House of Commons
Prayers
(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Mr Speaker
I know that Members across the House will have been shocked by the recent terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas. I invite the House to stand with me and observe a minute’s silence in recognition of all those innocent Israelis, Palestinians and others who have lost their lives, all those taken hostage and all those affected by the conflict in the region. Please join me now in standing.
The House observed a one-minute silence.
New Member
The following Member took and subscribed the Oath required by law:
Michael Shanks, for Rutherglen and Hamilton West.
Business before Questions
Committee of Selection
Ordered,
That Lilian Greenwood be discharged from the Committee of Selection and Holly Lynch be added.—(Mr Marcus Jones.)
Oral Answers to Questions
(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Michael Gove)
The Government strongly encourage the reuse of suitable brownfield land. Our national planning policy framework makes it clear that local authorities should give substantial weight to the value of using suitable brownfield land within settlements for homes and other identified needs. The Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill will further empower local leaders to regenerate urban centres by strengthening and adding to existing measures.
Henry Smith
Homes England proposes to build up to 10,000 houses on greenfield sites west of Ifield in my constituency. What directive has my right hon. Friend’s Department given to the executive agency Homes England on the Department’s brownfield-first building policy?
Michael Gove
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that question. I cannot go into individual planning cases, but Homes England is leading a programme of urban regeneration. The work that we are doing in London’s docklands and in Leeds, Sheffield, Wolverhampton and other areas demonstrates our commitment both to levelling up and to making sure that, for environmental and economic reasons, we develop brownfield land first.
John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)
My I help out the Secretary of State? He is aware of the Grove Lane site on the Sandwell-Birmingham border, in which the West Midlands Combined Authority and its Mayor are also interested. It is opposite the new Midland Metropolitan University Hospital site and it is an ideal brownfield site for housing. Will his Department get on with it?
Michael Gove
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, who refers to the Mayor of the West Midlands Combined Authority, the only metro Mayor to significantly exceed housing targets in the delivery of new homes. He is that rare thing: a Labour MP who welcomes house building in his own constituency. Of course I will support him.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
My right hon. Friend may know that, in Durrington in north-west Worthing, more than 1,000 new homes have been built. Will he ask his inspectors—and the Leader of the Opposition—to recognise that Chatsmore Farm and Lansdowne Nurseries should not be built on? We must have some green fields between one habitation and another.
Michael Gove
The Father of the House makes a very important point. Of course, his beautiful constituency—situated as it is between the sea and areas of outstanding natural beauty—has already seen significant development and we do need to ensure that settlements have the green belts around them protected.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
On developing brownfield sites, will the Secretary of State consider giving powers to councils such as Westmorland and Furness, and to planning authorities such as those in the Yorkshire dales and the Lake district, to ensure exclusive provision for affordable and social rented housing so that we do not see communities such as ours dying out because all the houses built end up being sold for second homes?
Michael Gove
From his perspective as an assiduous constituency Member, the hon. Gentleman makes a very good point, but may I commiserate with him? At the recent Liberal Democrat conference, I am afraid he was defeated, and his party adopted a housing policy that he describes as Thatcherite. It is a source of sadness to me to be outflanked on the right by the Liberal Democrats, but may I welcome more defections to the Thatcherite cause from those who once embraced my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) as one of their own?
Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)
My constituents are frustrated with the planning system in that, although sites are allocated and protected in neighbourhood plans, when applications come in, their concerns about those sites are not listened to by local planning committees and by the inspectorate. Will the Secretary of State tell my constituents in Witham what measures are in place in local neighbourhood plans and local development plans to protect these sites from being built on, so that the focus is on brownfield sites first and foremost?
Michael Gove
My right hon. Friend makes a very important point. If her local authority has an up-to-date plan, that is the best protection against speculative development. If, however, a local authority does not have a plan in place, there can be a presumption in favour of sustainable development and that can be upheld by the Planning Inspectorate, which could mean development on sites where local communities do not wish to see it. That is why it is so important for local authorities to adopt plans.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
The Secretary of State is a very clever man, and he must know that if there had been a large amount of brownfield land, it would have been built on. The fact of the matter is that we in this country must bite the bullet and build on land other than brownfield, because there is not enough of it. Does he agree that courage along with intellect would help us solve the housing problem?
Michael Gove
The hon. Gentleman is a man of independent mind, and he is straying from Front-Bench policy by decreeing me a man of intelligence—that is not the official Labour party position on these issues—but I should say that he is right. It is not only brownfield land that can be developed, but it must be brownfield first, and there is significant room for additional brownfield development if we invest in urban regeneration, which we are doing.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Jacob Young)
Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. May I use this opportunity to pay tribute to my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Dehenna Davison), who bravely used this moment to raise the challenges faced by people with chronic migraine? I thank her for her work and wish her the best of health. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”]
We have established 12 levelling-up missions principally aimed at tackling regional inequality and ensuring that, wherever someone lives—in cities, towns, island, rural or coastal communities—their opportunities are the same. Progress on the missions will be formally reported through an annual report as set out in our landmark Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, which returns to the House of Commons tomorrow.
Bill Esterson
The Secretary of State says that we must have infrastructure that allows us to move towards zero-emission vehicles as quickly as possible, but the biggest 14 cities in the north of England have fewer electric vehicle charge points than the City of Westminster alone. How does the chasm between the number of charge points in London and those elsewhere demonstrate levelling up?
Jacob Young
The hon. Gentleman will know of the £20 billion reserved for transport investment in the north, and I am sure that some of that can be dedicated towards electric vehicles.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
A conservative think-tank recently reported that coastal communities such as mine have lower life expectancy, inadequate transport links and people who are comparatively poorer. After repeated rejections for towns and levelling-up moneys, are my constituents not right to blame the Government of the last 13 years for this deliberate levelling down?
Jacob Young
The hon. Lady, like me, represents a north-east coastal community, and she will be aware of our devolution agreement with the North East Combined Authority, which hopes to address some of the challenges in her area.
Sir Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Speaker—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. Will the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) sit down, please?
Sir Jake Berry
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Minister on his new post. May I remind him of the huge opportunity and pent-up potential in former industrial mill towns such as those in my constituency? One of the most gratifying things about the Government’s levelling-up programme has been how it has seen the potential in towns such as Rossendale, Rawtenstall, Bacup and Darwen and supported that with real money, with £120 million of town deal money for Darwen and £17.8 million for Rossendale. Does he think that this is the right Government to drive forward the ambition of people who live in mill towns?
Jacob Young
I completely agree with my right hon. Friend. This morning, I met the leaders of Lancashire County Council, Blackburn with Darwen, and Blackpool, and they all agree with me that a devolution agreement in Lancashire will be fantastic. I am sure that you agree as well, Mr Speaker.
Mr Speaker
I am sure that the Minister should meet the district leaders as well.
Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)
I welcome the Minister to his new job. Several months ago, Essex MPs met his predecessor to talk about the possibility of a combined authority for Essex. We were overwhelmingly against it. The people of Essex do not want this ridiculous white elephant; there is no demand from them. This is all being brought about by some highly ambitious Essex county councillors and some officers who think they would do well out of it. As most people in Essex do not even know that it is going on, will he and his boss meet me and other Essex MPs to hear our objections?
Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)
Given the Prime Minister’s recent announcement on High Speed 2, when will local government leaders and Metro Mayors in the midlands and north of England get to know what additional resource they will get as a consequence?
Jacob Young
That question is best answered by the Department for Transport, but I will write to the hon. Gentleman when I have further details.
Katherine Fletcher (South Ribble) (Con)
I am absolutely delighted to hear that the Minister met the leaders of Lancashire County Council, and Blackburn with Darwen and Blackpool councils this morning to discuss the enormous opportunity that devolving transport and skills responsibility to Lancashire presents. Will he and the whole of the Treasury Bench look favourably upon this? It is an opportunity that we are keen to take to deliver for people in Lancashire and South Ribble.
Mr Speaker
Maybe we could have a meeting with Lancashire MPs as well as district leaders.
Jacob Young
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her question and to you, Mr Speaker, for your point. I hope to meet Lancashire MPs next week to discuss devolution. I hope that we are able to announce a devolution deal in advance of Lancashire Day at the end of November.
Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab)
I welcome the new Minister to his place. In the Secretary of State’s address to his party conference there was barely a mention of levelling up, and no mention whatsoever of the Government’s 12 missions, which were central to the original White Paper designed to tackle regional inequalities across England. There now exists a gaping chasm between a transformative change promised by the rhetoric of levelling up and the actual reality. Is the truth of the matter not that Downing Street has totally lost interest in that agenda, while the Department’s leadership bumbles on directionless and toothless, its bold promises unfulfilled and, in many cases, utterly disregarded?
Jacob Young
I thank the hon. Lady for her kind words and her question, though I completely disagree with her. At the party conference we announced £1 billion for our long-term plan for towns, which will help us level up towns right across the country. I hope she welcomes that.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
The Minister of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Rachel Maclean)
The Government have a range of schemes available to first-time buyers, including First Homes and shared ownership. The mortgage guarantee scheme helps to increase the supply of 95% loan-to-value mortgages. We have also doubled the threshold at which stamp duty land tax becomes due to £250,000, and expanded first-time buyer relief.
Chi Onwurah
In West Fenham recently, Mr and Mrs Joyce told me how their daughter and prospective son in-law had lived with them for five years while they tried to realise their dream of home ownership. Even after saving a deposit, the failure of the Minister’s Government to build houses meant that they were constantly outbid on the few homes available. Labour has set out plans to get Britain building again. Will the Minister match our ambition, or is living with the in-laws the new Tory dream?
Rachel Maclean
The hon. Lady asks whether we will match Labour’s ambition. I have news for her: from what I picked up from the Labour party conference, it announced the same targets that we are getting on with. I draw her attention to the fact that more than 860,000 households have been helped to purchase a home since spring 2010, through Government-backed schemes including Help to Buy, Right to Buy and First Homes.
Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)
I welcome the new “young” Minister to his post. I want to attach myself to tributes to his predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Dehenna Davison), who is sitting next to me.
Last week, a freedom of information request showed that the Lib Dem-Labour controlled Greater Cambridge Partnership, which handles city deal money in my constituency, spent £4.7 million developing plans for a congestion charge that was then dropped because it was opposed basically by everyone. It also spent £16.5 million on the Cambridge South East Transport bus route, also now dropped, and £18 million on new car parks, none of which are actually open. That is a total so far of £160 million on transport projects, and virtually none of them functioning. It is now asking the Government for £200 million more. It is no wonder that in Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire, people think that the Greater Cambridge Partnership is unelected, unaccountable and a waste of public money. Does the Minister agree that we have to ensure public value for money? Will he meet me to talk about the details?
Mr Speaker
Order. That question is too long, and I am not quite sure how it fits in with first-time buyers.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
Robbie Moore (Keighley) (Con)
Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)
The Minister of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Rachel Maclean)
Through the Levelling Up Parks Fund we have made available £9 million for local authorities in areas of high deprivation to create or significantly refurbish green spaces. The fund also includes the planting and maintaining of trees and encourages projects to work towards green flag award status.
Andrew Jones
I thank the Minister for that answer. What steps is she taking to ensure that proposed sites for housing that are completely unsuitable for reasons of biodiversity or lack of access or proximity to a site of special scientific interest are not taken forward and built upon? Although this is a national, not local, question, I am thinking particularly of a contentious application on Water Lane in Knaresborough, which has previously been refused.
Rachel Maclean
My hon. Friend will, I hope, understand that I cannot comment on that specific case or situation, but it is really important that local authorities make decisions according to their local plans, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State set out earlier. If local authorities have a plan in place, it allows them to set out where they would like to see development that benefits their natural environment take place.
In England, we have also set out that from January 2024 biodiversity net gain will apply to mitigate the impact of major development. That requires developers to deliver 10% biodiversity net gain.
Robbie Moore
In 10 days’ time Bradford Council is likely to give the green light to yet more houses to be built in Silsden on valuable green space. If approved, the additional 140 houses will follow many hundreds of houses currently being built in Silsden, and many more are awaiting planning approval. Silsden’s infrastructure simply cannot cope. Does the Minister agree that Bradford Council should prioritise Silsden’s infrastructure first, rather than seeing the area as a quick win for achieving its housing targets?
Rachel Maclean
My hon. Friend is completely right. As ever, he champions his constituents over the actions of Labour-run Bradford Council, which obviously has a detrimental impact on his constituent’s lives. Local authorities have an obligation to spend section 106 receipts in line with the purpose for which they were agreed, for exactly the reasons he gives. We are committed to introducing new measures through the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill that will give greater certainty to local communities about the infrastructure that will be delivered in their area.
Aaron Bell
Newcastle-under-Lyme is going through its local plan process at the moment. I welcome the fact that the Conservative-led administration has reduced the overall number of new homes to 7,000, from the 11,500 in the previous, Labour-led local plan, which would have carpeted over our green spaces, as the Leader of the Opposition seemingly wants to do everywhere. Nevertheless, some people are unhappy. Would the Minister join me in urging the council in its next draft to further prioritise brownfield development, which is the key to regeneration?
Rachel Maclean
I can assure my hon. Friend that it is the Government’s policy to strongly encourage local authorities to make the most of brownfield land first, especially for new homes. It is right that if local authorities want to alter a green belt boundary, they have show exceptional circumstances. We Conservatives believe in preserving our green spaces, and it is interesting to hear the proclamations from the Opposition. I will be very interested to see whether they propose concreting over the green spaces surrounding their own constituencies.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I chair the all-party parliamentary group for healthy homes and buildings. We have undertaken an inquiry and sent the report through to Ministers. The recommendations from that were clear: while it is good to have healthy, energy-efficient homes, it is really important to have green space around those houses. Has the Minister had an opportunity to read the report from the APPG? If not, I will ensure that she gets a copy, and I hope that she will then come back to me on the recommendations.
Rachel Maclean
I thank the hon. Gentleman so much for his comments, and I would be delighted to read the report from his APPG and respond to him. I fully agree with his broader point that green spaces are vital for mental health and wellbeing, as well as physical health.
Mark Eastwood (Dewsbury) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Jacob Young)
We are supporting 101 towns through our £6.1 billion towns fund, helping to level up across the country. I thank my hon. Friend for all his efforts locally in ensuring that the £25 million Dewsbury town deal delivers the positive outcomes that we all wish to see for his constituents. My Department proactively engages with local authorities through our monitoring and evaluation process to determine the delivery support they require, including specialist support from the Department where needed.
Mark Eastwood
On behalf of the people of Dewsbury, I thank my hon. Friend for the additional £20 million announced for our town centre, on top of the £24.8 million I secured after being elected. In light of Labour-run Kirklees Council’s financial mismanagement and failure to deliver regeneration projects in the past, how can we ensure that the towns fund monies are used to transform the town centre and not squandered because of the council’s inability to deliver anything on time or within budget?
Jacob Young
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for being such a fantastic champion for Dewsbury. My officials are monitoring the town deal and working closely with Kirklees Council and the town deal board to ensure that projects are delivered quickly. Like my hon. Friend, I was pleased to see that there is an extra £20 million for Dewsbury as part of our long-term plan for towns, and I look forward to hearing more about Dewsbury and its ambitions soon.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
Fifty-five towns receive support from the towns fund in England, Scotland and Wales, but none in Northern Ireland do. The excuse has been given that the Executive is not formed, although that is as much the responsibility of the Government as that of people in Northern Ireland, but given that the criterion has already been set, why has it not been possible to select towns in Northern Ireland to benefit from the towns fund?
Jacob Young
We want to see the Northern Ireland Executive up and running as soon as possible, and I think that that is an ambition shared across the House. I hope that when it is up and running, we will be able to help it with the funds that the right hon. Gentleman has mentioned.
Sarah Owen (Luton North) (Lab)
We all know that this Government claim a lot, but now they are claiming that they have a long-term plan for towns while continuing to build them without any of the infrastructure that people want and need. Residents of Mid Bedfordshire know that all too well: like many others, they struggle to see a GP or get a dentist, and the council’s budget is half what it was in 2015. The Tories have gutted the elements that make a town a home. Can the Minister please explain why they persist in prioritising developers in our towns over the people living in them?
Jacob Young
I thank the hon. Lady for her question, but I completely disagree with her. Members need only look at the measures that we are introducing in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, which will come to the House tomorrow, to see the huge changes that we intend to make to high streets to allow them to work better for local people.
Andrew Lewer (Northampton South) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Michael Gove)
We have announced £10 billion of investment in housing supply since the start of this Parliament, and we are also investing £11.5 billion in the latest affordable homes programme to provide thousands of new homes across the country for people to rent or, of course, to buy. In July we set out our long-term plan for housing, with regeneration programmes in Cambridge, London and Leeds.
Andrew Lewer
When the Department tried to change the nutrient neutrality rules, the Labour party fell at the first hurdle, showing that it had changed since its claims to be the party of house building. It blocked that, so will Ministers commit themselves to pushing through these essential changes afresh?
Michael Gove
Absolutely. We have just heard from the hon. Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen) a crude nimbyist appeal to the voters of Mid Bedfordshire, a week after the leader of the Labour party said he was in favour of
“the builders, not the blockers”
—but who could be surprised, given that, as my hon. Friend has rightly pointed out, when we put forward legislation for 100,000 new homes, Labour blocked it? It is unbelievable that the crew of gangsters over there are peddling the same nonsense week in, week out.
Mr Speaker
Order. I think we are going to moderate our language a little bit.
Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
For all the sound and fury from the Secretary of State, he knows that the maths does not lie and that the Government have failed on their targets. They have downgraded their affordable housing targets, and have still failed on those. When will the Secretary of State bite the bullet and provide more properly affordable social housing for people in my constituency and others who simply cannot afford to buy their own homes?
Michael Gove
I withdraw the word “gangster”, Mr Speaker; I should have said “huckster”.
I will tell the hon. Lady who has downgraded their social housing targets: it is the hon. Lady herself. When she was running for the deputy leadership of her party, she said that she wanted 100,000 new social homes every year. What is the target now? Zero.
Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
It is essential that we boost the number of new homes built each year for private sale, but just as important is the need to significantly increase the supply of new affordable homes to buy and rent. The National Audit Office has confirmed that the Government’s target for its flagship 2016 to 2023 affordable homes programme was 250,000 starts by March 2023. Can the Secretary of State explain how on earth the public can trust this Government to address the housing affordability crisis when recent figures reveal that they have failed to deliver on their share of that target outside London?
Michael Gove
The significant increase in the affordable homes programme that I outlined earlier is the means for that to be done, but the difference between us is that we have a target for social and affordable homes, while Labour has none.
Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)
Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Lee Rowley)
The Government expect those who have caused defects to step up to solve them. As the House is aware, 50 developers have now signed contracts to resolve cladding and non-cladding defects in more than 1,100 buildings. For other properties, the Government are making extensive taxpayer subsidy available to support cladding remediation, along with other mechanisms to pursue those who are responsible.
Janet Daby
Help for people living in under-11 metre buildings that have fire safety defects does not go far enough, because of the huge amount of money involved. One of my constituents has described her experience as a “never-ending nightmare”. Will the Minister bring that nightmare to an end for constituents such as mine who are forced to pay to fix the mistakes of others?
Lee Rowley
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising a specific question about under-11 metre properties. Every property, be it over or under 11 metres, needs a fire risk assessment, and I encourage her constituent to ensure that a fire risk appraisal of external walls is undertaken against that property. If the FRAEW indicates that extensive work is necessary, I would be happy to receive a copy of it and look into it personally in order to deal with this.
Vicky Foxcroft
I have written to the Minister about a constituent of mine who is a leaseholder living in an under-11 metre property and so is not protected by the Building Safety Act 2022. The cladding costs alone will be well over £100,000 and any non-cladding costs will be substantial. That is completely unaffordable for my constituent and it will bankrupt him. So when will the Minister provide a full update, which was promised to me back on 18 August?
Lee Rowley
As I say, if the hon. Lady wishes to raise the case of this individual building once again with me or talk to me separately outside, I will be happy to enable that. For every under-11 metre building we are made aware of as requiring additional remediation, we are going through and checking things, and compiling audits, where necessary, to get to the bottom of it. The Government strongly believe that under-11 metre buildings do not need extensive remediation, and we will be happy to talk more about any buildings where these issues have been raised.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
Does the necessity for the Government to take that sort of action show the danger that leaseholders are under from the abuse of freeholders’ power? May I, through him, gently remind the Secretary of State of an assurance he gave me when talking about leasehold? He said:
“We need to end this feudal form of tenure and ensure individuals have the right to enjoy their own property fully.”—[Official Report, 20 February 2023; Vol. 728, c. 3.]
Is that still intended to be in the King’s Speech?
Lee Rowley
My right hon. Friend knows that I am not able to anticipate what will be in the King’s Speech. We are clear that, particularly with regard to remediation, some freeholders have stepped up and should be credited for doing so, but others have absolutely not done so. The Secretary of State and I will not hesitate to call out that activity where it occurs.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on the action he and the Secretary of State are taking against developers that refuse to remediate tall buildings. What action will he now propose to take against developers that deliberately do not carry out this work and leave leaseholders with their lives in peril and potentially not able to sell or even insure their properties?
Lee Rowley
As my hon. Friend is aware, we are ensuring that developers uphold the promises they have made, through the developer contract and through the responsible actors scheme, which makes sure that if they fail to do so they could, in extremis, be banned from building in this country again. If there is any indication what he describes is occurring, we will be happy to take action and I will be happy to receive any information from him or others in the House.
Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)
More than six years on from the Grenfell disaster, where 72 people lost their lives, Sam, a disabled resident in a Galliard Homes building, is one of the hundreds of thousands of people still trapped in buildings that have not been remediated. Is this the new “do nothing” approach from the Department to building safety that was highlighted in The Guardian today, an approach that forced the resignation of a senior civil servant from the Department?
Lee Rowley
I think that question is somewhat beneath the hon. Gentleman, but let me state clearly what the Government are doing. They have recognised that there is an issue and have legislated to resolve that. They are working extremely hard to ensure that developers are held to account for that, and over the past few months, they have had success in ensuring that that process takes place. Where developers are no longer around, they are also stepping up and making sure that the cladding defects are covered. Hundreds of buildings have concluded their remediation over recent months, which demonstrates the progress that is being made.
Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)
Antony Higginbotham (Burnley) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Michael Gove)
Levelling up is a UK-wide project. That is why we have delivered city and growth deals across Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland; why we have launched our investment zones programme, including zones in the north-east of Scotland and Glasgow; and why we are investing £4.8 billion through the levelling-up fund in projects ranging from the transformation of Burnley’s historic mills to the development of a cultural quarter in Peterhead.
Stephen Metcalfe
I thank my right hon. Friend for that answer. However, as he develops these policies further, will he remember that even in apparently affluent areas, there are pockets that would benefit significantly from levelling-up investment, especially across Basildon and Thurrock? Will he therefore tell the House what plans he has to include those areas in the next round of investment?
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend makes a very important point, and in particular, it is vital to make sure that we level up that community in Thurrock. Our plans to extend the economic development of Docklands east to make the Thames estuary a powerhouse for economic growth have been inspired by my hon. Friend’s work and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price).
Antony Higginbotham
It was a pleasure to welcome the Prime Minister to Burnley two weeks ago, when he announced that Burnley was one of the many towns getting money as part of the long-term plan for towns, on top of more than £32 million from the levelling-up fund. I was particularly pleased to see that a key part of the long-term plan for towns is community engagement. Will the Secretary of State set out what that community engagement will look like? In particular, will it be a one-off, or can communities expect to be consulted throughout the decade for which the £20 million is allocated?
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend is right to point out that this is a decade-long investment in 55 towns across the United Kingdom. We will work with people in Burnley, with its excellent Member of Parliament and with other representatives to ensure that we can tackle antisocial behaviour, revive high streets and make sure that the pride that people have in Burnley is reflected in investment from Government.
Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
One of the economic sectors that provides levelling up across the whole of the United Kingdom is the creative industries, whether that is film production, theatre, the arts, video games or modern high tech. Will the Secretary of State have conversations with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the Treasury about the proposals to change business rates, which may have a dramatic effect and curtail the opportunities for the creative industries?
Michael Gove
Absolutely. The vital role that our creative industries play across the United Kingdom in levelling up is one we need to not just protect, but enhance.
Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)
The delivery of local services is so important to levelling up all areas of Britain. The Secretary of State will be aware that in rural areas, the cost of delivering public services is much higher than in their urban counterparts. In rural counties such as Shropshire, for example, the cost of providing social care is much higher and the proportion of people who need that care is higher, because there are older residents. Will the Secretary of State consider taking into account the cost of providing those services when determining the local government settlement in the future?
Michael Gove
It is a very fair point, and absolutely, on the Government side of the House, we understand that rural communities need additional investment, not least when it comes to the cost of adult social care.
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
As my hon. Friend the Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe) has said, there are pockets of deprivation even in wealthier areas, including Lichfield. Will the Secretary of State give some indication of what sort of timescale there is for the next round of applications?
Michael Gove
I simply cannot believe that there are any pockets of deprivation in Lichfield, given who has been representing that constituency since 1992. The idea that there is any home unvisited by its Member of Parliament or that there is any hearth where there is a chill seems to be inconceivable. But nevertheless, we will make sure that levelling-up fund round 3 is brought forward just in advance of the autumn statement, and Staffordshire, I hope, will have its voice heard.
Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)
We understand that the Secretary of State is planning some rushed, back-of-a-cigarette-packet devolution deal with Hull and the East Riding. Can I urge caution? After 13 years of deliberate, sustained and savage cuts to our city, the last thing we need now is a botched deal ahead of the general election. The very least I expect the Secretary of State to guarantee is proper consultation, so that the people of Hull, who have been badly let down by this Tory Government, get the opportunity to understand the implications and to speak on the issue. Will he guarantee that?
Michael Gove
I have a lot of respect for the hon. Gentleman, but we are not rushing or embarking on any botched process. We are talking to representatives from both the East Riding and Kingston upon Hull councils in order to ensure that we can get a devolution deal that works. We have devolution in York and North Yorkshire, West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire; as far as we are concerned, east Yorkshire should not be left out in that progress, but it is important that we get that right. In the meantime, we are developing a levelling-up partnership with Hull, in order to ensure that vital investment, not least in transport, matches the investment that we have already secured on the south bank of the Humber.
Ms Anum Qaisar (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)
Prior to Scotland’s being dragged out of the European Union against its will, EU regional development policies allocated up to £827 million from 2014 to 2020. Crucially, the Scottish Government played a key role in directing the funding, in stark contrast to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, which bypasses Scotland’s Parliament and undermines devolution. Will the Secretary of State and his Cabinet colleagues stop playing politics and devolve levelling up to Holyrood?
Michael Gove
We are devolving levelling up—we are devolving it to local government. That is why our recent towns fund announcement was welcomed by all councils, including SNP-led councils. I say to the hon. Lady, with respect, that the SNP conference, meeting in Aberdeen today, has decided that if the SNP gets 29 MPs, that is a mandate for independence. Given the rate at which the SNP is losing MPs to defection and by-election, it will be at 29 by Christmas, so let us discuss it then.
Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Felicity Buchan)
As we committed to doing in legislation, we are conducting an evaluation of the impact of voter identification at the May polls. We will publish that evaluation no later than November this year.
Gill Furniss
The Electoral Commission’s report into voter ID is utterly damning. It found that awareness of the new rules was lowest among black and minority ethnic communities, and take-up of voter authority certificates was minimal. Even the Government’s own MPs can see the reality of this failed experiment. The right hon. Member for North East Somerset (Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg) said:
“Parties that try and gerrymander end up finding their clever scheme comes back to bite them”.
Does the Minister agree with her own Conservative colleagues?
Felicity Buchan
I remind the hon. Lady that 99.75% of the electorate were able to vote successfully. I also remind her that it was the Electoral Commission that called for voter identification. It has existed in Northern Ireland for two decades and was introduced under a Labour Government, and it exists in most European countries.
On the hon. Lady’s point about ethnic minorities, everyone deserves fair and free elections, and it has been ethnic minorities in areas such as Tower Hamlets and Birmingham who have been the victims of electoral fraud.
Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Michael Gove)
We are taking action to improve the quality of social housing. The Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023, which received Royal Assent in July, will deliver transformative change across the sector, introducing proactive consumer regulation and rebalancing the relationships between landlords and tenants, ensuring that landlords are properly held to account for their performance.
Elliot Colburn
I welcome the steps the Government are taking to support people living in social housing, but many people in Carshalton and Wallington who live in social housing are still concerned about the level of service they receive from their providers. I have received complaints about a number of housing associations, including Liberal Democrat-run Sutton Council’s housing arm, Sutton Housing Partnership, and Metropolitan Thames Valley, which provides housing in Roundshaw. Will the Secretary of State assure those residents that they have somewhere to go when things go wrong?
Michael Gove
Yes, those residents absolutely do have somewhere to go. My hon. Friend, the excellent Member of Parliament for Carshalton and Wallington, stands up not just for his constituents, but for the most vulnerable in society, with clarity and moral authority. Our legislation will make sure that Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing and, indeed, Liberal Democrat-led Sutton Council are held to account for any failures.
Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Michael Gove)
Last Thursday, I was privileged to be invited to join a meeting chaired by the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary at which we heard from the Community Security Trust about the deeply unfortunate rise in antisemitic incidents following the terrorist attack that we marked at the start of today’s sitting. The increase in antisemitic incidents recorded by the Community Security Trust and its partner, Tell MAMA, is 494%. It is a melancholy trend, and I know that everyone in this House will join me in doing everything we can to defeat antisemitism and to promote peace and justice.
Dame Diana Johnson
I welcome the comments that the Secretary of State has just made, but may I take him to task about some of the comments that he made earlier? He talked about having conversations with Hull City Council about transport. This comes after the Government’s decade-long refusal to back the electrification of a line to Hull. It also comes after the exclusion of the northern Mayors in the decision to scrap the northern leg of HS2. Why should any of the people in Hull and East Riding—
Mr Speaker
Order. Topicals should be short and sweet. The right hon. Lady should just finish her question very quickly.
Dame Diana Johnson
Why should the people of Hull and East Yorkshire trust what this Government ever say?
Michael Gove
I am a huge fan of the right hon. Lady. The proof of the pudding will be in the continued engagement that we have with the people of Hull and, indeed, with their Liberal Democrat council.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
I have been running a “fair deal for new estates” campaign in my constituency to ensure that new estates are completed in a timely manner. I am talking about not just the housing, but the play areas, the planting, the drainage and the pavements. Will my hon. Friend meet me to discuss this campaign, which is important locally and is achieving progress for residents in Harrogate and Knaresborough?
The Minister of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Rachel Maclean)
My hon. Friend is doing an excellent job in raising the concerns of his constituents on the Floor of the House. I know that those concerns are also raised with many other colleagues. That is why, in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, we are strengthening planning enforcement powers, including powers to tackle uncompleted developments. I hope his constituents will welcome that, and I would be pleased to meet him and discuss it in more detail.
Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to face the right hon. Gentleman for our first questions. I hope he enjoyed his party conference, cancelling a meat tax that nobody had planned, abolishing seven bins that do not exist and announcing that they would build a series of transport links that already do exist—not so much conference season as panto season. I shall keep my question to a problem that definitely does exist. One million families are waiting for social housing. How can he justify handing back to the Treasury billions of pounds that are desperately needed to tackle the housing crisis?
Michael Gove
It is because we spend our money effectively. The affordable homes programme—the £11.5 billion investment that we are making—will lead, and has led, to investment in social and affordable housing across the country. The right hon. Lady has a challenge when it comes to credibility on social housing. She secured the deputy leadership of her party by saying that the Labour party should be building 100,000 social homes every year, and yet its current target is zero. Why did she retreat?
Angela Rayner
The right hon. Gentleman just comes out with flannel—I think he is auditioning for panto season this afternoon. He can dress it up however he likes, but the truth is that he could not spend this vital funding quickly enough in the middle of a housing crisis. It is clear that the Prime Minister shares his disregard for struggling families. In his hour-long speech in Manchester, the Prime Minister did not mention housing a single time—not once—but the Housing Minister did tell conference that renters are not all weed-smoking gangsters, which I am sure the right hon. Gentleman knows all about, as he mentioned gangsters earlier today. Can the Secretary of State assure us that, despite the tone of those remarks, the Renters (Reform) Bill will not be scrapped before the King’s Speech?
Michael Gove
Yes, we are bringing reform to the rental market, but I note that at her own party conference the right hon. Lady shared with the public not just her policies but her recipe for a cocktail called Venom, which apparently contains a bottle of vodka, a bottle of Southern Comfort, 10 Blue WKDs and a litre of orange juice. We know what the real lethal cocktail from the Labour party is: a mix of unfunded spending commitments, massive borrowing, greenbelt development and hypocrisy on housing.
Dame Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Felicity Buchan)
I am delighted to congratulate the staff and volunteers at the Hope Centre on 50 amazing years of supporting venerable people in Northampton. That work is critical in meeting the Government’s commitment to reduce homelessness and to end rough sleeping for good, which is backed by a Government investment of £2 billion over three years.
Ms Anum Qaisar (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)
Antisemitism is abhorrent and hateful, and there must be meaningful legislation to protect Jewish people. I appreciate that the Department introduced the anti-boycott Bill to help to tackle that, but as the Minister may recall, in Committee the Bill was not supported by many human rights organisations and no Opposition amendments were accepted. We need to work on a cross-party basis, so will the Secretary of State and the Minister meet with me to discuss what support the SNP can provide to tackle the hatred of antisemitism?
Michael Gove
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for the way in which she couched her question. I take this opportunity to thank the First Minister of Scotland who, in his visit to a synagogue in Edinburgh last week, I think spoke for all of Scotland in expressing his solidarity with the pain being felt by Scotland’s Jewish community. I look forward to working together on a cross-party basis if we can.
Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Jacob Young)
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, who is a persistent champion of Barry in his constituency. I am delighted that Barry has been chosen as one of the 55 towns and will receive £20 million to deliver its plan. I look forward to working with him to see Barry’s potential realised.
Samantha Dixon (City of Chester) (Lab)
Michael Gove
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising that question. As she rightly points out, the abuse of short-term lets is a significant issue in rural and coastal areas, and we will respond to the consultation shortly.
Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)
Over 200 of my constituents at the Mill development in Ipswich have been living in a cruel form of limbo for over 10 years. The building has deep cladding and structural problems. RSM, the administrator, could run out of money next March or April. My constituents fear that they could be turfed out of their homes. What steps are the Government taking to support my residents, give them clarity over their future, and come to a lasting settlement that funds the problems of the building and allows residents to move on with their lives?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Lee Rowley)
Like my hon. Friend, the Department and the Government want to see a resolution to the Mill, which is complex and challenging. We accept the points that he makes. I look forward to continue meeting with him, and we will try to find a positive resolution.
Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)
Michael Gove
The scourge of damp and mould, particularly but not exclusively in the social and private rented sector, is an issue that the Government recognise that we need to tackle. That is why we are providing additional support to local government and to housing associations in order to deal with that issue. I look forward in particular to dealing with the hon. Gentleman to assess the situation in Tiverton and Honiton.
Scott Benton (Blackpool South) (Ind)
I thank the Secretary of State for the tremendous support he has provided to Blackpool, with more than £140 million in levelling-up moneys allocated so far. Is he able to provide an update on the plans for further housing-led regeneration in the Bond Street and Revoe areas of my constituency?
Jacob Young
I fully recognise the importance of supporting Blackpool and places across the country in their ambitions for regeneration. Homes England and my Department are continuing to work closely with Blackpool Council to level up the town and improve the quality of housing. I look forward to my Department’s saying more about that in the future.
Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
Michael Gove
That is a fair question. Of course we care about reducing child poverty; that is why the steps we are taking across 12 levelling-up missions, including on education and welfare, are designed to reduce poverty across the United Kingdom.
Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)
Berkeley Town Council has created a much-needed regeneration plan that will make the town worthy of the tourist attractions nearby, such as Berkeley castle and the Dr Jenner’s House museum, but we have little faith that the Green and Labour-led district council will get the levelling-up bid over the line. It failed before and its local plans have also been withdrawn. Will the Minister meet me to discuss the issue?
Jacob Young
I look forward to meeting my hon. Friend and visiting her constituency.
Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)
Michael Gove
We are committed to introducing our Renters (Reform) Bill, which will end section 21—something that, when Labour were in government, it did not do.
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)
Levelling up is about levelling up all parts of the United Kingdom—north, south, east and west, including areas that did not get levelling-up funding in rounds 1 or 2 or the recent announcements, such as Gillingham town centre. Will the Secretary of State visit Gillingham with me and ensure that we get our fair share and allocation of resources?
Michael Gove
Either I or one of my junior Ministers will join my hon. Friend in Gillingham.
Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)
Michael Gove
That is a good question; I liked it even better when the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) asked it. As I explained, we will be bringing forward our legislation shortly.
Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)
As he is reforming the national planning policy framework and introducing a new infrastructure levy, how will my right hon. Friend ensure that our constituents get the doctors and dentists capacity that must go with new homes?
Michael Gove
The infrastructure levy that we are bringing forward will ensure, through the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, that the money is there to provide services when new development takes place. We will work with the NHS to ensure that GP and dental provision is part of that. We have a plan for an infrastructure levy; Labour has no plan.
Israel and Gaza
(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Prime Minister (Rishi Sunak)
The attacks in Israel last weekend shocked the world. Over 1,400 people murdered one by one; over 3,500 wounded; almost 200 taken hostage; the elderly, men, women, children and babes in arms murdered, mutilated, burned alive. We should call it by its name: it was a pogrom. The families of some of the missing are in the Public Gallery today. We call for the immediate release of all hostages, and I say to them, “We stand with you. We stand with Israel.”
The murdered and the missing come from over 30 countries, including the United Kingdom. The terrible nature of these attacks means it is proving difficult to identify many of the deceased, but, with a heavy heart, I can inform the House that at least six British citizens were killed. A further 10 are missing, some of whom are feared to be among the dead.
We are working with Israel to establish the facts as quickly as possible, and we are supporting the families who are suffering unimaginable pain. We are also helping British citizens who want to leave Israel. We have organised eight flights so far, bringing out more than 500 people, with more flights leaving today. We are working with neighbouring countries on land evacuations for our citizens in Gaza and the west bank. I have spoken specifically to President Sisi about supporting civilians to leave Gaza by the Rafah border crossing, which remains closed at present, and we have a Border Force team in Egypt working with our embassy to help citizens when they are able to cross.
I will come back to the grave humanitarian situation in Gaza in a moment, but I want first to address the British Jewish community directly: as I said at Finchley United synagogue last week, and at the Jewish school I visited this morning, we stand with you now and always. This atrocity was an existential strike at the very idea of Israel as a safe homeland for the Jewish people. I understand why it has shaken you to your core. I am sickened that antisemitic incidents have increased since the attack. We are doing everything we can to protect you. We are providing an additional £3 million for the Community Security Trust to protect schools, synagogues and other Jewish community buildings, and we are working with the police to ensure that hate crime and the glorification of terror are met with the full force of the law. I know that the whole House will support that and join me in saying unequivocally that we stand with the Jewish community.
I also recognise that this is a moment of great anguish for British Muslim communities, who are also appalled by the actions of Hamas but are fearful of the response. We must listen to those concerns with the same attentiveness. Hamas are using innocent Palestinian people as human shields, with the tragic loss of more than 2,600 Palestinian lives, including many children. We mourn the loss of every innocent life, of the civilians of every faith and every nationality who have been killed, so let us say it plainly: we stand with British Muslim communities, too.
Israel was founded not just as a homeland for the Jewish people, but as a guarantor of their security, to ensure that what happened in the holocaust could never happen again. Through its strength and resilience, Israel gradually achieved some of that longed-for security, despite the strategic threats on its borders, including Hezbollah in the north with Iran at its back. Israel normalised relations with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain through the Abraham accords, and moved towards normalising ties with Saudi Arabia—steps that were considered unthinkable not long ago.
One reason this attack is so shocking is that it is a fundamental challenge to any idea of co-existence, which is an essential precursor to peace and stability in the region. The question is: how should we respond? I believe that we must support absolutely Israel’s right to defend itself, to go after Hamas and take back the hostages, to deter further incursions, and to strengthen its security for the long term. That must be done in line with international humanitarian law, while recognising that Israel faces a vicious enemy who embed themselves behind civilians.
As a friend, we will continue to call on Israel to take every possible precaution to avoid harming civilians. I repeat President Biden’s words: as democracies, we are
“stronger and more secure when we act according to the rule of law.”
Humanity, law, decency, respect for human life—that is what sets us apart from the mindless violence of the terrorist.
There are three specific areas in which the United Kingdom is helping to shape events. First, we are working to prevent escalation and further threats against Israel. On Friday, RAF surveillance aircraft began patrols to track threats to regional security; I have deployed a Royal Navy task group to the eastern Mediterranean, including RFA Lyme Bay and RFA Argus, three Merlin helicopters and a company of Royal Marines, ready both to interdict arms and to support the humanitarian response; and we are bolstering our forces in Cyprus and across the region. Let me be clear: we are not engaging in fighting or in an offensive in Gaza, but we are increasing our presence to prevent broader regional instability at this dangerous moment.
Secondly, I am proud that we are a long-standing and significant provider of humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people. I can announce today that we are increasing our aid by a third, with an additional £10 million of support. An acute humanitarian crisis is unfolding, to which we must respond. We must support the Palestinian people, because they are victims of Hamas too. Like our allies, we believe that
“Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people, or their legitimate aspirations to live with equal measures of security, freedom, justice, opportunity and dignity.”
Hamas simply do not stand for the future that Palestinians want, and they seek to put the Palestinian people in harm’s way. We must ensure that humanitarian support urgently reaches civilians in Gaza. That requires Egypt and Israel to allow in the aid that is so badly needed.
We also need to keep the situation in the west bank at the forefront of our minds at this moment of heightened sensitivity. Earlier today, I spoke to Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority, to express our support for his efforts to provide stability.
Thirdly, we will use all the tools of British diplomacy to sustain the prospects of peace and stability in the region. Ultimately, that requires security for Israelis and Palestinians and a two-state solution, so we are increasing our regional engagement. I have spoken to Prime Minister Netanyahu twice in the last week, along with the US, France, Germany, Italy and others. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary was the first to visit Israel after the attacks. I met His Majesty the King of Jordan yesterday —a long-time voice of reason and moderation. I have spoken today with the leaders of Turkey and, previously, Egypt, and I will speak to others in the coming days. Our partners in the region have asked us to play a role in preventing further escalation, and that is what we will do. However hard it is, we need to ask the tough questions about how we can revive the long-term prospects for a two-state solution, for normalisation and for regional stability, not least because that is precisely what Hamas have been trying to kill.
In conclusion, unequivocally backing Israel’s right to defend itself, stepping forward with humanitarian support, working to protect civilians from harm, and straining every sinew to keep the flame of peace and stability alive—that is our objective. It is the right approach for the region, and it is the right approach for Britain. I commend this statement to the House.
Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)
I thank the Prime Minister for the advance copy of his statement and for the updates the Government have provided to Labour Front Benchers over the past few days.
Last Saturday, Israel was the victim of terrorism on an unimaginable scale: the senseless murder of men, women, children and even babies; the horrors of hostage taking; music festivals turned to killing fields; innocent Jews slaughtered within their own kibbutz—an attack with no cause other than bloodshed. I am sure that over the last few days, every Member of the House has seen images from this crisis that will never be unseen: tiny bodies, wrapped in bundles, in Israel and now in Gaza; mothers and fathers grieving—Israeli, Palestinian, Muslim, Jew; the innocent, dead.
As in any time of grave crisis, it is crucial that this House speaks with one voice in condemnation of terror, in support for Israel in its time of agony and for the dignity of all human life, because Hamas do not wish to see peace in the middle east; they just want to see Israel wiped off the map. But Hamas are not the Palestinian people, and the Palestinian people are not Hamas.
Labour stands with Israel. Britain stands with Israel. The attack is ongoing, terrorists are at large and hostages are still being held, some of them British citizens. Israel has the right to bring her people home, to defend herself and to keep her people safe. While Hamas have the capability to carry out attacks on Israeli territory, there can be no safety. As Secretary of State Blinken said last week:
“We democracies distinguish ourselves from terrorists by striving for a different standard—even when it’s difficult”.
He is right.
As the Prime Minister has said, there is an acute humanitarian crisis unfolding. Israel’s defence must be conducted in accordance with international law, civilians must not be targeted and innocent lives must be protected. There must be humanitarian corridors and humanitarian access, including for food, water, electricity and medicines, so that hospitals can keep people alive and so that innocent people do not needlessly die. And there must be proper protection for all those who work selflessly so that aid can be delivered to victims.
There can be no doubt that responsibility for this crisis lies with Hamas. They have no interest in Palestinian rights and no interest in the security of the people of Gaza. They unleash terror and then hide among them—women and children used as human shields; hostages held, who should be released. Hamas are destroyers of lives, of hope and of peace. And we cannot give them what they want.
We must keep striving for a two-state solution: a Palestinian state alongside a safe and secure Israel. We cannot give up on that hope. We cannot let Hamas brutality be a catalyst for conflict in the wider region. Engagement between Israel and Arab nations must be strengthened, not abandoned. International co-operation, the rule of law and a political road to peace—Hamas want us to abandon all three. In defiance, we must be resolute on all of them.
These attacks are having a huge impact on communities across the United Kingdom. Many in this House will have heard devastating stories from people who have lost friends and family, and from people who are deeply worried about the future of those they know in Israel or Palestine—including the First Minister of Scotland, who I spoke to at the weekend. We stand with all of them. We stand against the worrying rise in Islamophobia and against the antisemitic abuse, threats and assaults that we have seen on British streets, because we must never underestimate the burden of history that Jewish people carry with them.
I do not want Britain to be a place where Jewish schools are closed, where Jewish children stay at home out of fear and where Jewish families feel compelled to hide their identity. I do not want Britain to be a place where British Muslims feel they have to apologise for the actions of people who do not act in their name. We cannot allow community cohesion in our country to be destroyed. We all bear a responsibility to do all we can to stamp out hate, and we fully support police action to provide extra assistance for our communities.
The events of the past week have seen horrors beyond our imagination, so let us send a strong message that Westminster is united, and Britain is united: with Israel, against terror, for international law and for the protection of innocent lives. There are difficult days ahead, but our values cannot be compromised. Terror cannot win.
The Prime Minister
I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his remarks. Let me say at the outset that this is an unprecedented and extraordinarily difficult situation. It is likely to remain difficult for all of us in the days and weeks ahead, but we must always have at the forefront of our mind that responsibility for this crisis lies with Hamas, and with Hamas alone. It was a barbaric act of terrorism that has inflicted untold suffering and misery on so many people, and we have felt that acutely here at home.
We have seen the impact on our streets over the past week, and it has sickened all of us. We stand united in saying that antisemitism has no place in our society. Let me be unequivocal that those who incite racial or religious hatred on our streets, or who inflict violence and cause untold suffering to people, will be met with the full force of the law. I know the whole House will join me in making sure that happens: that the police have all the tools, resources and powers they need to bring that about.
In conclusion, let me say that the right hon. and learned Gentleman is absolutely right that this House stands united: united in condemning unequivocally this terrorist attack by Hamas, and united in saying that we will be steadfast in our support for Israel, and steadfast in our support for the Jewish people—not just today, not just tomorrow, but always.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
The House will be grateful to both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition for the lead that they have given in today’s statement. This is not the time to point out the faults of Benjamin Netanyahu. What we have to say is that the inexcusable terror attack on Israelis was intended to bring awful harm to the Palestinians.
Rather than quote international leaders, I want to quote a senior constituent, who said: “This is a very harrowing time for Jews all over the world. There are about 16 million of us worldwide. Why can’t they leave us alone?”
If we pray for the peace of Jerusalem, we want to try to bring security, both to the people of Israel and to the Palestinians in Gaza. Does the Prime Minister know that he will have our support as he tries to do that?
The Prime Minister
I thank the Father of the House for what he has said, and I simply agree with his constituent in saying that all of us will pray for peace in the region, but especially for peace for those families who have been so tragically affected by what has happened over the past week.
Stephen Flynn (Aberdeen South) (SNP)
Rabbie Burns once poignantly wrote that
“Man’s inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn!”
It is with those words echoing in all our hearts that we send our thoughts and prayers to all those suffering in the middle east. The abhorrent terrorist attack by Hamas on the Jewish people and the Israeli state was a crime against our common humanity, and it must be condemned unequivocally. What more powerful response can we have than to seek to protect the shared innocence and shared humanity of both Israeli and Palestinian civilians?
That will require a lot. It will require the defeat of Hamas; it will require the safe return of all those hostages who have been taken; it will require the opening of humanitarian corridors, so that people can escape Gaza and aid can get in; and it will require medicine, water and electricity for hospitals, so that people who are injured can be treated. It will require no collective punishment. Making all of that happen will require international leadership and diplomacy. On these isles, that responsibility will fall to the UK Prime Minister, and I very much wish him well in making that happen.
Right across this Chamber, we all need to be very conscious that history will judge us on our response not just to these abhorrent attacks but to the humanitarian crisis that is undoubtedly unfolding in Gaza. Let us not be on the wrong side of history.
The Prime Minister
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his remarks, and I agree that this crisis demands that the United Kingdom steps up diplomatically to make a difference—to bring about peace and stability. That is what we have done over the past week, as I alluded to in my statement. The Foreign Secretary was the first person to visit Israel and has spoken to multiple counterparts. In the same vein, I myself have been working with allies across the region to make sure that we can work together to bring about a successful and peaceful resolution. We also recognise the scale of the humanitarian situation that is unfolding and are playing a leading role in helping to alleviate it, not least with our announcement today of considerably more aid for the Palestinian territories, building on our strong track record as one of the leading providers of aid to the region. That will continue.
Mrs Theresa May (Maidenhead) (Con)
The attack on Israel by Hamas terrorists was barbaric. Terrorists must be defeated, whoever they are and wherever they are. I commend my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary for the stance that the Government have taken in support of the Jewish community here in the UK, and in support of Israel and its right to defend itself. I welcome the Prime Minister’s statement that action must be taken in line with international humanitarian law, but will he give a commitment today that the Government will leave no stone unturned in their efforts to prevent regional escalation of the conflict? In doing so, will he reflect on the role of Iran?
The Prime Minister
I can give my right hon. Friend that reassurance. It is not only something that we have discussed extensively with partners in the region, but why last week I deployed surveillance aircraft and assets to the Mediterranean, and they are already engaged in ensuring that arms shipments do not find their way to people such as those in Hezbollah, and that Iran does not see this as an opportunity to escalate the conflict. The support that we have put into the region has already been welcomed by our partners, who share our aim to ensure that action is constrained to dealing with Hamas and what they have done. No one wants to see any escalation. Again, that is something that Prime Minister Netanyahu and I discussed, and he very much agrees that his objective is to deal with Hamas and not to see the conflict spread more widely.
Ed Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)
The scale of Hamas’s terrorist attacks has been utterly horrifying and the atrocities they have committed are truly sickening. We stand with the people of Israel and with the Jewish community, who are grieving and afraid. We call for the unconditional release of all hostages and urge the Government finally to proscribe as a terrorist organisation the funders of Hamas: Iran’s revolutionary guard.
Israel unquestionably has the right to defend itself and its citizens. That means targeting Hamas, not innocent civilians, in line with international law. I am concerned about the forced evacuation of hospitals in Gaza, which means death for innocent Palestinians who will not survive being taken off life support. The World Health Organisation has said that this may be a breach of international humanitarian law, so will the Prime Minister set out what advice he has received on the matter?
The Prime Minister
Unlike Hamas, the Israeli President has said that the Israeli armed forces will operate in accordance with international law. Israel’s attempt to minimise civilian casualties by warning people to leave northern Gaza has been further complicated by Hamas terrorists telling the local population not to leave and instead using them as human shields. We will continue to urge Israel, as I have done when I have spoken to Prime Minister Netanyahu, that while it exercises its absolute right to defend itself and ensure that such attacks can never happen again, it should take every possible precaution to minimise the impact on civilians.
Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton) (Con)
Saturday’s terror attack on Israel constituted crimes against humanity—crimes so heinous that they violated our understanding of the depths of human depravity. That depravity continues today, as innocents remain held hostage by Hamas terrorists and their patrons, the state of Iran.
Israel has a legitimate right to self-defence and to defeat Hamas. We can support Israel and grieve with its people while recognising that how a counter-terrorism operation is conducted matters. It matters because Israel’s actions as a rule-of-law nation, and our words as its friend, shape our ability to be a legitimate arbiter in future conflicts and to have the right to call out abusers such as Russia. It matters because although there is an imperative to defeat Hamas in the immediate term in order to secure Israel’s future, how they are defeated will shape the region’s future, and because the people of Gaza are not Hamas—1.2 million children bear no collective guilt for Hamas’s terror.
So today I repeat my call for the creation of a special envoy for the middle east peace process. Will my right hon. Friend tell the House more about what actions are being taken to prevent conflict and loss of life on the west bank and in East Jerusalem? When will we finally proscribe the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps?
The Prime Minister
With regard specifically to the west bank, this is something about which I spoke to Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority this morning. I also spoke yesterday to His Majesty the King of Jordan. We discussed the measures that are necessary and the support the UK can provide to ensure the strong stability of the west bank. No one wants to see the situation escalate. I assure my hon. Friend that we are in active dialogue with both partners to see how we can help bring that stability to the west bank. Indeed, it is something I will also continue to discuss with Prime Minister Netanyahu. It is important that the west bank remains calm, and that is what we will help to bring about.
Christian Wakeford (Bury South) (Lab)
On Saturday, I went to shul and sat next to a constituent whose cousin is one of the hostages. My thoughts and prayers go out not only to him, but to all families and hostages currently detained.
While conflict escalates in the middle east, we see the effects on the streets here in Britain. I welcome the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition standing behind Israel’s right to defend itself and the £3 million increase in funding for the Community Security Trust. However, unfortunately, in the past week we have seen an increase of around 500% in antisemitic incidents and an 850% increase in suspicious behaviours, and even this weekend glorification of Hamas and genocidal chants on the streets of our cities, in some cases mere feet away from police officers. Will the Prime Minister join me in applauding the efforts of the CST in keeping the Jewish community safe, but also commit to ensuring that anyone found to be preaching this hate speech on our streets faces the full extent of the law?
The Prime Minister
I can give the hon. Gentleman that assurance. I met the CST and police chiefs last week, in Downing Street, not just to provide extra funding, but to reiterate that there is zero tolerance in the United Kingdom for antisemitism. It is tragic that we have seen a significant increase in incidents over the past week, but those who perpetrate these crimes will be met with the full force of the law.
Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)
I want to add my voice to all those who stand with Israel and her inalienable right to defend herself against an unspeakable crime. As someone born in the middle east, as a father and as a human, it was too painful to watch. Israel has to take the necessary steps to root out this evil virus of fundamentalism that has so clearly infested those in Hamas and, of course, destroy it. Just as we stood together against ISIS, we will stand together again. My request to my right hon. Friend is that, when this has been done, the UK encourages Israel to set out for all to see the positive actions it will take to change the reality in Gaza once and for all. Gaza and the world will need Israel to show her best self after this war.
The Prime Minister
I thank my right hon. Friend for his powerful statement and also agree with him, We must think about the future, and in spite of this awful tragedy, we cannot lose sight of the better future that we all want to strive for. Indeed, in my conversations with leaders we have already been thinking about that, and it is something I raised with the Prime Minister of Israel as well. We all want that better future for the Israeli and Palestinian people, and hopefully out of this tragedy we will find a way to move closer towards it.
Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)
The massacre of Israeli civilians was a heinous act of terrorism that we all utterly condemn and the hostages must be released immediately. In the words of the United Nations Secretary-General,
“the horrific acts by Hamas do not justify responding with collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”
But that is what we are seeing in Gaza, with civilian areas bombed and food, electricity, water and medicines all cut off. Such collective punishment is a war crime under the Geneva conventions, so will the Prime Minister take this opportunity to make it clear to the Israeli Government that this collective punishment of Palestinian civilians must end immediately?
The Prime Minister
I would say gently to the hon. Gentleman that I actually believe that we should support absolutely Israel’s right to defend itself and to go after Hamas, recognising that it faces a vicious enemy that embeds itself behind civilians. Of course, Israel will act within international humanitarian law—and, as a friend, we will continue to call on Israel to take every precaution in avoiding harming citizens—but we must acknowledge always that the responsibility for what is happening here is with Hamas and Hamas alone.
Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)
May I thank you, Mr Speaker, for the step that you took at the beginning of last week in lighting up this Palace in the colours of blue and white as an act of solidarity with the Israeli victims of Hamas terrorism? I know that it was appreciated by those British families mourning loved ones who were slain in that action as well as by families living with unimaginable fear right now because they have family members who have been taken hostage in Gaza. Some of those family members are with us in the Gallery.
Does the Prime Minister agree that after the acts of barbarism by Hamas, there is no going back to the situation before where, right under the noses of the international community, Hamas were allowed to rearm time and again? They were allowed to misappropriate aid into terrorist infrastructure, building those tunnels, amassing armaments and hiding them behind civilian families. Does he agree that the international community must take a stand and not allow the Gaza strip to go back to becoming a terrorist statelet?
The Prime Minister
First, I thank my right hon. Friend for everything he does to support the Jewish community here and overseas. I agree that no country can or would tolerate the slaughter of its citizens and simply return to the conditions that allowed that to take place. Israel has the right—indeed, the obligation—to defend itself and to ensure that this never happens again.
Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab)
Mr Speaker,
“No stone can remain unturned in finding a political solution.”
Those are not my words, but those of the Israeli and Arab mothers’ collective Woman Wage Peace, echoed in recent days by survivors from Kibbutz Be’eri, the family of those murdered at Netiv Ha’Asara, organisations such as B’Tselem, Omdim Ben Yachad, and thousands of peace activists and ordinary Israelis who are desperately praying for the cycle of violence to end and a lasting peace to be secured. What will the Government be doing to heed that call and mobilise international actors to find the political solution, however far away it feels right now, so that there may be a way out of the nightmare that Hamas has unleashed for all in Israel, Palestine and the wider region for good?
The Prime Minister
We must provide an alternative to the vision of violence, fear and terror presented by Hamas, and that is what the United Kingdom will do, standing with Israel but also working together with its people and our allies across the region—all of those who remain committed to a vision of a more peaceful, more integrated, more secure and more prosperous middle east. That is what we will work towards.
Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. I welcome in particular his urging of the state of Israel to act in line with international humanitarian law and his call for Israel to take every precaution to avoid harming civilians. May I ask him to press upon our Israeli friends the principles of distinction and proportionality in their action to avoid any sense in which it looks like a collective punishment is being meted out on the Palestinians in Gaza, as well as ensuring that we do nothing that will leave the democracies worse off at the end of this, which is not in line with the principles all of us would wish to hold?
The Prime Minister
As I said, we support Israel’s right to defend itself, but, as a friend, we will continue to call on Israel to take every precaution to avoid harming civilians. That is something that I specifically discussed with Prime Minister Netanyahu, and we will continue to do so.
Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
A six-year-old Palestinian child was murdered in Chicago because of his Muslim faith, and as a response to the war between Israel and Hamas. In the last week, we have seen a sharp rise in Islamophobic rhetoric and the dehumanisation of Palestinians. Tragically, yesterday, we saw the consequences in the murder of that little boy. Will the Prime Minister review his statements about the conflict and ensure that he does not add to the further vilification of Palestinians and Muslims when condemning the actions of Hamas?
The Prime Minister
I gently urge the hon. Gentleman to examine what I said earlier from the Dispatch Box, particularly about standing with the British Muslim community at this difficult time. We will not tolerate anti-Muslim hatred in any form, and we will seek to stamp it out wherever it occurs. I am pleased to say that, in June, the Security Minister confirmed additional funding of £24.5 million available this financial year to provide protective security at mosques and Muslim faith schools as a demonstration of our intent to deliver on what I said. But I say to him: please see what I said earlier from the Dispatch Box. We stand with all communities at this difficult time.
Sir Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)
In the long litany of attacks against Jews around the world, this is the single most murderous since the end of the Holocaust in 1945. The Prime Minister’s support for the Jewish community in this country and for Israel has been heroic. This is an historic moment, and the response of His Majesty’s Government has been all anyone could have asked. Does the Prime Minister agree that Israel has acted entirely in accordance with international law, despite Hamas using human shields and every type of horrific provocation? Israel has not only a right to defend itself but a duty to defend its people from sadistic and vicious murderers.
The Prime Minister
My right hon. and learned Friend makes an excellent point that Israel has not just the right but the duty. One only needs to imagine, if a similar incident had occurred in our country, what we would do to secure the safety and security of our citizens. That is what Israel is doing, it has every right and duty to do so, and it will have our support as it does.
Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)
I condemn unreservedly the actions of Hamas and the horror that has unfolded in the region, and I ask that the hostages are returned safely as soon as possible. However, from speaking to aid workers based in Gaza, the reality on the ground is that despite the evacuation order, people who are ill, frail, in hospital or just getting old cannot get out. This morning, I spoke to aid workers who told me people are returning from southern Gaza to northern Gaza because they have no water and there is nowhere to go. They cannot escape. Will the Prime Minister urge the Israeli Government to bear in mind the reality for ordinary Palestinian people living in the nightmare that is unfolding around them through no fault of their own?
The Prime Minister
As I said, I have spoken to President Sisi about the importance of the Rafah crossing being open for humanitarian purposes and I will continue to do so, and about the importance of allowing humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza. Today’s announcement of more support will hopefully make a difference. Again, I contrast Israel’s attempt to minimise civilian casualties by warning people to leave Gaza with Hamas, who are urging the local population to stay to use them as human shields. It is unacceptable, and we should call it out for what it is.
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
Every tragic loss of life in Gaza is the responsibility of Hamas alone. Some people in this place would do well to remember that fact. A week on from the pogroms, what do we have on the streets of Britain? We have some people attending pro-Palestinian marches, holding up banners in support of terrorists, whether it be hang-gliders, chanting anti-Jewish chants, supporting the racist boycott, divestment and sanctions movement or, in the case of a protest in Glasgow, reminding Jews where they were in 1940. Jews need no reminder of where they were in 1940. Those scenes are deeply distressing to British Jews, many of whom do not believe that the police will take action. Could I urge the Prime Minister to look at what some of our European partners are doing, and to take stronger action against some of those marches?
The Prime Minister
I thank my hon. Friend for everything he does to support the Jewish community in our country. I join him in saying that these acts are appalling. I want to make sure that we provide security and relieve the anxiety in the Jewish community here in the United Kingdom, which is why I quickly took steps last week to provide that reassurance. I am clear that where people incite racial or religious hatred, or where people’s conduct is threatening, abusive or disorderly or causes distress to others, we expect the police to take action, and those committing such crimes should face the full force of the law.
Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)
I join this House in its condemnation of the bloodshed in Israel and Palestine. The 2 million Palestinians in the open-air prison of Gaza faced a dire humanitarian emergency long before today, yet indiscriminate airstrikes and siege tactics have turned what was a critical emergency into a devastating catastrophe. Will the Prime Minister make it clear to the Israeli Government that laying siege to civilians in Gaza by cutting off food, water, power and medical supplies and through indiscriminate airstrikes killing civilians is in clear violation of international law? Just what is the international community doing to stop the horrific and inhuman treatment of Palestinians?
The Prime Minister
I again point out gently to the hon. Gentleman that Hamas are the entity responsible for the suffering we are seeing, and Hamas alone. Of course we in the international community will do our best to alleviate the impact on innocent people, which is why we have today announced further aid to the region. We will make sure that we provide as much humanitarian support as we can and indeed, in all our conversations with leaders around the region, we are discussing the humanitarian situation and finding ways to work together to alleviate the impact on innocent lives, and that is what we will continue to do.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
Does the Prime Minister accept that what Hamas did was not terrorism for its own sake, but an act of calculated barbarism with a strategy behind it? The present war will not feature Egypt and Jordan as enemies of Israel as was the case in previous wars, so does he agree that that strategy is to try and prevent similar peace agreements with countries such as Saudi Arabia? Does he accept that Hamas are a creature of a client state of Russia, and while we are talking about this we must remember that Russia is still at war in Ukraine?
The Prime Minister
I thank my right hon. Friend, and he is right to point to the broader situation and welcome the progress that had been made on normalisation between Israel and other countries in the region, which speaks to the brighter future that we all hope we will see one day. Let me reassure him on our support for Ukraine: we remain committed to that, and just this Friday I was at the Joint Expeditionary Force summit in Sweden talking with our northern European, Scandinavian and Baltic partners and hearing directly from President Zelensky about how we in the JEF will continue to support Ukraine in the coming year. My right hon. Friend can rest assured that we are able to do both.
Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)
Noam Sagi, his wife Michal and their son are here today to watch you give your statement, Prime Minister.
Ada Sagi, Noam’s mum, was taken hostage from her home by Hamas on Saturday 7 October, and is currently being held hostage in Gaza. Ada booked a ticket to the UK to celebrate her 75th birthday. Noam has written to the Prime Minister to ask for his immediate intervention and assistance. Joe Biden has made personal calls to his citizens. I ask the Prime Minister if he will please—remember, the family are watching—spare just five minutes to have a quick conversation with them.
The Prime Minister
Of course I am happy to have a quick conversation, but I am also engaged actively with our partners in the region to try to ensure the safe release of our hostages, which I am sure the House will support me in doing any which way we can. We will use all the tools at our disposal to ensure their safe return, not just for the hon. Lady’s constituents but all those British nationals and others who were taken by Hamas in that appalling act. They should know that we are doing absolutely everything we can to try to bring them back home as quickly and safely as possible.
Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)
We in this House are all absolutely horrified by the terrorist atrocities in Israel and the appalling way in which the Hamas terrorists have murdered, tortured and kidnapped men, women and children. I thank the Prime Minister for his important and significant statement today, and for the way in which—as he has just said—we are giving all the support to the grieving families right now. That is paramount. Can he explain from his conversations with President Sisi how the opening of the border crossings between Gaza and Egypt on humanitarian grounds will be undertaken in a way that prevents Hamas terrorists from leaving and potentially creating further atrocities in the region?
The Prime Minister
My right hon. Friend has made an excellent point. That is why there is complexity to opening the Rafah border crossing, but she should be reassured that we are engaged in those conversations with the Egyptians and with other partners, including the Americans, to find a safe way to open the crossing—ideally, for the evacuation of British nationals who may be in Gaza, but also to send humanitarian support into Gaza, which I know we would all like to see happen.
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)
The International Committee of the Red Cross has stated that
“hospitals in Gaza risk turning into morgues without electricity.”
The Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East has said that the agency’s colleagues in Gaza are no longer able to provide humanitarian assistance, and the number of people seeking shelter in UNRWA facilities in the south is absolutely overwhelming. Some civilians have no choice but to stay in the north of Gaza, and must be protected at all times. What conversations has the Prime Minister had with his Israeli counterpart about creating safe zones and humanitarian corridors in Gaza? Has the Prime Minister raised the urgent need to prevent the perpetration of atrocities on all civilians? Will he increase financial support for UNRWA, and the surrounding host nations, given that the increasing needs of refugees from Palestine will only, sadly, increase further for many years?
The Prime Minister
I am proud that over the past few years we have been one of the leading donors to UNRWA, accounting for about 10% of all its support for the region. Today we announced an increase of about a third in our humanitarian support, and we will work with the relevant partners to see how best to ensure that those funds can make a difference in the region as quickly as possible.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Speaker, for allowing us a one-minute silence to reflect on the victims of what has taken place in the middle east.
There can be no greater contrast between the actions of the Israel defence forces, which attempt to prevent the loss of civilian life, and the sheer brutality of the terrorists who kill and maim as many people as they possibly can. There can be no comparison between those two aspects of what is happening. This operation by the terrorist group Hamas was clearly well planned, well resourced and well equipped, and had clearly been planned for many months. It is beyond belief that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which funds and supports Hamas, was not behind this whole operation. Will my right hon. Friend now take the action that the whole House has asked him to take, and proscribe the IRGC in its entirety?
The Prime Minister
We have already taken strong action against the Iranian regime, including the sanctioning of 350 individuals and entities including the IRGC in its entirety. Furthermore, the National Security Act 2023 implements new measures to protect the British public, including new offences of espionage and foreign interference and tougher powers to arrest and detain people suspected of involvement in state threats. As the House knows, the Government have a long-standing policy of not commenting on whether specific organisations are being considered for proscription, and our approach, as currently stated, is completely in line with that of our allies.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
The Israeli Government have the right, indeed the duty, to protect their civilians against these bloody terrorist attacks, and we wish the Prime Minister well in his advice and guidance to the Israeli Government to enable them to achieve the aims that they need to achieve in protecting their citizens. His statement indicated that we would not tolerate the glorification of terror, which would be met by the full force of the law. Will he therefore join me in condemning the Irish language-speaking school in west Belfast whose students held pro-Palestinian demonstrations this week, which were facilitated within the school? Does he agree that schools should be places where pupils are taught that it is morally wrong to support terrorism, and they should not facilitate such demonstrations?
The Prime Minister
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his remarks. I do not know the details of the incident that he has described, but he is right that this malicious activity should not be happening in schools. We are absolutely clear about the fact that under the Terrorism Acts 2000 and 2006 it is an offence—there is a range of offences—to encourage terrorism, glorify and support groups that have been proscribed as terrorist organisations under UK law. The police will use all the tools at their disposal to stamp that out and arrest those who perpetrate such acts.
Sir Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)
One of the many things Bournemouth is known for is its large Jewish community; indeed, our first citizen and mayor, Councillor Anne Filer, is Jewish. Those people in my constituency will have heard and drawn comfort from the calm and measured words of not just the Prime Minister, but the right hon. and learned Gentleman, the Leader of the Opposition, this afternoon. What we have seen is not just an attack on the territorial integrity of Israel, but an attack on Jews and those of the Jewish faith. Will my right hon. Friend join everyone else of good will in this House to make it clear—not just this week, last week, this month, next month, but always—that antisemitism has no place in our society?
The Prime Minister
I agree with my right hon. Friend. This was an attack on Jews and we should call it out for what it was. That is what Hamas believe and what they have tried to do, but they will meet firm resistance from us. We will not tolerate antisemitism in any form on our streets, not just today or tomorrow, but always.
Tahir Ali (Birmingham, Hall Green) (Lab)
The Prime Minister has reaffirmed his commitment to a two-state solution. Why, then, have his Government failed to recognise the state of Palestine when 138 United Nations member countries have done so? Israel has absolutely every right to defend itself, but Palestinians need to have that right as well. If recognised as a state, Palestine will be able to root out terrorism and defend its territory. Do the unjustifiable actions of Hamas—a group that do not represent Palestinians—justify the collective punishment of innocent Palestinian civilians in Gaza by the Israeli defence forces?
The Prime Minister
The United Kingdom Government’s long-standing position under both parties has been that the United Kingdom will recognise a Palestinian state at a time when it best serves the object of peace. We are committed to the objective of a sovereign, prosperous and peaceful Palestinian state living side by side with a safe and secure Israel. As last week’s attack demonstrates, right now we must ensure that Israel has that security.
Dr Liam Fox (North Somerset) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that to conflate Hamas and the Palestinians is not only wrong but dangerous? Hamas have abducted, tortured and executed Palestinian members of Fatah, they have broken the arms of children who have worn Fatah colours to school, and they do not want a two-state solution because they do not believe Israel should exist as a state. But if the fingers on the trigger were Hamas’s, the strings were being pulled from Tehran. With £100 million of investment going from Tehran to the terrorists of Hamas, is it not time that we in this country asked again why Iranian banks are operating from the City of London, why Iran Air is operating from Heathrow airport and why we have not proscribed the IRGC, as I believe we should have?
The Prime Minister
I agree with my right hon. Friend that, crucially, the Palestinian people are also the victims of Hamas, as he said. Hamas do not represent the Palestinian people or their legitimate aspirations to live with security and dignity. They do not stand for the future that the Palestinian people want, and he is right to highlight that. That is why we have taken the approach that we have, and we will continue to make sure that our sanctions regime is effective. Where we have sanctioned entities, including banks, we will ensure that those sanctions are complied with. The new economic deterrence initiative that we have established with funding will help to ensure that that happens.
Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)
I join others in condemning the atrocities of Hamas, and my thoughts are with all those affected by the conflict in Israel and Gaza. One of my constituents, a UK national, is trapped in Gaza, having travelled there on Friday 6 October. I thank the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office staff and those on Labour’s Front Bench for the work they have been doing to try to bring my constituent home. I wrote to the Foreign Secretary on Friday to update him on my constituent’s whereabouts. I ask the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary to redouble their efforts to bring my constituent home, to ensure the safe passage of all other UK nationals trapped in Gaza and to work to support people both in Gaza and Israel who are caught up in this terrible conflict.
The Prime Minister
I thank the hon. Lady and express my sympathies to her constituent and their family. We are in touch with all the families who have registered with the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office to provide consular assistance to them. Obviously the situation in Gaza is difficult, but we are doing everything that we can, not least through our conversations with the Egyptians about the Rafah crossing. We have pre-emptively deployed a Border Force rapid deployment team to Egypt, so that when and if the crossing is opened, we are able to extract our citizens and bring them home. That is something I have explicitly discussed with President Sisi, to receive assurances from the Egyptians that they will allow the safe passage of British nationals when the time allows. The hon. Lady can rest assured that we will continue to do everything that we can to support her constituent and all others who are trapped.
Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)
Modern media have brought the full horror of the profoundly evil crimes committed against state of Israel into our homes, and they are now bringing the unfolding horror of the human catastrophe taking place in Gaza into our sitting rooms as well. In his statement, the Prime Minister indicated that Israel and Egypt are denying access for humanitarian aid into Gaza. What possible reason could there be for that?
The Prime Minister
As we heard previously, there are complexities with ensuring the safe opening of the Rafah crossing. We are having conversations with the Israelis, the Egyptians and other partners to see how best we can provide humanitarian assistance to the region, not least through the deployment of our Royal Navy assets, which will arrive over the course of the coming week, and the increase in aid funding, which we announced today, that will provide support to people in the region.
Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)
The use of white phosphorus in densely populated areas against civilians is illegal. Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have reported the use of white phosphorous against civilians in Gaza. Has the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office received confirmation of those reports? If such weapons have been used against civilian populations in Gaza, what will the Prime Minister’s response be?
The Prime Minister
Of course, we keep everything under review, but I am not going to comment or speculate on reports where we do not have full access to information or are unable to verify facts.
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)
I welcome the Prime Minister’s statement and the three-step approach. Terrorism is terrorism. As somebody who comes from a Muslim background, I say this: the actions that we saw with regard to Hamas were clearly terrorist and barbaric, and therefore everything must be done to confront that terrorist organisation.
As the former special envoy for freedom of religion or belief, I worked with people from the Muslim, Jewish and Christian faiths. We worked together to tackle intolerance against all people of all faiths. On the specific point about conversations with King Abdullah, Hamas will be defeated, but the question is who replaces Hamas in Gaza. Has the Prime Minister had conversations with King Abdullah with regard to whether President Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority are prepared to step in, with the support of international partners and humanitarian assistance? Everything must be done to preserve human life and find a two-state solution in this matter.
The Prime Minister
I thank my hon. Friend for his excellent question and reassure him that exactly that was part of the conversations I had both yesterday, with the King of Jordan, and today with President Abbas. We need to provide stable leadership in Gaza once Hamas have, hopefully, been removed. That thinking is already happening among us and our partners.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
On behalf of Plaid Cymru, I condemn the atrocities of Hamas. Our thoughts are with all the Israeli and Palestinian civilians killed, injured or bereaved in this horrific conflict.
International humanitarian law exists for a reason: to safeguard all civilians, universally. Among the rights under that law is the right to water. Fuel is necessary for many people in Palestine to have safe drinking water. Without clean water, people will die. The Prime Minister has announced humanitarian support today, which I welcome. As a close ally of Israel, what steps is he taking to urge Israel to comply fully with international law, including by supplying essential fuel to Gaza?
The Prime Minister
As I said previously, as a friend we will continue to call on Israel to take every precaution to avoid harming civilians, and we will continue to do everything we can to provide humanitarian support to those affected.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
I commend the calm leadership of my right hon. Friend over the past few days, as well as that of the Leader of the Opposition.
Some people forget that the reason we defend Israel’s right to exist and its security is that 6 million Jews were murdered due to a perverted ideology, and we must never return to that. That is why we stand with Israel in its time of absolute need.
I have a Jewish sister-in-law. She is quite clear that she has never felt more threatened than she did this weekend when she saw people take to the streets waving flags bearing Hamas’s crest—I do not know whether the Prime Minister saw this—and calling for Israel to be swept “from the river to the sea”. This is all about getting rid of the Jews in Palestine; there is no question about it. We must be clear about this: we have to protect the Jewish people here, who are British citizens, and we must stamp out antisemitism. I therefore ask my right hon. Friend whether we will redouble our efforts to ensure that, if ever such scenes were to happen again, the people bearing those flags and hurling that abuse would be arrested and prosecuted with the full strength of the law.
The Prime Minister
I thank my right hon. Friend for his excellent contribution. He is right: there is no place for demonstrations, convoys or flag waving on British streets that glorifies terrorism or harasses the Jewish community. That is why, last week, I met police chiefs and people from the Community Security Trust in Downing Street to discuss how better we can protect the Jewish community at this time and police these protests appropriately. I am pleased that that work is ongoing, but of course we will remain engaged with all partners. As my right hon. Friend said, anyone who breaks the law should be met with the full force of the law and be swiftly arrested. Many people will have seen incidents online and footage of scenes that are simply unacceptable. I can reassure him that the police are currently reviewing that footage and, where possible and where they can, they will arrest those responsible.
Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)
The acts of terror that were committed by Hamas were horrifying, and our prayers go out to everyone affected, both in Israel and across the world, and those who are here in the House today. Israel is seeking justice, but innocent Palestinians must not collectively pay the price. I urge the Prime Minister to seek guarantees from the Israeli Government on four crucial points: first, that incendiary weapons will not be used in civilian areas; secondly, that hospitals and medics will not be targeted; thirdly, that food, water and electricity supplies must be immediately restored; and, finally, that we must not see military occupation and annexation of Gazan land.
The Prime Minister
I am confident that the Prime Minister of Israel does not want to see any regional escalation beyond dealing with Hamas. As a friend, we will continue to call on Israel to take every precaution to avoid harming civilians.
Mr Jonathan Djanogly (Huntingdon) (Con)
Since the Hamas terrorist attack, the unequivocal Government support and concern for the safety and welfare of the UK Jewish community has been extremely well received by those in that community, and no one has shown greater care than my right hon. Friend, whom I would like to thank. Over the coming days, as Israel takes the remedial and self-defence action that it has been forced to take, can my right hon. Friend confirm that he will work with our international allies to ensure continued support for Israel, such that Israel is not left out on a limb, on its own, to be picked off by enemies?
The Prime Minister
I thank my hon. Friend for his kind words and agree that we will continue to support Israel’s right to defend itself. We remain engaged in the region, talking to our partners, so that we can provide Israel with all the support that we can, defend its position and also provide humanitarian support to alleviate the impact as best we can.
Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
My thoughts and prayers are with all the families who are grieving following the horrific terrorist attacks by Hamas, which I unreservedly condemn. These atrocities were committed by terrorists who do not seek peace, and they have set back the just cause of Palestinian freedom and statehood, which I, along with many across this House, have long supported.
Over a million Palestinians in Gaza have been told to flee, highlighting the scale of the impending humanitarian disaster, which will only inflame tension in the region. There are grave concerns about the escalation of the conflict in the wider region. Can the Prime Minister tell the House what particular steps our Government are taking to help de-escalate the conflict, which risks turning into a wider regional conflict, drawing in Lebanon and Iran?
The Prime Minister
Both the Foreign Secretary and I are speaking extensively to all our partners in the region to urge everybody to put pressure on those who would seek to take advantage of the situation not to. As I said, we have deployed surveillance aircraft to the Mediterranean, not least to ensure that Hezbollah is not in receipt of extra arms shipments, because that would be damaging to regional stability. We will continue to make sure that that does not happen.
Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)
In 2013, I took a group of schoolchildren from the Beit Shvidler Primary School in Edgware to the Hanukkah party at No. 10. A leading voice of the choir was Nathanel Young, one of the first people to be killed in the terrorist attack in Israel. Will the Prime Minister advise the House what actions have been taken for the bereaved families and the families of the 17 hostages who remain in Gaza, and what consular support that will entail?
The Prime Minister
I express again my sympathies to all those families who have been impacted by the appalling situation in Israel in this terrorist attack. I was in my hon. Friend’s constituency this morning and saw at first hand the impact that this was having on the community there. I assure him that the Foreign Office is providing extensive consular support to all families who are impacted, and we will continue to do so throughout this crisis.
Ms Anum Qaisar (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)
I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
I wish to put on record my utter condemnation of the Hamas attacks. Israeli hostages must be released. Over the last week, we have all seen horrific images of innocent Israelis and Palestinians on our screens—it has been awful. What struck me was a quote that I have seen from an aid worker in Gaza from Medical Aid for Palestinians. Mahmoud Shalabi said:
“I’ve seen kids write their names on their palms, because when they die they want people to know who they are.”
That is because in Gaza, families are being wiped out.
Across the globe, there has been a collective outcry for the people of Gaza, most of whom, as the Prime Minister has said, have nothing to do with Hamas. Has the Prime Minister pledged funding or support for the safety of children and their access to healthcare in hospitals? What is he doing to facilitate the opening of the border for aid? Humanitarian access is so important, so that foreign nationals can leave Gaza.
The Prime Minister
I have specifically spoken to President Sisi about the importance of opening the Rafah border crossing, both for humanitarian purposes and to provide for the safe evacuation of British nationals. Today, we have announced an increase in our aid funding to the region by around a third, and we will figure out how best that money can help those who need it as quickly as possible.
Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
On international law and media impartiality, will the Attorney General be asked to provide a legal note, if not a full opinion, given, for example, that one of Ofcom’s directors—Ofcom having full statutory and regulatory responsibility for all visual and oral media, including the BBC—is reported to be supporting posts this week arguing that the Government’s support for Israel is a “vile colonial alliance”, and referring to
“ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians”?
Ofcom must surely be told that it must deal with this at once as a matter of impartiality, quite apart from any criminal action that may be needed under terrorist or criminal law.
The Prime Minister
I thank my hon. Friend for his question. I will ensure that the Attorney General looks into it, and more generally, I will just say that I absolutely endorse those describing these attacks as what they are, which is acts of terror by a terrorist organisation. Obviously the BBC is editorially and operationally independent of Government, but the Culture Secretary raised that specific issue with the BBC director general last week.
Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
Hamas’s kidnapping of 200 Israelis is a stark reminder that the terrorist group have learned from their paymasters, the Iranian regime, who for years have promoted state hostage taking, including, of course, of UK nationals. Will the Prime Minister say a bit more about the steps that the UK Government are taking for the release of the British nationals who are currently held in Gaza?
The Prime Minister
As I said, we are providing consular support to the affected families. We recognise that this will be a very difficult time for them. We have, for a long time, maintained Foreign Office travel advice that people should not travel to Gaza, because we know the situation is dangerous. We are working as hard as we can to open the Rafah crossing, and the Border Force team has already been deployed to Egypt so that, if and when the crossing is opened, we will rapidly be in a position to be able to bring people home.
Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)
I welcome the Prime Minister’s most powerful statement in robustly standing with Israel in its mission to defeat Hamas after their brutal terrorist offensive last week. This has rightly been called Israel’s 9/11, but we now appreciate that, following those attacks on America in 2001, grave operational and strategic errors were made, however well-intentioned, in the name of defeating terrorism. That led to significant escalation and, indeed, radicalisation.
How events play out in the next few days will have severe repercussions across the middle east and beyond for years. With no emergency governance, security or humanitarian plans yet confirmed, does the Prime Minister agree that, if we are a true friend of Israel, we should counsel against a full-scale ground invasion at this time, as it will see this conflict spill into the west bank, East Jerusalem and southern—
Mr Speaker
Order. There are still many Members standing. I want to get everyone in, as I think that is right, but I ask that Members please consider each other in both questions and answers.
The Prime Minister
Of course every country has the right to defend itself, and it would not be appropriate for the UK to define that approach. I thank my right hon. Friend for his remarks. We will continue to stand with Israel and, as a friend, we will urge them to take every possible precaution to minimise the impact on civilians.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
As you are aware, Mr Speaker, my immediate family are from the west bank, but I have extended family in Gaza city. Their house was bombed by the IDF, so they went to seek sanctuary in a church—we are Christian Palestinians—and I am afraid to say that they are still there, because they are too old to leave. They say to me that they have nowhere to go.
Because of this, not despite it, I attended a vigil in Oxford organised by the Jewish community. Between our communities, we now share profound emotions, loss and grief. When the Prime Minister says never again, I agree with him. Will he give his assurance that it will be never again and that, whenever we get through whatever happens in the next few days, he will keep the promise he made to my great-grandfather that there will be a Palestinian state to call our own at the end of it?
The Prime Minister
I start by expressing my sympathies to the hon. Lady and her family for what they are going through. I know this will have been an incredibly difficult time for them. I also pay tribute to her, because her presence at the vigil, in spite of everything, will have meant an enormous amount to many people, and the courage she shows in talking about that experience here today is admirable. She looks forward to a more positive future, which is an ambition I share.
This is an unspeakably difficult situation, a tragedy, but we must find a way to move forward to secure a more stable, peaceful settlement for those living in the middle east, because this tragedy has reminded us all of the horrors of war and the horrors of terrorism. We must find a way to bring peace and stability to the region, and that is what I will strive very hard to help bring about.
Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)
As a child of Northern Ireland, I will never forget how frightening it is to be in a schoolroom when a bomb goes off across the road. The Hamas atrocities of last weekend rewrote the definition of evil. The Prime Minister is right to have condemned Hamas, he is right to have stood beside the Jewish population and he is right to have stood by Israel’s duty to defend itself. But our history also tells us that terrorism is rarely defeated by further terror, so he is right also to be concerned for innocent Palestinians caught in the crossfire and who are being used as human shields. I thank him for what he said about the need for Israel to stay within international law, and for the additional aid we have pledged today. May I urge him to try to get that aid to the people who need it as quickly as possible?
The Prime Minister
I thank my right hon. Friend for her contribution, and I can give her that reassurance. I know that she will have advice for us on how best we can do that. We are keen to make sure that that aid makes a difference to as many people as quickly as possible, and we will be working with partners to make sure that that happens.
Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)
Hamas knew what would happen to the people that they purport to represent after their atrocious terrorist actions. They knew that it would rain down fear and pain and killing in the region. Anybody in our country who purports to support them deserves, as the Prime Minister says, the full force of the law. I thank the Prime Minister for saying that more aid will be going to Gaza, but I want to know, from conversations that he has had with Israel, which he said he has had today, what progress has been made to ensure that that aid—medical supplies, fuel and water—will actually reach the people of Gaza? As my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) said, people have nowhere to go. Nothing is getting through, so what is Israel going to do to ensure that British aid can reach Gazans?
The Prime Minister
It is also important that Egypt is involved in that conversation because the Rafah crossing is one of the primary routes for aid to reach Gaza. That is why we have spoken specifically with President Sisi about that, and we will continue to talk with him and other regional allies to find ways to bring humanitarian aid to the region as quickly as possible.
Sir Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend for his statement and for his unequivocal condemnation of calculated acts of murder and hostage taking, which are deliberately designed to provoke a response that plunges the entire region, if not the wider world, into greater conflict. What assessment are my right hon. Friend and the Government making of current escalations on the northern border of Israel and Lebanon? We heard this afternoon of an evacuation of Israeli citizens within 2 km of the border. Does he think that that might well be a further escalation of the situation, and all part of a calculated plan to plunge the region into chaos?
The Prime Minister
We absolutely do not want to see regional escalation. One of the ways that we can help to ensure that that does not happen—my right hon. and learned Friend specifically mentioned Lebanon—is the deployment of our surveillance assets, which went into the region last week, with further to follow by the end of this week. One of the things that they can do is track and interdict armed shipments that might be going to Hezbollah, for example. That is something that none of us will want to see, which is why we have deployed those assets. Partners are grateful for our intervention, because no one wants to see an escalation of this conflict.
Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)
Some of the most vulnerable citizens in the event of war are people with disabilities, so what representations have the Government made for the protection particularly of people with disabilities in northern Gaza who are unable to move?
The Prime Minister
In all our conversations we will continue to call on Israel to take every precaution to avoid harming civilians, and we will do everything that we can to bring humanitarian support to the region.
Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)
During the Prime Minister’s school visit this morning we heard incredibly powerful speeches from students about the situation, showing the anguish felt about the worst attack on Jewish people since the holocaust. In the light of that, will he ensure that the unequivocal support for Israel that he has expressed today is maintained and does not weaken in the difficult days ahead as Israel does what it has to do to remove the capacity of Hamas ever to do this again?
The Prime Minister
I thank my right hon. Friend for welcoming me to her constituency this morning, and for joining me on what was an incredibly powerful visit to one of her local schools. I praise the courage and eloquence of the students we heard, who were incredible in explaining how this has affected them and their families. She has my assurance that we will continue to stand with Israel, as I said this morning, not just today, not just tomorrow, but always.
Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)
The Prime Minister is absolutely right to say that the unspeakable actions of Hamas mean that Israel has not simply the right but a duty to protect its own citizens. However, Israel also has a duty to protect innocent Palestinians. How does Israel cutting off food and water seriously bring the hostages home and help to defeat Hamas?
The Prime Minister
It is not right for us to prescribe how another country can best exercise its lawful right—indeed, it is a duty—to self-defence, but as a friend we will continue to call on Israel to take every precaution to avoid harming civilians.
Sir Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)
On Saturday, I met in Rawtenstall representatives of the British Muslim and British Palestinian communities of east Lancashire. They were united in one voice condemning the appalling actions of Hamas in the barbarous murder of Jewish people. They will have been heartened to hear the Prime Minister say that we stand with both the British Muslim community and the British Jewish community at this very difficult time. They want to see Israel comply with international law; they want humanitarian corridors to remain open to enable innocent Gazans to escape. How will the deployment of the Royal Navy help to ensure that that happens?
The Prime Minister
I know that this is important to my right hon. Friend. Like him, we recognise that this is a moment of anguish for British Muslim communities, who are appalled by the actions of Hamas but fearful of the response. As I said, we mourn the loss of every innocent life—of the civilians of every faith and nationality who have been killed. Our Navy assets can help, as I have said, to ensure that illegal arms shipments do not find their way to people such as Hezbollah. Also, the assets that we are deploying next week will be there as a contingency and can provide humanitarian assistance if and as required, which will be a valuable contribution to the role we play.
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
We in Walthamstow stand in solidarity with our neighbour, who is in Parliament today pleading for help to get her elderly parents back after they were brutally taken hostage by Hamas. We are also desperately worried about families from our community who are stuck in Gaza—UK citizens trying to get home. We believe that every life deserves the protection of international law, and that anyone who breaks it should be held to account.
My constituents are also asking what more we can do by using our international connections. As the Prime Minister will have seen, it has been reported today that the Qataris have brokered a deal to ensure that Ukrainian children kidnapped in Russia are returned home to their families. What conversations has he had with the Qataris about whether they might play a similar role, stopping the violence in Gaza accordingly?
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
Some Members will be disappointed but there is no way that we will get everybody in. The questions are far too long, which is not helping. I hope the answers will also be brief.
The Prime Minister
I assure the hon. Lady that we are talking to all leaders across the region. Indeed, I am due to speak to the Qatari leadership—maybe even today—so that we can work with them and others to ensure the safe return of hostages and to de-escalate the situation.
Mrs Flick Drummond (Meon Valley) (Con)
I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests relating to my visit to Israel and Palestine in May this year. The median age of a Palestinian in Gaza is 18 years. In the west bank, the median age is 21 years, and in Israel it is 29. If we do not sort out this long-term conflict quickly and permanently, we will have generations of young people affected in both Palestine and Israel, more radicalisation, and more tragedy for families living in those countries. Can my right hon. Friend elaborate further on his comments about a peace process that will have a lasting impact, and on a two-state solution?
The Prime Minister
It is precisely because Hamas have tried to kill off that notion of a peaceful settlement for the middle east—peace, stability and security for both the Palestinian and Israeli communities—that we must redouble our efforts to bring it about. That has very much been the subject of the conversations that I have had and will continue to have with leaders from around the region. If we can contribute to that in any way, we will.
Sir George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)
I thank the Prime Minister and my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Opposition for their statements. What role does the Prime Minister see for the United Nations in providing much-needed humanitarian relief in the region, particularly in Gaza, and in trying to get a new peace process off the ground? I know that that will be difficult, but it is badly needed.
The Prime Minister
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his kind comments. The United Nations can play a significant role when it comes to the humanitarian side. Indeed, around three quarters of our existing aid to the region is channelled through the UN, particularly the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which was referred to earlier. I am sure that it will continue to play a valuable role going forward.
Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)
Leeds has a proud Jewish community, including in my own constituency. It is not just the barbarity that we saw in the Hamas attack—burning, murdering, mutilation and rape—that is making my Jewish constituents fearful, but the fact that we came through several years where antisemitism had been given a safe space in this country and that there are now protests on the street pushing forward the antisemitic message. Every day, they are worried about how they go about living their normal life. As such, I thank my right hon. Friend for the £3 million of investment he has announced for security, but ask him to keep a close eye on whether more is needed. I cannot emphasise enough that the Jewish community in my constituency, and probably across the country, is fearful all the time.
The Prime Minister
I thank my right hon. Friend for his comments—he is rightly a champion of the Jewish community in his constituency. Like him, I am clear that there is zero tolerance of antisemitism in the UK. We will continue to do everything we can to ensure the security and safety of our Jewish citizens.
Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)
I stand with this House in condemnation of Hamas’s appalling killing of innocent Israeli civilians and call for the immediate safe return of all the hostages, but I am very concerned about the increasing numbers of deaths of innocent Palestinians. The forced mass displacement of Gazans is leading to a massive humanitarian crisis, so can the Prime Minister explain what the Government are doing to prevent this? Has he demanded an immediate ceasefire to end the collective punishment of civilians?
The Prime Minister
I believe that we must absolutely support Israel’s right to defend itself and to ensure that attacks like this cannot happen again, but as a friend, we will continue to call on Israel to take every precaution to avoid harming civilians, and we will provide humanitarian support.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
This morning, I was contacted by a constituent who, on visiting London on Saturday, was deeply disturbed by the pro-Hamas chants that were being shouted, the destruction of national monuments, the fact that the main stage for the protest was right next to the Cenotaph, and media reports of somebody with a Union Jack being detained and led away. What representations are going to be made to the Mayor of London and the Metropolitan police so that future protests are policed appropriately?
The Prime Minister
We have ensured that the police have the tools, powers and guidance they need to police these protests appropriately. Obviously, this is a difficult situation. I am thankful to them for what they did over the weekend: they have made, I think, over 20 arrests, and as I said, they are currently reviewing footage of some of the things we have seen after the fact. Where they can, they will make further arrests, but we are clear: people may be free to express their views, but where they are inciting racial or religious hatred, that is against the law and they will meet the full force of the law as a result.
Mr Speaker
I am going to finish the statement at 5.30, so let us help each other.
Sarah Owen (Luton North) (Lab)
Over the weekend, the Archbishop of Canterbury said that
“The price of evil cannot be paid by the innocent”,
yet in Gaza, Palestinians have had no access to food, water or electricity for over a week. We have seen an evacuation order that has left people with an impossible choice. Constituents in Luton North have spoken to me about their pain and anguish at the unimaginable loss of lives in Gaza, so many of which are children, all following the despicable attack of terror carried out by Hamas. Even at times of war, there are still laws, so as well as the urgent and desperate need for humanitarian aid and corridors, what are Ministers doing to counter breaches of international law that risk the further loss of innocent life and threaten the possibility of peace in the middle east?
The Prime Minister
It is Hamas alone who are responsible for this conflict, and we support Israel in taking action against terrorism and to defend itself. Hamas have also enmeshed themselves in the civilian population in Gaza and are using them as a human shield. We will continue, as a friend, to call on Israel to do everything it can to reduce the impact on human life, and we will continue to support the area with humanitarian support.
Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)
Is it not the case that Israel’s best hope for its future security in its justified response to Hamas’s atrocity is to treat the civilian populations in Gaza and the west bank with the full respect that the laws of war and civilised nations demand, or else this tragic cycle of violence will simply repeat itself in the years to come?
The Prime Minister
As I said, we must support Israel’s right to defend itself—to go after Hamas—and recognise that it faces a vicious enemy who are embedding themselves behind civilians, but it will do so in accordance with international law. As a friend, we will continue to call on Israel to take every precaution to avoid harming civilians.
Colum Eastwood (Foyle) (SDLP)
I join the Prime Minister in strongly condemning the despicable, horrendous acts by Hamas last week. It was and is an ongoing war crime. Of course, though, one war crime does not excuse another, so will the Prime Minister please speak to Prime Minister Netanyahu and ask him to stop dropping bombs on innocent children in Gaza? Some of us know all too well that unspeakable violence should not be met with unspeakable violence. We know in Ireland that the only option is to relentlessly pursue peace through dialogue.
The Prime Minister
I refer the hon. Gentleman to the Israeli President’s words, where he has been clear that the Israelis are working operationally according to the rules of international law. They will exercise their lawful right to defend themselves, and as a friend we will continue to call on them to take every precaution to avoid harming civilians.
Douglas Ross (Moray) (Con)
The barbaric terrorism at the hands of Hamas saw babies and children robbed of their futures in the most brutal way. The victims were male and female, young and old. One of the victims was Bernard Cowan, who moved from Newton Mearns to Israel. Last week, his mother, Irene, joined many others at a service of solidarity and lit a candle in his memory. We grieve and think of all the victims, and indeed of all the families of the hostages. Jewish communities in Scotland are worried about their safety, so I ask the Prime Minister, what action can and are the UK Government taking to ensure that Jewish communities in every part of the United Kingdom feel safe at this terrible time?
The Prime Minister
I thank my hon. Friend for everything he is doing to support the Jewish communities in Scotland. I agree with him that there is zero tolerance in our society for antisemitism, which is why we have provided extra funding to the Community Security Trust to ensure the safety and security of Jewish institutions, schools and synagogues, and clear guidance to the police so that they can step in and take action where someone is breaking the law.
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)
After the brutal terror atrocities carried out by Hamas, which tragically led to the deaths of over 1,000 Israelis, the Israeli Government of course have a duty to defend their citizens, but that must be proportionate and in line with international law. We must also condemn any indiscriminate killing or forcible eviction from their land of the Palestinian people, who have suffered so much for several decades and are now facing horrors on an unimaginable scale. Does the Prime Minister agree that there must be no collective punishment of Palestinians, that we must strive for peace and that there must be a humanitarian effort by the international community to avert furthering a crisis?
The Prime Minister
We are working with our partners to bring humanitarian support to the region. Again, today we announced a significant increase in our humanitarian funding for the region, which comes on top of what is strong support already. We will continue to talk to partners about how best to ensure that humanitarian aid finds its way to the people who need it.
James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
I warmly commend the Prime Minister for the strength and clarity of his statement and for his support for Israel, his condemnation of Hamas and his deep concern for the humanitarian situation in Gaza. I also thank him for being so strongly supportive of the Jewish and Israeli communities in Britain, but is he aware of an organisation called Palestine Action, which has this weekend listed a series of companies and the directors of those companies whom it believes to be legitimate targets for terrorist action? Will he now name this outfit, Palestine Action, and condemn what it is doing, and will he ask the police and the Crown Prosecution Service to act without further delay to deal with it?
The Prime Minister
I thank my hon. Friend for his kind words. I am sure he will understand that arrests are an operational matter for the police, but obviously what he has said, on the face of it, sounds concerning. The police have powers, under the Terrorism Acts of 2000 and 2006, to arrest people who are supporting either terrorism or proscribed terrorist organisations, and I would expect them to use the full powers available to them to prosecute people under the law.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
Our thoughts at this time must above all be with the Israeli and Palestinian civilian dead and injured, and with the hostages. According to Medical Aid for Palestinians, over 2,700 Palestinians have been killed so far in air attacks, more than a quarter of them children, and this is before any ground invasion. What practical help can the Government offer the 2 million people of Gaza, and the UK citizens such as my constituents who are trapped at the Rafah border and under constant threat from bombing and shelling?
The Prime Minister
We continue to be in dialogue with partners, notably with the Egyptians about the Rafah crossing, and in anticipation we have deployed a Border Force team to Egypt to bring people safely home if and when that crossing is opened. In the meantime, the FCDO is providing consular assistance to all those families who are in contact with it and are currently in Gaza.
Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con)
I thank the Prime Minister for his powerful statement and, like colleagues across the House, I join him in condemning the acts of Hamas. Hamas, Hezbollah and a multitude of other terrorist organisations get their logistical, administrative, financial and armament support from Iran. Will the Prime Minister assure the House that he will act with our international partners to do everything to isolate Iran and to increase economic sanctions?
The Prime Minister
Hamas are fully responsible for the appalling act of terror that has taken place, but Iran does pose an unacceptable threat to Israel, including through its long-term support for Hamas, Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. I reassure my hon. Friend that we are working with our allies, as we have been for a while, to decide how best to deal with the destabilising actions of the Iranian regime in the region.
Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)
I echo the Prime Minister’s unequivocal condemnation of Hamas and their appalling acts of terrorist violence. International humanitarian law demands that any Israeli response must be legal and proportionate. Does the Prime Minister agree that, regardless of the circumstances, the collective punishment of an entire civilian population—one that involves forced displacement and the cutting off of water, food, fuel and medicine—can never be legal or proportionate?
The Prime Minister
I believe that we must support absolutely Israel’s right to defend itself, to go after Hamas and to ensure its security in the long term and that such acts cannot happen again. As a friend, we will continue to call on Israel to take every precaution to avoid harming civilians.
Chris Clarkson (Heywood and Middleton) (Con)
Greater Manchester is home to a large and vibrant Jewish community. They are our neighbours, our friends and our families. It is also home to a sizeable presence of the BBC which, when faced with child murder, rape and torture, decided that Hamas should be called militants rather than terrorists. The political leaders of this country and our royal family can decide that they are terrorists; why cannot our national broadcaster?
The Prime Minister
I agree with my hon. Friend. I absolutely endorse those who, in describing these attacks, call them what they are: attacks of terror by a terrorist organisation. My hon. Friend will know that the BBC is editorially and operationally independent of the Government, but the Culture Secretary has raised this issue directly with the director general and we wait to see.
Kate Osamor (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)
My thoughts go out to everyone affected by the terrible violence in Israel and Palestine. I thank the Prime Minister for his announcement of additional funding for humanitarian aid. I press upon him the need to integrate a framework of atrocity prevention into the UK’s strategy, to ensure that UK officials are able to properly centre its treaty and ethical obligations throughout its response to the crisis, and to resource UK country teams and relevant officials with urgent atrocity prevention and response training, expertise, guidance and leadership.
The Prime Minister
I thank the hon. Lady for her question. The existing support that we provide to the region ensures the stability of the Palestinian Authority, for example, and helps to build capability there. We will work with partners to make sure that the new money we announced today can be used in the most effective and quickest way possible.
Nicola Richards (West Bromwich East) (Con)
Two weeks ago at conference, we were brought to tears listening to Hannah Lewis, a holocaust survivor, describe watching, at the age of seven, her mother get shot in the head—a scene that broke her heart, and that broke ours, too, as she spoke. Five days later, holocaust survivors were kidnapped or killed, babies were slaughtered, women my age were raped next to the bodies of their friends and then killed, and hostages were paraded through the streets of Gaza and spat on. That was the reality that unfolded in front of holocaust survivors and their families. My own staff member shared the story of his 10-day-old cousin, who was surrounded by Hamas trying to murder them. Will the Prime Minister join me in utterly condemning the acts of Hamas and in saying that we will never forget and that “never again” really does mean never again?
The Prime Minister
I thank my hon. Friend for her powerful statement and for all the work she does to support this cause in the country. I agree with her wholeheartedly in unequivocally condemning this act of barbarity as well as saying that there is no place in our society for antisemitism. She is right: we must never forget. I praise her work and that of the Holocaust Educational Trust and others for making sure that we never will.
Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I wish that the horrific terrorist attacks by Hamas last week had been truly exceptional, but the truth is that they reminded me of what the Russians did last year in Bucha in Ukraine. They also brought to mind how the first place the Russians targeted in Kyiv was a Jewish cemetery. There is a pattern here, and actually there is a network around the world. So while of course we must ensure that Israel is able to do everything it can to defend itself—and we stand with every single person in this country who has a friend or family member either in Gaza or in Israel, who will be terrified about what will happen to them in the next few days—we also have to tackle this network, do we not? Does that not mean having some tough words with Qatar in particular about why it has hosted so many people from Hamas over recent years?
The Prime Minister
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his powerful words. We will continue to speak to all leaders in the region to find ways to de-escalate the crisis and ensure that we can bring about an end to the evil that Hamas represent. He is right that it is not just limited to this particular conflict; it is much more widespread. That is why we need to work with our allies to stamp it out across the world.
Mr David Jones (Clwyd West) (Con)
Hamas are an Iranian proxy terror organisation, designated as such under the Terrorism Act 2000. Credible reports indicate that the 7 October attacks were planned in concert with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. For many years, hon. Members have been calling for the IRGC to be proscribed as a terrorist organisation, and those calls have been repeated today. While I understand that the Government do not indicate in advance what action they intend to take under the Terrorism Act, may I assure my right hon. Friend that if hon. Members were to wake up tomorrow morning and hear on the news that it had been so designated today, they would be extremely relieved and grateful to him.
The Prime Minister
I agree with my right hon. Friend that Iran both poses an unacceptable threat to Israel and has a destabilising influence throughout the region. That is why we have sanctioned more than 350 Iranian individuals, including the entirety of the IRGC. The new National Security Act 2023 also gives us the powers that we need to keep us safe here at home. I assure him that we will continue to work closely with our allies in finding the best possible way to contain Iran’s pernicious activities.
Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
I represent one of this country’s biggest Jewish communities, in my constituency of Hampstead and Kilburn. Following Hamas’s brutal attack on Israel, there has been an increase in antisemitic incidents in my local area. Most heartbreakingly, I have had emails from local parents who are very worried about their children going to a local Jewish school because aggressive men have been standing outside taking photos. Some of the parents have had their car tyres slashed. The Prime Minister has pledged support to Jewish institutions, but will he commit publicly to ensuring that the support actually reaches local Jewish schools? Will he provide some much-needed reassurance to parents in Hampstead and Kilburn?
The Prime Minister
The hon. Lady makes an excellent point. This morning I visited a Jewish school in north London to ensure that the community there knew that I will do everything I can to keep them safe. That is why last week I met with the Community Security Trust, which does an excellent job. We have provided it with extra funding, which it will ensure gets to the frontline, whether that is to schools, synagogues or other institutions. We will continue to do everything we can to keep our Jewish communities safe. What is happening to our schoolchildren is simply unacceptable and sickening, and we will work very hard to bring it to an end.
Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)
I think it is disgusting to choose the day after the massacre to start waving Palestinian flags outside the Israeli embassy. I also find what happened at the Cenotaph disgusting, but those who are explicitly pro-Hamas are on a different level. Does the Prime Minister agree that it is important to work with the Home Office and, where possible, to deport these individuals, because they do not share our values and they are not welcome in this country?
The Prime Minister
The military wing of Hamas has been proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the UK for some time, in addition to the political wing more recently. Once a group is proscribed, it is a criminal offence for people in the UK to do various things in support of that organisation, under the Terrorism Act 2000. Furthermore, the Terrorism Act 2006 created the offence of the encouragement of terrorism, which gives the police the powers and tools they need to arrest those individuals who are perpetrating that kind of support. I will ensure that they face the full force of the law.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
I utterly condemn the barbaric attacks by Hamas and call for the unconditional release of all those taken hostage. These are horrific acts of terrorism and constitute war crimes. Israel does have a right to self-defence, but the collective punishment of the people of Gaza is also a war crime. Those two things can both be true. The killing of over 2,600 civilians by the IDF is not only a humanitarian catastrophe but risks driving the deadly cycle of violence still further. I welcome the Prime Minister’s statement that he is straining every sinew to keep the flame of peace and stability alive, so will he listen to those UN experts calling for a ceasefire? What more will he do to promote a renewed international effort towards two legally recognised separate states, safe within their own borders?
The Prime Minister
It is that vision of a safe and secure two-state solution that Hamas have tried to kill off with their terrorist atrocities over the past week. That is why I absolutely support Israel’s right to defend itself. It must be able to go after Hamas to take back hostages, to strengthen its security for the long term and to ensure that this cannot happen again. As a friend, we will continue to call on Israel to take every precaution to avoid harming civilians, and we will continue to work with international partners to bring humanitarian support to the region.
James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con)
Given the appalling terrorist atrocities and wider events of the past 10 days, not to mention the division we are now seeing in our streets, does the Prime Minister agree that it is time for cool heads, dialling down the rhetoric, restraint and objective leadership right across the political community, with a view to providing humanitarian support in Gaza, defeating Hamas and bringing people home?
The Prime Minister
Those are all the right objectives, and we are working on all three, particularly working with regional partners to de-escalate violence, but also bringing humanitarian support to the region and thinking about a brighter future where people can live peacefully and securely side by side.
Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
As well as the discussions that the Prime Minister has had with his international counterparts, can he tell us what discussions the Government have had with international aid organisations, particularly on ensuring that if the Rafah border crossing is opened to allow a humanitarian corridor, the aid is successfully co-ordinated? Have there been discussions about who will take responsibility for displaced Palestinian civilians, who will have nowhere to go? Does he support the principle that those Palestinian civilians have the right to return home at the earliest opportunity?
The Prime Minister
I am proud that we have been a long-standing, significant supporter of aid to the region, and have regular dialogue with agencies such as the UN. Our support to the UN directly helps around 5.8 million Palestinians refugees every year over the past few years. We have announced an increase in that funding today by around a third, which is significant. We will work with partner agencies to find the most effective and quickest way to get that aid to the people who need it.
Sir Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)
In unequivocally condemning the barbarity of Hamas, I associate myself with the remarks of my right hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd West (Mr Jones) a few moments ago about the IRGC and Iran. May I ask specifically about the aid that we have pledged today for Palestinians? Clearly, we have seen that Hamas have been misappropriating aid, including using piping designed for water to fire missiles at Israel. How will we make sure that aid that goes into the Gaza strip is not used to strengthen Hamas?
The Prime Minister
That is a very good question from my right hon. Friend, and it is something we review and monitor very carefully. We channel the vast majority of our aid for the Palestinian territories through the UN, and it is almost overwhelmingly on humanitarian purposes—health, education and the protection services for Palestinians. We do not provide any bilateral financing aid into the region, which should give him some reassurance. With the new investments announced today, we will of course ensure that it goes on the things we care about and to the people we care about.
Sir Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
I agree with the Prime Minister that Israel’s response needs to be constrained by international humanitarian law. What steps will the Government be taking to monitor compliance with those constraints in the coming days, and how many days does he think it will now be before urgently needed humanitarian relief can be taken into Gaza?
The Prime Minister
We are doing everything we can to support humanitarian efforts, moving aid into the region as quickly as we can. We will continue to have conversations with all our counterparts in the region to make sure that that aid gets there as quickly as humanly possible.
Mark Logan (Bolton North East) (Con)
I stand with my constituents in Bolton in condemning the acts of terror committed by Hamas, who have targeted not only innocent adults but, even more barbarically, children. At the onset of the horrific atrocities, the Government rightly reach out their hand to the victims of unspeakable terrorism. Does the Prime Minister agree with me and my constituents that the people of Gaza must be treated fairly, within the bounds of international law, and that we refuse to accept an all-out humanitarian crisis?
The Prime Minister
We do support Israel’s right to defend itself and, as a friend, we will continue to call on Israel to take every precaution to avoid harming civilians. We will do everything we can to bring humanitarian support to the people of Gaza as quickly as practically possible.
Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)
The targeted killing of civilians, whether Israeli or Palestinian, must be condemned, as must the kidnapping of hostages. The civilians of Gaza should not be made to pay the price for the atrocities of Hamas. Blocking children’s access to food goes beyond self-defence; it is a violation of international law. The World Health Organisation has described forcing patients to relocate from hospitals as tantamount to a death sentence for some. Will the Prime Minister do anything he can to convince the Israeli Government to cancel the relocation order, lift the siege and end indiscriminate bombing?
The Prime Minister
I must gently point out to the hon. Lady that it is not Israel that is deliberately targeting civilians in Gaza; it is Hamas who are enmeshing themselves in the civilian population and using people as human shields. She talks about people moving but, again, Israel is attempting to minimise the impact on civilians by asking people to leave northern Gaza, and it is Hamas who are telling people to stay and using them as human shields.
Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)
We should all have no time for those who express sympathy for the terrorists of Hamas, and we should have no time for those who amplify their horrible messages either. Will the Prime Minister join me in welcoming the actions of the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology in trying to call the social media giants to account, and will he join me in encouraging them both to co-operate with the police in this country in their investigations and to do the same to try to minimise their impact abroad?
The Prime Minister
I thank my hon. Friend for his excellent point. More broadly, I want to make the point that online offending is as serious as offline offending. We have robust legislation in place to deal with threatening and abusive behaviour or behaviour that is intended or likely to stir up hatred, and it applies whether the behaviour takes place online or offline. We are working closely with the police and the internet companies to make sure that those who break those rules meet the full force of the law.
Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab)
Following the horror of Hamas’s appalling terrorist attack it is crucial, as others have said, that we distinguish between Hamas and innocent Palestinian civilians, in line with international humanitarian law. The United Nations Population Fund says that there are 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza, with 5,500 due to give birth this month. What efforts are being made to ensure that Gaza’s hospitals are protected and able to operate for those pregnant women, newborns, children and all others who need urgent medical attention?
The Prime Minister
This is an incredibly difficult time, with an impact on many, and it is important that we recognise and remember that the people responsible for bringing it about are solely and unequivocally Hamas, with their appalling acts over the last week. As Israel takes steps, rightly, to defend itself, we will continue to call on it to take every precaution to avoid harming civilians. We are doing everything we can to bring humanitarian support into the region.
James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)
Does the Prime Minister agree that we face a grave and dangerous moment in the middle east, which has been the result of myriad policy failures going back more than 25 years, and that a vacuum has been created where countries such as Iran, through its Hamas and Hezbollah proxies, are testing the will of Israel and the west as they seek to destabilise the region? I urge the Prime Minister to work with the US and other allies to ensure that they do not succeed, and that we show the same resolve on this era-defining moment as we did with our support for Ukraine.
The Prime Minister
I thank my hon. Friend for what he said. He is absolutely right: we must stand resolutely with Israel and also with our allies, such as the US, to demonstrate that Hamas’s terrorism will not prevail. We will ensure not only that Israel can defend itself, but that we work with partners to bring peace and stability to the region that everyone living there deserves.
Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)
The barbarism unleashed last weekend is unparalleled in the history of the state of Israel. Israel unequivocally has the right to defend itself, and yet it remains the case that half the population of Gaza are children under the age of 18, of whom around 500 are believed to have died already. I welcome very much the additional aid provided, but with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency warning that its ability to provide relief is running out today, can the Prime Minister use every channel to drive home the message that humanitarian aid delayed risks being aid too late?
The Prime Minister
I can assure the hon. Lady that we are working very hard with partners across the region to bring humanitarian aid to the people who need it as soon as practically possible.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. I know that a lot of people are disappointed that they have not been able to ask their particular question, but the House is grateful to the Prime Minister for having been at the Dispatch Box for two hours. I must point out in advance to all those colleagues who will come and complain to me about not being able to speak that the House has been asking the Prime Minister to use his diplomatic skills to the best of his ability on behalf of our country, so I think we must release him from the Chamber to allow him to do so. Thank you, Prime Minister.
Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Madam Deputy Speaker
Points of order come after statements. Is this directly related to the statement?
Hannah Bardell
Madam Deputy Speaker, I thank you for granting this point of order. I appreciate that the Prime Minister was at the Dispatch Box for nearly two hours, but as a result of the importance and the magnitude of this issue and the complexity and nature of our questions, nearly 50 Members did not get a chance to speak. Will you, Madam Deputy Speaker, do everything that you can to ensure that time will be afforded to us during the rest of this week and going forward so that we can debate and discuss this very important issue?
Madam Deputy Speaker
The hon. Lady makes a perfectly reasonable point. The Leader of the House is in her place and will have heard what she has said.
The Leader of the House of Commons (Penny Mordaunt)
Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I know that the Foreign Secretary and his colleagues are making themselves available to speak to colleagues, because we are very aware that they will have constituency issues to discuss.
Madam Deputy Speaker
I am very grateful to the Leader of the House for giving that immediate answer. I hope the hon. Lady and the rest of the House will appreciate that Ministers are doing their best to make themselves available, especially where there are particular issues relating to constituents.
I hope the House will settle down, as we move on to the next item of business. Will those who are leaving do so quietly and swiftly?
Prison Capacity
(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
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The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Alex Chalk)
With permission, I shall make a statement on the criminal justice system in England and Wales.
The first duty of any Government is to keep their people safe, and that is why those who pose a danger to society must be locked up. The Government are categorical that the worst offenders should be locked away for as long as it takes to protect the public. We have increased the sentences for offences including knife crime, causing death by dangerous driving—now a maximum of life imprisonment—and causing or allowing the death of a child. We have ended automatic halfway release for serious sexual and violent offenders, so they will serve two thirds of their sentence behind bars, and, in the most dangerous cases, all of their sentence behind bars. We are changing the law to make whole life sentences the default for the most heinous type of murder, so that for society’s most depraved killers, life means life and murderers end their days in prison.
Today, I can announce that we will be going further. We will legislate so that rapists, as well as those convicted of equivalent sexual offences, will serve the entirety of the custodial term handed down to them by the courts. A 15-year custodial term will mean 15 years behind bars.
There have been inaccurate reports in the media, claiming that judges have been told not to send rapists to prison. Let me be categorical: this is untrue. Sentencing is a matter for the judiciary acting impartially and in accordance with the law. It is a fact that under this Government the most serious and dangerous offenders are being locked away for longer. In the case of rapists, average sentences are nearly a third longer than in 2010. That is the right thing to do to keep the public safe.
To continue to put the worst offenders away for longer, we must use prisons better, and always so that there are sufficient spaces to lock up the most dangerous criminals. We must reform the justice system so that it keeps the worst of society behind bars, rehabilitates offenders who will be let out and presents the least serious, lowest risk offenders with a path away from a life of crime. That matters, because intelligent reform means less crime.
I have been candid from the moment I took on this role that our custodial estate is under pressure. Today, the prison population in England and Wales is greater than it has ever been—nearly double the level it was three decades ago. That is not principally because of the growth in the sentenced population: instead, it is the remand population, principally made up of unconvicted prisoners awaiting trial, which has surged in recent years, from 9,000 in 2019 to more than 15,000 in 2023. That is more than 6,000 more people in our prisons out of a total of some 88,000. That is because in the white heat of the pandemic we took the right and principled decision not to jettison hundreds of years of British history and abandon the jury trial system. We did that because the jury trial system is the bedrock of our freedoms. But covid restrictions inevitably meant that the flow of trials slowed and, in turn, the remand population grew. That growth was exacerbated by industrial action last year. In addition, the recall population is also significantly higher than in 2018, partly because we are rightly ensuring that offenders who do not comply with their licence conditions are returned to prison.
The Government have taken unprecedented steps to meet demand. We are building 20,000 modern rehabilitative prison places—the largest prison-building programme since the Victorian era. By doubling up cells where it is safe to do so, speeding up the deportation of foreign national offenders and delaying non-essential maintenance projects to bring cells back into use, we have freed up an extra 2,600 places since September last year alone. On top of that, we have continued to roll out hundreds of rapid deployment cells at prison sites. Altogether, we have been bringing on capacity at a rate of more than 100 places a week—the fastest rate in living memory, and possibly in 100 years.
We are going further. Today I can announce up to £400 million for more prison places, enough for more than 800 new cells. When we legislate to keep rapists behind bars for the whole of their custodial term, I will ensure that commencement is dependent on there being sufficient prison capacity. There is already an obligation to lay before both Houses of Parliament a report as to how I have discharged my general duty in relation to the courts. To ensure public confidence, a new annual statement of prison capacity will be laid before both Houses. It will include a clear statement of current prison capacity, future demand, the range of system costs that will be incurred under different scenarios and our forward pipeline of prison build. That will bring greater transparency to the plans and will set out the progress that is being made. I have also already commissioned urgent work, to conclude before the end of the year, to identify new sites for us to purchase. That is backed by a down payment of up to £30 million in funding to acquire land in 2024 and launch the planning process.
We must do whatever it takes to ensure that there are always enough prison places to lock up the most dangerous offenders to keep the British people safe, to ensure that criminals can be brought to justice, and to maintain safety and decency in the prison estate. We have decided to use the power in section 248 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 to allow the Prison Service to move some less serious offenders out of prison on to licence up to 18 days before their automatic release date.
Let me be clear: this will not apply to anyone serving a life sentence, anyone serving an extended determinate sentence, anyone serving a sentence for an offence of particular concern, anyone convicted of a serious violence offence, anyone convicted of terrorism or anyone convicted of a sex offence, and this power will be used only for a limited period and only in targeted areas. Every offender will be placed under strict licence conditions that provide a step down from custody to living in the community. They may include the following: first, being made to wear an electronic tag when that is needed for the offender to be managed safely; secondly, a condition not to contact a named individual, directly or indirectly; thirdly, having to live at an address approved by the offender’s probation officer; fourthly, attending appointments; and fifthly, a condition not to enter certain areas such as particular postcodes. I should also make it clear that breach of those conditions could lead to offenders’ being recalled to custody for the entire second half of their sentences.
This will be overseen by the probation service—a probation service into which we have injected £155 million a year to recruit staff to bring down case loads and deliver better supervision of offenders in the community. In addition, HM Prison & Probation Service leadership will retain discretion to decide on further exemptions from release on advice of governors when concerns remain. Let me make it clear that this is a temporary operational measure to relieve immediate pressure contributed to by remand.
However, if we are to protect the public and reduce crime, we need to go further to use our prisons better. At the heart of the long-term plan for prison reform that I am announcing today is a simple mission: cut crime. To deliver that, we need to do three things. First, we need to ensure that the most dangerous offenders are locked up for longer, away from the public and unable to commit crime. Secondly, we need to ensure that prisons are geared to help offenders turn away from crime, to change their ways and to become contributing members of society. Thirdly, we need to ensure that more lower-level offenders get the tough community sentences that are shown by the evidence to cut reoffending and hence to cut crime.
Let me put that last point in another way: prisons should not ruin the redeemable. It is clear that all too often the circumstances that lead to an initial offence are exacerbated by a short stint in prison, with offenders losing their homes, breaking contact with key support networks and, crucially, meeting others inside prison who steer them in the wrong direction. When they are released just a short time later, they all too often reoffend, fuelled by addiction or mental health issues that cannot possibly be addressed effectively in such a short space of time. The fact is that more than 50% of people who leave prison after serving less than 12 months go on to commit further crimes. The figure is 58% for those who serve sentences of six months or less. However, the figure for those who are on suspended sentence orders with conditions is 22%.
Meanwhile, the cost of this is £47,000 per year per prisoner. The taxpayer should not be forking out for a system that risks further criminalising offenders and trapping them in a merry-go-round of short sentences, so the Government are determined to grasp the nettle and deliver a better approach. We will legislate for a presumption that custodial sentences of less than 12 months in prison will be suspended and offenders will be punished in the community instead, repaying their debt within communities, cleaning up our neighbourhoods and scrubbing graffiti off walls. We can do this more intelligently with modern solutions for a digital age.
I can announce today that we are doubling the number of GPS tags available to the courts, to ensure that offenders can be monitored, to track them to ensure that they are going to work, and also to ensure that their freedom is curtailed in the evenings and weekends, with robust curfews of up to 20 hours a day. We will make further use of new technologies such as alcohol monitoring tags. This will enable us to strengthen and expand successful step-down programmes such as home detention curfew, which we will keep under active review. If offenders breach the terms of their curfew or other requirement of their suspended custodial sentence, or commit another offence, they can be hauled back before the court and forced to serve that sentence in custody.
What we are not doing is getting rid of short sentences altogether. I know from my time as a prosecutor that that is sometimes the right and just option. Prolific offenders who are unable or unwilling to comply with community orders or other orders of the court must know that their actions have consequences, and they will continue to feel the full force of the justice system. Building on our antisocial behaviour action plan, the Home Secretary and I are looking at what more we can do to punish those so-called lower-level offenders who are a blight on our communities. For some offenders, the proper sanction is, I am afraid, the clang of the prison gate.
We will also remove foreign offenders who should not be in the United Kingdom taking up space in our prisons at vast expense to the taxpayer. There are over 10,000 foreign nationals in our prisons. It cannot be right that some of them are sat in prison when they could otherwise be removed from our country. That is why we will extend the early removal scheme so that we have the power to remove foreign criminals up to 18 months before they are due to be released—up from 12 months now—getting them out of the country early and no longer costing taxpayers a fortune.
To support that, more caseworkers will be deployed to speed up removals, and the Home Office will also look at measures to do more to remove foreign nationals accused of less serious crimes more quickly. We will continue to strike new prisoner transfer deals like the one agreed with Albania, ensuring that criminals from overseas serve their time at home rather than in Britain. We will bring forward legislation to enable prisoners to be held in prisons overseas—an approach taken by Belgium, Norway and Denmark in recent years.
More must be done to stop people spending long periods of time waiting in prison for their trial. As I have set out, there are now more than 15,000 defendants on remand in our prisons. Remand decisions are properly for independent judges, but we will consider whether to extend the discount to encourage people to plead guilty at the first opportunity, because when more offenders plead guilty, that saves time in the court and cuts the number of people in our prisons on remand, but most importantly it saves victims the ordeal of giving evidence in court. We will also be reviewing the use of recall for offenders on release who infringe the terms of their licence. It is right that ex-prisoners who commit new crimes or serious breaches while on licence should be returned to prison. We want to ensure that the system is working effectively to mitigate any risk posed by offenders while not having people in prison on recall longer than necessary.
We will take decisive action to address sentences of imprisonment for public protection. We put a stop to these discredited sentences a decade ago, but it is true that there remain about 3,000 IPP prisoners in custody despite their original tariff expiring years ago. IPPs are a stain on our justice system, so I am looking at options to curtail the licence period to restore greater proportionality to IPP sentences in line with recommendation 8 of the Justice Committee’s report, and I will come back to the House on that in due course. This will not compromise public safety. Those found by the Parole Board to pose a risk to the public will not be released.
As I have set out, we are taking decisive action to make our prisons work better in the long term. We are building more prison places than at any time since Disraeli was speaking from this Dispatch Box. We are rolling out hundreds of rapid deployment cells across the country to increase immediate capacity. We are going further and faster than ever before to remove foreign criminals from our prisons.
To govern is to choose. We choose to lock up the most dangerous criminals for longer to protect victims and their families. We choose to reform the justice system so that criminals who can otherwise be forced into taking the right path are not trapped in a cycle of criminality. That is the right long-term plan for our justice system, and I commend this statement to the House.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
I call the shadow Secretary of State.
Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab)
Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement.
The Secretary of State was on his feet for about 15 minutes, his statement is about 2,500 words long, he did an op-ed at the weekend in The Telegraph, and there have been endless briefings to the media over the last few days. Yet in all that verbiage there has been not one word of apology to the British public for failing in the first duty of Government, which is to keep our citizens safe. As everybody knows, the first stage of rehabilitation is to acknowledge mistakes and make a sincere apology to those affected and let down by those actions, or, in the Secretary of State’s case, inactions. His failure to do so today is utterly inexcusable. It is a damning indictment of this Government’s collective failure.
Our prisons are completely full. We have been sounding the alarm for many years now, as overcrowding has skyrocketed. As of today, the public will undoubtedly be less safe. Although the Secretary of State has said that sentencing delays will apply only to those deemed “low risk”, he knows that in 2021 more than 20,000 offences were committed by those on bail, including more than 200 sexual offences. So the public need to know: what steps will he be taking to mitigate the risk of increased offending that will arise as a result of the delayed sentencing? How many cases in total are we talking about? How many of those involve sexual and violent crimes? What is the plan to reach out to victims and assure them that the convicted offender in their case will be taken off the streets as quickly as possible?
The reason we are in this position is that the Government have consistently broken their promises to deal with the rising prison population. As far back as 2016, the Government pledged to build 10,000 new prison places by 2020—the Public Accounts Committee found that they had managed just 206. So the Government went ahead and pledged 18,000 prison places, but still with no plan. A year later, they said that they would make it 20,000 by the mid-2020s. According to the latest figures, there are no more than 8,200 places set to be built by the end of 2025, which represents a shortfall of 60%. The Government have known about this problem not only for the whole time this Secretary of State has been in Parliament, but ever since the Prime Minister was the Chancellor, and they have done nothing. It beggars belief that the funding has been allocated but the Government still cannot get these prison places built—so much so that they are looking to rent space in prisons abroad, with no indication of how much that will cost. Given this woeful record, why should anyone believe that the Government will build those 20,000 prison places that we need? What update can the Secretary of State provide on the number of new prison places that are guaranteed to be built before the end of the year?
Will the Government consult on the changes to short sentences? Will any such consultation include victims? The Secretary of State knows that the use of community sentences has halved since 2011. How will the Government persuade the courts that these sentences are the solution? How can he reassure the public that this is not just a green light to offenders? He will know that this plan will take time to go through Parliament. What will his Government do in the immediate term to address the problem? So far, it sounds as though his plan is to move some prisoners abroad and to let others out early. Is that all he has got?
On the deportation of foreign national offenders, last year the Government managed to deport only 2,958 foreign national offenders, which is less than a third of the total number in our prisons and about half the annual number before the covid pandemic. Why should the public believe the Government when they claim that they can get a grip on the number of foreign national offenders in our prisons, given that they have failed to do so until now? What difference will bringing forward the deportation of foreign national offenders by six months make to the prison population—and by when? Let us be clear: the public need to know that today an offender—including, potentially, a sex offender—can go to court and be found guilty by a jury but instead of being locked up behind bars, where they belong, the inaction of this chaotic Conservative Government means that they can walk free. Can the Secretary of State tell the House today that not one individual convicted of a serious sexual offence is out on the streets as a result of a lack of prison places?
As the Secretary of State said, to govern is— [Interruption.]
Shabana Mahmood
As the Secretary of State acknowledged, to govern is to choose. His Government have chosen to fail victims and to fail the public. and to offer too little, too late to turn our failing criminal justice system around.
Alex Chalk
What a very disappointing response. I was surprised to hear that newfound interest in locking up rapists. Lest we forget, this Government are prosecuting more alleged rapists, convicting a higher proportion and imposing longer sentences than Labour, and ensuring that a higher proportion of those sentences is being spent behind bars.
It is important to aim off a little bit when looking at what is said in the Chamber by Labour Members. The hon. Lady refers to foreign national offenders, but I remember very well that back in 2020 we wanted to ensure that a plane full of rapists and murderers could leave the country, yet a letter came to the Prime Minister, saying:
“Dear Prime Minister, We, the undersigned,”—
have—
“grave concern over Home Office plans to deport 50 people”.
It went on to say:
“The flight and all future charter flights must be suspended”.
Shall we see who was on that flight, Madam Deputy Speaker? There was a man who had thrust a bottle into his victim’s face, leaving him scarred for life, in what was described as a “horrifying attack”—that is grievous bodily harm. Another person, who had been imprisoned for attacking a 17-year-old girl twice and abducting her, and who had sex with a 15-year-old, then lied about it and “vandalised” her life, according to her mother, was called “devious, callous and manipulative” by the judge. The hon. Lady signed a letter asking that he should not be deported. We will take no lessons from the Labour party in being tough on criminals. [Interruption.] She seems still to justify signing that letter. Does she not regret that decision? I think she might want to think about it again.
The Conservative party will get foreign national offenders out of this country. We have brought on the largest prison building programme since the Victorian era: 100 cells per week. [Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. When the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) was being interrupted, I stopped the interruption. I hope she will have the courtesy not to speak now from the Front Bench.
Alex Chalk
We will always take the steps that need to be taken to keep the British people safe.
In respect of community orders, the hon. Lady is right that it is important that they are robust and enforceable. That is why I was at pains to point out that we are doubling the number of tags—I suspect we will go much further and triple the number of tags. By the way, they are not the old radio frequency tags that were used when I was prosecuting. They are GPS tags that mean that judges and those appointed to the bench can ensure the monitoring of where that individual has gone, to make sure that they go to work and that their liberty is deprived at the weekend. That is the kind of robust penalty we support.
Our ability to ensure that people are under curfew for over 100 hours a week was in our legislation, which was opposed by—guess who?—the Labour party.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
I call the Chair of the Justice Committee.
Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
I commend the Lord Chancellor on his thoughtful, considered and serious statement that deserves a thoughtful and considered response, which it has not entirely had. Does he agree that it is right and proper that we are frank with the British public that prison is an extremely expensive way of dealing with people, and that it should be reserved for those who are a threat to us, not simply those with whom we are perhaps justifiably angry or irritated?
Does the Lord Chancellor agree that it is right to take on board some of the recommendations of the Justice Committee’s report in relation to IPP prisoners—those sentenced to imprisonment for public protection? I welcome what has been said about remand, which we know is also important. As well as reducing the qualifying licence period, can he help us a little more on what else he will do to take on board the recommendations about IPP prisoners in the report? What is the timeframe for moving swiftly towards reducing the remand population?
Alex Chalk
I thank my hon. Friend for his typically thoughtful and considered response. He is absolutely right that we have to make choices about what we do in respect of the custodial estate. We choose to ensure that the most dangerous people are locked away for longer, which is right, so that the punishment fits the crime and so that we protect the British people. This is not simply a political statement but a statement of evidence, and the evidence, not just in England and Wales but in the Netherlands and elsewhere, shows that short sentences are disproportionately associated with recidivism. Of course we should learn the lessons from that.
My hon. Friend rightly raises the issue of IPPs, which are a stain on the justice system. That point is made even by the person who came up with the idea. We will take steps, and I thank the Justice Committee for taking on this difficult issue and for coming up with some very sensible proposals. I will be announcing more, but the central point about licence length is critical. It seems to me that this 10-year licence length means that it is very hard for people on IPP to think they will ever be free.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
I have a constituent who has been in prison for 18 years under IPP. He is due to be up for parole towards the end of the year. The Secretary of State says he will be bringing forward a review. How long will that take, and how will it impact on people awaiting the Parole Board?
Alex Chalk
First, I make it very clear to the hon. Lady and her constituent that we will not take steps that put the British people at risk. The Parole Board will have to make an assessment, in the normal way, on whether a person is safe to be released. If they are considered safe for release, the question is then about the duration of the licence period that remains. IPP effectively continues to hang over them. I am looking at that particular area at the moment, but I want to be clear that it is a sensitive area. We are trying to unwind a very ill-starred policy, but we have to do so in a way that ultimately keeps the British people safe.
Sir Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
I commend my right hon. and learned Friend for his statement. In so many ways, it echoes and builds on the work we did together in the Department.
I emphasise the importance of building a technologically sound, innovative and direct alternative to short-term prison sentences, which I think this statement presages. We need to get on with that work, because short-term sentences have to be a last resort, as they clearly do not help to cut crime. What more can my right hon. and learned Friend do to redouble efforts to ensure that the prison building programme that started when I was in office is delivered on time, and that we overcome some of the constant barriers of planning permission and other administrative obstacles?
Alex Chalk
l pay tribute to my right hon. and learned Friend. I talked about tough decisions being made in the white heat of the pandemic, and he is the one who said that we will not get rid of the jury system on our watch. My goodness, he was right to say that. It was a tough call, but it was manifestly the right one.
Lest we forget, Five Wells and Fosse Way have opened and HMP Millsike is currently under construction, going alongside Garth, Gartree, Grendon/Spring Hill and other prisons. My right hon. and learned Friend is right that there has been an issue with planning. I have said that, with an additional £30 million, we will identify further sites in 2024 and get the planning permission well in advance, because we cannot have a situation in which these critical building programmes are held up by the planning process. We are changing to a new approach, and we are putting on the afterburners to make sure those prisons get built.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
I declare an interest as an honorary life member of the Prison Officers Association.
In his statement, the Secretary of State celebrated the fact that the prison population has risen to 80,000. When I was elected in 1997, it was a scandal that we were at the 40,000 level. Part of the problem is the lack of crime prevention, but there is also a failure of rehabilitation. The statement mentioned probation, but there was no mention of prison staff. There is a desperate need for adequate prison staffing if we are to secure the rehabilitation of prisoners. What will be the staff-prisoner ratio in our prisons following these reforms?
Alex Chalk
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for raising the issue of prison staff, as they are ultimately the most important factor, beyond the nature of the prison estate, in making the difference to whether prisoners are kept safe and rehabilitated. We are increasing the number of prison staff, and I think an additional 700 staff were recruited in the last period for which figures are available. The other important point is retention, and we are starting to see a positive trend in retention.
I also make the point that those prison officers who stuck by their duty during the pandemic and went into work when it was tough to do that—when their parents and friends would have been telling them not to do so—are the ones who ensured there was not a complete catastrophe in our prisons in terms of loss of life, and they should take enormous credit for that.
Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)
I completely agree with the Lord Chancellor’s last point about prison staff during the covid pandemic, and I am very grateful to him for pointing out that the approach to FNOs must continue. He will know that between 2019 and 2022, some 12,000 FNOs were deported, despite, as he so eloquently pointed out, opposition from Labour Members. They were writing letters personally to the Prime Minister and myself. What assurances will the Lord Chancellor give the public going forward—this is about the direction of travel on this issue—that they are protected, and that offenders who are out and released back into the community, with GPS tags, do not pose a threat to the public? He will recall that in 2008, when the Labour party was in government, similar policies were pursued and there were major issues, with hundreds reoffending and prisoners on the run despite being recalled to prison.
Alex Chalk
I thank my right hon. Friend; no one did more in government to ensure that serious foreign national offenders were on planes getting out of the country. She did an exceptional job and I pay tribute to her for that.
On public protection, the whole point of the suspended sentence order is that the magistrate will say to the individual, “The crime that you’ve committed crosses the custody threshold. I am going to impose a suspended sentence order, potentially with a curfew and unpaid work”—or whatever the other conditions are. That order is then a sword of Damocles hanging over the person. If they do not comply, they are brought back before the court and they serve that sentence in custody. The choice for that offender is very clear: do what they should and abide by the order of the court, or they will hear the clang of the prison gates.
Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)
As Home Secretary, Lord David Blunkett introduced indeterminate imprisonment for public protection sentences. Lord Blunkett has since said that he regrets injustices caused by the awarding of those IPP sentences. In February this year, 372 of the 2,456 women serving sentences in prison were serving indeterminate sentences. How many women are still serving IPP sentences who have already served their full tariff?
Alex Chalk
The hon. Gentleman is right, and I remember when IPPs came in; they were created by the Criminal Justice Act 2003. I was a barrister at the time and I remember that under the legislation we were required effectively to apply for them and that judges were required to hand them down. There has been an understanding, in the intervening 20 years, that they have not operated as they should. They have created a sense of total despair, hopelessness and, most importantly of all, injustice.
How we deal with this issue is difficult in circumstances where the Parole Board has judged that people remain a danger to society. That is the issue. There is no easy solution where we say simply, “Let people out”, because we know in doing so that they could commit crimes and harm our fellow citizens. So we cannot do that, but what we will do is take every step, including providing additional psychological support so that individuals can prepare for parole hearings, and we will look at the issue of licences. We will not compromise on public safety, but we will do everything we can to scrub out the stain of those misguided sentences.
Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)
The success of our prisons is not about having the highest possible number of prisoners in them; it is surely about prison rehabilitating offenders so that there are fewer victims of crime in the future. I strongly welcome the measures that the Lord Chancellor has announced today, especially on not putting people in prison who do not need to be in prison. Does he agree that we can cut crime substantially with much more effective use of technology, including the GPS tags that he mentioned, creating almost a virtual prison? That will be justice for the digital age under this party rather than for the Victorian era, which the Labour party seems to prefer.
Alex Chalk
My hon. Friend speaks clearly and persuasively, with the benefit of great experience as a magistrate. In my experience, magistrates courts overwhelmingly want to ensure, of course, that the punishment fits the crime, but they also want to ensure that the individual is taken away from the path of crime and ultimately rehabilitated. So of course my hon. Friend is right. Other countries have used technology very effectively. Where there are lessons to learn, we should learn them, but we will not compromise on ensuring that there is punishment. We can just deliver punishment with technology even more effectively.
Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
The Home Affairs Committee produced a report a while ago on the investigation and prosecution of rape and serious sexual assault, and we found that those cases were disproportionately affected by the backlog in the courts. Of course, few cases—less than 2%—are actually getting to the courts, and even those are taking too long, so with these reports that judges are now going to delay sentencing, what does the Lord Chancellor have to say to the victims of rape and serious sexual assault who wait far too long for justice? It seems like it is going to be an even longer wait.
Alex Chalk
The right hon. Lady is right when she says it is important to try to reduce the period of time that people are waiting. I absolutely get that point, but in the interests of balance, it is equally important to note the following. More people are being prosecuted for rape than in 2010, and a higher proportion are being convicted; the sentences are a third longer, and defendants are spending a higher proportion of those sentences in custody; we have introduced reforms that mean that complainants can pre-record their evidence; we have rolled out over 800 independent sexual violence advisers to support people; we have created the offences of coercive and controlling behaviour and have stood up a 24/7 rape support helpline. All that we do and more.
I can tell hon. Members that compared with when I was prosecuting this stuff, the difference in the experience and the rights of victims of sexual violence is night and day. As I say, complainants now have the right to make pre-recorded evidence; they can have court familiarisation visits; and they have the right to an ISVA, to seek a redetermination in the event that the CPS decides to reduce a charge, and to make a victim personal statement. We do all this because we care passionately about wanting to support victims of sexual offences, and we will continue to do so.
John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
I strongly welcome the proposal to deport more foreign criminals, and I also support the idea of finding something better than prison for non-violent offenders. Will that include, wherever possible, their need to have a job legally and to pay compensation to those against whom they have committed fraud, theft and other financial crimes?
Alex Chalk
My right hon. Friend makes two excellent points. It is worth reflecting on the fact that since 2019, we have deported around 15,000 foreign national offenders. A huge amount of work has taken place, and that will continue, albeit at an even greater pace.
The second point he makes is fundamental. Judges already have the power to impose a compensation order in the event that someone is convicted of a crime, but their ability to do so is determined by the funds that are available to that individual. How much better it is if the individual can go out and do an honest day’s work to generate more income, so that they can, in a small way, put right the crime they have committed and the damage they have done.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Minister very much for his statement and his comments. I am mindful that this is about England and Wales, but I have been contacted over the past few years by a number of people who have been victims of perpetrators of some of the most bestial crimes in the country. The Government and the Minister have replied to some of the questions I have asked and some of the comments I have made to his Department, but can he tell me today whether those victims will be elevated to a more prominent position, and whether looking after them will be given greater priority? Their feelings—how those crimes have hurt them—must be a priority for Government.
Alex Chalk
As is so often the case, the hon, Gentleman is absolutely right. We have to ensure that victims are not spectators in the criminal justice process, but participants in it. That is why we have rolled out the victims code, which contains 12 core entitlements to ensure that victims can be kept updated about the progress of the case and informed about special measures and how they give their evidence, as well as the right to court familiarisation visits, the right to make a victim impact statement and a right of review, as I have indicated. We have also ensured that victims’ funding has been quadrupled since 2010, we have doubled support for rape support centres, and so on. That is over and above creating the new offences to ensure that those victims can get justice. All this we do and more, and we do so because we want to put victims first.
Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)
Rape, and child rape in particular, is an abhorrent crime. Ensuring that those perpetrators serve their full sentence in prison will clearly act as a deterrent and reassure the public, but what steps is my right hon. and learned Friend taking to ensure we have the prison places to lock up dangerous rapists and child rapists in particular, so that victims know that those perpetrators are always behind bars?
Alex Chalk
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Those are some of the most appalling crimes, which shatter not just the lives of the victims, but potentially those of so many others, including the victims’ friends and families, and he is absolutely right that we need to make sure there is always sufficient custodial capacity for that to take place. That is why I am announcing today that we will roll out a programme to buy the very locations we need next year, with additional money, to ensure that, well in advance of the prison builds needing to come on line, we have the planning permission in place so that there is the pipeline of places to ensure that justice can be done.
Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)
To be fair to the Lord Chancellor, from the length of his answers there is no doubt he is against shorter sentences. [Laughter.]
My question is about overcrowded and understaffed prisons that make rehabilitation almost impossible. Many prisoners now leave jail more criminalised, more traumatised and, indeed, more dangerous than when they first arrived. While the measures outlined today may make a positive impact, the Government must go further. Will the Secretary of State commit to tackling the crisis in prison officer retention by starting with the Prison Officers Association’s key demand to reduce the pension age, which it insists has a massive effect on morale and, therefore, on the retention of prison officers?
Alex Chalk
I thank the hon. Gentleman. In fairness, that was quite a good joke; it was not bad—
Alex Chalk
The hon. Gentleman made some fair points, and I will get back to him.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
The Lord Chancellor is clearly well on top of this subject, so may I bowl him a couple of googlies? What safeguards will there be to prevent deported foreign criminals from coming back here if they are not imprisoned overseas? Will he be very careful before going down the road of plea bargaining, as in the States, whereby there is a perverse incentive for the innocent to plead guilty because of the huge disparity in the sentences they may receive?
Alex Chalk
To take the second point first, I am so pleased to hear my right hon. Friend say that. There are certain things that really are important in our jurisdiction: first, we do not do plea bargaining; secondly, we do not have political appointment of judges; and, thirdly, we have a jury system. These are incredibly important things. We do not talk about them enough in this Chamber, but they are immensely important to our basic freedom. I was delighted to hear that and, yes, he can be sure that we are not going down the road of plea bargaining.
On the point my right hon. Friend makes about ensuring people cannot come back, that is precisely the point. It is not just and it is not sensible to have people costing the taxpayer a huge amount of money in British prisons if, when they are out, they are never coming back anyway. That is central to our plan to ensure that, as we expand the ERS window, we put in place every necessary measure—in compliance or in consultation with our international counterparts—to ensure that once people are out, they are never coming back.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
The second largest prison in Europe is HMP Berwyn in north Wales. As of today, I understand that it houses 1,989 prisoners. Any solution to the well-documented problems of violence at HMP Berwyn since it opened six years ago is continuously undermined by the failure to retain staff because working conditions are so extreme. Will the Secretary of State recognise that warehousing offenders in gargantuan prisons creates chronic problems and is not fit for purpose?
Alex Chalk
I am very glad the right hon. Member has mentioned Berwyn. I went to Berwyn, and she is right that we always want to recruit more prison staff, but let us pause for a second just to note how fantastic some of the work is in that prison. I was there in the jobcentre—in effect, there is a jobcentre within the prison—and people were having Zoom interviews with their potential employers on the outside. That is one of the reasons why reoffending has dropped while we have been in government from 32% to 24%, and it is one of the reasons why crime is down overall. She mentions the 1,900 or so people, but let me say—lest we forget—that the Labour party promised, before it left office, that there would be three Titan prisons with 2,500 people in them. Did they happen? Did they heck.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. I think that was quite mild. It is all right. It could have been worse.
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
There was a great deal to be welcomed in my right hon. and learned Friend’s statement, but can I unpack the capacity question? When he is successful in deporting more foreign national offenders, that will free up capacity. When he is successful in the home detention curfews and better use of technology, that will free up prison capacity, leaving the spike as the covid backlog is caught up with creating a temporary problem in capacity. Therefore, would it not be better to meet it with the temporary provision of cells in the existing prison estate, rather than going the whole hog and devastating communities such as mine in Grendon Underwood and Edgcott by building mega-prisons?
Alex Chalk
May I first put it on the record that no one could be a more doughty defender of the interests of the people of Buckingham than my hon. Friend, who raises with me time and again the concerns of his constituents about Grendon Springhill? I will continue to have those important conversations with him, knowing fine well that his constituents’ interests are being vigorously advanced.
Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
The ministerial code says that all major announcements of Government policy should be made to the House first, yet half of what has been announced today was preluded by an op-ed written by the Secretary of State and in briefings to national newspapers over the weekend. That is a breach of the ministerial code, and when I asked Sir Laurie Magnus, the independent adviser on ministerial interests, whether he would investigate such breaches, he said, “Yes, in theory.” Would it not be a good idea, especially considering that the Secretary of State thinks that short and minor sanctions lead to recidivism, if there was a substantial sanction against Ministers who do that, and he reported himself to the independent adviser?
Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)
May I say what a pleasure it was to hear the Lord Chancellor’s statement, which represents a big step forward for our criminal justice system? He and I have long shared the view that we do not lock up the violent for long enough and there are smarter ways of dealing with the non-violent. On that note, I applaud his expansion of the tagging programme. I have two questions. First, on GPS tags, does he intend to expand the acquisitive crime pilot? Currently, in 19 police force areas every burglar and robber released from prison is GPS tagged to reduce reoffending. Secondly, while we are not short of sobriety tags, which he will know I am extremely keen on, the problem is that judges are just not using them, so what steps will he take to expand judicial enthusiasm, given how much alcohol drives low-level crime?
Alex Chalk
My right hon. Friend did exceptionally important work in ensuring that the supply and roll-out of alcohol sobriety tags, and indeed other tags, proceeded at huge pace, and they make a significant difference. On his point about uptake, plainly sentences are a matter for the independent judiciary, but I do think that more can be done to ensure that judges and magistrates are aware of the sheer extent of the technology available, and the steps that can be taken to properly curtail people’s freedom in appropriate cases by way of punishment, and to ensure that they have the tags to steer people away from addiction. Ultimately, that can be the best way to ensure that people are properly rehabilitated and become contributing members of society once again.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
The Secretary of State reminds me of the unfortunate astronaut who by mistake is still circling the moon somewhere, out of touch, when he only expected to be up there for three months. Those of us who have been down on planet Earth for the last 13 years know about the resources devoted to the Ministry of Justice, which has faced the worst cuts of any Department. Is he aware that we have been promised a royal commission on justice three times in the Queen’s Speech, which will now be the King’s Speech? Today’s statement was supposed to be an update on prison capacity. He has covered far more than that. Is he aware, for example, that joint enterprise is responsible for 1,000 young people who should not be in prison being in prison? Why can he not wake up and do something about them?
Alex Chalk
I know that the hon. Gentleman cares passionately about joint enterprise, but I must tell him this: joint enterprise is the legal doctrine that means that the getaway driver is culpable, or that the person who supplies the firearm in a murder is held properly accountable and found guilty. Those are important tools that the Court of Appeal considered carefully in the case of Jogee. Getting rid of joint enterprise would mean that a lot of people who have helped or encouraged the commission of offences get away—in some cases, with murder.
Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)
I declare an interest as the founder and chairman of a charity that works in prisons. I very much support today’s announcement of an expansion of prison capacity and tagging, both of which are necessary and right. I understand that the Lord Chancellor was inspired by Texas prisons. I visited some Texan jails and saw that they are doing two things right. The first is sentencing, with tough justice ensuring that people get the sentences that they deserve. The second thing that they are doing in Texas to reduce the jail population is getting rehabilitation right and, crucially, relying on civil society—outside organisations get access to prisoners before they are released and then support them afterwards. I think that the Government are getting it right on sentencing, but does the Lord Chancellor agree that we need to do more on rehabilitation, particularly by involving civil society?
Alex Chalk
My hon. Friend is completely correct. We in this Chamber all know that the context for offending—not an excuse, but the context—can be deep-seated problems of addiction, homelessness, relationship breakdown and so on. One thing I am pleased about is that the Department of Health and Social Care is investing over half a billion pounds, with more than 1,600 additional staff, to ensure that drug treatment is available to those who need it. For our part, we in the Ministry of Justice have launched a pilot of three intensive supervision courts in the Teesside and Liverpool Crown courts to ensure that those whose offending behaviour is driven by substance misuse can get the treatment they need to get them off drugs and off the driver of their offences.
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)
As my constituents have pointed out to me, there is a shoplifting epidemic under the Conservative Government. The police often do not deal with burglaries and other such crimes because of a lack of resources. Conviction rates for rape and sexual violence are at record lows. Now that our prisons are full, the Government propose to release prisoners early or try to ship them abroad. That is all because of a lack of foresight and action. Why are the Government so weak on law and order, and when were they first warned about a crisis and a lack of places in prisons?
Alex Chalk
There are more people in prison than ever before, which rather suggests the opposite of what the hon. Gentleman says. He also says that the conviction rate for rape is lower, but that is completely wrong—it is higher. Does he know who was Director of Public Prosecutions before? The Leader of the Opposition.
Edward Timpson (Eddisbury) (Con)
Despite resulting in lower reconviction rates, the use of community orders has halved in the last decade, so will today’s announcement start to reverse that trend? In trying to do so, will my right hon. and learned Friend consider increasing the use of pre-sentence reports and speeding up the roll-out of community sentence orders where we are trying to get people treated?
Alex Chalk
That is an excellent question. In appropriate cases, pre-sentence reports are vital because the probation service can provide the sentencing judge or magistrate with all the surrounding information about the offender so that they can impose a sentence that meets the seriousness of the case while also being rehabilitative and appropriate. That requires trained probation officers who are experts in their area. That is why we have invested £155 million in addition, each and every year, to ensure that the probation service has the resource it needs. I know from my time as a practitioner that the reports the probation service provides are essential to ensure that justice can be done.
Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab)
The Times reports that
“Lord Justice Edis, the senior presiding judge for England and Wales, has ordered that sentencing of convicted criminals who are currently on bail should be delayed”
from today. According to that report, the order did not specifically exclude rape convictions, which judges have expressed alarm about, given the already abysmal conviction rates of well below 2%. What message does the Secretary of State think such an order sends to victims of sexual violence who are deciding whether they have enough faith in our broken justice system to come forward? When do the Government expect sentencing to restart?
Alex Chalk
It is incredibly important that no one from this Chamber deliberately or inadvertently gives the impression that rapists are not going to be sentenced. They are going to be sentenced; the sentences imposed will be, on average, a third longer than those imposed in 2010; and they will serve a higher proportion of those sentences in custody. We are prosecuting more people for rape than in 2010 and, as I say, they are being punished more severely, so let the message go out that people who offend against women—and it is overwhelmingly against women—and behave in such a barbaric way can expect not just to hear the clang of the prison gate, but to be reflecting on their actions for a very long time.
James Daly (Bury North) (Con)
Will my right hon. and learned Friend give the House a guarantee that judges or magistrates will retain the discretion to impose short-term custodial sentences in the interests of public justice and public protection? In the circumstances, does he foresee a change to the sentencing guidelines for the raft of offences covered by the 12-month sentencing threshold? Does he foresee that all such offences will now be sentenced according to the one test he has outlined?
Alex Chalk
My hon. Friend has been a practitioner in the courts, so he understands, as all practitioners do, that there are offenders who, I am afraid, show themselves unwilling to abide by the order of the court, or incapable of doing so, and even if the court is prepared to say, “There should be a suspended sentence in your case,” they will breach it. In those circumstances, magistrates and judges must have the power, in the final analysis, to send that person to immediate custody. We will always ensure that they have that power. That is important for the rule of law and to send the message that there will be consequences if a person flouts an order of the court.
Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
I want to ask about licence conditions, and particularly those that prohibit the offender from contacting certain people or entering certain postcodes. It is obvious that such conditions are about protecting victims and their families. My concern is that the Lord Chancellor’s statement did not make it absolutely clear that breaching such conditions will lead to a return to custody. It is important for victims to hear that those kinds of transgressions will result in an immediate return to custody.
Alex Chalk
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that helpful and appropriate query on behalf of his constituents. In any case, before an individual falls to be released under the sentence that has been applied—in other words, when they get to the end of the custodial element of their sentence—probation officers will sort out, in advance, the package of licence conditions, which could include, as the hon. Gentleman indicated, instructions not to contact someone directly or indirectly, a residence condition, or a condition on contact with probation officers and so on. The point is that if they breach those conditions, they are liable to be recalled and—here is the important point—not just for the period of that release but for the entire balance of their sentence. In other words, if somebody was sentenced to 18 months and fell to be released at the nine-month mark, but a week later they breached the probation conditions, they would fall to serve the entire balance of the sentence of nine months. That is important. Metaphorically speaking, that sword of Damocles is hanging over that offender to ensure that they stay in line and do not commit further offences.
Nick Fletcher (Don Valley) (Con)
I thank my right hon. and learned Friend for his statement. I believe in zero tolerance and long sentences for the most serious crimes, but I also believe in prevention rather than cure. With 96% of the prison population being men and many young boys destined to spend their lives in and out of prison, will the Lord Chancellor use his position in Cabinet to work with his colleagues on reducing the number of boys who are on that path? Will he also back my campaign for a Minister for men? We are letting boys and young men down and it simply is not fair on men or women, or on the taxpayer as a whole.
Alex Chalk
My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we want to ensure that all prisoners, and certainly young men, are steered away from crime. We now have a much better understanding, as a nation, of some of the drivers of some offending. That is why, under our watch, when prisoners come into jail there will be a neurodiversity assessment to explore their background. We could potentially discover a brain injury—the hon. Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant) has gone, but I know that he takes an interest in that subject. The whole approach we are now taking is to ensure that those who can be redeemed are redeemed, but that those who are frankly beyond redemption and are a threat to society are locked up, and locked up for longer. That is the right approach.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
In a parallel Government universe, the Secretary of State’s proposals for directing short-term prisoners into community sentences might be an idea whose time had come, but it requires experienced probation staff in post, properly organised and challenging community work, and genuine rehabilitation initiatives. His Government’s evisceration of the justice system means that none of that is available, and he is doing it now only because of their mismanagement of the about-to-burst prison estate. Has he not been set up to fail?
Alex Chalk
No, that is wrong. The first part—that this is an idea whose time has come—is correct. I spoke about this when I was a Back Bencher in a speech at the Conservative party conference, of all places. I have come to this as a realisation for some time. What is encouraging is that the Government are putting enormous additional resource into the probation service, because I reckon that it is ultimately critical to the success of community orders; it does a phenomenal job. We are putting more resources in and recruiting more, and we will do everything we can to strengthen the system.
Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)
My right hon. and learned Friend knows that magistrates think carefully before they commit anybody to custody, because they know that once somebody is sent to prison for a short sentence, their life can spiral downwards very quickly: they can lose their home, their job and, often, their family. Does he agree that more robust community sentences are needed, particularly in relation to drug rehabilitation, which is the root cause of so much offending? Will he set out what steps he is taking to ensure that those on community sentences are suitably supervised?
Alex Chalk
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. His observation that magistrates do all they can to avoid sending someone to custody and do so only when absolutely necessary was well made. The reason why this reform will be so important is that under a suspended sentence order, the magistrates are saying in effect to that individual, “You must engage in a sensible and productive way with drug rehabilitation. If you don’t, you will go to prison.” That provides the most powerful incentive for that individual to break the cycle of offending while not locking them up, which, as my hon. Friend indicated, would mean they could lose their universal credit, not get the mental health treatment they require and break the family relationships that can be so important to keeping people away from crime.
Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab)
Four years ago, the Secretary of State’s Department announced limits on short-term sentencing, which were then scrapped, and now they are back. That is four years wasted; years when Ministers sat on their hands, ignoring a crisis of their own making. Meanwhile, prison officers have had to deal with the consequences of health and safety concerns, overcrowding and violence, all undercut by low pay and poor terms and conditions. Will he apologise to prison officers—especially those in the City of Durham—and will he lower the retirement age?
Alex Chalk
Prison officers in the City of Durham and elsewhere do an exceptionally important job. That is why I was pleased to accept the recommendation of the independent pay review body to ensure that the pay uplift was fair and decent, and recognised the stunningly important work that they do. That is why we have rolled out £100 million in prison security to ensure that prison officers have body-worn video cameras and other security measures to keep them safe. We will always do everything we can—whether with recruitment, pay or helping to drive retention—to keep prison officers safe and our prisons well resourced with prison officers.
Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)
My right hon. and learned Friend will be aware that I have been notified that HMP Wealstun in my constituency will get new cells. Will he write to me on when those will be completed by and what conversations he has had with the governor on being able to staff them to capacity? Many of the prison officers are constituents of mine.
Alex Chalk
I thank my right hon. Friend for the care and attention he takes in respect of this matter. I will be delighted to write to him in the terms he suggests.
Kate Osamor (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)
Earlier this year, I secured a Westminster Hall debate on the criminalisation of ethnic minority and migrant women who are themselves victims of violence. Sadly, 57% of women in prison or under community supervision are victims of domestic violence—a shocking statistic. Will the Lord Chancellor commit to amending the Victims and Prisoners Bill to ensure statutory defences for those victims of domestic violence accused of offending, to prevent more unjust convictions?
Alex Chalk
I thank the hon. Lady for the care and attention she gives to this topic. It is worth reflecting that around 5% of the overall prison population are women, so it is overwhelmingly men who are in custody. On the point she raises, she will be aware that there are already defences available—duress, self-defence and so on—that can be invoked by individuals facing charges. We think that strikes the right balance, but I am of course happy to have a conversation with her about any representation she might wish to make.
Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)
A rapist should be prosecuted, they should be sentenced and they should serve that sentence, and I thank the Lord Chancellor for making that very clear today. In Chelmsford we have a small number of people who have been charged with antisocial behaviour, a low-level crime, and are waiting to go to the magistrates court, but they are causing havoc on our high streets as they reoffend. Can he assure us that those persistent offenders will still be judged? I know that, as an Essex MP, Madam Deputy Speaker, who was here earlier, will have wanted to know about the situation in our local prison at Chelmsford: there were 708 prisoners there last night, so only 15 empty spaces, but there are 27 cells that could be repaired. Could the Lord Chancellor possibly look into repairing those cells?
Alex Chalk
On that last point, we have put a great deal of funding into the maintenance of Chelmsford prison, but also HMP Liverpool and Birmingham in particular. On the first point my right hon. Friend raises, about recidivist offenders, it is precisely because we are concerned about people committing so-called low-level offending that we want to ensure that magistrates retain the power to send people to prison. If people show defiance and that they are incapable or unwilling to abide by the terms of the order of the court, there is a simple answer: they will go to prison and they will learn to reflect on their actions in custody.
Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)
I welcome some of what the Justice Secretary said in his statement, especially on the implementation of the recommendations of the Justice Committee on IPP sentences. They were always a terrible idea, in my view, and they have been used badly. However, it should not be a surprise to anybody that, after 13 years of deliberate and savage underfunding, the criminal justice system is on its knees and our prisons are full to bursting. If it is right that the senior presiding judge, Lord Justice Edis, is saying to sentencing judges, “Adjourn sentence,” is that his fault, or is it the Justice Secretary’s fault?
Alex Chalk
The first part of the hon. Gentleman’s question, on IPPs, was absolutely right, and I am delighted to hear that he agrees. However, he is making a bad political point on the second matter, and it is not borne out by the arithmetic. In 2010 the total number of cases was around 48,000—he is shaking his head; we can argue about opinion, but this is fact. The position prior to the pandemic was around 40,000. The position we have at present is a function of that pandemic, and we are frank about that. That is why we are taking steps not just to increase the number of judges—we have recruited an additional 1,000—but putting up to £141 million into legal aid, something he should support. We will do everything we can to expand capacity in the system to ensure that we can deliver justice for all.
Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. and learned Friend’s statement and his focus on protecting the public. He mentioned that we are changing the law to make whole life sentences the default for the most heinous types of murder. He will be aware that one of the cases that led to that change in the law was the release by the parole board of the “monster of Worcester”, David McGreavy, a multiple child murderer. Unfortunately, last week, Worcester Crown court saw the sentencing of another monster of Worcester, Anthony Roberts, for a savage sexual assault on a 71-year-old woman. He had previously been sentenced to life for attempted murder of a 15-year-old girl. Will my right hon. and learned Friend meet me to hear the concerns of my constituents about this appalling case and about the case to be made for attempted murder, aggravated by sexual assault, to be treated alongside those heinous murders?
Alex Chalk
Of course I will—what an appalling case. I would be delighted to meet my hon. Friend. On the changes to whole life orders that we have introduced following the dreadful Sarah Everard case, where there was sexual violence followed by murder, it is in such cases that we insist, as a matter of fairness and basic natural justice, that someone who behaves in that way should expect to end their days in custody. That is what the British people think, and that is what we think too.
Tahir Ali (Birmingham, Hall Green) (Lab)
My constituents are increasingly victims of the scourge of dangerous and antisocial driving. They have contacted me demanding tougher penalties for those who cause death by dangerous driving. I welcome the Lord Chancellor’s statement that sentences have been increased for offences including death by dangerous driving to a maximum of life imprisonment. Will he confirm that prison capacity is not an obstacle to ensuring that dangerous drivers serve the prison time they deserve?
Alex Chalk
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that point. Dangerous driving shatters lives and families, which is why we thought it was right, in recognition of the sheer harm that it causes, that the maximum sentence should go from 14 years to life. I make the point, gently, that we would have welcomed support from the Opposition, which unfortunately we did not get. Notwithstanding the point that he raised, it is important for independent judges to decide on the facts of the case. We welcome the fact that the Sentencing Council is in place to impose guidelines to ensure that judges have everything they need to ensure consistency but also condign punishment.
Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)
I welcome the Lord Chancellor’s statement today, and I congratulate him on clearly being on top of a difficult brief, and on confirming today that those serious and violent criminals are being locked up for longer. Could he expand on the reoffending rates of those on short sentences versus community sentences? Does he believe that the general public—and victims, potentially—might support them, because those convicted are seen as doing good when they complete their community service in public?
Alex Chalk
I thank my right hon. Friend for getting absolutely to the heart of it. Those who are sentenced to short custodial sentences—under 12 months—statistically go on to reoffend 55% of the time. Yet for those who have suspended sentence orders with conditions—such as unpaid work or to address mental health issues or whatever—22% commit further offences. There is a massive reduction. We want to ensure that once people have served their sentences and atoned for the crime they have committed, they can go on to become law-abiding, contributing members of society.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
Last man standing, Mr Deputy Speaker. No early release for me. The Secretary of State’s statement would be all the more impressive had it not come after 13 years of continuous Conservative Governments. They promised to create 20,000 extra places by the mid-2020s, but we have seen a net increase of 300. We have lost some places to dilapidation, and those that have replaced them amount to a net increase of only 300. Only a few weeks ago, we were told that the Government were implacably opposed to early release. I take it that he has dropped his idea of buying places in foreign prisons. The truth is that the management of the system has been completely chaotic for 13 years. When will we see the increase in prison places that the Government have been talking about?
Alex Chalk
The first thing to say is that our prison programme is the largest since the Victorian era—20,000 places. If I may say so, that stands in stark contrast to Labour. Jack Straw stood at this Dispatch Box and said, “We will build three titan prisons, each one of them 2,500”. Did it happen? No, it did not. This is the party that has put the money behind it. In fact, it was this Prime Minister, as Chancellor, who did that. We are rolling them out. By the way, I will make no apology for taking offline old and inadequate accommodation and replacing it with modern, secure, decent prisons. That is something the hon. Gentleman should welcome.
Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)
My right hon. Friend will be well aware that people who have been through the care system are overrepresented in our prisons, as are people with neurodiverse conditions, as he has mentioned, and many existing victims of crime and abuse. It is a mark of a civilised society that when those people first touch the criminal justice system, we take the opportunity to support them to make them functioning members of society, not simply lock them up and throw away the key. We have heard all that across the Chamber, but that message does not survive the retail nature of our politics. Will he assure me that the Government will continue to walk the walk and talk the talk on those messages?
Alex Chalk
More than many people in this place, my hon. Friend combines compassion with clarity of thought. She absolutely demonstrated that. It is incumbent on all of us to advocate for basic fairness and decency and what works, and I can think of no more powerful advocate than my hon. Friend.
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con)
I welcome the Lord Chancellor’s statement that foreign criminals—who, by the way, cost the taxpayer an absolute fortune—will be taken out of their comfy cell, put on a plane and sent back to where they came from. What assurances can he give me that those planes will actually take off the tarmac and not be blocked by lefty lawyers, human rights campaigners and silly letters signed by that lot over there?
Alex Chalk
As always, my hon. Friend makes a robust point. It is not right that the British people, having suffered the crime in the first place, should then have to pay for the privilege of locking people up for longer at a cost of £47,000 a year. We will send them back. The only people who will try to block it—who will try to block rapists, murderers and grievous bodily harmers—will be the Labour party. And we know that because they have tried to do so already.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Last but not least, I call James Sunderland.
James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con)
May I thank the Lord Chancellor for his pragmatic statement? I also thank the prisons Minister for his engagement over the weekend. I really welcome progress with IPP sentencing, on which I have a clear constituency interest, but what I really want to ask about is custodial sentences of less than 12 months being suspended. Is there a presumption that those needing to pay a debt to the community will do so in the very communities in which they offend?
Alex Chalk
What an excellent point to end on. It is critical that where a community is offended against, the offenders make that community whole—in other words, that they do the work, whether it is scrubbing graffiti, clearing wasteland or planting trees, in the community to try to atone for their guilt and to repair some of the damage they have done. I am delighted that, increasingly, police and crime commissioners are working together with local probation services to identify the stuff that needs doing in their community so that when defendants go straight, they also look after the community that they have wronged so badly in the first place.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I thank the Lord Chancellor for his statement and for answering questions for just a minute short of one hour and 20 minutes.
Before we move on to the next statement on transport, may I make an announcement? Wendy Morton is pulling the debate on knife crime this evening. We have another two statements to go, which could easily take us to 8.30 or 9 o’clock. I think she has sensibly made the decision that we should have that debate at another time, and I hope that that can be facilitated as soon as possible.
Zero-emission Vehicles, Drivers and HS2
(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Mark Harper)
With permission, Mr Deputy Speaker, I wish to make a statement on how this Government are improving the journeys that matter most to the British public.
Our path to net zero remains ambitious, but we are making that path more proportionate. We are backing Britain’s drivers and slamming the brakes on anti-car policies. Thanks to record Government investment, everyday journeys for more people in more places will improve more quickly.
I wish to update the House on three long-term decisions we have made to secure a brighter future, starting with zero-emission vehicles. No one should doubt or play down Britain’s progress on decarbonisation. “World leading” is not an exaggeration. We have cut emissions faster than any G7 country, pledged a decarbonised transport sector by 2050—the first major economy to do so—and today we have laid another world-leading piece of legislation: the zero-emission vehicle mandate. Manufacturers will now meet minimum targets of clean car production, starting with 22% next year and reaching 80% by 2030. It stands to be one of the largest carbon-saving policies across Government, and manufacturers are on board. They will deliver a mandate that they helped shape, a product of partnership between this Government and industry that has been not months but years in the making. These targets are now embedded in their forecasts, and that certainty has inspired investment, protected existing jobs and paved the way for new jobs, too. Look at the past few months: BMW, Stellantis and Tata are expanding their electric vehicle operations right across the UK, from Oxford to Merseyside.
However, targets can be missed if Governments fail to take people with them, and we will not make that mistake. So, people will be able to buy new petrol and diesel cars until 2035, aligning the UK with the likes of Canada, Australia and Germany. It is fairer on British consumers, it allows us to grow the used EV market—lowering costs and increasing choice—and it ensures we raise confidence in our charging infrastructure. In fact, public charge points are already up by 43% since last year and set to grow even further thanks to investment from both the Government and private sector.
For many, that is the future, but today, in some parts of the country, drivers are being punished and cars vilified. The Mayor of London’s expansion of the ultra low emission zone is forcing drivers to sell up or pay hefty daily fines. Overzealous enforcement practices—from yellow box junctions to blanket 20 mph zones—are turning drivers into cash cows for councils. Measures to overly restrict where and when people travel are already being planned in places such as Oxfordshire. My message to councils is simple: this anti-motorist campaign has run out of road. This Government recognise that cars are not a luxury; they are a lifeline. They are how most people in rural constituencies such as mine access work, education and essential services. That is why, after listening to the concerns of motorists, I have announced a new long-term plan for drivers, with 30 measures that will protect their rights to travel how they want, where they want and when they want.
We will use AI technology to keep traffic flowing. We will build a national parking platform to make it easier to find and pay for a space. We will inject some common sense into enforcement: where 20 mph zones are necessary exceptions with local support, not a blanket norm; where rules are enforced to keep our roads safe, not to line council coffers; and where low traffic neighbourhoods rely on public support, not on outdated covid guidance. How many times drivers get from A to B will be their choice, not decided by councils. None of that undermines our investments in public transport, nor in active travel. We are pro public transport, but we will not be anti-car. A sustainable transport network needs both, so people can choose to travel in the way that best suits them.
Let me now turn to our decision on HS2. With decades to wait before it arrived and benefits dwindling, it risked crowding out investment in other transport areas and no longer reflected post-pandemic changes in travel. Despite that, some argue that we should have carried on regardless—that a single rail line between a handful of cities and London is more important than millions of everyday journeys around the country. I disagree. The facts have changed, so we are changing our approach. With work well under way, we will finish HS2 between London Euston and the west midlands. Just last week, I spoke to the Euston Partnership Board on the huge regeneration opportunity that can be unlocked with private investment. However, by stopping HS2 in Birmingham, we can reinvest every penny of the £36 billion saved in transport across the country, in the roads, the local bus services and the regional train links—all those essential daily connections that people rely on.
No region will lose out, receiving either the same, or more, Government investment than under HS2. Almost £20 billion will go to the north, with Bradford, ignored under previous proposals, now getting a new station and faster rail connections to Manchester. Northern Powerhouse Rail is now extended to include Hull and Sheffield. A separate £12 billion fund will better connect Liverpool and Manchester, and I have already spoken to the Mayors of Greater Manchester and the Liverpool City Region to kickstart work on that.
West Yorkshire, thanks to £2.5 billion of funding, will finally get its mass transitsystem built in full. Over 20 road schemes will be delivered, and crucially, we will more than double the transport budgets of northern Mayors, benefiting our largest cities and smallest towns.
We are also investing in the midlands, with almost £10 billion ensuring the midlands rail hub is completed in full, increased mayoral budgets, including £1.5 billion for the new east midlands city region, and councils—from Stoke on Trent to Lincolnshire—seeing long-term transport funding settlements for the first time.
Finally, the remainder of this transformational investment will be spread across the UK, including: extending the hugely popular £2 bus fare cap, which people will see the benefit of just next month; delivering the Ely junction project and north Wales mainline electrification, benefiting both passengers and freight; and dealing with the menace of potholes, with £8.3 billion in new funding to resurface roads up and down the country. All told, Network North is a new vision for transport—one that creates more winners in more places, one that prioritises people’s everyday journeys, and one that drives the growth and jobs that this country needs.
I will finish with this: we will never shirk the long-term decisions to secure this country’s future and we will always be guided by the needs of the British people. When the majority want a pragmatic route to net zero, we will back them. When drivers feel unfairly targeted, we will back them. When the public want us to focus on the journeys that matter most to them, we will back them. This Government are delivering on the people’s priorities. I commend this statement to the House.
Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement.
Let me start by saying how shocking it is that our first opportunity to scrutinise the cancellation of Europe’s largest infrastructure project comes two weeks after the announcement was made. It shows sheer contempt for this House and the people affected by this decision.
It is good to see the Transport Secretary in his place for a change, but for once I am not holding him responsible. I know that he was not in the room when these decisions were made and he has my sympathy for having to try to make this absurd decision look sensible. There is only one man who should take responsibility for the sheer chaos, incompetence and desperation that we have seen over the past two weeks: the Prime Minister. Only he could announce the cancellation of HS2 to Manchester in Manchester. Only he would have the brass neck to make that decision without consulting our metro Mayors or any of the communities and businesses that depend on the project. Only he would announce a plan for drivers, as car insurance and petrol prices soar, that makes no mention of the cost of living, and when, just six months earlier, he personally had kicked every future road project into the next decade. Only he would insult the north with a back of the fag packet plan that he has announced in its place.
The consequences of this shambles are no joke; they are profound. There will be owners of small and medium-sized enterprises that have bet the house on HS2. People will lose their jobs this side of the general election as a result of this decision—homes, farms and businesses all sold, the countryside carved up, and Euston a hole in the ground, and for what? He has wasted £45 billion on a line between Old Oak Common and Birmingham that no one asked for and that has no business case. Only in Conservative-run Britain could a high-speed train hit the slow-coach lane the second it hits the north of England.
We need some answers. First, was there a meeting with Simon Case before the Tory conference in which a decision on HS2 was taken? If not, why was a video recorded of the Prime Minister in No.10? Is he suggesting that he followed in Boris Johnson’s footsteps and recorded two versions just in case? And what of the economic impact? How many businesses does the Secretary of State expect to go under as a result of this decision? What is the estimate of the compensation that will have to be paid? How much more will phase 1 now cost through re-scoping? How much do the Government expect to lose in the coming fire sale of the land, and what safeguards are in place to ensure that there is not a hint of corruption in those sales? Given that the west coast main line is at breaking point, does he accept that this plan will result in severe overcrowding and set Northern Powerhouse Rail back by a decade?
This level of chaos and economic damage would make even the Prime Minister’s most recent predecessor blush, and I am not alone in that opinion. Two former Tory Chancellors have warned that this is
“an act of huge economic self-harm”.
The Tory Mayor of the west midlands has described it as “cancelling the future”, and David Cameron has said that it shows that
“we can no longer think or act for the long-term as a country”.
Not content with simply cancelling the programme, the Prime Minister is now salting the earth by selling off the land—and what have we got in its place? This so-called Network North. That announcement can be broken down into three categories: projects that have already been built, projects that have already been announced, and projects that do not exist. Let us go through some of them, shall we? There is the extension of Manchester’s tram link to the airport, a project that opened nine years ago; there is the
“brand new rail station for Bradford”,
a project that has been scrapped and reinstated by three Tory Prime Ministers in a row; and there is the upgrade of the A259 to Southampton, a route that does not exist. How can the Transport Secretary stand at that Dispatch Box and pretend that there is any credible plan for delivery, when last week even the Prime Minister admitted that these plans were only “illustrative”? For once I agree with him: they are illustrative—illustrative of the sheer incompetence of this Government, illustrative of the contempt with which they treat the north, and illustrative of why you can never trust the Tories.
The Prime Minister promised us a “revolution” in our transport infrastructure, but instead we got a wish list. He has robbed Peter, and he will not even be paying Paul. Communities are sick and tired of the broken promises from this broken Government. Does this fiasco not prove once and for all—after 13 failed years, three discredited rail plans, tens of billions of pounds of public money wasted. and thousands of homes and lives upended—that they have no record to stand on, no mandate to deliver, and no credible plan for the future? Is it not time they finally accepted that they are a Government at the end of the line?
Mr Harper
Oh dear. I do not know whether the hon. Lady noticed, but this is the first day that the House has been back after the conference break, and I am here at the Dispatch Box making a statement at the first—[Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) will allow me to answer the questions that her hon. Friend has just asked without shouting from the Opposition Front Bench, I shall be delighted to do so. This is our first day back, and I have made a statement at the first opportunity I have had.
The hon. Lady made a point about the cost of living. I drew attention to the fact that the £2 bus fare cap was being extended; that will kick in as early as next month, and it is an important cost of living measure for the many millions of people who use buses. Buses are the most popular form of public transport, which is why the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Mr Holden), is such a massive champion of them.
The hon. Lady referred to HS2. We are still delivering phase 1 from Euston to the west midlands, which is very significant transport investment and delivery, in terms of the supply chain and all the companies that depend on it. Moreover, it delivers a massive increase in capacity to the west coast main line, taking the number of seats a day from 134,000 to 250,000. As for the details in the “Network North” document, let me point out that a third of the savings we are making that are being reinvested—£12 billion—are increases in funding for various Mayors across the country. The ultimate decisions about what is to be invested are for those Mayors, and I have had productive conversations with a number of them. They will be working with us on the details of these plans, so that they are right for the areas that they represent. As for the hon. Lady’s point about decision making, I have said this publicly before: I took the formal decision on the day before the Prime Minister’s speech. There was a meeting of the Cabinet on the morning of his speech, which approved that decision, and the Prime Minister announced it shortly afterwards.
I noticed that the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) rowed in very quickly, and has not disavowed this decision. He, of course, has long campaigned against HS2, and I suspect that the fact he rowed in so quickly behind it reflects that. I note that, on this decision, where the Prime Minister leads, the Leader of the Opposition follows.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I call the Chair of the Transport Committee.
Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for his statement. My Committee colleagues and I will want to scrutinise a number of the measures in depth when he appears before us in a few weeks—it will be a bumper session. Today, however, let me focus on one issue regarding HS2. One advantage of the project was that it would release capacity on the west coast main line, not just between London and Birmingham, but right up the line. As it is stopping at Handsacre junction, there will be a severe capacity constraint on that part of the line; there will not be space for extra inter-regional services and freight services. The high-speed trains will be in a very congested part of the network, unless further upgrade work is done. I urge him to look at that capacity constraint; if HS2 is not happening on that part of the project, what additional measures might be put in place?
Mr Harper
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question and, as always, I look forward to appearing before the Transport Committee to answer his questions and those of his colleagues, from both sides of the House. On his specific question, the first thing we have committed to doing is invest in remodelling Handsacre junction, so that those high-speed trains that go to Birmingham then get on to the west coast main line on the fast lines. The most congested part of the west coast main line is its southern part, which of course is having a significant capacity upgrade. However, I note carefully what he said and will bear that in mind. He should also note that we are investing in the upgraded connections east-west in the north of England, including from Liverpool to Manchester. One conversations I have already had was about the importance of making sure we are able to take freight traffic, including from the Port of Liverpool, and those are conversations we will take forward.
Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
Dear me! I almost feel sorry for the Secretary of State. All the promises about greener, faster and more sustainable transport and connectivity are gone, unless you live in Birmingham, where people will have the most gold-plated express shuttle service in the history of the world. There are no real benefits to modal shift or net-zero targets here, but what about levelling up? The cancellation of the Golborne link last year highlighted that this Government never really cared about the project serving Scotland, but the Manchester leg following the Leeds route into the bin proves that they did not care about the north of England either. As always with Westminster, for London and the south-east money is no object, but when a large infrastructure project outside the M25 runs into trouble, the plug is pulled. Gareth Williams of the Scottish Council for Development and Industry said:
“The lead recommendation in the UK Government’s own Union Connectivity Review was to reduce journey times and increase rail capacity between Scotland, London, the Midlands and the North West of England.”
He also said:
“This is a very short-sighted decision that…actually risks making Scotland’s connectivity with London worse.”
There was also no need to push back the date on electric vehicles. The Government could have made the switch easier and faster had they, at any time whatsoever, listened to us on issues such as the charging network, VAT equalisation, removing incentives to switch too early or their zero-emission bus schemes being entirely unfit for purpose. So will the Secretary of State guarantee that Scotland will receive the consequentials expected through HS2, now redirected to these other schemes? How much money was wasted looking at a Golborne link alternative? How much consultation took place with the Scottish Government regarding the A75 announcement, given that it has absolutely nothing to do with this Government whatever? Will the Department now look at different rolling stock options, including new high-speed tilting options, to increase potential speeds on the west coast main line?
The Secretary of State recently tweeted:
“In Japan, I saw the benefits high speed rail can bring—to connect communities & grow the economy…we remain fully committed to building HS2..Building it shows we believe in Britain”.
I can only conclude therefore that he no longer believes in Britain—will he confirm that? I like to end in consensus, so I hope he will answer that question in the affirmative.
Mr Harper
The hon. Gentleman demonstrates in the close of his question the Scottish National party’s obsession with crowbarring independence into every question about everything, thus he continued in a way not to disappoint. The SNP never ceases to talk about independence at every available opportunity, even when it has nothing to do with the question.
The hon. Gentleman’s first point, about different regions in the country, might have some merit if we had just cancelled phase 2 of HS2 and not reinvested every single penny in alternative transport projects across the country. As I said, some of those will take place relatively soon: the money for local authorities for bus funding and for improving the quality of local roads, which is a top priority for most people, will be available next spring. The other investment will be available in the same timeframe as the money would have been delivered for phase 2 of HS2, which would not have delivered high-speed trains to Manchester until 2041.
Secondly, I congratulate the hon. Gentleman for mentioning the zero-emission vehicle mandate that we tabled, which is the single largest decarbonisation measure that the Government will take. I notice the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) barely mentioned it, if at all, but it is a very significant measure in delivering our net zero obligations. It is incredibly important and it would be good to have Opposition support for it. We have the support of the Scottish and Welsh Governments, which agree with the plan we have tabled in Parliament today.
On the point the hon. Gentleman made about our planned local transport spending, Barnett consequentials will flow in the normal way. The roads Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Mr Holden), has spoken to his opposite number in the Scottish Government about the A75.
As I said, this plan delivers every single penny that would have been spent on HS2 on alternative transport projects that, I think, are closer to what people want to see. When the facts changed, the cost of the project had risen and the benefits had reduced. That is why we have taken this decision, which will be welcomed by people across the country.
Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)
As a Yorkshire Member of Parliament, I have always championed HS2, Northern Powerhouse Rail and the trans-Pennine rail upgrade. Two out of three is not brilliant, but I will settle for that. It is very disappointing that the Leader of the Opposition always campaigned against HS2 as well, but we are where we are. With Network North, can the Secretary of State confirm that projects that improve local connectivity, such as the Huddersfield-Sheffield-Penistone line, which goes through my constituency and those of my hon. Friends the Members for Dewsbury (Mark Eastwood) and for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates), are exactly the projects that can now be delivered, with this cash being invested locally and regionally?
Mr Harper
My hon. Friend makes two good points, one of which is that the Leader of the Opposition has always campaigned against HS2. [Interruption.] If we look at the parliamentary record, he absolutely has. Secondly, my hon. Friend is right that what we have been able to do is free up money to pay for other road and rail projects and, for example, to fund buses. I know that the rail Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman), is going to meet my hon. Friend and the colleagues he mentioned to talk about exactly the sorts of schemes we are going to deliver.
Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)
Is it not the case that rather than levelling up the north, this is slowing down the north? I will give an illustration. Not very long ago, a station in the town of Northwich, which I represent, collapsed. It is now finally being rebuilt, via insurance, and what is being rebuilt is the ticket office—a ticket office that this Government are consulting on closing down. That speaks volumes about how, when the Government cut their cloth, it is always the north that pays the price.
Mr Harper
I do not think the hon. Gentleman listened to what I said or read what we said in the document. We are going to reinvest every single penny that we are saving from cancelling phase 2 of HS2 in the parts of the country where the money was going to be spent. Just under £20 billion will be spent in the north of England, just under £10 billion will be spent in the midlands and £6.5 billion, which we are saving from the new way that we will deliver Euston station, will be spent in the rest of the country. That is reinvesting in transport projects that I think are closer to what people want to see, which is why they have welcomed the decision we have made.
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
After I have spent years arguing that HS2 was wasteful and too destructive and that we could not afford it, the Government have finally agreed with me and scrapped the line north of Birmingham. However, with the Government having previously cancelled the eastern leg and now having chopped its leg off, that leaves a legless stump through my constituency from London to Birmingham, which continues to bring daily misery to my constituents and is costing an amount of money that we cannot afford. I ask the Secretary of State—going for third time lucky—whether he will scrap the entirety of HS2, return the land that can be returned, do something better with the community’s consent with the land that cannot be returned, and then spend that money on the west coast main line and the Chiltern line instead.
Mr Harper
Given my hon. Friend’s constituency interest, I completely understand why he takes the view that he does. He is a doughty champion for his constituents, and never loses an opportunity—in this place or, in fact, every time I see him—to make exactly those points.
However, given the progress we have made, the decision we have taken is to complete phase 1 from Euston to Birmingham, delivering that significant capacity upgrade. [Interruption.] I say to the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley, who just cannot help shouting from a sedentary position, that I had a very productive meeting with the Euston Partnership last week to discuss these details. The London Borough of Camden and the Mayor of London are very enthusiastic, and are working with us in partnership on those proposals. The new development corporation at Euston is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to transform that area. They welcome these proposals, and I look forward to working with them constructively on them.
Coming back to my hon. Friend’s point, we are going to complete phase 1 between Euston and Birmingham, which delivers the significant capacity upgrade that the Chairman of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart), referred to. Notwithstanding the inconvenience being suffered by the constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith), if there are any issues we can deal with—other than cancelling phase 1—I am always happy to meet him.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
The Secretary of State did not make any specific reference to his comments at Conservative party conference about the proposals for 15-minute communities that are out there. He has, however, said that the number of times drivers can get from A to B will be their choice, not decided by councils. Does he believe this nonsense? Can he tell the House about any local authority that has ever considered such a restriction on local people? This is just complete nonsense.
Mr Harper
I actually can. If the hon. Gentleman goes to the website of Oxfordshire County Council, he will see a very specific proposal for, I think, five roads. That council is proposing to have filters on those roads and to issue permits, enabling local residents to only drive down them a specific number of times a year. That is a Labour-Lib Dem-Green council, or at least it was when the proposal was made. If a resident exceeds that number of permitted journeys, a picture will be taken of their licence plate and they will be issued with a fine. We in the Conservative party do not support those sorts of restrictions being put on motorists by local authorities—clearly the hon. Gentleman does, but we do not, and we will not stand for it.
Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)
I am grateful for my right hon. Friend’s statement. Phase 2b to Leeds was cancelled earlier in the year, so does my right hon. Friend know when the safeguarded land through my constituency will be released back? That has had a big impact on constituents who have seen their lives blighted and have been unable to move forward. Any news my right hon. Friend has would be gratefully received; he may want to write to me later so that I can feed it back to my constituents.
Mr Harper
To help my right hon. Friend, phase 2a safeguarding will be formally lifted within weeks. Phase 2b safeguarding, which covers the area in which his constituents live, will be amended by next summer to allow for any safeguarding we need for the Northern Powerhouse Rail projects. In the meantime, we will start taking steps to lift the blighting effect of HS2 in areas where safeguarding is going to be lifted. We will obviously set out the details of that in the usual way. There is a proper legal process to be followed, and we will continue working with local authorities in my right hon. Friend’s area and colleagues in the House to keep them fully informed.
Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)
What consideration has the Secretary of State given to allowing Parliament to scrutinise the proposed £36 billion of expenditure, in relation to both Network North and Northern Powerhouse Rail? In the consideration of the schemes, now that HS2 has been cancelled, will any of the money that has been saved be available to address some basic transport failings in constituencies such as mine? We have a Northern Rail service on the Durham coast line that is frankly not fit for purpose. There is a lack of capacity. We have two carriages once an hour, with no notice of cancelled services, which undermines education and employment, leaving people stranded on the platform. These failings represent not only a transport crisis, but an economic crisis, which, frankly, makes a mockery of the Government’s levelling-up agenda.
Mr Harper
First of all, scrutiny of my Department’s spending will be carried out by the Transport Committee. The Chair, my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South, is no longer in his place, but I am sure that the Committee, of which the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) is an esteemed member, will carry out that scrutiny process.
The hon. Gentleman will be aware that in the north-east, there is a tripling of the money that will be under the control of the new North East Combined Authority. A significant amount of extra money in many parts of the country will be controlled by locally elected Mayors and local authorities, thus ensuring that transport decisions are taken closer to home. I hope that he and Opposition Members welcome that as much as I do.
Greg Clark (Tunbridge Wells) (Con)
The Secretary of State will know that in 2025, it is the 200th anniversary of the world’s first passenger railway in Britain. Does he share my dismay and, frankly, shame that in this country, 200 years on, we are not able to connect our great cities when other major countries around the world can do so? Would the right thing not be to address the cost of the schemes and why they are so much more expensive in this country, rather than scaling back our ambitions?
Mr Harper
My right hon. Friend raises two separate points. One is about the reasons why there have been cost increases. Some of this was in place before the project was in construction—from planning and issues like that, which are worth looking at in the long term, although that will not help in this case. We have also seen significant cost increases, not least due to construction inflation over the past few years. However, this is not just about cost increases; it is also about the benefit reduction. One of the key parts of the business case for HS2 was that it was for business and business traffic. We have seen business rail use and commuter rail use halve post-pandemic because of the changed way in which people choose to travel. That has been an essential part of the decision, and that is why we have decided to change the way we spend the money—not to not spend it, but to spend it on transport investments closer to the way people live their lives. We think that is the right decision, notwithstanding the fact that I recognise that my right hon. Friend is disappointed by it.
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)
The Government claimed that the decision to scrap most of HS2 was made due to rising costs, yet who was Chief Secretary to the Treasury and then Chancellor when the costs were spiralling out of control? The current Prime Minister. Not content with that failure, we now know that he also wasted a shocking £2.2 billion on the leg of HS2 that has just been cancelled. Secretary of State, does this entire fiasco not illustrate how little regard the Government have for taxpayers’ money?
Mr Harper
No, not at all. Having no regard for taxpayers’ money would be deciding that a project was going to cost too much and deliver too little in benefits, and then continuing to spend taxpayers’ money regardless. This will not be welcomed by everybody and it was not the consensus view, but we have decided to cancel the second phase. By the way, this was about not just increased costs, but the combination of increased costs and reduced benefits, as I said in answer to my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark). It was about the two things together, and we have decided to reinvest the money in alternative transport projects, which, by the way, have a higher return on investment and will therefore deliver a greater return to taxpayers. That shows exactly the opposite of what the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) said—that we value taxpayers’ money and want to deliver the best return for taxpayers’ money, which is why we have made this change in how we are investing their hard-earned money.
John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Many councils apply for grants in order to make changes to their local roads. When considering these applications, will Ministers ensure that they do not end up paying for schemes that cut local capacity on crucial roads and make drivers’ lives a misery?
Mr Harper
My right hon. Friend makes a very good point about what we should prioritise when funding roads. He should know that one of the important changes I have made is to make sure that our active travel team is focused on delivering cycling and walking schemes that increase choice, rather than focusing on driving people out of their cars. I hope he will welcome that important change.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
The Secretary of State says that his party is not anti-motorist, but it is clearly anti-public transport. We Liberal Democrats are not anti-motorist either, but we are unequivocally pro-public transport. Rail produces 76% less carbon dioxide emissions than the equivalent road journey, and each freight train removes up to 76 lorries from our roads. The decision to scrap the northern leg of HS2 will lead to up to half a million more lorry journeys up and down the country, resulting in a lot more congestion in our towns and cities. Is the Secretary of State not concerned that freight that would have gone on to the railway will now be forced on to the roads, increasing our carbon emissions and congestion?
Mr Harper
I do not agree with the hon. Lady’s characterisation of our view on public transport. First, we have already put in a significant amount of extra money this year and, from the savings, still more is going into our bus system. Our £2 bus fare cap is making it much easier and cheaper for people to use public transport. Twice as many journeys are made by bus than by rail. She should also know that HS2 spending was crowding out other important investments. One of the things we are now able to fund is the £600 million project at Ely junction that will increase capacity for both passengers and freight to the important port of Felixstowe.
Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)
My right hon. Friend has just mentioned Ely junction, and he will know that the great eastern main line taskforce has assiduously campaigned for that investment for over a decade. I am grateful for this announcement, and we look forward to seeing the proposal go forward. Alongside rail, which is huge in the east of England, can my right hon. Friend bring his long-term plan for motorists to Essex by bringing forward the dualling of the A120? That scheme has been delayed for another two years because of construction inflation, which I completely understand. I implore him to look at the business case and see what the scheme would mean for the economic wellbeing of mid-Essex.
Mr Harper
The Ely junction scheme, which I know my right hon. Friend and others welcome, is a well worked through scheme that was on Network Rail’s list of important priorities, but we simply did not have the money to fund it. We now do, as a result of this project. People cannot want to continue building the second phase of HS2 and simultaneously want to do all these other things. A choice had to be made, and we made that choice, and I think it is the right choice for the country. I know how important my right hon. Friend thinks her road scheme is. I obviously cannot deal with it now but, as ever, I would be happy to meet her to discuss how important it is for her constituents.
Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
I saw the Secretary of State’s Network North map on Twitter, featuring those legendary northern towns of Tavistock, Dawlish and Plymouth. That might have been mildly amusing had my constituency not been cut in half, with the whole of the Wirral disappearing into the Irish sea. Have we been taken off the map because we have no funding for any capital transport projects? Will Cheshire West and Chester Council now get a refund for the hundreds of thousands of pounds that it has already spent on preparatory work for HS2 coming to Cheshire? That money now appears to have been wasted because of the bungled handling of this contract.
Mr Harper
Just to be clear, of the money that we are saving as a result of cancelling the second phase of HS2, just under £20 billion is being spent in the north and just under £10 billion is being spent in the midlands. The money being spent in the rest of the country is the money saved from the way we are now going to deliver Euston station—with a much more ambitious development, building thousands more houses and having a much more positive impact on the local economy. It is sensible to call it Network North, because that is where two thirds of the money is going, but the £6.5 billion that is being spent in the rest of the country, outside the north and the midlands, will be very welcome. As I have said, every penny is being reinvested in those parts of the country that HS2 was going to benefit. In the north of England, for example, we are looking at investing £12 billion in the line between Liverpool and Manchester, and at having productive talks with the Mayors in that part of the world to deliver transport projects that are their priorities for the people they represent.
Paul Howell (Sedgefield) (Con)
The allocation of funding to the north-east has the potential to have a major positive local impact. I particularly welcome the announcement on Ferryhill station and look forward to discussing the timing with the Secretary of State. However, the substantial funding towards investments such as the Leamside line was within 24 hours spun by the local opposition as a reversal of intent. Will he make absolutely clear what is being delivered to the north-east and how it affects the Leamside project?
Mr Harper
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for his question. The reopening of the Leamside line is a Transport North East-led project. It is developing a business case to connect Washington with the Tyne and Wear metro, and we are supporting it as it develops the outline business case. Because we have cancelled the second phase of HS2, £685 million extra is being allocated to the north-east, meaning that the new north-east Mayor will have £1.8 billion to spend on their transport funding over the five years from 2027. One such scheme could be the reopening of the Leamside line. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) says, “Could be”. We believe in devolution. We are giving £1.8 billion to the north-east Mayor and it will be for the Mayor to decide the priorities. I know, having talked to one of the candidates for that mayoral office, that this is a priority for them. My hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Paul Howell) has been championing this project enormously, and we can now fund such projects because of the cancellation of the second phase of HS2. I am grateful to my hon. Friend and will continue to work with him as he champions that case.
Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
On Wednesday, Hull and Humber chamber of commerce, Humber local authority leaders and MPs are going to meet the rail Minister to discuss the need for transport investment around the Humber. The Prime Minister announced at the Conservative party conference that rail electrification for Hull would go ahead, and the Secretary of State has also mentioned that in his remarks today. Of course, this has been blocked twice by Conservative Governments. In the light of that and the broken promises over HS2, trust is very limited in the north as to whether this Government will deliver on what they say. To help with that, will the Secretary of State tell me the start date for the rail electrification project to Hull?
Mr Harper
I am not going to pluck dates out of the air. It is worth saying that phase 2 of HS2 was not going to deliver trains to Manchester until 2041. This funding is over a significant period of time. Clearly, we have to have the normal processes in place where we work through business cases and do all of that. I am not going to pluck dates out of the air. Since we made the announcement, I have met both National Highways and Network Rail. They are now working through the detail of how these proposals fit in with their planning processes. We will announce the details in due course, but the right hon. Lady would not expect me to pluck dates out of the air. We will announce them in the normal way. I know that my hon. Friend the rail Minister is meeting her local authority to talk through the details of these important schemes.
Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)
I very much support this decision on HS2, given that the cost was totally out of control, the benefits were much diminished from what was originally promised, and many of the stations in Staffordshire and up and down the north will actually receive a better service via the Handsacre link than ever could have been delivered by phase 2. Does my right hon. Friend agree that people in Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire very much want to see investment going into local schemes such as reopening Meir station, reopening the Stoke to Leek line, investing in the A5 and the A50, and investing in junction 15 of the M6?
Mr Harper
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who has demonstrated through his question and that list of valued local schemes why investing the money in those schemes will deliver more benefits to more people more quickly than delivering the rest of HS2. That is why he and many other people have warmly welcomed this decision.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)
Despite chopping HS2 off at the knees coming at a considerable cost—about £40 billion, from what I understand—and the statement indicating that the Government will reinvest the money from HS2’s northern leg, which is another £36 billion, the only Welsh announcement I can see in the statement is about the north Wales main line, which the Government estimate to have a cost of about £1 billion. That, by my maths, leaves a shortfall of about £3 billion. Will the British Government ensure in discussions with the Welsh Government that Wales gets its allocated shortfall of £3 billion so that it can invest in Welsh transport priorities?
Mr Harper
The Government retain responsibility for delivering heavy rail. We are making an investment of £1 billion into electrifying the north Wales main line, which I would have thought the hon. Member would welcome. As over the coming years we develop the funding for local transport spending, Wales will get Barnett consequentials in the usual way.
Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)
There is a deep democratic point in all of this. The Secretary of State was elected at the last general election with the expectation given by the then leader of the Conservative party that HS2 would be built. Partly because of the Government’s financial incompetence, they are now cancelling it. A Prime Minister—not the Secretary of State—whose own party did not support him, and who has certainly never put himself before the electorate as Prime Minister, is cancelling it. The current Secretary of State is following a scorched earth policy whereby it will be impossible for either the elected Mayors who are looking for alternative funding for carrying on the second phase or an incoming Labour Government, to build out the full scheme, with all the benefits it would have. That is fundamentally anti-democratic. Will the Secretary of State not consider, on a democratic basis, protecting the line of HS2?
Mr Harper
The hon. Gentleman raised two points. On the first, I make no apology for basing a decision on the facts. The facts have changed—both the costs have increased and the benefits have reduced—and pouring taxpayers’ money into a scheme where that had happened would not make a lot of sense. On his second point, I am now thoroughly confused: I thought the Labour Party had now accepted that HS2 was not going to happen and that it preferred all the alternative things we wanted to spend the money on. It cannot have it both ways. If he and his colleagues want to complete the second phase of HS2, they must go and tell everybody else that they do not want to spend the money on all those other things that we are going to spend it on. We have to make choices in politics. We have made our choice. I am happy with our choice and will defend it. They cannot have it both ways.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Apologies—I inadvertently called two speakers from the Opposition side, so I will next take two from the Government side. While I am on my feet, I remind Members that we have another big statement and an important debate to come, so I urge brevity in questions and answers.
Katherine Fletcher (South Ribble) (Con)
When the Secretary of State is looking at Network North, which I do welcome—I thank him very much for the A582 benefit in the Ribble Valley constituency of Mr Deputy Speaker; he will be delighted with that name-check—may I encourage him to think about the structure for funding other opportunities? There is a gap in the market between very large rail schemes and those extremely small rail schemes that are too small for local councils to deliver, such as at Midge Hall in my constituency, where the trains stop at a platform and we have the nonsense of customers not being able to get on or off. Does he agree that we could look at such improvement schemes in Network North?
Mr Harper
The rail Minister has listened to my hon. Friend very carefully, and I will ensure that he meets her to discuss that specific proposal.
Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)
The cancellation of HS2 is a triple win for Newcastle-under-Lyme. First, we will get faster trains to London. Secondly, we will get improvements to junction 50 and the things that my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) talked about. Thirdly and most importantly, HS2 will not cut a swathe through the south of Newcastle-under-Lyme. On that point, the people who will be most pleased are my councillors Gary and Simon White, who have been representing the people of Betley and Madeley on this since long before I was an MP. I have a number of questions from them that I will send to the Secretary of State, but most of all they are focused on the need to ensure that the situation faced by landowners who have had their land subject to compulsory purchase can be put right as quickly as possible, whether they want to purchase the land or not. What reassurance can he give that we will look after landowners whose land has been subject to compulsory purchase?
Mr Harper
As I just said, we are now following a proper legal process. We will set out the details of that, and then landowners who have been impacted will know what they can do for us to try to put things right. I welcome the work that his two councillors have done in ably representing their constituents, as my hon. Friend represents his.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
The more the Government pursue their net zero obsession, the less Conservative they look. The Minister, without any embarrassment, has today announced—in fact, he has boasted of—a new law, the zero emission vehicle mandate, which will instruct manufacturers on what they are allowed to produce year on year. Then he tells us that consumers will be allowed to purchase whatever cars they want until 2035. That sounds more like a Stalinist economic plan than a free-market Conservative policy. Can he tell us what will happen if rational consumers decide that they do not want to buy more expensive cars—cars that take half an hour to refuel, are likely to burst into flames, or are more expensive to insure? What will he do then? Will he have to introduce legislation to instruct dealers on what cars they sell and how to sell them?
Mr Harper
First, if the right hon. Gentleman assumes that climate change is a problem, then we need to deal with it. Transport is the biggest single emitter of carbon. That is why we have published these ambitious proposals, which by the way are supported by the automotive industry. Several of those in the industry are planning on going faster than we are legislating for. On the specific point for Northern Ireland, the plans that we have set out are agreed by the Scottish, Welsh and UK Governments. When, as I hope, we get a Northern Ireland Government and Assembly back up and running, they will have to decide whether they wish to join in with those proposals. I very much hope that they do.
Nick Fletcher (Don Valley) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend for his statement and the additional £900 million for South Yorkshire, which will make a huge difference to the region. However, with the recent closure of Doncaster Sheffield airport, does he agree that the best thing that our combined authority Mayor can do is use all his devolved powers to work with all stakeholders to secure the opening of our airport, and will the Secretary of State use all his influence to press the South Yorkshire Mayor to do the right thing with the additional money and use it to help secure our airport’s future?
Mr Harper
I know that my hon. Friend and others in that area of the country have campaigned in favour of the airport. Of course, the thing about devolution is that Mayors are able to decide to use their resources, which they now have more of, on what they think are their local priorities, representing the people they are elected to serve. It is a decision for the Mayor, and of course my hon. Friend and others will campaign for that decision to be taken.
Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)
The hon. Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) said that South Yorkshire will get £900 million as a consequence of the decision made by the Secretary of State and the Government to cancel HS2. Will the Secretary of State confirm that it is the case that in South Yorkshire we can expect £900 million for our region that we would not otherwise have received? If that is the case, over what timeframe will we receive it?
Mr Harper
It is extra money going to the region, capital funding over the next phase of that capital budget. It is over the second phase of the city region sustainable transport settlements scheme. I have already had a discussion with the South Yorkshire Mayor to talk it through, and his officials and mine are working through the details so that he can look at the relevant schemes that he wishes to invest in over that period.
Jerome Mayhew (Broadland) (Con)
Norfolk’s infrastructure needs have often been overlooked, but not any more: just in the last week, the Department of Transport has announced £231 million supporting the Norwich Western Link road in my constituency, for which I am very grateful, in addition to the £600 million supporting the Ely junction upgrade. The Secretary of State has mentioned the increase in freight transport that that allows, but am I right in thinking that it also unlocks the possibility of increased passenger trains between Norwich and Cambridge, along the Norwich tech corridor?
Mr Harper
I am pleased that we were able to make the decision on the road that my hon. Friend and other colleagues have been campaigning strongly for, and to communicate that to his county council so that the scheme can continue apace. I am grateful for his welcome for the upgrade for Ely junction and, as I said in my earlier remarks, that unlocks both freight capacity and potentially further passenger services that can be delivered. Network Rail will set out further details on that in due course, once it has set out the timetable, now that I have been able to confirm that the plan is funded.
Sarah Green (Chesham and Amersham) (LD)
Earlier this year I asked the rail Minister, the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman), what was in place to ensure effective monitoring and oversight of HS2. He assured me that comprehensive monitoring arrangements were in place. Now even the Prime Minister has raised concerns about mismanagement of HS2. What assurances can the Secretary of State give to my constituents in the Chilterns that HS2 Limited and its contractors will be better held to account?
Mr Harper
On that specific point, one of the things we have done, because we are going to continue delivering phase 1 of HS2 from London Euston to Birmingham, is to make sure that we focus on both cost and delivery on the current timetable. There are now extra members appointed to the HS2 board; I have met the board to talk through its plan and to hold it to account on both the delivery schedule and the cost budget that it has to hit, and I will continue to do so. If the hon. Lady has any further issues, I know that my hon. Friend the rail Minister will be delighted to meet her to talk through them.
Robin Millar (Aberconwy) (Con)
I can tell the Secretary of State that residents and businesses in Aberconwy and across north Wales are delighted to hear that there will be £1 billion put towards the electrification of the north Wales main line. The last major infrastructure project we had along the north Wales coast was in 1987 for the Conwy tunnel. Like that tunnel, this project will be transformative for our local economies, for lives and for our connections with the north-west of England and down to London. Will my right hon. Friend confirm from the Dispatch Box, for residents and businesses in north Wales, that £1 billion will be attributed to the electrification of the north Wales main line, and will he meet me and my colleagues to confirm that those plans are progressing?
Mr Harper
I would be pleased to meet my hon. Friend and colleagues, and I can confirm the money that we have put aside. I have already discussed the plans with Network Rail, which is starting work on detailing those plans. I am happy to meet him to talk them through in more detail.
Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)
I have campaigned for more than 18 years for the reopening of the Leamside line, which would enable the metro to come to Washington in my constituency —14 years longer than the hon. Member for Sedgefield (Paul Howell), who is a newcomer to that campaign. So hon. Members can imagine my joy when I saw it in print, the day after the Prime Minister’s speech—only for it to disappear 24 hours later. Far from it being the Opposition who went out spinning, it was Ministers on the Prime Minister’s own Front Bench who were on the airwaves spinning that nothing had changed after it disappeared. If it was just illustrative, why did it need to be deleted from the Network North document with other such illustrations?
Mr Harper
It was not deleted from the Network North document. The Network North document that was published on the website has not changed, so— [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) keeps going on about illustrative stuff. As I have said, £12 billion of the £36 billion was allocated to combined authority Mayors, so what it gets spent on is ultimately their decision. I know that that is a priority for the north-east, so it is one of the things on which we are working with them on a business case.
I am very pleased that the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) and my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Paul Howell) are both campaigning—it is always good when these things are done on a cross-party basis. I know that this is a priority for a region. The money is now there to pay for it, which was not the case before we took the decision to cancel the second phase of HS2. These things are only now able to happen because we took that decision. If the Opposition decide that they want to campaign to build the second phase of HS2, things such as the Leamside line will not happen.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
If the seaside resorts, industrial towns and rural villages of Lincolnshire are to expand their economies, it is essential that the road network be improved. The A15, A16 and A46 are just three examples. Can my right hon. Friend assure me that some of the redirected £36 billion will head towards Lincolnshire, and will he arrange for me and neighbouring colleagues to meet the Minister with responsibility for roads to discuss future plans?
Mr Harper
I would be very pleased for the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Mr Holden), to meet my hon. Friend and colleagues. Yes, there is money going to all local authorities to address the quality of their local roads. A number of road schemes, including the major road network and large local majors programmes, were funded in partnership between the Department and local authorities, but we are now able to pay all the costs to bring them to fruition more quickly. On specific local schemes, I know that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State would be delighted to meet my hon. Friend and local colleagues to talk them through that in more detail.
Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)
Building HS2 was a long-term decision for the future—investment for decades to come—not just to improve transport but to drive the economy of the north, which is why my south Manchester constituents once again feel let down by this Government. We now have the worst possible outcomes: £45 billion spent on half a job, without those long-term benefits for the north. That is not a long-term decision but a short-term, short-sighted failure.
Mr Harper
I disagree with the hon. Gentleman. First, the high-speed trains were not going to get to Manchester until 2041 anyway. Secondly, as the facts have changed, it has become clear that we will receive better returns on taxpayers’ hard-earned money by cancelling the second phase of HS2 and reinvesting every penny in alternative rail projects in the north, the midlands and elsewhere. We have set out the detail of that plan. I know that not everybody will agree with it—that is okay—but those who do not like what we have proposed instead have to be honest with people and say that campaigning to build the second phase of HS2 will mean that those other things cannot be done. The choice had to be made. We have made the right choice, which is to invest that money in things that will give a better return, sooner and for more people in more parts of the country. That is the right choice for the country, and a long-term decision for a better future.
Holly Mumby-Croft (Scunthorpe) (Con)
I am a member of the High Speed Rail (Crewe - Manchester) Bill Select Committee. We have been sitting for nine months and have listened carefully to a lot of petitioners. My view is that HS2 has had a massive impact on many of those people’s lives. How can the Secretary of State ensure that the people who have already lost businesses and properties to make way for a railway line that will not be built have the option to get them back for a fair price?
Mr Harper
One thing that we will do, as we work through the consequences of the decision, is set out the details exactly. I will not do so now because there are important legal consequences for such things, but we will set out the details exactly for people whose properties were subject to compulsory purchase orders—my hon. Friend will know, there are rules detailing what happens when such properties are no longer needed for the purpose for which they were purchased—to protect the constituents who were affected. We will set out details of how that will work in due course, and will keep her informed.
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
I was very pleased when the Prime Minister announced the electrification of the north Wales line, having been a long-term advocate of that sort of project. In fact, as long ago as 2003, I met the chair and chief executive of the then Strategic Rail Authority to press for it—he said no. Twenty years later, I remember the SRA’s motto, which was “Britain’s railway, properly delivered”. I was concerned that the Prime Minister noted a figure of £1 billion for the north Wales project; many commentators think that that is quite insufficient. Can the Secretary of State guarantee that the project will be properly delivered by being properly and fully funded?
Mr Harper
I am grateful for what I think was a welcome for the north Wales mainline electrification. I met Network Rail following the announcement we made, and it will now do the detailed work on delivering that scheme. It will announce the details, the timeframe and so forth in the usual way, and I look forward to the hon. Gentleman’s support for each stage of the project.
Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)
I very much welcome the commitment to Ely North junction and also to Haughley junction. They will deliver major benefits for my constituents, including an hourly Peterborough to Ipswich service and better services to London. It will also benefit the midlands and the north by better connecting the busiest sea container port in Europe to the rail network. Haughley junction is a much cheaper and simpler project than Ely North junction. Is there scope to expedite and accelerate the delivery of that specific project, which will start delivering benefits on the ground for my constituents soon?
Mr Harper
I am grateful for the campaigning work my hon. Friend has done on pushing for that scheme. It was very clear from the work that he and other colleagues have done that it was a very important priority. I can confirm that the Ely area capacity enhancement project includes Haughley junction, and we have started the work with Network Rail. It is seized of trying to do it as quickly as we can, but we obviously have to make sure it is done properly. I will keep him posted in the usual way.
Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab)
No matter how much the Secretary of State tries to back-pedal, the fact is that the proposal to reopen the Leamside line was scrapped just 24 hours after it was announced, and businesses and communities in the north-east rightly feel betrayed. Who was it who decided that they would water down the proposal? Who decided that the Leamside line was far too north to be worthy of Government investment? Was it the Prime Minister, the Treasury or the Minister who sold out the north-east?
Mr Harper
I am not quite sure why the hon. Lady does not think that an extra £685 million for transport in the north-east, adding up to £1.8 billion of investment, and the fact that we have started work with officials in that area on that project should not be welcomed. I think it should be welcomed, and I am sure that she and other colleagues who support it will continue working with us on making sure that it gets delivered.
Scott Benton (Blackpool South) (Ind)
The Secretary of State will be aware that Blackpool Council is considering spending millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on 90 zero-emission buses from China, instead of purchasing British ones. It is beyond farcical that taxpayer cash intended to support British jobs and local supply chains may be used to import poorer quality vehicles and ultimately end up in the hands of the Chinese Government. Will my right hon. Friend join me in urging Blackpool Council to support British jobs and investment, and to think again?
Mr Harper
It is ultimately for local authorities to make decisions. They are accountable, and it is for them to make decisions about how they choose to spend the taxpayers’ money for which they are responsible. I have heard very clearly what my hon. Friend has said about where that money should be spent, and his local authority will have done so. More importantly, however, so will have his voters, and they will be able to make a decision about the council’s future in due course.
Samantha Dixon (City of Chester) (Lab)
A number of years ago, the Conservative Government expressly instructed Members, local councils and other stakeholders not to focus on the electrification of the north Wales line. As a result, virtually the entire rail development case for Cheshire, north-east Wales and the Wirral was built on the premise of HS2. Have I heard the Secretary of State correctly that we are going to waste all the time, effort and money spent over the years, and go right back to the drawing board? To paraphrase the hon. Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart), what exactly is the plan?
Mr Harper
I am not entirely certain exactly what the hon. Lady’s question was, but we have set out the plan very carefully. We are going to deliver the first phase of HS2 from Euston to Birmingham, we are going to cancel the second phase and we are going to reinvest every single penny—the £36 billion we have saved—in the north, the midlands and the rest of the country. That is a very clear plan, and I think it is one that will be welcomed by the public.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Reclaim)
Will the Secretary of State confirm that, as per the Prime Minister’s recent announcement, the Ivanhoe line will be fully reopened, thereby linking Burton upon Trent to Leicester? Is the Secretary of State aware that even this week compulsory purchase orders are being issued and processed in respect of property and land on the now-cancelled HS2 route north of Birmingham?
Mr Harper
On the second point, which is very important for the hon. Gentleman’s constituents, all outstanding claims for land that has already been acquired for phase 2 of HS2 will still be paid. Applications that are in progress will be handled on a case-by-case basis after consultation with the claimants, because people may well have made plans based on the land being purchased and it is important that we follow through on that, so there will be proper consultation with claimants before we make decisions to try to do the right thing by the people affected. The Ivanhoe line is going to be delivered.
Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)
I welcome sincerely the news of the Secretary of State’s support for Cullompton railway station. It is not new, given that my predecessor as MP for Tiverton and Honiton, Neil Parish, secured restoring your railway funding for Cullompton station two years ago. At that time, Neil said that
“construction could take place as early as 2024”;
will the Secretary of State tell my constituents whether Cullompton station is still on track to open in this Parliament?
Mr Harper
It is very important, when projects are promised, that we have the funds to pay for them, and it is by cancelling the second phase of HS2 that we are able to fund that important project, which I am glad the hon. Gentleman welcomes. I do not think that the rail Minister and I, in the time we have been in post, have had any communication from the hon. Gentleman campaigning for the station, whereas my hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Simon Jupp) has campaigned for it assiduously, as has my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow).
Net Zero by 2050
(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Claire Coutinho)
With permission, I would like to make a statement on the Prime Minister’s announcement on net zero.
Britain has led the world on tackling climate change. We have cut our carbon emissions in half over the past 30 years. We have boosted our share of renewables from just 7% in 2010 to almost half today. We have delivered the second highest amount of recorded low-carbon investment cumulatively across Europe over the past five years. Of all the major economies, we have set the toughest targets, and we have exceeded every carbon budget target so far.
As we look forward to becoming a net zero economy by 2050, we must ensure that our ambitions are practical and achievable—achievable by industry, which is investing billions to decarbonise; achievable technologically, as much of the green tech we will need to hit our 2050 target needs to be scaled up; and achievable for consumers, in particular for the millions of households that are currently struggling to make ends meet.
We will not reach net zero over the next three decades unless our plans for the future are pragmatic and viable. Only 7% of people in the UK currently think that net zero is going to be good for them and their family’s finances in the near term. In Europe, we are seeing people push back at clumsy policy that is negatively affecting our lives. It is clear that if we do not bring people with us, we risk sacrificing the whole climate change agenda. That is why the Prime Minister set out his plans last month for a fairer approach to ease the burdens on hard-working people and keep people feeling optimistic about net zero.
The Prime Minister’s approach includes giving people the flexibility to choose a new petrol or diesel car until 2035; removing the requirement that would have seen property owners forced to spend up to £10,000 or more on energy upgrades; easing the transition to clean heating; and raising grants under the boiler upgrade scheme by 50%, to £7,500—that scheme is now one of the most generous of its kind in Europe. The changes will allow us to meet our international net zero targets while avoiding disproportionate costs at a time when global inflation pressures are challenging the finances of many households.
We are responsible for less than 1% of annual greenhouse gas emissions. While our emissions are down 48%, America’s remain unchanged and China’s are up by 300%. It cannot be right that our citizens face punitive costs here when emissions are rising abroad. As the Prime Minister said, the fear is that if we continue to impose extra costs on people, we risk losing their consent for net zero. I want people to feel optimistic about net zero and connect that with jobs, investment and a sense of pride in playing our part in a global challenge. By taking a more measured approach, we will achieve our ambitious targets with the public’s consent.
Meanwhile, we are spending tens of billions to transform our energy security, and to boost renewables and clean nuclear power. We are investing £20 billion to get our carbon capture and storage industry up and running, with jobs supported in places such as Humberside, Scotland and the north-east and north-west of England. We will take carbon dioxide from polluting industries and store it under the North sea. The UK can lead the world in the provision of carbon transport and storage services, with an estimated 78 billion tonnes of theoretical carbon storage capacity in the UK continental shelf—one of the largest potential carbon storage capacities in Europe.
We also have the largest operational offshore wind farm in the world, and the second largest, the third largest, the fourth largest and now the fifth largest, too—all delivered under a Conservative Government. We will have enough wind to power the equivalent of every home in Britain by 2030. We will generate enough solar energy to power the equivalent of over 25 million electric vehicle miles every hour by 2035. We are world leading in our fusion technology and space-based solar projects.
Britain’s nuclear revival is well under way. Hinkley Point C in Somerset will provide enough secure, low-carbon electricity to power around 6 million homes. Sizewell C in Suffolk features the most powerful electricity generators in the world, to power another 6 million homes. We have launched Great British Nuclear to deliver our programme and we have accelerated the development of small modular reactors. Bringing all our work together is the Energy Bill—the vehicle for delivering the energy strategy to turbocharge British technology. It will liberate £100 billion-worth of private investment, scaling up green jobs and growth, and make Britain the best place in the world to invest in clean energy.
The most important announcement made during my tenure has been about the grid. We must make sure that the grid infrastructure is in place to bring new clean, secure and low-cost power to homes and businesses. Four times as much new transmission network will be needed in the next seven years as was built since 1990, so we are bringing forward comprehensive new reforms to help green energy expand faster. We will speed up planning for the most nationally significant projects and accelerate grid connections so that those who are ready can connect first.
Later this autumn we will set out our response to the work of electricity networks commissioner Nick Winser, demonstrating how we are going further and faster on grid, informed by his recommendations on reducing the time taken to develop this critical infrastructure for lower bills, energy security, decarbonisation and economic growth. We will also set out our plans to reform the connections process so that new electricity generators and electricity users can be connected faster, bringing more low-cost, low-carbon energy into the system and connecting up new economic investment quicker. We will set out the UK’s first ever spatial plan for energy infrastructure, to give industry certainty and every community a say.
We have so much to be proud of in what we have achieved so far, particularly the international leadership that we have shown in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The Climate Change Committee has assessed that there is no material difference in our progress to cut emissions by 2030 since its last report in June, yet the changes we have made will make a real difference to the finances of many households up and down the country. The Prime Minister’s intervention means that we are now on a more secure path, because it can command public support, taking the people of Britain with us and delivering net zero in a practical, proportionate and pragmatic way. I commend this statement to the House.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I call the shadow Secretary of State.
Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for advanced sight of her statement. My only disappointment was that she did not read out the multiple paragraphs defending the Prime Minister’s claim about seven bins, which was in the copy sent to me. Obviously, she was too embarrassed to defend it, because it was made-up nonsense.
We profoundly disagree with the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister when they suggest that the answer to the cost of living crisis in our country is dither and delay on building a clean energy future for Britain. It will not work and their approach will make it worse. If you want the evidence, Madam Deputy Speaker, just look at their previous failures. The ban on onshore wind did not cut bills; it raised them. The slashing of home energy efficiency—cutting the “green crap”, as they called it—did not cut bills; it raised them. The fiasco of the offshore wind auction last month did not cut bills; it will raise them. It is not going too fast on climate that has caused the cost of living crisis; it is the Conservatives’ failures that have left us exposed to the worst energy bills crisis in generations. Rather than learning the lessons, they are doubling down.
The definitive analysis of the recent announcements came last Thursday from the Government’s own watchdog, the Climate Change Committee. It said this:
“The cancellation of some Net Zero measures is likely to increase both energy bills and motoring costs for households”.
Why did it say that? Let me explain. The Government now say that landlords will not have to insulate homes, but as the CCC points out, these regulations
“would have reduced renters’ energy bills significantly.”
Moreover, the cost savings would have outweighed any changes in rent. Therefore, they are not lowering costs; they are raising them.
On electric vehicles, the CCC says that
“any undermining of their roll-out will ultimately increase costs.”
That is because the lifetime costs of EVs are already cheaper than those of petrol and diesel vehicles. By 2030, the up-front costs of EVs are forecast to be at parity with petrol or diesel cars. Again, the Government are not lowering costs for families; they are raising them.
When the Secretary of State dumps other targets, I have to ask: who set these targets and then failed to take the action to meet them? The Government did. Laughably, they say that this is about long-term decisions. The biggest long-term cost that the British people face is failure to act at the scale required to tackle the climate crisis. The Secretary of State says again that the Government are on track to meet their 2030 target, but their own watchdog said in June that they were “significantly off track”. It says—this is from last Thursday—that the Government have not offered evidence to back their assurance
“that the UK’s targets will still be met.”
There is no evidence that they are on track to meet their targets.
Perhaps worst of all, imagine being a business trying to make decisions and invest in our country when they literally do not know from one day to the next what the Government policy is. Since the Prime Minister’s announcements, businesses from around the world have said that, by backing off climate action, the Prime Minister is turning his back on the greatest economic opportunity of the 21st century. Meanwhile, the UK heads into yet another winter where people cannot afford their energy bills. There are still no proper plans for a roll-out of energy efficiency, no plans to properly lift the onshore wind ban, and no proper plan to get the offshore wind market back on track.
Finally, let me say to the Secretary of State that the consensus on net zero has been hard-won over two decades. We have a duty to debate it on the basis of facts, not falsehoods. I have to say to her that it is deeply regrettable that she used her first major public appearance—two weeks ago at her conference—literally to make up complete nonsense about meat taxes, which I notice she did not defend today, and for which frankly she was exposed on national television. I say to her that it demeans her, it demeans her office and it demeans public debate. The Government said that they were going to move on from the premiership of Boris Johnson, but people will be deeply disturbed to find that that appears to mean dumping commitments to net zero and keeping his peculiar relationship to the truth.
Claire Coutinho
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his response to my statement. He raises a number of questions that I wish to address. He mentions the prospect of the seven bins policy. He has forgotten that he voted for it. The Conservatives, by contrast, came to the good sense to course correct. He has taken leave of his senses and forgotten what he has voted for in the past.
On the question of dietary changes, the right hon. Gentleman might like to speak to his shadow climate change Minister and shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, who both have pushed to treat meat like tobacco in the past. The substantial point that I would make is that we need to be practical about our net zero policy and to make sure that we are having honest debates. We on the Conservative Benches stand by our record. We are proud to be the party that has decarbonised faster than any G7 country, and it is regrettable that the Opposition cannot acknowledge that achievement. We are proud that we have secured almost £200 billion of investment in low-carbon energy projects since 2010 and that we have helped to secure this country’s energy independence by backing North sea oil and gas, protecting 200,000 jobs.
Can the right hon. Gentleman be proud of his record? He said that we should sacrifice our growth to cut emissions and that we should borrow £28 billion in his blind ambition for 2030. He supported coal, before he changed his mind and is now against it. He also said that growing our renewables sector to 40% was pie in the sky, but in the first quarter of 2023, 48% of our power came from renewable energy. He spent years at Gordon Brown’s side and as Energy Secretary but did nothing to boost British nuclear in his time in government, whereas we are forging a new path, with every operational nuclear power station in this country having started life under a Conservative Government. Members do not need to take my word for it that our energy security is safer with us, because just this weekend the owners of Grangemouth made it clear that the threat Labour’s plans pose to the future of the refinery, potentially putting thousands of jobs at risk, would be a danger for energy security. Furthermore, we cannot allow oil and gas workers to become the coalminers of our generation. It has been said that Labour
“does not properly understand energy”,
with it being “self-defeating” and “naive”. Those are not my words but those of the general secretary of the Unite union and the head of the GMB.
Furthermore, the right hon. Gentleman talks about uncertainty. If he would like to give the business and industry certainty, he and the shadow Chancellor need to sit down and agree how much money they will actually spend—is it £28 billion or £8 billion? Is it no new money, or is it what we heard over the weekend, which is as much as £100 billion of new borrowing for GB Energy? Conservatives will prioritise energy security. We are set on delivering the most ambitious net zero targets of any major economy, and we will do this all without forcing families to choose between protecting their family finances and protecting the planet.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I call the Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee.
Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)
I warmly welcome what my right hon. Friend has just said about the focus on the grid and accelerating grid access. I hope she will be able to pick up on the report that my Committee is undertaking on that subject and that we can contribute to her deliberations. As she will be aware, I wrote to the Prime Minister on behalf of the Committee in the week following his speech, offering him an opportunity to put some flesh on the bones of what his more pragmatic approach to achieving net zero ambitions actually means. Will she confirm when my Committee can expect to receive a reply to that letter? Will it include an analysis of the impact of the trajectory of delivering net zero on the five-yearly carbon budgets and, in particular, how the announcement we have just had confirmed by the Transport Secretary, who is sitting next to her, on maintaining the zero-emission vehicle mandate will impact on that trajectory?
Claire Coutinho
I thank my right hon. Friend and commend his long-standing work on environmentalism; I have been privileged to work with him on this before. I will be responding to him and I look forward to coming to speak to his Committee in due course. We set out unprecedented levels of detail in the analysis of how we are going to meet the targets earlier this year. I also accept the Climate Change Committee’s analysis, which is that the changes we have made are not materially different in terms of achieving our targets—we are absolutely committed to making sure that we do so. As he rightly points out, the biggest announcement we have made on achieving those targets is the one relating to the grid, which will allow for much greater and quicker electrification of society when it comes to the impacts of other proposals.
Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
There seems to be no level to which this Prime Minister will not stoop in his pursuit of a culture war. Apart from the reactionary brigade on his own Benches and the flat earthers, he has angered many across the UK, from environmental groups to Tory donors and even Boris Johnson. These legal targets and deadlines have been in place for some time and, accordingly, businesses active in all these sectors will have had investment and disinvestment plans in place for years. Reducing the UK’s energy use by 15% by 2030 was a tough target, but we need tough targets if we are to rise to the situation the planet faces.
What does the Prime Minister do when faced with difficulty? He scraps the energy efficiency taskforce after just six months—it is utterly embarrassing. If this Government were so worried about the affordability of climate measures, why were they offering less support than the Scottish Government for heat pump installation, and why do they keep cancelling successive home insulation schemes? Of course, all this follows the Tories permitting a new coal mine, along with the Cambo and Rosebank oilfields. Is the Secretary of State at all surprised that two thirds of UK voters say that the Tories cannot be trusted on climate change?
Scotland’s ambitions in this area are far greater and faster. Scotland’s Net Zero Secretary, Màiri McAllan, said that the Scottish Government had been
“blindsided by these announcements, with zero consultation in advance”
and that it was an
“unforgivable betrayal of current and future generations”.
The Prime Minister’s reckless decision, combined with the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020, makes it extremely difficult for Scotland to hit our targets. Last week, Scotland transferred—it would be an export, post-independence—more than 400 GWh of renewable electricity to England. Many other wind power schemes are in development, including the world’s biggest at Berwick Bank, which will ensure that Scotland is one of the world’s biggest exporters of clean green energy. We also have two hydro schemes ready to go, if the Government were to put the contractual agreements in place.
Scots often ask about the costs and benefits of this unequal Union of ours. Many will now wonder if watering down our climate ambitions or the obligations we committed to at COP26 is too high a price to pay.
Claire Coutinho
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his questions. Let me be clear: there has been no watering down of our targets. We have the most ambitious decarbonising targets of any major economy, and we have not changed those at all. We are resolutely committed to them. By 2030, we will have cut emissions by 68%; the US is planning to cut its emissions by 40% and the EU its emissions by 55%. The people of Scotland will be very proud that we are the most ambitious major economy in the world, and we will work towards that together.
We have worked with the devolved Administrations since the announcement, and I am due to speak to my counterpart in due course—I have been in correspondence with him. One of the biggest things that we will do that will be helpful for the Scottish people particularly, and that will bring benefits to the renewable energy sector, is to improve the grid. Having spoken to more than 100 investors, I know it is their biggest ask, and it will be very positive, not just for Scotland but for the whole of the UK.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I call the Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee.
Sir Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)
Even before Dogger Bank comes on stream, the UK is leading the world in offshore wind generation. I hope that in due course we will also lead the world in nuclear generation. If we are to charge up all those electric cars and power all those air source heat pumps, we will need an awful lot of electricity at peak times. We will also be producing a lot of electricity at off-peak times. Does the Secretary of State agree that hydrogen will have an important part to play in powering heavy vehicles and heating homes? If we are to do that, we need to make sure that our gas grid does not become a stranded asset, because we might need to press it into service.
Claire Coutinho
I thank my right hon. Friend and he makes an excellent and correct point. While making sure that we grow our intermittent energy sources such as solar and wind, we must also have a stable baseload underneath that. He is right that hydrogen will play an interesting role, and I am speaking to the sector about how we can move forward. It is an exciting policy area and I will explore it in many ways. We also have a trial on heating homes. I pick him up on one point: we will be using gas for a long time. Even the independent Climate Change Committee acknowledges that we will still be using gas in 2050.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker
We have another debate to follow. I will try to get everybody in, but I will prioritise those Members who have not already asked questions in previous statements or who did not get in. Brevity would be much appreciated in both questions and answers.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
I value the cross-party consensus that this country has enjoyed for the past 20 years, which is responsible for some of the strenuous targets that the Secretary of State has outlined. However, I was disappointed by the Prime Minister’s statement and, indeed, the tone of the Secretary of State’s remarks today. In the spirit of cross-party consensus, will she set out a hierarchy for the utilisation of the 10 MW of low-carbon hydrogen that the Government have now committed to, so that the limited supply of hydrogen power is delivered first to high-energy users such as those in the steel, ceramics, glass and cement sectors who need the extra heat that electricity cannot provide?
Claire Coutinho
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that hydrogen possesses enormous potential when it comes to our industrial sectors. I will be meeting many people from the sector tomorrow and will be looking at that point very carefully, and I would be happy to speak further with him about it.
Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)
When the new Select Committee on Energy Security and Net Zero first met, the first thing we did was to have huge roundtable days with over 50 different stakeholders from the sector. Time and again, those stakeholders talked about the tardiness of getting planning approval and access to the grid, so I absolutely welcome action that will deliver cleaner, cheaper and more secure energy. I also get the point about needing carrots, not sticks, for electric vehicles. In my constituency, those with driveways pay only 5% tax on their electricity, but those who do not have a driveway have to pay 20% tax. That is true all across the country, so will the Secretary of State join me in pushing the Chancellor for those carrots to be fair carrots?
Claire Coutinho
My right hon. Friend is a huge champion of all environmental issues, and I look forward to speaking to her Committee in due course. It is really important that we have a just and fair transition—that is exactly what the proposals we have set out aim to do. She will know that tax matters are for the Chancellor but, again, I would be happy to speak to her further about those issues.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
Honestly, this statement takes Orwellian doublespeak to new levels. It must have set some record for the largest number of misleading statements in the smallest amount of space. I do not know how the Secretary of State has the gall to stand at the Dispatch Box and say that this is about easing the burden on hard-working people, when she knows that all the evidence shows that what has been announced will increase costs for ordinary people.
For example, we have heard from the Climate Change Committee that the changes when it comes to landlords and efficiency standards in homes will cost renters an extra £300 a year. The Office for Budget Responsibility is clear that, as a result of the changes that are going to be made, our dependence on gas will cost us more. If the Government really cared about hard-working families, they would not be handing Equinor £3 billion to develop the climate-wrecking Rosebank oilfield; they would be admitting that what the Secretary of State is doing is ripping up the climate consensus for short-term electoral calculation and populist right-wing propaganda.
Claire Coutinho
I thank the hon. Lady for that question, but if she had any constituents living in properties off the gas grid, it would be clear to her how worried people were about those policies. We have given them this reprieve because we understand that putting in some of those technologies, such as heat pumps, would have cost them thousands of pounds—making sure that they had the right insulation in place, for example.
Turning to Equinor, far from us paying that company money, that is something that will pay tax into the Exchequer, unlocking green investment and allowing people in the wider sector to continue in 200,000 jobs across the economy. Those are jobs, people and communities that we will need in the transition to renewable energy, because they are the same people with the same skills that will be used. It would be right for the hon. Lady to talk to the people of those communities about this issue.
John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
The Secretary of State is right that, in order for this to work, green products need to be affordable and attractive. What study has her Department made of the attractions of synthetic and sustainable fuels as another option, compared with batteries? They may be easier for many of these users.
Claire Coutinho
I thank my right hon. Friend for that question—we have spoken about this issue before. We will be consulting on synthetic fuels, in particular for aviation, and we are looking at alternative fuels more widely, for example for rural homes. I would be happy to keep up the conversation with him about our progress.
Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) (Lab/Co-op)
In the words of my constituent Adam:
“In Vauxhall these climate policies would help local parents like us to pay our energy bills this winter and keep our children safe and warm. Without these policies children in London face a bleak future as the climate crisis does irreparable damage to the world around them.”
Like many other Vauxhall residents, Adam is deeply concerned about the impact of the Government’s delays and about the world we are leaving for our children. Does the Secretary of State not understand that these delays run contrary to the aim of making the lives of the next generation better than the lives that we all enjoy today?
Claire Coutinho
We do understand the importance of energy efficiency. In fact, during our tenure we have raised the proportion of energy-efficient homes from 14%, when we came to office, to 50%. We are also spending £6 billion in this Parliament and a further £6 billion up to 2028, in addition to the £5 billion that will be delivered through the energy company obligation and the great British insulation scheme. This is something that we are taking seriously, and the hon. Lady can give her constituent that assurance.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
Given that our total emissions are less than the increment in Chinese emissions every year, my right hon. Friend is right to be pragmatic about this. At present there are planning applications for solar farms ringing Gainsborough totalling 15,000 acres—enough to feed the city of Hull every year—all based on a fiddled application for a national infrastructure project. There is currently a planning presumption against building solar farms on land graded 1, 2 or 3a, but not 3b. But for a farmer there is no difference between 3a and 3b land. Can we change that planning presumption and build solar farms on top of factories and on grey land, rather than taking good farming land?
Claire Coutinho
I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend about the need to build solar farms in more appropriate places, which is why I announced, in the last couple of weeks, that it would be easier to build them on industrial rooftops, car parks and warehouses in the way that he has described.
Claire Hanna (Belfast South) (SDLP)
The Secretary of State has suggested that many people have not bought into the concept of net zero. Instead of seeing that as an opportunity for leadership, the Government play into misinformation about made-up taxes and the seven deadly bins. She will be aware that Northern Ireland is already a laggard on climate issues because the Assembly was collapsed just after it had finally passed binding targets, and before it had taken any meaningful action on issues such as retrofitting, planning for renewables and transforming agrifood. Is she also aware that Northern Ireland relies largely on the all-island single energy market for our energy needs, and is she confident that her Government are keeping up with their responsibility to ensure that we match the standards of that market?
Claire Coutinho
We care about climate change, which is why we have the most ambitious targets of any major economy. That is what we have delivered on to date, and that is what we will be delivering on when we get to 2030 as well. As for the single electricity market, I am familiar with that, and we talk to our Northern Ireland counterparts regularly to make sure that it is working in a way that benefits the Northern Irish people.
Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)
The Secretary of State is right: we must take people with us on this journey to net zero. When it comes to incentivising people in the take-up of electric vehicles, what more can the Government do to broaden—or turbocharge—the provision of public EV charging points by companies and councils?
Claire Coutinho
The most important thing that we can do to turbocharge that is get the grid working and look at both transition and distribution, which is exactly what we are planning to do in our responses to the Winser report. I would say to anyone who wants to buy an electric vehicle that if that works for them they will be able to do it, and nothing in our plans will change that.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
The cheapest energy is the energy that we do not use. It is unforgivable that the Government have cancelled the obligation for landlords to upgrade homes to an EPC grade C rating by 2028 at the latest. A comprehensive home insulation scheme would reduce bills and carbon emissions this winter. I am going to make a proposal that might sound quite attractive to Conservative ears, because it is about incentivising and tax breaks. Will the Secretary of State consider allowing landlords to offset spending on insulation against their income tax bills? That would benefit tenants by enabling them to live in warm and comfortable homes.
Claire Coutinho
I set out earlier the amount that we are spending on insulation: £6 billion in this Parliament, with a further £6 billion to 2028 and an additional £5 billion through the energy company obligation and the great British insulation scheme. The real-world reason for why we did not pursue that policy is that it could have cost property owners up to £15,000, and we did not want to put further pressure on rents at a time when families are really struggling. With regard to the hon. Lady’s policy on income tax relief, I suggest that is not necessarily the best response, because a lot of landlords are pensioners and will not necessarily pay income tax. However, we will continue to look at everything we can do to ensure that insulation is properly delivered.
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)
The announcement changed two key dates that were the subject of a lot of work by the previous Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee. Does the Secretary of State agree that in terms of the preparedness of the industry affected and the awareness of consumers, there is a contrast between the automotive sector and domestic heating, with far more progress having been made on the former, so there was a stronger case to put back the dates on home heating than on the automotive sector? Does she also agree that if we are to have power available where it is needed for electric vehicles and to heat our homes, we need to speed up the reinforcement of the electricity grid?
Claire Coutinho
I completely agree with my hon. Friend’s points about the grid. Every single person in the sector I have spoken to has said that the announcements we have made about the grid are the most important made to date. In terms of electric vehicles, if the prices get to a point where families want to adopt them, they will do so. Nothing in our policy stops them. On domestic heating, it is right that we have taken some space for households that would not be suitable for such technology. He is right to welcome the uplift on the boiler upgrade grant. I have spoken to providers such as Octopus, which has said that it has seen a fivefold increase in inquiries since we announced the policy.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
It was clear from talking to industrialists about net zero and carbon capture last week that they were exasperated with the Government’s start-stop approach to business, the snail’s pace of decisions and, of course, the lack of clarity. The Chemical Industries Association has reported declining production and said that domestic demand remains low. It needs CCUS, its fellow industrialists need CCUS and net zero needs CCUS. When will we get some final decisions, or are those initiatives also under threat?
Claire Coutinho
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to articulate the potential of carbon capture and storage. Earlier in the year, we set out the £20 billion package—a large package by international standards. We have set out some progress, and we are working at pace to ensure that we can set out more later in the year. He talks about lack of clarity; if he is worried about that, I gently say that he might want to look at his own party’s position.
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
Further to the question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood), synthetic fuels—by that, I mean genuinely synthetic fuels made from green hydrogen and atmospheric carbon capture, rather than biofuels or fuels from waste—are net zero, because the amount of carbon at the tailpipe is the same volume recaptured to make the next lot of fuel, yet the myopic zero-emission vehicle mandate prevents the UK from benefiting from synthetic fuels for our road vehicles. Will my right hon. Friend show the same welcome pragmatism she has shown to the rest of the agenda and revisit the zero-emission vehicle mandate?
Claire Coutinho
We have set out our position on the zero-emission mandate. However, we are also looking at synthetic fuels. As I said, we are consulting on them for aviation, and we can look at them more broadly. However, we have set out the position on the ZEV mandate, which has been widely welcomed.
Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)
Given that the rowing back on the commitments towards net zero came on the first day of the parliamentary recess, it looked an awful lot like there was an attempt to avoid democratic scrutiny. The Secretary of State has said that she wants to take people with her. May I put to her a group of people she could take with her by reversing some of these daft decisions: private renters. When I meet families who are renting from private landlords, particularly in the Marsh area of Lancaster, I hear that their energy bills are far higher because of their doors and windows and how their roofs are leaky and not insulated. That rowing back on the standard in the private rented sector is costing families more. Will she please look again at that?
Claire Coutinho
I thank the hon. Lady, but that takes some gall when the Labour party left the proportion of energy-efficient homes in this country at 14% and we have taken it to 50%. I have set out the multiple billions that we will be spending on insulation, which is important to us. But, at the same time, asking families up and down the country to spend £10,000 on updating homes would have been passed on in rents and may have led to more shortages in the private rented sector. That is something we absolutely must not see at a time when families are struggling.
Holly Mumby-Croft (Scunthorpe) (Con)
I too welcome my right hon. Friend’s comments on grid connections; that is something I am concerned about and have raised a number of times. Can she reassure businesses that may be making investment decisions right now that, when she brings forward her plans, those timescales will dramatically reduce? I am not talking about reducing from the 10 years we have seen reported to eight, six, four or even two years—I am talking about a really serious reduction in practical timeframes.
Claire Coutinho
My hon. Friend is a doughty campaigner for all the industries in her area. Our ambition is to tackle the challenge with the grid. We will be setting out for the first time a geo-spatial plan, looking at planning and looking at all the different connection points to make sure we have an overall strategy for the country, which will immeasurably speed up the connection process.
Ben Lake (Ceredigion) (PC)
September’s offshore wind auction failed to attract any successful bids, a result that dealt a severe blow to hopes for a floating offshore wind industry based off the south-west coast of Wales. What reassurances can the Secretary of State offer that lessons will be learnt from that auction process and that action will be taken to ensure that investment in this new exciting industry is secured in future?
Claire Coutinho
The hon. Gentleman is right to talk about offshore wind as an exciting industry, which has done incredibly well under our contracts for difference programme. We are looking at floating offshore wind, and he will know the support we have put in place, but I have been speaking to investors and stakeholders and will be making sure that we look at some of the challenges the sector faces.
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
What role does she see for the concept of 20-minute neighbourhoods in helping the United Kingdom to meet its net zero targets?
Claire Coutinho
The point of our proposals is to make sure that people have choice, that we can bring people with us and that people can live their lives in the way they want to. We can enable them through decarbonising the power grid and giving them alternative options, so we can make sure that we can get to our net zero targets in a way that is practical and achievable for families.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
At the Democratic Unionist party conference on Saturday past, the Ulster Farmers Union, of which I declare I am a member, had a leaflet on achieving net zero. Can the Secretary of State outline how we will meet our international obligations in terms of net zero with this rollback and how firms and farmers that have already invested in green policies and procedures will be able to compete with those who can go full steam ahead with older practices and no incentives whatsoever to change?
Claire Coutinho
We are not rolling back from our targets at all; I agree with the Climate Change Committee’s assessment that there is no material difference between the projections in June and the recent assessments it made post the announcements. I welcome a lot of the work that many of our farmers are doing to pursue environmental goals. I have talked to many in my constituency who are doing quite phenomenal things at a local level. They will be supported by our agriculture policy, the landmark Agriculture Act 2020 and the Environment Act 2021 that we have brought forward in recent years.
Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)
Last winter the taxpayer covered around half the cost of British people heating their homes. That amounted to exactly £39.3 billion of taxpayers’ money spent between last October and this March. At the end of last year, 33% of properties with a loft did not have loft insulation. How concerned is the Secretary of State about the cost to future taxpayers of rowing back this Government’s previous insulation plans?
Claire Coutinho
The hon. Gentleman is right to point out that we spent £40 billion last year helping people with their energy bills, paying on average half of people’s energy bills to support them through that difficult time. On insulation, I would say that when we came into power, 14% of homes were energy efficient, and now that figure is 50%. We are spending £6 billion in this Parliament, a further £6 billion to 2028 and £5 billion through the energy company obligation and the Great British Insulation Scheme to make sure that our homes are energy efficient.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
I welcome the Government’s belated recognition that net zero policies are costing individuals in their pockets, costing jobs and of course producing huge profits for the eco industry. But is the Secretary of State not concerned that, by maintaining the legal target for 2050, she hands a weapon to those who want to use the judicial review mechanism either to delay or to stop important decisions on airport expansion, new roads and oil and gas licences—delaying even some of the policies that she says today she wants to delay to save people money?
Claire Coutinho
We are confident that we can meet those targets, and we see opportunities in the transition ahead of us—we see jobs, investment and opportunities to export British products around the world. That is what I will focus on in this job to ensure that we make the most of the energy transition and that it benefits all parts of our country. We also want to do that in a sensible way that protects families and household incomes.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Reclaim)
The Secretary of State is explaining that she is only slowing the Government’s headlong dash to net zero because of waning public support. When did the Secretary of State think that she was ever going to maintain public support for policies that will make our constituents poorer, colder and less free, while at the same time allowing communist China to increase its emissions by more than our total emissions in every year of this decade?
Claire Coutinho
As I said, the climate transition presents huge opportunities for this country and the people of this country when it comes to jobs, investment and improving our energy security. That will be the focus of my work in this role. However, we will do that in a way that protects finances and families from clunky and clumsy unimplementable policies.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I thank the Secretary of State for her statement.
Backbench Business
Early Years Childcare
(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Before I call the mover of the motion, I should say that we will have a maiden speech, and we have a very short time for this debate. I warn those who are participating that there could be a maximum time limit of five minutes, but it might be a bit less. We will see how it goes—I just wanted to warn Members, because, obviously, there will not be a time limit on the maiden speech.
Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered support for childcare and the early years.
I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate early in this parliamentary sitting period and for allowing the Education Committee to continue its work on this vital area of policy. I am also grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton), recognising the pressure on parliamentary time today, for having withdrawn her equally important debate. I hope that she secures another one on that subject.
When I ran to be Chairman of the Education Committee, I proposed an inquiry into early education and childcare, and I was very glad to get the support of a substantial majority across the whole House, as well as from individual members of the Committee in pursuing that. As the parent of a five-year-old and two-year-old, I should perhaps declare a special personal interest in this area, but there is probably no single subject more vital to the future success of our children than their earliest experiences of education, and the stimulation, engagement and support they can receive through high-quality early years education and childcare.
As many others have argued, there is enormous economic benefit from investment in this space. However, the last time I troubled the Backbench Business Committee for time to debate it was in advance of the last Budget, when I was very glad that the Treasury accepted the case for major new financial commitments in this area. I said then that investment in childcare and early education would benefit multiple groups: parents who wish to work; schools to have properly socialised children ready to learn; children who benefit from better stimulation; and those with special educational needs with earlier identification. It is a win to the power of four.
Our inquiry was launched before the very significant expansion in the Government’s childcare offer and their plans for substantially increasing investment in the funded hours. It is important to note, however, that our oral evidence was taken both before and after the detail of the announcements became known. We heard both the relief of the sector at the scale of the commitment being made and also many of its ongoing concerns about the complexity of the many schemes of funding, the overall level of funding going into childcare, particularly for three and four-year-olds, and the many serious and ongoing pressures facing providers.
I am enormously grateful to the many expert witnesses, parents, providers, academics, campaigners, childminders and nursery practitioners who gave evidence to us. Indeed, it is worth noting that this inquiry received more written submissions than any other in the life of my Committee and, in so far as my Clerks recall, any other inquiry in the history of the Education Committee. I put on record my thanks to the Clerks of the Committee and their apprentice, who had to handle an unprecedented quantity of material with calm determination and expertise.
Due to the very important list of other debates that have taken place today, I will not have time to re-present every one of the 21 recommendations that we made in the report on the back of the more than 10,000 pieces of evidence. However, I want to remind the Minister of the pressing nature of the challenge, reflected in the enormous public response to our call for evidence, and I will focus on three key recommendations.
The affordability of childcare is a key concern for parents, and before the Budget it was becoming clear that the sector was facing a crisis of both affordability and availability. I have no doubt that the additional hundreds of millions in funding this year and next will make some difference, and that the roll-out of funded hours for the under-threes over the next few years will make a big difference for working parents, but I urge the Government to consider very carefully recommendations 6, 8 and 11, as well as overarching recommendations 1 and 2 on the need to work across Government to ensure adequate funding. The additional billions that the Government have committed over the long term will succeed only if the sector is properly supported in the short and medium term and if we continue to have strong and thriving early years education across the public, private and voluntary sectors.
I know the Department for Education is not able to make decisions on taxation, but I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to consider very carefully the case for our recommendation on exempting childcare providers from business rates and the payment of VAT on building costs. Not only are these taxes a false economy for the Treasury, as the DFE’s evidence admits these costs have to be taken into account in a setting’s funding rates, but they are a barrier to much-needed expansion to meet the Government’s own ambitions. Worse, many childcare businesses pointed out to the Committee that the size of their premises is a matter not of choice but of meeting regulatory standards required by Government and Ofsted guidelines. They therefore find themselves having to pay more in business rates not as a result of a commercial decision to expand but as a result of wishing to meet the space standards set by public bodies.
I raised nurseries’ pressing concerns about their rapidly increasing business rates bills in a previous debate but, as our unanimous recommendations suggest, fixing this problem and creating a level playing field among providers on rates and VAT should not be used as a cost-saving measure; it should be used to ensure that more resources are available for paying, upskilling and retaining expert staff. In support of this recommendation, written evidence from the National Education Union said:
“Business rates for nursery schools can be over £100,000 in some areas, so the absence of a rebate is a significant pressure on already overstretched budgets.”
Written evidence from the National Day Nurseries Association said:
“Business rate property revaluation from April 2023 has seen providers report bill increases of 40-50%.”
In a survey of NDNA members, 782 nurseries across England were asked what they would do if they no longer had to pay business rates: 61% said they would increase staff salaries; 49% said they would reduce losses in their business; and 40% said they would mitigate fee increases to parents. If affordability and quality are as important to the Government as availability, I believe that they should take account of this evidence. I know my hon. Friend the Minister is passionate about social mobility and the benefits of early years education, and I urge him to ensure this continues to be pressed with the Treasury.
We have heard strong arguments from the Treasury about the benefit to parents of being able to work, where there is affordable childcare provision. This has been a key rationale for the expansion of so-called free hours, which we have recommended should be called “funded hours,” down the age groups. It was a key rationale behind the very welcome changes to childcare costs within universal credit. However, in that context, I urge the Minister to press his Treasury colleagues on recommendation 11 for a fundamental review of the tax-free childcare system to improve both understanding and uptake.
Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs tax-free childcare report and survey of 2021 found that 43% of people found the name confusing or unclear. Of these, 58% said it prevented them from looking into tax-free childcare and 54% said it prevented them from signing up to the scheme. The Institute for Fiscal Studies said that
“in the four years after introducing tax-free childcare, the government spent £2.3 billion less on the scheme than it had planned.”
In the written evidence we received from parents, they said:
“The tax free childcare system is confusing and onerous to use, and complicated to calculate.”
Childminders told us:
“Not enough parents know about Tax-Free-Childcare, especially not the self-employed. Many parents also find it…difficult to set up the payments.”
My biggest disappointment with the announcements made at the Budget is that the tax-free childcare system was not touched, yet we know that the theoretical benefits of this policy are not reaching a very substantial proportion of the parents it was designed to help.
Worse, in answer to my written parliamentary questions, we have seen that even those who have gone to the trouble of registering or re-registering for support through the current cumbersome system, only around half actually claim anything from it, which does not suggest a system that is living up to its promise.
The Select Committee made a number of other suggestions for supporting affordability for parents, not least our call in recommendation 13 for better support for stay-at-home parents.
The last area I want to press particularly hard with my colleague on the Front Bench is the logic of our recommendation on offering funded support to parents in training or study. The logic is that elsewhere across education policy the Government are going out of their way to encourage people to upskill, supporting lifelong learning and investing in the long-term productivity of our country by ensuring people are better skilled. It is, therefore, counterproductive to disincentivise parents from pursuing higher qualifications by making 30 hours of childcare available only to working families on a particular income, and explicitly not to those in study. The recent report by the all-party parliamentary group for students on the cost of living and its impact on students highlighted the severe challenges facing parents in study. Addressing that, as part of our recommendation 18, would make a massive difference to that group of parents.
Supporting the workforce, expanding family hubs, not just in some areas but across the whole country, expanding the early years pupil premium and investing in early intervention and training to identify and meet special educational needs are among the other key recommendations of our report. I could speak passionately in favour of every single one of our key recommendations and, when the Select Committee meets tomorrow, I look forward to the detailed consideration of the Government’s response, but I know many other Members want to speak in the debate.
I end by commending the whole report of my Committee to my hon. Friend the Minister. Having served in the Government, I appreciate that he may not be able to accept every one of our recommendations straight away, but I hope he will recognise the weight of evidence that sits behind them, the incredible importance of getting policy in this area right and the immense value of continuing to invest in our children.
Our Prime Minister has described education as
“the closest thing we have to a silver bullet”
for improving productivity. I welcome his commitment to making education the main funding priority in every spending review—early years education needs to be at the forefront of that. Having worked with my hon. Friend the Minister over a number of years, I know how passionate he is about evidence-based policy to improve life chances for children, closing the attainment gap and tackling disadvantage. There can be no greater impact on each of those than investing effectively in early years.
I am hugely grateful to colleagues from across the House who have supported the debate and I am delighted that we have a maiden speech to look forward to from one of the House’s newest Members. I commend this report and debate to my hon. Friend the Minister.
Mr Speaker
I remind Members that this is a maiden speech and there will be no interruptions.
Keir Mather (Selby and Ainsty) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) for securing this important debate on support for childcare and the early years.
In my constituency of Selby and Ainsty enormous challenges exist for children who have additional needs and who sit at that critical juncture between the early years and key stage 1. One reason for that is the failure to build a special educational needs and disabilities school for the Selby area of my constituency, despite Department for Education funding having been allocated since 2019. That forces parents to make an impossible choice: they can place their children in mainstream schools that do not suit their needs, educate them at home with little support or have them travel for hours a day to attend schools in Harrogate or Scarborough. This outrageous situation cannot continue and, as Selby and Ainsty’s Member of Parliament, I will fight tirelessly for spades in the ground to provide the SEND school those children so desperately need.
If you will permit me, Mr Speaker, I would like in my maiden speech to tell hon. Members about my beautiful constituency of Selby and Ainsty, but before I do so I too condemn the barbaric attack by Hamas terrorists on Israel last week and send my profound condolences and personal solidarity to all innocent civilians caught in the terrible violence that has engulfed Israel and Palestine.
I would also like to take a moment to welcome another new Member to their place: my hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Michael Shanks). He is a person of integrity and intelligence, who I greatly look forward to working alongside, as we learn to navigate this formidable place together and show our constituents the difference that a hard-working Labour MP can make.
People in my constituency of Selby and Ainsty represent the best of Yorkshire. They are community-orientated, but personally resilient; hopeful and proud, but grounded and pragmatic; willing to give people a fair hearing, but never afraid to speak truth to power. It is that independent-minded outlook that I believe explains the most exciting political moments in our area’s past, because I am not the first by-election candidate to cause a national upset in our part of the world.
Back in 1905, Selby residents, much like their modern compatriots, had suffered through over 10 years of Conservative Government. Britain languished under the rule of an unelected Prime Minister, Arthur Balfour, too weak to govern and too lacking in authority to lead a broken Tory party, divided, unsurprisingly, by Britain’s trading relationship with the outside world. The residents of Selby looked at this Tory melodrama and said enough, using a by-election to send a Liberal, Joseph Andrews, to represent them. I am proud, Mr Speaker, that some 118 years later, local people in Selby have not lost the defiant spirit of their forebears, this time voting Labour for a brighter future for their community.
In modern times, the Selby constituency has mirrored the national picture, remaining Labour from 1997 to 2010 before being Tory-held from 2010 to now. I would like to take a moment to talk about my predecessors. My immediate predecessor is Nigel Adams, who had the privilege of representing the seat where he was raised and educated. Mr Adams deserves credit for his support for local charities such as Selby Hands of Hope, and his work to secure funding for Tadcaster’s flood-alleviation scheme. In his maiden speech, he said that there was
“no greater honour, privilege or responsibility”—[Official Report, 9 June 2010; Vol. 511, c. 395.]
than representing Selby and Ainsty. I echo those sentiments and thank him for his contribution.
I now turn to Mr John Grogan, who began the tradition of Labour MPs representing the Selby area. John and I both fought our first elections in Selby as younger men, myself at 25 and John at 26, though I am pleased to say that I had a little more luck on my first attempt. I can only hope that the similarities continue, as John’s achievements for our area were phenomenal. He secured the Selby bypass, oversaw the creation of modern flood defences, and achieved funding for Selby War Memorial Hospital, a pillar of our community upon which so many continue to rely. John was an empathetic and tenacious constituency MP, and will be so again when he returns to this place at the next election.
Selby and Ainsty is a vast rural constituency, with no one single centre of gravity. Instead, ancient patterns of agriculture, river trade and commerce have created a complex tapestry of villages and towns, each with its own unique attributes. Selby itself has always been on the national map, passing the centuries under the shadow of our magnificent 11th-century abbey as a prosperous market town. It played its part in the industrial revolution with a thriving shipbuilding industry, and in recent times boasted the largest coalfield in Europe, powering Britain for decades through the hard graft of ex-mineworkers and their families, whose interests I look forward to defending and advancing. It is also clear that our town has a bright future ahead as a regional tourism centre, an emerging hub for doing business, and in its continuing role as Great Britain’s energy epicentre.
To the west of Selby lies Sherburn in Elmet, a town fired by community spirit and people determined, in the best Yorkshire sense of the phrase, just to get on with it. The place is powered by fantastic community groups such as We Are Sherburn, the Old Girls’ School, Elmet Lions and the annual Scrapper’s Cup, stewarded by fantastic local leaders. To the north lies Tadcaster and its surrounding villages. Tad is a brewing town with formidable heritage, and those Members who enjoy a Madrí, a John Smith’s, a Foster’s or even a Newkie Brown are likely to be sampling the produce from that beautiful part of north Yorkshire.
However, like so many other northern villages and towns, the success of communities in my constituency has been in spite of a Government who have consistently failed to get the basics right. In our part of north Yorkshire, it is hard to stay healthy when a GP appointment or a timely ambulance is a thing of the past, and when dental provision is so poor that one resident told me that she had had to pull out one of her own daughter’s teeth. It is hard for people to keep their head above water when average mortgage payments in our area have increased by thousands of pounds a year, and when those trying to build a life on newbuild estates are fleeced by the very companies that are meant to provide them with a decent place to live. It is hard to get on as a region when broken bus networks isolate the elderly, stop people getting to work, stifle small businesses and cut us off from the outside world.
I have no doubt about our future success, but local people know that we deserve better than what we are forced to settle for now. That hope for a fairer future is what I will fight for every single day that I am in this place, and I am grateful that constituents have provided me with this opportunity to serve, because for me, the need to right those systemic wrongs is not just about productivity, health outcomes, or pounds and pence. It is about values—Labour values—and the conviction that residents in Selby and Ainsty have a right as British citizens not just to survive but to realise their full potential, and to live decent, happy and fulfilled lives that allow them and their families to flourish.
I hold those convictions not only as a Labour Member of Parliament, but as somebody who is deeply patriotic, who believes that Britain should lead the world and set an example for what it means for the Government to serve their citizens. That belief in progressive patriotism is defined by my experience as a young person. I am the first Member of Parliament to have been born after the last Labour Government took power in 1997. I know that some Members may want to close their ears at that fact, but it means that I have grown up in a world destabilised by the technological revolution, climate crisis and war, and I will live through a century of unparalleled global upheaval.
In the face of those challenges, myself and other young people believe that Britain has a duty to become a leader again. When globalisation has failed to solve challenges such as the climate crisis, British business and British workers must lead the world in securing green prosperity and winning the race to net zero. When the age of peace on the European mainland is over, and America’s ability to provide stability is in question, the UK must lead in NATO, support our European partners, and enhance our armed services’ ability to defend our interests. When democratic ideals are threatened, either by autocratic regimes or the destructive power of terrorist organisations such as Hamas, the UK must defend our allies overseas, uphold international law and human rights, and strengthen our democracy at home, protecting civil liberties, enhancing trade union rights, and pursuing meaningful devolution of powers across our United Kingdom.
As young people, this is the future we choose. We are clear-eyed about the challenges that lie ahead but determined to play our part in realising our country’s promise. As I said on the night of my election, I hope to be a representative of that power of young people to make a difference. But we will not do it alone. I was sent to this place by a constituency whose population is older than the national average but who put their faith in me to defend their interests. That is because, in spite of the divisive politics that seeks to pit one generation against the other, in Selby and Ainsty we share our ambitions for our community and our country, and are committed to realising them together.
It will be the privilege of my life to play my part in this work, working in our Parliament, which I revere so deeply, to give back to my community and country, which I love so very dearly. Thank you.
Cherilyn Mackrory (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)
I warmly welcome the hon. Member for Selby and Ainsty (Keir Mather) to his place. I am sure that he is going to be an absolute asset to his area. Not many people may know that, although I am a Member of Parliament in Cornwall, I was born and raised in North Yorkshire. I therefore wonder why none of the children in his constituency wants to go to school in Scarborough, because I thought it was a fabulous place to go to school. I understand his campaign, however, and I admire his confidence and desire to stop older people and younger people being pitted against each other. He made me feel incredibly old, because I left Scarborough to move south before he was even born, and I had thought that I would live my whole life there. I genuinely welcome him to his place.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) for securing this debate, and I also thank the whole of the Education Committee. This is a truly important debate and I agree with most of his recommendations today. This Government have made strides in improving the quality of childcare. As a parent with a young child at home—she is nine now—it was not that long ago that I also took an interest in these matters. It is important for all working parents and all parents who need to go into training to improve their lives that we take this sector very seriously and see what we can do to make things better.
During the spring Budget statement, I was incredibly proud to sit on these green Benches as part of a Government who were supporting childcare and early years, putting them at the heart of their long-term economic strategy. It is something that I have long campaigned for. With the Chancellor pledging to double the Government’s support from £4 billion to £8 billion by 2027-28, there is no doubt that we are serious about getting to grips with this issue. I feel that I can hold my head up high at my daughter’s school gates, in the knowledge that working parents in Truro and Falmouth will save, on average, up to £6,500 a year on their childcare bills. This really matters to all the people in my constituency.
It is never going to be straightforward to expand on that scale in what is a predominantly private sector-led service. That is why I also appreciate the pragmatic steps that the Government are taking to ensure the deliverability of promises and to try to take the sector with them. The necessary changes being made to the staff-to-child ratios, which can be controversial, are actually bringing them in line with those in Scotland and other countries. I believe that gives childcare providers the freedom necessary to deliver 30 hours of free childcare in the short term, while knowing that perhaps we need a longer-term solution. That is combined with the Government’s work to encourage people back into the childcare sector. I am excited by that expansion, which will have a positive effect on the people of Truro and Falmouth.
I am going to skip quite a lot of my speech, because we are running out of time. I want to add to what the Chair of the Select Committee has said. Perhaps this issue will be for another day, but I have campaigned on it before. I have further ambitions for the sector. Eventually I would like early years educators to be given the same pay, status and training as primary school teachers. It is my belief that the work done with under-fives is every bit as important as—if not more important than—what primary school teachers do. There would be a cost and an upheaval to the sector to bring that into reality, but it is important. It would help to solve some of the issues with the growing SEND sector. When things are a little more calm, I would like real thought to be put into bringing early years educators in line with primary school teachers, particularly in training but also in their all-important career status.
Stephen Farry (North Down) (Alliance)
I warmly welcome this debate. There may well be a few speakers from Northern Ireland today, which illustrates the fact that there is a real crisis in Northern Ireland, where we are being left behind. The Government talk a lot about so-called super-parity measures in Northern Ireland, but this is an example of a super-disparity that urgently needs to be addressed. We do not have a devolved Assembly functioning in Northern Ireland. That is an ongoing crisis, but this is a crisis for households and families, and it needs to be addressed urgently by someone with Government authority of some kind.
Parents are really struggling with childcare costs—in many cases, they are greater than their mortgage costs, which we know are challenging. That puts into context the sheer scale of the problem that families face. Childcare is vital infrastructure, both social and economic. It is a form of early intervention, early education, an anti-poverty measure and a means to improve economic activity, long-term productivity and gender equality. The Government have rightly addressed those things, but we need an affordable and high-quality childcare policy.
We have concerns about the 30 free hours scheme that is in place in England. We do not feel that it is appropriate—it is certainly not the measure we want in Northern Ireland. Last week, my party published a paper on childcare and what we could do differently in our region. We have listened to expert evidence—some of which is reflected in the Select Committee’s report and recommendations—that the free hours approach fails children in low-income households; distorts the market for childcare, creating issues in the sustainability of supply; and centres on parental employment rather than on the child. We need to do things differently around universal benefits, which will help to stabilise and enhance the sector and provision.
The sustainability of the sector is an important factor. We should not be in denial about the fact that a lot of labour from other parts of the world, including the European Union, was vital in sustaining the childcare sector. That is also a pressure point under the new dispensation. This is a key investment that we want to make in our future, and one that the Government have to make—preferably through a restored Assembly. In the absence of that, I call on the UK Government to intervene, because the parents and children of Northern Ireland cannot wait any longer for a properly resourced childcare scheme.
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) on securing this important debate. At the outset, I should declare that two of my three children are below school age. We are very lucky that we have found an exceptional childminder and a superb pre-school that my two sons enjoy every day of the school week. However, from talking to many mums and dads around my constituency, I know it is not always easy to find the right childminder, nursery, pre-school or whichever setting they want and is right for their child. When they do find it, it is even more difficult to pay for it and to meet the high costs of childcare.
I warmly congratulate the Government on the massive increase in spending on subsidised childcare that will apply from 2025 to children as young as nine months old, and when the Chancellor announced it, I welcomed it. However, whenever there is a great announcement such as that, there needs to be significant scrutiny of the detail. We need to iron out any of the gremlins that might be in there. In the limited time we have, I want principally to outline two points through the lens of a wonderful childcare setting in my constituency, Big Top Nursery in the village of Waddesdon, which I visited earlier this year.
The first point relates to the funding rates that we have as of this academic year. I would really appreciate it if the Minister could meet me at some point to go through the detail further. However, I inform the House that, on the current rate the Government will pay, compared with what it costs Big Top Nursery to provide childcare, it is currently losing £1.40 an hour on a three-year-old, which equates to £14 a day. For a child who goes to Big Top for 22 hours a week, which is a standard placement for that setting, the nursery is making a loss of £30.80 per week, which across those 22 hours-a-week children adds up to a loss of £1,500 every single year. That amount of money is not sustainable if that private nursery is going to remain in business and provide the excellent childcare that it does in the long term. Either we need to find a way to ensure that nurseries can charge a top-up, with the “free hours”, as they are badged, actually rebadged as subsidised childcare—not creating the expectation that everything is free, welcome though the funding is—or there needs to be another model that recognises that such a gap exists across thousands of settings across the country.
The other point I wish to mention very briefly is the way Ofsted treats pre-school and childcare settings. Big Top Nursery was subject to a report from Ofsted that it deems deeply unfair. Questions to staff were so unclear that staff had to ask the meaning of them, and the inspector then gave them a report that was not fitting for the setting, which had parents up in arms. My challenge to the Minister is to find a way to fix that when every single parent wants the setting to remain open and to be where their children go. As yet, there is no mechanism for parents to feed into such a process.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty (Keir Mather) on a full political speech delivered with real energy, style and passion, though I could have done without the age joke.
I sat on the last Childcare Bill Committee seven years ago, and I warned then that the plans would not fly because of lack of investment. We have just heard an example of that from the hon. Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith). The Minister all those years ago said that the market would create itself. It did not, and costs remain high while the number of places available is restricted. The spring Budget was an opportunity to get that right, and I welcomed the announcement of a funding package as well as the extension of the subsidised 30 hours entitlement—it was a step towards helping parents and providers with affordability and sustainability concerns—but this investment was too long overdue, and more will be needed to address the structural problems in the early childhood education and care system if the funding increases are to be implemented effectively.
Years and years of underfunding early years entitlements has left providers unable to invest in development and straining to survive. Children and families in my constituency and across the country deserve equal opportunities to thrive and fulfil their potential. The new clauses I moved all those years ago in that Bill Committee are still relevant today, but they are not on the statute book. One would have mandated the Government to ensure that all three and four-year-olds had access to high-quality, flexible and accessible early education and childcare provision, delivered by well-qualified, confident and experienced practitioners and led by an early years graduate. Sadly, that did not happen.
Childcare settings in disadvantaged areas are the least likely to be of high quality, which is why I argued during that Bill Committee for the Government to have the power and the responsibility to ensure that all our children are cared for and taught by highly qualified professionals. Instead, we have a situation in which nurseries are unable to pay the wages needed to attract early years teachers because of the chronic underfunding of the free education entitlement by the Government. At the same time, universities are withdrawing their early years teacher training courses because they cannot attract applicants.
It is widely recognised that effective early intervention and support is vital to improve the outcomes for children with special educational needs and disabilities. Such children have the same aspirations for the future as other children, but they face more barriers. Across education, health and care, we need to know that these children’s needs are being met and not missed. Despite their failures and initiatives, the Government still lack the ambition necessary to focus on those children whose life chances are being blighted from their earliest years, in order to close the attainment gap.
Last week, I was delighted to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson) set out Labour’s plan for the ambitious reform of childcare. With a taskforce chaired by Sir David Bell, Labour’s early years plan will ensure that we have a childcare sector that works for families, children and the economy, and that high standards are not just for those families who can afford them. The chief executive of the London Early Years Foundation responded to the policy, saying:
“As children from disadvantaged backgrounds struggle to find access to quality nursery education—thereby increasing the attainment gap even further—we welcome Labour’s new ambitious review to fix what is currently a broken childcare system.”
The Tory Government have broken the childcare system, from axing huge numbers of Sure Start centres to misunderstanding how they would deliver the promised provision seven years ago. There was no plan then and there is none now. It is time for them to move on.
Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)
I join in the praise of my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) and his Committee’s comprehensive report. We have 30 to 40 years’ worth of evidence about the benefits of early intervention and improving the first 1,001 days of a child’s life. The report adds to that evidence base.
All too often, we have a debate focused on getting mums and dads back into work, when actually the early years should always be about families. We should never forget that for some children, good early years care—being able to go to a nursery—is a lifeline. It is a chance to escape a violent home, to learn, to have some routine and to eat regularly. I had quite a chaotic home life myself and know all too well how that can affect people. The report’s focus on the quality of early years and childhood care is imperative, as is the focus on making sure that parents have parental choice, which is something we should all strive to achieve.
On parents, let us be honest: we love our kids but they are hard graft. This morning, I said to my daughter that she needed to drink her water like mummy, and she looked me square in the eyes and said, “But I don’t want to be like you.” Then my baby threw her Weetabix at me and snotted down my top—and that is before I came to this mad place to deal with thousands of emails.
Parents are quite literally on the edge because having little children is hard work, but add in mortgage-level childcare costs, the daily juggle, things going wrong—my mother-in-law has broken both her ankles—and finding childcare and it all adds up to quite a lot of pressure. The transition to parenthood is excruciatingly tough on relationships. We should not forget that it is one of the few life stages in which relationships are likely to break down, causing family breakdown.
I did a comprehensive report with Onward, which gave evidence to the Select Committee, and in our recommendations we focused on families and talked about reducing complexity, as there are currently eight childcare schemes; front-loading child benefits; sharing parental leave; subsidising support in training; and really focusing on the whole family existence and what we know about the weird and wonderful lives of families.
One of my girlfriends who is currently in the trenches with a new baby sent me an article about the South Korean Government, who are basically subsidising mortgage rates—people get lower mortgage rates if they have children—because they are trying to deal with their low birth rate. Governments all around the world are trying to think creatively.
For the first time we have a Government in which the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer have put the early years at the heart of a growth agenda. I take issue with the remarks of the hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham). The Labour party does not have a plan; it talks about having a review and about talking a bit more. I put it to Opposition Members that they have in the Committee’s work a review and all the details.
We give the workforce the most precious things in our lives, yet they feel undervalued and underpaid. There is a litany of recommendations in the report. I look forward to the Minister’s comments on the recruitment campaign. We must stop calling the hours “free”; they need to be funded or subsidised. The early years premium, for example, is £376 per annum, and £1,400 for primary schools. We need to see tax changes on business rates and VAT. I could go on and on, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I will not.
Claire Hanna (Belfast South) (SDLP)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) on securing the debate, and the hon. Member for Selby and Ainsty (Keir Mather) on an excellent maiden speech. It reminded me that my maiden speech as a Member of the Legislative Assembly some years ago was on childcare. I hope that he is slightly more successful than me in achieving his political aims.
Members across the Chamber have made excellent points about the chronic failure to think big on the issue of childcare, and about the series of minor interventions to tinker with a sector that is struggling under the weight of complex funding streams. Such interventions have increased demand on the sector, as various promises of free hours are made without any meaningful work on the supply side and so do not add up to any sort of solution. As we have heard, the UK has the highest childcare costs in the OECD. Northern Ireland is falling even further behind because, as my colleague the hon. Member for North Down (Stephen Farry) said, successive Executives have failed to take sufficient interest in the issue.
The crisis is not new. As I said, I addressed it as an MLA back in 2016, and I subsequently established an all-party group, which has driven quite substantial policy change and ideas. However, when government is down more than it is up, implementing those things is difficult. There has been quite a bit of progress in people’s understanding of the issue, and I credit Northern Ireland groups such as Employers For Childcare and Melted Parents NI, as well as the Federation of Small Businesses, with correctly framing the issue as one of gender equality in the workplace, of outcomes for children and, fundamentally, of economics. The issue is crucial in tackling Northern Ireland’s chronically low productivity and high levels of economic inactivity.
In January, my Social Democratic and Labour Party colleagues in the Assembly set out a plan for a two-stage rescue plan to address the acute cost of living pressures that families face, including gargantuan—and growing—childcare bills, which, as Members have said, dwarf housing and other costs; and to address the recruitment and retention crisis that the sector faces. We also had a longer-term strategy that would borrow from successful—and usually social democratic—economies around the world. We noted at that time the inverted pyramid of funding that means that 10 times more is spent on post-primary education than on early years education, despite all that we know about the impact of a child’s first 1,000 days.
Nobody is pretending that this is a simple issue, but the necessary fixes for childcare start from the principle that it is a common good. Yes, having children may be meaningful in our lives—I think back to being asked by an indignant morning radio presenter whether this was not just chronic self-interest on my part because I had big childcare bills—but fixing childcare starts with an acceptance that, as well as being a meaningful experience, parenting is necessary for the replenishment of the human race and the workforce of the future, so providing for childcare is a matter for us all. It starts from the knowledge that more equal societies do better. That means affording everyone an equal opportunity to thrive in the workplace, and understanding that giving children a better and more equal start in life is good for the public purse and for society throughout their lifetime.
Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)
I thank the Chairman of the Select Committee for opening the debate. I also add my congratulations to the hon. Member for Selby and Ainsty (Keir Mather), who gave an absolutely tremendous speech, full of patriotism and love of community, which is just what we need to hear from the Labour party. He is already an asset to this place, so I welcome him and look forward to the contribution that he will make.
It is a very good thing that the Government are committing such a significant amount of money to the early years. Normally, I do not want to boast about Government spending as if it is a sort of proxy for good work on its own. In this case, however, doubling the contribution that is being made, from £4 billion to £8 billion, is a tremendous demonstration of the Government’s belief in early years and family policy, so I welcome it.
I echo the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) about the importance of the birth rate and fertility, which is a great challenge facing countries around the world, and something that our country will have to grapple with. With that in mind, it is very important that we do put money into families. My anxiety, though, is about the method of implementation and the effect on pre-schools. We are talking about institutions that deliver perhaps 30 hours of education and childcare per week. Increasing the funded hours effectively makes the state the sole buyer of those places at pre-schools. Effectively, we are nationalising these schools and making them clients of the Government. That might be okay. There is nothing wrong with that in principle, except for the fact that the Government are traditionally not very good at setting prices. If, as we see in Wiltshire, the price that is set is way below the actual amount of money that it costs to run the pre-school, then we have a problem. We are distorting the market to the point of destruction. I am very concerned about the effect of that on pre-schools.
Nurseries are able to do better. They run throughout the year and are able to cross-subsidise and to charge for private places. I am afraid the effect might well be that we are driving parents into nursery provision, which is often of a lower quality and out of the pre-school sector. I received a letter from Little Dragons pre-school in Devizes, which I went to see the other day. It said that the current direction of Government policy is towards the state-funded, impersonal supervision of children by profit-motivated businesses from the age of two. I am not saying that is the case for all nurseries, but it is a concern.
I just want to make a simple suggestion—probably an oversimplistic one—to the Minister. We massively over-complicate the provision of childcare and the way that funding works, to the great distress of families and, of course, these providers. We are now putting £8 billion a year into early years. That is £6,500 per family. Why do we not just give that money, by some means or another, directly to families to use as they see fit? In the very early years, up to the age of two, I think that could be in the form of cash—a direct entitlement to parents to spend as they see fit, whether in a formal or informal setting. For three and four-year-olds, there could be a voucher system, redeemable at any registered institution, and it should be allowed to be topped up.
It is wrong that there should be a complete monopoly of state funding in these institutions. Why can a charity like Little Dragons not charge a bit extra if it needs to? Of course, it will also provide a free place to a child of a family who could not afford any additional fee. These schools should be allowed to work that out themselves with their community. Of course there is also quite a significant universal credit childcare entitlement that should enable people to support that cost.
I think we can be more imaginative, more flexible and more respectful of the choices that parents themselves want to make, both for the sake of their own family finances and the way they want to live their lives, but also in order to sustain a healthy and vibrant early years sector.
Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) for securing this important debate, and I welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty (Keir Mather) to his place. I commend him for his outstanding maiden speech—he has made his constituents very proud tonight.
Throughout this cost of living crisis, countless nurseries in my constituency of Coventry North West have struggled to keep up with ever-rising prices. At Georgie Porgie’s pre-school, Katie, the director, fought to keep her nursery open after her utility bills tripled. She was lucky and was able to save her business, but countless other nurseries across the country have been forced to close. We need only look in the faces of the nursery workers who have lost their jobs, and their security, to see that our current system is failing. The inadequate levels of state funding offered per child leaves nurseries to struggle with insufficient funds and inadequate support.
The system fails not only our nurseries, but the parents and carers who use them. Closing nurseries means less space for their children, packed waiting lists and longer morning commutes. But a financially struggling nursery almost always means a rise in fees. It is not surprising that Britain now has the third most expensive childcare system in the world, with more than one in five households spending more than half their income on it. For women who wish to return to work soon after the birth of a child, those costs crush their aspirations. Three in four mothers say that childcare fees are so significant financially that their best option is to stop working altogether. I know from speaking to many families on the doorstep that this is an issue that many of them raise with me. Our system hinders the opportunities and, ultimately, the freedom of women who wish to return to work, and we cannot continue to allow that to happen.
I strongly support my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) in her plan for an extensive review of the system. I believe that any reform we implement must move us closer to the examples of countries such as Finland or Estonia, where there is a better-funded, expanded system of care. As the shadow Secretary of State has suggested, that should involve empowering local councils to deliver their own childcare, filling the gaps in provision. But it should also include more substantial grants offered to nurseries, which could stabilise the industry, while also potentially adopting a Finnish-style tiered system, where each family’s fees are far more closely linked to their income.
While I welcome the Government’s plan to expand childcare provision to children as young as nine months old, those changes are simply not enough to tackle the challenges in our system. If we seriously wish to give our businesses and parents a system that works, we have to go for far more substantial reforms. Sticking-plaster solutions just will not work. I urge this House not to turn a blind eye to our childcare system, but to press ahead with the meaningful, long-term changes that this country desperately needs.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I will call Jim Shannon, but I do need him to sit down at 9.44 pm so that I can bring in the Front-Bench speakers.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker; it is a pleasure to speak in this debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Selby and Ainsty (Keir Mather) on his excellent speech.
Two women in my life have made a big difference. The first is Sandra, my wife, who I have been married to for 36 years. She brought up our three sons; she looked after them, she reared them and she is the person who can take the credit. Not only that, but she is now a grandmother and looks after our six grandchildren, with a stint at 5 o’clock in the morning and numerous stints in the afternoon. I mention that because that is the difficulty with childcare and early years: without my wife’s assistance, my boys and their wives could not afford to go to work. What was easily afforded 10 years ago is not afforded the same way today, particularly when parents are working beyond 65 years of age.
I think it is important, in my contribution to this debate, to say that we cannot talk about support for early years and children without highlighting the Government’s determination not to raise child benefit thresholds since 2013. From 2013 to now, the average increase in the UK consumer prices index has been 25.9%. How can any mother and father afford childcare and early years care? They quite simply cannot. If the boss gives them an extra £2,000 on their wages, that does not help, because it puts them over the threshold and they do not get the benefit. I want to put that case on the record.
With that 25% increase in CPI, a family who paid £98.15 per week for 25 hours of childcare in 2013 would now pay £285.31 per week. That is massive. For any mum and dad with a family to rear, there is no way they can do that—and if they earn more than £50,000, they do not get a tax credit to help them. These are people in ordinary jobs, trying their best to make their mortgage payments, heat their homes and educate their children, and they are not getting one penny from the Government in child benefit. That is why an uplift of that threshold is so important.
I will quickly give the House the example of the second woman I want to mention—not the second woman in my life—my parliamentary aide, who writes all my speeches. She leaves work, collects her children from the childminders, helps them with their homework, prepares their meals, gets their lunches ready and makes sure they are healthy, as they are not allowed any unhealthy food until Friday, which means peeling carrots, making fruit salads and cubing cheese. She does the housework, including the washing, and puts her children to bed, making sure to spend at least 20 minutes reading with them. The point I am making is that the pressure on her day is phenomenal.
I finish with this point: we must do something now before a generation of families are submerged in debt and stress and cannot recover. They need help with childcare, help with finances and help to manage expectations. A message must be sent to working families, as well as to single-parent families: “We see you, and we will support you.” That is what this debate is about.
Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
I congratulate the Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), on securing this important debate today and on the Committee’s excellent report on support for childcare in the early years. I am grateful to all hon. Members who have spoken in the debate, and I particularly congratulate my new hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty (Keir Mather) on a truly outstanding maiden speech. He has shown what a brilliant champion he will be for his constituents on the local, national and international issues that shape their lives. We are so glad to have him with us in this place.
I do not have time to mention specifically all the other contributions, but we have heard from hon. Members across the House about the eyewatering childcare costs that families face. We have heard about the deficit in Government funding for the so-called free hours. We have heard about the recruitment and retention problems faced by early years providers and about a sector that is under unbearable pressure.
Children’s earliest years are crucial to their development and life chances. Many of the factors that contribute to the education attainment gap are already present by the time children start school. Early years education and childcare should be focused on ensuring that families have the early support they need to give their child the best start in life and education, while also delivering affordable childcare to enable parents to work.
The current hours-based model for childcare funding is fundamentally not working for providers or for families. For families, it is inaccessible and complex and does not reflect the reality of their lives and working patterns, nor does it deliver affordability. At the same time, 4,800 providers were forced to close their doors last year due to rising costs. The current model is not working for them either.
Parents have seen rising costs year on year, and growing childcare deserts where they cannot access the childcare they need. There are now two children for every Ofsted registered childcare place in England, creating a barrier to parents, particularly women, taking on employment. We are seeing women leaving the workforce for the first time in decades, priced out by the costs of childcare. It is parents of children with special educational needs and disabilities who find it hardest of all to find childcare places.
The Government have delivered a triple whammy—the most expensive childcare in Europe, an unviable financial model for providers and significant childcare deserts. It is a colossal failure for both families and the skilled professionals who work in early years. The policies that the Government have introduced in response to the crisis, after 13 years of failure and only because of intense pressure after the Chancellor spoke a year ago about the need to expand the labour market but mentioned the role of childcare only once, will not fix the problems. Additional funding is welcome, but pumping it into a system that is already broken will not deliver the change families need.
Childcare providers are clear that, as things stand, they cannot deliver the expanded entitlement. A survey of 800 providers by the Early Years Alliance found that only 20% of providers who currently offer places to two-year-olds plan to deliver additional places under the expanded entitlement. Another 33% said that they were unsure whether they would deliver places under the new scheme. That is because the Government have no plan for expanding the workforce to deliver an expanded entitlement in a sector already struggling to recruit and retain staff, no plan for premises for which there are rightly strict requirements in the early years sector, and no vision for quality in the early years.
Childcare must be about more than just minding children while their parents work. It should be able to provide every child with high-quality early years education. A Labour Government will be driven by our mission to break down the barriers to opportunity at every stage, including by boosting child development with 500,000 more children hitting the early learning goals by 2030. Labour is determined that childcare should offer more flexibility, better availability and high standards for children and families. We will draw on the best practice internationally to drive an ambitious and coherent programme of reform, with higher standards for early education, better availability, stronger regulation of the financial sustainability of providers and a clear strategy for the childcare workforce. We have commissioned former Ofsted chief inspector Sir David Bell to undertake a full review of the early years sector and help to develop the detail of our early years plan.
A Labour Government will work with the early years sector to build capacity, including by removing the legislative barriers to local authorities opening new provision. We will also work with the sector to ensure that there is a plan for the early years workforce that offers more opportunities through high quality training and recognition for the skilled work of early years practitioners. We will also recognise that childcare does not end when children start school. We will deliver funded breakfast clubs in every primary school to help parents work, provide opportunities for children to play, learn and socialise at the start of the school day and ensure that every child is able to access a healthy, nutritious breakfast and start the school day ready to learn.
The Government’s record is the most expensive childcare in Europe, childcare providers closing their doors and childcare deserts across the country. They have always regarded children as an afterthought, and in doing so they have failed children and their families. After 13 years, their sticking-plaster solutions will not fix things now. A Labour Government will deliver a childcare system that works for children and their families from the end of parental leave to the end of primary school. We put children at the heart of our programme of government from 1997 to 2010, and we will do so again.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (David Johnston)
May I first congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), the Chair of the Education Committee? He has helped with the development of our policy in this area, and his Committee produced a good report that we have responded to. I am also grateful to him for relinquishing his time so that I have longer to respond to some of the points made in the debate.
I also congratulate the hon. Member for Selby and Ainsty (Keir Mather) on giving his maiden speech, which I thought he delivered with aplomb. He gave us a lovely portrait of his constituency, which I visited—on the losing side—a number of times earlier in the year. I have no doubt that he will be a strong advocate for his constituents.
May I also take the opportunity to pay tribute to the hard work and dedication of our early years and childcare workforce? Through challenges from the pandemic to the rising costs of living, they have worked tirelessly to provide care that allows children to flourish. Extensive evidence makes it clear—a number of hon. Members touched on this—that high quality early years education has a positive effect on the cognitive, behavioural and social development of children in both the short and long term. Building a strong foundation for every child is at the heart of the Government’s agenda, and it is critical to enabling children to succeed both at school and later in life. That is true for all children, but as hon. Members will know I have a particular interest in disadvantaged children, having run charities for them before I became an MP, and it is especially important to try to ensure that they get the right support in their earliest years, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) touched on in her excellent speech.
High quality childcare is also fundamental to building a strong economy, allowing parents to enter employment, take on more hours or choose from a wider range of jobs. That is particularly important for mothers, whose employment rates and pay have been and continue to be disproportionately impacted by having children.
The Government have a strong track record of supporting parents with the cost of childcare, supporting disadvantaged children and ensuring that childcare is of high quality. In September 2010, we extended the three and four-year-old entitlement that parents typically take as 15 hours a week for 38 weeks of the year. In 2013, we introduced 15 free hours a week for disadvantaged two-year-olds. In 2017, the three and four-year-old entitlement was doubled to 30 hours a week. Now, recognising that childcare is one of the biggest costs facing working families today, the Government are making the largest single investment in childcare ever.
This investment—an additional £4.1 billion—will double the amount being spent by the Government on childcare so that by September 2025 all eligible working parents will be able to claim 30 hours of free childcare—I will come back to the word “free” in a minute—from when their child is nine months old until they start school. As hon. Members know, that will be rolled out in stages. From April, eligible parents of two-year-olds will be able to access 15 free hours. From September, eligible parents of children aged nine months and upwards will be able to do likewise. The full 30-hour entitlement will come in from September 2025.
Alex Cunningham
We are all going to welcome additional funding within childcare and the expansion of services, but surely we need a very clear workforce plan if we are actually going to deliver all this.
David Johnston
I am grateful to the hon. Member, because I am about to come on to workforce. However, just before I do so, alongside this we want to increase the supply of wrap-around care to enable families to work more, or flexible, hours. We are investing £289 million in start-up funding to provide local authorities with funding to set up wrap-around provision from 8 am to 6 pm in their areas. More broadly, local authorities are critical to delivering this expansion of childcare, and we are working closely with them to understand the challenges they face and ensure they have sufficient places to meet parental demand. We will shortly be appointing a contractor to support them in that work.
There have been some key themes in this debate, beginning with funding rates. By 2027-28, we expect to be spending more than £8 billion every year on childcare. We have already increased the funding paid to nurseries for the existing entitlement by £204 million this year, rising to £288 million next year. That means that the national average rate for three and four-year-olds has gone up to £5.62 an hour, and for two-year-olds it has gone up to £7.95 an hour from £6—an increase of a third. Those rates are informed by a survey of more than 10,000 providers that we carry out in order to understand the funding pressures they face. That said, I am very happy to meet both my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith), who raised issues in his constituency—there has been a 10.1% increase for providers there—and my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger), where there has been a 6.8% increase. I am happy to continue that discussion.
On quality and flexibility questions, it is worth first noting that we have some of the highest-quality childcare in the world, with 96% of early years settings rated good or outstanding. However, we are working with the sector to increase flexibility and remove unnecessary burdens. In September, as my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory) touched on, we changed the ratios for two-year-olds. We are pushing landlords to be more flexible and to allow childminders to operate on their premises, and we will shortly announce our response to the recent consultation with the sector about the early years foundation stage, where we are hoping to make a series of changes to help practitioners more easily do their jobs while maintaining higher standards.
Delivering expansion is going to require a significant boost to the workforce, so it is key that we are able to encourage more people into this sector—to raise its status, as my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth touched on. In the new year, we will launch a big recruitment campaign to encourage people to consider working in a nursery school or as a childminder. We are expanding the early years professional development programme: nearly 25,000 people are already undertaking apprenticeships in this sector, but we are looking at accelerated apprenticeships and degree apprenticeships and will also be running early years skills bootcamps from next year to try to get more people into the sector. A start-up grant scheme for childminders, which will provide £600 for those registering with Ofsted and £1,200 for those registering with a childminder agency, will also be starting shortly.
Very briefly, I will touch on some other points made by the Chair of the Select Committee. Our funding rates do take business rate costs into account, and in the autumn statement the Government announced a freeze to the business rates multiplier, a tax cut worth £9.3 billion over five years. Small business rate relief exists, as does relief for charities, but I am happy to look at the extreme cases that my hon. Friend set out. He is right to flag the issue of tax-free childcare, which can save parents up to £2,000 per year on the cost of childcare, or up to £4,000 for children with disabilities. We are trying to drive up the take-up of that through our Childcare Choices website. As for people in education and training, a big part of this offer is to try to encourage people into work: students are eligible for the universal 15 hours for three and four-year-olds and for the 30 free hours if they meet the income criteria, and there is also the childcare grant and the parents’ learning allowance. However, I have heard the point that my hon. Friend has made.
I think I have covered most of the points that people have made. A number of Members from Northern Ireland have spoken: obviously, this issue is devolved in Northern Ireland, but I will just say that next week, I am chairing a meeting of the British-Irish Council on the topic of childcare. I am sure we are going to discuss childcare in both Northern Ireland and the Republic.
I think I have covered most of Labour’s commentary. I would be a lot more amenable to criticism from the Labour party if it had any policy whatsoever in this area. As it does not and all it has done is commission a taskforce to tell it what to think, I will close the debate there.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered support for childcare and the early years.
Protection of Dark Skies
(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con)
I rise to speak as the Member of Parliament for North Norfolk, a constituency blessed with huge skies and one of the few places in England where one can see, on occasion, the northern lights. Such is the significance of my constituency that we have two internationally recognised dark sky discovery sites: Kelling Heath holiday park and Wiveton downs. The North Norfolk coast is classified as having one of the darkest skies in the UK, with some areas as dark as those in the forest of Galloway or Exmoor national park, which are two internationally recognised dark skies that we all know well.
We celebrate our dark skies in Norfolk, and I wish to take a moment to highlight the fantastic work of the Norfolk Coast Partnership. Its dark skies festival opens up the secrets of our night-time wildlife and raises awareness of the impacts of light pollution. I should also pay tribute to the former co-chair of the all-party group on dark skies, my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith), who is a passionate campaigner. I also want to welcome David Smith and Shreoshi Das from Buglife, who are in the Gallery; I am proudly wearing the emblem pin badge this evening and they have helped me prepare for this debate. They have travelled a huge way, from Somerset and Scotland, to be here to champion the importance of invertebrates, nature and our dark skies.
I rise to speak also as the glow-worm species champion—that is one of the lesser-known facts. Despite its name—here is a slight lesson—it is actually a beetle belonging to the firefly family. Not just the glow-worm, but many creatures, along with our dark skies, are under threat from light pollution, which has so far received very little action to curb its ever-increasing expansion into our nocturnal world.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I commend the hon. Gentleman for bringing this subject forward. He has talked about light intrusion. I am blessed to live in a coastal area and also on a family farm, so I know perhaps more than most what true darkness is like. However, I, like many MPs, have recently had to instal security lighting, which certainly had an impact on the animals and birds, putting them on alert and disturbing their sleep. Does he agree that although we need protection from the darkness to address security concerns, there is a still a need to protect our ecosystems and that this must be more widely known and circulated? Tonight, he is ensuring just that.
Duncan Baker
I thank the hon. Gentleman for intervening on me; it would not be an Adjournment debate without that intervention. Of course, he is absolutely right in what he says, and this debate is all about highlighting some of the impact on and damage to our nocturnal creatures, be they mammals or insects. Later in the debate, Members will hear about some practical steps we want to take to try to achieve an improvement, through something so simple; light pollution can literally be healed with the turning off of a light, and there are not many pollutions for which we can do that.
Claire Hanna (Belfast South) (SDLP)
A large number of Northern Ireland Members are present tonight; I ask Members please not to let anyone make a joke about us being unenlightened!
For many years there was a stunning murmuration of starlings in south Belfast. It was quite something to be seen from Albert Bridge, which I used to cross every evening as I walked home to Woodstock Road. They used to come from across the city and beyond, but after some planning changes we noticed that they had all but disappeared, apparently because of a change in lighting. Along with others, I have worked with the authorities, and we were able to make a few relatively minor changes involving blinkers on some lights and filters on street lights. Since then, we have seen the return of some of the starlings. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that understanding the issue and, perhaps, minor planning changes will constitute a big part of protecting nature?
Duncan Baker
The hon. Lady is absolutely right. Later in my speech, I will come to some of the practical measures that are being taken by planning authorities. Many are leading the way in being able to put together sensitive ways of dealing with light pollution, and in 15 or 20 minutes Members will be able to hear about some of those things that are being done by authorities around the country.
Darkness is not only essential to the health and wellbeing of people; it is equally important to wildlife. A huge variety of animals need darkness for feeding, for migration, or even simply to rest. I shall say more about that shortly. As humans, we need sleep to recharge and maintain good physical and mental health, and so do animals. We are probably all aware of the effects of a bad night’s sleep on the rest of our day, and after several days without sleep the symptoms worsen. The same effects are seen in our wildlife, and they are exacerbated by the increase in light pollution.
Earlier this year, a group of international scientists estimated that light pollution is increasing globally by approximately 10% every year, and has been doing so for at least the past 12 years. That is an incredible rise in a pollutant that has gone pretty much unchecked, despite concerns being raised since the 1970s by astronomers whose ability to glimpse the outer reaches of our solar system has become obscured. More recently, environmentalists trying to protect nocturnal species such as invertebrates and bats have been pointing to light as a major issue in the pressures on ecology.
Light pollution, as defined by the convention on the conservation of migratory species of wild animals, refers to artificial light that alters the natural patterns of light and dark in ecosystems. Artificial light is of course very useful, allowing us to recreate some semblance of daylight during the hours of darkness. It creates a sense of safety as we travel, and allows work to continue long after sunset. As with everything, however, too much light, and in particular too much poor use of light, is becoming a block to our ability to meeting commitments to save energy, reduce costs and rescue biodiversity. The solutions are relatively simple, unlike those involving other pollutants. Once we remove light, the pollutant is gone; there is no lengthy clean-up operation, the results are immediate, and positive changes can happen literally overnight.
Our dark skies are under threat. We long ago lost the ability to see the Milky Way with the naked eye from where the majority of us live in the UK. This marvel of the edge of our galaxy greeted stargazers on every clear night for generations, stretching across the sky, but unfortunately sky glow, caused by light pointing and reflecting into the atmosphere, has restricted that vision to a handful of places in the country. We have become so accustomed to not seeing the Milky Way that many assume it is restricted to professional astronomers, which I think everyone would agree is a real shame.
The Commission for Dark Skies, set up by the British Astronomical Association in 1989, has been warning of this loss of stars and campaigning to raise awareness and secure better lighting to bring back the views that are still out there. CPRE, the countryside charity, runs an annual star count, asking citizen scientists to count the stars in the constellation Orion. This year it discovered that only one in 20 participants had a clear view of our starry skies. However, it is not just amateur astronomers who are suffering; earlier this year, the Royal Astronomical Society published research showing that three quarters of major global observatories are affected by light pollution. This impact is limiting scientific productivity, and reducing the useful lifetime of those incredibly advanced observatories.
Astronomers are not the only ones who are hampered by light pollution. There is now a substantial body of evidence that shows that artificial light impacts on living things. It is altering behaviour, it is changing the physical development of species and, in some cases, it is causing death. When we consider how the natural world has evolved on a series of dark and light cycles, it is not surprising that nature suffers when we alter those cycles by extending daylight and removing darkness. Whereas humans are quick to adapt and use technology to great effect, animals and plants are not so quick to respond to rapid rises in artificial light. They simply cannot keep pace. The majority of animals are active either entirely or partially at night, yet our focus is almost always directed to the daytime species. It is important not to forget the things we do not often see.
Invertebrates, for instance, appear to be disproport-ionately affected by light pollution. As we all know, our smallest creatures are vital to a balanced ecosystem, carrying out important services such as pollination, pest control, creating soils and filtering water. Unfortunately, they are suffering significant decline from a range of sources, and we must now do what we can to relieve the burden we are placing on them.
A seminal paper from researchers in the UK found that local populations of moth caterpillars are reduced by 52% due to exposure to streetlights. German researchers have estimated that a third of all insects attracted to lights die as a consequence, either through collision, increased predation or simply exhaustion. We see insects out of sync with their natural cycle, emerging too early from their hibernation or larval stage and missing the flowering of food plants. We see evidence that pollination rates are reduced in areas exposed to artificial light. Nocturnal pollinators are vital for pollinating crops, fruit and flowers. A study by researchers at the University of Sussex suggests that nocturnal pollinators are, in fact, more efficient than their daytime counterparts. Those are concerning statistics.
My own species, the common glow-worm, requires darkness to carry out its actions. The flightless female glows a magnificent yellowy green, which attracts the smaller male to mate. They live for only a short window of time as an adult, and they must lay their eggs quickly. Without the dark canvas on which to perform, the males cannot find the females, and thus the chance of a future generation passes by. Glow-worm larvae are ferocious predators and feast on snails and slugs, helping to keep populations under control. Unfortunately, we are losing these charismatic creatures from our countryside in the same way that we are losing the stars.
MPs get to do some pretty fun things from time to time, and the most memorable occasion for me was back in the summer, at the beginning of July, when I was fortunate to visit Sheringham Park in my constituency —I ran around the track on the park run, and 12 hours later I was scuttling through the undergrowth on the same track to find glow-worms. I was joined by representatives from Buglife, who are here this evening, by the UK glow-worm survey and by the National Trust to see these creatures in action. Genuinely, the glow caused by a chemical reaction in the glow-worm’s body was one of the most fascinating things I have ever witnessed. It was almost other-worldly, and I would encourage everyone to go and see it next summer if they are fortunate enough to have glow-worms in their constituency. It was fascinating. The first time I saw it, it looked like an LED glowing in the dark. I do not think I will ever forget it. When the male was attracted to the female’s glow, we turned on a red torch and, almost immediately, the male turned away from its female and went over to the new light. It was shocking to see just how pronounced the change was in that whole set of behaviours. It is no wonder that glow-worm populations close to light-polluted areas are dwindling, if that is what light pollution will do to their mating habits.
Glow-worms are members of the firefly family, as I said. Global red list assessments of that group by the International Union for Conservation of Nature shows populations under threat. While habitat loss, chemical use and climate change are all contributing factors, light pollution is a threat that we can quickly do something about to start to reverse that downward trend.
It is not just fireflies that are threatened by light pollution. The IUCN has listed light pollution as a threat to 160 assessed species, including birds, amphibians and even primates. The more that we discover about the impacts of light pollution, the more we realise its role in nature’s decline.
Hon. Members are no doubt familiar with a blackbird calling in the dead of night. I shall not sing it now, but that was an experience that the Beatles shared in the opening lyrics of their 1968 song, “Blackbird”. Where did it come from? That unusual phenomenon, which was coined by the Beatles, was a bird singing through the night due to light pollution. Birds are being tricked into thinking that it is dawn or dusk under artificial lights, which makes them sing out of turn with the normal day and night cycle. What does that do? It can act to deplete their energy levels; it stops their calls at optimum times; and it prevents them from attracting a mate.
Light pollution, as we are already finding out, is contributing to the death of millions of birds. Attracted by artificial lights, migrating species such as shearwaters, petrels and other sea-wading birds become disoriented. They may end up circling in illuminated areas. It depletes their energy reserves and puts them at risk of exhaustion, predation and potentially even fatal collisions with buildings.
Turtle hatchlings are oriented by the natural light of the moon reflecting on the sea’s surface. Artificial lights are confusing them and pulling them into a fatal direction away from the safety of the sea. Closer to home, bats, hedgehogs and other mammals avoid lights, confining them to smaller and smaller habitats.
The effects of light pollution impact not only on animals, but on people, and we are beginning to understand that better. The 2017 report from the chief medical officer warned that
“pollutants such as light…may…be adversely affecting our health”.
Exposure to too much artificial light is altering our circadian rhythms and is thought to be contributing to melatonin suppression, leading to diabetes, heart disease, possibly cancers and a range of mental ill health issues. I will not speak on those matters in any great depth, but members of the Science and Technology Committee in the other place recently published a report on that, and it is well worth looking at.
We have talked about issues relating to humans, what has happened to our star-gazing and the impact on nature, but what is the solution? How do we solve this problem with so many impacts on the natural world? The answers, which often in this place are so difficult to come by, are actually relatively simple, but they require leadership and understanding. While we can solve light pollution with a flick of the switch, campaigners are not calling for us to be plunged back into darkness. Instead, this is all about using light better. We must promote better quality, community-friendly lighting and we must not artificially light environmentally sensitive locations. We can reduce our levels of light pollution by lowering the brightness of our lights, directing lights only to places that we need them and ensuring that unnecessary lights are not on when we are not using them. Every simple measure, such as shutting curtains and blinds when we turn on internal lights, will keep the light where it needs to be and prevent it from spilling into our gardens and wild places.
Local councils are responsible for planning, and I believe that they should have good planning guidelines to be mindful of light pollution. I know that many parish councils—for instance, Weybourne, Blakeney and Cley in my area of North Norfolk—really care about this. They have campaigned for it to be taken seriously, even providing their own dark skies policies. The person who hit that home for me was Lyndon Swift, the former dynamo of Weybourne, where he was chair of the parish council. He was passionate about protecting dark skies, and I remember him talking to me about it a couple of years ago. He was probably one of the inspirations for me to be standing here this evening.
Nationally, there is lots of good news. The “Good Lighting Technical Advice Note for Cumbria”, stemming from the Dark Skies Cumbria project, led by the Friends of the Lake District and produced by Dark Source, and the “South Downs National Park Dark Skies Technical Advice Note” are guidance documents that are leading the way. They should be utilised more widely across the country. There is evidence of more localised actions for change, but I believe that action should be spread across the whole UK to ensure the results are as far reaching as possible. I hope that this debate, in one way or another, will help my own local council, North Norfolk District Council, consider closely how it can implement policies to help with light pollution.
We must treat light in the same way as we treat other pollutants. We need to monitor and set targets to reduce light pollution levels to ones that satisfy our needs and those of the planet. Guidance and encouragement are clearly not enough. We need to look at how we can create positive action. There are so many gains to be made from doing this, not least the release of the pressure on nature. Switching off unnecessary lights will save money and energy. Better-quality lighting can improve safety by reducing the contrast and shadows created by poor-quality lighting. We can restore our views of the night sky and inspire new generations about the science and wonders of space beyond our planet, and we can restore the natural canvas for glow-worms to perform that magical summer show.
Finally, I thank the staff at Buglife who have helped illuminate me to the issue and to the wonderful world of glow-worms, in particular Karim Vahed and Matt Shardlow, who arranged for my encounter with the species on that fateful July evening, and David Smith for helping me to prepare my speech.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Trudy Harrison)
It is once again a real pleasure to speak about such an important topic and to follow such an enlightened speech, supported by David Smith from Buglife.
In preparing for the debate, I was reminded of my little brother, who is now 40. Many years ago he had a Glo Friend, which I am sure many of us in this House remember, and he was obsessed with glow-worms. He would go down the lane to the river and see many glow-worms—not worms, but part of the firefly family. In preparing my speech, I reminded him of his glow-worm friend and he said sadly, “You don’t see them anymore.”
As my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Duncan Baker) states on his website, we have seen a 75% reduction in glow-worms, such is the urgency of the challenge that he eloquently, powerfully and interestingly set out. I join him in thanking David Smith and Shreoshi Das for travelling down to be part of the debate. I hope I can reassure my hon. Friend and the House of the steps that we are taking to protect nocturnal and crepuscular life, and the work that my Department is doing, working with other Government Departments, to reduce artificial light.
I draw the House’s attention to the environmental improvement plan. Across its 10 goals, it explains the apex target of how we will reduce the decline of nature by 2030 and increase nature’s abundance after 2030. We will do that through the fundamentals of better-quality soil, better air quality, better water quality and increased habitat.
It is also important to stress the importance of reducing unnecessary artificial light. In the United Kingdom, we are fortunate that we are able to enjoy the marvel of the night sky. My hon. Friend referenced the Lake district, where I live, and I am very fortunate to be able to experience a luminosity level of nigh on zero. While we do have some spectacular displays of the northern lights, seen as far south as Herefordshire, we also have some of the best, earliest and largest numbers of designated dark sky areas in Europe, with Exmoor national park designated the first sky reserve in Europe.
However, in our modern society, artificial light plays a valuable role in providing security. As the previous Minister responsible for the violence against women and girls strategy, I know just how important well lit areas are to design out crime. However, an excess of artificial light can, as we have heard this evening, be very detrimental to both the public and the environment. It can also be a tremendous waste of energy, an extra cost and a real source of disturbance and barrier to enjoying the night sky.
I pay regard to my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith), one of the co-founders of the all-party parliamentary group, which is working so diligently. I also thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for his contributions to the debate. The evidence base on the impacts of artificial light is less advanced than that for other environmental pollutants. The technological capabilities available to us for measuring the scope of artificial light remain in development. It is an area of concern to the Government, but we are taking significant steps.
As I have said, we have committed to the halting of the decline of nature by 2030 and set out in law the Environment Act 2021. We have also introduced a strengthened biodiversity duty on public authorities, which requires them to periodically consider the actions that they can take to conserve and enhance biodiversity and then take action. Furthermore, from 1 November, Ministers will need to have regard to the environmental principles set out in the Environment Act when bringing forward any policy development.
The hon. Member for Belfast South (Claire Hanna) referred to the importance of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and all other Departments working with each other. We are taking action to work in particular with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. We have supported internationally agreed guidelines on light pollution that cover seabirds, migratory shorebirds and marine turtles. These have been endorsed by the UK and parties to the convention on migratory species. In 2020, the parties adopted a resolution on light pollution guidelines for migratory wildlife. The resolution endorsed national light pollution guidelines for wildlife, including marine turtles, seabirds and migratory shorebirds, as developed by Australia.
In the marine environment, research is ongoing to measure the impact of artificial light and the threshold at which light exposure causes an impact. Those thresholds will allow for the determination of an indicator for light pollution for the UK marine strategy, the EU marine strategy framework directive and at OSPAR, but experts are currently unable to determine what level of light causes an impact. This is what we are working hard to achieve.
I pay particular tribute to National Highways. Clearly, our roads have a considerable impact in terms of artificial light, but National Highways is working to reduce light pollution, investing in technology that allows road lighting levels to be adapted in response to lower traffic flows. That will help us to better understand where night-time accidents occur and the impact that road lighting has as a contributory factor.
On a more local level, light pollution is managed by a number of regimes in the UK, through planning, transport and statutory nuisance policies. Local authorities are encouraged by the Department for Transport to upgrade to sensitive LED lighting where feasible. Local authorities are also required under the Environment Act 1995 to work with national park authorities to conserve and enhance the parks’ natural beauty, wildlife and cultural heritage. Through the collaboration between authorities and parks, we are proud that seven of our protected landscapes in England have achieved international dark sky status.
Finally, statutory nuisance legislation was amended in 2005 to include artificial light as a potential nuisance. This sets out the duties of local authorities with regard to artificial light. I really hope that in the short time I have had, I have given my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk reassurance that this Government take light pollution seriously.
Question put and agreed to.
Ministerial Correction
(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Work and Pensions
(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
When visiting schools, I am told by young children that it is not their turn to eat tonight. Schools tell me that pupils take leftovers from school friends so that they can eat a lunch. Rents are rocketing and households are paying almost £1,000 a year more on food than they did in 2021. Does the Minister honestly think that the support that the Government are offering is enough to stop rising hunger in constituencies such as mine?
Tom Pursglove
I of course recognise that food prices are a challenge not just here in the UK, but abroad, too. For example, I am aware that food inflation here is 19%, but within the EU it is 19% and in the euro area it is 18%. People are experiencing these significant challenges not just here, but abroad.
[Official Report, 20 June 2023, Vol. 734, c. 709.]
Letter of correction from the Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work, the hon. Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove):
An error has been identified in my response to the hon. Member for West Ham (Ms Brown) in the statement on Cost of Living Support. The correct response should have been:
Tom Pursglove
I of course recognise that food prices are a challenge not just here in the UK, but abroad, too. For example, I am aware that food inflation in March this year was 19% here, but within the EU it was 19% and in the euro area it was 18%. People are experiencing these significant challenges not just here, but abroad.
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Levenshulme Station and Gorton Station ticket office closures
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(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Advanced British Standard
(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
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The Secretary of State for Education (Gillian Keegan)
The Prime Minister has announced that we will introduce the advanced British standard (ABS) for 16 to 19-year-olds. This will bring together the best of A-levels and T-levels to form a single, overarching qualification. The advanced British standard will remove the artificial choice between academic and technical education, placing them on an equal footing, presenting a clear offer to young people while ensuring that every student studies some form of maths and English to age 18.
Since 2010, we have transformed the education children receive. We have relentlessly focused on improving the quality of our knowledge-rich curriculum and qualifications and have put in place the measures to raise standards. Eighty-eight per cent of schools are now rated good or outstanding and, thanks to our phonics reforms, we now have the best primary readers in the western world. We have introduced T-levels as new, high-quality technical routes for young people and reformed apprenticeships to raise their quality and prestige.
We now need to ensure that our 16 to 19 education system is fit for the long term and aligns England with countries across the OECD in terms of teaching time, breadth of study and parity between technical and academic routes. For example, young people in OECD countries typically study seven subjects post-16 compared to students in England who study around three. Students in OECD countries also generally receive more teaching time and study maths and their native language up to 18. We will align with some of our international competitors by increasing teaching time and bringing academic and technical pathways together into a single qualification with full parity of esteem. Within this framework, students will be able to study predominantly technical—including an occupational specialist route—or academic components, or a blend of both.
This reform draws upon the consistent principles that have underpinned our successful reforms by using the best available evidence, investing in teaching quality, and developing a knowledge-rich and broad curriculum. We will build on the knowledge-rich content and depth of A-levels and the high-quality, employer-led occupational standards of T-levels. The introduction of bigger and smaller subjects—called majors and minors—will give students greater breadth, while still maintaining depth of study in the subjects they are most passionate about and require for progression to higher education and employment. Students will typically choose five subjects, or a minimum of four if they are focused on preparing for a specific technical occupation. Given that we know that time with a good teacher is the single most important factor in improving learning outcomes, we will also increase the number of taught hours by 15% for most 16 to 19 students which will particularly benefit disadvantaged students.
This reform will take time and extra funding to deliver, including extra funding for the additional taught hours the advanced British standard will involve. We are providing £600 million over the next two years to lay the groundwork for the ABS and invest in the teachers and institutions that will be vital to delivering it. This comprises:
c.£100 million each year, doubling the rates of the levelling-up premium and expanding it to cover all further education (FE) colleges, disproportionately benefiting disadvantaged students. All teachers who are in the first five years of their career, teaching key STEM and technical shortage subjects and working in disadvantaged schools and all FE colleges, will be paid up to £6,000 per year tax-free.
c.£150 million each year to support those students who need the most support such as those who do not currently achieve a good pass—above grade 4—in maths and English GCSE at age 16. We will also invest in English and maths for all post-16 apprentices who have not gained their level 2 qualification, uplifting the funding rates to match the adult education budget.
c.£60 million over the next two years to expedite evidence-based techniques for maths teaching, including in post-16.
£40 million to the Education Endowment Foundation to expand its post-16 work and embed evidence-based approaches in 16 to 19 teaching.
This is an ambitious, long-term reform programme which will take a decade to deliver in full and require careful development and partnership working with the sector. We will therefore consult extensively, and in detail, over the coming months on the design of the new qualification. The results of our consultation process will inform a White Paper, which we will publish next year setting out our plan for delivery.
Meanwhile, students preparing to take A-level and T-level exams over the coming years should not doubt the value of their qualifications and be confident that high quality pathways remain open to them. T-levels will be integral to the vocational route within the advanced British standard and more T-level courses will be rolled out.
The ABS will ensure that all young people receive an education that is of the highest quality and prepares them to enter the changing workplace where digital transformation, AI and net zero will drive productivity. We will raise the floor and extend the ladder of opportunity for everyone, providing more breadth, increased teaching time, and a greater focus on technical education.
That is how we will give our children the brighter future they deserve, by ensuring that they are equipped with the knowledge and skills needed to succeed in the modern economy.
[HCWS1067]
Schools National Funding Formula: Correction of Error
(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
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The Minister for Schools (Nick Gibb)
Today I am confirming that the Department for Education has corrected an error in the notional allocations of the schools national funding formula (NFF) for 2024-25.
These allocations were originally published, and notified to the House, on 17 July 2023. However, the Department has subsequently uncovered an error made by officials during the initial calculations of the NFF. Specifically, there was an error processing forecast pupil numbers, which meant that the overall cost of the core schools budget in 2024-25 would be 0.62% greater than allocated. The Department therefore issued new NFF allocations on 6th October 2023 to correct that error. The Department rectified this error as quickly as possible and—because the republication of the NFF allocations took place during parliamentary recess—I am now providing this statement at the earliest opportunity.
The Department has apologised for this error in writing to both the Chair of the Select Committee on Education and the Secretary of State. The Education Secretary has asked the permanent secretary to conduct a formal review of the quality assurance process surrounding the calculation of the NFF, with external and independent scrutiny. Peter Wyman CBE will lead this review. Improvements have already been identified to ensure that similar mistakes are not repeated.
The Government are continuing to deliver, in full, the core schools budget, which includes funding for mainstream schools and funding for high needs. It will remain at £59.6 billion in 2024-25, the highest ever in history in real terms. This is a percentage increase of 3.2% compared to 2023-24.
Through the schools NFF, average funding is £5,300 per primary school pupil and £6,830 per secondary school pupil in 2024-25, up from £5,200 and £6,720 respectively in 2023-24.
Schools have not yet received their 2024-25 funding and so the correction of this error does not mean adjusting any funding that schools have already received. Likewise, the error will not impact on the publication of the dedicated schools grant (DSG) in December, or when schools will receive their final allocations for 2024-25. The 2024-25 high needs NFF allocations (which fund provision for children with complex SEND) are also unaffected by this error, as are other funding streams outside the NFF, including the teachers’ pay additional grant (TPAG) announced in the summer.
I would also like to clarify that the recalculation of the NFF for 2024-25 does not affect the affordability of the 2023 teachers’ pay award. There has been no change to the funding that was promised as part of the pay settlement in July, and which the unions agreed meant that the pay award is properly funded.
I recognise that the correction of the NFF error will be difficult for local authorities and frustrating for some school leaders, which is why the Department has rectified the error as quickly as possible. The Department are working closely with school stakeholders, including unions, to communicate this change and support schools and local authorities.
The following key documents that have been updated and replaced with new versions on 6th October 2023 are:
The policy document for the 2024-25 NFF, which is published at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-funding-formula-for-schools-and-high-needs'>https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-funding-formula-for-schools-and-high-needs
The “national funding formula: summary table”, and the “impact of the schools NFF” allocation tables, which are published at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-funding-formula-for-schools-and-high-needs'>https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-funding-formula-for-schools-and-high-needs
[HCWS1065]
Support for Farming
(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
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The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Dr Thérèse Coffey)
This Government are committed to backing British farmers, who produce some of the highest quality food in the world, contribute billions to our economy and are the custodians of our countryside.
We plan to replace the basic payment scheme in England with delinked payments in 2024, making things much simpler for both farmers and the Rural Payments Agency—building on the simplifications we have already made to existing schemes. Delinking will free up farmers to focus on running their business and delivering the public goods that can be rewarded under the environmental land management schemes.
On 18 September we opened the sustainable farming incentive 2023 (SFI) to applications. As of 12 October, we have received over 14,000 expressions of interest—equivalent to more than one in eight farmers—with the first groups of farmers already implementing their SFI agreements, and many more due to start in the coming days and weeks.
We have also seen farmers continue to show their interest in other environmental land management schemes, such as landscape recovery, where we have received a significant number of high-quality applications that are now being carefully considered. With 7,881 mid-tier and 1,030 higher-tier countryside stewardship applications in this year’s round, we have also seen sustained interest in the countryside stewardship offer, following a two-week extension of the application window in response to a challenging harvest. There are now over 33,000 countryside stewardship agreements in place across England in September 2023—a 94% increase since 2020. We are now spending £688 million on rewarding farmers for environmental, climate and animal welfare outcomes this financial year, as part of the wider £2.4 billion that we are committed to spend supporting farmers every year of this Parliament.
To ensure that farmers are treated fairly, we are developing new legislation to improve supply chain fairness in the dairy and pig sectors, with further reviews into fairness in egg and horticulture supply chains due to launch in October and December respectively. To support long-term decision making, the Government also intend to publish their response to the independent review into labour shortages in the food supply chain later this autumn, as planned.
The Government are also committed to supporting farmers to realise their contribution to the rural economy. Together with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, we will shortly publish a review of permitted development rights on farms. We are working to grant funding for farmers to invest in the productivity of their businesses and, for the first time, barn-top solar by the end of this year.
We recognise both the pressures facing smaller abattoirs and the opportunities available to them, so we will be launching a smaller abattoir fund by the end of 2023, providing financing for capital investments to support productivity, improved animal welfare and adding value to primary products.
To continue our progress, we will maintain engagement with the agricultural sector and provide practical opportunities for farmers that maintain our food security and also deliver on our environmental ambitions.
[HCWS1061]
Global Biodiversity Framework and Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures
(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
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The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Dr Thérèse Coffey)
Last December, the world came together at the convention of biodiversity in Montreal, Canada, to agree the global biodiversity framework, with a priority objective to halt and reverse nature loss globally by 2030. Key to securing the agreement was the commitment to establish a GBF fund to be administered by the Global Environment Facility particularly to help the Global South in achieving this objective.
The United Kingdom announced that it would provide £10 million to the GBF fund during the GEF assembly in August, adding to the Canadian Government commitment. I am delighted that Germany became the third country to commit to this new fund during the UN General Assembly. As a consequence, the fund can now be operationalised and I expect the GEF to start funding projects next year.
Other significant progress was made on GBF implementation and our blue planet fund and ocean objectives during UN General Assembly and New York climate week. This included: the UK signing the ocean conservation pledge, building on our existing commitments to protect at least 30% of our own marine area by 2030; and announcements of funding for some key initiatives including £120,000 in funding to Plymouth Marine Laboratory, as the secretariat for the Ocean Acidification Research for Sustainability (OARS) programme and £2.5 million to tackle illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing by funding the Joint Analytical Cell, which provides much-needed intelligence for countries around the world on protecting fisheries. We have also welcomed Costa Rica, Panama and Peru to the Global Plastic Action Partnership to reduce plastic pollution, particularly in the marine environment.
Working with countries around the world is vital in making progress on the GBF. That is particularly true of working with the Commonwealth of Nations. I chaired the first ever meeting of Commonwealth Environment and Climate Ministers, alongside its Secretary General, Baroness Scotland, which explored ways to strengthen collaboration to tackle global challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, desertification, ocean degradation and the energy transition.
Key to making progress on GBF implementation is bringing in private finance. Building on our 10-point plan for financing biodiversity, earlier this year we established a global initiative with France on biodiversity credits to accelerate high integrity investment that delivers for nature. At UNGA, the independent co-chairs Dame Amelia Fawcett and Sylvie Goulard of the international advisory panel met panel members in person for the first time and shared the work undertaken so far.
Further to this, the UK has been instrumental in supporting the global, market-led Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures. The TNFD framework has been designed by 40 private sector institutions representing over $20 trillion of assets under management. The aim of the TNFD is to generate decision-grade natural capital reporting data that can facilitate the alignment of global financial flows in support of improving nature. The panel launched its recommendations on 18 September at the New York stock exchange and again in London on 25 September. The UK Government have been instrumental in providing catalytic funding and political support to the TNFD since 2019. I welcome the commitment from GSK to use this framework from 2025 and hope that many more companies and institutions will start. Now that the recommendations have been launched, the UK Government will explore how best to incorporate it into UK policy in a manner that is coherent with global sustainability reporting in general, and nature themed standards development in particular.
[HCWS1064]
Roadmap for Rural Communities
(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
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The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Dr Thérèse Coffey)
Earlier this year, with the publication of “Unleashing Rural Opportunity”, the Government set out their roadmap for rural communities, including a range of measures across four priorities for rural areas: growing the economy, connectivity, homes energy, and rural communities.
On 1 October, I announced further measures to boost broadband connectivity, transport and the supply of affordable homes in rural areas.
The measures I announced include:
A consultation on reviewing and updating the broadband universal service obligation which already gives homeowners and businesses the legal right to request an affordable, decent broadband connection.
A consultation on further proposals to improve broadband provision for very hard to reach premises, which are unlikely to receive a gigabit-capable connection via either a commercial or Government funded intervention. This will ensure communities with the most limited connectivity experience a step-change in their digital connectivity as soon as possible, fuelling the economy and supporting jobs growth for decades to come.
A statement from Homes England setting out its work to support rural communities and families by enabling the delivery of good quality, affordable homes. The statement includes case studies of successful rural housing schemes currently operating within Cornwall and the Yorkshire Dales.
The publication of “Future of Transport: Helping local authorities to unlock the benefits of technology and innovation in rural transport” to help rural local authorities, their communities, and other stakeholders to harness transport innovation, helping to improve access to services, tackle isolation and increase access to jobs in rural and remote areas.
Whether through improved connectivity, housing or transport we are championing rural communities as we seek to grow our economy, so that every part of our country gets the support and opportunity to thrive.
[HCWS1060]
Water Companies
(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
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The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Dr Thérèse Coffey)
The price review is an independent, five-yearly process run by the economic regulator, Ofwat, to determine investment plans for water companies and customer bills over the next five years—in this case, from 2025 to 2030. This will include assessing future investment in enhancing the resilience of our water supplies, environmental improvements and customer support.
Following Ofwat’s timeline, I can inform the House that by Monday 2 October all water companies had submitted draft business plans for the 2024 price review (PR24) and published them on their websites.
The draft water company business plans submitted are the opening position in an independent regulatory process stretching to the end of 2024. I expect Ofwat and the Environment Agency now to look closely at the plans and ensure that they meet legal requirements and give customers the best value for their money. We do not allow water companies to charge consumers twice for investment that should already have happened, and through the PR24 process Ofwat will scrutinise business plans to ensure this does not occur.
Following this scrutiny process, Ofwat’s decision on total investment and consumer bills will be finalised in December 2024.
This builds on Ofwat’s announcement on 26 September that, following its assessment of water company performance against targets set for 2022-23, under-performance by the majority of companies means £114 million will be returned to customers next year.
I am also taking this opportunity to update the House on recent developments pertaining to the Government’s actions to reduce discharges from storm overflows.
On Friday 15 September the High Court ruled in favour of the Government’s storm overflows discharge reduction plan, following challenges brought by WildFish and others. All claims were dismissed, meaning the Government won on all grounds considered by the High Court. The judgment supports the Government’s position that the targets under the Government’s plan goes substantially further than existing legislation to tackle the use of storm overflows.
The Government welcome the High Court’s decision and have always been clear that we will go further and faster to tackle the issue of storm overflows wherever possible.
That is why on Monday 25 September, following consultation, the Government published an expanded “Storm Overflows Discharge Reduction Plan”, extending the targets of the plan to coastal and estuarine storm overflows. We have also expanded the list of storm overflows that are prioritised for early improvement, to include both marine protected areas and shellfish water protected areas.
The targets outlined in the expanded storm overflows discharge reduction plan provide an achievable, credible route to tackling sewage and delivering the improvements that customers expect without disproportionately impacting consumer bills.
Furthermore, recognising public calls for action to tackle plastic pollution in waterways, on Saturday 14 October the Government also launched a public consultation on a proposed ban of wet wipes containing plastic. This will help tackle wet wipes containing plastic breaking down into microplastics over time, which can be harmful to the environment and human health. The consultation delivers on DEFRA’s commitments set out in our “Plan for Water”.
[HCWS1063]
Withdrawal Agreement Joint Committee: Twelfth Meeting
(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Leo Docherty)
The Withdrawal Agreement Joint Committee met on 28 September 2023, with UK and EU delegates joining by video conference. The meeting was co-chaired at alternate level by me and the Deputy Secretary-General of the European Commission, John Watson. A joint statement was agreed and published on www.gov.uk.
The Committee made two declarations:
The European Union made a declaration pursuant to Article 23(4)(a) of Decision No 1/2023 of the Joint Committee declaring that the EU is satisfied with the implementation by the United Kingdom of Article 5 of Decision No 6/2020 of the Joint Committee.
The United Kingdom made a declaration pursuant to Article 23(4)(b) of Decision No 1/2023 of the Joint Committee declaring that all importers wishing to operate under Article 7(1 )(a)(ii) and Article 7(1)(b)(ii) of Decision No 1/2023 have been granted authorisations in accordance with Articles 9 and 11 of, and Annex III to, Decision No 1/2023.
The Committee also received an update on the work of the Withdrawal Agreement specialised committees that had met since the last meeting on 3 July 2023.
The Committee adopted the decision:
On adding two newly adopted Union acts to the Framework on Moldova and Ukraine trade liberalising measures.
[HCWS1066]
Biodiversity beyond National Jurisdiction Agreement: Update
(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
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The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Mr Andrew Mitchell)
The agreement under the United Nations convention on the law of the sea on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction, known as the BBNJ agreement, will be laid before Parliament today. In line with the process for international treaties in the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, the agreement will be scrutinised for at least 21 sitting days. An explanatory memorandum setting out the key provisions of the agreement will accompany the text.
The UK was one of the first countries to sign the BBNJ agreement when it opened for signature at the UN on 20 September 2023. Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, who signed for the UK, described it as
“a major victory for ocean protection and multilateral diplomacy.”
To date, it has attracted 82 signatures. 60 instruments of ratification are needed for the agreement to enter into force.
Primary legislation will be required before the UK can ratify the BBNJ agreement, to ensure compliance with obligations imposed by the agreement. In particular, obligations on notification of the collection and utilisation of marine genetic resources and associated digital sequence information, and for the conduct of environmental impact assessments for new activities in areas beyond national jurisdiction. The work to allow for ratification is being led by the ocean policy unit in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, working closely with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and other Government Departments. Input is also being sought from science, research, innovation and industry stakeholders to ensure that UK implementation of the agreement is informed by expert advice. The views of UK civil society organisations are also being sought. Legislation is anticipated in the first session of a new parliament after a general election.
At the international level, UN General Assembly resolution 77/321 of 2 August 2023 welcomed the adoption of the agreement and called upon all states and regional economic integration organisations to consider signing and ratifying, approving, or accepting the agreement at the earliest possible date to allow its entry into force. It also requested the UN Secretary-General to strengthen the capacity of the division for ocean affairs and the law of the sea of the Office of Legal Affairs of the secretariat to undertake activities to promote a better understanding of the agreement, to prepare for the entry into force of the agreement and perform secretariat functions under the agreement until such time as the secretariat to be established under article 50 of the agreement commences its functions. The agreement was also placed on the General Assembly’s agenda for the current session to consider next steps.
The UK supports the establishment of a preparatory commission or similar body to take forward work to prepare for the implementation of the agreement and the first meeting of the conference of the parties once the agreement enters into force. We will continue to play a proactive role in this international work, working closely with others and, in particular, supporting the participation of developing countries in this process, and in their implementation of the agreement.
[HCWS1062]
Stopping the Start: A Smokefree Generation
(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Neil O'Brien)
October 2023 the Prime Minister announced a bold and ambitious plan to create a “smokefree generation”, and the Government published the Command Paper “Stopping the start: our new plan to create a smokefree generation”. This Command Paper sets out:
Plans to bring forward legislation to make it an offence to sell tobacco products to anyone born on or after 1 January 2009. In effect, this would mean that the age of sale of tobacco products will increase by one year each year, so that children turning 14 years old or younger this year will never be legally sold tobacco, phasing out tobacco over time and preventing future generations from ever taking up smoking.
A package to support current smokers to quit smoking, including by more than doubling funding for stop smoking services with £70 million additional funding per year, and £5 million this year and £15 million each year after for anti-smoking marketing campaigns.
Measures to tackle youth vaping. While the legal age of sale for vapes is 18, and will remain so, youth vaping has tripled in the last 3 years. The Government announced that they will consult on measures to reduce the appeal and availability of vapes to children, including restricting flavours, regulating point-of-sale displays, regulating vape packaging, and restricting the sale of disposable vapes.
Plans to strengthen enforcement, including £30 million new funding each year for enforcement agencies.
Smoking is the single biggest cause of preventable illness and death and one of the biggest drivers of health inequalities across the country. It is responsible for disability and death throughout the life course, from increasing stillbirths to asthma in children, to dementia, stroke and heart failure in older age. Smoking causes around one in four cancer deaths in the UK and leads to 64,000 deaths per year in England. It costs the country £17 billion per year and puts huge pressure on the NHS, with almost one hospital admission every minute attributable to smoking and up to 75,000 GP appointments each month taken up by smoking-related illness in England.
It is therefore imperative that we take action, and these changes amount to one of the most significant public health interventions by the Government in a generation.
Following the Prime Minister’s announcement and the publication of the Command Paper, the government launched a formal consultation on 12 October 2023, “Creating a smokefree generation and tackling youth vaping”, to gather the strongest possible evidence on how best to implement these proposals. The consultation asks for views on three areas:
Creating a smokefree generation: the consultation gathers views on the smokefree generation policy and its scope to inform future legislation.
Tackling youth vaping: the consultation gathers views on several options to ensure we take the most appropriate action to tackle youth vaping while ensuring vapes continue to be available for current adult smokers to help them quit. The proposals in the consultation include restricting vape flavours, regulating point of sale displays of vapes, regulating packaging and presentation of vapes, and considering restricting the sale of disposable vapes. In addition, the consultation gathers views on the affordability of vapes and the role of a new duty on vapes.
Enforcement: the consultation asks about introducing new powers for local authorities to issue on-the-spot fines—fixed penalty notices—to enforce age of sale legislation of tobacco products and vapes.
The consultation will be open for a total of eight weeks and will close on 6 December 2023.1 am pleased to say the consultation has received widespread support, and the Scottish Government, Welsh Government, and the Northern Ireland Department of Health have all given it their backing and agreed to a joint consultation.
Responses to the consultation will inform the measures that are taken forward and I will provide an update to the House on the response to the consultation in due course. Following consultation, we intend to introduce a Bill as soon as parliamentary time allows.
[HCWS1059]
No and Low-alcohol Alternatives: Labelling Guidance Consultation
(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Neil O'Brien)
This Government set out in the 2019 Green Paper, “Advancing our health: prevention in the 2020s”, commitments to work with industry to deliver a significant increase in the availability of alcohol-free and low-alcohol products by 2025 and to review the evidence to consider increasing the alcohol-free descriptor threshold from 0.05% ABV up to 0.5% ABV, in line with some other countries in Europe. We remain committed to this goal, and I am proud to announce that on 28 September we launched a public consultation, “Updating labelling guidance for no and low-alcohol alternatives”.
Reducing the harms associated with excess alcohol consumption remains a priority for this Government. As of 2021, approximately 10 million, or one in five adults in England drank above the UK chief medical officer’s low-risk drinking levels, significantly increasing their risk of health problems.
Making alcohol-free and low-alcohol products more available will increase consumer choice. It will help to promote the options of lower-strength alternatives to consumers, and changing the alcohol-free descriptor threshold in non-statutory guidance could support further innovation in the sector. We are seeking views on this potential change, as well as a number of other potential changes to Department of Health and Social Care voluntary guidance on labelling of alcohol-free and low-alcohol products, to provide greater consistency for producers, retailers and hospitality, and clarity for consumers.
DHSC will consider which, if any, changes should be made to the guidance following the consultation to support its policy aim to reduce excess alcohol consumption and associated harm among people who regularly drink above the UK chief medical officer’s low-risk drinking guidelines.
I encourage all those with an interest—the alcohol industry, public health organisations, and consumers themselves—to share their views with us through responding to this important consultation.
[HCWS1057]
Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures: 1 June 2023 to 31 August 2023
(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
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The Minister for Security (Tom Tugendhat)
Section 19(1) of the Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures (TPIM) Act 2011 (the Act) requires the Secretary of State to report to Parliament as soon as reasonably practicable after the end of every relevant three-month period on the exercise of their TPIM powers under the Act during that period. TPIM notices in force—as of 31 August 2023 0 Number of new TPIM notices served—during this period 0 TPIM notices in respect of British citizens—as of 31 August 2023 0 TPIM notices extended—during the reporting period 0 TPIM notices revoked—during the reporting period 1 TPIM notices expired—during reporting period 0 TPIM notices revived—during the reporting period 0 Variations made to measures specified in TPIM notices—during the reporting period 0 Applications to vary measures specified in TPIM notices refused—during the reporting period 0 The number of subjects relocated under TPIM legislation—during this the reporting period 1
The level of information provided will always be subject to slight variations based on operational advice.
The TPIM Review Group (TRG) keeps every TPIM notice under regular and formal review. A TRG meeting was held on 10 August 2023.
[HCWS1058]
Health and Disability Benefits: Functional Assessment Service Contracts
(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
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The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Tom Pursglove)
I would like to update the House on the outcome of the procurement of new health and disability benefit assessment contracts—the functional assessment service contracts—for the period 2024 to 2029. These important new contracts have been subject to a rigorous and competitive process in line with public contract regulations.
The health transformation programme is modernising health and disability benefit services and will create a more efficient service and a vastly improved claimant experience, reducing journey times and improving trust in our services and decisions. It is developing a new customer-focused health assessment service and transforming the entire personal independence payment service, over the longer term. It will play a crucial role in implementing the reforms set out in the health and disability White Paper published in March 2023. The functional assessment service contracts will play a key part in delivering the service transformation being driven by the health transformation programme.
The functional assessment service contracts will bring together all functional health assessment services within a geographic area under a single provider. They will provide the foundation for the new health assessment service, which will eventually replace the different services we and our assessment providers use to undertake health assessments across all benefits, including new IT and processes. The new health assessment service will be fully integrated with other systems, including the transformed PIP service, with the aim of creating a much-improved experience for people who apply for support. The new service is being developed on a small scale initially. The new contracts will provide the flexibility to gradually introduce the new health assessment service once fully developed, before it is rolled out nationally from 2029.
On 25 May 2023, I notified the House that the Department had informed successful bidders in geographic lots 1, 2, 4 and 5. We have now concluded the procurement in lot 3—south-west England—and I am pleased to be able to announce today that the successful bidder is Serco Ltd.
We will now work with providers to ensure the transition to the new contracts is as smooth as possible. To ensure adequate time to safely transition, the functional assessment service contracts will begin in September 2024 and we have extended current contracts to this point to ensure service continuity.
We will also work with the functional assessment service providers to deliver structural reform, removing the work capability assessment via a phased approach over the lifetime of the contracts, as announced in the health and disability White Paper in March 2023.
[HCWS1056]
House of Lords
Lord Speaker’s Announcement
The Lord Speaker
My Lords, I know that the House will have been shocked by the recent terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas. I invite the House to join with me and observe a minute’s silence in recognition of all those innocent Israelis, Palestinians and others who have lost their lives, all those taken hostage, and those affected by this conflict.
Oaths and Affirmations
Retirement of a Member: Lord Stevenson of Coddenham
The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
My Lords, I should like to notify the House of the retirement, with effect from 1 October, of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Coddenham, pursuant to Section 1 of the House of Lords Reform Act 2014. On behalf of the House, I should like to thank the noble Lord for his much-valued service to the House.
Paediatric Care: Wating Times
(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Baroness Wheeler
To ask His Majesty’s Government what recent assessment they have made of the impact of the length of waiting times for paediatric care on children’s developmental outcomes.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Markham) (Con)
Cutting waiting lists is one of the PM’s top five priorities, and we are aware that waiting times impact more developmentally on a younger person’s life. Given this, we are committed to ensuring that babies, children and young people are prioritised in integrated care systems, and that the reforms in the Health and Care Act 2022 to improve child health and well-being outcomes are delivered on the ground.
Baroness Wheeler (Lab)
My Lords, the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges has described sick children as the
“forgotten casualties of the NHS’s waiting list crisis”
across hospital and community health. NHS data shows that over 220,000 are waiting for children’s and young people’s services, including paediatrics, autism spectrum disorder diagnosis, health visiting, and speech and language therapy. Even worse, almost 20,000 have been waiting over a year—that is 8% up on the previous month. What action are the Government taking specifically to address this appalling situation, and what cross-government measures are in place to try to mitigate the huge knock-on impact on children’s education, health and well-being, and on their families?
Lord Markham (Con)
I thank the noble Baroness for bringing this question up; this is an important area, and we all know that a year in the life of a child aged 10 is a lot more impactful than it is to a 60 or 70 year-old. It is a question very well put. Since receiving this Question, I have been working on it with the department and talking to the relevant Ministers about what we can do specifically. We are expanding capacity generally through the CDCs and the 95 surgical hubs designed around this space, but we are putting in measures with ICSs and tiering to make sure we are specifically addressing children’s wait times as well.
Lord Allan of Hallam (LD)
My Lords, it is naturally very stressful for any parent when they face a long wait for their child’s paediatric referral. That stress is often compounded by the fact that it is left to the parents themselves to chase things up through confusing referral systems and systems that are still far too manual and depend on paper letters that get lost. Will the Minister make a priority of improving the information flow to parents about a child’s referral, so that they can quickly and easily see what is happening and know what to expect?
Lord Markham (Con)
That is a point very well made. as the noble Lord knows, that is one of my priorities and what we are trying to do with the app. There will be a number of launches, but already we are seeing hundreds of thousands of messages going out via the app to make sure that people are getting them on time. That has become the backbone of our communication system and will expand across the piece to try to cover exactly the points the noble Lord raises.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, in addition to the list raised by my noble friend, I would also mention hearing assessments for children who do not initially get the newborn hearing assessment. Does the Minister consider that one of the problems is that, around the table at the ICBs and integrated care systems, no one really has the responsibility of representing the interests of young people and children, and that this is reflected in the discussions they have on prioritisation? If he would agree to look at this, does he not think we need a way of ensuring that, around that table, experts in issues relating to children, infants and young people are brought to the fore?
Lord Markham (Con)
It is now the legal responsibility of the ICBs to appoint an executive lead in this area, but I think the point generally is a good one. As I said, as a result of this Question I have managed to spend some time looking into this and we clearly need to make sure it is a priority. One of the other things I have been talking about with the executive team of the NHS is how we can introduce this to the tiering measures so that hospitals are given special help in making sure that children’s wait time is one of the key priority areas, and we can put more resources and support towards that and more support where hospitals are not performing well in that area. I agree with the noble Lord.
Lord Laming (CB)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that all staff in the front line of these services need to be aware of the dangers of child abuse or child neglect, because the developmental needs of very young children can also be indicators of serious neglect in the home?
Lord Markham (Con)
Yes. That is where our colleagues in the Department for Education have a key part to play. Start for Life is a joint initiative with DfE which is trying to look at early diagnosis. At the same time, often some of those issues can manifest themselves in anxieties and mental health issues. That is why we have done a lot of work to expand the number of mental health-aware teachers and assessors in schools, so that we can have early detection.
Lord McLoughlin (Con)
Have the Government made any assessment of the impact of strikes on waiting times?
Lord Markham (Con)
Unfortunately, industrial action is impacting on waiting times; we estimate that about a million appointments have been lost to date. Clearly, that is a matter of regret and not good news for anyone.
Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)
My Lords, I take the Minister back to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Allan, who referred to the necessity for parents to do a lot of running around and following up for themselves. Does he agree that this is a particular problem with the management of long-term conditions in young people—for example, ADHD and other things relating to autism—where the challenge is not just to get the diagnosis but to then get a consistent level of treatment over the long term? Can he comment on what steps have been taken to improve that? Can he also comment on the reported limited availability of appropriate drugs for treating young people with ADHD?
Lord Markham (Con)
I am aware from personal experience that, when you have a child with neurodiversity or developmental needs, it is a long journey. We are seeing this manifest itself much more in recent years; I was talking to Minister Caulfield about this just this morning. One-to-one is always preferable but, where capacity is constrained, group education and help can sometimes lend themselves to this space. It is a long-term condition, and clearly it will not be solved by treatment over a few months but needs many years.
Lord Winston (Lab)
The Minister quite rightly referred to the brain development of a child being very rapid and resulting from experience, and to various experiences having a profound effect on children’s development. However, he did not mention the place of primary care and, particularly, general practitioners in this. Does he feel that general practitioners are getting enough resources to be able to assess children on a more routine basis? The app will certainly be useful, but it does not get them clearly involved with medical practice; we need some standard way of doing this. Can he give us some information about the role of the GP?
Lord Markham (Con)
The role of the GP is clearly vital. That is what I was trying to get behind in the Start for Life initiative and clear early warning indicators. Clearly, that needs to go right through the development of a child at different key stages along the way. On digital treatments, I was at Boston children’s hospital last week, and it has early indicators for dyslexia—for example, looking at pattern recognition via an app, as it is not until children are older that they can see letters. Similarly, early signs of neurodiversity can be seen in the way that children play online on certain apps. I think we can add some of these digital support tools, but clearly the GP has a primary role.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, following on from his last comment, can the Minister give us some idea of what contact there has been on this with the Department for Education? We are supposed to talk to each other, but it becomes increasingly apparent that we do not do so.
Lord Markham (Con)
I like to think that we have good contact on this, centred around, as I said, Start for Life, which is a £300 million joint programme between ourselves and the Department for Education. There are also other things; for example, noble Lords might remember me mentioning the Bradford pilot previously, where we are looking at children’s scores in test environments and using those where there may be early indicators of ADHD or other neurodiverse needs. There is quite a bit of work going on in this space. No doubt we could always work more closely, but there is some promising work being done.
Lord Kamall (Con)
My Lords, looking at the waiting lists, there is clearly an issue of different needs and levels of seriousness in the conditions that people are suffering. Can my noble friend the Minister tell us what sort of prioritisation process has been put in place to make sure that those who need care immediately are prioritised over those who could possibly wait a little longer?
Lord Markham (Con)
Probably the best example of that is in the whole area of cancer, which we all agree has to be the absolute priority. We have set up children’s cancer networks precisely around that. They are also set up so we can do whole genome sequencing for all children with cancer and start to introduce specific point-of-care medicines especially for them. These are examples of where we are saying that this really is the priority and that it is what we will devote all our resources to.
Carbon Capture and Storage Infrastructure Fund
(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb
To ask His Majesty’s Government how much of the Carbon Capture and Storage Infrastructure Fund they have awarded in contracts to companies involved in the oil and gas industry.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (Lord Callanan) (Con)
My Lords, no contracts have yet been awarded through the cluster sequencing process. The amount that may be awarded to individual projects is still subject to negotiations. Project sponsors are from a range of industries including cement, industrial gases, energy from waste, et cetera. In addition, up to £40 million of the CIF is being spent under the UKRI industrial decarbonisation challenge fund, which aims to deliver significant reductions in industrial carbon dioxide emissions.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
That is sort of good news, because I hope that this Government are not going to give any of that funding to fossil fuel companies, or to any other industry that has not only had tax breaks in the past and made massive profits but trashed the planet knowingly. Will the Minister give me any sort of promise that fossil fuel companies will not be entrusted with this sort of technology, which is already considered very risky and ineffective?
Lord Callanan (Con)
No, I will not give the noble Baroness that assurance, for a number of good reasons. First, in the real world, as opposed to in the noble Baroness’s fantasy green world, CCUS is an essential technology.
Lord Callanan (Con)
The Climate Change Committee has said that CCUS is essential and not an option if we are to meet our net-zero goal, which we wish to do. Secondly, in a number of industries—cement and energy from waste, et cetera—CCUS is the only option to decarbonise those industries. Unless the noble Baroness is saying that she wants them all to close down, so that we have no building in this country and import all our cement from overseas, what is her practical solution in the real world to delivering these technologies?
Baroness Northover (LD)
My Lords, the Minister has just confirmed that no commercial plants are yet operational in Britain. Is the Government’s plan to capture 20 million to 30 million tonnes of CO2 by 2030 not therefore unachievable? Why are the Government subsidising this with £1 billion, at the expense of proven renewables?
Lord Callanan (Con)
It is not one or the other; we need to do both. Of course we need to push ahead with renewables, and I have set out many times in this House how well we are doing. Almost 60% of electricity in the last quarter was delivered by renewables, but CCUS is also essential. We have committed £20 billion-worth of funding to CCUS over the next few years because everybody thinks it essential to meeting our goals. It also offers a massive export opportunity for this country, as we have expertise in many of these technologies. The estimate is that capturing 20 million to 30 million tonnes of CO2 by 2030 could deliver up to 50,000 jobs, many of them in our industrial heartlands.
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
My Lords, the Government have only recently entered negotiations with track 1 clusters, despite the climate investment fund being announced three years ago. They have earmarked £0.3 billion of the £1 billion fund for this financial year. This does not leave much time for negotiating. Are the Government concerned that this deadline, caused by their own delays, will impact on their negotiating position? Is the Government’s priority using this money well or simply using it?
Lord Callanan (Con)
My Lords, this makes me think that we cannot win on this. One part of the Opposition does not want to award these contracts at all and the Labour Party thinks we should have done it earlier. The reality is that we are proceeding with negotiations. It is our aim to have the contracts let for the first 10 projects by quarter 3 of next year. This is a really exciting technology, but we need to do the negotiations properly and get maximum value for money for the taxpayer from what is an emerging new industry.
Lord Geddes (Con)
Can my noble friend bring the House up to date on the Government’s support for tidal power?
Lord Callanan (Con)
My noble friend is dogged in his pursuit of this, and I have answered his question before. As he knows, under the last contracts for difference round, a number of tidal projects were successful in receiving funding.
Schools: Music, Art, Craft and Dance
(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Baroness Garden of Frognal
To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have (1) to revitalise music, art, craft and dance, in state schools, and (2) to recruit teachers of these subjects.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)
My Lords, the Government remain committed to pupils receiving a high-quality cultural education, including in music, art and design and dance. We are investing around £115 million in music and arts up to 2025, in addition to core school budgets. There are over 468,000 full-time equivalent teachers in state-funded schools in England, the highest since the school workforce census began. We are offering £10,000 tax-free initial teacher training bursaries for art and design and music from 2024-25.
Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)
I thank the Minister for that very positive reply. However, one of the very many damaging offshoots of the EBacc and Progress 8 has been to degrade—indeed, in some cases to eliminate —music, dance, art and crafts from state school curricula, but every young person deserves the opportunity to experience and enjoy them. What is more, the arts are major contributors to the nation’s economy. The Minister has mentioned funding; how are the Government funding music hubs? How specifically do the Government intend to recruit teachers for these life-enhancing subjects?
Baroness Barran (Con)
To put the noble Baroness’s concerns in perspective, I point out that if one takes into account both GCSEs and technical awards, which I know she values, just over half of students—52%—take either a GCSE or technical award. We are funding the music hubs with £79 million per annum for delivery but there is an additional £25 million fund for the purchase of musical instruments. In my Answer I gave an indication of the bursaries we will be providing to encourage recruitment.
Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)
My Lords, as a former drama teacher and current chair of trustees of the Council for Dance, Drama and Musical Theatre, I know how important studying the arts is to children’s lives. When such access is limited in schools, it is the poorer students who are denied the benefits. Surely we all want young people to carry a love of learning that sets them up to achieve and thrive, and the arts are central to this. Can the Minister give an update on the progress of the cultural education panel? When can we expect its report?
Baroness Barran (Con)
The Government would not disagree with anything the noble Baroness said on the importance of arts and other wider curriculum subjects. She will be aware that we published our new music education plan in June 2022. We will be publishing the cultural education plan in the coming months.
Lord Lexden (Con)
My Lords, should we not note and commend the existence of nearly 1,700 partnership schemes through which state and independent schools are working together to develop the talents of their pupils in music and art subjects? Will the Government give vigorous support to the further increase and expansion of these valuable partnership schemes?
Baroness Barran (Con)
The Government have been very supportive of partnerships between the independent sector and state-funded schools. I absolutely recognise the important work done by the 1,700 schemes and I hope we see many more in future.
Lord Hampton (CB)
My Lords, I declare my interests in the register. We now have EBacc, Progress 8 and the new BritBacc—I presume that is what it is called—which all exclude creative subjects. Does the Minister agree that, until the Government stop their obsession with mandatory A-level maths and their focus on purely academic subjects, there is little chance of revitalising the teaching of creative arts in schools and therefore recruiting teachers to teach them?
Baroness Barran (Con)
To clarify, there is no mandatory maths A-level; there will be the provision of maths to 18, which will take us to the same position as every other G7 country. The noble Lord is a teacher and understands better than I do how children learn but, through the EBacc, we are delivering an important rich store of knowledge from which children can apply their creativity, critical thinking and imagination.
The Lord Bishop of Sheffield
My Lords, many Anglican and Roman Catholic cathedrals regularly send professional musicians into schools to support them with singing, at minimal charge. For example, by 2026, Sheffield Cathedral plans to support 30 schools a year with high-quality, curriculum-based music teaching, mostly in our most deprived communities. Does the Minister think there might be scope here for partnership with government to maximise the potential of such schemes?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I very much welcome that initiative. That ecosystem between our different cultural institutions, including charities and, of course, religious organisations, is extremely important. However, in practical terms, local relationships between schools and local cultural organisations can work best, and our music hubs help to link those up.
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
My Lords, shall we hear from the Labour Benches? There will then be plenty of time to hear from the Lib Dem Benches.
Baroness Blower (Lab)
My Lords, I am pleased that my noble friend on the Front Bench added drama to this list, because I am sure that the Minister knows that it has been lost from the curricula of very many schools. Although 52% is more than half, it is simply inadequate: very many children in our schools get no exposure to art, drama, music or dance. I ask the Minister to meet with the professional bodies, particularly the teachers’ unions, to look at how we might review and keep under review the 11-to-16 and the five-to-11 curricula, to ensure that all children, in every school, have access to these subjects.
Baroness Barran (Con)
As the noble Baroness knows, drama is obviously part of the national curriculum, so I do not quite recognise her description that many children receive no exposure to drama at all. There has also been a massive expansion of technical and vocational qualifications. Since 2016, the numbers of pupils taking music VTQs have gone from just over 8,000 to almost 18,000. There was a similar increase, from just under 9,000 to just over 18,000, for speech and drama. Perhaps unsurprisingly in some ways, the huge expansion has been in multimedia studies, which have gone from just over 4,000 students in 2016 to 54,000 last year.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, can the Minister give us an idea of what the Government are doing to encourage people to take up the subjects here part-time or as hobbies, due to the huge benefit you gain from being involved in things like community activity in dance and drama? Where is this being done, how are those hubs being created, and are we sure we have people who know enough to make these things fun for those other than the incredibly talented?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I meet many teachers who deliver these subjects, and I am struck by their commitment and skill. Close to 100% of teachers in art and design and in music have a relevant qualification post A-level.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
I refer noble Lords to my entry in the register of interests. Earlier this year, I attended a performance of scenes from Shakespeare plays by year 5s from North Wootton Academy at St George’s Guildhall, the oldest working theatre in the UK. When I spoke to pupils afterwards, it was clear not only how much they absolutely loved the experience but just how much confidence they had gained from performing on stage and in front of an audience. Can my noble friend explain or outline what the department is doing in addition to the fantastic school-led initiatives, of which that is one, to try to ensure that children of all ages are able to perform in public?
Baroness Barran (Con)
My noble friend paints a wonderful picture; I think that the House can imagine the pleasure of those children involved. I was fortunate enough to go and see something similar with a number of school orchestras and choirs performing, and I absolutely agree with what she said. We continue to support such activities, and will do more in our cultural education plan. I remind the House that we have also included an hour of music a week as compulsory, as our expectation in the school curriculum.
National Cyber Security Centre
(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Baroness McIntosh of Pickering
To ask His Majesty’s Government what is the role of the National Cyber Security Centre in monitoring and preventing cyber attacks.
The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon) (Con)
My Lords, the NCSC, as the UK’s technical authority, is the UK Government’s authoritative voice on the cyber threat, providing independent assessments and improving cybersecurity across the United Kingdom. The NCSC provides protection at scale and drives improvements to resilience and security to mitigate threats from our adversaries and reduce cyber harms in the UK. Through tailored expertise to protect citizens, businesses and organisations, the NCSC works to make the UK the safest place to live and work online.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for that Answer, and for the White Paper that the centre has produced. What advice would my noble friend and the Government give to a firm in North Yorkshire that underwent a cyberattack a year ago and had its systems restored only by the payment of a rather large ransom in cryptocurrency? The White Paper focuses on prevention but, in the midst of an attack, what can a company possibly do other than pay the ransom?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, my noble friend raises a couple of important points. First, on ransom demands, as she will be aware, it is the firm position of the Government and UK law enforcement that we do not encourage, endorse or indeed condone the payment of ransom demands. For example, if you pay a ransom after your computer has been affected or your systems have been impacted, there is no guarantee that you will not be targeted in the future by criminal groups. In that regard, Lindy Cameron, the CEO of the NCSC, and the Information Commissioner have written to the Law Society and the Bar Council.
However, the Government offer specific support, including to small businesses. There are the 10 Steps to Cyber Security and the Small Business Guide; there is also a ransomware portal that provides fresh advice, as well as the NCSC’s assured cyber incident response scheme. It is ever evolving, but the Government are very robust, and we are working across departments to ensure that we give the best information and response possible.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, of course, I refer to my interests in the register. I suspect that the excellent schemes that the Minister has outlined are very useful but that they do not address the question that the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, asked. If a company or organisation is subjected to a ransomware attack, can it get tailored help as to what to do in real time from the NCSC, and how do people know how to access that?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, if the noble Lord reflects on the answer that I gave, he will see that I answered the question quite directly. The first point is, “Don’t pay”, because the experience is that there is no assurance. Of course, a small company will have limited resources, and some of the portals, information and websites, as well as the response that I have outlined, are designed to help exactly those kinds of small businesses in their response. However, one thing is very clear, whether it is within my department or the Home Office: that by paying such demands there is no assurance, for a small or a large company, that a ransom attack will not happen again.
Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston (CB)
I declare an interest as the chair of Wilton Park, an executive agency of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Small organisations, while they are not completely part of government, nevertheless provide some back-door entrance to government by some people with malign intent, and they carry quite disproportionate costs to ensure their cybersecurity. Have the Government given any thought to how they could support ALBs and executive agencies across government more comprehensively?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, I recognise the vital insights of the noble Baroness. In working across government, we also work to ensure that government systems, structures, departments and agencies are fully protected. As I said in my Answer, this is an ever-evolving and ever-challenging threat—what is good today needs to be adapted for tomorrow’s threats. Where specific issues arise, be they for small businesses or for agencies, we seek to provide the necessary focused support.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, I have visited the centre and greatly admire the work of the whole team. The public and the private sector should adhere to its advice. The Government have consulted on prohibiting payments to ransomware. The Minister and I well know that the source of many such attacks is Russia and, currently, Iran. Does it not sit ill that businesses are only being told not to pay ransomware, rather than having a legal prohibition, when that money will end up in Tehran or Moscow?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, the noble Lord is quite correct and we have often discussed these issues and challenges. The mitigations we have put in and the advice we provide are all part of an overall package but, as I am sure he will agree, the challenge is that we also need sharp-end sanctions against these states. As I know from my experience at the Foreign Office over the last few years, we never used to call out or challenge state actors for cyberattacks. We now do so. The two countries the noble Lord named—Russia and Iran—are very much part of our focus. I am sure he will acknowledge that we have imposed cyber sanctions on Russia.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
My Lords, to take the Minister back to prevention, he will be aware of the increase in the number of ransomware issues—the incoming Costa Rican Government last year and the Irish healthcare system the year before were both hit by ransomware attacks. Can he tell the House more about what we are learning through international co-operation? Prevention is obviously better than having to deal with a significant problem afterwards, so I hope that we are learning something from other countries that have had to deal with this and that we can extend that to public bodies and private organisations.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
I totally agree with the noble Baroness and assure her that we work very closely with our key international partners in calling out some of these cyberattacks against companies or even government websites and systems. We seek to act together and have done so. She will be aware that at the beginning of next month we will host an AI summit, which the Prime Minister is overseeing, very much aimed at exactly what she articulates—how we can learn from each other while improving our responses. I always say that, for cyber and many of the other challenges we face, as good as mitigations or mechanisms may be, those who seek to cause us harm—be it to business or directly to the Government—are looking at new ways to overcome them, so we will continue to share and co-operate with our key partners and allies on this.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, a few weeks ago, the National Cyber Security Centre issued a warning about the risks of “prompt injection attacks” on the new large language models such as ChatGPT when used in the workplace, which enable them to be open to manipulation. What are the Government doing to ensure that they mitigate that risk in their own workplaces?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, as I have said, we are working across government and internationally. I think we all recognise the catch-up element with the evolution of these new methods. There are transformational elements with new innovations—that is why I referred to the AI summit, which is intended not just to avail us with the opportunities these new technologies present, as the noble Lord articulated, but to address the challenge and high risk presented to government, industry, sectors and individuals.
Noble Lords may recall the sad occasion when this very Parliament was attacked physically. I remember the emotional exchanges and statements made at the time, including by my noble friend Lady Evans. There was another attack at that time, on the parliamentary emails of many Members of this House and the other place. The knowledge base available for mitigation was limited, as was awareness. I think most Members and colleagues were concerned about getting their machines and devices up and working rather than about the data loss. The more learning, education and information we can share, the better we will be at mitigating some of these risks.
Lord McLoughlin (Con)
My Lords, a company which is the subject of a cyberattack may not wish to be publicly identified, but they may have suffered severe financial problems. How is HMRC taking this into account and giving those companies some breathing time to put right what may have happened to them? It is all very well saying it in one section, but is there a cross-government approach to this issue?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, I assure my noble friend that we do have a cross-government approach to this. He raises a very important point about both risk and the cost associated with cyberattacks, and we are very much seized of this. I have already outlined specific schemes and support. It is very important that we share this, however, so in the interests of full information, I will write to my noble friend and put on record in the Library the number of schemes that are available for information sharing and the support that can be offered to those impacted.
Non-Domestic Rating Bill
Monday 16th October 2023
(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Non-Domestic Rating Act 2023 View all Non-Domestic Rating Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: HL Bill 140-R-I Marshalled list for Report - (15 Sep 2023)
Baroness Swinburne (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords on all Benches for their co-operation on the Bill. The passage of the Bill will be a significant milestone in the reform of business rates, following our manifesto commitment and the subsequent Treasury review. When the Government examined the business rates system, they did so in the context of considerable upheaval due to the pandemic. Nevertheless, several themes emerged from which the conclusions of the review were formed.
The debates in this place have underlined the support for measures to improve the responsiveness of business rates to market changes. This was a key request from businesses during our review, the central achievement of the Bill and something I believe we can all be pleased to support.
With the first three-yearly revaluation cycle having now begun, the Government are already developing the new systems for data sharing that will enable regular three-yearly revaluations beyond 2026. Ratepayers and their representatives are the key stakeholders in these reforms, and the Valuation Office Agency will engage closely with them on the design of the future system. It has been pleasing to note that, while there is understandable appetite among noble Lords for even greater frequency, there is also a recognition that implementing such major changes to a tax requires a careful and incremental approach. I will repeat, then, what I said on Report: the Government will monitor these changes and keep the frequency of revaluations under consideration.
The Government’s review of business rates also identified the opportunity to reduce or remove business rates liability where this would support improvements to business premises or the decarbonisation of buildings.
The Bill enables the remaining parts of this package—namely, mandatory improvement relief and heat network relief—to be delivered from 1 April next year. This is a key part of producing a business rates system that better reflects our national priorities.
The Bill of course will now return to the other place for consideration of the Government’s amendments. As noble Lords are aware, these are of a technical but nevertheless important nature. That is true of much of this Bill, which shows the value of the expertise that we have witnessed in debate. Therefore, I will take the opportunity to repeat my thanks to the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, who identified those improvements and who more generally has offered the benefit of his considerable experience in rating to enrich the debates on this Bill. I also extend similar thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Thurlow, and other expert contributors to those debates, including the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, and the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale.
I thank the Front-Benchers opposite for their highly constructive and pragmatic approach, especially the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman of Ullock and Lady Pinnock, and the noble Lord, Lord Shipley. It has been clear that the Bill enjoys broad support, but their probing has opened fruitful areas of discussion and given us the chance to say more about the Government’s work. I am sure noble Lords will join me in thanking members of the Bill team for their engagement. As I have mentioned, this is a complex area, and the preparation and delivery of a Bill such as this rely on the commitment and experience of officials from across the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the Treasury, the VOA and HMRC. I also thank parliamentary counsel for their drafting of the Bill and their wider support to the Bill team. With that, I beg to move.
Lord Shipley (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister very much for her conclusion to this Bill. I extend our thanks also to the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook. As she said, the Bill has broad support in your Lordships’ Chamber. I am grateful for the Minister’s assertion that we have introduced a pragmatic approach to the content of the Bill, for I think it is true—we have done just that. I was particularly pleased to hear the Minister say that the Government have a commitment to monitor what actually happens. I know that, on all sides of the House, that will be very gratefully received.
The Bill has a number of very welcome changes: in particular, more regular revaluations, which will be a big help. However, problems remain. Crucially, the level of business rates is too high. Business rates used to be around half the rental level of a property; they are now almost equal. This financial burden is putting a huge pressure on many businesses, not least in the retail sector. I said on Report and at other stages of the Bill that small business rate relief should be further extended, particularly to assist the high street. I also think the Government should not be increasing the level of business rates next year by the rate of inflation.
I hope the Government will take on board comments made on all sides of the House about the need to review the non-domestic rates valuation process itself for its accuracy, its communications and its explanations to business rate payers. The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, has been particularly concerned about the issue of material change of circumstance. There is a new definition and there is a view that I share with the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, that it is too narrow. I am reconciled to what the Minister has said, which is that they will keep it under review.
Thirdly, the Government need to keep a close eye on the level of payments made by warehouses when those warehouses have a retail purpose.
In conclusion, I think that the NDR system is broken. This Bill is a welcome improvement, but it is not a solution. Business rates cannot just be a means of revenue raising by the Treasury. I hope that this Government, and any future Government, will simply bear in mind that we need a major reform of the business rates system.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her opening remarks. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, for all her work on the Bill; I wish her well from our Benches and we look forward to seeing her back in her place very shortly.
As others have done, I thank all noble Lords who took part in the debates on the Bill. It is a short Bill, but it is quite complex in areas, so it has been incredibly helpful to have real expertise and insight from noble Lords—such as the noble Lord, Lord Thurlow, and the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, who have been mentioned—not only for Government Ministers but for those of us leading on the Opposition Benches. It was good to be able to understand the implications of the Bill through the expertise noble Lords brought to the House. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, that, having had that, the Bill is now in a better place than it was when it began in this House. It is an important Bill, and it is important that we improve the situation of business rates from how they currently stand. However, I also agree with the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, that there are still a few outstanding issues; that is why it is important that the Government keep their commitment to monitoring the outcomes of the Bill, particularly on the timescales of revaluation. As we discussed in Committee, some of us would have liked to see revaluation done more regularly, so it is important that we keep an eye on that.
As we discussed in the debates on the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, as well as on this Bill, there are a lot of concerns about our high streets and our small businesses on them—and business rates are a critical part of how they are supported. So, as we are also coming to the end of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, I hope that, going forward, the Government will still consider different ways in which we can continue to support our high streets and small businesses. Having said that, we were pleased to support the Bill and we welcome it moving forward.
Water and Sewage Regulation (Industry and Regulators Committee Report)
(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Lord Hollick
That this House takes note of the Report from the Industry and Regulators Committee The affluent and the effluent: cleaning up failures in water and sewage regulation (1st Report, HL Paper 166).
Lord Hollick (Lab)
My Lords, I am pleased to introduce this debate on the affluent and the effluent. I thank our staff for their valuable contributions to the committee’s work, and the many contributors who gave evidence to the inquiry.
In May last year, we launched our inquiry into water and sewage regulation following a public outcry at the discharge of sewage into our waters. We published our report this March, which received a response from the Government that was curt and dismissive and implied that the committee had gone beyond its remit in questioning matters of public water policy. It was a clear attempt by the Government to dodge parliamentary scrutiny of their record.
In April, the Government published their Plan for Water. In May, England’s water companies issued an apology for sewage discharges and announced a recovery plan. We then launched a follow-up inquiry in June focusing on the role of Defra, which concluded with a letter to the Secretary of State last month; a response to that letter is expected on 27 October, this month. In our report, we found that, after privatisation, pressures on the water and sewerage network increased due to climate change and population growth; but the levels of investment fail to match that, leading to a serious deterioration in water quality and a network struggling to cope. Storm overflows are supposed to provide a safety valve during periods of heavy rainfall, but they are now used as a matter of routine.
According to Environment Agency figures, there were more than 300,000 monitored sewage spills in 2022 and 75% of all rivers are polluted. The Environment Agency itself has struggled to monitor or enforce against water companies due to budget cuts. There has been a growing pressure on our water supply itself, meaning that England will require an initial 4 billion litres of water a day by 2050, an increase of 41%. Taps will run dry with increasing frequency unless new water supplies can be established and more measures are introduced to reduce demand. The last reservoir built was in 1991. The Government’s plans for storm overflows estimates that £56 billion of investment will be needed by 2050 to clear up this mess. To this end, water companies have proposed investing £11 billion before 2030. Further billions of pounds will be needed to maintain the existing infrastructure.
Water companies recently published their business plans for the next five-year price review, proposing to invest £96 billion between 2025 and 2030—a 90% increase on the current period and a very welcome acknowledgement of the need for action. It is clear that investment over the last decade in our water system fell far short of what was needed—a casualty of weak regulation and incompetent government leadership. The opportunity to invest when interest rates were historically low and before prices surged with inflation was squandered. Now, a much higher level of investment is needed to remedy this neglect, and that burden will fall heavily on household bills.
Ofwat has the powers to regulate the price water companies can charge, the level of their capital investments and the size of returns they can make to their investors, but it has failed to ensure that companies invest sufficiently in water infrastructure, thus creating a backlog. Ofwat has been cautious about raising customer bills to finance long-term investment without the determined political backing of the Government. Decisions about the level of what people pay is, in the end, the responsibility of the elected Government, who must give regulators clear guidance on how to strike the right balance between investment and affordability.
The Government’s 2022 strategic policy statement for Ofwat gives no sense of priority—in effect, ducking this key decision. Will the Government provide further guidance on pricing ahead of the next price review? Underinvestment means that customer bills have been flat or falling for 15 years, but it is now inevitable that they will have to increase from 2025, when Ofwat’s next price review comes into effect. Company business plans published recently are proposing an average increase of 28.6% by 2030, even before inflation is taken into account. Including inflation, Thames Water has proposed a sharp 61% increase on today’s bills by 2030.
In the face of these rises, the Government must ensure that consistent support nationwide is offered to households struggling with their bills during a cost of living crisis. The Government initially committed to consult on a single nationwide social tariff to end the current postcode lottery, but then dropped the proposal. Water companies are now trying to help by more than doubling the number of households eligible to receive support, but the Government should have stepped in to ensure consistency. They urgently need to set out their approach.
Water companies have been assiduous in maximising their returns from their monopolies. It has been estimated that their dividends extracted since privatisations have exceeded £50 billion, while the debt of water companies has increased to over £60 billion, partly as a result of private equity owners loading the companies up with debt to help to pay themselves larger returns. All this has been in plain sight of a dozing regulator and an unconcerned Defra. This debt mountain has left companies vulnerable to higher interest rates. Ofwat now has stronger powers to control dividends and has set out a more determined approach, but this cannot recoup what has already been lost. The regulator now faces the challenge of requiring companies to boost significantly their level of investment just when they are facing rising costs, financial strains and uncertainty over government and regulatory actions, all of which is making water companies much less attractive to investors.
It is not clear to us that the water companies are capable of delivering investment at the level that is required. This is why we have called on the Government to increase the use of competition in delivering major water infrastructure. With this approach, specialist infrastructure companies, rather than the water companies themselves, can build the infrastructure that we urgently need. This approach has reduced the costs of the Thames Tideway tunnel project from an expected £80 per customer per year to around £25. Specialist infrastructure companies without the financial baggage of water companies can be an efficient and cost-effective solution for large projects. We recommend that the Government legislate to make it easier for more infrastructure to be built in this way. We await their response.
We noted in our recent report that some progress has been made. We called for the Government to provide a national water strategy, to look at the water system holistically, which they have done through the Plan for Water. The Government have also designated a National Policy Statement for Water Resources Infrastructure, as we recommended, to help water infrastructure to proceed more smoothly through planning. Funding has also been made available to monitor storm overflows. Ofwat has tightened its controls on the sector’s finances and, together with the Environment Agency, is investigating the water companies’ role in sewage discharges. All essential funding was previously cut by the Government.
However, major challenges remain. Can the Minister explain what action will be taken to reduce water demand? Why has mandatory water metering not been introduced? Concerns remain about the capacity of water companies and their supply chains to carry out projects at the necessary scale proposed. To ensure that infrastructure plans are independently assessed and their progress professionally reviewed, we recommend that consideration be given to granting the National Infrastructure Commission a statutory role to carry out these duties.
We remain concerned at the Government’s deep-rooted complacency. They have failed to set out how customers will be supported to pay rising bills. They have failed to provide Ofwat with any guidance on how to balance investment and bills. They have shown an almost casual confidence in the task of funding a huge investment programme in very challenging times. Nowhere is this complacency clearer than in relation to wet wipes. In 2021, a consultation found that 96% of respondents supported a ban on wet wipes containing plastic. The Government’s response was to bring forward yet another consultation—which was published only this weekend, after two years. Can the Government tell us when the ban is expected to take effect? This is an easy win. Its delay is unnecessary and deeply damaging to the environment.
Too often in the water sector, government, regulators and water companies have shown themselves to be poor stewards of an essential public service by preferring the easy, short-term option to prioritising the long-term well-being of the system, the quality of water and the environment. We need the Government to take responsibility to ensure a clean, plentiful water system free of sewage. The public deserves better. I beg to move.
Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hollick, for precipitating this debate. I declare an interest as a member of the Industry and Regulators Committee and as a farmer who holds some irrigation licences.
As you will see from the report our committee published on 23 September, to any objective eye we are in a very poor place, be it by security of additional supplies, through population growth, behavioural habits or hotter weather; poorly maintained infrastructure, perhaps best and most recently illustrated through Thames Water’s failure to bring the only significant desalination plant on stream during one of the hottest summers on record; or the financial health of the sector, which has been consistently raided for dividends and executive bonuses, while racking up ever-higher levels of debt. Thames Water alone has a whopping £14 billion of debt; it was debt free when it was privatised.
Meanwhile, sewage releases, politely called storm overflows, are running at extraordinary levels because the sector has failed to invest in adequate mitigation. According to the Defra consultation document published in March last year, in 2020 there were 400,000 sewage discharges, totalling over 3 million hours of sewage flow. Some 10% of those overflow points pumped out raw sewage more than 100 times each. All of this was under the supposedly beady eye of two large regulators, Ofwat and the Environment Agency. Even the regulators’ regulator, the Office for Environmental Protection, as recently as five weeks ago announced
“possible failures to comply with environmental law … in relation to … sewer overflows”.
It is interesting that, in the Government’s response to an Urgent Question triggered by the OEP’s intervention, they said that they started monitoring sewage overflow 10 years ago. If that is the case, what has this monitoring achieved when, in 2020, there were still 400,000 discharge events?
It is my contention that buried in this ocean of complacency is the more disingenuous excuse that it is all too expensive to deal with. In 2020, the Government optimistically created a thing called the Storm Overflows Taskforce. In November 2021, it reported that it would cost between £350 billion and £600 billion to solve the problem. This is equivalent, at the bottom end, to 15 more Elizabeth lines or—dare I say it?—at the top end, to six more full-fat HS2s. This is ludicrous, because numbers like this attempt to shut down the debate, as they are utterly unaffordable. The reality is that so much could be done affordably.
At its simplest, a sewage overflow is activated when the volume of water is more than can be handled by the sewage treatment plant, into which the water flows. Our infrastructure has been and continues to be built to comingle sewage and rainwater, so this is a constant problem. The solution is to reduce the amount of rainwater that hits the sewage plant in a concentrated period of time. There are at least two effective and simple solutions to help achieve this, and one alternative to expensive, hard-infrastructure treatment plants.
First, in a pilot scheme on the Isle of Wight, households were given water butts with slow-release valves, enabling water to be held in the butt until after the storm and then released, in a measured way, over hours and days. As of this month, Southern Water had agreed to extend the pilot to the whole of Cowes. This tiny intervention has, so far, delivered a 70% reduction in sewage releases. In a year, this could be rolled out across the whole of England and Wales at minimal cost. Perhaps the Minister could explain why his department is not pushing this small and elegant solution far harder.
Secondly, certain areas of farmland could be designated to be inundated during heavy storms. With an increasing trend for environmentally led farming, such as overwintered stubbles, this is becoming more and more viable. The Government were considering this in 2016; perhaps the Minister could update us but, rather than giving us a cursory reply today, I ask him to write with some detail. Over 50 million gallons of water flow through my own farm a year, ultimately ending up in the sea, in a system that cannot cope with inundation. It would be perfectly feasible for me to hold areas of land under water for a week or two, while the local drainage system recovers. To put this volume of water into perspective, it is equivalent to about half the annual drinking water requirement of Norwich. So one farm, of a couple of thousand acres, could make a real difference. It would require lateral thinking and proper co-ordination between the regulators and water companies. Perhaps the Minister could tell us if such dexterity of mind exists inside the bureaucratic machine.
The third solution, which now has credible pilot sites, is the use of wetlands in place of hard infrastructure. I recently visited a site in north Norfolk where the cost of construction was £250,000 and the annual running cost £10,000, against a treatment plant of £1 million with running costs of £100,000 a year. With the imminent arrival of biodiversity net gain regulations next year, the opportunity to incorporate more wetlands, and pay for it, becomes possible.
I have tried to show that there are innovative but proven ways to solve these problems without breaking the bank. Lastly, I ask the Minister whether his department is on target to provide a full and unambiguous response to our committee’s letter, due a reply on 27 October, covering this and other issues.
Baroness Taylor of Bolton (Lab)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, who in the committee gave us many examples of practical things that could be done. I am glad he has had the opportunity to raise them in the House today.
To say that the investigation into the water companies was timely is a great understatement. There has been a great deal of public concern about the performance of the industry, the profits taken out and the state of our rivers and beaches. The early response to our report shows the great contribution that House of Lords committees can make to debates on wider issues. The immediate response from the press—from the Times to Feargal Sharkey and experts—has been very positive in welcoming the recommendations in the report. The water companies seem to have regarded it slightly as a wake-up call and to have understood that they cannot get away with the kind of approach they had in the past—although part of their approach was to give an apology and say, “But it wasn’t really us; it was all the people who went before us”.
On the other hand, the Government’s response, as my noble friend said, was curt and dismissive. The Secretary of State, in particular, thinks she has immunity to every problem that has ever arisen in her department.
I have to admit that I never wanted privatisation in the first place, and I was part of the Front-Bench team in the Commons opposing it. I recently saw the figures I used during the wind-up there, which showed that the Labour Government from 1974 to 1979 invested £1,254 million in the water industry per year, but that from 1979 onwards, when the Conservatives came in, there was a sudden drop. Investment went down to £926 million, then £899 million, then £818 million. In other words, there was deliberate underinvestment to try to make a case for privatisation, because we were told that was the only way the investment would come.
We had big promises from the water companies—they were going to solve the problems of leaking pipes and everything else—and we were promised that Ofwat would be the great guardian of the consumer and the taxpayer. It has been very different in reality. Investors have done very well; the rest of us have had serious problems and been left with a situation in which we now need many critical improvements, because those promises were not fulfilled. The water companies have done well, but everybody else, as my noble friend pointed out, has been left with considerable problems. This industry has not invested, and very big figures are needed in investment for the future.
We have seen the dividends taken out of water companies and the big salaries paid to many executives working there. While the companies may say that they recognise the problems, there is no guarantee that they will be easily able to provide the investment that is now needed. Therefore, we now face a very significant and serious dilemma.
Investment is needed—my noble friend pointed out the scale—but who will pay for it? Those who ripped us off are long gone. Many of those companies have been sold on and assets have changed. Water companies maximised their returns but many debt issues remain. We as consumers and taxpayers will not get the money back from the investments that were promised; we paid our water rates and so on. The big question still remains as to how these issues will be dealt with and who is to pay.
There is another very big issue: the nature of regulation. Is Ofwat fit for purpose? It has been too weak. Has it not had enough powers? Has it chosen not to use those powers? Has it lacked government support, or has it just been outsmarted by the water companies? Whatever the fact of how this has happened, we are in a situation where regulation of the water industry, and probably a whole range of industries, needs to be completely overhauled. These companies, and the people regulating them, need to act in a totally different way in future.
Lord Cromwell (CB)
My Lords, I had the privilege of being a member of the committee that produced this report under the incisive chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Hollick. At the start of our inquiry I actually had some sympathy with the regulators and the water companies. The regulator, Ofwat, had been left by government to take what amounted to controversial decisions about the prioritisation between its objectives and those of the water companies. The water companies were primarily tasked with providing clean, cheap water, and to a great extent they have done so. If noble Lords need proof of that, please consider that, every weekend, millions of people in this country wash their cars and water their gardens with what amounts to pure, purified drinking water. Rightly or wrongly, environmental issues have been moved up the list of priorities only more recently.
However, this pool of sympathy dried up during the course of our inquiry. As the noble Lord, Lord Hollick, referred to, we uncovered financial engineering being used to take advantage of regional monopolies, including debt loading and opaque dividend extraction. This was at the expense of much-needed—now frighteningly overdue—investment into the very infrastructure on which our water and sewerage system depends.
How did we get here? As regards the regulators, the committee was far from convinced that Ofwat had the business savvy to spot what was going on and act early enough to stop it. By its own admission, it took only a light-touch approach to regulating the industry. The Environment Agency—demoralised and lacking the resources it needed to hold the water companies to account—has also not kept water companies up to the mark on their environmental performance. Indeed, civil society organisations called out the issues of pollution long before the regulators did. The committee’s very timely report also helped to bring the issue to prominence, as the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, mentioned. Finally, Defra, the department with overall responsibility, appears to have been far too complacent in looking into what was going on. It left the regulators and water companies themselves to make decisions about the competing demands of sewage and water management, and profit.
Where does this leave us? The regulators have taken some steps, at least latterly, but Ofwat’s Water Company Performance Report 2022-23 makes for depressing reading. Performance has fallen short for the majority of companies. Seven of the water companies are described as “lagging”, the report’s lowest categorisation, while fewer than half achieved their performance target on reducing pollution incidents.
We now have a water and sewerage industry desperately in need of a massive catch-up on spending, with numbers ranging from the Government’s quotation of £56 billion—noble Lords should remember that that will be spent over 25 years—to the hundreds of billions cited by the water companies, and the almost fantasy figures that the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, quoted from the task force.
Long-term money for infrastructure needs to be raised and sustained, not just in the short term but over the years and decades ahead. A crucial question therefore is how to raise the necessary investment funds. First, there is currently no suggestion that the money extracted by private equity investors will ever be recovered. Secondly, we have a number of water companies that have themselves been teetering on the brink of being washed over the financial weir into bankruptcy. Thirdly, we were told initially that the water companies would raise this money in the City or from their existing investors, but the talk now is of putting up customer bills. At a time of economic uncertainty and a cost of living crisis, when the benefits of investment might take 25 or more years to be felt, that is an extremely challenging proposition to put forward.
So we seem to be up sewage creek without an affordable paddle—but this is not just about money. The committee had severe doubts about the capability of some water companies, even if the necessary billions of pounds were made available to them, to manage the very substantial infrastructure projects that are required. Ofwat, when asked about this, appears to be crossing its fingers and hoping for the best.
To conclude, solving the problems highlighted in this report is going to be a long haul, and for that reason I hope that the current and future Governments will take note of it. I will pose four questions to the Minister and look forward to his responses when he winds up. How much money is needed to modernise our water and sewerage systems? How is that money going to be raised? How will this massive infrastructure renewal be competently delivered? Finally, are Defra, the regulators and the water companies really up to the job of getting these matters right?
Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD)
My Lords, I have been on the Industry and Regulators Committee since its inception and I am pleased that, before my time to rotate off, we will be looking at the issue, among other things, of whether regulators have the right kinds of remits, overlaps and priorities and whether the government/regulator relationship is right. It is my view that our Ofwat inquiry highlights well areas for improvement in those matters and, in the important case of utilities, whether privatisation has made things far too private—by which I mean lacking in transparency and in action.
One of the conclusions of our report deals with this by suggesting that utility companies should be subject to the same kinds of transparency requirements as publicly listed companies. There has clearly been failure. Water companies have got away with sweating the assets for far too long, to pay out large dividends instead of properly providing for future infrastructure, and have turned emergency sewage discharge into a routine way of operation.
Regulators focused too much on bills as their yardstick, were dozy about future water security and complacent about discharges, while Governments—always suspect in the short-term electoral cycle—have set meagre targets and inadequate Environment Agency budgets and have been held in thrall to the construction industry when it comes to changing planning laws in necessary ways. It is a catalogue of failure, leaving a dire situation for both finance and infrastructure.
A fundamental requirement throughout the company and regulator chain must be to ensure investment sufficient to match demand caused by population growth, property development and climate change. That has fallen a long way behind and there is no way to claw back the money that has gone to private pockets, leaving consumers to foot the bill in future. I doubt there is going to be any other way.
Behavioural change in water consumption has a part, and it will now have to be more draconian than it need be, and so too does banning harmful products such as wet wipes that cause environmental damage and cost. Why is it that the pleas of the wet wipe industry to government have overturned the needs of the sewage industry? The Environment Agency has found that last year the environmental performance of water companies was at its lowest ever, so what are it and the Government doing about it, other than monitoring decline?
Ofwat says that 14 of the 17 water companies have not spent the funds they have been granted to invest in the network, with some spending less than half. So what is happening, other than knowing the bad statistics? In recent times, there have been more fines levied for pollution, but that is not getting at those responsible; it has to come back to the boards and executives of the water companies. Whether it is sewage or lack of investment, these are things that affect the health and well-being of everyone. I am just as worried about a pathogen in waterways as I am about a dodgy financial product. The first might kill me, the latter might fleece me—so why do we closely regulate only the latter?
The former Ofwat chair Jonson Cox said in a letter to the committee that the sector had “lost public legitimacy”. He said it was
“tempting to lay the blame at the doors of regulators. But these are FTSE 100/250 scale companies and need to take responsibility, as the regulatory regime requires them to do”.
He went on to say:
“The CEOs and shareholders of these large-scale companies need publicly to face into their performance shortfalls, and not hide behind their trade association, Water UK, or regulators”.
Well, I agree with that, as did the committee, but surely as utilities they have responsibilities beyond that of top-end listed companies and must be held accountable accordingly—not, as seems currently the case, having health and safety cop-outs and being treated more leniently than others who released pathogens into public places would be. If water companies do not perform, responsible people should be banned from the sector, and indeed from other utilities—end of. Regulators need to be more joined up, cover more and be more active. Utilities are special and special provisions must apply, and that should apply to underspending on investment as well as to illegal discharges.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hollick, and the members of his committee on the most fantastic report. I have really enjoyed this debate so far and I look forward to the Minister’s replies on all these crucial issues of public health and the health of nature and the environment. It has been quite a slog to get this issue on to the agenda, but finally it is on the agenda and the public know about it. They are fully aware of it. I do not want to give any hints to the current Government on how to perhaps claw back some of the votes they have lost so far, but this is going to be an issue on doorsteps for the general election, so the faster the Government act, the better for them. Obviously they are going to lose big time, but we do not have to worry about that too much at the moment.
Ofwat, the water regulator, has said repeatedly over the years that water companies have had all the money they needed to do the necessary investment—so we have to ask where it has gone. Ofwat allowed our bills to rise by more than 40% in recent decades in order to fund investment, but the investment largely did not happen. Most of it went to shareholders at the average rate of £2 billion a year for the past 27 years. That money is our money; it is taxpayers’ money. I do not want to pay higher bills; I want a refund, and I think a lot of people will agree with me.
We are all fed up with pollution in our rivers and on our coastlines, with sewage floating past swimmers and surfers, and with businesses suffering when signs are put up saying, “Please don’t swim here”—not to mention environmentalists despairing at the loss of ecosystems because of the filthy rivers. We have to ask what the regulators have actually been doing over the last three decades, and whether it is possible to create an enforcement regime that will hold a private monopoly to account. I suspect that many of the public are no longer asking about regulations and regulators; they are probably asking about the prison sentences that ought to be given out. I am not a big fan of increasing the prison population, particularly at the moment, so if we are to penalise the people who have put us in this position—for example, the CEOs who are personally responsible for polluting our rivers—we should issue community service orders so that they can work on the ground to fix the pollution that they have created.
Water companies themselves should be fined if they dump sewage. Instead of those fines adding to the water bill, the money should be found by selling shares to the Government. If they keep getting fined, the public will get their water companies back into public ownership at no extra cost. Certainly, no water bill should go up until there is a guarantee that no money will go into shareholder bank accounts, be siphoned off to parent companies or be taken out by CEO or senior staff bonuses. I want the CEOs of these water companies put on notice that they will be taken to court if the problems are not fixed.
There are a lot of options for cleaning up this mess but they all involve a lot of money and some understanding from the Government that this is an urgent situation that has to be fixed. I very much look forward to the Minister telling us what the Government are going to do. Quite honestly, the petty, rather dismissive response from the Government to the report from the noble Lord, Lord Hollick, is shameful. I do not understand how any Government could be so petty and almost vindictive.
Lord Whitty (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Hollick for his cogent introduction, and thank the committee for what is a trenchant, highly critical report with very interesting recommendations and conclusions. This is a complete failure of the system of regulation, post-privatisation. I would also like to thank whoever invented the title of the report because it most succinctly expresses the outrage at the pollution that is caused by these water companies and the affluence with which they have treated their shareholders, investors and those who bankroll them. It is a disgrace, and one which this House and the Government need to face up to.
I have to first make a confession. I was a small cog in the structure of regulation of this industry, for a few months at Ofwat and for several years at the Environment Agency. That was more than 10 years ago. I clearly remember thinking and arguing at that time that the system was inadequate and that we had failed to use the powers that we already had, particularly in Ofwat but occasionally in the Environment Agency as well. In those days, the Environment Agency had more resources for monitoring, but we did not always use our powers to their full extent—and we see the results.
It is possible to argue that, in the early years of privatisation, more resources were brought to much-needed investment, technology and management improvement. But after that first period, this has not been the case. We now need to face up to the fact that the major political parties are not prepared to commit themselves to renationalisation. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, I would prefer that solution. If it is not possible, we need to start again on the system of regulation, not only of the areas covered by Ofwat, the Environment Agency and the Drinking Water Inspectorate but of the wider aspects of the water system. These broader aspects include taking account of the growth in population and the pressures from housing and from business, of the fact that water usage in this country is one of the highest in Europe, and of the fact that we completely fail to address water efficiency in appliances for industry, agriculture and domestic households.
We need a new start. In my view, if we are not to go for renationalisation then we need to establish a single and very powerful regulator for the water sector as a whole—one which subsumes all these interests and puts water centrally, as it should be, in the management of the resources of this country. It is not only about the dangers that the sewage overflows and discharges cause to our rivers and fisheries, and their threat to human health; it is also about the complete and utter failure to recognise that, as climate change progresses, water will become scarcer and less predictable, and so we need a much more effective system of management and a much stronger regulator.
We need a regulator if we are to keep the present system of ownership because these are regional monopolies, untroubled by competition. Unlike some privatised industries, there is no competition. They are also untroubled by requirements to review the franchise periodically, as exist in some privatised industries. That means they are almost free to make as much money as they like. If we add to that the complete failure of co-ordination and of clear strategies by the regulators and Defra, then we are heading for catastrophe unless we start again.
I ask the Minister to recognise that the list of failures spelled out by my noble friend and his committee in the report need a new approach. If we are not going for renationalisation, can all parties commit to a much more effective system of regulation and to starting again? I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, that sanctions need to be placed on these companies. I would hope that those sanctions were effective and would eventually lead to the sector being brought back into public ownership. But in the meantime, we need a much more effective and co-ordinated—and much more environmentally sensitive—system of regulation, which recognises and addresses the problems of this sector, and we need to start now.
Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)
My Lords, I must first declare my interests as a farmer and chair of the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology.
Rivers are an important source of life. They host a huge range of species, both above and below the waterline—too many to list in a five-minute speech. They also have a life force of their own, having run through our landscapes for millennia. We are here today and gone tomorrow compared to these moving symbols of what should be our national pride. They are also a force for cohesion. The early Babylonian and Egyptian empires, for instance, were founded on their management of water. Even today—this is a topical point—with all the violence in Israel, there is a movement there called the Blue Peace, the theory being that the management of water is too serious an issue to be disturbed by nationalistic politics. People from all sides have indeed kept talking, whatever the extremists are up to.
I mention all that because I am trying to emphasise a point, well made in the report and by other speakers today. As a nation, we are currently failing our rivers and must now make more effort to all work together to ensure they are restored to the historic institutions they should be: places as sacred as our cathedrals, where nature and mankind should thrive together. It is obvious, as others have said, that we are currently failing to achieve that end. It is also obvious that any campaign for instant renewal of our rivers is way beyond the current resources of this nation or its water consumers, but we have to start now to turn the situation around.
First—this is a practical point—in order to make a realistically costed plan, which sorts out the essential from the merely good to have, we need a map of the detailed condition of all our rivers, from headwaters to estuaries. The only way we will achieve that is by testing all the waters on a more regular basis. Where possible, we should have remote electronic monitors up and down all our rivers. I know these monitors are costly at the moment, and slightly limited in the information they provide, but their efficiency will improve, and their price will drop if the quantity is guaranteed. I believe we need thousands of them.
Sampling by staff is an extremely skilled job and takes time. It is therefore expensive, so random sampling is rare. I have heard stories from farmers—possibly exaggerated—that the chance of their bit of river being randomly tested is less than once in 100 years. We need to know on a daily basis what is happening to our rivers so that we can decide what our financial priorities ought to be. Sampling by staff, for instance, does not happen at night, nor usually at that vital time when it is raining.
With money short and rivers below par, we need to know what our priorities should be. For example, are the phosphates too high in the night or the day, or before or after rain? Is it the nitrates or the microplastics, nanoplastics, chemicals or a lack of oxygen that is the more pressing problem in each river? You can find out more from continuous monitoring in two weeks than you will probably find after many years of random sampling. We need to know how and where to spend our money.
I will touch quickly on a couple more points. I strongly support the report’s emphasis on building up more water supplies through new reservoirs and water transfers. The less water we take out of our headwaters and iconic rivers such as chalk streams, the less will be the effects of whatever pollution is seeping into system.
Finally, we need everyone, led by the Government, to come together—it is that cohesion agenda again—to promote better behaviour by water users. Thames Water has said that 85% of the 75,000 blockages it clears annually are caused by things that should go in the bin. We all know about wet wipes, but the public also need to know about the dangers of antibiotics, medicines and other no-nos getting into the system. We need a campaign to educate the public about not using the sewage system as an alternative to rubbish collection. I can see it being quite an amusing and imaginative campaign.
It is going to take a lot of work, money and time to get our rivers right again, but that work has to start now. I thoroughly commend this report.
Lord Sikka (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Hollick and the members of the Industry and Regulators Committee for their excellent report. In common with many previous speakers, I have no confidence in Ofwat; it needs to be replaced by a body which is independent of the industry and has a majority of customer-elected representatives on its board.
Can the Minister explain what justifies the 35% operating profit margins for water companies? I have not come across anywhere else in the private sector that competes having that kind of margin. High profit margins have not been accompanied by high levels of investment—indeed, others have commented on how low and how poor it is.
The investment picture is muddled by financial engineering. Let me give noble Lords some examples. On 28 June 2023, in the other place, the Minister responsible for the environment said:
“Water companies have invested £190 billion since privatisation”.—[Official Report, Commons, 28/6/23; col. 281.]
This amount does not appear to be right at all. Let me flag up some reasons for this. One example is on page 134 of Thames Water’s 2022-23 financial statement. It states that the company
“capitalises expenditure relating to water and wastewater infrastructure where such expenditure enhances assets or increases the capacity of the network. Maintenance expenditure is taken to the income statement in the period in which it is incurred. Differentiating between enhancement and maintenance works is subjective”.
A translation of that is that the amounts which are capitalised for maintenance cannot be independently corroborated at all. Will the Minister return to the House and make a statement explaining how much of the maintenance expenditure has been capitalised by water companies so far?
I turn to my second example. Water companies have the same policy as Carillion, which was destroyed by it; namely, they are capitalising interest payments on their debt, which is utterly imprudent. This overstates their investments and distributable reserves, and it understates their leverage. In the last two years alone, Thames Water has capitalised £330 million of interest payments, which increases its capacity to pay dividends. So will the Minister return to the House and make a statement explaining how much of the interest has been capitalised by water companies and what the related risks to them are?
Water company dividends, which a number of speakers have referred to, are also understated. On 28 June, the Minister in the other place said that Thames Water
“has not paid any dividends for the last six years”,—[Official Report, Commons, 28/6/23; col. 287.]
but that is not what the company’s accounts say at all. Page 43 of its 2022-23 financial statement describes a £45 million payment to its immediate parent company, and the word “dividend” is used. Thames Water Utilities Holdings Limited received that and then forwarded it to another company, whose accounts also say that it is a dividend. So, just in the last two years, Thames Water has paid its parent company £82 million. If it is spelled “dividend” and if directors and auditors say it is a dividend, it must be one—the Minister cannot deny that in any way. A wholly owned subsidiary has only one shareholder—the parent company—and, if the subsidiary is paying a dividend, it is a dividend. I hope the Minister will be able to clarify that.
Strangely, page 43 of Thames Water’s accounts also says that this dividend is not really a dividend because the purpose is
“solely to service debt obligations and group related costs of other companies within the wider Kemble Water Group”.
If there is any substance to that claim, Thames Water is saying, “We are understating our leverage”. What the hell is Ofwat doing? It is utterly out of its depth in trying to read the accounts and make sense of financial engineering. So will the Minister return to the House and make a statement on how much has been extracted from water companies in the form of dividends that are not really dividends?
Finally, the committee’s report raises questions about executive remuneration and, in a sense, it welcomes that Ofwat might have a say in that. I do not want Ofwat to have any such powers to influence executive remuneration at water companies. These must go to the customers, who must vote every year on executive pay. If they think they got a good enough service from water companies, they will approve directors’ remuneration. Let there be a bit of democracy; how could the Minister oppose that?
The Duke of Wellington (CB)
My Lords, I declare my registered interests that are relevant to this debate. I welcome the Industry and Regulators Committee’s report and congratulate its members, particularly the chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Hollick.
When the water companies were privatised in 1989, I cannot imagine that Ministers then thought that so many of them would pass into the hands of private equity groups, many of them based outside the United Kingdom. As the water companies are monopoly suppliers of essential water services to households and businesses, it is clear that they must be regulated. Regulation is divided between the Water Services Regulation Authority, known as Ofwat, and the Environment Agency. In paragraphs 2 and 3 of its recommendations, the committee suggests that there should be much closer co-operation between the two agencies. I ask the Minister whether it might not be more effective to merge into Ofwat the parts of the Environment Agency that currently regulate the water companies.
There have clearly been failings over the past 34 years in how the water companies have been regulated. The Environment Agency, for its part, pleads lack of resources. I am not convinced by that, although the committee appears to accept the argument. The problem has been that addressing the discharge of sewage into rivers and on to beaches has not been a high enough priority for the Environment Agency and, therefore, not enough of its extensive resources have been directed to oversight and monitoring of these monopolies. If all along there had been a department within Ofwat responsible for environmental regulation, in addition to financial regulation, for which it is responsible, the growing problem of sewage discharges would have been detected and understood much earlier and corrective action could therefore have been taken some decades ago. Will the Minister and his colleagues give serious consideration to whether the structure of the regulation of water companies is correct, and whether there should not in future be a single regulator?
There are several other recommendations in the report which I completely support. Paragraph 24 recommends banning the sale of non-biodegradable wet wipes. I was pleased to see that, finally, the Government on Saturday launched their latest consultation on this, but I am not sure why they think that further consultation is necessary, as the overwhelming majority of this House and the other place, and of members of the public, are in favour of banning those products.
I also welcome paragraph 35, in which the committee questions whether the 2050 targets in the storm overflows discharge reduction plan are sufficiently ambitious. I hope that, when that plan is reviewed in 2027, the then Ministers will be more ambitious.
I support paragraph 47, in which the committee recommends that it should be part of water company licences that bonuses and performance-related pay of executives be linked to environmental performance. I also support paragraph 49, requiring that water companies, even though they may now be owned by private equity groups, should still be subject to the same level of transparency as they were originally, when they were publicly listed companies. This must surely be right for monopolies formerly owned by the state.
There are two final recommendations of the committee that I strongly support. Water metering should be compulsory for all households and businesses where possible. For households, the cost of meter installation must be borne by the water company. This will clearly help many consumers to reduce their water consumption.
The last recommendation of the committee is that there should be more stretching targets for reduction of water leaks. A few months ago, I asked the Minister why the Government’s target was to reduce leaks only by 50% by 2050. That does not seem sufficiently ambitious. Ofwat currently estimates that leaks amount to 51 litres per person every day. The idea that in 27 years’ time, the companies will still be leaking 25 litres per person per day does not seem in any way justifiable.
I very much hope that this excellently titled, excellently written report will cause Ministers seriously to review how the water companies are regulated.
Viscount Chandos (Lab)
My Lords, as a newly appointed member of the Industry and Regulators Committee, I am privileged to have my name attached to this report, although I did not participate in the earlier evidence session. As chair, my noble friend Lord Hollick skilfully led the committee to its unanimous and deeply but constructively critical conclusions and has delivered a compelling introduction this afternoon. I pay tribute to him, the other committee members and the staff, who did the really hard work. Coincidentally, important work was done by the committee in pushing the boundaries on parliamentary language and the titling of reports, as should be the case with a former tabloid proprietor as chair.
I strongly endorse the report as a whole and will speak briefly on a couple of themes. I declare my interests as a trustee of the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, a major funder of freshwater causes in the UK and, through its endowment, an investor in the Robeco sustainable water equities fund, and as a trustee of the Ernest Kleinwort Charitable Trust, a funder of the Chichester Harbour Trust.
I start with that last organisation, about which its chair, John Nelson, wrote in the Observer in July:
“one of the most beautiful and important natural harbours in the UK, I witness on a daily basis its now-rapid destruction, caused in large part by an extraordinary deterioration in water quality—thanks largely, in our case, to Southern Water”.
Mr Nelson is not a diehard environmental campaigner but an experienced former investment banker and, for full disclosure, a friend and erstwhile colleague of mine. He worked on the privatisation of utilities in the 1980s and 1990s. I may disagree with his contention that, even as originally devised, the privatisation of the water industry had anything to recommend it, but his analysis of the disaster arising from the combination of aggressive capital structuring by private equity and infrastructure owners that acquired many water companies, weak regulation and complacent government policy is devastating. He wrote:
“we now have a water industry that is probably 15 to 20 years behind in terms of infrastructure investment … We can all, of course, blame the water companies, but at the heart of this is the failure by the government to recognise the long-term issues, and to act”.
My noble friend Lord Sikka and I do not agree entirely about private equity’s impact on the general economy, but if in this case its behaviour has been unacceptably aggressive, government policy and regulatory enforcement should be and have been robust enough to counter this. The Government and Ofwat have prioritised holding down consumer prices over the maintenance and enhancement of quality. The consumer interest is not solely about price. Swimming in rivers and by beaches that are not polluted by sewage or other toxic substances should, for instance, be a universal right. Recognising that many families, most of all those on lower incomes, are hurting from the cost of living crisis, it is all the more regrettable, as other noble Lords have noted, that the Government have not honoured their promise to introduce a single social tariff rather than the postcode lottery under which support can vary between £70 and more than £250 per household.
I strongly endorse the report’s advocacy of nature-based solutions as a cost-effective and environmentally friendly form of delivery. Ofwat must act to make these easier to adopt.
I end with one of the most depressing pieces of evidence given in our follow-up sessions this summer, by David Black, chief executive of Ofwat. As the noble Lord, Lord Hollick, wrote in his letter to the Secretary of State,
“David Black raised a different concern around water companies’ capacity to deliver major projects … the sector … has … little experience in taking major projects forward and has low public standing”.
What an abject failure Conservative government policies over 40 years have been, starting with the doctrinaire privatisation of the industry. How feeble Ofwat’s regulation of the sector has been, even within those failed policies.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hollick, on his excellent introduction to this brilliant report. All contributors to the debate have raised the worrying operational methods of the water companies. The noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, raised the absence of water testing.
Water is a resource we have taken for granted for far too long. We assume there will always be a sufficient supply for our needs: we turn on our taps and are able to drink clean water, we can shower whenever we wish, and we assume that when we flush our toilets, the system will deal with it and all will be well. Sadly, those days are gone, and everyone has a part to play in ensuring that our water supply is plentiful and fit for purpose and that our streams, waterways and coastlines are not stinking and polluted.
Primarily, it is the role of the water authorities to ensure that water supply and sewage disposal are fit for purpose. However, there has been little infrastructure investment over a long period. No new reservoirs have been built since 1991 and are not likely to be before 2029. The population of this country, however, has increased dramatically over this period. Water authorities appear not to have taken any of this into account in their business plans or strategies. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, referred to this absence.
There have been failures on all sides: Governments have not provided sufficient funding for enforcement or set a central direction, and Ofwat has not required water companies to provide sufficient investment in infrastructure but has encouraged keeping consumers’ bills low. The Minister has, in the past, raised the difficulty of increasing water bills. During a cost of living crisis, care is needed to protect the vulnerable to ensure that water supplies are not cut off due to inability to pay water and sewage charges—the noble Lord, Lord Hollick, referred to unaffordable bills.
It will be a challenge but there must be more investment in solutions. There do not need to be costly concrete constructions, which Defra seems to prefer; the lower-cost, nature-based solutions are much preferable. NBS help with restoring habitats, storing water, creating new woodlands and rewetting bogs. However, when such solutions are put before government, they are rejected in favour of costly concrete solutions, with technical specifications cited as a reason. In a time when water is seen as a finite resource, it is not reasonable to apply the same technical specification to nature-based solutions as apply to concrete ones. A quite different approach is needed, and the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, gave an excellent example. Ofwat, the Environment Agency and Defra need to encourage nature-based solutions and, together, provide new guidance to make this happen. Reaching net zero is vital and if it is possible to assist in this process, then this should be a priority.
Nutrients are polluting our waterways due to runoff from both farming and housing developments. Developers have been dragging their feet on this issue. Due to the right to connect, they have failed to separate surface water runoff from foul water discharge. This has, in part, led to the current scandal of increased sewage overflows, especially when there has been no rain. Instead, developers should be encouraged to ensure that all new buildings have rainwater harvesting capabilities. It is time the right to connect was repealed.
I was dismayed to find that despite the vote in the Chamber banning nutrient discharge from housing developments, the Government are delaying the implementation of this measure, which would assist in improving countryside and wildlife habitats. Biodiversity net gain would have been mandatory in planning from November—that is, next month—but the Government have told developers that this will now not be implemented until sometime next year. Can the Minister say when exactly this law will be implemented and what the Government are doing to ensure that developers take rainwater harvesting seriously?
In April this year, the Government produced a plan for water: their integrated plan for developing clean and plentiful water. This was a step in the right direction but does not go far enough. An effective national water strategy is needed. Recently, the Secretary of State for Environment wrote to water companies via the Environment Agency, suggesting investment plans should be slowed down in order to keep water bills at a low level. This is a false economy. We need a water and sewerage infrastructure that is fit for purpose and can meet its current demands, not one that is antiquated, creaking at the knees and crumbling.
The Environment Agency has seen its budget cut drastically, from £170 million in 2009-10 to £76 million in 2019-20. Some increases have been made to its budget since then, but nothing takes it back to its original level and it does not account for intervening inflation. Underfunding has led a to lack of enforcement action, which is no longer a deterrent. The polluter pays principle is not taken seriously. Fines have been derisory compared to the profits which water companies have made.
Privatisation has led some water companies to put share dividends and directors’ bonuses before infrastructure investment. I noted in the report that it was suggested that no reward payments should be made when a water company did not meet its water quality targets. I fully support this view. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, has spoken eloquently on this.
In 2021, storm overflows, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, were used 325,533 times for 2.6 million hours. Given that polluted water is a human health risk, I support the view that individual CEOs and directors should be held personally accountable for failures, with the penalties increased dramatically for them. I fully support paragraphs 252 to 256 of the report. It is time the softly, softly approach was abandoned altogether. The mechanism is there in the Environment Act for this to happen. The Office for Environmental Protection has a critical role to play and has already demonstrated that it is up for the challenge.
As I said at the beginning, this is a problem where we all have to play a part. I turn to wet wipes. The vast majority of packaged wet wipes indicate that they are not flushable, but this is in ridiculously small print. It is time the consumer realised that by flushing wet wipes and other plastic items down the toilet, they are responsible for helping to create fatbergs which are clogging up our sewerage system. It is time to ban plastic in wet wipes, but do we really need consultation, as the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, indicated? Manufacturers should move away from plastics. The information on flushability must be on the front of the package and in a minimum of 10-point characters, so that a magnifying glass is not needed to read it. Consumer awareness should be raised via advertising.
My noble friend Lady Bowles of Berkhamsted raised the issue of water usage by householders, including watering their gardens and washing their cars—which, as the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, indicated, should be minimised. Use by farmers, horticulturists and manufacturing industry must be minimised where possible. This must be coupled with a programme of reservoir provision, both small local and larger regional provision. Not to do so is to adopt the attitude of the ostrich. The water and sewerage system must meet the demands of the current population, which is not predicted to decrease: quite the opposite. I know the Minister is aware of the difficulties surrounding the water industry and I look forward to his response to the many justified questions raised in this debate, especially those from the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Hollick for his introduction to our debate on this excellent report. He laid out the recommendations that the report makes to the Government, which have been discussed by noble Lords today.
I will pick up a few of the recommendations in particular, looking first at water demand and reservoirs. A lot of concerns have been raised about our water for the future and the infrastructure required to manage it, so I would be interested to hear from the Minister what action the Government intend to take to reduce water demand and to increase consumer awareness about this issue.
On reservoirs, the report confirms in paragraph 308 that,
“despite the need for reservoirs … under current plans, not a single major one will have been built in the UK between 1991 and 2029”.
As my noble friend Lord Chandos mentioned, this is a failure of infrastructure and planning. One of the pieces of evidence taken from Professor Barker was about the Cheddar reservoir and the fact that Ofwat refused to fund it on the basis that the case had not been made—but it was subsequently recognised that it was actually really important. We also know about the issues with the inability to construct the reservoir in Abingdon, which has been going on for years. Mr Black of Ofwat told the committee that
“the planning process will need to align with the needs of water resource management”.
I would be interested to hear the Minister’s response to that. I had a meeting with Mr Black some time ago, and he seemed surprised to hear that in Cumbria they are closing reservoirs. There does not seem to be any joined-up thinking about our future water use, so I would be interested to hear the Minister’s response on our future ability to supply the country with the water that it needs.
One of the issues that my noble friend Lady Taylor raised was about the Government’s response to the report; she said that it was pretty dismissive, and other noble Lords have said similar. The Government seem to be saying, “Well, we don’t need to do that because we are already making plans for water, storm overflow action plans, legislative initiatives and so on”. But the point we are trying to make here is that, although that may be very well, it does not seem to be working. What will the Government do to ensure that it will make a difference?
Let us look at the Government’s Storm Overflows Discharge Reduction Plan. I am aware that, following consultation, the Government have published an expanded plan to extend the targets of the plan to coastal and estuarine storm overflows, for example, but the extended new plan does not answer the criticisms in the report. For example, it is criticised for not setting environmental targets and ambitions at an outcome level. Other criticisms are that there is
“a disconnect between DEFRA and regulators … that ‘DEFRA targets are about the number of sites that are improved, while Ofwat has a proposal … for the number of events per storm overflow’”,
and that the plan
“is very focused on just the water industry and fails to grasp the holistic approach”
needed across all sectors. Can the Minister explain how the Government intend to manage those criticisms and to improve the situation?
In Ofwat’s response to the report, it welcomed the awarding of extra funding for the next two years; we welcome that as well. It also points to the water companies’ commitment of £10 billion of extra investment by 2030. But, as has come out in this debate, how will that be paid for and who will pay for it? Will it land on the taxpayers—the people already paying a lot for their bills? As we have heard, people are not well off at the moment. We have heard again about the dividends given to directors, so whose shoulders should this cost fall on?
Ofwat also claims that companies have pledged to reduce storm overflows by 25% by the 2024 price review. If it is so straightforward for them to say that they can reduce them by a quarter, why has progress not already been made on this? Also, does that mean the reduction or eradication costs regularly cited by the Government are accurate? It does not make sense to me that they can suddenly say that they will reduce them by 25% when it has been, to be blunt, such a pickle.
Back in June the committee launched a follow-up inquiry into Ofwat, the water industry and the role of government, with oral evidence sessions in June and July, including with the Minister, Rebecca Pow MP. I am concerned that the committee’s work on this is ongoing, because that suggests that it was not convinced by the Government’s current approach and response. Why does the Minister think the committee feels it has to continue with this work?
The noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, spoke about his concerns about the ability of the regulators and the department to deliver what is required. This was clearly demonstrated by the Environment Agency’s 2022 performance assessment and the diabolical rating of almost every water company, bar Severn Trent. My noble friend Lady Anderson took some SIs in September on broadening Ofwat’s powers, including allowing the regulator to impose unlimited fines on failing water companies. As this change was announced some time ago, and improved in the Commons prior to the Summer Recess, I ask the Minister when we will see the power used. Does he genuinely believe it will lead to different outcomes? We need different outcomes from what has been happening to date.
Also in September, we had the news that the OEP was looking at whether Defra, the Environment Agency and Ofwat acted unlawfully in failing to prevent water companies’ sewage discharges. The Environmental Audit Committee and its chair, Philip Dunne MP, have expressed concerns around this as well.
Ofwat published its latest annual water company performance report in September, which seems to be quite a busy month for the water industry. The report found that fewer than half of companies met targets in relation to sewage, which triggered a requirement for money to be returned to bill payers. Many noble Lords have talked about the fact that if bill payers are not being served properly, they should have some money returned to them. Does the Minister agree that the Government are at fault and that responsibility lies at the Government’s door for that situation? The Government cut back enforcement and monitoring of water companies releasing into rivers and the sea, and they are now not properly being prosecuted when they are blatantly breaking the law.
One of the committee’s recommendations was to increase the Environment Agency’s resourcing. In their response the Government noted the recommendation but argued that the inquiry was primarily focused on Ofwat, which, as I said earlier, has had extra funds. But should sewage discharge fines not be given to the Environment Agency so that it can expand its enforcement efforts? Does the Minister not agree that that would make more sense?
We believe that the right approach should be to put the water industry under special measures—basically to force it to improve its performance, as that does not seem to be happening otherwise. We believe that there should be mandatory monitoring of every water outlet. The noble Lord, Lord Cameron, talked about monitoring. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, talked about the importance of effective sanctions. We believe that there should be severe and instant fines for illegal sewage dumping and that the money raised should be used to fund additional enforcement measures.
We believe that Ofwat should be empowered to ban the payment of bonuses to water bosses unless their companies hit performance targets. We also believe that we should introduce criminal liability for water company directors whose companies break the law in an extreme and persistent manner. Again, this is something that I have raised with the Minister during Oral Questions.
As my noble friend Lord Whitty said, the current situation is a disgrace. I am starting to lose track of how many times we have debated this or asked Questions about this. As the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, said, it is time that the Government became genuinely more ambitious in this area, because it is really time that we stopped the failures of our water industry.
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)
My Lords, I refer noble Lords to my entry in the register and start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Hollick, and the members of the Industry and Regulators Committee, for the report. This has been a thorough and wide-ranging inquiry and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, showed, it was extremely timely, given the current focus on the water industry and the role of government. I also thank the committee for the recommendations from its follow-up inquiry, to which the Secretary of State will respond very shortly.
If the noble Lord or any member of the committee feels that our response was terse, I deeply regret that. If Defra had a fault, it was that in the past it used to indulge in reams of replies on this. We have tried to condense the points. Where something is in another document—for example, the Plan for Water—we have referred committees, individuals and others in our responses to those documents. That is perhaps a more economical way of doing this, but if people have confused it with a lack of respect for the work that has been done, I regret that.
However, I do not share the committee’s conclusion that there has been complacency or a lack of leadership from the Government on the topic of water regulation. No Government have done more to tackle the pressing issues facing the water industry. Back in 2013, as Minister for the Natural Environment and Fisheries, I set out that water companies should introduce monitoring for the vast majority of combined sewer outflows by 2020. This will be at 100% by the end of this year. The fact that we did not know where these outflows were is an example of complacency and one that we have set about dealing with. The increase in monitoring has meant that the Government and regulators better understand the scale of combined sewer outflow discharges, so that we can take stronger action to improve the situation.
I am delighted that this information is available not only to informed and determined Members of this House but to the wider public. A very good point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, on monitoring. A wonderful citizen science project has been launched called the Riverfly project, which encourages people to assist the Environment Agency in monitoring. However, technology is moving very fast in our favour. It is now possible to put telemetry in our rivers that can give us, on our phones, real-time information on pollutants. We can then work with statutory bodies such as the Environment Agency to improve and deal with particular sources of pollution.
Just last month, we expanded our Storm Overflows Discharge Reduction Plan, first published in 2022, to cover all overflows. We also added marine protected areas and shellfish water protected areas to the sites that are prioritised for early action. This is the largest infrastructure programme in water company history, with £60 billion of capital investment by 2050.
We have also requested action plans from water and sewerage companies on how they will improve every storm overflow in England. These will be published shortly. In April 2023, we published the Plan for Water, our comprehensive strategy to transform the water environment. The plan contains all the actions we must take to meet our water goals and transform the water system, and provides the leadership and long-term thinking that the noble Lord’s committee and others in this debate say is required. These are but a few examples of the comprehensive action that this Government have taken on water, and I will take the opportunity to address some of the specific points raised by noble Lords.
First, the committee raised crucial points about investment in the sector and the impact on consumers. This October, the water industry announced a planned £96 billion of investment between 2025 and 2030. This represents the largest investment in infrastructure ever made by our water industry, and an 88% increase in investment compared with the current five-year price review period. It shows that the sector is responding to the actions of this Government to clean up our rivers and seas, drive more investment and jobs in the UK, and ensure stronger regulation and tougher enforcement to achieve a step change in the water industry.
This investment comes at a cost. Noble Lords will have seen estimates from the water sector suggesting that water bills will rise by an average of £156 a year by 2030 to fund the increased investment. It is important to stress that these are not final figures; they are an opening pitch. It is important to remember that the current average water bill in England is lower than that in many European countries such as Spain, France and Norway.
For many years I have been talking to members of environmental NGOs and to parliamentarians from all sides who have told me that water bills need to rise. I have said to them, “By how much?”—and I get a prominent, audible silence from them, because nobody is prepared to say how much water bills should be. For just over £1 a day, households in this country receive all the water they need and have all their dirty water taken away. I know that all Members of this House are very mindful of the cost of living crisis for some communities. We have to balance that with our bills. But, if people are to tell Ministers and policymakers privately that bills should rise, they need to say by how much and show how they are going to reduce the impact on hard-pressed families.
Examples of the kinds of support and innovations that my noble friend Lord Agnew raised are there to be seen. I do understand the points he made; there are some wonderful schemes that are now receiving Ofwat’s approval and driving innovation in the sector. For example, Southern Water has £35 million to explore innovative options and pilot sustainable interventions to reduce storm overflow spills by, for example, building and constructing wetlands. I will come on to talk about that key point, which was made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell.
Ofwat will now undertake a robust scrutiny process to ensure that these plans meet statutory requirements and government targets, to check that families are not paying for what companies should already have done and to give customers the best value for money. The Government are mindful that this announcement will raise concerns from consumers about their bills. In developing their business plans for 2025 to 2030, water companies have considered the impact of increased investment on customer bills and developed schemes that best suit the needs of local customers.
I was pleased to see Anglian Water proposing a new medical needs discount to provide direct financial aid to those whose medical needs require more water. This will be funded by the company owners and will help to support the most in need without adding to customers’ bills.
Therefore, while I note the committee’s disappointment in the Government’s decision not to proceed with a single social tariff scheme, it should be confident that this Government continue to work with industry and consumer groups to protect those struggling to pay.
Moving on to the topic of securing the investment needed to deliver our plans, I would gently challenge the committee’s view that the water sector will not be able to raise the required investment to meet our ambitious targets—a point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, and others. The water sector continues to attract international capital and there are examples of companies that have already secured additional finance to deliver their 2024 price review business plan. For example, Severn Trent Water announced on 29 September it had raised £1 billion of new equity from its investors. Investors have made clear that a reset is needed in the water sector, and the proposed £96 billion investment presents a clear step forward in that direction. It is now for Ofwat to review plans to ensure they strike the right balance of pace, while protecting customer bills. Companies must deliver value for money. Any increase in customer bills must be justified, efficient and deliver significant improvements in river quality and water resilience. Customers should only pay for new investment, not for companies’ past failings.
I will address very quickly some of the points raised in this debate. The noble Lord, Lord Hollick, in moving this debate, talked about dividends, as did others. The average dividend payment represents 3% to 4% of the gearing and I think that is not exceptional—that is why it is attractive to pension funds—and I welcome the investment of organisations like international sovereign wealth funds and others. A dividend rate of 3% to 4% is not the kind of figure that many would see as greedy, or usury, in terms of the investment.
The noble Lord, Lord Hollick, also raised the issue of water demand, as did others. Current water usage is around 145 litres per person. In the environmental improvement plan, we have a target of 122 litres per person by 2037 and 110 litres by 2050. Those are tough targets to hit, but we have set out a process, working with the regulators and water companies, to hit them.
The noble Lord, Lord Agnew, spoke about the figure of £350 billion to £600 billion—a very wide bracket—which he said is the required investment to solve the problem of pollution. It is actually the cost of separating clean and dirty water and retrofitting that into the millions of houses in this country. That is, frankly, not feasible or possible to do. I like his scheme of water butts, and other schemes, and there are plenty that are working, and we want to see them rolled out. There are agri-environment schemes that are taking on flood management and using farmland to store water.
We are seeing a massive increase in interest in the creation of new wetlands, and I challenge the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, who said that the Government are obsessed with concrete and steel. That was the case when I was Minister for water in the coalition Government and I found that Ofwat was sceptical of nature-based solutions, because it could not measure them. It liked concrete and steel because it could measure the quality of the water coming in and out and see whether the asset was working. Nature-based solutions are more complicated, but we managed to convince Ofwat to let a thousand flowers bloom. Some of them might not work, but to say the Government do not like it is 180 degrees in the wrong direction; we love nature-based solutions, we want to see more of them, we are funding them through our natural environment investment readiness fund, we want to see biodiversity net gain and private sector ESG green finance being used for this, and we want to make sure that happens soon.
I would love to debate longer and harder about whether we should renationalise our water industry. It is a very dated and slightly binary argument, but I just feel that it is fundamentally yesterday’s argument. I hope we can move forward and see that the model has been independently assessed as having seen water bills less than they would have been if it had not happened, and investment greater. The Social Market Foundation believes nationalisation would cost £90 billion, and I think there are better uses for that money. I want to see it ploughed into out natural environment and water companies investing in—
Lord Sikka (Lab)
I am grateful to the Minister. Since he referred to nationalisation, could he explain why is it acceptable to the Government that entities owned by foreign Governments can own utilities here, while there is no government-owned entity here that owns the utility? In other words, the privatisation that he referred to is a bit of a sham, is it not?
Lord Benyon (Con)
I think it has been wonderful to see pension funds invest—perhaps those paying the pensions of those of us in this Room. I totally welcome the fact that people want to invest in the regulated utility sector in this country, whether water, energy or any of the other sectors. It has seen a step change in investment and has helped keep bills down.
I was interested in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, who talked about our ability to do big infrastructure projects. I was involved in trying to persuade a lot of sceptical people, within government and outside it, of the importance of building the Thames Tideway tunnel. There was opposition from the Liberal Democrats, from Members of my party in both Houses, and certainly from the Labour Party. There was a belief that it would not work and that it would put up bills by £85 in the Thames Water area. It will actually put up bills by around £22. It is being built and it was the right thing to do. The Government stepped in as the guarantor. It is an example of a very large investment in one piece of infrastructure. There are many others that are much smaller that have—
Lord Cromwell (CB)
Either the Minister is agreeing with me or perhaps I was not clear. My concern is whether the water companies have the competence to implement these sorts of infrastructure projects. He has given a very fine example of a non-water company implementing the Thames Tideway. Will there be more of that? It seemed very doubtful that Ofwat had confidence in the water companies delivering these multi-billion pound infrastructure projects.
Lord Benyon (Con)
Multi-million pound infrastructure projects are being done by water companies; I will come on to talk about reservoirs. Some are doing them better than others; it would be a very strange world if they were all the same. The Government watch this matter very closely. We require investment and we want it done in the right way.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, who is shaking her head before I have even said anything, said that water companies should be fined; they are being fined record fines. One was fined £90 million last year.
Lord Benyon (Con)
Perhaps the noble Baroness would allow me to finish. We passed more legislation in the Moses Room just the other day to ensure that unlimited fines can be imposed on water companies. I do not know where she has got the idea from that we do not.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
I thank the Minister for his response. My point was that water companies can pay those fines very easily; they just pay and they do not care. We should assess the amount of the fine and then take shares from the company to that amount. That would make much more sense.
Lord Benyon (Con)
We make sure that the money comes not from customers but from shareholders so that it is fair.
Lord Sikka (Lab)
Further to the noble Baroness’s point, since 2010 Thames Water has been sanctioned 92 times and fined £163 million, yet it remains a leader in unplugged leaks, sewage dumping and financial engineering. What did that fine actually achieve?
Lord Benyon (Con)
I hope the noble Lord heard me say that we have changed the rules. Fines by the Environment Agency are no longer capped at £250,000. They can be unlimited and there can be criminal sanctions for companies that break the law.
I think the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, said that £82 billion was paid. I might have misheard him. My understanding is that Thames Water paid its parent company £82 million to finance its debt, but it has not paid dividends to its shareholders in the last six years.
I will move on to the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington. His recommendation for a changing landscape of regulation may well have its time. We need to review these things now and again. It is above my pay grade, but perhaps over time we should think about it.
To those who say that we are not resourcing the Environment Agency, I say that we have increased its annual spend by £2 million a year. That has produced nearly 50 enforcement officers looking at the quality of water. We want to see leaks reduced by 50%, which is an enormous number of litres of water, and have set out very demanding roles for that.
I come to the responses from the Front Bench. I have made my point about nature-based solutions and I hope the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, understood that. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, that we will continue with this work. It is continuous; this is not an issue that is of a single moment in time. Our strategic policy statement to Ofwat showed an absolute step change in how we saw the regulatory framework for water companies. I suggest that she was slightly confusing Ofwat and the Environment Agency on enforcement. The Environment Agency is the organisation that enforces water companies; Ofwat sets the parameters and is the regulator.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
I was suggesting that some of the money given to Ofwat could be given to the Environment Agency for enforcement.
Lord Benyon (Con)
I will take that away. I think that they are both funded properly. I want to make sure we continue to do so and allow them to carry out the work the Government require of them.
I will just touch on the reservoir issue. The draft plans contain proposals for multiple new supply schemes, including nine new desalination schemes, nine new reservoirs including an addition to the Havant Thicket reservoir that is being built, 11 water recycling schemes, and many new internal and inter-company transfers to share resources.
It is not just water companies that need to take action to protect our water supply—it is every single one of us. That is why the Government’s Plan for Water sets out clear action to reduce demand. The game-changer in the Plan for Water makes it easier to build reservoirs. The new water resources—through the Regulators’ Alliance for Progressing Infrastructure Development, known as RAPID—and securing planning consent through the DCO process, including having water resources infrastructure as a national asset, are certainly making things better on that front. I hope we will see an easier process. The noble Baroness quite rightly raises Abingdon reservoir; that has been going on for more or less as long as I have been alive. I want to make sure that very important structures like that are built. We cannot just go through a circular process of planning inquiries, with very smart lawyers who delay getting important assets built.
With that, I think I have covered most of the points raised. In conclusion, I again thank the noble Lord and his committee for their detailed work on these important issues. I welcome the opportunity to debate these matters in the House. I have confidence that the plans that this Government have put in place will deliver the greater investment, tougher regulation and stronger enforcement needed to transform the water industry and ensure that the clean and plentiful water we need is available for generations to come.
Lord Hollick (Lab)
I thank all the speakers in today’s debate. The Minister can be in no doubt about the anger about what has happened in the water industry and the fury of consumers. He talked about companies not being prepared to reveal what their price increases will be. Well, they have just announced them, and they are going to be between 28% before inflation and, in the case of Thames Water, 61%. I am afraid they will fall on household bills. Nobody is hiding the cost of this neglect of investment. Since privatisation, £200 billion has been invested in the water industry, which is about £5 billion per year. I am not adjusting for inflation, but we have now gone up to £96 billion over the next five years, so we can see the sharp rise to cover the lost ground. I pointed out in my remarks that, at the time, inflation and interest rates were low and therefore the cost of repairing the roof while the sun shone was there for all to see, but I am afraid that the Government squandered that opportunity, and we all will pay the bill for that.
Motion agreed.
Net Zero (Economic Affairs Committee Report)
(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Baroness Kramer
That this House takes note of the Report from the Economic Affairs Committee Investing in energy: price, security, and the transition to net zero (1st Report, HL Paper 49).
Baroness Kramer (LD)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, the chair of the Economic Affairs Committee, sends the House his apologies as he had to be absent today. He wished to move the debate on the committee’s report Investing in Energy: Price, Security, and the Transition to Net Zero because it has been 15 months since it was issued, but any further delay in debating its conclusions and recommendations in this Chamber would have been intolerable, so the role falls to me.
I start by thanking all the witnesses who gave evidence to the committee and expressing our appreciation to the outstanding staff who were essential in enabling us to deliver the report: Adrian Hitchins, Peter Jenion and Gurjeet Rathore, and I also thank one of our current staff, Neil Mellor, who helped me remember a report that I had put aside 15 months ago.
This is a brief debate, so I shall spare everyone a discussion of the impact of the Russian war in Ukraine on global energy markets and the impact of energy price rises on the cost of living of ordinary people. However, both factors were constantly in our minds and part of the background as we developed this report. Our focus was the Government’s commitment in law to achieve net zero by 2050 and their target to decarbonise the power system by 2035. We sought to answer the question: how can the Government mobilise the capital needed to ensure that the transition is orderly and that energy supply is affordable and reliable?
Our conclusions were structured under four headings. First, we considered investment and action in the short term. We urged the Government to seize the moment and respond to public concerns on energy prices by: speeding up the pace of reducing energy consumption, notably by accelerating measures such as home insulation; signalling very clearly that goal to the private sector; and providing far more detail on how such investment will be released. We asked the Government to publish an energy demand strategy and to include financing options and a means of incentivising investment in energy-efficient measures. We are still waiting. We called on the Government to re-examine their limited ambitions for onshore wind, to extend the life of nuclear power stations over coal power stations—that essentially seems to be the focus—and to seek an agreement with the EU and Norway on energy co-operation to manage possible shortages of liquefied natural gas.
Our second set of recommendations focused on increasing investment in the transition. While the committee supported the Government’s clear and ambitious targets for many renewable technologies, we asked for far more policy detail on a range of issues, including long-duration energy storage, market structures and mechanisms for hydrogen production, market models for carbon capture and storage, and investment in transition networks. We also sought more policy detail on the delivery plan for nuclear and sought an explanation for the Government’s target for 24-gigawatt nuclear capacity when the Climate Change Committee can see a route to only something like half that capacity. That question remains essentially unanswered.
The committee also suggested:
“Any extension of oil and gas exploration or investment should focus on projects with short lead times … and not enable substantial levels of long-term production that conflicts with net-zero objectives”.
I shall make a comment about that at the end of my speech.
We sought an assessment of the energy profits levy and any plans for carbon pricing. To oversee the complexity of the energy network, new technology and the security of supply, we recommended a new body, independent of government: the future systems operator.
Our third set of recommendations focused on financial regulation to ensure that the mandate for the Bank of England to support the transition to net zero included having regard to energy security. We received a fairly extensive response from the Bank of England assuring us that it was aware of the issues.
We called for better data and better disclosure. We also asked for the Government to help unlock new capital with Solvency UK; they have made moves in that direction. We asked them to work internationally on green taxonomies—investors need consistency, not just in the UK but across the whole marketplace that they serve—and to consider international opportunities, such as working with the EU common purchase platform. We also raised the issue of access to critical minerals and mitigating vulnerabilities in the supply chain.
All these strands were pulled together in our call for an energy strategy. Throughout the committee’s work, it became increasingly evident that there is a critical missing piece: a detailed and comprehensive plan. The gaps between the Government’s ambition and practical policy are significant. We recommended that the strategy should both set out a proper plan, even if in broad terms, and provide an assessment of costs and savings. A net-zero delivery plan would highlight vulnerabilities, take account of key issues such as energy security and foreign policy, and energy affordability, and help avoid a disorderly transition. An agreed plan in which all parties have confidence removes uncertainty—and, without certainty, the private sector will not make the critical commitments and investments necessary to achieve net zero.
The work of the committee ended here, in essence, but I will add a few comments of my own based on recent developments; I stress that they are my own comments. I recognise that this Government have made some progress—on a hydrogen road map, on identifying our first carbon capture site, and on a plan for insulation—but I agree with the Climate Change Committee in its comments made in March:
“Delivery and deployment of infrastructure must be achieved at a much greater pace”.
I am—as I said, these are personal, not committee, remarks—utterly disappointed by the Government’s decision to approve the Rosebank oil and gas field development. There is no way that I can see that it meets the committee’s recommendation that
“investment should focus on projects with short lead times … and not enable substantial levels of long-term production that conflicts with net-zero objectives”.
The five-year delay of the ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars is not just a blow to the UK automotive industry but, indeed, a blow to achieving net zero on time. I think others in this debate will expand on this but, talking to people within the automotive industry, the comment that has struck me most strongly is that the delay has made a fool of those who believed, and made investment decisions based on, the Government’s original commitment. Undermining certainty is a very dangerous thing to do, especially in a policy so critical to us as net zero, and so complex because of all the related activities and decisions.
The decision to delay for nine years the ban on fossil fuel heating for off-gas grid homes; exemptions to the ban on the sale of gas boilers in 2035; scrapping the requirement for landlords to ensure that all rental properties have an energy performance certificate of grade C or higher from 2025—all these are not just disappointments but, again, undercut any sense of certainty for the private sector as it decides how to plan and invest.
I thank all the members of the committee, several of whom will be speaking in this debate. They often have much more understanding of the broader issues here than I do, so I hope that their comments will be taken very seriously. Some of our members have passed on to pastures new. I also thank our chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, even in his absence, for his determination to be inclusive; we were a committee of fairly varied opinions. His wisdom and skill in focusing on the essentials in the end gave us harmony and brought us to a report around which there was a great deal of consensus.
The key messages of the report are the need for accelerated action, for an independent co-ordinating body and, above all, for a detailed and comprehensive energy strategy that gives certainty to individuals and the private sector, and—these are my own words—is not subject to whims and elections. That remains key to achieving net zero and resolving the potential conflict of net zero, affordable energy and energy security. We have to make sure that all three goals are wedded together in the co-ordinated plan that we then deliver. I ask that the House takes note of the report.
Lord Frost (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to debate this report. I declare my interest as an unpaid trustee of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a charity.
The committee’s report, as has been said, is now over a year old and therefore, unfortunately, rather out of date. It reflects a world where the policy goal of net zero was undisputed and its economic and financial underpinnings unquestioned. As we know, during 2023, as the real-world costs of the net-zero transition have become more apparent across western economies, we are beginning to see thinking change. Our own Government’s very welcome, though still minimalist, decisions to delay the deadlines for compulsory transition to EVs and gas boilers recognise the reality that the current course to net zero is likely to prove impossibly costly and politically and economically unworkable.
I certainly agree with the committee’s scepticism, though perhaps not from the same direction, about the relationship between the Government’s net-zero plans and hard reality. Nowhere is that scepticism more justified than in one area: wind power. Given the short time available, that is the issue I want to concentrate on today. One often hears it said that wind power is both a cheap form of energy and one that enhances energy security. I am afraid that both those points are fundamentally mistaken. Given the time constraints, I want to make just two broad points.
The first of these is the obvious one: wind power is intermittent and therefore requires back-up. We get wind power only when the wind blows, so widespread use of it means that we must maintain a back-up source of dispatchable power, currently gas. It is argued that the back-up to wind power in the future will be electricity storage. Unfortunately, this is implausible. Doing so through battery power will be fabulously expensive—several times the annual GDP of this country—if it is even possible at all. Hydrogen might be a little cheaper, though still well beyond what can plausibly be paid for. I am afraid that last month’s Royal Society report about hydrogen storage, which purported to show its feasibility, is based on rather implausible assumptions. At least, I hope they are implausible. For example, there is a belief that total UK electricity demand in 2050 will be half what it is now. We face a rather bleak future as a country if that is so.
The truth, which wind power proponents shy away from, is that the more wind power you have, the more gas you need as well. The resultant rickety generation system then makes the overall grid less reliable, while balancing it becomes ever more complex and costly—last year it was nearly £4 billion for this alone. This stressed renewables grid cannot be relied on by a modern economy.
Secondly, as a result of these things, wind power is expensive. It is obvious that running wind plus back-up will always be more expensive than just back-up. Moreover, running that back-up gas network at partial efficiency brings extra costs and deters the investment that we want to see. It is widely believed that wind power costs are coming down fast, but this really does not seem to be the case. The estimates produced by the department are a little disconnected from this reality.
If, as the department claims, an offshore wind farm can deliver power at £44 per megawatt hour, or £55 in current money, why did no wind farm developer take up the offer last month of contracts for difference at £65 per megawatt hour? Why did Vattenfall cancel its plans for the Norfolk Boreas wind farm in July, rather than deliver energy at the price it was contracted to—prices, by the way, that ignore the costs of back-up or strain on the grid? It is obvious from examining the published accounts of companies that costs have not fallen to any great extent, onshore or offshore. A policy based on the assumption that they have therefore makes no sense.
The truth is that the whole wind power project risks being a huge waste of effort and resources. It is going to deliver us, at fabulous cost, an electricity grid that is more unreliable, less secure and more expensive than the one we have now. The correct way forward to reach any serious target to reduce carbon emissions has to be a gas to nuclear programme, first by more modern CCGT generation at existing sites and restarting fracking, following that with a revived nuclear programme. We will obviously be able to do that only if we can eliminate the market distortions and the massive subsidies and consumer costs that come with the current wind power programme.
I do not have much expectation that this is going to happen, given the investment that this Government and their predecessors have made in wind power. I still hope that my noble friend the Minister and his department will look at these issues with a fresh eye and perhaps at least put in place a proper red team review of the wind power programme, before it is too late.
Viscount Chandos (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, has made a masterly introduction to this debate on the Economic Affairs Committee’s report Investing in Energy: Price, Security, and the Transition to Net Zero, a profoundly complex and challenging subject. I was proud to be a member of the committee at the time of the inquiry and, like the noble Baroness, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, for his excellent chairmanship and the work of other committee members and the staff.
A week is a long time in politics, so the 65 weeks that have elapsed since the publication of this report is an age. Unlike the noble Lord, Lord Frost, I believe that its analysis and conclusions stand up well to the changes during this time, although three different Prime Ministers and, in particular, breathtaking U-turns by the current incumbent of 10 Downing Street—in residence but not in power—have continued to move the goalposts hugely on government policy. I should draw the attention of the House to my interests as disclosed in the register and in the report: as a trustee of the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation—a major funder of environmental causes in the UK as well as, through its endowment, an investor in sustainable energy funds—and as a personal shareholder in Greencoat UK Wind.
Within the committee, we debated whether the challenge of balancing the issues of cost, security and achieving net zero could helpfully be described as a trilemma. I argue that it is even worse, not least in mangling the English language: it is a quadrilemma, as security must not involve unacceptable conflicts with, or compromises of, our foreign policy. For that reason, in the short to medium term the committee concluded, based on evidence we received from witnesses across the range of interested parties, that there needs to be further selective investment in fossil fuel production to meet the country’s need for energy security, consistent with other foreign policy objectives. But my personal view, at least partly shared by the committee, I think, is that to help meet the net-zero target, which is not an essay crisis with a last-minute deadline but a continuous path of action and emissions reductions over the next 27 years, the Government may need not just to prioritise the approval of short lead-time projects but to find ways to underwrite shorter periods for exploration of new fields. Stranded reserves may need to remain stranded.
In my remaining time, I will touch on two big themes: technology and money. The astonishing creativity of scientists and the technology sector as a whole must not be an excuse for inaction now. Technology in a wide range of areas, such as hydrogen, network transmission, carbon capture and, most significantly, nuclear, lies at the heart of the progressive improvements and reductions in emissions that are essential to achieve the underlying objectives of net zero: keeping global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees centigrade, and, importantly, a 45% reduction in emissions by 2030—seven years’ time.
Investment, both pure science and commercial, is highly important. However, a realistic assessment of how quickly technology can deliver results must be factored into the policies the Government adopt. Investors in hydrogen projects see no prospect of it being a valid means of storage in this decade. The Government have placed great weight on small modular reactors riding like the cavalry to the rescue, but the technology is still unproven. The first licence in the US was granted at the beginning of this year after the expenditure by the company concerned of half a billion dollars over 10 years.
Finally, on money and timescale, if a week is a long time in politics, then an hour is a long time for hedge fund traders. That seems to be the only explanation for the Prime Minister’s claim that recent decisions were essentially long-term ones. Net zero cannot be achieved without the expenditure of money. Just kicking the can down the road beyond the next election, perhaps betraying a lack of confidence from the Prime Minister that it will be his problem, is not acceptable. A Labour Government will make that investment within the constraints—
Lord Mott (Con)
My Lords, can we keep all our speeches to five minutes, please? Could the noble Viscount now wrap up his comments?
Viscount Chandos (Lab)
A Labour Government will make the investment that this Government have failed to.
Lord Turnbull (CB)
My Lords, I am now a member of the Economic Affairs Committee, but I was not when this report was published. Had I been, I would have endorsed it for bringing a measure of realism and proportion to the debate about net zero. It is helpful that the report recognises that there will be a transition, which will take several decades, during which there will still be a requirement for fossil fuels in the British economy.
When I first worked on energy policy some decades ago, the dominant framework was the so-called trilemma. Energy policy had three objectives. The first was sustainability; it had to advance the Government’s environmental objectives, especially on climate change. Secondly, there was the objective of affordability; the price of energy should not impoverish unfairly poorer people or small businesses, nor make major industries uncompetitive. Third was security of supply and resilience; it should protect energy consumers and society from major shocks. The aim was to find a solution which optimised a combination of those objectives. It was not to pick one objective and maximise the achievement of that at the expense of the others.
The Climate Change Act 2008 demolished this framework, giving climate change primacy. It is the only objective protected in statute. The Climate Change Committee was established to warn government about progress towards its environmental goals and to propose measures needed to correct course. The CCC has also been backed by extremely eloquent and well-paid spokesmen, some of whom were sitting here a few minutes ago.
As well as no statutory backing, the other objectives have had no equivalent sponsor. There has been no body equally resourced and voiced to defend the interests of poorer people, small businesses and traders, nor to speak for major industries. Nor, more dangerously, has there been a body of equivalent authority to monitor the state of energy security or resilience. This has become glaringly apparent since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Witness the reluctance to start filling the Rough storage facility. For too long we have tolerated dependence on our enemies, such as Russia, or our Saudi fair-weather friends. With such a lopsided structure it is unsurprising that policy decisions have been warped.
The EAC report is therefore to be welcomed for bringing a greater sense of balance between the three objectives. It is also consistent with the Prime Minister’s latest set of announcements. The reaction from the CCC has focused on two issues in particular: the coal mine in Cumbria and the go-ahead for offshore oil and gas exploration. The CCC argued that these measures have no effect on energy prices and that they do not enhance security of supply. Despite the eminence of their proponents, both arguments are flawed.
The EAC report acknowledged that extra UK fossil fuel output will have little effect on prices, which are set in world markets, but this is not the knock-down argument it claims to be. If, during the transition to net zero, UK output of oil and gas is higher and world prices go up, the value of that extra output will also rise—in effect, creating a natural hedge to offset what would be a loss to UK national income.
On output, it is argued that security will not be enhanced if the extra output is contracted to be exported. However, that depends on how the contracts are written and the terms the Government set for extraction licences. For example, is there an obligation to contribute to building up our strategic reserves? I doubt if any other country in the world takes the view that having greater domestic output has no bearing on the security of supply.
Notice the contradiction here. It is said that extra fossil fuel output is too small to be material on prices, but that same increase in production is claimed to be big enough to have a damaging impact on world CO2 emissions. You cannot have it both ways. Eventually the CCC is forced back on to the argument that the extra output will reduce our influence in the world debate. However, with our CO2 emissions being only about 1% of the world’s total, we are not major players, and we will be seen as having a loud voice but carrying a small stick.
I have one reservation with the report. It looks favourably on the discussions going on to ensure that banks and other sources of finance pay greater attention to the risks of fossil fuel investments becoming stranded assets. Indeed, they could be—just like the canals. But there are many places where one will find stranded assets. A lot of them are more immediate and closer to home. A walk down the high streets of Britain or its office districts will show you many stranded assets. The airfields of the south-west of the USA are littered with surplus aircraft, which are stranded on someone’s books. By all means, be wary of stranded assets, but do not treat oil and gas investments as a special case.
In conclusion, I welcome this report, with its greater recognition that oil and gas will be needed during the transition, and indeed beyond 2050, and that we must pay more attention to all three objectives in the trilemma. So long as we continue to be a consumer of oil and gas, it would be better to produce a higher proportion of it for ourselves.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in this debate. I listened particularly carefully to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Frost, who represents a small but very vocal segment of the debate covered by this report and the broader net-zero issue. I would like to correct one statement the noble Lord made about the Royal Society report. It does not assume a halving of electricity demand. I will quote a paragraph from the report:
“The demand for electricity in Great Britain in 2050 is taken to be 570 TWh/year in this briefing, roughly twice current annual demand”.
I thank the committee for the report and the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, for her excellent introduction. I will make three points, pairing the 86 pages of the report and the Government’s 28-page official response—I am not counting the letter from the right honourable Mr Rees-Mogg, who was briefly relevant as the Secretary of State—because, despite the change in governing regime, it seems that there has been disturbingly little change in government energy policy.
The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, focused on paragraph 121 of the Economic Affairs Committee’s report, and I make no apologies for focusing on it as well, because it is absolutely crucial. It quotes Dr Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency:
“Nobody should imagine that Russia’s invasion can justify a wave of new large-scale fossil fuel infrastructure in a world that wants to limit global warming to 1.5°C”.
But in the Government’s written response, as in their subsequent response, there is reference to launching a
“new oil and gas licensing round”,
which is exactly what they have gone ahead and done. You might think that they have not read the report at all. The noble Lord preceding me referred to stranded assets. I point out that the Committee on Climate Change estimates that new oil and gas licences take, on average, 28 years to begin producing. We are talking at a time when we clearly cannot use any significant amounts of oil and gas.
My second point is on the committee’s recommendation that the Government publish an “energy demand reduction strategy”, focusing particularly on home energy efficiency. This is just one of the many disaster areas of energy policy. It is worth noting that insulation rates in homes today are well below where they were when David Cameron, as Prime Minister, decided to “cut the green crap”. Listening to the Prime Minister’s comments at the recent Tory party conference, you might have thought that, given the committee’s report’s focus on the need for green skills—these are often debated in your Lordships’ House—they might have been a focus of Tory education policy. So can the Minister say how the proposed new British baccalaureate, the major education policy announcement, fits with the green skills agenda?
Thirdly, on carbon pricing, the committee calls for the provision of
“clarity to investors and … incentives to fund projects necessary for the transition”.
The official government response here has since been overtaken by events. We have recently seen a sharp decline in the carbon price, attributable to the Government’s decision to release 53.5 million additional allowances from a reserve pot to the market between 2024 and 2027. That means that emissions prices have fallen to less than half of the EU equivalent, when they used to be more or less at parity.
I credit the Financial Times for noting the financial and economic impact of this. It has left British exporters facing hundreds of millions of pounds in EU carbon border taxes within the next decade. That means that money that would have come to the British Treasury will now go to the EU; are the Government happy about that?
Baroness Noakes (Con)
My Lords, I declare my registered interests as an investor in a number of energy companies. I too am a member of the Economic Affairs Committee, and I pay tribute to the chairmanship of my noble friend Lord Bridges of Headley. It is a shame that he is not able to be here to lead this debate, but I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, for introducing the report so ably.
It has taken 15 months for there to be a debate on this report and, after all that, we are allowed only five minutes. Our Select Committees should be an integral part of how Parliament holds the Government to account, but they are being sidelined. I hope that the Government will do better in future to allow Select Committee reports the time they deserve in your Lordships’ House.
A lot has happened in the energy space in the last year since we reported. I particularly welcome the Government’s recent announcements, which have brought a welcome sense of pragmatism to the delivery of net zero. As we heard, the report focused on how much investment was needed in order to deliver net zero by 2050 and where that investment would come from. The Government’s response has not shed much more light on this. But the even bigger questions, which the report did not set out to look at, are: who pays, when they have to pay it and how much they have to pay. These are the biggest challenges facing the delivery of net zero.
The Government have never been clear with the public about how much the cost of achieving net zero will affect them. Indeed, my noble friend Lord Hammond has recently said that successive Governments have been “systematically dishonest” about it. The public have little understanding about how green levies are already inflating their energy bills or about what they will pay for in future, including the impact of delivering a nuclear programme. We need a proper grown-up debate with the public about what costs they are prepared to accept.
The advocates of net zero often assert that, in the long run, the costs are likely to be outweighed by the benefits. Long-range forecasts, such as those from the Committee on Climate Change, are only as good as the underlying assumptions on which they are based, and it is not surprising that many of those assumptions are highly contestable. They were also made at a time when interest rates were near zero, and today’s “higher for longer” environment does not improve the calculations.
The renewables sector lives on subsidies and, as we heard, it imposes costs by way of extra investment in grid infrastructure and in back-up storage or generation capacity for when the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow. Consumers pay for all of that. As my noble friend Lord Frost pointed out, renewable energy itself seems to be getting more expensive rather than less, as the latest auction round showed. Who really knows what renewables will end up costing consumers, not in a hypothetical 2050 but in three, five or 10 years’ time? A 25-year forecast has no meaning to those who pay bills in the short and medium term. Today’s energy consumers should be centre stage in the conversations about the cost of delivering net zero.
The country as a whole remains supportive of the Government’s net-zero ambitions, but polling shows that support weakens when the impact on bills is factored in. As energy bill payers discover what net zero is costing them, and as those costs increase, so support for the policies will likely decrease. At the end of the day, net zero will be delivered in this country only if the British people are prepared to pay for it, either in their bills or in higher taxes. The Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero described net zero as a form of religion. Religious belief is all very well, but it does not pay the bills.
It was never sensible to sign a blank cheque to deliver net zero in a country that accounts for less than 1% of global emissions, and we certainly ought not to sign a blank cheque for some notion of global leadership. This House must never forget that the British people will decide what happens, whatever the politicians and the metropolitan elite think.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
My Lords, I apologise for delaying the Front-Bench speakers a few minutes in their replies to what I regard as a really excellent report. In fact, I rate it the best one that has so far come from your Lordships’ House on the great energy transition.
In my brief intervention I will simply add one point. The report rightly explains that most of the funds for the great energy transition ahead will have to come from the private sector, which will have to do the heavy lifting. Governments may be strapped for cash—all Governments, not just this one, or any future one—but, as the report rightly says, there is certainly a huge amount of investment money around the world in both pension funds and sovereign wealth funds. Indeed, I declare an interest in advising one of the biggest funds, as in the register.
These funds will come here only if there are investible projects, and this applies acutely in the nuclear power field, which is central to our all-electric future. The present UK plan, as I understand it, is to build another mega-gigawatt plant at Sizewell in Suffolk, described as a replica of the unfinished and vastly overbudget one now being built at Hinkley Point C. This is just not very attractive for investors; even with the regulated asset-based idea, which piles the money on the consumer and taxpayer from the start, the attraction is not really there. The EPR design is anyway full of problems; even the French say that it is too complicated. The prize one that was supposed to work in China had to be partly closed, and others are full of difficulties. The taxpayer and the struggling consumer have to carry the full burden and a good deal of the risk.
Smaller new designs, which are becoming available and can be built much quicker off site, should right now be the absolute priority, as in many other countries. They could be highly attractive to investors and are ready to produce clean electricity from existing nuclear sites. Of course such sites will have the wiring already, which many other sites do not, and they can be ready before these risky and out-of-date white elephants are anywhere near finished, and well before the end of this decade. Therefore they will make a major contribution to our net-zero aims.
Please will my noble friend confirm that the Government are at least aware of those key facts before they mistakenly plunge ahead with Sizewell C, committing billions to it, which I understand could be very soon? Indeed, it would be nice if the opposition spokesmen could also confirm that they are aware of these realities, which so far seem to have escaped too many people.
Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, I also declare my interest: it is in a company called Aldustria Ltd, which is into energy storage. I absolutely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Frost, that there are many issues around energy storage, particularly in the long term, on which I know the Government have done a number of consultations.
I congratulate my noble friend Lady Kramer on her introduction to this report. She is absolutely right: it has taken far too long to get it to the Floor of the House. As the noble Viscount, Lord Chandos, said, there have been three Prime Ministers since the report came out. The only thing that I would say is that it has actually managed to get to the end of its process slightly quicker than the Government’s Energy Bill, which started in the same month that this report was published but has still to be completed. I hope that that will happen before the end of this month. That shows the urgency that the Government wanted to put into their energy strategy but did not, particularly on electricity and carbon capture and storage.
I shall come back on energy costs for a minute, in response to the noble Lord, Lord Frost. The noble Viscount, Lord Chandos, is absolutely right about 2050. It is not about reaching net zero that year—you have to get it all the way through. I do not think that methane was mentioned in the report—I may be wrong—but that is one area where there may be some quicker wins.
I absolutely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, about Rough storage, although I think that only a small amount of that facility is contracted to the Government. Centrica is hanging on to the rest of it, and there is no guarantee that it will be there long term. That is a real vulnerability.
As for new gas and oil and, particularly, coal facilities, I do not see any UK Government banning exports of those products. I do not see that ever happening, which is why I do not think that there is any effect on our energy security or, indeed, on global pricing for those new openings.
I shall come back on demand reduction in a minute in response to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, as it is an important area. But I just say to the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, that I came up as a traditional economist, and it always seemed to me that it was really important to cost the idea of externalities into actual pricing systems. With carbon emissions we have huge externalities that are not priced into market competition—and that is why there have to be differences.
I also say to the noble Baroness that, of course, there is a huge kickback at the moment to the Government on contracts for difference through the Low Carbon Contracts Company, whereby at the moment actual market prices are hugely higher than strike prices. I would be interested to understand from the Minister—
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (Lord Callanan) (Con)
It is not a kickback to the Government—it is a kickback to the consumer.
Lord Teverson (LD)
Yes, exactly. The Minister corrects me. That is even more to the point. I think it has got to several billion pounds in terms of coming back into that sector working the other way, which probably exceeds now the green costs that there were. That is quite an optimistic look at that.
It seems to me that one real problem in this area—because the world has moved on since last July—is with those recent announcements that my noble friend went through from the Prime Minister. They probably did not have as big an effect as some people said, but they did drive a horse and carriage through our international reputation, as indeed did the coal decision in Cumbria. Our being seen as a global leader in this area, which the report was keen to emphasise, has been trashed to a large degree, and has been seen as such by allies such as America and the European Union.
I want to come back to those announcements, one of which was to abolish the Energy Efficiency Taskforce. The Minister was chair of that, and I understand that four meetings took place. Whether you look at security or at cost, the most secure energy is the energy that you do not need. The energy-efficiency side is important in that area, as well as cost. I would be interested to understand from the Minister why he was made redundant by the abolition of that committee. The UK should be a real leader, and really move in this area. The report asks for an energy demand reduction strategy, and that is really called for. It is not just around buildings, as the Government’s response said that it was; it is around a much broader area, including appliances and other interests.
One thing that has been emphasised during this debate is private investment, which it is clear is absolutely essential to deliver net zero. I am not pessimistic about this. Most private investment takes place to reduce costs, not to increase them. Companies do not invest to increase prices; they invest to reduce prices, and that is what we should aim for with the net-zero strategy.
One problem with the Prime Minister’s announcement, and all the other issues that have happened, is that we have a wobble with investor confidence—absolutely we do. Those messages that go out to industry and the investment sector say that we are no longer reliable on our government policy or on the foundation of confidence going forward. That has an even bigger effect when we have the Inflation Reduction Act in the United States and the EU green deal industrial plan on the other side of the channel. I would be interested to understand from the Minister when the Government will really respond to that huge financial challenge, which really prejudices how we can deliver net zero through the private sector in future.
I will make one or two further points, as I am sure the House will want to move on. The noble Baroness mentioned the UK Emissions Trading Scheme. I have been very hopeful—not because I am pro-European but because of liquidity and various other areas—that there should be a tie-up between the UK Emissions Trading Scheme and the EU equivalent. I understood that that was a government objective, but now we have a huge divergence in prices. The UK ETS a year ago was about £100 per carbon tonne; it is now down below £40. In the EU, it was around €100 per tonne a year ago but is now down to about €80. A huge difference has opened up. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s reaction on how the carbon border adjustment mechanism will affect that, as Europe starts to develop it over the next few years. That price signal is so important in terms of taxation and disappearing incentives for investment in our economy.
I am glad to see the noble Lord, Lord West, is here, because one of the key issues in energy security at the moment is defence, which has not been mentioned in this debate. In Finland, we have seen potential interference with the explosion of one of its energy pipelines and we have seen Nord Stream 1 and 2 destroyed. We know from our intelligence that the Russian Federation is keeping a very close eye on our undersea energy and communication networks. The Minister may not have an answer to this, but it is one of our major concerns in energy security as we move forward and have more interconnectors offshore. I am sure he agrees that this is a major thing we must look at.
Finally, coming back to consumers, the energy companies and Ofgem estimate that, as we reach the end of summer and enter winter and higher bills, the outstanding energy bills from consumers will be about £2.6 billion. Are the Government happy with that? Do they think it is sustainable for low-income families? Do they intend to do anything about it? This is probably the biggest challenge of all. Although the noble Lord, Lord Frost, talked about the importance of gas, which will be important for many years, the gas price has driven inflation and the high costs to families of keeping warm. It has led to inflation, which has led to the failure of those offshore wind projects. It is important that we restart that, but the problem is not the technology and the price coming down in real terms; the problem is inflation. What will happen to families over this winter?
Lord Lennie (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, and, through her, the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, and other members of the Economic Affairs Committee for producing this weighty report. July 2022 was also when the Government first announced their intention to legislate for the country’s future energy needs in the Energy Bill. The Energy Bill has now expanded to some 400-plus pages, has still not become an Act of Parliament and is due for further consideration by the other place later this week.
Lord Callanan (Con)
It would not if the Government acted as Parliament recommended.
Lord Lennie (Lab)
There is a process to go through. The amendments we made were to the benefit of the Bill rather than to take away from it.
There is some crossover between the Economic Affairs Committee report and the legislation but, sadly, nowhere near enough. The starting point of this report was back in February 2022, when the Economic Affairs Committee launched an inquiry into how the Government could support investment in UK energy to achieve greater security of supply, improve affordability and meet the UK’s net-zero targets.
The committee considered how the Government planned to achieve the following two separate but related objectives. First was the commitment in law to achieve net zero by 2050 alongside the target to decarbonise the system by 2035. The committee considered how this target might be achieved while ensuring the UK’s energy supply was “affordable and reliable”. It argued that encouraging private sector investment was the key to achieving net zero. However, the committee said there was
“a gap between the Government’s ambitions and the practical policy that is needed to provide confidence and clear market signals to investors”.
The second was the Government’s plans to mitigate the effect of rising energy prices exacerbated by Russia’s appalling invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The report produced by the committee recommended that the Government should take the following measures over the next three to five years—now two to four years. First, they should publish a net-zero delivery plan which would detail how the UK could achieve net zero in an orderly way. Secondly, they should publish an energy demand reduction strategy which would include measures to increase incentives for investment in energy efficiency measures for buildings and to support the development of resilient supply chains and workforce skills—as the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, pointed out, this has not happened. Thirdly, they should increase the deployment of renewable energy sources to reduce the UK’s dependence on gas markets, including onshore wind, which it describes as
“one of the cheapest and fastest ways to increase renewable energy generation”,
despite the reservations of the noble Lord, Lord Frost. Fourthly, they should maintain existing energy generation in the immediate future while extending the life of nuclear power stations over coal power stations, as this would result in lower carbon emissions. Finally, they should seek to reach agreement with other European countries to manage energy supply emergencies. Have any of these measures been taken on board?
The committee also recommended that the Government should take action to increase investor confidence to make more private capital available to support the transition to net zero, by setting out a cost analysis of their targets to achieve 24 gigawatts of nuclear capacity. As the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, pointed out, this figure is more than double the capacity assumed by the Climate Change Committee. Can the Minister explain the variance between the two? It also recommended they provide more detail on the capacity, timeframes and expected costs of increasing long-duration energy storage, outline the market structures and mechanisms that would be used to support increased hydrogen production and support carbon capture and storage by fulfilling their commitment to develop four low-carbon industrial clusters. They should also design “market models” to provide information to investors on the types of technology required, to give potential investors greater confidence in the long-term viability of carbon capture and storage. Is there any sign of this happening?
Since the report was published, a number of government changes have affected energy policy. The Energy Bill was introduced in 2022 under Prime Minister Boris Johnson. It included measures intended to leverage investment in clean technologies, protect customers and maintain the safety, security and resilience of the energy system. It reached Committee on 7 September 2022 and was thereafter paused by the new Prime Minister, Liz Truss. Following Liz Truss’s resignation, in December 2022 Committee started again and, under Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, the House of Commons is now scheduled to consider Lords amendments on 18 October. In February 2023, BEIS was replaced, with responsibility for energy policy transferred to the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. Grant Shapps served as Secretary of State for Energy from February to 31 August; currently, the Secretary of State is Claire Coutinho, but for how long is anyone’s guess.
Chris Skidmore published his review Mission Zero: Independent Review of Net Zero on 13 January 2023. It concluded that the UK was not on track to meet all its targets towards achieving net zero and stated that the Government needed to do more to make the most of the economic opportunities arising from the transition to net zero. The Government have published a series of policy updates on their plans. In March 2023, Powering Up Britain was Secretary of State Grant Shapps’s launch of the new Government’s energy strategy. In the same month, Mobilising Green Investment: 2023 Green Finance Strategy updated the previous green strategy. In this, the Government committed to commissioning an
“industry-led … review into how the UK can enhance our position and become the best place in the world for raising transition capital”.
Has it happened?
On 20 September 2023, Rishi Sunak, still the PM, gave a speech in which he announced some changes to government policy on achieving net zero. While working towards meeting their overall 2050 net-zero target, he said that policies including the ending of the sale of petrol and diesel cars and vans, plus the sale of new gas boilers, would be pushed back by five years to 2035. How does this help achieve net zero? Its effect has been to deter investment by undermining the commitment and consistency required by business, as the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, said.
This is the framework in which the Economic Affairs Committee report is being considered. Of its 38 recommendations, only a small handful have been taken forward. However, the Government’s initiatives to secure private capital by certainty and leadership are woefully inadequate. In the meantime, more changes have been confirmed. Alok Sharma, chair of COP 26, is standing down. Chris Skidmore is not going to contest his seat in the next general election. The offshore wind auction attracted no bids because the strike price was wrong.
Tony Blair once said:
“I’ve not got a reverse gear”.
It is a pity the same cannot be said of Rishi Sunak. The report rightly states that the Government cannot be expected to accurately predict what is going to happen in the future. Surely, though, we can expect more than what is currently on offer.
Labour would establish Great British Energy. It would invest in order that Britain can lead the world in carbon-free energy and technologies. Labour will ensure that we have the grid we need to rewire our country. Our public investment will stimulate private investment to bring prosperity to every part of Britain.
Lord Callanan (Con)
First, I add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, for securing this debate, as well as thanking noble Lords for their insightful contributions.
It was a bit rich for the noble Lord, Lord Lennie, to criticise us for not getting the Energy Bill on to the statute book. The reason we have not done that is because the Opposition—despite saying that they support it—have supported largely irrelevant and superfluous amendments to the Bill. If the noble Lord is so keen to get it on to the statute book, he has the opportunity to prove it next week when it will come back to this House. I hope the Opposition will agree with the passage of the Bill, rather than just saying that they support it. We will then be able to get it on to the statute book and proceed to the secondary legislation, which will result from the primary powers, on things such as hydrogen, CCUS, et cetera.
Lord Lennie (Lab)
I think it is a bit rich for the Minister to say that the Opposition parties are responsible for the delay to the Energy Bill. It was paused by the Government for three or four months, when they went absolutely silent. We were knocking on the door asking what was happening with the Energy Bill, but nothing was forthcoming.
Lord Callanan (Con)
We would have had the Energy Bill on the statute book by now if it was not for the amendments the Opposition had supported. My point remains.
As the Prime Minister made clear in his recent speech, it is extremely important that we chart the fairest credible path to net zero, bringing people with us through democratic debate. As several noble Lords have mentioned, we have shifted to less drastic targets on phasing out fossil fuel cars and boilers because of the potential for sharp upfront costs to families already struggling with the cost of living.
The 2035 target for decarbonising the power sector, however, remains in place. Why is that? It is not just because this a critical bridge to net zero by 2050—which, I remind the House, we have a legal obligation to deliver —but, in response to my noble friend Lady Noakes, because wind and solar are the cheapest forms of electricity, which is also the reason why I, as a fiscal conservative, am in favour of them.
Against that, and as the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, noted, international fossil fuel markets are volatile as they are driven by geopolitics, and our own reserves are now declining. Yes, the price of offshore wind has now risen from a historic low, but it remains well below that of gas, nuclear or gas with CCUS. In response to my noble friend Lady Noakes, we are going hard for clean electricity because it is not in tension with cheap electricity; nor is there tension in such electricity having the security of being produced domestically. It is, if you like, electricity with a UK flag plastered upon it.
The UK energy system in 2035 and beyond is going to be a mixture of tried and trusted technology and new innovation. We have connected approximately 40 giga- watts of renewable electricity—primarily wind and solar—to the grid since 2010. The point made by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, is completely valid: with the high price of electricity, driven primarily by gas, the vast majority of those contracts for difference are now paying back into the system and subsidising consumer bills. It is not the case that the amount of renewables we have on the grid is contributing to the high price. It is driven entirely by international gas prices, and the problem is that we do not have enough of it connected to the grid. If we had more, prices would be lower.
On the nuclear side, Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C are under development, and we have set up Great British Nuclear, whose first objective is to support small modular reactor development, which my noble friend Lord Howell will, no doubt, be pleased to hear.
My noble friend Lord Frost raised an issue about wind and solar. Wind and solar are clean, cheap and homegrown. Of course, my noble friend is right to say that they currently rely on unabated gas as back-up. UK gas usage has declined in the past decade as wind power has proportionately increased. Of course, it is true to say that we need a portfolio of technologies to replace unabated gas, including power CCUS; hydrogen; short- and long-duration storage; renewables, such as tidal and geothermal; interconnection; energy efficiency; and demand side flexibility. We need all these technologies. My noble friend Lord Frost and the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, will be pleased to hear that there is currently nearly 38 gigawatts of electricity storage in its various forms in the planning pipeline.
Resilience comes from having diversified sources of supply and strong relationships with trusted partners and allies. We will work closely with the EU and bilaterally on both short- and long-term energy security. As the noble Viscount, Lord Chandos, will be pleased to hear, I was delighted recently to launch a UK-German hydrogen partnership with German State Secretary Nimmermann, where we are working on a broader energy and climate partnership.
Of course, investing in energy security is about demand as well as supply. We have made great progress in upgrading what is probably the oldest housing stock in the world. Despite what the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, would have us believe, residential emissions in this country have fallen by something like 31% since 2010; that is the second biggest improvement in the G20.
The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, was concerned about the decision to discontinue the Energy Efficiency Taskforce. The body was formed very much around Dame Alison Rose as my co-chairman and, without her, we believed it was better to streamline its function into existing work. We remain extremely grateful to the members of the task force, who produced some excellent work and recommendations; I continue to meet them regularly and we will continue to listen to their wise and trusted advice on the importance of energy efficiency.
The noble Lord, Lord Lennie, mentioned demand management. I can inform the noble Lord that the National Grid is planning to run its demand flexibility service again this winter—subject to Ofgem approval—as it proved so successful last winter.
The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, asked about the UK ETS, and that remains a cornerstone of our climate policy. It remains the fact, though, that the price is set as a market mechanism. The UK ETS is a separate market to the EU ETS so it is possible, as we have seen, that prices will fluctuate and differ, although both do have similar levels of ambition. The noble Lord will have noted that in the summer, we decreased the cap and aligned it with our net-zero ambitions. This means that the number of permits we issue in the future will continue to decline in line with our net-zero ambitions.
A number of noble Lords raised the important issue of nuclear, and our current nuclear fleet is of course ageing. While the Government have no direct involvement in the decision to expand lifespans, we are pleased that extensions are happening where the technology is performing above original expectations, and I am pleased that the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, is in agreement on this point. On new build, we are continuing towards taking Sizewell C to final investment decision this Parliament.
The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, did however note her personal opposition to Rosebank, as did a number of other noble Lords. Notwithstanding the shift towards renewables, it is important to remember the total UK energy use in 2022 was still 77% oil and gas. Following extensive scrutiny by regulators, including environmental impact assessments and a public consultation, we have granted new licences, including for Rosebank. As the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, alluded to, domestically produced gas is around four times cleaner than imported liquid natural gas. Oil and gas production also provides around £17 billion to the UK economy each year and supports around 200,000 jobs.
Let me address directly the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. New licences will merely slow the already inbuilt decline in UK production levels, rather than see them increase above current levels. Even with continued exploration and development, oil and gas production is expected to decline by 7% per year. This decline is faster than the average global decline needed to align with the UN 1.5 degrees centigrade pathway. Even with new licences, the amount of oil and gas produced in the UK sector will continue to go down as these fields come to their natural end.
I will deal with the point on the AR5 auction round. It was successful in broadening contracts to both tidal and geothermal projects, but, of course, we were disappointed by the lack of offshore wind bids. That was because developers were experiencing unprecedented economic conditions. However, as we have now moved to an annual process, in less than a year AR6 will open, and we will of course incorporate the lessons learned and ensure that AR6 reflects the most recent evidence.
As stated, we remain committed to the challenging but deliverable target of decarbonising the power sector by 2035, while at the same time, and most importantly, maintaining security of supply, which is absolutely critical. The Government are supporting investment, innovation and regulatory reform across the full range of technologies that will need to be developed and deployed in concert.
Baroness Kramer (LD)
My Lords, all that remains is for me to say thank you to all of those who participated in this debate. We have heard a very wide range of views and I think anyone listening to this range of speeches, including the Minister’s, would turn around and say “Yes, energy strategy and fast, energy demand reduction strategy and fast, and it sounds like we need infrastructure far more rapidly than we had previously planned”. I hope that those are the lessons that are taken away by everybody who is here, and I thank everyone for participating in this report and taking note of its content.
Israel and Gaza
(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
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The Lord Privy Seal (Lord True) (Con)
My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat a Statement made in another place by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister. The Statement is as follows:
“Mr Speaker, the attacks in Israel last weekend shocked the world. Over 1,400 people murdered one by one; over 3,500 wounded; almost 200 taken hostage; the elderly, men, women, children and babes in arms murdered, mutilated, burned alive. We should call it by its name: it was a pogrom. The families of some of the missing are in the Public Gallery today. We call for the immediate release of all hostages, and I say to them, ‘We stand with you. We stand with Israel’.
The murdered and the missing come from over 30 countries, including the United Kingdom. The terrible nature of these attacks means it is proving difficult to identify many of the deceased, but, with a heavy heart, I can inform the House that at least six British citizens were killed. A further 10 are missing, some of whom are feared to be among the dead.
We are working with Israel to establish the facts as quickly as possible, and we are supporting the families who are suffering unimaginable pain. We are also helping British citizens who want to leave Israel. We have organised eight flights so far, bringing out more than 500 people, with more flights leaving today. We are working with neighbouring countries on land evacuations for our citizens in Gaza and the West Bank. I have spoken specifically to President Sisi about supporting civilians to leave Gaza via the Rafah border crossing, which at present remains closed, and we have a Border Force team in Egypt working with our embassy to help citizens when they are able to cross.
I will come back to the grave humanitarian situation in Gaza in a moment, but first I want to address the British Jewish community directly. As I said at Finchley United Synagogue last week, and at the Jewish school I visited this morning, we stand with you, now and always. This atrocity was an existential strike at the very idea of Israel as a safe homeland for the Jewish people. I understand why it has shaken you to your core and I am sickened that anti-Semitic incidents have increased since the attacks. We are doing everything we can to protect you. We are providing an additional £3 million for the Community Security Trust to protect schools, synagogues and other Jewish community buildings, and we are working with the police to ensure that hate crime and the glorification of terror are met with the full force of the law. I know that the whole House will support this and join me in saying unequivocally that we stand with the Jewish community.
I also recognise that this is a moment of great anguish for British Muslim communities, who are also appalled by the actions of Hamas but are fearful of the response. We must listen to those concerns with the same attentiveness. Hamas is using innocent Palestinian people as human shields, with the tragic loss of more than 2,600 Palestinian lives, including many children. We mourn the loss of every innocent life, of civilians of every faith and every nationality who have been killed, so let us say it plainly: we stand with British Muslim communities, too.
Israel was founded not just as a homeland for the Jewish people but as a guarantor of their security, to ensure that what happened to the Jewish people in the Holocaust could never happen again. Through its strength and resilience, Israel gradually achieved some of that longed-for security, despite the strategic threats on its borders, including Hezbollah in the north with Iran at its back. Israel normalised relations with the UAE and Bahrain through the Abraham Accords and moved towards normalising ties with Saudi Arabia—steps that not long ago were considered almost unthinkable.
One reason why this attack is so shocking is that it is a fundamental challenge to any idea of coexistence, which is an essential precursor to peace and stability in the region. The question is: how should we respond? I believe that we must support absolutely Israel’s right to defend itself, to go after Hamas and take back the hostages, to deter further incursions and to strengthen its security for the long term. This must be done in line with international humanitarian law, but also recognising that Israel faces a vicious enemy that embeds itself behind civilians.
As a friend, we will continue to call on Israel to take every possible precaution to avoid harming civilians. I repeat President Biden’s words: as democracies, we are
‘stronger and more secure when we act according to the rule of law’.
Humanity, law, decency, respect for human life—that is what sets us apart from the mindless violence of the terrorist.
There are three specific areas where the United Kingdom is helping to shape events. First, we are working to prevent escalation and further threats against Israel. On Friday, RAF surveillance aircraft began patrols to track threats to regional security; I have deployed a Royal Navy task group to the eastern Mediterranean, including RFA “Lyme Bay” and RFA “Argus”, three Merlin helicopters and a company of Royal Marines, ready both to interdict arms and to support the humanitarian response; and we are bolstering our forces in Cyprus and across the region. Let me be clear: we are not engaging in fighting or in an offensive in Gaza, but we are increasing our presence to prevent broader regional instability at this dangerous moment.
Secondly, I am proud that we are a long-standing and significant provider of humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people. I can announce today that we are increasing our aid by a third, with an additional £10 million of support. An acute humanitarian crisis is unfolding, to which we must respond. We must support the Palestinian people, because they are victims of Hamas too. Like our allies, we believe that
‘Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people, or their legitimate aspirations to live with equal measures of security, freedom, justice, opportunity and dignity’.
Hamas simply does not stand for the future that Palestinians want, and it seeks to put the Palestinian people in harm’s way. We must ensure that humanitarian support urgently reaches civilians in Gaza. That requires Egypt and Israel to allow in the aid that is so badly needed.
We also need to keep the situation in the West Bank at the forefront of our minds at this moment of heightened sensitivity. Earlier today, I spoke to Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority, to express our support for his efforts to provide stability.
Thirdly, we will use all the tools of British diplomacy to sustain the prospects of peace and stability in the region. Ultimately, that requires security for Israelis and Palestinians and a two-state solution, so we are increasing our regional engagement. I have spoken to Prime Minister Netanyahu twice in the last week, along with the US, France, Germany, Italy and others. My right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary was the first to visit Israel after the attacks. I met His Majesty the King of Jordan yesterday—a long-time voice of reason and moderation. I have spoken with the leaders of Turkey and, previously, Egypt, and I will speak to others in the coming days. Our partners in the region have asked us to play a role in preventing further escalation, and that is what we will do. However hard it is, we need to ask the tough questions about how we can revive the long-term prospects for a two-state solution, for normalisation and for regional stability, not least because that is precisely what Hamas has been trying to kill.
In conclusion, backing Israel’s right to defend itself, stepping forward with humanitarian support, working to protect civilians from harm, and straining every sinew to keep the flame of peace and stability alive—that is our objective. It is the right approach for the region, and it is the right approach for Britain. I commend this Statement to the House.”
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Lord Privy Seal for repeating today’s Statement and for providing updates on the Government’s actions and the co-operation taking place, as I am aware, with other countries. I share his total condemnation of Hamas’s appalling and ongoing attacks on Israel.
When we heard the initial news just over a week ago, the accounts of unimaginable horror and suffering, and of hostages being taken, were deeply shocking. The senseless murder of men, women, children and babies is hard to comprehend. Those images of 250 young people targeted and killed while celebrating a Jewish holiday at a music festival are impossible to understand. As each day unfolds, every Member of this House will have seen film and photographs showing the suffering and horror, in a way that words can never convey.
In Israel, and now in Gaza, innocent citizens are grieving for their lost and injured loved ones; there is so much pain and suffering. It is imperative that both this House and our Parliament as a whole speak with one voice against such terror and for the dignity of all human life; and that we stand with Israel in solidarity and support of its right to defend itself, to rescue the hostages and to protect its civilians. As long as Hamas has the capability to carry out attacks on Israeli territory, there is no safety. Yet what makes this harder to bear is that that is the very reason for the existence of Israel. As the Lord Privy Seal said, it is more than a homeland; it was there to ensure that what happened in the Holocaust could never happen again. Some in your Lordships’ House will have friends and family who have moved to Israel, permanently or temporarily. For many, it provided a sense of belonging and affirmation of their Jewish identity; they wanted security and peace. Yet Hamas has no interest in peace and is not protecting Palestinians.
Let us be clear—the Lord Privy Seal emphasised this point too: Hamas is not the Palestinian people, and the Palestinian people are not Hamas. So, as we support the right, and indeed the duty, of Israel to defend itself and to seek to bring the hostages home, we must also recognise that it is both Israelis and Palestinians who are suffering terribly because of Hamas’s actions. That is where the responsibility for this crisis lies squarely: with Hamas. Terrorism can never be justified; it can never be excused. Hamas is not protecting the security of the people of Gaza as it unleashes terror and then hides behind them. It should release all the hostages.
We welcome the steps taken by this Government to support Israel’s response and the additional aid funding announced today. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said:
“We democracies distinguish ourselves from terrorists by striving for a different standard—even when it’s difficult”—
and it is never more difficult than this.
We also agree with the Government that Israel’s defence must be conducted in accordance with international law. Civilians must not be targeted, and innocent lives must be protected. Humanitarian corridors are required and humanitarian access, including to food and water, electricity and medicines, is needed to save lives. There must be proper protection for those who put themselves in danger to deliver such aid and medical help. Can the Lord Privy Seal provide the most up-to-date information he has on the status of the Rafah crossing in that area?
These attacks are also having a huge impact across the UK. Many of us will have heard desperate accounts from those whose loved ones have been killed or are missing. They are worried for the lives and the future of friends and family in Israel and Palestine. The sharp increase in anti-Semitic incidents, and reports of Islamophobic threats and abuse, must be denounced in the strongest possible terms. When I heard that Jewish schools were closing out of fear for the safety of pupils and that Jewish people were hiding their identity in public, I was not only shocked and angry but deeply saddened. Many Jews and Muslims have worked within the wider community to bring people together, to foster understanding and acceptance of our differences and to celebrate both shared and diverse religious views and cultures.
We must support them and share responsibility with them, because we cannot allow our community cohesion to be destroyed. Over the past week, we have seen images and heard personal, direct accounts of the absolute true horror of these attacks, and it has been deeply distressing.
Let us be clear: we condemn the terror of Hamas and reiterate that it does not represent the Palestinian people. Hamas’s brutality only escalates the problems and destroys lives, hope and the pursuit of peace. We continue to support and strive for a two-state solution: a Palestinian state alongside a safe and secure Israel.
The time ahead will be so difficult and challenging. In absolute defiance of the brutality of Hamas, the UK must stand with Israel, for international law, for international co-operation and for the protection of innocent lives. We remain united in those values.
Lord Newby (LD)
My Lords, we were all horrified to wake up 10 days ago to see the dreadful scenes of violence in Israel. The scale of Hamas’s terrorist activities has been beyond belief, and we condemn it unequivocally. The abduction and degradation of hostages, including women and children, are particularly appalling. We echo demands for the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages, and abhor the suggestion that they should be used as bargaining chips. We think particularly of those British citizens currently missing, who may be among those being held hostage today.
I have no personal connection with the region, but 50 years ago this month, as a student, I made a visit under the auspices of a UN youth and student association to Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. On the day the Yom Kippur War broke out, as a guest of the Israeli Government, I was on a visit to the Golan Heights. I heard and witnessed the start of the Syrian attack in that war. It is therefore a source of profound sadness to me that in the intervening 50 years, so little has been done to deal with the root causes of this conflict.
The impact of the atrocities on families in Israel, but also the wider community abroad, is understandably profound. We stand in solidarity with the Jewish community in the UK, in Israel and around the world, who now feel fear and grief. We utterly condemn the anti-Semitic incidents in the UK, which have tragically increased in recent days. We welcome the additional support the Government have committed to the Community Security Trust and their assurance that the police will take firm action to deal with hate crime and the glorification of terror.
Israel has, without question, a right in international law to defend its territory and citizens, and we fully support that right, but it is also vital that terrorists are now targeted, not civilians—again, in line with international law. Many innocent Palestinian civilians have been killed in recent days in Gaza, and the whole population now live in fear of attack.
They also face an absence of essential supplies. I believe that water supplies have been reinstated, but the same does not, I think, apply to food and electricity. Do the Government agree with the UN Secretary-General’s comment that the entry of supplies into Gaza must now be facilitated—again, in accordance with international law? It is also vital that the Government make humanitarian aid available with immediate effect, and it is good that extra funds are being made available for this purpose. But when the Government say that £10 million is an increase of a third in humanitarian aid to the Palestinians, does the noble Lord accept that this is a third of a figure that has been cut by 90% as a result of the Government’s overall aid cuts, and that a mere £10 million will simply not be nearly enough? Can the Government explain how they intend physically to get the aid to the people who need it?
The Prime Minister said he had spoken to President Sisi about British citizens being able to leave Gaza via the Rafah crossing. The crossing remains closed, but the Prime Minister implied that it might soon reopen, at least for foreign nationals. Is that a correct interpretation of the present situation? Looking beyond the current crisis, the people of Israel and Palestine have an equal right to live free from fear, and the UK and its partners in the international community therefore simply cannot allow a return to the status quo ante. We agree with the Prime Minister that if we are to bring violence to an end once and for all, it is for countries such as ours, which has long-standing ties to the region, to take a leading role in bringing about lasting peace based on a two-state solution. It is vital that the Government look to the longer term today, as well as to the immediate, in this most crucial moment.
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, I thank both the noble Baroness and the noble Lord for their remarks. I express my personal appreciation for the eloquence and passion with which the noble Baroness the Leader of the Opposition spoke. She spoke, as we from this side seek to speak, on behalf of the whole House and country, and I was moved by much that she said. I am of course equally grateful for the support from the noble Lord, Lord Newby, and the Liberal Democrat Benches. Yes, it is sad that 50 years after the Yom Kippur War, we are still in this situation.
Addressing the present, we have to accept that the situation at the present moment is the result, as the noble Baroness opposite said, of one of the most atrocious, despicable and cowardly planned and deliberate terrorist attacks that we have seen in recent memory. Both the noble Baroness and the noble Lord asked about the state of crossings and Rafah. I read the Statement and looked at it again when the noble Lord, Lord Newby, was speaking. The Prime Minister did not give any kind of undertaking. He said that he had specifically raised the issue of the Rafah crossing with President Sisi. The position is as I described it in the Statement: it remains closed currently, but we are working with the Egyptian authorities, we are in contact with them and it is our hope that it may be possible to facilitate approved individuals, including British nationals, to leave Gaza via Rafah—but that is not the position at present. It is the direction in which our diplomatic efforts are directed.
I welcome what both the noble Baroness and the noble Lord said about the Government’s position on humanitarian assistance. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Newby, was mildly churlish about it. In fact, it should be remembered that, between 2016 and 2021, the United Kingdom directly funded almost 10% of the United Nations work in that region.
We are calling for unimpeded humanitarian access so that essential aid can reach civilian populations, and that includes food, water, fuel and medical supplies. I agree with noble Lords that the conflict launched by Hamas has exacerbated an already dire humanitarian situation. We are providing £27 million in overseas development aid to the Occupied Palestinian Territories this year through partners including the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. We are also in close contact with the Palestinian Authority, and we urge it to use its influence to condemn Hamas’s brutal actions.
To return to the point made by the noble Baroness opposite, it is Hamas that has been discouraging civilians in Gaza to move towards the relative, certainly not perfect, safety that might be afforded. Hamas has shown no consideration, certainly not for the Israeli civilians it so brutally slaughtered, but nor for the Palestinian people it purports to represent, so I endorse and repeat the noble Baroness’s condemnation of Hamas.
I also welcome and support the comments from the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Newby, condemning the anti-Semitic attacks. It is almost inconceivable, in the light of the events that we have seen, that there are people among us who support and welcome this action and support the perpetrators. People in this House believe that in the United Kingdom, no Jew, no Muslim, no citizen, whoever they may be, of whatever age or walk of life, should ever go in fear, should ever be subjected to hate, should ever be subjected to criticism for who they are. That is the profound resolve of this Government. This Government are not only providing support for the protection of Jewish citizens, as the Prime Minister announced in the Statement, but continuing our programme for safety and security of Muslim places of worship and other places of concern to the Muslim community.
Of course, the noble Lord, Lord Newby, is right that in the long run the two-state solution, as the Prime Minister set out in the Statement, remains the only viable outcome. The United Kingdom will continue to work for it. It will come slower rather than sooner because of this brutal act of terrorism, but it remains the objective of the United Kingdom Government. I repeat my gratitude to noble Lords opposite for what they have said in support not of this Statement but of Israel and the position that the Jewish people find themselves in, and for their humanitarian concern and feeling for the Palestinian people.
Lord Howard of Lympne (Con)
My Lords, I have just been talking to the families of some of those who have been taken hostage in Gaza. The NGOs and the United Nations have understandably been vociferous in their concern for the civilian population of Gaza. However, those organisations have been working in Gaza for many years and so must have extensive contacts with Hamas and its leadership. Will His Majesty’s Government urge those organisations to use their contacts with Hamas to persuade it to release the hostages now—the grandmother, the Holocaust survivor, the babes in arms, all 199 of them—in return for which Israel has said it will resume the supplies of food, fuel and water to the people of Gaza?
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, the British Government will bend all their efforts not only to securing the release and safety of British people who are missing but to supporting all those who have been kidnapped, taken and oppressed in the way that my noble friend describes. We are talking to a range of organisations and nations—sovereign states and others—which may have capacity to bring to bear on the Hamas leadership. Whether that will soften the hearts of some of the people who ordered this atrocity I hesitate to forecast. However, I promise my noble friend that the British Government will pursue the action that he refers to.
Lord Pannick (CB)
My Lords, I very much welcome the Statement and the eloquent comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, and the noble Lord, Lord Newby. This is personal for me. My wife is Israeli. We have a home in Israel. We have friends with family members who were murdered by Hamas nine days ago. The Statement mentioned international law. Do the Government agree that the obligation of Israel to respond in a proportionate manner depends in very large part on the severity of the threat which it faces?
Do the Government further agree that there can be no doubt that the threat is very grave indeed, since Hamas aims not to negotiate a peace treaty or to secure a two-state solution but to destroy Israel? It has the military capacity to send thousands of missiles and we have seen that it has the ability and the willingness, astonishingly, to enter Israel to torture, murder and abduct its citizens simply because they are Jewish. Hamas does not care whether they are supporters of the Netanyahu Government or of a peace settlement. They do not care whether they are religious or secular, whether they are babies or elderly ladies. Do the Government agree that there is no country in the world that would tolerate such a threat on its borders and that therefore a military response is the only available response to the threat posed by Hamas?
Finally, do the Government agree that international law does not prohibit military action which, sadly and regrettably, will lead to civilian deaths, especially when Hamas hides behind the civilian population? Does the Minister agree that the essential difference between Hamas and Israel is that Hamas aims to kill civilians—Jews—while Israel does all that it can to avoid civilian deaths?
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his comments. I offer my sympathy and concern to his friends and family.
This is an unprecedented situation. The UK stands side by side with Israel in fighting terror. We agree that Hamas must never again be able to perpetrate atrocities against the Israeli people of the kind that the noble Lord has so eloquently referred to. The UK has a strong track record of supporting international law. That remains our position. We call on our friends and partners to do the same. Israel has stated that it will operate within international law. As the noble Lord said, every country is allowed to defend itself. It is not for the UK to define their approach. Israel suffered an appalling terrorist attack. It has a right to respond and defend itself.
The Lord Bishop of Sheffield
My Lords, I thank the Minister for the Statement.
There is no justification for the truly shocking atrocities perpetrated by Hamas nine days ago, a shock exacerbated for many of us by the fact that those attacks took place on the Sabbath. Nor is there any justification for the cancers of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia that stalk our own streets. We on these Benches condemn both unequivocally. It is plainly true that no one in this House questions Israel’s right to self-defence or that this right must be exercised judiciously, in accordance with international humanitarian law. I pray that this consensus will hold in the coming weeks, for the sake of the cohesion of communities across Britain—including in South Yorkshire, where I serve.
In view of the unfolding and escalating humanitarian tragedy, and looking to the future, what assurances have the Government sought and been given that the innocent people of Gaza will be able to return to their home neighbourhoods after the immediate conflict?
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, obviously that is the wish that all might have. I thank the right reverend Prelate for his remarks and agree very much on the importance of community cohesion. The reality is that Israel is reacting to the attack, which the right reverend Prelate rightly characterised as an attack on the Sabbath of such horror. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, that there is a distinct difference between those who seek to kill babes because they are Jews and a nation that we believe—as the President of Israel has stated—will operate within international law. If Hamas turned away from terror, laid down its arms and dedicated itself to improving the welfare of the Palestinian people, we would not have to wait too long for the outcome that the right reverend Prelate seeks, and we all devoutly wish that that will one day happen.
Lord True (Con)
I am not sure that I can be whipping the House as well. There is time for all Benches to be heard and I think the noble Baroness was possibly up first—but let us get on, because time is going by.
Baroness Blackstone (Lab)
I am very grateful to the noble Lord. My Lords, the cold-blooded murder of Israeli civilians and the taking of hostages was a dreadful crime against humanity. However, the Israeli reprisals in Gaza and their effects on the Palestinian community there are deeply concerning. Does the Minister accept that no crime against humanity justifies another one? Does he agree with the UN Under-Secretary for Humanitarian Affairs, who condemned all the parties for their rhetoric and called on all countries to ensure respect for the rules of war? Can the UK Government do more to ensure this and that the actions now being taken are in line with international humanitarian law and give some hope for the two-state solution?
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, what we have seen in recent days has gone a little beyond rhetoric, I fear. I would say to the noble Baroness that of course all countries have a responsibility to seek to abide by international law. When the Prime Minister spoke to Prime Minister Netanyahu last week, he emphasised that it was important to take all possible measures to protect ordinary Palestinians and facilitate humanitarian aid. Those things are vital. We have a strong track record of supporting international law and we ask our friends and partners to do the same. Israel has stated that it will operate within international law, but it has a brutal terrorist enemy to deal with.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)
My Lords, after the barbaric massacre of Jews taken from a Holocaust instruction manual, can the Minister see any peaceful resolution to an attack that started with the supreme evil of murdering young people who were enjoying themselves?
I follow what the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, was saying, because many years ago I sat down for coffee with a member of Fatah who had spent years in an Israeli jail. I asked what we could offer Hamas: “What do they want?” He replied that it wanted the complete eradication of Israel and the removal of Jews. Will the Minister confirm that he agrees that nothing has changed?
In the last few days, 6,000 rockets have rained down on Israel. Residents old and young of the kibbutzim have been slaughtered and abducted. Israel has decided that containment of Hamas does not work, which means that if possible it must be defeated. Neither Israel nor Egypt wants to occupy Gaza; they just need a clear view of Hamas, the enemy. Does the Minister agree that Israel is not bombing exit routes, as it is in Israel’s interest that the people of southern Gaza leave? It is Hamas that wants the human shield to remain to cover its barbaric terrorism.
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, the noble Lord expressed very eloquently the feelings that the many people who have witnessed these events have. It is important that our hearts go out also to the Palestinian people who have been caught up in this. Israel has our full support in fighting the terror of Hamas, as I think I have made clear. It is extremely important that the window for civilians to relocate remains open for as long as possible and that civilians are allowed to relocate voluntarily and safely. Hamas also must support that objective. We will seek to press that all possible measures are taken to ensure safe humanitarian access and to protect civilians.
As the noble Lord says, Israel has been attempting to minimise civilian casualties by warning residents to leave northern Gaza; that has been complicated by Hamas terrorists telling the local population not to leave and instead, as the noble Lord said, using them as human shields. The situation is immensely bleak. One can see no short-term brightness. If I may, I suggest that we should all resort to prayer.
Lord Polak (Con)
My Lords, I was in Jerusalem last week. Before I say my few words, I will say that I sat in the other Chamber and watched the Prime Minister and the leader of the Opposition speak, and then there was a two-hour discussion. It is shameful, when so many Members want to speak, that we are being curtailed. There may be a way of extending this. I also appreciate the Lord Speaker’s arranging of the one minute’s silence.
Actually, there are no words. With the noble Lord, Lord Howard, I too met the family of Ada Sagi, including her son Noam. It is so vital to mention her name. Ada Sagi should have been in London today, celebrating her 75th birthday with her family. She is from Kibbutz Nir Oz and she is being held by those monstrous Hamas terrorists.
All I am going to do is to ask the Leader and other noble Lords to join me in saying a prayer that is said in every synagogue throughout the world when there is a problem like this. In Hebrew it is called “Acheinu Kol Beit Yisrael”:
“As for our brethren, the entire house of Israel who still remain in distress and captivity, whether on sea or on land, may God have compassion on them, bring them from distress to relief, from darkness to light, from servitude to redemption, at this moment, speedily, very soon”.
Amen.
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, I pray for all innocent souls created under God. If it would help the House, I can say that we have had discussions in the usual channels. I am sad that my noble friend said that there had been an attempt to cut off discussion; this is not the case. I hope that we will provide time for a debate on these matters next week; I believe 24 October is the date.
Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I draw the attention of your Lordships’ House to the presence in the Chamber this evening of relatives of some of the hostages. I am sure that the whole House stands with them in total solidarity, praying for the safe return of the hostages and the IDF soldiers who have to go to Gaza to release them and to deal with Hamas. We all say to you, “Am Yisrael Chai”.
The position of the people of Gaza is solely and squarely the responsibility of Hamas. When Israel withdrew in 2005, Gaza had a functioning economy, control over imports and exports, discussions on a seaport and plans for discussions on an airport too. Then Hamas launched a bloody coup, drove out Fatah, executed its rivals and used the Gaza Strip as the basis to launch a campaign for the destruction of Israel. The poor people of Gaza are also the victims of Hamas’s brutal dictatorship, while its leaders amass billions and live in luxury in Doha.
Earlier today, UNRWA accused the terrorist gangsters of stealing humanitarian aid. Will the Government investigate these reports and ensure that any aid that we provide goes to where it is needed?
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, I can add little to what was said in the Statement, but I of course express the fullest solidarity that we—I am sure I speak for all Members of this House—have with members of the families who have been caught up in this dreadful affair. I express that freely.
The Earl of Courtown (Con)
We have only three and a half more minutes. Can people be as quick as they can with their questions?
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
My Lords, after that fine prayer, I have just one question. While it is clear that the Hamas butchers should be hunted down for their revolting crimes against humanity and made to pay for them, and while we somehow have to get out those hostages who have not been executed in cold blood by Hamas in the meantime, does the Minister agree that minds should begin to turn, for the longer term, to revisiting the two-state process and combining it with the best features of the Oslo accords and the Abraham accords, into which great thought was put? In the future, they are the key to Israel’s sustainability, survivability and the stability of the whole region.
Lord True (Con)
I agree with that. I said in the Statement that the Government’s position is that we should return to seek the two-state solution, and ultimately seek the way of peace. The way of terror is the way of death.
Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee (Non-Afl)
My Lords, terrorism can never be contextualised and unfortunately I know that first hand. Under the Terrorism Act 2000, Hamas is a proscribed organisation and it is an offence to invite support for a proscribed organisation. Can the Leader of the House tell us what actions His Majesty’s Government will take to deal with the enormous amount of people on the streets of the United Kingdom asking for support for this proscribed organisation—including in Belfast, where we had the spectacle of convicted IRA terrorists asking for support for Hamas?
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, I agree with my noble friend. Hamas is proscribed—those who invite support for this group could be jailed. However, arrests are an operational matter for the police. The Home Secretary has asked police to step up patrols and monitor protests.
Baroness Deech (CB)
My Lords, I mourn the passing of a young relative, only 22, who died in the military just a few days ago. I hope that the Minister will agree with me that the root cause of this is Iran. It is Iran that has funded Hamas and it is its equipment being used. We must stop funding Iran. At this very moment, there are protests outside the BBC, because the BBC has become partisan in not using the word terrorists. Above all, I hope the Minister will dry up the source of funds to Iran.
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, broadcasters are independent in this country, a free country, but as the noble Baroness will know, the Culture Secretary took up certain matters, which she has referred to. So far as Iran is concerned, Hamas is fully responsible for the appalling act of terror that has taken place, but Iran poses an unacceptable threat to Israel, including through its long-term support for Hamas, Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. We condemn Iran’s destabilising activity throughout the region and we will look at its activities with wide-open eyes.
Adult Social Care (Adult Social Care Committee Report)
(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Andrews
That this House takes note of the Report from the Adult Social Care Committee A “gloriously ordinary life’’: spotlight on adult social care (HL Paper 99)
Baroness Andrews (Lab)
My Lords, it is almost a year since the Adult Social Care Select Committee published its report. It is five months since we had the Government’s response. Although this debate has been delayed, there is no bad time to debate adult social care—it is always timely and always urgent. I am extremely grateful tonight that so many Members of this House have stayed for a late debate to share our report and to listen to the Government. I know that members of the committee particularly appreciate the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Polak, after his highly emotional intervention in the previous Statement.
Many members of our committee could not be here, for very different reasons. I am very grateful to all of them—particularly to those who are here. We will feel the absence of the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton—not only because she is exceptional at what she does, and how she does it, but because she made an extraordinary contribution to our committee. I am also grateful that there are people who were not even on the committee here tonight who want to address the report. It was a great privilege to chair the committee and to have the task of asking the questions we did.
The two great transformational changes of our age are an ageing society and climate change—and they are interrelated. We have known about both for decades. They are both in the “too difficult” box, which is why it has taken so long to organise the courage to address the issues. We are trying to catch up.
In our report, we ask two questions which we thought had been particularly neglected. Why is adult social care so invisible compared to the NHS? What would make a real difference to the poverty and ill health that come all too often to the 1.5 million unpaid carers who do care work for more than 50 hours per week or the 4.5 million carers who are conscious that their own health is suffering?
There were a few differences of emphasis in the committee, but we were of a mind, and we were helped enormously by an outstanding group of officials from the House: Abdullah Ahmad, Daphné Leprince-Ringuet, Alasdair Love and Megan Jones. They shared with us a sense that this committee would do things differently and address these difficult questions and give more justice to them. In that spirit, we put a high emphasis on co-production and our experts by experience—not just our superb special advisers, Jon Glasby and Anna Severwright, but our expert witnesses who have tested our conclusions and stayed alongside us this year while we have debated this report and who will be watching this evening. We put an equal emphasis on empowering those who care and those who are cared for—whether caring for young disabled adults or elderly and chronically sick relatives.
Our recommendations inevitably prioritise the need for clearer pathways through the maze of information that people are offered, putting emphasis on them having a greater say in what they are able to access and use, and on their contribution as well as the labour of love that is caring. We put huge emphasis also on partnership with the Archbishops’ Commission. We shared our witnesses, evidence and conclusions—which often overlapped, because they were rooted in the same values.
Our recommendation, which was probably the most important, made it clear that adult social care is far and above being, as it is too often seen, a vital but secondary handmaiden to the National Health Service. It is so much more than that. “The NHS saved my life,” said one of our witnesses, “but social care enabled me to live that life to its best”. That is the difference, and it is why we say that adult social care must be a national imperative with stronger national infrastructure. This is the way to release its full potential, to make the best of its values and skills, realised not just in better processes but in the trusted relationships that underpin everything done in this area, and to make it possible for people who care, and people they care for, to live that “gloriously ordinary life”—the title of our report that has resonated so widely with everyone who has come across it; it is so modest, and yet it says so much.
Inevitably, there were some recommendations that were hardly new and did not need to be. I defend in particular the need to ditch short-term improvisation and plan courageously for the long term, whether through funding, a carers strategy, or a resilient and versatile workforce, or for appropriate housing to support ageing at home and not in hospital.
We have had a raft of reports this year that have all more or less made the same case, from the Local Government Association, the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, Social Care Future, and Skills for the Future. Many of them ask for the Government simply to recognise the scale and urgency of the issue of the false economy that has followed from a decade of austerity and massive cuts to local authorities—the lost hours of caring, the higher cost of caring, the endless waiting lists, the exhausted carers, paid and unpaid, the profound inefficiencies in the system, and the lost opportunities that have marked this decade.
Because the people who know so much agree on so much, our report has resonated widely, and the Government will not be surprised that their response to our report has met with dismay. In November 2022, the Prime Minister announced an indefinite delay to capping care costs. The director of Silver Voices saw this as the “final betrayal” of older people. In April, the “next steps” proposals, published during the recess, were met with a genuine sense of dismay because this was a plan for only two years, not for the future. The workforce budget of £500 million had been cut in half. Many of the bolder ideas in the White Paper have been lost in transition. When the NHS workforce plan was eventually published there was not a word about social care, without which, as the King’s Fund points out, none of the ambition, which is great and serious, can be realised.
Therefore, we were not that optimistic about the Government’s response. There was much that we could welcome. For example, the Government acknowledged the central importance of the adult social care sector—how could they do otherwise? They said that they would support the Carer’s Leave Bill, at long last. We also welcomed specific commitments, for example to ensure better data collection, more and better R&D, and more investment in innovation across the sector, but that was the least we could expect, and it should have been in place at least a decade ago. The fact is that the lack of data has reinforced invisibility. It has made it so much more difficult to plan for the right, consistent, scalable and deliverable policies on a day-to-day basis, not just today but in the future. As we report, the expectation is that the family will go on caring, but by 2030 1 million people in this country will have no families to care for them.
That is why we sought to change the lens and interrogate the future, recognising that the demography and expectations of 1947 have changed beyond recognition while the assumptions of who will care have not—it is nearly always still women. Although we have just started to integrate services, health, housing and social care should be planned from the beginning to work as closely as possible together if we are to make living longer not a fearful prospect but something to celebrate.
That is why we put such a strong emphasis on a commissioner for adult social care and support: to bring voice, visibility, agency and challenge to the service. That is why the Government’s response, calling for a chief nursing officer, misses the point. That is why we recommended an urgent review of the Care Act 2014, which held so much promise, only to be told that this would be delivered through the Health and Care Act. Not so: the scope and the potential of these Acts are very different. I ask the Minister to take both these recommendations away for further consideration.
We have also had no response at all to other fundamental questions that impact deeply on the day-to-day possibilities of what carers, paid and unpaid, can expect. We asked for a review of the pay and working conditions that disable the sector and make it so difficult for disabled people to employ and pay for a personal assistant. Where they are available, they do not stay because the employment bureaucracy is so chaotic and, frankly, they can get more money working in the health service or in Asda. These recommendations were rejected. Although there is some good news in the plan for a Skills for Care workforce this week, and numbers of vacancies are slightly down, we cannot build the future of adult social care on improved immigration. It is a contradiction in terms and of the Government’s policy. It is certainly not an answer to 152,000 vacancies across the sector.
What does it mean to build a valued and versatile care force? It means that you have to pay people decent, dignified and proper wages. At the moment, many carers do not even get the national living wage. Can the Minister tell me why and what this Government, in their remaining days, can do about it?
All these recommendations would have strengthened the resilience of the whole workforce, from personal assistants to paid carers, but they would really have helped the unpaid carers, who would have known that their labour of love, which as we know saves us billions of pounds a year but costs them their jobs, their incomes, and their mental and physical health, is valid and visible. So, indeed, would our recommendations for a more forceful and consistent approach from employers towards flexibility and support in the workplace, and for mandatory housing provision and standards.
However, the recommendation that would have made the most difference to unpaid carers was an increase in the carer’s allowance—a shameful £76.75 a week, which, because they have to work a minimum of 35 hours, works out at £2 an hour. We called for an increase not only in the pay available but in the flexibility around the threshold. The Government rejected that recommendation too.
In short, the Government rejected all our key recommendations relating to funding, workforce planning, accessible housing, support for personal assistants and unpaid carers. The subtext of their response was, “We are doing it all already”. We are not.
We asked at the end of our report: if not now, when? When will unpaid carers see real change? The answer came back, “Not yet; not now”, so there is more wasted time when we face record-breaking NHS waiting lists and the distress of all those elderly people who cannot go home from hospital because it is not safe for them to do so.
Our committee’s main message is that we need a new, more positive and more confident approach to adult social care to enable it to deliver those “gloriously ordinary” lives. That means that disabled young people and older people should have more say in the support they are offered, better choice, and a service that will attract people to work in it because it is well paid, progressive, has status with recognised skills, and more capacity because it is built on stronger and sustainable partnerships between paid and unpaid workers, recognises the expertise held by both, uses the full resources of the voluntary sector, has more visibility through a national champion to challenge poor practice, and shows what change looks like. That is the way to spread best practice and innovation. If we invest in the care economy, just as we should invest in childcare, we will build not just a fairer community and strong families but a foundation for a more efficient and more resilient real economy.
Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)
My Lords, I was privileged to sit on the Adult Social Care Committee, which was so ably and sensitively chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews. I thank her for her comprehensive introduction to the debate.
I found it incredibly hard to think of what to say; it has all been said many times. We know what needs to be done. I pay tribute to my noble friend the Minister for his work and perseverance in this area, because I know that he knows what needs to be done and that he understands this sector, but we do not seem to be moving the dial one iota for people.
I travelled down from Scotland this morning, and our experience of attempts to create a national care service is not one I wish to recommend to the House. So far, its development has cost £1.26 million in engagement, £1.38 million in staff costs, an accountability agreement with local authorities and the NHS and an inadequate skeleton Bill that has been delayed three times. As Scotland illustrates, the top-down approach does not work. It is expensive and futile and, despite all the time and money spent on it, not one person’s care in Scotland has been improved.
For me, the Government’s People at the Heart of Care is based on very sound conservative principles, but we will not enable people to have choice and control unless plans are backed up by funding and action. Our committee’s report illustrates how carers, paid and unpaid, are key to ensuring that those who draw on care can indeed lead a “gloriously ordinary life”.
We heard of the huge challenges experienced by people in being able to find good PAs. The Government acknowledged in their response to the report that personal assistants are “invaluable”, yet this crucial and apparently valued workforce is unregulated, too often paid only the minimum wage, on zero-hours contracts and not funded enough to be employed full-time, and has no access to ongoing training and no recognised qualifications.
The Government have promised to improve career pathways and opportunities for progression within the adult social care workforce, and have identified £250 million to do this. Can the Minister give us any details on how this is to be spent? How could it help more people access PAs? I have encouraged the Minister before to look at the charity ENABLE’s PA model in Scotland, and do so again to support this.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, said, unpaid carers carry a huge burden but are largely unseen, unappreciated and ignored. The Minister will not be surprised to hear me calling yet again for improved identification. The discrepancy in the estimated number of unpaid carers of between 2.4 million and 6.5 million in our report illustrates how woeful our ability to identify this key group currently is.
In May the Government updated their road map for better data for adult social care, which recognises that while a variety of various sources capture some information on unpaid carers, they lack consistency and coverage. As I understand it, a new regular survey focused on unpaid carers is to be created. Can the Minister give us any update on these plans?
The Government’s vision that data should be collected once and shared with those who need it is one of those common-sense statements that sound really simple, but that I know will be very difficult to achieve and implement. Who will social care data be shared with? Will people needing care and their unpaid carers have access to their data? There are examples given, such as GP records being shared with home care managers and authorised social care staff, but who is classed as “authorised” in this context?
My worry is that social care provision is still far too far down the priority list. At the recent party conferences, neither the Prime Minister nor the leader of the Opposition spent any time discussing social care. Even the Minister for Social Care spoke about integrated healthcare teams and community health services, not social care. She spoke about how we continue to look at health and care through the prism of the NHS, saying:
“It often feels like the acute hospital is like the sun in the NHS solar system with everything else spinning round it. But it doesn’t have to be that way”.
She is right. I agree with her, but until we turn the telescope around and focus on enabling people to lead a gloriously ordinary life, social care will always lose out.
Lord Bradley (Lab)
My Lords, as a member of the Adult Social Care Committee, I welcome this debate on our report and add my praise to the chair of the committee, my noble friend Lady Andrews, for her wisdom and guidance throughout. I also refer to my interests in the register.
Time is short, so I will limit my contribution to just a couple of our key recommendations. But I start by quoting the very beginning of our report, which posed the question:
“Why should we care about adult social care?”
The blunt answer is that
“it concerns all of us”.
In our lives we are likely to need that support, or to care about someone who does. It
“affects the lives of over 10 million adults of all ages in England at any one time”.
In recent years, driven by the consequence of an ageing society and the cost of residential care, together with the challenges of funding and staffing, the increasing demands on adult social care have rightly forced it up the political agenda. Tragically, though, despite a raft of reports, research papers, White Papers and legislation, very little has improved for those who depend on and provide adult social care. As we said in our report:
“Many aspects of the system remain invisible and overlooked by the public and policy makers alike”.
This is particularly true of unpaid carers, which is why we put a spotlight on them in the report—people with lived experience of the current system.
Our report said:
“We heard the frustration and anger of those who have to battle to access even the most basic support, and who have experienced adult social care becoming ever-more distanced from a service that might enable them to live a life of their choice.
We also heard the testimonies of unpaid carers, the often invisible spouse, child, parent, sibling or friend who has to step up to provide care and support when the system is failing”.
These moving testimonies by individuals and the many wonderful organisations that try to help and support them were not made through bitterness but from a loving and caring perspective, simply asking for help and recognition of the dire and exhausting plight they often find themselves in currently.
It is against this background that the committee made its recommendations. I highlight just two tonight. First, the committee recognised that while a stronger, more resilient and integrated care sector is needed at the local level—and I believe the integrated care boards and systems must make this an absolute priority and drive this agenda forward—
“we also believe that some new and effective national leadership that focuses attention on adult social care is urgently needed”:
a real champion for social care. As Sir Andrew Dilnot described it to us, we need
“a single person whose job it is to think or worry about social care and do that publicly”.
The committee believed that:
“One effective way of doing so would be to establish a Commissioner for Care and Support, tasked with acting as an effective champion and upholding the rights of disabled adults and older people, as well as unpaid carers. The Commissioner would also embed more accountability and challenge in the system”.
What was the Government’s response to this recommendation? They said they believed that
“new statutory roles are not the most efficient way to promote and protect the rights of these groups. The duties covered by such a role are covered by work elsewhere in the system”.
To say that this response is disappointing would be a massive understatement. I do not believe that, for example, the excellent work of the Children’s Commissioner, if abolished, would be well covered elsewhere in the system. The Children’s Commissioner ensures an independent focus on the needs of children, and adult social care deserves the same focus. When he replies to this debate, will the Minister explain where the efficiency, transparency, accountability and, crucially, independence is clear in the current system?
Secondly, and very briefly, I will address our recommendations to review the care allowance, which the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, touched on. It currently does not reflect in any way the real value of unpaid carers. In my view, it is unacceptable that this is the lowest benefit of its kind, exacerbated by the threshold of caring hours and the low and inflexible earnings limit.
The Government’s utterly complacent response is to say:
“The government keeps the earnings limit under review and considers whether any increase in the limit is warranted and affordable”.
I believe that this is disrespectful to the millions of unpaid carers, without whom this care system would collapse and who need crucial financial support now. Their caring responsibilities often arise through an unforeseen incident or circumstance, such as a sudden diagnosis of chronic illness, a devastating accident or a stroke, so dramatically undermining household income or long-term financial and pension planning. I urge the Minister to reflect on this and respond accordingly tonight.
Baroness Wolf of Dulwich (CB)
My Lords, I welcome this debate and the opportunity to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, and her committee for a marvellous report, which is enormously informative, and, above all, for the fact that they have highlighted the role of the unpaid carers who keep us all afloat. I have no current interest to declare, but I was for many years a trustee of a small local charity that provided sheltered accommodation and respite care, and I am going to draw on that experience in what I say.
In recent decades, we have seen massive changes in the organisation and delivery of adult social care. In 2019, the Guardian found that 86% of care home beds are now in private for-profit homes, 3% are provided by local authorities and 11% are provided by charities. Yet in every study I have seen, charities are top rated by users ahead of local authorities and for-profit provision. In large part, this is because of what one witness before the committee called the “fine-grained” knowledge of local communities. Charities are uniquely well placed to harness this and to develop opportunities to bring such a fine-grained knowledge to bear on the provision of effective care that responds to individual local needs.
However, the regulatory and funding environment militates against small, local or charitable provision. Complexity comes up time and time again in the report, and rightly so. It creates huge barriers and huge deadweight costs. I think it is worth thinking about those costs because all of what we are talking about takes place within a context of growing demand and growing pressure on care budgets, so if there are ways in which we can save money, we really need to take advantage of them. My experience was of ever-growing regulatory and bureaucratic demands which devoured time and resources and favoured the supposed economies of scale delivered by large chains. These demands also meant local authorities felt safer dealing with big centralised companies, big concerns and people who knew about the latest central diktat and spoke the regulators’ language, but this is not the language of those involved in and dependent on social care. We must tackle complexity and the centralisation that fuels it because it creates a gap between the creators of policy and writers of rules and the people involved in delivery and use. It is not easy to simplify. It takes commitment and time, but it can be done. I wish the Government’s response had acknowledged this more explicitly. Can the Minister provide any further information on whether the Government recognise the need for such a sustained effort to simplify the system?
I also want to endorse as strongly as possible one of the report’s recommendations and its emphasis on respite care and providing breaks for unpaid carers. Recommendation 33 says:
“The Government should dedicate ring-fenced funding to increase the availability and capacity of services that provide flexible short breaks for unpaid carers”.
I very strongly agree. It may seem odd to have devoted most of the time that I have been on my feet to talking about local responsibilities and local decisions, and of course we need to make the system simpler and more local in how things are spent and in reducing regulatory complexity, but we are also, as I said, operating in a system where the pressures on budgets are gigantic. If we do not ring-fence funding this way, I fear the same thing will happen as happened in the local authority where I got my experience, which was that when our little charity closed the door respite care on a regular basis in the local authority effectively ceased. It was a chance for the local authority to reduce expenditure and walk away from something. However, this respite care and these breaks for unpaid carers are a lifeline. They are quite complex to organise and seem quite expensive, but when you take into account the direct benefits to carer well-being and their ability simply to carry on, I think we have to acknowledge that what they bring in results and rewards is enormous and that simply looking at apparent up-front costs obscures this reality. I would have been happy to have seen more recognition of this in the Government’s response.
I would like to take this opportunity once again to thank the committee and its chair for a wonderful report and to say how tremendously important it is that we remember those unpaid carers.
The Lord Bishop of Sheffield
My Lords, I start by paying tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, and to all the members of the Adult Social Care Committee for the excellent report they produced last year, full of thoroughly perceptive and practical recommendations to government and speaking to the longing we all have to live a life of joy, fulfilment and purpose. The committee undertook its work in precisely the same period as the Archbishops’ Commission on Reimagining Care and it is heartening to see the considerable amount of overlap in the values proposed and the conclusions reached. Both contribute to the growing consensus that we cannot any longer tinker around the edges of the existing system. We must reset and reimagine the way that social care is understood, organised and delivered.
The committee report identifies quite correctly the importance of making social care a national imperative, yet it notes the widely held perception that social care is something that affects other people and that many begin looking for information about support available only once they have reached a crisis. The Archbishop’s Commission on Reimagining Care argued that it will be possible to reimagine social care only if we fundamentally rethink our attitudes in society, where too often we are inclined to treat people as if their value is determined by factors such as age, gender or ability rather than affirming and celebrating the dignity of all human beings, valued for who they are and not for what they do.
At best, social care is the means by which people are enabled to live a full life. This is not the responsibility of the government alone. Churches, for example, have an important part to play in supporting people to flourish in community. I think of the hugely valuable dementia cafés currently organised and hosted by church communities in my diocese, for example, in the parishes of Sprotbrough in Doncaster and Handsworth in Sheffield, which are both run in partnership with local authority well-being services.
The primary recommendation of the Archbishops’ Commission on Reimagining Care is the development of a national care covenant which would clarify the roles and responsibilities for social care to be shared across society. The language of covenant encourages us to move away from ideas of contracts and rights towards powerful notions of partnership and interdependence. We all stand to benefit from a society where our dependence upon one another is recognised and celebrated and promotes the flourishing of all so that each one of us indeed has the best possible chance to live a “gloriously ordinary life”. Will the Minister say how far the concept of a national care covenant has been found useful by the Government in their ongoing efforts to reimagine social care?
Lord Polak (Con)
My Lords, it is a great honour to follow the right reverend Prelate. In the same way, it was a great honour to have been a member of the Adult Social Care Committee. I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, and the other members of the committee who took me along with them.
It was a learning experience for me, and there are one or two points that I would like to pick up. I notice that the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, is, sadly, not in her place. The thing I learned from her is something that we do not always think about: she talked a lot about the issue of ageing without children. I thank God that I have family and that we looked after my mother, who I will come on to in a minute. It is something that you do not appreciate until you hear it. The noble Baroness is a great champion for understanding that this will affect many, many people across the country. I was glad to learn that from her.
Similarly, I was very much a supporter of the suggestion, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Bradley, that we ought to have a commissioner for care and support. Just as the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, is a champion for her issue, we need a champion who can help my noble friend the Minister and other members of the Government to focus on this. Otherwise, it gets trodden down and nobody really takes responsibility; it is too big and, in the end, nothing really happens.
I made a plea last time I spoke on this subject and I make no apologies for repeating it. Looking around the House, I say to everybody: the one thing I learned is that it is important to take politics out of social care. Let us get politics out of it and let us try to help.
In the end, for me, it was an experience that suddenly became practical. During the time that we were sitting as a committee, my mother took ill in Liverpool; she sadly passed a few months ago. What is overridingly important is to have something that we missed—we did not understand what to do as a family; I have just made a note to call it a “guide for the ignorant”. We need a guide so that, when people find themselves in a situation like this, they know what to do, who to ring, where to go, who to ask. Currently, it is a lottery.
As it happens, I am from Liverpool and the organisation there was pretty impressive. There was a STARS scheme, which the Marie Curie centre had put on, and they came in to see my mum four times a day while she needed help. Without that, I do not know what we would have done. I live here, my sister lives in London and my mum was in a flat in Liverpool.
The experiences we had throughout were horrendous. As I have said once before here in the House, we experienced the best and the worst. The worst was when a nurse was assessing my mum—who could not speak any more—to see what the next stage of care would be. The nurse was in Maidenhead, or somewhere in Kent, and she was in Liverpool, unable to speak, and they did it on Zoom. It was a relic of Covid, of course, but it was no help to my mum at all. It took weeks before they had to pass on their report, from Margate, to a panel of three people who had never met my mother, to decide what sort of care she would get. It is mad. I repeat: we need a guide for the ignorant. The Government need to provide something like this so that people know where to go.
To conclude that story, the Marie Curie hospice in Liverpool was amazing; the people there were amazing. They cared for my mum for three and half months, which is pretty unusual in a hospice. They could not have been nicer. I remember after she passed, I thanked them for everything they had done and then I said, “But where is the gold watch? She has been in a hospice for three and half months”. They were amazing and I shout out to them.
In conclusion, it was a deep honour to have been a member of the committee chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, and I learned so much. Following the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Fraser, I ask the Minister to explain the role of data and patient records, and how we can use technology to support people to stay in their homes as long as possible.
Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in this debate and I very much appreciate the work of my noble friend Lady Andrews and the committee in producing such an excellent and helpful report.
The big issue, of course, is paying for sufficient care—we have been playing with that issue for 20, 30 or more years—but, short of a grand plan, we can leave that on one side for the purposes of this debate, because, in any event, much can be done. What I would like to stress is the need to take better care of the carers. There is a paid social care service on which there are recommendations that it should be properly funded and properly staffed with appropriate status and skills, but I am very pleased that the emphasis in this debate has been on unpaid carers.
The report sets out excellent proposals and I am sure we have all been sent additional proposals from Carers UK, with an emphasis on issues such as an improved carer’s allowance related directly to the national living wage and—an issue that is extremely important to those concerned directly—some form of carer’s leave.
I want, however, to add an extra point about carers and their pensions. This arises because the unpaid carers are all too often, all too frequently, poor. They are poor because they are unable to work, or have to work limited hours, because of the care they are providing. It affects them directly during the period when they are providing care, but it also lingers on throughout their lives because they have missed opportunities for promotion and career development. The inevitable result is that they end up poor. The problem with their pensions is that, in our current pension system, you get a reasonable pension only if you have had a reasonable income while at work; because of the gap in your employment income, you have a gap in your pension.
There must be some way of improving the pensions provided for carers who have no, or limited, employment income. In one way or another, this will require providing them with credits for additional pension. My favoured approach is that they should get additional national insurance pension on top of their basic pension to make up for the gap arising from their inability to earn while providing care; so, these carers should get some additional credits for their state pension.
This is very much an issue for all carers—male, female, sons, daughters, parents. They are all affected in the same way but, as most care is provided by women, it impacts far more significantly on women. Hence, the main reason for the gender pensions gap, which should get more attention, is that women provide the care. The way to solve that problem is to provide them with some pension entitlements for the period when they were providing that care.
It is not mentioned in the report but I will now be pressing this issue as often as I can. Clearly, it is relevant here: care for carers means providing them with decent pensions.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)
My Lords, I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Davies, that in my keenness to follow the noble Lord, Lord Polak, I jumped up too early. I was very glad to hear about the experience of the noble Lord, Lord Polak, with Marie Curie. I must declare that I am a vice-president of Marie Curie; I should also declare my co-chairing of the Bevan Commission, an independent think tank on health and social care in Wales, and my experiences in palliative care.
The noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, is to be commended for a gloriously inspiring report on adult social care which spotlights how much could be achieved by co-production with those in receipt of services and those on whom they depend. The government response has pointed out that additional funding of “up to £2.8 billion” is available in 2023-24 and “up to £4.7 billion” in 2024-25. Can the Minister explain how this funding will be distributed, whether it is ring-fenced for local authorities and how it will be allocated? Palliative care patients often need both social care and specialist palliative care involving the voluntary sector. Will they be able to draw on this funding for their integrated services, which we have already heard about this evening from the noble Lord, Lord Polak?
“We all want to live in the place we call home with the people and things we love, in the communities where we look out for one another, doing what matters to us”.
This definition, as in the report from #SocialCareFuture, explains how social care is not only about services; it is about having a life. For those with progressive disease, this desire to live to the full becomes pressing and urgent. Palliative care works to restore quality of life and a sense of personal worth. This core aim should be the same across the whole of social care: to add life to years, rather than focusing only on years to life. To achieve it, the workforce must be empowered to use their initiative to meet need and with time enough to go at the pace of the person.
Today, I was fortunate enough to meet a group of mothers who have children and young adults with multiple complex conditions. They were stressing the financial problem: they are unpaid carers who are getting burned out, and there is a huge lost opportunity. They realise that their children must be somehow prepared for independence because, as they get older and die, their children are likely to outlive them. However, the current system does not encourage that. It is simply about providing a response to the most pressing needs, rather than taking a long-term preventive approach, particularly when these young people are still able to develop.
The report highlights the ageist and disability-phobic attitudes that impede the ability of those with disability and who are older to function to their maximal ability in society. Such attitudes exist widely, sadly, including in health. Will the Government work with the voluntary sector to change attitudes and ensure that people are free to state what they need? The question “What matters to you?”, followed by sensitive listening, can guide the provision of services that empower, rather than a menu of services just given to people.
As the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, pointed out, we cannot expect the social care workforce to achieve the level of personalised care needed unless there is parity of esteem for them and without attention to their own welfare. Many have a wealth of valuable experience: the NHS could co-produce education and training with the social care workforce and with those with experience of receiving care. That would break down some barriers and improve integration.
In their response, the Government refer to the grant funding to Think Local Act Personal. Can the Minister tell us how that is being evaluated to ensure that holistic approaches reach the people on the receiving end of social care? Staff with skills need to be paid at an appropriate banding, with their managers also carrying a caseload so that they understand what is going on. Perhaps colleagues in health and management will then recognise the important job being done.
One thing I want to touch on in my closing moments is timely equipment. It can be essential to maintaining independence and decreasing the calls on hands-on care. What do the Government plan to do to decrease waste by recycling equipment such as mobility aids and so on? If equipment is not being recycled, could it then be sent to countries abroad as part of our aid programme? How much is wasted simply because things are not being used again and recycled in a timely manner?
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay. Her phrase about services that empower is an excellent one which I may well adopt.
Like everyone else, I wish to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, and her committee for this brilliant report and for her compassionate, caring instruction. The focus on co-production with experts by experience is a crucial phrase. Given the lack of representativeness of your Lordships’ House, that should really be adopted by all your Lordships’ committees—particularly given that, the way politics is heading, it seems that the nature of this House is unlikely to change anytime soon. Our society is increasingly coming to recognise the importance of those experts by experience.
I would like to pick up the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, by reflecting on the disappointment that the Government have essentially rejected all the recommendations of this report. If not now, when? The noble Baroness, Lady Fraser, said that we do not seem to be turning the dial, which was a similar reflection; she also noted that neither of the two largest parties’ leaders spoke about social care at their party conferences.
I am going to put a challenge to all the Front-Benchers who will be speaking shortly. I am well aware that they are not able to make up a social care policy on the Floor of the House, but I am going to challenge them to make a commitment that they will take into the election a social care policy that they plan to take forward—because surely this is so clearly desperately needed. As the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, said, the delay in debating this report has not made it one iota less relevant because we have not made any meaningful progress.
In the interests of living up to what I am asking others to do, I am very happy to set out the framework of the Green Party’s social care policy that we will be taking into the next general election. It is free social care for all adults who need it in England. That policy was decided democratically at our conference in 2021, led by members who were affected by the need for social care—more experts by experience. This calls for all social care support and independent living services to be free at the point of use and fully publicly funded.
The guideline for this comes from—I ask any Front-Bench spokespeople who might like to respond if they acknowledge these standards—the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. That should set the standards of what is available. The Green Party says that this should be
“accountable to local democratic bodies with a secure national framework of laws, guidance and funding … the services should be designed and delivered locally and co-productively, involving disabled adults, councils, the NHS, carers and unions”.
With that, I will raise a point that is implicitly referred to in the report, but developments have happened since it came out. Skills for Care, the workforce planning body for the sector, has noted that an estimated 70,000 people took up care jobs in England after arriving in the year to March 2023. That was after visa changes, and there were a further 30,000 to 40,000 people arriving between April and August. Despite that fact, the vacancy rate in the adult social care sector is still nearly 10%.
The noble Baroness, Lady Fraser, referred to difficulties in Scotland. I would point to the fact that Scotland, despite having about 8% of the UK population, took up only about 2.5% of those care visas. That reflects the fact that both Scotland and Northern Ireland have slightly raised the rate of pay already. Scotland is planning next April to raise the rate of pay to £12 per hour. In Scotland, carers are also employed by the local authority, unlike in England where authorities are forced to take legal responsibility for a market in care. Would the Minister acknowledge that the market as a model of providing care is one of our underlying structural problems?
Baroness Goudie (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Andrews for the way she led this committee. She set out with us, working together, how we would put this report to the House and the Government. I thank the staff of the committee, who gave us expert advice. Having worked on other committees, I can say that the staff are amazing.
The hardest part was for all of those who gave us evidence. It was very difficult for them giving evidence to us, and for us to accept the kind of lives they were living. Those people are really alive; people forget that they are not just a number or a file but real people. I wish that those in local authorities, in government and in the health service would acknowledge this and not leave them out on the edge.
I support my noble friend Lord Davies. I have worked with him in the other place on the issue of women who end up being carers. It is taken for granted that they can give up work and put everything aside to do this. It is very difficult for them to return to work because they are not necessarily respected for what they have done, which is huge and is saving local authorities and the Government a huge amount of money.
Further, these women understand that the person they are caring for—in some cases, more than one—wants to live at home. Nobody wants to go into an institution or be taken into some place that is not what they like. They end up dying sooner, and it is so unfair. People have to understand that people want to stay at home. We, as a country, must insist that people are allowed to be cared for in their own home.
Moving on to the report, these are the most important points about adult social care in England. First, it is funded largely from the revenue of local authorities. Secondly, a major source of that funding is from central government grants to local authorities. Thirdly, this funding has been dramatically decreasing. Fourthly, this inevitably has had adverse effects on the delivery of social care services. Fifthly, it is also having adverse effects on forward planning for meaningful reforms. If you are not funding and looking to the future at what funding we need, it is impossible to make any reforms. It is now causing huge problems for the National Health Service, in bed blocking and in other forms, which then has a further knock-on effect.
Adequate government funding is essential. I hope the Minister will be able to tell us how the Government see this going forward. As I said earlier, we are dealing with people. Given the present financial constraints, as paragraphs 105 to 109 of the committee’s report observe, access to appropriate social care services is extremely difficult to achieve. Needs assessments are based on increasingly narrow eligibility criteria. It is never explained to people properly what is required. Needs become extreme and urgent before they are recognised as requiring support.
Also, we need to look at why planning to make adequate changes to the inside or outside of a house takes so long. It should be automatic, and you should not have to wait six months or for inspections. This should be done immediately. The cuts in resources and services are very painful. These problems must be urgently resolved and addressed. The Government must deliver realistic, predictable and long-term funding to allow adult social care and its workforce to be properly resourced and planned to thrive.
Baroness Hollins (CB)
My Lords, I welcome this excellent report from the Adult Social Care Committee. I congratulate the chair and the members; I would have loved to be one. I declare my relevant registered interests: I manage a family member’s direct payment and I am a director of a not-for-profit support organisation. I will not have time to give examples from my professional experience or my experience as a family carer today.
The committee said that social care is often “invisible”, but the report draws attention to what good care looks like, and it deserves to be widely read. Some groups are more overlooked than others. I will focus my remarks on the social care needs of working-age adults with a learning disability. In 2021-22, the King’s Fund found that 69% of social care expenditure for those aged 18 to 64 was on learning disability support. The Health Foundation’s recent analysis calls for a staggering £18.4 billion to meet demand in the next 10 years.
The sheer scale of underfunding that the system faces has a direct impact on the lives of people in need of social care. Cutting an hour here may mean that a person with a learning disability cannot meet their family or friends for lunch. Cutting an hour there may mean that a young person with a learning disability has no choice but to go to bed at eight o’clock on Saturday night. People rely on social care to access ordinary life opportunities, to live the “gloriously ordinary life” envisaged in the report and to become part of their local community—not simply to survive but to live and thrive in meaningful relationships with other people, and to live a life of their choice, as the noble Lord, Lord Bradley, said, rather than one in which a social worker decides how Care Act-assessed needs will be met by a direct payment. Does the Minister agree with me that that is not the spirit of the Care Act?
I want to mention David Towell, whose work with colleagues at the King’s Fund in 1980 kickstarted the ordinary life movement. Their work was a response to successive scandals and inquiries which exposed cruelty and neglect for many of the 50,000 people with learning disabilities then living in long-stay hospitals. They wanted to provide an alternative vision and model of care. Dr Towell’s book, An Ordinary Life in Practice, was published in 1988. In it he said:
“We want to see people with learning disabilities ‘in the mainstream of life, living in ordinary houses and ordinary streets, with the same range of choices as any citizen, and mixing as equals with the other members … of their own community’”.
This philosophy went on to inform many initiatives, including the 2001 Valuing People White Paper and its principles of rights, independence, choice and inclusion. These values were strongly spelled out in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which we ratified in 2009.
The report highlights some wonderful initiatives, such as the Wigan Deal and Think Local Act Personal, which genuinely understand coproduction. But the social care system struggles to have the aspiration of an ordinary life any more because of the systemic issues outlined in the report and the urgent need for reform and culture change. This means learning to listen, particularly to the most ignored and marginalised communities, where the path to tackling injustice is that much higher and more difficult. The true state of social care requires pausing to look deeply at the sector and identify what is working and what is not. A key part of that is looking at the issues facing the workforce. Skills for Care estimates that there are more than 150,000 vacancies in the social care sector, and I welcome the committee’s recommendation for
“a comprehensive long-term national workforce and skills plan for adult social care”.
Without this, how could the significant issues of recruitment and retention be solved?
Roles in social care are highly skilled and vocational. Pay rates and training have fallen behind other sectors, but look at how social care has become a valued profession in Germany. We could transform it if we wanted to. In this country, the invisibility of care as a valued profession, compared with similar roles in the NHS, is one significant reason why people cannot stay in the job they love. The Care Act sets out a good legislative framework, but its spirit is not being adhered to. An audit cycle needs to be used effectively in adult social care: implement, review and change. This is the only way to ensure that lasting and meaningful change can take place. Legislation is just the start. I fear that, without political will to tackle these thorny issues, social care will remain invisible and broken. Remember that better lives lead to better health.
Lord Weir of Ballyholme (DUP)
My Lords, I too commend this report and thank the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, and the committee for producing it, not simply in my capacity as a Member of this House but as a former carer of my late mother.
The report is deeply prescient. For too long, the issue of the need for change in adult social care has been long-fingered, and it is understandable why parties of different complexions have not grasped the issue, given the toxicity particularly around how we pay for the additional needs of adult social care. But that luxury of putting things on the long finger is something that we cannot afford to ignore any longer.
Mention has been made of an estimated 10 million people in this country being impacted by adult social care, and that number is set to grow almost exponentially, particularly as we see advances in medical science which mean that people will die less of particular conditions but will have to live with them. Nowhere is that more pertinent than with dementia and Alzheimer’s, where the numbers are probably set to double in the next few years.
In the time available to me, I want to touch on three aspects of the report. The first is the need for codesign in any plan for care—codesign with carers and also those in receipt of care. If we simply look for a one-size-fits-all solution for individuals, it will not work; similarly, if we simply seek to impose it on people, it will be a recipe for disaster.
Secondly, we need a consistency of approach across the country. We are all too aware, as is highlighted by the report itself, that for many people the quality and quantity of availability of adult social care is a postcode lottery. I know that, even in Northern Ireland, where there is a greater level of co-ordination, because health and social care are within the same department, that is no guarantee of a perfectly consistent result. I was very fortunate in my own circumstances that the company providing the care for my mother was a very good one, but I know that if I was maybe 10 or 15 miles either side of where I live, that level of care might not necessarily have been available.
As indicated by the report, we need investment in the extent of training required for the workforce—and, frankly, we need to raise the salaries of the workforce to ensure that we attract and retain sufficient numbers to be able to provide that level of social care. On consistency of provision, we need to ensure that the pathways for carers are clear and that it is easy to obtain help. As someone who was an elected representative, filling in the forms and accessing the care was quite easy for me—but many others are left in a very difficult position. I also know that, perhaps because of the level of support that I and my family were able to give my mother through finances and savings, we were able to bridge the gap between what could be afforded and what was required. But for many families that is not available.
Thirdly, we need a level of co-ordination in the system. I have mentioned that in Northern Ireland health and social care are within the one system. That in itself is not a panacea for all issues—but we have seen in a whole range of health issues that within the broader health service there is a level of silo mentality that still maintains. A number of us had a meeting today about palliative care, where again the failure perhaps to realise where there can be investment to save and to ensure a co-ordinated approach damages what can be provided and the quality of that provision.
The report highlights a cocktail of measures that are required to improve adult social care. Ultimately, it requires all of us to commit to a step change in what we can provide in adult social care. I agree with the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Polak, when he talked about the need to take the politics out of this issue. Rather than try to create a political football in which we blame one party or another, we need to work together to try to deliver a consensus. It is often said that we have a health service in this country that is in danger of being broken. If we do not tackle properly adult social care, it will not be a question of it simply being broken—it will be irretrievably and irreversibly unfixable.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Andrews and her committee on producing such an excellent and thought-provoking report. I will add a bit of my own experience; in my family, there is a person in receipt of social care and an unpaid carer, so I have lived with this issue, as it were, over some years.
I will talk about invisibility in a minute, but first I make a plea: we need more hard data on the nature of the field. I talked some years ago to a professor who pleaded desperately that we need the data so that we can make harder decisions. Most of it is based on estimates and a bit of speculation. Hard data would be extremely helpful.
I approve entirely of the recommendation that there should be a commissioner for care and support. I know that the Government do not like it; it might make the task of the Government and the Minister a bit more difficult, but it would be very healthy to have someone who can pull this together and be an advocate as the Children’s Commissioner is for children, as my noble friend Lord Bradley said. That would be a good move forward.
I turn to the invisibility of unpaid carers. One reason why they are invisible is that they do not have a voice, because they are so beaten down by day-to-day pressures. They can hardly surface at all, even to lead their own lives for a few minutes every day, so they do not have a voice to speak up. If they could, they would say many things with a lot of passion and emotion. Some of the people they care for are also not very articulate; they are too ill and vulnerable. The professional carers are so busy and underpaid that they too are invisible, because they cannot speak up either. The people who speak up in our society are those who have some space in their lives. People who do not cannot speak up.
I think £76 a week for an unpaid carer is derisory. I know one person—there must be many—who has had to give up all work to be a full-time unpaid carer, so she will not have a pension at all. Can a person live on £76.75 a week? If I have got the figure wrong, the Minister will correct me. There is also the stress that unpaid carers have to undergo and the difficulty of getting a break. Maybe once every two or three years they get a bit of respite care; most of us get a good holiday and we do not even work under such pressure. Goodness me, unpaid carers do. Some of them work flat out virtually seven days a week, so it is no wonder that they need respite care so much, but they get it very seldom.
We need a workforce plan for professional carers. We need to make what they do a profession, with training and a decent level of pay. We need a plan to look at how the whole sector operates and why there is such a low rate of retention—at why it is easier for a paid carer to stack shelves in a supermarket because they can earn more money. Stacking shelves in the supermarket is important, but what sort of society are we when that forced preference is imposed on some unpaid carers? We need a workforce plan.
Finally, there is a need for independence. People can be properly independent by being at home as much as possible and by having the support to lead their lives there. Surely that must be the aim. It is a great report and I hope it will make a difference.
Lord Allan of Hallam (LD)
My Lords, I also congratulate the committee on a very comprehensive and useful report. My noble friend Lady Barker is very sorry that she cannot be here, due to family emergency—rather illustrating the point of the noble Lord, Lord Bradley, that caring affects all of us at various times in our lives. I am sure that she will listen to the debate later and certainly appreciate the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Polak, about the usefulness of her contribution to the committee.
I will pick up on three issues we need to hear more about from the Government. I agreed with the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews; I looked at the government response and it is very much, “We have got this; it is under control”. However, I do not think they have got this, and we need to hear more from them.
The first issue is around population care needs assessments. The point about data has been raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Fraser, and the noble Lords, Lord Polak and Lord Dubs. I do not think it is a data problem. We are swimming in data. We need the more useful offspring of data, which is information. The Government are, we think, about to spend £500 million to try and transform the health system’s data into useful information. The question has already been raised, however, about whether that will be integrated with care data and whether we can get useful care information out of that kind of project.
I hope the Minister can talk some more about what commitment the Government have to extracting useful care needs assessment information from the data that the ONS and others have already. For example, I saw in the report that the first projections are around people who do not have children; the Office of National Statistics already has that data, so we need to take that and transform it into something useful in the context of care. In doing that, the assessments need to be brutally honest. There is no room for fake optimism here. We need to know what the real needs are and those projections going forward. The old maxim of hoping for the best but planning for the worst is particularly relevant in these contexts.
Having done those population care needs assessments, the next stage is the workforce plan. Now we have a sense of how much care we are going to need, we can start to plan for the numbers of people we will need to meet those requirements. It is really important we are not overoptimistic, and visas for overseas care workers have been mentioned a few times. In an ideal world, it would be great if we were able to get the care workers we needed domestically, but we should be brutally honest if we are not going to meet the requirements. Let us not gloss over it: we should continually evaluate those needs and adjust the visa regime accordingly.
I know this is very sensitive, particularly in the Conservative Party, but we need those care workers. It is not like fruit picking. We cannot say, “We will just not grow the fruit any more if we cannot get the fruit pickers”. These are people who need care. We need to be honest about the balance between those we can train domestically and those we will need to provide visas for because the care needs delivering now; it cannot necessarily wait.
The ageing population is going to be a problem here. More and more people are going to do the informal care and, precisely because of that, be no longer available to enter the market as a paid-for care worker. Again, we need to be honest about the changing demographics and how they will change the availability of workers. It is not going to be like it is today in 10 or 20 years’ time. If there are more people in their 40s and 50s looking after people in their 70s and 80s, that may have an impact on the very workforce we are trying to target in our plans.
The third area is pay. Again, having worked out the needs assessment and the plan for the workforce we need, we need to think about how to attract people into the profession. This affects both paid and unpaid workers, as has been raised in the debate. Both the wage rates for the paid workers and the support available for the unpaid workers matter.
I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, will be happy when I say I am very confident that my party will have a proposal around care in our election manifesto. We have already said that we think there needs to be a higher living wage available for care workers, and we should be talking about that now because that is the only way we are going to solve the crisis. If we are going to will the ends, we have to will the means. I hope the Minister can say that. I have heard him say it all before and he will cite the big numbers the Government have already put in, but those numbers need to be set against inflation and other pressures that have been eating away at the value of those salaries. There needs to be something more fundamental than just saying, “Here is another announcement of a big number”.
The final area is one that has been raised with me, which is the question around who provides care to individuals. This is a question of the choice of carer gender for intimate personal care. It is a very sensitive issue and I do not want to go into the broader issues around gender and identity. Something very specific, though, that has been raised is that there are people—particularly those who have long-term intimate care needs, because they are often younger people with disabilities—who may not be able to choose the gender of the carer who provides that care to them.
I think we can all understand why that is a very sensitive area. Part of the solution is to have a bigger workforce available: if there is more choice of carers out there, it will enable people to exercise a choice over the gender of the person who provides personal intimate care. That is important because there have, sadly, been incidences of abuse. It is also a matter of the right of an individual and their own self-determination that they have some choice over who provides care to them.
I close by thanking the committee and the many members who are here today for a report that is of great benefit to anyone who is trying to understand and respond to the ongoing crisis in care in this country. The noble Lord, Lord Polak, talked about a guide: this is a guide for us as policymakers. I recognise the need for a guide for the person trying to employ carers, but this is a great guide for us as policymakers to the key questions we should be asking. I hope that the Minister will be able to offer some constructive comments on the points I have raised around population needs assessments, care workforce planning and ensuring that carers are properly rewarded.
Baroness Wheeler (Lab)
My Lords, we have had an excellent but very sobering debate, throwing the spotlight on the current state of adult social care, against the backdrop of the committee’s landmark report on what the service could look like now and in the future—if the people needing support and care were properly enabled to live the “gloriously ordinary life” which my noble friend Lady Andrews and the committee so expertly advocate.
The report was the central focus of Labour’s major debate on social care in March, and I am pleased committee members have again spoken in support of it today, across the range of vital issues the report addresses. They have all praised my noble friend’s expert chairing of the committee and her excellent introduction. As I have stressed, there is no better person to lead this authoritative cross-party group, and I pay tribute not just to that expertise and wisdom, but to the tenacity and determination she has shown ever since in making sure its key findings and recommendations have been disseminated and discussed across the sector and in Parliament.
I am also very pleased that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield has reminded us about the excellent report from the Church’s Reimagining Care Commission, which very much shared the values and principles espoused by our own committee. I again applaud the vital work that faith committees do to help plug the enormous gaps locally in social care provision, and welcome further discussion on how the proposed national care covenant could help reinforce making social care the national imperative it needs to be.
Before the March debate, we were still awaiting the Government’s formal response to the report, which, as we have now heard was wholly underwhelming and disappointing when it was finally published in May. We were also expecting what was heavily trailed in the press at the time as the imminent publication of the Government’s long-awaited 10-year social care plan, which we all recall had been supposedly scrunched up in Boris Johnson’s back pocket way back in 2010. The Government’s 2021 White Paper had been strong on a vision of what social care could look like, but only partial as a future plan and on the issues it actually addressed. It was also decidedly lacking on how today’s and tomorrow’s demands for social care could be met, addressed and funded, or how it fitted in with the then proposals on the care cap costs, or with the fair cost of care proposals. These were delayed a year later in the Chancellor’s budget until October 2024, with the spending reallocated to keep the social care system afloat and to finance reform.
What we actually got in the 2023 next steps follow up, published during the April Recess, was largely more of the same—baby steps, as they have been described—a two-year plan rather than 10 years or addressing the longer term, and cuts or doubts raised over some of the promised White Paper funding. We again had the welcome—but still unplanned—sticking plaster funding solution: disjointed, stop-start, short-term crisis reactions, which continued to fail to identify and deliver solutions to the root causes facing older and disabled people. The short termism was met with universal dismay by the sector, with ADASS lamenting that the reform vision was “in tatters”.
The urgent need for a comprehensive national plan is where the Lords committee report so strongly comes in. It is a major piece of work because it leads the way on reform and the clear stepping stones that are needed. The committee is to be congratulated on its depth of analysis and its understanding of the extent and reach of social care, impacting 10 million of us at any one time, including those receiving care and support, and unpaid carers and families looking after loved ones.
Its focuses—on giving disabled people and people with learning difficulties, drawing on care and support, the same choice and control over their lives as other people; on fair pay and recognition for care workers; and on support for unpaid care workers—are the key fundamentals for social care reform, which we fully support. It builds on the current legislative framework for care eligibility and entitlement, achieved through cross-party support for the Care Act 2014, and promotes social care’s positive benefits as an essential service benefiting people, society and the economy, not just as ancillary to the NHS, as my noble friend Lady Andrews so ably stressed.
Today’s reality remains that demand for social care is now hitting a record high—the current picture so expertly underlined by noble Lords. As the King’s Fund has summed up, the trends in social care are still all going in the wrong direction: demand is up and access is down; financial eligibility is tighter and charging reform has been put back; the costs of delivering care are rising, with local authorities paying more for care home places and home care support; the workforce is in crisis; unpaid carers are receiving less support; and public satisfaction with social care is lower than ever.
On unpaid carers, I again reiterate and endorse what all noble Lords have referred to on the urgent need for action on carer’s allowance, paid leave, respite care and pensions. In particular, I commend my noble friend Lord Dubs, who is not only a wonderful person but, as we heard, a carer for many years who has, like many of us, taken on the system and negotiated around it to try to get both the services our loved ones need and the practical recognition of unpaid carers. Carers UK has called on the Government to publish an updated and comprehensive national carers strategy, which has to be part of a comprehensive plan for social care. I look forward to the Minister’s response to that.
We know that the social care staffing crisis is worsening daily, despite the tiny drop—less than 1%—in overall vacancies, largely through the increase in the international recruitment that social care has always depended on and valued. Last week’s Skills for Care annual survey reinforced the overall picture all too dramatically. Of particular concern were the 390,000 social care workers leaving their jobs annually, with a third leaving the service completely—social care’s “leaky bucket” in urgent need of repair, as Skills for Care put it. That is why our shadow Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting’s landmark speech at last week’s Labour Party conference, setting out detailed future plans for gripping the NHS crisis, so forcefully stressed that there is no solution to that crisis without an integrated plan for social care running alongside.
Our new deal for care workers is our essential first step for tackling the crisis by addressing recruitment and retention and giving social care workers the professional status that they deserve and the first ever fair pay agreement for care workers, collectively negotiated across the sector. Skills for Care sums up the essential steps to recruitment and retention as paying above the national minimum wage, ending zero-hours contracts and providing access to training and relevant qualifications—all of which Labour is pledged to address.
When the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan was finally published in July, my noble friend Lady Merron questioned the Minister as to why it did not cover the social care workforce, as the two services are so inextricably linked. His response was that, as the Government were not the overall employer,
“it is not for us to make that plan”.—[Official Report, 4/7/23; col. 1178.]
Does the Minister not recognise that an NHS-only plan is likely to exacerbate the social care workforce crisis and the number of vacancies in that sector? Is it not the Government’s responsibility to ensure that local authorities are properly funded to pay social care contractors in care homes and domiciliary services at least the minimum wage, and to monitor this so that quality care can be provided? The committee identifies a massive 29% overall reduction in local government funding since 2010 and the precarious position that local councils find themselves in as providers of domiciliary and community care and care homes. My noble friend Lady Goudie spoke very forcefully on that.
Labour has also made clear the need, if elected, for fundamental reform and change to the current business model for residential care, which sees many private equity care homes, despite getting around £314 million in public funding each year, spending hundreds of millions servicing debts, giving bonuses to shareholders and avoiding tax. It is hard to understand why hundreds of millions of pounds go out of the service in that way. According to the CQC, one in seven private equity-owned care homes is not providing good levels of care. How long do the Government think that this model of funding for care homes can continue to plough money not into the social care sector but into shareholder profits?
The key message to the Government from the committee and today’s debate is still that reform and change for social care has to be whole-systemwide, long-term, joined-up, comprehensive, integrated care at home in the community to tackle the myriad fundamental problems in the system and deliver a new deal for care workers and unpaid carers. Instead of just keeping the current system afloat with short-term funding, stop/start changes and delayed reform, social care deserves much better and the step-by-step investment and reform that the Labour Party is so strongly committed to.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Markham) (Con)
I add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, and all the participants involved in putting together the reports of both the Lords committee and the Archbishops’ committee. I thank Members for an expansive and extensive debate today. We also had a good debate on this in the spring and a good round table on all this, where we were able to take to heart the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Polak, about taking the politics out of the debate. I commend all those speaking in the House on this today for having taken that approach. I know that in all our dealings, the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, takes that approach, and it is much appreciated.
I also say that the thrust of what we are trying to do is taking to heart the Archbishops’ report, where care is everyone’s business, whether that is citizens, families, neighbours or carers, and based very much, as the noble Lord, Lord Weir, said, on the concept of co-design, working with the local partners, the local authorities and integrated care system. I will also try to tackle head-on the challenge of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, about the policies we feel that, as well as implementing today, we plan to take into the next election as a whole-systemwide approach.
Of course, as mentioned by many noble Lords, this has to start with funding. We have made up to £8.1 billion more available over the next two years. To answer the point of the noble Lord, Lord Allan, I say that funding in recent years represents a real-terms increase of about 2.5% per annum. This will allow local authorities to buy more care packages, help people to leave hospital on time, improve workforce recruitment and retention and reduce waiting times for care. We are also trying to use the money to transform the adult care system, for which we have a £700 million targeted spend on improving care workers’ skills, supporting career progression and investing in technology in digitisation and adapting people’s homes to allow them to live more independently. I will give details on each of those as we go through it all. As mentioned by many speakers, key to that is our £2 billion market sustainability and improvement fund, which is designed to impact and work on reform and improvement of the whole workforce recruitment and retention. I will write to the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, on how the funding is specifically distributed so that that detail is understood.
We really believe in this vision to transform social care in England. It is a long-term vision which puts people at the centre of adult social care, to make sure that we can draw on the care support and include the absolute necessity of unpaid carers’ role in all that. I say that as someone who was an unpaid carer to good, dear friends of mine for many years.
We want to make sure that people can access outstanding quality in tailored care and support and find adult social care in a fair and accessible way, try to make it joined up in how we do it all and, I think for the first time, really try to involve the CQC in making assessments and ratings to guide where local authorities and local ICBs are doing a good job and where there are areas of improvement. I know that there are many concerns about the burdens that sometimes puts on a system which is always stretched, but I think noble Lords would also agree that inspections are typically a force for good in analysing those areas that are good and those that really need more work and improvement.
Of course, all this would be backed by much better data provision. Therefore, we are investing about £50 million into this area. I will begin by talking more about career progression, to answer some of the staffing points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews. Key to improving workforce retention is better training, recognition and career progression. The £250 million spend that was mentioned by my noble friend Lady Fraser goes very much to the heart of the training and retention of these people.
As many noble Lords mentioned, fundamental to all that is a career structure that staff feel goes beyond the particular care home that they are in and which they can take forward. Key to that is the creation of a new care certificate qualification, allowing them to move from place to place without needing to retrain each time. It is a modular system, so if they want to they can build that into an overall nursing qualification. Alongside that, we are ensuring that we are providing subsidised training programmes to decrease the turnover. We have modelled that to show that we can improve this by about nine percentage points.
Many comments have been made about how we are going to fill these workforce vacancies. The current run rate in terms of international recruitment is about 150,000 a year. I know that many comments have been made about how good it is that these are filled largely by international people, but that is a function of having a successful economy with full employment—you look to fulfil that. This has been the background to the whole health and social care system, right back to its foundations and a substantial part of the recruitment in the 1950s and 1960s. It brought people to the UK who have been an asset to the life and society that we have today. I had better say that, being married to one of these people, but I feel and hope that this should be the backbone of it and a successful way forward.
Also, it is important to understand the key role that unpaid carers play in this all. We are trying to help in this space. I perfectly understand that whatever we do here will not take the place of a full-time wage. I accept that but I hope that noble Lords will see that we are trying to make steps in the right direction. To answer the question raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, about the ability to offer respite care, we have earmarked £327 million of the better care fund towards providing those breaks. It is £76 plus the ability to claim benefits on top of that. I will not pretend that this completely compensates for a national wage, but it is not £76 alone. On the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Davies, about pension flexibilities, I hope that we showed in the case of the doctors that we could be quite creative in that space. I will take that back and ask people who are more knowledgeable in this space than I am to take a proper look at it.
Of course, in all of this, there is the importance of supporting all these people in terms of the digital side. We have invested almost £50 million in the last year to improve the level of digitisation. It now stands at about 55%. I freely admit that 55% is not 100% but it is a big move in that direction and, to answer the points raised by the noble Lords, Lord Dubs and Lord Allan, it is something that we see as critical to the planning and provision of care, where it really can provide that information so you can plan around it.
It can also provide information to make smarter planning decisions. Again, I have seen excellent examples of putting all this data together; places such as Redhill have used it as part of its preventive screening programmes. There is a tremendous opportunity, as we build these bigger databases and include social care, to use that as the key to the prevention programme in which I know noble Lords believe.
The point made by both the noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, and the noble Lord, Lord Polak, was how we can use that to allow people to stay in the place where they most want to be, their home environment. The answer comes from not just using the data and AI to look at prevention tools; the latest funding bid launches technologies that we want to use to help people stay in their home environments. One particularly good example I have seen is a very simple tool that looks at people’s electricity usage each day. They know from people’s patterns that there is a normally a big spike at 8 am, when they turn the kettle on. If they see that that is not the case one day, they know to make a call to that person and check whether it is not because they have had a fall; it could be because they have visited a relative. This can be done on a mass-produced scale, which would give people support and early warnings, when people are at the lighter end of the scale and do not need substantial support. Relatives, local authorities and local bodies would feel that there are those extra guard-rails around this.
I will address the point made by the noble Lords, Lord Bradley and Lord Dubs, about the champion role. This was considered as it was a large part of the report. We have a champion in place in the roles of the chief nurse and the Chief Social Worker for Adults. That is a key part of their roles. I am sure noble Lords will join me in thanking Lyn Romeo for the role she has played in the last 10 years. She retires towards the end of this year.
As ever, because of the brief time we have had, I plan to write in detail to answer all the points I was not able to cover. I have tried to set out what we see as the four pillars: stable funding, a stable workforce, digital enablement and the principle of coproduction in which everyone has a role, as was outlined in the most reverend Primates’ report—because care is everyone’s business.
Baroness Andrews (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his thoughtful reply. I should have thanked him at the beginning for making this time available. We had a good round table, and we share a huge number of concerns and an understanding of where things need to be done and can be improved. I will briefly come on to the points where we disagree.
I re-endorse the point my noble friend Lady Goudie made about the evidence we received. Some of the stories we heard about the daily lives of unpaid carers— and we heard a lot of them—were totally astonishing. I would have liked every Member of this House to have heard what people do as a labour of love and how modest their ask is. We should simply respect that they have an expertise that is often ignored. As was eloquently said by the noble Lord, Lord Polak, they do not know who to ask or where to go, and this becomes exhausting and defeating. If we have achieved nothing else from this excellent debate, I hope that any unpaid carer listening knows that we have the experience and empathy across the House to understand this and to want to change the conditions under which they are living and caring.
There has been an astonishing range of experience around the House tonight. There has been passion, of course, and a great understanding of what caring involves, because so many people have been involved. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Dubs and everyone else around the Chamber who has had that experience.
I think that what we have all been saying to the Minister is that we respect what the department has been trying to do; we know that it is an extraordinarily difficult task. It is always more difficult and slower to make policy than anyone anticipates, but we are not asking for a great vision; we are asking—without false optimism, with realism but with real urgency—that we step up. We cannot do the incremental thing anymore; it is not working, and it will not work for the future. We can use all sorts of expressions such as “turning up the dial”, but we are all saying the same thing: that there really needs to be a different energy and focus. That is why I return to the point about the champion, the commissioner—there is a lot of support for it around the House and there would be if the House was full. With great respect to the post of chief nurse, it does not do what we want. It needs someone to represent all that potential and frustration and to say, “There’s the good practice; that’s how you do it.” We have heard the example of Wigan from the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, and there was much good practice referred to in the report.
We have heard some terrific ideas which we did not put into the report, such as filling in the pension gap, and we have heard a lot about the deep complexity. The reason it has not been resolved is that it is difficult, but recognising the difficulty, the realism, is not an excuse for not dealing with it. I sense around the House, and it is common to all parties, that the time has come to make this a national imperative.
I want to thank again everyone who has spoken for their wisdom and for their practical and inspirational contributions, in every respect. It will not be the last time we debate this subject. I just hope that by the time we debate it next we will have a clearer relationship between the vision and the practical implementation of what we would all like to see.