statutory body and formal regulation would still outweigh the benefits and that the evidence on the ground suggests a new approach is needed, including for those businesses deemed too large for the Financial Ombudsman Service and which fall under the remit of the BBRS? For example, the Walker review estimated that more than 60,000 cases would be eligible for review by the BBRS, of which 6,000 were expected to register. However, according to the BBRS’s figures as of June 2023, only 28 cases, both historical and contemporary, directly adjudicated by the service, have resulted in financial awards being made.

We have heard numerous concerns about the transparency and accountability of the service in relation to the low number of cases and financial settlements, most notably those raised by Antony Townsend, who said it was too difficult for him to make progress when he resigned as chair of the BBRS SME liaison panel in March. Cat MacLean voiced similar concerns when she resigned last year, as the Minister will know. In 2019, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond stated that if the scheme did not bring resolution to a meaningful number of cases, he would expect further discussions about its scope and eligibility. Does the Minister believe his former Chancellor’s threshold for further thought on the effectiveness of the scheme has been reached? In particular, what assessment has the Minister made of the proposal to extend the jurisdiction of the Financial Ombudsman Service to take complaints from businesses with a turnover of up to £10 million?

I understand that the FCA recently concluded a call for input to inform its review of whether the thresholds for SMEs to access the Financial Ombudsman Service remained appropriate. However, since the consultation closed in April, businesses have received no update. Considering the concerns we have heard today, I hope the Minister will set out how the Treasury will work with the FCA to ensure that a timely and satisfactory outcome to the review is brought forward for Britain’s business community.

SMEs are vital to the UK economy. British businesses deserve a tax and payment system, procurement process and dispute resolution service that work for them. That is why I look forward to hearing the Minister talk about how the Treasury will respond to the concerns outlined in today’s debate. In particular, does he think we need a new approach to the resolution of disputes between SMEs and lenders? How will the Government work to ensure there is sufficient transparency and accountability in the resolution process? Finally, does the Minister believe it is time to widen access to the Financial Ombudsman Service?

15:02

[The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Andrew Griffith)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Pritchard. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg) on securing the debate on his behalf and that of the all-party parliamentary group on fair business banking. In my short time in this role, I have seen that the APPG does a significant job and gives a voice to our all-important small businesses.

We are a nation of small businesses. They employ a vast number of people in the economy and make a huge contribution and, as other speakers have said, it is vital that they secure access to the finance and capital that they need to grow, expand and do the wonderful things they do to help the UK economy. As part of that, it is critical when things go wrong—regrettably, they sometimes do—and businesses face issues with their bank, they can access efficient and unbiased dispute resolution. We all aspire to a quick, efficient and affordable process in that regard, which allows for unbiased outcomes for those businesses. Those are the higher-order objectives that we seek.

For context, it is not my role today to defend the BBRS. It is an independent body and is not a part of Government or the Treasury. I will share the same context about it being set up following a number of interventions by Parliament. We will not truthfully know whether the deficiency was in the overestimate of the number of cases or the effectiveness of the BBRS system. Given that we know that the BBRS is effectively headed for the exit in all circumstances, that is moot, although the question of how individuals and businesses get redress is not. That, I absolutely accept, is a responsibility of the Treasury; it is how we can ensure good order on this.

The more generous in spirit among us might accept that the BBRS was set up with good intentions, but as we have heard from Members here today, that has not perhaps been the experience. I understand that and have listened very closely to today’s debate, and perhaps my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove would care to meet me to share his own particular constituent experience. I understand that is a long-standing piece of casework, and sometimes such specific examples illustrate the more general point that we have heard from Members today given that there are clearly a number of cases.

[Kirsten Oswald]

The Minister has offered to meet the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg), who secured the debate, which I am sure is very welcome, but might he feel able to extend that offer to others of us who have long-standing cases in this field that are difficult to resolve?

[Andrew Griffith]

I want to be a listening Minister and am of course very happy to do that, but in so doing I do not want to hold out a false expectation. These matters are not directly the subject of ministerial interventions, so while I am very happy to meet the hon. Lady, and, again, use those examples to inform the wider policy area, in fairness it is important for people in the Public Gallery or who might be following the debate that I do not raise false expectations, because some of these matters have involved great trauma to individuals and have been going on for a long period of time. I would be grateful if the hon. Lady could frame things in that important context, but of course I would be happy to meet her and, lest I receive more interventions, that is a general point for Members of this House. It is right that I approach my responsibility diligently as we try to formulate policy.

As we go forward, whatever past decisions have been made in this respect, I am very keen to understand—the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) talked about this—the role of the Financial Ombudsman Service, which successfully deals with tens of thousands of complaints each year now, including SMEs up to the threshold of £6.5 million. The Financial Conduct Authority—whose decision it must be, but with the support of Ministers—has looked to extend that upper threshold, and it is consulting; perhaps Members have responded, like the APPG has.

I spoke to the chief executive of the FCA and gave him great encouragement that, the consultation having been closed in April of this year, we will shortly hear the response. I hope the House will await that, because it is my belief that one should look again at the merits of this versus a statutory tribunal, which I believe still has some of the disadvantages that the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn outlined, particularly in terms of the need for primary legislation but also the non-material differences between an ombudsman service which exists, is seen to work generally in practice—although I am always open to representations—versus yet another novel intervention in the form of a new statutory tribunal.

[Stewart Hosie]

Can I just get a guarantee that there will be no gap between the removal of the BBRS and the decision taken on the thresholds that can be reached and potentially another body, statutory or voluntary—that there will be no gaps or black hole that businesses might fall into at some point in the near future, whether in months or years?

[Andrew Griffith]

The right hon. Member makes a fair point. The cracks that exist in the compensation regime are a challenging feature. That is one reason why I am attracted to using as much of the existing architecture as possible precisely to avoid that point about cracks.

[George Eustice (Camborne and Redruth) (Con)]

I apologise that I missed the opening speech because I had another meeting. If a lender were to try to enforce security in respect of a residential mortgage on a home, they would first need to go to a court to get a possession order. When it comes to business lending, a bank can enforce their security without any recourse to the courts at all. Does the Minister think that that is something we should look at?

[Andrew Griffith]

My right hon. Friend raises an important point. It would not be right to say that we should not look at it, but he raises this in the closing minutes of the debate and he knows that these areas can be fraught. One of the most challenging things about the regulation of financial services in general is the unintended consequences. The hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn talked about that, and we do not want to see any diminution in access to capital that could prevent our small businesses from growing. I would be happy to meet my right hon. Friend to understand the issue he raises in more detail, but I do not want to go any further from the Dispatch Box on that.

We have heard the importance of this matter to constituents of hon. and right hon. Members. We are united in this House on the importance of the provision of that lifeblood of business growth capital for our small businesses, which lack some of the sophistication and have been predated on by the banking sector in the past. That is not acceptable, and it remains the position of the Government to do everything we can to deliver redress where we can and to ensure the financial regulatory regime protects those who need our protection.

15:12

[Mr Wragg]

I thank the Minister for his constructive reply to this important and timely debate. I can respond positively to that kind offer to meet the APPG. Such a meeting would be invaluable for explaining some of our thinking and ideas in greater detail—whether that is an expansion of the Financial Ombudsman Service or, indeed, the establishment of a statutory tribunal system. Each has things to be said for them, but that is something to be worked through. Our preference would be on the basis of a tribunal.

To echo the remarks made by the right hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie), we cannot have people falling through the cracks. We should be particularly mindful of the 600 businesses that have applied to the existing BBRS scheme and the status of their complaints. To finish on a phrase that is often used and can be seen as trite, but is absolutely applicable to this scandal, which has afflicted so many SMEs across our United Kingdom: justice delayed is justice denied. We should be mindful of that as we seek to bring about long overdue justice for those small businesses.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the Business Banking Resolution Service.

15:13

Sitting suspended.

Two-child Benefit Cap and Child Poverty

Tuesday 11th July 2023 Westminster Hall

15:59

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the two-child benefit cap and child poverty.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I am grateful to have the opportunity to lead this debate and raise the issue of the two-child benefit cap and its impact on child poverty. I put on record my thanks to all those who have championed this campaign in the six years since the cruel cap was introduced in April 2017, including the Bishop of Durham and the child of the north all-party parliamentary group on which I sit, who have led and supported the debate in the House of Lords and brought a private Member’s Bill to the other place on this issue. I am also grateful to the End Child Poverty coalition and all the member organisations for their “All Kids Count” campaign and for providing the statistics on the widespread effect of the two-child cap on benefits that I and others will use in this debate.

The explosion of child poverty we witness today has been the No. 1 by-product of the last 13 years of Tory austerity. The current cost of living crisis is adding unbearable pressure to an already critical situation for many families who are struggling to make ends meet.

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for the impassioned contribution she is making. Scrapping the cruel and pernicious two-child limit would be the most cost-effective way of reducing child poverty, lifting a quarter of a million children out of poverty in an instant. The Leader of the Opposition has rightly said that the next Labour Government will be laser-focused on eradicating poverty. Does my hon. Friend agree that to that end, our party should make an explicit commitment to scrap the two-child limit in the first days of the next Labour Government and, in doing so, give hope to the 2,700 young people in my constituency who are currently caught in this two-child trap?

[Kim Johnson]

I thank my hon. Friend for his contribution. I believe that the incoming Labour Government should make every effort to look at eradicating poverty in any way, shape or form. We are seeing a resurgence of Victorian diseases such as malnutrition, rickets and scarlet fever. Children are going to bed with empty bellies and going to school unable to concentrate or learn to their full potential. In recent years, we have heard many heartbreaking stories of children mimicking eating from empty lunch boxes or even attempting to erase their hunger by eating paper and erasers. Children are incredibly aware of the stigma of poverty, and the pressure can have lifelong psychological effects on top of the material impact on educational attainment, life chances and associated health problems.

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

It is great to see my hon. Friend bringing this extremely important debate to the Chamber. In the north-east, 12,000 children and families are unable to claim the universal credit benefit because of the two-child cap. Some 5,400 are also not considered eligible because of their child tax credits and their situation with universal credit. Will my hon. Friend say what sort of impact that has on ordinary families not just in the north-east, but up and down the country?

[Kim Johnson]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. The cap has done immeasurable damage to so many families in this country, impacting poverty and driving more families into poverty and not, as this Government anticipated, into work.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this really important debate. According to the End Child Poverty coalition, more than 2,700 children were living in poverty in my constituency of Wirral West in 2021-22—that is more than 18% of the children. As my hon. Friend has touched on, we know that poverty has an impact on children’s educational attainment, happiness and life chances. Does my hon. Friend agree that this is a scandalous state of affairs, it makes absolutely no sense for us to leave this problem unattended and we must end the two-child limit as a matter of urgency?

[Kim Johnson]

I totally agree with my hon. Friend. We need to end this horrendous two-child policy and ensure all children have the opportunity to thrive and grow and not live in poverty.

Last September, when I hosted an event in Parliament in partnership with the End Child Poverty coalition and the National Education Union calling for universal free school meals to help alleviate child poverty and close inequalities in education and health, we heard from some incredible youth ambassadors. They told us of the stigma of being singled out for free school meals. One said the impact was like sitting in a classroom wearing a badge on their back saying they were poor. Another told us she remembered her mother skipping meals to make sure she and her siblings had something to eat and that now, years later, her own relationship with food and the guilt she associated with eating is still having an impact on her. Members in all parts of the House will be painfully aware of so many similar personal stories from the constituents they work with every day.

Last year the Joseph Rowntree Foundation annual report on UK poverty showed that child poverty in families with more than two children increased from 33% to 47% between 2012-13 and 2019-20, reaching levels not seen since before 1997. In my constituency, 11 children in a class of 30 are living in poverty, and of the 1,400 children in households in receipt of universal credit, 444 are not eligible for extra support due to having two or more siblings born after 6 April 2017.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend mentioned the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which is based in my constituency. It has done work not only to demonstrate that the two-child limit is having an impact on children but also that the benefits base is not focusing on the essentials and the essential costs. On top of that, the broader rental market area is not paying the way on private rent either. Families in my constituency are struggling with the accumulation of cuts and the drawback that the Government have put in place. Does my hon. Friend understand why this Government are punishing children and families in such a way?

[Kim Johnson]

I do not know why the Government are punishing children and forcing them into poverty. It is a crying shame.

These families are disproportionately affected by increases in the cost of living and, as has just been mentioned, are treated punitively by the benefits system. Some 1.3 million children across the country are currently losing out under the cap, with their families losing on average £3,235 directly out of their pockets. With new stats due on Thursday 13 July, the Child Poverty Action Group and Save the Children predict the number will rise to 1.5 million.

[Beth Winter (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

CPAG has estimated that over 4 million children live in poverty, and that figure is due to rise. More than 5,000 children in my constituency—a third of the children living there—live in poverty. The Welsh Government are currently consulting on their draft child poverty strategy 2023 and there is a big debate in Wales about how we tackle not only child poverty but poverty more widely. Wales is very clear, as Minister for Social Justice Jane Hutt has said, that the two-child limit must be scrapped. Is it not right, and time, that the UK Government listened to the devolved nations and did just that?

[Kim Johnson]

I thank my hon. Friend for the intervention and the Welsh Government for rolling out universal free school meals, and I support her and the Welsh Government in saying we need to end the two-child cap.

Does the Minister really believe it is acceptable for children to suffer more just because of the number of siblings they have? The two-child cap on benefit payments is cruel and ineffective. Larger families are punished, leaving them struggling. A majority—some 55%—of the families affected by the policy are already in work. Black and ethnic minority families and single-parent families are disproportionately impacted, as well as families who rent. The two-child limit creates a huge hole in budgets that simply cannot be plugged by working additional hours. The Government claim that the policy helps to push parents back into work, but after six years, they still cannot provide a single shred of evidence that that is actually the case. The truth is that the policy does nothing to remove barriers, and research from the University of York shows that in some cases, the cap is counterproductive in helping parents back to work.

[Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate and for all her campaigning on the issue. I completely with her points about poverty and children suffering, but I have a slightly different concern about this punitive policy. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is an absolute disgrace that the rape clause is still in effect? I ask the Minister not to ignore that point. Why is the clause still on the statute book, and why will the Government not repeal it?

[Kim Johnson]

I thank my hon. friend for raising that important point, and I will come to it later.

Last year, 1,830 mums were forced to declare that they were raped in order to be eligible for extra support for their children—compelled to disclose horrific and personal details. The anguish that this demand creates for women has been found to have an impact on their decisions to terminate pregnancies. Just take a second to consider that. Imagine a woman having survived such a deeply traumatic ordeal, to then be faced with a Government policy that makes her feel she can no longer carry on with her pregnancy. It is so deeply cruel and damaging that we have to ask whether the Ministers who devised that heartless policy had an ounce of compassion between them.

We know that lifting the cap would immediately raise 250,000 children out of poverty, and a further 850,000 out of deep poverty. Campaigners call it the single most effective intervention that would tackle child poverty immediately. It would cost this Government just £1.3 billion. Consider that against the £37 billion that they wasted on a failed test and trace system, the £5 billion that they found for the defence budget in March, or the £9 billion tax cut to corporations and the pensions giveaway for the 1% that they so generously granted in the last Budget.

We know that the money is there to help struggling families, if we can only find the will. Poverty is a political choice, and time and time again this Government have chosen giveaways for the rich and scraps for the rest of us. Inflation is being driven by corporate greed creating record profits for the super-rich. The Government would like us to believe that there is no money to meet basic needs and support struggling families, but the reality is that it is just being hoarded by the 1%.

We are seeing the biggest drop in spending power in 70 years. Total spending on public services is set to be 12% lower in 2027-28 than in 2010, yet the wealth of UK billionaires has more than trebled since the Tories have been in government. With skyrocketing rent and energy bills eating into people’s pay packets, disposable income is being squeezed more and more. The record rise in food prices is pushing millions more into food insecurity.

There is a simple fix for this: enhanced workers’ rights to ensure that work pays enough to live and raise a family. That way, we can ensure that not a single child in this country goes hungry, and no child gets left behind. The evidence is there for all to see. Punishing families for having more than two children does not push parents back into work; it only drives more children into poverty. Tory austerity cuts were nothing less than an ideological drive to rig the economy in favour of the few at the expense of the many, and children in my constituency and across the country are now paying the price. The impact of growing up in poverty can be lifelong. We cannot wait for a new Labour Government to provide these children with a future; this Government must listen now and lift the two-child cap.

This debate is not the first time that I and many of my colleagues here in Westminster Hall today have raised these issues in this House over the years. We know the tired and misleading lines parroted by the Government, pointing to a rise in employment and a drop in absolute poverty over the course of their leadership of the country, so before the Minister gives his reply, I want him to consider the bleak reality of this situation. Work is no longer a route out of poverty. The Tories have undermined workers’ rights and trashed the very concept of work, to the extent that seven out of 10 children living in poverty in this country are in working families. Just let that statistic sink in for a minute: over two thirds of the children who live in poverty in the fifth richest country in the world are struggling because their parents’ wages are not enough to live on and raise a family.

In response to my question to the Prime Minister last month about the two-child benefit cap, the Prime Minister responded in his usual manner, by claiming that his Government had lifted 400,000 children out of absolute poverty since 2010. I am sure that Members in this Chamber would all agree that, on the face of it, that sounds like a really great achievement and one worth celebrating. However, as the Prime Minister and his Government well know, that statistic is misleading and does not take into account the impact of inflation, which is an approach that can only be described as being grotesquely out of touch during a cost of living crisis, when we see security tags put on basic necessities such as nappies and baby milk.

Economists and organisations such as the Institute for Fiscal Studies use “relative poverty” as a much more accurate measure of the reality of the trajectory in poverty, and this measure clearly shows the deepening trend in child poverty that we see every day in our constituencies. I ask the Minister not to take us for fools today. We are here because we know the desperate reality facing so many of our constituents. We are here to demand better for them. We will not continue to go round in circles debating meaningless numbers while the Government continue to bury their head in the sand and ignore the struggles of the people they were elected to represent.

I thank the Minister again for responding to this debate and the arguments that we have made, and I hope that he can feel the strength of feeling in this Chamber today about the facts of poverty.

16:14

[The Minister for Employment (Guy Opperman)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson) on securing the debate and on the passionate way that she put her argument today. That passion cannot be doubted in any way whatsoever and due respect is due to her for that.

The Government believe that the best way to support people’s living standards is through work, better skills and higher wages. I regret to say that I will rely on an answer similar to the one that the Prime Minister gave to the hon. Lady at Prime Minister’s questions. Whether she agrees or disagrees with that answer, I hope that she will bear with me as I give it.

In 2021-22, children living in a household in which all the adults were in work were five times less likely to be in absolute poverty after housing costs than children living in workless households. We believe that we have made progress. In 2021-22, there were 1.7 million fewer people in absolute poverty after housing costs than there were in 2009-10, including, as has been made clear, 400,000 fewer children. There are also nearly 1 million fewer workless households now than there were in 2010.

Following the review of the benefit cap levels by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in November 2022, those levels were increased by 10.1% from April 2023. Let us not forget that households can still receive benefits from the taxpayer up to the equivalent of a salary of £26,500 nationally or £31,300 in London, allowing for London weighting. Also, we uprated the national living wage by 9.7%, increasing our support for both those who are in work and those who are out of work, as well as uprating all benefits by 10.1% in April. That is the largest cash increase ever to the national living wage, which is now up to £10.42 an hour, providing extra support for workers.

Clearly, there are over 1 million vacancies across the UK and our focus is firmly on supporting people into work and helping them to progress in work. That approach is based on clear evidence about the importance of parental employment, particularly where it is full time, in substantially reducing the risks of child poverty.

[Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)]

Is the Minister aware of the recent study by the London School of Economics, published last month, that found that the two-child benefit cap policy has not increased employment levels? We can only conclude from that that even on its own terms, the policy is failing while hundreds of thousands of families have been pushed into poverty.

[Guy Opperman]

As I think I have made clear, I do not accept the arguments about poverty. I am not aware of the specific LSE paper that the hon. Lady mentions, but I would make the simple point that in this country we have never given more welfare support or paid higher figures for pensioner support or disability support. Without a shadow of a doubt, there has been massive cost of living support, as I will outline, to the most vulnerable.

[Ian Lavery]

The Minister makes the case for how good this Government have been on benefits, support and work funds. Minister, that is 4.2 million children living in poverty. He cannot be happy with that; he has to admit it is far too high. Secondly, does the Minister think kids sitting round the tea table at night are worried about whether they are in abject poverty, absolute poverty or relative poverty? If you have an empty belly, you have an empty belly, and this Government should be totally ashamed of themselves because of the high statistics and figures that are rising week in, week out.

[Guy Opperman]

With respect, I do not accept that the figures are rising week in, week out. The simple point is surely this: over the past two years, the taxpayer has contributed £94 billion of support to vulnerable households, and that support is ongoing. For example, the energy price guarantee will remain in place as a safety net and a support for households until March 2024. The cost of living payment, which I can go into more detail on, features a further £150 payment to 6 million people, over and above existing benefits, which have gone up by 10%. Over £900 will go to 8 million households on means-tested benefits over the course of the year. The first £301 payment to those on means-tested benefits was made in April.

For pensioners, an additional £300 on top of the winter fuel payment is being paid to over 8 million pensioner households. Such a degree of support has never been provided before, and whatever people’s views are of this Government—positive or otherwise—they have stepped in to the tune of £94 billion with cost of living support over the past two years. As I say, the first £301 payment was recently issued to local people up and down the country.

[Kim Johnson]

Will the Minister give way?

[Guy Opperman]

I will for the last time—I am attempting to answer some of the points.

[Kim Johnson]

Although I appreciate that £94 billion has been issued to the most vulnerable, we are in a crisis. Energy, rent and food are spiralling, so the money people have in their pockets is not going far enough. Does the Minister agree?

[Guy Opperman]

The Government have stepped forward and provided £94 billion of support, worth on average approximately £3,300 per household, because they wish to address those particular problems. We are trying to help individuals on an ongoing basis for that reason.

I will try to make some progress. The hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside made much of the question of tax. She will know that the richest 1% pay a massive proportion of UK tax and effectively have never paid as much as they presently do. Changes to taxable thresholds were a coalition policy, to be fair to the Liberal Democrats. When we started in government in 2010, low earners paid tax on low earnings as well as trying to take their money home. The taxable thresholds have risen repeatedly so that low earners no longer pay tax in that way; in other words, we have a very progressive policy that assists people who are struggling. Between 2016 and 2023, the number of couples in employment with children increased by 713,000, which is a 3.4% increase in the employment rate for that groups. In the circumstances outlined, child benefit continues to be paid for all children in eligible families, with an additional amount for any qualifying disabled child or qualifying disabled young person also payable regardless of the number of children in the household.

Universal credit offers additional help with eligible childcare costs and is also available regardless of the total number of children in the household. We believe we have a balanced system that provides strong work incentives and support for those who need it—all benefits have been uprated by more than 10%—while ensuring fairness to the taxpayer and the many working families who not only pay the bills we are talking about but do not see their incomes rise when they have more children.

The Government believe the policy to support a maximum of two children is a proportionate way to achieve these objectives. Similarly, the benefit cap provides both a strong work incentive and fairness for hard-working tax-paying households. It encourages people to move into work wherever possible. The work incentive introduced by the Government will also support people to move into work and increase their earnings, which will significantly increase the likelihood of a household not being affected by the cap. Universal credit households with earnings of £722 a month are also exempt from the cap.

I finish on a couple of key points. Clearly, there is a massive amount of cost of living support. However, I respectfully say that universal credit should be lauded and supported. I do not believe it is Labour party policy to scrap the two-child policy, but whatever happens there is no question that the legacy system that could not in any way cope with variable earnings and allow people to progress in work has been rightly replaced by universal credit, which allows people to work while also being constantly supported and in a position wherein they are never worse off under universal credit.

In conclusion, I welcome the contribution of the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside to the debate and I share her concern that children should be supported by the social security system. I respectfully suggest that there is ample evidence showing that that is the case. We are very much of the view that—whether it is through the 10% benefits increase, the £94 billion of support to vulnerable households, the uprating of the national living wage or the work of jobcentres up and down the country to support in-work progression—there is support out there.

Question put and agreed to.

Antisocial Behaviour and Off-road Bikes

Tuesday 11th July 2023 Westminster Hall

16:30

[Matt Vickers (Stockton South) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered antisocial behaviour and off-road bikes.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I bring forward this debate out of frustration for residents across my constituency whose lives are being made a misery by antisocial behaviour and off-road bikes. The issue has been raised time and again; I make no apology for dragging people to the Chamber to debate the issue once more in the hope that we can find a way forward. I have raised the issue numerous times with my local police force, my local police and crime commissioner, the local council and Government Ministers. From the looks of the turn out in the Chamber—despite the challenges with today’s schedule—the issue appears to affect people right across the country.

In my constituency of Stockton South, antisocial behaviour with off-road bikes manifests itself in areas across the patch. There is, however, a constant flow of problems in some of our most beautiful and scenic spaces, including green spaces in Ingleby Barwick and Thornaby, the Six Fields in Hartburn, Preston park and a beautiful and previously peaceful walkway that connects Bishop Garth and Elm Tree and Fairfield, which has recently come to resemble a racetrack—and there is little care for anyone who gets in the way. The issue also plagues our urban areas, housing estates and main roads across Thornaby, Ingleby Barwick and others.

The nature of incidents, nuisances and crime involving the misuse of dirt bikes, quads, electric bikes and scooters varies, but in all instances has huge consequences. Let me share a couple of examples of the impact that those bikes and the youths that misuse them have on my residents. I have heard from a pensioner who lives with her husband in a beautiful bungalow backing on to a field, previously filled with birdsong and nature. She and her disabled husband now spend most evenings listening to the roar of the bikes flying around that field, and the cuts and walkways surrounding it, at all hours. They have had vehicles come through their fence as well as mud and grit churned up on their property and they fear leaving their home at night for risk of being hit. They dare not confront the nasty and unruly youngsters who ride the bikes.

I have heard stories of young families looking to enjoy some of Stockton’s beautiful green spaces, only to be intimidated by youngsters on bikes, in broad daylight, driving at speed and ridiculously close in an effort to intentionally scare, harass and intimidate them. We have now got to a point where some of those youngsters feel that they are above the law, and to be honest, it appears that they are. Each weekend, balaclava-clad feral teenagers drive down normal residential streets creating fear and havoc, with no regard for the lives of people around them. It is simply unacceptable and it cannot go on.

[Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate on off-road bikes. Such antisocial behaviour not only disrupts the lives of my constituents but damages livelihoods and farmland, creating absolute misery for people who live in areas where the off-road bikers go. Does he agree with me that the police need to take those people for what they are, which is proper criminals, rather than mere nuisances, and use every power available to stop the menaces that terrorise residents in Rother Valley and across the country?

[Matt Vickers]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. We need to look at what the law is and how we can empower our police to tackle something that makes so many people’s lives a misery. Just yesterday in Stockton, three people were hurt in incidents involving off-road and electric bikes, including a three-year-old on his way home from school who was hospitalised after being hit by an electric bike.

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

Throughout the UK there is pressure on police to come up with innovative ways to stamp out the antisocial use of off-road bikes. Those methods include seizing vehicles, tenancy enforcement action and SmartTag spray. Does the hon. Member believe that other enforcement measures should also be pursued so as to not add more pressure on overstretched forces?

[Matt Vickers]

I agree entirely with the hon. Member. Sometimes it is about the best use of the resources available to us. Actually, across the country it is clear that we need to learn lessons and put best practice to use to tackle the horrendous situation. I cannot comment on the details of the youngster who was hurt yesterday, but it illustrates the horrendous consequences those bikes can have when allowed to ride roughshod across our communities.

I ask the Government to get a grip on this growing issue. We cannot wait for someone else to lose their life; too many people in my community are already losing their quality of life. In the past year, the number of reports to my local police has gone up by about 40%. Local police, led by our police and crime commissioner, Steve Turner, have been making innovative efforts to identify the whereabouts of these bikes and seize them. The force has developed an online reporting tool and has made use of drones. In April and May this year, Cleveland police seized 180 bikes as part of Operation Endurance—yes, 180 bikes were taken off our streets—but we still saw last night’s incident, and I am sure we will see many more.

In advance of the debate, I have had conversations with police officers and officers from my local council about what more the Government can do to support them in getting a grip on the issue. We need to find a balance with those who use these bikes legitimately, but the pendulum has swung too far. We need a real change to bring this misery to an end.

[Robbie Moore (Keighley) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. We are all sick to the back teeth of people causing havoc. In the Worth valley in my constituency and across Ilkley moor, I see people going off road on bikes and being a real menace. It is good that the Government are taking action by putting out a section 59 notice in certain pilot areas such as Darlington, but does my hon. Friend agree that we need to go further? When the bikes are seized, they should be taken away and crushed so that those individuals cannot buy them back at a later date. That will be a proper deterrent and will ensure that off-road biking does not cause havoc for our constituents.

[Matt Vickers]

My hon. Friend is entirely correct: we need to go further and faster, because this is an absolute plague on communities across the country. I ask the Government to look again at regulating and licensing the sale of these bikes—off-road bikes, quads, electronic bikes and scooters—and the petrol used in them. I ask them to look at what we can do to make it easier for the police to seize the bikes by looking at any threshold for evidence of misuse. The Government need to deliver tougher sanctions and consequences for those found to misuse bikes, and perhaps in some cases for their parents too. As I said, 180 bikes have been seized, but there is little to prevent the owners from buying back their bike or another one, which can cost just a couple of hundred pounds.

[Peter Gibson (Darlington) (Con)]

What consideration has my hon. Friend given to further measures that the industry, the Department for Transport and the Home Office can introduce? Compelling the installation of immobilisers in these vehicles, compulsory registration and compulsory insurance would go a long way to tackle the problem.

[Matt Vickers]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. My ask is for the Government to find a national strategy to look at good practice and end this horrible situation. They should look at what we can do on licensing and in public spaces. We need more guidance for local authorities that are putting in place measures to impede motorbikes in public spaces. In my constituency, a barrier was removed in Bishopsgarth to allow disabled access to a walkway, and the result has been hordes of youngsters on off-road bikes tearing up and down. Bikes have even been used to deal drugs in that space. The local authority is looking at alternative measures, but the lessons should be learned once and shared across public bodies.

[Margaret Ferrier]

Reports in the media highlight that food delivery drivers on e-bikes are causing a nuisance in city centres. They sometimes drive on pavements, and that puts locals off journeying into town. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that related issue also requires urgent intervention?

[Matt Vickers]

The hon. Lady is entirely right. For all the reasons that hon. Members have raised and that I have outlined, we need a national strategy for dealing with these vehicles so that we can share learning and best practice, and empower our local authorities and the police to get a grip on this issue.

People across Stockton are sick of the misery, harm and distress caused by a small few mindless youths misusing vehicles. All too often, my constituents are unable to see the work authorities are doing to tackle the issue.

[Kim Leadbeater (Batley and Spen) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech, and I agree with pretty much every word of it. It certainly applies to my constituents in Batley and Spen. Does he agree that there is a correlation between antisocial behaviour with off-road bikes and the cuts to our police forces over the past decade?

[Matt Vickers]

Resource is part of it, and part of it is about learning the lessons and making the best use of the resource. In my part of the world, there are 267 more police officers on our streets, and we are feeling the impact of that, but I fear that, due to the frustrations of the public, someone will try to take the law into their own hands, stand up to these yobs and find themselves on the wrong side of the law. I urge the Minister to ensure that the law is on the side of the many law-abiding citizens in my constituency, who want to be free to go about their lives without the fear of feral yobs on bikes.

16:39

[Navendu Mishra (Stockport) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Pritchard. I congratulate the hon. Member for Stockton South (Matt Vickers) on securing the debate. People who are less familiar with Stockport often confuse it with Stockton, so it is interesting to be in this debate and to thank the hon. Member for securing it.

Moving on to more serious matters, I think the hon. Gentleman mentioned he has 264 more police officers on the street recently. Is the Minister aware of how many we have lost since 2010, when the austerity agenda came in? The Government have cut the grant to my local force, Greater Manchester police, by £215 million since 2010. As a direct result, we have 2,000 fewer police officers on our streets, and 1,000 fewer support officers. I am grateful to everyone at Greater Manchester police for the difficult job they do in challenging circumstances. I also want to highlight the important job done by police support officers.

My office receives a large amount of correspondence about antisocial behaviour and illegal off-road bikes. The issue seems more pronounced in the summer months. I have often seen and reported illegal off-road bikes in my constituency to the police. They cause a lot of problems for residents. People who live on their own, are elderly or have health or mobility issues feel quite threatened in their own homes, due to antisocial behaviour and illegal off-road bikes. It is sad to say that my office receives a lot of letters, emails and phone calls—the figure for the last few weeks is around 250 pieces of correspondence about antisocial behaviour, and around 40 about illegal off-road bikes. I meet the police regularly to get updates, and I hold regular resident meetings to talk about these matters and learn the fundamental issues from residents.

It is all well and good for the Government to talk about what they are going to do, but they have significantly cut police funding in the last 13 years—although the solution cannot just be more police on the street; there has to be a well-rounded solution.

[Peter Gibson]

I am interested in the point the hon. Gentleman is making, but does he acknowledge that we now have more officers in our police forces nationwide than ever before?

[Navendu Mishra]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. He is making an important point, but I wonder whether he has compared the rise in police officers with the rise in population, and the complexity of crime. It is not just about more men and women in police uniforms on the street; it is also about the type of work they do.

I have been in the constituency with officers who tell me that they have to do more and more in less and less time. The types of crime being committed can be extremely complex and time-consuming. A few months ago, an officer told me about the impact of the workload on her mental health. We have to be realistic about the nature of crime, the amount and complexity of crime, and the understaffing. All those issues have to be addressed. It might be fair to say that there are more police officers now than ever, but the population has also gone up, and the nature and complexity of crime have also changed.

[Alexander Stafford]

We are talking about the complexity of crime. Off-road bikes, antisocial behaviour and auto-crime are complex crimes. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we need bespoke solutions to deal with that? In South Yorkshire, we have an off-road bike team that does an amazing job, but there is only a handful of them doing that. Does he agree that some of those extra officers need to go into more off-road bike teams, with their own quad bikes, to tackle the people who are riding their own bikes? We need to have the right officers doing the right jobs to deal with this particular type of crime.

[Navendu Mishra]

Absolutely. The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. We have a dedicated team in Greater Manchester police that deals with illegal off-road bike crime. I wish there were more officers on that team, of course. We have had several issues with Greater Manchester police over the last few years. I cannot comment on South Yorkshire police; I am not an expert on South Yorkshire.

The force, under new leadership in the last couple of years, has done a lot of good work. As I said earlier, I want to thank officers in Greater Manchester police, but the reality is that they are still underfunded and could do a lot more. It seems to me that the Government do not have that on their list of priorities. Living in one’s own home and being threatened by antisocial behaviour and illegal off-road bikes, with people wearing full face coverings, might be low intensity, but it can be serious for people.

I will make a couple of concluding points. There are high levels of antisocial behaviour in Stockport and across Britain. My local council has seen a 30% cut to its settlement funding. I do not think we would have seen such high levels of crime if the local council funding had not been cut and if Greater Manchester police’s funding—police funding in general—had not been cut. The solution cannot just be talking about putting more and more police officers on the street. We have to talk about youth clubs and what we offer these young people. We have to talk about support services and all those issues.

Finally, more generally in the north-west, between 2015 and 2022 there was a 41% fall in the number of neighbourhood police. The figures are staggering. I hope the Minister will address these important issues, particularly the complexity of the problem and the workload for police officers. We have seen crime go up, but prosecutions, cautions and community penalties have all gone down. That is a fact. Too often, when people report crimes or antisocial behaviour, they feel that absolutely nothing is done. That seems to be what many people feel, not just in Stockport but across Greater Manchester and England. It has to be addressed.

16:46

[Peter Gibson (Darlington) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I want to begin my congratulating my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (Matt Vickers), on securing this important debate. He knows, as do I, that antisocial behaviour and the fear of it is of great concern to our constituents. It is a blight on our society, imprisoning people in their homes, making them fearful of venturing out, and turning parts of our community into perceived no-go areas. That cannot be right in a civilised society.

Off-road bikes have long been a cause for concern in Darlington. Having raised this matter a number of times in the House before, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak on the issue again today. Off-road bikes and quad bikes are the vehicle of choice for those in my community who want to tear-arse around our estates and parks, creating noise pollution, posing an intimidating danger to pedestrians and making life grim for those who live nearby. Parents are fearful of the danger to their children. Pedestrians are fearful of being knocked over. The all-pervading drone of the engines can make parts of our community feel inhospitable. We must do more to rid our communities of this problem.

I praise Durham constabulary’s Operation Endurance, which is focused on tackling this scourge and has had an appreciable impact on tackling this form of antisocial behaviour. Since February last year, section 59 warning signs have been erected to notify offenders of the new powers. Anyone now seen riding an off-road bike, quad or 4x4 in Darlington will have their vehicle seized straightaway by the police, if they can catch them. Durham constabulary has issued a number of fixed penalty notices, speeding tickets and barring notices. We have seen a significant number of illegal quads and off-road bikes seized. These actions are working. They are removing the ability of offenders to offend and acting as a deterrent by demonstrating real consequences to those involved, but we need even more action.

Durham constabulary and Darlington Borough Council have worked closely to tackle this problem over the past year, and I hope that the new Labour and Lib Dem coalition administration will continue to work with me and the police so that we can continue to make progress in this area. I will soon be meeting with Robert Potts, our police and crime commissioner candidate, to ensure that he is fully up to speed on this issue. He is laser-focused on the steps needed to go further in our community.

It is vital that local communities play their part in tackling the scourge if enforcement is to be successful. I repeat my message that every sight and every sound of off-road bikes should be reported, so that our police force can gather the intelligence it needs to eliminate the problem.

[Margaret Ferrier]

Many of those who are responsibly using off-road bikes do so on uninsured and unregistered vehicles. Does the hon. Member agree that the current legislation is not a sufficient deterrent to those perpetuating antisocial behaviour on road bikes and must be reviewed swiftly?

[Peter Gibson]

It is a pleasure to see the hon. Lady in the Chamber, and I wholeheartedly agree with her point. Insurance and registration are important matters, which I raised in my earlier intervention and will address further in my speech.

For my part, as the MP for Darlington, I have continued to share Durham Constabulary’s messaging of reporting the problem to 999 if people feel they are in danger, or to the 101 service if the incident has passed. I could say much more about our Labour police and crime commissioner’s ability to improve the response times for the 101 service, or the closure of our custody suite in Darlington, or the threat of the closure of Cockerton police station, but I will remain focused on the topic at hand.

In tackling this problem further, which I know is not limited to Darlington, I would ask the Minister to respond to the simple, practical and sensible suggestions that I outlined earlier. Compulsory insurance for off-road and quad bikes would dissuade the casual user from illegal use of bikes on the road. Compulsory registration of off-road bikes would make the identification of these vehicles much easier for law enforcement. Mandating manufacturers to install immobilisers on these vehicles would also help to reduce theft and the misuse of them by unauthorised riders. These points have been raised in discussion with Ministers in the past. I encourage Home Office, Transport and indeed Justice Ministers to work more closely on a package of measures to tackle the antisocial behaviour associated with off-road bikes.

A further point about off-road bikes is what happens after the vehicle is seized. Currently, the police recoup their recovery and storage costs for seized vehicles by auctioning them off in order to recover costs. That leads to a merry-go-round of offenders buying back vehicles. Our forces need a ringfenced pot of money to enable them to crush these vehicles and meet the costs of recovery.

But off-road bikes are not the only issue; we face many other types of antisocial behaviour in Darlington. The illegal and unacceptable fly-tipping in our alley ways by fly-by-night operators who will rock up in a transit van or flatbed truck is a real issue. They will offer to take a household’s rubbish away for a tenner, avoiding the inconvenience of contacting the council or taking a trip to the tip. Having done shifts with Street Scene, Darlington Borough Council’s environmental services department, I have seen first hand the impact of this issue on local residents and the town as a whole. Street Scene is continuing to work hard to tackle this scourge, with increased prosecution of those found to be fly-tipping, and with Street Scene responding speedily to incidents and taking a proactive approach to rooting out those responsible.

Finally, while our Government and constabularies are tackling antisocial behaviour, more can be done with cross-Government working to tackle issues and ringfence pots of money to support the steps we need to take to reduce these problems. I know the Minister will have listened closely to this debate, and I take this opportunity —as I did in the last debate on antisocial behaviour I attended—to invite him and others in his Department to Darlington to see first hand the problems we are experiencing and the actions and the further solutions we need to tackle antisocial behaviour in Darlington.

16:53

[Kim Leadbeater (Batley and Spen) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for Stockton South (Matt Vickers) for securing this important debate. In the two years that I have been a Member of this House, antisocial behaviour and dangerous and inconsiderate driving have been perhaps the two biggest issues raised with me by constituents. Hardly a week goes by without people getting in touch about the risk to pedestrians and other road users, and the intimidating behaviour by what are, for the most part, teenagers and young men showing a total disregard for the safety of others.

I have held numerous meetings with the police, the council, the deputy mayor for policing and others to look for solutions to these problems—solutions that require a multi-agency approach. [Interruption.]

[Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)]

Order. I will suspend the sitting for the Division, and we will carry on the debate when we return. I understand there will be a lot of votes back to back, but I ask colleagues, particularly the Minister—or a Minister—and the mover of the motion, to get back very quickly after the last vote.

16:54

Sitting suspended for Divisions in the House.

20:31

On resuming—

[Kim Leadbeater]

I will return in a moment to why trying to make progress towards those solutions is so frustrating for me and, more importantly, the residents affected. Just last week I held a roundtable on antisocial behaviour at my office in Heckmondwike, and later this week I will be holding another on road safety. I find such opportunities to get everyone together to address problems very powerful. Although we have made some progress locally, I will not pretend that there is not a much bigger piece of work to be done to get enforcement, and the political and cultural changes we need, to change behaviours and bear down on offenders.

The contributions of the various agencies involved are valuable in setting out what is being done and what more could be done if the resources were available. For me, the most important voices are those of the victims of this hugely disruptive and damaging antisocial behaviour, on whose lives it has a significant impact.

One man from the Fieldhead estate in Birstall told me how seriously his whole family has been impacted. He said:

“The estate is currently plagued with nuisance motorcycles and quad bikes. I have sent many photos and videos to the police and have called them numerous times. Three this week alone. It’s not just the noise, that scares my children to tears, it’s the fact that they ride them around at speeds in excess of 60-70 mph, wear no helmets, ride on the pavement and between the houses and have absolutely no consideration for other residents around, including children that are playing in the streets.

The bikers nearly hit my daughter as she was walking home. On another occasion one guy on a moped almost hit my step mother as she got out of her car. He was speeding and pulling a wheelie as he flew passed.

I am at the end of my tether with it. The police have little to no power and when they do remove the bikes from the riders, they have a different bike in a matter of days.”

A constituent from Gomersal described

“young lads on trial bikes who are riding round our area wearing balaclavas and no helmets. They have no regard for anybody on the road, footpaths or anybody crossing the roads.”

He added:

“I really do believe it is only a matter of time before these people kill somebody.”

I am pleased to say that, in response to the issues raised with me, the police have stepped up patrols, and a number of bikes have been seized. They really want to do more, but it will come as no surprise to hear that they simply do not have the resources or the manpower. John Robins, chief constable of West Yorkshire police, said just last week that the cuts mean that he simply cannot deliver what he wants to deliver as a professional police officer. Since 2010, West Yorkshire has seen cuts to its budget of £165 million and the loss of 2,000 officers. At the same time that police numbers have fallen, there have been cuts to child, youth and community services. Too often, the voluntary and private sectors have to step in to try and fill the void. I want to pay tribute to local charities and organisations that do a fantastic job providing activities for young people to give them a focus and help to keep out them of trouble. Jack Sunderland and his team at the Training Cave in Birstall encourage young people to put their time and energy into boxing, while BUMPY, also in Birstall, offers on and off-road motorbiking sessions and qualifications to young people and adults, including some of the most vulnerable, in a safe environment.

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

The hon. Lady said a moment ago that police numbers in—was it South Yorkshire?

[Kim Leadbeater]

West Yorkshire.

[Chris Philp]

The hon. Lady said that police numbers in West Yorkshire had fallen. I gently say this: in March 2010, West Yorkshire had 5,856 police officers; in March this year, there were 6,160. Far from being cut, there are now 300 more officers than there were in 2010. I am sure that was inadvertent.

[Kim Leadbeater]

I am happy to be corrected if that is the case, but the deputy mayor for policing in West Yorkshire gave me those figures.

[Chris Philp]

Well, she is wrong.

[Kim Leadbeater]

I am happy to check and apologise if that is the case.

Going back to organisations in my constituency and across the country, Sustrans does a fantastic job of looking after the wonderful Spen Valley Greenway. However, like many charities, it is struggling for funding, and next year it will no longer be able to fund Rob Winslade, our dedicated warden. I am seriously worried about the impact that that will have on the greenway’s safety.

There are many other groups in Batley and Spen, as in all our constituencies, which do similar excellent work. They are keen to be part of the solution to tackling the problems of antisocial behaviour and specifically off-road bikes. However, the truth is that without a systematic, Government-led strategy to properly resource and fund our police force and to provide a proper range of community services, including sport and physical activity provision for young people, we will continue to have the kind of problems we have discussed today. Leadership at a political level is required, with the aim of helping as many people as possible to feel fit, healthy and fulfilled, and of building communities that everybody can feel proud of and want to protect.

We need a shift in culture, but that will not happen by itself. I recently proposed a health and wellbeing strategy that would bring together all Departments of Government alongside local authorities, charities and voluntary organisations, as well as the private sector, to help produce a happier, healthier and safer nation. It will not happen overnight, but the current Government are not doing anywhere near enough to make that happen. I finish by thanking everyone in my constituency and across the country for their fantastic work on this important agenda.

20:37

[Ashley Dalton (West Lancashire) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I congratulate the hon. Member for Stockton South (Matt Vickers) on securing the debate and I thank him for it.

I have always been of the opinion that politics is local. The issues that we discuss here are of so much significance to our constituents because they affect them. Like others who have spoken, I have an inbox full of messages from constituents who are concerned about our focus today, which is an extremely damaging issue for our communities. In Skelmersdale, in my West Lancashire constituency, residents are contacting me to report bikes tearing up and down estates at all hours of the day and night, terrorising local people at speeds of up to 50 mph. Local residents report that they hear the bikes coming before they can see them, with the noise carrying on for hours at a time, three to four times a week.

Much more troubling is residents’ concern about their safety as a result of that behaviour. My constituents are telling their children not to play out in the street—the place where they live—for fear of the bikes, and residents have described the activity in the local press as

“an accident waiting to happen”,

yet they dare not report the issue to the police for fear of retaliatory crime.

A simple online search will bring up reports of residents who complain about being targeted with attacks on their properties and, in the worst instances, arson. Good, honest and hard-working people are having their lives blighted by the reckless and selfish actions of those on bikes. Also, as perpetrators come and go at all hours of the day, it is hard for the police to react when offences occur. Even if the police are quick enough to react, a potential chase through residential streets poses further danger to local residents. It has reached the point where Lancashire police are now working with the Labour West Lancashire Borough Council to impose public spaces protection orders to try to get to grips with the ongoing nuisance, yet more concerning is the link between off-road bikes and organised crime, such as the distribution of drugs, which bring with them a whole raft of other antisocial behaviours and yet more illegal activities.

Reports of such vehicles being used to ferry illegal substances around communities and distribute drugs are widespread. Evidence of the link between bikes and drugs has been found right across the country, from Stockton, which the hon. Member who led the debate represents, to Glasgow, Manchester, Preston and Leicester. In fact, the issue has become so problematic in Leicester that the east midlands special operations unit has been established and tasked to address the problem.

I am not suggesting that all off-road bike-users are dealing drugs, and nor am I saying that to eliminate the issue of antisocial behaviour and bike use would be a silver bullet in eradicating drug crime, but it would certainly help to address the issue and provide some respite for my constituents, who are suffering due to noise, fear and the risk to their safety. The impact of antisocial behaviour is so far reaching, and I hear about it so much from my constituents, that I felt compelled to raise it with the Lancashire police and crime commissioner, Andrew Snowden, when I met him yesterday.

New technologies offer alternative ways to begin to address the problem. West Midlands police and Hampshire police, for instance, have both used drones to identify offenders and get more accurate descriptions than local residents can offer. While the success of such an approach, like others, needs to be assessed before it is more widely considered, it might well take a fresh approach really to deal with the issue.

What concerns me most is the lack of accessible support to the victims of antisocial behaviour. Tackling the problem and dealing with the perpetrators are, understandably, often the focus of attention, but to be a victim of antisocial behaviour can be incredibly isolating and distressing. That is why I support calls from Opposition Front Benchers to focus more on neighbourhood policing, with an additional 3,000 officers and police community support officers who are rooted in communities.

At a time when confidence in the police is waning, having a regular, familiar police presence in our communities would go some distance to restore and rebuild trust, as well as acting as a deterrent against antisocial behaviours. For my constituents in West Lancashire, antisocial behaviour and the menace of off-road bikes is a daily torment. I am committed to working with the police and crime commissioner, local police, local councillors, colleagues in this House and, most importantly, the communities of West Lancashire to ensure that the issue is taken seriously, and that people can once again feel safe in their neighbourhoods.

[Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)]

The debate will need to end at eight minutes past 9. If the Minister is so minded, he might allow the mover of the motion a couple of minutes to wind up. I call the shadow Minister.

20:42

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Pritchard; it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I will probably not take all the time that we have—you might be pleased by that.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Stockton South (Matt Vickers) on securing this important debate. I thought that he spoke a lot of sense. We have been here before, talking about this issue. He asked the Government to get a grip of the problem in his speech, which the Minister who is now present, the right hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), missed. I am sure that the Minister will respond to all the points that hon. Members made.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Navendu Mishra) is worried about the antisocial behaviour that will arise in the summer months, and the hon. Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson) raised similar issues. My hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater) is so active in her community that she had an event last week on this issue and is having one next week, which shows her commitment to her constituents. My hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire (Ashley Dalton) gave a harrowing story of how people feel when antisocial behaviour is rife, and how they think that they cannot report it because there will be reprisals. Such things are often completely hidden because those crimes never get to the point of the police being involved and are therefore not covered by the statistics.

In both this Chamber and the main Chamber, Ministers have described antisocial behaviour as low level, and the Government have not taken the issue seriously to any degree for a long time. It was only after Labour Front Benchers put forward tough antisocial behaviour plans earlier this year that the Government published their underwhelming and unambitious strategy, with lead responsibility transferred from the Home Office to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.

We know there is huge underreporting of antisocial behaviour, but the latest stats are awful. There were 1 million incidents of antisocial behaviour last year—more than 2,700 every single day—but that is just the tip of the iceberg. We know that criminal damage to a building other than a dwelling has risen by 20%, and “arson not endangering life” is up by 21%. Over a third of people say they have personally experienced or witnessed antisocial behaviour in their local area, and 72%—nearly three quarters of the population—think that crime has gone up in the past few years.

There is a big problem with antisocial behaviour statistics, because the Government do not do proper data collection. The freedom of information requests that I have submitted show huge variety across the country in how antisocial behaviour is reported and dealt with, and data on the use of new powers is not centrally collected. The Government could choose to address that if they wanted to, but they do not, so will the Minister look again at how antisocial behaviour is recorded? Will he recognise the impact of antisocial behaviour?

Our colleagues have been debating the Victims and Prisoners Bill in Committee over the last couple of weeks, and one of the amendments put forward by Labour Front Benchers was designed to treat victims of antisocial behaviour as victims in law. The Government voted against that proposal, which is a real shame, because until we recognise the impact of antisocial behaviour and that it involves victims too, we will not start to get serious about dealing with the problem.

People across the country raise the issue of off-road bikes, which has a pernicious impact on communities. The vehicles are loud and driven at great speed, causing great danger to other people and to those riding them. They spray mud and dirt, upset communities and ruin green spaces. It is a problem in the north-east, which I visited with Joy Allen and Kim McGuinness, Labour’s excellent police and crime commissioners there. There are also real problems with stolen bikes, and the police are concerned that not enough is being done to help them attack that crime. It appears that off-road bikes are easy to steal, and police tell me their frustrations about the fact that claims on off-road bikes are paid out even if the key is in the ignition. It is quite a niche, technical issue, but if people can leave the key in the ignition and get paid the insurance, it is quite easy for people to steal the bikes, which seems to happen in a lot of areas.

We have seen examples of good work. Simon Foster, the West Midlands police and crime commissioner, has funded three additional off-road bikes for the police—they now have six—and he is increasing the number of trained off-road officers in Northumbria. Kim McGuinness has had great success in clamping down on stolen motorbikes, including by using overhead drones.

[Kim Leadbeater]

In Batley and Spen, police officers have received the off-road bike training that they need to chase perpetrators, but I was informed recently that officers are now being told that if we want to get more of them trained, they will have to pay for their own licences, which seems wrong. I wonder whether the Minister could look into that and get back to us.

[Sarah Jones]

I thank my hon. Friend for her helpful intervention. I am sure the Minister will address that in his speech.

If the people are good enough to put their trust in us, the next Labour Government will put 13,000 extra neighbourhood police and PCSOs on our streets as part of our neighbourhood policing guarantee.

[Chris Philp]

I hear this 13,000 number a lot. Will the hon. Lady clarify whether that is a redesignation of 13,000 existing police officers, or new police officers in addition to those currently employed?

[Sarah Jones]

I am sure that the Minister could read our press releases, which explain where the funding will come from, but there will be 3,000 new police officers, 3,000 from the uplift, and the rest will be PCSOs and specials. But the point of our policy—it will not just be about neighbourhood policing—is that we need to have police on our streets, where people can see them. Given that half of all our PCSOs across the country and large numbers of police staff have been cut, officers who should be in our neighbourhoods are now answering phones, dealing with back-office functions and not doing the things that we need them to do.

[Peter Gibson]

I am all in favour of extra police on the streets, and I welcome the 168 extra officers we have in County Durham, but our Labour police and crime commissioner has closed the custody suite in Darlington, thereby stockpiling millions of pounds and starving the force of officers we could have had in previous years, and in effect turning our officers into taxi drivers to take people to a brand new £20 million custody suite in the centre of a gigantic county. That is a Labour decision in my county.

[Sarah Jones]

I understand where the hon. Gentleman is coming from. No one wants anything to close. Indeed, it is a great shame that nearly 700 police stations have been closed under this Government. What does that do to a community? Sixty were closed by the previous Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, when he was Mayor of London. Extraordinary figures.

Labour will crack down on repeat offenders with our new respect orders. We will introduce new town centre patrols and a mandatory antisocial lead for every neighbourhood. We will bring in fixed-penalty cleaning notices and tough penalties for fly-tippers. We will establish clean-up squads in which offenders will clear up the litter, fly-tipping and vandalism that they have caused.

I do not want to go on too long. I ask the Minister to go back to his colleagues about not including antisocial victims in the Bill. Will he look again at recording the data on antisocial behaviour, because the picture is hard to see? What are his views on off-road bikes and does he think we should be going further in helping the police to tackle that problem? Does he support Labour’s new respect orders? And does he support our policy to put more police in our neighbourhoods and on our streets.

Antisocial behaviour is a difficult thing to measure. Our job as politicians is not to find a stat that can prove our point, but to try to make people’s lives better. It is undoubtedly the case that many people’s lives are blighted by antisocial behaviour, and it is undoubtedly the case that we can do more. I hope that the Minister responds in that frame.

20:52

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

It is a pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I find myself in the Chamber slightly unexpectedly—you will have noticed that a younger and better-looking Minister has appeared than the one who was here at the beginning—[Interruption.] I hear some sceptical gasps rippling around the room. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Security is making a speech somewhere far less august than this. I have therefore come to conclude the debate. The matter is part of my portfolio, so it is probably appropriate that I am here in any event.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (Matt Vickers) on securing the debate on this extremely important topic, which is a Government priority and always has been. We have heard some commentary about resourcing, and it is important that the police have the resources that they need to keep the public safe from antisocial behaviour and crime more widely. To put the record straight on police funding, therefore, the police settlement for the current financial year is £17.2 billion. That is higher than it has ever been at any time in history. Police and crime commissioners specifically, who fund frontline policing in our constituencies, have £550 million—more than half a billion pounds—more this year, compared with last year.

Let me take a moment to comment on police numbers. I am sure that what the hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater) said about the police in her county was inaccurate only inadvertently, because her county has record numbers. In fact, England and Wales as a whole have record numbers. To be precise, as of 31 March, we now have 149,472 police officers in England and Wales. That is more than we have ever had at any time in this country’s history, and it is about 3,500 more than in March 2010, when there were 146,030 police officers. These are record police numbers.

We also heard a little about crime recording, data, peak crime and whether crime is going up or down. Perceptions of crime are sometimes different from the actual figures, however. There are two sets of crime figures, which apply to any criminal activity, including ASB. There is the crime survey for England and Wales, which is a large-scale survey recognised by the Office for National Statistics as being the only accurate measure of crime over the long term, and there is police recorded crime, which is when people report things to the police. That is a function of people’s propensity to report to the police and how good a job the police do in recording the crime. Until about five years ago, the police did not always do a particularly good job. The inspectorate has clamped down in the last few years, and the police are now much better at recording everything that is reported to them. It is for that reason that the ONS says that the crime survey is considered the most accurate measure of long-term crime trends.

In that context, I have some figures on changes in crime since 2010—I pick that date arbitrarily, of course. Criminal damage is down by 65%, and vehicle theft is down by 42%. On antisocial behaviour, the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones), mentioned that according to the crime survey, which she has obviously seen, 35% of people had experienced antisocial behaviour in the year ending September 2022. What she neglected to mention is that that was a substantial decrease of 12% when compared with the last year before covid.

On police recorded crime, which has its limitations, the hon. Member for Croydon Central said that 1.1 million ASB offences were recorded by the police. Again, she forgot to mention—no doubt for reasons of time and space—that that this is a 21% reduction since before the pandemic.

[Kim Leadbeater]

I know the Minister likes his statistics, and I have always admired his ability to get those statistics out there, but will he not take on board the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones) about the reluctance of people to report antisocial behaviour? Sadly, I know from my own experience in Batley and Spen that there is a feeling that nothing will be done so there is not any point in reporting it. That creates more statistics, but they are not visible to us.

[Chris Philp]

What the hon. Lady is saying is that there is limitation in the police recorded crime figures. That is why the crime survey is considered the authoritative source of data. It does not rely on the public reporting a particular offence; it is essentially a public opinion poll on an enormous scale. The methodology has been the same over many years, which is why the crime survey figures are considered the most reliable.

I was going on to say that even though those ASB figures are going down, whether measured by the crime survey or by police recorded crime, this is a serious issue, as the hon. Lady and Government Members have said. People feel that more needs to be done and that there is too much ASB, and the Government agree with that assessment. That is why, just a few weeks ago, the Government launched their antisocial behaviour action plan, which included £160 million of new additional funding.

Among other things, that extra funding pays for antisocial behaviour hotspot patrols, which will target areas of particular antisocial behaviour. Those hotspots could be in town centres, but they could also be in areas where there is quad biking or trail biking going on. That is being piloted in 10 force areas. I think Lancashire is one of those. I was in Chorley, in Mr Speaker’s constituency, last week, out and about with the very first ASB hotspot patrol in Lancashire. There are going to be 14 other hotspot patrols in Lancashire as it rolls out, as well as in 10 other force areas. In April of next year, every single police force in the country—all 43 of them—will have ASB hotpot patrols funded with over £1 million per force.

We are also funding immediate justice, where those people caught perpetrating antisocial behaviour, including on quad bikes and trail bikes, will within 48 hours be made to do some kind of restorative activity—it could be cleaning graffiti or cleaning up the streets—in branded, high-vis jackets, to make clear to the public and the perpetrators that there are consequences when people commit ASB. Again, there are 10 pilot forces, and by April next year every single police force in the country will have about £1 million each to deliver immediate justice.

The plan has a lot of other elements. It strengthens the provisions in the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014. There will also be a statutory instrument shortly to ban nitrous oxide, which is a driver of ASB and a serious matter.

[Sarah Jones]

Out of interest, where has the consultation on nitrous oxide got to? The Minister said that the Government are banning it, but have they gone through the process of consultation?

[Chris Philp]

There are a couple of stages. The first was to consult the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. We commissioned it back in the autumn and it reported in March. It actually advised us not to ban nitrous oxide, but, unusually, we decided to ban it anyway. It is about the fourth time a Government have disregarded its advice. The last Labour Government disregarded it a couple of times, and this Government have disregarded it a couple of times because we thought it was that serious. In a Westminster Hall debate a few months ago, both Conservative and Labour Members raised concerns about nitrous oxide being a driver of antisocial behaviour. It is genuinely the case that that Westminster Hall debate prompted us to get this done. I know that sometimes these debates are not hugely well attended, but they do lead to change, and that is an example of a Westminster Hall debate actually leading to a substantive change.

Having decided to ban nitrous oxide, we consulted on how to go about doing that with the ACMD and others, and we spoke to various stakeholders. We will create some exemptions for legitimate commercial use, because it is genuinely used for catering purposes and semiconductor manufacture. Clearly, if it is being used for a legitimate commercial, technical or scientific purpose, possession is lawful, but personal consumption and supply for the purpose of commercial consumption will be banned under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. There is a lot in that antisocial behaviour action plan. The Government are taking this seriously. There is money behind it, and we are determined to clamp down on it.

Off-road bikes, trail bikes and so on are obviously a scourge. We heard hon. Members earlier and more recently talk about that. The police already have powers to deal with this, particularly under section 59 of the Police Reform Act 2002, which confers a power to seize off-road bikes and vehicles if they are used in an antisocial manner. The definition of an antisocial manner is quite broad, but it could include, for example, using the vehicle in a careless and inconsiderate manner contrary to the Road Traffic Act 1988 or in a manner that causes alarm, distress or annoyance to members of the public.

[Peter Gibson]

I warmly welcome section 59 notices, which my constituency has benefited from. I am sorry that the Minister was not here at the start of the debate, and I understand the reasons for that. However, I raised a number of issues in my speech in respect of the things that the Department for Transport and the Home Office could do, working in conjunction with industry to ensure that vehicles are registered, insured, capable of being tracked and traced, and fitted with immobilisers. Much more can be done by Departments working together to tackle this problem. I do not disagree with the support for section 59 notices—they are tremendously useful—but we have to catch offenders first.

[Chris Philp]

I agree with that sentiment. With these record police numbers, the resources are available to do more on enforcement. On my hon. Friend’s point about registration, insurance and tracking, I will ensure that we take a careful look at that with the DFT.

[Peter Gibson]

I have raised this multiple times in multiple meetings with both the Home Office and the Department for Transport. It just feels as though we need to get some real will behind solving the problem.

[Chris Philp]

As I have just said, I will take a careful look at it. We obviously need to make sure that any regulation is proportionate. This is the first time that my hon. Friend has raised this with me, as far as I am aware, but now that he has done so, I am happy to take it away.

In relation to immobilisers, we have a private Member’s Bill going through Parliament that, certainly for quad bikes, requires immobilisers to be fitted. That was done with the purpose in mind of deterring and preventing theft from agricultural premises in particular. It may also mean that there are fewer stolen quad bikes in circulation that might then be used in a way that is antisocial, so that could be an unexpected or unintended side benefit.

[Peter Gibson]

The fitting of immobilisers is incredibly beneficial to the agricultural industry, which experiences the thefts. Those bikes then appear on the streets of my town, causing terror, so fitting immobilisers kills two birds with one stone.

[Chris Philp]

Exactly. That legislation is going through Parliament now with full Government and Opposition support.

Wider antisocial behaviour legislation, much of which derives from the 2014 Act, can also be used in this context. An Opposition Member mentioned the use of public space protection orders as a tool. Community protection notices would be another option. I think the hon. Member for West Lancashire (Ashley Dalton) mentioned that West Lancashire Borough Council is working with Lancashire police on this. I strongly encourage joint working between local authorities and the police on public space protection orders, community protection notices and other similar devices to eradicate this scourge. Again, through the ASB action plan we are intending to make it easier to use those various mechanisms.

I am grateful again to my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South for securing this debate. It is a very important topic. The Government are committed to working to fix this problem, and I look forward to co-operating and collaborating with Members on both sides to ensure that our constituents’ communities are kept safe and free of antisocial behaviour.

21:05

[Matt Vickers]

I thank the Minister for his comments. We obviously welcome the 267 extra police, the hotspot policing and all the other measures that are coming through. However, if the Minister had been here earlier—it has been a record long Westminster Hall debate this evening—he would have noticed that there were Members present from across the House, despite what we knew would happen with the timetable, and that there are very strong opinions on the issue from all corners of the country. Members felt very strongly about the increasing misery caused by off-road bikes.

This is not something that the police are dealing with as they always have. In my part of the world the problem has hugely increased, with 40% more reports in the last year and 180 bikes seized in May and April. Still these youngsters are going to be riding around on bikes causing absolute misery. I have put the case to the Minister again, and I hope he will engage with and continue the dialogue about what we can do specifically to tackle those quad bikes, off-road bikes, electronic bikes and scooters.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered antisocial behaviour and off-road bikes.

21:06

Sitting adjourned.