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Speaker’s Statement
(1 year ago)
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Mr Speaker
I wish to inform the House that I have received a letter from the hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare), informing me of his resignation as Chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee. I therefore declare the Chair vacant. I will announce the arrangements for the election of a new Chair in due course.
I would also like to draw Members’ attention to the fact that the book for entering the private Members’ Bills ballot is now open. It will be open until the House rises today and while the House is sitting tomorrow. The book will be available for Members to sign in the No Lobby until 6 pm on both days, at which point it will be taken to the Public Bill Office and will remain open for signatures until the rise of the House. The ballot itself will be drawn at 9 am this Thursday, in Committee Room 15.
An announcement setting out these and other arrangements, and the dates when the ten-minute rule motions can be made and presentation Bills introduced, has been published in the Order Paper.
We now come to questions to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. May I welcome the new ministerial team as a whole, rather than going through each of them individually?
Oral Answers to Questions
(1 year ago)
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Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Laura Trott)
As a result of the Government’s triple lock, the basic state pension is now more than 50% higher in cash terms than it was in 2011. The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is undertaking his review at the moment, and I cannot pre-empt that.
Richard Foord
Now that Lord Cameron has returned to the Cabinet, it is probably a good time for us to remember that the pensions triple lock was a Liberal Democrat initiative. The 2010 Liberal Democrat manifesto said:
“We will uprate the state pension annually by whichever is the higher of growth in earnings, growth in prices or 2.5 per cent.”
Given that the triple lock has now been operational for more than a decade, will the Chancellor and his team commit to putting the triple lock in the next manifesto?
Laura Trott
Nice try. The triple lock was a Conservative invention, delivered by the Conservatives, and it is something to which we remain committed.
Mr Ranil Jayawardena (North East Hampshire) (Con)
I welcome my hon. Friend to her new role. Given that it is right that we look after our pensioners and ensure that people are well looked after in later life, it is important that we have the right tax base to fund our pensions. Will she meet me to consider ways in which we can make our taxation system more family friendly, to encourage more people to have more children and to ensure that we can pay for our pensions in the years ahead?
Laura Trott
My right hon. Friend is a brilliant advocate on these issues, and of course I would be delighted to meet him.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Jeremy Hunt)
UK food inflation has been driven largely by global factors and has already fallen from 19.6% to 12.3%, and external forecasts expect it to continue to fall.
Alison Thewliss
Between March 2021 and April 2023, the cost of first infant formula increased by 24%, on average, with the cheapest formula on the market increasing by 45%. That is an absolute catastrophe for families who rely on infant formula, but a bonanza for the formula companies, which are making significant profits out of this. Can the Chancellor tell me why he believes it is right for companies to profit while families struggle to feed their babies?
Jeremy Hunt
The hon. Lady is absolutely right to draw attention to the pressures on families caused by very high food inflation in a number of areas, but I can tell her that the Competition and Markets Authority, which undertook a review of the groceries sector earlier this year, has not yet found evidence that high food price inflation is being driven by weak competition. But it is continuing its review and looking at the supply chain, and we will wait to hear what it says.
Deidre Brock
Recent research showed that the most significant decline in UK children’s height in the global ranking came after the UK coalition Government launched their austerity programme in 2010. An expert in child growth rates at the Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health said of that 30-place drop in ranking that austerity
“has clobbered the height of children in the UK.”
What lessons has the Chancellor learned from the UK Government’s previous disastrous errors of judgment in this area, and how will he be supporting vulnerable groups in the future?
Jeremy Hunt
The lesson I have learned is straightforward: if we had not reduced the deficit by 80% between 2010 and the start of the pandemic, we would not have been able to help families across the United Kingdom with payments of more than £3,000, on average, including 700,000 households in Scotland and more than 1 million pensioners.
Patrick Grady
Even if the inflation rate is falling, food prices are still going up considerably. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation reckons that they have gone up at least twice as fast as the value of benefits since September 2021. At the very least, can the Chancellor commit to ensuring that the Department for Work and Pensions has enough resource to raise benefits at least in line with September’s inflation rate?
Jeremy Hunt
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is doing his review at the moment to decide the correct amount by which to uprate benefits. If the hon. Gentleman looks at this Government’s record, he will see that we took the decision a year ago to uprate benefits by inflation, and we committed to £94 billion of measures to help families get through the cost of living crisis.
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
Food inflation will only get worse if our self-sufficiency in food production drops. Will my right hon. Friend consider fiscal measures to discourage the transfer of food-producing land to other uses such as solar industrial installations?
Jeremy Hunt
My hon. Friend is right to say that our food industry is very important to food security. We need to keep the priorities constantly under review. Nature is a very important part of that, but so too is food production.
Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)
It is good to be addressing an elected Minister this morning. The consumer organisation Which? has described Tesco and Sainsbury’s as committing “dodgy” practices over food prices and loyalty schemes, and Marks & Spencer has just posted record profits on food sales, yet people up and down the nations of the UK are struggling to pay their food bills. Will the Chancellor tell us which supermarkets he has held to account over rising food prices?
Jeremy Hunt
I can tell the hon. Gentleman that we had the supermarkets in over the summer to make sure that they were doing everything they could to bear down on food price inflation. However, the correct way for politicians to look at this is at arm’s length. We have the independent Competition and Markets Authority, which does a rigorous job and often does things that politicians disagree with, and it is looking at the issue right now.
Drew Hendry
In Canada, Ministers met the five largest grocery chains to get commitments on stabilising food prices. Other Governments are doing similar things. France’s Finance Minister held extensive talks with the food industry to get it to commit to freezing or cutting prices on 5,000 everyday products. Is it not the case that, for people facing crushing food bills in Scotland and across the nations of the UK, this Westminster Government are doing absolutely nothing?
Jeremy Hunt
I think £94 billion of support to help families up and down the country, including with food prices and energy prices, is a rather different answer from saying that we are doing nothing.
David Duguid (Banff and Buchan) (Con)
The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Gareth Davies)
Since March 2021, the Government have committed a total of £30 billion in public investment for the green industrial revolution. Since then, the Chancellor has announced £6 billion for clean heat and improving energy efficiency, and £20 billion for carbon capture, usage and storage. Alongside the launch of Great British Nuclear and the small modular reactor competition, the Government have also invested £1 billion in Sizewell C.
David Duguid
According to a recent survey, 90% of North sea oil and gas operators have reduced spending since the energy profits levy was introduced. I therefore welcome recent announcements on new North sea licences and the announcement before the summer of the energy security investment mechanism, by which the EPL will be removed when appropriate. Can my hon. Friend tell me when we can expect a response to the consultation on the ESIM and what plans this Government have to legislate for the mechanism? Will he meet me to discuss how investor confidence in our home-grown industry can be assured further?
Gareth Davies
Introducing the price floor for the oil and gas industry comes from the principle that, while it is right that oil and gas companies pay a higher share of tax during exceptional times, it is also right that when prices fall to normal levels, so do their tax rates. That is why we introduced the price floor in June and we have extensively engaged with the industry since then. I know that legislating will provide some certainty; we are looking carefully at that and will respond soon. I will always be happy to meet with my hon. Friend.
Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)
The Labour party and the Co-operative party have set out a shared ambition for more community-owned energy. That is not new: in Denmark, 52% of wind energy is community owned, and in Germany half of all onshore wind is community owned. Will the Government do far more to join that ambition of community-owned energy here in Britain?
Gareth Davies
We have ambitious plans for energy generation and our energy security. We want to bring communities with us, and we look at all options as we do so.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Nigel Huddleston)
Of course, the UK does not have a single wealth tax, but it does have several taxes on wealth and assets, and those generate substantial revenues. The Government are committed to keeping taxes low so that working people keep more of what they earn. The Government’s approach to delivering fiscal sustainability is underpinned by fairness, with those on the highest incomes paying a larger share.
Rachael Maskell
But the burden of tax is increasingly falling on working people’s incomes, while the richest 50 families in the UK have alone accumulated a combined wealth equivalent to that of half the population. Research from the University of Greenwich shows that a wealth tax could generate £70 billion for much-needed public services, so will the Government at least put forward a commission to investigate the matter and introduce a fair taxation policy?
Nigel Huddleston
I am not sure whether the hon. Lady is lobbying me or Opposition Front Benchers with her comments, but she will be well aware that we do have a progressive tax system in the UK. It is important to remember that the top 5% of taxpayers are projected to pay nearly half of all income tax in 2023-24; and the top 1% as much as 28%. Compared with what we inherited from Labour in 2010, when the top 1% of income tax payers paid 25% and the top 5% paid 43%, the tax system is fairer and more progressive under the Conservatives.
Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)
Those who live in homes with driveways pay just 5% VAT when they charge their cars from their home electricity, but those who live in terraced houses have to pay 20% VAT to charge commercially. Given that those who live in terraced houses are often less wealthy, will the Minister, whom I congratulate on his new role, meet me and other members of the Conservative Environment Network to look at how we might level out that anomaly?
Nigel Huddleston
My right hon. Friend is a great champion of such issues in her constituency and beyond. I am aware that she has already spoken to the Chancellor about this issue, but I would be delighted, as always, to meet her and discuss it further.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
The Government have done a lot to raise personal allowances, for which our party has advocated for many years. However, given that that is an improvement for people at the bottom end of the income scale, will the Treasury now turn its view towards hard-working, middle-income families, who also want a reduction in their tax burden?
Nigel Huddleston
We appreciate the support for taking 3 million of the lowest-paid people out of paying income tax altogether since 2010—an important and significant change. I understand the hon. Gentleman’s comments, but I cannot comment further, especially this close to a fiscal event.
Richard Fuller (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)
I welcome my hon. Friend to his new post. Does he share with me the humour that Opposition Back Benchers have proposals for new taxation that the Opposition Front Benchers are trying to bat away, while those of us on the Government Back Benches are telling the Government to cut taxes, and our Front Benchers keep batting that away?
Nigel Huddleston
I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. I am afraid that what we are probably seeing is “same old Labour”—we have heard this all before. What they are proposing did not work in the ’70s and it will not work now. We are very proud of our tax record, particularly taking the lowest paid out of income tax.
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)
I welcome the Minister to his place. The Government have the opportunity next week to right an historical wrong by abolishing non-dom tax status. The Chancellor could use that money to get our NHS back on its feet and to provide free breakfast clubs for all primary-age children, just as Labour has called for. Is the abolition of non-dom tax status under consideration, or has the Prime Minister ruled it out again, for personal reasons?
Nigel Huddleston
The hon. Gentleman is well aware that there are real dangers that what he is proposing would make the UK a less attractive destination—that is a very important issue. The City pays for a huge amount of our NHS, for example, and non-dom taxpayers were liable to pay £8.5 billion in UK income tax in 2021-22 and invested more than £7 billion in the UK.
Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Laura Trott)
The Government are committed to supporting households with the cost of living, delivering over £94 billion of support, including uprating benefits by 10.1% this year. As I have said, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is undertaking his review, and I cannot pre-empt that.
Wendy Chamberlain
Figures from the Trussell Trust show that food bank usage is at its highest ever level, and over the summer months a record 41,878 parcels of food were provided to 21,000 children in Scotland alone. Meanwhile, child poverty costs the Government £39 billion per year in poor health and educational outcomes. In order to tackle child poverty properly, will the Government commit to keeping benefits in line with inflation and lifting the two-child cap?
Laura Trott
We understand that things are really tough at the moment, which is why we have put in place £900 of cost of living support this year, but we also all need to work on bearing down on inflation. We are seeing it start to come down, but we know it is still too high, and we hope we will reach the Prime Minister’s pledge of halving inflation, because that is the biggest help we can give to households this year.
Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Bim Afolami)
The Secretary of State for Defence and my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith), recently set out that the values within ESG practices of financial institutions should never undermine capabilities developed to help us preserve peace and security. The Treasury recently consulted on a potential regulatory framework for ESG ratings providers, which aims to improve transparency and promote good conduct. I hope this will address some of the issues that defence companies have raised.
Alexander Stafford
ESG is so vital when it comes to investing in all our services, including defence. We were promised that the “Greening Finance” road map would come out at the end of 2022. Then we were told that the consultation would come out by autumn this year. It is still just about autumn, and it is yet to come out. Why are the Government kicking ESG down the road? Why have they stopped caring about ESG, and when will we have the consultation to get a UK green taxonomy sorted?
Bim Afolami
I thank my hon. Friend for his question. [Interruption.] I do; I know how much he cares about these issues and campaigns on them frequently in the House, and I commend him for it. The Government are committed to delivering on a UK green taxonomy to provide investors with clarity on which economic activity should be labelled as green. We expect to consult this autumn. The green taxonomy will provide an important tool for enabling the supply of relevant and reliable sustainability information for the market, and information will come in due course.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
One of the things that concern Northern Ireland MPs is the fact that when it comes to defence jobs and getting contracts, Northern Ireland falls behind. The Minister will be aware that Thales, on the border of my constituency, was recently able to secure its workforce. What steps can he take to ensure that each region of the United Kingdom, but especially Northern Ireland, can benefit from defence spending for the workforce? We can do the job the same as everywhere else; we just need the opportunity.
Bim Afolami
I thank the hon. Member for his question, which is incredibly important. As he knows, this Government are absolutely committed to ensuring that jobs in the defence sector, within an ESG framework, are protected. I am happy to meet him to discuss further the issues relating to his constituency and Northern Ireland.
Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Laura Trott)
Tuition fees have been frozen for 2023-24 and 2024-25, which will help affordability for future graduates. For new graduates, interest rates will move with the retail prices index but will have nothing added.
Mr Robertson
I thank the Minister for that response but, of course, interest rates have made matters much more difficult for graduates, who cannot afford to both pay off their student loan and buy their own property. Is there anything further that the Government can do to help graduates, who are struggling to do both? One of the things we could do is raise the threshold at which they start to pay back the loans.
Laura Trott
I thank my hon. Friend for his question. The most important thing we can do is bear down on inflation, because that will bear down on interest rates, which affect us all. I would also point to the cost of living support that the Department for Education is providing for students. I would be happy to discuss the matter with him further.
Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Jeremy Hunt)
Our policies are increasing economic growth, as the Office for Budget Responsibility confirmed following last year’s autumn statement and the spring Budget, but the only way to secure higher, sustainable, long-term growth is to bring down inflation.
Chris Elmore
The OBR judged the Chancellor’s last Budget to have no overall long-term impact on the level of potential productivity. Does he expect the OBR to make a similar judgment of his next Budget?
Jeremy Hunt
I remind the hon. Gentleman of what the OBR actually said about the spring Budget:
“the overall impact on GDP is around 0.2 per cent in 2027-28. This is the largest upward revision we have made to potential output within our five-year forecast as a result of fiscal policy decisions taken by a Government”.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
Economic growth in northern Lincolnshire will be severely impacted if changes go ahead at British Steel’s Scunthorpe works, which will result in redundancies and a massive impact on the supply chain. Will my right hon. Friend give an assurance that the Government will not proceed with any support for those changes until a full economic assessment of the impact on the local area has been carried out?
Jeremy Hunt
I thank my hon. Friend and, indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Holly Mumby-Croft) for their extensive lobbying on this very important issue. I have had meetings with him and her, and with many others, to discuss it. I reassure him that we are absolutely committed to steel production in the United Kingdom, and to making sure that any changes that are necessary support the local communities that depend on steel production.
Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)
I welcome the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Laura Trott) to her place. I look forward to holding her to account.
Last month, the Chancellor’s National Infrastructure Commission said that in order to unlock the billions of pounds of private investment that is available to get our economy growing, we need a Government who can “make good decisions, fast.” Why does the Chancellor think his Government have been making bad decisions slowly for quite so long?
Jeremy Hunt
It might help the hon. Gentleman if I tell him some of the facts on infrastructure. Since we made some reforms to the asset pooling framework in 2015, UK and global infrastructure investment by pension funds has grown from £1 billion to around £27 billion, and the Solvency 2 reforms could potentially unlock a further £100 billion-worth of investment.
Darren Jones
That, Mr Speaker, was a list of very slow decisions still being badly taken. The Labour party has a raft of plans available to help drive economic growth and investment in every corner of our country, from speeding up the grid to accelerating planning for critically important infrastructure. Today, I am making them available to the Chancellor for free. Would he like them, or would he rather call a general election?
Jeremy Hunt
Unfortunately, nothing is free from the Labour party. Funding plans by increasing borrowing by £28 billion a year leads to higher bills for families, higher energy prices and higher mortgages.
David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)
Mr Speaker
While we are basking in those questions, would somebody like to answer them?
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Jeremy Hunt)
In my speech at Mansion House in July, I announced reforms to boost pensions, increase investment in UK businesses, and improve UK capital market competitiveness. Those reforms could result in over £1,000 a year of additional retirement income and unlock £75 billion-worth of investment in high-growth businesses.
David Simmonds
Many local authorities have given the investment managers for their pension funds a mandate to invest in infrastructure. What plans does my right hon. Friend have to encourage greater infrastructure investment by UK public sector pension funds?
Jeremy Hunt
I thank my hon. Friend for his interest in this issue—of course, he has great experience of local government. Working with the former Economic Secretary to the Treasury, my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith), who I see is in the Chamber, we announced major reforms in July to help local government pension funds lead the way in the transformation we are looking for, in particular by sending a direction that they should invest in pools worth more than £50 billion. That will make it easier for them to have the expertise necessary to invest in infrastructure.
Nadhim Zahawi
I welcome the proposals that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor made in his Mansion House speech, which will increase investment in the United Kingdom. In his upcoming autumn statement, I implore him to build on his Budget announcement with a policy that was originally advocated for in a paper by the Adam Smith Institute, a think-tank I am proud to be patron of, as is set out in my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I implore him to make full expensing permanent and to scrap the hated factory tax.
Jeremy Hunt
I have a very small bone to pick with my right hon. Friend, because when I became Chancellor I was hoping to say that I was the first Chancellor who was once an entrepreneur, but he pipped me to the post. However, he is absolutely right to say how important it is to have competitive business investment taxes. I was very proud in the spring Budget to introduce full expensing for three years, which gives us some of the most competitive business taxes in the OECD. Only five other countries do that, and I will of course keep under review any possibility to extend that tax break.
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (Ind)
Is investment not needed in the UK given that 13 years of Tory rule have resulted in a £137 billion UK deficit? Meanwhile independent Ireland has a €10 billion surplus from its economic growth and investment. That is an Ireland without the oil or natural resources of Scotland, which is now about to start a sovereign wealth fund. Where did the failing crisis-hit UK go wrong and independent Ireland go right? The clue, by the way, is in the question.
Jeremy Hunt
I find that a very curious question. If the hon. Member is proud of Scotland’s natural resources, why does he want to cancel North sea oil and gas exploration, which is the very thing that can give families across the United Kingdom security from the energy shocks we have seen from things such as the invasion of Ukraine?
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
There is encouraging news in that the Pension Insurance Corporation has recently announced that it is going to invest in helping to support the building of 1,200 new affordable homes in this city. Does the Chancellor agree that pension funds could be a very important source of capital for developing social rented housing around the country—Eden Housing Association, South Lakes Housing, and Westmorland and Furness Council, for example? Will he look at the rules and bring in greater incentives for pension investment funds to invest in affordable housing across the country?
Jeremy Hunt
We are already working on proposals in that very area. Broadly speaking, we have one of the most robust and resilient pension fund sectors in the world, but we are doing a lot of work to remove the barriers to investing back into the UK. Things such as affordable housing, infrastructure and our growth businesses are areas of great potential.
Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Laura Trott)
My hon. Friend is rightly very focused on making sure that every single pound of taxpayers’ money is spent wisely, and I can assure him that the Government share that goal. In June, the previous Chief Secretary to the Treasury launched the public sector productivity programme, and we will provide an update at the autumn statement.
Marco Longhi
Estimates show that the public sector today is 7.5% less productive than in the environment just before covid. Does the Minister agree that this could possibly be down to a continued more liberal working from home ethic? How much is this costing the taxpayer?
Laura Trott
My hon. Friend is right that public sector productivity must be improved. That is exactly what the review is looking at and what we will address. I look forward to talking to him more about it in due course.
Alex Cunningham
I welcome the fact that the taxpayer has spent hundreds of millions of pounds on remediation work at the Teesworks site in Redcar. I do not welcome the fact that the assets, including 90% of the operating company and tens of millions of pounds of scrap, have been handed over by the Tees Valley Mayor to two private companies, whose owners are laughing all the way to the bank. Is that really good value for taxpayers’ money?
Laura Trott
I think these claims have been addressed by the Mayor, and I will not have anything further to say about them.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Gareth Davies)
The Government have taken significant action to help households with rising energy prices and the costs of living by providing one of the largest packages of support in Europe, totalling £94 billion.
Mr Carmichael
Orkney and Shetland have the worst rates of fuel poverty of anywhere in the country. Provisional figures show that, for last winter, both Orkney and Shetland recorded record levels of winter mortality. In his new office, will the Minister bring his colleagues together from across Government to hear from agencies such as THAW—Tackling Household Affordable Warmth —in Orkney that are working to tackle fuel poverty, because if we can tackle fuel poverty in Orkney and Shetland, we can tackle fuel poverty?
Gareth Davies
We are incredibly sympathetic to the right hon. Gentleman’s constituents, who have suffered a very difficult time. That is why we introduced the energy price guarantee, which will remain in place until March 2024 as a safety net. We continue to engage with lots of stakeholders and we are very happy to include the ones he suggests.
Nick Fletcher (Don Valley) (Con)
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Bim Afolami)
The path to lower mortgage rates, as everybody in this House knows, is through lower inflation, which is why the Prime Minister and the Chancellor made halving inflation one of our five priorities for this year. The latest Bank of England forecast shows that we are on track for that. In June, lenders representing more than 90% of the mortgage market agreed to our new mortgage charter, which includes new flexibilities to help customers manage their repayments, backed up by UK Finance’s advertising campaign encouraging anyone worried about their repayments to contact their lender.
Nick Fletcher
Does the Minister agree that the best way we can help the next generation of homeowners is to increase the supply of homes, bring back the help to buy ISA and stop the 35-year mortgage shared-ownership models, which only increase house prices?
Bim Afolami
I thank my hon. Friend for his question. On his first point, we are increasing the number of homes and we are optimistic that we will reach our target of delivering 1 million new homes over this Parliament. Secondly, the help to buy ISA was closed to new accounts in 2019, but existing holders can continue to save into their accounts. On his third point about stopping 35-year mortgages, it is important to have choice in the market and for people to make those choices for themselves. As a Government we are committed to supporting people doing just that.
Steve McCabe
According to the Centre for Economics and Business Research, mortgage increases are expected to cost UK households £9 billion this year and next. How on earth do the Government defend that?
Bim Afolami
As the hon. Member knows, the reason why we are in this position is that there is a global phenomenon. We are doing what we can. We are working closely with the Bank of England and, over time, due to the policies of the Chancellor, the Prime Minister and this Government, interest rates will come down.
James Murray (Ealing North) (Lab/Co-op)
I welcome the hon. Member for Mid Worcestershire (Nigel Huddleston) to his post as Financial Secretary.
It has been a year since the Conservatives crashed the economy. In 2023 so far, 1.5 million fixed-term mortgages have expired, leaving working people facing sky-high increases in their mortgage costs. For people living in Wellingborough, for example, this Tory mortgage penalty means that households are paying another £190 a month on top of everything else in a cost of living crisis. The truth is that working people are paying the price for the Conservatives crashing the economy last autumn. Does the Economic Secretary think that is fair?
Bim Afolami
I thank the shadow Minister for his kind words, at least in relation to me.
It is important to recognise that in the eurozone, the United States and the UK there have been broadly similar increases in inflation and interest rates. We as a Government are confident that our policies will bring those down in due course.
Michael Shanks (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab)
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Laura Trott)
We have announced UK-wide support for households, including cost of living payments, the energy price guarantee and the energy bills support scheme. Taken together, support for households is worth £94 billion and is among the largest packages in Europe.
Michael Shanks
The Institute for Fiscal Studies recently reported that wages in Scotland have risen by 1.5% since 2015, compared with 5% in England. In the face of a cost of living crisis brought about by the Conservative party’s disastrous mini-Budget, wages simply are not keeping up with the cost of living. What can the Minister commit the Government to doing next to help make work pay? Will she, for example, support Labour’s new deal for working people?
Laura Trott
I was pleased to see this morning’s figures, which show that wages are going ahead of inflation. This is very good news and I hope it spreads to Scotland.
Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Nigel Huddleston)
The Government want the UK to have a fair and internationally competitive tax system, designed to bring in talented individuals and investment that contributes to the growth of the UK economy. Non-domiciled individuals play an important role in funding our public services through their taxation contributions, and they pay UK tax on their UK source income and gains in the same way as everybody else.
Luke Pollard
The non-dom tax status allows people to dodge millions in taxes. Germany, France and Canada have closed their non-dom tax loopholes. Can the Minister explain to taxpayers in Plymouth and across the country why he thinks it is fair that people who live here do not pay their taxes here?
Nigel Huddleston
As I said in the answer I gave some moments ago, non-dom taxpayers make a significant contribution to UK tax, worth £8.5 billion in 2021-22, with £7 billion more invested. The City, for example, pays half the cost of the NHS.
John Mc Nally (Falkirk) (SNP)
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Bim Afolami)
The Government’s mortgage charter is providing support to vulnerable households, and arrears and repossessions remain at historic lows. Government support has helped real household incomes rise by 2.7% year on year in the latest data.
John Mc Nally
With the economy flatlining and interest rates remaining at 5.25% and more than likely to remain above 5% next year, it simply follows that households’ disposable incomes will continue to be squeezed throughout 2024. Surely the Chancellor agrees that mortgage interest tax relief must be reintroduced to support households facing high interest rates alongside inflation.
Bim Afolami
As the hon. Member has already heard from the Chancellor, the economy is still growing. The latest labour market data shows that incomes are going up at a higher rate than inflation, so I do not recognise the picture that he paints.
Ben Lake (Ceredigion) (PC)
The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Gareth Davies)
The Government continue to stand by households with one of Europe’s largest support packages, amounting to some £3,300 a household on average across 2022-23 and 2023-24.
Ben Lake
The Minister will be aware that a big concern for rural constituencies is the cost of fuel. The RAC has found that the margin enjoyed by the big supermarkets on fuel sales in October was double the figure for the year to date at 14p per litre. That reflects concerns raised by the Competition and Markets Authority that although wholesale fuel prices fell in September and October, retail prices did not. What is the Treasury’s assessment of the impact that these higher margins will have on households in the coming winter?
Gareth Davies
Fuel duty is a major cost for households and businesses. We recognise that. That is why in the spring Budget 2023, the Chancellor extended the 5p temporary duty cut. That was a £5 billion saving for motorists, worth £100 for the average motorist, but we always keep these things under review.
Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Bim Afolami)
As my right hon. Friend knows, the Government are committed to supporting economic growth all over the country, but particularly in the wonderful county of Essex. The recently announced £1.1 billion long-term plan for towns will, for example, provide £20 million of flexible funding over 10 years to Clacton, and there are many other measures.
Priti Patel
I welcome my hon. Friend to his new role. I hope that he will know not only that the only way is Essex, but that Essex is a net contributor to the Treasury. We want more economic growth in Essex. In a week’s time, we will have the autumn statement, so may I give a message to those on the Treasury Front Bench? May I appeal to the Chancellor in particular to look at lowering the rates of personal and business taxation, particularly the areas of business rates, corporation tax and all aspects to do with enabling people to keep more of the money they earn?
Bim Afolami
My right hon. Friend tempts me to make tax policy. What I will say to her is that she will know that the Chancellor always keeps these things under review, as do the Government. Indeed, we have a fiscal event shortly.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
Can I ask the Minister why he said he wants particularly to support investment and growth in Sussex? [Interruption.] Is that the Tories reverting to type in terms of the blue wall?
Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)
The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Gareth Davies)
Life sciences are one of the Chancellor’s key growth priority areas. In May, he announced a significant new policy package, backed by more than £650 million of funding, reaffirming the Government’s commitment to supporting a thriving life sciences industry.
Julian Sturdy
I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. Life sciences are incredibly important, so will he focus investment on them in projects such as BioYorkshire on the edge of my constituency, which brings together private, public and academic institutions for huge benefits right across the board?
Gareth Davies
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight the benefits and importance of life sciences to the country. We are genuinely a world leader: I was out in Boston in the United States seeing the other world-leading area for life sciences, and it is not a patch on ours. That is why, as an example, we are looking to support life sciences through the investment zone programme, but, as I said, they are a key priority for the Chancellor as part of his growth agenda.
Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Jeremy Hunt)
As we have a debate this afternoon, I will limit my comments to welcoming my outstanding new colleagues. The new Chief Secretary to the Treasury, my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Laura Trott), will brilliantly solve the problem of how we stop the state expanding, building on the work of her wonderful predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen). The new Economic Secretary to the Treasury, my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami), will single-handedly ensure that the City and stock market remain competitive, building on the superb foundations laid by his predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith). The job of the new Financial Secretary to the Treasury, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire (Nigel Huddleston), will be to work out how to bring taxes down, following in the footsteps of his excellent predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), who as Health Secretary will no doubt be trying to push them up.
Marco Longhi
There is widespread consensus that growth is essential to the economy. With 800,000 fewer self-employed in the economy post covid and post IR35, does the Chancellor agree that increasing the VAT threshold to £250,000 for new registrations would boost growth and be a net gain in revenue terms in the long run?
Jeremy Hunt
I thank my hon. Friend for raising the support we give to small businesses. As he will know, supporting small businesses, particularly by rolling over the retail, hospitality and leisure business rates discount of 75%, was a major feature of the autumn statement. We will continue to keep under review anything that we can do to help our small businesses.
Rachel Reeves (Leeds West) (Lab)
I welcome all the new Ministers to their roles and wish them well in them. The covid inquiry is uncovering unsavoury examples of Government mismanagement. We already know that Ministers ignored warnings that their business loan schemes were vulnerable to organised crime, yet the Prime Minister left the vaults open to fraudsters. Will the Chancellor update the House on the latest estimates of taxpayers’ money lost to fraud from the covid support schemes?
Jeremy Hunt
I am happy to tell the shadow Chancellor that as of September 2023, HMRC’s compliance effort on covid-19 support schemes, which started when the schemes were set up in spring 2020, had prevented the payment of or recovered the overpayment of more than £1.6 billion of grants.
Rachel Reeves
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that answer, but according to the House of Commons Library’s most recent numbers, covid fraud losses total a staggering £7.2 billion—that is bigger than the fiscal headroom that he had in his spring Budget. More stories are coming to light about companies with undeclared interests and personal protective equipment contracts not delivering to the standards required. Ahead of the autumn statement, will he confirm that the Government have also had to write off more than £8.7 billion from pandemic PPE contracts?
Jeremy Hunt
Let me say two things. First, we have no quarter with any incidence of fraud. We have commenced 51 criminal investigations into suspected fraud cases and there have been a total of 80 arrests so far. Let me also say that during the pandemic we introduced £400 billion of support to businesses and families up and down the country and, according to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics, the result is that our economy is nearly 2% bigger than pre-pandemic, while Germany’s, for example, is only 0.3% bigger.
Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)
Jeremy Hunt
I will take this question as well because my hon. Friend has lobbied me personally on this issue. Literally no one in this House has worked harder on it than he has. I have an example of the very problem he is talking about in my own constituency. He is right that it takes too long for housing development capital to reach NHS primary care projects. We will look into the issue carefully.
Kim Leadbeater (Batley and Spen) (Lab)
Jeremy Hunt
I am answering a lot of the topical questions today because I have a new team. I want to reassure the hon. Lady that we are very aware of the financial pressures that local authorities are under. I am having extensive discussions with the Communities Secretary.
Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)
On the Conservative Benches we all agree that the way to sustainable economic growth without inflation is through business investment. It is early days, but I wonder whether we have indications of how well full expensing is working for encouraging business investment in this country. Is the Chancellor considering making that full expensing permanent next week at the autumn statement?
Jeremy Hunt
I welcome my hon. Friend’s interest in the topic. One of the reasons why our productivity is 15% lower than Germany’s, for example, is that it invests 2% more as a proportion of its GDP than we do in the UK. Improving the rate of business investment is one of the most effective ways to boost productivity and people’s real disposable income. We are proud of what we introduced in the spring Budget, and we will continue to see whether it is possible to extend it further.
Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab)
Jeremy Hunt
With the Work and Pensions Secretary I continue to keep under review all the things that have an impact on poverty rates. We are proud to have made progress in reducing the number of people living in absolute poverty after housing costs by 1.7 million since 2010. When it comes to homelessness, we are investing £2 billion over the next three years. Rough sleeping is down 35% since its peak.
Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Member’s Financial Interests. The Chancellor has acknowledged that investment trusts, which make up one third of all FTSE 250 companies, are being plagued by misguided cost disclosure legislation, which is making them appear unduly expensive. That is restricting investment and does not happen in any other country. In addition to the positive dialogue between us and with the Financial Conduct Authority, will he consider supporting the First Reading of Baroness Altman’s private Member’s Bill in the other place next week, which helps to address this issue? Will he also address it in his autumn statement?
Jeremy Hunt
I welcome my hon. Friend’s expertise in this area, which is of great benefit to the House and to me as I consider fiscal measures. As we are so close to the autumn statement, I would say that the way that we treat costs in our investment and pension funds industries is not optimal, and we need to reform it.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
Jeremy Hunt
My right hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) did an excellent job and we all salute his brilliant work. If he were here now, he would remind the hon. Gentleman that we have the lowest tax burden of any European country in the G7.
David Mundell (Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale) (Con)
I know that the Chancellor is aware of just how important the whisky industry is to the economy of rural Scotland. It was very disappointing that the policy of a duty freeze was not continued in the Budget. Can he offer any reassurance that we will return to the policy of duty freeze in the autumn statement, and in next year’s Budget?
The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Gareth Davies)
We are incredibly supportive of the Scotch whisky industry. In fact, the Scotch Whisky Association was my first meeting in post. In nine out of 10 previous fiscal events we either cut or froze duty on whisky, and we have acted to remove punitive tariffs on Scotch whisky in the US market. It will not be a surprise to my right hon. Friend that all taxes remain under review and he will not have long to wait until the next fiscal event.
Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Bim Afolami)
There are two things I would say in response to that. First, it is important, when we talk about banks, that we have a globally broadly competitive tax regime, and we do not apologise for that in the Treasury. Secondly, the hon. Gentleman should bear in mind that the reduction he talks about in terms of the levy on banks was offset by rising corporation tax.
Peter Gibson (Darlington) (Con)
I thank the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Gareth Davies) for his recent visit to Darlington, where he opened a new branch of Darlington Building Society. He will know from that visit the impact that Treasury jobs are having locally, including an additional £80 million of spending in our local economy. Does he agree with me that Darlington Economic Campus is a fantastic levelling-up project, ensuring that people can stay local but go far?
Gareth Davies
It was a great pleasure to visit my hon. Friend and open the Darlington Building Society in his town, a very prominent business that is important for in-service banking facilities. The Darlington campus is an important part of our Treasury levelling-up agenda and long may that continue.
Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)
Bim Afolami
This is a complicated area of regulation and we are looking at it very closely. The consultation closed in April and we are working on it because it is very important we get it right, but I hear the hon. Lady’s concerns and will update the House in due course.
Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)
While the shadow Chancellor was busy scrolling through Wikipedia to copy and paste, the actual Chancellor has to look no further than the New Conservatives tax plan, which outlines scrapping the IR35 reforms, increasing the VAT registration threshold to £250,000, and delivering on the Prime Minister’s pledge when he was Chancellor to bring a 1p cut in income tax in 2024.
Jeremy Hunt
I thank my hon. Friend for adding to the litany of options I have in front of me for the autumn statement. What I can say to him is what I said in my party conference speech: we are committed to lowering the tax burden and will do so as soon as it is responsible to do so.
Samantha Dixon (City of Chester) (Lab)
Jeremy Hunt
Can I say gently to the hon. Lady that interest rates have gone up by 3% in the UK since then? That is just above the United States and just below the eurozone, so this is a global phenomenon. There is no short cut to bringing down interest rates. We have to support the Bank of England as it bears down on inflation and then we can bring mortgage rates down.
Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)
Will the Chancellor look at the red tape around the apprenticeship levy? Many businesses in my area, such as Asda, Amazon and DPD, all say that they want to take on more apprenticeships but that the red tape around how they spend the money is very difficult. This is something that he could change overnight, and really help to grow and boost our economy.
Jeremy Hunt
I thank my hon. Friend for drawing attention to the apprenticeship levy, which has been a tremendous success in bringing a rigour to technical qualifications that was not there before. We are very open to reforms to the apprenticeship levy, providing they stick to the fundamental principle that any investment is not in in-house training that would otherwise have happened, but in transferrable, passport-able training that someone can take with them if they move to another business.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
Jeremy Hunt
I will not pre-empt what I am going to say next week, but I will say to the hon. Lady that, as a former Health Secretary, I am well aware of the pressures on NHS dentistry and its importance to all our constituents.
Mr Ranil Jayawardena (North East Hampshire) (Con)
Given that inheritance tax is the least popular of all taxes at every income decile and that scrapping it would not be inflationary, will my right hon. Friend consider doing so?
Jeremy Hunt
That was a very nice try, but my hon. Friend will have to wait for a week.
Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
Opt-out savings are a little like auto-enrolment in pensions. They help those on lower incomes to save for a crisis—for the proverbial rainy day. Given that more than 9 million people in this country are in work with no savings at all, will the Chancellor note the impressive results of a small trial of the opt-out savings system in Manchester, and encourage its expansion?
Jeremy Hunt
I would be happy to do that. The hon. Gentleman is right: if we are to grow faster as an economy, the other side of the coin is we that need to save more, and we should be encouraging everyone in all income groups to do so.
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend seek to fix the anomaly that sees man-made fully synthetic fuels taxed at the same rate as their fossil equivalents?
Jeremy Hunt
I shall be happy to look into that issue in detail and get back to my hon. Friend.
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
Yesterday in the House, in the context of Labour’s plan for a health service, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions referred to the “poor old non-doms”. Does the Chancellor agree with his colleague that people who live in this country but do not pay their taxes here can be accurately described as poor?
Jeremy Hunt
Because we attract wealth creators from all over the world—and this may be uncomfortable for those on the Opposition Benches—we generate huge amounts of tax revenue. Financial services pay for half the cost of running the NHS. I am in favour of getting everyone to pay their fair share of tax, but I will not make reforms that mean less tax revenue for the NHS.
David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)
The Westminster-made cost of living crisis is having a devastating impact on household incomes, particularly in Broomhouse, where many young homeowners are seeing mortgage prices soaring. Will the Chancellor use the autumn statement to introduce mortgage interest tax relief to help people across Glasgow to deal with the cost of living crisis?
Jeremy Hunt
As the hon. Gentleman knows, we have taken enormous steps over the past year to help families throughout Scotland to deal with cost of living pressures. If he really thinks that people in Scotland believe that this was a “made in Westminster” problem, when we have experienced an invasion of Ukraine and a global pandemic, I simply say to him in return that after 16 years of SNP rule, GDP per head in Scotland is lower, productivity is falling, employment is lower, and inactivity is higher—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Members need to give me a good reason not to bring them in at the end again: be careful! Let us come to the statement—[Interruption.] Angus, you’ll find the door, I think, in a minute.
Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories
(1 year ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Mr Andrew Mitchell)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I will begin by responding to your helpful statement yesterday.
The Foreign Secretary, the business managers and I all believe it is essential that this House properly scrutinises the work of the Foreign Office, especially as we face such a daunting set of challenges across the world. As Minister of State, I will follow the precedent set by successive Governments of different parties, from the days of Lord Home and Lord Carrington to more recent times when Lord Mandelson served in the Cabinet from the House of Lords. I will deputise for the Foreign Secretary in this House, making regular statements like today’s and respecting the primacy of this House in the normal way; and, of course, the Foreign Secretary will appear before the House of Lords and relevant Committees regularly.
The terrible events in Israel and Gaza have underlined the critical importance of British diplomacy and development work. As Israel battles to defeat Hamas, the humanitarian situation remains extremely difficult. As the Prime Minister said last night, Israel must respect international humanitarian law.
With services and communication in Gaza under unprecedented strain, it is difficult to be absolutely certain about how events are unfolding, but the reports we have had from partners make clear the appalling loss of life, including among children and aid workers, and the situation in hospitals in Gaza City, notably Al-Shifa, is now acute. Al-Shifa has hundreds of in-patients and was able to offer a set of services unavailable elsewhere in Gaza. Reports indicate that operations have stopped due to the lack of fuel and supplies, and that premature babies have died due to the lack of electricity. Fuel is urgently needed to power hospitals as well as desalinisation plants to ensure access to clean water. Hospitals should be places of safety, able to treat patients with compassion. It is distressing to see them unable to do so. Every civilian death is heartbreaking, and it is impossible to comprehend the pain and loss that innocent Palestinians are enduring.
As the House knows, since 7 October the Government have been engaging intensively with our close allies and partners in the region. Since my last update to the House, I have met—in Birmingham on Sunday—representatives of Islamic Relief, who still have humanitarian supplies in Gaza, to hear clearly from them about the situation on the ground, and this morning I spoke to Martin Griffiths, the head of the United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs. I will travel to the region overnight tonight. The new Foreign Secretary has discussed the situation with US Secretary of State Tony Blinken. The Government will be able to draw on his extensive regional experience in the weeks and months ahead.
Our goals remain unchanged. As I told the House last week, we are focused on getting life-saving aid to those in need in Gaza; supporting the safe return of hostages and British nationals; backing Israel’s right to self-defence; and preventing a dangerous regional escalation. Our efforts have contributed to some delivery of aid via the Rafah crossing and to over 150 British nationals being able to leave Gaza safely. Since I spoke to the House last week, more British nationals and their families have left, and we will continue to offer all the support we can to those British nationals still in Gaza, so that they too can cross into Egypt.
As the House knows, we have more than doubled our aid to civilians in Gaza, committing £30 million, and we stand ready to do more. For over a week, British flights carrying aid have been landing in Egypt, with shipments including life-saving items as well as the vital equipment that the Egyptian Red Crescent needs to be able to manage donations from across the world effectively. We are also urging the Israeli Government to increase humanitarian access, including through Rafah and by opening up the Kerem Shalom crossing. At this point we assess that land presently offers the most viable and safe way to get humanitarian aid into Gaza in the quantities needed, but we are also considering air and maritime options, including through our bases in Cyprus.
The Government have been clear that all parties to a conflict must afford civilians the protection that is their right under international law. That includes respecting the sanctity of hospitals, so that doctors can continue to care for the sick and injured. Events on 7 October and Hamas’s subsequent statements have made it clear that they are a terrorist group who pose an existential threat to the very idea of an Israeli state. Israel has a right to defend itself against this terrorist threat, to restore its security and to bring the hostages home, but there are things that Israel must do as part of its response. We have impressed this on the Israeli Government: they must act within international law; they must take every precaution to minimise civilian casualties, limiting attacks to military targets; and they must stop extremist settler violence in the west bank. At the same time, we should be under no illusions. Hamas have chosen to embed themselves within the civilian population, and their willingness to sacrifice innocent Palestinians in this way only brings home their inhumanity.
Alleviating the suffering is our foremost priority. We welcome any initiatives that would allow more aid to be delivered and hostages to be released. We have therefore consistently called for humanitarian pauses. Four-hour pauses in northern Gaza are an important first step, but longer pauses that cover wider areas will be needed. We are discussing with the UN and other partners how best to achieve this. We must avoid measures that serve only to benefit Hamas and allow them to entrench their position. At the same time, we need all parties to the conflict to abide by any pause, allowing sufficient time and security for civilians to move and for aid to be delivered.
Responding to the immediate crisis is critical, but we also need to do more to create a new political horizon. The whole House knows that only one answer has come close to creating peace in these troubled lands: a two-state solution.
I commend this statement to the House.
Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for advance sight of his statement.
I would have liked to have started by welcoming the new Foreign Secretary to his place, but I cannot do so because he is not here. Despite my respect for the Minister, he is not the Foreign Secretary. We do not know when or how this House will hear from the Foreign Secretary because he is not a Member. [Interruption.]
Mr Lammy
David Cameron is the seventh Foreign Secretary in seven years of Tory chaos. He was forced to resign in failure over a matter of foreign policy. The Prime Minister has looked at each of the 350 Conservative Members and decided that none of them would be better at representing Britain’s interests on the world stage. The Prime Minister claims he is for change, but instead he has resurrected yesterday’s failure with an honour. That decision raises serious questions for this House, but I know you share those concerns, Mr Speaker.
At a time of grave international crisis and at a moment of war in Europe, with a more assertive China, a climate emergency and a horrifying conflict in Gaza, this House needs Government accountability more than ever. Will the Minister commit to working closely with Mr Speaker to ensure that the Opposition and all Members of Parliament can hold the Foreign Secretary to account?
I turn to the horrors of Gaza. More than 11,000 Palestinians have reportedly been killed, with two thirds of the dead being women and children. This is shocking and devastating. Every civilian death is an equal tragedy. Does the Minister agree that the number of Palestinian civilians and children who have been killed over the past month is intolerable? And does he agree that Israel must make changes to how it is fighting this war, by taking urgent and concrete steps to protect civilian life?
I am gravely concerned by the desperate reports from hospitals in northern Gaza. These hospitals were already overstretched with the wounded, short of fuel and filled with civilians seeking shelter. Doctors are now forced to make impossible choices as they try to care for the wounded and newborns, without power. Some of those newborns have now lost their lives—unbearable.
Medical establishments have special protection under international law. They should never be targeted or used as shields. All parties must follow international law, acting with necessity, distinction, proportionality and precaution. Allegations of breaches should always be treated with the utmost seriousness.
The Minister said last week that the Government support the independence of the International Criminal Court, as does the Labour party, but he failed to answer whether the Government recognise its jurisdiction to address the conduct of all parties in Gaza. As Prime Minister, Boris Johnson rejected that jurisdiction and attacked the court. Labour recognises the ICC’s jurisdiction. Can the Minister clarify his Government’s position today?
Gaza is in a humanitarian catastrophe. More than 1.5 million people have been displaced, and there are desperate shortages of basic essentials. Does the Minister agree that the short pauses in the north are clearly not enough? Gazans need aid now. They need medicine now. They need water now. They need food now. They need fuel now. A full, comprehensive and immediate humanitarian pause in fighting across the whole of Gaza is needed now to alleviate Palestinian suffering and in order for Hamas terrorists to release the hostages.
Hamas’s stated aim is to wipe Israel off the map. They committed the most brutal attack on Jews since the holocaust and now they are using innocent Palestinians as human shields. I would like to register my shock that not every Member of this House can say this truth: Hamas are terrorists.
We must not give up on the narrow openings that keep the prospect of peace alive. That means preventing escalation, condemning violence from settlers in the west bank, condemning rocket attacks on Israel from Iran’s proxies in Lebanon and elsewhere, and creating a future where Gaza is not subject to occupation. Meanwhile, international diplomacy evolves and the facts on the ground are changing day to day, in relation to both hostages being rescued and Hamas’s capability to carry out attacks such as we saw on 7 October. As the Leader of the Opposition set out to Chatham House, we must move to a full
“cessation of fighting as quickly as possible...the reality is that neither the long-term security of Israel nor long-term justice for Palestine can be delivered by bombs and bullets.”
We must seek a path to a political process that leads to two states, a secure Israel and an independent Palestine.
Mr Mitchell
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his comments, and perhaps I should start by addressing those about the Foreign Secretary. Having a former Prime Minister and party leader as our Foreign Secretary, wherever one sits in this House, must be a plus. They will be able to exert British influence and policy highly effectively overseas, and I greatly welcome the appointment of Lord Cameron to the position of Foreign Secretary. As the House will know, he is an extremely experienced parliamentarian, and I have no doubt whatsoever that the House, the Foreign Office and the Government will gain enormously from his presence.
The right hon. Gentleman asked me whether I will commit to working closely with you, Mr Speaker, and of course there is only one answer to that question.
Mr Mitchell
In addition, I will seek to ensure the fullest possible accountability, as you set it out, Mr Speaker.
The right hon. Gentleman speaks of the scale of death and misery. All deaths of civilians are to be profoundly regretted. He talked about the scenes from the Al-Shifa Hospital, which will have shocked every Member of this House. He, like me, will be aware that 102 humanitarian workers, who placed their lives in jeopardy to support their fellow human beings, have lost their lives. He asks me about the ICC. It is not for me to fetter or speak in the place of its chief prosecutor, but the right hon. Gentleman will know that he has spoken and will do so again.
The right hon. Gentleman called for the hostages to be released, and I hope that everyone in this House will echo that. He said that Hamas are terrorists and suggested that some do not recognise that. I agree with him and hope that every Member of the House will make it clear that Hamas are terrorists. A dreadful pogrom took place on 7 October, where more Jewish people lost their lives in a day than at any time since the holocaust, and that piece of information is fundamental to our appreciation of the events to which he referred.
Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton) (Con)
As of today, I am informed that no more aid will reach Gaza, not because it cannot get to the Rafah crossing or because it is piling up in Egypt, but because the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees has no fuel left and so the aid cannot be redistributed. So although I really appreciate the Government looking at maritime and air efforts, and, crucially, at the need to open a second aid crossing to the west bank, there is no point—it is futile—unless we get the fuel to the UN. Will my right hon. Friend reassure me as to what is being done to change that situation? Secondly, has the Foreign Office’s overseas judicial assistance assessment increased since 7 October—yes or no?
Mr Mitchell
My hon. Friend asks me about the position on fuel. Fuel is desperately needed today—it is going to run out. The United Nations has been accessing dirty fuel, but now that is at an end and we are incredibly worried about the situation. We are talking to the key American humanitarian intervenor, Mr Satterfield, about this. We are working diplomatically to do everything we can to make sure that the position on fuel is addressed, as we have been doing since I last updated the House.
I did not catch the first part of my hon. Friend’s final question, so I will write to her on that point.
Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)
I thank the Minister of State for prior sight of his statement, but here we are on day one of the new FCDO regime and already we see the absurdity of having a Foreign Secretary who is unable to come to speak in this Chamber to elected Members at a time of grave international crisis.
The Minister is right to highlight the appalling loss of life in Gaza, particularly among children and aid workers. Sadly, there is little sign of that ending soon as the bombardment intensifies. He is also right to say that a humanitarian crisis is unfolding.
A couple of weeks ago, I asked the previous Secretary of State whether he had been made aware, or had reasonable grounds to believe, that Israel had breached international humanitarian law in its response to the atrocities of 7 October. He steadfastly refused to answer that question, so I ask the Minister the same question. If he has, what representations has he made to the Israeli Government and what response has he had?
There can only be a political solution to this crisis, and one has to be found before the entire region is engulfed. That is why a ceasefire is essential: to end the unprecedented levels of killing and destruction, allow full humanitarian access, secure the release of the hostages and find a political solution that does not include Hamas. Four-hour pauses are not the answer. Can we expect the new Foreign Secretary to change tack and support our calls for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire, so that there is space for that political solution to be found?
Tomorrow, the House should have an opportunity to show its support for a ceasefire. I and every one of my SNP colleagues will be there to support an immediate ceasefire, and I would expect Labour party Members from Scotland to be in the Lobby with us. Without justice, there can be no peace, this horrific cycle of violence will continue and more Israeli and Palestinian lives will be lost.
Mr Mitchell
The hon. Gentleman underlines the loss of life and the causes of it. He knows our position on a ceasefire—it is a position shared by Members on the Opposition Front Bench—and he also knows the absolute commitment we have to try to drive forward pauses. They must be safe pauses for the delivery of humanitarian relief, but he knows of our commitment on that.
The hon. Gentleman asks me about humanitarian law. Robert Mardini, the director general of the International Committee of the Red Cross, has made clear that Gaza hospitals, treating hundreds of wounded people, cannot be targeted under any circumstances. The hon. Gentleman will know that the ICRC is the guardian of international humanitarian law and the Geneva convention, and Robert Mardini has said:
“Hospitals are to be absolutely protected at all times.”
Finally, the hon. Gentleman makes a point about a political solution. I draw his attention to my final comments in my statement, about how we have to focus on that and on the two-state solution, and about the need for hope and opportunity to drive forward the politics in this dreadful situation.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
Order. I expect to allow questions on the statement to run for about an hour, but because there are so many of the same Members wishing to speak in the debate on the King’s Speech, I hope we can have short questions and speedy answers.
Dr Liam Fox (North Somerset) (Con)
As my right hon. Friend has said, following the unprovoked slaughter of its citizens, Israel has a right to pursue and destroy the terrorist forces. It is terrible that the ordinary citizens of Gaza are paying the price for this, as Hamas would have known, but even if Israel is able to degrade and destroy the Hamas forces, the Hamas mindset will remain—a Hamas mindset that is funded and supported by Iran. Iran does not want there to be peace between Arab states and Israel because the Iranian regime does not want Israel to exist. When will the Government take firmer measures? Members from across the House have asked when the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, for example, will be proscribed and we have never been given a good reason why it is not. What is the answer?
Mr Mitchell
I hear what he says about the IRGC, and I know that he has already been in contact with the Foreign Secretary on exactly that point. I hope he will accept that we do not carry on a running commentary on issues such as proscription, but the House and the Foreign Secretary have heard what he said.
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)
I am still not clear whether the right hon. Gentleman agrees with Labour that the ICC has jurisdiction over the conduct of all parties in Gaza. If he does, then that is a very welcome change from the position of Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Will he clarify that?
Mr Mitchell
I repeat what I said last week. It is not for Ministers to seek to state where the ICC has jurisdiction; that is for the chief prosecutor. The chief prosecutor has not been silent on this matter, and I am sure he will continue to express his views.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
Whether we like it or not, Israel will carry on fighting until it has established control of the area from which it was attacked. The question that then arises is what happens next. If Israel simply withdraws, Hamas will reappear. At least one moderate Arab state believes that a two-state solution will have to be imposed and policed. Are the Government giving thought as to who might carry out that job? Otherwise, the outcome that they want—a two-state solution—is wholly impracticable.
Mr Mitchell
My right hon. Friend is entirely right about that, and entirely right that Israel has an absolute right of self-defence in this matter. On the options to which he alludes, I can assure him that a great deal of thought is going on, not only in Britain but across the region and elsewhere.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
A lasting peace and a two-state solution is the only way to guarantee dignity and security for both Palestinians and Israelis. Hamas, a terrorist organisation, cannot be part of that, but a month after their contemptable attack on Israel, it is clear that a military solution is not working. It is not removing Hamas, and instead we have the humanitarian catastrophe to which the Minister referred. Does he agree that the way to achieve that peace and a two-state solution is to back a political solution with an immediate bilateral ceasefire, explicitly contingent on both parties adhering to it, so that if one party breaks the ceasefire, a military operation remains on the table?
Mr Mitchell
The hon. Lady is entirely right about the importance of a political solution. She knows the position of the Government and Members on the Opposition Front Bench on the issue of ceasefires, but I hope she will draw some comfort from the emphasis on extended pauses that we are now seeing. On the politics, I remind her that the great progress that was made at Oslo, which brought things so tantalisingly close, took place on the back of the first intifada.
Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)
Every right thinking person wants to see an end to fighting and a durable peace for Palestinians and Israelis, but Hamas have made absolutely clear that there will be no such peace so long as the state of Israel continues to exist. Will my right hon. Friend say a bit more about what has been happening at the Al-Shifa Hospital and other hospitals in Gaza? Has he seen the reports and the footage circulating of Hamas fighters using those hospitals as bases for operations, putting civilians’ lives at risk?
Mr Mitchell
My right hon. Friend, who knows a great deal about these matters, is correct. Hamas have made clear that they do not seek a ceasefire and indeed seek to repeat the awful events of 7 October. As far as the Al-Shifa Hospital is concerned, he, like me, will have seen the horrific pictures on television last night, and I referred specifically to the awful effects on babies that were displayed.
Tahir Ali (Birmingham, Hall Green) (Lab)
Recently, several United Nations experts gave a dire warning to the world, stating they believed that
“the Palestinian people are at grave risk of genocide”,
and that the time is now “running out” to prevent such a tragedy. Furthermore, they made it clear that Israel’s allies share the responsibility for that and must act now to prevent a genocide from taking place. Given those warnings, will the Minister finally stand with 76% of the British public and call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza?
Mr Mitchell
We will continue to focus on the importance of humanitarian pauses, but also try to make sure that, when the opportunity of a pause presents itself, we are able to get critical humanitarian supplies to those in desperate need.
Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)
Away from the horror of Israel and Gaza, there is an unfolding tragedy on the west bank, with the killing of well over 100, getting on for 200, Palestinians by settlers and the Israel Defence Forces. In his statement, my right hon. Friend rightly urged Israel to provide protection from them. If the state of Israel declines to do so and the killings continue, would he consider the intervention of a UN peacekeeping force to keep the peace in that part of the world?
Mr Mitchell
We have condemned the settler violence without qualification. On the work of the United Nations, there will be many opportunities in the future, I hope, and we will neglect none of them.
Dame Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)
I share what the Minister has said about the humanitarian tragedy that we are witnessing all the time on our televisions. We must try to unlock a process towards peace, and the issue of the hostages is key to that. What steps has he taken so far and what further steps will be taken by the new Foreign Secretary to ensure that the hostages are brought home? I really believe that that could unlock the route to peace.
Mr Mitchell
I thank the right hon. Lady for her comments. She has spoken movingly and with great expertise and humanity about this situation both on the media and in the House. If she will forgive me, we cannot give a running commentary on what we are doing to try to recover the hostages. I hope that she will accept my word that we are doing everything, across Government and internationally, to try to get them home as soon as we can.
Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)
The director of the FBI has said that Hamas pose the greatest security risk to the United States and the west since ISIS a decade ago. Does the Minister of State agree with that assessment, and what are the Government doing to work with our international partners to reduce that threat both in the region and here at home?
Mr Mitchell
The threat of Hamas, which my right hon. Friend sets out very clearly, is undoubtedly true. It is part of Israel’s legitimate position that it can exercise its right to self-defence and go after the dreadful terrorists who perpetrated that awful act.
Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)
Thousands of innocent men, women and children have been killed and thousands more wounded in this conflict over the past month. As the ground operation and bombing campaign intensifies, as encircled hospitals run out of power and medicine, as babies are left to die outside their incubators, and as more than 2 million Palestinians remain trapped in a never-ending humanitarian nightmare, does the Minister agree that the international community must protect civilians? If he does, why will the Government not join me in pressing for an immediate ceasefire to end the bloodshed, allow desperately needed aid to reach those most in need, and create space for meaningful negotiations and a peaceful resolution?
Mr Mitchell
The hon. Gentleman speaks with great passion and eloquence on this matter in the House. I can do no better than repeat what the Prime Minister said last night in his speech at Mansion House. He said that Israel
“must take all possible measures to protect innocent civilians, including at hospitals”.
Sir Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)
My right hon. Friend and his shadow have spoken of hospitals. I have to tell him that there is now video evidence of suicide vests, rocket-propelled grenades, motorcycles used to kidnap Israelis to Gaza, nappies, and chairs with rope to hold hostages being found in the basement of the Al-Rantisi Hospital in Gaza. The hospital was obviously used by Hamas as a command centre and is believed to have held Israeli hostages. Does my right hon. Friend agree that using hospitals in this way as places to imprison hostages and keep weapons is an outrageous breach of international law?
Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)
Gaza was facing a humanitarian crisis before 7 October. The Government cut funding to UNRWA from £50 million to £10 million. The clock is ticking. Hospitals are running out of fuel, food and water supplies are almost depleted, and until a large-scale humanitarian operation is in place, many more people will needlessly die. Will the Minister update us on what progress the Government have made to secure a humanitarian resolution through the UN Security Council?
Mr Mitchell
We are working night and day for humanitarian access. On the subject of support for UNRWA, we increased aid very substantially, as the hon. Lady knows, before 7 October. Since then, we have allocated £30 million of humanitarian aid and we will do more if it is required.
Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)
Several hundred of my constituents have written to me deeply concerned about the loss of civilian life and wanting the fighting to stop, which we all want. Last week, my right hon. Friend called for Israel to take measures to protect civilians. I said that we needed to see Israel take such measures, but civilians have continued to die, especially in hospitals. Please can he double down on that request to Israel to take measures to protect civilians?
Mr Speaker, if I may, in the meantime in Sudan—
Mr Speaker
Order. I have asked everybody to be brief so that other people can get in. We should not be driven by self-centred behaviour.
Mr Mitchell
My right hon. Friend makes a most important humanitarian point and she may rest assured that the Government are seized of it.
Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)
France’s President Macron has called for a ceasefire, joining other European nations such as Spain, Norway, Portugal and Ireland, as well as the UN Secretary-General. Securing a negotiated ceasefire—one that is binding on all sides—will require a huge diplomatic effort, so is it not time for our Government to add their weight to the push for a ceasefire, rather than dismissing out of hand a proposal that has growing international support?
Mr Mitchell
The hon. Member will know that, in order to have a ceasefire, we need both parties to agree to it. Hamas have made it absolutely clear that they are not interested in a ceasefire. They made it clear that they want to repeat the actions of 7 October. I believe the right position is to press for pauses. That is the position of the Government and of the official Opposition.
Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)
I understand that just four Conservative Members have visited Israel since 7 October: the Prime Minister, the former Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) and me. Last week, when I was there, I did see evidence of humanitarian protection by the IDF forces. I also saw videos and photographs of the things that happened in some of the kibbutzim, and they were, quite simply, crimes against humanity. Does the Minister agree that there is no moral equivalence between Hamas and the sovereign independent state of Israel?
Mr Mitchell
Yes, I completely agree with what my hon. Friend has said. He should know that the Prime Minister and other members of the Government have been in continuous contact with Prime Minister Netanyahu, including by holding frequent conversations and discussions. However, I have to say that it would be helpful if all those calling for Israel to protect hospitals would also call on Hamas to vacate the hospitals and stop using civilians as human shields.
Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)
Today, Alon-Lee Green, the director of Standing Together, the largest cross-community organisation in Israel, posted a video of a soldier in Gaza saying:
“I’m on the beach in Gaza, in Gush Katif. I’m safe. I’m happy. Me and my friends conquered Beit Lahia, Al Atatra and Sulatin and we’re moving on and we’re gonna conquer the rest of Gaza. I’m safe. I’m happy. I’m enjoying the big opportunity of my lifetime. I love you all and I couldn’t be happier to be where I am—doing God’s work.”
Alon-Lee Green said:
“What’s going on in Gaza does not only go against the Palestinian interest, it goes also against my peoples’ interest, the Jewish Israeli interest.”
Also today, we had Danny Danon, a Likud member and former ambassador, and Ram Ben Barak, a Yesh Atid opposition member, say that Israel should expel all Palestinians from Gaza. What are we doing to restrain the Israeli Government and commentators?
Mr Mitchell
We have always made it clear to Israel that we are its closest possible friend, but friends give candid advice and do not always say what people want to hear. The British Government will continue—with, I believe, the strong support of this House—to make the right points to the Israeli Government, and we are able to do so because of our extremely close alliance and friendship with them.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)
The human misery and death on both sides, Israeli and Palestinian, are the worst I have witnessed since I became a Member of this House, and they will be solved only by a long-term political solution. Will my right hon. Friend, with whom I totally agree, explain what the British Government are doing in strategic planning to bring about a two-state solution?
Mr Mitchell
There is an immense amount of work going on about how we get to the point where we can achieve that. As I set out in my statement, there is no alternative to the two-state solution, and all interested parties should get behind that.
Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
I had a dreadful 40-hour labour when giving birth to my first child, but I still consider myself lucky: I had medicine, water, electricity and a functioning hospital. The 180 women giving birth in Gaza do not have those things. There is a report of a pregnant Palestinian woman who had horrific injuries from shelling and who then had an emergency C-section performed without electricity. I know the Minister will think that that is unacceptable, but what is he actually doing to ensure that hospitals and pregnant women are protected by international law?
Mr Mitchell
We are speaking out in every way we can to try to protect vulnerable citizens. I quote what President Joe Biden said yesterday in an Oval Office address. He said that Al-Shifa Hospital “must be protected” and that
“it is my…expectation that there will be less intrusive action”.
Israel has made it clear that it has clashed with Hamas nearby, but has not fired on the hospitals themselves.
Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)
First, I thank the FCDO for helping to rescue a group of Isle of Wight pilgrims who were caught in the Holy Land at the beginning of this dreadful conflict. Secondly—it is a genuine question—both sides have talked about the importance of protecting hospitals, but what can Israel do when those hospitals are being used to store ammunition and hold hostages, when there are military HQs and operational Hamas commands underneath those hospitals, and when Hamas are deliberately denying those hospitals fuel, because they would rather broadcast pictures of very tiny babies dying than try to save them?
Mr Mitchell
My hon. Friend speaks with great eloquence and passion on this point. I can do no better than to commend the eloquence of his argument.
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)
The short pauses on their own are a first step, but they will not address the grave humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza. The damage to water pipelines, sewage pipes, hospitals, schools and other infrastructure requires urgent rebuilding, and that will require a much longer negotiated ceasefire from both sides and the release of all hostages. Does the Minister agree that the aid getting into Gaza is woefully inadequate and that it is simply unacceptable for Israel not to lift its atrocious blockade and siege of Gaza?
Mr Mitchell
The hon. Gentleman is right that getting aid into Gaza is an absolute top priority. That is why we are focusing on opening up not only Rafah, but Kerem Shalom, and trying to make sure that we build up stores so that, when we can get it in, we are able to bring support to desperate people.
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)
I very much welcome the statement by the Minister and the fact that the Government are looking at and working with international partners on humanitarian pauses and increasing humanitarian aid.
The Minister has said that the Government welcome any new initiatives for a way forward. May I suggest two? The United Kingdom hosted the Friends of Syria international donors’ conference in London, with international partners. Can the United Kingdom look at doing that for Palestine and Gaza? Linked to that, with regard to what happens in Gaza after Hamas is defeated, we have talked about the Palestinian Authority stepping up, but we have not talked about the other scenario. The United Kingdom chairs the Trusteeship Council at the UN, along with France, which looks at transitional arrangements. Will the Government consider that as a way forward?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)
Order. Colleagues have to understand that Mr Speaker has said very clearly that the statement will end at 2 o’clock. It is up to colleagues whether they choose to allow other colleagues to get in. We must have shorter questions, please.
Mr Mitchell
My hon. Friend has made a further two thoughtful interventions. The Government will consider every possible way ahead as soon as the opportunity presents itself.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
There is no point in bragging about awarding £30 million of aid if it cannot get in to help the civilians in Gaza. Since 7 October, only 900 aid trucks have been allowed in. In normal circumstances, the number would be close to 20,000. With fuel running out, is this not now collective punishment? It is clear that, as the Minister says, a four-hour pause is not long enough. If he will not call for an immediate ceasefire, what length of pause in fighting does he think is required to get aid in to Gaza to help civilians?
Mr Mitchell
It is not just a humanitarian pause that is the issue, but how to distribute vital humanitarian supplies safely to people who may be being corralled in small spaces. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that, as the opportunity presents itself, we will do everything we can to drive forward those pauses and to make them as effective as possible.
Mrs Flick Drummond (Meon Valley) (Con)
UNRWA has announced that it will be unable to collect aid imported from Egypt today because it does not have the fuel for trucks. That also means that water pumping, sewage treatment and other essential services will cease. Has my right hon. Friend had discussions with the Israelis about the plan to get the aid around Gaza and about their exit strategy?
Mr Mitchell
My hon. Friend is absolutely right that fuel is the most important of many important issues today. We continue to lobby and argue with all relevant parties for the importance of allowing vital fuel for life-saving purposes into Gaza.
Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)
The Minister alluded to the horrific scenes at the weekend of babies dying because they cannot be in incubators. The IDF has offered incubators to the hospital, but it is not incubators that the hospital needs. It has incubators; it needs fuel. The UN has offered to courier that fuel in for the incubators, but the Israeli Government are not allowing that. Can I urge the Minister to do everything he can to change that?
Mr Mitchell
The hon. Lady will know that Israel did offer fuel yesterday, but Hamas did not allow it to be accepted.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
I congratulate Lord Cameron on his appointment as Foreign Secretary. I know that he will be well respected in foreign capitals. However, as Mr Speaker said yesterday, there is a scrutiny problem for this House of Commons. Many of my constituents care deeply about the Israel-Palestine situation and other issues, such as the ongoing negotiations on the future of the British Indian Ocean Territory. Therefore, in order to enhance Commons scrutiny, will the Foreign Office commit to the Secretary of State’s coming before the Foreign Affairs Committee on the same regular cycle that the Foreign Secretary would have appeared at the Dispatch Box for FCDO questions?
Mr Mitchell
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. We are committed to ensuring that this House can fully scrutinise everything that the Foreign Office does, and his suggestion about a similar pattern of appearances for the Foreign Secretary before the Foreign Affairs Committee is a good one.
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Ind)
The Minister will be aware that President Macron, the United Nations and all the adjoining Arab countries are calling for a ceasefire. They are calling for a ceasefire because short humanitarian pauses will not end the slaughter. Does he accept that what the British people and supporters of parties on all sides of the House want to see is policies that will end the killing, end the slaughter and move towards the negotiated settlement that we will have to move to in any case?
Mr Mitchell
We all want to see the focus back on the political solution, which the right hon. Lady ended her comments by extolling. I draw her attention to the telling arguments that have been made—and not just by the Government but by those on her own Front Bench—about why the humanitarian pauses, rather than a ceasefire, are the right approach.
Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con)
My right hon. Friend will know that the House welcomes the extra support that has gone to Gazan civilians, but he will also have noted today that there would be support for further aid to get there quickly. He will know that that aid can only get there, and we can only make sure it gets to the people who need it rather than to Hamas, if those humanitarian pauses are longer than four hours. Can he say what progress is being made? I have listened carefully to what he says, but can he say when he expects success for longer humanitarian pauses?
Mr Mitchell
I am afraid that I cannot give my hon. Friend a timescale of the sort that we would all like to see, but we are aware that to achieve a humanitarian pause is the start of progress, and nothing will deter us from advocating for that on all occasions.
Sir Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
The Minister referred in his statement to the appalling loss of life among children, and I was pleased that my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) pressed him on that specifically because so many of my constituents are concerned about it. As things stand, will that appalling loss of life not simply carry on? What are the Government doing to bring it to some kind of conclusion?
Mr Mitchell
The right hon. Gentleman is right. In north Gaza, all hospitals but one are out of service owing to a lack of power or damage. We are acutely aware of the strain and stress on life. That is why, as I set out in my statement and have argued in some of my responses to questions from across the House, we are doing everything we can to advance respect for international humanitarian law and to bring this dreadful conflict to a close.
Paul Bristow (Peterborough) (Con)
I thank the Minister for his statement, his acknowledgment that there is a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and all his efforts to get aid into Gaza. A few moments ago, in answer to a previous question, he acknowledged that the US President said he hopes to see “less intrusive action” at the Al-Shifa Hospital, as patients and staff remain trapped inside, and that hospitals “must be protected”. For clarity, is that also the position of the UK Government?
Mr Mitchell
Yes. We are extremely concerned that everything should be done to protect life, in the way that the President of the United States set out.
Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)
The Archbishop of Canterbury and the French President are the latest leaders to call for a ceasefire, joining the heads of several UN bodies, millions of British people, 120 nations and many Members of this House. More than 11,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed, of whom nearly half were children. That cannot be just. I cannot in all conscience call for anything less than an end to this suffering. Will the Minister pluck up some courage and call for an immediate ceasefire in order to end the humanitarian disaster in Gaza?
Mr Mitchell
The hon. Gentleman and I share the common aim of ending the suffering—there is nothing between us on that. The argument is about how best to achieve it. That is why the Opposition Front Benchers and the Government have determined that trying to promote humanitarian pauses is the right way to proceed.
Scott Benton (Blackpool South) (Ind)
Although nobody wants to see the conflict continue, does the Minister agree that those who call for an immediate ceasefire must initially acknowledge that Hamas are a terrorist organisation, that they started the conflict through their horrific attack on 7 October, and that terrorist organisations agree to ceasefires only when it suits their military aims, rather than for genuine humanitarian reasons?
Mr Mitchell
My hon. Friend is wise in pointing out the reasons why the combatants are not seeking to achieve a ceasefire at this time.
Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)
UNRWA has announced that it is no longer able to collect aid because it no longer has any fuel for its trucks. We know that half of the hospitals in Gaza are already closed owing to a lack of fuel and security. That is why I and many others believe that a ceasefire is vital to ensure that humanitarian aid, including fuel, can get into Gaza. What discussions is the Minister having with the Israeli authorities to ensure that healthcare, aid and fuel can get into Gaza? He talked about extended; how long would an extended pause be?
Mr Mitchell
In respect of the hon. Lady’s final comment, that is what we are seeking to negotiate. Every sinew of the British Government is bent towards achieving the humanitarian aims that she sets out. I can tell her that, as of the time I came to make this statement, the Al-Ahli Hospital remains the only functioning hospital in Gaza, but it does not have a blood bank or supplies, so the situation is every bit as desperate as she and others on both sides of the House have set out.
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
In addition to the evidence that we have already heard of Hamas stockpiling weapons and the apparatus of terror in hospitals, including children’s hospitals, the Israeli authorities have also identified the misappropriation of aid, such as oxygen concentrators—meant to aerate the tunnels operated by Hamas—being hidden in aid trucks. Is that not all evidence that no matter how much our human instincts want to see an end to bloodshed and the loss of life, a ceasefire would only embolden the terrorists, embolden Hamas, and the only way to get peace in the middle east is for the total destruction of Hamas?
Mr Mitchell
My hon. Friend is right: the military power of Hamas has to be destroyed. That is what many people believe, and that is what the Israeli Government are intent on doing. I point out to him that the Israel Defence Forces use their power to defend their citizens; Hamas use their citizens to defend Hamas.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
The Minister has rightly pointed out the intolerable human suffering of civilians in Gaza, but does he accept that it is a consequence of the blatant abuse of civilians by Hamas, who have bombed hospitals and used them as bases, denied vital aid, and located arms factories in flats where people are living? As the terrorists are clearly under pressure—they are losing commanders, bases and control—does he agree that now is the wrong time to call for a ceasefire, which would only allow the terrorists to regroup, re-arm and prolong the conflict?
Mr Mitchell
The right hon. Gentleman speaks with authority and understanding of these situations. He eloquently explains why a ceasefire is not a practical opportunity.
Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
The Minister rightly said in his statement:
“Hospitals should be places of safety, able to treat patients with compassion. It is distressing to see them unable to do so.”
Médecins Sans Frontières has demanded, as a bare minimum, a medical evacuation of patients. What more can the British Government do to make that happen?
Mr Mitchell
As I have set out throughout my responses and in my statement, the British Government are doing everything we possibly can to advance that humanitarian endeavour.
Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)
Clearly, the atrocities of Hamas will in time be considered a war crime, but what we are seeing from the IDF at the moment is so far removed from what can be described as “self-defence”. Israeli Government officials have called Gazans “human animals” and referenced the use of nuclear weapons on Gaza. Netanyahu himself has cited Amalek in the Book of Samuel, which mentions killing and slaughtering every child, animal and person. On top of that, Israeli Ministers have handed out machine guns to people in the west bank. I have not heard a moral case—let alone a logical case—from anybody in this House for not joining all the Arab world, the UN, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope in calling for an immediate ceasefire in order to get hostages out and humanitarian aid in.
Mr Mitchell
The hon. Gentleman will have heard the arguments for and against a ceasefire, and he will have heard what the Government and his own Front Benchers have said. That is where the argument rests.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
At the last FCDO questions, I asked the Minister twice about getting fuel through to hospitals, and highlighted in particular the plight of women due to give birth in appalling circumstances. Their babies are now dying. I appreciate what he says about trying to do everything we can to get fuel through to hospitals, but at what point do we say, “Enough is enough; Israel will not allow that to happen”, and what can we do to ensure that those babies’ lives are saved?
Mr Mitchell
It is important not to give up hope. It is important to drive forward in every possible way we can the objectives that the hon. Lady and I share, and we will continue to do that.
Dame Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
As the Minister acknowledged, we were all shocked by the images of babies being huddled together in the hope of keeping them warm enough to stay alive. What more will the Government do to overcome the problems that the Minister referred to in response to my hon. Friends the Members for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) and for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), to ensure that we facilitate the safe delivery of fuel for humanitarian purposes such as keeping life-saving equipment working for people in hospitals in Gaza?
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (Ind)
Many of my constituents want to see hon. Members in this place, including those on the Labour and Tory Benches, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. With one in 200 local Gazan people killed by the Israeli war machine, how much worse does it have to get before this place prioritises life over death and peace over war? The Minister says that Hamas may not want a ceasefire, so why do what Hamas wish? The Government must not wait for more people to die before eventually listening to the public, my constituents and President Macron and making that ceasefire happen.
Mr Mitchell
The hon. Member will have heard heavily rehearsed during this statement the arguments for and against a ceasefire, and I fear I cannot add anything to what I have already said on that point.
Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)
The Minister’s call for Israel to follow international law in Gaza rings utterly hollow when we know that that is not happening. The United Nations Secretary-General, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and others have been clear that Israel is clearly and grossly violating international humanitarian law. Since 2015, this Government have licensed more than £472 million of arms exports to Israel, including parts of F-35 stealth aircraft, which are currently raining down bombs on Gaza. Does the Minister know whether British weapons have been used in violations of international law in Gaza, and does he agree that we should not sell weapons for committing war crimes?
Mr Mitchell
The hon. Member will know that the President of Israel, President Herzog, has made it clear that his country will abide by international humanitarian law. [Interruption.] She will also know that, in respect of arms exports in this country, we have the toughest arms regulations anywhere in the world.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
What assessment has the Minister made of the number of Palestinian civilian deaths that there will be, including babies and children, without a humanitarian ceasefire in the next month?
Mr Mitchell
I would not necessarily trust the figures that are produced by Hamas, but we do know that an extraordinary number of people have lost their lives, and we are all trying to do everything we can to make sure that we bring this situation to a conclusion as rapidly as possible.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
Before we talk about humanitarian pauses, should we not agree first what we want to achieve by them? Would they not need to be for days or weeks, not just for four hours? We need to repair infrastructure and get aid in on a scale that is just not possible while hostilities continue. Do the Government not need to call for an immediate cessation of hostilities—a ceasefire—during the period that is agreed, to get humanitarian aid in at the volume that is required?
Mr Mitchell
It is not just a question of using the pauses to try to advance humanitarian good; it is also about trying to use the humanitarian pauses to achieve some of the things the hon. Member said. As I said earlier, we have to be incredibly careful that we do not end up creating a false sense of security, as the House will remember happened in Srebrenica, northern Iraq and Rwanda.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend for his statement and all he is doing to alleviate suffering in the region. The human cost in Israel and Gaza is truly immense and heartbreaking. Will he join me in commending the extraordinary bravery of the aid workers on the ground in Gaza, some of whom have tragically lost their lives, including over 100 UN workers?
Mr Mitchell
My hon. Friend is entirely right. I hope a particularly hot place in hell is reserved for those who murder humanitarian workers who have put themselves in harm’s way unarmed purely to protect the lives and interests of their fellow humanity.
Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) (Lab/Co-op)
We have heard this afternoon that, frankly, this short pause is not working—four hours will not achieve anything. The fact that we are seeing Palestinians being forced to leave their homes en masse is quite worrying. Will the Minister condemn the acts of violence and extremism by Israeli settlers in the west bank, call on Israeli authorities to prevent that settler violence, ensure that there is clear accountability for the perpetrators and condemn this extremist rhetoric?
Mr Mitchell
The hon. Member will have heard what the Prime Minister and other members of the Government have said in condemning settler violence. We will continue to stand up for the rule of law and international humanitarian law on every occasion we are able to do so.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I am not Gregory Campbell, but I am happy to ask a question.
Mr Deputy Speaker
I thought he was behind you. All right; I call Jim Shannon.
Jim Shannon
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I thank the Minister for his replies, which are positive, and I know he means well. Can he provide an update on what progress has been made on discussions with Jordan, Egypt and surrounding nations to secure the free passage of medical aid? Will that be considered as a priority?
Mr Mitchell
I thank the hon. Member for his comments. Discussions are going on with Jordan and Egypt on that very point, and I will go tonight to Egypt to try to further those discussions.
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
In setting out what a humanitarian pause would involve, the Secretary of State is setting out the challenge at the heart of this. Those of us who believe that we should be working alongside our international colleagues for an urgent ceasefire as the best way to end the Palestinian bloodshed and the horrors we are seeing in Gaza know that any ceasefire that does not involve the immediate return of hostages and the dismantling of Hamas is unlikely to be sustainable. The Minister talked about the conversations the new Foreign Secretary has had with the Secretary of State in America. The Foreign Secretary cannot be in front of us so that I can ask him this myself, so will the Minister urgently arrange a meeting with the Foreign Secretary for my constituent whose father is being held by Hamas, so that she may understand what this Government are doing for UK citizens who have hostage families?
Mr Mitchell
I assume that the hon. Member has spoken to the crisis centre about that particular example. If she has not, I hope she will, and of course, we will afford all support we can to her constituent.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
The news of the burial in a mass grave of babies, children and other patients at Al-Shifa Hospital is heartbreaking, as was the news of the murder, mutilation and capture of babies, children and other innocent civilians in Israel on 7 October. I agree with the shadow Foreign Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), that the Government must now urge concrete steps to protect civilian life. Does the Minister agree that we need humanitarian pauses long enough to ensure that lifesaving aid reaches hospitals, as well as the release of hostages and the safe movement of innocent civilians?
Mr Mitchell
We will undoubtedly continue to do everything we can to support humanitarian supplies getting in and to develop the concept of the pause to maximum effect. It is the role of the Government, through their very strong diplomatic connections with all parts of the region, to do everything they can to drive forward those humanitarian aims.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)
I apologise—I am new here and do not yet know everybody. [Laughter.] I call Kenny MacAskill.
Kenny MacAskill (East Lothian) (Alba)
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. Hamas today conjured up memories of Christmas truces before the horror recommenced, but this is not soldiers in the trenches; it is 2.2 million people trapped in a tight urban environment, including women and children. Is that not the reason that a humanitarian pause is insufficient and there must be an immediate ceasefire?
Mr Mitchell
The circumstances that the hon. Member describes are precisely the reason why the British Government put such a high priority on trying to advance those humanitarian aims, some of which, at least, can be advanced through the humanitarian pauses we are so trenchantly seeking.
Kate Hollern (Blackburn) (Lab)
On 24 October, I asked the Minister in this House about care for pregnant women and new-born babies in Gaza. Since I asked that question three weeks ago, approximately 3,400 children have been born amidst devastation and destruction. Given that it is quite clear that four-hour pauses are totally inadequate, can the Minister tell me what specific steps his Department will take to protect hospitals, deliver humanitarian aid to pregnant women and children and stop premature deaths?
Mr Mitchell
The hon. Member makes her point with great eloquence, and it underlines the effort and importance that the Government attach to trying to drive humanitarian support through these pauses to those who desperately need it.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
The Government have been calling for a humanitarian pause for some time, but the death toll has risen, and the humanitarian crisis deepens by the hour. As a result, we clearly need a ceasefire, to move to a political process and a political solution. Can the Minister say what steps he is taking to formulate that political solution?
Mr Mitchell
It is not just our Government who are arguing for this; it is Governments around the world. Everyone is focused on trying to bring this dreadful situation to a conclusion and drive towards a political process. That is what we need. The hon. Member asks what I am doing. I will go tonight to Egypt to further these discussions.
Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)
The situation in Gaza cannot continue as it is, and everything needs to be done to bring this humanitarian devastation to an end. Following on from the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi), will the Minister condemn acts of violence and extremism by Israeli settlers in the west bank?
Mr Mitchell
As the hon. Lady will know, I hope, the Prime Minister and the Government have condemned settler violence and urged the Israeli Government to crack down on it.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
It is difficult to get aid and medicine into Gaza, but there is no shortage of arms in the region. I have been contacted by many constituents concerned about Britain’s role in supplying British-made weapons to Israel. In the absence of the Committees on Arms Export Controls meeting at all this year, what assurances can the Minister give that the weapons we are supplying are not being used in acts of collective punishment?
Mr Mitchell
I refer the hon. Lady to my response a few moments ago, in which I made clear that Britain has the most rigorous arms sale regime anywhere in the world—it is extremely important that we have that. I will look carefully to see whether there is any aspect of the hon. Lady’s question that suggests we should do more.
Beth Winter (Cynon Valley) (Lab)
On Friday, the Palestine Red Crescent Society said that Israeli forces opened fire on the intensive care unit at Al-Quds Hospital, and Médecins Sans Frontières reported a doctor in Al-Shifa Hospital saying that a sniper attacked four patients inside that hospital. We are seeing babies dying—what is happening is a stain on our collective humanity. I implore the Government please to join the overwhelming majority of the British public, humanitarian organisations and other nations in calling for an immediate ceasefire, to prevent the further death of innocent civilians and resolve what is a humanitarian catastrophe.
Mr Mitchell
I think the hon. Lady should put some greater hope in the achievement of humanitarian pauses, and then the development of those pauses. In the meantime, as she will be aware, it is the policy of both the Government and the Opposition that we should promote pauses, not a ceasefire.
Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the Minister confirm that it is the Government’s position that there should be no compulsion for people to leave their homes in Gaza, and that when people are displaced by fighting, they must be allowed to return home as soon as possible?
Mr Mitchell
The Government are acutely aware of the extraordinarily difficult situation in Gaza, and it is not for me to give advice from the Dispatch Box to people on the ground there who need to assess their situation for themselves within their community.
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
The UN says that telecommunications will begin to fail from Thursday as fuel runs out for the providing companies. Some lives have been saved when people have been telephoned to inform them that their homes are about to be bombed. Can any steps be taken to deliver fuel specifically to telecommunications companies?
Mr Mitchell
I have also seen those reports—they are extremely worrying, and they intensify the requirement to get fuel into Gaza as quickly as possible.
Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
Among so many horrors that we have seen since the horrific and illegal attacks by Hamas on 7 October, the images of tiny babies in Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza being kept warm with improvised incubation are unbearable. That is not for the want of incubators; it is for the want of fuel.
The Minister spoke from the Dispatch Box a few moments ago about the offer of fuel made by the Israeli Government yesterday, but the head of one of the aid agencies on the ground in Gaza has explained what that offer was: a few jerry cans left outside the hospital, amounting to half an hour of generation time. Half an hour of fuel for generators is not what is needed, and it is not what international law requires, so can I press the Minister on what action he is taking to hold the Israeli Government to account for the unacceptable stoppage of aid into Gaza, including fuel, and for their maintenance of international law?
Mr Mitchell
It is true, I think, that 300 litres of fuel was offered yesterday and it was rejected by Hamas—that is the key point. Some fuel was offered. Obviously, we hope that more fuel can get through, but if Hamas refuse to allow it to be used for the extremely important purposes that the hon. Lady has set out, the position will not improve.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
The new Foreign Secretary called Gaza an open-air prison in peacetime. While we all stood with Israel on 7 October, what are the limits of self-defence—a population forcibly displaced by donkey because there is no fuel, or communications blackouts? When will the UK join France, Spain, the UN and all the aid agencies in advocating a cessation of hostilities? We cannot go on like this 20 hours a day.
Mr Mitchell
The hon. Lady makes an eloquent plea for us to advance on all the things that the Government, along with others, are doing everything they can to progress.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Reclaim)
While the whole House should condemn unreservedly the atrocities committed against Israeli civilians on 7 October by the terror organisation Hamas, do His Majesty’s Government believe that the ongoing response of the Israel Defence Forces remains proportionate, and will they keep the matter under review?
Mr Mitchell
I draw the hon. Gentleman’s attention to what I said earlier about the work of the Israel Defence Forces, and indeed the training they undergo, which respects international humanitarian law and understands the obligations a military force owes to civilians.
Abena Oppong-Asare (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)
I have constituents who are heartbroken and devastated about the continuing conflict between Israel and Palestine. Hospitals and patients, particularly babies, must be protected and cannot become targets. Does the Minister agree that the aid that is getting into Gaza is still completely insufficient, and that it is unacceptable that siege conditions have not been lifted?
Mr Mitchell
As the hon. Lady suggests, it is completely insufficient. That is why we are arguing so trenchantly for the opening of not just Rafah, but Kerem Shalom, so that more aid can be got in for those who desperately need it.
Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)
After the terrorist atrocity of 7 October and with an estimated 11,000 Palestinians dead, there is a new fear: that of forced and permanent displacement of the Palestinian people. Accompanied by a drumbeat of senior voices, there are pressures on third countries to take the Gazan population as refugees. Can the Minister take this opportunity to say that neither this Government nor the international community regard that as acceptable in any way?
Mr Mitchell
The hon. Lady once again demonstrates the dreadful position that the appalling act perpetrated by Hamas terrorists on 7 October has landed people in.
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
I think I heard the Minister correctly just now when he confirmed reports in the Financial Times that all but one of the hospitals in the north of Gaza have stopped functioning. That news is catastrophic, and my constituents just want to know—as all of us do—that there is some hope that this hell is coming to an end. As such, further to the responses he gave to the hon. Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) and my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms), can I ask the Minister to describe the UK Government’s diplomatic strategy? He has mentioned that he will be travelling this evening: which of our partners will he be engaging to bring this war to an end?
Mr Mitchell
I will be travelling to Egypt tonight, but the discussions that are going on are about the hostages and the humanitarian situation, which I have explained extensively today. There are also discussions about the politics and how we move on. Those discussions are going on not just within the British Government, but with our partners, allies and like-minded parties overseas—in particular, through the extraordinary diplomatic reach of the British Foreign Office with all the countries in the region, which of course care as much as we do about the appalling loss of life.
Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
In 2010, the then UK Prime Minister, now the Foreign Secretary, condemned the blockade of Gaza as a “prison camp”. The siege conditions have remained, and that is the context in which this war has claimed the lives of 11,000 civilians in Gaza, following the horrific Hamas attacks that have cost the lives of 1,400 innocent civilians and led to the hostage taking of over 200 people. The reality is that the longer the Gaza war continues, the more palpable is the danger of further contagion not only in the west bank and Jerusalem, but across the region. We could be on the precipice of a regional war, and of tensions enduring beyond Gaza and Israel and causing full-scale conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. That is why it is imperative for our Government to work with international partners to seek the cessation of hostilities and to work for an enduring humanitarian ceasefire. So much is at stake here, and it is for our Government to take that leadership role. I call on the Minister to do so.
Mr Mitchell
The hon. Member has set out with great eloquence the issue before us, and it underlines the absolute necessity to get back on to a political track as swiftly as we can.
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
The Minister continues to say that he wants the Government of Israel to respect international human rights law, but last week he said that the Government could not make a determination whether that was happening. He said it would be for courts and lawyers to determine, so which courts and which lawyers, and how and when should a determination be made about whether Israel is complying with international humanitarian law?
Mr Mitchell
The point I made last week is that it is not for Ministers to assert what is in effect a legal judgment and that it should be left to the courts. I think that is a sensible measure for us to accept. The hon. Member will be aware that there are many different people—I quoted, for example, the guardians of the Geneva convention and international humanitarian law—and I do not think there will be any difficulty in hearing from the judicial authorities on that matter.
Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)
The call for a ceasefire is backed by multiple United Nations agencies, 700 NGOs, Pope Francis, more than 250 British lawyers, the 120 countries that voted in favour of a UN General Assembly motion and 76% of the public, and yesterday the Archbishop of Canterbury said that
“the call for a ceasefire is a moral cry”.
What will it take for the newly installed Secretary of State to heed these international calls and to support an immediate ceasefire?
Mr Mitchell
I yield to no one in my profound respect for the Archbishop of Canterbury, but I think the reasons set out by both Government and Opposition Front Benchers about why that is not a practical approach should be listened to with care. Meanwhile, we will do everything we can to address the humanitarian situation, which has been so eloquently set out across the House.
Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)
Given the grave seriousness and scale of the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Gaza, it is vital that the length of humanitarian pauses is sufficient to allow aid and supplies to reach safely those who need them. In the statement, the Minister acknowledges that four hours is not enough, so the first question is: by the Government’s own assessment, how long is needed? Secondly, will the Government finally meet the shadow Foreign Secretary’s request for an international aid co-ordinator to be appointed to make sure that aid really reaches where it is needed?
Mr Mitchell
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point about the co-ordination of aid, but principally we need to get it into the country. I have set out that this is about not just the length of the pauses, but the nature of how the aid is then distributed. The British Government are working with our partners to progress all those things.
Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
I give thanks to Islamic Relief for the heroic work it is doing in getting aid to people in need in Gaza. However, this is not a natural disaster, and aid and supplies can be switched back on. Does the Minister agree that it is unacceptable for Israel not to lift its siege conditions?
Mr Mitchell
I pay tribute, as the hon. Member did, to Islamic Relief, which I visited in Birmingham on Sunday with Andy Street, the West Midlands Mayor. Islamic Relief is doing extraordinary work still. It has access to fuel, and it has access to ways of making sure that water purification can continue to take place. We work closely with it, as we work with so many others, to try to bring an end to this dreadful situation.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)
Avi Shlaim is an Arab Jew, who was born in Baghdad, served in the Israel Defence Forces and is a retired professor of international affairs at the University of Oxford. He probably knows more about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than most of us, and he says:
“revenge is not a policy.”
Do the British Government reject the position of the Israeli Government that they should have overall security control of Gaza after current military operations?
Mr Mitchell
I think we can all agree that revenge is not a policy, but given the appalling events of 7 October, I want to emphasise that the Israeli Government have an absolute right to self-defence.
Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)
The Minister said that the arguments for and against a ceasefire have been fully rehearsed, but the situation in the hospitals and the ongoing slaughter of innocent civilians fleeing the hostilities illustrate that these humanitarian pauses are not working. The difficulty is that our constituents can see this terrible situation unfolding on the television every evening, and that is why they are writing to us in their thousands about it. What they want to know and what I want to know is this: how many more innocent people have to die before the UK Government will support a call for a ceasefire from both sides?
Mr Mitchell
The Government and, indeed, Labour Front Benchers have explained why calls for a ceasefire do not work at the moment. We have explained the Israeli Government’s right to self-defence, but also that Hamas have made it clear that not only do they not want a ceasefire, but they want to repeat what happened on 7 October. The position in those circumstances is that, to alleviate human suffering and to progress humanitarian efforts to get supplies in, we should try to develop the humanitarian pause, and that is what we will continue to do.
Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)
The suffering of innocent civilians in Gaza is intolerable. The siege must end, the bombing must end and we need an end to hostilities. Does the Minister share my worry that the way the war on Hamas is being prosecuted—the constant bombing, the scale of the loss of life and suffering—runs the risk of radicalising people and driving them into the arms of Hamas and other terrorist extremists? Would he comment on that, and on whether that view is being expressed to the Israeli Government?
Mr Mitchell
The British Government have many friends and a brilliant diplomatic network in the region, and we express ourselves without fear or favour to give the best advice that the British Government have.
Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
The Minister said that it is not for Ministers to confirm or ascertain what is and is not a war crime, but I remind him that Government Ministers rightly condemned Vladimir Putin for his war crimes in Ukraine very quickly after the invasion. The Minister mentioned the sanctity of hospitals, which are places protected under the Geneva convention, yet when I mentioned this exact issue last week, he did not accept my analysis of the Geneva convention. With reports of hospitals being bombed, IDF snipers firing into Al-Shifa and civilians, including children, being fired on while trying to evacuate under white flags, I repeat: what will it take for the Government and Opposition Front Benchers to call acts such as this what they are—war crimes?
Mr Mitchell
I have set out very clearly during this statement and in responses to Members across the House the absolutely essential nature of the progress we seek to make. I hope that the hon. Member will accept that my answer this week will be no different from the answer I gave him on Wednesday last week.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)
I thank the House for its patience. We have come in just inside the Speaker’s time limit.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Not to detract in any way from the integrity of the Minister, the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), but many have spoken about the absurd scrutiny situation of the new Foreign Secretary being a Member of the House of Lords and unable to answer questions in this Chamber. Given the gravity of the situation we are dealing with, is it not right that we change the Standing Orders to enable us to call Lords to appear in this place to answer questions on this matter from the Dispatch Box?
Mr Deputy Speaker
The hon. Gentleman is well aware that the Speaker has made a statement on this. The matter is under consideration, and it is not my place to seek to second-guess the advice that the Speaker is given.
I thank the Minister for his statement, and I wish him a safe and productive journey.
Bills Presented
Criminal Justice Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Secretary James Cleverly, supported by the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Secretary Alex Chalk, Secretary Michael Gove, the Attorney General, Chris Philp and Edward Argar, presented a Bill to amend the criminal law; to make provision about criminal justice (including the powers and duties of the police) and about dealing with offenders; to make provision about confiscation and the use of monies in suspended accounts; to make other provision about the prevention and detection of crime and disorder; to make provision about begging, rough sleeping and anti-social behaviour; to make provision about the police; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time tomorrow, and to be printed (Bill10) with explanatory notes (Bill 10-EN).
Sentencing Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Secretary Alex Chalk, supported by the Prime Minister, Secretary Grant Shapps, Secretary Michelle Donelan, Secretary Steve Barclay, Secretary Mel Stride, Secretary Lucy Frazer and the Attorney General, presented a Bill to make provision about the sentencing of offenders convicted of murder or sexual offences; to make provision about the suspension of custodial sentences; to make provision about the release of offenders, including provision about release on licence; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time tomorrow, and to be printed (Bill 11) with explanatory notes (Bill 11-EN).
Debate on the Address
Economic Growth
(1 year ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
18:49 - The House divided: - Ayes: 228 / Noes: 314 - Question accordingly negatived.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)
I inform the House that Mr Speaker has selected amendment (m) in the name of the Leader of the Opposition. I call Rachel Reeves.
Rachel Reeves (Leeds West) (Lab)
I beg to move an amendment, at the end of the Question to add:
“but respectfully regret that the Gracious Speech fails to include legislative proposals to prevent a repeat of the economic fallout from the September 2022 Growth Plan, by amending the Budget Responsibility and National Audit Act 2011 to give the Office for Budget Responsibility the power to produce and publish forecasts for any Government fiscal event which includes tax and spending decisions with long-term effects over a threshold to be specified in a new Charter for Budget Responsibility.”
It is fair to say that the UK is not exactly gripped with excitement at the contents of the Conservative Government’s King’s Speech. It is as if Ministers have rummaged down the back of the sofa and found legislative loose change, a broken biro, some old Bills covered in fluff and even an old Prime Minister. In this current Tory era of three-word slogans, the country is thinking not, “Five more years!” but, “Is that it?”
It is clear what the Government’s approach is in the run-up to that election. They have given up on trying to improve the country, so all they can now do is attempt to divide it. But they will fail because the Conservatives simply do not understand the priorities, hopes and values of the people of Britain today. After five Prime Ministers—one of them recycled—and seven Chancellors since 2010, the Conservatives find changing personnel rather easier than changing our country for the better.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
I am listening to the right hon. Lady’s speech about values. The values of my constituents are such that they are calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Does she support those values?
Rachel Reeves
We have just had an hour and a half’s worth of questions on that issue. I am going to focus on how to grow the economy and tackle the cost of living crisis.
I wish that today we were debating the Government’s significant economic reforms and new measures to get our economy back on track after 13 years of Tory economic failure—but there weren’t any. Their big tax reform is to consult on bringing in a new duty on vapes. Their big energy Bill does not even lower people’s energy bills. In fact, a third of the Bills in the King’s Speech are reheated from the previous Session. How out of touch must the Prime Minister be to peer down from 10,000 feet up in his helicopter and conclude that everything is going so well that there is no need for legislation and Government action to help unlock growth? This is the final King’s Speech before the general election, and yet this set of proposals will not quicken the pulse, get the economy roaring or lift people’s living standards. Where is the ambition? Where is the plan?
As the British Chambers of Commerce has pointed out:
“The King’s Speech opened with an aspiration to increase economic growth—but it failed to outline how that will happen.”
Samantha Dixon (City of Chester) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend share the concern of many that rather than improving, economic growth is forecast to go into reverse next year under the Tories? Does she agree that this new Tory economic failure does not bode well for people’s living standards next year?
Rachel Reeves
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. She will have seen that the forecasts published by the Bank of England just over a week ago show that the economy is expected to flatline not just throughout the rest of this year but all through next year as well.
There is something quite apt, even revealing, about the Conservatives wanting to use this King’s Speech to protect the users of driverless cars from the damage they might inflict on others. The Conservative Government have been driving quite dangerously for 13 years. The current named driver of the vehicle—the third in four years—is nowhere to be seen, but there will be no protection for the Prime Minister or his party from voters’ verdicts at the general election, whenever that comes.
The Government’s King’s Speech was a lost opportunity for our country. There was no legislation to reform the antiquated planning process and accelerate decisions around our critical national infrastructure. Instead, planning processes continue to hold back the success of our offshore wind sector, life sciences and 5G. There were no pension reforms to encourage growing British companies to stay here instead of being forced abroad for funding, which contributes to the UK’s stagnating growth. There was no serious plan to help get energy bills down. The energy price cap has increased by half in this Parliament, yet the Energy Secretary has admitted that the Government’s energy Bill
“wouldn’t necessarily bring energy bills down”,
whereas Labour has plans for clean power by 2030, a national wealth fund, insulating homes to lower bills, and the creation of GB Energy.
There is no focus from the Government on industrial strategy or on putting an industrial strategy council on a statutory footing to help drive the growth and investment that we need. Instead, the Government reach for sticking plasters when important sectors hit crisis. We need positive, long-term plans to make the most of our assets and create good-quality jobs here in Britain.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I commend the right hon. Lady for her strong and wise words. Like me and others in the House, she believes that the life sciences sector can grow and do much more. In 2019, the pharmaceutical sector alone provided 18% of research and development spending. There are almost 600,000 jobs in the industry and it contributes £36.9 billion in gross value added to GDP. Does the right hon. Lady agree that if we are to ensure that everyone can gain from life sciences, there must be better distribution across all of this great United Kingdom of GB and NI, and that NI must be a part of that?
Rachel Reeves
I could not agree more with the hon. Gentleman. Our life sciences sector is key for Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and yet too many businesses are looking to relocate, including to the Republic of Ireland, but we want those jobs and those investments here in Britain.
There was no legislation in this King’s Speech for fairer tax measures. The Chancellor and the Prime Minister have been so quick to raise taxes—they have done so 25 times between them—that we now have the highest tax burden in 70 years. It is the biggest tax hike ever in a single Parliament, with working people and businesses hit hard, yet the Government allow unjustifiable tax loopholes to remain. I believe that if people make Britain their home, they should pay their taxes here, too. That is why we will abolish the non-dom tax status and introduce a modern scheme for people who are genuinely living in the UK for short periods. Why is it so hard for this Prime Minister to say the same?
There was no legislation in this King’s Speech to increase security at work or to update employment rights. Having confidence to plan a family’s future should be not a luxury but something that working people deserve, and we need to grow our economy from the bottom up and the middle out. If an economy is not working for working people, it is not working at all. This King’s Speech has no serious plans for tackling the cost of living crisis or for growing the UK economy.
The Conservative economic failures are piling up high: a failure on growth; a failure on infrastructure investments; a failure on the cost of living; a failure on public services; and a failure on tax. The responsibility for such disappointment and damage has been a Conservative team effort these past 13 years. The Government cannot get our economy back on track or make our country better off. The Conservatives cannot and have not tackled the cost of living crisis because they are the cost of living crisis.
Andrew Western (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that we are still paying the price of the failed Tory policies since 2010 that have weakened our NHS, stripped funding from our local council services and stopped Labour’s school repairs programme?
Rachel Reeves
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. The truth is that the combination of austerity, which was five Prime Ministers ago, Brexit without a plan—which relates to most of them—and the kamikaze Budget has contributed to the parlous state of our economy and the cost of living crisis that we are enduring today.
This is a party led—and I say “led” in the loosest sense of the word—by a Prime Minister with no mandate whatsoever and with no authority or vision for the future. This Prime Minister appears to be spending more time polishing his CV in conversation with Elon Musk than fighting for the livelihoods of manufacturing workers in Scunthorpe, Port Talbot and Derby.
And it is the previous Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), who still sets the tune for so many in the Conservative party. She wanted to scrap the bankers’ bonus cap in the kamikaze Budget last year, and that has now been dutifully delivered by this Prime Minister and this Chancellor. When the previous Prime Minister called this year for delaying the timetable for new electric cars by five years, undermining both the net zero consensus and the British automotive industry, this Prime Minister and this Chancellor delivered. Today, the former Prime Minister’s so-called growth commission is setting out its demands for next week’s autumn statement, oblivious to the damage already done. Will the Chancellor tell the House whether he agrees with the person who appointed him to do the job he is now doing and her proposals to slash corporation tax, abolish inheritance tax, abolish stamp duty and other unfunded commitments that make last year’s mini-Budget look like small fry, with tax cuts announced totalling £80 billion?
Labour will never gamble with the livelihoods of working people, as the Conservatives have. Labour’s economic approach is built on a rock of fiscal responsibility, with respect for taxpayers’ money. We will work in partnership with industry to bring about the change that our country so desperately needs. We know what the Tories did last autumn. They blew up our economy with their reckless, unfunded promises and a trashing of our economic institutions. It was a collective failure from the Tories. It was not just one bad apple, but a whole orchard of irresponsibility. The Conservative leadership contest of summer 2022 produced a sum total of £200 billion of unfunded promises. The Chancellor did not want to be left out. His leadership candidacy might not have been as successful or lasted as long as he may have wished, but there was still time for him to make almost £80 billion of unfunded commitments himself on corporation tax, business rates and defence, with no idea how those commitments would be funded.
Following the leadership election last year, Conservative Cabinet Ministers tried to blindfold the nation and global financial markets by preventing the Office for Budget Responsibility from publishing its assessments. The Conservatives knew that the truth would hurt, but they continued to gamble with the livelihoods of our country. The pound crashed, pensions were put in peril and interest rates soared. Working people were made to pay the price for the Conservatives’ kamikaze Budget and reckless eagerness to cut the taxes of the wealthiest few. It was reckless, it was irresponsible, and with Labour it will never happen.
The result is an average Conservative mortgage penalty of £220 each and every month for hard-working homeowners. This out-of-touch Government do not have a clue about what that really means for people. That is a lot of money to try to find from nowhere each and every month. It means holidays cancelled, spending cut back and life made harder. Some families are having to downsize, and others who have been trying to get on the housing ladder for years have had their dreams snuffed out. Meanwhile, rents rise as landlords see their mortgages go up and want to pass the costs on.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend is making a good point about housing costs and the shortage of housing in this country. Is it not therefore astounding that, given the climate we are in, there is not one single word about housing in the whole King’s Speech? There is not a single word about the shortage of housing or the rising costs of housing, no long-term proposals to build on this vague commitment of 300,000 homes, and no idea how to build them.
Rachel Reeves
My hon. Friend speaks powerfully on what he knows well. On top of the big challenges with house building and the Government getting rid of their housing targets, the number of homeowners in arrears on their mortgage is also up a staggering 18% compared with a year ago. The Conservatives are no longer the party of home ownership. Higher housing costs are the last thing people need in a painful cost of living crisis. It should never have happened in the first place, and it must never happen again.
Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)
Will the right hon. Lady enlighten us on the Labour party’s views on our precious green belt, because my constituents are terrified that a Labour Government will build houses all over it?
Rachel Reeves
Labour’s approach is brownfield-first. We also know that there is land designated as green belt that is no such thing. For example, there is a petrol station in Tottenham that people cannot get planning permission for, because it is classified as green belt. People want that land built on, and I think we can all agree across the House that we need reforms to allow that to happen, but this Government scrapped the house building target. Home ownership is falling under the Conservatives. The Conservatives were once the party of home ownership; they can no longer claim that mantle. It is Labour today that is the party of home ownership and of aspiration for working families.
Today the Conservatives can show that they have learned a lesson from last year. They can back Labour’s commitment to strengthen the Office for Budget Responsibility in our amendment. We believe that where a fiscal event is making significant and permanent tax and spending changes, the OBR should be able to freely and independently publish a forecast of the impact of those changes. No Government of the day should be able to stop it from doing so. In the event of an emergency, where changes must be introduced at speed and a forecast cannot be produced in time, the OBR would be allowed to set a date for when it can publish a forecast. The public should be able to read an independent assessment on the health of our economy, to understand the consequences of proposals and to see the prices on the menu.
The amendment should not be remotely controversial, and I look forward to seeing Conservative MPs and Ministers joining us in supporting this sensible measure today. If they do not, it will show that they have not learned a thing, and that the Conservatives continue to present a real and present danger to our economy.
What will be the legacy of 13 years of this Conservative Government? They have damaged our economy, trashed our public services, failed to invest in the industries of the future, squeezed people’s living standards and caused a calamitous cost of living crisis. A Labour Government will clean up that mess. We will clamp down on waste and fraud from the pandemic, because the country is sick of being ripped off and we want our money back. We will tax fairly, spend wisely and grow the economy. We will get the NHS back on its feet. The Conservatives have broken our public services before, but Labour Governments have fixed them in the past, and we will do so again.
As bad as the public finances are under the Conservatives, there will always be choices, so we will abolish the non-dom tax status and use that money to help our NHS tackle record waiting times and introduce free breakfast clubs for all primary school-aged children. We will close the tax loophole that gives private equity managers a huge tax break. We will close the tax loopholes benefiting private schools, which gain from not having to pay VAT and business rates, and use that money to support the 93% of children attending our state schools. If the Conservatives want to have a fight over who is most aspirational for our young people when the ceilings are crumbling in our schools, I say bring it on.
After 13 years of Conservative Government, the questions that people will be asking at the next election are simple: “Do my family and I feel better off after 13 years of Conservative government? Do our schools, our hospitals and our transport infrastructure work better than when the Conservatives came to office 13 years ago? In fact, does anything in Britain work better today than when the Conservatives came to office?” The answer is a resounding no. This King’s Speech is not remotely up to the task of changing our country for the better and meeting the challenges head on.
Real change cannot come from five more painful years under the Conservatives, but only from a fresh start with Labour. The Labour party is the only party of economic responsibility and with the ability to provide the change of direction and confidence that our country needs. As this King’s Speech shows, this desperate, decaying Government are out of ideas, out of excuses and increasingly out of time. If the Prime Minister and Chancellor are so confident about the Conservatives’ record, let us take it to the ballot box and let the British people decide.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Jeremy Hunt)
It is an honour to speak in the first King’s Speech debate for more than 70 years. Her late Majesty was a figure of grace and continuity, and we now look forward to His Majesty the King leading us, as she did, through troubled times.
It is always a pleasure to debate with the shadow Chancellor, although in a whole year of my being Chancellor, this is the first time we have had an economy debate, and now we know why: she has been busy writing a book, or, rather, Wikipedia has been busy writing her book. Today, I see she has been busy copying and pasting Conservative language about tax. May I tell her gently that that will take her only so far? Conservative Members will never forget what happened under Gordon Brown, who she campaigned for: income tax up, national insurance up, stamp duty up, fuel duty up, pensions up and multiple other taxes up.
Let us turn to some of the shadow Chancellor’s assertions. She said that the economy was flatlining. What she did not tell the House was that since Labour left the economy in the deepest recession since the second world war, we in this country have grown faster than Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, the Netherlands, Austria, Germany or Japan. She did not mention that after a global pandemic and energy shock, our economy is nearly 2% bigger than it was pre-pandemic. That is higher, for example, than countries such as Germany, whose economy is only 0.3% larger, not least thanks to the furlough scheme introduced by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister.
The shadow Chancellor also did not mention that when it comes to the fastest-growing industries, we are doing even better. In the last 13 years under Conservative Governments, we have built Europe’s largest tech sector—double the size of Germany’s and three times that of France; it is the third-largest in the world. We also have Europe’s largest life science sector, saving more lives than any other country globally with vaccines and treatments discovered in Britain. We have more offshore wind than anywhere in Europe bar Germany and Norway—it is the third-largest sector in the continent. We also have a world-leading creative industries sector, including Europe’s largest film and TV industry and a thriving publishing industry that has even produced a book written by the shadow Chancellor, which helpfully collates some fascinating information from the world wide web.
Mr Betts
The Chancellor talks about what he sees as some successes. Why does he not address the problems of small modular reactors? Sheffield Forgemasters in my constituency could be building SMRs, but it has been waiting for months for the Government to make a decision on a go-ahead for the right techniques. ITM Power, which is a leader in green hydrogen, is building plant in Germany, which is spending £7 billion on it in the next few years, while in this country we are spending £1 billion, so we are losing the international race on that.
Jeremy Hunt
The first big infrastructure decision that I took was on nuclear, when I assigned £700 million to Sizewell C. I completely agree with the hon. Member about the potential of SMR. That is why we set up a competition, and with the previous Energy Secretary I stipulated that it should finish by the end of this calendar year so that we can proceed as quickly as possible on SMR, because it could be an important part of our net zero future.
The shadow Chancellor’s central argument is that we can get growth only by borrowing £28 billion a year more. [Interruption.] Well, I was listening to her words. She may not have mentioned this in her speech, but on 9 October she said on the “Today” programme that she wanted to take borrowing “up”—her word. We delivered all those achievements in technology, life science, creative industries and advanced manufacturing industries during a time when we were cutting borrowing, which went down by 80% between 2010 and the start of the pandemic. That is the difference. Unlike Labour, the Conservatives know that we cannot borrow our way to growth. We have to do the hard work to support entrepreneurs and innovators, including by keeping their taxes down, which Labour has never wanted to do. Because we have done just that, the International Monetary Fund says that after inflation has been brought to target from the end of 2025, this country will have faster growth than France, Germany or Italy. No shortcuts; just hard work to get one of the fastest growth rates in Europe.
Alan Brown
On investment in renewable energy, EY has confirmed today that the UK has slipped further back on the attractiveness index, so it is now behind India, China and Australia. On offshore wind, the Chancellor knows that allocation round 5 was a disaster. What will he do to rectify that? On nuclear, he talks about SMRs being the future, but they are not. There is not a successful SMR anywhere in the world, and NuScale in the United States has just been abandoned after rising to an estimated cost of $9 billion.
Jeremy Hunt
I do not accept that we are not an extremely attractive place. We have third largest renewables sector in Europe and are the largest European provider of offshore wind. Can we do more? Yes, we can, particularly by improving access to the grid. The House should expect to hear more from us on that.
We had a lot of talk from the shadow Chancellor about the cost of living crisis, but she barely mentioned that the biggest pressure on the cost of living is caused by the rise in inflation—in fact, it did not get a mention at all in her conference speech. Because we have taken difficult decisions, inflation has fallen by 40% since its peak. Core inflation is now lower than in nearly half the entire EU membership. I say gently to her that if she were to reflate the economy by ramping up borrowing by £28 billion a year, prices would go up and families would end up paying more for their petrol, their food, their electricity and their mortgages. That is why that is the wrong approach.
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
One issue on borrowing that has not been talked about is that it is now four years since this place agreed that we should regulate the buy now, pay later lenders. Under this Government’s watch, the number of people borrowing from these companies to make ends meet during the cost of living crisis has doubled, and 40% of those people are struggling and borrowing from other lenders to pay their debts, yet we have still seen no regulation at all from the Government. If the Chancellor wants to prove that he is actually on the side of the people and understands the bills that they have racked up paying for this Tory Government’s failures, will he finally commit to regulating these loan sharks?
Jeremy Hunt
As the hon. Member might have heard if she had been at oral questions, we are acting on this and have been consulting on a solution since March this year—I started that at the spring Budget—but we want to get the answer right. We want to crack down on rogue lenders but also ensure that the financing that appropriate people can offer responsibly is available.
I want to talk about the pressures on ordinary families, because the shadow Chancellor also talked about incomes and the tax burden on working families. What has happened since 2010 to adults on the lowest legally payable wage? When we took over from Labour, that wage was £5.93 an hour; today, it is £10.42 an hour. After inflation, gross pay for those on the lowest legally payable wage has gone up by 20%. The number of people on low pay, defined as less than two thirds of median hourly earnings, has halved. At the same time, because Conservative Governments want to make work pay, we increased the thresholds before which people start to pay tax or national insurance from £5,700 to £12,570. Take-home pay after tax for people on the adult main minimum wage has therefore gone up by more than 25% after inflation. That is a bigger percentage increase than for people on much higher incomes.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
Notwith-standing what the Chancellor has said, my constituents in Edinburgh West, like those in much of the rest of the country, were listening intently to the King’s Speech for a Bill or anything that might help them with the cost of food and specifically energy this coming winter, but there was nothing, and it has been admitted that the petroleum Bill will not do anything to help households in this country. Does he appreciate why ordinary working families think that the Government are simply out of touch?
Jeremy Hunt
With respect, I think the hon. Member needs to look at the facts. We have given an average of £3,300 in cost of living support to families across the country this year and last. In Scotland, 700,000 households have benefited from our cost of living payments, which have reached more than 1 million pensioners.
I want to return to my main point about the impact of making work pay. As a result of that change, not only have a lot of people been lifted out of poverty, but unemployment has gone down by a million, after going up by nearly half a million under Labour, and the unemployment rate has halved. That is the difference: if we make work pay, as the Conservatives do, we lift people out of poverty and put people into work.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
What would the minimum wage be worth now if the right hon. Member’s party had succeeded in its attempts to wreck the legislation when it was introduced by the last Labour Government?
Jeremy Hunt
I simply say that we did not just build on that reform but improved it massively more than Labour proposed, because we turned it into the national living wage, which is far more generous than the original minimum wage.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
According to the House of Commons Library, in 2022 the tax burden on the lowest income decile was 25.5%. On the top income decile, it was 12.5%. Is that fair?
Jeremy Hunt
Because we believe in a progressive tax system, we introduced the changes that I just outlined, which mean that people on the lowest legal wage are getting 25% more after tax. That is a significantly bigger increase than for people on higher deciles.
One of the main things the shadow Chancellor mentioned was her amendment on the OBR. I understand the political game of trying to draw attention to the mini-Budget, but she should know that the OBR is already legally required to publish two forecasts a year, as will happen under this Government at successive autumn statements and spring Budgets. Today’s proposal is dangerous because, despite what she says, it would hamper the Government when acting in an emergency, as we did in the pandemic. I will tell her why. Instead of taking decisive action, Governments would feel obliged to enter a 12-week process with the OBR in case the outcome of the independent process that she advocates made any crisis worse by highlighting a significant loosening of the fiscal rules.
What is most extraordinary about the amendment is that, at the same time that the shadow Chancellor tries to claim the mantle of fiscal responsibility in this House, only this morning she briefed the papers that she wants to unfreeze income tax thresholds—a £9 billion commitment—and make full expensing permanent, which is a £10 billion commitment. That is all without an OBR forecast in sight. That kind of irresponsibility from Labour is exactly why we set up the OBR in the first place.
This is an argument not just about jobs and work but about poverty. Labour tried to eradicate poverty by tinkering with the benefits system and Gordon Brown’s tax credits. We all remember the “poverty plus a pound” idea, whereby if someone just below the poverty threshold is given £1, they are somehow magically lifted out of destitution. Instead, the Conservative Government have reduced the numbers in absolute poverty after housing costs by 1.7 million people by making work pay and by reducing the number of children living in workless households, because they are five times more likely to be in absolute poverty than households in which the adults work. Making work pay is a moral duty and not just an economic necessity, as only Conservatives understand.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
Work is the best way to eliminate poverty. What are the Chancellor’s reflections on the fact that every Labour Government have left office with unemployment higher?
Jeremy Hunt
My reflection is quite simply that the Labour party does not understand how to lift people out of poverty. Labour Members do not like us talking about the fact that nearly 2 million people have been lifted out of absolute poverty under Conservative Governments, because that does not fit their austerity story, but the reality is that a Conservative Government have been responsible for a very important piece of social progress.
I want to turn to the autumn statement, because as we start to win the battle against inflation we can focus on the next stage, which is growth. Next week, we will see an autumn statement for growth. Because no business can expand without hiring additional staff, I will address labour supply issues to help fill the nearly 1 million vacancies we have, working with the excellent Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. That will build on the 30 hours of free childcare offer that I announced for all eligible children over nine months in the spring Budget. I will also focus on increasing business investment, because despite the fact that our growth has been faster than that of many of our European neighbours, our productivity is still lower.
Holly Mumby-Croft (Scunthorpe) (Con)
My right hon. Friend talks about growth and productivity, and he knows that it is my strong view that steel is an incredibly important material for growth here in this country. Will he reassure the very concerned steelworkers in Scunthorpe that he is concentrating on that, and working on it on our behalf?
Jeremy Hunt
My hon. Friend has talked to me consistently and powerfully since I became Chancellor about the issues facing the steel industry. She is a strong advocate for her constituents. It is at the top of my mind, as we try to chart a better future for British Steel. We will bear in mind the many comments she has made.
The shadow Chancellor said in her conference speech that she would remove the barriers to business investment, by
“backing the builders not the blockers”.
Only weeks later, her party promptly U-turned and became a blocker by watering down changes to the rules on nutrient neutrality, which would have unlocked the building of 100,000 homes. That is 100,000 families whose future is on hold because of Labour’s political games.
On top of all the measures in the autumn statement, we will have the Bills from the King’s Speech, including a trade Bill that will confirm our membership of the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership, making us part of a group that wields a combined GDP of £12 trillion and a presence in the Indo-Pacific, where the majority of global growth will be. The Automated Vehicles Bill, which the shadow Chancellor mocked, will make the UK one of the first countries in the world to have a legal structure to allow driverless cars. The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill will modernise our digital laws to boost online shopping by making it safer. The Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill will secure our energy independence by replacing imported oil and gas with domestically produced fuel as we transition to net zero.
The Leader of the Opposition called the King’s Speech something that will only bring more of the same. In a way, he is right: more growth, more jobs, more pay, more opportunity and more prosperity. We are not following the easy path of opening the national cheque book and maxing the country’s credit card by borrowing £28 billion a year more; we are taking a path that is more difficult, yes, but more durable, and one that will turn us into one of the most prosperous countries in Europe. I commend it to the House.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)
Order. Some 40 Members are seeking to contribute to the debate, and we have until 6.30 pm. After the Scottish National party spokesperson, I propose to introduce an immediate time limit of six minutes, which may have to fall to five. I call the SNP spokesperson.
Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I did not hold out much hope of enlightenment from this debate, and it is fair to say that I am underwhelmed. This is a truly zombie Government, so bereft of ideas and talent that they have scoured the sheds of Chipping Norton to find a former Prime Minister who, along with his Liberal Democrat coalition partners, set most of the economic woes on their way for Scotland and the other nations of the UK, and resurrected him into their Cabinet. What a signal; what a shambles.
It is to the shame of Westminster that the Government spend so much time reliving past failures, continuing to do the same thing over and over—culture war rhetoric, punishing the vulnerable, and ignoring the suffering of the most vulnerable and the poorest. One of the many former Prime Ministers of this failing Government—although, to be fair, an elected one—used to talk about those people “just about managing”. I have news for her and for this place: they ain’t just about managing any more. They are struggling. Many more each day are failing to get by. Food bills, energy bills, mortgages and rents are crushing them.
Given the misery that the Government have wrought through austerity, the infamous mini-Budget and everything else, they should have put the cost of living at the forefront of the King’s Speech. They should have listened to those struggling to pay their electricity bills, put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads. Instead of talking about tents, they should have been talking about rents. While they pound the slogans of division by saying “stop the boats”, I trust the public will ensure that all they do for this terrible Government is stop the votes. Of course, being accountable and elected is not an issue for this place. The Tories and Labour will always simply create another Lord to do their bidding if they need to do so.
In a time so obviously marked by escalating living costs, the No. 1 concern on the doorsteps of Scotland—and, I contest, the other nations of the UK—is the cost of living. The King’s Speech glaringly overlooked the need for policies to assist households grappling with food and energy costs, mortgages and rents. While the Scottish Government have made a concerted and targeted effort to shield Scots from the brunt of Westminster policies, the omnipresent shadow of these often cruel Westminster directives remains inescapable.
The King’s Speech starkly underscored the unreliability of Westminster Governments in serving Scotland’s interests, with both the Tories and Labour wedded to a low-growth, Brexit-anchored economy. Independence and a return to the European Union, where all partners are treated as equals, is the only viable path for the prosperity of Scotland. The Scottish Government, within their limited capacity, strive to cushion Scots from Westminster’s harshest policies, yet Scotland’s full potential remains constantly stifled under the UK’s policy regime—a theme I will return to shortly.
Dr Liam Fox (North Somerset) (Con)
On the hon. Gentleman’s logic, if Brexit is the impediment to growth, why is it that since pre-pandemic times Britain has grown faster than either France or Germany?
Drew Hendry
Tory Members keep peddling this line, but what they know, and what everybody else knows, is that they started from a lower base because they tanked the economy in the first place. They have to live up to that responsibility. They claim higher growth from a lower point of entry. [Interruption.] They can try to shout me down, but I will make progress.
The King’s Speech, which was alarmingly brief on tackling the cost of living crisis, was a missed opportunity to offer concrete measures for relief. It paid lip service to reducing inflation and easing living costs, but lacked substantive policy proposals. Labour, too, is offering little on the cost of living crisis. Where are the measures that could be taken now to help people in their homes? Completely absent. Of course, that is just part of Labour’s “don’t scare the Tory voters” approach to securing office. The UK’s economic stagnation, which is evidenced by recent data, underscores a systemic failure to foster growth, post financial crisis. There is nothing in the King’s Speech to help support people, our food and drink industry, or our tourism and hospitality sector. That is something the Chancellor will need to correct before next week.
In a UK battling—unlike what the Government claim—rampant destitution, the failure of the King’s Speech to prioritise poverty reduction is indefensible, with millions, including a shocking number of children, unable to meet their basic needs. The situation in the UK is dire. Scotland’s lower destitution rate is a testament to SNP policies such as the Scottish child payment, but there is no attempt to replicate that anywhere in this House or to suggest that we do so. The eradication of poverty remains a more distant prospect under the current Westminster regime. Labour’s stance, echoing Tory rhetoric and policies, leaves independence as Scotland’s only hope for a fair and dynamic economy.
Paul Holmes (Eastleigh) (Con)
The SNP spokesman is outlining to the Chamber his utopian world under an SNP Government. Can he outline why under the SNP Government education standards in Scotland have fallen at record levels and NHS standards in Scotland have fallen at record levels, and why his Government have failed the people of Scotland on the delivery of public services?
Drew Hendry
That is what the hon. Gentleman has in his prepared statement, but when we look at the facts, we see that that is not correct. Scotland’s accident and emergency departments, for example, have outperformed the rest of the UK for the past eight years. We have more doctors and nurses per head of population than anywhere else in the UK. On public services, the Tories are pushing councils to bankruptcy in England. In Scotland, we are managing to negotiate with unions to avoid strikes and keep the economy moving, which is not being replicated by this Tory Government down here.
Despite constraints, the Scottish SNP Government have implemented significant policies to alleviate the cost of living crisis. We have frozen council tax, introduced the Scottish child payment, supported disabled children, offered free school meals and provided free bus travel. Those are just a few examples of the Scottish Government’s proactive steps. Those measures, though effective, highlight the limitations of devolution under the Westminster system, underscoring the urgent need for greater powers in Scotland, for Scotland, to support its citizens fully.
Despite being a nation rich in energy resources, our people still face the pressing challenges of fuel poverty and high energy costs. Current UK energy policies and management continue to fail the people of Scotland. The fact that our energy wealth is significant is not open to challenge. Despite numerous attempts to tell the people of Scotland that their oil and gas resources are running out, the UK Government now say that they will grant new licences every year. Scotland is producing six times more gas than it consumes. However, that abundance contrasts sharply with the high prices they are expected to pay and the increasing fuel poverty faced by our elderly in particular. In just two years, the fuel poverty rates among pensioners are a concerning trend that highlights another disconnect between resource richness and public benefit. Westminster policies have continually failed to translate Scotland’s natural energy wealth into tangible benefits for its populace—they have done quite the opposite. They have resulted in an oppressively toxic cost of living and inflationary effect for Scottish households.
The lack of targeted measures in the King’s Speech to address energy bill support further underscores that. Critics from various sectors have voiced their disappointment, emphasising the need for far more action on prices, investment and insulation, and many more renewable energy sources. The SNP has said we should have a £400 energy bill rebate and action on basic costs. We should have mortgage interest rate tax relief and there should be action on food costs, but of course we have not heard that from anywhere else in this Chamber.
In response to the challenges posed by Westminster’s policies, the Scottish Government have been proactive in implementing measures to mitigate the impact on its residents. Those actions include, as I mentioned, freezing council tax and providing additional support for heating costs for the most severely disabled children and young people during winter. Furthermore, the Scottish Government’s commitment to renewable energy and sustainability aligns with the broader goal of transitioning to a cleaner, more self-sufficient energy future. Westminster has singly failed to invest, most notably over a decade of dither and delay on the Peterhead carbon capture opportunity and subsequent potential hydrogen bonanza, and in its abject failure to meet the Scottish Government’s £500 million investment in the just transition—incidentally another area where the Scottish Government have had to step in to plug the gap on reserved Westminster inaction.
The transfer of energy, employment, welfare and economic powers to the Scottish Parliament is essential. With those powers, the Scottish Government could implement more effective policies to support their citizens through the ongoing energy and cost of living crisis.
Looking globally, nations comparable in size to Scotland boast vibrant economies that benefit their citizens. Countries such as Iceland, Norway and Denmark exhibit lower income inequality and poverty rates, and higher social mobility compared with the UK. That comparison raises a crucial question: why should Scotland remain tethered to a Westminster system that fails to resonate with its values and hinders its potential to be fairer, wealthier and happier?
The King’s Speech was a stark reminder of Westminster’s detachment from Scotland’s needs and the UK’s broader societal challenges. It highlighted the necessity of independence for Scotland—the only path that leads towards a more equitable, prosperous future in line with the aspirations and values of the Scottish people.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)
I call the Chair of the Treasury Committee.
Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)
It has been said that we enjoyed a holiday from history between the fall of the Berlin wall and 11 September 2001, but unfortunately history has now etched two more horrendous dates into our memories: 24 February 2022 for Russia’s evil invasion of Ukraine, and 7 October 2023 for Hamas’s evil terrorist attack on innocent Israelis. It is against this tumultuous backdrop that we discuss His Majesty’s historic first Gracious Speech—the first King’s Speech for 70 years, and a speech that represents a profound moment in the stability and continuity of our unwritten constitution. That we were able to change our sovereign and change our Prime Minister twice last year and arrive at the Gracious Speech with entirely peaceful transitions of power is something that we should all find profoundly moving.
Our world seems increasingly dangerous, and around the perimeters of NATO we see terrible conflict and lots of mischief being played to stir up conflict. As a proud member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, I know how important it is that NATO countries continue to show unity and that our door is open to new members such as Sweden and Finland, as well as, of course, Ukraine, Moldova and, I hope, Georgia; I draw attention to my interest in that country. It is time that Putin realised that annexing his neighbours gives him more NATO on his borders, not less.
In His Majesty’s Gracious Speech, there was not a lot to distract the Treasury Committee; that will come in next week’s autumn statement—and let me add, in case colleagues are interested, that in addition to our Committee’s scrutiny of that statement, the Bank of England and the financial regulators, we currently have open inquiries into access to finance for small and medium-sized businesses, quantitative tightening, sexism in the City and central bank digital currencies.
I am glad that His Majesty, and also the Chancellor today, have emphasised the focus on increasing economic growth. I am glad that everyone now agrees that we should continue to take action to bring down inflation, ease the cost of living for families, and help businesses to fund new jobs and investment. I am also glad that Ministers will help the Bank of England to return inflation to target. It is the Bank of England that has raised mortgage rates, and the Governor of the Bank of England has acknowledged that the only increases that mortgage payers are now seeing are thanks to its efforts to control inflation and are nothing to do with the decisions of our now responsible Treasury.
These decisions will help household finances, reduce public sector debt and safeguard the financial security of our country, about which my constituents care deeply. Tomorrow we should see a milestone in the quest to reduce inflation: the market expects the consumer prices index to decline to 4.7%, and, combined with wage growth of more than 7%, that means that real wage growth has returned to our economy. We have also seen low pay fall dramatically: fewer than 10% of the many millions more people who are now in work are low paid, thanks to the national living wage.
There was one omission from the Gracious Speech, in respect of what I regard as constitutional sexism in our country. No steps were announced to end the indefensible system of “men only” seats in the other place. The 92 hereditary peerages are almost exclusively for men, and the Hereditary Titles (Female Succession) Bill, which I tried to get enacted in the last parliamentary Session in order to change that, sadly did not make it on to the statute book. I shall try again to get a good slot in the ballot for private Members’ Bills, and if I do so, I will reintroduce that Bill. If I do not get a good slot, I will invite my colleagues to take up the baton.
Alistair Strathern (Mid Bedfordshire) (Lab)
It is a real honour to be here, speaking in this King’s Speech debate, after a by-election campaign that went on for one or two months longer than I think some of us anticipated. However, it left me with friendships and experiences that I hope will stay with me throughout my lifetime. There are perhaps one or two memories of slightly scarring use of statistics in leaflets, but the maths teacher in me hopes that I will be able to forget those rather sooner.
Most of all, there was an overwhelming sense that the community I represent is looking for change, a change back to a stable Government looking to the long term with a plan to get our future back on track: to make sure our communities can plan for the future with confidence again, rather than worrying about where the next setback will come from; to ensure that our businesses of the future can invest with confidence again, and seize the benefits of the industrial transitions to come; and to ensure that our fantastic rural farming community can get back to ploughing on with confidence, putting food on our plates and looking after our fantastic countryside.
This being my maiden speech, I pay tribute to my predecessor, Nadine Dorries. I think it fair to say that we differ somewhat in politics and personal style, but it is clear to me that she broke through many barriers on her way to this House, and she should take great pride in that. I also want to thank not one but two Prime Ministers for their incredibly warm welcome to the House over recent weeks, although I have to warn the current Prime Minister that although there are some areas in which I differ from my predecessor, I intend to continue her proud tradition of robust opposition to this Government.
Let me give credit where it is due, though. I am aware that by-elections over recent weeks have deprived the Government of a number of Members to take up Front-Bench positions, but I have to applaud the Prime Minister’s surprise creativity yesterday in filling one of those spots. It has given me an unexpected opportunity to repay that bipartisanship, and to extend a warm welcome back to the former Prime Minister as he returns to frontline politics. As a fellow Aston Villa fan, though, I really hope that his time as Foreign Secretary will not deprive him of an opportunity to enjoy our beloved team at the London stadium. [Laughter.]
I am embarrassed to admit that if some time ago someone had told me that I would be standing here as the Labour MP for Mid Beds, I would have responded in language that could only have been described as rather unparliamentary. While they may come from very different backgrounds, my friends, my family—who are here today—my former pupils and my former colleagues at the Bank of England may all be having a similar reaction to seeing me here in the Chamber. However, I could not be prouder to have the honour of representing part of the county I grew up in. Although the name of my constituency may suggest otherwise, there is absolutely nothing middling about the beautiful 48 towns and villages of Mid Bedfordshire.
Taking full advantage of the convention that maiden speeches are made without interruption, I fully intend to make use of this opportunity to talk at great length, in great detail, about each and every one of those 48 towns and villages and what makes them special. I know that Members will welcome that: I can feel the enthusiasm in the Chamber. [Laughter.] I am sorry to disappoint some, however, but I will try to keep it brief, as I explain why those who were unable to join us on the by-election trail really did miss out.
From the beautiful village of Shillington to our picturesque market town of Shefford to our fantastic Norman monastery in Woburn, Mid Bedfordshire really does have something for everyone. In Cranfield, Members will find one of the best examples of our world-leading research, innovation and enterprise combined. Cranfield Aerospace is propelling forward green aviation, leading on proposals for hydrogen-fuelled flight based on research undertaken at Cranfield University. Along the Greensand Ridge, walkers will find some of the best countryside that Britain has to offer, from Woburn through Millbrook to Ampthill and beyond. That will also give Members the crucial chance to keep those steps up ahead of any future by-elections.
As they near Flitwick, Members will find Woburn Center Parcs, with which many families from right across the country will be familiar from getaways and celebrations over the years, and where hundreds of my constituents work all the year round to bring joy to holidaymakers. Let me draw the attention of the Whips on both sides of the House to the Subtropical Swimming Paradise. As well as a great place to spend an afternoon, I suggest that it might be a more amenable option for the Whips to offer Members should they approach them in the future, feeling the lure of an escape to the jungle that might be on the cards and wanting some advice about what to do next.
But as anyone who has been to my constituency will know, it is not just the place that is so special; it is the people living there. People like Rob and Sue who, having formed a closer bond with their community in Harlington through covid, wanted to do more to bring them together after lockdown. They founded the fantastic Hub and Spoke café, which continues to go from strength to strength in delighting residents, and also recently impressing as robust a critic as the odd “Newsnight” journalist. People like Richard and the whole Ampthill fireworks organising committee, who stepped up when the treasured local firework display was under threat back in 2011 to ensure that it continued. They put on a display each year that wows thousands and raises many thousands more for really fantastic charities across my constituency. And people like Lou and Shaun, who have put so much into making the Brewery Tap in Shefford such a beloved pillar of our community. They run charity breakfasts and organise armed services days, and crucially, they have recently had to put up with rather more visits from a certain Labour parliamentary candidate, now the MP, than any publican should have to endure, but they did so with a brave and smiling face.
From these stories, Mr Speaker, you might be under the impression that all is well in my constituency and that life for everyone is rosy, but sadly the great potential of my place is not on offer to all my residents. Take Margaret from Broom, who is in her 60s, partially sighted and in poor health. For months she had been waiting to see her GP. For months she had been phoning up at 8 am and waiting until 9 am, only to be told yet again that there were no appointments available. Yet again, she would have to phone back another day. After months of waiting, her understandable anxiety about her health got too much for her, and she had to spend the limited savings available to her to see a GP privately, paying for something that should have been free to her at the point of use. This cannot be right.
Or take Steven and his family in Stewartby. They did everything right. They saved up, worked hard and bought the family home of their dreams on a nearby estate. But when mortgage rates rocketed up, their repayments went up by nearly £400 a month. That is an amount that no ordinary family can be expected to have to hand, and it meant that hard choices had to be made: holidays cancelled, enriching opportunities forgone and lives narrowed under the brutal reality of having to budget for an economic situation that was not of their making.
Or take Sarah and her daughter. Sarah had to wait for over a year just to have the authority recognise the need for her daughter to have an education and health assessment, and after that, she has been waiting over two years for the assessment to take place. Every day in the meantime she has to go through the heartbreak of seeing her daughter struggling in a school that is doing everything it can to support her but is being set up to fail.
The courage shown by all these families, and the determination they have shown in the face of adversity, should give all of us encouragement and hope for the future, but they cannot be expected to build that better future alone. They need their representative to speak up for them in this place, and they need the Government to act for them with the urgency that these challenges demand. Because every hour Margaret spent waiting on that phone line, filled with anxiety, is an hour that she is never getting back. Because every holiday cancelled and every opportunity forgone by Steven’s family is a childhood memory that will never be made. Every day that Sarah’s daughter goes to school and is unable to thrive is a day’s potential that will be forever have been wasted. This is an urgency that I feel deeply and that I pledge to carry with me every day that I am lucky enough to serve my constituents in this House.
At a time when global and national challenges can be so wide ranging as to feel almost insurmountable, it is so important that our politicians remain bold in keeping hope alive. At a time when actors seek to exploit divisive and thorny issues to sow division among our communities, we need our politicians to stay principled and act with the integrity and good faith this House demands. At a time when the disruptive opportunities posed by the green transition and technological developments also bring with them understandable anxieties, we need our politicians not to run away from them but to be bold in bending those forces to the needs of our communities and seizing their benefits for our country.
I am under no illusion that I will face great challenges in living up to these principles in this place, but my door will always be open to anyone from right across the Chamber who is willing to work with me—and not just because of the number of times over the last few weeks that I have managed to lock myself out of my office. To those back home in Mid Bedfordshire, I would like to say thank you. Thank you for the positivity and warmth you showed me every day on the campaign trail. Thank you for the ideas and creativity you brought to me every month that filled me with such hope for the future. But most of all, thank you for the privilege of my life: the opportunity to serve you here as our MP.
Sir Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)
I warmly commend the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Alistair Strathern) on what I thought was an excellent maiden speech. The movement has a funny way of delivering its ends these days, but I think it has come up with an excellent candidate in him and I wish him an enjoyable career in this place and serving his constituents. As he rightly says, it is the privilege of one’s life to represent where you grew up and I know he is obviously very aware of that, and given that we have all had the opportunity to enjoy Mid Bedfordshire at length over recent months, I share his diagnosis of its charm.
It is an absolute privilege to open the Back-Bench speeches this afternoon on the main topic of our debate, because my community, like the hon. Gentleman’s, is also looking for change. On Teesside, we need no lessons about the legacies of the last Labour Government. Frankly, we have had to live with them for too long: an industrial base abandoned; lives blighted by welfarism and low unemployment; and public services characterised by mediocrity and failure. This comes the week after British Steel announced that steelmaking is coming back to Teesside, which is a decision of huge significance for my local economy and follows a string of major successes, from the SeAH offshore wind factory, the new Net Zero Teesside power station and carbon capture and storage—all the things that our Mayor Ben Houchen, working together in lockstep with the Conservative Government, is helping to deliver for a part of the country that needs this success and opportunity.
I look forward to the autumn statement this week, and I welcome the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Laura Trott) to her position in my former bailiwick as Chief Secretary. The autumn statement represents an enormously important moment and all of us—on the Government side of the House at least—want to see pro-growth measures, the lowering of the tax burden when possible and a robust commitment not to take us back to the disastrous economic prescriptions of the Labour party. We have to recognise that it is at a time of global challenge here at home that we have some of the most important policy levers to improve our constituents’ lives.
I warmly welcome the Government’s commitment to act on leasehold and renters reform, but I also believe that we need to recognise the need in the housing sector for serious, sustained reconsideration of our planning laws if we are to ensure that the potential of this country is fulfilled. Ultimately, the honest truth is that we need to earn growth and not duck the fundamental reasons why it is so lacklustre. Many of us were aghast at the decision last week to block a new, much-needed £2.5 billion datacentre on the site of an old quarry adjacent to the M25. It was blocked on the basis that it would
“harm the openness of the green belt”
and would have been visible from bridges over the motorway. This is madness. We can delude ourselves all we want about being a science superpower or a new silicon valley, but if we do not will the means, we will not secure the ends that this country needs to see.
Our crippling lack of predictable, secure land supply is testament to a wider political failure. That applies on a cross-party basis. Ultimately, one could point the finger at the Mayor of London and his dismal record on housing just as much as one could at my own side of the House, but we need to move forward on a cross-party basis at local and national Government levels to achieve a better system of planning. Ultimately, the current discretionary system is not delivering for my constituents or for my country, and I believe that a move, as the Growth Commission has suggested this morning, to a zonal planning system along the lines suggested by my right hon. Friend Boris Johnson when he was Prime Minister and by my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) when he was Secretary of State, would be the right thing to do.
Schroders has estimated that house prices are at their least affordable compared with earnings since ’76. That is not the long hot summer of 1976 but 1876, the year Victoria became Empress of India. All our infrastructure capacity is being hamstrung by the underlying problem that we cannot build quickly enough where we need to. Roads, rail, data, energy and, most of all, good affordable homes are being delayed, made more expensive and in some cases being prevented entirely by this British disease.
Apart from the usual Westminster knockabout that a debate like this inevitably engenders, I think there is a serious point for Members across the House to consider, which is that there is a broken planning system at the heart of our society. Whether in central Bedfordshire or in Middlesbrough, we need to do more to make sure we can unlock growth, jobs, homes and opportunity.
Our politics deserves better and the public deserve better. This is not a right versus left issue; it is about growth versus stagnation, prosperity versus poverty or ambition versus relative decline. I hope that, over the months ahead, the Government will do much to take forward an ambitious agenda in this space.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
I pay tribute to the outstanding speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Alistair Strathern). It was one of the very best maiden speeches I have heard in this House. It had humour and seriousness. He succinctly described his predecessor in a couple of sentences, and in one sentence he demonstrated his superior knowledge of football compared with the Foreign Secretary. Many people watching across the country will now be reflecting, “If that is the quality of representative we could get by voting for change, perhaps we will give it a go at the next general election, too.”
Housing was not mentioned in the King’s Speech. We have a housing crisis in this country, and both sides of the House share an aspiration to build 300,000 homes a year. I agree with the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Sir Simon Clarke) that we are not building enough homes—that is true—but who has just changed the planning system to take away housing targets from local areas? We will never get to 300,000 unless each area has its own housing targets that add up to that number.
A further problem is that we will never hit 300,000 through the private sector alone. The Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee produced a report four years ago saying that we need to provide at least 90,000 units of social housing through housing associations and councils. The Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee is holding an inquiry now, and all the evidence shows that we simply do not have the resources.
There is a challenge for both Front Benches. We will have to find more money at some point to build more social housing in this country, both to get the numbers we need and to get the numbers that people can afford, as people cannot afford to go into the market to buy in the current circumstances. So many people have to save for years, even beyond retirement, for a deposit on a home. Rising mortgage costs are certainly not helping.
There was a promise to abolish section 21 notices in the private rented sector, but we are now told the Bill will wait until some future time—we do not know when—when the court system has been reformed. Yes, the court system needs to be reformed, and we ought to have a dedicated housing court, but the cost to local authorities of dealing with homelessness and temporary accommodation has risen by 50% in the last two years alone. That is due to section 21 notices, the local housing allowance freeze—many people cannot afford even to rent a home in the private sector—and the Government’s asylum policy, which is all over the place and is putting great pressure on local authorities in some parts of the country to house people while they are having their asylum position confirmed. We have a massive challenge, and there is nothing in the King’s Speech to deal with it.
We ought to address how we build homes for the future. Four years ago, the Government had a working party on modern construction methods, but they have forgotten about it. They have given up. I went to visit Lighthouse, a firm in my constituency that has just taken on 100 workers. The firm has doubled in size and is venturing into modern methods of construction for social housing. The Government should be encouraging that at national level, but there is nothing at all. There is no policy, no strategy and no plan for the future.
Levelling up was not mentioned in the King’s Speech either. Germany saw the inequality across the country after reunification, so it had a 30-year programme. The inequality in this country is now as great as it was in Germany on reunification, yet all we have had is £4 billion in scattered pots of money for local authorities to bid for. There is no strategy and no long-term solutions.
Levelling up, again, appears to have been forgotten but, if we are to get our economy growing as a whole, we have to address the disparities in gross value added, productivity and income levels between different parts of the country. Productivity in the north of England is now lower than in the Czech Republic. GVA in our major cities is lower than the national average, which is completely different from what happens in Germany and France. We need to get the whole country and the whole economy growing but, again, there is no plan, no strategy and no long-term future for this country.
There are one or two good things in the King’s Speech, and I welcome them. We have not yet seen the details of the leasehold reforms, but certainly stopping the building of new leasehold houses and allowing people more easily to purchase their freehold are good measures that we need to implement as soon as possible. Addressing the problems of service charges and outrageous permission fees also needs to be in the Bill. I also welcome the proposals on football regulation. It is about getting a fairer distribution of funding and giving fans the legal right to be consulted on important things that affect their club; again, we will have to see the details.
Finally, I completely condemn Hamas’s attack on innocent Israeli citizens, but I condemn just as strongly what Israel is now doing. The killing of innocent women, children and other civilians in Gaza is not acceptable and cannot continue as it is. I want to see a humanitarian pause and an end to the blockade to get aid into Gaza, and I want to see that as the basis for a ceasefire. A ceasefire cannot just be announced; both parties need to sit down and agree to one. That has to be done, and it has to be a stepping-stone to moving forward to a two-state solution: safety for Israel and a free Palestine, free of Israeli occupation. That is what we should be moving towards.
Dr Liam Fox (North Somerset) (Con)
I also welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Laura Trott) to her new post. Her promotion is richly deserved.
One thing on which I am sure we can all agree in this House is the need to create non-inflationary growth in this country. The question is how we go about it and, to some extent, how we define it. I say to my hon. Friend that gross domestic product, as a measure of growth, is becoming an increasingly less relevant index in our economy because, although economic growth has been low across the western economies, balance sheets and net worth have tripled; there is a dislocation there.
GDP needs to take domestic unpaid labour, such as child or elderly care, into account. It excludes a huge proportion of what happens online, as well as intangibles such as intellectual property, and is much less suited to a service economy than to a manufacturing economy. It also has the perverse incentive of making us want to encourage immigration, rather than discourage it. When we have the wrong analysis, we are likely to have the wrong targets and, ultimately, the wrong policy. That needs to change. We need to concentrate on wealth creation, which happens when we take unique IP from any of us and turn it into a good or service that does not currently exist, or into a better good or service than exists today.
We have a problem that, in a capitalist economy, we cannot get that sort of wealth creation if there is not sufficient access to capital. One problem in the UK is that 85% of company scale-ups here are done with bank lending and 15% are done with private equity, whereas it is 80:20 in the other direction in the United States. We need to have deeper and wider access to private equity and venture capital in this country if we are to maximise the benefits of our hugely creative and innovative population, and if we are to stop the IP leakage, especially to the United States.
We also need to create more wealth by improving our share of global trade, by which I mean the share of global markets that are expanding fastest, and not our obsession with the European Union. The latest Institute of Economic Affairs report shows that trade continued to grow between 2016 and the conclusion of the Brexit transition in 2020, indicating that Brexit had no main effect on trade. UK goods exports rose by 13.5% to EU countries and by 14.3% to non-EU countries between 2019 and 2022, so we need to put that issue behind us and instead focus on the world’s growing markets. The Office for Budget Responsibility forecast said that Brexit barriers would result in a 15% drop in trade volumes, contributing to a 4% lower GDP in the long run, and that is already clearly wrong. I ask those on the Government Front Bench to request from the OBR a much more updated and realistic assessment of where our trade sits at the present time.
Contrary to what many people will perceive, and certainly to what the Labour party will tend to suggest, 82.5% of all the jobs in this country are in the private sector and only 17.5% are in the public sector. From listening to our media and politicians, we would often think this was 50:50. Some 61% of those private sector jobs are in small and medium-sized enterprises. I know that if we are able to cut taxes, many of my colleagues will want to see personal taxes cut, but our priority should be to cut taxes for small businesses, because they are the ones that create prosperity and employment. They are the mainstay of our economy. In particular, I would like to see more Government action on late payment, particularly by local authorities; this is taxpayers’ money that should be getting through to SMEs on time, and the fact that it is not is a scandal. I would also like to see the retail, hospitality and leisure business rates discount extended to give many of the companies struggling in that sector the help they require.
We also need to look at other elements, including the broadband infrastructure in our country. Constituencies like mine still contain places with no broadband. It is ridiculous that we are putting public money into the programme and yet leaving parts of our economy without any of the advantages they require to participate fully in our economy. We were told that we would get that broadband at the end of 2022 and then we were told it would be in spring 2023. It was then to be October 2023, and now we have no idea when we will get it. I say to the Minister that the Treasury needs to give a kick up the proverbial to other Departments to make sure they are carrying out the promises that the Government made at the last election to stop some of the limitations in the rural economy and to get that infrastructure in place.
Finally, I want to say a quick word about the Bank of England. It has operational independence, but where is the accountability? We were told that inflation would be transitory and that there were external influences involved. I looked at the letters between the Governor of the Bank of England and the Chancellor, and not once did they mention monetary stability or the fact that we had had an expansion of our money supply for far too long, at far too great a level. These are not rounding errors. If we get extra inflation created by monetary expansion that is too fast, it will affect the poorest in our society and the balance of our public finances, and it will cost taxpayers money. I have no problem with the Bank of England having operational independence, but what I want to know is: when it gets it wrong, who is it accountable to? Ultimately, it is the taxpayers and the people of this country who pay the bill, not those who are well paid in the Bank of England.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
After 13 tortuous years, the policy programme in the King’s Speech reaffirms once more that this Conservative Government are out of ideas and out of time. Unfortunately, the resurrection of a former Prime Minister will not save them here. Given Lord Cameron’s disregard for standards in public life, which included dubious dealings during the covid pandemic on behalf of Lex Greensill, who is still being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office, it says a lot that the Prime Minister is prepared to appoint him despite that.
The Prime Minister needs to take responsibility for the consequences of 13 years of regressive economic policies and economic mismanagement, which have led to a flatlining economy and the misery that so many people are facing in this cost of living crisis. Over the past 13 years, we have seen inequalities widen, as covid has so cruelly exposed and amplified. Once again, we have seen the north-south health divide revealed, with 17% more covid deaths in the north than in the rest of England. Some here will recall the Black report in 1982, which was quickly followed by the health divide report in 1984, where for the first time the extent of the north-south health divide was revealed.
Some 40 years on, the same thing has been allowed to happen again under yet more Conservative Governments. It did not just happen; Professor Sir Michael Marmot warned us about this in 2010, 2016 and early 2020 in his various reports about the UK’s declining life expectancy, which was driven by socioeconomic inequalities. He made very sensible recommendations to address the situation but, again, where were those in this King’s Speech?
Worryingly, recent analysis found that a deprived area in the north of England had a higher level of covid deaths compared with an equally deprived area in the south; there was an “amplification of deprivation” effect. Contrary to levelling up the country, this Government have not learned any lessons from covid and why the north was worse affected than the south, or why people on the lowest incomes, those who were disabled and those who were from an ethnic minority community were more likely to get sick and die. As the Northern Health Science Alliance’s recent report shows, the implications of these regional health inequalities on the economy are vast. Before the pandemic, people in the north were living, on average, two years less than people in the rest of England. In addition to living shorter lives, they were living in poorer health for longer, were at increased risk of losing their job because of that ill health, and were put on lower wages if and when they returned to work.
The NHSA estimates that £13.2 billion a year would be added to regional GDP if the health of the population in the north was equivalent to that of the rest of England, as a result of improved productivity. The disproportionate ill health that people experience in the north reflects decades of under-investment there after the decline of many traditional industries, the ensuing poverty and inequality that accompanied that, and the fact that this has persisted over many generations. Where was the cross-departmental working to ensure health in all policies in the King’s Speech? Where is the joined-up working with the devolved nations and regions? Where are the fair funding formulae, not just for the NHS but for education, local authorities and public services as a whole?
Economic inactivity across the UK has stayed at about 21 % for a number of years, with a short blip in 2022, with covid. The Government’s response to that should not be to penalise people who are sick or disabled by withdrawing even more social security support, for example, through sanctions or cuts to universal credit, as was reported yesterday, but to provide the right type of support for people in the right way. I am calling on the Chancellor to ensure that he increases social security support by at least inflation. I also hope he listens to the many charities in this area, including the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the Trussell Trust and the Child Poverty Action Group, and supports an essentials guarantee pegging UC to the cost of basic essentials. Without that, I fear that the 200 claimant deaths that the Department for Work and Pensions has investigated over the past three years, which we know are the tip of the iceberg, will increase.
The Prime Minister said he wanted to lead a compassionate Government; ensuring a compassionate social security system that will help to reduce the poverty and inequality that millions are experiencing is just one example of how he can do that. The absence of this compassion for our fellow citizens, and indeed for our brothers and sisters overseas, is revealing uncomfortable truths about the attitudes of some to our common humanity. We believe that as human beings we are all equal, with equal rights, as set out in the universal declaration of human rights. It is evident not just in the covid inquiry, but every day in foreign and domestic policy, and in the policy programme in this King’s Speech, which embeds rather than tackles inequality, that for this Government some people are more equal than others.
Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)
It is a pleasure and an honour to contribute to the debate. I congratulate His Majesty on delivering the King’s Speech last week, following in the footsteps of his late, great mother and undertaking his constitutional duties to Parliament and our country. I also wish him a happy birthday today.
With the autumn statement just eight days away, it is clear that we need to see ambitious fiscal measures introduced to complement the economic growth provisions outlined in the King’s Speech. Tackling inflation has rightly been one of the Government’s priorities: we understand the corrosive effects of inflation on the economy, economic growth and households around the country. We need the rate to fall further, to manageable levels, but we must also increase supply through reforms and lower business costs to ultimately help bring down inflation.
There are many measures I would like to touch on in the time I have available. One, which I spoke about earlier this year, is the 5p reduction in fuel duty that the Chancellor maintained in the spring, which was incredibly welcome. Such measures are essential, as they can make a huge difference to households and businesses across the country. Against an inflationary backdrop—although we know it is decreasing—this matters because it helps to bring costs down across the whole economy and, importantly, can help businesses and motorists. I say that as an MP from Essex, where we are proud of white van man and where drivers come into London, in particular. Let us not forget that there are other pressures on motorists in London because of the additional burdens they now face, such as the ultra low emission zone.
Alongside that, there is the issue of business rates, which I often speak about. They are a fixed cost to businesses, but actually impede growth on our high streets. As we know, our high streets and town centres are struggling for many reasons. If addressed in a considered way by Government, a freeze in the business rates multiplier can help small businesses and firms to keep their costs down. I press the Government to maintain the freeze in the multiplier and look at reforms to lower the cost burden of business rates, which is having such a corrosive impact.
Some 80% of my constituents are employed by SMEs, which is 20% higher than the national average. We are very proud of that. Essex is an entrepreneurial county and we are risk takers. We like running our own businesses and being self-employed, but that means that the share of the burden on those smaller businesses is much higher. As Conservatives in government, we must always look to tackle that.
To return to my other favourite subject, the Government are aware of my concerns about the OECD plans for minimum levels of corporation tax and the way the Government are rolling them out. I fundamentally maintain the position I have taken on this issue, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer has given me assurances over the assessment and analysis that will be carried out of its impact. We touched on this during discussions about the Finance (No. 2) Act 2023, but those measures will make our country less competitive. They will have an overall impact on businesses, foreign direct investment and investment in our country, so I will want to press Ministers on the reviews of them going forward.
I also maintain my position on income tax. The tax system needs to be simplified and fairer, and we need to reduce the burdens on families and businesses, including levels of personal taxation. One of the core missions of the Conservative party is to support economic freedom and liberty by cutting taxes, ensuring people can keep more of what they earn and encouraging the development of a property-owning democracy, which has been a topic of discussion in the Chamber this afternoon.
Universally, we in this Chamber know we need reforms on planning and that we need to do more on social housing, as well as growing housing across the country in a sustainable and suitable way. People are struggling and the cost of owning property, or even getting a foot on the housing ladder, is astronomical, so we need to do more. I could go on to other statistics, but in the interest of time I will raise another couple of local issues.
In Essex, we are crying out for infrastructure investment. I will happily write business cases to the Treasury on dualling the A120 and expanding the A12. We have had a tremendously successful programme of investment on the great eastern main line because of a business case that went to the Treasury 12 years ago. We are proud of that, and that growth is now paying off.
I want to press the case on pylons and the Winser review. In Essex, we have concerns, which the Treasury must listen to, about the implications of the review. I support the wider measures on energy production and the introduction of the Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill, but more needs to be done.
To conclude, I welcome the framework of measures, but we have to look at the detail on supporting supply-side reform, lowering taxes for businesses, making sure our economy grows in a sustainable way and dealing with the challenges of inflation, so that we ensure our economy grows for decades to come.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
The King’s Speech opened with an aspiration to raise economic growth, but was devoid of a single clue to how the Government intend to achieve that. There is nothing about a skills development strategy, nothing to address declining apprenticeship numbers for 16 to 18-year-olds, and nothing on the investment required to get Britain working again. The Chancellor now wants us to believe that all will be put right in the autumn statement—methinks we’re going to need a bigger statement. The Government foisted Brexit on us without a plan to implement it, so what does the Prime Minister do in his hour of need? He brings back the planless man whose reckless behaviour caused so much difficulty. It is like Oliver Hardy asking Stanley for help.
At 6.7%, inflation is still a long way from the 2% target, with little evidence that Government action, rather than commodity price reductions, is accounting for the limited progress that we have seen. In fact, the interest rate rises forced on the Bank of England are more likely to damage business and living standards. Increased mortgages will cost UK households £9 billion over this year and next.
How will we raise economic growth with a Government who cannot even secure our ability to produce our own steel? Some 2,000 jobs are at risk in Scunthorpe while the Government do nothing. Just how safe and secure should anyone feel with a Government who have entrusted our steelmaking to the Chinese?
Last year, this country experienced what happens when Governments speculate with unfunded tax plans. There is always a price to pay when gamblers lose control, but it is the British people who are paying that price with wrecked living standards. The behaviour of the Conservative party has destroyed the prospects of families the length and breadth of this country. When will the Government take responsibility for the misery that they have caused? This is a Government of 25 tax rises, but what do we have to show for it? We have crumbling schools, an NHS on its knees, crime out of control, living standards plummeting and even life expectancy falling in 21st-century Tory Britain. The truth is that virtually nothing works anymore. There is hardly a family in the land, apart from the covid profiteers, who can claim to be better off than they were 13 years ago. Just think what we could do with the estimated £7.2 billion of fraudulent covid payments over which this Prime Minister presided and which this Government are prepared to write off.
Lest it appears that I think there is nothing of benefit in this King’s Speech, I welcome action to curtail drip pricing and subscription traps, which I hope will eventually be delivered via the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill. It is long overdue.
It is time that online businesses paid their fair share of taxes. It is time to breathe new life into our high streets by abandoning outdated business rates, and—I say this in Respect for Shopworkers Week—cracking down on retail crime, which, according to new research from Thruvision and Retail Economics, will reach £7.9 billion this year. It is turning shops into dangerous work environments and no-go areas for too many customers.
Let us think of the possibilities for jobs, growth and wealth creation in life sciences, creative industries, the green economy and financial services if only we had a Government who knew the value of an industrial strategy and were prepared to secure the necessary investments. Instead, we have a Government who make us a laughing stock over their inability to build a modern railway, and manage to let HS2 end up £30 billion over budget. Just who will be called to account for that incompetence?
I want to be able to offer hope to the brilliant Kath’s Café in Druids Heath as it struggles with increasing supply costs and customers’ declining living standards, to Cameron-Price, a great local manufacturing business that is toiling to find the skilled workers it needs, and to Loaf organic bakery, a popular and entrepreneurial venture, but without any Government support in the face of crippling electricity costs. We need a King’s Speech to offer hope to the homeless, to support well-paid jobs, to tackle the mental health crisis and to address the gangs and the scourge of antisocial behaviour disfiguring our communities. We need a King’s Speech to get Britain working again. This is not it.
Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con)
I warmly welcome my hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to her new position. Last week we were all allowed to see the historic spectacle of the King giving his first speech to this House. There are many historic spectacles associated with the speech, and today, entertainingly, the shadow Chancellor played her role, which is to claim that nothing has ever gone right with the Government and that there is nothing in the King’s Speech at all.
Of course, on bald numbers the shadow Chancellor is wrong, because it is clear that since 2010 the UK has had the third-highest growth in the G7 and 3.9 million more people are employed. However, that does not mean that growth should not be a priority, especially given the long-term supply002Dside shocks this economy has had from covid and the current crisis in Ukraine—although that seems to be forgotten at the moment—causing other energy shocks. It is therefore encouraging that the preoccupation of the King’s Speech and of this Government is to promote economic growth.
It is right to start by talking about supporting the Bank of England in taking measures that will reduce inflation. Inflation is economically corrosive, and it is the job of Governments to be financially responsible. When inflation is stable at lower levels, we see the encouragement of personal savings, which is a benefit, we see less pressure for people from what is described as the cost of living, and we see businesses investing. It reduces some of the inefficiencies that economists talk about and rigidity in the economy. It is key that we take measures and encourage the Bank of England to bring down inflation in order to have higher growth.
One such measure is to ensure that, for the next part of the 21st century, we look at the industries that both the Government and the private sector can foster so that we see sustained economic growth. The United Kingdom has the chance to be the world leader in many high-tech industries. The shadow Chancellor was right to welcome what the Government did in the spring statement with 100% expensing; it is the right thing to do, because it encourages businesses to invest. However, we can make it permanent only if we do away with some of the grants and take other actions to make it fiscally neutral, and it is of more benefit if it does not go only into plant and machinery. I urge the Government to look at a system that allows research-intensive industries to put research and development costs into full expensing as well.
The industries of the future were mentioned in the King’s Speech. I welcome the measures that we will see and discuss in the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill and the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill. Another industry of the future in which we must ensure that we remain a world leader, having been a world leader in it for the last 40 years, is the car industry. We must do more to encourage the electric vehicle industry. There are some simple measures that the Government could enact to encourage more people to take up electric vehicles. The first is the stabilisation and equalisation of VAT, so that people charging their vehicles in a public or a private place pay the same rate. The second is to put a presumption on local authorities to have byelaws permitting safety gullies, to allow charging by those who do not have access to their own off-street parking. Those are simple things that the Government will do to encourage growth.
The Government rightly recognise the importance of the quality of infrastructure and getting more people to invest in it. One thing that was not in the King’s Speech but is being circulated is the new rail reform Bill. I welcome some of the measures in that Bill, but we will need to look again at it because there is far too much emphasis on what the public sector does, and not enough on what the private sector could do—it could do more.
I welcome, and hope to see more use of, initiatives such as the Mansion House compact. I encourage the Government to think about how first-time buyers could use their pension funds to fund deposits, using something similar to what we have with self-invested personal pensions, which allow people to take out 25% tax free.
Economic growth for everybody across the world is difficult to achieve at the moment, but there are measures in the King’s Speech—as, I have no doubt, there will be in next week’s autumn statement—that will allow that growth to prosper. I welcome the King’s Speech.
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
The question that all our constituents are asking is: “Is that it? After 13 years, is that all this Government have to offer?” This is a King’s Speech so pointless that it could be an answer on the game show. It comes from a Prime Minister who is acting like one of the contestants on “I’m a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!”—desperate to do anything to stay in charge.
Frankly, our constituents deserve better. Many Members have spoken about the deep-seated challenges in our country, such as the lack of growth. After 13 years of this Government, we have a society in which the bank of mum and dad determines outcomes, not talent. In the last decade alone, housing and stocks and shares have earned far more than any hard work or effort that our constituents could undertake, because of sluggish productivity and the Government’s failure to invest in our communities.
Our kids cannot get apprenticeships; they are struggling to stay in university. [Interruption.] The Minister is shaking her head. I invite her to come and meet my local residents, who beg me for apprenticeships. They are still reeling from the impact of the pandemic. They are scarred by where they live and who their parents are, because that is what determines their outcomes. It is a mark of shame for us that we live in a country in which the exam results of black children are, on average, almost 10% lower than those of their white counterparts. Nothing is changing any time soon, and the King’s Speech will do little.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) set out the housing crisis. When I see the other crises that we are facing, I suppose I should be careful what I wish for, because when faced with the climate crisis, the Government’s response is to go hard on fossil fuels rather than recognising that renewables are cheaper and that, if we are to tackle both the cost of living crisis and the climate crisis, we should put those things together rather than asking our communities to choose.
Of course, nothing in the King’s Speech deals with the elephant in the room that is Brexit. I am sad that the right hon. Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) is no longer in his place after his valiant attempt to claim that Brexit has had a positive impact on our country and communities. The economic data suggests otherwise, so let me give him some other figures. Eurostat figures show that exports have fallen by 14% in the last year and that UK to EU trade of goods is down 16%. European Central Bank research shows that 77% of firms in this country say that the Brexit deal is not helping their sales. Indeed, our constituents are facing a £250 surcharge on their food bills alone.
The King’s Speech could have dealt with the fact that, in the coming year, Brexit’s impact on inflation will get a lot worse. Our constituents will face a £43-a-time charge on anything imported into the UK. Food will get more expensive—not my words but those of the Government’s own record. There will a £10 charge to enter the UK. What will that do to our stuttering tourism industry, which is trying to recover after the pandemic? The King’s Speech is silent on all those challenges, and tries to suggest that trade through the CPTPP will make up for the trade lost on our doorstep.
The King’s Speech offers a Criminal Justice Bill, which I welcome. It is time that we finally sorted out the inequality that means that my Walthamstow constituents have fewer human rights when it comes to choosing to have an abortion than constituents in Belfast. Sentencing guidelines will not deal with the fact that hundreds of women are now being prosecuted under outdated abortion legislation. It is time for decriminalisation, and perhaps one of the few positive things we can do in the year to come is to sort that.
I wish to correct the record. Earlier I said that in the time it has taken for the Government to fail to do anything about buy now, pay later lenders, the number of people borrowing from these companies has doubled—it has actually tripled. Forty per cent of people who are borrowing from buy now, pay later companies say they are in direct financial difficulty because of it, and these companies are benefiting from the Government’s failure to regulate them. I care as much about legal loan sharks in the private sector as I do about those in the public sector. The regulation of these companies is long overdue, and if this Government does not do it, waiting for a Labour Government to do it will mean another year and another explosion in the millions of people borrowing from them.
In the next year, we will see a crisis in our childcare industry, because the Government have pushed up the cost of childcare without providing the subsidy for it. We need to go further. It is not just about providing high-quality childcare; it is about helping every family to make the choices they want. Only 5% of dads report taking shared parental leave, because our shared parental leave system does not work; it asks the mum’s employer to pay the costs, rather than sharing them. Some 80% of dads say they do not have enough time with their kids as a result. These are challenges that we could deal with, but this King’s Speech will do nothing to solve them.
As I said, public sector legal loan sharks need to be dealt with, too. In the next year alone, private finance initiative deals will cost this country £9.8 billion in repayments. PFI is something that all Governments have used, and we need to tackle it. We have £200 billion-worth of commitments coming our way—money that could be going back into our public services if we fought for a better deal for our taxpayers.
What we are seeing is small responses to big challenges, not least to the biggest challenge of all, which is the uncertainty and conflict around the world. Everybody in this Chamber wants the bloodshed to stop in Israel and Gaza. Everybody in this Chamber, I hope, stands with people like my constituent whose parent has been kidnapped by Hamas and wants to see them returned and to see the dismantling of Hamas as a terrorist organisation. A humanitarian pause would require the same type of negotiation as a ceasefire. Let us stand together with our international partners and put pressure on those partners who can put pressure on Hamas to get people round the table. Let us challenge Israel to stand up for international humanitarian law, and let us stop the bloodshed. This King’s Speech does nothing to achieve that, but it could have done.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate on the King’s Speech. It was poignant to attend the House of Lords last week to hear His Majesty’s first King’s Speech. It is perhaps appropriate that this debate takes place on Charles III’s 75th birthday, and we all wish him a very happy day indeed.
At the beginning of this Parliament, almost four years ago, I do not think anyone could have predicted the events that would unfold after just a few months, with the global covid-19 pandemic. It is quite remarkable and not by accident that the UK economy has had one of the fastest and strongest recoveries of any in Europe, including Germany and France, and elsewhere in the world, including Japan. I welcome the investment of over £20 billion a year in research and development. It is no accident that this country is decarbonising and reaching our 2050 net zero carbon emission goals more than any other country in the G7.
I welcome the Trade (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership) Bill, which was announced in the King’s Speech. Yesterday evening, the New Zealand high commissioner was here in Parliament. I welcome the trans-Pacific partnership, which truly is a demonstration of global Britain and global reach post Brexit.
We are an island trading nation, and that is why economic growth has to be supported by a thriving British aviation sector. It has suffered hugely as a result of the pandemic but is coming back extremely strongly. I am delighted that later this month, Virgin Atlantic Airways, which is headquartered in my constituency, will be flying the first ever 100% sustainable aviation fuel fight, transatlantic from London to New York. However, we need to do more to support the sustainable aviation fuels industry, which has the potential to create over 100,000 jobs in this country. It is better for our economic and energy security to produce SAF here in the United Kingdom than to be reliant on importing it from abroad, with all the expense involved.
Another area in which we could boost our economic growth would be to use a Brexit freedom to introduce duty-free shopping on arrivals. Most of the rest of the world does so: parts of Europe that are not in the European Union have introduced duty-free shopping, including Norway and Switzerland, as have many other countries around the world. It is a freedom that we should be using. It would not cost the Treasury any lost revenue, but it would onshore those sales to UK shops and create employment.
Turning to animal welfare issues, I very much welcome the livestock exports Bill. Live animal exports for slaughter and fattening have not taken place for a number of years, but certainly in the past, that was an extremely cruel practice that caused great distress to animals who were trafficked over long distances to meet a very sad end. It is very good that that practice will come to an end in law, so that it can no longer take place. That is another Brexit animal welfare benefit, and something that my late mum would have been very pleased about. Many years ago, she often used to write to her local MP calling for an end to live animal exports. It is great that that is now being achieved.
Finally, a manifesto commitment that the Conservative party made four years ago and that featured in most of the main parties’ political manifestos, was the banning of trophy hunting imports—the import of endangered species’ body parts into Great Britain. In the last Session, I tabled such a ban in the form of a private Member’s Bill, but unfortunately that Bill was filibustered, blocked and eventually timed out by a very small number of peers—one of them a hereditary peer—in the other place. The ban passed this elected House unanimously, has widespread public support and was a Government commitment. If the Minister wants to intervene on me to say that the Government will bring forward that legislation in this Session, I would be delighted. I understand that she probably does not have that brief in front of her, but hopefully the Government can confirm that they will legislate in Government time to achieve that manifesto commitment, end what is a very cruel practice, and lead the world further in animal welfare measures.
Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)
It is a pleasure to speak in this King’s Speech debate on securing economic growth; I only wish the Government had offered us something in His Majesty’s Gracious Speech that would turn that vision into a reality. This Conservative Government have wrecked the economy, and they continue to make everyone else pay for it. They have given tax breaks to big banks and the oil and gas giants while the rest of us have suffered higher taxes, higher mortgage bills and spiralling inflation. The King’s Speech revealed a Government with absolutely no interest in tackling the cost of living crisis. There was nothing to address food price inflation, nor to support struggling households with their soaring mortgage payments, and it ignored the need to protect the most vulnerable from high energy bills this winter.
If there is one thing that all parts of the political spectrum can agree on, it is that the UK needs to grow its economy. Under the Conservatives, so much of the UK’s potential is going untapped, with anaemic growth, weaker investment and falling living standards. Years of stagnating growth look set to persist, with the most recent figures showing that our economy has flatlined, as household budgets are squeezed by higher interest rates. It could not be clearer that the Government’s approach has failed.
Unprecedented economic challenges have only been compounded by a Conservative Government who have no cohesive economic strategy, and who have chopped and changed time after time. A perfect example is the Prime Minister’s decision to row back on crucial green commitments—a decision that not only jeopardises our fight against climate change and keeps families stuck in draughty homes paying higher energy bills, but destroys the certainty that businesses need to invest in a greener future. It moves the goalposts, throwing into question carefully crafted business plans. What a colossal wasted opportunity for the climate, green growth and new jobs, and this is yet more proof that this Government do not have a plan—not for our planet or for our economy.
If the UK is to keep up with our international partners, we urgently need to restore business confidence and boost investment in growth industries. At the heart of the Liberal Democrat plan to achieve this is an ambitious industrial strategy, which would co-ordinate policy across key areas and set strategic objectives, such as supercharging green technologies, creating good local jobs and boosting international trade. It would create stability, give the private sector clear investment signals and revitalise business conditions by equipping our workforce with the skills it needs, investing in key infrastructure, encouraging the adoption of digital technology and creating financial markets that truly work for all businesses. Yet at every opportunity, the Government refuse to set a clear direction of travel or to implement a cohesive long-term industrial strategy, and this King’s Speech was no different.
One piece of legislation I was pleased to see is the Pedicabs (London) Bill, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) on all her work in securing this commitment from the Government. This Bill will create a regulatory framework for rickshaws. While the intention for this legislation may be to control the unruly service that operates in central London, I believe that rickshaws could be a real game changer for those in my constituency and elsewhere who cannot access active travel. This could be a particular benefit as an interim transport solution across Hammersmith bridge, which has been closed to motor traffic for almost five years. I was pleased to meet the hon. Member for Copeland (Trudy Harrison) when she was a Minister in the Department for Transport to discuss the potential opportunities for rickshaws in my constituency. Now that the Bill has finally been introduced, I would welcome a further meeting with the Department for Transport to discuss the possibility for Hammersmith bridge and the surrounding areas to run a pilot scheme for a new licensed pedicab service.
Of the 21 Bills offered in this King’s Speech, there was not a single piece of legislation to tackle the crisis facing our NHS and nothing to ensure that the 7.8 million people on waiting lists can access treatment. Mental health is one of the top issues in my constituency, and I know that many of my constituents are deeply disappointed that plans to reform the Mental Health Act 1983 have seemingly been scrapped. My constituents were also looking to the King’s Speech to provide a solution to the sewage crisis polluting our waterways, but it completely fails to introduce measures that would stop water companies pumping sewage into rivers and oceans, and it fails to introduce a new tougher water regulator to hold water companies to account.
In my constituency of Richmond Park, Thames Water has become synonymous with poor-quality work and dubious environmental practices. Alongside failing to attend burst water mains for days and taking weeks to repair relatively simple issues, the company is spending millions on a project intended to replace water from the River Thames near Ham and Petersham with highly treated sewage in times of drought. Given the company’s history of frustrating business practices and an appalling environmental record, how are my constituents supposed to trust Thames Water to do its job? How will the Government ensure that the agencies responsible for monitoring Thames Water have the powers needed to hold it to account?
I hope that the King, on his 75th birthday today, has received some decent gifts and is enjoying a special day, because I am afraid that his Government have nothing to offer the families and businesses across the UK that are crying out for change. There is no plan for economic growth, no plan to protect our natural environment and no plan to tackle the crisis facing our NHS. This shows a Government that are out of ideas and will soon be out of time.
Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)
This afternoon, I thought I would revert to my role as a one-woman tourist board for North Devon, home to the only cold water surf reserve in the world and the UK’s only world surf reserve. With stunning beaches alongside beautiful countryside and magnificent moors, there really is something for everyone who wants to get a bit of the great outdoors.
Hospitality in North Devon contributes over a quarter of a billion pounds to the economy. Indeed, our local economy is hugely reliant on our tourism and hospitality sectors. The pandemic saw a surge in people enjoying a staycation and visiting previously unseen parts of the UK. However, this year has seen a 20% drop in visitor numbers, in part as these visitors head to overseas destinations again, but the sector is also struggling to recruit staff, with many venues open for only part of the week, unfortunately driven in part by the huge surge in short-term holiday lets alongside a rush of second home owners.
I have two pleas to the Treasury: to keep the business rate discounts, as swathes of hospitality businesses are set to close their doors this January if discounts are reduced, and to reverse the Osborne tax reforms and level the tax playing field between long term and short-term rentals, to help resolve some of our housing and, hence, staffing challenges. During an economic downturn, we all know that eating and drinking out is one of the first things to go, so I say to those of us in North Devon and beyond: let us support our local pubs and restaurants this winter.
But I fear that there is more at play. I know from speaking to beach managers and surf schools that far too many people visiting our beautiful beaches are fearful of the sea, despite eight of the 11 bathing beaches in North Devon having excellent water quality and being among the cleanest beaches in the world. I know that that phrase makes opposition councillors rush home to write complaints about me to the local paper, but it is true. The so-called “sewage scandal” so loved by opposition parties is not what is happening to North Devon’s beaches.
Yes, when it rains, a lot of the storm overflows run—they are mostly rainwater—but less than 1% of the water pollution in North Devon comes from human sewage. These overflows have run for more than a century; we only know about this now because they are monitored. In North Devon, much work has already been done to hold water further up the catchment and to reduce the impact of heavy rains, as well as installing extra storage capacity to reduce the frequency of storm discharges. Yes, there is more to do, but it is vital to those businesses along the coast, and everyone who wants to enjoy our stunning beaches, to recognise that North Devon’s beaches have already undergone huge improvements, and the water quality is significantly better than it was 20 years ago. Indeed, even Surfers Against Sewage, whose app generates more content in my inbox than anything else, conceded in writing to me this month:
“With regards to the beaches in your constituency, we totally agree that huge improvements have been made to water quality there”.
Yes, there will always be more to do, but I wish the opposition parties would not talk down North Devon.
Lib Dems called for sewage to be tackled in the King’s Speech. They clearly failed to turn up, as they so often do, when we passed the Environment Act 2021, which is the reason we are monitoring and know where the real problems are. Anti-business rhetoric from Lib Dems is so damaging in a constituency such as mine. A Lib Dem council runs our biggest town, Barnstaple, which has a very busy high street, for a whole host of reasons, not least the great range of fabulous independent retailers alongside big brand names. But it is being held back because the council has not prioritised reopening the bus station. I have had complaints for over a year about the lack of toilet facilities and shelter. Rural bus journeys into town are long. The council is paid by bus companies to run the station, but it chooses to spend that money on business rates rather than on providing the commercial services that travellers need. I know that the plan is to sell it to the town council and open a community centre, which is very lovely, but there is a local coffee shop owner who is interested in opening a café. Why cannot we do something more commercial?
Our hospitality sector and, indeed, virtually every business I visit, as well as all our public services, cannot recruit staff because there is nowhere to live for working-age families. I attribute that to the failings of the Lib Dem-run council to get to grips with planning. The council officer staff work flat out to deliver the plans that are put together, but where is the Lib Dem vision for Barnstaple to thrive and improve its economic output? Where are the affordable homes that we so desperately need?
Yes, Government money is coming to help redevelop the high street and rebuild the hospital and its vital staff accommodation, but more commercial thinking is needed at a local level. Our Lib Dem council leader advised the BBC that I was electioneering when I suggested reopening the bus station. Fortunately, the council staff at the town council recognise the need for a bus station, as does everyone else I talk to. We need our businesses to thrive. We need to support them and provide the right associated facilities for shoppers to make long journeys into town, taking advantage of the Government’s £2 bus fare, which is a huge saving for long rural journeys.
While I work locally to help resolve some of these matters, I very much hope that more people will contribute to North Devon’s local economic growth. If they have not booked their next staycation, I can highly recommend my beautiful constituency. North Devon is a jewel in our country’s tourism crown, and this Conservative Government will continue to support it, not talk it down.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
It is an honour and a privilege to represent the people of Newcastle upon Tyne Central. It is the city I grew up in and, quite simply, the best place in the world. My question in this King’s Speech debate is: why are the Government letting Newcastle down?
Replacing the woman actually elected to lead his party, the Prime Minister promised to get the economy growing, but the IMF now forecasts that our country will have the lowest growth in the G7 next year, yet taxes are at their highest rate since 1949. What are my constituents paying for? It is not a better health service, better schools or safer streets; we are paying for Tory failure. This King’s Speech does nothing to change that.
I suppose it should not be surprising that an old Harrovian failed Prime Minister thinks the answer is an old Etonian failed Prime Minister, but it is not. That Tory failure will continue in my constituency. I see it on the doorstep, at my surgeries and on our streets, with young people trying to get on the housing ladder, but held back by Tory Britain’s systemic failure to build. We have businesses contending with inflation, as well as the scourge of late payments. We have pensioners choosing between heating and eating. Less than half of children in England saw a dentist in the past year. We have supermarket security tags on half a pound of butter. Some 42% of children in my constituency are growing up in poverty, 17% of households are in fuel poverty and almost one fifth of adults in Newcastle are estimated to be in problematic debt.
It is little wonder that this year, the citizens advice bureau in Newcastle is on course to help more people with crisis support, food bank referrals and charitable support than in any other year on record. Behind each statistic, there is a living family. One example from Newcastle City Council’s cost of living helpline is of an adult with two children. The parent has not eaten anything for three days, saving food so that the kids can eat. There is no gas and no electricity. They are going to warm places in the city to spend the day and wrapping up in multiple layers at night. That is impacting on the mental health of everyone in the family. This is Newcastle in 2023 under the Tories. This is the human cost of Tory economic chaos.
I am immensely proud of our local food banks such as West End food bank, Newcastle United supporters trust food bank and Kenton food bank. I am proud of the work of our council, and I am proud of the work of all the charities helping Geordies to survive, but it should not have to be this way. Newcastle’s wonderful industrial heritage inspired me to go into engineering. Whether it is renewable energy, life sciences, start-ups or innovative manufacturing, Newcastle has exciting prospects for the industries of the future and a green industrial manufacturing future. In our long-standing areas of strength, such as our world-renowned hospitality sector, which adds more than £300 million of GVA each year in my constituency, I can see enormous potential for growth, helped by Labour’s plans on business rates, energy markets and the planning system.
Labour has a plan to make people across the whole country better off by growing the economy, boosting wages and bringing down bills. Our industrial strategy would bring together our excellent universities, skilled workforce and deep capital markets to turbocharge growth in constituencies such as mine. Our planning reforms would make it possible to build the infrastructure we need, and switching on Great British Energy would bring down bills, create hundreds of thousands of high-paid jobs and put the UK on course towards energy independence.
The record speaks for itself. People in Newcastle upon Tyne Central would be better off with Labour. Under the Tories, disposable income is forecast to grow by just £42 between 2010 and 2025. Under Labour, it grew by £11,000 per person. The Tories low-growth, high-tax economy has meant hardship and setbacks for my constituents. We need a Labour Government and a Labour King’s Speech to restore pride and purpose to our country and to give Newcastle upon Tyne Central and the whole country our future back.
Mr Rob Roberts (Delyn) (Ind)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) as we debate long-term economic growth in all parts of the United Kingdom.
I cannot help but address a sentiment that has long lingered in the hearts of many in north-east Wales and my constituency: it often feels as though we are a bit invisible and forgotten by both Westminster and Cardiff Bay, and as a constituency we long for our voices to be heard and our potential to be unleashed. It is essential that both the UK and Welsh Governments acknowledge the challenges faced by regions like ours and respond with tailored policies and investments. We need infrastructure development, improved access to education and skills training, and targeted support for local businesses and industries. Only through those measures can we unlock the true potential of the regions that have been overlooked for far too long.
Across my home county of Flintshire, residents in all towns and villages see investment from the Welsh Government going into south Wales, they watch the news and see the UK Government investing in the north-east of England, and they yell at their TV screens, “What about the north-east of Wales?” We must strive for a future not where prosperity is confined to a select few, or to constituencies where Governments of whatever colour want to shore up support with investment, but where instead prosperity flows to every corner of the country, empowering individuals, families and communities to thrive.
With that in mind, I will first touch on the exciting opportunity that lies within the heart of region: the Flintshire and Wrexham investment zone bid. This collaborative endeavour holds immense importance and significance to both areas as they join forces to unlock their true potential and pave the way for a brighter future. Not only does the local authorities’ collaborative working call for praise; the manner in which the bid is being spearheaded by local industry and partnership, especially the fabulous Joanna Swash from Moneypenny in Wrexham, who is chairing the bid, shows exactly what can be achieved when frameworks are put in place that businesses can take advantage of.
The impact of the investment zone bid may be transformative to the region, not only by generating direct employment but by creating a ripple effect, creating opportunities, fostering entrepreneurship and driving economic growth in industries and supply chains across the region. We should embrace the bid, which I support wholeheartedly, as the zone will mean that we can all witness the remarkable transformation that awaits both Flintshire and Wrexham.
Secondly, devolution is holding back Wales. Every week—we have heard it several times today—Opposition Members shout things like, “You’ve had 13 years and it’s just getting worse.” I politely ask them to reflect on how Labour has been in power in Wales for 26 years and outcomes are worse in almost every measurable way. In 1997, average incomes in Wales and Scotland were almost identical; in 2023, Wales finds itself with incomes 20% lower than our northern British friends. It has become clear for a multitude of reasons that power must be taken back into hands of the UK Government, and I shall table a Bill to allow a referendum to take place to get rid of devolution in Wales as soon the parliamentary schedule allows.
Returning power to Westminster does not mean abandoning the unique identity and cultural heritage of Wales; on the contrary, it would allow for a more cohesive approach to governance, with decisions made in the best interests of all citizens in mind, rather than just those south of Welshpool. In fact, when that was put to the First Minister of Wales at the Welsh Affairs Committee recently, he did not even try to deny that that was happening. We must get back to focusing on outcomes rather than process. It does not matter where decisions are made or who makes them; what matters is that they are the right ones. People currently trundling to work at 20 mph in Wales down roads that are full of holes and crumbling because the Welsh Government will not repair them or build any new ones know that it is the outcomes that matter, not the process.
Devolution in Wales has been a resounding failure. The Welsh Government have proven incapable of delivering on its promises, leaving our nation lagging behind in critical areas. It is time to recognise the shortcomings of devolution and take the necessary steps to rectify the situation for the good of everyone in Wales.
The core principles of conservatism call for reducing taxation, removing regulatory burdens, increased empowerment, increased entrepreneurship and opportunity, and community collaboration. It is time to shift our focus towards empowering individuals, restoring personal responsibility and minimising state interference in people’s lives. That includes removing superfluous levels of government that add nothing to the lives of the people we are here to serve.
Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)
The way this Government run the economy does not work for the vast majority of people who live in Scotland or for those across the UK. It is frankly a disgrace that so many of my constituents, who live in the energy-rich country of Scotland, cannot afford to pay their energy bills. Let there be no doubt about it: the fault lies at the door of the UK Government. In Scotland and across the UK record numbers of people are struggling to afford food, energy and housing, yet there was a glaring omission of any tangible policies to help struggling households in the King’s Speech.
People in Scotland have so far been cushioned from the full impact of Westminster policies by Scottish Government action, but no amount of Scottish Government action can fully protect people in Scotland from regressive Westminster policies. Macroeconomic power and the real power to transform our society still lie in Westminster. The Scottish Parliament is only a devolved Parliament; it does not have the power to truly transform Scotland’s economy and society. That would come only with independence, and that is why I support independence.
I am here to scrutinise this Government. Climate change and the cost of living crisis are the two biggest challenges we face in Scotland and across the UK. The failure to include any meaningful action to tackle them in the King’s Speech is a gross dereliction of duty. With vision and a green new deal, this Government could tackle both the climate and the cost of living crises and transform the way our economy works to benefit all our constituents. But they have neither the desire nor the inclination to do so.
We have heard much about oil licences, but oil from the Rosebank oilfield will not increase energy security for the UK, nor will it lower energy bills for my constituents. It will be sold on the international market and we will have to buy it at the same price as everyone else. It will make Equinor and Ithaca a lot of money, but UK taxpayers will pay for it. As Jess Ralston from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit said, it is clear that this Prime Minister would rather give tax breaks to oil companies than lower energy bills. Taxpayers across the UK will fork out around £4 billion to the developers of the oilfield—money that could have been used to insulate millions of homes, many of which are set to be colder and poorer this winter. The UK Government did not even attach any net zero carbon conditions to the new oilfield. I wonder whether they plan to do so for the promised future licensing. The UK Government’s new-found enthusiasm for drilling oil and gas in the North sea tells us that Scottish voters were lied to during the 2014 independence referendum, when Unionists from both the Conservative and the Labour parties said that the oil in the North sea was about to run out. Why should people in Scotland trust anything either of them say ever again?
While the UK Government continue to sell off the energy in the North sea to the highest bidder, there are no meaningful plans for the much-promised just transition. That is why Scotland—and, indeed, the UK—needs a green new deal. That phrase was first coined in the United States, and the Biden Administration have gone some way to putting a green new deal into action, with an industrial strategy that involves the world’s most generous package of climate incentives, under the Inflation Reduction Act.
In Scotland, the Common Weal policy think-tank has produced some excellent work on what a green new deal would look like for my country. During the pandemic it produced a blueprint for a comprehensive green new deal for Scotland, which would involve a process of public planning, organised and implemented by public bodies and paid for out of the public purse. It would be a whole new scheme for Scotland’s energy, agriculture and housing, with huge benefits of employment, prosperity and skills. It is a plan not just for our environment but for our economy and society.
A green new deal might work by tackling the problem of the cold, draughty homes in which many of our constituents live. We need to insulate and retrofit them, and we could do that if we supercharged our construction industry. That could be combined with a programme of transformative land reform to allow for reforesting to produce the wood needed for construction work. Reforestation done properly would also assist carbon capture and expand biodiversity. Once buildings are properly insulated, they could be heated by district heating systems provided by a combination of solar, thermal and geothermal systems. We could also use inter-seasonal heat storage to store heat from the summer for use in winter. All of that costs less and could feed into the grid much more quickly than new nuclear power. It would be a huge engineering feat, but other countries have managed it and it could create well-paid jobs.
The UK covid inquiry has heard evidence about how, during the pandemic, privileged Government figures could not comprehend the lives of the people for whom they were making decisions. The Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the Chancellor are all rich men. How can they possibly understand the lives of the people I meet week in, week out at my constituency surgeries who are struggling to pay for basic necessities? We will not get sustainable economic growth for everyone until we tackle climate change, energy insecurity and the cost of living crisis. The King’s Speech was just another missed opportunity to do that.
Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. The first King’s Speech in over 70 years outlined the Government’s commitment to deliver for the British people, including the people of Stoke-on-Trent. We have a Government focused on delivering for the whole country and cities like Stoke-on-Trent thanks to levelling up and, of course, thanks to Brexit. I am glad that the topic of the debate today reflects that understanding. Those beyond London must benefit from growth and we must no longer be left behind.
After decades of decline under Labour, Stoke-on-Trent’s fortunes have revived. Our iconic industry, ceramics, gives our city its sense of place as the Potteries and our sense of purpose as a local centre of world-class manufacturing for the global market. Provided that free trade is rules based, particularly against outrageous dumping, our ceramics industry has much to gain from the trade Bill. That includes manufacturers of advanced technical and industrial ceramics upon which our future industries depend. We need to help our fantastic businesses in north Staffordshire to trade right around the world more of the amazing products that we produce. It is also vital that we further support energy-intensive sectors, which provide important skilled jobs. Measures to address energy security are welcome, but further support is needed. Alongside a number of colleagues, I have recently written to the Chancellor to express the importance of supporting the ceramics sector with energy costs and not applying too rigid net zero policies when technology is yet to offer viable alternatives. If we do not get this right, it risks offshoring an industry to countries that have a far worse environmental and human rights record.
Digital industries are also increasingly important in Stoke-on-Trent, as we emerge as a leading hub for gaming. Indeed, our industrial heritage buildings are being repurposed for gaming industry disruptors, who appreciate, and feed creatively from, those buildings in all their quirky and authentic glory. According to Ofcom, gigabit full fibre connectivity in Stoke-on-Trent enables download that is 15 times faster and upload that is 70 times faster than the UK’s average, so I welcome the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill, which will safeguard small and disruptor firms from any egregious behaviour by bigger players.
The Government have been extremely generous in providing investment through the transforming cities fund, levelling-up fund, heritage action zones and more. Our town centres and high streets, however, need further investment and it remains disappointing that Stoke-on-Trent has missed out previously on future high streets funding, town deal funding and the latest round of funding for towns, which did not include a single town in the whole of Staffordshire. I encourage the Government to do more to help our high streets across north Staffordshire with planning reforms and, of course, investment.
More funding is always welcome, but we also need the city council, Network Rail and others to get on with actually delivering things. It is concerning that the Labour council has already reverted to type, rolling back on levelling-up schemes, lacking entirely the ambitious leadership our city needs. We also see a lack of ambition when it comes to our local public transport. Yes, we need to improve bus services, and we are delivering that through bus service improvement funding, but rail improvements are also vital to our city, and should not be flippantly dismissed as we have seen Labour do locally. Only rail can provide a rapid alternative to cars, reducing road congestion and improving air quality for all.
Fortunately, the Government have had the wisdom to see that phase 2 of HS2 failed to deliver good value. For Staffordshire, it would have meant all the pain with no gain. The £36 billion released is now available for local schemes that will make a real difference. The reopening of Meir station and the Stoke to Leek line—including a station at Fenton Manor—must now be fast-tracked and delivered. Meir has some of the worst transport deprivation in the country. By bus it can take up to an hour to reach the university, the college and the main station. Reopening Meir station will put those destinations reliably within 10 minutes by rail, and that will level up many more life chances locally than HS2 could ever achieve.
We also need to make rapid progress with lifts at Longton station, and develop plans for a station to serve Trentham. Levelling up our city’s transport infrastructure so that it is back where it should be is the surest way of levelling up its potential as a place to live, work and visit. The inclusion in the King’s Speech of a draft rail reform Bill is welcome, not least because Great British Railways will be based in Derby, and I suspect that nothing will increase the chances of improving services on the Crewe-Derby-Nottingham line through Stoke-on-Trent quite as much as having GBR on it. We particularly need to increase the frequency of trains on that line to two an hour. For too long, east-west rail links like this have been dismissed. However, I also look forward to investment in the local elements of the national road infrastructure work. Investment in junction 15 of the M6 and the A50/A500 corridor, for instance, is long overdue.
The foundation for our success as a growing city in a growing national economy will lie in ensuring that it is a safe place to be: safe from crime and antisocial behaviour, safe from the scourge of monkey dust, and safe from the most heinous criminal offenders. I therefore welcome the Criminal Justice Bill, the Victims and Prisoners Bill and the terrorism Bill for the part that they will play in keeping us safe.
Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to speak in today’s debate on the King’s Speech. I believe that His Majesty is visiting a food poverty project today. It is marvellous to see our monarch and Head of State taking more interest in food poverty than our Government.
It is notable that the King’s Speech fell during UK Parliament Week. Last week I met many of the uniformed youth organisations, and many children from schools across my constituency, who had numerous questions to ask me about the King’s Speech and the processes that we have here in Parliament. One of them asked me how a man in a gold hat could sit on a gold chair and talk seriously about a cost of living crisis—but that, I thought, might not be the spirit in which to enter this debate, so instead I will raise some issues about democracy, because I do not think we talk enough about it in this democratically elected Chamber.
UK Parliament Week should have given us an opportunity to talk seriously about democracy, and about the need to ensure that the public feel they have a say in what we do in this place. One of the great ways in which we do that is through the public petitions system. As Chair of the Petitions Committee, I feel that I must raise the fact that action had been promised in the King’s Speech on two public petitions that gained huge support across the House, but that action was very much missing. The first, which asked for pet theft to be made a specific offence, has widespread support in the House but huge support among the public, many of whom see pets as very much a member of the family. Given that we are a nation of animal lovers, I know a Bill on the subject would also have huge support in the House, and I think it a crying shame that it was missing from the King’s Speech.
The other petition concerns the banning of conversion therapy. It is a horrible thing and I think the word “therapy” is very misleading. The petition has cross-party support and has received a huge amount of support from members of the public when there have been e-petitions on the subject. I ask the Government to think again about finding time to legislate for changes that have cross-party support and, more importantly, huge public support.
There was nothing in the King’s Speech about housing and housing shortages. I have been meeting housing advisers in my own constituency, and I know, for instance, that housing allowance continuing not to rise with costs has caused an enormous increase in the already rising number of cases of homelessness. This used not to be a problem in my part of Lancashire, but we are seeing a vast number of families being made homeless by section 21 no fault evictions and rents rising at a record rate. The only thing I can see coming from this Government on housing is allowing landlords to do a net zero U-turn to keep energy-efficient homes there for tenants, but all the while we have seen a 50% rise in the cost to local authorities of addressing things such as homelessness.
On transport, Network North is all promises, but we have already been promised an awful lot in the north and it has failed to be delivered. Is this going to be yet another broken promise after so many broken transport promises? We know that 85% of the announcements so far have been reannouncements.
What about rural bus services? My constituents in villages such as Forton, Scorton and Winmarleigh desperately need access to public transport, but they remain cut off. There was nothing in the King’s Speech about active travel, walking or cycling. As someone who is incredibly concerned about air quality in the village of Galgate and on the one-way system in Lancaster city centre, I know that we need to encourage active travel but in a way that is safe for public health as well. I had the pleasure of visiting, with the Canal & River Trust, a stretch of the Lancaster canal that is desperately in need of renovation, and the Government’s cuts to the trust will have a hugely detrimental impact not only in my constituency but across our canal network.
When one in seven people in England are awaiting NHS treatment and childcare is unaffordable, it seems to me that Government are going about things a bit back to front with their announcements on work and pensions. They are doing nothing to tackle the root causes of people being out of work. It is clear that the country needs change, but it is not being offered change by this tired and out-of-ideas Government. Only a Labour Government will bring about the change that my constituents in Lancaster and Fleetwood need.
I represent two universities, and I recently conducted a survey among students about the cost of living crisis. Students are acutely affected by the cost of living crisis, and they are often unable to work the hours they need to work to meet the shortfalls in their rent. I would like to see something from the Government to address the student cost of living crisis. Also, my rural constituents struggle to access reliable and fast broadband, but there was nothing in the King’s Speech to address their needs.
An issue that is very close to my heart is redress for those who have been victims of sodium valproate, which harmed countless numbers of children who are now grown-up adults with huge needs and disabilities. The women affected were lied to by medical professionals. They continued with their pregnancies while being prescribed drugs that harmed their unborn babies. It is important that we give redress to the victims of a scandal that has spanned decades and generations. Sodium valproate continues to be prescribed today, and for some women it will be the only medication that will control their epilepsy, but where it is not, we must go further and faster to ensure that they can transition to other medication that does not have a harmful effect on their unborn child. I urge those on the Treasury Bench to hear my calls as chair of the all-party parliamentary group for valproate and other anti-epileptic drugs in pregnancy, and to ensure that redress is given to the families who need it.
Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)
It is imperative that we secure high, sustained economic growth right across the UK. Some welcome policies are already being implemented and there are some good initiatives in the King’s Speech, although we face enormous challenges. The focus of my comments will be on coastal communities and on East Anglia.
I suggest that to deliver enduring economic growth, we need to address six issues. First, there is the cost of living crisis. Covid has a long and vicious tail, the cost of living crisis is still very much with us and this winter is likely to be very tough for many people. The household support grant has been successful and must continue, and other measures such as an increase in the local housing allowance must be given full consideration. Welfare reform must provide a clear and supported pathway for those who are some distance from the workplace.
Secondly, we must build more houses, particularly for social rent. The vehicles of delivery are primarily the housing associations, many of which are currently facing significant challenges, and Homes England. The recent announcement of funding to redevelop the former Sanyo site in Lowestoft is particularly welcome.
Thirdly, in coastal Britain, in places such as Lowestoft, there are exciting new jobs emerging in the renewables sector. Last week’s announcement of funding for local skills improvement plans, including for Norfolk and Suffolk, was welcome, but we need to ensure that trainers and colleges such as East Coast College in Lowestoft receive realistic revenue funding settlements. Progress has been made in recent years, but further education still receives a raw deal.
Fourthly, investment in infrastructure right across the UK is vital—in Lowestoft, construction of the Gull Wing bridge is well advanced—and there now needs to be an emphasis on improving regional connectivity, whether road, rail or the digital highway. Around the UK, to encourage investment and to protect homes, coastal communities must be made secure from the more prevalent extreme weather conditions we are now experiencing. With an eye to the opportunities arising from offshore energy and sustainable fishing, there must be fiscal incentives to encourage investment in port infrastructure.
Fifthly, net zero must be seen as an opportunity to revitalise coastal communities all around the UK. I can understand, and I support, the rationale for the Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill, but it must be part of a long-term strategy up to 2050 and beyond, to maximise private sector investment. Energy policy must be set in a 30-year, not a five-year, framework.
Sixthly and finally, we need to revitalise our towns, which for centuries have been hubs of economic activity all around the UK. Town deals, of which Lowestoft is a recipient, are welcome, as is the recently announced long-term plan for towns, but those initiatives can provide financial support for only a limited number of centres, and we need to put in place a growth framework for all towns that promotes their revitalisation and ensures they remain honeypots for setting up SMEs. That framework could include making it easier to set up banking hubs—at present, there is a very high bar to setting them up—and continuing the reform of business rates. We made a start in the Non-Domestic Rating Act 2023, which received Royal Assent last month, but it was only a timid move towards getting the business rates multiplier back down to between 30p and 35p in the pound. That is needed to ensure that businesses can plan with some certainty, rather than having to wait each year for the cliff edge of whether the Chancellor will extend business rates relief.
We should also consider the zero-rating of VAT for redevelopment in and around our town centres. Town centres across the UK have an awful lot of heritage that, properly realised and embraced, could help to promote them and get them back to being magnets and catalysts for economic growth.
Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the balanced and thoughtful speech by the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous). Securing high, sustained economic growth in every part of the country is an ambition we should all have in this House. The challenge lies in how we go about achieving that ambition.
The Government’s plan just is not working. At the start of the year, the Prime Minister and Chancellor promised to get the economy growing; instead growth is flatlining, as the shadow Chancellor mentioned. The Bank of England has downgraded its economic forecasts and the International Monetary Fund forecasts that the UK will have the lowest growth in the G7 next year.
Labour does have a plan: one that will grow the economy and get Britain building again. We need faster approval of critical infrastructure, we need investment in the industries of the future, we need to get more people owning their own homes and we must raise living standards. In my constituency, we have oven-ready schemes that would help achieve our ambition—schemes would unlock the delivery of more than 3,000 homes, enable the development of world-class health and care research facilities, and create thousands of jobs and opportunities across growth sectors. The Government are aware of those schemes, and should and could have supported Manchester and Trafford to deliver them.
The two town centres in my constituency, Wythenshawe and Sale, submitted bids to the last round of the levelling-up fund. In Wythenshawe town centre, Manchester City Council has invested £20 million in plans to provide a once-in-a-generation programme of regeneration, including more than 1,600 new homes—it should not be this difficult. Those homes will breathe new life, jobs and vital economic activity into the town centre.
In Sale town centre, in addition to the successful regeneration of Stanley Square by Altered/Space, Trafford Council has bought and is demolishing Sale magistrates court in order to build dozens of new and affordable homes on the site. It has regeneration plans for other locations in the town centre, including the leisure facilities and the public realm. However, both bids to the levelling-up fund—for Wythenshawe and for Sale—were rejected by the Government.
We have an approved masterplan for Wythenshawe Hospital in my constituency, which will see the transformation of the increasingly out-of-date hospital campus into a state-of-the-art health village, with affordable housing for nurses and an aparthotel. It will also create world-class research facilities in the health and care sector, a sustainable campus that delivers a commitment to be net zero by 2038, and other complementary uses, such as hotels, conferencing, training and retail. All of that will be done while delivering inclusive growth, which will derives maximum benefit through local job creation and employment and training opportunities, ensuring that it is local people who see the benefit, in addition to those in the region.
The delivery model proposed for the development of Wythenshawe Hospital is a financially driven, phased construction approach, using blended funding. That funding solution could leverage the many commercial, health and social-related investment opportunities afforded by the site’s prime location, while supporting the requirement of reduced levels of NHS capital. However, to realise this opportunity, Government and Treasury support is needed to unlock a technical solution to the current NHS capital regime. It is now more than 18 months since the approval of the masterplan and we have seen zero progress from this Government on a workable solution, although I am grateful to Lord Markham for engaging with me and with Homes England on this issue. This is not getting Britain building; it is blocking Britain building and flatlining our economic growth.
My area also has the Airport City masterplan. Manchester airport in my constituency is the largest UK airport outside London, and it provides international and domestic passenger and freight connectivity for the whole of northern Britain. I welcome the Government’s pledge in the King’s Speech to begin to look at consumer protection and the consumer experience in our airlines industry. The current transformation plan at my local airport will support 50 million passengers by 2030. There is still much to do; surface transport, the fabric of the estate and active travel all need to be addressed. The plan is set to deliver up to 5 million square feet and 16,000 jobs, with companies such as The Hut Group, Amazon and DHL already working on site.
Wythenshawe and Sale East has a plan to get Britain building and to grow our economy. We have a world-class airport, an Airport City enterprise zone, the Wythenshawe Hospital masterplan and plans for the development of Wythenshawe and Sale town centres. This is the Prime Minister’s first King’s Speech, yet he has nothing to say on housing and it includes more division and more of the same. What is needed to deliver the economic growth our country needs is change. Change is the question at the next election and the answer is Labour. A Labour Government will offer a decade of national renewal and replace the 13 years of national decline that we have had.
Sally-Ann Hart (Hastings and Rye) (Con)
I welcome the emphasis in the King’s Speech on improving the life chances of young people through the provision of academic and technical education, which is key to securing high and sustained economic growth in every part of the country, including beautiful Hastings and Rye.
Ensuring that young people have the knowledge and skills to succeed is especially important in Hastings and Rye—a coastal community that, like many others, is struggling with higher levels of educational and vocational deprivation, resulting in a local workforce whose skills do not adequately meet the local need, especially in our wonderful engineering and manufacturing businesses, such as Focus SB, Technoturn, General Dynamics, Marshall-Tufflex and Torr Scientific, to name but a few.
Academic education is not the only path for our young people and it is right to have equal focus and funding for technical and vocational skills. Skills are key to economic growth. They are a form of currency in the working world. In today’s ever-changing job market, employers are often more interested in hiring employees with a specific skillset rather than those who simply have a university degree. Therefore, the focus on apprenticeships is fantastic, but in coastal communities such as Hastings, these must centre on young people and SMEs.
We have an increasing number of NEETs—those not in education, employment or training. According to the Youth Futures Foundation, if we match the lowest NEET rate in the OECD, which is in the Netherlands, we could see a £69 billion boost in GDP. A focus on revenue funding for youth services, rather than on capital funding, is needed so that organisations, such as Xtrax and the Y Centre in my constituency, can do their thing.
Coastal communities have huge potential to become a resource—a coastal powerhouse—to the UK, rather than a problem to solve. It is fantastic that Hastings received £24 million in the town deal. Hastings and Rother both have levelling-up partnerships, and Hastings will receive an additional £20 million over the next 10 years, but our coastal communities also need a policy focus to unleash their potential and become a valuable powerhouse for the UK.
Our coastline and coastal communities should be at the forefront of nature-based solutions to climate change and renewable energy industries, including offshore wind developments, green hydrogen production and wave and tidal-stream energy. The Government should be ramping up investment in those areas, leveraging in private investment and boosting coastal communities.
Skills must evolve with the needs of the modern labour market and specific action is needed to generate new skills, to encourage more diversity of employment and to meet the needs of local employment opportunities. We have in Hastings and Rye, besides wonderful career opportunities in tourism and hospitality, an incredible engineering and manufacturing sector that wants to grow but that needs a skilled workforce. Through the towns fund, East Sussex Coast College has developed an important regional-scale project at its Ore campus that will improve skills provision in the new green and low-carbon technologies.
As regards recent announcements about education, the new advanced British standard will take the best of A-levels and T-levels and replace them, bringing together the technical and academic routes into a single qualification, which will widen the breadth of British school education. The proposed qualification will require a sea change in education thinking and will rely on the Treasury funding a new qualification for thousands of young people. The standard’s success will rely on Ministers encouraging the delivery of technical subjects at pre-16 levels, and the Government have cited the education models of many European countries as proof that we need the standard. However, a key feature of those countries’ models is technical education from the ages of 13 or 14, which has become a rarity in the UK.
That is why I am an advocate of the Baker Dearing Educational Trust’s university technical college sleeves. A decision by Ministers on the proposal for UTC sleeves within existing secondary schools is anticipated soon. Baker Dearing is aware of a significant number of large, highly regarded multi-academy trusts that wish to introduce the UTC sleeve model into at least one of their secondary schools, because they can see the benefit of that approach in improving student engagement, attendance and outcomes among certain pupil cohorts, and have witnessed the increasing interest in high-quality apprenticeships for leavers aged 18. All of that will contribute to economic growth.
Affordable housing is also key to economic growth for many reasons, not least that children and young people can access education and employment opportunities only if they have safe and secure homes.
Finally, improving transport connections and roads, and providing faster rail and bus services, is essential for Hastings and Rye and East Sussex as a whole to encourage and facilitate economic growth. Poor transport connectivity continues to blight Hastings and Rye, and it would help if Transport for the South East were made a statutory body.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I want to get everybody in as fairly as possible, so the time limit will be reduced to five minutes after the next speaker.
Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate on His Majesty’s first King’s Speech.
The news last week that the UK economy flatlined in the third quarter of this year was hardly a shock. It is the result of 13 years of Conservative choices that have delivered low growth, skyrocketing mortgages, soaring prices, crumbling public services and house building at its lowest rate since the second world war. Every family and business in Britain has paid the price of the Conservatives’ failed energy policy, leaving Britain the worst hit country in western Europe.
Listening to the King’s Speech last week, I was disappointed by the absence of a serious agenda on planning, infrastructure and growth, with no housing targets or planning reform, weakened proposals for leasehold and renters’ reform, and the binning of the Government’s manifesto promise to deliver 300,000 homes a year.
Meanwhile, my constituents are left spending nearly two fifths of their income on rent, even before tax; living in housing that is cold, damp, mouldy and expensive to heat; and with a Tory mortgage penalty that is estimated to take £2,600 out of the pockets of families in Birmingham, Edgbaston this year. To his credit, the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities admitted that the UK’s housing system is broken, but it is hard to see what this King’s Speech does to change that.
That brings me to my first point about the length of time it takes for anything to get built under this Government. HS2 is a great example. The previous Labour Government completed HS1 on time and under budget. This Government had 13 years and they failed, which meant that the biggest infrastructure project in Europe was cancelled. My constituents understand that modern public transport is not just about journey times to London, but about freeing up capacity and connectivity to all the other major cities and towns, so that people can travel for work, leisure, education and training. It can widen the horizon of their ambitions and bring the whole of the region closer together. What are they left with now? They are left with a gaping great building site in the centre of Birmingham for years to come; all the disruption and delay of the works at Curzon Street for a high-speed rail to nowhere; more delays to the east Birmingham metro, which, under Mayor Andy Street, will cost taxpayers £150,000 per metre of track; and, to top it all, no alternative to Avanti on the west coast main line. Having achieved the dubious distinction of having the most complaints of any operator, and consistently ranking as one of the worst performing on the entire rail network, this Government decided to hand Avanti a lucrative new contract. What did Avanti do? It announced swathes of cuts to services on the west coast main line before the ink had dried.
At the root of so many of the problems besetting British infrastructure and our housing crisis is the planning system. Surely no one in the House would agree that the current regime is fit for purpose. When we have millions locked out of the dream of home ownership, bills soaring and huge national infrastructure challenges such as the race for net zero, we cannot go on like this.
There are currently £200 billion of clean energy projects stuck in the queue for connections to the national grid. This country once built the national grid in less time than it now takes to get a connection to it. Labour has set out a plan for Great British Energy, which will procure the grid supply chain that Britain needs and bring down bills. The Government’s flagship King’s Speech energy policy will not take a single penny off energy bills, and even the Energy Secretary has admitted that.
The UK has some of the least energy-efficient homes in Europe, and Birmingham has some of the worst rates of mould and damp in the country. As we face another cold winter, with energy bills as high as they have been in living memory, my constituents are seriously worried about the toll on their finances and their health. What was in the King’s Speech for them? A primary school teacher contacted me about a pupil in year 3, just seven years old, who told her that she could not sleep at night because the mould exacerbated her asthma and she could barely breathe. My constituent Agnes, a junior doctor living in privately rented accommodation riddled with mould and damp, told me she felt helpless, as she could not end her contract and her landlord would not help. Birmingham has nearly 22,000 rental homes with category 1 hazards such as excessive cold, mould and damp.
The council is now getting on with taking rogue landlords to task and has launched the 3 Cities Retrofit scheme with Coventry and Wolverhampton, to help to shape the local retrofit market using their combined 116,000 social homes—but where are the Government supporting them? Where is the Government’s version of Labour’s warm home plan to upgrade 19 million homes, cut energy bills and create thousands of good jobs for electricians, engineers and construction workers across our country?
My constituents cannot afford a Government that will not grasp the difficult issues or take the long-term decisions the country needs. Whether on house building, national infrastructure or the cost of living, this King’s Speech does nothing to measure up to the scale of the challenges that the economy or my constituents face. Labour, meanwhile, will build 1.5 million homes over five years, with a planning reform blitz, planning passports for urban brownfield development and a devolution package to spread power out of Westminster and into communities on housing, transport, energy and more.
That is the ambition we need—a national mission to get Britain building again and grow our country from the grassroots, a plan to expand the country’s productive capabilities and at the same time to change who benefits. Does it not say it all that after 13 years of the last Labour Government, disposable income had risen by more than 40%—that is £11,000 per person back in people’s pockets—yet disposable incomes are now forecast to grow by just £42 between 2010 and 2025? Last week we should have had a King’s Speech that put working people first and a plan to get Britain building again, securing high, sustained economic growth in every part of the country. Only Labour will get Britain’s future back.
Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak in the first King’s Speech debate in nearly 70 years. I looked back at my comments during the last Humble Address debate, where the Government promised to make hundreds of millions of pounds-worth of upgrades to my local hospital and construct a new specialist emergency care hospital. I am grateful that the first set of funds has now been released for that.
The King’s Speech contains a lot to be welcomed, including the Media Bill, the draft rail reform Bill, the Renters (Reform) Bill, the Sentencing Bill and the Victims and Prisoners Bill. Turning however to the theme of today’s debate, securing high, sustained economic growth in every part of the country, I commend the Government for focusing on economic growth. Only with economic growth can we pay for those public services that our constituents rely on, and I want to touch on a few of those today.
I will start with rail. Although Carshalton and Wallington is in a London borough, it is one of the worst-connected parts of Greater London and would hugely benefit from a more efficient rail network to enable people to travel not just in and out of central London, but across London as well—a fact consistently lost on the Mayor of London, as we consistently come last out of all 32 London boroughs for investment from this Mayor. I invite the Government to look again at the redistribution of funding from HS2, to see whether any of that funding can be allocated to the Croydon area remodelling scheme to unlock the Brighton mainline and deliver improvements on that important link.
Moving on, I want to talk about being safe online. Many of my constituents raise with me issues including scams on social media platforms such as Meta. I look forward to seeing how the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill will be able to bring back consumer confidence online and provide a robust legal framework so that people can trust the services provided to them.
I want to touch on other elements of the King’s Speech. I welcome the Government’s ambition to make people’s safety and security paramount for the next parliamentary Session. That is particularly salient in Carshalton and Wallington, where the Mayor of London continues to fail to grasp the problem of violent crime in the capital. He promised a violence reduction unit, but we are yet to see any details of that unit’s operations or what effect it has had. We have recently seen a number of attacks locally, including an horrendous knife attack on the Roundshaw estate.
Many of my constituents are waiting with bated breath to see how the Criminal Justice Bill will tackle the scourge that is knife crime and violent crime. Tougher sentencing is an important step forward, but I remind those on the Treasury Front Bench of my interest in restorative justice and the part that that could play in breaking the cycle of reoffending. I look forward to the conclusion of the Victims and Prisoners Bill, and I hope that a right to access restorative justice services will be included in it so that we can help people to break the cycle of reoffending. Of course, punishment must be part of that as well, and creating a criminal offence for the possession of a bladed article with intent to cause harm will help to take more knives off our streets and stop the next generation taking up knives in the first place.
Lastly, let me touch briefly on the Renters (Reform) Bill, which will affect many of my constituents and many Londoners. I hear from many renters that there is no way of holding their landlords to account and that housing quality is not kept up to standard. The privately rented property portal will, I hope, be able to provide some security for tenants. Landlords will also benefit from the Bill, as they will be able to evict antisocial tenants more easily and disputes will be quicker and easier to resolve. I hope that, as the Bill makes progress through the House, we bring more harmony between landlords and tenants, and make the UK a much safer place in which to live and rent, cracking down on wrongdoers while supporting innovators.
Overall, I very much welcome the measures in the King’s Speech. I absolutely welcome the Government’s focus on and commitment to economic growth because—to repeat what I said at the beginning of my remarks—without economic growth, through backing wealth creators and entrepreneurs, we will not see the improvement in public services that we desperately want.
Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)
I will address the crisis in the middle east and the Government’s failure to back the growing calls for a ceasefire from the UN Secretary-General and beyond, and I will speak to amendment (b), tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Zarah Sultana), of which I am a sponsor.
Already, after just five weeks, more than 11,000 people in Gaza and more than 1,200 Israelis have been killed. It is the duty of everyone in this House to help save life—both Palestinian and Israeli—to help stop the bombing, to help end the suffering, to help free the hostages, to stop the war crimes, and to get the aid that is so desperately needed into Gaza. That means that we have to work for a ceasefire, and that work needs to happen now—there is not a second to waste.
The UN Secretary-General says that the way forward is a ceasefire, and so does the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. In fact, the heads of all major UN agencies are calling for a humanitarian ceasefire, so why do our Government think that they know better than the world’s leading humanitarian agencies? President Macron has now called for a ceasefire, so France joins other European nations such as Spain, Norway, Portugal, Switzerland and Ireland, as well as the UN Secretary-General, in that call. Other major nations, such as Brazil, and middle eastern nations including Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, are all calling for a ceasefire.
Securing a negotiated ceasefire—one binding on all sides—is achievable but it requires a huge diplomatic effort. It is time for our Government to add their weight to the push for a ceasefire rather than dismissing out of hand a proposal that has growing international support—especially when polls show that two thirds of the British public want a ceasefire. I am afraid that the Government have instead sought to distort what is being demanded, so let us be totally clear: a ceasefire means that all sides stop firing. That requires negotiation, so our Government should be straining every sinew, using every possible diplomatic avenue, and talking to Governments of all persuasions—those with sway in Israel, and those with channels to Hamas, such as Qatar—to secure a negotiated ceasefire that is binding on all parties, and bring an end to this crisis.
Of course, securing a ceasefire will not be easy, but it will not happen if Governments do not even bother to try. Once we secure that ceasefire, instead of more bloodshed, more suffering and occupation, let us turn this moment—as difficult as it now seems—into the moment when we secure, alongside Israel, the viable Palestinian state that is so needed for the cause of justice.
Kate Kniveton (Burton) (Con)
I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. It is an honour to speak in the first King’s Speech debate in over 70 years, and I pay tribute to His Majesty the King for the grace and dignity with which he has taken up his duties and delivered his first Gracious Speech. There is much to welcome in this Gracious Speech, which sets out long-term measures to safeguard our country’s future, whether it is keeping communities safe through tougher sentencing of prisoners, securing our energy security while maintaining our net zero commitments or securing economic growth across every part of our country.
I know that my constituents in Burton and Uttoxeter are really feeling the effects of recent high inflation and the impact it has had on household finances. Earlier this year, the Office for Budget Responsibility reported that the economic and fiscal outlook had “brightened somewhat”, but there are still challenges. We must encourage productivity, growth and business investment, but we need the infrastructure in place to support that growth.
I am very proud to be the project champion for the A50/A500 corridor, which runs through my constituency and is a key strategic link for many international businesses, including JCB, Toyota, Rolls-Royce, Nestlé and many more. Unfortunately, this key piece of our nation’s manufacturing infrastructure is currently costing our economy £8 million each year due to delays impacting residents, commuters and businesses. At several pinch points, the corridor is slow and unreliable, with average rush hour speeds of 20 mph.
Vital improvements need to be made to unlock the potential of this corridor, and the proposals put together by Midlands Connect offer a long-term programme of interventions to improve reliability and shorten journey times. This is about not only improving connectivity for residents and businesses but creating jobs, driving innovation and reducing emissions through alternative fuels and electric vehicle infrastructure. These improvements would support 30,000 new homes and 17,000 new jobs by 2030, as well as improving air quality made worse by chronic congestion. I was delighted when the Prime Minister announced that as part of Network North, this vital corridor will finally see the investment it needs, which will mean a 30% improvement in journey times and, as Midlands Connect found in its recent report, the potential to generate £12 billion for the economy.
Further investment in our region will allow the world-class businesses based here to expand, develop and unleash the potential of new green technologies. New hydrogen engines are being developed, which will be used in passenger transport and heavy plant machinery of the future. I pay tribute to the work being undertaken by Staffordshire County Council to promote the region as the UK’s hydrogen valley, and I look forward to working with Ministers through this Parliament to deliver these improvements at pace and realise the benefits of economic growth for my constituents and those who live and work in the area.
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. “Thin”, “empty”, “just depressing”,
“lost the will to lead”
and
“nothing in this for the public”.
Those are the reported words of Tory MPs describing the measures or lack of measures in the King’s Speech. Others were pleased, as the thin legislative programme gave the optimists more time to campaign in their constituencies ahead of a general election and the realists more time to look for a new job.
The PM claims he is taking difficult decisions, but it is the people in this country who are making the difficult decisions every single day, as they make sacrifices and grapple with a cost of living crisis made in Downing Street. Figures released yesterday show that not only has poverty risen in the UK but that in 2022, nearly 4 million people experienced destitution, and thousands of babies and toddlers are being admitted to hospital with lung conditions believed to be from living in damp and mouldy homes. Despite this, there was absolutely nothing in the King’s Speech to help those families. Not that long ago, the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights visited the UK and found that Conservative Governments had inflicted “great misery” through
“punitive, mean-spirited, and often callous”
austerity policies driven by a political desire to undertake “social re-engineering”, rather than by economic necessity. This month, his successor reiterated those concerns, stating that UK policies continue to inflict misery.
Even in a pandemic, the Government could not prioritise children. First, we had the chaotic voucher scheme. Then Tory MPs voted to withdraw support for free school meals. The holiday activities and food programme was hard fought for from 2017 onwards, but it was not until 2021 that the Government decided to roll it out. My fully costed School Breakfast Bill would have seen nearly 2 million children start the day with full stomachs; instead, the Government introduced a scheme that provides support to only 2,500 out of the 8,700 schools they identified as eligible. My cost-neutral Healthy Start Scheme (Take-Up) (No. 2) Bill would ensure that eligible families automatically receive free fruit, vegetables and milk; instead, the Government claim that financial regulations are preventing auto-enrolment, despite the payment and card operators saying that it would be entirely possible if only the Government would co-operate.
Evidence given to the child of the north all-party parliamentary group shows that children in the north are more likely to live in poverty. We heard testimony from expectant mothers who have been forced to have abortions because they cannot afford another mouth to feed and clothe. It is estimated that 4 million children now live in poverty. In my part of the world, the north-east, we have the highest rate of child poverty in the United Kingdom, at 38%, and in South Shields that figure rises to over 42%. It is clear that levelling up, just like the northern powerhouse before it, is a vacuous, empty phrase that was never intended to, and never will, do anything to improve the life chances of the children in my area.
If the economy does not work for everyone and consigns millions of children to poverty, the Government have failed. It is time for a general election, so that my party can do as we did last time and ensure that every single child has the very best start in life.
Antony Higginbotham (Burnley) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate on the first King’s Speech for more than 70 years, particularly today on the occasion of His Majesty’s 75th birthday, and particularly when the topic is economic growth, which goes to the heart of everything we are here to do in this place. Economic growth is not about statistics, percentages, and headlines in the Financial Times: it is about the real impact on households, residents and businesses across our constituencies and the whole country.
I would say this, but in my constituency of Burnley and Padiham, we probably have the best set of local businesses anywhere in the country. They do not just stand ready to help us with our future economic growth; they are doing it already. I am thinking of brilliant businesses in Burnley, including multinationals like VEKA and Safran Nacelles and big bakeries like Warburtons and Cherrytree. In Padiham, we have businesses like LP Technology, which is expanding at a rapid pace, and so many more. That is what we do in Burnley and Padiham: we make things and we export them.
That is the first thing about the King’s Speech that I want to touch on. Since the 2019 general election, we have passed some exciting legislation and signed some exciting trade deals with countries including Australia and New Zealand. I was privileged to sit on the Bill Committee during the passage of the Trade Act 2021, in which we rolled over a whole swathe of trade deals from our membership of the EU. It is very exciting that we are now looking at those same trade deals and seeing where we can go further, strengthening our relationships with fast-growing countries. That is exactly what the new legislation for CPTPP will do. Growth in countries like Vietnam and Canada is faster than almost anywhere else in the world; those are the countries where our businesses can seize opportunities. LP Technology—one of the businesses in Padiham that I just mentioned—is going to countries like Australia and signing massive business deals. That is only possible because of the amazing work of our trade negotiators and the team in the Department for Business and Trade. The more of that we can do, the better.
Economic growth is centred in our communities, and that is why I was delighted to see the long-term plan for towns mentioned in the King’s Speech. Since 2019, we have done an incredible job in Burnley and Padiham of working with Government to secure levelling-up funding. We secured £20 million from levelling-up fund 1 and £12 million from levelling-up fund 2, and the Prime Minister came to Burnley personally to announce that we were one of the towns to get a further £20 million as part of the long-term plan. We are going to use that to work with communities to find the things we need to do to secure extra economic growth. In the second town in my constituency, Padiham, we have a flood defence scheme worth almost £18 million that is securing the future of the town, the local economy and the residents who live there.
None of that would be possible without employment, and I was delighted to hear my right hon. Friend the Chancellor speak at the opening of this debate about his plan in the autumn statement next week to make progress on helping people get into work. Unfortunately, in Burnley we continue to have an unemployment rate that is higher than the national average, and that applies to both adults and young people. We are making massive progress in tackling that issue, and it is important we tackle it because of the real impact it has on people and families. The best thing we can do to help families in Burnley is to help them get into work, and that is particularly true of households that have been out of work for some time. I hope that in the autumn statement next week we hear more from the Chancellor on the work he has been doing with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions on tackling long-term out-of-work households.
I will end by talking about the final thing that I think makes a massive difference to economic growth, even if it is a politician’s hobby horse, and that is potholes. Our roads in Burnley and indeed across Lancashire need upgrading. We have brilliant logistics businesses in Burnley that take the products I have mentioned and send them around the world, but we can only do that with roads and infrastructure that are fit for the 21st century. My final ask of those on the Treasury Bench is that, as we look to the autumn statement and the Budget, we continue the focus on potholes and on the infrastructure that makes our country work.
Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Burnley (Antony Higginbotham).
Even by the standards of this shambolic Government, this King’s Speech is a wafer-thin effort. That might be forgivable if we were living in a country where public services were in good shape and the economy was going gangbusters, but we are not. The reality is that, after 13 years of Tory neglect, Britain is breaking and nothing works any more. There is an NHS waiting list of 7 million, schools are literally crumbling and trains are unreliable, extortionately expensive and packed to the rafters. Some 90% of crime is going unsolved, with dreadful conviction rates and victims facing three-year court delays, while raw sewage is being pumped into our rivers and child poverty has tripled since 2017.
This is an utterly shameful record, but it is not only our public services that the Conservatives have broken. They have also taken a wrecking ball to our economy, with a kamikaze Budget that cost £30 billion, and it is working people who are paying the price, with mortgages up almost £3,000, rents up 40% and the weekly food shop up 11% on last year. Their approach to the economy is plain to see. Low public investment has led to the UK having the lowest private investment in the developed world. A sclerotic planning system and rampant nimbyism have hindered house building and stymied our wind farm development, and the abandonment of our manufacturing sector has led to the UK being the most regionally imbalanced economy in the developed world.
If we are to clear up this Conservative mess, we are going to need a decade of national renewal delivered by a mission-driven Labour Government. So Labour’s first two missions are to deliver the highest sustained growth in the G7 and to make Britain a clean energy superpower. The crucial point here is that these two missions go hand in hand. They will be the mutually reinforcing drivers of the green jobs revolution that Labour will deliver.
Just look at the opportunities in floating offshore wind in my Aberavon constituency. FLOW is a prime example of where Wales’s geography offers huge competitive advantage, with the potential to create 16,000 jobs, deliver energy security and lower household bills. But we need central Government to match these ambitions, delivering on the full potential of 20 GW of clean energy by offering a fair strike price for developers in return for ensuring that the manufacturing supply chain jobs are kept here in the UK. If we get this right, Port Talbot could become a green energy and manufacturing hub, with our steelworks making the steel for the floating turbine substructures in a new plate mill, and those very turbines then providing the energy to run the Port Talbot steelworks as well as powering tens of millions of homes across the UK. This bold, ambitious, pioneering plan can become a model for a new economy. South Wales was the cradle of the first industrial revolution, and a Labour Government in Westminster, working in close partnership with the Welsh Labour Government in Cardiff Bay, will put our proud country at the heart of the green industrial revolution.
Whichever way we look at it, we need to make, buy and sell more in Britain. Labour knows that this begins with the steel industry, with our £3 billion clean steel renewal commitment dwarfing the Government’s dangerously unambitious and short-sighted approach. The Conservatives are failing to understand the growing commercial opportunities that a strong British steel industry would be well positioned to seize, and they are failing to recognise the risks of over-reliance on other countries. Decarbonisation is, of course, important, not least because consumers are increasingly demanding greener products, but decarbonisation must not become a byword for deindustrialisation. It would be utterly unforgiveable if the deal that the Government have done with Tata Steel leads to the offshoring of production, good jobs and carbon emissions to other countries that use dirtier steelmaking processes and that do not always have Britain’s best interests at heart.
This King’s Speech is noteworthy more for what it does not contain than for what it does. There is nothing on the cost of living crisis, nothing on the crisis in our public services, nothing to address our protracted productivity crisis, and nothing to tackle the epidemic of 6,000 business bankruptcies that we saw this summer. That is because this is a Government who have given up on governing. They just sit there desperately clinging on to power for power’s sake and arguing with one another.
The British people want a Government who see a problem as something to be solved, not something to be exploited. The choice is clear: five more years of the same Tory chaos or a Labour Government who will give Britain its future back.
Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
Transport infrastructure and regional connectivity are key to increasing both regional and national economic growth—they are the key to truly levelling up. Yet, as was the case with actual measures to tackle the cost of living, neither the Chancellor nor, indeed, the shadow Chancellor said anything whatsoever about them in their speeches earlier today.
The Williams rail review was commissioned three Transport Secretaries ago, in 2018—although I did wonder yesterday if I might have to change that to four Transport Secretaries ago. It recommended the formation of Great British Railways, and ever since then Secretaries of State and Rail Ministers have stood at the Dispatch Box and promised the legislation necessary to deliver GBR, which the right hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps) promised would be a “rail revolution”. Well, it is a very sedately paced revolution. If George Washington and co had proceeded with their revolution at the same speed, there is a fair chance that they would still be using pounds, shillings and pence, and happily drinking tea in Boston harbour. It is ridiculously slow.
When I asked in June, the Government had already spent more than £64 million on the Great British Railways transition team. But what transition? If there is only the promise of a draft Bill in this Session, that kicks any action down the track until after polling day. We were told that GBR is vital to the future of the rail network. If it is so vital, we in this place should be debating and voting on it before polling day.
At least the Government managed to find room in their legislative timetable to deal with the menace of pedicabs in London—a topic on which I am sure Members outwith the M25 have been absolutely inundated with correspondence. The home counties and areas inside the M25 have, as ever, been doing well from UK Government spending. Stage 1 of East West Rail is projected to cost £1.3 billion, Crossrail £19 billion, Thameslink £7 billion and the remnants of HS2 nearly £50 billion. The Treasury’s own figures show that the east midlands sits at under a third of per capita transport spending compared with London, with the south-west at 35% and the north-east at 37%. That is not levelling up or securing high, sustained economic growth in every part of the country—it is leaving the regions of England with scraps from the table, while London gets gold-plated investment each and every time.
Meanwhile, Scotland has a Government who actually do things, such as rolling electrification, reopening lines, trialling peak fare abolition and the full public ownership of rail services under Scottish Government control. Clearly there is a lot more to do, but instead of pushing value for the taxpayer by gouging passengers and cutting spending, ScotRail and the Scottish Government are targeting gains in revenue by boosting usage, with the result that passenger numbers are up by 33% on last year across the network, the highest by a country mile of any UK rail operator. That shows what ambition can mean and can deliver. It is high time that the UK Government showed the same level of ambition, so that the rest of England is not left even further behind.
We have also seen the UK Government publish their minimum service level regulations. It is a disgrace that we have a Government who use Victorian milliners as the template for industrial relations in the 21st century, with lists of the rail services that workers will be compelled to operate under penalty of prosecution published on the website. It is surely no coincidence that European countries with progressive employment laws, where employees are treated with respect and are social partners, have some of the best-performing economies with the highest standards of living. There is simply no way to secure high sustained economic growth in every part of the country when Government policy is to treat skilled workers as chattels. To be absolutely clear, the Scottish Government will play no part in this forced labour scheme, and we will not co-operate with the UK Government on the implementation of this appalling measure in our transport network or in any other area of devolved policy.
People in Scotland have had no faith in the Conservative party to deliver a better economy for decades. Its last election win in our country was in 1955, and since the ’80s it has remained a rump in Scottish politics. It is the only main party not to have held office in Holyrood—a fact unlikely to change any time soon. Conservatives’ defence of the Union as an engine of economic development has been threadbare for years, but ever more so as the few remaining strands keeping the UK aloft are being picked apart by their own actions. Brexit and the cost of living crisis continue to wreak havoc on communities across Scotland and the rest of these isles. Jobs and industry are downscaling and closing all the time, with both main UK parties committed to the insular and dogmatic “Rule, Britannia” policies so beloved of the Daily Mail. There is an opportunity for Scotland to build a better future. It is time that both UK parties stop blocking that opportunity and respect the right of the Scottish people to grasp that future and choose independence.
Feryal Clark (Enfield North) (Lab)
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this King’s Speech debate. After 13 years in power, five Prime Ministers, seven Chancellors, an economic crash and a Brexit without a plan, last week we were presented with a wafer-thin programme that honestly could be done by Christmas. Many of the Bills carried over are watered down and weakened versions of their original selves. One example is the Renters (Reform) Bill. We had to wait four years to debate the Bill. There were five months between First and Second Reading, yet the Bill goes nowhere near far enough to protect renters properly, particularly from no-fault evictions.
Court proceedings for no-fault evictions are at a seven-year high. My borough of Enfield has been hit particularly hard by this eviction crisis, having the highest number of section 21 evictions in the whole of London. It leads to a massive increase in homelessness, increased use of temporary accommodation such as hotels, a huge financial burden on local authorities as they try to grapple with the cost of that accommodation, and increased fear and anxiety for families across the country. I fear that the Government know all too well the impact that these evictions are having on people, but they either do not care or cannot stand up to their party.
Last week, we had the former Home Secretary, the right hon. and learned Member for Fareham (Suella Braverman), declaring war on the use of tents on the streets, disgracefully stating that homelessness is “a lifestyle choice”. According to the charity Crisis, the loss of private tenancy is the leading cause of homelessness. In Enfield, the risk of homelessness increased by 38% because of section 21 notices last year. This Government have chosen to delay banning section 21 evictions for four years. These are not lifestyle choices—they are hard evidence of Tory failure.
These evictions are not only deeply distressing to renters, causing grief and hardship, but costly to the public purse. In fact, Enfield Council faces spending an additional £20 million on temporary accommodation this year alone—that is £20 million that the local authority can no longer spend on public services, despite the dire need for investment and reform. That is funding it can no longer spend on housing or on stuff like social care—the list goes on. Rents in the UK were recently reported to be the highest on record. Far too few homes are being built, mortgage rates are spiralling out of control, and families in my constituency of Enfield North are paying an extra £350 on their mortgages every month, all thanks to 13 years of economic mismanagement and the Tory party’s mortgage bombshell.
Things like working hard, buying a home and raising a family are difficult enough as it is. People expect the Government to keep the economy stable so that their family’s future is secure, but meeting monthly payments is now forcing tough choices, from having to cut back on the weekly shop to abandoning family holidays. A food bank in my constituency recently told me that demand this year is out of control. All those problems demand the very best from the Government, but sadly they have no plan to fix them.
Our economy, like our country, is crying out for change. We need a Government who are on the side of working people and who have ambition, energy and ideas, but this is a tired Government who have lost their goal to govern. The Prime Minister and his Government have failed my constituents and the country. The only way to deliver the change he talks about and which the country needs is to call a general election.
Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)
The words in the title of the debate, “economic growth in every part of the country,” feel like some kind of cruel gaslighting given the dire economic conditions that too many of our constituents face. After 13 years of this Government, we have had devastating austerity, public services slashed, local government decimated, the growth of privatised monopolies and the creeping privatisation of everything from healthcare to our very own data. Given that track record, I do not think that anybody expects the shortest monarch’s speech since 2014 to contain the seeds of Britain’s salvation. It is increasingly clear that only a change of Government will achieve that goal. Therefore, in many ways, my contribution is not just for the current Government but for any Government who may come to power in the near future.
Genuine levelling up, which many of us in this place believe in, implies that everyone and everywhere that contributes to the UK’s prosperity should share in the bounty they help create. It is a simple principle. If we accept it, by that metric, former British Caribbean islands should be at the front of the queue when it comes to levelling up. This is known internationally as reparatory justice: namely, recognition of and compensation for transatlantic chattel slavery, which was the greatest atrocity in the history of humankind, without parallel in its brutality, in its 400-year length and in its profitability. At its 18th century height, slave plantations were making £4 billion to £5 billion a year in profit at 2010 prices, making Caribbean economies the single biggest source of imperial gain ever seen.
The recent Brattle report commissioned by the University of the West Indies estimated that the UK owes £18.8 trillion in compensation to Caribbean islands for the hundreds of years of exploitation. That is not just for chattel slavery but for the continued brutal and bloody exploitation that took place after emancipation. For that emancipation, the slave owners, not the slaves, were paid billions of pounds of compensation, and we as a country—everyone in the Chamber—only finished paying off the debt for that in 2015.
When recently I went back to the Caribbean, I had the chance to speak to everyone from Dickon Mitchell, the Prime Minister of Grenada, through to Avinash Persaud, a key economic adviser to Mia Mottley, the Prime Minister of Barbados. I must admit that I was a bit of a stuck record. I asked why my constituents should be expected to pay reparations to the Caribbean when many of them will struggle to heat their home and feed themselves this winter. The answer was intriguing. I was told that they should not. Arley Gill, chair of the Grenada National Reparations Commission, was very clear. He told me that the families, corporations, banks and other institutions that have exploited the Caribbean for centuries and continue to do so are the same ones that hoard that wealth in the UK or the various British overseas territories for tax avoidance purposes.
Unless we in this country are prepared to tax wealth more, deal with the imperial legacy of Britain’s network of global tax havens and challenge corporate power, whose extractive and exploitive practices have now boomeranged back from empire to almost every aspect of our lives here in the UK, we will never be able to fix our broken economy. By boomeranging I mean housing, water, energy and transport being privatised, and health on its way. Nearly every aspect of our lives these past 50 years has become financialised, leaving millions of our constituents in poverty and debt. Thus, the structural adjustment of the Caribbean became austerity and privatisation for the UK.
If we in this place are to live up to our stated rhetoric of equality, fairness and justice, we need to understand that our responsibility stretches to all who have contributed to this country’s wealth, wherever they may be. As such, let us start that process with a simple statement of acknowledgment on this country’s prosperity: Britain did not develop the world; the world developed Britain.
Stephen Farry (North Down) (Alliance)
I want to concentrate on the Northern Ireland economy, as this is primarily a debate on the economy. First, however, I want to touch upon the situation in the middle east, and in particular the need for a ceasefire. I utterly condemn the actions of Hamas as terrorism. However, we must recognise that Israel’s response has been disproportionate, represents collective punishment and sees ongoing breaches of international humanitarian law. We have all been deeply touched by the images we have seen on our televisions, and we know that there is a massive humanitarian crisis ongoing in Gaza.
Hopefully, we all recognise that there is no military solution to the situation. The only way forward lies in both Israel and Palestine having freedom and security, and the reaching of a political accommodation, notably with a two-state solution. Continued death and destruction achieves nothing—arguably, it makes the situation even harder, because it will only compound people’s sense of bitterness and feed extremism. It also risks wider regional escalation. A ceasefire, which must include the release of hostages and humanitarian access, requires a collective international effort, as does the renewed peace process that should follow any initial ceasefire. I hope I can speak with some degree of authority on peace processes, given my experience in Northern Ireland.
Moving on to the situation in Northern Ireland, our economy continues to function and businesses are continuing to invest, but our economy is being held back massively by the absence of a devolved Executive. We need an Executive for political stability and investment in skills, infrastructure and research and development. As a former Minister for Employment and Learning in Northern Ireland, I appreciate the importance of skills. Rather than further investment in those areas in Northern Ireland, we are seeing budget cuts. The impact on further and higher education is mirrored more widely in health, education and other public services.
I want to see a restored Executive working closely with the UK Government to address Northern Ireland’s current financial crisis through two key interventions. The first is the introduction of what is called a fiscal floor. Northern Ireland is structurally underfunded by around £400 million a year. A fiscal floor would need to be set at the correct level, taking into account policing and justice needs based on the most relevant period, 2010 to 2015, adjusted for inflation, as that was based on actual need as assessed by the Government at that particular point. We have the precedent of what happened in Wales, fed by the Holtham commission. That model could be replicated with adjustments for Northern Ireland relatively quickly.
We also need a transformation fund. We cannot fix public services in Northern Ireland from a burning platform of cuts and further cuts. We need an invest-to-save programme for both public services and our economy, as part of a renewed financial package. Of course, we have to learn lessons from previous financial packages in Northern Ireland. I say to the Government that I fully accept that there will be a need for a certain degree of conditionality around any intervention, but unless we have that financial package, we are never going to turn the situation around in Northern Ireland.
We have a very particular opportunity in Northern Ireland through the presence of the Windsor framework. I welcome the Government’s efforts to secure it earlier this year. I am disappointed that others are failing to see the importance of that breakthrough and to return to the Executive as a consequence. Without a functioning Executive and those key interventions in our economy, we will not be able to take full advantage of the opportunities provided by the framework, particularly in terms of dual market access.
Finally, I will touch briefly on climate change. It is by far the deepest, most far-reaching challenge facing the world, including us in the UK. While the Government’s targets may remain, there is a clear sense that the brakes are being slammed. It is a false narrative to pitch economic wellbeing against climate change. Through a green new deal, we can address not just economic change but social justice, alongside climate change. I strongly suggest that the narrative needs to change around a green new deal, both UK-wide and in Northern Ireland.
Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)
One of the greatest risks we face today as a country and as a global community is the climate and ecological emergency. It is also one of the greatest risks to economic growth. We need to align UK law with what science tells us is required for a liveable future by passing the cross-party backed climate and ecology Bill. That is why I tabled amendment (e), which would deliver a science-led, joined-up strategy to build a greener, fairer future for all and prioritise the protection of nature.
The housing sector is on track to use almost 50% of the Climate Change Committee’s recommended carbon budget. That trajectory is unsustainable if we are to uphold our commitments under the Paris agreement and play our part in limiting global warming to 1.5°. We need homes fit for the future. The Government have now prioritised stepping up the pace of retrofitting, driving progress towards decarbonisation while providing much-needed assistance to our constituents during the cost of living crisis.
On planning, we are told that England will soon have a new biodiversity net gain policy, which will mandate that any new development must leave biodiversity in a better state than before it was constructed. The Oxford Nature Positive Hub has exposed serious challenges that threaten the integrity of the policy’s outcomes, including the oversight, monitoring and enforcement of biodiversity improvements. Under the policy, developers have three ways to offset their biodiversity liability—the damage their project does to nature—but the process will be overseen by local planning departments, which are often lacking in capacity and expertise.
We must prioritise the protection of nature. The leaders’ pledge for nature was a welcome international commitment to not only halt nature loss by 2030, but set it firmly in reverse. That was also the ambition set at COP15 last December, which I attended, and which the Government signed up to. It is the apex nature target of the climate and ecology Bill that I am proud to draw attention to via amendment (e).
I want to discuss Gaza, which the King referred to in his Gracious Speech. I, like many others, was at a Remembrance Sunday event at a local church. I was privileged to read Micah 4, which states:
“He will judge between many peoples and will settle disputes for strong nations far and wide. They will beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war any more. Everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig-tree”.
Rev. Matt Broughton of St Giles then gave the eulogy. He drew attention to the fact that the same land that is being fought over now was being fought over 3,000 years ago. Micah was under threat of attack and assault, but he could see the need for peace and a peaceful settlement, and the need to turn those swords into ploughshares. He also drew attention to the fact that the only settlement would be through negotiation, as we ourselves saw in Northern Ireland and as the Spanish saw in the Basque country.
Although, as Matt Broughton said, now is a time of uncertainty, disharmony and fear, we need to look to the future and think about how we can recreate two states for two peoples. It is incumbent on us, as the UK Parliament, and on the UK Government to join the international efforts that are being made. Pedro Sánchez, the Spanish Prime Minister, has proposed that there should be a peace conference after the conclusion of the conflict. It is important that we create an intergenerational peace for the people of Israel and the people of Palestine. This is not a goal that should be seen as too lofty or too difficult. It is the only way in which we will move beyond the current conflict, and beyond the discussions we are having about the cessation of hostilities or a ceasefire. It is the only way in which we will bring peace to both peoples. Some say that there are not the partners for peace on both sides, but if we are to reach this goal, the international community must make it their top priority to find those individuals who exist in both Israel and Palestine, and promote and support them.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Reclaim)
In this debate we are discussing economic growth, and it is fitting that my constituency is being represented, because it has consistently delivered some of the highest economic growth in the UK, largely through being the premier distribution and logistics hub for our country. However, even in North West Leicestershire I am seeing the prosperity for which we have worked so hard being undermined by an evident lack of leadership and accountability on the Government’s part. We need honest, immediate change. The Government’s responsibility is to protect and serve its citizens, not to pander to the World Economic Forum, the World Health Organisation or other supranational bodies.
We appear to be sliding towards Marxism and the disruption of our traditional norms and values—our history, our religion and our institutions. What we desperately need is leadership that champions truth, freedom and economic prosperity. We are grappling with skyrocketing inflation, especially in food prices, with a looming financial crisis, out-of-control monthly mortgage payments, and energy prices that will reach new highs this winter and increase fuel poverty across the country.
We ended up here because of fiscal profligacy with zero accountability, in addition to a decade of reckless money printing by the Bank of England. Let us look at a few of the most outrageous project losses that we have seen. HS2 has meant tens of billions lost, while useless personal protective equipment and track and trace have lost us £100 billion and £40 billion respectively. There is the financing of the war in Ukraine, which could have been brought to peace last March, while our own people struggle to make ends meet. There is the economic crash, and the stunting of economic growth because of HS2, with 22 miles of North West Leicestershire blighted for a decade. There is the decade of delay to the regeneration of Measham, my most deprived village. I am pleased that the Government have decided to reopen the Ivanhoe line between Burton-on-Trent and Leicester, but concurrent plans to terminate it at Coalville are insufficient. It needs to go all the way to Leicester so that it can benefit the South Derbyshire, North West Leicestershire and Bosworth constituencies.
Asylum seekers in hotels are costing us more than £10 million a day. I do not think it fair that, given that there are seven constituencies in Leicestershire, 51% of the asylum seekers have been located in hotels in North West Leicestershire.
Taxes are higher than they have been at any time in my life. Taxes are used to modify behaviour, which is why we penally tax tobacco and alcohol, but we are penally taxing work when we want economic growth. I believe the Chancellor said, “You cannot borrow your way to economic growth,” but I did that many times when I was in business; I borrowed money, invested it in the business, grew the business, and paid the money back. It would appear that the Chancellor thinks we can tax our way to prosperity, but I do not think we will be able to do that either.
We are spending £200 million on a covid inquiry that is not asking the right questions. We need an admission from the Government and the Opposition that the flawed pandemic response was the cause of many of the problems we are suffering from now.
At a time when our country is in crisis and families are struggling to make ends meet, why do this Government persist in pressing forward with their nonsensical net zero agenda? I appreciate that the Prime Minister has announced a delay—maybe some would argue that it is a retraction—for some of the targets, but it is not enough. He needs to go further. The fact is that the UK accounts for less than 1% of global emissions, and on that basis we are voluntarily rejecting entire industries while at the same time communist China is allowed to increase its emissions by more than our total emissions in every year of this decade. If we press on with net zero, it will cost £1 trillion or possibly £3 trillion—slamming money on to the national debt in a way that our heirs and successors will not thank us for.
The debt is now completely out of control, and the global economy is on a knife edge. Many are foreseeing a major crash or another run on the banks, and this could pave the way for programmable digital central bank currencies—I hope not; I will oppose that—and a social credit scoring system. Our national debt is now £2.9 trillion. Why would we trust the central bankers again when they have got us into trouble twice in two decades? We must immediately instate the effective fiscal process used in August 1914, whereby the financial collapse was checked by introducing a Treasury bond known as the Bradbury pound. This was accepted and it stabilised the markets at the time. It is not debt and it is not interest-bearing; it is Treasury money. We do not need to trust the central bankers; we need to use Treasury money to solve the crisis, exactly as we did in 1914.
Tahir Ali (Birmingham, Hall Green) (Lab)
I will speak to amendment (b), tabled in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Zarah Sultana), to which I am a signatory. It is a great shame that the King’s Speech paid little heed to the immediate need for a ceasefire in Gaza. It is over a month since the dreadful attacks on Israeli civilians on 7 October prompted a massive wave of retaliatory violence in Gaza. Over 11,000 innocent Palestinians have been killed and over 25,000 injured. The majority of those killed and injured have been women and children, who have long been suffering the inhumane living conditions in Gaza, the largest open-air prison in the world.
Hamas’s attack was contemptible and rightly condemned, but the evils committed on 7 October do not justify the disproportionate and unlawful response by Israel. The indiscriminate bombing of hospitals, bakeries and even refugee camps has maximised the suffering of the Palestinian people and driven them out of their homes. The withholding of water, food, fuel and medicine by Israel constitutes collective punishment, which is prohibited under international law. Israel has failed to respond proportionately or lawfully, and it has now killed more civilians than have been killed in all world conflicts over the last three years. It is no surprise that United Nations experts have expressed a grave concern that the people in Gaza are facing imminent genocide. Those experts have also made it clear that Israel’s allies bear responsibility for the tragic situation unfolding in Gaza and that without immediate and decisive action, the Palestinian people face either death or complete displacement from their homes.
Given the terrible suffering of the people of Gaza, most of the British public now support a ceasefire—a position that is not reflected by this Government. A ceasefire is crucial to stopping the violence and allowing vital humanitarian assistance to find its way into Gaza. It is also essential to restarting a peace process that would see a secure Israel coexisting with a legitimate Palestinian state. However, on this issue the international community and the UK in particular have failed. Illegal settlers supported by the Israeli Government have, for years, seized land and property from Palestinians in the west bank, undermining the territorial integrity and sovereignty of any potential Palestinian state. Israeli forces have continually attacked worshippers at the al-Aqsa mosque in East Jerusalem, Palestinian families and businesses have been forced out of East Jerusalem, and the blockade of Gaza has continued unabated for many years. There are clearly elements within Israeli politics who have no wish or desire to see Palestinians co-exist alongside Israel, and who have used various means to prevent this from happening.
In this context, the much-needed leadership of countries such as ours in the peace process has been absent. There is still no indication of when the UK will formally recognise the state of Palestine, despite years of promises. Earlier today, we heard statements about a two-state solution. For a two-state solution there have to be two equal states, both of which have to be recognised. Of the 193 member countries of the United Nations, we are one of 55 that do not recognise Palestine. How can we talk about a two-state solution when we do not even recognise them as equals?
The Palestinian people have been abandoned, and now, in their time of greatest need, this Government cannot bring themselves to call for an immediate ceasefire. That is why, along with my colleagues in this House, I will continue to demand a ceasefire in Gaza. When half a million people taking to the streets to demand a ceasefire has been labelled by some Members as a “hate march,” we realise that humanity has failed.
Samantha Dixon (City of Chester) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to speak in today’s debate, particularly as this is my first King’s Speech since having the honour of being elected as a Member of Parliament by my constituents in Chester.
As grand as the occasion was, I am disappointed by the content of the King’s Speech. I have looked for what it will mean for my constituents, especially as so many continue to face the gruelling challenges of the cost of living crisis. Sadly, it offers them nothing. Proposing just 21 Bills, it is clear that the Government have simply run out of ideas. Six Bills have been carried over from the last Session, and any that were meant to address important reforms, such as the long-awaited leasehold reforms—an important issue to people across the country —appear to have been watered down from what was originally promised. We shall see.
Some promises have been completely omitted, including the shameful U-turn on banning conversion therapy. That move has abandoned LGBTQ+ people who face this abusive practice.
Change was a key theme in last week’s speech, and I agree that the country is crying out for change. However, that change cannot come about with the continuation of this Conservative Government—the same Government who crashed the economy just over a year ago, plunging so many hard-working people into further uncertainty about their lives and finances. The lack of ambition in the legislative programme for the next Session simply does not address the serious challenges facing the country.
The Chancellor and the Prime Minister promised a growing economy, and instead we are seeing growth flatlining, the Bank of England downgrading its economic forecasts and the International Monetary Fund forecasting that the UK will have the lowest growth in the G7 next year.
As we have heard, taxes are the highest they have been for 70 years, with households paying a staggering £4,000 more in tax each year. Mortgages and rents have skyrocketed, with home ownership being a very distant dream for many young people. Housing is the most prominent issue facing my constituents in Chester, and the King’s Speech has failed to deliver, with no sign of local housing targets or the needed reform of our planning system. It is clear that this Government have no plan to fix the housing emergency.
The worries do not stop there. They are everywhere we look. Our councils, schools, hospitals, police and fire services are all starved of resources. Local authorities are facing serious financial challenges. I know that Cheshire West and Chester Council is dealing with an unprecedented number of children in care, with never before seen levels of complexity, which will impact on all aspects of the council’s finances. It did not used to be like this and it does not have to be. Labour has a plan to make working people in all parts of the country better off, by growing the economy, boosting wages and bringing down bills. Labour has a plan to retrofit 19 million homes, which presents an ambitious opportunity to boost growth, cut bills and develop skills. Labour would deliver by making Britain a clean energy superpower, building an NHS fit for the future, making Britain’s streets safe and breaking down the barriers to opportunity at every stage. That is the real change that people, not only in Chester, but up and down the country, are crying out for.
Beth Winter (Cynon Valley) (Lab)
The King’s Speech is yet another lost opportunity to deal with the cost of living crisis, the climate catastrophe and the scandalous underfunding of public services in my country of Cymru, Wales, and across the UK. This Government’s priority remains tax cuts for a wealthy minority of the type that crashed the economy last year, which the shadow Chancellor’s amendment today seeks to prevent. As the TUC has said:
“The UK is stuck in a Conservative doom loop”—
which amounts to—
“low growth, terrible living standards, and repeated doses of austerity.”
Our distorted economy is still able to deliver millions of pounds to a few at the top, just so long as millions at the bottom accept living on a few crumbs here and there.
The King’s Speech did nothing to deal with those problems. On pay, the Government should have pledged to legislate so that they always deliver pay rises for public sector workers that at least match inflation and provide pay restoration. We must ensure that our hard workers do not receive real-terms pay cuts again and that their salaries match real value in society. The Government must address that issue and do that in the autumn statement. On social security, we need payments to rise, but we hear that the Government plan to make new savings. They are reportedly planning to cut £4 billion from health-related benefits, which will, according to more than 100 disability organisations, plunge disabled people into poverty and could lead to unnecessary deaths. On energy bills, we have heard the Energy Secretary tell us the oil and gas stunt in the speech will not
“necessarily bring energy bills down”.
What we should be doing is cutting out the vast waste of shareholder dividend payments and restoring energy provision to the public sector.
Unlike the hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Roberts), who spoke earlier, I strongly believe that we need more devolution in Wales. We need a fair needs funding settlement, devolution of the Crown Estate and the £5 billion owed to us in consequentials from the HS2 England-only project—I could go on.
I want to focus my final comments on public sector funding. The Welsh Government have announced in recent weeks that they have to find savings of £600 million to balance their budget and maintain health spending. That is solely down to UK austerity and a Conservative economic agenda that harms our Welsh economy, Welsh public services and the living standards of Welsh people. One in four people in Wales are eating smaller meals or skipping meals altogether. Almost 3 million people in Britain are using food banks. As usual, it is the poorest in society who are paying the highest price, which is why I am supporting our local TUC in organising a hunger march later this month. Communities such as mine in Cynon Valley and across Rhondda Cynon Taf organised the first hunger march to London back in 1927, and it is a sad reflection on, and indictment of, our society that we are having to do the same again in 2023.
The impact of repeated rounds of austerity and the extractive nature of the economy means that there is a need and a desire to look at new economic models, at integrated community-based economic and social development. In Wales, this is being done under a vision of “Cymunedoli which translates as “communitisation” and is similar to community wealth building.
Cymunedoli is an economic model that ensures that communities own and manage their resources and labour, rather than being exploited for the benefit of others, as has long been the case throughout Welsh history. A fair, inclusive, prosperous and sustainable economy is created for the benefit of everyone, through generating and retaining wealth within local communities. The examples of cymunedoli that are being pursued in Wales are successful: local investment in jobs, paying for local training, paying local suppliers and staff, and finances recycled and retained within the local community, rather than extracted. We need to see more of that.
The Tory Government have spent 13 years cutting services and creating a cost of living crisis. That has to stop now and we need the Tories out. Diolch yn fawr.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Those who have participated in the debate should aim to be in the Chamber for about 6.30pm.
Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)
We are now facing the 14th year of Conservative rule. In that time, the Conservatives have presided over the worst growth in GDP per head since records began, a sustained decline in living standards and a huge housing crisis, while our public services are disintegrating.
It is clear that the economic policies of the past decade have totally failed to address the biggest challenges faced in our everyday society. We are in the midst of the worst pay crisis since the Battle of Waterloo. Real income is still below levels of 2010. In fact, our entire economic system is a stagnant, economic disaster zone—as the New Economics Foundation has put it,
“a stitch-up between large, distant institutions and large, distant corporations.”
My constituents in Ilford South feel the full force of this economic malaise every day, whether it be in the shops, navigating the ever-growing prices of basic goods with an ever-shrinking pay packet, or perhaps most acutely in their very homes, where they face ever-rising rents, crumbling houses and the constant threat of no-fault evictions.
The private rented sector is the worst case of this—a highly deregulated mess that has enabled rents to skyrocket as quality declines, with freeholders looking to grab as much ground rent as possible. The English Housing Survey says that almost a quarter of occupied private rented properties, amounting to nearly 1 million properties, fail the decent homes standard.
Private tenants are almost three times as likely to be exposed to damp and mould as social housing tenants. Even if the property tenants reside in is liveable, there is always the looming threat of a section 21 no-fault eviction. Since the Government first promised to end section 21 no-fault evictions, over 70,000 households have been evicted and threatened with homelessness, and in the past few months, section 21 claims have risen by a shocking 38%. Section 21 is now a leading cause of homelessness in this country, but it can also be used as a weapon by unscrupulous landlords to quash any demands from tenants who complain about failure to meet basic standards and conditions.
While it is welcome to see that the Government are finally bringing forward the long-awaited Renters (Reform) Bill, which will end section 21 evictions, it seems to be too little, too late and appears to be indefinitely delayed. How much longer do tenants in my constituency in Ilford have to live with the constant fear of a no-fault eviction hanging over their heads?
The Bills presented in the King’s Speech do nothing to address the cost of renting. The past year has seen the biggest rise in rents since records began, forcing private renters to fork out huge proportions of their income on living costs. Sandra, in my constituency, said to me recently:
“Initially, our monthly rent was at a reasonable level, but we were shocked when our landlord proposed a substantial rent increase of £450 extra per month…As law-abiding citizens who diligently pay our taxes, we find ourselves in a bewildering and unjust situation. It is disheartening to see individuals and families, who were once stable in their homes, being pushed into homelessness or temporary accommodation due to these unreasonable rent increases.”
This will be a familiar story to countless families across London, as many London MPs will know. The average advertised rent in London is now a record £2,501 per month. Record rents are a symptom of the housing crisis and a broken private rented sector. Thankfully, the Mayor of London is urging the Government to act now, because London is one of the few global cities without any form of rent controls. We can learn from international precedents to design an effective system of rent control for London. Our Labour Mayor proposed two-year rent freezes, which could save average renters in London £3,374. I hope that the Minister will consider granting the Mayor of London the powers that his counterparts in Berlin, New York and Scotland have to introduce rent controls.
This is a failing sector that has pushed more and more families into disastrous temporary accommodation. When I speak to my constituents who are trapped in temporary and emergency accommodation, I hear how they have been waiting upwards of 10 years for a social home. As MPs, we have all heard the horror stories. This is a complex issue, with no silver bullet. The long-awaited and yet further delayed Renters (Reform) Bill is a welcome step in the right direction, but it does not go far enough. It does nothing to tackle excessive rent increases and it fails to close loopholes that will allow unscrupulous landlords to continue to exploit tenants. If this Government, and indeed any future Government, are serious about tackling this crisis, they must go further. They should give local leaders the power to issue rent controls and empower tenants with proper rights and guarantees. We need more Becontree estates, once homes fit for heroes, not Battersea power station monuments with luxury flats for the super-rich.
Stephen Morgan (Portsmouth South) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate on His Majesty’s first King’s Speech.
The Prime Minister was right to say in his response last week that the country needs change, but if the people of Portsmouth needed any more evidence that this change will not come through a fifth Tory term, this King’s Speech provided it. It contained more words than any since 2005, yet had the fewest Bills since 2014, and is a perfect symbol for the latest incarnation of Conservative Government that our country is having to endure. It is a party that governs with slogans rather than actions, and that promises to level up, to provide strong and stable Government, to grow our economy, and to cut NHS waiting lists, but the reality is that for more than a decade now the only thing that this Government have provided is an impeccable record of over-promising and under-delivering.
People in Portsmouth are facing serious challenges after a decade of Conservative Government and decline, with skyrocketing mortgages, rising rents, soaring bills, and taxes at their highest level for 70 years. It was sad but not surprising to see this week that the number of food bank parcels issued in Portsmouth by the Trussell Trust has risen by nearly 70% over the past year.
People are really struggling. This King’s Speech could have focused on tackling these huge problems, but instead there was nothing to help people with the cost of living crisis; nothing to tackle rising levels of shoplifting, which are now topping 1,000 incidents per day; nothing to finally stop the sewage pollution; nothing to ensure that every child succeeds and thrives; nothing to secure the investment that our community deserves; and nothing to address the fact that there is only one dentist and GP for every 2,300 people in Portsmouth. Those are the priorities of the people of Portsmouth, those are my priorities and those will be the priorities of the next Labour Government. Sadly, though, at the moment we have to live with a Prime Minister who has given up on governing, who is content to carry on with the failures of the past decade, and whose idea of change is bringing back a failed Prime Minister from a decade ago.
With so few Bills included in the King’s Speech, there is absolutely no excuse for some of its omissions. Much-needed Bills on mental health, for renters and to support victims have been dropped. The failure to ban so-called conversion therapy represents a complete betrayal of all LGBT+ people at risk of this abhorrent treatment. We should be clear: conversion practices are abuse and it is nothing short of disgraceful that they have not been outlawed yet.
Where this Government seek to sow division, Labour will unite the country, offering people hope around a mission to get Britain’s future back: by getting Britain building again to deliver transformational infrastructure and homes for millions; by switching on green energy to create jobs, cut bills and boost energy security; by getting the NHS back on its feet so that everyone can access a dentist and GP when they need it; by ending the Tory sewage scandal so that our waters can be clean again; by taking back our streets, with 13,000 more police officers tackling crime; and by breaking down barriers to opportunity so that young people’s futures are not defined by the circumstances they are born into.
The people of Portsmouth want new ideas and a plan to get our country’s future back and to bring about the change in my city and our country that is so desperately needed. This damp squib of a King’s Speech shows that that change will not come with the Tories. It is becoming ever clearer that the Tory party is out of energy, out of ideas and—hopefully, for all our sakes—soon to be out of Government.
Navendu Mishra (Stockport) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend, the new Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Alistair Strathern), on an excellent and important maiden speech. I hope he will continue to serve the people of Mid Bedfordshire for many years to come.
I want to talk first about housing, because that is the issue on which I receive the most casework in my constituency inbox. In recent years we have seen an escalation of section 21 notices, extortionate increases in private rents and a general increase in household costs. It is vital that the Conservative Government end the freeze on local housing allowance.
I am also extremely concerned about the level of homelessness, the demands on social housing providers in Stockport, and the financial demand on my local authority of meeting emergency and temporary housing costs. Stockport has seen a significant increase in homelessness: more than 2,300 households sought assistance from the council in 2022-23—an increase of 22% on the previous year—and, sadly, I see that trend becoming worse.
Stockport is the best place to live in England, but private rents have shot up in recent years. The housing emergency is now a full-blown crisis; it is placing those on low incomes in a very difficult place, and the Conservative Government are failing them. A constituent contacted me recently because her rent had shot up from £600 to £900 per month, causing her immense financial hardship. That rent increase seems entirely unreasonable. She now faces an eviction via section 21 notice from a home she has lived in for 15 years, at a time of her life when she should feel secure and comfortable in her own home.
The current housing emergency cannot be fixed overnight, but ending the freeze on the local housing allowance would have an immediate impact on those in need ahead of another difficult winter for the nation. People deserve the security and opportunity to get on in life, but under the Conservatives the foundations of a good life are crumbling. 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 from so many people who are stuck paying unaffordable private rents. Labour’s plan for secure homes will put an end to the Tories’ housing emergency, and we support fundamental reform of the private rented sector.
I also want to cover NHS waiting lists. I recently spoke to a constituent regarding her mother, who is in a care home. In Stockport, unfortunately, the wait for an assessment by NHS continence services is 31 weeks, which is far too long. My constituent, whose mother is 90, contacted me in distress regarding the very long period of time her mother had to wait to get an assessment. I am told that the assessment should take no longer than 12 weeks, but in this case it took 31. That is a very serious matter and I will write to the Department of Health and Social Care about it.
There are almost 8 million people on NHS waiting lists in England. The Prime Minister promised to cut those waiting lists, yet last month they rose to a record high of 7.7 million people, meaning that one in seven people are currently waiting for NHS treatment. That is simply unacceptable.
I recently wrote to all NHS-registered dental practices in my constituency, asking them whether they had any availability for registration for NHS treatment. In my local hospital, Stepping Hill, 365 patients had to visit A&E over the past year to get emergency treatment for tooth decay. We are in a crisis. I thank the British Dental Association for the work it is doing on this issue, but the Government have forgotten about NHS dentistry and it needs fundamental reform. From the letters and emails I have had from dentists in my constituency, I know the service is underfunded and people who cannot afford dental treatment simply do not get it; they have to do DIY dentistry at home, which is very dangerous.
On local government funding, Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council—my local authority— has delivered over £140 million in savings since 2010. It is also facing further savings of £44 million by 2027-28. The current cost of living crisis, caused by the Conservative party, is having a severe impact on my constituents and on people across the borough of Stockport. The council needs much greater funding certainty from central Government, and the national local government funding settlement falls short. I call on the Treasury to address that urgently.
I will finish with a comment about Respect for Shopworkers Week, which is this week. We have seen a significant rise in physical and verbal attacks and threats against shop workers. The Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers—my trade union, as a former retail worker—is campaigning on that issue, and the Government need to bring in legislation to address it.
We need a general election now so that we can replace this tired Government.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
This will be the last Back-Bench contribution before the wind-ups.
Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)
The King’s Speech was an opportunity for the Government to address the serious issues facing the country. Instead, it offered little in the way of hope for the millions waiting for NHS appointments, for the millions struggling to pay their bills, or for the millions of adults who struggle to read and write; and it dashed the hopes of everyone who is concerned about the climate emergency.
The NHS is in crisis, with more than 7 million people on waiting lists for routine treatment in England. Government spending on health has not kept pace with need. “The Rational Policy-Maker’s Guide to the NHS”, published by The 99% Organisation, presents the average annual change in per capita health spending—adjusted for population and demographic factors—by UK Governments since 1979. It shows that the Labour Government between 1997 and 2010 oversaw an average annual increase in per capita health spending of 5.67%. However, there was an annual average reduction of 0.07% under the coalition Government, and the Conservatives presided over a reduction of 0.03% between 2015 and 2021. Tory austerity is destroying our NHS.
This year, integrated care boards are required to make average efficiency savings of an eyewatering 5.8% at a time when we have massive waiting lists. Not only does that deliver misery to millions of patients, but it is damaging the economy, as people waiting for vital treatment have their recovery delayed, and so too their return to work. A Government who fail the NHS fail the economy, so I urge the Government to change tack and use the autumn statement to provide the NHS with the resources it needs.
Our levels of poverty and inequality are a source of shame and need to be addressed urgently. More than 14 million people in the UK, including 4.2 million children and 2.1 million pensioners, were living in poverty in 2021-22—about 1 million more people than in the previous year. Analysis by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that an estimated 1.8 million UK households, containing nearly 3.8 million people, including a million children, experienced destitution at some point in 2022. Shockingly, the study found that rates of destitution have more than doubled in the last five years as a result of benefit cuts and cost of living pressures. Paul Kissack, chief executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, said that the Government are “choosing not to” act. Olivier De Schutter, the UN’s special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, described poverty levels in the UK as “simply not acceptable” and said that the Government are violating international law.
OECD figures suggest that, compared with European Union countries, the UK has high levels of income inequality. Poverty and inequality are not inevitable; they can be addressed through progressive taxation, social security and investment in skills and education. The Government should start by abolishing the two-child limit and increasing child benefit. A Government who keep a large proportion of the population in poverty and ill health are a Government who have failed.
Illiteracy among adults is another driver of poverty and inequality. In the King’s Speech, the Government have yet again ignored the 7.1 million adults in England—one in six, or 16.4% of the adult population—who are functionally illiterate. Poor literacy skills make it harder for people to get good jobs, find and secure decent housing, and access services and use public transport, and it impacts on the wellbeing and educational development of their children, too. I call on the Government to carry out a review of adult literacy levels, and to come forward with strategy to improve them.
The climate and ecological emergency that we are facing affects us all, yet this irresponsible Government have announced a Bill that will support the future licensing of new oil and gas fields. It is sheer folly for the Government to be prioritising fossil fuels when we face climate disaster. The challenge we face is immense, and we need a Government who will invest in home-grown clean power and insulate 19 million homes, as Labour would do.
The Government have still not come forward with an outright ban on underground coal gasification, a risky technology to extract fossil fuels that has the potential to destroy the important ecosystem of the Dee estuary in my constituency. My constituents are adamant, as am I, that they do not want to see UCG under the Dee. Nor have the Government come forward with an outright ban on fracking—again, something that my constituents and I are opposed to. I call on the Government to ban both those technologies once and for all as a matter of urgency.
This King’s Speech shows a Government who have no intention of addressing these very serious issues: the future of the NHS, poverty, inequality, the cost of living crisis, illiteracy in adults and the climate crisis.
Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)
I thank all right hon. and hon. Members who have contributed to the debate this afternoon. In particular, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Alistair Strathern) on his brilliant maiden speech; it is great to see him here today. I also thank my hon. Friends the Members for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) and for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith), the Chairs of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee and the Petitions Committee, for their contributions on behalf of their Committees.
We heard excellent speeches from many colleagues, including my hon. Friends the Members for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams), for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe), for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah), for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane), for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill), for Leeds East (Richard Burgon), for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck), for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock), for Enfield North (Feryal Clark), for Norwich South (Clive Lewis), for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel), for Birmingham, Hall Green (Tahir Ali), for City of Chester (Samantha Dixon), for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter), for Ilford South (Sam Tarry), for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan), for Stockport (Navendu Mishra) and for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood). That long list shows the importance that Opposition Members place on growing the economy on the bedrock of fiscal responsibility. We heard that, from skills to housing, infrastructure to net zero and public services to poverty and inequality, there were a whole host of issues missing from the King’s Speech that we would put into a Labour King’s Speech if we were to win the next general election.
I am pleased to conclude the debate on behalf of the Opposition this evening. As you know, Mr Deputy Speaker, I was appointed to the shadow Cabinet just over two months ago, yet even within my short tenure, I already find myself in a position to welcome a second Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Laura Trott), to her place. As I said earlier, I look forward to holding her to account for what No. 10 has described as her core task, which is to grow the economy.
We all know that any number of Conservative reshuffles will not hide the failures of the past 13 years of Conservative government. Indeed, the latest Conservative Prime Minister is so keen to remind us of the past 13 years of Conservative failure that he has decided to bring back one of the Conservatives’ failed former Prime Ministers as his Foreign Secretary—a promotion that we can only assume is a testament to the lack of available talent on the Government Benches.
Let us look at the King’s Speech and the prospects for our economy. The good news is that the latest Conservative Prime Minister keeps telling the country that his plan is working. Indeed, he thinks it is working so well that he did not put anything meaningful on the economy in the King’s Speech at all. The bad news is that, while the Conservatives tell the country that everything is fine, we all know from our own lives that that is not the case and that their plan has failed. We see the cost of living, the cost of our rent and mortgages, the spending power of the pound in our pocket, and public services so close to broken that many people have given up trying to access them at all.
The latest Conservative Prime Minister might have his head in the sand, but we all know that the Conservatives’ plan is not working, because nothing is working in our country, which begs the question, why? The Chancellor is taking more money from us than ever before, thanks to 25 Conservative tax rises in this Parliament alone, but most of that extra cash is being spent on paying the interest on our national debt, to the tune of a whopping £112 billion in 2022-23 alone, which is more than we spend on our schools.
Why? Because for year after year of the past 13 years of Conservative failure on the economy, the Tories have had to borrow more and more money to cover up their failures—not just in response to Brexit, covid or the energy crisis, but in each and every year since they came to power in 2010. Let me tell you, Mr Deputy Speaker: it is working people who pay the price, not just through their taxes but through a lack of access to good-quality public services. People across the country will be saying, “We have never paid so much and gotten so little in return.”
How do we get ourselves out of this high-tax, high-debt spiral of Tory failure on the economy? The short answer, of course, is for the latest Conservative Prime Minister to call an election so that a Labour Government can be given the chance to clear up the Tories’ mess for them. The longer answer, and Labour’s plan, is to grow the economy so that working people are better off, because all the Prime Minister managed to reveal in the King’s Speech was his empty hand. There was no planning reform to get Britain building, no pension reform to kick-start investment in Britain, no industrial strategy and no new skills policy to help train workers for the jobs of tomorrow, nor were there any fairer choices on tax, such as ending non-dom status. Those are all Labour policies that sit on a bedrock of our mission for the country.
As we have heard repeatedly, this Government are out of touch and out of ideas. Only Labour has a plan to grow the economy, boost wages, bring down bills and make working people better off. Prosperity for every corner of our country can happen only with political and economic stability. That is why we invite Conservative Members to join us in the Aye Lobby this evening to vote for our amendment, which would give new statutory powers to the independent Office for Budget Responsibility —an uncontroversial amendment that should not trouble any Member on the Conservative Benches. It aims to prevent from happening again what the former failed Conservative Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), did this time last year when she crashed the economy.
That is why a Labour Government will introduce tough new fiscal rules to create solid foundations for growth—never again the Tory way, playing fast and loose with the economy and leaving working people paying sky-high mortgages. We will roll up our sleeves and partner with business, rather than stepping aside and letting investment relocate overseas. We will modernise our public services so that they work for patients, parents and public servants once again, and we will get Britain building, rather than allow outdated planning laws and ongoing division within the Conservative party to hold back our country.
The unpalatable truth facing the British people is that each day this Conservative Government remain in power is another day when our country is held back from achieving its potential, and that the biggest risk to the economy is the Conservative party itself. That is why I find myself in the unusual circumstance of agreeing with the right hon. and learned Member for Fareham (Suella Braverman), who was until recently the Home Secretary. She has described the leadership of the Conservative party as
“uncertain, weak, and lacking in the qualities of leadership that this country needs.”
I could not agree more. Even Conservative MPs agree that the choice facing the British people at the next election is between more chaos and uncertainty under the Conservatives that leaves Britain worse off, and the security of a changed Labour party that will unleash a decade of national renewal and make working people better off once again.
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Laura Trott)
It is an honour to participate in the debates following the first King’s Speech for more than 70 years. I thank all hon. Members who have contributed to this debate, including the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) both for his warmish welcome and for his remarks. He and I are both quite new to our posts, and much as we might disagree quite fundamentally on major topics such as taxes and spending, I am sure he agrees that it is a privilege to be closing today’s debate.
During my time at the Department for Work and Pensions, I saw at first hand the impact that Government decisions have on people, and the hugely positive effect that work has on households and regions. I will continue to hold that understanding as I take on my new role, and I look forward to working with Members across the House to make sure that the economy grows, that the wealth spreads, and that the Government are responsible and restrained with the public purse strings. I am sure the hon. Gentleman recognises, as I do, that the Chief Secretary’s job is a vital one that shows a clear difference between our two parties, and I am sure we will have robust discussions in the months ahead. I very much look forward to those opportunities.
We live in a changing world. Even since this Government set out their previous legislative agenda in 2022, we have seen huge upheavals. Putin’s appalling war in Ukraine has now dragged into another year of suffering and brave defiance; the terrorist actions of Hamas in the middle east have caused unspeakable suffering in Israel and Gaza; and all the while, the spectre of inflation haunts the globe, as the financial echoes of Putin’s war, covid-19 and the global financial crisis continue to ring out. What will work to address them is the careful, deliberate efforts that this Government are pursuing, which we will continue in the Chancellor’s forthcoming autumn statement. This is what the Government have done ever since we came to power, and this is what the King’s Speech does now.
Before I turn to the measures in the King’s Speech, it is worth taking a look at what this Government have already achieved. We came to power with a duty to tackle what was then the worst recession since the second world war: 2.5 million people were unemployed and 1.4 million were stuck on out-of-work benefits. What has changed since 2010? Unemployment is down by 1 million people, and 1.7 million have been able to lift themselves out of poverty thanks to a new living wage.
While many in the EU are experiencing a recession, here in the UK, as my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) regularly points out, since 2010 we have grown faster than France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Japan, and our recovery from the pandemic has been one of the strongest in the G7. We have grown our economy by 65%, and cut our emissions by almost 50% since 1990. Perhaps most impressive of all, we have done this while slashing our borrowing by 70% between 2010 and the start of the pandemic. This is what a Conservative Government deliver.
Here I should consider the amendment in the name of the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), although I will be brief as Opposition Members did not cover it much. If their amendment had been in force in 2020, we surely would have found ourselves in a much worse position. It would have hampered the Government from acting in an emergency, as we did during the pandemic, because instead of taking decisive action to support people and businesses up and down the United Kingdom, we would have been forced into a 12-week process with the OBR before we were able to deliver any support whatsoever. I am sure even Opposition Members would recognise that that is not an optimal outcome. Indeed, the Opposition seem to have put forward a plethora of new spending commitments today prior to an updated OBR forecast, which I would suggest is not in the spirit of their own amendment.
Turning to some of the measures mentioned today, the shadow Chancellor criticised the lack of action on the cost of living, yet did not once mention inflation. It is up there with the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) forgetting the deficit. Getting inflation down is the ultimate solution to the cost of living pressures we face. It requires disciplined, unglamorous work, which means keeping inflationary spending down. There was not one proposal in the shadow Chancellor’s speech to address it. It is true that she did not mention the deficit-busting, inflation-producing £28 billion of borrowing in her speech, but that is another Labour policy well overdue for a U-turn.
Key to driving non-inflationary growth will be boosting trade. The Brexit zombies on the SNP Benches fail to recognise the potential of the trade deals we have with the rest of the world. My right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset and my hon. Friends the Members for Crawley (Henry Smith) and for Burnley (Antony Higginbotham) know the benefits that our open, international, free trading stance will bring. Deals such as the CPTPP with the fastest-growing economies in the world will deliver the clear benefits of Brexit, and we should be talking them up, not down.
Indeed, there was too much talking down in the debate today. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) asked who is better off. I will tell him who is better off: the 1.7 million people who have been taken out of poverty since 2010, the 200,000 pensioners taken out of poverty, those helped by the 40% drop in youth unemployment, those for whom it now pays to go out to work, children learning in schools that are more likely to be good or outstanding and, as my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) said, the low-paid, the number of whom has dramatically fallen since the national living wage was introduced. Since 2015, the proportion of people on low pay has halved.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Sir Simon Clarke), with whom I hope to engage a lot as I hugely respect the work he did as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, pointed out the dramatic impact that a Conservative Government and a Conservative Mayor, the brilliant Ben Houchen, have had on Teesside. He talked about Labour’s legacy there as one of mediocrity and failure, and he is right. With steelmaking back, carbon capture and storage, and a new net zero power station, this is levelling up in action, and that is what a Conservative Government deliver.
Turning to growth and supply side reform, which lots of people have mentioned today, at the spring Budget we announced a comprehensive employment package designed to remove the barriers that are preventing people from getting back into work. This is the welfare reform that was called for by my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) and others. At the autumn statement, the Government will announce a package of long-term measures, creating an investment economy by unlocking business investment.
I welcome the remarks by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) about the digital network Bill and the importance of broadband. I am glad to have heard the hon. Members for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith) and for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) bring up childcare. This is an important measure for growth as well as the right thing to do, and I hope that they welcome our £200 million investment. I do not think that the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood is in her place, but I note her remarks on sodium valproate and will make sure that they are fed into the Health team. That was very important.
On the supply side, many Members, including my hon. Friends the Members for Burnley, for Burton (Kate Kniveton) and for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart), the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) and my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South, talked about the importance of transport in their local areas and of protecting consumers travelling by air.
Housing has been brought up by a number of Members. We are on track to deliver the 1 million houses over this Parliament, and the Chancellor is looking at what more we can do to support planning reform, particularly on infrastructure. I was slightly incredulous to hear the Opposition talk about boosting housing when they have just blocked a measure that would have added 100,000 much-needed homes. Being in opposition is as much about what to support as it is about what to oppose, and that was a mistake. However, I welcome the Opposition’s support, albeit grudging, for the Renters (Reform) Bill and the leasehold Bill.
Before I close, I should mention the brilliant maiden speech by the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Alistair Strathern), whose beautiful constituency we have all been seeing a little bit too much of recently. It was a gracious and accomplished maiden speech that spoke to his decency in the way he conducted the campaign. I wholeheartedly agree with him that there is nothing better than to represent the place in which one grew up. It is the world’s greatest privilege. This place, across the House, does an enormous amount of good. I hope and expect that the family, colleagues and friends that he brought along today were proud to see his excellent speech, and I look forward to further contributions.
We are taking the actions that will make this country better. The King’s Speech aims to push the UK into the spotlight on the international stage, embracing our role as a champion of global free trade, open for business and investment from around the world. Just look at our decision to scrap HS2, a one-route project where the right decision was postponed and kicked down the road as costs mounted up. The £36 billion that we are saving by cancelling HS2 will be reinvested to deliver Network North, improving journeys and infrastructure between and within the towns and cities of the north and the midlands, instead of just giving the people of the north a quicker way to move south.
The legislative agenda cuts through the noise of those who want to talk Britain down, who speak freely about our challenges but are tight lipped on solutions, and provides clarity, certainty and stability for those who need it most.
The last years have not been easy; the coming ones will offer their own challenges. I understand those who want to wish those truths away, but this Government’s instinct is to treat the public like adults. It is important that the public understand the challenges that we face, so that they can understand the changes we have made to safeguard their future. This Government’s legislative agenda recognises that, balancing the delivery of both security and opportunity. The Government have a track record and a long-term plan to do just that, and I am hugely proud to play my part as Chief Secretary to the Treasury.
That is why we will deliver licences for fresh oil and gas fields, continue to work to halve inflation and bring forward the trade Bill, cementing our place in the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership, locking in long-term rights for UK firms to do business in the fastest growing region of the world.
None of this is easy. These decisions involve tough trade-offs, but because of our history of delivery and our long-term plan for the future captured in this King’s Speech, I know that the Government can achieve their aims for this country and help every part of the country to reach its potential. I commend the Loyal Address, unamended, to the House.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
For those who are a bit rusty on King’s Speech procedure, I hope to assist. I will put only the amendment in the name of the Opposition today. Other questions will be put tomorrow.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Business Without Debate
Deferred Divisions
Delegated Legislation
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
With the leave of the House, I will take motions 3, 4 and 5 together.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),
United Kingdom Internal Market
That the draft United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 (Services Exclusions) Regulations 2023, which were laid before this House on 20 July, in the last session of Parliament, be approved.
Council Tax
That the draft Representation of the People (Postal Vote Handling and Secrecy) (Amendment) Regulations 2023, which were laid before this House on 11 September, in the last session of Parliament, be approved.
Environmental Protection
That the draft Persistent Organic Pollutants (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2023, which were laid before this House on 16 October, in the last session of Parliament, be approved.—(Joy Morrissey.)
Question agreed to.
European Scrutiny Committee
Ordered,
That Mr John Baron be discharged from the European Scrutiny Committee and Dame Andrea Jenkyns be added.—(Sir Bill Wiggin.)
Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy
Ordered,
That Tobias Ellwood be discharged from the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy and Robert Courts be added.—(Sir Bill Wiggin.)
Petitions
Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
We have a unique situation in Hull and East Riding where three different broadband companies are installing broadband infrastructure at the same time, and they are not sharing with each other or the existing provider. This has resulted in telegraph poles being put up in areas that have never had them, or multiple sets in areas where they already exist. Existing legislation allows this to happen with the local planning authority and residents having no say in the matter. Residents want to be consulted about what happens in their own street.
Following is the full text of the petition:
[The petition of residents of the United Kingdom,
Declares that telegraph poles being erected by designated communications network operators for the expansion of Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) broadband do not need planning permission under the Electronic Communications Code (Conditions and Restrictions) 2003 and the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015; that the only requirement on the operator is 28 days notice to the Local Planning Authority (LPA) that there is no requirement to consider alternatives such as under-street cabling; that the LPA can only make suggestions on siting which the telecoms company is under no obligation to follow; that there is no requirement to inform residents of the installation and so no opportunity for them to inform the process; that the first knowledge residents will have of a telegraph pole being installed is when it appears in their street or outside their residence.
The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to make statutory requirements for designated communications network operators to apply for permission to the LPA on any proposed installation of telegraph poles and for the LPA to consult with affected residents before issuing any permissions.
And the petitioners remain, etc.]
[P002872]
Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)
I rise to present the petition of the villagers of Hockliffe on the volume of traffic from the A5 that goes through their village. I thank Councillor Rob Scott, the chair of the parish council, and Peter Edwards OBE, who helped to put the petition together. Residents complain of vibrations so bad that objects are falling off shelves, firms are losing business because customers cannot get through, and parents are worried about their children walking to school because of drivers mounting the pavements. Nearly 85% of the residents of Hockliffe signed the petition, which states:
The petition of the residents of the village of Hockliffe,
Declares that the unacceptable volume of traffic now using the A5 trunk road through the village of Hockliffe endangers the health, safety and well being of residents and negatively impacts local businesses; further declares that Hockliffe, with over 400 homes, uniquely has the A5 trunk road passing through its centre; notes that the 2017 M1A5 link road provided relief for Dunstable but the impact on Hockliffe was greatly underestimated with over 20,000 vehicles now passing daily through the village; many of them HGVs; further notes that the 4-way traffic lights in the centre of Hockliffe cannot cope with this volume of traffic, leading to constant congestion and lengthy tailbacks in all directions, with noise and fumes from stationary traffic affecting the health and well being of residents; notes that pedestrians and motorists suffer dangers from frustrated drivers mounting pavements, racing to beat the lights or performing U turns to avoid the stationary or slow moving traffic; further notes that many M1 closures, due to accidents or maintenance, divert traffic to the A5 and this leads to gridlock through Hockliffe, day or night; further declares that Hockliffe residents often suffer sleep disruption due to HGV traffic, especially during M1 closures or restrictions that, when completed, the new A6/M1 link road, and a growing number of HGV logistics parks and new homes in the local area, will all add to an already unacceptable traffic problem affecting the A5 through the village of Hockliffe.
The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to convene all appropriate and necessary parties in order to find an early solution to the unacceptable traffic volume, congestion and associated dangers on the A5 trunk road through the village of Hockliffe, Bedfordshire and that this is urgently progressed.
And the petitioners remain, etc.
[P002874]
Bridges in London: Maintenance Funding
(1 year ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)
Thank you for calling me, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I am grateful to Mr Speaker for granting my request for a debate on the funding of London bridges. I am proud to be a River Thames MP, with Putney bridge a major and much-loved landmark as well as an essential road route in my constituency. However, it is not Putney bridge but the closure of Hammersmith bridge and its huge impact across London that brings me here this evening.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. More than a year ago I asked the then roads Minister, the hon. Member for North West Durham (Mr Holden), for a meeting to discuss the repair of Hammersmith bridge. I followed up that request on at least six occasions, but he had not replied by the time he was reshuffled yesterday. I did, however, receive a reply to my letter to the Secretary of State for Transport after the cancellation of the future stages of HS2. I had asked for a little of the £36 billion to be redirected to Hammersmith bridge, given that 0.5% of that would pay the full cost, and we know that the Department for Transport typically pays between 80% and 90% for strategic road schemes. Does my hon. Friend agree that the only reason the bridge has not been repaired is that the Government refuse to pay more than a third of the cost, and cash-strapped local authorities cannot meet a bill running into hundreds of millions of pounds?
Fleur Anderson
I thank my hon. Friend for making that important point. He puts the case very well that finance is available, that it could come from the money allocated for HS2 funding for south-east roads and that Hammersmith and Fulham Council cannot be expected to pay a third of the costs for this bridge, which are very high and rising. He has summarised my speech very well but it will be going ahead, and I hope that the Minister will respond by using this opportunity to at last announce the funding for the reopening of the bridge. Here we are, my hon. Friend and I, representing both sides of the river and both seeing the impact that this is having on our constituents.
Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)
I look forward to hearing more of the hon. Member’s speech on this vexed topic, but I feel a sense of déjà vu because we have all been here before. As she and the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) know, my constituents have also been badly affected by this closure. They are prevented from accessing schools, medical facilities and public transport on the other side of the bridge in Hammersmith, and that is having a really damaging impact on the local community, particularly in Barnes, but while I am concerned about my constituents, it is having an impact on the much wider geography. Does she agree that it is affecting not just Barnes, Hammersmith and Putney but the whole of south-west London? It is a vital strategic route across the river—of which we do not have enough—and its closure is causing lengthy tailbacks and congestion in a large area across west London and south-west London, and the wider south-east and Surrey in particular.
Fleur Anderson
I absolutely agree with my constituency neighbour. This shows not only the cross-party support for the reopening of the bridge but the enormous impact that its closure is having across a wide area of London. Hammersmith bridge is a national transport route and the fact that it has been closed for so many years is a disaster for many people.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I commend the hon. Lady, and I want to add my support for her request. On Monday this week, the Quoile bridge in my constituency developed a crack right down it and it is now closed. It is a major thoroughfare that carries lots of traffic, which will now be unable to go through Downpatrick on that road for a period of time. I understand the pain that the hon. Lady feels for her constituents and I offer my support to her.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I was intrigued as to how there could be a Northern Ireland aspect to Hammersmith bridge, and now we all know. Well done, Jim!
Fleur Anderson
It is a huge honour to be intervened on by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). I just hope that his constituents will not have to go through the same enormous pain, the long wait and the despair about funding as our constituents in south-west London. I also hope that the Minister heard that and will look into funding for the hon. Gentleman’s bridge as well. The closure of a bridge is a dreadful thing.
At every advice surgery I hold, at every visit to businesses, at every local event I go to and every time I go knocking on doors, everyone wants to know when Hammersmith bridge will be reopened. It is a grade 2 listed heritage suspension bridge. It was built in 1887 but closed to motor vehicles in April 2019 when fissures were found, making it dangerous. Boris Johnson said at Prime Minister’s questions here in this place on 21 October 2020 that it would be reopened, but it is still closed. I held an Adjournment debate on the issue in June last year, with a very disappointing Government response. The restoration has still not had its funding agreed, let alone being started or finished, so I am back here again.
This is a London issue but it needs a national solution and actions that can be taken only by the Government to fund the restoration. It is a disgrace that Transport Ministers have not sorted this out. My constituents are worried that it has become a plaything of Conservative party politicking, with Conservative mayoral and parliamentary candidates and MPs standing next to the bridge saying that something will be done, and then quickly forgetting about it altogether.
The Hammersmith bridge saga has revealed systemic failures in the way that bridge maintenance is funded that need to be urgently addressed by the Minister. While the Government have dragged their feet, the estimated cost of the bridge has been hit by Conservative-fuelled inflation and the war in Ukraine, where the steel was going to be sourced, rising from the initial £140 million to an estimated £250 million. The longer the Government wait, the more the costs will rise.
The closure of Hammersmith bridge since 2019 has had a huge impact on my constituents, especially in Putney and Roehampton. An estimated 22,000 vehicles used to cross the bridge every day, as well as seven vital bus services. Those vehicles are now diverted through Putney, which causes high levels of pollution and congestion and long journey times.
So that the Minister can fully understand what this closure has meant for my constituents, I will tell him some of the results of my recent survey of local residents and businesses. Over 75% of business owners said that the closure has negatively impacted their business because of pollution, difficulties with deliveries, employee commutes and low morale. Some 90% of people said that the bridge closure has been “extremely disruptive” and that they feel more isolated and disconnected.
Putney suffers severe traffic jams every day, with children inhaling toxic fumes. Asthma levels are rising. Patients needing to get to a hospital in an emergency are stuck in traffic that is barely moving. It is also making cyclists and would-be cyclists less likely to cycle because of the danger and pollution on the very congested roads. People who commute through, live or work on Putney High Street, Upper Richmond Road and Lower Richmond Road know how bad things are, and they need their voices to be heard.
The Government should have stepped up back in April 2019, worked with Hammersmith and Fulham Council on the business plan and funded it, and then they should have begun the restoration works. We might then have had the bridge reopened by now. Instead, they palmed off responsibility and have played political games.
Engineering works costing £8 million started in February 2022 and will be finished in a few months—the carriageway will then be cleared for pedestrians and cyclists, which is very welcome—but the full restoration is still unfunded architects’ plans.
The Hammersmith Bridge taskforce chaired by Baroness Vere agreed a settlement of Hammersmith and Fulham Council paying a third, Transport for London paying a third and the Government paying a third, but the taskforce then did nothing else. The taskforce has not met since November 2021. No task and no force. This third-third-third structure is a very poor settlement, as neither the council nor TfL can afford a third and the Government have not yet agreed to their third. The estimated cost is £250 million, but the council’s entire annual budget is just £132 million.
A business plan was submitted by Hammersmith and Fulham Council in December 2022, proposing a toll to pay for its third but, nearly a year on, it has still not been agreed and funded by the Government. I hope the Minister can tell us what will happen. These sums are way beyond the means of an individual council. How can a council with a budget of only £132 million a year for libraries, adult social care and children’s services afford to pay for this? Where could the money come from?
When it was announced that over £4 billion had been carved out from the cancellation of HS2 for road infrastructure in the south-east of England, it was an opportunity to fund the bridge. My constituents deserve to know why Hammersmith bridge is not receiving any support from this fund, or from which fund it will receive support. If just 5% of the £4 billion budget for the south-east—that is just 6% of the overall budget—were used, Hammersmith bridge could be fixed and reopened after all these years of closure.
My constituents and people across south-west London need answers, so I hope the Minister can answer these questions today. Why is it taking so long to fund the bridge? Has a funding source been identified? When will we know that it has been funded? When will the bridge be reopened for buses and vehicles? What is being done to stop another London council having to foot such a large bill again in future?
The closure of Hammersmith bridge should be a wake-up call for the Government to reassess the state of our bridges and the broken funding settlements. I hope that the Minister will commit to looking at the ownership and funding of all London bridges, so that this Hammersmith bridge fiasco is never repeated. But why does Hammersmith and Fulham Council have responsibility for this enormously expensive bridge? The arrangements for responsibility for London bridges were established by the Local Government Act 1985, when the Greater London Council was dissolved, and we have a disorganised and messy hotchpotch of responsibilities. Some were assigned simply because of the names, and so Hammersmith and Fulham Council is responsible because the bridge is called “Hammersmith bridge”. That is a ludicrous way of assigning responsibility for a national, heritage, landmark bridge and a vital connection in our city’s transport infrastructure. It is an embarrassment that as a country we are unable to find a political solution to this crisis. Hammersmith bridge is a national infrastructure project in the greatest city in the world, and the abstention from responsibility by the Conservative Government is shocking. Would Brooklyn bridge, or any other bridge in any other capital, be allowed to remain closed to all vehicles for years and years on end? We urgently need a futureproof, reliable and sufficient stream of funding so that all our bridges are maintained for all who use them. I urge the Minister to look into reforming the funding formula for London’s bridges and river crossings, so that another council is not burdened with a bill of £250 million that it cannot afford.
London boroughs were previously able to access support for bridge maintenance from TfL’s local implementation plan, but the Government’s restrictive cuts imposed on TfL mean that that support is no longer available. That will inevitably lead to more and more bridges needlessly falling into disrepair, meaning bigger and bigger bills in the long term. So what needs to happen? TfL needs new, long-term funding certainty through a multi-year funding arrangement, which would make sure that councils can access the support they need when bridges fall into disrepair. Without this investment, costs will continue to soar, with the Conservatives kicking the can down the road for a future Government to clean up. If the Minister is still convinced that this is not his problem, I hope that the £500 million paid by Londoners in vehicle excise duty every year which is spent on roads in other parts of the country, convinces him of the need to make sure that London’s roads and bridges are maintained when they need it.
I invite the Minister to visit the bridge and I request a meeting to discuss the funding. My main ask is very straightforward—it is for the Government to do everything in their power to urgently fund the restoration and reopening of Hammersmith bridge at the earliest opportunity. I hope he will not tell me that the Government have done everything they can and that it is all up to Hammersmith and Fulham Council to step up, because all the leadership so far has come from the council. That applies in respect of discovering the fissures in the first place; taking action to close the bridge and make it safe; the memorandum of understanding; the proposals for a cheaper bridge replacement and the first project; the business plan; and the stabilisation work. The Government must now step up to shoulder their responsibility to push this through, respond to the business plan, work with Hammersmith and Fulham Council and TfL and ensure that the restoration is finally fully funded. I also ask the Minister to review the entire funding settlement for London bridges, which has led us here, and why this most expensive of heritage bridge projects is being left to a cash-strapped local council because of a historical whim. We clearly need a new approach that safeguards our London bridges for generations to come.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Guy Opperman)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) on securing this debate. I appreciate and fully understand that Hammersmith bridge is of particular interest to her constituents and to people in the constituencies throughout the south and west of London. I wish to make a few preliminary points, the first of which is that clearly there is a good pre-existing working relationship between the Department for Transport and the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham.
Obviously, as the Minister, I have to choose my words relatively carefully because, as the hon. Lady will be aware, the business case for Hammersmith bridge strengthening works has been submitted to both the Department for Transport and Transport for London for review. As she will no doubt appreciate, I can only say so much tonight to avoid prejudicing any ongoing governance procedures and the borough’s future procurement activity. However, I will attempt to address that.
I am uniquely acquainted with the particular bridge. I have cycled across it many times in the past. I used to live in Fulham, back in the distant days when I first became a Member here, so I am well acquainted with it. Clearly, on my first day in the Department for Transport, I am delighted to be answering the Adjournment debate on an issue that I have inherited but which I am delighted to inherit.
It would be a sad day if there were no contribution to the Adjournment debate by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). Like you, Mr Deputy Speaker, I fathomed my brain to try to work out how, on a debate on “Bridges in London: Maintenance and Funding”, a gentleman from Northern Ireland would wangle in a vital part of transport infrastructure that would make all the difference in the world, but he successfully did so without interruption, fear or favour, and I congratulate him on that. I look forward to his pitch, doubtless in writing, to myself, the Northern Ireland Government and various other local authorities for bridge assistance. I have visited his constituency on several occasions and I congratulate him, as always, on his support for this process.
Mr Louie French (Old Bexley and Sidcup) (Con)
Given the Minister’s comments about the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), I assume he welcomes interventions. I congratulate the hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) on securing this important debate on the financing of roads and bridges in London. I welcome my hon. Friend the Minister to his place, but I hope he is aware that Government funding for roads and bridges in London is normally funnelled and channelled through Transport for London. He might be aware that the Government have already bailed out TfL to the tune of around £6 billion in the last few years, which is a significant sum of money.
I politely urge the Minister, as he gets his feet under his new desk, that he might consider channelling that money directly to the boroughs, in places like Bexley and Bromley, as I think that money would be better spent that way than through Transport for London. Can I be really cheeky and ask him to meet me, when he gets the time, to discuss my campaign to prevent the Mayor of London from tolling the Blackwall tunnel, which is one of the few crossings in south-east London?
Guy Opperman
My hon. Friend, who I know very well—I have visited his constituency in a former life—makes very good points. He is a doughty champion for Bexley. He follows in the famous footsteps of James Brokenshire, who we all miss and who was my boss at the Home Office for a long period. I am happy to discuss the issues he raises further. He makes an interesting point about funding going in a particular way. It would be wrong of me to make first-day commitments at the Dispatch Box, but I will take his point away and get officials to look at it with interest, and I am happy to discuss it further.
The hon. Member for Putney set out the history of Hammersmith bridge in some detail. She is right that it is a grade II listed suspension bridge, opened in 1887, and has served generations of Londoners very well for some considerable time. However, there are a few of her points with which I would gently take issue. First, let us go to the basics: the bridge is not owned by the Government; it is owned by the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. It is not the responsibility of the Government. Even if people had listened to quite a lot of the speech, they may not have picked that up.
The responsibility for maintaining the bridge and making decisions on its repair lies with the borough. It is unfortunate that the bridge had to close, first to motor vehicles in 2019 and then to all users in 2020. The reason, as we know, was that the safety of those using the bridge was deemed to be of the utmost priority. The assertion was made that the Government have done nothing. I respectfully invite the hon. Lady to accept that the Government have provided nearly £10 million of funding to support the London borough, to ensure that there is remedial work and assistance on an ongoing basis. I set that out to try to correct the record.
Following the complete closure of the bridge in 2020, the DfT provided £4 million of taxpayers’ money, which enabled a comprehensive investigation into the overall structure and condition of the bridge. Through this investment, world-leading engineers worked to develop a complete picture of the issues that faced the bridge. The works determined the bridge to be in better condition than first feared, leading to the bridge reopening on a temporary and controlled basis to pedestrians, cyclists and river traffic. The Department for Transport has worked closely with the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham and with Transport for London to help facilitate the reopening of the bridge to all users. In that vein, DfT established the Hammersmith bridge taskforce, which was led by the Transport Minister, Baroness Vere, as the hon. Lady outlined. The taskforce was set up in 2019 and has had many, many meetings—well over 15—since, and it was instrumental in providing a forum for interested stakeholders to work together to develop a clear course of action to resolve the immediate safety concerns around the bridge.
I know the hon. Lady has called for a further meeting of the taskforce. I want to try to address that. I assure her that when we are in a position to hold a further taskforce meeting, it will be to discuss issues of significance or change for the project, therefore ensuring that it remains a good use of stakeholders’ time. However, she will be aware that we have been waiting for the business case to be submitted and that is clearly the key part.
The commitment to this project by the DFT has not stopped at the initial £4 million support provided to the authority. In the most recent TfL extraordinary funding and financing settlement of August 2022, we committed to funding up to one third of the costs shared with the borough and TfL of reopening the bridge to pedestrians, cyclists and river traffic, and then, depending on costs, to buses and motor vehicles. The first part of this commitment has already been delivered. In March 2022, the Department for Transport approved the business case from the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham for the stabilisation works on the bridge, which in turn triggered the release of a further £3 million of Government funding. These works will ensure that the bridge remains open to pedestrians, cyclists and river traffic permanently, with no risk of further temporary closures due to unsafe conditions. I am pleased to say that those works are due to complete very early in the new year and will provide certainty to the pedestrians and cyclists of Barnes, Hammersmith, Fulham, Richmond and beyond that this link across the Thames will remain open.
Most recently, as all parties will be aware, the Department for Transport provided the borough with a further £2.5 million for the crucial geotechnical investigations now being carried out at Hammersmith bridge, which will pave the way for the next stage of the works. This brings the total amount of Government funding to the bridge to date of up to nearly £10 million. That is exceptional funding.
The next stage of the project is to strengthen the core and renovate other structurally significant parts of the bridge. The strengthening phase of engineering works will build on stabilisation works and, upon completion, will allow the bridge to reopen to all users. That should include buses and motor vehicles. Following close co-operation with TfL and the Department, the borough has now developed and submitted a His Majesty’s Treasury Green Book outline business case for the second stage of the works to the Department for Transport, setting out the estimated cost range for strengthening the bridge. The Department is reviewing that outline business case in great detail. It was submitted in on 23 April, as I understand it, so clearly that is an ongoing process. The hon. Member for Putney asked about the HS2 project and the funding related to it, but no decisions have been made regarding reallocation of funds.
The hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) also raised the local implementation plan. It is true that Transport for London provides formula funding to London boroughs for transport projects, but its budget for bridge projects is just over £2 million, to be shared between 33 boroughs. That is obviously insufficient to fund this project.
Sarah Olney
The Minister stressed at the beginning of his remarks that the repair of the bridge is the responsibility of Hammersmith and Fulham. While I fully accept that, does he not think it is in the Government’s interests to provide more substantial funding, because of the strategic nature of the river crossing? Would he consider the fact that, as I said earlier on, this is about more than local transport—it is a piece of strategic infrastructure? Therefore, responsibility aside, is it not in the Government’s interests to provide more substantial funding?
Guy Opperman
I want to address the hon. Lady’s point in brief, but I was going to come on to the legal basis. The practical reality is that, under successive Governments of different political persuasions, dating back many decades, the legal basis for this bridge and for other bridges in London is in relation to the local boroughs. It is the case, for example, that Wandsworth bridge required repair works, and in that particular case that was done by the local borough. She will be aware of the Local Government Act 1985, the Greater London Authority and the actions taken in 2000 with the mayoralty and the creation of TfL, which meant that significant roads became the specific responsibility of TfL.
With no disrespect, the A306, which runs over Hammersmith bridge, is a local road, as are, effectively, most of London’s bridges. I make the point again: under the Highways Act 1980 and various other Acts under successive Governments—this is not the work of one particular Government—these bridges and roads are associated with the local authority. I take the point the hon. Lady makes, and it is for that reason that the Government have spent over £10 million progressing matters as we have done thus far.
With no disrespect either to the hon. Member for Putney, who seemed to suggest there was nothing the Government have done and that it was all down to the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, the £10 million has been paid over a series of years to get to the hurdles that we have necessarily got to, and an agreement was entered into at an earlier stage. I do not believe I can add anything further, other than to congratulate her on securing the debate and highlighting the issue, which clearly affects her constituents and others in west London. I continue to assure her that the Department will provide support to both the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham and to TfL on the bridge project as it goes ahead.
Question put and agreed to.
Draft Carer's Assistance (Carer Support Payment) (Scotland) Regulations 2023 (Consequential Modifications) Order 2023
(1 year ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (John Lamont)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Carer’s Assistance (Carer Support Payment) (Scotland) (Consequential Modifications) Order 2023.
The draft order was laid on 16 October 2023. I am grateful to have the opportunity to debate it. The order is the result of collaborative work between Scotland’s two Governments, and it supports the Scottish Government’s decision to introduce the carer support payment in Scotland.
The Scotland Act 2016 devolved responsibility for certain social security benefits and employment support to the Scottish Parliament. The introduction of carer support payment in Scotland under the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018 exercises that responsibility. The draft order is made under section 104 of the Scotland Act 1998, which allows for necessary legislative amendments in consequence of any provision made by or under any Act of the Scottish Parliament.
Scotland Act orders are a demonstration of devolution in action. I am pleased to say that this draft order is the result of close working between my office and the Scottish Government, the Department for Work and Pensions, the Ministry of Defence, His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, and Northern Ireland’s Department for Communities. I thank all involved for the collaborative approach taken to progress the order.
The draft order makes amendments to relevant social security legislation as a consequence of the Carer’s Allowance (Carer Support Payment) (Scotland) Regulations 2023, which I shall refer to as the 2023 regulations. Those regulations replace carer’s allowance with carer support payment for individuals ordinarily resident in Scotland.
The 2023 regulations introduce carer support payment in Scotland in a phased approach from November 2023, beginning with a pilot in three local authority areas and to be available nationally by autumn 2024. The carer support payment will initially operate in a broadly similar way to carer’s allowance. Like carer’s allowance, it will be an income replacement benefit, a payment of £76.75 per week for unpaid carers providing 35 hours or more of care a week to someone receiving certain disability benefits.
I will now explain the effect that the draft order will have and the provisions that it will make. The order will ensure that those receiving carer support payment in Scotland are treated the same as those receiving carer’s allowance. The order ensures that carer support payment is a qualifying benefit for the Christmas bonus. It ensures that those eligible for carer support payment are treated as qualifying carers and are eligible to receive the additional amount for carers in an award of state pension credit. It also ensures that recipients are not disadvantaged in relation to compensatory payments as part of the HMRC tax-free childcare scheme.
The draft order ensures that it is not possible for any one person to receive both carer’s allowance and carer support payment at the same time. Similarly, no more than one person would be able to receive a carer’s benefit for care provided to a single individual. Some benefits administered by Veterans UK overlap with the carer support payment; the order makes provision to ensure that an individual cannot receive those overlapping benefits at the same time.
The draft order makes equivalent provision in Northern Ireland in respect of those policy areas that are transferred to Northern Ireland. That is because, when a claimant moves to Northern Ireland, they will continue to receive carer support payment for 13 weeks from the date that they moved while they apply for carer’s allowance. In that time, their carer support payment benefit will continue to attract the related entitlements. The 13-week run of support will also be available when carers move from Scotland to elsewhere in the UK.
In summary, the draft order makes amendments to UK legislation to support the introduction of carer support payment in Scotland. It ensures that the new Scottish benefit is able to operate effectively and that its recipients are treated equitably. I commend the order to the Committee.
Gerald Jones (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mrs Harris.
As has been said, the order will allow the Scottish Government’s carer support payment to go ahead with the necessary parliamentary approval. The carer support payment will be administered by Social Security Scotland and will replace the carer’s allowance, which is currently administered by DWP. The order is not controversial and we do not oppose it.
I do not wish to delay proceedings unnecessarily, but I want to put a few things on the record. The Scottish National party said that it wanted powers over social security devolved in order to build a different welfare system from that of the UK Tory Government, but it has left those powers in their hands due to its slowness in setting up a Scottish system. It is welcome that, according to the Carers Trust, 80,000 carers will be able to benefit from the carer support payment, but there are an estimated 800,000 people in Scotland providing unpaid care, including 30,000 young carers under the age of 18. The total value of unpaid care is estimated to be £12.8 billion per year.
The devolution of social security has been somewhat chaotic from the beginning. It was delayed multiple times over several years, and the wait times for some benefits have spiralled to even longer than the current Tory-run DWP waiting times in Scotland. The people of Scotland deserve to have two Governments on their side, which, unfortunately, does not seem to be the case at the moment. As I said at the start, we do not oppose the order.
Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)
Will the Labour party commit to replicating what the Scottish Government have done by broadening qualification for carer support and increasing the amount received by carers?
Gerald Jones
That is a matter to be debated at some point in the future, I am sure.
Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)
It is a pleasure to appear before you, Mrs Harris.
I have some questions for the Minister on the operation of the scheme. First, however, it is worth reflecting on the fact that we are dealing with quite a complex set of regulations that arises entirely from devolution. I suppose it illustrates to the people of Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom the significant complexity that is being introduced into our legal system and benefit system by devolution. I was surprised that the Minister said he was pleased to see the order arrive because, to me, it represents an unnecessary complexity in the United Kingdom, which we could all do without.
Like the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney, and having worked at DWP, I am also concerned by the devolution of what is quite a complicated and difficult administrative task to the Scottish Government—not necessarily the SNP—who have not covered themselves in glory with the administration of various schemes and various ideas they have had over the last couple of years. Given the delay and the failure to institute a new system—it has been on the cards for some years—[Interruption.]
Kit Malthouse
What confidence does the Minister have that the Scottish Government will be able to administer benefits to the extent that they get to the people who need them and the system will not collapse, as so many other things seem to have done? I wonder whether the Minister has any sense of the deadweight cost of having a separate organisation called Social Security Scotland on the budget. Obviously, it has to maintain its own back office, its own personnel and its own administrative burden, and there must be an extra cost, which is therefore being denied to the recipients of welfare payments because it is going into the hands of unnecessary administrators.
I also had a question about age limits. I am the patron of Andover Young Carers, an organisation that supports young people who are in full-time education and who look after an adult in their family living with a disability. Although I know that carer’s allowance is constrained for those who are under 16 or in full-time education, I have never quite understood why we do not look at the particular case of a young person who might be caring for a parent with a severe disability where there is no other carer available. They do so with a burden that no other adult carer broadly shares, yet we exclude them from such schemes. I would be interested in the Minister’s comments on that.
My second point is about the operation of the scheme. On reading the statutory instrument, there seems to be an unnecessarily complicated administrative task in the case where there are effectively two people caring for one individual. Could the Minister confirm that they will have to make daily elections—the SI talks about elections in a prescribed form—as to who is to receive the carer’s allowance on that day? What form is that election to take? Is it a letter, a phone call or a text? Who will decide?
The SI then says that in the situation where both carers claim, it will effectively be for the Secretary of State to decide who gets the allowance. Will the Secretary of State be showered with thousands of competing claims for carer’s allowance on an almost daily basis? If there is an election, how long will that endure? If there is a dispute between two carers about who gets the allowance the Secretary of State is given the discretion to make a decision, but what will be the process of appeal? How will carer B make a claim over carer A? What if there is carer C, who is not referred to in the legislation? In my experience, people with significant disabilities often have multiple carers who may work together as a team to support them. How will that be dealt with?
Finally, on the effect on the border, I am sure we will have a small number of cross-border carers—those resident in England who care for those resident in Scotland and vice versa. Who will pay them and where will the care be claimed? There is no reference to that in the legislation. Someone claiming carer support payment in Scotland will have to ordinarily be resident in Scotland. If I am ordinarily resident in Northumberland but care for somebody over the border, who will support me and how will I be supported in that care?
On the same theme, what happens if I am a family unit of a carer plus a disabled individual who move from Scotland to England or vice versa? How seamless will the transition be? Will there be a gap in payment? Will I have to apply before I move to have my domicile for the carer’s payment moved, or will I have to apply when I arrive? Do I have to be ordinarily resident before I apply and if so, how long do I have to wait until that kicks in? Will it be six, 12 or nine months before I receive a payment? If I do receive a payment on moving to lovely Scotland, will it be backdated to the date of my arrival, or will England persist in paying me beyond my arrival until the Scottish Government cover the gap? None of those issues, which might only affect a small number of people but will nevertheless be critical to their welfare and survival, seem to be addressed in this SI. I should be grateful if the Minister would answer those questions.
David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)
It is, as ever, a great pleasure to see you in the Chair this morning, Mrs Harris. I had not intended to speak and had been relatively relaxed about most of the things the Minister had said. Of course, I am struck by the fact that it is only me, my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East and the Minister who are Scottish MPs. I will put my jacket on, Chair, if you so desire. It is rather chilly here this morning, so I will put it back on.
I was struck by the contributions by the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney and the right hon. Member for North West Hampshire. I do not know if they are bored this morning and have come along. This is not a controversial order, but I take a couple of exceptions to their remarks.
Kit Malthouse
On a point of order, Mrs Harris. This is legislation being presented to the UK Parliament. We are Members of Parliament; our job is to scrutinise and ask questions of the legislation. I understand that it is common practice in Delegated Legislation Committees for people not to bother to read the legislation before coming into the room, but I happen to think that it is my duty, if I am presented with something that I am approving, to examine and ask what I believe are perfectly reasonable and relevant questions. If there is an answer, fine, but the fact that I am an English, not a Scottish, MP should have no bearing on the matter. This is UK legislation to enable the Scottish Government to do something.
David Linden
Thank you, Mrs Harris. As a former member of the Procedure Committee, I can categorically confirm that that is not a point of order. There is no suggestion that my remarks were out of order. It is notable as well that the right hon. Member for North West Hampshire would not take an intervention from me but sought to intervene during my speech with a point of order. Perhaps that is what former Ministers do.
I was quite struck by the right hon. Gentleman’s point; it seemed he was questioning the very nature of devolution. Scottish Conservatives have ended up in a place where they accept that the nature of devolution means that things will be done differently in Scotland. He seemed to take great exception to the formulation of social security in Scotland. I think that would come as news to the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk, whose party in the Scottish Parliament supported the establishment of Social Security Scotland—perhaps there may be a degree of divergence in the Conservative Benches on that. The whole nature of devolution means that things will be done slightly differently. In response to the right hon. Member for North West Hampshire suggesting that these are somehow complex benefits to roll out, I have to say that my party and my constituents will take no lectures from a Conservative Government who have been trying to roll out universal credit for the best part of 10 years and still have not managed that migration—presumably even in his constituency.
Something for the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney: I am struck by the fact that neither the hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) nor the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Michael Shanks) are here this morning. I suspect they might know slightly more about the details of what Social Security Scotland is doing, because my colleagues in the Scottish Labour Party certainly do not have the objections that were laid out by the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney this morning. My final challenge to him would be that if, as looks likely, we end up having a Labour Government, I would love to know what they would do differently on social security policy. Those of us who follow it see a commitment to the sanctions regime and all sorts of other punitive measures. There appears to be absolutely no difference between the Labour party and the Conservatives—a point that is not lost on those in Scotland.
John Lamont
I will start with an apology: I should have said at the start of my contribution what a great privilege it is to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Harris.
I thank Members for their various remarks and welcome the support of Labour and SNP Members. On the various points raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire, the broader point is that we have to recognise that this Parliament legislated for additional welfare powers to be delivered to the Scottish Government, which I and the current Government fully support. Others have said that a consequence of that will be differing types of system, including social security, being delivered on either side of the border. That is something which I also support and which we have to recognise is in the nature of devolution. That is how devolution in these islands works. The key for us is making sure that it works well.
As other Members have said, there have been delays in terms of the Scottish Government’s capacity to take up these additional welfare powers. We have worked with them to delay, transfer, or ensure that their delivery has been done in a practical way to make sure that the people in need of those benefits are receiving them in a timely and straightforward manner. I do not necessarily agree with the thrust of some of the remarks by the hon. Member for Glasgow East. As I said at the start, it is important for us to recognise that devolution results in these variations, and this Government have to ensure that we work with the Scottish Government to deliver these benefits effectively.
My right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire raised a number of points and questions, which I will try to answer. For example, what will happen if the claimant is a recipient of the UK Government’s carer’s benefit and then moves from England to Scotland? There will be a case transfer process from carer’s allowance to the carer support payment. When a carer who is getting an equivalent benefit in England moves to Scotland, the reward will transfer automatically—there is no need to apply, and the DWP will continue to pay that for 13 weeks from the date of their move. Following the completion of that case transfer, alternative arrangements will be made to minimise the risk of claimants who are continuing to provide care experiencing a break in payments when they move.
My right hon. Friend asked a number of other questions. We will write to him on those, if that is okay, rather than go into some of the granular detail. However, at the interministerial level, the interministerial group on welfare, on which I sit, deals with many of those points and has dealt with many of them in readiness for this order. That includes work on the sharing of data and ensuring that both the new social security system in Scotland and the DWP are working in partnership to ensure that the types of points that my right hon. Friend raised are addressed properly. That will ensure that nobody is left without the benefits that they are entitled to or the support that they need, and that people are not claiming wrongly when they should not be.
I am confident that the working relationships that we have, at both the official and ministerial levels, will deal with those concerns and questions raised by my right hon. Friend. However, I do undertake to write to him on the detail.
Kit Malthouse
I wonder how much the Minister is willing to wager that he will not be back at some point in the future to correct anomalies in this legislation. If, as he is saying, the approach is, “Well, we’ll try it and see, and we’ll talk about the problems that may emerge and try and tease them out,” is he saying that the legislation is likely to change, and therefore is not comprehensive for some of the anomalies that may occur?
I know that I raised a number of questions about the operation of the scheme, but could the Minister just answer the question about cross-border carers? There will be a number of cross-border carers who, as we speak, will be wondering where they sit and would be grateful to have some clarity on that pretty quickly.
John Lamont
I am not a betting man, so I will not enter into a wager with my right hon. Friend. However, as I alluded to earlier, there will be differences between how the social security system works in Scotland and in the rest of the UK. That is simply a reflection of the devolution settlement. I do not doubt that there will be anomalies that will have to be fixed and addressed, regarding both social security and other devolved policy areas. Again, that is just the nature of the constitutional settlement that we live with, and that is something that I just think we have to accept will be a reality, moving forward.
David Linden
Far be it for me to be of assistance to the Minister, but of course social security policy is devolved in Northern Ireland and there are similar cases with people moving cross-border between the Republic and the north of Ireland, and there has never been a question raised about that before.
John Lamont
Indeed. I think that there has to be a recognition. I repeat what I said: this Government absolutely support the devolution settlement and support the creation of this order. This order demonstrates the collaboration between both Governments to deliver. I will write to my right hon. Friend on the questions that he has raised, but this instrument demonstrates the continued commitment of the United Kingdom’s Government to work with the Scottish Government to deliver for Scotland and maintain a functioning settlement for Scotland.
Question put and agreed to.
Draft Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 (Risk of Being Drawn into Terrorism) (Revised Guidance) Regulations 2023
(1 year ago)
General CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister for Security (Tom Tugendhat)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 (Risk of Being Drawn into Terrorism) (Revised Guidance) Regulations 2023.
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. This is the first time I have served under the chairmanship of the representative of my uncle and aunt, so it is a great privilege.
The draft statutory instrument was laid before Parliament on 7 September 2023. It relates to Prevent, which is one of the pillars of Contest, the United Kingdom’s counter-terrorism strategy.
If I may quote Sir William Shawcross, who earlier this year published an independent review of Prevent:
“Prevent has a noble ambition”.
Its aim is to stop people becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism. The Prevent programme literally saves lives. It helps to tackle the causes of radicalisation and assists people to disengage from terrorist ideologies. In simple terms, Prevent is an early intervention programme that works to keep us all safe. I am a passionate advocate of this preventive approach.
To offer early interventions to those in need, Prevent needs the help of certain frontline sectors that are well placed to support communities to reject dangerous ideologies, or to recognise when someone they know could be susceptible to radicalisation. That is why we have the Prevent duty, which is set out in the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015. It requires frontline actors, including education, healthcare, local authorities, criminal justice agencies and the police, to support Prevent’s ambition. It sits alongside other long-established duties on professionals to protect people from a range of harms, such as involvement in gangs or sexual exploitation.
The Prevent duty guidance, which is the reason for today’s debate, exists to ensure that those working in frontline sectors have the information they need to support Prevent’s mission effectively. The Counter-Terrorism and Security Act specifies the authorities to have regard to that guidance.
I recognise, of course, that Prevent’s mission is not easy. The process of radicalisation is complex, and unique to the individual. A multitude of factors can lead someone to subscribe to extremist ideology or to commit terrorist atrocities. Factors often include exposure to radicalising influences, real and perceived grievances, and an individual’s susceptibility. The Prevent duty helps to ensure that people who are susceptible to radicalisation are offered timely interventions before it becomes too late.
Hamas’s brutal terrorist attack and extremist exploitation of the conflict in Israel and Gaza serve as stark reminders as to what happens when extremism is allowed to fester. The disturbing escalation we have witnessed in extremist rhetoric, both online and offline, aims to raise tensions, divide communities and fuel hatred. Delivering Prevent in the best way possible is vital to strengthen our united front against those insidious influences.
As Members will no doubt be aware, the independent review of Prevent was published on 8 February 2023. Within the review, Sir William Shawcross made 34 recommendations, all of which were accepted by the then Home Secretary and are well under way to being completed. We expect to deliver 29 of the 34 recommendations by February 2024, and the rest shortly thereafter.
The updated Prevent duty guidance, which is the subject of this draft statutory instrument, was issued on 7 September. It responds to several of Sir William’s recommendations. First, the guidance has updated Prevent’s first objective to make it clear that Prevent should
“tackle the ideological causes of terrorism”.
The ideological component of terrorism is what sets it apart from other acts of serious violence and it is on that that Prevent, as fundamentally a counter-terrorism initiative, must be focused.
Secondly, the guidance sets out requirements more clearly articulating the need for high-quality training so that radicalisation risks can be more effectively identified and managed. This will be supported by free Prevent duty training from the Home Office and a new face-to-face awareness training course. Updated training on gov.uk has already been provided for public sector staff subject to the Prevent duty.
Thirdly, the guidance provides professionals with an updated threat picture and introduces the details of the strategic security threat check, which helps Prevent recognise and respond to threats proportionately. In addition to responding to the independent review of Prevent’s recommendations, the guidance will assist statutory partners to understand how best to comply with the duty. It includes details of the capabilities they should have to be able to effectively identify and appropriately manage risk. It also advises on how they can help create an environment where the ideologies used to radicalise people into terrorism are challenged and not permitted to flourish. However, importantly the guidance does not confer any new functions on statutory bodies and reflects current best practice from across the sector.
I acknowledge the excellent work that many professionals already undertake. Every day, our agencies and law enforcement officers work tirelessly to stop those who wish to do us harm. Since March 2017, they have disrupted 39 late-stage plots in the United Kingdom. Our statutory partners are also crucial in that work, and I am immensely grateful for the valuable contribution they make to help keep our country safe by facilitating early interventions for those susceptible to radicalisation. It is in recognition of that, and to ensure close consultation, that a range of key governmental partners were engaged throughout the development of the updated guidance. I am pleased to report that their feedback has been positive.
Subject to the approval of this House, this statutory instrument will bring the new guidance into effect on 31 December 2023, replacing the outdated guidance from 2015. Officials are already working closely with key partners to roll out the guidance, and they stand ready to support its implementation. As I have made clear, Prevent is a vital component of our response to terrorism, but it is a joint effort. With this new guidance, the safety net is strengthened and the country will be safer, which is why I commend it to the Committee.
Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I thank the Minister for his remarks. I do not intend to detain the Committee for too long, but I will reference the fact that I first met the Minister in the deserts of Helmand in 2007—ironically, when he was shadowing me. I am pleased to be able to return the favour. Although of course we respectfully disagree with each other on many things, the importance of keeping our country safe is a common cause that we share and treat with the utmost seriousness. On that basis, I am pleased that the Minister and I are working constructively together as much as possible.
Before I turn to the matter in hand, I join the Minister in taking the opportunity to pay tribute to the exceptional men and women who serve in our intelligence services, in Government and in our police, who all work tirelessly to keep our country safe, not least against those forces that seek to divide and harm us. We all owe them a huge debt of gratitude.
Extremism is fuelled by fear and hate, and stoked by malign individuals whose motives are abhorrent to the vast majority of decent people in our country. We felt the devastation that extremism can cause through terrorist attacks around the world, around our country, in our Parliament and of course towards our colleagues. With every act of terror, there was a path starting with radicalisation and ending with a tragic loss of life.
Extremism never lies in just one community or a single ideology, and Prevent practitioners need confidence and clarity in the renewed guidance included in the draft regulations in order to ensure the right interventions are taking place. However, changes to the guidance come after some concern over the Shawcross review and its recommendations, which the Government have accepted in full. Neil Basu, former head of counter-terrorism policing, criticised the Shawcross review’s assessment of Prevent not doing enough to counter extreme Islamist ideologies. Furthermore, there were some concerns in the Muslim community that not enough weight was being given to mental health and other vulnerabilities among people feared to be at risk of radicalisation. There is a risk that those serious concerns are overlooked by an approach that, by design, focuses on ideology.
Recent weeks have seen protest activity in the UK arise from the conflict between Israel and Hamas. There have been displays of appalling hate and extremism on our streets by a tiny minority. There is not, and never will be, any excuse for inciting terrorism. The role of Prevent should not be to deal with excuses, but to effectively counter causes of extremism and terror-related activity, and there is more need than ever for community trust and confidence in Prevent’s work.
Given the importance of these matters, and in a very constructive spirit, let me ask the Minister some questions. First, could he outline recent engagement between his Department, local authorities and education establishments on Prevent in relation to increased community tensions over the past few weeks? Will he also share his assessment of any urgent revision needed to Prevent duty training, including any specific guidance for people living in temporary accommodation? Those questions are important tests of Prevent’s agility to adapt to new and developing risks, so if the Minister cannot answer them today, I would be very grateful if he would write to me with that information.
As the Minister will also be well aware, artificial intelligence is another developing risk. Specifically, large language models and chatbots have the potential to radicalise on an unprecedented scale. The chilling case of an attempted attack on the late Queen on Christmas day 2021 involved a number of factors, including encouragement by an AI chatbot. Therefore, the threat of AI is no longer a sci-fi concept, but a reality we face on our streets today. Can the Minister outline how Prevent is prepared to deal with artificial intelligence? Will it change the content of radicalising online materials and attempt to reduce exposure to it?
The definition of extremism has been brought into sharp focus by the recent protest activity in the UK arising from the conflict between Israel and Hamas. Will the Minister update us on contact he, or his Department, have had with the commissioner for countering extremism on definitions of extremism since 7 October? We must counter extremism in all forms that pose a terror threat to the public. Therefore, the Shawcross review’s assessment of mixed, unstable and unclear ideologies is consequential to the scope of Prevent’s interventions. For instance, incel ideology was not identified as terrorist ideology in the Shawcross review. Instead, it was referred to as a driver of hate crime. Can the Minister say something about the work that is being done by Prevent to monitor overlaps between mixed, unstable and unclear ideologies regarded as drivers of hate crimes and recognised terrorist ideologies? I understand if he would prefer to write to me on those matters.
Finally, the common strand that runs through Prevent and wider counter-terrorism work is the pace of developing threats and our ability to combat them. Will the Minister share his assessment of whether these frameworks are agile enough to adapt to new and emerging challenges in counter-extremism and counter-terrorism? I want to work constructively with the Minister as much as possible, and I know that he will take my points in that spirit, not least because all of us on this side want to ensure that the public is spared from the terrors of extremism and shielded from the horrors of terrorist violence. We will work closely with the Government to ensure that they succeed in that vital task.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
I would like to say what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers.
First, I pay tribute to all involved in Prevent, because I think they have been maligned recently—and on two wings. Certain people from the Muslim community, for example, will never like Prevent and think that the state somehow uses it to try to brainwash people, which is further control; I will come to that in a minute. On the other side we have the former Home Secretary, who has tried to portray Prevent as somehow ignoring Islamist terrorism and penalising those with right-wing views. Both of them, I would argue, are wrong.
I thought that the Shawcross review was very disappointing, as it was quite clearly written with a political agenda from the beginning. It tried to somehow argue that right-wing terrorism is something we should not really be worried about, but that the real problem was with Islamist terrorism. We have also seen nonsense about referrals to Prevent being trivialised. There was a succession of wild stories in papers such as the Daily Mail suggesting that people were being referred to Prevent for silly reasons.
If any Member would like to know what the process is, I suggest they go and meet the people who actually do the work. Individuals are not referred to Prevent without there being some concern about them. I have to say that when it works, it is very good, but to somehow think that we can have a hierarchy of terrorism—I am sorry, I do not accept that. Whether it is a threat from the Muslim community or a threat from right-wing terrorism, neither should be tolerated and they should be dealt with equally.
Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
Has the right hon. Gentleman ever taken part in the Prevent training programme?
Mr Jones
Yes. I spent a day in Leeds with the regional counter-terrorism group there with individuals from Prevent. I think they do a very difficult job, especially on referrals. They are the frontline and have to make some quite difficult judgment calls about individuals. I will talk about one particular case in a minute.
Dr Johnson
As an NHS employee, I have done the Prevent training programme, which addresses the various types of people who may be radicalised and the different ideologies to which they may be radicalised. It urges people in the NHS to make reports to the Prevent team when they think that individuals in their care may be a victim of radicalisation, vulnerable to it or may have already been radicalised by particular ideologies. This is done for Islamic and right-wing ideologies, and others besides.
Mr Jones
I agree with the hon. Lady; that is exactly how it operates in practice, but that is not the impression given by the previous Home Secretary, who suggested that one community was being targeted more than another. That is not the case. What the hon. Lady says is exactly right. Individuals should look at vulnerabilities in each case. That is not the agenda we have had, and that is why I think that the Shawcross review was a waste of time. A lot of its conclusions could have been written even before it even took evidence.
The important thing to remember, as I have said, is that terrorism is terrorism. Individuals under NHS care, to whom the hon. Lady referred, who are radicalised or vulnerable to either Islamic terrorism or right-wing terrorism should equally be referred to Prevent. I am a great supporter of Prevent, because if it is done properly, it works very well.
Dr Johnson
The other point I would make about the training is that it talks a lot about vulnerabilities of people who may be victims of ideology. We need to be making it clear that when atrocities are committed, people are responsible for the actions they have taken. They should not be excused because of being vulnerable to becoming victims of ideological radicalisation.
Mr Jones
I would agree, but when the Intelligence and Security Committee, on which I serve, did its right-wing terrorism report, there was evidence of groups targeting certain individuals with some vulnerabilities. The shocking thing for me is the rise in right-wing terrorism. Twenty-five per cent of the plots that were disrupted in the last few years were by right-wing terrorists, mainly young boys and teenagers, who were not radicalised by individuals, but usually on the internet. That is an area where it is very difficult for gatekeepers to intervene.
Dr Johnson
The right hon. Gentleman said that the right wing had increased and represented 25% of plots. What were the other 75%?
Mr Jones
It is right that Lord Anderson’s review moved the responsibility for right-wing terrorism to MI5 from the police. That is why we undertook our review. The other part is made up of Islamists and other types of terrorism. That is a growth area that we cannot ignore, and to try to categorise that, which is what the previous Home Secretary tried to do, is unfortunate. We should be coming together and, whether it is Islamist terrorism or right-wing terrorism, we need to deal with it in a co-ordinated and forceful way. Prevent is good at that but, unfortunately, political discourse in the last few years has led to fingers being unfairly pointed at certain people in Prevent. It is a difficult job. Certainly, as regards our report on right-wing terrorism, when dealing with young people and individuals who have been radicalised online, how do we get the gatekeepers to spot what they are doing? Let us be honest—some of those people will not go on to commit acts of terrorism.
Like it or not, the biggest threat to us now in this country is not necessarily organised terrorism; it is self-generating terrorism by individuals who are radicalised in cyber-space by other individuals. That is a very difficult thing for the security agencies to deal with. If we see some of the content on both the Islamist and the right-wing sides, it is pretty disgusting and it affects young people’s minds. That is why if we can get in there and use it properly, Prevent is the right way to try to stop people taking the next step, which is either to commit an act of terrorism or an act of hatred. We have seen a rise in such acts over the past few years on the right-wing side, with Islamophobia and others. That is the important thing that Prevent should do.
I just wish that Prevent had not become a political football to be kicked around by some people who have always been against it, for example in the Muslim community and likewise by those on the right in this country. We depend a lot on individuals and how they do the work, but a lot of the success stories are never told. As the Minister knows, having met some of the individuals as well, there are success stories.
I welcome the guidance. All I stress is that we must try and turn the temperature down on this and do what I think we all want to do, which is to prevent people from being radicalised.
Tom Tugendhat
I thank all hon. Members on all sides for the tone in which the debate has been conducted. The hon. Member for Barnsley Central is absolutely right that the first time we met I was sent out to shadow him. I very much hoped I would not have to take his job because we were in a combat theatre. This time, sadly, he is gunning for mine. I assure him I will resist just as hard as we resisted together nearly 20 years ago.
It is a great pleasure to work with the hon. Gentleman on this. As many will know, trust between individuals is what makes this Parliament work when it works at its best. We oppose each other on various areas—or rather, he opposes me as I try to do the best for the Government of the country—but the co-operation we have had has improved our ability to co-operate on things that matter. This is something that matters.
I want to pick up on the points the hon. Member—
Tom Tugendhat
I apologise to the right hon. Member who is sitting at the back and ask him to forgive me. He is an old friend and, again, he has raised some interesting matters.
As a friend of Jo Cox and a friend of David Amess, I appreciate the equality of terror in all its horror, in all its pain and in all its agony. I do not think that any of us in this place require a lesson in that. I hear point made by the right hon. Member for North Durham, but I would just say that the services, the intelligence agencies and the police fully appreciate that. The right hon. Member will also know that his words about professionalism in the Prevent space are absolutely right. We have heard frankly disgraceful commentary about the professionalism of our Prevent individuals, who are conducting these services, which completely ignores the fact—and it is a fact—that Prevent is about making sure that all British citizens are treated equally. It is about making sure that there is no soft racism of cultural misunderstanding that tolerates the extremism in one community rather than another, because “that’s normal for them”. No—all British citizens deserve the protection of the British state. They deserve protection from violence used against them, but they also deserve protection from the radicalisation of their children or themselves. That is what Prevent is about. It is about equality; it is about the rights of British citizens; and it is about the right of every citizen and individual in the United Kingdom to be safe.
The hon. Member for Barnsley Central made some interesting points. The point about mental health is valid and true; we are working with the Department of Health and Social Care on that. It is a complicated area, because while it is extremely likely that an individual who seeks to do harm through terrorism may well be suffering from a form of mental illness, that does not undermine the fact that their ideology is radicalising them towards violence. I am afraid that the overlap between mental health and terrorism does not negate either side. The reality is that both can exist at the same time, and we must address both at the same time.
The hon. Member’s point about the recent protests was also extremely valid. One of the things that has shocked me most—I use the term appropriately, I think—is the number of people the police have identified and want to talk to about incidents of racism, antisemitism and vile hatred who fill positions of responsibility in our society. That is completely unacceptable. The normalisation of antisemitism that we have seen on the streets is utterly unacceptable. It is wrong and deeply harmful. Not only is it harmful in the fear that it spreads in parts of the communities that we are lucky enough to represent, but it is wrong because it normalises in the minds of young people attitudes and actions that could easily lead to their causing greater harm and pain. We are absolutely committed to this, and I know that the Prevent professionals working in this space are fully aware of the dangers that we face.
A lot of the engagement on the AI question that the hon. Member spoke about is covered in different ways in the Online Safety Act 2023. The work that has just been done by the Prime Minister at Bletchley Park—the hon. Member will know what a remarkable achievement it was to get all those countries around the table for the AI safety summit—was an extraordinary effort that started to address some of the questions he spoke about. I am delighted to have the hon. Gentleman’ support on that, because it will evolve. The reality is that artificial intelligence is an extraordinary process. It is not just an event, but a process by which the acceleration of algorithms produces information and consequences much faster than many other systems have allowed. We are seeing extremism operating in a very different environment. We are also seeing a very different environment in which the information flowing into algorithms and producing artificial intelligence is changing the way in which different people understand things. This is a question about not just the process, but the input.
The last point I want to make is on the question about mixed, unstable or unclear ideology. In response to the right hon. Member for North Durham, the reality is that while there is extreme right-wing terrorism, it is not in any way ignored; in fact, it is addressed very clearly by our policing and Prevent professionals. Sadly, a huge amount of it is emerging at the moment from the Muslim community. It is a real problem, and we are addressing it. To protect young men and women in the Islamic community, we need to be sure that we support them in a way that would support everybody in the United Kingdom and attack those centres of radicalisation. It also means that we must look at other areas where they are emerging. The question about incel violence—involuntary celibate violence, or mixed, unstable or unclear violence—is also emerging. Sadly, it has grown at different points. It is still a smaller percentage of the events that we see, but sadly it is far too present even now.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That the Committee has considered the draft Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 (Risk of Being Drawn into Terrorism) (Revised Guidance) Regulations 2023.
Dynamic pricing strategy
Renters (Reform) Bill (First sitting)
Tuesday 14th November 2023
(1 year ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Renters (Reform) Bill 2022-23 View all Renters (Reform) Bill 2022-23 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 14 November 2023 - (14 Nov 2023)
The Chair
Welcome to you all. Our proceedings are now public. We have to go through some formalities; we will then invite members of the public into the Committee Room, so we will be truly in public at that stage. Date Time Witness Tuesday 14 November Until no later than 10.10 am Shelter; Citizens Advice; Joseph Rowntree Foundation Tuesday 14 November Until no later than 10.55 am National Residential Landlords Association; Propertymark; The Lettings Industry Council Tuesday 14 November Until no later than 11.25 am The Local Government Association; Housing Ombudsman Service Tuesday 14 November Until no later than 2.30 pm Generation Rent; Renters’ Reform Coalition Tuesday 14 November Until no later than 2.45 pm Crisis Tuesday 14 November Until no later than 3.00 pm British Property Federation Tuesday 14 November Until no later than 3.15 pm National Housing Federation Tuesday 14 November Until no later than 3.30 pm Chartered Institute of Environmental Health Tuesday 14 November Until no later than 4.00 pm Dr Julie Rugg, Reader in Social Policy, Centre for Housing Policy, University of York; Professor Ken Gibb, Professor in Housing Economics, University of Glasgow Tuesday 14 November Until no later than 4.30 pm JUSTICE; Professor Christopher Hodges OBE, Emeritus Professor of Justice Systems, Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford Tuesday 14 November Until no later than 4.45 pm Chartered Institute of Housing Thursday 16 November Until no later than 11.45 am Country Land and Business Association Thursday 16 November Until no later than 12.00 noon Grainger plc Thursday 16 November Until no later than 12.30 pm The Law Society; The Law Centres Network Thursday 16 November Until no later than 12.45 pm Advice for Renters Thursday 16 November Until no later than 1.00 pm Advocats East Mids Thursday 16 November Until no later than 2.45 pm Housing Law Practitioners Association; Giles Peaker, Anthony Gold Solicitors; Liz Davies KC, Garden Court Chambers Thursday 16 November Until no later than 3.00 pm ACORN Thursday 16 November Until no later than 3.15 pm The National Union of Students Thursday 16 November Until no later than 4.00 pm The Nationwide Foundation; DASH Services; Safer Renting Thursday 16 November Until no later than 4.15 pm National Trading Standards Estate and Letting Agency Team
First, let us go through a couple of technicalities. If you read something out from notes, it helps to let Hansard have your notes if at all possible. I am an old-fashioned Chairman and I treat Committees in precisely the same way in which Mr Speaker treats the main Chamber: the rules on wearing jackets and not drinking coffee, and all the other formalities, courtesies and everything else, apply here just as if we were in the main Chamber. I think some other Chairmen are a bit more informal and modern than I am, but one thing I am not is modern, so we will treat things traditionally.
Ordered,
That—
1. the Committee shall (in addition to its first meeting at 9.25 am on Tuesday 14 November) meet—
(a) at 2.00 pm on Tuesday 14 November;
(b) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 16 November;
(c) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 21 November;
(d) at 11:30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 23 November;
(e) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 28 November;
(f) at 11:30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 30 November;
(g) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 5 December;
2. the Committee shall hear oral evidence in accordance with the following Table:
3. proceedings on consideration of the Bill in Committee shall be taken in the following order: Clauses 1 to 3; Schedule 1; Clauses 4 to 20; Schedule 2; Clauses 21 to 51; Clause 53; Clause 57; Clause 52; Schedule 3; Clauses 58 to 63; Clauses 54 to 56; Clauses 64 to 67; Schedule 4; Clauses 68 to 69; new Clauses; new Schedules; remaining proceedings on the Bill;
4. the proceedings shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at 5.00 pm on Tuesday 5 December.—(Jacob Young.)
Resolved,
That, subject to the discretion of the Chair, any written evidence received by the Committee shall be reported to the House for publication.—(Jacob Young.)
Resolved,
That, at this and any subsequent meeting at which oral evidence is to be heard, the Committee shall sit in private until the witnesses are admitted.—(Jacob Young.)
The Chair
Copies of written evidence that the Committee receives will be made available in the Committee Room and will be circulated by email to Committee members.
The Chair
Welcome to the first evidence session of the Renters (Reform) Bill Committee. In particular, I welcome our first panel: Polly Neate, chief executive of Shelter; Dame Clare Moriarty, chief executive officer of Citizens Advice; and Darren Baxter, the principal policy adviser on housing and land for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Let me say in passing, so that we are all aware, that the first panel has to end by 10.10 am.
Polly is online. Polly, if I ignore you, can you please make yourself known by waving at me or something? It is rather hard to communicate online sometimes, so if I am not calling you to say something, please let me know plainly.
Perhaps it would be helpful if the witnesses introduced themselves for the record.
Dame Clare Moriarty: I am Clare Moriarty, the chief executive of Citizens Advice.
Darren Baxter: I am Darren Baxter, principal policy adviser for housing and land at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
Polly Neate: I am Polly Neate, the chief executive of Shelter. Thank you very much for letting me join virtually; I really appreciate it.
The Chair
Before I forget, let me ask members of the Committee whether they have any interests to declare. I am not sure whether the Chairman has to do so, but I own two buy-to-lets, not that that particularly matters.
Dr Ben Spencer (Runnymede and Weybridge) (Con)
I declare an interest in that I receive support, in particular as set out in my entry under category 2(a) on the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, from individuals with an interest in this area.
Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)
I am a joint owner of a property that is let out for residential rent.
Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)
I am also the joint owner of a property that is let out for rent.
Craig Tracey (North Warwickshire) (Con)
I am an owner of a property let out for commercial rent.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)
As per my entry on the register of interests, I receive some support from campaigning organisations that support my office and that campaign on this issue; and I have lodgers at my house.
Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)
Can I declare that I am also the joint owner of two properties that are let out, but are held in trust?
Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)
I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association.
Dean Russell (Watford) (Con)
I do not know whether I need to declare this, but I rent, so I am not a homeowner. Hopefully, that means that I have a particular interest in this.
The Chair
I think we all do, in one place or another, but that is probably not an interest to declare: it costs you money, rather than getting you any money.
The Chair
There being no further interests to declare, we will crack on with the evidence. I call the shadow Minister.
Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
Q
I will start with section 21. This was the Government’s manifesto commitment and is in many ways the centrepiece of the legislation, but clause 67 of the Bill has always given Ministers discretion as to when the system is introduced. A two-stage transition has been advertised, but the Government have recently made it clear that they will not abolish section 21 until unspecified court reforms are in place. Could you give us your views on those? Specifically, have the Government been clear enough about what they mean by court reforms? What are the criteria by which improvements will be judged?
The Chair
I should say at this stage that it is not necessary for all witnesses to answer all questions. Just answer those questions that you feel particularly interested in.
Dame Clare Moriarty: The thing we really want to underline is the urgency of passing this Bill, introducing it and allowing tenants to benefit from its provisions. We are currently helping nearly 100 people a day with section 21 evictions. The longer the current situation continues, the more problematic it will be. We are seeing a very consistent rise in the number of people coming to us with homelessness issues.
Anything that looks at what needs to be put in place before the provisions can be brought into force, assuming they are enacted, needs to be looked at against that background. There may well be issues with the court system. It is worth remembering that only a minority of section 21 evictions actually go to court, because the majority of tenants leave at the point of getting a notice. It is an important symbolic issue, but it is not the biggest practical issue. Having looked at what is available and at what the Government say they plan to do on court reforms, I do not think it is very precise at this stage, but I am sure that work is going on in the background.
There is, in any case, an implementation timetable that will extend beyond Royal Assent. A reasonable thing to do would be to set that as the timetable for making court reforms, rather than making the provisions’ entry into force conditional on rather imprecise commitments about court reforms.
Polly Neate: This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity and has been years in the making. At Shelter, we support thousands of renters every year face to face and millions digitally. Without question, we are seeing increased homelessness as a result of section 21 evictions, so I really want to stress, first of all, the urgency of ending section 21 evictions—it is the most urgent thing in the Bill. A tenant is served with a no-fault eviction every three minutes. In our view, there really is no need to delay ending no-fault evictions because of the reform to the justice system. We agree that court proceedings could be made more accessible and more efficient, and that that could be beneficial to tenants, but we do not think that the vital reforms in the Bill should be held up.
In fact, we believe that a robust Bill would reduce the number of evictions by increasing security to renters, rather than causing a significant increase in the burden on the courts. It simply is not the case that all evictions that now occur under section 21 will in future be heard in the courts as section 8 evictions. Many tenants—probably most tenants—will continue to leave before the end of their notice period, and therefore before court proceedings. Also, many evictions that now occur under section 21 would not meet the threshold for eviction under the new eviction grounds.
The Government were always going to have to hold their nerve over this Bill. This is a brave and reforming piece of legislation, so there was always going to be lobbying for delays and for watering down. That was always going to be the case; I think the Government always knew that. We urge the Government to hold their nerve and not to hold up the vital provisions in this Bill, which will reduce homelessness, for the sake of much more minor reforms that are massively less urgent.
Darren Baxter: To build on what has been said, it is clear that this delay is unspecified. It is not clear at what point the Government would determine that sufficient reform had taken place in order to enact section 21: whether that is having put in place a process of digitalising the court system, or whether it is more of an “outcomes” measure with respect to caseload or waiting time being reduced. If this is the reason for delaying, there is an urgent need for clarity.
I absolutely back up what has been said so far: there is no need to delay this legislation. For landlords to go through the court process is fairly rare. Most tenants leave at the point at which they are sent a notice. In 2022, about 11,000 or 12,000 repossessions went through the court system in England and Wales. That is less than 1%: it is about 0.3% of all households who are renting privately in England and Wales. I understand why this is an anxiety for landlords, but we have to keep that anxiety proportionate to the great harms that an insecure private rented sector is doing. We have to move quickly to reform, particularly given that the consultation was in 2019. We have already been waiting a long time for reform to take place.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Jacob Young)
Q
Polly Neate: The connection is not brilliant, but I hope I heard the question correctly.
There are reasons why landlords might be facing difficulties, particularly due to mortgage rates, but we do not believe that there is evidence that these reforms will, in themselves, influence the PRS supply. In fact, the Government’s own work shows that the impact on supply will be minimal. We are not overly concerned about that. The evidence from Scotland is that there was not the promised mass exodus of landlords: data from the Scottish landlord register indicates that there has been no quantitative evidence of an impact on supply of PRS accommodation since the reforms there were introduced.
The most recent English housing survey data tells us that the private rented sector is still increasing in size. Some landlords may well be selling up or retiring, but we do not think that there is evidence that this is happening in the unprecedented numbers that people are suggesting. We just do not believe that is taking place. We certainly do not believe that this Bill will impact it significantly.
Darren Baxter: I would back that. Various forms of data—the English housing survey, a comparison of stamp duty at the higher rate against capital gains tax on people selling properties, and other sources—show that over the past few years the private rented sector has grown. More landlords might be selling up in any given year, but there are still more who are buying. That has been against the backdrop of tax changes and various forms of regulatory reform over time that has tightened up the responsibilities on landlords.
I do not think we can draw a conclusion that that landlords are selling up. It is kind of the opposite. If that has changed—and the data is unclear—it has changed since interest rates increased significantly. That is because the cost of borrowing is a really significant variable for landlords. That should give you, as legislators, more confidence about this reform. It is not going to be this reform that pushes landlords out; it will be the responsibility of the independent Bank of England. That should provide sufficient confidence.
Blanket bans are important but not perfect. If we think of “No DSS”—discrimination against people who claim benefits—there are all sorts of ways in which people who are in receipt of social security benefits might be discriminated against by landlords at the point at which they apply for a house. Income checks, for example, might push them out of the market.
Fundamentally, unless you increase people’s income, they might struggle to rent privately, but it is an important signal to the market that you cannot discriminate against a group of people just because they receive benefits. The same goes for families with children: it is important to say that if you have kids you should be allowed to rent a property, and that if you are putting a property on the market you should be open to who lives in it. These measures will not solve 100% of the problem, but they are really important signalling devices that this legislation can provide.
Dame Clare Moriarty: On the supply question, it is worth looking at the international angle. The Social Market Foundation has done some quite interesting analysis. First, England is an outlier in still having no-fault evictions. Most countries do not, and many of the countries that do not have them have much larger private rented sectors. There are all sorts of different reasons for that, but there does not appear to be a correlation between reduced size of private rented sector and the banning of no-fault evictions. That is just to add to the important points that Darren and Polly have made.
On the point about blanket bans, that is something that we see coming through quite a bit, including with people who would not fail to be able to rent on the grounds of income alone. They are either told that they cannot rent or possible conditions are put on them, including six to 12 months’ rent up front, just because they are in receipt of benefits. Those are really serious points. I know that the Government have made a commitment to table an amendment to deal with that, which we would very much welcome.
The Chair
Before we go on, may I reiterate that we will finish at 10.10 am precisely, even if someone is mid-sentence? Questions and answers should both be brief and to the point.
Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)
Q
Dame Clare Moriarty: I will leave the question of antisocial behaviour entirely to Polly, but on the question whether we think there is a risk that there could be no-fault evictions by another route: yes, we definitely do. There were two time limits in the original consultation, including one for the period before which grounds 1 and 1A would apply, for people reclaiming a house to move family into it or in order to sell it. There was an initial period of two years before that could be effected, which has been reduced to six months. The original consultation also included a period of 12 months after those grounds had been used before the property could be re-let. That has been reduced to three months.
Both of those are problematic for different reasons. First, even the most exemplary tenant could rely on only six months before they might be removed from their home on a no-fault ground. That does not deliver the security that the Bill is designed to give people. Secondly, if the grounds are invoked and people are moved out, saying that the property could be re-let three months later does not give the impression that this is being taken seriously. If the ground is only ever used for people to move family in to sell the house, there should be no question about the property being back on the market. There may be circumstances in which that happens, but three months is not enough for people to feel that this is a serious intent. I am not saying that this is something that people would be looking to get round, but if there is only a three-month empty period before they could re-let the property, that does not give confidence that this is a piece of legislation providing that security.
Polly Neate: I absolutely agree with all those points; I will not bother to repeat them. The antisocial point is really important. I absolutely understand why landlords are anxious about antisocial behaviour, but it is already covered by two different grounds for possession under section 8. Those will continue to be grounds for possession once section 21 is scrapped. Without the proposed changes, landlords would still be able to evict tenants engaging in antisocial behaviour—and they should be able to.
The big worry is the wording change from “likely to cause” nuisance to “capable of causing” nuisance or annoyance. That widens the definition of antisocial behaviour. There is a real worry—and I have seen this in several roles in my career—that domestic abuse, serious mental health issues and some forms of learning difficulties can easily be misinterpreted or targeted as being antisocial behaviour. There is a real risk with this change that people will be evicted unjustly, when what they really need is help and support; they are not antisocial tenants. That is the worry. We would say that there are already ample means to be able to evict for antisocial behaviour, and it is quite right that that should happen, but we really need to not risk widening that net and catching people in a wholly unjust and even dangerous way.
Darren Baxter: I have just a couple of points. On the ground that Clare mentioned—selling or moving back in—we need to recognise that this Bill is about improving security for renters. There is legal insecurity that comes from section 21; there is also a structural insecurity, which is that the sector is made up of lots of small-scale landlords churning in and churning out. That leads to people being kicked out because landlords sell. It is the most common reason why section 21 is used, and it is the most common reason why a no-fault eviction leads to homelessness, which has a huge impact on households and on councils’ finances, public spending and so on. We should be using this Bill to think about different forms of security, and the amendments that Clare mentioned would not only address the abuse of that ground, but give a more general security to tenants.
The other risk is no-fault evictions through the back door, through rent rises or so-called economic evictions: jacking up the rent to an unsustainable level, which then forces a tenant out so the landlord does not have to use the court process. We think you could amend that by having a limit on in-tenancy rent rises, capping at, say, the consumer prices index or wage growth—whichever is lower in any one year. That would stop landlords using that as a route for driving tenants out.
Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
Q
Polly Neate: May I start, as you specifically mentioned Shelter? What we are seeing is an overall increase in no-fault evictions, partly because of deteriorating standards within the private rented sector. We are seeing tenants who complain about the poor conditions in which they are living then being subject to a no-fault eviction. As standards are becoming worse in the sector, we are seeing that happening much more.
There is also an increase in no-fault evictions because the landlord wants to put the rent up. Again, that is partly because of the shortage of accommodation. It is partly because there is now such overwhelming demand that that is possible. We hear a lot in the news about how many hoops tenants are being required to go through, even including bidding wars for properties. If a landlord believes that there is an opportunity to make a lot more from a property, there is a temptation to get the current tenants out in order to be able to do that.
Those are two of the main trends that we are seeing. The point about standards is particularly important, because this goes to the root of the greater security that the Bill is intended to introduce. It is not only about no-fault evictions being used when tenants complain; there is an even bigger problem, which is that the threat of a no-fault eviction stops tenants complaining about poor standards in the first place. That increases the risk of poor standards within the sector. It stops people complaining. It means that more and more families are living in conditions that are potentially damaging to their health. Part of what this Bill is intended to do is improve the entire sector. The point about the relationship between no-fault evictions and poor standards is really central to that aim.
Dame Clare Moriarty: In terms of data, we are seeing larger numbers of section 21 evictions. It is a big increase, with 45% more people coming to us for help than at the same time last year. In terms of homelessness issues generally, we have seen a steep rise—a really consistent rise from early 2020, which amounts to about 25% year on year and 35% year on year for people in the private rented sector. It is worth recognising that there is a real increase in homelessness. There will be lots more data, which we will be happy to share with the Committee afterwards.
As for reasons why people are coming to us for section 21, I do not have detailed data at my fingertips. I will certainly ask whether there is more that we could analyse and share with you. I completely agree with Polly: we certainly see what are called retaliatory evictions. We are helping about 180 people a month who are being evicted after they have complained about conditions. We are certainly hearing from people the pattern that when the landlord presents a rent rise and people say, “We can’t afford that—a £500-a-month rent increase is just not absorbable,” they will then be threatened with section 21 eviction. As I say, I am happy to dig out more from our data to see exactly what is going on.
The Chair
If you can dig out that data and let the Committee have it formally, that will be very helpful.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Q
Polly Neate: I don’t think so, no. I think the provisions in the Bill will make renting so much more secure that it will make sure that people are much less likely to have recourse to all forms of the courts—the rent tribunal and so on. The objective of the Bill will be effective in reducing the burden on all of that.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Q
Polly Neate: Yes, exactly.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Q
Dame Clare Moriarty: We would say that six months is simply not long enough. If you are moving into a property, you want to make it your home—we hear from tenants the idea that you can only feel secure there for six months does not allow people to do that.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Q
Dame Clare Moriarty: The original proposition was two years, which we think is a reasonable amount of time. Whether you would restart the clock at a rent rise—that is an interesting proposition. It is not something we have worked on ourselves. I don’t know whether you have at JRF?
Darren Baxter: Our position is similar—the initial period should be longer. Two years or beyond is an interesting idea and one I would not reject out of hand, but it is not something we have worked out.
To jump back to your previous point about the rent tribunal, the risk you identify is valid. Polly’s point about better security giving people a chance to exercise their rights is true, but if you have a rent tribunal where you can challenge your rent, but that rent might go up, there is a risk that people see that as rolling the dice on potentially having to pay even more than they faced originally. Capping that, so that effectively the rent can go down but it cannot go any higher than the landlord was asking for, would be a reasonable reform that would encourage people to use the tribunal.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Q
Dame Clare Moriarty: The property portal could be really helpful for tenants in understanding what has happened with the property in the past. Previous rents would certainly be interesting. Also, there is the issue of whether or not the landlord has previously used the available grounds for what are effectively still no-fault evictions. While the design of the property portal is about landlords, if it had the right information and was properly regulated, it could be a real benefit for tenants and give them more confidence, at the point when they enter into a tenancy, so that they know a bit more about who they are dealing with. Tenants are often dealing with letting agents, and it is only when they have signed the contract that they actually have any contact with the landlord. The quality of the landlord is incredibly important to their quality of life.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Q
Dame Clare Moriarty: Again, this is not something on which I would like to get into too much detail, because I do not have the knowledge. Certainly, the point about a tenant, at the point where they commit to a tenancy, not doing that blind to information about the landlord is really important. Whether the only way of doing that is by making it public, or whether at a certain point in the process there are ways in which they could be given access to information, is probably in the detail of the property portal.
Polly Neate: What is important is that people have access to the information at the right point. This will also be of benefit to local authorities when they are trying to regulate private renting. There are lots of issues around that at the moment. Some of them are about resources, but the property portal would make it much more straightforward and less resource-intensive to be able to properly regulate standards in private renting. That is another important benefit.
Mike Amesbury
Q
My second point is about prevention. What more needs to happen regarding the duties of local authorities and councils to people who are not evicted, given some of the current holes in the Bill?
Polly Neate: Yes, it would be very beneficial to have a clear timetable. I cannot stress clearly enough my previous point: this was always going to be subject to lobbying for delays and it is really important that the Government hold their nerve. We need clarity about when this will happen, because we also have a commitment to reducing homelessness and this is a really important way of doing that. When people get the eviction notice, for whatever reason, it is really important that they still have the right to access homelessness assistance from their local authority. It is really important that that right is not watered down as a result of the Bill.
Helen Morgan
Q
Darren Baxter: We know from the data that local authorities capture why households come to them reporting homelessness, and why they then have a duty to house them, and section 21 no-fault evictions are a really significant part of that. Anything that reduces that flow will inevitably take some pressure off local authorities, so the more quickly you do this, the more quickly you stop one of the really significant drivers of homelessness.
Dame Clare Moriarty: We need to recognise that there is a whole range of problems with the housing market, including the extent to which rents are simply not affordable for many people. The local housing allowance is now seriously out of kilter with what people are paying for rent. That means that if you are on benefit in the private rented sector, a big chunk of your living costs go just on paying rent.
There are lots of broader questions playing into the pressures landing on local authorities. Having said that, section 21 evictions are definitely part of the problem, but they can be addressed, and the Government are committed to addressing them. As Darren was saying, this Bill has been a very long time in the making, and addressing the issue of insecurity for tenants, and the number of evictions that that is driving, has to be helpful. We should not kid ourselves that it solves the whole housing market problem, but it would make a real difference to people.
Polly Neate: I agree with all that. The Government have decided to remove the prevention duty and not replicate it for section 8 evictions, leaving it to the discretion of local authorities to decide when a duty is owed to tenants. Given the resource constraints and the issues in local authorities, there is a real risk that people just will not get the homelessness support that they need, so we urge that that be changed in the Bill.
It is absolutely right to say that no-fault evictions are not the only reason local authorities are overwhelmed by homelessness. The freezing of housing benefit and of local housing allowance is another major reason, and of course the really serious lack of social housing stock is at the root of this. This is not a magic bullet to resolve these issues, but the Government can remove a really significant factor contributing to the overwhelming pressure on local authorities.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
The Chair
We have two minutes left. Who can do this in two minutes? Polly.
Polly Neate: Answering as quickly as possible, we think it should be removed from the Bill.
The Chair
And the others?
Dame Clare Moriarty: Yes, it feels like something that is targeting a group of people who are probably in crisis. It is a very specific set of circumstances that applies if you fall into arrears three times in two years, but not to the point at which the serious rent arrears ground comes in. These are people who are either suffering multiple adverse life events or possibly trying to avoid losing the roof over their head by borrowing in insecure ways, but they need help and advice, not to be evicted.
Darren Baxter: We also do not think it is necessary. Adding to that, I think it is punishing people for doing the right thing. This is a group of people who have fallen behind, but then ultimately paid that money back, which is what this system is encouraging people to do. It is effectively punishing people for putting the situation right.
The Chair
That brings us to the end of our first panel of the morning. I thank Polly Neate, the chief executive of Shelter; Dame Clare Moriarty, chief executive officer of Citizens Advice; and Darren Baxter, principal policy adviser on housing and land for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Thank you all very much for giving evidence to the Committee; it will be extremely useful and will be borne in mind during the Committee sittings that lie ahead of us.
Examination of Witnesses
Ben Beadle, Timothy Douglas and Theresa Wallace gave evidence.
The Chair
May I welcome our second panel of witnesses? For the record and for Hansard, can I ask you to introduce yourselves?
Timothy Douglas: Good morning, Chair. I am Timothy Douglas, head of policy and campaigns at Propertymark. Propertymark is the UK’s largest professional membership body for property agents, with 17,500 members working across the UK. That includes agents working in residential sales and lettings, commercial valuers, auctioneers and inventory service providers.
Theresa Wallace: I am Theresa Wallace. I am chair of the Lettings Industry Council, founded back in 2015. It is made up of stakeholders across the industry, including agents, professional bodies, tenant groups and so on. I have been in the lettings industry for more than 30 years. I have been a landlord for a few years and a tenant for many years, and I am now a homeowner.
Ben Beadle: I am Ben Beadle, chief executive of the National Residential Landlords Association. We are a campaigning and support organisation for property owners, and our members provide just shy of 1 million properties across the private rented sector.
The Chair
We have until precisely 10.55, at which stage we will call the session to order even if you are mid-sentence, so please be aware of the time.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
“Actually the truth is that while some landlords are leaving the sector, this sector is actually still increasing. That’s not terribly helpful to our argument, to be honest with you. But in the context of cost of living and rising costs we have to tell that story and link the two.”
Is it not the case that all the evidence would suggest that the sector is relatively stable, at about 20% of households, over recent years, and that it may even have grown, and that there is no evidence to suggest that we will see, as some claim, an exodus of landlords from the sector?
Ben Beadle: I am not going to sit here and say that after looking at the Bill, everybody is going to sell up. We are not scaremongering here. We are saying that some nips and tucks are necessary to give responsible landlords the confidence to deal with the reforms. As far as the webinar is concerned, I have been very clear that the sector is growing, but the reality is that whether landlords are exiting or not—and I would point to the Bank of England, which says that they are, and is a pretty reliable source for the most part—our members tell us that they are reducing their supply, rather than investing.
The reality is that although the sector might have grown, we still have 25 people, on average, applying per property. We have a massive demand and supply imbalance. Is that a result of renters reform? No. Is it a result of a lot of factors, including renters reform? Yes. I can point you towards the uncertainty about energy changes; I know that that has been dealt with, but it might be only a year or so before that comes back. I can point to taxation changes that are punishing individuals and forcing them perhaps to sell, and putting them between a rock and a hard place for their tenants. I can point to mortgage costs, and I can point to the fact that, I am afraid, we are all getting a bit old, and some of my members are selling off their stock because it is time to do that. It is a mix of those things.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Ben Beadle: We have been very clear on this. We have not sought to block, or say that section 21 abolition will destroy the market, but we have been very clear that responsible landlords need alternative grounds on which they can rely, and need confidence in the system that underpins them. I sit as a magistrate, and I would be loth to compare different areas of the justice industry, because it is such a low bar that I don’t think it is worth comparing.
We have very grave concerns about how things are recorded. Although you can point to some of the statistics, a lot will depend on how cases are logged and when they come in. I have been involved in a number of discussions with senior members of the judiciary who have exactly the same concerns. Something may have sat in a post tray for three months but get logged as having come in today, for example, and that impacts the overall timings. The overall timings are worsening. I believe that there is a quid pro quo to some of this stuff. I am as frustrated as you that court reform has not happened, because I am very clear: Government should get on with it. They need to deliver something that feels like renters reform. There are lots of issues in the sector. Broadly, there is stuff in this Bill that we can support, but I cannot support section 21 abolition when the courts service is in such a state.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Ben Beadle: I want timings to be much, much faster, and that needs to be supported by digitalisation. To deal with this, we need significant investment in the support team and additional judges. In London, we have seen evictions not take place because the right sort of stab-proof vests for bailiffs were not procured. That does not give me a great deal of confidence that Government is all over this like a rash, and we need to have confidence. Section 21 was brought in to give landlords the confidence to bring their properties to the market. The vast majority of our members can live without section 21 provided the alternative is fit for purpose, but until we see these things come to fruition, I do not think I can recommend that. That is not to say that section 21 should not be abolished. It is just that the alternative needs to work, because otherwise it will hurt the very people you want to protect: the renters.
Timothy Douglas: First, we have a demand crisis. If we are not looking at supply, we certainly have a demand crisis. Looking at our member data from August 2023, year on year demand is up 32%, based on tenants registering with properties. It is a demand crisis and a housing crisis. It has to be about the tax, social housing, people being able to buy homes and energy efficiency legislation. These are all part of a wider housing strategy. You cannot look at the private rented sector in isolation.
On the courts, bailiffs are an issue; certainly in London, there is an issue around not being able to get personal protection equipment, and that has spread to other parts of the country. It delays proceedings. Should we look at privatising that service—the county courts service—in order to almost remove that funding element from the Ministry of Justice and ensure that we have enough bailiffs? I think we need to provide landlords with an automatic right to a High Court enforcement officer. That is part of the process. Normally, if you cannot get the bailiff, they will have that. We have worked with officials on integrating mandatory notices for possession into the possession claim online. We have also looked at improving the Money Claim Online website and that process, which is important.
I have two final points. There are things in the Government’s antisocial behaviour action plan. The courts need to prioritise dealing with antisocial behaviour; that would help. If that were a directive from the UK Government, that would be helpful. We also need to define low-level antisocial behaviour in statutory guidance, or any guidance, so that courts can see that, deal with the behaviour and get evidence of it.
Theresa Wallace: I agree with a lot of what Timothy and Ben have said. They have covered a lot of the points that I would have made. There is no question but that we have a shortage of stock. We are experiencing that on a daily basis. More than a million tenants in the private rented sector who are in receipt of income support and benefits to pay their rent should be in social housing. We need to address that to solve the housing crisis.
We need to instil confidence in our landlords. It takes time for trends to feed through, but we are definitely seeing landlords leaving the market. We have a lot more at the moment sitting on the fence, waiting to see what this Bill brings in, before they make their decision. It is crucial that we keep those people in the market. Build to rent fills a gap, but we cannot build in the places where the demand is, because that does not work for the model. We still need the private landlord to provide properties.
There are two recent surveys. A Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors survey came out last week, which showed that overall there were 43% fewer homes available to tenants to rent in the first 10 months of this year. Research by Hamptons came out yesterday and also showed the 43% reduction. RICS says it is definitely seeing a fall in instructions of minus 18%. We want to find a balance. We want to find more security for tenants; I do not think abolishing section 21 will do that, if I am honest. We still need some fixed-term tenancies for those tenants who really want to stay in a property for three or four years because their children are in school, and where the landlord is happy to grant a tenancy for that length of term.
We could even include a break clause for the tenant, whereby for a month, or throughout the whole time, they could terminate, if their circumstances changed. If the property is not fit for purpose, the local authority should be able to visit quickly and make a decision, and the tenant should be able to get out. That way, we are giving the tenant much more flexibility and security. We still need to let landlords know that they can get their property back if they need it, but many are very happy to commit to a longer term, and I think they should be allowed to.
Timothy Douglas: I think clause 1 should include the option of fixed-term tenancies. We are not saying that it should be one or the other; I totally agree with Theresa on the option of the fixed term. The previous panel talked about the insecurity of tenants who can be evicted after six months. If a tenant has a 12-month fixed-term tenancy, they have that guarantee at the start of the tenancy that they will be in place for 12 months before a decision can be made on eviction from that property. That is vital for guarantors. If you are going to be a guarantor for a rolling periodic tenancy, you are not sure how long you will be a guarantor. How can you have rent in advance if the tenancy is not for a set period?
The fixed term is a vital point, and we need to bring that in as an option. It should not have to be one or the other. There could be the option of a periodic tenancy or a fixed-term tenancy. That will be vitally powerful in the student market as well, for any household with a student—and for non-students. Even if the student leaves after 10 months, the tenancy could stay as a fixed-term tenancy until month 12. It could either be renewed for another 12 months, or roll on to the new periodic. We need that flexibility in the system.
Jacob Young
Q
Timothy Douglas: I think we need more detail on that ground. I have not seen it, I do not know what it looks like and I do not know how it will work in reality around when it is served at the time of the year. There are myriad student semesters, term times, different types of students and mixed properties. Defining a student let is really difficult. You can do it under an HMO because the licence conditions will be in place, but a lot of students these days rent in a high-rise modern flat. How do we define them as students?
From the point of view of our members, if we retain that fixed term, you have the clarity. A UK student—this is important as well for rent in advance for UK students—can have a letter from the uni. For overseas students, it is the right-to-rent check, the visa and the share code. On the students, we remain sceptical about how that ground works. The simplest and easiest way would be to retain fixed-term tenancies as an option for any household that is either a student or mixed student household, to give that flexibility as a fixed term for 12 months as an option.
On the antisocial behaviour ground 14, I am not sure what the difference between “capable” and “likely” is. That is why I reiterate the point that local partnerships between police and councils will be really important. The guidance, defining antisocial behaviour and prioritising it in the courts will be important for that ground to work.
Ben Beadle: We like the suggestion around antisocial behaviour. The Secretary of State has been very clear that managing antisocial behaviour is important. This is one of the challenges in section 21 being abolished. Like it or loathe it, section 21 allows landlords to deal with antisocial behaviour effectively. What we are trying to do is to not end up with just the perpetrator of antisocial behaviour in the property.
I would take issue with the comments that were made in the previous session. This will be tested by a judge. It is a discretionary ground. Although the wording is wider, I think that is absolutely right. It goes before a judge to assess the merits of it, and it succeeds or fails based on judicial discretion. That sounds like something that we can all support, because it means that antisocial behaviour can be dealt with. No politician wants to write back to constituents in their area to say, “That noise that is waking your kids at night cannot be dealt with because of this, that or the other.” This strikes a balance, to coin a phrase, between protecting those who are at the hands of antisocial behaviour and not making it too easy so that it is a back door to section 21, which I absolutely get.
The second thing came up around domestic violence in the previous session. I see this as quite different. We have ground 14A, which allows social landlords to evict the perpetrators of domestic violence. I suggest that something like that is more clearly made available to the private rented sector. What happens in practice is that the landlord is working closely with the victim and wants to keep—I would say “her”, but it does not have to be—the victim in the home and to deal with the perpetrator. Anything the Government can do to make that clearer would be very helpful.
The third point is on the student market, which is an area we have been campaigning on vigorously. We support the ground, obviously, and think that it can work, but a lot of good things come as a pair—Ant and Dec, strawberries and cream—and what is missing from the ground is that it does not fully protect against the cyclical nature of the market, which Tim spoke about.
We propose an amendment that would deal with a whole range of matters. In the first six months, landlords cannot give a no-fault reason for repossession; we propose that that moratorium be extended across the sector, to deal with issues in three or four areas. First, it would provide for a fixed period, and that would deal adequately —but not fully, granted—with the need to keep the cyclical nature of the student market, because it is not broken, and we want to protect it, in the interests of both renters and landlords.
Secondly, more widely, outside the student sector, it is a possibility that a tenant will give two months’ notice on day one, and set-up costs hurt landlords. In my briefing, which I sent round to you, I gave an example of that.
Thirdly, the amendment protects against the creation of an “Airbnb lite” in the sector. We do not want the private rented sector to become Airbnb by the back door, and there is a real risk of these periodic tenancies creating that.
Fourthly, the Bill is about fairness, and striking the balance between protecting tenants from bad landlords, and landlords from bad tenants, so there is no justification for us not being treated in the same way, through that moratorium.
There is a fifth thing: this is quite easy to do through an amendment. For those five reasons, I think that we can make this work.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Q
Ben Beadle: To turn that on its head, why have the clause one way in the first place? Why not let the market talk for itself? If a landlord wants to sell, why not let them?
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Q
Ben Beadle: I think the Bill is about fairness, striking a balance between the reforms that we all want, and all the things that have been said about not causing a crisis of confidence in the sector. I do not think that it has to be quite as easy as ordering something from Amazon and sending it back. The reality is that it costs a lot of money to set up a tenancy and get the property in the right condition. Of course, energy performance certificates and other regulatory mechanisms are available, which allow tenants to make a very informed decision about the property that they are moving into. That will be supplemented by the property portal and the register. All that information is available, as it will be in future.
The Chair
No, we do not want a dialogue. I am the Chair. We ask questions; witnesses answer questions. We take evidence. The arguments come later in Committee.
The Chair
No, let us not tease anything out. Mr Douglas.
Timothy Douglas: To build on the points that Ben made, in any legislation, we have to be careful about unintended consequences. In the student market, there would be the option for landlords to rent on a licence or give individual tenancies. That would potentially mean more student properties being rented on a room-by-room basis. If a student leaves within the term, any non-student could come in to fill the property. I am not convinced that all students would be happy with that. If we are talking about reasonable costs for re-let, that is covered by the Tenant Fees Act 2019. We have been through those arguments, and that is already in legislation. There is enough protection for tenants in place, and it is clear there for landlords as well.
Theresa Wallace: I have just two quick points. First, if the property is not at the correct condition and that is why the student wants to leave, that should be dealt with under the property portal. If the property portal is built correctly, with the right objective or end in sight, and it can ensure that a property is safe to rent, that should take care of that side of it.
We also have to remember that students are often sharers who have come together for the first time. They move into a rented property and some of them very quickly—within the first couple of weeks—think, “Oh my goodness. I don’t like the people I’m sharing with. I’ve made a mistake. I want to get out.” They serve notice, and that serves notice for everybody in that tenancy, so all the students would then have to leave. But I have also found that they can settle down, and after another week they get to know the people they are sharing with, and they end up staying there for that tenancy. I think we have to take that into account as well.
Mike Amesbury
Q
Timothy Douglas: I will come in on the ombudsman first. I think the UK Government are trying to run before we can walk. I think there has been a misunderstanding of the current redress arrangement for property agents. Whether you are a sales agent, a letting agent, a managing agent, a business agent or an auctioneer, you have to belong to a redress scheme. We have to be very careful about meddling with that current structure. We have a lot of multidisciplinary practices as well—70% of sales agents do lettings. If we are taking lettings out and creating a private rented sector ombudsman, we are meddling with a system that already exists.
I think what we need to look at first are the existing arrangements for redress, and there are gaps in the current arrangements. There are two redress schemes. One works to a code of practice, and one does not; it works to another code of practice and adjudication. The existing adjudication is not there, and it needs more teeth. I think the largest fine the TPO gave last year was £13,000. It needs more teeth in order to enforce.
Before we look at bringing in landlords, we need to sort out the existing redress system for agents. Actually, before looking at conversations with the housing ombudsman, I think we should be looking at the capacity of the two existing schemes in the private rented sector to bring in landlords, because they understand the issues, they understand the sector, and I think that would be a more positive way to go.
There is then another conversation, which is littered across the legislation, about who manages the property. There has to be a greater understanding of the three or four different management types and of who is the primary contact that the tenant is going to complain to. Is it the letting agent that is fully managing the property? That is easy to do. But what about that landlord-letting agent relationship where it is let only and rent collection? They might do other services, or they might just do let only.
This is a really complicated area. It is not simply about bringing landlords into the redress schemes and giving it to the housing ombudsman. We need to sort the existing schemes first—strengthen them, give them teeth, adjudication, and a statutory code of practice for the sectors—and then we need to look at the management practices of landlords and letting agents and those relationships in order to build in a complaints function that can happen.
Theresa Wallace: I agree with a lot of what Tim has said, but we actually support an ombudsman for landlords. We have the ombudsman for agents at the moment, so if a landlord or a tenant wants to complain about their agent and the service they are receiving, they can go to the ombudsman. If they have a complaint about their landlord, they cannot. They need to go to court, and that costs money. I can see that there is a place for a landlord ombudsman for a tenant to refer their complaints to. Dealing with it and resourcing it will be the biggest issue, because they will need to qualify exactly what a complaint is to be able to deal with it.
Ben Beadle: I just want to touch on what Mr Russell-Moyle said about students, and then I will come to this question. If a student leaves a property, and that property is re-rented to a family, for example, you lose your status as an HMO, and you have to reapply, typically through article 4. This is a very heavily regulated area; it is not quite as simple as is made out.
As far as the ombudsman and the PRS portal are concerned, we are very supportive. With anything that can help reduce the flow to the courts and resolve problems informally, I am like a rat up a drainpipe. It is absolutely, exactly what we need. The overriding issue, though, is that all those things need to join together. At the moment, I cannot quite see how the existing schemes will work with the landlord scheme, how the mediation service will fit into this and how the courts will fit in if there is a breach.
With the portal and the different elements of licensing that exist, we must not fall into the trap of thinking that, somehow, the private rented sector is the wild west. There is a lot of regulation and enforcement, but that enforcement requires investment, and we have grave concerns about the things that underpin some of this stuff. It is all well and good to have lots of rules and regulations but, at the end of the day, if we do not have the means to enforce them properly, that is problematic. We know from our research that over half of local authorities are not using the powers that they have.
There are no issues from our side, but we want to have some comfort and a bit more of a vision about how these things fit together and how it will be priced, because that is a sensitive issue and there has been no detail about it so far.
Timothy Douglas: Just to come back in on that quickly, the key point is that, in the current redress system for agencies, the consumer has to go through the agent’s complaints procedure first, but it is not mandatory in the regulation to have a complaints procedure. All complaints procedures are different, and there are no set timescales for responding to those complaints. That is the first issue.
The second issue is that, yes, we can bring in landlord redress and the ombudsman, but are we expecting the 50%—as quoted in the levelling-up White Paper—of landlords who do not use an agent to have a complaints procedure and to be able to respond in a timely way? There are lots of avenues, as Ben alluded to. We have simply said that, with landlord redress, there are layers and layers of complications involved in making sure that the consumer knows where and how to complain and that issues are dealt with. There are lots of issues to be looked at.
Mike Amesbury
I did ask about housing courts.
Ben Beadle: Let me deal with that. We like the principle of a housing court, and the Select Committee obviously likes it as well. Given where we are, I guess there is a realism in terms of what we can do with the existing system to improve it rather than carving out a new housing court. We support the concept, but I think we might be able to do a number of things that end up meaning we see change more quickly. That includes playing with the civil procedure rules, for example. Those are things that can be done and timed so that we can assess improvements. Rather than having one measure of an element of a possession case, there ought to be different measures. Everybody ought to know what the measures and targets are. Otherwise, how do we know what reform looks like and whether it has worked?
So there are things that we would—not necessarily substitute—for a housing court, but there is not a lot of money to go around. Although we love the idea, we are pragmatists in the sense of asking, “What would a housing court do differently that we could not do with the existing regime?” That is where we are focused.
Timothy Douglas: I would certainly agree with that and would also perhaps move towards a tribunal structure, which is less intimidating, less informal and does not necessarily have to use court buildings—any public building can be used across the country. But essentially, in an ideal world, this needs to incorporate the powers of the county court and the first-tier tribunal. You would then be able to appoint specialist judges, surveyors and so on. In an ideal world, yes, we totally need to get there, but I agree with Ben that it is about perhaps looking at a dispute resolution and those sorts of issues within the existing system before we get to the ideal. But that certainly would be welcome in the long run.
Helen Morgan
Q
Theresa Wallace: I think so, because I do not think we are giving them any security with the current proposals because a landlord can serve a notice either to sell their property or move back into it. The majority of section 21s are served for rent arrears, or because the landlord is selling or they want to move back in, or for antisocial behaviour. You do not have to give a reason but those are the main reasons that section 21s are used.
We will still continue to have those reasons, and by starting off with periodic tenancies with no fixed term at all, okay, the landlord cannot serve a notice for six months, but that is the most that tenants are being told that they will be secure for. Last week, I had tenants saying to me, “I want to be able to secure a long-term tenancy. My children are in the local school. I don’t want my landlord to suddenly say that he is going to sell the property or move back into it.” There are definitely tenants who want longer secure terms and there are landlords who want to do that for their own security. As I said earlier, I still think that they would be happy to include the two months’ notice for the tenant from six months in case the tenant’s circumstances changed. That gives the tenant the flexibility of knowing that they can have the tenancy for however long they agree to it, but if their circumstances change after six months, they can also move out.
Helen Morgan
Q
Theresa Wallace: No, they would be committed for the entire term.
Timothy Douglas: I totally agree with that, and I think it is not an either/or, as has been stated. Let us have the option. The beauty of the private rented sector is that it is built on that flexibility. Without the flexibility of that option, we are closing that down. Of course, you can have a fixed term for up to three years—otherwise, it then becomes a deed, as we understand it. You can have it for longer. So in theory, it is already there and that 12-month fixed term, or longer, with break clauses could offer lots more flexibility and the security that certain tenants want, and we know that agents are hearing that.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Q
Theresa Wallace: If it were rent arrears, that would be different. Landlords cannot afford to keep properties when they are not receiving the rent. For rent arrears, I am saying that the landlord would not be able to serve the notice to either sell the property or move back into it.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Q
Theresa Wallace: It is an option, yes. I still believe that there should be a minimum term of six months with any tenancy to make it financially viable for landlords. That is why we have so many landlords waiting to hear what the Bill will bring, and more of them will exit the sector if they are going to have only periodic tenancies from day one. I have landlords telling me that.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Q
Ben Beadle: With this Bill, we have to strike a balance between giving confidence to both sides. The more you tinker and the more you meddle with things like this, the less confidence there is. I cannot see why on earth you would want to do that.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Q
Ben Beadle: Bluntly, it sounds like you want to have your cake and eat it there. You want all the benefits of a fixed term and all the benefits of a periodic tenancy.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Yes. If we can get that, yes. [Laughter.]
Ben Beadle: Well, from our side, it is no—absolutely not.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Ah, okay.
Theresa Wallace: Just to add to that, at the moment you do not always have a fixed term. You can have a periodic tenancy, and you can put the rent up annually. That does happen, and it continues as a rolling tenancy, so we do have that at the moment.
The Chair
Unless there are any further questions from colleagues, I thank our three witnesses for their evidence, which will be very useful to the Committee in the deliberations that lie ahead.
I will ask the last set of witnesses to take the stand as soon as possible, without too much further delay, but just before our next panel, I ask Dean Russell to make a wee declaration of interests.
Dean Russell
Thank you, Chair. I just want to declare that my wife works part time at an estate agent that also does lettings.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Mr Gray, I should also have said that I sit on the legal working group for a radical housing co-operative association.
Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)
What is the radical bit about?
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
That is its title; I did not choose it.
Examination of Witnesses
Paul Dennett and Richard Blakeway gave evidence.
The Chair
I am delighted to welcome our next panel to give evidence to us on this important Bill. Perhaps I could ask you both to introduce yourselves.
Richard Blakeway: I am Richard Blakeway. I am the housing ombudsman for England.
Paul Dennett: Hello. My name is Mayor Paul Dennett. I am the Mayor of the city of Salford, the deputy Mayor for the combined authority in Greater Manchester, and a member of the Local Government Association’s local infrastructure and net zero carbon board.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Paul Dennett: In terms of local authority capacity, I think it is well known that 13 years of austerity have had a profound impact on local government. In the case of my local authority, we have seen a reduction of £240 million as a cut to the revenue support grant and also unfunded budget pressures. An example of that would be—
The Chair
We need to remain within the terms of the Bill.
Paul Dennett: Absolutely. From a capacity point of view, we do not have capacity and that has impacted regulatory services. That is relevant to the Bill. You will be aware that we are asking for a whole range of things—the establishment of a portal and the enforcement powers for local authorities to uphold this legislation, when it is brought forward, and that will require significant investment in workforce. I say that because we have lost a lot of people who work within housing enforcement, over many years. Such things as Grenfell and what has happened in terms of housing standards has brought all that to the fore more recently. So to be able to enact some of the duties in here will inevitably take time, because we will need to develop the workforce of the future to support tenants and, ultimately, landlords in enacting the legislation as it stands today.
For me, though, there are a lot of requirements here for local government. At the moment, the legislation does not adequately respond to how local authorities will be resourced to meet some of those requirements.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Specifically, in clause 29, there is a requirement to set out guidance on how the ombudsman redress scheme would work alongside local authorities, so that they have complementary but separate roles. What do you think that memorandum of understanding, as I suspect it will be, needs to look like? How do those roles not overlap in a way that duplicates duties?
Richard Blakeway: I think that is a very important question. This is a thoughtful Bill, but to fulfil the ambitions set out in the Bill means real operational challenges. The first challenge speaks to the first part of your question about how you design a system where the ombudsman has sufficient teeth to be effective. That is one of the reasons why we have said that creating, or enabling, an ombudsman through the Bill does not necessarily mean that people will access redress. That in itself can be a real barrier for people when navigating a system where they may be passed from pillar to post. That is exactly the reason why the Cabinet Office guidance on the creation of ombudsman redress is explicit that you should build on existing schemes.
At the moment, we are the only approved scheme that does landlord and tenant dispute resolution. I heard some of the evidence in the previous session and think we need to really distinguish between agent and landlord redress, where the responsibilities of agents are very different from the landlord’s. The Landlord and Tenant Act sets out clear obligations that rest with the landlord and cannot be delegated to the agent.
What we are seeing is a convergence in policy, which I think is welcome. You already have some of those building blocks in place. The Landlord and Tenant Act is universal; it does not distinguish between social and private. The decent homes standard potentially extends that. The health and safety rating system is, again, universal. What we need is to bring that together into a single scheme. Otherwise, regardless of the powers of the ombudsman, people are going to struggle to access the system.
In so far as the powers of the ombudsman are concerned, overall, the Bill is quite effective at setting out role of an ombudsman without being overly prescriptive. You have to avoid compromising the independence of the ombudsman to make independent decisions and to have integrity, and also agility, by being independent. The Bill is responding to a private rented market which was not envisaged 30 years ago, so you need to enable the ombudsman to be able to produce guidance and codes of practice that can respond to a changing market and changing circumstances, without being overly prescriptive in the legislation.
On clause 29, that is a really important point, because there is a risk of duplication between the role of a council and the role of an ombudsman. Again, there is a lack of clarity for residents—tenants—about which route to take. An ombudsman does not operate in isolation—it will not operate in a bubble—so the relationship between the ombudsman and the courts will be critical, as well as the ombudsman discharging its own functions.
We currently see cases in which someone has gone through environmental health, and a local authority might even issue an improvement notice, and then someone is coming to us for redress—those are two distinct roles. Any information-sharing agreement needs to be really clear that when an ombudsman sees concerns that may indicate there is a category 1 hazard, for example, that information is provided appropriately to a local authority for potential enforcement. Also, the local authority needs to be able to signpost very early to a resident who has approached it through environmental health that they may have a right to redress.
The crux of this, alongside the memorandum of understanding, is the portal or database. Part of the problem is that there are a large number of landlords and there might not be clarity about which parties are subject to the Bill—subject to enforcement and redress—and then it is about being able to access that information easily so that compliance can be met. I agree with your point: there has to be a framework for operation and a clarity about roles, but both local authorities and the ombudsman will want access to the database so that they can be effective.
Jacob Young
Q
Richard Blakeway: That is a really good question. An ombudsman is not a surrogate for an effective landlord-tenant relationship and effective dispute resolution at source, done locally by a landlord. One thing that we have sought to introduce through our work on social housing is our complaint handling code, which has set out how to create a positive complaint handling culture and resolve disputes as early as possible without having to escalate them to the ombudsman. We have done a significant amount of work with landlords to implement that code and to avoid a postcode lottery whereby, depending on your landlord, different approaches might be taken, and some of those approaches were not promoting natural justice at a local level.
For me, although an ombudsman might be conceived as the potential stick—there is an element of that, which is important—another part of an ombudsman’s role is to promote effective complaint handling locally and support landlords. There are a lot of landlords who want to get things right—they are not rogue landlords—but sometimes they may not be aware of all their responsibilities, or they may struggle to engage the resident effectively or to discharge their responsibilities. That role is important for the ombudsman. It is something we have done in social housing and, were we to be appointed as the ombudsman, it is something we would certainly seek to do with landlords in the private rented sector.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Q
Paul Dennett: Selective licensing is very interesting for Salford, because I think we were the first local authority in the country to pilot the new legislation at the time. Selective licensing schemes will inevitably continue to be an important tool for councils to manage and improve the private rented sector properties in their area. In our opinion, local areas should have the flexibility to employ selective licensing schemes to meet local need, as we determine that. We are calling on the Government to amend the Housing Act 2004 to remove the requirement for councils to seek approval for larger selective licensing schemes. You will be aware of the 20% threshold—
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
You could do ward by ward.
Paul Dennett: Absolutely. People ultimately have benefited from that. We have evaluated that and renewed selective licensing, certainly in Greater Manchester. Having that flexibility at a local level would aid the legislation and ultimately our approach to regulating the private rented sector.
Eddie Hughes
Q
If I remember correctly, you and I met at a social housing decarbonisation fund demonstrator. With your decarbonising hat on, surely now you could have the opportunity to be able to communicate directly with landlords. You do not know who they are or where they are at the moment. You would be able to communicate with them directly and say, “The Government have this scheme. We can help you improve and replace your boiler,” and so on. There is no end of benefits, yet you seem to focus only on the negatives. Why is that?
Paul Dennett: I am definitely not only focusing on the negatives.
Eddie Hughes
You certainly did in your opening comments. It was all doom and gloom.
Paul Dennett: I was asked about resources.
The Chair
Order. Mr Hughes, we are asking questions; witnesses are giving evidence. We are not arguing.
Eddie Hughes
I am sorry, Mr Gray—no hectoring.
Paul Dennett: Renters should welcome the property portal, as it will inevitably create a more transparent system for tenants and provide a single place to check what is important information for tenants and also for local authorities about the properties. For the portal to be effective the Government must also require landlords to display eviction notices on the portal. That would support local authorities in enforcing the prohibited letting period associated with the new eviction grounds. For example, were a landlord to evict a tenant on a legitimate basis covered by the Bill, but then sought to re-let the property, logging that eviction on the portal would make it clear whether the property was within the prohibited letting period or not. Obviously that requires the portal to operate in real time, which is something we would certainly support in the Local Government Association.
What is absolutely critical to the success of the portal, and to secure its longevity, will be for the Government to commit the resources, both financially and non-financially, to the portal, and ultimately how that then interfaces with local government from an enforcement point of view.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Q
Richard Blakeway: A couple of thoughts. In direct response to your question, I think the ombudsman has been developed partly in the context of pressures and backlogs in courts. In designing the role of the ombudsman you need to give consideration to how that ombudsman’s jurisdictions could go further in relieving those pressures on the courts, not least so that the courts can focus on section 21, which in itself will be essential to give residents confidence to use the complaints process. There is plenty of evidence out there to suggest that until section 21 is removed, residents will be cautious about using the complaints procedure.
You give a compelling example of where an ombudsman’s jurisdiction might go beyond what is envisaged, albeit in a way that is trying to bring coherence to the system. Rents might be another area to look at. As an ombudsman, we currently look at aspects of rents and charges, and there will be other aspects for the tribunals, given some of the potential reforms to rents. You could consider the ombudsman’s role in considering what are often quite technical aspects, rather than things going to the courts.
If I may briefly answer on the context of the question and our being ready and willing, given the complexities of the system, which benefit neither the landlord, the provider, nor the resident—nor indeed the other bodies involved in this jigsaw—what the housing ombudsman can provide is one front door, one back office and one coherent approach to dispute resolution in the rental market. Given the policy convergence and the clear evidence that the more fragmented the process is, the more people will fall between the gaps and the more duplication and confusion there will be, building on our scheme would be the most effective way to deliver the ambitions of this Bill.
However, we should also do so at pace, because there is no one who can move faster than us to implement this. Therefore, you could implement the redress scheme before the removal of section 21, before some of the courts reforms that have been talked about. To enable that, we need a clear and unambiguous statement from Ministers during the passage of the Bill, and ideally in Committee, that they will appoint the housing ombudsman on Royal Assent to deliver the redress scheme.
Mike Amesbury
Q
Paul Dennett: Obviously we need to fully understand, from an evidence and empirical point of view, whether the courts issue is a legitimate concern, because at the moment we do not have the evidence to corroborate that. We are being told that this needs to be halted, but no definitive time has been given for the abolition of section 21 until the courts issue is resolved. For us, it seems as though this could be indefinite—there has been no definitive date. We know that there are lots of issues with our courts—we see that day in, day out—but we really need clarity on when the Government will introduce this legislation. We also need the evidence for whether the court delays issue is justified and warranted, because at the moment we do not know. We are hearing a lot about this, but we are not seeing the evidence to corroborate it, which is a concern for us. We are asking the Government to commit, in law and in timescales, to abolishing section 21, and to do that publicly.
Richard Blakeway: I agree with the thrust of that response. From a redress perspective, as I alluded to, clearly some residents will not exercise their right to redress because of a fear of eviction. The analysis by Citizens Advice, for example, says that it probably reduces tenants’ willingness to use the complaints process by about 50%, so about one in every two tenants will not exercise their right to redress. Obviously we will hear more about the timetable for removing section 21. What would be unnecessary, in addition to that, would be a delay in redress, whereby redress through an ombudsman and section 21 have to be removed or reformed at the same time. I think the redress can come first. I would not want to see a delay on redress. Even if fewer people might use the complaints procedure, some clearly will, and it is therefore important that they have that right.
Mike Amesbury
Q
Richard Blakeway: The courts themselves, or some aspects of the courts, have talked about the simplification of the courts and the creation of a housing court. My assessment of that is that an ombudsman is an alternative to the courts. Therefore, you need to be clear about why you might use the redress route, depending on what outcome you are seeking, alongside the court route, and a simplification of the court route, potentially through the creation of a single housing court, for example. That would be really beneficial, by making clear people’s rights, so that they can consider, “Do I want to go through the courts process, because this is the outcome I am looking for? Or do I use the ombudsman process?”
One thing I would stress is that an ombudsman should not be perceived as dealing with leaky taps or broken windows. These are not low-level disputes; we deal with some complex disputes in our current casework, as Committee members will have seen through our decisions. That approach needs to be applied here. The more you can apply that approach, the greater confidence people will have in a free and impartial alternative to the courts, or a free alternative to the courts, rather than feeling that their only effective route to redress is the courts process, given all the pressures on it.
Paul Dennett: Just to respond to the point about a housing court, we have to be careful that it is not a distraction from getting on with legislation. First, we do not believe the court backlogs are severe enough to warrant a delay in making progress with this legislation. We are therefore calling on the Government to publish that evidence, based on the court backlogs, in order to inform how best we implement the abolition of section 21. If courts are found to be in sufficient need of improvement to delay the ban on section 21 evictions, we call on the Government to commit in law to delivering a strategy based on evidence to reduce the backlog, backed up by sufficient funding and a specified date. To go down the road of considering a housing court would delay all that, and would be of real concern to many people in the country.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
The White Paper also committed the Government to exploring and bolstering local authority enforcement to tackle a wider range of standards breaches. That is not in the Bill. We have a commitment in the King’s Speech, as one of three areas for the Government to bring forward amendments to make it easier for councils to target enforcement action and arm them with further enforcement powers. Could you speculate on what we might expect the Government to bring forward in that area? What would you like to see? Should we seek to weave into the Bill the more expansive measures outlined in the White Paper?
Paul Dennett: The Bill deals with enforcement for local authorities quite adequately. It is about how we resource that and develop the workforce within local government, and how we ensure that this legislation is genuinely resourced and empowered to deliver on what we are setting out here. At the end of the day, any legislation and regulation is only as good as our ability to enact it.
To enact it requires a trained, skilled and developed workforce. I say that against our losing many people from regulatory services, certainly since 2010-11. It also requires the resources to employ people to do the work, gather the data and intelligence, prepare for court and, ultimately, work with landlords, ideally to resolve matters outside of the courts, if we can do that. That is the LGA’s position on all this.
We would like to be in a position of having a working relationship whereby we resolve matters outside of complaints systems, outside of courts, working through local authorities. Nevertheless, if that is required, it is important to have a skilled, resourced workforce. I stress the importance of resource, because local authorities spend an awful lot of money these days on children’s services and adult social care. Those are responsive budget lines that ultimately consume a lot of our budgets and that therefore diminish our ability to get on and do some of that regulatory activity in local government. The legislation is there for enforcement; we just need the resources to get on and do it, and we need the workforce strategy to train the people of the future to enact this and, ultimately, to prepare to support landlords and tenants in this space.
Richard Blakeway: That is a really interesting question, Matthew; I have a couple of thoughts in relation to it. It is perhaps worth testing—if, for example, the ombudsman is seeing repeated service failure in a particular area—what powers there might be to address those kinds of recurring systemic issues, and whose role and responsibility it should be. That goes to the heart of your question about clause 29 and the relationship between the various parties.
The second thing, which goes back slightly to your first question, is how redress is scoped in the Bill. The one area that I would highlight—I can understand why it has been introduced, but it might not stand the test of time—is the cap on the financial compensation that an ombudsman can award. At the moment, we do not have a cap. The Bill proposes a cap of £25,000. I can understand the motivation there and, as an ombudsman, we are always proportionate, transparent and clear about the framework in which we work when awarding compensation. None the less, in time to come, £25,000 might not seem an appropriate sum. It also slightly incentivises people to think of the courts, which do not have a cap, to solve their dispute, rather than using an ombudsman.
It is critical that the ombudsman has sufficient power to enforce its remedies, as well as the council being able to enforce its role and responsibilities, but the cap might be something to re-examine.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Q
Richard Blakeway: There is a term that may be in the statute or scheme of an ombudsman called “own initiative”, which allows them to initiate an investigation without a complaint whenever they have a strong sense that there might be service failure. That is not currently explicitly in our scheme. However, three years ago, we had scheme amendments that allowed us to investigate beyond an individual member of our scheme, or beyond an individual complaint, if we had concern that there may be repeated systemic failure. That is something that is exercised.
The Chair
Unless there are any more questions from colleagues on either side, I will thank the two witnesses on our final panel: Paul Dennett, the Mayor of Salford and member of the Local Government Association’s local infrastructure net zero board, and Richard Blakeway, the housing ombudsman for the Housing Ombudsman Service. Thank you both very much for your evidence.
Ordered, That further consideration now be adjourned—(Mr Gagan Mohindra.)
Renters (Reform) Bill (Second sitting)
Tuesday 14th November 2023
(1 year ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Renters (Reform) Bill 2022-23 View all Renters (Reform) Bill 2022-23 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 14 November 2023 - (14 Nov 2023)
The Chair
We will now hear evidence from Ben Twomey, director of Generation Rent, and Sue James, chair of the Renters’ Reform Coalition. For this panel, we have until 2.30 pm. Can the witnesses please introduce themselves?
Ben Twomey: Good afternoon, everyone. I am Ben Twomey, the chief executive of Generation Rent. We are a campaign group campaigning for private renters across the UK to make sure that every renter lives in a safe, secure, affordable and quality home.
Sue James: I am Sue James, chair of the Renters’ Reform Coalition, which is a coalition of 20 organisations, including national charities, national organisations, think-tanks, renters and unions. My background is as a housing lawyer for 30 years, and I have been at the coalface of the possessions duty scheme for that time. I have worked out that in the past 10 years I must have represented on at least 5,000 cases, so I come with some experience of the courts system as well. At the moment, I am the chief executive officer of the Legal Action Group, a national charity that campaigns on access to justice.
Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
Q
Ben Twomey: Thank you, shadow Minister. On the grounds, it is important to think about the question of what actually changes for the renter experience if the Bill passes in its current form. We welcome the Renters (Reform) Bill and think it is an important piece of legislation, but on some key areas not much will change.
The Government promised to abolish no-fault evictions. The Bill does not do that. It removes section 21 no-fault, or no-reason, evictions but introduces new no-fault grounds. Particularly on grounds 1 and 1A, which are where a landlord can move a family member in or may sell the property, it is important that we put ourselves in the renter’s shoes when that happens. A no-fault notice is given. That could happen to me or any renter across England. Right now, I could go home and find one of those notices on my doorstep. I would have to be out of my home within two months. Given the current economic climate, it is going to be difficult for me to find a new home quickly, so the risk of homelessness—no-fault evictions are one of the leading causes of homelessness—is very great.
In the current wording, that situation does not change for renters, and their experience does not change. A renter receives a no-fault notice and is out within two months. We think there should be better protections there. It should go to four months instead, to give the renter time to make the savings, look around and find somewhere to live. That saves the Government money because they do not then have to support people who are in temporary accommodation or are otherwise homeless. That is one of the key areas we want to change in respect of the grounds.
Similarly, I currently have a fixed-term contract that will move under the Bill to a rolling tenancy. The minimum fixed term is six months, and as soon as that ends I can receive a no-fault eviction. Within the rolling tenancy, under the wording of the Bill, once the six-month protected period ends, again, a renter can receive a no-fault eviction. It is important that there are better protections so that there is more security for renters. We say that period should move to two years instead.
Finally, on the no-let period, if the grounds are to be introduced, they need to be enforced. It needs to be clear that they cannot be abused by some landlords. At the moment, if someone says that they are moving a family member in or that they are going to sell the property, there are three months during which the property cannot be re-let. We think that should move to one year to make sure we rule out the idea that some landlords could still do retaliatory evictions or abuse the grounds in other ways. By moving that, we make sure that tenants have that greater protection and can enforce where local authorities may not be able to. If we can put that information on the property portal in the Bill, which we welcome, it will be much easier for tenants to play a role in the enforcement and scrutinise what is happening.
As I said, I could go home today and receive a no-fault eviction. The Bill could pass and I could go home and find one and the same thing could happen. I would be out within two months and it could happen after six months of my having a tenancy. That is a big problem. If you want to reduce one of the leading causes of homelessness and save the Government money in doing so, you need to address those factors.
Sue James: What we are talking about today is someone’s home. Over the past 20 years we have seen a huge increase in families who are living in the private rented sector, and we are talking about having enough protection for them. The private rented sector has doubled in size, so we do need to pay attention to it.
At the moment, the new grounds are all mandatory grounds, and we say they should be discretionary grounds. We want the court to make an order that will take into account the circumstances of the tenant and of the landlord. Grounds 1A and 1B, as they are currently written in the Bill, will essentially be a back door for section 21. I agree with what Ben said about improving the notice periods that are outlined in the Bill.
We also have a problem with grounds 1A and 1B in relation to the evidence. At the moment, it does not look like the landlord will have to provide much evidence. We want that to be strengthened so that you would have to have evidence that the landlord required the property for a member of their family or wanted to sell it.
The problem also is that once a landlord takes possession on that basis, or tells the tenant that they are going to seek possession on that basis, you have just a three-month period in which they are not allowed to let. That needs to be much longer—at least a year—in order to protect the tenant from unscrupulous landlords taking back their premises. Three months is not a very long time at all.
The other issue relates to enforcement. Currently, that rests with the local authority and the ombudsman. The tenant must have the right to challenge that and to take action against the landlord, including when the landlord has taken possession in court, because at the moment it is only if the tenant voluntarily leaves. It needs to be a bit more joined up in terms of having that protection.
The biggest problem is ground 8, and ground 8A in particular. I know you heard some evidence on that this morning. It is a particular problem: basing it on three times in three years when someone is at least one day in arrears is going to cause grave hardship. It has a perverse incentive, because the final time that the tenant is in arrears, a possession order will be made and they will not have an incentive to make that payment. That seems really perverse. All of that needs to be discretionary. The court absolutely has to have a look at that.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Jacob Young)
Q
Ben Twomey: We absolutely welcome the end of section 21 no-fault evictions—it could not come soon enough. We were promised it some time ago. For renters, that is one of the biggest insecurities we face. That is why I talk about the experience needing to change for renters. In Generation Rent, we love it when renters are aware of their rights and when they know what the system is like, yet those renters who discover they have received a section 21 suddenly become aware that the rights they have do not mean much at all, because they will be out in no time and there is not much they can do to challenge it.
One of the saddest things I have heard from renters we support is that insecurity follows them into the next home. Even when they are trying to feel settled and comfortable and to build their lives again, they are in constant fear that another no-fault eviction notice could come. It needs to be really clear that the new no-fault grounds do not keep that insecurity in the system.
We welcome the end of section 21 and we welcome the property portal. It will be really good to finally have a register of landlords. We hope to be able to put things into that portal that are not yet in the Bill: we hope that we will be able to track evictions, so that they are enforceable around the no-let grounds, and that we will be able to look at actual rents and properly monitor what goes on. One of the big advantages of ending section 21 will be that finally a reason is given for every eviction, so we can understand when things start to go wrong that lead to homelessness. At the moment, quite a lot of guesswork is happening to prevent that problem.
We also welcome an ombudsman coming into the sector, to have an equivalence with the social housing sector. As much as possible, in any way we can, we think renters should have the same rights across social housing and private renting. When the experience can be very similar, and the risks, insecurity and unaffordability are still factors across the piece, there is no reason to have a two-tier system. In fact, I would go further and say that we will have reached our goal only when homeowners start to kick themselves and say they wished they were renting because there are so many rights available, so much security of tenure and so much flexibility, and because they have organisations such as mine and Sue’s to inform people. We look forward to working with the Government to see how that ambition can happen.
Sue James: I agree. The property portal has such potential if we get the information in there right so that there is transparency around renting. That would be amazing. We absolutely love the fact that this has been brought in. There are some changes that we think need to be made. The fact that you are looking at delaying action on section 21 is something I would love to talk about, if you would like to hear that.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)
Q
With Ben, I would like to probe no-fault evictions, which are very expensive for the person who is not at fault. They have to pay for removal costs, a new deposit and, very often, a month’s rent up front, which is very difficult for people. Are there any ways that could be ameliorated when it is no fault and the tenancy is being curtailed early, within two months?
Sue James: Shall I go first? You also heard this morning that the Government need to hold their nerve, and I absolutely reiterate that. The Bill has been a long time coming, and we have a crisis out there. Colleagues of mine who are at law centres have queues of people coming to see them because of this, and we absolutely need to get it right.
The county court is not the experience I have been hearing about in some of these conversations. You heard this morning that the county court is pretty much getting it right: it is not one of the courts with a huge backlog of hearings and stuff like that. When you start a possession claim, there are fixed rules around that. The case has to be listed within eight weeks, and it is usually listed in six to eight weeks. You then have a hearing before a judge, so it is not actually taking that long. You have the hearing and the court has to apply strict criteria on whether it is just and proportionate, and whether there is a reasonable defence that can be pursued.
In the court, we have a fantastic duty solicitor regime that has just been improved to include benefits advice beforehand. So you already have judges who are experienced in housing, you have duty advisors who are very experienced in housing, and then you have income officers who are at the same courts all the time. You build these relationships, and as duty solicitor, you are working out a plan where you can get the arrears paid off and get the stuff sorted out. We now have crisis navigators in law centres, and they resolve the benefit issues that are sitting behind it. Of the rent-arrears cases I have ever seen, I would say that probably about 60% to 70% have been a benefit-related problem. I think those issues are different from the issues around the court.
The only thing that you could invest more in—well, obviously if we invested more in the court that is brilliant, but I do not think we need to wait for that—is the bailiffs and the end period. Sometimes, with a bailiff’s work, it can take up to eight weeks to fix a date. That is just about money. If you address that, you do not have these problems. That is why I am saying that discretionary is the way to go, because it provides fairness.
You already have a housing court sitting there. It could do with some tweaking, but you are already there with that. I think we are good to go. Given that section 21 is the biggest cause of homelessness, you would rebalance in the way that you want to, so I would say, “Hold your nerve and go with it.”
Ben Twomey: I have two very quick points on the court reform before I go into your other question, Lloyd. First, in quarter 3, the latest data from the Ministry of Justice shows that the median time it took for a repossession case was about 22 weeks in both section 21 and in section 8. The idea that section 21 is much quicker is not true. With section 21, more people move out beforehand because there are fewer ways in which you can legitimately challenge it. There is a problem if you are setting up the court system to say that we want to basically stop tenants having their rights and a way in which they can challenge an eviction. That is a really important point: it does not actually lengthen the time that will be taken. That is not true.
Secondly, I will talk quickly about Jasmine, a renter who very recently challenged an eviction because she could not move in time. She was given two months to move under a section 21, but she could not move in time, so she challenged it and it took up the court’s time instead. If you extend the notice period to four months, that challenge would potentially never happen, the court never has to see Jasmine, she finds a new place and is comfortable and able to move out in good time. She is happy, and potentially the landlord is happy too.
On the cost of no-fault evictions for renters, we estimate that the average cost to a renter of an unwanted move is £1,700. For a renter to be able to save, it is really important that they are able to find some way in which, when the move is through no fault of their own, they can make those savings quicker in order to be out of the home. We think the best way to do that—rather than, for example, thinking about repayments from the landlord—is just to say that the final two months of renting will have no rent cost attached. The tenant then has time in that space to save in order to find a deposit and the first month’s rent, for example, and they are able to move out with the savings they have made because of the two months’ lack of rent.
It potentially means two months out of pocket for the landlord who has chosen to do a no-fault eviction, but if it is a no-fault eviction for a sale, they are potentially getting a big windfall through that anyway. The two months out of pocket can be balanced against the fact that otherwise it would be two months in which the tenant is likely to find themselves as one of the record number of homeless people we have at the moment. It is an important balance to strike, and that is one of the ways in which you could do it.
Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)
Q
Ben Twomey: Thank you, shadow Minister. On the point about being “capable of causing” a nuisance, the previous language in the Housing Act 1988 was “likely to cause” a nuisance. It would be difficult for me to prove that you are “likely to cause” a nuisance, but it would be a lot easier to say you are “capable of causing” a nuisance—as it would be for me, you or anybody else here. I think that change in language is potentially dangerous, particularly when you think about antisocial behaviour being relatively difficult to define.
I know that others in these sessions have expressed serious concerns about domestic abuse victims, how domestic abuse could be mischaracterised as antisocial behaviour, and how that may be a reason for eviction. Obviously I do not need to emphasise how difficult that would be—having the punishment of homelessness potentially layered on to a domestic abuse situation, where that is happening. It is important that we differentiate between criminal justice matters and housing matters.
However, the need to deal with antisocial behaviour, when it causes a real a nightmare for neighbours and other tenants, is important, but the local authority has a duty to prevent homelessness as well. They enact that duty with two months’ lead-in time. You cannot do that if the ground says that a tenant could be out of their home in two weeks. Within those two weeks, the possession proceedings can begin immediately as well. The approach does seem reckless. Are we just talking about moving a problem, which is currently in a home, on to the streets rather than addressing the fundamental issues? Is it going to catch within it some serious victims of domestic violence?
Sue James: I would agree with all of that, but I add that I have dealt with many antisocial behaviour cases in my time as a solicitor and they are complicated. They are not quite so straightforward, and there is often a mental health issue or a vulnerability at the heart of them. I think we absolutely need to keep the original language rather than change it. And I agree with Ben on the importance of the domestic abuse issues; there are going to be women facing eviction and having to experience that as well.
Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
Q
Sue James: We think it is a great idea.
Nickie Aiken
Good.
Sue James: But it needs more.
Ben Twomey: I would add that it lacks detail at the moment, and we are very keen to see that detail. I mentioned that we are particularly interested in eviction notices and the outcomes of evictions being logged there; otherwise, there is not really much improvement in the way you monitor and enforce against abuse of some of the new no-fault grounds. So eviction notices are really important. Getting the rents charged on there will be really important, and we should think about energy performance certificates going on to the portal so that they can be enforced. When I talk about enforcement, I think it is really important that local authorities are empowered and have the necessary resources to enforce against bad practice—the kind of practice that can lead to people being unsafe in their homes.
It is also about having a place for tenants to access this information, as they have a vested interest in what happens afterwards. The only way to give them a vested interest is to have an incentive, and we think that is through rent repayment orders. We would encourage the portal to be made accessible to tenants. For example, where they can see that no-let periods have been abused, there should be a rent repayment order. If the landlord is not compliant with the portal, there should be a rent repayment order. Also, if the landlord is not compliant with minimum energy efficiency standards, we think that there should be a repayment—you would equalise it in that way. At the moment, where licensing schemes exist, for example, and the local authority pursues landlords for a fine, often that money does not actually get back to the person who has lost out—the tenant. It is important that rent repayment orders go directly to the tenant wherever possible.
Sue James: I totally agree, and I would like to pick up on the issue around the basic requirements of gas safety and stuff. At the moment, that is a huge protection in section 21; a landlord cannot get a possession order unless they have all those protections, and that does not appear in the Bill. We absolutely need to have them included, and the portal could be a place to put them. We would then have transparency; a tenant knows when they are looking in the portal that this is a good landlord and that they have complied with everything. I think that is so fundamental to changing the nature of the private-rented sector.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Ben Twomey: The question of guarantors is really important. Usually, there would be a guarantor if you are not earning a certain amount to cover the rent—usually, you should have an income that is two and a half times the rent and, if not, you require a guarantor. For younger people, for people on low incomes, that can be quite difficult, so they would need a guarantor.
We have been working with the National Youth Advocacy Service to look at the barriers facing care leavers when they access private rented homes. This has been a major barrier for care leavers. At the moment, 60% of local authorities do not offer people the ability to be a guarantor for care leavers. Local authorities are the corporate parent for care leavers, so they are basically taking on parenting duties. We think that is a big problem. The 40% that offer the guarantor scheme in principle vary in the way that they do so. We think that it is for the Government to step in and say, “If, as a state, you are going to take on parental responsibility, you should be a guarantor to make sure that young people who are care-experienced are not being locked out of rented accommodation, compared with their peers.” That would be a major step forward.
To touch on bidding wars, we have found in our research at Generation Rent that there are seven times more bidding wars than there were just five years ago. We have gone up from 3% of tenants experiencing this to 21%, from our research. I experienced it when I moved down to London relatively recently. I was asked how much more I would want to give and how much longer I would want to stay in the property as a fixed-term tenancy. It is very, very common now. We think that the issue needs to be addressed. There is nothing in the Bill at the moment, but there should be some consideration given to this. When a landlord offers a price for rent, they are almost, by definition, offering a rent that they are comfortable with. Just because of the changes in market forces—that is a change not to their costs, but to the number of people queuing round the block for them—it should not be that they can then increase the rent as they please and encourage others to enter into these kinds of bidding wars, which basically pit tenant against tenant. The only one who is benefiting from this is the landlord.
Sue James: To pick up on that point, this is not in the Bill, but the position of the Renters’ Reform Coalition is that, at the moment, unless you restrict the amount that landlords can put up rents, you potentially have an economic eviction, and we would suggest that you restrict that to the lowest of either inflation or wage growth.
To touch on what is in the Bill, section 14 of the 1988 Act allows the tenant to apply for the tribunal to have a look at the rent. Originally, it was restricted to whatever the landlord was requesting, but in the Bill it is now the market rent. That would potentially have a chilling effect on tenants who want to challenge the rent that has been set. As an adviser, I might say, “It is limited to what your landlord has suggested,” but at the moment, with the way Bill is, that could be the market rent if the landlord has asked for less than that. Does that person then challenge it? That could have a chilling effect. When thinking about rents and, as Ben said, bidding wars, that absolutely needs to change, because it is really difficult. There are queues of people for every tenancy and the protection needs to be there, so thoughts around that would be really welcome.
Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)
Q
Ben Twomey: It is really important, if you are thinking about a private rented sector that is attractive to tenants, rather than something that we feel trapped in. It needs to be something that recognises that there are 11 million private renters across England, and that, for many of us, we are here to stay in the private rented sector. It is no longer just a quick in and out—a temporary thing—while we save enough money to buy our own home. The protection is important, knowing that you can be in your home for a certain period of time—unless, of course, you do something seriously wrong, in which case there are protections in the grounds for landlords to act on that. At the moment, there is only a six-month protected period in which you are safe from a no-fault eviction, within the Bill’s wording. As I said, that does not really change the situation we are currently in, so it is not actually ambitious towards a fairer private rented sector.
We believe that the period should be two years. That would mean the landlord—if they are taking housing seriously and recognising that homes are the foundation of our lives—would be comfortable knowing that they can hold off selling the property and moving a family member in for two years. If they need to do some of those things afterwards—which would be a great shame, because the tenants are probably enjoying the property—they can still do that after that period. Six months feels far too short; it treats it like temporary accommodation—
The Chair
Order. I am afraid that brings us to the end of the time allotted to the Committee to ask questions. I thank the witnesses, on behalf of the Committee.
Examination of Witness
Francesca Albanese gave evidence.
The Chair
We will now hear oral evidence from Francesca Albanese, director of policy and social change for Crisis. We have only until 2.45 pm for this panel, so please can we have short questions and shorter answers? Please can the witness introduce herself for the record?
Francesca Albanese: I am Francesca Albanese. I am the executive director of policy and social change at Crisis, the national homelessness charity.
Mike Amesbury
Q
Francesca Albanese: We welcome the abolition of section 21. I think we have heard from others giving evidence today that it is one of the leading causes of homelessness, so that is definitely welcome. However, there are still some areas of the Bill that cause us concern with regard to homelessness. One is not automatically carrying over some of the areas of section 21 into the new ground 8. That would decouple the link around automatically triggering a homelessness prevention duty, which is currently in the Homelessness Reduction Act. We are concerned about that area—if we abolish section 21, we do not want to then disproportionately increase the risk of homelessness in other areas.
There is also an issue about the repetition of some of the rent arrears grounds. Ground 8 covers fault evictions, but ground 8A also looks at rent arrears. We do not see the reason for having both; there are suitable protections just in ground 8. The other area—which we have heard about from previous evidence—is antisocial behaviour, and making sure that the wording is tightened so that it does not cause further issues for more vulnerable tenants, and does not affect them disproportionately.
Mike Amesbury
Q
Francesca Albanese: We at Crisis recognise that changes do need to be made to the courts. Obviously, that is one of the central themes in this Bill and it is about making sure we get that right. But the problem is that if you bring in the court reforms first and then make the changes around abolishing section 21, you are effectively creating a two-tier system. For us, that does not protect tenants in the right way, so we would argue that both need to be brought in at the same time.
Jacob Young
Q
Francesca Albanese: To clarify, are you referring to ASTs, and their length?
Jacob Young
Yes.
Francesca Albanese: We would welcome longer-term tenancies. We know through our services—this is increasingly so at the moment—that people come to us who may have had their tenancies shortened for a reason that is not of their making. Being able to have longer-term tenancies in the private rented sector gives more stability for tenants. Equally, if you look at where rent increases can happen, this also manages that part of the market—making sure that there is proportionality in terms of when rent increases are made, as well as stability for tenants through longer-term tenancies.
Jacob Young
Q
Francesca Albanese: I think they certainly help. If we are looking at longer-term tenancies, I suppose it is about having more emphasis on longer-term tenancies being used more regularly. Going back quite a lot of years of working in this space, I know that there are ways you can do that now, but it is not the norm. Most tenancies that are given are six or 12 months with a rolling period or a fixed term.
I would also go back to the points made at the beginning: this is helpful, but there are other areas that we are concerned about, such as ensuring that people getting served notice on the kind of grounds that were under section 21 and which will now go over to section 8 are protected sufficiently. Even though longer-term tenancies can give tenants more protection, from the perspective of Crisis, which works with people at the lower end of the private rented sector market, where there is often a higher turnover of tenancies, we would want to make sure that those protections are still in place so that we do not end up pushing more people into homelessness as an unintended consequence.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Q
Francesca Albanese: I might make a broader point first and then come back to that. At the moment, as you will all be aware, the local housing allowance does not meet rents. It has not done so for a long time, and it has been frozen since 2019. That decoupling of rents from local housing allowance levels is causing huge problems. We did some research six months ago—I would say the situation has probably got worse since then—that shows that only 4% of the market in England is affordable to people on local housing allowance. In some areas of the country, that drops to 1%, so it is a massive issue. That needs to happen now, and it is something that the Government can do now. They can give broader access to the private rental market. There is obviously a longer-term issue: we need more social housing. Where private rental sits within the broader housing market is really important.
On the point about discrimination, we do not want tenants to be discriminated against because they are in receipt of welfare benefits. Anything that prevents that is welcomed. The problem at the moment is that quite a lot of tenants are not getting anywhere near properties within the private rented sector. We are seeing record levels of people trapped in temporary accommodation and local authorities are very stretched. The point about the private rented sector is that quite a lot of people are not even getting access to it, let alone being discriminated against because of being on welfare benefits.
On the more specific point about tribunals, that is not my area of expertise, so I do not want to comment on something where I would be giving an opinion rather than factual evidence.
The Chair
If there are no further questions from Members, I would like to thank our witness for her evidence. We will move on to the next panel.
Examination of Witness
Ian Fletcher gave evidence.
The Chair
We will now hear oral evidence from Ian Fletcher, director of real estate policy for the British Property Federation. We have until 3 o’clock for this panel. Could you introduce yourself for the record, please?
Ian Fletcher: Hello. I am Ian Fletcher, a director of policy at the British Property Federation. Thank you very much for the invite this afternoon.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Ian Fletcher: Build to rent is something that started over the past 10 years. It is trying to encourage institutional investment into market rented housing. It is not pitched at high-income earners. We do a survey each year that looks at the demographics of the build-to-rent sector, and I would say it is catering for medium earnings—often key workers and people of that nature—and supporting our core cities particularly, as a lot of investment has gone into a number of the core cities across the UK.
In terms of impact, a lot of the things we very much welcome in the Bill have, to some extent, been pre-empted by the build-to-rent sector: a number of my members are already members of an ombudsman voluntarily; the build-to-rent sector has proudly been at the forefront of welcoming pets; and decent homes is not something that will trouble the sector. The portal is something I have been campaigning for since 2007. There is a lot to welcome in the Bill.
Some challenges that are specific to build to rent are things like the Government abolishing rent review clauses and the lack of any minimum tenancy length in the Bill for landlords, which means that there could be a danger, particularly in properties in core cities, of significant churn.
Jacob Young
Q
Ian Fletcher: As I say, the stock of build to rent has been developed over the past 10 years, so it is unlikely not to be meeting the decent homes standard. Equally, the management of the property is done to a very high standard. That is something the sector is very proud of. I do not see any challenges in introducing decent homes into the sector from a build-to-rent perspective. We have sat around a number of tables with the Department as it has worked through the specifics of how the standard would impact the private rented sector, and I have not heard many dissenting voices in terms of this being introduced into the sector.
Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)
Q
Ian Fletcher: It is something that we have been continually concerned about. In a London context, the removal of the planning constraints on the short lets market affects property across not only the rental sector but the leasehold sector.
It is a concern, I suppose, in terms of members. At the moment, you obviously have to take a minimum six-month tenancy, but what members often find is that you do not want to restrict subletting, because often that is helping the ultimate tenant, if they have to move for various reasons. You are finding that quite a lot of people are moving into these premises and then subletting to somebody who will take it on a short-let basis, so these are portals and things of that nature that, to some extent, are exploiting that situation.
Ms Buck
Q
Ian Fletcher: Clearly, the Government are taking forward reforms, particularly planning reforms, and talking about licensing. In the context of this Bill, we would like to see a minimum tenancy length of six months—four months plus the two months’ notice. However, we are mindful that there are good reasons why tenants might have to leave within that six months: they have been mis-sold a property or the property is substandard. In those circumstances, we suggested that the solution might be to allow them to appeal to the ombudsman to be able to break the tenancy.
Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)
Q
It feels to me that it is likely that your tenants will stay and all the people who I have spoken to who provide this type of accommodation give me the feeling that the type of people that you are attracting and the type of property you are offering means that people do not walk in and walk back out again very quickly. I would imagine that lots of your tenancies last considerably—when I say “lots”, I mean that a very significant percentage of your tenancies last over a year.
Ian Fletcher: You were very welcome when you visited a build-to-rent building in Newcastle.
Eddie Hughes
I loved it.
Ian Fletcher: There are things to encourage the sector to provide long-term tenancies at the moment as well. As you will know, national planning guidance suggests that build to rent should be providing at least a minimum of a three-year tenancy.
I suppose the concern is that these are, as you found out from the site in Newcastle, very metropolitan and very popular areas.
Eddie Hughes
Very.
Ian Fletcher: You could end up in a situation where somebody has taken a two-month tenancy and is just using that as an opportunity to earn some money for themselves by renting it out at weekends for hen parties or things of that nature; it is almost sort of hotel accommodation in some respects. That is the concern of the sector—that you end up with a lot of churn in that respect.
I think there is also another concern. We have heard, quite rightly, from Ben and other evidence givers about the costs of moving from the tenant’s perspective. There are also significant costs from a landlord’s perspective where you are setting up a tenancy and then that is churned very quickly.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Q
I wonder whether you would support an idea that there should be some sort of matrix that prevents landlords from increasing rents above a certain level—that was nationally known, as it were, and that could be published by the Secretary of State, so that everyone had some security about what that ceiling is.
Ian Fletcher: Those remarks are specific to a particular context.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Q
Ian Fletcher: The context is that at the moment the way rents are often set in the build-to-rent sector is to give the tenants some certainty. They will typically be index-linked. The Bill abolishes the use of rent review clauses, so you are not allowed to do that in terms of setting a rent beyond a year. We think that is a pity. Often, tenants appreciate the certainty of knowing whether their income will meet the rental payments going forward. I would not want somebody to be tied into those sorts of rent review clauses forever and ever, because economic circumstances change significantly, but for a short period of time that should be acceptable.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Q
Ian Fletcher: I would be. I think that that is starting to look like rent controls, and that then comes with some of the adverse consequences of rent controls in terms of the quality of the stock. You tend to find with rent controls that the sector shrinks down and does not attract—
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Q
Ian Fletcher: That is the market. I am supportive of the market.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Q
“The abolition of no-fault evictions needs to happen in tandem with…court reform.”
What indicator explicitly do you think should be hit for court reform to be sufficiently achieved?
Ian Fletcher: I obviously saw the debate on Second Reading. I thought that the tests that the Secretary of State set out were relatively good ones. The thing that we have been particularly keen to see is the digitisation of the courts. That project has not advanced as quickly as I would have liked, but it will make a huge difference to the experiences of both tenants and landlords going to court.
A lot of the complaints that we hear about the courts are to do with communication and knowing where your case is in the system and how it is progressing, and digitisation will improve that significantly. I would like to see times coming down—obviously, it is at a 22-week median at the moment. I would like to see that come down to about 16 weeks.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Q
Ian Fletcher: Twenty-two weeks is the median time that a case takes to go from claim to possession at the moment.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Q
Ian Fletcher: I think one of the Secretary of State’s other tests was that bailiff recruitment would improve. The other thing I would say is that the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee recommended that there should be some sort of key performance indicators and regular measurement of them, which would give us the confidence that the courts are delivering what they should be delivering: speedy and efficient access to justice.
The Chair
If there are no further questions from Members, I would like to thank the witness for his evidence. We will move on to the next panel.
Examination of Witness
Kate Henderson gave evidence.
The Chair
Q
Kate Henderson: Good afternoon. I am Kate Henderson, chief executive of the National Housing Federation. We represent housing associations in England, which are not-for-profit providers of 2.7 million homes to around 6 million people.
I would like to say a little about housing associations, just for 30 seconds. While, on the face of it, this Bill does not apply to social housing, and a lot of the homes that we provide would not be seen in the private rented sector, it is important to acknowledge that the Bill has implications, particularly for supported housing, where we might currently be using assured shorthold tenancies.
That type of accommodation—we provide three quarters of all supported accommodation in this country—covers things such as emergency accommodation for people fleeing domestic abuse, for veterans experiencing homelessness, for care-experienced young people, for adults with both physical and learning disabilities, and also step-down accommodation from mental health facilities.
Again, it is about just being really mindful that, while the vast majority of the tenancies in the housing association sector are assured, there are implications for that important supported housing provision, and just making sure that there are no unintended consequences from this Bill coming forward.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Kate Henderson: The National Housing Federation supports the Government’s aims of protecting the rights of tenants, and we agree with the abolition of section 21. That should extend across the board. It is important to strike the right balance between landlords and tenants in all sectors, including tenants of housing associations, so it is really important that the Bill does not have any unintended consequences for the ability of housing associations to operate effectively and to provide decent, secure and affordable homes for their tenants, particularly in that area of support and need.
We have four areas in which we would like to seek further clarification. The first is around changes to rent increases. The second is around ground 1B for rent to buy specifically. The third is around superior landlord grounds—so 2ZA and 2ZB—and the fourth is around ground 6 for redevelopments.
We would like to see all types of social housing exempt from the proposed approach to rent increases, whether included within the rent standard or not. That is a limited change to the Bill but it would help to deliver vital forms of housing to meet specific sub-market needs. We would like to see ground 1B be extended to apply when a property is not being sold but a tenancy is being offered to another tenant wishing to take part in a rent-to-buy scheme. We would like clarification around ground 2ZA so that that can be used on a tenancy at will. Lastly, we would like housing associations to be given access to ground 6. There could be a possibility of making that a prior-notice ground as a safeguard for tenants. I have just listed several grounds for quite specific contexts, so I would be happy to give examples of why we would find changes in those areas useful.
On the specific ground that Matthew has just raised, the current wording of the rent-to-buy ground 1B does not allow it to be used when a property is not being sold but when a new tenant is moving in instead. For example, you have somebody who is in a rent-to-buy property, has been there for five years and has decided that they do not want to buy it or they cannot buy it; we would like the ground available so that that property could be given to another tenant who would like to use the property as it was intended and designed to be used—as a rent to buy. Just to highlight, that is a Government product supported by the affordable homes programme and regulated by the Regulator of Social Housing, so we would like it to be able to operate as intended. Again, just that access to that ground would ensure that rent to buy works as intended.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Kate Henderson: Sure. At the moment, the social housing sector is regulated by the Regulator of Social Housing, and the vast majority of our rents are set by Government and set annually. The Bill makes changes that would restrict rent increases to once in 12 months and require landlords to give two months’ notice of rent changes.
As I mentioned in my introduction, our members manage 2.7 million homes. Requiring two months’ notice of a rent increase, and requiring each tenant’s rent to be changed on the anniversary of their tenancy, would place a huge administrative burden, whether it is on a large-volume landlord or even on a smaller landlord with fewer staff.
This would take away from a provider’s ability to deliver those core services. The Bill acknowledges that by including an exemption for social housing in the rent standard—social housing is exempt from those changes. However, some types of social housing, such as intermediate rents, specialist supported housing and some forms of low-cost home ownership, are not included and do not appear to be exempt from the changes. Not exempting some types of social housing would cause complications and administrative burdens. It might mean that neighbours had their rents increased at different times, and it would really affect delivery.
Housing associations are responsible landlords, and we are regulated by the Regulator of Social Housing, so any concerns about unscrupulous rent increases do not apply to us. We are asking that all types of social housing be exempted from the proposed approach to rent increases, whether or not they are included in the rent standard.
Jacob Young
Q
Kate Henderson: It is absolutely right that residents in the private rented sector have access to an ombudsman. It is really important that that access is clear and easy to navigate and that there are routes to address where things have gone wrong in the private rented sector.
From a housing association perspective, we want to make sure that there is clarity about the remit of a new ombudsman, because we already have an ombudsman service. However, some housing associations also provide market rent homes. If you were a resident in a market rent home, would you go to the current housing ombudsman or to the new PRS ombudsman? We need real clarity on remits so that there is not confusion either for the landlord or, most importantly, for the tenant.
Ms Buck
Q
Kate Henderson: Housing associations take reports of antisocial behaviour very seriously, and we will always investigate them thoroughly. Many of our members have in-house teams dedicated to managing and resolving ASB that often work extensively with the police and local authorities. For any housing association, although eviction is sometimes necessary, it will always be a last resort. There are many actions that housing associations will take to resolve an ASB case prior to its reaching the point at which a tenant might face an eviction.
The Bill’s changes to ground 14 propose a widening of the definition of ASB in the ground from any behaviour “likely to cause” to any behaviour “capable of causing” nuisance or annoyance. The word “capable” is really open to interpretation. For us, it is all about clarity: what, exactly, constitutes a legal ground for eviction under the new definition, and how will it work in practice? Eviction is, of course, a last resort. It is incredibly distressing to deal with such cases, particularly if they are having an impact on multiple residents. It is really important that we do everything we can to resolve a case before it gets to an eviction.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Q
Kate Henderson: This is an area on which I would like to see further evidence. I am a member of the Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s strategic reference group on perpetrators. In that scenario, where the victim does not want to leave the property, how can we ensure that the tenancy is in their name but the perpetrator is removed? I would like to seek the expertise of those who are working at the forefront of domestic abuse before giving you a direct answer on the strength of that ground, but I would be happy to follow that up with the Committee.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Q
On ground 6, you said that you would quite like the ability for redevelopment. We know that there have been some very controversial repossessions over a state redevelopment that local authorities and housing associations have been part of. Tenants have often liked the security of knowing that they cannot just be given a few months’ notice, that they have to go through a process, and that they have the ability in the end to say, “No, this is my home.” Would giving that ability strike a balance that is not in favour of the tenant?
Kate Henderson: The context in which we are asking for access to ground 6 is when regeneration is already taking place. It is a scenario where you have a development where people have been moved out while works are taking place. That might be for building safety reasons, for energy efficiency reasons or for decency reasons. At the moment, if that accommodation is being rebuilt and the tenant has been moved into temporary decant accommodation, we would always try to do that by consent with the residents.
In that decant accommodation, we typically use assured shorthold tenancies. Obviously that will go with the abolition of section 21, which we support. This is the place for the grounds to be extended to where residents are in the decant accommodation. Those residents would be moving back into the newly built accommodation that would have been allocated to them, but we need to make sure we can have that constant flow between use of the decant accommodation and getting people back into their permanent settled accommodation.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
So that is where an assured tenancy is being offered.
Kate Henderson: Sometimes it is done on licence. If the building that is being redeveloped is not being fully demolished, and people are going back in, you would move into the decant accommodation on licence. But in a situation with major regeneration—we hope to see more of that; it is great that the affordable homes programme has now opened up to that—typically with the decant accommodation the tenant would have an assured shorthold tenancy. That will not now be an option, so we want a situation where there are grounds for the decant accommodation for those people. It would be a very rare set of circumstances where somebody wanted to stay in the decant accommodation and not move back, but it has happened. We want to make sure that we are able to continue with the pace of regeneration. This could be a prior notice ground to give a safeguard to the tenants. Again, it is just about having access so we can make sure that regeneration can happen in a timely way.
Mike Amesbury
Q
Kate Henderson: This is very technical, but one of the areas—in addition to rent increases; thank you for the opportunity to discuss those—relates to grounds 2ZA and 2ZB, which are two mandatory grounds for possession where a superior lease ends. This will generally be for situations in which a section 21 would previously have been used.
Let me give an example of why this is an issue. It tends to be an issue in supported housing, where you have a superior landlord who has let on a short-term lease to a housing association for, say, five years. That housing association is the intermediate landlord, and it would typically provide supported housing and sometimes very high-level support to vulnerable residents, who would be the occupational tenant.
In some situations, either the superior or the intermediate landlord will allow the lease to lapse, and then you would go into a scenario of tenancy at will; and in that situation, we do not want a situation where the superior landlord is responsible for the occupational tenant, given the high levels of support needs. It is unclear whether these grounds would then be available for use if there is a tenancy at will. Again, in most situations you would have given notice—the intermediate landlord would have given vacant possession to the superior landlord—but in the case where that has lapsed, we need to ensure that these grounds can work. The second issue is around maintaining possession of the property until proceedings have concluded.
It is a fairly technical area, but it matters to those who are providing supported housing and using leases. I would be happy to provide a further note to the Committee when I submit our written evidence. I appreciate that this is a rather technical matter, but it is important in terms of high-level support.
The Chair
If there are no further questions from members, let me thank the witness for her evidence and let us move on to the next panel.
Examination of Witness
Dr Henry Dawson gave evidence.
The Chair
Good afternoon. We will now hear oral evidence from Henry Dawson from the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health. For this panel, we have until 3.30 pm. Will you please introduce yourself for the record?
Dr Dawson: Hi. My name is Dr Henry Dawson. I represent the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
I suppose I would like to probe what you think the consequences are if that legislation takes some years to deliver. How does the delay bear on the other reforms that this Bill enacts? How might we use the Bill to tie into that other legislative process? How does this Bill need to relate, if at all, to that forthcoming legislative decent homes standard for the PRS?
Dr Dawson: Thank you for the question. I have a few thoughts with regard to indications we have had that the decent homes standard might be brought in through the Bill. That is something that the CIEH is very keen to see. At the moment, the decent homes standard provides a fairly simple set of criteria, which are measurable, are fairly easy to understand, and provide the opportunity for both tenants and landlords to have some consistent standards to refer to when considering the condition of the property. Not having that in the private rented sector results in an odd disparity: we have social rented accommodation with the highest standards, and conditions have improved considerably through that standard, and then there is private rented accommodation that does not have that standard.
We find it very difficult for the sector to self-regulate and for landlords to organise their own repairs and maintenance schedules, when they very often have to wait for a local authority inspector to visit their property to carry out an inspection under something like the housing health and safety rating system schemes. It is something we can also get some benefit from through the Housing Act 2004 licensing, which allows us to set some of these conditions, and allows us to tailor them by area. However, bringing in a national standard across the sector would be very advantageous and provide a very clear requirement, although the CIEH would like to see some more clarity and would like to be involved in the consultation on the proposed changes to the decent homes standard.
The standard could be implemented in the sector at a later date, after being included in the Bill in order to get it enacted. That would give us a two-step process, and then we could bring the standard in when the amendments had been made and we had the updated standard to work from.
Jacob Young
Q
Dr Dawson: The CIEH is very happy to see the portal introduced. I am based near Wales, and I sit on the advisory panel for Rent Smart Wales on behalf of the CIEH. We have seen the portal brought in, and it has been very effective. It provides a lot of data on where rental properties are, and who their landlords are. Local authorities have quite a hill to climb in trying to find that out independently. It will be a very useful source of information. It is also a good source to look at when collecting certificates on properties.
However, we find that the portal has limited impact with regard to the condition and contents of properties, and management practices. It is an information-gathering tool. It has the potential to be a central information portal that landlords and tenants can refer to—a sort of single source of truth. On very small landlords registering with landlord bodies, 85% of landlords own one to four properties, and we are finding what an author referred to as a cult of amateurism. These landlords have differing levels of expertise, and of knowledge of a complex legislative environment. The portal can be a central reservoir of information for them, with quite a bit of scrutiny behind it.
As I say, we welcome the portal when it comes to providing data on where the properties are and who the landlords are, though the more unscrupulous operators will still try to avoid the register so as to evade their duties. I would not go so far as to say that it will make a significant impact on the condition and contents of properties, or the management practices of landlords in the sector.
Ms Buck
Q
May I also ask a question about enforcement, which is central to this issue? As we know, the enforcement record is very patchy in local government. In your view, why is that?
Dr Dawson: With regard to the use of the decent homes standard in the sector, I have found through my personal research on the sector that there is a lot of variation in the licensing conditions and standards set for private landlords in different sub-markets up and down the country. It is only right that local authorities tailor their approach to suit their local market, but there is great need for more consistency between the licensing conditions that they set and what they require in their area.
If we were to bring in the decent homes standard across the sector, licensing standards could be revised to accommodate that new duty and any updates made to the decent homes standard. That would provide a fairly common set of grounds for properties nationally. Then, local authorities need only make small changes to what they require of properties in their area to fit local peculiarities of housing; for example, northern back-to-back houses are something to burden yourself with only if you need to be aware of the issues that they present. You get steel-framed houses in some areas and concrete houses in others. Local authorities need to be able to focus their approach and the standards that they require to fit what they have going on in their area.
We still have the opportunity to use the housing health and safety rating system under the decent homes standard. The updates to the HHSRS will come through fairly shortly; we will welcome their being brought into practice. Use of the HHSRS would remain a common requirement during the inspection of properties, to satisfy the requirement on properties not to have serious hazards.
A whole range of factors influence levels of enforcement in local authorities. At the moment, we have about 2.2 qualified environmental health officers for every 10,000 private rented sector dwellings, so that is already a pretty low rate. Where we have larger authorities and significant political backing, we see more environmental health officers, with better recruitment, better political backing and more funding for those officers, which is key, so you start to see a collection of experience building up and the legal backing behind it. For example, Newham has something like 100 environmental health officers or enforcement staff in its departments, and they can move their way through more than 200 prosecutions in a year. In contrast, a rural authority may have one or two environmental health officers, who must share their duties across all the regulatory functions of environmental health, including food safety, health and safety, environmental protection and public health.
One of the profession’s big problems is ensuring consistency in funding. When funding is renewed annually and you are looking at changes each year, it is very difficult to do succession planning. We have seen a gradual reduction in the number of people coming through university environmental health programmes in order to support the profession and provide a reservoir of expertise for the inspectorate. We are also seeing more of them going off to private sector employers, rather than the public sector.
A range of issues are affecting the sector, and the sustainable and predicable funding such as we get with Housing Act 2004 licensing has been a real lifeline for the sector. Where we have big schemes going, it has managed to keep the nucleus of staff that is required for the expertise and the momentum to move large-scale enforcement forward. My apologies—that was quite a long answer.
Jacob Young
Q
Dr Dawson: When Wales first implemented the scheme, about 196 penalty notices were given out in the first couple of years and there were about 13 prosecutions. The main reason, from the Welsh Government’s own analysis, is that they did not set up clear systems and processes for liaison with local authorities ahead of the formation of Rent Smart Wales.
There is a process whereby local authorities are expected to carry out enforcement functions and can then bill Rent Smart Wales, through an agreement—a memorandum of operation—that they have all signed up to. However, because they are trying to account for small amounts in hours and tasks, it is very difficult for local authorities to predict the workload and allocate officer time against it. That has become somewhat of a Cinderella to local authorities’ other duties.
One of the higher impact areas is that, although Rent Smart Wales provides licensing and can therefore enforce conditions, it also has a separate registration function, which is purely information gathering and gives it the ability to send out mailshots to landlords and letting agents about changes to the law and training courses that are available. However, landlords have the opportunity to exempt themselves from those communications, and a very large proportion did so at the point at which they registered. Therefore, they receive no communications and no updates, so they are none the wiser, despite the benefit of having registered and made themselves available to get that information. That was a sad loss, and there is not much you can do about it now.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Q
Dr Dawson: I think we could probably do with the portal as an information repository. That is very welcome. Research shows that a lot of landlords tend to deal with the need for information on a reactive basis, when a situation presents itself. As most of them are not members of recognised landlord bodies, they are using things such as internet portals, chatrooms and blogs to get information on what is required of them. Through local authority licensing, local authorities are getting much better penetration and being brought closer to landlords, and that allows them to provide advice, but landlords in general will tend to use online resources to get information. We would like them to use a single portal that we have quality control over.
The same goes for tenants. At the moment, one of the main reasons for tenants’ not complaining is ignorance of their rights; I am sure that Generation Rent will have raised that in its submissions. If we can point to a single, consistent source of information, that will help the sector to regulate itself. Given that so many landlords are small scale—85% of properties in the sector are owned by landlords with portfolios of one to four properties —providing the opportunity for more self-regulation in the sector would be a big help. Local authorities have limited budgets, and because the regulations are so complex and there is such a range of operators—there is a sort of sliding scale from the good to the poor—a more interventionist approach is required. Using rent repayment orders incentivises tenants to keep an eye on landlords.
Things like the three-month period in which you are unable to re-let a property after you have used grounds 1 and 1A will be exceptionally difficult for a local authority to follow up on. We just do not have the resources to react in that sort of time and proactively go out and visit these properties. Six months to a year would be much more sensible.
On incentivising tenants to take action separately from the local authority, the only thing we would say is that we should be able to give them advice. Under the original rent repayment order clauses, we were prevented from giving advice to tenants on cases. If we are taking action, they will often come to the local authority and ask for information. We have not looked at that as an option. We would certainly be open-minded to it, and we would support anything that helps the sector to regulate itself.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Q
Dr Dawson: Yes.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
The second was that there needs to be some sort of amendment to allow you to give advice to and support tenants through the rent repayment order process.
Dr Dawson: At the moment, there is nothing that specifically prohibits that in the Bill, and the original legislation has been updated to permit us to provide advice. We are just keen that, in the regulations that will be used to implement many of the changes introduced by the Bill, we do not see anything that interferes with our ability to do that.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
That needs an agreement between you, the portal and the housing ombudsperson.
Dr Dawson: Yes.
The Chair
If there are no further questions from Members, I thank the witness for his evidence.
Examination of Witnesses
Dr Julie Rugg and Professor Ken Gibb gave evidence.
The Chair
We will now hear oral evidence from Dr Julie Rugg, senior research fellow at the Centre for Housing Policy at the University of York, and from Professor Ken Gibb, professor in housing economics at the University of Glasgow, who joins us via video link. We have until 4 pm for this panel. Will the witnesses please introduce themselves for the record?
Dr Rugg: I am Dr Julie Rugg from the University of York, where I am a reader in social policy.
Professor Gibb: Hello. My name is Ken Gibb. I am a professor at the University of Glasgow and I direct the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Dr Rugg: That is a very big question. I do have concerns about the Bill as it currently stands. We have become quite focused on the abolition of section 21, and I can understand why, but the abolition of section 21 does not deal with the reasons why a landlord might serve a section 21 notice. My feeling is that, if the Bill goes through as it stands, it will give tenants the impression that they have greater security than they in fact have.
One of the biggest concerns with the Bill as it stands relates to possession on the ground of the landlord selling the property. The fact that the landlord is selling is one of the biggest reasons tenants are asked to leave, and a lot of landlords are exiting the market. The Bill does not prevent that, so that will continue. We have to think about how we neutralise the market. At the moment, the market is weaponised for both landlords and tenants in ways that are very unhelpful.
We have to think about how to calm everybody down and start thinking about what the problems are in the market. One of the biggest issues in the market at the moment is the lack of supply. That is quite problematic for tenants, and it is one of the reasons there is a lot of energy around section 21. Abolishing section 21 is not going to deal with supply issues. From the evidence we have at the moment, it is very likely to make supply issues worse.
Professor Gibb: My perspective on this stems to a large extent from the experience we had in Scotland after the introduction of some aspects of the Bill and some of the kinds of measures that you are now proposing. I would echo what Julie says, in that we made these changes, which brought some confidence to tenants—that is what some research tells us—but some fundamental issues remained unchanged.
Despite investing in tribunals—in justice, as it were—there is still a strong sense of asymmetry in access to justice, which is to the detriment of tenants. People supported the changes, which are very similar in terms of the grounds for possession and so on, but none the less we find ourselves with a similar housing rental market in Scotland, which exhibits a great deal of shortage and very high and accelerating rents.
The counterfactual is what it would have been like without the changes. It probably would have been worse, but the changes have not stopped those kinds of things happening. In a sense, they probably are not supposed to do that. It is not enough to do these necessary things to make the rental market work more satisfactorily.
Jacob Young
Q
Dr Rugg: On the issue of supply and section 21, counterfactually, a lot of landlords let because of section 21; they do not evict people because of section 21. Section 21 gives them the confidence that, if they run into severe difficulties, they will not have to go through a protracted court process in order to end a tenancy. This is particularly pressing for smaller landlords, who might find themselves paying two or three mortgages at the same time, with tenants that are problematic. You can understand the reasons why risk is hugely important to landlords a lot of the time. Antisocial behaviour is really problematic. If there is a tenant causing lots of problems in the neighbourhood, the landlord wants to get that situation to a close as fast as possible.
Abolishing section 21 would increase landlords’ perception that there is risk in the market. An area that will be problematic is that landlords who come to the sector with property—perhaps they have inherited it or they have started a partnership and there is a spare property—will think very hard about whether to bring that property to the market. I think that is one of the consequences we will see. The market does not look like a very friendly place to landlords at the moment, and that is the big issue we have around supply.
How we help local authorities deal with criminal landlordism is something that I am particularly concerned about at the moment, because it is part of a big project I am working on. Local authorities have very different approaches to dealing with enforcement action in their area. One of the issues is that there is an awful lot of variation in political—i.e. councillor—attachment to the notion that this is something they should be dealing with, so councils invest at different levels in their enforcement activity. That is a democratic issue, and that is something we cannot do anything about, but I agree with the notion that Dr Dawson introduced that we really need some baseline standards that everybody can expect to adhere to.
One thing we have not really mentioned is the use of letting agents. They cover an awful lot of property in the market, but we do not expect them to show responsibility for the quality of the property they are letting. In a sense, I think that is soft policing, if we think that letting agents should have greater responsibility for ensuring that the properties they have responsibility for meet the standards that we set for the sector. In some ways, that would relieve local authorities of some of the burden of inspecting all properties. At the moment, local authorities are obliged to inspect only a certain proportion of properties that sit under licensing regimes. An awful lot of the sector sits outside that and is covered by letting agents. I think we are missing an opportunity to think about how we skill up different parts of the market to improve property quality.
Professor Gibb: I think one of the reasons I am here is that yesterday my colleagues and I published an evidence review for the Department for Levelling Up on the question, “Is there evidence that increasing non-price regulation has led to disinvestment in the private rented sector?” That is clearly a very important question for the kinds of policies being proposed here. In producing the review—it is an international evidence review over the last 20-odd years—we found that it is very hard to answer that question, because there is very little research that directly speaks to it, but you can infer from some of the peer-reviewed literature, and there is actually very little evidence that that is the case.
In other words, we believe that there is probably a constellation of factors that drive disinvestment in the sector, and it is very hard to identify whether increasing regulation, per se, is behind that. The fact of the matter is that in England, there was increasing regulation in the last 20 years, while the sector was growing. There is also evidence internationally that where regulation has increased in the short-term lets market, there might have been a short period of disinvestment, but there has not been disinvestment in the longer term. In the longer term, investment tends to have stabilised and continued to grow.
So we have been quite struck that there is very little evidence to that effect. That is not to say that there is not disinvestment going on, but it is a much more complicated thing. Another problem is that often we have several regulations being introduced at the same time, and it is quite hard to unpick the causal forces of individual things. The bottom line is that we found it quite hard to identify that increased regulation was causing disinvestment or was correlated with it.
Ms Buck
Q
Dr Rugg: I am better able to speak about the lower end of the market, because that is the area that I specialise in. We had some comments earlier about build to rent, and there are some concerns about the build-to-rent sector, but I will not go into those here.
Thinking about the lower end of the market, the proposed regulation seeks an end to “No DSS”, as a catch-all. I do not think that that will necessarily work particularly well. Landlords seek not to let to people in receipt of benefits for two reasons: first, because they might have some prejudiced view about the people who tend to be in receipt of benefits, and that is something that is certainly not right; and the other set of reasons sits around frustration with the benefits administration and the level of benefits being paid.
I have researched landlords and housing benefit for many years—too many to mention. In the past, landlords who routinely let in the housing benefit market enjoyed quite good relations with their local authority and they worked together to deal with problems that their tenants might encounter in the benefits market. The introduction of universal credit has completely taken that link away. A lot of landlords are feeling quite exposed now: they have tenants with quite high needs having problems with their benefits, and they simply cannot do anything about it. That is a problem that we need to think about.
One of the earlier speakers referred to the rent control that sits in the local housing allowance system. That is hugely problematic. It means that tenants who receive local housing allowance simply cannot shop around the market, because the rent levels are far too low for them to act as effective consumers. Essentially, they are having to shop where they can, and some landlords are definitely exploiting that situation, letting very poor-quality property on the understanding that the tenants do not have very much choice.
Professor Gibb: I do not have much to add, except to say that I completely agree on the local housing allowance. We have just been doing some research in Scotland that suggests that the levels are far too low to be effective for the great majority of people. It is really welcome to think about the market rental sector as a series of segmented markets. We should therefore not expect regulation that covers the whole area to have equivalent effects in different parts of that area.
The only other thing I would say is that we also need to think as much as we can about housing as a system, recognising the importance of social and affordable housing alongside the bottom end of the rental market, and thinking about how those things can connect together and about the value that increasing investment in social and affordable housing would bring.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Q
Dr Rugg: I think we need to re-establish a relationship between landlords and the universal credit system, so that landlords who are encountering problems can talk to someone in detail about those problems. It is a very basic requirement that some landlords have, that when there are individual tenants who might be falling into difficulties they need to talk to somebody about that case, and about the specifics of the case of an individual who might have high support needs. Thinking about how we support landlords through those cases—and we are talking about specialist landlord lines within the universal credit system, so that landlords can seek advice for particular cases—that is not unreasonable; that is the kind of support that we need to re-engender, so that landlords feel that, when they have difficulties, they know exactly where to get advice from.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Q
Dr Rugg: The issue of what rent arrears mean is really quite complicated. Tenants can get quite confused about exactly what their rent arrears mean—whether it is because their housing benefit has not been paid or their shortfall has not been paid. Sitting within that, I think we need to be a little clearer about what rent arrears mean in a housing benefit context, so that that is clear for the landlord and the tenant.
Professor Gibb: This reminds us that the legislation that is being talked about today has to be understood alongside another critical part of the private rented sector, which is the local housing allowance. In a sense, there is something odd about making these changes and treating the LHA levels that it operates at as a constant or a given. In a sense, we are almost trying to fit in bits of legislation and policy on the basis of something that is clearly quite problematic for a lot of people, because the levels are so low.
Mike Amesbury
Q
Dr Rugg: It is good that renters will have the option of going somewhere to get neutral advice. The best advice that you can give to the sector is advice that supports tenancies—that does not support the landlord or the tenant, but seeks to support sustainable tenancies. At the moment, that advice is just not available, coming into the market; you can either, as a landlord, ask for landlord-based advice, or you can go to one of the lobby groups and ask for that kind of advice. Getting some advice that sits in the middle, where everybody can trust that the advice is neutral and accurate, is very important.
Professor Gibb: I completely agree.
The Chair
If there are no further questions, I would like to thank both the witnesses very much for their evidence.
Examination of Witnesses
Fiona Rutherford and Professor Christopher Hodges gave evidence.
The Chair
We will now hear oral evidence from Fiona Rutherford, chief executive of JUSTICE, and Professor Christopher Hodges OBE, emeritus professor of justice systems at the centre for socio-legal studies at the University of Oxford. We have until 4.30 pm for this panel. Could the witnesses please introduce themselves for the record?
Fiona Rutherford: I am Fiona Rutherford. I am the chief executive of JUSTICE, a law reform and human rights charity that covers the entire justice system across the UK. I could expand further but, as you probably know, we have published a report that is specifically on some of the areas that will be touched upon. I am very grateful to have engaged with many of the stakeholders involved, including the Government Departments.
Professor Hodges: Good afternoon. Thank you for the invitation. I am Chris Hodges. I am not an expert in the property sector, but I claim to be an expert in dispute resolution systems—courts and ombudsmen and anything else—and regulatory systems, which takes you into things like the portal and enforcement issues.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
To the extent that the system still needs to be improved, what is your understanding of what the metrics are? My reading of the Government’s response to the Select Committee, what is in the White Paper and what was in the King’s Speech briefing notes is that there is a whole set of different metrics—end-to-end digitalisation, new digital processes, bailiffs and so on. How are we to know, because the concern is obviously that the abolition of section 21 could be years away, if we have court improvements that are undefined or are large in scope?
Fiona Rutherford: That is one of the concerns that we have. Looking at the history of the reform project, while there have clearly been some successes, there have also been quite a few delays. And we are also concerned given the implications for the tenants in particular in relation to section 21, and given that a proper argument has not been made as to why that dependency between the two exists.
I am just thinking of the court performance, which you have just raised. Civil court performance, even during the pandemic, was better than that of most of the other jurisdictions and even now section 21 is taking roughly 28 weeks from notice to point of repossession, versus the estimation that the Government have made that section 8—the new approach in the new Bill—would take possibly the same time, maybe even a week less.
We would say, first, that a proper rationale has not been put forward as to why that dependency exists and why section 21 cannot proceed. Secondly, the implications for the tenants themselves are so considerable that it is not at all clear to us why that cannot proceed as fast as possible.
Professor Hodges: I tend to look at things in terms of quite long stages of evolution. Going back a hundred years, we had courts that administered law. One realises, and I speak as a professor of law, that law is not the answer to everything; in fact, in some situations it is not the answer to very much. A lot of colleagues would shoot me for saying that, but I profoundly believe it.
What we have discovered is that human behaviour, and therefore psychology and other forms of dispute resolution and supporting people to work together and restore relationships, is important. The answer to that is usually not law and the process is usually not an adversarial process involving courts or judges, however sympathetic they are.
We then started talking about a technique of mediation and that went into an institution of alternative dispute resolutions, or ADR, and the courts are sort of playing with trying to put these things together at the moment. Actually, that has been leapfrogged by things like ombudsmen, in the private sector as opposed to the public sector—parliamentary or local government ombudsmen. In the private sector, virtually every regulated sector now has an ombudsman—financial services, energy, communications, motor vehicles, lawyers, blah blah blah. It is quite a long list.
There are various reasons why that is true. The first is that the ombudsmen usually deal with codes—codes of behaviour—and not just legal rights. They can and do decide legal issues, but it is usually codes. They are looking at the underlying behaviour of the bank or the rail company or whatever it is, and therefore you need a different process as well. So it is not adversarial and it is usually free to the consumer, because the business is made to pay or pays for the infrastructure of the ombudsman.
However, there is a very considerable advantage of an ombudsman over a redress scheme, and many of the redress schemes are still somewhat old-fashioned because they are basically arbitration and basically adversarial, and therefore the larger party will bowl up with a whole load of expensive lawyers and you just maintain cost—an adversarialism of not bringing people together. And there is an imbalance of power in that situation.
That does not happen with an ombudsman, because it is a question of “Let’s talk to each other.” The mediation technique is automatically in the process—you encourage communication. If it is not going to work, the ombudsman makes a decision.
Another big function of why the ombudsman is really useful is that they collect data. In all the sectors I can think of, and critically in financial services, energy and so on, ombudsmen are the data controller for the sector because they can tell the banks or the regulator what is going on and what consumers are worried about. That is a feedback system within which people can see in real time exactly what is going on and can therefore respond to it. You sometimes then need responses. On the legal side, the responses may be enforcement of law by a court, or by a regulator if you have one—we do not have one in private rented yet, but we are, perhaps, close—and on the other side, you can have decisions by an ombudsman that are then put in place.
It was very interesting listening to Dr Rugg, who knows much more about the sector than I do. She spoke about support for landlords. Every regulatory system I know needs support for all the actors—tenants, landlords, agents, whatever. Ombudsmen can help with that, but I think there is a gap in local boots-on-the-ground support. Enforcers, like local authorities, or a national regulator if there is one, are sometimes able to support and help, but we have a missing piece.
Summing up, therefore, my view is that this Bill is a very important step forward in modernising towards a useful, effective future system. It is taking an ombudsman as being a central institution, as well as the portal where you get data—admittedly, it is a regulatory portal, rather than a disputes portal, but we may evolve; it is fairly easy to evolve once you have it. These are absolutely critical elements of what a really good future system would be.
I would go further, with just a couple of sentences. One point is that one needs to think about boots on the ground, with people supporting people. An ombudsman is national, so one has to fill that gap. Actually, I think tribunal judges, ombudsmen, local authorities and maybe others—I have had discussions with people about this—could fill that gap. It is critical for everyone. The other part is that one should ensure that everyone knows where to go—“Where do I go to get support? Have we got too many people?” On the dispute resolution side, do you go to court, a tribunal or an ADR scheme? How many ombudsmen are there? We already have three in the property and housing sector. Proliferation is never a good idea, and there are other sectors that show that. The objective is to pull things together. The inevitable logic of this means that you squeeze together the courts, the tribunal and the ombudsmen.
At their request, I chair an ad hoc committee involving the president of the tribunal, the various ombudsmen and the property redress scheme, who, in the past year, have worked on working together on service charges. It has been very effective. I am not sure it has actually been announced yet, as such, but it is not secret. They are working on how to work together. From the point of view of the tenant, certainly, but also the landlord, you want a simple pathway: where do you go? The data reason for that is that if you have a pathway where you have one database, you are going to maximise it; the data is all over the place at the moment, and we do not collect it.
I see this as a direction of travel. The answer to your question on when we will be ready to institute it is: do it now. I would be bold and move the county courts into the tribunal. We already know that the tribunal and the ombudsman can work together. You just squeeze people together one way or another. Then, you will have a fantastically good system, which is the basis of a very self-regulating regulatory space.
Jacob Young
Q
Fiona Rutherford: Thank you for the question. I think I am going to quote Dr Rugg again—I am afraid I only joined recently—but I thought the point on supporting the tenancy was really good: it is about neither the landlord nor the tenant, but the relationship. That is key to ensuring that, whatever solutions are put in place, you are looking at that as being your key outcome, as opposed to trying to take sides, as we have seen all too often.
The other thing that we have seen—Professor Hodges has strongly alluded to it—is the disaggregation of the amount of services that exist. To some extent that is great, because it means that there are potentially lots of places to go. However, the reality is that most landlords and tenants do not know that those services exist or how to access them. Whether or not that is through another ombudsman—I have some concerns about creating more and more ombudsman, and whether there is a way to streamline the available services—I think the most important thing is that those services are signposted to individuals, which means landlords and tenants, and also that the services are provided.
JUSTICE alluded to that in the report we published in 2020, where we talk about our long-term vision of adopting a multidisciplinary approach to avoid escalation and address the common underlying features behind tenants going into arrears, such as debt, family issues or employment issues. If there is a way to keep the longer term in mind, while not delaying on things like section 21, but also thinking carefully about addressing the disaggregation of services and including signposting and information, then ultimately, as far as I am concerned, all those things will be ingredients to success.
Professor Hodges: I have a quick comment. Your question was, “How do we get people to engage in mediation?” It is automatic in the pathway. It is not in courts; it is in ombudsman, and to some extent it is now in tribunals. The Ministry of Justice has just introduced a mediation stage for low-value cases, but it is not necessarily automatically in the pathway.
All the consumer ombudsmen have been using this for up to 20 years, automatically. You put in your complaint and the ombudsman then says, “Okay.” It is investigative and collaborative, rather than adversarial. You do not need lawyers; they do not do anything. You just say, “Tell me about it,” because you have a central expert. It is not that you have two lawyers and a judge—who are not there. Rather, you have one ombudsman in the middle, so it is efficient and quick, and they are saying, “Tell me about it.” So you pull all the evidence in, and then you say, “Okay, what do you say? And you?”
That is automatically mediation, and most cases settle at that stage, because they talk to each other. If it is not going to work, you know fairly quickly, in which case you just get more evidence and then make a decision, unless they agree. So it is in the process. The courts are moving toward that but, because of the cost of public provision, they cannot do it as well as the ombudsmen.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Professor Hodges: The signposting is to have a single ombudsman.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Professor Hodges: I would have one for the entire property and housing sector, and this is not the first time that I have said that. My ombudsman and judge colleagues know that, and quite a lot of them would not disagree. Fiona mentioned that we have a number at the moment. It must not proliferate. I am fairly confident that, if the Government just send the right signals, they might not have to legislate and that we can get adhesion on the ADR and the ombudsman side—people joining up spontaneously, if they are encouraged and pushed—so that you actually get there.
What we are doing here is filling a gap in private rented. We have already got the property ombudsman, which largely cover agents, and the private rented redress scheme. Then you have got have got social housing—let us converge. If you converge courts and tribunals as well, that is a major step forward for all the players, and certainly tenants and landlords. You will deliver things more quickly, basically, and everyone will know where to go.
As I said, look at every other sector. In financial services, you have the Financial Conduct Authority and the Financial Ombudsman Service; in energy, you have Ofgem and the energy ombudsman; and so on. It is not 100%, but it is well over 95%. In social housing, you have got a regulator. We have not got one in private property. We could have one, which would be a regulatory space involving these elements in a new and very effective way, within which you would not have, if you like, an old-fashioned regulator. Rather, you would have a system regulator, but all the people would work together in the system on supporting good practice, because codes already exist for that. The decent homes standards is just a code. It should apply, obviously, and then everyone would work towards that, whether it is local authorities, or the system regulator, the various ombudsmen, or the various self-regulatory bodies that exist—everyone knows where they are.
I am involved in several discussions like this, in totally different regulated sectors. If you say to people in your sector, “We’re all going to work together, and this is how we’re going to do it,” and if you have responsibilities to everyone—if you are no longer just a self-regulatory body on your own, but you are an ecosystem, and it has to work—then that works incredibly well, if everyone realises that is the game that has to be played.
Fiona Rutherford: I agree with a lot of what Professor Hodges said, but I am not sure that everybody does know where to go.
Professor Hodges: No, they don’t.
Fiona Rutherford: To answer your question about where there may be good examples, the health justice partnerships, which we have seen work together, are good examples to look at. They do not rely on a tenant or a landlord to know what they cannot know or do not know, and that is what is missing. The health justice partnerships are where we have seen lawyers, or support workers or sometimes NGOs, sit in doctors’ surgeries, so that when a GP sees a patient who is suffering from mental health issues, or various other physical illnesses, and they have it diagnosed that it is probably related to something outside of a medical solution, then there is somebody in the building who that person can go to—if not immediately, then an appointment can be booked. That stops us relying on what are sometimes very vulnerable people, or people who are at vulnerable points in their lives, to seek out support services and help themselves.
Professor Hodges: Just to add one sentence, which was implicit in what I said at the start: in the regulated sectors where you have an ombudsman, such as financial services or energy, no one goes to lawyers or courts—they disappear. People have voted with their feet, because the procedure is faster and more user-friendly, it is free, and it delivers a broader range of behavioural outcomes on the part of the energy companies, or whoever it is, and does not just ask, “Are they breaking the law?” If you feed that in to the ombudsman, you might get a decision, but you will also get the point referred up to Ofgem, or whichever regulator it is, so that it can do something systemically about it, if necessary. It is an ecosystem, but everyone knows where to go. I am afraid that lawyers and courts are toast.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Q
Fiona Rutherford: I would like to make a separate comment about the fine in the enforcement process within the Bill, but that is not your question, so perhaps Professor Hodges might start.
Professor Hodges: The amount of money that either a judge or an ombudsman should award must be relevant to the dispute, because you cannot have people not being compensated. Therefore, there should be a mechanism for the amount to be amendable over time. Personally, I would not waste your time with that—coming back again and again to put it up. I would put a mechanism in the Bill, so that someone can set it, whether that is a Minister or whoever. You cannot have people not bringing forward claims because they will not get fully compensated, or bringing forward claims that are not fully compensated when they should be.
That takes you over, however, into penalties or sanctions for behaviour. That is a complicated issue, but the point is that usually we have a national regulator, and here we have a lot of local authorities, and they need the right powers as well, but quite often the right powers are not fines. I am afraid that there is rather a lot of psychological and other evidence that deterrence does not work—which is a shock, the first time that you hear it. Therefore, other, quite significant penalties—such as talking to people, explaining, informing and giving supporting about how things ought to be different, or, in the extreme, removing the licence to operate and saying, “You cannot let this property”—are the ones that work. A broader toolbox of responses and interventions—I am not using the word “enforcement” here—is what actually delivers good outcomes.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Q
Professor Hodges: That would concentrate minds.
Fiona Rutherford: And even before enforcement, there is something about transparency. There is something about everybody going into a tenancy—going back to that focus on tenancy—knowing a fair amount of history on both sides.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Q
Fiona Rutherford: Importantly for the tenant. It is there that transparency matters the most. I think that there are possibly bigger issues with making it fully public.
Professor Hodges: One of the points about the portal is that it is a very effective self-regulatory—or indeed managerial—system, because it says, “Have you got an insurance certificate? Have you got a fire certificate? Well, upload it.” It is done, and then you get a reminder saying, “You’ve got to do the next one.” Everyone should be able to see that. There is nothing secret about that information, but it delivers a baseline of regulatory compliance—“Are you compliant with the decent homes standard? Where’s your certificate?” or whatever. It is self-policing, and provides a very simple mechanism for doing that.
Just to give one dramatic example of sanctions, the Civil Aviation Authority never fines airlines in relation to safety issues—although it fines them now and again. It has an incredibly good culture among all the players—air traffic control, the airlines, engineers, and so on—and has constructed that deliberately, and it is the only reason why planes stay in the sky and we have confidence in them. It never fines anyone, but it uses the ultimate sanction—rarely—that I was talking about of saying, “I’m going to stop you operating your aircraft or your airport.” That concentrates the mind and gets the result of them saying, “Okay, we’ve fixed it,” very quickly.
Dr Ben Spencer (Runnymede and Weybridge) (Con)
Q
Professor Hodges: Personally, I am in favour of the broadest possible enforcement powers, but not necessarily their regular use. Therefore, whoever is involved in management and responsibility should be within scope of the discussion, and then of the potential response or intervention.
Dr Spencer
Q
Professor Hodges: Well, whoever owns, or shadow-owns, a building, if you stop people letting the building, that will have an effect on anyone, will it not?
Dr Spencer
Q
Professor Hodges: You would have other powers against beneficial owners by saying, “You’ve done this several times; you’re out,” or, “Do it right otherwise you’re out.” That is a regulatory power.
Dr Spencer
Q
Professor Hodges: Not necessarily. I think one database is enough, frankly. You should be able to capture all the data about, “Who owns this?” We have been talking about foreign-owned companies and things in other contexts, and there are techniques for identifying them.
Fiona Rutherford: I am going to make a point in relation to enforcement that I referenced earlier. Local authorities have been brought into this as we are talking about the widest panoply of options that might be available. I am going back to the penalties that I referenced earlier, so forgive me—I am moving out of the ombudsman perspective and the regulatory questions—but this is possibly related to enforcement. While there is a plan with the penalties as and when section 21 can be moved forward, and while the local authorities get a benefit from those penalties, a rate of £5,000 probably does not go far enough to act as any kind of incentive, in so far as you want enforcement to work in that way. Of course, there are other examples: £30,000 is the maximum financial penalty for a breach of the Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Act 2022.
The other thing to say about local authorities is that while they benefit from the financial gain of any fixed penalties as a result of section 21 breaches, there is a real problem with local authorities’ resourcing. I am probably not saying anything that is particularly new to the Committee, but we are asking local authorities to do something more: it is not only enforcing section 21, but the other obligations to investigate antisocial behaviour appropriately. I again reference a report on behavioural control orders that we have looked into and the poor quality of data and understanding around antisocial behaviour. This means that the resources required are quite simply not going to be delivered through the proposed fixed penalties. We very much urge serious consideration around proper resourcing in a wider sense, but specifically in relation to antisocial behaviour and the section 21 enforcement regime.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Professor Hodges: Following the principle that the pathway and the process should be as simple as possible, we should not have a system in which people have to go to different institutions—a judge, an ombudsman, a regulator or a local authority—to get everything fixed if that can be done in one place at one time. The logic of that takes you towards giving power to the ombudsman, the judge and the regulator to issue rent orders at the end of a case. Why should anyone have to start again and go somewhere else to get that result? They should say, “Okay, on the proposition, the landlord was wrong—badly wrong, probably—in this particular circumstance. Fix it and we will come and make sure you’ve done all this stuff. The right result is to repay the rent.” Give them the power to do that and to be holistic.
The Chair
If there are no further questions, I thank both witnesses for their evidence.
Examination of Witness
James Prestwich gave evidence.
The Chair
We will now hear oral evidence from James Prestwich, the director of policy and external affairs at the Chartered Institute of Housing. We have until 4.45 pm for this panel. Welcome, James. Could you please introduce yourself?
James Prestwich: I am James Prestwich, director of policy and external affairs at the Chartered Institute of Housing. We are the professional body for the housing sector. Our members are individuals rather than organisations. We are cross-tenure and cross-UK in our remit.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
James Prestwich: I am very conscious that you have heard from any number of really esteemed experts on all manner of aspects of the Bill in today’s sessions, and there was an awful lot to agree with. A question has continued to be posed about striking the balance, and I suppose the position of the CIH is that if we accept that the private rented sector has an important role to play in meeting housing need—I think we all probably do—it is hard to look at what we have at the moment and think that the balance is right. It is tipped much too far in favour of the landlord rather than the tenants. A lot in the Bill is positive in looking to provide a better deal, but there are still some gaps and areas where it would be good to go further. A lot has been said about what was in the White Paper. We need action and to follow through on that now, particularly on the decent homes standard and an assurance on a timetable for its introduction.
We have seen over the past year to 18 months the impact on people of the cost of living challenges, particularly around energy efficiency. Experts have spoken about the importance of ensuring that families and people in receipt of welfare benefits are not discriminated against by landlords, so it is important that we see really firm action on that. We have talked a lot about section 21 and no-fault evictions, and it is worth saying that it is really good to see what is in the Bill as far as section 21 is concerned.
As for those landlord grounds of concern, though, the two-month notice period is a little on the short side. We know—witnesses have stressed this point—that one of the biggest causes of homelessness is the ending of a tenancy via section 21. It takes time for people to find another property, particularly in hot rental markets, and I think it would be reasonable to expect a longer period to allow people to try to find alternative accommodation.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
James Prestwich: We have heard really well-reasoned, well-argued points today about the importance of making that a discretionary ground. We know the challenges that people face when paying rent, particularly when we think about interaction with the local housing allowance, which witnesses have talked about. It is important that we are able to trust judges to make informed decisions based on the evidence of the case—the evidence presented before them.
Jacob Young
Q
James Prestwich: Again, as other witnesses have said, there is an awful lot to like about the landlord portal. We have talked quite a lot about the benefits that the portal will have for tenants, but it is right that there are significant advantages for landlords as well. This point might not have been made yet, but the overwhelming majority of landlords, regardless of the number of homes they own, are thoroughly decent people doing a decent job. We know there are examples of poor quality and poor practice, as there are in all professions, but any tool that enables landlords to get a better understanding of the responsibilities expected of them is to be welcomed. The point about how we get the portal to work both ways is really important. There is something about the sort of information that local authorities will be able to access from the portal, although they do not at the moment. That should enable local authorities, providing they have got the capacity and resources, to be able to take a harder line when people fall below the standards that we all want to expect from landlords.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Q
James Prestwich: There is a lot that Ben Twomey said that you could agree with. I think the challenge here is about how we try to find that balance. We know that a lot of people in the private rented sector are accidental landlords. Previously, I was an accidental landlord and an accidental tenant, and neither of those things was particularly pleasant, so I have a little experience of that. There is a real challenge around all of that that we have not quite bottomed out yet.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
That sounds a little inconclusive.
James Prestwich: Yes, it is.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
You are saying you think work needs to be done but you are not quite sure of the solution yet.
James Prestwich: Yes, that is probably the case.
The Chair
If there are no further questions, I thank all the witnesses for the time and expertise that they have given with their evidence.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Mr Gagan Mohindra.)
Written Statements
Industrial Action: Minimum Service Levels
(1 year ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Kevin Hollinrake)
Earlier this year Parliament passed the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023. The Act seeks to balance the ability of workers to strike with the rights and freedoms of the public to go about their daily lives, including getting to work and accessing key services.
Most major European countries, such as France, Italy and Spain, have had some form of minimum service level regime for many years, and organisations such as the International Labour Organisation have recognised that such approaches can be an appropriate way of balancing the ability to strike with the rights of the wider public.
Where minimum service level regulations are in place, the Act requires trade unions to take “reasonable steps” to ensure that their members who are identified in a work notice do not take strike action during the periods in which they are required by the work notice to work and comply with the work notice.
During the passage of the Act, the Government committed to bring forward a statutory code of practice setting out more detail on the “reasonable steps” that trade unions should take.
I am pleased to inform the House that yesterday we laid a statutory code of practice on reasonable steps to be taken by a trade union (minimum service levels) in Parliament for approval. This follows a public consultation on the draft code and careful consideration of the feedback received. A Government response to that consultation was also published yesterday.
The code of practice is issued under section 203 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 and sets out four steps that trade unions should take to meet the legal requirement under the Act:
Step 1: Identification of members—Trade unions should identify those of their members who are identified in a work notice;
Step 2: Encouraging individual members to comply with a work notice—Trade unions should send an individual communication or notice to each member identified in a work notice to advise them not to strike during the periods in which they are required by the work notice to work, as well as to encourage them to comply with the work notice.
Step 3: Picketing—Picket supervisors will be instructed by the trade union to use reasonable endeavours to ensure that picketers avoid, so far as reasonably practicable, trying to persuade members who are identified in a work notice not to cross the picket line at times when they are required by the work notice to work;
Step 4: Assurance—Once a work notice is received by the union, trade unions should ensure that they do not do other things that undermine the steps they take to meet the reasonable steps requirement.
Subject to parliamentary approval, the code will be issued and brought into effect by the Secretary of State in accordance with the procedure set out in section 204 of the 1992 Act.
We will also shortly publish separate, non-statutory guidance on the issuing of work notices in relation to minimum service levels.
[HCWS32]
Tackling Crime and Antisocial Behaviour
(1 year ago)
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The Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire (Chris Philp)
I am pleased to set out to the House the Government’s response to three consultations that have informed provisions in the Criminal Justice Bill that is being introduced in the House of Commons today.
Government response to the public consultation “Strengthening the law enforcement response to serious and organised crime”
The Home Office ran a public consultation from 24 January to 21 March 2023 that sought views on two legislative proposals to tackle serious and organised crime. Following the consultation, the Criminal Justice Bill will give effect to two legislative measures, as follows:
1. The creation of new offences to criminalise the importing, making, adapting, supplying, offering to supply and possession of specific articles for use in serious crime. These articles are:
vehicle concealments used to conceal goods and people;
templates used to 3D-print firearm components; and
pill presses.
2. Strengthening and improving the functioning of serious crime prevention orders (SCPOs) by:
increasing the number of bodies which can apply to the High Court for an SCPO in the absence of a conviction to include the National Crime Agency, the police, British Transport Police, Ministry of Defence Police, and HM Revenue and Customs;
empowering the Crown Court to issue an SCPO on acquittal;
introducing an express power to include electronic monitoring as a condition of an SCPO; and
prescribing a set of notification requirements for all SCPOs.
Law enforcement agencies frequently encounter articles that they suspect are being used in serious crime but which they are unable to act on under existing legislation. The Government must continue to give law enforcement agencies the tools and powers they need to disrupt and dismantle organised crime groups and those who knowingly enable them. These measures will help law enforcement agencies to frustrate the activities of the most harmful criminal groups operating in the UK. They will target the facilitators who support and profit from serious and organised crime, and improve our ability to manage and disrupt the highest harm offenders.
Government response to the consultation “Review of the Computer Misuse Act 1990”
It is essential that the UK has the right legislative framework to allow us to tackle the harms posed to our citizens, businesses and Government services online. As part of this, the Home Office initiated a review of the Computer Misuse Act 1990 (CMA), and a subsequent call for information and a public consultation. The consultation ran from 7 February to 6 April 2023.
We have been considering the information provided to us by that consultation and are now publishing the results. In summary, these are:
There was broad support for a new power to allow law enforcement agencies to take down domains and IP addresses especially in the event of non-compliance with a voluntary arrangement. However, several respondents argued that voluntary agreements should be used initially or there would be a risk that court-based routes would take primacy and organisations would only respond to takedowns and seizures under the statutory arrangements. After further engagement, we believe the voluntary arrangements will continue to be the primary route for action.
There was support for a power to allow a law enforcement agency to require the preservation of computer data, although several organisations did raise concerns that data storage is costly and that any long-term data storage requirements would impact on an organisation’s finances, reducing UK competitiveness.
There was less agreement on the proposal for a power to take action against a person possessing or using data obtained by another person through a CMA offence. This raised concerns with respondents. Some correspondents stated that harm would occur if an offence of copying data were to be created, as this would stop intelligence and law enforcement agencies from being able to proactively protect people from significant harm, and that there would be a lack of protection afforded to security researchers carrying out good faith security research.
The Criminal Justice Bill includes the necessary powers to enable law enforcement agencies to apply to the court for a domain name suspension order or an IP address suspension order.
When publishing the consultation, we also responded to three wider issues that arose in the call for information that ran previously in 2021. These related to the levels of sentencing, statutory defences to the CMA offences, and whether the UK has sufficient legislation to cover extraterritorial threats. We have been working with a range of partners on these since the consultation, including setting up a working group that includes law enforcement agencies, prosecutors, the cyber-security industry and system owners to consider in detail the issue of statutory defences. We will update Parliament on this wider work at the appropriate moment.
Government response to the consultation “Community Safety Partnerships review and anti-social behaviour powers”
The consultation on the community safety partnership review and antisocial behaviour powers ran from 27usb March to 22 May 2023, in support of the Government’s commitment to tackle crime and antisocial behaviour swiftly and robustly.
In March 2023, we launched a plan to crack down on antisocial behaviour, restoring people’s confidence that unacceptable behaviour will be quickly and visibly punished. We made a commitment to consult, via the community safety partnership review and antisocial behaviour powers consultation, on views about strengthening the powers used to tackle antisocial behaviour under the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014. The majority of respondents flagged that expanded powers would help to tackle antisocial behaviour more effectively, allowing the relevant agencies to better resource and implement longer term strategies, and agreed that the proposed measures will help to provide agencies with the necessary confidence to use these powers more frequently and consistently. This consultation was informed, and its findings are supported, by Home Office Analysis and Insight (HOAI) research into police perceptions of ASB powers.
The consultation also tested proposals to strengthen the accountability of community safety partnerships. Community safety partnerships were introduced by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and bring together local partners to formulate and deliver strategies to reduce crime, disorder and antisocial behaviour in their communities.
Part two of the police and crime commissioner review, conducted by the Home Office in 2021, found that while the importance of local partnerships such as community safety partnerships was widely acknowledged, they were not being used as effectively as they could be, resulting in a recommendation that the Home Office undertake a full review of community safety partnerships across England and Wales: the community safety partnership review. It also found that police and crime commissioners were unclear of their role in the antisocial behaviour case review process and that there was a disconnect between police and crime commissioners police and crime plans and local antisocial behaviour strategies developed by community safety partnerships.
I am very pleased, therefore, to unveil a package of measures through the Criminal Justice Bill to strengthen the powers available to the police and other local agencies to tackle antisocial behaviour. The measures will also help to improve and clarify the ways in which community safety partnerships and police and crime commissioners work together, including by enhancing strategic alignment between community safety partnerships and police and crime commissioners to deliver more effective outcomes for the public in tackling crime and antisocial behaviour.
A copy of each of the Government responses is available on gov.uk and will be deposited in the Libraries of both Houses.
[HCWS32]
Grand Committee
Persistent Organic Pollutants (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2023
(1 year ago)
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Lord Benyon
That the Grand Committee do consider the Persistent Organic Pollutants (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2023.
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)
My Lords, I beg to move that these regulations, which were laid before the House on 16 October 2023, be approved.
This instrument adds a new substance called perfluorohexane sulfonic acid—PFHxS for short—including its salts and related compounds, to the retained persistent organic pollutants regulation in response to the listing of this substance under the United Nations Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants. The UK is a party to the convention and is therefore obligated to reflect in UK law the listing of POPs under the convention. This legislative change is permitted by use of the powers available within article 15 of the retained EU regulation on POPs. We have worked with the devolved Administrations on this instrument. These regulations are needed to implement the UK’s commitments under the United Nations Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants. POPs are substances recognised as particularly dangerous to the health of humans, wildlife and the environment. This SI preserves and adds to the current regime for managing, restricting or eliminating POPs in the UK.
Let me turn now to the details of the instrument. At the 10th meeting of the conference of the parties last year, PFHxS was added to the list of substances for global elimination under the convention. This decision was communicated to parties and observers by the UN depository in November 2022. The SI adds this new POP to the list of substances prohibited by law from being manufactured, sold 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 they are unintentionally present and found in minimal amounts. The SI includes two general limits and one that is specific to its presence in firefighting foams.
This 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. The Government have also initiated public calls for information and opportunities to comment on draft evaluation documents for this substance. We received no evidence to suggest that exemptions or derogations were required by industry in Great Britain. Following that previous engagement, a recent Defra-led consultation on other potential amendments to the POPs regulation stated our intention to list PFHxS in annexe 1 of the POPs regulation in order to meet the UK’s obligations under the Stockholm convention.
A de minimis impact assessment was carried out. It concluded that there is no indication that PFHxS chemicals are intentionally produced or used in Great Britain. As such, this SI is not expected to have an impact on businesses, beyond one-off familiarisation costs. It is also not expected to disproportionately burden small businesses.
The Environment Agency is the delivery body for the POPs regulation 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 this SI and have no concerns in relation to implementation or resources.
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 SI and have consented to it being made on a GB-wide basis.
In conclusion, I emphasise that the measures in this SI are needed to implement the requirements of the Stockholm convention by adding the new POP PFHxS, 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. This 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 the production and use of POPs. I hope noble Lords will support these measures and their objectives, and I commend the draft regulations to the House.
Baroness Sheehan (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for the information he gave, and I convey the apologies of my noble friend Lady Bakewell, who is unable to be here today—I am standing in her place. The Minister spoke about PFHxS, but I was under the impression that we would be speaking about PFOAs and the extension of the deadline from July 2023 to 2025. I may have got it completely wrong, but that was the brief I was given.
I listened carefully to what the Minister said. These POPs are very toxic substances, with a long lifetime in the environment. It is not for nothing that they are called “forever chemicals”. So I am pleased that the Government have taken this firm line and will make sure that they are banned—and I am pleased that they are not being produced in the UK.
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
My Lords, in the absence of my noble friend Lady Hayman of Ullock, it falls to me to thank the Minister for introducing these regulations. The pedant in me needs to point out that we are invited to consider these regulations, not approve them.
The Minister will be relieved to hear that we support the passage of this statutory instrument, which, as he outlined, implements a June 2022 decision on the Stockholm convention, to which the UK is a party, to list PFHxS, its salts and related compounds as prohibited persistent organic pollutants—POPs. The Explanatory Memorandum notes that PFHxS is
“one of the most frequently detected and predominant PFASs in human blood”.
Although not all PFAS chemicals are POPs, it is worth acknowledging the significant threat posed by many PFASs. These forever chemicals degrade incredibly slowly, bringing a risk of large-scale health and environmental effects. From the debate in another place, I understand that more of these chemicals are due to be listed as POPs under the Stockholm convention in the near future. Is the Minister able to provide any timeline for the designation of these additional chemicals? Will the Minister commit to bringing forward further statutory instruments as quickly as possible?
As my colleague, Ruth Jones MP, noted, this instrument represents
“a very good example of common sense alignment with our neighbours”.—[Official Report, Commons, Second Delegated Legislation Committee, 13/11/23; col. 5.]
Close cross-border co-operation on environmental and chemical threats is vital. It is for that reason that we were puzzled by the Government’s decision not to seek an ongoing relationship with the EU’s REACH programme —the system for the recognition, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals. The replacement UK REACH scheme is still very much in its infancy, with worryingly little information about how it will work in practice. Recent media reports suggest that the department will require less hazard information from chemical companies when they register substances in the UK. Can the Minister confirm whether that is the case and whether an impact assessment will be made available in due course?
While this SI keeps us in step with international partners in relation to POPs, there is a perception that the UK is falling behind on broader chemical regulation. That flies in the face of promises made by a variety of Prime Ministers, Secretaries of State and Ministers. While we support the passage of this instrument, I hope the Minister will accept that the Government have work to do to convince colleagues that the necessary steps are being taken to preserve the health of the population, wildlife and the natural environment.
Lord Benyon (Con)
I thank noble Lords for their contributions to this debate. The regulations debated here today 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. This will contribute to the protection of the current and future health of the population, wildlife and the environment of the United Kingdom and the rest of the world.
I greatly appreciate the remarks made by the noble Lord about co-operation. We are seeking to fulfil our commitments to the Stockholm convention and to make sure that business understands that we are aligning with our closest trading partner, the EU. Of course, this has implications for the Windsor Framework and will ensure that there is a single standard on this chemical across the EU, Great Britain and the United Kingdom.
The noble Lord raised important points about REACH, and I will seek to cover them now. This instrument is about the management of POPs, which sits outside the REACH regime, as he understands. The POPs regime differs from the REACH regime in that there is no requirement on businesses to register POPs chemicals. The 2023-24 UK REACH work programme will be published by the Health and Safety Executive in due course, following approval by the Secretary of State and devolved government Ministers. It is worth noting that this instrument is now, as I said, outside the REACH programme.
We are developing an alternative transitional registration model for UK REACH. The aim is to maintain or improve existing human health and environmental protections in line with our international commitments, as we are doing with this measure, while reducing the cost to businesses transitioning from EU REACH to UK REACH. On Thursday 9 November, we announced the outline for the transitional registration model, including refining what information registrants will need to provide on how their chemicals are used in Great Britain and what that means for exposure for people and the environment. This will ensure that we reduce to the essential minimum hazard information required for transitional registrations for chemicals that were already on the market at EU exit. This will mean that UK REACH registrants will not generally need to access and pay for data packages held by EU industry consortia. It will also ensure that we improve regulators’ powers so they can require and receive data from registrants quickly for regulatory or risk prioritisation purposes, ensuring that we can respond to new and emerging risks. A consultation on the proposals will be published early next year.
This is a very important issue for a number of noble Lords on all sides of the House. I understand the points that the noble Lord made. Defra asked the Environment Agency and the Health and Safety Executive to examine the risks that PFAS posed and to develop a regulatory management options analysis. This makes recommendations for risk management measures for PFAS and was published in April this year.
Ministers accepted the recommendations, which include work under UK REACH to reduce PFAS emissions by developing UK REACH restrictions, beginning with restrictions on PFAS in firefighting foams. Defra is taking forward the recommendation to bring together work on PFAS strategically through development of a cross-government chemicals strategy and the creation of a working group on PFAS. Aspects such as drinking water standards and F-gases review will be considered within this overall policy development and subject to further ministerial engagement. I hope I have convinced the noble Lord that we are taking this matter extremely seriously. Business wants clarity, and we are working hard to achieve that.
As I have outlined, the changes introduced by this instrument will ensure that the UK can continue to implement its obligations under the Stockholm convention, which aims to protect the health of populations, wildlife and the environment from harmful persistent organic pollutants. I commend the draft regulations to the Committee.
National Minimum Wage (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2023
(1 year ago)
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The Earl of Minto
That the Grand Committee do consider the National Minimum Wage (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2023.
Relevant document: 53rd Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, Session 2022–23
The Minister of State, Department for Business and Trade (The Earl of Minto) (Con)
My Lords, these regulations were laid in draft before the House on 13 September 2023. This statutory instrument will help ensure that so-called live-in domestic workers will be paid at least the national minimum wage for the time that they are working. The live-in domestic worker exemption was part of the National Minimum Wage Regulations and provides that work done by a worker residing in the employer’s family home and treated as a member of the family is not work for the purposes of the national minimum wage and therefore does not have to be paid the national minimum wage. The exemption was originally created mainly to cater for au pairs, so that they should gain experience of cultural exchange through living and being a part of a family in the UK, although the legislation covers other types of domestic workers as well.
Currently, the National Minimum Wage Regulations state that workers do not need to be paid the minimum wage if they live with their employer and are genuinely treated as part of the family. Such treatment is particularly expressed in the provision of living accommodation and meals, sharing of tasks and leisure activities. The exemption is not compatible with most jobs, and it is hard to prove whether someone is or is not being treated as a family member. The removal of the exemption will remove the inequality facing these workers, who are more likely to be migrant workers and women.
In 2016, an employment tribunal judgment considered whether the exemption indirectly discriminates against women, as such workers tend to be women. The employment tribunal found the exemption had given rise to unjustified indirect discrimination, and thus the exemption was disapplied in this case. After the employment tribunal judgment on live-in domestic workers was published, the Government asked the Low Pay Commission to research low-paid live-in domestic workers.
In 2021, the Low Pay Commission published research into the live-in domestic worker exemption. During the gathering of this research, the commissioners came to a consensus conclusion that the exemption should be removed. The Low Pay Commission heard evidence of employers using the exemption to exploit domestic workers, often non-British nationals, who were required to work long hours and were not fully treated as members of the family. They found examples of domestic workers suffering abuse, including physical abuse, with little recourse for enforcing their employment rights. The commission found that the exemption is rarely being used for its intended main purpose, as in practice there are now few au pairs in the UK.
The Low Pay Commission’s extensive evidence in 2021 on this issue provided a clear recommendation to government that the exemption should be removed. The Government accepted the Low Pay Commission recommendations and announced that the live-in domestic worker exemption would be removed in March 2022. During this period, the employment tribunal decision was appealed, and the Employment Appeal Tribunal agreed earlier this year that the exemption should be disapplied. These decisions established the removal of the exemption as a matter of case law.
Taking into account the existing case law and other more general legislation, live-in domestic workers have reasonable arguments that they are entitled to be paid the national minimum wage. However, this is not a matter of certainty, and therefore with the National Minimum Wage (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations we are putting the matter beyond doubt by amending our regulations to remove the exemption from the date that the amendment comes into force. In the meantime, we recommend that live-in domestic workers are paid the national minimum wage in this short interim period.
These amendment regulations remove uncertainty and the risk of accidental national minimum wage non-compliance within this workforce. These regulations need to be put forward to make sure that the workers, and the families that hire these workers, are able to clearly understand the national minimum wage laws for live-in domestic workers. These amendment regulations will ensure that live-in domestic workers are paid at least the relevant minimum wage rate, providing protection from exploitative low pay.
HMRC will enforce the national living and minimum wage for this group, in line with other sectors. HMRC enforces the national minimum wage in line with the law and policy set by DBT. HMRC follows up on every worker complaint it receives, even those which are anonymous. This includes complaints made to the ACAS helpline, via its online complaint form and those received from other sources.
The policy will ensure that all work is treated fairly and will end the misuse of the exemption to exploit workers, particularly migrant women. The overwhelming majority of workers covered by this exemption are employed by families, not by businesses. The impact on businesses will therefore be negligible. However, many vulnerable workers will now enjoy the same protections that almost all other employees receive.
As live-in domestic workers will be entitled to the national living and minimum wage, I would like to remind the House of the achievements of the national living and minimum wage. The Government remain committed to their ambitious target for the national living wage to equal two-thirds of median earnings by 2024, provided that economic conditions allow. We look forward to announcing the 2024 rates in due course. The national living wage, which applies to those aged 23 and over, increased to £10.42 an hour in April 2023. As a result of this increase, a full-time worker on the national living wage has seen their annual pay increase in excess of £1,600 per annum. This increase ensured that our national living wage rate remains one of the highest in the world.
These regulations will provide clarity to live-in domestic workers and the families who employ these workers. With this exemption removed in legislation, there will be no ambiguity between what is in case law and the statute book. Through the national minimum wage and the national living wage the Government protect the lowest paid within our society. It is right that we ensure that the lowest paid are fairly rewarded for their contribution to the economy, and ensuring live-in domestic workers are entitled to the national living wage is vital to achieving this. Protecting workers’ rights, especially those of vulnerable workers, is a priority for this Government and therefore we have taken action to remove this exemption.
This does not remove the right to have a live-in domestic worker, such as an au pair or other domestic staff; it just removes the right to pay them less than the national minimum wage. This is the right thing to do to help protect these vulnerable workers and make it clear that our legislation reflects the case law on this issue.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)
I thank the noble Earl for his comprehensive introduction to this SI, which deals with regulations as to work in a family household, and rightly seeks to protect such workers by acknowledging their rights as workers and not as some inferior being. On my Benches, we support this new regulation.
The Minister expanded beyond this SI, for which I am grateful, so can I use the opportunity to say to the Minister that this is only one such unfair anomaly? Could I also call attention for the need of the abolition of the separate apprenticeship wage? I had a briefing from the End Child Poverty coalition, which talked about how this is a barrier to young people from less well-off backgrounds going into apprenticeships, because they are not sustainable.
Could I also ask for an assessment on the policy of having different wages for different ages? Is this the right thing to do? The cost of living is the same no matter how old you are, and it is hugely ignorant of the Government to assume that young people will be able to have support from their families.
Finally, unfairness goes right through the system. Could the Minister comment on the policy of paying under 25s less universal credit? This is punitive, particularly for young parents and care leavers. Again, we cannot assume that parents can or will give financial support to their adult children.
I welcomed the Minister’s expansion on this SI, and what the Government are doing, but I have tried to point out that there are still some gaps, which I hope the Government will remove in ensuing legislation and statutory instruments.
Baroness Donaghy (Lab)
My Lords, I am not going to ask the Minister questions on the regulations, which I think are fine.
But the background to this is fascinating. I was a founder member of the Low Pay Commission 25 years ago, and the complexity of establishing the minimum wage was quite fantastic. I remember that, when the legislation was settled, we had some very indignant lobbying from the au pair association to say that we were basically killing off the ability to have au pairs. I have to say that it was not a prominent consideration for the original Low Pay Commission, although I am sure that that was neglect on our part. But there was certainly, to some extent, an anomaly. So when that exemption was established, it then of course created the difficulty about live-in domestic workers.
One priority of the Low Pay Commission was for situations when people had complete power over an individual. The then chair, Sir George Bain, who was formerly director of the London Business School and vice-chancellor of Queen’s University Belfast, used the word monopsony, which some of us had never heard of as individuals. But we became very expert on the subject of monopsony—basically the power of an employer to tell an employee what to do, and the employee feeling that they have no choice. Very often they were people such as agricultural workers in rural areas and piece workers in declining industries—but they were particularly domestic live-in workers. So for the Government to right this anomaly is very welcome.
There were all sorts of areas that we had to clarify when the minimum wage was established, not least whether London weighting was in or out, how you calculated piecework and how you dealt with the accommodation off-set. I remember going to visit a monastery down in Devon, where we were shown around, helping us to calculate what the importance of accommodation off-sets was. I also note overtime. All those complexities helped to set up what I think was a great social reform.
It is a credit to this Government that they kept it going; I honestly thought that they might go back on it when they got elected. I just wanted to give that little bit of background and say that this is not just a little regulation about a few people; this is quite an important issue, which is about that old principle of monopsony.
Lord Leong (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for the overview and explanation of the statutory instrument. We on this side very much welcome this instrument. I thank my noble friend Lady Donaghy for her contribution and for bringing us up to speed on what happened 25 years ago.
As many noble Lords know, the national minimum wage was introduced on 1 April 1999 by the last Labour Government. It creates an obligatory threshold pay level. At the time, the party opposite argued that it would cost millions of jobs, but, 25 years later, this has not happened. In fact, the national minimum wage has had negative effects on the overall UK labour market. Today, around 1.6 million workers—roughly about 5% of all UK workers—are paid at or below the minimum wage. When there is such high inflation and a sustained cost of living crisis, this is just not good enough. Employers should be encouraged to recognise that making work pay with a real living wage and strong workers’ rights is good for growth and for the economy.
This statutory instrument removes the option for a person who resides in a domestic family home, but who is not a member of the family, to be asked to do work in a household without remuneration. This means that a potential loophole by which the unscrupulous employer could require someone living with them and treated as a member of the family to unreasonably be expected to perform jobs in the home without being paid at all. From 1 April 2024, such tasks will now have to be paid at the relevant band of the national minimum wage.
Does the Minister have figures for how many employees —nannies, au pairs and other domestic workers—can expect their income to increase as a result of this change in legislation? Can he also indicate which channels or organisations the Government plan to utilise to alert affected workers to their new rights, especially as I imagine some may not be British citizens or have any union representation? Given the sensitivity of employee-employer relationships in a domestic situation, can the Minister inform your Lordships’ House what provisions are in place to support workers who might find themselves in vulnerable situations, or even potentially homeless, if their employer refuses to recognise their right to be fairly paid as a result of these changes, since their access to legal advice may be very limited? Finally, as well as making people aware of their rights and offering support when made aware, will there be any more proactive steps to ensure that as few people as possible slip through the cracks?
The Earl of Minto (Con)
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their valuable contributions during today’s short debate. These regulations will reward low-paid live-in domestic workers right across the country so that they are paid fairly for the work they do. It will give more clarity on wage regulations for the families that employ these workers, making sure they are paid the national minimum wage. It will also ensure that HMRC enforces the national living wage and national minimum wage for live-in domestic workers, in line with other sectors. The legislation will ensure that all work is treated fairly, and it will end the misuse of the exemption to exploit workers, particularly migrant women.
I will now take the opportunity to answer some of the specific questions asked by noble Lords. The noble Lord, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, said that this is only one of the unfair anomalies in operation at the moment. The Government accept that and are working as hard as they can to ensure that this is dealt with. The question about different ages and rates is certainly something that I have always found quite difficult to come to terms with—I always paid everybody the same amount, regardless of their age. I can see the argument for bringing people up to a certain level as they leave education and start building up to a full-time job while living at home. Certainly, the Government have moved to narrow the gaps and, as I said, the full national living wage is a significant salary—that is good news. I will write to the noble Lord about the issue of less universal credit. I do not think that it is our policy to take away universal credit, but I will write to confirm that that is the case.
The noble Baroness asked about au pairs. I am advised that there are still 45,000 au pairs in this country, which is a surprisingly large figure. Although it is a small number in the total scheme of the 1.6 million workers, this is an important step to take—I suspect there are a lot of other people who are not covered by the au pair qualification. Clearly, it is the responsibility of HMRC to police this, and it has been given a substantial increase in the funds it can address towards this area. As I said, it follows up every single report it gets about this. Of course, there is a link to slavery and all sorts of things, which one worries about deeply. On the accommodation off-set, I rather like the idea of the monastery. That does reduce the national living wage but at a reasonable rate—I think it is about £1 per hour at the moment, or something like that.
The point of the noble Lord, Lord Leong, about the 1.6 million was well made. The Government have been absolutely committed to the national minimum wage and the national living wage, and they will continue to drive that through as far as possible. We will certainly encourage employers to ensure that this amendment is widely known; I will write with the detail on that. Equally, we will take seriously support for workers, particularly those who are homeless. I hope that covers the specific points raised.
I conclude by extending my thanks once again to the Low Pay Commission—it is wonderful to have an original member in our company. Thanks to its independent and expert advice on this national minimum wage exemption, we can ensure that the right balance is struck between the needs of workers, affordability for business and the wider impact on the economy and the families involved. Again, we look forward to receiving its recommendations for the 2024 rates, which will be published later this month. I commend these regulations to the Committee.
Pensions Act 2004 and the Equality Act 2010 (Amendment) (Equal Treatment by Occupational Pension Schemes) Regulations 2023
(1 year ago)
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Viscount Younger of Leckie
That the Grand Committee do consider the Pensions Act 2004 and the Equality Act 2010 (Amendment) (Equal Treatment by Occupational Pension Schemes) Regulations 2023.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Viscount Younger of Leckie) (Con)
My Lords, I shall speak also to the Occupational Pension Schemes (Amendment) (Equal Treatment) (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2023, the Pensions Act 2004 (Amendment) (Pension Protection Fund Compensation) Regulations 2023 and the Pensions (Pension Protection Fund Compensation) (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2023. These regulations were laid before this House on 18 September 2023. In my view, the provisions in these sets of regulations are compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.
When the UK left the European Union, much EU law was initially preserved to ensure legislative continuity. Now, however, some pieces of law need to be restated. This is because following the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act after 31 December 2023 certain retained EU law addressed in court cases will stop applying. Therefore, to remove any legal ambiguity for occupational pension schemes, DWP is restating the law addressed in three court cases—Allonby, Walker and Hampshire—the former only in relation to the extent that it applies to guaranteed minimum pensions.
We will be debating four sets of regulations: a set of two instructions for Great Britain and Northern Ireland covering the Allonby and Walker judgments and a similar set of two instructions for the Hampshire judgment. At the request of the Northern Ireland Executive, the Government have agreed to legislate on behalf of the Department for Communities in Northern Ireland. I will start therefore with the Pensions Act and the Equality Act 2010 (Amendment) (Equal Treatment by Occupational Pension Schemes) Regulations 2023 and its Northern Ireland equivalent that relate to the Allonby and Walker judgments.
Allonby is about the right to equal pay between men and women where discrimination has arisen in an occupational pension scheme because of legislation on guaranteed minimum pensions—GMPs. Regulation 2 restates the law dealt with in the European Court of Justice’s Allonby judgment, but only to the extent it applies to guaranteed minimum pensions legislation from 17 May 1990 onwards. I will provide a little background, as there are a few things that need to be brought together. First, GMPs, which were a part of the occupational pensions system from 1978 to 1997, are unequal for men and women, reflecting general differences in treatment between men and women in legislation at the time. There are disparities, including the age at which guaranteed minimum pensions can be paid: age 65 for men and age 60 for women. These differences in treatment can result in men and women in identical employment receiving different amounts of pension benefits from their occupational pension scheme.
Secondly, the European Court of Justice’s Barber judgment of 17 May 1990 found that pension benefits must be paid to men and women on an equal basis for pensions earned from the judgment date onwards. This means that pension schemes are required to equalise pensions to correct the unequal impact caused by members having a GMP.
Thirdly, in 2004, the European Court of Justice’s Allonby judgment found that where legislation is the source of discrimination, it is not necessary for a claimant to be able to point to a real-life opposite sex comparator.
This brings us to the Equality Act 2010, which requires schemes to have an equal treatment rule; anything in a pension scheme’s rules that treats one sex less favourably than the other should be read as if it does not do so. However, this applies only when there is a real-life comparator. If a woman wanted to show that she was being treated unequally, for example, she would have to point to a real-life man who was being treated differently. In some pension schemes this was difficult to prove. Noble Lords will remember occupations such as dinner ladies or miners.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Viscount for his complete exposé of all the problems that have existed and how the Government are trying to rectify them. Our Benches agree with these SIs. There is no problem with them. I see other noble Lords have lots of notes; I know from experience that I can be brief knowing that they will deal with the minutiae. This seems to be more rules bringing old EU law into domestic legislation. These SIs raise broader points about discrimination in pensions, which is roughly the scope of the legislation. However, as usual, in bringing old EU laws into place we are missing the opportunity to make pledges to follow the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman’s recommendations. It reports conversations with WASPI—Women Against State Pension Inequality—women. I would appreciate it if the noble Viscount could comment on how that is going to be dealt with.
Will the noble Viscount give the committee an update on the LEAP—legal entitlement and administrative practices—exercise through which the Government are doing a corrections exercise for historic errors and underpayments to women? I understand that these processes are taking place, but I do not know quite how far they have gone or how quickly they are going or when the majority of cases will be dealt with. I hope that the noble Viscount can put a bit of meat on that and give us some timeframe for LEAP and WASPI women, which are two issues close to my heart.
Baroness Drake (Lab)
My Lords, I declare my interests set out in the register as a pension scheme trustee. I welcome these statutory instruments and thank the Minister for the clarity of his explanation of their history. The equal treatment by occupational pension scheme regulations before us maintain the protection of the right not to be discriminated against on the grounds of sexual orientation in relation to pension benefits, particularly survivor benefits, which would be lost on 31 December 2023 but for these regulations. That is a pretty compelling reason for welcoming them.
Those protections were originally secured through the EU framework directive for equal treatment and confirmed by our Supreme Court in the Walker case. They apply to occupational pension scheme benefits and to compensation to beneficiaries of pension schemes that enter the Pension Protection Fund.
My first thought was: gosh, the Government are taking things to the wire, time-wise, given that the House rises on 19 December. It does raise worrying concerns about what other pension protections for UK citizens, previously preserved by Section 4 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act, will be lost because of a failure, whether by intent or neglect, to meet the 31 December 2023 deadline for changes to domestic legislation to be made for them to be retained. What level of confidence can the Minister give the House that all protections of pension benefits for members and beneficiaries preserved by Section 4 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act are or will be captured in changes to domestic legislation prior to 31 December? Is it intended that some of those protections will not be preserved? If so, which are they?
These regulations also restate retained EU law on the right to equal pay between men and women where discrimination arises from the legislation on guaranteed minimum pensions by amendments to the Equality Act and the Pensions Act 2004, so the right continues to apply to occupational schemes and PPF payments. Very importantly—it is certainly close to my heart—the regulations retain the intent of the 2004 ECJ judgment of Allonby to nullify the requirement for a real-life opposite-sex comparator to demonstrate unequal treatment. Instead, a notional or statistical comparator can be used. That is such an important judgment and it demonstrates the value of the many ECJ judgments that contributed so importantly to progressing gender equality issues. As my noble friend was reflecting, so was I; I was actually a commissioner of the EOC, which supported the Allonby judgment at the time the ECJ pronounced its decision.
Unless the amendments to legislation are made by 31 December, this particular important protection is lost. Again, that is another compelling reason for welcoming these regulations. What level of confidence can the Minister give us that all rights to equal pay between men and women in the payment of pension benefits to members and beneficiaries, previously preserved by Section 4 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act, are or will be retained in changes to domestic legislation prior to 31 December? While welcoming what we can see, we are nervous about what we cannot see, so we seek assurances on that.
The regulations before us on PPF compensation are also necessary because again, under the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023, without them the more generous PPF compensation payment calculations, which flow from the 2018 Hampshire judgment from the European court, would be lost. So too would the effects of the further clarifying 2020 Hughes judgment in the High Court, which was to disapply the then-existing cap on PPF compensation to those below their scheme’s normal retirement age, when the employer became insolvent. The High Court considered that it constituted unlawful age discrimination. For the intent of these judgments to remain, the regulations before us are required by the deadline of 31 December 2023, and of course there is an obvious and compelling reason why they are welcome.
It is very fortunate that the Government decided as policy to retain the effects of these judgments. It would have been a pretty poor show had they not, given the impact on individuals—and particularly so, given that the PPF is currently well funded, so much so that it is reducing its levy. We are very dependent on government to identify those elements of retained EU law to be retained in domestic law. What assurance can the Minister give that every element of retained EU law that impinges on the eligibility of pension scheme members for PPF compensation and the level and value of that compensation will be retained in domestic law after December 2023?
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for a very helpful introduction to these orders and particularly for explaining the background to the court cases, which will make reading Hansard for this debate a bit more comprehensible than might otherwise have been the case. I also thank my noble friend Lady Drake, to whose comments I shall return, and the noble Lord, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, whose confidence in my determination to expose the detail and minutiae I trust will not be disappointed.
All these regulations are a product of Brexit, the gift that keeps on giving. I shall start with the draft Pensions Act 2004 (Amendment) (Pension Protection Fund Compensation) Regulations 2023—the other way around from the Minister. As we have heard, it was prompted by two court decisions: the Hampshire court judgment, whereby the ECJ found that former employees should get at least half the value of their accrued pension benefits if their employer was insolvent before they hit pension age, and Hughes, when the High Court disapplied the cap on PPF compensation for those below normal pension age on the date of the employer’s insolvency.
These regulations amend the Pensions Act 2004 to ensure that affected scheme members receive at least the minimum level of protection due under the Hampshire judgment and remove reference to the PPF cap. Also, interestingly, they clarify how the Hampshire judgment is being implemented by providing a calculation of PPF compensation by reference to a one-off valuation, as approved by the Court of Appeal in Hughes.
As has been noted, action is needed because, under Section 4 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, the principles of EU law will sunset at the end of this year and cease to have effect, including where the position has changed as a result of court cases, which is very relevant to us today. The purpose of these regulations is to ensure that the effects of the Hampshire and Hughes judgments will be preserved in domestic legislation. Could the Minister confirm for the record that nothing will change from the current position once these regulations take effect and the relevant EU retained law has sunsetted?
Secondly, paragraph 10.1 of the Explanatory Memorandum reports that the DWP met with a cross-section of representatives of the pensions industry to seek views on its proposed response to the Hampshire judgment. There was broad support for retaining the effects of the judgment—but anybody who has worked in government will know that “broad support” can cover quite a range of views being expressed in the room. Out of interest, was there any opposition to retaining the effects of the Hampshire judgment and, if so, on what grounds? I am just interested in who was in the room.
I have read the draft Pensions (Pension Protection Fund Compensation) (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2023, which look on the face of it to be identical to the regulations I have just discussed, but amending the Pensions (Northern Ireland) Order 2005 instead of the Pensions Act 2004. Can the Minister confirm for the record that the effect of those regulations will be the same as the other ones, but just in Northern Ireland rather than in Great Britain? When regulations are this technical, it is important for the Committee to hear from the Minister what the intention is rather than just taking my word for it—love of detail notwithstanding.
I turn to the draft Pensions Act 2004 and the Equality Act 2010 (Amendment) (Equal Treatment by Occupational Pension Schemes) Regulations 2023—these are not catchy titles. These regulations were also prompted by court cases. In the Allonby case—I take the Minister’s point that this is being retained only inasmuch as it relates to GMPs, not its broader findings—the ECJ found that an opposite-sex comparator was not needed to demonstrate discrimination, where that was caused by legislation. In the Walker case, the UK Supreme Court found on the basis of EU equality law that legislation could not allow occupational pension schemes to restrict survivor benefits for survivors of same-sex civil partnerships or marriages so that only contributions from 5 December 2005 matter, when these became possible.
Something the Minister said confused me a little. I think he said that the Government were restating the law to avoid and remove any ambiguity. From reading these judgments, I understood that their contents have so far been resting on retained EU law and that, when that sunsets, there will be nothing supporting them. I may have misunderstood, so perhaps the Minister could clarify that. I understood—or perhaps misunderstood —that these regulations were necessary because without them the contents of those court judgments would not be retained.
Presumably, the Government could have amended domestic law to bring it in line with all these judgments. We have had an awful lot of pensions Bills in the last year; presumably any one of them would have been a means for doing this. Can the Minister explain why that did not happen? Since retained EU law rights will sunset at the end of the year, we need changes to be made. These regulations amend the Equality Act to remove the need for an opposite-sex comparator and they amend the Pensions Act 2004 to introduce the same test for unequal treatment when members are entitled to payments from the PPF. They also amend Schedule 9 to the Equality Act 2010 to reflect the framework directive rights with which the legislation was deemed incompatible.
Will the Minister confirm for the record that the effect of these changes is to maintain the position we are in now, resting on retained EU law? Is the position of the survivors of all marriages and civil partnerships now the same, whatever the sex of either the surviving or the deceased member? Is everybody, in any civil partnership or marriage, in the same position, irrespective of the sex of those involved?
These regulations retain one form of protection, as my noble friend Lady Drake articulated, but still we are left with a significant gender pensions gap, an issue to which the House returns periodically. There are various contributory factors, including the carer penalty and the impact of the gender pay gap that means women are more likely to have lower pension contributions. What plans do the Government have for reforms to reduce the gender pensions gap more widely?
One of the contributory factors is the fact that women are less likely to be eligible for auto-enrolment, so will the Minister tell the Committee when the Government intend to implement the provisions of the Private Member’s Bill sponsored by the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, which enabled the extension of auto-enrolment from age 18 and set contributions from the first £1 of earnings?
As far as I can tell, the draft Occupational Pension Schemes (Amendment) (Equal Treatment) (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2023 seem to mirror the provisions of the previous regulations but amend the Equal Pay Act (Northern Ireland) 1970 and the Pensions (Northern Ireland) Order 1995, instead of the Equality Act and the Pensions Act. Once again, can the Minister confirm that the effect will be the same, albeit just in Northern Ireland?
Finally, I am really interested to hear the Minister’s response to the question from my noble friend Lady Drake: given how close we are now to the end of this year, are there any other areas where DWP has been relying on retained EU law that will be sunsetted in a few weeks? A clear assurance to the Committee for the record would be very helpful on that point. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
My Lords, I thank the three noble Lords who have spoken for their general support for these regulations. The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, was right when she alluded to there being an element of complexity but, if I may say so, all four of us have seen through that complexity. I appreciate the general support. Nevertheless, I am very aware that a number of questions were raised and, as ever, I will do my best to answer them, in no particular order.
The noble Lord, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, asked about the WASPI. I understand exactly why he raised that. He will probably expect the only answer that I can give: we are not able to comment on the status of the WASPI at the moment because, as he will be aware, there is an ombudsman investigation ongoing. He has probably heard me say that in the Chamber before; I wish I could say something different, but I am afraid I cannot go any further.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)
Does the Minister have any idea of when we might hear or when the judgment will allow us to say something?
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
I wish I could as well, but it would depend on when the ombudsman is ready to do so, and I am not aware of when that might happen. Of course, we can always ask, but it is fair to say that if we asked, I think we might know what the reply might be. However, that is a fair question.
I said that this was in no particular order. In answer to a question asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, on why there is a reference to resolving ambiguity when these rights arose under EU law—that was towards the end of her speech—in the Pensions Protection Fund regulations, references to the compensation cap in the Pensions Act 2004 are removed by these regulations to reflect the decision in Hughes. I hope that makes sense.
The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, asked whether I can confirm that the effect is to maintain the current position. Yes, the regulations reflect decisions of judgments relating to the current position.
I think the question that was asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, as well as the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, referred to the effect of the Northern Ireland regulations and whether they are the same as the GB regulations. The answer is yes, the effect of the Northern Ireland regulations is just the same as the GB regulations.
The noble Baroness, Lady Drake, asked a very specific question about whether all protections are preserved, and if they are not, which ones would fall away after 31 December 2023. I think that falls into a number of questions she asked about timing, so I hope I can reassure her by saying that, on the timings leading up to 31 December 2023, I am not aware of any issues or concerns over the timing. I hope that gives some reassurance. However, to put a little more into the answer, the noble Baroness may be aware that the Government have decided to allow the Bauer judgment to sunset under the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act. This means that former employees whose employer becomes insolvent on or after the sunset date will not have an entitlement under that judgment. However, I reassure her that I am not aware of any other preserved under Section 4 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act, which I believe she raised.
The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, asked whether the Northern Ireland regulations provide the same effect. The answer is yes—I think I have covered that.
The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, asked whether anything will change from 1 January 2024 as regards protection provided by the decisions in Hampshire and Hughes, and yes, that is correct. For insolvencies after that date, the same rules will apply because of these regulations.
The noble Lord, Lord Palmer, raised a question about the LEAP exercise, and I hope I can give a slightly longer and more helpful answer in terms of where we are with that. He will know that the DWP became aware of the issue of state pensions underpayments —which was not addressed under previous Governments— in 2020 and took immediate action to investigate the extent of the problem. The Government have fully committed to ensuring that any historical errors are put right as quickly as possible where underpayments are identified, and the DWP will contact the individuals to inform them of the changes to their state pension amount and of any arrears payment that they will receive. My department in its annual report and accounts, particularly for the year 2022-23, published on 6 July 2023 updated figures relating to estimated expenditure and the number of cases affected. The overall number of customers to be reviewed is approximately 678,000; of those, we estimate that 170,000 customers will be affected. Between 11 January 2021 and 31 March 2023, 263,350 cases were reviewed. I can reassure the noble Lord that the department is on track to complete the exercise for category BL and category D by the end of 2023—to get into some granular detail on this. I think I understand that, and I hope the noble Lord will be reassured by it. For missed conversion cases, the exercise will run to late 2024—the end of next year.
The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, asked a specific question about whether there was any opposition to retaining the Hampshire judgment. The answer is that there was very little opposition—hardly any, although I am not sure I can give her any more information on that—to retaining it from stakeholders. I think it was to do with the Hampshire judgment that the noble Baroness raised.
Baroness Drake (Lab)
I will need to read very carefully what the Minister said—hopefully it will cover all of the points, but, if not, I will drop him a note.
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
On that last point, the Minister mentioned the Private Member’s Bill, but my question was actually about when the Government were planning to implement its provisions—perhaps he could give me a steer on that. I would be grateful if he would read Hansard because, if he thinks that he has answered the questions, I perhaps did not shape them as precisely as I had intended. Could he have a look at that and then come back to me?
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
Most certainly— I am grateful that the noble Baroness has put me right on the precise question. I knew what she was asking at the time. On the timing and where we are with the rollout of the Private Member’s Bill, I do not have that to hand—actually, it has been handed to me, so perhaps I do; it is one I prepared earlier. The consultation on implementation is coming soon—I am aware that a consultation comes out of that Private Member’s Bill—but, in terms of actual dates, I am afraid I cannot go any further. But I hope that that directly answered that particular question. I feel that a letter is due. A lot of questions were asked about exactly how this should be, and I pledge to answer them all fully if I have not done so this afternoon.
Occupational Pension Schemes (Amendment) (Equal Treatment) (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2023
(1 year ago)
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Viscount Younger of Leckie
That the Grand Committee do consider the Occupational Pension Schemes (Amendment) (Equal Treatment) (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2023.
Pensions Act 2004 (Amendment) (Pension Protection Fund Compensation) Regulations 2023
(1 year ago)
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Viscount Younger of Leckie
That the Grand Committee do consider the Pensions Act 2004 (Amendment) (Pension Protection Fund Compensation) Regulations 2023.
Pensions (Pension Protection Fund Compensation) (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2023
(1 year ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Viscount Younger of Leckie
That the Grand Committee do consider the Pensions (Pension Protection Fund Compensation) (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2023.
Carer’s Assistance (Carer Support Payment) (Scotland) Regulations 2023 (Consequential Modifications) Order 2023
(1 year ago)
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Viscount Younger of Leckie
That the Grand Committee do consider the Carer’s Assistance (Carer Support Payment) (Scotland) Regulations 2023 (Consequential Modifications) Order 2023.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Viscount Younger of Leckie) (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to debate this order, which is the result of collaborative working between the UK Government and the Scottish Government and supports the Scottish Government’s decision to introduce carer support payment in Scotland.
The Scotland Act 2016 devolved responsibility for certain social security benefits and employment support to the Scottish Parliament. The introduction of carer support payment in Scotland under the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018 exercises this responsibility. This order is made under Section 104 of the Scotland Act 1998, which allows for necessary legislative amendments in consequence of any provision made by or under any Act of the Scottish Parliament. Scotland Act orders are a demonstration of devolution in action. I am pleased to say that this order is the result of close working between the Scotland Office and the Scottish Government, the Department for Work and Pensions, the Ministry of Defence, His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and Northern Ireland’s Department for Communities. I thank all involved for the collaborative approach taken to progress this order.
The order makes amendments to relevant social security legislation as a consequence of the Carer’s Assistance (Carer Support Payment) (Scotland) Regulations 2023, which were made on 25 October. I shall refer to these as the 2023 regulations. These regulations replace carer’s allowance with carer support payment for individuals ordinarily resident in Scotland. The 2023 regulations introduce carer support payment in Scotland in a phased approach from this month, beginning with a pilot in three local authority areas: Dundee City, Perth and Kinross and the Outer Hebrides or Western Isles. They have been chosen by the Scottish Government to take initial applications from carers across urban, rural and island communities in Scotland. Further local authority areas will be added to the pilot from spring 2024 and carer support payment will be available across the whole of Scotland by autumn 2024.
Carer support payment will initially operate in a broadly similar way to carer’s allowance. Like carer’s allowance, it will be an income replacement benefit—a payment of £76.75 per week for unpaid carers providing 35 hours or more of care a week to someone receiving certain disability benefits. However, there will be some differences, which I will spell out. First, carer support payment will have a shorter past presence test requiring claimants to have been present in the common travel area for 26 of the past 52 weeks. The requirement for carer’s allowance is to have been resident in Great Britain for 104 of the previous 156 weeks. Those good at maths will work out that that is two out of the past three years. Secondly, some students in full-time education will also be able to claim carer support payment, whereas people undertaking full-time education are not eligible for carer’s allowance, instead being supported through the educational maintenance system. The Scottish Government may choose to make further changes to this benefit in future.
I will now take a step back to consider how many people will be impacted by these changes. DWP is currently delivering carer’s allowance to around 120,000 unpaid carers in Scotland. Around 80,000 of them are currently receiving payments of carer’s allowance. A further 40,000 carers have an underlying entitlement to carer’s allowance enabling them to access additional amounts in other benefits, although they do not get paid carer’s allowance as they are paid other income replacement benefits.
I will now go on to explain the effect this order will have and the provision it will make. This order will ensure that those receiving carer support payment in Scotland are treated the same as those receiving carer’s allowance. The order ensures that carer support payment is a qualifying benefit for the Christmas bonus. It ensures that those eligible for carer support payment are treated as qualifying carers and are eligible to receive the additional amount for carers in an award of state pension credit. It ensures that recipients are not disadvantaged in relation to compensatory payments as part of the HMRC tax-free childcare scheme. The order also ensures that it is not possible for any one person to receive both carer’s allowance and carer support payment at the same time. Similarly, no more than one person would be able to receive a carer’s benefit for care provided to a single individual. There are some benefits, administered by Veterans UK, that overlap with carer support payment; this order makes provision to ensure that an individual cannot receive these overlapping benefits at the same time.
The order makes equivalent provision in Northern Ireland in respect of those policy areas that are transferred to Northern Ireland. This is because, when a claimant moves to Northern Ireland they will continue to receive carer support payment for 13 weeks from the date they move while they apply for carer’s allowance. In that time, their carer support payment benefit will continue to attract the related entitlements. The 13-week run of support will also be available when carers move from Scotland to elsewhere in the UK.
In summary, this order makes amendments to UK legislation to support the introduction of carer support payment in Scotland. It ensures that the new Scottish benefit is able to operate effectively and that its recipients are treated equitably. I commend the order to the Committee and beg to move.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)
My Lords, I once again thank the noble Viscount for the detail of what the statutory instrument does and does not do. It seems to me that it purely ensures that the carer support payment in Scotland is treated the same as carer’s allowance. That seems to be a good idea. I cannot see why anyone could disagree. It also seeks to ensure that there is no double claiming by playing one set of regulations off against another set. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm my understanding of that is correct because, if it is correct, it seems very sensible. Could he come back to Parliament or write about how these regulations are being observed and give examples of success or failure? I think that to some extent his final comments cover this. I think he was referring to what had happened in the past. I am looking forward to an ongoing report about how these new regulations will help and to examples of success or failure. They need to be monitored in some way. I hope the Minister will be able to oblige as the situation evolves.
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, as we have heard, this order relates to people who will be eligible for the new carer support payment, which is replacing carer’s allowance in Scotland. As the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, indicated, it covers two issues, one around benefit entitlement and the other around trying to avoid duplicate or overlapping benefits.
First, the order aims to ensure that people who get carer support payment are treated in the same way as those receiving carer’s allowance when it comes to entitlement to reserved benefits.
Three reserve benefits are named in the order, and the Minister referenced them in his opening speech: the Christmas bonus, the additional amount for qualifying carers on pension credit, and compensatory payments due in quite complicated circumstances under the HMRC tax-free childcare scheme. Is that a comprehensive list? Are there any other payments to which someone on carer’s allowance could be entitled which were not mentioned here or indeed in the order?
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
I start again by thanking both the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, and the noble Lord, Lord Palmer. This is familiar territory but I thank them for their broad support. I will attempt to answer the questions that were raised, again in no particular order.
The first question raised by the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, was simply what this order does. I tried to set that out in my opening statement but perhaps I can answer it in a different way. This particular order, and an associated negative Section 104 order, makes provision in reserved areas to ensure that the 2023 regulations are fully operational at the time of implementation. It ensures that individuals in receipt of carer support payment are treated, as I said earlier, in the same way as individuals in receipt of carer’s allowance. That might answer a question that was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, on the treatment. It is similar treatment but in my opening remarks I alluded to some differences that were going to come through from the Scottish Government, particularly in terms of the treatment of students. As we know, of course, there are different educational arrangements for students in Scotland compared to England. I hope I made that clear in my opening remarks, in terms of the—
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
Just to clarify, what I was trying to say in the question was that the Minister had identified a couple of areas—one about residence requirements, the other about students—where people who are not currently entitled to claim carer’s allowance would be able to claim the new benefit. I was asking whether it was also the other way round; is there anyone who would not be entitled to the new benefit who is entitled to carer’s allowance, and if so, whose job is it to contact them? The Scottish Government would arguably have no locus in relation to them.
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
I must admit—please forgive me—that I thought that was a separate question, but I remember it and I shall try to answer it at some point.
The noble Lord, Lord Palmer, asked whether the order ensures that there is no double claiming. He wanted me to confirm that there is no double claiming, double counting or duplication—and I can confirm just that. I hope that I set that out in my opening remarks as well; that is also the aim, and also comes about from the very close collaboration of working that we have with the Scottish Government and, indeed, other parties that I mentioned in my opening speech.
The noble Lord, Lord Palmer, asked about the future, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock. On learning lessons and what we will gain from this order, particularly looking north of the border, can I say two things? One is that I have no doubt that there will be a way of finding out whether the three pilots mentioned were successful, however one might define that. I confirm that it is very much a matter for the Scottish Government — so this is an enabling series of regulations, which will enable the Scottish Government in a devolved manner to do what they feel is right. But I have no doubt that there will be a way in which we can find out.
On the noble Baroness’s point about learning from this—absolutely, she makes a very good point. When these different regulations are made in the right and proper way for the devolved nations, we should and will be, with our close collaboration, learning from any lessons that might be beneficial for us in England.
The noble Baroness asked how people should apply for the carer support payment. The application process is a matter for the Scottish Government, and questions on this should be addressed to them. That is not entirely helpful, but it falls in line with my point, which is that this is enabling the Scottish Government to make the changes that they will take forward themselves.
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
I was trying very carefully to ask questions of the Minister that related to his responsibilities and those of DWP, not the Scottish Government. I was not asking about how somebody would go about applying for the new benefit. There was reference in the order and Explanatory Memorandum to people being transferred from carer’s allowance to the new benefit. Until someone is transferred, the DWP has a responsibility for them. I was asking whether they could make any contact with those to whom they are currently paying carer’s allowance or whether they were leaving that entirely to the Scottish Government.
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
Unless there is a ready answer to that, I think that gets into the granularity of the transfer process, and I shall need to write to the noble Baroness to give her some proper information on that. Again, I make the point that there is a close collaboration between the UK and Scottish Governments. It is a fair question, and I think that I need to get some granular detail on that.
The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, asked about impact assessments. The answer is that orders made under the Scotland Act 1998 usually do not in themselves have a direct or indirect impact, whether benefit or cost, on businesses, charities or the voluntary sector, and would not therefore have a regulatory impact assessment. This is the case for this particular order. The noble Baroness may be aware—and I just want to confirm—that this is quite usual for constitutional measures in this respect. Implementing this order is not expected to have an impact on business, charities or voluntary bodies, and there is also not expected to be a significant impact on the public sector. The appropriate impact assessments were undertaken for the Carer’s Assistance (Carer Support Payment) (Scotland) Regulations 2023, when these regulations were prepared. No further assessments were required, as this order is a consequence of the 2023 regulations.
I have a couple of other questions that I should like to answer, which may help the noble Baroness with one of her earlier questions. I was asked when the Scottish Government would start and complete the transfer of individuals from carer’s allowance to the carer support payment. This may be helpful—I hope that it answers the question. From February 2024, the Scottish Government will begin the process of transferring the awards of around 130,000 people getting carer’s allowance in Scotland to carer support payments—it will be initiated by them. This will include around 40,000 carers with underlying entitlement only—carers who have entitlement to carer’s allowance but are receiving another overlapping benefit instead. Case transfer is a joint project between the Scottish Government and the DWP, which we intend to complete as soon as possible, while ensuring that the process is safe and secure. Case transfer for all disability and carer benefits remains on track to complete by the end of 2025.
The noble Baroness asked about similarities and differences in eligibility between the two benefits. I covered some of that in my opening speech, but this might answer one question that she asked. No one is eligible for the carer’s allowance who is not eligible for the carer support payment. That may be the succinct answer that she was looking for.
I hope that I have answered all questions. Again, as ever—with the number of questions that the noble Baroness rightfully usually asks—I normally look, and this case will definitely look, at Hansard, to be absolutely sure that I have answered them all. In the meantime, I beg to move.
House of Lords
Death of a Member: Lord Cotter
The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
My Lords, I regret to inform the House of the death of the noble Lord, Lord Cotter, this morning. On behalf of the House, I extend our condolences to the noble Lord’s family and friends.
Children’s Hospices: Funding
(1 year ago)
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Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they are on target to provide £25 million for children’s hospices for 2023-24; and whether they intend to repeat this on an annual basis uprated in line with inflation and allocated directly to each children’s hospice.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Markham) (Con)
The Government and NHS England recognise the vital role that hospices play in delivering high-quality, personalised palliative and end-of-life care for all ages. The children and young people’s hospice grant plays an important role in enabling that to happen. As such, grant allocations of £25 million have been paid in full to hospices in 2023-24. A further £25 million has been announced for 2024-25, with the funding allocation mechanism currently being worked through by NHS England.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister. He will be aware that 80% of the income that goes to children’s hospices comes from fundraising. With the cost of living problems we have at the moment, that is increasingly difficult, so the £25 million grant is a lifeline. Do the Government accept that making this grant permanent, so that hospices know about it going forward, and uprating it by the rate of inflation will give enormous help in stabilising the finances of children’s hospices?
Lord Markham (Con)
First, I absolutely recognise the noble Lord’s point that 80% of hospices’ funding comes through charities, so they represent an excellent resource for us. That is why we are pleased to confirm the £25 million for next year. The debate, which I am sure we will get into more later, is about making it a direct grant. We generally think that ICBs are best placed to take control of health services in their area, and it is about trying to get the right balance between making direct grants for the provision of places and saying that ICBs know what is best for their area and should cater for them in that way. I would be happy to talk further about that balance with the noble Lord.
Lord Patel (CB)
My Lords, should we not be ashamed that care for children at the end of their short lives is funded by village fetes, cake shops and elderly marathon runners instead of by central government? The total cost of 34 children’s hospices is £130 million and the totality of it should be funded centrally, not as unguaranteed £25 million grants every year. We should be ashamed of this.
Lord Markham (Con)
To put this into context again, only about 6% of children’s deaths occur in hospices, so 94% happen in other settings. I want to get that right for the context of all this. There are many parts to this; hospices are quite close to my heart and I want to donate to them charitably. There are many parts of society where we think there is a role for charities to add value and enhance the system, rather than their being crowded out by government-funded sources all the time.
The Lord Bishop of Worcester
My Lords, I am grateful for this announcement. We have a wonderful hospice in Worcester, the Acorns Children’s Hospice, which does extraordinary work with young people. Does the Minister accept that, although a minority of children die in hospices, the number of children cared for by them greatly exceeds that. Their work is invaluable.
Lord Markham (Con)
Yes, it is. I was surprised to find out that, for instance, the number of young people living with life-limiting conditions was 33,000 in 2001-02 and is over 90,000 today. That is the case because we generally have much better treatments for those children. That is obviously good news, but it means that lots more people with such conditions have to be cared for and we need to make sure that they are.
Lord Wigley (PC)
My Lords, as a former trustee of Hope House Children’s Hospices, I draw the Minister’s attention to the clinical guidance published by NICE, which showed that for every £1 spent by the public sector in supporting end-of-life care for infants, children and young people, non-cash savings worth almost £3 would be released back into the NHS. Will the Government commit to provide, ongoing, the necessary funding to sustain hospices and maximise the benefit for the NHS and, most of all, for the dependent families?
Lord Markham (Con)
As I said, we absolutely agree on the vital role of it all. The amount of funding that we placed there a few years ago was £15 million, so it has gone up by about 67%. It is excellent value for money, and it is excellent that we managed to get the care and energy of the voluntary sector into it. That is the model that I think we all believe in.
Lord Balfe (Con)
My Lords, I declare an interest as the joint chair of the all-party group whose secretariat is Together for Short Lives. The thing that is of great difficulty in this sector is uncertainty. In the interests of permanence and certainty, will the Minister include a dedicated long-term strategy in the Government’s mandate to NHS England that addresses the palliative care needed for children and young people so that the sector can have an assured future?
Lord Markham (Con)
My noble friend is correct; it is a long-term part of the statutory requirements of all ICBs to provide palliative care, so it is written into that NHSE mandate. It has to review all 42 ICB arrangements, and we make sure that in each setting they have the 24/7 care set-up required of them.
Lord Allan of Hallam (LD)
My Lords, following on from the Minister’s answer to the noble Lord’s supplementary question, most integrated care boards will have only a very small number of residents who need services from local children’s hospices. Given that, it raises concerns that spending on those services will not be prioritised at that very local level. Does the Minister accept that there is a case for integrated care boards to band together at the regional level and fund hospice services that way?
Lord Markham (Con)
Yes, absolutely. Again, there is a balance we are trying to get over here, because we are all agreed on the importance of what they are trying to do. At the same time, we believe that ICBs, generally, are the right people make provision at a local level, because they know best what is required in their area. Clearly, where it makes sense for them to band together, that has to be sensible.
Baroness Wheeler (Lab)
My Lords, most of us will have the amazing work of our own local children’s hospice in mind today in response to this Question. Ours in Surrey is the care and support that the Shooting Star Children’s Hospices provide for babies, children and young people with life-limiting conditions, and their families. We fully support the children’s hospice grant going directly to a hospice. It is the most cost-effective way; it overcomes the patchy performance of many ICBs and their CCG predecessors on hospice funding, and it avoids hospices having to engage with multiple ICSs when their services go across areas. What actions are the Government taking to ensure that ICBs meet the NICE standards in supporting children’s hospice care and against ICBs that have made no attempt to access the current grant arrangements?
Lord Markham (Con)
As I mentioned, it is a statutory requirement for every ICB. NHS England is responsible and is reviewing those arrangements in all 42 trusts. At the same time, this is an element which the CQC follows up to ensure that care is in place. I echo the House’s feelings that the results of the voluntary sector and the hospices are excellent. We need to ensure they get the proper support.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)
My Lords, I declare my interest as having set up training in paediatric palliative medicine in the UK and internationally. Together for Short Lives data shows that about £15,000 per annum is spent on children and young people in the active caseload, which is probably almost 10,000 young people having care from hospices, some of them for many years. Given that there are service specifications and guidelines, can the Minister be a bit more explicit as to how those are monitored to ensure that service specifications really do meet the needs of the children and that hospice services are integrated with local paediatric services, given that such children often have multiple and complex needs?
Lord Markham (Con)
As I said, it is a responsibility for all of them, but I will happily give the noble Baroness a detailed reply so that it is very clear exactly what they are doing to make sure that happens.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)
My Lords, a bazillion years ago when I was the Scottish Health Minister pre-devolution, we introduced a pound-for-pound match-funding system for hospices. That worked brilliantly because it meant that hospices could raise more cash and the Government provided support for organisations that depend on being voluntary. Would my noble friend consider doing that, not just for children’s hospices but for the movement as a whole, which does such fantastic work?
Lord Markham (Con)
My noble friend makes an excellent point. My understanding is exactly in this vein: £7 million was paid in match funding to children’s hospices in exactly the way he mentioned. As to whether we should be doing that more widely, it is a good idea, and I am happy to take it away and come back on it.
Authorised Push Payment Fraud Performance Report
(1 year ago)
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Lord Vaux of Harrowden
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the authorised push payment (APP) fraud performance report published by the Payment Systems Regulator in October 2023.
The Parliamentary Secretary, HM Treasury (Baroness Penn) (Con)
My Lords, the Government are committed to tackling authorised push payment fraud and stopping customers falling victim to scams. The Government welcome the publication on 31 October by the Payment Systems Regulator of data on the levels of APP fraud and of reimbursement among payment service providers. This will ensure that firms are properly incentivised to combat fraud and explore all avenues to do so.
Lord Vaux of Harrowden (CB)
My Lords, this excellent report allows us at long last to see which banks are behaving best and worst in preventing and reimbursing fraud. One of the best ways to reduce fraud would be to stop fraudsters using UK bank accounts to receive the stolen money. We can now see from this report that Metro Bank, TSB, Starling and Monzo are the banks that receive and process the most stolen money. Smaller payment providers are even worse. For every £1 million received by Clear Junction, for example, more than £10,000 was stolen money, and almost 20% of Dzing Finance’s receipts by number were fraudulent. Now that we have this information, what are the Government doing to ensure that banks take real action to stop their accounts being used by fraudsters? Secondly, I congratulate Anthony Browne on his promotion yesterday, but what does that mean for his essential role as the Prime Minister’s Anti-Fraud Champion?
Baroness Penn (Con)
I congratulate the noble Lord, because he was a strong advocate for the publication of this data. As he says, it has indeed been revealing, and I assure noble Lords that action has already been taken on the back of it. On 27 October, the Financial Conduct Authority imposed restrictions on Dzing Finance Ltd, which was the worst-performing payment service provider for fraud volumes received. It now cannot on-board any new retail customers or allow any new incoming funds from retail customers for the purposes of issuances of electronic money or providing payment services without the written agreement of the FCA. In March this year, the FCA wrote to all payment firms, highlighting fraud risks and instructing them to take action to address this. Where issues are identified, the FCA will continue to take action. I also congratulate my friend in the other place on his appointment, but I assure noble Lords that his excellent work will continue under the work of the Home Office.
Lord Sandhurst (Con)
My Lords, the Payment Systems Regulator aims to provide consumers with better information about fraud and the risks associated with each bank and payment services firm. If the volume and value of frauds and scams enabled by particular tech sectors and social media platforms were also published, that publicity would drive those institutions to improve standards and protect users. Will the PSR be asked to direct all payment service providers to include in their APP fraud data submissions for the next publication the value and volume of fraud enabled by the largest social media and tech platforms?
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, it would be interesting to look at that and at how that data might be collected. The point at the heart of my noble friend’s question is absolutely right. Banks have a responsibility in this area, and that is why the reimbursement obligation is coming forward, but others have an obligation in this area too. The recent Online Safety Act imposes new obligations on the largest social media companies and platforms to prevent their users being exposed to harmful content, including fraudulent content. I am sure those measures will make a real difference too.
Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)
My Lords, APP fraud rose by 20% in the first half of this year alone and, according to the Payment Systems Regulator, customers of banks and building societies have wildly different and divergent experiences of receiving compensation and restitution. While I welcome the mandatory reimbursement requirement that will come into force next year, in the meantime, what consideration is being given to mandate appropriate resourcing of out-of-hours fraud and complaints teams within banks to ensure that where an APP fraud has occurred it can be reported and acted on with appropriate speed?
Baroness Penn (Con)
As the noble Lord has noted, a significant step towards ensuring greater consistency and user experience will be the mandating of reimbursement; we already have 10 signatories to the voluntary reimbursement code. Of course banks need to have proper processes in place to deal with suspected fraud, and I think publications such as the data we had at the end of last month shine a light on how banks are performing and allow consumers to make informed choices about where they bank.
Baroness Kramer (LD)
My Lords, UK Finance has published analysis that shows that 78% of APP fraud originates online and another 18%—especially high value —via telecoms. These companies face no reimbursement liability at all. Will the Government act to change that and make the telecoms and online companies liable?
Baroness Penn (Con)
As I have said to noble Lords, through the Online Safety Act, platforms and services in scope will be required to take action to tackle fraud where it is facilitated through user-generated content or via search results. They must take preventive measures to prevent fraudulent content appearing on their platforms and swiftly remove it if it does. Additionally, there will be a duty on the largest social media companies and search engines to prevent fraudulent adverts on their services. Ofcom has the power to fine companies failing their duty of care up to £18 million or 10% of annual global turnover, so there will be accountability in the system for online companies too.
Lord Sikka (Lab)
My Lords, only 59% of the stolen money has been returned to customers, according to the PSR report. Can the Minister explain what pressures there are on bank directors to, as it were, take care of the customers’ interest? The regulators seem to be incredibly complacent that over 40% of the money still has not been returned. Is it not really a case of restructuring the FCA and the PSR, to ensure that customer representatives have the majority of the seats on the boards of those regulatory bodies so that they can get the protection they need?
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, I believe that an alternative route forward is already in train: the mandatory reimbursement requirement, which will apply across all payment service providers. As I said, there is currently a voluntary approach in place; a mandatory approach will ensure a much more consistent response for consumers when it is introduced next year.
Lord Livermore (Lab)
My Lords, the latest data from the Payment Systems Regulator shows that instances of payment card and remote banking fraud have fallen by 9% and 29% respectively, driven by greater use of much stronger customer authentication interventions. However, use of such initiatives varies markedly across the financial services sector. Does the Minister believe there is a case for stronger guidance on how digital banking platforms should make use of such technology?
Baroness Penn (Con)
The noble Lord is absolutely right that we need to use a range of tools to respond to fraud taking place through banking. The regulator does have the powers in place to ensure that payment services firms are taking the appropriate action, not just on reimbursement but to prevent the fraud in the first place.
Autism: In-patient Care in Mental Health Hospitals
(1 year ago)
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Lord Touhig
To ask His Majesty’s Government what provisions they are making to reduce the number of autistic people confined to in-patient care in mental health hospitals.
Lord Touhig (Lab)
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and declare an interest as a vice-president of the National Autistic Society.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Markham) (Con)
My Lords, this year we are investing £121 million in community support for autistic people and people with a learning disability. This will support reductions in the numbers of autistic in-patients in mental health hospitals in line with the NHS long-term plan commitments. To ensure that autistic people receive quality care in these settings, we are rolling out a National Autism Trainer Programme and have published guidance on sensory adaptations in health environments.
Lord Touhig (Lab)
The King’s Speech was an opportunity for the Government to introduce the mental health Bill, ending the scandal of autistic people being locked up in mental health hospitals, sometimes for decades. By shelving the Bill, the Government have failed thousands of autistic people and their families, who are devastated that there continues to be no legal protection against unnecessary detentions; I believe that is an attack on their human rights. The Minister is well respected across this House as a caring and compassionate individual, but I must press him on this. Will he please explain why His Majesty’s Government do not see the Bill as a priority, and as an opportunity to end a most evil practice?
Lord Markham (Con)
I thank the noble Lord for his kind words about me; I understand the situation. The Government are committed to implementing those changes and we are looking for opportunities to introduce them. I understand his disappointment that the Bill is not in the current programme of legislation. What I am committed to doing is making sure that as many features as possible from the Bill are implemented through action on the ground; the care and treatment reviews are a vital part of that today. Following the report from the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, we are also making sure that we have regular CQC reviews over the next few years. We are delivering good action in this space, but I understand his feelings.
Baroness Browning (Con)
My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, I am a vice-president of the National Autistic Society. I also remind the House of my interests in the register and my family interest in this subject. The reason why a lot of autistic people become in-patients in mental health hospitals is the lack of real understanding and training of healthcare professionals in that field. It is a lot better in the big conurbations than in the countryside. Autism is not a mental health condition but, as my noble friend the Minister will know, one of the problems that the Government will face if they are to help to get people out of these institutions is that, like the rest of us, people with autism can develop mental health conditions; autistic-related anxiety is a very common one. Psychologists—one finds more of them than psychiatrists out in the community—cannot prescribe; it has to be a psychiatrist who prescribes. Until you get the right number of trained professionals out in the community—namely, psychiatrists with a specialism in autism; it is no good having just your average jobbing psychiatrist—those people are doomed to stay. I urge my noble friend to look at the levels of availability for the right professionals, to release these people from the incarceration they should never have suffered in the first place.
Lord Markham (Con)
I and the whole House would agree with my noble friend that having the right people making the right assessments on the right place for those people to be treated is key to all this. We are rolling out training through the National Autism Trainer Programme, in which we have invested £20 million to ensure improvements in autistic diagnostic pathways and people’s capability to achieve them. We are now rolling out the Oliver McGowan training to over 1 million people and looking at rolling out stage 2. However, I agree with her that these actions are vital.
Baroness Hollins (CB)
My Lords, the tragedy is that so many admissions are due to failings in adult social care. Mencap’s analysis of the latest NHS Digital statistics shows that only 45% of ICSs have met the adult in-patient rate promised by March 2020 and that 26% of ICSs are going in the wrong direction. Can the Minister update the House on future plans for building the right support after March 2024? In the absence of mental health and adult social care Bills in the gracious Speech, what plans are there to fully implement the recommendations in my report, which he kindly mentioned, published by the Department of Health on 8 November? So many of those recommendations were dependent on a code of practice to the current Mental Health Act being reopened.
Lord Markham (Con)
I thank the noble Baroness for her report and the meeting that we had to follow it up. Probably the best way forward on this is that a lot of things we are doing and can do can be done absent the Bill. I should be happy to sit down with her and talk through what we can do and where we can go further to make sure that everything that we were trying to put into legislation we can effectively make happen anyway, because we are all agreed as a House absolutely on the direction of travel in which we want to go.
Baroness Barker (LD)
My Lords, what is being done to change the commissioning systems and contracts that currently incentivise providers of medium and long- term secure accommodation to keep people in hospital, rather than equip them to go back into the community?
Lord Markham (Con)
I will come back in more detail on the contractual arrangements, but the point that the noble Baroness raises on making sure that there are no perverse incentives to do that has to be right. The now CQC-led reviews that we have agreed to put in place as part of continuing the recommendations of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, happen frequently. In the case of adults, there is a review every six months, if appropriate, and, in the case of children, every three months to make sure that every step of the way we ask whether this is really the right place for them to be.
Lord Sahota (Lab)
My Lords, these days, more and more parents would like to have purpose-built accommodation for their autistic children. At this moment, they are unable to have that because they cannot access an adaptation grant, also known as a disability facility grant. That needs to change so that parents can build independent self-contained accommodation for their autistic children, which can be done only through legislation and extra funding. Will the Government look into this?
Lord Markham (Con)
I am aware of the point that the noble Lord makes. About 48% of the reasons why people are not discharged are because of a lack of suitable housing. It is something on which we are working closely with Homes England and DLUHC, to make sure that we can utilise as much of the affordable housing grant as possible. I was not aware that legislation needed to be changed but I will happily look into that to see if it is the case.
Baroness Meacher (CB)
My Lords, is the Minister aware of the critical importance of early intensive education for severely autistic children? I hope so. I was involved in such an initiative some years ago and it is remarkable how a child with no speech and tremendous deficits can ultimately go to a normal school, and the prospects to then lead a reasonably normal life are enhanced enormously.
Lord Markham (Con)
Yes, I have some personal experience here and I know how vital it is to find out early, so you can put together the tools. I have seen some really interesting things. The Bradford pilot looked at children’s scores and whether that was an early indicator. I was at Boston Children’s Hospital a few weeks ago, which is looking at the way that children play on apps and whether that can give indications of whether there is some neurodiversity. There is absolutely the intention of early diagnosis.
Baroness Wheeler (Lab)
Thankfully, my Lords, understanding of and support for autism have changed substantially since the now 40 year-old Mental Health Act, especially about being clear on what an autism-friendly environment looks like and should be, although sadly that is not often found in mental health settings and ATUs. Did the Government’s decision to abandon the new mental health Bill this Session include an assessment of the impact this would have on patients? This is particularly urgent now that changes to the code of practice, recommended by the excellent report on long-term segregation by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, will not be considered until we deal with the Bill. How and when will the Government deliver the significant changes needed?
Lord Markham (Con)
I think we are all agreed on the action; there was was an intensive and involved process by the whole House when it came to agreeing the action. That is why I am keen to ensure that we implement as much of it as possible that does not require legislation, which we are doing. I am happy for the noble Baroness to join me at the meeting with the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, when we can look at the practical steps to see what is possible.
Artificial Intelligence: Regulation
(1 year ago)
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Lord Bassam of Brighton
To ask His Majesty’s Government, following the action taken by the United States in respect of regulating artificial intelligence, including the recent signing of an Executive Order, whether they have plans to introduce similar provisions in UK law.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (Viscount Camrose) (Con)
In the AI regulation White Paper we set out our first steps towards establishing a regulatory framework for AI. We are aligned with the United States in taking a proportionate, context-based and evidence-led approach to AI regulation. The White Paper did not commit to new legislation at this stage. However, we have not ruled out legislative action in future as and when there is evidence of substantial risks, where non-statutory measures would be ineffective.
Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)
My Lords, I am a little disappointed in the Minister’s response, but we welcome the discussions that took place at Bletchley Park. While the Prime Minister says he will not rush to regulate, as the Minister knows, other jurisdictions— the US and the EU—are moving ahead. Labour in government would act swiftly to implement a number of checks on firms developing this most powerful form of frontier AI. A Bill might not have been in the King’s Speech, but that does not mean that the Government cannot legislate. Will the Minister today commit to doing so?
Viscount Camrose (Con)
The Government are by no means anti legislation; we are simply anti legislation that is developed in advance of fully understanding the implications of the technology, its benefits and indeed its risks. This is a widely shared view. One of the results of the Bletchley summit that the noble Lord mentioned will be a state-of-the-science report convened by Professor Bengio to take forward our understanding on this, so that evidence-based legislation can then as necessary be put in place. As I say, we feel that we are very closely aligned to the US approach in this area and look forward to working closely with the US and others going forward.
The Earl of Devon (CB)
My Lords, the Government have noted that AI’s large language models are trained using copyrighted data and content that is scraped from the internet. This will constitute intellectual property infringement if it is not licensed. What steps are the Government taking to ensure that technology companies seek rights holders’ informed consent?
Viscount Camrose (Con)
This is indeed a serious and complex issue, and yesterday I met the Creative Industries Council to discuss it. Officials continue to meet regularly both with creative rights holders and with innovating labs, looking for common ground with the goal of developing a statement of principles and a code of conduct to which all sides can adhere. I am afraid to say that progress is slow on that; there are disagreements that come down to legal interpretations across multiple jurisdictions. Still, we remain convinced that there is a landing zone for all parties, and we are working towards that.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, I welcome what the Minister has just said, and he clearly understands this technology, its risks and indeed its opportunities, but is he not rather embarrassed by the fact that the Government seem to be placing a rather higher priority on the regulation of pedicabs in London than on AI regulation?
Viscount Camrose (Con)
I am pleased to reassure the noble Lord that I am not embarrassed in the slightest. Perhaps I can come back with a quotation from Yann LeCun, one of the three godfathers of AI, who said in an interview the other week that regulating AI now would be like regulating commercial air travel in 1925. We can more or less theoretically grasp what it might do, but we simply do not have the grounding to regulate properly because we lack the evidence. Our path to the safety of AI is to search for the evidence and, based on the evidence, to regulate accordingly.
Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)
My Lords, an absence of regulation in an area that holds such enormous repercussions for the whole of society will not spur innovation but may impede it. The US executive order and the EU’s AI Act gave AI innovators and companies in both these substantial markets greater certainty. Will it not be the case that innovators and companies in this country will comply with that regulation because they will want to trade in that market, and we will then be left with external regulation and none of our own? Why are the Government not doing something about this?
Viscount Camrose (Con)
I think there are two things. First, we are extremely keen, and have set this out in the White Paper, that the regulation of AI in this country should be highly interoperable with international regulation—I think all countries regulating would agree on that. Secondly, I take some issue with the characterisation of AI in this country as unregulated. We have very large areas of law and regulation to which all AI is subject. That includes data protection, human rights legislation, competition law, equalities law and many other laws. On top of that, we have the recently created central AI risk function, whose role is to identify risks appearing on the horizon, or indeed cross-cutting AI risks, to take that forward. On top of that, we have the most concentrated and advanced thinking on AI safety anywhere in the world to take us forward on the pathway towards safe, trustworthy AI that drives innovation.
Baroness Kidron (CB)
My Lords, given the noble Viscount’s emphasis on the gathering of evidence and evidence-based regulation, can we anticipate having a researchers’ access to data measure in the upcoming Data Protection and Digital Information Bill?
Viscount Camrose (Con)
I thank the noble Baroness for her question and recognise her concern. In order to be sure that I answer the question properly, I undertake to write to her with a full description of where we are and to meet her to discuss further.
Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)
My Lords, I declare my technology interests as in the register. Does my noble friend agree that it is at least worth regulating at this stage to require all those developing and training AI to publish all the data and all the IP they use to train that AI on, not least for the point around ensuring that all IP obligations are complied with? If this approach were taken, it would enable quite a distance to be travelled in terms of people being able to understand and gain explainability of how the AI is working.
Viscount Camrose (Con)
I am pleased to tell my noble friend that, following a request from the Secretary of State, the safety policies of Amazon, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI and others have been published and will go into what we might call a race to the top—a competitive approach to boosting AI safety. As for enshrining those practices in regulation, that is something we continue to look at.
Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)
My Lords, further to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, around data—that the power of the AI is in many ways defined by the quality of the data—does the Minister have any concern that the Prime Minister’s friend, Elon Musk, for example, owns a huge amount of sentiment data through Twitter, a huge amount of transportation data through Tesla, and a huge amount of communication data through owning more than half the satellites orbiting the planet? Does he not see that there might be a need to regulate the ownership of data across different sectors?
Viscount Camrose (Con)
Indeed. Of course, one of the many issues with regulating AI is that it falls across so many different jurisdictions. It would be very difficult for any one country, including the US, to have a single bit of legislation that acted on the specific example that the noble Lord mentions. That is why it is so important for us to operate on an international basis and why we continue not just with the AI safety summit at Bletchley Park but working closely with the G7 and G20, bodies of the UN, GPAI and others.
Lord Allan of Hallam (LD)
My Lords, there is significant public interest in the companies developing artificial intelligence working together on common safety standards, but in doing so they may run the risk of falling foul of competition law. Will the Minister be talking to the Competition and Markets Authority to make sure that one public good, preventing anti-competitive practices, does not impede another public good, the development of common safety standards?
Viscount Camrose (Con)
Yes, indeed. It is a really important point that the development of AI as a set of technologies is going to oblige us to work across regulators in a variety of new ways to which we are not yet used. That is indeed one of the functions of the newly formed central AI risk function within DSIT.
Lord Patel (CB)
My Lords, can I back up the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, on access to data by research workers, particularly health data? Without access to that data, we will not be able to develop generative AI such as retinal scans, for instance, and many other developments in healthcare.
Viscount Camrose (Con)
Yes, indeed. In healthcare in this country, we have what perhaps may well be the greatest dataset for healthcare analysis in the world. We want to make use of that for analysis purposes and to improve health outcomes for everybody. We do, of course, have to be extremely careful as we use that, because that is as private as data can possibly get.
UK Sanctions Regime: Russia and Belarus
(1 year ago)
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Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, I start by saying how pleased I am to see the Minister in his place. I also repeat what I have said many times before: the Opposition are at one with the Government in supporting Ukraine and sanctioning those responsible for starting this horrendous war.
However, there are serious concerns about the effectiveness of our sanctions regime, nearly two years after the invasion. It is unacceptable that 130 UK companies have admitted breaching Russia-related sanctions. I welcome the Statement of the Minister in the other place, that the Government are closing loopholes, but can the Minister set out what assessment has been made of the alleged existence of specific loopholes to allow indirect imports of Russian- and Belarusian-origin steel, or indeed Russian-origin crude oil that has been refined in third countries? This is a really serious issue in terms of the loopholes that have been identified.
The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon) (Con)
My Lords, first, I thank the noble Lord for his kind remarks. Your Lordships’ House will be pleased to know that we will be having two FCDO Ministers here, which underlines the strong commitment of the FCDO and, indeed, His Majesty’s Government to your Lordships’ House.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
I shall carry on with the Answer. The noble Lord is totally right, and I appreciate him confirming again the importance of standing in solidarity against Russia’s continued invasion of Ukraine. As an aside, I have literally just come over from a Ukrainian survivor event that we were hosting at the Foreign Office—some of them very young survivors who have been through the most horrendous ordeals. It is important we send a message of unity.
On the specifics, I followed last week’s reports from City A.M. about 130 companies. There is a positive here, because this was voluntarily admitted, although there is of course inadvertent non-compliance. I assure noble Lords that we are working with our colleagues across government, particularly in the Treasury as well as other departments. The Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation is looking specifically at how we can further tighten some of the procedures. While we have fined companies that have acted inappropriately, and called others out, other methods are being put in place, including warning letters and mitigations. We are working particularly closely with the Treasury team to ensure, as I have always said, that loopholes are identified. Other loopholes identified as the sanctions are applied will also be closed.
The noble Lord rightly asked about some of the other specific industries and the sanctions we have imposed recently, including on areas such as oil and other contraventions. I assure noble Lords that, as we apply further sanctions, we will continue to identify such areas and loopholes. Only last week, on 8 November, we announced a further targeting of 29 individuals and entities operating in and supporting Russia’s gold, oil and strategic sectors, which are critical sources of revenue.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, I too admire the Minister’s reshuffle resilience and welcome him to the continuation of his post. I commend the Government on the latest sanctions on gold. The Minister knows that I have been warning about the UAE gold trade in Africa for a number of months now, and the measures in Zimbabwe are extremely welcome. Can he ensure that this will now be expanded to Sudan and other areas where that trade is so pernicious?
On implementation, I looked at the updates on enforcement on the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation website just before coming into the Chamber. The Minister referred to enforcement. The OFSI has said that, since 2019, there has been £21 million of enforcement against UK businesses. But, since the Russian invasion in 2022, there has been only £45,000-worth of enforcement against UK companies. Is the Minister satisfied that there is nearly 100% adherence to sanctions, or could we be doing more on enforcement actions against those who are circumventing them?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, I record my thanks to the noble Lord for his kind remarks. I recognise, as he has, that this is about cross-party working and identifying what further steps we can take. I would not be bold enough to suggest that we have 100% compliance or that we are closing every loophole that has been identified; as I said, there will be further action in these areas. I also take on board some of the countries he mentioned where we can do further work. I will work with colleagues across government to ensure that, when we identify particular areas, I will notify the Front Benches in the usual way about action we are considering taking.
Lord Watts (Lab)
My Lords, what system do the Government have for monitoring these sanctions? It seems strange that the media seem to have been better informed than the Government. What measures will the Government put in place to make sure that they do this effectively?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, part and parcel of our work with the Treasury and, in particular, the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation is, first, to ensure that we identify the actual structures being used and abused in this way to override sanctions and, then, to work directly with companies and inform them of mitigation methods that can be taken. This is ever-evolving, so, with the more sanctions we impose and the more sectors we look at, there is a lag time before they become effective. As I have already alluded to, we have identified that there will be a time lag while actions are implemented for particular sectors. I also accept that some companies act inadvertently and that we should not penalise them financially straight away; we should also look at other methods, including those we are deploying directly.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)
My Lords, would the Minister widen a little the response he has given so far and say what systems we have for working with the European Union so that our sanctions and their sanctions, which are very similar, are implemented in a properly concerted way and that we help each other to chase up over implementation?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, the noble Lord draws important attention to the key issue of co-operation with key partners. Not only are we working very closely with the European Union on the sanctions policy across the piece, but, particularly in light of Russia’s illegal war on Ukraine, we are working hand in glove with the European Union, as well as US partners and others, to ensure the consistency of application, so that all jurisdictions reflect the same types of sanctions applied to close those loopholes. As I have said before, if an individual or organisation is sanctioned either in the EU or in the UK and not in the other jurisdiction, there is a direct loophole that needs to be closed.
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 Science, Innovation and Technology (Viscount Camrose) (Con)
My Lords, on behalf of your Lordships’ House, I thank His Majesty the King for delivering the gracious Speech. I am grateful for the privilege of opening today’s debate on the Motion for this humble Address.
The bold, ambitious legislative agenda the Government have set out for the year ahead is testament to the fact that we are taking the right long-term decisions for a brighter future. That is because this Government recognise that, right across all the sectors we are debating today, the United Kingdom has an exceptional story to tell.
Last year we became one of only three countries in the world to boast a tech sector worth more than $1 trillion. We are a nation of scientific endeavour, home to the Jodrell Bank observatory, to the Francis Crick Institute and to pioneering businesses such as Google DeepMind, whose AlphaFold program has used AI to predict the shapes of 200 million proteins—the fundamental building blocks of human biology.
Through our Frontier AI Taskforce—soon to be our new AI safety institute—we are investing more than any other country in the safe development and deployment of this transformative technology. Indeed, earlier this month our leadership on AI was on full display as we hosted the first ever global summit on AI safety and agreed the historic Bletchley declaration.
Beyond science and technology, we all know that Britain today is a cultural powerhouse too, with a film and television industry worth more than £12 billion to our economy producing iconic, award-winning shows. In virtually every part of the globe, people can tune into the inimitable BBC World Service, which reaches an audience of more than 400 million.
But, for our many strengths, we know that there is no room for complacency. In all these sectors we want the UK to become one of the most competitive, pro-business and pro-innovation economies in the world, and in the proposed legislation we have set out in His Majesty’s most gracious Speech, we are making that vision a reality.
Through our Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill, we are delivering on our manifesto commitment to end consumer rip-offs while creating a host of growth-spurring incentives for British business. To that end, it will grant new powers to the Competition and Markets Authority to drive innovation by preventing a handful of powerful tech companies using their influence to quash competition and harm consumers. It will hand people more rights over subscription contracts to give them more control over their spending, and it will make it harder for unscrupulous traders to trap people in subscription contracts they no longer want—a practice that currently cheats consumers out of £1.6 billion every year. New powers will also enable the CMA to take tough action against other bad business practices more quickly, without needing lengthy court action.
In all this we want to strengthen the rights of the consumer, recognising that better data protection is a win-win for both businesses and individuals. That is why our Data Protection and Digital Information Bill will let us take full advantage of our post-Brexit freedoms, unleashing innovation in every corner of the UK. It will help create a flexible, common-sense data protection regime, one that takes the best elements of GDPR while cutting red tape and saving British businesses £2.2 billion in increased productivity and compliance costs over 10 years. In the public sector those savings climb to £2.5 billion over 10 years, thanks to reforms to the use of data for law enforcement, national security and digital verification services.
We are reducing the bureaucracy that has been holding us back, while delivering real benefits for the British people. That includes both cracking down on nuisance calls and reducing the number of dreaded “accept/reject cookie” buttons that freeze web pages, sometimes long after they have loaded.
We are ensuring that the rules around data and internet access are fit for the digital age, and we want to do the same for public service broadcasting, because the truth is that many broadcasters are governed by rules written 20 years ago. Our laws ought to drive growth in our creative industries, not constrain it. That is why our new Media Bill is so important—to enable our public service broadcasters to compete, to nurture talent and skills and to drive growth across the UK. The Bill will ensure that audiences, both here and around the world, can more easily enjoy quality British content, supporting our creative industries to produce the next “Killing Eve”, “Top Gear” or “Line of Duty”. It will make sure that public service content is only a click away on connected devices such as set-top boxes, fire sticks and smart TVs, which are in roughly three-quarters of homes. It is right that UK audiences have access to the content they love, be that on commercial or public service broadcasters. Thanks to the reforms in our Media Bill, they will.
We are backing British radio stations through these changes too. They require major smart speaker platforms to ensure that the likes of Gold, Magic, Classic FM and all the stations that listeners love can be played on request. Crucially, the Media Bill complements the sweeping protections we have put in place for young people in the UK through the Online Safety Act. It will mean that on-demand content will be held to the same high standards as broadcast channels so that our children can be protected from harmful material.
At the same time, we recognise that freedom of the press and of our media is sacrosanct. Through this Bill we are fulfilling our manifesto pledge to repeal Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013, which could have required publishers that are not members of an approved regulator to pay costs on legal claims brought against them, regardless of the outcome. This section could have had a negative effect on freedom of speech, undermining high-quality journalism and our newspapers, which play such a vital role in our political discourse and our wider democracy.
Finally, we are modernising the listed events regime to protect British viewers’ access to major sporting events, including the FIFA World Cup. Football is another area in which we have an exceptional story to tell, not least in the tremendous success of our Lionesses at the European Championships last year. In recent times, though, our national game has suffered. We have seen that in the collapse of Bury FC, the devastating impact of the pandemic on clubs and the botched plan for a breakaway European super league. This all underscores the need for an independent football regulator, one that addresses financial sustainability in our national game and ensures that fans’ voices are heard loud and clear. That is precisely what our football governance Bill will establish: a regulator with real teeth that will require a minimum standard of fan engagement. It will hand fans veto rights over changes to team names and badges, the things that are so often part of a club’s heritage. Fans will also be consulted should their local stadium ever be put up for sale. Through the new regulator, we will strengthen owners’ and directors’ tests to help prevent a repeat of what happened at Blackpool FC and Charlton Athletic, where fans had to fight to save their own club.
We also recognise that the current distribution of revenue in the top five divisions is far from sufficient. That, in turn, is causing financial headaches for some clubs, further destabilising the football pyramid. That is why the regulator will have targeted statutory powers to, as a last resort, ensure financial sustainability in this pyramid by redistributing broadcast revenue.
As noble Lords know, the vast majority of football clubs are pillars of their community and are well run, and for these the regulator will have less of a role. Instead, it will focus its efforts on ensuring financial stability in the top five tiers of the men’s English football pyramid, with a mandatory licensing system. Through the scheme, it will have powers to monitor and enforce compliance with requirements in financial regulation, club ownership and much more.
From Liverpool to Leeds, from Wrexham to Wolverhampton, our football clubs are the beating hearts of our communities, steeped in history and inextricably linked to our national heritage. Because of the reforms we are undertaking today, I am confident that they will continue to thrive tomorrow and for decades to come.
In the Bills I have outlined, we are fulfilling our commitment to unlock the UK’s full potential in science, technology, media and sport. We are giving every entrepreneur a fair shot at success, ensuring that corporate power is not unduly concentrated in the hands of a select few. We are backing the rights of consumers, giving them greater control over spending, while clamping down on businesses that engage in drip pricing. We are backing British television, British film and British broadcasters, flying the flag for our nation’s unrivalled creativity and talent.
I look forward to further debating these key Bills in His Majesty’s most gracious Speech and discussing our plans to change our country for the better, building a brighter future for every hard-working family.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, I am pleased to open this debate from these Benches and to welcome His Majesty to his first official King’s Speech as our new monarch. I look forward with pleasure to the maiden speeches that we will hear later in the debate.
I thank the Minister for his introduction, but he knows only too well that this is not a serious programme for government. Instead, the speech represents a sad attempt to plaster over the cracks of a dying Government trying to hold their divided party together and avoiding the big leadership decisions that this country needs to get our ambition and our futures back. I am sorry to say that it is no good pretending that this is in the nation’s interest, when society and business have lost confidence in what we can achieve and are increasingly looking forward to an alternative Government in which clearly defined, long-term national goals will usher in a decade of national renewal. This has been a decade of missed opportunities; this King’s Speech is no exception.
The recent government summit at Bletchley Park is a case in point. It was a welcome initiative and an opportunity for the UK to lead the global debate on how we regulate the power of AI for the public good. We know that AI has the power to deliver life-changing benefits for working people. From delivering early cancer diagnosis to relieving traffic congestion, the opportunities are endless. However, to secure these benefits, we need to get on top of the risks and build public trust. The US and the EU are already moving ahead with real safeguards on the technology while the Prime Minister—and, today, the Minister—says that there is no need to rush to action. At the same time, we were treated to the embarrassing spectacle of the Prime Minister’s cosy fireside chat with Elon Musk, who would be a likely beneficiary of unregulated technology.
Let me be clear: a Labour Government would urgently introduce binding regulation on those companies developing the most powerful AI models that could, if left unchecked, spread misinformation, undermine elections and help terrorists build weapons. We will also harness the new technological advantages that can grow our economy, reforming regulation and speeding up decisions to make Britain the best place in the world to innovate.
As we said at the time, the Government’s decision to withdraw from the EU Horizon scheme, as well as the three-year delay in negotiating our re-entry, caused untold damage to our research community. We lost many talented people to jobs abroad. In contrast, we will value, train and nurture our next generation of scientists and innovators, so that they have a long-term future in the UK. The Government’s short-termism has meant that funding for bodies such as UKRI lasts only three years and endless bureaucratic grant applications have become the norm. In contrast, we will create certainty and excellence, with R&D budgets set at up to 10 years in order to underpin our modern industrial strategy. We will harness technology in ways that can benefit everybody, tackling regional inequality, transforming public services and shoring up the welfare state after years of decline. These are the ambitions that should have been central to the gracious Speech but which are sadly missing.
There is no point in having vibrant new technologies if we cannot even get the basics right. We have seen repeated government failures to meet the targets on the rollout of fibre broadband. As the Minister will know, the Public Accounts Committee reported that DCMS was unlikely to meet even its downgraded target of gigabit-capable broadband for 85% of premises by 2025. So can the Minister update us on progress towards those targets, given that connectivity is vital for rural and isolated communities and is an essential part of our economic recovery? Can he update us on what is being done to ensure that all citizens have access to the smart technologies on which our public services will increasingly rely?
Meanwhile, although we were supportive of the Online Safety Act and will work with Ofcom to ensure swift and effective implementation, we recognise that further regulation may well be necessary—for example, around the right of bereaved parents to access data when their child’s death involves social media platforms. We look forward to the debates on the two carry-over Bills, particularly to protect consumers and to ensure that the new powers proposed by the CMA to ensure competition in digital markets are not watered down by this Government.
On the issue of media, we very much welcome the new Media Bill. The fact is that the current decades-old legislation is out of date. The media landscape has changed out of all recognition with the rise of media giants and the game-changing impact of new technologies. In this new world, our British broadcasters and UK radio have lost market share and lost prominence on smart devices, so they need to be given the tools to survive in a modern era. This should include giving significant prominence to the BBC and other public service broadcasters on all TV interfaces. Instead of fixing this problem, the Government have wasted a year on their disastrous and ill-conceived plan to sell off Channel 4. Therefore, we welcome this Bill, and we hope it can be introduced without further delay.
There is so much more that could be done to support the creative industries in the UK. The legacy of Brexit means that it is harder and more expensive for artists to tour Europe. Lack of funding means that smaller venues are closing at a rate of one a week, and, under Covid, creative freelancers were excluded from financial support. People are being forced to leave this sector, when it could instead be at the heart of our economic growth. This is why, under Labour, the creative industries will have a critical part to play in building communities, rejuvenating our high streets and providing a wealth of local leisure facilities. It is why we will deliver a creative curriculum which brings the best music, art, sport and drama to every child.
Also missing from the Speech is any mention of gambling regulation. Since the government review was announced in 2020 there have been 10 different Ministers responsible for this policy area. The White Paper has been subject to delays and policy downgrading, yet the problems of gambling exploitation and addiction continue to blight many lives. When can we expect to see any gambling legislation to bring in effective regulation of online gambling companies?
Finally, we welcome the announcement that there will be a football governance Bill. We have long called for football reform and will scrutinise this Bill carefully. Football clubs are at the heart of our communities and are a great source of identity and pride in our towns. However, we need to give fans a greater say in the way that clubs are run and to redistribute more television rights to the grass-roots game. Currently, despite bigger revenues coming into the game, the financial sustainability of the football pyramid has never been more at risk. We are increasingly seeing a new breed of owners with little interest in the long-term interest of their clubs. All too often, fans are locked out of discussions and deals which affect the whole community and which are done entirely behind closed doors. We urgently need to bring in new laws to stop any more clubs going bust or being used as a plaything for the wealthy. The Government were given a plan to do this by the fan-led review last year. We support the outcome of that review and will be looking to this new Bill to implement it in full.
We will give all the Bills in this King’s Speech the scrutiny and attention that they deserve, but make no mistake, this is not the sort of legislative package that the country expects or deserves. There is a real mood for change and no attempt at repackaging by the Prime Minister can alter the fact that this is more of the same, from a failed Government who have run out of ideas. We need a sharp break from “business as usual” and a new approach to government that will tackle the complex problems which are holding us back. I hope that the next King’s Speech will demonstrate how change on this scale can be achieved and set us on a course for the national renewal that we desperately need.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of the council of Queen Mary University of London, with its major research interests. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, in her new role.
I want to start on a positive note by celebrating the recent Royal Assent of the Online Safety Act and the publication of the first draft code for consultation. I also very much welcome that we now have a dedicated science and technology department in the form of DSIT, although I very much regret the loss of Minister George Freeman yesterday.
Sadly, there are many other less positive aspects to mention. Given the Question on AI regulation today, all I will say is that despite all the hype surrounding the summit, including the PM’s rather bizarre interview with Mr Musk, in reality the Government are giving minimal attention to AI, despite the Secretary of State saying that the world is standing at the inflection point of a technological revolution. Where are we on adjusting ourselves to the kinds of risk that AI represents? Is it not clear that the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee is correct in recommending in its interim report that the Government
“accelerate, not … pause, the establishment of a governance regime for AI, including whatever statutory measures as may be needed”?
That is an excellent recommendation.
I also very much welcome that we are rejoining Horizon, but there was no mention in the Minister’s speech of how we will meet the challenge of getting international research co-operation back to where it was. I am disappointed that the Minister did not give us a progress update on the department’s 10 objectives in its framework for science and technology, and on action on the recommendations of its many reviews, such as the Nurse review. Where are the measurable targets and key outcomes in priority areas that have been called for?
Nor, as we have heard, has there been any mention of progress on Project Gigabit, and no mention either of progress on the new programmes to be undertaken by ARIA. There was no mention of urgent action to mitigate increases to visa fees planned from next year, which the Royal Society has described as “disproportionate” and a “punitive tax on talent”, with top researchers coming to the UK facing costs up to 10 times higher than in other leading science nations. There was no mention of the need for diversity in science and technology. What are we to make of the Secretary of State demanding that UKRI “immediately” close its advisory group on EDI? What progress, too, on life sciences policy? The voluntary and statutory pricing schemes for new medicines currently under consultation are becoming a major impediment to future life sciences investment in the UK.
Additionally, health devices suffer from a lack of development and commercialisation incentives. The UK has a number of existing funding and reimbursement systems, but none is tailored for digital health, which results in national reimbursement. What can DSIT do to encourage investment and innovation in this very important field?
On cybersecurity, the G7 recognises that red teaming, or what is called threat-led penetration testing, is now crucial in identifying vulnerabilities in AI systems. Sir Patrick Vallance’s Pro-innovation Regulation of Technologies Review of March this year recommended amending the Computer Misuse Act 1990 to include a statutory public interest defence that would provide stronger legal protections for cybersecurity researchers and professionals carrying out threat intelligence research. Yet there is still no concrete proposal. This is glacial progress.
However, we on these Benches welcome the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill. New flexible, pro-competition powers, and the ability to act ex ante and on an interim basis, are crucial. We have already seen the impact on our sovereign cloud capacity through concentration in just two or three US hands. Is this the future of AI, given that these large language models now developed by the likes of OpenAI, Microsoft, Anthropic AI, Google and Meta require massive datasets, vast computing power, advanced semiconductors, and scarce digital and data skills?
As the Lords Communications and Digital Committee has said, which I very much welcome, the Bill must not, however, be watered down in a way that allows big tech to endlessly challenge the regulators in court and incentivise big tech firms to take an adversarial approach to the regulators. In fact, it needs strengthening in a number of respects. In particular, big tech must not be able to use countervailing benefits as a major loophole to avoid regulatory action. Content needs to be properly compensated by the tech platforms. The Bill needs to make clear that platforms profit from content and need to pay properly and fairly on benchmarked terms and with reference to value for end users. Can the Minister, in winding up, confirm at the very least that the Government will not water down the Bill?
We welcome the CMA’s market investigation into cloud services, but it must look broadly at the anti-competitive practices of the service providers, such as vendor lock-in tactics and non-competitive procurement. Competition is important in the provision of broadband services too. Investors in alternative providers to the incumbents need reassurance that their investment is going on to a level playing field and not one tilted in favour of the incumbents. Can the Minister reaffirm the Government’s commitment to infrastructure competition in the UK telecommunications industry?
The Data Protection and Digital Information Bill is another matter. I believe the Government are clouded by the desire to diverge from the EU to get some kind of Brexit dividend. The Bill seems largely designed, contrary to what the Minister said, to dilute the rights of data subjects where it should be strengthening them. For example, there is concern from the National AIDS Trust that permitting intragroup transmission of personal health data
“where that is necessary for internal administrative purposes”
could mean that HIV/AIDS status will be inadequately protected in workplace settings. Even on the Government’s own estimates it will have a minimal positive impact on compliance costs, and in our view it will simply lead to companies doing business in Europe having to comply with two sets of regulation. All this could lead to a lack of EU data adequacy.
The Bill is a dangerous distraction. Far from weakening data rights, as we move into the age of the internet of things and artificial intelligence, the Government should be working to increase public trust in data use and sharing by strengthening those rights. There should be a right to an explanation of automated systems, where AI is only one part of the final decision in certain circumstances—for instance, where policing, justice, health, or personal welfare or finance is concerned. We need new models of personal data controls, which were advocated by the Hall-Pesenti review as long ago as 2017, especially through new data communities and institutions. We need an enhanced ability to exercise our right to data portability. We need a new offence of identity theft and more, not less, regulatory oversight over use of biometrics and biometric technologies.
One of the key concerns we all have as the economy becomes more and more digital is data and digital exclusion. Does DSIT have a strategy in this respect? In particular, as Citizens Advice said,
“consumers faced unprecedented hikes in their monthly mobile and broadband contract prices”
as a result of mid-contract price rises. When will the Government, Ofcom or the CMA ban these?
There are considerable concerns about digital exclusion, for example regarding the switchover of voice services from copper to fibre. It is being carried out before most consumers have been switched on to full fibre infra- structure and puts vulnerable customers at risk.
There are clearly great opportunities to use AI within the creative industries, but there are also challenges, big questions over authorship and intellectual property. Many artists feel threatened, and this was the root cause of the recent Hollywood writers’ and actors’ strike. What are the IPO and government doing, beyond their consultation on licensing in this area, to secure the necessary copyright and performing right reform to protect artists from synthetic versions?
I very much echo what the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said about misinformation during elections. We have already seen two deepfakes related to senior Front-Bench Members—shadow spokespeople—in the Commons. It is concerning that those senior politicians appear powerless to stop this.
My noble friends will deal with the Media Bill. The Minister did not talk of the pressing need for skilling and upskilling in this context. A massive skills and upskilling agenda is needed, as well as much greater diversity and inclusion in the AI workforce. We should also be celebrating Maths Week England, which I am sure the Minister will do. I look forward to the three maiden speeches and to the Minister’s winding up.
Lord Patel (CB)
My Lords, I am pleased to take part in this debate on the gracious Speech and look forward to the three maiden speeches. I will speak briefly about the Government’s policy for science, innovation and technology, the regulation of AI and the use of data for research.
I fully acknowledge the clear commitment of this Government to science, technology and innovation, demonstrated by creating a Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, as already mentioned, maintaining UK membership of Horizon Europe, committing to public funding of R&D of £20 billion by 2024-25, passing the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act and creating the AI Safety Institute—all good news.
However, I was disappointed that the gracious Speech did not include the land use framework promised by Defra, the recommendations of the Skidmore review for an evidenced-based net-zero technology road map, nor regulation of genetically modified crops or the reform of narrow A-levels in education.
The science community also needs commitment to long-term funding at least 10 years ahead, as opposed to short-term, stop-start investment in science, as already mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch. The UK is not alone in seeking to grow its R&D capabilities, with some countries significantly increasing their R&D funding to 3% to 3.7% of their GDP. For the UK to succeed, we also need to be open to the rest of the world.
The punitive cost of visas and health charges, as already mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, undermines our ability to attract talented individuals and we are losing out to our competitors. The Government need to address the issue of visa fees for young scientists.
To become a genuine science superpower, the Government need to go further than they have. A brilliant paper titled Wired for Success, produced by Onward, identifies four key principles as a guide to reforms to make the UK a science superpower. Setting an ambitious target for R&D spend, creating a future centre for technology and exempting the Department for Science from Treasury controls are some of its key messages. The noble Lord, Lord Willetts, who played a key part in the report, may well say more.
Universities are key players in science-based activity, but some are finding it difficult to fund the infrastructure required to do so. As argued by CRUK, quality-related funding, or QR funding, and the charity research support fund, the CRSF, are two critical forms of government support for universities. But QR has eroded in the last decade and CRSF has declined in value as charities’ funding for research has increased. I hope the Minister will indicate what plans the Government have to increase QR and CRSF funding to universities.
As universities are major players in not only discovery science but innovation, is it not appropriate for the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology to be the home department for universities, instead of the Department for Education?
As for the regulation of AI, in my view, the broad principles on which AI regulations should be framed, apart from safety, should include the broader societal context, as was well articulated by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford in his speech yesterday. We need a bottom-up approach that captures a range of uses. Regulation should identify where responsibility lies and there should be clarity around transparency, accountability and redress. Finally, we need a global angle with regulations that work across nations.
I turn to the use of data for research. The world is on the cusp of a data revolution in biomedical research. Large-scale linkages and analyses of health data will drive innovations in health and care design and delivery. The 1.3 million daily contacts with the NHS generate data on health and well-being, diagnostics, imaging and genomic data at immense scale. The use of this data in a secure and co-ordinated way can optimise health care, manage the health service, augment clinical trials, improve population health management and, importantly, drive research and development. HDR UK—that is, Health Data Research UK—and others are already making progress in vaccine uptake, generative AI for retinal scans and many other areas in health.
The transformative potential of health data research in the UK is far from being realised, with significant gaps in the use of primary care data. A number of challenges remain in order to realise the benefits of health data research at scale. These challenges include demonstrating trustworthiness, creating a data ecosystem, streamlining data access, addressing skills needs, addressing issues on attitudes to risk aversion and protectionism and securing clear specific guidance from the Information Commissioner’s Office. Without access to health data for research, the Government’s life sciences strategy could fail.
The law is part of the problem—the Data Protection and Digital Information (No. 2) Bill will not have a significant impact on health data science unless it is amended. I hope the Government recognise the importance of the use of health data for research and intend to do something about it through legislation. I look forward to the Minister’s comments.
In conclusion, the Government have shown commitment to the UK being a science superpower, but to achieve this they will need to do more, with the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology having a central role with clear delivery plans. They need to engage more widely with the science and technology community. It would be good if the Minister could reaffirm the independence of research funding bodies, including UKRI.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)
My Lords, I am delighted that the long campaigned for Media Bill will be part of this Session’s legislative agenda. But today I want to concentrate on other issues that the Select Committee on Communications and Digital, which I chair, has examined recently, which relate to other Bills or government activity mentioned in the gracious Speech: namely, digital competition, how to deal with frontier AI and digital exclusion.
I start by emphasising the importance of the UK’s digital economy. Big tech firms have developed platforms and tools that are used and enjoyed by millions. We have countless digital and tech SMEs flourishing across the country. Consumers rely on services that are rapidly moving online. A well-functioning digital economy relies on healthy competition. Indeed, it is central to many of the Government’s core ambitions—especially being a tech superpower. But there is extensive and conclusive evidence that digital competition is not working properly. A handful of big tech firms dominate massively, and this is distorting markets.
In most cases we should let markets take care of themselves—I am no fan of regulation for the sake of it—but where there is clear evidence of market failure and distortion, regulators should step in to ensure a level playing field.
The Government’s proposed Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill aims to do just that. However, I am concerned by reports that the Government are backtracking in the face of big tech lobbying. This gets a bit technical, but the key issue is how big tech companies can appeal against remedies the regulator decides. What is currently proposed is a judicial review, which is a widely respected and used form of appeal process in many comparable settings. It is quick, so decisions remain relevant to market conditions, it is fair and it is robust. Most importantly, it encourages a non-adversarial approach, so all parties have incentives to engage in good faith early on. That is how good regulation should work.
The Government are considering changes to this that would open up more extensive avenues for legal appeal, but we must seriously ask ourselves: who benefits, and what is the price? Expanding the grounds for legal challenge does not in itself make the process fairer, but it does favour those with the deepest pockets and creates incentives for protracted litigation to be the goal from the outset.
Big tech firms say there will not be proper checks on the regulator’s work, but that is the job of Parliament and we need to ensure we do it. It is accountability to Parliament, not toothless regulators, that will give us the better outcome. It takes courage to stand up to big tech firms, as my committee has seen from the growing number of SMEs engaging with us and speaking out. The Government got this one right the first time around, so I would be grateful if my noble friend could confirm that the Government will not change the Bill and will stand up for fair digital competition and the interests of UK businesses.
Digital competition is also a central theme of our inquiry into frontier AI large language models. Our evidence suggests that these models are laying the groundwork for epoch-defining shifts in the way our information environment works, the power of big tech firms, and global approaches to digital regulation. At the heart of this is a multi-billion dollar race between operators of closed source and open source models. Unsurprisingly, we are seeing some big tech firms dominating the field already.
Governments have a rare moment of steerage here. Government and Parliament will not be leading the AI research field, but we can determine what sorts of companies are allowed to flourish and within what parameters. We need to get this right. Today, the committee heard from Meta and Microsoft, and it will take evidence from OpenAI and Google DeepMind next week. By the way, on this country’s potential to compete, it is worth remembering that DeepMind was originally a British firm that has since been acquired by Google. Recognising the urgency of this, the committee is working at pace and will publish its report early in the new year.
Finally, I repeat our call for the Government to take digital exclusion more seriously. It is clear that the world is moving online at an unprecedented rate. Lots of this is positive, but not for those who cannot keep up. We must not let people’s ability to connect and use digital services become another dividing line. However, I am sad to report that the Government have refused even to update their decade-old digital exclusion strategy, which is so out of date that many of the organisations it cites no longer exist and its progress updates are in the National Archives. Sorting this out is low-hanging fruit. The economic case is sound and the practical suggestions have been developed. What is needed now is ministerial attention. Will my noble friend refer this again to the Secretary of State and ask that she reconsiders my committee’s key recommendations?
I share the Prime Minister’s ambition for the UK to be a tech superpower. We have the talent and the potential. We just need to remove some obvious obstacles so that we spread the opportunities, correct the current imbalance of power and ensure that we bring everybody with us.
Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)
My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness. I particularly endorse her last comments around digital exclusion. I very much look forward to the three maiden speeches from the welcome new Members of your Lordships’ House.
Our cultural sector, our sports industries and our flair for design are a large part of what defines this country globally. They are also critical in defining our future success and that of our children. By the time a child currently in reception leaves school in 2037, we will need to have shifted to a new economic model and a new social contract, and embedded a new way of working that is no longer exploiting people or the planet. We need a truly sustainable and equitable future if we are to give that child the opportunity to thrive.
At the same time, as AI moves apace, it will, as we heard from the AI summit, largely disrupt the labour market; workers will be deskilled as machines combine highly agile robotics with the ability to recognise patterns, predict language and assimilate vast amounts of information, while learning to constantly improve their accuracy. New and exciting jobs will emerge, with inventiveness, curiosity and unpredictability at their heart, to work alongside these machines of prediction. These are big challenges.
The gracious Speech is the chance to hear the Government’s vision to address these huge challenges. By contrast, it reminded me of a decaf cappuccino. On the surface, there were some good sprinklings of legislative cocoa powder: I am a fan of the proposals on football governance and will want to do my bit on the digital markets and data protection Bills; I will be especially keen to explore how forms of data trust can help build public confidence in data sharing so that we can exploit the potential of AI for good to the full. The Speech also had plenty of froth: we will have to see whether warm words on support for the creative industries, making AI safe, or fixing apprenticeship take-up will amount to anything at all. But at its heart, the Speech lacked substance and offered not a glimmer of hope for future generations that things can get better. It is as though the Government have run out of ideas and are incapable of thinking long-term beyond the next general election.
Yesterday saw a commitment to recycling ministerial resources but lacked the punch we need to get Britain building again, to drive us forward into a sustainable green economy. The Speech lacked the shot of stimulant that the country needs to get us moving again and to fix the NHS and our wider public services that remain underinvested and broken following David Cameron’s years of austerity. Most importantly, it lacked a future vision to offer the opportunities our young people need to face the uncertainties of the future with confidence.
I should draw noble Lords’ attention to my entry in the register, in particular as a director of CENTURY Tech and EDUCATE Ventures, both businesses deploying AI in education. I know from that commercial work that hiring talent in the tech sector is really challenging. What does this Speech have to offer that challenge? I know from work I recently completed for Engineering UK with the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, who I am delighted to see in his place, that without reversing the decline in engineering apprenticeships we will fail to have the technical skills we need to transition to a growing green economy. What does this Speech have to offer that challenge?
For the technology and cultural sectors, access to skills is key and a constraint on current growth. What did the Speech have to say on reversing the catastrophic decline in the creative subjects and in design and technology in our schools? How can we build a pipeline of talent into design, engineering and technology if the only applied subject in the national curriculum is fading away? The number of students entering design and technology GCSE has more than halved since 2009. In that time, the numbers teaching the subject have also halved; teacher recruitment for D&T met just 23% of its overall target in 2021-22, and it is getting worse. I wish the new Schools Minister well and hope that he recognises that school accountability in the English baccalaureate and Progress 8 have all contributed to this decline.
This Minister at the Dispatch Box will know that one of our most inspirational Britons is Sir Jony Ive, the designer of a suite of Apple products, including my iPad here, that have changed the world. His dad was a D&T teacher and inspector and Jony left school to study industrial design in Newcastle. For this Minister the question is simply: does he agree that the decline in every creative subject except art in schools at GCSE and the decline in design and technology is now at a critical point for the long-term future of the sectors we are focused on in this debate? Will he be meeting the new Minister, Damian Hinds, and pushing him to accelerate and extend the ambition of the advanced British standard? The Speech promised that it will bring technical and academic routes into a single qualification, but we know that that will take 10 years and not extend below 16. That is too little and way too late for this country’s technology, creative and sustainable futures.
We are all proud of our cultural and digital sectors in this country. As we can see, the rapid adoption of AI means that the competitive advantage of humans over machines can be so only if we are better humans: more creative, more expressive, more caring, more inventive; that is our future. We need a Government who understand the urgency of making the changes we need to deliver that hopeful opportunity.
Lord McNally (LD)
My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, although I shall not try to match his skills as a barista. I was very interested but slightly disappointed in the speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell—not that it was not, as always, a well-informed and pertinent speech, but I had hoped that she would speak about the Media Bill. We cannot fill in everything, I know, but I put it to her that both her experience in her committee and her past experience will make her a powerful influence in this House in getting the Media Bill right; I look forward to working with her on that Bill.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)
I thank the noble Lord for giving way. I did welcome the Media Bill. I did not want to go into detail because there is not time to talk about every Bill that is relevant to the work of the committee, but I can assure him that I will definitely play a part in the passage of that Bill.
Lord McNally (LD)
I never doubted it. One thing that has come up already is that these chances do not come along every day. I was on the 2003 media Bill, which has been mentioned, 20 years ago. No matter how eager Ministers may be later to tweet their handiwork, government business managers are not enthusiastic about giving more time to a matter that they think Parliament has got done and dusted, so we have to get this Media Bill right.
I am particularly interested in making sure that our public service broadcasters are well provided for—as the Minister said—in that Bill. We are very lucky in that little cluster of public service broadcasters which play such an important role. In a way, ITV retains many of its old regional strengths from its federation origins. Although it was not always realised at the time, Channel 4 gave an immense boost to our independent production; thank goodness we saved Channel 4 from privatisation.
For me, the BBC has always been the iron pole around which we build the credibility of our public service broadcasting. One thing that could be done, even at this late stage in the Parliament, is to end the endless war against the BBC from the Conservative Benches. It is a national asset. I always think of a comment by one of the great titans of American broadcasting when Reagan was deregulating public service broadcasting in the United States: “We will only know what we have lost once it’s gone.” That is one of the things that still motivate me to come to this House: the determination that we pass on to the next generation a BBC that is, as it is today, the envy of the world.
The other factor in the media section is the repeal of Section 40. I am pleased to see the noble Lord, Lord Black, in his place. I am quite sure that he has the same speech that he has been delivering for 20 years, but it is none the worse for repetition. We will come to that. I draw noble Lords’ attention to the letter sent today to Members from the Press Recognition Panel, which sets out the facts about Section 40. It is interesting that the politicians and the newspapers that have reported on the repeal of Section 40 have all presented it as a draconian issue whereby the winner has to pay both sides in a loss. They always omit to say that this would never apply if only our press would follow what was promised in Leveson and go through a proper media regulator. That offer is still on the table.
If the noble Lord, Lord Black, who has influence in these areas, can exert some of it, it is still possible to implement Leveson in full. That would provide a much healthier approach. We should not be waiting for princes of the blood royal and those enemies of the people, the judges, to regulate our press. That regulation should come from an industry confident enough to set up a proper regulator. On the repeal of Section 40, and if the Minister wants the background, I was the Minister in the Lords at that time. The Foreign Secretary will tell him what a double-dealing stab in the back it was by the Conservatives once they were free of the moderating hand of the Liberal Democrats and free to abandon Section 40.
The only other thing I will mention is that as a lifetime football lover and vice-president of St Albans City Football Club—a declaration of interest—I think this is a chance to get our national game into good order. I look forward to the words of my noble friend Lord Addington. Before him came David Mellor, Tracey Crouch and now the Fair Game campaign—all encouragement for us to get it right.
The Lord Bishop of Newcastle (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to be making my Maiden Speech in this House and in this particular debate. I offer my sincere thanks to your Lordships for the kind welcome extended to me and I pay tribute to the dedicated parliamentary staff, whose commitment to public service is exemplary.
The gracious Speech set out the bare bones of a legislative programme that will reveal its detail as we go. However, before making one or two observations on that, I will set out what I hope I might bring to the collective wisdom and discourse of this House from my experiences across the world. I began my ministry as a bishop in Aotearoa/New Zealand, as Bishop of Waikato. My years of working closely with that land’s indigenous people, the Māori, taught me much about the challenges and the joys of collaboration amid difference, division and the complexities of history. There are many phrases of wisdom that I learnt in this context: that leadership in the public square is like climbing a mountain—the higher you go the better the views but the more unpredictable the weather systems.
My life began, however, as a daughter of the manse in Coldingham in the Scottish Borders and my Presbyterian heritage remains close to my heart. My diocese is the most northern in England and stretches from the Scottish border to the River Tyne, across rural, coastal and urban landscapes to the City of Newcastle, encompassing a small part of Cumbria to the west. This region is well known for the riches of its industrial, cultural and sporting heritage. Noting the measures laid out in the gracious Speech for changes in football governance and welcoming the focus on women’s football in particular, the Bishop of Newcastle is the only Lord Spiritual who literally wears the colours of their local football team but, somewhat controversially perhaps, our lanyard colours of red and white speak to the sporting colours of the city I grew up in, Sunderland.
The diverse communities and landscapes of the north- east and Northumberland are etched deeply into my life. The innovation in business and cultural life; issues of farming and rural communities; the creativity, kindness and ingenuity of the region’s people; and the deep challenges of poverty and inequality, transport and educational attainment are on my heart.
The footsteps of the northern saints who mapped out the religious and cultural heritage of our nation have shaped my journey too. For the first time this year, my own footsteps joined 60,000 others for the world’s biggest half marathon, which starts in the city of Newcastle, and of which our region is rightly proud: the Great North Run. This particular long-standing event reminds us of the value of sport in building healthy and stronger communities.
I hope to focus in the near future on aspects of media policy. I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin; I am one of her “Play School” babies. The Government published their draft Media Bill earlier this year, which I broadly welcome. It has been chewed over by many commentators and agencies. My time as chair of the Sandford St Martin Trust caused me to focus in a particular way on the place of religion and ethics in our media, not least on the importance of the public service broadcasting remit of the BBC, Channel 4 and other media in a dynamic environment.
It is clear from the draft Bill that particular scrutiny will be required on the detail of provision across communities of faith and particular interests such as science. Currently, as I understand it, there are no metrics for ensuring a minimum service in relation to religion in public service broadcasting; flexibility is being offered instead. But if there are no mechanisms for measuring requirements, then how will we know whether or not broadcasters are fulfilling their unquantifiable remit? My colleague the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds and I will be tracking the Bill with great interest and attention to detail.
In conclusion, I offer a Māori phrase to noble Lords as I look forward to working with them: “Nā tō rourou, nā taku rourou ka ora ai te iwi”—“With your basket and my basket, the people will thrive”.
Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)
My Lords, it is a truth universally acknowledged that an Anglican bishop making her maiden speech in the House of Lords is likely to be able to cope with being followed by a Methodist. I was delighted to receive the honour of being chosen to speak at this moment, and I hope very much that we have just had a foretaste of the nature of the contribution to our debates by—as I must learn to call her—the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle. She has much to bring, and has hinted at some of it. She was the first woman priest to be ordained in England to become a bishop but, because this was before women bishops could be made in England, she found herself the Bishop of Waikato and Taranaki down in New Zealand. The ministry there, as has also been hinted at, crosses all the borders between the Māori, Polynesian and English populations, so leadership styles have been developed such as co-primates and co-diocesan bishops. A Church of England without hierarchy seems like an oxymoron. Still, for all that, it is marvellous to hear the tones that we will hear more of in future.
One final thing before I turn my attention elsewhere is that the noble Prelate—I cannot ever get it right: as a Methodist, one is just “the noble Lord”—is a trained and deeply thoughtful theologian, and I am looking forward to hearing the insights of the deep studies she has undertaken finding their way into giving colour to the policies that we adumbrate together in this House. She has a challenge and we are very grateful at the prospect of listening to the noble Lady the Prelate. Oh, for goodness’ sake: in the Methodist Church, we have sandwiches, while the Church of England has those fancy little cakes—it is the same with language.
I must turn from natural intelligence to artificial intelligence in the remarks I wish to make. We have just hot-footed it from our committee, and I need not go over the ground that has already been rehearsed by the feisty chair of our committee—the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell—who has forged a terrific band of people asking awkward questions and bringing them to the Floor of the House eventually. Today, we had the pleasure, if it was that, of listening to top people from Meta and Microsoft, and we explored the various things that have already been mentioned in this debate. I do not want to fix my attention there; I just want to say what a pleasure it is to sit under her chairmanship and to be able to say so in this House. The more bipartisan things that we say about each other as we try to find our way forward, the better, it seems to me.
In the King’s Speech, there was just one sentence on the subject, was there not? It was:
“The United Kingdom will continue to lead international discussions to ensure that Artificial Intelligence is developed safely”.
It is “safely” that preoccupies me. In the National AI Strategy published by the Government, there are three bullet points. It is a 10-year plan, with forward thinking and long-term thinking. First, we must
“Invest and plan for the long-term needs of the AI ecosystem”.
That is easy to agree. Secondly, we must
“Support the transition to an AI-enabled economy”.
Again, I have no problems. Thirdly, we must
“Ensure the UK gets the national and international governance of AI technologies right to encourage innovation, investment, and protect the public and our fundamental values”.
That is, once again, the area of my concern.
I hope noble Lords will be patient with me if I refer to a conversation I had a number of years ago and that I shall never forget, with Joseph Rotblat, a nuclear physicist and very eminent man, holder of the Nobel Prize for peace. He escaped from Poland, although tragically he left his wife behind and she suffered in the way that so many others did. He was part of the Manhattan Project, developing nuclear physics for, as the scientists thought, the benefits of the world. There was a war on. He subscribed to continuing his research into the application of his science to the making of a bomb only because the story was that the Germans were producing a nuclear weapon themselves. When it turned out that they had abandoned their research, he resigned from the Manhattan Project and came back to Britain, to Liverpool, and began a series of conversations called the Pugwash conferences.
Those Pugwash conferences gathered together leading people in the field of nuclear physics who all had ethical concerns about the science they were doing and the application to which it was being put. In case anybody thinks that ethics is about something sentimental, romantic or non-substantial, let it be said that those Pugwash conferences led to treaties, bans, agreements for the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, for the banning of nuclear testing and all the rest of it. Ethics has outcomes that are measurable, but this man, towering above his community, set the standard.
I had a cameo career on the Front Bench before Covid—as well as old age—destroyed that. However, during that time with DCMS, and on the committee since, I have been looking in the start-up companies and at people in the field that we have been talking to where they work, and as they come to be interrogated at the committee, in the hope of finding from within the science itself that authoritative voice that will help us poor lawmakers who take for ever to catch up with the science—although we never do—to set the tone and the direction. Rotblat did it for nuclear physics; who will do it for the technologies we are currently developing? The ethical side of things is the answer to what we heard earlier: the need for transparency and openness and to offer explanations to a public who are bemused. We long for that voice.
I come off the committee in January. I have had the privilege of engaging with ideas that are well beyond my competence, but I find at the heart of it the desire to get that voice that will set us off in the right direction: that authoritative voice from within.
Lord Willetts (Con)
My Lords, I begin by congratulating the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle on her excellent maiden speech. We look forward to her future contributions to our debates in this House, and I think her powerful speech today was part of a Newcastle theme that is already running through this debate. The right reverend Prelate spoke of her commitment to that city. We heard from the noble Lord, Lord Knight, about the great Sir Jony Ive, who of course studied design at what is now Northumbria University in Newcastle. At the University of Newcastle itself, the Centre for Life is an excellent example of both advances in medical research and applying it to healthcare locally. It was wonderful to have her intervention in this debate.
I begin by drawing the House’s attention to my entry in the register of interests, particularly my role, until last week, on the board of UKRI, my position as chair of the UK Space Agency, and serving on the board of Tekcapital and Darktrace.
I welcome the gracious Speech and the Government’s clear and strong commitment to science and tech. We saw it in the creation of DSIT and the very significant AI summit the other week, and we see it in some of the science and tech proposals in the gracious Speech. I will briefly comment on three or four aspects of that: first, regulation. In the very powerful intervention from my noble friend Lady Stowell, we were reminded that these are deep waters. There are tricky issues in regulation. First, if we get regulation right, we can use it to promote innovation and new technologies. I am aware, as chair of the UK Space Agency, that one of our key advantages in the race for launch from various sites in Europe is that we have space-launch regulations in place, carefully scrutinised in your Lordships’ House a few years ago. Having that regulatory regime gives us an advantage. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act provides a shared framework for life sciences innovation, and I very much hope that the Automated Vehicles Bill, for example, is another case where getting the regulatory regime right for a new technology can help to promote it.
Indeed, the Government did have an initiative, a pioneer fund, to help promote new regulation in areas which required it. It would be very good to hear from the Minister in the wind-up that there is a continuing commitment to that initiative. We must get the balance right; sometimes regulation can be overdone. I welcome the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill, which may protect the privacy of personal data without being as clunky as some other regimes, such as in the EU.
However, we do not need to regulate everything all the time. Sometimes, we get ourselves into a position where, every time there is a new technology, we feel we need to have a specific set of regulations for it because otherwise it will just operate in a lawless, anarchic world. National, general legislation already exists. It is already a crime to try to create a bioterror weapon, so we do not need to ask, “As people may use AI to create it, what shall we do to legislate against it?” There is a lot of law protecting copyright and privacy and stopping theft and people from developing instruments for the purposes of warlike acts or acts of terrorism. We should remind ourselves that, within that framework, new technologies are always and automatically covered. It would be dangerous if we got into the assumption that, every time there is a new technology, we need somehow to construct a legal regime, otherwise there will be anarchy out there—there will not be.
I was involved in a report from Onward, which the noble Lord, Lord Patel, referred to. He referred to its criticism of Treasury controls. I must warn him that, when he made that remark, I saw a shadow pass across the face of the noble Lord, Lord Macpherson, a former Permanent Secretary in the Treasury, who may have thought that Treasury controls are one of the few things standing between us and national bankruptcy.
I will expand a little on what that report meant by “Treasury controls”. Of course, there have to be decisions about the total amount of public expenditure and it has to be allocated to departments, including the new Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. Governments have to be able to decide their public expenditure totals and then be disciplined in sticking to them. However, a lot of controls around spending are designed, particularly with processes such as procurement and business case rules, for what one might regard as conventional procurement, such as building a bypass or constructing some national infrastructure. They can stand in the way of a proper use of an innovation budget.
When you talk about how the US promotes innovation, you find, for example, that it uses procurement. I have been at conferences in the US, where I have asked some new inventor how he is funding his project. He said, “I have already sold the first 10,000 to the Department of Defense”, even though he has only a prototype and not yet produced any. That is contrary to our procurement rules. Even when we try to promote innovation, we are not allowed to pay for anything until the service has been delivered. However, innovative use of procurement is a powerful means, if used carefully and within an overall spending commitment to make things happen.
Similarly, business cases are necessary if you are doing a standard project, but they can sometimes be extraordinarily time-consuming when the Government are deliberately bearing risk. The target is therefore not risk reduction, as it should be when you are building a bypass. In the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, the Government are bearing risk. Indeed, in this case—speaking as a Conservative—the reason why the Government are involved is not because they have perfect knowledge of what will happen in every area of science and technology, but because it is the legitimate role of government to bear risk. So I believe that the proposals in our report from Onward were of merit, and I hope that they were consistent with the Treasury disciplines in which all of us on this side of the House believe.
Baroness Kidron (CB)
My Lords, I too welcome the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle. I admire her bravery in wearing the colours of Sunderland and Newcastle simultaneously.
I declare my interests as chair of 5Rights Foundation, chair of the Digital Futures Commission at the LSE and adviser to the Institute for Ethics in AI at Oxford. Like others, I will start with Bletchley Park. That was kicked off by the Prime Minister, who set out his hopes for an AI-enabled world, while promising to tackle head-on its potential dangers. He said:
“Criminals could exploit AI for cyber-attacks, disinformation, fraud, or even child sexual abuse”—
but these are not potential dangers; they exist here and now.
In the race for AI prominence and the vast riches the technology promises, the tech leaders came to town warning us that the future they are creating is untrammelled, unprincipled and insecure and that AI will overwhelm human agency. I think that that language of existential threat makes for fabulous headlines, but it rather disempowers the rest of us. Because, if we ask if we want to supercharge the creation of child sexual abuse material, I would hazard a guess that the answer will be no; or if it is okay for facial recognition trained on white faces to prevent a black parent or child getting a security pass to enter a school, again no; or if we believe that just because something is technically possible—the creation of a disease or a weapon—it should be done, again no. Indeed, we have a record of containing the distribution of inventions that have the capability of annihilating us.
AI is not separate and different, and the language that we use to describe it—either its benefits or threats—must make that clear. AI is built, used and purveyed by business, government, civil society and even criminals. It is part of the human arrangements over which, for the moment, we still have agency. Language that disempowers us is part of the deliberate strategy of tech exceptionalism, advocated by industry lobbyists over decades, which has successfully secured the privatisation of technology, creating untold wealth for a few while outsourcing the cost to society. Who owns AI, who benefits, who is responsible and who gets hurt is still in the balance and I would assert that these are questions that we must deal with here and now.
I was disappointed to hear the noble Viscount say earlier at Questions that the Government were taking a sit-back-and-wait approach, so I have three rather more modest questions for the Minister, each of which could be tackled here and now. The first is: what plans do the Government have to ensure the robust application of our existing laws? As we saw earlier, the large language models and image creation services have used copyright material at scale. Getty Images has been testing it in court on behalf of its artists and photographers, but other rights holders, including some of the world’s finest authors, are unable to challenge this on an individual basis while their art and livelihood is scraped into vast datasets from which they do not benefit. I ask the Minister whether it would be a good idea to have an analysis of how new models are failing to uphold existing law and rights obligations as a first and urgent task for the new AI Safety Institute.
Secondly, how do the Government plan to use their legislative programme to tackle gaps that have been identified? For example, the creation, distribution and consumption of CSAM content is illegal, covered by at least three separate laws in the UK. But not one of these laws covers the models or plug-ins that create CSAM at scale—in one case, more than 20,000 images in a matter of hours—so the upcoming data protection Bill provides us with an opportunity to make training, sharing and possessing software that is trained on or trained to produce CSAM content an offence.
Also on the Prime Minister’s list is disinformation. Synthetic information that passes for real is also a here and now problem: the London Mayor, whose voice was fabricated, celebrities falsely endorsing products or a child’s picture scraped from a school website to train those aforesaid CSAM models. The loss of control of one’s personhood carries with it a democratic deficit and potentially overwhelming individual suffering. I ask the Minister whether the Government are willing to put beyond doubt that AI-generated biometric and image data constitutes a form of personal data over which an individual, whether adult or child, has rights, including the right to object to its use.
Both the data Bill and the digital markets Bill could create new data models—a subject that the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, articulated very well in a recent article in the Times. New approaches to data rights, with new owners of data, are one way of having a voice in our AI-enabled future.
Thirdly and finally, I would like to ask the Minister why the Government have left children on the margins. I attended two official fringe events of the summit, one hosted by the then Home Secretary about child sexual abuse, the other convened by St Mary’s and the Turing Institute about embedding children’s rights in AI systems. Children are early adopters of technology—canaries in the coal mine—and many of us know the cost of poorly regulated digital environments for them. I am bewildered that, so soon after Royal Assent to the Online Safety Act, and in clear sight of the challenges that AI brings, the Government risk downgrading children’s data rights rather than explicitly protecting the age-appropriate design code and the definitions on which it is founded. Children should have been front and centre of the concerns at Bletchley, not pushed to the fringe, and perhaps the Minister could repair that damage by putting them front and centre of the new AI Safety Institute. After all, it is children who will inhabit the world we are building.
Finally, AI will create enormous benefits and upheaval across all sectors, but it also promises to put untold wealth and power in the hands of even fewer people. However, there are things in the here and now that we can do to ensure that technology innovates in ways that support human agency. It is tech exceptionalism that poses an existential threat to humanity, not the technology itself.
Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge (Con) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, it is a tremendous privilege to make my maiden speech in your Lordships’ House. It has been quite the journey getting to this moment, and I am immensely grateful for the guidance and advice that so many noble Lords have offered me. I am especially grateful to my supporters, my noble friends Lady Foster of Oxton and Lady Meyer, and my wonderful mentors, my noble friends Lady Morris of Bolton and Lady Seccombe. I would like to express my gratitude to Black Rod, the clerks, the doorkeepers—everyone who works in the House—and the special advisers who have helped me navigate my first few weeks in the role. I am also most grateful for the friendship and support of all my friends in the other place, whom I have had the honour of working with for a number of years.
A peerage is both an honour and a responsibility. It is a responsibility I take incredibly seriously. It is testament to the high level of discourse in this place that debate can be robust yet incredibly collegiate. I have been overwhelmed by the welcome of noble Lords across your Lordships’ House, all of whom have said how important it is for younger voices to be part of your Lordships’ deliberations.
I am part of a generation whose unique opportunities are accompanied by new challenges, from the difficulty of getting on to the housing ladder to the spiralling cost of university debt, the complexities of living in a social media age and the very real fear about our climate. We live in a time of great change. It is a confusing time; it is also a time of instability and anxiety. This is perhaps so for everyone, but it is surely so for the young.
I was born in 1993. George Michael was still at number one and the Spice Girls were about to set in motion a wave of girl power. I am a child of the dial- up internet connection, when mobile phones were only for phone calls and the world wide web was about to be launched to the public. Throughout my life I have witnessed not only the benefits of our ever-closer relationship with technology but, sadly, the threats that such advances can bring. This is an issue of great and increasing concern to me, as I am sure it should be to us all.
I followed with great interest the Online Safety Bill, which represents a landmark in online safety. I was delighted that my vote contributed to making the UK one of the safest places in the world to be online—something of which this Government should be hugely proud. However, the online world is evolving at pace, and we should not be complacent. I am greatly encouraged that the UK has shown leadership by hosting the first global summit on artificial intelligence and that the gracious Speech reaffirmed the UK’s commitment to leading international discussions to ensure its safe development. I look forward to addressing both the challenges and opportunities that technology and, in particular, AI present.
I must also thank the former Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, who put a great deal of trust in me. I will be for ever grateful not only for this but for his kindness and encouragement. I feel immensely privileged to have worked with him and other Cabinet Ministers during my time at No. 10. I was delighted that his commitment to delivering the referendum result, his optimism and his vision for levelling up the country and ensuring that life chances are distributed fairly resulted in the seismic election victory of 2019.
I wish to take a moment to pay tribute to my parents, especially my dear late father. Born in Unstone in 1930, he was a child during the war. He would often tell me of the horrors of those days, such as the time when he went cycling with his brother and they had to jump off their bikes and take cover as a Messerschmitt Bf 109 machine-gunned a passing freight train. Another time, the windows of his family home were blown out when the house opposite took a direct hit during the Manchester blitz. Despite this, my father always had a positive outlook on life. I like to think that this is a quality he instilled in me. He did not even complain when his retirement plans changed because of my arrival in the world. When I was a small girl, he would often tell me that it was possible to achieve anything that you put your mind to.
It was aspiration and the desire to get on in life that helped shape my parents’ politics. My mother has told me of how her own parents’ lives changed when Margaret Thatcher’s Government gave them the opportunity to buy the council house in Alderley Edge that was allocated to my grandfather on his return from the war—a policy I am sure most of your Lordships remember and for which some of your Lordships were perhaps responsible. My grandmother was so delighted by this policy that she went around knocking on all her neighbours’ doors to let them know about this life- changing opportunity. Up until that point, owning their own home was beyond their wildest dreams. It seems that levelling up was alive and well decades ago. It is vital that we create a climate where younger generations have a chance at home ownership, so that they too can feel secure for their future.
I end where I began: with thanks. I express my gratitude to all noble Lords for the warmth of their welcome and the kindness shown to me. During my time in your Lordships’ House, I hope to repay that kindness.
Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)
It is 65 years since the first Baroness and the first life Peer, Baroness Elliot of Harwood, made her maiden speech in this House—also on the fourth day of the debate on the gracious Speech. It is therefore a very auspicious day and my pleasure to congratulate the newest noble Baroness, Lady Owen, on her excellent maiden speech. Like those pioneering Baronesses 65 years ago, as my noble friend has just illustrated, she brings a fresh voice, new skills and energy that those who remember thinking dial-up internet and the Spice Girls were cutting edge are going to need as we navigate the future for science, technology, media and culture. I am sure that my noble friend has many years ahead of her in this House, but whether, like Baroness Elliot of Harwood, she votes against the Government and becomes known as “the despair of the Whips”, only time will tell. We welcome those who work hard and who show commitment. My noble friend does both. I therefore warmly welcome her today and look forward to her contributions in the years ahead.
In looking to the future, one of the challenges that we need to address with some urgency is the future of broadcasting, as we move into a multimedia, fragmented landscape. I too was delighted to find the long-awaited Media Bill in the gracious Speech. I draw your Lordships’ attention to my interests as set out in the register, for I am a board member of Creative Scotland, which includes Screen Scotland in its remit. Screen Scotland is a Scottish success story. In 2021, the screen sector contributed £627 million to Scotland’s economy and provided over 10,000 jobs. Scotland’s annual level of inward investment for film and high-end tv production doubled between 2012 and 2019, with nearly three times the growth rate experienced by the UK as a whole. But we have a finely balanced infrastructure in Scotland that has invested in development, production and skills. While the Media Bill is warmly welcomed, there are a few points that I want to highlight today that I trust we will clarify as the legislation progresses and which are important to get right so that we ensure that this finely balanced and successful industry continues to grow and thrive.
Our public sector broadcasters have successful homes in Scotland—Channel 4 and the BBC both operate from Glasgow, alongside the strongly performing STV, the main channel of which reaches 80% of Scots every month. Channel 4’s publisher-broadcaster model allows it to harness the power of the market to deliver a public service both on and off screen. This effective model has played a key role in supporting a large supply chain of UK production companies, many of them SMEs, most of them outside London and a great deal of them in Scotland. Channel 4’s role and economic importance to the production sector was the key defence against plans for its privatisation. However, by giving Channel 4 the power to produce without applying a cap on the amount of in-house content, the Government risks undermining the independent production and distribution sector at a time of very difficult market conditions.
We need to ensure that all our public sector broadcasters, including STV in Scotland, are given significant prominence—rather than just appropriate prominence—on internet-enabled TVs, smart TVs and streaming sticks. We cannot risk public service content becoming more difficult to access in the shift away from traditional linear TV broadcasting. It is with concern that I hear that public broadcasters such as STV are being asked to pay for prominence by big global networks such as Amazon. Figures of up to 30% of revenue have been quoted, which would wipe out the viability of PSBs in general but would be particularly crippling for smaller, regional companies such as STV.
Finally, the draft Bill stipulates that PSBs must make available a broad range of content which is
“likely to meet the needs and interests of as many different audiences as practicable”.
This is not just about journalism, yet other than news and current affairs the Bill makes reference only to provision of
“an appropriate range of genres”.
Removing existing specifications is of concern to providers of socially valuable but perhaps not so commercially valuable content—for example, science and technology, and, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle highlighted in her excellent maiden speech, religious broadcasters, and also those for minority languages such as Gaelic. At present, Gaelic is notable in the draft Bill entirely by the absence of any reference to it, unlike the Welsh language and S4C—something which MG Alba is extremely vexed about.
I trust that we will be able to address some of these issues as the Media Bill progresses. The Minister will not be at all surprised to hear that I will be looking to scrutinise it closely from a Scottish perspective, to ensure that public service content is easily accessible for all our nations’ communities and that we enable the Scottish screen industries to continue to thrive in a digital age.
Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)
My Lords, I congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle and the noble Baroness, Lady Owen, on their maiden speeches. For all of us in this House, our maiden speech is an ordeal—even, I guess, for a Bishop—but I think we will all agree that the maiden speeches we have heard this afternoon rose to the occasion. Both the right reverend Prelate and the noble Baroness have their own perspective through which they can contribute to our future debates in this House, and we very much look forward to their contributions.
I want to direct my brief remarks to reform of gambling law. Gambling is not mentioned in the King’s Speech and that is not surprising because, although there is much to do in the next 12 months, the measures the Government are going to take do not require legislation. I welcome many of the measures in the Government’s recent White Paper and I declare my interest as a member of the executive committee of Peers for Gambling Reform. In this context, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Foster, its indefatigable chairman, who can take a lot of the credit for the fact that the Government’s proposals in the White Paper are a great deal better than at one time they looked like being.
The noble Lord will be speaking later in the debate about the Government’s proposals more generally, but I want to concentrate my remarks on gambling reform as it affects young people. Gambling, like alcohol, is an activity which gives innocent pleasure to the vast majority of its users. But like alcohol, gambling, when it becomes an addiction, causes immeasurable human misery and even death. All the more reason, therefore, why we should protect young people from developing such an addiction. A 2019 study by the Gambling Commission suggested that there were more than 350,000 child gamblers in the UK and that approximately 55,000 children between the ages of 11 and 16 were at risk of becoming problem gamblers. Those are alarming statistics.
I want to address two areas of risk for young people. One is loot boxes and the other is “celebrity” or “influencer” streaming of gambling content. I do not know how many Members of this House are familiar with loot boxes, but they are games, particularly popular with the young, whereby players can acquire assets, sometimes by paying and sometimes in other ways, to improve their chances of winning. Loot boxes do not fall within the technical definition of gambling because players cannot cash their winnings, but they obviously play to the human instinct to take a risk to get a reward, and they can be highly addictive.
The Conservative Party’s 2019 manifesto stated that the Gambling Act 2005 would be reviewed, with
“a particular focus on tackling issues around loot boxes”.
It therefore seems that at that time the Government had reason to believe that there was a link between loot boxes and gambling, and that action needed to be taken to prevent the harm which would arise from it.
One of the options open to the Government was to extend the Gambling Act to cover loot boxes, but they decided not to take that course. Instead, after consultation with the gambling industry, they decided to rely on the industry itself to provide protections: but this industry has an obvious conflict of interest. A report in 2021 by the charity GambleAware found that around 5% of loot-box purchases could generate half the industry’s loot-box revenues, with almost a third of these falling into the “problem gambler” category. The danger is that so many of those problem gamblers will be children. The Government have said that they will keep their position under review and will not hesitate to consider legislative options if the measures taken by the industry do not prove satisfactory. Will the Government make that undertaking concrete, and commit to making a report by a specific date?
My second issue is the online streaming of gambling content. Because of the backing of celebrities or influencers, children can indirectly involve themselves in gambling before they are of the legal age to gamble. The noble Baronesses, Lady Kidron and Lady Owen, mentioned the dangers that come from new technology, and this is a form of that danger. Figures for as recently as August show that a website called kick.com—I have not used it myself, but it is known for streamed gambling content—was visited over 80,000 times, much of that by children. Are the Government conscious of this risk, among the other dangers of technology and online content, and will they consider using their powers under the Online Safety Act to restrict the exposure of young people to it?
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, the first thing that I must do is congratulate the two maiden speakers. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle— I do not know how many times I have invented my own title for Bishops in this House—gave the sort of speech you would expect of somebody who could work a pulpit and a crowd every time. The noble Baroness, Lady Owen, reminded me exactly how old I was by saying that she was born in 1993. I made my maiden speech quite a long time before she was born, and I can remember every word of it. It is quite clear that she is much better prepared by her life for life in this House than I was at that time. I congratulate them, and I look forward to hearing what they both say in the future, although I make no guarantee to agree with either of them.
The part of the King’s Speech that we have awaited for a very long time, and has a great deal of agreement, is about the regulation of professional football. It is something that the Government were, effectively, forced to do by fan reaction and the stream of embarrassing incidents where local assets—as the Government have quite rightly described them—called football clubs, all of which had an emotional connection to and, indeed, grip on their local communities, got themselves into trouble periodically. Looking back, Leeds United was probably the biggest one. These clubs usually had something in common. They decided that if they spent a lot of money on players or infrastructure, they were bound to get promoted because nobody else is going to spend a lot of money on that, and nobody else can possibly have as good a manager and as good luck. But remember this is sport—you can lose your star striker when he stubs his toe in the changing room. They will go up and go down and get themselves in trouble: that is usually the pattern.
This goes back a long way and often happens to smaller clubs. A new owner comes in and says, “Right, I’ll do a property deal. I’ll get rid of your ground, which is nice and central to all the other amenities of a town. It’s good for housing or other forms of development, so we’ll move you out of town”. That was another disagreement. Nearly 30 years ago, I first heard Supporters Direct, I think, raising how this was happening periodically in the lower leagues of football.
Then we have the other complaints the Government have mentioned about changing kit, extra prices and changing names for marketing purposes. All this should have been addressed a long time ago, but we have finally got around to doing something about it. It is one of the bits of glue in local society; competition and the structure within it provide a common currency. As someone who played a different code of football for most of my life, I am rather envious of that. As someone who plays rugby union, I cannot help thinking that we might need something of this ourselves, because we are haemorrhaging clubs for similar reasons. We have a precedent here. In this very narrow area, the Government are doing something that looks good.
Resilience is really about surviving demotion. Periodically, with the best will in the world, it happens. You do not have to be that bad; others just have to be a little better. In these big competitive leagues, people move up and down. This is why it might be attractive for somebody from the States, for instance, to want a franchising system and not to have to worry about relegation. Here, in effect, we have decided that we approve of it. That is why we are not going for the European super league; we need this structure of going up and down. We take the money and it is great; everybody is happy.
I cannot help but feel that we are missing an opportunity. The Government are going to pump money down, but what about the social potential to improve lives in the communities that support these clubs? I have read through the Government’s response, and in effect we have said that we are not going to do this, but the clubs themselves have award ceremonies that say it is a good thing. I know, because I have been asked to them and rugby union does the same. Why are we not making sure of at least some form of social interaction and support for local communities or other local clubs? Imagining that everybody 10 leagues below is a potential rival is ridiculous; it is just not going to happen. We need to make sure that there is a support structure, so that people are better educated about the game.
I raised this with the EFL, which said that it has a youth policy. I pointed out that this is largely based on talent identification. If a 14 year-old who thinks he might become a professional footballer is told that he does not make the grade—we are predominantly talking about males, which is another flaw in this legislation—he might go through some form of mental crisis. Football has a duty to support those communities.
My starter for 10 would be for every club or voluntary organisation in the country to have a treasurer and a secretary. Maybe the football club could organise mass training, so that people would know how to do the books and fill out the forms. Think how much that would help and how easy it would be for a group like this to do it.
When we go through this Bill, I hope your Lordships consider what else might be done without changing the essence of this. We are not talking about running all local clubs; we are talking about making sure there is public involvement in and support for voluntary structures within the Bill, because we need it. I cannot see why somebody, when we have had to intervene to sort out their mess, should not pay that small price.
Lord Chartres (CB)
My Lords, research done by the House of Lords Appointments Commission points to the fact that your Lordships’ House still has some way to go in the fields of diversity—in particular, regional diversity. Therefore, it is particularly refreshing, and good, that we now have a fresh, eloquent, new voice from the north-east. I join other noble Lords in congratulating the right reverend Prelate on her maiden speech.
The other respect in which diversity could perhaps be developed is, of course, in age, and that brings me to the second maiden speech. I visited a primary school the other day and they said to me, “Can you remember anything from when you were at school?”. I said, “Yes, I was the ink monitor. I had this can and every day I filled up the little porcelain ink-wells, and we learned how to write with a steel nib, following the pattern of the great Renaissance calligraphers of the 15th century”. They looked totally bewildered, I have to say. The teacher came to my rescue and said, “Oh yes, we have done a project on the Victorians and we have one of those cans over there”.
On the subject of the extraordinary changes that will come upon the world through AI, I was glad to hear in the gracious Speech that the Government’s plan is to
“strengthen education for the long term”
through the enhancement of knowledge and skills among young people. I follow other noble Lords in congratulating the Government on their timely action to ensure the safe development of AI and all those efforts to encourage innovation in technology and machine learning. We do indeed live in a time of technological exhilaration. Let us hope that it is not increasingly accompanied by cultural exhaustion. Education for the long term has to recognise that the great question for the 21st century centres on the meaning and value of human life—here I very much resonate with the speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth—and to encounter the already powerful current of thought that sees human beings as little different from machines, or, even worse, as rapacious bipeds bent on consuming the planet.
I can understand this desire to enhance skills and knowledge, because that translates into power. We also need the wisdom and humility that translate into service, as well as love. Failure to grasp this elementary point will lead to a new ice age for humanity. Technical knowledge enables us to know how to do something, but humane wisdom enables us to know why it is good for this thing to be done. We already see how the technological environment, conceived in the beginning as a useful tool, begins to shape those who use it. As we flick from screen to screen, constantly diverted by what is presented as new—but is in reality just more of the same—there are trends, spasms of the hive mind and gusts of indignation, but nothing accumulates. Cultivation, which is essential to culture, becomes impossible.
If the Government’s ambition is really to
“strengthen education for the long term”,
then, alongside the acquisition of skills and knowledge, there needs to be at every level a fresh and profound attention and investment in the creative arts—music, for example, which unites numbers and harmony. Music should not, at any level of education, be just a divertissement.
At the same time, we must be very serious about translating and transmitting the texts of the great wisdom traditions of world culture, all of which teach that humility—being close to the humus as human beings —is the beginning of wisdom. We grow by connecting with one another in humility. We grow by self-giving, not by performing on platforms. We cannot genuinely grow up online; we grow up in communities, where we can make one another our work of art and learn profoundly what it is to be human. Any education for the long term must ponder the practical implications of this truth. It is a way in which we shall recover our confidence in the future of the human species.
Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I take this opportunity to congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle and the noble Baroness, Lady Owen, on their impressive maiden speeches. I warm- heartedly welcome them to the House. I am also looking forward to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Ranger.
I welcome the announcement in the King’s Speech that Parliament might be considering introducing legislation relating to science, technology and innovation, and the steps the Government took at the AI safety summit at Bletchley Park. Over the past 18 months, I have had the privilege of leading the work of the All-Party Group on the Metaverse and Web 3.0. I am grateful to my co-chair, Mr Simon Fell MP, Dr Lisa Cameron MP, the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, and other members of the APPG across both Houses, as well as our partners in the industry. The APPG’s ambition was driven not only by the commercial imperative of British competitiveness but by potential social changes. We have been able to highlight the amazing array of British innovation, which is encouraging global interest and investment.
The APPG also wanted to broaden understanding of the many components that define the technologies that are termed “the metaverse”. In our research, we collaborated with researchers and academics at Greenwich University, New York University, Goldsmiths, Durham University and Surrey University, innovators, organisations and business leaders across many disciplines. We were guided by our advisers, including Professor Yu Xiong of Surrey University, Professor Fernandes of Durham University, Professor Xing of Liverpool University and Professor Johnson of New York University.
The APPG involved schools in our evidence sessions, where students quizzed senior academics and officials at Google and Roblox. I wish to acknowledge our deepest gratitude to all those who co-operated with us, particularly the many students, for their insightful contributions. They demonstrated their prowess during their questioning of a panel of experts on the use of technology. They made useful interventions on improving their safety and experiences, and on the lack of evident diversity in social media platforms and games. It also is worth noting that this work led to our collaboration with Sir David Amess’s Children’s Parliament, which has resulted in us partnering with schools in Africa.
We organised several evidence sessions in partnership with public and private sector organisations, including the British Computer Society, to enable experts and stakeholders to exchange thoughts and ideas across their different sectors. We examined the potential impact of Web 3.0 and the metaverse on various industries, including healthcare, education and governance. Professor Fernandes has just completed his report, which studied the potential impact of the metaverse on the UK regions. Our report was deliberately mindful of the Government’s levelling-up agenda. There is broad consensus that an evolving regulatory framework will be needed for digital ownership, blockchain, governance and compliance, as many noble Lords have stated.
In principle, I support any government attention on AI, given the warnings issued by experts throughout the world—such as the work of our APPG and that of Dr Lisa Cameron, Martin Docherty-Hughes and the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones—who have made significant advances on the discourse of digital transformation. Much of this work leads many of us to conclude that focusing on AI in silos may be detrimental to progressing effective governance of advanced technologies overall.
There is a paradigm shift in digital infrastructures, comprising more autonomous and decentralised platforms, with user-concentric ecosystems and greater personal control of digital identities, data and online interactions—or at least this is promised. It is being developed by monopolies of service providers without adequately addressing the needs and access issues of communities at large.
Therefore, we must address where AI fits within the broader spectrum of a technology ecosystem, including the interconnected nature of the metaverse and web 3.0. Where is it headed given that our knowledge and skills are expanding fast and will produce countless reiterations of products and services? Some of these may seem obscure now but as transformative AI-assisted machine learning widens its scope and function, we as legislators are obliged to ensure that there is an all-encompassing and well-regulated ecosystem which will not only yield benefits to British competitiveness but will honour our social obligation for an inclusive and just society.
This House has distinguished champions and expertise in this field, which was so evident throughout the passage of the Online Safety Bill, and today. We have learned the complexities of the wide range of unregulated technologies in use throughout the world where we have little jurisdiction to stop the horrific harm caused by well-known as well as unidentified creators, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron. Hence, our international collaboration in the AI summit is critical to safeguard our national integrity as well as global security.
Metaverse technology is here to stay. The enterprise and industrial metaverses require an extensive set of technical enablers, which means a learned population who can tackle the demands of cloud computing. AI, network structures and connectivity are ranked the most important, according to a worldwide survey undertaken by McKinsey and others. Noble Lords will be aware of notable reports by PwC and Goldman Sachs which suggest the monetary value of the metaverse to be up to $80.2 billion this year.
Many opportunities exist for global co-operation. My time is running out and I will just paraphrase Shakespeare: the tide in the affairs of men may lead to fortune or a life bound in shallows, and when the current is in our favour we must grasp the fortune or lose our ventures. This is our time to progress a global, comprehensive strategy on emerging technology, cultivating the best of our skills and infrastructure.
I end by asking the Minister whether he will consider meeting Professor Fernandes and the team who wrote the report.
Viscount Chandos (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle and the noble Baroness, Lady Owen of Alderley Edge, on their truly excellent maiden speeches. Like the noble Lord, Lord Addington, I was almost exactly the same age as the noble Baroness when I made my maiden speech and I can assure her, like the noble Lord, Lord Addington, did, that her speech was very much more articulate than mine. I look forward to the maiden speech following mine of the noble Lord, Lord Ranger of Northwood, and will try not to prolong my contribution in order to minimise any final pre-match nerves he may be feeling.
I will speak briefly on each of today’s specialist subjects: science and technology, media, and culture. I draw your Lordships’ attention to my interests in the register; in particular, as chair of the Thomson Foundation and chair of the Theseus Agency. Not disclosed in the register is that my son is a television and film screenwriter.
Currently, AI, particularly generative AI, dominates the focus of and debate about science and technology, and I will address this area. But the contribution of technology to economic growth and broader prosperity encompasses a much wider range of disciplines than AI alone, even if AI is being deployed alongside them in almost all cases. Our positions in life sciences, green technology and nuclear power, for instance, are all dependent on the base of pure and applied science that this country enjoys.
Two weeks ago, the major US venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz—which in the 15 years since its founding has set new ground rules for how venture capital firms provide broad support for technology companies beyond just money—held a reception to mark the opening of its London office, the first outside the US. Co-founder Ben Horowitz singled out the excellence of the UK’s higher education sector as one of the three factors leading to this step.
We on these Benches, and others, recognise this but those of us on the Industry and Regulators Committee particularly fear for the sustainability of this sector, as spelled out in our recent report. The belated decision by the Government to rejoin Horizon Europe is welcome, even if irreparable damage has been done by the delay in rejoining. But the wider financial pressures on the higher education sector and on students themselves put at risk that vital science base, not just in the Russell group universities but throughout the sector. Does the Minister who will be winding up agree that there is a systemic risk to the HE sector’s financial viability and hence to our prospects for long-term economic growth?
Generative AI represents a classic balance of opportunity and threat, which the Government have at least partially recognised. From my perspective, the Bletchley Park summit on AI safety was at best a score draw. I draw on football analogies without having the time, much less the expertise, to comment on the football governance Bill. I welcome the participation of China—as more than half of all published academic papers on AI have at least one Chinese co-author—and the signing of the declaration by China and the 27 countries in the EU but I deplore the exclusion of workers’ representation, which my noble friend Lady O’Grady highlighted so authoritatively in yesterday’s debate.
PAI—the influential non-profit US-based partnership, founded by big tech but now with over 100 members from academic, civil society and media organisations, including the Thomson Foundation—has the impact of AI on employment as one of its four priority areas of focus. Previous speakers, and participants in my noble friend Lord Bassam’s Oral Question earlier, have regretted the absence of any proposed legislation to provide overarching regulation of AI in line with, notably, the US and the EU. I join them. Of course, it is particularly hard to regulate such a fast-moving sector but I was struck this morning hearing a representative of a big pharma company make the point, in giving evidence to the Industry and Regulators Committee, that there is no successful life sciences industry in a country that does not have a world-class pharmaceutical regulator.
I am short of time. Like other noble Lords I welcome the Media Bill, although after such a long wait it may be hard for it to meet expectations. I will raise two specific points. The independent television production industry has grown and changed hugely in the 40 years since Channel 4’s start. Many production companies and groups are now well capitalised and resourced with customers throughout the world. Channel 4’s pioneering role accounts significantly for this, but its work is not done. It remains a vital catalyst in nurturing younger and smaller programme makers, as the noble Baroness, Lady Fraser, noted, and it is essential that any change to Channel 4’s remit preserves, if not strengthens, this.
The Government’s briefing on the King’s Speech stated that the Bill will support Channel 4’s sustainability
“by strengthening the broadcaster’s governance arrangements”.
All organisations are capable of improving their governance, but will the Minister say in what specific ways he believes Channel 4’s governance needs improving?
A couple of years ago, a candidate for the Channel 4 board with impeccable professional qualifications and political independence was unanimously recommended by the Channel 4 board, Ofcom and DCMS. No. 10 rejected the recommendation without reason but presumably in the hope of appointing a more biddable fellow traveller. Would the envisaged changes to governance prevent this or at least ensure that there would be complete transparency over the process for board appointments?
Lord Ranger of Northwood (Con) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, I rise with equal measures of pride and humility to have this opportunity to speak in your Lordships’ House for the first time. I begin by recognising the long history of this Chamber and the immense warmth and greeting I have felt from noble Peers from all sides of the House. I thank the officers and staff for everything they have done to make me feel so welcome. I have great confidence that this warmth will remain a constant support for my time in this place.
I am also grateful to my noble friends Lord Howard of Lympne and Lady Verma for introducing me into the House this summer, and for their encouragement and guidance over the last 20 years as I have made my way from political campaigner to London mayoral adviser and eventually to this place.
I appreciate that no individual’s journey is easy, and I congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle and my noble friend Lady Owen on their maiden speeches and their journeys. As a proud British Sikh, a born and bred Londoner, a Conservative and, yes, a Tottenham Hotspur fan, I must say that I have had my own path and its various ups and downs.
I thank my wife Sigita for her ongoing support and patience and the daily inspiration and love I receive from our two young boys, Rajveer and Amrit. I am standing between them and bath-time at home at the moment. But, of course, I stand here also on the shoulders of my parents and grandparents and the challenges they overcame: living through post-partition India, building new lives in different parts of the world and showing how to deal with prejudice. The dignity and values that they instilled in me are a huge part of why I am here today.
I want to recognise my grandfathers. Sardar Jodh Singh Ranger, born in 1913 in Harial, later to be in Pakistan, moved to Mombasa, Kenya in 1948 and worked in the docks of east Africa. He pooled his savings and bought a petrol station in 1966, which he ran day and night for almost 20 years. After sending my father to the UK in 1968, he followed with my grandmother in 1984. My maternal grandfather, Sardar Gurnam Singh Sahni, was born in 1927 in Rawalpindi, later to be in Pakistan. From an early age he followed his father, Ajeet Singh Sahni, into local politics. At the age of 15 he became the general secretary of the Rawalpindi Student Congress, becoming president in 1944. He moved to the UK in 1961 and, as a man who really valued his community, he established the first Indian newspaper in the UK, the Punjab Times, in 1965. He then served 10 years as president of the central UK gurdwara. Their love and guidance are greatly missed.
In my own case, I am delighted to have joined the cohort of turban-wearing noble Lords: my noble friend Lord Suri, who I see in his place, and the noble Lords, Lord Sahota and Lord Singh of Wimbledon. I recognise them for what they have achieved for this country and for their communities, but it also fills me with great pride to be the first British-born turban-wearing Sikh to sit in this House. In a world where we are still fighting wars over religious differences, I hope that this country —my country, modern Britain—can act as a beacon as to how diverse cultures, religions and even political values can sit and work together in peace to achieve progress.
I welcome the gracious Speech. During the last 25 years, my career has enabled me to play a part, in some small way, in the technological change that we see around us. I note my registered interests: my board membership of techUK, my membership of the West Midlands tech and digital advisory board, and my position as a senior executive at Atos.
I have been fortunate to be involved in projects, programmes and policies that have delivered innovating public services. In 2003, as part of the team that delivered the Oyster card for London, I saw at first hand the application of contactless technology in a western society for the first time. It was our first brush with e-money, an early example of personal digital data being captured en masse and, yes, the first time people had to totally trust the machines. This project changed my perspective on the power of good tech delivery. In the proceeding years, I sought out roles that would harness innovation and deliver positive outcomes and societal change.
When invited in 2008 by my friend Boris Johnson to join him at City Hall as his transport adviser, I started by establishing the London Electric Vehicle Partnership, paving the way for London to become an early adopter of EVs. We also delivered the most user-friendly and app-enabled cycle hire scheme, and returned the iconic Routemaster bus with a 21st century design and the latest hybrid technology, championing cleaner air for London. I also convinced the mayor to establish the office for digital London, because it was becoming ever clearer that we were on the cusp of a generation-defining industrial change—the beginning of the digital era.
During the last decade, we have witnessed the initial phase of digital transformation in UK public services. This means that today, if you want to renew your passport, pay your council tax or update your driving licence online, you can. But something is missing: the user experience does not feel integrated or elegantly designed. Yes, I can use my NHS app and manage my income tax digitally, but I need to visit different websites and applications to do so. That is because services are designed around the way government is organised; they are not yet citizen-centric.
Let us contrast this with our experience as consumers. Our interactions with the mega digital behemoths such as Apple, Google or Amazon feel effortlessly intuitive and joined up. These service providers already know us and what we might need, and are an example of what great user-centric experience looks like. They are the benchmark and opportunity for public services over the next decade and beyond.
We are all aware that the future of digital is brimming with opportunity, but I also know from my time in industry that, in the years ahead, what we debate and decide in this Chamber will need to sit alongside what tech businesses around the world decide to do. I humbly suggest that this House will need to do ever more to be relevant in the fast-moving digital world and to ensure we retain that most valuable of commodities, public trust, in our ability to generate legislation that is relevant and inclusive.
We will need to inform about the capabilities of digital technology, promote the opportunities it brings and, yes, protect from the risks—the potential of information overload and the loss of privacy, and the need to ensure cybersecurity for our online and offline lives—as well as maintaining control as we create and deploy technologies such as AI.
As I look forward to playing my part in this House, I see on the horizon the emerging challenge of how we will help shape a fast-moving digital society that can be fair, inclusive and secure, and will hopefully mean that my children and, God willing, their children will look back and say that we protected and advanced society when faced with our greatest moment of technological migration—when society transformed and we helped build a better future for us all.
Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)
My Lords, it is an immense pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Ranger and congratulate him on a superb and memorable maiden speech, which was elegant, captivating and moving in equal measure. He has an exceptional track record of distinguished service at the highest levels of industry, government and the public sector, and a specialist knowledge of transport, digital and technological issues, which will be of inestimable value in this House. His many achievements—the delivery of the Oyster card, as described, establishing the Digital London office, helping prepare for the hugely successful 2012 Olympics and championing Crossrail—speak volumes in themselves. He has also been closely involved with key environmental issues as a member of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, sitting on the board of Bristol 2015 European Green Capital and campaigning on issues such as cleaner air and electric vehicles. With such a track record of accomplishments, many at an international level, and such a strong sense of public service, he will bring real insight and wisdom to our deliberations.
His powerful speech—the harbinger, I have no doubt, of many more to come—gave us an inspirational insight into his family story. I was of course delighted to hear that his maternal grandfather founded the first Indian newspaper in the UK, which is a shining achievement. His journey to becoming the first British-born, turban-wearing Sikh in this House is a remarkable one and his experiences will enrich our deliberations beyond measure. My noble friend is exceptionally welcome. We look forward to hearing from him in years to come on public policy issues of huge importance to everyone in this country—not least digital transformation and artificial intelligence—with the fascinating perspectives that he will bring to our work.
I want to talk about aspects of the gracious Speech relating to the media. I declare my interest as deputy chairman of the Telegraph Media Group, a member of the News Media Association and director of the Regulatory Funding Company, and note my other interests in the register.
First, I want to pay my own tribute to our late friend and colleague the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge. I had the pleasure of working with him on an issue he held most dear, the freedom of the press, for which he was a consistently passionate and eloquent champion. His commitment to the principles of an independent, self-regulating media was as strong as tungsten, and his calm, wise voice will be sorely missed in our debates.
I welcome the Government’s commitment to bring forward
“legislation ... to support the creative industries and protect public interest journalism”,
which has never been under such threat, and I applaud their commitment to press freedom. Central to this is the Media Bill. It will ensure that broadcasters such as ITV can continue to invest in their brilliant British content, by guaranteeing prominence on digital platforms for PSBs. It will take forward the principles established by the Online Safety Act by levelling the deeply unfair playing field between the platforms and the traditional media and bringing streaming regulation into line with broadcast TV.
At this point, I am going to disappoint the noble Lord, Lord McNally, because, for me, the most crucial part of the Bill is the repeal of Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013—one of the most pernicious and draconian pieces of legislation ever put on to the statute book. It sought, in effect, to put a gun to the heads of the free and independent media by attempting to force them into a system of state-backed regulation or saddle them with costs, whether or not a case was won in court, that would have killed stone-dead investigative journalism and bankrupt most of the regional press and a large part of the national media. Fortunately, common sense has since prevailed, and Section 40 has never been put into effect. But its baleful, chilling presence remains—one reason that we have sunk down the international press freedom tables—and it must go.
Perhaps we can then move on to dismantle the royal charter on state regulation of the press, another otiose part of the detritus of the Leveson inquiry, along with the Press Recognition Panel, which shamefully continues to receive commitments of hundreds of thousands of pounds from the taxpayer, despite its mission to become self-funding.
I applaud too the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill. This heavily consulted-on legislation will give the Digital Markets Unit within the CMA the teeth it needs to level the playing field between news publishers and the unaccountable giant tech platforms, and will pave the way for a sustainable future for quality journalism across the UK. We must scrutinise the Bill carefully to ensure that there are no unintended consequences of the sensible provisions to crack down on unscrupulous operators deceiving customers with malicious subscription traps in a way that impacts on responsible news publishers who are building new business models on the back of subscription revenues. We must also ensure that the carefully constructed appeals mechanisms are retained intact. Chief among these is the robust judicial review appeals standard, which is an essential part of the provisions redressing the imbalance in market power. To amend it as a result of aggressive lobbying by the giant platforms would undermine the whole regime. I associate myself absolutely with what the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and my noble friend Lady Stowell had to say on the subject —she hit the nail on the head.
I hope that both pieces of legislation will move swiftly though this House, with as much cross-party support as possible, so that the Government’s stated aim to protect journalism can be fulfilled as soon as possible. Other legislation—including the Automated Vehicles Bill, which could pose a threat to the future of public notices in printed local newspapers—will need careful scrutiny to ensure that it does not pull in the opposite direction to this vital legislation.
As the Government are committed to ensuring a sustainable future for a free press, then one issue that they must tackle—not foreshadowed in the gracious Speech—is the burgeoning imperial ambition of the BBC. Here, I am afraid that I will again upset the noble Lord, Lord McNally. I am going to talk just about its local activities, because I recognise that it is a national treasure and I absolutely support it. However, an absolutely vital part of the rich tapestry of the British media is the local and regional press, yet it is under commercial threat as never before as a result of the BBC’s Across the UK plan. This will inexorably lead to an increase in its online news provision in areas already well-served by independent news publishers, which means the inevitable loss of jobs for journalists in the local press.
The BBC’s royal charter requires the BBC to
“avoid adverse impacts on competition”
and causing harm to commercial providers. But that is precisely what these plans do. The BBC, which I absolutely support, is using the might of its enormous taxpayer funding aggressively to draw local audiences away from commercial providers and deprive them of readers and the revenue needed to continue investing in independent journalism, and does so at the expense of much-loved local radio services, to which it is taking the axe. It is inexplicable that, at a time when the BBC claims to be facing financial pressures—I am sure that it is—it chooses to invest heavily in news provision that is already well-served by the commercial sector.
If the BBC is allowed by the Government—the ultimate arbiter of the charter—and Ofcom to continue down this dangerous path, it will end up eradicating plurality in the local news market and leave local people only one source of news about their area: the corporation’s. As the clock ticks towards the mid-term review of the charter, I hope my noble friend will take note of the strong views of local publishers in particular and act to stop the BBC destroying independent local media.
Our free press is under the most terrible commercial strain. Much in the gracious Speech will help the situation but there is a great deal more to do.
Lord Rees of Ludlow (CB)
My Lords, ideally, crucial sectors such as education and science should be governed by a bipartisan consensus that offers long-term stability. In depressing contrast, turbulence in the Government has triggered unstable policies and a rapid churn of Ministers. The UK risks getting further from, not closer to, being a science superpower. To reverse this trend changes are needed in schools, higher education and R&D.
In our schools, attainment levels are poor compared to nations in the Far East and northern Europe. In particular, there are too few good science teachers. Young children display enthusiasm and curiosity, often focused on dinosaurs and the cosmos—blazingly irrelevant to their lives, but fascinating—but they are starved of the inspirational teaching that could channel this enthusiasm.
There are three things that can be done. First, we should ensure that conditions are good enough to retain excellent schoolteachers and that their pay level is appropriate for practitioners of a serious profession. Secondly, we should encourage mature individuals to move into teaching from a career in, for instance, research, industry or the Armed Forces. Thirdly, we should make optimum use of the web to supplement and individualise what the teacher can do.
At university level, our international rankings are higher but there is a systemic weakness. The missions of our universities are not sufficiently varied. They all aspire to rise in the same league table, one that gives more weight to research than to what matters to potential students. What should worry us in particular at the moment is the financial pressure that current students are under: the fact that they cannot find affordable accommodation near campus and need to do time-consuming part-time work to support themselves. Universities and the public should expect a full-time commitment from those enrolled on three-year degree courses, but that requires that they are properly supported.
Indeed, there may well be a shift away from full-time three-year degrees. Everyone should have the opportunity to re-enter university or technical education, maybe part-time or online, at any stage in their lives. This path could become smoother, even routine, if there were a formalised system of transferable credits across the whole system of further and higher education. The Government’s lifelong entitlement to support, to be taken à la carte at any stage in life, is a good step forward.
Another problem is that the post-16 school curriculum is too narrow. An especial downside is that those who have been turned off science drop it at 16 and thereby foreclose the chance to qualify at 18 for high-quality university courses, so we should welcome the broad support for some kind of British baccalaureate.
It is shameful that we in this country are losing the professionals to staff ourselves and high-level technical expertise, so we should listen to the noble Lord, Lord Baker, and strengthen high-level technical education. Degree programmes should be valued by the graduates and geared to job prospects, that is true, but that need not necessarily be related to the salaries. To give one example, if a fine arts degree gives a gifted and committed artist the expertise to follow their avocation, even if their earning is just a living wage, that is surely an outcome to be welcomed.
Of course research is a distinctive activity in most universities, but the encroachment of audit culture and other pressures is rendering our universities less propitious environments for research projects that demand intense and sustained effort. Dedicated stand-alone labs may become preferable, although there is a downside in so far as they reduce contact between talented researchers and students. Indeed, the UK owes its strength in biomedical sciences to its famous labs that allow full-time long-term research, with government funding massively supplemented by the Wellcome Trust, cancer charities, and a strong pharmaceutical industry.
There is a serious concern that academia itself is becoming less alluring as a career. Some people will become academics come what may—the nerdish element, of which I guess I myself am one—but a world-class university system cannot survive just on those. It must attract to its faculty a share of young people who are savvy about their options and ambitious to achieve something distinctive by their 30s. These people increasingly associate academia with years of precarity and undue financial sacrifice. Indeed, the declared rationale for setting up ARIA was to get round the problem by fostering long-term blue-skies research and freedom from bureaucracy in a fashion not available elsewhere in the system. That is fine, but surely it would have been a far higher priority to render less vexatious the bureaucracy of UKRI, whose budget is 25 times higher than what is envisaged for ARIA.
The effective exploitation of new discoveries is an imperative. Universities and research institutes must be complemented by organisations, in the public or private sector, that can offer adequate development and manufacturing capability. This concatenation certainly proved its worth in the recent pandemic. It is likewise imperative that the UK should foster expertise not only in the biological sciences but in energy, climate and the cybersphere—indeed, in all the fields needed to tackle global challenges. We have traditionally suffered from a lack of venture capital to bring things to market, but I worry that our ability to attract and retain mobile academic talent—students and professionals—is now at risk. We have been fortunate with regard to ESO, but it is an unwelcoming deterrent that, as has been mentioned, someone with a family who wants a global talent visa has to fork out more than £20,000.
I shall mention an enlightened recent contribution to these debates, a report co-authored by Tony Blair and the noble Lord, Lord Hague. They call for the creation of a science and tech policy and delivery unit that is
“independent from vested interests and status-quo forces, and able to devise, drive and unblock a reform agenda”.
That is needed, they say, to end the situation whereby
“the Treasury strongly micromanages science and technology spending and is the de-facto controller of the UK’s national R&D strategy”.
Their report advocates measures to reduce the level of audit imposed on universities and argues for the reform of technology transfer offices to encourage more university spin-offs. They say that UKRI should be restructured and there should be new hubs for regional development and
“a network of research institutes tasked with securing our lead in established competitive areas like synthetic biology and AI”.
I thought it was appropriate to listen to those two dormant ex-politicians on a day when many are celebrating the recycling of another of their number as the Foreign Secretary.
Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Rees. He always sees the world through the right end of the telescope. It is a pleasure to take part in day 5 of this debate. I declare my technology interests as adviser to Boston Ltd and Ecospend Ltd. I congratulate all three maiden speakers on their excellent and extremely interesting contributions. Like other noble Lords, I look forward to hearing much more from them in the coming months.
I shall concentrate on the technology elements in the gracious Speech, although relatively shortly into my contribution noble Lords may notice that I am having to concentrate more on the technology elements that were not in the Speech than those that were. In reality, as has been mentioned by many already, it is not overstating the case to say that this is really all about data. It is our data. We should be able to determine and decide; we say why, who and to what. My first question for the Minister is: what is the Government’s plan to ensure that people are enabled to have control over their data, to say when, who, why and for what, and to be rightly recompensed if their data, ID or copyright is infringed by the training of these AIs?
To return to the question I raised at Oral Questions earlier today, would it not make sense to regulate at this stage, to enable, by regulation, all those that use others’ data, IP, images and copyrights to train AIs? All of that should be published in a transparent record to protect those individuals’ rights and to enable at least some decent degree of explainability as to how these AIs were trained. With regard to the excellent speech of my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Knight, what is the Minister’s position on what the Government are going to do about digital inclusion? Without that, citizens are not going to be enabled and will not have the benefit of what these new technologies can bring.
We are certainly at the top of the AI hype cycle at the moment. In many ways, the greatest achievement of ChatGPT is that it has got more people chatting about AI. That has to be a positive thing, but to what purpose and for whose benefit? The Minister said earlier this afternoon that it is too early to regulate; we have not got the evidence; we do not know. Well, one of the great joys and equal frustrations of being born human is that we never fully know, but we know what we need to know to make a success of these new technologies, because we understand critical theory, politics, economics and social theory. We have understood philosophy for thousands of years. So I ask the Minister, when he comes to wind up, to say whether it would not make sense to at least put on some kind of regulatory footing a role where concepts such as fairness, dignity, respect, accessibility, inclusive by design and inter- operability are wired in; golden threads through all of this development, all of this deployment.
Seven years ago, I wrote a report on another emerging technology when it was at the top of its hype cycle: the technology blockchain. My report was Distributed Ledger Technologies for Public Good: Leadership, Collaboration, Innovation. Why did I write that report? Because at that stage, then as now, I feared that many of the public good use cases there could be from these technologies could be lost because of fear, because of misdeployment, because of a connection, a belief that blockchain and bitcoin were the same thing, which they are patently not.
One example in the public space is that 25,000 doctor days are currently spent on assuring credentials. It is extraordinarily important: you want to know that the person operating on you, or consulting you, has the qualifications, the expertise, the experience, the skills that they are holding out that they have. With a very simple technological solution, those 25,000 doctor days could be collapsed into a matter of minutes. Those 25,000 days thus become converted into care. So will the Minister, when he comes to wind up, say what is being done across Whitehall, across the whole public sector, to ensure that all these potential benefits—yes, from AI, but from all these emerging technologies—are being considered, to give us the public sector, the public services, the National Health Service that we could have if we rightly lead on these technologies, with talent leading the possibilities that these technologies can bring to us?
As I said earlier, these technologies are nothing without data, but they will become nothing whatever without proving themselves trustworthy. Has the Minister considered such approaches as the alignment assemblies in Taiwan and other approaches to public engagement? Without that, how can we have fully informed and engaged citizens? How will we get the optimum benefits for all from these technologies? If everyone is not enabled to benefit, the benefits will fall far short of their potential.
Finally, I welcome the Bletchley summit, largely for this point alone. Two generations ago, a diverse and talented team gathered at Bletchley Park in one of the darkest hours of our human history. Through their diverse talents leading the technologies, they more than helped defeat the Nazis. When the Minister comes to wind up, will he agree that, if we have the enabled talent leading these new technologies, we can not only fully address some of the darkest issues of our times but really turn up the light and drive economic, social and psychological benefit for centuries to come?
Lord Bilimoria (CB)
My Lords, on 24 August I landed in Delhi to take part in the B20 before the G20. India was celebrating because the day before, on 23 August, Chandrayaan-3, the Indian spacecraft, landed on the south pole of the moon—the first time ever a spacecraft has done that. India is only the fourth nation to land a spacecraft on the moon, at a cost of $74 million. Now that is cost-effective science; that is world-beating science beyond compare, described as “a victory cry of a new India”.
In the summer of 2019, I was in Oxford to witness the honorary doctorate being given to my friend Dr Cyrus Poonawalla, the founder and chairman of the Serum Institute of India, and a fellow Zoroastrian and Parsee. On that day I spoke to Professor Sir Adrian Hill, who told me of the amazing work they were doing in a race to develop a malaria vaccine, working very closely with the Serum Institute of India to achieve this. This year, we heard the great news that this vaccine has now been approved. It is 75% effective, it is cheaper than the other vaccine that is available and it is going to save millions of children’s lives, particularly in Africa.
Covid was not even on the horizon when I met Sir Adrian Hill in the summer of 2019, yet, because of this cross-border collaboration between Oxford University and the Serum Institute of India, when Covid hit, Oxford partnered with AstraZeneca and they went to the Serum Institute of India and the Serum Institute of India produced 2 billion doses of the Covid vaccine, more than anyone else in the world, again saving many millions of lives. It is no wonder that Dr Poonawalla is being spoken of as a future recipient of a Nobel Prize, because if you go back through the decades of the SII’s existence, by providing cheap, affordable vaccines for developing countries, it is estimated that 30 million children’s lives have been saved.
The gracious Speech promises
“to lead action on tackling climate change”.
As Chancellor of the University of Birmingham, I remember when, a few years ago, the railway department received the Queen’s Anniversary Prize at Buckingham Palace. Fast forward to COP 26 in Glasgow and that railway department, in conjunction with Siemens, a German company, with government help from Innovate UK, developed the world’s first hydrogen-powered train, hydroFLEX. As President of the CBI at the time, I was on board that train with His Majesty the King and Prime Minister Boris Johnson. It was a great example of universities, Governments and business working together. What are the Government doing to promote this phenomenal collaboration even further?
AI was mentioned in the gracious Speech, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and others have spoken about it. In February this year, I was in Chennai, as Chancellor of the University of Birmingham, to announce the first master’s between the University of Birmingham and the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, one of the highest ranked Indian institutions at the moment. It is a joint degree in AI and data science, with the students spending time in both England and India. We need many more such initiatives.
The gracious Speech mentions negotiating free trade agreements. Can the Minister tell us when the free trade agreement between the UK and India will be signed? It was meant to be Diwali last year, according to Boris Johnson. Well, we have had Diwali this year and it still has not been signed. It will greatly enhance trade, business and investment between our two countries, and we need to invest much more in research and development and innovation. We invest less than 2% of GDP. America invests more than 3% of GDP. What are the Government doing to increase investment in R&D and innovation?
I have just taken over from the late, great Lord David Young of Graffham as patron of the Small Business Charter. In conjunction with the Chartered Association of Business Schools, we provide, through 60 business schools, the Government’s Help To Grow Management Course, an initiative of Rishi Sunak when he was Chancellor. Already, over 5,000 businesses have gone through this course. It is amazing: the Government pay 90%, and the business pays only 10%. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. The turnover of MacMartin, a marketing and design agency —Claire, one of the partners, took part in the course—has tripled, and the head count has grown by 60%. Can the Government make this great programme available to SMEs with fewer than five employees? At the moment, they cannot take part.
I am a proud manufacturer. I manufacture an award-winning product, and the vast majority of it is manufactured here in the UK. Manufacturing makes up less than 10% of GDP, yet we are one of the top 10 manufacturers in the world, and I chair the Manufacturing Commission. The noble Lord, Lord Rees, spoke about our universities’ rankings. In February, I took part in the QS World University Rankings annual conference in India, and in my keynote speech I pointed out with pride that the UK, with less than 1% of the world’s population, has four out of the top 10 universities in the world and 17 out of the top 100 in the world, including the University of Birmingham.
I am co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on International Students and president of UKCISA. We have a record 690,000 international students, which is wonderful. Some 25% of world leaders today have been international students in the UK, yet net migration is 600,000 and we include international students in those figures. Please could we exclude international students from the net migration figures in the way that America and Australia do? That would scare people less, and that figure would come down by probably half. We could then activate the shortage occupation lists that are desperately required across all sectors.
Finally, in this debate on the gracious Speech today, we speak about science, technology, media and culture. This is the best example of the UK having the strongest combination of hard and soft power in the world, whether it is our manufacturing; defence; financial services; the Royal Family, led by His Majesty the King; the BBC, watched and listened to by 500 million people; or of course, Premier League football. We should be proud of our combination of hard and soft power: the best in the world.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the three noble Lords who made their maiden speeches today and I welcome them to your Lordships’ House.
It would be no exaggeration to say that the content of the gracious Speech was underwhelming: a hotchpotch of mainly minor legislation with little sign of any strategic approach. As my noble friend Lord Knight said, it demonstrated that the Government had run out of ideas. Indeed, various Bills that had been at least hinted at, if not promised, were notable by their absence. There was no mention, for instance, of delivering on the 2019 manifesto commitment to bring forward much-needed reforms to the Mental Health Act, despite a White Paper last year promising what were termed “once in a lifetime” reforms. There was no mention at all of education, despite statements by Ministers in both Houses after the Schools Bill crashed and burned last year that the long overdue register of children not in mainstream education would be legislated for separately, on grounds of safeguarding if nothing else. There was no mention either of reform of the private pensions sector, an issue close to the hearts of many, not least noble Lords, despite the commitment by the Chancellor in his Mansion House speech in July that the reforms would boost the typical pension by more than £1,000 a year. Perhaps he mislaid the envelope on the back of which he had written that down. Not to worry; Labour in government has a commitment to deliver that important reform.
Further, in terms of the main thrust of today’s debate, there was next to nothing on science and technology. Yes, there are the two carryover Bills, but apart from that the DSIT website could offer only:
“plans to introduce a new legal framework to encourage innovation in new technologies such as machine learning was also announced”.
Rather vague, and a missed opportunity to champion harnessing the role of science in the economy and wider society.
I want to focus on physics because it fuels economic growth. Research commissioned by the Institute of Physics in 2019 is highlighted in the most recent issue of Science in Parliament, the excellent journal of the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee. It showed that, in 2019 alone, physics-based industries directly generated £229 billion in gross value added, which represents 11% of total UK GDP. These firms had 2.7 million full-time employees, accounting for 10% of UK employment. Anyone still labouring under the misapprehension that those working in physics are mainly white-coated boffins needs to get real.
Of course, all governments have an ambition to grow the economy and strengthen society, and that can be achieved more quickly and more sustainably by unlocking the full potential of physics innovation. Physics-intensive firms underpin a third of all business R&D, powering many of the world’s most impactful innovations, such as fibre optics that bring better connections to millions of homes across the UK, or MRI that helps to diagnose disease. A new wave of technological innovation is about to break. Emerging technologies, enabled by UK physicists’ breakthroughs in fields such as materials science and quantum physics, promise to radically transform the way we work and live, to create new business opportunities and to open up new markets.
The research to which I referred earlier shows that, of the total amount of research and development undertaken by businesses in the UK, more than a third came from physics-intensive firms. These figures assume even more significance when considered alongside the fact that almost two-thirds of physics innovators say they expect to increase investment in R&D and innovation in the next five years. Physics-powered technology sectors can become engines for economic growth. To build a green economy, most clean technologies are built on physics discovery and innovation and need physics skills for their continued development. A thriving base of physics innovation is critical to tackling climate change and powering growth of the green economy.
However, a major challenge threatens those developments: a shortage of the necessary skills, which has already put a brake on the innovation activities of some physics-based businesses. Two-thirds of physics innovators say that skills shortages caused innovation activity to be suspended or delayed in the past five years. Meanwhile, the demand for physics skills is growing quickly, which will cause the skills gap to widen even further, stalling plans to increase R&D activity and scientific output.
For the UK to build a more innovative economy requires an equally dramatic increase in the scale and diversity of the R&D workforce to fuel scientific progress. This needs to start in schools, where more young people from more diverse backgrounds should be encouraged and supported to study science subjects, including computer science, where in 2022 the numbers of female students taking GCSEs was just a third of that of male students. There also needs to be much better advice and guidance on studying STEM subjects for young people considering their post-16 options.
I was pleased to see that in its report published in March this year, the Commons Science and Technology Committee made a strong commitment to diversity and inclusion in STEM subjects. It is also incumbent on teachers to challenge gender stereotypes, and the Institute of Physics is calling for the barriers in the current education system to be tackled, so that young people are not prevented from enjoying the rich and inspiring future that studying the sciences can offer. This requires that all schools offer inclusive and equitable environments, including whole-school equity plans to be made mandatory in all nurseries and schools, to shift the dial in the numbers of underrepresented groups studying the sciences. An inclusive environment must be backed up by high-quality specialist science teaching, particularly physics teaching, in all schools. Too often, science subjects are taught by non-specialists, teachers in other subjects who just happen to have passed an A-level in one of the sciences.
However, learning the key skills needed for an increasingly digital economy is not just a challenge for school students. Adults too must be helped to build these skills. Upskilling and reskilling are key to that challenge, and I welcome the campaign to boost digital skills led by the Institute of Coding. Noble Lords will have received the letter that the institute has prepared for sending to the Chancellor in advance of the Autumn Statement next week. I have signed it and I hope many others have also done so. The Institute of Coding highlights the fact that the UK has some 870,000 vacancies across the tech sector, at a time when there is growing demand for a digitally skilled workforce with the right knowledge in the right places to make a difference. Of those already working in the sector, the institute reveals that just one in five is a woman and that there are clear disparities between those from other underrepresented groups, who face barriers to accessing both education and employment.
Since 2018, the Institute of Coding’s hybrid short course programmes have supported more than a million learners from hard-to-reach backgrounds and this essential work deserves much greater exposure and government support. It is vital that this work expands rapidly as improving support for digital skills is essential. I would like to believe that it is inconceivable that Ministers and civil servants have not stressed this point to the Chancellor. We shall see.
Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)
My Lords, I was encouraged by the Government’s White Paper on AI published earlier this year, with its stated intention of extending AI regulation throughout the economy.
The gracious Speech mentioned the UK leading international discussion on developing AI safely, and of course much has been made of the Bletchley AI summit. While that was happening, I joined a lower-profile but equally interesting fringe AI summit, attended by hundreds of young AI developers, ethicists and policy thinkers from all over the world. They pointed out that AI is already deployed across multiple government systems and the private sector to increase productivity and effectiveness in the areas of medicine, science and employment, to mention a few.
Although the Government have had success in bringing together disparate players to look ahead at AI, the real threat is already here, as my noble friend Lady Kidron said. The National Cyber Security Centre’s annual review highlights these threats only too well. It says that the
“large language models … will almost certainly … make the spread of disinformation easier; and that deepfake campaigns are likely to become more advanced”
by the time of the next general election.
Generative AI can already make videos of people saying anything in a convincing iteration of their voice and features. At the moment, AI models to simulate somebody’s voice on audio are freely available; their video equivalent is available commercially but will be freely available within months. It will soon be possible to make videos of anybody saying anything and spread them across the internet. The possibility of this technology being used to make deepfake political statements will cause havoc in the coming elections, leaving voters not knowing what to believe.
When I asked the Minister, on 24 October, what could be done to ban them, he told me that it was not possible because they are developed abroad. However, in the Online Safety Act, the law now requires foreign players to abide by our requirements to prevent online harm to children and illegal harms to all. I echo other noble Lords in pointing out that there is no legislation in the gracious Speech to show that the Government are taking this very present threat at all seriously.
Any new AI law needs to ensure that this country is pro innovation in the hope of making us a global superpower. The White Paper laid out important principles for understanding how models should being developed; however, the successful development of AI in Britain will depend on effective regulation across every sector of the economy where the models are being trained—and before they are deployed.
The White Paper says that existing regulators could be given extra powers to deal with AI. That is fine for areas of the economy which already have strong regulation, such as medicine, science and air travel, but AI is already being deployed in sectors such as education and employment, where the regulators do not have the powers or resources to look at the ways in which it is being used in their fields. For instance, who is the employment regulator who can look at the possible bias in robo-firing from companies and the management of employees by algorithm? Can the Minister say why no AI legislation is being brought forward in this new Parliament? What plans are there to enhance the AI-regulating powers in sectors where such regulation is very weak?
I am concerned not just by the way that AI models are being trained but by the state of the data being used to train them. Public trust is crucial to the way this data is used, and the new legislation must help build that trust, so it will be very important to get the digital protection Bill right. Generative AI needs to be trained on millions, if not billions, of pieces of data, which, unless scrutinised rigorously, can be biased or—worse—toxic, racist and sexist. The developers using data to train AI models must be alert to what can happened if bad data is used; it will have a terrible impact on racial, gender, socioeconomic and disabled minorities.
I am concerned that crucial public trust in technology will be damaged by some of the changes to data protection set out in the Bill. I fear that the new powers available to the Secretary of State to issue instructions and to set out strategic priorities to the regulator will weaken its independence. Likewise, the reduction in data protection officers and the impact statements for all data that is not high risk also threaten to damage public trust in the AI models on which they are trained.
We see this technology evolving so fast that the Government must increase the focus on the ethics and transparency of the use of data. The Government should encourage senior members of organisations to look at the whole area of data, from data assurance to its exploitation by AI. I know that the Government want to reduce the regulatory burden on data management for businesses, but I suggest that it will also make them more competitive if they have a reputation for good control and use of the data they hold.
So much of our concern in the digital space is with the extraordinary powers that the tech companies have accumulated. I am very pleased that the digital markets Bill is giving the Digital Markets Unit powers to set up market inquiries into anti-competitive practices that harm UK markets. Building on what was said by the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, for me one of the most egregious, and one of the most urgent, issues is the market in journalistic content. Spending on advertising for regional newspapers in this country has declined from £2.6 billion in 1990 to £240 million at the end of last year. As a result, the country’s newspapers are closing and journalism is being restricted by the move of advertising to the big tech companies. That is the real problem—it is not, as the noble Lord, Lord Black, said, caused by competition from the BBC.
This is compounded by those companies aggregating news content generated by news creators and not paying them a fair price. So I am pleased to see the introduction of a means for tech companies to make proportionate payment for journalistic content. I hope that the conduct requirement to trade on fair terms will be sufficient. However, if the final-offer mechanism has to be used to force an offer from the tech companies, the lengthy enforcement period means that it could take many years before the CMA is able to deploy it. There need to be strict time limits on every step if we are to make the FOM a credible incentive to negotiation. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, I ask for the CMA decisions to be appealable through the shorter judicial review process, rather than the longer merits standards asked for by the tech companies.
Finally, I am very pleased by the clauses to help digital subscribers, but I will make one plea. It is often very difficult to terminate a contract online with the “unsubscribe” link being hidden away in some digital corner. I suggest that we take the example of Germany, which requires contracts to have an easily accessible cancellation button on all digital contracts.
Lord Foster of Bath (LD)
My Lords, I regret that the time constraints make it impossible to comment on the many valuable contributions we have already heard, not least that from the noble Viscount, who is always worth listening to. But I do want to pay tribute to our three maiden speakers.
In thanking the noble Lord, Lord Butler, for his comments earlier, I declare my interest as chairman of Peers for Gambling Reform. On behalf of its 150 members, I recently wrote to the Prime Minister, acknowledging that the Government’s gambling White Paper included many of the measures we have been campaigning for, including a statutory levy, affordability checks and bringing online stakes and prizes more in line with land-based gambling. We strongly welcomed the White Paper, while arguing for additional measures—not least those referenced by the noble Lord, Lord Butler—and pressing for speedy implementation.
Speedy implementation was promised by the Government, and my letter argued that the King’s Speech offered an opportunity to reaffirm that promise, providing the assurances that so many want that there will be no further delay in gambling reform. So I was disappointed that the Speech made no reference to gambling reform. Therefore, I hope that, when the Minister responds, he will give a clear assurance that gambling reforms will progress as rapidly as possible.
However, one issue is woefully addressed in the White Paper: gambling advertising, marketing and sponsorship. We and our children are bombarded with, and incentivised to gamble by, ads on TV, on the radio, online, on social media and in direct emails. No wonder the noble Lord, Lord True, speaking from the Dispatch Box last year, said that as a sports fan he was
“sick and tired of gambling advertising being thrust down viewers’ throats”.—[Official Report, 27/1/22; col. 446.]
The promotion of gambling products has grown exponentially, with an annual spend now in excess of £1.5 billion, and a growing amount of it online. One in six adults follow gambling companies on social media, as do a surprising number of children. Also growing has been the level of public concern about the way gambling companies are using ever more sophisticated means to attract new customers and persuade existing ones to spend more. They use a range of techniques to keep customers hooked, from disguising losses as wins and celebrating near-misses to offering so-called free bets, free money and free spins. No wonder 50 academics recently called for “badly needed” restrictions, claiming:
“In our opinion it has become quite clear that the gambling products being offered and the ways in which they are promoted are harmful to individual and family health and damaging to national life”.
Following a review of evidence, the Advertising Standards Authority said:
“Several studies … found associations between advertising exposure and the behaviour of problem and at-risk gamblers,”
with some
“robust enough to support the existence of an association between exposure and gambling behaviour”.
The charity GambleAware said there was a “missed opportunity” in the White Paper for greater regulation of gambling advertising and marketing. It wrote:
“Almost half (45%) of 11–17-year-olds are exposed to gambling marketing on social media each week. Our research shows that increased exposure to gambling can influence attitudes towards gambling and the likelihood of gambling participation in the future, which in turn comes with an increased risk of harm”.
Under the heading
“Gambling Advertising has no public benefit and contributes to harm”,
the Coalition Against Gambling Ads, citing numerous pieces of research, concluded:
“There is good evidence that, for a considerable number of people, gambling advertising substantially contributes to disordered gambling”.
The White Paper itself points to research showing that gambling advertising and marketing leads people to start gambling, existing gamblers to gamble more and those who have stopped to start again.
Given this link between gambling advertising and harm, some organisations are taking matters into their own hands. The Guardian has banned all gambling ads. Even the Premiership has agreed to ban shirt-front gambling logos, and some football clubs have gone much further, ending gambling sponsorship deals and banning ads. Reading City Football Club, for example, said it is
“pleased to commit to helping eliminate harmful gambling ads, which are a scourge on our beautiful game”.
Even the gambling industry itself has made concessions, albeit small, with the whistle-to-whistle ban on ads during football matches. These are all welcome and, backed by research evidence, show an acceptance of the damaging impact of this barrage of gambling marketing and so the need for greater action. Several other countries are taking action to ban or restrict gambling advertising. The vast majority of the British public want us to do the same.
We were promised a public health approach to gambling. I believe such an approach should lead to significant curbs on advertising, a ban on direct marketing, an end to all inducements to gamble and the phasing out of sports sponsorship, yet the White Paper proposals do little of this. As the charity Gambling With Lives says:
“Gambling advertising is designed to encourage people to gamble. The more people gamble, the more likely they are to be at risk of harm. It’s not rocket science”.
It really is not rocket science.
We have a large number of people who suffer gambling harm, including a surprising number of children, an even greater number of people impacted by it and, tragically, far too many gambling-related suicides. Current gambling advertising is contributing to this and more robust action is needed. I encourage the Minister to ensure speedy implementation of existing White Paper proposals, but will he also acknowledge the need to go back to the drawing board in respect of gambling advertising and come up with proposals that acknowledge the huge weight of UK and international research evidence and the huge public support for far tougher measures?
Viscount Stansgate (Lab)
My Lords, I am very pleased to take part in this debate, and it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord in what is, after all, the first King’s Speech debate in 72 years. I congratulate the three maiden speakers, who each spoke with character and experience. I know that they will all be feeling a lot better for having completed their speeches, and their temporary absence from the Chamber probably illustrates exactly why.
I think this is the first debate on a gracious Speech for some time—possibly years—in which the word “science”, as we can see on the monitor, is in the title. That is a very welcome development. My noble friend mentioned a moment ago Science in Parliament, the magazine which all your Lordships receive and, I hope, read with interest. That prompts me to refer to my entry in the register of interests, because I am president of the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee, which is the body that produces that excellent publication. I also thank the organisations that have provided very useful briefings for this debate, including our own Lords Library, the Royal Society, Cancer Research UK and others, such as the Royal Society of Biology, the Royal Astronomical Society and the London Mathematical Society. Indeed, this week is Maths Week England, which celebrates the importance of maths both to the UK economy and to scientific discovery and innovation.
In the short time available to me, I want to identify five areas which are crucial to the UK’s science future and ask some questions of the Minister to reply to in his winding-up speech, not all of which, if I may say so, were covered by the noble Viscount in his opening speech.
I start with science funding. The very creation of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology earlier this year shows that, in structural terms, the Government now have the organisational means to further their stated wish to make the UK a science superpower, and the Government’s stated aim of increasing R&D funding to £20 billion a year by 2024-25 is now getting closer. It will lay the foundations not only for the superpower aspiration but the future of the entire UK science base. We are nearing the Autumn Statement. Will the Minister confirm that the UK will reach this target figure by the due date?
Next, I turn to Horizon Europe, to which some Members have referred. It took far longer to rejoin than it should have done, and real damage was done by the three-year delay, but the intention of the UK is now clear. We all want to make sure that Horizon Europe succeeds. Incidentally, I remind the House—the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, is gazing at me from a distance—that, next month, the Foundation for Science and Technology is due to hold a session on making Horizon Europe a success. We were due to hear from the Science Minister, George Freeman, who I regret has left his post. I hope that his successor will take part in that debate, but I put on record my appreciation of what Mr Freeman did over many years. Can the Minister tell us what practical progress has been made, in the Government’s view, towards making Horizon Europe a success? Is there now tangible evidence that some of the brain drain of researchers which we had seen has been reversed? Would the Minister like to comment on the points about visa fees and health charges which have been made by others?
Thirdly, the Paul Nurse review of the research, development and innovation organisational landscape was requested as long ago as 2021 by the then Secretary of State for BEIS. If I may remind the House, the objectives of the review were these: first, to explore the existing ecosystem of research, development and innovation; secondly, to identify improvements to the landscape to deliver the Government’s ambition; and, thirdly, to ensure that RDI organisations—ranging across the whole landscape, from those carrying out discovery research to those supporting innovation—are effective, sustainable and responsive to future priorities and developments. We have not had a government reply to that review. Perhaps the Minister will explain to the House why we have not and when we will get it, because it is terribly important for the House to be able to discuss it.
Next, I turn briefly to net zero. We know the Prime Minister announced a relaxation of various targets. Nevertheless, significant milestones remain. The Government responded to the 2022 independent Skidmore review earlier this year. The review called for the creation of an evidence-led UK net-zero road map to send clear signals to global investors. My question now for the Minister is about what preparation work the Government are doing on these issues, and in particular around the need to reform the planning process, without which the necessary infrastructure of the future may not be built in time.
Fifthly, my final question relates to AI, which is surely the most debated subject of the year. Like others, I welcome the recent safety summit, but can the Minister tell us a bit more about the summit and the four pre-summit events held with the Royal Society, the British Academy, techUK and the Alan Turing Institute?
I refer, as other Members have, to the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill, which has been carried over into this Session. One of the Bill’s central features is establishing a framework for the provision of digital verification services in the UK to enable those digital entities and attributes to be used with the same confidence as paper documents. This is crucial, and I follow what the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, said a moment ago. With the increasing sophistication of AI, how will we be able to tell the difference between truth and lies and between reality and fakes? For example, only last week there was a fake audio put out in the name of the Mayor of London, saying things that were completely untrue. Although the wording of the video clips was perhaps too extreme to be considered plausible, they reflected the intonation of the mayor’s voice, demonstrating the level of online fakery that can now be achieved. Perhaps on this occasion people were persuaded that it was a fake, although I dare say some were only too willing to be convinced.
It is interesting that the Metropolitan Police made a statement that the deepfake audio of Sadiq Khan on social media
“does not constitute a criminal offence”.
Next year we will have an election and I, for one, think our democracy will be at grave risk if we fail to take action to enable people to distinguish between what is real and what is not. The National Cyber Security Centre, which is part of GCHQ, said in its recent annual report that AI
“will almost certainly be used to generate fabricated content; that hyper-realistic bots will make the spread of disinformation easier”.
Perhaps in view of the importance of these issues, might the Government consider taking action in this Session via that Bill to make sure that we have a general election with as much integrity as possible?
I have run out of time. I add only that I hope that in this Session the House will have more opportunities to debate science and technology. There is a great willingness to do so, and it would be hugely beneficial not just for the House but for the Government and the nation at large.
Baroness Doocey (LD)
My Lords, I too welcome the three maiden speakers, who made such excellent speeches.
It was very disappointing to me that, yet again, tourism was not mentioned in the King’s Speech, despite the contribution it makes to the economy. I want to focus on the increased contribution that tourism can make to the economy if the Government would just listen and take advice from the industry.
First, there is the Government’s deliberate policy of removing tax-free shopping for international visitors. This has been discussed in the House several times, but we are not making progress. As the Association of International Retail puts it, all the data shows that Britain is suffering from this decision. In 2022 tourism spend in the EU was up by 98% compared with 2019; in Britain it was down by 28%. British shops lost £1.5 billion in revenue as international visitors chose to spend their money in France, Italy and Spain instead. This trend is worsening in 2023: we are now the only major European country not to offer this bonus to international visitors. We are missing out on a rare Brexit opportunity: to offer tax-free sales to the 447 million consumers of the European Union.
By changing this policy, the Government could give an enormous shot in the arm not only to retail sales but to the hospitality, leisure and travel industries. The Treasury would also benefit from all the extra spending on services, hotels, travel and meals. Treasury estimates on this issue are simply wrong, and the mounting evidence contradicting its sums shows why the Chancellor should announce an independent assessment of this policy in his upcoming Autumn Statement. The industry has been crying out for this to happen because policies like this feed into the widespread perception that Britain as a destination is simply not competitive on price.
I also want to address school group travel and the loss to this country of those young people we once welcomed here in numbers, establishing vital early connections that benefited not only them but Britain. EU schoolchildren in organised and supervised groups used to arrive on official lists of travellers without needing a passport, but they can no longer do this because they now need a passport to enter the UK. But because most EU countries operate national ID card systems, the culture of getting a passport is much less prevalent than in the UK. For example, only about a third of Italian children have a passport.
Meanwhile, with British schoolchildren no longer automatically benefiting from visa-free access to the EU, and airlines and ferry companies reluctant to accept UK collective group passports, UK schools are struggling to organise their own trips to the continent. The Government recently proposed changes to alleviate this situation, at least for French children. The industry has waited for more news on this for many months and there are fears that, unless there is an announcement soon, it could be too little, too late to save an industry estimated to be worth £1.5 billion a year to the UK economy.
In short, not only must any changes be rolled out to other countries but they must be implemented urgently before the alternative destinations chosen by trip organisers over the last two years become established choices. Surely, with the upcoming introduction of the ETA, there is scope to reintroduce a more flexible system for schoolchildren. I hope that the Minister can update us when he winds up.
Finally, I turn to seaside towns. These communities are highly dependent on tourism, with the industry supporting half the jobs in places such as Whitby and St Ives. These areas have long faced a spiral of decline, with businesses closing and accommodation falling into disrepair. Covid hit them disproportionately— 90% of the areas that suffered the biggest job losses were on the coast. Now a crisis is looming, with a third of coastal businesses not confident about trading over the next six months, and four out of every 10 expecting to close during the winter to boost their chances of survival.
England’s Chief Medical Officer, Sir Chris Whitty, says that demographic trends mean that ageing populations and associated challenges in coastal areas will only increase, and warns that we need action to stop the situation getting worse. But he also believes:
“Many of the challenges faced by coastal communities are amenable to strong, targeted, long-term action”.
There is no doubt that a co-ordinated strategy to regenerate these areas is long overdue. That is why, on these Benches, we are proposing new coastal deals, building on the town deals model, to provide new homes, upgrade transport infrastructure and boost tourism. This will involve working with port operators to drive regeneration through development of housing and amenities on port sites.
Together, these changes would make a real difference to tourism and to the economy. Crucially, they would also show a Britain that is truly open for business.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, in a lacklustre King’s Speech, with thin pickings for those of us committed to expanding freedom, I am glad to have something positive to say at the start of my speech. I too congratulate the Government on the proposed repeal of Section 40 in the Media Bill. This always was an outrageous attempt at financially strong-arming the press into signing up to a state regulator. Dumping this draconian measure is a rare victory for free speech.
I also want to probe proposals to modernise the mission of public service broadcasting to keep up with new technological changes. It is fine to ensure that viewers and listeners have easy access to public service TV and radio content on connected devices, online platforms and smart TVs, but I am concerned that there is a complacency that assumes that simply making PSB content available will deliver what the gracious Speech calls a trusted source of impartial news. My question is: will it?
This ignores the ongoing problems of partiality in PSB news output. Also, public service broadcasters themselves now often use web and online platforms that can mean one-sided material, even misinformation, being available for ever longer. I will give a couple of examples.
Recently, the grass-roots anti-racism campaign group Don’t Divide Us made a formal complaint about a BBC “Newsround” web article published in 2020 entitled “White Privilege: What is it and How Can it be Used to Help Others?” This was no impartial primer. Aimed at children and teenagers, material was presented by Professor Kehinde Andrews, an openly partisan activist and advocate of critical race theory. A highly contested, unscientific and politically divisive concept—white privilege—is presented as a self-evident truth with no counterview—and that was by the BBC. As DDU director Dr Alka Sehgal Cuthbert explains, this controversial ideology impugns
“the majority of the British public who happen to be white”
for alleged privilege based on their skin colour while
“patronising Britain’s non-white citizens”
as perpetual victims. This politicised narrative is presented as trustworthy fact on a BBC website. How did the BBC respond to concerns? It was a bit jobsworth-like, I am afraid. It explained that content currently published on a BBC website must be complained about within 30 working days of it being published. So, this partisan material, labelled as PSB for youth, remains online and nothing can be done.
Here is another example. In a very fine speech in this House on Israel and Gaza, the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, noted that the BBC “uncritically” repeated Hamas officials’ claims
“that Israel had struck the Al-Ahli hospital”—[Official Report, 24/10/23; col. 592.]
in Gaza, and that the claims were presented as fact. When it was clarified that, actually, it was an Islamic Jihad rocket, the defamatory report remained on the BBC website, unaltered. It was viewed by millions and was cited as verified fact by too many at the start of what has become an ever-growing climate of anti-Semitic hatred on our streets.
Mind you, if you watch PSB news, you may not see the scale of this anti-Semitic problem. In coverage of the Armistice demo at the weekend, I got the sense that some journalists from the likes of, for example, Channel 4, were almost relieved to spot familiar bigots in the guise of Tommy Robinson and friends; these were the dangerous thugs that all bien pensants in the media recognise and denounce. However, they somehow managed to miss the racist bigotry aimed at Jews: protesters dressed up as Hamas terrorists; placards featuring swastikas in the Star of David; and those caught on film shouting, “Kill all Jews”, or, “Hitler knew how to deal with these people”. None of this featured in the mainstream news at all, so I am grateful to those citizen journalists and freelancers such as Inc.Monocle—we should all follow him—for filming and photographing so comprehensively that we have material we all need to see. I note that the Met Police is using that material as evidence for its post-event, Wild West-style “Wanted” posters. My question is: why was more of this not on PSB channels?
Also, as a follow-on to the endless arguments I had with Ministers on what is now the Online Safety Act, it is worth noting that those much-maligned platforms are often invaluable for publishing inconvenient truths and proof of why free speech online is so important. Censorship is never the answer to hate. Hamas despises freedom but, for democracies, it is our lifeblood. This is why I am not convinced by the Economic Activity of Public Bodies Bill, which tries to ban boycotts and divestment projects rather than democratically convincing public bodies against treating Israel as a pariah state and using censorious tactics to punish it, Israeli products, Israeli speakers, Jewish shops and so on.
This is also why we should all be anxious about one of the Secretaries of State associated with these debates, Michelle Donelan, calling on UK Research and Innovation—UKRI—to shut down its equality, diversity and inclusion committee on the grounds that some of its academic members put anti-Israel posts on social media. Although I disagree profoundly with the sentiments expressed by those academics—such as labelling Israel as an apartheid state guilty of genocide, which I find disgusting—I am also disgusted when a Government Minister interferes with academic freedom. Surely this makes a mockery of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act that we passed earlier this year and of which I was rather proud.
Talking of equality, diversity and inclusion, it is a sign of the times that, although I welcome confirmation of the construction of the Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre, my first thought was, “They’ll need extra-heavy security because it could be attacked”. My second thought was, “Oh no, I hope the memorial project won’t have an EDI committee or activists might demand that it decolonise the content and rebrand Jewish victims of the Holocaust as colonisers”—a fashionable slander that is very popular in educational and cultural institutions as we speak.
To conclude: sadly, the arts are being poisoned by such intersectional identity politics—so much so that a new organisation, Freedom in the Arts, has just been launched. It was set up by the dancer and choreographer Rosie Kay and a former senior Arts Council officer, Denise Fahmy; both of them were personally cancelled for their gender-critical views. How sad that we need to campaign now, in 2023, for artistic freedom. I urge the Minister to meet them and I hope that DCMS will support their work.
As always, my theme is that free speech is crucial for the arts, innovation, research and democracy, as well as for the excellent maiden speeches that we have heard. We are about to hear another, so good luck to the next speaker. Using our free speech is crucial in arguing against and defeating bigotry in all its forms—something that I associate with the world of arts and culture.
Lord Lebedev (CB)
I thank all noble Lords for their kind words. First, I would like to say that it is a pleasure to speak in this debate and to mark the three exceptional maiden speeches. Congratulations and welcome.
My great-grandfather Mikhail was a deputy in Stalin’s war Cabinet—not a role that naturally encourages a man to speak his mind freely. In fact, my family say that he never felt able to speak openly about anything out of fear—the downright terror that afflicted the country where I was born of being punished for saying the wrong thing. That is why this country’s great tradition of free speech has long aroused such admiration in my heart and around the world.
Ten years ago, I told the Leveson inquiry that a free and independent media was essential for Britain today. It has been alarming since then to see the erosion of free speech that is taking place here. It has been appalling to see an author as distinguished as JK Rowling forbidden from speaking at great universities, supposedly bastions of intellectual liberty, because she espouses views about gender that are probably the views of the quiet majority and have been held for centuries. It was shocking that Coutts Bank decided that Nigel Farage was no longer suitable to be a customer, not because he was insolvent but simply because it did not like his views on Brexit.
I am aware that these examples may tempt your Lordships to conclude that I am some kind of reactionary—or even a conservative. So let me say, in the spirit of Voltaire, that I equally support the right of Jeremy Corbyn to his views on Hamas. I may find those views repellent, but I will defend his right to hold them; it is not just the left that is guilty of cancel culture. I will even defend the Tory MP Andrew Bridgen, who was abruptly sacked from his party for his views on Covid vaccinations.
I am concerned that some of the provisions in the online harms Bill could give further legal basis for a process of censorship and self-censorship that is already under way. When you muzzle, cancel and sack people merely because they champion their honestly held opinions, you are playing with fire. By allowing people to be censored right, left and centre, we are making a huge mistake. By suppressing free speech, we are not contradicting the nutters and conspiracists; we are giving credence and foundation to their otherwise bonkers assertions. Worst of all, we are allowing the most deadly enemies of freedom to claim an equivalence between cancel culture in Britain and the suppression of free speech around the world.
There are too many countries where you can be jailed for your views, where journalists are shot—including, sadly, Russia. I have read industrial quantities of falsehoods about myself in the last two years, but at least I live in a country where journalists do not fear for their lives. Those authoritarian regimes are growing in number. We must not give them the propaganda win of pointing at us and saying, “What about you?”—believe me, that is what they are saying.
Why the hell is the BBC trying to bowdlerise “Fawlty Towers”, one of its finest creations? Why can we not mention the war? Why are they trying to sandpaper Roald Dahl? Why can we not say “fat”? Have attitudes really changed so fast? Around the world, people are noticing what is happening and saying, “Look at Britain, the home of western liberal values. Look at what happens, in Britain today, if you say or think something about human biology that used to be pure common sense”.
Our positions on gender are so booby-trapped with dynamite and so easy to parody that they are harming the cause of gay rights around the world. We are giving our enemies precisely the stick that they need to beat us with. They are not laughing with us any more; they are laughing at us. It is worse than that, because freedom is indispensable to our national creativity. The freedom to be comically outrageous contributed to the national sense of fun. That spiritual and intellectual exuberance, that amazing artistic, cultural, literary, scientific and journalistic energy, has drawn people of talent from around the world to make this a great home of innovation and ideas precisely because they know that they will be able to live their life as they choose and speak as they find. We would be insane to throw away these freedoms.
Baroness Morgan of Huyton (Lab)
My Lords, as ever in these debates, the breadth of experience in this House is quite outstanding. I certainly hope that the new Foreign Secretary knows what he is facing when he comes here.
I start by drawing attention to my interests as set out in the register, particularly as master of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, and chair of the Royal Brompton and Harefield hospitals as part of Guy’s and St Thomas’. I am also a trustee of the National Heart and Lung Foundation.
Others have spoken comprehensively about the central importance of science and technology to the future success of the UK economy in attracting inward investment, increasing productivity and creating highly skilled jobs. I will not repeat all that. Moreover, and obviously, advances in science and tech are essential to address society’s big challenges and can and must have a global impact on health, wealth and sustainability. It would perhaps be remiss of me not to say that the economic impact of the University of Cambridge is nearly £30 billion annually—80% of which is generated by spinouts, as well as commercial activity carried out there. However, I use that only as an indication that our universities around the UK boost the UK demonstrably and are crucial to any discussion about regional economic growth.
This does not happen by chance. The future of such scientific research and commercialisation depends on long-term commitment, especially from government, and ambitious targets for R&D spending—we must aim to head the G7 on that. It also depends on longer cycles, of 10 years or more, which will provide stability for researchers, innovators and investors; reduction up front on visa costs to make the UK competitive in the battle for talent, as we have heard; and evidence-based rather than populist policies around net zero, to rebuild confidence in the UK’s global ambitions as a serious science nation.
I want to use my remaining short time to talk about the opportunity of further strengthening the UK’s life sciences sector and the dangers if we do not get this right. I was a member of your Lordships’ Select Committee which examined the sector deal, the Life Sciences Industrial Strategy, and the Bell report, a while back. A lot has happened since then, a lot of it good but not all of it. However, it has still not been completely gripped across government. I want to focus on the arc that makes the UK unique: excellent universities undertaking basic science and translational science with leading hospitals; central organisation through NHS England and world-class regulators, including NICE; highly developed pharma and biotech beyond the golden triangle, increasing, as we heard earlier, in the north-east; and a universal health service, where the whole population is essentially in the same system, which is very different from virtually all our competitors.
This is, of course, the massive opportunity, the golden nugget. Crucially, we need the NHS and government to support, recognise and reward innovation and move away from heavyweight bureaucracy, but that is for another day. However, above all, the opportunity presented to the UK life sciences sector depends on trust. The key relationship remains between medical personnel—whether clinicians or nurses—and patients. Data is the foundation to realising that potential to lead to amazing medical breakthroughs and for improved patient care and outcomes.
The noble Lord, Lord Patel, talked about the importance of the work that is still to be done on data, and I endorse everything that he said. The requirements are obvious and I know that they are appreciated but they are not there yet—collection of data that is standardised across the system, the ability to link systems properly, access to NHS data by third parties but within clear rules, and, crucially, public acceptance of the need for the data to be used to enable short-, medium- and long-term patient benefit, so again it is trust. That crucial trust is easily damaged. It is easy to be captivated by remarkable breakthroughs. We hear this in the media every day. However, there is a gap between the stories and the rollout that can be disappointing at best and heartbreaking at worse.
An example I know well illustrates this. At the Brompton, we have a long-established cystic fibrosis service. Over the years, our clinicians saw young lives severely narrowed and cut short. They also got to know families who put immense time, emotional back-up and resource into supporting children and relatives. Therefore, they were delighted when the new drugs were at last developed that would transform—it is not too strong a word—the quality and length of the lives of their patients and future patients. The first drug got the go-ahead in 2019 and the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, then head of the NHS, said that the day marked an important and long-hoped-for moment for children and adults living with CF.
There was a deal—full marks to the noble Lord—to roll out the drugs at a price that was acceptable then to the NHS, while NICE undertook its appraisal. However, that work has now concluded. NICE has reported that the medications are highly effective for people with CF. The effectiveness is not in doubt. It is not marginal but dramatic. However, the drugs are above the range that NICE considers to be an acceptable use of NHS resources and therefore new patients will not receive the effective drugs going forward.
Professor Jane Davies at the NHLI said that the drugs are “genuinely transformative” and reported that there has been a reduction in hospital admissions of at least two-thirds. She added:
“If this … decision sticks, the population that is going to lose the most will be the youngest children who aren’t yet on these drugs, or haven’t yet been born”.
At Harefield Hospital, the percentage of lung transplants related to CF has fallen from 60% in 2018 to 5% in 2022. The DHSC says:
“Cystic fibrosis can be a devastating illness, which is why we have invested over £1.1 billion of funding into research of rare diseases”.
One is tempted to ask how that response will land with parents of patients with CF.
My wish is not to beat up on NICE. It has a really hard job and it is an extremely good regulator, trying to give analytical precision to the use of limited NHS resources. I really hope that there is serious behind-the-scenes pressure on the drug companies—in this case, Vertex Pharmaceuticals—to reduce the astronomical price. I am not naive. Research is expensive and often fails. We need long-term work and investment by pharma, but it comes back to trust—the bedrock which releases our golden nugget of patient data. Patients and families are watching this dance with disbelief. How can we collectively urge patients to share data for research if they see proven treatments being removed? They will feel like pawns.
The danger is still that life sciences are not being handled in a holistic way across government. Is the strategy for UK life sciences really joined up? Will the public’s relationship with personal data be handled intelligently and seriously—because that is right and because it is economically essential?
The Earl of Devon (CB)
My Lords, it is an honour to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan. I much enjoyed the three maiden speeches delivered today and I welcome and congratulate all our new Members. We all arrive here by various routes; mine involved the gratitude of the Empress Matilda in respect of a previous Brexit. The diversity of paths to these red Benches is one of the House’s greatest strengths, and I look forward to their various contributions. I note my interests in the register, particularly as an IP and technology litigator in both England and California.
The issue du jour is artificial intelligence, highlighted by the earlier Question of the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, and the recent AI safety summit. I appreciate the letter to us all from the noble Viscount, Lord Camrose, and the Government’s stated ambition to remain at the forefront of this epochal technological development. I applaud the commitment to ensure that AI development is
“human-centric, trustworthy and responsible”,
a point that the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Chartres, made clearly. I also agree with the Prime Minister’s commitment to ensure we do not “rush to regulate” before understanding what it is we are regulating; we should not strangle the proverbial golden goose with unnecessary red tape.
However, some issues and implications of AI are already well identified and agreed, not least that discussed earlier: the IP implications of large language model training and the need for technology companies to obtain consent from rights holders for the data and content they ingest. The Government have stated:
“Data mining systems copy works to extract and analyse the data they contain. Unless permitted under licence or an exception, making such copies will constitute copyright infringement.”
The Minister’s earlier confirmation of this is appreciated.
Of course, access to content is key to the training of LLMs, as identified by Sir Patrick Vallance in his recent Pro-innovation Regulation of Technologies Review, and a code of practice is thus long overdue. Can the Minister in summing up please confirm the expected timing of this following the IPO’s consultation?
I note that the recent AI summit agreed to commission a “state of the science” report as a basis for international collaboration. Could we not also consider the state of the law and regulation governing AI development? In such a fast-moving sector, should we consider an IP regulator and the development of a speedier means of legal recourse than the current civil justice system? The Science, Innovation and Technology Committee noted in August that there is a danger that we will be outpaced by other jurisdictions, which are legislating specifically for AI. But I do agree with the Government’s considered approach to AI regulation.
Finally on this point, as to the welcome programme of AI investment, what measures will be in place to ensure protection for individuals—both rights holders and employees—and to ensure that AI is developed in a manner consistent with accepted environmental, social and governance principles? The dangers of entrenching bias in AI are well documented, as are the environmental impacts of the massive data centres in which LLMs are housed.
As the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, has noted, crucial to AI is data, and the continued passage of the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill is therefore to be welcomed. However, noting the ambition to “reduce burdens on organisations”, I issue a word of warning. Having chaired the Westminster data protection forum recently, I know that there are dangers in becoming non-aligned. Can the Minister please confirm that the legislation will ensure that the UK is able to participate in the free transfer of data internationally? Will it maintain equivalence with Europe, as well as easy exchange with jurisdictions beyond, such as North America and particularly the Pacific Rim? We must not become a data island in our efforts to reduce burdens.
Talking of the Pacific, I support the introduction of legislation to enable our accession to the CPTPP, an important chapter of which addresses intellectual property. The Bill will expand copyright to allow performers from CPTPP countries to enjoy protections in the UK, and UK performers to enjoy additional protections overseas. To the extent the Government intend to extend this national treatment beyond what is strictly required by accession, will the Minister please confirm that they will do so only after full and proper consultation, as this will have unexpected and unwelcome consequences?
The Government are to be congratulated on the passage of the Online Safety Act, but we must not rest upon those laurels. Ofcom published some 1,500 pages of consultation last week, and there is much work to be done to ensure a smooth implementation. The Minister may be aware that the legislation mirrors the provisions of California’s recent Age-Appropriate Design Code Act. Will he please undertake to ensure a free exchange with legislators in that jurisdiction as they wrestle with the constitutional and practical challenges of such implementation? I recommend the work of the British-American Parliamentary Group, of which I am a member.
A similar discussion on tech legislation could occur regarding the Automated Vehicles Bill recently introduced in this House. California leads the world on the regulation and implementation of this technology, as anyone who has recently visited San Francisco can attest, and the BAPG recently visited California to focus just on this issue. I encourage the Minister to note our trade negotiations with the state of California on a memorandum of understanding on economic co-operation and trade relations, and I recommend that it include co-operation in these important areas.
Now that online safety is legislated for, will the Minister please assure the House that the Government will renew their efforts to review the regulation of pornography, including the long overdue identification and verification provisions? The ease with which young and old can access misogynistic violence and abuse on the internet is a stain on our society and, as the Government’s own research has identified, is doing lasting damage to many people across the country—not just the young and vulnerable.
I turn from technology to culture. The football governance reforms are to be applauded, particularly in the light of the well-being, diversity and safeguarding concerns raised by the National Plan for Sport and Recreation Committee, upon which I sat. I note the concerns about the unsustainable financial models adopted by many clubs. In echoing the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, I ask only that the Minister consider the need for a similar review of rugby union governance, in the light of the number of professional clubs that are collapsing in that sport.
Finally, I bemoan the absence of any discussion of heritage in His Majesty’s most gracious Speech. Given the importance of heritage to His Majesty personally, this is a surprising omission and must have been a sadness for him. On the day of the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the formation of Historic Houses, of which I am a member, and following the launch of its recent report entitled, Changing Times, Valuing History, will the Minister please repeat his warm words delivered this morning recognising the importance of privately owned heritage? Will he also undertake that, despite our rush to navigate and master the technologies of the future, we will not forget the important lessons that reside in our rich and varied past?
Baroness Featherstone (LD)
It is a pleasure to follow the noble Earl, Lord Devon, and I congratulate all those who made their maiden speeches. It reminds us all for a moment of our own maiden speeches. Mine was three minutes long, as I did not know I was allowed extra time.
I am worried about the state of our democracy for many reasons, but today I want to focus on the damage being done by the Government’s creeping control of what they permit we the people to be told, and who they will permit to tell it to us. A 2019 Freedom House report, entitled Media Freedom: A Downward Spiral, said:
“The fundamental right to seek and disseminate information through an independent press is under attack, and part of the assault has come from an unexpected source. Elected leaders in many democracies, who should be press freedom’s staunchest defenders, have made explicit attempts to silence critical media voices and strengthen outlets that serve up favourable coverage. The trend is linked to a global decline in democracy itself: The erosion of press freedom is both a symptom of and a contributor to the breakdown of other democratic institutions and principles, a fact that makes it especially alarming”.
It is happening to us and it is happening right now, under our noses.
According to Freedom House’s Freedom in the World data, media freedom has been deteriorating around the world over the past decade, with new forms of repression taking hold in open societies such as ours, and in authoritarian states. Who would think that we would be on the way to being an authoritarian state?
The trend is most acute in Europe—and despite Brexit, we are still in Europe—which was previously a bastion of well-established freedoms. The guidelines for the Government Communication Service, for example, say that dealings with journalists
“should be objective and explanatory, not biased or polemical”,
and
“should not be—and not liable to being misrepresented as—party political”.
The guidelines also state:
“To work effectively, media officers must establish their impartiality and neutrality with the news media, and ensure that they deal with all news media even-handedly.”
I am sure that your Lordships remember when Suella Braverman—now the ex-Home Secretary and author of a love letter today to Rishi Sunak—went to Rwanda to showboat her care for refugees coming to this country. She excluded the Guardian, the Mirror, the i, the Independent and the BBC, albeit in the end BBC Africa-based journalists did manage to get a look in. Guardian editor-in-chief Katharine Viner condemned it as a “chilling” pattern of behaviour from the Government. The editor-in-chief of the Mirror, Alison Phillips, also warned of “really damaging” consequences from the way press places were handled on the visit. She wrote:
“A single instance of the government excluding journalists from newspapers and broadcasters would be chilling enough, but this is not a one off. Rather, it is becoming a pattern of behaviour whereby this government excludes journalists and selectively chooses reporters from sympathetic papers to cover ministerial trips and visits.”
Martin Bright, then editor-at-large at Index on Censorship, which works to defend freedom of expression, said:
“We are concerned to hear that journalists from organisations judged to be critical of the government’s immigration policy have not been invited to accompany the Home Secretary on her trip to Rwanda. Democracy depends on an open and transparent relationship between government and the media, where all journalists are able to scrutinise the government. Index on Censorship believes that access to government ministers, both domestically and as part of international visits, should not be treated as a reward for favourable coverage”.
It was not a single occurrence, because this actually happened less than a year after journalists from the Guardian, the Financial Times and the Mirror were blocked from joining the then Home Secretary, Priti Patel, on her trip to Rwanda to sign the original asylum deal. And it is not just trips, because in 2020 political journalists, including the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg and ITV’s Robert Peston, staged a walkout after Downing Street communications staff attempted to brief some journalists but not others— presumably the ones they did not like. Those excluded by former Mirror and Sun journalist Lee Cain included journalists from PA, the Mirror, the i, Huffpost UK, PoliticsHome and the Independent.
One of the Guardian journalists who would have been on the Rwanda flight was Rajeev Syal. He told me yesterday that, on both occasions, the Guardian made representations to the Society of Editors and complained to the Home Office, and that the exclusions came from the Home Secretary’s office on both occasions, not from civil servants. Following the most recent exclusion, the Guardian, the Mirror and others were invited to a meeting at the Home Office by members of the Home Office press and media operation to discuss differences. While this resulted in a thawing of relations, there have been no written commitments or guarantees that exclusions would not take place in the future.
The guidelines are insufficient; in fact, they are totally useless. We need legislation, and sadly there was nothing in the gracious Speech to ensure that this practice and the consequent threat to our democracy was halted in perpetuity. I just want a simple Bill introduced: a media inclusivity Bill that prohibits the Government, whatever Government, whether Labour, Conservative or Lib Dem—I wish—from excluding broadcasters or journalists whom they feel may not be on their side, or who may write what they do not want to hear; and that will prohibit them from excluding specific media from covering them on foreign visits they are making, from speeches they are delivering or from briefings they are giving, or any other occasion to which media are invited. There must be no exclusion of particular media because the Government of the day wish to eliminate potential criticism: our democracy literally depends on it.
Lord Hampton (CB)
My Lords, it is always a pleasure to take part in a debate like this, following the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone. I add my congratulations to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle, the noble Baroness, Lady Owen of Alderley Edge and the noble Lord, Lord Ranger of Northwood, on their excellent maiden speeches. They were extremely thoughtful, and I look forward to hearing more from them in the future.
As the noble Viscount said, we are justly proud of the thriving creative sector in this country and how many billion pounds it adds to the UK economy. We have world leaders in architecture, music, film, arts, advertising, design, fashion and photography, among many others. No one is born with creative ability. The skills are learned in the same way that any other skill is learned, in the same way that one will learn to kick a football or a rugby ball or program a computer. A child who is encouraged to make marks will continue to make better marks; someone who is told that their drawing of an elephant looks like a blob will give up, convinced that they cannot draw. Skills that are given the oxygen of encouragement will grow; talents that are ignored will wither and eventually die. It seems more and more that we are producing world-beating creatives despite the curriculum.
As ever, I must declare an interest as a teacher and ex-head of department of design and technology at a state school in Hackney; I thank the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, for his bigging-up of design technology. How are we teaching the young designers of tomorrow? Are we giving them the confidence to thrive and the tools to do it with? We are trying, but it is not easy. The EBacc and “BritBacc” are a flat back four ranged against the creative subjects. The current curriculum is outdated with its obsession with facts that our students replicate for two days in the summer, and that is what they and their schools are judged on. Although I accept that we need a foundation of basic knowledge before we can build learning, I think that we have gone too far. As Sherlock Holmes said:
“I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out … so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it”.
I know what he means. I can recite Archimedes’s principle, something that I learned when I was 15 but have never used, yet I cannot remember my wife’s mobile number—maybe we all think that. I wonder whether the change of Schools Minister will mean a change of thinking; I hope so.
Despite the Minister’s praise of the creative media, it was not really mentioned in the gracious Speech, apart from a certain amount of talk of broadcast. It also mentioned secondary education only with the introduction of the advanced British standard. This has the laudable aim of broadening post-16 education, but seemingly by adding maths and English to the mix, rather than giving students a liberal arts-style offering, for instance. Better, more relevant maths is what we need, not more maths.
We need to change our mindset so that creativity and culture play a much stronger role in our education. I was reminded of this last Friday at school. It was PHSCE day— Personal Health Social and Citizenship Education Day—when the timetable is collapsed, and the students study a separate agenda for the day concentrating on topics outside the normal curriculum. While other students were practising putting condoms on plastic phalluses, or learning to write CVs, I was helping a form of year 10s from a mixed religious, ethnic and socioeconomic background discuss the subject of extremism; a topical subject indeed. Much of the teaching was a fairly passive affair and it was only when we allowed the students to debate the subject of free speech that they became truly animated. What developed was a fascinating debate with many good points made. It occurred to me that the confidence and presentation skills that they learned in that debate was a much better preparation for life than much of the passive educating that had gone before. If we could provide a more engaging, more relevant, more creative curriculum, surely that would help to retain teachers and tempt some of the 1.8 million children who regularly miss education, according to the Children’s Commissioner attendance figures, back into school. It is from these diverse, questioning and engaged students that we must grow our creative sector.
The Creative Majority report published by the APPG on Creative Diversity said that:
“Straight, able-bodied, white men living in London are only 3.5 per cent of the UK population ... Nevertheless, this small minority still dominates the creative sector, and in particular occupy a vast number of the most senior creative roles”.
As you can see, I did not exactly buck the trend during my 25 years as a professional photographer.
The report continues:
“men from privileged backgrounds are five times more likely to work in a creative occupation than working-class women. Someone with a disability from a working-class background is three times less likely to work in a creative occupation than someone who is privileged and able-bodied”.
All we have to do to grow the creative sector in this country is completely change the mindset to attract a diverse workforce in all aspects and restructure our education system to put creative skills at the heart of the curriculum. It is that simple; that should keep us busy until the next general election.
Viscount Hanworth (Lab)
My Lords, I will talk about nuclear technology. The Government must sustain the nuclear industry by ensuring that a sufficient number of nuclear power plants are built to maintain the supply of our electricity. They must also support the development of innovative nuclear technologies to assist in the decarbonisation of our industries.
The privatisation of the electricity industry appeared to validate the opinion of the Conservatives that private industry could be relied on to maintain the nation’s energy infrastructure. With the benefit of newly exploited North Sea gas, the private electricity companies began to replace existing coal-fired power stations with combined- cycle gas turbine plant. These could be constructed rapidly and demanded much smaller capital investments than the plants that they replaced.
At a later date, the same companies began to respond to the Government’s incentives to construct offshore electricity-generating wind farms. The Government’s incentives have been far less successful in inducing the electricity companies to invest in nuclear power plants. The problem here has been the size of the necessary capital investments and the long duration of the construction period that precedes the generation of any revenues.
In the view of some commentators, most of the nation’s requirements for electricity could be met by wind and solar power, which appear much cheaper to deploy than nuclear power. It is claimed that as much as 70% of demand can be satisfied in this way. However, these are intermittent sources of power: often the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow, and then no electricity can be generated by these means. At such times, the deficit is currently being met by gas-powered electricity. This is an effective recourse only when the so-called renewable sources of power generate less than 30%, on average, of the total supply of electricity.
Moreover, gas is a fossil fuel that emits carbon dioxide. In the absence of a means to capture its emissions, gas cannot continue to be exploited for this purpose if we are to meet the objective of decarbonising the economy. If the demand for electricity is to be met at all times and if we are to depend solely on the renewable resources of wind and solar power, there has to be a means to store the energy. It is widely believed that the most appropriate means of achieving this is to use any available surpluses of electricity to generate hydrogen via a process of electrolysis. The hydrogen would be used to power fuel cells and turbines to generate electricity and would find other industrial uses.
However, to accommodate the intermittence of the renewable sources of power, if they were to become the dominant sources, would require major capital investments in technologies that have yet to be realised. Large amounts of hydrogen would have to be stored over a long period to meet the eventuality of a prolonged dearth of wind and solar power. When the costs of constructing and maintaining the necessary infrastructure are added to the costs of the renewable sources of power, they no longer appear cheap. Projects to establish such facilities, if they were to be undertaken by the private sector, would encounter the very difficulties that have beset the projects to build nuclear power stations. They would require large amounts of capital and the financial returns would be deferred for far too long.
Nuclear power, which is capable of generating a constant supply of electricity, suffers from none of the problems of intermittence that affect the so-called renewable sources of power. It should be relied on in future to satisfy most of the demand for electricity. Nuclear power is a mature technology which has been exploited for almost 70 years. However, in deploying it today, we should exploit some new technologies. There are three distinct purposes that can be served by nuclear power plants, and they demand different kinds of nuclear reactors.
First, we need nuclear power stations that contribute electricity to the grid. Various reactors are on offer for this role, mainly pressurised water reactors. At one end of the spectrum are the EPRs, rated at 3,300 megawatts of electrical power, which are to be deployed in the mega power stations of Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C. At the other end is the small modular reactor of Rolls-Royce rated at about 470 megawatts of electrical power. We should persist with Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C, but they should be succeeded by a fleet of SMRs from Rolls-Royce, which should be distributed widely throughout the country. Pressurised water reactors are described as third-generation reactors. In due course, they should give way to a fourth generation of reactors, some of the leading examples of which are currently under development in this country.
The second purpose, which is to power industrial processes, can be served by much smaller reactors. The British MoltexFLEX molten salt reactor, which is simple and robust, can fulfil this role. It was originally proposed as a marine reactor and it will generate 50 megawatts of thermal power. Another reactor that could serve this purpose, which is rated at 100 megawatts of thermal power, is being developed jointly by Copenhagen Atomics and UK Atomics. The fuel of this reactor is thorium, which is described as fertile as opposed to fissile. Once the reaction is under way, thorium generates fissile uranium and creates very little waste.
The third purpose that can be served by the new generation of reactors is consuming the existing stocks of plutonium. The newcleo reactor, which can be described as a lead-cooled fast reactor, has this capability. Alternative versions will generate 50 or 200 megawatts of electrical power. This is a project with British, French and Italian backing. The newcleo reactor can also consume MOX fuel that is a mixture of uranium and plutonium, which is generated from the waste of conventional pressurised water reactors. A variant of the Moltex reactor, which is of interest to the Canadians, also has this capability. It is described as a waste burner and will generate 300 megawatts of electrical power.
These are all fourth-generation reactors endowed with passive safety. Their proponents are keen to describe them as British projects, but each is of interest to at least one other country. I fear that, unless our Government undertake active sponsorship of these projects, their ownership and intellectual capital will be ceded to those other countries. Financial subventions are required that seem modest in comparison with the money wasted by purchasing unusable personal protective equipment during the Covid pandemic.
Sites must be designated where the prototype fourth-generation reactors can be located. Alternatively, a technology park could be created to host these reactors. If the necessary support were immediately forthcoming, these reactors could be up and running by 2030, which could be some time before the completion of the Sizewell C power station. However, if the necessary support is not forthcoming, the projects are liable to emigrate to other countries, and we would be in the position of importing the products of technologies that originated in this country.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I have managed to listen to every Member’s contribution during this part of the King’s Speech debate—with a couple of toilet visits. The contributions show a real depth of knowledge and understanding of the issues, which I doubt would be found in any other chamber in the country; “breadth of experience” was the phrase of the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan.
As has been said, this is likely to be the last King’s Speech before the general election and a new Government are formed. This government programme sees 21 Bills, and we are told by the commentariat that they are designed to create dividing lines between the Government and opposition. Really? The King’s gracious Speech is against the backdrop of a Cabinet reshuffle and the Autumn Statement.
What strikes me about the 21 Bills and the topics assigned to our five days of consideration is that there is no mention of children and families, of education and schooling or of the day-to-day issues that struggling families face. Only today the Children’s Society produced a survey that shows that 82% of parents are very or quite concerned about the cost of living on their families. There is no mention of the NHS.
I turn to science, technology, media and culture. If we are to be a science and technological superpower or a leader in automated vehicles, if we are to develop AI and green technologies, we need a first-class education service that values and rewards its teachers and lecturers and provides our schools, colleges and universities with the resources they need. Universities that have more students from China doing engineering than UK students—is that the way to be a first-class technological superpower? In our schools we are seeing the highest ever number of teacher vacancies and shortages in specialist subjects. For example, more than 400 schools do not have a qualified physics teacher. We have the lowest ever number of people applying for teaching jobs, and more and more pupils having to be taught by a daily rate supply teacher. Added to this, teachers are leaving the profession in their droves; there is the lowest ever retention rate for teachers. At the same time, we are seeing class sizes rising. In our universities we are seeing more and more lecturing staff employed on fixed-term contracts—is that the way to encourage their enthusiasm for the subject? We are also seeing more and more financial dependency on overseas students and their fees.
In many high-tech industries, such as commercial quantum computing, semiconductors or the green technologies of the future, as the noble Lord, Lord Watson, said, physics is crucial. Why have we allowed a shortage of 3,500 physics teachers in England and Wales? Why have we allowed 40% of our physics teachers to drop out of physics teaching in their first five years? Physics, remember, brings £220 billion to our economy, 11% of our GDP. As my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones reminded us in his tour de force of a speech, this week is Maths Week England. We know that the Prime Minister is committed to the teaching of mathematics. If that is the case, the Government must take on the sustainability of maths at university level and signal to universities the importance of protecting and investing in mathematics. Without this commitment to support them, mathematical skills in the UK will be undermined, because we are seeing maths departments in our universities being closed down.
Talking of undermining, we have seen how the dreadful EBacc has, as the noble Lord, Lord Knight, told us, undermined creative subjects in our schools. It beggars belief that for the creative industries—a truly amazing UK success story that before Covid was worth £116 billion in GVA and created 2.3 million jobs—the very pipe steam that should be providing those talented and creative students of the future is stymied. If other countries had that jewel in their creative crown they would be pouring in opportunities and resources to develop it further in schools, colleges and universities. I hope Peers get a chance to read the report on the curriculum that will be published at the end of November by the Lords Select Committee on Education for 11-16 Year Olds.
Let me now put my positive hat on and say that I very much welcome the Media Bill. Our terrestrial TV channels are too important to our sense of belonging as a nation to be allowed to slowly wither away to the margins. As many noble Peers have said—and I did not realise that, as my noble friend Lord Foster said, it is two decades since the last media Bill—this Bill should be used to ensure that we can easily find public service content that we value and enjoy. PSBs should be given significant, not “appropriate”, prominence. The Media Bill also enables us to modernise the listed events regime and close the streamer loophole so that TV-like services that provide live content to UK audiences via the internet are within the scope of listed events legislation. Why are no women’s events listed? Why, for example, if you are cricket fan, do you have to pay to watch test matches?
I very much welcome the tobacco and vaping Bill. Just as tobacco enticed our generation and our grandparents’ generation into addiction, if we are not careful we will see the same happening to our children with vaping. Go around any urban area at school home time and you will see children vaping—school pupils as young as 11 and even younger. They are certainly enticed by group peer pressure, but also enticed by the candy man’s offer of wonderful flavours to enjoy, such as bubblegum, strawberry ice cream, cherry cola, raspberry slush and vanilla custard—all made to look like sweets. No wonder there has been a threefold increase in the number of children using vapes. The health risk to children is frightening. Nicotine can harm developing adolescent brains and lungs. Other health risks are that it can lead to anxiety and depression, becoming a smoker, impotence, sleep problems, exposure to cancer-causing chemicals, chronic bronchitis and lung damage—all so easy with disposable vapes.
I want to talk about the pedicabs Bill. Six years ago, a taxi driver complained to me about what, in those days, were called rickshaws. I constantly asked Written Questions, only to be told in reply that it was not a government matter but for the London Assembly. Clearly, that was not the case. Pedicabs have put passengers at risk with no health and safety standards and fleeced tourists with no proper listing prices; there need to be criminal record checks and safeguarding checks.
I thank the maiden speakers for their amazing speeches—our House is in safe hands, if I may say that. The winding-up person is meant to reference various people—I need to go on a training course to do this, because I always struggle. I enjoyed the important contributions on gambling from my noble friend Lord Foster and the noble Lord, Lord Butler. The comments on football from my noble friend Lord Addington made me think about the need for it to be community engaged.
There were two other contributions that I did not see coming and really made me think. The first was by the noble Lord, Lord Lebedev. I thought that was a very brave speech; freedom of expression and speech are important. Obviously it has to hold up to the law of the land and cannot be racist, homophobic or misogynistic. I remember a little rhyme as a child—sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never harm me. Words can really harm you, and that is why we have to think for our ourselves and teach children the importance of not hurting people’s feelings. I hope we might have a debate at some stage in our House on that contribution. Finally, my noble friend Lady Featherstone was absolutely right; journalists were also not allowed to go on one of the campaign buses because of their political views. I thank colleagues for their excellent contributions.
There are clearly some important Bills, but the Government have failed to use the opportunity to deal with the big issues and real concerns of the day. What I am sure of is that this House will be rigorous and fair-minded in its scrutiny of these 21 Bills.
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Storey. He said a lot of thank-yous—well done.
My Lords, it is a great honour and not a small challenge to be the winding speaker from these Benches on today’s debate on the gracious Speech. I might add that I am missing a concert in the Cholmondeley Room by the Yehudi Menuhin School. I think several other noble Lords are, too—but they will probably manage without us and it will be wonderful.
We have heard three maiden speeches from noble Lords. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle, in a rather lovely speech, served to make this feminist humanist give yet another cheer for the addition of another woman to her sister bishops. I welcome her to the House. The noble Baroness, Lady Owen, should be congratulated on her very gracious speech. It was what you might call a Young Conservative speech. None the less, the first part of it, in which she talked about young people, will be a very valuable addition to our debates in the House. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Ranger, on his moving speech and also thank him for the Oyster card. That was a revelation; you always learn something in maiden speeches and that was something that I did not know, so I thank him very much indeed.
This is my first time in several years speaking from the Front Bench as DCMS spokesperson, which I did before 2015. It is an honour to do so again. I am greatly looking forward to working with a huge range of brilliant organisations and talented people, and, indeed, with the Minister. I will continue to carry the women and equalities brief, because equalities cuts across the whole of government—something I draw to the attention of my colleagues from time to time—including DCMS. Here I am thinking about girls and football, and the equality challenges for disabled, women and BAME performers on stage, in music and in the media. So there is plenty to celebrate but also plenty to challenge.
I turn to the gracious Speech. I will mostly address culture, the media and the creative industries in this speech, but I must say how proud I am of the range of speakers on these Benches. My noble friend Lord Stansgate is a science champion of many years. My noble friend Lord Griffiths treated us to an enormously thoughtful speech. He always gets to the nub of things—the ethics of AI, which I hope the Minister will take on board. My noble friend Lord Knight questioned whether the gracious Speech offered anything to prepare our next generation for the science, technology and creative future that they face. My noble friend Lady Morgan gave us a brilliant and well-informed speech about global science. My noble friend Lord Watson talked about physics and education. I have a nephew who was a physics teacher and stopped being one, which was a huge shame because he is a great scientist and loved his subject. He just could not stand the bureaucracy; he felt he spent too much time not teaching physics.
I agree with my noble friend Lady Jones’s opening remarks, and indeed with the remarks of my noble friend Lady Smith of Basildon when she moved the Motion to adjourn the debate on the gracious Speech last Tuesday. This is not a serious programme for government. It fails to meet the criteria that my noble friend Lady Smith sought: good governance, competence, optimism and vision. It is a missed opportunity to champion our creative industries. Mind you, I am significantly less critical than the steaming letter I have been reading on these Benches from the previous Home Secretary to the Prime Minister, which is a bit of a scorcher.
I need to declare an interest: my brother-in-law, Peter Carr, is owner of the Picturedrome in Holmfirth, the town famous for being in “Last of the Summer Wine”. The Picturedrome was built in 1912 and was one of the first purpose-built cinemas. It remains a cinema, but it is also one of the best music venues in the north and an important community resource that has played a huge role in the revitalisation of the town.
Like many noble Lords, I have some favourite places and venues, including Salts Mill in Saltaire, a world heritage industry village; I was there on Sunday with my granddaughter. There is also the Rich Mix in Bethnal Green, Belsize Community Library, the gallery in Cartwright Hall in Manningham Park, where I saw my first paintings as a child, Piece Hall in Halifax, and the Roundhouse in Camden. We need to celebrate local creative arts venues. At the same time, we should rejoice at our wonderful national creative places, of which we are so rightly proud. Labour will work to create and protect creative spaces across the country, in rural areas and towns, as well as cities, in both the north and the south.
A week or so ago, I was privileged to attend the opening of the London College of Fashion at the University of the Arts London at East Bank. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, has found time to visit there. If he has not, I suggest that, as he is a Hackney resident, he would appreciate it. East Bank is the UK’s newest cultural quarter, at the heart of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. The Mayor of London has set out his £1.1 billion vision, which represents the most significant single investment in London’s culture since the legacy of the 1851 Great Exhibition. I am pleased to say that it will shape the cultural life of the city for the 21st century and beyond. The opening was a life-enhancing event, with wonderfully talented and creative young people. Next door to it is the V&A building and Sadler’s Wells.
A new creative quarter is very exciting indeed. However, on leaving the event to go to Stratford station, I was met by a stream of humanity heading in the opposite direction to the Olympic stadium for a West Ham v Arsenal football match. I thought: what a great use of our Olympic stadium—which helpfully brings me to mention the football regulation Bill, which I expect we will see some time in the new year. I anticipate that my noble friend Lord Bassam will engage in forensic and informed scrutiny of the Bill, which I, of course, will support. We will look closely at the details of the financial regulatory measures and the scope of the regulatory field to see whether it goes far enough down the football leagues and ask why it does not cover the women’s game, which is growing so fast.
As several noble Lords have mentioned, football clubs are at the heart of our communities. I would not say that our social life at home revolves around the fixtures of Leeds United, but it does sometimes feel like that. Labour supports the full implementation of the fan-led review and an independent regulator. I thank the noble Earl, Lord Devon, and the noble Lord, Lord Addington, for their comments on this.
I turn to the wider concerns of the creative sector, which is now worth £111 billion in gross value added to the UK—more than £35 billion more than the automotive, life sciences, aerospace, and oil and gas industries combined. One gets the feeling that the UK’s creative industries are thriving despite the Government, not because of them. Under the Conservatives, the creative industries have been short-changed. We have seen vandalistic attacks on some of our most important orchestras and musical establishments. Creative freelancers were excluded from Covid support. The post-Brexit cost and complexity for artists—and, indeed, for some of our young scientists, as the noble Lord, Lord Patel, said—makes getting visas and working in Europe difficult, and it jeopardises those orchestras and companies. That is without doubt the Government’s responsibility. They face many other challenges: financial sustainability, intellectual property protection, which the noble Earl, Lord Devon, mentioned, the changing technology landscape and the freelance and gig economy.
My honourable friend Thangam Debbonaire MP, who is shadow Secretary of State at the DCMS, has announced that the next Labour Government will bring forward “space to create”—the first national cultural infrastructure plan. We intend to put the creative industries at the heart of our plan for economic growth.
Finally, I turn to the Media Bill. As noble Lords know, the draft media Bill was published by the Government in March 2023. It is urgently needed. We strongly welcome this all-important Bill, which is long overdue. The Government wasted a year—as noble Lords have said—pursuing their disastrous plan to sell off Channel 4. My noble friend Lord Hanworth rightly told us about the strategic importance Channel 4 has had to our creative industries in the UK. Can the Minister tell the House what is the timetable for the Bill and its implementation? We need to get on with this.
This Bill rightly seeks to address the prominence of public service broadcasting. As many of us know, on a lot of smart TVs it is now equally hard to find the EPG itself. Will the Bill properly address this issue to make sure that EPGs are included and that they will be prominent, whatever system people use? Remote controls are a key navigation tool for people and often the subject of disputes in households, mine included. They provide clear and well-understood routes to watch TV content. Will remotes be included in the prominence regime to guarantee a familiar route for users to access regulated user interfaces? Finally, will PSBs be given “significant”, not “appropriate”, prominence, as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said?
I thank all noble Lords for their contributions today. I look forward to working with the Minister as we pick up the legislation and other issues relevant to our precious creative industries.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay) (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to close the debate on the fourth day of our debates on the humble Address to His Majesty, particularly as it falls on His Majesty’s 75th birthday. I will not risk the confusion of the clerks and the ire of my noble friends the Lord Privy Seal and the Chief Whip, particularly in the midst of a reshuffle, by suggesting amendments to our humble Address but I am sure we would all want our humble Address to be accompanied by the warmest good wishes on His Majesty’s birthday.
I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, back to her place speaking on DCMS matters on the Opposition Benches. Like her, I had the pleasure of being at the opening of the London College of Fashion last week and swimming against the tide of West Ham fans on the way back. She is right that it is a jewel in the new East Bank development in which more than one Mayor of London has played a key role. It is a great new addition to our cultural life in the capital.
I join the noble Baroness and others in welcoming the fantastic maiden speeches we heard today. I start with the speech from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle, who, as was rightly pointed out, was a trailblazer in the Church of England. I was baptised in her diocese and the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port, will be glad to know that that was in Cullercoats Methodist Church. It is a part of the world I know well. She is absolutely right to point to the proud sporting, cultural and industrial heritage of the north-east of England, and I applaud her ecumenical approach to the rival football allegiances represented across Tyne and Wear.
I was impressed, and I think we were all moved, by the right reverend Prelate’s Māori quotation and the well-chosen words with which she ended her speech. As somebody who was raised on either side of her diocese, in the Scottish Borders and in Sunderland, I am sure she will have equal command of the Geordie dialect and we look forward to her wise words in whatever form she wishes to put them.
My noble friend Lord Willetts was right to point out the Novocastrian theme present throughout this debate, perhaps in the right reverend Prelate’s honour. We rightly heard about Sir Jony Ives and his education at Northumbria University. My noble friend mentioned the Centre for Life at Newcastle University, which is home now as well to the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre, which does so much good work in informing our debates on the creative industries, and I declare my interest as a member of court of Newcastle University.
I welcome too the maiden speech from my noble friend Lady Owen of Alderley Edge, who has already got the measure of, as she put it, the “robust” but “collegiate” debates we have in your Lordships’ House. She is right to point to the value of having a digital native among us as we debate some of the issues we have touched on today, as well as issues such as housing and the environment in which future generations will of course have such a stake. She spoke with grace— I agree with the noble Baroness—humility, empathy and passion, and we look forward to her future contributions in your Lordships’ House.
My noble friend Lady Owen and my noble friend Lord Ranger of Northwood both spoke very movingly of the debt that they owe their parents and grandparents. Their ancestors took very different paths but their presence and their legacy were heard very clearly and, I think, proudly today. My noble friend Lord Ranger showed in his very thoughtful speech how his first-hand experience in driving technological innovation in our capital city and more widely will help him meet the challenge he rightly set us all to make sure that our debates on digital services and new technologies remain relevant and well informed. We look forward to hearing more from all three of our maiden speakers today.
I want to highlight a speech that was made by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State yesterday in Manchester at the Aviva Studios, where she met businesses from across our creative industries to underline our commitment to help them forge ahead with plans to grow our creative industries by £50 billion by 2030. More than 150 cultural and creative businesses were there, discussing how government and the industries can work together to maximise the potential of these thriving sectors—one of the five key areas of the economy as identified by my right honourable friend the Chancellor.
In her speech, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State highlighted the aims of our sector vision, which are
“to grow our Creative Industries by an extra £50 billion … to create a million extra jobs—all over the country—by 2030 … and to deliver a Creative Careers Promise that harnesses the potential of our young people and constructs a pipeline of talent into our creative industries”.
These were not just—as the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, said—“warm words”. To accompany them, the Secretary of State announced that the Government are
“doubling the number of areas in the Create Growth Programme, with almost £11 million additional funding … to provide targeted support to around 1,800 creative businesses”.
She also launched the £5 million supporting grass-roots music fund to ensure support for the lifeblood of our world-leading music sector and venues, which are the cornerstones of their communities, and, of course, Creative Careers Week has begun this week. It is an initiative supported by DCMS, helping to inspire the next generation to go into our creative industries so that we can build that talented pipeline. I am looking forward to meeting some of the young people who will benefit from that work later this week.
This underlines the importance of cultural and creative education, a point mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Knight, and others. Its importance was underlined powerfully by the speech from the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Chartres, no doubt aided by his great penmanship and command of the inkwell. As noble Lords know, the Government are working between DCMS and the Department for Education on a new cultural education plan, informed by an expert panel chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, putting forward ideas about how we can improve cultural education not just in schools but through our cultural organisations and the youth sector.
Earlier this year, the Chancellor announced wraparound care for primary schools. The Secretary of State and I are working to see how we can get more creativity into our primary schools in those hours that children will be staying after school. Through the Advanced British Standard announced by the Prime Minister earlier this autumn, there is another opportunity to support creativity and cultural education in our schools. That is on top of the £25 million of additional capital funding for music in schools, which accompanied the national plan for music education, in which my noble friend Lady Fleet played such a part.
I share the pain of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, at not being able to attend the wonderful concert by the talented students of the Yehudi Menuhin School in the Cholmondeley Room. It was sponsored by noble friend Lord Blackwell, co-hosted with the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty—who rightly, I saw, nipped out and, I hope, enjoyed it on our behalf. That school admits pupils based on their talent and musical potential, regardless of their social and financial background—a policy that my noble friend Lord Blackwell says is possible only through the lifeline of pupil support provided by the Department for Education’s music and dance scheme, together with bursaries funded through charitable donations.
The noble Viscounts, Lord Colville of Culross and Lord Stansgate, mentioned the threats to our political process and to public discourse of misinformation and disinformation, particularly as amplified by AI. That topic was very much on our minds as we debated the Online Safety Act—which I am glad to call by that name, now that it has received Royal Assent—and it is one in which both the arts and the sciences can play a role. Tomorrow, I am attending an event at the Royal Academy organised by Art UK, called the Superpower of Looking, setting out the key role that arts education can play in equipping young people with the critical thinking and scepticism that they will need to navigate a world in which digital images, videos and more can be cynically manipulated.
We need to equip people with skills so that we can grow the AI sector in a responsible way. Our flagship initiatives are our £30 million AI and data science conversion course and our scholarships programme, which aim to address the lack of diversity and the supply of talent in the labour market in AI in the UK. We established the programme in 2020 to fund universities to develop master’s-level AI or data science courses suitable for non-STEM students, alongside 1,000 scholarships. Since then, more than 6,300 students have enrolled on those courses.
Based on the success of that programme, from this year we have begun working with employers to fund up to 2,000 more scholarships, with up to £16 million of public funding available depending on the level of industry investment. In addition, we are creating new AI PhDs through centres for doctoral training, to support the UK’s development of AI talent, with £117 million of investment.
We want the best people from around the world to come and be part of that work. We recognise, as did the noble Lord, Lord Patel, that, following our exit from the EU, both creative and scientific professionals face new requirements; we are working with them to help them understand and adapt to these. The Government keep our visa arrangements under review and will continue to strike a balance between reducing overall net migration in the long-term and welcoming the talented people who can contribute to our scientific and creative endeavours.
On routes for creative professionals, we have spoken to every EU member state to encourage them to adopt arrangements as generous as those we have in the UK. The majority of member states offer visa and work permit-free routes for musicians and creative performers. As outlined in the Creative Industries Sector Vision, we will expand the export support service to help creative exporters as well. I know this is a matter on which noble Lords will rightly press my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary when he joins your Lordships’ House.
The noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, mentioned our borders in relation to tourism. She talked about previous arrangements by which people could travel on ID cards. As she will know, some of the EEA identity cards were among the least secure documents that we saw at the border and dominated detection figures for document abuse. We do not accept identity cards from countries around the rest of the world and we are able now to deal with that fairly across the globe. We expect all visitors to the UK to hold a valid passport and visa where necessary. However, I hope she has noted that, as part of the agreement we reached with France during the leaders’ summit in March between the Prime Minister and the French President, we have committed to easing travel between our two countries for schoolchildren on organised trips. Work is now well under way to introduce those arrangements.
The noble Baroness is right, of course, to point to the importance of the visitor economy as a powerhouse of the UK economy, delivering jobs and driving growth right across every part of the UK. The Government are committed to supporting the sector and ensuring that we become more competitive in a rapidly growing global industry. We are doing that through implementing the recommendations of the destination management organisation review and the destination development fund, which, again, I am happy to say is happening in the north-east. We hope that that part of England can be a pioneer for other areas in unlocking the potential of tourism and the visitor economy.
I agree with the noble Earl, Lord Devon, that heritage is a vital part of that—a keen magnet for tourism domestically and from around the world. As he mentioned, I had the pleasure of speaking this morning at the 50th birthday celebrations of Historic Houses and was able to congratulate and thank that organisation for the work it has done to champion our built heritage, which is so important, not just for tourism but of course as an incubator for so many of our creative industries, film locations and so much more.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, talked about the importance of digital infrastructure. Some 78% of premises today can access gigabit-capable networks, up from just one in 10 in November 2019. That is a huge jump, I hope she would agree. By 2025, we want at least 85% of premises to have access to gigabit-capable broadband and by 2030 we want this coverage to be nationwide. We continue to work on that through the £5 billion Project Gigabit and by taking legislative steps, such as through the Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Act and changing building regulations to mandate gigabit connectivity to all new-build homes, we have implemented nearly all of the recommendations set out by the Public Accounts Committee. We will be completing the final one by sending a letter to the committee soon setting out our plans beyond 2025.
My noble friend Lady Stowell rightly mentioned digital exclusion. We are committed to ensuring that nobody is left behind in the digital age and our recent UK digital strategy, published in 2022—so not yet in the National Archives—sets out key actions and initiatives that support the three main pillars of digital inclusion: access, skills and trust. On access, I mentioned the work we are doing through Project Gigabit; on skills, in England we are providing free training for adults with low digital skills on new essential skills qualifications through the digital entitlement; and on trust, through the Online Safety Act, the UK is leading the way globally with legislation that will tackle online harms and make the internet a safer place for us all.
Many noble Lords, understandably, talked about AI and many facets of it. On its interaction with intellectual property, the Government recognise the enormous potential of AI to deliver better public services and high-quality jobs, and to enable future high-growth industries. We support AI innovation in the creative industries, including through our £100 million BridgeAI programme, our £50 million investment into the next wave of creative industries clusters programme, and our £75 million in funding for the UKRI CoSTAR network.
It is important that while we harness the benefits of AI, we also manage the risks. That includes particular risks to our vital creative industries, where it is important that creativity and originality are supported and encouraged. The Government want to make it easier for AI firms to access and analyse copyright-protected materials for machine learning research and innovation, while ensuring that rights holders have appropriate protection. That is why we asked the Intellectual Property Office to work with AI users and rights holders to develop a code of practice with the aim of making licences for data mining more easily available and to help overcome the barriers that AI firms and users currently face. That is a complex task but we look forward to the outcome of its deliberations on it.
On AI regulation more broadly, we received responses to our consultation on the AI regulation White Paper from more than 350 individuals and organisations. Alongside that, we actively sought the views of others through a series of round-table meetings and technical workshops, and we will be publishing our response to that consultation later this year to ensure that we can take into account the outcomes of the AI Safety Summit, which I am glad a number of noble Lords mentioned in their contributions. I am happy to reassure the noble Lord, Lord Patel, that UKRI is indeed independent. It is a non-departmental government body. Its funding decisions are made independently from government as per the Haldane principle.
The noble Lords, Lord Butler of Brockwell and Lord Foster of Bath, talked about gambling, as I expected them to. We want everyone who chooses to gamble to be able to do so safely and to make sure that we have the right balance between respecting adults’ freedom of choice and preventing harm. Gambling reform remains a priority for His Majesty’s Government, and we are on track to have the key measures from our White Paper in place by next summer. Measures such as the stake limit on risky online slots products, online financial risk checks and the new ombudsman can all be taken forward without primary legislation. They did not need a mention in the gracious Speech. I know that the noble Lords and others will make sure that your Lordships’ House has the opportunity to scrutinise our progress on them.
On loot boxes, the Government are committed to ensuring that video games are enjoyed safely by everybody. That is why we undertook an extensive call for evidence to look at the issues relating to loot boxes. Our response to the call for evidence set out the view that loot boxes should not be purchased by children unless approved by a parent or guardian, that all players should have access to spending controls and transparent information, and that better evidence and research should be developed to inform future policy-making. To pursue those objectives, we convened a technical working group and, in July this year, the trade body Ukie published new industry-led guidance on improvements to player protections. The Government welcome that, which, if implemented, has the potential to meet the objectives set out in the Government’s response. We have agreed a 12-month implementation period, during which we will monitor the industry’s compliance with these new measures, supported by independent academic scrutiny facilitated by our new video games research framework.
A number of noble Lords mentioned the importance of our broadcast media. The noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, is right to highlight the importance of the BBC’s impartiality, but also of the way it describes global events. The attacks by Hamas in Israel since 7 October are terrorist acts committed by a terrorist organisation, proscribed as such in the United Kingdom since 2021 and by a number of other Governments and international organisations. The Secretary of State has been clear how proud she is of our world-leading BBC, but in this case she does not believe it has set the right standard. True impartiality means being grounded in facts. The legal position in the UK on this matter is clear: Hamas members are terrorists. Calling these acts what they are and accurately labelling the perpetrators helps audiences to understand what has happened, what is still happening and its context. That is the point that the Secretary of State has been clear to the BBC about.
On Channel 4, the noble Viscount, Lord Chandos, asked what steps we are taking to strengthen Channel 4’s governance arrangements as part of the reform package that was agreed with Channel 4 in January. The Media Bill will place a new statutory duty on the Channel 4 board to consider the corporation’s long-term financial sustainability alongside the delivery of the channel’s public service remit. That will be underpinned by an updated memorandum of understanding between the DCMS and Channel 4, which was published last week.
On grass-roots sport, the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and others highlighted the football regulator, which I look forward to debating with noble Lords in the Session ahead. Our investments in grass-roots sport are focused on getting people active, particularly people from underrepresented groups. Half of the £300 million spent on football facilities will go to the 40% most deprived local authority areas in the country, and 40% of the projects will benefit another sport.
My time has almost run out. With so many people speaking on such a wide range of topics, I feel, rather like the noble Lord, Lord Storey, that it is not possible to touch on everything. However, I know that we all look forward to debating the Bills in this area over the Session ahead. The points that noble Lords have raised in today’s well-informed, thoughtful and wide-ranging debate will improve our scrutiny of those Bills as we take them forward in the next Session.