House of Commons
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Deputy Speaker’s Statement
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. I regret to inform the House that there is a technical fault in the audio system. There is not a technical fault here in the Chamber—there is one in my own voice, but that is something to be remedied in another way—but there is a technical fault which means that our proceedings cannot be broadcast. Apparently it is inappropriate for us to proceed without our proceedings being broadcast, so with great reluctance I am required to suspend the House in the hope that this fault will very soon be rectified. I am going to suspend the House for only 10 minutes, in the hope that the work can be done to enable us to be broadcast to those who are listening and paying attention. The House is therefore suspended for 10 minutes.
Sitting suspended.
Madam Deputy Speaker
In the hope that we are now broadcasting, we will commence. If the audio feed is not working properly —please do not let anyone judge by my voice whether it is or not—people observing from around the Palace of Westminster are more than welcome to come to sit in the Gallery and Members wishing to observe proceedings from their offices may come to observe from the Chamber.
Oral Answers to Questions
(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)
Douglas Chapman (Dunfermline and West Fife) (SNP)
The Minister for Energy Security and Net Zero (Graham Stuart)
The Secretary of State is unwell and sends her apologies both to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to the House.
Ministers in the Department regularly meet Ofgem to discuss a range of issues. The Secretary of State met suppliers, alongside Ofgem, in November to discuss consumer energy debt and the protection of vulnerable customers. I know that many families are struggling with their energy bills this winter, which is why we are providing cost of living support worth £104 billion between 2022 and 2025.
Martin Docherty-Hughes
I am grateful for that answer. Just a few days ago, the Office for National Statistics showed that the number of households who had been unable to pay their energy bills has increased by nearly 40%. Does the Minister, on behalf of the Secretary of State, who I hope gets better soon, accept that the UK Government’s failure to listen to stakeholders such as Citizens Advice, which is calling for the £400 energy bill discount to be reinstated, has led to soaring energy debt among those who can least afford it, such as my constituents?
Graham Stuart
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question; he is right to highlight the issue of debt and families who are struggling. This is why we are providing £104 billion—or, on average, £3,700 per household—between 2022 and 2025, which is one of the most generous packages in Europe. In the autumn statement, we increased the national living wage, which is worth £1,800 to a full-time worker, and increased benefits by 6.7%—that is worth £470. Just last week, we also delivered a tax cut for 27 million people, which is worth £450 for the average worker. So we are taking steps, but we recognise the reality for many people that he set out.
Douglas Chapman
In my country, energy debt is rising, as Scottish consumers pay a premium on their energy bill—it is a high price to pay to keep the lights on in England. In the light of that imbalance, has the Minister discussed abolishing the not-fit-for-purpose Ofgem? If not, should his Government not give full responsibility for energy pricing in Scotland to the Scottish Parliament?
Graham Stuart
We have moved decisively to support families in Scotland and across the rest of the UK. I am pleased that the price cap has fallen by half since its peak last year, and we are making sure that our support is targeted at the most vulnerable. I have already laid out many of the measures we are taking precisely to ensure that people in Scotland and elsewhere are supported in what has been a tough time. Overall, we are, of course, looking to power up Britain. We have set out a plan to do that, precisely in order to have more of our power coming from Britain and to remove our dependence on foreign fossil fuels. I hope that the hon. Gentleman and his party will support us in our efforts to deliver that.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
I call the Scottish National party spokesman.
Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)
The situation for bill payers this winter is even worse than it was last winter, which is why the SNP has called for the reinstatement of the £400 energy support scheme. However, the Government have stubbornly refused to sufficiently stand by householders, who are freezing all over these islands, despite reports of increased hospitalisations and the doubling of burns from hot water bottles in Scotland. How will the Tories extend just a fraction of the interest they have shown in exploiting Scotland’s natural energy resources to the people of Scotland, who are freezing yet again this winter?
Graham Stuart
As I set out in response to the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues, we have acted decisively, offering among the most generous support of any nation in Europe. We can be proud of the efforts we have made and I am pleased to see that the energy price cap is down so significantly.
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
Giles Watling (Clacton) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Andrew Bowie)
Last week, I announced the biggest expansion of nuclear power for 70 years. We will deploy a fleet of small modular reactors and build up to 24 GW of nuclear by 2050. This will ensure we have reliable, cheap and low-carbon power to protect consumers from price volatility and hostile foreign regimes, bolstering our energy security.
Kevin Foster
A new civil nuclear road map is a welcome step in growing our nuclear sector, potentially creating jobs across the United Kingdom, from the north of Scotland to the south-west peninsula, and including sites like Wylfa. What assessment has he made of the economic impact of the potential growth of the nuclear sector for the south-west region, particularly given the nuclear expertise at sites such as Devonport and Hinkley Point?
Andrew Bowie
My hon. Friend is absolutely right that the nuclear sector supports jobs across the United Kingdom, and it would be very welcome if Governments across this United Kingdom were to come together and champion that industry as it grows over the next few decades. The nuclear sector is vital to the economy of south-west England, as my hon. Friend knows, providing up to 11,000 jobs in construction alone at Hinkley Point C, and will go on generating highly skilled jobs for generations as we continue to build up this important part of our energy security.
Bob Blackman
I thank my hon. Friend for his answer and the announcement of the nuclear road map. Small modular nuclear reactors can bring energy to our towns and cities across the country very quickly. They are under development right now, so when can we see the first one installed and providing power to the grid?
Andrew Bowie
My hon. Friend will be pleased to know we are bringing forward small modular reactors and that the next phase of the live SMR competition will launch within weeks. Our aim is for the competition to be the fastest of its kind in the world, to help facilitate final investment decisions for the project being taken in the next Parliament and operational projects being here in the UK by the 2030s. The launch will mark a significant step forward for eligible companies and for the UK’s broader nuclear ambitions.
Giles Watling
We have given away over the decades the massive advantage this country had with the Calder Hall development in 1956, so will my hon. Friend reassure me that we will regain that ground by pushing for more rapid development of a sensible nature, as the Finns have with their hole in the ground for storing nuclear waste? Will he inform the House with which nuclear vendors the Department is engaging?
Andrew Bowie
My hon. Friend is right to refer to the proud history we have in this country when it comes to civil nuclear—the developments at Calder Hall led the world—and the deep geological disposal that is happening in Finland right now. The plans in our nuclear road map will quadruple nuclear capacity by 2050. We are making rapid progress on Sizewell C and the SMR competition. We continue to work closely with countries such as Finland, with which I engage with regularly. It has built and operates large-scale geological disposal facilities, and signed up to the COP pledge to triple nuclear capacity.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
I welcome the Government’s commitment to SMRs, which are the way forward for the future of nuclear. Sheffield Forgemasters is ideally placed to produce the essential parts for those reactors and has a memorandum of understanding with both Rolls-Royce and Hitachi. Will the Minister meet the Mayor of South Yorkshire, Sheffield Forgemasters and others in the consortium? The consortium now has access to significant development capital, so we can build the SMRs in South Yorkshire and create the thousands of well-paid jobs we want, as well as green energy.
Andrew Bowie
I would be delighted to meet the Mayor of South Yorkshire. Through the nuclear road map, we are committed not only to ensuring our energy security and achieving a further drive towards our net zero objectives, but to building up the supply chain and creating those high-wage, high-skilled jobs at all levels across the United Kingdom. Of course I would be delighted to meet the Mayor of South Yorkshire and, indeed, anybody else who represents an area that wants to invest in this future and this great exciting moment for nuclear capacity.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
I, too, am in favour of new nuclear; it is an important part of a balanced green energy mix. Does the Minister share my concern that much of the investment in new nuclear in the UK is coming from overseas companies, and even the Governments of overseas countries, especially given that the emphasis is not just on reducing carbon emissions, but on energy security? Would he perhaps consider other forms of renewable energy, such as tidal power, for which the entire supply chain is British and which would be great for our economy as well as for tackling climate change?
Andrew Bowie
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. I hold a contrary position. I am proud of the fact that this country is open to inward investment and, indeed, attracts attention from some of the biggest companies in the world to invest in our future energy security and net zero objectives. Of course, in unveiling all these exciting announcements, as we did last week, at the heart of what we are seeking to achieve is to create those high-wage, high-skill jobs as we move forward across the United Kingdom, building up that supply chain, and tidal will be an important part of the mix as well.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Minister for that most progressive answer. The progress made in nuclear safety and the need for clean energy clearly indicate that the Government must invest in the security of this sector. That would lower energy costs and help us to meet our green targets, which we all want to meet and should meet. Will the Minister outline what progress has been made to secure this investment?
Andrew Bowie
As the hon. Gentleman knows, just last week we unveiled our civil nuclear road map. I committed to meet him and, indeed, anybody else from Northern Ireland to seek to build up the manufacturing and supply chain workforce in Northern Ireland, so that all parts of our United Kingdom can benefit from the once-in-a-generation investment that we are making right now.
Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con)
The Minister for Energy Security and Net Zero (Graham Stuart)
The environmental impact of onshore windfarm cables is assessed through the consenting process. Minimising potential environmental impacts of new infrastructure is a Government priority. We are committed to ensuring that new electricity network projects mitigate environmental impacts at every opportunity.
Duncan Baker
Although I am a huge supporter of offshore wind, there is no doubt that the trenching through my beautiful countryside is not without its own set of problems. Flooding, agricultural run-off and pollution have all been hugely exacerbated since the summer with what has happened in North Norfolk. What measures do we really have to force wind companies to clean up and repair the countryside after the damage they cause when they trench through it?
Graham Stuart
I thank my hon. Friend for his question and for persistently raising these issues to make sure that we get the transmission infrastructure that we need, but in a way that has the minimum negative impact on his constituents and others. I will follow up his question today by looking specifically at the regime, making sure that the companies concerned not only go through all the correct permissioning ahead of time, but are properly followed up to ensure that they deliver it in a way that does not leave the problems that he has itemised.
Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)
On 28 November, I asked the Minister how many planning applications for onshore wind had been lodged in England since the alleged loosening of planning restrictions on onshore wind in September. The answer then was zero. Even now that the policy has had more time to bed down, the answer, I am afraid, is still zero, and I predict that it will be zero the next time we meet. In September last year, the Secretary of State said that the changes made in September
“will help speed up the delivery of onshore wind projects”.
Does the Minister think that the Government have succeeded?
Graham Stuart
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. As he will be aware, in the last contracts for difference round, a great deal of onshore wind was successfully brought forward and it still constitutes the largest single form of renewable energy in the United Kingdom—the Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, my hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie) will correct me if I have got that wrong. I share with the hon. Gentleman a frustration in making sure that we see that pulled forward, so that we see more projects in England as well as in the rest of the UK.
Dr Whitehead
I am glad the Minister is frustrated about the complete failure of this alleged policy turnaround, but I am frustrated because if we had not had the absurd ban in the first place, the onshore wind development that would have taken place would have saved each family £180 on their energy bills. All Labour is suggesting is that onshore wind is treated like any other development. How long will it be before the Minister accepts the reality and concludes that he needs to go back and properly repeal the ban?
Graham Stuart
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question and his personal commitment to this area, but he knows as well as anyone the parlous performance of the previous Government, which his right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) was a leading figure in. Less than 7% of our electricity came from renewables as recently as 2010. It is this Government that have led the world after a flatlining in carbon emissions from our electricity sector under Labour. We have seen renewables grow and, by October, we will see coal entirely removed from our mix.
Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)
New renewable energy generation demands new transmission infrastructure. This Government have been asleep at the wheel for 14 years, showing zero pace, ambition or grip in delivering that energy infrastructure, and that is why bills are so high. Nevertheless, we are where we are. Will the Minister confirm to the House for the record what National Grid has said: that UK Government policy is that when constructing new transmission infrastructure, overhead lines are the starting position?
Graham Stuart
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. Of course, we have been moving at pace. We have had the Winser review and the connections plan. In the autumn statement and, indeed, the Prime Minister’s speech in September, there was so much to drive forward and change the transmission infrastructure, including halving the 14-year timeline to seven years. We are working flat out.
It should be noted that the reason overhead lines are preferred is the cost of undergrounding. Not only is it vastly disruptive, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Duncan Baker) said; either undergrounding or offshore is five to ten times more expensive than having overhead infrastructure, and sometimes even more than that. That is why it is the starting presumption. We want to power Britain from Britain and in a low-cost manner, so that when we get to the 2030s and we have decarbonised our electricity system, we have a low-cost electricity system, while ensuring that we install the infrastructure in a way that is friendly and supportive to communities.
Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Amanda Solloway)
The Government remain focused on providing help where people need it most. We are already providing a package of support totalling over £104 billion, or £3,700 per household on average, from 2022 to 2025.
Liz Twist
Last year, the Government promised action to help the most vulnerable with their energy bills. In April 2023, the Secretary of State’s predecessor, the right hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps), said that
“a social tariff could be very helpful”.—[Official Report, 18 April 2023; Vol. 731, c. 111.]
Nearly a year on, we have heard absolutely nothing about a social tariff. Will the Minister explain to the House why the Government have abandoned plans for a social tariff?
Amanda Solloway
As the hon. Member will know, we are continuing our support for vulnerable households, and it is important that we help households as best we can. As an example, we have the £900 cost of living payments and the warm home discount payment. Obviously, we will constantly monitor where we are and will ensure that we continue to support all those vulnerable households.
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (Ind)
There is indeed a need for a social tariff, whether it is a cost of living crisis or a lack-of-wages crisis, given that the Resolution Foundation reported at the beginning of December that average wages across the UK were £10,700 lower than they should be compared with other comparable countries, following the past 15 years. There probably is a lack-of-wages crisis hitting the UK.
Regardless, the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee said in our “Preparing for the winter” report, in paragraph 24:
“We urge the Government and energy suppliers to consider implementing a form of social tariff and other measures to protect vulnerable households from being cut off from their energy supplies.”
That was a unanimous report across Labour Members, Tory Members and, of course, the pro-Scottish independence voice on the Committee, but will we see some movement on this from the Government? It is important and needed by everybody, and it would be particularly welcome to my constituents in Na h-Eileanan an Iar.
Amanda Solloway
As I have indicated, we are doing a lot of things to help people, including the most vulnerable in society. It is worth pointing out that it was announced recently in the autumn statement that the national living wage will be worth £1,800 for a full-time worker and that benefits will increase by 6.7%, which is worth £470 a year.
Kate Osborne (Jarrow) (Lab)
Beth Winter (Cynon Valley) (Lab)
Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Amanda Solloway)
Fuel poverty is devolved. Statistics for England are published annually by the Department. The next English statistics will be published on 15 February and will include estimates of the number of households in fuel poverty in 2023 and 2024.
Kate Osborne
Just under a third of people in my Jarrow constituency are now living in fuel poverty, like Maureen, who told me she is struggling to find an extra £975 per month due to the disability price tag. That will be made worse by the recent news of the energy price cap rise. Can the Minister explain why the Government still insist on giving subsidies worth billions to the oil and gas industry through loopholes in the windfall tax? Would that money not be better spent cutting people’s bills?
Amanda Solloway
I must point out the work the Government have been doing to help vulnerable people. Not only that, but we have halved energy bills. I have constant meetings with all stakeholders, including Citizens Advice and all the disability groups, and we are ensuring that we are supporting all vulnerable people in the cost of living crisis and as we go through this winter.
Beth Winter
I also have increasing numbers of constituents with significant levels of energy debt coming to my office seeking fuel vouchers. Why are the Government pursuing the Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill, which the Minister herself has said will not bring down bills, when economic forecasters warn that delays in decarbonising will leave consumers with higher prices? Is it not time the Government dropped the focus on fossil fuels and delivered instead the public investment in renewable energy that will bring down bills and go some way to averting the climate catastrophe?
Amanda Solloway
We are committed not only to helping vulnerable people, but to making sure we are providing the best energy security we can. That is why we are committed to all the policies we have introduced.
Ruth Jones
I listened very carefully to the answer the Minister gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist), but I am still none the wiser, so I will ask again: can the Minister set out what recent discussions she has had with the Welsh Government about the social tariff, which the previous Secretary of State described as “very helpful”?
Amanda Solloway
Just to reiterate, I have been having conversations with all stakeholders, and when I say stakeholders, that does not just mean Citizens Advice or Disability Rights UK, but across Government and with different devolved Departments.
Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)
I am sure the Minister will agree that energy security and supporting the most vulnerable in fuel poverty go hand in hand. The way to address security is by both securing supply and cutting waste. Can she set out what the Government and her Department are doing to reduce the waste of energy from people’s homes?
Amanda Solloway
I want to acknowledge how hard my hon. Friend works for his constituents. Of course those are the things we are most mindful of: making sure we get energy efficiency not only in production, but in the way we use that energy.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
The Minister for Energy Security and Net Zero (Graham Stuart)
I meet regularly with business leaders and chair several groups bringing together Government and industry so that we can drive progress towards net zero. That includes the Net Zero Council, which is meeting next week and includes members from right across the economy. Like me, they are delighted that the UK is leading the world in tackling climate change. We are the first major economy to halve its emissions, ahead of every other major economy, and we have one of the most ambitious decarbonisation targets in the world.
Bill Esterson
Contrary to what the Minister has just said, and to what he said about onshore wind, this country has fallen on his party’s watch to seventh in the world for attracting investment in renewables. Well-paid jobs, lower bills and economic growth will all follow, but only if we attract investment, so why are the Government enabling what EY has described as the “diminishing of green policies” and undermining the economic benefits of net zero?
Graham Stuart
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question, which has a sort of comic element given Labour’s monumental failure to deliver renewables when it was in power, coupled with the fact that it wants to bring forward GB Energy. That, as his left-wing colleague, the hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter) just said, would be public investment. It would drive out private investment and destroy the transformation of the UK energy system that has happened under the Conservatives—it had flatlined under Labour. We have led the world and have now decarbonised more than any other major economy on the planet. Under the policies of this Conservative Government, which major world economy is predicted to decarbonise fastest by 2030? This one.
Dame Meg Hillier
If I may puncture the Minister’s rant, I would like to ask him what certainty his Government will give businesses. We need a £23 billion combined investment from the public and private sectors, but because targets have been missed, that figure will need to double or treble every year between now and 2050, according to a Public Accounts Committee report. The Government’s chopping and changing in delivering what they need to do is a big problem in businesses having the confidence to invest. That has happened on his watch, so what is he doing to improve the situation?
Graham Stuart
I thank the hon. Lady for her question and for her work on the Committee in holding the Government to account. Of course, we have realised £198 billion of investment into clean energy since 2010, and we have a plan, which we set out in “Powering Up Britain”. The Labour party has only an intention to borrow £28 billion a year, putting up families’ taxes, putting up bills and destroying the most investable market in Europe that we have had to date. We will have another £100 billion of private investment by 2030, and the Conservatives will carry on our work leading the world in transforming our energy system so that we have lower-cost, home-produced energy while also delivering on net zero—things that signally did not happen under Labour.
Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)
UK start-up Newcleo and French start-up NAAREA—Nuclear Abundant Affordable Resourceful Energy for All—have just announced a partnership to promote small modular nuclear reactors. What support are the UK Government providing, and what proportion of our energy mix does the Minister think this kind of initiative can support?
Graham Stuart
My right hon. Friend is right, and it is great to see excitement across the Chamber about developing nuclear. It is just a shame that, when it came to the secondary legislation to enable the business models, Labour Members did not support it—they say one thing in one place and a different thing when it comes to making the laws of the land. I am pleased to say to him that, under the Conservatives, the plan is to bring the jobs, technology and opportunity of small modular reactors to this country, as part the ambition for up to 25% of our electricity to come from nuclear by 2050.
Katherine Fletcher (South Ribble) (Con)
I have been talking with businesses in South Ribble about achieving net zero. Businesses on Leyland business park are exploring geothermal, and we also have the huge advantage of the Howick Cross substation bringing in energy from offshore wind, onshore wind in Scotland, and the north-west and Welsh nuclear fleet. Does my right hon. Friend agree that, in future, businesses will look to site themselves where there is reliable and accessible cheap energy, and that South Ribble is well placed to take advantage of that?
Graham Stuart
My hon. Friend is quite right to highlight the benefits and attractions of South Ribble, and indeed the wider UK economy. It is not just that the areas that have those services will attract business within the United Kingdom: by rewiring and leading the world in delivering a low-cost, low-carbon energy system, we can attract more investment from abroad and have a renaissance, not least in the north of England but also in Wales and Scotland—all around the country. That is a result of the net zero policies that, uniquely, this country is managing to lead the world on following so many years of Labour failure.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
The Minister will know that the Climate Change Committee has a key role in advising the Government on their path to net zero, but he will also know that 18 months on from the resignation of Lord Deben as chair of that committee, the Government still have not announced a replacement, despite 60 applications for the role having been submitted and several people already having been interviewed. Are the Government scared of having their record scrutinised, or are they simply determined to destroy any last shred of the UK’s climate leadership? Will the Minister tell us now when the selection will be announced?
Graham Stuart
Given the hon. Lady’s lifelong passion for this subject, I find it extraordinary that she never, ever recognises the unique achievement of this country in halving emissions. I would have thought she would celebrate that. As the hon. Lady will know, the Climate Change Committee’s chair is not just a matter for the UK Government. The appointment of the chair of that committee has to be agreed by the devolved Administrations as well, and we are moving as quickly as we can.
Graham Stuart
The best thing, as barristers know, is to not ask a question unless you already know the answer, because it might not suit you. We are moving as quickly as we can to make sure that we have a chairman in place. I share the hon. Lady’s belief that it is an important role, and we want to have it filled as quickly as possible.
Simon Fell (Barrow and Furness) (Con)
One of the most effective ways in which we can hit our net zero targets is by delivering an effective carbon capture and storage industry, and I was delighted to see the Government make an announcement just before Christmas about the next round of that. The Morecambe bay net zero project based in my constituency could deliver a gigaton of carbon storage, helping some of our most energy-intensive industries through this transition period. I invite my right hon. Friend to come and visit.
Graham Stuart
I am not the Minister who leads on carbon capture, usage and storage, so I may have just swerved a visit, but of course I am always delighted to talk to my hon. Friend. If I can lean on my colleague in the House of Lords who is responsible for that policy area, I will let him know of my hon. Friend’s kind offer. I share his enthusiasm: by capturing the renewables around the UK and converting them into low-cost electricity, as we are also taking forward hydrogen and using the natural blessing of having so much carbon capture capability, we can deliver this country the jobs, the opportunity and the low-cost energy system for the future. I look forward to my hon. Friend’s continuing support.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
Having shared a constituency border with the former Member for Kingswood for 14 years, I know that he was genuine in wanting what was best for his constituents. He knew that a green transition would protect their jobs at Rolls-Royce and Airbus, help the science park to thrive, and bring opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises and the self-employed. He knew that home insulation and clean energy would bring warmer homes to Warmley and Woodstock, and lower bills to Bitton. He resigned because he had lost all hope that this Government would deliver on those things. He was right, was he not?
Graham Stuart
Just to spell it out—because we do have to speak very slowly for the Opposition Front-Bench team—we have cut our emissions more than any other major economy, and our plans and the expectation of the UN are that we will continue to lead the world. That is leading the world: not talking about it, not promising to borrow £28 billion and put everyone’s taxes up, and then fluctuating on a daily basis. It is about delivery. We have delivered and will continue to do so.
If we want to see the reality of Labour on energy, we only need to go to Nottingham. There, Labour invested in Robin Hood Energy, which went spectacularly bust—a forerunner of a Labour Government, perhaps, if there ever were to be one. It is typical of Labour to reverse all the principles of Robin Hood: all Labour does is steal from the poor in order to pay for the bailiff.
Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Andrew Bowie)
Because of our plan, half of homes now meet the Government’s 2035 energy performance certificate band C goal, a significant jump from 14% in 2010. In 2010, low-cost measures were targeted, with 960,000 installations. In 2022, funding shifted to high-cost measures to benefit low-income households and less-efficient homes, resulting in approximately 200,000 installations last year.
Matt Rodda
I fear that the Minister may be referring rather too much to new build homes. The reality is that in 2010 there were 1.8 million insulation measures introduced into cavity walls and lofts, yet in 2022, in comparison, there were only 80,000. That has left my constituents in Reading and Woodley, who mainly live in Victorian and 20th-century homes, struggling with very high bills, so what is the Minister going to do about that?
Andrew Bowie
The hon. Gentleman did not acknowledge that we have moved from 14% to 50% because of the actions of a Conservative Government. To answer his question directly, we are allocating around £20 billion to clean heat and energy efficiency over this Parliament and the next, which will benefit his constituents. That includes our Great British insulation scheme, worth £1 billion, which will deliver insulation measures to around 300,000 of the country’s least energy-efficient homes, saving them £300 to £400 each year by March 2026.
Daniel Zeichner
I echo the observations of my hon. Friend the Member for Reading East (Matt Rodda). I remember in 2008-09, long before I came into this place, working endlessly with Cambridge City Council and energy providers on encouraging people in the city to take up home insulation schemes. Since then, we have seen precisely nothing—nothing has been going on. Labour has a huge ambition for the future; what is the Government’s ambition?
Andrew Bowie
I know mathematics is not a strong point for the Labour party, but I will go over the figures again: 14% to 50% over the course of the last three Parliaments, delivered by the actions of this Conservative Government. We have a plan to continue to deliver for the least well-off in those homes that need more energy efficiency measures. As I just said to the hon. Member’s colleague, we are allocating £20 billion to clean heat mechanisms over this and the next Parliament, and we are going to continue to deliver for the British people.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
Thousands of new homes are being built across the Kettering constituency. What is my hon. Friend doing, together with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, to decarbonise the future housing stock and improve energy efficiency in new build housing?
Andrew Bowie
We recently announced further details of the £6 billion extension that will be allocated from 2025 to 2028. This will support an extra 500,000 homes—prioritising those who need it most, but including new build—and is on top of support for 700,000 families to install improvements through the Great British insulation scheme and the energy company obligation by March 2026.
Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Amanda Solloway)
I have met Ofgem and suppliers to reiterate my expectations that the new rules will be followed. Ofgem has announced that if a supplier wrongfully installs a prepayment meter, it will be expected to compensate its customers appropriately.
Imran Hussain
Forcing the installation of prepayment meters in the homes of some of our poorest and most vulnerable constituents is, frankly, a scandal. Although the Government rightly paused forced installations last year, some energy companies have been allowed to resume this outrageous practice under a new rules regime, which the Minister referred to, that still faces many questions. Does the Minister think that in the middle of winter—in a week when we have seen temperatures drop dramatically—we can trust energy suppliers that have a history of unscrupulous practices in force-fitting energy meters in the homes of vulnerable people to, in effect, self-regulate? Will the Government instead legislate to ban the scandalous forced installation of prepayment meters once and for all?
Amanda Solloway
I acknowledge how awful it was that people had their homes broken into to force fit prepayment meters, but there is also a place for prepayment meters to enable people and to support people out of debt. I reassure the House that I have scrutinised every level of the regime for prepayment meters, now that we are going back to reinforcement, to absolutely ensure that we will not see all the scandalous practices that happened before.
Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)
The Minister for Energy Security and Net Zero (Graham Stuart)
The North sea is a mature basin and production will naturally decline in the coming years. The Government are committed to supporting our oil and gas industry and the energy transition, which is why we have the North sea transition deal and have introduced the Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill. We want to protect investment, the 200,000 jobs supported by the sector and the tens of billions of pounds coming in in taxes, as well as to use the existing industry to deliver the wider energy transition.
Alun Cairns
The Government’s action to use gas and oil reserves in the UK for the smooth transition to renewable sources is important for our energy security, but also offers great employment and wealth prospects in the process. Is the Minister aware that Offshore Energies UK published a workforce insight last year that highlighted that the number of people working in the sector could be increased by 50%? For that to become a reality, the sector needs to be stable and competitive. What commitment can my right hon. Friend offer to the stability and competitiveness of the sector?
Graham Stuart
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. This is a declining basin, and it is so important as we go through the transition that we do not lose the skills and jobs of those people who are providing the oil and gas on which we currently rely. No country is doing more to decarbonise than we are, but we will continue to use oil and gas for decades to come. As our production falls even more quickly than our demand, and even more quickly than is required globally, it is essential that we support the industry, send the signal that my right hon. Friend suggested, and rebut the attitude of the Labour party, which would destroy those jobs, lose the tax and put up emissions.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
I welcome the fact that, belatedly, the Government have accepted that, despite their net-zero policies, the oil and gas industry is important for the future in the United Kingdom. Does the Minister recognise that to benefit from the oil and gas in the North sea that will be released by the new licensing regime, we need to have refinery capacity? There has been little, if any, investment in refinery capacity, because of the uncertainty of the future and the carbon taxes placed on it. When will the Minister address that issue to ensure that we get the full benefit of the oil and gas that we extract from our shores?
Graham Stuart
Effectively, we are part of a European market. Most of the gas that we produce is consumed in the United Kingdom, and most of our oil is refined elsewhere in Europe and contributes to European and UK energy security, as it is converted into product. It is one joined-up market for historical reasons, and our refineries are used predominantly for oil that comes from abroad, as opposed to that which comes from the North sea. These are multi-decadal investments, and as part of a managed decline in demand we will see refinery capacity reduced over time. We are doing absolutely everything to do this in the most sensible manner possible, and it is a shame that Labour Members would have us import more. They are all in favour of oil and gas jobs, so long as they are not in the UK, and they will bring in foreign imports from which we will get no jobs and no tax, with higher emissions. It makes no sense, and only the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) could champion such an insane policy.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Amanda Solloway)
As chair of the all-party group on carbon capture, utilisation and storage, the hon. Member will know that the Government have committed £20 billion to support the early development of carbon capture, usage and storage, and up to £500 million for the industrial energy transformation fund to help industry to decarbonise, with phase 3 opening shortly.
Alex Cunningham
I welcome the investment in carbon capture—we just need to get on and make something happen there. Teesside is home to some of the most energy-intensive industries in the country, but instead of attracting more of those industries, including primary steel making, we are seeing plants closed down and jobs lost because investors do not see any industrial strategy from the Government. High energy costs mean that it is cheaper to import many of the goods that until now we have made at home. Why are the Government content to see this managed decline, rather than back the kind of strategy that will protect existing industries and drive investment and job creation?
Amanda Solloway
This Government invest throughout the country with our levelling-up agenda, but we have of course been investing in the steel industry, and we are mindful to ensure that we have the skills that will take us forward for those future requirements.
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
My hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) was of course absolutely right: we have seen managed decline under this Government, with no coherent industrial strategy, total failure to get the grid connected where we need it, and different Departments giving mixed messages and providing complicated processes to access any support.
On top of all that, our industry has to pay twice as much on its energy bills compared with European competitors. A recent report by UK Steel stated that our steel producers have to pay £117 million more per year on electricity, forcing the Government to deliver a subsidy through the supercharger, which in turn raises bills for everybody else. Instead of such short-term policies, is it time for Labour’s industrial strategy, Labour’s grid reform and Labour’s mission to become a clean energy superpower, so that we can permanently cut bills for everyone, grow our economy and give Britain its future back?
Amanda Solloway
This Government have demonstrated our commitment to help across the domestic and non-domestic sectors. However, we also recognise the vital role that the steel sector plays in our economy. In fact, the 2021 net zero strategy reaffirms our commitment to continue to work with the steel industry on decarbonisation.
Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab)
The Minister for Energy Security and Net Zero (Graham Stuart)
The UK is the first major economy to halve its emissions. Since the Prime Minister’s speech in September, we have announced the £960 million green industries growth accelerator, helped to deliver the first global agreement to transition away from fossil fuels at COP28, acted to protect motorists from unfair prices at petrol stations, announced backing for 11 major projects to produce green hydrogen, and committed to the biggest nuclear expansion in 70 years. We have a plan. Our plan is working and it will get us to net zero. It will guarantee our energy security and bring consumers and the British people with us.
Mary Kelly Foy
My constituents have told me they are no longer eligible to receive the warm home discount, which, along with Ofgem’s price increase, is making the cost of living even more severe in the City of Durham. Will the Minister meet me to discuss that? What, if any, discussions has he had with the Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work, the hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Mims Davies) about the impact of fuel poverty on disabled people?
Graham Stuart
We are providing targeted support for the most vulnerable through the warm home discount. I am pleased to say that we have raised it to £150 and extended it so that it now reaches 3 million low-income households, giving them a rebate on their energy bills every winter.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Andrew Bowie)
I thank my hon. Friend for that question. He will be delighted to learn that renewable generation has increased fivefold from 2010 to 2022. It has gone from a risible 26 TWh to 135 TWh. Some 40 GW of renewable energy has connected to Great Britain’s electricity networks since 2010. Since 2010, the UK has seen a more than 500% increase in the amount of renewable electricity capacity in the grid thanks to this Conservative Government.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
I call the shadow Secretary of State.
Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)
In the past month, the former Prime Minister who legislated for net zero has condemned the Minister’s oil and gas policy. His colleague the former COP President has accused the Government of “not being serious” and the Government’s net zero tsar has resigned his seat in disgust. Why does the Minister think that that is?
Graham Stuart
As we have rehearsed, the UK is the first major economy to halve its emissions. It is the one that is delivering more going forward. It is so important that we recognise that we will continue to need oil and gas for decades to come. The Labour party’s policy will do the opposite; it will weaken British jobs, reduce taxes and put up emissions, and that is why we remain committed, working across society, to ensuring that we deliver.
Edward Miliband
It is not just us who oppose the Minister’s Bill, but those on his own side—he has lost an MP over it. I know he brought down the last Government over fracking; he is trying to do it again with his new Bill. That is the reason that people have lost confidence. They see the hottest year on record and a Government backsliding on net zero. Is it not the truth that the Conservatives who know and care most about climate change no longer support this Government?
Graham Stuart
The right hon. Gentleman would love to think that was the case, but the Conservative party is united in driving this forward and in delivering. We are powering up Britain from Britain. We have taken ourselves from the abject position left by him when he was in government, which so many of my colleagues have described. We must not go back to that, because it would put bills up, it would put emissions up, and it would stop us being the global net zero leader that we are.
Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con)
Graham Stuart
I agree with my hon. Friend and the Prime Minister on the importance of Bacton, which, like all gas terminals across the country, has the potential to play a crucial role in our energy security. The decarbonisation of these terminals is vital to delivering both economic growth and net zero. The Hewett field, 20 km offshore from Bacton, was awarded a licence for carbon sea storage by the North Sea Transition Authority in 2023. I hear his loud voice—it will be heard on the Government Benches—about its potential to be a hydrogen hub as well.
Sarah Green (Chesham and Amersham) (LD)
Graham Stuart
The hon. Lady is absolutely right to highlight that issue. At the autumn statement, we announced plans to halve the time it takes to build new critical powerlines as well as reducing average delays from five years to no more than six months. The connection action plan at the more local level will release more than 100 GW of capacity and give powers to the system operator to terminate stalled projects. We are seeking across multiple Departments—led by this one—to deal with the issues that she rightly raised.
Cherilyn Mackrory (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)
Andrew Bowie
It is incredibly encouraging to hear about what is happening at A&P Falmouth. As my hon. Friend knows, the floating offshore wind manufacturing investment scheme is providing up to £160 million to support investment in UK ports. However, while FLOWMIS is still live, I am afraid I cannot comment on individual applications.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Amanda Solloway)
I will have to write to the hon. Member with the figure, but the Government remain firmly committed to new builds as well as to retrofitting.
Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)
Graham Stuart
As we make the transition, it is essential that we do so fairly, not least for those with less. We have committed to keeping the transition to electric vehicles affordable for consumers, and we support innovations for those without a home charger such as cross-pavement cable channels and peer-to-peer charging schemes. I know that my right hon. Friend will continue to raise the VAT issue. As she rightly said, all taxes, including VAT reliefs, are kept under review by the Chancellor.
Samantha Dixon (City of Chester) (Lab)
Amanda Solloway
I am aware of the challenges facing all the industry. I have ongoing talks with UKHospitality and other groups. There are things that we can do, such as blend and extend, and we are looking at the brokers, and ensuring that third-party intermediaries are doing their jobs correctly.
Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)
Driving down to Parliament, I pass petrol stations. In my constituency, prices were 136.9p and 137.9p. However, at the service stations, they were 164.9p and 167.9p. That is a massive difference, which the public just will not tolerate and want something to be done about it. What will the Government do?
Amanda Solloway
Road fuel prices are down for a second consecutive month. Petrol prices are now at a level not seen since early October 2021, following our work to bring transparency to the market. Today, we launched the consultation to require petrol stations to report real-time prices, which will mean that drivers can compare prices and get the best deal, and prices will fall through greater competition.
Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)
Graham Stuart
I apologise for the Secretary of State not being here. I will write to the hon. Lady promptly in answer to her question.
Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
Transparency is important in the development of the energy sector. National Grid is refusing to publish its assessment of Bradwell as a potential landfall site for cables and interconnectors. It must be logical to prioritise brownfield sites with existing connections to the electricity network. Will my right hon. Friend please require National Grid to publish fully its assessment so far?
Graham Stuart
When my right hon. Friend thinks that something is important, she does not let it go. That message will go out clearly from this Chamber, and I will happily work with her to see whether we can find a resolution and give her the information and insight that she requires.
Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab)
Following the recent state visit from the Korean President, when he identified nuclear as one of the key sectors for future collaboration in the UK-Korea trade deal, and the publication—albeit two years later than promised—of the civil nuclear road map last week, could the Minister please detail what conversations are taking place with the Department for Business and Trade to maximise inward investment opportunities for the nuclear supply chain in Warrington North and across the UK?
Andrew Bowie
I thank the hon. Lady for her question and for her support for our nuclear road map published last week. As she knows, we look forward to increasing the opportunities to co-operate with South Korea on civil nuclear, including on fuel supply chain safety, security, non-proliferation, decommissioning and the development of new reactors in both countries. That will benefit jobs and the supply chain around the UK, specifically where there is a strong history of a nuclear industry, such as in her constituency, which she champions.
Nick Fletcher (Don Valley) (Con)
The additional power supplies from offshore wind farms are creating the need for further pylons, yet if we doubled the voltage of power lines from 400 kV to 800 kV, we might not need them. That is used in China and America, and would stop the need for all the additional power lines running up and down the country. Will the Department look into that?
Graham Stuart
It will be useful for us both if I write to my hon. Friend and set out the technical assessments, constraints and issues around that, because he makes an interesting point.
Dame Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
The Government have finally committed to a carbon border adjustment mechanism to protect our energy-intensive industries from being undercut by imports made with dirtier energy or in more heavily polluting processes. Will the Minister explain why the Government are delaying that until 2027, when the EU is introducing equivalent legislation a whole year earlier? Will he speak urgently to ministerial colleagues about bringing that date forward, both to protect our industries and reduce our carbon footprint?
Graham Stuart
I thank the hon. Lady for her support for the introduction of a carbon border adjustment mechanism. This is to make sure that we do not have carbon leakage—to use the jargon—where carbon costs imposed on companies here lead to that production simply going abroad, with no betterment to the planet. His Majesty’s Treasury takes the lead on this particular policy, but I will ensure that her sentiments are passed on to my Treasury colleagues.
Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)
Can my hon. Friend confirm that, given all the questions about carbon accounting, sustainability and value for taxpayers’ money, the Government will not be guaranteeing Drax billions more in subsidies?
Andrew Bowie
As my hon. Friend knows, we will shortly be consulting on potential support arrangements to help facilitate the transition of large-scale biomass generation to power bioenergy with carbon capture and storage. Power bioenergy with carbon capture and storage could deliver negative emissions to support our climate change targets and the UK’s energy security.
Business of the House
(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
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The Leader of the House of Commons (Penny Mordaunt)
With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will make a short business statement about an addition to this week’s business. Following the announcement by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary that the Government intend to proscribe Hizb ut-Tahrir under the Terrorism Act 2000, the business on Thursday will now be:
Thursday 18 January—A motion to approve the draft Terrorism Act 2000 (Proscribed Organisations) (Amendment) Order 2024, followed by a debate on a motion on the loan charge, followed by a debate on a motion on HS2 compensation. The subjects for these debates were determined by the Backbench Business Committee.
I will announce further business in the usual way on Thursday.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I call the shadow Leader of the House.
Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank the Leader of the House for updating the House on the business for Thursday, and for advance sight of it. It is good to see her announcing a change in business as a statement, rather than a point of order, and I know that Members will appreciate that proper approach.
There have long been serious concerns about the activities of Hizb ut-Tahrir, which have been exacerbated in the light of Hamas’s barbaric terrorist attack on Israel on 7 October. It is right that the Government have looked at the evidence and intelligence on the threat posed by the group, and Labour supports the decision to proscribe it.
I also welcome the fact that urgent time has been found to debate the order this week. Those who incite violence and promote or glorify terrorism have no place on Britain’s streets. In that context, what progress has been made on proscribing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, either via a statutory instrument, as the Government are using this week for Hizb ut-Tahrir, or by a new process to deal with hostile state actors for which there is wide cross-party support in this House?
Finally, I have to say that when I was first notified of an emergency business statement today, I did wonder whether the Government were having a rethink about their Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill in the face of the usual infighting and chaos. Can the Leader of the House take this opportunity to confirm that, whether the Bill is or is not amended in Committee today or tomorrow, there will still be, as programmed, Third Reading at the end of tomorrow’s business? There has been some suggestion that the Government may still table their own amendments and push Third Reading back to another day. Would that not be further proof of the Prime Minister’s weakness and the fact that, when it comes to governing, they are just making it up as they go along?
Penny Mordaunt
First, I thank the hon. Lady for her support for the statutory instrument that we are bringing forward. The Home Office has taken its time to consider the matter, but it is very clear that the activities the group is involved in fall into that category. They need to be dealt with swiftly, which is why we brought forward the SI at the first available opportunity.
The hon. Lady talks about the point of order I made last week. She will fully appreciate that this is a different situation. I am making a business statement today because we are changing the business that was previously announced. Last week, I was simply giving Members advance notice of forthcoming business, because if I had waited until our exchanges on Thursday, it would have meant an unsatisfactory amount of time for right hon. and hon. Members to prepare amendments.
I will certainly ensure that the Home Secretary has heard the hon. Lady’s query about the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Its activities are not restricted to what is happening overseas; it is engaged in activities on British soil against British citizens. I know that there is a great deal of interest in that in all parts of the House.
As the hon. Lady will know, the progress of the Rwanda Bill is subject to the House, and I shall make further business announcements in the usual way.
Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)
As a member of the Defence Committee, I know that it is an open secret that Iran is paymaster to, and helps to train, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthi rebels in Yemen—there is no doubt about that throughout the international intelligence community. I warmly welcome the decision to proscribe Hizb ut-Tahrir. However, given what I have just said, and given the action that we have taken against the Houthi rebels in order to maintain freedom of navigation on the seas, can the Leader of the House foresee any circumstances in which she could return to the House in the near future to make a similar announcement about proscribing the IRGC?
Penny Mordaunt
I thank my right hon. Friend for his very helpful question. I know that this is an issue of great concern to many Members. He will appreciate that the Home Secretary and the Government will want to make any future announcements in a timely way while also considering all the effects that such a course of action might bring about, not least to our ships and their insurance, but I shall ensure that the Home Secretary has heard what he has said.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Does the Scottish National party spokesperson wish to ask a question?
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
Given that the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee is not present and that the announcement has an impact on Thursday’s Backbench business, can the Leader of the House give us any information about the timing of the debate? Will there be a timetable motion, as there would be if the business were taken in a Committee upstairs—probably allowing an hour and a half in normal circumstances—and why has the Leader of the House decided that it should be taken on the Floor of the House rather than upstairs?
Penny Mordaunt
I apologise to the Backbench Business Committee—I know that this will eat into its time on Thursday—but this is an important matter that we want to deal with swiftly, and we therefore felt that it was appropriate for it to be dealt with on the Floor of the House.
Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)
I thank the Leader of the House for the statement and welcome the intention to hold the debate on Thursday. In response to the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois)—a fellow member of the Defence Committee—the Leader of the House said that the Home Secretary would come back to the House “in a timely way”. As the right hon. Member highlighted, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps supplies the Houthis, especially with drone materials, and it was also committing international action last night in northern Iraq. Rather than talking of a “timely way,” many of us in the Defence Committee would say, “Time’s up.” I wonder whether the Leader of the House could reinforce to the Home Secretary the fact that across the House there is a clamour to proscribe the IRGC at the soonest opportunity.
Penny Mordaunt
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that helpful question. I will ensure that the Home Secretary has heard what he has said. The actions that he has described are not new; I think that, on average, that organisation has been behind about 500 attacks during any recent year against international shipping and people going about their daily business, and, as I have said, it is also engaged in activities in the UK. As a member of the Defence Committee, the hon. Gentleman will know of some the issues that surround this decision, but I am sure that if and when the Home Secretary makes his decision, he will want the House to be alerted at the earliest opportunity.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I welcome the statement and clarification of the business for Thursday. The Leader of the House will be aware of the high levels of terrorism and the severe threat to people in Northern Ireland from the Real IRA and the New IRA. There is surely a connection between such terrorist groups in Northern Ireland and those who have sympathy towards the Hamas terrorists—is it not wonderful how terrorists across the world come together to murder innocent people?
With regard to the business on Thursday, may I ask the Leader of the House—ever mindful of the fact that only certain things can be said in the House—if it might be possible to indicate whether the threat from the Real IRA and the connection with the proscribed Hamas can be clarified evidentially, and if so, what measures will be taken to reinforce the action of stepping down hard on the Real IRA and the New IRA?
Penny Mordaunt
I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising this important matter. As he will know, it is not a matter for me in connection with the business of the House, but he has characteristically made the point that he wished to make and put it on the record, and I shall ensure that the Home Secretary has heard it.
Points of Order
(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Last week I attended a Committee considering a statutory instrument on the immigration health surcharge, and, as would be expected in such a forum, I was asking questions of the Minister—in this instance, the Minister for Legal Migration and the Border, the hon. Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove)—who was unable to answer a number of those questions.
I should give credit to the Minister—I have alerted him to my intention to raise this point of order—because he has since written to me, ahead of the House finally agreeing to the statutory instrument yesterday, and I thank him for that courtesy. However, that was not the first time that I have been in a statutory instrument Committee and Ministers have been unable to answer questions. In this case it was off the back of a detailed impact assessment conducted by the Home Office, but on other occasions Ministers have been unable to supply answers on fairly basic information.
I wanted to raise the matter with you, Madam Deputy Speaker, because it seems to me that this is an inadequate and inopportune way for the House to operate. We are there to scrutinise the legislation of the Government of the day, and we are hampered in doing so if Ministers are unable to give us answers and instead promise, variously, to write to us or tell us about the issue involved at a later stage, or sometimes even brush off the questions. I wonder whether you would like to say anything on this matter, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I thank the hon. Lady for her point of order and for giving me notice of it. I assume that she did inform the Minister that she intended to raise it.
Obviously, Ministers are responsible for their own replies to Members in Delegated Legislation Committees, as they are in the Chamber. I note that the hon. Lady said that the Minister did her the courtesy of writing after the event, but I think we would all believe—and it is certainly my view—that Ministers should have all the relevant information to hand when responding to a debate. The Leader of the House is here and has clearly listened carefully to what the hon. Lady has said. I am sure that she will take that point back, as will others on the Treasury Bench.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I can tell the House that this is not an isolated incident in statutory instrument Committees, but surely it is not good enough, because the Ministers who are answering questions about an impact assessment have signed that impact assessment and dated it to confirm that they are responsible and fully aware of its contents. If Ministers are indeed signing off impact assessments on statutory instruments and presenting them to Committees without knowing the contents, that is an extremely troubling revelation.
Madam Deputy Speaker
I note the point that the hon. Gentleman has made. Let me say again that this is up to individual Ministers; we cannot test them from the Chair before they respond to a debate on a statutory instrument.
Madam Deputy Speaker
I sense that the Leader of the House might like to provide a brief response.
Penny Mordaunt
Further to the point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. We take these matters very seriously, and I will ensure that the points that Members have raised are brought to the attention of the Departments that have been mentioned.
I would just add that a great deal of work has been done by the Select Committee on Statutory Instruments, which has been looking into how we can improve these processes, the quality of impact assessments and so forth, and a large training programme takes place in Departments. My noble Friend Lord True and I have also undertaken sessions with Ministers dealing with statutory instruments, involving training and improving the quality of what is put forward to enable the House to scrutinise legislation properly.
There will be incidents, I am sure, particularly with complex briefs, where someone cannot recall the information while at the Dispatch Box, but as the textbook example set out by the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier) with regard to my hon. Friend the Minister for Legal Migration and the Border shows, when those situations arise, Ministers are very aware of their responsibility to get back to hon. Members before those statutory instruments come into effect.
Madam Deputy Speaker
In that helpful intervention the Leader of the House has outlined the programme that is in train, and I am sure that right hon. and hon. Members will keep their beady eyes on the situation and Ministers will ensure that they are as well prepared as possible.
Bills Presented
Unpaid Trial Work Periods (Prohibition) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Stewart Malcolm McDonald, supported by Kirsten Oswald, Ms Anum Qaisar, David Linden, Deidre Brock, Patricia Gibson, Alison Thewliss, Allan Dorans, Stuart C. McDonald, Dr Philippa Whitford, Alyn Smith and Ian Blackford, presented a Bill to prohibit unpaid trial work periods; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 15 March, and to be printed (Bill 144).
Military Action (Parliamentary Approval) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Richard Foord presented a Bill to require parliamentary approval for the deployment of UK armed forces for armed conflict; to provide for exemptions from that requirement in cases of emergency or in respect of compliance with treaty obligations; to make provision for retrospective parliamentary approval in certain circumstances; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the first time; to be read a second time on Friday 26 January, and to be printed (Bill 146).
Scotland (Self-Determination)
(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate
13:19 - The House divided: - Ayes: 48 / Noes: 228 - Question accordingly negatived.
Neale Hanvey (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (Alba)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the Scotland Act 1998 to transfer the power to legislate for a Scottish independence referendum to the Scottish Parliament; to provide that that power may only be exercised where the Scottish public has demonstrated its support for the holding of such a referendum; to provide that no such referendum may be held sooner than seven years after the previous such referendum; and for connected purposes.
Madam Deputy Speaker,
“I’m standing up for the right of self-determination. I’m standing up for our territory. I’m standing up for our people. I’m standing up for international law. I’m standing up for all those territories—those small territories and peoples the world over”.
Those are the words of then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, recounted in her memoir “The Downing Street Years”. She went on to say:
“The principle of self-determination has become a fundamental component of international law and is enshrined in the UN Charter”.
That principle she spoke of—the principle of the self-determination of peoples—was enshrined in the United Nations charter when Prime Minister Winston Churchill signed the 1941 Atlantic charter. Any notion that Scots freely entered into the Union by an act of self-determination has no credibility whatsoever. In 1707 a majority of Scottish parliamentarians may have been persuaded, but the people were never consulted. The Acts of Union in 1707 between England and Scotland created the kingdom of Great Britain, establishing a single political entity yet preserving the territorial, legal and institutional integrity of each partner country.
The UK’s constitution is not codified in a single document, so the question of whether the Acts of Union can be unilaterally dissolved by one party is not clear. However, the accepted position hitherto is that the Union is a voluntary association of equal partners and that Scotland has an unquestioned right of self-determination. Scotland’s distinct constitutional tradition is best expressed by Lord Cooper in the case of MacCormick v. Lord Advocate:
“The principle of the unlimited sovereignty of Parliament is a distinctively English principle, which has no counterpart in Scottish constitutional law”.
In the pleadings of the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) in her Prorogation case to the UK Supreme Court, it was noted that the 1707 parliamentary Union between England and Scotland may have created a new state but did not create one nation. In recent years the UK state has steadfastly refused to acknowledge or honour that principle or the democratic wishes of the Scottish electorate. According to the distinguished academic and legal practitioner in international law, Professor Robert McCorquodale,
“the people of Scotland are distinct within the UK and have a right to self-determination…And as the people of Scotland are a people for the purposes of the right to self-determination…the choice of the means to exercise it is for the people to decide and not for the state.”
These are not obscure or arcane points of law; they are precise and purposeful, and according to Professor McCorquodale such treaty obligations are
“binding under international law on all states”.
The question of whether the ancient nation of Scotland should be an independent country once again continues to be the subject of much debate. In short, with current support sitting at 50% across the population and above 70% among younger people, the matter is far from settled. It is entirely proper for any country to review such important matters because Scotland will only become independent as and when a majority of the people of Scotland choose that path. This demands the use of a democratic mechanism that is constitutional and satisfies international legal precedent. This Bill seeks to standardise and codify such a requirement in line with the motion passed by this House that endorsed the principles of the 1989 claim of right and acknowledged the sovereign right of the Scottish people to determine the form of government best suited to their needs.
At that time the claim of right was supported by every political party save the Tories. In particular, Liberal Democrat MPs such as Ray Michie and Charles Kennedy were forthright in their support for the principle of Scottish sovereignty. They were following a home rule tradition in that party which never for a second disputed Scotland’s right of self-determination, albeit they thought Scotland should choose a form of federalism rather than independence. It would be unfortunate today if, having already deserted their historic commitment to the European cause, the Liberal Democrats were to follow that by deserting their historic commitment to respecting Scotland’s national rights. This morning the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) called this Bill, which favours neither one side nor the other, “divisive and unnecessary”, when it is anything but. It is in fact both liberal and fundamentally democratic.
The effect of this Bill should be uncontroversial for every Member. It merely establishes in law an equivalent mechanism to the principle already conceded by the UK Government in relation to a border poll in Northern Ireland. First, it establishes that the power to legislate for a referendum requires a democratic mandate from the Scottish public to do so. Since 2014 that criterion has been met in successive general elections to the Scottish Parliament, most recently in 2021 when a majority of MSPs were elected and a majority of votes were cast in favour of a manifesto commitment to deliver an independence referendum. Secondly, the Bill states that no such referendum may be held any sooner than seven years after any previous such referendum. Should Members of this Chamber deny Scotland her legitimate claim on self-determination, that will put beyond doubt that the voice of the people of Scotland is not welcome in this place and that a new approach must be considered.
This Bill offers both remedy and route. It places the power to decide firmly where it belongs, in the hands of the people of Scotland, and it does so by transferring the power to hold a referendum on independence to the Scottish Parliament. It is a parallel initiative to that being led by my Alba party colleague Ash Regan MSP in the Scottish Parliament. Ms Regan has brought forward a draft Bill that will allow for a referendum to be held to ask the people of Scotland if they think that the Scottish Parliament should have the powers to negotiate and legislate for independence. Its purpose is to consult the people of Scotland on their opinion on extending the provisions of their Parliament to hold such a referendum—a proposition supported by the expert legal opinion of Aidan O’Neill KC. Both proposals have at their heart the democratic imperative that Scotland’s political destiny must be in the hands of the people of Scotland, not in the hands of the Westminster Parliament or the Supreme Court. How does the behaviour of the UK Government or the repeatedly espoused position of the Opposition party constitute access to meaningful political process, as claimed in the recent UK Supreme Court judgment?
In the aftermath of the 2014 referendum, the all-party Smith commission agreement was signed by all Scotland’s main political parties—SNP, Labour, Tory and Liberal Democrat—and it stated:
“It is agreed that nothing in this report prevents Scotland becoming an independent country in the future should the people of Scotland so choose.”
While each have failed to deliver on that commitment, this Bill provides a necessarily equitable and democratic mechanism for the people of Scotland.
In 1889 in this place the equality of the UK partner countries was asserted by a Liberal MP, William Ewart Gladstone, when he said that
“if I am to suppose a case in which Scotland unanimously, or by a clearly preponderating voice, were to make the demand on the United Parliament to be treated, not only on the same principle, but in the same manner as Ireland, I could not deny the title of Scotland to urge such a claim.”—[Official Report, 9 April 1889; Vol. 335, c. 101.]
John Major, when he was Prime Minister, said of Scotland that
“no nation could be held irrevocably in a Union against its will.”
It is increasingly apparent that this is not a Union of equals. The UK is wilfully subverting the will of the people of Scotland by denying them their established human rights, as enshrined in the UN charter and in international treaty obligations that the UK state entered freely.
I cited the words of Lady Thatcher at the opening of my speech, but she went further:
“The Scots, being an historic nation with a proud past...have an undoubted right to national self-determination... Should they determine on independence, no English party or politician would stand in their way, however much we might regret their departure.”
Whether I like it or loathe it, we are in this Union. I hold that it is incumbent on every MP elected on an independence ticket to explore every option with courage and conviction. Today this Chamber faces a choice: affirm that this is a voluntary Union of equals or tell the world that Scotland is a mere possession to do with as it wishes. This Bill is a necessary condition of securing Scottish democracy, and I commend it to the House.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Neale Hanvey) on securing this ten-minute rule Bill and on his knowledge of Liberal political history. I have to confess, though, that my overwhelming sentiment on hearing of this Bill was, “Oh, not again!” Surely this has been settled not just by the Supreme Court ruling but by the repeated occasions on which the people of Scotland—including me and other MPs here—the electorates of several constituencies and the majority of people at the last general election, and in the referendum, made it clear that, no, we cannot be held in a Union against our will, but that our will is to stay.
On the anniversary of parliamentary approval of the Act of Union in 1707, we are going over the same nationalist argument again and again—an argument that was rejected in the referendum and at the general election. This could and should be a day when the people of this country might expect their elected representatives to be considering the importance of what has gone before, as a result of that Act, what we have achieved and built, and what we can continue to build and improve upon as part of the Union. As a liberal and a Liberal Democrat, as the hon. Gentleman said, I fundamentally believe in home rule for Scotland, I fundamentally agree that the United Kingdom needs to change and I agree that the people of Scotland deserve incremental increases in power, but that is because I believe in a federal United Kingdom and have said so on numerous occasions, and I will continue to do so.
In the past 45 years, there have been three referendums on Scotland’s political future, on the Scottish people’s future and on the state of the constitution. Every single one of them was facilitated by the United Kingdom Government and, on every occasion, the Scottish people have benefited. We have devolution as a result of the second referendum, and surely even devolution sceptics can see the good that has come from our Parliament. We have seen the benefits of devolution not only in Scotland but in Wales, and we have seen great changes in Northern Ireland and, let us not forget, the London Assembly.
The third referendum, on independence in 2014, was facilitated by the UK Government, who felt that the Scottish Parliament and Scottish parliamentary elections had proven that there was a mandate. I know this because I worked on that referendum—I declare that interest—and, as a result, we have more devolved powers. This country has come so far on devolution since the turn of the new century, and power is now closer to the people most affected by it. It would be dreadful to undermine that, to throw the baby out with the bath water, with a separatist argument. Let us be clear that that is what some colleagues want.
It is not a secret that I fundamentally disagree with my colleagues on the Alba and SNP Benches about independence and where Scotland should be heading, particularly at a time when we need to work together in this place to solve the ills that are blighting people across these isles. I repeat that, in doing so, the UK Government are not a block on more devolution but have worked to enable it.
Whatever nationalists might tell us, independence is not an answer to our problems. It is not even the question that most people in Scotland want to raise. That question is about inflation, interest rates and the cost of living. My constituents constantly ask me about instability across the globe and what we will do about those issues. Yes, they want change, but they want a different Government and a different approach. They do not want separation, and they regularly tell me that they are fed up of hearing about it. They are tired of the negativity and of their world, and their children’s world, becoming smaller because of their Government’s mismanagement and ideological decisions. They want to address the problems with our education system in Scotland, with our NHS in Scotland and with our public services in Scotland, all of which have declined during the period of a nationalist Government who have prioritised only independence. We are suffering, and we do not want to do it any more. If the nationalists lifted their heads from their ideological manifesto on separation, and if they listened a little more to the people of Scotland and stopped taking their support for granted, perhaps they would know that themselves.
The people of Scotland may not like this particular UK Government, and there are times when, frankly, I wholeheartedly agree, but they can see an opportunity for change coming in the next few months. Perhaps that is why the nationalists are putting new impetus into their cause—because they see that there is an opportunity for change coming and that people may choose to change the Government rather than the constitution.
We all know that the United Kingdom is not perfect. Of course it is not. What governmental system is? It needs reform. I believe we need to move forward to a more federal system, but we do not need more division and more rancour at a time when the list of problems in this country is longer than any of us would like. The proposition before us would do little to address those very real problems faced by my constituents and everyone else in Scotland; as I say, it would be just one more division, with more arguments and the same old grievances. It is time to move on, accept that the will of the Scottish people, as expressed regularly, is to remain in the United Kingdom, and work to improve it and improve the lives of all of the people of the UK. The Scottish people have expressed their will. As we have all said, we cannot be held in a Union against our will, but our will is to stay in that United Kingdom. I ask this House not to waste any more time on an argument that the Scottish people have settled and will settled again at the next general election.
Question put (Standing Order No. 23).
Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill
Tuesday 16th January 2024
(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024 View all Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024 Debates Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Committee of the whole House Amendments as at 16 January 2024 - (16 Jan 2024)
17:38 - The Committee divided: - Ayes: 66 / Noes: 337 - Question accordingly negatived.
17:52 - The Committee divided: - Ayes: 68 / Noes: 529 - Question accordingly negatived.
18:11 - The Committee divided: - Ayes: 331 / Noes: 262 - Question accordingly agreed to.
18:24 - divided: - Ayes: 58 / Noes: 525 - Question accordingly negatived.
18:40 - The Committee divided: - Ayes: 330 / Noes: 55 - Question accordingly agreed to.
18:54 - The Committee divided: - Ayes: 262 / Noes: 336 - Question accordingly negatived.
The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I remind Members that in Committee, Members should not address the Chair as Deputy Speaker. Please use our names when addressing the Chair, or Madam Chair, Chair, Madam Chairman or Mr Chairman are also acceptable, so there are lots of options.
The First Deputy Chairman
That is my name— I mentioned that.
Clause 2
Safety of the Republic of Rwanda
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
I beg to move amendment 45, page 2, line 33, leave out “a safe” and insert “an unsafe”.
The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Dame Rosie Winterton)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 1, page 2, line 34, at end insert—
“(1A) The Secretary of State must lay a report before Parliament no later than one year after this Act is passed, and at least once in every subsequent calendar year, on whether in the judgement of His Majesty's Government the Republic of Rwanda is a safe country.”
This amendment requires the Secretary of State to monitor on an ongoing basis whether Rwanda remains a safe country and to report the outcome to the House.
Amendment 46, page 2, line 41, leave out “not”.
This amendment would require a court or tribunal to consider review or appeals of decisions relating to the removal of a person to Rwanda.
Amendment 47, page 3, line 3, leave out “not”.
This amendment would require a court or tribunal to consider claims about actions of the Republic of Rwanda.
Amendment 35, page 3, line 4, leave out paragraph (a).
This amendment would permit courts and tribunals to deal with systematic risk of refoulement from Rwanda.
Amendment 56, page 3, line 12, at end insert—
“(d) any claim or complaint made by a person on the grounds that the Republic of Rwanda is not a safe country if the person has—
participated or engaged in any activity, or made any communication containing serious allegations, which has led directly to bringing into question the safety of the Republic of Rwanda in general or in relation to that person, or
(ii) colluded or conspired with any other persons who have participated or engaged in any activity, or in any communication containing serious allegations, which could lead directly to bringing into question the safety of the Republic of Rwanda in general or in relation to those persons.”
This amendment would prevent a court or tribunal considering a claim that Rwanda is not a safe country from persons who deliberately tried to put themselves in jeopardy if they were removed to Rwanda.
Amendment 10, page 3, line 13, leave out subsection (5) and insert—
“(5A) This Act and the Illegal Migration Act 2023 will have effect in relation to removals to Rwanda notwithstanding—
(a) any provision made by or under the Immigration Acts,
(b) the Human Rights Act 1998,
(c) EU derived law and case law retained under sections 2 to 7 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018,
(d) any other provision or rule of domestic law (including any common law), and
(e) international law, including any interpretation of international law by the court or tribunal.
(5B) Nothing identified in paragraphs (a) to (e) of subsection (5A) may prevent or delay the removal to Rwanda of an individual under this Act or the Illegal Migration Act 2023, or affect the interpretation or application of any provision of this Act or the Illegal Migration Act 2023, including the actions or policies of public authorities, in relation to the removal of a person to Rwanda.
(5C) To the extent that any provision or requirement included in paragraphs (a) to (e) of subsection (5A) has been given effect to in legislation (including the Asylum and Immigration Appeals Act 1993, the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 and the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants etc) Act 2004), that legislation does not apply in relation to provision made by or by virtue of this Act or the Illegal Migration Act 2023 in relation to the removal of an individual to Rwanda, and shall not prevent or delay the removal to Rwanda of an individual under this Act or the Illegal Migration Act 2023.
(5D) A person or body to which subsection (5E) applies may not have regard to international law, in the circumstances mentioned in subsection (5G).
(5E) This subsection applies to—
(a) the Secretary of State or an immigration officer when exercising any function related to removing, or considering for removal a person to Rwanda under this Act or the Illegal Migration Act 2023,
(b) a court or tribunal when considering any application or appeal which relates to a decision or purported decision to remove, or to consider the removal of a person to Rwanda under this Act or the Illegal Migration Act 2023.
(5F) No inference is to be drawn from this section as to whether or not a person or body mentioned in subsection (5E) would otherwise have been required to have regard to international law.
(5G) The Asylum and Immigration Appeals Act 1993 is amended as follows.
(5H) In section 2 at the end insert ‘except in relation to the removal of a person to Rwanda under the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024 and the Illegal Migration Act 2023’.”
This amendment specifically excludes the legislation raised in AAA v Secretary of State of the Home Department [2023] UKSC 42 as potential blocks to removal and excludes from consideration any international law (including the ECHR and anything put out by its court).
Clause stand part.
Amendment 19, in clause 4, page 4, line 11, leave out from “whether” to the end of line 14 and insert
“and in what manner a person is to be removed, or considered for removal, to Rwanda under this Act or the Illegal Migration Act 2023”.
This and other amendments to Clause 4 are intended to remove the ability of individuals to block their own removal through suspensive claims and to limit such claims to rare situations where there is bad faith on the part of decision-makers in relation to decisions as to medical fitness to travel.
Amendment 48, page 4, line 13, leave out from “circumstances” to end of line 14.
This amendment is intended to allow the decision-maker to consider whether the Republic of Rwanda is not a safe country in general.
Amendment 20, page 4, line 18, leave out from “that” to end of line 22 and insert
“are expressly permitted by this Act or by the Illegal Migration Act 2023”.
This and other amendments to Clause 4 are intended to remove the ability of individuals to block their own removal through suspensive claims and to limit such claims to rare situations where there is bad faith on the part of decision-makers in relation to decisions as to medical fitness to travel.
Amendment 49, page 4, line 20, leave out from “circumstances” to end of line 22.
This amendment is intended to allow the court or tribunal to consider whether the Republic of Rwanda is not a safe country in general.
Amendment 37, page 4, line 23, leave out subsection (2).
This amendment ensures that decision-makers are still able to consider the risk of refoulement when making individual decisions on removals to Rwanda.
Amendment 50, page 4, line 23, leave out subsections (2) to (7).
Amendment 2, page 4, line 27, at end insert —
“(2A) Any review or appeal under subsection (1) may be considered only after the person in question has arrived in Rwanda.
(2B) The Secretary of State may provide any necessary technical assistance, including access to video-links, to the person in question if it appears reasonable to a Minister of the Crown that such assistance should be provided in order to enable the person in question to request a review or make an appeal after their arrival in Rwanda.
(2C) The Secretary of State may provide any necessary incidental or medical assistance to the person in question if it appears reasonable, in the circumstances of that individual person in question, to a Minister of the Crown that such assistance should be provided in order to enable the person in question to travel to, and if necessary to be looked after or quarantined following arrival in, the Republic of Rwanda.
(2D) Any decision by a Minister of the Crown in relation to subsection (2B) or (2C) shall be final for all purposes and may not be considered or questioned in any tribunal or court.”
This amendment would allow reviews and appeals to take place only after the person had reached Rwanda; allow video-links for an appeal made from Rwanda; authorise the provision of any necessary medical help or quarantine on the way and if necessary after arrival in Rwanda; and prevent the courts from questioning decisions on assistance made by Ministers.
Amendment 3, page 4, line 28, leave out subsections (3) to (6) and insert—
“(2E) No order for an interim remedy under this section may be made by any tribunal or court.”
Amendment 21, page 4, line 34, leave out from “is” to end of line 37 and insert
“expressly permitted to do so by this Act or by the Illegal Migration Act 2023”
This and other amendments to Clause 4 are intended to remove the ability of individuals to block their own removal through suspensive claims and to limit such claims to rare situations where there is bad faith on the part of decision-makers in relation to decisions as to medical fitness to travel.
Amendment 57, page 5, line 1 , at end insert—
“‘compelling evidence’ may not include foreseeable risk of any kind of harm to a person if that person has—
(i) participated or engaged in any activity, or made any communication containing serious allegations, which has led directly to bringing into question the safety of the Republic of Rwanda in the particular individual circumstances of that person, or
(ii) colluded or conspired with any other persons who have participated or engaged in any activity, or in any communication containing serious allegations, which could lead to bringing into question the safety of the Republic of Rwanda in the particular individual circumstances of that person.”
This amendment would prevent the Secretary of State, an immigration officer or a court or tribunal considering a claim that Rwanda was not a safe country for the particular individual circumstances of a person if that person had deliberately tried to put themselves in jeopardy if they were removed to Rwanda.
Amendment 22, page 5, line 7, at end insert —
“(8) The Illegal Migration Act 2023 is amended as follows.
(9) In section 8 at the end insert—
‘(18) In relation to notices under subsection (2) which specify Rwanda as the country of destination —
(a) paragraph 2(b) does not apply, and
(b) subsections (3) to (7) do not apply.’
(10) After section 8 insert—
‘8A Finality of decisions
(1) Subsections (2) and (3) apply in relation to persons named in notices as described in subsection 8(18), and all matters, decisions, or conclusions reached in relation to their selection, processing, detention, and removal.
(2) These matters, decisions, and conclusions are final, and not liable to be questioned or set aside in any court or tribunal.
(3) In particular—
(a) the decision maker is not to be regarded as having exceeded its powers by reason of any error made in reaching the decision;
(b) the supervisory jurisdiction does not extend to, and no application or petition for judicial review may be made or brought in relation to, the decision.
(4) Subsection (5) applies only in relation to decisions as to medical fitness to travel to Rwanda.
(5) Subsections (2) and (3) do not apply so far as the decision involves or gives rise to any question as to whether the decision maker is acting or has acted in bad faith.
(6) The court of supervisory jurisdiction is not to entertain any application or petition for judicial review in respect of a decision relating to a removal or proposed removal to Rwanda that it would not entertain (whether as a matter of law or discretion) in the absence of this section.
(7) In this section—
“bad faith” means dishonesty or personal malice, and does not include unreasonableness or actions taken which are inconsistent with international law;
“decision” includes any purported decision;
“first-instance decision” means the decision in relation to which permission (or leave) to appeal is being sought;
“the supervisory jurisdiction” means the supervisory jurisdiction of—
(a) the High Court in England and Wales or Northern Ireland,
or
(b) the Court of Session, in Scotland,
and
“the court of supervisory jurisdiction” is to be read accordingly.’
(11) After the cross-heading ‘Entry, settlement and citizenship’, insert—
‘29A Exclusion of certain provisions relating to entry, settlement and citizenship
Sections 30 to 37, and the other legislation therein mentioned or referred to, shall not apply if they have the effect of preventing or delaying any removal notified under this Act to Rwanda.’
(12) After the cross-heading ‘Legal proceedings’ insert—
‘37A Exclusion of certain provisions relating to legal proceedings
(1) Subsections (2) and (3) apply in relation to persons named in notices as described in subsection 8(18).
(2) Suspensive claims, as defined in section 38, are not available in relation to such persons.
(3) Where suspensive claims (including any appeals) have been commenced prior to the giving of notice, such claims and any pending appeals are null and void and shall not prevent removal or have any other legal effect.’”
This amendment limits the ability of courts to review, and restricts suspensive claims that may be made, in relation to the decision to remove a person to Rwanda.
Clause 4 stand part.
New clause 6—Changes to the classification of Rwanda as safe—
“(1) A Monitoring Committee overseeing removals to Rwanda must be established
and maintained in accordance with Article 15 of the Rwanda Treaty.
(2) Section 2(1) of this Act does not apply if—
(a) the Monitoring Committee established under subsection (1) has formally concluded that the Republic of Rwanda is in breach of its obligations under that Treaty,
(b) the Secretary of State has advised against travel to the Republic of Rwanda, or
(c) if a court or tribunal has found the Republic of Rwanda to be unsafe in accordance with subsection (3) below.
(3) On an application for judicial review, if a UK Senior Court determines that credible evidence exists that the Republic of Rwanda is no longer safe on the basis of non-compliance with its obligations under the Rwanda Treaty, nothing in this Act shall prevent a court or tribunal from further considering an application for judicial review brought by an individual so affected.”
This new clause places the Monitoring Committee for the Rwanda Treaty on a statutory basis, and places conditions on when the classification of Rwanda as ‘safe’ can be suspended in accordance with material conditions and/or non-compliance with obligations under the Rwanda Treaty.
Amendment 28, in clause 9, page 6, line 38, after “Act” insert “except section 2”.
This is a paving amendment for Amendments 29 and 30.
Amendment 29, page 6, line 39, at end insert—
“(1A) The Secretary of State may by order made by statutory instrument bring section 2 into force.”
This Amendment makes the commencement of Clause 2 (Safety of the Republic of Rwanda) subject to a commencement order.
Amendment 30, page 6, line 39, at end insert—
“(1B) The Secretary of State may not make an order under subsection (1A) before—
(a) at least 30 days have elapsed since the Rwanda Treaty entered into force, and only if
(b) the Secretary of State is satisfied with the extent of the implementation by Rwanda of its domestic obligations under the Rwanda Treaty since the Treaty entered into force.”
This Amendment makes the commencement order for Clause 2 (Safety of the Republic of Rwanda) contingent on the Secretary of State being satisfied with the implementation by Rwanda of its domestic obligations under the new Treaty.
Alison Thewliss
The SNP has brought forward these amendments to this appalling Bill not because we really believe that there are improvements that can be made to it, but because that is the limitation of the process we have in front of us this afternoon. The Bill is irredeemably awful in each and every provision and clause, and in the intent behind it. And it will not work. Like the hostile environment that came before, the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 and the Illegal Migration Act 2023, which got Royal Assent only 180 days ago, it will fail to reach its objectives because it fails to engage with reality. The more I hear from Members on the Government Benches on the issue, and from the many Home Office Ministers who have come and gone, I can only feel that they just do not understand why people seek sanctuary on our shores. They are astonishing in their ignorance and baffling in the lack of effort they put into understanding.
One reason people come to the UK is its—now clearly defunct—reputation for fairness and the rule of law, which the Bill comprehensively shreds. The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants has highlighted the impact that all of that has had on the people it deals with, and told me about a Kurdish client who fled Iran under a death sentence from the Iranian Government. On arriving in the UK, he was issued with a removal notice to Rwanda. He said:
“The reason I came to England was that I knew I will be safe in the UK, and also, I was trapped by the smugglers…When I received the news”—
that he would be sent to Rwanda—
“it felt like death again to me.”
He was relieved by the Supreme Court ruling because he thought he would be safe, but now he has had the rug pulled from underneath him yet again.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
On a point of order, Madam Chairman. The hon. Lady’s speech seems more appropriate for Second Reading. It would be helpful if she could direct her attention to the amendments, about which we are interested to hear what she has to say.
The First Deputy Chairman
It is actually amendments and clause stand part, so that gives a wider scope than perhaps the right hon. Gentleman realises.
Alison Thewliss
I am glad the right hon. Gentleman has had your advice, Dame Rosie, on the subject of the debate.
To put the issue into context, every single week I sit in front of people at my advice surgery and listen patiently to the stories of the constituents who come to see me. I have read their Home Office statements: they have been through trauma, made perilous journeys at unimaginable cost, been tortured and bear the scars, both physical and mental. They have seen their relatives murdered, run rather than be forcibly recruited into an army that would kill and rape their loved ones, and been victims of trafficking and slavery. They have been unable to hide their views or their identity from those who would persecute them, and seen the stable life they had built crumble before their eyes. They never planned to be sitting on a random Friday morning in a community centre in Glasgow, in tears, before a Member of some other country’s Parliament. They do not understand why this UK Government treat them so poorly, disbelieve them, force them to wait, prevent them from working and keep them apart from the only loved ones they have left. I cannot comprehend it either.
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
On that point, will the hon. Lady give way?
Alison Thewliss
I will if the hon. Gentleman can tell me why the Government treat people so cruelly, I will.
Michael Fabricant
I have been listening with interest to the compassion that the hon. Lady is expressing, but could she tell me how many illegal asylum seekers per head of population Scotland is accommodating, and how many illegal asylum seekers per head of population England is accommodating?
Alison Thewliss
The hon. Gentleman should inform himself, because there is no such thing as an illegal asylum seeker in the first place.
Alison Thewliss
The hon. Gentleman can sit down; he has made his point.
Fellow human beings, from Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Iran, Iraq, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Cameroon, Tamils from Sri Lanka, Ahmadiyyas from Pakistan—all of those and more—have given me just the tiniest of insights into their lives. It is a privilege to know them and to help them as much as I can as their MP.
Glasgow is home to many different nationalities and it gives me great pleasure to attend community events and celebrate the diversity that enriches us: to learn to dance the attan sway and to teach Afghan Scots to do the Gay Gordons and Dashing White Sergeant in return; to sing, very badly, alongside the wonderful Maryhill Integration Network Joyous Choir; to share the most delicious food with AfricAlba and Africa Future; or to play football, as badly as I sing, in the refugee football tournament that is held every year in Scotland, organised by Councillor Abdul Bostani.
Sir Desmond Swayne
On a point of order, Dame Rosie. I do not want to try your patience, but clause 2 is about the safety of Rwanda and what the hon. Lady is saying has nothing to do with that at all.
The First Deputy Chairman
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his point of order. Please can he leave it with me? It is rather discourteous to keep disrupting the debate. I assure him that I will keep a close eye on proceedings. If the hon. Lady veers off track, I will make sure she gets back on track, but can we not have the debate disrupted constantly like this?
Alison Thewliss
Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman would like to come along to listen to Olivia Ndoti and the women at the Women’s Integration Network in Glasgow. Perhaps he will hear from people from Rwanda—this Government grant asylum to people from Rwanda, because their country is not safe.
I do not believe that anyone who supports this awful Bill can do so knowing the people it will affect. It is laid out in such cruel terms that they would remove the rights of our fellow human beings simply for seeking sanctuary and safety. It undermines our obligations under international law and denies the need for individualised protection, which is guaranteed under the anti-trafficking convention. That this Government seek to declare a country safe by legislating for it to be so is an absolute affront. Amendment 48 simply seeks to change “safe” to “unsafe”. For every decision maker to be forced to declare any country safe—regardless of the facts in front of them, regardless of their own knowledge and regardless of circumstance—flies in the face of the justice and the rights that the UK is supposed to stand for. It is illogical. Amnesty has called this “treating fact as false”.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
Amendment 45, as the hon. Lady has just said, would permanently designate Rwanda an unsafe country. She has just complained about decision makers having to designate it the other way. Therefore, first, what is the difference? Secondly, is that not offensive to Rwanda? Thirdly, is that not worrying to the 100-plus refugees from Libya whom the UN recently settled in Rwanda? Under what circumstances would she then agree to legislation that recognised Rwanda again as a safe country?
Alison Thewliss
I believe that it is fundamentally unwise to recognise countries as safe in perpetuity, because things are unsafe. This amendment highlights the illogicality of this Bill. These things should not be legislated on at all. The hon. Gentleman mentions the Libyans who are being transited through Rwanda. They are not settling in Rwanda; they are being transited through Rwanda to other countries such as Canada.
Alison Thewliss
I wish to make some progress. The hon. Gentleman will be able to contribute later on.
I wish to touch on what the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has said about this. It has reviewed the updated UK-Rwanda scheme and it says:
“It maintains its position that the arrangement, as now articulated in the UK-Rwanda Partnership Treaty and accompanying legislative scheme, does not meet the required standards relating to the legality and appropriateness of the transfer of asylum seekers and is not compatible”—
it is not compatible—
“with international refugee law.”
Equally, this Bill does not have any kind of sunset clause, or a set of circumstances by which it can acknowledge a change in the situation in Rwanda. That is foolhardy, and it is bad legislation. The clauses that talk about mere monitoring of the situation do not go far enough. That is a prime example of the incompetence of this legislation and how it cannot really be made to work.
There has been ongoing tension, for example, with the neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo, where recently re-elected President Tshisekedi has been quoted as saying in relation to Rwandan-backed M23 rebels:
“If you re-elect me and Rwanda persists…I will request the Parliament and Congress to authorise a declaration of war. We will march on Kigali. Tell Kagame those days of playing games with Congolese leaders are over.”
I ask Conservative Members what would happen to their precious treaty and to this legislation should such a situation escalate. None of us wants to see that, but it could happen. More importantly, what would happen in the interim to anybody the Home Secretary had sent to this unsafe situation in Rwanda? They would not be able to bring them back. That person would be stuck in a situation of conflict.
It is beyond me how Conservative Members, including former Ministers and members of the legal profession, can sign up to amendments shredding the rule of law and human rights. Our amendments 46 to 50 are, at the very minimum, an attempt to reinstate the powers of our courts and tribunals to do their work. They are the people qualified to make these decisions, and they do so for the most part with great diligence. Their services are stretched and there is much more that could be improved were the UK Government not chucking away hundreds of millions of pounds on distractions such as this legislation that they bring here today.
The Government have recently published their consultation response on safe and legal routes, following the Illegal Migration Act 2023, and it offers nothing. It offers no change whatsoever—no new safe and legal routes that would help to resolve the situation. The Refugee Council has presented a credible alternative, and the Minister could not be less interested.
I honestly do not know what to say about the amendments of the former Minister, the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), and his cabal. It sickens me that they would treat people in this way. Surely the only way in their minds that they can justify treating asylum seekers in this way is if they consider them to be less. If they do not matter, they can therefore be shipped off as if they were some kind of inconvenient waste. This is stirring up fear and hatred of people who only came here to ask for our protection. These are real lives; it is not some political game. I say to Conservative Members who are focused on this Tory psychodrama that this is about real people and real people’s lives. We on the SNP Benches see them as humans, just like us. Shame on all those Members.
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)
I rise to speak in favour of the amendments in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash).
A single question—at least on the Conservative Benches—hangs over this debate: what works? It does not matter whether this is the most robust piece of immigration legislation that we have ever considered. That is not relevant. It does not matter whether this is a suitable compromise between this faction or that. That might be a noble aim, but it is not what we are here to do on behalf of our constituents today. What matters is whether this scheme works. Why does that matter? It matters because illegal migration is doing untold damage to our country. It is costing us billions of pounds. It is exploiting tens of thousands of people. It is leaving a trail of human misery across Europe, north Africa and beyond. People are drowning in the English channel and will continue to do so month after month. We must fix this problem. We in this House have the power to do so, and the responsibility is on our shoulders. The question is: are we willing to do it.
The current Bill does not work. The test of whether it works is not whether we can get a few symbolic flights off in the months ahead, with a small number of illegal migrants on them. The test is whether we can create the kind of sustainable deterrent that we set out to achieve— the sustainable deterrent that my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) set out to achieve when she secured this groundbreaking deal with Rwanda. It is the kind of deterrent that protects not just this country for generations to come from the scourge of illegal migration, but the whole continent of Europe. I can tell all right hon. and hon. Members that, having spoken to almost every Interior Minister and Immigration Minister not just in Europe, but in Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco and Turkey, they all ask, “When will you get this policy up and running? Will it work?” And they want it to work. They know that if we can create a sustainable deterrent, we will stop people coming, we will secure Europe’s borders and we will save lives. In an age of mass migration, this is one of the most important challenges that we face.
Sir Chris Bryant
I completely agree with the right hon. Gentleman about one thing: this Bill will not work. I do not think it will work if it includes the amendments that he has tabled, either. That is because he and I have come to a completely different position on the nature of the deterrence and whether it would work at all. It seems to me self-evident that there must be an enormous deterrent if you have to get in a tiny boat, risking your life as a pregnant woman with children beside you, having paid thousands of pounds to a vile, despicable people trafficker. What evidence does he have that this plan, this gimmick, is any more of a deterrent than that?
Robert Jenrick
If the hon. Gentleman were right, hundreds of thousands of people would not be making that very journey every year. Millions of people in the world want to make that journey. There are thousands of people in France seeking to pay people smugglers to come to our country. The only way we will stop that is if we break the people smugglers’ business model once and for all, so that it is clear beyond doubt that if people come to this country, they will be detained and swiftly removed to Rwanda or another safe country.
Where the hon. Gentleman is wrong is that he, like those on the Labour Front Bench, believes completely erroneously that we can arrest our way out of this problem. The National Crime Agency does not support them in that contention, and I have not seen any evidence that that will work. Nobody who has looked into this problem believes that the fungible and complex gangs that stretch across Europe and beyond, which import boats for next to nothing from China, Bulgaria and Turkey, can just be arrested out of existence. Everyone says the same thing: “Create a deterrent.” That is what the Rwanda policy does.
Robert Jenrick
I will not give way again to the hon. Gentleman. Let me move forward and speak more directly to our amendments, because that is the purpose of today.
The amendments tabled in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone are in four groups, two of which will be discussed today and two tomorrow. They seek to address the evident flaws of the Bill, and they represent the last opportunity for us to get this policy right. I shall speak directly to mine, and my hon. Friend can speak to the one that he leads on. Mine speak to individual claims. This is a point I have made time and again.
All my experience at the Home Office teaches me that every single illegal migrant who comes to this country will try every possible way to avoid being removed. We know that; that is what they do today. It is human nature that people would do that. We have to legislate for human nature, not against it. Every legal representative and lefty lawyer will try everything they can to support those claims. We see it every time, and experience teaches us that.
The Bill improves the situation; it makes it tighter, but in respect of only the general safety of Rwanda, not an individual’s circumstance.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Robert Jenrick
I will give way to the hon. Lady in a moment. As night follows day, every migrant will say, “Rwanda may be generally safe”—I believe that it is—“but it is not safe for me.” That is one of the central intellectual incoherences, as the Government’s own lawyers have said, at the heart of the Bill. It envisages that Rwanda is generally safe but, for a range of unspecified reasons, foresees that it will not be safe for others. Of course, as we have seen in the past, one person will mount a successful challenge, and that will create a precedent. Every legal representative and non-governmental organisation like Care4Calais will then school everyone to make exactly the same challenge and, time and again, we will lose those cases in the courts. The Bill, in that respect, is legally flawed, but it is also operationally flawed because of that.
Let me explain to those who are, understandably, not as well versed as those of us who have been Ministers in this field: we have only 2,000 detained spaces in our immigration removal centres in this country. On a single day in August, 1,200 arrived illegally on our shores, so in a weekend, all the detained capacity in the whole United Kingdom would be consumed. When hon. Members are considering whether the Bill works, they should see it through that lens.
We have to get people out of the country within days, not months, and the operational plan behind the Bill foresees that it will take months for people to be removed from the country. What will happen is our detained capacity will be filled, and people will be bailed to hotels. They will then abscond and never be seen again. Within a single week in August, this scheme will have failed. That matters for the country and, of course, for the Government. It matters for trust in politics and Westminster, because we will have told people that it was going to work, knowing that it would not work. It also matters for all those other European countries that want the scheme to succeed in protecting our borders.
Tim Loughton
My right hon. Friend makes a good case for deterrents but, I fear, a bad case for his amendments. As the Home Affairs Committee found out, when the Rwanda scheme was announced, a big surge of people in Calais tried to regularise their status in France because they did not want to risk being sent to Rwanda, so deterrents do work. He has just said that this is the last opportunity to get this right. Does he not acknowledge that there is a large chance that his amendments would make the Bill unworkable, not least in the eyes of the Rwandan Government? In that case, there would be no deterrent, so what is the alternative?
Robert Jenrick
Let me address that question head-on. I have known my hon. Friend for a long time—he was not born yesterday. That argument is not a plausible one, in my opinion. The argument that the Rwandan Government would walk away from the scheme was raised not just at the eleventh hour, but at one minute to midnight. It is predicated on the belief that the Government of Rwanda would walk away from a scheme on the grounds that it might conceivably fall foul of the European convention on human rights, which Rwanda is not a party to, when the only reason we would fall foul of the convention would be conduct in Rwanda itself. I do not find that a plausible argument.
If that were the correct response, why then pilot a Bill through Parliament where the very front page says that the Government cannot attest to the Bill’s compliance with international law? Why would the Prime Minister say that he is willing to ignore foreign judges when his own legal advice says that that is in breach of international law? Why would we pursue a policy that the UNHCR said yesterday is, in its opinion, in breach of international law? That is not a plausible argument from the Government.
It was unwise of the Government to solicit that press release from the Government of Rwanda. I do not think that we should cast blame on the Government of Rwanda, because they are honourable people who want this scheme to work, and I have the highest opinion of our interlocutors in Rwanda. It is for that reason that I want to do what we said we would do when my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham created the scheme, which is to work with them in good faith to get the job done.
Robert Jenrick
I will not give way at the moment; let me make some more progress on explaining the amendments, if I may.
The way that flights will work when the scheme commences is not under the Illegal Migration Act 2023 at all. The first several months of flights will involve a group of individuals whom my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham and her officials at the time selected when the Rwanda policy was first devised. Those individuals have been in the United Kingdom for years. We have lost contact with many of them and none of them can be subject to the protections in that Act.
Even if hon. Members believe that the serious and irreversible harm test within that Act is a very strict one—I will come to that in a moment—that will not apply to the flights that will go off in the months ahead. It might not apply to any flights that go off before the next general election. If we want those flights to be full of illegal migrants and for there to be a deterrent effect, hon. Members need to support the amendments I have set out, which create that strict approach.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
Will the right hon. Member give way?
Robert Jenrick
I will give way in a moment. When we come to those individuals who are subject to the strictures of the Illegal Migration Act, the Government’s contention is that the serious and irreversible harm test is a very high one. I do not think that is right. The Supreme Court’s judgment lowers the bar. The revealed preference of the judiciary is to be generous towards illegal migrants and to make the scheme difficult to operationalise. As this is the last legislative opportunity for us to tackle the issue, I suggest we get it right and narrow the opportunities for the judiciary to intervene, or else we are going to find that these flights are symbolic flights, with very few individuals on them at all.
Mr Roberts
I want to touch on something the right hon. Gentleman said earlier about whether the Bill will work at all. He has often gone on the record talking about the Albania scheme, which has been very successful: there are 90% fewer Albanians coming across. In the year to September last year, 2,749 illegal migrants were returned to Albania. They did not require the amendments. The law that we currently have allowed them to be returned, and I do not remember hearing about any appeals from those people. On that basis, and given that this Bill is stricter than what we currently have, why will it not work, if the Albania scheme already works?
Robert Jenrick
I have heard that argument advanced before, and of course I am proud of what we have achieved with the Albania scheme, but that is to judge two quite different propositions. The Albania scheme takes somebody who is in the United Kingdom and asks them to return to their home country, which is a European, highly developed country. That is a very different proposition from enforcing somebody’s removal from the United Kingdom to a third country to which they do not wish to go. Also, as the hon. Gentleman may know, very few small boat arrivals have been removed to Albania. Almost all those individuals who have gone to Albania have been time-served foreign national offenders in our prisons, individuals who have voluntarily chosen to return to Albania and those who have been in the United Kingdom for a long time.
The success of the scheme rests on taking people off small boats, detaining them for very short periods of time and then removing them swiftly to Rwanda. For the reasons I have set out, I think that is extremely unlikely to succeed at any scale in the way the Bill is currently structured.
Caroline Lucas
I just point out to the right hon. Gentleman that people arrive in small boats because legal routes have been blocked. When it comes to his amendment in particular, clause 4 of this disgusting Bill already provides a very limited route for individuals to challenge their removal to Rwanda based on their individual circumstances, yet my understanding is that he is seeking to go even further to override individual legal protections—even decisions that contain errors would not be open to challenge under his amendment 22, as I understand it. How on earth is that fair, just or justifiable?
Robert Jenrick
On the hon. Lady’s first point, we have had this argument many times before, and she is completely wrong. This country is one of the world’s most generous countries in supporting those in need around the world. Since 2015 we have issued more than half a million visas on humanitarian grounds, more than at any time in our history. On her point about my amendment, it is not correct to say that we would not enable people to challenge on their individual circumstances; they could, but those challenges could not be suspensive. Individuals would arrive in the UK and within days—which is critical to the success of the scheme—they would be removed to Rwanda. There they could bring forward claims as they might wish, but it would not block the flights, and that is critical. Without that, the scheme will simply not succeed.
Robert Jenrick
I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman.
The amendment also says there very narrow grounds on which individuals will not be put on flights, grounds that the Home Office is very used to dealing with through fitness to travel requirements. That is a concept that is well known and understood and I am certain it would work.
What does the amendment do that is different? It narrows down the reasons for which individuals could make claims and makes the scheme legally and operationally workable for the first time. We have tried to be constructive in tabling amendments. The Prime Minister set a test for me, and for anyone who shares my determination to tackle this issue, as follows: that he would accept any amendment, whether or not it strengthened the Bill, if there were respectable legal arguments in international law in their favour. We can argue about whether that test is the right one. Personally, I feel very strongly that there are times when contested notions of international law should not surpass either parliamentary sovereignty or, above all, the interests of our constituents, and border security and national security are the prime responsibilities of any Government. But that was the test, and we have met the test.
We instructed a very eminent lawyer, John Larkin KC, former Attorney General of Northern Ireland, to provide us with an opinion. The opinion says that each and every one of the amendments in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone are compliant with international law. Unless the goalposts have been shifted by the Government, I see no reason why the Prime Minister and the Minister could not accept the amendments and enable us to strengthen this Bill once and for all.
In conclusion, at the outset I said there was one question hanging over this debate: what works? However, there is a further question: how much are we willing to do to stop the boats? How willing are we to take on the vested interests, balance the trade-offs and take the robust steps that will actually work? The only countries in the world that have fixed this problem, latterly Australia and Greece, have been willing to take the most robust action. Are we? I am. I want to stop the boats and secure our borders.
This is a difficult issue, but we are not a parish council struggling with some kind of intractable legal problem. We are a sovereign Parliament. The power is in our hands. We have agency. The law is our servant, not our master. I urge all right hon. and hon. Members to support the amendments in my name and the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone and create a scheme that works. That is what our constituents expect of us and that is the promise that the Prime Minister has made to them and the whole country.
Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)
I rise to speak in favour of amendments 35 and 37 and new clause 6, tabled in my name and the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), the shadow home Secretary.
I start by reminding the Committee and anyone watching at home that the Labour party is opposed to this Bill in its entirety, for the simple reason that we are opposed to the Rwanda scheme in its entirety. We have been clear that we need to stop the Conservative small boats chaos and we need to fix our broken asylum system, but those aims can only be achieved by way of measures that are based on common sense, hard graft and international co-operation, as opposed to headline-chasing and government by gimmick from those on the Conservative Benches.
The Conservatives like to accuse us of opposing everything that the Government are doing to stop the Tory small boats chaos, but that is simply not the case. We on the Labour Benches fully support measures such as the deal with Albania, because that is the sort of sensible, pragmatic action that can make a tangible difference. We have repeatedly made our support for that course of action crystal clear, if only the Conservatives would care to listen. However, the Labour party will never support any proposal that is unaffordable, unworkable or unlawful.
Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government are being extremely neglectful with the public purse by throwing money at a Rwanda scheme that simply will not work?
Stephen Kinnock
My hon. Friend is absolutely right: it is quite remarkable that a party that used to pride itself on being the party of fiscal rectitude is throwing £400 million of taxpayers’ money at the Government of Rwanda for precisely nothing. So far, all they have got for it is that they have sent three Home Secretaries to Rwanda, but not a single asylum seeker.
The Rwanda plan is all of the above: it is unaffordable, it is unworkable and it is unlawful. It is unaffordable to the British taxpayer because a truly staggering £400 million of our taxpayers’ money is on the way to the Rwandan Government without a single asylum seeker landing in Rwanda. It is unworkable because we know that the Rwandan authorities are capable of taking less than 1% of the 30,000 who crossed the channel in small boats in 2023, according to the Court of Appeal. In order for a deterrent to be effective, it must be credible. Surely even the most ardent supporter of this policy would acknowledge that such a tiny chance of being sent to Rwanda will never deter someone who has risked life and limb and crossed continents to escape persecution and violence.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
The Foreign Office recently admitted that hundreds of Afghans who are eligible for resettlement have not been brought into the UK. They exemplify the need for safe and legal routes. Are they not exactly the people who are risking life and limb because they do not have access to legal and safe routes, which the Government should provide?
Stephen Kinnock
The hon. Lady is right. The Afghan schemes are a case in point. The Afghan relocations and assistance policy has more or less collapsed, the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme is not working at all, and which nationality is always in the top two or three that are crossing on small boats? The Afghans. It is pretty straightforward.
We oppose the Rwanda policy because it is not a deterrent; it is a distraction. It would be far better, as the shadow Home Secretary, I and others have set out many times in this Chamber, to redirect the vast quantities of taxpayers’ money being wasted on the Rwanda scheme into a new cross-border police unit and a new security partnership with Europol that can smash the criminal smuggler gangs upstream.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making an important point about how we need to co-operate much more intensively with the law enforcement agencies across Europe. The brutal fact is that these gangs are putting people into boats that were made for rivers, not seas, in treacherous conditions. Who in their right mind would go in one of those dinghies in the English channel right now? But people are being forced to do that by the gangs. We need to smash the gangs, and we can do that only by working with our colleagues across Europe to ensure that we bring the situation to an end.
Stephen Kinnock
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. If we accept that international co-operation with our European partners and allies must be at the heart of dealing with the gangs, as he so eloquently sets out, the possibility of that co-operation is fundamentally undermined when our Government are flagrantly prepared to break international law, which should underpin the trust that is a prerequisite for all such co-operation. Co-operation based on joint working and intelligence-sharing with our partners and allies is possible only if Britain is deemed a trustworthy partner.
That brings me to the third reason for our opposition to the legislation and the amendments tabled by so many Conservative Members. We find ourselves in the utterly extraordinary position of debating a Government policy that has been found to be unlawful by the highest court in our land. Amendment 35, which I will come to shortly, reflects that very fact. We find ourselves confronted by a Government who are seeking to legislate for an alternate reality. Although Ministers appear to believe that they can pass a Bill that determines that the sky is green and the grass is blue, that does not make it so.
Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
Has it escaped the hon. Gentleman’s notice that one claim was dismissed by the Supreme Court judgment on Rwanda? That was an Iraqi in the case of ASM. The reason was very simple: the Court made it crystal clear in paragraph 144 of its judgment that the issue in question, as far as that claimant was concerned, was undermined by clear and unambiguous words in an Act of Parliament. In other words, the sovereignty of Parliament prevailed.
Stephen Kinnock
Of course Parliament is sovereign, and of course we in this place are sent here to make laws, but we must make those laws with restraint; we must make them while respecting the judicial function. The separation of powers is fundamental to our identity as a liberal democracy, so although the hon. Gentleman very often talks about the sovereignty of Parliament, it is vital that his comments are always founded on the principle of separation of powers and the checks and balances that it gives us.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
Just to tease out a little more Labour policy on the specific issue that the hon. Gentleman referred to, is he ruling out any consideration of this House determining to overturn the wrongful convictions of hundreds of sub-postmasters simply because that would set a new precedent in the relationship between this House and the courts?
Stephen Kinnock
Well, that is an interesting one; I did not have talking about the sub-postmasters scandal on my bingo card today. Parliament is free to legislate in any way it wishes, but it has to do so in full recognition of the view of the courts. I know that a number of eminent legal experts have raised concerns about the Government’s proposed approach on the sub-postmasters. We have to see precisely how the detail looks, and it is our duty in this Parliament to scrutinise it carefully to ensure that we are not setting dangerous precedents. I would argue that there is no doubt whatsoever that the Bill before us would set a profoundly dangerous precedent because it seeks to directly overturn the findings of the highest court in our land, and that is a toxic approach.
John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Has the shadow Minister not seen all the comments and budget lines that the Government have put out stating that they are co-operating extensively and fully with continental countries in trying to crack down on the awful trade that is leading to deaths in small boats? The proof is that money is sent to France to help the French with their task. There is no evidence that they are not co-operating.
Stephen Kinnock
The co-operation with France is to be welcomed. The problem is that it is too far downstream. We need far better co-operation upstream, which is about sharing data and fixing the issue with the databases—the shadow Home Secretary and the Leader of the Opposition visited Europol recently to come forward with very practical and detailed plans around getting the data-sharing right. That may address the issue of the falling number of prosecutions of criminal smuggler gangs on this Government’s watch and the number of returns and removals falling by 50% since 2010. Again, we go back to the point about putting more energy and resources into the pragmatic and sensible things that can actually make a difference, as opposed to being distracted by this madcap Rwanda scheme.
It is mark of a liberal democracy that courts are independent of Parliament and the Executive. We on the Labour Benches believe passionately that that separation of powers is a fundamental and immutable element of what makes us proud to be British. Not only are we opposed to the specifics of the Bill, but we are deeply troubled by what it represents in a broader sense.
Robert Jenrick
Over the Christmas period, the Labour Front Benchers anonymously briefed The Times saying that they would want to pursue an offshore processing model. Is that the position of the hon. Gentleman and the shadow Home Secretary, and if so, why would they want to do something that is known to be more expensive and less effective—everyone would have to be brought back to the United Kingdom one way or another, so that would create no deterrent whatsoever—and not move forward with a scheme such as Rwanda?
Stephen Kinnock
I thank the former Immigration Minister for his comments. I enjoyed opposing him and, on some occasions, working with him. Look at the Ukraine scheme. That is an example of offshore processing: people’s applications were processed in Poland before they came to our country. Look at the Hong Kong scheme. There are plenty of ways of doing upstream and offshore processing. To coin a phrase, what matters is what works. What is absolutely clear is that it is difficult to imagine any scheme that could be more expensive than the Rwanda policy. I will now make some progress.
I cite the view of the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law and countless other legal experts, who have stated that the Bill is contrary to the rule of law because it amounts to a legislative usurpation of the judicial function. It is an assault on our country’s constitutional conventions, which require the legislature to respect the essence of the judicial function. Moreover, there is a staggering hypocrisy at the heart of the Bill when we consider it in the context of the treaty that has been signed with Rwanda. The purpose of that treaty is to bind the Rwandan Government into respecting the rule of law, and in particular the principle of non-refoulement. How on earth can Ministers hold the Rwandan authorities to account on these matters if they themselves are so blatantly and egregiously failing to practise what they preach?
Tim Loughton
It is a little disingenuous to liken this process to the Ukrainian scheme. The only criteria for the Ukrainian scheme were that a person had to be Ukrainian and come from Ukraine.
The hon. Gentleman has said that enforcement has gone down. Up to the end of November 2023, Home Office immigration enforcement arrested 246 people for people smuggling into the UK, and there were 124 convictions. That is in addition to those arrests and convictions that have happened on the continent, so in what sense are those figures declining, as the hon. Gentleman has just claimed?
Stephen Kinnock
There has been a 30% drop since 2010 in convictions of criminal smuggler gangs, and a 50% drop since 2010 in removals. I would be very happy to write to the hon. Gentleman with clear details of those facts—we have the receipts.
It is against that fundamentally flawed and farcical backdrop that we seek to modify the legislation that is before us today. Our amendments are an attempt at damage limitation—an effort to moderate the most egregious aspects of this nonsensical and counterproductive Bill. Our amendment 35 acknowledges that, in November of last year, the Supreme Court upheld the Court of Appeal judgment. It ruled unanimously that the Rwanda policy was unlawful, because there were substantial grounds to believe that people transferred to Rwanda could be sent to countries where they would face persecution or inhumane treatment if Rwanda rejected their asylum claims, a practice known as refoulement.
The reason for those concerns relates to an issue that I first raised at this Dispatch Box back in April 2022, when the Rwanda plan was first announced. When Israel signed its deal with Rwanda in 2013, many of the asylum seekers who were sent from Israel to Rwanda were routinely moved clandestinely to Uganda, and in three cases, refoulement to Eritrea via Kenya was prevented only by the UNHCR intervening. It is little wonder that the Israeli Supreme Court ruled the scheme unlawful in 2018, and it was closed down. In December, the Government signed a treaty with the Rwandan Government that says that refoulement is prohibited, and that anyone removed to Rwanda from the UK must be allowed to stay in Rwanda. Indeed, the only country to which people can be transferred from Rwanda is the UK, which under the deal must also accept some of Rwanda’s most vulnerable refugees and offenders sent back from that country.
That in itself tells a story. The fact that the UK Government and the Rwandan Government have agreed that Britain might need to take some Rwandan refugees is a stark admission that Rwanda is not a safe country for many people. Indeed, since the first £120 million payment by the British Government to Rwanda, six Rwandans have been granted safety and refuge in the UK. Then there is the tragic fact that Ministers are simply too afraid to address. In 2018, 12 Congolese refugees were shot dead by Rwandan police for protesting against food shortages. Our amendment 35 therefore permits British courts and tribunals to recognise and deal with the specific risks of refoulement associated with Rwanda by removing the relevant text from clause 2 of the Bill.
Likewise, our amendment 37 makes clear that decision makers must be able to take the risk of refoulement into consideration when processing asylum claims. The Bill designates Rwanda as a safe country, and therefore makes clear that
“Every decision-maker must conclusively treat the Republic of Rwanda”
as such. It states that the Bill
“does not permit a decision-maker to consider any matter, claim or complaint to the extent that it relates to the issue of whether the Republic of Rwanda will or may remove or send the person in question to another State in contravention of any of its international obligations (including in particular its obligations under the Refugee Convention).”
However, as the Government have previously acknowledged, the facts on the ground can change, and decision makers should therefore be able to make their own judgments based on the latest court rulings. As such, we see no reason not to let decision makers do their jobs and make decisions based on all the knowledge available to them as the situation evolves, as opposed to the frankly absurd idea that Rwanda can be defined as safe in perpetuity.
I turn now to our new clause 6. The new treaty states that Rwanda is committed to addressing concerns that are laid out in the Supreme Court judgment, including refoulement. New clause 6 would help to ensure that Rwanda can be held accountable on its treaty commitments by placing the monitoring committee for the Rwanda treaty on a statutory basis, and by placing conditions on when the classification of Rwanda as safe can be suspended in accordance with the material conditions and/or non-compliance with obligations under the treaty. As things stand, the Government could vary the operating principles of the monitoring committee without it being possible for such changes to be challenged in our domestic courts. Our new clause 6 therefore addresses that unacceptable position by placing the monitoring committee on a statutory footing, making it judiciable and thus, by definition, more transparent and accountable. We see no reason why Government Members and Members across this House should oppose the principles of transparency and accountability on which our new clause 6 is based, and we hope they will join us in the Aye Lobby later.
Turning briefly to the amendments tabled by Government Members, I would point out that even one of their own colleagues, the right hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green)—the chair of the One Nation group—has described many of those amendments as “authoritarian” and a betrayal of Conservative values. He is right. The Bill in its current form is already an assault on our reputation as a country that upholds the separation of powers and the rule of law, and the majority of the amendments tabled by Government Members would take us even further away from those basic democratic principles. Let me be clear: Labour Members will proudly be voting against the amendments that are being promoted by Conservative Members, because the Government’s Rwanda policy is unaffordable, unworkable and unlawful; because the Bill is an affront to the values that we hold dear; and because we will always stand up for the separation of powers, the rule of law, and ensuring that we can stand tall in the world.
Robert Jenrick
The hon. Gentleman is very kind to give way a second time. I have listened to him carefully, but I have not heard an answer to one of the central questions of the debate. It is the Government’s view that Rwanda is a safe country; what is the view of the Labour party? Is Rwanda a safe country? I think we would all be interested to know the Labour party’s position—I know the Government of Rwanda would be interested.
Stephen Kinnock
I thank the right hon. Member for that intervention. I do not think I could have made it any clearer that we believe in the rule of law and the judicial function, and when the Supreme Court of our land rules that it is not safe to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, we on the Labour Benches absolutely agree with that position.
We have seen some pretty bizarre stuff emanating from the Conservative Benches over the decades, but when the history books of the past 14 years are written, the Conservatives’ psychodramas over this Rwanda policy will surely take centre stage. Just think of the astonishing amount of Government time that has been ploughed into this unaffordable and unworkable nonsense, when Ministers and officials could have been focused on the design and delivery of the sorts of sensible, practical measures that I mentioned earlier. Just think of the vast amounts of political capital that the Prime Minister has squandered on a policy that he does not actually believe in, that his Home Secretary has privately pooh-poohed—if you will pardon the pun, Chair—and that has left his leadership in tatters.
The legislation before us is a sham, but in the interests of damage limitation, I urge Members to get behind Labour’s amendments today. Of course, most crucially, I urge them to vote down this Bill on Third Reading, and get behind Labour’s plan to deliver the security partnership and cross-border police unit that will smash the criminal gangs, defeat the people smugglers, and stop the Tory boats chaos once and for all.
Sir William Cash
We want the Bill to succeed. We want it to work and to do what our voters want, but at present it does not. Clause 2, as it stands, does not work, which is why I shall press my amendment 10 to a vote, supported as it is by well over 60 Members of Parliament. Clause 2 needs to be amended with clear and unambiguous words, and with a full “notwithstanding” formula, not the one currently on offer. This formula has been used throughout our legislative history, for hundreds of years, but most recently it has been enacted in our most important domestic constitutional legislation, without opposition—namely, in section 38 of the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020.
The sovereignty of the Crown in Parliament is democracy, and it is described in a leading case by the great Lord Bingham, our greatest modern jurist, as the “bedrock of our constitution”. Democracy delivers the wishes of the voters who elect us through the legislation that we pass as Acts of Parliament, and it is this democracy for which people fought and died. Nothing can be more important to their daily lives, including illegal immigration, and that is why this issue is so important.
However, it is also important to stress that genuine refugees are fairly protected—this country has always done that—as in the case of Afghanistan, Hong Kong and so forth. Yesterday’s YouGov poll makes it clear how strongly people feel about all this. It is a legal and constitutional, and therefore also essentially political, problem.
The reason why sovereignty is so fundamental is that the courts recognise that they have a duty to interpret, adjudicate on and obey the laws made under that parliamentary sovereignty, where legislative words are clear, express, explicit and unambiguous. Therefore, the use of a comprehensive “notwithstanding” formula, as in my amendment, would ensure that we make the Bill work in line with its intended purposes, and that it would not be frustrated by claims of international law or other contrary law.
The Bill in its current form will not prevent, as everyone knows, further ingenious individual claims, followed by further Supreme Court decisions. The recent Supreme Court judgment on 15 November 2023, as I pointed out in an intervention, makes my very point. It shows that the words in the immigration and asylum Acts at that point in time were not clear and unambiguous. However, and this is vital, it seems to have escaped many people’s notice that one of the claimants—ASM, an Iraqi—had his claim dismissed in that very judgment because, in the words of Lord Reed, the President of the Supreme Court himself,
“in any event, the principle of legality does not permit a court to disregard an unambiguous expression of Parliament’s intention such as that”—
I say this to the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) on the Opposition Front Bench—
“with which we are concerned in the present case.”
This was emphatically because the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023 and related immigration legislation was so clear and unambiguous in that case as to require the Court to dismiss the claim of the Iraqi precisely as a matter of parliamentary sovereignty.
John Redwood
My hon. Friend is doing a wonderful job, as always. Did he see the recent briefings, which seemed to come from the Government, that they are expecting a lot of cases under their law and are going to provide a lot more judges for them? Are they not telling us that this is not going to work?
Sir William Cash
I am afraid to say that does appear to be the inevitable inference to be drawn from the statements that have been made. The worry is that, unless the law is completely clear and unambiguous, there is going to be more trouble, and if the Bill was to be passed with clear and unambiguous words, the Government would not need the judges that they seem to want to employ—and nor, for that matter, all the fees that the lawyers will accumulate as a result of taking part in some very spurious cases.
As I have said, the Rwanda judgment is in line with all previous judgments by pre-eminent jurists in recent generations, such as—I mention but a few—Lord Denning, Lord Reid, Lord Hoffmann, Lord Bingham and others. Months ago, I sent the Prime Minister a seven-page memorandum, each line of which set out breaches of international law in almost every jurisdiction in the world, including even the EU itself, the United States, France and Germany, where clearly apparent breaches of international law have occurred without international sanctions. As for the Vienna convention, what really matters is whether the internal domestic law is of fundamental importance in the national interest, and this illegal immigration law manifestly is.
In the UK, we have a dualist system of law in which the sovereignty of Parliament is fundamental to our rule of law and cannot be trumped by international law, the opinions or conventions of the Government Legal Service or—speaking as a former shadow Attorney General—if this be the case, even by an Attorney General. We have a dualistic approach to these matters in which domestic law and international law are seen as independent of one another. The recent Miller 1 judgment states, at paragraph 57, that our
“dualist system is a necessary corollary of Parliamentary sovereignty…it exists to protect Parliament not ministers.”
Furthermore, as Lord Hoffmann made so clear in R v. Lyons in 2002, the courts will have regard to the words of the statute, not the treaty. This is because we have no written constitution defining the internal status of international law within the United Kingdom. As Lord Bingham has said, international law is
“complementary to the national laws of individual states and in no way antagonistic to them”.
International law is not supranational, unlike European law.
British courts cannot deem a statute unconstitutional. Under our constitution, it is the King in Parliament who legislates, not His Majesty’s Government—I thought they had learned that in the civil war of the 1640s. The court does not require to have regard to functions of Government when interpreting the law. A statute, even when arising from an international treaty, will always prevail over a rule of international law. Lord Hoffmann, in the case of R v. Lyons in 2002—I will quote what he says, as I cannot improve on it—stated that
“it is firmly established that international treaties do not form part of English law and that English courts have no jurisdiction to interpret or apply them… It is not the treaty but the statute which forms part of English law. And English courts will not (unless the statute expressly so provides) be bound to give effect to interpretations of the treaty by an international court, even though the United Kingdom is bound by international law to do so... The sovereign legislator in the United Kingdom is Parliament. If Parliament has plainly laid down the law, it is the duty of the courts to apply it, whether that would involve the Crown in breach of an international treaty or not.”
Nothing could be clearer.
In Bradley and Ewing’s authoritative book “Constitutional and Administrative Law”, it is clearly stated that the legislative supremacy of Parliament is not limited by international law. The courts may not hold an Act void on the grounds that it contravenes general principles of international law. Indeed, the Labour Government in 1998 specifically reaffirmed the sovereignty of Parliament in relation to their Human Rights Act, saying that they would not seek to transfer power from future Parliaments to the courts because that would confer on the judiciary a general power over the decisions of Parliament and would draw the judiciary into serious conflict with Parliament. Their own White Paper stated of the judiciary:
“There is no evidence to suggest that they desire this power, nor that the public wish them to have it.”
I do wish the hon. Member for Aberavon was listening to this, because it is about the Labour party, and this still applies today.
Indeed, under paragraph 53 of the House of Lords Constitution Committee’s report of 18 January 2023, the Committee accepts that UK domestic law can
“diverge from obligations agreed by the Government under an international treaty, and ratified following the CRAG”—
Constitutional Reform and Governance Act—
“procedures... And parliamentary sovereignty means that Parliament could legislate to ensure that domestic law differed from the requirements of a treaty.”
Paragraph 54 states:
“Parliament having enacted legislation that is not compliant with the UK’s international obligations, the courts are bound to apply that law.”
Paragraph 58 goes on to state:
“Parliamentary sovereignty means that Parliament can legislate contrary to the UK’s obligations under international law.”
There we have it. And I should add that many members of that Committee, such as Lord Falconer of Thoroton, are certainly not Conservatives or Brexiteers. So there we are—we are all agreed.
In our unique unwritten constitution, our sovereignty patently prevails over international law, which is, for example, in contrast with that of Germany. What happens there? Article 25 of its written constitution, which I have taken from an established work on public international law, states as follows—these are the words of the very constitution in Germany:
“The general rules of public international law are an integral part of federal law. They shall take precedence over the laws, and shall directly create rights and duties for the inhabitants of the federal territory.”
Similar provisions apply under the Dutch constitution, in articles 65 and 66. That tells us that there is a dualist system, and some countries take a view that is different from ours. We just happen to be on the right side of the fence. Similar provisions may be applied by specialist international lawyers, and they may seek to make out that international law in this country prevails over clearly explicit words in Acts of Parliament and parliamentary sovereignty. But no House of Lords or Supreme Court case supports that proposition.
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
I am very much enjoying my hon. Friend’s speech, as always. He gave the example of Germany, which for obvious historical reasons has imported principles of international law into its own domestic constitutional law. For example, the German Supreme Court, the Federal Constitutional Court, still reserves its right to be the final arbiter of whether, for example, European Union law is compatible with German basic law.
Sir William Cash
I am extremely glad that my hon. Friend has made that point, because I had the disobliging necessity to read some of the Supreme Court judgments from Germany. Sometimes—believe me—they run to nearly 1,000 pages, for the simple reason that they are struggling to find something that will support the German people, compared with some of the rules of law that are applied more generally on an international footing, which cause them so much trouble.
As I have said—my hon. Friend has just made my point for me—the European Union is in a complete mess on the issue of illegal migration, and we are well out of it. It still has the charter of fundamental rights, which we excluded in our withdrawal agreement, and legal changes to its immigration law, all of which will require hotly contested constitutional changes and referenda in its member states. It is going to be bedevilled by referenda and constitutional change, and I fear it will not succeed. Very many are up in arms about compulsory quotas and fines for non-compliance being imposed on them under the new pact on migration and asylum, which was passed by majority vote. It is noteworthy that recently the French Government defied rulings of the Strasbourg Court regarding the deportation of an Uzbek national, but they cannot apparently trace him as ordered by their own Supreme Court—[Interruption.] In reply to the barracking I am receiving, I simply point out that the relevance of this is that we are talking about our constitution, which can solve the problem, and about theirs, which cannot.
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making a compelling argument about the difference between this country and those abroad who failed to take back control when we did. He will know that constitutionalists from Dicey to Denning, and from Lord Woolf to Lord Sumption, agree with him that this place is supreme. The supremacy of Parliament is at stake as we debate his amendment and the Bill.
Sir William Cash
I have to say, with all humility, that it is not so much that I agree with them, or that they agree with me, but that this is the law of our land. This is the rule of law as it applies to the United Kingdom, and it is a tribute to the British people that they took that decision in 2016.
As I said to the Prime Minister in December’s Liaison Committee, he can be a world leader on the issue of illegal migration, not only in the EU, but also in the United States, Canada and Australia—every country in the world. The international refugee convention, among other conventions, is seen as requiring reform. In Europe, it is clear that they need to change the European convention on human rights as well as EU immigration law, and European Union voters are voting with their feet.
Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
I start by raising my concerns with the Government about using a Committee of the whole House for this part of the scrutiny of the Bill. We had this with the Illegal Migration Act 2023. In that case, there were hundreds of amendments and the Minister just got to speak at the end for a short time. When we are debating and scrutinising such Bills, we need to do so line by line, and we need to debate and hear the argument from the Minister and the argument from the proposers of amendments. The process we are going through does not allow Parliament to conduct that effective scrutiny that we all want to see when passing laws in this place.
Turning to the Bill, when the Home Affairs Committee published our report on channel crossings 18 months ago, we were clear about the potential problems posed by the Rwanda scheme. As I have highlighted on several occasions in this Chamber, we said that the small boat crossings are an issue on which “no magical single solution” is possible and that:
“Detailed, evidence-driven, fully costed and fully tested policy initiatives are by far most likely to achieve sustainable incremental change”.
We warned that the Government risked
“undermining its own ambitions and the UK’s international standing if it cannot demonstrate”
that the scheme was
“compatible with international law and conventions.”
We said that aspects of the scheme carried
“significant reputational risk for the UK”.
The amendments we are debating today contain provisions that are incompatible not only with the UK’s obligations under international law, but with basic principles of liberty and freedom under common law. The amendments’ implications are therefore profound and affect every single one of us. Despite what the former Immigration Minister, the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) said, I take in all sincerity the Rwandan Government’s view on the importance of upholding legal obligations. We can conclude that some of the amendments would prove fatal to the implementation of the Bill. Indeed, yesterday, the UN Refugee Agency declared that the Rwanda treaty and this unamended Bill are
“not compatible with international refugee law.”
I will speak to amendments 2, 3, 10, 56 and 57 and then focus my comments on amendments 19 to 22. Amendments 2 and 3 would prevent any claim based on risk derived from individual circumstances being considered until the person in question had arrived in Rwanda. That would effectively exclude the very narrow possibility for suspensive claims that the Bill currently allows, and it could result in the person being exposed to the risk on which their claim is based—including claims based on fear of persecution and torture—before it is even considered. The European convention on human rights requires
“independent and rigorous scrutiny of a claim that there exist substantial grounds for fearing a real risk of treatment contrary to Article 3”.
It also requires that the person concerned should have access to a remedy with automatic suspensive effect. The amendments would therefore be inconsistent with that requirement of the ECHR.
Amendment 10 would extend the notwithstanding provision to apply to all the Bill and the Illegal Migration Act 2023. It would effectively prevent a claimant relying on any pre-existing legal protection to prevent or delay their removal to Rwanda. The amendment would expressly allow removal to Rwanda, despite that removal otherwise breaching domestic law and despite that removal being in breach of international law. That includes fundamental human rights from which we know no exception or derogations are permitted, such as the prohibition on torture. Needless to say, the amendment is not compatible with the UK’s obligations under international law and risks undermining our international standing.
Amendments 56 and 57 would provide that courts and tribunals would not be permitted to consider a claim on the grounds that Rwanda is not a safe country where the claimant has engaged in activity or made serious allegations that have brought into question the safety of Rwanda, or colluded or conspired with others who have done the same. Worryingly, the amendment appears to exclude people who have made serious allegations about the safety of Rwanda from asylum and human rights protection. That would be inconsistent with rights to asylum and humanitarian protection under international law and could also be inconsistent with freedom of expression as guaranteed under article 10 of the ECHR.
Amendments 19 to 22 have profound implications for us all. They would prevent any individual set to be removed to Rwanda from arguing that they could not be sent there on the basis of their own circumstances. In the inevitable absence of absolute certainty that no risk to any individual could arise in Rwanda, that would mean that legitimate claims based on a real risk of persecution and human rights violations would not be heard, and that those people whose claims are unheard would be removed to face the persecution and human rights violations in Rwanda on which their claims are based. That is clearly inconsistent with the refugee convention, the ECHR and the other international legal obligations cited by the Supreme Court in its recent judgment.
Amendment 22 would prevent the courts from reviewing not only the asylum claims of individuals being sent to Rwanda, but also claims for unlawful detention, for assault in the course of removal or for discriminatory treatment in the course of the removal process. To be clear, denying those claims would be inconsistent not only with human rights law, but with fundamental principles of liberty and freedom under our common law that have been protected for centuries, including by the writ of habeas corpus. All Members who do not want to see habeas corpus sacrificed today can surely not support these amendments.
Finally, I add my support to amendments that would make sensible and logical revisions. Amendment 1 would require the Secretary of State to monitor whether Rwanda remains a safe country. New clause 6 places conditions
“on when the classification of Rwanda as ‘safe’ can be suspended in accordance with material conditions and/or non-compliance with obligations”.
Sir John Hayes
The right hon. Lady will know that under this Government and previous Governments of all political colours, many people who came here illegally have been deported from this country. When that happens, it invariably does so notwithstanding claims they make about their circumstances. Sometimes, those are claims about their personal circumstances; sometimes, those are claims about the place they are being deported to and from where they come. On the basis of her speech so far, she would deport no one.
Dame Diana Johnson
I do not know whether I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention, because that is clearly not what I am saying. What I am talking about—the Home Affairs Committee is clear about this—is the rule of law, recognising the international obligations that this country has freely entered into, and doing things properly and legally. That is what I am questioning, because some proposals tabled by Conservative Members go to the heart of our common law, our belief in the right to go before a judge and our belief that if one is detained, it cannot be indefinite. Those are important matters that are before us today.
I want to get a couple of other things on to the record. Going back to amendment 1 and new clause 6, while the Government have determined in the Bill that it is possible to stipulate in law that Rwanda is safe—as we know, that is to the contrary of a finding of fact by the Supreme Court—it does not seem sensible for the Government to propose that that status should be fixed forevermore, which would, by extension, make Rwanda the only country on Earth in which nothing can ever happen or change. As such, amendment 1 and new clause 6 have merit; I hope the Minister will consider them.
Amendments 35 and 37 would allow the courts to consider the risk of refoulement in decisions on removals to Rwanda. Given that the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the Rwanda policy was unlawful precisely because there were substantial grounds to believe that refoulement could take place, those amendments also have merit.
I understand from media reports that when the Minister gets to his feet, he will give some undertakings about increasing the number of lower level judges—or, I should say, moving lower level judges up to the upper tribunal—to hear any appeals. That is apparently to deal with some of the concerns of Government Members. The Home Affairs Committee is concerned generally about the lengthy delays in court cases. In particular, in one of our recent reports on the investigation and prosecution of sexual offences, particularly rape, we were worried about how long it was taking for those cases to be heard.
I am concerned about the Government’s initiative—perhaps I am prejudging what the Minister will say, but it is being reported in the press—given the amount of resource and finance that will have to be put into training up 150 judges. It strikes me that they seem to be using an enormous amount of political time and resource on this policy. I look forward to what the Minister has to say about increasing the number of judges when we have so many other problems in other parts of the court system that they have not so far been able to deal with. That concludes my remarks on today’s amendments.
Sir Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee. I rise to speak to amendments 28, 29 and 30 tabled in my name. Although they would amend clause 9, they relate to the operation of clause 2; hence their selection for debate today.
It is important that we focus on what clause 2 actually means, what its effect is and what the changed reality is with regard to the position in Rwanda—and, indeed, the position between the United Kingdom and Rwanda—since the decision of the Supreme Court in November and since the facts on which it based its decision, which relate to the spring and early summer of 2022. There is no doubt that matters have moved on significantly. We have not only a treaty between the United Kingdom and Rwanda, which was signed late last year, but an indication in the form of a policy document published by the Government, and indeed further information, as to the hard and fast changes that the Rwandan Government will be making to, in effect, answer the questions asked of it by the Supreme Court decision.
The Supreme Court decision really was not about the law; it was about the evidence. When we look at what the Supreme Court justices decided, we see that it was very much narrowed down to whether refoulement was still likely, bearing in mind the position of Rwanda. The Court decided that it was, and that is the sole reason why the policy was held to be unlawful. Other grounds were tendered in that case, including one on retained EU law. A specific ruling of the Court was that that did not apply; the law was clear that that part of retained EU law had fallen with our departure from the EU. Other aspects of the appeal were not ruled on by the Court. The decision was not, for example, based on compatibility with the ECHR. Importantly, the decision was not based on a challenge, which was upheld, to the legality of the removal of people to third countries.
In my view, it is neither illegal nor immoral to seek third-country assistance when it comes to this unprecedented challenge. Indeed, other European countries either are doing it or wish to do it. My right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) was right to say that other countries are looking to what happens here and to the precedent that we might set.
In setting precedents, we have to tread carefully. That is why the amendments that I tabled are very much focused on the factual reality and the need to ensure that Rwanda does indeed carry out its policies. When we look carefully at the policy statement, we see that particular tasks will need to be completed, including new operational training for decision makers in Rwanda—I think the latest figures show that over 100 people have now been trained to implement the deal—and the need for clear standard operating procedures with regard to the reception and accommodation arrangements for asylum seekers, the safeguarding of their welfare and access to healthcare.
Of course, there needs to be strengthened procedural oversight of the migration and economic development partnership agreed in 2022 and the asylum processes under it. That means that bodies have to be set up—the new MEDP co-ordination unit and the MEDP monitoring committee of experts. The involvement of experts is needed, certainly in the early days of the decision making to be made by the new body, which will be set up by the Government of Rwanda. There will be a new appeal body that consists of panels of three judges, with subject-matter experts, including Rwandan judges and judges from other Commonwealth jurisdictions. All those details are important, because they go towards answering the question, which I think will be answered in the affirmative: that individuals in the scheme will not be at risk of refoulement and, therefore, there will not be a breach of the 1951 convention.
That reality has to match the deeming provision. I know that my hon. and learned Friend the Minister will be anxious to ensure that deeming provisions do not either perpetuate or encourage legal fictions. This is difficult law, but it is not unprecedented. Deeming provisions are used often in tax legislation. The leading authority is fairly recent: Fowler v. Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs back in 2020 in the Supreme Court, in which Lord Briggs made it clear that deeming provisions creating statutory fictions should be followed as far as required for the purposes for which the deeming provision was created, but the production of unjust, absurd or anomalous results will not be encouraged. That is clearly somewhere that the courts do not wish to tread or to encourage, and neither should we as a Government or a Parliament.
We must dovetail the coming into force of the deeming provisions with the reality on the ground in Rwanda, so that we create not a statutory fiction but a series of facts reinforced by statute. That degree of care does not have to take ages—it can be done in weeks, bearing in mind the quick work that has been done already. That would go a long way to satisfying the natural concerns that many of us have about the use of such provisions. We understand why they have to be made, and we do not oppose the principle of their use, but I simply caution that we take care to make sure that we get that co-ordination right.
Many of us have been down the road of discussing ouster before, and it can take many forms. There have been examples where ouster proceedings and clauses have clearly not worked, and they are not the sole province of this Government. Previous Labour Governments tried to enact bold and sweeping ouster clauses, only to find that their efforts fell flat either before the Act became law or as a result of court intervention. I think of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004, when Labour tried to be too extensive and expansive.
Experience has taught us that where we have clearly defined reasons—and, importantly, limited exceptions—ouster clauses will work. We had a recent example of that in the removal of the Cart jurisdiction in the Judicial Review and Courts Act 2022, where my hon. and learned Friend the Minister finished the job that I started. In the consultation on the judicial review, my noble friend Lord Faulks and others embarked upon those provisions at my direction. That worked—it has been tested not just in the High Court but in the Court of Appeal in the Oceana case, and it is held to be sound and watertight. Why? Because there was a clear rationale behind it, and there were limited exceptions. Herein lies the danger posed by the otherwise well-intentioned amendments by my right hon. and hon. Friends: without those limited exceptions, we are setting the Bill up to fail. That is what history has taught us.
I am a strong believer that it is from this place that the core of our constitution comes. It is from Parliament that our constitutional authority is derived. To contradict the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock), who in many respects couched his remarks well, we do not have a separation of powers constitution. We have a checks and balances constitution, where each part of the body politic respects each other. I do agree with him that restraint is an important principle.
Sir John Hayes
My right hon. and learned Friend is making a profound and important point about the nature of the separation of powers. There is a lot of misunderstanding about it. The separation of powers is not about equal bodies or each of those bodies performing the same role. As he describes, it is entirely a matter of the balance between those bodies. This House is the body that makes laws. Judge-made law is something he and I have debated, discussed and agreed on many times, and it is invidious because, as I said earlier, this House is supreme when it comes to making or changing law.
Sir Robert Buckland
I entirely agree. My right hon. Friend and I are both romantic Tories of an old school, which might surprise many Members. We share that common fount of Toryism that is important to us both and, within that, we utterly respect the independence of the judiciary. It is a separate part of our constitution. To trespass upon its domain—as, sadly, in the Post Office case we have had to—is something that we do extremely reluctantly, and I hope in a very rare and unique way in that tragic and scandalous example.
Richard Graham
I want to bring my right hon. and learned Friend back to the amendments. Does he agree that between the absolute conviction of the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) and the Opposition that the Bill cannot ever work, and the absolute conviction of my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) that it can work only with his amendments, there is a landing space where we can deliver something that will make a difference and will act as a deterrent, without getting rid of all the individual rights in our domestic and international law? That is what we should aim to achieve.
Sir Robert Buckland
My hon. Friend puts the point very well. There is a landing space for this policy. I disagree with Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition and their leader when he said that he would not support the Rwanda policy even if it worked. Frankly, that is an extreme position and not one that chimes at all with what the British people want, because they want solutions to these problems. This party and this Government are coming up with solutions. They might be novel or untested, but at least we are working on it.
Robert Jenrick
My right hon. and learned Friend is generous in giving way. With all his experience as former Justice Secretary, is it his view that the Ministry of Justice will be able to recruit hundreds of tribunal judges—from where, I do not know—and use them to process and decide the claims that will surely come from each and every illegal migrant who comes across the channel, in sufficient speed that we do not fill up our detained estate capacity and have to bail those individuals, so that they abscond, even in the peak season of August and September? His professional opinion would be much appreciated.
Sir Robert Buckland
I will give, if not a professional opinion, my right hon. Friend an opinion born out of experience. Anything is possible, but it is quite a task. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor will talk to the Senior President of Tribunals, Sir Keith Lindblom, about this very issue, to make sure that not just full-time but part-time tribunal chairs will be available to deal with a large number of cases. But if we can do that in immigration, can we not do it in crime as well, please? It is a timely reminder that our justice system is pretty important and, despite my best efforts to increase funding—which we did do—more needs to be done to ensure that the backlogs are dealt with. I declare my interest, and I know that my colleagues at the Bar would tell me off if I did not say that. To answer my right hon. Friend’s point, it will be a challenge and will require probably some changes to practice directions, and cases will have to be dealt with much more quickly than the status quo.
Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)
My right hon. and learned Friend is being very generous and I appreciate the speech he is making. On that last point, does he also acknowledge that the Government’s intention of recruiting a large number of extra judges implies that they expect a large number of claims to be made on behalf of migrants, rather than their being swiftly detained and removed, as we all wish them to be?
Sir Robert Buckland
I am inclined to be kind to my hon. Friend. It is probably not an either/or, but an and. He and the Government will want to achieve not only a further spur in dealing with current cases in the system, but any particular influx we might get because of novel points that will need to be tested. I am satisfied, having looked at the terms of the clauses currently drafted, that it is narrow. If not quite the eye of a needle, it will certainly be a pretty restrictive process. I remember feeling deep frustration at the time of covid in not seeing backlogs in the immigration tribunal come down, despite the fact that people were not coming into the country.
Robert Jenrick
My right hon. and learned Friend may not be aware that after has left office the current waiting time for an appeal before an immigration tribunal is 48 weeks. Given the thousands of cases we successfully cleared in the backlog—many of which, thankfully, have been rejected—that backlog is probably likely to double in the coming weeks. Currently, immigration tribunals will be taking between one and two years to hear a case.
Sir Robert Buckland
My right hon. Friend is right. He is building on the frustration that I had. That is not a criticism of Ministers. The way in which the Home Office was working did not seem to allow the expedition that was needed. I know that he and others have done a lot of work to improve that—by scaling up the number of officials dealing with cases and creating a sense of urgency with a wartime emergency approach that is entirely right—but I can tell him that back in 2020 I was deeply frustrated not to see a decrease in the backlogs, bearing in mind that in other areas we were actually making a difference and taking at least some benefit from the awful covid crisis. The challenge facing my hon. and learned Friend the Minister is significant and we should not pretend otherwise.
Richard Graham
The practice of Government, certainly over the last 14 years, has been that where there were bottlenecks—we saw them during the pandemic in the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, the Passport Office and the Home Office—the answer to those questions was for Ministers to energise that particular department, recruit more people, allocate more resources and get the backlogs down. If it can be done in all those places, there is surely no reason why it cannot be done in this hypothetical instance of lots of extraneous claims by people to avoid extradition to Rwanda, given the very narrow scope allowed in the Bill.
Sir Robert Buckland
Where there is a will there is a way. I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. I do not want to detain the Committee unduly lengthily today—some would perhaps say uncharacteristically, but I really do not—[Laughter.] Self-deprecation takes you only so far in this place! I yield to my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) in that department.
To conclude, the Privacy International Supreme Court case from about three or four years ago is a warning. Where Governments, with good intention, try to overreach and wholly exclude a particular judicial review approach, they will often fail. In that case, we saw an inevitable consequence of a line of thinking that has gone back in our law for about 50 or so years since the Anisminic case. We have to be alive to that reality. We should not put the courts in a position where we end up with what was a highly contested case with dissenting judgments. In the end, it gives us a very important guide on how carefully we need to approach these matters.
I will not pretend that I can ever love notwithstanding clauses. I do not like them, because they create all sorts of internal conflicts. Those conflicts are not necessarily in international law—I am less interested in that; I am more interested in conflict in our own domestic law—but anything that this House does that is ambiguous, contradictory, self-contradictory or unclear serves only to draw the courts further into the realm of politics, where none of them ever want to go.
We do not have a constitutional court in this country and I hope we never, ever see one. Because of our unwritten constitution, we are able as a Parliament to legislate as we wish. But—this is the qualification—I said on Second Reading that the principle of comity, that mutual respect that needs to exist between the arms of the constitution, is one that means we need restraint and to take care when we legislate. However grave the situation might be—previous generations faced wartime challenges—we must remember that in legislating in this place, we do not protect ourselves out of the very freedoms we cherish.
At some point there will not be a Conservative Government sitting on the Treasury Benches, but a Government of another hue. I hope, having been in my party for nearly 40 years—I am much older than I look—that we do not see that day, but a day will come when we, as an Opposition, will be worried about an overweening socialist Government that will try to impose their will through the will of Parliament and will not show the restraint that we expect a democratically elected Government to show. That is why the challenges we faced during Brexit were exceptional. I do not think that, despite the maelstrom we all went through and some of the things we had to do to get that done, we should be seeking to normalise them now.
Sir John Hayes
My right hon. and learned Friend is once again right that this place should not act in an arbitrary way. I mentioned Dicey earlier and he will be familiar with Dicey’s view on that subject. But in the end our legitimacy is derived from the people and we are answerable to the people. On this issue above all others, the people expect us to stand by our pledge and to stop the boats.
Sir Robert Buckland
I agree with my right hon. Friend that we are not just another public agency. This is Parliament and this place has a particular status, position, responsibility and privilege—that word privilege that he and I know and cherish so much in its true sense—that means we are absolutely at the core of our democracy and our constitution. But it is also our responsibility to make sure that the legislation we pass works. I know that he and my hon. Friends who are supporting the amendments want this law to work—I absolutely accept that—but I say in all candour and frankness that I genuinely think the amendments they have tabled will make it less likely. I do not say that with any pleasure; I say it with a heavy heart. History has taught us that where, despite good intention, we end up being too expansive and we overreach, the check and the balance that exists in our constitution will then apply. All that we will do is end up having the sort of arguments about the constitution—not arcane to me, but arcane to many people—which, while important, do not solve the problem, and do not deal with the issue that is facing us as a people.
That is why I urge the Government today to ensure that the intention in the treaty becomes a reality, that Rwanda does what it says it is going to do so that we can avoid refoulement, and that we focus on the practicalities and also avoid more unnecessary legal clash. If I may paraphrase Matthew Arnold, ignorant armies clashing by night is something that we as Conservatives should seek to avoid at all costs.
Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab)
Let me begin by declaring my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, which refers to the help that I receive from the Refugee, Asylum and Migration Policy project, and my position as co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on migration.
I agree with much of what was said by my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) about the process involved in the Bill and the way in which we are debating it today. This is our third immigration Bill in less than two years, and throughout that time Ministers and Back Benchers alike have engaged in progressively more inflammatory rhetoric about refugees without addressing any of the real problems in our asylum and migration system.
Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)
Many of the amendments relate to whether or not Rwanda is a safe country. Would we not be in a different place if there were a much broader range of safe and legal routes? We would not see small boats crossing the channel, and there would be no need for us to discuss whether or not Rwanda is safe, which is not helpful to Rwanda or to us.
Olivia Blake
I entirely agree. That is an important point, and we are struggling to get much sense out of the Government on it. I have asked repeatedly whether safe and legal routes are available to people trying to flee from parts of the world where genocide has been declared, but unfortunately the answer has always been “The safe and legal routes that exist are all that we will offer.” I do not think that that is good enough, and I think we need to have that conversation about safe and legal routes.
The problems that I have listed are the real, human problems. That is the real cost to human life and wellbeing that the Government’s “hostile environment” policy brings. This Bill is another example of Ministers’ doubling down on that approach, and the amendments tabled by Conservative Back Benchers—I believe they are amendments 10, 19, 20, 21, 22, 56 and 57—take it even further.
Tim Loughton
As the hon. Lady knows, I agree with her that we need to extend safe and legal routes—that is why I tabled my amendment previously, which I hope the Government will honour—but does she not also acknowledge that, even if there were safe and legal routes that could be used by legitimate refugees fleeing from genuine violence and oppression, the bogus asylum seekers who do not meet those criteria would still use people smugglers? That is why we need to be able to deter and clamp down on them so that they do not set foot on our shores.
Olivia Blake
We need the safe and legal routes first. The rates at which people are accepted as having a reasonable claim and are given a form of leave to remain in the UK are very high: in recent years, the rates at which applications are accepted have been as high as 67%. I do not believe that a large number of people are coming here illegally without good claims. Indeed, I think the opposite is true, given the evidence from our own systems.
Tim Loughton
That is an interesting point, but how does the hon. Lady explain the fact that France receives more asylum applications than we do but rejects twice as many? What are we doing differently?
Olivia Blake
I would hope that our system has the trust of its politicians and is robust enough to ensure that we are making the right decisions whenever possible, although I still believe that there should be an appeals process within that system. I cannot say that the system always gets it right, and that is certainly borne out by the casework that I have seen. It is more complicated than saying, “This action will reduce this and that action will increase that.” It is a very complicated system, and the most obvious thing to say about it is that in the past few years and months the second or third highest number of people arriving here in small boats has been people from Afghanistan. We are also seeing people fleeing from Syria and from all sorts of other complex and difficult situations at the moment. That does not take away from the fact that it is not necessarily about the nation those people come from and that it is also about their individual circumstances. I have spoken a lot about the rights of LGBT people and disabled people seeking asylum and how we need to make sure that any system maintains that individual view of an individual going through our system. That is a lesson that should be learned from the Windrush review.
At its core, the hostile environment is a policy designed to make life as uncomfortable as possible for everyone who comes here and to prevent anyone from accessing the support that international law says is rightfully theirs, and now the Government are proposing to outsource what little responsibility they have taken by offloading their obligations and offshoring refugees against their will. It is no wonder that they are recklessly declaring Rwanda as safe, despite the known risks. As the shadow Minister pointed out, since the Government signed their deportation deal, six people from Rwanda have been granted asylum here in the UK. Torture persists there, along with continued risks of refoulement to third countries, which is the reason I support amendments 35 and 37.
Human Rights Watch’s reports on Rwanda as part of its World Report series published in 2021, 2022 and 2023 all include examples of torture in Rwanda. In the UN Human Rights Council’s periodic review of Rwanda published in January 2021, it was the UK Government who criticised Rwanda for
“extrajudicial killings, deaths in custody, enforced disappearances and torture”.
The country has a continued history of breaching obligations under the refugee convention, and between 2020 and 2022 the UNHCR found that Afghan, Syrian and Yemeni asylum seekers had 100% rejection rate in Rwanda. Those are statistics that I am sure people would find shocking given our granting rate. It is common for discrimination and abuse to be faced by LGBTQ+ people in Rwanda. Same-sex marriage is prohibited, and LGBTQ+ people are not protected from discrimination by any specific legislation there. All this makes a mockery of clause 2 of the Bill.
Ministers can continue to use ad hoc Bills such as this one to paper over the cracks in their asylum policy, but the truth is that the foundations of their approach are completely rotten. Rather than chasing headlines, it is time they thought again and built an asylum system that puts respect for international law and basic human dignity first.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
Immigration is quite possibly the most important issue facing this Government or indeed any Government in Europe. It is the issue of our age, and mass immigration, whether legal or illegal, is undermining trust. This debate has to be held against the backdrop of the overwhelming numbers coming into our country. Sir Roger, you and I entered Parliament on the same day in 1983. During that year, net legal migration was only about 17,000. It is now 600,000. This debate about small boats is held against the backdrop of this huge influx into our society, on which the British people have not been consulted. It is changing our society and undermining the work ethic of our own people. Too many people are languishing on benefits. Perhaps some of our public services are not paying adequate salaries. We are bringing more and more people into this country, whereas we should be encouraging and training our own people to work.
The whole small boats crisis is made much more toxic by that debate. When people say, “Well, 40,000 people a year isn’t a great deal compared with the sort of numbers coming across the Mediterranean”, we have to see it in terms of that overall debate. Unless the Government can sort this out and actually stop the boats, which was the commitment made by the Prime Minister, it will be extraordinarily politically damaging to the Conservative Government and also damaging to the public’s perception of and belief in democracy. When the Prime Minister says he wants to stop the boats, he should stop the boats. That is why, tonight and tomorrow, I will support the amendments tabled most ably by my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) and my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash). I tabled amendments 56 and 57, which I will explain in a moment.
Against this backdrop, we have an extraordinary and absurd situation in which people are arriving in Calais having travelled through an entirely safe country. There is no threat to their human rights. They may find it difficult to speak French, or they may not want to learn to speak French, and they may not be able to find a job, but they are in an entirely safe country. They are putting their life at risk—even this week, there has been an appalling tragedy—and we are encouraging the most horrible criminal gangs to get involved in this trade. They then arrive here and claim asylum.
Unbelievably, we are putting them up comfortably in hotels, which other European countries do not do. Even more extraordinarily, and I will not labour this point because I have made it many times before, such is the crisis in our hotels that the Government are now spending tens of millions of pounds on trying to convert former military bases such as RAF Scampton in my constituency—by the way, we have now been arguing about RAF Scampton for nine months and not a single migrant has arrived there. The court cases are still ongoing.
If we put ourselves in the migrants’ place, we can see that the draw factor to this country is extraordinarily high. First, we speak English. Secondly, unlike in France or Germany, they will be put in a comfortable hotel. Thirdly, they are given benefits. Fourthly, there is probably a 95% chance that they will be given asylum at the end of the process. If they have come from a hell-hole like Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan, why would they not want to take that risk? We must be mugs, frankly, and the rest of Europe must be laughing at us.
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
The hon. Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant) also asked that question. If it is so attractive to come to the United Kingdom and nothing else has been a deterrent—if the risk to life of crossing the channel is not a deterrent—why should the prospect of being sent to Rwanda be a deterrent? If Rwanda is a safe and secure country where they can have a comfortable life, why should the prospect of being sent there be a deterrent?
Sir Edward Leigh
What is the hon. Gentleman’s solution? When Opposition Members make these arguments, they have to say what on earth they would do. I agree with the Opposition on one thing: with modern surveillance technology, drones and all the rest of it, it is a mystery why we are not managing to stop more people. With modern police efforts, it is a mystery why we cannot interdict more of these criminal gangs.
It is so easy to get involved in this trade. We close down one criminal gang, as the Opposition want to put more resources into doing, and another springs up. It is incumbent on the Opposition, given that we are such an attractive country, to explain how on earth they would stop this trade. I question whether we can proceed with the policy of keeping people in hotels, paying them benefits and approving 95% of applications when they have come through a safe country.
The problem I have with the Government is not their Rwanda policy because, looking at Australia and elsewhere, I accept that the only policy that seems to have any chance of discouraging this mass movement of people is offshoring. My argument with the Government is that, if we pass this Bill and keep passing Bills, such is the nature of our legal system that people will make spurious claims based on their political opinions, which will make it impossible for them to be put on a flight to Rwanda. That is the nature of my amendments, which is why I talk about spurious claims.
Alison Thewliss
The right hon. Gentleman is talking, quite ridiculously, about people concocting stories—I feel that he is perhaps concocting one himself. Will he tell me when he last spoke to an asylum seeker?
Sir Edward Leigh
They may not concoct it; it may be entirely true—we do not know. However, what we all know is true is that every asylum seeker who arrives in Dover will say that they cannot be sent to Rwanda because of their own personal history, and every single one of us would do the same thing.
Last year, we had the farce of the judgment issued by the Council of Europe, which we will be discussing in more detail later. I have been a member of the Council of Europe for 14 years. We now know that this ex parte judgment, this rule 39, was perhaps not delivered according to international law, and apparently, in discussions with the European Court of Human Rights, we have now sought assurances that it is going to be tidied up. But even if our own courts allow somebody to proceed through them, with their case to be heard, even if we manage to appoint a sufficient number of judges, even if the person does not create a history and even if our own courts allow them to be put on a flight, there is this right of appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. We therefore have no certainty that these cases will not be heard and delayed.
I accept that this is the toughest Bill we have ever had. It is a good Bill in its own right. If we had produced it two years ago, we may have been getting people to Rwanda by now, but time is running out. We have perhaps nine months until the next general election. If we do not amend the Bill, we could end up in the worst possible situation, where we, as a Government, say that we are committed to stopping the boats, we have passed the necessary legislation and then we have egg all over our face because nobody is actually put on the flights. We will look extremely stupid.
In my view, the only solution is that when people arrive here, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark said, they are detained, but within a matter of days they are offshored, and the only justification for not being put on a flight is a proper medical condition. That is the only way we will get people on these flights.
Richard Graham
May I posit a slightly different approach? As my right hon. Friend says, all of us on the Government Benches want to do something about the problem. There are Opposition Members who are quite happy to subcontract our immigration decision making to the evil people smugglers operating small boats across the channel, but we are united on trying to do something. The only issue on which we differ is the extent to which we wish to override domestic and international law on individual human rights. My right hon. Friend has stood up for his constituents in their most difficult times, so he will understand that to do so would be a massive step that most of us on the Government Benches are not prepared to take.
Is my right hon. Friend prepared to see the Bill through, in the face of opposition from those who, at times, risk looking as if they are keener on putting sub-postmasters in jail than illegal immigrants, and make sure we have an option and a deterrence that will almost certainly work? Or is he prepared to sacrifice that huge step forward on the altar of an amendment to try to rule out all possibility of any individual human rights complaint being upheld?
Sir Edward Leigh
To be fair to my hon. Friend, I do not like what I am suggesting, but we are faced with a national crisis and we have to look at our own experience of what has and has not worked. We all know that overwhelmingly the people who are crossing are economic migrants. They are all perfectly nice people—I make no complaint about them personally; they are just trying to get a better life—but we all know the truth is that they would do anything to avoid being put on one of these flights.
I agree with my hon. Friend that we would not normally want to circumvent human rights, but in this case we know that is what is going to happen. We are almost arguing on the head of a pin about legal uncertainties, when we know from practical experience that everybody will appeal and be able to create a credible case, based on personal political involvement, mental health or some other reason, and nobody—or only a derisory number of people—will be put on the flight. The Government should grasp this nettle and accept these amendments, although I fear they will not. If they do not, we will be in a very dangerous place in relation to public opinion.
Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)
It is always interesting to follow the right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh). I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak to the amendments tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), the shadow Home Secretary.
As we consider the amendments and new clauses before us, I start by acknowledging, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake) has done, how awful it is that more lives have been lost this weekend in the cold waters of the channel. More families are grieving while dangerous criminal smuggler gangs are making huge profits from these perilous boat crossings, whenever the weather calms. They must be stopped before any more lives are lost and that requires action, but it must be the right action.
The Tories are in total chaos about this failing scheme, which is costing the British taxpayer £400 million with more money promised, even though not a single asylum seeker has been sent to Rwanda. Every new detail of the plan is more farcical than the last and, as we know, more Home Secretaries have been sent to Rwanda than asylum seekers so far.
Even if the Tories get the scheme off the ground, it will cover less than 1% of people arriving in the country, or people in asylum hotels, making it astronomically expensive. That is why I support new clause 6, in the name of the shadow Home Secretary. This would place the monitoring committee for the Rwanda treaty on a statutory basis, and place conditions on when the classification of Rwanda as “safe” can be suspended in accordance with material conditions and/or non-compliance with obligations under the Rwanda treaty. This new clause is absolutely the right thing to do, and I urge Ministers to look at it very seriously indeed.
In April 2022, the British Government and Rwanda signed a memorandum of understanding to provide a Migration and Economic Development Partnership. It is a five-year agreement, from 2022 to 2027, and, under the deal, the UK pays Rwanda large sums of money as part of its economic development fund, which has no impact on the asylum system. In return, Rwanda has agreed to take responsibility for some of the people who arrive in the UK on small boats. Those people will be removed to Rwanda where their asylum claims will be processed, but the UK will have to pay extra costs for asylum processing, decisions and support.
In June 2022, the European Court of Human Rights issued an injunction that halted the first attempted removals until legal proceedings had concluded in the UK courts. The High Court backed the policy; the Court of Appeal declared it to be unlawful. In November 2023, the UK Supreme Court upheld the Court of Appeal judgment and ruled unanimously that the Rwanda policy was unlawful because there were “substantial grounds” to believe that people transferred there could be sent to countries where they would face persecution or inhumane treatment—a practice known as refoulement —if Rwanda rejected their asylum claims.
That is why new clause 6 is so important and would be a welcome addition—and a much needed one at that—to the Bill. Through our Front-Bench amendments, Labour has tried to guide Ministers in the right direction and, importantly, to stand up for our values and our commitment to the strongest border security. That is why Labour’s plan is so important and has my support.
Labour’s plan will strengthen our border security and smash the criminal gang networks and their supply chains with new powers and a new cross-border police unit, so that we stop the boats reaching the French coast in the first place. We will clear the backlog with new fast-track systems, end hotel use—saving the taxpayer more than £2 billion—and improve enforcement with a new returns and enforcement unit to reverse the collapse in returns for those who have no right to be here.
We on the Labour Benches believe in strong border security and a properly controlled and managed asylum system, so that the UK does our bit to help those fleeing persecution and conflict, but returns those who have no right to be here. That is why new clause 6 is so worthy of support from across the Committee. It means that we stay true to who we are—good neighbours, committed to doing what is right and to standing up for those most in need. That is the kind of global Britain that I am committed to.
Getting this wrong would not just be a cost to our reputation; this whole scheme has a massive financial implication too. The full costs of the Rwanda scheme have not been disclosed and what details are available have emerged in a haphazard way, through Home Office documents, official letters, comments in Parliament and a leak.
Sir Matthew Rycroft has said that he is “not at liberty” to disclose the full costs as they are contained in a “confidential” memorandum of understanding between the two Governments, saying that it was “commercially sensitive” information. He said the Home Office annual report and accounts sets out details of the costs for the relevant financial year—the report is usually published in July. However, the Government have set out the costs for future years for the UK’s security collaboration with France. In addition to payments of at least £232 million between 2014 and 2023 to combat illegal migration, the Government have agreed to pay the French sums of £124 million this year, £168 million next year and £184 million the year after. These costs were set out before the payments were made in a public document. This is why our Front-Bench amendments are so important. This Bill is way off the mark, as are the motivations behind it. Anything we can do to improve it should be a priority.
Let me turn specifically to amendments 35 and 37, which also have my full support. Amendment 37 would ensure that decision makers are still able to consider the risk of refoulement when making individual decisions on removals to Rwanda. Amendment 35 would permit courts and tribunals to deal with systematic risk of refoulement from Rwanda. Those are two important amendments, and I urge the Minister, as I did with new clause 6, to think carefully about their merits.
Mr Roberts
Good afternoon, Mr Evans, and thank you for calling me to speak in this important debate in reference to my amendments 1, 2 and 3 to the Bill and some others that I will cover during the course of my remarks. I am not a lawyer or an immigration specialist, but I have sought advice, done my research and, above all, spoken to the people of my constituency.
This is the first time that I have been sufficiently animated to speak in a debate on this issue. Contrary to what we hear regularly from hon. and right hon. Members, when I walk the streets of Delyn and speak to my constituents, almost none of them raise the issue of illegal migration as being among the things they are most concerned about. I appreciate that rural north Wales is a different place to many constituencies, but it is worth noting for the record that it is not the priority of everyone in the country. They would rather the Government spent more time improving public services, making our streets safer, returning us to a period of greater economic stability and—dare I say it—aiming for prosperity, but here we are in another effort to solve the intractable problem of small boat crossings with this Bill.
Some elements do not necessarily sit well with me, but some of the amendments, sadly, sit even worse. Some of the rhetoric that we hear on this subject is quite alarming. I have tried in my small number of amendments to apply a little common sense and compromise, neither of which appear to be in abundant supply when it comes to discussing this issue.
I listened carefully to the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), who is sadly no longer in his place, who spoke passionately on this issue and answered my question and others put to him in interventions very well, but I cannot help but retain a feeling of the fundamental unfairness of some of his amendments. I will expand on that later.
Turning to my amendments, amendment 1 seeks to compel the Home Secretary to confirm on an ongoing basis that Rwanda remains a safe country. I have no interest in restarting the debate about whether it is safe now; for the purposes of this legislation, we assume that it is. What I am trying to address in the amendment is the political and social instability that exists in many parts of Africa, and that regime change is more common in that part of the world than any other.
It will be 30 years this year since the horrific Rwandan genocide in 1994, and a lot of things have happened in those years, largely down to stability and the steps taken by President Kagame. It is probably worth noting that since 1994, Rwanda has had two Presidents, whereas the UK has had eight Prime Ministers of varying levels of honesty and competence. It might therefore seem unusual to table an amendment on regime change, but it is a real concern none the less.
In 2021, coups d’état ousted four Heads of State in sub-Saharan Africa. Elected leaders in other African nations were accused of enacting a more authoritarian approach, presumably to stave off a similar rise of forces against them. Between 2017 and 2019, President Bouteflika of Algeria, President al-Bashir of Sudan and President Mugabe of Zimbabwe were ousted after a combined 90 years in power. In a paper released two years ago almost to the day, experts from the London School of Economics and Political Science showed that,
“their removal, rather than a direct consequence of mass protests and economic downturns, was the culmination of ripened factionalism, which had blossomed after the leaders’ attempts to centralise power.”
That simply illustrates the potential volatility of politics in the region and the rationale behind my amendment. It is not an onerous requirement that the Home Secretary must lay before the House a report every 12 months confirming that Rwanda remains safe. As a responsible partner to various international agreements and conventions, it would seem the least we should do in that regard.
I will take amendments 2 and 3 together, as they are related, as well as commenting on other amendments on the same issue. As a layperson who is not legally trained in any way, but hopefully has a decent dose of common sense, I find it unthinkable that individuals against whom any kind of judgment is made would not be allowed the right to appeal against that judgment. That type of thinking puts our legal process back 100 years; it is frankly beneath us and beneath what this Parliament should stand for.
We have in this country a robust and well-established legal system, from magistrates to county court, Crown court, High Court, Court of Appeal and finally the Supreme Court, with various tribunals and other such devices for specific purposes. As a matter of law and simple fairness, we allow people to question and appeal. Shoplifters can appeal. Car thieves can appeal. Abusers can appeal. Perpetrators of domestic violence can appeal. Rapists can appeal. Murderers can appeal.
I have listened carefully to the arguments of some of my colleagues, both personally and what has been said in the House and in various media outlets. I feel compelled to conclude that the trend towards dog-whistle politics and putting the label of enemy on people where no such label needs to apply seems to have got the better of some people. I point out to colleagues that although it is often the noisiest voices that call for migrants simply to be rounded up and shipped out, the noisiest voices are almost certainly not the voices of the majority of the people of the United Kingdom, which is and always has been a welcoming and kind country to those in need.
We can point to all manner of schemes to show that that has been the case. Even recently, between 2015 and June of last year, more than 179,000 people arrived in the UK from Ukraine. Over that same period, more than 123,000 people have come to the UK on the basis of being granted British national overseas status and more than 50,000 people have come as part of the Afghan and Syrian resettlement programmes. We are a kind and supportive country to those in need—but have we become what many consider to be a soft touch? Perhaps in some ways we have.
I look at the movement of people in two distinct ways: they are either moving away from something or moving towards something. What I mean by that is that some people are, as we all know, in a horrific situation. Whatever people think of the Government in the UK, it does not carry out large-scale attacks against its own people, as we have seen in Syria, and the Government of the UK does not routinely persecute and incarcerate people who dare to speak out against them. Of course we recognise that people in many places across the world need to flee. They need to move away from that situation.
Where I end up, however, and where I have sympathy with some of the arguments made by those on the right among Conservative Members, is that there is a clear and distinct dividing line between someone moving away from danger by necessity and someone moving towards something else by choice. That is where much of the message is lost and drowned out by noisy activists on both sides, when a calm and common-sense approach to thinking about the problem would make it very clear. Those people I mentioned earlier, in danger and in fear of persecution, incarceration or worse, must of course do all they can to remove themselves from that situation and to save their lives and those of their families. I have absolutely no problem with that.
Where the problem lies, however, is that once there is no danger and the fear of persecution, incarceration or worse has passed, movement is out of choice rather than necessity. People are then moving towards something they consider preferable, rather than away from danger—the danger is over. I completely understand the arguments and the confusion about why people need to move from France, a perfectly safe country. Aside from the occasional street protest, and baggage handlers battering luggage when they actually turn up for work, France is a civilised, modern and, above all, safe country where people are not in danger, so people who come from there are no longer seeking to escape but are in fact moving towards something preferable. That is where the arguments of certain charities and some Opposition Members sadly lose their credibility.
The problem is that, once they have made that journey across the channel, they are our responsibility, and we simply cannot send them back unless France agrees to take them, which it will not—why would it? Aside from the fact that the French have no desire to increase their own problem, we have just spent the last decade calling them and their friends everything under the sun and saying that we do not want anything more to do with them, so of course they are not inclined to help us deal with this problem.
What do we do when we cannot just send people back and have to deal with the situation ourselves? We have heard many Opposition Members say that we cannot do this or that, but no one has said, “Here is what we would do instead.” Many people have said throughout the debate that there is no capacity in the UK—that we do not have enough houses for everyone, or enough doctors, dentists, hospitals schools or general infrastructure for even our existing population—and they are right. Relocating asylum seekers to a safe third country is a long-established mechanism used all over the world—it is nothing new—but I do not like the push for a lack of due process in order to remove people’s rights in favour of speed, expediency and a populist movement.
Amendments 2 and 3 would balance those competing needs by allowing for appeals if they are heard remotely from Rwanda post-deportation, which seems perfectly feasible. If covid taught us anything helpful, it was that we could be a lot more flexible in our use of technology than we had been. Since 2020, courts have been rapidly moving online: the cloud video platform was introduced in response to the pandemic, and a video hearing system is already being used nationally in tax and property tribunals, as well as in Chester Crown court, not far from my constituency. By all accounts, it works seamlessly and is a great success. His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service plans to transition to a new service of video hearings covering more areas, so it seems perfectly reasonable for the same technology to be used to hear appeals against asylum decisions.
As the Government have considerably narrowed the eligibility of appeals in clauses 2 and 3, the chance of any eligible claim rearing its head is negligible, so there is no reason that individuals cannot continue to be removed before having their appeal heard via a Government-established video conferencing facility in Rwanda. I am aware of the established principle laid down in law, in the European convention on human rights, that people cannot be removed to Rwanda if there is an imminent and foreseeable risk of serious and irreversible harm. The Government rightly need to pay heed to that situation, as the UK is very much a signatory to the ECHR—a situation that should not even be considered for change.
As the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), mentioned, it would not be appropriate simply to ignore that rule. I thank the Minister for the time he took to address that concern in relation to my amendment and to explain why he did not feel that my proposals would be possible. I completely accept his explanation and am pleased to have had it confirmed by the right hon. Lady earlier, but I hope that a simple common-sense approach will be taken in the aftermath. For example, colleagues have expressed concern that women who are heavily pregnant might be able to appeal on the basis of being unfit to fly. I hope that the process will recognise that anyone determining themselves fit enough to take a 30-mile journey across a dangerous sea in a barely floating craft that could capsize at any moment cannot then claim to be unfit to take a flight in perfectly comfortable and safe conditions.
Michael Shanks (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow a contribution that was slightly more rational than those we have heard from a number of Members on the Conservative Benches during today’s debate. This is my first Committee of the whole House, and it has been an interesting experience. We have had 17th-century constitutional and political lectures, analysis of the US constitution and, really interestingly, the suggestion from a number of Conservative Members—which slightly lets the cat out of the bag—that this policy is all about the upcoming general election and how quickly we can get flights off the ground before that happens. We have heard very little about whether the Bill actually contributes to an effective immigration strategy.
I rise to speak in support of new clause 6. I have spoken in various other debates on this legislation and outlined my objections. It is a fundamentally ridiculous proposition that is becoming increasingly ridiculous as we see the Tory psychodrama playing out in front of us—slightly less dramatic this time than it was in December, but I am sure that will change—and pulling the Bill in two completely opposing directions while the Government still claim that it is an entirely workable policy. It has the dubious distinction of being a policy that is both utterly immoral and completely ineffective, at the same time as costing an extraordinary amount of money. It is seemingly not even supported by the Prime Minister, yet here we are, debating amendments that will take the Bill even closer to breaching international law—if it does not already—and further diminish Britain’s standing in the world. The Bill should be voted down on Third Reading, and from the looks of the Tory chaos it might well be, but for now we have an opportunity to try to make it a little better with some safeguards.
In my view, new clause 6 should be completely uncontroversial. If the Government genuinely believe that Rwanda is a safe country—if they believe it is able to meet all the expectations placed on it in the Rwanda treaty—why should there be any hesitation at all about putting the monitoring committee on a statutory footing? That would ensure that Rwanda’s status as a safe country can be suspended if the facts change—if we uncover additional evidence that perhaps it is not a safe country, if the political situation changes, or if the Foreign Office changes its travel guidance. Surely those are basic things that would lead us to question the safety of Rwanda.
It is on that evidence base that I will focus my remarks. As has been discussed, clause 2 of the Bill is an attempt to replace facts with legally binding fiction. The Bill might be said to legislate for a lie—to make something that is not true on the evidence we have seen true in the eyes of the legal establishment. It was Orwell who wrote:
“In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it…the very existence of external reality…was tacitly denied by their philosophy.”
We are in that situation now: “Forget the evidence to the contrary. Just take our word for it: this is fact.” Through new clause 6, we have an opportunity to ensure that if evidence of human rights abuses or the mistreatment of migrants were to emerge, there is a mechanism to suspend the Government’s alternative truth and make legal decisions in our courts on the basis of reality.
It is risible that this is even debatable. Given the security situation near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi, which the Foreign Office, in its own international travel guidance today, says makes Rwanda “unstable”, is it not a sensible precaution to introduce a protection saying that if the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office were to advise against travel to Rwanda, the statement that Rwanda is a safe country for migrants should be suspended? Otherwise, we have a Bill that the Government seek to make into law that simply says that in perpetuity, no matter what, Rwanda is a safe country.
The 137 pages of the Home Office’s information note on human rights, which it published this week, make for interesting reading. I spent some time reading all 137 pages, and I encourage Members to do so, although I wonder how many have. In some ways, when I was reading it, I was surprised that the Government had actually put it on their website, given the litany of evidence it presents on why Rwanda cannot in all seriousness be declared a safe country. It details examples of the state prosecuting political opponents, deaths in police custody, unofficial detention facilities, police torture, ill treatment and torture in custody, the recruitment of child soldiers as recently as last year, and countless other breaches of human rights law. It also covers the questionable strength of Rwandan Government institutions to challenge those breaches, so I do wonder whether the Government have read their own evidence pack.
To add to that, this week the UNHCR has provided further evidence, updated just yesterday, that the UK-Rwanda scheme does not meet the required standards relating to the legality and appropriateness of the transfer of asylum seekers. It states that the scheme is therefore
“not compatible with the international refugee law.”
It cites numerous concerns about fair and efficient procedures in Rwanda for handling asylum applications and the continued risks of refoulement, and it concludes that this
“undermines the universality of human rights, has implications for the rule of law both domestically and internationally, and sets an acutely troubling precedent.”
The evidence is clear on the Government’s own website that Rwanda cannot be defined as a safe country, but even if we were to accept that it is a safe country, surely new clause 6 gives scope in the future should circumstances change—even if it is the Government who decide that—to suspend the idea that it is a safe country and allow the courts to make their own decisions.
Although voting down this entire Bill on Third Reading is the right course of action, we should at least try to do what we can to make it slightly more sensible—to oppose some of the amendments tabled by Conservative Members that would take us even further towards breaching our international obligations, and to support amendments that seek to make it slightly more sensible. New clause 6 is a sensible amendment that I would encourage Members to vote for.
This Bill must be defeated and the policy it seeks to enact must be abandoned. It is hugely costly and it is ineffective. With the news this week that, as Members have said, five more people have been tragically killed in the freezing cold waters of the channel trying to make their way to this country, it is time to move beyond these gimmicks and the appeasement of the extremes in the Conservative party and to deliver some workable policies.
Sir Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak in the debate. I rise to speak in support of the amendments standing in the names of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), who I believe has shown considerable political and personal courage during the course of this legislation to date.
I want to open my remarks by saying how strongly I believe in the principles of the Rwanda scheme. It is imperative that we break the business model of the people smugglers in a way that means the trade is not merely dented but ceases. We have heard platitudes, I fear, from Opposition Members about how if only we worked a bit more closely with the European law enforcement agencies, everything would resolve itself. Of course, would that that was so.
I can testify not only from my own time in Government but from having spoken to Ministers in the Home Office both currently and previously that a litany of work is under way to make sure that we bear down on this evil trade, and it has had some success. Crossings are down by approximately a third on their peak in 2022, and there has been enforcement action ranging from the French coast right through to dinghy sales in Bulgaria, which testifies to the fact that the UK is working at pace with our partner agencies to try to end these crossings. However, unless we address the root causes, we will always be left dealing with the consequences of the problem. That, I am afraid, is not acceptable to me and, much more importantly, it is not acceptable to my constituents or to the people of this country.
Just this weekend we had, as the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Michael Shanks) said, a tragic reminder of the human cost of allowing this trade to persist. Clearly it also has serious consequences for the United Kingdom. It makes a mockery of our border security and damages social cohesion. The accommodation costs alone of our asylum seeker population are somewhere in the region of £8 million a day, and that is before the through-life costs of these people being in this country. It also compromises our security, as the awful murder in Hartlepool a few months ago made clear. We do not know—we cannot know—who is coming into this country, and that is a serious and substantial risk that it is incumbent on us to acknowledge.
As my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark alluded to, the test that faces us as legislators is simple: will this legislation work? It is not, “Is this legislation the strongest ever?”, although for the record it is, but it is still likely to prove insufficient. Still less is the test, “Is this as far as the Prime Minister is willing to go?” There is a crisis of faith in our politics. That boils down, as it has done for a number of years, spanning the Brexit debate and the causes of that, to whether we as Members of Parliament mean what we say. Is our word worth anything? Are we capable as a country of asserting our national sovereignty? Are we as a country capable of policing our borders?
I welcome the fact that the Government have decided that we now need to derogate from parts of the Human Rights Act 1998, which is welcome, brave and commendable. We now need to follow that logic to its conclusion. As amendment 10, in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone, sets out, we should set out clearly and unambiguously that this Act will have effect notwithstanding the Human Rights Act. We must also close the loopholes that regrettably remain in the legislation. We have proposals to do so, with an accompanying legal opinion from John Larkin KC, the former Attorney General for Northern Ireland.
As my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark set out eloquently a few hours ago, we must in particular strengthen provisions against individual claims, as opposed to the general principle of the safety of Rwanda. It is welcome that we are asserting that, but it will be critically undermined unless we can stop the profusion of individual claims that will materialise, not least with the help, I am afraid, of the creative legal fraternity, if we do not close off that route.
Contrary to what the hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Roberts) said a few minutes ago, we are not excluding appeal rights entirely. If, for example, someone is seriously ill, they will not be eligible for removal to Rwanda under the amendment of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone. However, we must make it clear that we will not tolerate the abuses—and they are abuses—that we witness day in, day out under the current system.
We must also make clear in the Bill that rule 39 interim injunctions from the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg will not have automatic binding effect. That is something that I think many of us regarded as a settled issue. Anyone who watched the Prime Minister’s appearance on the Kuenssberg show on the BBC just 10 days ago will have seen that he was unable to offer that guarantee. He was unable to offer it in good conscience, because here we enter the contested territory of what the Attorney General is prepared to sign off and what the ministerial code will allow. That goes to show precisely why the issue is so pressing. If we do not assert it as a sovereign Parliament in the Bill, it is highly likely that the issue will rear its head again in the months ahead.
Failure to close the loopholes will mean that, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark said, we will face pressing operational problems that will significantly impair, and perhaps totally frustrate, our ability to pursue what this side of the Committee wishes to deliver. Our court system will be overwhelmed, our detained estate for asylum seekers will be overwhelmed, and the public’s patience will be exhausted. We have marched the British public up this hill not once, but twice already and failed both times. This is our third attempt. The Government’s own estimate, as we know, is that as we stand today, the Bill’s best chance of success can be rated at around 50:50. That is simply not adequate.
Mr Roberts
My right hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. I am curious, and it is possibly my procedural unawareness that leads me to ask this question, but if this Bill is voted down tomorrow evening on Third Reading, is it not the case that we will not be able to bring anything else back within this Parliament, on the basis that we cannot ask the same question twice if it has already been negatived? He said that it is not an ideal Bill, it is flawed and its success is 50:50 at best, but if he votes it down, there is surely a zero per cent. chance of anything happening.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. I remind Members that when intervening they should please look forward, so that their voice, mellifluous as it may be, can be picked up and the Hansard reporters can get the words down accurately.
Sir Simon Clarke
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. It is possible to bring back a Bill on this issue, providing there is a substantial difference in what is brought forward from what we are debating. I would argue that a Bill that was not focused, as this one is, on the general safety of Rwanda, but on the wider enforceability of our immigration law could be brought forward in this Session.
It was a regrettable farce—I use the word advisedly—in the previous Parliament of which I was a Member that the overt bias of the then Speaker, Mr Bercow, meant that we were frustrated when we attempted to deal with this issue in the context of Brexit. If the Government do not support amendments to the Bill—I hope they will—I do not anticipate that situation arising in what would be the happy event of their coming forward with a new Bill that goes further on these points so that they can command the support of the whole of the Conservative party.
Sir Simon Clarke
I will not give way further on this point. We are clearly keen as a Conservative party to deliver on this problem in a way that will satisfy the British public.
The Prime Minister has said that he will do “whatever it takes”. Unfortunately, I do not believe that, as of this moment, we are set to do whatever it takes to stop the problem. I can vote for this legislation only if I believe genuinely and sincerely that it will resolve the problem and I can look my constituents—the people who send me here—in the eye and say, “This is going to fix it”, because I have done so twice before and let them down. I urge my colleagues to reflect carefully on that.
The Prime Minister has confirmed that the general election is likely to be held in the latter half of this year. I am afraid that, by that time, there will have been contact between this Bill and the reality of our court system, and I do not think the outcome will be a pretty one. There will have been time for it to be tested and, I fear, for it to fail. At best, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark observed, we are likely to see a few token flights setting off—not the automatic deterrent that will be required to change the incentives. The expectation for a young male who is in essence an economic migrant in all but name seeking a better life in the UK needs to be that he will be detained and removed. That, and that alone, is what will change the incentives driving this trade. That is not what is set to be delivered by the Bill.
In the absence of amendments being brought forward and supported by the Government, I will not be able to support the Bill. More than that, I will vote against it on Third Reading. I say that with real sadness but with total determination that we as a Conservative party should show that we are honest with the British people about the nature of the crisis we face, and that we are determined to do everything in our power to resolve it. Short of that, this legislation cannot have my support.
Jane Stevenson (Wolverhampton North East) (Con)
I rise to speak to the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick). Those of us in this place who are not learned Members have had interesting conversations in the past weeks and months with learned colleagues on both sides of the argument on the Bill. Some want it toughened and some want it slightly softened, but all of us are united in wanting a Bill that works and allows the Prime Minister to deliver on his promise.
I absolutely trust the Prime Minister’s commitment to ensuring that we can stop the boats. I believe that the Rwanda policy can be a deterrent to people. If their expectation is that they will not succeed and they do not have a right to remain in the United Kingdom, they will not pay their money to a person who promises they can succeed. I am grateful to my learned colleagues for putting forward their opinions. If that has shown me anything, it is that lawyers like to talk and argue, and it is in their interests to do so, so we cannot pass a Bill that enables lawyers to bat cases around indefinitely and allow appeals to be lodged—enough to make the policy ineffective.
My constituents find it ludicrous that they elect Members to come to this place and act in their interests, yet we do not seem to be able to do that. I think the small boats trade is raised with me on the doorstep more than any other issue. It is an evil practice on so many levels. These are people making money from others’ misery, and they are putting lives at risk. As I have said before, it is perverse, because a fair and just asylum system should not be reliant on a person’s ability to scramble thousands of miles—across a continent—and to pay people smugglers. It is absurd to any rational person.
Alison Thewliss
The hon. Lady says that the asylum system has limitations, but does she accept that the only way legally to claim asylum in the United Kingdom is to put feet on these shores? There is no asylum visa, and the Government have not proposed any new safe and legal routes to allow people to come here.
Jane Stevenson
Another absurdity that my constituents raise with me is that Opposition parties seem to speak for the rights and interests of 8 billion in the world above the rights of the people who elect us to serve here. I invite the hon. Lady to intervene again, because I do not ever hear a sensible limit. I will come to international development later in my remarks, but undoubtedly, many more people would have the right under the current framework to claim asylum here than we could ever possibly hope to accept into the United Kingdom. Does she have a number that she thinks would be acceptable? At what point is this argument exhausted?
Alison Thewliss
The hon. Lady’s point is quite absurd. Nobody is saying, realistically, that 8 billion people are coming to the UK. The vast majority of people who flee their countries stay in a neighbouring country. They do not go any further because they want to return home. The UK takes a very small percentage of that number, and those who come often do so to reunite with family and for safety, because there are people already here who can look after them and support them.
Jane Stevenson
I fundamentally disagree with the hon. Lady. Scotland does not have the same issues as many English places, and I do not think that Scotland has taken its fair share of asylum seekers in recent months. Globally, we need to look at a bigger reality. Our responsibility in this place is to look forward. The Rwanda Bill will be a deterrent. If it succeeds, it will put people off making those perilous journeys and break the evil, perverse model of people smuggling.
We need to look at the wider framework as well. I had an interesting visit to Washington last year, when I met many people, including from the Word Bank. If anyone has not read its report last year on global migration trends that it anticipates over the coming decades, I invite them to read it. We also met the United States Agency for International Development. My profound belief is that the answer for the world is not to empty the less affluent bits into the stable, affluent bits. Mathematically, if nothing else, that cannot work.
Now is the moment for us to consider a much wider picture and to question the whole framework, much of it devised for a European issue 70 years ago. We live in a very different world. Twenty years ago, information was not available to people living in developing countries. The internet was not there. They had no idea how to get from point A to point B, who to pay, what to say and what to expect when they arrive. We are living in a totally different world. I welcome the Prime Minister’s commitment to dealing with that. In December, he spoke to the Fratelli d’Italia conference in Rome, where he was quite clear, on breaking the business model of the criminal gangs, that
“if that requires us to update our laws and lead an international conversation to amend post-war frameworks around asylum, then we must do that. Because if we don’t fix this problem now, the boats will keep coming and more lives will be lost at sea.”
I wholeheartedly agree.
I am well known in Wolverhampton for telling my Labour council to get a move on, and on this issue I turn my fire, briefly and in a friendly way, on the Prime Minister. He should get a move on. He should be leading that global conversation. It is one that so many countries are ready to have. The United States is ready to have it, and most European countries are looking to our policy to see if it will work, They accept the mathematical and social reality, and that is what our constituents want.
I will conclude, as I do not wish to speak at great length. I thank all colleagues who are trying to strengthen the Bill. I want it to be as robust as possible, because we need it to be fit for the crisis we face. It is a crisis and my constituents certainly want to see results, so I will support the amendments. I also want to put on record my wholehearted thanks to the Prime Minister for his determination to sort this issue out.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
After Miriam Cates, Matt Warman will be the last Back-Bench speaker. The wind-ups will begin after he sits down.
Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Jane Stevenson). She made a fantastic speech and got to grips with the heart of the issue.
I rise to speak in support of the amendments in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick). In particular, I want to speak to amendments 19 to 22 to clause 4, in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark. Taken together, they will prevent individual migrants blocking their removal to Rwanda by using the UK courts to make claims over months and even years. The Bill already blocks claims relating to the general safety of Rwanda in particular, but it does not stop individual challenges like those that stopped the flight in June 2022, which ended up with the case that went to the Supreme Court last year.
As drafted, the Bill states that for an individual to avoid deportation, there must be compelling evidence that they would come to serious and irreversible harm if deported to Rwanda. That sounds like a very high bar, but in reality all that would be required is a doctor’s certificate certifying mental health problems if they were taken to Rwanda. Indeed, that is what happened in June 2022 to a couple of dozen people sitting on the flight on the tarmac. Nothing in the Bill materially changes that fact in terms of individual claims.
Even if claims are eventually not accepted, they still clog up the courts. They can still end up on appeal and, as we have heard, that can be for a matter of years. The Government said last night that they will increase, I think by about 150, the number of judges on the tribunals. All that shows is that the Government expect a large number of individual claims. If the Bill, as drafted, blocks individual claims as the Government suggest, why would they need additional judges to move through the courts? The questions raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Sir Simon Clarke), about where the judges would come from and what impact that would have on our wider courts system, are very valid.
If individual claims clog up the courts for months or even years, then even if they are not ultimately successful they will automatically weaken the deterrent effect of the Bill. The whole purpose of the Rwanda plan is to be a deterrent, and deterrents only work if the same action is always followed by a consistent response. It is the same with the criminal justice system and the same with parenting. Effective deterrents are by definition fair, because they treat everybody equally. Some of those opposing the amendments are normally highly in favour of equality. The amendments make it equal: everybody who arrives here illegally will be detained and deported. That is how we create an effective deterrent.
I readily admit that the Government have made progress and I warmly welcome all the progress that has been made: the deal with Albania, the upstream work with Bulgaria, and the attempts to help the French prevent more boats from launching in the first place. But to actually stop the boats, which is the Prime Minister’s pledge and the pledge we as a party have made to our constituents, migrants in Calais and the international criminal gangs must know beyond doubt that anyone arriving illegally in the UK will swiftly be detained and deported.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East is absolutely right; criminal gangs and migrants have smartphones. They can tell instantly which routes are available, where the boats are, how much they have to pay, what different countries’ asylum systems look like and what different countries’ benefit systems look like. They have an instant trade in information. A deterrent can only work if everyone knows beyond doubt that that is exactly what will happen to everyone who lands on our shores.
Lia Nici (Great Grimsby) (Con)
I commend my hon. Friend for all the work that she has been doing in this regard. Does she agree that the reason we need to strengthen these clauses—this is why I will support the amendments—is that the whole purpose of the majority of people who come here illegally is to claim asylum in order to prevent the possibility of deportation? The Home Office’s own figures show that when that process has happened, 70% of those people abscond. We need to stop that now.
Miriam Cates
I entirely agree. The problem is that Britain has become known as a soft touch, partly because of the delays in our courts, partly because of the generosity that has led to the housing of migrants in hotels, and partly because our acceptance rate is very high compared with those in other countries. If the Bill is to serve as an effective deterrent, we must remove the limitations of the current scheme by ensuring that everyone who arrives here illegally is swiftly detained and then deported.
The amendments argue that individual migrants should not be able to make suspensive claims—they should not be able, in British courts, to claim against deportation—but should retain those rights when they arrive in Rwanda. We are not talking about removing those individual rights to claim asylum, or even to be sent back to the UK in some circumstances. However, it is essential for that process to happen offshore, in the third country of Rwanda, because it is the deportation that is the deterrent. That is why the amendments are so necessary for all individuals, except those who are unfit to fly or in respect of whom obvious mistakes have been made. Of course they should not be put on planes to Rwanda, but the amendments would make it consistent for all others to be sent there.
As I have said, the point of this is a deterrent, but there is strong opposition to the amendments—on the Opposition Benches, obviously, but also among many on these Benches. Let me draw their attention to a poll published last night in The Telegraph, which showed that in nearly every constituency swift detention and deportation is the most popular way of dealing with illegal immigration. It is the preferred option for a large proportion of the general public. While various interpretations of international law and its application may be strongly contested in Westminster, as we have heard today, the need for secure borders is not a contested idea in the country as a whole.
The British people are generous and compassionate. They support managed schemes to welcome refugees, as we have seen over the past few years. However, when they see tens of thousands of mostly able-bodied young men coming from France, which is a safe country, taking physical risks to cross the world’s busiest shipping lane in dinghies, and then being housed in hotels at great expense to taxpayers—and when they see some of those people absconding and some committing horrific crimes, and then hear Westminster commentators saying that because of international conventions we cannot deport them—they ask, “Are you serious?” Are we, indeed, serious in saying that we cannot do that?
Most ordinary people in this country do not lie awake at night worrying about our standing among elite international lawyers. They lie awake at night worrying about security, crime and the cost of housing, all the issues that are made significantly worse by the abuse of our asylum and immigration system—because, without doubt, our system is being abused, and will continue to be abused unless the Bill is strengthened to limit those suspensive claims so that all the people arriving on our shores illegally are treated in the same way, and are detained and deported.
The fact is that weaknesses are always exploited. That is a sad fact of history and human nature, and those who do not believe it are, I am afraid, naive. We must deal with the reality. My right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) put it very well: many of us would behave in exactly the same way in these circumstances, if we saw what was available in the UK and compared it to a life in another country, and if we knew that it was easy to come here, tie up the courts for a long time and, potentially, abscond. Many would do the same, because that is human nature. The reality is what we have to deal with.
This is a matter of responsibility. The responsibility of the British Government is the safety and welfare of the British people. It is not our responsibility to rehouse everybody in the world who would like to leave their own country and come to ours. We can absolutely sympathise with their plight as individuals, but it is simply unrealistic to say that the UK has a responsibility to any asylum seeker anywhere in the world who would like to come here. We have a responsibility for our constituents; other Governments have a responsibility for theirs. If they are not engaging with that responsibility correctly, that is not our fault.
Jane Stevenson
Would my hon. Friend agree that a focus on foreign aid and a united effort—[Interruption.] I thank the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) for shouting at me. Does my hon. Friend agree that there should be a united focus on helping safe developing countries to benefit from giving these people asylum? They could make good lives there, with education and good prospects for their children. That is the way forward rather than this mass influx into the UK.
Miriam Cates
I agree with my hon. Friend, who of course is right. One of the many solutions to this problem is to improve conditions in some of the countries from which people are fleeing, but we also have to be realistic. We cannot solve all the problems in the world. We are speaking about illegal migration, but there are also ethical issues with legal migration. Taking large numbers of well-trained, well-educated young people from developing countries into our NHS and our workforce is not helping the countries that they are leaving. The ethics of the whole immigration debate need careful scrutiny in both directions.
I shall come back to my point. Yes, we should be compassionate and yes, we need well-managed schemes for taking refugees, but it is not the responsibility of the British Government to rehouse everybody in the world who would like to come here. That does not mean that we do not have sympathy for the plight of individuals, but the definition of responsibility and accountability matters, and our responsibility is first and foremost to our constituents and the welfare of those in the UK.
I support these amendments and I will be voting for them tonight because the Bill must work. It must work to provide an effective deterrent; it must work to secure our borders; it must work to prevent people smuggling; and it must work to show the British people that their elected representatives really do take their concerns seriously.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
After Matt Warman we will have the ministerial response, then Alison Thewliss will make references to her amendment, and then we are expecting multiple votes.
Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)
I want to begin by talking about the remarkable contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), to whose amendment I wish to speak. In a constituency such as mine, which voted overwhelmingly for Brexit, the work that he has done over many decades is appreciated, and it is something that has served the national interest, so I am somewhat nervous about criticising amendment 10. None the less, I know that he and I, more than anything else, can disagree courteously, which is perhaps more than I and many others have managed with some Brexiteers who have perhaps got too much credit for a project that has now run its course.
I could talk a little about why I worry that a Bill that is already judged to have a 50:50 chance of success could, in the pursuit of toughening it up, be driven to having a far lesser chance of success. The people who say that they want it to work, and to work quickly, in fact run the risk of driving it into the courts, seeing it fail and seeing us as a party take less of the action that is so clearly in the national interest.
Sir William Cash
Having looked at my amendment carefully, has my hon. Friend observed that the only way to guarantee that this Bill will be satisfactorily regarded by the courts is if the sovereignty of an Act of Parliament is combined with clear, unambiguous words that improve the Bill? That does not mean that it will not go through; it means that it will go through and the courts will accept it.
Matt Warman
I would agree with my hon. Friend that the Bill could go through, but that does not guarantee legal success, as he knows. He is right to say that there is a respectable legal argument to be made for it, but a respectable legal argument does not guarantee success. I want, not least because of the poll that he and others have cited, to see us taking clear and effective action on this. To be successful, that clear and effective action must be able to survive the potential legal challenges. I argue in favour of the tightrope on which the Government are walking not because I lack conviction but because I want to see action as quickly as possible on an issue that, I hear from my constituents day in, day out, has a clear and real impact on their lives.
Only yesterday, the Home Office announced that it is closing another two hotels in my constituency that are being used to house asylum seekers. The global migration crisis is on the doorstep of constituents in Boston and Skegness, which is why we must tackle it effectively. I will take no lectures from anyone in this Committee on my personal commitment to tackling this issue, and I want the Government to stay on the tightrope and to get on with addressing this vital matter.
Sir William Cash
I hope my hon. Friend noticed that I said that changes to the European Union’s charter of fundamental rights and the European Court of Human Rights will ultimately lead to constitutional referenda and amendments, which would not only take a long time but might be impossible.
Matt Warman
I fear that some of what my hon. Friend says is correct, but it is also true that we lessen our ability to make that case, on our own behalf and in the global interest, if we step back. I want to see Britain leading that conversation and taking its place at the table. If we can do that, we will be able to construct a global system today, just as we did 70 years ago. It worked then, and we need a system that works now.
The more we send a signal that says Britain is stepping back, the less we have the right to make the case, and making that case is surely in the interest of all our constituents. My hon. Friend is right that it will take a long time, but he surely has to acknowledge that we must have that long-term view, because this global migration crisis will be with us for decades. If we step back, we will have less right to influence that conversation.
Lia Nici
I thank my hon. Friend and near constituency neighbour for giving way. I am sure his constituents are in the same frame of mind as mine on how illegal migration is having a detrimental effect on our communities. Does he agree that that is why it is so important for us to be able to have these wider discussions, and for the Government to take our amendments seriously? It is only by having robust discussions on the options and amendments that we want the Government to consider that, internationally, we can get to the place he talks about.
Matt Warman
I agree up to a point, but the Government can go only so far before they lessen their chances of getting the Bill through successfully in terms of potential future legal challenges. This is about the practicality of delivering a Bill and about Britain’s place on the world stage, which should allow us to continue to play a leading role in reforming those vital conventions and international agreements.
Does the Bill work? Does it go as far as it can without fundamentally jeopardising its chance of legal success? Yes, it does. It walks a tightrope. I know that my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) says that there is legal advice supporting his position, and I would like to see it, as I am sure the Government would. However, that practical issue of whether the Bill can work is a tightrope that the Government have to judge. I accept that the Bill goes as far as it can—for me, in some ways, it goes too far. Some Conservative Members have said that it goes too far for them but that they are prepared to support it because of the importance of the issue.
Beyond that, we need to address Britain’s place in the world and our role: our ability to help shape a new set of conventions that work not just for us or for countries that share our values and share this problem, but for the countries that people are fleeing from. We have an opportunity to reform that global system and we lessen our ability to do so if we say that we are able to stand apart from its rules. That is a balance we can strike, and if we are optimistic about Britain’s future place in the world, we should be saying that we stay at that table, not that we resile from it. That is why I will support the Government in seeking to rebuff the amendments and to get on with addressing this vital issue, because it will establish Britain as a country that is committed to those commitments that we made some time ago and helped to draw up. It will also demonstrate that we are committed to going as far as possible in pursuit of challenging a vital issue that affects all our constituents. I look forward to the Government’s winning the vote this evening.
The Minister for Countering Illegal Migration (Michael Tomlinson)
What a great pleasure it is to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman). I believe it is the second time I have done so on this Bill, and I will try to emulate his courteous exchanges with colleagues. I enjoyed his exchanges with my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) and with his near neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Lia Nici), because it is with such courtesy that we can still have a robust discussion about this vital issue. We have had a wide-ranging debate and I am grateful to all right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions.
As the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) had the lead amendment, I start by making some overarching remarks in response to her amendments. This House has a fundamental choice: we can legislate, as the Government propose, to end the perilous journeys being made across the channel, by enabling Parliament to confirm that, in the light of the treaty that the Home Secretary signed on 5 December and of the updated evidence, the Republic of Rwanda is a safe third country, or we can put into statute a scheme that is riven with holes by amendments tabled by right hon. and hon. Opposition Members that make the Bill simply unworkable.
The new legally binding treaty with the Government of the Republic of Rwanda does respond to the concerns set out by the Supreme Court. It also reflects the strength of the Government of Rwanda’s protections and commitments, both to this scheme and to the rule of law—I will return to that point later in my speech. Let there be no doubt that our Government are focused and determined to stop the boats. We have made progress, but we must be enabled to finish the job.
Clause 2 creates a conclusive presumption that the Secretary of State, immigration officers, and courts and tribunals must start from the basis that Rwanda is safe. It is right to say that it will not send someone to another country in breach of the refugee convention. The Supreme Court’s ruling on the Rwanda policy recognised that changes could be delivered in the future that could address the conclusions they came to, and we have been working closely with Rwanda to address those issues. When considered together, the treaty and the evidence of the changes in Rwanda since the summer of 2022—I will come back to that evidence in relation to points picked up by right hon. and hon. Members during the debate—mean that we can confidently conclude that Rwanda is a safe country.
Patrick Grady
If Rwanda is a safe and secure place in which asylum seekers can live comfortable and productive lives, why should the prospect of being sent there be a deterrent?
Michael Tomlinson
The deterrent is because they are seeking to come to this country and not Rwanda. I hope the hon. Gentleman listens to the evidence that I am about to set out. He has sat through a fair amount of the debate and I always enjoy taking interventions from him, so I encourage him to consider the evidence as I progress with my remarks.
Sir William Cash
As he heard, I made reference to the Rwanda judgment and the case of ASM, whose claim was dismissed because of the sovereignty of Parliament in the context of immigration laws that were revoked under the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023. That is a perfect example of what the courts will do under paragraph 144 of the judgment. Does he accept that it is the sovereignty of Parliament that led the Court to make that decision, as it itself stated?
Michael Tomlinson
As my hon. Friend knows, he and I agree on a great deal and I have paragraph 144 engraved on my heart. We have had a number of exchanges about that paragraph, and it is clear that the Court will not disregard an unambiguous expression of Parliament’s intention, as set out in paragraph 144. I will come back to the comments made by my hon. Friend a little later in my speech.
Since the evidential position considered by the courts in summer 2022, there have been further specific information, evidence and assurances from the Government of Rwanda that explicitly address the challenges raised by the claimants and the UNHCR in the litigation, and the findings of the Supreme Court, following its judgment in November. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland) mentioned the evidence and the importance of looking at it, so it is worth setting out some of that here, at least in outline.
First, let me set out the headlines from the world rankings. The World Economic Forum global gender gap report ranked Rwanda 12th in the world for gender parity. Interestingly, it ranked the UK 15th. Secondly, Rwanda’s overall score in the World Justice Project’s rule of law has increased consistently from 2019 and 2023, and Rwanda ranked first in its region and 41st out of 142 globally. I will come back to that important point and provide more detail. The World Bank scored Rwanda 16 out of a maximum score of 18. That is just some of the evidence.
The Government published a policy note on the date of Second Reading and it has been updated this month. There are country information notes on Rwanda’s human rights and asylum system, and on the evidence provided by the Government of Rwanda and the UNHCR. A lot of that evidence is substantial and helpful, but we have not cherry picked evidence, unlike some Members. Other material has also been published. It is worth considering that evidence because that is what has changed since summer 2022.
Michael Tomlinson
My hon. Friend might have been a touch facetious in her intervention—she herself said it, otherwise I would not have dared to say it—but I understand what she says. Suffice to say, we are confident in the safety of Rwanda and the aim of the Bill is to prevent domestic courts and tribunals from considering claims that relate to the general safety of Rwanda, hence clause 2 and the points raised by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon about the evidence, the treaty and the fundamentally changed situation.
Let me turn to the hon. Member for Glasgow Central and her amendments. She is right that the amendments seek to undermine the core objectives of the Bill.
Michael Tomlinson
The hon. Lady has been straightforward about that; she is nodding. We are agreeing yet again during the course of these exchanges. It will do nothing for her street credibility in her constituency, but we are agreeing at least on that point. Her amendments would undermine the provisions aimed at narrowing the grounds on which people can challenge their removal to Rwanda in courts or tribunals.
Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)
On India, Jagtar Singh Johal has now been detained for over six years. Is the Minister saying that India is a safe country for every UK national?
Michael Tomlinson
No, I am saying that this House passed legislation last night stating that India is generally a safe country for the purposes set out in the legislation. I point out—I am grateful to him and other hon. Members who are listening—that India happens to be 79th in the global rankings. Vietnam, where we regularly return citizens to, is 87th. Albania, which we have mentioned and I will come back to, is 91st, and Rwanda is 41st on that list. It is marginally lower down the rankings than Poland, comparable to Romania and higher than Croatia, Greece, Bulgaria, Hungary and all these other countries that are safe, strong international partners of this country. That is the evidence that has been published and that is before the House, and that evidence shows compellingly that Rwanda is a safe country.
I turn to amendments 19, 20, 21 and 22 and amendment 10. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) for his engagement and remarks—he is absolutely right. He set out the moral imperative that we need to act and limit individual claims, and I agree that we need to focus on what works.
As I said earlier, I agree with much of what my hon. Friend the Member for Stone said. He is right about dualism and sovereignty. We may, indeed, debate sovereignty again tomorrow when we come to clause 1. There is a lovely accord between him and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon on the very point of sovereignty, and doubtless we will debate that again. Where I respectfully disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Stone is in his assessment of whether the Bill will work. As drafted, this legislation is clear and unambiguous. Parliament is setting out the law clearly and it will work.
Sir William Cash
I merely repeat the point that parliamentary sovereignty has to be combined with clear and unambiguous words. The word “notwithstanding” is hallowed; it is in the withdrawal agreement of 2020 and it makes the wording absolutely clear. Otherwise it is not clear and the courts could rule against us—as they did, conversely, on the Rwanda judgment, where they agreed that clear and unambiguous words are necessary and essential with regard to claims under matters relating to this Bill.
Michael Tomlinson
I am grateful for the intervention, and I agree with my hon. Friend: he is absolutely right about clear and unambiguous language. However, clause 2 as drafted is clear and unambiguous; if I may say so, it is simply a different way of saying the same thing. Either we have a deeming clause that deems Rwanda to be safe, or a notwithstanding clause. Clause 2 has the joy of both a deeming clause and a notwithstanding clause. It is clear, it is unambiguous and the courts will follow it.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Sir Simon Clarke) passionately believes that this is the right policy, and I agree with that. He mentioned that it is important to tackle the root causes and that we must not allow this evil trade to persist, and I agree with him entirely. He asked about the courts and the tribunals, as did the Chair of the Select Committee—the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson)—and my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates). A written ministerial statement was laid earlier today, and I encourage my right hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland to consider the detail of it. He is right that more judges are being recruited.
It is important to say that deployment of the judiciary is of course a question for the independent judiciary—that is absolutely right—but more are being identified and trained, and I encourage my right hon. Friend and other right hon. and hon. Members who mentioned that to look out for the Lord Chancellor’s written ministerial statement, published today.
Miss Sarah Dines (Derbyshire Dales) (Con)
Will the Minister clarify whether, if the Government can, as reported in The Times and The Daily Telegraph, find as many as 150 extra judges, we could perhaps divert that judicial capacity to prosecute some alleged rapists and murderers here in the United Kingdom? Will he clarify and exemplify what he means and whether those reports are true?
Michael Tomlinson
My hon. Friend is right and I sense, understand and share her passion for resolving the issues in relation not only to the tribunals but to the courts. I know her background and passion for ensuring that the backlog in the court system is dealt with, and she knows my position on that as well. I encourage her to look at the detail that the Lord Chancellor set out in the written ministerial statement. It is right to say that it is in response to the Illegal Migration Act 2023, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Fareham (Suella Braverman) took through the House, and it is right to say that it is there to ensure capacity in our tribunal system. I entirely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire Dales (Miss Dines)—there was an exchange on this in the debate—that we must ensure that that capacity is there in our court system as well.
Mr Roberts
Before the Minister moves on from the contribution of the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Sir Simon Clarke), I intervened in his speech to say that my opinion was that if the Bill was voted down tomorrow on Third Reading, no similar Bill could be brought back because it would be an issue the House had already dealt with. The right hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland was of the opinion that a substantially different Bill could be brought back. The problem is that if the House declines all the amendments, as it is entirely likely to do, presumably any future Bill that was brought back would include all those amendments. Therefore, as the House will have substantially dealt with all those issues, if the Bill is voted down tomorrow, it will not be able to come back in any form.
Michael Tomlinson
The hon. Gentleman will appreciate my determination to get the Bill through. I am the Minister for this Bill, and I am determined to get it through today, tomorrow and at its further stage.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Jane Stevenson) for her constructive speech and the constructive tone that she adopted during the debate. She is right: we are united in wanting to make the scheme work. I am very grateful to her for mentioning the Prime Minister’s words in Italy, which bear repetition. He said rightly:
“If we do not tackle this problem, the numbers will only grow…If that requires us to update our laws and lead an international conversation to amend the post-war frameworks around asylum, then we must do that. Because if we don’t fix this problem now, the boats will keep coming”.
My hon. Friend was right to echo those words, and I am pleased to have the opportunity to re-emphasise them now.
Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)
It has been explained that the grounds for individual appeals are exceptionally narrow, so why are 150 judges needed?
Michael Tomlinson
As I said in response to a previous intervention, they are being stood up in relation to the Illegal Migration Act 2023, which was taken through by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Fareham and my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark, in anticipation of the work that will need to be done—that is sensible governance, dare I say it. My hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt) is right to take me back to individual claims, which I will now turn to in the few minutes I have left.
The legislation provides that a court may grant interim relief only where there is
“a real, imminent and foreseeable risk of serious and irreversible harm”.
There must be credible evidence of that; there cannot simply be a bare assertion. Clause 4(5) cites the Illegal Migration Act, which my right hon. Friends took through last summer. It is worth pointing out that section 39 of that Act sets out an extremely narrow range of circumstances in which an individual claim can be made. I encourage right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the Committee to look at section 39 of that Act and just how high the threshold for serious and irreversible harm is set.
Let me turn briefly to new clause 6, which was tabled by Opposition Members. I was intrigued to hear the shadow Minister state that the purpose of the new clause is to invite further legal challenge. That seems to be Labour’s plan—to invite further legal challenge. That is the purpose of new clause 6, and it is the exact opposite of the purpose of Conservative Members. We want this to work.
Stephen Kinnock
The Minister is simply misrepresenting the purpose of new clause 6. Its purpose is to put the monitoring committee on a statutory footing so that it can potentially be subject to our domestic courts. I do not know whether he thinks that our domestic courts should be lower down the pecking order than the courts of Rwanda.
Michael Tomlinson
I am grateful to the shadow Minister for his intervention. When he was setting the policy out in his opening remarks, he said that it would invite further legal challenges. Those of us on the Conservative Benches want to shut out legal challenges; those on the Opposition Benches want to encourage further legal challenges.
The Government have delivered a plan for immigration that will work. It builds upon the excellent work of my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel)—the champion of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022—and of my predecessors, my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Fareham, who worked incredibly hard to deliver the long-awaited Illegal Migration Act, the toughest piece of immigration legislation until the Bill before us.
Just look at Albania. Our successful deal with Albania, which started with small numbers, has now removed nearly 6,000 people with no right to be here. We know that deterrence has worked because small boat arrivals from Albania are down by 94%. Legal challenges have not successfully stopped the flights to Albania. Those flights have not been stopped; in fact, not a single case of Albanian small boat arrivals has reached a substantive hearing at the upper tribunal in the past year.
We on the Conservative side of the Committee are united in our determination to ensure that the Bill works. As drafted, it creates an ever-tighter test than for illegal migrants facing removals to Albania. Our Rwanda Bill is tougher, tighter and goes further. We have a plan to stop the boats, and I invite hon. Members to back it.
Alison Thewliss
What a despondent, pathetic, ridiculous Bill this has been, and what a grim debate it has been to listen to. We have heard a wide range of speeches, most of which, I am afraid to say—I am putting it politely—were absolute guff. The UK is not looking to accommodate 8 billion people—of course it is not. Most people in small boats are not economic migrants; we know that, because the Home Office grants them asylum.
The only Member, I believe, who mentioned the people whom this Bill will affect was my friend the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake), who talked about the impact it will have on real people, on their lives and their futures. As far as I can establish, not one of the Conservative Members has ever met or spoken to an asylum seeker, or has any conception of the struggles they have been through, because they were not able to cite a single one sitting opposite them in their surgeries. Asylum seekers have done them no personal harm, yet they seek to ruin their lives. To make it light for a second, my hon. Friend the Member for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan), who ended up being crocked at the refugee football tournament he played in, does not bear any ill will towards the asylum seekers who played in that game. I think he mostly bears ill will towards me for forcing him to play in it, not the asylum seekers and refugees whose silky skills outclassed us on the football pitch. I encourage Members who want to learn a little bit more to sign up for the refugee football tournament, which will be coming up before we know it.
The UNHCR does not buy the Government’s assurances. It has been very clear that nothing that has been said or done has changed the situation. The UNHCR says that the Rwanda partnership treaty is not compatible with international refugee law, and that we cannot declare Rwanda a safe country in perpetuity. I do not believe that we should be declaring any country a safe country in perpetuity, as my hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire (Martin Docherty-Hughes) said in relation to India, where Jagtar Singh Johal is still being held in arbitrary detention with no effort from this Government to see justice done for him.
This scheme fails in many respects. It is an affront to human rights, to the dignity of individuals and human beings, and to the international obligations that this Government have claimed they hold dear—they ask other countries to abide by international conventions and rules, yet undermine those rules when it suits them. There is a practicality issue as well. The Independent has just published some figures that the Committee may find interesting. Over the past five years, Rwanda has assessed only 421 asylum cases in total, and has refused two thirds of those cases. Many of those people are from Afghanistan and Syria, and have an indisputable case for their asylum claim to be heard. We know that Rwanda has form in not upholding its obligations: when it had a deal with Israel, it did not uphold those obligations, and nobody has given any evidence that anything has changed since the Supreme Court’s ruling on this issue last year.
Turning to the issue of deterrence, which many Conservative Members have mentioned, 70,000 people have crossed the channel since the Rwanda deal was signed. If that deal were any kind of deterrent, it would have had some kind of effect, would it not? That has not happened, and in any event, this Government seek to remove to Rwanda only a couple of hundred people out of that 70,000. They are absolutely incompetent in bringing this Bill before us today. It is a toxic distraction from a failing Home Office and a failing Government. They should do the work, process the cases, and give refugees and asylum seekers the dignity and safety that they so richly deserve.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
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Delegated Legislation
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Petitions
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Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)
I rise to present a petition on behalf of the constituents of Linlithgow and East Falkirk in relation to buy now, pay later products. Used correctly, those products can be fantastic, but 37% of UK adults have used them in the past 12 months, and Citizens Advice has reported an increase in people seeking help as they are turning to them to support themselves through the cost of living crisis.
The petition states:
The petition of residents of the constituency of Linlithgow and East Falkirk,
Declares that buy now, pay later products are becoming increasingly mainstream, with 37% of adults in the IL using an unregulated credit products in the last 12 months, and with many of the most vulnerable people turning to these products to cope with the cost of living crisis; further that Citizens Advice report an increase in people seeking help with these products, with some facing unmanageable debt and requiring food bank referrals and other charitable support, and notes that unregulated Buy Now Pay Later products lack consumer safeguards, such as requirement for firms to carry out affordability checks, bringing lenders under the oversight of the Financial Conduct Authority, and ensuring borrowers can take complaints to the Financial Ombudsman Service.
The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to implement regulation of buy now, pay later products as a matter of urgency, to prevent any more people falling into serious and unmanageable levels of debt.
And the petitioners remain, etc.
[P002893]
Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)
I rise to present a petition on behalf of the residents of the Axe valley, and the towns of Seaton, Beer, Colyford and the surrounding area, who are objecting in the strongest possible terms to the disposal of an entire wing of Seaton Community Hospital. The petition has been signed by over 9,000 of my constituents, because they object to the fact that the hospital, which was funded by generous local donations, is being ripped away from them, and in part potentially sold off by NHS Property Services, and disposed of for potential sale for housing.
The petition states:
The petition of residents of Axe Valley in the Tiverton and Honiton constituency,
Declares that community hospitals play a vital role supporting health and wellbeing in rural communities; further that the hospital in Seaton was built with active support and fundraising efforts by residents across the Axe Valley; and further that plans to turn the wing of the hospital building over to NHS Property Services puts the future viability of the hospital at risk.
The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to take into account the concerns of petitioners and take action to return the facility to the local community, so it can be repurposed to provide better care for those living in the area.
And the petitioners remain, etc.
[P002897]
Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)
I rise to present a petition on behalf of the constituents of North Ayrshire and Arran, who are deeply concerned by the ongoing industrial dispute at Defence Equipment and Support in Beith, North Ayrshire. It is an arm’s length body of the Ministry of Defence. The strike for improved pay and conditions is unprecedented, involving non-craft workers preparing arms for shipment at the depot, who face discrimination in the payment of bonuses to workers. The petitioners are concerned that these bonuses are withheld from workers earning less than £21,000 a year and have been excluded from retention bonuses. The petitioners stand with the workers in rejection of a two-tier workforce.
The petition states:
The petition of residents of the constituency of North Ayrshire and Arran,
Declares deep concern about the ongoing industrial dispute at Defence Equipment and Support in Beith, North Ayrshire (an arm’s-length body of the Ministry of Defence); further that this strike, for improved pay and conditions is unprecedented; notes that non-craft workers preparing arms for shipment at the depot face discrimination in the payment of bonuses, relative to craft workers who assemble munitions; further that the petitioners reject the fact that retention payments are made to managers and craft workers, while non-craft workers earning less than £21,000 per year have been excluded from retention bonuses and stands with the workers in rejecting a two-tier workforce.
The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to take into account the concerns of the petitioners and urgently intervene to ensure a fair resolution to the industrial dispute.
And the petitioners remain, etc.
[P002898]
Cost of Living: Pensioners
(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
There are 2 million older people living in poverty—that is one in six—and another million are sitting just above the poverty line silently struggling to make ends meet. Together, a quarter of older people are in or at risk of being in poverty. In recent years, the phrase “heating or eating” has become shorthand for the cost of living crisis. It rhymes, and it is easy to say, but it is the reality facing too many of our pensioners. Age UK research found that 4.2 million people cut back on food or groceries last year, while a survey by this House’s Petitions Committee of those engaging in petitions on pension levels found that three quarters were worried about affording food.
Health statistics always worsen in the cold winter months, with mortality rising in all parts of the UK last year compared with previously. As we face an even colder winter —in my constituency we often reach minus temperatures overnight—there are real consequences when older people cannot afford to properly heat their homes. The reality is that heating or eating is not a catchphrase, but a decision about survival. It is our duty as policy makers in this place to ask why that is a reality for so many of our older people and to find solutions.
I welcomed the Government’s eventual decision to keep the triple lock this year, but the lack of clarity and uncertainty about that decision appeared to be electorally motivated, and I argue it caused a great deal of anxiety for many older constituents.
Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)
My hon. Friend is talking about the triple lock on pensions. I have heard it said in this House in recent months that the triple lock on pensions was a Conservative proposal, so I went to the Library to find out whether that was true. The 2010 Conservative manifesto talks about
“restoring the link between the basic state pension and average earnings”,
while the 2010 Liberal Democrat manifesto states:
“We will uprate the state pension annually by whichever is the higher of growth in earnings, growth in prices or 2.5 per cent.”
Does she agree with me that the triple lock was a Lib Dem proposal?
Wendy Chamberlain
I regularly meet Steve Webb, the former Lib Dem Pensions Minister from the coalition, and I know how hard he worked when in government on this policy, so I entirely agree with my hon. Friend and thank him for his intervention.
The triple lock is of no use to anyone if the Government cannot get their systems working to pay people what they are due. Repeatedly last year we learned of pensioners nearing or reaching pension age trying to top up their national insurance records and seeing their money disappear without a trace. It would appear again some weeks later, but often only after chasing by an MP, an adviser or due to media coverage. That was not just in one or two cases; what became apparent were systemic problems of jammed helplines and hundreds upon hundreds of people losing track of their savings as they paid them over to the Government. Will the Minister tell us what he is doing to resource properly the Future Pension Centre?
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
My hon. Friend is making a strong point and an excellent speech. On savings and topping up national insurance, we hear that about two thirds of those over 64 are dipping into their savings just to keep going. They are cutting down on food, and eating less healthily. Apart from the cruelty shown to pensioners by forcing them into that position, are the Government not short-sighted in not seeing the implications of treating our pensioners so badly for the NHS, the welfare system and social care?
Wendy Chamberlain
I think it is reflected across a number of policy areas that we should look in all our services at sufficiency of income, allowing people to live with dignity and respect and knowing that they can cover the essentials, and for pensioners as well as for other age groups.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Further to that point, will the hon. Lady give way?
Wendy Chamberlain
I give way to the hon. Member—it is not an Adjournment debate without him.
Jim Shannon
I congratulate the hon. Lady, who always brings to the House and Westminster Hall bread-and-butter issues that I support. I am glad to come along and give my support to her tonight. The price of electricity in Northern Ireland is rising by 20%, but pensions are rising by only 8.5%. With similar increases in the cost of meat and veg, it is clear that those comfortable on their pension in 2020 will be substantially less comfortable now. Does she not agree that an investigation into energy prices must take place as people feel that they are being gouged every time they put on their light or gas and feel the pain of prioritising one necessity over another?
Wendy Chamberlain
I am grateful to the hon. Member. I agree that many people feel they are being held hostage by the vagaries of energy prices and systems. Although the cap and other measures have gone some way to helping with that, there is no doubt that it is a huge challenge. It also demonstrates why the triple lock remains required.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
While we are on energy prices, I am acutely aware that, as we speak, pensioners in my constituency are having to brave serious snow conditions and, because we have the highest level of fuel poverty anywhere in the country, they will feel literally and metaphorically out in the cold. Does my hon. Friend agree that Ofgem has a role to play in the creation of a social tariff, or even a geographically-based tariff?
Wendy Chamberlain
One challenge in my right hon. Friend’s constituency is the number of his constituents who are off grid. We know that there is a lack of regulation in the sector off grid. One other challenge for the Government in responding to energy price fluctuations was getting a lot of money out to many people easily, and administrative issues materialised for those off grid. Many of them have still not seen the money to which they are entitled. We need to look at better regulation of our energy system.
I was talking about the Future Pension Centre and the challenges experienced by many constituents across the UK in topping up their pensions. I tabled a presentation Bill on the issue to extend the deadline and was glad that the Government took that up. In responding, will the Minister tell us what discussions he is having with His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs about making its systems align and function properly? If those systems were working as they should, many constituents would not have a gap to fill in the first instance. Will he consider implementing a proper receipting system so that older people have proof of payment as they do with any other transaction?
We know that errors by the Department for Work and Pensions are all too commonplace; we need only to look at the experience of the WASPI women—the Women Against State Pension Inequality—to see that. Those women, through no fault of their own, lost their ability to plan for their retirements. They lost their financial autonomy. Many of them continue to live in poverty, while others have sadly died without seeing any compensation.
I know that we are all awaiting the final report of the ombudsman setting out its recommendations for compensation for the WASPI women, but in the meantime will the Minister agree to meet me to discuss the next steps? He and I worked successfully together on the all-party parliamentary group on ending the need for food banks before he took on his current role, and I hope that we can do so again.
I return to pension income and want to raise pension credit with the Minister. This top-up benefit is the simplest tool at the Government’s disposal to lift pensioners out of poverty. It feels like every year we have a new attempt at increasing uptake with a fancy leaflet or other information campaign. I am sure we all go to the drop-ins, have our pictures taken and share them with our constituents, but pension credit take-up remains stuck at 63%, which suggests that the campaigns simply are not working. Pensioners either do not know about the benefit or do not realise they are eligible, or some struggle with the stigma of being seen to claim it.
I have been in this role for more than three years, and I have spent a lot of time having conversations about how to improve uptake. Clearly, an annual leaflet is not doing the trick. We need a long-term strategy on pension credit uptake with two key focuses: how we share data to identify people eligible for pension benefit, and how we target them efficiently and effectively so that they actually claim it and do not feel stigmatised?
Jim Shannon
The hon. Lady makes a critical point. When I talk to pensioners in my constituency, I always ask what benefits they are on. I always mention carer’s allowance if they do not receive disability living allowance, and I always mention pension credit. In many cases, they are not on it. How do we make a better system? I suggest, with great respect, that maybe the Department needs to physically go to those people and introduce it to them. Many people are proud, independent and do not want to take it up because they think they should not, but they should. They worked hard all their days and paid their tax and national insurance, and it is time for payback.
Wendy Chamberlain
Stigma is definitely a part of it, but some think they do not qualify as they have a sufficiency of income that would result in their being rejected. I always say to them that even if it is only 50p, it is worth doing because of the passporting benefits. We have seen this challenge around child benefit. Having not seen an increase in the thresholds, we are in a ludicrous situation where if a single earner earns over £60,000, the household is not entitled to it. The challenge is that if the non-earning parent does not apply, they do not get their national insurance contributions for their pension. Why would people apply for something that they do not think they are entitled to? We must do more to make it easier for people to get what they are entitled to. They do not want to end up 20 years down the line finding out that they do not have full pension contributions, because we know that topping it up is quite challenging, as I have talked about.
Going back to pension credit, perhaps once the Minister’s Department has published the results of last summer’s trials of targeting recipients of housing benefit, he could give us an update on the outcome of the trial to see whether that might work for pension credit, and what lessons can be learned. Missing out on pension credit has serious implications beyond the credit itself. As I mentioned, it is the main passporting benefit for older people for cost of living payments. While we focus on a long-term strategy for pension credit, will the Minister consider extending entitlement to those payments to older people in receipt of housing benefit and council tax reduction, for example? I suspect that if they are eligible for those things, they are probably eligible for pension credit.
Before I move on to long-term strategies to tackle pension poverty, I want to raise one more benefit-related point. This is not strictly in his portfolio, but will the Minister commit to providing the House with an update on the future of the household support fund? I know from English colleagues that there is significant distress at the prospect of its not being renewed in March.
I dispute the claim of the Minister’s colleague, the Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work, the hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Mims Davies), in a written response to me yesterday, that pensioner poverty is falling. It is not. The claim was based on statistics before housing costs, which is distinctly disingenuous. Increasingly, pensioners face high housing costs, as more continue to rent privately into older age. Twice as many rent now than a decade ago—a trend set to continue as it is harder for young people to get on to the housing ladder.
We must tackle the poverty immediately in front of us, but we must look at long-term drivers of poverty among pensioners and stop this trend in its tracks. There are two parts to that: ensuring that people enter retirement sufficiently equipped, and ensuring that no one falls into poverty after ending their working life. Ultimately, our experience during our working life determines what happens to us when we retire. If someone has to take time out of work or only works part-time because of ill health, child rearing or caring, they will be substantially worse off in retirement. Those last two reasons are incredibly gendered, with women more likely to miss out on savings for their retirement.
Dr Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
It was right earlier to highlight the benefits of the coalition Government introducing the triple lock, which this year will mean an uptick of between £650 and £1,000 for pensioners. The coalition Government also introduced mandatory pension contributions and pension pots from employers. Does hon. Lady not think that that is the sort of long-term planning that will make a difference to help this generation to be in a better place financially when they retire?
Wendy Chamberlain
I assume the hon. Gentleman is referring to automatic enrolment; if he waits, I will mention that. I will not let it go amiss.
Returning briefly to the gender pay gap, the Government’s own research puts the gender pensions gap at 35%. I would argue that we could call it the caring gender gap, because life is arguably more complicated for retirees with caring responsibilities. I am not just thinking about older couples who increasingly rely on each other as their health starts to deteriorate, but people who move into retirement while carrying on caring for their adult children or for other family members.
Constituents have written to me to protest about the injustice of having lost out on the opportunity to build up retirement savings and now, moving into pension age, losing their carers allowance but still continuing to provide unpaid care to their loved ones while others in their cohort settle into a more comfortable retirement. I would like to see a comprehensive plan from the Government, across Departments, to tackle that unfairness. Are there ways of bringing unpaid carers into auto-enrolment through a credit scheme? Could we increase the employer contribution to auto-enrolment to help to build the savings of those in low-paid work? How can we encourage more carers back into the workplace?
I was proud to pass the Carer’s Leave Act 2023, but that is not enough. We need policies on issues such as staying-in-touch days and we need a carer’s allowance that incentivises work. I look forward to meeting a colleague of the Minister on just that. There is definitely an education piece here. Auto-enrolment was an incredible policy, but it also means that people do not really think about their pensions. The Money and Pensions Service estimates that 22 million people say they do not know enough to plan for their retirement, while Department for Work and Pensions research last year found that attitudes to pensions are
“characterised by detachment, fear and complacency”.
I think that those views would be represented in this place, too, when I think about the different things I did before I came to this place and the different pension pots I have.
I understand that planning for retirement is difficult and complicated unless you are an actuary or a financial specialist. I can hear the response of my teenage children if I try to bring it up at home or see the eyes glaze over on the doorstep, but people do care about the result of not engaging. My challenge for the Minister is to bridge that gap and change our culture so that people knowing about their pension is normal, and not scary but a standard part of people’s financial planning and education.
I am interested to hear the Minister’s ideas, but I will put to him just one that keeps coming up when I speak with experts and stakeholders. Will he consider a trial to test the impact of automatically booking savers for pensions guidance appointments when they turn 50? Let us try to make it easy, because lots of things can happen in retirement: your health can change, you could be bereaved or divorced, you could become a carer. The economy could be crashed, causing a sustained cost of living crisis. To try to understand drivers of poverty among older people, Independent Age followed the outcomes for a cohort of pensioners who entered state pension age above the poverty line. Within 10 years almost half had fallen into poverty. Something else is clearly happening that we need to understand. I have talked about a lot of different moving parts in the overall pension and poverty landscape, but what we need—what older people need—is a comprehensive plan.
I will end by asking the Minister this: will he consider a cross-Government review of what support an older person needs to stay out of poverty? Will he bring Westminster up to the standards of other nations and support a Westminster commissioner for older people and ageing? I would like to get something done and I am sure that the Minister would too. I look forward to hearing his response.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Paul Maynard)
I congratulate the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) on securing the debate. I am always happy to meet her, as she knows. I think I have been given eight minutes to respond. Is that correct, Madam Deputy Speaker? [Interruption.] I have been misinformed. Madam Deputy Speaker, you will get more of me than I anticipated! I will do my best to respond to all the hon. Lady’s points where I can.
As the hon. Lady will of course know, we have both toured the United Kingdom looking into issues relating to poverty and visiting food banks in Hackney and Newcastle. I have toured North East Fife and thoroughly enjoyed myself, and the hon. Lady has come to Blackpool to look at the situation on the ground—an experience that I trust she enjoyed equally. I know how passionate she feels about this matter, and I hope she knows how passionate I feel about it. As I have said, I shall be more than happy to meet her. She put forward so many ideas in her speech that I may not be able to do justice to them all, but I will do my best to touch on some of them in the time that is available.
The Government fully recognise the challenges facing pensioners owing to the higher cost of living, and we are committed to action that helps to alleviate levels of pensioner poverty. We have taken significant steps to ease financial pressures by providing total support of £104 billion over 2022-25 to help households with the high cost of bills. In 2023-24 we will spend more than £152 billion—5.6% of GDP—on benefits for pensioners, including £125.4 billion on the state pension alone. Tackling high inflation remains a core priority for the Government. At its peak inflation was 11.1%, but the latest Office for National Statistics data shows that we have reduced it to 3.9%, which is good news for everyone but particularly for pensioners, on whom, in my view, inflation bears down particularly hard.
We also recognise the exceptional circumstances of the last two years and have committed ourselves to providing timely relief for those who need it most. That has been especially important following the inflationary pressures. We have provided one of the largest support packages in Europe, including two rounds of cost of living payments. More than 8 million UK households receiving means-tested benefits for which they are eligible, including an estimated 1.4 million pensioner households, may receive additional cost of living payments totalling up to £900 in the current financial year, and 8.9 million pensioner households across the UK will have received an additional £300 cost of living payment this winter as a top-up to their winter fuel payment, worth a total of £4.8 billion.
The Government remain committed to ensuring that older people can live with the dignity and respect they deserve. When I was a Member of Parliament in the coalition, we achieved many things, and to put it bluntly, I happen to think that the Conservatives have a good record as well. I will not get into a fight over whose idea was what when, and who first made the comment when, because I do not think that that would do much credit to the joint endeavours on which we are engaged, but we have stuck with the triple lock. The state pension will increase by 8.5% in April 2024, following the 10.1% increase in April 2023, and the standard minimum guarantee in pension credit will also increase by 8.5%. Like the hon. Lady, I often meet Steve Webb and listen carefully to what he says; he is a wise man indeed.
The hon. Lady focused a great deal on pension credit, as do I, for that matter. It provides invaluable financial support for about 1.4 million households claiming about £5.4 billion. The hon. Lady is right: the latest figures suggest that take-up is 63%, although they are based on cohort estimates, so they are not quite as accurate I would like them to be. Unfortunately, it is often hard to identify actual take-up; that, I think, is one of the deficits of our data system. However, take-up of the guarantee credit element, which is perhaps the main safety net, is at 70%.
I believe we can always do more. In benefit circles, we talk about stock and flow. The new pensioners flowing on to the system need an approach that will ensure that they are signposted speedily, and at an early stage, to the existence of pension credit and the question of whether it is right for them, but in recent years we have been trying to focus on the stock, not least through the advertising campaigns to which the hon. Lady referred. I am sad that Harry Redknapp did not get a mention, given the fantastic video that we put out on social media. As the hon. Lady said, we have also been considering more targeted efforts, including writing to housing benefit claimants. There has been an important trial run, but I do not have the results yet. I want them yesterday because I think they are so important, but I also want to ensure that the data is validated properly and actually means something, so that decisions based on it can then be made.
However, the work we have done already has improved uptake. The quarterly caseload statistics show a rise in the number of households in receipt of pension credit, after about 12 years of the caseload being in decline. I cannot say that that is entirely due to our campaign; Martin Lewis can probably take a share of the acclaim following his ITV series this year. I entirely agree that there are much more creative things that we can do, and we can discuss some of those ideas during our meeting when we get around to it.
The hon. Lady made a point about topping up national insurance and the issues around that. We are looking at introducing online services that will allow people to make their own payments for voluntary national insurance contributions directly to HMRC. I heard the point she made around receipting and the proper provisioning of the service, and she was quite right to do that. That will be uppermost in my mind as we go forward.
I could talk for half an hour on the gender pensions gap, although I am not sure that I have that much time. We all know that the pension gap is there, and part of the reason why auto-enrolment was introduced was to try to address that pension gap over time. In 2012, 40% of eligible women were participating in a workplace pension; 10 years on, that has increased to 86%. That shows that auto-enrolment has been a great success, but in my view it is a work in progress. There are still groups in society who are under-saving, even among those participating in auto-enrolment, and women and those with caring responsibilities are at the forefront of my mind. The hon. Lady might have seen a report by Scottish Widows back in November that identified those issues. I have had multiple discussions within my Department on what we are going to do about each particular group, so that is of particular interest to me as well.
My other point relates to pensioner poverty and poverty indicators, and I suspect we could argue about this until the cows come home. The latest statistics show that in 2021-22 there were 200,000 fewer pensioners in absolute poverty after housing costs than there were in 2009-10. Average pensioner incomes are growing in real terms, and in 2021-22 the average net income of all pensioners was £349 per week after housing costs, compared with £335 in 2009-10. As I have outlined, the Government take the cost of living pressures facing pensioners and pensioner poverty extremely seriously.
The amount we are spending is clear, but I recognise that the task will never end. The hon. Lady is quite right about that, and I think the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) mentioned it as well. She and I discovered this on our tours around the country. She will have been sick of hearing me talk about trying to identify people upstream, as soon as something occurs, when the state can intervene and help them, rather than waiting for issues to accumulate further down the track, where the cost to the public purse is that much higher. That is very much the spirit in which I have embarked on this particular part of my ministerial journey. Many of the questions the hon. Lady raised are the questions that I have been raising in my introductory meetings, and I am now getting a chance to put some of the ideas into practice. When she and I meet, I will be in listening mode and I look forward to hearing more about some of her ideas.
Question put and agreed to.
Draft Medical Devices (In Vitro Diagnostic Devices etc.) (Amendment) Regulations 2023
(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
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The Chair
Before I call the Minister to move the motion, let me I make it clear to the Committee that this is not exclusively a Northern Ireland instrument, as items to which it refers can be sold in the rest of the UK. I will therefore allow this Committee to run for 90 minutes.
The Minister for Health and Secondary Care (Andrew Stephenson)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Medical Devices (In Vitro Diagnostic Devices etc.) (Amendment) Regulations 2023.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Maria.
I will begin by setting out the policy context of the draft regulations. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency is the UK regulator for medical devices, including in vitro diagnostic devices. The agency is responsible for enforcing the regulations and protecting patient safety. The provisions in the instrument will enable the MHRA to carry out its duties effectively in Northern Ireland.
IVD devices are used to test samples taken from the human body, to monitor a person’s overall health or to treat and prevent diseases. These can include complex tests, such as blood tests to detect HIV or hepatitis and tests for cancer biomarkers, or more commonly used tests, such as pregnancy tests. In May 2022, the EU replaced its regulatory framework for IVD devices with a new regulation, the EU in vitro diagnostic regulation. The EU IVDR has automatically applied in Northern Ireland since 2022 under the terms of the Windsor framework.
This statutory instrument brings important benefits to patients and businesses across Northern Ireland. First, it enables the MHRA and the Department of Health and Social Care to protect patients in Northern Ireland more effectively. Without it, the MHRA will lack important powers equivalent to those in place across Great Britain, leaving NI patients lacking important safety protections available elsewhere.
Secondly, the SI is particularly important because life sciences and medical technology are major growth sectors for the Northern Irish economy. It provides for a stable regulatory environment in Northern Ireland, enabling the whole of the UK to remain an attractive market for research and the development of medical technologies. Thirdly, the SI will unblock UK-wide clinical studies of medical devices and IVD devices that include Northern Irish locations. Last, the SI facilitates consistency between the operation of devices regulation in Northern Ireland and GB where beneficial to Northern Ireland, including through provisions to charge comparable fees and to reflect the unfettered access of NI IVD devices into the GB market.
I will summarise the key provisions in the instrument. It lays down proportionate penalties and gives the MHRA powers to serve enforcement notices for breaches of the EU IVDR in Northern Ireland. Although the MHRA previously had the necessary tools to respond to safety concerns, the draft regulations further strengthen that toolkit. The SI also gives the MHRA powers to designate and monitor notified bodies in relation to the EU IVDR and charge fees relevant to those services. Notified bodies in the UK can carry out the technical conformity assessment of IVD devices for EU regulatory compliance, allowing manufacturers to affix the CE and UK(NI) marks for placing their devices on the market across the UK.
Sponsors of performance studies for new IVD devices in Northern Ireland will need to apply to an ethics committee in the UK for an ethics review, and hold sufficient insurance to meet any potential financial liability in the event of injury or death as a result of participation in the study. The instrument also creates an arbitration procedure for refused performance study applications. It allows performance studies of IVD devices and clinical investigations of medical devices taking place in both Northern Ireland and Great Britain to require only a contact person to be established in Northern Ireland, rather than a legal representative, supported by a sponsor or legal representative established in Great Britain. That reduces the burden on business and makes it straightforward for investigations to include sites across the whole of the UK. This will enable more studies and investigations to go ahead in Northern Ireland.
The instrument includes specific provisions to ensure unfettered access of qualifying NI IVD devices to be placed on the GB market with no additional barriers or burden. This product-specific legislation sits alongside general protections for Northern Ireland’s unfettered access to the rest of the UK market under the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020.
IVD devices play a critical role in maintaining patient and public health, and this statutory instrument will strengthen the regulation of these devices in Northern Ireland. It protects patient safety and facilitates consistency in IVD regulation between Northern and Great Britain, which will enable the whole of the UK to remain an attractive market for research and development of medical technologies, bolstering the UK Government’s commitment to the life sciences sector.
Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dame Maria.
As the Minister set out, we are considering regulations that update legislation pertaining to in vitro diagnostic devices and make supplementary provisions for the EU IVDR in Northern Ireland. The SI appears to be an innocuous measure to support the implementation of new EU regulations that came into operation in Northern Ireland in May last year. Those will continue to be applied, per the annex to the Windsor framework, but with consequential amendments to other legislation, provisions for the fees for certificates and conformity assessment, and some practical provisions for the enforcement of the new regulations.
It is of course critical that we secure continuity of supply and trade in medical devices within the United Kingdom and with the EU. The draft regulations affect a diverse range of equipment and systems to examine specimens in vitro, including things like blood grouping reagents, pregnancy test kits and hepatitis B test kits. From catching killer diseases early to preventing infections, the medtech sector makes a huge contribution to our national health service and our vibrant life sciences sector. These products are found in doctors’ surgeries, hospitals and our own homes, and we saw during the pandemic how difficult it can be to replace them when supply is disrupted.
Although the explanatory memorandum sets out that the draft regulations should affect only 19 businesses in Northern Ireland and cost less than £5 million to implement, they are still a valued part of the UK medtech ecosystem. The Opposition therefore support the regulations to secure unfettered access to the GB market for NI businesses and continuity of supply. None the less, I have a few questions for the Minister.
We welcome the fact that the previous fee structure is being retained to reduce disruption for NI operators, but will the Minister say what assessment has been made of any impact on the MHRA’s responsibilities as regulator, and assure us that it will be resourced to fulfil them? Previously, Ministers have talked about future realignment of regulations on medical devices following our departure from the EU, including consideration of alternative routes to the GB market. Will the Minister comment on the opportunities in this area? What is the timeline for the future regulatory regime that the Government want to bring into force? The Government have still not set out their proposals; is there a timeline for doing so?
It is interesting that medical devices did not receive attention in the Windsor deal. I know that some suppliers are disappointed by this, citing the complexity of navigating the current system. Is the Minister considering adding other product classes, like medical devices, to its scope? Will he also clarify the status of devices on which a conformity assessment has been performed by a UK notified body? Will it be possible to place devices bearing a CE conformity mark as well as the EU(NI) mark on the EU market? To my knowledge, no UK notified body has been appointed; when will this be dealt with and why has it been delayed?
To reiterate, we support the amendments to secure continuity of supply for the critical medtech sector. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.
Andrew Stephenson
I thank the shadow Minister for her remarks and her support in principle for the instrument. She asked about the MHRA’s capacity to deal with these new regulations. We have received assurances that the agency sees this as a tidying-up exercise. It welcomes the regulations, which it wanted to be introduced, and sees no capacity constraints.
To update GB regulations on medical devices with a specific focus on patient safety, the Government will bring forward secondary legislation in the near future. I cannot be more granular about the timescale, but we do intend to introduce that at the earliest opportunity.
We consulted widely on the draft regulations. I was in Northern Ireland on 4 January, when I spent the day meeting life sciences companies in Belfast and Lisburn. The Government are committed to promoting access to safe and effective IVD devices for all patients across the whole of the United Kingdom, and this SI supports that commitment by strengthening the MHRA’s enforcement powers in Northern Ireland. The MHRA has worked collaboratively with the Northern Ireland Department of Health throughout the development of the regulations, and will continue to do so to ensure their effective implementation and to monitor impacts on the market.
By supporting the regulations, we will ensure that the MHRA can effectively carry out its role as a regulatory authority in Northern Ireland, ensuring that patients in Northern Ireland and in Great Britain have access to safe and effective IVD devices. The provisions will reduce the burden on NI businesses when placing a device on the market. We believe the measure will generate innovation and attract investment into the UK and UK businesses, build on the life sciences strategy, and realise the opportunities in the life sciences sector. I am grateful to the Opposition for their support and to the Committee for considering the draft regulations today. I commend the regulations to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Draft Child Support (Management of Payments and arrears and fees) (Amendment) Regulations 2023
(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Paul Maynard)
I beg to move.
That the Committee has considered the draft Child Support (Management of Payments and Arrears and Fees) (Amendment) Regulations 2023.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Latham, and I am pleased to introduce this statutory instrument, which, subject to approval, will help more families to access vital support through the Child Maintenance Service. It will also ensure that efforts and resources can be focused on taking action to collect unpaid arrears in those cases that will make the biggest difference to children.
The draft regulations are intended to further improve access to the Child Maintenance Service for all families, and to ensure that it runs effectively to focus on getting more money to children. First, to improve access, the regulations remove the £20 application fee to access the Child Maintenance Service. The fee was introduced in 2014 to encourage parents to come to their own collaborative family-based maintenance arrangements, rather than go down the statutory route by default. Evidence published by the Department for Work and Pensions as part of an evaluation of the fee and its impact shows that the £20 fee is not a significant factor for parents when making decisions about their child maintenance arrangements.
However, the evaluation found that families on lower incomes, whom we know disproportionately experience conflict and therefore are often in need of support, can find the application fee a financial barrier to accessing the service. It is important to highlight that around 54% of all applicants already pay no fee because of existing waivers, such as those for victims of domestic abuse and those aged under 19. Therefore, it is sensible to remove the application fee completely for all, ensuring that those most in need can get support more easily.
The regulations will also ensure that the service can more efficiently focus resources on getting larger, more recoverable unpaid payments flowing to children. To be clear, we continue to come down on parents who refuse to pay child maintenance and fail to take responsibility for their children. We do so using a range of enforcement powers to collect unpaid amounts. However, we are taking a pragmatic approach in these regulations by bringing forward powers to write off minimal amounts of £7 or less in a small number of inactive cases that would have been closed were it not for small outstanding balances.
We are introducing that measure for two reasons. First, keeping such cases open requires considerable resource, and taking action to recover such small amounts often costs more than the value of the debt. The cost of leaving such cases open could increase for decades, with no greater chance of money being paid to receiving parents. We need to ensure that taxpayers’ money, as well as caseworker time and effort, is directed effectively, for example by focusing action against parents who owe significantly larger sums and where the impact on children missing out on money is greater. Secondly, given that we close cases only when we have stopped calculating child maintenance payments, it is likely that such cases will no longer be needed. That could be because the child has become an adult, the parents have reconciled, or the absent parent has sadly passed away. It therefore makes sense to close these cases, not least for the certainty and clarity it provides for families.
Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)
I have just been before the Backbench Business Committee with the right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms) to ask for a debate on child maintenance, so if we get our way, the Minister will hopefully be talking about this again. I see that the proposals affect only 2,800 cases, and both measures seem sensible, but every single MP gets many cases about the service, response times, or things being lost. How will the Department and the Government make sure that even this small change does not send the message that they are not interested in such cases or in ensuring that arrears are paid to families?
Paul Maynard
I very much look forward to the next debate that comes my way. I am slightly trepidatious, because this is not my policy area, but it is a good chance for me to learn a bit more and understand it better. My hon. Friend is quite right that we all get many such pieces of constituency casework, which shows the importance of getting this right. I can talk at much greater length about what we are doing, so I look forward to the debate.
The full details of the criteria permitting a debt to be written off are set out in the regulations. They include the maintenance calculations having ceased, and no payments having been made in the previous three months. In addition, the Child Support Act 1991 provides that for write-off powers to be exercised, we must be satisfied that it would be unfair or otherwise inappropriate to enforce liability in respect of the debt.
The changes build on a number of improvements that we have already made, and they are among the first in a wave of measures that we plan to bring forward to ensure that the service is more accessible, simpler and speedier, and ultimately gets more money to more children more quickly.
The measures represent proportionate, common-sense changes that will further improve the Child Maintenance Service. They are good for parents, good for the taxpayer and, most importantly, good for children. I hope that colleagues will join me in supporting them.
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Latham. Without rehearsing all the arguments ad nauseam, let me say that we support the measure and think it is good that it removes the application fee. The Minister has already explained why that is positive, and we agree with him.
I will not detain colleagues for long. I want to make three quick points and ask the Minister some questions. If the hon. Member for Stroud and the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee are successful in securing a Backbench Business debate, more colleagues will be able to rehearse the issues for longer. A large number of cross-party colleagues would like the country to learn the lessons from their casework. I am one such Member, so I support that initiative for a Backbench debate, and hope that we can discuss these issues again without too much delay.
Following discussion of the measure in the other place, we know that the Government anticipate that the removal of the fee will have the positive impact of increasing the number of agreements. We also know, however, that the Government think that the fee is not the sole reason why there are not as many agreements as we all want. As the Minister has explained, it is very important, for anti-poverty reasons as well as basic fairness, for payments to be made to parents, but the fee is not the only problem. In response to a question asked by my colleague in the other place, the Minister explained in writing that 35%—more than a third—of receiving parents without arrangements said that they wanted a payment arrangement with the other parent. Although we know, as the Minister has explained, that the removal of the fee will have an impact, there is more to do to ensure that more parents secure an arrangement.
What research are the Government undertaking with parents who have experienced the system in order to ensure that it works better? What is the plan? A wide range of MPs and stakeholders know that the system does not work perfectly. It would be good if the Government could say more about how the removal of the fee will help. Furthermore, their own research identifies parents who want an arrangement, so could the Government share their plans for how those parents get one? Could we hear a little more about that research?
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend makes a very good point about the need to know the details of the Government’s research. When the parent who should be paying is self-employed, or employed via a company that their new partner owns, there are often a lot of disputes about how much they actually earn and their household income. Does she agree that it would be interesting to know whether the Government have researched any of those problems, which seem to cross my desk regularly, and to hear their solutions? This measure is good, but it does not really touch the sides of some of those big issues.
Alison McGovern
I am coming to that, but my hon. Friend makes the point well. I am sure that the Minister and many colleagues would recognise that there is a broader agenda here about making the service much more effective for parents. I think everybody across the House will be anxious to hear more about that from the Government.
Secondly, I have been in touch with Gingerbread, the organisation for single parents—everybody on the Committee will know it well—about these regulations. It raised a couple of things with me, particularly in relation to the point that the Minister made about survivors of abuse. As he mentioned, previously the fee was waived for survivors of abuse. Gingerbread tells me that that enabled the CMS to know how many survivors of abuse were using the service. It is important that that is calculated, and that the service knows about the body of its service users who are survivors of abuse. When the fee is removed, how will the service know how many of its users are survivors of abuse, so that it can ensure an effective service for those people?
As you will know, Mrs Latham, we have gone on a big journey over the past decade on financial abuse and understanding how, unfortunately, abusers often use arms of the state to continue that abuse, even after separation, and even once protection is in place for the victim of abuse. The Child Maintenance Service is therefore on the frontline in protecting parents who have experienced domestic abuse from experiencing further abuse. If the Minister can say a little more about what training the service has planned, and about Gingerbread’s important question on how we will monitor how many parents using the service are victims of abuse, we would all find that helpful. Gingerbread also points out, quite rightly, that we might anticipate that more people will apply to use collect and pay, so it would be good to know how the Department is planning to ensure that that increase in demand is met.
Finally, we all understand the rationale—the Minister set out the case precisely—for writing off small arrears, particularly when the cost of pursuing them would far outweigh their value, but as the Minister also set out, we want writing off small arrears to increase the effectiveness of the service. Gingerbread says that it is not uncommon for its helpline to receive calls from people who are owed tens of thousands of pounds. Those are the arrears that we want tackled, so will the Minister say how writing off these nugatory amounts will enable the service to become more effective? That is what we all really want. If we can have a debate on this in Back-Bench time, I hope that we will hear from a huge number of colleagues, from right across the House, about what parents have experienced in trying to get debts paid. It is no small thing and can be an extremely frustrating experience.
It would be useful if the Minister could say more about, first, the Government’s research—what they hope to publish and what they hope for—so that we can understand the effectiveness of getting these agreements in place and what parents might find most helpful, beyond removing the fee. Secondly, perhaps he can say more about victims of abuse—how we will monitor them and make sure that the right training and resources are in place in the service. Finally—this is the major point—we all want an effective service. In the end, this is about all our kids in this country. This is about making sure that they do not grow up in poverty, and that their parents have enough money in their pockets to look after them. If the Minister could explain what the plan is to ensure effectiveness, that would be very helpful.
Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)
It is good to see you in the Chair, Mrs Latham. I want to briefly put on record the Scottish National party’s support for these draft regulations, and particularly for the scrapping of the £20 fee, which makes perfect sense. The Minister’s arguments for reprioritising resources, so that we chase not very small amounts of money but larger sums, also make sense, but obviously we need to monitor that very carefully. We would, of course, encourage the Government to go further on issues such as collecting pay fees, the 4% in particular. Some of the arguments that the Minister has used today for scrapping the fee could equally apply to that charge. Like Members from across the Committee Room, we want the overall performance of the service improved, but that is for another day. Perhaps it is for the Backbench Business debate that we hope is coming. In the meantime, we support these regulations.
Paul Maynard
I thank both the Front-Bench spokesmen for their support, and for their helpful summary of the questions, which gave me that bit longer to make sure that all my notes for answering them were in the right order. First, the hon. Member for Wirral South mentioned application numbers. The main thing that the Government have been doing is trying to use a more digital service called “get help arranging child maintenance”, which has been operational since 2022 and has seen the number of applications increase. That shows that we can we can create a pathway, so that people going through a breakdown in a relationship can seek out the right support.
The hon. Lady mentioned research. It helpfully says in my notes that research has shown that those on the lowest incomes are least likely to have an effective arrangement. It does not give me much more than that, I am afraid, so I will commit to writing to her on that point. I will try not to have to write to her on any other point, but I am giving the best answers I can.
The hon. Lady rightly raised the issue of domestic abuse. After we have removed the fee, we will continue to capture information about parents who need additional support, including as a consequence of domestic abuse, and ensure that they are able to safely use the service, because there are many safety issues around how money is transferred. We will move away from collecting the figures and towards using externally reported quarterly stats, but we will look at how best to capture the information in a usable format in the future.
The hon. Lady may be aware that CMS has a domestic abuse plan, which outlines key steps for caseworkers to follow to ensure that victims of domestic abuse are supported. That includes advice on contacting the police, for example, if the parent is in immediate danger. CMS can also act as an intermediary in direct pay cases, and provide advice on how to set up bank accounts with a centralised sort code to limit the risk of a parent’s location being traced. We also reviewed our domestic abuse training, and commenced using a single named caseworker to ensure that victims of DA are appropriately supported, so I think we are doing an awful lot on abuse in the home.
Alison McGovern
Could I ask the Minister to be clear on the statistics that will be published about victims of domestic abuse? I understand his point about training and the pathway that will be there, but from the point of view of public transparency, it is important that we can see how many users of the service are victims of domestic abuse, and that the data is publicly reported. I say that simply because, as he will understand, abuse has so often been completely hidden. Many people would be quite shocked to find out how many people are victims of financial abuse, so it is important that that is reported publicly, not just understood within the system. Could the Minister confirm that the Government will still report publicly how many users of CMS are victims of domestic abuse?
Paul Maynard
I take the hon. Lady’s point. It says in my brief that CMS will look at how it captures that information. I will ensure that that point is passed on to Viscount Younger in the other place when he is looking at whether the proposals are adequate. No decision has yet been made. Nothing has been ruled out; nothing has been ruled in. I accept her point, and like her, I am a champion of transparency wherever possible, so I will ensure that Viscount Younger writes to the hon. Lady.
On the points that were made about collect and pay and the calculation more generally, we are consulting on how we can improve both those things. I believe that the consultation on collect and pay is yet to start, but we announced in October that we would be consulting on how to collect and transfer maintenance payments. I understand that the consultation on the calculation side of things will also be launched shortly.
Finally, there is a very valid point, which I often hear in my own constituency, about cases involving vast sums that parents are unable to access for one reason or another. Where parents have certain categories of taxable income that are not captured by a standard child maintenance calculation, they can make a request to CMS to have the calculation varied. We have consulted on proposals to include more types of taxable income held by His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs in the standard maintenance calculation. The proposals were accepted, and legislation will be brought forward when parliamentary time allows. Cases involving complex income can be investigated by the financial investigation unit, which is a specialist team. Where there is evidence of fraud, the FIU will seek to prosecute, or forward the case to HMRC for action.
In summary, as everyone has agreed, the regulations mark the beginning of a more comprehensive legislative journey towards improving the Child Maintenance Service and represent a clear road map to action. I am committed to working with Viscount Younger to drive these plans forward in order to deliver a fairer, faster service for more families, especially the poorest. I thank everyone for attending the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Draft Employment Tribunals and Employment Appeal Tribunal (Composition of Tribunal) Regulations 2023
(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mike Freer)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Employment Tribunals and Employment Appeal Tribunal (Composition of Tribunal) Regulations 2023.
This draft instrument delegates the power to determine the composition of employment tribunals and the Employment Appeal Tribunal to the Senior President of Tribunals. The proposed regulations form part of the Government’s ongoing work to reform and improve the employment tribunal system.
Until now, panel composition in the employment tribunals has been determined by the Employment Tribunals Act 1996. It contained a list of case types that must be heard by a judge alone; cases that do not fall into those categories must be heard by a panel of three, or, with the consent of the parties, two. I know some people are concerned about why we are making changes, but the current arrangements are quite restrictive and prescriptive. Changing them requires a statutory instrument.
The panel composition rules suffered from a high degree of inflexibility, requiring a substantial amount of time and resources to make even reasonably minor amendments. This approach also meant that panel composition was determined by Ministers with the approval of Parliament through Acts of Parliament and statutory instruments, rather than by the judiciary, which is out of step with the wider unified tribunal system, where all decisions on panel composition are made by the Senior President of Tribunals. It also raises constitutional questions regarding the separation of powers.
The Judicial Review and Courts Act 2022 sets out a new framework that addresses these concerns. It gives the Lord Chancellor new powers to determine panel composition, while also making this delegable to a member of the senior judiciary. As the Committee will know, the intention when that Act was passed was to delegate this power to the Senior President. This instrument puts that commitment into effect.
If the draft regulations are approved, and following consultation with the Lord Chancellor, the Senior President will be able to issue practice directions specifying the types of cases that can be heard by a judge alone across the employment tribunals—a far more flexible process than before. Where the matters for discussion or decision concern narrow points of law, the Senior President may use the power to have a single judge, rather than a wider tribunal. That will enable the tribunal to be better tailored to the needs of users and the complexities of the cases it handles, while also aiming for far more efficient use of tribunal resources.
More widely, the draft regulations will align the employment tribunals and the Employment Appeal Tribunal with the arrangements that apply in the unified tribunal system by ensuring that panel composition is a judicial function, allowing the development of a more closely aligned tribunal system while retaining the separate nature and unique characteristics of the employment tribunals. The Senior President will be able to ensure that the tribunals have the appropriate composition to make fair and informed decisions, while also being used in the most efficient and proportional manner possible.
The challenges faced by the tribunals system in recent years, particularly the pressures posed by the covid-19 pandemic, have emphasised the importance of flexible and efficient resource use to meet the needs of the tribunals and their users. The employment tribunals have recovered well from the pandemic, with the current outstanding case load sitting far below its pandemic peak. The reduction is thanks in part to the steps the Ministry of Justice, working closely with His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service and the Department for Business and Trade, has taken to increase capacity, such as through the recruitment of additional judges, the deployment of legal caseworkers, and a new electronic case management system. In particular, the judiciary has played an instrumental role in this easing of pressures, such as through the establishment of a virtual region of judges able to hear employment tribunal cases remotely from any region. Since its inception, this virtual region has allowed thousands of additional cases to be heard that otherwise would have been postponed. Nevertheless, challenges remain and the outstanding case load remains high, which means that parties may have to wait a considerable time for their claim to be determined.
The senior judiciary has continually shown its ability to make decisions to the benefit of the tribunals. I have every confidence that the Senior President’s role in deciding panel composition across the employment tribunal system will help to ensure we make the best use of the resources at our disposal.
As the Committee may be aware, in anticipation of this delegation of powers, the Senior President conducted a public consultation in February last year seeking views on his proposals for employment tribunal panel composition. I understand that he intends to publish a response to the outcome of the consultation once these powers have been delegated to him. None the less, I anticipate that some Members of this House may have concerns regarding the proposals set out in the consultation, particularly on the role of lay members and the potential for their reduced presence in the tribunals.
As some members may be aware, my noble Friend Lord Bellamy made clear the Government’s position on this during the debate in the other place. The Government value the vital contributions that lay members, through their wisdom and experience, bring to bear in proceedings in the employment tribunals. It is not our intention through the measures in this statutory instrument to dilute or weaken their role.
First, and most important, no decisions on the role of lay members or on panel composition arrangements in the employment tribunals more widely, have been made. While the Senior President shared a number of proposals in his consultation, no final decisions have been made. The Senior President has stated that any final decisions will take into account the views expressed by consultees. He will, no doubt, also be following the proceedings in both Houses closely; in addition, he has a statutory duty to consult the Lord Chancellor before making the practice direction.
I stress that this delegation of powers does not mean that we will lose the unique characteristics of employment tribunals, or that we intend to move away from the current structure. I reiterate: no decisions have been taken. However, even under the Senior President’s proposals, the system would allow hearings to be determined by a judge sitting alone, but would not require it. It would be left for the judge to decide the most appropriate arrangements for the particular circumstances of individual cases.
Concerns have been expressed that this statutory instrument threatens the special status of employment tribunals, imposing on them the panel composition arrangements that apply in the wider tribunal system. That is not the case. As some Members may know, different composition arrangements currently apply, under separate practice directions, in each of the chambers of the unified tribunal system, including to different types of proceeding within a chamber. This recognises the different specialisms and circumstances of the proceedings they deal with. The same approach will apply to the employment tribunals under the measures in this instrument.
Finally, judicial diversity is a key priority for the Government and the judiciary, and the lay members are a key part of that diversity. The Ministry of Justice is a member of the judicial diversity forum, through which we work closely with the judiciary, the Judicial Appointments Commission, the Legal Services Board and the legal professions to promote diversity in the judiciary across each jurisdiction.
This statutory instrument will put into effect a commitment to delegate powers over panel composition arrangements in the employment tribunals system to the Senior President of Tribunals. I believe it will allow flexibility without the loss of the valuable input that our lay members offer. Where narrow points of law are being considered, it may be more appropriate for the Senior President to appoint a judge only; where that is not appropriate, a wider panel will be appointed.
Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Elliott. I thank the Minister for his remarks.
It is a pleasure to speak for the official Opposition in this debate on a statutory instrument to bring in the changes to the membership that oversees employment tribunals that were introduced under the Judicial Review and Courts Act 2022. In the previous system, tribunals sat between the MOJ and the Business Department; under the draft regulations, the Secretary of State for Justice will delegate power to the Senior President of Tribunals to decide the composition and make-up of the panels. The reason given by the Government is that it creates greater scope for panels consisting of a single member, who, I understand, will always be an employment judge. We do not oppose the change and will not vote against the instrument today. The decision on whether to have a single judge or a multi-member panel will depend on the case and the need for relevant and appropriate experience.
Turning to the wider context around employment tribunals, the Minister mentioned that the change is being introduced to bring about a more unified justice system; he also mentioned more flexibility and better use of resources. I am sure that those formed part of the Government’s reasoning. However, as the Minister in the other place said, we also have to consider the backlog. At the end of 2022, the employment tribunal backlog stood at 475,000 cases, with a wait of some 49 weeks for a decision. That is a long wait for justice for workers who have been wronged in their workplace—bullied, denied pay, or subjected to other mistreatment—and who decide to pursue their case to tribunal. I was sure that the Minister would mention the coronavirus and say that the backlog is down from its peak. It is, but it is still there, and I note that it is 60% bigger than the backlog in 2010, when we last had a Labour Government. However, I am not here to make party political points, of course—heaven forbid!
When this statutory instrument was debated in the other place, concerns were voiced about ensuring that the changes do not override the important role played by lay members, especially in employment cases where technical and specific knowledge is required and can make a key difference to the outcome of a case. I welcome the Minister’s comments about diversity in membership of the panels, but I hope it encompasses diversity of specialist skills and technical knowledge. That was mentioned in the Government’s consultation. I see that the Senior President of Tribunals has also conducted a consultation and the responses are being considered. I thank the Minister for his clarification on this, and I hope we will see the results very soon.
I also hope the Minister will let us know how the Government will monitor and assess the impact of these changes, especially if we see a significant change in the outcome of tribunal cases that are heard by a single member. As my noble Friend Lord Ponsonby said in the other place, if in the future we see further changes and a further reduction in the number of multi-member panels, that will need profound and serious justification.
I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.
Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Elliott. As you are aware, I have an extensive trade union background—in fact, I remember we both served on the Committee considering the Bill that became the Trade Union Act 2016. The Minister is always talking me into seeking a Division, and his answers will determine whether I do so today.
As the Minister outlined, there are some concerns about judge-only panels and removing lay members from particular types of case. Does he envisage discrimination or whistleblowing cases, for example, being heard by a judge alone? There would be real concern if lay members were not part of the process, because the lay members have the specialist knowledge of workplace realities needed to determine what has actually happened in such cases. Another worrying example is cases involving illegal deduction of wages. There have already been moves to make such cases judge-only and short-tracked, and there is a dangerous precedent for cases of unfair dismissal.
I hope the Minister answers those questions, because I share the very real concerns the trade union movement expressed in their consultation response about the approach the Government are taking, which may lead to more unfairness in the system.
Mike Freer
Without prejudging what the Senior President will announce, I expect that where lay members have expertise to give, particularly on trade union membership or non-membership, they will continue to be used because they add value. If the case is about a narrow point of law, where legal training is needed, that is what I expect the judge to focus on.
If the proposals brought forward are unsatisfactory, the Lord Chancellor has the right to “undelegate” the powers. We think this is the right thing to do, because it allows flexibility. Also trying to put multi-member panels together can be resource intensive and time consuming, and sometimes the lay members do not have a particular skill to add. The instrument offers more flexibility and more speed.
Perhaps I can reassure the hon. Member for Glasgow South West by saying that at some point this will be a devolved matter. The Ministry of Justice and the Scottish Government have almost concluded discussions on how to devolve the powers, so any concerns can be addressed locally.
Chris Stephens
I thank the Minister for that reply. He mentioned that after the Senior President has reached a decision, the Lord Chancellor has the right to unpick it, but what mechanisms are there to report back to Parliament? Would there be a statement in the House, so that if we had concerns about the Senior President’s decision making, we could raise them in the House?
Mike Freer
The delegation of any powers by the Lord Chancellor can be reversed. That is the nuclear option. If Members have concerns about what the Senior President is proposing, let me give some thought to the best mechanism for giving voice to those concerns—whether we come back to debate the matter, or use some other mechanism. That is a perfectly legitimate ask, but let me give some thought to the matter. I am more than happy to have a private conversation with the hon. Gentleman. I will, if Members are happy for me to do so, write to the members of the Committee setting out what I think is the best way to ensure that concerns about the detailed proposals are discussed and addressed.
Question put and agreed to.
Ministerial Correction
(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Cabinet Office
(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I very much thank the Deputy Prime Minister for his statement and the answers—every one—that he has given. On encouraging businesses to build resilience in a broad range of operations, I believe we must consider the risks in relation to the cost of energy, and others have asked similar questions. What discussions has the Deputy Prime Minister had with devolved Administrations—for example, on ensuring that businesses are able to build resilience on net zero targets and energy commitments—to ensure and secure prosperity for the future for everyone?
The Deputy Prime Minister
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to raise this. Under this Government, we have seen a 68% reduction in carbon emissions, which is faster than the EU, the United States of America and others. We are world leaders in many technologies, not least offshore wind and, I hope shortly, in the next generation of carbon capture and storage. We continue to work very closely with businesses to help them build that resilience.
[Official Report, 4 December 2023, Vol. 742, c. 67.]
Letter of correction from the Deputy Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Hertsmere (Oliver Dowden):
An error has been identified in my response to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) in the statement on Risk and Resilience. My response should have been:
The Deputy Prime Minister
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to raise this. Under this Government, we have committed to a 68% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, which is faster than the EU, the United States of America and others. We are world leaders in many technologies, not least offshore wind and, I hope shortly, in the next generation of carbon capture and storage. We continue to work very closely with businesses to help them build that resilience.
Petition
Local Government Funding and Food Voucher Provision
Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill (First sitting)
Tuesday 16th January 2024
(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill 2023-24 View all Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill 2023-24 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 16 January 2024 - (16 Jan 2024)
The Chair
Before I begin, I have a couple of announcements. Hansard colleagues would be grateful if Members emailed their speaking notes to hansardnotes@parliament.uk. Obviously, electronic devices should be switched off. Date Time Witness Tuesday 16 January Until no later than 9.50 am The Leasehold Advisory Service (LEASE) Tuesday 16 January Until no later than 10.25 am Leasehold Knowledge Partnership; Velitor Law Tuesday 16 January Until no later than 11.00 am The National Leasehold Campaign Tuesday 16 January Until no later than 11.25 am Law & Lease Tuesday 16 January Until no later than 2.30 pm The Law Commission Tuesday 16 January Until no later than 3.00 pm The Financial Conduct Authority Tuesday 16 January Until no later than 3.40 pm Free Leaseholders; Commonhold Now; HoRnet (the Home Owners Rights Network) Tuesday 16 January Until no later than 4.15 pm The Property Institute; Fanshawe White Tuesday 16 January Until no later than 4.50 pm The Home Buying and Selling Group; The Conveyancing Association Tuesday 16 January Until no later than 5.15 pm Public First Tuesday 16 January Until no later than 5.40 pm Dr Douglas Maxwell Thursday 18 January Until no later than 12.10 pm HomeOwners Alliance; The Federation of Private Residents’ Associations; Shared Ownership Resources Thursday 18 January Until no later than 12.40 pm Professor Andrew J. M. Steven (Professor of Property Law, University of Edinburgh); Professor Christopher Hodges OBE (Emeritus Professor of Justice Systems, University of Oxford) Thursday 18 January Until no later than 1.00 pm The Building Societies Association Thursday 18 January Until no later than 2.20 pm Competition and Markets Authority Thursday 18 January Until no later than 2.40 pm Policy Exchange Thursday 18 January Until no later than 3.10 pm The Law Society; Philip Rainey KC Thursday 18 January Until no later than 3.30 pm The Residential Freehold Association Thursday 18 January Until no later than 3.50 pm End Our Cladding Scandal
Ordered,
That—
(1) the Committee shall (in addition to its first meeting at 9.25 am on Tuesday 16 January) meet—
(a) at 2.00 pm on Tuesday 16 January;
(b) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 18 January;
(c) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 23 January;
(d) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 25 January;
(e) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 30 January;
(f) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 1 February;
(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 4; Schedule 1; Clauses 5 to 11; Schedules 2 to 5; Clauses 12 to 19; Schedule 6; Clauses 20 and 21; Schedule 7; Clauses 22 to 37; Schedule 8; Clauses 38 to 65; 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 Thursday 1 February.—(Lee Rowley.)
Resolved,
That, subject to the discretion of the Chair, any written evidence received by the Committee shall be reported to the House for publication.—(Lee Rowley.)
The Chair
I take it that we do not need to move the motion about deliberating in private; just intimate to the Clerk or me that you want to speak, and we will proceed informally. We are sitting in public, and the proceedings are being broadcast. Do any Members want to make a declaration of interest?
Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
My wife is the joint chief executive of the Law Commission, and we are hearing evidence from it.
Examination of Witness
Mr Martin Boyd gave evidence.
The Chair
We will now hear oral evidence from Martin Boyd, chair of the Leasehold Advisory Service. Before I call the first Member to ask a question, I remind all Members that questions should be limited to matters within the scope of the Bill. We must stick to the timings in the programme order that the Committee has agreed. For this panel, we have until 9.50 am. Perhaps the witness could introduce himself briefly.
Mr Martin Boyd: Good morning, everyone. My name is Martin Boyd. I am the newly appointed chair of the Government’s Leasehold Advisory Service. I am also chair of the charity the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership, and I am chair of the resident management company in the place where I have a flat.
The Chair
I think perhaps the Opposition spokesperson wants to start off with the questions.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Ms Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)
Excuse me, Chair. Is the loop system on? No? Can we arrange to have it on, please? [Interruption.] Oh, we cannot; I understand.
Matthew Pennycook
One of the aims of the Bill—certainly in the terms of reference handed to the Law Commission, whose recommendations frame a lot of parts 1 and 2—was to provide a better deal for leaseholders as consumers and increase transparency and fairness. In your view, to what extent does the Bill as a whole do that? Are there any specific clauses or elements of the Bill that we might seek to tighten up to further improve the experience for leaseholders as consumers? I am thinking of the fact that leaseholders are still liable to pay certain non-litigation costs and that right-to-manage companies are still liable when claims cease.
Mr Martin Boyd: As you may recall, when the Law Commission originally looked at this area of the law, it suggested to the Government that a consolidation Bill was warranted. However, there was not the budget at the time, so it was then given the three projects on right to manage, enfranchisement and commonhold to look at. The enfranchisement proposals and some of the right-to-manage proposals, but none of the commonhold proposals, have been brought forward in the Bill. The difficulty with the Bill is that there is an almost endless list of things that could be added. In removing the one-sided costs regime, the Bill does quite a lot to balance the system during the enfranchisement process. It also attempts to address the problem of the costs regime at the property tribunal. In the current system, the landlord is in a win-win position. Even if they lose the case, they are able to pass on some of their legal costs under most leases. The Bill tries to address some of those issues.
We still have a whole set of problems in the way that resident management companies and RTMs operate. They do not have a legitimate means of passing on their company costs within the service charge. There are still sites where they effectively have to cook the books to pass on the legitimate costs to the service charge payers. There are still many more things to add to the Bill. Clearly, we will continue to have problems with multi-block right-to-manage sites as well. They do not operate effectively anymore, and unfortunately the Bill does not address that element of the problem.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Mr Martin Boyd: Yes. There are several things that could be added.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Mr Martin Boyd: The RoPA—regulation of property agents—report, which the Government undertook some years ago under Lord Best and which proposed statutory regulation of managing agents in this sector and within the estate agency world, has unfortunately not moved forward. There are proposals in the Bill to bring estate agents within codes of practice, but nothing in particular changes on property management. We have a slightly strange position at the moment. In the social sector, there is now an obligation for a property manager to have a proper level of competencies to look after high-rise buildings, or high-risk buildings, as they are still called. In the private sector, though, we have nothing. There are no requirements to have any qualifications to look after and manage the highest of our high-rise buildings in this country. That is simply wrong, so I would support fully a move to the statutory regulation of agents.
Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)
Q
Mr Martin Boyd: Yes, there are risks. Currently, we do not have a viable commonhold system. Even if the Government were to come forward with the full Law Commission proposals, those had not reached the point where they created all the systems necessary to allow the conversion of leasehold flats to commonhold flats. I see no technical reason at the moment why we should not move quite quickly to commonhold on new build for extant stock. I think it will take longer—and, at the end of the day, conversion will be a consequence of consumer demand. People would want to do it. On my side, I would not want us to convert to commonhold, because I could not yet be sure that it would help to add to the value of the properties. It would make our management of the site a lot easier, but I could not guarantee to anyone living there that it would add to the value of their property—and that is what people want to know, before they convert.
Richard Fuller (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)
Q
Mr Martin Boyd: I do not think the Leasehold Advisory Service would have a specific preferred path. At least two of those are important. I will add a fourth, actually. It is illogical that we do not have a requirement for professional qualifications for those managing particularly complex buildings.
Richard Fuller
Q
Mr Martin Boyd: I will be cautious, so that I am not rude in answering that. There are a set of skills that you would expect to acquire as an MP, and a certain set of skills that you need to acquire as a property manager. Buildings are complex entities, particularly large buildings. They have a lot of plant and a lot of complex systems. There is quite a complex interaction with the people who live in those buildings. There are voluntary qualifications that we have in the sector. The Secretary of State decided recently that there should be a mandatory level of qualification in the social sector. I do not see there being a logic in saying that we need one or the other.
In terms of regulation of managing agents, there is a problem. The ex-chair of the managing agents’ trade body said that it is perfectly legal to set up a property management company in your back bedroom in the morning and be collecting a large amount of money in the afternoon, without any regulation. I think that is a problem. One of the issues not considered in the Bill—perhaps it would not be relevant, although the Government need to consider it at some point soon—is that there is still no proper control of leaseholders’ funds. It is very likely that the two largest managing agents in this country hold between them somewhere between £1 billion and £2 billion. There is no Financial Conduct Authority regulation of how that money is held.
Richard Fuller
Q
“to champion the rights of leaseholders and park homeowners.”
I have a number of park home owners in my constituency, as I am sure many colleagues do. Are there any provisions in the Bill, or is there anything that could be added to it, that would improve the lot of park home owners?
Mr Martin Boyd: Yes, there is, but again that goes on to the long list of things that could be added to the Bill. Park homes have been a difficult area for many years. It is a relatively small part of LEASE’s work, but it is work that will be expanding as we move forward. I am more than happy to talk to you about some of the provisions on park homes that could be added.
Richard Fuller
There is nothing that leaps out at this stage.
Mr Martin Boyd: Nothing leaps out.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
Q
Mr Martin Boyd: There were proposals in sections 152 to 156 of the 2002 Act to help to improve protection for leaseholders’ funds. Currently, we are left with a set of voluntary codes. One is applied by the Association of Residential Managing Agents—the Property Institute, as it is now called—and sets out that managing agents should hold separate bank accounts for each of the sites that they manage. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors’ code does not require that. I am aware from experience of my and other sites that, in the recent period of higher inflation, some managing agents used consolidation accounts, accrued the interest in the service charge funds to themselves and passed very little on to the leaseholders. So yes, I think it would be very helpful if we had greater transparency and protection.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Mr Martin Boyd: I can tell you why it did not move forward. One of the reasons it did not move forward is that, when there was a consultation, the organisation that I now chair argued very strongly against the implementation of that section. That was one of the things that annoyed me when I found out about it over a decade ago. It is not something that we would argue for now.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Mr Martin Boyd: It was a very good provision, yes.
Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)
Q
Mr Martin Boyd: I am proud to say that it was LKP that restarted the whole commonhold project in 2014. At the time, we were told, “The market doesn’t want commonhold.” The market very clearly told us that it did want commonhold; it was just that the legislation had problems in 2002. One of our trustees, who is now unfortunately no longer with us, was part of a very big commonhold project in Milton Keynes that had to be converted back to leasehold when they found problems with the law.
I think the Government have been making it very clear for several years that they accept that leasehold’s time is really over. I do not see any reason why we cannot move to a mandatory commonhold system quite quickly. What the developers had always said to us—I think they are possibly right—is that they worry that the Government might get the legislation wrong again, and they would therefore want a bedding-in period where they could test the market to ensure that commonhold was working, and they would agree to a sunset clause. They had fundamentally opposed that in 2002, and we managed to get them in 2014 to agree that, if commonhold could be shown to work, they would agree to a sunset clause that would say, “You cannot build leasehold properties after x date in the future.” I think that that is a viable system.
Ms Rimmer
Q
Mr Martin Boyd: As some of you may know, I have been very critical in the past of the organisation that I now chair, because I thought that it was doing the wrong thing. The Government took what some might see as a brave decision in asking me to take on the role as chair. LEASE is going to become a much more proactive part of the system, and, as far as I see it, we now have several roles rather than one. While we are predominantly there to help advise consumers about the legislation and how to use it—and hopefully when not to use it—we will also have a role in helping to press Governments to make sure that they improve the legislation. That was not a remit that we had, but it will be very much part of our remit going forward.
Ms Rimmer
Q
Mr Martin Boyd: As I said to the all-party parliamentary group yesterday, the organisation does not currently have the budget. The Government have said that they will give us the relevant budget. If they do not give us the budget, I will not be staying, so I am very hopeful that we do get the budget.
Some aspects of the Bill do quite a lot to reduce the amount of time that leaseholders would need to spend asking for help. If the enfranchisement process goes through and we get to an online calculator system, where you simply feed in your data and it produces the answer, that will make that whole system much easier. That will reduce not only the amount of work that comes to us, but the amount of work that goes to various solicitors and surveyors in that field.
The Chair
That is the end of our allotted time for this session; I think we got everybody in who wanted to ask questions. Thank you for coming to talk to us today.
Examination of Witnesses
Sebastian O’Kelly and Liam Spender gave evidence.
9.50 am
The Chair
Q
Sebastian O’Kelly: I am Sebastian O’Kelly, director of the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership. I am not a leaseholder; I am a commonhold owner in another jurisdiction, not in the UK.
Liam Spender: I am Liam Spender, senior associate at Velitor Law. I am a leaseholder in London. I am also a trustee of the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Various provisions in the Bill touch on ground rents. You will know, for example, that schedule 2 imposes a 0.1% cap on their treatment in valuation. Clause 21 and schedule 7 deal with existing ground rents and how we will treat those. What are your views on the fact that those provisions provide leaseholders with the enfranchisement right to buy out their ground rent under a very long residential lease, but we also have the consultation ongoing with five options? How do those provisions interact? Why have the Government specified an option in clause 21 for a particular type of very long residential lease, while we also have this consultation ongoing and, in theory, a commitment to bring forward further measures that apply to all existing ground rents? Does clause 21 in the Bill as drafted make sense to you?
Sebastian O’Kelly: Not especially. We are eager to hear the result of the consultation on ground rents. We very much support the peppercorn ground rent option and are delighted that the chairs of the all-party parliamentary group also support that. It would be a game-changing measure if that did come about—frankly, stripping out the one legitimate income stream in this ghastly system—but I can see that, as a precautionary measure, you might have that 0.1% provision in the Bill for dealing with enfranchisement. It will assist with some of the enfranchisements where you have very onerous ground rents.
Liam Spender: I agree; it is not clear why the 150-year threshold has been chosen. As far as I understand it, the Law Commission did not consider that in its work. That might be something that could be fruitfully explored in this Committee’s more detailed work.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
On the right to manage, only eight of the 101 Law Commission recommendations on right to manage have found their way into the Bill. We face the issue that Mr Boyd referred to—we could add in many more provisions to the Bill. Are there any specific RTM recommendations from the Law Commission that it would be really worthwhile to try to incorporate into the Bill?
Sebastian O’Kelly: In relation to leasehold houses, it is a bit of an embarrassing omission that the proposal is not there. The spreading of leasehold houses around the country simply to extract more cash from the unwitting consumers who had purchased houses from our plc house builders was a national scandal, actually, and it was frankly a try-on too far and caused a huge amount of kerfuffle. There will be times when you would have to build a leasehold house—when the builder does not actually own the land—but they are very isolated cases, and largely this scam has self-corrected through the adverse publicity.
On the right to manage, one of the most egregious issues is where groups of leaseholders have attempted to get a right to manage and have been hit for extortionate legal costs, where their petition for right to manage has been resisted by the landlord. There are certain landlords out there who always, always, unfailingly take this through the legal steps. They rack up legal costs, but of course they can get that back through the service charge. That is an issue that I urge is the worst deterrent to right to manage.
Liam Spender: The lack of right to manage for fleecehold estates—for estates subject to management schemes—is one of the most obvious omissions in the Bill. The Law Commission did an awful lot of work on how to improve the process for multi-block sites, particularly following the Supreme Court decision two years ago on Settlers Court. I think that is another missed opportunity.
Rachel Maclean
Q
Sebastian O’Kelly: This is for Liam really, because I am not a leaseholder at all; it is Liam’s court case.
Rachel Maclean
Sorry, I was looking at Mr Spender and I misspoke.
Liam Spender: I quite understand anyone being distracted by Mr O’Kelly. Thank you for the question. In our case to date, the freeholder has put £54,000 of its legal costs through the service charge. It did so in breach of a section 20C order, which is the current restriction that is supposed to prevent landlords from doing so. We complained and got most of that money back, but they have served something called a section 20B notice: they intend to recover the costs in the future if they prevail on appeal, by which point we could be looking at a substantial six-figure sum. This is all to do with us fighting to get back unreasonable service charges.
We are currently owed about £450,000—to give a round number—pending appeal. There is an appeal in April and I am carrying the burden of doing all that work myself. I quite understand why leaseholders without legal training give up and things will fall by the wayside. The system is very much stacked in landlords’ favour.
The cost provisions in the Bill are welcome. As you probably know, they changed the default so that the landlord has to ask for their costs. The issue is what has been created as a just and equitable jurisdiction; the tribunal can do what it thinks is fair in the circumstances. I believe—I think many people who have much more knowledge of this than I do would agree—that what that will mean in practice is probably that the tribunal will be inclined to give landlords their costs if they have won the case, so it will not change anything.
The other problem is that the first-tier tribunal considers itself a no-cost jurisdiction, and that is a generational way of thinking, so that has to be overcome and it has to get into the mindset of awarding costs to leaseholders and against landlords. Provisions could be included in the Bill that would make that that process easier—for example, prescribing a regime of fixed costs as applied to other low-value civil litigation. It is not a magic bullet, but I think that would be better than the current provisions in the Bill.
Mike Amesbury
Q
Sebastian O’Kelly: We would like to see a commitment to mandatory commonhold for new builds, frankly. How many more times are we going to try to reform the leasehold system? How many goes have we had at this since the 1960s? If you keep having to reform leasehold, is the answer not that it does not work? Why do you want this third-party investor—now, invariably, somebody offshore—hitching a ride on the value of somebody else’s home? It is a nonsense. One Duke of Westminster we can accept—the political continuity of our country maybe allows a freehold such as that—but we will create 1,000 of them with this. It is a nonsense. Bring it to an end and bring us in touch with the rest of the world—that is my statement.
Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)
Q
Liam Spender: Yes, happily. The main items in dispute are our intercom, car park gates and barriers. Our satellite TV dishes are rented in perpetuity; they were costing £240,000 a year, which is somewhere between 10 and 20 times what they should cost. The reason for that is that the developer chose to enter into a long-term rental and maintenance contract. That contract has never actually been—the technical term is “novated”—transferred to the current landlord, so there is no legal obligation on the current landlord to pay those costs at all. However, the landlord has dug in, so we are more than two and a half years into a service charge dispute. We prevailed in the first instance—that was the largest single item we won—and we must fight an appeal in April, and potentially another one after that, depending on what the landlord chooses to do.
Andy Carter
Q
Liam Spender: I knew the general amount of service charges. I was not aware that there was a perpetual maintenance contract, because it was not disclosed in the searches.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Liam Spender: I agree; you have summarised it very well. To borrow a loose analogy from company law, there is something called a tag-along right. If someone comes along and buys a certain proportion of shares in a company, the other shareholders can exercise the right to tag along to join the purchase. That could be adapted to those who do not participate in an initial enfranchisement to address exactly the issue that you raise.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Liam Spender: I think the provisions introduce a degree of complexity into buildings because, exactly as you say, you are creating a new class of landlord. That could be solved by—
Barry Gardiner
Q
Liam Spender: That is right: there is no statutory mechanism to transfer to the newly enfranchised freeholders.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Liam Spender: The Bill creates a lot of new areas of complexity, and that is certainly one that would merit detailed attention.
The Chair
Well, gentlemen, I think that is it. Thank you very much.
Examination of Witnesses
Katie Kendrick, Jo Derbyshire and Cath Williams gave evidence.
The Chair
Q
Katie Kendrick: I am Katie Kendrick. I am the founder of the National Leasehold Campaign, which has been running for seven years. I am also a trustee of LKP.
Jo Derbyshire: I am Jo Derbyshire. I am one of the co-founders of the National Leasehold Campaign and a trustee of LKP. I am not a leaseholder; I enfranchised and bought the freehold on my home. I had one of the now-infamous 10-year doubling ground rents on my house.
Cath Williams: I am Cath Williams. I am one of the co-founders of the National Leasehold Campaign. I am no longer a leaseholder, but I did buy a leasehold house.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Katie Kendrick: The Bill is very much welcomed and long overdue. As we all know, the Law Commission reports were fantastic and very detailed. The Bill is lacking significantly on the detail of the Law Commission recommendations. The headline was that the Bill would ban leasehold houses, and obviously the Bill as it stands does not do that. I am confident that it will, in the end, ban leasehold houses, but currently that has not been achieved.
The Bill improves the transparency of service charges, but just being able to see the fact that leaseholders are being ripped off more does not actually fix the root cause of the problem. As we all know, the root cause of the problem is the leasehold system per se. I am concerned that the Bill sticks more plasters on a system that we all agree is immensely outdated and needs to go. There is no mention anywhere in the Bill of our long-term vision of achieving commonhold. That is our vision, and it is the elephant in the room. The Bill does not even mention commonhold and how we can move towards it.
A peppercorn ground rent would massively change the playing field and help us to move towards our vision of commonhold, so we need to get a peppercorn ground rent for existing leaseholders in there. With the Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Act 2022, which means new builds do not have a ground rent, we have created a two-tier system. The Bill really does need to look at existing leaseholders and what can be done to help to put them in a similar position to new leaseholders. If ground rents are wrong for the future, they were wrong in the past and we therefore need to be bold enough to go back and fix that. Peppercorn ground rent has to be the solution. This is an amazing opportunity and I hope that will be the outcome of the consultation.
Cath Williams: On peppercorn ground rent, we have noted a new definition of a long-term lease being 150 years, which we have never come across before. Many members in our group—there are over 27,000 members in the National Leasehold Campaign—have modern leases with ground rents at significantly less than 150 years, at around 99 or 125 years. That means that the provisions in the Bill do not give them the opportunity to revert to a peppercorn ground rent. If we have read it correctly—we are not legally trained—they would be excluded as having a non-qualifying lease. That is our understanding: that they would be excluded. That could be a significant number of leaseholders who will not benefit from the peppercorn ground rent opportunity in the Bill.
Rachel Maclean
Q
Jo Derbyshire: I had a ground rent that doubled every 10 years. It meant that my ground rent would be £9,440 after 50 years. It certainly is not a trivial issue in my experience. A ground rent is a charge for no service. That is the big thing for me. Some warped genius at some point in the mid-2000s decided to create an asset class on our homes. It is just wrong.
Rachel Maclean
Q
Jo Derbyshire: I think that is project fear. I work in pensions. I work in administration, not investments, but I sit on a lot of pension committees where we talk about the assets that pension schemes hold. They have investment strategies and they protect themselves from over-investing in one asset class. The amount of ground rents held by pension funds in this country would pale into insignificance compared with, for example, the impact of the mini-Budget and what happened with equities shortly after that. This is deliberate scaremongering.
Mike Amesbury
Q
Katie Kendrick: You cannot just ban leasehold houses and not flats—70% of leaseholders live in flats, so you are not tackling the problem. You are cherry-picking the easy things, and banning leasehold houses is easy. It is more tricky with flats, but that does not mean it is not achievable. As you have said, it has been achieved everywhere else in the world. We do not need to continue to mask that leasehold system. It is deeply flawed and it ultimately needs to be abolished.
We do understand that there is no magic wand and this is not going to happen tomorrow, but there have been a lot of campaigners, well before us, who have highlighted the issues of leasehold, and yet here we are, still, again, trying to make it a little bit fairer. It does not need to be a little bit fairer—it needs to go. That needs to be the ultimate aim. Everybody needs to work on this. There is something better out there, despite what the other lobbying groups will tell you.
Richard Fuller
Q
Jo Derbyshire: It is long overdue; bring it on.
Richard Fuller
Q
Jo Derbyshire: If I think of my estate, there was no reason whatsoever to create leasehold houses other than to make money from the people who had bought them. That is partly why, going back to an earlier question, it is taking so long to dismantle the system in this country: it is because there is so much money for nothing in it. That is why it is so hard to dismantle it.
Richard Fuller
Q
Jo Derbyshire: I work in a pension fund.
Richard Fuller
Q
Jo Derbyshire: From my perspective, it is just about how all investment carries risk. This is no different. This is about rebalancing the scales in terms of leaseholders and freeholders. For me, it is about fairness for leaseholders. That is what the Law Commission was tasked with a few years ago, it is what we have been fighting for over the last however many years and that is what this does.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Ms Kendrick, you said that there were things that the Law Commission report had talked about that have not been included in the Bill. One of those is in relation to shared services. Often, in a mixed development, if there is a commercial element to the block of flats, with flats above, you will find that there is a common plant room or a common car park. I welcome the provisions in the Bill that say that you can go from 25% commercial to 50%; that is a good move. However, the Law Commission actually said something specific about whether you should be allowed, if there are shared services such as the car park or the plant room, to be able to take over control, because the flats—the leaseholders—would only have control over the plant room as it related to their block. Is that a provision that you think should be introduced? Otherwise, it makes a mockery, to a certain extent, of increasing from 25% to 50% if you are still going to be precluded from gaining control of your block because of the plant room or shared services.
Katie Kendrick: Yes, there are clever ways in which they exclude people from being able to do that. We welcome the increase to 50%, but they are very creative when they design these buildings, with the underground car parks and stuff, as to what they can do to exclude the leaseholders from taking back control of their blocks. It is all about trying to have control over people’s homes. We should be able to control our homes—what is spent. No one is saying that you should not have to pay service charges, but it is about being in control of who provides those services. At the moment, leaseholders have no control. They just pay the bills.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Katie Kendrick: Absolutely, yes.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Katie Kendrick: Absolutely.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Katie Kendrick: Absolutely. If they are saying that commonhold is not ready to rock and roll, to have a share of freehold to mandate, a share of freehold for new flats moving forward would be a good step closer.
Andy Carter
Q
Katie Kendrick: All three of us have now successfully bought our freehold. Yes, we are still here.
Jo Derbyshire: There are a number of things. The first is that most leaseholders do not understand the difference between the informal way and the statutory way to do that. The more unscrupulous freeholders will write to leaseholders with a “Get it while it’s hot” type of offer, which can be quite poor value for money. So, there is understanding the process in the first place. Then, regardless of which way you go—if you go the statutory way, currently you pay your own fees and the freeholder’s fees. There is an element of gamesmanship that goes on at the moment, which is why the online calculator is so important. Your valuer and the freeholder’s valuer will argue about the rate used to calculate the amount and then you will try and have some kind of an agreement. It is not a straightforward process at all. Cath will tell you what happened with her transfer, because they leave things in the transfer documents.
Cath Williams: Yes, they did. In my case, it took 15 months and £15,000 to get my freehold.
Andy Carter
Q
Cath Williams: Yes, £15,000 on a house. It took that long because I found—this is one of the problems that leaseholders have—that I knew more than the alleged leasehold-specialist solicitor who was dealing with my case at the time. That was very early in the campaign, so a lot of education needs to go on for everybody: leaseholders, conveyancers and solicitors. Because I had done some research and tried to get my head round leasehold clauses and what were fee-paying clauses, shall we say, in the TP1, which is a transfer document, they tried to carry across all the fee-paying clauses. Essentially, it would be freehold but fleecehold, because I would still have to pay to the freehold investors.
It took that long because I kept redacting my own TP1, putting a red line through it and sending it back, saying, “I am not doing that, that or that.” Eventually, we got rid of them. The problem now is that we still have a lot of conveyancers who do not do that for the leaseholders. If the leaseholder does not understand the system or the lease terminology, that is always a big barrier. The way that leases are written—all their legalese—means the general public generally cannot understand; so, it is difficult.
Andy Carter
Q
Cath Williams: No, there was nothing on the site or in the paperwork to say that it was leasehold.
Andy Carter
Q
Cath Williams: I found out on the day that I paid my deposit and went in to look at the extras list, which you tick to say, “I’m going to have carpets, curtains” and so on. The sales person said, “There’s something I need to add”, took a pencil and wrote “leasehold” along the bottom. [Interruption.] It is a true story. I said, “What’s this?”, because I had bought so many houses that were newbuild. I said, “I don’t understand why you are writing ‘leasehold’.” They said, “Did we not tell you?” I got a story about how it was local council land and had to be leasehold, which turned out to be completely untrue.
Andy Carter
Q
Cath Williams: Yes, I paid the deposit, and I had sold my other property. We were very late on in the process, so I believe that I was mis-sold and misled, as were many members of the National Leasehold Campaign. We hear very similar stories.
Andy Carter
Q
Cath Williams: That is right. You are committed, and you are at a point where if you do not continue, you will lose even more money. You have an emotional connection to the property that you want to buy and lots of other pressures as well—people might be moving jobs or trying to increase the size of their home.
Jo Derbyshire: I knew, but the salesperson told me that we could buy the freehold at any point for about £5,000. What they did not tell me was that the business model was to sell it on and what the implications of that would be. They sold it on less than two years after I bought the house, and the price went from the £5,000 they asked for to £50,000.
Andy Carter
Q
Jo Derbyshire: No.
Katie Kendrick: No, because legally it is unlike in flats, where when they sell the freehold on they should offer the people in the flat the right of first refusal. That does not apply to houses, so the land was literally sold from beneath us and they told us afterwards. Because we were not entitled to buy the freehold for two years—you must live there to qualify to enfranchise—they sold the freeholds on before the two-year point, so the freeholder was no longer the developer that we originally bought from; it was an offshore investment company that then increased the price significantly. We were never told that that would happen.
Andy Carter
Q
Jo Derbyshire: That was the market value for a 10-year doubling lease.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Katie Kendrick: It is a big concern, because leaseholders are trapped. They are in limbo, so they do not know whether to enfranchise now or to wait for the Bill to go through. The Bill says that it will make it easier, cheaper and quicker, but the devil is in the detail, and we do not know what the prescribed rates will be. We are being promised that it will be cheaper, but will it? It all depends on who programmes the calculator. Ultimately, will it actually be cheaper? The Bill says that it will abolish marriage value, which is hugely welcomed by leaseholders, so those people with a short lease approaching the golden 80-year mark are waiting. Do they go now?
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Katie Kendrick: No, some people do not have a choice. People’s lives are literally on hold, and have been for many years, waiting for the outcome of the legislation. If we need further legislation to enact the Bill, people cannot sell. Housing and flat sales are falling through every single day because of the lease terms and service charges. It is horrendous. It will grind the buying and selling process to a halt.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Under the Building Safety Act, the provision is to appoint a designated person—an agent—to deal with the safety of the building. Often it will be the developer who is responsible for the remediation of a building that has fire safety defects and so on, which the Government are quite rightly trying to address, but they will argue that it is not possible to do that unless they have control over the management of the block as a whole. Therefore, there is a conflict between the Building Safety Act and the provisions in this Bill to help leaseholders gain the right to manage.
You might have just enfranchised and got the right to manage your own block, yet there is now an appointed person who will be told by the court that they have the right to manage the block. Very often, it will be the person you have just liberated yourself from. You will have just enfranchised yourself from that freeholder, only to find that they are now back in control. Do you feel there is a way in which the Committee should try to remediate and address that problem when it is looking at the Bill, and do you have any ideas as to how we should go about it?
Cath Williams: First of all, the situation that flat leaseholders are in at the moment, where they have building safety issues and leasehold issues, is so complex. It is horrendous. We hear daily in the National Leasehold Campaign about these poor leaseholders. It is really heartbreaking.
Barry Gardiner
People have committed suicide, have they not?
Cath Williams: People have committed suicide, yes. That is worth noting.
They ask for advice. We have never been flat leaseholders; that is the first thing, but there is a lot of support in the group to try to help people navigate their way through the Building Safety Act first of all, and now we have this Bill as well. In principle, I think they would really welcome some sort of cohesion between the two. I don’t know what that would be; it is really hard.
Katie Kendrick: It is really difficult because we are encouraging people to take control, but by doing that they are liable for more of the building’s safety. The two Bills have to work together.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Katie Kendrick: There is.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Cath Williams: Yes.
Jo Derbyshire: The Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Act 2022 has essentially created a two-tier system where you have new builds without ground rent. As Cath mentioned, we are concerned that clause 21 and schedule 7 of the Bill seem to say a qualifying lease for buying out to a peppercorn rent must have a term of 150 years. We have seen lots of examples in the National Leasehold Campaign of new build properties—flats in particular—where the lease is 99, 125 or 150 years from the start, so a whole swathe of properties would be automatically excluded.
However, for us, because ground rent is a charge for no service, peppercorn is the answer. We also fear that, in terms of the timetable for legislation and getting this through, the sector will fight intensively and try to tie this up in the courts for years. It has nothing to lose; why wouldn’t it?
Andy Carter
Q
Katie Kendrick: Because an escalating ground rent worries mortgage lenders and buyers are unable to get mortgages because of an escalating ground rent. Where that is because of the £250 assured shorthold tenancy issue, my understanding is that that will be sorted through the Renters (Reform) Bill, so that will close that loophole, but lenders do not like—for most leases now, the doubling has half-heartedly been addressed and a lot of leases are now on RPI—the retail price index.
However, with RPI being the way that it is—it has been really high in the last couple of years—some of those ground rents are coming up to their review periods and are actually doubling. Therefore, RPI, as Jo said many years ago, is not the answer. Converting to RPI is not the answer because an escalating ground rent is still unmortgageable, and it takes it over the 0.1% of property value, which, again, mortgage lenders will not lend on.
Therefore, a lot of mortgage lenders are asking leaseholders to go to the freeholder and ask them to do a cap on ground rent, which is then costing the leaseholder more money to get a deed of variation from their freeholder. That is if the freeholder agrees at all, because the freeholder does not have to agree to do a deed of variation to cap the ground rent. That is coming at a massive cost if someone wants to sell, but without that people are losing three, four or five sales, and people have given up because their properties are literally unsellable.
Cath Williams: There is a house on my estate where sales have fallen through twice already. It is a townhouse; it is worth about £220,000. The ground rent currently—it is on an RPI lease—is £400, which takes it over the 0.1% of property value. Two sets of buyers have had problems getting a lender to lend in that situation.
Andy Carter
Q
Katie Kendrick: Absolutely. When I watched the programme, I was shouting out loud. The parallels—the similarities—are astounding. The system there was a computer system; the system here is leasehold. People have been ripped off for so many years and paid unnecessary fees, and lots of leaseholders are thousands of pounds out of pocket. And that is because the system—the leasehold system—has allowed that to happen, and it is a scandal of the same magnitude, as far as I am concerned. People have, unfortunately, lost their lives. I have become a bit of an agony aunt for people; my phone never stops because people contact me in tears, and I have stopped people from taking their own lives because of leasehold. It is horrendous—absolutely horrendous—when you are living it and you feel completely trapped. It is when they feel that there is no way out that people look at taking another way out, and it is horrendous.
Cath Williams: And we were both told, weren’t we, by the CEOs of the developers that we bought our houses from, that there was no leasehold scandal?
Katie Kendrick: Yes.
Mike Amesbury
Q
Katie Kendrick: Our campaign coined the term fleecehold, and it has been used as a bit of an umbrella to describe all of the different ways that we can be ripped off through our homes. It first began because, when we were enfranchising and buying our freeholds, the freeholder was trying to retain all the same permission fees—such as permission to put on a conservatory or to paint the front door—in the transfer document. Ultimately, you could be a freeholder but still have to pay permission fees to the original freeholder.
That is where fleecehold came from, but fleecehold is now used as a much broader phrase because we have estate management charges. The new build estates all have estate management charges attached to them. They have replaced one income stream—leasehold—by creating another asset in the open green spaces. We all have lovely big open spaces and lovely parks, but it is the residents who pay for that. Again, it is a private management company that manages them. You have no transparency over what they are spending.
I can remember somebody ringing me up and saying, “Katie, I have a breakdown of my estate management charges and they are charging me such-and-such for a park, so I rang up and said, ‘You’re charging me.’ ‘Yes, Mr Such-and-Such. You have to pay for the upkeep of your park.’” And he went, “I understand that, but I haven’t got a park.” It is outrageous. It is great that they are going to give people more right to challenge the costs, which they do not currently have with their freeholders. They have fewer rights than leaseholders to challenge at tribunal. But ultimately why have we gone to a private estate model? Why are people paying double council tax? They are paying full council tax the same as anybody else is, yet they now have to pay thousands of pounds in estate management charges. It is a ticking timebomb.
The estates look very nice now, but in the future when the pavements are falling to pieces—I spoke to a police officer and things are not enforceable because they are classed as private. Speeding restrictions? You could have a boy racer running through the estate, but the police cannot enforce anything. The same with double yellow lines and things like that. It is a ticking timebomb, because new build estates are popping up all over the place with private management companies.
Jo Derbyshire: There are some things in the Bill that try to stop things. Typically on fleecehold estates there might be freehold houses, but the estate management charge is secured legally by something called a rent charge. What most people do not understand is that if they withhold their estate management fees, the property can be converted from freehold to leasehold. Again, that cannot be right.
Rachel Maclean
Q
Rachel Maclean
You mentioned that in the new Bill leaseholders will have to pay to get their ground rent to zero. Can you set out what that provision is? Where is that in the Bill?
Cath Williams: I don’t think we know. That was one of our questions. There is a process in the Bill about how a leaseholder can acquire the peppercorn ground rent, but who pays for that is not clear. I think that was raised before. I do not think leaseholders should pay, because it should not have been there in the first place.
Katie Kendrick: Or there should be a prescribed cost—“apply for your peppercorn now”—with a simple process. Otherwise it will be exploited, and lawyer will charge different amounts to convert. You can see what will happen, so it needs to be streamlined. Whatever we go for, it needs to be streamlined.
Cath Williams: And we need an online system that cuts out everybody in the middle, so that there is no confusion or discussion about what it should cost.
Alistair Strathern (Mid Bedfordshire) (Lab)
Q
There are many estates in my patch where you can literally see where it becomes private because the condition of the road is shocking compared to 2 feet away, or the condition of the public space completely deteriorates. What measures would you like to see added to the Bill to help address that? Would you agree that ultimately we need mechanisms to ensure that a stated object can happen in a way that everyone can have confidence in?
Katie Kendrick: In an ideal world, the local authorities would be adopting these areas. I do not think there should be a private management at all. Local authorities used to, and they can charge the builders more for the land at the start.
Cath Williams: I agree.
Katie Kendrick: Adopt the lot.
Ms Rimmer
Q
We have to tie it down and not let the situation become like the one we have seen with the post offices. It is an obstacle course. People have committed suicide. Managers have broken down. Homes have been lost. Jobs have been lost. The management charges are unbelievable, and I do not think people understand that. I have not seen it anywhere, but a leaseholder has to write if they want to change the carpet; they then get charged a couple of hundred pounds for that, they get charged for the answer, and they get charged when somebody comes to have a look at it. That is how it goes on. The management charges are as big a fear as the lease, because leaseholders do not know where they are going.
The Government simply have to step in. It is the biggest money-making racket in this country now—and it is a racket. It is said that people have sat down and designed this system, and we should not leave these people to do the fighting on their own. I genuinely believe that there is desire to do so from both the Minister and our shadow Minister. Please come forward with your thoughts; do not give up. I do not believe for one minute you will give up.
Katie Kendrick: I believe there is political will to do this from across the House; there is unanimous agreement and there is no dispute. If there is no dispute, we just need to get it done.
The Chair
Right, that is probably it then—[Laughter.] Thank you.
Examination of Witness
Amanda Gourlay gave evidence.
The Chair
Good morning. Would our last witness like to introduce herself?
Amanda Gourlay: I am Amanda Gourlay. I am a barrister at Lazarev Cleaver LLP and I am an associate member of Tanfield Chambers. I have been in practice for nearly 20 years—I think it is 18.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Amanda Gourlay: I would like start by quickly saying that while the Bill is welcome—as far as I am aware, we have been working towards leasehold reform for about six years now, from a service charge perspective—in an ideal world, although I appreciate that we are not starting with an ideal world, the best starting point would be to repeal everything we have so far so that we can codify and consolidate everything. I say that in relation to service charges, which apply only to leasehold properties, but also to bring all the charges relating to services and works that homeowners, occupiers and residents might pay within one regime, so that we are not looking at a separate regime for estate management charges or for estate management schemes, which are different from estate management charges, but we bring everything into one place. If I receive a demand for payment of maintenance of a park on my estate, it matters not to me whether I am a leaseholder or a freeholder—the money that I pay is exactly the same.
I wanted to set that out as my starting point, if I had a blank piece of paper and endless parliamentary time and patience. Having said that, we are where we are. I have made notes and, with your permission, I will run through them as quickly as I can, while still providing some degree of detail. I am a lawyer—I am one of those people whose living is derived from working with leasehold. I am one of the people who is often criticised in this arena.
I have had a good look at the clauses of the Bill. There are good things: there are time limits and an enforcement provision, and we are undoubtedly attempting to achieve some transparency. I wanted to put that out there as the good news to start off with.
From an improvement perspective, I want to start with clause 28, which deals with the provision of the written statement of account and the report the landlord will be required to provide. I have very little to say about clauses 26 and 27. Clause 26 brings the fixed service charge into the service charge regime. Clause 27, as you say, relates to the service charge demand. We do not know what the regulations are going to say. We do have an existing framework—a relatively limited one—for service charge demands, so there is something there, but we will need to see what the regulations do. What we would really benefit from is consistency in the regulations, so that across the board, as a leaseholder moves from one flat or property to another, they can expect to see the same charges set out in the same way, broadly speaking—so that they know what to look for when they go from one place to another.
The clause I have had quite a look at, with the benefit of some accounting input, is clause 28. It will insert two new sections into the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, which is the framework we are looking at when looking at the Bill from the perspective of these clauses. It is good that we have a time limit for the provision of service charge accounts. I have come across many cases where leaseholders are repeatedly asked to pay on-account service charges and they never receive a reconciliation at the end of the year, so there is no real knowledge of what is being spent.
We could do with looking at a template for the provision of service charge accounts. That may be a matter for regulation, rather than the Bill, but I want to explain to you why I say that is important. When the service charge accounts come over, they have often been prepared by the managing agent, who has then instructed an accountant to review them in some shape or form. Often, the accountant will simply say, “I have agreed a set of procedures that I am going to follow in relation to the service charge accounts. I am going to check that the numbers have been properly extracted and check a small sample of the invoices to make sure that what is said has been invoiced has found its way into the accounts.” What we do not find for leaseholders, unless the lease requires something like an audit, is a proper review of service charge accounts with a balance sheet, an income and expenditure report, and notes to the accounts.
The first thing I must say as I am explaining this is that I am not an accountant—far be it. If I may make a suggestion, it would be extremely helpful for the Committee to engage with either a firm of accountants or, in fact, the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales; the Committee could then ask how they would go about formulating a proper system—probably in conjunction with the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, under the fourth edition of the code, hopefully—in order to bring service charge accounting into the arena that it is currently in in the commercial code, or the professional statement that the commercial environment has in it.
Accounts is a big area, and it would be immensely helpful to have more involvement all round from accountants. I will not say accountants are the elephant in the room, as that would be a discourteous metaphor. They are the people who are never seen in tribunals. They are the people who do not speak loudly to Committees such as these. Yet, service charges are as much about the money as they are about the services. A balance sheet will give completeness. Income and expenditure will tell you what has come in and what has gone out. It makes sense.
While we are there, might I also invite the Committee to consider trying to bring together the differing understandings of “incurred” in the 1985 Act, as against what an accountant will understand. An accountant will understand a cost being incurred when that service is effectively provided. When I consume electricity, I incur a cost from an accountant’s perspective. From a lawyer’s perspective, I do not incur that cost until either, as a landlord, I receive the invoice, or I pay that invoice. So, they are very different dates and times. Some consistency between those professions would be helpful.
We would very much benefit from cost classifications that would support the provision of service charge accounting. It would also support the tribunal in understanding where to look for certain costs in relation to service charges. Cost classification would simply be some headings, some detail beyond that and then detail of the service that has actually been provided.
I am stepping entirely outside my area of comfort, but I confess I am married to a chartered accountant who specialises in commercial service charges. I have some wonderful Sunday morning conversations with him over breakfast. Those are points that, between us, we have come up with—looking at the way that service charge accounts have been prepared.
Further, in clause 28, there is a word I have not seen before in relation to service charges. That is that there is an obligation to provide leaseholders information about variable service charges “arising”. I am not sure what that means, and it would benefit from some explanation. That is the sort of word that will find its way into tribunals, I would expect. If “incurred” did, and found its way to the Court of Appeal, “arising” could do with some explanation.
The report, which is the second element in clause 28, which a landlord is required to—
The Chair
The point is not to make a long speech. The purpose is to answer questions. You might want to draw your remarks to a conclusion, so that my colleagues can ask you questions.
Amanda Gourlay: Certainly. I was asked a question and the only way I could answer was by taking you through the detail, because general comments are not going to help the Committee in formulating its way forward.
The Chair
I am a lawyer, too; I know that we manage to speak quite a lot.
Amanda Gourlay: I am grateful, thank you very much.
Dehenna Davison (Bishop Auckland) (Con)
Q
Amanda Gourlay: I am going to try not to go too far. I have been described as enthusiastic and I find I have to pull back slightly.
Dehenna Davison
Q
What did you make of that? Clearly, the Bill contains a number of provisions, particularly on consumer rights. From my perspective, the most interesting is around transparency. Do you think the Bill goes far enough? You have already given examples on service charge accounts, but are there other ways that the Bill could go further to improve that?
Amanda Gourlay: What I would say, to start with, is that my area of expertise is service charges. I know the Committee will hear from Philip Freedman KC (Hon) and Philip Rainey KC on Thursday. I would defer to them on all matters on enfranchisement. That is my preface to your question. Transparency is going to come from consistent information being provided in the service charge arena. Thinking specifically about the sale of properties—the assignment of leases and the sale of leases—one issue that comes up quite regularly is the provision of information on the position on service charges, including questions like, “Has the leaseholder paid all the service charges?”, “Are there any works proposed for the future?” and those sorts of general questions that we all want to know the answers to if we are going to buy a property. There is no regulation of that whatsoever at the moment, and it is quite a sticking point.
I have had one or two cases where I have been involved in those sorts of issues—where a leaseholder has wanted to sell on their lease and has simply not been able to obtain the information from whoever it is who should be providing it and to whom the request has been made. That information is really something that we need to see pushed forward.
The Bill does provide two clauses about the provision of information. Provided that it is understood that those provisions extend not only to the leaseholder—“Please tell me about my service charges”—but also to the packs that conveyancers will ask for when flats are being sold on, it would be a good thing to move that forward, because it has been a real struggle to impose an obligation or to find a way of obtaining that information in a reasonable time and at a proper price from the managing agent. That would be my answer in terms of sales.
Dehenna Davison
Q
Amanda Gourlay: Twenty-four hours would be great, but that would probably sow total panic at the receiving end—I know that it would if I received that and I was doing something else. It will depend very much on the nature of the property. There are some very complex developments over in the east end of London. On the other hand, there are Victorian houses that are only two or three flats, and that should be much more straightforward.
I am aware that people have been able to pay for, say, a seven-day or five-day service, and there has been an uplift in the price for that. I am not the best person to ask about what the price should be. What I would say is that if a managing agent to whom this request would normally go is keeping their records up to date, one would hope that with the progress we have in software nowadays, that should very much just be the pressing of a button.
On work that is going to be carried out in the future, I have heard talk about, for example, mandatory planned maintenance plans. I have not seen those in the Bill. If a building or property is being well managed, one would expect there to be a plan for the next five or 10 years—what is needed to be done in terms of decorating, lift replacement and so on. Again, if that is in place, I would anticipate that it should be relatively straightforward to produce the information. I cannot give a specific answer; what I would say is that if we are all keeping our records up to date, that should be a relatively speedy process.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Amanda Gourlay: That is correct—yes. Forgive me; I was involved in Canary Riverside between 2016 and 2017. My involvement finished in June 2017.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Amanda Gourlay: I am not sure that I am—no.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Amanda Gourlay: No, I was not involved in that element of it.
Barry Gardiner
Q
In relation to that case, and on the accountable person provisions and section 24 amendments in the Building Safety Act—this relates to a question I asked earlier—the tribunal decided in the Canary Riverside case that the section 24 manager cannot be the accountable person, and that risks the section 24 management order failing, and the failed freeholder coming back to take control of the leaseholders and their service charge moneys. The implications of that decision really are quite dramatic. It means that the lifeline of the section 24 court-appointed manager provision from the Landlord and Tenant Act 1987 has been removed from leaseholders, particularly those who cannot afford to buy their freehold or do not qualify for the right to manage. How should we address that problem in the structure of the Bill?
Amanda Gourlay: I do not think you need to do that in the structure of the Bill. Casting my mind back to the Building Safety Act, which is now in second place to the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill in my mind, my understanding is that there is provision for a special measures manager in that Act. If that were brought into force, one would have a recourse. I am very happy to open my computer and look at the Act, but I do seem to recall that there is provision for a special measures manager to take over the building safety or the accountable person role in a manner of speaking. I say that in the loosest terms, without having checked the law.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Amanda Gourlay: There is always a concern looking forward as to how things might play out. I will deal your question on “arising” first, then come to your other point. Clause 28(2) inserts proposed new section 21D, “Service charge accounts”. Subsection (2)(a)(i) talks about the variable service charges “arising in the period”.
Barry Gardiner
Ah, “arising in the period”. Gotcha.
Amanda Gourlay: Turning to the second part of your question, one of the very big difficulties with the reform of leasehold is that good and bad—to put it in very binary terms—do not sit on one side or the other. While it seems to me that in an appropriate situation it would be entirely reasonable for a leaseholder to be able to withhold their service charges, there may equally be leaseholders who consider that this is an opportunity not to pay, for different reasons. There is always that risk. If one does not pay one’s service charge and is obliged to do so—for example, by going to tribunal and the tribunal says that actually £2,000 is payable—one is at risk of legal costs, which I am sure we will come on to in relation to the risk of forfeiture.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Amanda Gourlay: Yes, and I understood your question that way. I think my concern is that if there is a minor breach, is that simply a situation where we withhold service charges entirely? The question is the nature of the breach and whether it is or is not a breach. In principle, I would agree that it would be a sensible form of enforcement, because it is the absolute. It is the most draconian form of enforcement. One should always bear in mind, however, that if a third-party management company—a residents management company—is obliged to insure a building and has absolutely no wherewithal to insure it, there is that risk. Things may need to be done that simply cannot wait but, in principle, I see no reason why that should not be a remedy for failure to follow the process.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Amanda Gourlay: Do you mean generally, or in relation to insurance?
Barry Gardiner
In relation to insurance—because it will no longer be possible to charge commission, but it will be possible to charge a fee.
Amanda Gourlay: That is always a risk. In fact, that is a risk across the whole Bill where more obligations are imposed on a landlord. If the costs of those obligations are recoverable under the terms of the lease as part of the management, it is almost inevitable that charges will go up. They will have to: I am going to have to do more work, so I would like to be paid more.” The only control of those that we have at the moment is under section 19 of the Leasehold Reform Act 1967, which is whether the costs are reasonable in amount for the standard of work that is provided. One would hope that there would be degrees of transparency, but of course there is no obligation to account necessarily for the fees, save for the limitation of administration charges and the obligation to publish a schedule of fees of administration charges.
Again, however—I am sorry that I am providing such long answers—where it comes to publishing a schedule of administration charges, that is quite straightforward for most cases, but clearly if someone wants to carry out a significant change to a flat on the 15th floor of a building, the costs will be difficult to quantify in advance. There is still wriggle room, I think, in the administration charge limitations for costs to be higher.
Barry Gardiner
Finally, proposed new section 21E of the 1985 Act talks about annual reports, while proposed new section 21D sets out the basis of the accounts and when they must be presented. What is your understanding of the difference between the report—as set out,
“before the report date for an accounting period, provide the tenant with a report”—
and the accounts, which have to be presented at the end of the sixth month after the period? Is there any requirement in the Bill as drafted to ensure that the information available in the accounts is greater or more detailed—indeed, in any way different—from the report?
Amanda Gourlay: That is a question with which I have battled for a number of hours. The conclusion I reached was that proposed new section 21D very plainly envisages the involvement of a chartered accountant—a qualified accountant; proposed new section 21E is different because it would appear to be more narrative, a more general description of the information that has to be provided.
If you look at the Bill, subsection 21E(3), which entitles the appropriate authority to make provision about information to be contained in the report, is extremely broad. It refers only to
“matters which…are likely to be of interest to a tenant”.
That is a very wide scope. The information in effect has to be provided within a month of the service charge year-end, whereas the service charge accounts must be provided within six months.
While I am on that point, proposed new section 21E is enforceable under the enforcement provision, which I think is clause 30; rather peculiarly, however, proposed new section 21D is not. I invite the Committee to consider whether that new section 21D should be brought within the scope of clause 30.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
In some senses, many of the new requirements in this section are covered by the enforcement measures in clause 30. Is proposed new section 21D the only example, or are there other examples, of where that power in the 2002 Act might be considered necessary for a leaseholder to use, because the enforcement provisions do not cover the full gamut, if you like? I suppose that I am trying to get to where the enforcement clause is lacking. Is Mr Gardiner correct in specifying that there are circumstances in which you would want to withhold because the non-payable enforcement clauses do not bite in the relevant way?
Amanda Gourlay: I am instinctively nervous about withholding, even if it is simply a question of process.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Amanda Gourlay: It seemed to me that when I was reading through the clauses in the Bill that it was really section 25D that stood out as the measure that was not covered by clause 30. Clause 30 very clearly enumerates that we have section 21C(1) which is about the demand for a payment; 21E, which is about the reports—obviously, between C and E there is D, which is not in there—and then we also have 21E covered. You can literally trace those measures through. D was the one that stood out for me as being a necessity.
It might be said that that is because the provision of those accounts is outside the control of the landlord, because the accountant is the person who is preparing the accounts and they may—you will understand that I am trying to argue both against myself and for myself. There is that possible argument that may be proposed as a counter-argument to mine.
Richard Fuller
Q
You talked also about the provision of information and how important it is that people have access to annual reports and so on. In clause 49, there is a provision whereby the failure to provide things such as annual reports will carry a charge, with a maximum charge of up to £5,000. Then in clause 51, which addresses other aspects of what should be provided—in this case, charge schedules; you said how important they were—there is a maximum charge of £1,000. Does that sound like a sufficiently large sling from which a shot may be fired, or is it just a cost of doing business?
Amanda Gourlay: Again, we come back to the fact that for some landlords, particularly those that might be management companies with no other assets, £1,000 would be crippling; effectively, that might put them into insolvency unless they can recover those moneys from other leaseholders. For other landlords, even £5,000 will be next to nothing. It is a shot across the bows; it is clear that such failure is regarded with disapproval.
What I would like to do is to take those figures back, because they appear in part 3 as well as in relation to the estate management charges. The way in which they are formulated is that they are damages that can be awarded to a tenant if they make an application, certainly on the leasehold side of things—
Richard Fuller
Q
Amanda Gourlay: Not in that section.
If it is effectively a civil fine, there needs to be a sliding scale. In the tenancy deposit scheme, the way that things work is that, as you may know, if the landlord has not protected the deposit, they have to pay back an amount that is between one and three times that deposit. Some form of sliding scale would seem to be appropriate. I am not the right person to ask about sums and amounts; that is a policy question, really.
Richard Fuller
Q
Amanda Gourlay: I think it should be assessed on a sliding scale, to take account of the differences of interest—
Richard Fuller
Q
Amanda Gourlay: I would not anticipate that the first-tier tribunal would be overwhelmed. At the moment, I find that my hearings go through within a reasonable period of time. That is the best I can say.
Mike Amesbury
Q
Amanda Gourlay: In the first few years, it would make it more complex, because I would have to learn about it. I have read the Law Commission’s report, and any new scheme is going to involve some bedding down. From what I read and hear about commonhold, it should make matters less litigious. That is what I hear. I have no experience of commonhold directly, however.
Andy Carter
Q
Amanda Gourlay: The difficulty always comes back to what information people are given when they purchase a property, or when they take on the lease of a flat or a house. On the whole, those in the conveyancing industry who behave ethically do their best to inform people. I have very little conveyancing experience, so I am going to hold my fire on that a little. Clearly, if something is important, it should be drawn to a purchaser’s attention. Recurring charges are something I would have anticipated. Anecdotally, I have heard that people will say, “I don’t understand why I am paying a service charge—I own my flat.” “Education” always sounds slightly high-handed, but more information being made available or accessible would be useful.
Andy Carter
Q
The Chair
We have just three minutes left, as we are bound by the programme motion. We will hear questions from Rachel Maclean and then Barry Gardiner, and we will finish by 11.25, as per the programme motion.
Rachel Maclean
Q
Amanda Gourlay: I believe I have acted for freeholders against leaseholders on occasion.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Amanda Gourlay: That would make sense, but damages are not an appropriate remedy in this particular situation. It is very rare that a leaseholder will suffer financial loss. It is more about encouraging good behaviour.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Amanda Gourlay: I will, yes. I had no intention of making a speech, and I am sorry if I trespassed on people’s patience.
The Chair
That is fine. Do not worry.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned.—(Mr Mohindra.)
Criminal Justice Bill (Seventh sitting)
Tuesday 16th January 2024
(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Criminal Justice Bill 2023-24 View all Criminal Justice Bill 2023-24 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 16 January 2024 - (16 Jan 2024)
The Chair
Before we begin, I have a few preliminary announcements. Members should send their speaking notes by email to hansardnotes@parliament.uk and please switch your electronic devices to silent. As you know, tea and coffee are not allowed at these meetings.
Clause 15
Testing of persons in police detention for presence of controlled drugs
The Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire (Chris Philp)
I beg to move amendment 25, in clause 15, page 11, line 19, leave out lines 19 to 21.
The amendment and amendment 26 ensure that procedural provisions in respect of regulations made under new section 63CA of PACE 1984 operate as intended.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Government amendment 26.
Amendment 133, clause 15, page 11, line 27, at end insert—
“63CB Diversion services for persons testing positive for controlled drugs
Where a person has tested positive for the presence of controlled drugs in a sample taken under section 63B, that person must be directed to an appropriate drug diversion service.”
This amendment would require the police to refer individuals who test positive for a controlled drug to a drug diversion service.
Clause stand part.
Government amendments 27 to 31.
Clauses 16 and 17 stand part.
Government amendments 45 and 46.
Government new clause 13—Testing of persons outside of police detention for presence of controlled drugs.
Chris Philp
It is a great pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mrs Latham.
This series of Government amendments and associated clauses expands the police powers to drug test on arrest to include locations outside of custody. That includes introducing a new police power into part 3 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 to drug test persons on arrest at a location outside of the custody suite when certain conditions have been met. It also amends part 3 of the Drugs Act 2005 to provide the police with a power to require people who test positive to attend an initial assessment—and, when appropriate, a follow-up assessment—in respect of their drug misuse.
The Government are keen to get more people into treatment: something that we have funded with £300 million of extra cash over two or three years, with the aim of creating 54,500 extra drug treatment places. I am sure that we can all agree that the best thing is to get people off drug addiction, to prevent criminal behaviour.
The assessments that I have just referred to will enable those people to be referred into treatment or support services, whose funding has just been increased, as I mentioned. The new power will operate alongside the existing power, as expanded in the Bill, to drug test people on arrest or charge in police detention under section 63B of PACE.
Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)
During the evidence sessions it was made very clear, by both experts in the field and the police officers, that currently there is absolutely no possibility of this resource being available. Will the Minister please outline what resources the Home Office will put in place to ensure that the drug testing that he is rightly outlining will be able to take place?
Chris Philp
I thank the hon. Lady for raising the point. It is important to have capacity to deliver the testing. As I mentioned a couple of moments ago, we are now in the second year of a three-year funding commitment, as part of the 10-year drug strategy, to fund 54,500 extra drug treatment places across the country, delivered in partnership with local public health bodies. Those places have been created. There are now also liaison and diversion officers, I think, in every—or almost every—custody setting and in many courts as well, to help identify people who have a drug addiction.
Just before Christmas, I visited the custody suite in Northampton, where I met liaison and diversion officers. They speak to people who have been brought into custody and, if there is a substance problem, get them referred as we are describing. I accept that there is a need for resources, but those investments are being made. The implementation is being tracked by a cross-Whitehall taskforce that meets on a regular basis and includes officials from lots of Departments.
Jess Phillips
I thank the Minister for that and am fully in favour of more drug support services. What I was asking was whether the police have the resources to undertake the drug testing that the clause outlines. The police said no; this is not about whether somebody then gets referred on—the police, in the evidence session, said no. The Casey review into the Metropolitan police last year found that samples from rape cases were being kept next to packets of sandwiches in a police officer’s fridge. Yesterday, there was the story about the foetus in Rochdale. Also, if—
Jess Phillips
Okay. There are just not the clinical resources in police stations currently. Will the Minister outline how the testing will be funded?
Chris Philp
I have talked about the liaison and diversion officers and the treatment capacity, but on police resources, which the hon. Lady was asking about, we have just completed a substantial police recruitment programme. We now have 20,951 more officers than we had four years ago and 3,500 more than we have ever had before. The training takes two to three years; as officers complete their training, more and more will be available for frontline deployment. In addition, we are also—
Chris Philp
Well, the actual tests often get administered by police officers, and the hon. Lady asked about police officer capacity.
We are also removing some of the administrative burdens on policing by reforming the Home Office counting rules—that has already saved half a million hours of police time per year. Furthermore, the NHS are in the process of picking back up mental health cases where there is no criminality or threat to public safety. That is right; people in a mental health crisis need medical treatment, not the police. Once that is fully implemented, and we are in the middle of doing it now, it will free up more than a million hours of police time. In addition to record police numbers, we are removing some of the burdens keeping them from frontline activity, including what we are discussing.
I am satisfied that both police resources and medical treatment resources are available. If anything, the challenge is actually that we are not using all the treatment places available. Some of the proposals in this legislation will help the police refer more people for that initial assessment, which we hope and expect will lead to treatment in the extra places that we funded.
I do not want to stray too far from the clause, Mrs Latham. Following the community safety partnerships review and antisocial behaviour powers consultation, we are, as I mentioned, expanding drug testing on arrest to locations outside of custody so that the tests can be done quickly and easily and take up less time, to answer the point made by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley. That expansion, in addition to the expansion of drug testing to class B and class C drugs, as the Bill already provides, will ensure that police have all the necessary powers to identify people with a drug problem and get them into treatment.
The Government amendments confer a power on the police to drug test when a person aged 18 or over has been arrested for an offence and the officer has requested that the person give a sample. The power is discretionary, to be used when the officer feels that it is an appropriate course of action. It is also worth being clear that when drug testing takes place outside of police detention—that is, not in a police station—only a non-intimate sample, such as a swab or saliva, may be taken, for obvious reasons.
As with the current powers to drug test in police detention, testing may take place only when a person has been arrested for a relevant trigger offence, or another offence where an officer of at least the rank of inspector has reasonable grounds to suspect that the misuse of a specified controlled drug has caused or contributed to the offence and expressly authorises the test. A refusal to provide a sample without good reason will be a criminal offence, as is currently the case with the existing regime for drug testing on arrest.
Jess Phillips
In many domestic abuse cases—the fatal ones, sadly—the fact that the perpetrator was on drugs is used as a mitigating factor to get, for example, a manslaughter charge rather than a murder charge; I could cite many cases, but I will not stretch the Chair’s patience. Will drug testing be done in cases of domestic abuse, and has the Minister thought about how that might help the perpetrator?
Chris Philp
As I just set out, drug testing might be done, particularly if the inspector thinks that drug abuse might have contributed to the offending. If someone is on drugs that are causing them to commit domestic abuse, I am sure we would all want that identified so that action can be taken.
On the hon. Lady’s point about homicide versus manslaughter, that is not in the scope of this Bill—we are not making any changes in that area. I do, however, share her concern about the cases of people who murder their partners. We should not be somehow excusing their behaviour or seeking to diminish their culpability by saying, “Oh, they’re on drugs,” and getting the charge dropped from homicide to manslaughter. Although that is not the topic of this Bill—the Bill makes no changes as far as that is concerned—I share the hon. Lady’s concern. I hope that the legal community have heard the point that she has just made, with which I have enormous sympathy. I think it sounds reasonable.
The safeguards for the new power include that it can be used only by approved constables; that the statutory PACE codes of practice must include provision about how the new drug testing power is to be exercised; and that the sample may be taken only for the purpose of a drug test. That is to ensure that the power is used proportionately and only by those with appropriate experience.
The individual being tested must also be given a notice setting out why, when and where they were tested, and the result of the test. Following a positive test, a person can be required to attend an assessment with a drug-support worker, as is the case with the current drug testing regime. Non-attendance without good reason will itself be an offence. We will probably debate Opposition amendment 133 later; that tries to go further on this issue.
The trigger offences and specified controlled drugs will be set out in secondary legislation. The Secretary of State will, in line with the regime for drug testing in police detention, have the power to specify in regulations those trigger offences within the scope of drug testing in locations outside of custody, and the controlled drugs to be tested for. Such regulations will be subject to the affirmative and negative procedures respectively. That will ensure appropriate parliamentary scrutiny and allow for the regime to be varied if circumstances require.
The amendments also make various—I hesitate to use this term after the comments from the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Nottingham North, last time—technical and consequential amendments; I think we should excise the word “technical” from our discussions in future to avoid triggering the shadow Minister. The amendments make various important and consequential changes to ensure that the drug testing regime outside of custody has the same legal effects as drug testing in police detention.
In talking through the amendments, I have explained the intent behind clauses 15 to 17. I will rest my remarks there and reply later to any further points raised in the debate.
Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)
As we have heard, clauses 15 to 17 expand police powers to test for drugs in suspects who have been arrested and are in police detention. Drug testing on arrest was originally introduced as a police power under the Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000, which inserted sections 63B and 63C into the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. That legislation gave the police the power to drug test those arrested if aged 18 and over, or charged if aged 14 and over, for the presence of specified class A drugs if arrested or charged either for a trigger offence or where a police officer of at least the rank of inspector has reasonable grounds to suspect that specified class A drug use has caused or contributed to the offence and authorises the test. Trigger offences include theft, handling stolen goods, going equipped for stealing and possession of a controlled drug if committed in respect of a specified class A drug. We know that such offences have a significant link to substance misuse. Clause 15 expands police powers to test not just specified class A drugs but any specified controlled drug.
We were very keen on such measures 23 years ago in relation to class A drugs, and we support their expansion to include any specified controlled drug; my anxiety stems from the fact that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley mentioned, we heard in the evidence session and we know from engagement with our local police forces that there is not likely to be the capacity to do this effectively.
The Minister said that there are record police numbers, but he knows that there are 10,000 fewer police in neighbourhood settings. His pushback to that in previous debates has been to classify response police as neighbourhood police, but they would certainly not be able to do this type of activity. The burden of proof is on the Minister and the Department to show where the capacity will come from. We have real doubts, although we hope the measure will work.
Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the measure seems to be in contradiction to the position that many police forces are in? Because they lack resource capacity, they are withdrawing from dealing with issues relating to mental health and are saying, “We don’t have the capacity to do it.” Does my hon. Friend agree that this measure will put more pressure on police forces at a time when they are having to withdraw from some operational interventions?
Alex Norris
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Routinely or in extremis, demand pressures can push officers to do just the basics—keeping people safe and putting people in detention—rather than dealing with the broader issues, as we want them to. That problem creates further issues, and that is a challenge for us all.
Chris Philp
On that point, it is important to clarify the reason we are introducing the national partnership agreement, which applies Right Care, Right Person across the whole of England and, we hope, Wales too. Following a successful pilot in Humberside, it was found that in many of the mental health cases that the police were dealing with there was no criminality and no threat to public safety, so a police response was not right for the person suffering the mental health crisis. Not only was that taking up lots of police time that should have been spent doing other things, such as dealing with drug offences, but the person suffering a health episode was not being properly treated. It was found in Humberside that it is better for everyone, including the patient, to get a medical response in those circumstances. That is the motivation for the national partnership agreement, which the hon. Gentleman just referred to.
Alex Norris
The evidence from Humberside was strong and gave us encouragement to expand the scheme nationally; the challenge will be whether we see the same level of thought in its implementation across the country as we saw in Humberside. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bootle said, the risk is that forces will apply the scheme by simply not responding or turning their phone off, and displacing the activity. Humberside is a really good example of something done thoughtfully and well, but we should not assume that we will see that nationwide.
Peter Dowd
On the point that the Minister made in his intervention, does my hon. Friend agree that the issue is circuitous? The reason why the police were involved in mental health interventions in the past, although they are pulling away from them, was that there were such strains and stresses on the health service and local government that they had to fill the gap. Does my hon. Friend agree that this is getting to the farcical stage, with gaps in resources left, right and centre?
Alex Norris
Sadly, it has been a defining feature of the past nearly 14 years that we have been left dealing with significant issues such as substance misuse at the latest and most expensive stage, and that is particularly pertinent in policing. We deal with mental health issues, to the degree that we do deal with them—certainly for children and adolescents, that is definitely not the case universally—at the point of crisis. We do not have earlier interventions.
My amendment 133 seeks to add a little bit of that back in. It is a point of agreement across parties that, if individuals are in custody for crimes that they are alleged to have committed and they test positive for substances in their system, then that support is necessary—it is critical—to stop their drug use and hopefully change their life. My amendment refers to that, and I will get to that in a second. Currently, under the Drugs Act 2005, an individual who tests positive for a class A drug may be required to attend an individual assessment relating to their drug use and possibly a follow-up assessment. I think that we can go a little further than that, as my amendment does.
Jess Phillips
I am not offended by the fundamentals of the clause—the idea that everybody is drug-tested. I can foresee possible abuses of the discretion that the Minister described, and I will not be surprised in a couple of years’ time if that discretion is used with black people more than it is with white people, for example, but time will tell. Let us have the triumph of hope over experience that this occasion will not be like every other one that came before.
But as somebody who deals with police forces and forensics and testing, I really do have to challenge the idea that the capacity currently exists to take even just a swab from someone. I do not understand this. What is the timeframe? How long will it take to get the results? I am currently working on a case that I started in May last year, and where are we now? Seven months in I am still waiting for lab results from my local police force. It is not some backwater, but the second largest force in the country.
In reality, I do not believe that this will happen for every person who comes into a custody suite. Let us say it takes a week for the results to come back. The Minister should feel free to intervene to say that the system will work like in an airport, where a bag can be tested to see if it has cocaine in it—not that I have any personal experience! He should feel free to say that every police force will get new machines to enable a result within the time that somebody is kept in custody, and that an intervention will be put in place sensitively. I would be delighted to hear that the world is completely not as I recognise it from being in custody suites just over this past year—not over many years, but just this year. This situation just does not stack up in reality.
The lag in getting a result could be a week—again, let us go for the triumph of hope over experience—but we are much more likely to be talking months. Will that slow down charging? I want to understand exactly how this is going to work in an already overstretched system. In the case from May that I talked about, a victim of multiple rapes, forced marriage and 10 years of abuse has waited seven months for anything. We just get, “Sorry, we’re waiting on forensics.”
Mark Garnier (Wyre Forest) (Con)
The hon. Lady’s points are well made and important, but, at the end of the day, does she fundamentally agree with the principle behind the measures? Is it just the process that she is worried about?
Jess Phillips
I believe in so many principles that I know in reality cannot be realised. I believe in the principle that when someone is in crisis with suicide, there should be a telephone line that I can call that means that they get what we used to call—because it used to exist—a safe and well check. I have done that many times myself. I believe in principle that that should happen. If a Minister were to stand in front of me and tell me that that was the policy, it would be like them telling me that the sky is green. It may very well be the policy, but the reality is completely different. In the evidence sessions, all the experts in the field backed me up.
I want to know how this will actually work. I absolutely want it to work, but, to the hon. Gentleman’s point, I am very concerned about some of the safeguards. One of the things that people who work in the criminal justice system notice is the trends in how wrong ’uns, essentially, start to get away with things—there is always some new defence coming down the line. In the days when we did not believe victims of domestic abuse and they could just be ignored—see yesterday’s report on Rochdale—people did not need a response. The current favourite of a domestic abuse perpetrator on a summary or more serious offence is a counterclaim against the victim—“Well, she’s abusing me”—and my God, does it work! The amount of women who are victims of domestic abuse currently being accused by police forces across the country of being perpetrators, not victims, of domestic abuse is plentiful.
We also know that if we look at our female prison population, or at the roll of women in any substance misuse service, we would go a long way before we found one who had not been a victim of domestic abuse or sexual violence—in childhood and adulthood—and exploitation. There is a reason why women end up substance-dependent. Incidentally, there is a reason why men do too, but the main reason why women end up substance-dependent is abuses they have suffered. It is very likely that a counterclaim that brings a woman into a custody suite will find that she smoked a few spliffs the day before. That will go against her not just in the criminal court, where she is much more likely to be convicted of those crimes than her partner, if we look at all the data on female convictions, but in the family court, where she will lose her children as a result of that evidence.
If a woman is distressed because she has just been attacked or has lived with fear and she is behaving erratically—who wouldn’t?—and somebody says, “I think she might be on drugs,” it will be used against her. On the defences I talked about, if a person commits domestic abuse and is on drugs, that will be considered a mitigating factor. I have seen it lots of times; in the most serious cases, it is the difference between manslaughter and murder. Let us flip it around: if a person murders or harms someone who is themselves on drugs, it is seen as an aggravation on their part, and they get manslaughter again. If a person kills a woman who is behaving erratically because she is on drugs, jackpot—manslaughter! If a woman takes drugs and is killed, it is a reason to give a man manslaughter. If a man takes drugs and kills someone, it is a reason to give him manslaughter. Frankly, the cards are stacked against us.
I agree with the principle of the clause, but what happens if there is a counterclaim and the woman is drug-tested and found to be on drugs and the man is not, or the other way round? Either way, there is a possibility—well, it is not a possibility, because every other law we have tried to change has been used by perpetrators; they are better than us in this regard and know their way around the system, as do their lawyers—that he will get a lighter sentence.
I wish the police were trained well enough, but only 50% are trained on coercive control, for example. We have to make sure that there is guidance so that, in cases of domestic abuse, where the woman has a potential counterclaim, these things are not taken into account; otherwise, they will be used to take her children off her—they will be used against her. I can already see it in my future. I ask that that is given some really serious thought, because I am a bit frightened about how this is going to play out.
As somebody with decades-long experience of living side by side with a heroin, crack and cocaine addict, who I am pleased to say is well now and has dedicated his life to the service of other people in that situation, I have to say that the idea that a person “has to” go to one session—it is about the compulsion—means that they are just going to go and tick a box. My mum sent my brother halfway round the world to have different interventions. They did not work. Thousands of pounds were spent trying to get somebody off drugs.
I hear what the Minister says about more money being put into this, and my brother was and continues to be part of Dame Carol Black’s review. However, there is this idea that just one interview will do the job. In reality, it is a tick-box exercise, and it will not work unless people’s initial trauma is dealt with. You would have to go a long way to see somebody with problematic substance misuse who has not suffered some form of trauma. Loads of people take drugs recreationally, and it does not harm them; they are not allergic to it and do not become problematic addicts. The reason why that happens to some people and they go on to commit crimes is that something else is wrong. One meeting will not a problem solve. If one meeting had been what it took, my mother would have died in a happier position than she did.
This proposal is not a panacea, unless we work with things such as the 12-step programme—I declare that I am on the all-party parliamentary group for 12 step recovery. The programme is completely free, so commissioners do not understand it; they do not know how to behave when no one is asking them for any money. I cannot stress enough that if this proposal is just to make a nice headline—“We are going to drug-test everybody”—rather than something that will work in reality, it is a massive waste of police time; it is pointless. I will leave my comments there.
Chris Philp
I will try to respond to some of the points made on this group of amendments and clauses. On mental health, as the national partnership agreement is rolled out, we are asking the NHS to do more to treat people when it is just a medical condition, and that is what the NHS should do, because a medical crisis requires a medical response.
To respond to the point about resources, the NHS is this year receiving an extra £3.3 billion above and beyond what was planned. A lot of extra money is going into mental health specifically, and things such as mental health ambulances and mental health places of safety are being invested in to create the capacity required for the NHS and the ambulance service to take on people who have, in the last few years, wrongly been picked up by the police.
On making sure that the roll-out is done as thoughtfully elsewhere in the country as it has been in Humberside, we are not taking a “big bang” approach; we have not just flicked a switch and said that it is going to happen nationally from tomorrow. Implementation is happening on a force-by-force basis. In each area, the police are working with the local hospital trust, the mental health trust and the ambulance trust to make sure that the capacity is in place before things get switched over.
The roll-out has already happened in some areas. In London, I think it went live on 1 October or 1 November, but it may not be implemented until the end of this year in other areas, because they are going through the process of making sure that the NHS side of the equation has the capacity and is ready. Things are being done in a thoughtful and measured way around the country to replicate the success in Humberside, to which the shadow Minister referred.
I will try to address one or two of the other questions.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
I did not intend to intervene in this debate, but will the Minister address one issue before he moves on? In my area, the mental health trust is under considerable stress, and there have been various patient deaths and things like that. The mental health services tell me that they are struggling to get professionals to join them so that they can provide what is needed. How can the Minister be confident in what he is saying if we do not have professionals joining the service and are more likely to see them leaving?
Chris Philp
We are getting a little way off topic. Briefly, since the shadow Minister has raised the question, the roll-out is happening in a thoughtful way, rather than immediately, to make sure that such issues are addressed. As I said a moment ago, extra money is being put in. The NHS workforce plan, which is now in place, is designed to make sure that the people needed are there to meet the challenges, not just in mental health, but across the whole NHS spectrum.
Fundamentally, we all want to see people who have a mental health condition treated medically. Where there is no criminality and no threat to public safety, it is completely inappropriate to get a police response, which has been happening in recent years. Those people need to be treated, not put in a police custody cell, for example. That is the right thing to do, not just for the police, whose capacity is freed up to protect us and our constituents and to catch criminals, but for patients, who need and deserve a medical response. We are now working to ensure that that happens across the country, building on the successful trailblazer in Humberside, which shows that this can work.
On the question from the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Nottingham North, about using the negative versus the affirmative procedure in Government amendments 25 and 26, no substantive change is being made. Essentially, changing the list of specified controlled drugs is subject to the negative procedure, the trigger offences are subject to the affirmative procedure and, if the changes are some mix of the two, that is subject to the affirmative procedure. That does not substantively change the current position.
Let me turn to the questions that arose on drug testing outside of a custodial setting. To be clear, we are conferring a discretionary power on the police. We are not compelling them to test; we are leaving it up to the police officer. There may be occasions when, for operational reasons and to test more people, they find it more operationally appropriate to test on the spot outside of a custodial setting. It may be that they do not plan to take the person back to a custodial setting. That will save police time. This is a discretionary power, not an obligation; the police can use it where they judge it to be helpful.
The shadow Minister also asked about time. These tests are not sent away to the laboratory. I accept that we need laboratory tests to be a lot faster, as the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley highlighted in her remarks. However, these are on-the-spot tests, similar to those that might be seen in an airport—by the way, I think those are testing for explosives.
Chris Philp
I am relieved, but not surprised, to hear that. The result of these on-the-spot tests takes between 13 and 35 minutes to come back, so it is pretty quick.
I said these were so-called non-intrusive tests, and the shadow Minister asked, “What about urine samples?” To be clear, non-intrusive tests are defined in section 65 of the PACE code. That does not include urine samples but does include hair—excluding pubic hair—saliva and a swab taken from a non-intimate place, such as under the armpit. We are talking about pretty non-intrusive stuff.
Chris Philp
I beg to move amendment 32, in clause 18, page 14, line 13, after “application” insert “(including any appeal)”.
This amendment clarifies that for the purposes of clause 18(8)(b), the final determination of an application includes the determination of any appeal.
Chris Philp
The clause provides a new power for the police to seize, retain and destroy any bladed article—a knife, for example—held in private when they are on the private premises lawfully, but where they have reasonable grounds to suspect that the item is likely to be used for unlawful violence. Such knives are legal and held privately, but the police are concerned they might be used for unlawful violence.
Data shows that incidents with a knife or sharp instrument have fallen by 26% since December 2019, but it is still disturbing to see the number of cases admitted to the NHS every year—we look at NHS hospital admissions data because that is the most reliable measure of knife crime. As I say, hospital admissions for injuries with a bladed item have fallen by 26% in the last four years.
Currently, the police have no power to remove potential weapons from individuals unless those are to be used as evidence in an investigation or are subject to a ban. Even if the police come across several potentially dangerous knives while they are in a property with a search warrant for an unrelated matter—for example, a drugs charge—the only way they can legally remove those knives, even if they have reason to suspect they will be used unlawfully, would be if they were to be used as evidence in the investigation. These knives do not fall foul of the definition of knives that are inherently illegal, which we discussed in our previous Committee proceedings. We will widen the definition of illegal knives shortly via a statutory instrument, and such knives are always illegal, even if possessed in private. We are talking here about knives—a kitchen knife, for example—that will remain legal. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West for her campaigning on the issue of banning a much wider range of knives completely.
It might assist the Committee if I share a case study to illustrate the need for this measure. A police officer might be conducting a search in the residence of a male arrested for murder involving a firearm. The person might have multiple links to local gangs. A quantity of drugs might be recovered from the premises, along with a number of knives. Although there were drugs offences, if the knives found were not related to those offences, the police would have no power to seize them, even though they were found in the possession of a known criminal.
Jess Phillips
I seek clarity. There is a load of big kitchen knives on the wall in my house, and I can see them when I walk in. I deal with the issue of violence in a domestic setting all the time, but would that count?
Chris Philp
No, it would not count. For the police to exercise the proposed power, they must have reasonable grounds to suspect that the item is likely to be used for an unlawful purpose. I do not think there would be any reasonable grounds to suspect that kitchen knives hanging on the wall of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley would be used for an unlawful purpose. By contrast, if the police were in the residence of a known prolific drug dealer and gang member, drugs had been recovered from the premises and they had been arrested or convicted for previous violent offences, that would be an instance where a quantity of knives—perhaps different knives beyond kitchen knives—would meet the threshold that I just set out. I hope that sets out the rationale.
In his evidence to the Committee on 12 December, Chief Constable Gavin Stephens, chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, said that giving the police this power is
“a very important preventive measure.”––[Official Report, Criminal Justice Public Bill Committee, 12 December 2023; c. 11, Q18.]
That is why are seeking to introduce the provision, justified in the way that I have set out. If somebody believes that their property—their knife—has been seized in error, they will be able to make a complaint to the police, as with any other police matter. In addition, we are providing a right of appeal in court to have the item returned, if the court agrees. If somebody did unreasonably seize the kitchen knives of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley, she would be able to complain to the police in the first instance. If they did not address her complaint and return the knives, she would then be able to go to the court and get them returned.
It is also important to say that there is no additional power of entry associated with the new power. The police would need to be in the property lawfully, which, presumably, would also not be the case in the hon. Member’s house. For example, they would need to be there as part of an investigation into an unrelated matter or invited into the property. We will amend code B of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 to ensure that the codes of conduct reflect the new power, so that it is used in a fair and reasonable way.
Finally, amendment 32 is a minor technical amendment —we must not forget that—which clarifies that for the purposes of clause 18(8)(b), the final determination of an application includes the determination of any appeal. This provision will help the police to take dangerous knives off the street, or out of people’s houses, even if they are legal, where they are suspected of being used for unlawful violence. It is a useful additional power. The police asked for it in their evidence to the Committee, and I hope that it will command cross-party support.
Alex Norris
This provision is to some degree the less controversial—though not unimportant—counterpart to clause 19, so I will keep some of my arguments for the next debate. The Minister wants cross-party support and he will secure it on this matter. The consequences of the clause will be that if a constable is lawfully on a premises and they find a bladed or sharply pointed item that they think might be connected to unlawful violence, they can seize the article. It passes an important test, which I think about quite a lot: if I had to explain to my constituents that the reverse were true, would they think I am an idiot? In this case, I think that the test is passed. If bladed or pointed weapons that might be used for unlawful violence are found during a lawful visit relating to another purpose, they absolutely should be seized. It is in the public interest.
We will discuss this point in the next debate, but it is important that the principle of search warrants is upheld, and that they have a definition; they cannot be used for fishing trips or exploratory trips. Nevertheless, when these sorts of items are found, we must be able to take them out of use. I am interested in whether the Minister thinks there is a need for training or awareness among officers. We could apply a Phillips test quite easily: if someone has a knife but they do not have any food or a kitchen, that is probably a bad sign. That in itself is possibly not the quality of regulations a Secretary of State might wish to set, so I would be interested to hear how the Minister thinks that might work.
I am grateful for the clarity that clause 18(1)(a), which states,
“is lawfully on the premises”,
means that the power applies on any visit, for whatever purpose, whether that is a search warrant or a response call. I do not disagree with that, but it is important that we state that. It is important that it is understood. It must be demoralising for staff to visit for a certain purpose—say, on a search warrant—and then to have people there laughing at them because they cannot withdraw from circulation some dangerous weapons. I think, therefore, that the provision will be welcomed by officers as well.
Chris Philp
I will briefly reply to a couple of the questions. We propose to use the same processes already in place for property that is seized. There is a very standard form and process that the police routinely use, and the same would apply here. The hon. Gentleman asks about subsection (7), on the basis on which a court might hear an appeal, and about paragraph (b) in particular, which appears towards the top of page 14. The subsection states that the court may make an order if it appears to it that the person is the owner and that
“it would be just to make the order”.
The hon. Gentleman askes what that means. I think the meaning is that the test set out in subsection (1)(c) is met—that is to say, there are
“reasonable grounds for suspecting that the relevant article would be likely to be used in connection with unlawful violence”
were it not seized. I think the test of whether the decision to seize and retain the blade is “just” essentially refers back to the test set out in clause 18(1)(c). It would seem reasonable that if that is the statutory test that the police officer applies when deciding whether to seize the knife, one would expect the court to apply precisely the same test, and that is how, therefore, I would expect the court to apply the term “just”. I hope, should there be any ambiguity, the transcript of this answer will assist the court in interpreting the use of the word “just” in what will be section 18(7)(b).
Amendment 32 agreed to.
Clause 18, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 19
Stolen goods on premises: entry, search and seizure without warrant
Alex Norris
I beg to move amendment 61, in clause 19, page 15, line 17, at end insert—
“(8) A constable may search a specified premises for specified items without obtaining authorisation under subsection (1) if the constable believes that the search is necessary for the effective identification of stolen goods.
(9) If a constable conducts a search by virtue of subsection (8), they shall inform an officer of at least the rank of inspector that they have made the search as soon as practicable after the completion of the search.
(10) An officer who is informed of a search under subsection (9) shall make a record in writing—
(a) of the grounds for the search;
(b) of the nature of the items sought;
(c) confirming that the officer would have given their authorisation under subsection (2) had the constable sought it.”
This amendment aligns the power given under Clause 19 with that in section 18 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, and enables a police constable to undertake a search for stolen goods without a warrant without obtaining authorisation from a superior officer.
Clause 19 is one of the more significant clauses. It introduces very significant new powers of entry, search and seizure without a warrant. That is not without controversy, as I think we will cover in the next three debates. Amendment 2, which proposed to leave out clause 19, has not been selected for debate, but it is worth noting that it received quite a lot of signatures spanning a very broad range of parliamentarians across the Conservatives, the Lib Dems and the Democratic Unionist party. Clearly, a significant range of colleagues with significantly different world views are discomforted by these provisions. That is always an interesting and important sign that we should get something right.
Again, I subject this to what my constituents think and the conversations that I have had with them in the past. So many items are now fitted with a GPS or geolocation tracker, but it is a matter of considerable frustration and no little confusion that the fact that we know where an item is does not provide appropriate grounds for a constable to retrieve it. That is deeply frustrating and, as we have seen in the explanatory notes and heard in the evidence sessions, is a problem that the clause seeks to solve.
The clause inserts into the Theft Act 1968 proposed new section 26A, which confers power on a police officer to enter and search any premises for stolen goods without a warrant. Under the current provisions in the Theft Act, a warrant would have to be issued by a magistrate before such a search could take place. Given the nature of the enterprises that pinch digital technology or expensive bikes, or that may even be stealing cars to order, we know that that delay involved could mean that our response is far too late and that the moment for retrieval, for detection and perhaps for breaking up an organised group of criminals has been missed.
Clause 19 goes on to state the parameters for the new power whereby the need for a warrant can be bypassed—namely, that a police officer of at least inspector level must authorise a constable to enter premises and search for the specified items, in this case stolen goods. It also sets out the conditions—namely, that the police officer of at least inspector level must be satisfied that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the items have been stolen, that they are on the premises and that it is not reasonably practicable to obtain a warrant without frustrating or prejudicing the search—and that authorisation can be oral or written. Again, this process seems reasonable, given that the crime that it is concerned with often involves the rightful owner having that degree of tracking information and being able to provide it to the police, showing the precise location of the stolen goods, but at present the police cannot do anything about it.
There are certain checks and oversights. A uniformed constable must conduct the search; it must happen within 24 hours of authorisation, although I suspect that such searches will take place much more quickly than that; and it must be done at a reasonable hour. Again, in principle we support these measures; without wanting to prejudge the stand part debate, I need to establish that context before I can turn to my amendment.
The current process for obtaining warrants to search properties for stolen goods with tracking information can be an inefficient use of police and magistrates’ time. It hampers investigations and allows criminal enterprises to benefit from their activities, using the slowness of the authorities to do things much more quickly, and obviously we know that that can have a knock-on effect for further crimes as well.
An interesting point was well made in the evidence session when we heard from Superintendent Nick Smart of the Police Superintendents’ Association. He challenged the Committee about why the Bill appeared to sit differently from existing powers set out in section 18 of PACE. Amendment 61, which I have tabled, sets out to probe that issue.
Section 18 of PACE allows entry and search without the prior authorisation of a more senior officer, provided that it is after an arrest and the officer has reasonable grounds to suspect that there is evidence on the premises being searched relating to the offence that has been committed, or to a connected offence. Therefore, there is precedent in current legislation for entry and search without a warrant or prior authorisation, and section 18 of PACE allows for consent to be sought afterwards, with a senior officer at the rank of inspector or above having to sign off on that, saying that they would have authorised the search if they had been there in that moment. That is also an important caveat.
Amendment 61 merely seeks to align the powers in clause 19 with similar powers in section 18 of PACE. The reason I think that would be quite helpful is that it would be more consistent from an officer’s point of view. I do not think that we would want officers to think, “Ah, am I using section 19 of the Criminal Justice Act or section 18 of PACE?” and therefore asking, “Can I, or can’t I?” The possibility for error is quite clear there.
More importantly, however, I think there would be some clarity for the public, too, because, once again, just as it would be challenging but not unreasonable to ask for officers to be very conscious of the different sections of the powers that they are using—of course they need to know that, although there are times in the heat of the moment when mistakes could happen—I do not think it is reasonable to expect members of the public to hold such things in their minds.
Therefore, consistency in the regime used is important; I think that was the point that Superintendent Smart was making, which is probably a good one. I want to press the Minister as to why that approach was not taken and why his approach is better.
Peter Dowd
Amendments 61, 58 and 59 are linked, but I will speak first to amendment 61, a thoughtful amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North.
I want to address an issue relating to the Human Rights Act 1998, which incorporates the European convention on human rights into UK law, with particular reference to section 6, “Acts of public authorities”, which came into force in October 2000. I stand to be corrected, but as far as I am concerned, for the purposes of the amendment, the right to respect for private and family life informs the relevant police powers and sets them in context.
Article 8 of the convention states:
“1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.
2. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.”
As paragraph 2 above sets out, it is unlawful under the Act for a public authority to act in a way that is incompatible with the convention right, unless it is compelled or permitted by statute to do otherwise. There is an excellent lecture by Robert Walker entitled “The English Law of Privacy: an Evolving Human Right”, which is well worth a perusal. I am sure that everyone in this room agrees, notwithstanding the current debate among some Government Members in relation to the ECHR more broadly, that article 8 is pretty uncontentious. What is perhaps more contentious is where it is breached. It is important that we keep that in mind.
Chris Philp
I very much welcome the Opposition’s support for the principle behind clause 19. As the hon. Member for Nottingham North mentioned, some people—a small number, I would add—have expressed reservations, but I am glad that we agree on the principle that the clause will help police officers to retrieve stolen goods; our constituents will welcome that. Amendment 61 aims to fine-tune the detail of how that is done. In fact, it goes a little further in its drafting than the Government are proposing. The hon. Gentleman referred to section 18 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, noting that in some circumstances constables can enter premises without a warrant or prior authorisation from a more senior officer. He seeks to implement the same thing via his amendment.
The difference, however, is that under in the PACE provision the police must either suspect that a person is on the premises or be in pursuit of a particular person, whereas clause 19 is about stolen goods. Of course, individuals are a little more mobile than stolen goods: a stolen mobile phone, iPad or car can be moved, but that requires a person, whereas if the police think a person is in the premises, they can leg it pretty quickly. We do not need prior authorisation from an inspector under section 18 of PACE, because that relates to a person the police are after, whereas in this case we are talking about stolen goods. If the police think that there are both stolen goods and a person, the PACE provisions will apply and they can enter the premises without a warrant and without prior authorisation. The reason that we have built in the little extra step of prior authorisation by an inspector is that we are talking just about stolen goods, not about a person.
I can assure the shadow Minister that inspectors are used to authorising the use of various police powers—that is relatively routine—and inspectors are always available in each relevant area 24 hours a day, so there should not be any particular delay. We think that the clause is ECHR-compliant, and of course on the front page of the Bill there is a statement under section 19(1)(a) of the Human Rights Act that in the view of the Secretary of State, its provisions are consistent with our ECHR obligations—a topic that may be debated on the Floor of the House today and tomorrow.
It is very welcome that the Opposition support the clause in principle. I do not think that the calibration of the inspector’s prior authorisation will cause any delay practically. Because we are going after goods and not people here, I think the balance is right. While welcoming the Opposition’s support for the clause in principle, I therefore gently resist their amendment.
Alex Norris
I am grateful for the contribution from my hon. Friend the Member for Bootle. His points about human rights are really important. In this Committee, and during the Bill’s remaining stages in this place and down the other end of the building, we will have to fine-tune—I think that is the phrase he used—the balance of these provisions.
The Opposition certainly do not support routine warrantless searches, just on spec, of people’s lives, premises or property. We have to find a balance; that is why we have a warrants regime. If there are cases—I think that the clause provides us with one—in which it is reasonable to set that to one side, we must do so in a tightly defined and clearly understood way. I do not want to start the next debate prematurely, but that is very much my view, and I will be pressing the Minister further on it.
I am grateful for the Minister’s explanation, which is enough to give me comfort. It is slightly strange to hear conversation about the ECHR up here in Committee, given what we will hear downstairs on the Floor of the House this afternoon, but that is for others to debate. For the purposes of this debate, what the Minister said is a helpful caveat. What I offer perhaps would go further, and given that we are moving gently into this space, perhaps it is not wise to go the whole way. I suspect that this might have to be kept under review. The Minister talked about property not being fast-moving. Perhaps that will be tested by time, but at this point I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Alex Norris
I beg to move amendment 58, in clause 19, page 16, line 24, at end insert—
“(4) The Secretary of State must, as soon as is practicable after a period of two years from the date of Royal Assent to this Act, lay before Parliament a report on the implementation and utilisation of the police powers introduced by this section.”
This amendment would require the Secretary of State to publish a report on the police’s use of the new powers of entry, search and seizure.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 59, in clause 19, page 16, line 24, at end insert—
“(4) The College of Policing must exercise its powers under section 39A of the Police Act 1996 to issue a code of practice in relation to the use of powers introduced by this section.
(5) In drawing up the code of practice under subsection (4), the College of Policing must consult with such individuals or bodies as it sees fit.”
This amendment would require the College of Policing to publish a code of practice on the use of the new powers of entry, search and seizure.
Alex Norris
There are considerable concerns about clause 19, as colleagues have demonstrated by tabling amendment 2. As far as amendments to Bills tabled by people who are not Committee members go, the range of signatories to amendment 2 is interesting. It shows that there is interest from a wide range of colleagues with a wide range of world views, so it is important that we take the time to look at the matter properly.
We should be honest that allowing warrantless searches is a significant change. Search warrants are a well-established and well-understood part of our law and policing processes. My hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North mentioned how all-pervading they are in media and on television. There is a widespread acceptance and understanding of “You’re not coming in if you don’t have your warrant,” and that sort of thing. It is important that we in this place provide clarity and leadership, and that if we want to set that regime aside we explain how we will do it and what it will mean. We have to balance that against the public’s very reasonable expectation that we should use new technologies to get their things back.
I hope to hear from the Minister that the Government’s view is that this is a very narrow power for a narrow set of circumstances, that it is not a significant change to the search warrant regime in this country, and that people should understand that warrants are the default, primary and most important way for law enforcement agencies to enter their property. I hope to hear that this is a de minimis power that will be utilised in a targeted way for a specific purpose. I believe that to be the case, and I think that that is what came out of the evidence sessions, but I hope that the Minister will put it on the record.
Amendments 58 and 59 are designed to give the powers some shape, assurance and guardrails so that members of the public and interest groups watching our debates know that we are not just signing off on the Bill and forgetting about it, and that Parliament takes an active interest in seeing how and whether it works.
Amendment 58 would require the Secretary of State to lay before Parliament a report on the use of the powers within two years of the Bill’s Royal Assent. That would give us in this place a chance to have some oversight and scrutiny of what has happened. It would get the Government to state on the record, in an indisputable way, whether they feel that the powers have or have not worked, so that there can be an assurance of ongoing parliamentary interest. It would perhaps give us a jumping-off point to change direction if needed. Again, I would be interested to hear the Minister’s views. If he is not minded to accept the amendment, how will the Government keep track? How will Parliament get the chance to have its say about the effectiveness or otherwise of the new provision?
We will file amendment 59 under no good deed going unpunished. We heard typically excellent evidence in our session with Chief Constable Andy Marsh, the chief executive of the College of Policing. He said that there is an issue with the provisions in the Bill: the technology is not perfect. If someone has lost their phone or tablet and finds out that it is in their house, pinpointing it becomes quite the scavenger hunt, because the technology is not that accurate. Some of the inbuilt technology might be better than some of the trackers that are appended to an item, which can have varying ranges and be imprecise. There could also be challenges if someone is living in shared accommodation, because it might not be clear which room or dwelling an item is in or, if the building has multiple enterprises, which one is holding it. The technology is not so good that those concerns are removed.
My suggestion, which mirrors one of the Government’s ideas in clause 73, is that we ask Chief Constable Marsh and his College of Policing to issue a code of practice on the use of the new powers of entry, search and seizure. We should be very clear about what it is for and what it is not for, which would give confidence to colleagues and the wider public. This is primarily a conversation about technology, but not exclusively so. Again, there will be frustration if someone comes to us and says that their distinctively designed guitar is in the window of a pawn shop. It is deeply frustrating that the police have very little power to recover that item, so providing some shape through a code of practice would be helpful.
The code of practice ought to state—perhaps the Minister will say this himself in his response—that the purpose of the clause is not to change our warrant regime, but to ensure that a stolen item has some degree of locator or physical differentiator, so that it is known to be in a certain vicinity and it is not reasonable to think it could be anywhere else. That is the narrow circumstance under which the power should be used. That is certainly our view on how broad it should go. I think it is probably the Government’s view as well, and I hope to hear that from the Minister. Either way, my amendments seek to give the powers guardrails. I hope that they will be agreed to on that basis, but if not, I hope that the Minister will tell us what guardrails the Government have in lieu to ensure that the power is effective and retains public confidence.
Peter Dowd
My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North has laid out the context for amendments 58 and 59 with thoughtfulness and with consideration, as he did for amendment 61. I agree with him that seeking a review within two years or thereabouts of the application of the powers is really important. It is important to ensure that when we give additional powers to the police, we ensure that the operation, implementation and use of those powers are subject to review. I think we would all agree that it would be beneficial on various levels, including operationally and in policy terms, to step back after a period of time and take a look at the implementation of the powers.
Notwithstanding the fact that my hon. Friend has described the powers as narrow, people will not be used to them. Let us say that in the first five or six months of last year, there were about 50 or 60 bike thefts in my constituency and that half of those bikes had a locator on them. Although they may have a “stolen” bike in their home, people are not used to the police just turning up, going into the shed and getting the bike, so we must explain why we are doing that. It is important to have a review after a couple of years to ensure that my constituents know that they will not be on the receiving end of a disproportionate intervention by the authorities. I have no reason to believe that the powers will be used indiscriminately or outside the spirit of our discussions today, but we live in a democracy and we want to live in a cohesive society, so it is important that we have checks and balances. A review after a couple of years, to ensure consistency, is important.
I agree with amendment 59, which would require the College of Policing to produce a code of practice in relation to the use of the powers. The College of Policing often talks about using
“evidence-based knowledge in everything we develop”.
That is crucial, so I am sure that it would welcome my hon. Friend’s proposal. It is important that the modus operandi of the police officer or constable be guided by authorised professional practice guidelines, which the College of Policing has, to ensure that their interventions are as appropriate as possible. That is all the more important in the light of the challenging circumstances in which some powers will be used. As I have indicated, the College of Policing is already well versed in the production of codes of practice, including—to name just a couple—those on the use of the police national computer and the law enforcement data service and on armed policing and the use of less lethal weapons.
I hope that the Minister will give careful consideration to the points that my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North and I have made about the amendments. As my hon. Friend says, if the Minister will not accept the amendments, we ask him for an assurance that the spirit of them, if not the letter, will be included in the Bill. I know that the Minister is always equitable in these matters, and I am sure he will give careful consideration to the well-thought-out and considered views expressed by my hon. Friend.
Chris Philp
Let me respond briefly on amendments 58 and 59. Amendment 58 asks for review. Members of the Committee will know that review and scrutiny of statutory powers happens on a regular basis. The Home Office collects and publishes more data on the use of police powers than it ever has before. There are plenty of opportunities for Members to scrutinise the use of powers both via written questions, oral questions, the Select Committee, and so on and so forth, but critically the normal post-legislative review of the Act will happen three to five years after Royal Assent, as is usual. The scrutiny of how this works in practice will happen through those mechanisms, particularly through the post-legislative review that always happens three to five years after Royal Assent. A range of scrutiny mechanisms exist beyond that. The police are not under-scrutinised.
On amendment 59, I am pleased to confirm to the Committee, particularly the shadow Minister, that we intend to update PACE code B, which covers police powers of entry, search and seizure, to give a clear statutory guide—even stronger than the College of Policing’s authorised professional practice—on how best these powers should be used. Under section 66 of PACE, there is a requirement for us to do that. We are of course happy to do it, but we do not actually have any choice; it is a statutory requirement under section 66. That will include the new powers covered in clause 19 of the Bill. We will work with the college to ensure that any supplementary guidance it issues on these new powers reflects the wording of updated code B, but updating code B is compulsory; we have to do it. It is statutory, and I can confirm that we will comply with our statutory obligations. I hope that addresses the issues raised by amendments 58 and 59.
Alex Norris
I am grateful for colleagues’ contributions. My hon. Friend the Member for Bootle raised a couple of points. We must always hold in our head how things will operate in practice. What is in the Bill is in the Bill but often what happens in that moment—perhaps a moment of challenge or conflict at 11.30 on a Friday night—can feel very different from what is in the Bill. We ought to hold practical operations in our head, which is what we have been seeking to do.
The Minister addressed my hon. Friend’s point about stepping back and scrutiny to some degree, which was very welcome. I feel a certain degree of risk saying in an election year—obviously, I aspire to swap places with the Minister by, say, this time next year—that this may come back with a degree of interest. In this place in general, we are getting better at pre-legislative scrutiny, but I do not think that has been the norm. Notwithstanding what the Minister said about post-legislative review, I do not think that we do that very well, certainly not in Parliament. In fact, it is largely something we do not do.
We are lawmakers, and the temptation to make law and fill the parliamentary time will always be there, but very rarely do we go back and ask of something we tried three to five years ago, “Did it work? And if it didn’t, why? Did we need to do more law? Was it right to have done this by regulation rather than primary legislation?” It could be that people like me, who by nature are perhaps more interventionist than other colleagues in the room, might think, “Perhaps that was the wrong time to intervene.” It is about all those things. I do think we do that process very well, because we basically do not do it at all.
I have a degree of confidence. I am grateful for what the Minister said about post-legislative review, but I suspect that will be more of a departmental and less of a public exercise. There is something about being willing to own our errors in our proceedings that is good for public confidence—when we are willing to do it. On that basis, I am happy to withdraw my amendment.
Similarly on amendment 59, what the Minister has offered in lieu on PACE code B is better than my proposal, so that is a very good deal indeed. On that basis, I am happy and willing not to press my amendment.
Perhaps the Minister, being a diligent student of Parliament, is saving his powder for the stand part debate, which is probably right given the gusto with which I entered the stand part debate during the debate on amendment 61. I really hope to hear in the stand part debate clarity from the Government that this is seen as a tightly-defined variation of the search warrant regime under a very tightly-defined set of circumstances. We have not yet heard that. We are about to debate the clause, and although I dare say we have covered most of it, so it may only be a short debate, we really need to hear that message.
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Chris Philp
We have touched on many of these issues already, so I will not speak at great length on clause 19 stand part. Suffice to say, our constituents expect the police always to follow up leads where they exist, particularly to retrieve stolen goods, whether mobile phones, e-bikes, cars or whatever it may be. As members of the public and as parliamentarians, we expect the police to always follow those leads. Just a few months ago, the police made a national commitment to do precisely that. An important part of that is the ability to retrieve stolen goods where their location is known or reasonably suspected. With technology now, many items—mobile phones, cars, and so on—have tracking devices, and the public are rightly frustrated if the police do not always follow them up.
This power enables the police to respond quickly to retrieve stolen goods where they have reasonable grounds to believe they know the location. Quite often, those stolen goods move very quickly indeed. For example, the thief may take them off to sell them, and therefore there is often not enough time to go through the process of getting a warrant. The police may want to act in a manner of minutes or hours. In investigatory principles, there is the concept of the “golden hour”, talked about by Chief Constable Andy Marsh, now chief executive of the College of Policing. That first hour is really important. Even the best magistrates court in the world will not be able to respond in an hour to authorise a warrant, but a phone call to an inspector can be done within that golden hour. That is why we are making these changes.
This is only one part of the police commitment to always follow all reasonable lines of inquiry. For completeness, I will mention the use of facial recognition technology. Where there is a photograph of somebody committing a crime on CCTV, Ring doorbell, dash cam, or someone’s phone, we expect the police to always run that through the facial recognition database, but that is a separate element of their commitment.
It is important to ensure these stolen items are recovered. It is more than irritating to our constituents when the police do not always follow them up. This legislation will give them the power to act quickly and decisively where needed, and I think it is balanced and proportionate. Historically, we have required warrants—unless the police are in pursuit of a particular individual, as we debated previously—but we think this strikes the right balance.
On the commitment the shadow Minister asked for around the scope of this provision, the circumstances in which this power can be used are clearly set out on the face of the Bill. I draw the attention of the Committee to clause 19(2); subsection (2) of proposed new section 26A of the Theft Act 1968, sets out very clearly when this power can be used. The conditions are that there are “reasonable grounds to believe” that, first,
“the specified items are stolen”,
secondly, that
“the specified items are on the specified premises”,
and thirdly, that
“it is not reasonably practicable to obtain a warrant…without frustrating or seriously prejudicing its purpose”
—that is, a concern that the goods may be moved on before a warrant can be obtained.
The scope of this power is very clearly defined on the face of the Bill, and I think strikes the right balance. The evidential test the police have to meet is that they have reasonable grounds to believe that those three things are met. The wording uses the formulation “and”, so it is not just that any one of them have to be met; all three have to cumulatively be met before the provisions of this clause are engaged. There is a very clear need for this provision, as it will help police to recover stolen goods. The public will welcome it, and it is very clearly defined in clause 19(2).
Alex Norris
Just briefly, what the Minister has said is in the Bill is welcome. I still think that a stronger signal on tightness may yet need to be furnished. The rubber will meet the road at subsection (2)(b) of proposed new section 26A—that the specified items are on the specified premises. If that was seen to be done on an intelligence basis or possibly a word-of-mouth basis, that might discomfort colleagues. The compelling case for this generally is the new and novel technology element. Nevertheless, we support the principle.
I will not labour the point any further, not least because the colleagues listed under that amendment are an admirable group, who I know will pursue the Minister on it. Never mess with people from Derbyshire, I suspect you might say, Mrs Latham. There may yet need to be a little more comfort given on this, but we do not object to the principle. The provision is important, and the public demand for it is there. We think it can be used effectively, so I will not encumber us any further.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 19 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 20
Suspension of internet protocol addresses and internet domain names
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Chris Philp
I will do my best to conclude prior to 11.25, when the Committee might consider adjourning.
Clause 20 and schedule 3 create a new power for UK law enforcement and other investigative agencies to suspend IP addresses and domain names that are being used in serious crime. Under the power, law enforcement will be able to apply for a court order requiring the organisation responsible for providing the IP address or domain name to prevent access. Sadly, we have all too often seen that criminal actors use domain names and/or IP addresses to carry out crime including fraud and malware dissemination, targeting the vulnerable. When IP addresses and domain names are being used to conduct criminal activities, law enforcement agencies need to be able to block access, preventing the crime occurring.
In the UK, the police and other law enforcement agencies currently use public and private partnerships, and industry will, in the majority of cases, voluntarily suspend domain and IP addresses used for criminal purposes. This has led to the UK being generally one of the safest jurisdictions in the world. However, voluntary suspension is not an option in all cases. In particular, the majority of cyber-crime emanates from outside the UK, where the same voluntary arrangements are not available. Quite often, internet infrastructure providers based overseas will only take action when a court order is handed down. This measure will provide for such a court order to be obtained. Overseas infrastructure providers are much more likely to comply with a court order than a simple request made by the police without a court order.
We reviewed the Computer Misuse Act 1990 in 2021. As part of that, we invited views from stakeholders. Responses indicated that although much of the 1990 Act remains effective, more could be done in cases where the UK wants to take action against offences committed from overseas. The main function of these provisions is to ensure that UK law enforcement and certain investigative agencies can act to suspend IP addresses and domain names where they are being used for criminal activity with a link to the UK. Schedule 3 enables UK law enforcement agencies listed in paragraph 12 of the schedule to apply for a court order, which they can serve on entities based outside the UK.
Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)
Will this apply to illegal gambling sites and crypto casinos? Will the Gambling Commission have the authority to have these addresses pulled down?
Chris Philp
If illegal activity were taking place, which would include illegal gambling, then the provisions of the clause would apply. As to whether the Gambling Commission can make the application or whether it would have to be the police, to answer that question we will have to refer to schedule 3 on page 91 and look at the list of entities. The hon. Member will see that paragraph 12(2)(e) does include
“a member of staff of the Gambling Commission of at least the grade of executive director.”
Indeed, paragraph 12(1)(a)(v) also expressly references the Gambling Commission, so I hope that answers the question about the Gambling Commission’s powers. I obviously prepared that in advance, anticipating her question—as Members of the Committee could surely see!
That is very helpful and will strengthen our hand with overseas entities that might not respond to a polite request but are willing to act when there is a court order. I hope that is something that we can all get behind. It will help protect our constituents from online crime, particularly fraud, but other forms of illegal activity, including illegal gambling. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Swansea East for her work combating gambling harm, which I saw at first hand during my time as Minister for technology and gambling a couple of years ago.
Alex Norris
Given the time left in this sitting, I thought there was a degree of optimism when the Minister stood up on a matter related to some degree to illegal gambling and thought it would be quick; I will try to bring my remarks in under the wire, but I may fail, when I assume I will be cut off in my prime.
Much of our discussions so far have had a digital and online dimension: the sale of knives and bladed articles, the posting of intimate images, the sale of stolen goods, and the digital online element of fraud. This is a very live, shape-shifting part of the debate. It was feature of the Online Safety Act 2023 discussions and is an important part of this Bill. Our basic principle is that we must give our police and broader enforcement agencies the best tools possible for them to stand half a chance of keeping up. This clause and schedule 3 fit with that approach and, as such, we support them.
For all the creative and direct uses that criminals can exploit modern technology with, there remains a basic staple: a website, a domain name and an IP address. That can be used in a variety of ways: selling illicit goods, selling stolen goods, pirating live events, pirating software or content, scamming or illegal gambling. It is right that enforcement agencies can close such sites down. Although this is a modern venture, I suspect it is today’s version of the 1975 classic Whac-A-Mole, as we chase scammers, fraudsters and thieves around the internet. I dare say that is frustrating but it is important for enforcement agencies to do.
The provisions in the schedule allow for the suspension of IP addresses and domain names for up to 12 months, following an application to a judge. In doing so, four criteria must be met. Three are relatively simple: condition 1 is that the address or domain name is being used for serious crime; condition 3 is that it is necessary and proportionate to shut the site down to prevent crime; and condition 4 is that the address or domain name would not be shut down by another route. The industry picture can be good, as the Minister says, but I do not think it is always good. That is the nature of the type of crime. We talked previously about pirating a premier league game—that would go pretty quickly. If the site is hosting an intimate image that was unlawfully obtained, that tends to take an awful lot longer, or indeed does not happen at all; that point has been debated.
Conditions 1, 3 and 4 seem clear to me, but I want to press the Minister on condition 2. That is met under four scenarios, although I believe the use of the word “or” means any one of the four scenarios, including,
“(a) that a UK person is using the IP address for purposes of serious crime”,
which is very similar, if not the same, as condition 1. The other scenarios are: (b)—that a UK person is a victim of the serious crime that the site or domain name is used for; (c)—that the IP address is being used for unlicensed gambling, which goes to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East; or (d) —the IP address is allocated to a device located in the UK. I think only one of those four tests needs to be met in order for condition 2 to be met. Given that (a) is essentially the same as condition 1, but with the proviso that the person is UK based, how does that operate in practice? Is that not a degree of duplication? The Minister can mull that one over while having his lunch.
I will move on to the heading
“Inclusion of non-disclosure requirements in suspension orders”.
As in the Bill, as part of a suspension order, a judge can require that the individual deprived of their domain name or IP address does not tell anyone that that has happened to them.
Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill (Second sitting)
Tuesday 16th January 2024
(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill 2023-24 View all Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill 2023-24 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 16 January 2024 - (16 Jan 2024)
The Chair
Q
Professor Hopkins: I am Professor Nick Hopkins. I am the law commissioner for property, family and trust law. I have led the Law Commission’s work on enfranchisement and commonhold since our work began in 2017. Since 2020, I have also led our work on the right to manage.
The Chair
Will Members please indicate whether they would like to ask a question of the witness? We will start with Matthew Pennycook.
Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
Q
Professor Hopkins, thank you for coming to give evidence to us. I have two questions, perhaps three if we have time. My first relates to those clauses that implement options or recommendations made by Law Commission reports. Parts 1 and 2 of the Bill implement not all but a subset of those recommendations. I expect that the Law Commission will have had a dialogue with Government about what the clauses look like, but ultimately what goes into the Bill is a political choice for the Government. With a view to strengthening the Bill, I will be grateful if we can get a sense from you whether any of the clauses that draw on those options and recommendations is in any way problematic? Do they contain flaws? Are there omissions that mean they will not work in the way that the Law Commission intended them to?
My second question is related to the Law Commission’s reports as a whole. My understanding is that they were meant to work as a complete package. In drawing on only a subset of recommendations, is there a risk that some of the underlying rationales for the options and recommendations that you made will be blunted or limited by the fact that others have not been included?
Professor Hopkins: To answer your first question, I am confident that the clauses of the Bill that implement the Law Commission recommendations achieve their desired intent. I know from my team that there will be a number of technical amendments. I do not think that that is necessarily unusual, given the complexity of the legislation, and it reflects the continuous process of examining iterations of clauses to ensure that robust scrutiny is applied.
I should explain the Law Commission’s involvement in the clauses. We have worked in much the same way that we would in producing any Bill: Law Commission staff have written instructions to parliamentary counsel, scrutinised drafts and iterations of the clauses, and commented back to parliamentary counsel. We have provided our usual role in the development of draft clauses.
As for the robustness of the clauses, as you said, our reports—in particular on enfranchisement—gave recommendations that would have wiped away the Leasehold Reform Act 1967 and the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993, to provide an entirely new and unified scheme for houses and flats. In the process of instructing counsel, the Government have made decisions on what to implement. We have had to think about how to carry over that policy in the context of legislation that performs keyhole surgery on existing legislation, rather than starting with a blank sheet. With that constraint in mind, however, I am confident that the clauses achieve their desired purpose.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Professor Hopkins: There will be some technical amendments to come that refine the operation of the clauses.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Professor Hopkins: On the package as a whole, the Bill implements key recommendations that would be most impactful to leaseholders, in providing them with much greater security and control over their homes and in putting the financial value of the home in the leaseholder’s hands rather than in the landlord’s hands. It will also enable leaseholders to take control of the management of their block through the right to manage, enabling more leaseholders to do that than can do so at the moment. In particular, it extends the non-commercial threshold from 25% to 50%, which is a doubling, and it also enables more leaseholders to own their block through meeting that threshold.
What is there in the Bill will have a considerable impact for leaseholders exercising enfranchisement rights, whether individually or collectively, and for leaseholders who are exercising the right to manage. There are other things in our schemes that are not there, and other benefits that will not be obtained. For example, sweeping away the ’67 and ’93 Acts, and providing a unified scheme, would bring with it the ability to remove some procedural traps that can arise. So there are other things in our scheme as a whole that are not in the Bill, but what is there will have considerable impact and a very positive impact for leaseholders.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Professor Hopkins: During Second Reading, the Secretary of State said that he thinks commonhold is preferable to leasehold, and I concur with that. We concluded that commonhold is a preferable tenure to leasehold. It gives the benefits of freehold ownership to owners of flats—the benefits that owners of houses already enjoy.
Commonhold does of course have a history. It was introduced in the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002 and has not taken off. Our recommendations as a whole were designed to provide a legal scheme that would enable commonhold to work more flexibly and in all contexts—to work for complex, mixed-use developments. With commonhold having failed once, there is a risk of partial implementation, meaning that commonhold has a second false start, which would probably be fatal to it. I think that the legal regime for commonhold needs to be looked at as a whole, to ensure that it works properly for the unit owners, developers and lenders who lend mortgages over commonhold. We need the legal regime that works. We need to remove any other blocks on commonhold.
Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)
Q
Professor Hopkins: It is our job at the Law Commission to make recommendations for Government reform and of course we would like to see those recommendations implemented, but ultimately what goes in the Bill is a matter for the Government to decide, not the Law Commission. There is a lot in this Bill that is very positive for leaseholders, albeit the commonhold recommendations are not there.
Mike Amesbury
Q
Professor Hopkins: Since we published our reports in 2020, we have been supporting the Government as they work through the reports and develop their legislative plans, but I cannot speak for what decisions they have made and what has led them to make those decisions on what is and is not in the Bill.
Ms Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)
Q
Professor Hopkins: Yes, they certainly will, and I will draw attention to a number of provisions. First, those that deal with the price that leaseholders will pay will ensure that it is cheaper. For the first time, how that price is calculated is mandated, and it is designed to identify the value of the asset that the leaseholder is receiving. At the moment, the focus is on compensating the freeholder for the asset they are losing. The price will consist of two elements. There will be a sum of money representing the terms and buying out the ground rent, but that will be capped so that onerous ground rents are not taken into account in calculating that sum, and a price representing the reversion, which would be the value today of either a freehold or a 990-year lease that will come into effect at the end of the current lease. In calculating those elements of the price, the deferment and capitalisation rates will be prescribed, so that will remove the current disputes.
The price is mandated and the price is cheaper, and there are other things in the Bill that will help, such as the ability of leaseholders to require the landlord to take leasebacks of property when they are exercising a collective enfranchisement so that, for example, they do not have to pay for the expense of commercial units that they do not want responsibility for. There is a lot in there. There is reducing price and also reducing the ability for disputes to arise.
I will also refer to the provisions on costs that will generally ensure that parties pay their own costs in relation to a claim. Leaseholders will not be paying the costs of freeholders.
Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)
Q
Professor Hopkins: Across enfranchisement, right to manage, and commonhold, we made around 350 recommendations.
Rachel Maclean
Q
Professor Hopkins: I think we made around 120.
Rachel Maclean
Q
Professor Hopkins: We began it as a package of work that was being conducted in parallel. We began in 2017 as part of the 13th programme that we published in December of that year. We published three consultation papers on enfranchisement, right to manage, and commonhold. We ran public consultations from September 2018 to January 2019. We received around 1,800 responses across those papers, and around 1,600 responses to leasehold surveys that we undertook for enfranchisement and right to manage. Then, in 2020, on the basis of all the evidence we had, we published four reports: a report setting out options relating to valuation to reduce the price payable, and then a report on each of enfranchisement, the right to manage, and commonhold in July of that year.
Rachel Maclean
Q
Professor Hopkins: We have to separate the two issues. Our work on commonhold was designed to provide the legal fixes needed so that commonhold can work. In our report we concluded that commonhold is the preferred alternative to leasehold. The question of whether commonhold becomes a default or whether it is mandated was not a matter on which we were asked to provide advice to the Government. You need the legal fixes to be in place, though, and then the decision must be made about what is done in order to ensure that commonhold is given a fair chance.
Rachel Maclean
Q
Professor Hopkins: The risk at the moment is that the legal regime that governs commonhold is too rigid. It does not apply effectively in larger, mixed-use developments, because they were not envisaged at the time. The risk is that you mandate a legal regime that does not work. You need a legal regime that works, which could then be mandated if that is what the Government chose to do.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
Q
Professor Hopkins: I do not think I would like to comment on whether specific amendments or recommendations could be introduced. They would have to be seen in the light of what they would do to the scheme that is in the Bill and how the provisions interrelate. That basic uplift from 25% to 50% is significant and will enable many more leaseholders to exercise their rights. There are perhaps things around the edges, but what is there is beneficial.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Professor Hopkins: Yes, although you have to look at what impact that would have in terms of what is in the Bill as it stands.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Professor Hopkins: It is certainly the case that it is easier to do things with new builds than it is for existing leasehold blocks. Our report includes recommendations on the conversion of existing blocks, which is undeniably more complex than building a commonhold block from the start.
We concluded in our report that commonhold was the preferred tenure because it gives the advantages of freehold; leasehold is really performing a job it was never designed to do. When I gave evidence to the Select Committee on the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, as it then was, I said that if commonhold works, you do not need leasehold. But whether you then mandate commonhold is not just a legal question; there is a political question there.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Professor Hopkins: Again, all these things are Law Commission recommendations, and I am always going to say that the Law Commission would like to see our recommendations implemented—
Barry Gardiner
I am delighted; that is what I wanted you to say.
Professor Hopkins: But I cannot say whether they are the right things or the most impactful things to add to the Bill. What is there is great and is going to be hugely beneficial. There are lots of other things in our recommendations that would benefit leaseholders—
Barry Gardiner
Q
Professor Hopkins: No, that is absolutely not my view. Whatever happens with commonhold, leasehold is going to be with us for a long time. There are people who own 999-year leases. The system has to work. When we published our reports, we published a summary of what they were seeking to do. We identified them as having two distinct aims. One is to make leasehold work, and work better, for those who now own the leasehold and who will own it in future. Secondly, it is to pave the way for commonhold to be available so that everyone can enjoy the benefit of freehold ownership in future. But we always saw those as two entirely legitimate aims that legislation would need to pursue.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Professor Hopkins: Yes. Conversion is always going to be more difficult than building from the start. We have recommendations that would enable conversion and enable more people to convert than can at the moment, where unanimity is required, but leasehold is going to be with us for a very long time.
Barry Gardiner
Well, it has been with us for a very long time, hasn’t it?
Professor Hopkins: Yes. So the system has to work, and that is what the Bill achieves in relation to leasehold.
Richard Fuller (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)
Q
Professor Hopkins: The Bill ensures that those rates will be prescribed by the Secretary of State. At the moment, on every enfranchisement claim—whether it is the lease extension or the purchase of the freehold—the rate used to capitalise a ground rent and to determine the price paid for the reversion has to be agreed for the individual transaction. That is a significant source of dispute, and it is a dispute where there is a real inequality of arms.
The leaseholder is only interested in what they have to pay for their home and the landlords have an eye not only to that particular property, but also to what it would mean for their portfolio of investments—so they agree a particular rate on one flat in a block, for example. The Bill ensures that those rates are fixed by the Secretary of State and mandated, so there is then no argument about what rate applies in an individual case. It takes away that whole dispute and ensures that the same rates are applied in all claims.
Richard Fuller
Q
Professor Hopkins: The politician will be fixing the rate through advice that they receive.
Richard Fuller
Q
Professor Hopkins: In our report on valuation, we set out a number of options for reform to reduce the price payable. In relation to the fixing of rates, we identified two separate options: they could be fixed at market rate; and they could be fixed at below market rate to reduce the price leaseholders pay to a greater extent. We put the decision on how to fix the rates as a matter for the Government to consider, and now the power is given to the Secretary of State.
Richard Fuller
Q
Professor Hopkins: The impact assessment is not a Law Commission impact assessment. We have provided technical input to the Government in preparing that assessment. I am not sure that I can give a definitive reason why so much more was in one pot than the other. It is probably because the Bill removes marriage value from the premium, which adds a significant sum to premiums now for leaseholders who have 80 years or less, so I think a lot of that sum is the saving.
Richard Fuller
Q
Professor Hopkins: The terms of reference that we agreed with Government for the project in relation to premium were that we would provide options to reduce the price payable while providing sufficient compensation to landlords, recognising their legitimate property interests.
The Chair
Mindful of the fact that we will be drawing this to a close at half-past, I call Matthew Pennycook.
Matthew Pennycook
May I press you a bit further on valuation? This is a phenomenally complex area to understand, and the standard valuation method in schedule 2 is extremely technical. The Law Commission set out options—it did not make recommendations—but the Government have chosen to allow the Secretary of State to prescribe the applicable deferment rate.
In all your work, did you wrestle at all with the fact that there may be some leaseholders who do not benefit from a fixed rate, in the sense they could have negotiated higher and more favourable rates in certain circumstances? Is that potentially a risk? Related to that, will it be the case that the Government need to set multiple rates to account for regional variations? Is a single fixed rate going to be an issue?
Professor Hopkins: In answer to both questions, I cannot sit here and say that every leaseholder will pay less. I can identify the fact that leaseholders with 80 years or less on their lease will pay less, because they will not pay marriage value, and that leaseholders with onerous rents will pay less, because of the cap on those taken into account.
Overall across the system, having the prescribed rates will be a considerable saving for leaseholders on the whole, because that takes out the legal and valuation costs in negotiating a rate and a price. It takes out that entire source of dispute, which will be beneficial—
The Chair
Order. I apologise for interrupting you. I am afraid that brings us to the end of the time allotted for the Committee to ask you questions. I thank our witness very much on behalf of the Committee.
Examination of Witness
Matt Brewis gave evidence.
The Chair
We will now hear from Matt Brewis, director of insurance at the Financial Conduct Authority. We have until 3 pm for this next session. Will the witness please introduce himself for the record?
Matt Brewis: Hi. I am Matthew Brewis. I am director of insurance at the FCA, so I am responsible for regulation of all brokers and insurers that operate in the UK.
Matthew Pennycook
Thank you for coming to give us evidence, Mr Brewis. The FCA published a report in September 2022 on insurance for multi-occupancy buildings. In a general sense, on the basis of the recommendations and potential remedies you outlined, to what degree do clauses 31 and 32 faithfully enact those recommendations? Furthermore, it would be useful to know whether the FCA might have any ongoing role in the arrangements that those clauses will introduce. Finally, in that report, the FCA made a recommendation about a pooled risk insurance scheme. Could that be introduced into the Bill as an additional means of providing leaseholders with protection?
Matt Brewis: I will set out what the FCA is responsible for and what it is not, because that is the context for this and probably the questions to follow. Insurers write a policy and brokers sell it to a freeholder or property management agent who is the customer. They pass on charges to the leaseholder, who is partly a beneficiary of the product, but the primary beneficiary is the freeholder. The FCA is responsible for the insurer and the broker, the creation and selling of the product. That is where its role ends.
Traditionally, the customer has been the freeholder, who has been the beneficiary, but our review found that there was no benefit in freeholders shopping around to get the best price, because they simply pass on the cost to the leaseholder, often with significant add-on charges and other functions. We found that the risk price that insurers charged between 2016 and 2021 pretty much doubled. The brokerage charge by brokers increased by more than three times, or 260%-ish. The service charges added on increased by about 160%, so they more than doubled.
In our report, we recommended a number of pieces, including that leaseholders should be partially party to the contract, in that they should be provided with a copy of the documentation—previously, they have not been—and that insurers and brokers, when creating and selling products, should consider the needs of leaseholders, the people who are paying, in a way that insurers and brokers have previously not been required to.
We also made a number of recommendations about the parts that were not relevant to FCA regulation but were part of the chain and to do with freeholders and property management agents. That is where the clauses that you mention, 31 and 32, come into effect—where there is a restriction on the commission that can be charged by the brokers or by the property management agents to the leaseholders. I think that how much impact these clauses will have will depend on how broadly or tightly the secondary legislation around these points is drafted. Of course, I and my colleagues will work closely with the Department as that gets put together.
In terms of your second question, “Should a pooling scheme be included as part of the legislation?”, we believe, based on how parts of the market currently work, that pooling does work. By putting together buildings under one roof, as it were, for an insurance contract, you spread the risk; that reduces the cost of insurance. We see that as how it operates at the moment. We recommended that the Association of British Insurers work with the market in order to put together a pooling arrangement, which they have been working on—
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Matt Brewis: For a very long time. Unfortunately, I do not have the power to force anybody to write business that they do not want to. But the ABI has been working closely with a number of firms, and progress is being made. I believe that pooling remains the best option to reduce the cost to leaseholders. In terms of how that could be achieved, I think it is appropriate that the market try to do that. It is always possible for the Government to step behind that, albeit that would be at a significant cost—
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Matt Brewis: It does not require primary legislation for the market to do it itself, as it is seeking to do at the moment, working with us, working with the brokers and working with colleagues at DLUHC.
Rachel Maclean
Q
Matt Brewis: If I understand your question correctly, you are saying, “Is there pressure on freeholders to charge more to make increased returns to pension funds?” I cannot answer that question, I am afraid; it was not part of our review to date. Sorry, I cannot tell you—
Rachel Maclean
Q
Matt Brewis: I understand. What we have found in the past is that actually, for the insurance part, it is not necessarily a panacea for leaseholders to take over the freehold, because, as I was just explaining, when you have a pooled number of properties, that can reduce the cost. We have found, for leaseholders who have tried to insure their building on their own, that it has proved more costly when they have done so. That is more to do with market dynamics and trying to insure one building as opposed to a portfolio of buildings. It does not necessarily follow that it is cheaper for leaseholders who have taken over the freehold to—
Rachel Maclean
Q
Matt Brewis: I do not believe that the size of the insurance part of the market is significant enough to destabilise any firms. I have not heard that claim before, but I do not think that this part of the market, in the types of firms that we are talking about, is of a size that would cause structural issues.
Mike Amesbury
Q
“Insurance firms must now act in leaseholders’ best interests and ensure that their policies provide fair value.”
Now I will give you a live case, which happens to be in a neighbouring constituency to mine. It is called The Decks. They have a remediation day and Taylor Wimpey has accepted responsibility, yet insurance premiums are going up again—poor value and high cost, as I think was cited in the review. New year was going to be a new broom to intervene and shape the market, yet you have got insurance companies like this, and many more up and down the country, laughing at people in this room—key stakeholders such as yourselves. What are you going to do? What powers have you got to intervene? Also, we have discussed insurance. Are clauses 31 to 33 in part 3 sufficient to deal with the issue?
Matt Brewis: Our new rules around ensuring that these products are fair value came into force on 31 December last year. The cost of insurance of multiple-occupancy buildings has increased, and our report of 2022 found that this was not an area where insurers were making significant profits, or super-profits, of any form because of a number of different parts—around fire safety risks, but more to do with some of the structural issues around the quality of the buildings and how they had been constructed. Escape of water was something that was causing significant losses in these buildings.
We found some of the biggest issues around the brokerage charges, which were increasing, and the payaways—payments that insurance brokers were making to property managing agents for services that they were apparently providing for them. So our new rules require them to be very clear what value they are providing and how they are doing that as brokers, as managing agents, and for that to be made clear to the leaseholders. We are undertaking reviews of those with a number of firms. This will provide leaseholders with more information so that they can challenge their freeholders, so that they can challenge the insurers and the brokers at a tribunal if necessary.
Where this Bill goes one step further is that although, as I have explained, we are not responsible for the managing agents or the freeholders, by effectively banning those payments of any commissions, as the Bill does in the clauses that you mention, it will go significantly further than I can with the powers that the FCA has to restrict the payments to other parties and therefore to reduce the cost to leaseholders. In my view, this is in line with the recommendations that we made in that report and results in a better product—a cheaper product—for leaseholders.
Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)
Q
Matt Brewis: In terms of the provision of information, yes. And it goes alongside the rules that we have introduced that require brokers and insurers to pass information to the freeholder to pass on to the leaseholder. This further tightens up that. It allows for leaseholders to take their freeholders to tribunal to reclaim costs, as necessary, that have been incurred. So this does go further, and I welcome that.
Andy Carter
Q
Matt Brewis: Yes.
Andy Carter
Is that suitably addressed in this legislation?
Matt Brewis: We have talked with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities about how to do that. The tribunal is a mechanism, but from talking to leaseholders, we recognise that taking a firm to court is a big step for anyone. There are a number of routes that strengthen that in this Bill, and we welcome that, albeit—
Andy Carter
Q
Matt Brewis: There are other mechanisms—an alternative dispute resolution mechanism—that we have seen used in some parts of financial services. The Financial Ombudsman scheme is one, where it is not a legal test; it is more of a fairness test about how you are treated as a consumer. But the tribunal is another mechanism—the insurance part is a very narrow part of a much wider piece, and I am not equipped to talk more broadly about the leasehold ownership structure.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Matt Brewis: I cannot talk about individual cases. However—
Barry Gardiner
Q
Matt Brewis: Yes.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Matt Brewis: The value assessments I talked about require firms to approve what value they are providing, for there to be transparency to a leaseholder around—
Barry Gardiner
Q
Matt Brewis: Under our new rules, which came into force at the start of this year, that needs to be provided.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Matt Brewis: The new Financial Conduct Authority rules around this do provide that, in a way that was not the case previously.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Matt Brewis: I believe that would be duplication of a clause that is already in the new rules from the regulator, which require a broker to provide that information.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Matt Brewis: In the event that the freeholder is not forthcoming with the contract, it is incumbent on the insurer to provide a copy of the contract to the leaseholder directly. It is in our rules that the leaseholder has the option of going directly to the insurer now, in order to get a copy of that contract, in a way that was not previously possible.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Matt Brewis: Yes, and they will be in breach of the FCA rules if they do not provide it.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Matt Brewis: Which insurer it is?
Barry Gardiner
Q
Matt Brewis: If you follow that chain of events, when they do not know who the broker is and they do not know who the insurer is, and the landlord refuses to provide the documentation—
Barry Gardiner
Q
Matt Brewis: One would hope—expect—that it is a very low-likelihood situation, but that would be the case.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Matt Brewis: For some buildings that have material issues around fire safety or other issues, it can be very difficult to place insurance. It is about time and cost. There is value in the services that brokers provide, and sometimes some of that work is outsourced to property-managing agents. Assuming that is done appropriately—itemised and billed—I have no issue with the payment of commission or brokerage, where it is for services that have been rendered effectively. Where it is a blanket case, in the way that you described—
Barry Gardiner
Q
“not attributable to a permitted insurance payment”,
but not that they have to be costs that are reasonable. There is a difference between a permitted insurance payment and a reasonable permitted insurance payment, is there not?
Matt Brewis: My understanding is that the secondary legislation that will follow will set out what those are.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Matt Brewis: One would still need to define reasonable.
Barry Gardiner
I think the law has done a pretty good job of that over the years.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Matt Brewis: It is quite a significant list. The question effectively is: what are the reasonable costs of writing an insurance policy, and then the appropriate checks to be carried out to ensure that that policy is enforceable? From my perspective, that is focused on providing the information to the insurer or the broker that allows them to appropriately price the insurance—to understand the risk factors of that building, to determine the likelihood of escape of water, the quality of its fire defences and other things, all of which in sum add up to whatever the risk price is. There are different methods for determining what is an appropriate brokerage fee. We have seen some firms come out to suggest that it should be a maximum of, say, 10% of the cost. Others take a time-and-costs-incurred approach, based on how much work they have done. Being clear about things that are directly relevant to the pricing of the insurance is the best starting point for what should be allowed to be charged.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Matt Brewis: Yes.
The Chair
Thank you. If there are no further questions from Members, I thank the witness. We will now move on to the next panel.
Examination of Witnesses
Harry Scoffin, Karolina Zoltaniecka, Cathy Priestley and Halima Ali gave evidence.
The Chair
We are now going to hear from our seventh panel, which is Harry Scoffin, founder of Free Leaseholders; Karolina Zoltaniecka, founding director of Commonhold Now; and Cathy Priestley and Halima Ali, co-ordinators of the Home Owners Rights Network. We have until 3.40 pm for this session. You are all welcome. Would you please introduce yourselves for the record?
Harry Scoffin: Hi there. I am Harry Scoffin, founder of Free Leaseholders. I am also deputy chair of One West India Quay residents’ association—a block on the Isle of Dogs, east London.
Karolina Zoltaniecka: Hello. I am Karolina, founder and director of Commonhold Now. I am a right-to-manage director, leaseholder and commonhold owner in Australia under what is called strata. I have been a director over there for 30 years, and I am also a forensic analyst who does audits on service charges.
Halima Ali: Hi. I am Halima Ali. I am a joint campaign co-ordinator for the Home Owners Rights Network. We campaign for regulation and, ultimately, for adoption and for management on private estates.
Cathy Priestley: Hi. I work with Halima. We have worked together since 2016—a little longer than the National Leasehold Campaign has existed, in fact. We both reached the same stage in our journey of horrors at about that time. We were put together by Paula Higgins at the HomeOwners Alliance. We decided that there would be other people out there who had discovered the same situation and who felt entrapped and angry about where they were—they were tied into paying estate charges, and most were unaware at the point of purchase that that was the liability they were taking on. So we set up a website, social media and so on, and we are 11,000. We have continued our journey of exploration and learned a lot during the last eight years, and I hope we can help you.
The Chair
We are very grateful that you are here, Cathy. Thank you very much. I call Matthew Pennycook to start us off.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Harry and Karolina, we heard earlier from Professor Hopkins from the Law Commission, which had 121 recommendations on commonhold. It is clearly not feasible to add all those to the limited Bill we have in front of us at Committee stage. Professor Hopkins says there is a risk of partial commonhold legislation that might create unintended consequences. Are there any of those recommendations that we can reasonably add in that might make things easier in the future and pave the way for commonhold? That is my question to both of you.
Cathy and Halima, clause 59 in part 4 of the Bill seeks to amend the Law of Property Act 1925. Would you agree that section 121 of that Act needs to be done away with? Are we attempting to, if you like, ameliorate an historic law that should really just be freehold forfeiture and should be done away with? On part 4 generally, we have sought to introduce by amendment an RTM regime for private estates. Are there any other tweaks to part 4 that we could reasonably look to make?
Harry Scoffin: In terms of the commonhold point, obviously, attitudinally, I have accepted that it will be seen as out of scope of the Bill. But we also have to remind ourselves that England and Wales are the only two jurisdictions in the world that persist with this fundamentally unfair system. The Law Commission—we heard from Nick Hopkins earlier—gave a big endorsement of commonhold in 2020. They flew officials out to Australia and Singapore, where I grew up and where we lived under strata title, a form of commonhold where residents are in control. But there is no point crying over spilt milk.
There is a good alternative, interim measure before second-generation commonhold eventually comes through. Bear in mind that I have been campaigning now for six years—that is six years of my life that I have wasted trying to abolish leasehold. The fact is that the time to have brought in commonhold was now. We did not even necessarily have a guarantee that this Bill would be here. After the Queen’s Speech in 2022, it was dropped at the last minute because of pressure from No. 10. So I am not going to hold my breath for commonhold.
However, one thing we can do, which is a pragmatic halfway-house compromise, is to say that all new leasehold flats come with a share of the freehold. That still persists with the leasehold system, but residents have control from day one. They are like Alan Sugar on “The Apprentice”: if they are being ripped off, they say, “You’re fired,” and they get a better company in—that is capitalism, that is choice and that is the right way forward for now if we are not doing commonhold, which is obviously too meaty.
Secondly, all new leases must be 990 years. At the moment, shared ownership leases under the new model lease through Homes England and the Greater London Authority must be 990 years. I think it is obscene that, after this Bill comes in, people can buy a brand-new flat from one of these developers and be hit with a 99 or 125-year lease. They need to be able to get a 990-year lease from the beginning, given that Parliament has already got rid of ground rents—two years ago, it got rid of ground rents—and our argument is that the value in the freehold is now valueless.
Ground rents have gone, so why do you not just require developers to hand over a freehold with a resident management company? I understand that Matthew Pennycook is halfway there with an amendment to bring in resident management companies; we just need the freehold. If we do not have the freehold, we will allow the expensive middleman, the rip-off freeholder, to have some form of control going forward. I know of developments with an RMC, where you might think, “Bob’s your uncle, they’ve got control,” yet they are still being ripped off on things like insurance, even though they appoint the managing agent.
From that point of view, let us not let perfect be the enemy of the good, but leasehold must stop and, with leasehold, we must get rid of its toxic forms so that everyone has a share of the freehold from day one. As we heard from Nick Hopkins, it would be much easier for those guys to convert to commonhold later, but we should give people the ability to have the freehold to begin with.
It is not just me who says that; in 2006, an academic who is on the Commonhold Council—this is in my written submission—expressed the view that, if people have super-long leases of 990 years and zero ground rent, it is asking nothing of developers to hand over the freehold, because the freehold is valueless. They might as well give the freehold, as opposed to expecting leaseholders to go through the rigmarole, stress and cost of buying it later. Also—we might get on to this later—getting 50% of a large block is impossible, so doing that is absolutely the right thing.
Another point is that the market for leasehold flats has collapsed, so the gap between the average price of a house and that of a flat is at its widest in England in 30 years. The fact is that buyers have woken up to the toxicity of leasehold, particularly after Grenfell and the cladding situation. They have worked out that this is a hideously one-sided deal. It is like the sub-postmasters, this idea that, every way you turn, people say, “You signed the contract. You’re responsible for the shortfalls. That’s the law, that’s the contract,” but it is so hideously one-sided.
If you can do only one thing to the Bill, even though it will not directly help existing leaseholders, it should be to say that all new flats must be share of freehold with a resident management company. Give us control of our homes, our lives and our money, please. It is 22 years since the last Act. Let’s do this.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Karolina Zoltaniecka: The Bill is very welcome. It does remove a few of the barriers to commonhold, but I feel that a few more things could be done, through amendments, to take steps towards commonhold and to make it easier to convert once we enfranchise and buy the freehold. We could lower the agreement rate from 100% to 75%. They have that in Australia already; you only need that amount to have a special resolution. There is already a trial for 20 blocks in the country. We cannot say it is not working, because it is working.
There is a lot of miscommunication around commonhold in the industry. There could be an education and awareness campaign. The Bill could also be amended to introduce a sunset clause for existing flats. There could be some sort of agreement between the commercial and the leasehold residential blocks to pave the way for how this will be defined when we get to commonhold and people can convert. That would prepare people and get them ready, in practical terms, for how to run and maintain their blocks. There could be long-term maintenance plans and we could give people real, practical skills in how to do that.
Commonhold is so much easier. Having a strata, I know that. You do not have complex laws. You talk to each other and work problems and disputes out. You have meetings. Laws are prescribed, so it is easy for people to know what to do each step of the way. I do believe that there are things that could be done with commonhold in the Bill to pave the way and say that we have a future with commonhold and it will happen en masse.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Halima Ali: Overall, I want to say that the model of maintenance that has been implemented is a scam, and all this Bill is really doing is legitimising the scam. Homeowners are being fleeced. This needs to be brought under control. In terms of the Law of Property Act, this is a positive step, but I would argue as a homeowner that a management company should not have its foot on my neck. This is my property. It is my hard-earned future for my family and kids, and no management company should have any rights over it. I feel that the model should be abolished altogether. There are two different tiers—fixed rent charges and variable rent charges—that are being allowed to continue in the private estate model. This needs to be abolished altogether.
Cathy Priestley: I do not really have anything to add except to say, would all the measures in the Bill really be necessary if the fundamental, underlying problem of private estate management was addressed? The estates we are talking about are not gated; they are not private. They contain public facilities, public open space, play parks and community centres. They might have private sewage systems and pumping stations. They almost always have sustainable urban drainage systems, because that is the way that flooding is mitigated these days. In the past, all these areas would have been adopted by the local authorities, but they are not being. If they were, there would not be any need for regulating managing agents or for the abolition of section 121.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Cathy Priestley: It would be helpful for those who are on truly private estates and who do have private management, but we do not see any reason why homebuyers on estates should suddenly become estate managers for their local community.
Halima Ali: It is exactly as Cathy said: normal homebuyers are not qualified to manage estates. If we are given the right to manage, if we are looking at a development of over 100 homes, it is really hard to get in touch with 100 people who will agree and be on the same page. It is not workable. The Government are insisting on regulating, but realistically the Bill is not doing anything for us. Literally all it is doing is maintaining a scam.
The Chair
I am mindful of the fact that we will have to bring this session to a conclusion at 3.40 pm and five more Members have indicated that they would like to speak, so you can time yourselves accordingly. I will start with Andy Carter.
Andy Carter
Q
Halima Ali: I am the perfect example. I have living on a fleecehold estate for 13 years.
Andy Carter
Q
Halima Ali: There is no management happening at all.
Andy Carter
Q
Halima Ali: The management company should respond in a timely manner, do the work and communicate with the residents. The situation is horrendous. On our estate alone, we are paying £30,000 to maintain a field that is half the size of a football pitch. That makes no logical sense.
Andy Carter
Q
Halima Ali: They are cutting it, but at a substandard level. On top of that, the grounds that they are maintaining have not even been built to a standard for local councils to adopt.
Andy Carter
Q
Halima Ali: I have had meetings with the head of planning. I have raised so many complaints.
Andy Carter
Q
Halima Ali: They just do not want to know, literally, because they are not regulated and it is not their concern. They just will not do anything.
Andy Carter
Q
Halima Ali: It has to be central Government. They need to regulate that councils need to start adopting all new build estates going forward and in the situation that we are stuck in.
Barry Gardiner
Q
I have one estate in my constituency where they were charging residents for the management of land that they did not even own. It took us months to get the documentation to prove that they did not own that land. The fence that they had mended had actually been mended by the council. Other things like that are going on, but if that restriction were put in place in the first place, they would not be able to do it, would they?
Cathy Priestley: Our understanding is that the land belongs to the developer. It is not public until it is made public through section 106 agreements with the council.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Cathy Priestley: Well, yes, you would not want more and more privatisation, would you? I do not think any policy is in place that is pushing for privatisation of the management of public open spaces, is there?
Barry Gardiner
Q
Harry Scoffin: There are a number of quick wins. One is to get rid of forfeiture, because that allows these freeholder overlords to extort money from ordinary people. It is not like mortgage foreclosure, where if you cannot keep up with the mortgage payments you get the difference back less the debt; with forfeiture, in theory, a freeholder could take back a £500,000 flat on a £5,000 bill. Now, what the freeholder lobby will say when they come on later is, “There are only about 80 to 90 cases a year.” That is potentially 80 to 90 homeless families a year. More important, in a way, is that it is the threat of forfeiture that gets leaseholders to go, “Oh my God, I’m going to pay that bill.”
My mum is on £33,000 a year, for a three-bed with no swimming pool, no gym and no garden. The freeholder is one of Britain’s richest men, sheltering in a tax haven in Monaco—a billionaire. Everyone who is not a leaseholder says, “Why would you pay that? That’s more than someone’s salary.” She says, “If I don’t pay it, I’ll lose the property.” So get rid of forfeiture.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Harry Scoffin: Yes. They draw it out. There is a process now in the courts, where you can go, “Oh, I forgot to pay it” or “Here’s the money.” The point is that it does not give leaseholders the confidence to challenge unreasonable bills. They have the sword of Damocles hanging over their heads—they are being treated almost like criminals. The Law Commission recommended in 1985, in 1994 and more recently in 2006 getting rid of this iniquitous element, arguably the most feudal element of leasehold. It has not been done. The Government recently asked the Law Commission to update its 2006 report, so we know work has been done, but it is not in this Bill.
I think you spoke earlier today about this section 24 business. That is a really important issue that many Members may not be aware of. Since the Building Safety Act came in, there has been a very interesting regime about the accountable person, trying to make developers and freeholders take responsibility for their buildings. This was heard in tribunal in December—I was there—and I understand that Michael Gove has taken a personal interest in this, but there is again no guarantee that we can get the fix.
The problem is that, at the moment, any building over 18 metres cannot have a court-appointed manager, because the court-appointed manager cannot be the accountable person. It is like an aeroplane being flown with two pilots flying in completely different directions. The freeholder, who has been stripped of his management rights—because, basically, he has defrauded leaseholders or been absentee, is not doing remediation works in a timely manner, or is not giving information—will now be the accountable person. But the manager cannot manage the building, because you will have two managers for one property.
The tribunal for Canary Riverside—I add a disclaimer that this is my sister estate; we have the same freeholder, so I was there at the tribunal—said that, as much as we would like to help the leaseholders at Canary Riverside, Parliament has made it very clear that, while a non-freehold owning right to manage company or a non-freehold owning resident management company can be the accountable person, a court-appointed manager specially vetted by the tribunal is no longer allowed to be one.
What is happening at Canary Riverside is that the freeholder—the same one that we have—is looking at getting back a building that he was removed from controlling in 2016. There was even a letter from the Secretary of State to the leaseholders, which they cleverly submitted to the tribunal, saying that he was the man who passed this Act and he genuinely, honourably, had no idea that that was the implication. That is another thing, because many blocks are not going to be able to buy the freehold or be able to get right to manage. They are in a monopolistic position with these freeholders. If there is no ability to buy the freehold, you are trapped.
In our building, we cannot sell the flats. We cannot even give them away at auction. It needs to be allowed that a manager appointed under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1987 can be the principal accountable person where a tribunal deems it appropriate.
There is one other major point. At the moment, many people may stand to benefit from getting the right to manage or buying the freehold, with the 25% rule going up to 50%. I know that because I have campaigned for it for the last six years. Nick Hopkins at the Law Commission used to have a joke that he would probably have to take out a restraining order against me, because I really pushed on this issue. The problem is that there are so many people who would benefit from that, but if they have that plant room or that underground car park, they still will never be free. They will never be able to get the freehold or right to manage. That is something that the Law Commission already recommended. We can get that into the Bill.
Another point to note is that if you cannot participate, for whatever reason, in buying the freehold—you do not have the money to join your neighbours—in perpetuity, you will never be able to buy that share of the freehold ever again. If you cannot get the money together, you are out. That needs to be sorted. The right to participate was very popular with the Law Commission consultees. That absolutely needs to happen.
There is one last thing. Nickie Aiken MP and other MPs, such as Stephen Timms, have been pushing on this point. At the moment, to buy the freehold or get right to manage, you have to get 50%. In our building, which is 20 years old, we are very lucky that we have managed to get 82% of the leaseholders. Do you know how much work that has involved? It is cornering people in lifts, paying the £3 to the Land Registry, doing some weird investigations. It is Herculean. You have to go back to 1931 in this country to find a political party that has won a general election with 50% of the vote, so why is it fair for residents who are being ripped off to be told, “You need to get 50%”? That should come down, because most big blocks, particularly the newer ones, will never hit 50%, and given that the Government are talking about a long-term housing plan and about building up in the cities, we have to make flat living work. We have the second lowest proportion of flats of any country in Europe, after Ireland—
Barry Gardiner
Q
Harry Scoffin: Some leaseholder advocates say, “We do not touch the 50%,” and I do not understand them for it, but the fact is that they just say, “Give leaseholders more information.” I have to be honest: even once you have got in touch with guys from Singapore, Hong Kong, the middle east and all the rest of it, when you try to explain what leasehold is, it goes over their head; when you say “right to manage”, it goes over their head. They say, “Well, I’ve bought the flat. I don’t need to get involved.” And then you say, “It’s £2,000 or £3,000. We all need to do it—each—to club together.” These guys are mean—some of them—and they are not going to get involved. So the fact is that at least on right to manage, where you are not compulsorily acquiring the freehold interest, it should at least come down to 35%, in line with the suggestion from Philip Rainey KC, whom you will be hearing from on Thursday. The London housing and planning committee also said that 50% is very, very difficult in large developments, particularly in London. So that does need to be thought about at least—it coming down on right to manage.
Barry Gardiner
Ms Ali wants to come in.
Halima Ali: I just want to make this specific point. It is clear that rules and regulations regarding leasehold and RTM are not working. It is very—what is the word, Cathy?
Barry Gardiner
Q
Halima Ali: It is very unfair and inadequate, and it makes no logical sense for freeholders on a private estate to be given the same rules and regulations when it is not working for leaseholders.
Rachel Maclean
Q
Harry Scoffin: There are not specific provisions to improve the position on forfeiture. I would love it to be abolished, but if we have to have some form of mechanism that is still going to be called “forfeiture”, at least say that if it happens, the equity is returned to the departing leaseholder when the flat is sold and it is just the debt that the freeholder gets back. The idea that he gets a windfall is obscene. That has to go. At the moment, forfeiture can kick in at £350, so what some law firms are doing is, for a breach of lease, a 350-quid charge, so forfeiture already kicks in there. So bring that up. Some people have suggested £5,000. I would go even higher—£5,000 is the figure for personal bankruptcy proceedings—and bring it up to £10,000.
There will be these freeloading freeholders that will come before you today or on Thursday and say, “Well, if these leaseholders are not paying, the whole building is going to fall to rack and ruin. It’ll be like this country in the 1970s where the bins weren’t getting collected and bodies were piling up. You’ve got to keep the lights on in a block of flats.” What you say to them is, “Sue for a money judgment.”
Rachel Maclean
Do not worry: I know what to say to them. That is fine.
Harry Scoffin: Yes, you know. Okay, good. The point is that we do not need forfeiture, but if you cannot abolish it, at least get rid of the windfall.
Rachel Maclean
Q
Harry Scoffin: It is for mixed-use buildings that would otherwise benefit from the 25% non-residential premises limit going up to 50%. Let us say that you have an underground car park, a plant room or maybe, more recently, a heat network. Basically, because you are now linked, almost like Siamese twins, with a hotel, for example, or some shops, under the current 2002 Act for right to manage and even the 1993 Act for buying your freehold, you are out. So even though the Law Commission and the Government mean well, saying, “We’re going to liberate mixed-use leaseholders,” for many of those mixed-use leaseholders, where they are completely linked with the commercial, it is game over; you will never be able to qualify. That definitely needs to be revisited because the Government will not get any political benefit from moving, rightly, from 25% up to 50% and even to mandatory leasebacks for when you buy the commercial.
The quick argument—the Law Commission understood it—is that at the moment, the plant room will normally be managed, yes, by the hotel, but the freeholder for the flats will appoint a managing agent who will also have access to the plant room. We are not changing that position. The only difference is that the managing agent that the freeholder appointed, who has access to the plant room, would now be working directly for people like my mum. So it is not disrupting—we are not going to become hoteliers. We are not going to become shop owners. If we rely on a service and are paying for it—53%, mind—we should have access to it, but the key thing is that we need the right to manage. Without right to manage, or without buying the freehold, you are, literally, perpetually in this abusive relationship with a freeholder who has your cheque book and is spending it how he likes, whether that is reasonable or not. That is a fact.
On the point about section 24, that needs to be revisited so that the manager, where a tribunal deems it appropriate, can be the accountable person. In our building, we have mobilised—ironically, it is over 50% of the leaseholders. We now face going back to them—with their cash, by the way—and saying, “We can’t now get one because of this unintended consequence of the Building Safety Act”. That is a quick bit of drafting— I have spoken to lawyers about it. It would be very easy for you guys and that would help, particularly on cladding developments, where the cladding is not getting done because the freeholders are sitting on their hands. You need an officer of the court who is going to turn around the development and be accountable.
Karolina Zoltaniecka: Can I say something about the right to manage? At the moment, the process is so complex. There are three notices that need to be served. I believe there needs to be only one, to say to the freeholder, “We are taking over the right to manage and this is the date we are going to do it on”, and that is it. There are solicitors who specialise in analysing notices to pick holes in them to prolong the process, so that leaseholders give up, and costs just go up and up. And I completely agree with the forfeiture point from Harry. It is unnecessary and a breach of lease, and especially, arrears can be taken to the county court to recover if the arrears are real.
Mike Amesbury
Q
Harry Scoffin: No, it is a tenancy scam. You do not own anything. You own the right to sell on a bit of space in a flat you occupy. You do not own, even though you may have paid a freehold price and you thought you owned it—you do not.
Mike Amesbury
Q
Harry Scoffin: Completely, because—
Mike Amesbury
In England and Wales?
Harry Scoffin: Yes, because people are coining it in and they want to keep it that way. I understand that a political decision was made by No. 10 not to have commonhold in the Bill and not to say even “a share of freehold”. Let us do that. Let us work with the Government to get share of freehold in. That is maybe an English fudge, but at least it gets us halfway to the ideal of commonhold, whenever it comes. I am not going to hold my breath for commonhold, sadly, because we have wasted the last seven years talking about it.
Mike Amesbury
Keep going.
Karolina Zoltaniecka: I would not give up on it; it is well worth waiting for.
Harry Scoffin: We need share of freehold in the meantime, at least.
Richard Fuller
Q
Halima Ali: I do not agree that it is. All it is doing is creating a two-tier system where a set of homeowners, like myself, living on a private estate are dealing with this situation, whereas other homeowners are not. I do not see how regulating it is helping, because overall, the management company still get to set the fee.
Richard Fuller
Q
Halima Ali: Oh right, sorry—
Richard Fuller
I was not being very clear, I am sorry—it is my job to be clear, not yours. I think what you were saying is that this is trying to fix the problem, but the root of the problem is that councils are permitting this to go ahead.
Halima Ali: Yes, absolutely.
Richard Fuller
Q
Cathy Priestley: Yes. There are other detrimental effects on estates, other than those on the homebuyers, because non-adopted areas are not built up to adoption standard, so there is a quality issue. There is also a community cohesion issue, if you have one lot of people paying for everybody else’s open space.
Richard Fuller
Q
Halima Ali: That is correct. I will make a specific point; I am sure this is the situation nationwide as well. When I purchased my property, the council tax for band C was around £1,000. Currently, it is at £2,000. If you look at that and the average family income, there is a big disparity. How are we able to afford all this? Ultimately, we are paying council tax twice. It is unfair on us. It is unfair on vulnerable people who generally do not understand all these arbitrary rules and regulations and who are coming to us for support.
Cathy Priestley: Most of the people in our group were unaware of what they were getting into. They are unaware of the unlimited liability, because this cannot be capped. It is what it is, and it costs what it costs.
Richard Fuller
Q
Cathy Priestley: I do not know what councils would think about that. About 50% of the estate charges are just administrative fees. Councils could do it much cheaper. I do not think it would be acceptable to councils, but it would be great for us, yes.
Richard Fuller
It would make them adopt them quicker though, wouldn’t it?
Cathy Priestley: It certainly would, yes.
Ms Rimmer
We need to be careful on this. Councils are constantly picking up bills from other people, and these costs are the costs of poor developers. There are different ways of dealing with different aspects of this. One is safety development. To take a leaf out of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, you design, you develop, you construct—for use, maintenance and everything. Why not do the same for future housing developments, so that we do not have estates built without roads or pavements or these nice park features that would be lovely for children to play out on?
Nobody’s going to maintain them and they end up like a rubbish tip. People tip there, because nobody cleans it up. And what happens? More people tip there. No developer should be allowed to develop things that cannot be put right. They should pick up the costs on development, so people know what they have got. Then you have the old properties—I call them asset-rich and purse-poor. The properties are worth a fortune. They are beautiful big old houses—you would give your right arm for one of them—but when it comes to maintaining all this and their paths, the older people cannot do it. To bring that up to standard is a cost. It is not a cost for the council to pick up.
The Chair
Order. I am afraid that brings us to the end of the allotted time to ask this panel questions. Apologies, Marie. On behalf of the Committee. I thank all our witnesses for coming in.
Examination of Witnesses
Mr Andrew Bulmer and Angus Fanshawe gave evidence.
The Chair
We will now hear from Andrew Bulmer, CEO of The Property Institute, and Angus Fanshawe, specialist in leasehold enfranchisement. We have until 4.15 pm for this session. Will the witnesses please introduce yourselves for this session, starting with you, Andrew?
Mr Andrew Bulmer: I am Andrew Bulmer, chief exec of The Property Institute. There was supposed to be a third chair here today, in that an organisation called ARMA—the Association of Residential Managing Agents—was invited to attend as well. For the benefit of the Committee, if I may clarify, The Property Institute is the merged organisation made up of the former Institute of Residential Property Management, which was 6,000 individuals with qualifications to manage buildings, and ARMA, which used to be a trade body for the managing agent firms, with approximately 350 managing agents. Between them, they manage about 1.5 million leaseholds.
Angus Fanshawe: Good afternoon. I am a valuer specialising in leasehold enfranchisement, specialising in helping people to extend leases on their flats and to buy their freeholds. I am a member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, or RICS, and of the Association of Leasehold Enfranchisement Practitioners, or ALEP. I am based in central London, and all my work is in central London. I probably act about 50:50 for leaseholders and for freeholders. My first case was in 1994, so this year is 30 years since I did my first extension case—in Belgravia, I think it was. Acting for both leaseholders and freeholders, I hope that I can bring a balanced view to the Committee today.
Mr Andrew Bulmer: Apologies, Chair, I should declare that I am on the Commonhold Council.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Angus, we have exchanged correspondence on valuation, and I know that you take the view that the deferment rate should not be fixed by the Secretary of State. I wanted to explore that a bit further, in the sense that the 2007 Cadogan v. Sportelli judgment, which has broadly set deferment rates, was made in the context of 0.5% interest rates. I have heard it put to me by people in other parts of the country that it may work in London, but it is very out of kilter with what works in different regions. If the Government are minded to remain of the view that the Secretary of State should fix the deferment rates, how best should the Secretary of State do that? What would need to be taken into account? Is there a need to set multiple rates for different parts of the country to deal with the variations? I want to explore the prescribed rates a bit more and how they can function most effectively if schedule 2 is to remain.
Mr Andrew Bulmer: Thank you for the question. On the regulation of managing agents, I should also declare that I was on Lord Best’s working group. There were three components to Lord Best’s recommendations: first, there should be a regulator; secondly, the regulator should have a code of practice through which to hold the industry to account; and, thirdly, there should be mandatory competency standards. That applies to sales and lettings as well as to block, or leasehold block management. He made a distinction with block: because of the large sums of money and the high risks involved, block should be qualified to a higher standard—indeed, minimum level 4.
There is a compelling reason why regulation is required. The way to think of it is the apocryphal tale of “The Ambulance Down in the Valley”, a famous poem. There is a large cliff, and people fall off it. Should there be a fence at the top of the cliff or an ambulance down in the valley? Redress and the first-tier tribunal, as well as the ombudsman, are the ambulance down in the valley, but it would be better to prevent harm occurring in the first place. Minimum competency standards and a regulated sector are the fence at the top of the cliff.
Lord Best made his recommendations four or five years ago now and I wholeheartedly support them—we support them. If we take Lord Best’s basket of reasons, put it on the table in front of us and acknowledge that, we will then have to consider where the industry has moved. Since that time, we have had the Building Safety Act, which was supposed to introduce a building safety manager. That was abandoned and the building safety manager is now in effect the property manager. The property manager now has to learn half of a new profession. The responsibilities and the technical knowledge that go with that are considerable.
For leaseholders who are RMC directors, the Building Safety Act also makes the RMC the principal accountable person, and to whom do they turn? The first port of call is the building manager. The Building Safety Act has the unfortunate consequence of inevitably driving leaseholders, who may be very intelligent individuals—such as the lead violinist of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, a brilliant individual but not an expert in building safety management—to their building manager. That means the Act is now driving lay consumers into the hands of an unregulated sector. That is another basket of reasons, in addition to Lord Best’s basket, on why the sector should be regulated.
Then we come to this Bill, which we warmly welcome and very much support. We can go into the details of it, but let us be very clear that we think it is a Bill that is going in the right direction. One of the Bill’s effects is going to be empowering leaseholders to look after their own affairs, and that is a good thing. But, again, we have the leaseholder, who is not daft—they could be a brilliant surgeon, or a lead violinist—but are none the less not property experts, so, again, the move towards self-determination and self-control means that they are being driven into the hands of an agency sector that is entirely unregulated. If Lord Best’s basket of reasons were not enough, if we add to it the Building Safety Act, then we add to it the inexorable drive towards leaseholder control of their own homes and their own affairs, it is surely now time that the sector was regulated.
If there is no appetite to regulate in this Bill, with its limited time going through Parliament, at the very least we should introduce minimum competency standards. It has been done already, swiftly and elegantly, following the death of poor Awaab Ishak, where mandatory qualifications were brought in in the social sector.
Many buildings are mixed use. A building manager will be walking down a corridor, qualified to manage the units on the left-hand side but not the units—or homes, I should say—on the right-hand side. That is inequitable and it makes no sense. Further, it also assumes that those in the private sector are not vulnerable. Vulnerable people live in the private sector too. The argument for, at the very least, having a code of practice and mandatory qualifications for building managers is, in my view, all-compelling.
Angus Fanshawe: On fixing rates and the deferment rate, before the Cadogan v. Sportelli case, which you mentioned, the deferment rate was always a contentious point. In my years of practising, that case has probably been the most important; really, it removed the deferment rate as something that was in dispute. Since that case, I cannot recall that I have ever had a disagreement on a deferment rate or a problem with agreeing the deferment rate.
Cadogan v. Sportelli set the rate at 4.75% for houses and 5% for flats. There are a couple of exceptions—well, maybe one or two more than that, but there are two significant exceptions where you can depart from 4.75% or 5%. My concern is that if we fix the rate, we will remove the opportunity, as is the case now, for leaseholders to agree a higher rate than 4.75% or 5%.
As I say, there are two cases where there are significant exceptions. The first is that if you have an intermediate leasehold—so, you have a head leaseholder who has a reversionary period—then commonly you would agree that at something higher than 5%, normally 5.5%, to the benefit of the leaseholder. Also, with some buildings there is an element of obsolescence—so, will the building actually be there at the expiry of the lease in, say, 80 years’ time? With a building built in the 1960s or 1970s, which perhaps has a life expectancy of 50 or 60 years, is there certainty that it will be there at the end of the term? In those circumstances, you can agree—I do not think with too much controversy—a slightly higher rate than 5%, again to the benefit of the leaseholder. If you are going to fix the rates, that will bring an unfairness, either to the leaseholder or the freeholder, depending on what rate you are going to fix.
It also ties in with capitalisation rates, if you are going to fix the capitalisation of the ground rent. There was a case on capitalisation rates—Nicholson v. Goff in 2007—that set out very clearly how the capitalisation rate should be assessed: so, the length of the lease term, security of the recovery, the size of the ground rent and the rent review provisions, if any.
Every ground rent is different; every circumstance is different. Again, if you are going to fix the capitalisation rate in the same way that you are going to fix the deferment rate, that could certainly bring about unfairness. It could be unfair to freeholds, it could be unfair to leaseholders, but the problem with fixing the rate is that it does bring unfairness.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Angus Fanshawe: Yes, you are right. The case was about a flat in Cadogan Gardens—so, London SW3, prime central London. However, it was very clear. It set out how the deferment rate should be assessed. If the rate is to be assessed, I think the Cadogan v. Sportelli case sets out very clearly how it should be assessed. That would be the starting point: if the Government decide to do that, that is the starting point.
Ms Rimmer
Q
Mr Andrew Bulmer: Sorry—yes. I am afraid that I do not have a voice that projects, but I will do my best.
We warmly welcome regulation of managed estates; it is an anomaly that the management of those estates is unregulated. I was in the room earlier and I heard some eloquent discourse around the fact that some of these estates exist at all as managed areas and that those common areas are not adopted. I have personal experience of managing estates where there are two grass strips, a couple of gullies and a little piece of road, for which you need to set up a limited company, find directors, get them insured, do a health and safety risk assessment and a whole load of other stuff—a whole load of on-costs—for what amounts to, as I say, two strips of grass and a couple of gullies. Clearly, for that kind of small estate, that is utterly disproportionate and I strongly recommend that those areas are adopted by the council. There has to be a way through it, through planning legislation, section 106 agreements, commuted sums and so forth. I would strongly make that point.
On the regulation of those estates that either exist and cannot be adopted or alternatively perhaps are part of a much more complicated scheme and it is therefore inevitable that they will be managed areas, then, yes, absolutely bring them in. I would recommend that you align the regulations and the processes for reporting and service charge accounts, or charge accounts, as closely as you possibly can to the reformed leasehold regime so that there is consistency.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Mr Andrew Bulmer: Would it be easier? I am not entirely sure. A substantive point was well made earlier. At the very minimum, there was a call for the equity that is left in a forfeited property to be returned to the leaseholder.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Mr Andrew Bulmer: As I understand it, that is absolutely correct. Yes, the freeholder takes a lot.
Just to be clear, it might just be worth saying that we represent only managing agents. We do not have freeholders as members and we do not represent freeholders. That is sometimes misunderstood and, while I am clarifying, probably 50% or thereabouts of the estates that my members manage are RMC controlled. We also have members in Scotland who are freehold entirely, so we are very comfortable with freehold, commonhold and resident control.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Mr Andrew Bulmer: We do a mental health survey of our members. We have done it now for, I think, three years. I am sad to report that the answers of property managers to the question of “Is your life worthwhile?” are in the bottom 17% of the UK population, which is certainly a cause for concern. We ask for the sources of stress, and they include the cost of living and things external to their work, but it is roughly equally balanced between freeholders and leaseholders.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Mr Andrew Bulmer: I think it rightly places property managers roughly in the middle of all this. Shall we say that?
Barry Gardiner
Q
Mr Andrew Bulmer: I would go further than that and say that we have been calling for a standardised chart of accounts for quite some time and that standardised chart of accounts would be able to separate out and highlight the various funds. It is important that each individual leaseholders’ funds can be readily identifiable in terms of their own account.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Mr Andrew Bulmer: Yes. The Property Institute standard, the old ARMA standard for member firms, requires separate accounts for each development and for those to be trust accounts—it is leaseholders’ money held on trust.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Mr Andrew Bulmer: First of all, it still does have that code of conduct. We are in the middle of rebranding from ARMA to TPI. Just to be clear, the legal entity is The Property Institute, but we are still running on the ARMA and IRPM brands for the next few weeks, when the branding will finally change. I am not quite sure what the phrase, “What went wrong?”—
Barry Gardiner
Q
Mr Andrew Bulmer: There is a plethora of codes. I am good with this: when I was residential director at RICS, I project managed the delivery of the third edition of the RICS code. There is a fourth edition of the code, which I think sits with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities at the moment. Separately from that, Baroness Hayter’s overarching code of practice, inspired by RoPA, is in draft form and goes across all agents. There is then the ARMA standard. There is a plethora of codes. It is the RICS code that the Secretary of State adopted, so again I would love to answer your question, but I do not quite understand it yet. How can I help you?
Barry Gardiner
Q
Mr Andrew Bulmer: We are not a regulator. For firms to join us, they volunteer to do so. It is to their credit that they do so, but there is a limit to what we are able to enforce. We can embrace standards, and our job is to raise standards by pulling—
Barry Gardiner
Q
Mr Andrew Bulmer: And we have done so. We can raise standards by pulling firms and members along. We can have adventurous conversations, we can set standards and, in extremis, we can remove agents from the institute. We have done that for both individuals and firms. But, ultimately, we are not a regulator, and if you are truly to drive standards you need both pull and push. The role of the regulator would be to push.
Barry Gardiner
I think you have given a very eloquent explanation of why, try as you might, we need to ensure that within the primary legislation we have the adequate safeguards, because they cannot be done by voluntary effort outside in a complete and effective way. Thank you.
The Chair
Are there any further questions from Members? No? Okay, in which case I thank the witnesses for attending today. We will move on to the next panel.
Examination of Witnesses
Kate Faulkner OBE and Beth Rudolf gave evidence.
The Chair
Q
Beth Rudolf: I am Beth Rudolf. As you say, I am the director of delivery at the Conveyancing Association. I started my working life as an estate agent, became a licensed conveyancer and now work with the Conveyancing Association to improve the home-moving process for the consumer.
Kate Faulkner: Hi, my name is Kate Faulkner. I am chair of the Home Buying and Selling Group. If you are not familiar with it, it is a massive volunteer group. Our steering group has more than 30 different organisations, because that is how complicated it is to buy and sell a home in this country, be it leasehold or not. We have participants who are practitioners, as well as all the trade bodies, regulators and redress schemes. Our aim to improve the home buying and selling process, to prevent the one third of fall-throughs when a sale has been agreed after the offer stage and to reduce the length of time, which impacts on people’s uncertainty of life when they are buying a home. I have worked in all property sectors, from part-exchange to helping people who need to move into a retirement home and working with agents. Most of my work involves trying to communicate to consumers from an industry or Government perspective.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Kate Faulkner: There are various issues. I heard one of the best descriptions of this recently, which was that, if I ask you to bake a cake with 20 ingredients but I only give you five of them, it is a bit difficult to do. Once you have made the offer and the legal companies have had a look at it and at the agreements, in a couple of months’ time you might get up to 10 of those ingredients. Eventually, four or five months later, you might have all 20 and you can then buy and sell that property. That is the biggest problem we have.
One of the massive opportunities with the Bill is to mandate the information required for people to understand what they are purchasing with a leasehold property. A key thing that we do not have in the property sector that other areas have—I have worked in the health, beauty, food and drink sectors—is an awful lot of natural education on how to buy things. We have nothing; there is no natural education of the public in our sector, apart from in the media, where any property story is particularly negative.
The work we are doing now has been fantastic. It has improved consumers’ education so that they really understand what they are buying into and that leasehold is very different from freehold, but they have now got the impression that leasehold is a bad thing. When leasehold works, it is not a bad thing.
From my perspective, and certainly from all the work we do with our participants on the Home Buying and Selling Group, it is essential that information be provided up front. Fantastic work has been done by the group that worked with trading standards, who now require up-front information, but it is not mandated. Although agents are supposed to understand all the property rules and regulations, from the discussion you had earlier, apparently nobody thinks that they should be qualified, and there is no regulation, so one problem is that agents have no idea about the trading standards up-front information that is coming through. A lot of good work is being done; the issue is that it is not working on the ground.
On leasehold specifically, people have to get hold of leasehold packs. There is a cost associated with them, and the time it takes can be excruciating. Anything that can be done to cap those costs would be welcome, but we need to make sure that quality is still required. The danger of the cost being too low is that we do not get quality leasehold packs, and they are essential due to the complexity of leasehold. The time it takes is also essential. Mandating up-front information specifically for leasehold would help us to reduce fall-throughs and reduce the time it takes, but most importantly, it would mean that people could get on with their lives more quickly than they currently can.
Beth Rudolf: I am the co-ordinator of the leasehold property enquiry form and the freehold management enquiry form, which are supported by TPI, RICS, the Law Society, the Conveyancing Association and right across the sector. The intention of the forms was to create a standard template for the information required. It is noticeable that, of the questions raised, only five are time-sensitive, such as failings to pay ground rent or the current budget—the kinds of things that change over time. Most of the information is standardised across the whole of that estate; nothing is going to change. Certainly, when we were looking at the regulation of property agents with Lord Best, it was clear that some of the bigger managing agents already have templated tenant portals where people can go to get that information. That needs to be put across the whole of the leasehold sector, the rent charges and the managed freehold estates, because we are seeing charges of up to £800 for the information.
We are also seeing the duplication of those charges. We will go to the landlord and they will say, “We only answer the ground rent ones, but we still want £400 to answer those. You will need to go to the managing agent to get the information about the service charges.” The managing agent says, “Right, well, we charge £400 for that, but you will need to go to the Tenants Association to get information about disputes and consents,” and so it goes on.
The timescale to getting the information having paid for it is about 57 days. For the consumer, it is an absolute nightmare. As Kate says, guidance from National Trading Standards came out on 30 November 2023 which sets out the material information—the information that would be relevant to the average consumer. It is not all the information. What we need mandated is what information and what data should be reviewed to identify what the relevant material information is, because without that how do we know if somebody has the information from the leasehold property inquiries or from the seller’s or the estate agent’s guesswork? Certainly, without the regulation of property agents, there is nothing to say, if they do just make it up, that anybody can take anything against them. We absolutely need that to be incorporated. It was promised and there was an announcement, I think, in 2018 that the leasehold property inquiry information should be made available at a cost of £200, with a refreshment fee for those time-sensitive elements of £50, and that that information should be made available within 10 working days. We have still not seen that and there is nothing in the Bill that identifies that.
Rachel Maclean
Q
Kate Faulkner: I do not think we have ever asked that question, so it is very difficult to answer. Also, the issue with property is that people change a lot. As a result, you could have a block that works brilliantly because we have a wonderful violinist or—my grandma used to own a little place at The Poplars in West Bridgford in Nottingham and, through complications, the family still owns a garage where my grandma used to live. The two guys who run that estate—the guy who does the accounts and the guy who does the overall management—are absolutely fantastic. They are a pleasure to deal with, and it is an extraordinarily well-run block. Now, if either of those were to move on, who knows whether there is anybody to replace them?
If we take another situation—I must say that this was quite a shock for me and I was a bit green in those days—I owned a flat and I thought it was safe to buy because it was owned by a housing association. Thirty per cent of those flats were owned privately. We were treated abominably by that housing association, and I would go as far as to say that they really did not like private leaseholders. I understood; they were social homes originally and they did not want us to own them. I felt we were treated as if we were an ATM machine. The original agreement that we signed up for with the housing association was a good one, but we found that they were changing that agreement over time and changing it so fast with so much paperwork that by the time the roof needed to be replaced, all the reasons we had bought that property, which we thought was safe, had been taken away from us. I know what I am doing and I asked all the right questions, but we still ended up with a situation where we had no control whatsoever over what was happening.
You have two cases there. In one, you have a wonderfully-run estate, but that could change overnight if different people take over, and in the other, you have a situation where I thought I would be safe with the housing association, only to find all the rules were changed.
To give you some idea, I think it is the complexity of this that is so scary. However good anybody is, the missing qualifications are just horrendous. That just has to be sorted. The best way I could describe it to you is that when I moved, I had a bag. Do you remember those big Asda bags? Not the ones that they do now, because they seem to have got smaller, like everything else. I had a big Asda bag, and after owning this flat with the housing association for 10 years, I had three lever-arch files full of paperwork.
When we brought the complaint against the housing association about how they had dealt with the roof renovations, it took a year to take that to a complaint situation. When I suggested that I take it to a first-tier tribunal, I was told—this is one of the good things—that if I drove my other leaseholders into taking them to a first-tier tribunal, it would cost more than £30,000. I was asked whether I wanted that responsibility on my shoulders. Taking that cost off is one of the good things, but my worry is that however good we do, until you give the leaseholders parity with the legals—the surveying and the accounting expertise of the freeholder or agent or whoever it might be—we will still never dig ourselves out of the situation we have. That parity service has to be free, or every leaseholder puts in a hundred quid a year or something to provide them with some sort of service.
Rachel Maclean
Q
Kate Faulkner: Absolutely. That is in one of my notes. If we make sure all houses are freehold, but we keep flats as leasehold, is that a problem? Well, actually, we can make leasehold work. We spend so much time looking at how to solve the bad bit, but what we do not do in this industry—which I have always done in others—is learn how it goes right, and how we can pull everybody up to that standard. We spend so much time looking at what happens when it goes wrong.
Rachel Maclean
Q
Beth, it is often presented that your industry and your members are perhaps part of some of the problems we see, because conveyancing is not done to high standards. We have heard so many times that people do not know what they are buying. Surely, that should be the role of conveyancers? Is it your view that there are some poor people practising in your industry? How much of this leasehold problem would have been avoided if we had had decent conveyancing right from the beginning?
Beth Rudolf: We have to go back to the understanding that, as Kate said, if you only have a few of the ingredients up front, then you are going to give misinformation. For example, let us think that without any information going to the buyer, they have decided to buy that property. Now, their intended use and enjoyment of the property is then what the conveyancer needs to do the due diligence on, to ensure that the buyer gets the information and understands what it means to them.
The issue we have with the current conveyancing process is that because of the dematerialisation of deeds, there is no need to keep deeds packets in fireproof safes any more. Consequently, they are just returned to the property purchaser, who loses them without realising their use, or they keep them really safe and then take them with them to the next property. All of that information goes missing, which means that every time the property is sold, the information and archive of the data has to be reconstructed. If I, as a conveyancer, was selling a property back in 1990, I would just get out the deeds packet and send through the contract pack on the day that a buyer was found. Within that, I could put old local searches, planning and documentation, warranties and guarantees, and insurances.
Now, when I get instructed, I have to start from scratch. I have to go to the lease administrator and planning authority and get all the information. That takes time. The trouble is that, as a buyer’s conveyancer, I am trying to report to the client on the information as it comes in. I hopefully get in the material information that the estate agent gets when they put the property on the market, but then I have to do the transaction form that the Law Society requires, which duplicates what has already been provided, but is slightly different, so you do not get the right information there.
On top of that, I get the search results in, but I probably do not order those until I get the mortgage instructions in. But the mortgage instructions are based on a valuation done by a valuer who did not know what information was available on the lease, so I then have to go back to the valuer and say, “No, you’ve got the wrong information.” By the time I have reported to my client on each thing, I have had to change my story each and every time. So conveyancing transactions take about 20 weeks before you can even exchange contracts, because each time you are trying to recreate the information about the property.
What we need is for the property data to be digitised and stored in property log books at the end of the transaction so that it can then be used when the seller wishes to instruct an estate agent to sell their property. To advertise it, they can then pull down the property pack, get the relevant material and information out of it, and ensure that when the buyer puts their offer in, they know what they are buying, and that the valuer for their mortgage company knows the details about the valuation. Where that happens—in Norway, Denmark and Australia—we see binding offers with cooling-off periods, and the only stress is trying to work out what you are going to move and what stuff you are going to give to charity.
Kate Faulkner: You have to bear in mind that when people are moving, they are also having a baby, getting divorced or getting married—or somebody has died, or they are in debt. Maybe they are trying to get in for a school time. As much as I wear a consumer hat, they are not in the most rational mode.
One of the difficulties that the conveyancer, the agent or anybody else has is actually getting people to sit down and understand the paperwork and what they are doing. We have a huge problem: consumers do not really understand, and do not always take the time to, either, because they just need to get into the property. We have a real education issue. One of the things I would do is work with companies to help them to educate consumers. I have to say that, in all my jobs, getting them to understand from a property perspective is the toughest thing.
That is why we have to bring everything up front. If we wait until they have made an offer and had it accepted, we have lost them—they are interested in what colour the walls are and what the sofa is, and if anybody, such as a surveyor, gets in their way and says, “You shouldn’t buy this property”, they are almost cross with them. The mindset of a consumer during the buying and selling process with property is very different from any other consumer mindset I have ever worked with.
[Chloe Smith in the Chair]
The Chair
By way of explanation, for the next 10 minutes I am Caroline Dinenage.
Kate Faulkner: Many congratulations!
The Chair
Otherwise, my name is Chloe Smith. I am temporarily chairing the session to allow for a very short break.
Andy Carter
Q
Beth Rudolf: What you have in there is the energy performance certificate; the title to the property, including a plan and any documents referred to in the title, such as a lease or a conveyance containing covenants; the searches—the local authority search, the drainage and water search and environmental data, which will tell you whether the property is impacted by coastal erosion or flooding; and the BASPI, or the buying and selling property information, which is completed by the seller and provides information about their understanding and ownership of the property.
You verify the identity of the seller digitally to ensure that they are the person registered as the proprietor to avoid seller impersonation fraud, through which people have lost £1.3 million. Those are the things that you need available. For a shared amenity property with a leasehold or managed freehold estate rent charge, you also need that shared amenity information—the LPE1, or the leasehold property enquiries form, and the FME1, or the freehold management enquiries form.
[Dame Caroline Dinenage in the Chair]
Andy Carter
Q
Beth Rudolf: It is about building safety. Is remediation required? What will be the impact on you? How much will you have to contribute? Are you a qualifying leaseholder? How the hell do we know?
Andy Carter
Q
Beth Rudolf: For any house, yes, absolutely. It needs to whack up the material information under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008, which impact estate agents by saying, “These are the prescribed documents.” The home report in Scotland shows that that is pretty much what they have done. They have 60% fewer fall-throughs than we have and their transaction time is much faster. If we can go that way, it will absolutely deliver. When estate agents and conveyancers have worked together to deliver this already, it has knocked transaction times from 22 weeks to 10 weeks and fall-through rates have plummeted.
Kate Faulkner: Obviously, I work right across the property industry, from self-build to the leasehold side, and a lot of the work that has been done, including the rent reform and the work that has been done here, focuses on what happens after. For me, there is a problem with property from a consumer perspective, because there is a shortage of properties and owning a property is such a complex thing. You cannot compare it to buying a toaster—it often is, but please let us get rid of that.
For property to work for consumers who are moving, buying property or selling after deaths, divorce and so on, you have to make sure we have no bad freeholders, no bad landlords and no bad or poorly qualified agents. The good thing about the leasehold Bill is that you are doing some of those things. The Renters (Reform) Bill is not doing those things; most of it is after the event, but that is too late because consumers have to put a roof over their head and get their kids into school, so they will compromise on their rights. They will compromise when they are told, “You need to understand this information from your conveyancer, which means you should pull out of this deal.” We therefore have to put the protection in first. We must regulate agents and make sure the bad elements cannot be there. There is such a massive scale, ranging from the brilliant people I work with right through to the criminal, and we have to move everybody up.
Beth Rudolf: Just to catch you there, because we are short on time, the regulation of qualifications is a key point.
Andy Carter
Q
Beth Rudolf: No. It is wonderful that you are opening up the jurisdiction of the tribunal, but it still does not cover administration charges—I have talked about how ridiculously expensive they are—and their duplication. The point is that, as Kate says, the consumer is not educated, and nor is the estate agent. The material information guidance has come out, but none of the estate agents knows about it. When conveyancers ask them whether they can help them prepare the summary of the material information, the estate agents say, “Well, why? What are you talking about?” They have no idea.
The point is, as Andrew says, that we want to put a fence at the top of the cliff, not an ambulance at the bottom. The tribunal is the ambulance at the bottom; regulation of property agents is the fence at the top. That will ensure all people are educated, including the consumer, the estate agent and the property manager, and we also need to include the landlords and the developers in that. They need to be regulated too, because otherwise it is all going to slip through the net. The enterprise reform regulations do not incorporate anything where you are not instructed to work on behalf of somebody else, so your landlord is not going to be regulated, and they already do not have to be part of a redress scheme. Bringing these things in will help with education, so that they know what they are supposed to do and they will not make these mistakes that cause people to have a nightmare in their own homes.
Andy Carter
Q
Beth Rudolf: No, I have so much to tell you about this. In Worcester, the county authority has a £35 million overspend on adult social care. Because of that, it is not putting any money into the adoption of public open spaces. It is not putting any money into supporting those. It will absolutely look for developers that will take on those open spaces, create these estate rent charges and make a bit of wonga by collecting all that money.
Andy Carter
Q
Beth Rudolf: It is council resources, as much as anything. Then, on top of that, developers see it as being a financial asset, because they continue to have an economic interest in that land by gathering the referral fees, the commissions on the insurance and things like that.
Andy Carter
Q
Beth Rudolf: All I can tell you is that currently the council that I am aware of will not adopt anything. The dowry that it used to receive for adopting is no longer enough to cover the cost of bringing it up to an adoptable standard and, as was mentioned before, if the developers leave before bringing it up to an adoptable standard, you are completely stuffed: there is no resourcing and no money available to fund this.
Andy Carter
Q
Beth Rudolf: Bring in commonhold. Enable commonhold on managed estates, because then people will at least have their control. With commonhold, you immediately get people saying, “You don’t have professional property managers running it.” Well, require that, when the commonhold association takes over, it has in place a professional, regulated property manager with a limited contract, so that the association can tender for a replacement if it turns out that that estate manager is not good. That means that you are starting to drive it on the basis of customer satisfaction: if you do not do it fairly, well and reasonably, the commonhold association is going to replace it. We did a survey of the commonholders—
Andy Carter
I am conscious of the time. Others may want to—
Beth Rudolf: I know, but I was going to say that the commonholders did not complain about being commonholders. Some of them had been leaseholders, and they said that they would prefer to be commonholders.
Kate Faulkner: One of the things from the developers’ side—and I was not clear about this—has to do with where this leaves people with shared ownership, because you cannot have two-tiered systems. The housing associations and shared ownership should be as protected with these rules and regulations, because, unfortunately, not all housing associations do a good job.
Beth Rudolf: One more thing: the ground rent capping referenced in the Bill requires the lease to be a qualifying lease, so it will not impact leases under 150 years. But the majority of the mis-sold leases with onerous terms and escalating ground rents were well under 150 years. They will not be touched by this, so that needs to change.
The Chair
Thank you very much. I do not think there are any further questions, so I thank you both very much for attending today.
Examination of Witness
Professor Tim Leunig gave evidence.
The Chair
We will now hear from Professor Tim Leunig, who is the director of Public First. We have until 5.15 for this session. Can the witness please introduce himself for the record?
Professor Leunig: I can. I am indeed Professor Tim Leunig. I was an employee of the Department that is currently known as the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, where I served as economic adviser on housing supply to three Secretaries of State—Clark, Javid and Gove respectively—and any number of Housing Ministers, to be honest, one of whom is here. I served almost all of them between Brandon Lewis and Rachel Maclean.
I am now the director of economics at Public First consulting and am chief economist at the think-tank Onward. I am employed by University College London Consultants to train Treasury civil servants. I run a Substack and I am a visiting professor at the London School of Economics school of public policy.
Rachel Maclean
Q
Professor Leunig: I think that is a question that people often ask medics: “Why do I have this?” Who cares? The question is, “Am I going to get any better?” I have not got the faintest idea about the origin of leasehold, but I contend to you that that does not matter; all that matters is whether this is an effective system and, if it is not, what we could do either to improve or replace the current system. Those two questions I can answer, but I am afraid that I get an E grade for my answer to the question that you actually asked.
Rachel Maclean
Q
We have a Bill in front of us. What is your view on the Bill? Does it address the problems that we have all heard and are familiar with?
Professor Leunig: It is a step forward; there is no doubt about that. I do not suppose that any person has appeared in front of you today and said, “Oh, this is a terrible step.” I do not suppose anyone has argued that we should keep leasehold for houses or that we should have 99-year leases or 49-year leases or anything like that.
Rachel Maclean
No.
Professor Leunig: In that sense, it is obviously a step forward. I have not been here all day, but I am guessing that you have had a consensus on that throughout your evidence sessions. I am part of that consensus. I think that it is very good that leaseholders have increased rights to information and that we are eliminating ground rent for longer leases, although I agree with the person who was sitting here before me—whose name, I think, was Beth Rudolf—that 150 years is a rather long thing before you get rid of ground rent. The case for ground rent seems to me to be extraordinarily weak. I think that it would be better to move to commonhold.
First of all, I should say that I am not a lawyer. Indeed, once, when I made a remark about the law in a meeting with one of your predecessors as Housing Minister, said Minister remarked that, as an analyst, I should know better than anyone else that the first four letters of analyst stand for, “am not a lawyer”, which, I have to say, was wittier than most Housing Ministers.
I am not a lawyer. I am an economist, but I can say that leasehold is a peculiarly economically inefficient construct, because it usually constrains a person, for whom the largest single thing they will ever invest in is a leasehold—their house—from doing all sorts of things. It constrains improvements, for example. It also holds them open to the risk of forfeiture, and the risk of forfeiture is particularly bizarre: for a very small amount of service fee, you can lose the entire value of your flat or, occasionally, your house. That is disproportionate to any sense of economic, moral or any other kind of fair play, and it acts as a disincentive to people.
In that sense, leasehold is a fundamentally economically inefficient construct, as well as having dubious morality. For sure, if you do not pay your service charge, there needs to be some way of enforcing, whether it is commonhold or leasehold, but that is why we have things like the small claims court. Ultimately, we have bailiffs if you do not pay a bill. You do not lose your entire property because you failed to pay your telly licence or something like that, and nor should you for a service charge. In that sense, I think that leasehold should be killed off.
I also think that leasehold is, on occasion, an absolute magnet for sharks and other wretched creatures who disgrace our society and the good name of capitalism. I think it was Edward du Cann who made a remark—before I was born and before at least some of you were born—about the “unacceptable face of capitalism” when companies behave very badly. We see that happening in leasehold with the companies who had doubling ground rents until a property was worthless and the companies who pursue forfeiture over tiny bills. Bluntly, if I am allowed unparliamentary language—I think I am but you are not—there are bastards out there, and your job is to construct the law to constrain those people who have bastard tendencies. Leasehold does not do that; commonhold does. That is why I think that commonhold is a much safer construct for people who are currently leaseholders. It should be the norm and the requirement for all future building, whether that is flats or houses, and we should be looking to move leaseholds to commonholds over time.
Rachel Maclean
Q
Professor Leunig: The final point is factually incorrect, because of course the nurses pension scheme is unfunded, so there are no assets behind—
Rachel Maclean
That is probably a bad example.
Professor Leunig: It is, but people always put forward nurses and policemen when they want an “Oh, woe is us” story. Well, the NHS pension scheme is unfunded; it is underwritten by us as taxpayers and is thus completely and utterly secure.
Although I accept that there are some people who have these in their pension funds, any good pension fund is diversified. No sensible pension fund has more than a trivial amount of its money invested in this class. Of course, if you have a self-invested pension plan and you decided to put it all in this, that is a risk that you took when you decided to invest all your money in it.
Changing to commonhold will make not a jot of difference to the number of houses that are built over the next year, or the number of flats. The number of houses and flats built is determined entirely by whether the builder believes that they can make a profit. This is a for-profit sector, and that is right and proper, as is the manufacture of pens, mobile phones, bits of paper, quasi-plastic cups and everything else. It depends on whether the buyers have enough confidence to buy, on whether they think their job is secure and on whether they can get a mortgage at a rate that seems acceptable and is competitive with renting. That is what matters. It also matters whether the builder thinks the market will be radically better in the following year, in which case they will quite understandably delay building for a bit.
Frankly, the difference between the value you will get for a leasehold and what you will get for a commonhold is at best slight; in so far as it exists, it is based on confusing and bamboozling buyers. Sometimes the builders of a leasehold flat say, “Ah, but we can sell them for less, because we make some money by selling off the right to the ground rent.” If that is true, the buyer is not better off, because they have got it for less, but they have to pay ground rent. The buyer would be perfectly able to pay a little more, because their monthly or annual outgoings would be exactly the same.
The only way in which the builder is able to do better is if the buyer does not realise that they have to pay ground rent and is unable to do a net present value calculation in their head, which I grant you is more than likely—I challenge any of you to tell me on the spot what the net present value of £250 a year discounted by 3.5% a year is, over any number of years you like that is greater than five. Does anybody want to do that off the top of their head? No? I even typed into Google last night, “What is the net present value of £250 discounted at 3.5% over 10 years?” Google did not give me a number as an answer. It is not the sort of thing that we have to hand.
Yes, some people might be bamboozled into this, but a good economy never says, “Great: we can build some more houses by tricking people into being poorer later.” That is not the way to have a well-functioning market—and a well-functioning market is the best guarantee that we will get the houses we need built where we need them and when we need them.
Richard Fuller
That’s all right, Dame Caroline. Let’s stick with net present values, shall we, Professor?
Professor Leunig: Go for it—I’ll get out the calculator.
Richard Fuller
Q
Professor Leunig: Indeed, yes. It’s a very long one, by the look of it.
Richard Fuller
Q
Professor Leunig: Yes.
Richard Fuller
Q
Professor Leunig: Oh, yes, absolutely. That is not necessarily reprehensible, because sometimes you just cannot have a clue.
I am often asked to forecast the future. I say, “Why did economists get the last four years wrong? Because we didn’t predict that Vladimir Putin would invade Ukraine.” Making predictions about the future as a social scientist is, by and large, a mug’s game. All you can do is stand up from first principles and say, “When do market economies work well? They work well when contracts are simple and plain and everybody understands them.” That is much truer of commonhold than of leasehold, which is why I support commonhold rather than leasehold.
Richard Fuller
Q
Professor Leunig: Does it have a range?
Richard Fuller
Q
Professor Leunig: I have not seen the impact assessment.
Richard Fuller
Q
Professor Leunig: I would want to read it before giving a definitive answer, but the information that you have given me tells me that this Bill is above all a redistributive Bill. However, both of those are static estimates. The main change in property rights is usually dynamic; for example, what does it do to the incentives for people to improve their own homes? I would be surprised if that were captured in those benefits. If it is captured, I would be interested in seeing over how many years it is captured, and so on and so forth. Of course, a lot of this Bill, as I understand it—assuming that it is like every other Bill—leaves all the important stuff to secondary legislation and regulations. I imagine that those figures, in particular the figure of £2.8 billion under “transfers”, are heavily dependent on exactly how the secondary legislation is written.
Richard Fuller
Q
Professor Leunig: Yes.
Richard Fuller
Q
Professor Leunig: The biggest winners and losers will be in the south-east and in London, because that is where the marriage values are greatest because that is where property prices are highest. If you own a flat in Peterlee, one of the lowest value housing markets in Britain, the marriage value will be trivial at the moment, so changing the rules on marriage values will have a very small effect.
Richard Fuller
Q
Professor Leunig: That will be the biggest—
Richard Fuller
Q
Professor Leunig: No. Not every leaseholder in London is rich, by any means. If you are buying a flat for £300,000 in London, that will make you rich by the standards of someone in Peterlee, but I do not think a young couple buying a flat for £300,000 would meet The Daily Telegraph’s definition of “the rich”.
Richard Fuller
Q
Professor Leunig: Yes.
Richard Fuller
Q
Professor Leunig: Redistribution is ultimately a political issue; it is about who you think should have the money. Government engages in redistribution all the time. Sometimes it does so explicitly through the tax system— I am looking forward any day to my tax cheque coming back from HMRC for the money I overpaid last year—and in other ways it does so implicitly.
For example, as somebody who has been employed in universities for most of my academic career, my income was constrained by the fact that Government limits university fees. I teach at the London School of Economics. The fee that we charge for a master’s suggests that we could charge much higher than £9,250 to undergraduates, but the Government do not let us. That is a legitimate decision by the Government. It makes me directly poorer. That is a transfer away from someone like me—broadly speaking, on the richer end of the spectrum—to people who are currently not very well off but who later on will be rich.
That is just the right of a Government to define property rights in such a way that some people are winners and some are losers. The right to borrow Jeffrey Archer’s books from the library, for which he gets virtually no compensation, is exactly the sort of political decision that you are entitled to make by dint of having a democratic mandate. Apart from agreeing with you that there is redistribution, I do not think that there is a great deal that any of us at this straight table can say to those of you around the horseshoe. It is your right, privilege and responsibility to make that decision.
Richard Fuller
That is very helpful. I will stop there, but I want to come back on discount rates later if I have time.
Professor Leunig: Excellent.
Barry Gardiner
Thank you. I make it 296.91, actually, but please correct me if Google thinks I am wrong.
Professor Leunig: May I ask whether you used a calculator to work that out?
Barry Gardiner
Of course.
Professor Leunig: Phew! I was once involved in setting a question for Carol Vorderman on “Who Do You Think You Are?”. They wanted her to work out something like that, and I said, “You’ve got to give her a calculator.” They said, “No, she’s Carol Vorderman.” No one can work out 1.02794 in their head, not even Carol Vorderman. They finally agreed to put a calculator to hand, which she used, I believe.
Barry Gardiner
So she didn’t do it in her head.
Professor Leunig: Even Carol Vorderman cannot do that in her head. If you had said that you had done it in your head, I would have put you above Carol Vorderman.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Back to the Bill. There is an argument put forward for ground rent—the Government’s proposal is to take it down to a peppercorn or indeed abolish it entirely—that these are inalienable property rights, so there must be compensation and there must be proportionality. Could you elaborate for the Committee on whether the same argument was used when we compensated slave owners for the loss of their property, and whether you think that there is an analogy there?
Professor Leunig: Property rights are never sacred in the sense of being inviolable, because a property right is over and above the right to be compensated for the loss of property, so a properly inviolable property right would ban the emancipation of slaves, ban compulsory purchase and so forth.
But the Government often take actions that, de facto, end someone’s business. One of the saddest things I did in Government when I was economic adviser to the Chancellor was meeting a group of people affected by Brexit. One of them was a seed potato exporter. Under EU law, seed potatoes cannot be imported into the EU, so on the day that we left, this person’s business was completely kaput. He asked for compensation, but it was not granted. We can argue the rights and wrongs of that, and we can argue the rights and wrongs of Brexit, but it seems to me that the fundamental sovereign right of Parliament is to make decisions that some people like and some people do not like. If people are really unhappy, they can judicially review it. A lot of rich people own ground rents, and they may well be judicially reviewed. Sometimes almost anything is reviewed, certainly in the world of property.
I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that there is a plausible case for Parliament to stand up and say, “We believe there are social advantages to doing this, and we have therefore done it.” That is the standard defence in law, and we did this at the end of covid. I was involved in the compulsory arbitration for a commercial rent scheme; indeed, it was one of the things I came up with as an idea in my time as a civil servant. At the end of covid, just about every restaurant had a huge accumulated rent debt. The standard commercial clause says that on any day you are behind with your rent, the landlord can go in, occupy the property and seize everything that is in it. We put that into abeyance for covid, without compensation, because we had a public policy reason for wanting restaurants shut.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Professor Leunig: There we are.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Professor Leunig: Correct, and that was what we decided at the end of covid, when restaurants, particularly those that served fine wine, came to us to say, “As soon as we restock our cellar, the landlord will turn up, reoccupy the property, seize all the wine and sell it for the back debt.” They said, “We are literally not willing to bring wine on to the premises.” It was clear that that was an inefficient outcome that risked undermining the high street, risked undermining the future of hospitality and risked undermining a sector that is the biggest employer of young people. We therefore created a compulsory arbitration scheme to prevent that from happening. Nobody judicially reviewed that, even though there were some unhappy landlords, because they understood that we had a public policy purpose for doing so. The weight of evidence that you have heard today suggests that there is a public policy purpose here but, as I say, I am no lawyer.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Professor Leunig: Let us be clear: land for housing is of higher value and agricultural land is of slightly higher value, but industrial land is often not.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Professor Leunig: Gobsmackingly. The field with three horses next to Heathrow airport that I go past if I ever go to Heathrow is a tragedy. It is a really dreadful little bit of land. It is used for nothing other than three horses, but its value is constrained, because it is zoned for agriculture. I think the answer is: very little. Most of the large developers are not in this in order to make a fast buck out of ground rent and so on. Indeed, from memory, I think I can put on record that Taylor Wimpey behaved very honourably, having inadvertently had doubling rents in the north-west—
Barry Gardiner
Q
Professor Leunig: Hang on; I will exercise my right to finish the sentence. It actually bought them back from the people to whom it had sold them, and it had not sold them at a particularly high price. It was just a local convention in the north-west that houses were sold on leasehold. The national companies hired solicitors, who did the normal thing in their area. Just as there is in government, there is often a lot more cock-up than conspiracy in the private sector. I am much more worried about the people who buy the leases later on with a view to finding the loopholes and exploiting them, just as people buy up medicines that are not quite out of patent to force the prices up. That is why I think it is good to set up a legal system that prevents the sharks from sharking, or whatever the verb is, but I would not want to tar all developers with that brush. In terms of property prices, I should say that I think it is overwhelmingly the planning system—we can see that if you look at somewhere like Manchester, which has lots of flats where land prices are not that high. Land prices are high in London and the south-east because we do not release enough land for housing.
Barry Gardiner
I will exercise my right to interrupt.
Professor Leunig: Absolutely.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Professor Leunig: It could do for sure, yes. If you can extract more money for the product that you are able to sell, you are willing to pay more for the constituent parts. However, I would not want anybody here to think that if we move from leasehold to commonhold, houses will suddenly become affordable in the south-east. That would not be a credible economic prediction.
Barry Gardiner
Thank you.
Professor Leunig: For that, you need to build more houses.
The Minister for Housing, Planning and Building Safety (Lee Rowley)
Q
Professor Leunig: First of all, I repeat what I said earlier, namely that it seems to me that a lot of it is up to the secondary legislation. In particular, I think that issues of compensation are entirely in secondary legislation and regulation. As I say, I am not a lawyer; I find it very hard to read a Bill. It is not my skillset at all. I would not like to have your job.
I think that the biggest effect is the dynamic effect of creating a much cleaner and clearer property market. We have a rather ossified property market in Britain; it has become more ossified over time. There are all sort of reasons for that, including the fact that far more people are now under stamp duty, as well as the effect of financial regulations that mean someone needs a relatively large deposit to get on the housing market. There is a bunch of other costs that we really could simplify and get rid of. Take searches, for example. You can buy a house that is two years old and you have to do a completely clean set of searches. Why? When did we last find a mine in central London? We know this stuff pretty well.
I think this is part of clearing up the housing market and if we do so it can have quite big dynamic effects—for example, facilitating the better movement of people in response to opportunity. Such opportunities may be economic. I do not want to sound too Norman Tebbit and say, “Get on your bike.” However, there can be opportunities to go and live next to an aged parent who has suddenly fallen ill, in order to provide better care for them, or opportunities to move nearer to better schooling. Whatever the opportunity is, a more flexible housing market allows people to move to a house that is better suited to their needs.
All those things are good dynamic effects that in the medium term are strongly pro-growth and I see this Bill being part of it, but it is a small step forward. A move to commonhold would be a better step forward to a nice, clean system, where everybody knows exactly what they are buying and nobody is left wondering, “What sort of freeholder is this? Are they an exploitative one? Are they a reasonable one?” Many freeholders are perfectly reasonable.
Lee Rowley
Q
Professor Leunig: I see no risks in anything that you plan to do; I really do not think that there are any meaningful risks in moving to 999-year leases over 99-year leases. I certainly do not see any risk in ending leasehold for houses.
However, you might have people coming back with very specific cases of supported housing, for example—you always want to check with specialist groups about things like that—but I see no meaningful risks in this Bill as far as it goes. If you had gone much further, there would have been no meaningful risks either. The fact that commonhold and similar things work in places like Australia shows that it is a perfectly possible and viable system.
The time when you want to be really worried is when you are the first person in the world doing something. Of course, that does not mean you are wrong—right? When we privatised the first utilities, or when we privatised British Telecom, that was not a wrong decision, but there were definitely grounds for caution. However, when you are doing something that is already done in many countries—of all the things you lot have to worry about, I would not worry about that one. Sleep well tonight.
Lee Rowley
Q
Professor Leunig: The only prioritisation meeting I had was with the current Secretary of State for Levelling Up on the LURB—the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill —because the first draft of the Bill had twice as many clauses as could get through Parliament. We had a meeting for about two hours with the Secretary of State and each part was read out, including what its intention was and how many clauses it required. That is the cost-benefit analysis.
If I say to you, for example, “The lady before said 150 is too big”, I would agree with her; I imagine that is a very sensible change to make. By contrast, I am sure that other people have said, “Go for commonhold for everything in future”. That strikes me as requiring a lot more clauses than the number that would be required to change the 150 figure to 99, or 75, or something.
What I urge you to do is to ask the lawyers—the people drafting the legislation—how many clauses would each change that has been proposed cost. Then you think, “Okay, we can probably manage another 24 clauses”, or whatever it is, “or we can change 24 clauses. Which ones do best in that cost-benefit analysis?” I do not think that it would be sensible for me to give you an answer without knowing that legislative cost.
Andy Carter
Q
Professor Leunig: Yes.
Andy Carter
He should?
Professor Leunig: Yes, and it is increasingly important as more and more of us live in flats. Unless we are going to make London look like Houston and stretch all the way from the white cliffs of Dover to Oxford, more people are going to have to live in flats in London. They are going to have to live in terraced houses and flats; that is just a simple, basic sense of physics and geography.
So yes, flats are going to be more important over time. I can see no reason why new flats should not be built on commonhold for anything where planning permission has not already been granted. That gives builders amply long enough. At that point, they cannot turn around and say, “Oh, but our economics were predicated on this.” You have not put in for planning permission. Do it on commonhold. Get on with it. Adjust to the new world order.
The Chair
I think we had a couple of follow-up questions, first from Rachel and then Richard.
Rachel Maclean
I am sorry, Dame Caroline. When you told me that there was not time, the question went out of my head. I apologise.
The Chair
In that case, we will go to Richard and it might pop back in again.
Professor Leunig: Oh no, he is going to test me on net present value.
Richard Fuller
Q
Professor Leunig: The default rate chooses 3.5% because that is the rate in the Green Book. Again, it is fundamentally a political decision, because you put the rate one way and the value goes up. You put the rate the other way and the value goes down. It is just a political decision. I really do not think that there is a right or wrong answer to that.
The only thing to say is that I would be very cautious in using the current Bank of England base rate because it is so volatile. The idea that if we had made the calculation two years ago we would have used a discount rate of 0.25%, but today we would use 5.25%, is absurd. You need one number that you stick with through thick and thin, and the default rate, I think, is the Green Book discount rate of 3.5%. I am happy to believe that if we were in the Department and I was employed, you could sway my belief that 3.5% is the right answer, but that is where I would start.
Richard Fuller
Q
Professor Leunig: Because this is a one-off decision. For example, we saw Paul Johnson mention this week that the cost of student loans has gone up dramatically because of the rise in interest rates. We do not suddenly cut the number of people who can go to university and then increase it when interest rates are low, because we accept that most people de facto get one shot at university when they are 18 or 19. Over the 25 years of your mortgage, you will re-mortgage a number of times so it averages out, whereas this is a one-shot thing. We do not really want people acting strategically on which day to do it. That is why we would prefer to have a single number over time.
It is not a stand-up case; I grant you. You have a case. It is the classic thing of marking to market, right? When you retire, if you have a defined contribution pension scheme, you are to some extent at the whim of the market on the day you retire and in the five years before, as you move out of equities and into bonds. If you are a defined benefit pension holder, de facto we use the scape rate, which is a long-run average. I argue, in effect, for something similar to the scape rate for something like this.
Richard Fuller
Q
Professor Leunig: As I say, my main advice would be to make a political decision and pick an interest rate, rather than to make a political decision without realising you have made a political decision and go for Bank rate, or Bank rate plus two or minus one, and to have complete randomness over the following years.
The Chair
If there are no further questions from Members, I thank the witness very much. We will move on now to the final panel.
Professor Leunig: May I say well done? You have had a very long day.
Examination of Witness
Dr Douglas Maxwell gave evidence.
The Chair
Apologies, Douglas, I have one eye on the screen, where the Minister is now on his feet in the Chamber—we do not want to keep you waiting while we do lots of voting. Douglas Maxwell of Henderson Chambers, will you introduce yourself quickly for the record, please?
Dr Maxwell: Good afternoon. My name is Douglas Maxwell. I am a barrister in private practice at Henderson Chambers in London.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
On the existing ground rents, to what extent do you think that any of those courses of action in the five options will be compatible with the provisions of A1P1? On compensation, how credible do you find the figure in the Government’s impact assessment? They cite the figure of £27.3 billion as the estimated change in asset value from calculating the loss of ground rent income on the relevant leases. Do you find that a credible figure, or is it subject to a heavy amount of caveats, assumptions and so on?
Dr Maxwell: To deal with your first question, I think it is important to start by looking at how the European Court of Human Rights, the Strasbourg Court, considers applications under article 1 of the first protocol. The Court has said consistently that where a deprivation of property occurs—article 7 interprets that effectively as when your entire right to property is extinguished and all economic value is lost—there is what is called a presumption of compensation. I am not entirely sure, because we do not have the proposals set out in statute—we simply have the consultation document—
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Dr Maxwell: In most instances, it would appear that that would fall within control of use: the freeholder’s right to property is not entirely extinguished, because they retain the ability to use, sell or whatever that property, and they retain the ability to make money through other means such as enfranchisement fees or lease extension fees. I discussed this yesterday with Professor Bright at the APPG, which I know some of you were present at, but there might be instances where it falls within the category of a deprivation, or certainly gets close to that category, where the entirety of the income is derived from ground rent and the removal of that would effectively remove the value.
Absent sight of those sorts of leases and the relevant facts, we are dealing only in hypotheticals here, so that brings us to another question, which is to look at the macro picture of the options as a whole and the micro application of that to certain facts. It might be that on the macro approach, looking at the totality, we are dealing with a control of use, which means that there is no presumption of compensation, but it could be that if we looked at the micro analysis, certain individual circumstances do fall into that. Again, absent the relevant facts, it is only possible to speculate. It is a very broad market and there are lots of different leases.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Dr Maxwell: I am not an economist. I have skimmed the impact assessment figures and noted the figures that seemed to be quite substantial. I noted for option 1— correct me if I am wrong, but I do not have a copy in front of me—I think it said that in the first 10 years, the loss of ground rent might be £5 billion, and then a loss of value of about £27 billion. I am not an economist, so I cannot really comment on whether that figure is remotely correct or reflective at all.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Dr Maxwell: If any of the options are implemented, it will result in a significant loss in value of freeholds. As a result, there is a prospect of challenges being brought. I cannot comment on where those challenges will come from, but it would be slightly naive to say that any of those options are completely safe from challenge. However, the prospect of a challenge being brought is very different from the finding of a violation; seeking to bring or threatening judicial review is very different from the actual court finding that a violation has occurred. Obviously, the risk register—if you want to call it that—of the finding of a breach is effectively reduced if you go down the relevant options to the final one of freezing ground rent, and there are other questions about the proposals as set out in there.
This was discussed last night with the APPG, but it is important to recognise that there is Strasbourg case authority concerning cases from Norway that went to Strasbourg on the capping of ground rent. Obviously, ground rent in Norway is not exactly the same as it is in England and Wales, but there are some similarities. There was an initial case called Lindheim where the Strasbourg Court said that a cap of 0.2% in Norway breached the right to property of article 1 of the first protocol. That was because, effectively, the value was completely lost.
The Norwegian Government engaged in a process like this—a very considered discussion and consideration within the political sphere of the best way forward—and they effectively set a cap, which was the equivalent of about £600 a decare—I had to look that up—which is 0.2 acres. They set a cap, which again was challenged in a case called The Karibu Foundation, and that was when the ground rent related to about 0.6% of the land’s value. In that case, the European Court of Human Rights said, “No, there is not a violation here, because the Norwegian Parliament have clearly considered this and they have what the Strasbourg Court calls a ‘broad margin of appreciation’. These sorts of questions are for Parliament”—they are for you. The EHCR said that it had been adequately considered, they have retained the property, and that is reflected. Therefore, there cannot be seen to be what the Strasbourg Court usually refers to as an “individual and excessive burden” on this foundation, and it said that a breach had not occurred.
The principle is that a cap or a limit on ground rent is not necessarily a violation, but you have to apply it to the certain facts and see whether it falls within causing an “individual and excessive burden.” But we are absent from facts and again dealing in hypotheticals here. We have to look at the macroanalysis.
Rachel Maclean
Q
Dr Maxwell: There is a book, but it is probably not on your Christmas list.
Rachel Maclean
You are presuming what is on my Christmas list! Anyway, are you able to express a view on whether this Bill and what we are proposing is a proportionate interference in property rights?
Dr Maxwell: That is an exceedingly broad question. There are 65 clauses in this Bill, and there is a consultation with five potential options. We do not have time to go through every single clause, but in terms of the risk register and potentially successful challenges being brought, I would focus on option 1 of the consultation, on reducing ground rent to a peppercorn.
There are various other people who have looked at this. For example, Giles Peaker, who is a very respected solicitor and has appeared before these Committees previously, has recently written that it would quite obviously, in his view, be a violation and it is important not to give people false hope. There is an undeniable risk of a violation being found in the relevant options. I suspect, but I do not know, that the prospect of a challenge being brought is very high, but again that depends on the relevant facts. It would be my understanding that it cannot be brought in a macro sense against the Bill as a whole, and it would depend on the relevant facts.
For example, the Supreme Court found a breach of the right to property in a case called Mott, which concerned limits on an individual’s right to fish on the Severn estuary. The Environment Agency’s policy of fishing as a whole—limiting fishing for the benefits to the environment—was considered okay. But for Mr Mott, it resulted in a complete loss of his income—fishing represented 95% of Mr Mott’s entire income—and it therefore did cause a breach to Mr Mott in particular. That is why I am slightly apprehensive about giving broad conclusions about consultations and clauses when we do not have the ability to analyse the impact on an individual or entity.
Rachel Maclean
Q
Dr Maxwell: Yes, so in the case I referred to earlier—The Karibu Foundation v. Norway—one of the factors that the Strasbourg Court gave a lot of weight to was that the Norwegian Parliament had sat down with the Council of Europe, because it was following a breach in the Lindheim case, and considered all the relevant options. It was properly aired and debated and they got in experts from various fields. That is clearly a consideration. It shows that the democratic institutions—Parliament—have properly considered it, rather than it being, say, a last-minute amendment without justification.
The Chair
I am quite keen to wrap this up before the Minister concludes speaking in the Chamber, because otherwise we will have to keep the witness for at least an hour during votes, and I do not really want to inconvenience him that much. Can we have very quick questions and swift answers if possible, please?
Barry Gardiner
Q
Dr Maxwell: In relation to your first point on the Norwegian case, yes, as I said, it was different. It is about agricultural land value. The value was equivalent to several thousand euros. As for what happened with the adoption of, say, strata title in Australia and so on, that is not within my knowledge. What I know or have studied in detail is—
Barry Gardiner
Q
Dr Maxwell: The very short answer to that is that we are dealing with article 1 of the first protocol to the European convention on human rights. Countries such as Australia, and particularly places such as Hong Kong now, are not signatories to the convention, nor do they have a domestic law-giving effect to it. That is why we are dealing with article 1 of the first protocol, and that is why we are dealing with case law from other jurisdictions that is, perhaps, not directly analogous.
As for the sorts of cases, or whether any cases were brought in those jurisdictions when that system was adopted, that is not something I am aware of or can comment on, unfortunately.
Andy Carter
Q
Dr Maxwell: I am not a solicitor; I am a barrister. I am not able to really comment on the main implications of the Bill for solicitors, unfortunately. That is a nice, succinct response.
The Chair
Thank you—I do apologise for that. Thank you very much on behalf of the Committee. That brings us to the end of this afternoon’s sitting. The Committee will meet again on Thursday to hear further oral evidence on the Bill.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Mr Mohindra.)
Westminster Hall
(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Excess Death Trends
(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Ind)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered trends in excess deaths.
It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for scheduling this debate and my 17 colleagues from across the House who supported the application for a debate on the trends on excess deaths. This debate follows on from my Adjournment debate on 20 October on the same issue.
The eyes of history are upon us. Every generation looks back in wonder at the incredible mistakes of its forebears. They will ask questions such as, “How could they possibly not have realised how wrong they were?”, “What on earth happened to them?”, “Why did they ignore the evidence for so long, as well as their values and every opportunity to learn from the mistakes of yesteryear?” and “What madness captures men?”
From 2010 to 2019, annual death rates in England and Wales oscillated between 484,000 and 542,000. In 2020, there were 607,000 deaths, which is 65,000 more than the maximum figure in 2018. In 2021, there were 586,000 deaths, which is 44,000 more than the 2018 figure. After such a rise, there should be a significant deficit. In fact, our most vulnerable and elderly, who might have lived a while longer, were sadly taken from us early. In 2022, there were 577,000 deaths in England and Wales, and in 2023 there were 581,000. That is a huge rise when a significant deficit would, and should, have been expected. The deficit has been filled not with the extremely old and vulnerable, but has been filled—and then some—with many, many others who are often young or in the prime of their lives.
Some people might want to ascribe the excess deaths in 2022 and 2023 to the virus, but that would be a mistake; that is not what their death certificates say. Moreover, far too many young people are dying. Far from being below the recent rolling average, excess deaths in 2022 were above that average: 6% above. In 2023, when one might have expected deaths to finally fall below the average, the excess was also 6% above. Those numbers are higher in the younger age groups.
No one with integrity can fail to be troubled by those figures. What is actually going on? That is why we need to have this debate. This problem affects us all. It affects every community in every constituency across the country. I thank all right hon. and hon. Members attending this debate, and we need to thank the public for their interest, which has stirred the interest of colleagues. I am very encouraged by the turnout for today’s debate, which is considerably better than we have seen in the past.
Not everyone in this room will be comfortable with analysing scientific data and figures, but that is not my position. I was fortunate enough to take a degree in biological sciences from Nottingham University many years ago. I specialised in biochemistry, genetics, behaviour and virology.
Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman has secured a very important debate. In 2022, we saw nearly as many excess deaths across the UK as during the blitz. In my region of Yorkshire, there have been excess deaths every year since the pandemic. My constituents are very concerned about that. They are also concerned about the almost deafening silence from the NHS about what is causing this, why this is happening and what it is doing to alleviate it. I thank the hon. Gentleman for securing this very important debate. Only by talking about this can we get to the root cause of the issue—and there clearly is an issue.
Andrew Bridgen
That is the whole point of a representative democracy. We are here to raise issues on behalf of our constituents and to look after their best interests at all times. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his attendance. We had enough signatures for a three-hour debate in the Chamber, but we are having a 90-minute debate in Westminster Hall. I mentioned to the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee that I felt that that was a bit of an insult, given the gravity that the issue we are debating has for those who have lost loved ones over the last few years.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)
The hon. Gentleman is right that there is considerable concern about this issue. Does he agree that we should use the most accurate data available and the dataset of the age-standardised mortality rate, which takes into consideration a growing and ageing population?
Andrew Bridgen
Of course we should be using the most accurate figures that we have. Later in the speech, I will talk about the data we really want, which would settle this matter once and for all beyond reasonable doubt.
I thank the public for their pressure and interest in these statistics, the people who have attended in person today and the thousands who will be watching on television or online.
There is a burning question at the heart of this debate. After excess deaths, there should be a deficit: where is it? When will we have it? Worse, why is the deficit being not just filled but significantly exceeded? Why are the institutions, whose job it is to notice, record, publicise and call attention to such matters, apparently asleep at the wheel?
A second burning question is why no one is listening to those raising the alarm. The research and analysis done by two of Britain’s most trusted doctors provide us with alarming clarity. Only this week, Professor Carl Heneghan, director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford, reviewed the causes of excess deaths and concluded that they are predominantly related to cardiovascular disease. He told the Sunday Express newspaper that this cannot be explained by covid, population growth or an ageing population. Yesterday, consultant cardiologist Dr Aseem Malhotra, who is a world-leading expert in the causes of heart disease, told TNT Radio that even though cardiovascular disease is multifactorial, top of the list in the hierarchy of causes behind excess cardiac-related deaths has to be the experimental covid mRNA vaccine until proven otherwise. This is not speculative.
Andrew Bridgen
No—let me finish the point and I will then give way.
Dr Malhotra’s point is not speculative but based on the highest level of data that combines plausible biological mechanism, randomised control trials, high-quality observational data, pharmacovigilance data, autopsy data and clinical data. Those who choose not to acknowledge these cold, hard facts are either unaware of the evidence, wilfully blind or lacking in conscience.
Dr Evans
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for shining a spotlight on the important issue of excess deaths, but I am keen to understand the difference between correlation and causation. There is a correlation between eating ice cream and sunburn, but we do not necessarily assume the two go together; they could be caused by sunny weather. The same goes in this case. Is the cause to do with lockdown, late presentation or access to the NHS? Understanding causation and correlation are key to understanding why the numbers are so high.
Andrew Bridgen
I agree with the hon. Gentleman. He is a medical doctor, so he clearly has some knowledge. Correlation is not causation, but it is an alarm bell. Alarm bells are going off all over the building, but no one wants to open the door to see whether there is a fire.
Future generations will ridicule us for what we have done in response to a seasonal airborne virus. We have apparently lost our collective minds. We have imposed a brand-new type of quarantine on a healthy population, in breach of all previous public health advice and our own carefully crafted expert pandemic plan, and in flagrant breach of the sensible and experienced advice of many professionals.
The noble dissenters are inevitably being vindicated, one by one, as the suppressed, shaming, real-world evidence finally emerges. I will not mention those who harass, discredit and ridicule the dissenters; they loudly parade their egotistical virtue on social media, in the press and on television. I know exactly how harassment feels.
We inflicted social distancing, masking and school closures on healthy children who were at no risk from the virus. We did that to protect adults, at the expense of our children’s social and mental health. People raised the alarm, but nobody listened. A society that consciously and knowingly sacrifices perfectly healthy children for adults is sick. This time will not be looked on well by future generations. That will be our legacy, and I call on this House and those in authority to right that grievous wrong quickly. With unbearable cruelty, we isolated even those who would gladly have made the individual choice to see their grandchildren.
Worst of all, we bypassed the procedures, protocols and science to inflict on a healthy population a brand new and untested product that had never before been used outside clinical trials, never mind approved. There was no long-term safety data. The safety analysis in the trials was eight weeks, and then the control group was vaccinated. There was no age stratification for recipients of an experimental medication for an illness with an average mortality age of 82. There was no liability under any circumstances for the manufacturers of those experimental treatments. Furthermore, there were good reasons, based on the science known at the time, for thinking that those products might be harmful. Rather than ridicule us, future generations may come to loathe us. We will forever be the poster boys and girls of a society that collectively lost its mind and its moral compass. They will hang that millstone around our necks for eternity.
What is the flaw in human nature that latches on to things and destroys all before it? It has been dubbed by some as the madness of crowds or a kind of mass formation psychosis. It is the sort of thing that allowed China to commit population Armageddon with the one-child policy for decades. It is the sort of thing that allowed us to slaughter millions of cattle during the apparent foot and mouth outbreak, when we were persuaded not by the science but by the plausible patter of provable idiots such as Professor Neil Ferguson—yes, the very same. His advice led to the bankruptcy, immiseration and utter despair of countless farmers who were forced to destroy their livelihoods in a futile attempt to prevent the spread of an airborne virus, which had already managed to pass in the air all the way from France to the Isle of Wight. How many times must the so-called experts be caught with their pants down as their models fail yet again? How long must we be subjected to debunked drivel dumped in our political discourse? How long must decision makers deal with discredited modelling and moribund and captured institutions? Why will no one listen to reason when they have been proved wrong so many times?
There are many other examples in medicine, from bloodletting with leeches to pointless lobotomies to not washing hands between the mortuary and the labour ward. Doctors and scientists are far from immune from groupthink, and the current batch are living proof.
Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)
This will not be the first, or I suspect the last, Government in history not to follow the evidence when it comes to difficult issues. When Governments make mistakes, protect themselves and do not look at the evidence, we as a democratic society should expect there to be an inquiry that establishes what happened, what should have happened and what should happen in the future. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the inquiry that we set up is failing to do that job, and is assuming that lockdown was right from the beginning?
Andrew Bridgen
I agree wholeheartedly. This is not a political issue; it is a public health issue that affects every constituency. The so-called covid inquiry has already set out the answers it wants to get. It has all the appearance of a whitewash. It was deeply disappointing that it announced this week that the module on the safety and efficacy of the vaccines has been put off indefinitely—certainly until after the general election, which is extremely disappointing.
I contacted every public and media body I could think of in 2014 to tell them again and again that the sub-postmasters were innocent, but no one listened. I knew the sub-postmasters in my constituency were completely honest; anybody who knew those pillars of society knew it. The innocent were falsely accused of dishonesty over the Horizon scandal and were relentlessly pursued by a merciless, mendacious and malicious bureaucracy. It is the coldness that shocks most—the imperious arrogance and the mercilessness that capture institutions and cowards in authority when a single narrative closes our collective minds to nuance, to experience and to the inconvenient truths. No one listened to the sub-postmasters; no one cared. No one in power moved a muscle to help, but now, all of a sudden, one media programme has shifted the narrative to reveal that the experts were wrong, our institutions were wrong, those in authority were wrong and an infallible computer system was, in fact, fallible. Even our justice system got it so tragically wrong, with thousands of court hearings and judges making wrong judgments. Will the Post Office lessons be learned regarding the covid insanity?
Who is actually dying now? It is not the old and frail, as it was with covid; in fact, deaths from dementia, a key benchmark of elderly deaths, have been in deficit ever since covid, as we would expect after a period of high mortality. Instead, particularly for cardiovascular deaths, there has been incessant week-on-week excess mortality for months and months in the young and middle-aged. Every age group is affected, but the 50 to 64 age group has had it worst—I declare an interest. They were struck with 12% more deaths than usual in 2022 and 13% more in 2023, and at least five in six of those deaths this year had nothing to do with covid whatever.
My constituent, Steven Miller, was a healthy IT engineer in his 40s. He had two doses of AstraZeneca jabs in the summer of 2021 and was ill shortly afterwards. His side effects were so bad that he lost his job, and in November 2021 he was rushed into hospital. He now has cardio- myopathy and ventricular failure with a maximum of five years to live, taking him to 2026, unless he has a heart transplant. When I saw him last, he had a resting heart rate of 145 beats per minute. He has subsequently lost his partner and access to his child, and he is at risk of losing his house. He now has a diagnosis from Glenfield Hospital in Leicester of vaccine-induced cardio- myopathy, and I want to help him to try to get his compensation. However, he is just one example among my constituents who will probably have 30 years of his life stolen from him. His child will lose his father. How is £120,000 of compensation possibly adequate for that?
Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for introducing the debate so coherently. Can he explain why module 4 of the public inquiry into the safety of the vaccines has been arbitrarily postponed from next July? Surely the case that he mentioned highlights the need for urgent inquiry.
Andrew Bridgen
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise that issue. Why would they put back any investigation in the public inquiry, which I think costs some hundreds of millions of pounds and therefore should be in the public interest, indefinitely? I fear that political pressure has been placed on the inquiry. Clearly, a lot of political capital in the run-up to the next election has been placed on the fact that the Government, with support from the Opposition parties, did the right thing in our pandemic response, including the roll-out of the vaccines. The very fact that they have done that indicates that there is something to hide, and it should make the public extremely suspicious. I will come on to that shortly.
For two years we have turned society upside down so as not to “kill granny”. Now that mum and dad are dying, it appears that no one cares. This is “Alice in Wonderland” thinking. People in their 50s and 60s— I declare an interest again—would normally, I hope, have many more years of active contribution and deeply fulfilling lives left to live, and they are the people being hit hardest.
Furthermore, the raw number of lives lost is not the only measure that we can look at. We have better methods, and the most famous is known as quality-adjusted life years—those who understand public health generally refer to them as QALYs. They measure healthy years of life lost and are the most sensible metric for properly assessing the impacts of deaths and lost life on families and society. QALYs were ignored at the outset. They were ignored in July 2020 when the Government’s own assessment was that lockdowns would reduce QALYs by about 1 million years in the UK—I repeat, 1 million years. They were ignored when deciding to inject the young with experimental vaccines despite the refusal of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation to recommend jabbing under-15s in September 2021.
Even at the covid inquiry when the Prime Minister tried to raise the issue of quality-adjusted life years, he was shouted down by Hugo Keith KC, the lead lawyer at the inquiry. He then revealed his unbelievable, unforgivable negligence and ignorance by saying:
“I don’t want to get into quality life assurance models.”
This, I repeat, is the most senior lawyer at the so-called covid inquiry, so when I say that future generations will ridicule us, it is not hard to see reasons why. The pandemic—a term that some of our best academics from around the globe questioned from the outset in published and peer-reviewed papers—is over. The crisis has passed. Yet still, empty vessels continue to drown out intelligent, reasoned, expert discourse. Not knowing what QALY means is one thing, but parading his ignorance with arrogant disdain ought to disqualify Mr Keith from any further part in that inquiry. Sadly, his condescending disdain for open inquiry epitomises what many of us have encountered time and time again when raising these issues.
A smorgasbord of fanciful excuses has been proffered for the rise in heart attacks. Sir Chris Whitty laughably claimed that it was from a reduction in statin prescriptions, even though prescribing levels were exactly the same, and it would take years or even decades for changes on that issue to take effect and be seen in population mortality data. The media have tried to persuade us—persuade the people—that eating eggs or the wrong kind of breakfast or climate change is to blame. People are sick of being patronised with these lies. Some have claimed that the excess deaths are due to covid. The literature is littered with studies claiming that covid causes heart disease. Almost all include covid cases from spring 2020, when it was almost impossible for someone to be tested and become an official case unless they were sick and in hospital. Proving that sick people get heart disease more than healthy people does not mean that covid causes heart disease. Indeed, the claims can be easily debunked. There has been a steep rise in cardiac deaths in both Australia and Singapore, as well as the UK. Those countries did not have any significant covid until 2022, but they did roll out the jabs at exactly the same time as we did in the UK. Correlation does not prove causation—we have already heard that in this debate—but correlation with and without covid can rule out causation. The excess cardiac deaths were certainly not caused by covid.
Some have claimed that the excess deaths were caused by lockdowns. It is well known that psychological stress increases the risk of heart disease. The Government subjected people to a massive propaganda campaign of fear—well documented by Laura Dodsworth in her book, “A State of Fear”. We were cut off from our usual support networks. For many, there were immense financial pressures. Such policies could contribute to heart disease in a minor way. However, the sharpest rise came later, entirely coincident with the jab roll-out, so we have a clear temporal link between increased deaths and vaccination.
Some have claimed that the excess cannot be down to the jabs, because Sweden has not had as many excess deaths as elsewhere despite having a very similar number of doses, per million, of the experimental vaccines, but it is important to understand that heart disease is a cumulative risk. In the UK, we already had a serious problem with heart disease before the pandemic, and it has got much worse following the vaccine roll-out. By contrast, Sweden has the longest healthy life expectancy in Europe. It is no wonder that it is a statistical outlier on excess deaths now. If someone is under 50 and lives in Sweden, their chances of dying from heart disease were already half that of a resident of the UK of the same age.
Some have admitted to the problem but claimed it was worth it. Science journalist Tom Chivers even said regarding jabbing children: “It sounds cruel—but a small number of deaths would be worth it”. As I pointed out earlier, from China through to the UK, any culture willing to openly sacrifice children for adults is rotten, in my view, to its very core.
Look at what is happening now. Yet again we are seeing a peak in covid hospitalisations, as we should be expecting from a coronavirus in January. The number of people infected and the number of intensive care admissions were about the same every six months before and after the vaccinations. The number of covid intensive care admissions in the January to June 2020 wave was about the same as the number in the July to December 2020 covid wave, and the figure remained similar in the January to June 2021 and July to December 2021 covid waves. The jab therefore had no impact whatsoever. Those interested may wish to consult a recent paper in the Journal of Clinical Medicine that demonstrates exactly this point.
The next important factor is that omicron is far less deadly. The reason why there are fewer covid deaths now is because of omicron’s arrival at the beginning of 2022, but viral waves will continue to come and go until almost everyone has post-infection immunity. We are not there yet.
It is clear that viral waves were not impacted by lockdowns, and it is increasingly clear that they were not impacted by the jabs either. People have denied that viral waves peak naturally at predictable times of year, but how much longer can that be denied? The lockdowns did not cause deaths to decline from their peak in April 2020, because they also peaked and fell in April 2022 and March 2023 without lockdowns. Indeed, in 2020 infections were already falling before the lockdowns were even started.
The problem with excess deaths started in spring 2021 with the jab roll-out, and there was a stepwise rise in ambulance calls for life-threatening emergencies at exactly the same time. Hospitals started to be overwhelmed for the first time, and the number of people unable to work because of long-term sickness started to rise. Even the number of mayday calls from aircraft rose. Are we meant to think that this was all a coincidence, when we know that these injections cause a range of serious adverse events, especially cardiac events?
The excess deaths are the tip of a very ugly iceberg, and we have not even mentioned the world-shaking scandal of jabbing people who had already had covid, which, at a stroke, almost entirely demolishes the credibility of our public health policies during this period. We completely ignored natural immunity. That one fact ought to be a red flag of gigantic proportions, but no one is listening. I do not have time to discuss the fact that the jab was not pulled when it became clear that an incredible one in 800 doses administered led to serious adverse events and consequences. The rotavirus vaccine was pulled entirely after causing an adverse event rate of one in 10,000. For the 2009 swine flu vaccine, one in 35,000 was harmed, and it was then pulled from the market. The covid jab is still being pushed and it is seriously harming people, inevitably at a much higher rate than one in 800, because most people are being exposed to multiple doses of the vaccine, with the same adverse event risk at each dose.
Thalidomide, syphilis treatment and all the other infamous, appalling and shattering medical scandals are dwarfed by the iceberg under the water that is the medical scandal we are currently living through: the experimental, so-called vaccines for covid-19. It took 11 years after the drug was withdrawn in 1961 for the thalidomide scandal to be first raised in Parliament—11 years before the word “thalidomide” could even be mentioned in the Chamber of the House of Commons. I am not going to let that happen this time, which is why I fought so hard to raise this issue in Parliament, at a cost to my reputation, my career and the financial security of my family.
The public inquiry should urgently be looking at this issue. Instead, it is wasting taxpayers’ money on obsessing over WhatsApp messages while people are dying. As if that is not bad enough, we learned this week that the vaccine module has been postponed indefinitely, for no good reason. It is as if the inquiry is so desperate not to find fault that it cannot even look at what has happened with the vaccines. We need transparency.
Dr Clare Craig, co-chair of the Health Advisory and Recovery Team, has been doggedly pursuing the UK Health Security Agency for its record-level data on dosage, dates and deaths for a year. That data could sort out this issue once and for all. The UKHSA admits that it has it. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency admits that all this data has been released to Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Moderna, yet claims that it cannot anonymise it for release to the public. A failure to release the data makes it look like there is definitely something to hide.
A recent poll in the USA shows that more than half of the public thinks the vaccines are responsible for a significant number of deaths. If there was nothing to hide, the anonymised data would certainly be released for analysis to stop the upswell of legitimate concern. The latest response from the Information Commissioner’s Office is that Dr Clare Craig has to wait at least another six months before a case officer will be assigned to this issue. That is not acceptable. They have released our health data to big pharma, but they will not release it to us. The record-level data must be released. Is it really too much to ask that the British public be given the same level of access to the relevant data given to big pharma companies actually responsible for the debacle? Those are corporations that carefully secured immunity from all legal liability—or, in this country, indemnity—from the Government before dangerously and negligibly experimenting on the health of our nation and the world. We are witnesses to the greatest medical scandal in living memory. The consequential fallout in trust, public opinion and public confidence is only just beginning. Continued attempts to shut down debate, flatten dissent and obstruct independent analysis can only delay the eventual collective shame. There will be a reckoning and we will have to try and rebuild trust in our health services, our media and our politics. We have not even started on that journey.
Before I was expelled from the Conservative party for voicing my concerns over the experimental vaccines and the harms I believe they caused, I met a senior member of the party who, after listening to my concerns about the vaccines and NG163—the midazolam and morphine scandal—told me quite calmly, “Andrew, there is currently no political appetite for your views on the vaccines. There may well be in 20 years’ time and you will probably be proven right, but in the meantime, you need to bear in mind that you are taking on the most powerful vested interest in the world, with all the personal risk for you that that will entail.”
I refused to bow to that threat and as they say, the rest is history. People have alleged that I am spouting conspiracy theories. I think it is a conspiracy; a conspiracy against the science, a conspiracy of silence and a conspiracy against the people—and I will have none of it.
Several hon. Members rose—
Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)
Colleagues, more than nine of you wish to be called. Wind-ups will begin at 10.38 am, so I impose a voluntary time limit of three minutes each and I will try and get everybody in if I possibly can.
Sir George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)
I am afraid that the evidence the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) is basing his arguments on is highly controversial and strongly contested as to its reliability. I will shortly explain what I mean by that assertion.
I attended two meetings on the issue that the hon. Gentleman chaired, the latter of which, late last year, included a panel of “experts” who made presentations. I attended both meetings on the basis that I am aware that there are cases in which some people with underlying or pre-existing medical conditions were vaccinated inappropriately, in some cases with lethal consequences. I support the case for some form of restitution for them and their surviving families.
At the second meeting, I was alarmed that some of the evidence given was polemical rather than scientific. The nature of some of the expert presentations alarmed me—specifically, the misleading and inaccurate assertions, similar to those made, for example, by Andrew Wakefield on the measles, mumps and rubella scandal, which tried to make the link between vaccination and autism. That was thoroughly discredited subsequently, but the consequence of that, which is still being felt, is that children are not being vaccinated and there is now an upturn in the incidence of measles, in some cases with serious consequences.
The meeting I attended involved a number of “experts” who gave presentations that included data that I am frankly sceptical about. At that meeting, I undertook to raise my concerns about the accuracy of the data with the Office of National Statistics, and I have done so. In his response, Professor Sir Ian Diamond, the national statistician, said that he has undertaken to
“consider and investigate any possible misrepresentation of the data.”
I am grateful to Sir Ian for that undertaking.
In a report in The Times today, reference is made to a study published in The Lancet that said:
“Missed vaccines ‘caused 7,000 Covid hospitalisations and deaths’”—
that is missed covid vaccines.
Sir George Howarth
I am drawing to a close. By the way, that evidence involved 67 million people. The hon. Member for North West Leicestershire quoted some research based on unreliable data, but that is a major undertaking published in The Lancet, and it makes completely the opposite point to his.
Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
This is a very important debate and I will try to make my speech as short as possible. I congratulate the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire on raising this issue and on his determination to highlight the challenges that we are facing. On the one hand, we might have expected that the pandemic would shorten the lives of a number of our more frail citizens and thus have expected a fall in deaths post-pandemic, and we saw that. The ONS reported roughly 608,000 deaths in England and Wales in 2020, 586,000 in 2021, and 577,000 in 2022—that was higher than 2019 when there were about 531,000 deaths, so that does warrant further inspection. We expect a fluctuation year on year, and we also expect the total number of deaths to increase year on year as the population increases and ages. We therefore look at the five-year average, and currently we are using 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021 and 2022 because of the outliers in 2020. Even then, it is unlikely that we will be exactly at the average, and we would expect some years to be higher or lower.
The ONS monthly mortality analysis shows that, in 2022, there were 32,000 more deaths than the five-year average, and in January to July 2023, there were 21,809 more. That equates to an annualised figure of around 37,000, but the figures appear to stop in July 2023. Would the Minister advise as to why the data series has been discontinued? It would be helpful if it were not. However, those are raw numbers and we must be cautious because, as the population ages and increases, so will the number of deaths. The ONS therefore uses the age-standard mortality rate, which has fluctuated month on month but is actually down for both 2022 and 2023 when compared with the five-year average. Overall, when adjusted for age and population size, the number of deaths is not excessive, given what we would expect.
We need to look further at the trends on age and the causes of death to see a fuller picture. Others will no doubt speak of rising cardiovascular disease in men, the late presentation of cancers or the rise in liver disease, but as a consultant paediatrician, I would like to focus on children. The National Child Mortality Database collates data on children’s deaths from nought to 18. Its latest bulletin from March 2023 shows that there were sadly 3,743 deaths to the end of that month, which is an increase of 8% on the previous year. Would the Minister comment on what investigation she is doing into the cause of that increased mortality and what is being done to prevent further deaths? The purpose of the child death overview panel is to investigate those deaths, but the average investigation is taking 392 days, with less than half completed in 12 months and a significant fall in the number being completed in 12 months. What is the Minister doing to improve that process?
One particularly distressing feature of child death data is that suicide or deliberate self-harm was a primary cause of death of children between 10 and 17 years, and looking at the data, it is getting much worse with children between 10 and 14. I understand that the Government are aware of those figures and are investing in mental health for children and improving online safety. I would be grateful if the Minister elaborated further on the steps they are taking to support children and prevent further tragedies.
Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)
Order. The hon. Member is running out of time.
Dr Johnson
I will finish on this point. One reason why I get exasperated with the covid inquiry is that there seems to be too much focus on who said what to whom—did someone swear, did the actors like each other? I am not that interested. I want to know what lessons can be learned. Was lockdown useful? Was getting children out of school useful? Was the vaccine a suitable thing to give to children or not, particularly if they had had covid before? Those are the answers that we need.
Neale Hanvey (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (Alba)
Time is tight, so I will cut to the chase. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) for his courage and determination on this important matter. I also challenge the right hon. Member for Knowsley (Sir George Howarth) on his assertion that these were so-called experts at that meeting. They are world-renowned experts in their field; that is just a matter of observable fact.
I want to focus on the safe use of novel mRNA agents and on concerns over their alleged role in driving excess deaths. I repeat a point that I have made previously in this place and directly with the Minister: any agent has the potential to cause harm or injury to the subject. For the avoidance of doubt, the position I have taken is based on decades of involvement in the management and delivery of clinical trials. Politicians who dismiss the data and emerging clinical evidence are acting in a wholly irresponsible manner, and posing a real threat to the duties of honesty and candour at the heart of good clinical practice. If substantiated, the concerns surfacing around falsified or concealed data are the most serious that I can imagine.
Sir George Howarth
The hon. Member is defending the “experts”, but has he actually checked their backgrounds? Has he checked the criticisms and the fact that, in some cases, they have had their medical practitioner status withdrawn?
Neale Hanvey
I am not going to get into the detail of that; I have far too little time and too many important points to make. I have worked in the same institution as Professor Dalgleish, and his credentials are impeccable.
Addressing this matter is necessary because we are talking about the standards on which good clinical practice, or GCP, is based. GCP is not about a nice bedside manner or knowing what treatment to prescribe; it is a set of internationally recognised ethical and scientific requirements, which must be followed when designing, conducting, recording and reporting on clinical trials that involve people, and have their origin in the declaration of Helsinki.
The rights, safety and wellbeing of trial subjects are the most important consideration, which should prevail over interests of science and society, including commercial or political interests, and I will conclude with a reflection on that important principle. The foundation of good clinical practice is under threat. In their December 2023 pathology research and practice paper on gene-based covid-19 vaccines, Rhodes and Parry gave the following warning:
“Pandemic management requires societal coordination, global orchestration, respect for human rights and defence of ethical principles. Yet some approaches to the COVID-19 pandemic, driven by socioeconomic, corporate, and political interests, have undermined key pillars of ethical medical science.”
None of these clinical experts are quacks or conspiracy theorists. As the Government said so often during the pandemic, we must follow the science.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
As we have seen in data published by the ONS, non-covid excess deaths continue to run higher than they should. People are dying unexpectedly across all age groups, particularly at home. Since the restrictions in March 2020, there have been 110,000 excess deaths in people’s own homes. In the week ending 22 December 2023, deaths at home were 11% higher than the five-year average. In the first 11 months of 2023, over 21,000 excess deaths took place at home, which is roughly one every 25 minutes.
Last month an article in The Lancet, co-authored by the head of mortality analysis at the ONS, stated that although
“the causes of these excess deaths are likely to be multiple”,
ONS data did show some clear trends—in particular, the “largest relative excess deaths” since the pandemic occurred in young and middle-aged adults, with the number of cardiac deaths happening outside hospitals the most elevated. In other words, young and previously healthy people are dying at home from cardiac-related events, and we do not know why. The article concludes:
“Timely and granular analyses are needed to…inform prevention and disease management efforts.”
Let us be clear: this is not a new phenomenon. Experts have been raising concerns about excess deaths since as early as 2021. I remember seeing an interview with Professor Carl Heneghan, professor of evidence-based medicine at Oxford University, where he called for an investigation into the 75,000 excess deaths at home between March 2020 and October 2021. Some 90% of those excess deaths were not covid-related, but related to things such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Many of those deaths could have been prevented had people not been dissuaded from seeking care, because they were told by the media and the Government to stay at home and protect the NHS. Perhaps they tried to get help but were dismissed by a health service concerned with only one disease.
The calls for an investigation went ignored then, just as they are ignored now. Perhaps the covid inquiry, as others have said, should make better use of Professor Heneghan’s time by asking about this topic rather than the tittle-tattle that it seems to revel in. The pertinent question is: why did we lock down at all? That is what I think did the biggest damage.
We can all speculate on the cause of excess deaths, which are clearly happening, from withdrawal of healthcare during lockdown, the increased risk of sedentary lifestyles and alcohol consumption, the impact of the pandemic and related restrictions on NHS staffing levels, increasing NHS waiting times, lack of access to emergency care, covid-19 vaccine adverse reactions or another unknown cause—perhaps a mix of all of the above. Until the Government commit to a robust and independent investigation, we will not know for sure and the speculation will keep going. That is why the Government need an investigation rapidly.
Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. I congratulate the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) on securing this debate. It is important that Parliament considers all the available evidence. As you might expect, Sir Gary, I have to declare an interest: I am vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for radiotherapy. I am a supporter of Action Radiotherapy and an advocate for the Catch Up With Cancer campaign. The two issues that I will highlight are delayed access to cancer treatment and health inequalities.
Inequitable access to and availability of radiotherapy services are leaving the UK lagging behind other countries in cancer outcomes. That was true before the pandemic and it was amplified by the delayed diagnosis and treatment caused by the pandemic. I hope the Minister is well versed in the arguments, but I am always happy to meet if it would help to advance the cause of the campaign and promote the idea of accessing this cost-effective life-saving treatment.
There is no doubt that covid-19 impacted routine access to healthcare. It is little comfort to those protected from covid through cancellations and delays to routine services and treatment if the outcome for them is delayed cancer diagnosis, with the inevitable impact on prognosis and delayed treatment. I do not always agree with the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire, but never again can the whole NHS be subverted to deal with a single illness or condition, no matter what challenges we face. As other Members have highlighted, cancer is not the only condition affected in this way.
Health inequalities are also an important issue, and I hope the Minister is aware of a recent report by Professor Peter Goldblatt of University College London entitled “Health Inequalities, Lives Cut Short”. The report considered the life expectancy of people across England and Wales, and it is clear that those in the poorest areas suffer the worst health inequalities. Economic inequalities affect health outcomes, and my constituency is on the frontline of health inequalities. We have the worst rate of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in the UK, the highest levels of obesity and the third highest rates of epilepsy. We are well above the national average for diabetes, heart failure, depression and dementia.
For me, this is political. The hon. Member for North West Leicestershire said that this is not a political issue, but a public health issue—but public health is a political issue. In 2024, as in 1997, I expect it will once again fall to a Labour Government to begin the process of fixing the years of Tory neglect and mismanagement. For my constituents—the communities of east Durham—the general election cannot come quick enough.
Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)
You were doing so well until that point. I call Miriam Cates.
Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)
I will be brief, because it is clear that there is far more demand to speak in the debate than there is time. That shows that we absolutely need a longer debate; we need a debate on the Floor of the House, because it is not just Members present who want to speak, and members of the public have shown enormous interest.
I will not go over the excellent points that have been made and the data that has been shared. We know we have a problem in this country with excess deaths, particularly among younger people and particularly from cardiovascular disease. That, in itself, is a huge challenge. We need medical experts and statisticians to address those issues—I am not qualified to do so.
What I will say is this: lockdown changed everything. Our response to covid changed everything. Just as we look back on different periods of history—before the war; before the industrial revolution—I believe we will look back at before and after lockdown. Lockdown has changed our economy and how we relate to each other. It has changed our health and our understanding of children’s development.
The conditions under which those decisions were made—decisions that were overwhelmingly wrong, in my opinion, although I do not blame any individuals, given the pressure they were under—have not changed. The conditions under which we suspended the precautionary principle, ignored the fact that interventions may cause harm, suspended the importance of children’s education, suspended the safeguarding of children, suspended the need for medical trials and suspended all sorts of safeguards that have stood society in good stead for a long time have not changed.
The conditions in Government, the media and wider society under which those decisions were made have not changed because, unfortunately, we have not yet got to the heart of the matter. Why did that pressure come from the media? Why did we have to follow what other countries were doing? Why were we obsessed with particular points of data, such as deaths from covid, rather than considering the wider impact on society?
My concern about the covid inquiry is that it is asking all the wrong questions. It is concerned with who swore at whom on WhatsApp, and not the wider conditions under which decisions were made. When, several Education Secretaries ago, the former, former, former Secretary of State for Education, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Gavin Williamson), stood up in the House of Commons and said that he would close schools, I remember, as a mother, shouting at the television, “Don’t do it! Don’t do it!”. I could see the impact it would have—not just on my own children, but across all the wider components of society. Society is like a big machine; we cannot just take out one part and assume that the rest will continue to operate. We have seen that clearly over the past three years.
We must address the reasons why these decisions were made. We cannot do that in three minutes each—we must have a longer debate.
Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)
I remind colleagues that they have three minutes. I call Jim Shannon.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Thank you, Sir Gary, for giving me a chance to speak. I also thank the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) for setting the scene. The issue is clearly sensitive. I come from the angle of someone who wanted to be and who is fully vaccinated, and who accepted that and believed in the process. However, I am also one who advocated for those who did not want to take the vaccine and whose freedoms were curtailed. It was a strange balance for me, and perhaps others, to strike, and yet I was firm in that stance.
I found myself in a delicate position as I listened to the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire, as I do believe there are questions to be answered. With all due respect to the Minister—I respect her greatly, as she knows—despite hon. Members’ various attempts and different approaches, those questions have not been answered to their satisfaction, and there are many in my constituency with similar questions.
I lost my mother-in-law to covid two and a half years ago. It was well publicised. I miss her every day. I have lost other loved ones to complications of this disease, and I have seen more who are living with the long-term effects. I can understand the drive for a vaccine and the fact that, to achieve the vaccine, emergency legislation was enacted. This House and the Government happily allowed that to take place, as our medical professionals deemed it to be necessary.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
Does my hon. Friend agree that, as the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) said, we now need to focus on the fact that the approach of society and Government must never again be all-consuming, with them dealing with one particular public health issue almost to the total exclusion of others?
Jim Shannon
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, and I agree.
I do not understand why the supposed links between donors and PPE provision are worthy of investigation, yet excess deaths demonstrably linked to vaccines have not been deemed important enough for investigation. For me, there is a question to be answered. It seems a natural follow-on that the unprecedented steps taken should be held to the scrutiny of an investigation and that the points that have been raised are seemingly supported by medical evidence.
I am not a doctor and I do not profess to be, but the facts raised by the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire do call for scrutiny. Therefore, I support calls for an investigation. I have seen young men in my constituency struck down with unexplained cardiomyopathy before covid, and seen the heartache that the families deal with as they wonder why. There are many families at this time with similar questions. It could well be that the increase has nothing to do with the vaccine, but we must look into why fit young men, or fit, non-smoking, healthy-weight women in their 50s, are having heart attacks, and their consultants are asking them, “Which injection did you take?”
To me as an unlearned man, those are signals that there are questions to be asked, and there is an onus on our Government and our Minister, with great respect, to see that the questions raised by medical professionals and voiced by Members of this House are taken seriously and addressed. Not for one second do I claim to see the correlation, but enough people have warranted it, so I support the calls for an investigation and ask for one to be carried out.
Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)
Thank you. The voice of Cornwall, Derek Thomas.
Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)
I thank the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) for securing the debate and for his effort to bring it to the House. I have received a significant number of emails, and the consistent theme is a lack of trust. Trust is key, and constituents have a right to know that elected representatives take them seriously and work to find out why these excess deaths are occurring. Every death is a tragedy; in each home there is devastation. We see this in all our constituencies. I have sat with several families who have lost loved ones, and I am not satisfied with the answers they have been given. We owe it to them to restore trust and to be transparent about why death rates are higher than expected.
Ignoring the issue will only increase the anxiety and distress further. People deserve answers to why the numbers are high, what the cause is, whether deaths could have been avoided and who and what were responsible. We all know people who have died. No one could realistically deny that deaths are higher than expected. Too many families are left without answers. But what is the cause? That is what needs to be established. Are these deaths attributable to covid? Is it the vaccine? Is it misdiagnosis? Is it lack of access to treatment? Is it constituents choosing to stay at home?
I have two examples. One lady, who had had cancer and seemed completely clear of it, chose not to go back for a check-up and then died quickly after that. A gentleman who had a severe lung problem was denied drugs because of gaps in the assessment of the degradation of his lungs. He died very horribly and quickly at 56 years old. As has been said, a deafening silence will not reassure our constituents or ensure that we learn and respond effectively in future health pandemics.
Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)
The hon. Member makes an important point about cancer. Operations were cancelled and treatments delayed. More and more stories are coming to the fore around vaccinations of cancer patients, how that triggered other complications and caused deaths. Does he agree that more needs to be done to investigate that?
Derek Thomas
I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention, and I was coming on to that. Whatever the Minister is minded to say today, a proper understanding is needed of what is behind these excess deaths and the examples that have just been given.
We seem incapable in this country of talking openly about death. It will come to all of us, but we lack the courage to discuss it openly, and the consequences are widespread. Addressing the issue openly and transparently can only help our effort to bring healing and some comfort to grieving families.
Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)
I am here because a number of my constituents—the people I work for; they are my employers—have asked me to be here. I congratulate the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) on securing this debate. He is right to ask the questions that he did, and right that the Post Office Horizon scandal has taught us that asking hard questions is really important.
This country generally does hard science well, and I am very proud of that. I do not think it is immodest to say that we are a science and technology superpower. However, science always needs to be evidence-based. We need to be unafraid to ask difficult questions, and we must never lack the professional curiosity to challenge and interpret data. That is really important for all of us. We have had references to lockdowns. I do not think that Parliament will ever agree to lockdowns again, because the situation is completely different now. We now have testing, vaccines and medicines, so I cannot ever see a future Parliament agreeing to lockdowns again.
I am one of the 93.6% who freely chose to be vaccinated against covid. That was my choice, but I support people who did not choose to be vaccinated. However, it is worth just mentioning that figure of 93.6%, and I am grateful for the opportunity to have been vaccinated.
I will just look at the facts. Unlike the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire, I do not have a biotechnology degree, but it has been put to me that according to the Office for National Statistics, which is independent, the mortality rate in 2022 in England was significantly lower than it was in 2020, before the arrival of covid-19. Also, analysis from the ONS published in August last year shows that people who have received a covid vaccination have a lower mortality rate than those who have not been vaccinated against covid. I accept that there are other data sets, and I completely agree with him that if there is more information that should be in the public domain, it should be put there; I support him in that regard. However, I also support the independent ONS. We challenge it at our peril, because it is important that we politicians have reliable data that is genuinely independent.
Andrew Selous
I am afraid that I will not, because I have so little time in which to speak, and I do not want to knock other speakers out.
What is the NHS doing about people dying who should not be dying? There are such deaths from cancer, cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes, respiratory disease, dementia and musculoskeletal conditions, because people stayed away from their GPs or from hospitals for too long. To be fair to the Government, there is a major programme in place. We want an additional 9 million treatments and diagnostic procedures over 2023 and 2024, and 30% more elective activity. There is £8 billion extra put in by the Chancellor, and a big focus on pharmacy. However, I think there should also be a focus on diet, exercise, lifestyle and air quality, all of which are important issues.
Karl MᶜCartney (Lincoln) (Con)
As ever, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary, and I am grateful to the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) for securing and leading this debate.
Like many hon. Members, I have been concerned by the increasing trend in excess deaths in recent years, which includes deaths in the male population; indeed, there have been a higher number of excess deaths of men than of women, although all excess deaths are of course a tragedy.
According to the Government, from the start of the pandemic until 1 December 2023, there were 77,907 excess female deaths and 92,913 excess male deaths, the latter figure making up 54% of the total. However, once we delve into the data, we find that there are deeper differences. Between the ages of 25 and 64, the number of excess deaths for women was 12,579, while the number for men was 24,688, so nearly twice as many working-age men as working-age women have died unexpectedly since the pandemic.
Where is the research to find the underlying causes for these excess male deaths from conditions affecting the heart, diabetes and urinary disease? Where are the reports saying what we need to do to address these issues, both as a whole and in response to the nuances of particular figures? Who is looking into how this happened? In Government, which Minister, which Department, which corner of our expansive NHS, which think-tank and which Select Committee—either in the Commons or the Lords—is examining this issue?
The myriad external health and wellbeing-orientated bodies, whether they be quangos, non-governmental organisations or charities, have a plethora of experts, who are available across the state and in the various institutions that we have in this country. However, for some reason—maybe one that centres on an uncomfortable truth—no one who should be interested in the huge rise in excess deaths seems very interested in them at all. Is that a scandal? Perhaps; time will tell. However, the silence from the Secretary of State and the Ministers in her Department speak volumes, as does the silence from the civil servants at the Department. The silence from the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities is similarly underwhelming, and the silence from the health community at large is echoed by the silence from the royal colleges, as is the silence from Sir Chris Whitty and his colleagues. That is worrying, not just because we all know that if the gender figures were the other way round, there would be huge publicity and research, but because it seems that these figures, in general, are purposely being ignored. Is it because men in this age group are more affected? Do men not count as much?
Overall, there have been huge number of excess deaths from covid, and we do not know what the underlying causes are for a range of conditions. It is as if the health authorities and the Government do not want to talk about it. Have they something to hide? Do they know something we do not? Back in the dark days of the pandemic, there was a debate in the Chamber about vaccinating young people, perhaps mandatorily. Only two Opposition Members turned up to support the Government, and more than 40 of the Minister’s Government colleagues did not support the Government’s approach. In my speech I said that, with regard to the health of the youngest in society, we should do no harm.
Similarly, I am not proud of the Government for ignoring the higher excess deaths. I hope the Minister will announce investigations to ascertain why the ultimate harm of excess death numbers is rising, and how excess deaths might be tackled, for women and men of all ages. As an aside, it is commendable that the Government recently ensured that all schools have defibrillators, but to my mind, that raises more questions than it answers. Is this the next Post Office Horizon-type scandal? Time will tell. One suspects that the truth will eventually out.
Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)
I call Dean Russell, but please sit down at 10.38 am.
Dean Russell (Watford) (Con)
I pay tribute to the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) for securing this debate. I will be brief, as I have a very specific point to make.
Losing a loved one can be a profoundly painful experience. In Hertfordshire, families are experiencing delays from the coroner due to the apparent increase in complicated deaths over a number of years. Although it is right to take time to do a full investigation, I am concerned about the lack of communication with families who have lost loved ones to update them about the reasons for the delays and set out what the timings will be. I am getting inquiries from families who are suffering and do not know what is happening and why there are delays, and that is feeding their concerns. Does the Minister agree that this only adds to families’ pain? They just want answers, and to know what is happening. Will the Minister please urge coroners, if they are not able to do the work, to at least communicate regularly, and provide updates, so that grieving families know what is happening and suffer less?
Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)
We now come to the Front Benchers. Will the Minister please give the mover of the motion at least two minutes to respond?
Abena Oppong-Asare (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)
It is a pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairship, Sir Gary. I congratulate the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) on securing this important debate on trends in excess mortality. I also congratulate all hon. Members who have spoken in this lively debate.
The phrase “excess deaths” refers to the difference between the actual registered number of deaths, and the expected number of deaths, based on data from previous years. Recording and understanding such trends is important for any Government of this country, because through that lens we discover areas of growing irregular activity, and we can use that information to tackle issues and improve the lives of our families, our constituents and everyone in this country.
It is sad that excess deaths appear to have increased in recent years. Although there is a range of estimates from different bodies, they all point to an increasing trend. Life expectancy in the UK has also fallen to its lowest level in a decade. Male life expectancy is down 38 weeks from its pre-pandemic peak, and female life expectancy is down 23 weeks. Those worrying trends reinforce the need for us to understand what is happening and what we can do to turn them around.
However, it is important to tackle the claim by the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire that there is a causal link between the covid-19 vaccines and excess deaths in this country.
Abena Oppong-Asare
I am afraid I have limited time.
The Opposition have stated clearly, and I confirm again, that we believe vaccines are the most effective public health intervention in relation to coronavirus and health in general. It is clear from extensive independent research that the covid-19 vaccines have been and continue to be extremely successful at preventing deaths. Sadly, there have been extremely rare cases of people suffering side effects that are possibly linked to the vaccine, but the data does not suggest that there is a link between that and the large increase in excess mortality in recent years. However, when serious side effects do occur, it is right that individuals and their families should have access to the vaccine damage payment. I encourage anyone who has a side effect from any vaccine to use the yellow card system and to report the side effect to their general practitioner.
It is wrong, however, to consistently link the observed excess deaths to covid-19 vaccines. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Sir George Howarth), I have concerns that making that link not only stokes fear and misinformation, but distracts the public conversation away from other health concerns of critical importance.
Abena Oppong-Asare
I normally would, but I have limited time, and I really want to explain the Opposition’s thoughts. Although I disagree with hon. Members on this issue, I am pleased that we are discussing the topic today, because as I have mentioned, we face increased excess deaths and a wider health crisis across the country.
The primary cause of excess mortality has, of course, been covid-19. The pandemic was one of the most profound events of our lifetime, and in the UK, hundreds of thousands of people died, and millions were extremely ill. In fact, there are perhaps 2 million people still shielding because of their clinical vulnerability to the virus. I am sure that we all know who some of those individuals are.
The Opposition have made the case over many years that the Government and our health system were not fully prepared, and were far too slow to act throughout the crisis. It is vital that we learn lessons from the pandemic, and take steps to strengthen our resilience for the future. That is why it is so important that the covid-19 inquiry receives the support that it needs: to ensure that mistakes are not repeated.
The Government have named several other reasons, apart from the pandemic, for the increase in excess deaths in recent years.
Abena Oppong-Asare
These include high flu prevalence, a strep A outbreak, an increase—
Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)
Abena, we have a point of order; I am so sorry. Philip, it had better be a point of order.
Mr Hollobone
Sir Gary, your chairmanship is superb. Will you confirm that it is normal in these debates that the Opposition spokesperson has up to 10 minutes to make their case? The hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asare) therefore has just under five minutes left, which is plenty of time for interventions.
Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)
That is entirely a matter for the Opposition spokesman, but thank you for the point of order.
Abena Oppong-Asare
There is an increase in conditions such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer. As a number of Members have mentioned, the Government say that they are attempting to reduce excess deaths through more health checks, as part of their major conditions strategy. We in the Opposition welcome all efforts to improve the health of our country and tackle these issues, but we must have a Government who will build an NHS and a healthcare system that is there for the public when they need it.
Abena Oppong-Asare
I am afraid not; I really want to explain our concerns, and what the Opposition will do.
Unfortunately, through 14 years of Conservative mismanagement, the country has seen the Government do the exact opposite. On patients being seen on time, the situation continues to get worse; so many key NHS targets are being missed. The Prime Minister promised last year to get NHS waiting lists down by 2024, yet this month, waiting lists remain sky high at 7.6 million—400,000 higher than he promised. One year on, that is another pledge missed by the Prime Minister and this Government, and it leaves so many families waiting for urgent care across the country.
What is more, we are so far behind on critical health challenges. As the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) mentioned, on cancer mortality, thousands are needlessly dying because of slow and late diagnosis, combined with delays to urgently needed treatment. Cancer waiting time targets are consistently being missed, and some of them have not been met for over a decade—a leading cause of avoidable deaths in England. It is urgent that we swiftly tackle this crisis. That is why Labour has committed to improving cancer survival rates by hitting all NHS cancer waiting time targets, and to ensuring early diagnosis within five years, so that no patient waits longer than they should.
When it comes to the NHS and the health of our nation, Labour offers a different plan. We are fully committed to delivering a mission-driven Government who will cut NHS waiting times and build our NHS, so that it is there for the people when they need it. That includes measures such as delivering 2 million more appointments and operations a year at evenings and weekends.
Abena Oppong-Asare
It means doubling the number of scanners, so that patients with conditions such as cancers are diagnosed early.
Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)
Order. The hon. Lady has indicated that she will not give way. Let us hear the end of this speech. Thank you.
Abena Oppong-Asare
And it includes ensuring that ambulances get to people in time to save lives, not when it is too late. We will also tackle the wider health inequalities that mean that life expectancy is much worse in our country’s poorest regions, through our focus on intervention and a shift to community care.
Just last week, we announced our detailed child health action plan to reverse the plummeting health outcomes for our children. Through specific measures, targeting waiting lists, mental health, dentistry and more, we will ensure that that we have the healthiest generation of children ever. That area of concern has been echoed by a number of Members during this debate.
I will conclude by restating the Opposition’s concerns about increasing excess deaths in recent years. Covid-19 was the most significant threat that our public had faced in over 100 years. It is vital that we all learn lessons from that profound event and make sure that mistakes like this never happen again. It is critical that we understand other trends in the excess mortality seen across the country, and that we build our NHS as a healthcare system that invests in prevention—because prevention is key—and that is there for the public when it is needed.
I look forward to hearing from the Minister on the issues that have been raised, and about how we can tackle rising excess deaths across the country.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Maria Caulfield)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. I thank the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) for securing this important debate. We have had a number of debates; I responded very briefly to his Adjournment debate in October. I acknowledge that he is absolutely correct that there is an increase in excess deaths. We take that very seriously; I take that seriously as a Minister, and from the point of view of my clinical background.
To echo the thoughts of many hon. Members around lessons to be learned from the covid period, I too, as Minister with responsibility for pandemic preparedness, would like answers and advice on the impacts of lockdowns, face masks and the timings of vaccine roll-outs, so that those can be taken into consideration for any future pandemic. Although the inquiry is independent, a focus on those issues would be extremely helpful to me, as Minister.
Maria Caulfield
Not for the moment; let me respond to as many points from hon. Members as I can.
There is an increase in excess deaths. A number of factors contribute to that. We take that seriously, and monitor it constantly. Looking at the past year, for example, there was a high flu prevalence last winter, when there were still ongoing challenges relating to instances of covid-19 and a strep A outbreak, particularly among children. Those had an impact. Statistics from the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities showed that last year, there were almost 26,400 excess deaths in England, and of those excess deaths, 7,300 were due to acute respiratory infections, including flu and pneumonia.
Last winter, the number of positive tests for flu peaked at 31.8%—the highest figure in the last six years. There are schools of thought on that; one is that when people were locked down, they were not exposed to flu for a couple of years, so their immune systems struggle to cope. We have learned those lessons, and that is why, this year, we have brought forward our flu vaccination programme. We have successfully vaccinated over 17.6 million people since the campaign started in September. It is still early in the winter season, but—touch wood—we are seeing fewer admissions from flu and covid than we did last year. We are learning lessons from those excess deaths.
There are also excess deaths from cardiovascular diseases; that was pointed out during the debate. The figure is 6% higher than expected in England, with almost 13,500 excess deaths attributed to cardiovascular disease. Lockdown did have an impact on that. We know that people were not getting their cholesterol tested or their blood pressure checked, and were still smoking. Antihypertensives and statins were not being prescribed. Again, we have taken action. As my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) pointed out, we are supporting local authorities to resume normal NHS healthcare checks; between April and June last year, the highest number of checks were offered since the programme began in 2013. We are investing £17 million in innovative new digital health checks, to be rolled out this spring, that will deliver an additional 1 million checks in the first four years. We have a £10 million pilot to deliver up to 150,000 cardiovascular disease checks in the workplace, with free blood pressure checks being rolled out in community pharmacies to people over 40, and we are investing £645 million to include blood pressure checks in our community pharmacy facilities. That is in addition to the work the Prime Minister announced on a smoke-free generation, which will be debated further, through which we want to see smoking rates further reduce.
I turn to the elephant in the room—covid vaccines—because the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire and other hon. Members have raised concerns about their safety. It is true that Office for National Statistics data, published only in August, shows that people who have had a covid-19 vaccine have a lower mortality rate than those who have not been vaccinated. My hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth (Dr Evans) and the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire are absolutely correct that a high number of people who were vaccinated appear in the excess death population, but when 93.6% of the population have had at least one dose of a covid vaccine, there will be a high number of vaccinated people in the excess death numbers. That is prevalence, not causality. It is important that we look at the causes of excess deaths and tackle them.
Dr Caroline Johnson
The Minister is saying that the number of people dying who are vaccinated is higher than the number of people who are not. That is to be expected because they are more likely to be older and frailer. Does she have any data that are adjusted for age and frailty—to say whether the vaccinated population are more or less likely to die?
Maria Caulfield
I do not have those figures on me, but I will be very happy to write to the hon. Lady with them. I am not saying that the rate is higher if people are vaccinated but that a high number of vaccinated people appear in the excess death figures because 93.6% of the population were vaccinated. That does not link to causality; it shows a high prevalence instead.
Paul Girvan
On that very point, during the public inquiry, should greater importance not have been placed on investigating the excess deaths, as opposed to delaying that part of the inquiry?
Maria Caulfield
The public inquiry is independent, and the Government are under heavy scrutiny from it. It is not for me to say how the inquiry should be conducted. As a Government, we are looking at the causes of excess deaths and introducing, where we can, urgent measures to reverse that increase as quickly as possible.
No vaccine or medicine—even simple paracetamol—is completely risk free, but we have systems in place to continually monitor the safety of our medicines. For example, in April 2021, following concerns raised through the yellow card system or by GPs or clinicians, the MHRA reacted to rare cases of concurrent thrombosis and thrombocytopenia following the AZ vaccine. That resulted in actions, with adults under 30 not offered the vaccine any further. In May of that year, that was extended to adults under 40. Where there is concern, we will take action and take recommendations from bodies like the MHRA to make sure that those vaccines are as safe as they can be.
Neale Hanvey
The Minister knows as well as I do that the yellow card scheme sits at the heart of safe clinical care, but allegations are circulating that the MHRA is sitting on 50 times more yellow cards related to the covid-19 vaccine than those related to any other vaccine that have been reported to it. Will she commit to asking the MHRA to account for that and to taking urgent action if, indeed, it is sitting on the yellow card system reports?
Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)
Minister, please leave some time for the Member in charge to wind up.
Maria Caulfield
Thank you, Sir Gary, for reminding me that I have two minutes left.
I absolutely take the hon. Gentleman’s point. If people have concerns, I am more than happy to raise them with organisations or to provide hon. and right hon. Members with answers. Although we have had over 8,000 claims to the vaccine damage payment scheme so far, 4,000 of them have been rejected on the grounds of causation or not meeting the severity threshold, and 159 have been awarded—156 for the AZ vaccine, two for Pfizer and one for Moderna. As well as the information that the MHRA is collecting, we are analysing the vaccine damage payment scheme to keep constantly reviewing the safety of the vaccines.
We must be careful with the language we use. We have a measles outbreak at the moment that is affecting young children, with particularly high outbreaks in London and the west midlands. Thankfully, it is mild in most cases, but children can die or have long-term side effects, and there is a danger if we are not careful with the language we use. We should absolutely scrutinise the safety of vaccines, but we need to make sure that we are not deterring parents from coming forward. We nearly eradicated measles, and we are now seeing outbreaks because of concerns about vaccinations. Although we have concerns, we also have responsibilities.
I do not have much time left, so I will make one quick point. If clinicians and experts have concerns, we should point them to the funding that we have made available for the National Institute for Health and Care Research. Some £110 million has been allocated for covid-19 vaccine research, and I encourage them to make use of that fund to develop our knowledge further.
I reassure colleagues that we absolutely acknowledge that there is a risk of excess deaths. We are working towards how we reduce that as quickly as possible, but the lockdowns have had a negative effect in many cases. We are also mindful of the safety of vaccinations, and have taken action when safety concerns have been raised.
My hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Dean Russell) mentioned coronial delays. That is a matter for the Ministry of Justice, but if he wants to write to me with the details of his case, I would be happy to take it up with that Department.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire for bringing forward this issue. My door is open, and I am very happy to continue the discussion with him on it.
Andrew Bridgen
As it always should be, Sir Gary; your chairing of the debate has been excellent. I have been extremely impressed by the turnout, which is far in excess of my expectations. I congratulate all hon. and right hon. Members who have attended, especially those who have contributed, and I thank the Minister and the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asare), for their participation. Respectfully, I advise the Front-Bench spokespeople that not taking interventions will not fill colleagues or the wider public with confidence that they are being open and transparent. If we want to reassure people, they need to have confidence in us.
Clearly, time has been in short supply; three minutes for Back-Bench contributions was insufficient, and I hope that everyone present today, and those who have not been able to attend but who wanted to speak, would support an immediate call for a three-hour debate in the main Chamber. That would treat the whole issue of trends in excess deaths with the reverence, time and respect that our constituents demand and that we need in order to get to the absolute truth. I am saddened that I do not believe that this trend in excess deaths will stop any time soon; in fact, I think it will continue and that the concern from our constituents will only escalate.
The Minister talked about the elephant in the room: the vaccine harms. It is that bad, and it is going to get that bad, that apparently even the elephant in the room has died suddenly. The Minister could sort all this out if her Department were to tell the data holders to release the record-level data: the vaccine records, the vaccination data, the age of the vaccinated, what they were vaccinated with, and whether they have died or had a severe adverse event. That level of data would sort out this argument once and for all, and if—
Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)
Order. We must move on to the next debate.
Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).
Heritage Assets: Uxbridge and South Ruislip
(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Steve Tuckwell (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the protection of heritage assets in Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship in this—my first Westminster Hall debate.
“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”—[Official Report, 20 August 1940; Vol. 364, c. 1167.]
As I am sure colleagues will know, those words were immortalised by Sir Winston Churchill, as Prime Minister, on 20 August 1940 in the House of Commons Chamber, only a few steps away from this very room. The speech containing those famous words came at a time when Nazi invasion was long suspected and indeed feared. Adolf Hitler knew that if an invasion of the British Isles were to be successful, the German Luftwaffe would have to establish superiority over our skies. This was inconceivable, but by the end of June 1940—only a couple of months before Churchill gave his speech—the Luftwaffe’s superiority in terms of planes seemed insurmountable, with a count of 2,550 planes to the RAF’s 750.
Let us fast forward a couple of months. With war now raging over the skies of Britain, the sound of a Spitfire or Hurricane drawn into a dogfight against its Nazi foe echoed all around. The airfields of southern England faced the full force of the Third Reich, and what’s more, by 16 August the resources of Fighter Command in this part of the country had almost been completely spent. In Churchill’s speech, he remarked on and paid tribute to the enormous bravery and sacrifice of Fighter Command and the wider Royal Air Force. Sir Gary, I hope you will forgive my short history lesson; I know how famous those words are, how they epitomised that point in the war, and everything they represented.
What many people do not know, however, is that that day in the Commons Chamber was not, in fact, the first time that Churchill spoke those words. Indeed, the first time he quipped, “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few” was four days earlier in my constituency of Uxbridge and South Ruislip. On 16 August 1940, Churchill, along with Major General Hastings Ismay, visited the then RAF Uxbridge, including what we today call the Battle of Britain Bunker. The trip was especially eye-opening for the then Prime Minister, as it was from that bunker that No. 11 Fighter Command operated.
Of the four Fighter Command groups, No. 11 saw the most action during the battle of Britain, shooting down many of the 1,700 enemy aircraft lost during the war. The sheer scale of No. 11’s work was evident when, on Churchill’s visit, each squadron in the group was actively engaged in combat, right at that moment, against the continuous Luftwaffe raids pouring from over the channel. When leaving the bunker, Churchill said to Ismay,
“Don’t speak to me; I have never been so moved.”
A couple of moments later, while still reflecting on what he witnessed, he turned and uttered those famous words. No. 11 Fighter Command’s continuous defence on that day was not a one-off either. Churchill would go on to write in his memoirs
“all the bulbs glowed red”
in reference to the tracking boards in the bunker’s operation room, which showed each group’s squadron engaged on 15 September that year as well.
It was not just as the stage from which Churchill uttered his famed words, or as the home of No. 11 Group’s operations, that the bunker underlined its important part in the history of Uxbridge and South Ruislip and of the entire country. I am incredibly proud of the part that the bunker played in our national history, and of the immensely courageous and brave men and women based there during the most momentous moment in Britain’s history. I am also proud that the bunker not only exists, but is one of the most popular places to visit in my constituency. I hope to be able to welcome the Minister there soon.
The bunker shows what can happen when local interest groups, alongside the wider community—those keen to preserve important parts of our history—are given institutional support. After the war, No. 11 Group relocated elsewhere, with Dowding unveiling a memorial close to the bunker entrance noting the role it played during the second world war. Thirty years after the war, and through painstaking work, the operations room of the Battle of Britain Bunker was recreated in that very room, through the tireless work of those committed to the building and its history, and those associated with it. A couple of years on, a museum was opened in the bunker, with the operations room open to visits.
When I was growing up, the bunker was an incredibly interesting place for me to visit and to learn more about my local area’s ties with the wider war effort and the role it played protecting Britain in some of her darkest days. Much of the work, however, was done off the back of volunteers and special interest groups, which is why in 2015 the whole community was thrilled when the Government pledged £1 million to fully restore the bunker, and even more people were able to visit through a specially built visitor centre. Alongside that pledge was a multi-million pound grant from Hillingdon Council to celebrate and build the visitor centre. Along with its incredible popularity, the bunker demonstrates what can happen when local heritage projects and assets have institutional support, whether from local or national Government or established charities and organisations.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I remind the hon. Gentleman, as I think he probably already knows, that the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has some of the richest heritage around. We in Northern Ireland have some of that, including at the Conlig mines, where the first world war and second world war soldiers trained. The hon. Gentleman mentioned funding. It is incredibly important that the seed funding and help for councils to develop our heritage is made available. Does he agree that when it comes to the Minister’s input, which we very much welcome, the opportunity to have projects in my constituency of Strangford should also be supported?
Steve Tuckwell
I think that later in the debate we will see how the Minister responds on the issue of funding, but I thank the hon. Member for those remarks.
What is more, this does not always have to be about funding; it can be about advice and even signposting. I recently spoke in the main Chamber on a similar project, so I look forward to the Minister expanding on other ways in which local residents in Uxbridge and South Ruislip can access support and guidance to ensure that the heritage assets that they believe are worth saving can be saved. I hope to come on to a number of those.
Just as decades ago it played host to the valiant men of No. 11 Group, Fighter Command, the Battle of Britain Bunker has now become the very place where those people’s stories are told. I wholeheartedly thank all the team who work at the Battle of Britain Bunker for all that they do as part of this important work. As I have already noted, the bunker’s experience shows how local heritage assets can be protected. The process can be summed up in three stages: identification, protection and capitalisation. Each of those stages can have its own pitfalls. For the remainder of my time, I will try to address each of these within the local context of Uxbridge and South Ruislip.
We are incredibly lucky to have organisations such as Historic England, which maintains the “Heritage at Risk” register, giving a yearly glimpse at the state of England’s heritage fabric. But the register can make for troubling reading. For instance, the 2023 edition details 392 buildings, 98 places of worship and 25 archaeological sites at risk in London. Altogether, with the other categories combined, there are 599 entries from across London. For the Borough of Hillingdon, the register contains 44 entries, including historic stables, crumbling church walls, a cinema and Hubbard’s Farm Barn and outbuildings in Uxbridge. However, the register is only as effective as the information that it contains, and I am sure that, despite the valiant work of Historic England, some sites may go undetected, known only to niche local knowledge and unfortunately then lost when that local knowledge is lost. On this, I would like to repeat my ask of the Minister to highlight how residents in Uxbridge and South Ruislip might go about highlighting the local assets that they are worried about, and how they can get them through the first and most important step of the protection process.
I have said that the register can make for troubling reading, but it can also provide a positive glimpse into the state of heritage preservation in our communities. For example, the 2023 register details that 203 assets, including 41 sites in London, were removed from the register for positive reasons. These success stories show the importance of identifying heritage assets at risk, as they underpin the protection process that I have been talking about. However, any prospect of this success stands to be undercut by a lack of suitable funding and expertise to get the work under way suitably, sympathetically and in a way that will ensure longevity.
Here is where I draw on another part of Uxbridge and South Ruislip’s aviation history—although to call RAF Northolt “aviation history” is not quite true, as it is still a fully working airfield, dealing with commercial and military flights, including Government, both national and international, to and from London. Established in 1915, RAF Northolt actually predates the establishment of the Royal Air Force and is the longest continuously used RAF airfield in the country. Like the Battle of Britain Bunker, RAF Northolt has a number of links with the second world war, but especially with the battle of Britain itself. Indeed, RAF Northolt was the first airfield to receive the Hawker Hurricane in 1937, two years before the outbreak of the second world war. The Hurricane, often overshadowed in the public psyche by the sprightly Spitfire, was the workhorse of the battle of Britain, inflicting 60% of the Luftwaffe’s losses. Four out of the five squadrons based at RAF Northolt at the time of the battle of Britain would fly Hurricanes during that time.
One of the squadrons that we are especially proud of in Uxbridge and South Ruislip was No. 303 Polish Fighter Squadron. The squadron was made up of Polish forces who were withdrawn to Britain following the 1939 invasion of Poland and then the fall of France. By 1940, 8,000 Polish airmen had arrived in Britain from across the channel. Unlike many of their British counterparts, the Polish pilots were incredibly experienced and had already had wartime service. Despite that, many of the Polish servicemen were originally met with scepticism and often relegated to jobs that left them stood firmly on the ground. The 303 Squadron would go on to serve with enormous heroism and skill. Indeed, during the battle of Britain, the squadron shot down the greatest number of enemy aircraft. Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding noted:
“Had it not been for the magnificent material contributed by the Polish squadrons and their unsurpassed gallantry, I hesitate to say that the outcome of the Battle would have been the same.”
Neither that nor the service of the Polish squadron is lost on my residents. We are proud custodians of the Polish air force memorial. Dedicated to Polish airmen who lost their lives during the second world war, the memorial stands close to the airfield’s south-eastern corner.
All squadrons based at RAF Northolt during the battle of Britain and beyond demonstrated great courage, skill and resolute determination, and 30 allied airmen from the United Kingdom, Poland, Belgium, Canada, Czechoslovakia and New Zealand were killed after flying out of RAF Northolt. That is why I would like to draw the Minister’s attention to one small part of the airfield’s fabric that those overseeing the airfield believe to be at risk and would like to preserve. The physical space of RAF Northolt went through a lot during the second world war, with the Luftwaffe concentrating its efforts on crippling Britain’s air superiority by targeting airfields. More than 4,000 bombs fell within two miles of the airfield in just over 14 months. During the war, the airfield was camouflaged to look like housing from the air to confuse the German bombers, and a stream was even painted over the primary runway. The only problem was that these designs were so ingenious that they even fooled allied pilots when approaching Northolt for the first time.
The airfield saw so much of the physical effects of war and the lives and stories of the brave few. That is why it is important to protect the remaining fabric of the airfield such as the scramble hut, which airfield authorities are looking to preserve and to better protect. To have this physical asset harking back to a point of huge bravery during wartime, while continuing to operate as an RAF airbase, would underline the timeless notions of bravery, commitment and what is right. I hope the Minister will agree to meet me, the airfield authorities and other local groups to discuss how best to preserve this second world war asset. Hopefully we can guarantee the stories of those who have used it, including our Polish allies, and continue their legacy of fighting for what is right.
So far, I have explored the first two parts of the heritage asset journey: identification and protection. The final part remains. For this last stage, I am departing from the aviation of Uxbridge and South Ruislip and instead making a pit stop at another local point of pride for many residents and myself: our pubs, and especially our historic heritage pubs. Across our area, we are incredibly lucky not just to have pubs but to have historic pubs. This is a topic I have contributed on before in Westminster Hall, although I hope that you will allow me the chance to briefly revisit it, Sir Gary.
Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)
I just want to make clear that I want to give the Minister a good 10 minutes to respond and that the debate must conclude by 11.30 am.
Steve Tuckwell
Okay, I will move on. In the 16th-century Red Lion, regulars and one-off visitors can sup a pint or something less alcoholic, taking in the pub’s original Tudor fireplaces and beams. One of the most distinctive and storied pubs is The Crown and Treaty, which is historic and entwined with this very place. Both sides of the English civil war met in the pub to discuss a document that proved to be ill fated and short lived. The treaty of Uxbridge was an attempt at negotiated peace between the two sides, which had already been at war for three years. The treaty failed, but the pub is still going after 400 years.
As I said earlier, this is a potted history of Uxbridge and South Ruislip, and I recognise the work that the Department has already done on heritage asset protection and especially their engagement with myself. I hope that the Minister and hon. Members leave this debate with greater knowledge of places to visit when they are next in Uxbridge and South Ruislip.
The process of ensuring that an asset survives is identification, protection and consistent consolidation. These assets are more than just structures; rather, the stories of ordinary men and women and of extraordinary situations and moments in history are woven into their fabric. Finally, I look forward to working with the Minister to ensure that these stories of the few are left for the many to hear and learn from in the centuries to come.
The Minister for Media, Tourism and Creative Industries (Julia Lopez)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Steve Tuckwell) for securing this debate. I was on maternity leave when he was elected, so I belatedly welcome him to this place. I am proud and glad to be responding to his first ever Westminster Hall debate, which is on such an important subject. As he knows, we are committed to protecting the historic environment for the benefit of present and future generations.
As my hon. Friend said, he has a significant number of important historic buildings in his constituency, many of which are already protected for future generations to enjoy, including a total of 148 listed buildings—nine at grade II* and 138 at grade II. The most recently designated was the church of St Mary’s, South Ruislip, which was listed at grade II in 2022. It is clear that Uxbridge and South Ruislip is a standout place for heritage and history, particularly military history. He and I have similar constituencies in many regards. Our constituents are virulently anti-ultra low emission zone, and we have histories of protecting the capital of our nation in the battle of Britain. RAF Hornchurch is in my constituency, and my hon. Friend eloquently set out the role that his constituency played.
I recommend that my hon. Friend join the armed forces parliamentary scheme. I did so, and I was honoured to be able to go to RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire, which had the battle of Britain memorial flight. I also had the opportunity to visit RAF Northolt on that tremendous scheme, which connects today’s parliamentarians to the service and sacrifice that so many of our fellow citizens have made over the course of our nation’s history.
One of my projects on maternity leave was publishing the memoirs of my late auntie, who spoke about her time in Bexley when London was under the blitz. We forget about the terrible human cost that was paid by ordinary people in those terrible times for our nation, so I am grateful for the role that our constituencies played in protecting London.
The story of Uxbridge and South Ruislip is an important source of local pride, but it also brings in visitors and has an important and positive economic impact. I am speaking on behalf of my noble Friend Lord Parkinson, the Minister for Arts and Heritage, but I am the tourism Minister, so I recommend my hon. Friend’s constituency, which I have visited, to those who are interested in military history and those from across the world who want to think about the role this nation played in the war.
The primary way that my Department protects heritage assets is through the designation system, which highlights an asset’s special interest and value to this and future generations, and provides protection under law. The grade I listing of the Battle of Britain Bunker means that potentially harmful changes to it are given particularly careful scrutiny through the listed building consent process. DCMS works closely with Historic England to protect England’s heritage. Historic England gives expert advice to the Secretary of State on the listing of historic buildings and the scheduling of ancient monuments, and to central and local Government, property owners and other stakeholders. Anybody can request an assessment through Historic England with a view to listing a building, and it can then set out, with its experts, the process to ensure that an applicant has all the information they need for a listing to take place.
My hon. Friend mentioned Historic England’s “Heritage at Risk” programme, which is another excellent way to ensure that our most vulnerable heritage sites are highlighted and protected. The risk register also has available repair grants, which are given to local community groups. Again, that is something that my hon. Friend might consider.
I mentioned that my constituency has RAF Hornchurch. We have a fantastic band of volunteers, and it sounds like my hon. Friend has a similar group in his constituency. There are myriad ways in which local volunteers can leverage their position in the community. In my case, they did work with a developer to get some section 106 and community infrastructure levy funds to help to fund local heritage. Similarly, work is under way in my constituency with National Highways to help to protect some of our heritage. My hon. Friend might look into those initiatives, and his band of volunteers can also look at the National Lottery Heritage Fund as a potential avenue for funding.
According to the community life survey, 5% of all adults who have volunteered in the last year did so in the heritage sector. There is enormous enthusiasm across many people’s constituencies for that kind of work, and I want volunteer groups to be aware of the range of ways in which they can access it. The Friends of the No.11 (Fighter) Group Operations Room are very appreciated by our Department for the vital work they do so that others in London and beyond can understand our history.
Historical buildings are also a key part of our high streets. The £95 million high streets heritage action zones programme, delivered by Historic England, looks at how we can remind people of the histories of their high streets. As I said, the battle of Britain bunker is an important tourism destination. Local lists also play an essential role in building and reinforcing a sense of local character and distinctiveness in the historic environment. Historic England provides guidance on local heritage listing for councils, community groups, and other interested stakeholders. The assets of community value and community right to bid initiatives are further opportunities for local groups to protect locally important assets. The heritage action zone scheme has also worked closely with building preservation trusts, such as Valley Heritage in Lancashire and the Tyne and Wear building preservation trust, to support community groups in ownership of particular assets. That is something that my hon. Friend’s local group might want to explore. I encourage local groups across the country to contact our public bodies and their local councils for advice on how to support heritage in their area.
My hon. Friend also mentioned another important aspect of our country’s heritage: historic pubs. As he so perfectly summarised it in the debate on heritage pubs back in November:
“They are not just pubs. They are our communities; they are our history.”—[Official Report, 16 November 2023; Vol. 740, c. 24WH.]
There are currently over 12,250 listed pubs in England. That is 3.2% of all listed buildings, so the appreciation for the local boozer is well known and appreciated by people across the country. Since 2015, a number of listings have taken place as a result of research projects into heritage pubs undertaken by Heritage England. I am sure my hon. Friend is aware that barriers to the serving of building preservation notices by local planning authorities have been removed by the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, which means that historic buildings at risk of development or demolition can be protected much more quickly. Through measures such as our designations process and the serving of building preservation notices, our historic pubs, such as Uxbridge’s nearly 400-year-old The Crown and Treaty, can be preserved for generations to come.
I shall pass on my hon. Friend’s kind invitation to the heritage Minister, my noble friend Lord Parkinson, who sits in the other place. We will also look at this issue from a tourism perspective. I thank my hon. Friend again for bringing such an important debate to this place and highlighting the fantastic history that his constituency has to offer the rest of the country.
Question put and agreed to.
Online Filter Bubbles: Misinformation and Disinformation
(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
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John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the matter of preventing misinformation and disinformation in online filter bubbles.
It is good to see you in the Chair and in charge of our proceedings, Sir Mark. It is also good to see the Minister in his place. He confessed gently to me beforehand that this is the first Westminster Hall debate in which he has had the honour of being a Minister. I am sure that he will mark his debut with elan.
This important issue has not had enough exposure and discussion so far in Parliament, so I am pleased to see so many colleagues present. I suspect that they have all had far too many examples than they can possibly count of not just fake news but fake science, fake medicine or online memes of one kind or another landing in their in-trays from constituents. This is not just about constituents writing to Members of Parliament; it is a much broader issue that affects the whole tenor and fabric of our democracy and public debate. It is particularly important because public debate, in these online days, happens in a far wider and more varied collection of different forums than it used to before the internet was so commonly and widely used. It is something that needs to be addressed.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
I congratulate the hon. Member on securing this timely debate. Does he agree that the prevalence of fake news is all consuming? There was a quote put to me, as a Member of Parliament, on social media a few years ago. It was along the lines of, “In the words of Abraham Lincoln, don’t believe all you read on the internet.”
John Penrose
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The saying used to be, “Don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers,” but it applies equally strongly in the modern digital world to everything that we read on the internet.
Fake news, or misinformation and disinformation, really matters, particularly this year. A large proportion of the democratic world will have general elections in the next 12 months. The scope for interference in those elections by malign actors, whether they are foreign states, organised criminals or people of a particular religious or political persuasion, is very strong. They try to sway public debate through fair means or foul, and if we are talking about misinformation and disinformation, that means foul means. The potential in the next 12 months for bad things to happen is very high, and that is just when it comes to democracy. That does not cover the other examples of fake news or fake science that I mentioned, such as fake medicine. Believing quack cures can lead to more deaths, more people getting the wrong kinds of medical treatments and so on. There are many different opportunities.
There is also a serious issue around radicalisation. Somebody who is fed a diet of alt-left or alt-right political views, or extremist religious views—it does not really matter what it is—can easily disappear down a rabbit hole, into an echo chamber of views where only one particular strand of opinion is put in front of them again and again. That way leads to radicalisation on a whole range of different topics, and it undermines both our society and our democracy, and science in many cases. It means that societies as a whole become much more brittle and more divided, and it is much harder for democracy to flourish.
What is misinformation and disinformation, without getting sucked into technocratic definitions? It is rather like trying to define pornography. As the famous phrase goes, “You may not be able to define it, but like a hippopotamus, you recognise it when you see it.” [Interruption.] I will ignore the heckling on my right; it will not help. There are two underlying facets to misinformation and disinformation. One is that if someone is simply making stuff up, telling lies and saying things that are factually inaccurate and false, that can easily become misinformation and disinformation. The second is when things are factually accurate and correct but really one-sided and biased. That matters too; it is extremely important, and we have long had rules for our broadcasters, to which I will return in a minute, that are designed to prevent it.
The good news is that the Online Safety Act 2023 took a few early steps to do something about factual inaccuracy, at least. It does not do a great deal—it should do more—but it takes some early steps, and it would be churlish to pretend that there is nothing there at all. I tabled a couple of early amendments to get us to think about factual inaccuracy and to work out where it came from—provenance, in the jargon—so that we could tell whether something comes from a trusted source. We ended up with some useful points, particularly duties on Ofcom relating to media literacy and making sure that people know what questions to ask when they see something on the internet and do not, as we were just hearing, necessarily believe everything they read online but ask questions about where it came from, who produced it and whether it has been altered. Ofcom has that duty now; it has not yet grown teeth and claws or started to bite but at least, in principle, that power is there and is very welcome.
There is also the advisory committee enshrined in the Act, which ought to make a difference, although precisely how will depend on how actively it flexes the muscles it has been given. Separately from the Online Safety Act, there are the national security laws about foreign interference too. There is some protection, therefore, but it is not nearly enough. The Minister’s predecessors, in what used to be the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport before it was reorganised, will say that in the early days of the Online Safety Act’s gestation, it was intended to cover misinformation and disinformation, but that was hived off and fell away at an early stage. That is an important omission, and we need to come back to it now.
I want to make a modest proposal. The Online Safety Act will start to make modest progress towards media literacy and people understanding and asking questions about factual accuracy and where something comes from when they see it on the web. It will go some way to addressing the first of the two sources of misinformation and disinformation—people telling lies, making stuff up, deepfakes of one kind or another. The sad fact is that the chances of deepfakes getting better with the advent of artificial intelligence is very high indeed so that, even if we think we can spot them now, we are probably kidding ourselves and in a year or two’s time it will be doubly, trebly or quadruply difficult to work out what is real and what is completely made up.
If we accept that at least something is in place in this country to deal with factual inaccuracy, we are still stuck with absolutely nothing, as yet, to deal with the one-sided and deeply biased presentation of factually correct narratives. I therefore want to draw a comparison, as I mentioned earlier, with what we already do and have been doing very successfully for decades in the broadcasting world, where Ofcom, through the broadcasting code, has been in charge of the duty of balance and undue prominence. That duty has very successfully said for decades that the analogue broadcasting world has to make sure that, when it presents something that is supposedly factual in a broadcast news programme, it must be balanced and must not give undue prominence to one side of the argument. That works really rather well, and has been a core part of ensuring that our public debates in this country are not sidetracked by fake news.
I suspect that every one of us here will, at various different times, have gnashed our teeth and shouted at the telly because we felt that the BBC, ITV or Sky News was presenting something in a slightly partisan way; depending on which side of the House we are on, we may have thought that the partisanship was on one side of the argument rather than the other. However, the fact remains that we all know the way they are supposed to do it and that there is some kind of redress, and there is generally an acceptance that it is the right thing to do. The duty matters not just because politicians think it is important, but because it has—very successfully, I would argue—made sure that there is a tendency towards reasoned, evidence-based consensus in British public debate, online and in broadcast news, over more than half a century.
The title of this debate is not just, “Misinformation and Disinformation”; it is about those two things in online filter bubbles. Online filter bubbles bear some quite important similarities to what broadcast news editorial room decision making has long been doing. The reason is that when we go online, we all have our own personal online filter bubble. Whether we use Google, Facebook, TikTok, all of the above, or whatever it might be, those platforms have an algorithm that says, “John Penrose likes looking at stuff to do with fishing tackle—we’re going to send him more stuff about fishing tackle.” I am not sure what the equivalent would be for the Minister; I am sure he will tell us in due course, unless he is too shy.
The algorithm works out what we have personally chosen to look at and gives us more of the same. That can also lead to radicalisation. If I start looking at things to do with Islamic jihad, it will say, “Oh! He’s interested in Islamic jihad”, and send me more and more things about Islamic jihad—or the alt-left, the alt-right, or whatever it might be. The algorithm’s decision to send people more of what they have already chosen—when it sends people things they have not chosen, but which it thinks they will like—is effectively a digital editorial decision that is, in principle, very similar to the editorial decisions going on in the Sky, ITV or BBC newsrooms, either for radio or for broadcast TV.
We need to come up with a modern, digital version of the long-established and, as I said, very successful principle of the duty of balance and undue prominence and apply it to the modern, digital world. Then, if I started looking at Islamic jihad, and I got sent more and more things about Islamic jihad, as I saw more and more things about Islamic jihad, the algorithm that was creating my personal filter bubble would start sending me things saying, “You do know that there is an alternative here? You do know that there is another side of this argument? You do know that the world is not just this, and this particular echo chamber—this rabbit hole of radicalisation that you are enthusiastically burrowing your way down—may actually be exactly that? You need to understand that there is more to it.” That is something that happens to all of us all the time in the old, analogue world, but does not happen in the digital world. I would argue that it is one of the reasons that many of us here, across the political spectrum, are so worried about the divisive nature of the online world and the rising levels of disrespect and potential incitement of violence there.
I plan to do something rather unusual for politicians and stop talking very soon, because I hope that this has served as a proposal for colleagues to consider. It is something that would need cross-party consensus behind it in order to be taken forward, and there may be better ways of doing it, but I am absolutely certain that we do not have anything in our legal arsenal in this area at the moment. I would argue that we need to act quite promptly. As I have said, the stakes in the next 12 months democratically are very high, but the stakes have been very high in other areas, such as medical disinformation, for a very long time because we have just come through a pandemic. The scope for damage—to our society, to our health and to our entire way of life—is very high.
Therefore, I hope that colleagues will consider what I have said, and if they have a better answer I am all ears and I would be absolutely delighted to hear it. This is a very early stage in the political debate about this issue, but we cannot carry on not having a political debate about it; we cannot carry on not addressing this central issue. So, I am glad that everybody is here today and I hope that we will all go forth and tell our political friends and neighbours that this issue is important and that they need to address it as well. And as I say, if people have better solutions than the one that I have just politely proffered, then my pen is poised and I look forward to taking notes.
Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)
It is most unusual for me to called so early in a Westminster Hall debate, Sir Mark, so I am grateful to you.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) on securing this debate. There is no question that preventing misinformation and disinformation is one of the great challenges of our time, and it will only become more and more challenging, as he has adumbrated in his remarks to the House this afternoon.
Unfortunately, we have many active theatres of conflict around the world at the moment, so I will begin by thanking all of those who take to social media to counter so much of the disinformation that exists. Whether it is about the war in Ukraine or about the situation in the Red Sea, Gaza and Israel, so much disinformation is doing the rounds. Some of it is clearly state-sponsored; some of it less so.
Indeed, there is also misinformation or disinformation about elections, so no doubt we will see more of that as the elections in this country and elsewhere in the west draw closer. Also, last week there were elections in Taiwan, when the Taiwanese political parties said it was the harshest election yet in terms of Chinese-sponsored disinformation against a democratic people. However, a great many people invest time, effort, energy, money and resources online to counter such disinformation and they do a public service.
I will mention the negative part first, if I may; there is no point in my going over all the various examples of disinformation that exist. I recall being in a conference a few years ago with the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) where one of the complaints that we had—it is so often a complaint—was that when there are conferences and workshops and think-tank events about disinformation, everybody wants to talk about examples of disinformation but few people want to talk about how we arm ourselves against it.
So, as I say, let me start with the negative part first. I do not mean any of what I say today to be against the Minister—the Under-Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, the hon. Member for Meriden (Saqib Bhatti)—who, I will confess, I do not think I have faced on this issue before. Nevertheless, the Government do not have a coherent strategy on this issue. There are a great many officials across Government and across Whitehall who are doing some sterling work on it; no question about that. At a political level, however, this issue has not been given the serious consideration that it deserves; although it may be uncharitable of me to say so, that was evidenced most of all by the fact that Nadine Dorries was put in charge of it. [Laughter.] Having said that, I will come on to a central problem that is less about personalities and more about the policy framework and the institutions that are required.
As I understand it, and the Minister may correct me in his remarks, misinformation is the responsibility of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport; some disinformation is also that Department’s responsibility. Foreign disinformation falls with a mixture of the Foreign Office, the intelligence services and the Home Office. Other parts of disinformation are the responsibility of the Ministry of Defence and defence intelligence. I spent five and a half years as my party’s spokesperson for defence and the type of question that I wanted to ask depended on whether or not the Ministry of Defence could answer it. Who does this madness—a madness of responsibility and lines of accountability lying all over Whitehall—benefit? Certainly not our constituents.
Alex Davies-Jones (Pontypridd) (Lab)
The hon. Member is making a very important point. I have tried repeatedly to find answers from the Government’s Counter Disinformation Unit. That specialist unit, set up in Whitehall to counteract some of this disinformation, is meant to be cross-departmental, but sadly it has been quite dormant. We have had very little information and transparency. Does the hon. Member agree that, if we had more transparency, we could see what Departments were working on across Government and seek to tackle the problem?
Stewart Malcolm McDonald
Indeed. The hon. Lady is entirely correct. The fact that so much of this has spread like a great blob—some might say—around Whitehall benefits only our adversaries and those who wish to pursue disinformation in this country. That is before we get to the growing problem of the things the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare mentioned—deep fakes and AI-generated disinformation—all of which is going to get worse and worse. As long as responsibility and lines of accountability and policy formation are a bit all over the place, when in my mind the obvious place for them to lie would be with the Cabinet Office, that will be of benefit only to those who want to sow disinformation.
In June 2021, in the spirit of trying to be a helpful Scottish nationalist, which might be an oxymoron to some people, I published a report that made nine recommendations on how, in fairness to the UK Government and Scottish Government, they can better counter disinformation in public life. I want to go through a couple of those. First, we need a proper national strategy that is a whole-society national strategy, imitating the excellent work done in countries such as Finland and Latvia, where countering disinformation and hybrid threats is not the job of the Department of Defence or even the Government but involves public institutions, other public bodies, the private sector, non-governmental organisations, civil society and private citizens. There is much that can be done. Surely we saw that in the generosity people showed during the pandemic. There is so much good will out there among the population to counter hybrid threats when they arise.
Although we have the counter disinformation unit, I would suggest a commissioner, perhaps similar to the Information Commissioner, with statutory powers on implementing the national strategy and countering disinformation. There is a job for our friends in the media, too. The media need to open up to explain to the public how stories are made. There is a job to be done in newspapers and broadcast media. It would be to the benefit of mainstream media—that phrase is often used in a derisory way, although I like my media to be mainstream—as the more the media explain to the public how they make news, the better that would be for those of us who consume it.
There should also be an audit of the ecosystem. One thing I suggested in the report is an annual update to Parliament of a threat assessment of hostile foreign disinformation to this country. The better we understand the information ecosystem, the better we can equip ourselves to counter hostile foreign disinformation. I also suggest literacy programmes across all public institutions, especially for public servants, whether elected or unelected. My goodness, some of them could do with that in this House.
I also suggest we look to host an annual clean information summit. There is so much good work that goes on, especially in Taiwan, and right on our own doorstep in Europe. So much good work goes on that we could learn from, and hopefully implement here. If we do not have a whole-society approach, involving public bodies, faith groups, trade unions, private enterprise and even political parties, fundamentally any strategy will fail.
I will end on this: political parties need to get their acts together, and not just on some of the stuff that gets put out. I am not going into things that individual parties have put out. But at either this election or the next—I would argue that the upcoming election is already at risk of a hostile foreign disinformation attack—what will happen when that disinformation gets more sophisticated, better funded and better resourced than anything we have to see it off? I come back to the conference I attended with the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe, where we took part in a war game: it was a presidential election, and our candidate was subject to a hostile foreign disinformation attack to spread smears and lies about them. We need to get used to this now. Political parties need to set their arms to one side and work together so that we can preserve that thing we call democracy. I think it is worth fighting for. I look forward to the other suggestions we will hear in the rest of the debate.
Sir Mark Hendrick (in the Chair)
I note the number of people present, and ask Members to keep their contributions to around seven minutes so that we can get everybody in.
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Sir Mark. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) on securing the debate. I agreed with a lot of what was said by the hon. Member for Glasgow South (Stewart Malcolm McDonald)—did he say a “helpful Scottish nationalist”? I am not sure whether or not that was disinformation, but we will not debate that today.
I am extremely concerned about misinformation on a whole range of subjects. We saw it during the pandemic, with the vaccine debate; all Members will have received communications from constituents that were completely and utterly false, where people had been wound up online by fake doctors and people who were not vaccine specialists and were then presenting that information to us as fact. We see it in the immigration debate, where people are subjected to what is often racist commentary online, which then directs them towards other accounts—a lot of them anti-Muslim—which reinforce what they have heard. These people then appear in our inboxes, quoting that bile.
As others have mentioned, we also see it in election campaigns. I think all political parties can sometimes be a little guilty of promoting elements of disinformation. In the 2017 election in particular, I remember being on the receiving end of abuse and torrents of stuff that was put out about votes here, which, when I looked into the detail, just was not true. It was not as presented. I am afraid that all political parties sometimes cannot resist the urge to perhaps slightly misrepresent what has gone on in this place.
It will perhaps come as little surprise that I want to talk today about antisemitism—the anti-Jewish racism that remains prevalent and pernicious throughout our online platforms. Perhaps I am a hypocrite for talking about this, because I am not actually on any of these social media networks. I left them all, and it was the best thing I ever did for my mental health. I realised the power of filter bubbles, though, when I once looked at an account about a trainspotter, and ended up getting presented with lots of other trainspotting information. I thought, “Why is this all happening?”—it is because if someone looks at something once, they are driven down that path. Now, I could have become a radicalised trainspotter, but I was able to cut myself off just at the right point. I joke, but in other debates and on other accounts, this is incredibly frightening and dangerous.
We see it with antisemitism, with conspiracy theories reaching back hundreds of years, which, like artificial intelligence, mutate and evolve. It will be of little surprise to Members to hear that it can be found in relation to misinformation and disinformation too. We have particularly seen that since the start of the conflict in the middle east. Following the terror attacks on 7 October, there has been a significant proliferation of disinformation and misinformation. Shortly after the attacks, conspiracy theories emerged that were rooted in the anti-Jewish ideologies of those who wished to deny the atrocities that took place—denying that innocent civilians were attacked, that children were murdered and that women were subjected to gender-based violence.
I have seen some of that hate in the past 24 hours, following an outrageous smear somebody put out about me on social media that has resulted in a trickle of abuse coming at me, some of which is questionably antisemitic. Those emails have included a denial that Hamas was responsible for the deaths on 7 October, while someone else questioned, in relation to the Houthis, whether interrupting shipping lanes is really a heinous act. Worst of all, someone emailed me and described the hostages as “them Zionist rat hostages”. People have not come up with those comments and views themselves, but they have seen them online. They have been pointed in a particular direction through a series of misinformation and disinformation. It has had no effect on me, of course. I will continue to speak out and call out whatever I wish wherever I think it appropriate to whoever. It will not have any impact on me, but it has proven to me once again what a cesspit of hate and antisemitism social media can be. I will give a couple of examples to emphasise that.
One major conspiracy since 7 October is that the attacks on that day were a false flag operation by Israel—we have all probably had emails stating that. In one particular viral claim, social media users argued that the attack at the Nova music festival, in which 364 people were murdered and many abducted, was not carried out by Hamas but by Israeli forces, despite the fact that there was video evidence taken by the people there. Some try to be clever and deny one single aspect of the atrocity in order to skirt some of the social media rules.
In another example, it was claimed that the Israeli Government knew of the attack, but did not deploy the army in the hope that the crisis would help restore popularity. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue found that many of the conspiracies contain common antisemitic tropes. For example, sites affiliated with QAnon spread a conspiracy that the war was part of a plan to start a third world war, with a hidden ambition to start a new religion and cause chaos, which is of course a trope straight out of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. We have seen that throughout.
AI has also played a major role in disseminating disinformation. I will use a few examples to demonstrate that. A Facebook post shows Israeli civilians cheering Israeli Defence Forces soldiers in an image that was heavily altered by AI. Of course, the people who shared it do not know that. There was a deepfake video of President Biden calling for a military draft in response to the war with Hamas. It appeared on TikTok and Facebook, where it managed to fool users into thinking that was real. I note that other people have talked about the difficulties of deepfake.
Deepfake images of abandoned and injured Palestinian babies in the ruins of Gaza have been viewed and shared millions of times. Because AI-generated content has become widespread, people now doubt genuine content. When authentic images of the luxurious homes of some Hamas leaders were shared, it was immediately pooh-poohed as an AI deepfake. Because of the algorithms that personalise the content, as other Members have said, users are drawn into filter bubbles on social media and continuously exposed to a specific narrative, with little or no exposure to counter-information.
The proposal of my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare was spot on. I am conscious of your guidance on time, Sir Mark, so I will end there. I will just say that there is more we can do. The ideas that my hon. Friend has outlined are important, as are the things about digital media literacy and all the rest of it that the Government can invest in.
Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair this afternoon, Sir Mark. I am very sorry to hear about the abuse that the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) has received. It is something that many of us unfortunately have experienced from time to time.
However, I want to start on a positive note and congratulate the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) on securing the debate and coming up with a sensible suggestion, which has to be the basis of further consideration. He was right. The matter is very dangerous for democracy and is an urgent issue that needs to be addressed. He used the term “radicalised”, which is a good way of looking at how that affects people.
People can hold views that they might not have countenanced a few months ago. The effect of filter bubbles can be that, in effect, they become a totally different person and they are completely unaware of the process that they have been through. There should be greater openness with individuals about the type of content that is being pushed on to their timeline. If an individual user could see, for example—or better still, be directed to—the tags that they have amassed, that knowledge would be of great assistance. It would hopefully prevent people from passively entering the echo chamber that we have heard so much about, and, crucially, would alert people to the possibility that the process is happening at all.
Anyone who has talked to someone whose worldview has been altered by what they have seen online will know that they will not be persuaded that their view might not be accurate. They can make no distinction between information they have picked up online as opposed to from traditional media sources, and they truly believe what they are being told. I have seen the terror in a person’s eyes as they recounted to me a particular conspiracy theory. That fear was absolutely real, and there was no dissuading them.
How widespread is the problem? Some academic research says that about 2% of the population are in an alt-left echo chamber, and 5% in an alt-right one. Another survey found that about 10% of those in the UK claim to see only social media that agrees with their particular views. That seems quite low, but it is actually still millions of people. I believe it is far easier to fall into these traps than to get out of them, so the potential for the number to grow is there. Even on these relatively low numbers, their potential to influence society is corrosive.
Groups of people operating in a sphere with a different factual basis from wider society have implications for how our democracy works, not only in terms of their own participation but in how they can shape debate outside their echo chamber. Voices airing conspiracy theories about 15-minute cities have, as we learned last week, impacted Government policy. It was reported in The Guardian that Ministers began considering curbs on cycling and walking schemes last year in response to concerns about 15-minute cities. Conspiracy theorists believe that 15-minute cities are designed to be part of the “great reset”, under which people will be forcibly locked down within their own local neighbourhood and not allowed to travel outside of it. After gaining traction online among right-wing fringe groups, mainly in echo chambers, it found its way into a Government policy. One of the biggest shifts in transport policy in decades had its origins in online conspiracy theories. From that, we can see the potential it has to really impact on Government policy.
That is one reason why foreign powers have used prominent social media platforms to seek to influence elections and disrupt civic debate. We know from extensive investigations by the US and UK security organisations that Russian state security services conduct operations via social media in order to influence the results of elections. The potency of infiltrating echo chambers and manipulating those inside can have national consequences. We have elections across the world this year, including in this country and the United States, so tackling the issue now is incredibly important.
When I have constituents who seem to believe that I and the majority of people in this place are lizards, who believe that I want to deliberately stop them from moving about freely, or who recite to me with unwavering certainty any number of other examples of absurd but dangerous conspiracy theories, we have to take seriously the threat to the democratic process that this represents. It is no coincidence that many of those online conspiracy theories have very negative things to say about UK politicians and the political process; the people peddling this stuff have no interest in seeing western liberal democracies flourish. They want to see them fail. It is fair to ask whether democracy can function properly when people are so trapped in their own warped realities that they cannot see any other viewpoint than their own, they immediately distrust anything that comes from an official source, and they cannot agree with others on basic, previously uncontested, facts.
We know trust in politics and politicians is at an all-time low. Those who end up in online bubbles tend to have zero confidence in politicians and the political process. Some people might say, “Well, so what? There have always been people who do not trust authority. There have always been people who have a propensity to believe conspiracies and operate outside the mainstream of society.” It is clear that those numbers are on the rise, their influence is growing, and there is a concerted effort by people hostile to this country to increase their ranks.
We cannot afford to be blasé. Our liberal democracy is fragile enough as it is, and it cannot be taken for granted. It has to be protected, defended and supported by us in this place as the guardians of democracy. It is not enough for us to be simply participants in the political process; we need to be its guardians. In this place, we debate and argue over interpretation of facts, but we do so within a framework where we are at least debating within the same reality. We also share a common understanding that if our arguments do not succeed on this occasion, the democratic process ensures that we will have another chance sometime. However, having so many and growing numbers of people who do not share the same reality as us and do not think that democracy works represents a real threat to democracy as a whole. We should not write those people off: we should try to engage with them as much as possible. However, we must also take on the source of their discomfort, challenge their beliefs and really lift the lid on who is pushing the disinformation and why. If we ignore that, it will grow, and before we know it there will be enough people sufficiently motivated to take matters into their own hands that this will not be just a dark corner of the internet: it will be on every street corner, and by then it will be too late.
Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) on securing the debate. It could not be more important or timely; as he alluded to in his speech, half the world is voting this year. We have already seen some of those elections take place in Taiwan and Bangladesh, and in America the Republican party had the Iowa caucus last night. It is interesting to see a demonstration of the impact of disinformation on ordinary people going about their daily lives. It has been heavily reported in America that 60% of Republicans voting in the caucus believe that the last presidential election was stolen and illegitimate and that Donald Trump was elected as President.
The challenge of disinformation is not just from foreign state interference. When we first started talking about the issue some five or six years ago, we were looking principally at the influence networks of Russia and Iran and their ability to try to reshape the way in which people saw the world and the institutions in their own countries to sow fear and discord and make people distrust the institutions of their own society, the legitimacy of their courts, the freedom of their elections and the truth of their media. However, it is happening in our society as well. The pandemic was a demonstration of the potency of conspiracy networks such as QAnon to persuade people that the vaccine was not safe, and we see it today to persuade people that our public institutions and elections are not safe. It is being done to undermine the fabric of democracy. There is a lot more to being a democracy than holding elections, and having faith in our institutions, trusting our media and trusting the news and information that we get are all essential to the citizen’s job of casting their vote every four or five years to determine who should run their country. If that is attacked and undermined, it is an attack on our entire democratic way of life. This year, we will see that challenge in a way that we have not seen before, with a level of technical sophistication that we have not seen before, and we should be concerned about it.
I will respond briefly to the remarks by the hon. Member for Glasgow South (Stewart Malcolm McDonald) in his speech. I was briefly the Minister responsible for the Counter Disinformation Unit, and I thought that I had better meet it, because it is not a particularly public-facing organisation, to see what it had to say. The Government quite rightly have different strategies for dealing with disinformation across Government: some of it is led by policing and security; some of it is led by looking at bad actors internally; and some of it is led by the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence looking at bad actors externally. The Government should trigger different responses: some that respond with news and information that challenge conspiracy theories and networks, and some that identify networks of disinformation being controlled and operated by foreign states against which we want companies and platforms to take action. That was included in the National Security Act 2023 last year, and the Online Safety Act places a further obligation on companies to act in response to intelligence reports that they receive. If they do not take action against those known networks of disinformation controlled and run by hostile foreign states, action can be taken against the companies as well.
That is why the Online Safety Act was so important; it creates, for the first time, the principle of liability of platforms for the information that they distribute and promote to other users. Central to the debate on the Bill that became the Online Safety Act was finally answering the false question that was posed all the time: are platforms, such as Facebook, actually platforms or publishers? They do not write the content, but they do distribute it. People have first amendment rights in America to speak freely, and we have freedom of speech rights in this country—that is not the same as the right actively to be promoted to millions of people on a social media platform. They are different things. The companies promote content to users to hold their attention, drive engagement and increase advertising revenue. It is a business decision for which they should be held to account, and the Online Safety Act now gives a regulator the power to hold companies to account for how they do that.
I listened carefully to what my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare said about whether we could borrow from the broadcasting code to try to create standards. Can we break filter bubbles by trying to give people access to different sorts of information? I think this is a difficult area, and there are subtle differences between a broadcaster and a social media platform. It is true that they both reach big audiences. It is also true that social media platforms exercise editorial decisions, just like a broadcaster does. However, the reason why it was so important for broadcasting and broadcasting licences to make sure that there were fair standards for balance and probity was that there were not that many broadcasters when the licences were introduced. The list has now grown. People tuning in do not necessarily know what they will get, because the content is selected and programmed by the programme maker and the channel.
I would say that social media have become not broadcast media, but the ultimate narrowcast media, because the content to which people are being exposed is designed for them. An individual’s principal experience of being on social media is not of searching for things, but of having things played and promoted to them, so the responsibility should lie with companies for the decisions they make about what to promote. There is nothing wrong with people having preferences—people have preferences when they buy a newspaper. I am sure that when the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) watches services by Rev. Ian Paisley on YouTube, he does not want to get a prompt saying, “You’ve had enough this week. We’re going to give you some content from the Sinn Féin party conference.” We do not want that kind of interference going on. People have perfectly legitimate viewing habits that reflect their own preferences. The question is, do platforms push and actively promote conspiracy theories and fake news? I think they do, and there is evidence that they have done so.
I will mention one of the clearest examples of that in the brief time I have left. In the 2020 US presidential election, the platforms agreed, under pressure, to give far greater prominence to trusted news sources in their newsfeeds, so that people were far more likely to see content from a variety of different broadcasters. It was not necessarily all from CNN or Fox News—there could be a variety—but it was from known and legitimate news sources as a first preference. The platforms downgraded what they call civic groups, which are the friends and family groups that are often the breeding ground for conspiracy theories. One reason why they often spread so quickly is that people push them on their friends, who look at such content because it has come from someone they know and trust. However, when the platforms changed the ranking and promotion factor, it had a big impact: it dampened down disinformation and promoted trusted news sources, but it also reduced engagement with the platform. After the election, Facebook reversed the change and the conspiracy theorists were allowed to run riot again, which was a contributing factor in the insurrection we saw in Washington in January 2021.
Companies have the ability to make sure that fair and trusted news gets a better crack, which is absolutely essential in this digital age. They should be very wary about allowing AI to use content and articles from legitimate news organisations as training data to create what would effectively become generic copies to sell advertising against, steering people away from journalism that people have to pay for and towards free content that looks very similar but is far less likely to be trustworthy. We need to get the news bargaining code right so that proper news organisations do not see their content being distributed for free, and ads sold against it by other people, without getting fair remuneration. These are things we can do to protect our news ecosystem, and the Online Safety Act is essential for making sure that Ofcom holds companies to account for actively promoting known sources of conspiracy theories and disinformation. It is important to tackle the big threat to democracy, just as it is important to combat fraud and protect citizens from financial harm.
Several hon. Members rose—
Sir Mark Hendrick (in the Chair)
I am conscious of the time, so I will limit Back-Bench contributions to six minutes each.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) for securing the debate and for giving us all an opportunity to participate. I am not technically minded, but he mentioned TikTok. In all honesty, I have no idea how it works, but my staff do, so I let them look after all the correspondence and contacts. I thank other Members for their significant contributions to the debate, and for the contributions that will follow.
We are here to discuss a critical issue that affects the very fabric of our society. In an era dominated by digital connectivity, the internet has become an indispensable tool for information transmission and exchange. It has also given rise to filter bubbles and echo chambers that reinforce our existing beliefs and shield us from alternative perspectives. I am very fortunate to have my office staff, who challenge me every day, so I never get an easy passage, so to speak. If I say something, they will always say, “Look, here’s the other side of that story.” It is good to have that challenge, because it keeps us sharp and focused on the issue, making us better understand the direction we are taking.
We live in a time when misinformation and dis- information can spread like wildfire, influencing public opinion, shaping public discourse, and even undermining the very foundations of our democratic systems. It is imperative that we address this issue head-on and take collective action to prevent the further entrenchment of filter bubbles in our online spaces. I am fortunate to have had a very good friend for some 45 or 46 years. If ever I have a problem or need some advice, it his wisdom I go to. He never tells me what I want to hear; he tells me what I need to hear. That helps us form our policies, strategies and thoughts for the way forward in the future.
First and foremost, we must acknowledge the role that social media platforms play in shaping our online experiences. These platforms, while providing a valuable means of communication, also contribute to the creation of filter bubbles by tailoring content to suit our preferences. To combat this, we must advocate for transparency and accountability from these platforms. They must disclose how their algorithms work and take responsibility for the unintended consequences of creating echo chambers.
Education is the most powerful tool in the fight against misinformation. We need to equip individuals with the critical thinking skills necessary to evaluate information critically, discern credible sources from unreliable ones, and challenge their preconceived notions. By fostering media and digital literacy, we empower citizens to navigate the vast online landscape using good judgment, balanced with a healthy scepticism. They say that as we grow older, we become more cynical. I would say that, no, we become sceptical. We are shaped by decisions and experiences, by those around us, and perhaps by the realities of life as well.
Collaboration between Government, technology companies and civil society is essential. We must work together to develop and implement policies that promote transparency, accountability and the ethical use of algorithms. Government should invest in initiatives and strategies that promote media literacy, while technology companies should prioritise the ethical design of their algorithms to mitigate any unintentional elaboration of misinformation and disinformation. This sounds very technical, but the fact is that we need to be wise, sensible and aware. That is what we are saying. By integrating these strategies into their practices, the IT sector can contribute significantly to the prevention of misinformation and disinformation in online filter bubbles.
There must also be encouragement for our online social media platforms to become more diverse. By engaging with individuals who hold different perspectives, we can burst the filter bubbles that insulate us from alternative viewpoints. This not only makes for a more robust and resilient society; it helps in breaking down the walls that misinformation and disinformation build around us. What steps will the Minister’s Department take to engage with platforms such as Meta and Google in building a more user-educated and factually informed society? We need to be aware of the power of media and those companies. It influences our young people—my generation, maybe not as much—because of access.
I conclude by suggesting that tackling misinformation and disinformation in online filter bubbles requires a multi-faceted approach that holds technology companies and platforms accountable and promotes education, critical thinking and collaboration. By taking these steps, we can strive towards a digital landscape that promotes the free exchange of diverse ideas, with the benefits of a more informed and connected society. With the help of the Minister, we can do that. I appreciate the contributions of all those who have spoken in the debate today and those who will speak after me. I believe we are all on the same page. We just need to do it better.
Alex Davies-Jones (Pontypridd) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate under your chairship today, Sir Mark. I thank the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) for securing this timely and important debate on such an important issue.
Let us be clear that the Online Safety Act is an extremely important and very long-overdue piece of legislation. In reality, however, gaps remain in that legislation that need to be addressed. In this debate, we have heard about what are hopefully some positive ways forward.
There is huge cross-party consensus. It is a shame and a frustration that, when cross-party amendments were tabled to the Online Safety Bill, they were not taken seriously enough in Committee and were not carried forward. We raised serious questions about social media platforms, their responsibility to protect users, young and old, and to tackle the rise in disinformation. That was a clear opportunity that has now sadly passed, but the fact remains that this issue needs to be tackled.
This debate is timely, but when the Bill was progressing through Parliament, the debate focused on misleading information around the conflict in Ukraine. We all know that an alarming amount of information has recently been shared online regarding the situation in Israel and the middle east. As the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) mentioned, the horrendous atrocities that occurred on 7 October were livestreamed by Hamas. They wore GoPros and uploaded the footage directly to social media platforms, yet an incredible number of people still did not believe it, saying it was not true or that it was a hoax. How far do we have to go for women in particular to be believed when they report crimes against them and to take this seriously? I cannot help but think that if the Government had listened to the concerns that I and others raised at that time, then we would be in a much better position to deal with these issues. Sadly, we are where we are.
As colleagues have mentioned, we also need to consider the role that AI plays in relation to misinformation and disinformation, particularly the impact of generative AI. That has the power and the potential to be at the forefront of economic growth in the country but, as others have mentioned, with a huge number of elections happening across the world this year, there has never been a more crucial time to tackle the spread of this misinformation and disinformation and the impact that it could have on our democracy. I would be grateful if the Minister reassured us that the Government have a plan; I would welcome his assurances, specifically in light of whatever discussions he has had with the Electoral Commission regarding plans to tackle this ahead of the next UK general election.
The Minister knows that, despite the passing of the Online Safety Act, many of the provisions in the legislation will not be in place for quite some time. In the meantime, Twitter—now X—has given the green light for Donald Trump’s return. Political misinformation has increased since Twitter became X, and right-wing extremists continue to gain political traction on controversial YouTube accounts and on so-called free speech platform Rumble. Platforms to facilitate the increase in political misinformation and extremist hate are sadly readily available and can be all-encompassing. As colleagues have rightly noted, that is nothing new. We only need to cast our minds back to 2020 to remember the disturbing level of fake news and misinformation that was circulating on social media regarding the covid pandemic. From anti-vaxxers to covid conspiracists, the pandemic brought that issue to the forefront of our attention. Only today, it was announced in the media that the UK is in the grip of a sudden spike in measles. Health officials have had to declare the outbreak a national incident, and the surge has been directly linked to a decline in vaccine uptake as a result of a rise in health disinformation from anti-vax conspiracy theories. That causes real-world harm and it needs to be addressed.
Misinformation causes anxiety and fear among many people, and I fear that the provisions in the Act would not go far enough if we faced circumstances similar to the pandemic. We all know that this is wide-ranging, from conspiracy theories about the safety of 5G to nonsense information about the so-called dangers of 15-minute cities, about which my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) spoke so ably. Sadly, those conspiracy theories were not just peddled by lone-wolf actors on social media; they were promoted by parliamentarians. We have to take that issue very seriously.
There are dangerous algorithms that seem to feed off popular misinformation and create these echo chambers and filter bubbles online. They have not helped but have amplified the situation. Would the Minister explain why the Government have decided to pursue an Online Safety Act that has failed to consider platforms’ business models and has instead become entirely focused on regulating content?
Moving on, possibly my biggest concern about misinformation and disinformation is the relationship between what is acceptable online and what is acceptable offline. As we all know, the issue of misinformation and disinformation is closely connected to online extremism. Although the Minister may claim that people can avoid harm online simply by choosing not to view content, that is just not realistic. After all, there is sadly no way to avoid abuse and harassment offline if individuals choose to spout it. In fact, only recently, when I dared to raise concerns and make comments here in Parliament about online misogyny and incel culture and ideology, I experienced a significant level of hate and harassment. Other colleagues have had similar experiences, as we have heard today.
This is a worrying trend, because we all know that online extremism can translate into the radicalisation of people in real-life terms, which can then heighten community tensions and make minority groups more susceptible to verbal and physical abuse and discrimination.
Online harm costs the UK economy £1.5 billion a year; we cannot afford to get this wrong. Online harm not only has that real-world impact, but it puts our country at an economic disadvantage. Recent research has shown that when there is a spike in online abuse towards one specific demographic, that translates to real-world abuse and real-world harm two weeks later, as the police themselves have said. There is only a two-week lag before online harm results in real-world attacks on certain individuals. No one should have to fear for their safety, online or offline.
In short, the Online Safety Act 2023 had the potential to be as world-leading as it was once billed to be, but the Minister must know that is far from being a perfect piece of legislation, particularly when it comes to misinformation and disinformation.
I am clearly not alone in expressing these views. I hope that the Minister has heard the concerns expressed in this wide-ranging debate, and that he will take seriously some of the proposals and move them forward.
Sir Mark Hendrick (in the Chair)
We now move to the contributions from the Front Benches.
John Nicolson (Ochil and South Perthshire) (SNP)
I thank the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) for securing this debate. He and I sat together recently at a Quaker dinner in London, where we discussed disinformation and the coarsening of public debate, and I think that the small cross-party group present at the event all agreed that social media had been one of the driving factors behind that, if not the only one.
In 2015, as a new MP and a new user of social media, it took me quite some time to adapt. At first, I thought that when people wrote to me on Twitter the rules of normal social intercourse applied—that I might disagree with someone but if I responded courteously and offered facts, a respectful dialogue would then ensue or we could agree to disagree amicably.
Historywoman, a professor from Edinburgh University no less, soon disabused me of that view. The venom was staggering, and apparently it was just because we disagreed on facts about the constitution; she screamed abuse. Then there was Wings Over Scotland, with more eyeball-bulging, temple-throbbing hate. I had offered some facts about trans people, which he did not like; in fact, he hated it so much that he pounded his keyboard for months in a frenzy.
I got to understand the concept of pile-ons when a sinister organisation called the LGB Alliance decided to reward folk who gave them money by reposting disinformation and abuse about me from their account—a charity account, no less. Finally, when someone called me a “greasy bender” and Twitter moderators judged that comment to be factual and fair comment, I realised that courteous replies did not quite cut it and I became a fan of the block button.
Why are these people so angry and why do they believe that they can behave online in a way that would be considered certifiable offline? I sit on the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, which has undertaken long and detailed inquiries into the areas of disinformation and misinformation, and the impact of online filter bubbles. So what are filter bubbles? They are the result of algorithms designed to increase user engagement rather than correct inaccuracies; in other words, they are designed to show people content again and again based on their viewer biases. For some people, that can be innocent enough—I seem to be directed towards endless posts and films about house restoration options and Timothée Chalamet’s latest outfits—but for others, the filter bubbles are far from benign. Indeed, Facebook itself warned its own staff that its algorithms
“exploit the human brain’s attractiveness to divisiveness”.
What does that mean in practice? It means that if someone watches one conspiracy video, the chances are 70% or more that another conspiracy video reinforcing their paranoia will be recommended for them to watch immediately afterwards. The result is to drive some users into a frenzy. This is why some people blow up 5G masts, convinced that they are the cause of covid. It is not just the underprivileged and ignorant who fall prey; even graduates of the world’s most elite universities can become victims. Donald Trump thought that injecting bleach could cure covid and we now know from the covid inquiry that Boris Johnson wondered whether blowing a hairdryer up his nostrils might save him from the pandemic.
Filter bubbles pose an enormous threat to our democracy. We know how heavily engaged Vladimir Putin was in encouraging people to vote for Brexit by spreading disinformation online. He believed that Brexit would weaken the European Union and Britain’s economy. He was successful but only half right. In the United States, swept away in a tsunami of ignorance, prejudice and shared disinformation, those who stormed the Capitol believed that the victor had lost and the loser had won. Who knew that one of the world’s great democracies would be so vulnerable?
At the Select Committee, we have heard harrowing stories about vulnerable young people fed content persuading them to commit suicide. One father’s testimony was especially harrowing, and I will never forget it. So what responsibility should Members of Parliament take? Surely we should have been much tougher, and dealt much sooner with cynical and unscrupulous social media companies that are driven only by profits and scared only by threats to those profits.
Of course, politicians are directly responsible for the way in which disinformation that they initiate is spread offline and online. All of us—at least almost all—condemned Nigel Farage’s overtly racist Brexit campaign poster, with its image of outsiders supposedly queuing to get into the UK; it had hideous echoes of the 1930s. But what of the much mocked and seemingly more innocuous Tory conference speeches last September? Delegates were told that the UK Government had prevented bans on meat and single-car usage, and had stopped the requirement of us all having seven household bins. The claims were risible, false and mocked but, strikingly, Cabinet Minister after Cabinet Minister tried to defend them when questioned by journalists. Does it matter? Yes, it does. It has a corrosive effect on voters’ trust. Knowingly spreading disinformation helps only those who would undermine our democratic institutions. Some call it post-truth politics: conditioning voters to believe no one and nothing—to believe that there is no difference between truth and lies, and no difference between “Channel 4 News” and GB News.
Our Committee found that there have been repeated successful attempts by bad-faith actors to insert their talking points into our democratic discourse online. The social media companies have shown little interest in tackling them. They were disdainful witnesses when we summoned them and, disturbingly, we have seen our once proudly independent broadcasting sector polluted with the arrival of GB News to challenge long-standing, universally accepted standards. Its aim: to become as successful as Fox News in the dissemination of on-air propaganda online and offline. We all hope that the Online Safety Act 2023 will help but, alas, I fear that the evidence hitherto suggests that our woefully passive regulator, Ofcom, will continue to be found wanting.
Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) on securing this debate, which has come at a very important time as we face an election year, not only in this country but across the world. It was a theme developed by the hon. Member for Glasgow South (Stewart Malcolm McDonald) when he talked about the vigilance that we all must demonstrate in the coming months and years as, whatever our political stripe, lots of fake news and information will be thrown at us. I was particularly interested to listen to his views on the recent election in Taiwan and the interference of China. It is sad that the pedlar of fake news himself last night won a huge victory in the Iowa caucuses, and I do hope that the America that elected Barack Obama will come to the fore in November.
I was particularly saddened to listen to the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy). I have known him since we were both was elected in 2010, as a doughty fighter for social justice for those whose voices have not been heard. He has been a very strong advocate for his constituents and he is one of the most patriotic people I have ever met, so when I hear of the accusations he has faced online, it fills me with sadness—not only because I am a Member of Parliament, like him, but because I feel that in the world we are living in, it makes it extremely difficult to put any view across. That means that people who come here, especially women and those who identify as being from an ethnic minority, can sometimes be afraid to speak for the abuse they will get online from people outside this place, and very often outside this country. As many have said, that is ultimately a danger to our democracy.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) is right to say that the people who write to us with these crazy conspiracy theories actually believe them and nothing can be said to change their minds. I have someone who writes to me every week with increasingly outlandish views about what the next Labour Government will do. As often as I tell him that he is completely wrong, he tells me that I am a liar and he knows better than everybody else. What can we say to these people?
The hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins), a former Chair of the Select Committee, talked about the Online Safety Act, which was one of those rare occasions when the entire House comes together. He is right that social media platforms finally need to answer the question of whether they are just platforms or whether they are publishers. They should be held to account, because ultimately they are the mouthpiece for these crazy, odd, eccentric conspiracy theories that have permeated our society.
The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who probably has not missed a Westminster Hall debate since the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole and I were elected in 2010, spoke about ensuring that online platforms can be diverse; he made a great contribution, as always. I must congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones), who was the shadow Minister before me and has proven to be quite a hard act to follow—[Interruption.] Who said that? [Laughter.] I pay tribute to the work of my hon. Friend in her new role on violence against women and girls. I know she will be a strong advocate for them, as she has proven already. She showed that in her passionate speech. I thank her for all her work in this area, and I think the entire House would agree with me. I listened to a very passionate and powerful speech by the hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (John Nicolson)—I hope I pronounced that correctly, because very often people mispronounce my constituency. He gave lots of sad examples that were all too true. It is nothing we have not heard before; sadly, what he talks about has become all too familiar.
The concept of filter bubbles captures how digital platforms personalise information based on individuals’ web history. These personalised digital environments create universes of information tailored to individual preferences, opinions and beliefs. This results in information being pushed on to a person’s algorithm even if it is not necessarily true, yet because it might be something that already aligns with the person’s beliefs, it could be taken as fact. In the realm of digital thought bubbles, individuals are primarily exposed to content aligned with their existing views, potentially fuelling polarisation and diminishing mutual understanding. The challenge we face, as highlighted by the Writers’ Institute, is to navigate a society where finding common ground becomes increasingly elusive.
As we have heard today, we MPs are more than familiar with echo chambers. Most can see that echo chambers or filter bubbles affect others. However, accepting that they affect ourselves is more of a challenging task. When discussing this topic, we think of Americans with the Fox News logo burned on to the television screens, or our conspiracy theorist uncle sitting there in his tin foil hat, yet we fail to consider that we ourselves are scrolling through Twitter or Instagram, instantly consuming the posts we enjoy.
On a lighter note, you will be pleased to learn, Sir Mark, that through numerous posts I have discovered that Manchester City is the greatest team in the world. I know that Sir Mark is a long-time supporter, so I am sure he will tell me that that is absolutely correct and reaffirms what he already knows to be true. But in the interests of honesty, among our hon. Friends, I think he might concede that the algorithm is feeding us posts that may be biased or that tell us what we would like to hear. Members may think, with my example of football, that these clever algorithms are not particularly harmful, but as many have said, they have negative and dangerous consequences. They will limit our freedom of thought and are a danger to the democratic freedoms we have enjoyed throughout the years in this country and around the world. This is because within those filter bubbles divisive ideologies can take root and thrive, leading to the erosion of trust in our institutions.
We cannot ignore the fact that these bubbles are a by-product of algorithms designed to maximise user engagement. Although they keep us engaged, they can simultaneously trap us in a feedback loop of our own preconceptions. The danger lies in the fact that citizens become increasingly susceptible to manipulation, as misinformation tailored to their worldview becomes indistinguishable from reality.
Recent research has shown that absorption into these thought bubbles is not inevitable or a passive process. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston said, Oxford University does not think that filter bubbles affect the majority, but somewhere between 6% and 8% of the UK population. As my hon. Friend said, that might sound like a small figure, but it is millions of people.
What sets that 8% of people in echo chambers apart from those who are not? The primary causal mechanism is self-selection, when individuals actively choose to immerse themselves in echo chambers because they prefer news that aligns with and reinforces their existing views. It is not a process of hypnosis by the Twitter algorithm, over which one has no control. It is through an active dismissal of news sources that do not agree with their opinion.
Recent studies have gone as far as to suggest that, for some, passive personalisation results in a more varied source breadth. That is because passive personalisation is shown to enhance the probability of algorithms suggesting additional news content to individuals already immersed in news consumption. For those who are less like to actively seek out the news, it promotes news in the first place. For people who have no interest in current affairs, these algorithms produce a wider variety of news than they would otherwise see.
As such, the filter bubble theory does not seem to be comprehensive. In many cases, algorithm selections lead to slightly more diverse news than if the algorithm had not been used. It is easy to see why many older people, or those who do not have smartphones, simply consume the news by reading the same paper every day. I must admit publicly that my grandparents were avid readers of the Daily Mail and believed everything it said—imagine the conversations when I became a Member of Parliament.
Many people took their paper’s stance as gospel, as it aligned with their own political and social views. Now we can google a news story and hundreds of different stances are presented to us immediately, as is the ability to discuss and engage with those who do not agree with us. Of course, even if the proportion of people in these thought bubbles are small, that does not mean that the issue is not dangerous. We should work so that nobody is in a thought bubble. I believe that can be helped through proper education, giving people the skills to spot when they are in a thought bubble and arm them with the tools to get out.
In an era dominated by digital connectivity, the ability to navigate the vast sea of information online has become an essential skill. Sir Mark, I can see that I am pushed for time but I will try to speak on this issue as quickly as I can. One key aspect of cultivating digital literacy is the understanding of how online platforms curate content and of the formation of thought bubbles. A well-rounded education in digital skills plays a pivotal role in equipping individuals with the tools necessary to prevent entrapment in these echo chambers. An informed understanding of the process is critical, as is educating individuals on algorithms.
As a Welsh MP, I should raise the example of Wales. Welsh schools have introduced a digital competence framework, which teaches children from the age of three how to responsibly find and use information on the internet, further encouraging fact finding and verifying. As the child grows up to 16, the level of skills taught gradually increases, so as they first navigate the wide world of social media, they are best placed to curate their own nuanced social media needs.
As I said to someone this morning, by the age of six it is often too late; children already have exposure to social media platforms and devices. At one of my first events as shadow Minister, I saw the amazing example of the Kingston University digital skills campaign, which involves every student there having to pass an exam in a digital skills course. That enables students to be confident with media literacy and allows them to be resilient in the face of thought bubbles.
We face something we have never faced before. All that we have known to be true is in danger. It is only through education and debates like this that we can come to grips with those who seek to bring down our democracy.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology (Saqib Bhatti)
I am conscious of time and of the broad range of this debate, but I will try to address as many issues as possible. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) for securing this important debate on preventing misinformation and disinformation in online filter bubbles, and for all his campaigning on the subject throughout the passage of the Online Safety Act. He has particularly engaged with me in the run-up to today’s well-versed debate, for which I thank hon. Members across the Chamber.
May I echo the sentiments expressed towards my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy)? I thank him for sharing his reflections. I was not going to say this today, but after the ceasefire vote I myself have faced a number of threats and a lot of abuse, so I have some personal reflections on the issue as well. I put on the record my invitation to Members across the House to share their experiences. I certainly will not hesitate to deal with social media companies where I see that they must do more. I know anecdotally, from speaking to colleagues, that it is so much worse for female Members. Across the House, we will not be intimidated in how we vote and how we behave, but clearly we are ever vigilant of the risk.
Since the crisis began, the Technology Secretary and I have already met with the large social media platforms X, TikTok, Meta, Snap and YouTube. My predecessor—my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully)—and the Technology Secretary also held a roundtable with groups from the Jewish community such as the Antisemitism Policy Trust. They also met Tell MAMA to discuss Muslim hate, which has been on the rise. I will not hesitate to reconvene those groups; I want to put that clearly on the record.
It is evident that more and more people are getting their news through social media platforms, which use algorithms. Through that technology, platform services can automatically select and promote content for many millions of users, tailored to them individually following automated analysis of their viewing habits. Many contributors to the debate have argued that the practice creates filter bubbles, where social media users’ initial biases are constantly reaffirmed with no counterbalance.
The practice can drive people to adopt extreme and divisive political viewpoints. This is a hugely complex area, not least because the creation of nudge factors in these echo chambers raises less the question of truth, but of how we can protect the free exchange of ideas and the democratisation of speech, of which the internet and social media have often been great drivers. There is obviously a balance to be achieved.
I did not know that you are a Man City fan, Sir Mark. I am a Manchester United fan. My hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare talked about fish tackle videos; as a tortured Manchester United fan, I get lots of videos from when times were good. I certainly hope that they return.
The Government are committed to preserving freedom of expression, both online and offline. It is vital that users are able to choose what content they want to view or engage with. At the same time, we agree that online platforms must take responsibility for the harmful effects of the design of their services and business models. Platforms need to prioritise user safety when designing their services to ensure that they are not being used for illegal activity and ensure that children are protected. That is the approach that drove our groundbreaking Online Safety Act.
I will move on to radicalisation, a subject that has come up quite a bit today. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) for his eloquent speech and his description of the journey of the Online Safety Act. Open engagement-driven algorithms have been designed by tech companies to maximise revenue by serving content that will best elicit user engagement. There is increasing evidence that the recommender algorithms amplify extreme material to increase user engagement and de-amplify more moderate speech.
Algorithmic promotion, another piece of online architecture, automatically nudges the user towards certain online choices. Many popular social media platforms use recommender algorithms, such as YouTube’s filter bubble. Critics argue that they present the user with overly homogeneous content based on interests, ideas and beliefs, creating extremist and terrorist echo chambers or rabbit holes. There are a multitude of features online that intensify and support the creation of those echo chambers, from closed or selective chat groups to unmoderated forums.
Research shows that individuals convicted of terrorist attacks rarely seek opposing information that challenges their beliefs. Without diverse views, online discussion groups grow increasingly partisan, personalised and compartmentalised. The polarisation of online debates can lead to an environment that is much more permissive of extremist views. That is why the Online Safety Act, which received Royal Assent at the end of October, focuses on safety by design. We are in the implementation phase, which comes under my remit; we await further evidence from the data that implementation will produce.
Under the new regulation, social media platforms will need to assess the risk of their services facilitating illegal content and activity such as illegal abuse, harassment or stirring up hatred. They will also need to assess the risk of children being harmed on their services by content that does not cross the threshold of illegality but is harmful to them, such as content that promotes suicide, self-harm or eating disorders.
Platforms will then need to take steps to mitigate the identified risks. Ofcom, the new online safety regulator, will set out in codes of practice the steps that providers can take to mitigate particular risks. The new safety duties apply across all areas of a service, including the way in which it is designed, used and operated. If aspects of a service’s design, such as the use of algorithms, exacerbate the risk that users will carry out illegal activity such as illegal abuse or harassment, the new duties could apply. Ofcom will set out the steps that providers can take to make their algorithms safer.
I am conscious of time, so I will move on to the responsibility around extremism. Beyond the duties to make their services safe by design and reduce risk in that way, the new regulation gives providers duties to implement systems and processes for filtering out and moderating content that could drive extremism. For example, under their illegal content duty, social media providers will need to put systems in place to seek out and remove content that encourages terrorism. They will need to do the same for abusive content that could incite hatred on the basis of characteristics such as race, religion or sexual orientation. They will also need to remove content in the form of state-sponsored or state-linked disinformation aimed at interfering with matters such as UK elections and political decision making, or other false information that is intended to cause harm.
Elections have come up quite a bit in this debate. The defending democracy taskforce, which has been instituted to protect our democracy, is meeting regularly and regular discussions are going on; it is cross-nation and cross-Government, and we certainly hope to share more information in the coming months. We absolutely recognise the responsibilities of Government to deal with the issue and the risks that arise from misinformation around elections. We are not shying away from this; we are leading on it across Government.
The idea put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare has certainly been debated. He has spoken to me about it before, and I welcome the opportunity to have this debate. He was right to say that this is the start of the conversation—I accept that—and right to say that he may not yet have the right answer, but I am certainly open to further discussions with him to see whether there are avenues that we could look at.
I am very confident that the Online Safety Act, through its insistence on social media companies dealing with the issue and on holding social media companies to account on their terms and conditions, will be a vital factor. My focus will absolutely be on the implementation of the Act, because we know that that will go quite a long way.
We have given Ofcom, the new independent regulator, the power to require providers to change their algorithms and their service design where necessary to reduce the risk of users carrying out illegal activity or the risk of children being harmed. In overseeing the new framework, Ofcom will need to carry out its duties in a way that protects freedom of expression. We have also created a range of new transparency and freedom-of-expression duties for the major social media platforms; these will safeguard pluralism in public debate and give users more certainty about what they can expect online. As I have said, the Government take the issue incredibly seriously and will not hesitate to hold social media companies to account.
John Penrose
I thank everybody who has contributed: it shows that there is a great cross-party consensus on the need for more. I urge the Minister to understand that, because although the Online Safety Act is good and important and does vital things, I do not think that it will be enough in this area. It used to be said, and is still true, that a lie is halfway around the world before the truth has got its boots on.
Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).
Child Poverty: Greater Manchester
(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Sir Mark Hendrick (in the Chair)
I will call Afzal Khan to move the motion and then call the Minister to respond. As is the convention in 30-minute debates, there will be no opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up. Interventions are okay, but there can be no speeches other than the Minister’s and the mover’s.
Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered child poverty in Greater Manchester.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Sir Mark. I am deeply biased, but I believe that Manchester is the best city in the world. We have everything: rich cultural diversity, a bustling music scene, incredible football heritage, amazing food and beautiful green spaces. With two world-class universities, we are leading the way in education, research and innovation. However, among the vibrant energy that defines our great city, there exists a grim reality for too many families.
In 1821, the first edition of The Manchester Guardian reported that official figures citing that 8,000 children were receiving “free education”—a proxy term for poverty in those days—were wildly inaccurate: the actual figure was almost 25,000 children. Two centuries later, the official statistics on deprivation still mask the real number of children living in poverty in Manchester. We know that in Greater Manchester there are hundreds of thousands of children and families grappling with the harsh implications of poverty, made worse in recent years by the Tories’ economic and cost of living crisis. However, child poverty is not just a statistic: it is a stark realisation of systemic failure by central Government, of persistent inequalities and of a long list of unmet promises. Greater Manchester is a region that embodies resilience, but unfortunately we are not immune to the deep-seated issues that contribute to cycles of poverty, particularly among the youngest of our residents.
In this debate, I will highlight just how bad child poverty in Greater Manchester is, and the range of factors and poor policy decisions by the Conservatives here in Westminster that have caused it. I will also pay tribute to the excellent work of Mayor Andy Burnham and Labour-led Manchester City Council to alleviate child poverty despite shoestring local authority budgets, and what Labour would do in government to tackle this important problem.
The UN lead on extreme poverty and human rights has said that, in the levels of poverty over which they preside, the UK Government are in violation of international law. According to Greater Manchester Poverty Action, an incredible organisation based in Ardwick that focuses on research and outreach, we have about 250,000 children living in poverty. The End Child Poverty coalition recently found that 11 children in a class of 30 in Greater Manchester live in poverty, which is higher than both the England and the UK average.
Navendu Mishra (Stockport) (Lab)
I congratulate my constituency neighbour and good friend on securing this important debate. I agree that Manchester is the best city. However, my hon. Friend forgot to mention that Stockport is the best town not only in England, but in Britain.
Does my hon. Friend agree with me on a point about child poverty rates? In my constituency of Stockport, we have seen a 3.9% increase in child poverty since 2014; the average increase in the north-west region is 4.1%. Does he agree that the Conservative Government in Westminster have failed children not just in Greater Manchester, but across the UK?
Afzal Khan
I will simply say yes; I will make some of those points later.
Manchester City Council has the third highest rate of child poverty among local authorities in England. The Manchester, Gorton constituency has the sixth highest rate, with just over half of all children living in poverty. There are other ways in which we can understand the scale and impact of poverty. For example, 27% of secondary school pupils receive free school meals in Manchester, compared with 14.1% overall in England. Almost 20% of Manchester residents claim out-of-work benefits, compared with just 14.2% across England. Nearly 7,000 children across Greater Manchester were homeless on Christmas day, and the number of food parcels for children issued in Manchester, Gorton by the Trussell Trust network has risen by 81% since 2022. That all affects life expectancy, with men and women in Manchester living for an average of four years less than others across the country.
Alarmingly, the highest rates of child poverty are found among ethnic minority communities. Children in Bangladeshi and Pakistani households are most likely out of all ethnic groups to live with low income and material deprivation. After 14 years of harsh Tory cuts, child poverty levels in Manchester city have increased by almost 10%.
It has not always been like this. The Labour party, both in government and in opposition, has always prioritised tackling poverty, particularly child and pensioner poverty. In 1999, the Labour Government made a remarkable pledge to end child poverty in a generation. Gordon Brown set a further target of cutting child poverty in half in 10 years; as Chancellor and then as Prime Minister, he committed considerable resources to achieving that. In those 13 years, 2 million children and pensioners were lifted out of poverty, through a range of anti-poverty policies including spending on welfare, the introduction of the national minimum wage, the Sure Start initiative, financial support for childcare and increases in education spending. The Child Poverty Act was passed in 2010, enshrining in law four child poverty targets to be met within a decade.
In 2016, the Conservatives repealed the Child Poverty Act, axing Labour’s four targets, the requirement for local authorities to develop child poverty strategies, and the duty on local authorities to conduct child poverty needs assessments over 14 years. The Tories have presided over monumental cuts in public sector spending that have worsened poverty levels, meaning that we now have more food banks than police stations. The shameful level of child poverty and deprivation that we see across Manchester today is the direct result of punitive austerity measures brought in by the Conservatives in 2010, and of the Tory Government’s failure to undo any of them since then.
Too many issues have caused the high level of child poverty in Manchester, so I will focus on three: the two-child benefit cap, rising living costs and health deprivation. Introduced in 2017, the two-child benefit cap was supposed to incentivise parents into work by preventing them from claiming child tax credit or universal credit for any third or subsequent child. It has affected 1.5 million children, further impoverishing families rather than increasing employment. This has had a disproportionate impact on Manchester, with 22% of the children in my constituency alone living in affected households. The two-child limit impacts Muslims and orthodox Jewish communities more than any other faith group. For Muslims in particular we know that poverty levels are already high and 60% of all Muslim children live in families with three or more dependent children. Recent research has found that the two-child limit causes poverty—clearly failing to meet its ends.
There is no doubt that the cost of living crisis impacts us all, but no one more so than low-income families. More and more of people’s incomes are being diverted to paying soaring rents, mortgage costs and extortionate energy bills, and food is becoming increasingly more expensive. Those on benefits are struggling to make ends meet.
Around five in six low-income households on universal credit are going without at least one essential such as food, a warm home or toiletries. Without universal free school meals, too many children go to school hungry, hindering their education and development. Manchester City Council has used the household support fund to address the impact of fuel and food poverty and to provide support to the most vulnerable households. The current scheme provides support to 60,000 residents through free school meals in the holidays for 40,000 children, cost of living support payments for 12,500 vulnerable households, and additional holiday activity fund support for 6,000 children.
Despite the perpetual cost of living crisis that we find ourselves in, the Tories have decided that households will need no more support beyond March 2024 and have scrapped that vital lifeline for millions of people across the country. The complete loss of that funding in the next financial year will have a significant impact on the council’s financial capacity to provide support to some of Manchester’s most vulnerable households and to deliver the free school meal programmes in the holidays to Manchester children.
Poverty is also a major issue for children’s health. Many health challenges and inequalities in later life have their foundations in early childhood, with the poorest families experiencing the worst health outcomes. In the most horrific cases, health challenges caused by poverty end children’s lives early. In 2020, Awaab Ishak from Rochdale died from a respiratory condition caused by extensive mould in the flat that he lived in with his parents in social housing. The Levelling Up Secretary described Awaab’s death as
“a tragedy that should never have occurred.”
I agree with him, but without proper support and funding for tackling poverty and improving social housing, we cannot guarantee that there will not be another Awaab.
Parents on low incomes worry about being able to offer their children a healthy lifestyle as they are less able to afford healthy foods. The recent increases in household energy costs mean that many families are choosing eating over heating. Living in a cold home hugely impacts physical health, especially by worsening respiratory illnesses.
One in three children are not school ready in terms of their development when they start in reception. For children eligible for free school meals, almost 40% have not achieved a good level of development at the point of starting school. That has an impact throughout their lives. The foundations for the healthy development of a robust respiratory system are built during infancy. Babies living in cold housing during their first winter will be burning up calories on maintaining body temperature rather than organ development.
The knock-on effects of socioeconomic inequality cost NHS England £4.8 billion a year—almost a fifth of the total NHS budget. If children had a better, healthier start in life, the NHS would have much more capacity and resource to help those who most need it.
As I have described today, the Conservatives are failing to look after our children. It is not because they do not know how to do so, but because there is no interest in improving the lives of vulnerable people and taking them out of poverty. There are straightforward solutions that would have an unimaginable impact on the lives of children and families trapped in poverty. We must consider scrapping the two-child benefit limit and the benefit cap; restoring the household support fund; expanding free school meals; ensuring that benefits for children are regularly uprated in line with inflation; supporting childcare costs; and providing local authorities with long-term, sustainable funding to deliver the vital services our constituents depend on. These are not all the solutions, but they would go a long way in alleviating child poverty.
In Manchester, while vulnerable children are exposed to the harsh cruelties of the Conservative Government, they are cushioned by the incredible work done by Mayor Andy Burnham and Manchester City Council. As the Government have no plan or strategy to address poverty, Manchester City Council and other local authorities across Greater Manchester have taken matters into their own hands and created their own anti-poverty strategies. To quote my colleague, Councillor Tom Robinson, executive member for healthy Manchester and adult social care:
“We know that the Government has given up trying to govern, but we in Manchester have not.”
Manchester’s anti-poverty strategy includes a range of measures, from helping residents on low incomes to manage their spending and reduce debt, to ensuring access to culture and leisure opportunities to help people experiencing poverty to have a good quality of life. Some of the other incredible initiatives delivered by Manchester City Council to help the most vulnerable include setting up a cost of living advice line on debt, bills and food support, which has already supported almost 8,000 people; distributing £55,000-worth of cash and household goods through the welfare provision scheme to those suffering financial hardship; and providing school uniform grants through Manchester Central food bank.
Mayor Andy Burnham recognises that food poverty is one of the biggest scourges on our society, with food bank usage in the city region higher than most other parts of the country. He launched the first ever food poverty action plan, calling for a campaign to increase uptake of Healthy Start vouchers, the provision of debt and welfare advice alongside food handouts, and the appointment of a poverty lead in each council and by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority. Many of these initiatives were recommended by the Greater Manchester Poverty Commission 10 years ago, chaired by the then Bishop of Manchester, the Right Reverend Nigel McCulloch, who called for, among other things, initiatives to reduce energy bills, access to financial support and services, and ensuring that people can access affordable fresh fruit and vegetables.
However, there is only so much we can do at a local level without ambition and investment from central Government. Under a Labour Government, this will change. Universal credit must work for those who rely on it, so Labour will reform the system so that it is effective in supporting vulnerable people and alleviating poverty. We will make it a fairer system that restores dignity and security, and we will address persistent inequalities, support workers and help people back into work. Our new deal for working people will cut poverty, increase wages and improve workers’ rights.
In conclusion, as we have seen, child poverty is not a stand-alone issue, nor is it caused by one single thing. From health disparities to educational challenges, poor housing conditions and chronic low pay, the interconnected web of factors that cause and contribute to child poverty are extensive, but not undefeatable. My questions to the Minister today are very simple. Why have the Conservatives persistently enacted policies that make child poverty worse? When will they finally call a general election and make way for a Labour Government to take back the reins and clean up their horrible mess? British children deserve so much better. We have seen the incredible impact Labour councils can make. All children deserve to grow up under a Labour Government. Their future depends on it.
The Minister for Employment (Jo Churchill)
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark. I first thank the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) for securing this debate. I am sure we all believe that we represent the best place in the world, although I feel a little outflanked today, given the presence of the hon. Gentleman, the hon. Member for Stockport (Navendu Mishra) and my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton North East (Mark Logan), who is sitting behind me. All of them are probably fighting for the constituency they represent to be recognised as the best place in Manchester. As the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton articulated, it is a wonderful and vibrant city with a huge number of positives driving its resources.
Obviously, I disagree with the picture that the hon. Gentleman has painted. I do not believe that any Member elected to this place wants to see any child living in poverty in our constituencies. I fully understand the passion that drives the contributions on this important issue. The hon. Gentleman himself has explained the complexity of the issue, and how the compounding of many factors and variables makes it an enormous challenge. I am very proud that it was us who introduced not only universal credit, which has transformed lives, to replace the old legacy benefits system, but free school meals for children in reception, year 1 and year 2. I gently say that we will probably agree to disagree at the end of this debate, but I will lay out what we have done. I always urge, in areas such as this, that we all work across the Floor to help all our children rise to fulfil their talents.
I start by reassuring colleagues about our commitment to a strong welfare system to support those most in need. That is reflected in the £276 billion that we will spend through the welfare system in Great Britain this financial year, including a £124 billion package on people of working age and their children. Having uprated in line with inflation this year, we have announced a further increase of 6.7% in working-age benefits for 2024-25, subject to parliamentary approval, and that is well ahead of inflation and its projections. On top of that, we are increasing the local housing allowance from April, which will give a further 1.6 million low-income households the support that they need.
I know that many people are concerned about the cost of living, as the hon. Gentleman said. The Government’s commitment to provide support is reflected in the further £104 billion provided in this area over 2022-23 and 2024-25. In particular, 8 million households across the UK on eligible means-tested benefits have received the first of three cost of living payments totalling up to £900 in this financial year. That includes over 400,000 homes in Greater Manchester, and I am very pleased to confirm that the final payment will be paid to most eligible households next month to further help ease the burden.
I think there is a small area of agreement on the household support fund. For people who require that extra support, we have provided an additional £1 billion of funding, including the Barnett impact, to enable the extension of the household support fund until March. As with all such issues, we keep these things under constant review in the usual way, and before the announcements in the spring, it is not right to say it has ended. This current household support package finishes in March, but it will be kept under review. The covid pandemic and Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine have put pressure on virtually everyone, and the household support fund has been a hugely important asset. It has been in existence since October 2021 and we have provided a total of £2.5 billion in that time. It was introduced at a time when the pandemic placed real pressures on the economy, and it has provided that support through these disrupted times.
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman knows that the 10 upper-tier local authorities that make up Greater Manchester have together been allocated £134.6 million since October 2021, including £32.3 million for Manchester City Council, with nearly £13 million allocated to it in the last round. I was really pleased to hear his great examples of local authorities, but the third sector, which is so important in this area, has spent that money in order to add value. Funding has been distributed broadly in the sector and includes financial support to recent care leavers.
While we remain committed to a strong welfare safety net for families who need it, particularly during challenging times, we have always believed that the best way to help children in families who are struggling with their financial circumstances is through work. The hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton said himself that levels of worklessness in his area are higher. Our approach is based on the clear evidence of the importance that work, particularly full-time work, plays in lifting children out of poverty. The most recent data showed that in the 2021-22 period, children living in workless households were five times more likely to be in absolute poverty after housing costs than those in households where adults worked, which shows how important work is.
The data also showed that there were 400,000 fewer children in absolute poverty after housing costs compared with 2009-10—hardly the glowing record that the hon. Gentleman painted. In the north-west in particular, in the three years to 2021, absolute child poverty reduced by 8 percentage points compared with the three years before 2010 after housing costs were accounted for. There are now over 1 million fewer workless households than in 2010. That is more people working and 680,000 fewer children growing up in a home where no one works. As of today, there are 934,000 vacancies across the UK, so our focus is to work with our work coaches across the Department for Work and Pensions family, holding people’s hands and giving them confidence to step into work and progress into financial independence.
I speak to families regularly, as we all do, and they tell me that the two biggest barriers into work are childcare and transport. Manchester is a thriving transport hub and the extension of the £2 bus fares by this Government provides affordable travel options for many. Furthermore, we are extending childcare support so that from September, eligible working parents in England will have access to 30 hours of free childcare per week for 38 weeks of the year from when their child is nine months old.
Universal credit can provide up to 85% of a parent’s childcare costs, and in June last year we increased that by almost 50% to £951 for a single child and £1,630 a month for families with two or more. Importantly, we can also help with advances to help people into work.
We are not stopping there. From April this year, subject to approval by Parliament, the maximum universal credit childcare amounts will increase further to over £1,000 a month for single children and over £1,700 for two or more children. We want to support people into work and allow them to progress. As I said, work coaches and those in our DWP centres stand ready. The national living wage has increased by some £6,700 since we first introduced it in 2016. This year, it has gone up to £11.44—an increase of 9.8%. That is not the record the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton painted.
To conclude, we are committed to providing opportunities for parents, wherever they live in the UK, to succeed in work. That is the only sustainable way of tackling child poverty in the longer term. It balances the needs of families on benefits with the expectations of taxpayers who contribute to the system. At the same time, as we have done throughout this challenging time, we will of course continue to ensure that vulnerable families have the support they need through the welfare system—but that is a job for all of us. I thank the hon. Gentleman.
Question put and agreed to.
Illegal Vapes
(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Peter Gibson (Darlington) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the matter of the use and sale of illegal vapes.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark, and I am pleased to have secured this debate, in order to highlight my concerns about the use and sale of illegal vapes.
As a country, we should be pleased with the progress that we have made in reducing smoking, with smoking rates falling to their lowest since records began; now, only 12.9% of the population smoke. In some part, this progress is down to the wide array of nicotine replacement products: patches, pouches, gum, and of course, in more recent years, vapes.
However, despite vapes being an effective alternative for adults to use in order to quit smoking, we must be concerned about the risks they pose to children and non-smokers. Vapes are not risk-free. Nicotine is a highly addictive substance, whatever means are used to absorb it, and there remain unanswered questions about the longer-term use of vaping. As Professor Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer, has said:
“If you smoke, vaping is much safer; if you don’t smoke, don’t vape.”
I have concerns about vaping that I wish to raise with the Minister in this debate. They are threefold: first, the availability of vaping products to children; secondly, the sale and supply of illegal vaping products to children and adults; and thirdly, the organised crime and exploitation that lie behind the illegal products.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I commend the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate. Many people see vaping as an alternative to smoking and it probably is, but that does not mean that it is, in some cases, any less destructive. Indeed, it has become an overnight epidemic, with vape shops popping up, including in Newtownards, the main town in my constituency. My concern has always been about the regulation of these pop-up shops; they come here and they disappear, only to pop up somewhere else.
Does the hon. Gentleman share that concern and agree that there must be a licence to sell vapes, which should be vigorously checked by the local council to ensure that laws are being adhered to, so that the things he has expressed concern about regarding children gaining access to vapes cannot happen?
Peter Gibson
It would not be a Westminster Hall debate without an intervention from the hon. Gentleman. He anticipates two of the points that I am about to come on to in my speech—first, the popping up of these shops; and secondly, the need for licensing. So, I thank him for his intervention.
Legally supplied cigarettes have reached a price that puts them beyond the reach of children’s pocket money. That has been brought about by a raft of measures, including a ban on smaller packets, a ban on advertising, plain packaging, concealed displays and raising the legal age to buy cigarettes to 18. However, we have seen a worrying trend of children taking up the habit of vaping; the latest figures show that some 20% of children have tried vaping.
Those children have taken up the use of a product that is designed to help people to quit smoking, but—this is the important point—they themselves have never smoked. We know that the flavours, packaging and design of vapes are attractive to children, and that vapes are on very visible display in shops, in contrast to the cigarettes that they are designed to replace.
As with the sale of cigarettes, the sale of nicotine-related products is restricted to people over 18, but that restriction is clearly not working. To my mind, many of the measures that we introduced to curtail smoking need to be considered again in addressing this problem.
I have met the parents of children who are addicted to vaping. It is not uncommon to see children vaping in the street and the whole disposable vape industry is visibly responsible for the increase of litter on our streets, which local authorities face huge difficulties in dealing with and which increases the risk of fire in general waste collections.
The Local Government Association is deeply concerned about what to do with the almost 200 million disposable vapes that are thrown away every year in our country, and we should all be concerned about their environmental impact. However, my primary concern is the use and sale of illegal vapes, which do not always comply with our legislation and often have much higher concentrations of nicotine. They are sold with much higher capacities than their legal equivalents. It is estimated that a staggering one out of every three vapes sold in the UK is illicit. They are being sold with no care whatever for the user.
In the north-east, we have seen tragic cases of young children hospitalised as a result of using high-strength illegal vapes. The sale of these products is often concentrated in pop-up mini-markets, which are easily identifiable and distinguishable from reliable and traditional corner shops. Once upon a time criminality hid away, but these operators hide in plain sight. These shops appear quite rapidly, with blocked out windows, vivid lighting and a sparse supply of genuine goods on the shelf and are often, although not always, also selling illegal tobacco products.
I want to put on the record my thanks to Phoebe Abruzzese from The Northern Echo in Darlington for her campaigning journalism on this issue, and I am pleased to be working with her to highlight this problem.
Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing this debate. He is right to want to see a clampdown on illegal vapes. They are very different from those produced by responsible manufacturers, which help adults quit smoking and thereby save lives. Does he agree that we should continue to encourage adult smokers to vape, and that we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater over this? The responsible attitude is to allow people to use legal vapes while clamping down on the illicit ones that we see too many of.
Peter Gibson
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention; he raises a really important point. It is right that we encourage people to stop smoking and that smokers have an array of products available to help them, but those products must be legal. They must be supplied legally and made available in the right way.
Trading standards in Darlington, which is doing a tremendous job led by Shaun Trevor, has had much success over the past 18 months in targeting these traders. Products with a value of over £300,000 have been seized from some 23 retailers. Among those products were almost 20,000 packets of illegal cigarettes. Their sale would have resulted in a massive loss of revenue to the Exchequer—something that I am sure the Chancellor would be interested to learn about.
Last week, I went to visit a number of my local independent corner shops. They report that their tobacco sales have fallen off a cliff. In one instance, a trader of some 40 years reported that his tobacco sales had fallen from more than £7,000 a week to just £2,000. One the one hand, we can celebrate that as it will partly be the result of some people giving up smoking, but we know that the real underlying cause is that the trade has shifted to illegal sales in newly popped-up competition, which is robbing trade from our legitimate traders. Together with the footfall that tobacco sales bring to those shops and the massive loss in revenue, one retailer I visited estimates that his store is collecting nearly £200,000 less duty and VAT because of the sale of illegal tobacco. That is just one shop in one town. Imagine the scale of that lost revenue to the country as a whole.
I have shared my concerns about children vaping and about the availability of illegal products, but for me the most important aspect of this debate is the organised crime that sits behind the illegal supply and sale of these products. I know at first hand of the collaborative work going on between my local council and police in the sharing of intelligence, and I know that they are acutely aware of the damage caused to our community and the local economy. We have evidence locally that the funding for these shops is rooted in organised crime and money laundering. We know that, besides being supplied with illegal tobacco and vapes, children are being used as mules to fetch and carry the illegal products, which are stored off site rather than on the shop premises, or to act as agents by selling the vapes to their friends in the school playground. The most shocking local case was of a young person being groomed for sex with the enticement of illegal vapes. We should be wide awake to the risks in our community to young people who are exposed to exploitation in this way.
I will conclude by putting to the Minister some suggestions of things that can be done that I believe can help tackle these issues. We need to see a nationwide awareness campaign on illegal vapes for both adults and children. We need to see much-increased awareness in our schools of the safeguarding risks to young people posed by the sale and supply of these products. I would like to see all vape products in plain packaging and out of sight, just like tobacco. We need to fully explore a robust licensing system for both vapes and tobacco. We need greater collaboration on intelligence between our very small trading standards departments and police forces across the country. We need on-the-spot fines, set at punitive rates, to tackle the sale of these illegal vapes and tobaccos, and we need to see swifter premises closure orders.
I am sure that all Members are as concerned as I am about the issues that I have shared, and I have no doubt that more worrying stories will be shared throughout this debate. I look forward to the Minister’s response and to a plan that sees us clamp down on this danger.
Sir Mark Hendrick (in the Chair)
I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to be called in the debate.
Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson) for securing this afternoon’s debate. I am sure he knows that I have been discussing this issue and campaigning against the sale and use of illegal vapes throughout this Parliament, and I am sure he is aware that I tabled several amendments to the Health and Social Care Bill in 2021, when it was in Committee. I understand that the hon. Member was not a member of that Public Bill Committee, but he must share my frustration with his party on this issue. The Tory Whips instructed Conservative Members to vote down my amendments in 2021—amendments that were very similar to the proposals in the King’s Speech last November. If my amendments had been voted for, it is fair to argue that fewer people—particularly young people—would be addicted to nicotine, and that as a result the tenor of this debate would be different.
“What ifs” aside, we need to see robust regulation and enforcement at local level. My constituency needs that, and I am shocked at the extent of illicit, non-compliant and even untraceable vaping products in my constituency. Over 6,000 illicit vapes were seized last year across County Durham, with three prosecutions linked to under-age sales and illicit vapes. I express my thanks to The Northern Echo for its investigation into that.
Although I welcome the Government’s announcement of an illicit vapes enforcement squad, we are now nine months on from that announcement, and unregulated and potentially dangerous products continue to fly off the shelves. All the while, the tobacco industry is making profits off the back of youth vaping rates. Cuts to trading standards have not helped, either. Trading standards workers in Durham are at full capacity, so when will they receive something from the £30 million that was announced in October to help them do their job?
We need the Government to be bold. We need to stop rogue vape traders in their tracks, and we must ensure that the sale of illicit vape products does not deter smokers from switching to vaping. I welcome any Member’s raising the issue of the use and sale of illegal vapes. Like the hon. Gentleman, I was pleased to be part of a rare example of cross-party unity in The Northern Echo but, at the end of the day, what matters in this place is how we vote on policies. If an issue similar to that posed by the Health and Social Care Act 2022 arises in the future, I hope that the hon. Gentleman and Members who are about to contribute to the debate will put their constituents before their party Whips.
Sally-Ann Hart (Hastings and Rye) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Sir Mark. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson) on securing today’s debate on a very important issue.
On the face of it, nicotine vaping is substantially less harmful than smoking. It is also one of the most effective tools for quitting smoking. However, I believe that before I speak about illicit vapes it is worth noting that although vaping has helped adults to quit smoking, we do not know for sure its long-term health effects and have only an early understanding of the kinds of health problems that vaping poses. The Royal College of Physicians noted that some cancer-causing substances present in tobacco smoke have also been detected in e-cigarette vapour, which raises the possibility that long-term use of vapes may increase the risk of smoking-related diseases. However, the risks are obviously much lower than those posed by smoking.
Vaping is becoming more and more popular with young people. According to Action on Smoking and Health, over 20% of children between the ages of 11 and 17 tried vaping in 2023—up from 15.8% in 2022. There is potential for the major health disaster of a new generation of young people getting hooked on nicotine. Although nicotine itself is not the problem per se, the different substances found in e-liquids cause concern. To analyse the real contents of popular vapes, the Inter Scientific laboratory, which offers regulatory and testing services, looked at a selection of vapes confiscated from school pupils in the UK. It examined them to ensure that the UK tobacco and related products regulations were met, but it found high levels of metals in the e-liquid that far exceeded safe exposure levels. Results from the 18 vapes analysed showed 2.4 times the safe level of lead, 9.6 times the safe level of nickel and 6.6 times the safe level of chromium. Obviously there was a low dataset, but it shows that the regulations on vapes are not being met in this country.
Then we come to illegal vapes. Trading standards seized over 2 million illicit vapes across England between 2022 and 2023. In East Sussex, over 3,000 illegal vapes were seized in 2020. I believe that this is only the tip of the iceberg. Illicit vapes are particularly popular with under-age consumers, because they are cheap and can be bought in shops that are less likely to check ID. Research from the Chartered Trading Standards Institute suggests that a third of products sold in UK shops are likely to be illegal. Given the levels of metals found in legal vapes, I dread to think what the levels might be in the illegal ones. The situation is staggering, and young people are often unaware of what they are actually buying.
How do we tackle this problem? The solution lies in the method that we used to reduce smoking rates in children between 2000 and 2021. By reducing vaping rates in children, we can also help to address the scourge of illicit vapes. ASH’s response to the Government’s recent call for evidence on youth vaping is fantastic. I do not have time to go into the detail of its suggestions for tackling youth vaping, but it emphasises four key policy levers at the Government’s disposal, and I am sure the Minister is considering its recommendations.
I am glad that the Government have set out plans to introduce a tobacco and vapes Bill in this parliamentary Session, and I hope it will address many of the issues highlighted in today’s debate, because that will help to protect the health of children and adults in Hastings and Rye, now and in the future.
Mark Eastwood (Dewsbury) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark. First, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson) for securing this important debate, which gives me the opportunity to highlight the seriousness of the use of illegal vapes and cigarettes in my constituency.
A week before Christmas, I was accompanied by a team of enforcement officers on a test purchase exercise in Dewsbury town centre. I put on record my thanks to the team for their professionalism and ingenuity. During the exercise, we discovered over 20 retail outlets selling illicit cigarettes and vapes across Dewsbury. Fourteen of them were selling illegal disposable vapes, one of which was on sale for £10—but it was £10 for 3,500 puffs. The maximum legal tank size equates to about 600 puffs, so £10 spent on that product would be equivalent to almost six legal vapes. Unlike a legal vape, however, this one had not had its chemical constituents approved by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, so we have no idea what was in it.
Here are some further shocking findings from our investigation. That product was the smallest puff size available to purchase that day. Another product, available for £12, promised 4,000 puffs. Another claimed to provide 9,000 puffs for £13. For £17, two disposables claiming to provide 15,000 puffs and 24 ml tank sizes were available. The maximum legal tank size is 2 ml. Almost half the shops that sold these illicit vapes had them on display. They either did not care or did not realise that the products were illegal. The whole exercise was an eye-opener, but there have been several high-profile incidents involving the sale of illicit cigarettes and vapes in Dewsbury. Last October, £100,000-worth of such products were seized by West Yorkshire police and trading standards.
Last July, an independent report found that nearly a fifth by value and volume of the vaping industry appeared to be illicit in 2022 and that almost a third of e-liquid consumed in disposable vapes failed product compliance rules on nicotine concentrations and volume limits. It is clear that the industry finds itself in a challenging position but, in forging a path forward, it is important that we do not lose sight of other key facts. Scientific research indicates that vaping is less dangerous than smoking, with up to 95% fewer harmful chemicals in the emissions. The legal vape industry has had a positive impact on reducing smoking, converting 1.5 million people away from cigarettes. I have given up smoking in the last 12 months, and I used nicotine patches, but I recognise that there are other ways to stop smoking, including legal vapes. From a health benefit point of view, it is important that we recognise that aspect.
The legal vaping industry, like any other industry, needs protecting from criminal activity and illegal competition. There must also be a balance between discouraging young people from vaping and continuing to provide a route away from smoking for adults. Getting the regulation wrong could further undermine the Government’s smokefree ambitions and would arguably give a significant boost to the illicit trade. I therefore urge them to carefully consider the implications of any proposed legislation and changes to regulations in the future, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to this important debate.
Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson) on securing this important debate.
Hon. Members will not be surprised by my presence or to hear my stance on this issue. For more than a year now I have championed the fight against youth vaping, an epidemic that is spreading like wildfire. These sleek, colourful contraptions, once touted merely as a smoking cessation tool, have become ubiquitous. They are not just in shops, but litter our streets and are hidden away in our children’s bedrooms and classrooms. According to a recent NASUWT survey, a staggering 85% of teachers reported vaping as an issue among their students. Teachers in my constituency have spoken of pupils struggling to concentrate because of their nicotine addiction and having to leave lessons for vape breaks—let us remember that these are not hardened junkies but schoolchildren.
I propose a number of solutions to this growing problem, including banning the sale of disposable vapes, removing them from public displays in shops and banning the bright colours and sweet flavours, which prolong the addictive effects and are so attractive to children. I welcome the Government’s work and commitments in this area, and I particularly thank the Minister for her commitment to stopping children vaping and her broader commitment to children and their health. However, we need to go further, and I would like the Government to extend the existing restrictions on cigarettes to vaping in public places to ensure that no one, least of all children, becomes an unwitting victim of second-hand vapour.
Coupled with that, we must impose tougher regulations on the advertising and marketing of vaping products. I have previously spoken out against the sponsoring of sports teams and the pervasive advertising that glamourises vapes. I would like to see these products taken off the side of Transport for London buses, off prominent displays in corner shops and away from sports stadiums. Instead, they should be put discreetly away behind the counter, as the medical type of smoking cessation device they are supposed to be.
Moving on to the specifics of today’s debate on illegal vapes, vapes can be illegal for one of two reasons. They are either illegally composed and perhaps have no self-extinguishing mechanism, excessive quantities of nicotine or more puffs than allowed. However, they may also contain harmful toxic chemicals. Last spring, Lincolnshire police took a selection of vapes from children and tested them. These are just some of the chemicals they found: diethylene glycol diacetate, aviptadil, 2-methoxyethyl acetate, poster varnish, Indian snakeroot and antifreeze. Those were all being inhaled by children using vapes in Sleaford.
The other way vapes can be illegal is that they can be sold illegally to children under the age of 18. Indeed, vapes can be illegal in both the ways I have mentioned. Newspapers locally are reporting an example of a police officer in Sleaford who recently stepped into a local shop to stop illegal vapes being sold to children. Those products were illegal not just because they were being sold to children, but because they contained much more than they ought to.
The next question is what we can do about this. We have talked about ways in which we can tackle the use of vapes. I welcome the vapes enforcement squad the Government put together with £3 million earlier this year, but we need more. There is no registration scheme for selling vapes, in the way there is for alcohol and tobacco. I would like to see a registration scheme for vapes, tied to alcohol and tobacco, specifically to disincentivise unscrupulous sellers. If they lose the vaping licence, they would also lose the alcohol and tobacco licence. I would also like to see an increase in on-the-spot fines, from £2,500 to £10,000, so that there is a significant disincentive to this behaviour. Let us face it, these people are making money out of this, and that is why they are doing it—they are making money out of selling illegal things to children that will harm them.
Another idea is an import tax. It has been proposed to me that one challenge facing Border Force is that vapes are not subject to excise. If they were subject to excise controls, Border Force would be able to intercept some of the illegal vapes. That is much more challenging because there is no excise duty on vapes. Also on the issue of tax, I am a Tory and would normally advocate cutting as many taxes as possible, but I think there is a place to put tax on vaping devices. Even with tax, they would still be potentially much cheaper relative to their nicotine content than cigarettes, making them a cheaper option for a genuine adult smoker who wishes to quit, but they would be more expensive for children, taking them out of the realms of pocket money.
In summary, this issue demands bold action, as it did when I first stood up to discuss it a year ago. I urge the Government and all hon. Members to join me in ensuring that vapes are used as a cessation device, as they are supposed to be. Only by toughening our response to a rogue industry can we protect our children from the suffocating grip of addiction.
Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Mark. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson) for securing the debate and for the powerful way he introduced the topic.
Like the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson), I have made no secret of my lack of enthusiasm for vapes—specifically disposable vapes. I have held my own debates on the topic, and I have supported others, including the hon. Lady, so I am pleased to speak today, because we need urgent action on these things.
We have heard about smoking cessation a couple of times during the debate. Smoking cessation is absolutely important, and we should all take it very seriously, but disposable vapes are not risk-free, as has been pointed out. There are other, more useful ways of supporting smoking cessation—for instance, reusable vapes, which are not seen as attractive to young people. However we look at it, and whether they are illicit or not, disposable vapes are harmful, particularly to young people and our environment.
The environmental side of things is what first caused me to become interested in disposable vapes. That was thanks to Laura Young, better known as “Less Waste Laura”, who is a student from my constituency. Laura has worked tirelessly to rid our streets, parks and beaches of the discarded plastic, which is so familiar to us all, and the pollution that has become a torrent in recent years. These apparently disposable vapes are almost never properly disposed of; in fact, the way they are constructed means it is almost impossible to properly dispose of them even if someone wants to, which is quite unlikely, considering that this product is sold on the basis of its easily disposable nature.
It is a great pity—this is embarrassing for it—that the Labour party, propped up by the Tory party on East Renfrewshire Council, is so unwilling to support anything the SNP supports that it has, not once but twice, refused to support a motion to ban disposable vapes locally, putting the council out of step with almost every other local authority in Scotland and with the evidence of the harm that such devices do.
Gareth Johnson
Does the hon. Lady not accept that properly and legally produced disposable vapes provide an attractive alternative for adults to stop smoking and thereby save lives? Some companies, although this is not happening a great deal, can now almost fully recycle the components of disposable e-cigarettes. Does she accept that there is a danger that we move from illicit vapes and start targeting those that would be welcome for adult smokers to switch to?
Kirsten Oswald
No, I do not accept the hon. Gentleman’s proposition at all. That is absolutely wrong-headed. We can see in front of our eyes that these products are so attractive to young people that they are hooking them in—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman is mumbling from his chair. If I can finish my speech, I will set out for him that these products are hooking young people in and getting them addicted, and some of these young people then go on to start smoking. That is far from the situation he laid out, and we should take a very serious attitude to these products.
I have spoken about the harms caused by legal vapes to the planet, whether it is plastic, overuse of precious metals or fires. We have heard today about the impact that these substances have on the young people who ingest them, which should be of significant concern to us. Vaping is popular among young people. Since 2021, there has been a more than sevenfold increase in the number of 11 to 17-year-olds vaping and using disposable vapes rather than reusable ones. These devices are colourful and attractive, with snazzy names and fruity flavours. Vaping has risen so rapidly among children that one in five are now using disposable vapes.
We are not speaking about a smoking cessation mechanism. We are speaking about something that health professionals increasingly warn about. They are increasingly worried about a generation of young people who are hooked on nicotine. As the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health has said:
“Youth vaping is fast becoming an epidemic”.
Despite all that, and despite the fact that the public would be concerned to know all these things, we have this stream of illicit, and other, vapes on our streets. We know that local shops are the most likely source for young people to come by them, and we have heard quite a lot about that today. There is also the online space, which is a source of significant concern to me. Unregulated and untested products are coming via the online space, and we have no idea what harms will be caused to the young people consuming them.
I met a business owner from my area last week, and she talked me through her concerns about illegal medical products—obviously not proper medical products. She showed me how she was targeted by online accounts pushing these goods to her. She is a responsible professional and she resisted, but let us be clear that there are many and complex routes by which these illicit vapes arrive here, just as there are for illicit medical products. All those routes need to be closed down, and they need to be closed down now. Whatever the disposable vape, it causes harm.
We know that there are significant kinds of harm being caused with the flavours and the colours. We have heard from the hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart) about the worries that Action on Smoking and Health spoke about. We are hearing more and more about vape use being glamourised online, and when people under the legal age cannot purchase vapes legally, they are purchasing them illegally or purchasing illegal ones.
The public health messaging on this issue is not as clear as it should be. The hon. Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) tried to tell me that vapes would be a perfectly reasonable way to expect adults to support themselves in smoking cessation, but that is not right and that should not be what the public health messaging tells us. We heard from the hon. Member for Darlington that vapes are a gateway to other, sometimes very serious, concerns and to riskier behaviour, such as smoking and substance abuse. He eloquently outlined the even greater and more significant harms that can be caused.
These things are arriving in huge numbers. I am grateful to the Advertising Standards Authority, which met with me after the most recent vape-related debate I spoke in. It is doing significant work trying to uphold the ban on advertising in various places, including on social media, of nicotine-containing cigarettes that are not licensed as medicines. None the less, Members may have seen adverts that would cause them to think that was not the case, and that is part of this torrent and this pushing of vapes, which needs our urgent attention.
Indeed, vapes need attention across the world. Let us be clear that the scale of the problem and the potential harms to young people and the planet should cause us deep worry. I read a really interesting piece by Chris Kirkham from Reuters last month about the owners of Elf Bar, which is a company with roots in China. Elf Bar products are very popular here, and the company is now, according to Reuters, flooding the US with illegal vapes—ones not covered by Food and Drug Administration regulations.
Kirsten Oswald
I am going to make progress, but if I have time, I would be happy to let the hon. Gentleman come in later.
Elf Bar is simply ignoring those regulations to get its products to market. In the UK, it is taking a different approach and complying with regulations so that it can—one presumes—sell the maximum number of its products. That means that we need different regulations that will stop the surge in young people vaping. Of course, if we banned all disposable vapes, it would be far easier to identify the illicit ones, because all vapes would be illicit. It is far better that we close down the distributors and that we do so in a wholehearted way.
I have spoken before about my own concerns about sports advertising of vapes. I spoke about Blackburn Rovers, and a 15-year-old footballer, who came on as a substitute in their FA cup win recently, made history as their youngest ever player. However, his shirt did not have the club sponsor, Totally Wicked, on it. Blackburn Rovers said that, as the legal vaping age in the UK is 18, under-18s cannot wear that logo—but they can still see it, because it is displayed on everyone else’s strip. We would not want tobacco companies advertising on sports strips. We would not want whisky, beer or cider companies on sports strips. None of those things should be acceptable to us, and advertising for vapes should not be acceptable to us either. If we are serious about dealing with the harms that young people experience because of vaping, we should expect sports clubs to take that seriously too. The claims by both Blackburn Rovers and Totally Wicked at the time that vaping had a positive and proven role in supporting the reduction of smoking are simply not credible when we think of the young people who are interested in football.
I will bring my remarks to a conclusion. I noticed recently that some vaping companies are actually going out and looking for sportspeople to sponsor. I think that is hugely dangerous and hugely unwelcome. I ask the Minister to give us some of her thoughts on that matter in her response.
Sir Mark Hendrick (in the Chair)
Order. I am conscious of the fact that there may be a vote shortly. Have you finished?
Sir Mark Hendrick (in the Chair)
Okay. There may be a vote so I may have to suspend proceedings. I call Preet Kaur Gill.
Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark. I thank the hon. Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson) for securing this important debate, and the many colleagues who have made excellent points, including my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy) who is a great campaigner on this issue.
Many Members have focused their remarks on the impact of vaping on children, and they are absolutely right to do so. The Opposition recognise the value of vapes as a stop-smoking tool. They have their place. The chief medical officer put it bluntly:
“If you smoke, vaping is much safer; if you don’t smoke, don’t vape”.
But the CMO has also been blunt about the epidemic rise in youth vaping in recent years. Nicotine addiction is in no one’s interest apart from the companies that profit from it. Certainly no child should be vaping. We do not even know some of the long-term risks of the ingredients used in vapes, and certainly not when inhaled by young people whose lungs and brains are still developing.
However, I am afraid to say that the Government have been asleep at the wheel. In 2021, as we have heard, Labour voted for an amendment to the Health and Care Act 2022 to crack down on the marketing of vapes to children. Since then, as Labour has found, the number of children aged 11 to 17 who are vaping regularly has more than trebled. That is more than 140,000 British children. Meanwhile, one in five children have now tried vaping. Does the Minister regret that her Government and MPs voted against the amendment in 2021?
The issue is that it is now 2024 and we still have no legislation in place. It is bad enough that so many children are using these products, but, as other Members have said, it is even worse when we consider how many products on the market are illegal in their own right. As the chief medical officer has warned, those products can contain dangerous chemicals such as lead and nickel. Some contain nicotine when claiming they do not, or harmful tetrahydrocannabinol chemicals found in cannabis. To be clear, in most cases that amounts to a failure in enforcing existing regulations, and it really is shocking.
Last year, Inter Scientific and the BBC conducted an analysis of vapes confiscated from schoolchildren, and found that the vast majority did not meet UK product regulations and were actually illegal. In a separate analysis of 300 products seized by various trading standards around the country, they found that 88% were non-compliant with UK regulations; 23% had a nicotine strength over the legal limit; 15% contained lead, which when inhaled can damage children’s central nervous system and brain development; 100% contained nickel; and 33% contained nicotine, despite being marketed at 0%, which absurdly means that they can be sold to children. Can the Minister tell us what she will do to crack down on the influx of illegal vapes so that dangerous products are not falling into the hands of our young children?
From speaking to experts in the industry, I have heard that there has been an influx of illegal vapes into the United Kingdom in recent years. One expert I consulted said they think that around 6 million illegal vape products have flooded the UK in the last 12 to 24 months. Can the Minister comment on why the UK seems to be targeted more than many other countries, and where she thinks these products are coming from? Until now, UK regulations have largely inoculated us from public health scares such as the spate of hospitalisations from popcorn lung in the United States, but does she share my concern that if we do not get a grip on illegal products flooding our markets, we could face something similar here? Lastly, can she comment on what she has learned from the Government’s consultation about the percentage of vapes circulating in the UK that are illegal under the 2016 regulations? If it is anything like the 88% found by Inter Scientific, we have a very big problem.
A glaring issue that many have identified is enforcement. As we all know, trading standards is stretched and Border Force is evidently not stopping the import of illegal vapes in sufficient numbers. However, the Government have not made their job easy. One issue is the confusing regulations. I know that the Government have said they will act to close the loophole that means that while it is illegal to sell vapes to children, it is fine to hand them out. We have heard less from the Government on the fact that it is also currently legal to sell nicotine-free vapes to under-18s, which is of serious concern. Labour has been vocal on this issue. As I have flagged, these 0%-nicotine vapes in fact often do contain nicotine or other harmful chemicals. Will the Minister confirm that the Government will take action to ban those vapes being sold to children? It strikes me as a blatant loophole that is giving unscrupulous companies scope to hook young children on their products as a gateway to addiction. These 0%-nicotine vapes are out of the scope of the regulations, meaning they do not need to be registered with the MHRA. Will the Minister now require all manufacturers to notify vape products regardless of nicotine content to the MHRA? This would allow for a complete database of products where currently it is not possible to say which products are legal or illegal, which really undermines enforcement action.
Speaking of the MHRA, we must also recognise that the relevant authorities are not always empowered to do what is needed to crack down on those breaking the rules. It strikes me as a serious shortcoming that as long as producers complete notification requirements with the regulator, their product is allowed to go on the UK market without being tested as a whole. The MHRA—the regulator—does not have powers to test products to determine whether they are even compliant with what producers claim are in them, nor to remove notifications once published.
The fact that under this Government children are using vapes with nicotine in them is pretty scandalous, given what we know about the lack of regulations. I say that because when the producer of Elf Bars was found to be selling products that had larger tank sizes than allowed, the regulations did not provide the MHRA with the power to remove the product from the market, as the product notifications said that it was compliant. That is farcical.
This matter is a huge concern not just for me, but for most Members across the House. Will the Minister say whether she is looking at this as part of the legislation? Will she consider allowing the MHRA to use notification fees for testing and enforcement and giving it the powers to remove notifications from publication and, if necessary, take products off the market? Likewise, does she believe that Border Force has the powers that it actually needs? Will the Minister finally tackle the issue of youth vaping, as we have heard about from many Members, by doing what Labour has called for for years and banning vapes from being branded and advertised to appeal to children? We have all seen the displays in our local off licences, with flavours like gummy bear and unicorn shake, looking like colourfully packaged pick ‘n’ mix products at pocket-money prices. These really do need to be banned.
Dr Johnson
The hon. Lady is making some very good points about the regulations that need to be brought in to protect children. I do not think anybody thinks that the colours and flavours are not there in some ways to attract children—how many adults are going to want a unicorn milkshake-flavoured vape, whatever that tastes like? On that point specifically, would the Labour party support legislation brought in by the Government to ban all but one colour and to severely restrict the flavours available?
Preet Kaur Gill
What has been marketed at children, definitely, is the different flavours. However, I appreciate that adults do choose different flavours as part of their whole smoking cessation, so we need to look at the evidence in the round once we are looking at the Bill. I would be keen to hear at what the Government say on that and to look at the evidence base. We need to look at the ingredients, the make-up of colours and how we get those flavours—it is about what those ingredients actually mean. We have to ensure that we have a proper evidence base on that issue.
Dr Johnson
I was talking to an industry representative about the issue of flavours in particular, and he told me that when a smoker decides to quit, they often start with a tobacco-flavoured vape. When their sense of smell and taste improves because they have stopped smoking, they then no longer like the taste of the tobacco vapes, so they move on to cherry cola or some other flavour. That actually can persist their addiction. The concern about removing the flavours is that instead of stopping using the vapes, people will continue—
Sir Mark Hendrick (in the Chair)
Order. Interventions are meant to be short. The hon. Lady has already spoken, and we still have the Minister to come. She requires 10 minutes at least, and it is now 5.19 pm. I suggest to the Opposition spokesperson that she makes an end to her speech fairly quickly.
Preet Kaur Gill
The next Labour Government would come down like a ton of bricks on companies profiting at the expense of our children’s health. As part of our child-health action plan, we will crack down on companies peddling vapes to children. We will work with local councils and the NHS to ensure that they are being used as a stop-smoking aid, rather than as a new form of smoking. We will tackle health inequalities, get serious about prevention and ensure that children born in Britain today are part of the healthiest generation that ever lived. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Dame Andrea Leadsom)
It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship today, Sir Mark. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson), and all my hon. Friends who are here today. It highlights the importance with which the Government Benches view this issue.
I would just assure the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill) that all of the issues that she has mentioned are indeed top priorities for me. I am on the warpath when it comes to children vaping. Whether it is nicotine-free, cherry-cola flavoured, legal or illegal, children should not be vaping. I will bring forward, as soon as possible, the results of the consultation, and then the smoking legislation, and all colleagues will be able to see that. However, I pay tribute to all my hon. Friends, who are here in droves in this Chamber today to make known their very serious concerns about the protection of children. I also pay tribute to the hon. Member for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy), who has done so much to try and promote this issue and to ensure that children are kept safe.
I am pleased to have the opportunity to talk about the work that we are doing to tackle the use and sale specifically of illicit vapes, and I am grateful to all colleagues for this being largely a cross-party issue, where we are all on the same side, and I very much hope that we will keep it that way. Like so many parents right across the country, we are all incredibly worried about the damage that is potentially being done to children’s bodies by vapes—particularly illegal vapes.
One of the main health risks posed by vapes is from their highly addictive nicotine content. Young brains are more susceptible to the effects of nicotine, and so the risk of becoming addicted is greater for younger people compared to adults.
Dame Andrea Leadsom
I will not give way, I am sorry; there is no time left and I want to make my points.
It is appalling and unacceptable when businesses knowingly and deliberately encourage children to use a product that was designed for adults to quit smoking. Often sold at pocket-money prices, easy to use and widely available, disposable vapes are the product of choice for children. Over two thirds of current youth vapers use disposable products—all illegally, because they are under age. And, as if we needed another reason to regulate, 5 million disposable vapes are either littered or thrown away in general waste every week. That has quadrupled over the last year.
Our duty is clear: to protect all kids from vaping while their lungs and brains are still developing. Businesses are shamelessly using bright colours, alluring packaging and attractive flavours, as hon. Friends and colleagues have said, like “candy bubblegum” and “blueberry razz”, in Coke-can shaped packaging, right next to the sweet counter, in the full knowledge that our children are going to become addicted to nicotine. This cannot go on.
Businesses should abide by the existing regulations setting product standards, including prohibitions on certain ingredients and restrictions on nicotine strength, bottle size limits and advertising. Products should be registered with the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency to be sold legally in the UK. Any product that is not notified and does not meet our high standards should not be sold to anyone, let alone children.
Unregulated vapes pose a massive risk because they circumvent the high standards of regulation, contain unknown ingredients, as colleagues across the Chamber have said, and stronger nicotine, and are often made available to children through black-market channels. Illicit vapes may contain dangerous metals such as lead, nickel and chromium, and contents such as antifreeze and poster varnish—unbelievable, extraordinary contents. We have no idea what frequent inhalation of those does to adult lungs, let alone still-developing lungs.
Independent research suggests that there is a direct link between the rise in children vaping and the flood of illegal, non-compliant vapes coming to our shores. That is why, to keep vapes out of our children’s hands, we must first enforce our regulations to stamp out the sale and supply of illicit and underage vapes, and, secondly, educate our children about how those products will hurt them.
On enforcement, we have learned much from our successful campaign to tackle illicit tobacco. Targeted enforcement saw the overall consumption of illegal tobacco plummet from 17 billion cigarettes 25 years ago to 3 billion cigarettes last year. In April, building on this success, we announced the formation of a new, specialised illicit vaping enforcement team, named Operation Joseph, to identify and seize illicit vapes on entry to England through the seven ports that have seen increased illegal activity. We are giving National Trading Standards £3 million of new funding over two years for the sole purpose of getting illicit products off our shelves. Across the country, it is diligently testing products for dangerous substances, and carrying out test purchases online and in shops. Recently, I had the great pleasure of meeting some of its officers in action—people such as David Hunt, a senior officer and illicit tobacco lead in Hackney, who is doing incredible work to ensure there is a fair and honest market. As a result of National Trading Standards’ work across the country, 2.1 million vapes were seized by trading standards officers in England between 2022 and 2023 alone.
My message to people and businesses that sell illegal vapes is clear: they should stop it right now. If they do not, they may receive an unlimited fine or a custodial sentence of up to two years. However, there is no room for complacency, and I am not naive to the scale of the challenge. That is why in October we announced an additional £30 million per year for our enforcement agencies over the next five years, to support their efforts to extinguish the illicit trade in tobacco and vapes. The additional funding will give agencies the resources they need to catch criminals and rogue traders.
Cracking down on illicit products entering the country is critical, but such efforts must go hand in hand with educating children about the dangers of these products to prevent their use in the first place. Over the past two years, we have taken a number of steps to increase the training resources and support available to teachers in schools, to update the curriculum to include the health risks of vaping, and to publish new online content on the potential risks of vaping for young people. We have also written to police forces right across England to ensure that dedicated school liaison officers are keeping vapes away from the playground as much as possible.
Finally, I want to touch briefly on our wider plans to reduce the overall rates of youth vaping. As I said at the start, I will set out much more detail in the near future. As colleagues know, we recently consulted on a range of measures to reduce the appeal, availability and affordability of vapes to children. Our consultation has also considered what further measures we could take to strengthen enforcement, such as by introducing new fixed penalty notices. We are in the process of finalising our response to the consultation and will update Parliament shortly on the measures we are taking forward.
As I said at the start of my remarks, we all have a duty to protect our children from under-age vaping as their lungs and brains continue to develop. We do not yet know about the long-term damage being caused to their lungs and brains, but I dread to think about it, so we will be ruthless towards those who disregard our safeguards and undermine our work to protect children’s health. I am on the warpath where vaping is concerned, and I urge all children to stop vaping. I look forward to working with colleagues across parties and across Government to make youth vaping a thing of the past.
Peter Gibson
I am delighted to have led the debate this afternoon and to have heard from the Minister. I was pleased to hear all the contributions from Members across the Chamber, and it is clear that there is cross-party and political-free concern about the issue of our children’s welfare. I am particularly pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson) is here, given that she is a consultant paediatrician and has campaigned long and hard on this issue. I was particularly interested in her idea about bringing in some excise duties as a way to stop illegal vapes.
I am delighted to have heard from the Minister. She stole the words that I had written down—I was going to say that she was on the warpath. She is clearly—
Written Statements
(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
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UK Export Finance Support for Ukraine
(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
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The Minister for Industry and Economic Security (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Nearly two years since Russia brutally invaded the sovereign territory of Ukraine, the UK continues to stand resolutely with the Ukrainian people against Russian aggression.
The UK is providing significant economic, humanitarian and defensive assistance to Ukraine, including through export credits and insurance from UK Export Finance (UKEF). As part of the UK’s support for the repair and defence of Ukraine’s critical infrastructure, UKEF has already agreed to provide financing for the reconstruction of six bridges in Kyiv and support for Urenco’s contract to supply fuel to Ukraine’s largest power producer, Energoatom, and provided payment risk insurance for UK exporters trading with Ukraine.
Government Ministers have decided it remains in the national interest for UKEF to stay on cover for Ukraine. This means that UKEF’s £3.5 billion of financial capacity for UK exporters and their buyers in Ukraine is still available.
The heightened risk of supporting Ukraine during a war falls outside UKEF’s minimum risk standards as set by HM Treasury and is not a typical activity undertaken by UKEF. Therefore, ministers must instruct UKEF to operate.
Depending on the volume and value of the transactions supported by UKEF, the Government could incur up to £3.5 billion of contingent liabilities over time. UKEF will assess transactions on a case-by-case basis in accordance with normal policy and practice, while also obtaining written consent from Ministers and HMT before providing support for each transaction.
[HCWS185]
Tax Simplification Update
(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
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The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Nigel Huddleston)
The Government want the tax system to be simple and fair and to support growth, and have issued a clear mandate to officials in HM Treasury and HMRC to put tax simplification at the heart of policy making.
At autumn statement 2023, the Government published their four main objectives on tax simplification:
Tax rules should have a clear consistent rationale and be easy to understand.
The burden of compliance and administration should be proportionate for taxpayers and HMRC and it should be easy for taxpayers to get their tax right.
Taxpayers should be able to understand their obligations and options, particularly at key life-cycle points, such as when they do something for the first time or infrequently.
Tax policy should not unnecessarily distort the decisions of taxpayers and result in poorly informed choices.
The Government also announced a comprehensive set of changes to make it easier for businesses and individuals to interact with the tax system, reducing the time and money spent on tax administration and allowing them to focus on their businesses and daily lives.
Today, the Government are setting out further measures to simplify the experience of taxpayers, using the efficiencies of digital services to drive public sector productivity.
Enhancing the non-reimbursed expenses service
Each year, HMRC receives 1.1 million claims for tax relief from employees on their expenses. These claims are submitted through existing online services, or via digital or paper forms, resulting in some claims being manually processed. To simplify the process for many employees claiming tax relief on their expenses, and for HMRC to automatically process claims, the Government are designing a new, online service for employees to claim tax relief on all of their expenses in one place, meaning that employees will get relief sooner. HMRC will provide further details later this year.
Mandating the payrolling of benefits in kind
The Government will mandate the reporting and paying of income tax and class 1A national insurance contributions on benefits in kind via payroll software from April 2026, building on the progress already made on the Government’s ambition to fully digitalise the reporting of benefits in kind. Mandation will simplify the tax affairs of 3 million people and reduce the need for them to contact HMRC.
This measure will reduce administrative burdens for thousands of employers and HMRC by simplifying and digitising the process of reporting and paying tax on all employment benefits. It will remove the need for 4 million end-of-year returns to be submitted to HMRC. HMRC will engage with stakeholders to discuss our proposals to inform design and delivery decisions, and draft legislation will be published later in the year as part of the usual tax legislation process. HMRC will also work with industry experts to produce guidance, which will be made available in advance of 2026. Further information will be published via usual communication routes, such as through employer bulletins.
Amending the parents’ NI credit (child benefit)
As announced in April 2023, the Government will legislate to introduce a route for people to apply for national insurance credits for parents and carers for tax years where they have not claimed child benefit, to ensure that people do not miss out on their state pension entitlement. The credit will add qualifying years of national insurance where eligible, which will support future state pension eligibility. Individuals will be able to claim this credit from April 2026. The eligibility for the credit will be closely based on child benefit eligibility criteria. Transitional arrangements will ensure that those affected since 2013 are still able to claim. Going forward, applications will be available for six years following the relevant tax year. The Government will bring forward secondary legislation as soon as possible.
Today, the Government are also exploring further opportunities to make the tax system simpler and fairer.
Tax simplification for alternative finance
The Government are today publishing a consultation proposing changes to the capital gains tax rules that apply to alternative finance arrangements. The proposed changes seek to amend those rules so that where property is used as collateral for the purposes of raising finance, the CGT outcome is the same whether alternative finance or conventional finance is used. The consultation also asks whether there are any implications for capital allowances. The consultation will be open to responses for 12 weeks, closing on 9 April 2024.
Reform of the UK law in relation to transfer pricing, permanent establishment and diverted profits tax
The Government are today publishing a summary of responses from a consultation undertaken last summer, which proposed reforms to transfer pricing, permanent establishment and diverted profits tax legislation. The aim is to develop simpler, shorter legislation that is easier to understand and to administer and provides greater certainty for both HMRC and taxpayers. The Government will continue to engage with stakeholders on the proposed approach set out in the summary of responses with a view to publishing draft legislation for consultation later in 2024.
[HCWS189]
Road Fuels Consultation and Impact Assessment
(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
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The Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Claire Coutinho)
I would like to update the House on the Government’s road fuels consultation and impact assessment that will be published today and closes on 12 March 2024. The Government are committed to reducing bills for families, including to ensure drivers get a fair deal at the pump. The proposals in the consultation will help with this by facilitating a competitive road fuels retail market, increasing price transparency and protecting consumer interests.
The UK is a nation of drivers. There are 41.2 million vehicles on the road in the UK today. For many people, vehicles are a critical part of everyday life, connecting countless communities and businesses up and down the country—whether that is getting to work or taking children to school, or for those living in rural areas.
The Government have already taken action to support drivers. At spring Budget 2023, the Government announced their continued support for households and businesses by maintaining the rates of fuel duty at the levels set on 23 March 2022 for an additional 12 months, by extending the temporary 5p fuel duty cut and cancelling the planned inflation increase for 2023-24. That represents an overall saving for drivers of around £10 billion over the two years from the 5p cut being introduced, and around £200 for the average car driver. From 2011-2022, the average driver made a cumulative saving of £1,900 from the freezing of fuel duty rates, compared with what would have been paid under the pre-2010 escalator.
When fuel prices are high the impacts are felt by everyone. That is why the Government were very concerned with the findings of the Competition and Markets Authority’s road fuel market study published in July 2023. The CMA found that competition between fuel retailers at a national level had weakened since 2019, due to a decision by the historic price leaders to take a less aggressive approach to pricing by significantly increasing their internal margins for fuel. This was coupled with other retailers maintaining largely passive pricing policies rather than trying to win market share.
As a result, consumers were paying generally higher prices than would otherwise have been the case. Among the four largest supermarkets, the higher margins resulted in a combined additional cost of £900 million for consumers in 2022 alone.
The study also found that long-standing patterns of variation in pricing between different local areas remain across the UK, meaning that consumers in some areas can pay significantly more for fuel than those in others. Drivers are also paying significantly more to fill up at a motorway service station than they would elsewhere. In 2022, motorway retailers were on average charging around 20p per litre more for petrol and 15p per litre more for diesel than retailers elsewhere.
We are determined to ensure that consumers get a fair deal at the pump. It is crucial that we strengthen competition so that the market works for consumers. The Government have acted swiftly to address this and committed to introduce a statutory open data scheme and an ongoing road fuels price monitoring function. These measures will empower consumers to find the best price for fuel, igniting competition among fuel retailers for their business.
The open data scheme will increase price transparency for consumers, allowing them to compare prices more easily. It will grow our digital economy, creating opportunities for third-party app and website developers to use the data in innovative ways. This will end the need to drive around to find cheaper fuel, instead enabling live price data to be displayed on in-car displays, apps and price comparison sites.
The monitoring function will provide the Government with an assessment of competition in the market, acting as a deterrent against individual businesses taking actions that may weaken competition and holding industry to account. The Government recently announced that the CMA will undertake the monitoring function and amended the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill to provide the CMA with the necessary information-gathering powers.
We want to hear from everyone to ensure that the two recommendations work effectively to facilitate a competitive market, deliver on price transparency and protect consumer interests. We will closely assess all the responses, which will inform the design of the open data scheme and some aspects of the monitoring function that are not covered in the amended Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill. The measures will improve competition for the benefit of consumers and get a better deal for drivers across the United Kingdom.
I am placing copies of the consultation and the impact assessment in the Libraries of the House.
[HCWS182]
Review of Wilton Park
(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (David Rutley)
I am announcing today the conclusion of the review of Wilton Park, an executive agency of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.
As I noted in my statement in June on the commencement of the review, the public bodies review programme delivers against the commitments made in the declaration on government reform to increase both the effectiveness of public bodies and departmental sponsorship, making government work better in service of the public. This review of Wilton Park follows the tailored review of Wilton Park in 2018.
Wilton Park is a key strategic asset in the FCDO’s portfolio. The review found that Wilton Park continues to make valued contributions as a convenor and facilitator of international policy discussions, and noted that Wilton Park’s most important feature is its ability to convene and facilitate extended, in-person conversations among diverse groups of policymakers at mid-senior level to support international policy objectives.
The review comes at an important time for Wilton Park, which has successfully steered through the challenges of the covid-19 period and is considering options for its future.
We are very grateful to the lead reviewer, Lorraine Wilkinson, and her team, for their hard work on behalf of Wilton Park and the Government. Their recommendations will give vital structure to further sharpen the strategic alignment of Wilton Park with the objectives of His Majesty’s Government, while safeguarding its independence and ensuring that Wilton Park continues to provide value for money for the taxpayer.
The lead reviewer’s overview and the review recommendations, along with the Government’s statement of how it intends to take these recommendations forward, has been published on www.gov.uk.
A copy of the review and the Government’s response will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses.
[HCWS187]
UK Delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe
(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Leo Docherty)
The right hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) has been appointed as a substitute member of the United Kingdom delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
[HCWS190]
Personal Injury Discount Rate: Call for Evidence
(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mike Freer)
My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Lord Bellamy KC) has made the following statement:
I announce today the publication of “Setting the Personal Injury Discount Rate: A Call for Evidence”. This call for evidence is intended to obtain evidence to inform the second review of the personal injury discount rate (PIDR) under the Civil Liability Act 2018. The call will remain open for 12 weeks.
The PIDR is important in ensuring that claimants who suffer serious, life-changing personal injuries receive full damages, including for their future financial needs. It is the percentage figure used to help calculate how much a compensator—usually an insurer or body such as the NHS—pays to a claimant, in the form of a lump sum. It is assumed that claimants will invest this lump sum and accrue a return on that investment and the PIDR represents what the real rate of return on this investment is expected to be.
The Civil Liability Act 2018 introduced changes to the way the PIDR is reviewed and set, and this is the second review under that methodology. It is also the first where the Lord Chancellor will consult with the expert panel he has appointed as well as His Majesty’s Treasury.
The responses to this call for evidence will inform the work of the expert panel and the Lord Chancellor’s considerations in reviewing the PIDR later this year. The Lord Chancellor will formally consult the expert panel in due course and inform both Houses, in line with the timetables set out in part 2 of the Civil Liability Act 2018.
Copies of the call for evidence can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/calls-for-evidence/setting-the-personal-injury-discount-rate.
[HCWS183]
Hague Convention of 2019: Foreign Judgements in Civil and Commercial Matters
(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mike Freer)
My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Lord Bellamy KC) has made the following statement:
On Friday 12 January, the UK signed the Hague Convention of 2019 on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments in Civil or Commercial Matters (hereafter: “Hague 2019”; “the convention”). The signing of Hague 2019 follows from the UK Government’s decision, which was announced on 23 November 2023, to join the convention as soon as possible, following a public consultation.
Once in force, the convention will provide greater certainty and predictability for citizens and businesses dealing in cross-border civil and commercial disputes, about when judgments from courts in the UK will be recognised and enforced in the courts of other parties to the convention, and when judgments from those states can be recognised and enforced in the UK. By facilitating cross-border recognition and enforcement of judgments, the convention will provide a welcome uniform set of rules for a wide range of judgments between the UK and other contracting parties; increase confidence in the UK legal system; support international trade, investment and cross-border mobility; enhance access to justice and reduce the costs for litigants of determining whether a judgment obtained from one court is enforceable in another contracting state. And, by joining the convention the UK is indicating its position as a global leader in private international law—an area in which the UK undoubtedly has significant expertise.
For these reasons, the UK Government believe that joining the convention will be highly beneficial for the UK. Therefore, the UK Government have signed the convention as a signal of the UK’s commitment to co-operation with our international partners and will now work to ratify the convention. Ratification will occur once all the necessary implementing legislation and rules have been put in place to facilitate the convention’s smooth operation. As per the rules set out in the convention, Hague 2019 will come into force 12 months after the UK has deposited its instrument of ratification. As part of the procedural stages that precede any ratification, the treaty will be laid before Parliament for scrutiny in the coming months under the terms of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 (“CRaG”).
Concluded under the auspices of the Hague conference on private international law, the convention has a potentially global reach. There are currently 29 contracting parties (the 27 EU member states, the EU and Ukraine) to Hague 2019, for whom the convention entered into force on 1 September 2023. Uruguay has also ratified the convention, with it set to enter into force on 1 October 2024. There are also six signatories (Israel, Costa Rica, Montenegro, North Macedonia, the Russian Federation, the USA) who have not yet ratified.
The Hague 2019 convention was signed on behalf of the jurisdictions of Scotland, Northern Ireland, and England and Wales. While the decision to join an international convention is a reserved matter, the implementation of the convention is devolved to Scotland and Northern Ireland as it relates to private international law, a devolved matter. My officials have worked closely with colleagues in the devolved Governments and will continue to do so throughout the implementation process.
The UK is able to make declarations under the convention under articles 14, 16, 18, 19 and 25 at the point of signature, ratification, or any time thereafter to clarify or limit the application of the convention in the UK. Such declarations may be subsequently modified or withdrawn at any time.
The UK Government will keep questions of declarations under review as we proceed to signature and implementation and in the future as the convention comes into force between the UK and the current and future contracting parties.
A copy of the UK Government response to the Hague 2019 consultation was placed in the Libraries of both Houses at the time of publication and is also available online.1
1 https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/hague-convention-of-2-july-2019-on-the-recognition-and-enforcement-of-foreign-judgments-in-civil-or-commercial-matters-hague-2019.
[HCWS184]
Tribunal Capacity
(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
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The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Alex Chalk)
The Illegal Migration Act 2023, once commenced, will provide for accelerated claims and appeal timescales for individuals subject to the “duty to remove” provisions of the Act when making suspensive claims relating to the narrow grounds of serious harm and removals conditions. The Act provides that these appeals are to be heard in the upper tribunal—Immigration and Asylum Chamber—rather than the first-tier tribunal.
The Act sets out that, once issued with a third-country removal notice, individuals will have eight days to make a claim to the Secretary of State for the Home Department. Having received a claim, the Secretary of State will have four days to consider the claim and decide whether it should succeed, and if not, whether to certify it as clearly unfounded.
Where a claim is certified as unfounded, there is no automatic right of appeal. The individual can be removed unless they apply to the Upper Tribunal for permission to appeal within seven working days from being given notice of the certification. These applications will normally be dealt with on the papers, noting that this is a judicial decision. The upper tribunal must decide whether to allow the appeal to proceed and notify the parties within seven working days from when the application is made—there is no right of appeal against the tribunal’s decision. The upper tribunal may not extend either of these timeframes, unless it is satisfied that it is the only way to secure that justice is done in a particular case.
Where the Secretary of State for the Home Department rejects the initial claim but does not certify it as clearly unfounded, or where the upper tribunal gives permission to appeal, the individual has seven working days from when they are notified of the Secretary of State’s decision, or from when they are given permission to appeal, to give notice of appeal to the upper tribunal. The upper tribunal must make their decision and give notice of that decision to the parties within 23 working days from the day the appeal was lodged. Again, the upper tribunal may extend either of these timeframes only if it is satisfied that it is the only way to secure that justice is done in a particular case.
The Ministry of Justice has been working to increase capacity in the justice system in preparation for the commencement of the Act. Additional hearing rooms have been prepared, making a total of 25 hearing rooms available within the existing Immigration and Asylum Chamber estate in London. These rooms are set up with remote hearing technology, allowing for either in-person or remote hearings in order to maximise flexibility. Over 100 additional staff have been recruited to support the upper tribunal’s work and are currently undertaking training ready for the commencement of the Act.
The Illegal Migration Act provides for first-tier tribunal judges to be deployed to sit in the upper tribunal to hear Illegal Migration Act appeals. The judiciary has identified relevant judges, which could provide over 5,000 additional sitting days. The decision on whether to deploy additional judges temporarily to the upper tribunal, including when they sit and the courtrooms they use, is for the independent judiciary and will be taken by the relevant leadership judges at the time and in the interests of justice. In addition, I have asked the Judicial Appointments Commission to recruit more judges to the first-tier tribunal and the upper tribunal. The recruitment will conclude in the next few months and new judges will be appointed, trained and start sitting from this summer.
We are confident that, with the additional courtroom and judicial capacity detailed above, in line with projected levels agreed with the Home Office, the vast majority of Illegal Migration Act appeal work will be dealt with by the courts in an expedited manner.
[HCWS188]
New Overseas Electors Franchise
(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Simon Hoare)
On 27 May 2021, the former Minister for the Constitution and Devolution, my right hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith), updated the House on the Government’s plans to bring forward measures in the Elections Bill—now the Elections Act 2022—to remove the arbitrary 15-year limit on the voting rights of British citizens living overseas.
The Government committed in their 2019 manifesto to enable more British citizens living overseas and with a demonstrable connection to the UK to vote in UK parliamentary elections—and to enable them to do so more easily. We have delivered on that promise.
Votes for life, delivered
I am pleased to be able to inform the House that, as of today, the 15-year limit on overseas electors’ voting rights is abolished. British citizens living abroad who have been previously registered or previously resident in the United Kingdom can apply to register to vote in UK parliamentary elections.
British expatriates continue to have strong links with the United Kingdom. Decisions on foreign policy, Brexit and trade will directly affect their lives. Now we have left the EU, it is more important than ever to strengthen our ties with the British expatriate community. We want all British citizens abroad to remain part of our democracy, and they should continue to have their say in UK parliamentary elections.
Improving accessibility, enhancing security
The registration period for overseas electors has been extended from one year to up to three, making it easier for an elector to maintain their registration for longer.
The majority of electors can now also apply for an absent vote—postal or proxy— online. This will be particularly useful to British citizens living overseas, as it will speed up the process for obtaining an absent vote.
In Great Britain, overseas electors’ absent vote arrangements will—from now—also be tied to the registration renewal process, meaning that an overseas elector will be able to renew their registration and their absent vote arrangement at the same time. This makes it easier for an elector to maintain their registration for longer, with an absent vote arrangement in place ahead of elections. This means that, when a UK parliamentary election is called, the elector’s absent vote can be issued without delay.
As now, the integrity of the registration process will be maintained, with all overseas applicants subject to identity checks when applying to register to vote, or when applying for an absent vote.
In the first instance, this will be matched against Government-held data, with documentary evidence provided as a new step, in alignment with domestic registration. All applicants will also have their connection to a qualifying address verified by electoral registration officers.
In addition, postal vote arrangements will be restricted to a maximum of three years. For proxy arrangements, a fresh signature will be required for identity verification purposes every three years. This is all part of the concerted effort by Government to improve the integrity of our elections.
A more inclusive and representative democracy
Together, these changes will help to ensure that more British citizens resident overseas are able to participate in elections, and maintain a secure and robust electoral system.
[HCWS186]