Westminster Hall

Wednesday 6th March 2024 Westminster Hall

Wednesday 6 March 2024

[Ian Paisley in the Chair]

Energy Rebates: Highlands and Islands

Wednesday 6th March 2024 Westminster Hall

09:30

[Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the introduction of energy rebates for Highlands and Islands.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. Before I start the debate, may I thank the Minister for taking time out to see me prior to this debate? Engaging beforehand is a refreshing departure from how many of her Government colleagues work, so I thank her for the way in which she goes about her business. We will see, of course, whether she can agree to the change that is so desperately needed.

Let us get something straight from the beginning. Energy policy is 100% reserved to the UK Government. I will come later to the actions of the Scottish Government on the cost of living and our attempts to mitigate UK Government harms, but let us be clear that the issue we are discussing today lies squarely at the feet of the UK Government and the regulator Ofgem.

The energy market in its current form is completely broken. Along with colleagues, I have called for urgent changes to the whole system and urgent support for those in need, the reintroduction of a £400 energy bill rebate, for regressive standing charges to be abolished, and for the Chancellor to honour his pledge to open a consultation on the social tariff. Today’s debate, however, is about a specific action for the people of the highlands and islands, who are uniquely disadvantaged, and a workable solution for them. I will underline how the people of the highlands and islands have been neglected by both the regulator and the UK Government, how energy injustice has not levelled up but rapidly increased, why now is the time to fix it and, of course, how the Government can do that.

Part of the problem in preparing for a debate such as this is that the message is so straightforward and the injustice so clear and unarguable that it feels almost surreal. How has the problem been allowed to get to where it is and why has it not already been fixed? Of course, the highlands and islands are largely rural, almost entirely off the gas grid and so rely on higher electricity use, fuel oil and liquefied petroleum gas. It is much more expensive than for the majority across the nations of the UK who are on the gas grid. We have a colder climate, sometimes spectacularly so. As a result, we use more units of electricity and pay more than the UK average, with higher electricity bills just to get through the days. More of our people—around a third—are in fuel poverty and a fifth are in extreme fuel poverty, by far the highest across the nations of the UK. We might think that those facts alone would have spurred any Government with a spare ounce of conscience to look at meaningful interventions to help, but that has not happened.

Fuel poverty is a major driver of actual poverty. When the time comes when you cannot switch the heating on—a lived experience for many—other problems click in. Some people are already barely eating due to the punishing cost of living and simply try to endure the cold. Some go to more extreme measures, as we know, such as self-disconnection. That has depressingly obvious consequences.

As the medical journal The Lancet pointed out, when people can no longer heat their homes their mental health deteriorates significantly. The odds of their reporting depression, anxiety or hypertension increases by around 50%, as does the risk of suicide. Children in cold homes are at increased risk of asthma attacks and respiratory infections. As the temperature drops and the circulation of viruses increases, immunity is impaired. Absolutely avoidable public health dereliction continues while that remains unaddressed. We might think that any Government with the power to do so and any shred of decency would act in those circumstances, but instead things have been allowed to get worse.

We have long been arguing these points, but the kick in the teeth for the people in the highlands and islands is the standing charge for electricity, which is a pernicious beast for those suffering fuel poverty because it applies every single day, warm or cold, whether the heating is on or off. The consumer cannot control it; there are no measures they can take. What have the UK Government allowed Ofgem, the regulator, to do across the highlands and islands? People were already paying 40% more for their standing charge than those living here in London, yet the Government have let Ofgem increase it to 50% more. According to Yourweather.co.uk, the mean daily temperature in London—the warmest city in the UK—is 16°C; in Skye, it is 9°C. How can that be fair? Surely any Government with the power to do something about that and with a shred of decency would do so.

If that were not unfair enough, think about this: the families across the highlands and islands who suffer these unfair charges, which lead to fuel poverty and even extreme fuel poverty—those who are terrified of the envelope containing the bill when they turn their heating on and try to feed and warm their kids—are sitting in the middle of energy wealth that is much, much greater than their needs, and they get none of it paid back to them. They can see the infrastructure all around them. Renewable energy generates at least six times more than the electricity they use—the figure is higher than that, but let us go on the low side. The rest is exported to the grid, only to be sold back to them at the cost I have described. It is immoral.

The UK Government have the power to do something about it and must make amends for that grossly unfair situation. The Minister will say that her hands are tied because Ofgem makes these decisions, and Ofgem will say that its hands are tied because it needs instruction from the Government. I do not believe anybody suffering those conditions in the highlands and islands will take that argument from the Minister when we hear it. Perhaps she will adjust her notes before we get to that point—we will see.

The Scottish Government have been doing what they can to mitigate Westminster policies that increase poverty in the highlands and islands, although they should not have to. They have been paying the bedroom tax, for example, so our people do not have to. They have supported children through the Scottish child payment and put money in place to fund a council tax freeze, but they do not have power over energy: the UK Government do. That is the same UK Government who introduced the two-child limit and the rape clause, cut universal credit by £20 a week, and reduced funding for public services in the last autumn statement by £19 billion, severely restricting devolved government and local authority support.

I started by praising the Minister for her engagement with me prior to the debate, and she told me that she would like some figures, so I have some for her. Northern Scotland, as it is called under Ofgem, pays more for both standing charges and unit rates than the UK average —60.1p and 24.5p respectively. Currently, northern Scotland’s standing charge cost is 59.38p, roughly 50% higher than London. Energy usage in the highlands and islands averages over 4,400 kW per household, compared with about 3,000 kW in London. Some 62% of the properties in the highlands and islands are not connected to the gas grid, resulting in higher heating costs per household. On current rates, April to June 2024, the daily standing charge direct debit single rate for electricity is 61.1p in northern Scotland and 40.79p in London and the daily standing charge’s direct debit multi-rate is 62.25p for northern Scotland and 40.75p for London.

The 2021 rates of fuel poverty are thought to be underestimates because of covid restrictions, and the Commons Library uses 2017 to 2019 aggregates. The highlands and islands region has the highest levels of fuel poverty and extreme fuel poverty in the UK. It is 39.8%—some 5,000 households—in Na h-Eileanan Siar, with 24.3% in extreme poverty; 32.9% of households in the highlands, with 21.5% in extreme poverty; 32.2% of households in Argyll and Bute, with 19% in extreme poverty; 31.6% of households in Moray, with 18.5% in extreme poverty; 30.9% of households in the Shetland Islands, with 22% in extreme poverty; and 30.5% of households in the Orkney Islands, with 22% in extreme poverty.

I expect the Minister will point to the hydro benefit replacement scheme as helping to balance the situation. Knowing that she will have done her research, I think she knows that that is a poor substitute, and an excuse for years of inactivity. A Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy report of 2022 notes that the HBRS

“does not (and never could) provide an efficient or effective way of providing targeted support to specific groups of vulnerable consumers within a region.”

However, in its own unique and inadequate way, it points to a solution, along with another precedent that has come up recently and could be adopted, which I will come to shortly.

The HBRS was established in the 1940s to compensate for the small hydro dams, and it took current form in 2005 under the Energy Act 2004. As it stands, it falls woefully short of the meaningful intervention required. In 2022, the Highlands and Islands Housing Associations affordable warmth group highlighted the £60 per annum discount is only “adding insult to injury” to regional energy costs.

When someone is paying much more than the rest, that does not really make a difference, in an area that is producing much more electricity that it could ever use. In 2022, Scotland was already producing the equivalent of 113% of Scotland’s overall electricity consumption from renewable technologies, a 26 percentage point increase on 2021. As I said earlier, I am certain that figure is on the low side.

The highlands produces enough energy through electricity to power six times more homes than there are in the highlands. The highlands produced a total of 7.2 million MW of energy, with 4 million MW from onshore wind and almost 3 million MW from hydro power. Argyll and Bute produced 1.3 million MW of energy from renewable sources. The Highland Council area comprises only 0.36% of the UK total population, yet the area produces 5.5% of the 49.7 GW UK-installed capacity for renewables, 43% of the UK’s installed hydro capacity and 13% of the UK’s installed onshore wind capacity.

With those regions playing a crucial role in providing the rest of the UK with cheap energy, it is surely only right that they should start to get some benefit from cheaper energy prices, yet they are not. The HBRS could and should be converted into something more meaningful. In his autumn statement, the Chancellor offered the solution. Why not introduce a meaningful rate based on compensating the highlands and islands contributions? He said he would introduce a rebate of up to £1,000 a year for up to 10 years for people living next to planned new energy generation infrastructure. That is very laudable. If it works for those living next to new generation equipment, how about those living among existing generation equipment?

That rebate would redistribute the wealth being generated in the highlands and islands among the communities, enabling them to reap benefits from what is produced there. That would offer several benefits, such as reduced energy costs for those facing higher than average per unit costs, alleviating the financial pressure that that places on households. It would empower communities by allowing them to reap the benefits of what their communities produce, and it would boost economic growth by alleviating the pressure on households from energy costs.

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

The hon. Member is making an excellent speech, which strikes a chord with anyone who knows and works for the highlands. There is another benefit, I think. During the pandemic, the recovery of anyone suffering from covid was assisted by being kept warm. I believe that a warm household goes a very long way towards disease prevention. It is arguable that one of the benefits of getting this right would be the health of people in the highlands, which would lead to fewer days off work and greater economic productivity, and that can only be good for the economy of the highlands.

[Drew Hendry]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. He will not be surprised to hear that I agree; indeed, I mentioned earlier in my speech that The Lancet has reported on the health outcomes of having a house that is too cold. One of them is the fact that immunity drops, and people’s resistance to picking up infections actually decreases due to those circumstances. There are particular effects on children and their ability to develop. The hon. Member makes the good point that this is an issue of not only lost work days, but lost ability for people to operate in their communities and have a general sense of wellbeing. He was absolutely right to highlight that point, and I thank him for that.

The hon. Member talked about economic growth. As I said, a highland energy rebate would boost economic growth by alleviating the pressure on households from energy costs, allowing them some money to try to get through the cost of living and to spend elsewhere. Let us see some justice for, and amends made to, those suffering in fuel poverty who are generating and exporting power for others across the nations of the UK. The highlands and islands produce almost 6% of UK energy while having about 0.4% of the population. Why do we not benefit further from that? We pay higher than average bills, face higher costs due to the climate and have higher rates of fuel poverty and extreme fuel poverty, yet we live in an energy-rich region.

Even the UK Government’s own report, the BEIS review scheme of 2022, describes how the hydro benefit replacement scheme does not provide efficient or effective support for vulnerable consumers in specific regions. The scheme introduced by the Chancellor that will give rebates to those living near new energy infrastructure up to the tune of £10,000 over 10 years is laudable, so why can a scheme not be put in place for those living near to existing renewable infrastructure? It is time for the people of the highlands and islands to be treated fairly, for fuel poverty to end, and for the contribution of those people to the billions that is generated for the Treasury on their doorsteps to be recognised. It is time for a highland energy rebate.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Ian Paisley (in the Chair)]

I thank Members for bobbing. That helps me considerably.

09:47

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Paisley. I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) on acquiring this time for a debate on a subject that matters to his constituents, my constituents and the constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) and the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford).

As the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey said, this issue goes right across the highlands and islands, where we have longer, darker and colder winters. We have more houses that are older and therefore more difficult to insulate and heat, and we have virtually no access to the gas grid. Those things all contribute to the perfect storm that he rightly outlined, which is the exceptionally high incidence of fuel poverty. I know that because one of the less laudable claims to fame that the northern isles have, along with the Western Isles—Na h-Eileanan an Iar—is higher rates of fuel poverty than anywhere else in the country.

[Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP)]

Much is often said about the colder temperatures and dark winters that we have in the highlands. However, we also need to give consideration to the fact that it is about not just temperature, but about the driving wind and rain that make it feel colder. There are times when the rain is horizontal, certainly in places such as the Isle of Skye and others. Let us remember that these communities are often very isolated. We are talking about single homes. Little protection is provided, so the impact of bad, cold, windy or wet weather on these communities is enormous, which just increases the need to have the heating on to give some protection from the climate.

[Mr Carmichael]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. We have to be a little careful about how we describe that to people in other parts of the world: doubtless, in a week or two, we will all be back here telling everybody they should come and have their holidays in the highlands and islands. However, we are by no means unfamiliar with the phenomenon of the rain that comes straight at you. Certainly, it is always the surest sign of somebody who has just recently moved to Orkney or Shetland, or who is visiting, that on a rainy day they go out with an umbrella, which is a spectacularly useless piece of equipment in the communities that we are blessed to call home.

The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey brings us the interesting and constructive proposal of a standing charge rebate. When it comes to the question of energy costs, I have long taken the view that every little helps. Frankly, it does not really matter whether it is a silver bullet: when families are facing the choice not of heating or eating but of starving or freezing, which might be a better characterisation of the situation in the highlands and islands, if there is some benefit to be had, we should take it. That was the view I took on the alternative fuel payment brought forward by the Government last year: it helped a bit, and a bit of help is better than nothing.

The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey would probably agree that standing charges are a small part of the equation when it comes to the question of energy costs and the actual cost involved in heating people’s homes. The unit price is where the real action is to be found, and it is there that I would like to focus some attention, not least because I understand that Ofgem is carrying out a consultation on a social tariff. That is an interesting idea, and one that I think would command a fair degree of support across the whole House. I therefore hope Ofgem gets on with it—and quickly. Within that social tariff, there surely has to be some mechanism for geographical variation, because social is not just on the basis of income. It has to bring in other factors as well, such as the fact that we live in places that have longer, darker and colder winters.

[Drew Hendry]

The right hon. Gentleman is right to talk about this as being part of a wider package. I secured the debate today to be specific about the need for a highland energy rebate, but that does not negate the sense of what he says about the collective impact. With the social tariff, the highland energy rebate scheme might give an opportunity to put that geographical difference into the mix, in order to achieve the right hon. Gentleman’s aim.

[Mr Carmichael]

The Shetland Islands Council has promoted the idea of a Shetland tariff for years. I understand what the hon. Member says about seeing the energy development; that is something we have lived with in Shetland and Orkney for the past 50 years, as we have kept the rest of the country supplied with hydrocarbons. We have had some significant benefit, but nothing compared with what we could have had. Yes, there are opportunities here. The real fight comes with the energy unit cost, but in the meantime, if we can do something with standing charges, we should.

I am a wee bit disappointed that we do not have a better turnout for this debate. It seems to me that the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey has drawn our attention to something that is really severe for the highlands and islands, but not only there. The hon. Gentleman referred to the disparities between a standing charge in London and in the highlands and islands, or in northern Scotland, which is probably the same thing. For somebody in London paying their bill by direct debit, the current standing charge is 38.5p per day, against the northern Scotland figure, which is 59.38p per day, and the southern Scotland figure, which is 62.08p per day. That is utterly random. I am sure that very clever and complicated sums were done to get those figures, but they have produced what we in the highlands and islands, and elsewhere in Scotland, would probably call mince. If ever there was an illustration that the regulation of the energy market has gone fundamentally wrong and requires root-and-branch reform, that is surely it. In north Wales and Mersey, the rate per day is 62.21p, which is even higher than in the highlands and islands and southern Scotland. People in north Wales and Mersey pay 29.57p per unit, compared with 28.48p in the north of Scotland and 28.16p in southern Scotland.

When we drill down into the figures and the regulation of the market, the other injustice is the rate charged to people on prepayment meters, who by definition are under the greatest financial pressure in relation to energy. The rate charged in the highlands and islands is 62.3p per day in standing charges and 27.19p per kilowatt-hour. If people in the north of Scotland pay by direct debit— I do, and I suspect everybody else in the room does—they pay 59.38p per day, whereas somebody who has to rely on a prepayment meter pays 66.23p per day. In what universe is that a sensible and fair system?

[Jamie Stone]

My right hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. He talks about an injustice. When the national health service was set up, people who lived in Lerwick, Tain, Paisley or Bristol had the same right to see a doctor and to get an antibiotic or treatment to make them well; the situation that he describes flies in the face of the notion of fairness, which is important to our democracy.

[Mr Carmichael]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Like the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey, my hon. Friend touched earlier on the health aspects of energy costs, which not only impact the family budget for heating the house but have a much wider application. As the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey said, they impact mental health, and have serious impacts on those who are elderly and so more vulnerable to the cold and on those who have physical health conditions. For those people, the choice between heating and eating actually becomes less difficult, but only in a bad way: they have no choice. Their medical condition means that they have to give priority to heating.

The fact that we are now so far from the idea of a universal, standard price for energy across the whole country shows just how badly wrong the regulation of the market has gone. As the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey said, responsibility lies at Ofgem’s door. I wish we could see more proactivity from Ofgem, which had to be taken kicking and screaming to get to the point of consulting on a social tariff. If the Minister could instruct it to look at the issue and achieve meaningful change, she would be doing some genuinely good work.

In conclusion, I congratulate the hon. Member on focusing our attention on the question of standing charges. The situation is bad for the highlands and islands, and it seems even worse for other parts of the country, although they might not be as heavily dependent on heat in the winter as we are.

Of course, I could not sit down without making brief reference to the fact that, for many in our constituencies, the real cost of heating their houses comes from the cost of using heating oil, as that is the only way that they can. There are no standing charges for that, and it is much more difficult to get money into the pockets of people who rely on it. That is baked into the system, and it will not be fixed easily.

[Drew Hendry]

I realise that the right hon. Gentleman is concluding his speech, but it is important to point out that this is an issue that I and others, and possibly even himself, have raised in the past. Ofgem has been delinquent in not regulating for those off the gas grid as well. We need to appreciate those who are reliant on LPG and fuel oil because they need protection as well. Again, when they are using fuel oil and LPG, they also tend to use more electricity, which brings us back to the main thrust of the debate. I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his patience.

[Mr Carmichael]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman; as one would expect, there is not a great deal of difference. The one thing I would start with, if I were in Ofgem, would be multi-rate meters, such as Economy 7 and “Total Heating with Total Control”, which many of our constituents use. The standing charges on those are 69.32p per day in northern Scotland and 69.17p in southern Scotland. Again, we see the disparity. That is one standing charge where direct action could have a direct impact on the highlands and islands.

I await with interest what the Minister has to say. I share the experience of the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey; the Minister is thoughtful and prepared to engage. I hope that, having had this brought to her attention, she will use her offices to ensure that, going ahead, the highlands and islands, as well as those who are fuel poor in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and indeed southern Scotland, will not be given this rather shoddy treatment.

10:02

[Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) for securing this important debate and for his contribution on the absolutely urgent need to get recompense for those who live in the highlands and islands. I also thank the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) for his remarks.

If I may, let me put this is in a slightly broader context. We stand on the cusp of an energy production revolution. David Skilling, in his 2022 report, “The Economic Opportunity for Scotland from Renewable Energy & Green Technology”, talks of a potentially fivefold increase in green energy production from the current 12 GW to 80 GW by 2050, transforming the landscape in Scotland, and of course the economic opportunity there for investment and jobs as well. Scotland is therefore playing its part through green energy production, and we must also play our part to deliver on climate change and net zero. An energy-rich Scotland could be the powerhouse of green energy production, with the highlands and islands a key driver in increased onshore and offshore production, and a green energy bonanza driving investment and financial returns for investors, who will benefit from what are, after all, our natural resources.

However, there has to be fairness, and there has to be equity for those who live in the highlands and islands. There is an expression, spoken originally in Gaelic for many generations of Gaels: you do not own the land; you belong to the land. There is sense of responsibility that comes from that to look after the land, to protect it, and to use opportunities wisely. That the highlands and islands is a source of green energy production is something we can take pride in. But what does that mean for those who live there? As has been outlined, the harsh reality is that so many in the highlands and islands are living in fuel poverty. People who live in the region can see the energy production and the transmission lines exporting energy while too many are facing fuel poverty. That is a disgrace.

Let us examine the facts. Even before the cost of energy spiralled over the last two years, too many households in the highlands and islands were already living in fuel poverty. In 2022, it was estimated that 31% of Scottish households were in fuel poverty, with an extraordinary 18.5% already in extreme fuel poverty. That was before the energy price increases we have seen over the last couple of years. The fuel poverty rate of rural households was 35%, and for remote rural areas it was a staggering 47%—nearly half of all households in the rural parts of the highlands and islands living in fuel poverty. We are supposed to be a civilised society. Compassion is supposed to be at our core. How can that be right? How can we tolerate so many of our citizens living in fuel poverty?

My constituency is largely a remote rural constituency. We have talked about the impact of weather—not just temperature, but the wind and the rain. Think about that. Yes, of course we can enjoy, and we encourage people to come and visit, our beautiful areas in the summer, but think about having to endure a highland winter—that driving wind and rain. Many people simply cannot afford to turn the heating on, given the costs that they face.

Let us not forget that much of this is a political choice. Much has been said about the standing charge, and since 2022 it has increased by 138% in Scotland. How on earth can the Government—how could anyone—justify such an increase at a time when so many people are suffering from the cost of living? How can anyone look my constituents in the eye and tell them it is right that we should be increasing the standing charge by 138%?

Today, we have the Budget, and the Tories are fixating on tax cuts. Tax cuts—my goodness. I’ll tell you what people in the highlands and islands want: they want help with their energy bills. They want the ability to turn the heating on. They want the ability to put food on the table. What a distraction this Tory fixation on tax cuts is. Let us deal with the fundamentals.

Going back to what has happened with the standing charge, let us be clear that consumers are being ripped off in the middle of a cost of living crisis by a policy decision that heaps costs on those who face difficult choices, such as whether they can turn their heating on. Of course, whether people can turn their heating on or not, they still have to pay the standing charge. They still have to pay that daily bill. Where is the fairness? Where is the equity? Not only that, but we get penalised in the highlands and islands by higher transmission and distribution charges. That is, after all, a financial penalty imposed on people who live in the highlands and islands by this Government. That is what it is—no ifs, no buts. It is a charge for living in the area in which many people were brought up. Yet, when those living in houses there are having to consider whether to put the heating on, they can look out their windows and see the wind turbines and transmission lines. What kind of country do we live in that we allow that to happen?

As my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey mentioned, the vast Highland Council area has 0.36% of the UK’s population, yet we produce 5.5% of the UK’s installed capacity for renewable energy. Where is the direct benefit for communities producing energy that the rest of us, in other parts of the United Kingdom, benefit from? Why is it not mandatory in legislation for compensation to be paid by producers to local communities, from whom they need consent to produce that energy? It comes back to that point: you do not own the land; you belong to the land. There ought to be a commitment written into legislation that the communities affected by that should benefit from it. Why is it not mandatory for the transmission companies to recognise the rights of communities to compensation for transmission rights? I want companies to invest in the highlands and islands and for those companies that come and invest to prosper and be a part of our future. I want the highlands and islands to be at the forefront of green energy production. I want investment in green energy to lead to a green industrial renaissance for the highlands, but I want fairness for our communities.

The Chancellor has talked about those living near transmission lines benefiting from up to £1,000 off their energy bills for a decade. Why has that not yet happened? That much-needed investment in the national grid to meet the increase in energy production is with us now. It is very much a live issue in the constituency that I represent. To a greater extent, Scottish and Southern Energy is at the forefront of much of that investment. I stress that we should all work with companies such as SSE, which I know shares a vision of a just energy transition for the highlands and islands. I want to see that economic renaissance in the highlands, and I recognise the scale of investment that SSE will be making over the coming years in transmission and production, not least in the Coire Glas pump storage scheme. There is, in essence, a £20 billion investment programme for the north of Scotland, and it is important that we ensure the legacy for jobs and wider infrastructural improvements. That is £20 billion just from SSE. We should think about that and about what should be a modest—because that is all we are asking for—community benefit.

To expand on Coire Glas, there will likely be 500 full- time jobs in its construction. That will require housing for the workforce. It is vital that such projects have a lasting legacy and investment in housing, which is critical for the future of the highlands, linking what happens in energy policy to our industrial development and the need for homes. We also need that offer of financial compensation right now for our communities. If we can greenlight that much-needed investment, where is the benefit for those affected and, as my hon. Friend said, the recompense for those who have existing transmission lines?

[Drew Hendry]

My right hon. Friend is making a clear point about the fact that, as generation is happening, the people of the highlands and islands are losing out. As I underlined in my speech, it is a direct slap in the face when we look at what they have to endure. There is also the matter of the electricity generator levy, which is deducted from those generating electricity in the highlands and goes straight to the Treasury. That is another fund that could be used to pay some of that money back to the people generating it.

[Ian Blackford]

My hon. Friend makes an important and fair point. In my constituency and home island of the Isle of Skye, a number of planning applications are coming forward. Of course, there is always a range of views on these things across all our communities, but if I look back over the past few years and, indeed, at the debate taking place today, on balance, people are generally favourably disposed towards those developments. They understand the importance of getting to net zero. My goodness, the communities that we all represent feel the impact of climate change—we can see it. There has to be that fairness, and the fact is that so many people are living in fuel poverty—the 47% of households that I referred to that live in rural areas. I see it when I am out and about.

If we think about us here in London going about our jobs, many people are dressed, as we are, in their working garb—suits or whatever it might be—but when we see people in remote rural areas, they often work outdoors, in the fishing industry or as crofters or farmers. It is largely an outdoor life, so people wear layers of clothes. They need those layers because of the climate they face outside, but—here is the “but”—in too many cases, they are still wearing those layers when they come back inside because they simply cannot afford the heating. That is the reality. When we give our consent—because it is about our consent—to that increase in energy production, where is the benefit?

I mentioned the increase in energy production that we will see in Scotland between now and 2050. We welcome it, but how can we have our people living in fuel poverty? How can we accept that? Where is the fairness? We are being charged higher transmission costs to transmit that energy into the grid, and being charged again to get the energy back. That energy is produced in our communities. Can somebody explain where the fairness is in that? How does that look for those living in these communities?

[Jamie Stone]

None of us should be under any illusion; the fact that so few of us are here today does not reflect or minimise the nature of the problem. It is fundamentally unfair that many other aspects of government would command a higher attendance of Members. There is something basically wrong here. Part of the UK is being ripped off when it comes to energy.

When the Chancellor and his civil servants were drawing up the Budget, I am sure they took into account what was fair, what was right and what was not, but has this issue been factored in? We await today with interest. It is apposite that the debate is precisely at this hour, because shortly we will know whether the Chancellor cares about a fundamental unfairness or not.

[Ian Blackford]

I thank the hon. Member, my constituency neighbour, for that contribution. I agree with the sentiment; it is a pity that more Members are not present. Having said that, the Members who represent the four most northerly constituencies are here. We four represent the communities most exposed to this issue. We have four of the most rural constituencies in the whole United Kingdom, although we could add Na h-Eileanan an Iar or Argyll and Bute to that. It is our constituents who are feeling this. It is our constituents in the main who are facing fuel poverty to such an extent. I wonder whether those in government actually recognise what it is like to live in those communities and face the kind of pressures that we face.

I have talked about the community benefiting from transmission, but it is important that the community should benefit from production as well. Again, those on the production side are encouraged to engage in community benefit, but we simply cannot leave it to the developers to determine community benefit at a whim. It must be mandatory. It must be in legislation. The highlands and islands produce enough energy to power nearly six times as many homes as there are in the highlands, even before the scale investment that we are talking about. Of course, being a windy and wet region makes us an attractive option for developers, but there must be payback for communities.

In the highlands and islands, we are exposed to the effects of climate change. In general, it is an outdoor lifestyle. Crofting and fishing still provide the backbone to economic activity, and those exposed to such activities are exposed to what climate change is bringing. Anyone who has engaged in crofting can say how difficult it is over the winter months with, from personal experience, crofters increasingly sinking into the mud because it is just so relentlessly wet. That is the effect that climate change is having on us.

It is therefore unsurprising that, in general, those who live in such places as Ross, Skye and Lochaber support green energy initiatives, but there is an increasing concern that rising production produces little direct benefit for communities for that right to produce. That is why we have a broken UK energy market. Let us not forget that the increase in pricing over the last two years is largely because electricity prices are tied to gas prices. However, we have talked about the fact that in the main, people who live in the highlands and islands are off grid. We do not consume gas as part of our energy mix, yet highlanders are paying the price for others’ dependence on gas.

It is simply unfair that Scotland, which produces enough affordable renewable energy for all domestic consumption, must pay higher prices because other parts of the United Kingdom are more reliant on more expensive gas. In energy-rich Scotland, consumers are in fuel poverty because of the broken UK energy market. Those in Scotland are paying a price for being in the United Kingdom—so much for the broad shoulders of the United kingdom; so much for the “Union dividend”. There is no Union dividend; it is a financial penalty, and we in Scotland all pay the price. To put that in a wider context, the value in today’s prices of tax from North sea oil to the UK Exchequer is more than £400 billion. Our legacy from the bounty of North sea oil has been squandered, and we have now been locked out of the benefit of Scotland’s green energy production.

The phrase “Scotland has the energy, but we don’t have the power” is often used. It is an absolute scandal that we produce the energy and yet so many of our people are living in fuel poverty. That is the price of Westminster’s control of Scotland’s natural resources: highlanders and islanders suffering fuel poverty from a broken energy market. The blame lies fairly and squarely in this place, and its inability to act in the appropriate manner to defend the interests of our constituents.

10:21

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure, as always, to see you in the Chair, Mr Paisley. I thank the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) for bringing forward this debate, as well as all four Members who have taken part and highlighted the specific circumstances that mean fuel poverty is even more of an issue in their constituencies than in the rest of the UK.

We know that overall the average fuel poverty gap increased by 66% between 2020 and 2023. We know that 3 million people are in debt to their energy providers. We know that the Government are struggling to roll out their home insulation scheme; we saw figures the other day showing that in the first eight months of the Great British insulation scheme, only 2,900 houses had benefited from measures meant to benefit 300,000.

Obviously, in areas such as the ones represented by the Members present, home insulation is even more of a challenge. That is partly because of the nature of the homes—they are older buildings that are difficult to retrofit—but also because there is a much smaller retrofit-skills market. The scattered nature of the housing and its isolation means that the economies of scale from rolling out an insulation scheme would be far more difficult to implement. Unless local skills and finance can be mobilised, the areas are unlikely to be first in the queue to benefit from national schemes.

All Members in this debate have spoken eloquently, partly about the conditions that mean that fuel poverty is more of an issue: the longer darker nights, the cold, and the rain that “comes straight at you”, as the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) described. The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey said that a third of people are living in fuel poverty, and a fifth of people are living in extreme poverty.

One of the things that I am grappling with is the debate about prepayment meters. We know about forced disconnection, when people simply cannot afford to carry on paying for their electricity. What is more difficult to ascertain is the extent to which people, while not going to those extremes, are living in very cold conditions because they have cut back on paying bills. We know that when there is energy bill support, and when prices come down, their energy use will go up, which implies that they were using less energy than they needed to keep themselves warm. A point was made about the impact on the health of children, older people and people with disabilities. People with disabilities have higher energy costs.

[Drew Hendry]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for underlining that there are big impacts on health, as well as the point that where there is a rebate and some funding to help people, it has a measurable impact. The whole point of the proposal on the highland energy rebate is to put that in place. It is an excellent point to underline and I am grateful that she has brought it to the table.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I would say that we do need to look at this in the round. Hopefully, the Minister will enlighten us a bit more, but Ofgem did a call for input on standing charges, which I think closed at the end of January. As far as I know, the outcome has not yet been published, but I think that it is for the Minister to give us some more details about the balance between standing charges, unit prices, and indeed the discussions about the social tariff. We are certainly looking at all those things.

As the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey has said, the fact that the highlands and islands lack access to the gas grid means that they are in a particularly difficult situation. It was mentioned that 62% of properties in mainland Scotland were off the gas grid; I think I have that figure too. However, some places are almost entirely off grid, as I think the hon. Member said. That obviously leads to significantly higher costs because oil is often then used as a fuel, or heating is entirely electric.

Again, we have very much taken on board the point about decoupling from gas prices, but this all means that those people do not benefit immediately when wholesale prices do come down. I have figures here from Lochalsh & Skye Housing Association, which says that households in the area pay an additional £1,000 a year on energy bills compared with an average-sized home in the rest of Scotland, amounting to a 76% premium. That is just one figure illustrating the problem.

The point was very well made that Scotland is home to a huge amount of old and new generation energy generation. As the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) asked, where is the benefit for Scotland from that? I was reading through a report from Changeworks on fuel poverty in the region in advance of this debate, and there was a quote from an energy adviser that really stood out:

“The annoyance of being a 321% net generator of green electricity to the rest of the UK, all from renewables, yet we have no access to the polluting fuel which is mains gas and the price of energy is four times the cost.”

Again, we know that renewable energy is going to be way cheaper than fossil fuels, and that is one of the reasons why Labour is committed to the “clean power by 2030” mission—because we know that that will help bring down energy prices. However, I can appreciate how absolutely galling it is to be somewhere where so much energy is generated—I think the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber talked about an economic renaissance for the highlands and islands linked to renewable energy—yet to be last in the queue to actually benefit from that. We absolutely need to tackle that unfairness.

I do not know whether anyone wants to intervene on this, but my understanding is still that the SNP is opposed to a windfall tax within our proposal. It is telling that we have this debate today, with the upcoming Budget; I hope that we see firm action from the Chancellor on tackling fuel poverty and recognising many of the unfairnesses that have been raised. There is some talk— I think we have actually heard most of the Budget already, which is not normally the case—about movement on a windfall tax on oil and gas. Labour is calling for an increase in the rate on the energy profits levy to 78%—

[Drew Hendry]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Kerry McCarthy]

Sorry, I will just finish what I was saying. And we are calling for an extension of the sunset clause to 2029, which would raise billions of pounds for the green transition, cutting household energy bills in the process.

[Drew Hendry]

I apologise if I got it wrong, but I thought that the hon. Member was inviting an intervention on that subject.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I was, but I just wanted to get my bit in first, otherwise I would have lost track.

[Drew Hendry]

Yes, of course. The point—I think I have to underline it again and again in this debate, and I think that the hon. Lady understands this—is that there is already a windfall tax, and other taxes coming from the highlands and islands through renewable energy, and we are getting nothing back. We are already seeing the effect of money being taken out, and it is not going back into the pockets of the consumers who are being punished in this way.

[Kerry McCarthy]

To do justice to the issues that hon. Members are raising, I will not go down the path of having an argument about the windfall tax, because we want to focus specifically on fuel poverty in constituencies.

[Drew Hendry]

The hon. Lady did actually raise the issue of windfall tax, so to say that she does not want to debate it is rather perverse. Let me try to help her a bit: over the past two years, oil prices rose to extraordinary levels and, as a result, many oil production companies made excess profits and have engaged in large-scale share buybacks. It is pretty simple and straightforward: in effect, it is a return of capital to shareholders, but it is untaxed. The Labour Opposition and the Government missed the opportunity to recognise the one-off nature of the situation. A one-off tax on share buy-backs could have alleviated the impact of higher energy prices, but both the Government and the Opposition missed the chance.

[Kerry McCarthy]

We have been calling for a windfall tax for quite some time. We have also been challenging the generosity of the investment allowance that goes to oil and gas companies, which I think is 91p in the pound. Not least because my voice seems to be slightly failing me, let us keep to the topic—[Interruption.] I will draw my remarks to a close.

Scotland’s huge potential for renewable energy generation shows the need for a place-based approach that allows people to feel that they are part of the transition and are directly benefiting. It is particularly galling that Scotland is responsible for so much of the new renewable energy generation, but is not benefiting. In some ways, it should be benefiting more than other parts of the country because it is doing the generation.

What Joe Biden has done with the Inflation Reduction Act in the States very much demonstrates a place-based approach to the green transition. I think that about 70% of the investment has gone into Texas, which is traditionally an oil-producing state but has been keen to embrace the benefits of the green transition not just for jobs, but for the community. Labour’s local power plan is partly about community energy generation and how communities can directly benefit from renewables and use them to serve their needs, but an element of it is about lifting places up because they have made a contribution to the rest of the country.

I suspect that the Minister will tell us she cannot say anything about what is being announced in the Budget today, but I would like some reassurance that she recognises the geographical disparities whereby some parts of the country are being hit harder by fuel poverty. There is an overarching need to tackle the fuel poverty that affects millions across the UK. Could the Minister say something about the geographical disparities? Could she also give some indication of where the Government are on the fairness of pricing, on the impact of standing charges versus unit prices, and on prepayment meters? I look forward to hearing from her.

10:32

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Amanda Solloway)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I thank the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) for securing this incredibly important debate, and I thank other hon. Members for attending. Although we are a small group, they have made their cases very powerfully.

I will go through the main issues one by one. Standing charges have been the thread running through the debate. The hon. Member made a powerful point about how standing charges for residents of the highlands and islands are too high. As hon. Members will probably know, the setting of standing charges associated with each tariff is a commercial matter for suppliers, which have flexibility to structure tariffs. However, Ofgem has launched a call for input on standing charges, which closed in January and has so far received more than 40,000 responses. We are looking at how standing charges are applied to energy bills and at what alternatives should be considered. Ofgem is currently analysing the responses and will publish in due course.

It should be noted that suppliers can offer low or no standing charges. As wholesale energy prices are coming down, competition is coming back to the market and consumers are able to access different tariffs.

Once the findings have all been put together, I am very happy to get together to further discuss how we can use them. I recognise that the price of standing charges for highland and island households is an important issue for all hon. Members, and it would be useful to discuss that in more depth on an ongoing basis. The importance of discussing these matters with Ofgem was mentioned earlier; I assure all hon. Members that I have been putting pressure on Ofgem to address all these important issues.

[Drew Hendry]

The Minister is always very thoughtful and considerate about these issues, and she wants feedback, but people in the highlands and islands need action. I think I am hearing from her that she agrees with the principle that it is fundamentally wrong that people in the highlands and islands are paying more in this way. Is that indeed what she is saying? Is she determined to address that injustice and to get something done about it with Ofgem?

[Amanda Solloway]

The point I am making is that we are looking at the standing charges, which are the one thread that has run through everybody’s speeches and comments today. We need to ensure that the standing charges are fair. We do not know what the findings will be, but I suspect that among the 40,000 responses— I think it is probably nearer to 44,000—there will be a lot to take into account, including looking at how we adjust the standing charges.

[Ian Blackford]

I say respectfully to the Minister that this is about fairness, and it is about what should be a universal market. We cannot have people being penalised to this extent. It is simply a matter of the Government saying to Ofgem that this is not right. There should be a universal market; people should not be penalised on the basis of where they live. It is a simple question, and the Government ought to provide leadership.

[Amanda Solloway]

To give assurance again, that is exactly what I am saying: I have been tasking Ofgem with looking at the issue. We are waiting for the consultation results to come through.

[Ian Blackford]

Change it. Change it!

[Ian Paisley (in the Chair)]

Order.

[Amanda Solloway]

Once we have all the responses and have looked at them, I will be very happy to welcome views on the findings.

I turn to transmission and distribution charges. Electricity network charges are the costs that users pay to connect to and use the electricity network. These are charged to suppliers and generators, so eventually the costs are passed on to consumers in their energy bills, some of which is reflected in their standing charges.

As an independent regulator, Ofgem is responsible for setting the electricity network charging methodology. Government officials are working closely with the regulator to understand these charges. Electricity network charges must be cost-reflective, so that those who pay them are charged in a way that reflects the cost that they are placing on the network.

Transmission charges are based on the costs that different users impose on transmission by connecting in different locations. That means that there are higher charges for those whose use of the network results in longer distances of electricity transmission. As hon. Members will know, Scotland is a net exporter of electricity, so transmission costs for Scottish consumers are lower than those for their counterparts in England and Wales.

[Mr Carmichael]

The Minister describes locational charging. That made a degree of sense in the days of generating electricity from hydrocarbons, because there was an element of transmission loss, so we wanted to encourage transmission closer to the point of consumption. As we move to renewables, that argument simply no longer stands, because we are not wasting a non-renewable resource in order to generate and then transmit electricity. Why has the approach not been changed?

[Amanda Solloway]

I thank the right hon. Member for his intervention. These are the kinds of things that we are working through as we respond to the net zero challenge.

Hon. Members have quite rightly talked about the geographical challenges of electricity supply in northern Scotland, such as the area’s size, poor weather conditions, sparse population, mountainous terrain and the need to supply multiple islands. Inevitably, these challenges mean that the costs of distribution are much higher than for other regions in Great Britain. Hon. Members have made that point very clearly.

I also acknowledge that the highlands and islands produce high levels of renewable electricity, although that does not remove the challenges of distribution. We will be looking at that issue.

The hydro benefit replacement scheme provides annual assistance of about £112 million to reduce distribution charges for domestic and non-domestic consumers in the region. That equates to a reduction of about £60 annually per household.

[Drew Hendry]

The Minister knows what I am going to say: with the bills that we are talking about, the £60 that she is talking about does not touch the sides for the people affected. I know she knows that, because I have said it to her before. What we need is an overhaul. We need a rebate that actually makes sense to people and has an impact on their bills. That is exactly what this debate is about: getting a highland energy rebate. If the Government want to use the scheme as a basis for doing so, that may be workable. I hope that the Minister will take that point away. Every little helps in a way, but the scheme really does not touch the sides for the people who are suffering this injustice.

[Amanda Solloway]

The hon. Gentleman is right. He has made that point clearly on several occasions, and I am prepared to discuss more fully the highland energy rebate paper that I have been sent.

I turn to energy prices and support. Despite the rise in standing charges, energy prices have fallen significantly since the winter of 2022-23. The 2024 quarter 2 price cap of £1,690 is 60% lower than the 2023 quarter 1 price cap peak. It is important to note that the Government reacted quickly to support households last winter. About £40 billion was delivered to support households and businesses, an average of £1,500 per household between October 2022 and June 2023. We delivered £40 billion to support households and businesses last winter, with a typical household receiving £1,500 in support between October 2022 and June 2023. Many highlands and islands households off the gas grid also benefited from the £200 alternative fuel payment schemes.

Despite the fall in energy prices since the winter of 2022-23, the Government have continued to support households. We are delivering a package of support worth £104 billion—an average of £3,700 per household—between 2022 and 2025.

Debt is an incredibly important challenge at the moment. Although we are doing a lot to help households, we know that some have fallen into energy debt. We want to support them to ensure that consumers do not fall into further debt. Last year, Energy UK announced a voluntary debt commitment: 14 energy suppliers announced their collective commitment to go above and beyond the current licensing conditions to help households with their energy bill debt. Those energy suppliers will aim to provide immediate assistance to those in debt and will arm people with knowledge and resources to empower them to manage their bills more effectively. For assurance, I regularly meet stakeholders such as Citizens Advice to discuss what can be done to address consumer debt. I welcome further input from hon. Members on the issue.

[Kerry McCarthy]

This week, I met some academics who are doing some research into debt levels. As I understand it, the average is about £1,000 per household, but I do not know the extent to which some people are in only £100 or £200 of debt and others are in five-figure debt. Do the Government have analysis of that? Does the Minister have figures she could share with me or put in the House of Commons Library?

[Amanda Solloway]

It is important that we consider the different levels of debt. It is quite complicated to get those figures because the suppliers have them, but I have pushed to see whether we can get a flavour of them. One of the things that I would advise households struggling with their bills to do is to speak to their supplier before going into debt, to receive help and support as soon as possible.

We have talked about prepayment metres, which can be a useful tool for consumers to manage their budgets and for energy suppliers to manage debt. However, it is important that the rules around their use are sufficient to protect consumers and are properly enforced. Involuntary installations should be used only as a last resort. Ofgem has strengthened its licence conditions for suppliers to conduct involuntary prepayment metre installations with exemptions in place for households with vulnerable individuals, such as those with people over 75 or children under the age of two.

The Government have already committed to supporting households past April 2024. Though I obviously cannot comment on today’s Budget, in the autumn statement we announced the biggest increase to the living wage and an increase to benefits of 6.7%. Earlier this year, we also cut national insurance for 27 million people, worth £450 for the average worker. As hon. Members have noted, in the autumn statement we also committed to giving communities living nearest to electricity transmission infrastructure up to £1,000 off their electricity bills for the next 10 years. That will apply across England, Wales and Scotland, including the highlands and islands, and they may be able to benefit from the scheme. We will also publish guidance this year on the wider benefits for local projects and provide an update on the electricity bill discount scheme.

As hon. Members have mentioned, many households in the highlands and islands are off the gas grid, which means they rely more on electricity. I also understand that many highlands and islands residents will use more energy and subsequently pay more for their energy bills due to the inclement weather, colder temperatures and poor insulation, but also due to having older and larger properties, which are harder to heat. To address that, the Government have already introduced several domestic energy efficiency schemes for all households in Great Britain to help lower bills and reach net zero targets. As an example, the Great British insulation scheme is delivering low-cost and free insulation to the least efficient homes in lower council tax bands, including many vulnerable households. The scheme will run until March 2026 with a value of £1 billion.

Since it was launched in January 2013, the energy company obligation has delivered around 3.8 million measures in approximately 2.5 million homes. Across ECO schemes, around 31,600 measures have been delivered to 23,100 households in local authority areas in the Scottish highlands and islands since 2013. As hon. Members will know, fuel poverty is devolved, with the Scottish Government responsible for the matter in Scotland. However, the ECO and the Great British insulation scheme are delivering energy-efficient measures to the least efficient low-income homes in Scotland. We are currently reviewing the fuel poverty strategy for England and will engage with the devolved Administrations as part of the process.

I understand this is a complex matter and one that is important to all hon. Members here. I thank them for bringing it to the debate. I would be happy to meet people further to today’s discussion. Finally, I want to touch on lived experiences and the impact on health. Having been brought up in a household that was fuel-poor, I know what it is like. I know the impact that that can have on someone’s health, especially as my mum suffered with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and we found it incredibly difficult to manage all those challenges. My commitment is therefore to do the very best I can to support all those energy-poor households.

10:47

[Drew Hendry]

I thank Members who have taken part in the debate. We have had a clear exposition of the issue this morning. I thank the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) on the Labour Front Bench and the Minister for being so open to looking at discussions and understanding the issue. Nobody in this room has disagreed that an injustice is happening to the people of the highlands and islands or that they are suffering unduly in the circumstances from the prices that they pay for their electricity.

I more than anyone welcome the idea of further discussions with the Minister, but along with the empathy that she obviously displayed there is a need for action. The issues of electricity pricing for the highlands and islands and unregulated off-gas grid customers have been going on for years and years—decades, in fact. They need action now, because this is a severe and urgent problem. I urge that those discussions be quick and meaningful, and I urge the Minister to use her best offices to give the most serious shove to Ofgem to tackle the issue.

As we said during the debate, the highlands and islands produce 6% of electricity but have only 0.4% of the population across the nations of the UK. They have higher than average bills, yet they get the highest levels of fuel poverty and extreme fuel poverty. The hydro benefit replacement scheme does not do the job that it was supposed to do. It needs to be updated, and there is an opportunity to do that by combining it with the Chancellor’s scheme to get a rebate that goes back directly to those people affected in the highlands and islands. I hope that the Minister will take that away, as she said she would, for further discussions, but I stress again the need for urgent action to solve the issue. I would be happy to meet her in future to see what we can do to get some real action.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the introduction of energy rebates for Highlands and Islands.

10:51

Sitting suspended.

A379 Slapton Line

Wednesday 6th March 2024 Westminster Hall

10:56

[Ian Paisley (in the Chair)]

I will call Anthony Mangnall to move the motion. As he knows, there are no other speakers in the debate, although he can give way to Members if he so wishes. As an experienced gentleman, he will know that. There will be no wind-up opportunity.

[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the future of the A379 Slapton line.

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Paisley. For residents and visitors to south Devon, there can be no better view than those momentary westward glances that are revealed when travelling through Stoke Fleming or Strete. For the unacquainted, it is perhaps one of the most magnificent views these isles have to offer: that of the Slapton line, which is a bar of shingle dividing the sea and the largest natural freshwater lake in the south-west of England, the Slapton Ley. Its simple beauty has captured the imaginations of generations and has encouraged people to retire to the area. It attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. That bar of shingle has become not only of natural importance, but a vital link between the towns of Kingsbridge and Dartmouth and the villages in between.

The A379, which runs atop the shingle, is an arterial route that carries goods, schoolchildren, visitors, farmers, healthcare workers and emergency services across south Devon. It has become an essential link that the good people of south Devon cannot do without. The history of the area is as wide and varied as one would think: from the November 1824 storm that wrecked hundreds of ships and resulted in the Slapton line being breached, to Plymouth dredging the shingles of Slapton to expand its dock, and the destruction of the village of Hallsands in 1917, which was due to that very dredging. Perhaps most famously, in 1943 Slapton sands became the training ground for the D-day landings. The similarity of the topography to that of northern France made it the ideal training location for US troops. As a result, an area of 34,000 acres was evacuated of residents, and troops moved in to undertake their preparations for the invasion of Europe. Today, there stands a monument, presented by the United States, to recognise those who left their land to support the war effort, as well as a Sherman tank to commemorate Exercise Tiger and the hundreds of servicemen who died during the rehearsal in April 1944.

Since then, this special area has become a wildlife sanctuary and a site of special scientific interest, and a Field Studies Council centre has been created. The council has also helped to provide education and scientific research in the area. The area’s history and natural beauty are undeniable, but it is also a working environment. The villages of Strete, Slapton and Torcross are all adjacent to the Slapton line, and the local community depends on its existence and the ability to travel across the line on the A379.

Over the years, the storms have resulted in man altering the landscape to deal with the impact of mother nature: first in 1944, when sea defences were built in Torcross, and then expanded and completed in 1980; in 2001, the road had to be repaired; in 2002, a 300-metre section of the A379 was moved and rebuilt; in 2015, 25,000 tonnes of shingle was moved on to the beach; and finally, in 2018, Storm Emma caused significant damage to more than 500 metres of the road and the middle car park. While the scale and viciousness of the storms have varied over the years, it was Storm Emma that resulted in my predecessor, Sarah Wollaston, securing £2.5 million of Government funding to realign further sections of the road and place rock armour along the Slapton line to protect the road.

We all know the fragility of the Slapton line, and we all recognise the increasing impact of storms. However, we also know that the line is integral to our rural economy and way of life and to ensuring access across the area. In 2001, the Slapton Line partnership was formed to co-ordinate policy for managing coastal change in the area. The group is made up of a range of public, private and third sector organisations; its current members are Devon County Council, South Hams District Council, Strete, Slapton and Stokenham parish councils, the Environment Agency, Natural England, the South Devon area of outstanding natural beauty, the Wild Planet Trust and the Field Studies Council.

Over the years, the group has helped to create a local strategy and evaluate what can and should be done to protect the line. Until 2018, the strategy was that the Slapton sands would operate on a policy of “retreating the road”, meaning that it could be rebuilt, moved and repaired. After Storm Emma, though, the policy of “retreating the road” was altered to “no further retreat”, which is, unfortunately, where the trouble began. When the policy for management of the line was quietly changed, no consideration was given to the needs of the local community or the economic and social impact of losing the road, nor was any thought given to what message it would send to Devon County Council, and indeed to central Government, when we ask for further funding or support.

In October 2019, the Slapton Line partnership published a strategy document, unsurprisingly and rather unexcitingly called the Slapton Line partnership policy document. The excellent work undertaken by Dan Field and Chris Brook—notwithstanding the title of that document—from South Hams District Council has helped to identify key areas of weakness on the Slapton line, areas of concern and recommendations of what should be improved. I will take a moment to put on record how very fortunate we are to have two of the best public servants working for South Hams District Council in the form of Dan Field and Chris Brook. They have done the most extraordinary work on shoestring budgets, for which I applaud them. I want to make that very clear on record in the House.

The Slapton Line partnership strategy document was updated in November 2023, with me as interim chair. The strategy document made a number of recommendations, including that the road should continue to be maintained as a highway and cleared of shingle and debris post storms. Most importantly for me in terms of this debate, it recommended maintenance of all sea defences and a review of the shoreline management plan to extend the “hold the line” policy across the line. It also recommended improved traffic planning and passing points on the back routes, increased car parking at both ends of the line, and ensuring the development of the adaptation plan.

The group recognises that we will not indefinitely be able to protect the line and road from ever-increasing storms and sea levels. However, we do believe that we need to strengthen the line against future storms, and that maintenance of the sea defences and reviewing the shoreline management plan, with the intention to extend the “hold the line” policy across parts of the line, will be the most cost-effective way of keeping the road open while minimising taxpayer cost.

For the moment, my ask of the Government is to help us to shore up those defences so that we can avoid a large cost later on. Having reached consensus, the Slapton Line partnership group produced a beach management plan in 2017, a vulnerability assessment and an economic assessment. Together, those reports have highlighted the impact that the loss of the road will have on the more than 30,000 people living in the area, along with the damage it will do to thousands of local jobs, the disruption to education, the limitations to healthcare and emergency services, and the potential danger it will do to the economy, which estimates its local value to be about £40 million gross value added. As I am sure the Minister knows, those figures are not small, but essential for rural communities like mine in south Devon.

What do we need? This year, Devon County Council is conducting the following surveys: in the first quarter, a data review; in the second quarter, what options and what the design should look like; in the third quarter, preliminary designs that can be presented to the Slapton Line partnership group; in the fourth quarter, consent and planning applications; and in the third and fourth quarters, the environmental assessments. Those surveys and applications are going to come at a cost of about £130,000 to £200,000. Will the Minister support my call for Devon County Council’s increased budget for its highway maintenance fund to help to produce those reports? We are not asking for new money; we are asking for the money that has already been allocated to Devon County Council to go towards funding those reports.

A question remains about what the extended and improved defences will look like. I believe we already have the answer. Beesands is the neighbouring village to Slapton. I welcome any hon. Members to come to see this, and I will even throw in lunch. I will extend that to civil servants, if they would like. In Beesands, after Storm Imogen, work began after South Hams District Council requested an innovative form of rock armour to be designed and trialled. Working with Landmarc and other local business, it came up with a new solution, using specialist high tensile stainless steel mesh that locked in rock and shingle and provided a solid, yet natural-looking, defence system. Doorkeepers are also invited to come and look, I hasten to add.

That prototype cell system was installed in 2016 and has worked so well that, in 2021, an improved TECCO system was commissioned and rolled out further along the beach at Beesands, protecting the village green and nearby properties. The initial work was funded by the Environment Agency, and the extension by South Hams District Council. It is my opinion, and that of many other members of the Slapton Line partnership and local community, that such technology would be more than appropriate to be installed on the Slapton Line. The successful trial at Beesands shows not only its durability but its appropriate aesthetic look.

To install that technology, those scoping documents and assessments need to be completed and planning consent approved. I am led to believe, because Slapton Sands falls under the category of a SSSI, that Natural England will block any proposals we put forward. I appreciate that Natural England has a fine balancing act to work on, but I believe it is counter-productive to reject any plans put forward, especially when the loss of this road would impact the local community so significantly. Does the Minister believe that highway maintenance should be able to circumvent application processes and allow us to proceed in a timely manner to introduce those defence measures?

The estimated cost of the measures we would like to put in place is still being worked out, but it is likely to be several million pounds. Although we might gulp at the prospect of that sum being spent, it is considerably less than what would have to be spent if the road were washed away, and we would have to focus all our attention on the back roads. The considerable back-road network would require a far greater sum to be spent on it, while being less effective.

Time and tide stop for no man. Although I recognise the brilliance of the Minister, I am not asking him to do that. What I am asking is whether he can make our defences fit for purpose, to help us extend the life of the line for the next three decades, ensuring that south Devon remains a community that is open and accessible, where businesses and residents can thrive together.

[Ian Paisley (in the Chair)]

I was transported to the shingles of Devon county by your speech. I call Minister Opperman.

11:08

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Guy Opperman)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. Mr Paisley, and it is an honour and privilege to respond to my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall), to discuss part of the heritage of south Devon and of this great country. He rightly set out the long and illustrious career of that community and surrounding area, which is particularly noted for its role in the preparation for D-day, 6 June 1944. As is set out on the memorial, without the actions of that community and countryside, we would have been impeded in our ability to invade France and take forward the changes we managed to achieve in 1945.

I thank my hon. Friend for bringing this matter forward, and I hope I can address some of the important points he raised. It is clear to everybody who has read up on this issue that he has fought assiduously—in the footsteps of our good friend Sarah Wollaston—to drive forward progress in difficult circumstances, and I give him due credit for that.

The debate not only matters to constituents in Slapton or Torcross but has a wider impact on Stokenham, Frittiscombe, Strete, visitors to Slapton Ley, and all the communities up and down the coast that use this road. I accept and understand that the issue has a wider importance than simply the stretch of road we are talking about, given the geography and the ongoing difficulties involved. I express my sympathy for those affected, given the ongoing concern and worry that this issue causes. As any Member of Parliament knows, such an ongoing worry—whether about flood risk, complications for development or the potential loss of a road—is a serious and legitimate thing. People get very exercised about such things, and we should in no way underestimate that—I certainly do not.

I have been lucky enough to read the Slapton Line Partnership November 2023 strategy, which goes to 25 pages and is a credit to everybody who brought it forward. I have also tried to look at the considerations, and there is a relevant factor with which I want to try to assist my hon. Friend and the local community. That document was created on 3 November 2023 after many months of work. Subsequently, on 27 November 2023, Devon County Council received £6.63 million of further funding after the HS2 decision taken by the Prime Minister in early October 2023—the cancellation of the second leg allowed extra funding to go to local authorities up and down the country. That has consequences when one assesses the financial capability of the local authority, and I will come to that in a bit. Clearly, the Slapton Line Partnership wrote the strategy before it knew that further funding was coming to Devon County Council. Given that further funding, I respectfully suggest that the document should be refreshed.

My hon. Friend kindly asked me to visit, and I would be delighted to accept. It is legitimate for a Minister to sit down with the local authority and the interested parties—there has been support from arm’s length bodies, whether that is the EA or Natural England—and drive forward a compromise solution that gives security and peace of mind to the local communities my hon. Friend so ably represents. Surely, that is in everybody’s interests. We are not talking about what the policy will be in 100 years, but people do need to know what it will be in the next two, five and 10 years. That is totally legitimate and understandable.

Different Administrations have made serious interventions dating back to 2018, when the then Transport Secretary gave £2.5 million to support the local authority’s works after Storm Emma. There was an adaptation manager, and other work was done, ultimately producing the Slapton Line Partnership strategy. However, that strategy has to take into account local people, and I would be concerned if local communities felt in any way that the impact on them was not considered over and above the statutory and arm’s length bodies—that would be of concern to any Member of Parliament, let alone any Minister. This issue is a classic example of the difficulties of combatting climate change and coastal erosion, and of addressing people’s modern-day needs to get their children to school and to get out and about across the rural community, but I have no doubt that there is a middle ground where the situation can be to the satisfaction of all.

It is right that I set out the statutory position. Under section 41 of the Highways Act 1980, the local authority has a duty to maintain the highways network in its area. Importantly, the Act does not set out specific standards of maintenance, as it is for each highways authority to assess which parts of its network need repair and what standards should be applied, based on its local knowledge and the circumstances that apply.

Clearly, a key matter in all of that is funding. Devon County Council receives significant funding—in fact, more highway maintenance funding per capita than any local authority—to reflect the fact that it is responsible for more miles of local roads than any other authority, including my own in Northumberland. There is a variety of ways in which that funding is provided. There is the original highways maintenance block grant. Budget 2023—we are now on Budget day 2024—announced a further £9.39 million. And there is the £6.63 million, which was announced in the late autumn, or early winter, last year. That means that the total budget from the Department for Transport for highways maintenance was £68.88 million in 2023-24.

That matters, because it is a 30% increase on the sums from last year. That is a massive increase in any business or local authority funding, and it clearly makes a difference. By way of context, if I go back to 2009-10, total funding was £27 million; we are now up £68 million. That is a massive increase in budget, and it has come about under this Government. That allows funding to be spent on the local highways maintenance priorities that matter most to local people.

Clearly, the views of arm’s length bodies matter—they are very important—but it is also about what local people want, as personified by their local parish council, their county council and their individual Members of Parliament. That unquestionably includes potential roads that are under threat, such as the Slapton line. I genuinely hope that Devon County Council, my hon. Friend, the local community and the partnership will go away and reflect on the increase in funding. I hope they will have a proper sit-down—I am very happy to facilitate as a Minister, if I am able to find the time in the diary—and a genuine discussion about what the local community wants, how there can be ongoing preservation of the Slapton line and how we can have a long-term, practical policy that everyone can get behind and that provides peace of mind over the next two, five and 10 years, with an acceptance that things may be different over a much longer period. That is surely a practical and pragmatic approach that we can all get behind, and I hope it will provide assistance and comfort to my hon. Friend and his constituents.

Clearly, it is for Devon county councillors to spend the money as they see fit once it is given to them, because they are the elected representatives. In relation to the HS2 money, I want to be utterly clear that the £6.63 million is not ringfenced—it is not prescribed solely for potholes or whatever. It can be spent on any capital project or programme, but highways maintenance is particularly prayed in aid in support of that announcement.

To conclude, it is an honour and a privilege to respond to my hon. Friend and to address a part of the nation’s heritage, and I will be looking forward to visiting when diaries permit. I am certain that there is a way forward that will maintain and continue this line in the near future.

[Ian Paisley (in the Chair)]

Thank you, Minister. I am sure the hon. Member for Totnes appreciates the opportunity for a meeting and a collective visit to the area by the entire Committee.

Question put and agreed to.

11:19

Sitting suspended.

World Book Day

Wednesday 6th March 2024 Westminster Hall

[Mark Pritchard in the Chair]

14:30

[Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered World Book Day.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. Tomorrow, 7 March, will mark World Book Day 2024, the day when we reflect on the importance of reading and literature for people of all ages and encourage the younger generations in particular to embrace reading. World Book Day was created by UNESCO in 1995 as a worldwide celebration of books and reading. The occasion is now marked each year in more than 100 countries around the globe. World Book Day founder Baroness Gail Rebuck explained the reasoning behind the idea as follows:

“We wanted to do something to reposition reading and our message is the same today as it was then—that reading is fun, relevant, accessible, exciting, and has the power to transform lives.”

I could not agree more.

As we celebrate World Book Day once again, I often find myself in conversation with friends and colleagues about our favourite books and authors, which have inspired and influenced our lives. My first memories of reading include Enid Blyton’s Famous Five, followed by the Nancy Drew series and the Hardy Boys. My love of crime and mystery novels has been built on both the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. Possibly my favourite novel when growing up was “Little Women” by Louisa May Alcott. It was a delight to introduce my daughter to the novel when she was younger and she, equally, loved it.

In my late teens, when studying A-level English, I was introduced to Thomas Hardy and particularly his “The Return of the Native”, which included the most fascinating and mysterious character in Eustacia Vye. I have read many Hardy novels since and have always been taken by the complex characters and relationships between men and women that he wrote about. During my twenties, I read most of Margaret Atwood’s collection of novels and perhaps one of my top-five favourite novels of all time is her “The Blind Assassin”. My love of reading has continued throughout my life and I have enjoyed writers such as Pat Barker, Sebastian Faulks and Ian McEwan, whose novel “Atonement” also makes it into my top five.

In the UK, we have been blessed over centuries with some of the most world-renowned authors still enjoyed by readers today, from Charles Dickens, the Brontë sisters, C. S. Lewis and Virginia Woolf to the outstanding J. K. Rowling, who has probably done more to introduce children to and encourage them to read books through her Harry Potter series than any other known author. We should pay tribute to her for her outstanding contribution to encouraging children to read, as well as to the publishing industry in this country.

My constituency of the Cities of London and Westminster is blessed with a rich literary history. Arthur Conan Doyle’s legendary Sherlock Holmes was based at the iconic 221b Baker Street. Other famous novels also based in my constituency include “Mrs Dalloway” by Virginia Woolf, which is set in numerous places across the two cities, including Bond Street, Victoria, Green Park and St James’s Park, and the “Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”, whose characters lived in Soho. Now, you might very well think this; I couldn’t possibly comment, but the Palace of Westminster has been the setting for many a novel, including Michael Dobbs’s “House of Cards”. Just across Parliament Square in our great Westminster Abbey lie a plethora of British authors and poets, including Geoffrey Chaucer, Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling and Alfred Tennyson, to name but a few.

I could speak for the full 90 minutes about the vast wealth of legendary authors and books set in my constituency and from the rest of the world, but we must concentrate on celebrating World Book Day. It is important to remember that the joy of reading can be accessed for free. Whatever the economic background, children and adults alike can borrow books from libraries across the United Kingdom.

[Theo Clarke (Stafford) (Con)]

I welcome my hon. Friend’s debate on World Book Day, which I very much support. On Friday, I will visit schools in my constituency to celebrate it and I am delighted that Stafford libraries are so popular and well used. I pay tribute to HarperCollins and the Publishers Association who arranged for 50 books to be delivered to every primary school in my constituency for World Book Day. I am very keen to get Stafford reading and to support the campaign.

[Nickie Aiken]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We must all work together to ensure that children are open to or introduced to reading at an early age.

We are fortunate in the Cities of London and Westminster to be home to some amazing libraries such as Pimlico, Victoria and the Barbican children’s library. In total there are more than 15 libraries for public use across the two cities. As local authorities’ budgets become tighter and with household incomes squeezed, I do not think it has ever been more important to protect our libraries. They not only offer a diverse range of books, but act as an essential third place between home and school. That is particularly beneficial for children who live in overcrowded homes and need a quiet place to do their homework.

Yesterday, I jointly hosted the World Book Day parliamentary drop-in with my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South (Andrew Lewer). It was an amazing day and I thank all the MPs who turned up to collect books for their schools.

According to World Book Day, reading for pleasure is the single biggest indicator of a child’s future success, more so than parents’ educational backgrounds or income. That is why it is so important to support initiatives such as World Book Day. Last year alone, the organisation provided 50 million £1 book tokens to children in the UK. Children across my constituency benefited from them and will do so again this year. I look forward to visiting schools over the next couple of days to hand out book tokens.

According to World Book Day research, a staggering one in seven pupils stated that the book they purchased with the token they were given was the first book they had ever bought. For those receiving free school meals, the figure climbs to one in five pupils. Also according to World Book Day research, reading for pleasure is at its lowest since 2005. We must all work together, whatever our political party, to reverse that trend.

I am very, very proud that since 2010 the Conservative Government have made improving children’s literacy a major priority, and results are paying off. The most recent OECD programme for international student assessment international literacy tables saw the UK climb from 25th in 2009 to 13th in the 2022 rankings. I fully support the Government’s reading framework that is designed to increase the focus on reading for schoolchildren. Moreover, the Department for Education has invested an extra £24 million to support children’s literacy skills over the past year to help pupils’ recovery from the pandemic and to work towards achieving the target of 90% of primary school pupils reaching the expected standard in literacy and numeracy.

[Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing the debate and the powerful message she is sending. World Book Day’s theme is encouraging reading for fun, and, with nine and 11-year-old boys myself, I know that that is a real challenge. She rightly points to the increase in literacy levels among young people under this Government. That is one of our proudest achievements and it would not have happened without the emphasis on phonics and the core skills that unlock the independence of mind and creative thinking that goes into reading for fun.

[Nickie Aiken]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. When my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities was Education Secretary he really emphasised that, working with his ministerial team, and the results are paying off.

World Book Day research has also shown that reading with a parent is the single biggest determinant of whether a child will read independently. Some of the most important and happiest memories that I have of my children growing up was reading with them. Of course, they read Harry Potter, but when my son was very little he was obsessed with Thomas the Tank Engine and my daughter read every single Jacqueline Wilson book. For a child to be able to read with their parent, the parent needs to be a proficient reader. That is one reason why improving adult literacy rates is also important. According to the National Literacy Trust, in England 16.4% of adults —just over 7 million people—can be described as having poor literacy skills. That has wide-reaching implications and is extremely worrying. On average, an adult with very poor literacy skills will earn 7% less than if they had a basic level of literacy.

Those issues not only impact the person’s confidence and ability to be part of society, but their income generation and the type of job they can get. Research by the National Literacy Trust has shown a correlation between literacy rates and life expectancy. For example, a boy born in a ward with some of the greatest literacy challenges will live 26 years less than a boy born in a ward with some of the fewest literacy challenges.

We must work together to ensure all adults have access to educational resources throughout their lives, particularly when they are in their 30s and 40s and perhaps realising that they need to improve their literacy. Organisations such as the Reading Agency and the Adult Literacy Trust provide a number of free resources to help improve adult reading skills. The Government are also doing their bit to reduce adult illiteracy rates. The Department for Education’s essential skills entitlement provides the opportunity of free study for adults who do not have essential literacy skills.

When I finished university and was looking for a job, I volunteered to teach people who had just arrived in the country how to read. I will never forget the most amazing Somalian woman, who was so eloquent and wanted to learn to read to help her children. It was the most humbling experience of my life to see the passion she had for learning to read. I hope she was able to go on to help and support her children and herself.

Books are not only invaluable for their positive impacts on readers, they also play a vital part in our economy. Across the UK, there are more than 1,000 bookstores, and the publishing industry is worth £7 billion a year to the UK economy. I hope that following the excellent Budget just delivered by the Chancellor, the publishing industry will be able to grow its economy with a number of the initiatives announced today.

It would be remiss of me in a debate on reading not to mention the Publishers Association, the member organisation representing companies of all sizes involved in publishing in this country. I have worked closely with it since entering Parliament, setting up the Conservative women’s book club for MPs; I think my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Theo Clarke) is a member. She and I are the only ones in this debate who are able to join, because we are women and Conservatives. It has been a joyous experience to bring Conservative MPs from all intakes to talk about a book, and to enjoy fiction again. Some of the MPs involved told me it is the first time they have read a fiction book since entering Parliament. It is so important to put aside time to read books for our health and wellbeing.

I have also worked closely with the Publishers Association to establish a summer reading list for parliamentarians. I thank the MPs and peers who have given us their favourite book recommendations over the past few years. Last summer, my choice was “Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad” by Daniel Finkelstein. I hope that everyone in today’s debate will provide us with their summer reading choice this year.

We all have a part to play in supporting World Book Day and encouraging everyone, whatever their age, to pick up a book. I know I will be doing just that when I visit the schools in my constituency later this week. Sometimes, it really can be as simple as this: one book can change someone’s entire life for good.

14:44

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure, Mr Pritchard, to serve under your chairship. I am very pleased that I can contribute to the debate.

I thank the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) for bringing this issue to Westminster Hall. I was just sitting there thinking to myself, “I don’t think there’s been a debate that the hon. Lady has had in Westminster Hall that I haven’t managed to attend and support.” I love to do that; it is part of my task in this place.

I declare a clear interest in this debate, as a book lover. I probably read biographies more than anything else; I love reading those types of stories. I like to hear about people’s lives and what they did, especially those who have changed the world and who have sought to change the world in many ways, and to get an understanding of what made some of the men great men and women of history tick and do the things they did.

The hon. Lady referred to some of her favourite books and some of her children’s. One of my absolute favourite biographies is that of Blair Mayne, or Paddy Mayne as we know him—the local Newtownards boy who founded the SAS and who I still believe was robbed of the Victoria Cross.

That story was transferred from book to TV. But, just for the record, he did not swear like a trooper. In real life, he was quite careful with his words. He might have got angry and used his fists on many occasions—that was fairly obvious in the TV programme—but he did not use the language portrayed in that series; his family and the people of Newtownards are very clear about that.

In the last few weeks, I have read something slightly different: a book by Dan Walker, who most people will know as a BBC sports commentator and an early morning BBC news presenter. He has also written a number of books, and I got the chance to read one in which he told stories about places around the world he had visited as a BBC journalist; he mentioned the Olympic games; the Manchester Arena bombing and South Africa. Forgive me for making me the analogy, but he was almost like Forrest Gump—he seemed to be everywhere when something happened. Well, Dan Walker actually was there when all those things were happening, and the book gives his interpretation of the occasions and the people. It is about not him, but the people he met. It is a lovely story, and I encourage everyone to read his books if they get the chance.

When my boys were younger, we used to go on holidays, but very quickly the boys grew up and they did not want to go on holidays with their mum and dad any more. I genuinely could have read five or six books while I was away. Reading enables you to put your busy mind somewhere else; it is just phenomenal. When I was listening to the hon. Lady, it was quite clear to me that reading books helps her. I believe it helps us all, transporting us to a different place.

The world is open to anyone through a book, which is just wonderful. That is why I love to see World Book Day coming round. Yesterday, there was a World Book Day event in Portcullis House. It was lovely to go, as I do every year, in support. This year, the celebration was in the Boothroyd Room; I believe that is right. That room is much bigger than Room R, Room S or Room U, where the event has sometimes been held, which tells me that World Book Day is expanding. Yesterday it used at least half the Boothroyd Room—and what an exercise it was in how to promote books to children. All being well, next week or the week after I will take the half a dozen or so books that I was given yesterday to one of the primary schools in my constituency and give them to some of the children there. I hope that they will read them.

I love to see pictures of children dressed up as their favourite characters: from Disney princesses to Marvel heroes; from Bananas in Pyjamas to Toad of Toad Hall; and from characters in the Bible to war heroes like Blair Mayne, who was always my hero as a young boy in Ballywalter and Newtownards back in the ’60s and early ’70s.

World Book Day is a day to encourage children to immerse themselves in the world of reading, to escape from the world we live in and perhaps travel elsewhere. One of my local primary schools, Victoria Primary School, this year has an initiative whereby children wrap up one of their books and swap it with someone in their class. I think that is a fantastic idea: a child reads a book and gives it to someone else, who gives them their book in return. All of a sudden, their knowledge becomes greater and they become even more avid readers.

My parliamentary aide is an avid reader—she must be to be able to read up on every topic that I speak on! Her knowledge is encyclopaedic; with respect, it is perhaps much greater than that of other people who do speechwriting. She has passed that joy on to her children. Indeed, this year Santa brought her two girls a bookcase with books on it for their rooms. Every Saturday morning, they go with their grandad to the library, which conveniently has a park beside it, and the staff watch their wee dog while they get their new book. Every Saturday, they go to the library with their grandpa to get a new book—what an insatiable desire to read! Their school has a rewards programme: the children progress from belt to belt until they end up with a black belt—not in judo, but in reading. That is encouraging.

I tell these stories not to boast, but to explain what schools in my area are doing to progress reading. All these things make it interesting for children to get engaged. However, the fact of the matter is that literacy is a challenge that has to be met head on, and for that schools need funding. I am pleased to see the Minister in his place, although he does not have responsibility for Northern Ireland. I will tell some stories about what we have done in Northern Ireland. What I wish to do in this debate is encourage people: I wish to encourage the Minister and highlight the importance of reading; and I want to encourage the two Opposition spokespeople. I know they will all encourage me in return.

It is great for children to have grandparents who can take them to the library or a dad who has the time to read to them before bed each night, but the issue is that that scene is not replicated everywhere. That is why many children are in reading recovery, as schools attempt to fill the breach and help children not only to attain an average level of reading but to improve more easily.

There is a duty on us, and a real interest in this issue. We are blessed to have so many teachers whose vocation is to educate children and make them better. Everyone here advocates that—in particular, the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), who has just arrived. Reading recovery needs teachers, and that needs funding. In the gentlest of ways, I remind the Minister and others in the Chamber that reading levels are largely based on the funding that schools can access.

The other day, someone in Westminster Hall—I cannot remember who—said that some schools do not have a library at all. I was quite amazed; I did not think any school did not have a library. I think it is important that they do. Giving those on free school dinners book tokens, and paying for teachers dedicated to helping with reading and encouraging others to be more passionate about it, can be done only if the prioritisation—the focus, demand and drive—is right here.

Thankfully, Northern Ireland is ranked fifth in the world for reading proficiency among primary school children. Data from the 2021 progress in international reading literacy study revealed that children from Northern Ireland significantly outperformed those in 52 of the 56 participating countries. I am very proud to be here to tell others about what our schools do, what our education system does and what parents do in Northern Ireland. That is something we can be very proud of on World Book Day, but we cannot be complacent. There are still children who cannot read well, children who struggle and children who have no enjoyment of reading. The fun of World Book Day is a time to focus on all that. Collectively and singly, we should attempt to do better.

When it comes to reading, I always try to leave with a quotation. This quotation is from my favourite book in the whole world—the Bible—and it is Proverbs 22:6:

“Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.”

What are we doing for our children through books? We are teaching them about the world, about life, about social engagement, and about how they can be great adults in a world that may seem incredibly strange and, for some, may even be a world that they are not sure they want to be in. If we give our children a love of books, that will stand them in good stead for the rest of their lives. For me, that is a definite priority, and one that we should all, collectively, try to achieve.

14:55

[Sir Gavin Williamson (South Staffordshire) (Con)]

It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) on securing this debate. I think we all feel very passionate about this subject, because we all understand how important reading is to our children. One of the most precious things we can do is take the opportunity to sit down with our child and read them a book.

We have to be acutely aware that although that often occurs in households right across the country, it sadly does not happen in all households. A recent BookTrust survey found that out of over 2,000 low-income families, less than half of children under seven were being read a bedtime story. That is one of the very simple acts that can really transform a child’s outcomes, making sure that they develop and widen their range and vocabulary. That early language development is so incredibly critical for their outcomes later in life. Perversely, that is the case not just in English, but in other subjects, such as maths and science.

World Book Day is incredibly important. It is an opportunity to put a real focus on the importance of a book for every child right across the country. We should all feel a great sense of pride in the scheme, which the Publishers Association has championed over the years. It is not just about what is being done in schools and for children; it is also a celebration of the fact that Britain is a world-leading nation in publishing. We have some of the best companies in the world based here in the United Kingdom, employing so many people right across the country.

The heart of the publishing industry is here in the United Kingdom, and that means we have an amazing stream of talented authors who have the opportunity to get their works published. Indeed, there are many parliamentarians who think they are talented authors as well, and who like to take up the opportunity.

[Jim Shannon]

Name them!

[Sir Gavin Williamson]

I think their book sales speak to it—but we are getting slightly distracted.

World Book Day brings that focus, because we do face challenges. My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster picked up on some of the challenges faced by children from some of the most disadvantaged backgrounds, who do not have access to a book. It is sad to think that in so many households there is not a book for a child to pick up—for them to discover a new world and have their eyes opened.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster read a long list of authors from her constituency, and I would like to point out the great literary tradition that Staffordshire has provided in Arnold Bennett. In my own constituency, Arthur Conan Doyle—my hon. Friend touched on him—visited Great Wyrley during the Great Wyrley outrages and was a great champion of making sure that justice was done. He did not just write about the fictional characters who were meant to have walked the streets of my hon. Friend’s constituency, but also actually delivered justice in Staffordshire.

[Theo Clarke]

I absolutely agree with what my right hon. Friend and neighbour in Staffordshire is saying. I will add that Tolkien lived in my constituency and was based in Brocton in the world war, which is one reason why I am keen to promote literacy. Does my right hon. Friend agree how important it is that the Government continue to promote reading? Does he welcome the fact that children in England now rank fourth globally for reading? We have gone from eighth in the league tables up into the top five. Is that not fantastic news, which we should welcome?

[Sir Gavin Williamson]

That is absolutely fantastic news. It is a testament to the work that has been done and to the focus we have had in this country on reading over the last 14 years, and we have to continue to build on that. My hon. Friend mentioned Tolkien; it is not necessarily widely known, but the Shire in “The Lord of the Rings” was based on the Kinver Edge rock houses in my constituency, and I strongly encourage people to come and visit them—[Interruption.] I notice that my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) is going to intervene and disagree with me on that.

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

I am delighted to intervene on that point. I congratulate my right hon. Friend for the points he is making, but Worcestershire would certainly dispute the suggestion that the Shire was based on Staffordshire. Tolkien enjoyed looking down from the Malvern hills and comparing the black Black Country, which may have been the inspiration for Mordor, with the green shire below him.

[Sir Gavin Williamson]

I fear that the point is not going to be resolved in this debate, but it is fair to say that I am right and my hon. Friend is wrong. I will, however, move swiftly on.

The Department for Education plays an incredibly important role in the promotion of World Book Day, working with the Publishers Association and schools and creating the underpinning to ensure that we get our children reading. We have seen children make amazing progress up the PISA scales in terms of reading outcomes and understanding literature as part of our curriculum. That is also true of phonics, which I know is close to the heart of my right hon. Friend the Minister, who has championed it over the years, along with many of us. We know that phonics delivers results, and we are seeing that in the international tables. Sadly, we are not necessarily seeing the same results in every component part of the United Kingdom, and I urge those parts that have not embraced phonics as a central part of developing, promoting and teaching reading to look at it as a matter of urgency.

I particularly welcome the DFE’s £60 million English hubs programme—an intervention focusing on designing and developing the expertise to teach reading. Getting that right is critical, and a number of us in the Chamber have probably seen that work. Getting the very best teaching, as well as encouraging, developing and, most importantly, sharing it right across our schools, is critical for all our children.

Libraries have already been touched on, and it is so important that children from right across the country always have access to a good library and the opportunity to pick up a good book and to be transported to a different world and a different country—or even Worcestershire. With the support of that book, they can go anywhere their imagination takes them. The £20 million libraries improvement fund is certainly welcome, but I suggest that we need to do more in that area. There are some concerns; we saw library book stocks decrease by 11% across England, Wales and Scotland between 2021 and 2022. We need the best possible range of stock in our libraries so that when youngsters have that book that they picked up on World Book Day, they have the opportunity to feed and develop their enthusiasm.

It is important that we thank all the people who have been instrumental in creating the structure for World Book Day. We must also thank all the teachers, teaching assistants, support staff and parents, and the children themselves, who make World Book Day the living, wonderful, beautiful thing it is.

15:05

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

It is a privilege to take part in the debate, Mr Pritchard. I do not really understand why it is not better attended—it is not as if there is much else of interest going on anywhere. I commend the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) for bringing this issue forward, and I thank her for her contribution to the drop-in we had for World Book Day.

This debate is one of those events in the parliamentary calendar that I always try to put in an appearance at. Having seen the difference that World Book Day has made in some of the primary schools in my constituency, which have some very high levels of deprivation, I think it is vital. Somebody being given a £1 book token to spend on a book might not seem like much, but if that £1 is the only pound spare in the family budget that month, it can make a big difference.

As so often happens in Westminster Hall, I have not heard much I would disagree with—maybe a bit, but nothing particularly significant. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) made a comment about schools without libraries, which is something that concerns me. I will come back to that in a minute, because I have a story about how a school library almost literally saved the life of someone who has gone on to do great things in my constituency.

Talking of libraries, I had the great pleasure a few years ago of visiting Innerpeffray library in Perthshire, which is Scotland’s oldest free lending library. It opened in 1680; I think the first one in England was about 20 years before that. By the way, the oldest continuously operating library in the world is in Fez, in Morocco, and it has been going since 859 AD. We sometimes forget how much of what we regard as western civilisation we owe to people who, these days, are not seen as part of western culture.

The hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster reminisced about her experience of reading. Although I do not directly remember this myself, my mum and dad would reliably tell me that the first sentence I learned to read was “How they ran last time out”, because my dear grandad Quinn taught me to read the racing results before he became so ill that he could not read them for himself. That was when I was three—I had originally learned to read from my pyjamas, which would have pictures of cats and dogs and so on. I know that I was only three, because I then learned to read and taught my big brother, who was four. I must have done something right because he eventually came out with an honours degree in chemical physics from Glasgow University and much else as well. If we get well taught when we are young, there is no holding us back.

However, I met my match when I got married. My wife, Fiona, is such an avid book reader that she once managed not to realise that the toast under the grill had gone on fire when she was standing next to it, because she was so engrossed in her book. She also caused consternation at the then Glenwood library in Glenrothes in the days before computers. I do not know how many people are young enough to remember this—I think it is an ever decreasing number—but library books were once managed using wee card envelopes that we had to put a tab in. [Interruption.] I see the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster nodding—she obviously learned about that in history at school. Fiona used to get four books out of the library in the morning, read them and take them back in the afternoon, which completely knackered the system because the tickets were still in the “Issues” and were not ready to be taken back in the “Returns”. They came to a compromise: when she went in in the morning and got books, the library staff would leave her tickets to one side, because they knew she would be back later in the day.

Something else that not many Members here will remember—this was actually on my fifteenth birthday— is that the BBC started a programme called “On the Move” to encourage adult literacy. A big part of it was trying to get adults who could not read, or who were not confident in their ability, to learn that that was not something to be ashamed of. If, for whatever reason, they had not had the chance to learn to read adequately in childhood, they would be given the chance in adulthood. That programme launched the careers of people such as Bob Hoskins and Martin Shaw. Those who have seen it will immediately recognise the wee logo that went with it, although they might not be able to describe it now. My uncle, Alex Mackenzie, designed that wee logo for “On the Move”. He has never received a single penny in royalties for it, but he did it for the love of adult education.

The hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) suggested that we all chip in with nominations for a summer reading list, and I notice that no one has risen to the challenge. I am going to suggest a book called “On the Come Up” by Angie Thomas, which was recommended to me not on World Book Day but at a summer reading event in Parliament a few years ago. One of the volunteers asked me what kinds of books I usually read, and went and picked it out. It is the story of a young, black, inner-city American girl who is a very talented rapper. The only one of those words I would identify with is “young”, and that was quite a long time ago. I said, “That’s not what I usually read,” and the volunteer said, “Exactly.” Sometimes it is important to encourage ourselves and others to read something completely different. People say that travel broadens the mind, but reading can broaden the mind a great deal without us having to travel very far.

I often make a point of reading about things I think I am not interested in, just to see whether I become interested in them. But we all like to go home sometimes, and I still love finding books by Val McDermid, a great Fife author; books by Ian Rankin, who was brought up in Cardenden, in my constituency; or some of the Scottish books of Sara Sheridan. The two books on my bookshelf that are falling apart because they have been read so often are “Yes Minister”—that was before I got interested in politics, by the way—and “Hamish’s Mountain Walk”, which was written by another person with a long association with Fife. Hamish used to teach in a school in Buckhaven, and was the first person to do a continuous non-powered journey across all 278 Munro mountains in Scotland. “Hamish’s Mountain Walk” is a about that, but there is a lot more in it than just mountain walking, and it contains a phrase I have always remembered. He encourages people not just to walk up and down a hill, or to cycle around the roads, but to take in as much of what they pass through as possible. He writes:

“Any book can be ordered from the local library where a whole world of vicarious fun lies ready to hand.”

That is as true today as it was when Hamish wrote those words almost exactly 50 years ago.

The difficulty is that, because so many local libraries have closed or restricted their opening hours, they are sometimes not that local any more, which is very sad. Although local authorities in Scotland—and I think elsewhere in the UK—have to provide for library services, there is no minimum standard of provision, and there is no statutory inspection system, in the way there is for policing, education or social work. Inevitably, if councils get squeezed but want to avoid going bankrupt, they have to keep providing the services for which there is a required standard of provision, and, sadly, the things that are not an absolute legal requirement start to suffer. That often means that cultural services, library services and so on are the first to suffer, which is sad.

Getting read bedtime stories by a parent or another adult is a great thing, but the earlier that children learn to read for themselves, the quicker they will learn to start thinking for themselves. That is vital, and it is something that modern society seems determined to stamp out. People are not encouraged to think for themselves enough, and reading a book allows them to do so. I have seen evidence that children who read a lot of fiction, regardless of whether it is, in the eyes of middle-class folk like us, worthy or trashy fiction, are less likely to grow up to be psychopaths—I mean clinically diagnosed psychopaths; I am not using it as a slang term. When someone reads fiction, they have to put themselves in the position of somebody else. We cannot read a book of fiction without putting ourselves in the shoes of one or more of the characters. Simply by reading what looks to be just a story about spacemen, ballet dancers or whatever, children learn to be empathetic.

[Sir Gavin Williamson]

The hon. Member makes an important point. Some of the statistics are interesting: people who read just 30 minutes a week are 20% more likely to have greater life satisfaction, and 19% of readers say that reading stops them feeling lonely. Similarly, non-readers are 28% more likely to report feelings of depression. Reading is therefore good not just from an educational point of view but from a mental health point of view.

[Peter Grant]

Absolutely. That is one reason why it is sad that children sometimes almost have to be forced to read at school. If somebody is forced to do something, the chances are that they will stop doing it as soon as they are no longer forced to do it. That is why I commend the work of the Publishers Association, through World Book Day and many other initiatives, in encouraging children and young people to want to read. Children should be encouraged to do so for fun—because they like doing it, rather than because they have been told they have to do it and to recite it when they go back to school the next day.

I promised that I would go back to the story about the school library. I am sorry that I cannot give any hints as to the identity of the two people concerned, partly because of the sensitivity of the information that the lady provided, but this is somebody in my constituency I know very well. I wish I could tell hon. Members what she has achieved and delivered for other vulnerable people in and around Glenrothes over the years.

She had a troubled childhood. By the time she was at secondary school, the path her life seemed to be set on was not a good one. On one of the relatively few days she went to school, she happened to go past the school library and she went in to see what was going on. She got talking to the school librarian, who was someone I later got to know very well. He sat down, heard her sad story and asked if she wanted a book. I do not think that the girl had read a book in her life. He gave her something simple and told her to take it away. He said that even though she was only supposed to have it for a week, she could take as long as she needed to get through it. The girl brought it back two days later. She had finished it, and she asked for another.

Simply pointing that young girl in the direction of books helped her to see life from a different perspective. That quite possibly saved her life, because she might have ended up with a lifestyle that would have led to an early death. Because of that almost chance encounter, and because she was introduced to books when she needed something to show her an alternative path in life, she has continued for decades to provide an enormously valuable service in my constituency. I wish I could identify the two individuals concerned.

The story also says a lot about the school librarian at the time. Simply by being prepared to take a few minutes and help someone who needed it, he helped to turn a life around with the aid of some books. Reading books of any kind can change lives for the better. It should be encouraged, although we cannot force people to do it, because that does not work.

I consider myself lucky that I went to school when every town had its lending library that was open all day, every day. Mine in Coatbridge was one of a great many public lending libraries built on the legacy of Andrew Carnegie. I fully appreciate the difficulties that library services have across the United Kingdom. They have had to change—they no longer just provide books and a place for people to read—but it will be a sad day if financial constraints cut down the library profession any further or stop its original purpose, which is not only life-enhancing but sometimes lifesaving: to encourage people to take time from their busy day to sit down and lose themselves in a book.

15:17

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

It is a real pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Pritchard. I thank the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) for securing this World Book Day debate, and I thank hon. Members who have contributed. It has been an incredibly thoughtful and thought-provoking discussion.

This is one of those topics that reminds us why we got into politics: to ensure that all children get the best start in life. I know that my children have enjoyed many a World Book Day, getting stuck into stories and the occasional dressing up. I had a look through some old photos of costumes that we had made over the years: many were of dubious creativity and quality, but the experience of sharing them has always been fun. I really commend the work of the World Book Day charity.

Beyond World Book Day, there is something incredibly special—hon. Members have touched on this point—about reading with a child, rediscovering old favourites and discovering new stories and authors with them. Anything that promotes and encourages that is to be hugely applauded.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster on bringing this debate to Westminster Hall. We have heard many examples of the contribution that World Book Day, and reading generally, can make to a person’s life and particularly to a child’s education and life chances, yet we know that there are huge challenges in this space. Last year, the annual literacy survey found the lowest levels of reading enjoyment since the survey began almost 20 years ago, with just two in five children saying that they enjoy reading in their free time and only 28% saying that they read daily. Those are incredibly worrying statistics. They form a trend that we really need to work to reverse.

For the 1 million children in the UK who do not have a single book in their home, World Book Day is a fantastic opportunity to introduce or reintroduce reading into their life. That is especially true for the children in our poorest households, where books can often be seen as a luxury during a cost of living crisis. Ensuring that every child can choose a book with their £1 token is an important step towards igniting that passion for reading and making it accessible to all.

Being immersed in a story can help a child to think creatively or to become interested in an entirely new topic that they may never have encountered. Reading is so important, as many hon. Members have highlighted, and too many children are leaving school without those essential reading and writing skills. Without getting the basics right, they are being left behind, and it is often the children in the most challenging circumstances, who have the least access to books, who are hit the hardest.

A Labour Government would prioritise a curriculum and assessment review to ensure that we provide an excellent foundation in the core subjects of reading, writing and maths. We want to get the basic building blocks right and give every child access to a broad curriculum that not only reflects the issues and the diversities of our modern society, but ensures that children from all backgrounds do not miss out on the things that make school fun, like music, art, sport, drama and reading. Together, those building blocks will ensure that children are able to develop life skills such as better communication skills, which are essential for their future. For Labour, the key to that is resetting the relationship between Government, schools and families so that we can improve literacy outcomes together as a community.

Schools that have faced challenging budgets have had to make some difficult decisions, and many do not have designated funding for libraries. Whether they are in schools or in our communities, libraries play such a vital role in encouraging children to read and ensuring that every child has those resources. I have vivid childhood memories of going to our local library when I was knee-high to a grasshopper, flicking through the dockets of books and seeing what delights might have newly arrived when the exchanges took place. I also remember the library buses that used to come round our school, and how excited I always was about books. We all need to recognise, as we have done today, how important that is for every child. Every child should have books available to them.

A lack of books in schools can entrench inequality in access to reading, and we know the impact on literacy outcomes. Michael Morpurgo, among others, has highlighted that crucial point. We also know that parents value it when children have access to books, or to a good school library or local library. It is a big pressure for parents to ensure that their children have the same access to books and the same love of reading as every other child.

There is a gap in the support available, and many charities have filled in where they can. I pay tribute to the amazing work of the National Literacy Trust and BookTrust. In its strategy, the World Book Day charity says that it wants to see

“more children, from all backgrounds, developing a life-long habit of reading for pleasure, benefiting from the improved life chances this brings them.”

We could not sum up the purpose of this debate any better. In a recent Westminster Hall debate, the Minister himself said that

“we cannot knock down barriers for children if we do not teach them to read well.”—[Official Report, 24 January 2024; Vol. 744, c. 137WH.]

I could not agree more.

We should all focus on improving literacy outcomes for our children. A Labour Government would focus on that as part of our curriculum review to make sure that we have the building blocks in place. We would focus on hiring more teachers to fill the gaps left in our classrooms and make sure that everybody can be supported to reach these aims. We would invest in early language and speech interventions to ensure that the very youngest schoolchildren get the strongest possible start.

I conclude by paying tribute to the amazing work that World Book Day does year in, year out to encourage more children and their parents to take up reading. I thank the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster for giving us the opportunity to discuss such a positive thing today.

15:25

[The Minister for Schools (Damian Hinds)]

It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Pritchard, and to take part in this debate—or is it a discussion? It felt more like a discussion: sometimes a discursive discussion, but a very good one. Even as politicians, we will probably struggle to find things to disagree on. As the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) said, this is one of those things that brought so many of us into politics, both directly and indirectly: seeking ways to improve the life chances of those who are disadvantaged, and wanting to open up the discovery of the world, including the literary world, to as many people as possible through the power of education.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) on securing the debate and on having the foresight to apply for it. I thank everybody who has taken part: my hon. Friends the Members for Stafford (Theo Clarke) and for Worcester (Mr Walker), my right hon. Friends the Members for Esher and Walton (Dominic Raab) and for South Staffordshire (Sir Gavin Williamson), and the hon. Members for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who comes from the beautiful County Down. Those who spoke and those who intervened made interesting and insightful points.

The hon. Member for Strangford reminded us of the variety of what we are talking about when we speak of books. Although perhaps we think first of novels or children’s books, World Book Day is also about biography, non-fiction and eyewitness accounts. The hon. Member for Glenrothes rightly mentioned the joy of discovering a new genre, something we were not expecting. The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North spoke of the joy of rediscovery in reading with our children or coming into contact with books that our children and their friends have. This may be a debate for another day, but we might reflect on how, in a world where so much is about electronica, it is wonderful to celebrate the simplicity of a book and being able to lose oneself in a story—me time, if you like, which I would argue is good for the soul.

I was struck by the very touching story that my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster told about her time volunteering. She also reminded us about the importance of book clubs, a category that has recently grown significantly; I did not know about the Conservative women MPs’ book club. She took us on an interesting journey through the literary chapters of her own life, as well as through the rich literary heritage of the two cities.

There was a competitive spat with my right hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire and my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester about who was from where. I will gently say that I would never join in that type of competitiveness. I will just mention that I represent East Hampshire, the undisputed home of Jane Austen.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster said that she was a Famous Five girl. I was a Secret Seven boy, but I agree with her on just about everything else. It was only a month ago that we were last here discussing the importance of reading. It is a real pleasure to be here today to recognise and celebrate World Book Day. We all look forward to tomorrow.

The Government wholeheartedly believe that all pupils deserve to be taught a knowledge-rich curriculum that promotes extensive reading, both for pleasure and for consuming information. The texts that our young people read play a significant part in their wider development, broadening their horizons and introducing them to new ideas and different perspectives. Reading is a principal way of acquiring knowledge about the world, language and vocabulary. Such knowledge eases access to the rest of the curriculum. It really does underpin all education.

Ensuring that pupils become engaged with reading is one of the most important ways to make a difference to their life chances. Evidence shows that reading for pleasure, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster said, is more important for children’s educational development than even their family circumstances or their parents’ educational background or income. That is why the Government have introduced a range of measures to promote reading and improve literacy standards, as part of that mission to level up education standards across England.

We have strengthened the national curriculum to focus on reading, requiring pupils to study a range of books, poems and plays throughout their schooling, to encourage a lifelong love of literature and appreciation of our rich and varied literary heritage. But we recognise that for children to develop a love of books, we need to build a strong foundation in reading early on, as my right hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire rightly said. That is why many of the measures the Government have introduced support the effective teaching of reading right from the start.

In 2021, we introduced landmark reforms at the early years foundation stage, to improve early years outcomes for all children, particularly those who are disadvantaged. The reforms to curriculum and assessment requirements focused on the critical areas that build the foundations for later success, including language development and reading. We have invested in the Nuffield Early Language Intervention—NELI—improving the speech and language skills of an estimated 150,000 children in reception classes. More than 320,000 primary school children have been screened to identify those with language development difficulties, who will receive targeted language support.

We also recently launched Start for Life’s Little Moments Together home-learning environment campaign, in partnership with the Department of Health and Social Care. That campaign follows the Hungry Little Minds home-learning environment campaign of a few years ago, and aims to increase rates of school-readiness, by alerting parents to the importance of the early years and their own critical role in their child’s development for school-readiness.

As we were reminded by my right hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton, among others, to drive up the teaching of reading in primary schools, we have focused on high-quality systematic synthetic phonics teaching for every child, starting as soon as children join in reception. The evidence for phonics is indisputable. Phonics approaches have consistently been found to be effective in supporting younger readers to master the basics of reading, with an average impact of four months of additional progress, compared with other approaches.

Because of that, since 2010 we have placed phonics at the heart of the curriculum. In 2012 we introduced the phonics screening check, to assess pupils at the end of year 1. We have also incorporated phonics into the teachers’ standards, the baseline of expectation for teachers’ professional practice; placed a greater focus on phonics and the teaching of reading in Ofsted’s framework; and supported schools to choose good phonics programmes, by publishing a list of schemes validated by the Department. Our focus on phonics is making a clear impact. When we introduced the phonics screening check in 2012, 58% of pupils in year 1 met the expected standard. By 2023, that figure was 79%.

To support schools to embed phonics into their practice, as my right hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire mentioned, we have funded the English hubs programme since 2018. The programme has so far supported more than 1,600 school intensively, with a focus on helping those children making the slowest progress in reading, many of whom come from disadvantaged backgrounds. It includes Chesterton English hub, which offers support to primary schools in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster.

That programme is having a palpable impact. I saw that at first hand during a recent visit to the Knowledge Schools Trust English hub last month. The programme’s impact is also measurable. Schools supported intensively as partner schools by English hubs outperform non-partner schools by around 7 percentage points, when comparing the change in year 1 phonics screening check results between 2019 and 2022.

English hubs are also doing excellent work to develop reading for pleasure and early language. For example, in 2021 we rolled out the “Transforming your school’s reading culture” programme, which was developed by hub schools and sector experts to support reading for pleasure. Reaching around 600 schools last year, English hubs are now into the third year of delivering this research-based continuing professional development programme, which trains teachers in schools across the country to ensure that every pupil in their school develops a love of books.

Of course, teachers play a vital and irreplaceable role in inspiring a love of literature. The Government have committed to supporting their professional development, including with the national professional qualification for leading literacy in October 2022. As part of our education recovery plan, we announced £184 million of funding to deliver 150,000 scholarships across a range of NPQs by the end of 2024. The NPQLL saw 3,064 funded starts in its first year, which was 8.6% of all funded NPQ starts.

The hub programme cannot reach every school, and the NPQ programme cannot reach every teacher, so, to ensure that all teachers have clear guidance to support their teaching of reading, we published the reading framework. Updated last year, the framework offers non-statutory guidance on best practice in the teaching of reading from reception up to year 9. It recognises the importance of encouraging a love of reading, including the vital importance of pupil choice and access to a wide variety of books. It also includes helpful guidance for schools on how to organise the school library, book corner or book stock to make reading accessible and attractive to readers. I thank the organisations and authors who work tirelessly to promote the importance of libraries. Alongside school libraries, public libraries have a strong offer to support children’s development as readers beyond school, and are part of the vital social and cultural infrastructure of the country.

Our clear focus on reading is making an impact, and it has been recognised internationally. In the progress in international reading literacy study—better known as PIRLS—England came fourth out of 43 countries and first among western nations. I am hugely grateful to all the primary school teachers, teaching assistants and other staff, alongside the parents and children, whose commitment to reading and embracing the phonics approach introduced by the Government has made that possible. Indeed, the strongest predictor of PIRLS performance was the year 1 phonics screening check mark, with higher marks predicting higher PIRLS scores.

I absolutely recognise the important contribution of charities and organisations to promote the importance of reading for pleasure, and that very much includes our subject today, World Book Day. We should also mention the National Literacy Trust overall, the Reading Agency, BookTrust and many more. World Book Day is a fantastic worldwide celebration of books and reading marked in more than 100 countries around the world. Its book and book token scheme, distributed through schools and early years settings, aims to appeal to all children, particularly those who need encouragement to read for pleasure. I thank those charities for the enormous contribution they make.

The National Literacy Trust’s National Storytelling Week took place last month. It, too, is a wonderful annual event that celebrates the power of sharing stories. The charity provides excellent storytelling resources to early years practitioners, teachers and families to help to bring the magic of storytelling to life and strengthen children’s imaginations, critical thinking and literacy skills.

Like everyone else here, I look forward to celebrating World Book Day. Some of us will celebrate it tomorrow and some of us on Friday in our constituencies. I think some have already started, and we are all sort of celebrating it together today. I will be celebrating with the children and staff at High Hazels Academy in Sheffield, and I am excited that best-selling children’s author and artist Rob Biddulph will be there too. The Secretary of State is also busy celebrating World Book Day. She attended the grand final of the BBC 500 Words competition last week to celebrate the finalists of one of the UK’s most prestigious children’s writing competitions, and yesterday she visited Hampden Gurney Church of England Primary School to celebrate World Book Day with the children and staff there.

The last time I spoke in a debate in Westminster Hall I concluded by saying, as the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North was kind enough to repeat, that

“we cannot knock down barriers for children if we do not teach them to read well.”—[Official Report, 24 January 2024; Vol. 744, c. 137WH.]

I reiterate that point today, as I know the hon. Lady does. The Department is firmly committed to improving literacy for all pupils, ensuring that all children can benefit from high-quality teaching, and giving them a solid base on which to build as they progress through school and beyond with a lifelong love of books.

15:40

[Nickie Aiken]

I thank everybody who took part in this celebration of World Book Day.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) pointed out that he has always supported my Westminster Hall debates. I am not sure how many I have left before I stand down from Parliament, but I expect him to attend each one. He made an important point about reading non-fiction: it is not just about fiction; it is about whatever book.

We should remember that libraries are so important. I was fascinated to hear from the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) about the oldest library in the country, and the oldest in the world, perhaps. Both he and the hon. Member for Strangford made important points about how reading and libraries can change people’s lives. That made me remember my visit, several years ago when I was leader of Westminster City Council, to the Westminster pupil referral unit in St John’s Wood. The head there wanted to extend the library, which was very small, and he wanted his children to embrace reading, and hopefully to change their lives, like the constituent of the hon. Member for Glenrothes. I contacted David Campbell, the person behind the Everyman’s Library, who donated so many books to the PRU. I am sure that his donation and the work of the headteacher has changed some of the most vulnerable children in Westminster.

I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Gavin Williamson), a former Education Secretary who made a huge contribution to ensuring that children can and do read, and to supporting schools. He highlighted how utterly important phonics are and how important it is to introduce them at the earliest age to help children to read.

I finish by celebrating World Book Day and thanking the organisers behind it and the Publishers Association. I also thank the teachers, the teaching assistants and the parents who will be supporting their children tomorrow. After we leave this place, when we walk through the streets tomorrow, whether it is in our constituencies or in Westminster, we will see children walking to school in goodness knows how many different designs, whether related to a book or not—I remember several occasions when my children wore things that had nothing to do with a book. It is so important that we celebrate World Book Day, thank those involved, and ensure that parents know that it is World Book Day, because we do not want children turning up for school in their school uniform when everybody else is in their World Book Day costume. So parents, remember that it is tomorrow.

Let us really celebrate reading: it can change people’s lives for the better and open up worlds for children living in very different conditions. For as long as we can, we must have a World Book Day.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered World Book Day.

15:44

Sitting suspended.

Illegal Drug Use and Organised Crime

Wednesday 6th March 2024 Westminster Hall

15:59

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of illegal drug use and organised crime.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I am delighted to see the Minister in her place to respond.

The issue of drug use is exacerbated by organised crime and criminal gangs, not just here in the UK but across the globe. It is a growing phenomenon and problem. I have received estimates on the drug business in the UK—if drug death and drug peddling can be called a business. The estimates vary, but the value is approximately £9 billion to £9.5 billion per year. The cost of drugs is much greater than that, however, given hospitalisations and treatment, aftercare, and the problem of drugs in prisons. Estimates of the total cost are between £18 billion and £19.5 billion, so it is an extraordinarily expensive problem and it is escalating.

In Northern Ireland alone, drug-related deaths increased by almost 100% between 2012 and 2020. Similar increases are reported in England, Wales and Scotland. We know that the issue of drugs in Scotland is particularly acute, and issues have been raised there, but I will not dwell too much on how they are treated.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend my hon. Friend and colleague for bringing this matter forward. He will be aware of the difficulties caused in my constituency by a feud between rival drug gangs; it cost the Police Service of Northern Ireland literally hundreds of thousands of pounds to police. Does my hon. Friend agree that when we are facing a crumbling NHS, the fact that this money had to go toward this problem is truly disgusting? Does he agree that the penalties for those involved should reflect the damage they did to their own community and should be paid for out of their own pockets?

[Mr Campbell]

Yes, in Northern Ireland the issue that my hon. Friend raises is well known and, unfortunately, replicated elsewhere. There were particularly acute problems there for a considerable period of time. Organised criminal gangs were peddling and distributing drugs, often using young people to enhance their distribution methods.

I have bid for this debate for some time now, and I have taken note of some of the national and international newspaper coverage. In The Times a few weeks ago was a headline about a crack epidemic sweeping Germany. In The Daily Telegraph: “Narco gangs hold sway in the Med”. Those are just two headlines, but they indicate to the readers and the wider public the growing problem across the Western world, particularly the developed world, of gangs being able to influence society not for good but to peddle death and destruction in the wake of their drug trade. Ecuador has been in the news recently, with drug cartels there causing mayhem and destruction in recent months. There are drug gangs in Venezuela—and Honduras, Guatemala, and Trinidad and Tobago have all suffered problems.

The issue has crystallised in the UK in recent times. Last September a huge haul was seized off the coast of the Republic of Ireland; it was so big that the ship was almost sinking. Then €150 million of illegal drugs were seized. They were not destined purely for the Irish Republic; the market for drugs in the Irish Republic would not have amounted to €150 million on one trip—they were destined for all of these islands and possibly further into Europe. There was an even bigger haul in the port of Philadelphia some five years ago, when $1 billion of illegal drugs was seized.

I mention those two particular hauls because we all know that the reality of the 21st century is that for every haul that is discovered, other consignments get through via other routes for distribution. I do not know whether one in 10 or one in 20 consignments is caught, but we know for absolute certain that it is not one in one. If drugs worth $1 billion were caught in America in one haul and €150 million worth were caught off the coast of the Irish Republic less than six months ago, how many billions’ worth of illegal drugs have reached these islands and continental Europe in the past few years? Our hospitals and treatment units all bear testimony to the problems that these illegal drugs are causing, particularly for our young people.

However, an interesting facet about the drug deaths issue is that although it is predominantly young people who begin experimenting with drugs and peddling them, it is those in an older age range—those between 40 and 50—who tend to die from drugs or drug-related problems. That indicates to all of us that even those who talk about drugs as a leisure pursuit or about “casual use” of drugs, perhaps at the weekend, find that, as with other substances, drugs become addictive. They come to be increasingly used in a weekday or weekday evening setting, as opposed to being used “casually” on a Friday or Saturday night, whether out at a social event or at home. The problem comes later in life, and we see what has happened in our hospital beds and treatment rooms.

My reason for raising this issue today is that hopefully the Minister will be able to reassure us that her colleagues, both nationally and internationally, will ensure that the issue is brought to the attention of the authorities that can do something at the point of departure—whether in central America or eastern Europe; where there are hotspots—to try to stop the drugs from being dispatched in the first place.

Of course, the National Crime Agency has a central role to play and I hope to receive an assurance from the Minister that this type of issue will concentrate minds—not just now, in the aftermath of a huge haul like the one in September last year, but on an ongoing basis; and not just over the next few weeks and months, but for years to come.

[Jim Shannon]

When I look at organised crime and realise the money that organised criminals have created through their illegal activities over the years, I always think about the best way to deal with criminals and crime gangs. Does my hon. Friend agree that if we want to hurt the criminal, we hurt him in his pocket? We should do the Al Capone trick: hit them where it hurts and put them away. We can do that by getting them for tax evasion and laundering money that they should not have.

[Mr Campbell]

Indeed, in Northern Ireland the Paramilitary Crime Task Force and the Organised Crime Task Force are bodies that should concentrate on this issue. I know they have had some success in recent years, but there needs to be an escalation of awareness among the relevant statutory authorities about the increasing scale of the problem.

Sometimes we hear people on television or on the radio talking about drugs as if they are a casual thing and not really addictive. There may well be a few people who fall into that category and think they are using drugs casually on a night out or a social evening, but as the problem escalates—after 10, 12 or 15 years of constant use—the addiction gets worse and worse, and it often results in hospitalisation or admission to an addiction treatment unit if there is one. In some areas people are yearning for addiction treatment units because the problem is increasing.

[Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising this important issue. Unfortunately, all our constituencies are impacted on a daily basis by those who peddle illegal drugs. I have no time for them; they ruin lives and communities, and they should face the full force of the law.

Does my hon. Friend agree that we have a particular difficulty in Northern Ireland because our police resourcing and recruitment levels are at an all-time low? I trust the Minister will refer to the fact that we are running a major deficit in our police forces, so the Government need to step up with regard to police recruitment so we can get a grip of the problem.

[Mr Campbell]

I am glad my hon. Friend got to her feet, because I was just about to come to the inadequacy of the police resources in Northern Ireland. She makes an accurate assessment: we need an increased police presence.

There is an increasing concern that as the drug cartels and gangs become more sophisticated, they will look at ways of channelling their resources into other semi-legitimate businesses. We all know about the businesses in our constituencies that use cash—I am a great supporter of retaining the use of cash—in order to launder ill-gotten gains. We need to concentrate on that. Whenever new businesses spring up with marvellous, state-of-the-art items and the source of the funds is questionable, that has to be examined. If it is as questionable as it appears to be on some occasions, the full rigour of the law should be used to bring those people to justice.

I hope the Minister will respond positively and give not just Members here but the wider community an assurance that the authorities—the NCA and local organisations in Northern Ireland—will have a greater awareness of these individuals and organised gangs and greater diligence in pursuing them. I hope she will assure us that that will be raised on a national and international level so that we restrict the flow from the source and address the distribution methods.

16:13

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Laura Farris)]

It is a pleasure to be speaking under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr Pritchard. I am very grateful to the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell) for securing this debate, and to the others who participated.

As we heard, these are really serious issues that affect many people across the United Kingdom. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that drugs go to the heart of every serious social issue that we face, whether it is family breakdown or young people being enticed and entrapped into lives of crime. Whether drug dealers are fuelling crime itself or simply ruining lives, their impact is felt not just by those who are directly involved but by the neighbourhoods where they operate. The trade is driven by organised crime’s relentless pursuit of money; it seeks the maximum profit for the minimum risk. The tactics the gangs use are evolving, and so must our response.

As everybody who contributed to the debate will be aware, in Northern Ireland crime and policing is the responsibility of the Executive, who in 2021 published an organised crime strategy for Northern Ireland. However, this issue is of course cross-jurisdictional, and we must work together closely. The example that the hon. Gentleman gave of the €150 million haul seized, which was quite possibly designed to go elsewhere in the United Kingdom or more widely, is a good illustration of that point.

I will explain briefly the steps being taken by the Government to tackle the UK-wide illicit drugs trade and disrupt the organised crime groups behind it —[Interruption.]

[Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)]

Order. Can Members ensure that all electronic devices are off? If they cannot do that, I am afraid that they will have to leave.

[Laura Farris]

In 2021, we published our own 10-year drug strategy, setting out how we are stepping up our response to all stages of the supply chain. I will summarise briefly the first elements of that, because they are the most directly relevant to the issues raised in the debate.

The first element is restricting upstream flow, working with both Border Force and the National Crime Agency to tackle drug trafficking upstream to prevent the highest-harm drugs reaching our shores. We have invested in a network of law enforcement officers who are posted to key source and transit countries of which we are already aware. The second element is securing the border, which we have done by working with partners to develop innovative, intelligence-led approaches that ensure that we keep pace with criminals, particularly the routes and methods that they use. The third element is targeting the middle market. Part of that will be bearing down on the organised crime groups that are involved in wholesaling and distributing drugs across the United Kingdom. The fourth element is going after the money, disrupting drug gang operations and seizing their cash.

We are cognisant of the fact that a seller of illegal drugs no longer has to be physically present; a user in Northern Ireland can now order drugs online from anywhere in the world. That is why the sale of illegal drugs is a priority harm listed in the Online Safety Act 2023, which will introduce measures requiring platforms to identify and remove content relating to the sale of drugs online. A key pillar of our own plan is to disrupt and destroy county lines operations; while I concede that they are more prevalent in Great Britain, that does not mean that the activity does not have the potential to spread to Northern Ireland. At present, our county lines programme has met its three-year target to close down more than 2,000 lines so far, and we are on track to close down a further 1,000 lines by August.

I will summarise our progress report so far. By 2024-25, we are on track to have contributed to the prevention of 750,000 crimes, including 140,000 neighbourhood crimes, through increases that we have provided in drug treatment. We have delivered just shy of 9,000 major and moderate disruptions of organised criminals, including arresting suppliers, targeting their finances and dismantling supply chains. Significantly, we have seen improvement in our denial of criminal assets, taking cash, crypto and other assets from the hands of criminals involved in drug trafficking and supply.

I will make two more points before I conclude. One focuses on our serious and organised crime strategy, which the hon. Member for East Londonderry said is the key component in understanding the drug trade. Our strategy refocuses our efforts in response to new and emerging challenges to reduce serious and organised crime in the UK, making it a significantly harder place for organised crime groups to operate. Some of what we are doing is set out in the Criminal Justice Bill. For example, we are taking steps to criminalise or make illegal pill presses used for the mass reproduction of drugs.

We are also making illegal the templates for 3D-printed firearms components, which we see increasingly as a tool of serious and organised crime, as well as various vehicle concealment devices, where we find that weapons and people are being hidden effectively in cars. We are also strengthening and improving the serious crime prevention orders regime in the Bill. The measures under that regime will have equal application to Northern Ireland. The legislation will target the enablers and facilitators who support and profit from serious crime, which often has an overlap with the drugs trade, and improve our ability to manage and disrupt the highest-harm offenders.

I promise to take back to the Policing Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp)—he is not here today, which is why I am responding in his place—the question that the hon. Member for East Londonderry asked about policing in Northern Ireland.

I will finish my remarks by again extending my thanks to the hon. Member for East Londonderry for securing the debate and for the very sensible points that he has made. The supply of illegal drugs is an issue for every area of the United Kingdom. It may present different challenges according to location, but I think it is obvious that it creates equivalent problems, no matter where it arises.

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the Minister for her very helpful response, which we appreciate. In my intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell), I referred to how all regional police forces can better work together across the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, across Europe and through Interpol. Organised crime transcends all borders: criminals do not stop at wherever the borders may be—they keep on going. Does the Minister have any indication of how the regional police forces on the mainland here and in the Republic of Ireland can better work collectively with those in Northern Ireland to ensure that we can take on those guys, remove their money and put them in prison?

[Laura Farris]

I reassure the hon. Gentleman that there has been some discussion about a Home Office trip to Northern Ireland to talk about exactly that—how we can improve the cross-communications. It is still at quite an early stage, but we are really interested in doing that for exactly the reasons that he outlined.

Concerted action is obviously needed to turn the tide on this issue, and that is what the Government are aiming to achieve through our strategies. I promise to take the sensible and helpful points that have been made back to the Policing Minister, and hopefully we can continue our work collaboratively on this issue.

Question put and agreed to.

16:22

Sitting suspended.

Kinship Care Strategy

Wednesday 6th March 2024 Westminster Hall

16:30

[Alistair Strathern (Mid Bedfordshire) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the kinship care strategy.

I could not be happier or more privileged to move this motion. There are so many campaigns that I am lucky enough to work with as an MP, but since well before I was elected one group has been a constant source of inspiration for me. From the number of colleagues in Westminster Hall today, it looks like I am far from alone in being touched by the story of kinship carers across the country.

From the very start of my by-election campaign, which colleagues may remember was rather longer than expected, kinship carers were meeting with me to set out their concerns locally, and none more so than Carol and Amanda. They sat me down and talked to me about the battles they face, and how through their love and commitment to the young people in their care they had been able to fight and ensure that they could do everything to give their young charges the best possible start in life. I could not help but be inspired by those stories and their determination, and feel the need to do right by them to ensure that they have everything they need to take care of the young people they look after.

Carol and Amanda’s love and commitment was matched only by their tenacity. I found that out four days after being sworn in as an MP when, at my first constituency surgery, first through the door yet again were Carol and Amanda, asking me what I had done so far for kinship carers and how I would be championing the cause going forward. The truth is that I could not be happier to be held to account on this important issue, because it matters so much. Although I am afraid I have not quite been able to get Carol and Amanda their meeting with the Prime Minister yet—not through lack of trying—I hope that today marks the start of a continuing commitment from me to champion the issue of kinship care in Parliament and to ensure that we make progress in some of the important areas they have highlighted to me.

In the run-up to the debate, I have been truly moved by the number of kinship carers who have taken the time to write to me; I know that colleagues across the Chamber have been too. Indeed, Kinship told me that in the last week alone nearly 300 kinship carers from right across the country have written in to share their own personal, difficult and important testimonies. The fact that they have done so underlines why we are all here today.

At its heart, kinship care is all about supporting a young person who may have been through a really traumatic and difficult moment in life—far more traumatic and difficult than many of us would ever have to go through ourselves. Making sure that that young person and the people in their wider family unit have everything they need should be a matter of great importance to all of us. They step up to take on caring responsibilities at a really important time—a time of real trauma and need.

It could be a situation like that of Karen, who emailed me to tell me about the moment she had to take care of her grandson, when he arrived at the start of lockdown with only the clothes on his back after his father had cut off all communication. Angela wrote to tell me about the challenges she faced in carrying out her caring responsibilities to her grandson while his parents were battling through addiction. Those stories are all unique and important, but they share one fundamental truth: at a time of need, kinship carers across the country step up to provide love and care for a young family member at a really difficult time. They take on responsibilities, often at incredibly short notice, that they have not planned or saved for.

I fear that in the time available, and to ensure that as many colleagues as possible can speak, I will not possibly be able to do justice to the wide range of emails and stories that I have received. I hope, however, to be able to underline the passion and the urgency of their love and care, and highlight some of the clear areas where we can all work together to go further, faster for kinship carers in this country.

As a former councillor with responsibility for children’s social care, I got to see at first hand the moving and important work done by kinship carers to take on caring responsibilities and ensure that their young person could stay with a sense of place, with family and with familiar faces through difficult moments. It was as clear to me then as it is now that, where possible, kinship care provides an amazing and powerful way of ensuring that the traumatic moments in some young people’s lives have as little impact as possible on their development. It ensures that a young person’s true interests, and their need to stay with family and with a sense of identity and place, can be protected and supported.

It is no wonder that the independent review of children’s social care found that where young people across the country had been placed with kinship carers the outcomes were often far better. Those outcomes alone should be more than enough to justify the support that kinship carers need and are asking for. But if they are not enough to spur action, we should be clear: failing to support and maintain every viable kinship care relationship means propping up a broken and expensive care system that currently is all too often letting children down.

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. The north-east, where my constituency is, has the highest proportion of kinship care households in England, and many of my constituents have been in touch with me about the difficulties they face. Many children raised in kinship care have experienced loss and trauma; does my hon. Friend agree that we need to do more to support those children and provide spaces for them to socialise with peers?

[Alistair Strathern]

Absolutely. I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. She highlighted a really important point, on which I would be keen to hear from the Minister in his response, about how we can all work together to make sure that support is put in place and that opportunities are provided for young people right across the country.

To return to what I was saying, in looking through the outcomes the independent review of children’s social care rightly found that despite the amazing work and commitment of kinship carers, we need to do far more as a country, and we need our Government to do far more to ensure that wherever kinship carers are taking on responsibilities, and wherever possible kinship placement exists, everything is done to support, nourish and champion those situations.

The children’s social care review set out a number of areas in which we could be going further. It was welcome to see some of the review’s recommendations being taken forward in the Government’s own strategy, announced in December last year. I thank the Minister for that, and look forward hopefully to hearing more about the Government’s action on those recommendations, and on further areas. Sadly, as welcome as some of the measures were, I have spoken to kinship carers and advocacy groups and it feels like they fell far short of the comprehensive support and recognition that those groups need to ensure that many significant recommendations from the review can finally be enacted in full.

I am sure there are lots of aspects that colleagues across the Chamber will want to focus on, so I will touch on just three, the first of which is the need for a clear and consistent local authority offer. One thing that came through loud and clear in the testimony is the postcode lottery that kinship carers currently face throughout the country in terms of the support on offer from their local authority. Amanda in my consistency faces a real battle. She potentially faces a cliff edge in support when she moves between local authorities and is rightly concerned about what that might mean for her and her granddaughter.

Shockingly, researchers found that over a third of local authorities do not even have a local family and friends care policy in place—something that legislation already requires. I am keen to hear more from the Minister about how the existing requirements are enforced and how the Government will commit to making sure that we have strong requirements on local authorities, including considering whether an active, outward-facing local offer, on a par with that for care leavers, might be helpful to compel some of the support we would like to see on this issue across the country.

The second aspect is the need for fairness when it comes to care and parental leave. Kinship carers take on just the same responsibilities as other carers and parents, often at much shorter notice, but do not currently benefit from the same entitlement to parental care leave as others. As Clare, a passionate kinship carer, said powerfully at a recent meeting of the all-party parliamentary group on kinship care, this cannot be right, and it has a real impact on kinship carers and the child they support at a crucial moment. I am keen to hear more from the Minister about why a right to statutory pay and leave on a par with adoption pay and leave was not committed to in the national kinship care strategy, and about what barriers the Department for Business and Trade might face to working with the Department for Education on making sure that that measure can finally be introduced.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly to many kinship carers in the room today, is the issue of financial support. When it comes to financial support, the commitment to pilots is a welcome step forward, but at the same time for many kinship carers that feels like yet another delay that may mean support is never in place to reach them and their young person.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I declare my interest as chairman of the quality and safeguarding board of the National Fostering Group. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate on a really important subject, concerning a really undervalued cohort of people in society. I want to add a fourth point to his list. All the points about practical support are absolutely valid, but what kinship carers also need is legal clarification as to their status, and how that fits in with special guardianship orders, family fostering and so on. In the absence of primary legislation, does the hon. Gentleman agree that it needs to be made really clear what the options are to kinship carers who want to step up and do that really important job? Does he agree that they should have the full backing of the law, and the status, in place of the parents, to do that job?

[Alistair Strathern]

I could not agree more with the hon. Gentleman. I hope the Minister might be able to shed some light today on whether the Government will bring forward, with haste and urgency, some of the primary legislation needed to give that formal legal definition, clarification and certainty to kinship carers throughout the country, who often find themselves in a very uncertain place in the bureaucratic and legalistic care framework that currently exists.

On financial support, Stuart, a kinship carer of two children, powerfully highlighted to me the fact that over and over again, whichever report or study one looks at, the economic case for kinship care is overwhelming. It is clear and is the right thing to do for the young people involved. Given the wealth of evidence already available, if we are to have pilots, how will they be delivered in a manner that ensures that a national roll-out can follow as quickly as possible? If the Government are looking for partner councils to help to support this effort, I am sure that some of our Bedfordshire ones would be keen to bite off the Minister’s hand.

We should also consider whether, by limiting the scope to children who have already been in the care system, the pilots risk reinforcing some of the factors that currently push children into the system that the strategy seeks to avoid the excessive use of. The measures required are not just important, but urgent. As is repeatedly raised with me, the young people in the care of kinship carers deserve help and support, not years down the line but now, when it can still make a difference for their families and, crucially, for the young person they are doing everything they can to support.

Every day that the kinship carer lacks a minimum standard of support from their local authority is a day their young person may not be receiving every bit of support they need to get the best start in life. Every month that the kinship carer takes on responsibilities without care or parental leave is a month when some of those precious early moments in a young person’s life may be forever missed. Every time that a potential kinship carer is unable to take on caring responsibilities because of financial barriers is a moment when a better outcome for that young person, who has suffered real trauma, may forever be lost. Every day that we do not provide support to our fantastic kinship carers is a day we are letting down young people right across the country.

I pledge to carry with me not just the importance of these issues and not just the wealth of factual evidence that has been presented to me, but the clear urgency of kinship carers’ love, commitment and call for action, today and every day that I am lucky enough to serve as an MP. I know that many colleagues here share that urgency, and will share their own stories of commitment to it. I hope that the Minister will be able to share more on how the Government can show urgency too.

We may not know when the general election will be—although I am sure colleagues would welcome clarification on that from the Minister—but we do know that kinship carers deserve help, and they deserve it now. They should not have to go a day longer without the required support. It should not have to come to a general election. This should not be—and clearly is not—a party political issue, and it does not feel like one in this debate. I look forward to hearing from others and the Minister about how we can work together during every day remaining in this Parliament to deliver for kinship carers across the country.

[Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)]

Before I call Ben Everitt, I say to colleagues that, as this debate is oversubscribed, there will be a time limit of three minutes, which might be shortened later in the debate.

16:42

[Ben Everitt (Milton Keynes North) (Con)]

I am not sure what I have done to deserve to be called first; I may have been promoted accidentally. Thank you, Mr Pritchard; it is appreciated, and it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I thank my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Alistair Strathern), for securing this debate on the Government’s new strategy for kinship care. He beat me to it, because I have been trying to get a debate, but it is a pleasure to give a three-minute speech as opposed to a 15-minute one, so I am grateful.

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on behalf of the brilliant kinship carers in Milton Keynes North. The strategy represents a huge step forward for ensuring that incredible kinship carers throughout the country receive the financial support that they need and deserve, as well as in education, through the expansion of virtual school heads, and better advice for local authorities in schools.

I welcome the Government’s strategy that will deliver for all kinship carers across England a package of training and support that they will be able to access from this spring. We are making progress, heading in the right direction and engaging with kinship carers, although there is always room for improvement. I am feeling the heat that my constituency neighbour described.

My local kinship carers are incredibly vocal, coming forward about things we can do and fine-tuning tweaks to do things better. It was clarified to me that training and information will be accessible via a supplier website, but there are still gaps to be addressed. Specifically, will there be information about where to find and how to obtain support from the virtual school heads? If so, in what form will it be made available? My constituents have also made it clear that that information needs to be integrated at the council level, so that those with special guardianship orders are better able to access support. We are talking about a better quality of life for children and the incredible sacrifices that kinship carers make every day, and nobody should fall through the net.

Continuing on the theme of education, I am aware that there has been no extension of eligibility for pupil premium plus—which schools receive to support children in care—to children under SGOs or child arrangement orders. Without such resources, extra help in schools might not reach a consistent level across the board and the strategy may not fulfil its stated aims.

Ultimately, it is in our interests to make the strategy work in the most effective way possible for our kinship carers, schools and local authorities. The upshot is that we need deeper integration between those three elements to deliver the best possible outcomes for children and their families. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response. I thank you, Mr Pritchard, and I thank kinship carers for their amazing work, love and sacrifice.

[Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)]

Before I call Kevan Jones, I remind colleagues that there is a clock, which will help them to stick to three minutes.

16:46

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Alistair Strathern) on securing this debate. I first became involved with kinship carers 15 years ago through a tragic case in my constituency of a young woman who was kicked to death in front of her two children, who were then left with no parent because the perpetrator was in jail. The grandparents stepped in, and that was my first experience of kinship carers. Since then, I have worked with them across County Durham along with the county council.

Kinship carers do not take on responsibility because they are looking for financial gain; they do it from love, but the state takes that for granted. While I accept the national strategy, in my opinion it is the wrong approach. We need a clear approach on the legal status, as the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) just said. When carers first find themselves with children, they are often left not knowing what to do and or what is the right approach. We need to integrate them into the benefits system so that benefits are paid automatically and we need to co-ordinate at a local level.

I congratulate Durham County Council, which has a great kinship carer unit that I have worked with for quite a few years. It provides not just practical, but financial support, but again that support is time-limited. One kinship carer turned up at county hall one day and left her kids there, because the two-year rule on their support was up.

I say to the Government that this is an investment in the future. If we get it right with these kids, they are less likely to get involved in the criminal justice system, be disruptive at school or go off the rails, because they have that bubble of care around them—usually a grandparent or sibling. If we have to look at it in monetary terms, investment early on will pay itself back. It will also allow grandparents to continue working. Some of them have had to give up work to look after individuals, and they often do not expect to be in that position at their age.

Although kinship care is on the national radar, let us have a local approach. Let us integrate carers into the benefits system, give them support and recognise that this is a long-term investment. We will not get results straight away, but over a period of time we will have better citizens, and the kinship carers themselves will be more productive if they are allowed to work and they are not under pressure.

For example, we need a national system for respite care. I have one kinship carer who is dealing with three boys under 12, one of whom has foetal alcohol syndrome. She is 67. These people are complete heroes; we need to invest in them, put money behind them and congratulate them on the work they do on everybody’s behalf.

16:49

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Alistair Strathern) on securing this important debate. The turnout in the Chamber reflects the importance that MPs across the House place on this issue.

I have some brilliant local kinship carers and I pay tribute to the work that Enza Smith has done over many years on behalf of kinship carers in Worcester. I also pay tribute to a constituent, Julie Rose, who came to see me recently to raise some of the issues and some of the concerns of the #ValueOurLove campaign.

I do not want to repeat points that other hon. Members have made, because they made them very well, but respite care is vital and I have to say that in my constituency at the moment I am concerned by cuts to respite care. I hope the additional £500 million for children’s and adult social care announced in the Budget might help local authorities to redress some of those cuts, but that issue is undoubtedly important.

I also think kinship carers need access to other forms of support—bereavement support, in many cases. Even when a parent has not actually died, children face separation issues, having moved away from their original parents and into the care of another family member. Support such as counselling, which is offered to foster families in many cases, also needs to be considered specifically for kinship carers.

Of course, I welcome the fact that we now have the first kinship care strategy and I very much welcome the pilots; indeed, I have asked for Worcestershire to be considered as one of the areas in which those pilots take place. However, given the scale of what we know kinship carers are doing for children, we should be going beyond pilots and looking to fund and support kinship care more systematically across the country. The returns from doing so are pretty obvious and pretty clear.

Regarding the outcomes, we have already heard that the Education Committee has begun an inquiry into children’s social care; I do not want to pre-empt the outcome of that inquiry, because we are in the early days of receiving evidence, but we have already heard about the much better outcomes for children in kinship care, in terms of life chances, long-term employment and life expectancy. We should celebrate all those outcomes and the contributions that families can make to them.

I know my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) wishes she could be here for this debate. On the Education Committee, she has already made the point about the need for kinship carers effectively to have parental leave and for a more systematic approach when people take on the responsibilities of kinship care, so that they can then have some time to spend with their new charges. We should make sure that businesses support that. The guidance mentioned in the kinship care strategy is a welcome first step in that direction. We will continue to work on this issue as part of our work on social care in the Select Committee. I look forward to hearing the evidence that kinship carers can bring to us, so that we can strengthen the evidence-based case for the Government to take further action.

16:52

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Alistair Strathern) on his eloquent opening speech and I thank him for his support on this important issue. I am the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on kinship care, because I myself am a kinship carer. My wife Allison and I have the utter privilege of being the special guardians to our wonderful five-year-old grandson Lyle. Like many who find themselves as kinship carers, it was unexpected and unplanned; basically, the social services stork left a baby on our doorstep. Of course, around all the arguments that we could have about the structures and the legalities, the one thing that comes to the fore at a moment like that is love. Every kinship carer does it for love and only for love.

However, I have to say that special guardianship orders are far from a perfect device: you are often left to defend yourself in a legal maze, and if you are taken back to court for any reason, you are literally on your own. Had I known then what I know now, I would much sooner have remained as a temporary foster carer of my grandson, because at least then I would share legal responsibility—parental responsibility—with the local authority. Therefore, if I was taken back to court on a spurious argument, I would have the backing of the local authority rather than having to rely on myself. That is the predicament that far too many people find themselves in, so I would like special guardianship orders to be strengthened.

In addition, I want to get rid of the postcode lottery that, sadly, we now see in kinship services across the land. Some local authorities provide superb support for kinship carers, but some do not, and it cannot be right that where someone lives determines what support they can access. In theory, my wife and I can access support from the post-adoption fund. In practice, that is incredibly difficult because the social services computer says no. The last thing that I want to mention is parental leave, where I believe that, if the Government act, they can make a big difference. That is not just a matter for employers; it is a matter for this place, because when I effectively became a dad again five years ago, the House of Commons did not recognise that kinship parental leave was necessary.

16:55

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I too want to congratulate my parliamentary neighbour, the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Alistair Strathern), on bringing forward this very important debate, and I agree with every word said by other Members so far.

I will look briefly at New Zealand, because I understand that in New Zealand only 48 in every 10,000 children are in care, and of those 57% are in kinship care. In England, 71 in every 10,000 children are in care, and only 15% are in kinship care. I know my good friend the Minister cares deeply about this issue, so I ask him to look at New Zealand and whether there are lessons we could learn, particularly the use of family group conferences and the legal weight that those have in New Zealand. This is a wonderful country and we do a lot of things well, but we should always be humble enough to learn from other countries that may have something to teach us.

The constituents to whom I have spoken on this issue tell me that they want urgent and really accurate information. I spoke to one quite recently who did not know whether she was entitled to child tax credits. My reading of the House of Commons briefing note suggests that she is, but she did not know that and she had not been told that. I have recently been in contact with another constituent, a grandmother who had to come out of work to look after her grandson when her daughter very sadly died. She needs an urgent nursery place for her grandchild. Again, I have spoken to the specialists in the House of Commons Library about that this afternoon: my understanding is that she is entitled to that free nursery place for her grandchild and to the Government help towards it, but she has not been told that. I have sent her the Library briefing note and I will do everything I can to help, but to me that highlights an urgent information gap.

My constituents have also told me that they are concerned about the cost and the uncertainty of getting a special guardianship order—and the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne), who has just spoken very eloquently, told us that in any case that is not a panacea. That is a worry, because the first thing social services has said to some of my constituents is that they need a care order. If they are worried because it is expensive and involves lawyers, or because they have never been to court before, or do not know how it is it all going to work out, care is needed now.

Moving towards some form of financial parity with foster carers would clearly be sensible. We have talked about grandparents looking after grandchildren, but in my last 20 seconds I observe that, in adult social care in Germany, the most popular option for taking the money is for friends and family to look after elderly or frail loved ones. We are mainly looking downwards at children, but kinship care could work for frail family members as well.

16:58

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Alistair Strathern) on securing this important debate. I pay tribute to the fantastic work of many campaigners on this issue, several of whom are in the Public Gallery today. It is thanks to their hard work and their tireless commitment to the cause that we even have a kinship care strategy, published just before Christmas.

The publication of that strategy was a real milestone. It has finally put kinship on the map—an achievement for which I pay tribute to the campaigners. However, that strategy was a real missed opportunity and fell far short of the ambition that the Minister himself set out in his response to my debate in this Chamber back in September. Indeed, while much of the text of the strategy set out the challenges, I am afraid that many of the solutions fell far short of addressing them.

First, on allowances, the Minister said back in September that

“kinship carers need more support than is currently available to them.”

He pointed out that there is no “great logic” to foster carers’ allowances not being on a par with kinship carers, and he recognised

“the strain that many kinship families are under.”—[Official Report, 14 September 2023; Vol. 737, c. 425WH.]

But only eight local authorities are going to be part of the pilot, and even in those local authorities it will be a tiny subset of kinship carers. We have a perverse situation in which only families of previously looked-after children will be able to claim an allowance, yet it is local authorities that, in trying to save money, go to families to prevent children from going into care in the first place.

In the September debate, even the Minister recognised that it is much more cost-effective for local authorities to put children into kinship care rather than local authority care. The savings are very realisable. in the short term as well as in the long term. The right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) talked about long-term savings, but about £35,000 per child can be saved by putting children into kinship care rather than local authority care. If the Minister is going to stick to just eight local authority pilots, I beg him to at least look at expanding the eligibility criteria.

Many hon. Members have already talked about the lack of movement on employment support and the lack of a commitment to statutory pay or leave, which are hugely disappointing. Kim, the constituent who first brought my attention to the issue of kinship care, had to reduce her hours significantly. So many people do. They are typically women, because kinship carers are often grandmothers, who are already suffering the gender pay gap and losing out. That is a key barrier that must be removed.

There are so many things that I do not have the time to say. In September, the Minister said that he was determined to do as much as he could. He needs to go back to the Treasury and the Department for Business and Trade and ask for more, because the strategy is just scraps. Kinship carers deserve an awful lot more.

17:01

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Alistair Strathern) on securing this important debate, leading it with such energy, providing an excellent introduction and championing the cause of kinship carers.

Kinship carers play an immeasurably important role in our communities. They care for children when the parents no longer can. The complexities associated with full-time care for someone else’s child, even if they are a family member, should not be underestimated. The love, care and stability that the families offer kinship children are nothing short of remarkable. Their actions enable countless young people to remain in their own families and existing support networks. It is for those reasons that we must enhance support for kinship carers.

To their credit, in December last year the Government published the first ever national kinship strategy, which provided welcome recognition of and support for kinship families. However, it falls far short of the support that the families urgently need. There are more than double the number of children in kinship than in foster care, so the Government must support kinship carers in the same way that we support foster carers.

In my region in the north-east, around one in 50 children are growing up in kinship care, with over half being looked after by grandparents. The Kinship charity runs a number of successful support groups across my constituency. As my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) says, the support that Durham County Council offers is outstanding. It helps families to support one another through very challenging times. However, there is only so much that the Kinship charity can do. I support its call for the introduction of a mandatory non-means-tested allowance for all kinship carers that is at least equivalent to the national minimum fostering allowance. That was also recommended by the independent review of social care. Eight in 10 kinship carers are forced out of work or must reduce hours because of a lack of financial support.

I want to mention my old friend and constituent Elaine Duffy, who is a kinship carer. She has three grandchildren, and had to give up her full-time work because she could not sustain the commitment to her caring role while working full time. Her dedication is commendable, and fortunately she is now employed by the brilliant Kinship charity. She works very hard to support its campaigns alongside looking after her three grandchildren.

The Government must consider the successful models in New Zealand and Scotland. I urge the Government to do far more to support our kinship carers.

17:04

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Pritchard. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Alistair Strathern) on championing this issue so strongly and laying out the issues so clearly. I also thank the charities Kinship, the Family Rights Group and Barnardo’s for all their work on kinship care.

I give big thanks to all the kinship carers in my constituency of Putney, who are offering all their support and love to so many young people, and to those constituents who have been to my surgery. One lady came to me recently and explained that in a time of great need, her mother took on her daughter for a time; she was able to move back in with her several years later. The problem was that in those years when she looked after her daughter, she suffered enormous financial hardship. That is what the lady wanted to raise with me, and that is what I will talk about.

Kinship carers have the responsibility of parents without the rights, and the responsibility of foster carers without the training, support or pay. That inevitably has an impact on the young person they care for. A recent survey found that 12% of kinship carers were concerned that they might have to stop caring for their kinship child in the next year if their situation did not improve. That is the last thing that they want. They are full of love, but they are also impacted financially by suddenly having to take on those commitments.

Financial support and legal costs are their main ask. The second ask is for statutory paid leave; it is very unfortunate that that has been missed out in the kinship strategy, and I would like to see that looked at as a matter of urgency. The third ask has been raised by other hon. Members today: it is about the postcode lottery among local authorities in looking round and exploring where kinship care is appropriate when a child is about to go into care. I was really surprised to find out that before a child goes into care, not every avenue is explored in looking at family members. There is a lack of consensus and understanding from different authorities. A fourth area, which has been raised by many hon. Members, is the lack of a legal definition. Kinship carers are often not recognised in their parenting role by services, schools or employers.

The #ValueOurLove campaign is to be commended. Its goals are:

“Equalise allowances between foster and kinship families…Equalise access to training and support between kinship carers and foster carers…Equalise leave between adoptive and kinship families …Equalise support between children in kinship care and those in care.”

I know that the Minister cares about the issue. I ask him to look at the gaps in the kinship care strategy. Action today will keep families together, save money and radically change the life opportunities for hundreds of thousands of children and young people in Putney and across the country.

17:07

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

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Pritchard. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Alistair Strathern) for leading this important debate.

It is vital that support for kinship carers, including the many incredible kinship carers in Liverpool, West Derby, is being discussed in this Chamber today. Many families say that they feel invisible, undervalued, unimportant and ignored by the Government. Some 75% of kinship carers entered the cost of living crisis in severe financial hardship. We know that children growing up in kinship care have better emotional, behavioural and educational outcomes than children in unrelated foster care; I have seen that with my own eyes with the fantastic group in Liverpool. However, kinship carers do not get anywhere near the recognition that they fully deserve. The support provided to kinship carers, including financial, legal, practical and emotional support, is nowhere near what the families need.

Important work has been happening in Liverpool. The kinship charter developed by Pauline Thornley of Kinship Carers Liverpool with her magnificent team and local kinship families is the first of its kind in the country. It is a groundbreaking achievement for kinship carers and their loved ones, and we in Liverpool are rightly extremely proud of it. I place on the record my thanks to Liverpool City Council for its efforts on the charter, and to Pauline and the team.

Families urgently need more support at a national Government level. Thanks to the fierce campaigning of kinship carers and charities, the Government recently published the first ever national kinship care strategy. However, like many of my constituents and like Kinship Carers Liverpool, I share the thoughts of the charity Kinship:

“The Government’s Strategy provides welcome recognition of and new support for kinship families, but the overall investment and commitments made do not deliver the urgent help which kinship families need today nor build a kinship care system fit for the future.”

The Minister should act on the concerns of families and campaigners. Will he commit to legislating on and funding a full roll-out in all local authorities of financial support for kinship families that is equal to that for foster and adoptive families? Will he commit to a new statutory pay and leave offer for kinship carers that is on a par with pay and leave for adoption? Lastly, will he equalise access to training and support between kinship carers and foster carers, as so many hon. Members have called for today? Those changes would make a huge difference to kinship families in Liverpool, West Derby and beyond. Many of the fantastic campaigners here will attest to that.

If the current Government will not act to implement these changes, I very much hope that an incoming Labour Government will. It is the very least that we can do for these fantastic, amazing people.

[Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)]

Before I call Jim Shannon, I remind Front-Bench Members that there will be five minutes for the Opposition, 10 minutes for the Government and then a minute or two for the mover of the motion to wind up, if the Minister is so minded and if there is time.

17:10

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship for the third time this afternoon, Mr Pritchard. I commend the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Alistair Strathern) for securing the debate. I want to give a Northern Ireland perspective on the whole thing, as I always do—it is about what we do back home. The Minister will obviously have some input into that, and I seek his assistance as to how we can make it better.

In March 2023, some 3,801 children and young people were recorded as in care in Northern Ireland, which is 177 more than in 2022. That is the highest recorded number in Northern Ireland since 1995, some 29 years ago. It tells us a wee bit about the issue, which everybody has illustrated very clearly. Some 22% of the children had been in care for less than a year, while 32%—almost 1,300—had been in care for five years or longer. There is a real issue for us back home with foster care, but today’s debate is about the kinship care strategy. The increase is certainly concerning; it highlights the issue of kinship care even more fully when we consider that more than half of those in foster care are in kinship foster care.

I have two questions for the Minister, along with the Northern Ireland perspective. First, I understand that foster carers were given an increase of some 12% in the foster care allowance. It seems that that did not go as far for kinship foster carers as it should have done. Could the Minister clarify the point and give us some indication of whether that is the case? Secondly, some £9 million will be invested in a bespoke training and support offer for all kinship carers. That is excellent news, but I am a great believer in the saying that the devil is in the detail, so I would like to know a wee bit more about how that will work.

As the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) and others have pointed out, many families who take in their sibling’s child do so not for the money, but for the love of the children. That is what is all about: the motivation. It is not about the money, but the money helps them do some of what they would like to do. Love does not buy the school uniforms or clothes, so they need that extra support.

I believe that there is a real need for urgent recruitment of foster parents and kinship carers in Northern Ireland. I always ask the Minister gently, humbly and with all graciousness, knowing that he will work with the relevant Minister in Northern Ireland to ensure that we can take things forward and help.

One of my local businessmen took his children—children of his own and those he fosters—to Florida. He loves all those kids and treats them all as his own. He does not do it for the money. That kind of money would never pay the bills for the holidays or anything, but the fact is that many others cannot do this without financial support.

We must get the strategy right, not just in England or here on the mainland, but across this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It begins with kinship care being recognised and supported appropriately.

17:13

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair today, Mr Pritchard. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Alistair Strathern) on securing today’s debate on such an important subject and on speaking so powerfully on behalf of kinship carers in Mid Bedfordshire.

I know that we are joined by kinship carers in the room today. I want to start by paying tribute to them for the love and support that they give to the children in their care. It is always humbling to meet kinship carers and hear about their experiences. It is an extraordinary thing to step up to care for a child when a family member or a friend is unable to do so, yet for every kinship carer I meet, it is never a choice; it is an instinct for a child they love. I also want to pay tribute to Kinship, the Family Rights Group, the Kinship Care Alliance, and the APPG on kinship care for their vital work in supporting and giving voice to the experiences and needs of kinship families.

We have heard from many hon. Members this afternoon, which is a testament to the importance of this issue across the country. I do not have time to mention every contribution individually, but I will mention some. The hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), the Chair of the Education Committee, having looked at the evidence, highlighted the need to support kinship carers much more systematically across the country. My hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) spoke once again about his experience as a kinship carer for his grandson Lyle. I have to say that I look forward to these debates for the opportunity to have an update on Lyle’s progress. He is a wonderful little boy. My hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) spoke about the difficulties facing kinship carers who give up employment to look after children.

My right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) talked about how the state takes for granted the love that kinship carers give, and he is right about that. My hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) spoke about how kinship carers are parents without rights and foster carers without the support or training that foster carers get, and how they fall between those two categories. My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne) paid tribute to the work of his local authority in supporting kinship carers.

An estimated 141,000 children across England and Wales are growing up in kinship care. Most will have experienced a traumatic event such as a bereavement, abuse or neglect. Kinship carers will often have shared in the trauma that led to the grandchild, niece, nephew or close friend coming into their care. Those are hugely challenging circumstances for every family, which makes kinship care much more than simply welcoming a family member into your home.

Often kinship carers are left without the wraparound support they need. There has been clear consensus in the debate on the need for greater support for kinship carers and we welcome the publication of the Government’s long-overdue kinship care strategy. For far too long, kinship care has been undervalued and under-recognised. It is testament to the hard work of campaigners that the strategy has finally been published. It is a step in the right direction, but sadly it falls short of what kinship carers were hoping for. Many of the measures announced will only be implemented through pilots, meaning that most kinship families will not see the benefits for several more years. In the very limited time we have this afternoon, I want to press the Minister on the question of legislating for a legal definition of kinship care. The guidance is welcome, but that statutory footing is what campaigners are asking for.

The pilot of the equivalent of the foster care allowance for kinship carers covers just eight local authority areas, and therefore a very limited number of kinship carers. They face hardship now, and we need more action from the Government. The strategy rightly discussed the need for greater advice for kinship carers and stronger guidance for local authorities. There is a huge postcode lottery in the support kinship carers receive. Statutory guidance has been in place for more than 12 years, but we know that many local authorities are not implementing it. What is the Minister doing to ensure that all local authorities are implementing the guidance and will he consider producing regulations if the situation persists?

Guidance for employers is welcome, but what is the Minister doing to ensure that the guidance is implemented? Finally, it is impossible to separate the challenges faced by kinship carers from the wider pressures on our social care system and on families. Labour in government have always put children and families first. We will do so again, working with kinship carers and those who support them to get them the support and recognition they need.

17:18

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (David Johnston)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I cannot possibly do justice to the debate and all the points that were raised, and certainly not to the fantastic role that all kinship carers play. It is great to see some of them in the Gallery today. I had the pleasure of meeting them briefly before this debate, but I know we will have a lot more opportunities to discuss the subject in more detail.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Alistair Strathern) on securing this important debate. People who have been in such debates before have heard me talk about the fact that my first experience of the subject came many years ago, when I mentored a nine-year-old boy who had to be removed from his parents and was put with his nan. She totally transformed his life, and, as everybody has said, did so out of love—certainly not for money. It was to prevent him going into care and taking other bad directions in life. That was my first experience of the issue, which is why I was so excited for us to publish the first strategy before the end of the year.

I wholeheartedly share the commitment of the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire to championing the role of kinship carers. I have spoken to many kinship carers through the Department’s reference group and during visits all over the country, and I have huge admiration for the role they play, often unseen. The conversation I always have with them is that there is a lot of attention, rightly, on those who adopt and who foster, but if we went down the street and asked what a kinship carer was, people would not know. They play an incredible role. We also know, although this is not the reason kinship carers do what they do, that children in kinship care will on average end up with better GCSE results, better employment outcomes and better long-term health outcomes. It therefore makes sense for the country as a whole, in addition to making sense for kinship carers and the children they are taking on.

Starting with the financial allowance, we know from the many conversations we have with kinship carers that nobody expects to take on the role when they do. We have announced a pathfinder programme for eight local authorities, which will provide special guardian kinship carers—

[Grahame Morris]

Will the Minister give way?

[David Johnston]

Very briefly, because I do not have much time to get through everybody’s points.

[Grahame Morris]

I am following very carefully what the Minister is saying. Can he tell us the eligibility criteria or the basis on which the eight pilot authorities have been chosen?

[David Johnston]

We have not announced the local authorities, so let us do that bit first. Members asked why we are starting with the particular subset of children who have special guardianship orders; they are one of the easiest groups to define, they often have the highest need and they are the quickest for local authorities to make the payments to. We want to get the programme going as quickly as possible, but subject to its success we want to broaden it to the full range of people in kinship care and to the other local authorities. However, we have not chosen the eight yet.

On virtual school heads, while some children in kinship arrangements have already been able to benefit from education entitlements and support, one of the constant conversations I have with kinship carers is that at times they find it very difficult to get the school to engage with them. Even though they are acting as the parent, they do not get the same conversations and treatment that a parent would get. That is why we announced £3.8 million to expand the role of virtual school heads to children in kinship care. All children in kinship care arrangements will get that, regardless of their status. My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Ben Everitt) raised that point and mentioned making sure everybody is aware that the heads are there. The local authority grant letters are being published imminently, delivery will start in September and we will do all we can to make sure everybody knows that they exist.

My hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) and others mentioned kinship leave, and we recognise the challenge many kinship carers face when continuing to work alongside the pressures of taking in and raising a child at an unexpected moment. We continue to explore what we can do. We have published guidance for employers, as some hon. Members have mentioned, to better support kinship carers in work. Some employers are already doing that. The Department for Education will give kinship leave to its staff who are kinship carers and we expect other Government Departments to do similarly in the coming weeks and months.

On training and support, which was raised by the hon. Members for Putney (Fleur Anderson) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon) as well as others, we announced a £1.6 million extension to our peer support funding, which will be delivered from July. It will mean that all kinship carers, regardless of their care order, will be able to network and learn from each other until the end of March 2026. Following the progress and positive impact that the peer-to-peer support contract has already made, we have committed to delivering a package of training and support that all kinship carers across England can access. We were pleased to confirm that the charity Kinship will be the training partner and that training is on track to be delivered from spring 2024.

We know that many kinship carers feel that a clear definition of kinship care will help to reduce barriers to them accessing services and support, creating a common understanding of what kinship care means. We are proud to have published the first Government definition of a kinship carer. This year, we will implement that in statutory guidance to improve understanding and awareness from practitioners about what kinship care is.

On a related matter raised by the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire, we have asked the Law Commission to review and simplify the framework for kinship care status. On the point made by him and the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) about inconsistent support from local authorities, we are publishing an updated version of the family and friends guidance this spring, and we will be monitoring compliance. I had a conversation with the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish at his APPG about the fact that we have found local authorities not paying the minimum fostering allowance, which we give them the money to do. Local authority compliance is very much in my sights.

This year, we will recruit the first-ever national kinship care ambassador to advocate for kinship carers and work directly with local authorities to improve services. That should go live for recruitment this month, and I look forward to working with the appointed candidate. They will help us to ensure that local authorities provide a consistent service that complies with what we require them to do. We are creating a board of sector experts, in addition to our kinship carer reference group, to advise me on priorities for future funding and policy development.

Let me quickly respond to some of the other points that were raised. My hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) asked about family group conferencing and New Zealand. We are exploring using legislation to mandate the use of family group conferencing at pre-proceedings and my predecessor met colleagues from New Zealand to discuss how it works there. The right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) and the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne) described what sounded like good local offers to support kinship carers in their areas, and I will ask officials to follow up with them to ensure that we are aware of the good work they are doing. I need to leave a couple of minutes for the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire, so if there are any points I have not addressed, I am happy to write to hon. Members.

[Munira Wilson]

Would the Minister address the issue of the pupil premium plus and priority admissions for children in kinship care? We know that looked-after children get those benefits, but kinship children do not, and it was not in the strategy.

[David Johnston]

I will write to the hon. Lady about that because it is a longer answer than the 30 seconds I have before the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire winds up.

We are proud of the progress we are already making to support kinship carers through the strategy, but we know there is more to do. I am fully committed to reducing the barriers to kinship care where it is in the best interests of the child to offer a safe, stable and loving alternative to becoming looked-after. I am determined that we keep the profile of kinship carers as high as possible and that people understand the vital role they play for the children in their care and the country as a whole.

17:26

[Alistair Strathern]

It has been a real pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I am grateful for the wide range of contributions we have had from my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) and my hon. Friends the Members for Blaydon (Liz Twist), for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne), for Easington (Grahame Morris), for Putney (Fleur Anderson) and for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne), as well as the hon. Members for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), for Milton Keynes North (Ben Everitt), for Worcester (Mr Walker), for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon).

It will be difficult in these two minutes to do justice to the wide range of issues highlighted today, but the range and sheer number of contributions gives me two important takeaways. First, we need to go further on a number of areas to do right for our kinship carers. Secondly, and more encouragingly, the sheer range of cross-party consensus around the House should hopefully mean that we can move with the urgency the issue demands over the remaining days of this Parliament. I am grateful to the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell), for her contribution, showcasing and highlighting the important areas where we need to go further and underlining our party’s commitment to ensuring that they are tackled.

I thank the Minister for the work he has done on the issue and some of the things he has pushed along through the strategy. I want to flag, though, that the fact we have not even gotten to the point where the pilots have been chosen might cause some concern to carers, who fear that we are not yet in a position to even announce that. That underlines the sense that things are not moving with the urgency the issue demands. Similarly, the fact that we have had so many representations today on parental leave makes it clear that guidance is unlikely to be enough and that we will need to go further. I urge him to reconsider that.

Finally, I thank the fantastic kinship carers and advocacy groups in the Chamber today. Their love, commitment and dedication day after day as they look after their young people, breaking through so many of the barriers and issues that have often been put in their way, is truly inspiring. The fact that they do all that and then go beyond by advocating not just for themselves, but for future and potential kinship carers right across the country so that they and their young people do not have to face those same challenges is inspiring. I hope that today they have seen that they have parliamentary allies to their cause across the House. I look forward to working with everyone in this room to continue to champion the cause between now and the time when we can finally say the support they need and deserve is in place.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the kinship care strategy.

17:26

Sitting adjourned.