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Speaker’s Statement
(1 year ago)
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Mr Speaker
Order. I would like to make a short statement.
I do not usually discuss urgent questions, but today I received one and rather than discuss the matter in the Chamber, I thought it would be better for me to set out my thoughts on a particular issue that involves procedures of this House.
The House will be aware that the Prime Minister has today appointed the right hon. David Cameron as Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs. This is not the first time in recent years that a Cabinet Minister has been appointed in the House of Lords but, given the gravity of the current international situation, it is especially important that this House is able to scrutinise the work of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office effectively.
I have therefore commissioned advice from the Clerks about possible options for enhancing scrutiny of the work of the Foreign Secretary when that post is filled by a Member of the other House. I also look forward to hearing the Government’s proposals on how the Foreign Secretary will be properly accountable to this House. I do not propose to respond to points of order on this subject today, until the advice I have referred to has been received and until I have heard the Government’s own proposals, but I can assure the House that I am fully aware of the need for hon. and right hon. Members to be able to hold the Government to account in this area, especially at the current time, and I shall do everything I can to ensure that they are able to do so.
As colleagues will know, the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee is elected each Session. Nominations are now open and will close at 1pm on Wednesday 15 November. Nomination forms are available from the Vote Office, the Table Office and the Public Bill Office. Only Members from the party not representing Government may be candidates. Candidates need the support of no fewer than 10 Members from the Government side of the House and no fewer than 10 Members from the party not representing the Government or from no party. If there is more than one candidate, the ballot will take place on Wednesday 22 November from 11am to 1pm in the Aye Lobby.
Oral Answers to Questions
(1 year ago)
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Simon Jupp (East Devon) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mel Stride)
We take the challenges of the menopause very seriously, which is why the Government appointed Helen Tomlinson as the menopause employment champion for England. In terms of progress, I point my hon. Friend to the report, “No Time to Step Back”.
Simon Jupp
I welcome the work by campaigners and Devon’s NHS to improve access to menopause services in Devon. Almost 80% of menopausal women are in work, yet all too often support can be lacking. What steps is my right hon. Friend taking to raise menopause awareness among employers?
Mel Stride
I thank my hon. Friend for his question and for his extensive work as my constituency neighbour, pushing for proper support in all GP practices across the county. We lead by example: 64% of the Department’s staff are female and we have a menopause and workplace policy, which sees 350 menopause ambassadors across our DWP network.
Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)
Almost 900,000 women in the UK have quit their jobs due to the menopause. The right to flexible work is a key part of tackling economic inactivity, and it would particularly benefit people managing menopause symptoms. What conversations have taken place between Cabinet colleagues on removing the onus on employees to request flexible working and instead ensuring that that is provided as a day one right, by default?
Mel Stride
The hon. Lady’s question is best directed to the Department for Business and Trade rather than DWP, as it relates to employment legislation and regulation. However, I am pleased to tell her that we have our 50PLUS champions, work champions in our jobcentres, the Midlife MOT and many other measures that are there to help exactly the people she describes.
Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mel Stride)
We have a number of projects that use artificial intelligence within the Department to drive performance, efficiency and the service we provide to our customers. One important point to bear in mind is that we never replace a human when it comes to judgments relating to a claim or an appeal.
Stephen Metcalfe
Will my right hon. Friend tell the House what assessment he has made of the potential merits of the use of AI in fraud protection? How will his Department ensure that appropriate safety measures are in place?
Mel Stride
Let me take the second of my hon. Friend’s points first. As I have outlined, there is always human intervention when it is appropriate. None the less, he is quite right to raise the issue of fraud and error. We have seen a reduction in the Department over the past year of some 10% across the benefit system, and much of that has been driven by machine learning and data analytics.
Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)
Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)
Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)
Keir Mather (Selby and Ainsty) (Lab)
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mel Stride)
Child poverty and its reduction is absolutely core to the mission of my Department, which is why we have focused on cost of living payments, why we have put up benefits across the board by 10.1% and why the Chancellor announced £3.5 billion in the spring statement to support our back to work programmes to raise people out of poverty.
Tonia Antoniazzi
One of the crowning achievements of the previous Labour Government was to lift 1 million children out of poverty. How does the Secretary of State think that that compares with the Conservatives’ record given that new figures show that children are experiencing destitution, and that that has actually tripled since 2017?
Mel Stride
I think that our record is extremely clear. Since 2010, we have 1.7 million fewer people in absolute poverty, 400,000 fewer children in absolute poverty, and 200,000 fewer pensioners in absolute poverty. Under Labour’s watch, we had 1 million people parked on long-term sickness benefits for more than 10 years.
Liz Twist
There has been a shameful increase in the level of destitution in the UK, with 1 million children not having their basic needs met. In my constituency of Blaydon, nine children in every classroom are living in poverty. Across the north-east, there has been a 12% increase in emergency food bank parcels in the past year. Does the Minister agree that his Government have completely failed the most vulnerable children in the UK?
Mel Stride
No, I am afraid that I cannot agree with that at all. I have just gone through the various figures pointing to the decline in the level of absolute poverty, including 400,000 fewer children in absolute poverty since the hon. Lady’s party was last in Government. The cost of living payments, the increase in the level of benefits, and the £3.5 billion that the Chancellor has made available to help people back into work are helping to drive poverty figures in the right direction.
Fleur Anderson
The Minister’s responses are disappointing. If the Government do not recognise the problem of child poverty in this country, how will they fix it? One million children experienced destitution in the UK last year. Organisations such as Chantelle’s Community Kitchen, Little Village and Wandsworth Foodbank in my constituency work tirelessly to fill in the gaps, but they say that there is increasing hardship and they are worried about the winter ahead. What impact does the Minister think that crashing the economy and unleashing a cost of living crisis have had on child poverty?
Mel Stride
The common theme in all the questions that we have had on this substantive question is a lack of memory as to what happened under the previous Labour Government. Under that Government, we had 1 million more workless households and 680,000 more children in those workless households.
Keir Mather
In the past six months, the Trussell Trust has issued 769 emergency food parcels for children in my constituency. In some schools that I visit, teachers bring food from their homes to feed hungry kids. Will the Minister step up and take responsibility for this, or, instead, move out of the way for a Labour Government committed to making child poverty a thing of the past?
Mel Stride
Heaven forbid that we do have another Labour Government, Mr Speaker, because I have just set out the case against the last one and their appalling record on poverty. When it comes to cost of living payments, those went to 8 million low-income households and to 6 million people with disabilities. There will be further payments of £300 for pensioners alongside the winter fuel payment in the coming months.
Mr Dhesi
I wish to draw your attention, Mr Speaker, to a very distressing case in my Slough constituency. A single mother, a victim of domestic violence, is struggling to pay her rent and meet basic needs due to cuts in her universal credit after being compelled to find part-time work. Her living conditions, including mould in her home, are very badly affecting the health of her children. Will the Secretary of State explain how current policies are helping to support such vulnerable families, and what immediate measures will he put in place to ensure that we do not have such dire situations of destitution?
Mel Stride
I cannot comment on the specific case that the hon. Gentleman has put forward, other than to say that what he has described is of concern to me and I will want us to look into that extremely carefully. I will be happy to make sure that he has the appropriate time with the appropriate Minister—I think the Minister for Employment—to look into those matters.
Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)
In “A Christmas Carol”, published 180 years ago, Charles Dickens wrote of a world where children lacked shelter, clothing, heating and food. They were represented by a boy called Ignorance and a girl called Want. Dickens died in 1870 and we live in the sixth-largest economy in the world, so why, in 2022, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, did 1 million children experience the type of destitution he chronicled long ago? We have heard the Minister quote figures and programmes, and launch attacks on previous Governments, but simply, as a human, would he not agree that just one child living in destitution is one child too many?
Mel Stride
I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman that one child in destitution is one too many. One person in poverty is one too many. One person who is unemployed and badly wants a job to support their family is one too many. The question we have to ask is how best to go about improving those situations. I say it is through encouraging people into work and through those cost of living transfer payments for those targeted through universal credit, which his party originally opposed, so that we can help those who are most vulnerable and most in need.
David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)
The cost of living crisis is plunging many families into destitution. We know from the JRF that 1.8 million households and 1 million children were plunged into destitution last year. Will Secretary of State use the upcoming autumn statement to bring forward the mortgage interest tax relief and action to tackle soaring food prices, and to reintroduce that £400 energy bill rebate? Otherwise, more and more children will fall into destitution. He has the power—will he respond at the autumn statement?
Mel Stride
The hon. Gentleman raises mortgage payments in particular; we have extended the scope of the support for mortgage interest arrangements, particularly for those who have not long been on universal credit. I cannot comment on what may or may not be in the autumn statement, but I can assure him that the kind of issues he has raised are always at the centre of our thinking.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Tom Pursglove)
The Department closely monitors all aspects of the assessment process, including how we assess fluctuating health conditions such as multiple sclerosis. Following the publication of the recent White Paper, we are looking at ways to further enhance the delivery of personal independence payments to all disabled people.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
Orkney has the highest prevalence of multiple sclerosis anywhere in the world, so we have seen the problems caused by PIP assessments that do not cope properly with fluctuating conditions. We now have the adult disability payment in Scotland, but that still uses some of the same eligibility criteria. As the Minister carries out the review, will he speak to Scottish Ministers to make sure that we have a system that works for every MS sufferer, wherever they are in the United Kingdom?
Tom Pursglove
It is fair to say that I have a collaborative and strong working relationship with Ministers in the Scottish Government, and I would definitely be keen to talk them about the tests and trials that we are introducing, which I hope will help to better capture fluctuating conditions and help people to provide all of the right evidence as early as possible in the claim journey, so that we get people’s awards rights and make the right decisions. We should certainly look to work UK-wide where we can.
Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)
Learning the lessons of our changes to special rules for the terminally ill and the principles of the severe conditions criteria should allow us to look at those who sadly have degenerative conditions such as MS and motor neurone disease. Will the Minister confirm that, as part of the testing and piloting, the Department is looking at the potential for automatic entitlement for those with degenerative conditions, which would lift around a quarter of a million people a year out of unnecessary assessments?
Tom Pursglove
My hon. Friend has been a strong advocate for the severe disability group work that we have been taking forward. I am pleased to be able to say that Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and the British Society of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine have agreed to work in partnership with the DWP to test the SDG. Reducing the assessment burden where it is inappropriate, and ensuring that people get the right support and help, is the right thing to do.
Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
The Minister for Employment (Guy Opperman)
We are working with UK Hospitality and local providers up and down the country—from Liverpool to Manchester to Coventry; in London, of course; and also, to come, in Wales—to ensure that we have a hospitality work programme that provides employment training, work experience and a guaranteed job interview. It is free for all DWP jobseekers. It is early days, but the signs are promising.
Nickie Aiken
May I first thank the Minister for Employment for joining me this morning at Ben Venuti, a brilliant café and deli in Pimlico, to celebrate hospitality in Cities of London and Westminster? I am delighted that the hospitality SWAP pilot has been launched in my constituency, where we have thousands and thousands of hospitality jobs. One of the businesses involved in the pilot is the Raffles London hotel, just up the road at the Old War Office, which I visited with UK Hospitality recently. What further steps is the Department taking to ensure that the scheme benefits minorities and those struggling the most with the cost of living crisis?
Guy Opperman
It was a tough ministerial visit to an award-winning coffee shop this morning—somehow, I missed the earlier hotel visit. I can assure my hon. Friend that we are driving forward that hospitality pilot to try to tackle the recruitment issues in that vital sector, which permeate all across the United Kingdom. She will be keen to know that every person who passes gets a hospitality skills passport, which we believe can genuinely make a difference across all age groups and all sections of the community.
Michael Shanks (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab)
The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Tom Pursglove)
May I start by welcoming the hon. Gentleman to his place in this House? The work capability assessment is a functional assessment based on how a person’s condition affects them, not on the condition itself. Work capability assessors have training across a range of health conditions, including neurological conditions, and can access a range of resources that have been quality-assured by relevant external clinicians.
Michael Shanks
My entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests has not been published yet, but I am a trustee of an epilepsy charity. I thank the Minister for his welcome and for that answer, but for people with neurological conditions, particularly multiple sclerosis and epilepsy, the condition is not uniform. One week they might be affected in one way, and the next week in a different way. so the capability assessments have to match that so that they meet people’s capabilities as they are. The published consultation on reforming the assessments is still causing a lot of concern for people with those conditions, so what more can the Minister do to make it a holistic process that recognises people’s needs as they are?
Tom Pursglove
I am not in a position to set out the outcome of recent work capability assessment consultation, but a key principle underpinning the test and trials that I touched on earlier is to take better account of fluctuating conditions, helping people to provide high-quality evidence as early as possible in the claim journey. We are spending a lot of time working with stakeholders to develop that work, and I would be very willing to have a conversation with the hon. Gentleman about that.
Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)
The Minister for Employment (Guy Opperman)
Employment in Essex is up 4% on 2020 figures and better than in 2010. Full credit goes to the Essex jobcentre staff, who, working across the county with local skills providers, are providing real opportunities for local men and women. They held a 50-plus event in Witham recently, for example, and my right hon. Friend will be aware that there is a jobs fair in Maldon on Wednesday, just down the road from her constituency.
Priti Patel
My hon. Friend is well aware of the fact that Essex is a powerhouse when it comes to employment, job creation and economic growth. That said, many businesses are still frustrated because they find recruitment and training difficult. We have the autumn statement coming up, but will he touch on some of the cross-departmental discussions he has been having to look at how we can support businesses by lowering taxes, getting rid of regulation and red tape, and helping them to employ more people and grow the economy?
Guy Opperman
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for her question, and for her robust championing of Conservative values and support for businesses and jobs in her constituency and across Essex. We at the DWP are working across Government to ensure that we consider different ways of supporting jobs, investment, childcare support, higher-paid skills and pathways into work. The views of my right hon. Friend are strongly put, and I am quite sure that Treasury Ministers and the Chancellor will have taken due notice.
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mims Davies)
The level of youth unemployment is down by 43.8% since 2010, and this Government remain committed to delivering targeted support to young people through our expanded DWP youth offer, providing comprehensive employment support for 16 to 24-year-olds claiming universal credit. That offer includes intensive support through the youth employment programme, youth employability coaches and youth hubs across Great Britain.
Lee Anderson
I visit businesses on a weekly basis, and one thing they tell me in Ashfield is that they struggle to recruit apprentices. One of the barriers is the requirement for English and maths, because a lot of these young people would make great apprentices but they either messed about at school or have not had that support. What more can we do to get those young people into apprenticeships, and then support them with their maths and English at a later stage?
Mims Davies
We fund apprentices to achieve English and maths qualifications by the end of their apprenticeships. We understand how important they are for people’s long-term career prospects, and we are boosting the rate for those qualifications by 54% from January. We are also piloting flexible English and maths requirements for young people with learning difficulties or disabilities, to ensure that they are not overlooked when it comes to apprenticeship opportunities.
Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)
Economic inactivity due to ill health has more than doubled for 18 to 24-year-olds over the past decade. Why does the Minister think that is? Could she also please look again at the closure of the local jobcentre in Halton Lea in my constituency because of building safety issues?
Mims Davies
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question—I will happily take away his second point, have a look at it and get back to him in writing. I want to assure him and the House that having DWP youth hubs together in one location helps those young people who have been going through very difficult times because of covid. They help local youth experts and local partnerships to come together and overcome those barriers, and ensure that young people have the skills and confidence sought by local employers to take up the opportunities that are around them, just down the road. It is really important that we are there to support them through those mixed youth hubs, which are a big focus for me and for our Department.
Sir Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)
Anglo American and its contractors have just announced 70 new job opportunities at its Woodsmith mine just outside Whitby, with workshops both in Whitby and on Teesside for those interested. Does the Minister agree that these sorts of opportunities in the mining industry are just the sorts of opportunities that young people need to grasp with both hands?
Mims Davies
I thank my right hon. Friend for his question, which goes back to the point about knowing what jobs are just down the road for young people, so that the labour market comes closer to home for them. That is what our youth employability work coaches do, and we saw that with the kickstart programme: 163,000 jobs were created by employers who want young people in their businesses. Their feedback shows that they absolutely got something from having young people in their businesses, and I appeal to employers to keep doing what is happening in Whitby.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
But the number of young people unemployed in Denton and Reddish is still far too high—the latest figures show a 7% youth unemployment claimant count, which is not good enough. Given that the share of young people not in full-time employment or education rose last year, what more is the Minister doing to make sure that young people in places such as Denton and Reddish get the life chances they deserve?
Mims Davies
I absolutely agree that, in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency and more widely, it is absolutely right that young people get the opportunities they deserve. In fact, since September 2020 the DWP’s youth offer has seen over 600,000 starts. As I mentioned earlier, our comprehensive support for young people now encompasses those from age 16.
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
The Minister began answering these questions by claiming credit for having better youth unemployment figures now than in the aftermath of a global financial crisis, which seems to me to be a low ambition. As she has heard, we have problems with inactivity and we have more young people who are not doing anything. What account can she give for the fact that, even after 13 and a half long years of Conservative Government, we have worse youth unemployment than Ireland, Norway and the Czech Republic, and that here it is double what it is in Germany and treble what it is in Japan? What on earth has gone wrong?
Mims Davies
I think that is a reminder to continually speak up for opportunities for our young people. The current youth employment rate is 53.9%, up three percentage points since 2010. It has been my absolute mission in this Parliament, over the last four and a half years, to focus on young people, with around 140 new youth hubs to support the complex needs of young people. I humbly suggest that the hon. Member goes and looks at the changes that are happening, to see the difference being made in communities up and down the land. We are not writing young people off; we are making sure that we support them. I went to see a new youth hub only last week, and the work being done on housing and with partners is innovative. It means young people with smiles on their faces and their futures in their hands.
Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
The Minister for Employment (Guy Opperman)
The Government have never spent more on welfare and benefit support than we presently do. From April 2023, we uprated benefits by 10.1% and increased the benefit cap levels by the same amount. That is on top of the cost of living support that has been made to multiple households and individuals to address the rising cost of bills.
Chris Stephens
I thank the Minister for that answer, but he will be aware that the Trussell Trust has warned that food banks are at “breaking point”, as more and more people across the UK are unable to afford the essentials, with new figures showing that 1.5 million emergency food parcels were distributed through the charity’s network between April and September this year. Will the Minister therefore back its joint campaign with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation calling for an essentials guarantee within universal credit, to ensure that the basic rate at least covers life’s essentials and that support can never fall below that level?
Guy Opperman
The hon. Member will be aware that there has been £94 billion of cost of living support over and above the 10.1% increase in benefit rates. That support is over 2022-23 and 2023-24. For example, the winter fuel payment will be paid to the tune of £600 or £500 over the next few weeks.
Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)
Would the Minister agree that the journey we have been on with benefit rates for the last decade and a half has perhaps been a little haphazard, and it is pretty unclear to most people exactly what basket of goods and services benefits are actually meant to buy? If the Minister does not agree with the case for an essentials guarantee, will the Government commission their own study to work out if benefits are at the right level?
Guy Opperman
My hon. Friend makes an interesting point, which is clearly a matter for the Secretary of State and the Chancellor when they make their decisions on uprating, and I am sure they will take that on board. There are always ongoing discussions about how one assesses this process but, with respect, this is the system we have had for some considerable period of time.
Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Tom Pursglove)
There are a range of initiatives for supporting disabled people to start, stay in and succeed in work. This includes disability employment advisers, the Work and Health programme, intensive personalised employment support, Access to Work, Disability Confident, the information and advice service, and support in partnership with the health system.
Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
Research by the charity Versus Arthritis has found that one in five people described as economically inactive have a musculoskeletal—MSK—condition. Arthritis and MSK conditions were the cause of over 23 million working days lost in 2021 alone. Will the Minister ask the Chancellor for additional support in the autumn statement, to help people with arthritis and MSK to find and remain in work, and will he meet me and Versus Arthritis to discuss this serious issue further?
Tom Pursglove
I am always happy to meet colleagues to discuss such issues. It is fair to say that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has put a real emphasis on this policy area in his previous spending announcements; no doubt he will have heard the hon. Lady’s comments in advance of the upcoming autumn statement. When we consider initiatives such as Work Well—our work in respect of occupational health and the consultations on that—we see that a lot of effort and energy have gone into recognising that retention is just as important as job starts.
Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
In his conference speech, the Secretary of State said there would be a revolution in employment support for people with health conditions and disabilities. Does this revolution include a backlog of 22,432 people waiting for an Access to Work decision, with an average delay of 48 days? Ministers need to get a grip of support for disabled people, rather than vilifying them. The Government’s lack of real action often prevents disabled people from working. Labour has a plan for delivery, so instead of endless reshuffles, why does the Minister not ask his boss to call a general election now?
Tom Pursglove
I think I will pass up on the invitation at the end of the hon. Lady’s question. The fact is that this Government are concentrating on working hard to support more disabled people into work. We are unlocking that potential with all the help and support around it. The hon. Lady specifically mentioned Access to Work; we now have more than 500 full-time staff members working on that, compared with 375 in March. We are focused on prioritising job starts and streamlining things to make it easier for claims to be processed and for people to get support quicker, as well as that staffing increase. We have a comprehensive plan; the hon. Lady’s plan is hidden somewhere—I am sure we would all love to hear it.
John Mc Nally (Falkirk) (SNP)
The Minister for Employment (Guy Opperman)
The Pensions Minister is unavoidably detained in No. 10, so they have wheeled out the old Pensions Minister to attempt to address the hon. Gentleman’s question. The reality of the situation is that April saw the biggest ever rise in the state pension, by 10.1%, thanks to the triple lock. Every pensioner is entitled to a winter fuel payment and will receive a cost of living payment this winter. The poorest pensioners will receive a £900 further cost of living payment.
John Mc Nally
I thank the Minister for his answer, but many older people in my Falkirk constituency are living below or on the poverty line. Furthermore, 2 million older people in the UK live below the poverty line, with many more hovering precariously above it. Research by Independent Age has shown that older people are significantly struggling and urgently need additional cost of living support to help them through the coming winter. By expanding the eligibility criteria for the existing cost of living payments to people on housing benefits and those who receive a council tax reduction, we could help to support this group of older people who desperately need it. Will the Minister commit to that?
Guy Opperman
With no disrespect to the hon. Gentleman, we have committed to that, which is why there is the £900 further cost of living payment, a doubling of the winter fuel payment and the highest state pension we have ever had. This Government are passionately supporting our pensioners and our most vulnerable on an ongoing basis.
Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)
New figures on pension credit update have shed light on the catastrophic failure to get money to the people who desperately need it. Up to 880,000 pensioners are now missing out. Thousands of households would be so much better off and able to keep the heating on and food on the table this winter. Underpinning the figures is a huge drop in uptake among the under-75s, with a fall of up to 20%. With so many new pensioners seemingly unaware of their entitlement to pension credit, will the Government stop burying their head in the sand and get a grip now?
Guy Opperman
It is good to welcome the hon. Lady to the Dispatch Box; I have not previously had the chance to answer her questions. We have undertaken TV campaigns, internet campaigns and campaigns on the radio, in print and on social media—the great Len Goodman assisted us in that regard before his passing—so there is fantastic support across all aspects. The hon. Lady should be aware that pension credit applications were up 75% in the year to May, and we have never had so many people as we are now seeking to encourage to apply. Absolutely, the Government are fully behind the pension credit campaign.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Tom Pursglove)
The Department has developed estimates of the number of claimants impacted by options considered in the work capability assessment consultation. Estimates are not based on specific conditions, because the work capability assessment is based on how a person’s condition affects them, not the condition itself.
Alan Brown
The proposed changes to the work capability assessment could actually see half a million people forced to look for work they are not cut out for and then at risk of sanctions. The proposed changes on continence, mobility and social engagement are putting thousands of Parkinson’s sufferers at risk of being denied the benefits they need, causing needless stress and financial pressures. Will the Secretary of State meet me and Parkinson’s UK to discuss the impacts on those suffering from Parkinson’s? Hopefully the Government will then change their mind on these cruel proposals.
Tom Pursglove
What I can say to the hon. Gentleman is that no decisions have been made. It is right and proper that the consultation responses are properly considered in the normal way. I would be happy to meet with Parkinson’s UK again; I met it previously, and it is an important stakeholder for the Department. We do think it is right that we look at the work capability assessment and review it periodically, not least because of the changes we have seen in homeworking and flexible working in recent years.
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
The Minister for Employment (Guy Opperman)
There have been transformational changes in childcare, skills, training and support for future employers, as announced at the spring Budget. It is absolutely the case that from April 2024, eligible working parents of two-year-olds will be able to access 15 hours of free childcare per week from the term after the second birthday, plus there will be the delivery of more support for working parents of children over the age of nine months with 30 free hours of childcare. There is nowhere in the world that compares with our childcare offer on an ongoing basis. We have virtually Scandinavian levels.
Greg Smith
I am a huge supporter of the bold action that the Government are taking to tackle the costs of childcare and get more parents into work. However, some settings in my constituency report that the rate the Government pay does not cover the full costs of providing that place, putting them in an untenable position. Can my hon. Friend work with me, alongside the Department for Education, to ensure that the scheme is fully working and that the childcare places are actually there to be able to take up this generous Government support?
Guy Opperman
I am happy to convene a summit with the Department for Education, my hon. Friend and his unitary authority to discuss the ways in which we are ensuring that. We are already working in partnership with the DFE to deliver this campaign, and clearly the Government are committed to ensuring that the implementation of the expansion to 30 hours is dealt with in an appropriate and seamless way.
Nick Fletcher (Don Valley) (Con)
The Minister for Employment (Guy Opperman)
I am on a one-man mission to support my hon. Friend, who is a doughty champion for Don Valley and getting more people into jobs in his Yorkshire constituency. It was a pleasure to visit his constituency recently and meet the jobcentre leads in his patch, to understand what we can do to drive forward greater employment. He will be aware of the £3.5 billion package of support across the country, some of which is being spent in Yorkshire.
Nick Fletcher
I thank members of Doncaster and Thorne jobcentres for the job fairs they have done, subsequent to my meeting with the Minister at Yorkshire Wildlife Park. Job fairs do a fantastic job. Does the Minister agree that many people in their 50s are busying themselves at home, when they could be having a wonderful second career like me? If he does agree with me, what can he do to help them jumpstart into a new career?
Guy Opperman
My hon. Friend will be aware of the 50-plus champions that we have up and down the country. The midlife MOT is being rolled out across the private sector and across jobcentres up and down the country. Older Workers Week is coming up, and there is no doubt that there are successes up and down the country of workers beyond retirement age who are doing amazing work, whether that is the 96-year-old shop owner I met in Macclesfield, or many of the others I have met in the past few months. These are great people whom we want to support into work on an ongoing basis.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
Last week, I received a letter from the Minister for social mobility, youth and progression, the hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Mims Davies), saying that she intends to close down the Jobcentre Plus on Renfield Street, which was opened on a temporary basis in 2021. I know from having met the staff there that they have done a huge amount of work to get people in through the door—and in particular to work with employers—and into employment, including a programme for Ukrainians. Why does the Department want to throw that all away and close it down?
Guy Opperman
I think the clue is in the name: it was a temporary jobcentre during covid. I am happy that the specific Minister will write and further explain the situation.
Stephen Morgan (Portsmouth South) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mel Stride)
Given that remembrance is still fresh in all our minds, I take the opportunity to pay tribute to the armed forces champions who work across our jobcentre network looking after armed forces personnel and their families. They do a fantastic job, and we should be very proud of them.
These are financially challenging times, but the DWP is up to that challenge, hence all the cost of living payments that we have been hearing about during questions. Inflation is coming down and real wages are beginning to move up. We continue to take a balanced and fair approach to encouraging employment, which has resulted in economic inactivity falling by about 300,000 since its peak, and almost three quarters of a million since 2010.
Stephen Morgan
The Trussell Trust has reported a 68% increase in the number of emergency food parcels provided to Portsmouth people in just one year. Does the Secretary of State agree that more and more people being pushed into poverty is not a lifestyle choice and that urgent Government action is required to tackle the cost of living crisis ahead of another difficult winter for constituents in my patch?
Mel Stride
I certainly agree with the hon. Gentleman that poverty is not a lifestyle choice. We have gone through various statistics during questions, with 1.7 million fewer people in absolute poverty since 2010, 200,000 fewer pensioners in poverty since 2010 and 400,000 fewer children in poverty since 2010. We have also gone through the cost of living payments, the increases to the national living wage and all the other support that the Government are providing.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
The Minister for Employment (Guy Opperman)
My hon. Friend is a doughty champion for Kettering. He will be aware that 20.9% of working-age people are inactive, down 0.7 percentage points from last year and down 2.7 percentage points from 2010, showing that our drive to get more people into jobs is paying off. The UK now has a lower inactivity rate than the US, France and Italy. We are doing more every single day, but we are also aware that there is more to do.
Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)
The health of our nation is critical to the health of our economy, but after 13 years of this Government, both are in a dire state. The Secretary of State should know that the number of young people out of work due to long-term sickness has doubled on the Government’s watch, predominantly driven by poor mental health. Labour’s plan will recruit 8,500 more mental health staff, with support in every school and hubs in every community to tackle these problems early on. Because I am feeling generous today, Mr Speaker—
Liz Kendall
I would like to make the Secretary of State an offer. If he is serious about getting Britain working, why does he not swallow his pride, do the right thing and adopt Labour’s back to work plan?
Mel Stride
The reason for that—I am feeling rather less generous—is that we have seen Labour’s plans in the past, and no Labour Government have ever left office with unemployment anything other than higher than when they came to office. Under the last Labour Government, we saw 1.4 million people parked on long-term benefits for over a decade, with many of them exactly as the hon. Lady described: long-term sick and disabled. Under this Government, we have near-record low unemployment, and we have 4 million more people on payroll employment than we had in 2010.
Liz Kendall
I am afraid that the Secretary of State is living in cloud cuckoo land. Record numbers of people are out of work due to long-term sickness. We are the only country in the G7 whose employment rate has not gone back to pre-pandemic levels. It is not just young people but the over-50s. The Office for Budget Responsibility said that the rise poses a serious risk to our prospects for growth and the stability of the public finances. Where on earth is the Secretary of State’s plan to sort it out? Perhaps I am being a bit unfair, because it turns out that the Government can get the over-50s back to work, but only if they are former Prime Ministers.
Mr Speaker
Order. I have been through this time and again. When Front Benchers want to have an argument, they need to come in earlier please, and not soak up the time of Back Benchers, whom I now need to get to urgently.
Liz Kendall
Will the Secretary of State have a word with the current occupant of No. 10, and ask him to put as much effort into saving other people’s jobs and livelihoods as he does attempting to save his own neck?
Mel Stride
Very briefly, I have set out our employment record, which we are proud of. In his last Budget, the Chancellor set aside £2 billion to fund measures to tackle long-term sickness and disability. That includes a consultation on occupational health, the roll-out of universal support and Work Well, about which the hon. Lady will hear more presently.
Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)
Mel Stride
I thank my hon. Friend for his typically astute question and for his advice in this area over a number of months. We have gone out to consultation on the work capability assessment. We have not come to our conclusions on how to move forward, but right at the centre of that will be a strong belief that if people can work, with our support and encouragement, that is the best of all outcomes.
David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)
The freeze on local housing allowance is having a devastating impact on housing providers. Scotland’s Housing Minister wrote to the Secretary of State on 25 May to make that point and to make the case for restoring it to the 30th percentile. Why has he not replied? Will the Government use the autumn statement to raise it back to the 30th percentile?
Mel Stride
I will certainly look into the letter to which the hon. Gentleman refers, but I assure him that LHA and other housing matters are under constant review, and form part of the discussions that my Department has with the Treasury from time to time.
Robbie Moore (Keighley) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mims Davies)
The Government are committed to ensuring that parents meet their obligations to their children and that the CMS has robust enforcement powers where parents refuse to pay child maintenance that they owe. The Child Support (Enforcement) Act 2023 received Royal Assent in July, and will substantially and rightly speed up that process.
Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab)
Mims Davies
The hon. Lady is right; every child maintenance arrangement plays a vital role in ensuring that both parents play their part to support their children, whether they live with them or not. I am happy to take up that case urgently, on behalf of our noble Friend in the other place.
Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)
Guy Opperman
Automatic enrolment has transformed savings across the country. I welcome my hon. Friend’s strong support and his passion in this area. The pot for life model offers attraction, with the potential to help engaged individuals with their pension savings if it maintains the gains achieved under automatic enrolment. I am sure he will discuss that with the future pensions Minister.
Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)
Guy Opperman
The hon. Lady will be aware that pension credit applications are up 75%. Clearly, we are trying to get that even higher. There is a nationwide campaign, which includes Scotland.
David Duguid (Banff and Buchan) (Con)
According to the latest figures, there are 1,825 households receiving pension credit in Banff and Buchan, but what more can we do as Members of Parliament to encourage more pensioners to apply?
Guy Opperman
My hon. Friend’s campaign in his constituency has been a massive success and I thank him for that. It builds on our nationwide campaign to support pension credit. There is much we can do to promote it locally, which I know my hon. Friend is doing, through our local councils, Citizens Advice and voluntary organisations.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
Mims Davies
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point. Other ID forms are there to help claim sooner. Those granted refugee status have recourse to public funds and are able to apply for universal credit as soon as they can. DWP staff are instructed to consider all available evidence and work with the Home Office directly to confirm status where unsure. We are reviewing our public guidance to ensure that all those getting that status claim support as soon as possible.
Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)
The cost of living payments from the Government are undoubtedly bringing real benefits to my constituents, but what support is available for those who are not eligible for that specific support?
Mims Davies
I thank my hon. Friend for the opportunity to mention the household support fund, providing local authorities with further funding which is discretionary for those most in need, particularly those ineligible for cost of living payments. The latest year-long extension in England runs to March next year. Buckinghamshire Council received nearly £4.8 million in its latest extension.
Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)
The proposals in the work capability assessment activities and descriptors consultation will mean some claimants will lose £390 a month if they are reassessed, pushing them even further into poverty. Will the Minister or the Secretary of State please explain this huge financial impact on low-income people with disabilities or a serious health condition?
The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Tom Pursglove)
No final decisions have been made. We have had the consultation and we will respond appropriately in the normal way.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
May we have specific detail on the help that jobcentres are giving to armed forces veterans, who must live with the consequences of decisions made by Governments?
Mims Davies
A very pertinent point after the weekend when we paid tribute in our local communities and after what we saw on the Elizabeth Tower. The DWP continues to work to identify universal credit claimants who are members of the armed forces community, with 11 dedicated forces champion leads and over 50 armed forces champions across our jobcentre network working with spouses and partners, too.
Sir Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
Those Trussell Trust figures published last week made grim reading. Does the Secretary of State recognise that if working-age benefits are uprated by less than September’s rate of inflation in April next year, there will inevitably be another big surge in food bank demand and destitution?
Mel Stride
The right hon. Gentleman has raised an important point. I take the uprating process extremely seriously, and, as he will know, I look at a number of factors, including the effects on poverty. However, as he will also understand, I am not able to comment on a parliamentary process that has not yet been concluded.
Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)
May I ask a question about auto-enrolment and pensions? What can the Secretary of State do to build on our good record by extending and increasing the total amount that young people—I see that there are schoolchildren in the Public Gallery—who retire on defined-contribution pensions are likely to be able to save in their retirement?
Guy Opperman
There are two key points here. Consolidation will make a massive difference, but more important is the transformation of workplace savings through auto-enrolment for young people. The figure has risen from below 40% to well over 80%, and it will get bigger as time moves on.
Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)
For those who suffer from endometriosis, Crohn’s disease and colitis, incontinence is a daily challenge. For the purpose of the Government’s proposed changes in the incontinence descriptor, what capability assessment has been done, and was there any consultation with those sufferers?
Tom Pursglove
I hear the point that the hon. Lady has raised. We have, of course, had the consultation, and many views were expressed. We will now consider those views very carefully, and come forward as appropriate in the normal way.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. May I take advantage of a rather quiet news day to ask if there is any way in which I can place on record the appreciation of right hon. and hon. Members for the wise advice, quiet efficiency and unfailing courtesy of Mr Peter Barratt, who recently left the service of this House after more than 30 years?
Mr Speaker
I made a statement last week to thank Mr Barratt for all his service, so it has not gone unnoticed and has certainly not been forgotten.
Debate on the Address
Building an NHS Fit for the Future
(1 year ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister for Social Care (Helen Whately)
It is a pleasure to open this debate on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, and to have the opportunity to speak about the long-term decisions that the Government have been taking for a healthier future for our country, for our national health service, and for our social care system.
We are building our health and care system for today and for tomorrow. We are increasing the capacity of the NHS and social care systems, boosting primary care and community care, investing in diagnostics and in treatments, building our NHS workforce with the long-term workforce plan and building our social care workforce with our 10-year vision, putting people at the heart of care. We are giving people choice and control over their health and care, and investing in the facilities and technology that need to be at the forefront of care and sustainable for the long term. We are driving reforms to prevent ill health, joining up health and care in integrated care systems and delivering a shift towards prevention and proactive care, keeping people out of hospital and enabling them to live independently in their communities.
Every day since last winter, we have been planning and preparing for the challenges that lie ahead this winter. The first ever NHS long-term workforce plan underpins our plans for the future of the NHS. It will double the number of medical training places, almost double the number of adult nursing places, and expand GP and allied health professional training numbers, giving the NHS the staff it needs for the future, creating new roles, building new training pathways and delivering a huge boost in diagnostic capacity.
By the end of this year, we will have opened 160 new community diagnostic centres. That is the biggest investment in MRI and CT scanning capacity in NHS history. Community diagnostic centres will bring care closer to home, on high streets, in supermarket car parks and at football stadiums. They have already done more than 5 million tests and scans, getting patients faster diagnosis for cancer, heart disease and other life-threatening conditions. That is not all we are doing to diagnose conditions faster. The number of people receiving blood pressure checks at local pharmacies has more than doubled, reducing thousands of people’s risk of suffering a heart attack or stroke.
We are expanding primary care, too. There are now over 30,000 more primary care professionals working in GP practices than in March 2019. We will deliver 50 million more GP appointments by the end of next year and we are investing more than £200 million in tech to end the 8 am rush for GP appointments. Pharmacy First will give people another choice, giving pharmacists the power to prescribe treatments for seven common conditions, freeing up as many as 10 million GP appointments, and as we put test results on to the NHS app, that will free up GP time again.
That is also one of the ways that this Government are giving patients more choice and control. Just as we are going to give people more choice in where they are treated when they are referred by their GP for specialist care, we have committed to giving patients a choice between by five providers so that they are treated based on what matters to them—be that shorter waiting times, seeing a particular doctor or getting care closer to home. We have given patients who are waiting more than 40 weeks the right to request treatment elsewhere, making better use of available capacity across the NHS and bringing in more capacity from the independent sector.
On patient choice, there is a clear dividing line between the Government and the Opposition. The Leader of the Opposition calls the Welsh Government the blueprint for what Labour would do in power, yet in Wales, under a Labour Government, there is no legal right to patient choice, and patients there wait on average five weeks longer for treatment than in England. We know where Labour’s plans would lead. We just need to look at its Welsh blueprint: less choice for patients, longer waiting lists and more bureaucracy for doctors and nurses who just want to get on with the job.
Before the most disruptive industrial action in NHS history stalled progress, we were reducing the longest waits. Last summer we hit our target to eliminate two-year waits for planned operations. This June we had virtually eliminated waits longer than 18 months. We are spending more than £8 billion between 2022 and 2025 to increase elective activity, including opening over 140 new surgical hubs to deliver 2 million more operations. We are investing almost £6 billion in beds, equipment and technology, and this year we started preparing the NHS for winter sooner than ever before.
Back in January, we published our recovery plan for urgent and emergency care, setting clear targets to improve A&E waiting and ambulance response times and using £1 billion of dedicated funding to provide 5,000 more permanent staff beds and 800 new ambulances. We are seeing results. In October, average category 2 ambulance response times were more than 90 minutes faster than in the same month last year. Delayed discharges have been coming down and we have brought forward flu and covid vaccinations, protecting the most vulnerable from illness this winter and reducing the likelihood that they will need hospital treatment.
A strong social care sector is also vital this winter and into the future. That is why we have made up to £8 billion available over this year and next to boost adult social care across the country. This is enabling local authorities to buy more care packages and help more patients to leave hospital on time, together with 10,000 “hospital at home” beds which mean that patients can receive their care where they are most comfortable, recovering in their own homes with support from secondary care when they need it. Through social prescribing, thousands of people up and down the country are benefiting from activities such as reading circles, choir groups, walking and football. We are driving reforms to the intermediate and proactive care framework, which sets out how local systems should support adults who need support after discharge, freeing up hospital capacity for those who need it most and giving people more care as they need it—in their community, away from A&E and out of hospital.
We are rolling out technology that will give patients life-saving treatments now and in the future. By the end of the year, every stroke network in England will have AI technology that can examine brain scans an hour faster, cutting stroke patients’ risk of suffering long-term consequences by as much as two thirds. What is more, almost half of NHS acute trusts have won a share of £21 million to invest in AI, accelerating the analysis of X-rays and CT scans for suspected lung cancer patients. That will save radiologists’ time, boost efficiency and cut waiting times. For the long-term, we are investing a further £100 million to use AI to unlock treatments for diseases that are incurable today, be they novel treatments for dementia or vaccines for cancer.
Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
Can the Minister say something about the availability of new and specialist drugs that the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence is not recommending? Will an effort be made to make these specialist drugs, which in many instances are effectively regarded as miracle cures, available for cystic fibrosis and cancer treatments, for example?
Helen Whately
I understand what the hon. Gentleman is saying, and I know how strongly families and patients feel about this. It is not for me, as a Minister, to step on the independence of NICE, which has a remit to take those decisions. I am sure that the new Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), and other Ministers in the Department will continue to listen to the concerns of families about access to those treatments.
If we want to fully embrace preventive care, we must tackle the single biggest preventable cause of ill health, disability and death, which is smoking. Unlike drinking alcohol or eating fatty, salty or sugary foods, there is no safe level of smoking. It causes almost one hospital admission every minute, one in four cancer deaths and 64,000 deaths a year.
Four in five smokers start by the time they are 20, so the best thing we can do is to stop young people smoking in the first place. That is why this Government will automatically raise the smoking age by one year every year, so anyone who is 14 or younger today will never be able to buy tobacco legally. Increasing the smoking age works. When it rose to 18, smoking rates dropped by almost a third in that age group. Restricting choice is never easy, but this time it is the right thing to do. Existing smokers will not be affected, but the next generation will be smoke-free, saving thousands of lives, reducing pressure on the NHS and building a brighter future for our children.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
I hear what the Minister says about the Government’s commitment to this policy, but can she explain why the Government are allowing a free vote rather than whipping Back Benchers to vote for Government policy?
Helen Whately
I am not going to stand here and explain whipping policy, which is not my job as a Health Minister, but I am delighted to see the potential of this legislation. As with so many other worthwhile Government policies, such as increasing funding for the national health service, I would be delighted to see the right hon. Gentleman and other Opposition Members support this policy.
We are also cracking down on the alarming rise in vaping among children. There is no doubt that vaping is safer than smoking and is a terrific tool to help adult smokers quit, but, like Members across the House, I am concerned that one in five children has tried vaping, which can be hugely damaging to their health. The whole House knows that no child should be using nicotine.
The rise in youth vaping is no coincidence. Disposable vapes are consistently marketed at children and are available at pocket-money prices, with many retailers ignoring their duty not to sell them to young people. With more than 5 million being thrown away every week, disposable vapes are also damaging our planet. We are acting now to protect our children and our planet. We are looking at banning child-friendly flavours, restricting colourful packaging and mandating that vapes are displayed only behind the counter. We are also exploring a ban or a restriction on disposable vape sales and empowering local authorities to dish out on-the-spot fines for selling vapes to children. All these proposals are being developed with parents and teachers across the UK, and they will strike a balance between giving adult smokers a choice to switch to vaping and preventing our children from taking it up.
I recognise the disappointment that the mental health Bill was not included in the King’s Speech, but I can assure hon. Members that this Government are committed to achieving genuine parity between mental health and physical health, improving the care of those detained under the Mental Health Act 1983 and bringing forward the Bill when parliamentary time allows.
We are not going to wait for legislation to make change. We will continue to pilot models of culturally appropriate advocacy, providing tailored support to hundreds of people from ethnic minorities to better understand their rights if they are detained under the Mental Health Act. This comes on top of the record investment and staff numbers we are putting into mental health. Since 2010, the mental health workforce has grown by more than 20%, and by March we will have invested over £2 billion more in mental health than four years ago, meaning that 2 million more people, including more than 300,000 children and young people, will benefit from mental health support.
Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)
One of the biggest issues raised by every school I visit in my constituency is mental health support, and I am disappointed not to see the mental health Bill in the King’s Speech. Will it be addressed in any other way? Where is it?
Helen Whately
As I said a moment ago—let me remind the hon. Lady of this—we are not waiting for legislation in order to bring forward mental health reforms. That is why, for instance, we have already been rolling out mental health support teams in schools. We are already ahead of schedule on that; we are giving a quarter of England’s school and college children access to mental health support teams a year ahead of schedule. In addition, thanks to this Government, dormitory accommodation for mental health patients will soon become a thing of the past.
It has been a pleasure to work with the new Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay), and a huge honour to work with my hon. Friends the Members for Colchester (Will Quince) and for Harborough (Neil O'Brien) as part of a Government taking the long-term decisions to build a health and care system for the future, one with more doctors, nurses, pharmacists, physios and care workers, better mental healthcare for adults and children, more proactive care in the community, greater capacity, the newest technology and more choice, where conditions are diagnosed quicker or prevented altogether, thus helping people to live longer and healthier lives.
Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
I congratulate the Minister on being the great survivor of the Department of Health and Social Care. She must surely be due a carriage clock or the long service medal by now. The only long-term decision for a brighter future seems to be that she is still in her place, although she did not offer much of a brighter future.
More positively, I see far more than one nervous face on the Government Benches—I see lots of nervous faces among those contemplating the next general election—but one is undoubtedly that of the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Steve Tuckwell). I congratulate him on his election and wish him well for his maiden speech, which I can confidently say will be the best speech we hear from those on the Conservative Benches all day.
At a time when patients cannot get a doctor’s appointment, families are struggling to pay the mortgage and major conflicts are having an impact on our economy and security, the Prime Minister has spent the past five days deciding whether to sack his Home Secretary for publicly disobeying him, undermining the police and inflaming tensions on our streets. Finally, having had the sheer poor judgment to have appointed someone to such high office when she had already been forced to resign for a serious national security leak, he has summoned up the guts to sack the worst Home Secretary in history. Yet, as we see, the merry-go-round of the Conservative clown show continues. After 13 years, the Conservatives have run out of names at the bottom of the barrel, so they are starting all over again. May I offer my sympathies to the Conservative Members who did not get the call from No. 10 today? What kind of message does it send to their constituents that their own party leader cannot find a suitable candidate for Foreign Secretary among the 350 Conservative MPs who sit in this House?
The arsonist has today returned to the fire, because when it comes to the national health service, Lord Cameron has quite a lot to answer for as the architect of austerity and the biggest top-down reorganisation in the history of the NHS—a £3 billion disaster that has led straight to the biggest crisis in the history of the NHS. That is before we even begin to take into account his record of ushering in the “golden” age between Britain and China; taking 20,000 police officers off our streets; and having food bank Britain leave more than 1 million people dependent on charity to feed themselves and their families. That is Lord Cameron’s legacy and as the current Prime Minister admits, “some mistakes were made”. Who is he trying to kid when he tells us that this recycled Conservative Government offer the change our country needs?
I would welcome the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins) to her position, but of course she is not here this afternoon, having just been appointed earlier today. She is the fifth Secretary of State for Health and Social Care that I have faced in this job in less than two years, although, to be fair, two of those appointments were the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay). The Government said they would make
“Long-term decisions for a brighter future”,
but they cannot even deliver a long-term Secretary of State for Health.
We know where the Secretary of State is—she will be in the Department being briefed about the challenges of the job and being brought up to speed. No doubt she and new Ministers will want to review the decisions she is inheriting and to start to think afresh about whether she wants to proceed with those decisions as they have been working through the machine. That is why it is so grossly irresponsible to change Ministers every five minutes and constantly churn from one face to another, when it is clear to everyone but the Prime Minister that it is not just a change of faces around the Cabinet table that we need, but a change of Government.
As the Secretary of State sits in the Department being briefed by her civil servants, I will help them out with the induction by offering her a primer on what she inherits: millions of patients a month unable to get a GP appointment when they need one; 24 hours in A&E—not just a television programme, but a reality for far too many; ambulances not arriving on time, if they arrive at all; the 12th month of the worst strikes in the history of the National Health Service; NHS dentistry in managed decline, to the point where people are forced to pull out their own teeth—DIY dentistry in 21st century Britain; a generation of young people who have paid the price for lockdowns with their mental health, forced to wait years for the support they need; the longest waiting lists and the lowest patient satisfaction in history. That is the record of the Secretary of State’s seven predecessors: failure, upon failure, upon failure, upon failure, upon failure, upon failure, upon failure.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is absolutely right about that list of failures—it is shocking. I would like to add to the list that over 2,000 autistic people or people with learning disabilities are detained in inappropriate units, when this Government promised over 10 years ago to close them all down.
Wes Streeting
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. As I make progress through my speech I will come back to the breath-taking complacency about mental health we heard from the Minister a moment ago.
Given the scale of the crisis and given that the Prime Minister has made fixing waiting lists one his five priorities, hon. Members might have expected something in the King’s Speech to deal with it. Instead, we got nothing on the NHS as it heads into its most challenging winter yet and we got nothing on social care, just kicking the can down the road and delaying reforms until after the election. There was nothing on dentistry, despite even Conservative Back Benchers crying out for a rescue plan, and nothing on mental health, despite the Conservative party committing to reform, not just in its last manifesto but in its last two manifestos.
It was the longest King’s Speech in almost a decade, with the fewest Bills. Does that not just sum up the modern Conservative party? Plenty of slogans, but no solutions. What we got was a Bill that will not come into effect until after the general election and a sack-the-nurses Bill. On the tobacco and vapes Bill, the question is not whether Labour will support it, but whether the Conservative party will support it. Government Members will remember that I first proposed that smoking ban back in January. I say they will remember, because they made their feelings known in newspapers at the time. They called it “nanny state” and
“an attack on ordinary people and their culture”.
They accused me of “health fascism”. Well, they can now make their considered and nuanced views known to the new Secretary of State—I am sure she is looking forward to receiving them. It just demonstrates that where Labour leads, the Government follow.
The Prime Minister may be too weak to whip his Back Benchers to vote that crucial measure through, but on the Opposition Benches we will put country first and party second. Labour MPs will go through the voting Lobby and make sure that the legislation is passed, so that young people today are even less likely to smoke than they are to vote Conservative.
I am afraid to disappoint the Government, but we will not be supporting the other Bill in the King’s Speech that relates to health. Most people look at the crisis in the NHS and think it needs more doctors and nurses. The Conservative party looks at the health service and concludes that we need to sack more doctors and nurses. The Government are saying that public servants should be sacked for failing to provide minimum standards on strike days, but the Government have not met the four-hour A&E standard since 2015; they have not met the standard for treatment within 18 weeks since 2016; and they were doing so badly on meeting cancer waiting time standards that they have simply got rid of the standards altogether. If the Conservatives are proposing to sack doctors and nurses for failing to provide minimum service levels, can we now sack Ministers for failing to meet minimum standards on non-strike days?
The new Health and Social Care Secretary has an opportunity to break with the past year. Strikes are crippling the NHS and they are putting patients in harm’s way. Her predecessor may have thought that they were a useful excuse for his failure, but they were, and are, a misery for patients and staff alike. The Government must stop the scapegoating of NHS staff, go into these negotiations with good faith, work at finding a solution, and, finally, bring these strikes to an end. There will be no progress on turning around our national health service until the Government make some progress.
When summing up I hope the Minister will explain why action was not taken on the Mental Health Act 2007, because, I am afraid, the Minister’s opening remarks were entirely unsatisfactory. The Bill has gone through Committee. It has cross-party support. It is ready to go, so where is it? The treatment of people with learning disabilities and autism under the current Act shames our society. The disproportionate impact on black people, who are four times more likely to be sectioned than white people, is appalling. Prisons and police cells are no place for people with mental ill-health. Surely that is not controversial in 2023. It is, as the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), said, “a burning injustice”. I cannot understand why the Government have broken their promise to address that matter finally.
It is long past time that mental health was treated with the same seriousness as physical health. Labour will not only reform the Mental Health Act in our first King’s Speech, but recruit thousands more mental health professionals, provide hubs in every community, and set up mental health support in every school, so that young people can get the help they need when they need it. [Interruption.] The Minister says that they have done that. What planet is she living on? This is the problem with these Ministers. Even when the faces change, the lines remain the same. The Minister has not changed, but she is still reading from the same failed script. This is the problem with the Conservative party. Its message to the country is simple: “You have never had it so good. Everything is going really well. The reason we are churning all the Ministers in our Cabinet is that they are doing such a good job. It is job done and time to give someone else a chance.” I am afraid that that is why these Conservatives are so out of touch and will struggle at the next general election if their message to the country is that it has never had it so good.
Furthermore, unlike this Government, who crashed the economy in the most reckless way, we will pay for our policies, making sure that they are fully costed and fully funded—in this case, by ending tax breaks for private schools and private equity fund managers. Politics is about choices: Labour chooses the wellbeing of the many, not the interests of the few, and we will fight the election on those lines any time. I say call the election tomorrow, because we are ready.
When it comes to dentistry, I should also say farewell to two former Ministers, the hon. Members for Colchester (Will Quince) and for Harborough (Neil O’Brien). As the hon. Member for Harborough departs Government, I hope that he does not take with him his pledge to bring forward a recovery plan for NHS dental services. It has been seven months since he announced that such a plan would be forthcoming, yet it is now nowhere to be seen. Indeed, last week, integrated care systems were given permission to raid their dentistry budget underspends and to remove the ringfence. That follows a pilot in Cornwall, trialling making NHS dentistry available only to children and the most vulnerable. It is the managed decline of NHS dentistry before our eyes. If people want to know what the future of the NHS would look like with five more years of the Conservative Government, they need only look at the ghost of Christmas past in NHS dentistry. The Conservatives blame the previous Labour Government, but they have been in power for 13 years. In 2010, we stood on a manifesto committed to reforming the NHS dental contract. They have had 13 years to do it, and they have failed again and again, leaving us in the situation that we are in today, with Dickensian stories of desperate people performing DIY dentistry and tooth decay being the most common cause of children aged six to 10 being admitted to hospital. It did not need to be this way.
I say to the new Secretary of State and her team that she may not have a plan, but Labour does, and she is more than welcome to nick it. We will deliver 700,000 more urgent appointments a year, recruit dentists to the areas most in need, introduce supervised toothbrushing in schools to prevent children’s teeth from rotting, and reform the NHS dental contract so that everyone who needs an NHS dentist can get one—
Wes Streeting
The Minister says, “Is that it?”. It is 700,000 more NHS dentistry appointments than her Government are providing. It is ridiculous. The extent to which Ministers continue to parrot these ridiculous lines is embarrassing. If they want to intervene, make my day. I am perfectly prepared to confront any Member with their own Government’s record. Of course, they do not want to defend the Government’s record; they have a hard enough time doing that on the doorstep.
Turning back to His Majesty’s Gracious Speech, there may not have been any Bills for the health service last week, but we did see the white flag being waved on the Prime Minister’s pledge to cut waiting lists. Hospitals received a letter telling them to cut the number of operations and appointments they are aiming to offer this year. At the same time, an extra funding pot was announced, so we are literally paying more and getting less. No wonder the NHS is in such a state. No wonder waiting lists have trebled since 2010. No wonder hundreds of thousands more patients are waiting for treatment today than when the Prime Minister first made his pledge.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I want to make a plea for those 10,000 young people with cystic fibrosis, who have to take multiple medications and endure daily physiotherapy, blood tests, X-rays, and hospital visits—waiting on many occasions—as part of their normal routine just to stay well. The shadow Secretary of State and the Labour Opposition have given a commitment to endeavour to do better for the NHS. Will he do better for those 10,000 young people who have cystic fibrosis?
Wes Streeting
I am very grateful to the hon. Member for his intervention. I am deeply concerned about the situation facing children with cystic fibrosis in particular, given that there is radically life-extending treatment available that offers the hope to those young people not just of longer, happier, healthier lives, but of reduced admissions to hospital. It is right that the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence makes those judgments in a rigorous way, looking at the evidence. I hope that it will be successful in bringing down the price of those drugs by negotiating with the pharmaceutical companies to make sure that we can get affordable drugs to families who desperately need them and are desperately anxious that the announcement they have read about means shorter lives for their children. No family should go through that agony, and I hope that a resolution can be found.
The Government and the previous Health Secretary got into the habit of stealing Labour’s policies—I say that not as a complaint, but as an invitation. It is clear that the Government do not have a plan to cut NHS waiting lists, but we do: £1.1 billion will be paid straight into the pockets of hard-pressed NHS staff to deliver 2 million more appointments a year at evenings and weekends, paid for by abolishing the non-dom tax status, because patients need treatment more than the wealthiest need a tax break—[Interruption.] Conservative Members groan when we mention charging non-doms their fair share, they groan when we talk about closing private equity loopholes and they groan when we talk about taxing private schools fairly. They did not groan when taxes went up on working people. They did not groan when benefits were cut for the poorest people.
We know who the Conservatives are in it for. They are in it for the few; we champion the interests of the many. That is the Labour difference. We believe strongly that people who live or work in Britain should pay their taxes here too. There is still time for the new Secretary of State to lobby the Chancellor ahead of the autumn statement. This genuinely is an oven-ready plan, unlike some of the plans we have heard from the Conservatives, and I encourage the new Secretary of State to nick it.
After 13 years, we have an NHS that gets to people too late. We have a hospital-based system geared towards late-stage diagnosis and treatment, which delivers poorer outcomes at greater cost. We have an analogue system in a digital age. We have a sickness service, not a health service, with too many lives hampered by preventable illness and too many lives lost to the biggest killers. It could not be clearer: the longer we give the Conservatives in power, the longer patients will wait. This was an empty King’s Speech from a Government who have run out of road, run out of steam and run out of ideas; a Conservative party too busy tearing itself apart to govern the country; a Prime Minister who cannot decide whether it is time for a change or to go back to year zero.
The future of the NHS after another five years of the Tories is emerging before our eyes: a two-tier health service, where those who can afford it go private, and those who cannot are left waiting behind—our NHS reduced to a poor service for poor people; our country viewed as the sick man of Europe. It does not have to be that way. The Prime Minister was right when he said,
“It’s time for a change”,
but only Labour can deliver it.
Labour has a different vision for our country in which no one fears ill health or old age; people have power, choice and control over their own health and care; the place people are born, or the wealth they are born into, does not determine how long they will live or how happy their lives will be; patients benefit from the brightest minds developing cutting-edge treatments and technology; and children born in Britain today become the healthiest generation that ever lived.
Only Labour has a plan to get the NHS back on its feet and make that vision a reality: a plan to cut waiting lists, delivering 2 million more appointments a year; a rescue plan for NHS dentistry, delivering 700,000 more appointments, recruiting dentists to the areas most in need, introducing toothbrushing for three to five-year-olds in schools and having an NHS dentist for all who need one; a plan to double the number of scanners so that patients are diagnosed earlier; a plan to recover our nation’s mental health from the damage of lockdowns; a plan to cut red tape that ties up GPs’ time, so that we can bring back the family doctor; a plan for the biggest expansion of NHS staff in history—a plan so good that the Government adopted it and gave us a head start; and a plan to reform the NHS to make it fit for the future. To those who say that that cannot be done and that things cannot be better, I say this: the last Labour Government delivered the shortest waiting times and the highest patient satisfaction in history. We did it before and we will do it again.
It is not a change of faces we need but a change of Government. It is time to call a general election and give the British people the choice: more of the same with the Conservatives or a fresh start with Labour. Call a general election now, so that Labour can give Britain its future back.
Mr Speaker
We come now to a maiden speech, so there will be no interruptions. I call Steve Tuckwell.
Steve Tuckwell (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Speaker, for calling me to deliver my maiden speech. Many words have been dedicated to this summer’s by-election campaigns and the subsequent result in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, so I hope you will allow me to add just a few more words based on my own experiences, rather than the conjecture offered by many commentators.
Let me begin with ULEZ—the ultra low emission zone—and its expansion across outer London. It will come as no surprise to anyone that this is not the first time I have mentioned those four letters in this Chamber. Even though the extended charge zone has now come into being, I stand here—no longer the local candidate, but the Member of Parliament—still determined to fight the Mayor of London’s money grab and reduce the burden placed on my residents and local businesses.
For me, however, the by-election was about much more than ULEZ and its unnecessary expansion. It was about a variety of local issues, such as securing a new hospital, keeping Uxbridge police station open, providing further support for childcare places, and protecting our green spaces for future generations. It was a by-election campaign fought on multiple local issues of substance. So, rather than dwelling on ULEZ, may I suggest that what also drove residents to the polls was the motivation to have an MP who understands the needs of the community, who appreciates the complexities of the community, and who is truly embedded in the community?
Since 2018, I have served as a local councillor for the London Borough of Hillingdon. Hillingdon Council is well respected, and in some cases even envied, for its consistent year in, year out performance in core services that residents expect, be they weekly waste collections, which are quite rare these days; refurbishing libraries, not closing them; and being one of the greenest boroughs in London, with 67 green flag awarded parks and open spaces. All of this and more is achieved through Hillingdon Council’s continual focus on sound financial management that puts residents first. I pay tribute to the leader of Hillingdon Council, Councillor Ian Edwards, and his executive cabinet, as well as Sir Ray Puddifoot—the former leader for over two decades—my fellow councillors, both past and present, and of course the officer team and frontline teams across all departments who deliver great services for their residents and my constituents.
During the by-election, Uxbridge and South Ruislip saw intense campaigning, with a media frenzy and a whopping 17 candidates, but being the centre of attention is not something new for my constituency. Uxbridge is home to the Battle of Britain Bunker—one of the most popular heritage destinations in my constituency for visitors near and far. The bunker played a key part in the allied defensive network across Britain during the second world war, and it was from that bunker that No. 11 Fighter Command was controlled. No. 11 Fighter Command, based in Uxbridge, played a crucial role in securing victory during the battle of Britain. Indeed, it was at the entrance to the bunker that Winston Churchill first uttered his famous words,
“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”
He repeated those profound words in this very Chamber four days later, on 20 August 1940.
A bunker mentality was right for that time, but now is not that time. This is a time not to hunker down and hide away, but to face the many complex challenges that face us here in the UK and across the globe. The Prime Minister, the Government and my party are quite rightly looking at the long term, and have outlined clear and decisive policies that are designed to tackle the challenges we face. They are not easy decisions, but decisions that build on the long-term horizon, rather than easy short-termism that has no foundation or substance. I was elected to stand up for the interests of my constituents. I was born and raised in the constituency that I now have the privilege of serving as an MP.
A number of years ago—probably a few more than I would care to admit—I was born at Hillingdon Hospital. The hospital holds a special place in my heart: my children were born there, and there have been plenty of visits and treatments for myself and my family over the years. I pay tribute to the entire team at Hillingdon Hospital, past and present, as they continue to demonstrate exceptional professionalism and dedication to the surrounding communities. Much has been said about the condition of our hospital, some of it rather harsh and sensationalist in the heat of by-election campaigning. With that in mind, I am incredibly proud of the work that has been completed as part of the delivery of a new hospital for Hillingdon. Thanks to the combined efforts of all involved, including the local NHS trust and Hillingdon Council, work has begun on delivering that new hospital.
I pay a specific tribute to my predecessor, Boris Johnson, for his tireless efforts in support of Hillingdon Hospital during his time as MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip. He campaigned continuously for the funding to be secured and for the project to become a reality. That was one of many local campaigns that Boris championed across the constituency, and I thank him for his dedication in supporting many businesses, charities and community groups. While developing a new hospital is a large and complex project, I look forward to working with the Department of Health and Social Care to ensure that we can deliver long-term positive health outcomes and a state-of-the-art new hospital for my constituents.
To be stood here among these historic and world-famous green Benches is a great honour. It is incredibly humbling to follow in the footsteps of John Randall, who back in 1997 also became MP for Uxbridge as a result of a by-election. I am incredibly thankful for his advice and support on my journey to becoming an MP, and I hope to achieve as much as he did when he represented Uxbridge and South Ruislip. To be the Member of Parliament for Uxbridge and South Ruislip—the place where I was raised, where I have worked and where I live—representing friends, neighbours and strangers alike is a true honour. Immediately after the by-election, my work as an MP started: meeting some of the many faith and cultural groups that make Uxbridge and South Ruislip such a vibrant place to live, and visiting many local businesses that help keep residents in good, decent jobs and contribute to keeping our high streets bustling.
I thank the Hillingdon chamber of commerce for its engagement so early on. It is clear that we share the goal of supporting our businesses and keeping our community thriving, as well as encouraging other businesses to set their roots in our local economy. There are some fantastic businesses from small, home-based entrepreneurs and medium-sized exciting businesses such as Mills Ltd in Cowley, which is supporting gigabit infrastructure through the supply of essential tools and equipment, to a number of large national and international businesses such as Coca-Cola, Hertz and Brunel University, which all create employment opportunities for local people.
One of my priorities for Uxbridge and South Ruislip is to support business and promote our high streets. I am looking forward to taking this further through building on the work this Government have already done to protect businesses against the pressures of the cost of living. This includes a tax cut for 38,000 British pubs earlier this year through the Brexit pubs guarantee, and to ensure that our fantastic local pubs—like my local, the Middlesex Arms in South Ruislip—remain at the centre of the communities they have helped for many years. [Interruption.] A pint tonight, yes!
As I have already mentioned, much has been written about the by-election campaign. Even though local issues ultimately won over attempts to frame it with a national outlook, I want to take this opportunity to declare that I will be a Member of Parliament for all residents regardless of how or if they voted. I am incredibly proud of Uxbridge and South Ruislip and its civic pride from our active community-focused residents’ and volunteering groups to our dynamic, hard-working charities such as the Daniella Logun Foundation, which does amazing work to help children and their families with brain tumours and in raising awareness of childhood cancer.
As I have already said, we are a truly vibrant community, and through my priorities—they include a new Hillingdon hospital, securing even more police officers, protecting our green spaces, delivering improved special needs provision, supporting local businesses and improving our high streets—I stand here ready and determined to do all I can as a Member of Parliament to ensure that my community remains a great place to live, a great place to raise a family, a great place to work and a great place to grow to grow old in.
Mr Speaker, as I am sure you are aware, old habits die hard, so as a former postie, I will continue to deliver for the people of Uxbridge and South Ruislip. Thank you.
Amy Callaghan (East Dunbartonshire) (SNP)
It is of course an absolute pleasure to follow the maiden speech of the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Steve Tuckwell). He made a very compelling maiden speech, although maybe not quite as compelling for me as a nationalist following him.
It is always a pleasure to rise on behalf of my party in a debate centred on our NHS. Few know more about the NHS than the man who contributed to its present-day financial struggles, the new Foreign Secretary, who obviously is not here because he is not elected to this place. It is incredibly unfortunate that this big set-piece event in the parliamentary calendar did nothing to address the increased privatisation in NHS England. Perhaps that is something we can look forward to being addressed in the autumn statement, but for now I will summarise the issue that was overlooked in the King’s Speech.
Privatisation is creeping in through the back door in NHS England, and while health is devolved and we have our own NHS in Scotland, this has dire consequences for our NHS in Scotland through Barnett consequentials. The reality is that money spent by the British Government on England’s NHS dictates how much the Scottish Government have to spend on our NHS up the road. Despite cuts to Barnett consequentials for our NHS in Scotland, the Scottish Government are continuing to invest in new and innovative ways to reduce health inequalities and to protect our NHS for future generations.
Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
My colleague in the Scottish Parliament, the MSP for North East Fife, Willie Rennie, has raised the issue of a £10.9 million funding shortfall in NHS Fife, and that is before we see the winter surge. Does the hon. Member agree that, although we might see higher spending in Scotland, there are failures in how the SNP is delivering for our health services there?
Amy Callaghan
I thank the hon. Member for her contribution, but I would say that there are definitely structural funding issues because of being tied to this financial Union, which is the point I was just about to make. I hope she recognises that, and will maybe reflect on the fact that being part of this Union does have dire consequences.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. I remind the hon. Lady that she has to face forward.
Amy Callaghan
The First Minister’s pledge of £300 million to cut NHS wait times is an example of the fantastic work that the SNP Scottish Government are doing. There will be 100,000 fewer patients on our NHS wait lists come 2026, because of that incredible investment.
Despite the year-on-year reduction in Barnett consequentials for health, NHS Scotland staff remain the best paid across these isles. What does that look like in practice? A band 2 porter in Scotland earns £2,980 more a year than their counterpart in England, and a band 5 nurse in Scotland earns £3,080 more a year than their counterpart in England. This is all despite the increased privatisation in NHS England. Under the SNP, the Scottish NHS fares much better than its counterparts across these isles, but under the current funding structures only the UK Government can deliver the funding necessary to get the NHS back on its feet. Down here, the Treasury gives money to private companies to provide a service for NHS England. That means less capital investment into NHS England, which means less money for the Scottish Government to spend on NHS Scotland.
I have always found the monarch’s speech quite baffling, but particularly so over the past few years, with so many broken promises and so many shallow, unfulfilled commitments. I think of promises to ban conversion therapy, commitments to reach net zero and pledges for a mental health Bill. The Government think my party does not respect this place, yet it is them who make a mockery of it by not fulfilling the policy agenda that they set for themselves. Perhaps this threadbare King’s Speech is perfect for them: less to fail on.
Jim Shannon
I thank the hon. Lady for her empowered speech. One issue with Barnett consequentials is that although Scotland perhaps is not getting its full complement, Wales does, and I am grateful that it does, but Northern Ireland does not. We have asked for the Barnett consequentials for Northern Ireland to be looked at and reviewed to enable us to be at the same level as Wales; perhaps the hon. Lady would like to see that for Scotland.
Amy Callaghan
I absolutely would like to see the same for Scotland. The Barnett consequential system in itself is quite frustrating, because we do not see the full complement we should get because of how the British Government exercise spending decisions. I would absolutely like to see a different funding structure exercised down here. The way it is spoken about is complicated in itself, and a bit of truth around that would be useful.
I have been struggling with the image of the King delivering his speech from his gilded throne while innocent people in Palestine are dying. It feels a ridiculous thing for this Parliament to have been focusing on. We are witnessing the biggest humanitarian crisis that many, if not most of us, have ever seen. It bears witness to how soulless this British Government truly are. Children are dying, refugee camps are being bombed and hospitals are being destroyed. For each second that Members throughout this House fail to call for a ceasefire, more innocent people are dying in Gaza.
Not just a humanitarian pause but a ceasefire is necessary. Riham Jafari of ActionAid Palestine so aptly described the difference between a humanitarian pause and a ceasefire:
“What use is a four-hour pause each day to hand communities bread in the morning before they are bombed in the afternoon?”
Innocent men, women and children in Palestine continue to die. I make a plea to colleagues on both sides of the House: walk through the Lobby with us on Wednesday night to vote for a ceasefire. They need you to show leadership. We need to show leadership and vote for the SNP’s common-sense humanitarian amendment to the humble address.
In preparation for this debate, I found myself reflecting on the words inscribed on the mace of the Scottish Parliament: “Wisdom, Justice, Compassion and Integrity”. The mace is not just about tradition, and it is not a bit of a pantomime like in this Parliament. In Holyrood, the mace is there to signify the relationship between the people, the Parliament and the land.
No institution better represents the link between the people and the state than our precious NHS, but being tied to this financial Union means that our NHS is suffering terribly. We have workforce shortages, medication shortages and equipment shortages—shortages, shortages, shortages. I got into politics because of the rampant health inequalities I saw in my part of the world when I took unwell as a teenager. We all know health outcomes are impacted, whether directly or indirectly, by the quality of our support network. I saw first-hand the effect of poverty on outcomes. That is why I am so proud that our SNP Scottish Government implemented the young patients family fund, which helps to prevent income from being a barrier for families being able to support a young person through ill health. Scotland is leading the way in transforming lives and outcomes with that fund.
It would have been nice to see some flickers of hope and progress woven through the King’s Speech, but given the British Government’s lack of willingness to learn from good practice elsewhere on these isles, it is relatively unsurprising not to see it. The pomp and pageantry of this place, its traditions and its reactionary main parties seem to me to be a distraction from the real work and hard conversations that neither of the two main parties want to have. Instead, we have a celebration of the dance we call debate in this place.
I will now reflect again on the words inscribed on the Mace of the Scottish Parliament. Let us take a look at each and see whether they apply to the British Government. I will start with the wisdom that is being shown—or not shown—in this place where Brexit was forced through, despite the broken promises it was built on. What has come with that wise decision endorsed by both the Government and the Labour party? We have severe medicine shortages, meaning that people are unable to access vital treatments such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder drugs and hormone replacement therapy, as well as a shortage of staff to supply and distribute them. That oven-ready Brexit deal that the public were promised was lacking one key ingredient: wisdom. My constituents in East Dunbartonshire applied wisdom in advance when they overwhelmingly voted to remain within the European Union, but the structure of the Union meant that their voice was ignored.
Moving on to justice, where is the justice in there being so many material changes of circumstances since the 2014 referendum, while the British Government continue to deny the people of Scotland the right to choose our own future? Some might say that that is an injustice.
Moving on to compassion, there are many ways in which I could question the compassion of this place, but there is nothing more timely or truly horrific than the ongoing attacks on civilians in Gaza. We are witnessing the biggest humanitarian crisis many of us have seen in our lifetimes, and this place has rightfully expressed compassion for those killed and suffering in Israel, yet the compassion is lacking for those children in Gaza. Each day that this place fails to unite behind a ceasefire, children die. Where is the compassion for those children?
Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)
Would the hon. Member get behind a unilateral or a bilateral ceasefire?
Amy Callaghan
I would get behind a ceasefire. We are talking about a ceasefire.
Amy Callaghan
Yes, with both sides stopping. The hostages should be returned to Israel and we should see a ceasefire. I think that is relatively straightforward, is it not?
Finally, moving on to integrity, integrity should be the foundation of politics. Having trust that manifestos will be implemented and that policy agendas, such as the King’s Speech, will be taken through Parliament in the form of legislation is the bare minimum that folk at home expect. Instead, the British Government have thrown integrity out the window. It will be interesting to see, over the next parliamentary year, how much of what was in the King’s Speech is actually delivered.
I received a desperate appeal from the Linda Norgrove Foundation—it is named for a brave British aid worker murdered by the Taliban—for the UK Government to reopen the Afghan citizens relocation and resettlement schemes to allow 20 female Afghan medical students to come to Scotland specifically to complete their studies. It is now clear that the Taliban will never reopen schools and universities to girls. These young women are now prisoners in their own home, unable to show their face in public or to leave the house without a male guardian. Many live with the terrifying threat of forced marriage. The Linda Norgrove Foundation will pay for them to get here, and the Scottish Government have readily agreed to waive their tuition fees so that they can finish their studies. The only thing stopping these women from finding sanctuary in the UK is the British Government’s refusal to open the Afghan citizens relocation and resettlement scheme and create a legal pathway for them to do so.
That simple change would save 20 incredible women from brutal oppression at no cost to the British Government at a time when our NHS is also in desperate need of qualified doctors. I cannot think of a reason, other than performative cruelty, why the Government would withhold that permission.
I will once again say these words that are so sorely lacking down here: wisdom, justice, compassion and integrity. What could not be clearer is that Scotland’s NHS is not safe while we are tied to the financial structures of Westminster. Broken Brexit Britain is damaging our precious NHS through workforce shortages, equipment shortages and medication shortages. I look forward to a day when an independent Scotland rejoins the European Union, leaving broken Brexit Britain behind.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. As you can see, there is a lot of interest in the debate. We will try to proceed without a time limit, but I will give an indicative amount. If Members do not go wildly over eight minutes, we should get everybody in. Let us give that a go to begin with.
Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
Waiting lists are rightly one of the Government’s top priorities. To the best of my knowledge, Mr Deputy Speaker, you could not perform a knee replacement—one of the most waited-for operations—and if I were to give you £1 billion, I suspect that you would still be unable to do so. Too often, debates focus on money and how much has been put into the NHS—the Government have put record amounts into the NHS—but it is about more than money; it is about people.
On this, the 75th year since the NHS was founded, the workforce plan is a milestone in the NHS’s history, and one that I am very pleased to see. It is an essential step towards creating a more productive health service where we can expand training and recruitment while retaining the amazing pool of talent that we have in the NHS. My constituents will be particularly pleased to see the plans to increase the number of dentistry students by 40%, because many are struggling, as has been said, to see dentists. We will also double the number of GP training places by 2031, which is welcome.
These changes will take time, because doctors take a long time to train. One of the first things that the Conservative Government did was to put in place steps to open the new Lincoln medical school. It has opened and is training doctors, and it will not be long before the first new doctors will graduate, which is excellent news for my constituents. I am also pleased for my constituents that we have got a new diagnostics centre opening in Grantham, which will accelerate patients’ diagnoses and treatment.
I have been pleased to hear in the last few days about the streamlining of processes for clinical trials. That will help us to find the new treatments and diagnoses that will be the miracle cures. The Health and Social Care Committee recently visited Singapore, where we met a professor who had identified the benefits of chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy and treated Oscar, the little boy from Worcester whom many of us will remember from the news. Thankfully, he has recovered from his leukaemia. Such groundbreaking, world-beating discoveries will be made only if we make it easier to conduct safe clinical trials. However, we also need to look at how we incentivise people to do them.
The NHS has advertised roles for equality and diversity staff at more than £90,000, yet there is currently an advert for a professor of synthetic biology at Cambridge University—they will lead global clinical research—for a little over £67,000. We need to look at how the state values the people who will bring about world-leading discoveries and how it can support them in their quests so that our brightest children will want to do that not just through moral desire but, essentially, to turn their A-levels into cash.
The NHS has been crippled by strikes this year, and more than 1 million appointments have been cancelled. That is not helping with waiting lists, and patients are being left to suffer. Cancer diagnoses are being delayed, and patients’ conditions, when they are in pain, are being left unrelieved. As a paediatrician, I understand the desire for better working conditions and more money, but I cannot understand morally the desire to leave patients behind in order to achieve that. Morally, I do not agree with the strikes and I support the Government’s prioritising patients and their commitment to maintaining minimum service levels during industrial action.
Mr Ranil Jayawardena (North East Hampshire) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that people often forget about the huge amount of pension rights quite understandably provided to people in public service? Junior doctors who are continuing their action do not take account of the huge benefits that they will accrue in later life.
Dr Johnson
I should mention that I have an NHS pension, but my right hon. Friend is right. The Government took a big step earlier this year to improve pensions, by changing the tax regime to make it easier for more senior doctors to remain at work and not feel they have to give it up because of punitive tax levels. Ultimately, doctors are paid well—they could be paid better, of course—but for me it is a moral question: morally, I do not think it is right to leave patients in order to advocate for more money.
I am pleased by the steps that the Government are taking to crack down on tobacco products. The proposal will not please everyone, but it shows the Government’s boldness and earnestness when addressing public health issues. Prevention is better—and usually far cheaper—than cure. A preventive approach to smoking will reduce the burden on our healthcare system and improve people’s quality of life. Colleagues will not be surprised to hear that I am especially pleased by the Government’s commitment to restrict the sale and marketing of vapes to children. I am glad that the Government have included some of my proposals in their upcoming consultation on vaping, including regulating their flavours, branding and visibility in shops, as well as giving local authorities the power to issue on-the-spot fines for those selling them to children.
I am glad that the Government are consulting on banning the sale of disposable e-cigarettes, which time and again have been the vape of choice for children. I was shocked by figures published last year that found that 1.3 million vapes are thrown away every week in the UK. Subsequent figures released in September show that, staggeringly, in the space of just one year that number has more than tripled to 5 million every week. Those disposable vapes would fill this Chamber from top to bottom twice over every single week—heaven forbid, Mr Deputy Speaker. That is the scale of the problem we are dealing with.
The UK risks falling behind if it does not seize the agenda quickly. I eagerly await the results of the Government’s consultation, as I know many colleagues do. Sometimes, it can be difficult to find issues on which figures from across the political spectrum are strongly aligned, but I am confident that the House will unite behind the Government’s recent proposals on vaping.
Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making some compelling points. It strikes me that disposable vapes are often available at the point of sale where we used to find things such as chewing gum and packets of Polo mints. That makes it very easy for children to access them. Does she think that regulating point-of-sale products is a massive tool to tackle the problem? Let us remember that established tobacco companies have to have their multi-use vapes on sale behind the screens that tobacco is sold behind.
Dr Johnson
I completely agree that putting vapes where children can see them makes them more available and makes children want them more. That is why they need to be in plain colours and flavours and out of the sight and reach of children. My understanding is that that is part of the Government’s consultation, and I hope they legislate and make regulations as soon as they can.
Overall, the King’s Speech is a good one, and I am proud to support it.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
First, I congratulate the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Steve Tuckwell) on making his maiden speech. Having mentioned his local boozer, he will no doubt be forever welcomed there with open arms. I welcome him to his place and thank him for his speech.
I note the historic event last week of the King making his first Gracious Address as sovereign. It is just a pity that the speech written for him by the Government was so thin, with little content and little vision. It was a clear demonstration that the Government not only are running out of steam, but have none left at all.
People know that I have campaigned on mental health for many years. It is 11 years since the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker) and I spoke, in a mental health debate, about our own mental health. I think attitudes have changed for the better over that period, and it has clearly moved up the political agenda. I was therefore, like a lot of campaigners and professionals, very disappointed that the reform of the Mental Health Act 1983 was dropped from the King’s Speech. The Act is outdated and archaic in parts, and its language is more fitting to the Victorian era. As my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) said, in some cases it is leading to people with learning difficulties and autism being locked in the system for many years, without any voice to raise their plight.
The Minister, in her address, seemed to dismiss that as though it was somehow not important, but depriving people of their liberty is a very serious thing. To deprive somebody of their liberty, you have to ensure that they not only have rights, but care. My concerns about the Mental Health Act relate to those with autism and learning disabilities, some of whom have been locked in the system for years without a strong advocate. There are people in the criminal justice system locked into a Kafkaesque system that we have created. The Minister more or less threw that aside. I am sorry, but if you are a black teenager in the criminal justice system or an adult with learning difficulties, the system needs reforming and it needs reforming now.
It is not as though the Government started with a blank sheet of paper. We had Sir Simon Wessely’s excellent review in 2018. The Government made a manifesto commitment in 2019 to bring forward legislation. There was a draft Bill last year and a Joint Committee to scrutinise it. One would have thought it was a clear priority for the Government to move the issue up the political agenda, but what we have had from the Department of Health and Social Care is not just no Bill, but inaction. The Joint Committee spent a great deal of time looking at the Bill and put forward 36 recommendations. Ten months later and they have not yet even been answered by the Government. This is not just the Government abandoning the Bill and a broken Conservative party manifesto promise; it is a dereliction of duties. Politics is about priorities and, for me, this is a priority. Some 50,000 people a year are sectioned under the Mental Health Act. For some, I accept, it is life changing. For others, however, it leads to a system that they get into and cannot get out of. It is right to reform the Act and it is absolutely shocking that that is not in the King’s Speech. It will certainly be a commitment for the next Labour Government. I and many on the Labour Benches will make sure it is a commitment.
The Minister, in her Gatling gun approach to her speech, was more or less saying that it does not matter because everything else is okay in mental health. I am sorry, but it is not. In April 2022 we had, with much fanfare, the 10-year mental health and wellbeing plan. Over 5,200 individuals and mental health charities responded to a consultation, only to find out in January this year that it had been completely scrapped. The Minister talks about mental health being a priority, but the facts do not support that. Unless we have a proper joined-up approach to mental health, we will not get on top of the issue of individuals who need help, or have a system fit for a modern country such as the UK.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on raising this matter. Throughout my time in the House he has spoken up significantly for those with mental health issues, and he understands the subject very well. One group who seem to fall below the radar are veterans. In Northern Ireland, a large number of people who have served in the forces suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that those veterans who are suffering greatly must be a priority in addressing mental health?
Mr Jones
I agree with the hon. Gentleman. As a former veterans Minister, I did a lot about veterans mental health. We now have a disjointed system with a veterans Minister who, in Trumpian style, says that everything is perfect and everything is working, when it is clearly not. We need to ensure that veterans receive the best mental health care in their local areas, and that means adopting a joint approach.
If we are to get on top of the nation’s mental health, that must be done through a public health approach. It must be done at local level, and it must ensure that public health takes a lead. Less than 2% of the mental health budget is spent on preventive work, which needs to be done not just in schools but in communities generally. Fortunately for my constituency, a new initiative has been launched in Chester-le-Street where GPs and local community groups divert people from mental health services by securing them the help they need, and I congratulate those who are involved.
Tobacco affects mental health, with 50% higher smoking rates among those with a mental illness and two-thirds higher death rates, so I support the movement for a smoke-free generation, although I note that the Government will not ask their Back Benchers to support the policy because they know they will not receive it. Action also needs to be taken on illegal sales of counterfeit tobacco, but that cannot be done in the present circumstances, because the number of local trading standards officers has been cut by 52% since 2009. We need to ensure that more money is put into trading standards and policing. The Government keep saying how wonderful it is that we have extra policing, but in fact County Durham has 140 fewer police officers than it had in 2010. It is important for us to have the enforcement side, because without that some people will be driven into the illegal tobacco market, but we cannot see it as a silver bullet that will justify cuts in public health budgets. We need continued, dedicated local smoking cessation programmes, because without them we will not make the strides that we want to make.
I shall say something on two other issues. First, on leasehold reform, let us look at the facts, as opposed to what the Government are saying. The Government have given the impression that this reform will affect every leaseholder, but it will not; it will apply only to new buildings. There is no roll-out of the commonhold for new flats, which constitute the majority of leasehold properties. This outdated feudal system needs to change. There will be a great many disappointed people who, having assumed they would suddenly be given more rights, then find otherwise. Let us be honest: this has been fuelled by the Government’s right to buy scheme, which is being used by Persimmon and other big house builders as a way of making extra cash, mainly at the expense of the taxpayer and those poor individuals.
Secondly, on transport, I have heard the references to the Network North plan. I will not dwell on it too much, because I do not believe anything in it. We know that 85% of it has already been announced, but some of those announcements have been withdrawn very quickly. In the north-east, for example, the Government argued that the Leamside line, which would help my constituency of North Durham, would be reopened, only for that announcement to be withdrawn within 24 hours. I doubt that many of these projects will see fruition.
With my role on the Intelligence and Security Committee, I welcome the investigatory powers reforms, which will be important in ensuring that the right safeguards are in place for the way our security services collect bulk data, and in bringing some of the oversight up to date. It is also important that the Government work closely with the ISC—something they did not do on the National Security Bill that went through in the last Parliament. We are still waiting for a response to some of our arguments around how the ISC is run. This legislation will be important to ensure that we give our security services the necessary powers to protect us all, and to ensure that we get the proper oversight.
This will be the last King’s Speech before the general election. It was half-hearted and full of gimmicks that were designed to be eye-catching, but it has no long-term plan for the future of our country. That is the disappointing thing, and that will only change when we get a change of Government at the next general election.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Steve Tuckwell) on a superb election victory and on a great speech from a real local champion. That result shows how important it is for the Government and the Mayor of London not to get ahead of public opinion on green energy. We all want more green energy but it must be economically driven and we must take the general public with us. I am afraid that the Mayor of London, certainly in outer London, has not taken the public with him. In Lincolnshire we have an aspect of green energy that affects my constituency, with 10,000 acres ringing Gainsborough to be put under solar panels. That will involve a huge loss of agricultural land, enough to feed the city of Lincoln every year. We all want solar panels as long as it is proportionate, but 10,000 acres ringing one small town in Lincolnshire is overdevelopment.
The advantage of the King’s Speech debate is that we can range quite widely, and in the few minutes I have, I shall raise a few general points. We have a new Foreign Secretary, a new Home Secretary and a new Health Secretary. The challenges facing the Foreign Secretary are enormous, both in the middle east and in Ukraine. On the earlier intervention, I am all in favour of a ceasefire, but it must be by both sides, and there is no intimation yet that if Israel were to announce a ceasefire, Hamas would follow suit. If Hamas are now prepared to commit themselves to a permanent ceasefire with Israel and respect the right of Israeli citizens to live in peace and tranquillity, I am sure we can have a negotiation on that basis, but I do not see that happening.
We also need to have a tone of compassion for the Palestinian people. The Palestinian people are not Hamas. I was quite impressed by what President Macron was saying on this. The Israeli Government have the right to defend themselves, but it must be in proportion, and I think we are all devastated and concerned about the plight of women, children and babies in Gaza. The Israeli Government have to deal with this issue in a proportionate way.
On Ukraine, I do not suggest a ceasefire, because that would simply benefit President Putin, but if there is a stalemate, I am not sure that we can go on thinking that we can solve the problem by pouring in more and more weaponry. Eventually there will have to be some sort of settlement.
This is a debate primarily about the NHS. We in Lincolnshire suffer from a poorly performing NHS. I have constituents—people of my age—who have paid taxes all their lives and who suddenly fall ill, go to A&E in Lincoln and have to stay there for 24 hours, often in pain and difficulty. More and more doctors are insisting that people who want an appointment have to go online, and fewer and fewer doctors are providing prompt face-to-face service. The NHS simply cannot continue as it is.
We have a new Health Secretary and, as I have said before, I think we need fundamental reform. Frankly, our counterparts on the continent, in France, Italy and Germany, get a much better service. We have to look at some sort of social insurance system by which people who pay taxes all their life are entitled to treatment within a certain period and, if they do not receive that treatment, the state will assist them to go private.
I have made the point many times that a previous Conservative Government gave tax relief for private health insurance. This Government have not progressed that idea, which I do not think would be a wildly popular one, but we have to do something. The NHS is consuming an ever-larger proportion of the national budget and delivering a worse and worse service.
Over the next 12 months up to the general election, I hope the new Health Secretary will think big ideas to try to give people, particularly those of pensionable age, some right to the healthcare that they have paid for all their life and that they do not get at present. Having more children brushing their teeth at school under a putative Labour Government will not solve the problem; it is far greater than that.
Of course, we also have a new Home Secretary, who has an enormous challenge. I have confidence that he will speak up for Conservative Britain and Conservative voters who are deeply unhappy about the very high levels of both legal and illegal migration. It is completely unsustainable to carry on with the current net migration rate of some 600,000 people a year, which is overwhelming our services, the NHS, housing and everything else. It is said that we need these people to work in the NHS or in care homes, but we need to provide proper wages so that people who already live in Britain want to work in the NHS or in care services.
We should not allow employers to think they can solve their problems by constantly importing labour from abroad. There is a simple solution to help solve this problem. The average wage in the UK is about £34,000 a year and, at the moment, a person can enter this country for a job paying £26,000 a year. If we said that migrants have to earn a minimum of, say, £34,000 a year, we would bring in high-quality staff and not undercut our own indigenous labour.
Mr Jayawardena
Does my right hon. Friend agree that we have a structural problem because of our country’s ageing population, and that we need to have more children in this country so that we meet our replacement rate for the first time since the 1970s?
Sir Edward Leigh
I have made a personal contribution by having six children. They are all now in their 20s and 30s, and they are finding it unbelievably difficult to get on the housing ladder. The Government really have to solve this problem. We cannot just fill this country with more and more people so that our young people cannot get on the housing ladder and cannot find a place to rent.
I am a bit dubious about reforming how landlords can evict tenants. I just want supply-side reforms to ensure there is more housing coming on to the market for young people to rent. I want the Government to be far more proactive on building houses, if necessary in grey areas on the green belt. That might not be universally popular with my colleagues, but we certainly have plenty of room in Lincolnshire. If people want to come up to Lincolnshire and build houses, they are very welcome. We will do our bit.
I am very dubious about the smoking ban and, as a libertarian, will vote against it. It will not solve the problem, and I believe it will result in a massive increase in criminality. Every time we ban something, we simply increase the criminal class. I am not sure a ban is even enforceable. In 50 years’ time, old boys will go into a tobacconist and say, “I am 64 years old and am entitled to buy cigarettes, but my friend here, who is 63, cannot buy cigarettes.” It is ridiculous, and it is not enforceable. I do not smoke, and smoking is decreasing all the time. The people who smoke are heavily taxed. I do not believe we can solve this or any other problem by banning things. Conservatives have to be primarily about freedom. They have to be about low taxation and deregulation. We have to give something for our own people to vote for, which is why I have talked about these issues and, in particular, curbing legal and illegal migration. I am a victim of that, as is the Home Secretary, because the previous Home Secretary was going to open a camp for asylum seekers in his constituency. I do not know whether the Home Secretary is still going to do that; if he decides to row back on that idea in his constituency, I hope he will not close that camp in Essex but keep open the putative camp at RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire, as that would be completely unfair. Being a fair-minded person, he will not do that, I am sure. I shall be knocking on his door soon to say that we need a compromise, as we cannot have 2,000 illegal migrants overwhelming local social services. After that brief run around the King’s Speech, I am sure you will be grateful if I now sit down and let others have a go, Mr Deputy Speaker.
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
Let me start by saying what a pleasure it is to follow the right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh). I also welcome the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Steve Tuckwell), who will make his maiden speech; he will know that we campaign in slogans but we sometimes have to make difficult decisions when we represent our constituents, as we have seen with the international issues taking place in Israel and Gaza.
I say to the right hon. Member for Gainsborough that we are talking about a ceasefire not only to enable the hostages to be released, but to stop the killing of innocent civilians. When organisations such as the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development cannot even enter Gaza and do the work they need to do, and when 44% of the United Nations workers have been killed, we have to do something. We cannot sit back and do nothing, which is why I will add my voice to the calls for a ceasefire to enable our brilliant diplomats to try to find a solution to this intolerable situation. People may have seen what took place at the weekend, but let me say that I was writing this speech and I just could not carry on, as it was incredibly upsetting to see babies’ bodies lined up—that is just a horrific thing. They have done absolutely nothing; they have just come into this world, and for what—just to be dead? Parents and all sorts of people are facing incredible difficulties, not being able to eat or drink; doctors are even unable to carry out operations.
We have had the first speech of our gracious sovereign and he set out the Government’s business until the next Session, with 21 Bills proposed. They do not represent the urgency of what is needed, and I want to focus on energy and climate change, public services and empowered local government, and keeping us all safe through the criminal justice system. In the gracious sovereign’s speech, the Government say they want to strengthen the UK’s energy security, but there are no measures set out to bring down bills. Onshore wind projects have recently stalled, as there are no new applications, so investment is being driven abroad. However, new licences for oil and gas are set out in the King’s Speech. Despite 13 years of North sea licences, only small amounts of gas have been found—the equivalent of nine weeks of usage; we are talking about 12 fields and nine weeks. Despite six rounds since 2010, only five new fields have been discovered, and the Sillimanite gas field is 30% owned by the Russian gas giant Gazprom. How is that making us secure?
His Majesty’s Opposition’s Gracious Speech, which we hope to produce fairly soon, will include the energy independence Bill. That will include a target to achieve clean power by 2030—we have nothing from this Government on targets. We will bring forward the planning and regulatory reforms for clean power by 2030 and establish “Great British Energy”, a new home-grown publicly owned clean power generation company with a mandate to produce profit-free power for our citizens. All of that will cut energy bills, create good jobs, ensure energy security and protect the planet for future generations.
Our children are choking and dying from inhaling particulate matter. Dr Sarah Moller from the University of York found that the people who experience the highest levels of nitrogen oxide emissions are those who live nearest roads and in areas of higher density—deprived communities—so what did the Government do? They cancelled a major transport project that would have enabled people to use high-speed trains for capacity and connectivity. To make things more difficult, the Government have done a U-turn. Ticket offices are there to help people use trains; the Government want to close them. Accessible train stations should be a right for people with disabilities. That is what I am trying to ensure with Bescot Stadium station. Our next Gracious Speech will have a Bill on energy independence.
We have seen the recent pronouncement of the Bank of England that the economy is flatlining. Inflation, mortgage costs, and food and energy prices are creating a crisis in every household. There was nothing in the speech to help those on the frontline who are providing statutory services. The Government-funded part of local authority spending has fallen in real terms by 52%. Instead of giving local authorities a grant based on a formula that calculates need and deprivation, the Government have retained funding and purport to dish it out by ensuring that local authorities have to bid against each other for a particular fund. Most local authorities are struggling to provide child protection and other statutory services, but there was nothing in the speech to deal with the issues surrounding vulnerable children, which have increased since the pandemic and have had a major impact on local authority budgets. Local authorities are on the frontline, and they should be in a position to provide these services face to face. They are there to support our constituents, not to close down or turn people away. Again, there was also nothing in the Gracious Speech about NHS waiting times or decent wages for staff.
There was also a lack of clarity in the Gracious Speech regarding the criminal justice system, which is collapsing, Mr Deputy Speaker—and he will know as a former barrister. Some 90% of crimes are going unsolved. Arrests on thefts are down 40% on just a few years ago. Shoplifting has reached record levels. Those who work on the frontline in supermarkets are suffering abuse. The charity Retail Trust found that 40% of workers—two in five—face abuse from customers weekly. Those workers were the ones who helped us through the pandemic. I saw a gang when I was in a local convenience store, looking at the CCTV. I was wondering what the owner of the shop was looking at. Basically, someone had wheeled up a van, and lifted a clothes bank and took it away. That is what is happening now. We still have 10,000 fewer neighbourhood police. In Labour’s first Gracious Speech, His Majesty’s Opposition will put 13,000 more neighbourhood and police community support officers on the street. We want to introduce respect orders, with criminal sanctions for antisocial behaviour.
The Government have not even looked at prisons; there was no mention of those difficulties in the King’s Speech. I asked a prison governor in my constituency, “What’s the capacity in your prison?” He said, “99%.” I said, “What should it be?” and he said, “70%.” That is what is happening, and it has to be dealt with. We need a return to extended court sittings to address the backlog of cases, and we should perhaps bring back Nightingale courts, which we used to have. We need to see respect for the rule of law. The legal system needs proper representation for all, and it is vital, as you will know, Mr Deputy Speaker, that both sides are represented. Judges are having to fill in for claimants and for the defence because they need to explain procedures to people, so that they know exactly what will happen to them.
There was also not a single word in the Gracious Speech—I did check—about public services, apart from a statement that public service estimates will be laid; there was nothing about how to deal with the present crisis. We have a dithering, do-nothing Government. The biggest discussion is whether a Minister or Secretary of State should be sacked. We told the Government about the Northern Ireland protocol. They then had to put it right, and rename it, and that came in only in February this year. We told them about the Horizon programme, and how our brilliant scientists were being prevented from continuing to take part, until finally the Government agreed that we should get involved in the Horizon programme. It is so difficult for scientists because they have to plan ahead and apply for grants. Yet only in September this year did the Government agree on the Horizon programme. They dithered about it, and could have saved everyone time. Some 28% of music industry workers have not had any work in the EU for the last two years.
I know people say, “So what are you going to do?”, so I want to set out what will be in His Majesty’s Opposition’s King’s Speech: breakfast clubs, so all children can benefit from a good start; getting the NHS back on its feet by cutting waiting lists, delivering out-of-hours treatment and doubling the number of scanners to provide faster treatment; and getting Britain building again, with 1.5 million homes built in five years and first-time buyers being allowed to bid for those houses in their local community.
I walked past the flats that were there for the Commonwealth games village. They are lying empty and I would like to know what is happening with them. Homeless people are being put up in hotels, when those flats are lying empty and should be used.
We need to switch on “Great British Energy”, a new British company giving us cheaper bills and new high-paid jobs; and to take back our streets from gangs, drug dealers and fly-tippers, with stronger policing, guaranteed patrols in town centres and more criminals put behind bars. That is what will be in His Majesty’s Opposition’s King’s Speech.
Finally, I know the Prime Minister is very interested in “Star Wars”—he is a “Star Wars” geek—so I say this to him: “Red 326 standing by.”
Dame Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)
I am grateful for the opportunity to talk about the NHS and our nation’s health and wellbeing. I welcome the Minister’s commitment to prevention and early detection of disease. For the long-term stability and affordability of our NHS, it is vital that there continues to be a laser-like focus on diagnostic centres and more medical staff. The stronger role for pharmacists is very welcome, but there is still so much more that we need to do to provide adequate GP provision and dentistry. That is acutely felt in my Gosport constituency.
I have spoken many times in this House about childhood cancer, which is the biggest killer by disease of children under the age of 14 in the UK. Early detection is more crucial here than almost anywhere, yet over 50% of children’s cancers are missed in primary care and picked up at A&E, meaning longer, harsher and more invasive treatment, along with a long-term impact on the children themselves, their families and loved ones, and the NHS as well. There are no long-term impact studies in the UK, but studies by St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in the United States reveal that everyone who has undergone treatment for cancer as a child will experience some long-term health implications in adulthood, from infertility to blindness.
The title of today’s debate is “Building an NHS Fit for the Future”. A future-focused NHS means smarter, more efficient and more appropriate treatment, as well as earlier detection and, ultimately, prevention. We already lead the world in genome sequencing and we should be harnessing its power; that means a childhood cancer mission. I must say that found it disappointing that such a vital piece of the puzzle was missing from the King’s Speech. I look forward to hearing the new Health Secretary talking more about this in the future.
Prevention, as much as cure, is the key to managing the health of the nation, and I am glad to see the tobacco and vapes Bill in the Government’s legislative programme. Smoking is the biggest entirely preventable cause of death and disease. Although vaping is an important tool for quitting smoking, it is absolutely right that more is done to reduce the appeal and availability of vapes to our young people.
As Chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, I have seen and heard about the huge value that grassroots sports have to the health and wellbeing of people—young and old—across the country, so I was pleased to see the guidance from the Government earlier this year on preventing and dealing with concussion in grassroots sport. The Committee’s work in this area, alongside the work of the all-party parliamentary group on acquired brain injury, has shown that signs and risks of concussion, including possible links to dementia, are not yet well enough understood. It is right that the focus is on encouraging everyone in sport—players, parents, coaches, teachers and administrators—to make sure they can recognise and act on concussion, so I look forward to hearing more about what the Government are going to do on that vital issue.
I cannot move on without paying tribute to Sir Bobby Charlton, whose memorial service was today. He was a giant among British sportsmen and will be sorely missed by our football fraternity.
At the grassroots and professionally, women’s sport is thriving in the UK. The Culture, Media and Sport Committee and the Women and Equalities Committee are both considering what more can be done to support women in sport. It is such an important component to women and girls’ physical and mental health and wellbeing. It is crucial to make sure that women have access to the facilities that they need—whether that is schools providing the opportunities to play a range of sports, local clubs providing women’s changing rooms, or training schedules that are not based principally on the convenience of male players. It is also about national institutions finally waking up to the value of women’s sports and ending the disgraceful situation where the England women’s cricket team have never played a test match at Lord’s, the so-called home of cricket.
I look forward to the Committee completing our inquiry in the new year, bringing recommendations from the Government and sporting bodies to improve the provision of sport for women, and I look forward in the new year to revisiting the Committee’s work on discrimination in cricket as the England and Wales Cricket Board begins to implement the recommendations of the Independent Commission on Equity in Cricket.
Looking more widely at sport, it is fair to say that English football has been in the grip of an existential crisis. The failed European Super League, the collapse of Bury FC and the impact of the pandemic called into question the sustainability of our national game. The fan-led review, chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch), and the Government’s White Paper were both important steps to reform. The promise of a football governance Bill in the King’s Speech is the biggest step in the right direction.
Earlier this year, my Committee published our report on football governance. We want to see the Government getting on with setting up the independent regulator, and for it to be ready to step in to prevent the collapse of more clubs and to ensure fair funding and revenue sharing throughout the football pyramid. We will wait to see the detail of the Bill, and I hope that the Department will be able to introduce it at the earliest possible opportunity.
I also strongly welcome the inclusion of the Media Bill in the King’s Speech and the decision to introduce it so early in this Session. The Culture, Media and Sport Committee conducted pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill earlier this year, and our key recommendation in both our report on the radio measures and our report on the Bill overall was that this legislation needs to be enacted, because it is vital to protecting the long-term health of the media in this country.
I especially welcome the fact that the Government have listened to the Committee and strengthened the legislation to ensure that specific genres of content are still relevant to the public service remit. I welcome, too, that the Government and Channel 4 have worked together to ensure that the channel is sustainable, while also protecting independent content producers. The Bill balances the ability to adapt to future changes in TV and radio, while ensuring that viewers and listeners have necessary safeguards in place, and I look forward to seeing that Bill progress.
Much of our country’s culture, media and sport does not need legislation to flourish. They are remarkably resilient, imaginative and innovative sectors, but I am glad that the Government continue to act where it is necessary. I am pleased that the Pedicabs (London) Bill will tackle one of the antisocial rip-off behaviours that is targeted at visitors to London, but there is much more that the Government could be doing to support our tourist industry. Tomorrow, the Culture, Media and Sport Committee will be taking evidence on what more can be done, whether that is through restoring tax-free shopping, improving our visa system or growing investment. I look forward to continuing to press for more action wherever it is needed.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
My constituents in Nottingham South are deeply disappointed by the thin offering of Bills promised by the Prime Minister for the last year of this Parliament before he finally lets them have a vote on his unelected Government’s dismal record. The legislative affairs team at Downing Street should be applauded for inserting the Automated Vehicles Bill—a Bill about driverless cars—into the speech. Perhaps there is a telling allusion to the absence of leadership behind the great wheel of state at 10 Downing Street.
This Mr Micawber-esque King’s Speech offers precious little change from the past 13 years of the Tories’ mismanaged decline of our country. The only hope emanating from it is the desperate hope coming from the Prime Minister that something might turn up to save his sinking premiership, but, then again, perhaps he has already given up. After all, he seems more interested in interviewing big tech billionaires with a view to a new job in 2025 than rolling up his sleeves and addressing the many challenges facing our country.
When the Prime Minister replaced his short-lived predecessor, he promised to get Britain back to its salad days. Instead, the state of our country now more resembles that of last year’s ill-fated lettuce. This dereliction of public duty is most evident in the stark decline of our national health service, which is already under immense pressure as we enter yet another difficult winter season. My local hospital was forced to declare a critical incident in October. How much worse will things be come January?
Just as the electorate and the Opposition are eagerly waiting for the Prime Minister to call an election, an unprecedented number of people are waiting to be seen by our NHS because of this Conservative Government’s neglect. When the Prime Minister entered 10 Downing Street last year, he pledged to cut NHS waiting lists, yet just last month, and despite the incredible efforts of hard-pressed staff, they rose to a record high of 7.75 million. One in seven people in England are waiting for treatment.
In Nottinghamshire there are still around 60 patients who have been waiting more than 18 months for a procedure, and 1,200 patients who have been waiting for more than 15 months—waiting with their lives on hold, worried and often in pain and discomfort. For some it is worse, because for too many that waiting will have a profound effect on the outcome. The Public Accounts Committee’s finding that waiting times for patients suffering from cancer are at their worst recorded level is hugely concerning.
Many Members of this House will, like me, have received often heartrending testimony from constituents whose families have spent hours waiting for an overwhelmed ambulance crew to arrive to help them in their time of need, waiting in an ambulance outside an overwhelmed emergency department, waiting in overstretched emergency departments in pain and distress, waiting on a trolley in a corridor to be admitted to a ward, waiting for a social care package to be in place so they can leave hospital, or waiting weeks for an appointment just to see their family GP. We have all been waiting 13 long years for the Tories to sort out the growing NHS staff shortage, which is at the heart of many of the issues afflicting our health service.
As a result of the Tories’ inaction, our NHS is now short of 125,000 much-needed staff. That is the population of a small city, and those chronic shortages are leading to all-too-predictable delays in diagnosis and treatment, despite the fact that working people are paying the highest levels of taxation since the end of world war two. We are all paying more and getting less. In many other walks of life that would be deemed a breach of contract. It is therefore no surprise that public satisfaction with the NHS has fallen to its lowest level since 1997. The public, and NHS staff, deserve so much better than this Government.
We have also been waiting for a reformed mental health Act. I have been contacted in recent days by constituents shocked that despite promising to do so in their 2019 election manifesto and, as I mentioned, also promising to do so in their 2017 manifesto, the Conservatives have now refused to introduce a replacement Bill before the next general election. I know that health professionals and the public are rightly concerned that the Mental Health Act 1983 is outdated and that reform is required so that our NHS can treat people with greater effectiveness and dignity, while also giving them greater control over their treatment.
During his failed Tory leadership bid last summer, the Prime Minister also promised a plan to restore NHS dentistry and a review of dentists’ contractual arrangements and incentives. The sad reality is that I am surely not the only Member in this House to receive a depressingly regular number of letters from constituents who are angry that they have been waiting for years to register with an NHS dentist, let alone see one. Research has found that an estimated 4 million people cannot access NHS dental care and cannot afford to go private either. We have heard about DIY dentistry, tooth decay putting children in hospital and increasing levels of oral cancer.
Again, that is a crisis of the Tories’ making. What did they expect when they cut funding for dental services in England by 8% in real terms since 2010? I know the Prime Minister wants everyone to learn maths until the age of 18, but they did not need to be Pythagoras to work out that that would lead to droves of dentists quitting and many remaining NHS practices not taking on new patients, creating so-called dental deserts. After waiting a year for the Prime Minister to implement his plan to save NHS dentistry, the British Dental Association stated that there are still
“no new dentists, no new contract and no new money.”
All this waiting would have tested even the patience of Vladimir and Estragon to breaking point. This King’s Speech has shown that the Conservatives have no plan to keep staff working in the NHS, no plan to cut waiting lists and no plan to reform our health service. The Government are more focused on in-fighting and waiting in the vain hope of something better turning up.
Only the Labour party has the ideas and the ambition to save our NHS, restore the vital services it provides us all, and reform it so that it is ready to face future challenges. We are the party with a mission and a 10-year plan to change and modernise our NHS by training more doctors, nurses and health visitors, to lower waiting times, and to raise standards for patients. We will provide 2 million more appointments by paying staff extra to work evenings and weekends, paid for by abolishing the non-dom tax status. We will take the hard decisions to tackle finally the problems with the NHS dental contract so that it properly delivers for patients and staff. And it is Labour that will introduce a new NHS standard that guarantees everyone in England the right to treatment for their mental health within a month, and will back up that commitment by recruiting more than 8,500 mental health professionals to provide support in every school and set up mental health hubs in every community.
The public are rightly fed up of waiting for a change, and the Labour party wholeheartedly agrees with them, not just on health, but on all my constituents’ priorities: help with the cost of living, help creating good jobs, tackling crime and antisocial behaviour, reducing homelessness, ending child poverty and giving every child the opportunities they need to thrive, cutting energy bills, and reaching net zero. We, the Labour party, will give the public the change that they want and cut the waiting.
Maggie Throup (Erewash) (Con)
I am delighted to contribute to the debate because the Gracious Speech not only marks an historic first for His Majesty, but signals the Government’s clear commitment to focusing on the right long-term decisions to put our country on a stable footing in the face of global instability created first by covid-19 and latterly by the conflicts in Ukraine and the middle east.
When His Majesty’s grandfather, the late King George VI, made his final address to Parliament from the throne in October 1950, the Gracious Speech prepared by the then Labour Government made no mention of public health or any health-related legislation. Yet just fifteen months later—although it was never officially acknowledged—the late King, who was conservatively estimated to have smoked 40 cigarettes a day from his early teens, succumbed at the age of just 56 to the effects of two smoking-related diseases: lung cancer and cardiovascular disease. It is therefore bittersweet that, in the first King’s Speech of his reign, His Majesty announced new legislation to create a smoke-free generation by restricting the sale of tobacco so that children currently aged 14 or under can never be sold cigarettes, and restricting the sale and marketing of e-cigarettes to children. I will focus my remarks on those specific measures.
By committing to raising the age of sale for tobacco by one year, each year, making it an offence for anyone born on or after 1 January 2009 to be sold tobacco products across England, the Government will not only save countless lives, but will continue to level up areas of our country such as my Erewash constituency, where smoking rates remain unacceptably high. I take great pride in the fact that, thanks to the actions of the Conservative Government, the majority of the 1st Sawley Scouts, whom I met last Friday as part of Parliament Week, will never legally be able to buy cigarettes. When we discussed this topic, and the measures to address inappropriate vaping, there was wholehearted support from the scouts and their leaders.
I pay tribute to Dr Javed Khan for the work he has done and the role he has played in getting us to this stage on tobacco control. I was privileged to be part of the ministerial team who asked Dr Khan to dig deep into how we, as a nation, can become smoke free by 2030. One of his flagship recommendations was to raise the age of sale. To some, that may seem illiberal, but others—I am definitely in this group—would ask: “What is illiberal about protecting individuals from a killer?” Smoking remains the biggest single cause of preventable illness and death.
Shockingly, cigarettes are the only legal consumer product that will kill most users. Two out of three smokers will die from smoking unless they quit, and more than 60,000 people are killed by smoking each year. That is approximately twice the number of people who died from covid-19 between March 2021 and March 2022, yet it does not hit the headlines. Add to that the fact that in 2019, a quarter of all deaths from cancer were connected to smoking. The annual cost of smoking to society has been estimated at £17 billion, with a cost of approximately £2.4 billion to the NHS alone and more than £13 billion lost through the productivity costs of tobacco-related lost earnings, unemployment and premature death.
Achieving a smoke-free society by 2030 will not only save the NHS money; more importantly, it will save lives. Increasing the age of sale will undoubtedly be a key intervention that will make that happen. Age-of-sale policies are partly about preventing young people from gaining access to age-restricted products such as cigarettes and alcohol, but more importantly, they are about stopping the start. When smokers are asked when they started smoking, the majority say that it was in their teens. The longer we delay the ability to legally take up smoking, the fewer people will take it up, so fewer will become addicted. Let us face it: never starting to smoke is far easier than trying to quit. We have already proved in the UK that raising the age of sale leads to a reduction in smoking prevalence. Increasing the age of sale from 16 to 18 in 2007 led to a 30% reduction in smoking prevalence among 16 and 17-year-olds in England.
The last time I spoke about vaping in this place, I made a number of asks of the Government. I am delighted that I have been listened to, and that many of the measures I requested have been included in the Gracious Speech. Those asks were to regulate vape packaging, flavours and product presentation, and to enable further enforcement around the sale of vapes to children and young people. Those measures are a good start, but the message we need to put out is that vaping is an aid to quit smoking, not a recreational product. We are already hearing of children—yes, children—who have medical conditions as a result of vaping.
I believe that one way to change the way adults and children perceive vaping is to ensure that e-cigarettes are available on prescription. In October 2021, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency updated its guidance on licensing e-cigarettes as medicines. Being licensed would allow e-cigarettes to be available on prescription. Just over two years on, we are yet to see the first MHRA-licensed e-cigarette, so when the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions closes the debate, will he update the House on the progress made in enabling e-cigarettes to be available on prescription? That would undoubtedly put out the message that vaping is a serious way to quit smoking, not something to be consumed like sweets. That message needs to be loud and clear, because the scouts I met last Friday informed me that children in year 7 at their school were already vaping. We have no time to waste on this issue.
I will briefly mention the NHS long-term workforce plan. The focus of that plan has always been on nurses and doctors, but I want to put in a plug for other NHS workers. We need more radiologists and radiographers; we need more pathologists and biomedical scientists. Let us make sure we have all the supporting NHS staff in place that the doctors and nurses will need to conduct their business in an effective manner.
In our 2019 manifesto, we committed to levelling up, and that commitment has been reinforced by the actions of our Prime Minister and the Government he leads. Levelling up is about so much more than infrastructure; it is also about levelling up our health and our life chances. That is particularly important for my constituents in Erewash, where the prevalence of smoking—16.6%—is higher than the national average. It is estimated that the average annual spend by someone with a 20-cigarette-a-day habit is upwards of £3,000, while research recently conducted on behalf of The Daily Telegraph suggests that those under the age of 26 are spending around £2,700 a year on disposable vapes to satisfy their daily habits. Consequently, these measures should not just be considered in a health context. By becoming smoke free by 2030, the Government can lift around 2.6 million adults and 1 million children out of poverty altogether, which would represent a significant victory for our levelling-up agenda.
Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)
It is my pleasure to speak in this debate in response to the King’s Speech—the King’s first—on behalf of my North Shropshire constituency. I particularly welcomed the Government’s ambition to cut NHS waiting lists, but, frankly, I was shocked to see no reference to some of the most pressing health emergencies in my constituency. There was no mention of emergency care and ambulance waiting times, and no acknowledgement of the lack of access to NHS dentists and GP appointments and, indeed, of our catastrophic cancer treatment situation. Some of those issues are literally ones of life and death in North Shropshire.
The proportion of patients at Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin integrated care board who started cancer treatment within 62 days of an urgent GP referral was just 38% in June, according to Macmillan. The national target sits at 85%. It is shocking that in 2023 access to timely NHS cancer treatment is still a postcode lottery. Liberal Democrats have pledged to give people a legal right to cancer treatment within two months of an urgent referral, and I urge the Government to make a similar commitment, rather than watering down their targets for lifesaving treatment.
I was also disappointed that the crisis in NHS dentistry was overlooked in the King’s Speech. In North Shropshire, the number of adults seen by a dentist between 2019 and 2022 fell by more than 10%, down to just 35.4%, and less than half of local children have seen a dentist in that time. Local dentists report a shocking increase in child tooth decay when a parent is unable to register and take their child along. Seven months ago, the Government promised that a dental recovery plan would be published specifically to deal with this problematic issue, so I am concerned that no reference at all was made to it in the King’s Speech. I would be grateful if the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions provided an update on the progress of the plan in his closing remarks and confirmed on what date we should expect to receive it.
I was frustrated to see a lack of reference to adult social care and carers in general in the King’s Speech. The support that carers provide is a lifeline to elderly and rural residents in my constituency, yet the workforce is shrinking at an alarming rate. In the last few years, the number of vacancies nationally has skyrocketed to 165,000. Of course, that is having an impact on A&E departments and on ambulance services, because hospitals cannot discharge patients and allow a good flow through the hospital for those who are admitted when critically ill. I hope that the promised plan to transform the workforce of the NHS will not ignore the vital but creaking care sector. The Government must resolve the crisis there by reforming staff retention and recruitment; tackling the importance of pay in a sector that is in competition with retail and hospitality for new recruits; and recognising the importance of carers’ roles by providing the sector with minimum professional standards.
In Shropshire, the care sector faces the logistical challenges of delivering these vital services over a large rural area. I hope that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions will agree that it is vital to consider rurality when drawing up NHS and care workforce plans.
People in North Shropshire know that accessing healthcare is nigh on impossible without access to their own car. I have spoken in this place many times about how poor the public transport links are in my constituency. They prevent people from accessing vital health services, and from accessing job opportunities and higher education. It is welcome that the Government want to improve journeys in the midlands but, to be blunt, in my constituency there are very few public transport journeys to improve. People without a car rely on friends and relatives for lifts—we are resilient and we get by—but when will the Conservatives realise that rural Britain is home to 20% of the population and that we are worth investing in, rather than simply taking us for granted?
The Government have also said, and I welcome it, that they want to ease the cost of living and provide help for businesses. I am glad that both statements were included in the King’s Speech, but I feel it is necessary to spell out exactly what it might look like to deliver that for constituents in places such as North Shropshire. For rural residents, the cost of living has only exacerbated long-standing inequalities. Rural residents earn 7.5% less on average than people in urban areas, but because council services are much more expensive to provide, their council tax payments are on average 20% higher.
Not only that, but off-grid energy users are still waiting for the Government to provide substantial support with their energy costs. The Countryside Alliance has reported that, on average, rural households spend £800 a year more on fuel than those on the grid. The Government need to reassure people in North Shropshire and the rest of rural Britain that their commitment to easing the cost of living crisis includes them, by addressing the lack of an energy price cap for people who live off-grid and extending rural fuel duty relief to those forced to drive long distances for work, for education or to access essential healthcare.
Rural businesses obviously have to battle with the cost of supplies and energy bills, but they also struggle because of a depleted workforce and the lack of digital connectivity. Just 46% of rural businesses have a stable 4G broadband connection, so it is no wonder that the Federation of Small Businesses reported that in 2022, 6% fewer rural businesses reported that they planned to expand. If the Government want to help with this issue, they need to understand the factors that have put rural businesses on the back foot and put in place policies to help them cope with the discrepancies that come with sparse and spread-out populations. I suggest that allowing rural roaming on mobile networks would be a great place to start. Much of my constituency is in a notspot or a partial notspot. Anyone who has tried to phone me will know that a continuous conversation is almost impossible across large swathes of North Shropshire.
The Government have committed to promoting trade with economies in the fastest-growing regions of the world through the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership. It is crucial to ensure that our farming industry has the opportunity to promote the fantastic produce that we grow in the UK and expand its export activities, but the deal endangers farmers’ businesses as well as animal welfare and environmental standards. Because of the deal, imports that have a lower production cost but a much higher animal welfare and environmental one will be for sale in this country, which risks undermining our world-leading British farmers and food producers. Surely future trade deals must avoid any further damage to this vital sector.
I was glad to hear the Government commit to the promise to reform the archaic leasehold system—something that Liberal Democrats have been calling for since Lloyd George. I hope the leasehold legislation will include new protections for homeowners with a freehold who have been trapped into a fleecehold arrangement because the shared areas on their development are managed by a private company and not the local authority. I have been campaigning for this issue to be resolved following shocking cases in my constituency, and I have been contacted by freeholders throughout the country with unbelievable stories of their experiences with rogue developers.
In conclusion, 95% of the land in North Shropshire is used for agriculture. We are typical of rural Britain. I am disappointed to stand here and explain to the Government, yet again, the ways in which they have failed to address the challenges we face. The Government have proven that they have run out of ideas for rural Britain, having taken its votes for granted for so many years. Now, here we are in a debate to discuss ways to get the NHS back on its feet. After eight years of disastrous Tory management, the only viable answer to that question is surely to hold a general election and start afresh.
Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)
It is not really surprising that, having spent two years of this Parliament with large chunks of the economy and the NHS shut down while we fought a disease, we still face challenges coming out of that. When I listen to speeches from around the Chamber, with the constant wish lists for more and more money, I think we all ought to remind ourselves of that. We should also remind ourselves that lots of people who run businesses up and down the country are being taken for granted, with additional burdens being put on them. They are carrying the additional debt that we, the guardians of the taxpayer’s pound, have taken on, given what we have spent. In fighting the pandemic, we have taken on what is, in effect, a wartime debt. We must recognise that that has consequences. We would all have been much better off and could have afforded to be much more generous with taxpayers’ money had we not been through that.
Let me focus on some issues that were included in the King’s Speech and some that were not. One issue that was not included is reform of the Mental Health Act 1983. I add my voice to those around the Chamber who have expressed regret about that. I was the Minister who commenced that work five years ago, and it is particularly personal to me, because we raised expectations that we really were going to deliver parity of esteem by changing the Act. The Mental Health Act was passed in 1983, an era when we viewed people with severe mental health issues as a problem to be managed. We all wanted to look the other way; it was not something we wanted to deal with.
We have seen a sea change in public attitudes towards that issue, and it was finally being recognised in government. It was a privilege for me to sit down with a lot of campaigners, who told me of their experiences. What makes it personal to me is that I witnessed them reliving the trauma that they experienced under detention. I feel personally responsible for the fact that, having raised their expectations five years ago, we have let them down by not legislating.
My message to those on the Front Bench is that the legislation, although it was not in the King’s Speech, could still be brought forward. I encourage them to do that, because until we do, we are not genuinely delivering parity of esteem. It is all very well saying, “We are putting more resources into schools and we are tackling suicide prevention,” but they are two different things. We need a proper approach to dealing with severe mental ill health that will enhance the rights of people who are having to be treated.
There are occasions where people need to have their liberty taken away, but it is not an absolute; they still have ownership over what happens to them. When we hear stories about people in detention being constantly medicated by drugs, that is not something that I equate with our society. It is important that the Government’s first priority is to make sure that they do their best for the most vulnerable.
Another item of legislation long-promised that was not in the King’s Speech was the ban on conversion therapy. I issue a word of warning to the House. It is clear to me that there is a majority in this Chamber for a ban on conversion therapy. It is also clear to me that every one of us, I would hope, would wish to see abusive and coercive practices designed to cure people of their sexuality banned or outlawed. The thing that bothers me is that when we are talking about these abusive and coercive practices, we use the term “therapy.” Therapy is designed to alleviate distress. The practices we want to outlaw cannot in any way be described in such a manner.
I have been pleased by the engagement I have had with Government and campaigners on all sides about how we get the language on this right. We have moved a long way in the right direction, but we are looking at abusive practices designed to cause harm. I know that lots of discussion is happening, but I say to those Members perhaps thinking about bringing forward a private Member’s Bill to resurrect the ban on conversion therapy: can we just remove this term “therapy” from anything designed to change people’s sexuality? We know that ultimately therapy should be used only to describe processes designed to alleviate distress.
Turning to some more local issues, I want to talk about the national health service in south Essex. For a long time, we have had a challenging position in south Essex. We sit right next to London. We know there are much more attractive places to work for NHS professionals when there are the great teaching hospitals in London. We have always found it difficult to recruit the staff we need in south Essex. In fact, in Thurrock we have been without enough GPs for decades. When we have an NHS dealing with the backlog caused by the pandemic and waiting lists, we are seeing some acute problems. I was drawn to an article in the press just this weekend, where I read that along the Thames—just a little bit down the road in Southend—as many as one in five people are awaiting treatment on a waiting list. I am sad to say that was not a surprise to me.
Going back to 2015, the Ministers at the time gripped the challenge with the provision of health in south Essex. Great focus was put on it. There was a proposal for developing the integrated care system. We looked closely at what made the best health economy, and there was recognition that improving primary care in south Essex should be a priority, but we seem to have lost that focus. My challenge is this: what has happened to our commissioning system for that to happen? We thought that moving towards ICSs would give a better focus, but it seems to have fundamentally failed.
Six years ago, as part of the process, my local NHS brought forward a proposal to close what remained of Orsett Hospital in Thurrock. That hospital ceased to be a general hospital decades ago, but it retains a great deal of affection among my constituents, mainly because most of them were born there. I took it upon myself to support my local NHS when it said that it wanted to close what remained of that hospital and reinvest it in new services in the community. I was prepared to take the political flak. It is difficult to deliver that message to constituents, but I believed the local NHS when it said that it would bring new facilities—it promised me an urgent treatment centre in Grays in my constituency, and three new integrated medical centres—but I have not received any one of those things in six years.
I took the flak and persuaded my constituents that that was in their best interests, and now I look a fool. That is basically because there is a circular system in the NHS commissioning system whereby lots of papers get produced but there is no actual delivery. We really do need to get to grips with that. When we raise issues about the NHS, people think, “How dare they criticise our doctors and nurses.” Actually, we are not; we are criticising failings in how services are commissioned. Every time we look at this, we never see any improvements.
In Tilbury, I am looking at the hoardings around a site where we will build an integrated medical centre—they have been there for two years. We have cleared the site and it is ready, but we are still getting that circular conversation with the NHS in south Essex. That really needs to change.
I will use the last bit of my time to talk about the covid inquiry and what it tells us about how Government works and what we should be doing with our institutions. It is really not very pretty, is it, to see some of the film that is coming out? As we move on from the King’s Speech and we are having a new Government assembled in front of us, we should reflect on some of the really bad behaviours being highlighted as part of the inquiry. In the last few years we have seen some very bad behaviour here in Parliament, as well as in relationships between Ministers and civil servants in Whitehall.
We should remember that the impartiality of our civil service is to be valued. The way in which our Governments have operated has given us stable government for decades. We have seen a massive expansion in the number of special advisers, which has led to the marginalisation of junior Ministers in this place and a subsequent lack of accountability. Here is where the action should be. Ministers are responsible to Parliament for what happens in their Departments, and special advisers seem to be breeding apace but doing nothing to improve the quality of that government.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
The shadow Health Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), raised the fact that there have been five Health Secretaries in two years. The Conservatives have also had 12 Culture Secretaries since 2010, so perhaps it should not surprise us that, among the many glaring omissions in the Gracious Speech, there was an absence of any measures to support those who work in Britain’s cultural sector, and particularly musicians. I want to focus on that.
Music industry leaders tell me that their sector feels left behind. Freelancers feel left out in the cold without the financial stability they deserve. In too many communities, cultural provision is now dependent on the good will of talented individuals who are prepared to manage on shoestring budgets with low income levels. We can do so much better in this country. As a music leader recently told me:
“The warning bell has been ringing for years, and this Government seems to have taken for granted the drive, passion and sacrifice which has somehow kept the industry alive.”
I have been told repeatedly that the problems faced by creatives come back to this: a decline in arts education, which is leading to skills shortages; falling funding levels; and the challenges to touring caused by the Government’s failure to get a visa waiver for touring in the Brexit deal. The Government choose to ignore those problems and pretend that they are supporting the sector adequately—even today they are setting ambitious growth targets for the creative sector. I want to begin by looking at the squeeze on arts education, and in particular the decline in music education.
We know that state-funded schools are increasingly unable to provide strong music education—or in some cases any music education. Policies such as the English baccalaureate, combined with the crisis in music teacher recruitment and squeezed school budgets, have led to a reduced provision of music education for young people in state schools. On average, music provision in state-funded schools is only 47 minutes a week. That is significantly below the Government’s target of one hour, which is a bare minimum. Compare that paltry target with parts of Germany, where secondary school students study music for at least two hours a week, or Finland, where music is studied for eight hours a week. Meanwhile, the uptake of music at A-level has fallen by a catastrophic 45% since 2010. There is a similarly worrying picture when it comes to studying music at GCSE.
In this difficult environment for schools and teachers, the role of music education hubs is all the more important, yet those hubs have had their funding reduced by 17% in real terms since 2011, and Government plans to reduce the number of hubs risk a further deterioration of the music offer. The Government’s failed education policies mean that the opportunities to gain the skills necessary to be a musician are becoming increasingly the preserve of those young people whose families who can afford to pay privately, either through attending independent schools or through private music tuition. As a result of those Conservative policies, less than a quarter of the music and performing arts workforce now come from a working-class background.
As well as fewer opportunities in schools, there are now barriers to both budding and established musicians touring beyond the UK’s borders. The failure of the former Culture Secretary to obtain a touring agreement with the European Union for cultural workers resulted in an appalling mess of red tape and extortionate fees for bands and orchestras looking to perform in EU countries. Agents, promoters, record labels and musicians have all told me that this is proving devastating for artists, particularly those trying to break into the industry. The freelance opera singer Paul Carey Jones said:
“As ever, it’s those at the start of their careers, without the backing of an established reputation, who will suffer the most…the consequent long-term damage to the UK’s position as a global force in the performing arts is incalculable.”
In a recent interview on LBC, the Culture Secretary implied that sorting out the mess of visas for touring musicians is not under the control of her Government, but it is up to the Government to renegotiate it and to find a solution for touring musicians.
Then there are the financial challenges that many musicians face. A recent survey by the Musicians’ Union found that musicians earn, on average, just £20,700 a year from music. Nearly a quarter of musicians reported that they did not earn enough to support themselves or their families, even after their lengthy training. There is a direct link between the working conditions of musicians and decisions to cut arts and culture budgets. Local authorities are the biggest funders of culture in the UK, but, as we know, they have suffered a 40% real-terms reduction in central Government spending since 2010. That has meant a £1.4 billion shortfall in spending on culture, heritage and libraries. Meanwhile, Arts Council England had its per capita budget reduced by 13% between 2009-10 and 2021-22. It is therefore no surprise that the number of filled jobs in music is falling.
In the last year alone, the number of filled jobs in music performing and visual arts fell by a tenth—a drop of 35,000 roles. That reduction is even greater in roles relating to instrument manufacture, sound recording and the operating of music venues. How can we expect children and young people to aspire to work in the music industry if there are no jobs for them to go into?
Funding shortfalls may also sadly have an impact on the important work undertaken by music organisations in health and care. For example, the Liverpool philharmonic has just celebrated 15 years of its music and health programme, which works with the NHS to help people access music to support their recovery and their wellbeing. Another brilliant health initiative is the English National Opera’s “Breathe” programme, where ENO chorus members have used singing techniques to aid recovery from covid-19 or long covid. There is also a great deal of work involving musicians bringing joy to people with dementia and those living in care homes.
The failure to support musicians and other creatives is not a peripheral issue, because expression in all its forms is central to the task of recreating a sense of community, identity, pride and hope, and our creative workers are at the heart of that potential. We will never achieve the diversity needed for the arts sector to thrive under the Tory policies I have discussed. The systemic failure to protect creative workers under this Conservative Government has led to working-class representation in the creative industries halving since the 1970s.
Today, the Culture Secretary is in Manchester, praising the creative industries as a driver of economic growth. At the same time, she is presiding over the cutting of the funding streams that feed them, and expects them to run on empty, doing more with less, year after year. It is time for this Government finally to accept that their policies have failed, and that Britain’s culture sector would be better off under a Labour Government.
Peter Gibson (Darlington) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Steve Tuckwell) on his excellent maiden speech.
Let me begin by paying tribute to His Majesty on his first Gracious Speech. As he reflected in that speech, we were all reminded of the selflessness of his mother, Her late Majesty, which he continues to exemplify. It was fantastic to hear the wonderful speeches of the proposer and the seconder of the motion on the Loyal Address, my right hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Sir Robert Goodwill) and my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie). They are both fellow Yorkshire folk and both great friends. My right hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby has regaled friends and colleagues alike for many years with his jokes. It was wonderful to hear his entire repertoire in just one sitting. He told us that his first parliamentary contest was, just like mine, in Redcar, where I lived as a child and went to school. It was also where my mum served as an NHS community midwife, so I saw at first hand the incredible work of the NHS from a very early age. Fast forward to the present day, I have the privilege of representing the town, and the hospital where my mum undertook her nursing training. That was some years before I was even born, but still I regularly meet constituents who worked alongside mum in the 1960s.
I welcome the Government’s focus on building an NHS fit for the future. As I visit dentists, doctors and Darlington Memorial Hospital and I speak to constituents at my surgeries, it is clear that despite this Government’s strong record of investment, with record funding, record doctors and record nurses, much more needs to be done. Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys is our local mental health trust. It has some immense challenges to deliver the mental health care that my constituents need. My surgery regularly features people with heartbreaking stories, where the support they need has not been there. That is why I welcome more funding to deliver mental health support.
I regularly see families in my surgery affected by the tragedy of suicide. Those terrible stories of pain and suffering are incredibly difficult to hear. That is why the Government have my full backing in their suicide prevention strategy. However, I think they should bring forward long discussed mental health legislation, just as I believe that we need progress on banning conversion practices. I join my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) in her comments on the terminology used. Abuse is abuse, not therapy.
I also welcome the £8 billion commitment for NHS and adult social care. As a solicitor before being elected to this place, I found that the biggest single concern of those planning for later life was how their care would be covered. Our elderly should have confidence in the care and support they need in later life. I welcome the steps being taken to deliver that.
On hospices, I am privileged to follow in the steps of Jack Dromey as co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for hospice and end of life care. I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, as a hospice trustee. The Government rightly supported our hospices incredibly well during covid. However, with patchwork commissioning from our ICBs, and despite clear direction in the Health and Social Care Act 2012 to commission palliative care, many hospices are vulnerable to closure or reduction in services, putting increased pressure on our NHS. It need not be like that, with ringfenced funding in ICB budgets for palliative care.
Darlington is still not getting sufficient dentistry. Ministers say that is down to the ICBs; the ICBs say it is down to the dentists; and the dentists cannot make the contracts work. Even when additional funding is found, as it has been recently following the closure of one practice, we still cannot get the dentists we need. Is it time to insist that every dentist trained here spends a number of years providing NHS services before they move to exclusively private work? I welcome the expansion in dental skills and urge Ministers to go further to accelerate growth in numbers.
Tackling the challenges of tobacco, illegal tobacco sales, disposable vape sales, the child grooming that flows with that and the organised crime that lies behind that, is of deep concern to parents in my constituency. I welcome the measures to clamp down on tobacco use and disposable vapes, and I would welcome the licensing of sales of legal tobacco as a further way of cracking down on that.
Jim Shannon
Respiratory health is very important. Across the United Kingdom, one of many issues is chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The hon. Gentleman is well aware of that, for he has spoken before about it. We have the worst figures in all of Europe except for Denmark. Some 33% of COPD patients are readmitted within 28 days of discharge, even though readmission has been found to be strongly related to post-discharge mentality. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that for that 33%, the NICE system in place for COPD needs to be reviewed, and a better service needs to be delivered?
Peter Gibson
I concur with the hon. Gentleman’s calls for further work on that. It is deeply concerning to see children using disposable vapes and suffering severe traumas that result in hospitalisation. More must be done to clamp down on the illegal sale of those products.
I am pleased that the Government are focused on building an NHS fit for the future. Finally, can we please see more dentists in Darlington?
Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)
“A profound betrayal”, “An insult”, “Incomprehensible”, “A major breach of trust”, “A huge blow”, demonstrating “what little regard the current UK government has for mental health”, having “broken its promise to thousands of people”—not my words but those of mental health experts in response to the Government’s scrapping of the reform of the Mental Health Act.
Back in 2017, there was hope of real change when the Government pledged to reform the Act. Six years later, and after much posturing from Government Ministers, that promise has sadly been broken. I sat for many months with colleagues from across the House on the Joint Committee of the draft Mental Health Bill. We took evidence from experts and those with lived experiences. Many had to unpick painful, traumatic experiences, and did so willingly so that no other person would have to endure the same. That would all be for nothing. Trauma relived for nothing. Recommendations made for nothing. The Government never even bothered to respond to the Committee’s report.
Black people are five times more likely to be sectioned. More than 2,000 people with learning disabilities are held in mental health hospitals, of whom 200 are children. That is the reality of the Mental Health Act in modern Britain. All that is set amid years of Tory failure on mental health. Waiting lists are through the roof, standards of care are falling and staff are burnt out. Poor standards of social housing, the cost living crisis, the decimated benefits system and growing job precarity are the social ills driving the mental health crisis we now face. Those ills have been intensified by a Conservative Government who have underfunded our NHS and public services. That is the hallmark of a Government who simply do not care.
This Government do not care if children languish on waiting lists. They do not care if parents have to give up their jobs to sit at home on suicide watch because their children cannot get the help they need. They do not care about people in all our communities. Health is something that bridges the economic divide and the class divide. It is a factor that matters to every single one of our constituents in some way or form.
But the failures are not just in health. Across Tooting, whether they live in a council house, rent privately or are a homeowner, the Government have failed everyone. Not content with selling off over 20,000 council homes in Wandsworth, leaving thousands of children homeless each winter, the Conservatives then made it impossible for people to get on the housing ladder. Average rent in Tooting for a two-bedroom flat is £2,300 a month, with bills. In what world is that feasible or even acceptable? Homeowners are no better off either. After the previous Prime Minister crashed the economy, which Conservative Members all supported, homeowners across Tooting are having to pay hundreds of pounds more on their mortgages. Everyone deserves the security and safety of their own home.
Speaking of safety, talk to people across Tooting and they will tell you of their worries about antisocial behaviour and crime, with multiple incidents of children—children—being mugged after school and of drug dealing not being addressed. Why? Because the police are under-resourced and overstretched. My local police teams are absolutely incredible. Local police teams do their best and I pay tribute to their efforts, but we all know that most low-level crimes go unsolved, and they are often a feeder for the most serious stuff, such as drug dealing. This the direct result of real-terms budget cuts and a cut to safer neighbourhood teams.
The Government are record breakers, but it is not something to be proud of. Waiting lists for NHS treatment have reached a record high of 7.7 million people. That includes many people from across Tooting. They are waiting in pain for a hip replacement, worried their cancer might spread, or stuck in a bay for many, many hours in A&E, where I do shifts. Back in 2010, patients waiting more than 12 hours in A&E were pretty much non-existent, but that was the sad reality for 44,000 people last month alone. In 2010, when Labour left office, doctors like me were not having to perform intimate exams in cupboards and patients were not having to line the halls waiting to be seen, lying on the floor. With yet another Health Secretary coming into post, nothing will change and Tooting people will continue to be let down by the Government.
This was a King’s Speech lacking in ambition and failing to address the problems faced by people across the country on a daily basis; a King’s Speech that is truly a testament to broken Britain and the Government who caused it. We now need a Government willing to give Britain its future back. We need a Labour Government.
Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)
On behalf of the people of the city of Southend and Leigh-on-Sea, I wish to express my gratitude and respect for His Majesty. Her Majesty the late Queen Elizabeth II is still much missed in Southend, but His Majesty has acceded the throne with all the dignity and gravitas that we came to expect from his mother. It was a true privilege to witness the first King’s Speech in 70 years.
I judge all new legislation against my three priorities to make the new city of Southend safer, healthier and wealthier. I am pleased to say that the King’s Speech hits all three of those priorities, although today we are, of course, talking about building an NHS fit for the future. That goes right to the heart of much of the work I have undertaken since being elected. As many Members have done, I welcome very much the commitment to creating a smokefree generation, cracking down on youth vaping, growing our NHS workforce and cutting waiting lists. However, I would like to talk a little about capital funding.
I welcome very much that core spending by the end of this Parliament will have increased from £140 billion to £193 billion in 2024-25. We have invested record sums in our NHS. That is an increase of £53 billion in cash terms, or a 37% increase. I welcome the fact that that includes capital spending of £83 million in the current spending review going into Southend Hospital, with another £19 million set to come on top of that, meaning a total of £102 million into my local hospital since the last election. I welcome that wholeheartedly, but we must do more to speed up the arrival of NHS capital funding.
The House is well aware of my campaign to get £118 million of capital investment that was promised to South Essex hospitals in 2017. The lion’s share of that, £52 million, was promised for Southend Hospital and it is much needed. I termed that money the missing millions and I have mentioned it 11 times in this House. Last year, I got £8 million to secure improvements to our emergency department, and two years ago I was absolutely delighted to hear that the rest, the £110 million, was finally confirmed and would be delivered in full. That will mean a modern endoscopy suite for Southend, an upgraded refurbished main theatre, more hospital beds and an upgraded emergency department: better and faster hospital care in better surroundings for all Southend’s residents and those around who come to our hospital. Better late than never, but we must do more to get that money through the bureaucracy faster than we have managed so far.
That investment will be moot if my constituents cannot get to the hospital. Ministers are aware that last year elderly residents were left stranded literally overnight when First Bus withdrew the No. 21 bus service, literally cutting them off from Southend Hospital. Working with First Bus I managed to reroute the No. 3 bus, but that is not good enough because it runs only once every two hours. I reiterate the need to restore that bus service. I am delighted that, working with the previous Roads Minister, bus funding of almost £1 million is now coming to Southend over two years, which should help to protect and enhance local bus services, including getting the No. 21 back. I am now looking forward very much to working with the new Roads Minister—as soon as I know who that is!
Money is not the be all and end all for the future of our NHS. We are investing record sums, but what we need to 100% focus on religiously is reform and prevention. Here, I want to talk about something called the fracture liaison service. I recently visited the fracture clinic at Southend Hospital, which is to launch a new fracture liaison service in spring next year, with the support of the Mid and South Essex integrated care board. This will be the first fracture liaison service in the UK to have a single FLS across an entire area, supporting consistent care across Mid and South Essex. In our region, there are an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 fragility fractures every year in adults aged 50 or over, often causing patients to spend extended periods in hospital, taking up hospital beds and staff time. Over five years, the new Southend FLS is expected to prevent 550 fractures, saving half a million pounds and 1,300 bed days every single year. If that is scaled up nationally, we will be saving 74,000 osteoporotic fractures and releasing 750,000 hospital bed days. Services like this are truly the future of the NHS. Their benefits are unquestionable. I look forward to seeing all regions following our lead in Southend to deliver savings and free up beds across the board.
On waiting lists, I was extremely disappointed to see The Times reporting erroneously that Southend is England’s NHS waiting list hotspot. The number quoted on waiting lists did not include the total catchment population for Mid and South Essex, where waiting lists today sit at approximately one in seven people, not one in five as was quoted. It is disappointing to see prestigious leading national newspapers irresponsibly pumping out the wrong information and not getting their facts straight.
Of course I am not happy for any of my constituents to wait longer than they should, but we must recognise that industrial action has played a part in the extension of waiting lists across the NHS. Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust has a recovery plan, and provided that there is no further industrial action it will virtually eliminate 65-week waits—except in the case of some specialist services—by next March. However, we must have sustainable staffing in order to cut waiting lists, which is why I welcome the proposal to deliver the NHS long-term workforce plan. Like others, I also welcome the commitment to creating a new smoke-free generation. That will save thousands of lives, and it goes without saying that a healthier future for our children means a more sustainable NHS.
Community pharmacies are already saving 619,000 GP appointments every week—roughly 32 million a year—and removing the need for about 3.5 million people a year to visit A&E departments and walk-in centres. Given such staggering results, we must surely consider moving more health services out of hospitals and into the community.
Mr Jayawardena
Is it not also important for us to educate the public so that they know how much they can obtain from their local pharmacies rather than always relying on GP appointments or, indeed, associated professionals?
Anna Firth
I entirely agree with my hon. Friend, and he has brought me neatly to my next point. The brilliant Belfairs and French’s pharmacies in Leigh-on-Sea are run by an inspirational pharmacist, Mr Mohamed Fayyaz Haji, known as Fizz. The range of services that those pharmacies deliver is incredible, including cholesterol and blood pressure checks, health advice and prescribing, and they are now expanding into primary and community care, from ear syringing to community phlebotomy, earlier diagnosis measures such as measuring prostate-specific antigen levels to test for prostate cancer, electrocardiograms, ultrasound screening for sports injuries, and services for pregnant women. This is a model for community pharmacy care around the country that will keep people out of hospitals unless they really need to be there.
I am delighted that one of my key campaigns has made it into the King’s Speech. My campaign to ban all forms of zombie knives will be enacted through the criminal justice Bill, which will increase the maximum penalty for those who sell dangerous weapons to under-18s and create a criminal offence of possession of a bladed article with intent to cause harm. Being stabbed is the No. 1 fear for young people in Southend for the second year in a row, and I welcome the fact that the Bill will make our streets in Southend safer.
I see you looking at me, Madam Deputy Speaker, so I will summarise my next few points. Bleed kits must be rolled out, because the first person to reach a stab victim is often not an ambulance driver but someone from a pub, a club or a police car. If we support Julie Taylor’s award-winning campaign and roll out those bleed kits, we will save more lives.
No speech from me would be complete without my mentioning Southend United. I wholeheartedly welcome the football governance Bill, which will deliver a more sustainable future for football clubs such as Southend for generations to come.
I believe that this King’s Speech will deliver a healthier future, a stronger economy, and a safer future for all the residents of Southend and Leigh-on-Sea, especially children, and I look forward to voting for it later this week.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. I was merely glancing at the hon. Member for Southend West (Anna Firth) because I believe that the previous occupant of the Chair encouraged Members to speak for about eight or nine minutes so that we can get everyone in equitably.
Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)
The issues that we have all been discussing today, and will discuss further, are extremely important, but looking at what is happening globally, they appear extremely trivial. The unbearable terror, suffering and death of innocent civilians in the middle east, in Gaza and Israel, must stop, which is why I have added my name to the call for an immediate ceasefire.
This country is in crisis. Our public services are collapsing, a climate change crisis is upon us, and working-class people are suffering a horrendous cost of living crisis that is draining them of the resources that they and their families need just to lead basic, decent lives. In my constituency of Wansbeck, ordinary families are bearing the brunt of this Government’s utter failure. Child poverty is surging, mutual aid groups and food banks are stretched to the limit, and businesses are suffering because of the lack of available finances. A Government with even an iota of human decency would have presented to the House a legislative plan for the next year that could address those grave crises, but instead they have delivered an agenda that will do absolutely nothing to alleviate the strain that these problems are causing our people. In fact, they are happy to draft statutes to make the crises even worse.
The people I proudly represent in south-east Northumberland know what it is like to be forgotten, to be neglected, and to be offered nothing by this Government. They also know that it is Tory Governments who have caused many of the problems that they face—not just those caused by the past 13 years of disastrous Tory rule, but the legacies of previous Tory Governments as well. It is the Tories who, over the years, have not only destroyed the industrial base that we have needed to produce well-paid jobs, but passed and continue to pass anti-trade union legislation that will deprive working-class people in my area and all over the UK of the means to obtain the decent wages that they deserve.
We are living with the legacy of the anti-trade union laws that began with the Thatcher regime. That legacy is a low-wage economy in which even workers in what should be very well-paid jobs struggle to make ends meet. Those laws have made it harder for unions to organise themselves in workplaces, and have created rules for industrial action that are some of the most restrictive in the world. The legal obstacles to organising a successful strike ballot are immense, and have given the employers an unfair advantage in disputes in which trade union members have rightly asked for a fair wage. It is not surprising that many workers now face falling living standards, and the stressful day-to-day torment of trying to make ends meet.
Where in the King’s Speech was the much-promised employment Bill to protect people in employment? Where was the abolition of zero-hours contracts, and the abolition of fire and rehire in the workplace? The last 13 years have seen wages across many sectors decline in real terms, forcing many of our fellow citizens to take strike action. They have been determined enough to fight these injustices that they have overcome the treacherous anti-strike laws designed to thwart them. The Government have antagonised workers up and down the country, including many who were classified as key workers, who drove the country through the worst pandemic and some of the darkest times in history. Strikes and industrial action continue at the likes of the bus company Go North East, and balloting is taking place even at Oxfam—an organisation that prides itself on looking after the deprived and the poor—which has amassed a fortune, but still not enough to pay the workforce properly. There are pockets of strike action in the civil service and elsewhere in the public sector. I ask again, where is the employment rights Bill that the Government have promised for so long? In the private sector, individuals have seen their wages decline at the same time as company directors and CEOs have seen their remuneration packages grow grotesquely. In the public sector, many of those we value so highly and who showed their dedication to serving us so courageously during the covid pandemic have been forced to take action not only to seek to restore their own wages but to try and redress the crippling staff shortages caused by Tory neglect.
In the NHS, staff shortages have been created by a long-term Tory public sector wage squeeze, which has also made staff retention and recruitment extremely difficult. That has been a major factor in the decline of our public services, especially in the NHS. The NHS is held together by the glue that is the dedication, passion and commitment of the staff, and we should all pay tribute to every single one of them. Where in this King’s Speech was there anything to do with the deterioration of our people’s health, caused as a direct result of the wilful Tory neglect of the NHS? For instance, why was there nothing to improve the cancer waiting lists that are endangering so many lives? In my area, the privately operated Rutherford Centre was being used by the NHS for cancer scanning and treatments. In June 2022, the company that owned it went into liquidation and it remains closed to this day. It remains empty and its treatment rooms are silent through Tory indifference. It is locked up and idle, but it could be helping individuals with cancer.
The King’s Speech could have been used to announce full compensation payments to parents and children who have suffered the loss of loved ones as a consequence of the blood contamination scandal. These people have been promised time and time again that full compensation would be paid. It was undoubtedly the worst tragedy in the history of the NHS, and I fear that many more victims of this tragedy will die before the Government agree to pay full compensation as well as interim repayments to some of the individuals. My constituent Sean Cavens was among those victims. They have all suffered and they have been tret terribly. The King’s Speech could have recognised their suffering and that of so many others, but it did not, because the Tories simply do not care.
This issue cannot continue to be kicked into the long grass. Victims are dying on a daily basis, and the recent reshuffle, only hours ago, means that the Minister in charge of the contaminated blood tragedy has now left their post, leaving the victims at a loss over who will take charge of this absolutely desperate situation. I would love the Minister who is summing up to tell the victims of contaminated blood who will be in charge and, as victims of the NHS failing to comply with the regulations all those years ago, tell them when they will receive fair and right compensation.
The Government have announced in the King’s Speech that they intend to use the powers they created under the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023 to lay down minimum service levels during strikes in the health services, transport services and other sectors. That will force many into work against their will and allow them to be sacked if they refuse. It will be done without negotiating with the unions, in the dictatorial manner that we have come to expect from anti-trade-union fanatics. It will be chaotic, undemocratic in the extreme and probably illegal under international labour law. The Government consistently manifest their disdain for democracy, whether by attacking people’s right to strike or through undermining our freedom to protest, yet they have the nerve to say that they are the true guardians of British values.
Let us not forget that this Tory Government recently revealed that their only constant principle was to encourage greed and help those who have the most already. In a country in which we have the disgrace of families having to rely on food banks to live, the Tories think it is more important to remove the restrictions on bankers’ bonuses than to meaningfully address the needs of the poor and the low-paid. That is in sharp contrast to the values shown by the shadow Deputy Prime Minister, who has pledged that within the first 100 days of a Labour Government, the recent anti-strike measures will be repealed and measures will be created to allow trade unions to organise more freely.
There is lots more, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I see many others waiting to speak. I wanted to hear something in the King’s Speech about the gigafactory in my constituency, which was again neglected; it never received a penny from the Government, from the automotive transformation fund, to progress lots of jobs in my area. That did not happen. Why was it not in the King’s Speech? I represent a mining area. Why was there nothing in the King’s Speech on the surplus that the Government are robbing from the mineworkers’ pension scheme, and why was there nothing on the changing regulations on pneumoconiosis and mesothelioma, when people are dying on a regular basis? The Government are dying, and they have nothing to offer but further chaos and despair. The King’s Speech was evidence of this terrible state of affairs, and we need to strip aside the worst Government in living memory.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I emphasise that we need to think of others and try to stick to the advisory guidance.
Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will do my very best.
I agree with one thing that the hon. Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) said. He talked about the contaminated blood scandal, and I want to see that compensation moved forward as swiftly as possible.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Steve Tuckwell) on his excellent maiden speech and welcome him to his place. He is clearly a great local champion and I look forward to him delivering for his constituents. I apologise to colleagues if my speech slightly errs from the main topic of this debate on the NHS to focus on education, but as Chair of the Education Committee, there are important things I have to say and unfortunately we were in session while the education debate was taking place.
Touching on health, I welcome the focus in the Gracious Speech on supporting the NHS, cutting waiting lists and implementing the much-needed NHS workforce plans. In particular I welcome the change to that plan to allow the three newly approved medical schools to begin training doctors from next year rather than from 2025. That will make a huge difference in Worcester, and I am grateful to the Health Committee for having me as a guest when we were examining officials on that and pushing the case for it. I also raised it with the Prime Minister in the Liaison Committee. Allowing those doctors to train in Worcester will help with retention and recruitment, and it will support our local NHS.
I welcome more investment in mental health services, but I would observe from my work on the Education Committee that in child and adolescent mental health services that cannot come soon enough. I support the aim of creating a smoke-free generation, which I believe strikes a sensible balance between public health and individual freedoms. This Government have delivered a great deal for my local NHS, and a massive £15 million expansion of the emergency department at the Worcester Royal Hospital is only the latest stage of that investment, but we continue to suffer from a capacity challenge in our Worcestershire hospitals that has been in place since the last Labour Government closed Kidderminster A&E without properly planning for space in either Worcester or Redditch. I sincerely hope that the new emergency department, with its dedicated paediatric emergency department, will make a real difference alongside the pipeline of new and much-needed junior doctors through the medical school. The recent decision of the acute trust to declare a critical incident at the very start of winter pressures in November reflects the ongoing pressures that we face.
Turning to education, unlocking opportunity should be the very essence of any Government’s education and skills policy, and it is certainly a key mantra for the Education Committee, which I am privileged to chair. I welcome the commitment to apprenticeships in the Gracious Speech—I know that the Secretary of State and the Minister for Skills share my Committee’s passion for vocational learning and for people earning while they learn—and I am excited by the prospect of more detail on the advanced British standard, but I am concerned by the absence of long-promised and frankly overdue legislation on attendance. When I was schools Minister, the Department for Education accepted a recommendation from the Select Committee to implement a register of children not in school. When I discussed that with the chief inspector, the Children’s Commissioner, school leaders, multi-academy trusts, unions and councils, they were clear about both the urgency and the importance of this measure. I helped officials to draft legislation and to prepare handling for the register as part of the wider Schools Bill, and it was committed to both in the White Paper and in the House.
Although there have since been many—some would say too many—changes to personnel in the Department, I have been reassured by the excellent Minister for Schools, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Nick Gibb), who was both my predecessor and my successor and whose ministerial career sadly ended today, and by the Secretary of State that they support the measure. The Secretary of State told the Select Committee that it was a top legislative priority for the Department, which was simply seeking the right vehicle to deliver it. This is why the Committee recommended in two reports that the legislation should be brought forward even in the absence of the wider Schools Bill.
We heard in this Chamber from the Opposition Front Bench and from Conservative members of the Education Committee the strong cross-party support for such a measure. We heard in the Lords debates on the now defunct Schools Bill a cacophony of opposition to other elements of the Bill but near unanimity on the importance of a register. The Centre for Social Justice called it “overdue” and “necessary”, and in my many discussions with school leaders and councils, most have been exasperated that this mechanism is not already in place. In July, the Secretary of State replied to my question on the matter:
“my Department remains committed to legislating for statutory local authority registers of children not in school and will do so at the next suitable legislative opportunity”.—[Official Report, 17 July 2023; Vol. 736, c. 603.]
My hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond) brought forward a private Member’s Bill in the previous Session, with cross-party support, that would have delivered the statutory register as a stand-alone measure. I can see no reason why the Bill could not have been adopted at once by the Government. Indeed, we highlighted this in our report on persistent absence and made recommendations to the Government, including the specific recommendation that the register should be brought forward, on a cross-party basis, as part of the King’s Speech. I am disappointed that opportunity has been missed.
Nevertheless, the legislation has been drafted. We have repeatedly heard about the strong support it enjoys on both sides of the House, and in the other place it has been championed by Cross Benchers and noble Lords on both sides of the House. I therefore repeat the Education Committee’s recommendation that the Government should adopt a private Member’s Bill on this matter at the first available opportunity. I will do what I can to ensure any such Bill makes rapid progress, and I am happy to work with Members across the House to make sure it has a prominent place in the business of this Parliament.
There are other measures in the late Schools Bill that I would also have liked to see resurrected. Among them are the delivery of statutory guidance on attendance, which the Children’s Commissioner spoke about in Parliament today, and fairer funding for our schools—the next step in delivering the fairer funding formula. I have campaigned throughout my time in Parliament for fairer funding in education, and this is vital for our mainstream schools—there are important changes to the funding mechanisms that I hope the Government will consider bringing forward—but it is even more vital for the specialist and high-needs sectors.
It was great to hear my new hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip talk about wanting to champion SEND children in his constituency, and that is something we all want to do. The high-needs formula is not working properly, and every local authority has a deficit in that space. I joined 40 MPs from both sides of the House in signing a letter calling for more investment.
I am pleased to welcome the aspiration for the advanced British standard to deliver greater parity between vocational and academic qualifications. I look forward to hearing more on this from the Department in due course. The past 13 years have seen England rise up international league tables for academic achievement, becoming the best in the west for literacy and improving our performance in maths. There are great challenges in the recruitment and retention of specialist teachers, and I hope the Government will listen closely to the recommendations in the Committee’s upcoming report on those challenges.
The aspiration for more children to study maths to 18, and for there to be a better mix of vocational and academic subjects, is good. If we are to achieve the full potential, however, it is vital that we do not just focus on A-level equivalent qualifications; we must also deliver for those who do not currently achieve a pass at GCSE. The schools White Paper set out a worthy aspiration to reduce the so-called “forgotten third” by raising standards in English and maths by the end of primary school. Whatever changes there are in personnel, I hope Ministers will stand by that worthwhile and ambitious aim.
We also need to look at GCSE resits. It is a fundamental problem in our system that in order to progress, whether to university or to an apprenticeship, people need a pass in maths and English GCSEs, and only around a quarter of those who take resits ever succeed in getting that vital qualification to move forward. We need to offer a wider range of qualifications to people who do not get a pass the first time round, so that we can see real progression and the removal of barriers.
Finally, I will touch on the international situation. Like MPs on both sides of the House, I want to see progress towards peace in the middle east, I have heard from hundreds of constituents with deep concerns about the humanitarian situation in Gaza, and I share the solidarity with innocent civilians in the Palestinian territories that the Prime Minister, among others, has expressed.
I very much understand the concerns that have been raised by members of both the Jewish and Muslim communities in Worcester about the importance of protecting civilians. We all want to see an end to the fighting and progress towards a two-state solution, but I am as appalled as anyone by the brutality of Hamas’s attacks on Israeli civilians. I recognise that any country facing such an assault has a right to self-defence, but I urge colleagues in government to be critical and clear-sighted friends of Israel and champions of a two-state solution, and to remember the full wording of the Balfour declaration:
“it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”.
We should continue to oppose antisemitism wherever it occurs, and we should continue to do all we can to get humanitarian aid to the innocent civilians in the Palestinian territories who are victims of Hamas’s atrocities as much as their intended targets.
In particular, as a key supporter and author of the millennium development goals, we should do all that we can to protect children. As I said the other day to the Development Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), if more humanitarian pauses or more humanitarian access and support can achieve this, I hope the UK will play a leading role in securing them.
Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker).
The King’s Speech was more notable for what was not in it. On the day, critics called it the “all mouth and no trousers” speech. In fact, it had the fewest Bills in a monarch’s speech since 2014. People in my Salford constituency looked at it and wondered, “What is in it to make my life better? What is there to help with the cost of living? What is there to support public services, to improve our broken public transport system or to address the NHS crisis?” Sadly, the answer was nothing.
The mental health Bill was abandoned yet again, despite being a manifesto promise in 2017 and 2019, and despite there being a clear mental health crisis. There was no conversion therapy ban, despite it being promised repeatedly by the Government.
What was actually in the King’s Speech? Well, the big flagship policy seems to be the Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill, which completely undermines the Government’s so-called commitment to net zero. Staggeringly, even the Government admit that the Bill will do nothing to bring down household bills.
The King’s Speech also talked about implementing minimum service levels. Of course, this was a reference to underpaid and, frankly, burned-out public sector workers striking for fair pay and adequate funding for their services, which are in a state of acute crisis. The irony is that the Government cannot deliver minimum service levels on a day-to-day basis in the NHS because of chronic underfunding and underpay, never mind on strike days. I wish to elaborate on the staffing crisis within the NHS.
More than 112,000 vacancies were recorded across NHS England in March. At the time, both the Royal College of Nursing and the British Medical Association warned that staffing levels were not meeting patient demand and that this was putting patient safety at risk. Further, the Royal College of Nursing stated that nursing staff were leaving the profession “in droves”, often because the stress and demands of the job do not match their current pay levels. It said that one nurse can be left looking after 10, 15 or even more patients. Those ratios are unsafe and require urgent action from the Government.
There is also a two-tier system for nursing staff, with different pay for the same job, as there is no parity of pay, terms and conditions across all the sectors in which nurses work. The position for midwives is equally dire, and midwifery now makes up a smaller slice of the NHS workforce than at any time on record. There is a big difference between the English regions, too. In the 12 months to July 2023, the number of midwives in the east of England rose by almost 9%, but in the north-west the number rose by just over 1%. The Nursing and Midwifery Council has said:
“There are clear warnings workforce pressures are driving people away.”
It found that 27,000 professionals had left the register in the UK in the year to the end of March 2023 and that although retirement was the most common reason for leaving, the next most common reason was health and exhaustion.
The real-world consequences of this crisis in midwifery are being felt in Salford. Ingleside birth and community centre is a freestanding midwife-led birth centre for antenatal and post-natal care, as well as low-risk birthing. It is situated in the middle of the beautiful Oakwood park in Salford. This state-of-the-art facility was opened a few years ago to address the absence of local maternity services after the closure of the maternity unit at Salford Royal Hospital in 2011.
Sadly, because of a midwife shortage, the facility has been closed since the pandemic, leaving Salford residents, families, new parents and their new-born babies without access to maternity services in the city. New parents and their new-born babies are forced to travel many miles across Greater Manchester to access these services. Even when they reach these services, which are miles away from their home, resource pressures and reduced staffing appear to be negatively impacting the remaining services at other locations. One mother explained the situation to me:
“I have recently given birth to my third child and the deterioration of services is shocking and has caused significant trauma to myself and my family... I experienced medical negligence, epistemic and testimonial injustice and disability discrimination throughout pregnancy, birth and in the postnatal period”.
Unfortunately, that mother’s story is not a one-off. Make Birth Better estimates that about 200,000 people a year find some aspect of giving birth traumatic, yet 30% of new parents suffering from mental and/or physical trauma after giving birth do not feel they are being supported. It is no surprise that we are hearing these stories, as the Government have chronically underfunded NHS maternity services—a commitment to only one third of the funding recommended by the Health and Social Care Committee was made recently.
Of course, the Government will say that they are responding to the staffing crisis and will cite their NHS workforce plan, but the Public Accounts Committee has criticised the plan heavily in a new report. In particular, it has criticised the lack of funding estimates and raised concerns about how the plan will be achieved. Although an additional £2.4 billion is to be provided to cover training costs for the first five years of the 15-year plan, no estimate has been put forward of total additional running costs beyond that for the hundreds of thousands of extra workers the plan says will be needed by 2036-37. The Government may refer to the education pipeline, but for every burned-out experienced nurse who leaves the profession, it takes at least three years to educate a new nurse. It has been estimated that one in three nurses leave their course citing financial challenges and poor support as reasons for leaving, and trainee doctors report feeling burned out.
Clearly, the Government need to take urgent action to increase the numbers of those training in NHS professions. They should listen to calls from the Royal College of Nursing to forgive tuition debt for all current nursing and midwifery students and to abolish self-funded tuition fees for all future nursing, midwifery and allied health students. That must be accompanied by a package for students, including a living costs grant that reflects the true cost of living and access to hardship payments. To keep those staff, the Government must listen to the alarm bells being rung by the NHS workforce, who do not want to take strike action but are simply desperate. Pay them properly and fund their services.
Richard Fuller (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)
May I join my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister in thanking His Majesty for his Gracious Speech, as there was much in it to commend? As this issue is dear to my heart and the hearts of many councillors in Bedford borough, let me thank the Government for saying that they will introduce changes on estate management charges to homeowners. Those charges affect perhaps 1 million homeowners across the country and this is an unregulated area. It is important that those people have improved rights to challenge and I look forward to seeing what the Government come forward with.
Let me also say what a pleasure it is to follow the hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey). Like many of her colleagues, she bemoaned the fact that the King’s Speech contained so few Bills and that the Government were not trying to do more. Let me make a counter point: many people think that the Government are already trying to do too much. These people are fed up with their businesses and lives being too regulated, and their taxes being too high. They are fed up with being told what they can and cannot say, and when they can and cannot demonstrate. People want to be free to live their lives. Government can play an important enabling role, but I say to her that the most important thing is the quality of the legislation proposed, which we all have a role in forming, rather than the quantity.
The topic of today’s debate is an NHS fit for the future. When I became the MP for North East Bedfordshire, it was clear that growth in population and in housing was driving many of the issues that affected my generally rural constituency. That is why “infrastructure first”, whereby we get the infrastructure in place before putting in more housing, was important for the future, while recognising that the growth over the previous two decades had had a significant impact, most importantly on primary care.
I have visited literally every GP practice in my constituency and spent an hour there, with one exception—it is still to come. I have found out about discrete issues that are important in how local residents feel about their GP services, including the choice of phone system. I think that the move to the cloud-based phone system by the NHS is welcome. I found out how people feel about the skills mix, where we have more non-GPs. Some parts of the community find that making the transition from seeing their normal GP to seeing another differently qualified member of staff creates problems, but in the long term it is useful. I found out that the different methodologies for accessing primary care—not just walking in or getting an appointment by phone, but getting access through email, the net or an app—have created extra pressures on primary care doctors. However, they are there to see it through to the end and they think it will have long-term benefits.
I thank all my local GPs across the constituency. A couple had particular difficulties, but I am pleased to say that progress in those two practices has been substantial since changes have been made. Despite the fact that all Members here feel that primary care has gone through quite a difficult process after the covid experience, in my constituency we have made progress, although there is still more to be made. It is a shame to see my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien) moving from his role in primary care, not least because I had just arranged a meeting with him and the leader of Central Bedfordshire Council to discuss the Biggleswade health hub. May I make a quick plea to those on the Front Bench that that meeting should be put back on the schedule as soon as possible?
Social prescribing was mentioned by the Minister in her opening remarks and it is a positive initiative. I visited the Bedfordshire Rural Communities Charity, which has taken on that responsibility. What a great form of outreach that charity and its volunteers and recruits have taken on with this role of social prescribing. In addition, there is a bit of pressure on local pharmacies, with some of the national changes altering their strategies. Others, however, are coming forward with positive initiatives, including Jardines pharmacy in Biggleswade, which has just launched its out-of-hours, Amazon box-type option for people to get their prescriptions.
In discussing improvement, I wish to mention four areas where there is change. On capital for the NHS, the issue is not primarily one of needing more money. Capital for the NHS in this five-year period will be 60% greater than it was in the previous five-year period. The issue is the process by which that capital is allocated and the choices that are made. We are also seeing people coming forward to help with capital. We recently had a change in the elected mayoralty in Bedford, with the replacement of a Liberal Democrat Mayor by a Conservative one, Tom Wootton. I am delighted that as one of his first measures, he has provided capital from the council’s budget to bring forward the provision of primary care services in the constituency and the rest of the borough. I look forward to those improvements being made in Great Barford and in other constituencies—I know it is happening in Wixams and Wootton. I commend an elected Conservative Mayor as the way to get local primary NHS facilities improved. Well done, Mayor Tom Wootton.
We need to provide more access for private capital if we are to enable a range of diagnostic centres across the country. I think that people are prepared to put private capital in place, but decision rights on how we all access diagnostics need to be given to us, not held by the NHS. Because of the limitations on time, I will mention compensation briefly. How on earth did we end up with a GP pay system that means that those who choose their hours and do not take on the responsibility of being a partner end up getting paid more lucratively than those who are full time or who are partner GPs? We need to reinforce the partner GP model, not turn our back on it.
I know that the Government are in discussion with junior doctors about this, but the circumstances in which we train our doctors has changed substantially. There is much greater global competition, both in terms of trying to bring people to the UK—the NHS brand is not as strong as it used to be—and in what people will do when they leave their training, such as moving to the middle east or to other health markets. We also need to recognise that many of our junior doctors now carry student debt, which the original model did not anticipate that they would have, and therefore the charging of ongoing fees for annual training is important. We must also recognise that junior doctors want to spend most of their time training and being with patients. The Government should look acutely at ways they can reduce the admin burden.
On decision authorities, it seems odd to have a system where integrated care boards bring together local councils and the local NHS—my area has a £2 billion annual budget—yet local people who understand local health needs have almost zero decision rights over how that money is spent. I do not see how the future of the NHS in the long term can be such a top-down, budget-driven system with so little local discretion if it is to succeed.
Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller), who made an interesting speech. He talked about the progress in primary care in his area. Sadly, I do not see such progress in south Manchester, where patients and GPs are in despair at the state of primary care after 13 years of Conservative-led Governments. We desperately need real change and new ideas for public services. All that we have is a damp squib of a King’s Speech, devoid of ideas and more interested in wedge issues than the country’s best interests.
I will start by looking at measures that relate to the NHS—two that are not in the Bill and one that it is. As a number of Members have said, it is desperately disappointing that there was no mental health Bill in the King’s Speech. This was an opportunity to strengthen safeguards and give new protections to vulnerable people. Alongside the demise of the mental health plan, the absence of such a Bill is a worrying signal about the Government’s priorities for mental health. I am really pleased that the Labour shadow Secretary of State has pledged that we will introduce a mental health Bill in a future Labour King’s Speech.
I also would have liked to have seen a measure to address the crisis in medical cannabis. It is now five years since medical cannabis was legalised in this country, and we have a handful of NHS prescriptions—literally; they can be counted on the fingers of one hand—while many thousands of people are getting private prescriptions for medical cannabis and paying hundreds and hundreds of pounds a month, costing them an absolute fortune. We absolutely need to address that. I recommend the private Member’s Bill that I introduced a couple of years ago to address that issue as a model for the Government to start from.
A measure that was in the speech was the tobacco and vapes Bill. I will always support measures to reduce the scourge of smoking, and I welcome measures to reduce the 5 million disposable vapes that are used every week in this country. We will certainly lend the Government the votes that they may need to get the measures through. Much play has been made of the idea that nobody under the age of 14 will ever be able to buy cigarettes legally. The emphasis has to be on the word “legally”. I have often stood up in this Chamber to say that prohibition often does not work. I really hope that the Government will give careful consideration to the impact that the Bill will have on the illegal market and organised criminal gangs—a point made earlier by my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones). We will certainly support the Bill, but this needs to be done carefully.
Let me turn to probably the single most disappointing measure in the King’s Speech. With COP28 coming up, the speech was an opportunity to set out a platform for a greener future. The Government could have introduced measures to make it easier to build onshore windfarms, to sort out the electricity grid so that we can all be connected to clean energy, or to bring in a programme of energy efficiency and low-carbon heating. Those are all things that a Labour King’s Speech would have done. Instead, we got the Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill, which will allow oil and gas companies to bid for new licences to drill for fossil fuels every year, riding roughshod over our net zero plans.
Last year, British households were the worst hit by the energy crisis in western Europe because of our high dependency on gas. For millions of households, bills this year will be even worse. The Government briefing says that the Bill will
“reduce reliance on volatile international energy markets”.
It will not. There is not enough gas and oil in our offshore fields to make any difference to the prices set by the international markets. The Government themselves have already admitted that the Bill will not do anything to reduce energy bills, and it rubbishes our efforts to fight the climate crisis.
Every respected body, from the International Energy Agency to the UN, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Climate Change Committee, has warned of the dangers of awarding new oil and gas licences. The Tories’ own former net zero tsar, the right hon. Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore), said:
“There is no such thing as a new net zero oilfield.”
A former Chair of the Climate Change Committee warned earlier this year that Government inaction on net zero
“has been compounded by continuing support for further unnecessary investment in fossil fuels.”
The Bill will not deliver energy security. The way to deliver energy security is to boost our economy and stake our future on clean energy. That is what Labour will do, upgrading a million homes with our warm homes plan and delivering a clean electricity system by 2030.
I have talked about the worst aspects of the King’s Speech; let me mention some positives. Leasehold is a centuries’ old, unfair system. Almost every country in the world apart from ours has ended it. Britain’s feudal leasehold system has left millions trapped in expensive housing with ever-increasing service charges and fees. It is the root cause of the abuse and poor service that so many homeowners experience at the hands of managing agents, and Labour has been pressing the Government to fundamentally reform and overhaul the leasehold system for a long time.
I welcome the Government’s announcement that they will finally reform leasehold. It is long overdue, and they have not gone far enough; the Government’s new rules will apply only to new homes, and there is nothing to rule out commonhold for new flats, which make up the majority of leasehold properties. A Labour Government would fundamentally and comprehensively reform the leasehold sector. The system needs a complete overhaul so that existing leaseholders can collectively purchase more easily and move to commonhold if they wish. Labour would enact the Law Commission’s recommendations on enfranchisement, commonhold and right to manage in full.
I welcome the Renters (Reform) Bill, which is also long overdue. I am concerned about delays to some of the key measures, particularly section 21 no-fault evictions, which continue to leave renters vulnerable at the height of a cost of living crisis. Labour would strengthen the Bill to ensure that it meets the scale of the housing crisis that the Government have presided over, but we welcome reform to the rental market.
I warmly welcome the Football Governance Bill. Our national game has needed reform for years to protect the clubs that are at the heart of our communities. I congratulate the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) on her excellent fan-led review, and I am really pleased that the Government’s White Paper contains most of her recommendations, particularly on the key issues of independent regulation and the protection of clubs’ heritage assets. My personal view is that more could have been done on financial redistribution, particularly the transfer levy. It is a shame that that was not mentioned in the White Paper. Perhaps after the consultation and when the Bill progresses, the Government can look at that again, so that we can really get the money that needs to go down the pyramid to support grassroots football. We welcome that Bill, look forward to its becoming law and will work with the Government to make it happen, because that is the right thing to do.
I will not test your patience, Madam Deputy Speaker, so in two lines I will mention two more Bills: the Media Bill—excellent. I am pleased that we are finally getting a Bill to protect public service broadcasting, but I am disappointed that a ban on conversion therapy has not been introduced. That is a betrayal of LGBT people who have been promised it by countless Tories, including Ministers, for a long time, yet that broken promise puts people at risk.
I will close by mentioning the future. We knew the Prime Minister is a fan of “Star Wars” but we did not know that he is a fan of “Back to the Future”. Lord David Cameron—really? He was the future once, but does anybody really think he is the answer to this country’s problems or that he is the change we need? No, Madam Deputy Speaker. We need real change in the future but that change has to be a Labour Government.
Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)
As we begin the final Session of this Parliament, we do so for the first time in more than 70 years debating a King’s Speech. I am pleased that this King’s Speech lays out a comprehensive legislative programme for the forthcoming year: an ambitious set of reforms that will help boost economic growth, strengthen society and make Britain a safer and healthier place.
Having looked back at my contributions in this place over the last four years, there are a couple of Bills I want to spend time talking about, because the subjects they address have dominated what I have said. First and foremost, the subject of the debate is “Building an NHS fit for the future”. The reason I am keen to take part in the debate is because the NHS has been front and centre of my campaigning in Warrington South, before and since becoming its Member of Parliament.
Since 2019, we have seen the benefits that Government investment in our local health services is making in Warrington, including a new £5 million radiology centre at Warrington Hospital, with state-of-the-art MRI and CT scanners, and £6 million to extend the emergency department, building a new same-day emergency care unit to speed up discharge and free up capacity. Money from Warrington’s £21 million town deal has funded a new health and social care academy so that we can train people to work in our health and social care sectors in the future, and a mammography unit has boosted screening capacity.
I have named but a few projects in Warrington, but there is still much more to do. Putting in place the right health infrastructure and training more doctors, dentists and nurses is vital for the long-term future of our national health service. I regularly speak to regional NHS leaders who tell me that the extra funding the Government are putting into Warrington is making a difference to people and staff alike in Warrington. In fact, there are more doctors, nurses and staff working in GP practices and the hospital today in Warrington than there were in 2019.
However, there are two areas related to health infrastructure where we need to go further. Warrington’s status as a new town has meant its population has gone from 60,000 in the late 1960s to more than 200,000 today. When I became the MP for Warrington South, I promised to campaign for a brand new hospital for our town, not because I wanted it but because Warrington needs it. Working together with local health chiefs and local cross-party politicians, we put forward plans that would allow that to be delivered. So far we have not managed to achieve that, but there are simply not enough beds to cope with the demand, nor sufficient parking spaces for patients, visitors and staff. The facilities we have today are not fit for a town of 200,000 residents. When the Minister for Social Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately), who was on the Front Bench earlier, came to visit in January last year, she saw for herself the challenges that we face in our A&E unit.
The other infrastructure issue I want to raise relates to the building of new GP surgeries in areas where new homes have been built. On Friday, I met with local GP Dr Jain, at the Appleton medical centre. She showed me around and, understandably, she is keen to progress from a first floor consulting suite with limited parking spaces in Appleton to a new surgery that is being funded by section 106 contributions from the local developers of all those houses that have been built. However, the process of securing an agreement to build is being delayed because of challenges in agreeing prices with the district valuer. One of my key asks for the new Secretary of State for Health and Social Care is to help unlock the funding and make progress on building the new health centres that are now urgently needed for our growing towns.
I will touch briefly on a couple of other areas mentioned in the King’s Speech that I have spoken about in the Chamber on numerous occasions, including the leasehold reform Bill. I have spoken many times on behalf of residents in Chapelford about the crucial need for changes in the law to protect those who are trapped in the leasehold system. Homes, particularly in the Chapelford area of my constituency, have been built under leasehold systems. I have been dealing with the issue on an almost daily basis since becoming the Member of Parliament for Warrington South. In common with colleagues across the House, I have constituents who face an endless array of problems with leasehold—including high service charges, and drawn-out and complicated processes to get information about the leaseholds on their homes, with people having to spend money to get that information if they are able to obtain it at all—so I welcome the leasehold and freehold Bill.
Like the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith), I am pleased to see the Media Bill, which I and colleagues on both sides of the House have been pushing for. As the chair of the all-party parliamentary media group and of the APPG on commercial radio, I have spent a lot of time looking at and working on the issue. It is hard to explain to constituents why we want to prioritise a Media Bill, but the truth is that if we do not get today’s legislation right, frankly, it will be the only such legislation we see for 20 years, and what we watch on our TVs and listen to on our radio stations will be controlled not by what happens here in Parliament, but by what happens with tech companies on the west coast of America. That is why it is so important that we get the Media Bill right.
When the last media Bill came through Parliament 20 years ago, Facebook was not around, we did not have streaming services and people listened to a radio station not through an on-demand speaker, but through a dial that they tuned. All those things have changed and we need to get the legislation right to ensure that viewers and listeners in this country are protected, and get to listen to and see public service radio and TV in the way they should.
Finally, I will briefly touch on the Government’s criminal justice agenda. As a magistrate, I know all too well how important it is to ensure that justice is seen to be done, so I very much welcome measures on proportionate sentencing and powers to compel criminals to hear their verdicts read out in court.
I do not want to take up any more time, Madam Deputy Speaker. To sum up, the King’s Speech contains a strong and promising agenda from the Government. There is lots of work to be done, and I am looking forward to another year of healthy debate and parliamentary scrutiny, so that we can get these important reforms on to the statue book over the next 12 months.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter). I agree with some of what he said, but I do not agree that the King’s Speech was ambitious, although it was graciously delivered and historic. A consensus is building not that there was much that was bad in the King’s Speech, but just that there was not much. For those of us who live in rural communities—knowing the challenges we face, particularly when it comes to the health service—that feels particularly hard to take.
When it comes to our health services, one issue that rural communities have in common is the distance people have to travel for care and treatment. That is particularly the case when it comes to cancer treatment. The average age of members of my community of south Cumbria and Westmorland is more than 10 years above the national average, and sadly cancer is a disease of ageing and therefore there is a greater incidence of cancer; and yet, 99% of my constituents have to travel beyond the recommended time—45 minutes maximum—to get to radiotherapy treatment at our nearest centre, the Rosemere cancer centre in Preston. That is a brilliant unit, by the way, but it is an awfully long way for people from Grasmere or Coniston, who are looking at a three-hour round trip every day to get treatment. People are often not referred for that treatment in the first place because their clinicians realise they are not able to make the journey; others do not take the treatment by personal choice or they simply do not complete treatment—and as a consequence, we see longer journeys leading to shorter lives.
There is a plan for a new radiotherapy satellite unit at the Westmorland General Hospital. I was pleased to discuss that with the hon. Member for Colchester (Will Quince) only the other day, so I am gutted that he has now left his ministerial position. On the record, I ask his successor to honour that meeting and the work we have been doing together to try to bring radiotherapy to Kendal. I worry greatly that the “building hospitals for the future” programme could move that Preston hospital, which is already too far away from our communities, even further south to South Ribble.
Hospices are also a major part of our armoury in tackling cancer and supporting those living with it. Of course, their costs have gone through the roof in recent times because of energy costs. They get only 21% of their funding from the national health service. Hospices serving our communities, such as ours in Eden Valley, St Mary’s in Ulverston and St John’s in Lancaster, have seen zero uplift to take account of the fact that their energy bills have trebled in recent times.
Let me comment on the future of Westmorland General Hospital in Kendal, which is of great importance as it is at the very heart of our community. We have seen good movement, with chemotherapy coming to our hospital after many years away, a new mental health unit, and growth in the amount of surgery that takes place there. However, we have seen the cancellation of overnight cover at Westmorland General Hospital three nights a week, meaning that people from Kendal, Burneside, Staveley and elsewhere are now expecting a doctor to come on call to them all the way from Penrith, which is a massive reduction in the quality of service and something that was promised years ago would never happen.
Let me turn to dentistry. I have intercepted a document from the chief executive of our integrated care board, berating his managers for not cutting deeply enough, at a time when, in Kendal, people’s nearest dentist—if they were trying to find an NHS one today—is in Preston. If they are in Kirkby Stephen, it is all the way over in Hexham in Northumberland. Half of all the children in my constituency have no access to an NHS dentist, and only a third of adults have that access. In Grange-over-Sands, where we lost an NHS surgery recently, a family was offered the chance to go private with the same surgery at the cost of £1,000 a year just to be registered with that practice. That is in addition to all the other cost of living challenges that that family, or any others in those communities, are facing. What is all the more appalling is that, through our taxes, these folks in my community have already paid for their NHS dentistry, yet they are being expected to pay again. Some just about pull the money together and afford to do it, but most do not and are left in staggeringly poor dental health; we also see the failure to pick up oral cancers as a consequence of people not attending the dentist.
GP surgeries are of great importance to us, as they are everywhere. In recent times, we have fought and successfully saved the Goodly Dale surgery in Bowness, the Central Lakes medical practice in Ambleside and Hawkshead, and, most recently, the practice at Haverthwaite, but the ongoing threat to our surgeries in rural communities such as mine comes from the fact that they cover vast areas, have relatively small roles and, therefore, struggle financially. I have repeatedly called on the Government to bring in a strategic small surgeries fund to make it possible for small rural GP surgeries to survive and serve their communities safely.
Over the 18 and a half years that I have served in this place, the biggest single increase in volume of casework has come from mental health issues among young people, and it is utterly and totally heartbreaking. Fifty per cent of young people on the books of child and adolescent mental health services in Cumbria and north Lancashire at the moment are those presenting with autism spectrum disorders, or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder—very often waiting two years just to be seen at all. That 50% of the workload is for those neurological conditions that do not attract any funding whatever from our local commissioners—nothing at all. Those young people are being held up in the system. They are being left to rot, as are their families and other young people, including those with eating disorders and anxiety disorders. If a 15-year-old were to break their leg on a football field on a Sunday afternoon, they would be seen within a couple of hours. If a person breaks something invisible inside them, they may wait months or even years to be treated, sometimes with fatal consequences. That is utterly and totally outrageous.
We need to tackle the subject of mental health at the beginning, so that we build resilience in young people, not just treat the symptoms. That is why I recommend the Government pick up my private Member’s Bill on outdoor education, which would compel every Government to fund every single child—once in primary school and once in secondary school—to take part in an outdoor education residential experience to build their resilience, help them to develop teamwork, and ensure that they are able to deal with the stuff that life throws at all of us at one time or another.
Finally, let me mention care. With many people above the average age in our community, it is no accident that 32% of our hospital beds were blocked early this year. Why was that? It is because there are not enough carers, and we do not pay those carers enough or treat them well enough. The consequence is the clogging up of our national health service from top to bottom—from A&E and ambulance response times to GP surgeries and everything else. Until we tackle the care crisis, we will not tackle the NHS crisis.
In a community like ours, one of the major reasons that nearly a third of the beds were blocked is the simple fact that there are not enough homes for people on average or below average incomes to live in. If we do not provide homes in communities like ours—by tackling the Airbnb crisis, the second homes crisis and the lack of social rented homes—we will have no workforce in care, in health or in any part of our public sector. Until the Government recognise the need to support those who work, and can potentially work, in health and social care, mental and physical health, we will continue to live in a crisis, particularly in rural communities like Westmorland.
Nick Fletcher (Don Valley) (Con)
It is a great honour to speak today, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Steve Tuckwell) on his maiden speech.
Today we are looking at the role of our NHS, which we can all agree is one of the most important institutions of our great nation and, as such, one of the most well-funded, too. With an organisation as big as this, waste is always going to be discussed. Middle management and back-office staff are always targeted, poor private finance initiative contracts always raised. Then there are the millions spent on dilapidated hospitals, when really we should be replacing them—Doncaster Royal Infirmary is a glaring example—and cutting money spent on ideologies with their numerous flags and handsomely paid equality and diversity officers who earn far more than the nurses. We all must agree that, as much as there is waste within the system, we are also creating unnecessary costs outside the system. The NHS costs the taxpayer an enormous £168 billion each year. Record sums are spent year on year by this Conservative Government. But what can we, as individuals, do to help?
The difference between Conservative and Labour Members is that we on the Government Benches believe in personal responsibility. This can be seen in a whole manner of ways: eating and drinking sensibly; getting plenty of exercise; and stopping smoking. Then there are simple things that we could do, like keeping our GP appointments. Appallingly, each day, one in five appointments—20%—in one practice in my constituency is not kept by patients, taking away appointments that others could have, and with no consequences for those who miss them. We all know this and if we all took personal responsibility, we could save the NHS billions of pounds each year. I challenge the people across this country to take charge of their health and do their part in securing the future of our NHS.
Another area of our health that we need to look at collectively is mental health. There were people hoping that there would be something on mental health in the King’s Speech, but I think we can do much more ourselves, without relying on the Government. There appear to be many young people who are struggling with their mental health. Two questions arise: why, and what can we do? When I go into schools and meet young people, or receive letters from them, many seem so confused and afraid. We seem to be encouraging our children to be ashamed of this country’s past, and raising concerns and fear-mongering about its future and their futures too, when there is so much of which we should be proud. We seem to be encouraging them to look inwards to find an identity, when they already have a brilliant one. Relationships, sex and health education and literature in our schools deny the basic building blocks of life, such as that a man is a man and a woman is a woman. We teach them myths of 100 identities. We confuse their language with misuse of pronouns. We tell the boys that they are a problem to society and we compound that by telling girls that all boys are bad. We tell them that their future is doomed because of climate change. We encourage their parents to work from home, which, as we know, is increasing school absenteeism. Then we ask, “Why are so many young people struggling with mental health problems?”
There were many items in the King’s Speech that I believe are important to my constituents: the Victims and Prisoners Bill, leasehold reform, oil and gas licensing to keep our lights on, a Media Bill to regulate streaming services, the animal welfare Bill for the animal lovers and, for football fans, a regulator to ensure that they are consulted, among other items. Since in this debate we are speaking about the NHS, however, I encourage all of us to take personal responsibility for our own health and, much more than that to help the young people in our lives.
We must teach young people to be proud of the place where they live and the body they were born in. We need to be role models that they can aspire to, teaching them that looking outwards is so much better than looking inwards and for oneself, that being there for our fellows is better than narcissism. Getting off the computer and phone and being part of the community is the best thing we can do for our mental health. Then, just maybe, we can save the NHS some money, or at least save the resources for those who really need them.
I have two more points to make, one national and one local. The first is that we need a men’s health strategy. Some 13 men will have taken their lives today, 13 men will have died of prostate cancer and 88 men will have died of heart disease. It is a crying shame that we do not have a men’s health strategy. We have a women’s health strategy, and it is right that we have one, but we need one for men too. Locally, we have a phlebotomy clinic that is about to close. If ever there was a case of an integrated care board not listening to the people it is meant to be serving, it is this. We need to save that clinic. It takes the pressure off the GPs and it is a service that the people of Doncaster need.
There was much in this King’s Speech that we can look forward to over the next 12 months, to help this country to be great again. However, unless we all start taking personal responsibility, we will become a nanny state where the Opposition will be teaching us how to clean our teeth, which just proves that that is all they have to say.
Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)
It is no exaggeration to say that we face an acute crisis in public mental health. Last week, the Government had the opportunity to announce reform of the Mental Health Act and to introduce a rights-based approach that would offer choice, protection and human dignity to people who are sectioned. Their failure to do so is really disappointing. There are many problems with the Act in its current form, from inequalities in the disproportionate use of detentions, to high levels of restraint, particularly experienced by young people, and the removal of patient autonomy. The Act is not fit for purpose and must be changed.
That is why the next Labour Government will reform the legislation, putting an end to the disgraceful detention of people with learning disabilities and autism who do not have other psychiatric disorders. We will remove prisons and police cells as places of safety to ensure that people in crisis are supported in an appropriate setting, and make other reforms to empower mental health patients to have more control over their own care. Reforming the Act was a manifesto commitment for the Conservatives in both 2017 and 2019. Abandoning those critical reforms shows a lack of political will at the heart of Government to tackle the current crisis.
What we desperately need is a much greater focus on prevention of mental ill health. Since the cancellation of the 10-year mental health and wellbeing plan, we have seen little movement towards addressing the social determinants of mental ill health, which should be the business of every Government Department. Public mental health is an asset, and it is vital that the Government see it as such. We need targeted programmes and workplace and community interventions to protect, support and sustain public mental health. I am glad that Labour has committed to providing mental health hubs in every community, which we will pay for by abolishing tax loopholes for private schools and private equity fund managers.
The King’s Speech spoke of “record levels of investment” that are supposedly “transforming” mental health services, which makes me wonder who the Government are talking to. There are an estimated 1.2 million people on NHS waiting lists in England, and the proportion of 17 to 19-year-olds with a probable mental disorder has risen from one in 10 to one in four in the past five years. For organisations I meet through my work on suicide prevention, and for the constituents who come to my door, that is simply not a picture that speaks to their experiences.
Last week I organised a conference in Newcastle on tackling young suicide, coming together with local stakeholders from the NHS, charities, universities and schools across our region. I promised them that I would take their message back to Westminster, and one of their key messages was about funding. Short-term and short-notice grants and funding mean that voluntary and statutory sector organisations are forced to lurch from one insecure position to the next, unable to plan for the future. It is costly and time-consuming for small grassroots organisations to apply properly for those grants, and they feel that the process is too top-down to empower them to fulfil the needs of local communities.
I have worked with many excellent charities in the area of suicide prevention, and one of their key strengths is their ability to be innovative. However, with NHS services struggling, they are carrying large burdens without proper funding or co-ordination from above. The £57 million allocated to local authorities for suicide prevention and bereavement services in 2019 was really important, because it helped to co-ordinate local suicide strategies and local action, but despite the publication of the national suicide prevention strategy, we have seen no reassurance that that money will be renewed or increased in line with inflation. Many of the projects happening at local level have already been forced to end.
Meanwhile, the public health grant has plummeted by around £1 billion on a real-terms, per person basis since 2015. We desperately need the restoration of local suicide prevention funding and a cross-Government, 10-year mental health plan that creates real accountability and incentives for local structures. Many mental health organisations were concerned that the mental health strategy, which was due to be produced this year, was taken into the major conditions strategy. There is much concern about that delay.
It was positive to see in the national suicide prevention strategy the beginnings of a “no wrong door” approach, including training for Department for Work and Pensions staff dealing with distressed callers. I do not want to belittle those efforts, but there is a failure to reckon with the fact that, if people do not have enough money, life is really hard. Polling last year showed that the most common cause of anxiety was not being able to pay the bills. We need the Government to be assessing the impact of all their decisions, not just those being made about the health services. That includes ensuring that essential service providers and creditors have policies and procedures that underpin a compassionate response to customers experiencing financial strain.
I have talked about the need to tackle the mental health crisis, but I also want to talk about adult social care. It was noticeable that there was nothing in the King’s Speech about tackling that very real issue, and it was interesting that it came at a time when the National Audit Office was publishing its report, out last Friday, “Reforming adult social care in England”. It revealed that, of the £1.75 billion committed to reforming the adult social care system in December 2021, more than £1 billion has been diverted to other priorities, meaning that there has been a 58% fall in the budget. We already know that there are significant problems, including long waiting lists and high numbers of staff vacancies, which have increased by 173% over the last decade.
Thousands of people who are medically fit to leave are stuck in hospital beds because the care in the community that they need is not there to support them. It was therefore concerning to read the analysis in the NAO report, which found that the DHSC has not established an overarching programme to co-ordinate its social care reforms, and that six out of eight of its workforce projects are still in development. It also found that the Department does not have a long-term funded plan for transforming adult social care beyond the current spending review period.
Once again, we are seeing sticking-plaster politics and the absence of long-term thinking from this Government. We have serious long-term issues in our mental health and adult social care systems, and we require serious long-term solutions to fix them. After 13 years of failure, the Conservatives are looking to Labour for the ideas to fix the mess that they have made. Come the general election, the country too will be looking to Labour.
Paul Bristow (Peterborough) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to speak in this debate following the first King’s Speech in more than 70 years. I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
The debate is entitled, “Building an NHS fit for the future”. In my view, we face no bigger public policy challenge. To build an NHS fit for the future and make the right financial choices, we need to get a grip on how much we spend. Money alone does not provide improved outcomes for patients; the investment we make—or, in other words, our spending—needs to deliver value. The NHS is not cheap, and it is certainly not free: it costs around £180 billion, or £2,700 per person, a year. The NHS is not underfunded, but workforce challenges, escalating costs and an increasing level of non-clinical activities are putting a strain on it. We need to debate how that money is spent, and I want to contribute by highlighting three areas.
First, I will address procurement. “Value-based procurement” is a term that has been used in the NHS for many years—it is not new. Whether or not we use that term, it is clear that the tariff, and other systems and culture, need to change to embed value into the system. What do I mean? Well, we need a transactional relationship in our NHS that goes way beyond the simple purchase of a commodity or a technology. We need long-term relationships between suppliers and our NHS that deliver better outcomes for patients and good value for money for the taxpayer. That requires a cultural change among procurement leads, yes, but for others as well.
As well as that partnership approach, savings need to be made across the whole treatment pathway—from referral to discharge—rather than just on the acquisition of an individual commodity or therapy. Pathway change is required, and “We have always done it this way” can no longer be the answer. Trust leaders should be told what is expected of them in that regard, and then they can flow that cultural change throughout the entire organisation. That should be exciting and rewarding for NHS staff, managers and teams. We need mechanisms and systems that not only incentivise that, but insist on payment and tariff systems focused on reducing expensive overnight hospital stays, prioritising day cases, early diagnosis and referral, and putting patient outcomes at the centre of things.
Secondly, I will address innovation. Recently, I accompanied Health and Social Care Committee colleagues on a trip to Singapore, where we saw how digital technology and artificial intelligence can transform efforts to tackle cancer. The Committee is conducting a future cancer inquiry. There was a rather amusing moment—I found it amusing, anyway; others might not—when I asked a couple of questions about the inspiration for that approach and about the regulatory and reimbursement models for technology. It was clear to us all that the inspiration for the approach was actually the UK, especially the 100,000 Genomes Project and the Galleri test from Grail. On regulatory and reimbursement models, we were given a presentation that looked almost exactly like NICE—I have sat through numerous presentations on NICE, reimbursement and all that, so one more would not make any difference. Obviously, Singapore has different funding models for its healthcare system, but how it judges whether something is cost effective looks remarkably similar to NICE.
Although some of our systems, and our clinical research, are admired around the world—about which we can rightly be proud—we need to be flexible to allow those innovations to be effectively reimbursed. There is still no specific tariff for digital technologies, but one is vital if we are to adopt such technology at pace and scale. We must not lose the advances and potential that AI could have for patient outcomes and diagnosis simply because there is no effective way of assessing, reimbursing and embedding the technology in the NHS. The technology can and should make it easier for the NHS to save money, and we must learn how to pay for it.
Finally, we need to end the one-year NHS funding cycle. Muti-year financial settlements—or funding arrangements that reward outcomes rather than activity—need to be embedded across the whole system, including at trust and ICB level. That will save money, and we must move it forward. In-year savings incentivise only short-term cost gains. The drastic change needed to embed innovation and new pathways that focus on patient outcomes, and to generate savings by doing things differently, is possible only by changing single-year funding models.
We want those innovations to be a must-have, not a nice-to-have. Time and again, innovation has dried up when the one-off funding pot has ended. I could bore the House with countless examples of that—hon. Members will be pleased to hear that I will not, but they will be familiar with what I am saying. It is the same in any big bureaucracy, be it the NHS or local government: short-term decision making, cost escalation, cultural resistance to change, and innovation treated as a nice-to-have. We cannot go on like this; we must move on from that system. We cannot have a situation in which other countries take inspiration from us in research and technology but do it much better, while we remain in an analogue age not because of a lack of ambition, but because our system does not embrace ways to spread those things at pace and scale.
Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)
I pay tribute to our national health service and social care staff, be they in Cheshire, Merseyside or elsewhere across Britain. Of course, while many in Downing Street partied, those staff went above and beyond and sacrificed so much every day—we must not forget that; the public inquiry is certainly shining a light on it—and, importantly, they continue to do so.
It is no secret that our NHS is facing the worst crisis in history. Urgent action is needed to make our cherished healthcare system work again, but the Government provided no solution in the King’s Speech, with 21 Bills that were heavy in rhetoric but light in substance. Where was the Bill on mental health, which we have long awaited and the Government have promised time and again?
Bizarrely, after 13-plus years of failure, the Prime Minister is trying to paint himself as a vehicle of change, while recycling a failed Prime Minister from the past, whose only notable recent success was to get himself on the payroll of Greensill Capital, which came at a real human cost of 305 job losses in the Daresbury Park area of my constituency. This is a company—sorry, a failed company; a former company—that is now subject to an investigation by the Serious Fraud Office. We are still dealing with that sorry affair, yet bizarrely, that individual is now appointed to the Government. To me and my constituents, it sounds like the same old entitled Tories time and time again, with no responsibility to anybody, putting arrogance above all. It is the same old Tories—the same old Etonians—and one of them is coming back.
The Conservatives have no answers on how to save the NHS. This Government are failing millions of patients and NHS staff across the country. Waiting lists are out of control, staff are burned out, and people are literally losing their lives. Too many of our constituents are waiting longer than ever for operations, in A&E, for ambulances, and when trying to get doctors’ appointments. The system is broken; the Government broke our NHS. We only need to look at their own figures: recent statistics show that the NHS backlog has hit a record high, at 7.8 million. That backlog is 600,000 larger than when the current Prime Minister made his pledge—one of his five pledges—in January.
We on the Labour Benches know that there is a plan. There is a sizeable pot of money available from non-doms, the very people who, bizarrely, the Prime Minister seems to want to protect. It is almost as though he has a vested interest in non-doms—I cannot imagine what that might be. That money could be used to power up the frontline resources that we need to get waiting lists down. Why not adopt the Labour plan? Go and steal our plan. Let us provide 2 million more appointments by paying staff extra to work evenings and weekends, paid for by abolishing the Prime Minister’s beloved status of non-dom. Just do it—steal it! Do the right thing. Of course, that is not going to happen.
The NHS shortfall affects a number of other areas across the health landscape, especially dentistry in my constituency and throughout England. We know that 90% of dental practices in England are closed to new NHS routine patients, creating dental deserts. That is certainly true in the Halton and the Cheshire West and Chester parts of my constituency. People who have a little bit of extra money in their pockets are forced to pay for expensive payment plans in the private sector, but as has been well documented across the Chamber today, many are resorting to DIY treatment. It is an absolute scandal; it is Dickensian. In this day and age, everyone should have the right to receive dental treatment when they need it. That is a fundamental principle of the NHS—the NHS that we founded, and that we will protect and save.
Just as it is very challenging to get a doctor’s appointment, unfortunately the principle behind NHS dentistry continues to be severely undermined. I recently visited Leftwich Community Primary School, a brilliant school in my constituency with great teachers and support staff. The joint headteachers raised the desperate attempts that are made to try to get NHS dentists for pupils at the school. The teachers are going the extra mile, trying to get NHS dental appointments for children in the local community. What will the Government do to make sure there are enough dentists across England, including in Cheshire and Merseyside? Why not adopt Labour’s plan for an additional 700,000 dental appointments—quite a significant number, although it seemed to be pooh-poohed by a Minister earlier in the debate—by closing private equity loopholes? That is another costed plan—steal it! Do the right thing. Of course, the Government will not.
In my constituency, we have hospitals that badly need to be upgraded and modernised. Our bid for a new Halton campus hospital was snubbed by another Health Secretary—third time unlucky—while Leighton Hospital, which serves the Northwich part of my constituency, was successful only because it is literally falling down. It is propped up by scaffolding; it is riddled with reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete. That is how it got on the programme for the 40 new hospital builds, which of course is a work of fiction in itself. I will be asking another Secretary of State for Health and Social Care—another one was announced today; I had forgotten about that—when the people of Halton can expect to hear some good news about that desperately needed hospital rebuild.
Richard Foord
I was interested to hear the hon. Member mention RAAC in his speech. I have heard that there is a hospital in Harrogate that needs £20 million of repairs because of RAAC, but the Government are requiring that hospital to bid for the funding, rather than just giving it the funding. Does the hon. Member think that is right?
Mike Amesbury
I certainly do not. It is a critical building safety issue, and funding should be given according to need, so that is a very well-made point.
The latest Tory gimmick—a dangerous one at that—is to introduce the so-called minimum service levels Bill. It is an attack on the fundamental right to strike, which of course is done as a last resort. It is a piece of legislation that will sack nurses and doctors, while at the moment the NHS has vacancies for 112,000 health workers. The Government have failed to meet minimum standards for patients on non-strike days for the past 13 years. The only people who the majority of my constituents—and, I am quite confident, the country—want to sack are sat on the Government Benches. They want to sack each and every one of those Tory Ministers. We do not just need the reshuffling of the deckchairs we have seen today, or the recycling of former Prime Ministers; we need the Government to go to the electorate, grow a spine, and let the people have their say. Let us rebuild our NHS and rebuild Britain with a Labour Government.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)
After Steven Bonnar, I will impose a formal seven-minute time limit on speeches.
Steven Bonnar (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (SNP)
Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury).
Since its inception, the NHS in Scotland has stood as a testament to our way of life and our society’s outlook and as a beacon of our compassion, all thanks to the unwavering dedication and commitment of our NHS staff and social care workforce. Even in the face of an unprecedented pandemic, coming as quickly as it did after the damage already caused by Brexit, our NHS staff have remained steadfast, their commitment undeterred. We clapped them—remember?—and then this place let every single one of them down, time and time again. They held the hands of our dying relatives while those who were setting the rules our NHS staff had to endure were breaking those rules.
In Scotland, we cherish each individual and the contributions they make to all our lives, day in and day out, across the Scottish NHS and social care sector. They are working under immense pressure for myriad reasons, but none is more apparent than the wilful damage inflicted on Scotland by this place over the past four years alone, let alone the 13 years of Tory rule. Let us stop to consider the pressures placed on our NHS staff: consider the pandemic, and the attack that it unleashed on our frontline service provision; consider the third of our NHS workforce sent home overnight when our freedom of movement was removed; consider the Truss-Kwarteng psychodrama that played out before us, and the tanking of the economy hitting every single household across the UK. When we consider all of that, is it not the workers of our NHS who should be honoured and decorated by this place? However, instead of crowns, they wear paper hats and scrubs, and they struggle on day by day. Speaking of crowns, when we look past the pomp and the grandeur of Westminster, we find nothing in the King’s Speech that resonates in any way with the hard-working people of Scotland. The Tory Government fail to address the core issues affecting people’s lives today—the soaring cost of food, mortgage costs, energy costs and interest rates, not to mention the lack of support for those on the lowest of incomes or those in the middle who are being squeezed from every conceivable angle.
Scotland’s NHS has been independent since its inception, and despite all the issues I have mentioned as being faced by service users and staff alike, we in the SNP can say with confidence that it fares much better than its counterparts across any of the constituent parts of the United Kingdom. The operational separation it enjoys has undoubtedly enabled and maintained that better performance over many years. Earlier, we heard the Opposition Health spokesperson, the hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), lay out the state of play in England’s NHS—and, let us be honest, it was not pretty —but as of today Scotland’s NHS has higher staffing per head of population than the NHS in England. In Scotland we have 8.3 qualified nurses and midwives per 1,000 of our population, compared with just 6.3 here in England. This means that nursing and midwifery levels are 32% higher per head of population in Scotland than they are here in England. Overall, nursing and midwifery staffing is up by 13% under the SNP Scottish Government, and medical and dental consultants are up by 65% under the SNP Scottish Government. A band 2 porter in Scotland earns more than £2,980 extra when compared with a porter in England, a band 5 nurse in Scotland is earning £3,080 more when compared with a nurse in England and a band 6 paramedic is more than £3,480 better off when compared with their counterparts in England. All of this is while avoiding any strikes within NHS Scotland.
The one area where our NHS does not enjoy full independence is funding, and this has proven critical for a few reasons. For the past three years, we on the SNP Benches have been calling on the UK Government to deliver the funding necessary to not only deal with the pandemic, but make sure our NHS comes back better and healthier than before. If the Government in this place were to lift up wages in NHS England to match those in Scotland, they would not only secure NHS staff in England, encourage greater staff retention and possibly avoid the strikes we have seen so many of, but unlock billions in additional funding to make its way up the road to Scotland. However, this Government, with the reserved borrowing powers of Westminster, have refused to act. Despite all our efforts, a Westminster Government ultimately hold the key to delivering the funding necessary to catapult our NHS not just back on to its feet, but forward into a future the public so much deserve.
The pressure in our NHS demands urgent action, so what my constituents in Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill are asking themselves is: what change will come under a Labour Government? Will employment law be devolved, and will immigration law be devolved? What exactly are the changes that the Labour party is proposing, because its foreign policy is practically the same, its economic policy is largely the same, its welfare policy is largely the same and its constitutional policy is largely the same? Both the Tories and Labour offer Scotland the status quo. They both offer a life under a Westminster Government who do not care for it, will never put it first and will never put it before the interests of little Britain. Only the SNP is offering the people of Scotland any real change and any real hope, and it will only come with independence. Only then can the great reset begin.
As things stand, we in the SNP come to this place daily to stand up for Scotland and to address the challenges in our healthcare system, our economy and our interactions with the world through UK foreign policy. In my opinion, it is becoming more difficult to come here, and to sit and listen to the rhetoric of this place and of this Government. Listening to some of it has been hard to stomach, so let me be very clear: both the Government and the Opposition, in refusing to call for an end to innocent lives being lost and the collective punishment of Palestinians via a humanitarian ceasefire on all sides, are once again out of lockstep with the people of Scotland. The SNP amendment to the Loyal Address, to which I have put my name, calls for an immediate ceasefire to take place. I very much look forward to voting for that in the name of peace and humanity, and I hope many hon. and right hon. Friends will join me in the Lobby.
Scotland’s reputation among our partners in the international community is being damaged and we are being dragged down by our attachment to this place. The harm that has been caused to our economy, our public services, our population and our reputation are unparalleled. Is it not a little bit ironic that the man who caused so much of it, with his Brexit vote and his failed Remain campaign, is back? Former Prime Minister Cameron is now in the Government as Foreign Secretary—unelected, of course, but simply handed an ermine robe and told, “You’re a Lord now, Dave. Get on wi’ it!” He is allowing himself to be used as some kind of stooge to distract from a weak Prime Minister, who had no option but to sack his dog-whistling Home Secretary. The Leader of the Opposition is no stranger himself to anti-immigration rhetoric, specifically targeting the NHS and recruitment from overseas. This is at a time when the recruitment and retention of senior medical staff is one of the biggest challenges we are facing, with over 40% of GP trainees being international graduates. The challenges felt in the health and social care sector resonate across other sectors too—agriculture, fishing, food production and distribution have all been victims of Brexit—and the last thing Scotland needs is any more right-wing rhetoric on immigration from this place.
The best future for the NHS is an independent future in Scotland. An independent Scotland, free from the constraints of this place, can chart its own course, ensuring the wellbeing of its citizens without being tethered to the whims of political agendas thought up by right-wing ideologues who do not prioritise our nation, its health or our people. The people of Scotland deserve so much better, and we in the SNP will work to deliver a healthcare system that puts people first, values our healthcare professionals and recognises the true worth of our national health service—and to achieve this, our fight continues.
Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to speak in today’s King’s Speech debate on getting the NHS back on its feet. It is clear that the country is crying out for change. We do not mean bringing back one of the architects of austerity, who started 13 years of failure on his watch, to try to help a Conservative party that is out of ideas and has given up on governing. We are seeing stagnant growth, skyrocketing mortgages, crumbling schools and hospitals, and a cost of living crisis, yet the Government’s agenda includes no meaningful action to deal with the past 13 years of failure.
Only Labour is offering true change—a decade of national renewal to overcome the Conservative party’s national decline—with unshakeable commitments to driving economic growth, safer streets, cheaper home-grown British power, better opportunities for all and a rejuvenated NHS. What working people deserve is a good job, a secure home and a safe community. The cornerstone of a good life is our and our family’s health, and at the heart of that is our NHS. This example of socialism in action is the jewel of the British crown, and a proud creation of the post-war Attlee Labour Government. However, that creation has been pushed to breaking point by the Conservatives as the health service is short of 125,000 staff; patients are waiting longer than ever for operations, in A&E or for an ambulance; and NHS staff are forced to use outdated, creaking equipment, which means longer waits for patients. The answer is not to sack healthcare workers by introducing minimum levels of service on strike days.
It is clear that only Labour can rescue the NHS from the biggest crisis in its history, get it back on its feet and make it fit for the future. We can see that already, with the welcome announcement that the Conservatives are finally adopting our plan to train the doctors and nurses the NHS needs. The Secretary of State could have included a few more of our ideas in the King’s Speech, beginning with our plan to provide 2 million more appointments, to be funded by abolishing the non-dom tax status. We would also arm NHS staff with the latest cutting-edge technology and equipment and support more care in the community so that patients are not stuck in hospital. A Labour Government will ensure that the NHS is there when people need it, from cradle to grave in a fairer Britain, allowing everyone to live well for longer.
The King’s Speech sadly confirmed that the Conservatives have shelved the much-needed reform of the Mental Health Act, breaking their 2019 and 2017 manifesto pledges. Rightly, the absence of Mental Health Act reform has been heavily criticised by social work and health leaders and by mental health campaigners. We need a prevention-based approach whereby people can access mental health support in the community when they first need it, rather than having to wait until they reach crisis point. That is why a Labour Government would recruit 8,500 more staff to expand access to talking therapies and cut waiting times. We would provide mental health support in every school and an open-access mental health hub for children and young people in every community. We would fund that by closing interest-tax loopholes and charging VAT on private schools. Accessible and timely mental healthcare is vital to the creation of a healthy society.
Let me take this opportunity to give credit to Luton Borough Council’s 2040 vision: a plan to create a healthy local community in our town, to improve population wellbeing, and to enable everyone to have a good quality of life and reach their full potential, as part of a commitment to become a Marmot town by tackling health inequalities with action on the social factors that impact health. That means embedding health across all policy areas. The covid-19 pandemic further highlighted and exacerbated many health challenges, and widened inequalities that affect health, such as education, housing and employment.
The Government’s 13 years of failure have had a substantial impact on working people’s lives in Luton. Under this Conservative Government, people are struggling to afford to meet their most basic physical needs—to stay warm, dry, clean and fed. How can the UK have a healthy society when the Conservatives are failing to ensure that people have the basics? People deserve the security and opportunity to get on in life, and a good job is an important part of a healthy life.
The Government need to recognise that they are failing to break down the barriers that prevent people from re-joining the workforce. One in seven people in England are waiting for NHS treatment; unaffordable childcare costs are locking parents out of full-time work; the number of young people out of work due to ill health has nearly doubled in a decade; and only one in 10 older or disabled people has had any support to find work. Labour will tackle the root causes of economic inactivity by driving down NHS waiting lists, reforming social security, making work pay and supporting people into good jobs across every part of the country.
A secure home is essential to a healthy life, but the King’s Speech does nothing to tackle the housing emergency in Luton and across the UK. There is no sign of local housing targets or the reform needed to our planning system. Homeowners face eye-watering mortgage rates, young people are struggling to get on the housing ladder, and the dream of home ownership has been snatched away for so many who are stuck paying unaffordable private rents. Labour’s plan for secure homes, including council housing, will put an end to the Conservatives’ housing emergency.
This is the Prime Minister’s first King’s Speech and, much like his predecessors, he has nothing to offer the country other than division and more of the same. Labour has a plan to rebuild Britain and our public services. We respect and understand the effort that millions of people put in every day. They deserve better from politics and government, and they will get it from the next Labour Government’s King’s Speech.
Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
The lack of a comprehensive Government programme was borne out by our experiences over the previous Session, in which business finished before the end of the sitting day on 100 occasions, or 47% of the time. That amounted to 134 hours of parliamentary time left unused. Even now in the debate on the Humble Address, the Government have run out of speakers on their side of the Chamber yet again. That has happened every day so far. They also seem to be running out of people on the Government Benches to put in their own Cabinet.
It is hard to escape the feeling that this is a Government who have run out of steam. Indeed, what kind of shambles of a Government decide to conduct a full reshuffle in the middle of the debate on the King’s Speech? Presumably, Departments have been working for some time on plans for the legislative programme. To change the political leadership in those Departments just six days after that programme was announced smacks of a rudderless ship lurching from one crisis to the next. It is like a football team sacking its manager on the morning of the FA cup final. We really can do better than this.
Nothing sums up the failure more than the fact that the biggest omission from the Humble Address is the lack of anything to deal with the cost of living. Inflation may be coming down but it is still far too high and the long tail of its impact will be felt for possibly years to come through higher mortgage payments and rental costs. Food inflation has been running at 15% for much of the year, and every item of household expenditure has gone up this year. Maybe we will see something in the autumn statement next week—whoever is in charge of the Treasury at that point.
We need to see something. The Trussell Trust has given out some 1.5 million food parcels in the past six months. I can just about remember a time when food banks were the exception; now they appear to be the norm. Far too many families have to rely on some form of support on a permanent basis and the growth of food banks continues unabated. Although I commend and thank the volunteers for all their help, when are we going to get down to tackling the serious issue of why food banks exist in the first place?
In the past week or so, I have been visiting schools in my constituency as part of Parliament Week. One thing that I discuss with the children is what issues they want to see us dealing with in here, and one of the issues they raised was the cost of living. It is normally litter, animals or play areas that come up, but not this time. With wages going only as far as they did 16 years ago, and at a time when inflation has been so consistently high, it is no wonder that everything has become unsustainable. The Office for Budget Responsibility found that wages are not set to recover to the same real level until 2026, and estimates that the average worker in 2022 would have been £233 a week better off had wages continued to grow at pre-2008 levels. Those statistics bear out what the children have been telling me. It is about time that the Government acted and listened.
The NHS’s founding principle that everyone is entitled to care, free at the point of use and on the basis of need, is one of our proudest achievements. It provides assurance that everyone can access some of the best healthcare in the world, but that principle is now at risk. Look what we are witnessing at the moment: a record high waiting list of 7.7 million; 391,000 patients waiting more than a year for treatment; and cancer targets being consistently missed. The number of patients waiting for more than 12 hours from a decision to admission stood at more than 44,000 last month; that is 64 times higher than it was in October 2019, which is an incredible deterioration in just four years. But it is even worse compared with when Labour was last in office, when the number of people waiting for more than 12 hours was non-existent.
It is clear to everyone that the NHS is in the midst of the biggest crisis in its history, but unfortunately the issues were completely bypassed in the King’s Speech. What is worse, my local NHS is being asked to find 5% cuts from its services. Goodness knows where it will find that from—and we have not even talked about the crisis in social care—yet we hear about trusts having to ask volunteers for redundancies. Why is that happening when we have more than 100,000 vacancies in the NHS?
The Government’s record on homes is no better. The amount of people we see in our constituency offices who have nowhere to call home is growing to an unprecedented number. The lack of progress on building new homes, especially genuinely affordable housing, along with the crippling rise in interest rates, the failure to tackle the private housing sector and the continuing giveaways of right to buy, all combine to leave us with the worst housing crisis in memory and an inevitable increase in rough sleeping.
In the first six months of 2023, my local council had 6,000 housing applications, compared with 7,000 for the whole of the previous year. Part of this is down to section 21 notices, which still have not been ended, but it is also about the affordability of private rents, with the local housing allowance rates being frozen year after year. It is a shame that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has just left the Chamber because I really wanted him to hear about that.
It seemed that someone in the Government had noticed an increase in rough sleeping, because before the King’s Speech a proposal was trailed to end the plight of homelessness. Instead, though, it would have criminalised those who want to help people with tents and other forms of shelter. Thankfully those measures did not appear in the final speech, but those comments have had an impact. I am hearing stories of people having their tents stolen, and it reminds us that comments from people in important positions have an impact. We have all seen the consequences of that over this past weekend.
On a positive note, the leasehold and freehold Bill is a good start, but it does not go far enough. In particular, the suggestion that the new rules will not apply to flats is a disappointment. On the proposal to cap ground rents at peppercorn, I had the opportunity last week to ask the former Housing Minister, the hon. Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean), whether she agreed that ground rents had no place in a modern world. While she did agree, it worries me that there will be a consultation on ground rents before any legislation is introduced, and that will give the freehold industry another opportunity to keep its lucrative income stream going. I have already seen comments from those protecting vested interests, or their lawyers, saying that capping ground rents at peppercorn cannot possibly happen as it was a fairly agreed contract, and surely the leaseholders knew what they were signing up to. Well, we have spent many hours in this place debunking that theory, and I am sure that the Competition and Markets Authority would also have something to say about that. Of course, we have another new Housing Minister, so we will see whether we do see that reform.
In conclusion, this is a pathetic offering from a Prime Minister insisting that he is the voice of change, even though he is now bringing in the cheerleader of austerity from the previous decade. It is one last desperate roll of the dice from a Government who have run out of ideas and just about run out of road. Every aspect of life has got worse during these past 13 years. With this Government, it feels like decline is inevitable. It does not have to be this way, which is why we should have a general election straightaway.
Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)
Thirteen years of Tory rule has delivered a broken country, where the majority of people know that times are harder now than they were before. Whether it is accessing a GP, trying to get on the housing ladder or meeting the ever-rising costs of food, childcare, energy and public services, people are working harder and paying more taxes for less in return. Our morale is being tested to the limit.
The climate change emergency has been downgraded, the Government are going backwards on their commitments. Our rivers have been turned into open sewers. Schools are struggling to cover their costs. Public buildings are collapsing. Food bank use continues to soar, and more and more children are falling into poverty. All this zombie Government could offer in their last stand before the general election was this pathetic agenda. Instead of genuine attempts to fix the problems they have created, the Government have opted for more division and yet more authoritarian anti-strike measures; they do not believe that public service workers have a right to stand up for fair pay, conditions and better services for the patients they care about.
I will focus my King’s Speech response on health and social care, because more than 7 million people are waiting, on record waiting lists. I am so disappointed on behalf of my constituents that the King’s Speech offered little hope to get the NHS back on its feet—in other words, to how it was the last time Labour was in power. Many of my constituents are waiting for care, and the struggle to get a GP appointment is the norm. Access to dental care is not possible for many, and some of my constituents are struggling to access vital medications because of ongoing drug shortages, particularly epilepsy drugs, HRT and ADHD medication. There was nothing in the King’s Speech to address those problems, and mental health reform has again been kicked into the long grass.
Parts of the Mental Health Act are 40 years old, and we now know so much more about mental health conditions and how to treat them, so why are the Government failing patients and children, and continuing to ignore the mental health emergency? My constituents have been waiting nearly seven years for the in-patient mental health beds they lost to be returned. This Government enabled blatant profiteering during the national health emergency, and the covid inquiry has confirmed what we already suspected: that the Government response to covid was slow, chaotic and deadly. They went from clapping the NHS to calling for their sacking for having the temerity to demand a wage they could live on. The Government say they want minimum service levels on strike days, but what is the Conservative plan to provide a minimum level of service on non-strike days? The Government have finally relented to Labour’s calls to publish a long-term workforce plan for the NHS to ensure that the service can meet demand.
The Health Foundation forecasts that waiting lists will go up to 8 million by next year—not down, as the Prime Minister promised—and these proposals have come far too late. The health service is now short of 125,000 staff, and the announcement will take years to have an impact. There is no plan on retention measures, but I offer the Government one piece of advice: stop blaming hard-working, burned-out NHS staff for the Government’s decade of neglect of our NHS. There is still no long-term social care workforce plan to overcome the severe staff shortages in the care sector. We cannot fix health unless we fix social care. It will be left to the next Labour Government to rescue the NHS from the biggest crisis in its history, to get it back on its feet and to make it fit for the future.
Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)
It is an honour to speak in this historic debate on the first King’s Speech for 72 years, but, to be frank, it is not a pleasure. When I go around and talk to people in Putney, Southfields, Roehampton and Wandsworth town about what I can say for them on their behalf in Parliament, many just shrug their shoulders and say, “Where do you start?”, because there are so many things they feel that the Government should be doing that they are not doing, whether that is: the climate crisis; the cost of living crisis; a million children living in destitution in the UK; the damage to our international reputation; or the NHS crisis, with 125,000 vacancies in our NHS and nearly 8 million people on waiting lists. Those are all things that my constituents think should be tackled by the Government, and I just have not seen that in the King’s Speech. It is disappointing.
Before turning to the pressing issue of healthcare, I put on record my disappointment at the lack of legislation to move us towards a net zero green future in the King’s Speech. There could have been so much more in that legislative programme. It is being left to Labour to pick up the pieces, but we will do so in all our actions for Government. There is also welcome reform for leaseholders, but the legislation is too weak and is mainly not for current leaseholders, but for future and new-build leaseholders. I am pleased to see that the Government have reintroduced the Renters (Reform) Bill in the King’s Speech, but the long delay has caused suffering across the country and across London. Will the section 21 eviction ban actually see the light of day, as we need it to?
I will focus on three serious issues of concern on healthcare for my constituents: the dropping of any reform to the Mental Health Act; dental health; and, support for GP surgeries and primary healthcare.
Last week, the Government broke yet another promise to reform the Mental Health Act—a promise they have been making for six years. There has long been cross-party support for reforming the Act. A Committee met from summer last year to January, and a report was made, but it has not received any Government response. Legislation is there, waiting to be put into place.
The Mental Health Act 1983 is outdated and unfit for purpose, yet it remains the main piece of legislation outlining the rights of people who are being detained in hospital for mental health treatment. There are huge problems with it. Black people are five times more likely to be detained under the Act and more than 11 times more likely to be given a community treatment order than white people.
The Government are letting down people with autism and learning disabilities. In September alone, more than 2,000 autistic people and people with learning disabilities were detained in mental health hospitals in England, including 205 children—often in solitary confinement. The Care Quality Commission has said that these people
“continue to be in hospital inappropriately when they should be receiving care in the community.”
There were concrete plans to tackle that in the draft Mental Health Bill, but that has been dropped. What are the Minister’s plans to take action on this issue going forward? The reforms were a crucial chance to give people more dignity and independence, yet the Act continues to fail children and young people in particular. It takes away agency from those detained to have any say over their treatment.
Mental health is not the only area in which the Government are failing our NHS: my constituents are unable to get GP appointments. The most recent GP appointment survey data found that the proportion of people who secured an appointment when wanted has fallen to just 51%: the lowest level in five years. Too often, our GP surgeries—the premises—are unsuitable, with a report from the Royal College of General Practitioners finding that 40% of GP staff consider their premises unsuitable. I was told in a recent letter from a GP in Putney how far too many surgeries are
“stuck in tiny residential buildings”,
which really affects GPs’ ability to provide the services—prevention services in particular—that they want to provide. Will the Minister tell the House what is being done to improve the GP estate—GP surgeries in particular—and to expand it in future?
Labour would reverse the decline in GPs by doubling the number of medical school places to 15,000 a year, rapidly improve GP appointment performance and provide a public service that has time for people with more complex needs. Labour’s NHS workforce plan will train a new generation of doctors and nurses.
Also missing from the King’s Speech was any mention of dentistry. At my most recent visit to a local GP surgery, I said, “What is the main issue that you face?” I expected all sorts of issues that we might think would be bigger, but they said that it was NHS dentistry for children. They are seeing the impact of that—people cannot get an NHS dentist appointment, so they come to their GP—and that problem is growing, especially for children. It is increasing the health inequalities in my constituency, which I see from one part of the constituency to another in dentistry more than anything else.
During covid, I took part in many debates in which we laid out how the NHS dentistry contract was going to fail local people and how it was not fit for purpose, yet it was not changed then and the problem has been exacerbated since. Labour will address the immediate crisis in NHS dentistry by providing 700,000 more urgent dental appointments and recruiting more dentists. In the long term, it will reform the NHS dentistry contract as well so that everyone who needs an NHS dentist can get one.
Alongside reform of the Mental Health Act, Labour will transform mental health services in Britain so that timely support is available to those who need it. We will recruit thousands more mental health professionals, provide mental health hubs in every community and put mental health support—that crucial early prevention work—into every school.
The Government must now make way for a party with a vision for a revitalised NHS that works for everyone or risk running our healthcare service further into the ground. It is time for a general election now.
Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
I know that we say “the Government of the day”, but this Government seem to be taking that term to new heights.
The NHS is top of what I hear about on the doorsteps. People talk about how long it will take to see a GP, whether their children will get support with complex and little-understood conditions such as paediatric acute-onset neuropsychiatric syndrome and paediatric auto-immune neuropsychiatric disorders associated with streptococcal infections, whether specialists are available for support when things go wrong, and how they access mental health needs.
I understand that day-to-day decisions by NHS Scotland are not made here, as NHS Scotland’s running is within the devolved competence of the Scottish Parliament, but, from listening to the hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Steven Bonnar), we would think that everything was great in Scotland. It is right that our spending on the NHS is higher per capita, but that has nothing to do with the generosity of the Scottish Government. We get more money per head to reflect the high cost of delivering services over large rural areas in Scotland—it is simply more expensive to deliver our services. When I look at the GP services in North East Fife, I see them crumbling under the SNP.
Amy Callaghan
Does the hon. Member recognise that the lack of capital spending by the British Government in NHS England and its Barnett consequentials mean that the Scottish Government get less money to spend on NHS Scotland, so we are suffering as a result of being tied to this Union?
Wendy Chamberlain
Part of that comes from the fiscal framework that the Scottish Government have signed up to. The Barnett consequentials have always recognised that services in Scotland are more difficult to deliver because of our geographical size. In North East Fife our NHS board’s finances are stretched beyond the limit, as I raised earlier. Also, we no longer have any specialist A&E support, because no one in Scotland does.
Health services include caring services. My priority for North East Fife is for anyone who needs support to live independently to get it. No one should be left taking up a hospital bed or be on a waiting list because of a lack of carers. A lack of carers has not been addressed by either Government, which is why it is my party’s policy to introduce an elevated statutory minimum wage for social care workers, which will instantly help recruitment and place value in that vital profession.
I regret that, once again, the UK Government have failed to support the estimated 10.6 million unpaid carers across the UK. Whether they are helping with washing or arranging appointments, our unpaid carers sacrifice their time and, too often, their own health and wellbeing as they care for their loved ones and others. Carers UK research has found that almost a third of all unpaid carers—3.6 million—are struggling to make ends meet, while 75% of those receiving carer’s allowance are struggling to cope with the cost of living crisis. They are worrying about money, how they will care for their loved ones, how to stay in work, and whether their work will result in losing their carer’s allowance. There is so much worry, it is no surprise that Carers UK has found that almost four fifths of carers feel stressed or anxious, and 65% agreed that the cost of living was having a negative impact on their mental or physical health.
We can and must do more to help. I was proud this year to see the passing of the Carer’s Leave Act 2023. Once it is fully enacted, carers will have, for the first time, the right to take leave from work for their caring responsibilities. However, we are not quite over the line yet, so I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm whether the Government programme will include time for the regulations under the Carer’s Leave Act, and set out when we can expect those to be laid.
Going forward, I want that leave to be paid. Carer’s allowance must be reformed to enable people to enter and stay in work, and to lift those who cannot away from poverty. At the moment, carer’s allowance is a disincentive to entering work. Given that it is supposed to be a priority for the Government to get people back into work, I hope that there might be some change in the autumn statement next week.
North East Fife is a wonderful place, often ranking highly for its hospitality and stunning scenery. Of course, it is the home of golf. I could not miss an opportunity to applaud St Andrews university, currently ranked the best university in the UK. It is no wonder that we are a top destination internationally. You would be welcome to visit any time, Mr Deputy Speaker. However, I must highlight the damage that has been done by the UK Government’s policies. The success of St Andrews university is down not just to student experience and outcomes but to its incredible research. However, the continual delays in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s processing of academic technology approval scheme applications disincentivises the brightest minds from coming to our shores. The delays in gaining associate membership of Horizon have led to funding losses and frequent complaints that UK researchers were left out multinational proposals. Meanwhile, there have been cuts to official development assistance budgets, which help to fund vital research on how to tackle the greatest issues facing the world. I am looking forward to hearing from the new Foreign Secretary on that very issue, given his previous opposition to the cut in ODA funding.
Thinking about your visit, Mr Deputy Speaker, it would be a sad trip if the hostelries in North East Fife were shut or you had nowhere to stay due to persistent post-Brexit labour shortages. I would want to show you our brilliant distilleries—Lindores Abbey, Kingsbarns, Eden Mill and Daftmill—but, again, the Government seem to be intent on making it harder for such businesses. Their refusal this spring to include distilleries as high intensity energy users for support with their bills, while simultaneously hiking tax by 10.1%, was a betrayal of the Scotch whisky industry. That means that a responsible drinker of whisky will pay an extra £200 of tax per year compared with others such as cider drinkers. I urge the Government to stop their unfair treatment and the Chancellor to freeze duty on spirits in his statement next week. The Government said that they would do that, so it will be great if some of those long-term decisions for a brighter future were committed and kept to.
I wonder if the Chancellor will pick up the slack from the total failure to mention vital local services such as banking hubs and post offices in the King’s Speech. We have had seven post office closures in North East Fife alone. Post offices used be the heart of a community, where people could do basic banking, buy their stamps and apply for passports. Those needs have not gone away, particularly in rural constituencies, and neither has the need for physical banking. In Cupar, in the centre of my constituency, the last physical bank standing is Nationwide. It is great to still have a building society presence, but what about all those other customers in other banks and in the villages outside Cupar, too? I very much hope we will see from the Financial Conduct Authority a proper way to assess how a community will benefit from a bank hub that goes simply beyond the last bank in town being lost.
Mr Deputy Speaker, I would like briefly to take you back to the joy of a visit to North East Fife. The East Neuk coast is stunning and an inspiring sight for tourist and local alike, and, in summer, a favourite for swimming. That leads me to the failure to regulate water companies and the challenge in Scotland of the ongoing discharge of sewage into our sea. This is as much of an issue in Scotland as it is in other parts of the UK. Monitoring over the summer found that Lower Largo’s beach was at least 50 times above the recommended contamination limit at least three times, its filthiness a stain on any claim by decision makers to protect our environment. The challenge —this comes from a Liberal Democrat investigation earlier this year—is that only 4% of 3,500 outflows in Scotland are currently monitored, and the 1,000 additional monitors they want to put in will not be available until the end of 2024 at the earliest. That is also true in other places, such as Eastbourne, where Southern Water has lots to answer for.
To conclude on the point made by the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), yes a reshuffle slows things down. How much of the King’s Speech will we actually get through before a general election?
Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab)
The most Gracious Speech summed up the agenda, or lack thereof, of a tired Government: one who have run out of steam after inflicting considerable damage to our country over 13 long years and are intent on whipping up hate, manufacturing culture wars and sowing division, instead of a Government concerned with the bread and butter issues that matter to working people the length and breadth of Britain.
The Gracious Speech could have—should have—included significant measures to improve our public services and rescue our public sector from the state of permanent decline that those on the Government Benches have put it in. The NHS is on life support and so, too, are the Tory Government. Waiting lists are now approaching 8 million and NHS staff are forced to use outdated, creaking equipment, making their jobs harder. Meanwhile, those on the Tory Benches preoccupy themselves with minimum service levels and trade union bashing, rather than tackling the root causes of the recruitment and retention crisis gripping our health service. Those on the Tory Benches say that they want minimum service levels on strike days, but what is the Conservative plan to provide minimum levels of service on non-strike days?
As the Prime Minister brings back one of his predecessors to the heart of Government, let us not forget that it is the 13 years of public sector pay policy first initiated by the new unelected Foreign Secretary as Prime Minister that has led us to this point. Only yesterday, the General Medical Council warned the Government that a record number of doctors plan to leave the profession due to burn-out and dissatisfaction. It states that the long-term workforce plan has come too late. Indeed, many would say it represents too little, such is the scale of the problems that are now endemic in the NHS.
There was never a better time in recent history for the Gracious Speech to include the Government’s long-promised mental health Bill. Instead, the reform of the Mental Health Act 1983 has been shelved by the Government. The charity Mind is right when it proclaims that the Government have failed to prioritise mental health as well as broken their promise to thousands of people. Despite the Government promising to deliver 6,000 extra NHS GP appointments, patients are finding it impossible to see a GP because there are simply not enough GPs to meet the demand for care. Some of my constituents are being forced to perform DIY dentistry, because they are facing two-year waits for check-ups and some cannot even access an NHS dentist.
If we look at adult social care, we see that thousands of people are stuck in hospital beds who are medically fit to leave but unable to do so because the care they need in the community simply is not there. I am sure that all Members remember only too well the former Prime Minister—for the avoidance of doubt, let me remind them that this was three Prime Ministers ago—telling us that he would fix the broken social care system within the first 100 days of office. Nowadays, many Ministers do not even reach the heady heights of 100 days in office—just ask the lettuce.
Once again, the Gracious Speech contained nothing for renters, NHS staff or working people. The Government are again reaffirming their intent to turn their back on the most vulnerable in our society. The scars left by the pandemic, the volatility of the labour market and the cost of living crisis weigh heavily on millions upon millions of people in this country—on workers in the public and private sectors, and on those who cannot work.
The Government’s programme of austerity hit the very poorest in their first five years. Electorally, the Government were shielded from their own policies because—as he has now admitted—the then Chancellor, now the Prime Minister, changed the funding formulas to take money from deprived urban areas and give it to other parts of the country such as the leafy shires. However, now the chickens are coming home to roost, and it appears that no one is safe from the Government’s economic dogma, aside from their mates in the 1%—not homeowners, and not those on wages larger than the national average. Indeed, many are carrying the significant economic burden of our times, for themselves and their families.
When we have the highest tax burden since the second world war and the largest squeeze on wages in 200 years, the word “economy” featured just once in the King’s Speech. If anyone was in any doubt about the lack of a long-term plan from this Government, they should be in no doubt now. The Government do not have one. They are out of ideas, out of Ministers, and out of time. Last week’s King’s Speech was one of the last big moments that the Government had to turn the tide and come to the aid of our citizens in their time of need. Instead, they have signalled their intent to fill the vacuum left by a threadbare agenda with politicking, and with division rather than governing. The best thing they can do now for the British people is call a general election, and give Britain its future back.
James Murray (Ealing North) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Paula Barker).
Let me begin by paying tribute to His Majesty the King on the occasion of his first Gracious Speech as our sovereign. Let me also take this opportunity to put on record how proud and glad I was to spend yesterday with my local community in Greenford, laying a wreath at the Greenford war memorial, coming together at the Royal British Legion club, and celebrating Diwali at Shree Jalaram Mandir.
I turn now to what was in and, just as importantly, what was lacking from the King’s Speech. It is astonishing that the Government announced new legislation on energy and yet their Energy Secretary was immediately forced to admit that the new laws would not take a penny off people’s bills. It is deeply frustrating, although sadly unsurprising, that the Government have announced legislation on housing that walks away yet again from unfulfilled promises that they have made time and again to leaseholders and private renters. It is a sign of how tired this Government are that there was nothing in the King’s Speech about a plan for economic growth to make people across the country better off, or the planning reform that we need to get Britain building. In short, this King’s Speech shows that the Conservatives are incapable of delivering the change that even the Prime Minister concedes our country needs.
People and businesses in my constituency, like others across Britain, have been paying the price of the Government’s failure on energy for the past 13 years. The Government’s failure meant that the energy crisis hit people in Britain harder than those in any other western European country. People are right to ask what on earth the Government were doing over the past 13 years to allow us to get into this mess. At the very least, people might have expected the energy crisis to serve as a wake-up call for Ministers, but the Government’s flagship energy policy in the King’s Speech shows no sign of their waking up. In fact, it shows just how tired and out of touch Ministers are that they appear to have simply given up trying to bring down energy bills for British families, and are happy to admit that. That is why Labour’s plan is so important to making Britain energy independent, to investing in British industry and to cutting bills for families.
Energy bills are far from the only pressure on household budgets. As the cost of living crisis continues to hit families across the country, the housing crisis that has also been growing under the Conservatives is getting worse and worse. Homeowners with mortgages are being hit by the Tory mortgage penalty. Private renters face relentlessly rising rents as they struggle to get on the housing ladder and live in perpetual insecurity. Families in social housing that does not meet their needs often have no choice other than to wait for years on end. And yet the King’s Speech offers nothing to truly get a grip on the housing crisis. The only legislation that it includes on housing represents yet more walking away from some of the promises the Government have repeatedly made and delayed.
We know that the Government have been dragging their feet for years over reforming the private rented sector. We finally have the Renters (Reform) Bill before us, but I will believe that it will become an Act under this Government only when I see it gain Royal Assent. Despite the Bill having come forward, we have already learned that the implementation of much-needed changes is to be delayed even longer. The Government are kicking the ban on no-fault evictions into the long grass yet again, despite tens of thousands of households being evicted and threatened with homelessness as Ministers dither.
Meanwhile, the legislation that the Government have announced for leaseholders would apply only to new homes, and there is nothing to roll out commonhold for new flats. Their plans fall woefully short of the fundamental and comprehensive reform that Britain’s feudal leasehold system needs. We know that that change will only come from Labour, as we have committed to enacting the Law Commission’s recommendations on enfranchisement, commonhold and the right to manage in full. More widely, there was no sign in the King’s Speech of any wider ambitious plan to do what is necessary to reform the planning system or to begin to fix the housing crisis.
Just as there was no plan to fix the housing crisis, there was no plan for economic growth. The economy is just not working under the Conservatives. Figures published on Friday confirm that the UK economy failed to grow at all between July and September, yet there was no change from the Government in the King’s Speech last week. There was no attempt to draw a line under the economic failure and decline of the last 13 years and set out a serious plan for growth.
We know that economic failure and stagnant growth have a direct impact on people’s lives, leaving working people worse off. We know that, faced with low growth, the Government have increased taxes 25 times in this Parliament alone, leaving British people and businesses paying the price. As if that were not enough, we know that working people are still paying the price of the Conservatives’ disastrous mini-Budget last year.
That is why Labour has a plan to replace 13 years of national decline with a decade of national renewal. Our plan has economic responsibility as its foundation, and under our plan, the Government will work with businesses to grow the economy and make working people in all parts of the country better off. As Members of Parliament, we are here to serve, and making life better for people across Britain is what Labour’s plan—our alternative to the King’s Speech—would set out to achieve.
Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)
I intend this evening to talk about rural and coastal healthcare, community hospitals, social care and NHS dentists. Right across the country, our NHS is creaking. In rural areas such as the one that I represent in Devon, many people are finding it almost impossible to get timely care. Despite that, there were almost no announcements in the King’s Speech of new legislation to support the NHS in rural areas. I really am wondering, given that I represent a corner of Devon, what was in this King’s Speech to provide for healthcare in the countryside. We often hear about acute challenges in urban areas, especially when it comes to vital services that we perhaps do not need to travel very far for, but coastal and rural areas tend to be places where older people retire to and so have a higher population of older people.
Last week Sir Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, said that the elderly boom will be in rural, largely coastal areas. He said:
“We’ve really got to get serious about the areas of the country where ageing is happening very fast, and we’ve got to do it now...otherwise we will end up with large numbers of people leading much more dependent lives”—
that is, lives that are more dependent on the state and on taxpayers. We really need to get a grip of this. Sir Chris wrote:
“Improving quality of life in older age sometimes means less medicine”.
It might be that older people want to go to hospital, but not to intensive care. It might be that they want to have treatment, but not an operation. It seems to me that Sir Chris Whitty is encouraging us to listen to what older people want.
I held a listening exercise over the summer in which I visited 34 village and town halls, and I am certain that, more than anything else, people in my part of Devon want good community hospitals and good care close to their home. I heard that they do not want to have to travel 30 miles to the nearest acute hospital in Exeter, on a bus that can take up to 90 minutes, to see a loved one or to have an operation. Going to hospital is a huge burden for people living in rural areas like mine, where public transport is poor and declining in quality, meaning that people spend a whole day travelling to and from hospital, which is a huge undertaking for older people.
That is why community hospitals are vital. They offer bases for treatment, helping to support people in their own community. Sadly, we have been losing these centres in recent years. In my corner of Devon, we have seen the hospitals in Seaton, Honiton and Ottery St Mary suffer swingeing cuts. The cuts to the number of beds, made in 2017, were fought vocally by local people, and they are having lasting consequences.
My Adjournment debate will focus on Seaton Community Hospital but, in the meantime, I will talk about two other rural health challenges: social care and dentistry. The cost of providing care at home is higher in rural areas, both to those who pay for it and to those delivering it, because they are having to drive between appointments. That is why the Liberal Democrats are calling for a carers’ minimum wage, with an additional £2 an hour boost to the minimum wage paid to carers.
The situation for dentistry in Devon is even worse. Local NHS dentists are so up against it that not a single dentist in all of Devon is taking on new NHS patients. Healthwatch England reported on seven of the NHS’s 42 subregions that are not taking new dental patients:
“Of all of these areas perhaps the worst affected is Devon, as there are currently no practices showing as taking on adult or child patients.”
This means that people are having to live in agony; having to travel huge distances to far-flung destinations—I heard one constituent say that it was recommended that they travel to Gloucester for an NHS dentist; having to pay huge sums of money that they do not have to go private; or having to perform terrible, dangerous DIY dentistry to remove their own teeth.
The Government would prefer to be silent about this issue. We have a ticking time bomb of retirement looming, and the Conservative Government have rejected Liberal Democrat calls to reform the NHS dental contract or to set out a clear plan to recruit and train the thousands of dentists that we need.
Those challenges are specific to rural communities, but today I am also talking about challenges that are specific to coastal communities. The final subject I want to cover is therefore sewage dumping, which can be damaging to health. I know people who have become sick after swimming off the east Devon coast. People should not have to risk sickness on Devon’s beautiful beaches.
There was a raw sewage spill at Sidmouth on 10 September 2022, despite the water quality report by Surfers Against Sewage finding that there had been no rain over the previous 48 hours. What did South West Water, the water company responsible, have to say? It said the spill was a “false alert” due to wildlife brushing over the sensors on the combined sewage overflow monitor. What kind of Government would set up a regulator that was prepared to accept that as an explanation? Liberal Democrats want to see water companies overhauled and reformed into public benefit companies. We need to put the health and wellbeing of local people ahead of corporate greed and shareholder profits. That will stop people getting sick and ensure that our favourite beaches remain attractive places for tourists.
I wish to close by reading out the words of David Cameron. When he retired, he talked about how he did not think he was the right person
“to try to be the captain that steers the country to its next destination.”
That can apply to the whole of this Conservative Government.
Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab)
Last week, we heard the longest King’s Speech in years, but it had very little in it. However, there was a silver lining: the announcement that the Government will bring forward legislation to create a smokefree generation. The devil will be in the detail, of course, and this certainly does not let Ministers, past and present, off the hook on the NHS. We see that if we just look at the state of NHS dentistry, an issue I have raised, and will continue to raise, in this place. Numerous Labour and other Opposition Members have also raised it in today’s debate.
I want to focus on smoking because it may be the single largest driver of health inequalities in England. Professor Chris Whitty argues in his latest report that central and local government has a key role to play in reducing smoking. It is an issue that the overwhelming majority of medical professionals agree on, as, I hope, do the majority of MPs. I have long taken an interest in the issue; as a councillor, I held the portfolio for health and wellbeing for nearly a decade, and this included chairing our tobacco control alliance. Working together with communities and local authorities to tackle tobacco harm, I saw at first hand just how much can be achieved with a comprehensive approach that drives change, through a multitude of initiatives. So although I welcome the Government’s proposals to create a smokefree generation and to curb youth vaping, the smokefree ambition must be delivered for everyone, not just the next generation. The measures announced to date have not gone far enough, not by any measure. As I walk through certain areas of my constituency, I continue to be struck by the number of people who still smoke. More than 117,000 people have died prematurely from smoking in the north-east since 2000; it is our biggest preventable killer and it is devastating for the thousands of families whose loved ones are lost each year. It also has significant implications for our health services and economic costs for our communities. It is estimated that smoking costs County Durham almost £190 million each year, £22 million of which is spent on healthcare. So preventing ill health is key. The concept that prevention is better than cure is a pretty old-fashioned idea, but it works. After 13 years, Ministers have finally picked up on that with their smokefree announcement.
Smoking is a deadly addiction, one that can lock people into a cycle of poverty and is difficult to break out of without support. We also know that regions with the highest rates of poverty have the highest rates of smoking in England and that smoking is one of the leading drivers of health inequalities in constituencies up and down the country. Not only do men and women in the most deprived areas have shorter life expectancy overall, but they live a larger number of years suffering from ill health. So far, the Government have wasted too much time. In 2021, I tabled amendments to the Health and Care Bill to tackle smoking and youth vaping. My proposals included a levy on tobacco companies’ profits to fund stop-smoking activities; inserts in packs containing health information, with links to smoking cessation services; and a ban on tactics such as branding and sweet flavourings to market vapes to children. To my amazement, not only did the Government fail to adopt my amendments, but they voted them down. Those were common-sense proposals that enjoyed cross-party support and the backing of health campaigners. If passed then, the amendments would have been law today. Instead, the Government chose inaction. I hope that the amendments will return in whatever the Government put before the House. Since then, tobacco companies have made record profits, leaving taxpayers and their families to pick up the pieces. We cannot afford to waste any more time.
Last week, the all-party parliamentary group on smoking and health published its latest recommendations for a smokefree future. The plans called for further regulations, such as increasing the funding levied from the tobacco industry on a polluter-pays principle—a measure that could raise up to £700 million a year. The APPG report shows that the polluter-pays levy is popular, feasible and supported by voters of all political parties, as well as the majority of tobacco retailers. Tobacco manufacturers make an estimated £900 million profit in Britain each year, with an average net operating profit margin of about 50%, compared with the less than 10% average for British manufacturing. Ministers must take the APPG’s recommendations into consideration.
While the measures that the Government have announced are a step in the right direction, the devil will be in the detail. To ensure that we have the best possible legislation, I hope that the Minister will work with the APPG. We know that a strong cross-party consensus for legislative measures can make a real difference. We have seen it all before. When a Labour Government banned smoking in enclosed public places in 2007, it was a measure that had once seemed inconceivable. Now it is baffling that we did not do it earlier.
In the seven minutes I have been speaking for, at least one person has lost their life due to smoking and tobacco use, which means that as MPs we have a responsibility to stand up on this issue. As health inequalities worsen and lives remain at risk, the Government must make up for their lost time with bolder action. They must ensure that the latest Tory turbulence and the exit of yet another Health Secretary does not thwart progress. They must get on with the job.
Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy); I will definitely follow on her theme. Colleagues may know that I am a strong advocate for vaping as a way for adults to quit smoking. As one of the vice-chairs of the APPG for vaping, the tobacco and vapes Bill announced in the King’s Speech is of great interest to me. I have seen so many of my friends and relations in North Tyneside make the switch from being heavy smokers to using—I stress this point—safe vaping products. I again stress the message that comes from the Department: “If you smoke, change to vaping. If you don’t smoke, don’t vape.”
Someone dies from a smoking-related death every eight minutes, as my hon. Friend just said. While not risk free, vaping is 95% safer than smoking, but there are still more than 6.5 million adult smokers in the country who have not been able to quit smoking or change to vaping. Vaping is the most effective tool that the UK has to achieve the goal of a smokefree 2030, and it is crucial that the Government continue to promote these products to existing smokers so that they can transition to a less harmful alternative.
In 2022, King’s College London restated that vapes are 95% safer than smoking, and switching to vaping was a critical recommendation of last year’s Khan report, “Making smoking obsolete”. It is unequivocal that under-18s should not use or have any access to vaping products, but despite the Government’s announcement to tackle youth vaping, it remains a major concern, and far more needs to be done to address the issue. Had the Government accepted the amendment proposed to the Health and Social Care Act 2022 by my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham in 2021, there would have been strict regulations to stop vapes appealing to children and we would not have seen the trebling in the number of children vaping in the past two years. Measures are specifically needed to target rogue manufacturers and retailers. Ultimately, Trading Standards needs to have the resources and powers to enforce the law.
Since entering the UK in 2021, disposable vapes dominate the vaping market, with 70% of disposable vape sales generated by new vape users, but we are now seeing a whole new raft of consumers—schoolchildren attracted by low pricing, bright colours, sweet flavours and packaging replicating the branding of well-known confectionery, soft drinks and much more.
According to the latest figures highlighted by the Chartered Trading Standards Institute, more than 138 million disposable vapes are sold every year, and with one in three products being potentially non-compliant, that is more than 45 million non-compliant products being sold here every year. Figures also revealed that 1.4 tonnes of illegal vapes were seized in the last six months of 2022 in the north-east of England alone, with Trading Standards officers across the country working tirelessly to try to combat the tidal wave of non-compliant vapes.
In 2022, JTI UK commissioned tests on a variety of popular disposable vapes in the UK. The results discovered that 25 out of 28 products were not legally compliant, as they all exceeded the e-liquid volume and nicotine strength limits mandated by law. The Government must ensure that regulations are effective in targeting rogue vape producers and retailers, not the manufacturers who are making and selling them responsibly.
While the sale of vapes to children is the major concern, it is vital that the Government do not introduce restrictions that result in fewer smokers turning to vaping products. According to Action on Smoking and Health, 40% of smokers incorrectly believe that vaping is as or more harmful than smoking. It is critical that all e-cigarettes and e-liquids, including product, packaging and marketing communications, do not appeal to minors by prohibiting imagery, flavour names and descriptors, and environment or objects that are typical of the world of children and youth, such as comic or cartoon characters, toys or sweets.
It is also important that the Government ensure vapes appeal to adult smokers, maintaining a low price point and flavours that are specifically aimed at adults. Part of the reason that vaping has been so successful in helping smokers to quit is that it is significantly cheaper than cigarettes. Should a tax be imposed on these products, they will move out of the price range of lower-income households and become relatively less attractive to smokers. That must not be overlooked as the areas with the highest smoking rates are often some of the UK’s poorest.
The UK Vaping Industry Association does not believe that an increase in price will stop youth vaping. It is already predicted that as many illegal vapes are sold as legal ones, and if the price of legal products is increased, more and more children will revert to buying illicit products. Flavours also play an important role in helping smokers to quit. According to a survey published by OnePoll, 80% of vapers seeking to quit smoking considered the availability of flavours. Additionally, 74% of respondents noted that flavoured vapes had been helpful in their efforts to quit smoking.
A balance has to be struck. Banning disposable vapes is not and should never be the answer. Disposable vapes are pivotal in providing an accessible way for smokers to try vaping before investing in vapes.
To conclude, I hope the Government’s response to the consultation is successful and that the next Labour Government and the NHS, under the reins of the shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall), will go in the right direction and implement all the necessary regulations.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)
I call the shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.
Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)
It is a real pleasure to close this important debate and to follow my hon. Friends the Members for North Tyneside (Mary Glindon) and for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy) who spoke powerfully about the need to take more action to help people quit smoking and not take up smoking in the first place. As a former smoker myself, I wish to goodness that I had never ever taken it up, and I can reassure Members that a Labour Government would do everything within our power to take further action in this area.
My right hon. Friends the Members for North Durham (Mr Jones) and for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz), and my hon. Friends the Members for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan) and for Putney (Fleur Anderson) rightly held the Government to account for once again failing to bring forward legislation to reform the Mental Health Act 2007, despite all the serious problems that need addressing, all the promises that have already been made and the cross-party agreement that there is on the need to act.
My hon. Friends the Members for Blaydon (Liz Twist) and for Liverpool, Wavertree (Paula Barker) talked about the importance of reforming social care—another area where promises have repeatedly been made and repeatedly been broken—and the real importance of giving older and disabled people more support in the community, rather than their ending up in hospital, which is worse for them and worse for taxpayers.
My hon. Friends the Members for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) and for Ealing North (James Murray) rightly talked about the desperate need to build more affordable housing, including social housing, to tackle problems in the private rented sector, and to reform leasehold. Those are huge issues in my constituency. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) talked about the terrible problems of people waiting in huge pain and distress in ambulances or on trolleys in A&E, and many hon. Members talked about the need to improve GP access and dentistry care.
Last but by no means least was my hon. Friend the Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins), who talked about the fantastic work her council is doing to tackle health inequalities, and the need to understand that a good job is part of a healthy life, and good health is vital to getting a job.
The point that I wish to make today is that the health of our nation is critical to the health of our economy and that, after 13 years of the Conservatives, both are in a perilous state. There was nothing in the King’s Speech to address these problems or meet the scale of the challenge we face. But Labour has a plan: to improve the health of the nation; to get Britain working again; and to give our country its future back.
Ministers repeatedly attempt to claim that everything in the garden is rosy when it comes to the state of our economy and to employment, but the truth is that we are the only country in the G7 with an employment rate that still has not returned to pre-pandemic levels. The underlying reason for that is the increasing number of people out of work due to long-term sickness. Some 2.6 million people are now shut out of the labour market due to ill health, which is the highest number ever. Frankly, that is a scandal in what is still, despite all our problems, one of the richest countries in the world. Around half of this group are more than 50 years old—that is more than double that of any other age group—and musculoskeletal problems, such as bad hips, knees, backs and other joints, are the most common problem.
Many of the over-50s are also caring for elderly, sick or disabled loved ones, for which there is precious little help and support. Women are consistently more likely to be workless due to long-term sickness than men. Indeed, women account for more than two thirds of the increase that we have seen over the past decade. But the rise in worklessness due to long-term sickness is not just an issue for older people; there has been a sharp and hugely worrying increase in the number of young people not working due to ill health, predominantly driven by mental health problems—an issue that many of my colleagues have raised. The number of 18 to 24-year-olds who are workless due to ill health has doubled in the last decade, while the number of 24 to 35-year-olds has almost trebled. Those problems are even more likely for young people who lack basic qualifications and who live in parts of the country that are struggling economically, often outside our big cities in towns and rural and coastal areas.
The fact that such problems are more likely to affect certain parts of the country in the midlands and the north comes as no surprise to Opposition Members. In Conservative Britain, people are twice as likely to be out of work due to ill health if they live in one of the most deprived areas in England than if they live in the least deprived areas, with rates of economic inactivity due to long-term sickness in the north-east and midlands almost double that of London and the south-east.
That really matters to families, to our economy and to wider society. Being shut out of work because of poor health is terrible for individuals, especially during a cost of living crisis. It is bad for businesses, which need to draw on the skills and talents of all our population if they are to grow, expand and thrive. It is also bad for taxpayers, who are now paying an extra £15.7 billion a year in lost tax revenues and higher benefits bills, compared with before the pandemic. The Office for Budget Responsibility says that the rise in health-related economic inactivity poses a significant risk to our fiscal sustainability, because it reduces our prospects for growth, reduces tax receipts and puts ever-increasing pressure on health and welfare spending.
Yet despite all that, we have not seen a plan from Conservative Members that is anywhere near serious enough to get Britain working again. No doubt, when he rises to speak, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions will tell us about work coaches and health MOTs for the over-50s. I am not against those measures—I support them; I have met work coaches in my own jobcentre, and I know how hard they are working to try to support people back into work—but they are nowhere near big or fundamental enough to get to grips with the root causes of worklessness, or to reform the way the system runs.
Britain deserves so much better, and that is what Labour will deliver. Our top priority will be to ensure that everyone who can work does work. We believe that the benefits of work go beyond a payslip to the dignity and self-respect that good work bring. We will tear down the barriers to success, tackle the root causes of worklessness and get Britain working again.
Our long-term plan for the NHS will invest an extra £1.1 billion a year, paid for by abolishing the non-dom tax status to provide 2 million more appointments a year and clear the NHS backlog—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for North West Norfolk (James Wild) laughs, but I say to him: if you were a woman stuck on a waiting list, waiting for help and treatment for your hips, for your knees, for your back, you would not be laughing. We will recruit 8,500 more mental health staff, with support in every school and every community to tackle mental health problems in young people early on.
But that is not all. We will transform jobcentres so that they provide personalised help and support, work in genuine partnership with local employers and services, and help people not just to get work, but to get on in their work, with all the benefits that progression from low pay brings. That is an issue that the Government’s own review said they needed to tackle, but they have completely failed to act on it.
Richard Fuller
For a shadow spokesperson, the hon. Lady is making some good points, but she has just raised the interaction of the non-dom status and the health service. As she will be aware, the General Medical Council said today how important it was that we continue to attract doctors from overseas, but many would be impacted by a change in the non-dom status. How will Labour’s policy affect our ability to recruit people from overseas for our health service?
Liz Kendall
I have spoken to many doctors who come to work in the hospitals in my constituency—
Liz Kendall
—and in many other parts of the country, and they want to come, work and support the work that we do. We have looked at all those issues and taken them into account, and made a small-c conservative estimate of the impact that it would have. We are confident that that will provide the resources we need to get the backlog down and get Britain working again.
We will overhaul skills with new technical excellence colleges and by reforming apprenticeships, so that no one is ever written off again, whatever their age. We will devolve employment support to local areas to better meet local needs, because the man—or even woman—in Whitehall can never know what is really needed in Leicester, Liverpool or Leeds. We will grow our economy in every part of the country by getting Britain building, through our plans to make Britain a clean energy superpower, and by ensuring that we are the best place to start up and grow a business.
Those are the long-term changes that our country needs. In contrast, the King’s Speech just tinkered at the edges or ignored those problems all together. And what have we seen today? The latest round of chaos, confusion and division in the Conservative party—a party so concerned about its own future that it cannot focus on the future of the country, proving once more than it can never be the change from 13 years of its own failure—and a weak Prime Minister, finally forced to sack his Home Secretary, and to bring back a former Prime Minister he accused only weeks ago of being part of a failed status quo, in a desperate attempt to save his own neck. The people of this country deserve better. They want change. It is time for an election so Labour can give Britain its future back.
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mel Stride)
May I begin by welcoming the new Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), to her place? This has been a good and full debate. It has, in large part, been fairly well-informed, although I thought the quality of the offerings from behind me was a little ahead of that from in front. None the less, it has been a good and passionate debate.
No effort today was in any way better than that of my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Steve Tuckwell), who gave us a virtuoso example of a maiden speech. He referred to the fact that it was in his constituency that Winston Churchill first uttered the immortal words,
“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”
Of course, Churchill then repeated that in this Chamber, but not with the same eloquence as my hon. Friend, and he certainly did not manage to squeeze in a tribute to the Middlesex Arms, my hon. Friend’s local pub, where I am sure a free beer awaits him—that is probably where he is at this very moment. Now that I too, in addition to him, have mentioned his local pub, I hope that a second pint awaits him.
There are certain things that the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall), and I can agree on, and smoking is one of them. I was interested to learn that she is a former smoker. They always say that former smokers have a passionate desire to stop other people smoking, and she certainly demonstrated that. We know that one in four cancers is caused by smoking. As a father of three young daughters, vaping is of great concern to me personally, and I was pleased to see the reference in the King’s Speech to getting on top of those kinds of products and the way in which they are retailed.
The hon. Lady also mentioned mental health, as did many of this afternoon’s speakers. We have said that we will come forward with a mental health Bill if parliamentary time allows, and of course that does not mean we have not already done a very great deal in exactly that space, or will not do a great deal further. Some £2 billion of extra funding is already going into mental healthcare compared with four years ago, with a 20% increase in staffing since 2010. It does not stop there: we will also be bringing forward mental health hospitals and 100 specialist ambulances.
Mr Kevan Jones
We have now been waiting six years for a change to the Mental Health Act 1983. The Minister says that the Government are committed to mental health, but earlier this year we saw the 10-year mental health and wellbeing plan scrapped. I am sorry, but I have to say to the Minister that words are pretty hollow; when it comes to action, the Government are doing very little.
Mel Stride
I have just set out for the right hon. Gentleman two very significant actions that this Government have taken: £2 billion of additional funding compared with just four years ago, and a staff increase of some 20% since 2010.
I have to pick up on the non-doms point, because we hear it so often from the Opposition. Those poor old non-doms are going to be paying for the entire British economy over and over again. They pay UK taxes on their UK income, and it is just not realistic to expect to be gaining more tax in the longer term as a result of taxing them.
We have heard much about waits for NHS services. We have been working very hard on that issue, and it has to be recognised that we have had a pandemic, as well as a considerable amount of industrial action. Frankly, if the Opposition had done more with their trade union paymasters to encourage them to go back to work, we would have had smaller backlogs than we do at the moment. We have already largely eradicated the 18-month waits; the two-year waits have already been abolished; and we are rolling out all sorts of approaches to make sure we have more provision going forward, including 140 new surgical hubs. When Labour tells us about their plans, we need only to look at Wales, where we can see the results of Labour’s stewardship of the health service: on average, waiting times in Wales are five weeks longer than in England.
The hon. Member for Leicester West spent some time discussing employment, an area in which we have a first-class record. Economic inactivity, which she raised, is almost 300,000 lower than it was at its peak during the pandemic: it is below the average level of the OECD and the average level across the European Union. Unemployment is at a near-historic low, the number of those in payroll employment is at a near-historic high, and youth unemployment is down 44% on 2010. What happened under the Labour party? As Opposition Members know, it went up by almost exactly the same amount—another 44%. Labour is the party of unemployment; it has never left office with unemployment anything other than higher than when it came in. Under Labour’s stewardship, 1.4 million people were languishing on long-term benefits for over a decade, and that is a disgrace.
Liz Kendall
The Office for Budget Responsibility has said that
“A sustained rise in health-related inactivity poses a significant risk to fiscal sustainability by reducing the UK’s medium-term economic growth prospects and tax receipts”.
Does the Secretary of State disagree with the OBR?
Mel Stride
I do not, inasmuch as I recognise that long-term sick and disability has been on a rising trend for at least five years now. The hon. Lady knows that, but that is not the point that I was making; neither was it the point that she was making when she referred to the figures on economic inactivity.
That brings me to what this Government are doing. In the previous Budget, the Chancellor set forth plans for £2 billion to go towards resolving issues around long-term sickness and disability. We have consulted on occupational health across businesses to get upstream of this issue. The hon. Lady will know of our White Paper and the structural reforms that will make sure that, for the 2.5 million people on long-term sickness and disability benefits, we always focus on what those people can do, not on what they cannot do. The universal support we are rolling out is there to place people into work and give them a whole year’s worth of support, so we can make sure that those people stay in work. She will be aware of the pilots that we are now rolling out under the Work Well banner, which are there to bring people together with work. We believe that is one of the answers to mental health issues alongside medical support. Of course, we have just concluded our work capability assessment consultation, in which we are looking at how we can further help those people who can and want to work to go into employment, because we believe that that, ultimately, is in the best interests not just of the economy and of society, but very much of those people themselves.
This Government are not afraid to take long-term decisions in the national interest. The next generation of welfare reforms that I am bringing forward are part of this Government’s mission to deliver a better future for everyone across the country. It is a future that brings together employment support and healthcare to help disabled people and those with health conditions to realise their full potential. It is a future in which, thanks to the decisions we are now taking, the NHS can deliver better care in a changing world. It is a future that sees the first smoke-free generation become a reality, a future in which the most vulnerable in society continue to be the Government’s priority and are protected, and a future where work grows our economy, but perhaps more importantly still, changes lives, with thousands more people enjoying all the financial, social and health benefits that employment brings.
Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.—(Mr Mohindra.)
Debate to be resumed tomorrow.
Seaton Community Hospital
(1 year ago)
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Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)
I would like to welcome the new Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), to her place.
I rise to raise the pressing situation facing the community hospital at Seaton in the part of east Devon that I represent. I am very grateful for the opportunity to outline why plans to strip away a whole wing of the hospital pose a serious risk to the long-term viability of the hospital, and how small actions by the Government can unlock this space and provide huge benefits for the local communities.
Seaton Hospital is one of 12 community hospitals that provide vital services in my corner of Devon which were given over to NHS Property Services in 2016. Seaton Hospital provides a range of services and clinics that enable people to be cared for closer to home in their own community. I would like to take a moment to give hon. and right hon. Members an idea of the range of services that the hospital currently provides. They include a dedicated Chime audiology service, aneurysm screening, bladder and bowel treatments, and child and adolescent mental health services—we heard a lot about that in today’s health debate—as well as access to a dietician, ear, nose and throat specialists, general medicine, orthoptists, support for those with Parkinson’s, physiotherapy, podiatry, retinal screening, speech and language therapy, and stoma treatments. I could go on.
The hospital also acts as a hub for the growing number of so-called at-home care services. We appreciate that community hospitals have been increasingly moving over to services provided in the community at home. That includes provision for those who are frail and need regular care, or are reaching the end of their life. Indeed, the Seaton & District Hospital League of Friends supports the hospice at home professionals, who provide care to people and their families in those most difficult times of a person’s life or in a family’s life.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I commend the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate. When someone evaluates what a community hospital does, they find that it is about much more than finance and making sure that the books balance. It is about all the things the hon. Gentleman has referred to. The community hospital in my constituency is where my three children were born some 30-plus years ago. It is where I took my youngest son when he broke his arm. It is where I took my other boy when he put his hand through a glass window and had to go to hospital for surgery. That is what a community hospital is about, and that feeling is replicated by every one of my constituents. When the hon. Gentleman speaks about his local community hospital, I am quite sure that he has the same passion, belief and commitment to that hospital, because it is part of the community, and that is how it is measured, not by finance.
Richard Foord
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. His anecdotes about what that hospital has done for his family and community are absolutely the same sort of thing as I hear from constituents every time I speak to them.
Seaton Hospital was built in 1988 to provide better local access to medical care and treatment for people across the Axe valley. It serves people not only in Seaton but in Colyton, Colyford, Beer, Axmouth and other villages dotted around the east Devon countryside. Originally, the plan was that people would not have to travel so far for their treatment. Given that the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital is perhaps 30 miles away—20 miles at least—people felt that acute provision was on their doorsteps, which is what they wanted.
Simon Jupp (East Devon) (Con)
The hon. Member is making a stand for a community hospital used by people in both our constituencies, and I congratulate him on having secured the debate. I live less than 10 miles from Seaton Hospital. So many residents raised funds to build the wing, which first opened back in 1991. Does the hon. Member agree that it would be so wrong for local residents to have to pay twice for a building that they helped to fundraise for and build?
Richard Foord
The hon. Member makes an excellent point. It is exactly right that Seaton Community Hospital was built by local people. Let me expand on that important point, because a lot of people have talked to me about this and I want to relay to the House the feelings they have spoken to me about at recent local community meetings.
The hospital was built over two storeys and updated in 1990 with an acute wing, which was funded not just 50% by the local community but 100% by local donations. The important thing to note is that the construction would not have been possible at all were it not for the contributions by local individuals. For example, the Seaton & District Hospital League of Friends had a scheme called “Be a brick: donate to Seaton Hospital”. People could make a small contribution—whatever they could afford—and get a little brick as a memento to demonstrate that they had contributed to Seaton Community Hospital. The charity is still a vocal champion of the hospital to this day. The project would not have happened had it not been for the generosity of the local people. What comes with that is a sense of ownership that I cannot really stress enough. There is a really strong feeling that the hospital does not belong to some amorphous NHS: it is their hospital. They paid for it, they were treated in it and it belongs to them.
Several weeks ago, I was contacted by the League of Friends charity after it learned from the Devon NHS that the plan is to hand over the two-storey wing from the Devon NHS to NHS Property Services. The charity was concerned that this could lead, eventually, to the selling off of the hospital wing, and even to its demolition. As soon as I heard that, alarm bells were set ringing for me. It is clear that Devon’s integrated care board is keen to wash its hands of the facility as quickly as it can. In essence, the facility is in special measures, and in a financially dire place. The wing is costing the Devon NHS about £300,000 a year, billed by NHS Property Services.
I was not all that familiar with NHS Property Services a year ago. I had heard of it, but I was under the impression that it was just another division of the NHS. I looked into it a bit further, and I found that it is responsible for the maintenance and support of most local NHS facilities. I was surprised to find that it is a Government-owned company, legally owned by one shareholder. The single shareholder for NHS Property Services is the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. As of today, the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle can congratulate herself on taking on NHS Property Services as her new holding. How can it be the case that a hospital built with the generous support of local people is now owned directly by NHS Property Services, rather than those local people?
In 2016, the Government transferred that facility over to NHS Property Services and implemented a consolidated charging policy to levy charges for rent, maintenance and service charges. Some of those charges are extortionate. We are talking about £300,000 a year, which is £247 a square metre. On paper, it might seem prudent to organise the NHS with some commercial expertise in charge of some of these facilities. However, we have to bear it in mind that the people running NHS Property Services are not necessarily thinking about it through the lens of health and social care; they are thinking about how they can maximise the utility of space and make savings to put money back into budgets.
That is worrying, because what I am hearing is that the offer being made to NHS Devon is, “If you wash your hands of this facility, you will receive 50% of the proceeds of the sale”—that will be to the NHS Devon integrated care board—“and 50% of the proceeds will go back into central coffers, back to Whitehall and back into the very large pot that is the NHS.” The House can imagine what that is like for an individual constituent in my part of east Devon, who has contributed perhaps tens or hundreds of pounds—as much as they could afford—in decades gone by, perhaps through a direct debit or regular payment, to maintain the facility. To hear that those decades of investment will be put back into a big pool in London, a long way away, is pretty sickening.
There has been an understandable backlash from people right across my corner of Devon. I have been to a couple of public meetings in recent weeks since the news broke. At Colyford Memorial Hall a couple of weeks ago, there were more than 200 people. It is a cliché to say there was standing room only, but there was no standing room—there was a long queue of people outside in the rain wanting to get into the meeting. People had one overriding feeling that they wanted to convey to me, and that they wanted me to convey to the Minister and to others gathered here this evening: they created this hospital and they are deeply offended by the idea that it might be taken away. What put salt into those wounds was the idea that that should happen with zero public consultation.
Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
My hon. Friend is making a passionate speech on behalf of his community. What strikes me is that when the community came forward and made those contributions or bought those bricks, they did not do so to save the hospital at that point. I am pretty sure, like the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), that they made that contribution to maintain the hospital for future generations. I am not surprised that it feels like a betrayal to my hon. Friend’s constituents.
Richard Foord
I very much thank my hon. Friend for her contribution. She is exactly right. I point to two specific conversations I have had with constituents recently. The first was with someone who lives in Seaton, who was close enough to the hospital that she could walk there. Her husband died in the hospital and she was able to go and see him in his final days. She welled up—more than that, tears rolled down her cheeks—as she told me about her husband, who she was able to see in his final days.
Now we have moved to a situation in which patients are cared for at home. Of course, that means that some of the staff previously based out of the community hospital are driving to people’s driveways and providing that care in their homes. That works for some individuals, but the other day I had a lady in my surgery who was almost shaking with nervousness because her husband, whom she loved dearly, had just been discharged from the acute hospital in Exeter and she was charged with looking after him but did not feel able to look after his needs, as he was overcoming his operation towards the end of his life. We are putting some of our constituents in a really difficult situation that they do not feel equipped for.
The reason for the beds being removed from the hospital in 2017 related to so-called workforce issues. There was a substantial consultation of local people in 2017 when beds were removed from local hospitals, but I fear that following that consultation, which showed the outrage and indignation of local people, the NHS does not want to get involved such a consultation exercise again, hence the desire for the ICB to get shot of the building as soon as possible.
The ICB was talking about getting shot of it by the end of this calendar year, although that has gone to Devon County Council’s health scrutiny committee, so it may be pushed into next year. What we need tonight is an intervention from the Minister in relation to NHS Property Services, which is charging a clinical rate for a space that has not been used for acute medicine—it has not had clinical beds in it—since 2017. Organisations are coming forward with a desire to use it not for clinical use but as a care hub to provide other services.
I want to make hon. Members aware of how those clinical beds got removed in the first place. In 2017, there was deep concern that the removal of the beds was an arbitrary decision made following a last-minute intervention by the then right hon. Member for East Devon, Hugo, now Lord Swire. In fact, it is revealed in a book by his wife, Sasha, that Seaton Hospital was to be kept open, with its beds maintained, but, because of that last-minute intervention by Hugo Swire, the bed closures moved to Seaton and the Sidmouth Hospital beds remained.
As a result of that decision, there was no additional funding to set up extra services at Seaton. Instead, the ICB began charging this exceedingly high rent for an empty space. What we really need to do is reduce that rental fee from its clinical rate to one that acknowledges that there are community alternatives. The palliative care nursing team can operate out of this space, and organisations such as Restore and hospice at home carers can work out of it, too. The friends of Seaton and District Hospital are coming up with a strong business plan, but they do need more time to develop it and a concessionary rate—not the clinical rate—to operate from it. If no solution is found, the ward is most likely to be either sold off or demolished. Again—I cannot stress this enough—we need to do this for the people who feel that they paid for the hospital.
There is a precedent for it, and I am grateful to the hon. Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) for letting me know that the hospital in Cornwall was saved from the jaws of NHS Property Services. However, there is a big difference between what I am proposing for Seaton and what happened at St Ives. St Ives hospital was paid for by a single philanthropist. As we have heard, Seaton Hospital was paid for with contributions—or subscriptions —from thousands of people.
Richard Foord
Exactly.
Finally, when it comes to healthcare infrastructure in rural areas such as mine, it is so much harder to rebuild something once it has been removed than to maintain it. We saw in coastal and rural communities such as mine the damage that the closure of cottage hospitals caused, and the impact of removing beds from community hospitals. We must put a stop to that, before our rural healthcare centres are left empty skeletal shells of their former selves, where they were once hubs of love and care. I am looking forward to the Minister’s response and hope that she will agree to work constructively with me, as Seaton’s MP, to ensure a fair deal for local people and to protect our hospital for the people who bought and contributed to it.
The Minister for Social Care (Helen Whately)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Richard Foord) on securing this debate. I appreciate his interest and concern about the future of Seaton community hospital. As he said, it was built only as a result of a huge fundraising campaign in the local community, which was matched pound for pound by the NHS. It therefore holds a lot of importance for the hon. Member’s constituents. I fully understand his interest in making best use of the facilities. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Simon Jupp) also wants to see this situation resolved, and I met him earlier to talk about it. I remind the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton that decisions about the use of NHS property such as this community hospital are taken at a local level—as they should be—and not by a Minister in Whitehall.
It may be helpful to recap some of the history, as the hon. Member covered in his speech. Between 2015 and 2017, the then NHS clinical commissioning group—CCG—undertook a recommissioning of community services in Devon. That was about introducing a new model of care—more integrated and more community based, with more people receiving care at home. I heard him raise concerns about that model and the shift to getting care closer to the community. My ministerial brief includes supporting the discharge of people from acute hospitals to try to care for more people in their own homes. Some patients spend longer in hospital than is good for their recovery, so for many people it is much better that, when they are declared fit for discharge, they recover and receive care at home.
Returning to the situation of this particular community hospital, as part of the commissioning change there was a change of lead NHS trust as the provider of services in local community hospitals. That meant that ownership of 12 community hospitals, including Seaton, was transferred from the former NHS provider trust to NHS Property Services, as the hon. Member spoke about. NHS Property Services’ model of charging a market rent for properties is to build an incentive to make good long-term decisions about the use of buildings. NHS Property Services then invests that income into those properties and the services that they provide.
At the point of transfer, many community hospitals in Devon had a large amount of empty space. The transfer happened on the basis that the NHS commissioning body—now the ICB—would be responsible for the full cost of that space. The costs include the recovery of the market rent and service charges, such as energy, rates, cleaning and maintenance. Over the past seven years, progress has been made to identify sustainable, alternative healthcare uses for vacant spaces in other community hospitals in Devon, such as in Axminster and Ottery St Mary’s. However, I understand that Seaton and some others still have significant amounts of vacant space. In addition, the ICB and NHS Property Services have worked closely with the voluntary sector, and have supported local initiatives in some properties, such as the Waffle café at Seaton Hospital. However, it is for the local commissioners—not NHS Property Services—to determine the best use of the healthcare spaces that they are responsible for.
Despite sincere efforts from the ICB, I understand that no sustainable healthcare use has been identified for the former ward space at Seaton, which adds up to about half the hospital space. I know the hon. Member’s constituents are frustrated by this situation. Local community groups have expressed an interest in taking on some of the empty ward space, but they see the level of charges as an insurmountable barrier. The ICB has explored a range of potential healthcare uses with NHS providers, but the proposals have not yet come to fruition, so I know the situation is not satisfactory for them either.
The costs to the system of the vacant space are a pressure on the health budget. Clearly, having unused space is not a good use of resources and, ultimately, taxpayers’ money.
Helen Whately
It is important to note that NHSPS operates on a cost recovery basis. That means any reduction in its charges counts as a loss to the health budget if it is not directly offset by actual cost reductions in the facilities. As the hon. Member mentioned, the annual charges for the vacant space in this facility are approximately £300,000, of which £140,000 is the rental charge. The rest is spent on a share of the utilities, business rates, maintenance and cleaning costs for the property.
Richard Foord
I am grateful to the Minister for explaining the charge-back system. Could she explain why the NHS is charging the NHS and hence the NHS cannot have this space, and why it cannot be used for health purposes? Could she explain the charging mechanism a little bit more please?
Helen Whately
The hon. Gentleman says it cannot be used for health purposes. What I understand is that what is being looked at is what healthcare it can be used for, albeit recognising the shift of more care into the community and the changing model of care. On the way the system works, in essence the philosophy behind NHSPS is to ensure that best possible use is made of property. If there are no charges associated with the use of buildings, we could get lots of buildings sitting empty and there is not the same incentive to ensure the best possible use of facilities and resources. That is the philosophy behind having this kind of system. I think he mentioned in his speech bringing specific expertise together as part of the organisation that is NHSPS. I hope that addresses his query.
Helen Whately
I will make a bit of progress, if that is all right.
As I outlined, the ICB is required to pay for the costs and it is not sustainable for the ward space to remain empty for a further lengthy period of time. When an ICB decides there is no long-term healthcare use for an asset, it will usually be sold to allow the funds to be reinvested elsewhere. I have been told that that is not the plan in the case of Seaton community hospital, not least because half the building is an operational health facility and the ICB is fully committed to keeping those services open. I also appreciate that a huge fundraising effort was put in by the local community to build the wing at the hospital in the first place, a point that my hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Simon Jupp) made when he intervened earlier, and so selling the facility would not be what the community wants.
We know that providing high-quality care and support in the community benefits patients, and their carers and families, helping people to stay well and independent for longer. Across the country, we have achieved a lot as part of our commitment to move more care out into the community. For example, urgent community response services are doing a great job of helping to keep people out of hospital when they are at risk of a crisis. Virtual wards or hospital-at-home services are providing hospital-level care in people’s own homes, helping to avoid admissions to hospital and allowing earlier discharge, and ensuring extra support is there if somebody is concerned about being discharged home, or, as I heard the hon. Member mention, is concerned about a family member being discharged home.
Richard Foord
I am grateful to the Minister for raising the concept of the virtual ward in this context. It reminds me a little of conversations that I have had with constituents in recent months about the virtual shopping experience, the virtual rail ticket purchasing experience, and the difficulty that they are having in dealing with humans. I think that the last thing people want when it comes to health and social care is “virtual”. They want the human touch.
Helen Whately
I can only encourage the hon. Gentleman to visit a team that supports a virtual ward, and speak to some patients who have been cared for through hospital at home or virtual wards. I have done both, and the feedback from patients is phenomenally positive. If someone is concerned about being discharged and supported in this way, it does not happen, but many people would much rather recover in their own homes with that support than be in a hospital where it is hard to get a good night’s sleep because there so much going on around them. Moreover, while people recover in their own homes, beds are freed up for people who really need acute hospital care on site.
A third model that is doing very well in helping people to receive care close to home is the proactive care model delivered by multidisciplinary neighbourhood teams. These are real game-changers, helping people to live independently and stay out of hospital. The teams consist of—among others—doctors, nurses, care workers, allied healthcare professionals, all coming together to ensure that people have the care that they need in order not to be going in and out of hospital, as sometimes happens when people become unwell.
While I fully understand the hon. Gentleman’s frustration, I have been assured that the integrated care board, local providers and NHS Property Services are working together to resolve the situation at Seaton Hospital to ensure that facilities—and, indeed, funds—are put to good use for patients.
Question put and agreed to.
Draft Representation of the People (Postal Vote Handling and Secrecy) (Amendment) Regulations 2023
(1 year ago)
General CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Jacob Young)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft The Representation of the People (Postal Vote Handling and Secrecy) (Amendment) Regulations 2023.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq, and to introduce these important regulations.
In our manifesto, we committed to ensuring the ongoing integrity of our democratic process by stopping postal vote harvesting, and we are delivering on that commitment. Postal vote harvesting is the practice of third parties collecting the votes of a large numbers of postal voters. Last year, Parliament passed the Elections Act 2022, which introduced some significant changes to electoral procedure in the UK such as voter identification, improvements to the security of postal and proxy voting, and online applications for absent votes, and I am delighted to introduce a statutory instrument, that flows from that Act and implements three measures concerning the handling of postal votes and the secrecy of absent voting. The changes aim to tackle the practice of collecting, or harvesting, the votes of large numbers of postal voters and to enable electors to cast their votes confidently and securely outside of the polling station.
The first measure introduces a ban on political campaigners handling postal voting documents issued to another person. The second sets out that, in addition to their own postal vote, an individual will be able to hand in the postal votes of up to five other electors, either at a polling station or directly to the returning officer, which is typically achieved by handing them in to the returning officer’s staff at the council office. The third measure extends existing secrecy provisions for those voting in person in a polling station to those voting by post and by proxy. The measures implement recommendations set out in the 2016 report into electoral fraud published by Lord Pickles, and are designed to improve the security of absent voting and make it less vulnerable to potential fraud.
Let me set out the measures in the statutory instrument in more detail. Currently, there are no restrictions on who may hand in postal votes or how many may be handed in by any single person, and there is no record of who has handed in a postal vote. That is unacceptable, because it creates opportunities for unscrupulous individuals to undermine the integrity of postal voting. For example, there is a concern that voters could be coerced into completing their postal voting statement before handing the unmarked ballot paper to be filled in elsewhere by someone else, or that completed ballots could be tampered with out of sight of the voter and the returning officer. Tackling the collection, or harvesting, of votes in this way delivers on a manifesto commitment that we are determined to deliver on.
Furthermore, even when acting legitimately, people seen handing in large numbers of postal votes create the perception and suspicion of impropriety, which can be damaging to public confidence in the electoral system. We want to address that while striking the right balance between security and propriety and keeping the electoral process accessible. Under the draft regulations, in addition to their own postal vote, a person will be able to hand in the postal votes of up to five other people either at a polling station or to the returning officer via the council office. We consider that that is a reasonable limit that will support the integrity of postal voting. A person handing in postal votes will be required to complete a form that includes information such as their name and address, the number of persons whose postal votes they are handing in, and the reason for this. Postal votes in excess of the limit or not handed in in accordance with those requirements will be rejected.
Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)
If a member of the public or an elector turned up at a polling station with more than the permitted number of postal votes, how would it be decided which one of those postal vote packs was to be rejected?
Jacob Young
My team will help to clarify that so that I can respond to the hon. Lady in my closing speech, but I believe the situation is that a person will be able to hand in one of those postal votes—presumably deemed to be their own—and the others would be rejected. Only one of those postal votes would count in that situation.
Jacob Young
That would be for the individual to know themselves, but I am happy to try to bring clarity to the hon. Lady’s questions in my closing speech.
The regulations will update all relevant prescribed forms to ensure that the new limits are set out clearly for electors. That information should help electors to plan accordingly and to return their postal votes via the post where possible, and if they are handed in, they will know the permitted number that they can submit. After the poll, the returning officer will put together lists of rejected postal ballot papers, and the electoral registration officer will, where possible, write to those whose postal votes have been rejected to notify them and give them the reason, or reasons, why. That will ensure that postal voters are informed of the rejection of their postal vote and can, if necessary, act to avoid the same thing happening at future polls.
The Government’s concerns about vote harvesting are magnified further when it is carried out by a political campaigner, which is why the Act, supported by the regulations, bans such individuals from handling postal vote documents that are issued to another person, unless the political campaigner is a family member or their designated carer. The ban is supported by a new offence, which carries a maximum penalty of up to two years in prison, a fine or both. The regulations apply an equivalent new ban and related offence to other kinds of elections not directly covered by the Act, such as police and crime commissioner elections.
Currently, requirements protecting the secrecy of a person’s vote are in place for people voting in a polling station. It is essential that electors opting for an absent vote receive equal protection under the law. The secrecy of the ballot is fundamental to our democracy, and the ability of voters to cast their vote freely without pressure should apply equally, whether they are in a polling station or marking their ballot at home. Therefore, it will be an offence for a person to seek information about whom a postal voter is voting for when they are completing their ballot paper or to communicate that information. However, the offence does not apply to legitimate opinion polling activity asking how a postal voter has voted or how they intend to vote. As well as protecting postal voters, the measure provides that a person voting as a proxy for another elector at an election must not communicate to a third party for whom that person voted. As with the ban on vote handling by political campaigners, the Act also makes secrecy changes to other types of election.
Cat Smith
I hope I am not testing the Minister’s patience, but something that struck me when reading the regulations was the lack of clarity around the definition of a political campaigner. While it might be obvious if someone walked into a polling station wearing a rosette that they were a political campaigner, if they removed that rosette, would they therefore not be a political campaigner—or is a political campaigner anyone who has delivered a leaflet for a candidate or political party or who has voiced support for a certain political party on their own private social media? I wonder how we will define “political campaigner”, because it strikes me that doing so will be particularly challenging.
Jacob Young
The definition of a political campaigner for the purpose of the new postal vote handling offence and the exemptions that apply to that offence is set out in the Elections Act 2022. After the debate, I am happy to write to the hon. Lady with the exact part of the Act that specifies that.
In conclusion, the measures are sensible safeguards against the potential abuse of absent voting and will reduce the opportunity for individuals to exploit the process and steal the votes of others. I hope that in setting out the details of the statutory instrument the Committee will appreciate its careful and considered design for supporting absent voters and strengthening the electoral process, which is the foundation of our democracy. I commend the regulations to the Committee.
Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) (Lab/Co-op)
It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq. I thank the Minister for his introduction outlining why we are here. As elected Members of this House, we should all support aims to make our elections as free and fair as possible. I think about why I got involved in politics, and why I got involved stood for election as a local councillor: it was because I wanted to represent my community which, I felt, simply did not have enough of a voice in decisions. It would be disgraceful to see my or any other community denied a voice in our system by fraud in favour of another candidate.
The Minister will be pleased to know that we do not intend to oppose the measures, but I want him to consider seriously the potential for unintended consequences if the regulations are not implemented with sufficient care. I would welcome his assurances on these matters. I refer to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood. I, too, am concerned about the definition of political campaigners. In its report on electoral reform, the Law Commission acknowledged the stickiness of regulation in this area and highlighted feedback from respondents:
“(1) regulation would criminalise helpful and otherwise unavailable assistance for those voters who need it;
(2) regulation would be difficult to enforce and breaches hard to detect—putting off honest campaigners without deterring dishonest ones; and
(3) regulation would be an overreaction in the light of the available data on fraud.”
The Law Commission said that it
“could not recommend legal regulation”
in respect of measures such as those we are discussing without addressing existing electoral offences such as undue influence in a more effective manner.
Returning to the Minister’s response to my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood about the definition of a political campaigner, the definition in the regulations includes
“members of registered political parties who carry on activities designed to promote a particular outcome at the election.”
My local party in Vauxhall has significantly more than 1,000 members and, at elections, many of them put up posters in their windows. They occasionally comment online. That is enough to draw them into the definition of a political campaigner. Many of my constituents, along with many hon. and right hon. Members, are renters or are in cohabiting relationships but are not married or in a civil partnership; they would not be covered by the exemptions in the regulations. I should make it clear that the Labour party has signed up to the Electoral Commission’s code of conduct on campaigners for many years which, by agreement, bans campaigners from handling completed postal ballots. Our internal guidance also clearly states that under no circumstances should campaigners handle completed postal ballots unless electors have absolutely nobody else to return them for them and only then with the prior agreement of the returning officer.
It is easy to imagine that a party member, for example, who does not generally involve themselves in day-to-day campaigning and has therefore never seen this guidance and who simply wants to hand in a postal vote for a sick housemate or partner could end up being caught by the regulations. The Minister has outlined the fact that the penalty could be imprisonment for up to two years, just for trying to help a colleague or a family member to exercise their democratic right to vote. In short, I am not sure how far the regulations draw a distinction between a political campaigner—in the sense of someone with a red or blue rosette knocking on a door as part of an organised activity—and someone who happens to be an ordinary party member who is acting in a personal capacity.
If we are honest, this could be a real travesty, because it could mean that votes would be lost and legitimate voters denied their voice. Can the Minister therefore outline what safeguards are in place to ensure that that would not be the case and what efforts are being made to ensure that legitimate voters do not lose their voice as a result of the regulations? Can he make sure that the burden of proof is on prosecutors to show that such a person intended dishonestly and illegally to influence a decision? This point may be lost if it is not made explicit, and we have to be clear about it.
The Minister outlined the reasonable limit of five. I would welcome clarity on where the limiting of the number of postal voters to five came from. I have struggled to find any concrete reasoning behind that number, bar what is described in debate on the statutory instrument in the other place as
“helpful input from your Lordships”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 24 October 2023; Vol. 833, c. GC56.]
Although we respect the Lords, it is important that we do not pluck an arbitrary number out of the sky when it comes to such an important decision.
My hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood pushed an amendment when the Elections Bill was in Committee so that we would have the required public consultation on regulations in what is now section 5 of the Act. While the Government may have their reasons for rejecting that, it is important for the Minister to clarify the exact journey that they went on to reach the maximum limit of five. I would like to put on record the concerns of Lord Khan of Burnley, who said:
“What will happen to those who are already registered as a proxy voter for more than four electors or more than two domestically residing electors?”
He also said:
“Will there be special circumstances by which a proxy can act as such for more than four electors, should they be family members who are unable to vote themselves and the chosen proxy is the only trustworthy option for them?” ”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 24 October 2023; Vol. 833, c. GC61.]
These are real consequences affecting people’s ability to exercise their democratic right to vote.
Finally, the Minister may be aware that this regulation is the latest in a line that adds layers to our voting system. While those layers may have security advantages, they risk overloading election officers, who are already stretched by changes such as the requirement to bring in photo ID for voters. Can the Minister outline what discussions he has had with the Association of Electoral Administrators about the extra load that the regulation will impose on their work?
Ms Anum Qaisar (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)
The SNP supports the intention to reduce voter fraud and ensure the secrecy of the ballot, which is fundamental to democracy. That should not come as a surprise to anyone; it is what all Members of the House should be aiming for. Safeguarding the legitimacy and integrity of democracy is fundamental to securing the trust that is necessary for it to function. Accordingly, we do not necessarily oppose the changes in this SI in principle. That said, it seems to run against some of the measures in the Elections Act, to which it applies.
The Elections Act is flawed and riddled with problems. The voter ID requirement introduced in this Act disenfranchised tens—if not hundreds—of thousands of voters, especially those from vulnerable minority groups. The Act, far from protecting the rights of all to vote independently and secretly, undermined the freedom and protections for, specifically, blind and partially sighted people when voting. It also undermined the independence of the Electoral Commission, weakening trust in elections. It therefore rings hollow that the Tories are now seeking to protect the independence of the vote. It would have been far better to use this opportunity to undo the severe harm that the Elections Act did.
I am not without concerns regarding the SI itself, but the primary focus of these regulations, which amend the handling of postal votes at the polling station or electoral offices, is impractical. These amendments introduced by the Lords last month are surely destined to fail. The No. 1 aim of this SI is to stop election fraud. However, if somebody wanted to commit voter fraud, what would stop them harvesting postal votes and not handing them into the polling station or electoral office, but simply putting them in a post box, which might be only metres from the polling station? I would appreciate clarification from the Minister on that point.
Alternatively, not everyone can get to a polling station on election day or to an electoral office between 9 am and 5 pm. We have all stood in general elections, or, in my case, a by-election, and we know that, on election day, it is simply not possible for all voters to get out, for a number of different reasons. Will the votes of those people be invalidated simply because they decided to hand in their postal ballot instead of mailing it? Will the difference of a couple of metres, when somebody decides to hand in their postal ballot, decide a person’s disenfranchisement?
The Association of Local Authority Chief Executives has also raised concerns about the SI. It says it will put extra strain on polling staff and create extra work for them. Members of staff will have increased duties and responsibilities under this SI to accept or reject postal ballots. As has been asked previously, who will decide whether to reject them? I would also appreciate clarification from the Minister on whether the UK Government will foot the bill for training staff in their new responsibilities, or will that fall to councils? What measures will the Government put in place to provide extra funding for these staff, or are they not planning for that?
We know that postal voting is often used by those who are vulnerable, such as folk who are disabled or elderly. Although the Government should be mindful of security, they must keep the electoral process accessible. I know that I am saying that to a Conservative Government that have been looking to disfranchise various parts of society during their tenure since 2010. Given that elderly and disabled people are more likely to have difficulty with online applications, does the Minister not share my concerns that that could prevent them from being able to vote? What happens to constituents who are struggling with the cost of living crisis and who cannot afford to buy more mobile data so that they can go online and vote?
Madam Deputy Speaker—apologies, Dr Huq; I have given you an upgrade there—we do not oppose the SI, but we are not convinced that it is fit for purpose or that it will solve election fraud. It will make the process more difficult, more complicated and more inaccessible. I hope the Minister will answer my questions in his closing remarks.
Cat Smith
I do not usually speak from the Back Benches on SIs, but as the spokesperson for the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission, I have the duty of answering questions on the Floor of the House on electoral matters, and there are a couple of things I would like some clarity on, because I suspect I will be answering questions on the consequences of this legislation quite soon.
I want to begin with the consultation process on this legislation. I have been made aware that the Electoral Commission has been consulted, but that is the extent of the external bodies that have been consulted. I make a plea to the Minister to pause slightly and consult a little more widely than just the Electoral Commission, because local authorities that have to deliver elections on the ground have some strong opinions on this legislation. I certainly think there would be time, should the Minister so wish, to consult the Association of Electoral Administrators, the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and other organisations that are able to provide clear insight into how we can secure the ballot, but in a way that is both secure and inclusive and does not disfranchise people. I suspect there will be people around tea tables up and down the country right now discussing how an unelected Prime Minister plucks out a failed politician and makes him Foreign Secretary. Trust in our democracy—and our democracy as a whole—is incredibly precious, and we must protect it.
The pressure on local authorities is significant. I know that, as a local government Minister, the Minister will have frequent conversations with local authorities around the country, hearing about how stretched they are, but this legislation is putting a lot of pressure on our returning officers, who are often volunteers who give up their time to staff polling stations to ensure everyone can take part. Up until now, they have been in charge of issuing ballot papers based on whether the name matches the name on the electoral roll and, more recently, on whether the ID does as well.
This legislation is about rejecting a completed ballot paper, which is a completely different requirement that we are putting on people who are often volunteers. I would also say that we are putting these duties on council reception staff, who are not trained in electoral law and did not necessarily step up to do that job thinking that this duty was part of the package. We are asking people working on reception desks in county offices up and down the country to make that assessment as well. I think that that needs to be considered, and I urge the Minister to do further consultation with local government.
On the recruitment and retention of polling staff, could the Minister say anything in his closing remarks on what he is doing to improve that? I know it is of great concern to an awful lot of individuals.
Looking to the evidence, could the Minister also tell me how many fraudulent postal ballots have been taken into, first, polling stations and, secondly, town hall counters or reception desks, and how many have been dropped into Royal Mail post boxes? That, ultimately, is the massive loophole in this legislation. Postal vote harvesting is a crime, and it is not a victimless crime, because votes being stolen is a crime. I do not dispute that, and I do not think anyone in this room would, but if someone harvesting postal votes can drop 20 or 30 completed postal packs into a Royal Mail post box and get those votes counted no bother, and we disfranchise a person with six sick relatives who turns up on the day to hand in those votes at the polling station only to realise they cannot do that, are we not taking legitimate votes from legitimate voters while allowing fraudsters to go in through the backdoor? It is like building a massive fence around the property but not putting any gates at the front.
I also want to know what will happen to postal vote packs that are dropped through council letterboxes. If it is not clear whether a postal vote has come via Royal Mail delivery or has been hand-delivered through a council letterbox, how on earth is a council officer meant to differentiate between those two things? One would require the checks and one would not. I would love to know how the Minister sees a way through that.
Finally, the best way to strengthen our democracy is to increase participation. The best way to secure every ballot is to ensure that everyone turns out to vote. If everyone turned out and voted, and voted freely and not under pressure, we would have a legitimate election in which votes could not be stolen because they would all be used. I will finish by asking the Minister what steps he is taking to strengthen democracy by increasing participation in it.
Jacob Young
Thank you for calling me, Dr Huq. I thank all hon. Members for their thoughtful consideration and input today. I will take this opportunity to provide further clarity on some of the points raised, including by the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood just now.
On the question of whether a ballot can be handed in through a council letterbox versus into a post box, a postal voter may return their vote only by post or by handing it directly to a returning officer or their returning officer’s team. In the past, it appears that individuals were informally allowed to put their postal votes through a council letterbox as a way of returning their vote. However, where a person puts a postal vote into a council letterbox, it is not counted as having been returned by post, for example via Royal Mail. The new handing-in requirements will therefore apply to such votes. Postal votes handed in through a council letterbox cannot be treated as being in accordance with these requirements and will therefore not be counted in the election to which they relate. The postal voting statement that postal voters receive with their postal ballot paper will notify postal voters of the new requirements and caution them not to put any postal votes in a council letterbox, for this reason.
The hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood mentioned further consultation with the Association of Electoral Administrators and others. We formally consulted the Electoral Commission on these regulations, as the hon. Lady rightly said, but we have since also engaged with the Association of Electoral Administrators, the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and the wider election sector throughout the development of this policy and legislation, and we continue to do so as we approach implementation.
In terms of the justification for this policy, the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood referred to how many examples of postal vote fraud there have been, but I do not think that low levels of prosecution for fraud should deter us from introducing changes that protect the integrity of our elections. That is exactly what we are trying to do with this policy.
Jacob Young
I am happy to try to write to the hon. Lady with that statistic, as I do not have it in front of me today.
During my opening remarks, the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood asked what happens when someone hands in a number of votes that exceeds the total permitted number. To clarify, the individual will have to decide which of those postal votes is their own, and the election staff will have to take that decision at face value. If the person hands in the votes without the completed form, all the votes will be rejected—none will be accepted. I hope that provides the clarity the hon. Lady was seeking.
There has been a lot of discussion about the definition of a political campaigner. As I set out earlier, the definition of a political campaigner for the purpose of the new postal vote handling offence and the exemptions that apply to that offence are set out in section 4(2) of the Elections Act 2022. The Electoral Commission issues guidance to candidates at elections, and we expect that it will cover the new postal vote handling and handing-in requirements. We also expect that political parties will bring the new requirements to the attention of their members. We intend that the changes will be communicated to electors directly via forms, including the postal vote statement and poll cards, and through information made available to electors via gov.uk.
Additionally, information will be displayed on the Electoral Commission and other agency websites and in information provided by local authorities. We will continue to work with the Electoral Commission to develop this information and awareness. Also, when a person hands in a number of votes, they are given a form that requires them to confirm whether they are a political campaigner. That should provide the clarity the hon. Lady was seeking.
Florence Eshalomi
I understand what the Minister is trying to outline here, but does he agree with the concerns raised by the Law Commission about a clear definition of a political campaigner, and that there may be unintended consequences on innocent people who are just trying to make sure that their friends, family and other people have the right to vote?
Jacob Young
As I have set out, individuals will need to complete a form. They will need to define whether they are a political campaigner, so I do not agree with hon. Lady’s assertions. I think it will be clear to individuals whether they should be handing in postal vote forms.
In terms of the potential impact of these changes on electoral administrators, we are aware of the concerns that have been raised. We continue to work with the Electoral Commission and electoral administrators on the implementation of these measures, on ensuring that administrators have support to deliver them and on raising awareness among the electorate of the changes and new requirements.
A concern was raised by the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts about poll clerks having to reject postal votes. We consider it appropriate for presiding officers and poll clerks in polling stations to be able to make decisions on whether postal votes have been handed in in accordance with the rules and whether they should be accepted or rejected. It will be an objective matter as to whether the person handing in the votes has completed the accompanying form and has handed in the permitted number of postal votes.
We have provided for poll clerks to be able to make decisions on these matters in case the presiding officer is not available in a busy period or is indisposed due to unforeseen circumstances. In practice, the presiding officer may well decide to make all decisions on whether to accept or reject handed-in postal ballot packs, but we thought it helpful to enable poll clerks to make such decisions too.
The hon. Member for Vauxhall raised the question of five plus one. The number was decided on in the passage of the Elections Bill and goes back 20 years. Having six postal vote electors in a property starts to raise concerns about postal vote fraud. Hon. Members will know that there was a discussion during the passage of the Bill about the right number to use. Throughout various types of election guidance and so on, the number six is used, which is why we have chosen it.
The hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts asked whether the cost will be met by central Government. Yes, it will be, through new burdens funding.
All hon. Members are deeply committed to preserving and enhancing the electoral processes that underpin our democracy—a commitment that has been underlined so vividly by the contributions to this debate. I thank everyone for the part they have played in this discussion, and I commend the regulations to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That the Committee has considered the draft Representation of the People (Postal Vote Handling and Secrecy) (Amendment) Regulations 2023.
Draft Persistent Organic Pollutants (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2023
(1 year ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Persistent Organic Pollutants (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2023.
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Dame Angela. The regulations were laid before the House on 16 October 2023 and add a new substance, called perfluorohexane sulfonic acid—hon. Members will be pleased to hear that I will not be repeating that long hand—otherwise known as PFHxS, including its salts and related compounds, to the retained persistent organic pollutants, or POPs, regulation in response to the listing of the substance under the United Nations Stockholm convention for POPs. The UK is a party to the convention, and it is therefore obliged to reflect in UK law the listing of POPs under it. This legislative change is permitted by the use of the powers available in article 15 of the retained EU regulation on POPs and we have worked with the devolved Administrations on the regulations.
This statutory instrument is needed to implement the UK’s commitments under the UN Stockholm convention. POPs are substances recognised as particularly dangerous to the health of humans, wildlife and the environment and the regulations preserve and add to the regime for managing, restricting or eliminating POPs in the UK.
What does the statutory instrument actually do? At the 10th meeting of the conference of the parties held last year, a decision was adopted to add a new substance called PFHxS to the list of substances for global elimination under the convention. The decision was communicated to parties and observers by the UN depository in November 2022. This instrument adds the new POP to the list of substances prohibited by law from being manufactured, placed on the market and used in Great Britain. Secondly, the instrument provides some exemptions from the prohibitions by allowing the unintentional presence of PFHxS at trace levels. These limits define the concentrations at which PFHxS can lawfully be found in a substance, article or mixture where it is unintentionally present and found in minimal amounts. This instrument includes two general limits and one that is specific to its presence in firefighting foams.
The instrument was not subject to consultation because, although it represents an update to existing legislation, it implements an international obligation that the UK is required to put into place in law. There were opportunities for UK stakeholders to feed into earlier engagement, both UK and convention-led, at various stages before PFHxS was adopted for elimination under the Stockholm convention. Following the initial proposal of PFHxS as a POP in 2017, there have been public calls for information and opportunities to comment on draft evaluation documents for the substance. We received no evidence to suggest that exemptions or derogations were required by industry in Great Britain.
Following that engagement, a recent consultation led by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on other amendments to the POPs regulation stated our intention to list PFHxS in annex 1 of that regulation to meet the UK’s obligations under the Stockholm convention. A de minimis impact assessment was carried out that concluded that there was no indication that PFHxS chemicals are intentionally produced or used in Great Britain. As such, the statutory instrument is not expected to have an impact on business beyond one-off familiarisation costs. It is also not expected to disproportionally burden small businesses.
The Environment Agency is the delivery body for the POPs regulations for England, and Natural Resources Wales and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency are the delivery bodies for Wales and Scotland respectively. They have been involved in the development of the instrument and have raised no concerns about its implementation.
The territorial extent and application of this instrument is Great Britain. Under the Windsor framework, the EU POPs regulation 2019/1021 applies in Northern Ireland. The devolved Administrations in Wales and Scotland were engaged in the development of the instrument and have consented to its being made on a GB-wide basis.
The measures in the instrument are needed to implement the requirements of the Stockholm convention by adding the new POP PFHxS, including its salts and related compounds, to the list of substances prohibited by law. The environmental improvement plan for England has made clear our commitment to support and protect the natural environment, wildlife and human health. That includes our commitment to manage and reduce POPs in the environment. The draft regulations will allow the UK to continue to meet commitments relating to POPs, and to continue to implement the Stockholm convention requirements to prohibit, eliminate or restrict their production and use. I commend the draft regulations to the Committee.
Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)
It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this evening, Dame Angela, and it is very good to see the Minister in her place. I will be as brief as I can so that she can take her phone off silent, just in case she has any urgent calls that she needs to return.
I want to acknowledge the service in the Department of the former Secretary of State—we did not agree very often, but I acknowledge her service. I will surprise the Minister on this very busy day by saying that the Opposition cautiously welcome the statutory instrument and its contents, but before I sit down—Conservative Members are sighing with relief—I would like to a say few things in consideration. This SI is to be welcomed, and I commend the adding of one subset of PFAS—perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances—PFHxS, to our country’s list of POPs. That follows its designation as such at last year’s Stockholm convention, which restricts or prohibits extremely persistent substances that cause worldwide pollution. The statutory instrument is an important step forward, and I note that the caveats to it are the same as those to the related EU legislation. It is a very good example of common sense alignment with our neighbours, and I commend the Minister for it.
I want to use this opportunity to ask the Minister about the Government’s actions on PFAS more generally. The consensus tonight will go only so far, as there are some wider issues relating to PFAS that this SI will influence. Will the Minister please outline the timelines that the Government are following? As she knows, we are still awaiting the 2023-24 work programme for UK REACH—the registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals—which sets out priorities for the year. We are already halfway through, so when will the work programme be published?
In parallel, the PFAS working group, which runs to the end of the year, will culminate in a set of policy options that the Health and Safety Executive will consider and analyse. It would be helpful if the Minister could provide a brief update on the work of that group.
The SI makes it clear that the PFAS pollution crisis is one of the biggest chemical threats of our time, and that we need real action to regulate and mitigate it. Scientists argue that the PFAS planetary boundary has already been exceeded, because PFAS levels in the global environment are ubiquitously above guideline levels. Some 14% of European teenagers have been found to have PFAS in their bodies at levels that may harm their health. Given the comparable lifestyles shared by teenagers in Europe and the UK, it is very likely that a similar percentage of UK teenagers have elevated PFAS levels. The extreme persistence of these chemicals means that if emissions continue, levels will only increase, and that will in turn increase the risk of triggering irreversible large-scale adverse health and environmental effects. That is why the SI is so important, but we must go further and do more.
Like many out there in the real world, I am waiting to get more detail on the action that the UK plans to take on PFAS. The European Chemicals Agency is considering a proposal to ban the manufacture and use of about 10,000 PFAS as a class. Will the Minister consider the merits of such an approach?
The SI’s focus on PFAS is a reminder that we have seen a worrying pattern of regulation from Ministers in the UK Government: Ministers in Westminster are prioritising far fewer substances for control and, where action is taken, fewer protective measures are generally proposed in the UK compared with in the EU. I urge the Minister to go big and be bold on such issues. Our planet and our people need it.
Rebecca Pow
I thank the shadow Minister for supporting the legislation, which aligns us internationally with the Stockholm convention. I also put on record our thanks to our departing Secretary of State for the great work she has done in the Department. She steered through not just pieces of legislation but plans and strategies for the future that are huge and groundbreaking, not least the Plan for Water, which sets the whole water industry on a holistic trajectory.
To clarify, the regulations ensure that existing legal provisions for the prohibition and restriction of the manufacture, placing on the market and use of POPs will be extended to the new POP substance PFHxS, following its addition to the list of POPs for global elimination under the Stockholm convention. That will contribute to the protection of the current and future health of the population, wildlife and environment in both the UK and the rest of the world.
The shadow Minister asked where we were with REACH. I assure her that we are developing our alternative transitional registration model for UK REACH, with the aim of maintaining or improving existing human health and environmental protections in line with our international commitments while reducing costs to businesses transitioning from the EU REACH to UK REACH.
Just last week, on Thursday 9 November, we announced the outlines of our alternative transition model. It includes refining the information on use and exposure in Great Britain that registrants will need to provide. That is the critical information that we expect industry to have so that they fully understand and manage risks, and that GB regulators need in order to prioritise regulatory action. The model also reduces to the essential minimum the hazard information required for transitional registrations and intermediates, which will mean that UK REACH registrants will not generally need to access and pay for the data packages held by EU industry consortia. It also outlines that there will be an improvement in regulator powers so that regulators can require and receive data from registrants quickly for regulatory or risk prioritisation purposes, which will ensure that we can respond to new or emerging risks. A consultation on the proposals will be published in early 2024. I hope that that clarifies the issue.
The shadow Minister also raised the matter of PFAS. To clarify, PFHxS are a type of PFAS—forever chemicals, as they are commonly known. There are thousands of forever chemicals, and not all PFAS are POPs. I want to reassure the hon. Lady that more PFAS will be listed as POPs under the Stockholm convention in the near future. Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances—PFAS—represent an enormous group of chemicals, and the group of substances covered by this instrument are a type of PFAS, but, as I said, not all PFAS are listed as POPs.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs asked the Environment Agency and the Health and Safety Executive to examine the risks that PFAS pose, and to develop a regulatory management options analysis—or RMOA—to make recommendations for measures to manage the risks of PFAS. That was published back in April 2023, and we have accepted all the listed recommendations. They include work under UK REACH to reduce PFAS emissions by developing UK REACH restrictions, beginning with a restriction on PFAS in firefighting foams, which I think the hon. Member will know about, and exploring further restrictions covering a wide range of industrial and consumer uses, with a joined-up approach across Government and with external stakeholders.
DEFRA is taking forward the recommendation to bring together work on PFAS strategically through the development of a cross-Government chemical strategy and the creation of a chemicals stakeholder forum working group on PFAS, which the shadow Minister referred to. Aspects such as drinking water standards and a fluorinated gases review will be considered within the overall policy development and are subject to further ministerial agreement. I hope that clarifies the issue, which is important, as the shadow Minister rightly said.
I thank the shadow Minister for supporting the regulations. They will ensure that existing legal provisions for the prohibition and restriction of the manufacture, placing on the market and use of POPs will be extended to the new POPs substance, PFHxS, following its addition to the list of POPs for global elimination under the Stockholm convention. As I have said before, that will contribute to the protection of the current and future health of the population, wildlife and environment of both the UK and the rest of the world.
Question put and agreed to.
Ministerial Correction
Prime Minister
(1 year ago)
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Sir Chris Bryant
I am very grateful to the Prime Minister. Bearing in mind that a significant proportion of people who sleep rough are Army veterans and people with acquired brain injuries, does the Prime Minister agree with the Home Secretary when she says that homelessness—sleeping rough—is “a lifestyle choice”? If he does not, will he sack her?
The Prime Minister
I am not sure about the link between that and energy security, but I can tell the hon. Gentleman that thanks to the efforts of my right hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer), veterans’ homelessness is at record low levels in this country. Rough sleeping overall is down by around a third since the peak, thanks to the actions of this Government and in particular the landmark Homelessness Reduction Act 2017—passed by this Government—which has helped relieve or prevent more than 640,000 people from becoming homelessness.
[Official Report, 7 November 2023, Vol. 740, c. 21.]
Letter of correction from the Prime Minister.
An error has been identified in my response to the hon. Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant). The correct response should have been:
The Prime Minister
I am not sure about the link between that and energy security, but I can tell the hon. Gentleman that thanks to the efforts of my right hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer), veterans’ homelessness is at a near record low in this country. Rough sleeping overall is down by around a third since the peak, thanks to the actions of this Government and in particular the landmark Homelessness Reduction Act 2017—passed by this Government—which has helped relieve or prevent more than 640,000 people from becoming homelessness.
DVLA Applications in Post Offices
Stowmarket Railway Station Ticket Office
Written Statements
Public Sector Fraud Authority: Annual Report 2022-23
(1 year ago)
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The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Jeremy Quin)
The Minister of State, Baroness Neville-Rolfe DBE CMG, has today made the following statement:
Fraud against the public sector is a crime that impacts us all. Unfortunately the public sector is just as affected by this hidden crime as other sectors. It affects the quality and quantity of public services as every pound stolen by fraudsters is one pound less spent on vital public services, such as schools or hospitals or on reducing the burden of tax.
The Government are committed to tackling fraudsters head on. The Prime Minister in his previous position as Chancellor, announced in the March 2022 spring statement £24.7 million of funding over three years for the establishment and building of a new counter fraud authority: the Public Sector Fraud Authority (PSFA) was launched in August 2022.
In its first year, the PSFA set 21 objectives which are published in the 2022-23 ‘Building For Success’ document available at www.gov.uk'>www.gov.uk. The PSFA is today publishing its annual report which outlines the progress and performance of the PSFA in 2022-23. This includes meeting 20 of the published objectives and surpassing its savings target of £180 million in audited benefits, delivering savings of £311 million for the public in 2022-23. The PSFA has also partnered with Quantexa and Deloitte using cutting edge technology to fight fraud, as well as hosting the International Public Sector Fraud Forum, inviting our Five Eyes allies to the Imperial War Museum to share expertise in this vital area.
The annual report will be available on www.gov.uk and copies will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses of Parliament.
[HCWS29]
Independent Review of Governance and Accountability in the Civil Service
(1 year ago)
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The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Jeremy Quin)
Today we have published in full the Independent Review of Governance and Accountability in the Civil Service. This review was commissioned in July 2022 and was led by the right hon. Lord Maude of Horsham.
The Government are committed to ensuring we are best placed to take long term decisions, and implement them for the British people. Our reform agenda is rooted in the principles set out in the Declaration of Government Reform, which envisaged the Independent Review on Accountability. In a speech I gave at Policy Exchange in July, I updated our reform agenda reflecting my renewed focus on people, place, and technology.
Lord Maude’s proposals aim to improve efficiency, clarify accountabilities, and change structures in the Civil Service. There are some issues highlighted in the review on which the Government are proud of action already underway. For example, we have introduced a training programme for Ministers; we are undertaking a review of the 125 most significant public bodies to improve efficiency and performance; and we are strengthening the process to identify new chairs and board members of public bodies to develop and support a strong pipeline of candidates.
However, a number of long-term recommendations, if implemented now, would serve to detract from the focus on the Prime Minister’s five critical priorities. For example, we will not take forward the recommendation for a significant restructure of the machinery of central Government or alter the role of Cabinet Secretary.
This is a welcome contribution and we will now consider the recommendations carefully and respond in due course. In the meantime, I have requested that a copy of the review be deposited in the Libraries of the Houses of Parliament.
[HCWS30]
Service Family Accommodation and Winter Planning
(1 year ago)
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The Minister for Defence Procurement (James Cartlidge)
Last December, my predecessor responded to an urgent question in the House about the poor state of service family accommodation and the performance of Ministry of Defence accommodation maintenance contractors, particularly over the winter period[1]. Lessons were learned and action is being taken. The purpose of this statement is to set out the steps that the Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO) and its contractors have taken and continue to take, to ensure that they are prepared for winter this year.
Improving the level of service for families living in service family accommodation continues to be a priority for me and fellow Ministers in the Department. We will continue to improve our service accommodation across the UK by offering modem, energy efficient homes which are good for the environment and cost-effective for service families.
As winter approaches, the Defence Infrastructure Organisation’s Director of Accommodation has written to all service families living in service family accommodation to inform them of the provisions being put in place to ensure that the Defence Infrastructure Organisation and its contractors are fully prepared, and able to provide the right level of service for families over the colder months, recognising the challenges faced last winter.
The Defence Infrastructure Organisation has received an investment of £400 million over this financial year and next as part of the recently announced Defence Command Paper 2023. This means that funding in the current financial year for maintenance and improvements will have more than doubled from around £160 million to around £380 million. This investment will be spent on improving the preparation of homes for service families to move into; treating and preventing damp and mould and improving the thermal efficiency of homes; and refurbishing empty homes for reoccupation by service families in areas where demand is highest.
Specifically, this financial year the Defence Infrastructure Organisation will:
Increase funding for the routine preparation of homes ready for move in, ensuring they are prepared to a high standard.
Fund damp and mould mitigation packages for around 4,000 families who currently have a damp and mould report raised, representing around 60% of all properties requiring such work. These standardised packages will include increasing insulation, replacing guttering, upgrading extractor fans, and resealing windows and doors.
Fund further and more substantial damp and mould prevention works, encompassing everything from replacement doors and windows to full thermal upgrades which include new doors, windows, roofs and the installation of external wall insulation. Thermal upgrades will not only reduce the vulnerability of homes to damp and mould but will also reduce the cost of heating homes for service families and reduce the carbon footprint of the estate.
Fund extensive, high-quality refurbishments of around 1,000 long-term empty service family accommodation to make them available.
Fund the replacement of kitchens and bathrooms, which will benefit more than 1,000 homes.
Fund boiler and heating upgrades for around 1,500 homes.
In the last 12 months, 423 modern homes have been purchased for service families across the UK in a £173 million deal, as part of the Defence Infrastructure Organisation’s Capital Purchase Programme. The Capital Purchase Programme works in partnership with major developers to identify where there is a need for family accommodation and determine the best way of delivering high-quality, energy efficient homes. The Defence Infrastructure Organisation has agreed to purchase a further 176 new homes over the next three years in a £78 million deal.
The Defence Infrastructure Organisation has published communications on both www.gov.uk and Defence Connect on the damp and mould programme of works being undertaken across the service family accommodation estate. This includes information and frequently asked questions on what families can expect from the works. Pinnacle, the National Accommodation Management contractor, has also published a guide for families on condensation, damp and mould prevention.
In preparation for winter, the Defence Infrastructure Organisation has been working collaboratively with its contractors to establish robust contingency plans to not only cope with severe weather events, but to ensure services can recover quickly to minimise any disruption to families. This includes:
Having the right resources in the right place and at the right times as winter progresses.
Increasing call handling capacity by 55%, with calls on average being answered within 29 seconds as opposed to around seven minutes last year.
AMEY has increased its resource by 40% since last winter.
VIVO has recruited additional out-of-hours staff to ensure urgent repairs are effectively managed over weekends and bank holidays.
VIVO has created a Customer Experience team to manage contact with families, and ensure communications are in place for follow-on works.
Better availability of parts, including temporary heaters which are distributed across the UK as needed.
Using remote technology to help to guide families to resolve simple issues without the need for an engineer callout.
Establishing indicators and warnings to enable the Defence Infrastructure Organisation to remain agile in where resource is allocated as the colder months progress.
Continuously reviewing and testing suppliers to ensure that planning, resource and stock holding is at the right levels.
A collaborative DIO, Pinnacle, Amey and VIVO Rehearsal of Concept drill to test winter preparedness plans against extreme weather scenarios took place on 17 October 2023. All three contractors tested their plans to ensure their resource and stock management could respond appropriately to a surge in repair requests—par exemple, from storm damage or frozen pipes—and to the impact of weather on the ability to respond to callouts—par exemple, in severe snow and ice.
Winter preparedness plans were tested during Storm Babet which impacted parts the UK, predominantly Scotland, on 19 and 20 October and was the first severe storm of the season. The Defence Infrastructure Organisation and all three contractors worked collaboratively to monitor the storm, anticipate the storm’s impact, and successfully apply severe weather protocols. Additional resource was engaged to manage the predicted uplift in calls, which saw a 33% increase on 20 October, and ensure all were answered promptly—within an average of 58 seconds. Clear communications were issued to manage expectations of service families with pre-arranged maintenance appointments, and 14 families whose homes were damaged due to flooding, were moved to pre-booked, temporary hotel accommodation to allow assessment of the damage.
In addition, the Defence Infrastructure Organisation, Pinnacle, Amey and VIVO have collectively produced a proactive winter communications plan. A winter safety leaflet has been developed which is held on Pinnacle’s website and is being distributed when contractors attend appointments at families’ homes. Winter safety messaging is also being included on social media to ensure families are aware of the steps they can take to keep their homes safe this winter.
[1] Service Family Accommodation—Commons Urgent Question in the House of Lords, 21 December 2022; Vol. 826, col. 1187.
[HCWS28]
International Treaty on Plastic Pollution: Negotiations on Development
(1 year ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)
The annual flow of plastic into the ocean is predicted to triple between 2016 and 2040 and is already having a devastating impact on our natural environment. We urgently need to take action at all levels on plastic pollution, in all its forms. That is why the UK is tackling the issue both internationally and at home.
Today marks the start of the third session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee to develop an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, established by a landmark decision taken at the United Nations Environment Assembly in March 2022.
At the negotiations, the Government will press for a combination of international obligations and national measures across the whole plastic lifecycle to ensure that the treaty can adequately address the transboundary nature of plastic pollution. We will call for provisions to: restrain and reduce the production and consumption of plastic to sustainable levels; address plastic design; and increase the safe circularity of plastics in the economy, guided by the waste hierarchy. We will support measures to manage plastic waste in an environmentally sound and safe manner and eliminate the release of plastics—including microplastics—into air, water and land.
As one of the founding members of the High Ambition Coalition to End Plastic Pollution, a group of like-minded countries calling for an ambitious and effective treaty, the UK has signed the High Ambition Coalition joint ministerial statement which echoes these calls.
We are committed to working with other member states to build consensus, calling for a Chair’s mandate to develop further the treaty text, supported by a formal intersessional programme of work, to lay the foundation for a successful outcome from the two remaining negotiating sessions in 2024.
[HCWS31]
House of Lords
Alternative Investment Fund Managers Regulations 2013
(1 year ago)
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Baroness Altmann
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of disclosure obligations under the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Regulations 2013 on UK-listed investment companies, in terms of competition, consumer duty, exclusion from investor platforms, and funding crisis for such companies investing in UK small growth businesses, renewable energy and infrastructure.
The Parliamentary Secretary, HM Treasury (Baroness Penn) (Con)
My Lords, the Government and the Financial Conduct Authority understand industry concerns regarding investment company cost disclosure requirements. The issue sits across multiple areas of legislation and we are working at pace to repeal retained EU law under the smarter regulatory framework, enabling the FCA to deliver UK-tailored rules. On the alternative investment fund managers directive specifically, work has already started on plans for reform, with a discussion paper issued by the FCA in February.
Baroness Altmann (Con)
I thank my noble friend. However, does she recognise that an important UK financial sector is being undermined by selling pressure based on exaggerated reported charges figures? These listed, closed-ended investment companies and their institutional investors support British companies in areas including battery storage and wind and solar farms, and offer particularly suitable vehicles for pension funds and other investors in sustainable growth. However, they are deterred by misleading aggregated costs, including by retail investor platforms. Has the Minister’s department urged emergency action following FCA failure to protect the market stability, international competitiveness, fair competition and the consumer duty?
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, I agree with my noble friend in recognising that investment trusts play a vital role in raising capital for infrastructure projects across the UK. The FCA is of course independent, but I understand that it is taking forward work to look at what can be done in this area while we take forward the wider programme of measures to repeal retained EU law and replace it with UK rules that will help to address the issue that she raises.
Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD)
Does the Minister recognise that the debate around aggregated cost disclosure and associated errors arising from misapplied legislation has highlighted difficulties of amending retained EU law rapidly and the absence of FCA powers to amend legislation or issue useful forbearance notices when needed, given concerns about FiSMA Section 138D on right of action? Can the Minister explain whether His Majesty’s Government are considering how emergency action or forbearance can safely be introduced to avoid being in a tighter static regulatory bind than when we were in the EU, where ESMA had more flexibility and power?
Baroness Penn (Con)
I reassure the noble Baroness that the FCA has the appropriate powers to implement regulatory forbearance where it considers it appropriate, but it must operate within the legal framework and it does not have the powers to amend legislation—that is for this House to do. It is right that forbearance can only be a temporary, short-term fix. That is why the Government are committed to repealing and replacing retained EU law, including legislation related to cost disclosure, under our smarter regulatory framework.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)
My Lords, does my noble friend recognise that there really is a win-win situation here—a proven method of investment, offering individuals an opportunity to invest in new technologies relatively safely and new sources of funding for those technologies? The only thing standing in the way is the FCA. Where there is a will, there is a way, so could my noble friend please ask the FCA to engage in some digital extraction?
Baroness Penn (Con)
I reassure my noble friend that the FCA is indeed engaged in this issue, as are the Government. There are many problems with inherited EU financial services rules and we have set out a programme of work to look at how we can repeal them and replace them with UK-appropriate measures. These include the PRIIPs rules, which affect this issue, and the Government have set out our plans to repeal these measures and replace them with FCA rules, as soon as possible.
Lord Livermore (Lab)
My Lords, the primary duty of the FCA is to deliver stability, but the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, raising this issue today is not the first time that concerns have been raised about apparent instability in certain markets. Does the Minister remain satisfied that the FCA has the tools and expertise it needs to uphold its duties, and is she confident that it has the capacity to meet its growing workload?
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, I do remain satisfied and I believe that the Financial Services and Markets Act, which passed through this House earlier this year, updates the tools and framework for the FCA to do its job, now that we have left the EU.
Baroness Kramer (LD)
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, has a Private Member’s Bill before this House, which would create the proper framework for the important investments that she has been discussing. I hope the Government will support her Bill, but would the Minister also introduce a statutory instrument to the House, as proposed by my good noble friend Lady Bowles on many occasions, which would rectify the immediate and emergency situation that is discouraging investment in critical activity in this country?
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, I have not yet seen the details of my noble friend’s Private Member’s Bill, but I will look at it closely. The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, is right that the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, has raised this in the past and I thank her for her work in this area, including her detailed suggestions to reform MiFID, which the Government are considering. As I have said, FSMA 2023 gives us the powers to repeal and replace retained EU law in a more agile way. We intend to use those powers to solve the issue before us.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
Will the Minister tell us what consultation has taken place with the Financial Services Consumer Panel and other consumer groups on this?
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, the operation of the consumer panel and other panels of the FCA is a matter for the FCA. I am sure that it draws on all its different panels, as appropriate, when taking forward its work programme.
Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)
My Lords, one recognises the important issue being raised, but the context has to be understood of a financial services industry that does not have an unblemished record, in terms of the personal pensions and endowment insurance scandals. The FCA has to recognise that it cannot take the good will of the industry towards the client as given.
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, some of the issues that the noble Lord sets out are why it is important to take forward the programme of reform in a measured way that takes into account the interests of all involved in the sector, whether industry or consumers, and makes sure that we have proper consultation in everything that we do.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
My Lords, I think the bottom line of this Question is how to get trillions invested in our pension industries back into British enterprise and investment again. At one stage this was considerable, at about 60%, and it is now down to 40%. Is this not a matter of prime urgency in getting the economy really moving again? Can my noble friend outline the key steps she thinks should be taken, or are being taken, to get our pensions trillions back into British industry in a massive way?
Baroness Penn (Con)
My noble friend is absolutely right about ensuring that pension funds are invested in the future of British industry. In fact, this was the theme of my right honourable friend the Chancellor’s Mansion House speech this year. He set out a number of reforms that the Government are taking forward to support this. There was rapid consultation on a number of those areas, and we expect further updates at the Autumn Statement.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
My Lords, repeal of the AIFMD should have been straightforward. When it was brought in some 16 years ago, it was opposed by every party. It was opposed by Labour and the Conservatives, the industry and financial services more widely. What we are seeing here is the way in which, once a sector absorbs the administrative costs of doing something, however much it opposed it coming in, it then becomes an opponent of repeal. Is it not the role of Ministers to look beyond producer capture and look at the interests of the companies that do not yet exist and, above all, at the interests of consumers?
Baroness Penn (Con)
My noble friend is absolutely right. The Government consulted extensively when the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Regulations were introduced. That was some time ago but, as part of the smarter regulatory framework, we are working closely with the FCA to explore what changes can be made to AIFMD to make it more streamlined and tailored to UK markets. I assure all noble Lords that that work is being taken forward with urgency.
Baroness Altmann (Con)
My Lords, may I press my noble friend? She says the FCA has regulatory powers for forbearance. Given that this is EU-derived legislation that has been misapplied in the UK, no EU country adopts it, no other country in the world adopts it and it is uniquely disadvantaging British companies, is there not a case for emergency action from the FCA once it is aware of this particular problem?
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, the FCA can apply forbearance when it comes to its rules, but it cannot when it comes to the law; it is for this House to amend the law. I set out that the Government intend to look at the various pieces of underlying EU legislation, including PRIIPs and MiFID, to ensure we address the underlying problem as well as applying forbearance while that work is under way.
Flying Schools: Liquidation
(1 year ago)
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Lord Balfe
To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they will convene a working party consisting of the Civil Aviation Authority, Financial Conduct Authority, the Department for Transport and any other relevant body, to examine the case for strengthening consumer protections for customers of flying schools who lose money when such schools go into liquidation.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Vere of Norbiton) (Con)
My Lords, we fully sympathise with those affected and recognise the substantial impact on those individuals. It is important to note that these recent closures represent around 1% of the training school market. We are actively considering options to support current and potential future trainee pilots, including improving guidance from the Civil Aviation Authority.
Lord Balfe (Con)
I thank the Minister for her Answer, but three flying schools have gone into liquidation this year. Individual customers are owed up to £80,000 each, and a debt of over £4 million is very unlikely to be paid by the liquidators overseeing this. Surely it is the job of government to protect individuals who are put in this invidious position, where they have to pay up front for a service that is just not being delivered. Certainly, in one case, a flying school was collecting money almost up to the day that it collapsed. We need the Minister to do something. My Question suggested a framework for moving forward. Will she agree to investigate that framework and see whether she can make it work?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
My noble friend is, I believe, honorary president of BALPA. I am sure he will be reassured to know that I met BALPA, the airline pilots’ union, on 19 September alongside the CAA to discuss this issue. A number of ideas were taken forward but it is clear that we need to improve the guidance and information available to trainee pilots such that the amounts of money handed over are not excessive, because they do not need to be. There is a significant amount of competition in the flying school market. If a candidate is asked to hand over too much money, frankly, he or she should potentially look elsewhere.
Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)
My Lords, as one of those who benefited from learning to fly at a municipal flying school, I am concerned that a number of flying schools are ceasing to trade. I wonder therefore whether my noble friend can do more to encourage our UK-registered airlines; in particular, to make sure that they train their future pilots at UK flying schools rather than at flying schools in other parts of the world.
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
As my noble friend is aware, the aviation sector and the flying school sector are private sectors. I reassure him that we have had a number of conversations with airlines around the need for skills, including new pilots. The airlines do not currently see a pressing pilot shortage; however, I am very pleased that both British Airways and TUI now have cadetship programmes in place. That is great for supporting new trainees, but also really good for increasing diversity.
Lord Sikka (Lab)
My Lords, the issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, are experienced by millions of people who pay for goods and services in advance, but then do not receive them because the supplying entity has gone into liquidation. A good way to protect innocent customers is to ring-fence all credit balances. If the Minister disagrees with that suggestion, what else would she propose?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
I think the noble Lord is trying to tempt me into the wider economy, when I am focused on flying schools. But when trainee pilots pay money over to the flying schools, they should ask themselves whether it is reasonable. BALPA is considering a finance fairness charter, which I am sure the noble Lord would also support, which would ensure that flying schools that sign up do not accept excessive advance payments, and that they commit to transparency regarding costs and charges.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, the Minister seeks to downplay the significance of these problems, and the demise of these three companies. She seeks to downplay the amount of money that is owed to individuals—£80,000 is a significant amount to most people. Is she not concerned that the situation will undermine the reputation of the UK aviation industry, and the skills for aviation that we really need to build up as a nation, rather than undermining them with the failure of companies?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
Three flying schools have closed. One of those was a planned closure, and the trainees were not impacted. Two were unplanned closures, and trainees were impacted. There remain around 270 flying schools. As I said, it is a small amount. The noble Baroness mentioned £80,000; I cannot corroborate that figure. That seems quite high to me; it would mean that somebody is paying for their entire training up front. Again, this is the point I am trying to make; it is up to the trainees. Working with BALPA and the CAA—wherever trainees get their information—it is about getting the information to them to say: “You do not need to pay vast amounts of money up front, and if a flying school is asking for that, it is entirely reasonable to go elsewhere”. As I say, there are 270 flying schools in the UK.
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
My Lords, this issue is essentially a financial one. It is a matter of the chaotic planning of pilot training. Ever since the Second World War, there have only been periods of it being properly done. I was trained in the 1960s, paid for by the national airlines. That yielded a group of pilots which has created four decades of ever-increasing safety. Mistakes were made in demand; I was also responsible for those, having got the number of pilots catastrophically wrong—we had too many. It has gone on like that. In the recent past, we have had this magic formula of leaving it to the private sector. Now, things have happened to the private sector that have put these relatively small businesses under stress. The Minister’s department needs to study the whole thing and see where we are.
I think there must be a real crisis because, as the Minister will know, British Airways has launched the Speedbird Pilot Academy for 60 candidates—wholly paid for, including board and lodging. The problem that has emerged is twofold. First, becoming an airline pilot is probably the profession that needs the right parents more than others as £120,000 is the sort of figure you need. Secondly, there is instability among the flying schools. Will the Minister look into this problem and see whether she can bring some stability to the situation?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
I am grateful to the noble Lord. The Government have already looked at this and we continue to look at this in some detail. In May this year we published an independent research report commissioned by the Department for Transport which looked into the cost of airline pilot training and the numbers that we are likely to need. It forecast a shortage in about 20 years. However, that prediction was highly uncertain, so I would very much like the airlines to work with the training schools and BALPA to come forward with proposals, which I will happily look at.
Lord Trefgarne (Con)
My Lords, is it not the case that many flying schools are having increasing difficulties with the environmental constraints being imposed upon their operations by local authorities, meaning that they can fly for fewer hours during the day than previously, which is beginning to cause something of a problem?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
I was not aware of the issue that my noble friend has raised. It is right that local authorities are able to impose restrictions on aerodromes in certain circumstances. However, they must do that balancing the advantages of having an aerodrome in a certain location, not only in terms of getting people learning to fly, but all the ancillary services and other businesses that are often on aerodromes and are hugely beneficial.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
Does the Minister agree that one of the reasons for these flying schools getting into difficulty is the lack of air navigation aids, which were cancelled when we Brexited? Will she look into reinstating EGNOS or possibly Inmarsat so that not only can more people can learn to fly but so that we can fly to the Hebrides or the Scillies more easily in fog?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
The noble Lord is pushing the boundaries of this Question and indeed my patience.
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
No, no, no. The noble Lord knows that the two are not particularly related. He makes representations to me about EGNOS, and I am always grateful to receive them.
Certificate of Sponsorship: Foreign Health and Care Workers
(1 year ago)
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Lord Oates
To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they will take action to ensure that care providers who issue out-of-country certificates of sponsorship to foreign health and care workers provide sufficient work to allow them a living wage while resident in the United Kingdom.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Migration and Borders (Lord Murray of Blidworth) (Con)
My Lords, the Home Office’s sponsor licence system places clear and binding requirements and obligations on employers, including paying the required salary, looking to recruit and manage overseas employees across all sectors, including care. Should an employer be found in breach of these requirements, we will swiftly take action and can remove its ability to recruit from overseas.
Lord Oates (LD)
I thank the Minister for his Answer. Is he aware that those requirements are frequently not complied with? Is he aware that the Kenyan and Zimbabwean diasporas report certificates of sponsorship regularly being sold in those countries for many thousands of pounds to care workers who, when they arrive, are not provided with sufficient hours of work to enable them to live, leaving many indebted and destitute? Will the Government end this scandal by requiring a minimum number of hours of work to be provided, and enforcing compliance through an audit of HMRC records held for every employer for whom a certificate of sponsorship is issued?
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
The rules provide that care workers must be paid at least £20,960 per annum, not lower than £10.75 per hour based on a 37.5 hour working week. The Government do not tolerate illegal activity in the labour market. Any accusations of illegal employment practices will be thoroughly investigated, and it goes without saying that we strongly condemn the offering of health and care worker visas under false pretences.
Lord Laming (CB)
My Lords, recently I had brief contact with a residential care home where it seemed that many of the front-line care staff were from the Philippines. It made me realise that these staff were a long way from home and unlikely to understand the safeguards in British employment law. Is the Minister satisfied that safeguards are in place for such staff?
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
Yes, I reassure the noble Lord that the Home Office works very closely with the Department of Health and Social Care on ensuring the safety and security of those who come to work here on visas and of those for whom they care.
Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway (Lab)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that a key problem with the health and care worker visa scheme is that it forces workers into dependency on an individual employer? If a worker leaves that job, they need to find another sponsoring employer within 60 days or face deportation. The terrible truth is that many vulnerable care workers are more frightened of the Home Office than they are of an exploitative boss. Does the Minister agree that the Government should introduce a sector-wide fair pay agreement, strengthen workers’ rights and work with trade unions so that workers have the confidence to exercise their rights?
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
I reassure the noble Baroness that migrant workers are able to seek alternative employment in the event that their initial placement is unsatisfactory for the reasons that she outlines, provided that they have a job offer from a Home Office-approved sponsor—which of course stands to reason. They can make a new application for a further visa in those circumstances.
Lord Allan of Hallam (LD)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that it would be very helpful to have a long-term national social care workforce plan, so that we can compare the assessed need for care workers from overseas with the number of certificates of sponsorship being issued?
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
As I said, the Home Office works closely with the Department of Health and Social Care in relation to the requirement for those working in the health and social care sectors—and there is a lot in what the noble Lord says.
Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)
Recently, it has been reported that a number of care workers have been exploited. The Minister has given assurances that this is totally unacceptable. How many prosecutions have taken place over the last year of people, bodies or care homes that have exploited the system?
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
I reassure the noble and right reverend Lord that, since 1 July 2022, 87 sponsor licences have been revoked and 32 suspended pending further investigation.
Lord Sahota (Lab)
My Lords, is the Minister aware that these care workers—not all of them, but some—who come to the UK to look after our elderly are sometimes charged thousands of pounds by recruiting companies and care companies. It has sometimes been as much as £20,000, yet it is illegal for the workers to pay more than £260 for the costs of their visas and travelling. Sometimes—not always—when they arrive in the UK, the company that hired them will fire them after a few months so that it can bring in another worker and charge them £20,000. My information is based on talking to some of these care workers. They do not want to give their names, or the names of their companies, because their immigration status is rather precarious. Are the Government aware of this money-making scam?
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
The Home Office is aware that abuses exist. I reassure the noble Lord that the sponsor licence system places clear and binding requirements and obligations on employers looking to recruit. The Department of Health and Social Care has published guidance on applying for jobs from abroad, as part of a wider effort to address its concerns about exploitive recruitment and employment practices. That guidance helps prospective overseas candidates to make informed decisions when seeking health or social care jobs in the United Kingdom, including information on how to avoid exploitation and where to report concerns.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)
My Lords, the Minister has acknowledged that abuses exist in this sector. In a previous answer, he seemed sympathetic to a social care workforce plan and to agree that there should be some sort of fair pay agreement. What is his ministry doing to implement these things? Is he consulting his colleagues in the health and social care sectors to bring the workforce plan into being?
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
There is no workforce plan in process. As I say, the communication between the Home Office and the Department of Health and Social Care and other relevant government departments is a close one. The function that the Home Office can perform is to set the minimum floor for the sum that these workers must be paid, which, as I said earlier, is £20,960, reflecting an hourly salary of more than the living wage. That is an important mechanism to achieve the objective that the noble Lord outlined.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, I read in the financial pages of the profits that chains of privately owned care homes are making. I also note that some of them have their headquarters outside the United Kingdom for tax and other purposes. Is it a failure of regulation that these companies are extremely profitable with a substantial chunk of those profits coming from subsidies from the state or local government? Do the Government think they should tighten regulations to make sure that conditions for such workers are adequate?
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
It is not for the Home Office to regulate the profits made by private companies, and the noble Lord would not expect me to comment on that. I reassure him that the Department of Health and Social Care is sighted on what the appropriate standards should be for those working in the sector, and it works with the Home Office on the grant of sponsor licences for those coming to work in the sector.
Lord Kamall (Con)
Attracting social care staff to the social care sector, whether from the United Kingdom or from abroad, is important. Where there are cases of exploitation what advice can the Minister give to those individuals—especially those who come from other countries and may not know the system very well—about where they can turn if they feel they are being exploited?
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
Information is certainly available on the GOV.UK website, which is signposted from the health and social care visa pages. There are also NGO bodies, including Care England and the gangmasters licensing authority, and, as the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, said, trade unions.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
The Minister has used the term “abuses” a number of times. The Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority, to which he has just referred, says that the health and care worker visa system is being abused by criminals, leading to a “constant stream of allegations” of fraud and modern slavery—a rather stronger term. Following on from the question about the involvement of the private sector in this, I ask: what value are all these Wild West private sector firms that are popping up adding to the system? Would it be better to do this not in a privatised way but, if we need to recruit care workers from overseas, to do so through a national workforce plan and not-for-profit agencies?
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
The noble Baroness will be unsurprised to learn that I do not agree that the state is the answer in the provision of health and social care in the way that she suggests. It is entirely appropriate that private companies can recruit in the way that they presently do, that abuses are stamped out and that the Home Office uses its enforcement powers in the way that it does and will continue to do.
Near-earth Satellites
(1 year ago)
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Viscount Stansgate
To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to work with international partners to regulate the use of commercial near-earth satellites to combat any adverse effects on astronomy.
Viscount Stansgate (Lab)
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, especially as the House may not appreciate the potential risks to astronomy from a new generation of near-earth satellites.
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
My Lords, before I start, I bring the House’s attention to my registered interests. With the number of satellites in orbit growing rapidly, the UK recognises the need for trade-offs between the requirements of the astronomical community and those of the satellite operators. The UK has advocated strongly on dark and quiet skies as part of our leadership on sustainable space activities. We continue to support efforts to identify mitigation measures at international forums as we deliver the goals of the National Space Strategy.
Viscount Stansgate (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer. Would he agree that, with satellites now designed to transmit signals to earth across the whole of the earth, the previous protection for radio astronomy has been diminished? Would he therefore agree to give a commitment on behalf of the Government to seek to protect astronomy facilities both in the UK and around the world, perhaps in line with the protection afforded to the Effelsberg observatory in Germany? Finally, given the Government’s significant stake in OneWeb, will the Minister try to ensure that, in the next generation of satellites, measures are introduced, along the lines of the International Astronomical Union, to protect our astronomy facilities to the greatest extent possible?
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
I am most grateful to the noble Viscount for bringing up this very important subject. The UK will always consider how it can best work internationally with partners to enable science and technology, including radio astronomy. The UK is working with the international community to understand the requirements for the protection of our skies for both astronomers and the indigenous populations. We are also scoping the range of potential technological and policy solutions available to accommodate those requirements as fully as possible. The IAU proposals are a valuable addition to our work in understanding the space standards we should consider for sustainable space operations. We are working closely with international colleagues and the UK space sector to develop standards fit for the future space operating environment. Great Britain is leading the world in this sector.
Lord Cromwell (CB)
My Lords, is the Minister aware of the Kessler effect, whereby items circulating above this planet are either hitting or being hit by other objects, creating more debris that then goes on to hit other things and so on ad infinitum? Secondly, is he aware that, of the satellites circling above our heads right now, 85% do not carry insurance? Does he consider these two factors satisfactory and, if not, what should be done about this?
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
The noble Lord asks two good questions. On his first, a recent summit pointed to Europe making a commercial step change, launching and celebrating the zero debris treaty and ESA’s commitment to deliver a cargo return mission to the international space station. The main output from the ESA council, at ministerial level, was the approval of ESA’s director-general’s resolution on lifting Europe’s ambitions for a green and sustainable future, and access to space and space exploration. On the question about insurance, I am not familiar with that, so I will write to the noble Lord.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, these satellites are now set to fill space at a rate of over 1,000 a year until 2030. In the Government’s National Space Strategy in Action paper of July this year, the Minister, George Freeman, said:
“The UK will lead the pack on regulatory standards, promoting competition whilst ending the wild west nature of space today”.
How will the Government do that? How will they, for instance, get their space sustainability standard adopted internationally?
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
As I said just a moment ago, we are world leaders in this. My honourable friend Minister George Freeman announced the first ever UK plan for space sustainability—an ambitious package showing UK leadership and commitment on this issue. The Minister also chairs the space sustainability round table, bringing together key members from industry, finance, insurance and academia to focus on the key issues of space sustainability. I assure the noble Lord that Great Britain is leading this way on this with our European and international partners.
Baroness Eaton (Con)
My Lords, I welcome the merger, but can my noble friend the Minister tell the House what influence the French Government will have as a result of it?
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
My Lords, France holds a 13.58% in the Eutelsat group through the Public Investment Bank, or BPI, and its sovereign wealth fund. His Majesty’s Government now have a 10.8% share in the Eutelsat group and retain their existing special rights and vetoes via a special share in OneWeb. His Majesty’s Government can appoint one director to the board of the Eutelsat group and one director to OneWeb’s board, so Great Britain is in control of the merger and OneWeb’s role in it.
Lord Winston (Lab)
My Lords, my noble friend raises a very important point, but is not it also true that one of the greatest problems facing astronomy is light pollution, as has been recorded recently by the Science and Technology Committee? Is not that a real issue for understanding astronomy better? Hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren in many parts of the world that are overpopulated are unable to observe what is going on in the night sky, which is a serious disadvantage to our better understanding of satellites and astronomy, and giving attention to this problem.
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
The noble Lord is exactly right. It is a case of the urban and the countryside. If you live in the city, it is often very difficult, due to light pollution. I am fortunate enough to live in the Peak District, where we have no light pollution and we can see the stars. I am not sure that I have an answer to the noble Lord’s questions. When designing our modern cities, they could reduce the number of lights that are left on. When noble Lords go home this evening, they will see an awful lot of light pollution in the vicinity. As the noble Lord points out, planning for the future is the key, so that our cities do not produce so much light and young people can enjoy the delights of space.
Lord Birt (CB)
My Lords, I declare an interest as a one-time vice-chairman of Eutelsat. What was the historic rationale for the UK Government to invest in the soon-to-be-bankrupt OneWeb, and what is the rationale now for the UK to hold an investment in Eutelsat OneWeb?
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
The noble Lord asks a very good question. I was not privy to the original decision-making, as he may well appreciate, but I think that it was a decision well made, because Great Britain needs to be kept within this relatively new sector, and that was the motivation for the investment of taxpayers’ money originally. The reason for keeping that stake, as it is for the French Government, is to make sure that we can have some influence, and that any inward investment that comes into future satellites comes into the United Kingdom, bringing well-paid jobs and investment into the UK.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, the Minister earlier cited very favourably the work that Mr Freeman, the Science Minister, is doing on this issue, and how important he is to the work. What are the implications of the fact that he has just been sacked?
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
The noble Lord never lets us down, does he? My understanding, in answer to the question, is that he resigned and was not sacked—but I was hoping that the noble Lord would ask about future investment in Scotland.
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, my noble friend will be aware that from 1 January we are rejoining the Copernicus Programme. The Sentinel system for Copernicus of near-earth orbiting satellites provides us with absolutely vital data, not least in relation to climate change. How might the British space industry, as a world leader, benefit from our rejoining Copernicus in the next three years?
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
That is a very specific question about rejoining that organisation, and I do not have an answer to it for my noble friend, but I shall certainly write on that specific point.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, there are already an estimated 36,000 near-earth space objects circulating around our planet, and the prospect of many thousands more commercial satellites being launched in the coming decade. Given the prospect of serious collisions, what are the Government doing to create an agreement on cleaning up space junk—for example, by bringing down satellites when they have finished the end of their mission, and so on? Is this an issue on which the Government should take a role as global leaders, to make sure that we are leading the way rather than following in the footsteps of other countries?
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
The noble Baroness raises a very good point. The UK collaborates internationally to develop standards, regulations, norms of behaviour, agreements and best practice to influence and define the in-orbit regime of the future. That includes exactly what the noble Baroness is pointing to around how we remove satellites and other space junk when they come to the end of their active life. There are technologies out there, such as, for want of a better word, a giant magnet that grabs hold of it and puts it somewhere. Some of these satellites contain valuable metals, so it is in the long-term interest to remove them. Technologies are happening, and I am assured by the department that it is something that Great Britain is leading on.
Policing of Marches and Demonstrations
(1 year ago)
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Baroness Deech
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the policing of recent marches and demonstrations.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Sharpe of Epsom) (Con)
My Lords, the police are operationally independent: it is their decision how they choose to police a protest and they are accountable for that. The Metropolitan Police used a range of powers to minimise disruption and disorder. On Saturday police made 145 arrests, most of which were linked to the counterdemonstration; however, the police continue to investigate other offences. The police have the Government’s full backing to use all the powers at their disposal to ensure that the perpetrators face the full force of the law. As is right, the Government will continue to hold the police to account. I think it is also right to acknowledge that Remembrance Weekend events passed without disruption.
Baroness Deech (CB)
My Lords, freedom to speak and to march and police discretion are all pillars of our constitution, but I have never before in my lifetime seen mobs marching through the streets alongside some who call for violent jihad and the death of Jews and waving swastika signs. Once the Saturday march was under way, why were the police posing with a child dressed as a terrorist while protesters rampaged threateningly outside a synagogue? Many of us call on the police to apply the law to those who are guilty of offences under Section 5 of the Public Order Act aggravated by religious and racial hatred, public nuisance and glorifying terrorism. It is a worldwide problem. Anti-Semitism is on parade. Jews cannot fix it on their own; we need people with us. Does the Minister agree that we need a cry of solidarity?
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
I wholeheartedly agree, and I was very emphatic on that point at the Dispatch Box last week. We saw vile examples of anti-Semitism by a minority at the pro-Palestine march. The fears that our Jewish community has experienced over the weekend and the days leading up to it are shocking and disgusting, as I said last week. There is no place for hate on Britain’s streets, and the police have confirmed that investigations are ongoing.
Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl)
My Lords, as someone who marched with hundreds of thousands of very peaceful protesters last Saturday, I witnessed not one single incitement to hatred of anyone. It was a march for peace until the EDL came on to the scene, and we all saw what happened. Will the Minister assure all those who marched for peace that they will not be chequered by the way they are being depicted as jihadis? The simple fact is that they were not.
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, a quick surf of the internet this morning would suggest that the noble Baroness is wrong. I suggest that trying to conflate the activities of the violent thugs who tried to invade the Cenotaph and those of the marchers, some of whom were indeed peaceful, is also wrong. The fact is that 15 officers were injured at the Cenotaph, two of whom required hospital treatment, and my best wishes go to those officers. I think the police behaved entirely appropriately in dealing with the violence, and I seriously hope that they also deal with those marchers who were doing precisely the things that the noble Baroness has alleged they were not.
Earl Russell (LD)
My Lords, in light of the unplanned departure of the previous Home Secretary and the extraordinary and deeply concerning violent events witnessed on the streets of London this weekend, can the Minister confirm whether the new Home Secretary will use more restrained language, to ease tensions on our streets, and refrain from interfering in the operational independence of the Metropolitan Police?
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
On the second part of the question, the previous Home Secretary did not interfere with the operational independence of the Metropolitan Police. On the first part, I have not yet spoken to the new Home Secretary, but I wish him very well in his new role.
Lord Walney (CB)
My noble friend is right that there has been an explosion of anti-Semitism in the capital and across the UK since 7 October. These marches are at the very least a factor in aggravating that. If the police, in exercising their judgment, feel that there is not sufficient trigger at the moment to say that there is a threat of serious public disorder, which is the current bar, is there not a case for re-examining the bar for asking for these marches to be banned, so that the cumulative effect on many members of the Jewish community can properly be taken into account?
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
The noble Lord makes a very good point. The Home Secretary has reserve powers and some legislative tools that enable intervention and direction, but those powers may be used only in line with statutory tests and public law principles and in very exceptional circumstances. The Metropolitan Police has not asked for that sort of intervention. He is quite right that the Government have been in regular contact with the police over the use of their powers to manage protests. Where we identify gaps in the legislation, we will seek to address them. As was widely reported this morning, that is still under review.
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
My Lords, any violence and threat is to be deplored, wherever it comes from. I congratulate the police, who did a superb job in very difficult circumstances. Of course there will be groups of people pushing the boundaries and acting unacceptably. The danger of the media is that it gives the impression that the only game in town is the marches and demos, but many on these Benches and other Members of this House have been meeting leading Israelis and Palestinians in our local communities and finding that there are people desperately trying to reach out to others and thinking about how we can take this forward. What are His Majesty’s Government doing at the moment to mobilise some of our leading Israelis and Palestinians to try to enable talks about how we might find a more positive narrative as we go forward?
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
The right reverend Prelate makes an extremely good point. I commend his activities and those of his colleagues and other faith leaders in trying to find civilised solutions to this problem. I am afraid I do not know what His Majesty’s Government are doing to try to encourage the sort of interactions he mentioned, but it deserves to be mentioned, on proportionality, that the organisers of the pro-Palestinian marches have a responsibility. Peter Tatchell, whom many in the House will know, was blocked from marching with the pro-Palestinians for carrying a sign that said:
“End Israel’s occupation! End Hamas’s sexist, homophobic, anti-human rights dictatorship!”
That is pretty disgraceful. Everybody needs to exercise proportionality in this.
Lord Paddick (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I declare an interest as set out in the register. Anti-Semitism is unacceptable in any setting, but does the Minister agree that arresting people in the middle of a mass protest can result in serious disorder and injury to police officers, as can the police attempting to prevent people who are determined to protest from doing so, as we saw with the right-wing demonstrators on Saturday?
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, on this I am very happy to defer to the noble Lord’s extensive experience of policing protests of this type. It is self-evident that if you wade into a crowd, there is a chance that you will inflame tensions. The police are operationally independent and I will not judge what they did, but their approach makes some sense to me in that context.
Lord Coaker (Lab)
My Lords, as the right reverend Prelate did, I thank the Metropolitan Police and all the officers who were on the streets of London ensuring that Armistice Day events were not disrupted, facing disgraceful far-right violence and assaults while working to pursue appalling, vile anti-Semitism—as the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, pointed out to us—and other hate crimes. Does the Minister agree that it would have been helpful in the run-up to these events to have had a Home Secretary who calmed tensions rather than using language that inflamed some of the protests and policing that we saw? Above all, despite the Minister’s points to this House, will the new Home Secretary ensure that never again do we have a situation in which a Home Secretary of this country seems to question the operational independence of the police? Is it not one of the fundamental parts of our democracy that the police can police without fear or favour?
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
I agree with the noble Lord. It is, as he knows, governed by a pretty rigorous protocol. I went into the details of that protocol last week, and I can do it again if anybody wants to hear it—I suspect they do not.
The previous Home Secretary is no longer in post, so debating what she did or did not say seems moot. As regards the new Home Secretary, I have not spoken to him and I do not know what he is thinking.
Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, it is no surprise that we are seeing Nazi-level propaganda and incitement of terrorism on the streets of London when some of the organisations behind these marches have had connections with a Hamas leader who lives in the UK. What is being done to investigate the links between those organisations and proscribed terrorist groups?
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
I cannot answer that question, but I certainly hope the police are investigating.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, I revert to the point made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans. It would be a marvellous beginning for the new Home Secretary if he were to call in leaders of the Jewish community—who have the admiration and respect of us all—together with those responsible Palestinians who have a legitimate cause for concern at the destruction and deaths in Gaza. If he were to do that, using moderate language—which I am sure he would—it would help to ease tension and to bring together people who have a common cause.
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
I am happy to reflect my noble friend’s opinion to the new Home Secretary when I speak to him.
Lord Hain (Lab)
My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, that the examples she gave are completely unacceptable and should be met with a firm response. The degree of anti-Semitism in the country at the moment is deeply shocking, as is the degree of racism and Islamophobia. That is something we should commonly confront, but I urge the Government to be very careful about curbing protests and the right to march through London. In 1936, when anti-fascists confronted Mosley’s mob swaggering through Jewish communities, many of the actions of those anti-fascists could have been regarded as disorderly, but they stopped them and they stopped that wave of anti-Semitism. Similarly, many of the actions I helped organise through the Anti-Nazi League in the late 1970s saved local Jewish communities and black communities from assault. Be very careful about curbing the right to march peacefully.
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
I entirely agree with the noble Lord.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, we are told that two of those arrested in Paris for painting anti-Semitic slogans on French synagogues have said to the police that they were acting under orders from Russian sources. Are the Government looking to see whether there is any element of foreign interference in some of these protests? It is in the Russian interest to stir up disorder in this country, and this is a very easy way to do it.
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, I have absolutely no idea.
Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)
One of the saddest pictures we saw over the weekend was of the two poppy sellers—an elderly couple in Victoria station—having to be gradually moved and shifted because of large numbers of loud and very angry protesters around them. What annoyed me, and I think vast numbers of members of the public, was that the police standing there did nothing to help those poppy sellers. They seemed to be more interested in supporting and helping the demonstrators. Did the Metropolitan Police Commissioner give an outright order to rank and file police that they had to go very easy with protesters but stamp down on anything else that seemed to be out of order?
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, I do not know what direct orders the Metropolitan Police Commissioner gave. As I said earlier, the response to the Cenotaph, where violence was being deployed, was swift and appropriate—not that it is my call to judge the police’s actions; that is for the courts. I do not know whether he gave those sorts of orders. I was at Victoria station by chance on Saturday afternoon, and I have never felt more uncomfortable in this country because of the tension. It was palpable in the air. It was disgraceful.
Lord Mann (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I have visited Jewish communities across the United Kingdom over the last few weeks. Everywhere the message is the same: Jewish people and Jewish families are scared. Does the Minister agree with me that the increased police presence we have seen in Jewish communities, be it in Leeds, Manchester, London or elsewhere, has been essential in ensuring that people have been kept safe? Can we be certain that this increased presence will continue for as long as it is needed?
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
I certainly hope so. Police forces up and down the country have stepped up their neighbourhood patrols to support local Jewish and Muslim communities, including visiting schools, synagogues and mosques. We have seen a rise in the anti-Semitism that the noble Lord describes; that is appalling. I certainly hope that the police’s response will stay in place for as long as it is needed.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, I refer to my policing interests in the register. There were clearly images of people on those marches over the weekend doing appalling things. I hope the Metropolitan Police and other police forces are using those images to track down the individuals concerned and then to take action against them. No doubt the Minister will be able to confirm that this is the case. Can he also draw attention to the huge march against anti-Semitism that took place in Paris? Does he think it would be appropriate if something similar happened in this country?
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
The police have said that they are investigating those images so, yes, I think I can confirm to the noble Lord that this is happening. I would certainly like to see a march against anti-Semitism, and I would join it.
King’s Speech
(1 year ago)
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Lord McInnes of Kilwinning
That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty as follows:
“Most Gracious Sovereign—We, Your Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled, beg leave to thank Your Majesty for the most gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament”.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (Lord Callanan) (Con)
My Lords, on behalf of your Lordships’ House, I thank the King for delivering the gracious Speech. I am grateful for the privilege of opening today’s debate on the Motion for an humble Address.
Today, I shall outline the Government’s plans to grow the economy, to secure our energy supply for the long term, to deliver a world-class transport network for the whole of the UK, and to protect our environment. My noble friend Lady Penn will close what I am sure will be yet another spirited debate, with many important contributions from all parts of the House. My right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer will present the Autumn Statement to Parliament on 22 November. Your Lordships will be unsurprised to know that I will not pre-empt any of his announcements or the OBR’s forecast but will focus on the Government’s recent record on the economy.
Despite enormous global challenges, the UK is proving the doubters wrong. The Government have made difficult long-term decisions to restore stability and grow the economy. The best tax cut for the UK public is indeed a cut in inflation. Inflation has already fallen to 6.7% since peaking at 11.1%, and most major forecasters agree that we are on track to meet our goal of halving inflation by the end of the year, before returning it to 2% by 2025. This will enable us to create better-paid jobs and opportunities across the whole of our United Kingdom, guaranteeing a better future for the next generation.
To deliver that growth, we are creating the right environment for businesses to invest and expand. We have announced a £27 billion tax cut for business, and the UK now has the lowest corporation tax rate in the G7, as well as one of the most generous capital allowance regimes in the whole of the OECD. Our labour market reforms will also add 110,000 people to the workforce, and our extended 30 hours free childcare reforms will help to support even more people into the workplace.
At the same time, we remain on track to reduce the national debt. The independent OBR confirmed in March that debt will be falling by the end of the forecast. Reducing debt provides the essential foundations for sustainable growth, as it reduces spending on debt interest that could otherwise support essential public services. It also allows the Government space to respond to future shocks and reduces the financial pressure passed on to our children and grandchildren.
We recognise the immense challenges that British people have been facing with the cost of living. Putin’s war in Ukraine caused global economic disruption and unleashed huge energy price increases, leading to pressures on living standards. We have taken significant action over the past year to give struggling families the support they desperately need. We stepped in last winter to protect communities and businesses, spending £40 billion to help pay half the average household energy bill. Although energy prices have been steadily coming down since, we are continuing to offer support, with a £900 cost of living payment going to those on means-tested benefits. Taken together, our support to households to help with higher bills is worth £94 billion, or £3,300 per household on average, across 2022-23 and 2023-24—one of the largest household support packages in the whole of Europe.
We cannot thrive as a country without affordable, reliable and abundant energy. As we steadily transition to a net-zero economy, this Government recognise the huge role that home-produced renewables and nuclear power will play, alongside North Sea oil and gas. Our commitment to investing in the UK’s energy infrastructure will help to unlock private investment, scaling up green jobs and growth across the country.
The Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill will make the UK more energy independent by increasing investor and industry confidence with regular oil and gas licensing. The Bill’s emissions tests will ensure that future licensing supports our transition to net zero. It will enhance the UK’s energy security and reduce dependence on imports with higher emissions intensity. It will protect our domestic oil and gas industry, which supports more than 200,000 jobs, as we grow the UK economy and realise our net-zero target in a proportionate and realistic way.
This country has led the world on tackling carbon emissions, and we will continue to do so. Of all the major economies, we have set the deepest cuts in emissions for 2030, and we have so far exceeded all our targets, including cutting our emissions by almost half over the past 30 years and boosting our share of renewables from 7% in 2010 to over 40% today. To realise our ambitions, we have to take a pragmatic approach, taking consumers and industry with us; we cannot impose unaffordable, extra costs on households, particularly when millions of families are struggling with the cost of living.
By that same token, we are working with Ofgem and suppliers to reform markets so that they work for consumers more effectively and are fit for the future. I outlined a few moments ago the immediate support being offered directly to households by the Government, but we also want to ensure that customers get the service they deserve and that vulnerable customers are prioritised and protected.
We also want a fair approach to decarbonising how we heat our homes. We are already investing £12 billion in energy efficiency and clean heat this Parliament, and we have seen the share of homes in the highest energy efficiency bands rise from 14% in 2010 to around 50% today. We recognise that we need to support people to make these changes, so, in addition to financial support, we are giving people more time and support to make the necessary changes in their own homes.
Our energy transition plans have enormous potential to deliver economic prosperity across the country, as well as the security that comes from being able to power Britain from Britain. Green investment is a top priority, and we are doubling down on sectors with the greatest opportunities, such as carbon capture and storage, offshore wind, and solar and fusion energy.
Britain’s nuclear revival is well under way too, with Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C set to power 12 million homes. We have launched Great British Nuclear to deliver our pipeline of resilient projects, while accelerating the development of small modular reactors.
However, despite the billions being invested in new energy projects, we do not yet have the grid infrastructure to bring that energy to households and businesses. So we are building new transmission infrastructure and speeding up connections to the grid. We will set out the UK’s first ever spatial plan for infrastructure to give industry more certainty, and we will fast-track plans for the most nationally significant projects.
I move on to transport. Responsible government is about making the tough, long-term decisions to secure a brighter future. It is why we have scaled back our plans for HS2—a project that saw its costs double, its business case weaken and its completion date repeatedly delayed. Rather than focus on a rail line between Birmingham and Manchester, we are prioritising the millions of everyday journeys that matter most to the British public.
By stopping HS2 in the West Midlands, we will reinvest every penny of the £36 billion saved into better bus services, faster regional train links, new road schemes and pothole-free streets. Network North will see more places and more people benefit more quickly, thanks to the choices that we have made.
Now, with work already under way, we will complete HS2 between Euston and Birmingham. It remains a ground-breaking infrastructure project—indeed, one of the biggest in the country. Talks are already under way on the huge regeneration opportunity at Euston, which could potentially see 10,000 homes built.
While the packed parliamentary timetable has prevented us from introducing legislation in this Session, we will bring forward the rail reform Bill for pre-legislative scrutiny, alongside the benefits that we are already delivering in areas such as ticketing, private sector innovation and better contracts for operators.
Moving away from rail, the Government have been clear that the war on motorists must end. For many, cars are a lifeline, not a luxury. Yet, across the country, drivers face overzealous enforcement measures and a variety of restrictions which clearly do not have public support. In our capital, thanks to the newly expanded ULEZ scheme, hard-working families must now decide to either pay up or sell up. The Government are on the side of motorists, and the 30 measures in our Plan for Drivers will ensure that people can travel where, when and how they wish.
Looking to the future, we remain committed to seeing more zero-emission vehicles on Britain’s roads. However, that transition should be proportionate and, wherever possible, we should ease the burden on working families. That is why we have extended the period in which you can buy new petrol and diesel cars by five years, ensuring more time for zero-emission vehicle prices to fall and the used market to grow. However, our overall ambition remains the same. We will ban the sale of new polluting vehicles by 2035 and, to give manufacturers certainty, our zero-emission vehicle mandate, which kicks in from next year, will set minimum targets for clean car production.
Automated vehicles will also be part of our future. We want to position Britain as the global leader of a sector that could be worth up to £42 billion by 2035, with 38,000 jobs at stake. So, in this parliamentary Session, we will bring forward the Automated Vehicles Bill, enabling the safe deployment of self-driving vehicles.
We will also—I know this will have particular support in this House—bring London’s pedicabs under the letter of the law.The Pedicabs (London) Bill will give Transport for London powers to regulate the city’s pedicab industry, reassuring passengers and road users that those vehicles and operators are properly licensed and accountable.
I move on to discuss the environment. The Government are committed to leaving the environment in a better state than we found it. On 31 January 2023, Defra published a revised Environmental Improvement Plan. This sets out how we will deliver our long-term Environment Act targets, matched with interim targets to measure progress over the shorter term.
With respect to air quality, in addition to our existing emissions and concentrations targets we have set two new targets for fine particulate matter, the pollutant most damaging to human health, under the Environment Act 2021. We are also enhancing protected landscape management plans through the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act and are placing a stronger requirement on partners to contribute to their delivery.
On green finance, we published a cross-government green finance strategy and a nature markets framework in March 2023, setting out the action we are taking to support a transition to a net-zero, climate-resilient, nature-positive economy. On climate change, Defra published the Third National Adaptation Programme in July this year. This sets out a programme of action for the next five years to respond to a range of climate risks facing the United Kingdom.
I am also delighted that we are introducing the animal welfare (livestock exports) Bill to Parliament. Animal welfare is a priority for the Government, and we have some of the highest standards in the world. Thanks to our actions, the UK is building on our reputation as a world leader on animal welfare: we are joint top of World Animal Protection’s animal protection index.
Since the publication of Our Action Plan for Animal Welfare in 2021, we have delivered on a range of key manifesto commitments. We have increased the penalties for those convicted of animal cruelty, passed the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022 and launched the Animal Sentience Committee. We have made cat microchipping compulsory and have announced the extension of the Ivory Act 2018 to cover five endangered species: hippopotamus, narwhal, killer whale, sperm whale and walrus.
Now that we have left the European Union, we can fulfil our manifesto commitment to end excessively long journeys for slaughter and fattening. The animal welfare (livestock exports) Bill will ban the export from Great Britain of cattle, sheep, goats, pigs and horses for slaughter and fattening, stopping the unnecessary stress, exhaustion and injury caused by the export of live animals.
This Government have extensive and comprehensive plans to deliver a strong economy, a secure energy supply, a state-of-the-art transport sector and a safeguarded environment, laying the foundations for a more secure, resilient and prosperous country.
Lord Livermore (Lab)
My Lords, the King’s Speech promised to “strengthen our economy” and
“put the country on a better path”.
Such measures would indeed be welcome. The country is ready for change. Britain desperately needs national renewal, with a serious plan for growth. Yet, in reality, the King’s Speech delivered nothing of the kind. Just as with today’s reshuffle, it merely brought back more of the same.
Just as today’s reshuffle has seen the return of a man the Prime Minister himself described as part of a “record of failure”, the King’s Speech saw a continuation of a failed approach that has led to 13 years of national decline; no change from an economic model that has failed over 13 years to give working people the security and opportunity they deserve; 13 years of failure that began with the Cameron-era austerity that missed all its targets, then gave us a Brexit that broke all its promises—followed, inevitably, by a mini-Budget that gambled with people’s livelihoods, undermined our financial institutions, sent government bonds plunging and pushed the pension market to the brink of collapse; 13 years of chaos and instability that have left Britain weaker, and working people paying the price.
The Resolution Foundation has calculated that never in living memory have Britain’s families got so much poorer over the course of one Parliament, with typical working-age household incomes set to be 4% lower in 2024 than at the start of this Parliament in 2019.
Many of those families are home owners, who worked hard, saved for a deposit and have taken pride in having somewhere to call their own. But the security that that should bring, has, for many, turned to dread, as they receive letters from their lender telling them their bills are going up by hundreds of pounds a month. Interest rates have now risen 14 times to a 15-year high of 5.25%, while the average two-year fixed-rate mortgage rose from 2.6% to 6%. As a result, average mortgage holders have paid £2,900 more this year—8.3% of their disposable income. Some 1.4 million people will lose a staggering 20% of their disposable income.
The Government may well this week meet their own self-imposed target to halve inflation from the levels they allowed it to rise to. But, as for the actual inflation target, the Bank of England now expects inflation to stay above target throughout next year, with interest rates remaining at their current levels for—I quote—“an extended period”.
We have falling incomes, persistently high inflation, higher food and energy bills, rising mortgages and, if that were not bad enough, the highest tax burden for 70 years. There have been 25 tax rises since this Government came to power in 2010. Taxes are now £120 billion higher every year, equivalent to £4,000 more in tax every year for every household. Why is tax so high? Because growth is so low. UK GDP is still 5.2% short of its pre-pandemic trend, a far worse performance than either the United States or the euro area. At the start of this year, the Prime Minister promised to get the economy growing again, but we are now going backwards—from low growth to no growth. The latest GDP figures show that there was no growth at all in the third quarter of this year. The Bank of England’s latest forecast now shows no growth at all in any of the next three years—no growth this year, next year or in 2025. As a result, growth next year is now set to be the lowest in the entire G7.
After 13 years, the Government’s economic approach simply is not working, but where is their plan to fix it? So much of this King’s Speech is either insubstantial or trivial, when what we needed was a credible plan for growth. We needed a modern industrial strategy to show that we are serious about securing the jobs of the future. We needed an employment Bill, time and again promised but which once again failed to materialise. We needed a planning Bill to cut red tape and get Britain building. We needed a Bill to give British business the skilled workforce to succeed. What we got was a transport agenda 85% of whose projects were re-announcements, and an oil and gas Bill that everyone in the energy sector knows is a political gimmick. Despite Britain being the worst-hit country in western Europe during the energy crisis, even the Energy Secretary admits that the Bill will not take a single penny off anyone’s energy bills.
Increasing growth is clearly the biggest economic challenge our country faces. In government, and in our first King’s Speech, Labour’s defining economic mission will be to restore growth to Britain, with good jobs and productivity growth in every part of our country. Our plan to deliver that mission is built on three pillars. First, we will rebuild our economy on the rock of stability and fiscal responsibility, so that we can withstand shocks in an insecure world and families and businesses have the certainty to plan ahead. That means we need strong, robust and respected economic institutions. The last Labour Government gave operational independence to the Bank of England, and we will protect that independence. The next Labour Government will strengthen the Office for Budget Responsibility. We will guarantee in law that any Government making significant, permanent tax and spending changes will be subject to an independent forecast by the OBR, and we will provide greater certainty by committing to holding a single annual Budget by the end of each November, giving businesses and families four months to plan for the new tax year.
Together, these changes will be put to Parliament as a new charter of Budget responsibility, introducing a new fiscal lock on Britain’s economic institutions, strengthening our stability and our security. We will also introduce new fiscal rules. We will not borrow to fund day-to-day spending and we will reduce national debt as a share of GDP. Again, these rules will be put to Parliament to agree. With a Labour Government, fiscal responsibility will be embedded in the Budget process. Never again will a Prime Minister or Chancellor be allowed to repeat the mistakes of the Liz Truss Budget. Never again can we allow a repeat of the devastation that Budget brought to family finances, or allow a plan to be pushed through that is uncosted, unscrutinised and wholly detached from economic reality.
The second pillar of our plan for growth is to unlock billions of pounds of private sector investment into British industries. Investment is the lifeblood of a growing economy. It is investment that allows businesses to expand, create jobs and compete internationally so that new plants, factories and research can come to Britain. Yet today, business investment in the UK is at rock bottom. Among 30 OECD countries, Britain is currently 27th for private sector investment as a share of GDP. In government, we will seek to restore investment, as a share of the economy, to its level under the last Labour Government, bringing us back in line with our international peers.
The Government simply stepping back, looking only to business, is not the route to success. As our competitors understand, there is a role for the Government in energising and derisking investment into new and growing industries, so we will provide catalytic investment through a new national wealth fund to unlock billions of pounds more in private sector investment, delivering new gigafactories, clean steel plants and renewable-ready ports across Britain.
This new wealth fund will be set a target so that, for every pound of investment the Government put in, we will leverage in three times as much investment from the private sector. To further spur investment, a Labour King’s Speech will get Britain building the homes and infrastructure of the future, with a reformed planning system to remove the barriers to investing in new industries. We will introduce a modern industrial strategy to accelerate the building of critical infrastructure in energy, roads, rail and housing, and our energy independence Bill will create “GB Energy”, harnessing homegrown renewable power, so that we can cut energy bills, create jobs, tackle the climate crisis and give Britain back its energy security.
Our final pillar to restore growth is to give working people the skills and opportunities they need to succeed. To make work pay, we will introduce a genuine living wage. To ensure that the workforce can meet local skills needs, we will transform the further education system, with specialist technical colleges delivering tailored courses designed with local businesses, and we will turn the failed apprenticeship levy into a new growth and skills levy to give businesses the flexibility they are asking for to train their workforce and deliver growth.
Measures to restore stability, to boost investment, to get Britain building, to cut energy bills and to secure for Britain the industries of the future: this is a positive Labour agenda offering a decade of national renewal in place of 13 years of national decline. What a contrast this is to a King’s Speech from a Government who are out of ideas and out of time, and who have given up on governing; a King’s Speech that shows that a very clear choice now faces the British people—a continuation of 13 years of chaos and insecurity, or a changed Labour Party now ready to change Britain.
Baroness Sheehan (LD)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to open day three of the debate on the gracious Speech from these Benches. I will be concentrating the bulk of my remarks on energy measures and will address the environment to some extent—climate change and nature being two sides of the same coin. I will restrict my remarks in the comfort and knowledge that noble friends following me are far better qualified than I am to cover the remaining topics.
I wanted to preface my disappointment with the gracious Speech by congratulating the Government on at least one item in it, so I scoured the mighty tome and found one that I approve of—the animal welfare (livestock exports) Bill. It is late, but welcome nevertheless.
I and many others were relieved that the dastardly plan to criminalise homeless people sleeping in tents and make it an offence for charities to help them had not found its way into the gracious Speech, and on that I congratulate the Government. The Home Secretary was adept at finding new ways to cast herself as a cartoon villain. She will not be missed. I am sorry that I digress a bit from the subject of today’s topics.
I jest, of course, when I refer to the gracious Speech as a “mighty tome”, because it was nothing of the sort: the legislative agenda with which we are presented is light and largely insubstantial. Before I move on to the bulk of my remarks, I express my disappointment that there was no reference to peat or the growing problem of disposable vapes. In particular, there had been hopes that the Government would address their promise to ban the sale of peat by the end of this Parliament. Implementing a comprehensive delivery mechanism to address degraded peatlands is a priority recommendation in the Climate Change Committee’s 2023 progress report, so it is a disappointment that the Government were silent on this.
Going forward, I hope that we can use the tobacco and vapes Bill to tackle disposable vapes. Aside from the damage they are doing to young people’s health, the amount of lithium that is piling high in landfills and not being recycled is criminal. The Green Alliance states that, in the past year, enough lithium to make 5,000 EV batteries was disposed of. I hope the Government will give my comments serious consideration.
The star announcement was the Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill, to
“support the future licensing of new oil and gas fields”,
but the more than 100 new licences granted this year did not require new legislation, nor did those in previous years, so I am a little perplexed by the Government’s inclusion of this measure in the gracious Speech. Why did the Government feel it necessary to legislate for something that already happens? Surely, in this instance, they could have spared His Majesty the embarrassment.
Unless the Minister can give us evidence to the contrary, the Bill is both an unnecessary measure and an abuse of parliamentary time. Moreover, it flouts our international commitment to curb our carbon emissions. Is it not the case that, if the UK were to extract oil and gas from all the fields currently in production, we would exceed our nationally determined contribution commitments as per the Paris Agreement? If the Minister does not have the answer to hand, I hope he will write to me.
Not only will this Bill trash our reputation abroad, but it will have zero impact on easing the burden on people struggling to pay their energy bills. Shockingly, the Secretary of State is on record as saying there is nothing in the King’s Speech to help people struggling with their energy bills today. She inexplicably went on to speak of future tax receipts funding future investment in renewables, which will bring cheaper energy bills at some point in the future. What do the Government say to people suffering from the cost of living crisis today? “Not enough” is the answer. The damage that the Government have done is so great that the measures the Minister outlined at the outset are not enough for the poorest households.
The Bill and the gracious Speech are silent on where this future investment in renewables will be deployed. Can the Minister tell us? Can he assure your Lordships’ House that that investment will be in proven, cheap renewable sources, such as wind and solar, rather than unproven sources of energy that will not come online in time, until sometime in the distant future, if at all, by which time this sorry Government will, we hope, be history? If the Government are referring to carbon capture and storage and small modular nuclear reactors then they are betting the country’s energy security and energy affordability on technologies that are unproven at scale, with no guarantee that they will ever be deliverable safely and in the required timeframe.
In her Commons speech on the gracious Speech, the Secretary of State was less than ingenuous when she said:
“Even the Climate Change Committee acknowledges that oil and gas will be part of our energy mix when we reach net zero in 2050. So if we will need it, it is common sense that we produce as much of our own of it here.”—[Official Report, Commons, 9/11/23; col. 282.]
What assessment have the Government made of our requirements for oil and gas in 2050? What are the assumptions that dictate we will need annual granting of oil and gas licences? The Secretary of State’s comments are in direct conflict with the International Energy Agency and the Climate Change Committee, which both state that no new oil and gas fields are necessary to achieve net zero by 2050. Indeed, if we are to keep within a 1.5 degree centigrade rise in global temperature, it is essential that we reduce emissions with immediate effect. Currently, global emissions continue to rise.
The Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill is wrong on so many fronts. It flies in the face of our international agreements, is on the wrong side of history and will not bring the price of oil down. That oil will first go to the international markets via the Netherlands for refining, as we no longer have the refining capacity here in the UK—or are we going to take the retrograde step of bringing that industry back?
The oil and gas we produce will necessarily be placed on the international commodities market, where it will be available for us to buy back at the global fixed price. It is no use the Minister saying it will help global supply and therefore bring the price down, because it will not. It is a fact that
“UK production isn't large enough to … impact the global price of gas”.
Those are not my words, but the words of former Energy Minister, and now former chair of the Conservative Party, Greg Hands. I am very glad I look at my Twitter feed quite regularly, because otherwise I could not keep up with who is current and who is not. It has really messed up my speech.
We need more energy from renewables that are indigenous and ours in a way that oil and gas can no longer ever be. So why, I ask myself, are the Government doing this? They are doing this to create what they term a wedge issue in the next general election—how cynical. Nothing, it seems, is off bounds. Winning, whatever the cost, seems to be the only thing that matters. But they are mistaken if they think broadening the ULEZ issue in the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election, and doubling down on climate change measures, will translate into a winning message at next year’s general election. “Bring it on”, I say.
The Government’s actions fly in the face of scientific consensus, advice from our own globally respected Climate Change Committee and statements by the world authority on global energy requirements, the International Energy Agency. They stretch our international credibility to incredulity and will increase the cost of living for people struggling to pay their bills. If the Government truly want to help the poorest and most vulnerable in our society, then my advice to them is the following.
First, they should get a national awareness campaign off the ground, with consumer advice on how to save energy. Secondly, they should put in place a well-resourced national energy conservation programme, to bring every possible dwelling and business premises to EPC standard C, including reversing the decision to exempt private landlords. Thirdly, they should get heat pumps—ground source or air source—installed in every home, where possible, and as quickly as possible. Fourthly, they should decouple the artificially high price of electricity from costly gas. Fifthly, they should lift the ban on onshore wind, the fastest and cheapest form of energy—it is still easier to put up an incinerator or open a new coal mine. Sixthly, they should sort out the national grid and bring it to a point where it is fit for purpose, both in updating its infrastructure and freeing it so that ready-to-go renewable projects are not held back.
In conclusion, we need leadership that recognises that the green transformation needs a Government that have the confidence to put in place the necessary building blocks now, not sometime in the future.
Baroness Hayman (CB)
My Lords, I declare my interests as chair and a director of the associated company Peers for the Planet. I will follow the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, in two respects. The first is to start with a positive and welcome the measures in the gracious Speech in relation to smoking and finally achieving a generation that will be smoke-free in this country. The second respect is that I will also be speaking on issues relating to climate and energy.
As the noble Baroness said, there are two separate, and arguably contradictory, elements relating to these issues in the Government’s proposals. First, there is the plan to mandate annual licensing for North Sea oil and gas drilling, which is a specific policy proposal to be underpinned by legislation. In contrast, we have much a more high-level and aspirational commitment to
“seek to attract record levels of investment in renewable energy sources and reform grid connections”
as well as to
“lead action on tackling climate change and biodiversity loss”
and
“support developing countries with their energy transition”.
These are high ambitions, but with no accompanying legislation or specific policy initiatives.
I have grave concerns about both sets of proposals: on the first, whether it is quite simply wrong in principle; and, on the second, whether it is mere words without the necessary substance behind them. Nowhere is there a commitment, which we need so badly, to provide a comprehensive, effective energy transition plan against which government proposals and government progress can be assessed.
I do not dispute, and I do not think anyone does, that we need existing oil and gas now and in the immediate future, and residual amounts once the majority of the grid is decarbonised, but the annual licensing regime proposed by the Government is, according to the FT, unlikely to reverse the dwindling reserves, a poor use of parliamentary time, and
“particularly short-sighted, given the volume of private capital globally now looking for a home in supporting the green transition”.
Last week the United Nations Environment Programme’s powerful Production Gap Report 2023 concluded:
“There is a need for governments to adopt both near- and long-term reduction targets for fossil fuel production and use”.
Yet our Government seem to be going in the opposite direction.
We will not achieve an orderly energy transition and meet ambitious electrification targets based only on top-line commitments and assertions for the future. We need serious plans led by government in partnership with industry, explained properly to the public, that are long-term in nature and accountable in their governance. That means key milestones, robust measures against which progress can be assessed, and clear roles and responsibilities. It means addressing the current woeful absence of comprehensive plans to address energy demand and efficiency, and a serious plan will need to address the fundamental lack of equity in our tax and subsidy regimes for investing in fossil fuels versus renewables and other clean technologies. It cannot be right that oil and gas companies receive a 29% investment allowance, which can rise to 80% for building new infrastructure, whereas renewable energy producers receive no investment allowance whatever. To put it simply, our taxation provisions favour the building of oil rigs over wind farms. I hope that when the Minister responds she will undertake to look at financial provisions to incentivise clean energy and support the move away from high-polluting, expensive and ultimately insecure fossil fuels.
The Prime Minister has committed to putting accountability and long-term decision-making at the heart of his Government. Without a transparent and robust transition plan that drives up renewables and exits fossil fuels, there is neither long-termism nor accountability. Industries and individuals in multiple sectors deserve to understand the Government's proposals for shifting our country’s energy profile and the implications and opportunities in green growth for those industries and individuals. If we wish to continue to lead globally, as the Government say they do, other countries need to see us doing this, and doing it well, at COP 28 and beyond.
The Lord Bishop of Durham
I look forward to the maiden speeches of the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, and my right reverend friend the Bishop of Norwich. The gracious Speech expressed the Government’s intention to make difficult long-term decisions to build a better future for the country. I confess that I am struggling to see much evidence of that plan. To think truly long-term about our country’s future, it is vital that children and families and the environment are at the heart of every policy, particularly from the Treasury. Without prioritising investing in children, what hope is there of moulding citizens who contribute positively to society and the economic growth that this Government desire? So I welcome the Government’s plan to increase the number of those taking high-quality apprenticeships, allowing young people to pursue their varied skills, but to ensure the educational success of all children we need to prioritise their well-being inside and outside the school gates. Without this support, how can we expect them to thrive?
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s recent report Destitution in the UK 2023 revealed that around 1 million children have experienced destitution in the past year—I repeat: 1 million children have experienced not simply poverty, but destitution. This number is not inevitable. It is preventable.
Poverty limits opportunity and life chances. The implementation of the two-child limit, the benefit cap and low levels of universal credit continue to push more families into poverty, impacting their education and futures. The well-being of children and families must be at the heart of all policy decisions. The Government will soon outline their proposals to reform welfare. Will His Majesty’s Government carefully consider whether the decisions they make truly place children and families at the centre?
We also cannot abandon the urgent present needs. If these are not addressed now, they will have lasting consequences. The Trussell Trust revealed last week that over the summer it distributed record numbers of food parcels for that time of year, as well as having threateningly low levels of food-bank resources. As described by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation:
“We used to worry about food banks opening. Now we’re worrying about food banks closing”.
A vital lifeline for those facing hardship and unexpected costs has been the household support fund, allowing local authorities to help directly those most in need. This is due to end in March 2024, which will leave a gap that neither local government nor the charity sector has the resources to fill, pushing even more families into crisis. So I ask the Minister: will His Majesty’s Government renew this fund and develop a long-term strategy for local crisis support and proper economic support for local government?
I also believe that economic growth is hindered by certain groups being prevented from contributing to the economy. Nowhere is that truer than with refugees and those who are displaced. Refugees are gifts to our communities and companies alike. Our shared life is all the stronger due to the determination and contribution of many migrants. I highly commend the way the Government have piloted the tier 2 visa scheme with Talent Beyond Boundaries. Since 2021, it has seen 500 refugees come to Britain to help fill the country’s skills gap and contribute to our economic growth, including: medics, lawyers, IT workers, graphic designers, civil engineers, construction engineers, and more. It is clear evidence that compassion, justice, safe routes and good economics do often correlate. Will His Majesty’s Government commit to expanding this tier 2 visa scheme for refugees?
It remains nonsensical to prevent asylum seekers who have waited over six months for a determination of their case from working. It takes the toughest toll on people seeking asylum, but the nation is also missing out on tax revenue, much-needed specialists and a reduction in subsistence support. Allowing people seeking asylum to work could benefit the UK economy by well over £300 million each year. More importantly, it would allow people to rebuild their lives with dignity and purpose. Will His Majesty’s Government rethink this matter? We all want to see long-term decisions and economic growth that change this country for the better, but that begins with placing the future generation at the heart of those decisions and not preventing those who are in need and in a well-placed position to do so from contributing their skills to our nation’s life.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham. We all share his aspiration to ensure that children and families are supported, but in order to do so we need to create the wealth to achieve that. Governments do not create wealth, businesses do, and I am sorry that his speech had very little about that aspect.
I shall talk about how the contents of the gracious Speech are going to be delivered and about the accountability of the Executive to Parliament. In the last Session there were 30 Ministers and Whips in this House, and 14 of them were unpaid. I thought we ended the practice of having to have private means in order to be able to serve in government in 1911. In this Parliament, one extremely effective and senior Minister of State was forced to take demotion in order to receive a reduced salary. Another able Front-Bencher gave up altogether as he could not continue unpaid. All Ministers of State in this House are now expected to work for nothing. This includes senior Defence and Foreign Office Ministers, whose duties involve travel away, and therefore they are not even able to claim the daily £300-odd allowance that is meant to cover accommodation and other necessary costs.
Unsurprisingly, the result has been that Peers are unwilling to take up ministerial office as many simply cannot afford it, while others are resentful at being asked to do so. The less than satisfactory remedy has been to appoint new but inexperienced Peers with deeper pockets, some of whom disappear after a short time in office to the Cross Benches—no names, no pack-drill.
Having served in government in the Commons for more than a decade, I am acutely aware of how much more demanding it is to be at the Dispatch Box in the House of Lords. Although politer, the questions are penetrating—even from your own side—and well-informed, and Ministers are expected to answer for the Government as a whole. Great rafts of legislation, bristling with Henry VIII clauses that have not even been discussed in the other place, surge up the Corridor for detailed consideration long after the other place has gone to bed. The House of Lords sits for longer hours than the elected House. In the last Session, 7,937 amendments to Bills were tabled and, unlike in the other place, each one is considered, with any of us free to speak with no restrictions on time—something that the Liberal Benches take full advantage of. Of those, 2,680 were government amendments accepted by the House, together with 277 opposition amendments. In contrast, as most Bills in the other place are timetabled, few if any amendments are considered and debated at all. The truth is that the other place is no longer doing its job of scrutinising legislation effectively and holding the Executive to account. There is much talk of reform of the House of Lords, but the Lords is working, working hard and doing a good job; it is the other place that is in need of reform.
Ministers in the Lords cannot be paid a ministerial salary because the Government have increased the numbers of Ministers in the Commons to 95, the maximum number allowed. I would like to think this profusion of Ministers had nothing to do with extending patronage and reducing parliamentary accountability. However, there is certainly little evidence that it leads to better government.
There has clearly been blatant ministerial inflation. I am indebted to my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham for pointing out that Baroness Thatcher’s first Administration had two Ministers in the Department of Transport in 1979—a formidable pair, in my noble friends Lord Fowler and Lord Clarke. This morning—or at least earlier this morning—there were five Ministers, even though much of what they were responsible for in 1979 has been privatised. The DHSS had five Ministers and is now replaced by two departments with a total of 12 Ministers, six in the DWP and six in the DHSC.
The Ministerial and other Salaries Act 1975 imposes a limit on the number of Ministers of 109, while the House of Commons Disqualification Act provides that there can be no more than 95 holders of ministerial office in the Commons entitled to vote. There is agreement on all sides of the House that the current position is outrageous and that the Prime Minister should either reduce the number of Ministers in the Commons today—he has an opportunity to do so—or introduce a Bill to increase the statutory limit to 123. Successive Cabinet Office Ministers have agreed that the position is unacceptable but then move on, having done nothing to change it. Rishi Sunak, our Prime Minister, has promised to take difficult decisions to ensure good government and the long-term interests of the country.
Personal wealth cannot be a qualification for ministerial office. I welcome the appointment of David Cameron as Foreign Secretary in this House, but it would be rather awkward if he was paid and his Minister of State was not.
Lord Woodley (Lab)
My Lords, I never thought I would agree with a contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, but I do.
This was a deeply disappointing King’s Speech—the first, and quite possibly the last, by this lame-duck illegitimate Prime Minister. There was no mention of an employment Bill, promised in the 2019 gracious Speech and over 20 times since by Ministers but now forgotten. Instead, we are going backwards on workers’ rights, with new strike-busting laws to be in place by Christmas.
I remind noble Lords that, at the last election, the party opposite promised to raise standards in employment rights and make Britain the very best place to work in Europe. But rather than raising standards, the Government have undermined workers’ rights, notwithstanding the valiant efforts from across all sides of your Lordships’ House during the passage of the retained EU law Act—efforts which saved us from falling off a legislative cliff edge at the end of this year. I say well done to noble Lords.
We fought hard in this House, but we were not strong enough to stop the Government lifting the ban on using agency staff to break strike action. Thankfully, the High Court agreed with noble Lords and quashed these changes. It is a shame that Ministers did not listen to this House, saving themselves the embarrassment of acting unlawfully, not to mention the public money that was wasted. But it is the anti-strikes Act—that is what it should be called—that now threatens to throw Britain into major industrial unrest. This pernicious legislation, which this House fought so hard against, could see millions of workers lose the most basic industrial right of all—the right to withdraw their own labour—with workers forced to cross their own picket lines and their trade unions legally obliged to enforce this. This is nothing short of scandalous, and the Government have not wasted any time, with new legislation soon set to make it impossible for rail, ambulance and border staff to take any kind of effective strike action.
As I said, this Government won power promising to improve employment rights, but they have done the opposite: they have broken promises to raise standards, with new attacks on workers’ rights and industrial unrest around the corner. These are the problems that the Government will leave Labour to fix. I am proud to be in a party that has pledged to clear up this mess in the first 100 days of government and to introduce day 1 rights at work, to repeal the draconian anti-trade union laws and to ban fire and rehire.
In this House, we have been on the right side of history time and again, standing up for workers and against government abuse of democratic processes. I urge Ministers to listen to this House and end their vendetta against trade unions; to keep their promises and improve employment rights, not weaken them; and to stand up for workers during this cost of living catastrophe, not knock them down by undermining their last line of defence. When the first worker is sacked—there will be one—for refusing to cross a picket line, whether on the railways, in our NHS or on our borders, this will spark a furious reaction from across the trade union movement and beyond. I urge the Government to rethink their reckless strategy and not to start an unnecessary war against their own workers. Let us encourage growth and productivity.
Lord Stern of Brentford (CB)
My Lords, the Government’s backsliding on climate action is a deeply damaging mistake, damaging for the UK, the world and the future of us all. It is a mistake founded on a whole series of muddled and incorrect arguments.
First, on the science, the Government speak as if the issue is simply about achieving net zero at mid-century, when what matters is the path to net zero and the total of emissions over time. Rapid reduction is crucial. The Government speak of “maxing out” from the North Sea, and thus appear to fail to understand that the Paris goals imply that much of the fossil fuels already discovered must be left in the ground. The Government also leave the impression that they have not understood the immense dangers of delay. I argued 17 years ago in the Stern review that the science told us that inaction was costly and dangerous. Let us not waste any more time.
Secondly, on energy, any actions on exploration which started now would lead to the production of oil and gas primarily in the next decade. For the Paris goals, the world’s consumption of oil would need to be around 60 million barrels a day 10 to 15 years from now, relative to the 100 of today. I refer, for example, to the work of the International Energy Agency. If oil consumption reduces, as it must, higher-cost producers will be forced out of the market; that would include most of UK production. Gas consumption must fall rapidly too. The alternative to these arguments is to claim that oil and gas would not be so reduced—in other words, to bet on the failure of Paris. That outcome would be disastrous for our children and grandchildren.
Thirdly, on security, the Government appear to believe that extracting oil and gas from the North Sea would deliver energy security—yet another confusion. That production is by the private sector and sold on world markets, as has already correctly been argued. It would, in large measure, be refined outside the UK. That it could be commandeered for UK use is simply not credible. We should also be clear that UK output has a negligible effect on world prices. Energy insecurity has come from dependence on fossil fuels, much of it produced in unstable parts of the world. Energy security will come from a rapid replacement of those sources. Renewables, with storage, already produce cheaper electricity than fossil fuels.
Fourthly, on health, the Government’s prolonging of the use of the internal combustion engine prolongs the killing and maiming of many in our towns and cities through air pollution. We kill in the UK around 35,000 people a year from air pollution, 20 times the deaths from road accidents. Children are especially vulnerable. Indeed, the president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health has shown clearly that the Prime Minister’s policies involve a serious threat to the lives and health of our children.
Fifthly, on our reputation internationally, the UK’s backsliding reduces the confidence of Governments and investors around the world. As many noble Lords know, I work a lot on the international action in these areas, and I have been asked by many investors and policymakers in the United States, India, China, Africa, Europe and beyond what the UK thinks it is doing. Our actions encourage those opposed to climate action around the world to strengthen their efforts. They encourage the oil companies of the world to argue that their products can be phased out over a much longer period than is required for Paris. The Guardian reports today on a study that indicates that 96% of oil companies are planning expansion and exploration. Our hard-won leadership and respect, established through our climate legislation, emissions reductions and our successful COP 26, are being eroded or thrown away.
The growth opportunities of the 21st century lie in clean and efficient technologies and not the destructive methods of the 20th century. With strong investment in these technologies, the UK can be in the vanguard of the new growth story, but not through the increasingly backward-looking policies for energy and environment set out in the gracious Speech. Vacillation creates uncertainty, raises the cost of capital, reduces investment and is anti-growth. The proposed policies are founded in bad economics, confusion on the science, misunderstanding of energy markets and energy security, negligence on health and a failure to understand our global role and reputation.
Baroness O’Grady of Upper Holloway (Lab)
My Lords, I declare my interests in respect of the Bank of England court and as former leader of the TUC.
In a world of accelerating shocks, building UK resilience is vital, but after 13 years of Conservative administration, the economy is in a mess. The latest figures show stagnating investment, low productivity and zero growth. Families are still struggling with energy bills and falling behind on mortgage repayments and the rent, and I hope everybody in this House will agree that homelessness is not a “lifestyle choice”. Yet the King’s Speech offered no serious analysis of the challenges we face and no serious remedies, so the forthcoming Autumn Statement is the Government’s last chance saloon.
Many would agree that we need measures to boost productivity, and that technologies such as AI offer big opportunities to do that, but I have a word of warning. As the OECD has pointed out, higher productivity is no longer any guarantee of higher wages. That link has been broken, so we also need new policies designed to ensure that productivity gains are shared more fairly. The Bletchley Park summit was a missed opportunity—for sure, eyebrows were raised when the Prime Minister announced the Elon Musk interview on social media, with an image of the door of No. 10 morphing into the corporate logo of X; after viewing that so-called interview, I think it is safe to conclude that Rishi Sunak is no Jeremy Paxman.
The summit red carpet was rolled out for big tech moguls and Governments, including those of China and Saudi Arabia, so there was certainly expertise in the room on AI and mass surveillance, but workers’ expertise was not invited. There was no seat at the table for the TUC, despite trade unions representing millions of workers in the UK and around the world. Instead, the Government have lined up behind big tech lobbyists against strong regulation of AI. We are asked to believe that the industry will voluntarily do the right thing, but have Ministers learned nothing from the bankers’ crash? As Larry Elliott observed:
“There is, once again, a danger that the pursuit of profit comes before the public good. As in 2008, that way lies disaster”.
Government must also face up to the urgent challenge of industrial disruption and the risk that AI will exacerbate both regional and class inequalities. New jobs will be created, for sure, but many jobs will change and some will go. To smooth the transition, the country needs much stronger social protection and much more ambitious investment in skills and training. Competition policy must be tougher to prevent tech megacompanies exploiting their market power, and workers need support to secure a fair share of those productivity gains. That must include new rights to technology agreements, a human review of AI decisions and the right to disconnect. And, not least at Amazon, where low-paid workers are in the midst of strike action, workers need stronger rights to organise and to win union recognition.
I have a final word to the wise. In a country crying out for change, pre-election tax cuts for the wealthy and a bankers’ bonuses free-for-all will not cut it. Instead, we need a serious plan to rebuild the UK’s economic resilience; investment in a green industrial strategy to grow good jobs; and a little less deference and a lot more determination to hold tech giants to account for the common good.
Lord Bridges of Headley (Con)
My Lords, I very much look forward to the speeches by my noble friend Lord Gascoigne and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich. I see that there is a pub called the “Lord Gascoigne”, which puts him in a unique and elite clique alongside the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, and the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington—sadly, there is no “Lord Bridges” yet, although I live in hope.
Here is a striking sentence from His Majesty’s gracious Speech:
“My Government view with grave concern the economic situation of the United Kingdom about which a full disclosure must be made to the nation”.
This sentence was not what we heard last Tuesday. It was in the gracious Speech of the last King, George VI, in 1951, but it is as relevant today as then. Given the talk about the Chancellor having headroom for tax cuts in the Autumn Statement and the fact that we might hear some good news at last on inflation this week, your Lordships might well ask why I am being Eeyore when I should be being Tigger. I could point to last week’s spluttering, flatlining GDP figures but, worrying though they are, that misses a much bigger picture.
Let us start with our debt. Earlier this year the OBR said:
“The 2020s are turning out to be a very risky era for the public finances … This rapid succession of shocks has … pushed government borrowing to its highest level since the mid-1940s, the stock of government debt to its highest level since the early 1960s, and the cost of servicing that debt to its highest since the late 1980s … UK … borrowing costs have risen more than in any other G7 economy … The rise in global interest rates has fed through to the UK’s debt servicing costs more than twice as fast as in the past or elsewhere”.
Debt is just one of the challenges we face. We have heard of others: demographics—our ageing population; decarbonisation, as the noble Lord, Lord Stern, mentioned; digitalisation, the need to retrain and skill our workforce; and defence, the need to strengthen our Armed Forces. These are the five Ds—the challenges that loom over all our debates. Let us consider what these challenges will mean for the public finances, not off in some distant date in 2050 or suchlike but in the life of the next Parliament. According to the OBR, the little list of greening our power, buildings and industry, increasing defence spending and higher health-related welfare benefits will alone cost about £40 billion a year of extra spending. That is before we get on to other topics, such as debt interest.
Some say that this spending is inevitable. I have heard it said many times over the last few months that our government will grow and that we are back in an era of big government. This is therefore an acceptance that we will have to pay more taxes, so that the Government can do more. That is a respectable argument, and many in this House will make it. I profoundly disagree with it because it suffers from a fatal flaw; the only way we will be able to overcome these challenges is to become more productive and more attractive for investment so that we grow more. If we do not grow, we will not be able to pay for the public services we all want. The road to growth is not paved by bigger government and higher taxes, yet I very much fear that this is the path we are on.
Too many people, particularly after years of QE, think we inhabit a forest of magic money trees in which the Government have the ability to spend their way out of any national disaster and to pick up the Bill for any personal misfortune. Too many people believe that government can, should and must regulate and legislate to stamp out or at least mitigate risk and bail out business failures. I strongly believe that, if we want to encourage the enterprise and innovation that power growth, this approach and mindset—I stress that word—are unsustainable. While a tax cut may cheer some this week and while there are some measures in this gracious Speech that I might be able to support, I fear that we are in danger of lulling ourselves into a false sense of security and that we are not rising to the challenges.
We need a coherent strategy to confront those five Ds, and it must ask and answer a very basic question: what do we want the state to do? What is the state’s responsibility and where does the responsibility for the individual lie? For that debate to happen, we need full disclosure about the state we are in and the precarious nature of our finances. Without that brutal honesty, we will stumble and stagnate. In the words of His late Majesty George VI, this overshadows “all other domestic matters”.
Lord Snape (Lab)
My Lords, in the nearly 20 years I have spent in your Lordships’ House—and even longer than that in the other place—I have seldom heard a less relevant gracious Speech than the one we are debating. There is barely a sensible word about transport policy; all we have is a Bill about pedicabs. When I first looked at it, I thought it was about pedicures. At least there would have been some sense in that: we all have feet and toenails but few of us ride on pedicabs. Surely this is a matter that could be dealt with by by-laws at Westminster council level.
We are told that there is no time to introduce the Bill for Great British Railways in the current Parliament. I remind your Lordships that it is five years since Mr Keith Williams sat down to prepare his report about the future of the railway industry—the fourteenth in the current century, as far as I can count. His report was initially so well received by government that Mr Grant Shapps—or whatever he is calling himself these days—attached his name to it. Overnight it became the Williams-Shapps report, although I very much doubt he did anything other than read what Keith Williams had prepared and have his picture taken in various railway stations—although he is normally one to avoid publicity.
There was not a word about those of us who have to suffer Avanti trains on a regular basis. As a regular traveller, I get a daily message from Avanti with a list of train cancellations. There were three today due to a shortage of train crew. There is something wrong with a railway system that depends on blaming trade unionists for its failure. One of the many jobs I did during my railway experience was rostering train crews. Any depot that relies on rest day working and overtime to provide a basic service is obviously undermanned, yet it is cheaper for the people who run our railway system to run it on that basis than to adequately employ people.
There was not a word about the sale of Arriva trains. This is not a corner shop we are selling off. This is a train service that runs from Aberdeen to Penzance and from Birmingham to London Marylebone. This company provides the bulk of buses in the north-east and a quarter or so of London’s buses. Yet, without any reference to His Majesty’s Government, it is being sold by the German Government to an American private equity company based in Miami that is registered in the Cayman Islands for tax purposes. We are used to some of the villainy that has taken place so far as PPE is concerned, so it should not surprise any of us that this Conservative Government should stand by while this sort of conduct takes place.
Do your Lordships think that the shareholders of I Squared, which is acquiring Arriva, will be concerned about the future of rail passengers in the United Kingdom? The people I talk to in the United States cannot believe that this country could sell its main assets in the way that we do. The land of the free forbids foreign ownership of industries such as the railway, and yet we are to give ours away.
There was not a word about HS2—although the Minister mentioned it during his opening speech—where we have the worst of all worlds. We have a rump of a high-speed train running from Aston in Birmingham to Acton in London. It will presumably be a premium fare service but slower than the existing high-speed trains that run on the palpably inadequate infrastructure we have at present. We are the laughing stock of the railway world.
We heard from the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, and the Prime Minister that the private sector will rebuild Euston station. I bet it will. I do not know anybody in your Lordships’ House who would invest much money in that; I cannot see that very much private money will be invested.
At least there is some hope as far as the bus industry is concerned, although not very much. The proposals that freeze the £2 or £2.50 maximum charge for our buses—the major method of public transport in this country—run only until October next year. As far as this Government are concerned, that is probably long enough and just about right.
In 2010 the Government signed a PFI agreement with the city of Birmingham—the city I live in, although I have never managed to acquire the accent—to maintain the roads and traffic lights. They have not renewed that agreement and, unless they do so, work will cease on Birmingham’s highways and the city will be bereft of about £500 million.
This is, I hope, the last King’s Speech that we hear from this Government. The sooner they are sitting on these Benches, the better it will be for this country.
Lord Gascoigne (Con) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, it is the honour of a lifetime to rise to speak for the first time in your Lordships’ House. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect to be granted such a privilege. Before entering, I was repeatedly assured that everyone in the House would be warm and welcoming, and I assumed such words were akin to those given by your dentist just prior to them unveiling drilling equipment last seen in the digging of the Channel Tunnel. However, I have been genuinely struck by the friendliness from all around the House, and I thank your Lordships for the exceptionally warm words today as well. Although it has been a few months since I was introduced, every day before entering your Lordships’ Chamber the heart beats a little faster—especially right now—and I constantly expect to be tapped on the shoulder, followed by, “Excuse me sir, but you shouldn’t be here”.
I would like to pay tribute to Garter, Black Rod, the doorkeepers and those working in the House for being so kind and helpful. I also thank my supporters, the noble Lords, Lord Udny-Lister and Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park, both of whom I have worked with closely and known professionally and personally for many years. Both taught me much about politics and life: to be respectful, kind, stand up for what you believe in, work hard but enjoy life and your family, and that, crucially, politics is the arena in which we can make things better. I thank my noble friend Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury, who, when he chose to cease working for the late Lady Thatcher, must have thought that would be the end of tough gigs—yet ended up having to mentor me. But he has done so with enormous energy, grace, and kindness, and given me a lot of time and sage advice.
Throughout my time in politics, and indeed my life, I have had the privilege of so many who have imparted their help, support and opinions—some not always friendly. To everyone on my journey, I say thank you. That especially goes to my family, who are watching on the parliament channel—or at least I hope so. When I have not always been around as much as I wanted due to the pressure of work over recent years, they have always been there for me and tolerated me, especially my wife, Clare, who is here in the Gallery, and our most beautiful three year-old daughter, Sophia, who is an incredible jolt of life and fuel to want to live, and we have another on the way. Although I lost my dad when I was much younger, I am sure he will be cheering me on.
I was born in the early 1980s and grew up in sunny Lancashire, in the former mill town of Nelson, surrounded by some of the most beautiful countryside, including Pendle Hill, from which the area takes its name. My dad worked for the council, among other things, and my mum ran a nursery. Although we did not have much money as a family, what we did have in abundance was love and humour. Like the noble Lord, Lord Lee of Trafford, and the late noble Lords, Lord Greaves and Lord Waddington, I am not the first person with links to Pendle to sit in this place. I hope that I am not the last, because like so many northern towns and areas, these places need strong advocates. While Pendle is rich in its history and beauty of the local countryside, it faces many challenges. Yet there are opportunities, and I was struck by elements of the gracious Speech which looked way into the future: trade deals, achieving net zero, AI. These are going to shape the lives of everyone, especially young people such as my three year-old daughter and her generation.
I am aware of the wealth of knowledge in your Lordships’ House. For my part, I have had the privilege of working in local government for the Mayor of London, in the Foreign Office for the Foreign Secretary, and in No. 10 for the Prime Minister. Although I know that Boris Johnson can be controversial to some—though he is not alone in that—I was proud to have worked with him in all three of those roles and grateful to him for giving me the opportunity to fight for three things about which I care passionately.
The first is the right for quality education for all girls around the world. This is a righteous cause in itself, often taken for granted in the West, but one which makes absolute sense to this country and elsewhere for social, economic or demographic means. The second is levelling up. When I first went into politics, I felt that the north was seen as a separate, neglected partner in the UK, but I firmly believe that a truly United Kingdom means equal opportunity across all the country. While much work has begun over recent years, much more still needs to be done.
The third, and most important to me, is conservation: tackling the evils of the illegal wildlife trade and promoting better animal welfare and the wonders of the natural world. Over many years, I am proud of having worked with a number of brilliant, inspiring and passionate campaigners and charities, as well as those in Whitehall. While I recognise that there are those who remain unconvinced, tackling pollution, creating better animal welfare, and protecting and restoring nature are things that matter. They are crucial to food production and to our air, health and economic security, not to mention the beauty and benefits that a green and pleasant land gives to the soul. Furthermore, these things also unlock huge opportunities and economic growth. I firmly believe that we can revitalise parts of the country, create new jobs and growth, increase exports and tourism, and reduce bills, as well as protecting nature and the beauty of this land and the world.
I am pleased that this Conservative Party, under successive leaders, has led the way in putting these issues front and centre, which this King’s Speech has continued with the animal welfare Bill, not to mention a commitment to continue to tackle biodiversity loss. I look forward to doing all I can to support the Government to tackle all these issues and many more.
Finally, I assure noble Lords that I will be committed and respectful and that I will play my part. In all the days ahead, I look forward to working alongside your Lordships, learning the ropes and doing all we can together to move this great country forward.
Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)
My Lords, it is with genuine pleasure that I congratulate my good friend the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, on his maiden speech. It was informative, eloquent and deeply moving.
I have known the noble Lord for nearly 20 years and have watched him grow from a rather shy young man, a little conscious of his northern roots—perhaps too conscious—to someone who now knows what he wants to achieve. He can be very proud of what he has already achieved. His deep love for his family is evident, and I know how much he depends on the support from his wife Clare. I am not sure whether he has ever told Clare, but, years ago, I tried to matchmake Ben with a very beautiful young woman. I was completely unsuccessful; of course, he was just waiting for Clare to come along.
The noble Lord has, in a relatively short time, been privy to some of the most extraordinary events in politics in our country. At London’s City Hall, he was with the Mayor of London for eight years. As I, the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, and others know—I worked with the mayor as the unpaid sports commissioner—behind the scenes, he was instrumental in making so many things happen when sometimes it looked as though they would not happen. He was crucial to the mayor’s very successful two terms in office—whatever you think of Boris Johnson.
He continued working with the then Prime Minister, first in the Foreign Office and then in Downing Street, so he lived through the entire leaving the EU saga—always behind the scenes, but he is one of the very few who knows where all the bodies are buried. I am sure that we all can breathe a sigh of relief that, thankfully, the noble Lord is one of the most discreet and decent people in public life. He assures me that he is not writing a book.
Noble Lords should know that he is definitely not a tribal politician; indeed, he could not in any way be described as just another boring politician. He will be another voice here for freedom of speech, tolerance and saying it how it is. I look forward, as we all do, to his future contributions.
Following on from the noble Lord’s remarks on the environment, I too welcome the ban on animal exports. Sadly, it will not apply to Northern Ireland, for the sole reason that this Government have abandoned part of the UK to the rules of the EU, and the EU, disgracefully, does not seem to have any care for the animals suffering on long journeys just to be slaughtered. I say here that we also need more local abattoirs.
In discussing the environment, I will mention a word that has become very trendy but without a great deal of discussion: “rewilding”. It is well intentioned but threatens active harm to our natural environment. All of us see the devastation caused by the worst excesses of human activity and we want to see it undone. As someone brought up on a small farm run on organic principles long before the word “organic” was even thought of, I believe that we should be much tougher on the companies and others responsible for those who pollute our rivers and discharge sewage.
However, rewilding in its fuller sense is a different matter and means different things to different people. The basic problem with rewilding is that it suggests a reversion to some previous state. The problem of course is: which state? What are we rewilding to? Landscapes across the UK have been shaped for centuries by people. It was people who transformed the wildernesses into land that still produces so much of our food. We should be producing more and more, and we should still have a Minister of Agriculture.
It was people who created a thriving rural ecosystem that underpins the UK’s biodiversity strengths, and it was people who have, in doing all this, curated our landscapes as diligently as those who manage the galleries that now house paintings by Constable—that great artist who depicted those landscapes in all their majesty—which we love. Rewilding those landscapes would not mean a reversion to some state of imagined perfection, a mythical past of dark, dramatic forests and endless fields of wild flowers. Ours is not a mythical world but a real world, and applying romantic and emotional ideas in the real world may comfort those who advocate it, but can prove disastrous.
I will give one example. The Hunting Act, passed nearly 20 years ago, was supported by many for what they thought were sound animal welfare reasons. Many of us here warned this would not happen and now we have been vindicated, as we know from the publication just last week of a brilliant book called Rural Wrongs: Hunting and the Unintended Consequences of Bad Law. Written by environmental journalist Charlie Pye-Smith and helped by former League Against Cruel Sports director Jim Barrington, it argues that instead of benefiting wild animals, the precise opposite has occurred. Life for the fox, the brown hare and the red deer of Exmoor is now far worse, their status having been reduced to that of a pest. Those who campaigned and supported this detrimental law have not spent a penny in assessing its impact. We said it would be bad and now we can prove it.
The rewilding argument tells us to ignore similar warnings and wilfully permit the destruction of the landscapes we love. There are better solutions. Farmers and land managers are the best environmental champions we have. England has three-quarters of the world’s chalk streams, and the British Isles have the most heather moorland in the world. These are globally rare, globally significant habitats, and we should be cherishing, celebrating and promoting them, not abandoning them for the sake of a slogan and a brand. If we are serious about reversing biodiversity loss, people and rural communities are key to the solution. Yes, of course solar power is important in the overall policy of climate change, but we should not be so intoxicated by the objective that we allow it to also desecrate our countryside. There are plenty of places to put solar other than on fertile farmland where we should be growing food. Responsible and organised species reintroductions are one thing, but abandoning environmental management would do nothing for the future of the countryside—we need it managed. Government should be empowering and encouraging the managers.
I am so glad that in His Majesty’s gracious Speech there was not one mention of rewilding.
Lord Lilley (Con)
My Lords, I know we are not supposed to reiterate congratulations to the maiden speaker. However, as the first speaker from his side, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Gascoigne on his maiden speech and on his modesty, which, I suspect, belies great ability. We look forward to hearing more from him in future.
Unlike the noble Lord, Lord Stern, I welcome the Government’s decision to allow exploration in the North Sea. There are two ways to reduce emissions: phase out demand for fossil fuels, or phase out their supply. Sensibly, we have decided to phase out demand—indeed, that is the basis of his whole report. It would be absurd for the UK unilaterally to restrict domestic oil and gas production while allowing imports with added transport emissions from abroad. If oil and gas industries worldwide invest in more fossil fuels than are needed as we phase out demand, they will lose a lot of money. Tough—it could not happen to a nicer bunch of people—but that is not our big problem. However, if we reduce the supply of fossil fuels worldwide faster than we phase out demand, we will face shortages and escalating prices, there will be huge profits for the oil industry, and we will have done to ourselves exactly what Putin did to us two years ago. Let us keep to phasing out demand and not supply.
I also welcome the PM’s decision to delay the ban on internal combustion engine vehicles—not because it will have a major effect in itself. More than 80% of all the vehicles produced in this country are exported, so they depend on the rules of the countries to which they are exported. The rules here have almost no effect on them. What he has done is open up the possibility of a rational debate about the cost of action to reach net zero versus the cost of inaction or delaying action.
Until now, the presumption has been that incorporated in the very name of Extinction Rebellion: that if we do nothing, the human race faces the risk of extinction. If that were the case, almost no cost would be too great to bear to phase out fossil fuels and prevent global warming. But is it true? I asked Ministers in a Written Question if they know of any peer-reviewed study accepted by the IPCC which forecasts the extinction of the human race if the world takes no action to phase out fossil fuels. The answer was clear: there are no peer-reviewed studies predicting human extinction if we do nothing. Of course there would be problems, costs, and so on.
Nor is there a serious threat of humankind being reduced to poverty, hunger and wretchedness if we take no action to reduce reliance on fossil fuels. Take, for example, the predictions of the noble Lord, Lord Stern. His key conclusion was that if we do nothing—not if we do not do enough, but if we do nothing—it would be equivalent to a loss of well-being of 5% of GDP every year, now and for ever. Being 5% poorer than we would otherwise be is a serious blow, but by no stretch of the imagination does it amount to impoverishment of the human race, just setting us back by two, three or four years of growth.
A more recent assessment, if you think that the noble Lord’s report is out of date, comes from Professor Nordhaus, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2018 for his work on assessing the costs and benefits of action on climate change. He concluded that the optimum target for the world to aim for is not 1.5 degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels, or even limited to 2 degrees, but nearer to 3 degrees, which would mean that there may be scope for us to delay our target for net zero beyond 2050.
If that is not enough and you want the imprimatur of the IPCC, turn to its chapter on the impact of climate change on the economy. I quote the opening words:
“For most economic sectors, the impact of climate change will be small relative to the impacts of other drivers … Changes in population, age, income, technology, relative prices, lifestyle, regulation, governance, and many other aspects of socioeconomic development will have an impact on the supply and demand of economic goods and services that is large relative to the impact of climate change”.
I am a scientist by training, and I know the basic science is rock solid, but let us have a rational debate about the cost of action and inaction, because these costs and benefits are more finely balanced than often supposed. Let us approach the issue in a rational way and not as if we are all members of an apocalyptic sect.
Lord Ravensdale (CB)
My Lords, first, I declare an interest as a project director working for AtkinsRéalis, a director of Peers for the Planet and co-chair of Legislators for Nuclear. I wish to make a few remarks on energy, which forms part of the focus of the gracious Speech, and particularly to talk about some enablers for the nuclear programme.
First, we have seen some very welcome developments recently, such as the formation of Great British Nuclear, as the Minister stated in his opening remarks, and it is really encouraging to see the pace at which the SMR competition is moving. However, SMRs are only one piece of the puzzle and larger gigawatt nuclear also needs a similar process to proceed beyond the current projects of Hinkley and Sizewell C. If we are to meet the government target of 24 gigawatts, additional buildout of established technologies will need a place in that, alongside SMRs and advanced nuclear technologies.
Further to that, there is clear crossover on the way forward on SMRs and large nuclear, in that the sites being considered for SMRs will also be suitable for large nuclear, so the two need to be considered together. Can the Minister please update the House on when the Government will announce a way forward with large gigawatt nuclear and a technology selection strategy? Advanced nuclear technologies also need a route forward, and there are a number of advanced nuclear vendors that want to progress in the UK but have no clear route forward; as a result, they are looking elsewhere. I look forward to the forthcoming consultation and hope that the Government will give this some urgent attention in order to seize the opportunity for the UK.
I had hoped for legislation on planning and consenting in the King’s Speech. This has been a central part of the national conversation in recent months, with the HS2 decision highlighting all the difficulties in getting large infrastructure projects built in the UK. We made some good progress in the last Session in ensuring that climate mitigation will be considered in the new national development management policies, but the Government need to go further.
A few examples highlight the issues in this area. The environmental statement for Hinkley Point C ran to 20,000 pages, and for Sizewell C, 44,000 pages—a stack of paper around 5 metres high. Clearly, we are not going to get things built quickly under these kinds of constraints. Also, there is the infamous acoustic fish deterrent system at Hinkley Point C, which went through a five-year process with various regulators and is being installed at huge expense, for negligible benefits. To solve this, energy security and net zero need to be better recognised within the legislative framework, for regulators and other agencies—for example, the Planning Inspectorate and the Environment Agency. These are critical national priorities and must be recognised as such if we are to deliver the nuclear programme the Government want and the country needs. It is not just nuclear: there is grid buildout, onshore wind and energy storage. There is a huge infrastructure challenge here, and a fresh look at the planning system is needed if it is to be delivered.
Finally, the Government are working to address energy security in terms of our oil and gas capacity, but we have an issue globally with dependence on Russia for nuclear fuel. It dominates global supply chains for uranium conversion and enrichment. The UK is uniquely placed to develop a capability that can meet our fuel needs as well as those of other western countries. I know that work is ongoing in this area, but legislating to secure our nuclear fuel supply chains would be an effective way of getting some momentum behind this and ensuring that it happens.
Nuclear will be critical to meeting our energy ambitions. We are in the foothills of the renaissance but there is much still to do to ensure that we seize this opportunity for the country.
Lord Mandelson (Lab)
My Lords, I will focus on economic growth and the need for investment to achieve this.
Weekend reports suggest that the Government intend to cut business taxes in the Autumn Statement by extending the tax deduction for companies’ investment in IT equipment, plants and machinery. I can see the case for this and for restoring tax relief on companies’ research and development, rather than the mooted cut in inheritance tax. We need to recognise that alongside the hard Brexit that this Government foolishly engineered, long-standing low investment in our economy is a root cause of our dire economic state, which the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, accurately described. Raising levels of public and private investment in the economy will be the central challenge of a Labour Government, if elected. I commend very warmly what my noble friend Lord Livermore had to say on this subject.
Unless we in this country shift from low to even moderate levels of investment by comparison with our competitors, we will simply not get out of the deep economic malaise we are in. I believe that every policy should be judged in this light: does it aid economic growth or not, and is it likely to attract and stimulate additional investment or not?
Where I part company with the Government is in imagining that adjusting tax allowances is anywhere near sufficient to create the stimulus for investment and propulsion that our economy needs. For this, we need a much bigger growth plan, in which the Government play a more active role alongside the private sector; which takes advantage of the new market and business opportunities connected with the energy transition that is under way; which draws on and commercialises key parts of Britain’s science and technology base; and which leverages the underexploited university research and human talent that exists across the UK’s nations and regions.
Science and technology are the lifeblood of the 21st-century economy. They will not only solve our biggest climate and societal problems but, if we successfully unlock our world-class scientists and technologists, build new businesses and supply chains that are the seed corn of our future growth. We are already doing well; but imagine how much more we could achieve if we actually planned for success—not just for one Parliament but spanning two and more, as other successful countries do.
Every aspect of such a plan requires the delivery of higher levels of private investment. It is a generational challenge, but the point is that private capital is mobile; it has options and we are in a global competition to attract it. Other countries are falling over themselves to win that race and, too often, the UK appears on the sidelines, having indeed sidelined itself at times.
We have done great damage to our international reputation through the chaos of the last seven years. I was in the United States last week and I heard this first hand from American investors. I am afraid that, despite all the advantages we have—geography, language, rule of law, our science base, our first-rate business and professional services and many more—our once well-earned renown for quality of government has been replaced by a reputation for policy irrationality, political instability and chaos at the centre of government.
We have to make the UK a competitive place to attract private investment. We are not the biggest economy, and we are going to compete not by writing large cheques but by demonstrating a clear long-term strategy, regulatory stability, clear industrial priorities and a laser-like focus on the total business environment, including our offer on taxation, careful labour market reform and skills.
All this is not going to be easy. There are no quick fixes for the situation we have got ourselves into. We face the most challenging economic circumstances since the 1970s. But, in my view, there is huge opportunity and, I hope, good will available to a future Labour Government who approach these challenges with a mixture of zeal, focus and good sense.
The Lord Bishop of Norwich (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, it is a privilege to offer my maiden speech following the first gracious Speech given by His Majesty. I thank noble Lords for their welcome, and the staff for their kindness and guidance. I will need to draw on the wisdom of all who serve our nation in this House.
As Bishop of Norwich, I serve a diocese that has 658 of Norfolk and Waveney’s churches. Many of them are gems of medieval architecture. All of them are treasure troves of memory and places of prayerful watching. Plenty have unique round towers. Each rural church community knows about the hidden challenges of poverty, poor transport and the high cost of housing, but also about the strong sense of community found in our churches and schools.
Since my early years, I have been captivated by our natural world, going on to become an ecologist. This, combined with a vocation to ministry, means that my passions are flying in formation in my current role as lead bishop for the environment. Through a quirk in history, I am also the last remaining Bishop Abbot, with the ruined St Benet’s Abbey in the Norfolk Broads being my bailiwick. I sail there each year in a Norfolk wherry, standing at the bow, anxiously trying to ensure that my mitre is not blown off.
That stunning landscape was created by our forebears’ need for fuel—for peat. Now, as we realise the damage to people and the planet from our dependency on carbon fuels, so ably highlighted by the noble Lord, Lord Stern, we must protect and enhance ecosystems that store vast amounts of carbon, such as wet fen, reed beds, deep peat soils and forests.
The noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, mentioned in his excellent speech his love of the natural world. I raise him Norfolk’s biodiversity: the peregrine falcons nesting on the spire of Norwich Cathedral; the dancing of swallowtail butterflies over milk parsley in the Broads; the plaintive mewing of the grey seals protecting their pups on the east coast; tending my own honeybees; the great dawn flight of pink-footed geese from their marshland roosting grounds on the north coast; or the soil ecosystems that are so essential for growing cereals for Norfolk’s outstanding ales. Big skies and rich land, chalk streams and broads, forests and heathlands: many are internationally important habitats because of their place along migratory routes, the scarcity of their ecosystems, or the rarity of their species.
Therefore, I welcome His Majesty’s Government’s commitment in the gracious Speech to
“continue to lead action on tackling climate change and biodiversity loss”.
Past UK Governments have been instrumental in seeking and shaping international agreements to protect nature. I saw these in action as a board member of the Northumberland National Park Authority, with its various protected landscapes, and as we dealt with new tree diseases when I chaired the Forestry Commission’s advisory committee in the north-east. While the gracious Speech spoke of holding
“other countries to their environmental commitments”,
the UK Government can do that with credibility only if we are an exemplar ourselves. As His Majesty has frequently reminded us, we must learn again our interdependence on nature and seek to reverse the horrific graphs of decline.
With the care of creation being a strong theme within Christianity—indeed, all faith communities—churches have a part to play. Churchyards should have a rich biodiversity—places for the living, not just the dead. The Communion Forest is a global initiative comprising local activities of forest production, tree growing and ecosystem restoration, seeking to safeguard creation right across the Anglican Communion.
The Book of Revelation notes that the leaves of the trees will be for the healing of the nations. To plant is to hope; to restore is to heal; to protect is to love. I wonder whether seeing again nature’s wonder and its beauty might just rekindle the foundation for a life-affirming, nature-valuing horizon, because we have a long way to go to leave nature in the better place than we found it, as the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, spoke about. This needs cross-party leadership and a commitment long into the future. I look forward to playing my part in your Lordships’ House.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, we have heard two brilliant maiden speeches, and I congratulate both speakers on making such excellent contributions.
I welcome and congratulate the right reverend Prelate to this House. As a member of the Rural Affairs Group of the Church of England Synod, I particularly welcome him. His impeccable credentials are proved on both rural and environmental matters. I understand that we were both educated in North Yorkshire and are both alumni of Edinburgh University, so I think that is a very good start for him. I am delighted that he reflected his strong sense of community in his maiden speech. He serves the diocese of Norwich, which proudly boasts of a beautiful garden widely known as the Garden of Eden. To continue the theme of my noble friend Lord Bridges, that is possibly not disconnected from the fact that it neighbours the well-frequented “Adam and Eve” hostelry.
The right reverend Prelate serves with distinction; his work on medical ethics as a board member of the Human Tissue Authority is exemplary. He has also found time to publish a book on walking, The Way Under Our Feet: A Spirituality of Walking, and, as he mentioned, is lead Bishop on the environment; we first worked together on national parks. He is also an avid beekeeper and has chaired the Forestry Commission’s forestry and woodlands committee in the north-east. He is passionate about biodiversity. I look forward to working together on rural and environmental issues, and to his many future contributions to this House.
I turn to the contents of the gracious Speech as regards the rural economy, food and farming. The animal welfare and livestock exports Bill will ban the export of cattle, sheep, goats, pigs and horses for slaughter and fattening from Great Britain to the EU. Why is this ban not reciprocal? Why is it at present nigh on impossible to export cattle from this country for breeding purposes, but there is no ban on imports from the EU? Given that we have high standards of animal welfare in this country, which I welcome, I urge the Government to closely and properly monitor the imports of live animals, plants and food products into this country. I watch with alarm the explosion of bluetongue. We appear to be accepting live animals into this country, but my understanding is that there is no centralised quarantine point and, as yet, no border control points. That does indeed threaten the very basic domestic biosecurity in this country.
Last week the FSA, in its second annual report on our food, mentioned a specific alert about shortages in key occupations needed to keep our food safe, such as, in particular, vets and food inspectors. The FSA, both for England and for Scotland, goes on in the report to call on the Government to introduce import controls on food imported from the EU, and to reduce the risk of unsafe foods entering the UK from the EU and other third countries. How do the Government intend to respond to the FSA report and the alarms it has raised?
In view of the recent floods and the third storm this autumn, it is disappointing that the gracious Speech makes only fleeting reference to adaptation and other aspects of flooding. Residents have suffered appalling flood events and farmers have seen their land waterlogged, threatening food production, food security and the vital role that farmers play in food protection to communities downstream. This could represent a potential loss to the economy and a threat to food security and to the environmental protections that farmers provide.
While it was agreed that it would be best not to build on flood plains, 60% of potential building locations are on flood plains. Would it not be better to renovate existing properties in market towns and cities, in particular focusing on the provision of one or two-bedroom homes in rural areas rather than this fixation with four or five-bedroom homes? In particular, it is extremely important that farmers nearing retirement can remain in a rural area; a small one or two-bedroom home would be ideal.
The role of mapping is very much the preserve of local authorities, particularly mapping the division between zones 3a and 3b as regards flooding. We established that this is not being done through the passage of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act. How can we identify the areas most prone to flooding and reduce the risk of flooding going forward? I hope this is something the Government will focus on in any legislation on adaptation and mitigation.
I urge noble Lords to spare a thought for farmers at this very difficult time. Some 58% of grade 1 agricultural land is situated on a flood plain and 9% is at high risk of coastal flooding. Fields are currently waterlogged or flooded. Farmers cannot plant crops or feed their livestock.
As with all commercial insurance, the availability of flood insurance is primarily determined by flood mapping. Using these flood maps, insurance underwriters will then consider their stance on floods and align their acceptance of risk, with some having a more lenient approach than others. Flood risk is usually built into farm insurance as standard, if available, when it comes to buildings and equipment, including crops in store. However, it is routinely unavailable in respect of livestock and straw in fields or for growing crops, which means that farmers will effectively face the total loss of any crop failure due to flooding.
Some farmers are now attempting to reach agreement with the Environment Agency to offer their land for flood alleviation in return for specific payment, which I hope my noble friend will look favourably on when she comes to review the gracious Speech in terms of the impact on the rural economy, farmers and residents who have been affected by recent flooding.
Lord Birt (CB)
My Lords, in the debate last year following the gracious Speech, the Minister declared that she would outline the plan for a world-class transport network. She said that
“few things transform the prospects of an individual, a community and, indeed, an entire nation more than a modern, well-functioning transport network”.
I agree.
Just over a year later, a Minister reminded us that:
“HS2 is a key part of the Government’s levelling-up agenda … The section … between Crewe and Manchester will also form the foundations for Northern Powerhouse Rail … speeding up east-west rail services between the north’s towns and cities”.—[Official Report, Commons, 3/7/23; col. 32WS.]
In October last, Liz Truss as Prime Minister promised an HSR link linking Liverpool to Hull via Manchester and Leeds. I can confirm the need for that. Just a few days ago, after a football match, I travelled on the comically misnamed TransPennine Express from Liverpool to Leeds, that modest distance taking almost one and a half hours. No surprise: the train was five minutes late departing. My short wait was accompanied—as invariably is the case in stations these days—by public announcements that two trains had been abruptly cancelled: one to Warrington, the second to Blackpool North. Is this a
“modern, well-functioning transport network”?
The in-principle go-ahead for an ambitious high-speed network in the UK was given by Tony Blair in 2004, almost 20 years ago. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, duly picked up the baton and launched HS2. All three main political parties when in government in effect gave the project their full support, but in 2014 the link to Europe, to HS1, was dropped. Later, the eastern leg to Yorkshire, the branch to Liverpool and the enabling spur north of Manchester to Scotland were dropped. This year, the links to Manchester and the east Midlands have been dropped.
The UK currently has 113 kilometres of high-speed rail, linking St Pancras to the Channel Tunnel. The International Union of Railways has collated the global data for 2023. As of 1 October, Sweden had 860 kilometres of high-speed rail, Italy 920, Germany 1,600, France 2,700, Japan—a far more mountainous and densely populated country than the UK—3,100, and Spain, the European leader, 3,900. Perhaps noble Lords might like to guess how many kilometres of high-speed rail China has. Is it 4,000 kilometres? In fact, China has a remarkable 40,000 kilometres of high-speed rail versus the UK’s 113 kilometres. Whatever would the UK’s great railway pioneers make of our falling so far behind, our chopping and changing, and our inability now as a nation to plan and keep to it?
As Tony Blair’s strategy adviser at No. 10 in the early 2000s, I worked with a team of Department for Transport and Cabinet Office officials to examine the state of the UK’s road and rail infrastructure. We identified then that we had the least developed infrastructure of any major country. We demonstrated that the UK had invested a lower share of GDP by far than other leading countries and that for half a century Governments of all persuasions had cut back on infrastructure spending whenever the economic winds turned against them. When Tony Blair gave the green light to progressing a UK high-speed network in 2004, China had precisely no high-speed rail. Incredibly, its 40,000-kilometre network has all been built in the 15 years since 2008. The World Bank has published an extensive report on China’s achievement, identifying the key reasons for its success: a well-analysed long-term plan with minimal changes once approved, standardisation of design and a competitive supply industry, all resulting in a low cost per kilometre built. We need to abandon the frenzied, short-term calculation that shames our political system and return to good, steady, strategic government. Hasten the day.
The Lord Bishop of Oxford
My Lords, it is a privilege, as ever, to take part in the debate on the most gracious Speech. I thank the Minister for his clear introduction and pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich for their gracious and eloquent maiden speeches. It is particularly good to welcome the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich to this House with his considerable expertise, as he has demonstrated, on the environment and climate change.
I warmly welcome the Prime Minister’s ambition to build a better future for our children and grandchildren and to deliver the change the country needs. It seems to me, as to so many, that so great are the challenges we face that this or any Government will need deeper humility combined with greater practical wisdom to lead the nation forward.
I shall speak on my two areas of focus in this House: the climate and artificial intelligence. Both are areas of existential risk in this and future decades. On climate, I welcome the Government’s restated determination to lead action on tackling climate change and diversity loss. As a member of your Lordships’ Select Committee on the Environment and Climate Change, I recognise the complexity of a fair transition of our whole economy to net zero, but I do not yet see this determination translated into effective leadership of granular policy, whether that is in the transition to electric vehicles, decarbonising home heating or encouraging behaviour change.
The tone of the Speech is that the world is more or less succeeding in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The opposite is, of course, the case. The years when we can avert future disasters are slipping away, as the noble Lord, Lord Stern, argued. I say, with respect, to the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, that much of the world is currently experiencing the catastrophic effects of climate change, as is well documented by the United Nations and others. We need greater leadership and co-ordination across every government department and an increased sense of urgency in this legislative programme.
In particular, I want to highlight the risks and dangers of politicising the climate change agenda, which has been a feature of recent government announcements. Reaching net zero fairly demands the patient building of cross-party and cross-societal consensus, which has been damaged by the recent changes in electric vehicle targets and the decision to licence yet more future oil and gas fields, which are unlikely to come into production in time to support the essential and urgent transition we need.
Turning to artificial intelligence, I congratulate the Prime Minister and the Government on the recent AI summit and all that has emerged from the discussions there. The summit served to raise the profile of the questions raised by AI, the ways in which the benefits of new technology can be realised and the mitigation of its potential harms. I welcome, therefore, the promise of new legal frameworks for self-driving vehicles, new competition rules for digital markets and the encouragement of innovation in machine learning. However, I encourage the Government to invest more deeply in dialogue with civil society about the impact of these new technologies. The recent summit claimed to be a conversation with civil society, but I have seen no evidence of this third key voice in the room. The Government have entered a dialogue with the tech companies, which is welcome, but this dialogue must be further informed by trade unions, academia, community groups and faith communities to build trust and confidence about the kind of society we are building. In her response, will the Minister indicate the ways in which the Government will strengthen this third arm of the conversation in the coming months and years?
Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke (Lab)
My Lords, this was a very lightweight gracious Speech, especially on critical aspects of the economy. I know we are in the run-up to the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement, but the Speech makes it look as if improving our economic performance is of secondary importance. My noble friend Lord Livermore was very precise on that. The Minister was very upbeat about the economy. He probably does not read the rebel magazine, the House, because the previous Chief Secretary to the Treasury pointed out in it how difficult the economic situation was. He said that the tax burden would rise to 37% next year and that debt interest spending in 2022-23 was £112 billion, more than 6% of GDP, which is higher than any other G7 nation. He stated:
“Those are the facts. They’re unpalatable facts, but they can’t be avoided”.
I think it was a missed opportunity not to have more in the King’s Speech, but I will move on and talk about energy now. I am sure the noble Baroness the Minister, who is to reply, wants this section to be about the annual licensing rounds in the North Sea. Well, it is—because it is a stunt, supposedly to trip up Labour. It fails to take into account that, just a fortnight ago, we had a major announcement on drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea. Labour will honour the licences that were granted at that time, but we will not issue any more, because of the climate change issues but also because it is a dwindling reserve.
I was a young economist for the trade union movement when it started, and the only claim to fame I have to put me with the Queen and Margaret Thatcher was that I could never go to a rig because they did not have any ladies’ toilets. I remember very well how difficult the environment is. But the way forward is about energy security. The new licences can achieve that, I suppose, but, as I pointed out, it is a dwindling reserve. The legislative stunt will do huge damage to the reputation of the UK in the run-up to the next COP. It is very unfortunate timing.
The noble Lord the Minister knows that I am president of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association. I will pay the Government a compliment: to thank them for the £20 billion that has been allocated to CCUS in the Spring Budget. It is much appreciated but, alongside the £20 billion, the industry has made a £1 billion capex investment and is ready to make substantial capex of £42 billion between now and 2035. My point to the Minister is that the Government need very rapidly to confirm the allocation of that funding as the funding envelope for future projects depends on it. The country’s future as a leader in the field is dependent on clarity. Without clarity, the project pipeline is at risk; so, if the Government want to ring-fence energy security, it is vital that these spending issues are addressed quickly. We have between six and 12 months to resolve these very difficult issues.
We have in the United Kingdom about one third of Europe’s storage capacity and we could develop a sector worth £30 billion in taxable revenues by 2050. Other countries are waiting in the wings. They are ready to move. A clear timetable of our own for driving the programme forward is absolutely essential if we are to realise this country’s true potential. Only today, the press was reporting on the progress being made in sustainable aviation fuel to protect developments such as this. The Government need to get a move on. CCUS will create 70,000 new jobs throughout the UK if the clusters model is realised and will protect 71,000 jobs in existing industry. There is no time to delay; this is an opportunity, and it would be a sin praying to heaven for vengeance if we did not get a move on and did something about it.
Baroness Moyo (Con)
My Lords, I start by saying that I very much enjoyed the maiden speeches of my noble friend Lord Gascoigne and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich. I am afraid that both of them have stepped out just in time for me to stand up and thank them. I know that they will make great contributions to this House given their respective experience.
In the gracious Speech, His Majesty stated how the Government’s focus
“is on increasing economic growth and safeguarding the health and security of the British people for generations to come”.
With this in mind, there are three global changes afoot that pose serious risks to an already stressed economy and, ultimately, to British life and wider society. With the confluence of these global factors comes the question of how well equipped government is to overcome them.
First is the energy transition. As a point of order, I direct Members to my interests as recorded in the register of interests. Ahead of the upcoming COP 28 meetings, it is worth remembering that, globally, we are consuming the equivalent of over 100 million barrels of oil every single day, with fossil fuels still representing roughly 80% of the energy supply stack. The International Energy Agency estimates that the energy transition could require $5 trillion of investment every year if we are to achieve net zero by 2050. This is nearly double the projected $2.8 trillion of investment in clean energy prescribed for this year. Together, these realities raise doubt about our ability to limit global warming by 1.5 or even 2 degrees in the nearing timeframe. More crucially, what appears to be an energy crisis only is also, at least, an economic and national security challenge.
The second global risk is artificial intelligence, including generative AI. AI is more than just a technology issue; it has far-reaching implications for the economy, with the prospect of productivity gains and boosting economic growth, although how and when this may occur exposes the economy to vulnerabilities. AI also has implications for business, with predictions of a declining labour force, albeit leading to lower operating costs and higher company profits. AI has implications for society, as economic gains could accrue largely to owners of capital rather than to providers of labour, thereby increasing the threat of greater inequality and social unrest.
Ultimately, AI could mean changes in the role and scope of government, as my noble friend Lord Bridges highlighted. At a minimum, facing a rising jobless underclass, the state will have to confront more assertively at least two big policy areas: taxation and welfare. Of course, Governments are alert to the changing calculus that AI brings to the actions and behaviours of rogue states.
Thirdly, there is the global risk of widening and worsening geopolitical fissures, as well as the reconstitution of the world map. Both of these complicate the energy transition and the impact of artificial intelligence. Noble Lords will not have failed to notice that BRICS nations, led by Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, are expanding to 11 emerging countries. From January 2024, the group will be home to over 40% of the world’s population and this will represent 36% of world GDP. This group will have the potential to open and alter the world’s trading corridors, supply chains and direction of investment. Meanwhile, the so-called swing states, including Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Cooperation Council countries, are already altering the movement and pricing of key commodities such as foodstuffs and critical minerals upon which the energy transition relies.
The widening schism between developed and developing nations is frustrating the progress on the energy transition through COP negotiations. Furthermore, it is entrenching the technological splinternet that pits China and other state actors against the West in a race for technological superiority. It seems to me that we are presently underequipped to mitigate and address these multifaceted risks. Thus, we require a serious review of the way this Government, and this Chamber, confront Britain’s threats as they rapidly change militarily, technologically and economically. Of course, the 2021 government integrated review and this year’s integrated review refresh remind us of the benefits of an overarching cross-departmental approach within which to think about global threats.
However, we must be open to reassessing the vulnerabilities of the more siloed lead department model that governs our Civil Service and our own ability in this Chamber to gauge the intricate and emerging global threats. After all, if there is one key lesson from the 2020 pandemic, it is that there are always second-order effects that must be confronted by a more unified approach than that offered by the lead department model. To put it plainly, what was in the moment seen as just a health crisis has had tentacles spanning the economy, education and civic life in ways that we now know could inflict irreparable damage on future generations. In a similar vein, the threats targeting the UK today warrant a more comprehensive and coalesced analysis, assessment and response if we are to adequately avert them.
Lord Whitty (Lab)
My Lords, that impressive and wide-ranging speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Moyo, indicates what an extraordinarily wide range is covered, at least notionally, by the title of this one-day session. I say “notionally” because the main burden of the contributions so far, including mine, concerns not what was in the King’s Speech but what was not. Enormous opportunities have been missed. I shall not dwell on the specifically economic aspects—the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, has spelled out all the things not being addressed by the Government in that respect—but shall concentrate mainly on the environment.
That said, the economy is being experienced by ordinary families in a particularly acute way at this time: falling real living standards, the precariousness of employment, the inability to improve jobs and a lack of training to do so. That needs to be addressed. As my noble friend Lord Woodley said, we did not see the employment Bill that was promised in 2019; instead, the Government have ignored the decline in working standards and in training for future challenges. We need an employment Bill, but I doubt it will come from this Government; it may come from the next.
So, there are serious economic problems, but the environmental ones are even more serious. We are not even prepared. The King’s Speech does not address the issues that the public themselves have brought up in the last few months. The most important issue they have concentrated is water: sewage and the state of our rivers and seas, the effect on wildlife and biodiversity, and the effect on agriculture, as the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, has referred to. There is nothing about water in the Speech. We had a debate a few weeks ago in which some of us argued for a new approach to water regulation, but that has not been addressed at all.
Water is an important issue but it is not the only one, and perhaps not even the most important. The real problem with the Speech, one that demonstrated enormous government insensitivity, is that its first legislative commitment is to continue indefinitely to give licences every year to North Sea oil and gas. As my noble friend has just explained, we do not actually need it, and it sends the signal that we appear to be departing from a major climate change commitment. Probably the most important, positive achievement of the Johnson Government was holding the COP 26 conference in Glasgow. It was not perfect, but Alok Sharma did a tremendous job, and it gave us the opportunity to tackle climate change globally. Yet we are now signalling, as the first item in our legislative programme, that we are going back on that.
A few weeks ago, the noble Lord, Lord Deben, argued successfully that if the UK is to take a lead, it is impossible for us to continue exploring for oil and gas in the North Sea, when we are arguing that countries much poorer than us should not increase their dependence and open mines and oil wells. If we do that, we will have lost our leadership position. I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Stern, who has spent a long time looking at these issues over the last two decades, emphasised that the loss of that leadership position is important.
I am afraid that that is part of a more general theme. We have set back the date for phasing out the internal combustion engine. We have put back the date by which landlords are expected to achieve a certain level of energy efficiency for their homes. We have put back the date for ending new gas boiler sales. As others have said, this is part of a political ploy to try to differentiate the Government from what they see as a woke green agenda. I do not believe the British electorate will buy it, and it is a real fault of this Government to think that such ploys are important, when there are many profound global issues that they should be addressing. To undermine what was previously a very effective position for the Government by doing that at this point is a political mistake of the first order.
Lord Cromwell (CB)
My Lords, I add my congratulations to today’s two maiden speakers for their eloquent, thought-provoking, even lyrical contributions.
Many today are speaking about the environment. Environmental issues have become an increasing concern as we consume this planet’s resources and bring ourselves closer to a climate tipping point. In his most gracious Speech, His Majesty referred to
“long-term decisions in the interests of future generations”.
He has often personally been ahead of many others in his concern for the environment. That concern is not only for terrestrial life but now includes the space that surrounds this planet. Today we need not just to look at life on earth but to look up and address what we are doing around our planet, in space.
Space is no longer accessible only to state agencies. Both state and private actors are firing more and more material into the limited orbits available around our planet. Such launches now often release numerous small satellites in their wake, making orbits ever more crowded.
There are many positive sides to space technology, of course—communications, climate observation and navigation systems, to name but three—but this new space race has negative consequences too. There are now millions, indeed tens of millions, of fragments, many of them simply untrackable, orbiting our planet at very high speeds in these limited orbit zones. Not only do they collide with other equipment in orbit, but astronauts—this is insufficiently publicised—have to take cover inside their spacecraft in order to avoid being hit. Even a fleck of paint hitting an astronaut at such speeds would likely be fatal. States, in acts of bravado, have used missiles to shoot down and explode redundant satellites, creating thousands more fragments circling our planet in blizzards of flying metal. Where overcrowding causes one item to smash into another, that creates a cascade of yet more debris that in turn hits other objects, and so on—known as the Kessler effect.
New frontiers are pretty lawless places. History shows that mankind explores new frontiers, then exploits and, in doing so, despoils them, and then looks for new opportunities to repeat that process. Space is no exception. As a student of space law, I quickly realised how limited and often out of date the regulation of space is. That is compounded by the fact that enforcement is extraordinary difficult. For example, imagine trying to prove liability, or even jurisdiction, when an astronaut is cut in half by a flying fragment of unidentified metal thousands of miles above the surface of the earth.
Furthermore, I was astonished to learn that 85% of the satellites circling this planet today have no insurance. Can you imagine airlines or vehicle fleets being allowed to run on that basis? Unless proper regulation, backed by effective detection and enforcement, is put in place, we will see a repeat of the pattern that we have seen on this planet: a scramble by those who can afford it to take control of the frontier—by force if necessary—pollute it for their own gain and leave our grandchildren with the consequences.
There are some causes for hope. His Majesty has again led the way with his support for Astra Carta—a kind of Magna Carta for space. With others, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology is working on standards for space activity that it hopes will become the norm for space projects seeking investor finance, for example. I was sad to learn today of the resignation of George Freeman as the Minister for this department, as he has been a great champion of these standards.
There are also companies—I know of three in the UK—developing ways to remove space junk or extend the life of items in orbit. I note that, last week, the UK Space Agency announced a bid process—albeit a modest one—of £2 million for research into this area. But until there are effective regulatory and commercial incentives to do these things, they face an uphill struggle to realise a market for their services. Success will need both international buy-in and global enforcement. If the UK is going to lead on this, continuity of effort beyond the impending election will be needed.
In short, humans have always looked up at space and felt its seeming vastness and mystery, but today the orbits around this planet are limited and are becoming overcrowded by state actors, the military and commercial operations. Can we do better in space than we have on this planet? As a first step, the Government should publicly and clearly recognise that space is an inevitable and integral part of our environment. As such, proper regulation and management of this so-called new frontier requires urgent and co-ordinated action every bit as much as addressing the environmental issues on the surface of this planet. Will the Minister undertake tonight to follow up on this?
Baroness Drake (Lab)
My Lords, I reference my interests as a trustee in occupational and master trust pension funds. Pension funds have moved up the political agenda, as the Government focus on them as generators of investment for growth and net-zero infrastructure. The City sees them as potential inflows to make up for those lost by Brexit and to maintain its economies of scale and competitiveness.
In his Mansion House speech, the Chancellor set out proposals to support growing the economy through directing investment from funded private and public pension schemes into productive assets, including private equity and new businesses. He set out three golden rules: to secure the best possible outcomes for pension savers, with any changes to investment structures putting their needs first; to prioritise a strong and diversified gilt market, recognising its importance in debt funding to government; and to strengthen the UK’s competitive position as a listing destination and leading financial centre.
Alignment of the UK’s economic growth with the interests of millions of workers’ pensions savings is an aspiration clearly to support. How that alignment is achieved is where the challenge lies—how conflicts of interest are reconciled, who benefits, who bears what risks, the governance in investment structures and the governance of political decision-making.
Greater state intervention into the investment of private savings is being prepared. The prospect of government mandating how assets are invested was trialled in the December 2021 letter signed by the then Prime Minister and Chancellor. Political mandation would supplant fiduciary duty in investment decisions. Once that precedent is set in law, a Pandora’s box opens up on the extent and specificity of subsequent government mandates imposed on private assets. Mandation poses many problems, including undermining public confidence in auto-enrolment. It would be better for government to create the right conditions for attracting investment in productive finance, and the capital will follow.
As to those conditions, in the large funded public schemes, such as local government, the Government have greater powers to influence, but most private defined benefit schemes are closed. By the end of the decade, over half of their assets and liabilities will have been bought out by insurers. The remaining closed schemes will be cash-flow negative. The decline in DB pension savings, the drive to productive investment and the negative shift in market sentiment raise important questions for the future gilt market—no wonder they form part of the three golden rules that the Chancellor set.
Through automatic enrolment, funds in DC schemes will rise to well over £l trillion by 2030 and continue to grow, in effect providing capital of the future. The Mansion House aspirations expose the inefficiencies in our highly fragmented private pension market. Little is in the gracious Speech, but the Autumn Statement may address how to consolidate and scale up workplace pension schemes and how to get them to invest in start-ups and desirable infrastructure.
Consolidation to create scale is necessary to enable lower costs, better governance and increased investment capacity and capability. However, the Government must also address other inefficiencies, such as the existence of many millions of disaggregated small pension pots, which are inhibiting long-term investment. The assumption that more illiquid, higher-risk investments will produce better outcomes for savers comes with many dependencies, not least charges. In its new value assessment framework for pension funds, the Treasury chose a gross, rather than a net, investment performance metric. This is deeply disappointing, and in my view fails the Chancellor’s golden rule spelled out at Mansion House.
The Government have to facilitate the investment opportunities and the structures and governance that enhance investment, growth and value for savers. For example, in Australia, master trusts set up collectively owned vehicles to invest in their start-ups. Major Canadian and American pension schemes have taken similar ownership steps with private equity and investments. But our economic growth requires capital from both overseas and UK investors. As my noble friend Lord Livermore stressed, that requires government to set long-term economic policy, provide the consistency needed for investor confidence and adhere to high standards of governance in decision making. These requirements have not been met in recent years.
Lord Bradshaw (LD)
My Lords, when I was introduced to your Lordships’ House some 24 years ago, the then Chief Whip of the party, John Harris, gave me some advice: to speak about what you know about and otherwise keep quiet. During my career on the railway, I have managed the west coast main line on four occasions, and have kept in close touch with it since. I feel qualified to talk about it professionally. The route is the major railway line between the south and the north of Great Britain.
I will set aside the effects of the pandemic and the subsequent industrial disputes. If this route were being managed by a guiding mind, the demand would be forecast to be 12 passenger trains plus four freight trains an hour, in both directions, north of Birmingham. This amount of traffic cannot be accommodated on the existing railway without very substantial and disruptive investment. It was this issue of the shortage of capacity that led to the development of HS2.
I am not attempting to defend the management of the project to date. This must rest with government and its appointed agents, and it is not the responsibility of professional railwaymen. But I am arguing for the continued safeguarding of the route north of Birmingham so that in future a new team of competent railway personnel should be given the task of reworking the proposals on a value-for-money basis. This had to be done with HS1, the route from London to the Channel Tunnel, when Union Railways, the Government’s chosen contractor for the then project, failed and a team of railway professionals took over and delivered the project on time and on budget.
Next, the timetable for the whole route needs to be recast on a flighted pattern, which would increase throughput to the maximum possible. This is a job for the guiding mind, acting independently of government and private interest groups. The potential prizes for this are immense in the context of climate change. Many road-based journeys would transfer from road to electrified rail, particularly if fares were simplified. For example, it is estimated by the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport that 5,000 lorry journeys each way could make the switch, with significant savings in emissions and fuel burned.
If we do not improve the railway north of Birmingham, we will have a terrible railway journey going south and north, to Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow. There is really no alternative to developing HS2, because it took 14 years of parliamentary time to get the wretched Bill through—and another 14 years will probably be a point at which we give up travelling altogether. If any money is immediately available arising from the decision to postpone work on HS2, the Government have at hand proposals from the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport to fully electrify gaps in the core freight network. Can the Minister confirm that she has got these proposals in her hands, as I believe she has? They may form some part of the money that the Government are still to spend.
Lord Lennie (Lab)
My Lords, I am not the first, and I certainly will not be the last, to say that this Government’s plan for this Session of Parliament is lacklustre. As my noble friend Lord Whitty said, the wide range of contributions that have been made by speakers throughout this debate proves the point of the insignificance of what is in this speech.
The Government have admitted what we have been saying from these Benches for years—that the country needs change. It is baffling that in this King’s Speech they have offered nothing but more of the same. It is the people of Britain who have been failed by this Government—a Government who have given up on governing, with a legacy of stagnant growth, skyrocketing mortgages, crumbling schools and hospitals and a cost of living crisis. This is the case everywhere you look: every family and business has been failed by the Government’s failed energy policy. On their watch, Britain was the worst-hit country in western Europe. It was this Government who were unprepared and slow to react.
While the consequences of that crisis are still being strongly felt, what is the Government’s response? It is in the King’s Speech—their new flagship policy, the Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill. Astonishingly, the Energy and Net Zero Secretary has admitted that it will not take a penny piece off energy bills. It is a gimmick and a stunt, and one more thing that the Government have given up on. Do they accept the current levels of people’s energy bills? Insulating the 19 million cold and draughty homes in Britain could cut Bills by £2 billion, so why is that not in the King’s Speech? When the importance of energy independence could not be clearer, this Government’s solution is to double down on fossil fuels.
The National Infrastructure Commission recently found that moving away from fossil fuels would enhance energy security by reducing exposure to the impact of geopolitical shocks on prices. Do the Government disagree, or do they just not care? Why are they happy to reduce our energy security in this way? While producing our own energy may bring down energy imports, it is not necessary to do it in this way. Indeed, our oil and gas production has higher than average emissions compared with other producers and is twice as polluting as that of Norway, where most of our imports come from. That is where the Government’s focus should be: to increase energy security, increase energy independence and lower bills while meeting our climate commitments.
It was this Government’s own former net zero tsar, Chris Skidmore MP, who said:
“There is no such thing as a new net zero oilfield”.
Yet oilfields are the Government’s number one priority.
The Duke of Wellington (CB)
My Lords, in this very wide-ranging debate this afternoon, I wish to speak about the environment, and in particular the aquatic environment. I had hoped that there might have been a reference in the gracious Speech to the regulation of water companies. Almost every day we read in the newspapers of yet more revolting discharges of sewage into our rivers and on to our beaches. The Environment Act 2021 placed new obligations on water companies to limit such discharges. The Water Services Regulation Authority, Ofwat, and the Environment Agency are taking this matter a great deal more seriously than they did before the passing of that Act, and public awareness and concern have continued to rise. In the local elections last May, it became an important political issue—but the continuing level of discharges is an embarrassment to this country.
Many people rightly question how we could have got ourselves into this shameful situation. There have been suggestions that the water companies should be renationalised. I am personally not in favour of that, but I think we must now accept that, when these regional public service monopolies were privatised, the regulatory structure then created has been found to be inadequate. Any monopoly, particularly of a public service, must necessarily be methodically regulated. Unfortunately, for the water industry this responsibility is split between Ofwat, the financial regulator, and the Environment Agency, the environmental regulator.
The Environment Agency has many responsibilities and monitoring sewage discharges has not in the past been a high priority. I therefore propose to Ministers—and I realise that the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, is a Treasury Minister, and I hope that she will pass this on to her colleagues in Defra—and to the Opposition—I am pleased to see the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, in her place—that whoever is drafting the next King’s Speech should include an undertaking by His Majesty’s Ministers to introduce legislation to Parliament to place all regulation of water companies in one regulator. I am not aware of any other regulated industry where the responsibility is divided.
In trying to analyse the causes of this dire situation, we see a number of possible reasons. Ofwat may not have been aware of the level of investment required to cope with the enormous increase in wastewater being generated by housebuilding and home improvements. It may not have been aware of the increasing volumes of rainwater being channelled into the sewerage system. Equally, the Environment Agency had not been aware for years of the level of illegal discharges and the degree of investment required to rectify it. I sympathise with officials at both regulators, who are trying to do their jobs. At Ofwat, one hand was tied behind their back, and at the Environment Agency they have been more concerned with other matters, such as floods and flood management.
My request, perhaps to the new Secretary of State, is to allow officials at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to study the possible restructuring of water company regulation so as to place it unambiguously with a single regulator. This will probably lead to higher investment, which is absolutely necessary; to lower dividends to water company shareholders, which with hindsight have been too high; and to lower bonuses for management, which have clearly been too high. This is not a glamorous subject. In this green and pleasant land—a phrase used earlier in the excellent maiden speech by the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, but worth repeating—we simply cannot go on polluting our rivers and beaches.
Lord Leong (Lab)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington. I take this opportunity to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich, on their excellent speeches. I look forward to their contributions in the years ahead.
This time last year, I was introduced in your Lordships’ House, so it was a great honour, exactly one year later, to be in the Chamber to listen to His Majesty the King’s gracious Speech. Apart from my first anniversary, however, there was very little to celebrate. Indeed, on the crucial subject of the economy, there was very little in the Speech. It does not take a political mastermind to work out why: interest rates are at their highest since the 2008 global financial crisis; and inflation is at more than three times the Bank of England’s target rate, with underlying indicators suggesting that further falls will be sluggish. The British people are paying the price of this failing Government, through 25 Tory tax rises and much higher mortgages. Does the Minister agree that there is really nothing to crow about?
At the start of this year, the Prime Minister and Chancellor promised to get the economy growing. Last week’s GDP figures show that growth is flatlining, yet this is met with a mixture of relief and tepid celebration on the Government Benches. The Chancellor put it down to high inflation. Does the Minister believe that if inflation comes down to the Prime Minister’s personal target of half what it was in January, we will see growth rise significantly, or is just avoiding recession now the limit of this tired Government’s ambition? According to the IMF’s World Economic Outlook report, the UK is forecast to record the weakest growth of all the G7 economies next year, while our national debt is at historically high levels. Will the Minister inform your Lordships’ House what the UK’s current national debt is, and how many millions servicing debt interest will cost us over the coming years?
Looking at the few economy-related Bills in the King’s Speech, I welcome the reintroduction of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill, carried over from the previous Session. The additional protections for consumers in the rapidly evolving online marketplace are broadly agreed cross-party and in both Chambers. Sadly, the digital divide in the UK is increasing, just as connectivity becomes ever more important for people’s access to fundamental services, information and financial transactions. The inequity of access to online learning for the poorest households was evident during the pandemic and risks becoming entrenched for the next generation, yet there is no indication that the Government have a plan to address this, or even any answers on the scale of the problem. Can the Minister confirm how many households do not have, first, broadband, and, secondly, mobile internet access, and indicate what the Government plan to do to reduce those numbers?
Labour is a proud pro-business, pro-trade party and we welcome any deal which increases the export potential for British businesses and improves choice for British consumers. However, unless and until we fundamentally address our long-standing and widely acknowledged low productivity problem, joining a trade organisation containing
“some of the world’s most dynamic economies”
will not transform our economy. It reeks of desperation—a bit like the nerdy kid in a school hanging round the cool kids, hoping that some of their success might rub off. I fear the Government’s claims for the CPTPP trade Bill are optimistic, to say the least. Parliament must have the chance to properly scrutinise this deal. Can the Minister ensure that it will deliver for British people, workers, businesses and consumers and will not diminish their hard-won rights and environmental protections?
Our great country deserves so much better than this fag-end Government and their uninspiring set of Bills which fail to address the fundamental issues facing the British economy. Labour has a radical vision for an economy that works for the whole world. Regrettably, the gracious Speech is another missed opportunity from this Government, a half-hearted final throw of the dice by a Prime Minister with his back to the wall in the last chance saloon of a one-horse town at the end of the road to nowhere.
Lord Wakeham (Con)
My Lords, I enjoyed the speech of the noble Lord. I have not heard him speak before. As he said at the beginning of his speech, he has been here only about a year and I have not managed to speak in the House for quite a bit longer than a year because I have been in and out of hospital. I am now, I think, getting better, but I have my stick here in case I wobble while I am speaking.
It is interesting that when you are away from the House for a time after you have been here—in my case now, in both Houses, getting near to 50 years—you think about the things you got wrong rather than the things you got right. One of the most important sentences in the King’s excellent Speech was that we should
“make the difficult but necessary long-term decisions to change this country for the better”.
I applied that to the time when I was Secretary of State for Energy, some 30 years ago, when I privatised the electricity industry. I can forget about the things we got right; I think about the things that have not been quite right. At the time, I remember the tremendous difficulties we had and the things we had to abandon. We wanted to include nuclear power, but we were simply not able to do it because nobody could tell us what it cost to close a nuclear power station, so that was out of the question. Secondly, looking at more recent days, it is quite clear that the arrangements we then made for wind power have not really stood the test of time; I think that has to be looked at again.
The new Secretary of State therefore has two important areas to oversee. I would like to see nuclear power given a substantial revival and I would also like to see wind power. She also has to look at the wider question. One report by the Economic Affairs Committee of this House, of which I was chairman for many years, wrote about how it is thought that the economic growth in the world for the rest of this century will mean that the standard of living in the underdeveloped parts of the world will rise to the point where it will be very near the levels of the developed world. Of course, that will produce great wealth; it will probably stop people wanting to emigrate to other countries as much as they did; it will do all sorts of things and it will also add to the problems of global warming. There are some massive challenges to deal with in the years to come.
What we have probably not developed enough in the world is solar power. There is more to do. I was reading the other day, for instance, that 60% of the facilities for global solar power are in Africa and that they produce 1% of the solar power in the world. There is a lot to be done. We will go through a difficult time in which, I am pretty certain, fossil fuels will gradually die out in the end, although not as quickly as some people want. A lot of things in this world will be great for my grandchildren, let alone my children. I am delighted to be back.
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, and to welcome him back to the House.
The gracious Speech will have been followed by many to understand how the Government intend to bring much-needed relief to those struggling with the cost of living crisis and the grave reduction in our public services. Those of us focusing on energy and the delivery of net zero are, I am afraid, faced yet again with a massive missed opportunity and real disappointment at the announcements made.
I am taken back to the introduction of the Energy Bill—now Act—in July 2022. While it undoubtedly brought in improvements, the overwhelming reaction was disappointment. The measures left out would have made a real difference to people’s lives, such as the means to develop a substantial retrofitting programme, the ability to move at speed to deliver community energy schemes or the ability to move at pace to increase the introduction of onshore wind schemes. It was such a waste, with the subsequent crises in the affordability of energy prices and in energy supply, and therefore security, made so much worse by the conflict in Ukraine.
The Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill does not provide the ambition this country needs. As the Secretary of State has admitted, it will not deliver lower energy bills for consumers—a shocking admission by any standard—so we are left asking who will benefit. Could it be those oil and gas companies already in receipt of record profits? Surely, now more than ever, the focus should be on what is right for the future prospects of this country. This is not a time to follow through on policies attempting to achieve division by political point-scoring. What message does it give to the world that the Government’s flagship policy is encouraging fossil fuel development?
The impact on the economy must be taken very seriously. We know that the damage to our international reputation as a leader in the field of climate change has consequences. The lack of a coherent plan to deliver against our climate objectives has caused consternation among our business leaders and those responsible for attracting inward investment. We have already seen the lack of interest in developing new offshore wind approvals. Now we learn that the slight encouragement given to those wishing to deliver onshore wind has failed to deliver any new investment proposals at all. The competition for investment from the United States and Europe in particular poses a real threat to our viability in these areas.
The tragedy is that there are alternatives, as outlined by my noble friend Lady Smith of Basildon in the debate responding to the gracious Speech last week. Speaking about what government can and should be doing to be a force for good, she highlighted innovation and enabling and encouraging investment. She went on to outline what Labour would do in government to achieve a successful green economy, such as establishing a national wealth fund to invest in battery gigafactories and clean steel plants and setting up a publicly owned GB energy company to improve procurement, speed up green transition and make us a global leader in clean energy. Labour’s mission is to make the UK a clean energy superpower, boosting jobs and investment for all across the UK.
We have heard much reference to the future prospects of our children and young people across our debates on the gracious Speech and to how they are being let down. An ambitious transition to clean energy would deliver thousands of skilled jobs across all our regions and nations and an ambitious nature recovery plan would offer hope for the future and help deliver our net-zero targets—missed opportunities again.
Right now, the reality is that 6 million households are heading into this winter facing fuel poverty. We have the worst-insulated housing stock in Europe and, as a consequence, an estimated 31,000 children aged four and under being admitted to hospital each year due to respiratory viruses and more. The personal cost to children is unimaginable, the loss to the economy staggering and the impact on the NHS impossible to calculate. I hope the Minister can assure us that the Government will focus on solving the problems we face, although I somehow doubt that we will receive the comfort we look for.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, last week the Hackney mayoral election saw the Green Party candidate, Zoë Garbett, take 25% of the vote, finishing second. On a rough calculation, my noble friend Lady Jones and I have about 0.5% of the time available, so here I go on economy, transport, energy and the environment.
On the climate emergency, I could just cross-reference the noble Lord, Lord Stern, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman and Lady Sheehan. The Copernicus Climate Change Service has found that, following exceptional October temperatures, it is now virtually certain that 2023 will be the warmest year on record. Social media is full of climate scientists with graphics showing just how out of control our climate is. At current levels of emissions, the world has six years left before we bust through 1.5 degrees. Do the Government understand that?
The UN Environment Programme report on the discrepancy between the planned fossil fuel production of Governments around the world finds that they collectively plan to produce 110% more fossil fuels than is consistent with the 1.5 degree limit in 2030. The UNEP says there is
“no evidence that the UK government is actively winding down oil and gas production”.
Well, quite.
Local environmental questions are perhaps for our new Environment Secretary. I am sure he has great interest in these issues, although I have not found any evidence of that online. The Government appear to have promised two steps that demand primary legislation: a ban on the sale of horticultural peat by 2024 and UK ratification of the global oceans treaty. Can the Minister say whether the Government have taken into account the environmental principles in all the Bills in the King’s Speech, given that there is now a legal duty on Ministers to have due regard to the environmental principles policy statement? The Minister is from the Treasury; this applies to it as well.
I have two points on transport. First, in introducing this debate, the Minister repeated the fiction of the “war on the motorist”. To take just one comparison, we are actually talking about the burden on the bus user. According to Office for National Statistics data, the cost of travelling by bus has risen 30% more than the cost of car travel since 2014, the bus being used primarily by the poorest in our society.
Secondly, in responding, perhaps the Minister could tell me if she stands behind the briefing given by an unnamed government source that the first models of self-driving cars could be offered to motorists in the UK by 2026—if they are proved safe. Does she agree with me that that reflects the pie in the sky thinking that is shot through the announcements and actions of this Government?
Finally, I will use the Government’s favourite phrase, employ some “long-term thinking” and reflect on the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Livermore, who opened for the Labour Party. The noble Lord focused on tax generally being high and blamed the poverty of the many and the terrible destitution affecting so many households, particularly those with children. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham highlighted, some 1 million people are suffering from destitution. Labour’s answer to this is the magic of growth, implying a return to historic levels that very few can see in our future. That means, however, that if we do not tackle the distribution of wealth, those who are living on crumbs now will get only a few more crumbs.
I came into the Chamber for this debate from a session titled “the economic common-sense case for taxing wealth as well as work”, run by groups including Patriotic Millionaires UK, the APPG on Anti-Corruption and Responsible Tax, and Tax Justice UK. It highlighted how the 50 richest families in the UK have wealth worth more than the bottom half of the whole population. That is 50 families versus 33.5 million people. I suggest that the Labour Party think harder about who is and who is not paying tax and the need for the redistributive effects of a wealth tax in our society.
Lord Hain (Lab)
My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, especially on climate change and environmental issues. In October, the Institute for Fiscal Studies summed up the UK’s prospects as “darkening” and the growth outlook as “poor”. IMF data shows that in the 14 years before the 2008 global financial crisis, most of which was under Labour, UK productivity rose at an average annual rate of well over 2%. However, in the 14 years following the financial crisis—and most of that was under the Tories—productivity only improved at a measly average annual rate of less than 0.5%.
The stand-out factor for this worsening economic performance is our pathetically poor rates of investment, both public and private. According to the IMF, between 2010 and 2022, UK investment as a share of GDP was the lowest in the G7, and UK savings were far below even that, leaving the UK highly dependent on foreign capital. A Resolution Foundation study in March 2023 found that Britain’s public investment is in the weakest third of OECD countries. Had Britain matched the average OECD rate of public investment over the past 20 years, it would have been a massive £500 billion higher. This long-term failure to invest in our healthcare, housing and transport services is the reason why Britain has fewer hospital beds per person than all bar one OECD economy, and why the British spend more time commuting to work than all bar two other OECD countries. That is a pathetic record.
Andy Haldane, former chief economist at the Bank of England and now the director of the Royal Society of Arts, has noted that as well as being too low, UK public investment levels are far too volatile—witness the Government’s HS2 shambles. The planned increase in public investment announced by the Boris Johnson Government in 2020 was later cut following the Liz Truss disastrous mini-Budget. Rishi Sunak’s Administration is now planning for public investment to fall as a share of GDP in each of the next four years, reversing most of the increases announced three years ago.
Resolution Foundation economists calculate that setting public investment at a stable 3% of GDP—about £75 billion—would boost UK economic growth by nearly 1% per year over five years and stay within the debt rules accepted by both Front Benches. The Government’s present plans, however, envisage public investment dropping from £74 billion this year to only £62 billion in four years’ time.
The independent National Infrastructure Commission agrees that decades of inadequate infrastructure investment have held UK productivity back, singling out public transport, home heating and insulation, and water networks as all being in urgent need of renewal. It recommends extra public investment of £30 billion per year, plus at least £40 billion per year from the private sector. More than an extra £30 billion per year of public investment might have been recommended, but for the restrictive remit set by George Osborne when he created the commission in 2015.
I am afraid that everywhere we find evidence of Tory economic failure, we also find George Osborne’s fingerprints. His austerity policy, continued under Philip Hammond, drastically curtailed UK economic growth, triggering a severe slowdown in the rate of increase in British productivity and a standstill in real household living standards. Over 80% of the Tory spending cuts fell on public sector budgets, equivalent today to slashing public spending by a colossal £180 billion—more than the total of NHS spending in England this year.
A decade of Tory austerity has inflicted huge self-harm on Britain’s public services, with the Institute for Government finding eight of nine public services performing worse now than before Covid. Hospitals and courts stand out, with waiting lists for hospital treatment at 10 million and a backlog of nearly 90,000 court cases. The Government’s spending plans mean that however bad the plight facing Britain today, the outlook after 2025 is even worse—unless, of course, Britain is saved by a Labour Government, which we all should hope for.
Baroness Noakes (Con)
My Lords, there is predictably little in the gracious Speech on the Government’s economic policies, other than a reference to the Government’s focus on increasing economic growth. I know the Government believe in growth, but sadly I have often struggled to reconcile this with their actual policies. I am, however, an optimist and I am looking forward to next week’s Autumn Statement. I hope it will set out some clear policies to support a healthy and growing economy. I will be looking for three things: lower taxes, less regulation and a smaller state.
First, a high-tax economy is not a healthy economy. The current tax burden is around 37% of GDP. This Parliament is on track to be the biggest tax-raising one since the Second World War, higher even than that of the first term of the Blair Government. Thirty years ago, the UK was several percentage points below G7 and EU levels of tax, and we are now broadly on a par with them. If we look at the economies that are growing rapidly, we rarely find them carrying that level of taxation.
Our corporation tax headline rate of 25% is quite simply anti-growth. No amount of relief for R&D or investment will change this, because headline rates are often a deciding factor in major investment decisions. The 25% rate is the key driver of the UK plummeting down the international tax competitive league tables. This year, we are 30th out of 48 OECD countries. For corporation taxes alone, we have fallen 17 places in the last year. This is shocking. We certainly cannot tax our way to economic growth, but the depressing thing is that our current corporation tax policies are doing the exact opposite. Our personal taxes are no better. In the last three years, frozen tax rates and thresholds have pulled around 4 million more people into the tax net and 1.6 million have moved into higher tax brackets.
The Government’s addiction to fiscal drag means that as many as one in five taxpayers will be paying the higher income tax rates. Very high marginal rates around the thresholds exacerbate this and create perverse incentives. Lower tax rates do not have to result in lower tax yields, as my late noble friend Lord Lawson of Blaby demonstrated when he was Chancellor. Low rates liberate the economy and higher activity, and that drives higher tax yields.
My second area is less regulation. We may have taken back control from the EU, but we have done little to relieve regulatory burdens, especially on SMEs. Big businesses love regulation, because it acts as a barrier to entry. We need to smash those barriers down to unleash the growth potential in our smaller businesses. The Government and their quangos need to get serious about deregulation, especially in the SME space.
Thirdly, we need a smaller state. The size of the Civil Service is shocking. Having wrestled the numbers down to around 385,000 in 2016, the numbers have gone back up again to around half a million. Quangos employed nearly 320,000 people in 2020, up nearly threefold since 2008. What on earth is going on? The public sector needs to stop doing things. Cancelling the white elephant of HS2 was a good start, but there is much more that needs to be done.
At some point, the Government, whichever party is in power, will have to face the fact that the NHS monolith needs serious reform. It eats up around 40% of day-to-day government spending and it has an insatiable appetite for taxpayers’ money, but it does not deliver a world-class health system. Even the British public are starting to realise that their precious NHS is letting them down.
I conclude with energy. I have been much encouraged by the Government’s new pragmatism on vehicles and on gas boilers, as well as by the announcement in the King’s Speech that there will be more licensing of oil and gas fields. Energy policies need to be affordable today or they will undermine our economic growth ambitions. It is time to get real and take net zero off its pedestal.
Baroness Whitaker (Lab)
My Lords. the gracious Speech reaffirmed the Government’s commitment to net zero, but without much detail. May I fill some of that gap by advocating more action from the Government on wave energy? I declare that I am completing a fellowship in wave energy for the IPT and I am a member of Peers for the Planet. I am also grateful to Richard Arnold of the Marine Energy Council for factual information.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that waves are the world’s largest untapped energy resource. Our Science and Technology Committee encouraged development as long ago as 2001, with a positive response from the then Minister, my noble friend Lord Hain. Our abundant, vigorous waves are more predictable than our wind and sunshine. Since wave energy is seasonal, mostly available over the winter, its use fits well with demand. It is estimated that just over 12 gigawatts of wave and tidal stream energy would save the UK £1 billion in energy system costs, as this would avoid the expensive generation and storage we would otherwise need in our future dependence on intermittent renewables. Research has supplied various working models, which I have seen in our universities.
The Energy Minister, Graham Stuart—I think he is still the Energy Minister—told parliamentarians that there was no technical problem inhibiting commercial scale-up, so what are the obstacles? The private sector lagged behind. There is a national problem in the recruitment and training of mechanical engineers. Later Governments did not help, and it was only some EU schemes that filled the gap. We cannot rely on the market to innovate when the benefits may be long-term. Underpinning by the state has a crucial role. For instance, costs would also be saved by co-locating wave and wind energy. Research projects on combining wind and wave sites can apply to UK Research and Innovation for funding, as the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, has said, so why not a government pilot scheme to demonstrate the advantages? We need technology stimulus as well as market pull strategies.
Had the Government stepped in, some estimate that an increase in the technology learning rate of 10% to 15% could have reduced the total investment needed for wave energy to deliver over 6 gigawatts by 2050 from £20.5 billion to £3 billion. This could still be done if the schemes were introduced now. There are many sites for development off our western coasts. What discussions will take place with the devolved Governments, particularly in Scotland, where the biggest wave resource is? Only Wave Energy Scotland has seized this opportunity for funding.
The Government’s scheme, contracts for difference, has finally included wave energy, but as it has not received any support for development, it is more expensive than other technologies for the time being, so a ring-fence is needed. We need a better consent process. Consent is required for a project for over 1 megawatt for marine energy to be eligible to bid for a contract for difference, unlike onshore wind, where the ceiling is 50 megawatts. However, this can take up to four years, often longer. I heard much concern about this when I visited research sites. The EU target is three months.
Tide and wave energy are put together, obscuring the relative paucity of wave energy support. It needs its own category. The Government are consulting on this subject. Where have we got to? Will there be assistance in capacity building for the consent process? We are being left behind. CorPower in Portugal has started exporting wave energy to the grid. In the USA, the Senate in California unanimously passed a Bill to support wave and tidal energy, and the EU funded the Saoirse project in Ireland with a share of £250 million.
Finally, the government-funded Supergen reports by Edinburgh University have set out in detail really significant opportunities to increase clean growth substantially through adding tidal stream and wave energy to the renewables mix. I commend them to the Minister, and I implore the Government not to waste the potential of one of our strongest national assets in hastening the abandonment of fossil fuels, in which we could still, with support, be a world leader.
Lord Londesborough (CB)
My Lords, I will focus on the economy, in light of the Prime Minister’s rather baffling introduction to the King's Speech where he states that “Our vibrant economy”, which has “turned the corner”, makes investors
“excited about what the UK has to offer”.
As an entrepreneur and investor in SMEs—I declare my interests as set out in the register—I must beg to differ. Our economy is flatlining. GDP is stuck at around £2.3 trillion and has barely moved in the last three years, whatever ONS revisions the Government cling to, and the outlook is for minimal growth.
Our GDP generates some £900 billion in tax receipts for the Government, which, for an ageing nation of 67 million people and a finite workforce, is simply not enough to run public services and invest in infrastructure—HS2 being a case in point—let alone meet the unknown costs of achieving net zero. Our tax burden is now at the highest level since the Second World War, but tax receipts remain arguably some £100 billion per annum short of the nation’s needs. There is no scope for increasing taxes, and the costs of servicing our national debt are spiralling.
The only way out of this is to generate real economic growth—to be specific, 2% to 3% annual GDP growth over a period of five years. Overall, that would add about £250 billion to economic output and, crucially, generate an additional £100 billion per annum in tax receipts. That is the big picture, so let us have an honest appraisal of our economy—or, as the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, put it, full disclosure—identify the opportunities, set out ambitious targets and be fully accountable for them; in other words, take an enterprising approach. That requires a laser-like focus on boosting labour productivity—output per hour—which is fundamental to achieving sustainable growth.
We keep referring to the productivity puzzle but do little to solve it. When the Prime Minister claims that our economy is recovering at a faster rate than France and Germany, he misses the point entirely. Our productivity lags significantly behind those two countries and has done so for decades. I suggest that we cut the hubris and perhaps learn from our neighbours—and learn also from leaders in the private sector who champion the productivity of their workforces. They talk a language we rarely hear in Parliament: that of performance culture. They focus on the critical areas that turn the productivity dial: recruitment, training, incentivisation on performance, management and leadership. We are deep in the fourth hour of this debate and I am the 37th to speak, but no one has mentioned even one of those items.
I have time to touch on only one of those areas: management. We have 8 million managers in the UK workforce, yet 70% of them are deemed accidental managers, having received no proper training to develop the skills required to lead their teams effectively and productively. That begs the uncomfortable question: are we a nation of poor managers?
Take football’s Premier League, which has become very big business. How many of the clubs finishing in the top three places over each of the last 20 years have been led by an English manager? The answer is zero—not one. In the other major leagues of France, Italy, Germany and Spain, those nations’ managers have accounted for more than 30 of the top three places over those 20 years. In that time, not a single British manager has led a top-three club in any one of those countries. Is that a trivial, anecdotal example? No, it is symptomatic of a country that invests too little in its human capital—in education, training, skills and management in both public and private sectors. This is hugely important for productivity but gets far too little attention. Can the Minister say what plans the Government have to develop a coherent plan and strategy for workforce productivity, and when will we see it?
The Lord Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to speak in this debate on His Majesty’s gracious Speech, even if I find myself, at this stage, unlike the previous speaker, echoing many of the points made and being at variance with points that others have made. I draw attention to my entry in the register of interests, particularly as president-elect of the Suffolk Agricultural Association.
I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, and my right reverend friend and neighbour the Bishop of Norwich on their maiden speeches; I look forward to their future contributions to this House. When the diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich was formed out of the dioceses of Ely and Norwich in 1914, the coastal town of Lowestoft remained part of the diocese of Norwich, so I am pleased to welcome another Bishop serving the glorious county of Suffolk to this House.
In my own maiden speech, given after Her late Majesty’s final gracious Speech, I noted with gratitude the Government’s aspiration that the United Kingdom be a global leader in responding to the challenges of energy security without compromising our response to the climate crisis. I continue to applaud the Government’s desire for the United Kingdom to be a global leader in tackling climate change, but it is my fear that the current direction of travel risks us losing this position as a global leader.
The King’s gracious Speech expressed a hope that we could encourage other countries to improve on their climate commitments, and it is indeed commendable that the UK has the fastest reduction in emissions in the G7, granting us the authority to be seen as a leader in the field. I believe that we should encourage others to be more ambitious with their own targets, rather than scaling back our own.
While fossil fuels continue to have a place in our energy transition to net zero, there is limited evidence that proposed new offshore petroleum licences will have any impact on UK energy security or customer bills, or themselves aid our transition to net zero. UK oil and gas production has reduced by almost 75% over the past couple of decades, so the direction of travel is clear. It is this direction—away from fossil fuels—that we need to invest in wholeheartedly if we are to secure energy security.
Our net-zero transition requires us to move quickly to invest in new technology and renewables, while also preparing our infrastructure and homes to work within the new energy landscape. That requires focus on and investment in not only renewable energy but the surrounding technologies, such as energy storage and transport, and readying homes to be heated through electricity only.
At a time when cost of living pressures are so high and more than 3 million Britons—earlier I heard the figure was 6 million—find themselves in fuel poverty this winter, it is disappointing to see that the Government do not intend to require landlords to improve the energy efficiency of rented homes. The poorest are often in accommodation that is badly insulated, if at all. The scrapping of plans for landlords to upgrade their properties will mean that many continue to pay higher energy bills for longer. Leaving the timing of these important improvements up to landlords risks leaving more people in fuel poverty for longer.
As a Bishop for a largely rural county and president-elect of the Suffolk Agricultural Association, I have a great interest in the future of farming and in developing sustainable methods of food production and food security. I support the ELMS, although I believe that even more needs to be done to support farmers in accessing those funds. Following the recent floods, I am concerned about the vulnerability of farmers and many in our rural communities to the impact of severe weather. I want to ensure that we continue to mitigate the risk and impact of flooding on farmers, businesses and homes. The impact of the recent floods has been devasting to many; some 750 homes were flooded in Suffolk.
I will end on a personal note. My even nearer neighbour, the Bishop of Dunwich—listen to his title—was flooded out of his home and has spent the last few weeks living with me. I have refrained, out of pastoral sensitivity, from pointing out that his home is now sharing the fate of the rest of his see.
Lord Razzall (LD)
My Lords, as a number of noble Lords have found, the debate on the gracious Speech provides the opportunity to comment on the current state of the British economy without having to comment on specific proposals. Notwithstanding the Minister’s brave attempt in his opening speech, and the Prime Minister’s remarks, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Londesborough, that few can doubt that our condition is parlous. Although we may have just avoided a technical recession, we are bumping along at the bottom with little prospect of growth. Commentators now even predict that in 10 years there will be six major trading entities—China, India, the USA, Japan, Russia and the EU—and we will play no significant role.
I fear it is now appropriate, today of all days, to quote from Kipling’s “Recessional”, written in 1897:
“The tumult and the shouting dies;
The Captains and the Kings depart …
Far-called, our navies melt away …
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!”
I fear that is us—and that the noble Lord, Lord West, who is not in his place, will never get the ships he requires.
Notwithstanding our parlous position, the right wing of the Tory party consistently calls for tax cuts, believing, as the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, said—although she did not describe it as such—in the Laffer curve, which has never been shown to work. But why, in 13 years of government, have the Tories not reformed the tax system to raise revenue in a growth-friendly manner? The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, sadly not in his place, produced ideas in 2006 to reform our tax system which have not been implemented.
No one could deny that the tax system itself is a structural mess. Take the major revenue-raising taxes. The VAT system has numerous exceptions and zero-rated items and is a mess. We have two different personal taxes in income tax and national insurance running simultaneously, with strange marginal tax rates for individuals. In addition, business taxes have been on a rollercoaster. Corporation tax was reduced to 19% but is now back to 25%. Why have the Government not sorted out this mess? It is significant that the Government have even recently abolished the Office of Tax Simplification.
Instead of calling for reform of the tax system, many Tories such as the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, cling to the idea that there is now £20 billion of room for tax cuts in the short term. In the short term, this is because the budget deficit for the first six months of the fiscal year is £19.8 billion lower than the OBR March forecast. However, the deficit is still £15 billion higher than the corresponding period last year, when on the way to a full-year outturn of £128 billion, which is 5% of GDP. No: in my view, advocates of tax cuts should listen to last year’s speaker at the Mais lecture, who said:
“I am disheartened when I hear the flippant claim that ‘tax cuts always pay for themselves’. They do not. Cutting tax sustainably requires hard work, prioritisation, and the willingness to make difficult and often unpopular arguments elsewhere. And it is hard to cut taxes at a time when demands on the state are growing”.
That was not a left-wing economist or a member of the Liberal Democrats or the Labour Party. It was Chancellor Sunak—and I hope Jeremy Hunt is listening.
Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)
My Lords, we have had presented in the gracious Speech a Potemkin village of a legislative programme: facades with no substance, performative legislation driven solely by the Prime Minister’s perception of short-term and shoddy political advantage. Others have and will deal with the egregious examples of poor and ill-considered legislation in the Speech. For myself, I am particularly concerned about the proposed Economic Activities of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill, but I will save my remarks on that for Second Reading, other than to emphasise my strong opposition. That is what is in the speech. I want to highlight some of the matters that are missing from the Speech, which ought to be there if we had anything like a serious Government.
First, and most importantly, although technically it does not come under the heading for today, is the mental health Bill. It is shameful that it has not appeared. It was in the Government’s manifesto and was agreed all-party as a matter of high priority, and yet the Government cannot afford the time to put it before the House. I am particularly pleased therefore that my Front Bench in the Commons earlier today announced that it would be a Bill in the first Session of a Labour Government.
More relevantly but also important is the absence of the audit Bill. What explanation can the Front Bench provide for the absence of that Bill? BEIS announced in May last year that there would be an
“audit regime overhaul to help restore trust in big business”.
It said:
“Government will revamp the UK’s corporate reporting and audit regime through a new regulator, greater accountability for big business and by addressing the dominance of the Big Four audit firms”.
That is so important but not important enough, apparently, to justify a Bill this Session. Not that I would necessarily agree with everything in the draft Bill, but these issues need to be dealt with. In this context I need to declare an interest as a fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, as the draft Bill includes provisions to regulate the profession.
Lastly, there is no sign of a pensions Bill, so all attention goes to the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement. The focus here is on the so-called Mansion House proposals, with the presumption we must take that the Government can achieve all they wish without legislation. My noble friend Lady Drake has already addressed the issues and problems that are faced, and it may well be true, but it is not as if in the area of pensions more does not need to be done. The lack of a pensions Bill suggests not so much that the Government have run out of ideas but that they have run out of Pensions Ministers, with Laura Trott’s move to the Treasury.
We are looking for leadership here on important policy issues such as collective defined contribution schemes, defined-benefit superfunds, the value for money framework, small-pot consolidation and, not least, the dashboard. Even without a Bill, these issues need to be addressed, and the chopping and changing of Pensions Ministers leaves the pensions industry in despair.
Lord Warner (CB)
My Lords, as a number of people have said this afternoon, the UK has an economy that is flatlining, with high debt, high taxes and little fiscal headroom. I want to speak this evening about making better use of public expenditure, an issue totally ignored in the King’s Speech.
First, I will address an old favourite: adult social care, which Boris Johnson promised to fix within a year back in 2019. After a few financial handouts to local government, the Government have given up on fixing social care’s workforce, funding and organisational problems, so we continue to burden families unfairly, load unnecessary costs on to the NHS and leave patients marooned in expensive acute hospitals.
Secondly, our failing NHS is spending an ever-increasing proportion of GDP. The Prime Minister indulges in a fantasy that he can fix things by pledging again to cut the NHS waiting list backlog, transforming the NHS with a long-term workforce plan and passing new legislation to curb smoking. The new anti-smoking Bill is well intended but will take years to have much impact, and the backlog has increased to over 8 million people since Rishi Sunak first promised to cut it. The workforce plan arrived in June, a decade too late, NHS doctors have not stopped strikes and the King’s Fund has pointed out that the workforce plan has no measures for retaining disgruntled NHS doctors and nurses now being tempted by attractive offers from aggressive American and Australian recruiters.
The NHS now faces an existential crisis seemingly unrecognised by our Prime Minister. Thankfully, the Treasury has stepped in and refused to give NHS England all the extra funding it is seeking despite having been given £20 billion more than pre Covid. McKinsey has now been called in to find out why NHS productivity is so poor. The Prime Minister must wish that he had not ignored the advice of Sajid Javid, who, when he was Health Secretary, called for radical NHS reform because it was financially unsustainable.
The NHS remains an inefficient ill-health service, dominated by costly acute hospitals and neglectful of community services. Women are getting a particularly raw deal, with two-thirds of England’s maternity units rated as substandard by the Care Quality Commission. Obesity and other lifestyle diseases continue to kill people prematurely, with public health disgracefully underfunded. The public are voting with their feet and increasingly using the private sector for diagnosis and treatment.
Thirdly, there is the burgeoning problem of mental ill-health, which has been referred to, and its impact on families and the labour market. Over 12% of sickness days absence are attributed to mental health problems. The King’s Speech promises
“expanding and transforming mental health services”.
This is difficult to take seriously when there are over 1 million patients waiting for mental health services and 10% of consultant psychiatrist posts are unfilled. That is about 600 posts. As has again already been mentioned, the legislative programme contains no updated mental health Bill, despite promises in the 2017 and 2019 Conservative manifestos.
It is not just health and care that test the credibility of the King’s Speech. I do not have time to go into the housing market promises not being implemented, or the rather crazy idea that we need tougher sentences for serious offenders when we have a record high prison population and only 500 spare places. Where are the extra prisoners going to go? Perhaps we will have another prison ship.
Lastly, I turn to the Government’s problems with life sciences, which the Prime Minister has said are going to be world-beating. In fact, the UK currently has the highest tax in Europe for clawing back money from pharmaceuticals sold to the NHS: 27.5%, compared with 12% in Germany. This results in large companies like AstraZeneca making new investments in medicines research and manufacturing facilities outside the UK, with the consequent loss of research jobs here in the UK. A new claw-back scheme is being negotiated at present for 2024. If he wants to protect the UK economy, Rishi Sunak now needs to get his hands dirty and ensure that the new scheme secures some competitive advantage for UK plc.
Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)
My Lords, I will speak about Britain’s railways and in doing so remind the House of my interests as chair of the Great Western Railway stakeholder advisory board, president of the Heritage Railway Association and co-author of three books on railways and politics which attracted favourable reviews from Members of your Lordships’ House, two of whom I am happy to see in their place this evening.
It is now well over five years and four Secretaries of State since Keith Williams was asked by the Government to conduct a rail review. He came up with a set of practical proposals which formed the basis of a White Paper in May 2021. It had the makings of a cross-party consensus which could survive a change of government. A transition team was set up and much work was done and expense incurred in preparing for fundamental changes on the railways, which were necessary because the franchising model was broken.
We were repeatedly promised legislation “when parliamentary time permits” to give statutory backing to the central proposal to establish a new body—Great British Railways—to provide a guiding mind over the railways’ various operations. Given how light on legislation is the gracious Speech, there would have been ample opportunity to introduce a short and largely uncontentious Bill in this final Session; or to pick up the suggestion I put to the Government on 12 July that the powers given by the Deregulation and Contracting Out Act 1994 would have allowed the Secretary of State, by means of a statutory instrument, to delegate some or all of his franchising powers and get Great British Railways up and running. But these opportunities have been lost, and all we are promised is a draft Bill. Failure to get GBR running means that the costs of operating the railway will continue to be higher than they need be, and the Treasury will go on strangling revenue growth, with the DfT micro-managing virtually every operational decision taken by the train operators.
Despite their best intentions, the civil servants struggling to cope with this situation frankly do not have the capability or capacity for this work. The management of the railways must return to the professional railway men and railway women whose hands have been tied by the present arrangements of annual contracts and whose expertise has been ignored for far too long.
Despite this negative background, growth and passenger demand is back. While business travel and commuting numbers are still down compared with those before Covid, leisure travel is booming and trains are full again, particularly on routes such as the east coast main line and Great Western. New figures from Hull Trains published last week showed a very strong recovery in journey levels, with 28% more people now travelling with that operator than before the pandemic.
This is good news, of course, as it is helping to reduce the need for car travel and flying, and thus is reducing the carbon footprint of these travellers. But please can we hear no more of the “war on motorists”, which I was surprised to hear the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, mention in opening the debate, and on which the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, poured scorn in her speech. We should remember that from May 1999 to July 2022, the cost of motoring fell by 19% compared with inflation, as measured by the RPI. Rail fares over the same period rose by 31%, and bus and coach fares by 102%.
Getting juggernauts off the roads should be a major priority. A reduction in lorry miles through the transfer of trunk haul to rail is necessary if our 2050 net-zero targets are to be met. Capacity is the constraint, and the abandonment of HS2 between Birmingham and Manchester is a huge setback, as it would have released train paths on the classic railway for the increase in rail freight which is required if these targets are to be met. The HS2 decision and the lack of ambition in attracting new business reminds me that we are in danger of returning to the days of the 1970s and 1980s, when the railways were told to plan for managed decline. The biggest opportunity for rail to play its full part as a sustainable part of the national transport network is therefore at risk of being delayed for many years or even lost altogether.
There is still much good will and affection towards our railways—although, sadly, not in all parts of the Government. Shortly, we will hear about the plans for the celebrations to mark the 200th anniversary of the first passenger railway, between Stockton and Darlington, which are being led by the noble Lord, Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill. This will help rekindle a national sense of pride, but it is deeply disappointing that rail did not rate a higher priority in the gracious Speech.
Viscount Waverley (CB)
My Lords, the economy will rightly be centre stage as we approach the general election, so the King’s Speech and the upcoming Autumn Statement need to act as a catalyst for international trade and attracting FDI, with both being the engine room of the national economy. We live in a changing world, however, where the new world will increasingly come alongside the old, presenting opportunity but challenges.
I refer the House to my declaration of interests. Digitalisation and technological advances are examples of positive advances. The enabling benefits of electronic trade documents and the provision of financial instruments, particularly for mid-sized SMEs from those emerging markets, will bring heightened competition in international exports. Increased compliance in mandatory supply-chain transparency and the increased risks associated with supply chain disruptions will further challenge us.
I preface further remarks by acknowledging that the UK brand is held in high regard globally. However, adhering to antiquated practices is not a blueprint for success. I am sorry to say that in many a quarter there is palpable unease about current governmental intervention, with some decrying unhelpful meddling. To succeed internationally we must actively engage with the priorities of others, recognising the significance of cultivating trust and giving due regard to an emphasis on local context.
I was uncomfortable, therefore, when a PM’s trade envoy at a recent pan-Africa conference that I attended could muster only a narrative centred around “we in Britain”, rather than adopting a more fitting approach of, “I have come to listen, to understand your continental vision and priorities and how we can contribute to your aspirations”. The global messaging should be that of a new, innovative, centrist, forward-thinking United Kingdom, at ease with itself and contributing with all the experience that we have, to promote a world of equitable coexistence. That is key.
The intervention by the envoy led to a distinguished African diplomat underlining passionate concerns about the UK’s historical involvement in slavery and African asset-stripping—a poignant point that should not be dismissed lightly. I note that Lloyd’s of London is promoting racial equality causes after a research project determined its significant role in the transatlantic slave trade. I listened with keen interest to the noble Baroness, Lady Moyo, who is not in her place, particularly in relation to the BRICS grouping, to which can be added economic regions from the Asia-Pacific, Africa and Latin America. However, closer to home, when EU neighbours signal with an olive branch, at least we should have the courtesy and pragmatism to listen, reflect and not be dismissive with an out-of-hand Brexiteer ideological dismissal. The Foreign Secretary should remember that continental partners deeply regret not contributing more when he went cap in hand to Brussels. In the aftermath of such reflections, I have relinquished my role as founder and co-chair of the Trade and Investment APPG.
Nothing short of a comprehensive root and branch reform of the UK’s export promotion strategy and that of multipliers in promoting UK excellence is required, in a way that some will find difficult. It is that of a changed mindset, with genuine collaboration with the private sector being key and the Government’s role being singular—to create conditions that empower all facets of bilateral and regional relations to thrive, then to step aside and allow seasoned professionals to navigate the intricacies.
I returned from Tashkent last night, where I had assisted in the opening of the British Management University, on a visit that coincided with the Presidents of Italy and France on separate bilateral visits. Can the Minister give some assurance that the age-old problem of access into Downing Street and ministerial diaries will be properly addressed and that we will see many more state visits to support the international trade agenda? It would be appreciated by all.
I had hoped to put forward a raft of thoughts for consideration, but I will leave it there and hope that in the not too distant future we will have the opportunity to properly scrutinise government performance and advance informed thinking, including advocating for a formal review of the role of UK-based chambers of commerce and the relationship with overseas BritChams, and how best to strategise on global SME access and co-operation in emerging markets where the real opportunities lie. These and the role of the regions within the United Kingdom are examples of where urgent review is required, fulfilling the mantra of a global rather than an insular Britain.
In conclusion, responding to the set of challenges from the noble Lord, Lord Londesborough, and to many other noble Lords who have spoken today, why do we not establish a rolling scorecard system to monitor progress by this and any future Government, to include, for example, comparison with other countries’ performances?
Lord Jones (Lab)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the always insightful noble Viscount, Lord Waverley.
On rail, huge interest has been shown in north Wales in the Prime Minister’s conference pledge to invest £1 million in the north Wales coastline. Will the Minister repeat the guarantee that this money shall be forthcoming? To spend well on the north Wales rail system, we must urgently have money to formulate the business plan. How will this be done and when? Also, the north Wales coastline is a vital economic artery from the cross-border city of Chester to Holyhead, Anglesey. Please, modernise Chester city station as soon as possible. Are there sufficient funds for this modernisation?
The helpful chair of Transport for the North, the noble Lord, Lord McLoughlin, and the supportive Mayor of Liverpool have sought investment in the Liverpool-Wrexham rail line, especially from English Bidston to Welsh Wrexham. Will the Government please move this on? It is a priority in Wirral and north Wales. The interim report from the commission led by the noble Lord, Lord Burns, has marked up these issues. Our Growth Track 360, so well led and chaired by Councillor Louise Gittins, has the goal of cross-border connectivity, with the emphasis on rail. The Prime Minister’s pledge at conference will help this on.
On energy, Trawsfynydd and Wylfa have distinguished historic pedigrees in the production of nuclear power for Britain. Both are dormant now. I would like both localities to be rewarded for their undoubted excellence in the production of vital power. I ask the noble Baroness the Minister to state what specific plans the Government have for these locations. Shall there be small modular nuclear reactors at Trawsfynydd? Is it the case that Rolls-Royce is considering a prototype there? Do the Government have plans to encourage the building of a standard reactor at Wylfa, or will there be SMRs there? Are American companies looking at SMRs there? Can the Minister please give information? There is but speculation on these issues.
Trawsfynydd and Wylfa are far flung from traditional industrial locations. There are few skilled, well-paid jobs in north-west Wales. It is not fair to expect hard-pressed communities to exist on the tourist industry alone, good though it is in the lovely landscape of Wales, which is my homeland. Can the Minister spell out and summarise where the Government stand as far as Trawsfynydd and Wylfa are concerned, at the wind-up or by letter? If we go the SMR way, why not build these units at the extensive Welsh industrial facility at the giant industrial park at Deeside or in the lee of the advanced manufacturing centre alongside Airbus UK’s giant facility in Flintshire in north-east Wales?
I conclude by congratulating the noble Lord who has the name of a great English soccer forward and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich on their magnificent maiden speeches.
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
My Lords, I declare my interest as president of the Rural Coalition as set out in the register. That means that I want to reflect for a few moments on the environmental and rural dimensions of some of the legislation that will be coming our way over the coming year.
I will make a couple of preliminary comments. Back in 2015, His Majesty’s Government responded to the independent rural-proofing implementation review by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington. Among the recommendations was that
“Defra Ministers should work with Cabinet Office to strengthen and improve rural proofing guidance when the impact of policies is being assessed, to ensure that rural policy impacts are given clear and robust attention”.
It is clear to many of us in the Rural Coalition, and many Members of your Lordships’ House who have a particular interest in rural life and rural industry and economy, that many policies and Bills are still not being properly rural-proofed. Some 9.6 million people live in our rural areas. It is vital that we attend to this dimension of legislation as it goes through Parliament.
The second general point I want to make is that Section 17(5) of the Environment Act 2021 introduced the five principles that would
“protect and enhance our environment and preserve England’s unique natural assets, all within the context of building resilience to biodiversity loss and the effects of our changing climate”.
This legally binding commitment needs urgently to be applied to each Bill we debate in the next Session to ensure that we consider the environmental impacts of proposed legislation that comes before your Lordships’ House.
I want now to make some brief comments on three of the Bills in the King’s Speech, one of which strays briefly into the themes of another day of this debate. The first is the Trade (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership) Bill. Our domestic agricultural sector is world leading. While welcoming the UK’s membership of the CPTPP, I believe it is essential that UK farming is not disadvantaged or weakened. We must use this opportunity to drive up standards in other countries and not allow our standards to drop to theirs. In particular, we urgently need a better and more accurate system for food labelling, especially with regard to country of origin. For example, meat products should be shown as British only when the livestock has been born, fattened and slaughtered here.
Secondly, I welcome the animal welfare (livestock exports) Bill, which will stop the export of livestock for fattening and slaughter once and for all. Although livestock is not currently exported for this reason, in the past many animals were in transit for long periods, which caused unnecessary suffering. It is also well documented that some overseas abattoirs to which they were taken do not have the same high standards that we provide in the United Kingdom. I congratulate His Majesty’s Government on the announcement some months ago of a fund of £4 million for smaller, more local abattoirs in this country, which will also be a more humane way to treat our livestock. This is especially important as the number of small abattoirs in the UK has declined dramatically over recent years.
Finally, I will say a few words about the tobacco and vapes Bill, which I warmly welcome. I am very supportive of the aims of that Bill. Other Members of your Lordships’ House have already noted that there is a problem with around 5 million disposable vapes being used each week in the United Kingdom. Each of those vapes has a battery which uses metals such as copper and lithium. The Green Alliance has estimated that enough lithium has been disposed of to create 5,000 batteries for electric cars. Surely there is a powerful argument for a complete ban on the sale of disposable vapes here in the UK. I expect that Members of your Lordships’ House will plan to bring amendments to that Bill as we seek to focus it and make a real improvement as we take it through.
Lord Altrincham (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interest as a director of the Co-operative Bank in Manchester. I will make some comments on infrastructure investing and financial regulation.
The gracious Speech emphasised the importance of making long-term decisions, reducing debt and investing in energy. It went on to refer to the importance of investing and attracting private sector investment into renewables. In opening the debate today, the Minister reminded us of the importance of private sector investment to make that possible. The noble Lord, Lord Livermore, made the same comment for the Opposition, in particular referencing investment in the gigafactory project and a sovereign wealth fund investment project, which would attract up to three times the amount of public capital from the private sector. Both sides of the House support attracting private sector investment. That will become extraordinarily important given what has happened to government finances.
Unfortunately, renewable energy needs a lot of help. It is not just that the recent wind farm licence round did not work out—perhaps that was a one-off and the Government made some mistakes—but that the two largest wind farm operators in the world, Ørsted and Siemens, are in quite a bit of financial difficulty. In fact, they were running into financial difficulty at the same time as the gracious Speech.
Ørsted, by the way, runs 12 huge wind farms around the UK—one is out in the Thames estuary, in the Riddle of the Sands area. It said that its problem is not wind but interest rates. The problem we are running into is that these investments are very capital heavy and the decisions to make them were taken at a time when capital was very cheap. This is an enormous change for the Government, because renewable infrastructure inevitably rests on rates that are close to zero. As capital has repriced, many of those projects are no longer possible without a good deal of government help.
The other side of the equation is making more capital available from the private sector. The clue to that is in the financial services Bill that we have just passed. If it is successful, it may free up bank, private sector and asset manager equity to invest in the UK. We are all familiar with the possibility that legislation may be passed but that it may be ineffective, not be actionable and ignored or go out of date very fast. However, the Financial Services and Markets Act achieves accountability to Parliament for the regulators. This is a very important step which means that, in bringing back rules from Brussels, the regulators are not uniquely in a position to decide how to regulate. As your Lordships know, regulation has been somewhat cautious and there has been a gold-standard approach.
There will be accountability to Parliament and there will be two parliamentary committees—I will come on to that—which roughly replicates the kind of regulatory supervision that exists in Brussels; the ECON committee in Brussels supervises financial regulation quite effectively. Unluckily, the House of Lords made a recent approach to have a Joint Committee with the House of Commons, but we were rebuffed. It may be that we should not have asked, but the House of Commons’ committee will go ahead and ours needs to get going quickly. It needs to get going quickly because there needs to be a change in private sector investment in the UK and it is becoming rather urgent. A lot of the promises that the Government are making, our own expectations and often those expressed in this House rest on unleashing private sector investment.
That change would be a rebalancing away from looking at financial services regulations just through the lens of prudential regulation in favour of an underlying sense of growth, competition and promoting the wider good of the economy. It would be like the regulatory environment in Singapore, which allows for the growth of Singapore but also refers to and understands that without economic growth there are other risks to the economy and to the Government. We are perhaps running into those risks at the moment.
In supporting what is in the gracious Speech and the Government’s plans—and perhaps the next Government’s plans—we should get on with our own committee to look at financial regulation as quickly as possible. I wish the committee godspeed.
Lord Grocott (Lab)
My Lords, I should apologise in advance for what inevitably will be rather gloomy remarks, the first half of which will be something of a howl of frustration at the cancellation of the Manchester leg of HS2. The second will be a litany of my failure to get any sensible answers from the Government as to what is being done by way of compensation.
On the frustration: what is it about this country and major infrastructure projects? I remind the House that the first London to Birmingham railway was mooted in 1830, rejected by the Lords in 1832 but started in 1833 and finished in 1838. How did they do it, with picks and shovels? We are 14 years since the first iteration of HS2 and we will be lucky if the truncated railway is finished in 25 years in total.
What is it about this country in comparison with so many other major economies across the world? These are the countries that have dedicated high-speed lines either in existence at the moment or in the course of construction: in Europe, Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland; outside Europe, China, India, Japan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey and the USA. I am sure the list is longer than that. What do we know that they do not know? They all have successful high-speed lines.
Being someone who tries to look on the bright side, I have made some attempt to find out something about what the Government intend to do by way of compensation for this blow that they have landed on the Midlands and the north of the United Kingdom. I asked the Government about costs. I was told that £36 billion would be saved by the cancellation of this link, but I wanted to know how much money has so far been wasted, so I made the mistake of asking a Parliamentary Question, which simply asked
“how much money has been spent to date on the Manchester leg of HS2”.
I got this reply from the Minister:
“Spending up to and including February 2023 was reported in the Department’s last HS2 report to Parliament in June 2023. Updated figures will be provided in the Department’s next six-monthly report”.
In other words, “Look it up for yourself, mate”.
I did get something—a little, largely negative—from the Government’s document Network North, which is supposed to spell out the various compensatory rail schemes that might now go ahead with the money that has been “saved” from HS2. It is a very misleading document. It is entitled Network North, and at one point it explains that a new station will be built at Tavistock. Geography was never my best subject at school, but how that fits into a document entitled Network North I do not know. But I read the document, which said that
“every pound that we save from not proceeding with further phases of the scheme will instead be reinvested in hundreds of transport projects … far more quickly”.
So I made the mistake of asking another Parliamentary Question. It had this reply, which must go down for the next episode of “Yes Minister”. It says about further schemes:
“Officials are in the early stages of planning, including delivery timelines and estimated costs, for these schemes and are working closely with Network Rail”
and others to develop them. It continues:
“All schemes will be subject to the development and approval of business cases and will undergo all formal governance, in line with relevant fiscal and legal duties”.
In other words, if you are looking for a railway to be built, do not expect anything quickly from the Government. This was to be delivered “more quickly”—those are Rishi Sunak’s own words in Network North.
I try to be of a sunny disposition, so I will give the Government the chance to put these things right by asking them about a couple of the schemes listed that I know about; I invite every Member of the House to ask about ones they know about. Paragraph 63 of Network North says that we will reopen the Leicester to Burton line—that has been a possibility for a long time—and Stoke to Leek. What is the estimated cost of reinstating these two railways? What is the timeline for delivering them, bearing in mind the Government’s clear promise in Network North that these schemes will be delivered more speedily than the cancelled Manchester leg? On that attempt at being optimistic, but not with much hope, I close my remarks.
Viscount Trenchard (Con)
My Lords, it is indeed an honour and a privilege to have this opportunity to debate the gracious Speech, delivered last Tuesday by His Majesty. I thank my noble friend Lord Callanan for his comprehensive introduction to this day’s debate. I also congratulate my noble friend Lord Gascoigne and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich on their excellent maiden speeches.
I know that I should not dwell on the trade Bill, which permits our accession to the CPTPP, but I believe our accession will have a positive effect on the economy and that it is therefore appropriate to mention it in today’s debate. As many noble Lords are aware, Japan is the largest economy in the CPTPP. Its Government have been strongly encouraging us to apply for accession for five years for geostrategic reasons, as well as to build on our bilateral comprehensive economic partnership agreement, which already provides a framework that should enable an increase in our trade with Japan. That trade and the economy will also receive a boost from our trilateral joint project, together with Italy, to develop and build a sixth generation fighter jet.
I believe that the Government’s recognition of the need to strengthen the UK’s energy security should also lead them to take advantage of an extremely attractive opportunity to collaborate with Japan and mitigate the huge disappointment that resulted from the cancellation of both Hitachi’s Horizon nuclear power station project at Wylfa, which would have provided 2.7 gigawatts of generation capacity, and Toshiba’s NuGen project at Sellafield Moorside, which was to have created 3.4 gigawatts of additional capacity. The opportunity is provided by Japan’s need to find an international partner to commercialise its high-temperature gas-cooled reactor technology. The UK was identified as Japan’s chosen partner for this more than four years ago, but the Government have put it on the slow train by classifying it as an advanced modular reactor, along with several other technologies that are still on the drawing board or at an earlier stage of development. This technology’s demonstrator has been running for more than 10 years in Japan and is inherently safe.
The gracious Speech heralds the introduction of the Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill, which I welcome. However, the best and cheapest way to achieve energy security without unduly burdening families and businesses is not to spend more and more on subsidising wind projects, both offshore and onshore, the subsidies for which account for a growing proportion of our increasingly unaffordable electricity bills. The best way to provide much-needed relief to struggling households and businesses is to increase very substantially the future target of 24 gigawatts of nuclear generating capacity by 2050. That figure needs to be double or more. Why can we not be more like France in this regard? Great British Nuclear’s remit needs to be widened to encompass our total energy requirement, rather than just the electricity grid.
I am disappointed that there was no mention of our financial services industry, and no commitment to a smaller state and lower taxes, both of which are desperately needed. The Financial Services and Markets Act enables the Government to take advantage of our freedom to introduce a more agile, less cumbersome regulatory regime to restore competitiveness and growth to the UK’s financial markets. How do the Government intend to achieve that? There is no time to lose, as was well illustrated by my noble friends Lord Bridges, Lady Noakes and Lord Altrincham in their powerful speeches.
I welcome the Government’s commitment to invest more in our gallant Armed Forces. I hope my noble friend will explain in her winding-up speech how the rather lacklustre programme outlined in the gracious Speech will bring about the desperately needed growth and investment in the economy.
The Earl of Glasgow (LD)
My Lords, I was deeply depressed when the Government announced they were abandoning HS2—or at least, it seems the most important part of their purpose, anyway. It was always a bold and exciting enterprise, allowing increased capacity to the lines going north and bringing the major northern towns closer to London. It was a challenging and expensive project, but one that I thought totally worthwhile. I have long believed that half our transport problems would be solved by having a comprehensive and efficient railway network, and HS2 could have been seen as the flagship.
Now, for a number of complicated reasons, mainly rising costs and incompetent management, the Government have decided they can no longer afford the new route to the north and will keep only the least important of its features—the high-speed train between London and Birmingham. Apparently, in exchange for that, the money saved will be used for improvements to existing lines in the north, something we had already been promised anyway. Maybe I am forlornly hoping that this scrapping of HS2 is only a temporary postponement and not the final death knell of the whole project. Maybe it can be revived when the Government’s financial position improves, or when we have a better Government.
In the meantime, though, we must not sell back the land already bought from landowners to establish the proposed new railway line. All we have achieved, or will have achieved, so far from this whole fiasco is a slightly quicker trip from London to Birmingham and back. The northern towns are no closer to London than they were before. Maybe we could achieve something by building a railway that affords slightly less speed than originally intended.
I would like the Government’s assurance that they have not completely abandoned the original intention and plan of HS2, but if they have, it will rightly be seen as an embarrassing engineering failure and another example of the country’s further decline.
Lord Hendy (Lab)
My Lords, 67 million people live in the United Kingdom. Of them, 35 million, just over half, are workers—30 million employees and 5 million self-employed. In the King’s Speech, the Government offer them nothing, except the prospect of agency strike-breakers and regulations requiring workers to break their own strikes.
On 9 November, the International Labour Organization governing body considered the mass sackings at P&O Ferries last year. It called on the Government to engage with unions and employers to review the legislative prohibition on sympathy strikes, and to ensure an adequate and efficient system of protection against acts of anti-union discrimination. Will the Government comply?
Noble friends have mentioned that in 2019 we were promised an employment Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Callanan, has told us many times since that the Bill would be introduced “when parliamentary time allows”. We now know that there never will be parliamentary time before the next election.
The real issue facing working people, and the overwhelming majority of the rest of the population who depend on them, is rising prices and falling wages. The real value of wages has not risen since 2007. The nominal median earnings for full-time employees were £682 a week in April this year: £34,963 gross—an increase of 6.2% compared with April the previous year. However, the ONS tells us that that nominal increase actually represents a fall in the real value of earnings of 1.5%. Self-employed median earnings are significantly less than for employees. Today’s report from the Resolution Foundation, An Intergenerational Audit for the UK, shows that those born in the late 1980s earned on average 8% less at age 30 than their counterparts born 10 years earlier.
The ONS’s use of the term “median” means that half our full-time employees earn less than £35,000 a year. Few in this Chamber, including me, could live on that figure, let alone less. A report published on 8 September by Professor Padley and Dr Stone of the Centre for Research in Social Policy at Loughborough University calculates that in 2023 a single person needs to earn £29,500 a year to have an acceptable standard of living and a couple with two children need to earn £50,000 a year. They estimate that no fewer than 19.2 million people, 29% of the UK population, are living in households with an income below those minimum standards. Among these 19.2 million are those on the so-called national living wage. The total annual salary for such a person working 37.5 hours a week is £20,375 a year, which is 70% of the Padley/Stone minimum standard for a single person and 41% of the minimum for a family.
It is not surprising that the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s latest report Destitution in the UK 2023 shows that around 3.8 million people, 1 million of them children, are not able to meet their basic physical needs of staying warm, dry, clean and fed. The UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights pointed out last week that the UK is accordingly in breach of its international legal obligations.
I do not diminish the significance of raising the national minimum wage or enhancing pensions and social security, but there is only one way to raise wages significantly and that is by extending collective bargaining, as a recent directive in the EU and legislation in Australia and New Zealand propose. This is the solution that the OECD has been advocating in its annual employment outlook since 2017. I ask finally, without a glimmer of hope, that the Minister will consider with social partners not just the conclusions of the ILO, to which I referred, but the means by which collective bargaining coverage can be extended by law, as the Labour Party has undertaken to do.
Lord Balfe (Con)
My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hendy. I think he is misplacing his hope if he thinks the Labour Party is going to do much—but we will let him live in hope. From time to time, I do a bit of lecturing. One of the subjects I lecture on is British politics, and occasionally I point out that the Conservative Party is the most successful party in the world. From time to time it loses elections and then reinvents itself. In the past, of course, everybody has sat there feeling rather smug and thinking, “Yes, we are in government”, but I say to my good and noble friends on the Front Bench, if they still are my friends, that we are soon going to have do a bit of reinvention by the look of things, because the state we are in is somewhat dire.
Part of the problem is quite simply this: there is no longer room for incentive and aspiration among the group of people who create the wealth of Britain. I see my noble friend Lord Callanan sitting there and he knows who I will mention: the huge army of trade unionists who run middle Britain. They are people with degrees who work hard, go to work every day and create the wealth of this country. I am afraid my party still does not seem to have come to terms with the fact that the average trade unionist today is a middle-aged woman with a professional qualification—the days of the old working-class TUC are gone—and these people are leaving the Conservative Party behind because they do not feel that incentive and aspiration are being looked to.
I shall just point out one or two things. If the higher rate tax threshold, 40% at £50,271, had increased with inflation, it would be £55,340. Every year, roughly 1.6 million people move from the lower rate into the 40% rate, and they do not see that as an incentive. Also, people who get to £50,000 find they lose their child benefit. They find they have a tax rate of around 60% between £50,000 and £60,000—but the children still need feeding. I know much is said in this Chamber, rightly, about the plight of the poor; but there is a middle group, which Theresa May characterised as “just managing”. They are just managing, but they are not managing to feel very happy with a Government who do not appear to want to help them earn a bit more money.
I will also give another challenge to the Government: in 2006, George Osborne promised an overhaul of inheritance tax. Our Government—and the Labour Party, for that matter—think, “Oh, not many people pay it; it doesn’t matter”. But there are millions of people in middle-class housing, in middle age, who are looking forward in a grim sort of way to inheriting the wealth of their parents, and we are doing nothing about it. If you want to do something, I say to the Government, “Do it now”—because I do not think Labour will do much.
My final point is that we need a strategy for the public schools. If Labour imposes VAT on public schools, they will not go bankrupt; they will be full of foreign children, as they increasingly are at the moment. We will have another large increase in migration as the children—with their mummies—come over and fill the places, and that will be a cause, again, of great resentment. So I say to both sides of this House, “Think of middle Britain and the people we need to innovate. Think of Harold Wilson and the way that he stirred middle Britain into action. For goodness’ sake, we all love the poor, but let’s start doing something for the wealth creators”.
Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to participate in this debate on the gracious Speech. In particular, I want to refer to the measures relating to the Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill and their direct relevance to the environment and climate change. I think it is a measure of regret that the Government have found it necessary to bring forward the licensing Bill to legislate for something that usually happens on an annual basis, when many other things are needed, including a determined policy and legislative programme to deal with the impact of climate change, with the provision of many mitigations, including investment in the economies of flood-stricken areas accompanied by flood-alleviation measures.
It must be stated that the UK’s ability to rise above petty politics, to decarbonise our society and lead the fight against climate change, has made us the envy of many of our allies in the past. I believe we should not squander this but, if the Government are intent on this course of action with this Bill, the public will determine the future of it at the forthcoming general election—and I hope that that will result in a Labour Government.
The decisions on climate change mitigations and ongoing decarbonisation and adaptation are issues that affect people now and into the distant future in terms of the economy, commerce and our way of life. Over the last number of weeks, we have witnessed unprecedented levels of rainfall, resulting in heavy floods in Britain and Northern Ireland, which have impacted on businesses, communities, homes and the social economy sector. In Northern Ireland at the end of October—I raise Northern Ireland because it is where I live but also because it is where the NIO has intervened—we faced the full force of that rainfall where, perhaps, flood defences were not capable of dealing with the deluge. We saw climate change in action.
One example of this was my home town of Downpatrick on the east coast of Northern Ireland. We witnessed floods that decimated businesses and left the local Asda store—which is an anchor store for the town’s and region’s economy—closed for the foreseeable future. Downpatrick has not witnessed such floods for a long period of time. A barrage was built on the local river in 1957; questions are rightly now being asked about whether our flood defences are adequate or need to be upgraded in light of climate change.
I know that we are built on a flood plain. Last week, I asked the noble Lord, Lord Caine, a Minister in the Northern Ireland Office, to come to Downpatrick. He agreed to do that; he came on Thursday afternoon and met a large number of business representatives who told him about how their business, commerce and way of life had been decimated. But he knew, and noted, that they were highly resilient, wanted to start up again and needed financial assistance. Now £13 million has been allocated to Northern Ireland in reprofiled expenditure from the underspend in Northern Ireland departments.
But I say to the Minister—I have already written to her about this, and she acknowledged me at the weekend—that the Treasury needs to look at additional financial measures for the planning and implementation of flood alleviation schemes. If we are really trying to build economies and our society, we have to look at how we tackle climate change adaptation and deal with these particular measures.
My town of Downpatrick has a population of some 12,000. I noted that, while the people were resilient, they were quite downhearted at the same time. There is another point to take on board: Newry, which is in the same district council area as Downpatrick, has super-output areas in terms of deprivation, with the third highest level of super-output areas within the 100 most deprived areas in Northern Ireland. I hope the Minister will give that matter some attention in the longer term with her colleagues in the Treasury to see what help can be given to such beleaguered communities to build commerce and economic development in the wake of climate change.
Lord Liddle (Lab)
My Lords, never in the last 40 years has there existed a bigger gap between the grim realities of our present national economic situation and the fantasy world that the Government, from their pronouncements, appear to live in. The Prime Minister declares that inflation is down, the economy is growing and debt is set to fall. The Prime Minister may meet his target of halving inflation, but the fact is that it is stubbornly higher than in the United States, France and Germany; the cost of living for millions, now dependent on food banks, continues to rise; and interest rates are going to stay much higher for longer than the Government think. Economic growth is, at best, at a snail’s pace; the Bank of England thinks there is going to be no growth at all for the next two years. As for debt falling, that is based on projections of public spending and borrowing that the Institute for Fiscal Studies regards as completely unrealistic, given the demographic pressures on our public services and the clear breakdown that exists today—and those projections are going to get even worse if there are tax cuts in the forthcoming Budget.
The fact is that the cumulative hangover from the 2008 banking crisis, Brexit, Covid and Liz Truss has put into reverse the catch-up in living standards that this country enjoyed in the years of John Major’s and Tony Blair’s premierships. Last week, the ONS produced figures on total factor productivity, which is the main driver of living standards. Under Major and Blair, total factor productivity rose by no less than 27%, but since 2007 it has grown by 1.7%.
Future historians are going to regard these 13 years of government as wasted years of destructive populism, when successive Governments failed to build patiently and constructively on Britain’s great strengths: our universities, our scientific pre-eminence, our technological opportunities and our massive creative strengths. There has been no building on them. Business investment has flatlined since 2016—remember what happened then, by the way. Britain stagnates while we have a City of London in decline, a hospitality sector unable to recruit the European workers that it needs, retailers desertifying our town centres and a construction industry that is failing to build the homes that our families need. Just on housing, we will see 250,000 housing completions this year—not enough—and this is estimated to fall next year to 151,000. There were supposed to be 144,000 housing starts this year, but the figures for election year are 70,000. What a record of failure this is, and an incalculable cost to many families.
We need new policies for growth—a modern industrial policy—but this has to be applied with consistency and discipline. We need the comprehensive planning reform that Michael Gove had to abandon because of Conservative Back-Bench pressure. We need a government drive for more apprenticeships, which have gone down under the present Government. We need reformed further education colleges—a real vocational ladder of opportunity. And we need a much better trading deal with the European Union than the one that the noble Lord, Lord Frost, negotiated.
I have just rejoined our Front Bench as a transport spokesman, and I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, for this. It takes me back to the department where, 47 years ago, I first started as a special adviser. Transport is a vital part of the growth agenda, as the noble Lord, Lord Birt, explained. A principal reason for our poor economic performance in this country is the huge and growing gap between our city regions in the north and Midlands and in London and the south-east. It is far bigger than in other European countries, and the lack of transport investment plays a major role when it comes to connectivity with London and within and between the city regions. We must change course and do better than this, and I am confident that a Government led by Keir Starmer will.
Lord Sarfraz (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich and my noble friend Lord Gascoigne on their superb maiden speeches.
To meet our economic ambitions, as laid out in His Majesty’s most gracious Speech, we will need to source critical minerals from all over the world. Whether it is tungsten or gallium in defence, or tantalum in medical devices, at least two dozen minerals are highly critical for the British economy. There is no path to net zero without them: wind turbines, solar panels, hydrogen fuel cells and EV batteries all contain critical minerals.
We will probably be able to source some quantities domestically, such as lithium from Cornwall, but the geology of the United Kingdom means that we will be hugely dependent on international markets for a long time. Other countries are after the same materials that we need, and they have aggressive sourcing strategies in place. The Chinese strategy is well known: they will invest right through the life cycle; they will fund high-risk exploration; they will fund mine development, which costs billions of dollars; they will build the domestic processing and logistics infrastructure required; and then they will sign a 30-year offtake agreement. But it is not just the Chinese; for many years, many other countries have had upstream strategies in place. The Middle East has its sovereign wealth funds, the Japanese have JOGMEC and the South Koreans have KORES. How do we compete with that? We do not have a sovereign wealth fund or a state-owned mining company, and we have no ability to guarantee offtake.
The Government have laid out their critical minerals strategy, but the end-users in industry do not think it goes far enough. Our strategy must be strengthened. We need to build emergency stocks, which might be held overseas, otherwise we will end up panic buying, as we did with PPE. We will need to work with our allies and partners to strengthen our buying power. We alone have very limited market share and thereby little influence. We will need a state-owned entity to be the buyer of last resort. We have precedents such as the Low Carbon Contracts Company, and we should not be shy to apply similar models to critical raw minerals from overseas. Most importantly, we will need to ensure, with full transparency, that we source sustainably and ethically. This is where we can better direct our existing resources, whether it is BII, our ODA allocations or our newly appointed Foreign Secretary. We must also continue to leverage the fact that London remains a global hub for mining companies. Doing nothing is not an option.
These industries are cyclical and, when supplies are short, prices will go up, which will mean higher prices for British consumers. In some instances, entire factories will shut down, as we saw during last year’s semiconductor crisis. So I hope that the Government might consider much bolder steps in sourcing critical minerals, which are literally the basic building blocks on which our economic and technological future depends.
Lord Sikka (Lab)
My Lords, a sustainable economy requires high investment and good disposable income for the masses. The Government have failed on both counts. The OECD’s data shows that, despite low inflation, corporation tax and interest rates since 2010, the UK is almost the lowest investor in productive assets; it is ranked 35th out of 38 OECD countries. There are two major reasons for this, and neither is addressed in the King’s Speech.
First, until the late 1970s, the state directly invested in industry and emerging technologies, such as aerospace, biotechnology and information technology, especially as the private sector showed little appetite for long-term risks. The entrepreneurial state has been replaced by one which guarantees corporate profits, as evidenced by privatisations, outsourcing and corporate subsidies, typified by the £45 billion handed to privatised rail companies in the last five years. Did they invest in Crossrail or HS2? No, none of that. Yet the Government skimp on direct public investment: investment into HS2 has been axed; roads are full of potholes; schools and public buildings are crumbling; and NHS England has 2.3 beds per 1,000 population and is on that basis ranked 23rd of 24 European countries. So there are plenty of opportunities for public investment, but there is nothing in the King’s Speech to suggest that the state will return to its entrepreneurial role.
Secondly, low disposable income of the masses is a disincentive for long-term investment by the private sector. Who will buy goods and services, even if we produce them? With a government-led drive to cut wages, the average real pay is back to the 2007 level. Some 14.4 million people live in poverty. One in 20 people—that is, 3.8 million people—is unable to afford food or other basics, and half of those have a weekly income of less than £85. This mass exclusion from consumption cannot provide the basis for building a sustainable economy.
People’s incomes are further eroded by the Government’s inflation strategy. Everyone knows that corporate profiteering is the main cause of higher rates of inflation. The Government could have checked it with price controls, the break-up of monopolies, windfall taxes and selective taxes on those who have excess cash, especially given that nearly £1 trillion of quantitative easing has been handed to financial speculators. But no, they do not do that—instead, they attack wages and further deplete household incomes through higher interest rates.
People have been forced to hand more of their wealth to banks. In the first nine months of 2023, the big four banks have reported profits of £41 billion, compared with £23 billion for the same period last year. Huge bank profits have increased business and household costs and destroyed many SMEs. The Government have enriched bank shareholders and executives. This policy has increased inequalities and squeezed economic growth, because people simply do not have the resources to buy goods and services. Even worse, Ministers are saying that they will continue with this forced transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. The Government have declared war on the poor.
There can be no economic renaissance without redistribution of income and wealth. The richest 1% have more wealth than 70% of the population combined. Just 50 families have more wealth than 50% of the population—but any mention of wealth taxes and the Government say, “Not us, we’re not going to do this”. Instead of taxing wealth, the Government have anti-worker policies. Wages are taxed at a higher rate than capital gains, dividends and investment income. This needs to be rebalanced; we need to rebalance the tax system by increasing taxes on wealth and reducing taxes on work and the less well off.
This afternoon, I attended a meeting with the Patriotic Millionaires, which includes some of the country’s richest individuals. They have openly urged the Government to tax them more heavily, so that inequalities can be reduced, public services can be rebuilt and we can have a just society. I hope the Minister will tell us why the Government will not listen to the richest and tax them more.
Lord Desai (CB)
My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, but unfortunately he has said some of the things I was going to say, so, as the 57th speaker, I will have to invent something new. Let me say this: I am more worried about the Autumn Statement than about the King’s Speech, because the King’s Speech has passed and we have all spoken on that. I worry about what is about to happen. I think there is a sort of madness in this Government who have been here for 13 years, that somehow the way to proceed is to give tax cuts to the rich and tax the poor. It is a very simple sort of logic any time you say something. You want investment? Give money to the businesses, forgive their taxes and investment will go up. Empirical evidence says that that is never the case: giving tax incentives to investors has never led to investment.
The nearest example is what George Osborne did during the 2010-15 Government. He made corporation tax cuts while giving no concessions to the poorer people, and investment did not increase, because we know there was no growth. Interest rates were low in those days: remember, we had historically one of the lowest interest rates from 2008 to 2020. Investment did not increase; productivity did not increase. People just pocketed the money and spent it on whatever they liked, but talk about anything in universal credit—you want to increase universal credit by £1? Suddenly, fiscal responsibility comes to you: we cannot have a deficit. If you give money to the poor, you will cause a deficit. If you give money to the rich, growth will occur. These are two fallacies on which we have built a really weakened and second-rate economy.
In a sense, it is interesting how things are very topsy-turvy. The Prime Minister wants inflation to come down, and I wish him luck, but he also has to realise that it was inflation and him not adjusting income tax limits to inflation which has got him the surplus that is about to be spent at the Autumn Statement. The room that we suddenly have for ourselves is actually due to inflation, and when inflation stops, the room is going to go away, so he had better be careful.
There is a serious rise in child poverty in this country, which is supposed to be one of the richest countries in the world, we are told—the numbers have been given by the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, and others—and we ought to be ashamed of this. However, all the time the discussion is: how can we abolish inheritance tax? The poor rich people are worried about inheritance tax. The wealth creators need more money. Of course, the people who work do not create wealth, they just work. The wealth creators are people who do not work, who just hire people. I am sorry to be left-wing in these matters, but in a sense it is a perverse understanding of public finances and a perverse understanding of public welfare that have got us into this trouble.
Interestingly, nothing I have said does not have empirical evidence. If people want to see it, I can show them empirical evidence that tax cuts do not cause growth. After Nigel Lawson cut taxes—a great big historic moment in the Thatcher legend—we had a recession. I was here then; 1990 and 1991 were recession years. In the Autumn Statement, please do not cut taxes.
Lord Horam (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Gascoigne on his maiden speech. He and I come from the Ribble Valley; he will know, as I do, that they speak a lot of common sense in that part of Lancashire. We will hear a lot of common sense from him in future years. I am also delighted, as usual, to follow the noble Lord, Lord Desai, who is a very distinguished economist. I am a much less distinguished economist, but I have followed economics closely ever since I read it at Cambridge many years ago.
My view at the moment, sadly, is that the economic model that all Governments have followed since the Blair/Brown days is leading us badly astray. Gordon Brown rather let the cat out of the bag when he said that what drove economic growth in the UK was immigration and construction. That approach continued under the following Conservative Governments. Even now, Jeremy Hunt will say that 50,000 more immigrants will give him an extra 0.1% growth in GDP—at the moment, he needs all the fractions he can get. Even the Labour Party now subscribes to this orthodoxy. Sir Keir Starmer has said that Labour will build 1.5 million houses within the Parliament if it is elected and has clearly indicated that it will be more relaxed about immigration.
The problem with this approach is that it has serious downsides. Immigration is not a free good, as the Treasury appears to presume. On the scale we have recently allowed it—net more than 600,000 last year—it reduces the incentive to invest in skills and machinery, which is vital to productivity. The noble Lord, Lord Liddle, made the point about productivity; many economists have said that the reduced productivity over the last two years is in inverse relation to the amount of immigration. It also increases poverty and low wages among people affected by it. Immigration also adds to the demand for housing. Labour is promising 1.5 million new homes in the new Parliament, but it has been calculated that even 1 million would mean covering an area the size of Bedfordshire. How much of our green and pleasant land will be left to our children and grandchildren if we go on like this?
We should not go on like this. Fortunately, there is an alternative in the Far East. Countries such as Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore and Japan do not rely on mass immigration and associated housebuilding. They have little or no immigration. They invest in the skills and machinery needed to make their existing populations more productive. Instead of focusing on the size of their economy—crude GDP—they look at GDP per capita, which measures the wealth of the country. They have gone in for the more productive kinds of manufacturing. Taiwan makes two-thirds of the semiconductors in the world; South Korea has nine times as many robots as we do in the UK; even Japan, which has long had a very unfavourable press in the West, now benefits from massive investment by Warren Buffett, the American investor. As a consequence, they are now richer than we are. Per head of population, Singapore is much richer than the UK and South Korea is nearly as rich. Taiwan is richer than the UK per head of population and even Japan is closing fast. Their approach works. They have even got to grips with the problems of an ageing population by extending the working life of ordinary people and using additional technology.
We need to look at this. We need to change. I sense that the Prime Minister may have a glimmering of this, since he said in his conference speech that we need to change from what we have been doing for the last 20 or 30 years. He was derided for saying so, but he has a point. One way he could tackle this is to form a small committee of economists and businessmen—rather like the US President’s committee of economic advisers—and give them six months to come up with an industrial and labour force strategy that does not rely so much on construction and immigration. The Prime Minister has shown that he is prepared to take a refreshing view of his Cabinet and the people who work in government; he should now have a refreshing view of our policies.
Lord McNicol of West Kilbride (Lab)
My Lords, as commentators have noted, this King’s Speech had the most words but fewest Bills in almost a decade. I will focus my short time on how the Government have failed to outline a long-term plan for the economy, transport, energy or the environment. What we need is precisely that: long-term decision-making to generate growth and inspire business and market confidence. In spite of current sloganeering, that is simply not what we are getting from this Government. Instead, we are seeing political posturing. Where the Government have looked to the future, they have acted only out of a narrow interest for themselves and their friends.
As we have heard across the House tonight, the King’s Speech contains nothing to help people who continue to suffer the consequences of the cost of living crisis. It was a missed opportunity to offer hope and solutions to rebuild our industries and the communities that serve them. If the economy is working, as the Tories argue, it is surely working for the wrong people. On the same day, a fortnight ago, when the Prime Minister scrapped the cap on bankers’ bonuses, it was revealed that the number of children in destitution has tripled in the last five years. As the noble Lord, Lord Desai, said earlier, we should be ashamed.
What the Government surely must understand now is that growth does not come from releasing the richest from any obligation—legal or moral—to society. Growth comes when working people succeed and when, in partnership, all parts of society push for the same goal. To that end, government must use its position at the nexus of businesses, consumers and employees to fight for the fairest deal for everyone. Unfortunately, we simply do not see this leadership. It is no wonder, then, that both the British Chambers of Commerce and the Institute of Directors found this King’s Speech lacking. When the country needs consistency and vision, we are given uncertainty and short-sightedness.
The Prime Minister’s lack of control over his party may be amusing to some but not to businesses, trade unions and working people who need solidity and resolve. Only for one party is growth a strategy rather than a buzzword. That is why I am so glad that the next Labour Government will give businesses the certainty they need to invest, to hire and to thrive.
At a time when 3 million people in England alone find themselves in fuel poverty, action is something we urgently need. After inaction, with the Tories’ eight-year ban on onshore wind hampering domestic energy production, I am happy that the next Labour Government will double onshore wind and green hydrogen, triple solar production and quadruple offshore wind capacity. We need leadership on energy security and the environment by lowering bills through GB energy and insulating homes as part of a green prosperity plan.
Delaying action on climate and delaying investment in green energy could increase national debt by billions. Sending mixed signals to the automotive and emerging industries does not make us a world leader, it makes us a laughing stock. The path to growth lies not in kicking the climate challenge can down the road but in investing and in building. For the sake of British businesses and working people up and down the country, I say call an election now. Let us see who the British people really think has the solutions.
In some ways, I am glad that the Government have tried to use this King’s Speech to set dividing lines between the parties, as I believe and hope that the British people have had enough and will see through the shallow self-interest. If it has ever been felt that time for change is here, it is now.
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
My Lords, I join the House in congratulating my noble friend Lord Gascoigne on his excellent maiden speech. I draw attention to my entry in the register of interests regarding my role as an independent consultant at Terrestrial Energy, a Canadian Generation IV nuclear technology company, and as a founder member of Legislators for Nuclear. It will not surprise noble Lords that my short contribution today will concentrate on the role that nuclear can play in achieving secure, cost-competitive decarbonisation, through the production of hydrogen, process heat, sustainable fuels and flexible electricity. I say to the noble Lord, Lord McNicol: it is about as long-term as it can get.
The King’s Speech referred to energy security, and indeed policy has developed rapidly in support of nuclear deployment, on which the Government should be congratulated, not least as it draws global attention to the UK as a place to do business. As my noble friend the Minister outlined, and as acknowledged by the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, the Government have achieved many milestones: the launch of Great British Nuclear; the appointment of a dedicated Minister for nuclear; the setting of a 24 gigawatt target for new nuclear by 2050; the nuclear financing Act, incorporating the RAB model; the inclusion of nuclear in the hydrogen business model; and the inclusion of nuclear as an energy input for the production of renewable fuels in the renewable transport fuels obligation.
Perhaps even more exciting have been the developments in the fusion sector, with the new Fusion Futures programme with government funding of £650 million aiming to demonstrate commercial viability by building a prototype STEP fusion power plant at West Burton. This STEP project will, as part of the UKAEA, not only seek collaboration between the public and private sectors, which is already accelerating, with companies such as First Light Fusion, Tokamak Energy and General Fusion occupying space alongside the UKAEA at Culham, but internationally, building on the UK’s strategic advantage in science and technology. Most importantly, it will accelerate breakthroughs in fusion technology, not just in the physics but in the engineering and material sciences. The UK shall also lead the development of international fusion standards and regulation while seeking to protect the UK’s intellectual property and significant competitive advantages. We are indeed seizing these opportunities with zeal, focus and good sense.
I do not wish to sound ungrateful, but it is frustrating that there is so much more to be done in parallel with all the above, to unlock the opportunities for advanced modular reactors, technologies which do not yet have a champion within government, and which are therefore in danger of being orphaned. While I welcome the forthcoming government consultation on AMR routes to market, we need a greater sense of urgency if we are to unlock the many benefits that a greater focus could yield. GBN and the 24 gigawatt target are aimed predominantly at Generation III water-cooled SMR technology, with all six technologies advancing to the next stage being SMRs. The welcome focus on fusion given recent exciting developments is the sole preserve of the UKAEA, as indeed it should be.
AMRs are the next generation: Generation IV. They encompass novel cooling systems and new advanced fuels. They offer additional functionality that has the potential to be game-changing in the fight to decarbonise our power-hungry industries and heat and transport sectors. In addition, the development and manufacture of new enriched fuels that AMRs will need represent a golden opportunity for export, while securing our own home-grown supply. AMR development and an advanced fuels industry will generate vast economic benefits for the UK. Technology vendors from as far afield as South Korea, Poland, the USA and Canada are keen to deploy in the UK, and we need to develop the supply chain of both human capital and manufacturing to take advantage of these opportunities to produce growth in all the regions of the UK.
In due course, and with the approval of government, it is hoped that MOX—mixed oxide—fuel may be manufactured from the nuclear waste in Sellafield, turning this hugely expensive liability into a long-term strategic asset. Using MOX is a well-established practice in France, and the IAEA has long recognised that reusing plutonium is a viable and valuable solution to plutonium management.
I will ask the Government some questions. Can the scope of GBN be widened to encompass AMR technology, and is GBN itself fully funded and resourced enough to be able to deliver within its assigned, or indeed enhanced, scope? There is an urgent need for clarity on siting and a route to market, so when will the alternative route to market consultation report be published and when will decisions be made over siting? What are the Government doing to secure a domestic fuel supply for AMRs?
Finally, and most importantly, what is being done to ensure that all Whitehall departments outside DESNZ—including the Cabinet Office, which is often a little too risk-adverse in evaluating business cases, and the Department for Transport—realise the opportunities that nuclear represents to decarbonise their own sectors and to facilitate the levelling up of all sectors of the UK?
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
This was a fairly lightweight King’s Speech, and the elements of transport about which I shall speak are pretty light—although I welcome some legislation on self-driving vehicles; I am sure that we will have some fun debating that. I was very surprised to hear His Majesty say that he was going
“to deal with the scourge of unlicensed pedicabs”.
I do not know how many pedicabs he comes across in his horse and cart. That is a fairly strong word; I think that they are rather fun, but they obviously need some regulation.
I was concerned by the comment from the Minister, when he opened the debate, about the war on motorists. Is he substituting that with a war on pedestrians, cyclists and the environment? I think that we can all live together.
As my noble friend Lord Faulkner of Worcester mentioned, the biggest loss was the lack of any legislation for railways; it is very sad. He went into it in some detail, and he is absolutely right.
Many noble Lords have spoken about the need for investment, including my noble friend Lord Hain in particular detail, but it has to be a wise investment and the Government have to manage or facilitate it in a manner that is best value for money and need. They have to be honest and transparent about this to Parliament. If I have been seen as the only person in your Lordships’ House against HS2, it is not because I do not like railways—I love them—but because their work on HS2 was not followed up well. That was the model chosen by the Government, and while we can debate whether you need very high-speed rail, the costs and overspec meant that, eventually, the Prime Minister was right to cancel it.
What we have to do now is make sure that the Government, whichever Government, invest in any alternatives that many noble Lords have talked about. Is the Department for Transport capable managing this? I refer noble Lords to an interesting report that the National Audit Office put out on 6 November. It says:
“DfT is not able … to deliver all of its priorities”
or
“to deliver its major projects”.
The NAO has looked at the Department for Transport and it goes into some detail about the money that has been, and should have been, spent, and everything else like that. It gives various projects traffic lights: red, amber or green. There are one or two green projects in the Department for Transport, quite a lot of amber ones and the two bits of HS2 are of course red. I could list them all, but we do not have time for that now.
The key for me is that the NAO seems to be right in suggesting that the department seems to be incapable of managing projects or controlling costs. The HS2 case has been made worse by concealing the project costs and timescales from Parliament. I complained to Simon Case in the Cabinet Office a couple of years ago and asked him to investigate whether the DfT was breaking the Ministerial Code by misleading Parliament. He passed my letter to the Department for Transport for it to answer; that was not really the independent response I was looking for. Of course, many Lords committees and a few Commons committees have also complained about this, but, sadly, no one in government seems to have been listening to where this has got to.
I have been talking about railways, but this is about big projects; I suspect that things such as Hinkley Point C are in a similar situation, except we do not get told about it because it will all end up on our electricity bill in 10 years’ time, so maybe nobody minds. My question to the Minister is therefore: what will happen next? This has gone on for 15 years now, so is it not time for a proper independent public inquiry into what has gone wrong with the management, governance, costs and planning of HS2 to find out why nobody in the Department of Transport and the Cabinet generally, the House of Commons or the House of Lords has looked into this and demanded fully independent information on an ongoing basis? That might give some people pleasure, but the most important thing is a lesson for the future. Unless we have this, we will make the same mistakes on projects again and again, and that will not help the investment that many noble Lords have spoken about.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
My Lords, I congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich and the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, on their excellent maiden speeches and look forward to their contributions to our deliberations in the future.
Today’s debate has been wide ranging and extensive, with some very pertinent contributions on which I cannot hope to respond. The gracious Speech set out the Government’s agenda for the next year in the run-up to the general election. Although it has some interesting Bills which are to be welcomed, it is clear from the debate that many of the issues your Lordships were hoping to see addressed were absent. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, and the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, raised water and flooding, and the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, clutter in space, all of which are valid but not mentioned in the gracious Speech.
My first comments are on the Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill. Annual licensing rounds for new oil and petroleum are unlikely to produce a more secure supply of oil and gas until well into the future. Most of this will be destined for export rather than the home market, so there will be no benefit to the British consumer. By 2035, half of the UK’s refineries in the North Sea will be of a type which are unsuitable for processing the heavy oil which the new licences will produce. UK refineries are outdated and were built to process light oil and will not be able to cope with the anticipated increase from 25% to 50%. Given this, we urge the Government to invest in renewable energy and insulating homes, especially for those on low or fixed incomes. Energy prices doubled last year and there is little evidence of this being reversed. Waiting for new licences to start producing oil will not help today’s householders to manage their budgets and afford to heat their homes as well as feeding themselves. How does the Minister propose to assist households?
I also find it extraordinary that this announcement on annual licensing comes just three weeks ahead of COP 28. I cannot understand how it helps the UK’s credibility or demonstrates strong leadership on climate change.
Turning to the Trade (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership) Bill, I can understand that the UK is keen to be the first new member of the CPTPP, which was not possible during European days, but just wanting to be a member of a club does not in itself bring benefits, and it is difficult to see what the benefits are likely to be. The gracious Speech and the Minister’s letter of 8 November indicate that farmers will benefit from reduced tariffs on cheese and butter exports to Canada, Chile, Japan and Mexico, and that imports of cheaper high-quality products, such as fruit juices from Chile and Peru, will benefit the UK customer.
However, a brief search of top exports from Chile in 2021 show that these were copper ore, refined copper, fish fillets, raw copper and iron ore. Its imports were petroleum products through to delivery of trucks. Its top export destinations were China, the US, Japan, South Korea and Brazil. Four of those countries are its relatively close neighbours, whereas the UK involves a great deal of air miles to get goods to market in both directions—again, cocking a snook at climate change. Chile, on the upside, is the largest producer of cherries and grapes, and exports fish pieces and fillets. Given that we are an island nation, I feel certain we can provide for ourselves with fish, but the fruit would be welcome. The main agricultural exports from Peru are grapes, blueberries, avocados, green coffee beans and asparagus. While all these commodities are part of our diets in the UK, they can be sourced nearer to home. The Government’s assertion that they will not compromise our high standards of protection for the environment seems extremely hollow when considering the carbon equation in bringing products from the other side of the world. This does not stack up in assisting the UK to get to its net-zero targets. Can the Minister suggest what the air miles are likely to be for this policy?
I turn now to the animal welfare (livestock exports) Bill. This is to be welcomed. The noble Lord, Lord Benyon, has on many occasions reiterated the point that no live animals have been exported for slaughter or fattening for some time. This Bill will ensure that this is enshrined in law, and it should come forward at the earliest opportunity to prevent unnecessary animal suffering. Even within the UK, animals often have to journey a long way to slaughter due to the closure of rural abattoirs over the years. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans has raised this issue.
However, I was disappointed that measures originally promised in the abandoned kept animals Bill are not likely now to make their way on to the statute. Examples are the keeping of primates as pets and the ban on the import of hunting trophies—so vehemently opposed from the Government’s own Benches. Listening to some of the arguments put forward on hunting trophies, one would think that every baronial home in the country had a lion or tiger skin rug in the hall.
I cannot leave the subject of animals without saying that I feel that the Government have somewhat abandoned their animal welfare credentials. Again, this is more about what was absent from the gracious Speech than what was included. Despite there being excellent faux fur alternatives, the MoD insists on the use of pelts of Canadian black bears to make bearskin caps. Italy and Sweden have changed their policy to using only synthetic fur. I find it extraordinary that the UK does not follow suit. Each cap requires the pelt from one bear, which costs the British taxpayer £1,560 by the time it has been made into the traditional bearskin cap. The Government, if they are serious about their animal welfare agenda, should bring forward a Bill to abandon this practice without delay. Can the Minister commit to ensuring that this happens?
The thorny issue of banning the use of peat in horticulture came to the fore this morning with the publication of the report on the future of horticulture. The 25-year environment plan trailed the ban on peat. The Government have indicated that it is coming, but still there is no sign of it. I fully understand the needs of the horticulture sector and seed growth. Perhaps a compromise could be reached by allowing the use of peat only for the very first, delicate stages of seed and plant germination before switching to peat-free alternatives. A dialogue is needed, rather than ignoring the subject altogether. The country and the world desperately need the carbon storage that peat provides. It should remain where it is, in the ground, wherever possible. Can the Minister please give reassurance on this?
I am trying not to be a total prophet of doom and do welcome the tobacco and vapes Bill. Living for a while in London, I was conscious of the huge number of discarded vapes at a certain spot on my Sunday morning dog walk. Vapes contain the critical materials of lithium and copper, as my noble friend Lady Sheehan referred to. I am grateful to the Green Alliance for its information that last year, enough lithium-containing vapes were disposed of to create 5,000 batteries for electric cars. Other Peers have referred to this. Now is the time for this Bill and the Government to take a holistic view on the use of lithium, which is not a finite resource.
Lastly, I was disappointed that there was no mention of tackling the issue of waste. Repairing and reuse of goods and materials is not rocket science, as was ably demonstrated yesterday evening at the earth sciences awards ceremony. It is time that the Government stopped talking about tackling waste and actually took it seriously with legislation. Wales is successful in this field. Why cannot England follow suit?
There is much to commend in the gracious Speech, but it is the absence of substance on climate change which causes most concern. I fear that I cannot agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lilley. Overall, the Government have missed a golden opportunity to show their commitment to tackling climate change and have let the country down badly.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich on their maiden speeches in today’s wide-ranging debate. I am very pleased that there is another advocate for the north of England, so I offer the noble Lord the warmest welcome to the House. As someone who also feels passionately about our environment, I warmly welcome the commitment to it of the right reverend Prelate. I look forward to further contributions from them both.
My noble friend Lord Livermore clearly laid out our concerns about the current state of the economy, which have been reiterated by many noble Lords in today’s debate, including my noble friends Lady Drake, Lady Liddell, Lord Mandelson, Lord Sikka, Lord Hain, Lord McNicol, Lord Liddle and so on. My noble friend Lord Livermore spelled out Labour’s very different approach to turning around the economy and tackling the cost of living crisis, so I will concentrate my remarks on other aspects of the debate.
We are just weeks away from the UN climate summit, COP 28. With this in mind— and considering that the Government have time and again spoken up about their green credentials—the opportunity to use the King’s Speech to set out a clear vision for a greener future has been squandered. Instead, with one of the lightest legislative programmes in a decade, the Government have missed a vital opportunity to set out a positive agenda that delivers for people and the planet. Vague commitments to “lead action on tackling climate change and biodiversity loss, to support developing countries with their energy transition and hold other countries to account on their environmental commitments” are simply not good enough. It seems a little bit rich of the Government to pronounce that they will hold other Governments to account on environmental commitments when they are not exactly managing their own terribly well.
As we have heard today, there are huge health impacts from climate change and biodiversity loss. Does the Minister not agree with the WHO that:
“Further delay in tackling climate change will increase health risks, undermine decades of improvements in global health, and contravene our collective commitments to ensure the human right to health for all”?
My noble friend Lord Davies mentioned the lack of a mental health Bill—another thing missing in our approach to health.
The King’s Speech is a missed opportunity for nature’s recovery. Some noble Lords talked about peatlands, which are our largest natural carbon stores. They help to reduce flood risk, produce clean water and provide homes for many important species. The noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, mentioned this in much more detail and the fact that the Government are still to ban retail sales of peat-based compost, as they promised to do by 2024.
We also heard about some of the direct and indirect impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, for example, talked about the need to ensure that the impact on the environment is considered right across our political agenda. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, and my noble friend Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick talked about flooding and the lack of action on flooding. In government, Labour would set up a flood resilience task force to make sure there is better co-ordination between national and local government in emergency services and to give communities and local economies far better protection against flood damage. We would also appoint a Minister for Resilience within the Cabinet Office and overhaul local resilience forums, so that they are more ready to respond to emergencies such as floods.
Air quality was mentioned by a number of noble Lords. We know about the impact on health of poor air quality, and the Government simply do not have ambition on this. Food and farming, higher temperatures, changing rain patterns and extreme weather—all affect global food security. The United Kingdom Food Security Report 2021 says that climate and biodiversity loss are significant risks to domestic food production. With half of UK food imported from overseas, worsening climate impacts could lead to food shortages and price rises, which we have already been seeing. What exactly is the Government’s plan to tackle this?
We also know of indirect impacts from the current situation on climate change and our economy, such as increased poverty, migration and intensified inequalities. My noble friend Lord Hendy talked about this, as did the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham.
My noble friend Lord Whitty pointed out that there is nothing about water in the Speech. Nothing more graphically illustrates the 13 years of failed Conservative government than the tide of raw sewage that today spills down our rivers and into our lakes and washes up on our beaches. The noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, spoke about this and the failure of our regulators to do something to tackle it. The Government must take responsibility for cutting back on the enforcement and monitoring of water companies and for the poor rate of prosecutions when the law is blatantly broken.
We believe that the regulatory framework is simply not working effectively and needs changing. We would ensure that the polluter pays by expanding Ofwat’s powers to ban the payment of bonuses to water bosses until they have cleaned up their filth. We would make law-breaking bosses personally and criminally liable for their crimes, we would make monitoring of every water outlet compulsory and we would introduce automatic, instant severe fines for every illegal sewage dump.
Energy has been much discussed in this debate. A number of noble Lords talked about the Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill. For example, my noble friend Lady Liddell clearly laid out Labour’s position on this, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, drew attention to the tax incentives that favour fossil fuels over renewables and my noble friend Lady Whitaker spoke of the need to move away from fossil fuels. We need an energy policy that delivers clean power, increases Britain’s energy independence and reduces our reliance on oil and gas derived from the North Sea. The importance of investment in nuclear was mentioned, in particular by the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield.
However, as my noble friend Lady Blake said, it is hugely concerning that clean energy generation and security have not been a priority. Instead, we have recently seen a number of announcements that instead delay important net-zero policies. Unfortunately, it still seems easier to get permission from the Government to build a new coal mine rather than build the renewable energy that we so desperately need. Although the Speech included broad commitments to seek to attract record levels of investment in renewable energy sources and to reform grid connections, we need specific policies to be set out in the Autumn Statement at the end of November so that we know what this actually means. Can the Minister confirm that we will have more detail shortly?
As we have heard, the problem facing the UK is not just one of energy supply but one of energy affordability. Energy bills are still rising. My noble friend Lord Lennie spoke about energy security and the high cost to consumers, and the lack of action and ambition on this. We now know that an estimated 6 million households are in fuel poverty. The King’s Speech offers no hope to families living in poverty, struggling to heat their homes this winter.
There were also a number of expected Bills that simply did not make an appearance. My noble friend Lord Livermore mentioned a number of these, so I wonder whether the Minister knows if we are likely to see them at all in the near future. One example is the expected transport Bill, which a number of noble Lords mentioned. In December 2022, the Transport Secretary. Mark Harper, told the House of Commons Transport Committee that, due to a lack of parliamentary time, the Government had not been able to put it forward just yet but that some of the measures might well be included in the 2023 King’s Speech. What exactly has happened to these promised regulations?
The Speech did not include measures to limit the powers of local authorities to make it more difficult to introduce policies such as ultra-low emission zones or 20 mph speed limits. Have the Government changed their mind on this?
A number of noble Lords also referred to HS2, including the noble Lord, Lord Birt, and my noble friends Lord Grocott and Lord Berkeley. How will the rail reform Bill tackle the big issue of capacity now that the Government have cancelled HS2 north of Birmingham, without any sign of any suitable alternatives? Rail infrastructure is vital for economic growth, connectivity and investment, as we have heard. We have heard about the Network North proposals and promises, particularly from my noble friend Lord Grocott. We also heard more broadly from my noble friend Lord Faulkner about the need for proper rail infrastructure in this country, and my noble friend Lord Jones talked about the importance of funding investment for Welsh rail. The north really needs a rail Bill that delivers, so what guarantees can the Minister give me on this?
Finally, let us end on a positive note on animal welfare. I am sure noble Lords who know me will not be at all surprised to hear how absolutely delighted I am with the inclusion of a Bill to end the live export of animals. However, despite the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, saying that animal welfare is a priority for the Government, my welcome is tinged with a touch of cynicism after what happened to animal welfare announcements in previous Queen’s Speeches.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
The kept animals Bill and the animals abroad Bill were in Queen’s Speeches. What has happened to the promised bans on the importation of fur and foie gras, for example? What will happen with the trophy hunting import Bill that just collapsed? How can the Minister guarantee that the Government will actually deliver the promised legislation this time, and what is happening about the outstanding pledges?
It is a bit depressing that this legislative programme is the best the Government could come up with. I gently suggest to them that it is, in fact, time for a change.
The Parliamentary Secretary, HM Treasury (Baroness Penn) (Con)
My Lords, I add my words of welcome to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich and my noble friend Lord Gascoigne and congratulate them both on their maiden speeches. I am sure that they will prove to be valuable Members of this House. The noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, put it well when she described my noble friend Lord Gascoigne as “discreet and decent”. I have always enjoyed working with him over many years in the past, and I look forward to working with him in the future. I also welcome back my noble friend Lord Wakeham to this House, and also welcome the optimism that he brought in his remarks about the opportunities of the future.
Much of today’s debate has focused on the Government’s record on the economy and our plans to grow it in future, so I thought it worth taking some time to go over the facts. Since 2010 the UK economy has grown by more than 24%, faster than France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Spain, Austria, Finland, Belgium, Portugal, and the Netherlands. At the same time, borrowing is forecast to have fallen by 4.7 percentage points, more than that of any other G7 member. We have halved unemployment and cut inequality, and reduced the number of workless households by 1 million. In fact, since 2010, 4 million more people are now in work, with more than 1 million new businesses created.
Increases in tax thresholds made by successive Chancellors mean that people in our country can earn £1,000 a month without paying a penny of tax or national insurance. At the same time, educational outcomes have consistently improved. All this has been delivered while we have cut our carbon emissions by more than 48% between 1990 and 2021, delivering net zero faster than any other major economy.
We also have a bright future ahead of us. We are ranked number one by the World Bank among major European economies as a place to do business. We are home to Europe’s largest life sciences sector, which helped produce a Covid vaccine that saved 6 million lives and a treatment that saved 1 million more. We are only the third country in the world to have developed a trillion-dollar tech economy. Our film and TV industries are the largest in Europe, and our creative industries are growing at twice the rate of the rest of the economy. We are a world leader in offshore wind, behind only China in the scale of energy production.
But we are not complacent, not least because of the unprecedented shocks our country and economy have faced in recent years. The Covid pandemic forced us to take decisions to shut down large swathes of our economy and made huge demands of our public services, as the NHS went on to a war footing, and teachers and families had to adapt to moving learning for millions of children online and at home. The Government also stepped forward with unprecedented support totalling more than £350 billion during that period. The furlough scheme protected 11.7 million jobs and livelihoods. Our loan support schemes provided lifelines to 1.6 million businesses, as well as cutting VAT for the worst affected, providing a business rates holiday for more than 750,000 businesses, and protecting our arts and cultural sectors through the nearly £2 billion culture recovery fund. We supported our public transport systems with more than £12.8 billion of funding, our NHS with £81 billion of Covid ring-fenced spending, and our schools with nearly £5 billion towards educational recovery since the 2020-21 academic year.
In 2022 we emerged from the pandemic earlier than many other countries thanks to our vaccine rollout, and our economy grew at the fastest rate of any G7 nation. But in March of that year, we faced a further global shock after Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. Energy prices shot up, adding to inflationary pressures caused by global supply chains needing to rebuild after Covid. The noble Lord, Lord Livermore, sought to lay the blame for inflation and therefore higher interest rates at the Government’s door. However, given his emphasis on Labour’s respect for the independent Bank of England, perhaps he will defer to its analysis from the August Monetary Policy Report this year, which explained:
“High inflation has been caused by a series of big shocks. The first shock was the Covid pandemic … The second shock was Russia’s invasion of Ukraine … The third shock was a big fall in the number of people available to work”.
In May the IMF confirmed that we have taken “decisive and responsible” action to bear down on inflation and achieve the right balance of fiscal and monetary response, while also focusing on growing the economy.
The noble Baronesses, Lady Sheehan and Lady Bakewell, asked what the King’s Speech is doing to support households with this higher cost of living, but they neglected to recognise the significant ongoing support already in place. Over the past year, government support paid for about half the average household energy bill and provided one of the largest household support packages in Europe. We extended the temporary 5p fuel duty cut and a freeze to fuel duty representing a saving for the average driver of £200 since the record 5p cut was introduced.
I reassure the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham that we have targeted our support at the most vulnerable, with cost of living payments to more than 8 million households on means-tested benefits and 8 million pensioner households, and to 6 million people on disability benefits, worth respectively £900, £300 and £150 this year on top of payments of £650, £300 and £150 last year. This is in addition to uprating benefits by 10.1% this year in line with inflation and protecting the triple lock for around 12 million pensioners, worth £11 billion.
My right honourable friend the Chancellor confirmed that the UK Government will accept the Low Pay Commission’s forthcoming recommendation on the increase in the national living wage from April 2024, currently forecast to increase to at least £11 an hour. This means that the annual earnings of a full-time worker on the national living wage will increase by more than £1,000 next year.
There is no doubt that we have faced real challenges over the past few years, but this Government have stood by the British people every step of the way. When we look ahead, the Prime Minister has set three clear priorities for the economy to ensure that we recover from the shocks we have faced and once again release the potential of this great nation. First and foremost, we remain steadfast in our commitment to cutting inflation, the most insidious tax on household budgets there is. We are on track to deliver our aim to halve inflation this year as a staging post to returning to the 2% target, and decisions by the Bank of England’s independent Monetary Policy Committee remain the primary tool for controlling inflation.
It is also essential that fiscal policy acts in support of, rather than working against, monetary policy. That is why the measures taken by the Chancellor at this year’s Budget were focused on easing some of the longer-term drivers of inflation. Indeed, the reforms announced at the Budget were the largest supply-side measures ever scored by the OBR.
We have also taken the difficult but necessary decisions needed to control public sector borrowing. Additional borrowing would increase aggregate demand and place further pressure on inflation and interest rates. The noble Lord, Lord Leong, asked about the current level of government debt and the cost of servicing it. Government debt currently stands at £2,702 billion, and the OBR March forecast put debt interest costs at £94 billion this financial year. This figure puts into stark relief the challenge before us, set out so ably by my noble friend Lord Bridges. I say to my noble friend that, while it was absolutely right for the Government to step in in response to Covid and the energy price shock, an ever-growing state cannot be the new norm, particularly in a future where we know there will be growing demands on the state, whether it is to support the energy transition or to harness and respond to the technological revolution—challenges to future global growth so eloquently set out by my noble friend Lady Moyo. As my noble friend Lord Bridges said, the future will demand clear choices from government about what it can and should do and a relentless focus on productivity in the public sector and, as noted by the noble Lord, Lord Londesborough, in the private sector.
I reassure noble Lords that these themes and concerns drive this Government forward. In contrast, despite the valiant attempt by the noble Lord, Lord Livermore, to reassure noble Lords of Labour’s commitment to fiscal responsibility, despite its record in government, he failed to explain how Labour’s plans to spend £28 billion extra every year could be paid for without additional tax hikes or adding to this borrowing burden.
Getting debt falling is essential in ensuring that we do not pass on the burden to future generations who would have to pay it off. It provides space to allow government to respond to future shocks and reduces spending on debt interest that could otherwise support public services—or, in response to my noble friend Lady Noakes, put money back into people’s and businesses’ pockets through cutting their tax burden. As an aside to my noble friend Lord Balfe, I reassure him that we have delivered on George Osborne’s commitment to cut inheritance tax.
In its latest forecast, the OBR confirmed that the Government are on track to deliver their debt target. However, challenges remain: borrowing and debt are high by historical standards, and the headroom to debt falling is historically low. Controlling inflation and getting debt falling provide the foundations for our third priority: long-term, sustainable growth. Growth is the key to building confidence, security and hope for the future. It rewards aspiration and invention, creates freedom and choice, and strengthens our communities and our country. As my noble friend Lord Forsyth put it, it is the prerequisite for any action by government to support vulnerable households and essential public services.
The Spring Budget set out an ambitious programme of measures to drive economic growth across employment, enterprise, education, and everywhere in the UK, without irresponsibly fuelling inflation. We will look to build on this further at the Autumn Statement; I hope the noble Lord, Lord Desai, will forgive me if I do not pre-empt that today. The Budget package included a landmark childcare offer, and key new policies to ensure the UK business tax system is one of the most comprehensive of the world’s major economies.
In today’s debate we have focused on a number of other important areas driving our future growth. One has been the role of technology, in particular AI, as raised by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, my noble friend Lady Moyo and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford. The AI Safety Summit was an important step forward to deploying this crucial technology with the launch of the world’s first AI safety institute, which will help spur international collaboration on the safe development of AI.
The noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, also called for more effective digital competition policy. That is exactly what the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill is designed to address, providing new powers to the Digital Markets Unit in the CMA and building on the Online Safety Act, creating a modern regulatory framework for online platforms and tech companies.
My noble friends Lord Altrincham and Lord Trenchard raised the potential of our financial services sector, and the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, and the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, touched on pension reforms. Both these areas have significant potential to unlock further investment in the UK. The Government will continue to pursue reform at pace, with appropriate safeguards.
The Government’s economic priorities have also driven our approach to delivering on net zero. Since March 2021, the Government have committed a total of £30 billion of domestic investment to the green industrial revolution. Since then, the Government have announced an additional £12 billion for energy efficiency and low-carbon heating to support the work we are doing to reduce the UK’s energy consumption from buildings and industry by 15% by 2030 relative to 2021 levels. We have also announced up to £20 billion for early deployment of carbon capture, utilisation and storage in the UK. In response to the noble Baroness, Lady Liddell, we are currently working with industry on the right quantum of spend within a given period. These are commercial negotiations, the outcomes of which we will announce at the next spending review and future spending reviews, to ensure that the UK remains at the forefront of deploying this technology.
The policies set out in the Net Zero Strategy 2021 and the Net Zero Growth Plan 2023 are expected to mobilise an additional £100 billion of private investment and support 480,000 jobs across the UK. But we know there is more to be done, so we are doubling down on tackling the most significant constraints to our transition —accelerating grid connections, addressing issues with planning and improving auction rounds for renewable power, as well as investing in UK green R&D.
At the same time we are investing in our energy security and making sure that we smooth the transition for households in a pragmatic way. The impacts of Putin’s war in Ukraine have made clear the need for greater energy security in the UK and Europe, which can be secured only by boosting the range of domestic energy supplies that we have available.
Renewable power reached a record share of 48.2% of total generation in the first quarter of 2023. When you include nuclear, low-carbon sources provided over 60% of total generation. In future the UK will be powered by renewables including wind, solar and hydrogen power with carbon capture, usage and storage and new nuclear plants.
The noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, asked about tidal and wave energy. The Government have invested over £175 million in wave and tidal stream innovation over the last two decades. The Government announced on 8 September that a record 11 tidal-stream contracts have been secured in the latest contract for difference, thanks in large part to a ring-fenced tidal budget. On wave energy, we continue to engage with domestic and European industry, academia and the devolved Governments, including collaborating with Wave Energy Scotland.
Baroness Whitaker (Lab)
I am sorry to hold up the Minister in her magnificent tour de force but I asked her a specific question about the consent process consultation. If she does not have the answer to hand on wave energy, would she please write to me?
Baroness Penn (Con)
I will be happy to write to the noble Baroness.
We have launched a nuclear revival. The Government invested to become a shareholder in Sizewell C in November 2022 and launched a capital raise process in September this year to bring in new project finance. We have launched Great British Nuclear to drive the delivery of new nuclear technologies beyond Sizewell and to develop the latest small modular reactor technologies, and last month we announced the shortlist of companies to build the new generation of small modular reactors. Beyond the initial focus on delivery, Great British Nuclear will be available to support further nuclear ambitions. It has the statutory backing and resources behind it to deliver against its long-term operational mandate.
Through the nuclear fuel fund we will invest over £35 million, match funded by industry, to develop new domestic fuel production capabilities and to supply gigawatt reactors, SMRs and AMRs. On siting, we are developing a nuclear national policy statement that will cover the policy framework for deploying new nuclear power stations beyond 2025. As an initial step, we plan to consult on our proposed approach for determining new nuclear sites by the end of this year, with our aim to finalise a consultation on the NPS next year and complete parliamentary scrutiny to enable its designation in 2025. We will launch our consultation on alternative routes to market next month and, following our review of responses, deliver a report in 2024. I hope that responds to the questions from both the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, and my noble friend Lady Bloomfield, who are both great advocates for the nuclear industry. Perhaps I can write to the noble Lord, Lord Jones, to respond to his specific questions about the two sites that he focused on in his contribution.
However, we also need to recognise that data published by the Climate Change Committee shows that the UK will continue to rely on oil and gas to meet its energy needs even after the UK reaches net zero in 2050. That will include the use of gas for power generation and carbon capture usage and storage. That is why we are investing in the range of domestic energy supplies that we have available, including taking steps to slow the decline in the domestic production of oil and gas, which will reduce our reliance on hostile states and back a thriving industry in the UK that supports 200,000 jobs. It is important to recognise that the UK is a rapidly declining producer of oil and gas, and new oil and gas licences will reduce the fall in UK supply to ensure vital energy security, rather than increasing it above current levels, so that the UK remains on track to meet its net-zero 2050 commitments.
I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Blake of Leeds, that we recognise the unprecedented profits made by oil and gas producers after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. These profits represent not a return on investment but a windfall as a result of unprovoked war. It is therefore right that we introduced the energy profits levy on those windfall profits, bringing the tax rate on the profits of North Sea oil and gas producers to 75%. By 2027 the levy is expected to raise almost £26 billion, having already generated around £5.9 billion, helping us—as I said earlier—to pay half the typical household’s energy bill between October and June.
We also want to take a fair approach to decarbonising how we heat our homes, which is why we are giving people more time to make the necessary transition to heat pumps. We have increased the boiler upgrade scheme cash grants by 50%, to £7,500, to support consumers who want to make the transition now. It is one of the most generous grants in Europe.
I reassure noble Lords that, in taking into account the changes to the boiler and electric vehicles mandate and the ongoing licensing of domestic oil and gas reserves, we are confident that we can deliver our carbon budgets and capitalise on the opportunities for green growth. So I say to the many noble Lords who raised concerns in this area that we remain completely committed to our existing targets and to meeting net zero by 2050, compatible with the Paris Agreement ambition to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.
We will continue to listen to and engage with the expertise in this House on climate and nature. I say to my noble friend Lord Lilley that our approach will be informed by evidence, pragmatism and rational debate. Our package of proposals and policies will continue to evolve to adapt to changing circumstances, to utilise technological developments and to address emerging challenges.
But we are in no doubt about the real and present threat that climate change and biodiversity loss represent to our economy and society, and there is no change in our commitment to tackling this challenge. The UK overachieved against its first and second carbon budgets, and the latest projections show that we are on track to meet the third. We are able to quantify the vast majority of carbon savings in the late 2030s, more than a decade away.
Environment and nature are the other side of the coin when it comes to tackling climate change. I reassure the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich, who spoke so eloquently of his own work on ecology, that not only have this Government done more than any other on the environment and nature—including through the landmark Environment Act—but we remain committed to going further, through our commitment to end the net loss of biodiversity in the UK by 2030. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, that we need to put people and rural communities at the heart of this approach. We will not achieve this transition without the support and action of farmers and land managers.
My noble friend Lady McIntosh asked about the live animal export Bill and whether there is a means to restrict live animal imports from the EU. I say to her that there has never been a significant import trade for slaughter or fattening. For example, since 2019, only 91 cattle, 14 sheep and 20 pigs have been imported for slaughter from mainland Europe—so we do not see a pressing case to take action in this area. On my noble friend’s question about border control points, I reassure her that our new border control point at Sevington, covering the short straits, opens in April. Other border control points will open around the UK, securing our biosecurity with our new border targeting operating model.
A number of noble Lords, including the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich, raised concerns about the impact of recent flooding on farmers. The flood recovery framework provides funding for households and businesses affected by severe flooding, and it includes several grants and business rates relief.
I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick, that I know that my noble friend Lord Caine spent several hours with her in communities affected by the recent floods. In the absence of the Executive, who could have acted swiftly, the UK Government are making money available to support those affected by floods, through the reallocation of existing funding.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, who, among others, raised the reform of water regulation, that we are driving the largest infrastructure investment in water company history—an estimated £60 billion of water company capital investment by 2050—to meet storm overflow discharge reduction plan targets, which were recently expanded to cover all storm overflows in England, including those discharging to coastal and estuarine waters. But I will of course pass on to Defra the proposal from the noble Duke for the future of regulation in this area.
This brings us on to the theme of what is not in the King’s Speech, and to speak to the concerns raised by the noble Baronesses, Lady Sheehan and Lady Bakewell, around the ending of peat in horticulture. It remains our policy that we intend to legislate to restrict and ultimately ban the sale of peat and peat-containing products. We appreciate that there is good support for this from the public and from within Parliament.
I turn to the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, who raised the subject of disposable vapes. The Government launched a consultation on smoking and the use of vaping earlier this month. As part of it, the UK Government and the devolved Administrations are considering restrictions on the sale and supply of disposable vapes, including prohibiting the sale of these products due to the environmental impacts that they have.
The noble Lords, Lord Whitty and Lord Livermore, and many others raised the question of employment rights. I say to noble Lords that, over the past year, we have proven our commitment to supporting workers by introducing a number of new employment rights via government hand-out Bills, including a new day one right to request flexible working; a new legal right to request predictable working patterns; additional protections for pregnant women against redundancy; a right to paid leave for employees whose child is receiving neonatal care; and a right for unpaid carers to one week of additional unpaid leave. Action is being taken in that area.
Perhaps related is the question of unpaid Ministers in this House, as raised by my noble friend Lord Forsyth. I and my noble friend the Lord Privy Seal have heard my noble friend Lord Forsyth’s plea and impressed the point at the highest levels. However, as he is well aware, the number of Ministers who are paid is set out in legislation, and to improve the lot of our Ministers who are unpaid we would need to legislate. Unfortunately, there is not currently the appetite to do that.
I turn to the remarks by the noble Lord, Lord Snape, who questioned the inclusion of the Pedicabs (London) Bill in the King’s Speech—
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)
I am most grateful to my noble friend. I appreciate her courtesy in referring to what I said. As David Cameron is joining the House on a salary of £106,000, can we take it that his Minister of State will be paid?
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, I could not possibly comment on that, but I join my noble friend in welcoming David Cameron to his new post. I think we will be very pleased to have someone of such talent and experience join your Lordships’ House.
To return to pedicabs, they are the only form of unregulated public transport on London’s roads. If we could deal with it through by-laws, that would be fantastic, but in fact it takes primary legislation to deal with that issue.
Many noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Birt, Lord Grocott, and others, regretted the cancellation of High Speed 2 beyond Birmingham. We absolutely recognise the need better to support critical links between and within our cities and towns, but the reality is that High Speed 2 is crowding out investment to further these priorities elsewhere across the country. We have made the difficult decision not to extend High Speed 2 and, instead, to deliver the £36 billion of savings that we have allocated to Network North, an ambitious pipeline of alternative projects. The new plan will provide direct benefits to more people and more places and will do so more quickly than the previous plan for High Speed 2.
The noble Lord, Lord Birt, raised the need to upgrade the trans-Pennine rail route, which is absolutely a priority for this Government. The upgrade programme is expected to provide an extra two trains per hour and aims to reduce journey times between Manchester Victoria and Leeds from 55 to 41 minutes. The Government have committed £3 billion to date, and an announcement on future funding will be made later this year.
To the noble Lord, Lord Jones, I say that we are delivering a £1 billion upgrade to the north Wales main line, including electrification and improving journey times to better connect Wales with London and the north-west. We will now proceed with the steps necessary to implement this, including reflecting on the existing package of legislation before Parliament, necessary consultative steps, business case development, and our parliamentary and legal and fiscal duties.
Finally, the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, asked whether I stand behind the briefing that the first models of self-drive vehicles could be offered to market by 2026 if they are proved safe. The short answer, which at this time of the night will be appreciated by noble Lords, is yes.
So, this Government have a comprehensive plan to deliver a strong economy, secure energy supplies, a state-of-the-art transport sector and a safeguarded environment. From bringing down inflation and the national debt to growing the economy and tackling climate change, we are committed to making long-term decisions for the benefit of everyone across this United Kingdom. That is what the first King’s Speech in many a generation delivers, and I commend it to the House.