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Oral Answers to Questions
(7 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Craig Tracey (North Warwickshire) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Steve Barclay)
Around 45% of the Government’s £5.2 billion investment in flood protection is targeted at rural communities, and the Minister for Water is allocating £75 million of funding specifically to internal drainage boards, which, again, serve many rural constituencies.
Craig Tracey
I thank the Secretary of State for his answer. In recent months, parts of North Warwickshire and Bedworth, including Austrey, Polesworth and the Woodlands, have seen significant and unprecedented flooding, which has caused real damage to houses and businesses and upheaval for local residents. Will the Secretary of State set out what other steps can be taken to prevent this from happening and to stop these situations becoming the norm?
Steve Barclay
My hon. Friend has been a real constituency champion in highlighting some of the flooding issues that have occurred in North Warwickshire and Bedworth. Of the Environment Agency investment over six years, £24 million is going specifically into protecting 800 properties, and I know we will have further discussions on the work that he is doing locally to tackle flooding.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Secretary of State for his response. As he will know, the Northern Ireland Assembly is back up and running. We have a Minister in place to deal with flooding, but money must be spent wisely and effectively. What discussions has the Secretary of State had with the Northern Ireland Assembly Minister at this early stage to ensure that lessons learned here on the mainland can be used back home, where over the past year flooding has become an exceptional problem that worries many people?
Steve Barclay
I think the whole House welcomes the fact that the Assembly is back up and running. The hon. Gentleman will appreciate that I am very keen, as a former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, that money is spent in a value-for-money way. I was in the Northern Ireland Secretary’s constituency just last week to discuss a range of issues in Northern Ireland, and I am very keen that we learn from each other about the best ways to tackle flooding.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
The Minister for Food, Farming and Fisheries (Mark Spencer)
I welcome the campaign of my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth (Dr Evans) and the action taken by some supermarkets to introduce a “buy British” button online, and I strongly support their efforts to encourage consumers to pick high-quality British produce. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has launched a consultation on fairer food labelling to help promote British produce and statutory codes that ensure that British farmers get a fair price for their goods.
Mr Hollobone
One of the best ways we can support British farmers is by choosing to buy British food. It is good for the environment, reduces food miles and improves our food security, because we are importing less produce. Will my right hon. Friend the Farming Minister join me in specifically congratulating Morrisons, Aldi, Sainsbury’s and Ocado, which all now have the “buy British” button online so that consumers can easily find British food to buy?
Mark Spencer
What we see is that consumers want to buy top-quality British food. I congratulate those supermarkets, and I encourage others to consider whether they may want to introduce a “buy British” button for online sales.
Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Robbie Moore)
We know how important clean water is to the public, and we share their concern and outrage about pollution in waterways. That is why we have increased monitoring of storm overflows in England from 7% under Labour in 2010 to 100% today, and we are now holding water companies to account on tackling pollution by quadrupling the number of checks, increasing unannounced inspections, giving Ofwat new powers to block bonuses, and taking action against water companies that do not link dividends to environmental performance.
Mick Whitley
Households across the north-west could see their water bills rise by nearly 40% by 2030 as water companies look to consumers to meet the costs of much-need infrastructure upgrades. Do the Government agree that the cost of stemming the flow of sewage into our waterways should be met by the water companies and the shareholders who were received hundreds of millions of pounds in payouts last year, not by the hard- working British public?
Robbie Moore
The Government are absolutely clear that no one should pay extra for water companies to clean up our rivers. We are pleased that water companies have promised a £96 billion investment over the next five years across England and Wales, and we will continue to hold polluters to account. Just this week, we announced a fast-track investment of £180 million over the next 12 months to prevent more than 800,000 sewage spills from polluting English waterways.
Rachael Maskell
We should not have an open sewer flowing through the city of York and, when it floods, flowing into businesses and people’s homes. While water company executives have pocketed £10 million in bonuses, my constituents have had to put up with 1,414 sewage releases. When will the Minister end this profiteering and invest in upgrading York’s sewerage infrastructure? How does he intend to do this?
Robbie Moore
As I said, we have already seen water companies want to invest £96 billion over the next price review cycle. I recently visited York, and work is being undertaken by Yorkshire Water to address sewage pollution spills. Ofwat has already been given powers to take a much tougher approach to bosses’ bonuses, if their companies are deemed to have been polluting. This Government will continue to hold water companies to account.
Stephen Crabb
I welcome the action that this Government are taking to improve water quality, but in Wales, which has some of the worst levels of sewage pollution, there are no legally binding targets for the water companies to reduce sewage or to upgrade their waste water treatment plants, and there is no overall reduction plan for sewage. There are not even any prosecutions, because the policy in Wales is not to prosecute these companies. Does the Minister know which party is running the Administration in Wales?
Robbie Moore
I share my right hon. Friend’s concerns about Labour’s failure to tackle spills from storm overflows in Wales, where the average number of spills from storm overflows is two thirds higher than in England. I am not surprised by this, because we know that when Labour was last in government in 2010, only 7% of storm overflows were monitored, compared with 100% today. Ninety per cent of bathing waters are now classed as good or excellent, compared with just 76% under Labour in 2010.
Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
Drinking water is treated with both ultraviolet light and chlorine before it goes into our taps, so it is perfectly safe. Water that goes through water treatment works is treated but not necessarily disinfected by the use of UV, unless it is heading towards a designated bathing water.
France is hosting the Olympics in Paris, and the Seine is being treated with performic acid. One place in this country, Southwold, is using performic acid right now, but scientists from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Environment Agency have so far been reluctant to roll it out. If it is good enough for people to swim in the Seine during the Olympics, surely it is good enough to start using this treatment, which is cheaper and could be deployed across our country.
Robbie Moore
I thank my right hon. Friend for raising this important issue, and I reassure her that I am having conversations with officials not only in the Environment Agency but in DEFRA on this very issue. I am more than happy to meet her so she can share her knowledge from when she was Secretary of State.
Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
It is clear from what we have heard that the Minister is here to tell us how well the Government and the water companies are doing. Meanwhile, out there in the real world, the recent “State of Our Rivers” report exposed that not one English river is in a good overall condition. The capital’s water supplier is on the brink of collapse, and the only solution that the Government are even considering was stolen from the Labour party. Is it not the truth that what Britian’s rivers really cannot afford is five more years of this useless Government?
Robbie Moore
When the Leader of the Opposition says that he would want Wales to be his blueprint if Labour gets into power in England, I fear for this country. We have seen far worse water pollution under Welsh Labour, as has already been said. We will continue with our plan for water, which is about more investment, stronger regulation and much tougher enforcement against those who pollute.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Robbie Moore)
DEFRA, supported by the Environment Agency, is currently seeking clarification from Thames Water on its revised draft water resources management plan to help inform the next steps for the Teddington project. The proposals are still at an early stage. Thames Water will continue to carry out further consultation over the next couple of years to help it design and carry out further environmental assessments of the scheme.
Munira Wilson
The water resources management plan for the south-east, which contains the highly controversial Teddington direct river abstraction proposal opposed by tens of thousands of local residents and river users across south-west London, has been sitting on the Environment Secretary’s desk since August. We have been calling for the Teddington proposal to be taken out of the plan, and we were told that a decision would be made by Christmas, then by February 2024, and now we are told it will be made in due course. In the meantime, as the Minister suggests, Thames Water is wasting huge amounts of billpayers’ money on the proposals, so will he confirm when the Secretary of State plans to make a decision on the water resources management plan and whether he will take the Teddington project out of it?
Robbie Moore
This follows on from a conversation I had with the hon. Lady and her constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney). We are well aware of Thames Water’s proposals for this scheme, which is still in a consultation stage. It is one of 17 strategic water resources options being considered across the Thames catchment, and I will be updated by Thames Water, as will the Secretary of State, when it has completed its consultation.
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Steve Barclay)
The Department engages regularly with UK industry to understand the impact of the Windsor framework, and we encourage businesses to respond to the consultation, which is still live.
Mr Dhesi
During my various meetings, including at the UK corporate headquarters of Bidfood in my constituency, exasperated businesses have expressed serious concerns about the damage being inflicted on them by the Conservatives’ ill-thought-through “Not for EU” labelling scheme. Along with increasing consumer confusion, it will also likely reduce choice and raise prices for shoppers. Secretary of State, why are this incompetent Government so hellbent on burdening British businesses with more bureaucracy and red tape, and increasing their cost base?
Steve Barclay
First, let me say that there is a consultation taking place, so there is discussion on this. Secondly, £50 million has already been allocated as transitional support. Thirdly, particularly for colleagues in Northern Ireland, it is important that, far from restricting choice, we maintain it. That is exactly what the Windsor framework, which the House as a whole agreed to, is designed to do.
Dr Huq
A correctly labelled shipment for Going Nuts, a firm in Park Royal, made it to Felixstowe on 2 January but, shockingly, it has only just been released from being impounded. That was due to a customs staff shortage at the border, so will the Government fix that? The company incurred a three-figure sum for 40 days’ storage, plus VAT. The Government are throwing small business under the bus—albeit a Sadiq Khan bus with low emissions.
Steve Barclay
I will leave it to others to deduce the link to Sadiq Khan’s bus. I think the hon. Lady prepared her question before the previous answer, because I just set out that we are giving £50 million of transitional labelling support. Of course, a consultation is live and we are working with businesses on it.
Steven Bonnar (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (SNP)
The Food and Drink Federation has warned the UK Government that their plan to require all meat and dairy sold in the UK to have “Not for EU” labelling attacked will divert “hundreds of millions of pounds” of investment away from the UK, and that several international investors have paused their plans to invest in UK food and drink. As we continue to circle the drain of Tory-imposed recession, will the Secretary of State tell the House and the public if driving investment away from this vital sector will help or hinder attempts to avoid yet greater recessions?
Steve Barclay
Of course we will work with industry on any changes, but the SNP needs to be consistent, because we have other proposals, such as the review of public sector procurement being carried out by my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince) and fairer labelling. For example, pigs reared overseas are often marketed as British bacon, and our labelling changes often have widespread support from the farming sector. It is important that we do these changes with the industry, which is why we have allocated £50 million of transitional support.
Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Steve Barclay)
British farmers put food on our tables and form the backbone of the rural economy, and this Government will always back our farmers. That is why in January we increased the rates paid through the environmental land management actions by an average of 10% and increased the number of choices through the 50 new actions for farmers.
Helen Morgan
One concern that farmers have raised about the sustainable farming incentive is that they have to pay money up front before they can receive compensation or reclaim that money from the Government. A farmer in my constituency installed a stone track to prevent soil from washing on to the road. He committed to the Bacs payment before he received the money from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, but because it left his account three days later, he now has to pay his DEFRA money back. This is an insane situation and he cannot afford this. He is going to have to take this track up and sell the stone. Will the Secretary of State help me with this case, so that we get those environmental protection schemes in place and do not penalise people for timing differences?
Steve Barclay
First, I am happy to look at any individual case the hon. Lady raises. Secondly, I agree with her on the wider point. I have been very clear with the Rural Payments Agency that we need a more trusting relationship about payments. We need to accelerate those payments, so they are paid more quickly. To be fair to the RPA, there are sometimes constraints because of National Audit Office rules around the error rate checks it needs. We are working with the RPA to shift the relationship to one built more on trust, where payments go out in a more expedited fashion.
Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)
Fishermen are the farmers of the sea. What further steps is the Secretary of State taking to support the aquaculture industry, especially helping it to create new businesses across our coastal communities?
Steve Barclay
My hon. Friend knows from our regular conversations just how engaged I am on this subject. He met with the Minister for Water and Rural Growth yesterday. As he knows, there is a consultation about medical exemptions for boats under 10 metres. I know the Minister for Food, Farming and Fisheries is looking closely at the issues around pollack. I am happy to update my hon. Friend on a series of other initiatives as we work through them.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Has the Secretary of State actually talked to the National Farmers Union recently? Has he even talked to the celebrity farmer on television who we all know about? What is the plan? Farmers are in a period of stasis. They do not know where they are going or how they are going to face the future, because there is no plan under this incompetent Administration.
Steve Barclay
Not only have I spoken to the new president of the NFU—he has been in my office already—but I have been on his farm to discuss these matters. I have also been his deputy’s farm. In fact, on being appointed Secretary of State, the first meeting I had was with the former NFU president and the first meeting in my office, within a week, was with the then president of the NFU, so I regularly engage with colleagues in the NFU. Just this week I had a meeting with the NFU county president for Cambridgeshire. However, I am surpassed in that engagement by the Minister for Food, Farming and Fisheries, who has discussions with the NFU even more frequently.
Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)
On a recent visit to Church Farm in Weston Turville in my constituency, the family who have farmed there for generations stressed how important it is for them to be able to diversify their income, for example with their very popular farm shop, which sells their produce and that of nearby farmers. However, current planning rules limit the shop to opening on 28 days a year. Will my right hon. Friend update the House on his conversations with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and across Government about making it easier for farmers to diversify their income, so that we can assure the food security that is so vital to our nation?
Steve Barclay
My hon. Friend raises an important point. My focus, and that of the Minister for Food, Farming and Fisheries, is first and foremost on ensuring food production and food security is viable for our farmers, but diversification is also important. I am in advanced discussions with the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities on extending permitted development rights.
To go back to the question raised by the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), a certain very famous farmer has raised his frustrations in Oxfordshire. I want to streamline permitted developments to make it easier for farmers to diversify, but first and foremost farmers want to produce food, which is my key focus.
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
Farmers need support against potentially devastating contagious diseases, such as African swine fever. I recently visited Dover, where the diligent Port Health Authority regularly seizes contaminated meat. Yet next month, its DEFRA funding will be cut by 70% and, incredibly, those border checks will be moved 22 miles inland. Why are the Conservatives putting the farmers of this country and our national security at risk?
Steve Barclay
That is a timely question. Just yesterday I had a meeting with the chief veterinary officer to discuss our security risks, particularly in the context of bluetongue disease. It may not be catching the House’s attention today, but I am concerned that it will become a widely debated issue by the summer. I am actively engaged in that discussion, and the Minister for Food, Farming and Fisheries is having a roundtable on that live security issue next week. Last week, I spoke at the British Veterinary Association annual dinner, which the hon. Gentleman also attended, so he saw in first person just how engaged we are with these issues.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)
This Government are committed to protecting human health and the environment, and we will be setting out our priorities for addressing risks from chemicals in due course. To be clear, though, the new draft strategy sets out that our chemicals policy and regulatory decisions will be independent of the EU; they will be bespoke to the UK.
Chi Onwurah
The cosmetics sector is often overlooked, perhaps because we are unwilling to show how dependent we are on that sector, or perhaps because so many of the 550,000 people who work in that sector are women. The Cosmetic, Toiletry and Perfumery Association manifesto makes it clear that it requires a safe and sustainable supply of chemicals within a robust, internationally compatible regulatory framework. Is it not clear that this ongoing chaos with the chemicals strategy means that what it actually requires is a change of Government?
Rebecca Pow
A great many people from that industry were at an international women’s event about sustainability that I spoke at yesterday. In our engagement on the new alternative transition model, which involves working with the industry very closely, we are taking into account the fact that supply chains are complicated, that they operate cross border, and that the sector values access. We will be consulting on the strategy very shortly.
Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)
The Minister told me in January this year that the chemicals strategy will be produced next year, before correcting it to this year. Whether it is this year, next year or sometime never, does she agree that the strategy will be worth the paper it is written on only if the UK regulations catch up with other countries and stop hazardous substances being dumped here, damaging our environment and public health?
Rebecca Pow
As the hon. Member will know, there is a global framework on chemicals. I attended a conference on the UN global framework on chemicals back in September in Bonn. We signed up to the framework, which is binding, sets targets and international commitments, and relates to finance capacity-building, so that we can soundly manage and handle our chemicals and waste, and that is exactly what we are doing with our bespoke UK strategy.
Mr Speaker
I call the Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee.
Sir Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)
The Minister for Food, Farming and Fisheries (Mark Spencer)
Food security is a top priority for the Government and we are committed to continuing to grow 60% of our food here in the UK. To back up those plans, we are introducing an annual food security index and we are currently developing the content of that index. We want to strike the right balance between food production and the natural environment, which is why all the actions in the sustainable farming incentive work to support food production and the environment.
Sir Robert Goodwill
Does the Minister share my concerns that a perfect storm may be brewing? With grain prices on the floor, a third of the wheat crop either not being drilled or flooded out, and rape being increasingly difficult to establish, some of the long-term, multi-annual stewardship options are becoming increasingly attractive. And that is not to mention those idiots in Wales taking 20% of land out of production. Does he share my concerns?
Mark Spencer
That is something we consistently and constantly review to make sure that we are striking that right balance between food production and the environment. We will continue to do that to make sure that we do not see such perverse incentives. Certainly, given the challenge of the weather this season and the difficulties with planting cereal crops, we will continue to look at whether that balance is right. What I do not want is people abusing the system and putting in too much wild bird mix or pollinator mix; we will continue to review whether that is having an impact on the market.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Ind)
I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Can the Minister explain how his Department’s policy of taking good agricultural land out of food production is compatible with improving UK food security?
Mark Spencer
I can. The sustainable farming incentive motivates farmers to improve their soil quality, which is good for the production of food, and incentivises farmers to look after pollinators, which is good for the pollination of crops. The environment and food production are two sides of the same coin. We, as farmers, want to encourage farmers to look after the environment, so that we can continue to produce top-quality food on highly productive land.
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Steve Barclay)
If the hon. Member is concerned about food prices, I urge him to consider the impact of the Scottish Government’s decision to crack down on meal deals and supermarket promotions, which will mean that Scottish customers pay more than English ones for the same products.
Patrick Grady
That has nothing to do with the question on the Order Paper. The London School of Economics found that Brexit has added £250 to the average household bill. The healthcare certificates that are now required will add even more. Is the reality not that the cost of living crisis is a cost of Westminster crisis, fuelled by Brexit?
Steve Barclay
The hon. Member seems to imply that food inflation has been unique to the UK. Actually, we have seen more severe consequences on the continent. It is right to draw the House’s attention to the decisions that the SNP Government are taking, which have an impact on increasing food prices.
Sir John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Steve Barclay)
Since last updating the House, we have continued to bring forward measures to place greater prioritisation on food production and food security. That includes delivering a key National Farmers Union ask for a food security index, committing to the Farm to Fork summit as an annual event, and the largest ever round of grants for farmers, worth £427 million, announced by the Prime Minister to drive greater productivity. We are also consulting on fairer food labels to ensure that our British farmers are fairly rewarded. We are announcing today a consultation on the next phase of our tuberculosis eradication strategy, which includes culling in high-risk areas, and this week I announced that my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince) is conducting a review into public sector food procurement.
Furthermore, we are taking action to hold water companies to account more strongly, which includes a fourfold increase in inspections and consulting on banning bonuses for companies that commit serious criminal breaches. We are working at pace with the devolved Administrations on the banning of wet wipes. As we covered earlier, we continue to address the threat from the bluetongue virus. I can confirm to the House that I have acted on the representations of my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Dr Hudson) on extending the neutering deadline for XL Bully dogs by some months, from 30 January 2024 until 30 June 2025. Finally, tomorrow the Minister responsible for nature will announce the successful bids for species restoration grants, building on the progress on biodiversity net gain.
Sir John Whittingdale
Is my right hon. Friend aware that the inflexibility, bureaucracy and cost of the seasonal poultry workers scheme make it prohibitive for businesses such as Kelly Turkeys in my constituency to hire labour for just a few weeks in the run-up to Christmas? Will he urge the Home Office to include it within the existing seasonal agricultural workers scheme, thus allowing producers to use labour that is already in the country?
Steve Barclay
My right hon. Friend raises an important point. Of course, there are 2,000 seasonal worker visas to meet the demand in the run-up to Christmas. He will know that from my time as the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, when I dealt with the issue of turkey supplies before Christmas, I am happy to look at that issue. He is talking about a finite period, and I will make those representations to Home Office colleagues.
Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)
Last month, I visited Newcastle-under-Lyme with local campaigner Adam Jogee to meet residents who are literally choking on toxic fumes from the Walleys Quarry landfill site. More than 10,000 residents have complained about the stench, and a five-year-old child ended up in hospital. Will the Secretary of State publish all correspondence between DEFRA, the Environment Agency and the operator, so that residents in Newcastle-under-Lyme can see why the site has not been closed down?
Steve Barclay
No one could have done more to highlight the issue than the constituency MP. Indeed, the Minister with responsibility for water has already been to Walleys Quarry to look at first hand. Having spoken directly to the chief executive of the Environment Agency, I know that everything that can be done within the law is being done. That is the assurance that the Minister and I have had from the chief exec of the Environment Agency. Indeed, enforcement action was taken recently at that specific site.
Mrs Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)
The Minister for Food, Farming and Fisheries (Mark Spencer)
The Government recognise the huge challenge faced by pollack fishers. We are trying to offer funding to help those most affected. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend’s campaign and that of my hon. Friends the Members for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory) and for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) in raising the issues. We are helping those fishermen through the fisheries and seafood scheme, as well as with a new scientific study, but the Secretary of State and I are personally looking at what other options may be available to help and support. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Mrs Murray) will continue her pursuit of this issue and support for her constituents.
Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)
Steve Barclay
The hon. Gentleman’s question merely highlights a fundamental difference between the Front Benchers of the two parties: I want to work with farmers, which is why through SFI—the sustainable farming incentive—we are looking at permissive access, where we pay incentives to farmers to provide access to their land; but Labour would impose a top-down requirement with the right to roam, rather than work constructively with our farmers and landowners, which is the approach that the Conservatives are taking.
Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)
Steve Barclay
I pay tribute to the amazing campaign led by my hon. Friend on behalf of those in his constituency. Already, £80 million of support has been secured from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs for that scheme. He will be aware that the local authority has changed the scope and driven the cost, so there is a question as to what contributions are made by partners, but he is a formidable champion of the scheme and £80 million has already been allocated.
Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)
The hon. Lady is slightly behind the times. We have committed to protecting our hedgerows in law in England. We carried out a consultation, and this measure was extremely popular with our farmers, because we know how much they value hedgerows. They will be protected with those regulations, including the 2 metre buffer strip from the centre of the hedge, and all the rules and regulations on what can and cannot be done, and the cutting ban. We are fully behind that. We are working on the fight to protect nature, and that will be part of getting to our nature target.
Tom Randall (Gedling) (Con)
I thank the Minister responsible for water for coming to Vale Road in Colwick recently to meet residents affected by flooding. I know that that meeting was very much appreciated. Will the Minister reassure me that he and his Department will carry on working with me to continue to improve flood defences in Colwick and across Nottinghamshire, so that the residents can sleep a little better at night?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Robbie Moore)
I was glad to visit Colwick and meet residents along Vale Road to hear about the impact of recent flooding, not only on them but on residents of the wider area. I will continue to work with my hon. Friend and with Nottinghamshire County Council. This is not the only area that he is interested in; he has also been working with my right hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mark Spencer) to focus on Lambley and Woodborough as well. That work will build on the £51 million that has already been allocated to Nottinghamshire County Council and is already better protecting 15,000 properties.
Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)
Steve Barclay
I have a really clear message for his constituents: we are sticking to the plan, which is bringing inflation down—that is what the Chancellor set out in the Budget; the numbers are clear on how inflation has come down—and we are not risking going back to square one, as the hon. Gentleman’s party would propose.
David Duguid (Banff and Buchan) (Con)
My right hon. Friend the Minister is very aware of the concerns raised by the seafood processing and catching sectors about recent proposals by the Migration Advisory Committee to remove key occupations from shortage occupation lists. What engagement has he had with the Home Office to ensure that the occupations on which our food security and coastal communities depend are adequately and meaningfully supported?
Mark Spencer
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his campaigning again on behalf of his constituents. We continue to work with our friends in the Home Office to ensure that the fishing sector in Scotland and around the UK gets the labour that it requires to deliver top-quality British fish to the marketplace. I will continue to have those discussions with the Home Office to ensure that we get to the right place.
Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)
I was pleased to play a small part in passing the Animals (Low-Welfare Activities Abroad) Act 2023, but the Government continue to delay its implementation, while 550,000 captive wild animals suffer in tourist entertainment around the world. One example is that of elephants in Thailand, many of which suffer complex post-traumatic stress disorder because of the psychological and physical abuse that they endure daily. UK companies may still advertise and sell tickets for activities that involve elephants that are forced to perform for tourists. Will the Minister assure me that the conversation will be launched as soon as possible and that the regulations will include a ban on the advertising and selling of elephant tourism?
Mark Spencer
Future decisions on which animal activities will fall into the scope of the legislation will need to be evidence-based and subject to parliamentary scrutiny. The Government continue to make animal welfare a priority. We are currently exploring a number of options to ensure that there is progress as soon as is practicable.
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)
The Secretary of State is bringing forward a system of extended producer responsibility to obligate brand owners, including food suppliers, to bear the cost of recycling the packaging that they place on the market. However, in some estimates, the cost to obligated businesses will be 10 times higher than under the current packaging waste recycling note system. Given that the cost will need to be passed to consumers, does the Minister share the concern that it will contribute to food price inflation?
Robbie Moore
It was good to meet my hon. Friend just this week to discuss that issue. I encourage all those in the packaging sector, and those involved in the industry, to keep feeding information to my officials. We are reviewing EPR at the moment—we have a dedicated roll-out plan for it—but we are very keen to hear from the industry.
Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)
The Government promised to ban plastic in wet wipes nearly a year ago, on 3 April last year, but there is still no ban in place. Will the Minister protect nature by banning plastic in wet wipes now?
Steve Barclay
I am extremely keen to get the ban on wet wipes delivered. Has the hon. Lady spoken to her colleagues in the Welsh Labour Government? As she knows, these things need to go through with agreement from the devolved Administrations. I can assure her that I am pressing very hard on that, and hope to have something to announce very soon. [Interruption.] I will take the chuntering from the Labour Front Benchers into those discussions.
Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)
Ministers are already aware of the success of my quarterly water summits, which have caused Anglian Water to beat the Government target for reducing storm overflows by five years and to pilot all-year-round testing of our bathing waters. However, one agency consistency failed to attend: the Environment Agency. Will the Minister come to the next summit and bring the Environment Agency with him?
Robbie Moore
There is no doughtier champion than my hon. Friend, who has been lobbying me on this issue. I am happy to commit to the Environment Agency attending her next summit, and I will also attend in person.
Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)
British farmers produce some of the very best produce in the world, but the trend in supermarkets selling it is going in the wrong direction. Will the Minister support Liberal Democrat proposals to invest an additional £1 billion in British farming, and reform environmental land management schemes so that they genuinely incentivise sustainable farming?
Steve Barclay
I agree with the hon. Gentleman that British farmers produce among the best food in the world, but I do not agree that the trend is deteriorating—quite the opposite. We have the Buy British campaign, which a number of supermarkets have already signed up to; the public sector review—the Quince review—is under way; and we are looking at labelling, and how we better empower consumers to buy food with good animal welfare standards. There is a lot of progress, and it reflects the great standards we have for British food.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
Can my hon. Friend update the House on the responses to the consultation on the 27 bids for bathing water status—one of which, of course, is for the River Nidd and the lido in Knaresborough?
Robbie Moore
My officials have been inundated with a huge number of responses to the consultations on the 27 bathing water sites. My hon. Friend is a doughty campaigner for the River Nidd; I cannot say anything at the moment, but he will not have to wait too long before hearing the outcome.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
Lidl has become the first supermarket to roll out a deposit return scheme across the whole city of Glasgow. Will the Secretary of State commend Lidl on doing what he blocked the Scottish Government from rolling out across Scotland?
Steve Barclay
I always commend supermarkets that are being innovative, but part of the problem with the initiative in Scotland was the amount of push-back from industry. That is why the Scottish Government pulled it.
Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)
Extended producer responsibility will add financial burdens to amazing food producers, such as Wilkin & Sons in Tiptree in my constituency, so can the Secretary of State say what he is doing to keep financial costs down and reduce red tape for great British food manufacturers?
Steve Barclay
As my right hon. Friend knows, we are kindred spirits in trying to keep the amount of red tape and regulation down. Indeed, on a visit to Tiptree just a couple of weeks ago, I looked at methods of automation that bring the cost of food production down. My right hon. Friend will have heard the comment from the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Robbie Moore), who has responsibility for water: a consultation on these issues is live, and as a formidable constituency champion, I know that my right hon. Friend will ensure that any concerns about costs are raised in that consultation.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
Stephen Morgan (Portsmouth South) (Lab)
Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)
The Attorney General (Victoria Prentis)
I visited Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories between 14 and 16 February. In Israel, I met Israel’s Attorney General, lawyers for the Israel Defence Forces, and the president of the Supreme Court. In the west bank, I met the Palestinian Attorney General and the Prime Minister.
Rachael Maskell
History will not judge kindly when asked whether we did everything we could to prevent possible genocide in Gaza, given the scale of suffering brought about by weapons, disease, hunger, and in the light of the International Court of Justice’s interim order on restraint. When the Attorney General met the officials that she referred to, did she clarify that under the genocide convention, the ICJ order must be adhered to fully, and did she give any indication that the UK will cease participating in arms sales to Israel until that happens?
The Attorney General
I know that the hon. Lady cares very deeply about this region—she and I have visited it together. I reassure her that my discussions with those I met, both in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, were very frank, and I am confident that our messages were delivered clearly. I made clear the importance of international humanitarian law being respected, civilians being protected, and compliance with the Geneva conventions when it comes to detainees.
Dr Huq
The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), has stated that the Government respect the ICJ’s independence and role, but do not think that its ruling of plausible genocide was helpful. Given the forcible displacement taking place, the demolition of homes and structures, the near famine in Gaza, and the expansion of illegal settlements in the occupied west bank worsening daily, how does the Attorney General—who has seen all this stuff with her own eyes—propose to uphold international law before it is too late?
The Attorney General
The hon. Lady and I served on the Justice Committee together, and I know that she shares my deep feeling that we must do everything we can to make sure that international humanitarian law is respected in the region. The UK has repeatedly raised with Israel the need to limit operations to military targets, to protect health facilities, and to avoid harming civilians. The Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary have repeatedly raised those matters with their counterparts.
Andy Slaughter
The UK Government’s less than wholehearted endorsement of the ICJ process and the International Criminal Court war crimes investigation, which is led by British lawyers, means that the alternative is that people increasingly turn to violence. That is the view of the Israeli civil society organisations that came to meet us yesterday, with the co-operation of Yachad. We have to uphold international law. Will the Attorney General recommit to both those processes?
The Attorney General
The hon. Gentleman has long campaigned on these issues, so I know that he feels particularly passionately about the region as well. I am absolutely happy to commit this Government once again to upholding, where ever we can, international humanitarian law. Across this House, there is a great deal of consensus: we want the fighting to stop now. We are calling for an immediate pause to get aid in and the hostages out, and then to progress to a permanent ceasefire. We applaud the part of the ICJ’s provisional measures order that calls for exactly that.
Stephen Morgan
It is seven weeks since the ICJ issued its interim ruling on Israel’s conduct in Gaza. The Netanyahu Government have failed to comply with that ruling, and we are still waiting for the UK Government to urge them to do so. Will the Attorney General today call on Israel to take the steps it was ordered to take by the Court?
The Attorney General
We do not feel that that case was particularly helpful at this moment in the negotiations. We absolutely respect the ICJ—I have appeared there myself—and we of course understand that the interim measures order is binding on the parties. As I said to the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter), elements of that order are extremely sensible, and we wholeheartedly respect them. We call, as the ICJ has done, for aid to go in and the hostages to come out immediately. That is the right way to proceed if we are ever to achieve a permanent ceasefire and, ultimately, a resolution of this dreadful conflict. However, we do not think terms such as “genocide”, without a formal final ruling of the Court, are particularly helpful to use.
Jeff Smith
I welcome the Attorney General’s strong condemnation of settler violence against Bedouin communities in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and I also welcome the sanctions recently imposed on some of those involved in the violence. Based on her recent visit, does she think that there is a need to go further and sanction those extremist Israeli politicians who are encouraging the violent and illegal expansion of settlements?
The Attorney General
When I visited the region with the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) many years ago, we saw some of the actions of settlers in the occupied territories. So far as I was able to, I reprised that visit when I went to the region most recently, and I was surprised at the difference in the level of violence used. I was able to visit a Bedouin village and talk to those who feel that at a very difficult time for the farming community, during lambing, they were being pushed off their land. I listened very carefully to what the hon. Gentleman said, and I reassure him that the Government continue to keep this issue under review.
Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
I welcome the Attorney General’s comments. I think every one of us shares the desire for the fighting to stop, and respect for the International Court of Justice. However, does she agree that it is important to be careful when we use legal terms in broader political debate? For example, the test of plausibility in the jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice is essentially about the admissibility of a claim, rather than its ultimate merits. The Court itself has described that, in a judgment involving Myanmar, as a “low threshold”. It is important not to make more of a preliminary finding than we should before final litigation is completed.
The Attorney General
As ever, the Chairman of the Select Committee makes a very important point, and may I take this opportunity to congratulate him from the Dispatch Box on becoming an honorary KC, which I understand will happen on Monday? I am sure that the whole House will want to join me in saying that he is extremely worthy of this very significant honour, and we are all thrilled that it will be given. He does make an important point: words really matter; there will shortly be a statement to the House about that, and about the meaning of the term “extremism.” It is very important that we all choose our words carefully, particularly when it comes to this long-running and difficult conflict. We respect the rulings of the ICJ—of course we do—but that does not mean that we think every case before it is well brought.
Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
On the issue of international conventions, treaties and international law, including international humanitarian law and the international refugee convention, will the Attorney General place in the Library over the weekend a legal statement on the circumstances in which international law is trumped by clear and unambiguous words in an Act of Parliament? Will she include in that statement the necessary citations from the Supreme Court and the House of Lords?
The Attorney General
My hon. Friend is a great and long-standing Member of this House, and is able to ask questions the answers to which might not automatically be obvious. We are talking here about Palestinian and Israeli counterparts being in compliance with international law, but I am of course delighted to say again to my hon. Friend that this Government are committed to international law—we have said that repeatedly from the Dispatch Box—and I do not see any need to lay a statement such as he suggests, but I will continue to enjoy our conversations on this topic.
Dr Neil Hudson (Penrith and The Border) (Con)
This week, in the other place, the Foreign Secretary said on the tragic conflict in the middle east:
“You have to obey the rules and obey the law”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 12 March 2024; Vol. 836, c. 1915.]
That is an important affirmation from this Government that Israel both has a right to self-defence and very much has a duty to obey international humanitarian law. Can the Attorney General reaffirm that the Government will continue to stress both that right and that duty in this conflict, which we all want to end as soon as possible?
The Attorney General
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and I would not like any Member of this House to be in any doubt: we all, across this House, want the fighting to stop now. That message is delivered by the Government on behalf of the House and the nation repeatedly and loudly. We are calling for an immediate pause to get aid in and hostages out, and then progress to a permanent ceasefire. We need five things to happen: the release of the hostages; the formation of a new Palestinian Government; Hamas’s capacity to launch attacks stopped; Hamas to no longer be in charge of Gaza; and a credible pathway to a two-state solution. I think we can all get behind that.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
The Solicitor General (Robert Courts)
The Crown Prosecution Service is transforming the way that it supports victims. The victim transformation programme will roll out this spring; under it, for example, every rape victim will receive an invitation to meet their prosecution team before their case goes to trial.
Andrew Jones
The tension resulting from the conflict in Israel and Gaza is causing an escalation in hate crimes. What progress is my hon. and learned Friend making alongside the CPS to ensure that the victims of these crimes—indeed, the victims of any hate crime—receive full support, and that the perpetrators are prosecuted?
The Solicitor General
My hon. Friend raises the absolutely key point, which is the support given to victims. The programmes that the CPS is rolling out include a programme for closer working between the police and the CPS, to support victims. He will be pleased to know that in the rolling year to September 2023, the CPS prosecuted 12,508 hate crime offences, with a charge rate of 86% and a conviction rate of 84%, and in 78% of those cases, the judge increased the offender’s sentence because they agreed that it was a hate crime.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Does the Minister agree that some of the most tragic cases are those in which a family member is murdered? In that context, could coroners courts and the coroner system be modernised? The time that some of my constituents have to wait because of coroners court delays is unacceptable.
The Solicitor General
The hon. Member raises a key point. There is nothing more tragic than the circumstances he outlines. I am happy to meet him to talk about any specific case concerns he has, but more broadly, I am acutely aware of the pressures, and I will look at whether there is anything I can do to ensure that the pressures and stresses on his constituents are alleviated.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
I am absolutely certain that the Attorney General and the Solicitor General will have been as shocked as I was to read this week’s report by researchers at Warwick University on the recent handling of rape cases by the CPS. In far too many areas, the picture it paints is simply appalling: poor communication, poor quality control, poor decision-making, outdated attitudes, stereotypes and victim blaming, added to the constant problem of staff being overworked and under-resourced. The one positive is that it was the CPS that commissioned the report in the first place. It has not shied away from the findings, and researchers are clear that the roll-out of Operation Soteria will take things in the right direction. Do the Law Officers agree that we simply cannot leave things there? Will they undertake to come back to the House with an action plan based on the findings of this report, and a clear timetable for its implementation?
The Solicitor General
I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for raising that. I am horrified by a great number of the findings. There is clearly a lot of work here. Things are clearly moving in the right direction, and much of the work being undertaken by the CPS is on liaising with victims and ensuring that their experience is as easy as possible, in the hugely traumatic circumstances. There is a lot more to do on joint working, but I am happy to continue liaising with her, in order to update her as this goes forward.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
The Solicitor General (Robert Courts)
My hon. Friend will be pleased to hear that CPS East Midlands is now making charging decisions for rape cases more quickly. In 2022 and 2023, the area was performing better than the national average on reducing victim attrition.
Mr Hollobone
I thank the Crown Prosecution Service for the work it does in prosecuting offenders and seeking justice for victims in Kettering. What overall assessment has the Solicitor General made of the effectiveness of the CPS across the east midlands?
The Solicitor General
The Attorney General visited the CPS East Midlands office in Leicester just last month, and she tells me that she was impressed to hear about the work that prosecutors have been undertaking to tackle recent and historical instances of child sexual abuse in particular, securing lengthy sentences for the perpetrators. That is an excellent example of the importance of joint working between prosecutors and the police, which I have referred to.
Mr Speaker
Are you the shadow MP for Kettering or something? I hope this is linked to the question.
Jim Shannon
I welcome the Minister’s answer. The Minister is responsible not only for Kettering and the east midlands, but for the United Kingdom. What one- to-one support can be offered to victims of sexual crime across the United Kingdom, to improve their experience of the criminal justice system?
The Solicitor General
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his ingenuity in managing to squeeze that in. That was an excellent bit of Order Paper operation. I am happy to meet him to talk about what we are doing in his area to smooth the experience of victims of crime who have to go through the criminal justice system. They have suffered trauma already; the system should not add to that.
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)
The Solicitor General (Robert Courts)
The CPS has specially trained prosecutors who work closely with law enforcement agencies to bring to justice those who commit the heinous crimes to which the hon. Lady refers. The CPS has, for example, recently obtained convictions in the first prosecution for trafficking people for organ harvesting. That presented many complex and difficult challenges, and I commend the teams in the CPS for their work on that.
Deidre Brock
Last year, the number of potential UK victims of modern slavery reached a record level, with referrals for women and children both at all-time highs. In 2022, the average wait for a first decision in modern slavery cases was six days. In 2023, it was 23 days. Modern slavery is getting worse, not better, and now the UK Government are actively making progress on seeking to strip people of modern slavery protections. When will the Government accept that this is a crisis, and take the urgent action needed?
The Solicitor General
The hon. Lady is quite right to draw attention to the seriousness of this crime, but the Government accept the urgency, which is why, for example, we have the CPS available to provide early advice to law enforcement in exactly the cases that she refers to. We have specialist prosecutors providing that advice, so that we have the right advice and the right charges against the right people at the right time.
Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)
Even in freezing conditions at the start of the year, thousands more men, women and children crossed the channel in small boats. For all the talk that the threat of deportation to Rwanda will act as a deterrent, there is no evidence whatsoever of that deterrent working. Perhaps that is why the Government have changed tack and plan a £3,000 incentive for refugees to get on planes to Rwanda. Does the Solicitor General now accept that the only way to stop the boats is to crush the trafficking gangs and prosecute the criminals?
The Solicitor General
The hon. Gentleman is quite right that the country faces a major challenge from the cruel people-smuggling gangs who are exploiting people financially and emotionally. We have to put an end to that. The Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill has passed through this House, but there will be further opportunities for debate on its return here. What he has underlined is how important it is that we take action: I agree, and that is what we are doing.
Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)
Last week, the Prime Minister’s flagship Rwanda Bill was defeated 10 times in the House of Lords, with calls for the UK Government to protect victims of modern slavery and human trafficking from being removed to Rwanda without their consent until a decision, based on conclusive grounds, about their safety and not being placed at risk of being re-trafficked has been completed. Does the Solicitor General not understand that modern slavery protections for vulnerable children and adults appear to be expendable under his Government?
The Solicitor General
The Bill will be coming back to the Commons next week, when there will be an opportunity to debate those issues further. However, I point out that the treaty between the Government of Rwanda and the UK includes specific provisions that address the need for protection and support for victims of trafficking.
Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)
The Attorney General (Victoria Prentis)
Regulars at Attorney General’s questions know that the Law Officers convention prevents me from disclosing outside Government whether or not I have provided advice and the specifics of that advice. Colleagues also know that I take seriously my obligations to ensure that the Government are acting in a lawful manner on both domestic and international fronts.
Imran Hussain
I have listened to the Attorney General, and she will know that the UK Government, as a signatory to the genocide convention, have a clear responsibility not only to punish but—under article 1—to undertake to prevent genocide, as one of the gravest crimes under international law. Given that the Government will still sell arms to the Israeli military after the International Court of Justice found the actions in Gaza to be plausibly in breach of the genocide convention, what legal advice has she provided to the Foreign Office that allows her to fulfil the legal obligation to prevent genocide at the same time as selling arms? If the ICJ ultimately rules that it is genocide, and it is proven that civilians have been killed by UK-sold arms, does that not leave the UK complicit in genocide?
The Attorney General
I believe that I dealt earlier with the substance of the hon. Gentleman’s question. We respect the independence of the ICJ. We have considerable concerns about this case, which is not helpful in the goal of achieving a sustainable ceasefire. We accept that the Court has made a provisional measures order, much of which we wholeheartedly agree with. We would suggest, however, that terms such as genocide not be bandied about until there has been a final ruling of the Court. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman asks from a sedentary position what advice I have provided. I have explained clearly why I cannot answer that. However, with your leave, Mr Speaker, I will take him through some of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s decision-making process to inform the Department for Business and Trade on export licensing.
The FCDO continues to assess Israel’s commitment and capability to comply with IHL. The assessments are supported by a detailed evidence base, including analysis of the conflict, reporting from NGOs, international bodies and partner countries, statements from the Israeli Government and military representatives, and Israel’s track record. We have asked the Government of Israel specific questions on their approach to complying with IHL—I did some of that myself to help inform that advice. Applications for export licences are assessed on a case-by-case basis against strategic export licensing criteria, including with regard to IHL—that is a major part of that assessment. We keep licences under careful and continuing review. The Government can amend, suspend, refuse or revoke licences as circumstances require.
Business of the House
(7 months, 3 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the Leader of the House give us the forthcoming business?
The Leader of the House of Commons (Penny Mordaunt)
The business for the week commencing 18 March will include:
Monday 18 March—Proceedings on the Supply and Appropriation (Anticipation and Adjustments) Bill, followed by consideration of Lords amendments to the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill.
Tuesday 19 March—Remaining stages of the Trade (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership) Bill [Lords].
Wednesday 20 March—Second Reading of the Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Bill.
Thursday 21 March—General debate on the reports of the Defence Committee and Public Accounts Committee on armed forces readiness and defence equipment, followed by general debate on the reports of the Environmental Audit Committee, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee and the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee on food security. The subjects for these debates were determined by the Backbench Business Committee on the recommendation of the Liaison Committee.
Friday 22 March—Private Members’ Bills.
The provisional business for the week commencing 25 March includes:
Monday 25 March—Remaining stages of the Investigatory Powers (Amendment) Bill [Lords].
Tuesday 26 March—Committee of the whole House and remaining stages of the Pedicabs (London) Bill [Lords], followed by debate on a motion relating to the national policy statement for national networks.
The House will rise for the Easter recess at the conclusion of business on Tuesday 26 March and return on Monday 15 April.
Lucy Powell
First, I pay tribute to Tommy McAvoy, the former Member for Rutherglen. Tommy was a legend of the Labour Whips Office, and the longest ever serving Government Whip. He was highly respected and revered. My thoughts are with his family and friends.
Despite the King’s Speech being only a few months ago, the Government seem to be running scared from their own legislative programme. Where have all their flagship Bills gone? We hear that the Renters (Reform) Bill is being held to ransom, on the brink of collapse because the Government will not stand up to landlords on their own side and end no-fault evictions. Second Reading and Committee stage happened in November, but there has been nothing since. That is a manifesto commitment, so when will we get Report stage? If the Government do not end no-fault evictions, we will.
The Prime Minister’s personal pledge, to much fanfare, of a smokefree generation also seems to have gone up in smoke. Where is the Bill? We have offered the Government Labour’s votes, and they should take them. The Victims and Prisoners Bill is languishing in the Lords. Is that because the Government do not want the amendment tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) on infected blood to be agreed to? If that is so, it is pretty shameful. Will the Leader of the House promise Government support for the amended Bill? When will we finally see details of the compensation scheme?
The Sentencing Bill is also stuck in limbo. We have been waiting for weeks for its Committee stage. Is it another victim of this worn-out Government? Apparently, the Justice Secretary and the Prime Minister are at loggerheads over how to proceed, while this week the Government sneaked out further plans to release criminals early because they have lost control of prison places. Is that not exactly what Members should be scrutinising during the passage of the Bill? Will the Leader of the House bring it back?
Much needed and long heralded legislation to regulate English football is still nowhere to be seen. Just this week, the Premier League shelved a new financial settlement for the football pyramid, and the English Football League is responding today. Does the Leader of the House not agree that new powers to impose a fair deal for smaller clubs cannot come soon enough? Fans in Bury, Macclesfield, Derby, Reading, Scunthorpe and, may I add, Portsmouth want their precious clubs saved. If the Conservatives want to make this an election issue in those places, I say bring it on. Let us be really clear: if they do not want to regulate football governance, then we will.
I notice the Leader of the House has not announced any further provision beyond Monday for ping-pong on the emergency Rwanda legislation. Is that because it has now been pushed back to after Easter? Some emergency! To be honest, I do not want to hear “as parliamentary time allows” when there is an abundance of it. Do we really need time on the Floor of the House for so many statutory instruments or Committee stage of the Pedicabs (London) Bill? The Government have the time, but on those issues and more they do not have the support of their own side. It is as if they do not have the numbers. With every week that passes, their majority gets smaller and smaller. This week, it was another defection. But the reasons for their dwindling numbers do not make for pretty reading. In no particular order: tractor porn, drug abuse, a conviction for paedophilia, breaking parliamentary rules on paid lobbying, groping, misleading Parliament, flashing at staff, tantrums because they were not given peerages, and eating camel penis. It might sound ridiculous, but it is actually not funny. It all brings Parliament into disrepute and drags our politics through the gutter.
And now, this week, we have had overt racism from the Conservative party’s biggest donor. I had to check for myself yesterday that the Prime Minister really said that he was “pleased”—he was pleased—that this man, who said a black woman MP should be shot and that Indians should climb on the roof of trains, supported his party. Is the Leader of the House pleased? Will she use his resources in her marginal Portsmouth North constituency? Surely, if he is a racist, which he clearly is, he has no place in the Conservative party and his money should be given back.
The truth is that the Conservatives cannot implement their own legislative programme. They have lost control. As the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker) said last night:
“the Conservative party is unleadable and…for the sake of the nation, it’s better to go early than allow this psychodrama to continue.”
He’s right, isn’t he?
Penny Mordaunt
May I start by wishing all who are marking it in the UK and around the world a blessed Ramadan? I join the tribute paid by the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) to Tommy McAvoy. I am sure many Members will pay tribute to him in the coming days and weeks. I also thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) for her service and friendship over many years. This House may be losing her, but I know she has many more years of public service ahead of her.
The hon. Member for Manchester Central focuses first on the legislative programme. She will know that 26 Bills have already been introduced in this Session and that four have reached Royal Assent. She will know that last Session we did 43 Bills, and broke many records in terms of private Members’ Bills and the amount of legislation we were able to get through. She will know the passage of the Bills that are going through both Houses at the moment, and she will also know that we will shortly bring through a Bill on football governance. This is a programme of work that we initiated following a review that was conducted with the help of many clubs around the country. When we bring legislation to the House, it will need to have the confidence of the English Football League, and, having attended many events with the EFL myself, I know that that is clear and understood.
The hon. Lady claimed that the Conservatives had no energy left for legislation, suggesting that we were not bringing measures forward and that we were a zombie Parliament, but I am afraid that it is the Opposition who are the zombies in this Chamber. The House rises early when the Opposition are not opposing. The Committee stage of the Finance Bill was completed in 30 minutes, and in recent times the Opposition have found it hard even to find speakers for their own debates. It is they who are displaying zombie tendencies. It is often tempting to refer to the Leader of the Opposition as the Knight of the Living Dead, and in stark contrast I commend the always energetic and vibrant stance taken by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker); I think the point he was making in that interview was that the plan is working.
Let me now come to the very serious issue that the hon. Lady raised about Mr Hester’s remarks. They were racist and abhorrent, and—I fully appreciate—threatening to the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), who I understand has referred the matter to the police.
My party is financed by fundraising and donations—notably money raised from raffles—including donations from private individuals. There might be some who would come to this Dispatch Box today and attempt to argue that such a refund was not practically possible or warranted, but I am not going to attempt to do that. The point that the hon. Lady has made is not concerned with the practicalities of a refund, the consequences to the payroll of Conservative Campaign Headquarters, or the ability of my party to fight a general election. No, no; it is a point of principle, and I respect that. She could not have been clearer in what she has said today. She has stated that it is wrong to take funds from people who say horrible things, no matter when they were said, and that when there is an issue, funds should be returned. She has been clear about that today, and she has said that that is the right thing to do.
If, for example, someone said of Hamas that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, as Dale Vince has said, or said that my colleagues and I should be “taken out and shot”, as the RMT union boss Steve Hedley has said, the hon. Lady would presumably think it wrong to hang on to funds donated to Labour by them—or by an organisation branded “institutionally sexist”. I believe that during Tim Roache’s time as GMB general secretary, when he ran what has been described as a “casting couch culture”—menacing young women in the union—the Labour party took 12 million quid from him.
Those three charmers alone have contributed £15 million to the Labour party, and presumably, immediately following this session, the hon. Lady will demand that it is repaid. To be precise, and to assist her in that matter, let me add that those donations were made directly to the central Labour party, Labour MPs, Members of the Scottish Parliament, councillors, the Mayor of Manchester—she might like to mention that this weekend—the deputy leader of the Labour party, and the Leader of the Opposition.
If Labour is sincere and this it is not a political stunt, it will commit itself to repaying those funds, and there would be some additional upsides to doing so. The scurrilous suggestions that Labour’s pro “Stop Oil” policies were anything to do with Mr Vince’s donations could no longer be deployed, and nor could the charge that Labour Members would not support our legislation to protect the public’s access to the services they pay for because their party was in the pockets of militant trade unions—but I am not holding my breath, because I know that Labour Members say one thing and do another. They have dropped their £28 billion decarbonisation spending pledge, yet they keep the policy. They say that they will not tolerate pro-genocide chants, yet they have restored the whip to the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald). They say that they back our tax cuts but they will not vote for them, and as a consequence they now cannot say how they would fund NHS appointments, breakfast clubs, NHS equipment, dentistry appointments, home insulation, their own state-owned energy company, and their wealth fund. No amount of confected drama and virtue signalling can disguise the fact that it is the same old Labour party, the same old hypocrisy and the same old games.
This week, in the real world outside the Westminster bubble, which is where we are focused, cancer deaths among middle-aged people are down by a third, revised forecasts show that the economy is growing and, for the eighth month in a row, real wages are rising. The plan is working, unlike Labour’s line of attack, and my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne is very excited about it.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
It is good to hear inclusive politics. May I ask the Leader of the House whether, following consultations, there might be a statement before or after Easter on inclusivity in Parliament? We rightly want to embrace and value difference and diversity, whether of a person’s race, gender, other characteristics, background or experience. The word that is missing is “sex”.
Over the last five years, those who are gender critical have raised all sorts of issues, including the constant use of puberty blockers for children and the attack on the LGB Alliance for not swallowing what Stonewall and Mermaids persuaded many Government Departments and agencies to do, which was to disregard sex completely.
While wanting to support trans people and make sure that they can have a life free from bigotry and fear, would it be possible for the House to examine its own policies on inclusiveness and try to ensure that the word “sex” is included along with the other characteristics for which people should not be discriminated against?
Penny Mordaunt
My hon. Friend raises a very important point, and I know that many members of the House of Commons Commission will have heard what he has said. This is a very important matter. When the Government have put forward measures—for example, to protect single-sex spaces, which are important and valued by many people in this country—we have also been reassuring about what that means for trans people and those living in a different gender. It is perfectly possible to do both, and I think that the House having a further focus on the issue is a very good suggestion.
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)
May I, too, wish everyone a happy Ramadan and pay my respects to the family of Tommy McAvoy?
Well, here we are again: trying to get the answers that the Leader of the House does not want to—and indeed never does—supply to our sticky, inconvenient questions. I will begin with the dream that dare not speak its name here: Brexit. The Resolution Foundation tells us that the UK’s goods exports and imports have contracted by far more than those of any other G7 country, largely due to Brexit. Things are now so dire in Brexitland that even news of a GDP uplift of just 0.2% is fallen upon by Brexiteers like starving pigeons on the crust of the stalest bread. The Conservative party aims to shrink suffering public services even further, as evidenced in last week’s Budget, so should there not be some discussion, or even a debate, about the huge uplift in civil service jobs that Brexit seems to have required since the EU referendum in 2016?
Despite all the glorious promises of strength and environmental protections in this freer, fairer and better-off Britian, we are seeing green policies abandoned right, left and centre by both the Tory and Labour parties. A hapless Minister even tried to tell us yesterday that building new gas-powered plants is good for the environment—a suggestion that seems to be supported by shadow Environment Ministers too. Once again, Labour presents one face down here and entirely another up in Scotland. Frustratingly, all the warning signs of Brexit impacts, across a huge range of sectors, come in bits and pieces. Surely what is needed is for the Government to collate all the impacts and present the results to the British people, so that they can properly judge whether Brexit has been a success. Can the Leader of the House help to facilitate that?
There was a little good news this week: hopefully, there will be some proper Government redress for victims of the shocking Post Office Horizon scandal, although there is still no comfort for the infected blood scandal victims. I met the International Consortium of British Pensioners recently, and I fear that another scandal is about to break in the form of frozen pensions. There are now so many scandals that it is hard to keep track. Something does not work in this place if so many can build up under successive Governments of different political hues.
Unfortunately, the Leader of the House’s party distinguished itself again this week by choosing money over morality in its grubby handling of the racist comments allegedly made about one of our colleagues in this House. At the very least, a debate to re-examine how parties are funded is called for.
The “Seven Up!” series was recently deemed to be the most influential television series of the last 50 years. Well, 14 years is well and truly up for this terrible Government, but apparently we cannot be put out of our Tory misery yet because their junior Members have debts and need the extra months to build up some reserves. Does the Leader of the House agree that that is not much of an excuse?
Penny Mordaunt
I welcome the hon. Lady’s welcome of the Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Bill, which I hope her party will support. She knows that we will shortly bring forward measures to rectify the situation on infected blood. These scandals did not arise under this Administration, but we have gripped the issues. The infected blood issue had been left for decades, but we have investigated and set up inquiries and are compensating the victims. I hope the House will support us in doing so on both matters.
The hon. Lady insinuates that I dodge questions, but I do not. She said six weeks ago that she would write to me with a list of all the questions I have not answered, but she has not yet done so. The SNP never fails to disappoint.
The hon. Lady asks about sound administration and about money over morality, in a week in which it has been discovered that the Scottish Government have presided over a six-figure sum of Scottish taxpayers’ money being spent on an art installation that promises a
“magical, erotic journey through a distinctly Scottish landscape.”
That is known to the rest of us as a hardcore porn movie.
I am glad that the SNP is interested in good governance and improving administration, particularly with reference to Brexit. Let me see how I can help to improve the Scottish Government’s effectiveness in that regard. There has been criticism this week that the SNP is blowing taxpayers’ cash on copious embassies and lobbying to rejoin the EU. That camper van must be out of the police pound soon, so why not turn it into a mobile embassy that can drive between Brussels and European capitals to lobby for EU membership? If the SNP wants to continue funding innovative film projects, perhaps it could double up and ask Cliff Richard to come along and produce a sequel to “Summer Holiday”, which would have the added bonus of cutting down the SNP’s need to blow more taxpayers’ cash on overseas jollies. I am here to help.
Sir Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)
I have a lot of time for the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell), but I need to clear my name. I strode across Victoria Tower Gardens yesterday to put my boot into my miserabilist colleagues who are demanding an early general election. I said to Gary Gibbon that, with incomes rising, inflation falling, the economy growing and the plan working, why 2 May? I am rolling up my sleeves to man the ramparts in November.
My question is: can we have an urgent debate on foot in mouth disease?
Penny Mordaunt
Thank you, Mr Speaker.
I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker) is in the Chamber to set the record straight and to request a debate on foot and mouth disease. Because of his energetic question, I will write to the Secretary of State to ask him to consider what my hon. Friend has said. As for the rest of what my hon. Friend said, we thank him for it.
Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)
I declare an interest, as I am a member of the Tyneside Irish centre, which is handily placed because of its proximity to St James’s Park in Newcastle upon Tyne city centre. With that in mind, I wish all members of the Irish diaspora a very happy St Patrick’s day on Sunday.
The Committee is still open for applications for Westminster Hall debates on Tuesday mornings and Thursday afternoons after the Easter recess, but we are a little disappointed that we have not been allocated a little more Chamber time before the recess.
The cost of childcare is a significant barrier to work for many parents, and the increase in funded places will be welcome but, with the first phase coming into effect in April, many parents are reporting difficulty in obtaining the promised funded places and very significant cost increases for the non-funded element. Can we have a debate in Government time on the impact of the first phase of the scheme; on the accessibility and affordability of the scheme; and on whether the scheme, as it currently stands, will effectively remove the childcare barrier to work and fulfil its promise to parents?
Penny Mordaunt
I thank the hon. Gentleman for all the work he is doing for his Committee. I hear his appeal for more time and I will soon be able to give him some information about that.
As for our childcare policy, this is a priority for the Secretary of State for Education and I will make sure that she has heard his concerns today. It is one of the many elements we are bringing forward to enable people to remain economically active and grow their household income. It is a very important service, which is why have done this. It is an unprecedented, generous package for parents and we must ensure that all parents who want to access it can do so.
Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
Yesterday, I hosted my second parliamentary fertility treatment drop-in, where we had the likes of Fertility Matters at Work, LGBT Mummies and Fertility Network UK. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is time we looked at access to fertility treatment and ensured that employers provide time off work for people undertaking it? May we have a debate in Government time to discuss this important subject?
Penny Mordaunt
On behalf of all of us, I thank my hon. Friend for all the work she does on this important matter. It is primarily an issue for the Department of Health and Social Care, but some of the issues she raises will fall to the Department for Work and Pensions. I will therefore make sure that both Secretaries of State have heard what she has said today. This is an increasingly a concern and an important matter to many couples, and we must ensure that we are doing all we can to support them.
John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
May I press the Leader of the House again on the football governance Bill and say how urgent it is? Many of us, on both sides of the House, have clubs in our constituencies that have been on the verge of going under, and that situation is only going to get worse. Will the Government bring the putative Bill to the Floor of the House as soon as possible?
Penny Mordaunt
The hon. Gentleman has my undertaking to do that. It is important that we bring that Bill forward; the football pyramid, at every level, needs to be supported. I know that many hon. Members will have had a great deal of input into the Bill and we must make sure it is perfect when it comes to this House.
Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)
During a recent visit to the Eastwood Academy, an outstanding non-selective secondary school that aims to help every child fulfil their potential, the head told me that a year 10 student had been removed from school mid-term in favour of elective home education. The student was doing incredibly well, having come from a challenging background. The head had only 10 days to try to engage with the parents and they would not even come into the school for a meeting. Please may we have a debate in Government time on the process by which children can suddenly be ripped out of school, and an assurance that when children are being electively home educated, they are getting the education they rightfully deserve?
Penny Mordaunt
I thank my hon. Friend for raising that important point. She will appreciate that these situations are often incredibly complicated and involve many factors. However, it is important to ensure that we know where children are and what education they are getting. It is particularly important after the pandemic that we ensure that all children are getting access to a good education.
My hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond) introduced the Children Not in School (Registers, Support and Orders) Bill on 11 December and its Second Reading is scheduled for Friday. I hope we can ensure that the Bill makes progress in this Session. It is important and, of course, it would not impede in any way people who want to home educate their children, as many do in a very good way indeed.
Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)
We had a debate in Westminster Hall on 12 December on arms export licences for sales to Israel. On the same day, the Foreign Secretary decided he was satisfied that there was
“good evidence to support a judgment that Israel is committed to complying with IHL”—
international humanitarian law. It is Liberal Democrat policy to have a presumption of denial for arms sales to countries on the most recent Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office list of territories designated as human rights priority countries. May we have a debate in Government time on that list of human rights priority countries, so that we may better interdict Iranian arms supplies to Hamas and Hezbollah, but also look again at UK arms exports to Israel?
Penny Mordaunt
I will certainly ensure that the Department for Business and Trade, which has oversight of this matter, is aware of what the hon. Gentleman has said. The House scrutinises the policies and procedures that surround arms export controls. We are very transparent and we have one of the most rigorous regimes in the world. I am sure that we would welcome further scrutiny of it, because I think it is a sound policy.
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)
Last week, we saw a Budget that delivered lower taxes and high economic growth. It contained measures, such as freezing fuel duty, support for childcare and changes to child benefit, from which areas like Gillingham and Rainham will benefit. However, will the Leader of the House ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to make a statement on how the 20 town centres were chosen for levelling-up investment and regeneration, and how the criteria were applied? Gillingham has not had any funding, despite representations to the Secretary of State, so my constituents, like any other constituents, want to know how the criteria are applied and that decisions are made on a fair, open and transparent basis.
Penny Mordaunt
I thank my hon. Friend for being a champion for his constituents, in particular by trying to get levelling-up funding. He will know that the processes that assess where funding is directed are independent of Ministers, and that the criteria and grading are transparent. He will also know that where people have not been successful, the Department has quite often worked with local authorities and Members of the House to improve the bids put forward. I encourage my hon. Friend to go and talk to the Secretary of State, and I will ensure he knows that my hon. Friend has raised the issue today.
Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)
Oldham is a wonderful place but it is not without challenges. The local community is concerned about the number of young people who have been drawn into gang activity and who are at risk of child criminal exploitation. Figures over the last two years show that 312 young people have been identified as being at risk of exploitation. We have had five section 60 stop and searches in place over the last year because of the number of knife incidents. Can we have a debate in Government time on what is being done in urban areas where criminal exploitation is not being checked?
Penny Mordaunt
I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising this important matter. I encourage him to raise it with his local police and crime commissioner, as I am sure he has. I will ensure that the Home Secretary has heard what he has said today, but I would encourage him to address the issue with his local constabulary and the police and crime commissioner.
Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)
Education is the bedrock to levelling up in Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke. I am delighted by the improvement since 2010, with some 92% of schools now rated “good” or “outstanding”. Mill Hill Primary Academy and New Ford Academy in Smallthorne have both recently received “outstanding” status.
Sadly, Labour’s abysmal and dismal record looms large and haunts Stoke-on-Trent. Thanks to Labour, 88 schools are languishing in disastrous private finance initiative deals. Recent hikes to the charges facing those schools could put staff livelihoods at risk, as well as undermining the very fabric of what we are trying to do, which is to turn education around in our great city after Labour’s abysmal failure. Will the Leader of the House assist me in securing an Adjournment debate or a Westminster Hall debate so that I can raise these matters directly with the relevant Department, in order to ensure that those 88 schools can and will be protected?
Penny Mordaunt
I congratulate my hon. Friend, the teachers, the parents and everyone who has worked in his constituency to improve education standards. That is very good news indeed. But I know, as a founder member of the “no to PFI” campaign, of the legacy issues with which many public organisations are dealing. I know, too, that my hon. Friend has been a doughty campaigner on trying to get these matters resolved, ensuring that the commercial negotiations that need to take place to protect those public services and those working in them are properly under way.
Given that Education questions are not until the end of April, I will make sure that what he has said today has been heard by the Secretary of State, and also by the Treasury, which has done much under our Administration to try to rectify the damage that these contracts have done. He will know how to apply for a debate.
Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
Sub-postmasters are rightly being put at the centre of the Government’s response to the Horizon scandal. Last week, the Leader of the House told me that the Paymaster General was going to tour around the United Kingdom to meet all the groups of the infected and affected in the contaminated blood scandal. I have had a letter from the Paymaster General, which does not give me any more information, and all the groups are telling me that they have had no contact with the Paymaster General’s office to organise that tour. It is nine weeks until Sir Brian Langstaff produces his final report on the infected blood inquiry. Can we have a statement from the Paymaster General, so that we can all understand exactly what is happening and what this tour will do? Many people are concerned that it may be a delaying tactic, and we all want to get compensation to those who have been infected and affected by the scandal.
Penny Mordaunt
I thank the right hon. Lady for raising this matter again. In doing so, it sends a message to those who have been waiting far too long for redress that they are at the forefront of our minds. I met the Paymaster General again this week. He is making good progress towards getting this resolved. I know that this is frustrating for the right hon. Lady and all those involved with her all-party parliamentary group, but the Paymaster General will come to the House to give an update at the first available opportunity. We are now moving towards the end of this process. What the Paymaster General has discussed with me has given me confidence in that respect, and he feels strongly that he wants to meet people directly. There will be more information coming out on that, but I do understand the right hon. Lady’s impatience.
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)
The Leader of the House will know that I welcome the support the Government have given to pensioners, with an 8.5% increase in pensions in April and the triple lock remaining firmly in place. However, the tax threshold will consume much of the support that pensioners have been given, and the national insurance reduction has done nothing for them. I ask the Leader of the House to arrange an urgent debate on improving the quality of life for pensioners in the United Kingdom who have worked hard all their lives, contributing to our nation’s success, and deserve a high-quality retirement.
Penny Mordaunt
This Government can be very proud of their record in this respect. I remember when we came to power in 2010 the appalling maladministration of pension and tax credits that left many people trapped in poverty and misery. The triple lock and uprating of the state pension by 8.5% from April this year will protect pensioner incomes, and the state pension has increased by £3,700 since 2010. It is very important to ensure that people are being lifted out of poverty and looked after when the cost of living rises due to heating bills and other demands that are made on their purse as they age. We have lifted 200,000 pensioners out of absolute poverty and improved the lives of many more, and that is a record to be proud of. I will make sure that the issue that my hon. Friend raises is heard by the Secretary of State.
Owen Thompson (Midlothian) (SNP)
This week, we mark the start of the 40th anniversary of the miners’ strikes of 1984-85. Tomorrow, I will attempt to bring my Miners’ Strike (Pardons) Bill forward in this place and invite the Leader of the House to join me in supporting it. Beyond that, can we make arrangements for a debate in Government time on the potential merits of a public inquiry into the political interference that took place at that time?
Penny Mordaunt
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on the advert for his Bill; I wish him well with it. The other issue he raises would be a matter for the Cabinet Office. I understand why he makes the point, but I suspect that it will not be on the list of Cabinet Office priorities for a public inquiry.
Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)
Can we have a debate on the shocking decision by Labour’s Barnet Council to approve overdevelopment in Victoria Quarter in New Barnet and to concrete over green fields in Whalebones Park in High Barnet? This is a disgraceful decision that demonstrates the ominous situation in the terrible event that Labour were to win power at the general election, because its leader wants to bulldoze the green belt as well.
Penny Mordaunt
I thank my right hon. Friend for yet again raising her concerns over particular developments in her area. She will know that we have worked hard to strike the right balance in ensuring that we are building to enable people to have cost-effective housing and achieve their ambitions of home ownership. She will know that the next Levelling Up, Housing and Communities questions are not until later in April, so I will ensure that the particular local issue that she is campaigning on is brought to the attention of the Secretary of State.
Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)
I want to raise with the Leader of the House a shocking statistic: research shows that more than 300,000 people died as a result of this Government’s austerity policies. On top of those deaths, austerity has driven down wages, caused the economy to stagnate, and ripped the heart out of so many public services that our communities rely upon. Despite that, the Government plan a further £20 billion of cuts, so can we have an urgent debate on the specific issue of the damage caused by austerity economics, and why it need to be ditched once and for all?
Penny Mordaunt
I thank the hon. Gentleman for the opportunity to remind him of the state of the country when we took office in 2010. Youth unemployment was running at 45%, and there were 400,000 more children and 200,000 more pensioners in absolute poverty than there are today. In my constituency, my hospital was in the top five for those with MRSA infections. We had crumbling school buildings. The Labour party’s Building Schools for the Future programme had not done any work, and secondary schools were excluded from it— I could go on.
The hon. Gentleman points to the fact that if Labour got in, it would repeat that exercise. Currently, it is unable in its spending plans to afford NHS appointments, breakfast clubs, NHS equipment, dentistry appointments, home insulation, the job bonus or its plans for wealth funds and a state-owned energy company. We have brought back sound money. The Labour party does not understand that. If he really wants to complain about what we had to do to get this country back on track, he should look to his own party and its behaviour pre 2010.
Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)
While the shambolic Labour leadership at Kirklees Council are busy fighting among themselves, with resignations, sackings, and the jailing of a Labour councillor for perverting the course of justice, can we have a debate on all the millions of pounds of Government investment that is flowing into the Colne and Holme valleys and Lindley: a brand new A&E unit; the multibillion pound trans-Pennine rail upgrade; the West Yorkshire investment zone, boosting the national health innovation campus of the University of Huddersfield; £100 million of levelling-up cash for the indoor market; the Penistone line upgrade; Marsden Mills; a £30 million teaching block at Greenhead College; and much, much more?
Penny Mordaunt
I thank my hon. Friend and congratulate him on listing the considerable achievements that he and his local community have been able to achieve. It is a great track record and one to be proud of. It sits in stark contrast to what has become a distinctive feature of Labour-run councils: in Birmingham, bankruptcy; in Liverpool, police investigations into corruption; Sandwell saved from complete failure by Government intervention; and in Tower Hamlets, Labour’s vote-rigging legacy is still causing havoc for residents.
Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)
The Scottish Government have built more affordable homes than any other country in the United Kingdom: 126,000 over the past 17 years. Meanwhile, there has been a staggering 76% fall in affordable housing alone in London in this financial year. Will the Leader of the House make a statement setting out her response to a call from the housing charity Crisis, which said that the UK Government’s three-year freeze on local housing allowance is one of the biggest drivers of homelessness?
Penny Mordaunt
The hon. Lady asks, I will deliver. I will make a statement now: the Mayor of London’s record on home building, crime, and support for small businesses and charities is a shambles, and he should be voted out of office.
Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)
When we build thousands of new homes to ensure that people are decently and affordably housed, as we are doing in my constituency, we also put thousands of extra motorists on to the existing road network. The A505 between Leighton Buzzard and Dunstable has seen four fatalities in six years, and 50 accidents, and Bedford Road in Houghton Regis is not safe. What can we do to ensure that we recognise the impact on the existing road network when we build thousands of new homes?
Penny Mordaunt
I thank my hon. Friend again for his work to ensure that developments in his constituency are matched by investment in infrastructure and services, whether that is healthcare, which he has campaigned on enormously, or transport, which he has raised again today. I will ensure that the Secretary of State for Transport has heard what my hon. Friend has said, and he can raise it with him directly on 21 March. I congratulate my hon. Friend, because this is an important aspect of ensuring that, as developments progress, his community gets the services it needs.
Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
The greater the scandal, the greater obligation on us to act with speed and clarity to provide remedies. Notwithstanding yesterday’s welcome news on the Horizon scandal Bill, we have not acted fast enough, and now we are not acting with enough clarity, because the Department for Business and Trade is more than a fortnight late in providing the explanatory memorandum for its supplementary estimate. No other Department has missed the deadline; only the Department for Business and Trade. We cannot see where the budget might lie for remedies and redress for the GLO—group litigation order—litigants, whose heroic tenacity actually allowed us to overturn the convictions that the Bill proposes. Will the Leader of the House join me in urging the Department to provide that explanatory memorandum quickly and, if not, may we have a debate in Government time to get to the bottom of what on earth is going on?
Penny Mordaunt
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for raising that matter. I will certainly ensure that the Department has heard what he has said and that the House is presented with papers in good time to be able to scrutinise the legislation. He will know the complex issues that surround the Bill and the work that has gone on to ensure that the Bill was brought before the House in the best form possible to make swift passage through the House. There is concurrent activity to ensure that what the Bill enables is ready to be implemented once it leaves this House and gains Royal Assent. He raises an important matter. I will ensure that the Department has heard what he has said.
Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)
Last Friday, on International Women’s Day, I had a fantastic time in my constituency celebrating the “Let Girls Play” campaign’s “Biggest Ever Football Session”. Schools including Castlefort JMI, Pelsall Village, Ryders Hayes, St John’s, St Anne’s, and Manor Primary in Streetly all came together. Will my right hon. Friend join me in thanking Walsall FC Foundation, including Swifty the mascot, Streetly Academy and everyone who was involved in organising the day and, we hope, in encouraging and inspiring the next generation of Lionesses?
Penny Mordaunt
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on all her work, and join her in thanks and praise for Walsall FC Foundation, Swifty the mascot, and everyone involved. The proof of focus in this area is in the statistics: the BBC recently analysed the uptake in women playing the national game, and there are now twice as many registered female football teams in England than there were just seven years ago. That is a tremendous thing to celebrate.
Claire Hanna (Belfast South) (SDLP)
Members will know that the shared prosperity fund was initially a replacement for EU funds—and a poor imitation in the view of many. Despite Northern Ireland having the highest levels of economic inactivity and the lowest proportional SPF spend, money allocated to that fund has been repurposed into last month’s Stormont deal and effectively raided to fund vital services. Will the Leader of the House allow for a debate in Government time to discuss that fund and how money can be properly returned to levelling up and to supporting employability for carers, the long-term unemployed, vulnerable young people and people living with disabilities in Northern Ireland?
Penny Mordaunt
The hon. Lady raises an important point. The opportunity to speak directly to the Secretary of State at the Dispatch Box is not until 24 April, so I will ensure that he has heard her concerns.
Sir Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)
Labour demands that a large donation to the Conservatives be returned because of a racist comment made five years ago, but does my right hon. Friend recall that Mark Serwotka, the head of the Public and Commercial Services Union, said six years ago that Israel “created” the antisemitism row in the Labour party? The Board of Deputies said at the time that that was antisemitic, but Serwotka was subsequently elected president of the whole TUC. Applying the same standards, should not Labour return the tens of millions that it has received from trade union donations?
Penny Mordaunt
My right hon. and learned Friend has provided yet another example to add to the three that I gave earlier in this session, so it is £15 million and rising. We wait to see what the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) does.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
Can we have a debate about Ofcom’s approach to GB News and its alleged breaches—found breaches, in fact—of the broadcasting code, as well as its ownership? Is it not time that we had a proper wide-ranging Ofcom inquiry into whether Sir Paul Marshall, who has endorsed very right-wing and extreme views, is a fit and proper person to hold a broadcasting licence, and whether the editorial policy is in breach of the rules set down by this House?
Penny Mordaunt
The hon. Gentleman is an experienced parliamentarian and will know how to secure a debate. The Chairman of the Backbench Business Committee is smiling and wiggling his eyebrows at him along the Bench. The work that Ofcom does is incredibly important. It has raised a number of concerns with that channel about particular broadcasters and presenters; it has not raised matters of concern with regard to the channel itself. If the hon. Gentleman wishes to explore those matters further, he knows what he can do.
Peter Gibson (Darlington) (Con)
In working with Durham Constabulary and Darlington Borough Council civic enforcement, I have been shocked to learn of the widespread sale of illegal vapes and illicit tobacco, sales to children, and the grooming and entry of children into acting as agents for that organised crime, which is akin to county lines. What work are the Government doing across the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the Department of Health and Social Care, the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice to tackle that deeply troubling issue, and will my right hon. Friend find time for a debate on it?
Penny Mordaunt
My hon. Friend will know how he can secure a debate. Things that could be discussed on that occasion include the £30 million a year of new funding for enforcement agencies—including trading standards, His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and Border Force—to tackle the illicit market and under-age sales. There is a new joint illicit tobacco strategy and a new illicit tobacco taskforce, which will be backed by £100 million of new funding over the next five years. It is a very important issue for the Government, and I welcome further scrutiny of it.
Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
With only four bank branches left in my constituency, I thought my days of moaning about branch closures were over, but on Tuesday, Lloyds informed me that it was closing the Bank of Scotland branches in Renfrew and Bridge of Weir. Renfrew is a growing town with a population of 25,000 that will not have a single branch, and the village of Bridge of Weir—where doing anything without a car is difficult—will also not have a branch. Can we have a debate on local banking? For so many, that is now left to the Post Office, albeit in simple terms, and it is fair to say that the Post Office’s reputation with the public is in the gutter.
Penny Mordaunt
Those are important services for any community, and the hon. Gentleman is right to raise concerns about what is happening in his constituency. It is fortunate that the Secretary of State for Levelling Up is on the Front Bench—he has saved me the stamp that it would cost to raise this matter with him—because his Department has done a lot of work to ensure that even though banking services might not have bricks-and-mortar locations, services can be retained in local communities, including communities that are very isolated and rural. I will take a belt-and-braces approach: I will write to the Secretary of State and ask his officials, who have put together guidance on best practice in this area, to contact the hon. Gentleman’s office.
Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)
When Mark Murphy was a presenter at BBC Radio Suffolk, it is fair to say that we had a bit of a mixed relationship—he was probably the most robust questioner I have ever encountered. However, last September, he took over as the chief executive officer of Cancer Support Suffolk, and has done an exceptional job with his team. I visited that charity last week, and it has made some changes: people do not need to be referred by the hospital to go in and have a meeting, and it now supports family members, not just those with cancer.
One of the things that Mark raised with me, though, is that he thinks there should be national screening for prostate cancer and a level playing field for all forms of cancer, to make sure we catch it early, and that we should work with some hard-to-reach communities to raise awareness. Will the Leader of the House support me in that campaign, and recognise the work that Mark Murphy has done and how it could save lives in Suffolk?
Penny Mordaunt
I add my congratulations and thanks to those of my hon. Friend for those individuals who have done so much to improve services and the patient experience in his area. We have had some good news on cancer outcomes today. That is very welcome, and it is because of those people—their attention to detail and their efforts—that those achievements have been secured.
As my hon. Friend knows, diagnostics are absolutely critical to ensuring that people have good outcomes. That is why we have invested so much in the 160 new diagnostic test centres in a whole raft of therapy areas across the country. I will make sure that the Secretary of State for Health has heard about my hon. Friend’s particular interest in this area. We obviously have new opportunities to use data that the Department of Health and Social Care is collecting to ensure we improve patient outcomes everywhere.
Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)
Last week, I visited Zeelandia UK. Besides showing me its range of products, I had a Zoom call with the managing director of that company’s Ukrainian factory, who set up “Bake for Ukraine”, a project that helps bring fresh bread to local people by sending decommissioned commercial bakery equipment from the UK, which is converted and given to small bakeries in local villages. Tesco already contributes to that scheme, but could the Leader of the House suggest how it could be promoted to all colleagues, to encourage more companies to contribute and raise awareness of this wonderful project?
Penny Mordaunt
In addition to asking a question, the hon. Lady has provided her own answer by sharing with the House this very impressive scheme, which shows the power of business as a force for good in the world. It will be in Hansard; I hope that the media will pick it up; and I am sure that everyone in this Chamber will do their best to promote the scheme.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
In recent weeks, I have been working with Sky News on its investigation into the purchase and misuse of catapults—sadly, all too often by children and young people—to kill and maim wildlife and pets. All too often, videos are then shared on social media through channels such as WhatsApp. Can we have a statement from the Home Secretary on introducing criminal sanctions for the irresponsible sale and use of catapults to kill and damage wildlife?
Penny Mordaunt
I thank my hon. Friend for all the work he is continuing to do on matters such as that, and also in other areas of animal welfare. He will know that Home Office questions is not until 15 April, so I will make the Home Secretary aware of what he has said. This is a disturbing and growing phenomenon. In addition to causing animal suffering, it is, as we now know, an indicator of what those perpetrators may go on to do and other crimes they may commit. It is a serious matter, and I thank my hon. Friend for raising it.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
Can we have a debate in Government time on the urgent need for an employment Bill, particularly to protect those on very precarious app-based contracts? I have had several taxi drivers and delivery drivers off-boarded by Uber and Just Eat, but they do not seem to have any recourse to complaint, despite its affecting their employment prospects and their incomes. The Government need to do an awful lot more to protect people in these circumstances.
Penny Mordaunt
I will make sure that the Department for Work and Pensions has heard the hon. Lady’s concerns. We have had labour market statistics out today, and in addition to the good news on wage growth as people progress through work, since 2010 unemployment has halved, absolute poverty has gone down and there are 800 more people in jobs for every single day that we have been in office.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
I bring good news from Kettering, because Kettering has made it into the top 10 of the most dog-loving places in the UK. A study by pet insurer Waggel has found that, in Kettering, for every 1,000 people there were 252 of our furry friends. With so many local green spaces and countryside areas where residents can take their dog for a walk, such as the hugely popular Wicksteed park, it is clear that Kettering is a great place to own and love a dog. May we have a statement from my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House on celebrating Kettering as one of the most dog-friendly places in the whole country?
Penny Mordaunt
I thank my hon. Friend for bringing us the good news, which we were all hoping for and anticipating, that there are more waggy tails per square mile in Kettering than anywhere else in the UK. I would encourage local authorities and communities to look to the example that has been set by Kettering, and I congratulate everyone who has made it such a dog- friendly place.
Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)
Parents from the Northwich part of my constituency are rightly lobbying me about specialist educational provision in the Cheshire West and Chester council area. Could we have a debate in Government time about the sufficiency of resources given to councils and powers to deal with education and health partners in this field of special educational needs?
Penny Mordaunt
The hon. Gentleman raises a very important matter. He will know that this is not just a priority for the Secretary of State for Education, but something very personal to her that she has a particular personal interest in and focus on. We have increased the funding available for special educational needs and we have also invested in specialist schools, but I will make sure that the Secretary of State is aware of his concerns as the next Education questions is not until the end of April.
Simon Baynes (Clwyd South) (Con)
Would my right hon. Friend make time for an additional debate on farming? Does she agree with me that the Prime Minister’s recent announcement of £220 million to deploy new technology to boost productivity in the farming sector in North Shropshire and the rest of England compares very favourably with Welsh Labour’s policy, which would force farmers in Clwyd South and the rest of Wales to reduce their productive land by 20%? That will result in a 122,200 reduction in Welsh livestock numbers, 5,500 lost jobs and a £199 million loss to Wales’s economy, all of which has led to mass protests by the farming community throughout Wales.
Penny Mordaunt
I commend my hon. Friend and the farmers he represents for all the work they are doing to fight against those plans. He is right that they will cost jobs, and they are an appalling use of good agricultural land. That is why just 3% of the farming community trusts the Welsh Government, and 87% of farmers believe that that misguided farming policy would not benefit their work or business or, very importantly, deliver a positive outcome for the environment. I think Labour in Wales needs to start listening to farmers.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Ind)
Despite consistently delivering some of the highest economic growth in the country, North West Leicestershire remains without access to the rail network, leaving my constituents completely reliant on their own vehicles, taxis or local bus services. Will the Leader of the House join me in commending the 1,000 North West Leicestershire residents who signed a petition calling for the reinstatement of the original routes for the Nos. 16, 29 and 29A bus services, administered by Arriva Midlands East? These bus services are essential for my constituents, so can we have a statement from a Minister on why bus services in the area continue to be curtailed, when North West Leicestershire continues to make such a massive contribution to the UK economy?
Penny Mordaunt
I thank all the hon. Gentleman’s constituents and the businesses in his constituency for what they are doing to grow our economy and strengthen their community. The next questions to the Transport Secretary will be on 21 March, and I encourage the hon. Gentleman to raise this directly with the Secretary of State.
Holly Mumby-Croft (Scunthorpe) (Con)
I recently visited our local sea cadets in Scunthorpe to see their new and improved facilities, which have been backed by Government funding. A serving or former cadet can always be recognised by their manners, common sense and can-do approach, and I was incredibly proud to meet three former Scunthorpe cadets who have gone on to serve our country as Royal Marines Commandos. Will my right hon. Friend join me in commending our fantastic cadet leaders and our local young cadets, who we are incredibly proud of, and would she support a debate on how we can continue to support cadets in making their genuine, positive contribution to our society?
Penny Mordaunt
As my hon. Friend was asking her question, there were audible noises of support from around the Chamber. I think we all appreciate the work that the Sea Cadet organisation does. As well as being a fantastic escalator of talent and giving young people opportunities and confidence, it does a huge amount for local communities. I am sure that we would all agree with my hon. Friend’s sentiments. We have done a huge amount to expand access to not just sea cadet schemes but other cadet schemes, by supporting schools in setting up their own branches, but there is always more to do, and her question has reminded us of the benefits of doing it.
Steven Bonnar (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (SNP)
All of us across the House appreciate the vital role played by local individuals and volunteer groups in constituencies. One such group in my constituency is the Friends Together Club, based in Coatbridge, which has been running for seven years and makes a real difference to the lives of 150 local people with additional support needs. Will the Leader of the House join me in welcoming the thrilling news that the following individuals are to be recognised by the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta? Liam Hackett will receive the cross of merit and Ena Hamill the silver medal, while Elainne McDermott, Patrick Allen, Yvonne Crowley and Elizabeth Locke will receive a bronze medal. This is a truly outstanding recognition, and richly deserved. May we have a debate in Government time about the importance of community volunteers across the United Kingdom, and the valuable work that they do for us?
Penny Mordaunt
It is a shame that applause is not allowed in the House and would be out of order, because I think we would all want to give those individuals a round of applause. I would say from all of us: congratulations to all in the Friends Together Club, and thank you for your service. I hope the hon. Gentleman will get a copy of today’s Hansard for everybody that he named. We appreciate all of them.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
I am sure my right hon. Friend will join me in congratulating Conservative-run Harrow Council on this year exceeding the usual number of apprentices it recruits. More than 50 young people have been given the opportunity to work across different departments, including eight in our schools. That obviously gives them the opportunity to build a career in public service. Will my right hon. Friend find Government time for a debate on apprentices in public services, so that we can congratulate the public services that are recruiting apprentices and shame those that do not?
Penny Mordaunt
I join my hon. Friend in congratulating his local authority on its achievements. We should all be proud of the fact that over the past few years, we have created 5.7 million such opportunities for young people, but also people at other stages in their life. It is a tremendous way in which people can progress, move career and gain new qualifications without getting into debt. I send my congratulations to him and to Harrow Council.
Michael Shanks (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab)
May I begin by joining the tributes of Mr Speaker and those on the Front Benches to Tommy McAvoy? He represented my constituency of Rutherglen for 23 years, and was a committed trade unionist in the community before that. He was very much Rutherglen’s man. During the by-election, I do not know how many people said to me, “You don’t need to worry; I knew Tommy well, all those years ago.” Fourteen years after he stopped being the MP, he was still remembered by so many constituents.
May I ask the Leader of the House about the subsidy scheme that provides support enabling schools to come to this place? It is always wonderful to have schools visit us, and as a former teacher of politics, I think that bringing pupils to this place to see politics in action is incredibly important. The hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) has already raised the issue of the subsidy. Although it has been increased for April, the support is still not enough to enable many schools to come to this place. Has there been any analysis of how many schools have been prevented from visiting because of that? Will there be a review of the categories? All of Scotland’s schools are in category C, and it is particularly difficult to bring pupils here using the current subsidy.
Penny Mordaunt
As I said, this matter has been looked at by the Finance Committee. It has gone into a lot of detail on who comes here, the barriers to people visiting, and what other options they have to access education resources that they might want. Clearly, coming to this amazing UNESCO heritage site is important to many people. I will make sure that the Chair of the Finance Committee, the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), has heard what the hon. Gentleman has said. A number of House of Commons Commissioners are in the Chamber today, and they will have heard what he said. The policy has recently been changed to be more favourable, but all parties concerned keep it under review.
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)
Rugby is providing new housing at scale, yet the number of pharmacies in our town is falling. Following closures in recent months, residents have told me about having to queue for more than an hour to get a prescription. I am aware of offers to set up new pharmacies, but they have been turned down by our health and wellbeing board, which unbelievably says that there is sufficient provision in our area. Can we have a debate about how this process is managed?
Penny Mordaunt
I am sorry to hear about the situation in my hon. Friend’s constituency, which does indeed sound serious. Local commissioners have an obligation to ensure that such services are available. Following initiatives of ours, such as Pharmacy First, that obligation is doubly important, because many of these places now have the authority to prescribe. I will make sure that the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care hears his concerns. I will ask the regional managers of NHS England to look at what is going on in his community. That level of service is not acceptable for his constituents.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
A company called Claim My Tax notified my constituents Margaret and Brian Broadley that they were due a £1,200 marriage tax allowance refund from His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. Having seen the paperwork, my constituents believe that the company obtained their signatures fraudulently, and they notified HMRC accordingly. HMRC insisted that my constituents gave permission, and it will continue to work with the company, rather than directly with them. The Government rightly talked about clamping down on the actions of such claims companies. Why is HMRC allowed to behave like this?
Penny Mordaunt
I hope that we can swiftly resolve this situation for the hon. Gentleman. If he gives me the details of the case after this session, I will make sure that he speaks immediately to someone from HMRC who can resolve this. I am sure that he has tried to get it resolved himself, and I am here to assist him in doing so. Hopefully we will be able to sort this out for his constituents.
Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)
One of the driving reasons why I wanted to come to the House was what I saw in the NHS. All too often, those who wanted to create change were told, “You’re too junior,” or “This is the way it has always been done.” That is why I am delighted to see the productivity plan, which £3.4 billion is being put towards. When that plan is brought forward, may we have a debate in Government time on ensuring simple things, such as cross-boundary results being shared, having computers that load quickly, and getting rid of faxes and letter scanning? All that takes 10% to 15% of a clinician’s time—time that could be better spent with patients.
Penny Mordaunt
That is a good suggestion for a debate. I hope that all Members of the House welcome the £6 billion increase in funding for the NHS announced in the Budget. Roughly half of that is going to the new improvement programmes, which we know will not only assist members of staff and clinicians working in the NHS, but improve patient outcomes. To give just one example, when a nurse asks a doctor to attend to a patient, in a large percentage of cases that is not done. However, with tracking by a handheld device, we can ensure that the visit happens—or, for example, that a cannula is changed, which improves patient outcomes. That is vital. We need to do more of that in our NHS, so that the patients that it serves get the treatment and care that they deserve.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
H100 in Methil is making good progress towards delivering the biggest green hydrogen domestic heating network that the world has ever seen. The Government promised that by March 2023, they would have announced the successful applicant, somewhere in the UK, in an even more ambitious project to provide green hydrogen heating to potentially tens of thousands of homes, but a year later, we have heard nothing. Can we have a statement to explain why the Government are dragging their feet, and jeopardising the status of Levenmouth and Scotland as world leaders on this vital green hydrogen heating technology?
Penny Mordaunt
The UK is a world leader in this area. I shall ensure that the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero hears what the hon. Gentleman said, given that the next questions to the Department are not until 16 April, but we have a good track record across the UK in this area, and we will want that to continue.
Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)
I feel that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has been robbed of its time in this place. Last year, the Leader of the House was kind enough to ensure that we had the full hour for oral questions on our countryside, our fishermen, our farmers and the environment, but we have slid back to 40 minutes. May I please ask that we get the full hour again to discuss those important topics?
Penny Mordaunt
My hon. Friend is diligent in ensuring that he has enough time and opportunity to scrutinise that Department. I understand why that is a priority for him and the constituency that he represents. He knows that deciding how we divvy up time is a complicated Rubik’s cube problem. I was sympathetic to the case he made last time, and I will raise the matter with business managers.
Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)
Dudley hospital workers contracted by Mitie have been striking because they did not receive a lump-sum covid payment that was given to some staff directly employed by the NHS for doing the same job. Mitie wants the taxpayer to cover those payments, despite being directly responsible for its employees. Will the Leader of the House join me in thanking Mitie workers for their work during the pandemic, and encourage the Department of Health and Social Care to work with me to resolve this issue?
Penny Mordaunt
I join my hon. Friend in thanking those people for all the work that they did during the pandemic. It is important that we value all our health and social care staff, no matter how they are employed and in which sector they sit. The Department of Health and Social Care has decided to provide additional funding on this occasion to help deliver one-off payments to eligible organisations and staff employed by non-NHS businesses. Those organisations can apply for funding. We felt that we ought to be doing our bit. I know that there were discussions ongoing about that, but I will see to it that the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care is aware of the situation, sees the outstanding issues, and ensures that those people are taken care of, and that there is parity.
James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con)
The Leader of the House might have seen in the news this week that Reading football club intends to sell its state-of-the-art Bearwood training ground, in what I hope will not be a precursor to administration. Football fans across Berkshire and beyond are in despair at the state of some of the clubs in our beautiful game. Although the football governance Bill cannot come soon enough, will my right hon. Friend please use all the levers at her disposal to ensure that it has sufficient teeth and powers to prevent owners who are not fit and proper from taking control of clubs, and to ensure that those who slip through the net are properly held to account?
Penny Mordaunt
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to make that point. He is preaching to the choir, as I am a Portsmouth supporter. We must ensure that the legislation is effective. The amount of input that it has had from so many fans of the game across the country is unprecedented. The game would be nothing without its fans, and clubs are treasured community assets. We must take care of everyone in the football pyramid. When the Bill comes to the House, we will ensure that it does exactly that.
Extremism Definition and Community Engagement
(7 months, 3 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Michael Gove)
With your permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement about the next steps that we are taking in the Government’s strategy to counter extremism and to build greater national resilience and social cohesion.
The United Kingdom is a success story: a multi-national, multi-ethnic and multi-faith democracy, stronger because of our diversity. However, our democracy and values of inclusivity and tolerance are under challenge from extremist groups that are radicalising our young people and driving greater polarisation within and between communities to further their own ends. In order to protect our democratic values and enhance social cohesion, it is important both to reinforce what we all have in common and to be clear and precise in identifying the dangers posed by extremism.
As our new definition makes clear, extremism can lead to the radicalisation of individuals, deny people their full rights and opportunities, suppress freedom of expression, incite hatred, weaken social cohesion and, ultimately, lead to acts of terrorism. Most extremist materials and activities are not illegal and do not meet the terrorism or the national security threshold. For example, Islamist and neo-Nazi groups in Britain are operating lawfully, but they advocate and work towards the replacement of democracy with an Islamist or Nazi society.
The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities has been working with local authorities, civil society and faith groups, especially in those areas where social cohesion is most under strain, to de-escalate tensions and to explore the most constructive support that we can offer. From our engagement we hear widespread unease about the safety and security of community organisations, political candidates and elected officials. Councillors have been threatened with violence; council meetings have been disrupted; council officers and elected members talk of walking a tightrope, terrified of inadvertently saying the wrong thing or offending one side or the other. Many choose to remain silent and to take no action, such is the chilling element of these extremist groups on our democracy.
It is gravely concerning that the conflict in the middle east is driving further polarisation. We have seen a terrible increase in antisemitic and anti-Muslim hate crime, as well as a very significant increase in radicalisation. Troublingly, there is also evidence that some Islamists and extreme right-wing groups and others who seek to tear our society apart are working together to maximise the reach of their message and cause. That is why the work of civil society organisations such as the Community Security Trust and Tell MAMA, as well as Muslims Against Anti-Semitism, the educational charity Solutions Not Sides and the Forum for Discussion of Israel and Palestine is so important. We have provided additional funding for the CST and Tell MAMA to counter antisemitism and anti-Muslim hatred, and we will do more. We will shortly establish a new fund to provide additional, direct and tangible support for grassroots organisations, building bridges and fighting division. I commend those who are doing so much to counter prejudice.
Working in civil society, it is critical that we do not unwittingly, or through ignorance, fund or otherwise support organisations or individuals who are themselves extremist. In the past, it has unfortunately been the case that extremist groups and actors have sought to present themselves as moderate voices representative of majority or mainstream opinion. The Government have had a definition of extremism since 2011. It has helped inform our Prevent counter-terrorism work and was designed to assist the Government in engagement. But in a considerable number of cases organisations and individuals with views that are clearly extreme have nevertheless benefited from state engagement, endorsement and support, and furthermore have exploited that association to further their extremist agendas.
Among the most significant was Shakeel Begg, who was labelled an Islamist extremist by a judge. Mr Begg, an NHS chaplain and regular speaker at state schools, ran Lewisham Islamic Centre and was on both the Metropolitan police’s independent advisory group in Lewisham and Lewisham’s standing advisory committee on religious education. In 2016, Mr Begg sued the BBC when it described him, accurately, as an extremist. The judge in the case, Mr Justice Haddon-Cave, conducted his own scrupulous research, identifying many occasions when Mr Begg had advocated extreme positions, including promoting and encouraging religious violence, and by telling a Muslim audience that violence in support of Islam would constitute a man’s greatest deed. Mr Justice Haddon-Cave not only dismissed Mr Begg’s claim but drew specific attention to the danger of extremists exploiting sponsorship from state institutions. He outlined the need for an updated and more precise definition of extremism to guide engagement by Government and others.
We have since seen how figures of potential extremism concern have been able to work with the Crown Prosecution Service and the Metropolitan police, co-opt charities and benefit from public funding. We know from William Shawcross’s excellent independent review of Prevent, that such engagement has inadvertently provided a platform, funding or legitimacy for groups or individuals who oppose our shared values. This apparent legitimising of their views can lead extremists of all ideologies to be emboldened and to exert greater influence. That is why today my Department is publishing an updated, more precise and rigorous definition of extremism, alongside a set of cross-Government engagement principles for use when engaging with external groups. There is also detailed guidance on what the definition does and does not capture. We are also setting up a new counter-extremism centre of excellence in my Department, as a world-leading authority on best practice, data and research.
Our plans, drawn up in close collaboration with the Home Office, will enable the Government to express more clearly than ever before which groups fall within the extremism definition, point to the evidence, and explain the funding and engagement consequences. They will also support national efforts to counter the work of extremists who promote their ideologies both online and offline. The new definition will strengthen vital frontline counter-radicalisation work. The new centre of excellence will also help us to understand the role played by state actors and state-linked organisations in extremist activity that is taking place in our country. The wider knowledge of what constitutes extremist behaviour and who is behind it, will, I hope, help all of us to identify potential threats, and to take steps to challenge and marginalise them.
Critically, the rights that we enjoy in the United Kingdom extend to everyone. Freedom of expression, freedom of religion and belief, the rule of law, democracy and equal rights—these are the cornerstones of our civilised society that Government and Parliament, on both sides of the House, strive always to uphold. To be clear, our definition will not affect gender-critical campaigners, those with conservative religious beliefs, trans activists, environmental protest groups, or those exercising their proper right to free speech. In drawing up the new definition, the Government have taken every possible precaution to strike a balance between protecting fundamental rights and safeguarding citizens. Our definition draws on the work of Dame Sara Khan, the Government’s independent reviewer of social cohesion, and Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, before his appointment to that post.
The proposed definition will hold that extremism is the promotion or advancement of an ideology based on violence, hatred or intolerance that aims to: negate or destroy the fundamental rights and freedoms of others; undermine, overturn or replace the UK’s system of liberal parliamentary democracy and democratic rights; or intentionally create a permissive environment for others to achieve those results. While the Government in no way intend to restrict freedom of expression, religion or belief, we cannot be in a position where, unwittingly or not, we sponsor, subsidise or support in any way organisations and individuals opposed to the freedoms that we hold dear.
Across the House, I am sure that we agree that organisations such as the British National Socialist Movement and Patriotic Alternative, who promote neo-Nazi ideology, argue for forced repatriation, a white ethno-state and the targeting of minority groups for intimidation, are precisely the type of groups about which we should be concerned and whose activities we will assess against the new definition. The activities of the extreme right wing are a growing worry. The targeting of both Muslim and Jewish communities and individuals by these groups is a profound concern requiring concerted action.
As with our definition of extremism, it is important that we be precise in our use of language when discussing Islamism. Islamism should never be confused with Islam. Islam is a great faith, a religion of peace that provides spiritual nourishment for millions, inspires countless acts of charity, and celebrates the virtues of generosity, compassion and kindness. Islamism is a totalitarian ideology that seeks to divide, calls for the establishment of an Islamic state governed by sharia law, and seeks the overthrow of liberal democratic principles. It has its roots in the thinking of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna, the founder of Jamaat-e-Islami, Abul A’la al-Maududi, and the Muslim Brotherhood ideologue Sayyid Qutb. The Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood is, of course, Hamas. Organisations such as the Muslim Association of Britain, which is the British affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood, and other groups such as CAGE and Mend, give rise to concern because of their Islamist orientation and views. We will be holding those and other organisations to account to assess whether they meet our definition of extremism, and will take action as appropriate.
There are, of course, further steps that we will take in the coming days and weeks to marginalise extremist groups, and to support and strengthen the communities where extremists are most active and spreading division. They will include responding to Dame Sara Khan’s forthcoming report on social cohesion and democratic resilience, and Lord Walney’s independent review of how to counter political violence and disruption. In this debate, we must never forget about the experiences of victims of extremism who are targeted by extremist groups and the severe and distressing impact that that has on their lives, and I am pleased that Dame Sara Khan will be addressing that in her forthcoming report.
As the Prime Minister has said, the time has come for us all to stand together to combat the forces of division and beat this poison. The liberties that we hold dear, and indeed the democratic principles that we are all sent here to uphold, require us to counter and challenge the extremists who seek to intimidate, to coerce and to divide. We must be clear-eyed about the threat that we face, precise about where that threat comes from, and rigorous in defending our democracy. That means upholding freedom of expression, religion and belief when it is threatened, facing down harassment and hate, supporting the communities facing the greatest challenge from extremist activity, and ensuring that the House and the country are safe, free and united. I commend this statement to the House.
Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)
I start by thanking the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement, and for his briefing yesterday.
Hateful extremism threatens the safety of our communities and the unity of our country. Everyone, across the House, can agree that it is a serious problem which demands a serious response, so let me say from the outset that when it comes to our national security, when it comes to the threat of radicalisation and when it comes to the toxic scourge of Islamophobia, neo-Nazism, antisemitism or any other corrosive hatred, the whole House can and should work together. The way the Government do this work matters, and the language that we all use is important. I welcome the Secretary of State’s opening comment that it is our diversity, and our values, that make our country stronger.
The Secretary of State is right to raise concerns about the dangers facing our elected representatives. We must be free to represent the views of our constituents. We all have a responsibility to work to extinguish the flames of division, and never to fan them. While it may be part of the nature of our politics for passion sometimes to take centre stage, and while we may challenge and probe these plans today, if the Secretary of State wants to engage going forward, he has my word that we can do so in good faith.
I say challenge because I believe that the Secretary of State has made a mistake in the way in which this policy has been trailed in the last week. I am glad he has now come to the House to give clarification, but it is not right that we have spent the last few days poring over a possible new definition in the papers; it is not right that the Department has leaked the names of groups that may or may not be covered by this definition when, as he rightly says, this work should be based on due diligence; and it is not right that each stage of the recruitment of a new Islamophobia adviser has been mired in controversy. Can the Secretary of State confirm that he has now appointed an adviser?
On today’s announcement, we will scrutinise this new definition, and it will be crucial to see how it is applied in practice, but will the Secretary of State set out how the new centre of excellence will operate and how it will be resourced? How will this new definition work in practice? How exactly will it restrict the Government’s engagement? Will these restrictions relate only to Government engagement, or will they later be extended to other public bodies such as the police and universities?
Given this new definition, the public will rightly be alarmed by the idea that Ministers could have already met extremist groups. Can the Secretary of State shed some light on that? Renewed vigilance and diligence are welcome, particularly in the current climate, but if his own Department now needs to cut ties with extremist groups, that begs the question of why it was working with them in the first place. He said in his statement that the new definition
“will not affect gender-critical campaigners, those with conservative religious beliefs, trans activists, environmental protest groups, or those exercising their proper right to free speech.”
Can he explain which groups it will affect, and where the Government have chosen to draw the line?
This is not the first time that the Government have identified this risk or promised to act. As the Secretary of State mentioned, back at the beginning of 2011 the Conservative Home Secretary told the House:
“ If organisations do not support the values of democracy, human rights, equality before the law, participation in society…we will not work with them and we will not fund them.”—[Official Report, 7 June 2011; Vol. 529, c. 53.]
That prompts another question: why has it taken the Government 13 years to address this? The Secretary of State says that organisations that are clearly extreme have benefited from Government engagement, endorsement and support, and even suggests that those groups have exploited Government engagement. Can he understand how deeply concerning that is to hear? He must explain exactly how it has been allowed to happen.
We know there has been a huge surge in online extremism. Can the Secretary of State give assurances on how that will be dealt with? What action is he taking to work across Government to assess and confront online hate? We know that extremism does not exist in a vacuum, and we need political leadership on this, but a quality of good leadership is to empower others. The Secretary of State says that the Department has been working with faith groups, civil society and local councils, and I agree that they all have a crucial role to play in tackling extremism, but what form has that consultation taken, and will he publish its findings?
On the wider work that is now needed, will the Secretary of State set out whether it will be underpinned by a new cross-Government counter-extremism strategy, given that the last one is now nine years out of date? Will it include action to rebuild the resilience and cohesion of our communities? He mentioned new funding; how much will it be, how will it be allocated, and how will it interact with other funding streams, including those relating to multi-faith dialogue?
I also want to raise a point about hate crime, and how important it is to tackling extremism. We have seen an appalling surge in antisemitism and Islamophobia in recent months, and the previous strategy is now four years out of date. When will the Secretary of State have an updated hate crime action plan? Have Ministers abandoned plans to introduce a new hate crime strategy? Why are the anti-Muslim hatred working group and the antisemitism working group no longer meeting?
We need much stronger action to tackle the corrosive forms of hatred that devastate lives and corrode communities, but today’s statement does not go far enough. Regardless of how workable and effective the new definition and the centre for excellence may be, this announcement will not be enough.
Let me end by echoing the words of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, who have warned that, against the backdrop of growing divisions, it is for political leaders to provide “a conciliatory tone” and to
“pursue policies that bring us together, not risk driving us apart.”
I look forward to working with the Secretary of State on this.
Michael Gove
I am very grateful to the shadow Secretary of State for the constructive, detailed and consensual approach that she is taking to what are inevitably challenging and difficult issues. I enjoyed the opportunity to talk to her and other Labour colleagues yesterday, and I look forward to working together in the future. I know it is the role of the Opposition to challenge, and I wholeheartedly welcome the constructive way in which that challenge has been issued today.
I agree with the shadow Secretary of State that the danger to elected representatives is growing, and my right hon. Friend the Security Minister has invested time, care and money to countering it. Passion, vigour and determination are all part of the meat of our politics, and nothing that we have said today should take away from our desire to see free speech exercised as energetically as possible.
The shadow Secretary of State mentioned the leaking of some information relating to our work on this issue. I deprecate that leaking, which is a fundamental challenge to the effective operation of government, and a leak inquiry has been commissioned in order to see how some of the information about today’s statement was shared. As a result of my having given the statement, however, there is an opportunity for all of us to scrutinise the detail.
The shadow Secretary of State asked how the centre of excellence will be staffed and funded. Impartial civil servants with training in this area will be supplemented in their work by studies by academics and academic bodies, and we will work with the existing expertise in the homeland security analysis and intelligence unit within the Home Office in order to ensure that all our work is rigorous. We will make sure that if a decision is made to list an organisation as extremist, we will show our working and the evidence that leads us to that conclusion, and the judgment that we have made will be there for everyone to see.
The shadow Secretary of State asked why the Government or arms of the state have unwittingly engaged with extremist organisations in the past. Although the previous definition of extremism was well intentioned and drawn up with care, it was perhaps insufficiently precise and insufficiently policed, so we thought it was appropriate to update it. This follows the Shakeel Begg case, William Shawcross’s independent review of Prevent, and other examples that were brought to the Government’s attention. Having been told by independent figures, the courts and William Shawcross that we needed to look again at our approach, the real sin would have been not to do so and to have stuck to a course that had led to mistakes in the past.
The shadow Secretary of State asked about the wider work on resilience. We will publish a more detailed action plan, which will include funding commitments to support organisations on the ground that build up a greater degree of community resilience, and I look forward to working with her and others in local government to achieve that valuable end.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
I am glad to follow both Front Benchers, who have given a lead to the House.
It is interesting to consider whether it would have been right 90 years ago to identify as a threat Oswald Mosley’s approach, as well as the people who marched through the streets to intimidate others. More recently, when Kathleen Stock was at the University of Sussex, the students’ union and many others called her a dangerous extremist for writing a rather good book and having views that are now mainstream.
Filling the gap between what is not necessarily criminal but should be identified as wrong is important, and I hope the whole House can give support to today’s proposals.
Michael Gove
I am very grateful to the Father of the House. There should, rightly, be a high bar on the use of criminal sanctions. We should always seek to encourage free speech, but he is quite right to draw attention to the freedom-restricting harassment that some people have engaged in. I completely endorse the point he makes about Kathleen Stock, who is a distinguished academic.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
I wish Ramadan Mubarak to everybody who is marking this significant month in the Islamic calendar.
Friday is International Day to Combat Islamophobia, but Muslims are afraid to speak out, lest they be targeted for their beliefs or, indeed, labelled as extremists. The Government’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, Jonathan Hall, has said that their proposal
“could undermine the UK’s reputation because it would not be seen as democratic.”
The Archbishops of Canterbury and York have said in a joint statement that the new definition
“risks disproportionately targeting Muslim communities, who are already experiencing rising levels of hate and abuse”,
and
“may vilify the wrong people”.
Zara Mohammed of the Muslim Council of Britain is concerned that the Government’s proposals are undemocratic, divisive and potentially illegal. The organisation is also concerned about the lack of engagement with some of the groups that the Secretary of State has talked about today. Were any of the Muslim groups that he specifically mentioned contacted, so that they knew that they would be mentioned in today’s statement?
There has been a desperately worrying increase in Islamophobia and antisemitism since 7 October, and it should concern us all that it is happening. We stand against extremism and the targeting of groups in our society, but extremism is on the rise, driven in no small part by the culture wars stoked by the Conservatives, their hangers-on and those who would call peace demonstrations hate marches. This week we have heard about the racism and misogyny expressed by someone who has funded the party of Government. Does the Secretary of State think that racism and misogyny meet his definition of extremism? Does he believe that Frank Hester’s statement about the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), in which he said that she makes him
“want to hate all black women”
and that she “should be shot”, would meet his definition of extremism? If he does, will his party return the £10 million, or will he donate it to a charity of her choosing?
Michael Gove
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for making those points, and she is quite right to say that we need to be precise. As I stressed in my statement and now have the opportunity to stress again, we should not conflate the specific challenge from certain Islamist groups with the broader Muslim community. We need to be precise in order to draw that distinction, so that we are able to support organisations on the ground that seek to bring people together and to counter anti-Muslim hate and antisemitism. I thank her and her colleagues in the Scottish Government for the engagement that we undertook earlier this week through the Interministerial Standing Committee in order to share best practice about how to work with groups on the ground that are engaged in this vital counter-extremism work across the United Kingdom.
The hon. Lady refers to the comments made by a gentleman who is not a Member of this House, which were clearly racist and regrettable. Speaking as someone who was targeted by an extremist who was attempting to kill me, and who went on to murder a colleague and friend in this House, I take that sort of language incredibly seriously.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
Surely the essential point here is that the Government are proposing not to ban any organisation, however extreme, from operating legally and within the law, but to identify organisations that should be barred from receiving funding or other support from the Government. They have not shared their proposals with the Intelligence and Security Committee, so any point that I make now is purely personal to me, but does the Secretary of State agree that in any democratic society people have a right to decide with which bodies they will or will not associate? That is why it is right that, since July 2021, Labour has banned no fewer than seven extreme-left organisations as incompatible with party membership, in accordance with values defined, quite properly, by its own national executive committee.
Michael Gove
I thank my right hon. Friend, who has a distinguished record in this area. He is absolutely right. There is, appropriately, a very high threshold for the proscription of organisations, which Hizb ut-Tahrir recently met. We are not seeking to ban or restrict the operation of organisations in a free society; we are simply making it clear that it would be wrong for the Government to use taxpayers’ money or public endorsement in engagement with such organisations.
Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
The Secretary of State said in his statement:
“Our definition draws on the work of Dame Sara Khan, the Government’s independent reviewer of social cohesion, and Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, before his appointment to that post.”.
In our report on the policing of protests, the Home Affairs Committee said:
“We find it surprising that the Government has not yet responded to the reports it commissioned from the Commission for Countering Extremism regarding hateful extremism, particularly the report ‘Operating with Impunity’ by Dame Sara Khan and Sir Mark Rowley. Sir John Saunders in his report in 2023 rightly said that the Home Office should respond as a matter of urgency.”
With this policy moving from the Home Office to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, has the Secretary of State had any conversations with the Home Office about whether there will be a full response to Dame Sara Khan’s report? How will this new definition affect the policing of protests?
Michael Gove
The Chair of the Home Affairs Committee makes some very important points. I had the opportunity to meet Dame Sara and Sir Mark to discuss our work on this new definition and, of course, I have worked very closely with the Home Secretary and, particularly, the Security Minister on framing the definition.
As the right hon. Lady will be aware, work in this space is shared between my Department and the Home Office, which is responsible for security and for supporting the police. We are responsible for funding community organisations and encouraging a greater degree of social cohesion and resilience. There will be further responses to some of the recommendations in that report, and indeed in Lord Walney’s report and Dame Sara’s additional report, which is forthcoming. I hope that, alongside the Home Secretary, I will have the opportunity to share further detail in the weeks ahead.
Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)
I thank Dame Sara Khan, Sir Mark Rowley and Sir William Shawcross for all the work they have each done in this important area, including during my time as Home Secretary. I also thank the Secretary of State.
Although the proposals are non-statutory and will act as a guide for civil servants and Ministers, can the Secretary of State explain what evidential threshold will be applied by the new centre of excellence when compiling the list of organisations and guidance? How will this guidance be applied against the existing legal definitions of racism, incitement and intimidation that guide our security services and our police in upholding the rule of law?
Michael Gove
During her time in the Home Office, my right hon. Friend initiated and took forward fantastic work to deal with extremism and intolerance. She is right that the definition does not impinge or alter the legal threshold for prosecution where people incite violence. Indeed, there are arguments for looking again at our laws to make sure that they are fit for purpose, but today’s definition is not about changing the criminal law; it is about setting a threshold. That threshold will be evidenced when we come forward with the list of organisations that we believe meet this bar, with evidence that everyone can see makes a compelling case that the ideology that spurs those organisations is extremist in nature.
Sir Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
The Secretary of State, in my view very unwisely, recently closed down the Inter Faith Network, which facilitates the kind of dialogue he praised in his statement. He closed it down on the grounds that one of its 22 trustees is connected with the Muslim Council of Britain. If an organisation unjustly finds itself on his proposed list, will it have the opportunity to appeal against its inclusion?
Michael Gove
We have not closed down the Inter Faith Network. We ceased our funding, and the Inter Faith Network draws its funding from a variety of sources. We will apply appropriate due diligence and publish evidence. If anyone believes our judgment is wrong, as in any case where it is believed that the Government have acted unreasonably, the option of judicial review is always available.
Sir Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. Words matter, and I note in particular the aim to
“intentionally create a permissive environment”
to deal with the harms that he rightly identifies and that we all oppose. However, there are dangers in that wording. Will he issue guidance as to what it precisely means? The word “intentionally” is clearly important. Does he accept that, with the Government generally not engaging with the organisations that he rightly identifies, we should not inhibit the work of the security services and agencies, which have to engage with elements of these organisations in order to combat extremism at an individual level?
Michael Gove
My right hon. and learned Friend makes a very important point, because obviously our intelligence and security agencies, our law enforcement actors and sometimes those working abroad to keep us safe will have to deal with and engage unsavoury individuals. The definition does not cover that activity.
Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)
Let us be clear and call this what it is. It is not a serious and genuine attempt to address a very important issue. It is a further draconian attempt to continue the Tory agenda of culture wars. It is disappointing that countless civil liberties groups, and three former Home Secretaries, have warned the Secretary of State against politicising such an important issue, but it seems it has fallen on deaf ears.
If the Secretary of State is serious about addressing these issues, I ask him to condemn the extremist, vile and dangerous language used by some of his own Back Benchers and some of the Tory donors who are bankrolling his party.
Michael Gove
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question, but I hope he will appreciate that both I and the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) are determined not to politicise this matter but to make sure we can operate consensually. Of course there will be debate, challenge and differences of opinion and emphasis in what we seek to do, but it is a shared endeavour. Indeed, we have been working with independent figures such as Lord Walney to achieve consensus.
Michael Gove
I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman feels it necessary to make a party political point about my colleagues. I extend to him the same courtesy that I extend to every Member of this House by respecting his mandate and his voice, and not indulging in that sort of unfortunate personalisation.
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)
My right hon. Friend has, for a very long time, been consistent and clear-eyed about the threats that we face, for which I applaud him. He has faced personal threats and responded with bravery and resilience, which we all admire.
First, I fear that the definition, though well intentioned, lands in no man’s land. It does not go far enough to tackle the real extremists, and it does not do enough to protect the non-extremists who are simply expressing contrarian views and who might find that this definition is used against them, perhaps not now but possibly in the future. What reassurance can my right hon. Friend give to me and others who are concerned about that?
Secondly, does my right hon. Friend agree that this is not the totality of our anti-extremism strategy, important though it is? We now have to take forward other areas, particularly on William Shawcross’s superb recommendations with respect to the Prevent programme, on revoking the visas of visitors who do not share our values—that appears to have stalled—and on ensuring that the police vigorously and fairly implement our existing laws so that everyone can have confidence that there is not, and will never be, two-tier policing in our country.
Michael Gove
When my right hon. Friend held my current post, he took forward immensely valuable work to counter anti-Muslim hatred and antisemitism, and to support organisations fighting both. He asks whether this definition is enough on its own, and he is right that it is not, but it is a necessary step in responding to Sir William Shawcross’s independent review of Prevent, which makes it clear that the operation of Prevent is insufficiently rigorous because of the definition—that is no criticism of the professionals involved. The rigour of the definition needed to be updated, which is what we are doing.
My right hon. Friend expressed concern that this definition might be misused. The previous definition was looser, baggier and capable of many more interpretations than this much tighter definition, which is therefore much less likely to be misused. Of course the proof will be in how we set about using it and in the evidence we provide to back up any judgments we make.
Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)
This new definition will require careful scrutiny of its compliance with human rights such as the right to freedom of expression, religion and belief. In my role as Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, I am delighted that we will be taking forward that scrutiny next week. On a personal level, may I ask the Secretary of State to agree that Members of this House have a duty to be careful in their use of language and not to brand groups “extreme” or “hateful” simply because they disagree with them?
I want to give an example of that, because it is an important and topical one. My friends at LGB Alliance, a well-respected LGB rights charity, have been described by some Members of this House as a “hate group” simply because they raised hitherto unfashionable but now vindicated concerns about the prescription of puberty blockers. Will the Secretary of State join me in reminding Members of this House of their responsibility not to use their positions to stifle legitimate debate that makes an important contribution to our democracy?
Michael Gove
I am grateful to the hon. and learned Lady for her point. Again, I stress that this is about Government engagement. Although she or I might agree or disagree with an individual or group, we respect their right to free speech and free association. The points she makes about the LGB Alliance are well made. It is right that there should be debate on gender and sex questions, and I commend the Government for the steps they have taken to ban puberty blockers. Therefore, in this debate, it is right to have a degree of respect and concern for the different and heartfelt positions held by everyone. Her consistent championing of a particular position, though sometimes unpopular with others, is commendable and brave, and she represents the very best of her party.
Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)
I share, along with many other Members, some alarm at the emergence of this new definition, and I have two questions for the Secretary of State. The first is further to the point made by the right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms): is there really to be no appeal process in this branding of particular groups as unacceptable? I ask that not least because, as I am sure the Secretary of State will intend, putting them on a Government blacklist will have a chilling impact more widely on their place in society; from financial services to the media, who is likely to engage with them? At what stage in the process will those groups that he decides are worthy of examination be able to present evidence in their defence?
My second question is: if a Member of this House disagrees with the view of the Secretary of State or the Government, and decides to invite that group into the House or to be a member of that group, will the Government refuse to engage with the Member of Parliament?
Michael Gove
Again, I am grateful to my right hon. Friend and commend him on the work he did in the Home Office during his time there. He will have known that there was an already existing definition, with which there was an obligation on Government not to engage with certain groups. He will also know that while he was there Sir William Shawcross pointed out that that definition needed to be updated and those engagement principles reinforced. We are simply continuing the work that my right hon. Friend did so diligently and effectively while at the Home Office. Organisations such as the British National Socialist Movement and Patriotic Alternative, which I mentioned, are ones that I hope no Member of this House would want to deal with. Obviously, however, each individual must look to their own conscience about the organisations with which they engage. This is purely about Government; Parliament is, quite rightly, sovereign.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)
Following the point made by the right hon. Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse), I urge the Secretary of State to be cautious in all of this. Those of us who campaigned against apartheid in the 1970s were often condemned, and although the African National Congress was never banned in Britain, there were calls to ban it. Things change and history moves on; those who marched for peace in Ireland were condemned at the time, and later we had the Good Friday agreement. So I ask the Secretary of State: what is the status of this statement? Does it have legal force? Will it be an instruction to the police? Will it be an instruction to local authorities? Exactly how will it be implemented?
On pages 5 and 6 of the Secretary of State’s statement, he rightly makes the point that we have rights of religious assembly, free speech and organisation. It is important to state those, and they are all enshrined in the European convention on human rights. Will he assure us—because this is not mentioned anywhere in this document— that there is no plan by the Government or the Conservative party to withdraw from the European convention on human rights and therefore from the European Court of Human Rights? For all its failings and inefficiencies, the convention underpins human rights in a very important way.
Michael Gove
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for the points he makes. His question gives me an opportunity to clarify that we will proceed with caution and that this definition governs only Government engagement and funding. Other autonomous organisations must and will make their own judgments; this is simply about what Government and their agencies do. He makes the point that people and organisations can change over time, and that is true. There are people who have been members of extremist organisations and have then changed their view and been invaluable in helping us to challenge the work of extremists: those who were formerly members of Islamist organisations such as Hizb ut-Tahrir have been valuable in countering that hate; and those people who were formerly members of neo-Nazi organisations have been invaluable in making sure that we can police their activities. Of course, it is always within the human heart to have the capacity to change and reform.
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)
Of course, the first duty of any state is to protect its citizens and maintain national security. Many of us have different experiences of dealing with extremism. I served on the Home Affairs Committee for three years, dealing with extremism and radicalisation in that regard. As someone who comes from a Muslim faith, I get 1,000 pieces of hatred from the far right and the same from Islamist Daesh-inspired individuals. I have also had a death threat against me that is being investigated by Kent police, and other Members will have their own different experiences.
I say to the Secretary of State that this statement is being made today, after 16 months of our Government not having an independent adviser to tackle Islamophobia. This statement is also being made two weeks after the Government-funded body Tell MAMA published data showing that there had been 2,000 hate incidents or crimes against the Muslim community—we have not had a statement from the Government on that or on engagement with the Muslim community. People will be looking at today’s statement with that backdrop in mind.
I want the Secretary of State to provide me with clarification about the interpretation of the definition. Am I right to say that a Minister will make the determination as to whether something creates a “permissive environment” or is “intolerant”? I mean no disrespect to current or future Ministers, but giving Ministers that responsibility raises a real concern, because it then comes down to each Minister’s own judgment. We need to ensure that we have a thorough, independent and fair process, because we are all committed to our national security.
Michael Gove
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who has endured the consequences of extremism himself and has been a very valuable voice for religious freedom for many years. He makes two important points. The first is about the need to be vigilant in dealing with anti-Muslim hatred. That is why my right hon. Friend the Security Minister announced more than £100 million of funding to better protect mosques, schools and other Muslim community centres—I commend that initiative. It is also why the Government continue to fund the excellent organisation Tell MAMA, whose founder I had the opportunity to meet again yesterday to discuss the approach that we are taking. My hon. Friend asks whether Ministers alone will make the judgment. Ministers will make that judgement, informed by impartial civil service advice and academic research.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
For a number of years, I have been meeting and working with an organisation that in 2018 published its report “Our Shared British Future: Muslims and Integration in the UK”. I supported that report because it called for “equal integration for all”, for us to “break down barriers” and work towards tackling the challenges that hinder integration, and for us to “celebrate British diversity” and the success of our model of integration. It also reported on the role of faith organisations in integration, recognising that faith can support integration efforts.
That organisation is the Muslim Council of Britain. The Secretary of State deprecated the leaks around this report, but the informal spin and briefings that have taken place have dragged the name of the Muslim Council of Britain through the mud in recent days. He has not answered the question as to what appeal process there will be, aside from judicial review. Will organisations and individuals have access to legal aid for judicial review in challenging decisions made by the Secretary of State on this?
Michael Gove
I think it was the Labour Government, when Gordon Brown was Prime Minister, that raised concerns about some of the activities and views expressed by members of the Muslim Council of Britain. Any organisation about which concerns are raised is an organisation that we will be very careful in scrutinising before taking any steps. When we do take any steps—if we take any steps —the evidence will be clearly laid out.
Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)
I absolutely support my right hon. Friend’s aims in making the statement, in terms of protecting our democracy and protecting us from violence and the kind of terrorist threats we have seen over recent weeks, but I share the concerns that many hon. Members have raised. In separating the definition of extremism from actual violence and harm, and in using terms like “fundamental rights”, which do not have a definition in law, we risk criminalising or, at the very least, chilling the speech of people who have perfectly legitimate, harmless views.
To go back to the example of gender critical feminists, a gender critical feminist might be intolerant of the right of people to change their sex on their birth certificate. They might seek to undermine that right by seeking to repeal the Gender Recognition Act 2004, for example. They would be labelled extremists under these regulations, as I understand them. As to impartial civil servants deciding these things, I am afraid I do not think that is always the case. Certainly, I have seen civil servants wearing very unimpartial lanyards on this particular issue. I seek my right hon. Friend’s reassurance that not only will such groups not be labelled extremists now, but there will be protections so they will never be labelled that way in the future.
Michael Gove
It is precisely because I share the concerns raised by my hon. Friend that we have made the definition tighter. I am sure she is aware of the existing wording of the 2011 definition, which has a far broader range of groups that could fall within its ambit. By being more narrow, precise and rigorous, we more effectively protect free speech. She referred to criminalising. Let us be clear that there is nothing in this definition that would lead to a ban. It is simply about saying which organisations Government should and should not engage with. I am sure she would agree with me that neo-Nazi organisations and Islamist organisations, of the kinds that I drew attention to, are the kinds of organisations the Government should not be engaging with. It is regrettable that in the past we have.
Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)
The Government’s independent reviewer of terrorism, Jonathan Hall, and the Government’s independent adviser on antisemitism, Lord Mann, have both criticised what they have learned of these outline proposals for a new non-statutory definition of extremism. Jonathan Hall points out that Hizb ut-Tahrir was proscribed under the Terrorism Act 2000—quite rightly—for its reactions to the attacks of 7 October, and he said the proposals mark a shift
“away from people who are doing bad things, towards people who think bad things”.
Lord Mann points to the contradiction in banning some speakers from universities, having just passed a law to enshrine freedom of speech in universities, and he talks about “the politics of division” doing nothing to help the Jewish community. Will the Secretary of State reflect on the advice of the Government’s independent reviewer of terrorism and their independent adviser on antisemitism?
Michael Gove
I met them both in the preparation for the work we have done today. I think it was the case that the independent adviser on antisemitism, Lord Mann, whose work is outstanding, said on broadcasts today that he regarded this as an improvement on the existing definition. I am grateful for that support and for the hon. Gentleman’s question, which has given me the opportunity to relay that to the House.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
I am worried about this. Will my right hon. Friend reassure me that nothing in this statement will add to the increasing culture, in what should be a free country, of the intolerance of the right to offend? I might be offended if people make extreme attacks on Christianity, but they have an absolute right to do so. People have a right to criticise religious people or particular religions. Equally, Orthodox Jews, devout evangelical Christians with a particular view of the Bible and devout traditional Muslims have an absolute right to say what they believe in a free society, even if it is very unfashionable.
Michael Gove
I could not agree more. It is the principle of Milton’s “Areopagitica” that governs my approach towards free speech: ideas should contend on the plain of argument and people should be able to discern good arguments from bad arguments.
All the statement does is to tighten the existing definition. The concerns that my right hon. Friend raises about definitions being used to marginalise speech existed with the previous definition, to an extent. Now, with this tighter definition, along with the fact that the Government will publish the reasons why they choose not to engage with a group, things will be clearer. As I say, this is purely about Government engagement and financing. I know that he, like me, would want to ensure that taxpayers’ money was stewarded wisely.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
This tweet was liked by Sir Paul Marshall:
“Civil war is coming. There has never been a country that has remained peaceful with a sizeable Islamic presence…Once the Muslims get to 15-20% of the population the current cold civil war will turn hot.”
Many other incendiary tweets were liked or retweeted by Marshall, a substantial donor to both the Tory party and the Secretary of State personally, according to a recent investigation by HOPE not hate and “The News Agents”. How does the Secretary of State square his definition of extremism with accepting money from someone like Marshall?
Michael Gove
I deprecate the personal attack on Sir Paul Marshall, who is a distinguished philanthropist and a supporter of Ark academies—state schools that have done so much, including in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, to improve the lives of disadvantaged children from a variety of minority backgrounds.
Mark Logan (Bolton North East) (Con)
Last evening in the House of Commons, I attended the Big Iftar celebration of the all-party parliamentary group on British Muslims. One person after another said to me in private that they were fearful of an increasing mood of Islamophobia. Indeed, right hon. and hon. Friends have referred to the Tell MAMA statistics that show a 335% increase in anti-Muslim hatred since October.
I am worried about a slippery slope. I commend what the Secretary of State said about the statement just looking at community engagement, but can we be assured that this is not a slippery slope? Will it lead to a position across the criminal law, months and years ahead, where people feel that they are no longer able to speak their minds? As an example, two or three weeks ago I attended a rally in my own constituency in support of Gaza but, as we have seen in recent months, such attendance has almost been outlawed and people have been silenced. Will the Secretary of State give a commitment that this statement will not be the commencement of a slippery slope? As someone who grew up in Northern Ireland, in an environment of terrorism, I know that it is easy to think that we are putting one person away, but to end up with 1,000 enemies behind them.
Michael Gove
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend, whose experience not only in Northern Ireland, but working abroad to promote peace and inclusion, is to be commended. He is quite right. The Department that I lead funds Tell MAMA, which does such important work in highlighting and recording acts of anti-Muslim hatred. There has been a dreadful increase in such acts. We want to work with organisations on the ground to counter that hatred. As I mentioned, sadly some of the organisations that have been supported in the past have been extremist and have sought to intimidate British Muslims. That is why we need to be careful about those with whom we work, in order to present a united front against anti-Muslim hatred.
George Galloway (Rochdale) (WPB)
It is quite clear that there is a shared endeavour between the two Front Benches, but as questions have continued, it is clear that there is unease on the Back Benches on both sides of the House, and for very good reason. It is obviously true that this is part of the culture war wallpaper that is being created for the general election soon to come. It is not good enough to say that it does not seek to ban or jail anyone—try getting a bank account once you have been branded by Michael Gove as an extremist.
If we were debating extremism in the Oxford Union, as once we did in the Secretary of State’s salad days on another matter, we would all be talking about what is the definition. I remind the Secretary of State that a former Speaker of this House was wearing a “Hang Nelson Mandela” T-shirt when my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) and I were seeking the overthrow of apartheid and being called divisive. This building is designed to show that politics is full of division, and sometimes those reviled as extremists turn out to have been right all along.
Michael Gove
I congratulate the hon. Member on his election as Member of Parliament for Rochdale. As he rightly points out, we have known each other for several decades. During that time, I have always admired his oratorical skills and the passion with which he makes his case. There is nothing in this definition that any hon. Member should fear will inhibit them in making their case. While I passionately disagree with the hon. Gentleman on so many issues, he has the same rights as every other Member of this House and deserves to be listened to with respect as he makes his case.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
By stating that a free society requires that the Muslim religion accommodates itself to the same level of scrutiny, criticism and even blasphemy that Christianity has become accustomed to, am I straying into the Secretary of State’s permissive environment? I am not an extremist, am I?
Michael Gove
My right hon. Friend is many, many things: learned, wise, kind, a champion of the New Forest and a distinguished former educationalist. He is not an extremist, and I shall continue to admire the rigour with which he prosecutes his case.
John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
I share the concern of my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton- under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) that Government Departments may have been engaging with extremists and racists in the past. The Secretary of State seems to indicate that engagement, or lack of engagement, is dependent on the definition. Is it not also dependent on the common sense of Ministers? If Ministers are willing to engage with extremists and racists, surely they should not be Ministers in the first place.
Michael Gove
I absolutely take the hon. Member’s point. The key thing here is that sometimes there are organisations and individuals that seek to operate by presenting one face to one group and a different face to another. That is why we need due diligence. Mistakes have been made in the past. I think those mistakes were made in good faith and unwittingly, but as has been pointed out by Members from across this House, a number of people have expressed their concern about those past errors. That is why we need a tighter, more precise definition.
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)
I commend the Government on what they are attempting to do to oppose and fight all forms of extremism and hatred in our country. Does the Secretary of State agree that what underpins Britain is our ancient liberties and freedoms, free speech and the rule of law, which uphold our democracy under the Crown? Does he believe, as I do, that we must defend all our British values and traditions? We must teach them in schools, and we must ensure that British values are the order of the day.
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend makes a very important point. In our schools and other institutions, we should make sure that people from every background are acquainted with our history and taught the very British habits of scepticism, questioning and sometimes raucous expressions of opposition to Governments and others. That spirit of democratic challenge is core to this country, and no one better exemplifies being able to speak out without fear or favour than my hon. Friend.
Claire Hanna (Belfast South) (SDLP)
The press release attached to this statement, which refers to 7 October, seems to imply, deliberately or otherwise, that protests and other human responses to the horrors of the Hamas attacks on Israel and the bombardment of Gaza are extreme. In my diverse and shared Belfast South constituency, we are battling extremism at the moment, in the form of a rash of menacing and racist posters about foreigners and housing. It is my genuine belief that that rhetoric is being fanned by this Government—the Government of a party funded by a person who says that they hate all black women. It is worth mentioning that Northern Ireland Office Ministers met representatives of paramilitaries during their negotiations on the withdrawal agreement. This kind of politics and the departure from pluralism and tolerance are part of the reason why I and many others advocate for a new Ireland by exclusively peaceful and democratic means. That would of course undermine and change the constitution of the United Kingdom and its democracy. Can the Secretary of State confirm that people like me, who advocate for a new Ireland, are not extremists under the second part of his definition?
Michael Gove
No, of course not. The Social Democratic and Labour party has a long and proud tradition of arguing for Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland to become a new state, and that has an impeccable political tradition. As she rightly points out, many people wish to protest about what is happening in the middle east. We may disagree about aspects of that conflict, but I hope we all share a sincere desire to bring peace to the middle east. We all deprecate the regrettable incidents of prejudice on the streets of South Belfast.
James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con)
I welcome the clear statement today. It is right that we openly debate and tackle extremism in this place. At this time of tension and sensitivity, does the Secretary of State agree that politicians have a responsibility to dial down the rhetoric, that divisions must not be exploited for political gain, and that we all must work together across the House to achieve that?
Michael Gove
I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. His distinguished career of public service even before he entered this House shows a commitment to working across divides to strengthen our democracy.
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)
The Secretary of State spoke of sharing our workings about affected organisations. He did not share his workings after his abrupt decision to pull Government funding from the Inter Faith Network, causing that respected organisation to close. How does he explain the contradiction between his words and his recent actions?
Michael Gove
A letter was published outlining the reasoning behind that, and the Government are only one of a number of funders of the Inter Faith Network.
Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)
I do not want to be accused of dialling up the rhetoric, but I must say that I and millions of people in this country are utterly fed up with these protests that have been taking place in our nation’s capital. Not every person who attends these protests is an extremist, and not every person who attends these protests is a radical, but many are, and they are going unchallenged. I have Jewish friends who will not go into their own capital because they do not feel safe, and it is weekend after weekend after weekend. When is something going to happen? All the public see is impotence. It is fuelling extremism, and it is linked to this debate. If the situation does not get any better, and we continue to see hate on our streets going unchallenged, is the Government prepared to strip responsibility for policing in London from the Mayor of London, and to give a far stronger steer to the Metropolitan police, who every weekend, from what I can see, are failing to stand up for our values, and for Jewish people, so that they feel safe?
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend speaks passionately about this. I know from talking to Jewish friends that some of the statements and actions that accompany these marches cause them to feel a profound sense of fear. That has been well recorded not just by the Government’s Commission for Countering Extremism, but by Members of this House, so I share his concern for the Jewish community.
I should say that the Metropolitan Police Commissioner takes his responsibilities very seriously. There have been a number of arrests alongside these marches, and individuals have been prosecuted for incitement and for hateful actions. In addition, my colleagues in the Home Office have commissioned a report from Baron Walney, John Woodcock as was, looking at how we give the police all the powers that they need. We will come forward in due course with a response to that report.
Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)
I am afraid that the statement has not assuaged the fears that so many have about what the Government are really up to here. Given recent events, on which the Secretary of State was remarkably silent in his statement, may I ask whether we should count as an extremist someone saying that an MP should be shot? Or are those who have donated £10 million to the Conservative party exempt from such definitions? Would the Tory party not be better off getting its own house in order, rather than making this clearly political intervention, which has more to do with the upcoming general election, and trying to silence the huge numbers of peaceful opponents of the Government’s Gaza policy, than it has with public safety?
Michael Gove
As I mentioned earlier, speaking as someone who was the victim of a determined effort to kill me, and because the individual who was trying to kill me went on to kill a friend and colleague from this House, I take incredibly seriously threats of violence. I have long admired the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), and I have no hesitation in stating that those comments were disgusting, but the intention in bringing forward this definition today is to make sure that the Government—we are talking about only the Government—work with organisations that are committed to peace and greater social cohesion. I hope that, on reflection, the hon. Member will recognise that we can work together to deal with these hateful extremists, whose actions we both, I am sure, deprecate.
Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)
My right hon. Friend will understand that the people of Southend West will welcome his statement, and appreciate his commitment to tackling extremism, but they also know that the devil is not just in the detail, but in the enforcement. They have seen the antisemitic slogan “From the river to the sea” projected on to their Parliament—if such slogans are not already against the law, they certainly should be—and they have seen the police take insufficient action. On marches against the middle east war in Southend, we have seen dolls covered in white bandages, spattered with a red substance, and placards saying, “Anna Firth kills babies”. Clearly, both those things are, if not extreme, then very close to being within my right hon. Friend’s definition of extremism. Can he assure me and the House that we will ensure that the message about what is extremism and what is against the law gets through to the police, and that appropriate action is taken?
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend is correct to draw attention to the fact that there have been occasions recently when people motivated to make a particular point have crossed the threshold. I know that the police take those transgressions incredibly seriously, as do the Security Minister and the Home Secretary.
Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)
Over the past week, as we have meandered towards this statement, much of the debate has been played out in the press; there have been definitions, and various organisations that could potentially be proscribed have been named. How can my constituents in Ilford South have any faith in the Secretary of State’s ability to decide who is, and who is not, an extremist? I ask because it has also been briefed that his preferred appointment as the anti-Muslim hatred adviser is Haras Rafiq, the former chief executive officer of the Quilliam Foundation, which worked with US anti-Muslim think-tanks and promoted the favourite theory of Nick Griffin, the great replacement theory—a conspiracy theory that is so debunked and extreme that it should be nowhere near the thinking of the Secretary of State. Yesterday, most damningly, Tommy Robinson, a far-right extremist—everyone in this House knows who he is—praised that appointment. How can my constituents have faith that the decisions the Secretary of State will make are not politicised?
Michael Gove
Because we will publish the evidence behind them.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
I warmly welcome today’s statement, but we have to consider the fact that organisations are populated by individuals. Individuals who have hateful views may be expelled by those organisations, or may go off and form other organisations that will not be on the banned list. As the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) said, it is individuals who seek to radicalise young people, either from abroad or in the UK. What action will the Secretary of State take to ensure that foreign nationals who seek to radicalise our young people are prevented from doing so?
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend makes a very good point, related to that made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick). The Home Office is vigilant about who it allows to come here, and it conducts appropriate work to ensure that visas are not granted to people who are here to sow division and hate.
Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)
We know from the work of the Intelligence and Security Committee, under the leadership of the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis), and its report on extreme right-wing terrorism that a number of people are radicalised not simply by shadowy organisations on the dark web, but at least in part by the mainstream media. How does the Secretary of State see his statement and his definition of the creation of a permissive environment—I am thinking of calling judges “Enemies of the people”—intersecting with the mainstream media?
Michael Gove
All of us have a responsibility to be vigilant about the dangers of extremism. I am grateful to many media outlets for shining a light on extremism, from the BBC to The Times. The hon. Gentleman mentions one particular newspaper headline. He may disagree with it or find it objectionable, but the most important thing to recognise is that a vigorous culture of free speech, sustained by a free and independent press, is a critical part of our democratic culture.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement, and for responding to questions for an hour and 13 minutes.
Estimates Day
SEND Provision
(7 months, 3 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I call Mr Robin Walker to lead the debate.
Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am grateful to colleagues on the Liaison Committee and the Backbench Business Committee for supporting my application for the debate and giving it the prominent position that it has today. I thank all those who supported the application. I note that it is an unusual subject that brings together the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Sir David Davis), and the hon. Members for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon). Not all of them can be here today, but I know that each has passionately supported the case for more and better targeted investment to support children with special needs. I warmly welcome the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Gen Kitchen) to the Chamber. It is greatly to her credit that she has chosen to make her maiden speech on this subject; I look forward to hearing it.
There have been many debates on the importance of special educational needs and disabilities in the House over the past few years, so this is not new ground, and I make no apology for that. There have been Green Papers, a Command Paper, and the excellent Backbench Business debate under the auspices of my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden, which was so well subscribed. It is no surprise to me that today’s debate is similarly well supported across the Chamber. I do not intend to repeat all the arguments from the previous debate, in which 30 Members spoke. I hope that the Minister will take them all as read in his response.
In my casework as MP for Worcester, and in the evidence that I have seen as Chair of the Education Committee, there is a consistent trend of schools at every phase and of every variety struggling to meet the rising level of SEND, of families struggling to get the needs of their children properly met and supported, and of children with SEN too often being home educated, not as a result of genuine elective home education but as a result of their parents feeling that there is no other way in which their needs can be supported. We have heard this at the Education Committee described as “non-elective home education”.
Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
The hon. Member has secured a really important debate. One big problem that comes across strongly in Derbyshire is the lack of capacity within the local authority to do the assessment. Many schools are supporting parents and their special needs children, but are unable to get assessment for months or even years. How big an issue does he think that local authority resources are in all this?
Mr Walker
The hon. Gentleman is right: that is definitely part of the challenge. I will try to come back to that later in my speech. The briefing that the Local Government Association has provided for the debate is very helpful in drawing attention to that. In the previous Backbench Business debate, Members from both sides of the House highlighted the need for earlier identification of need, and all the different organisations across local authorities, health and education that need resource and support to deliver that.
Matt Hancock (West Suffolk) (Ind)
The need for early identification is incredibly strong. There has been some progress towards it, and I congratulate the Minister for the strides that he has been able to make, but we cannot have a genuinely universal education system unless we have universal early identification of special needs, so will my hon. Friend welcome the fact that I have secured the opportunity to reintroduce my Dyslexia Screening and Teacher Training Bill, as a ten-minute rule Bill, on 23 April?
Mr Walker
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing that opportunity, and for all the progress that he has made in drawing attention to the needs of dyslexic children and identifying those needs early. He is right that we need to look at how we better support universal identification of need at an earlier stage. He will recognise that some conditions only show themselves over time, so it is important that there are the right interventions at every level to identify those needs and ensure they are properly met.
When we debate children missing school, as we often have in recent years, we often find it difficult to tell which are doing so because of unmet need. The work of the Children’s Commissioner, among many others, has highlighted that that is a major cause. When we debate rising levels of home education without the benefit of a much-needed statutory register, which the Government have now pledged to support, we find it impossible to tell how many of the rising number of cases are genuinely elective. My hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond) is sponsor of a Bill that seeks to address the issue, and I hope the whole House will support its Second Reading tomorrow. I welcome the fact that Opposition Front Benchers have already done so and I believe that the Government have as well.
Both those factors, as highlighted in the Education Committee’s report on persistent absence, point to the need for urgent action on SEND. The Government’s own Command Paper is also clear on that point. In fact, in preparing for this debate, I was struck by recent comments made by the Secretary of State at the Association of School and College Leaders conference:
“The massive demand, of more and more children diagnosed or even not diagnosed but have special educational needs, that’s something that I don’t think we’ve got the right system in place. If you look at special education needs, we haven’t built enough special educational needs places or schools. We have councils under pressure because families can’t get the right support that they need”—
a succinct summary of the nature of the challenge, which colleagues across the House will recognise all too well.
In that context, we need to consider the departmental estimates of the Department for Education, the £57.8 billion rising to £58.5 billion for the core schools budget, and the £82 billion rising to more than £100 billion overall in the supplementary estimate, as well as the £6.3 billion capital budget. Although it would be easy for a Government Member to point to those big numbers and trumpet what are without doubt record sums in cash terms for revenue funding, they do not tell the whole story.
The excellent House of Commons Library briefing prepared for this debate confirms both cash and real-terms growth in spending on high needs since 2015, as well as a faster trajectory of increasing need as identified by education, health and care plans. Within those numbers, it is to the credit of Ministers in this Government that the amount spent on high-needs funding has doubled in the past 10 years and has increased by more than 60% since 2019. That shows some recognition of the importance of investing in this space.
But it is also clear, as we debated on the F40—Campaign for Fairer Funding in Education—motion a few weeks ago, that revenue funding has not been sufficient to meet demand. Over the same period, the growth of EHCPs alone has more than doubled. The level of need demonstrated not only by the number rising from 240,000 nine years ago to more than 500,000 today, but by the complexity of conditions and the demand for specialist places to support highly complex pupils, has grown even faster. I am told that 180 children per day are being identified as having special educational needs.
For every child with an EHCP, as the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) pointed out, many more are awaiting assessment or have their needs already met in public or independent schools without the need for an EHCP. Nevertheless, those children also need support. I do not intend to rehearse all the arguments for the early identification of support need, but that is a vital part of the argument.
Also to the credit of Ministers is the greater recognition in recent years of the need for more capital investment in SEND places. Even in the most recent Budget, the main capital commitment for school-age education was a further £105 million for 15 SEN free schools, delivering up to 2,000 specialist places across the country. I welcome that, but I observe that the calculation that just over £100 million can deliver 15 whole new special schools seems a challenging one. That gives a cost of £52,000 per place, compared with more than £86,666 per place in the calculations that the Government made only three years ago—before the impact of three years of high inflation for building costs.
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and for all he does on the Education Committee. In my constituency surgeries, I, like many Members of Parliament, see parents in real pain. They want the best for their child, and they are waiting for one to two years to get a plan so that their healthcare and education needs can be met. My hon. Friend asked about the allocation of the £105 million in the Budget. Can he clarify his understanding of how the Government will allocate that across the country? I need an allocation for my constituents in Gillingham and Rainham, who urgently need it. All Members want to know whether that will be done on a fair basis.
Mr Walker
I congratulate my hon. Friend for making the case for his constituents. The question he asks is one for those on the Front Bench, and I hope the Minister can further clarify the process of allocating those resources.
At the last spending review in 2021, the Department secured £2.6 billion over the review period for a mixture of new specialist settings, expansions of existing ones and delivery of bases in mainstream schools. In total, that was designed to deliver 30,000 new school places. Will the Minister, in his reply, update the House on progress on spending that substantial capital investment? Can he update the House, too, on the total number of specialist places already delivered? Will he explain how deliverable the Government have found this programme, at a cost of about £86,666 per place, and the rationale for the Budget announcement being so much cheaper?
Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend for his exceptional work in this area. He shares my passion for the new Malvern-based autism free school, which will benefit children across Worcestershire and more widely. Can he update the House on how he sees progress on delivering the new free school?
Mr Walker
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for her intervention and for her campaigning to secure those vitally needed places in south Worcestershire, which I hope will benefit my constituents as well as hers. I want to more places delivered for autistic students in Worcestershire as swiftly as possible. That is being done through a combination of the provision that she has rightly championed and campaigned for, a new base in my constituency in a mainstream school—which the county council is commissioning—and the provision recently created for an AP, or alternate provision, school in the north of the county. There is some welcome progress there, but as I will touch on later, I do not feel that it is quite enough to meet need.
Back on that £2.6 billion, I have some concerns about the progress of that much needed capital investment. Careful examination of the supplementary estimates for the Department reveals a £300 million transfer from the capital to the revenue budget. I ask for reassurance that none of that has come out of the £2.6 billion originally targeted for investment in SEND. If any has, will the Minister tell us how much? Can he provide figures for how many places have been commissioned in each of the three categories set out in the 2021 spending review and how many more are in the pipeline?
From long experience and from my work on the Select Committee, I know that the DFE has routinely underspent its allocated capital, but at a time when the need for SEND placements is so high and we have the urgent challenge of RAAC—reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete—affecting many mainstream and specialist schools, I hope that the Department is protecting the precious investment that Ministers, including me and my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince), fought so hard to secure.
Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con)
I am grateful for my hon. Friend securing this debate and for his work on the subject. In Cheadle, we are welcoming a new £70 million SEND provision being opened at the end of this year, in September; 133 places will be provided there. Teachers and headteachers I have talked to are telling me that in their establishments and schools, they want more resource-based provision, which might involve capital investment. Going along with that as well, we have the problems mentioned earlier in securing the education, health and care plan. Does my hon. Friend agree that all those issues need to be addressed if we are to get the right future for our children?
Mr Walker
Yes, is the short answer. My hon. Friend sums up some of the challenges neatly.
I come to some of the recommendations of the Select Committee before touching in a little more detail on the local picture in my part of the world. During my time as Chair and under my predecessor, now the Minister for Skills, the Education Committee has held a number of sessions on SEND and the implementation of the 2014 reforms. In 2019, before my time, the Committee concluded that the reforms of 2014 “were the right ones” in principle, but that implementation had “been badly hampered”, notably by administration and funding, which at that time it called “wholly inadequate”.
The Committee also called for a more rigorous framework for local authorities; a direct line of appeal for parents and schools to the Department for Education; powers for the local government and social care ombudsman to investigate school complaints; and development of more employment and training opportunities post 16 for people with SEND. The Government pointed to their Green Paper and towards the Command Paper that was finally published two years later in response, but only the first and last of those recommendations have been fully addressed.
More recently, under the chairmanship of my right hon. Friend who is now the Minister for Skills, and his predecessor, the Committee held sessions and published correspondence in which SEND funding, and delays in processing it, have repeatedly been raised. I am grateful for correspondence in which Ministers have unequivocally confirmed that there is no push from the Government to ration or limit EHCP numbers, but I note that in his letter of October last year, the Minister on the Front Bench stated that
“in-year funding delays occur due to insufficient planning from local authorities”.
Will he update the House on what steps he is taking to address that and to ensure that every local authority has the resource and support it needs to plan properly in this space?
The vast majority of local authorities have high-needs deficits, which have been growing rather than shrinking in recent years. I have no doubt that my hon. Friend will talk about the valuable work that the Department supports through the safety valve and “Delivering Better Value” programmes, but the fact that those programmes are constantly growing, as is the cumulative deficit of local authorities, surely makes the case for more funding. At some stage, we have to acknowledge that producing ever more help to manage the level of deficits is not a sustainable solution, and that investment is required to clear or remove them. The high needs deficits are now compounded by the fact that the same local authorities have rapidly growing deficits in children’s social care and transport, limiting their potential to cross-subsidise.
The Government promised to introduce in their SEND and AP improvement plan a new national framework of banding and price tariffs for high needs funding, and more details were to follow later in 2023. I am not aware that that has been published, but my local specialist schools tell me that, although the total level of high needs funding has seen much-needed increases, and underlying per pupil funding has risen in real terms, the banding for specific conditions has not had an inflationary increase for over a decade. Given the rising costs of employing teaching assistants to support complex needs, surely that needs to be reviewed.
At every level of education, my Committee has made recommendations about SEND and encouraged the Department to do more to support SEND children and our families. In our childcare report, we recommended that the Government amend the early years foundation stage framework to ensure that more staff involved in a child’s care receive mandatory training in identifying and manging types of SEND. The Government rejected that proposal but stated that newly revised criteria for level 3 early years educator qualifications, alongside level 2 criteria, now include standalone criteria on SEND identification and practice. They also made welcome announcements about support for early years special educational needs co-ordinators, and partially accepted our recommendation to expand family hubs—although, to be clear, I believe that they can and should go further.
Absence rates are significantly higher for pupils with SEND. In our report on persistent absence, the Committee recommended that the Government prioritise resources for early identification of need, inclusion and assessment in mainstream schools to ensure that they can adequately support pupils with SEND. We recommended making attendance in specialist schools a key metric of success, recognising both the support that having children in such settings provides families and the developmental benefits to the child. The Committee also recommended that the Government ensure that pupils with SEND are placed in alternative provision only for a limited time and as a way of addressing issues affecting their attendance in mainstream schools. The DFE should discourage its use as a way of managing behaviour.
The Department for Education said in its response that it is working with 32 local authorities and testing approaches in schools to improving early identification of SEND-related conditions. Additionally, it is piloting early language support for every child, jointly funded by NHS England, to have speech and language professionals based in early years primary schools to spot early delays in development and take swift appropriate action. Pilots are great, but we need that support everywhere in the country.
For our recent report on Ofsted’s work with schools, we heard that lack of expertise among inspectors was seen by specialist schools as a particular problem. The report recommended that Ofsted ensure that the lead inspector always has expertise relevant to the type of school, and that a majority of members of larger teams have the relevant expertise. We recommended that factors, such as the number of students from disadvantaged groups and those with SEND, should be clearly described and visible in the final Ofsted report. We hope that that will be reiterated both to the new chief inspector, through his “Big Listen” consultation, which was launched last week, and to the Government.
Evidence to our careers inquiry suggested that pupils with SEND were not receiving adequate careers advice and guidance, and highlighted that they face additional barriers and need extra support to access the same level of careers education and opportunities as their peers. The Committee recommended that the Department set out the steps that it intends to take to ensure that all SENCOs are fully trained and working with career leaders or with a school or college.
The Committee has welcomed the increased focus on supported internships and apprenticeships targeted at SEND pupils, but as we highlighted in our post-16 qualifications report, too many SEND pupils are being held back by the focus on GCSE grade 4 for English and maths as a gateway to progression. We have also agreed in principle to look into the Government’s changes to disabled students’ allowance to ensure that the consolidation of that system does not lead to a reduction in opportunities for SEND students to progress into and sustain higher education. That matters because we know that pupils with special educational needs are a rising proportion of the school population. Their life chances matter just as much a everyone else’s, and their parents’ ability to work, support them and live a full life depends on their receiving the right support through childhood, in school and into early adulthood.
Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)
This is not just the morally right and good thing to do for the individuals in question and their families, but it is massively good for wider society because it unlocks the potential of neurodivergent individuals, who are among the most creative and gifted people in the country. Does my hon. Friend agree?
Mr Walker
My hon. Friend puts it perfectly, and I wholeheartedly agree with him.
The logic behind the Government’s welcome increase in investment in childcare, which I have strongly supported, applies just as much, if not more, when it comes to supporting children with SEND. If we get this right, there are benefits for the life chances of the individual and of the family who support them.
Mr Walker
I will not give way because I need to make progress.
I have lost count of the number of highly educated parents who have felt that they needed to give up work to support their children. An increase in the departmental estimate to support SEND children would repay itself in the future earnings of their parents and would help the Government to meet their worthy aspiration of halving the disability employment gap and ensuring that work pays for future generations.
I should acknowledge some welcome local progress. In Worcestershire, two new specialist settings for children with autism have opened in the past few years: the one mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin), and one in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier). The county council is in the process of commissioning a new secondary school with a specialist autism base in Worcester. We have seen expansions in the number of pupils supported at both Regency High School and Fort Royal Community Primary School in Worcester, and we have seen improvements in the opening of new settings in alternative provision. An exciting partnership between Heart of Worcestershire College and the National Star college in Cheltenham promises better local progression opportunities for further education students with SEND. Our university prides itself on being one of the most inclusive in the country.
The demand on all our settings is rising insatiably. Fort Royal in particular has seen a huge increase in severity among the population of pupils it serves. That has led the school to seek agreement with the county council to reduce its intake so that it can ensure that pupils with highly complex needs are properly and safely supported. The principal of the school has recently written to local politicians to highlight that and the risk of local needs not being met by 2030. Will the Minister look at that correspondence and consider carefully the need for small specialist provision in Worcestershire, particularly at primary level? I have over many years made the case to move Fort Royal Community Primary School—a brilliant school on a highly constrained site—to a location where it could grow and expand.
I also want to raise the concerns of respite settings such as New Hope Worcester, which provides vital support to SEND families during the holiday. New Hope has seen a reduction in the number of places that it is commissioned to provide. Parents from that setting have raised with me their concern that more support is urgently needed for respite care, which helps to ensure that their children can engage in specialist education and avoids the far greater cost of children being taken into homes. Although that support comes from the budget of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities rather than the DFE, we need to acknowledge the importance of cross-departmental working to better support need.
The Local Government Association’s helpful briefing for this debate, which I have touched on already, majors on that issue and makes a number of constructive recommendations. It calls for a cross-Government strategy for children and young people, arguing that DLUHC should co-ordinate capacity issues impacting on children’s social care, SEND and the early years. The LGA wants councils to have the powers to lead local SEND systems, and hold health and education partners to account for their work supporting SEND children and young people.
The LGA calls on the Government to use the SEND improvement plan to recognise the vital interconnection between SEN and mental health. Children and young people with learning difficulties are over four times more likely than average to develop a mental health problem. That means that one in seven of all children and young people with mental health difficulties in the UK will also have a learning disability. The report points out that good-quality early years provision can generate sustained and significant improvements in children’s outcomes, reducing disparities in later life, but neither councils nor early years providers feel that they have sufficient funding, resources and tools to properly support children with SEND and their families.
This morning, I attended the excellent briefing by the Children’s Services Development Group on the launch of its “Hopeful Horizons” report. Among the key recommendations of that report are urgent clarity on the banding and tariffs arising from the new national standards, and speeding up the building and registration of new services. The group pointed out that independent specialist advisers have a wealth of knowledge and want to work closely with the Government to make the process a success.
It is good to see the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) in her place. I look forward to hearing her proposals for ensuring that any future Labour Government address SEND funding and provision better than they have in the past. I expect her to point to her party’s flagship policy of imposing VAT on independent schools as part of the solution for providing the resource to meet needs. However, having heard many of the uses to which Labour wants to put that theoretical money, I am at a loss to see how any of it would provide the revenue or capital needed to better support SEND children.
In fact, in our last debate on this issue, in which no Labour Back Benchers spoke, we heard from the hon. Lady’s colleague that Labour does not plan to exempt specialist settings from its tax grab—only pupils in independent settings with an EHCP. I profoundly believe that that is a policy mistake that Labour would come to regret if it ever carried it out. Many pupils with SEND are supported either by their families or by local authorities in independent provision, including many highly specialised schools, and a small proportion of those pupils currently have EHCPs.
The decision to make that, and solely that, the gateway for avoiding a 20% increase in costs would create enormous and immediate demand for EHCPs, which local authorities and health structures are already struggling to provide in a timely manner. It could result in many pupils with SEND leaving, or being taken out of, settings that are currently meeting their needs and then seeking EHCPs in order to access settings that might. I do not believe that Labour has thought this policy through, or that it has factored into its calculations that £86,000 per place for public provision.
The DFE estimates show rising spend on public education and schools and, within that, a rising level of investment in high needs. All of that is welcome, but not sufficient. In 2014, this House legislated to better support the needs of SEND children, and as the Government themselves have acknowledged, the potential of that legislation has not yet been realised. I hope Front Benchers of whatever colour will reflect on the need for future estimates to better support this vital and worthy cause.
In conclusion, I will support the departmental estimates, because they provide record levels of funding for education in general and SEND in particular, but I believe there is a strong case for increasing both capital and revenue investment in the latter.
Gen Kitchen (Wellingborough) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Speaker, for calling me to make my maiden speech on this vital topic, which came up a lot during the campaign.
It is a great honour to stand here as the new Labour MP for Wellingborough. I was two years old when the last Labour MP for Wellingborough made their maiden speech in 1997, but since then, we have had a highly visible Member of the Chamber. Although Peter Bone and I disagree on many things, he was an experienced campaigner and a lead voice in the Grassroots Out campaign.
Wellingborough is not just a constituency, but a tapestry of diverse voices, experiences and aspirations. From the streets of our market towns to the tranquil countryside that surrounds them, each corner of the constituency tells a story of resilience, ingenuity and community spirit. I pledge to honour, protect and champion this rich tapestry with every ounce of my being. Many on this side of the House will have visited the beautiful constituency of Wellingborough during the campaign, but for those who did not make it on to the campaign trail, the constituency consists of the towns of Wellingborough, Rushden, Higham Ferrers and Finedon, and the picturesque villages that surround them. We are 50 minutes from London by train, and close to the M1 and the A14, so there is no reason for Members not to visit for a cheeky weekend away to help boost our local economy and high streets.
As Wellingborough is a bellwether seat, the people of Orlingbury, Wollaston and Irchester often know the problems that the Government of the day will face before they do. The result of the campaign saw the largest swing this century, and the cleanliness of high streets, highways, policing, access to education for children with special educational needs and disabilities, and access to healthcare were crucial issues when knocking on doors from Bozeat to Wilby and the Harrowdens. It was striking how the communities of Chelveston, Newton Bromswold and Grendon had all stepped up where the public sector had been cut.
One village in particular, Great Doddington, holds a special place in my family history. The quaint village is where my great-grandfather, the Reverend Henry Hacking, served from 1935 to 1938 as the parish vicar of St Nicholas after serving as an Army chaplain in the first world war. As many will know, both sides of my family have served in the armed forces for three generations, and their commitment to public service and duty to our country was instilled in me from a young age. I endeavour to make them proud, and have dedicated my professional career to the charity sector, fundraising for projects to help those in need.
On that point, I would like to highlight a couple of charities that have done incredible work to help the community and the constituency. The “Off the Streets” knife crime campaign has trained the public on how to use bleed kits, and has designed knife amnesty bins that have been installed in Queensway. I urge Members to look at the work of that charity and encourage similar charities in their constituencies. The Victoria Centre and Daylight Centre provide housing, food banks and a sense of community to Wellingborough town centre. SERVE in Rushden has stepped in to ensure that the elderly and disabled can get to doctors’ and hospital appointments now that the bus service is lacking and urgent care is challenging. Coming from the charity sector, I am honoured to be in a position to further their causes in this House.
As part of my commitment and economic pledge to the constituents of Wellingborough, Mr Speaker, in the coming months you can expect me to bang the drum for our town centres and high streets, and encourage more tourists and Members to visit the area. For a great Saturday, you could visit Irvin’s speciality tea shop, whose tea I serve in my office, or have wine from the Wine Chateau, which is the only bricks and mortar specialist shop that sells Moldovan wine—again, in my office. You could visit Rushden & Diamonds football club to support community football; it is a great Saturday out—me and my dad have watched them score in the 97th minute. You could end your night at the award-winning Ember restaurant in Wellingborough or the new restaurant in Rushden, La Estrella.
If history is more your thing, the constituency is steeped in it, with buildings from the Jacobean, Elizabethan and Caroline eras. In fact, the Hind Hotel was the resting point for Oliver Cromwell and his army before the battle of Naseby in 1645. Higham Ferrers’ town charter is from 1251, and the town has a charming farmers’ market on Saturday and Sunday in the historic town square, opposite the English Heritage site of Chichele College. The natural landscape of the constituency is breathtaking. Based within the Nene valley—pronounced differently if you’re from from Cambridgeshire—the constituency hosts the internationally renowned Waendel Walk, which Members can participate in this May; I hope to see many of you with walking boots on. As a bonus attraction, my pugs will do a small section of it too.
Thank you again, Mr Speaker, for allowing me to make my maiden speech in a debate on this vital topic, and basically to launch the “Visit Wellingborough” campaign. I am honoured by the opportunity, and will now give way to the estimates debate.
Matt Hancock (West Suffolk) (Ind)
I begin by congratulating the new hon. Member for Wellingborough (Gen Kitchen) on an eloquent speech and on her “Visit Wellingborough” campaign. That campaign is just embryonic right now; I know that she was encouraging some in the House to join it a couple of months ago, but sadly, I could not do so. No doubt it will continue.
I note that before entering the House, the hon. Lady was an ardent fundraiser for many charities, including Sarcoma UK, a children’s hospice, a children’s health charity and the Salvation Army. I am delighted that she is taking such an early interest in special educational needs, a subject that is very close to my heart. I have just launched a charity, the Accessible Learning Foundation, to champion early identification of neurodivergent conditions. Maybe in the short time we will overlap in this House, she can teach me something about charity fundraising. I say “short time”, of course, because I am leaving, not just because—[Laughter.] I will leave that hanging. It was an excellent maiden speech: it was powerful, strong and clear, and did not go on nearly as long as the speech by the Chair of the Select Committee. By acting in that way, she will win many friends right across the House, and I congratulate her.
This is an important debate, because it is vital that we have stronger provision for special educational needs. I acknowledge and appreciate the work that the Minister has done on this issue and the progress that the Government have made. The Chair of the Select Committee was right to say that some of the promise of the 2014 Act that is the cornerstone of the legislative framework has been delivered on, but certainly not all of it. My particular focus is on the need for early identification. The argument is this: if we can identify special educational needs and neurodiverse conditions early, we can get the support in early, which is better value for the taxpayer as well as self-evidently better for the individuals concerned.
In particular, I want to take on and defeat the argument that identifying conditions leads to labelling, which some say makes the problem worse for an individual. That is not true—it is an antediluvian attitude that needs to be abolished from our policy approach. Having more information and data about each child is better for those children and their teachers. For instance, early identification of dyslexia by assessing the gap between a child’s phonic ability—already assessed in the early year 1 phonics test—and their oral linguistic ability is now easily doable using technology and artificial intelligence, which can automatically assess oral capability in a way that simply was not possible even a couple of years ago. Knowing about that gap can help a teacher support a dyslexic child in a way that can mitigate the challenges that dyslexia brings and give them the skills to deal with those challenges, so that they can benefit from all the rest of their education. That is not just in English—in reading and writing—but in all other subjects, which are of course built on reading and writing, especially those such as history that require significant amounts of language.
The argument that these conditions are somehow not scientifically valid and we should not identify them early has been put to me by officials in the Department, and most recently in The Times newspaper by the otherwise absolutely brilliant Matthew Parris, whom I love. He argued that he did not think attention deficit hyperactivity disorder existed, for instance. Those arguments are simply wrong, and should be destined for the dustbin of history. I urge the Minister to set out the further progress that has been made on early identification. The pilots are good and some schools are doing great work, but what we need in a universal education service is universal early identification of neurodivergent conditions, and the support that comes with that.
I welcome the fact that the Minister recently said that there is no rationing of education, health and care plans. That is important because some people worry that, because EHCPs are expensive to deliver, there is somehow an attempt to limit who gets them. The challenge, however, is that they are not fairly and evenly available. Because some parents can afford to pay for a formal diagnostics test for dyslexia, there is a social inequality in who gets access. Hence we need universal screening—not necessarily universal formal diagnosis, which is a more expensive process, but universal screening—so that we know who is more likely to be neurodivergent, and then the plans can be more properly and more fairly targeted. There are now proven, cost-effective early years interventions that we know work. They do not take up much time, and the time they do take up is more than well spent in being able to target better support. They are available online, and this needs to become a universal standard across primary schools in England.
One of the reasons why this subject is so important is what happens when things go wrong. We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt) that we need to support neurodivergent children because of their ability to succeed. We know, for instance, that about half of successful entrepreneurs are dyslexic. We know that there are skills that dyslexic people tend to have in more abundance than straight-line thinkers, such as creativity, and we can understand why, because if someone has had to spend their whole childhood working out how to get around the fact that they are dyslexic, that will develop those parts of the brain that enhance creativity.
However, we should not just be Panglossian; there is a darker side to this. In our society, neurodivergent individuals have for far too long been let down, and we have a school-to-prison pipeline, much of which is due to the lack of early identification. For instance, statistics for 2016-17—I would be interested to know if the Minister has an update—show that children identified with special educational needs accounted for 46.7% of all permanent exclusions, despite making up under 15% of the school population, so almost half of those who are excluded from school are identified as having special educational needs.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
The right hon. Gentleman makes a powerful point about school exclusions. I should not have been shocked because the statistics are all out there for us to see, but last year when I visited Feltham young offender institution, just down the road from my constituency, I was told that the vast majority of young men in that institution have special educational needs and had been excluded from school. He is powerfully making the point that, if we do not invest early, we are storing up huge social and economic costs for ourselves.
Matt Hancock
That is absolutely right, and this issue unites colleagues from across the House. The Bill I will bring forward next month has cross-party support, and I urge the hon. Member to add her name to it. It has support from my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) all the way through to the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), and it is not often that they sign the same piece of paper. If she will add her name to it, that would create a triangle of support across this House, which I would really welcome.
As the hon. Member said—in fact, she anticipated my very next point—the Ministry of Justice reports that 42% of incarcerated individuals had experienced exclusion from school, and we know that just over half of those in the male prison population have a primary school reading age. Addressing neurodiversity, identifying it early, ensuring there is the right support, and therefore reducing illiteracy and getting in support for the behavioural consequences of neurodivergent conditions will lead to fewer people in prison. It will also make sure that those who end up in prison, having been missed by the education system, get this support, and that will help to reduce reoffending. I am glad to say that the Lord Chancellor is on this and is making progress, and the Health Secretary made a huge amount of progress when she was prisons Minister, but there is much more to do.
Here is one concrete example of a new policy that I would propose, which I put to the Minister. The Ministry of Justice is currently rolling out digital profiles of prisoners, outlining their screening data and educational enrolments that are assessed on entry to prison, and ensuring that that data follows prisoners as they move from prison to prison. It is a very good initiative that was started under the previous Lord Chancellor and is being rolled out now. However, in the school system there is no automated data flow from primary to secondary school. Often, there are assessments early in secondary school, and that is good, but if there is screening data or an assessment of individual child need, there is no automated way for such data, with the richness of the data that can now be available, to be passed through to secondary school. Essentially, each child starts from a blank canvas, and it all has to be reassessed.
We need an accurate assessment of where a child is up to at the start of secondary school, but understanding their history as well would be valuable, so I ask the Minister to look at what the MOJ has done on data transfer—in its case, normally from initial prison to the longer-stay prison—for use in the transition from primary to secondary school.
Mr Robin Walker
It strikes me that my right hon. Friend’s suggestion about passporting information from primary has much wider applications. Something I have often observed in my work on the Education Committee is that there are problems when, for instance, primary schools build up a pupil’s ability in one language and then the pupil transfers to a secondary school that teaches a completely different one. Some form of passporting of data from primary to secondary through a pupil passport, not only for special educational needs but for learning, would be extremely useful in managing such transitions.
Matt Hancock
Yes, I am absolutely certain that this approach to data is more widely applicable. My focus is on this specific area, but there is now a richness of data on individual children that simply was not available 10 years ago or even five years ago, and I think that such passporting of data would be invaluable.
I agree with everything the Chair of the Select Committee said on the question of funding, so I will not repeat it. He has been the leader of the f40 campaign for many years. Suffolk is underfunded, as is Worcestershire, so I put in my plug, but I do not need to add any more details. The Minister knows them for sure.
I will close by saying that I appreciate the engagement the Minister has shown on this subject, and I look forward to meeting him in private in the next couple of weeks to continue this discussion. However, I would urge him to support early identification not just as a matter of social justice, not just as a matter of progress for each individual child and not just to ensure that each child can reach their potential, but, since this is an estimates day debate, because we will then spend taxpayers’ money on education more wisely and we will get better educational outcomes as a result.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I would like to publicly congratulate Gen Kitchen on her fine maiden speech. Well done.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock). I agreed with an awful lot of what he said, particularly his point about early diagnosis and not being afraid to attach a label to things, because that equips parents and teachers to support a child appropriately. Even if that does not necessarily mean additional funding is needed, it is about making sure that we all have the right tools in our armoury to support a child.
I congratulate the new hon. Member for Wellingborough (Gen Kitchen) on her maiden speech, and I look forward to seeing her around—I hope for many more months and years to come.
I also congratulate the Chair of the Education Committee, the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), on securing this important debate. I was very happy to sponsor his application for it, given the desperation and exasperation felt by so many parents of children with special educational needs and disabilities up and down the country. As he said, we heard from Members from both sides of the House in January in a well-attended debate secured by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Sir David Davis). They told harrowing stories that they learned of from their constituency casework, and in some cases from personal family experiences. Sadly, his plea for more immediate support in the Budget fell on deaf ears, although the longer-term commitment to build a few more special schools was welcome, and I will say a little more about that later. The insufficient funding for SEND has a visceral impact on vulnerable children and their families, but it is also one of the most pressing financial issues facing local authorities around the country, many of which are on the brink of bankruptcy. I shall focus my remarks on that issue, rather than repeating points that I made in the debate in January.
Since March 2021, the Department for Education has made safety-valve agreements with the 34 local authorities with the highest dedicated schools grant deficits, and a further five are in the pipeline. The Department is working with an additional 55 local authorities through its “delivering better value in SEND” programme, so we are not far off having 100 local authorities already engaged with the DFE because they are struggling with funding for SEND. That number will continue to rise because, as has repeatedly been said in the House, the available SEND funding simply does not match the need. Ultimately, many of these programmes are sticking-plaster solutions that will not address the longer-term underlying challenge, because local authorities are already predicting and modelling significant deficits in years to come, beyond the lifespan of some of these agreements.
It is worrying that so many local authorities are already involved in these mechanisms, but more worrying still is the number of local authorities using the statutory override. Introduced in 2020, the override allows local authorities to exclude any deficits in their dedicated schools grant spending from their main revenue budgets. In effect, it allows local authority to proceed with an imbalanced budget without requiring a section 114 notice. That provision had been due to expire in March 2023 but has been extended for a further three years and will end in March 2026, yet there seems little prospect of local authorities being able to manage these deficits down in such a short space of time without a great deal more Government support.
Are we just waiting for a deluge of section 114 notices when the statutory override expires? The Select Committee on Levelling Up, Housing and Communities certainly seems to think so. In its recent “Financial distress in local authorities” report, it concluded:
“The Government’s use of the statutory override and one-off ‘safety valve’ funding are temporary measures and do not address the underlying mismatch between demand, costs, and annual Dedicated Schools Grant funding”.
It added:
“the sector faces a cliff-edge of section 114 notices.”
There is no information on what will happen when the statutory override concludes. A cynic might suggest that this Conservative Government, who are clearly on their last legs, are happy to kick this thorny issue into the long grass for the next Administration to grapple with. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s answer to this problem, which is already keeping many council leaders awake at night, even if he hopes that this will be somebody else’s problem.
As for those local authorities that are in safety-valve agreements, are the Government keeping their side of the bargain? I have spoken before about the lack of SEND school places and the costs that can lead to; for example, children may be placed in private equity-backed schools that charge exorbitant fees and rip off taxpayers, and there is also the additional cost of transporting SEND children outside the local area. It behoves the Government to set up new SEND schools and create new places, and although the Government have promised 15 special schools in their Budget, as we have heard, their track record on delivery is poor. As the Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Worcester, pointed out, it is an open question whether the funding announced will allow the promise to be met.
We are told that we can expect these schools to open in three to four years. Frankly, I will believe it when I see it, because just last week it was reported that building work on 33 new special schools that will particularly help children with autism was seriously delayed, despite the expectation that they would be up and running by 2026. The response from the Department for Education was that it never set that target date. Councils are trying to take matters into their own hands, but the Government approved fewer than half of the 85 applications from councils to open SEND free schools in 2022.
Local authorities trying to meet the requirements of their safety-valve agreements will be significantly hindered if the new SEND places promised by the Government are not forthcoming. The day-to-day impact that the delays will have on mainstream schools must not be underestimated. I hold a termly call with all the chairs of school governing bodies in my constituency. My discussions with those governors and with local headteachers regularly feature SEND, as I am sure the Minister can imagine, and in particular the massive impact on staff, other pupils and school budgets of ensuring that children with high needs who are waiting for an EHCP or desperately searching for a special school place are adequately supported. One local school told me of teaching assistants being bitten, and quitting as a result. When that happens, it exacerbates the workforce challenges that many of our schools face. The school was concerned about how to keep other pupils safe, and was spending a large amount of money trying to support a child who clearly should not have been in a mainstream school. The mainstream school cannot claw that money back once the child finally gets an EHCP and a special school place.
These delays are exacerbated by a desperate shortage of educational psychologists and speech and language therapists. I agree with the comments about making sure that we have those people in place to support the early identification that has been talked about; these professionals are integral to the system. We must address the chronic shortage of speech and language therapists and educational psychologists if we are to provide any sort of timely assessment. Scandalously, one school in my constituency said that it had the budget that it wanted to spend on speech and language therapy, but it had to hand the money back because it could not find anyone to deliver the support, and it was a “use it or lose it at the end of the financial year” budget.
I come to the final issue that I want to raise. I heard about this just last week from a Shropshire councillor, and it strikes me as a real anomaly, and waste in the system that Ministers could easily address without spending more money. I was told that a statement of special need issued in one nation of the UK cannot be passported to another. If a child with an EHCP in England moves across the border to Wales, that EHCP is not recognised, and vice versa, and the parents have to join a waiting list and start the process again from scratch. The situation is the same in Scotland. That will also have an impact on children coming into England. They are being reassessed for EHCPs, as the statements they received in Scotland or Wales are not recognised. At a time when resources are being stretched to breaking point, this lack of passporting is surely nonsense. The help and support that a child requires in one nation of the UK is surely the same in the next. I hope the Minister will take this issue away and seek to resolve it. As always seems to be the case with SEND, it is the children and their families who suffer the most. They wait forever to get the help and support that they need, and families often have to fight hard for their child’s rights.
I am afraid that the Government are letting down children with special educational needs and disability. I hope that even if Ministers choose to ignore those on the Opposition Benches, they will listen to Back Benchers from their party, given that so many Conservative Members chose to sign a letter to the Chancellor asking for more SEND funding. We all know the statistics, and know that there has been a huge increase in the number of children with special educational needs. I recognise that presents enormous challenges for national and local government, but although those statistics are important, we must never forget that behind every statistic is a child who is directly affected—a child who, like every other, deserves the very best start in life, because every child, no matter their background or needs, can achieve great things.
Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to speak in the debate. First, I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Gen Kitchen). It is always good to make a maiden speech about special educational needs; I did so as well, and SEND is a critically important issue. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), who gave an incredibly long speech, but it was not unenjoyable. I am dyspraxic and dyslexic, and my attention is not great, so I often get bored easily, but the content was really good. He covered virtually everything there is to say in an incredibly comprehensive way. In fact, the Chairman of the Education Committee covered points that I was looking to make that I thought would be innovative, because he is so on the ball. I was on the Committee for a couple of years, and it is a shame that I never served under him. I left before he became Chairman, and I supported him in becoming Chairman. I learned a lot today about the work he has been doing. It makes me happy to see him giving so much priority to special educational needs, which he has such knowledge of and is so well versed in. That is good news and great to hear.
I have supported my right hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock) in his work on early diagnosis. I have told this story so many times, and I am sorry if I am a bit like a broken record, but when I was 12, I had the reading and writing age of an eight-year-old. I could not do my shoelaces until I was 14. Frankly, it was only when I was diagnosed with dyslexia and dyspraxia that things started to change in a positive way for me, so diagnosis makes a huge difference. Some people say that sometimes it can go a bit far, or that sometimes there is a bit of an obsession with people feeling like they need to be labelled. That might be an issue, perhaps in a minority of cases, but in the vast majority of cases, people need and deserve to know what they have got if they are neurodivergent, because then other people can better understand them, and they can better understand themselves. Things that may have been real challenges can, over time, in the course of their life, become assets.
Certainly if somebody turned up today and said, “Tom, I can wave this magic wand and you will no longer have dyspraxia and dyslexia,” I would say, “Don’t wave it, because I want to have dyslexia and dyspraxia.” It presents me with a number of challenges. Some people try to say that I use it as an excuse when I should be a bit more on top of things. Two weeks ago, I left my phone in the back of a cab and lost it. Last night, I left my rucksack in the back of somebody’s car. I have only just got it back; that is why there has been lots of activity here, and messages being passed. I will not blame my forgetfulness on my dyspraxia, but it might have something to do with it.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Sir David Davis)—I think that is right; I have not had a phone to check his constituency online. I had to get advice from colleagues about the name of his constituency. [Interruption.] He is here! You have just missed my excuse for not knowing it. [Interruption.] I will speak through the Chair from now on, sorry. I was pleased to sign his letter, because I know there are significant funding issues. I sat and watched the Budget, and I welcome the additional funding, but do I honestly feel that it was the game-changing moment we need on SEND funding? The answer is no.
Pretty much everyone sees special educational needs as being a very important issue, but it is not that. It is a critical issue. It is one of the most important issues, and it links in with so many other things. We need to see the big picture of how getting SEND right relates to tackling crime, how it links to entrepreneurialism, and how it helps us to deal with providing mental health services. These connections and links must be seen if we are to truly understand how important SEND is. It cannot be seen in isolation.
My right hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk knows that in Suffolk, we sadly have had a failing SEND system. I have got to a stage, particularly over the past year, where 50% to 60% of my surgery appointments are with parents fighting to get the support that their children need. More than 50% of my surgery appointments are about SEND, and probably about 20% are about mental health. For some of those individuals, or individuals whose loved ones are struggling, often crippled by mental health problems, that is not disconnected from the fact that they have not got the support they need, because they are neurodivergent.
Earlier this week, I met the Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust, whose mental health services have been in special measures for a long time. We heard some tragic stories from campaigners whose loved ones are no longer with us because they were failed. I remember hearing from one lady in particular. She was not a constituent, but she explained to me how her son, who is no longer with us, had dyspraxia, dyslexia and autism, and the profound impact of not getting the support. When you are not understood, or you feel like you are not understood—sometimes not even understanding yourself fully, or the world around you—that can breed deep upset and anguish. The two things are linked.
Since 2019, we have had two new special schools in Ipswich: the Sir Bobby Robson School and the Woodbridge Road Academy. Each provides up to around 50 places. I remember speaking to the head teacher of the Sir Bobby Robson School, and already it has taken a few more pupils than it planned. There just are not enough places, even with those two new special schools. It is great for those who get in—it has been transformative and turned some of their lives around—but for every young person who gets a place, there are a number who cannot.
Part of SEND needs to be about the mainstream. EHCPs are not appropriate for everyone, so we have to get that support in the mainstream, too. We need more SEND specialists, but we also need to have general teachers having a much higher knowledge of all different types of neurodiversity. That is one thing I want to probe with the Minister at some point, because the SEND review made a commitment to a higher amount of initial teacher training. When I visit schools in my constituency, I make a point of trying to find newly qualified teachers, and I always ask them, “How much of your teacher training was about SEND?”, and the consensus is that hardly any of it is. I need to see evidence that since that commitment from the Government, things are changing in practice. For existing teachers—those who have perhaps been teachers for many decades—we must put in place resources to ensure they get the knowledge they need, because there is not a teacher I have met who is not passionate about wanting to do more to support SEND; they just need the knowledge and support to get to that place.
When I was on the Education Committee, one link we discussed was 40% or 50% of those in prison being neurodivergent to some extent. They feel like the system has failed them. They feel alienated from the system, and then they turn against it, and to a certain extent that is understandable. One good thing that was done was by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) when he was a Justice Minister—he is now an Education Minister—and he committed to putting a neurodiversity manager in each prison. Before then, there were only enough neurodiversity managers to cover four prisons. That was a good change.
Ultimately, we have got to get to that game-changing moment on funding. There are many things that Suffolk County Council could and should have done better on SEND, but I have sympathy that in Suffolk we are particularly badly funded. We have met the Minister about that, and we understand that that gap is apparently narrowing, but how is it defensible for me to have to explain to parents in my constituency why their children who are neurodivergent are worth less than children who are neurodivergent not just in London—we have become used to that kind of disparity—but in Norfolk and Essex? It is extraordinary, and I cannot defend that. I do not want people in those areas who are neurodivergent to get any less investment—I want them to get all the investment in the world—but I want young people in Ipswich and Suffolk who are neurodivergent to get that support as well.
Why does this matter? I raised this in an intervention earlier. Because this is a debate about the Budget, I will not just make the argument about why investing in SEND is morally the right thing to do. Even taking the bean-counter’s approach—the Treasury view—that game-changing moment in funding for SEND is good for the taxpayer, because it unleashes the talent and ability of so many people who think differently. I am in the process of setting up the all-party parliamentary group for neurodiversity in defence and national security because the soldier-first principle is difficult for many neurodiverse people who think differently, but we really need them when it comes to cyber.
This might surprise people, but I briefly flirted with joining the Royal Navy as an officer. I went to the open day where six of us got together and it was like, “Here’s a barrel. You’ve got to tie loads of knots and get it over these imaginary shark-infested waters to the island.” At that time—I think I was probably 25—I felt like I was 11 or 12 again. I felt thick again. I felt that people were looking at me like I was stupid.
We have got to do this. I served on the Education Committee with the Minister, who I know is in this place because of his passion for education, and I know that he gets SEND. I want to help him to make the case for why investing in SEND is of monumental importance and game-changing.
James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con)
It is an enormous pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt) and his typically powerful and forthright speech. I also commend my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) for securing the debate and, of course, the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Gen Kitchen) for her maiden speech. A massive “Well done” to her— it is not an easy thing to do.
I have been a pretty robust champion for SEND for some time and have spoken on it at length in the House, so I do not want to detain hon. Members for too long, but there are some important points that I wish to raise, particularly with the Minister. The backdrop for SEND across the UK is getting ever better. In March last year, the Government published their SEND and alternative provision improvement plan. Why was that important? Because it commits to a huge increase in funding for education across the UK, and for SEND in particular, with investment increasing by more than 60% from 2019-20 to more than £10.5 billion a year by 2024-25. That is a huge increase in money, and we know beyond doubt that this is the highest funding ever for education in the UK.
I was also pleased that, as part of that plan, there is a new leadership-level SENCO NVQ, which is an important professional qualification. We have also got expanded training for staff ranging from up to 5,000 early years educational needs co-ordinators to 400 educational psychologists. Excitingly, in Bracknell Forest, a proposal is being mooted in conjunction with Bracknell and Wokingham College for a pilot to be run for recruiting and training additional teaching assistants, and particularly those who may be focused on special educational needs.
As the Minister knows, last year’s review identified three key challenges. First, navigating the SEND system and alternative provision is not a positive experience for families. Indeed, the EHCP process is too long, too convoluted and too difficult—it requires a degree to fill it out and submit it. Secondly, outcomes for children and young people with SEND are consistently worse than their peers’ across every measure, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich just mentioned. Thirdly, despite the continuing and unprecedented investment, the system is not financially sustainable and insufficient places are available for those needing specialist provision.
What do we need to do? Given that I try to focus nationally as well as locally, I think that first we need to better operationalise the process. We know that the money is available and the policy is in place, but it is not being translated right now to improvements locally. I am working locally with Bracknell Forest Council to do that. Additional staff are being recruited and response times are improving for those who contact the Department, but these improvements need to happen much more broadly across the DFE’s area.
While the details remain confidential—that is a safety valve—I am supporting Bracknell Forest Council in its endeavours and am meeting here in Westminster with Ministers to ensure the best possible deal for councillors and officials at the council. I am grateful to the Government for their ongoing co-operation and investment, which is pivotal. However, to better operationalise the provision, we need the right settings for all our children, and sufficient places. Even with the increased funding, we need to build additional schools—and that is now, not in five years’ time.
Last year, I was pleased to play my part in securing funding for the new SEND school in Crowthorne in my constituency, which was one of the 60 new schools announced last year. Bracknell Forest Council assures me that it is ready right now to scope and build the school, so can we please have the money right now, not in five years?
Why stop there? We need to be ambitious nationally and locally. We could also invest locally in a third school. An obvious site in Bracknell is the Warfield site, which I have raised with the council before. I encourage the council in Bracknell to be more ambitious and go for it. Let us not just go for a second SEND school; let us go for a third as well. We need to do the same thing across the UK: identify settings where schools can be built and make the money available now, because these settings are non-discretionary.
Before I finish, I will raise two points. First, I have a particular issue with Labour’s policy on VAT for private schools. Aside from the huge impact on parents who choose—it is about choice—to educate their kids privately for good reason, that policy would have an adverse effect on service families and those with children with special needs. We must be careful what we wish for. Lastly, while I absolutely welcome the huge progress being made on SEND right across the UK, it does need operationalising both locally and nationally. It is about results and outcomes, not policy and money. I urge the Minister please to wave his magic wand on this one.
Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)
I thank the Chair of the Education Committee, the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), for securing this important debate and commend him for the work he does as the Select Committee’s Chair. I also pay tribute to those who work with and support children with special educational needs and disabilities. Across the country, teachers, teaching assistants, support staff, speech and language therapists, occupational therapists, mental health professionals and many more work tirelessly every day to ensure that children with SEND have the best possible education.
I am grateful to hon. Members who have contributed to the debate, but I must pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Gen Kitchen). It really is to her credit that she has chosen this debate to make her maiden speech and to be that powerful voice for some of the most vulnerable children and most challenged families in her community. She is clearly a powerful advocate for her communities. If they vote her back in at the general election, they will also hopefully have a Labour Government with whom she can work to truly deliver on her “visit Wellingborough” campaign.
Since the passage of the Children and Families Act 2014, the number of requests for EHC plans has risen year on year, doubling between 2016 and 2022. There was a further 7% rise in 2022 when 66,706 new plans were issued. Almost 400,000 school pupils are now supported through an EHC plan, while a further 1.2 million children are receiving support without a plan. However, it is clear from today’s debate that the support system for children with SEND is failing too many children and their families. Parents and carers are being forced into expensive and lengthy battles to access the support they need throughout their children’s time in school. In 2022, more than half of EHC plans were issued after the 20-week target.
Increasingly, families are turning to the tribunal process—with a 24% increase in cases last year—to secure a plan or appeal the detail of their child’s plan. An overwhelming 98% of cases were won by parents and carers last year. That process is not only draining for families but expensive for the taxpayer. Research by the Disabled Children’s Partnership found that lost cases cost councils and courts £60 million in 2021-22. We must not forget the families who do not even make it to the tribunal, and whose children’s needs are left unmet. These unacceptable delays are heartbreaking for families, who face years of stress and anxiety while their child is unable to access the education to which they are entitled.
More than a third of children with SEND were persistently absent from school in the autumn and spring terms last year. Although some of that absence is related to the need for medical appointments, much is due to the lack of tailored provision for a child’s needs. Children with SEND have one of the largest attainment gaps compared with their peers. A child with an EHCP is on average 28 months behind their peers at the end of primary school. The gap only grows throughout school, to a staggering 3.5 years—40 months—by the time they leave. We only get one childhood, and delayed support will embed lifelong inequalities and create barriers to the opportunities that children can pursue later in life.
The crisis in SEND support is having a devastating impact on local authority finances, as hon. Members have touched on. Increasing numbers of councils are issuing section 114 notices, effectively declaring bankruptcy, with many citing the impact of increasing SEND and home-to-school transport costs as reasons. No council takes this lightly, and councillors and officers across the country working really hard to balance the books. I am sure that the Minister may want to blame specific councils for the issues, but the sheer number of local authorities on the brink—with administrations of all political parties—cannot be dismissed. Reforming the SEND system is vital not only for children and families but to ensure that the wider local government services across the country are sustainable. Issuing a section 114 notice has grave implications for the delivery of all local government services, and it is often children who suffer most from the resulting cuts.
The Government’s SEND and alternative provision review should have been the opportunity to set out an ambitious plan for reform to ensure the best outcomes for children with SEND, better relationships with families, and a sustainable system for schools and local authorities. Yet after a four-year wait, the plan was met with widespread disappointment with its limited scope. Many measures will not come into effect until 2025—six years after the review was announced. In that time, 300,000 children with SEND will have left school.
The funding for 15 new special schools in last week’s Budget is welcome, but the schools will provide additional places for just 2,000 children and there is no clear timeline for when they will open to students. I hope that the Minister will update the House on the other 33 new special schools announced alongside the SEND and alternative provision improvement plan. More than a year on from the publication of the plan, the Department has yet to publish the details of approved academy trusts, and that is delaying the start of construction. When does the Minister expect those schools to open for students?
It is also disappointing that the Budget had little to say more widely on support for children with SEND, the majority of whom will continue to be educated in the mainstream sector. The Opposition are committed to breaking down the barriers faced by children with SEND. We believe in high and rising standards for every child. We know that there are children with additional needs in every classroom in every school but, as has been highlighted by Members on the Government Benches, the Government do not equip every teacher with the knowledge and skills they need to teach them.
Labour would look at every aspect of teacher training—undergraduate curriculum, early career framework and career change routes—and we will introduce an entitlement to annual continuing professional development, which we would expect to be used in many instances to boost SEND expertise. As part of Labour’s planned reforms to Ofsted inspection, moving away from the use of single-word judgments will ensure that schools are inspected on their inclusivity and that parents of children with SEND have access to clear information about their child’s school.
Children increasingly start school without the foundational language and communication skills that they need to take part in their education. We are committed to improving speech and language support, and will equip every school with funding to deliver evidence-based early language interventions, such as Nuffield early language intervention. More than 280,000 children received SEND support last year for their social, emotional and mental health, while many children with mental ill health were out of school entirely. The need for mental health support has soared in recent years. Alongside urgent action to address the unacceptably high waiting times for CAMHS support, we will embed professional mental health support in every school and deliver open access youth mental health hubs in every community.
We will build a modern early education and childcare system that works for the families of disabled children. The early identification of needs is vital to provide the intervention in the most important years of a child’s development. Last year, Coram found that just 18% of local authorities had sufficient places for disabled children. Will the Minister confirm that there will be sufficient places for disabled children ahead of the expansion of entitlements in April?
Children and families deserve much better than Government sticking plaster solutions. We will work with parents, carers, schools and local authorities to rebuild the support that children with SEND rely on, and deliver the change needed to ensure that every child can thrive in school. For 14 years, the Government have failed children and families. As we have always done in government, Labour will put children first again.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (David Johnston)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) for opening this important debate. I know how important it is to him that our investment in education gives children and young people the very best start in life, and his work on these issues both as Chair of the Education Committee and as an excellent former Schools Minister is well recognised across the House. I, too, pay tribute to all the staff and parents doing all they can to support children with special educational needs.
Before I turn to the substance of the debate, may I say what an excellent maiden speech the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Gen Kitchen) gave? It is nice to see someone else from the charity sector join the House. Her speech was a great advert for visiting Wellingborough, and specifically her office, where she seems to keep all of its best products. She said that she would like to make her family proud, but I have no doubt that she has already done that and will continue to do so a great deal more in the coming years.
This Government are making record investment in education, with total schools revenue funding reaching over £60.7 billion this coming year. That is the highest level in real terms per pupil in history. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (James Sunderland) said—a great champion for children with special educational needs—within the total funding amount, high needs funding is increasing to more than £10.5 billion in the coming financial year, which is an increase of over 60% compared with 2019-20.
The Department is also making a transformational investment in capital funding. We have published over £1.5 billion of high needs provision capital allocations for the 2022-23 and 2023-24 financial years to support local authorities to deliver new places and improve existing provision for children and young people with SEND or who require alternative provision.
James Wild (North West Norfolk) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way so early in his speech. I am grateful that there will be two special schools in Norfolk, including one in west Norfolk, but at the moment Norfolk County Council spends £40 million a year moving children with special needs to special schools rather than on their education itself. Will he look at the urgent funding need for counties like Norfolk that face those very high costs?
David Johnston
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. The amount being spent on transport rather than provision is too high. The solution is both to create more provision and to meet children’s needs in mainstream schools at an early enough stage wherever possible, though that is not always possible.
The investment is on top of our ongoing delivery of new special and alternative provision for free schools. Currently, 108 special free schools are open, with a further 77 approved to open in future. Last week, we announced funding for an additional wave of 15 special free schools. My hon. Friend the Member for Worcester asked some questions about that investment. I can confirm that it is intended to provide 30,000 additional specialist places and that we remain on course to deliver that. I can also confirm that we will still be spending £2.6 billion in this area.
Despite our investment in education funding, it is right to acknowledge that the SEND and alternative provision system continues to face challenges. The SEND and alternative provision improvement plan, which we published in March 2023, seeks to move us to a national system where every child gets the right support in the right place at the right time. We have already begun the process of testing our reforms. In September last year, we launched the SEND and AP change programme, which is delivering some of the things we talked about in the plan, including standardising and digitising the EHCP process, testing advisory tailored lists, and strengthening mediation.
On financial pressures, as has been touched on, the Department for Education has two main programmes—the safety valve programme and the delivering better value programme—to support and stabilise local authority expenditure. The programmes are designed to improve SEND services by helping local authorities to make the very best use of their resources. The local authorities with the highest percentage deficits are invited to join the safety valve programme, and there are now 34 local authorities with safety valve agreements. By March 2025, the Department will have allocated nearly £900 million through the programme to help local authorities to eliminate their historic deficits while continuing to deliver high-quality provision.
Local authorities with substantial but less severe deficits have been invited to join the delivering better value programme—an £85 million programme launched in 2022 that helps selected authorities to structure and deliver their SEND services so young people get the support they need at the right time. The authorities work out the causes of their challenges and develop action plans. They are given £1 million to support the implementation of the plan. We have published some of the learnings and insights from the programme so far, and will continue to find and share examples of good practice in local areas. That is, in part, to address the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester, the Chair of the Education Committee, about helping local authorities to plan appropriately.
Turning to other areas of funding to support children with special educational needs, we are investing £21 million to train 400 more educational psychologists by September 2024. We are investing £18 million between 2022 and 2025 to double the capacity of our supported internships programme. We have a new programme called PINS— partnerships for inclusion of neurodiversity—which is a £13 million investment that will deploy specialists from both health and education workforces to train more than 1,600 mainstream primary schools to better meet the needs of children with autism and other neurodiverse needs. There is plenty more I can say, but I want to address some of the questions raised.
As my right hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock) said, we know that effective early intervention can reduce the impact that a special educational need or disability may have. I commend him on his continued campaigning in that area. On childcare, we are working with every local authority to ensure they have the places available for all children, as part of our childcare roll-out.
My hon. Friend the Member for Worcester asked me to review the correspondence relating to the location of Fort Royal. I give him that commitment. My right hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk asked me to look at what the Ministry of Justice has done on passporting information; I will do that. On exclusions, we do not recognise the figures he quoted, but the proportion of children with special educational needs within the exclusion figures has been falling—although it is still too high.
The hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) asked about EHCP passporting between home nations. We would expect English local authorities to accept the evidence they have been given, but I will discuss that further with the team. My hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt) has been a consistent champion for children with special educational needs since we arrived here and served together on the Education Committee. We recently reviewed the frameworks for teacher training and there is now significantly more content on supporting children with special educational needs, but I am very happy to have a further discussion with him separately.
David Johnston
I would be very happy to meet my hon. Friends on that point.
There is then the question of what the Labour party would do differently. I did not hear anything that the Labour party would do differently. The only thing we know that it would do differently is to charge families with a child at a special school having their special needs met an additional 20% on the cost of that place. It can often be a huge struggle for families to meet the cost of a place in the first place, yet Labour will add 20% to that on the spurious grounds that otherwise—and I quote—“any school could claim it’s a special school.” That seems to me a particularly poor way of making education policy, not that there is much of it from the Labour party. I wonder how many Labour MPs, when they sit with constituents in their surgeries, tell those parents that they will hike their fees by 20%. I suspect not many, but every parent in the country deserves to know that.
James Sunderland
Does the Minister agree that this is ultimately about choice? It should be about parents having a choice about where they send their children to school, without being fiscally penalised for doing so. Does he also agree that imposing VAT on school fees will massively overload the state school system, because of the number of parents who may not be able to afford to send their kids to private school and who will therefore send them to state school? Does he agree that that policy is complete nonsense?
David Johnston
My hon. Friend makes some important points. The honest truth is that I just do not think the Labour party thought it through. I think they thought it was ideology that would please a particular wing of the party, but they did not think through the fact that it would hammer families with a child in a special school, trying to get their needs met, with an additional 20%. We will see what those families think about that policy.
Munira Wilson
I thank the Minister for giving way, because I actually support quite a lot of what he is saying on this issue. Just in the last couple of weeks, I have come across two or three families that have children with lower levels of additional needs that do not warrant an EHCP who have gone into state mainstream schools and really struggled. Those families told me that they scrimped and saved to get their child better support in a mainstream, but smaller and more nurturing, private school. In one case, a mother had inherited a little bit of money from a parent that she was then able to invest. She said to me that so many children will not have that opportunity. We should not penalise parents who want to make that choice to support their children with special needs. That is why the Liberal Democrats will also oppose putting VAT on private school fees.
David Johnston
It is not often I say this, but I entirely agree with the hon. Lady, and I hope we can work together. The Labour party believes in the myth that everyone who puts their children into these schools is wealthy and can afford the 20% increase, but, as the hon. Lady says, often people are just trying to get the right support for their children. Whether they can secure an EHCP is not within their control—all sorts of factors are involved—and it is completely unacceptable to hammer those families with another 20% on the cost of trying to meet their children’s needs.
Catherine McKinnell
At the risk of focusing on an issue that is a distraction, let me emphasise that we need to invest in special educational needs provision in mainstream schools, for all the reasons that have been advanced today, including in the necessary teacher training. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has concluded that this policy would bring in £1.3 billion to provide the 93% of children in the state sector who are currently being failed by the Government with the support that they need.
David Johnston
I agree that it is a distraction. This policy is a distraction from Labour’s having no plan for any area of education—schools, apprenticeships, universities or childcare. It is a distraction, and Labour has not thought through the consequences of it.
Our investment in special educational needs is a key part of the Government’s mission to set all children and young people up for success. I am proud that the Government are providing record levels of investment, and I look forward to continuing to work with Members as we strive to make the special educational needs system the very best that it can be. I commend this estimate to the House.
Mr Robin Walker
We have had an excellent debate. We have heard from Members in all parts of the House about the importance of continuing to increase investment in special educational needs across both capital and revenue.
I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Gen Kitchen) on a fantastic maiden speech. I was very impressed to hear about her ancestor who was a chaplain in the great war. We had a famous one in Worcester, Woodbine Willie, who went on to become a great Christian socialist. I am sure that the hon. Lady will make a big contribution on education issues, and I invite her to join us on the Education Committee, where I hope she will be able to contribute further.
We have heard brilliant speeches from Members on both sides of the House, and although I do not have enough time to talk about all of them, I congratulate them on the case that they have made for their constituents. I recognise that the Minister has done some very important work and that and he takes the issue seriously. I say to him, “Keep it up, and help us to help you make the case to the Treasury to ensure that these estimates continue to increase.”
Question deferred (Standing Order No. 54).
Home Office
Asylum and Migration
17:00 - The House divided: - Ayes: 36 / Noes: 220 - Question accordingly negatived.
17:16 - The House divided: - Ayes: 218 / Noes: 35 - Question accordingly agreed to.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I must announce that Mr Speaker has selected the amendment in the name of Alison Thewliss. I will call Alison Thewliss during the debate to move the amendment.
I now call the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee.
Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
Let me start by thanking the Backbench Business Committee for granting the debate.
I think we can all agree that it is an important and vital job for Parliament to scrutinise Government spending in general, and in this particular case the Home Office budget for the purposes of asylum and migration—an issue that I know every Member of the House cares about, and one that the public are rightly concerned about as well. Over the past five years, the Home Office’s asylum support, resettlement and accommodation budget has increased by 733%, which represents a quarter of the Department’s total expenditure.
It is, of course, the Home Office’s responsibility to enable scrutiny to take place with the timely provision of clear and transparent information, but the Home Affairs Committee has been repeatedly hamstrung by its refusal to disclose key details of its spending plans and commitments. We have had to ask for information repeatedly, and on several occasions we have worked with the Public Accounts Committee to obtain financial details which I believe should have been readily available to us.
As the House will know, the terms of reference for the Home Affairs Committee are to examine
“the expenditure, administration, and policy of the Home Office and its associated public bodies.”
We do that, of course, on behalf of the House of Commons as a whole. Ministers should not need to be reminded that parliamentary scrutiny is not a disposable luxury. The Home Office says that it welcomes scrutiny, but unfortunately we have not found that to be the reality. I would argue that scrutiny is a basic necessity to ensure that public money is spent well, appropriately and wisely, but time and again our demands for financial transparency have been rebuffed by the Department, keeping Parliament and therefore the public in the dark about how it is spending billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money. Members of the House have therefore not been able to ask crucial questions about spending plans until long after the money has left the Government coffers. Today’s debate will shine a light on the position of the Home Office, and highlight the urgent need for Ministers to change their approach to being scrutinised.
I will set out the current position of the Home Office. It has requested £5.9 billion in additional funding through the supplementary estimates—£4 billion for asylum, £1.2 billion for the implementation of the Illegal Migration Act 2023 and the 10-point plan, and £0.5 billion for the Afghan resettlement schemes. I turn first to the Home Office’s spending on the asylum system. In publishing and setting out its plans on asylum for the year, the Department has not disclosed its spending plans and commitments in a timely manner, preventing full and proper parliamentary scrutiny. What seems to have happened is that the Home Office, in agreement with the Treasury, completely omitted a significant proportion of expected asylum expenditure from its main estimates. This means that Parliament will not get to scrutinise the Department’s spending plans until after the money has been spent.
The Department is now seeking retrospective approval at the supplementary estimates stage, which goes against the principles of the estimates approval process. Given all the sophisticated modelling that it has at its disposal, I question why the Home Office was not in a position to make available at least a notional figure to put into its budget, which would have needed to increase if necessary. It is wrong that nothing was put in the budget at the start. On 1 February this year, the Home Secretary requested an emergency drawdown of £2.6 billion from the reserves, because the Department had run out of money before the supplementary estimates had been approved.
Further, the level of detail provided on asylum spending in the supplementary estimates is inadequate. A much more detailed breakdown of the asylum budget is required to fully understand the cost drivers and to hold the Department to account for the decisions it is taking. Sadly, that is not what we have been given. Expenditure on asylum has increased rapidly over the past two years. We know that levels of migration have increased due to the number of small boat crossings, the war in Ukraine and the Afghan resettlement schemes, and the departmental settlement in the 2021 spending review was insufficient to cope with the growing pressures. As such, the Department has made large claims on the reserves, as well as extending its use of the official development assistance budget.
Some pressures on the Home Office’s budget are beyond the Department’s immediate control, but others are not. For example, it is down to the Department to decide how it delivers accommodation for asylum seekers. The Home Affairs Committee is very concerned that the former chief inspector of borders and immigration has said that the Home Office did not appear to have an asylum accommodation strategy. Of course, the use of hotel accommodation is due to the backlog—or, as the Home Secretary corrected me at the Home Affairs Committee, the “queue”. It is apparently not a backlog anymore, but a queue. The queue has been allowed to develop because of the failure of the Home Office to invest in processing asylum claims in an efficient way over a number of years. That has resulted in a much larger bill for accommodation, which we are now having to deal with.
We know that the Home Office is currently spending £8 million a day on accommodating asylum seekers in hotels, which amounts to £2.9 billion a year. Despite the Home Office spending a huge amount, it is not predominantly the Department’s money, because the first 12 months of an asylum seeker’s accommodation is funded through the official development assistance budget. Between 2021-22 and 2023-24, Home Office usage of the ODA budget increased by 226%, from £981 million to £3.2 billion. That forced the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office to cease all non-essential programmes, as spending was redirected domestically. The implications have been heavily criticised by the Independent Commission for Aid Impact and the International Development Committee.
Also, the Illegal Migration Act, if implemented in full, will restrict the Home Office’s ability to use the official development assistance budget for asylum seekers, as migrants arriving irregularly will no longer be able to seek asylum.
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
The right hon. Lady is making an important point about the use of ODA. Does she agree that nothing is forcing the Government to spend ODA in that way? Even if the expenditure has to be counted as ODA, they could make up for it in the FCDO budget. The Government have made a choice to take money away from the FCDO and spend it via the Home Office.
Dame Diana Johnson
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that this is a Government choice. Does the Minister think that spending £3.2 billion on asylum accommodation in the UK is an appropriate use of the ODA budget? What does he say about the FCDO having to cease all its non-essential programmes, which could be important to ensuring that people stay in their home country, rather than feeling that they have to become a migrant? Does he have a plan for how the Home Office will fund asylum accommodation if it can no longer take money from the ODA budget?
One of the Home Office’s alternative approaches to accommodating some asylum seekers—a maximum of around 500 at a time—is the Bibby Stockholm barge. In January 2024, the Home Office’s permanent secretary informed the Home Affairs Committee that it costs £120 a night to accommodate a man on the Bibby Stockholm, as compared with £140 a night in a hotel. That figure is based on full occupancy, but the barge was not fully occupied when we visited in January, and we were led to believe that it will never reach its full capacity of 500. We are also aware that the initial figure did not include the barge’s set-up costs, which amounted to around £22 million. The permanent secretary assured us that when set-up costs were included,
“there is a total-life saving from use of the Bibby Stockholm of £800,000.”
However, we understand that the contract for the barge is for only 18 months. Can the Minister say over what period the total-life saving is calculated? At what level of occupancy does the Bibby Stockholm cease to be value for money? What figures has the average cost per person per night fluctuated between over the past year?
We put all these questions to the permanent secretary, and I am aware that the National Audit Office is conducting a value-for-money audit of asylum accommodation, which will not be published until 22 March. In recent oral evidence sessions with Ministers, the Home Affairs Committee has repeatedly asked about the finances of the Bibby Stockholm and other asylum accommodation sites, but sadly with few meaningful replies.
What specifically is driving the capital budget increase in asylum costs? In the Home Office’s proposal, the capital departmental expenditure limit budget will go up to £1,399,800,000—an increase of £468.5 million. That is a more than 50% increase on the initial budget of £931.3 million. Is that due to the Prime Minister’s announcement in June 2023 that two other barges had been procured, in addition to the Bibby Stockholm—there is no explicit reference to that in the estimates memorandum —or is it for the additional detention facilities required under the Illegal Migration Act?
Secondly, why did the cost of processing an asylum claim go from £9,000 in 2019 to £21,000 in 2022-23? That is a real-terms increase of 109%.
Again, Home Office spending on the UK-Rwanda partnership is a familiar story. The Home Affairs Committee has finally been able to glean that large sums of money have been committed to this scheme, but largely via retrospective disclosures and an accidental leak in an International Monetary Fund board paper in Rwanda. The Committee has, once again, had to join forces with the Public Accounts Committee to ask the National Audit Office to find out the costings of the scheme. I reiterate that it is very unsatisfactory that when we have been holding our normal scrutiny sessions with Ministers and officials to try to get detail on spending and any further commitments, we have repeatedly been met with silence from Ministers and been told to wait until the accounts for the Department are published at the end of the financial year.
Let us be clear: the failure to respond to our requests is not because anyone behind the scenes has judged the value-for-money test of this policy to be so overwhelmingly watertight that disclosures to Parliament are completely unnecessary, unsatisfactory as that would be. On the contrary, the permanent secretary required a ministerial direction in April 2022 to start implementation of the Rwanda partnership, because he judged that there was insufficient evidence of the deterrent effect that had been suggested, and therefore of the scheme being value for money. That ministerial direction has not been revoked, and it is in force today, with even more money being committed to this scheme. As the Institute for Government points out, permanent secretaries have a duty to seek a ministerial direction if they think a spending proposal breaches the value-for-money criteria—that is,
“if something else, or doing nothing, would be cheaper and better”.
That makes it even more important that Parliament can scrutinise this scheme and have the full costs available.
Less than two weeks ago, we learned, via the National Audit Office investigation that the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee and I had sought, that the UK Government have committed to making payments to cover asylum processing and operational costs, and an integration package, for each individual relocated to Rwanda, and that these payments can last for five years and total £150,874 per person. Ministers had previously indicated that the per-person payments in the Rwanda scheme would be similar to the per-person cost of processing claims in the UK. Asked at the Home Affairs Committee what the UK processing cost was, the then Minister responsible for illegal migration said that it was £12,000, although we now know that it is £21,000.
Here is what else we have learned: the Home Office has committed to pay the Rwandan Government £370 million under the economic transformation and integration fund. It will also pay an additional £20,000 per individual relocated, and a further £120 million once 300 people have been relocated. That is in addition to the £150,874 per person for asylum processing and operational costs. On top of that, we also have the direct costs incurred by the Home Office in managing and overseeing the scheme and transporting people to Rwanda. As of February 2024, the Home Office had incurred costs of £20 million, which it expects to rise to £28 million by the end of 2023-24. The Home Office estimates that it will incur further costs of approximately £1 million per year in staff costs and £11,000 per individual for flight costs. It would be helpful if the Minister could let the House know whether he now has an airline available to remove people to Rwanda, because that is another question to which we have not been able to get an answer.
The Home Office will also incur costs to escort individuals to Rwanda, including training costs of £12.6 million in 2024-2025 and £1 million per year thereafter in fixed costs, plus further escorting costs that are dependent on the number of flights required. That does not include the wider costs of implementing the Illegal Migration Act 2023, such as the cost of providing sufficient detention facilities to hold people before they are relocated. It would be helpful if the Minister could explain what arrangements are in place for that; that is linked to my question on capital costs.
Will the Minister comment on whether it was a mistake not to make the full set of costs I have just listed known to Members of this House, especially given that Members were legislating on this policy but did not have the information available on cost to make a judgment on value for money? Why did it require an investigation by the National Audit Office to get basic, factual information? Does the Minister think that the permanent secretary is wrong in his assessment that there is insufficient evidence
“to demonstrate that the policy will have a deterrent effect significant enough”
to justify its cost? Is the Minister also able to assist the House on the number of people who will be sent to Rwanda under the Illegal Migration Act after the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill is enacted?
In recent days, it has appeared that the Government will offer asylum seekers whose applications are unsuccessful £3,000 to relocate to Rwanda voluntarily, alongside those forcibly removed under the scheme, and that they too will be entitled to support for five years.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
The right hon. Lady is absolutely right: the justification that we hear time and again from those on the Government Benches for the Rwanda scheme is that it will break the business model of the people smugglers and traffickers. Does she think that providing a voucher scheme for people traffickers is going to break their business model?
Dame Diana Johnson
The right hon. Gentleman makes his point very clearly. To go back to that new development that we have heard about in recent days, will the Minister be clear with the House about what offer is being made for voluntary relocation? How many individuals will be eligible for the scheme? How much has the Home Office budgeted in total for support costs? The press are reporting that Home Office officials are calling asylum seekers to ask them if they would like to be sent to Rwanda. Is that correct?
In conclusion, for Parliament to be able to do its job, we need a major culture change at the Home Office. Calls for financial information must never be treated as irritating requests to be swatted away; they should be treated as part of the effective lifeblood of scrutiny and good governance. Big question marks hang over Ministers’ spending decisions on asylum and migration, particularly on accommodation and the UK-Rwanda partnership. If the Home Office is confident about how it plans to spend public money, it should have no problem letting Parliament see the full details in advance of how that money will be spent. If it is not confident, then it must change tack, let the light of scrutiny into the Home Office, and develop spending plans that it is willing to share with Parliament and the public.
Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the thoughtful and considered remarks of the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, and her forensic analysis of the funding. That funding has not been as transparent as it should have been, and I will expand on that point.
I am pleased to be able to speak on the estimates for the Home Office, and to make some wider observations about expenditure. Controlling expenditure in any Government Department has its challenges, especially when events and circumstances, largely beyond the control of any Minister or Government, land on a Government. The covid pandemic, during which I was at the Home Office, was one example of that. There have been other unforeseen events, such as the war in Ukraine, although there was some planning for that, and Operation Pitting, which was a significant cross-Government initiative; funding for its operational costs was worked out by Departments after the event. As a result of such events, spending profiles change.
I can say this because I was in the Treasury a long time ago, and people know my view on fiscal form and fiscal fitness in government: domestic events can create inflationary pressures, just as macro-global economic pressures such as the war in Ukraine can. The Chair of the Home Affairs Committee pointed out the inflationary pressures that were created during the pandemic, because the Government effectively had a monopoly on hotel rooms, which drove prices up. There was no real alternative that could have been adopted, because the Government did not have a plan. I will come on to the type of plan that would not have led to the fiscal situation in which the Home Office now finds itself.
During the pandemic, inevitably, public health advice relating to asylum accommodation resulted in the Government no longer being able to detain people, and distancing measures in asylum accommodation being put in place. That led to the use of hotels and a response to the growth of illegal migration, as highlighted by the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee. Helpful financial numbers provided by the House of Commons Library show an increase in the figures over the past five years. Moreover, since the publication of the baseline figures of the last spending review settlement, increases have gone up by 110%, so, clearly, there are some significant challenges in this area.
As the wonderful figures in the Treasury’s supplementary estimates demonstrate, the Home Office has a wide range of responsibilities, including vital work around counter-terrorism activities, keeping our streets safe, supporting the police uplift programme, and the work around violence reduction units, which were announced by the Chancellor last week. A lot of the investment that has gone into tackling domestic violence against women and girls, and the lead that the Department has taken on modern day slavery, are critical. That is now business as usual and absolutely important.
The documents mention the responsibilities around issuing visas and passports, and the income and revenue that comes in from that to sustain the system. Then we have control of our borders, immigration and asylum matters. At the heart of these activities must be transparency. Ministers and budget holders must always put transparency and value for money at the forefront of their actions. My mantra was very well known in every Government Department in which I served: we must follow the money, people, activities and outcomes and be fiscally responsible.
As this debate has shown, thanks to the introductory remarks from the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, we must have transparency. It is right that there is accountability and transparency around our key policy decisions, but having seen the figures in the supplementary estimates covering the Home Office, including more than £4 billion of additional funding for resourced staff, asylum support and resettlement and accommodation, a number of issues have been raised, which I know the Minister will seek to address in his response.
I will, if I may, mention something that has been touched on already, which is asylum accommodation. It is obvious that that is not working. Serious questions need to be asked of the Department in relation to ministerial directions and decisions over, at least, the past 14 months. Again, that goes to my point about public expenditure and transparency—and I will come on to Rwanda shortly. Many of the proposals link in with the Nationality and Borders Act 2022—I know that the Chair of the Select Committee mentioned the Illegal Migration Act 2023 as it now is.
When I was in the Home Office, we developed the new plan for immigration, which provided a clear policy on not just asylum accommodation, but reform of the entire system. That enabled us to break down the ultimate cost and be quite transparent about that when planning for future accommodation needs. We were working to establish Greek-style reception centres and to increase detained sites. We wanted not even to use hotels, but to have Government-funded accommodation, which would have assisted the Government in processing claims quickly and promptly. Clearly, that is the crux of the matter, as the Chair of the Select Committee has pointed out, with processing claims going up by more than 100%. Serious questions need to be asked. Why, for example, was the digital level of processing asylum claims that would have taken place in these centres not forthcoming? Why did that information not materialise? That was only one aspect of what should have been the new plan for immigration. Implementing these serious measures would have led to financial transparency and, quite frankly, accountability around public spending.
It would also have had a deterrent effect on those trying to enter the UK through dangerous and illegal routes, reducing the pull factor by having accommodation that is about not just moving from one hotel to another, but processing claims in these centres and having cost-effective solutions. The development of the site at Linton-on-Ouse is one example. That site should have been up and running by October 2022 and would now be in use, supporting the efforts to tackle illegal migration by accommodating more than 1,500 people, addressing some of those wider issues that the Government at the time sought to address. There were, of course, start-up costs involved, but they are all now blended into the estimates, the supplementary estimates and the £4 billion of additional spending being retrospectively sought. As a result of abandoning the plans, the Home Office has, again, fallen behind where it should have been on establishing a robust network of detention sites, proper accommodation facilities, proper processing plans, and transparency and digitalisation, which would have led to fundamental reform of the asylum accommodation system.
Instead, this time last year, what did we have? The Chair of the Home Affairs Committee touched on the infamous barge, Bibby Stockholm, and its set-up costs. In my district of Braintree, we have RAF Wethersfield and all the established problems there, the additional start-up costs, and all the supplementary costs of dealing with problems that were not even anticipated at the outset. Some of those problems were ones that I had raised, such as ill health outbreaks, additional resourcing for policing, and costs that the local council has to pick up, including the county council. When those decisions were made, concerns were raised about the suitability of the locations. It is incredibly disappointing that Ministers at the time were incredibly tin-eared about all this, and not transparent on the funding or the decision making.
My local authorities had to work with me to get the information out of the Home Office. As the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee will know, none of the information was readily available to the Committee, which is simply not acceptable. I am conscious that my colleagues on the Front Bench are having to pick up a lot of this, because they were not Ministers in the Department at the time. It is incredibly unfair. The money in the supplementary estimates is retrospective, but there is an opportunity to be much more transparent, demonstrate that the Department has learned lessons from frankly the most appalling processes and the ministerial indifference in the Home Office over the past 12 months or so, and improve the situation.
That is incredibly important, particularly while we are still dealing with many issues at Wethersfield, which is supposed to reach a full capacity of about 1,700 people. Currently onsite we have around one third of that level, but we have a lot of issues, which again cost money. The Home Office will bear the brunt of that through the various local authorities that are having to deal with this—Braintree District Council and Essex County Council in particular. The issues include onsite medical facilities, access to primary care, mental health, reasonable accommodation, the cost of transport, and all the various associated costs. We now have an issue around class Q, the special development order that has been issued, and what that means for the long-term costs to the Department and for running the site. Again, nothing has been published, leaving my Braintree residents in the dark, along with Parliament, frankly, on the wider cost implications.
The costs associated with illegal migration are clearly staggering, as has been exposed. This may speak to the recent publication of a report by the former chief inspector of borders and immigration, David Neal. Other reports, which the Department not only commissioned but sought to publish, would have led to a much more robust approach around Border Force, agreements with France, and how the Home Office conducted its business. They could have led to some serious reform, good prudent fiscal management, and importantly, proper investment in technology at the border. I suspect that some of that was touched on by David Neal. Alexander Downer conducted a review of Border Force, and gave an excellent report. I do not know whether the Home Affairs Committee even saw it; it seems to have been buried. I know for a fact that it included some very serious and good recommendations, which would have led to fundamental reform at the border. I suspect that David Neal would have agreed with some of the measures.
The Department has been silent on this. I do not think that there has been any progress or implementation of any of the recommendations. Basic things such as better engagement with industry, developing better technologies and taking a more long-term strategic approach to border security are what was planned at the Home Office. It is somewhat unfair to demand that those on the Front Bench explain what happened, but the House should know, because at the end of the day those reports were commissioned to invest in a digital border and in long-term measures that would make our border much more secure and efficient, and to tackle issues such as illegal migration and documentation being disposed of when people entered our country, as well as all the wider challenges that the Minister is familiar with. That touched on the work with France and the funding we gave France, which since my departure has increased to more than £500 million. Again, the public should know and hear much more about the value for money and, more importantly, the outcomes, because those sums are unprecedented.
Also, how is increasing use of surveillance at the border being leveraged to go after the criminal gangs? What about more activity on patrol and in law enforcement along the French coast? I should add that the French coastline is very difficult, given how large it is and how difficult it is to police. I pay tribute to everyone who works in that area, but again, so far this year the number of Channel-crossing arrivals has passed more than 3,500, which is higher than at the same point last year. When half a billion pounds is being spent, it is important that the public and the House see a level of transparency with what is going on.
I will touch on the Rwanda partnership, which is important, and there will be a debate in the House on Monday, when the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill comes back before us. I say that the partnership is important, because I negotiated the original one, but I came to the House and at the outset set out the original costings of £120 million. It was a migration and economic development partnership. Clearly, the principle of the Rwanda partnership as it now stands has moved miles from the original. That is deeply concerning. There has been zero transparency. As the Chair of the Select Committee pointed out, what on earth has gone on with the partnership over the past 12 months, other than more cash being funnelled into it and to the Government of Rwanda?
I will say something about the Government of Rwanda but, on the original partnership, which was world leading, other countries in Europe are still to this day—as I know from conversations that I am having—looking at the model and may follow it. Various European countries have taken an interest because of wider migration issues across Europe and because of destabilisation in the world. However, I add that there has been far too much criticism of the country and Government of Rwanda, and much of that has been ill-informed, misleading and inaccurate. The country has experienced significant economic growth, rising living standards this century—with 1 million more people lifted out of poverty in their country—and increasing life expectancy, so it is important that we do not malign Rwanda.
Rwanda joined the Commonwealth in 2009. It has worked with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to support more than 130,000 refugees. It is a country that is committed to playing a leadership role on the African continent and to make a contribution to tackling one of the biggest challenges that they and we face—I say “they” about those on the African continent—which is mass migration. I pay tribute to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Co-operation, Vincent Biruta, and to the High Commissioner in London, because they were outstanding in their engagement with our Government, including me and others. It is important that we make this partnership work.
I am sceptical, I have to say, about what we have read in the press this week—I think that is the best way to put it—on how the partnership will work. That brings me to the issue that has been touched on already: we have to be practical. The Home Office is an operational Department, and day-to-day operational costs are inevitably high. Given the voluntary returns, removals and reception centres—which we do not have now—and the cost of running detained facilities with the required support staff, it is right to negotiate the contracts properly and transparently. Everyone needs to have the right kind of scrutiny.
I say that because something might go wrong, not just with the contracts but when incidents happen—they have happened in the past. The Home Office might have legal action taken against it, such as on the handling of a voluntary return or removal of a migrant. The challenges are enormous, and the reputational—
Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend recall that when it was announced that £500 million was being made available to the French for some form of processing centre, the European Union announced the very next day that it was not going to allow them to do it? Does that not send us a big message about the potential waste of money on quite a big scale?
Priti Patel
My hon. Friend makes an important point and gives me the chance to expand on that from an operational perspective. That was over a year ago. It was considered a flagship announcement from the Government, but we have not seen that detention centre in France open up yet. Although I think it was due to open in 2025, the Government should report back on it. What has happened to the money? What processes are in place? Are there any updates on that partnership?
My hon. Friend mentions the EU—that would have been the Commission in particular. I have spent a lot of time with the Commission. It was important to have those discussions. Let us not forget that the EU Commission funded the reception centres in Greece, which have gone a long way towards deterring illegal migration to Greece and stopping the awful crossings that were taking place. I pay tribute to the former Greek Minister of Migration and Asylum, Notis Mitarachi, who did an outstanding job. I worked with him on the replication of the Greek-style reception centres in the UK, because, as we showed in the new plan for immigration, we could follow the money, develop transparent operational plans and see their deterrence impact. That is critical.
My final point is about the legislation that this House has passed in the last two years in the asylum and illegal migration space: the Illegal Migration Act 2023, and the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, which was passed when I was Home Secretary. Ministers and everyone in Government know my view on this, but I want to put on record that it is really not good enough that the legislation that we have passed has not been implemented.
I will speak in particular to the Nationality and Borders Act. If we want to follow the money and drive outcomes, implementing the legislation is crucial. We left in the Department a fully costed operational plan for the implementation of the NABA, as it now is, which would have introduced the one-stop shop. That one-stop shop—the immigration courts and tribunals—would have gone a long way towards reducing costs and the time it takes to process cases. Here we are, 14 months on since the 2022 legislation was enacted, and that has not happened.
Ditto on the reception and accommodation centres. At the time, the costs were envisaged to be £120 million, including for start-up. Processing costs would then have come into it through digitalisation of asylum cases. It is inexcusable that the needle has not been moved on that. It is no longer acceptable for people to just discard such plans, as a result of the revolving door, and say, “Actually, we don’t need these; we can have newer plans.” All that does is kick the can down the road and increase Government expenditure. We are now in the unprecedented situation of the Home Secretary of the day retrospectively trying to get approval for more than £4 billion of public spending for asylum accommodation.
Whether on a partnership with Rwanda, cross-border work with the French authorities, implementation of provisions in our legislation, or delivery of accommodation centres, I can say that plans were in place—absolutely. We must get back on track. This debate should send out two messages—to the Home Office, yes, but also for future spending reviews. We have had this period of annual spending reviews, but we must go back to five-year SR periods, with proper fiscal transparency, led by the Treasury, and Ministers must be held to account on public expenditure. We must go back to the core principle of following money, people and outcomes.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
I beg to move amendment (a),
“That resources for use for current purposes be reduced by £740,850,000 relating to asylum and migration.”
The amendment stands in my name and that of my honourable colleagues. As the Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), has so clearly laid out, there has been frustration among members of the Committee about the opacity of Home Office spending. There has been obfuscation, delay, denial and downright sleekitness over many months, and from reading the supplementary estimates in front of us, it is still very difficult to get to the bottom of what money has been spent when those estimates come forward for retrospective approval today.
Members on the Government Benches, including current and former Home Office Ministers, are prepared to weigh in publicly and call outrage on the spending of the Home Office, but trying to get any clarity on how the Department utilises its budget has been like trying to nail jelly to a wall. I agree that spending appears to be out of control, but the utter incompetence and abject cruelty at the heart of the Home Office makes things so much worse. If the Home Office was overspending, but at least having a decent set of outcomes and treating people humanely, I would perhaps be a wee bit more forgiving. Instead, it is presiding over a chaotic, mean and dangerous system, where those who are unlucky enough to come within its orbit are drawn into a dystopian nightmare.
It is a pity that due to the timing of this debate, we were not able to have sight of the National Audit Office’s report on asylum accommodation, which is due to be published on Wednesday. I hope the Minister will come to the House next week to speak to that report. We do, however, have information on what kind of service is being provided. Just this week, the food charity Sustain, working with Jesuit Refugee Service UK and Life Seekers Aid, published research that found that,
“People seeking asylum do not have access to sufficient money, kitchen facilities or food to meet their needs, are provided with food that does not meet food hygiene or nutritional standards, in some cases resulting in hospitalisation. Experiences of food were broadly experienced as degrading and dehumanising, especially for mothers unable to feed their children adequately.”
That desperately poor and deeply harmful experience is being provided by Home Office contractors, who have seen their profits soar. Clearsprings and Stay Belvedere Hotels Ltd, for example, have made a combined profit of over £113 million, and Serco and Mears are also profiting handsomely from those lucrative contracts. The UK Government often claim that they want to support displaced people closer to the place from which they have fled, yet the supplementary estimates reveal that they are now quite brazenly pochling the official development assistance budget to the tune of £3.2 million, a staggering 389.6% increase just from the sum in the main estimates. That money is supposed to help the world’s most vulnerable—to support countries and help them flourish. Instead, it is simply boosting the profits of companies that are demonstrably not even providing the very basics of humanity.
Facilities such as the Bibby Stockholm, Napier barracks, Wethersfield and Scampton are being presented as some kind of alternative to hotels, but in many cases they cost just as much if not more, and are no better run. Hotels cost so much because of the delays that the Home Office is presiding over: people left waiting, not just for months but for years at a time, without a decision. The former Immigration Minister, the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), had the cheek to say on Sky News that this was quite deliberate; the Government do not want to speed the process up, because that would make the UK too attractive. They are presiding over their own failure quite deliberately and purposefully, so if the Minister says today that it is terrible that we are spending so much money on hotels, I would ask him to speed up those applications and let people get on with their lives.
The Bibby Stockholm barge is estimated to cost taxpayers £41,000 a day or £15 million a year. With around 300 asylum seekers being housed on that barge, that equates to a cost of about £205 per day per person, the same as an overnight stay in a four-star hotel. Thrown into an indefinite stay in a shared room on an industrial barge moored in an operational port, however, you get the bonus of legionella bacteria in the water supply, as well as anxiety, depression, respiratory illness, infectious diseases and, unfortunately, seeing some of your fellow inmates committing suicide.
I have not had much of an opportunity to speak about the Home Affairs Committee’s visit to the Bibby Stockholm, but I will take this opportunity to put on record the sadness, confusion and frustration of those on board. Those men felt that they were being punished for some unknown misdemeanour—unable to get any peace and quiet, living in impossibly close proximity to people for months at a time, with no certainty as to when that will end, and their health needs not being properly assessed. The vessel was not intended to be lived on 24/7, and despite the tabloid rhetoric, none of those I met on that boat had come on small boats. Some had been international students, forced to claim asylum when the political situation in their home countries deteriorated. One told me:
“The longer you are in here, you turn into a person you don’t know”.
How incredibly sad it is that the UK Government see fit to treat people in that way.
Dame Diana Johnson
I completely agree with what the hon. Lady has said about our visit to the Bibby Stockholm. Does she agree with me that what Wendy Williams said in her review on the Windrush scandal about the Home Office remembering the “face behind the case” seems to have been lost in the way we are now treating some asylum seekers?
Alison Thewliss
The right hon. Member is absolutely correct to point that out. From reading some of the reports of the independent chief inspector, it is very clear that that policy has all but been abandoned. People have lost the sense that they are dealing with actual human beings —with stories, with dignity, with a past and a future—and that these things have been completely lost all together. People are treated as so much less than as if they were actual human beings, and that is quite appalling from any Government. It is appalling to listen to those stories, and to hear what people had been through and what they continue to suffer in those circumstances.
Home Office officials have reportedly raised significant concerns about the cost and feasibility of housing asylum seekers at MDP Wethersfield in Essex and RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire. In addition to the near £15 million to another private contractor to set it up, it is estimated that it will cost about £72 million per year to accommodate people at Wethersfield—a site about which the now former chief inspector of borders and immigration raised concerns about safety. He said that
“there was an overwhelming feeling of hopelessness caused by boredom which invariably, in my experience, leads to violence.”
That was before the site was even at full capacity. It would be useful to know from the Minister what he is doing to address the concerns about violence at the site, because the chief inspector was very clear to the Committee how worried he was about that.
A report published in December by the Helen Bamber Foundation and the Humans for Rights Network found that the asylum accommodation site at Wethersfield is causing “significant” and “irreparable” harm to residents, and recommended that it be shut down as a matter of urgency. Not only will the public cover the cost of the woeful conditions at Wethersfield, but they are also het for the Government’s court fees in any upcoming legal battles. Scampton, similarly, comes in at an estimated £109 million this year.
The detention estate has been growing arms and legs over the past few years, and the estimates provided by the Home Office suggest that the trend is only set to continue. The cost of detaining someone for one day is estimated at about £113 per person. Expanding the detention estate at Campsfield House and Haslar immigration removal centres is expected to come in at about £260 million. Ludicrously, the Home Office has made quite a deliberate choice to pursue these more expensive and more punitive options, despite having clear evidence from the pilots of alternatives to detention, which it itself commissioned, that were found to be significantly cheaper, more effective and with much better health outcomes for those in that system.
It is no secret that the SNP thinks the Rwanda scheme is irredeemably awful. It is unworkable, conspicuous punishment. The Supreme Court has found the scheme to be unlawful. On top of all that, it is of course eye- wateringly expensive. I would like to thank the National Audit Office for its report setting out the known sums so clearly. I find it quite wild that the former Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel), came here today to criticise the ball that she herself started rolling. I guess it has not worked out the way she expected, but I could not really see what she thought would be so great about the scheme in the first place.
The UK’s Rwanda scheme has cost about £220 million so far under the UK-Rwanda partnership, not including the UK Government’s legal costs for defending the plan in the courts. The Home Affairs Committee finally received evidence in November last year that, in addition to the money already sent, additional payments will be made to the Government of Rwanda each year. Quite unbelievably, some of this was only uncovered because somebody in Rwanda let it slip to the International Monetary Fund; it was not through due diligence to our own Parliament or the parliamentary Committees that are supposed to scrutinise these things, but because of a slip in some other documentation.
There is a direct cost of £20 million to the Home Office, which the National Audit Office says is expected to rise to £28 million by the end of 2023-24. There will be £1 million a year in staff costs, £11,000 in flight costs per individual and the as yet unknown costs of escorting individuals to Rwanda. There is also the bounty to Rwanda for the delivery of the first 300 asylum seekers, which is a further one-off £120 million. Whether or not Members believe 300 will actually be sent, the fact is that this is within the documentation.
The National Audit Office report sets out a further payment schedule for each person removed to Rwanda up to a total of £150,874 each. Again, it is entirely unclear how much this will all add up to in the end, because it depends on somebody staying put once they have got to Rwanda, which nobody can guarantee. The NAO says that the numbers are “inherently uncertain”; I would say that that is putting it mildly. Of course, this does not save any money. The UK Government’s own figures estimate that moving an asylum seeker to Rwanda would cost £63,000 more than keeping them in the UK to be processed, so it is no wonder the permanent secretary would not sign it off without ministerial direction.
I do not seek to malign Rwanda or its Government, but we hear a curious dichotomy from Government Members, whereby Rwanda is safe enough that the legislation can pass, but sufficiently scary to serve as a deterrent to those desperate enough to risk their lives crossing the channel in a flimsy inflatable. It cannot be both scary and safe at the same time; it cannot be a deterrent and something that is perfectly reasonable. Those two things cannot exist together.
Bizarrely, we have heard the news just today from Lizzie Dearden at The Independent that the Home Office is so desperate to fill up these flights that it is offering those who have been unsuccessful in their asylum claims £3,000 to go to Rwanda. This is wild stuff, and again it has not been brought to this House as a proposal and has not received any further scrutiny.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)
The hon. Lady is making an excellent speech. Not every country in Europe behaves in the same way and tries to outsource or evade its human rights obligations by exporting refugees and asylum seekers. Does she agree that we ought to give asylum seekers the right to work much quicker so that they can join the labour force and contribute to the economy, rather than be held at great expense in totally unsatisfactory and often totally appalling conditions?
Alison Thewliss
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct, and that entirely flips on its head the Government’s argument that asylum seekers are some kind of burden. Many have skills that they wish to bring to the workforce and many have things they wish to contribute; they want to say thank you for being given sanctuary. They have a lot to offer the UK, but the UK Government are not interested and do not see them as people with skills who can contribute in any meaningful way, which is desperately sad.
The Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford has suggested that a value for money assessment should take account of asylum seekers who are neither deterred from coming nor removed to Rwanda, because they are now left in a limbo of the Home Office’s own making. They cannot have their asylum claim processed nor in most cases be removed to their home country because of the Illegal Migration Act 2023. They are inadmissible and are unable to work, to contribute and to move on with their lives. Who exactly does this situation benefit and where on earth is the Home Office going to accommodate them? It cannot say.
None of this is sustainable. The new backlog replaced the old one, and over 12,000 people are now appealing to the first-tier tribunal due to slapdash decisions made in haste to meet the Prime Minister’s target last year. Safe and legal routes have been closed down. Money has been given hand over fist to France and Belgium, while Home Office staff are left without the resources they need to do their jobs effectively. The independent chief inspector of borders and immigration noted in his report on asylum casework that staff had taken demotions rather than continue as caseworkers, and managers had tried to shield their teams from difficult messages coming from above. The Guardian has revealed this afternoon that the Atlas database flaws have left 76,000 people listed with incorrect names, photographs or immigration status and cases combined together.
What an absolute guddle this system is. The Home Office is now under investigation, I understand, by the Information Commissioner due to its utter incompetence and inability to process cases properly. The Home Office has pulled off the astonishing feat of creating an asylum system that is simultaneously slow, expensive, shoddy and in some cases unlawful besides. This wastefulness is a pattern of behaviour from a Department that appears to regard those who come to our shores as somehow less than human.
In a cost of living crisis, the Rwanda scheme is a bottomless pit for public funds. The UK Government under either the Tories or Labour cannot find the money for an essentials guarantee, to scrap the two-child limit or for cost of living support for people struggling every day, yet when it comes to dog-whistle politics there is a big blank cheque.
There are limitations on what we as MPs can do about this. The estimates and budgetary processes are entirely inadequate for the purpose, particularly in light of the fact that this is a Department prone to secrecy and misdirection. My SNP colleagues and I have tabled an amendment to reduce the resources for use for current purposes relating to immigration and asylum by £740,850,000. That pertains to our best estimate of how much the supplementary estimate would have to be reduced by to defund the Rwanda plan, the Bibby Stockholm and Wethersfield, Scampton, Campsfield and Haslar immigration removal centres. It is a small part of what the Home Office has wasted on schemes that have absolutely no merit and that cause more harm than they ever will good. I commend our amendment to the House.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
I shall speak to the main motion. I listened to the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), and I am not entirely sure that she made the case for reducing resources to the Home Office. I will agree with much, but try not to repeat much, of what the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee said.
It has been a long labour of love to try to get relevant information out of Home Office officials. Anything approaching financial figures is always met with a degree of reluctance and opaqueness. Even the Home Affairs Committee—described only yesterday as “Westminster’s best committee” in a leading newspaper by a leading journalist—has been frustrated by the problems we have had when interrogating officials from the Home Office. I in no way direct that criticism at the Minister on the Front Bench and his colleagues, who have been something of a breath of fresh air.
Having been a member of the Committee for 10 years, I can say that our relations with officials and our ability to get information out of them have never been worse. That is a great shame, because we have an important job to do. We are the scrutinisers of the Home Office, not least because it does not have one in the form of a chief inspector of borders and immigration—this debate is on that area—after the recent unfortunate demise of the excellent David Neal, who has yet to be replaced. The Home Affairs Committee’s work is even more important at the moment to try to fill part of that vacuum as best we can.
This is an estimates day debate about figures, and it is a complex area. The whole budget figure that we are looking at is £23.6 billion for the Home Office in 2024-25. The largest increase of £3.9 billion is for asylum support and accommodation. That figure has risen by 733% over the past five years. Net legal migration hit a record 745,000 in the last year, but most of the spend in this area of the Department, and certainly most of the increased spend, is on illegal—or shall we call it irregular—immigration. Those are people arriving without prior permission who are subsequently able to stay, either because they are permitted to stay or because they can for all practical purposes not be deported for various reasons.
The Home Office accounts are split between four areas of spending: day-to-day spending, investment spending, resource day-to-day spend and capital. I want to strip that down into five main areas under irregular immigration headlines. First, there is the money we are spending largely in France on trying to prevent people from coming here in irregular ways in the first place. Secondly, there is the cost of processing irregular migrants when they arrive in our territorial waters and then on our shores, and then the cost of accommodation and policing secure accommodation or hotels, as well as the cost of delays and the backlog—or queues, as the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee said we now have to call it. Thirdly, there is the cost of returning people when we can do so because agreements are in place. Fourthly, there is the cost of those we cannot return or those who do return to countries we could not otherwise return them to because they take a voluntary payment. That includes the cost of the Rwanda scheme.
At the heart of this, the vital question that the Opposition have failed to answer every time they have been challenged on it is: what do we do with people who have come here irregularly—be it through little boats and paying people smugglers, on lorries or through other means—and had their asylum claims firmly rejected, but who come from countries to which it is practically impossible to return them, such as Iran and Eritrea? The purpose of the Rwanda scheme and much of the irregular migration spend is to try to come up with a solution to that particular problem.
Fifthly—this is slightly related—there is the cost of the big net increases in legal migration to infrastructure and services in the UK. Much of the impact of that falls on other Departments. Added to all those areas is the question of who is overseeing whether that substantial investment is achieving what is intended, in the absence of a chief inspector of borders and immigration.
It is important to put in context the whole spend and the whole activity of the Home Office on migration. Too often, we hear, “What a waste of money on the Rwanda scheme.” Much of that is up-front costs, but it must be seen in the context of what we are spending on hotel accommodation in this country while those people who should not have come here are here, and while we cannot send them to their original country or a third country.
Priti Patel
My hon. Friend is making an important point. It is also imperative that we recognise that some of the spending is based on forecasts. We constantly hear from the Home Office its forecasts on expected irregular migrants, small boat arrivals and so on. A methodology can be applied to be much more transparent about the funding that is allocated and the deterrence measures that can be put in place, along with all the additional costs. The Home Office should be really transparent about all of that.
Tim Loughton
I am sure that my right hon. Friend is absolutely right that a methodology is being used and that the figures could be available, but the opaqueness that is applied to prevent the Home Affairs Committee and anyone else who wants to get to the bottom of the figures from seeing whether we are getting value for money, let alone cost-effectiveness, is really frustrating. The Home Office must have those calculations—I am sure she saw them in her time at the head of the Home Office—and they should be available to Parliament and those who scrutinise the Department’s activities.
Let me look at the first area, which is effectively the £480 million subsidy that we give to the French police force to police its beaches to try to stop these people getting to the boats in the first place. We know that the number of interceptions has gone up; the trouble is that, by and large, the police do not arrest those people, so they are free to try again the following night and so on with a new boat or dinghy from China, Turkey or one of the other sources.
We have seen all the fantastic kit that the French police have—the drones, the rigid inflatable boats and the dune buggies that the Home Affairs Committee has been on—but the trouble is that people are still getting through. We have this problem because of the absence of French co-operation in detaining and processing people in France to determine their status, as is done in Belgium, where we do not have the problem, as the Committee saw at first hand when we went there.
There is also the whole question of what the French are doing with that kit. There are stories that some of the night drone capability that we provided to them is being used in the south of the country, policing the Mediterranean rather than the channel, with the money having gone on microwaves and such things as well. Are we getting value for money from the £480 million that we are giving to the French police force?
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
The hon. Member is making a valuable point about money. If I heard him correctly, he suggested that we are spending £480 million on protection along the French coast that is not effective. When we add that to the hundreds of millions spent on the Rwanda scheme—which so far has done nothing—does he agree that if we had been less obsessed with solving the problem at the endpoint, and had instead invested the money in improving the conditions in other countries through international development to make it viable for people to stay in them, as well as in safe and legal routes, we would not have this problem now?
Tim Loughton
The hon. Lady makes a number of rather conflicting arguments. The point that I made right at the top of my speech—I am not sure if she was here—was that we need to see the spend in the whole context. If we are spending money here, it is because the alternative would be spending even more there, not having solved the problem at source.
As someone who defended the 0.7% overseas spending commitment, I agree that this is a global problem on which international co-operation is needed if we are to ensure that people have more incentive, and it is more viable and sustainable, to stay in the countries that they are departing from, not necessarily because of civil war and danger but because of economic conditions linked to climate change. That is why we have such large migration from equatorial and sub-Saharan countries. I completely agree with the hon. Lady. She knows my position on safe and legal routes; I tabled amendments on the subject to the Illegal Migration Act 2023.
The Government need to do more—and will do more —on safe and legal routes, but that should be coupled with being much tougher on those who do not use them because they have no legitimate case for applying for asylum in the United Kingdom. We need to come down on those people hard, to prevent them coming here in the first place. If they do come here, we need to do everything we can to remove them from the country as soon as possible.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
I am listening with great interest to my hon. Friend’s authoritative speech. There is a paradox that always strikes me about giving money to the French to stop the small boats coming: if they ever succeeded in stopping the small boats coming, that would mean that France would be the end of the line for those illegal immigrants. That would mean that the French would have to start imposing their own borders, which have largely been dismantled in the context of the EU, to stop the illegal migration into their country. Can we ever really expect the French to co-operate in sealing off the illegal route across the channel?
Tim Loughton
The response is, “To an extent, Lord Copper.” The authorities around Calais who are trying to deal with the crossings said that the year before last, when the Government announced the Rwanda scheme, they saw a big surge in migrants around Calais approaching the French authorities to try to regularise their position in France, because they did not want to risk being put on a plane to Rwanda. Why are so many migrants in the north of France around Calais? They have come to France because they think that there is a chance that they can get to the UK. They would not necessarily go to France if it were clear that they could not get to the UK because they would be stopped by whatever means—hopefully by the French intercepting them in the water or on the beach and bringing them back—and they would be paying money for a round trip. There are different aspects to this.
Tim Loughton
If my right hon. Friend will allow me, I will continue. I know that other Members want to speak, and I have a few more points to make.
My second point is on the whole cost of processing. There are self-inflicted costs, because the Home Office took too long to increase the number of caseworkers to speed up processing time. It has now done that, but it needs to go still further. As of last September, the asylum backlog or queue was 165,411, which was up 11% on the previous year, but up 372% over five years. We have now seen a fourfold increase in the number of decisions.
The Home Affairs Committee was particularly concerned that last year 17,316 asylum seekers withdrew their asylum applications. The permanent secretary and his No. 2 at the Home Office were singularly incapable of telling us what had happened to those 17,316 people and why they withdrew their applications, and of assuring us that they were leaving the UK. It turned out that an awful lot of them had not left the UK, and the whereabouts of rather a lot of them—about a third—are unknown to the Home Office. It would be interesting to hear from the Minister what the backlog/queue is now, and what audit has been done on the cost effectiveness of recruiting additional caseworkers, how that feeds through to quicker processing times, how that has benefited us financially, and what the efficiencies are from faster processing.
We also need to know the breakdown of the cost of accommodation and assistance for asylum claims that are in limbo. The former Immigration Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), stated that the Home Office was spending £8.3 million a day, or about £140 per person per night, on hotel accommodation. That was last year, since when some hotels have been taken out of circulation. That is good progress, and hopefully the £8.3 million a day cost is reducing, but how much is spent on accommodating those awaiting initial decisions, especially in the last six months in which they have been waiting?
Secondly, how much is spent on accommodating those who have had their claims rejected but are going through additional appeals processes, or those whom we still cannot deport to their country of origin, although they have gone through appeals processes? Thirdly, how much are we spending on those whose claims have been accepted and have leave to remain, but for whom there is a shortage of long-term and appropriate accommodation to transfer them to? That is the problem we have with Afghan families who, airlifted from Kabul airport, are here legitimately. They are still staying in hotels after many years, largely because it is difficult to find larger houses to accommodate larger families. It is completely unsuitable to have children in hotels for years at a time, when they have to go to school and try to socialise with other children.
As of the end of last year, there were 111,132 individuals in receipt of asylum support. That was down 10% on the figure for September, the previous quarter, but still included about 45,500 people in hotel accommodation. Will the Minister tell us at what rate hotel accommodation is decreasing, and by how much costs are reducing?
I want to touch on the cost of those we can return. An article in the Financial Times earlier this week, in which I was quoted, raised concerns about the shortage of detention spaces. The problem is the growing number of people who have come here since the Illegal Migration Act 2023, and who have no status to be here. They are not in jail; presumably, they are on bail, and some might disappear into the ether. The Home Affairs Committee will visit Brook House next week. Many people have been there a long time because of continuous appeals. How much is that costing? What is the cost of the returns agreements with countries such as Albania? All those are costs on the immigration and asylum budget.
Priti Patel
My hon. Friend is being very generous in giving way. There is an important point to make about returns agreements and removing individuals. Costs aside, section 40 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 amended section 24 of the Immigration Act 1971 to cover re-entry bans. I do not know whether the Government have implemented that, but unless it is enforced, it will lead to the very problems that he is alluding to: further costs, pressures on accommodation, and entire processes restarted all over again.
Tim Loughton
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. There are stories—they are not apocryphal; I have heard them on good authority—of people who, under an agreement, have been returned from the UK to Albania, accompanied by an officer. That officer has then returned to Heathrow or Gatwick airport, only to see the person they just returned to Albania in the queue ahead of them, coming back into the country. There are ways and means of getting back into the country. Enforcement is absolutely crucial; otherwise the system is a complete joke—and a very expensive joke. We are returning people on a temporary basis when it should be a permanent arrangement, until and unless they apply legitimately, and are accepted as having a reason to come to the UK legitimately.
All sorts of figures have been bandied around for the cost of the Rwanda scheme; the Home Office has disclosed only the £140 million to Rwanda in the first year of the deal. I absolutely accept that there are all sorts of start-up costs, so I am not troubled by the fact that we are paying money up front. The Rwandans have said that if the scheme does not take off, literally, they will return at least part, if not most, of the money, so there are some assurances there. However, even if the amount we are spending on the Rwanda scheme turns out to be, say, £500 million, given that it costs £8.3 million a day to house people in hotels, the cost of the scheme will be just two months-worth of hotels. There is an economic case for investing in the scheme, because the alternative is people staying in hotels at an expensive rate unless we can find cheaper accommodation for them, so it will not be long before the scheme has paid for itself. We must look at it holistically, in the round.
I have a few questions to leave in the lap of the Minister. First, there is the overall question of why we are accepting so many asylum claimants in the UK. France receives more applications, but rejects twice as many as we do. We must also take account of the fact that some of the returns figures have been slightly distorted. In its rush to clear some of the backlog, the Home Office has invariably gone for low-hanging fruit—some of the easier cases to accept, such as children and women—so the acceptance rates are artificially higher, as it has not dealt with the more problematic cases that are more likely to be rejected. In 2023, the number of people granted refugee status was the highest on record, at more than 62,000. Why is the threshold apparently so much lower in this country than in many other European countries, and what calculations has the Home Office made about the financial savings that would result if we toughened up that arrangement and raised the threshold, so that we rejected more claims in the future?
I asked what would happen to those who have been in limbo since the Illegal Migration Act 2023 came into force. Does the Minister think that we may have to issue some sort of amnesty, as we did previously, to enable people to qualify for assessment of their claims?
I welcome the changes to immigration rules that have been heralded by the Minister. Certain people coming here are dependants who do not need to come with the primary visa applicant, and are likely to be a cost, rather than a contributor, to the Exchequer. There are reasons for us to allow that in certain cases, but according to the 2021 census, the size of the population had risen by 7.4% since the previous census, and the volume of resources and infrastructure have not risen comparatively. Over those 10 years, the number of GP surgeries increased by only 4%, and the number of secondary schools by only 4.9%. The population is rising, and it is forecast that there will be 6.1 million more migrants by 2036. Working people aged between 20 and 64 who were born in the UK have a much higher rate of employment than people who have migrated to the UK.
I agree that immigration is good, but not all types of immigration are necessarily adding to the UK economy rather than drawing on it, so we need to be more discriminating in deciding whom we allow into the country. Genuine refugees fleeing danger certainly have a case for safe haven here, but when it comes to dependants who will not necessarily be contributing to the UK, we need to clamp down on that more, which indeed is what was announced today.
A large part of this policy is about addressing illegal, irregular migration. It is incumbent on anyone who disagrees with it to come up with their own solution to the problem of how we should deal with people who enter the country with no legitimate, credible case for claiming asylum and being granted safe haven, because that is where an awful lot of the money is going. It is absolutely right for us to be able to scrutinise that money properly, and it is absolutely right to expect the Government to give answers about whether it is being used effectively. However, I give credit to the Government for trying to come up with proper, sustainable solutions such as the Rwanda scheme to deal with all the costs of a very inefficient migration system that treats us unfairly, given that people with absolutely no credible case for safe haven from us are choosing to pay people smugglers to cross the channel in the most dangerous and inappropriate way. Frankly, those people are jumping the queue, and the biggest victims are genuine asylum seekers, to whom we have always had a good and generous tradition of giving safe haven. They are the ones who we absolutely need to focus on, and we are spending far too much money on people who are, frankly, gaming our system.
Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)
I want to focus my comments on the cost of the Government’s Rwanda policy, particularly as I visited Kigali two weeks ago as Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. The Committee will report on our visit in due course, so any comments that I make today are made in my personal capacity.
It was good that the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), reminded us that information about the cost of the Rwanda scheme has come not from the Government, but from the National Audit Office and other sources. I really query whether the scheme offers value for money, and whether it will work as a deterrent. We heard from the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee about the huge increase in the asylum support, resettlement and accommodation budget, and it is important to put that in context by looking at how many asylum seekers come to the United Kingdom every year. Looking at the figures, we can see that there were asylum claims for about 84,000 individuals in the most recent year—let us say about 80,000. Bear that figure in mind for what I am going to say in a minute.
I completely agree with the right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel) that it is important not to be rude about the Rwandans, because they are good people, as I will come back to. When I was in Rwanda, I asked Government officials how many asylum seekers they expect to receive from the UK, and they told me that they expect to receive 2,000 over the first four months and 10,000 over the next five years. That is 2,000 per annum, which is 2.5% of the 80,000 asylum seekers who come here every year. What are the Government proposing to do with the rest of them? We need to know about those costs.
The central point I want to make in what little time I have is that we need a system for asylum seekers who come to the United Kingdom. We need to go back to basics and think about an efficient, cost-effective system, but it must be a system whereby the United Kingdom takes its fair share. The Joint Committee on Human Rights has heard evidence on this issue. Looking at the figures for displaced people and refugees, there are 36 million refugees in the world. The idea that they are all coming to the United Kingdom is absolutely ludicrous.
Returning to my trip to Rwanda, I want to give my own impressions. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) makes a very good point: how can Rwanda be a great place to be and safe, but also a deterrent at the same time? I have formed a pretty clear view as to why it is a deterrent. Based on my visits to Rwanda, I agree with the UK Supreme Court that the Rwandan Government and the Rwandan people are acting in good faith, but I also agree with the House of Lords’ International Agreements Committee, which has looked at this issue, that the relevant legislation has not finished going through Parliament, and that the system and the training are in their infancy. It will take a long time for the Rwandans to create an asylum system.
We visited the accommodation in Kigali, which was of a very high quality. We saw only one of the reception areas, but I can tell you, Madam Deputy Speaker, that it was a hell of a lot nicer than the Bibby Stockholm. Perhaps that is because so many Rwandans have been refugees, owing to their recent history. They were at pains to remind us of how many refugees they have welcomed from over the borders with Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and of how they see refugees as their “friends, brothers and sisters”. I was struck by how that does not accord with the current discourse in the United Kingdom. Perhaps the UK Government should take a leaf out of the Rwandans’ book and see refugees as their friends, brothers and sisters. That might make it easier for them to devise a cost-effective system whereby we take our fair share.
Rwanda has a written constitution, but very few people were able to point to any case law showing people taking advantage of their rights under that constitution. In 2016, the Rwandan Government withdrew the right of Rwandan citizens to individually petition the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights because they did not like the court’s decisions on their dissidents. That sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
Most importantly, the Home Office has prepared a 137-page country information note on human rights in Rwanda that collates sources ranging from the US State Department to Human Rights Watch, and it sets out very serious shortcomings in the protection of human rights in Rwanda. Before we went, my Committee took evidence from dissidents who had concerns about their human rights.
I have written elsewhere about my concern for the protection of LGBT rights in Rwanda. At best, Rwanda is where the United Kingdom was 50 years ago. Yes, it is not criminal to be gay or transgender, but LGBT people have no positive rights, and they live in a society in which stigmatisation and discrimination are common. Nobody was able to give me any examples of anyone being able to exercise their rights through the courts.
Mhairi Black (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (SNP)
Is it not also concerning that the Government’s travel advice for Rwanda states that they cannot guarantee the safety of LGBT people?
Joanna Cherry
Indeed, it is. When I guested at the Home Affairs Committee, I raised with a Minister that we tell LGBT Brits going to Rwanda that they need to be careful as we cannot guarantee their safety, but we are now quite happy to send LGBT asylum seekers there.
I could say a lot more about Rwanda, but it is important to understand why it is a deterrent. People often come here to seek asylum because they have criticised their country’s Government, because they are a human rights defender or because they are gay or transgender. Rwanda is not an attractive country for them, as the United Kingdom is at present.
The Chair of the Home Affairs Committee told us that the UK will pay around £150,000 per person relocated to Rwanda, to cover asylum processing and integration over the first five years. If we apply that to the 12,000 figure given by the Rwandan authorities, that comes to billions of pounds. On what basis can that be said to be cost-effective? Billions of pounds are being spent on sending to Rwanda less than 2.5% of the people who come to these shores seeking asylum. It is a gimmick, and the Government should own up that it is a gimmick. They should not be spending taxpayers’ money on a gimmick and a sop to their Back Benchers.
What does the Minister have to say about the points I have raised today?
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. I had thought that we had lots of time for this debate, but everything expands. I would be grateful if the two remaining Back-Bench speakers took around eight minutes each. We will then be able to get everyone in, barely.
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
I will certainly do my best, Madam Deputy Speaker. Of course, the debate might have expanded even further if any Labour Back Benchers other than the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee had turned up. We SNP Members are accused of disengaging from this place, but four of us have contributed to this debate, compared with only one Member from the official Opposition.
Estimates debates should be among the most important debates each year, as this is the process by which we approve billions of pounds of Government expenditure. Before us is nearly £8 billion set aside for the Home Office. As you know, Madam Deputy Speaker, many SNP Members take a great interest in the estimates, both the process and the substance. Not so long ago, my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart)—he should be my right hon. Friend—was called to order and had to leave the Chamber for daring to try to debate the estimates on estimates day. We had been assured by the then Leader of the House that the estimates process is the way to make sure that Scotland’s voice is heard on questions of Government expenditure and Barnett consequentials, and that the English votes for English laws procedure would not stifle the votes or voices of Scottish Members. We may have been delivered from EVEL in this House, but if there is any positive legacy from those unlamented procedures, it is that estimates days are now set aside for the discussion of estimates, and we can debate and indeed vote on detailed aspects of Government expenditure.
That does not mean that the process is not still woefully lacking in effectiveness and the ability to propose substantive changes. In other legislatures, there can be line-by-line examination of a Government’s budget and spending plans, and Members can propose detailed amendments to direct funds to their priority policies or communities. That is not an option available to us, but I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) and our estimable colleagues in the SNP Whips Office on their ingenuity in bringing forward the amendment before us today.
The spending of the Home Office, particularly on asylum and immigration, certainly does warrant scrutiny and amendment. When Ministers say that the sums are vast—indeed, the sums spent on asylum accommodation are too high—they are not wrong. But their solutions, their alternatives, are wrong—very wrong. As the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) said, the most straightforward and simplest—and also the most practical and dignified—solution to the question of asylum accommodation, is to give asylum seekers the right to work and allow them to pay for their own accommodation. Instead of costing the taxpayer money, let them become taxpayers. Let asylum seekers contribute to the Treasury, our economy and our communities. If Conservative Members are genuinely concerned about community cohesion and integration, surely the way to build that is not to ostracise and “other” asylum seekers, but to allow them to play an active, positive role in our society and economy. There are plenty of examples where immigration in that sense has worked, as we see if we look at the contribution that the Syrian community have made to life on Scotland’s islands since that resettlement scheme was introduced, at how Ukrainians have been welcomed into homes and families and schools and workplaces across the country through those schemes. Of course, we have spoken many times about the impact that Afghans have had in Glasgow, not least through the Glasgow Afghan United organisation, headed up by my good friend, Councillor Abdul Bostani. I invite the Minister to come to Glasgow to meet refugees and asylum seekers such as those supported by Glasgow Afghan United and the Maryhill Integration Network.
Jeremy Corbyn
It was pointed out earlier that the number of asylum seekers, even those coming on small boats, would not be accommodated in Rwanda under the current plan, if that should go ahead. Is the hon. Gentleman aware that many of those trying to cross from Calais—I have been there and met them—are desperate people, some of whom are victims of war, some of whom are victims of war in Afghanistan and some of whom are victims of war in Afghanistan because they have worked for the British forces there. Surely we need to have a slightly more humanitarian approach to what are desperate people.
Patrick Grady
Yes, I agree entirely on that. The safe and legal routes that do exist for Ukrainians, Syrians and some Afghans are exceptions to the rule. They are the exceptions to the hostile environment, which starts when anybody gets off a plane and has to wait in interminable queues at the UK to get through passport control. It is a hostile environment that can end with the prospect of being deported to Rwanda if the Home Secretary does not like the cut of someone’s jib.
For the past nine years or so, asylum, immigration and visa cases have been at the very top of my constituency case load. Way back in 2105, a constituent of mine, literally a rocket scientist who wanted to contribute to world-class engineering projects at our universities, came to see me because the Home Office was attempting to refuse her a visa. I have lost track of the number of academics, musicians, artists, religious ministers and sometimes even just holidaymakers whose visits to the UK have been cancelled or curtailed by Home Office hostility and inefficiency. We have seen families whose reunion has been denied, small business owners who have given up and moved away, and funerals and weddings missed because the default position of the Home Office is suspicion and hostility towards anybody who wants to come here, unless they are stinking rich, in which case they are very welcome to come straight through the door, on a gold-plated visa.
Even as other parts of the Government proclaim that Britain is great, and say that we need and want skilled and talented entrepreneurs and graduates, the Home Office says, “No, Britain is closed.” I have visited British embassies and high commissions in parts of Africa that have been festooned with bunting and adverts for Chevening scholarships, and then gone to dinner that evening with young people who could not take up their scholarship because they had been denied a visa. I have visited the visa processing centre in Lilongwe, Malawi, and I was grateful for the time they gave me and for the efficiency with which they carry out their role. They take the biometrics and process the paperwork, and they do so quickly and effectively. But then the applications get stuck at the point of decision making, not in Malawi, not with input from our excellent high commission team, but at a remote centre in Pretoria, and that causes frustration, confusion and too often disappointment among the visa applicants. All of that speaks to inefficiencies, systemic and systematic failures within the Home Office.
I want to touch briefly on the question of the Rwanda scheme, as many have. According to the National Audit Office, the scheme will cost £1.8 million per person for the first 300 potential deportees. I had a look online the other day—a year’s full board in Disneyland Paris would cost £100,000 a year. The Prime Minister and the Minister for Countering Illegal Migration have said that the reason they think Rwanda is a deterrent is because it is not the UK; well, Disneyland Paris is not the UK, so there is a quicker and cheaper way of deterring people. If that sounds absurd, it is because the whole scheme is absurd.
We have touched on the question of ODA. It would be interesting to know whether any of the funding under the UK-Rwanda migration and economic development partnership, or the treaty with Rwanda, will be classed as ODA. As I said to the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, even if the UK Government have to count some of the money spent on supporting Ukrainian refugees as ODA, that should not be an excuse to minimise the amount of ODA being spent elsewhere by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. The Government should never have abandoned the 0.7% target in the first place; they broke a cross-party consensus to do that.
In an independent Scotland, the 0.7% target would be a floor, not a ceiling, for our spending on supporting some of the poorest and most vulnerable people around the world. But then in an independent Scotland, many things will be different and in stark contrast to the decay and decline of Westminster under successive Governments of whatever hue. The Scottish Government have printed commendable papers explaining what a humane asylum, immigration and migration policy would look like. Of course, Brexit has only added to all these costs.
For generations, people have left Scotland to make their homes elsewhere in the world because they were cleared from their land to make way for sheep, because their crops failed, because they wanted to join friends and family who had gone before them, or because they had skills and talents that they wanted to put to use in an economy or society that could benefit from them. Today many people from elsewhere in the world want to make their homes in Scotland and the rest of the UK for precisely the same reasons, but the UK Government say no. They spend vast amounts of money saying no, and they refuse to allow the devolved Administrations to do anything different. So it seems that devolution is in fact the real separatism. With independence, we will rejoin the world and play our part as an open, welcoming, good global citizen.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
It is a pleasure to take part in this necessary and timely debate. It is necessary because the common thread that has run through just about every contribution is the lack of transparency and accountability in the way the Home Office goes about its business, and in how it accounts to this House for the way in which it goes about its business. It is timely because, as the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) said, The Guardian has published an article today about Home Office immigration database errors that affect more than 76,000 people. The hon. Lady, I think, said that it was a guddle. If I may say so, I think that is an uncharacteristic understatement on her part; in fact, it certainly meets the test for being called a right bùrach.
At the heart of the system, the Atlas tool is used by immigration officers and Home Office officials for processing any asylum or immigration dealings. That is underpinned by the snappily titled person centric data platform, which stores a migrant’s interactions with UK immigration systems over time, including visa applications, identity documents and biometric information. It stores the records of 177 million people and is part of a Home Office project to digitise fully visa and immigration systems that has cost more than £400 million since 2014. The PCDP records feed into Atlas, so that Border Force officials can view information and some people seeking to track their own applications can access them—and that is where the problems come to light.
There is an issue of something called “merged identities”. Essentially, merged identities, as I understand it, are of two ordinary people; for example, Madam Deputy Speaker, you may have an application that is live, so you might go in and find my picture attached to your data, or vice versa. How on earth can a Home Office official processing applications possibly hope to make sense of that? Indeed, the person accessing this information online will of course immediately be upset and alarmed at what they are finding; this is something that can bring up very profound feelings. It is an issue not just of data mismanagement—as the hon. Member for Glasgow Central said, the Information Commissioner’s Office is looking into this—but that strikes at the right and opportunity of an individual to access some of the most basic services, rented housing, accommodation, healthcare and so much else.
There is a substantive matter here. Clearly, this is yet another botched Government IT project, but the issue of process matters as well. Members of the House have been asking about the operation of Atlas and the PCDP and they have been given assurances by Ministers. The Minister for Legal Migration and the Border, the hon. Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove), who I had hoped might be in the debate today—fortunately for him, he is not—has given said in a written answer that no “systemic issues” have been identified with Atlas, but the documents that have been seen by The Guardian today clearly contradict that. Either the Minister has been misled by his officials, or he has been told something by his officials that he did not think would be advantageous for Parliament to hear, so the information and the answers have been framed in a particular way. Either way, it is clear that the culture within the Home Office is one that does not respect parliamentary accountability.
I hope that, when the Minister for Countering Illegal Migration, the right hon. and learned Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson), comes to reply to the debate, he will tell the House what the Government knew about the problems with the Atlas system and the person centric data platform that underpins it, when they knew that, and why they have not brought information about it to the House. The Guardian has done a tremendous service to this House by exposing the full extent of Home Office failure, but that should not be necessary. We should not be relying on investigative journalists and on people blowing whistles from inside the Home Office; we should be able to take on trust what we are told, but we are told very little, and, on the basis of what we have read in The Guardian today, it seems that we can cannot even trust that.
Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for securing this important debate and pay tribute to the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee for her powerful opening speech and for the outstanding work that she is doing on these issues.
The Home Office spending figures, detailing an astronomical overspend of £5.9 billion last year, represents such a shockingly cavalier attitude to taxpayers’ money that it really does beggar belief. Two thirds of that £5.9 billion was for asylum costs—a staggering £4.3 billion overspend over the past 12 months, taking the total spend on emergency asylum hotels and asylum seeker support up to a quite astonishing £5.4 billion. These costs also include a whopping £1.2 billion to pay for the implementation of the Illegal Migration Act 2023, which, let us not forget, has not even been implemented yet.
We also know that, should the Government manage to be able to realise their fever dream of sending asylum seekers rather than Home Secretaries to Rwanda, the first 300 will cost an astonishing £570 million and account for just 1% of the 30,000 asylum seekers who crossed the channel in small boats last year. That works out at almost £2 million per asylum seeker. Just let that sink in: £2 million of British taxpayers’ money to send one asylum seeker to Rwanda. The country knows it, this House knows it, the Home Secretary knows it, and the Minister knows it: the Rwanda scheme is the worst value for money policy in history.
The Conservatives will point to the asylum seekers crossing the channel. It is correct to say that more than 100,000 have made that perilous journey since 2018, which is when the Conservative party started to well and truly lose control of our borders. It is also correct to say that, of that 100,000, a staggering 40,000 have crossed since the current Prime Minister was appointed by default, which tells us all we need to know about his vacuous “Stop the boats” pledge and how it is going. Labour is clear that tackling the Tory boats chaos cannot be achieved through headline-chasing gimmicks, such as the Rwanda plan, which just absorb vast amounts of money, time and resources.
Instead, we need a laser-like focus on practical common-sense measures that get the job done, which is why Labour has set out a detailed plan to smash the criminal smuggler gangs that are running Britain’s borders and trading in human misery. If this Government cannot restore order to the border, then the next Labour Government will, but the fact is that the asylum backlog had already grown fourfold even before the small boats started coming in large numbers. It was the Conservative Government’s decision to downgrade the seniority of asylum decision makers in 2013 that led to the backlog spiralling, due to slower, poorer-quality decision making and larger numbers of appeals, plus high staff turnover, resulting in the total chaos that we are now seeing.
Let us not forget that the Government have an estate of more than 50,000 relatively cost-effective asylum beds that keep the system within budget, but the use of nearly 400 hotels last year to house as many as 56,000 asylum seekers at any one time has sent costs through the roof. According to the House of Commons Library, spending on asylum hotels and support has increased by an astonishing 733% in the past five years alone. That is what happens when we try to cut corners and costs: we end up paying 10 times as much in the long term, clearing up the mess that we have made. It is the definition of a false economy. Labour has a plan to clear the backlog within one year by surging the number of caseworkers, thus saving the taxpayer £2 billion in hotel bills. We will also create a new returns unit, with 1,000 immigration enforcement officers, to remove people from safe countries who have failed in their asylum claims. Those are the key pillars of our plan for a firm, fair and well-managed asylum system.
Of course Britain faces a forced migration challenge caused by increasing geopolitical turbulence and the proliferation of authoritarian regimes, with violence and persecution spreading across the world, but the Government have utterly failed to rise to that challenge. Successive Home Secretaries have had ample opportunity since the small boats started coming in large numbers in 2018 to work with our European partners and allies to end the vile trade of people smuggling in the channel, but rather than seeking to engage constructively they have spent the last six years trashing their working relationships with our European neighbours through their damaging rhetoric and frequent promises to break or ignore international laws and treaties.
The Government have traded hard graft, quiet diplomacy and common sense for unworkable legislation and headline-chasing gimmicks that are not based on reality and are therefore destined to fail. Meanwhile, the public has been forced to watch on helplessly as the criminal gangs have taken hold, with prosecutions of people smugglers down a startling 34% since 2010. We are clear that co-operation with Europe is the only way to restore our border security. Labour has promised a cross-border police unit to go after the criminal gangs upstream by forging a new security partnership with Europol based on intelligence sharing and joint work, paid for by redirecting some of the vast sums of money that are being squandered on the Rwanda shambles.
Given the central role that the Minister is playing in all this, I have the following questions for him. The Prime Minister promised to end the use of hotels for asylum seekers by the end of last year. Can the Minister therefore explain why, at the end of December, there were still more than 46,000 asylum seekers in hotel accommodation? We now know that hundreds of millions of pounds have been committed to the Rwandan Government as part of the Tories’ failed plan. Can he tell me how much of that money the UK will get back if no flights take off?
Can the Minister explain why the Rwanda money could not have been invested in border security instead? Does he truly believe that spending nearly £2 million on every person sent to Rwanda, just to get “a few symbolic flights” off the ground—to quote a previous Immigration Minister, the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick)—in an election year represents good value for taxpayers’ money? Does the Minister agree that Rwanda is the worst value for money policy in history? The NAO revealed that the Home Office would spend £11,000 per person on flights to Rwanda. Can the Minister explain why taxpayers are paying 11 times as much as a commercial flight would cost?
The failures of Home Office Ministers are not just impacting on their own budgets and overspends, but causing severe challenges for other Departments and for local councils. As my right hon. Friend the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee pointed out, a huge amount of the spending is being channelled through overseas development assistance, which is having a huge impact on the amount of ODA available to spend in countries that are generating large numbers of asylum seekers and in the neighbouring countries. It is a lose-lose situation. The money that should be spent to address push factors is instead being spent on hotel bills in this country. Will the Minister therefore set out whether he feels that using ODA in this way is a viable long-term strategy? Does he agree that that is the very definition of robbing Peter to pay Paul, and that it is working against the strategic objectives of ODA and against what any sensible Government should be doing to address the crisis in our asylum system?
The latest estimates are part of a long-running and increasingly predictable pattern. The Home Office goes cap in hand to the Treasury, asking for billions of pounds, over and above what was already a multibillion-pound annual budget, to deal with a set of crises entirely of the Government’s own making. The Treasury then duly signs blank cheque after blank cheque to the Home Office, and yet still somehow manages to make matters worse. Ministers are trying to claim that an alternative to Rwanda would somehow be more expensive, but the problem with that argument is that they are comparing the Rwanda plan with the cost of doing nothing; they are not comparing the Rwanda plan to Labour’s common-sense plan to go after the gangs, to get removals back up and running, and to clear the backlog.
The Minister for Legal Migration and the Border said:
“It is not acceptable to spend £8 million a day in the asylum system.”—[Official Report, 4 March 2024; Vol. 746, c. 647.]
That is £3 billion a year, and I could not agree more. It should not be necessary to remind him that it is on his party’s watch that the cost of the asylum system has rocketed tenfold since 2010. That is why the Conservatives need to get out of the way, so that Labour can restore order at our border and fix this broken and unaffordable Tory asylum system. Let us have that general election, and let us have it now.
The Minister for Countering Illegal Migration (Michael Tomlinson)
I start, as other right hon. and hon. Members have done, by paying tribute to and praising the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, which is reportedly the most effective Select Committee in town—I will come back to that point. Seriously, she does an important and vital job.
I gently suggest a couple of things. It is sad to see that the right hon. Lady is so lonely, sitting on her own on the Labour Benches. The hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) made that point—it is nice to agree with him on something, at least. With due respect to her, however, the right hon. Lady has carried out her role forensically and with diligence, as she always does.
Occasionally, the right hon. Lady is critical of those on the Government Front Bench. That is part of her role, so she is entitled to be, but I will gently push back on her accusations about transparency and say what a pleasure it was to appear before her Committee within hours of being appointed to this role, alongside the Minister for Legal Migration and the Border, my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove). In fact, my hon. Friend enjoyed his experience so much that he was back in the Committee this week. From the reports I have seen, it was a genuinely constructive and instructive exchange between those on the Committee and those giving evidence.
Before I turn to the details set out by the Chair of the Select Committee, it is right to say that the Government need no reminding that taxpayers’ interests must come first and foremost when determining our approach to the asylum and immigration systems. It is right to say that no one has done more than this Government to shine a light on the overall costs and on the public money that is being spent, not least every day to house asylum seekers in hotels. I will come back in a few moments to the detail of that, but my hon. Friend the Minister for Legal Migration and the Border has confirmed that his pledge has been exceeded: in fact, more than the 50 hotels that he had pledged would close had been closed by the end of January.
On Rwanda—again, I will come back to the details shortly—it is right to say at this stage why the partnership is needed. It is needed because we cannot go on with the situation where there are fatalities in the channel. For the past eight consecutive months, people have died attempting to cross the channel. There is a moral case, a compassionate case, for saying that we must stop the boats. That is the mission—it is my mission, and one that I am determined to carry out.
Joanna Cherry
Does the Minister appreciate that those of us who question the Rwanda scheme are doing so not because we do not think that the boats should be stopped, but because we think that the Rwanda scheme is not the way to do that and does not provide value for money? Those are the issues that he needs to address in the short time that he has left—whether the Rwanda scheme is value for money.
Michael Tomlinson
I will come back to the hon. and learned Lady’s points—she made a series of points. She is right that she led a Select Committee visit to Rwanda. I very much look forward to seeing the details of that report. My point is that there is a moral and compassionate case for the Rwanda scheme, and if time allows, I will delve into the detail. If time does not allow, there will be further exchanges on Monday, and doubtless in the future, about the Rwanda scheme.
The hon. Member for Glasgow North was kind enough to invite me to Glasgow, so let me turn to his contribution first—briefly, if I may. I endorse his point about there being no one on the Labour Benches. It is perhaps instructive as to where Labour Members’ priorities are that not a single Back Bencher, other than the Chair of the Select Committee, is here in the Chamber to address what is, in my view, the single biggest global challenge facing not just the United Kingdom, France and the EU, but the whole world. Not a single other Labour Back Bencher is here. The hon. Member spoke powerfully on that point, and I agree with him entirely.
Dame Diana Johnson
I think it worth pointing out that the two other Labour members of the Home Affairs Committee are representing Parliament at the United Nations women’s equality summit this week. I am sure that otherwise they would be here supporting us, like other members of the Committee.
Michael Tomlinson
I am very grateful indeed to the right hon. Lady for that point, but there are Labour Members of Parliament other than those two—at the moment, in any event.
Once again, I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Glasgow North for his points on that. Let me say directly that, yes, I would love to come to Glasgow. He teased and tempted me with football. If I could perhaps encourage him to find a cricket team, I would certainly be willing to go up—my footballing skills are not as they once were. But seriously, I take him up on that offer and look forward to being there. I disagree with him on the Rwanda scheme; he will not be surprised to hear me say so. I hope that I have the chance today—and, if not, on Monday—to set out more details on that.
The hon. Member for Glasgow North had an exchange with the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) about the plea to allow illegal migrants to work in this country. I disagree fundamentally on that point. It will be interesting to see whether the Labour Front Benchers pick up on that and accept it as their policy. It is not my policy; it is not our policy.
Jeremy Corbyn
The point that I was making was that, unlike other countries, we do not encourage and rapidly allow asylum seekers and those granted asylum to work upon arrival. We lose an awful lot of skill from a great number of people who could make a huge contribution to our lives and our economy. We spend a great deal of money preventing them from working. We could change the attitude and the approach on that.
Michael Tomlinson
I understand the right hon. Member’s point; I disagree with it fundamentally. That would be not a deterrent but the opposite of a deterrent: it would be a pull factor and an encouraging factor. I would be very interested to see whether the Labour party adopts that policy—so far, it has been pretty silent on its plans, but it sounds like that may well be one of them.
I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) for her thoughtful and considered remarks. She rightly praised the Chair of the Select Committee, but I also praise my right hon. Friend for her diligence and for being in the Chamber for such an important debate. Her expertise in Treasury matters and in Home Affairs matters has come together during the course of this debate, and the Chamber is grateful for her contribution. I agree with her about the Nationality and Borders Act, and again pay tribute to her for taking that Act through Parliament. I will reflect on her points, particularly in relation to the one-stop shop, which I know is something she has championed.
I also agree with my right hon. Friend about the overall deterrent effect. She rightly mentioned technology and borders and the Downer review. She will, I hope, be reassured to hear that progress is being made, although perhaps not as fast as she would like—she will know of my impatience on this subject as well. We will, and must, crack on with that. As for the money going to Rwanda, she is right: it is an economic, migration and development partnership, as the Home Secretary has set out. That money is going to support things like education, healthcare, agriculture and infrastructure, and I know that my right hon. Friend will welcome that.
The hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) moved her amendment. I encourage hon. Members to disagree with that amendment—I do not think we should be spending less money in this area.
My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) rightly posed challenges: what do we do with those who are here irregularly and have had their asylum cases rejected, but who we cannot return to Iran or Eritrea? That question has been posed time and again to Opposition Members, and answer comes there none. The third country scheme—the Rwanda scheme—is the answer to that challenge, which is why I am so determined to see it through. I am sure we will have further exchanges on that question as the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill returns to the House and goes through ping-pong next week.
I also thank and praise my hon. Friend for his diligence on the Home Affairs Committee over the past 10 years. Although he may be superficially charming, he is as challenging to Government Front Benchers as the Opposition Members are, if not more challenging; certainly when he gets his pen out and asks those detailed questions, Ministers have to make sure that they are at the ready. He has rightly challenged the French partnership, and I agree with him. I know that the Select Committee has been out to France to see the work that is taking place there. That work is increasing, more French personnel are now deployed, and that is beginning to have an effect. He will have seen the reduction in numbers from last year: crossings are down by 36%. We must reduce those numbers further and redouble our efforts.
My hon. Friend also asked challenging questions about the backlog. The direct answer is that the backlog stands at 95,252 as of the end of December and is down by 28%. We must increase that downward trajectory, and we must increase the upward trajectory in the number of caseworkers and decision makers. Over 2,500 are in place, and I pay tribute to each and every one.
I must, in due deference, give time to the Chair of the Select Committee to wind up in the final few minutes. We will return to the subject of Rwanda on Monday, but I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North for her forensic approach and for bringing this debate to the Chamber of the House of Commons. There will be further debates on Monday; it will be nice to hear more details—or a detail—of what Labour has to offer in this area, because so far it has nothing to offer at all.
Dame Diana Johnson
This has been an excellent debate at which members of the Home Affairs Committee have been well represented, including the deputy Chair, the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), and the spokesperson for the SNP, the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), who is a very valued member of the Committee. The former Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel), has spoken, as has the Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry).
The key theme that I want the Minister to take away, which almost every speaker referred to, is the lack of transparency from the Home Office. That is the issue that I want the Minister and his colleagues to address. Parliament is not a rubber stamp for whatever the Home Office wishes to do; it has to be accountable to the Home Affairs Committee and to Parliament more generally. I look forward to future meetings of the Committee where Ministers come equipped with all the information that is necessary for our Committee to carry out effective scrutiny on behalf of the House.
Question deferred (Standing Order No. 54).
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
I am now required to put the Questions necessary—[Interruption.] The Clerks are wondering if it is 5 o’clock yet. It is not quite 5 o’clock, but by the time I say this it will be. I am now required to put the Questions necessary to dispose of proceedings on the estimates set down for consideration this day.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
With the leave of the House, I will put the Questions on motions 2 to 5 together.
Estimates 2024-25 (Navy) Vote A
Resolved,
That, during the year ending with 31 March 2025, a number not exceeding 39,650 all ranks be maintained for Naval and Marine Service and that numbers in the Reserve Naval and Marines Forces be authorised for the purposes of Parts 1, 3, 4 and 5 of the Reserve Forces Act 1996 up to the maximum numbers set out in Votes A 2024-25, HC 529.
Estimates 2024-25 (Army) Vote A
Resolved,
That, during the year ending with 31 March 2025, a number not exceeding 97,710 all ranks be maintained for Army Service and that numbers in the Reserve Land Forces be authorised for the purposes of Parts 1, 3, 4 and 5 of the Reserve Forces Act 1996 up to the maximum numbers set out in Votes A 2024-25, HC 529.
Estimates 2024-25 (Air) Vote A
Resolved,
That, during the year ending with 31 March 2025, a number not exceeding 35,800 all ranks be maintained for Air Force Service and that numbers in the Reserve Air Forces be authorised for the purposes of Parts 1, 3, 4 and 5 of the Reserve Forces Act 1996 up to the maximum numbers set out in Votes A 2024–25, HC 529.
Estimates, Excesses 2022-23
[Relevant document: Eighteenth Report of the Committee of Public Accounts, Excess Votes 2022-23, HC 589.]
Resolved,
That, for the year ending with 31 March 2023, resources, not exceeding £946,445,000, be authorised to make good excesses for use for current purposes as set out in the Statement of Excesses 2022–23, HC 502.
Supplementary Estimates 2023-24
Question put,
That, for the year ending with 31 March 2024:
(1) further resources, not exceeding £3,319,371,000, be authorised for use for current purposes as set out in HC 447, HC 500, HC 531, HC 533, HC 575 and HC 587,
(2) the resources authorised for capital purposes be reduced by £11,316,268,000 as so set out, and
(3) a further sum, not exceeding £8,456,085,000, be granted to His Majesty to be issued by the Treasury out of the Consolidated Fund and applied to expenditure on the use of resources authorised by Parliament.—(Nigel Huddleston.)
St Peter’s Hospital, Maldon
(7 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Sir John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)
It is a pleasure to have a fellow Essex Member in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker. I also welcome my hon. Friend the Minister, and I am glad to see my constituency neighbours, my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois)—on the opposite side of the River Crouch—and my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel). She and I share the Maldon district between us, and we are working very closely on an issue that is of huge importance to both my constituents and hers.
St Peter’s Hospital in Maldon is a much-loved community hospital. It has been delivering care since the NHS was founded, but the building itself is a former workhouse and is more than 150 years old. We have known for some time that the building has significant problems, although, thanks to the dedication of the staff, the quality of care has been superb. There are significant challenges, which have become worse over time. The hallways are too narrow for stretchers, the floors have not been able to take the weight of the beds, the lift has repeatedly broken down, and there are leaking roofs, asbestos and potentially even a risk of legionnaires’ disease. While money has been spent over the years to maintain the building and keep it going, it has long been recognised that a new purpose-built facility is needed, either on the present site or in a different location. That has been the subject of debate and discussion for a number of years.
In 2003, the annual report of the Maldon and South Chelmsford Primary Care Trust stated that two preferred sites had been identified, that a provisional outline business case approval had been given, and that the new build was scheduled to open at some time towards the end of 2007. It never happened. There were difficulties with establishing ownership of part of the land off Limebrook Way, where it was due to be sited. Since then, we have had a succession of studies and debates about what a new hospital should offer and whether it should be a health hub. Most recently, plans were being drawn up for a new site to be developed to the west of Maldon, on Wycke Hill. However, this proposal became stuck due to the lack of sufficient funding for the access road, and a reduction in the contribution available from the developer and from the section 106 money for the housing being developed nearby.
To meet the anticipated winter pressures, it was announced in August last year that the in-patient beds would be relocated to Brentwood and Rochford, and the birthing unit transferred to St Michael’s Hospital in Braintree. We were told that these changes were only temporary while long-term solutions were found. Despite that, the Mid and South Essex integrated care board announced in January that it was proposing to make the changes permanent and that the out-patient services at St Peter’s would be relocated elsewhere, allowing the building to be eventually closed.
The proposals are subject to a consultation, which has recently been extended to 4 April. The ICB says that 2,600 of its surveys have already been returned. Over 400 people attended a public meeting that I organised with the mayor of Maldon, Councillor Andrew Lay, and another 100 had to be turned away. I have also received nearly 700 email responses to my own survey, and I am currently distributing across the constituency 25,000 leaflets containing a survey. It is already clear that my constituents are unanimous in wanting to see medical services continue in the town. They also believe that the consultation is a cosmetic exercise, with decisions already taken. I have to say that this belief is reinforced by the fact that the two alternative options presented for the in-patient beds currently in St Peter’s both involve closing the wards in the hospital and moving them elsewhere.
The Maldon district is growing steadily. We have something like 3,000 houses currently under construction in Maldon and Heybridge, with another 1,500 across the district. Demand for NHS services is rising steadily, with the GP to patient ratio already one of the worst in the country. Rather than closing NHS facilities, we need more. In addition, Maldon district is geographically spread, with some villages already half an hour’s travel time from Maldon. The travel time to Broomfield, Braintree or Brentwood can be up to an hour or more from villages such as Tillingham or Southminster in the Dengie peninsula, and the idea that an expectant mother in the early stages of giving birth should have to travel an hour is appalling.
The ICB suggested last year that there was an average of just six births per month at the maternity unit in St Peter’s, but the unit was actually closed for a large part of that time, because staff were sent to Chelmsford. Ten years ago, there were over 300 births per year, and the population has grown steadily since that time. As one of the midwives wrote in response to the survey that I am conducting:
“Our unit has seen 1000’s of births over its 75 years, over the past 5 years we have had over a 1000 postnatal stays, mothers who have birthed at Broomfield, then needed ongoing support coming to stay with us, we have taken readmissions from the community with baby’s not feeding well, which in turn warded off a remission to Broomfield where beds are always in short supply. We do in excess of 50 community visits weekly, 80+ clinic appointments weekly, over 20 new bookings a week, and anything between 5-10 appointments a day on our ward for anything extra…We are so much more than the ‘6 births a month’ that was widely reported and made us as a team so very angry and undervalued.”
The availability of in-patient services and a maternity unit are of huge importance to my constituents, but it is the out-patient services on which thousands depend. There are some 80,000 out-patient appointments each year, with a huge range of specialties such as X-rays, blood tests and ophthalmology. Although, unlike my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham, I have not used the birthing unit, I have received physiotherapy at the hospital and am due to have an abdominal aortic aneurysm screening there in the next few weeks.
I welcome the ICB’s assurance that out-patient services will be maintained at St Peter’s until alternative locations in the town are found, but it is essential that they are maintained in Maldon without a break or cessation of service. It is not good enough simply to divide up the different services and to try to slot them into buildings across the town. We need the new hospital or health hub that has been promised for so long. We have seen the new hospital at Braintree and the expansion of Broomfield and Southend, but Maldon has been consistently overlooked.
It was announced in last week’s Budget that the Maldon district is being allocated £5 million of levelling-up money for cultural projects, which I welcome, but what my constituents want is not cultural projects but a new hospital. Essex County Council and the district council have money set aside, but it is unlikely to be sufficient.
I applaud the Government’s continuing investment in the NHS, of which we saw further proof last week, but I ask the Minister to tell the Mid and South Essex ICB to think again and, rather than cutting services, to maintain and expand them so that my constituents have the high-quality, easily accessible healthcare they deserve.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
The right hon. Lady has not asked me, the Minister or the right hon. Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) whether she can take part in the debate, but she can ask now.
The Minister for Social Care (Helen Whately)
indicated assent.
Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) on securing the debate, and I echo everything he said in illustrating the sorry and sad situation in which our constituents find themselves with regard to what is a much-loved local hospital. Naturally, we both speak from our personal experience, but it is fair to say that both he and my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) will have received hefty mailbags of angry correspondence from our constituents who believe that the ICB’s consultation is effectively a slippery slope to permanent closure and the running down of services after last summer’s announcement, which we clearly do not support. It is right that we stand up for our constituents.
I reiterate and echo the points raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon, particularly on the incredible maternity and birthing facility. Nurses from the facility were present at the public meeting held in Witham on Monday evening, and I emphasise the due diligence, care and compassion they provide not just in the birthing unit but in the wider community. The support that the facility gives to new mothers was echoed by everyone in that public meeting.
The reality is that Essex is a very large county, and relocating these services is simply not good enough because of the time it takes to travel to the alternative facilities, and public transport is not available. I emphasise that Maldon is a growing district in both our constituencies; the Westcombe Park development in Heybridge straddles my right hon. Friend’s constituency and mine, and it now has more than 1,000 homes under development.The current local plan runs until 2029 and will see the development of another 5,000 homes. It is simply unsustainable that we have a proposal to close St Peter’s Hospital and relocate services elsewhere in Essex, because we can guarantee that in future years there will be calls to stand up those local medical facilities again. That is why, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon said, we must have new facilities in Maldon town, and they have to be future-proofed to meet growing need.
Finally, it is vital that we recognise the overall impact of an ageing and growing population. We have to provide the right kind of medical facilities and give our constituents the assurance that whatever happens with their health, they can have health provision on their doorstep.
The Minister for Social Care (Helen Whately)
I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) for securing this important debate about the future of NHS services for his constituents. I know that St Peter’s Hospital, which has a long history of delivering local NHS services, is close to his heart and those of many people in his area. He spoke of the dedication of the staff who have worked there over the years and of many debates about the future. I welcome his sustained efforts to bring together stakeholders and ensure that his constituents’ voices are heard. We also heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel); she, too, made sure that her constituents’ voices are heard in this place. It is not the first time that she has raised this matter with me.
I want to assure both my right hon. Friends that the Government believe that NHS reconfigurations should be locally led, and based on clinically evidenced decisions. Any decision about St Peter’s will reflect our commitment to investing in health and care services for Maldon and Mid and South Essex. Let me start by reiterating that no decision has been made on the future of St Peter’s, and that a local consultation will run until 4 April 2024. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon is aware, the local NHS is concerned that the hospital does not meet the required standards for services because of issues with the age, condition and suitability of its buildings. Indeed, he spoke about that a moment ago. St Peter’s was built as a Victorian workhouse and has deteriorated in recent years. That makes the building costly to maintain and it would be expensive to refurbish. The cost of getting the facility up to the standard needed is estimated at more than £18 million.
The St Peter’s site has also struggled to staff services properly, despite the increase in the NHS workforce in the past few years. When the birthing unit was at St Peter’s, it had to be periodically closed due to staff shortages, and there were also clinical safety concerns about the isolation of the unit; there were no other 24-hour services in the building. I heard my right hon. Friend explain that in the past there had been more than 300 births a year in the maternity unit, and I believe that my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham had her baby there.
I understand that stroke rehabilitation services in Essex community hospitals are not currently staffed in line with national best practice for specialist stroke units. I am sure that my right hon. Friends’ constituents want services not only on the doorstep, but to be staffed to provide the best possible care. That will be crucial, be it for mothers giving birth and their new babies, or for patients recovering from a stroke, for whom getting the right rehabilitation can make a huge difference to future quality of life. That is why ways to treat and care for patients and better equip facilities with the right level of specialist staff are being considered by the integrated care board.
I understand that other locations in and around Maldon are being considered by the ICB for the other patient services provided at St Peter’s; this will keep services such as out-patient appointments close to the current location. It is crucial that the ICB gets a full understanding of how these proposals will affect local people—of whether expected standards are met, not only of care, but of access. People usually understand that they may need to travel to get to a more specialised service, but it is essential that the services that people need are accessible. As well as considering patients, the ICB must consider families, carers, who need to be able to visit, and of course staff.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Witham emphasised the size and scale of Essex, and both she and my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon spoke of house building and the growing population in the area, which clearly needs to be taken into account by the ICB. I have been assured that the local NHS is engaging and seeking to understand the views of residents before making any final decision. When that decision is made, the ICB must clearly set out how a decision will benefit the constituents of my right hon. Friends and people in the wider area.
I understand that my right hon. Friends are concerned about the adequacy of local consultation on the proposed changes. I am assured by the local NHS that multiple events are being held to discuss the proposals, and at least three have already taken place in Maldon. As we heard earlier, public meetings have already been held, involving my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham. Almost 3,000 people have already completed the online survey since 25 January.
I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham for raising the closure of St Peter’s in a Westminster Hall debate earlier; my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon raised it in oral questions the other day. I am glad to hear that the NHS will consider the results of a survey undertaken by my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon, and that those views will be fed into any decision. The local NHS is giving people more time to come forward, and this week it announced an extension to the consultation by an additional two weeks.
Mid and South Essex is already one of the best parts of the country for the NHS getting patients back home and to appropriate care settings to recover from a stay in hospital. That strong performance has been supported by Government investment. That includes significant capital funding of £20 million for accident and emergency across 2020-21 and 2021-22; £18 million for the targeted investment fund in 2021-22 and 2022-23; and £7 million for a community diagnostic centre across the same two years. We have invested £61 million in operational capital in 2023-24, and £182 million across the 2023 spending review, which can be used for capital projects and work. I am sure that my right hon. Friends will be in no doubt about the Government’s commitment to the health of their constituents.
I can also assure my right hon. Friends that we have now delivered on our manifesto commitment for 50 million more general practice appointments per year, with nearly 370 million appointments booked across the last 18 months. Our primary care recovery plan is making it quicker and easier for patients to get the help that they need from primary care. On facilities for GPs in Maldon, integrated care boards have delegated responsibility for commissioning primary care services and can prioritise capital funding for an essential system of allocation to invest in primary care estates as needed.
In closing, I thank my right hon. Friends the Members for Maldon, and for Witham, for speaking in the debate and focusing our attention on healthcare in Essex, specifically on the future of St Peter’s Hospital. They have both done an excellent job of ensuring that the views of their constituents are heard, and I have no doubt that they will continue to do so. I am very much looking forward to meeting them to discuss in greater detail the questions we debated today. I am confident that the local NHS has been listening, and I know the importance of St Peter’s to the area. Any change in NHS services must be made with the utmost sensitivity to local views.
Question put and agreed to.