House of Lords
Introduction: Lord Shamash
Red Sea Telecommunication Cables
(8 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Rawlings
To ask His Majesty’s Government what support they are providing to help protect telecommunication cables in the Red Sea.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (The Earl of Minto) (Con)
My Lords, the Government take the security of the UK’s critical national infrastructure extremely seriously. We are working closely with private commercial interests to better understand the ongoing situation in the Red Sea and the resilience of telecoms networks. In recent months, Defence has acted decisively to protect international shipping in the Red Sea from the Houthi’s dangerous and illegal attacks, while continuing to apply diplomatic pressure.
Baroness Rawlings (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his Answer. The Red Sea is particularly vulnerable to attack because of its narrow and shallow proximity to Iran’s naval bases. Digital data is not in the cloud but depends 97% on seabed cables, and trillions get transferred yearly. Unlike ships, there are no flags, and they are not legally registered to any country. They are easily cut, causing major disruption in the world. Their location is freely available, with scope for plausible deniability. Does the Minister agree that there have been two very good reports, one by our Prime Minister in 2017 and one this year, stressing that China, with its undersea great wall, and Russia, with its sensors and unmanned vehicles, pose a severe threat? What is the UK’s strategic doctrine guiding our seabed policy? With Russia’s aggressive behaviour in the European Atlantic, what is the UK doing to support NATO’s defence system?
The Earl of Minto (Con)
My Lords, I will cut to the chase. We take all this extremely seriously, but it is important to contextualise the risk. The most likely cause by far of damage to subsea cables comes from accidental damage by industrial fishing and shipping and from underwater geological events. That is not to say that undersea cables are not prone to attack but it is extremely rare, and the commercial organisations can divert very quickly to alternative routes. Having said that, the Ministry of Defence has capabilities to monitor the seabed and has invested in a multi-role ocean surveillance programme which enhances our joint intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance capability. We work collegiately with allies, including NATO, to ensure that subsea infrastructure is resilient.
Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)
My Lords, one issue is clearly the cutting of cables. The other is cyberattacks on undersea cables. What is the MoD’s position on that, and do we have adequate resilience?
The Earl of Minto (Con)
My Lords, the question of resilience is one of ongoing technological change. However, through maritime domain awareness, which is a critical part of our maritime defence and is more specifically about the UK’s national waters rather than international waters, we collect an enormous amount of data to provide accurate information through surveillance software, coastal radars, aviation operations, space-based reconnaissance and government vessels. We get an enormous amount of data. Resilience is something which we consistently and constantly work on.
Lord Stirrup (CB)
The Minister has said that physical attacks on undersea infrastructure are very rare, and this is true at the moment, but it is unlikely to be true in a period of heightened tension and approaching conflict. It is not just the Red Sea. Our undersea connections for communications and power supplies, such as for gas and oil with Norway, are extensive and are growing ever greater in the Arctic. The Minister mentioned some of the capabilities that the UK military has to defend them, but they are very few and far between. Given the proliferation of this entirely new and very challenging threat, is Grant Shapps not absolutely right to call for an increase in the defence budget to 3% of GDP?
The Earl of Minto (Con)
My Lords, nobody would be surprised to know that, yes, I think Grant Shapps is absolutely right.
Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)
My Lords, in the absence of my noble friend Lord West, I ask: what naval assets do we have to protect the underwater cables?
The Earl of Minto (Con)
My Lords, our naval assets are substantial. In fact, there are new support ships coming in that have the specific capability of underwater surveillance, so it is well on the way.
Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton (Con)
My Lords, I will add some specifics to that. RFA “Proteus” is our multi-role oceanographic survey ship. Interestingly, its purchase was announced by Ben Wallace in November 2022 and it was in service less than one year later, which is really quite impressive. Will my noble friend say what the lessons of the speed of that procurement are and whether it is our intention to purchase any further vessels in future?
The Earl of Minto (Con)
My Lords, the speed of that acquisition is a fantastic example of how when procurement goes right, the agility and ability to acquire, equip and train crews to man these sorts of vehicles is comfortably within our capability. I do not know precisely when the next ship is due to come, and I will write to my noble friend with that information.
Lord Coaker (Lab)
What assessment have the Government made of the impacts of the cuts to these telecommunications cables on the telecommunications traffic from Asia to Europe or whatever? What are they going to do specifically to protect the workers needed to fix those cables?
The Earl of Minto (Con)
The noble Lord makes a good point. On the whole, the cables themselves are not fixed but replaced. It is too dangerous and time-consuming to replace them because of the depth they are at and the danger from shipping. These are commercial decisions, and there are commercial sensitivities that we really cannot go into. Suffice it to say that we are acutely aware of what the risk might be in this area.
Lord Teverson (LD)
For UK data security, the rather unglamorous solution is the proliferation of these cables, which to a degree is already naturally happening commercially. Where there is real vulnerability is at landing sites, where there is a concentration of these cables. We need to diversify those landing sites on this side of the Atlantic. Does the Minister agree? If so, what action are the Government taking to make sure that takes place?
The Earl of Minto (Con)
The noble Lord is right that proliferation is an issue. As has been mentioned, the amount of data that travels through these cables is so significant that it requires all the protection it can get. The question of landing sites is very much part of the overall security resilience that we have been talking about. I can only imagine that they are going to become more and more important as we continue to suffer such an unstable global situation.
Lord Craig of Radley (CB)
My Lords, the Minister mentioned the Houthis. What assessment have the Government made of the ability of the Houthis to replace the weapons they have used or those that have been destroyed by Royal Air Force and other allied attacks? It is important to know whether the Houthis will be able to continue the sorts of attacks that they started some months ago.
The Earl of Minto (Con)
The noble and gallant Lord is right. The Government’s approach to addressing the issue of the Houthis has not really changed. It is all about increasing diplomatic engagement, ending the illegal flow of arms—I think we are all fully in support of that—cutting off the financial resources of the Houthis and helping the people of Yemen, who need support.
Lord Bellingham (Con)
My Lords, the Minister mentioned diplomacy. Surely this brings into sharp focus the need for a robust and sustainable peace process. Obviously military action is part of what is needed, but can he give us an update on how the peace process is going at the moment and what role the UK is playing?
The Earl of Minto (Con)
My Lords, that is not strictly within my brief. However, I am fully aware that my noble friend the Foreign Secretary and my noble friend Lord Ahmad have recently met the relevant parties, and the importance of the peace process could not be emphasised more.
Royal Navy: Climate Change Training
(8 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Lord McColl of Dulwich
To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to introduce training for the Royal Navy on climate change.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (The Earl of Minto) (Con)
My Lords, the defence command plan refresh highlighted that defence is already being impacted by climate change and that we must face the reality of operating in a harsher climate and adapt accordingly, enhancing both our capabilities and our operational advantage. As part of the ongoing work to ensure that defence is resilient to the impact of climate change, we have introduced an awareness course on climate change and defence resilience for the Armed Forces and Ministry of Defence personnel. Currently there are no plans for that training to become mandatory.
Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con)
I thank my noble friend for that Answer. Will any training include the scientific record of how the climate has changed substantially without either human interference or causing human extinction? For example, during the Younger Dryas, about 12,000 years ago, the temperature fell dramatically and then rose again by as much as 10 degrees centigrade over a period of 50 years, while during the Middle Ages the temperature of the earth was higher than it is today. Abandoning attempts to prevent climate change would save the West from bankruptcy and release a large amount of money for defence and would even enable us to buy some frigates, which would please the noble Lord, Lord West.
The Earl of Minto (Con)
My Lords, the question of climate change and defence resilience is increasingly at the heart of what we are doing. The UK’s ability to understand the impact of climate change across defence and to adapt to it will be key to gaining strategic advantage.
Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)
My Lords, I shall ask the Minister a question that is within his brief. The respected Institute for Economics and Peace has identified 27 countries with over 700 million people who already face catastrophic ecological threats but at the same time have the lowest levels of societal resilience. This is a recipe for conflict. The list includes countries where we are likely to deploy our Armed Forces and other humanitarian and emergency responders if requested so to do. The Minister and I have had cause to discuss the complications and consequences of the manifestation of an unanticipated risk that caused the accidental death of a member of our armed services deployed with our allies in a foreign jurisdiction in a post-conflict environment. With that in mind, since we have identified the countries where we will need them, should we not be working on appropriate and comprehensive status of forces agreements now in anticipation of this situation arising again?
The Earl of Minto (Con)
My Lords, I entirely agree with the noble Lord. However, I make two points. First, we will not and cannot compromise military capability solely for a sustainable solution. A key principle here is to safeguard the national defence, and that is paramount. Secondly, having said that, the UK is world-leading in this area, and we should be proud of our Armed Forces’ efforts to gain an edge on the threats and challenges posed by climate change. Each service is making significant improvements.
Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston (CB)
My Lords, I refer to my entry in the register of interests as an honorary captain in the Royal Navy. While education is very important, even more important is capacity. HMS “Protector” is currently our only icebreaker. Last week it returned from Operation Austral in the Antarctic, where it was delivering supplies, carrying out hydrographic surveys and improving the safety of naval passage. I urge the Minister to build on that capacity and, as we train the Royal Navy, to draw on the experience that HMS “Protector” and the teams have gained over the last few years.
The Earl of Minto (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for that extremely valid point. She is right that we need to learn from our experience. The Navy in particular is building in adaptability to all future platforms to ensure flexibility of fuel sources and all energy-efficient technologies wherever possible.
Lord Coaker (Lab)
My Lords, following on from the noble Baroness’s question, Lieutenant General Richard Nugee warned that global warming may affect the Royal Navy’s technical capabilities. He warned that rising sea temperatures might make it difficult for ships to cool their engines as they rely on cold seawater. It would be helpful if the Minister could provide an update on what assessment has been made by the Ministry of Defence of the impact that rising sea temperatures have had or could have on the technical efficacy of Royal Navy ships.
The Earl of Minto (Con)
Again, that is an extremely valid point. The MoD has just held its first climate security wargame across government, with international representation, and it was the MoD that led it. It is now assessing the outcomes and the lessons learned. Things such as rising sea temperatures and land temperatures are exactly the sort of area that was being considered. This and future wargames will inform all operational planning and current and future military capabilities to ensure that defence understands how capabilities will perform and operate in these changing environments; that is, both physical and security environments.
Earl Russell (LD)
My Lords, climate change and its future impact will not only impede our ability to project force but will be a key driver of conflicts. Responding to climate breakdown disasters will become a regular reason for deployment. Does the Minister agree that arguing that the Royal Navy should not be prepared for climate change, as some have, is the modern equivalent of asking the Navy to work on the assumption that the earth is flat?
The Earl of Minto (Con)
That was a very nice allegory; I entirely agree. It is embedded in everything that all services, not just the Royal Navy, undertake. This is to ensure that what is inevitable—the climate change we are facing within the next relatively short period of time—is completely planned and catered for. As I said, that will give us a strategic advantage.
Lord Dannatt (CB)
My Lords, I think we can all agree that the main purpose of the Question is to express our concerns about the health of our planet. However, I will extend that to say that I am concerned about the health—as the noble Lord, Lord West, will be pleased to know—of the Royal Navy. Will the Minister comment on His Majesty’s Government’s view of the former Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s statement yesterday that the economy should be put on a war footing, not just to grow the economy, but to grow the size of the defence budget from 2.5% to 3% in the interests of the Royal Navy, the Army and the Royal Air Force?
The Earl of Minto (Con)
My Lords, I am increasingly thinking this is rather like Groundhog Day. I entirely agree, but the words “war footing” are slightly alarmist. There is no doubt that we are in a considerably more unstable environment and that we need to invest in industrial capacity to rebuild our stockpiles and re-equip all our forces. As I said the other day, we have 22 ships and submarines on order. We have 1,200 armoured vehicles currently on order. The RAF has its greatest lift capacity since the Second World War. The new Chinooks announced yesterday by the Secretary of State are extremely good news.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, grounded in the reality of 2024 and the climate emergency, Britain faces greatly increased risks and the reality of floods, droughts, fires, and heat affecting public health. The independent Climate Change Committee said yesterday that the third national adaptation programme was wholly inadequate. Given that there will be increasing demands for military aid for civilian authorities—known as MACA—what extra training and provision are happening within the Navy? With areas such as floods, the Navy should have the capacity to help.
The Earl of Minto (Con)
My Lords, there are training programmes in all three forces, and the whole question of climate change and the changing environment we will have to face is deeply embedded in that. However, I confirm that we will not compromise on military capabilities solely for some form of sustainable solution. Our job in the Ministry of Defence is to ensure and safeguard the national defence.
India: Democratic Freedoms
(8 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness D'Souza
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of reported threats to democratic freedoms in India.
The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon) (Con)
My Lords, the United Kingdom Government are absolutely committed to standing up for democracy and defending human rights around the world. We have a broad and deep partnership with the Government of India. We discuss all elements of our relationship, including concerns where we have them. I visited India in February and had constructive discussions with government representatives on a wide range of issues.
Baroness D'Souza (CB)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his Answer. The BJP policy of Hindu nationalism is increasingly invading press freedom, political opposition and the civil society space. For example, the use of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, sedition law, the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, all hint at an electoral autocracy in the world’s largest nominal democracy. There appears to be a departure from India’s secular constitution and its underlying democratic principles. Does the Minister not believe these to be dangerous precedents?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, one area I am very focused on is the importance of the constitutional protections that we have, as well as those that we see abroad. India is a country that provides constitutional protections to communities. I understand the concerns the noble Baroness alludes to. I assure her in every respect that, on every one of the legislative instruments she has mentioned, we have made our views known to India and we will continue to do so. India is a country which is multi-party and elections are coming forward. It is for the people of India to decide on their Government, but it is a country which celebrates a wide diversity of religions as well.
Baroness Eaton (Con)
My Lords, how are the Government collaborating with western partners to address shared challenges and promote democratic governance, human rights and the rule of law? What opportunities exist for joint initiatives and co-operation in supporting India’s democratic trajectory while advancing mutual interests?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My noble friend raises the important issue of collaboration. I also put to my noble friend that with India we do not just have a partnership; I would term it a friendship. The nature and depth of the relationship allows us to raise issues of concern on a broad range of human rights indirectly in a constructive way, and we continue to do so. Of course, we learn from each other. India is the world's largest democracy, and its election is imminent. There will be a larger degree of commentary on that, but I believe very strongly that the transparency of the election will be very clear. We hope that all communities in India, as is their right within the constitution, will exercise their right to vote.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, India is critical to the success of the sustainable development goals. The Secretary-General, on the 75th anniversary of India, said that it was at a critical point in terms of the opportunity to
“lead by example, as a model of resilience and an advocate for sustainable development”
goals. Labour has long supported India’s role in international forums such as the UN Security Council. Could the noble Lord update us on where we are in terms of reaching a consensus for expanding the permanent membership of the UN Security Council?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
As the noble Lord knows, the United Kingdom is a long-standing supporter of expanding the UN Security Council. That remains the case with this Government. We believe the inclusion of India as a key member of that widened Security Council is fundamental to reform. However, the noble Lord will be aware of the challenges we face because of the constitution of the Security Council. It requires unanimity amongst the P5, and we have seen the challenges that presents in recent years.
Lord Singh of Wimbledon (CB)
My Lords, last year the Canadian Government expelled Indian diplomats for their involvement in the murder of a Canadian Sikh. This was followed by an attempt in America by the Indian Government to assassinate an American Sikh. In this country, the death of a Sikh in suspicious circumstances in Birmingham led Westminster Police to warn prominent Sikhs of a possible threat to their lives at the hands of Indian agents. Prime Minister Modi, shown in a BBC documentary as having a responsibility for the Gujarat riots in which thousands of Muslims were killed, is now planning a citizenship law that will disadvantage thousands of Muslims in a so-called secular state. Are the Government not being a little hypocritical in not voicing their criticism of India’s abuse of human rights in the same strident terms they reserve for Russia and non-Commonwealth countries?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, I would not compare India in any shape or form to Russia—we have to be very clear about that. On the specific case that the noble Lord raised, he will be aware that, following speculation on it, a thorough review undertaken by the West Midlands Police concluded that there were no suspicious circumstances. On the wider issues the noble Lord raised, the CAA, which he referred to, was a specific provision, and we have of course raised concerns related to that. But it is clear that it provides freedom of religion or belief protections and minority protections for people seeking citizenship in India from neighbouring Islamic states. We have raised concerns about minorities within the Muslim communities from those states. This amendment allows someone to get citizenship within five years, but Muslims from those states will still be allowed to get citizenship within the 11 years specified.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, further to the noble Baroness’s question on press freedom, I know this has been a focus of the Minister’s work on human rights. Across its services, the BBC provides more services to Indians than the entire population of the United Kingdom, but, as a result of harassment and intimidation, it has had to uniquely restructure its presence within India to operate from a purely private sector entity. Will the Minister reassure me that officials from the Department for Business and Trade who are negotiating an FTA with India will not provide a market-access offer for Indians to have opportunities in the UK media market while those are not reciprocal for broadcasters such as the BBC within India?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, the noble Lord is right. This Government stand up for media freedom and the protection of media. Indeed, the current Chancellor of the Exchequer initiated such a programme during his time as Foreign Secretary, and we stand by that coalition. We continue to raise those specific concerns related to the BBC with the Government of India, and I assure the noble Lord that, on the positive progress on the FTA, we want to ensure that it is an agreement that works for both countries, that is robust and that is in the interest of all communities, sectors and industries in India and the United Kingdom.
The Lord Bishop of Leicester
My Lords, the number of acts of religiously motivated violence against Christians in India has increased almost every year since 2014, from 147 to 687 in 2023. Last year, over 500 Christians were arrested under anti-conversion laws, including a couple and their pastor during their wedding, on the grounds that it was a conversion event. Will the Minister condemn this state of affairs and, if so, what steps will the Government take with their allies to defend the freedom of religion and belief in India?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
I assure the right reverend Prelate that this Government, with our partners, are fully committed to defending freedom of religion or belief globally. Any reports of discrimination against religious minorities are investigated by the Indian police. We have raised direct concerns about forced conversions, and I assure the right reverend Prelate that we will continue to raise these in a productive and constructive way with the Government of India.
Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, before the United Kingdom Government push again for India to join the permanent five, will we look for an improvement in India of the treatment of minorities and the democratic process?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
I said in previous answers that we continue to recognise India’s valuable contribution internationally, but, equally, we raise concerns constructively where we see them.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, in addition to the dangers to minorities identified so far, can the noble Lord assure us that he raises these questions about communal violence, sectarianism and the threat that has to India? I specifically note the recent position in Manipur, for instance, with the hill tribes there being targeted because of their ethnicity and religion. I also note the 166 million Dalits, who continue to be discriminated against. Does the noble Lord raise with the Indian Government the wonderful constitution crafted by a Dalit, Dr Ambedkar, which guarantees those rights, and the work of people like Dr Brian Grim, which shows how freedom of religion or belief leads to prosperity, stability and harmony?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
I totally concur with the noble Lord’s summary because that is demonstrable in any country around the world. On the issue of Dalits, we have seen progress in this respect not just on the crafting of the constitution but in terms of the progress that Dalits, and indeed all communities, have made in India. Those have to be protected and strengthened. On Manipur, I met with Home Secretary Bhalla when I was in India and I raised that directly with him. This remains an area of direct and constructive dialogue.
Cancer: Staffing
(8 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Merron
To ask His Majesty’s Government, in the light of warnings by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, what assessment they have made of the risk to cancer patients in England presented by the staffing levels, workloads and working conditions of healthcare professionals.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Markham) (Con)
I express my regret about the cases referenced by the ombudsman. The department is taking steps to reduce cancer diagnosis and treatment waiting times across England and to improve survival rates across all cancer types. Through announcing the first ever NHS long-term workforce plan, we are taking meaningful steps to build the NHS workforce for the future. The Government are backing the plan, with over £2.4 billion of funding for additional education and training places.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
My Lords, the Minister will know that numerous complaints relating to patients with cancer that were investigated by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman included misdiagnosis, treatment delays, the mismanagement of conditions, poor communication and unsuitable end-of-life care. As the NHS is grappling with over 110,000 staff shortages, how is patient safety being compromised by the Government’s long delay in bringing forward the workforce plan? What immediate action will the Government take to deal with the continuing risk to cancer patients posed by a workforce that the ombudsman describes as “understaffed, under pressure and exhausted”?
Lord Markham (Con)
As the noble Baroness says, we see increasing the workforce as a core component here. I was speaking to the president of the Royal College of Radiologists about this the other day, and we obviously need to make sure that the workforce can be as effective as possible at what it does. We are doing a lot of new diagnosis, and 80% of all the medical AI technologies are in the radiography space, which is making a huge difference to diagnosis and productivity. It is clearly fundamental that we get the treatment to these people as quickly as possible.
Baroness Meacher (CB)
My Lords, does the Minister accept that there has been underfunding of the NHS for more than a decade now and that our cancer recovery rates do not compare with those of our competitors in Europe? Will he agree to have an urgent uplift in the funding of cancer services in particular over the next period, in order to try to lift our recovery rates up to those of Europe?
Lord Markham (Con)
Noble Lords have heard me say many times that we are investing roughly 10% of the economy into the health space, which is much more than ever before and comparable to nations around the world—apart from America, which stands significantly above. I am sure noble Lords saw the headline in the Times today that survival rates are at their best level ever, and there has been a 35% reduction in mortality rates for men and women over the last 10 or 15 years. So there is a lot of progress in this space, but I accept that we need to invest more—that is what the new CDCs, and the 7 million extra tests they are performing, are all about.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, I remind the House of my interest with the Dispensing Doctors’ Association. Does my noble friend share my concern about the number of GPs, particularly those under 55, who are considering retirement in the next five years? How do the Government plan to fill the vacancies that will be created, to ensure that, particularly in rural areas, a fast track will exist for patients who are suffering from cancer for the earliest possible referral to hospital? I refer to the letter I wrote to our noble friend Lord Evans on this.
Lord Markham (Con)
I thank my noble friend and totally agree that GPs are the front line of our medical services. We are trying to do everything we can to make sure that they feel valued and are retained. The recent change to the pension law was all about addressing that very point, answering GPs’ number 1 concern in order to keep them. Their hard work has seen a 25% increase in the cancer referral rate: we treated 3 million people, up 600,000, over the last year, thanks to their work and the expansion in the diagnostic centres we have set up.
Baroness Barker (LD)
My Lords, does the Minister agree with us on these Benches that there should be a statutory two-month period between diagnosis and access to appropriate treatment for any cancer patient? In order to achieve that, there needs to be further investment in radiography training and an equitable distribution of trainee radiographers and qualified radiographers across the country. How will the Government ensure that that happens?
Lord Markham (Con)
As I mentioned, that was very much the big feature of the discussion that I had with the president of the Royal College of Radiologists just the other day. We have been growing the number of radiographers by about 3% every year, which is a good rate, and we look to increase that even further. The CDCs are about that. However, the actual demand is increasing by about 5% every year. Clearly, as well as recruitment, we need to make sure that we have effective diagnosis, and this is where the field of AI is very exciting. The radiographers are 100% behind it, because they really see the revolutionary effect it is bringing.
Lord Turnberg (Lab)
My Lords, we are certainly shortly of staff, and the problem is not increasing recruitment but enhancing retention. Staff are leaving because they are disillusioned and disaffected, and we do not treat them well enough. Any large business knows that, if you have a happy workforce, it will be productive. We certainly do not have that in the NHS. We certainly need to stop this dismissive attitude and enhance the conditions of their service, and it is not simply about pay. Does he agree?
Lord Markham (Con)
I totally agree that it is a range of things. I completely agree with the noble Lord that a good employer should be looking to make sure that employees have good working conditions and feel valued, and that there is an understanding culture in the workplace as well as decent pay. I say all this in the context that the workforce in the cancer space has actually increased by 56% since 2010, so it is not as if there have not been massive increases here. The actual number of treatments and diagnoses has gone up by more than 20% from pre-pandemic levels. So we are doing a lot in this space, but I agree with the noble Lord’s basic premise that we need to ensure that staff feel valued so they will want to carry on working.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)
My Lords, I declare my interest as being employed in part by the Velindre Cancer Centre in Cardiff. Do the Government recognise that continuity of care is absolutely essential for patients to be able to spot when things are changing and to allow sensitive conversations to occur? Will he therefore undertake to have urgent discussions with the Royal Colleges and with Health Education England to look at the training rotas for doctors who are working in oncology, allowing them to provide better continuity of care with less disruption to their own lifestyles, and better support? Will he also look at recommending that they might draw on the Welsh experience of Talk CPR, which allows early conversations about very difficult topics, providing video books and so on that patients can take home and then come back to see the same person again some time afterwards, providing continuity of care and better communication?
Lord Markham (Con)
First off, I completely agree about continuity of care—in any treatment, to be honest. I was just saying, in answer to a maternity question the other day, that continuity of care in the midwifery space is another vital example. On the question of learning lessons from what the noble Baroness mentioned, we have some meetings set up, so I look forward to discussing it further then.
Lord Kakkar (CB)
My Lords, I draw noble Lords’ attention to my registered interests. The Minister rightly identified an improvement in survival rates for those between their late 30s and 69 over the last 30 years. He also accepted the fact that those delivering cancer services are under a huge amount of pressure to ensure timely provision of that care. It is also essential to achieving long-term improvement in outcomes that we continue to innovate and that clinicians are provided the opportunity to participate in clinical research, which validates innovation and allows its adoption at scale and pace. Is the Minister content that we are doing enough to protect time for clinical research and participation by all healthcare professionals in those protocols to drive those advances in innovation?
Lord Markham (Con)
First, I completely agree on the need for and the vital importance of clinical research in all this. Providing clinicians with time does two things: it means that they get their incredibly valuable time, resources and brains on it; it also addresses the question asked earlier about retention. Of course, this is why a lot of clinicians want to be in this space, so they have time to do research as well. There are very good personal and medical reasons why they should be allowed to do that.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, I should declare an interest in that my wife is receiving treatment from the Royal Marsden. Is it possible that the national statistics mask a great variation between hospitals such as the Marsden, which is absolutely top of the range, and some others? Is it worth looking at the differences and what we can learn from them?
Lord Markham (Con)
Yes. Funnily enough, I was having a similar conversation just yesterday about how we can use data to really understand some of the differences in performance because, as the noble Lord said, we have all heard of some brilliant examples in our NHS hospitals and we have all heard of some other examples which, as pointed out by the ombudsman, were unfortunately not so good. Understanding those centres of excellence and those that need more help is vital.
United Kingdom: Union
(8 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Lord McInnes of Kilwinning
That this House takes note of the case for strengthening and safeguarding the union of the United Kingdom.
Lord McInnes of Kilwinning (Con)
My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to open this debate on the union. I refer to my interest in the register as a constitutional adviser to the Secretary of State for Scotland.
I am particularly pleased that today’s debate furnishes my noble friend Lord Cameron of Lochiel with an opportunity to answer for the Government and to give his maiden speech. It is my privilege to have been able to call my noble friend a true friend as we have experienced the highs and lows of life as Scottish Conservatives and Unionists over the last two decades. My noble friend’s forebears as clan chief would, I am certain, have joined your Lordships’ House if not for their principled commitment to the Jacobite cause in the past. I am glad that, in the year of our Lord 2024, this objection has been overcome, not least because of the very deserved appointment of my noble friend. It seems fitting that his maiden speech will be on this never-ending question of the strength of the union. As a former Member of the Scottish Parliament, he will bring great wisdom on the issues of devolved politics to your Lordships’ House.
I am also delighted to have such a wealth of speakers in this debate from across our United Kingdom. I am sure they will bring forward a number of positive suggestions as to how to strengthen our United Kingdom in all its parts. That very much needs to be also from the English and, dare I say it, in looking forward to the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, the Cumbrian perspective as well. I apologise in advance to colleagues from Wales that I will focus my remarks on Scotland and Northern Ireland. That is not to say that much of what I have to say cannot apply equally to Wales, but I wanted to concentrate on the two areas where a perceived fragility in the union is often identified—such is my sunny disposition. I am therefore very pleased to see the noble Baroness, Lady Humphreys, who will, I am sure, help properly ensure that our debate is inclusive of Wales. I also look forward to the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Foster of Aghadrumsee, who, despite the excitement of much of the London media, was actually the first female First Minister of Northern Ireland.
As a former member of your Lordships’ Common Frameworks Scrutiny Committee and a former Number 10 union special adviser, I could have been tempted to discuss at length the importance of intergovernmental relations, the structures of devolution, the importance of my noble friend Lord Dunlop’s excellent review into intergovernmental relations and the essential nature of the UK Government’s programme of direct financial intervention through levelling up and other schemes, all of which I agree are absolutely necessary to maintain and make the argument for the union. However, to me, these are the physics of the strength of the United Kingdom, and today I want to talk about the chemistry.
I want to start my remarks by quoting a former Member of this House, the author and unionist MP John Buchan, later Lord Tweedsmuir, who in 1932 said:
“I believe that every Scotsman should be a Scottish Nationalist. If it could he proved that a separate Scottish Parliament were desirable, that is to say that the merits were greater than the disadvantages and dangers, Scotsmen should support it”.—[Official Report, Commons, 24/11/1932; col. 261.]
In this age, it is difficult to appreciate how someone whose very political identity was unionist—a unionism formed around Irish unionism—could make such a bold and seemingly contradictory assertion. However, that statement is not as contradictory as it first appears; in fact, it may offer a glimpse of how the union can be strengthened over the next 10 to 20 years.
A stocktake of the union may seem to some to be a fool’s errand from a unionist perspective when one considers the apparent, if superficial, fragility of the union in both Scotland and Northern Ireland over the last decade. In both, a demographic inevitability is often cited in favour of Scottish independence and Irish unity. In Scotland over that decade, British identity has plummeted while political nationalism has dominated the Scottish political scene. Perhaps that is soon to change, but the SNP was seemingly only strengthened by the referendum defeat in 2014. In Northern Ireland, meanwhile, the assumption that demographic change could lead to a nationalist majority seems at first glance fulfilled with the Sinn Féin primacy at the ballot box and a Sinn Féin First Minister. That is the sunny disposition coming out.
However, regarding the future of the United Kingdom in both Scotland and Northern Ireland, public opinion and party-political support should not be confused. Yes, since 2014 Scotland has been divided almost equally on the desirability of an independent Scotland, however—not to sound like the BBC—despite the foretold supposed kryptonite powers of both Brexit and my former boss Boris Johnson, that parity has not changed. Most importantly, the number of people who want an independence referendum now is less than half of those who favour an independent Scotland. Only yesterday, a poll showed that independence as a priority for Scottish voters is at its lowest level ever. It is no wonder that Nicola Sturgeon probably felt she had run out of road—as well as for various other reasons with which I shall not detain your Lordships this afternoon.
In Northern Ireland, support for Irish unity remains stubbornly stuck at 30%, with the fastest-growing demographic groups—self-identified Northern Irish and “neither unionist nor nationalist”—favouring remaining in the UK by 2:1. As we also know, the number supporting Irish unity diminishes as people consider the disruption and changed public services that would result.
Should those who support the union therefore enjoy a feeling of complacency about the continuation of the status quo? The answer is clearly no. While the current level of support for the union seems broadly stable in Scotland and Northern Ireland, in Northern Ireland most people see unity as inevitable when asked and traditional political unionism appears to be in retreat. At the same time, despite the fact that the SNP is now going through its own political travails, support for independence remains stubbornly stuck at 50%, with support among young people very high. Political uncertainty and a reaction against disruption and existential change have provided the union in Scotland and in Northern Ireland with a strategic breathing space of which the UK Government and those who support the union must take advantage. That is why John Buchan’s words in 1932 now seem so prescient: the union needs a new identity.
Born in 1875, John Buchan was the epitome of British imperial unionism. He was to serve as Governor General of Canada as well as being a unionist MP. However, if one looks at the unionism he celebrated, it was a union of diversity. In the Houses of Parliament, we see the English rose, the Irish harp and the Scottish thistle equally displayed—a display of diversity, difference and national pride. It was not some uniform symbol of British national identity that we would see, for example, in France at the same time. Even at its international height, the strength of the United Kingdom came from its diversity and not a desire for uniformity or what would now be called “muscular unionism”, where only the union flag, Britannia and related symbols can be deployed to argue for the union.
Some unionists may regret that the union is not to be saved by even more red, white and blue. They will be disappointed by what they will portray as my weak-kneed approach to the union’s cultural identity. There is, though, often a disproportionate relationship between those who did least in the 2014 Scottish referendum, when the future of our country was under existential threat, and their now fervent muscular unionism. The very idea that this approach will do anything other than alienate from the union the broadly younger and forward-looking median voters for whom the constitution is not a priority seems to me obvious. Yes, unionists must be able to celebrate their sense of Britishness as they see fit—I always will—but for the state to try to enforce a false Britishness on people who are currently, on balance, in favour of the United Kingdom would be counterproductive at best.
That means that the First and Deputy First Ministers of Northern Ireland reaching out to celebrate all Northern Ireland’s identities and cultures should be celebrated, and not pilloried as we have seen over the last fortnight from some quarters. Reaching out to all communities was something that the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, was a trailblazer in during her time as First Minister and it is surely the very essence of unionism. One need only look at how much damage the nationalist cause in Scotland has done to itself by using government as an extension of its narrow vision of Scottish nationalism. Unionists should rejoice that the SNP has chosen to do so. By refusing to engage with those who disagree with it or understand their views, the SNP has only helped secure the integrity of the United Kingdom. There is a lesson for all of us in this.
The danger to the union, both in Scotland and Northern Ireland, is a radicalised, nostalgic, reductive unionism of the last resort, where speaking forcefully about the union in a way that is completely disconnected from the priorities of real people does little to strengthen it. Too often, those of us who support the union assume that others see the world as we do, through that prism. A new train service to Glasgow or Cardiff, if it happens, should be celebrated by the United Kingdom Government because it improves connectivity and not because, as all too often department press officers are told to say, “It’s good for the union”. Immediately, a cynical public assume that the UK Government make an investment not for the betterment of all their citizens but for some distant and disconnected political term. Constantly using the word “union”—as we are doing in today’s debate, very helpfully—and not pursuing policies that strengthen the union does nothing other than tick a box. Supporting the union should always be about actions in real people’s lives and not political polemic. A United Kingdom responding to its people’s priorities across the United Kingdom is the very best way to secure that United Kingdom.
Of course the constitutional settlement must be upheld, and I applaud the UK Government for doing so over the recent gender reform issue in Scotland, but it should not be done for political partisanship. I find it odd that some of the most vociferous commentators concerned about the Scottish Government engaging in reserved areas did not have the same concerns when a Labour/Liberal Democrat Administration were doing exactly the same thing.
Instead, the United Kingdom should play to its strengths and go with the groove in both Scotland and Northern Ireland. That means ensuring in Northern Ireland—this will go down very well with some contributors to the debate—that the “best of both worlds” economic advantage of being in the UK and EU single markets is fully utilised. The UK Government should not be mealy-mouthed about the Windsor agreement and the return of Stormont, which has the support of the vast majority of unionists and nationalists in Northern Ireland, as evidenced only this week in Liverpool University’s Institute of Irish Studies poll.
The UK Government should be doing all they can to ensure that Northern Ireland can build on the dynamism unleashed since the Good Friday/Belfast agreement. Let us make Belfast and Derry/Londonderry the tech hubs of the UK, using all the human resource and higher education network the UK has to offer. For too long, the view of the UK Government has been that “Northern Ireland is different”. We need to properly invest the leverage that the UK has. In Scotland, we should work with the Scottish Government and local authorities to ensure that the economic leverage of the UK builds on its energy past to become the renewable superpower of the world while we maximise the continuing opportunities of the North Sea.
John Buchan would have approved of the strength of the UK being used to build and strengthen the success of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, making them ever more vibrant and successful parts of their country. These steps and this progress will then in turn make people even more risk averse to constitutional change, but in a positive, confident way—not the politics of financial transaction and “project fear”. For the union to build on its current structural stability, it needs to culturally change its attitude from fighting seeming inevitability to embracing diversity, returning to the roots of a successful and dynamic United Kingdom, where identity is not subsumed but celebrated—the chemistry complementing the physics.
Lord Lilley (Con)
My Lords, it is a great privilege to follow—and slightly unexpected to follow immediately —the noble Lord, Lord McInnes of Kilwinning, who has made an extremely thoughtful and valuable speech in opening this debate. I expected to follow the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, and I am sorry that he has had to scratch because, as the author of a distinguished report on multiculturalism, he would have had much to contribute to this debate, I am sure. I want to contribute very briefly from a partly English perspective to this debate about the union and emphasise that we should not merely strengthen it but celebrate it.
I always feel slightly uneasy when I hear the term that has come into vogue only over the last few years of us being four nations. I have always thought of us as one nation—certainly of one union. Though membership of that union is ultimately voluntary—“the King has no unwilling subjects” is an old maxim—we should not passively say, “Well, it is up to you”. We should say, “We rejoice in the membership of all four parts of this union, which makes this union as great as it is”. Certainly, as someone who was brought up to be proud of my rather remote Scottish ancestry on my mother’s side, I know it would feel like losing a limb if Scotland were to ever leave. Although any Irish ancestry I have is even more remote, it would feel similar if Northern Ireland were to be separated from us.
Philosophers and politicians have debated what makes a nation. Certainly ideas that it could be based on some single thing like common race or even common language have long since rightly been discarded. It is a whole range of things that unite people and create a sense of being one nation or one union: common language, common religious and cultural history, and common ancestry—certainly all the historical events that go into our background and forge our memories are important. Particularly, of course, nations and unions are very often forged in war, as ours have been. The sacrifices made by people from all parts of that union in the great battles and wars of the last century unite us by sacrifice and loss of blood. No one can forget the sacrifice made voluntarily by those of Northern Ireland—and of course the huge contributions from Scotland and Wales as well as England.
Above all, Britain is unique in being bound particularly by common institutions: the monarchy, this sovereign Parliament, our common-law traditions—of course, Scotland has its own law but it is simultaneously a common law and a different tradition—which unite us in a way that few other countries can claim to be united. I did not even visit Scotland until my early 20s or Northern Ireland until my late 20s. When I did go over to Northern Ireland during the Troubles—in fact, studying the Troubles—I felt simultaneously that it was different and home. I felt I was at one with the people I met, even though I had an enormous amount to learn from them and about different traditions that prevailed there. That is why it is very different from the fact I have had a holiday home in France for nearly 40 years and have spent a month or two a year there. It is always a different country; whereas all parts of this union seem to me part of my home and the people bound to me. Much as I love France and the French, it will always be a different country.
We should celebrate our union and strengthen it but recognise too that it has an economic basis which we must not allow to be weakened by the arrangements that have been set up in the North Sea. I hope that they will be so diluted that they do not weaken it. Our job is to make this union something we all want to belong to, feel enthusiastic about and be warm towards each other—warm enough, of course, to be rude and make jokes about each other. That positive approach, that sunny optimism with which the noble Lord, Lord McInnes of Kilwinning, began the debate, is something we should all share and rejoice in.
Lord Bew (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord McInnes, for introducing this debate in the style with which he has. Much of what I say—indeed, all of what I say—is operating emotionally at a similar level.
In the last few days we have lost Lord McAvoy. I want briefly to pay tribute to him. His life embodied one of the many complex trajectories characteristic of the union, in his sympathies and his background as a Labour politician in Scotland. I recall with pleasure one exchange. A few years ago Sinn Féin had issued a statement and the Labour Party—actually, the Labour Government—did not like it and he said to me, “We are very cross with Sinn Féin and now we are going to send a very low-level delegation to its party conference to indicate how cross we are”. I said, “Oh, really, Lord McAvoy?”, and he said, “Yes. Me!” We will miss him.
I remember writing in the Sunday Times in the immediate aftermath of Brexit in January 2019, when the mood at the paper in many articles—including, to a degree, my own—was to the effect that Brexit may have triumphed but might now well destroy the union. There is no question that, for example, in some of the polling at that time—indeed, I was commenting in an article on that issue—you could see the rise of support for Irish unity within Northern Ireland, and similar things were being said about Scotland. Both Northern Ireland and Scotland had, after all, voted to a very large degree against Brexit.
Things today are considerably more stable. The Royal Irish Academy polling from Dublin—the ARINS project—would seem to indicate a substantial long-term lead for the union in Northern Ireland. It is arguable that it is probably the best polling we have. Again, in Scotland, many people feel that the union has been strengthened—I will return to this—by the collapse of the leadership of the Scottish National Party.
There is a point here that is sometimes missed: the sheer complexity and misery of the debates on leaving the EU, in this House and the other place. Even the most enthusiastic supporters of Brexit acknowledge that there were difficulties that nobody anticipated, along with the miseries, the points of discussion, the anguish. There is no question about that. That ended a relationship of a few decades, but I think there is a public sense that, if you start to end a constitutional relationship that is far more detailed—lasting for 224 years in the case of Northern Ireland—the mess and anguish that will set in for the next few years will make the Brexit debate and its miseries look like a tea party. I really think that, in that strange way, the Brexit debate has not, in the end, weakened the union.
I want to make one point about the connection between Scottish nationalism and Ireland. This week, the leader of the Scottish nationalists came to London to speak at the LSE. Once again, he returned to what used to be very fashionable in Scottish nationalism: the greatness of the Irish example and what an independent Scotland could do. Up to 2007, this was called the Atlantic arc. Then Ireland went bust in 2008 and suddenly, everybody forgot the Atlantic arc and how wonderful that was. Now Ireland is again doing wonderfully well, with remarkable growth rates, so it has become permissible again for Scottish nationalism to flirt with the idea that Ireland shows it will be okay. This is regardless of the fact that the sort of economists Scottish nationalists tend to like on other issues—the big-name economists such as Krugman, Stiglitz and Piketty—are all critics of the Irish model of development, which they all regard, in a certain sense, as dubious. It is worth noting that the EU Tax Observatory’s Global Tax Evasion Report 2024, published in January, has a tone that would make any Scottish nationalist who studied it carefully realise that, whatever happens with respect to Ireland’s still extremely interesting tax policies—extremely complex and, in some people’s eyes, extremely dubious—there is absolutely no possibility that Scotland, as a new member of the EU, would be allowed to play the same game.
There is one other thing that ought to be stressed. We are proud in England that the PISA rates for educational performance have risen in the last few years, against the expected trend. So it is too with the Irish Republic. After the crash, it was told by the big American firms, “You think your education system is great? It’s not so great—you have to do better”. There was a clear, serious response to that on the part of the Irish Republic. Education is one of the mysteries of devolution: we assumed it would work well, but the performance of the devolved regions, particularly Wales and Scotland, is strikingly unimpressive. Again, if Scotland is paying attention to Ireland, the reality is that Ireland did, in one way, pull itself up by its own bootstraps.
I turn to the resolution and the very welcome return, in my view, of the functioning Good Friday institutions in Northern Ireland. After the major negotiating setbacks embodied in the 2017 joint report with the EU and the first draft of Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement, there has been a slow and steady struggle to get to the point we have finally got to and to take the poison of Brexit out of Northern Irish politics. This involved, among a number of things, insisting that the Good Friday agreement was based not on something called an Ireland economy but on the co-operation of two economies—north and south—and insisting that a harmonious east-west relationship between Belfast and London was important. Another crucial part of the international agreement is that the UK Government, being the sovereign Government, cannot leave a political community in a state of alienation.
These were the key points that lay at the heart of what has been, in one shape or another, five long years of negotiation to get these institutions up and running. People talked about Britain’s—or London’s—neglect of Northern Ireland, but this was a huge labour of patience and hard work. Even those in Northern Ireland who criticise it and believe it does not go far enough acknowledge that it was a serious attempt to deal with the problem, in so far as it could be dealt with.
There is no doubt in my mind that if, after continuing on the basis of the DUP leader having enunciated seven tests, he had then said, “No, we didn’t quite mean that; we meant something else more extensive”, it would have been disastrous for the union. He did not do that, to his credit; he said, “These are my seven tests, and we now have enough progress on those”, and he did not introduce a new agenda. There is no doubt that it would have been disastrous for the union if many Northern Ireland Catholics had continued to believe, not without reason, that the unionists had not accepted the outcome of an election result, which was under their rules, essentially, and not accepted the first Sinn Féin First Minister. It is very good that those poisons have been removed from the union, and it is now clear that it is possible to develop the politics of Northern Ireland along more progressive lines.
Finally, I find myself slightly surprised to be supporting this Motion, because I am certain that I am the only Member of your Lordships’ House who was once a member of Sinn Féin, then the Workers’ Party, and then the Democratic Left, which played a very important role in the Bruton Government in the mid-1990s and opened up contact with Belfast, which no previous Irish Government had done. I am proud of that connection and, in the aftermath of the death of John Bruton, I pay tribute to the work that he did. Without him, there would not, in my view, have been a successful negotiation of the Good Friday agreement, because trust was built up. But that has now evaporated. The trust that used to exist between leaders in Dublin and in Belfast has evaporated and needs to be radically reconstructed.
The recent referendum in Dublin, which was a startling defeat for the whole political class—the opposition as well as the governing parties—reveals that they do know even their own people. What is certain is that, if we are going to have Irish unity at any stage, it has to be based on a level of understanding between north and south. We are nowhere near that at this point. That is one reason why I am very happy to support the Motion.
Lord Dodds of Duncairn (DUP)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Bew. What he has just said about his political journey is a reflection of the complexities of Northern Ireland politics and indicates how far many people have travelled in their support for the union and their acceptance of the arrangements set out through the St Andrews agreement and, before that, the Belfast agreement, as has now been amended by the consensual approach of unionists and nationalists. I also join the noble Lord in paying tribute to the late Lord McAvoy, who I had pleasure of working with in the other place for many, many years. For obvious reasons, he did not speak very much in the Chamber, but he was the consummate politician. I remember he told me once that he was a fervent Celtic supporter, which of course did not go down so well in certain quarters in Northern Ireland. He said, “But I keep myself right—I have some shares in Rangers”. He knew how to operate very well in Northern Ireland
I also welcome the Minister to his place and look forward to hearing his maiden speech. I thank the noble Lord, Lord McInnes of Kilwinning, for initiating this debate and for the way in which he introduced it. We have had some very thoughtful contributions; I hope I do not spoil the atmosphere in any shape or form. I look forward to hearing from others today.
The noble Lord, Lord Lilley, spoke about what we have in common across the United Kingdom, and he is so right in that. There is a sense in which, when we travel to different parts of the United Kingdom, we feel at home in those parts, even though there are big differences in culture, attitudes, history and so on, but there is a commonality. That is why I am a believer in devolution, and always have been. When unionism had a big debate between integration and devolution, I and others in our party were strong devolutionists. We believed in having that difference reflected in a way that would allow people to have their own policies—laws, even, in certain areas—but also be bound together as part of one United Kingdom. I still believe that that is the way forward. I accept that people want to see devolution in Northern Ireland. Our point is that it should operate on a proper democratic basis that respects the territorial integrity of the United Kingdom. I will maybe say a word or two about that before I conclude, as noble Lords would expect me to do.
I believe in devolution and, as has been said, that there is a difference between party-political support, in terms of unionism and nationalism, and the general support of the populace—in Northern Ireland in particular—for the union. The noble Lord, Lord McInnes, has dealt with that point. There are issues for political unionism parties in Northern Ireland in addressing that and moving it forward, and gaining more and more support at the polls.
I have no doubt that there is still a very strong majority in Northern Ireland for the United Kingdom. Some of the propaganda and arguments that are put forward are not based on reality. I see that at the St Patrick’s celebrations in the United States this week, Sinn Féin has once again taken out advertisements, as it does in St Patrick’s week, calling for an immediate border poll. Even Leo Varadkar, the Taoiseach, has debunked this and said that there is no support for it, and I am glad he has done so. But this is not the way forward; we have just restored devolution and if Sinn Féin is serious about what it says, what is it doing stirring this up in the United States? It is a completely wrong approach.
However, I will say, in terms of the Irish Republic—and the noble Lord, Lord Bew, touched on this—that there has to be respect for the basis on which we have a political settlement in Northern Ireland, and for the three-stranded approach. The internal affairs of Northern Ireland—that there is a north-south dimension and an east-west dimension—are a matter for the people of Northern Ireland, the parties and the United Kingdom Government. The UK Government need to be quite robust in defending that, and there have been recent signs of this over legacy, including the pushback against Dublin’s legal claim on the legacy legislation. This week in Washington, Leo Varadkar talked about reform of the Northern Ireland Stormont institutions, and when that should happen. With the greatest respect, that is deeply destabilising to the politics of Northern Ireland and should be robustly rebuked by the UK Government.
This debate has been very positive. In a previous speech a week or two ago in your Lordships’ House, I referenced the positivity of the union and its important advantages for the people of Northern Ireland, and our many massive contributions—for example, to the Armed Forces, and that of the Harland & Wolff shipyard to industry—to the progress of the United Kingdom and to our history. But it is important to say that there is a concern among unionists today about the Windsor Framework—the Northern Ireland protocol. There has been a consensus in unionism that it has been damaging and wrong. I note what the noble Lord, Lord Bew, said about where we are at in all of this, but there are those who are concerned that a United Kingdom should not have internal customs and trade borders within it.
The recent Command Paper contains a lot of things which in and of themselves are positive, such as the east-west council and InterTrade UK, but the reason they are there is to mitigate a fundamental problem. The Select Committee on which I have the honour to serve took evidence yesterday from Steve Baker, the Cabinet Office and NIO Minister, in which he said, “Oh no, don’t worry about the border in the Irish Sea because, if you compare it with other international borders across the world, it is not as bad as any of them—it is nothing like them”. But that is not the point; we should be comparing it with borders between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland—between parts of the United Kingdom.
There is no other country that I can see which has a situation where it is divided in such a fundamental way, in terms of customs and trade, and in relation to the imposition of foreign laws by a foreign political entity in its interests, without the elected representatives of the people of Northern Ireland—whether they be unionist, nationalist or other—having the opportunity to make, develop and amend those laws, or even to say yes or no if there is a change in them. That has to be addressed in the long term; it is an unsustainable position. It would be remiss of us if, while talking about all the other issues in this debate, we did not highlight that point and say it is an issue that must be resolved in a satisfactory way which restores democracy and UK sovereignty to part of the United Kingdom.
Baroness Goldie (Con)
My Lords, it is always a pleasure to speak about the union and to listen to the experience and wisdom of my noble friend Lord McInnes of Kilwinning, whom I thank for securing this debate. I welcome my noble friend the Minister to his place on the Front Bench; he will be an asset to both the Government and this House, and I am only sorry that our gain has to be the Scottish Parliament’s loss.
I too pay tribute to Lord McAvoy, a formidable politician and doughty unionist. I used to greet him with that Glaswegian salutation, “Hoy, handsome”, to which he would give me the standard Glaswegian response, “Hello, petal”. I am going to miss him.
I take it as a given in this Chamber that there is both overwhelming support for the union and recognition of the benefits it brings. I am a Scot and I was an MSP for 17 years, a Westminster Government Whip for three years and a Defence Minister for over four years, so it is through that prism of personal experience that I view the union. I am also a member of this House’s Constitution Committee, which is currently looking at the governance of the union, so I shall not tread on its territory; let me come in under the broad umbrella of the title of this debate.
Is the union some abstract constitutional structure, defined by the devolution settlements? No, it is not. I agree with my noble friend Lord Lilley: the union is a vivant, sentient organism which connects all of us across the United Kingdom, reflected by an intricate political tapestry of a sovereign Parliament at Westminster and devolved legislatures of different political hues in Edinburgh, Belfast and Cardiff.
Do I see devolution as I saw it when I entered the Scottish Parliament in 1999? Absolutely not. I thought then that it was a neatly defined jigsaw, part of which was marked “reserved” for Westminster, part of which was marked “devolved”, belonging to Holyrood. The temptation was to create a devolution silo: “We know what is ours and we will get on with it; Westminster, you know what is yours and you get on with it”. Now it is unrecognisably different: there are enhanced devolved powers, increased competences and, of course, the consequences of Brexit, with Northern Ireland being a particular example, as has already been so eloquently described.
I now see devolution as a distribution of powers across the union, not a cascade of powers down from one part of the union. Westminster is, of course, still a sovereign Parliament and the devolved parliaments have defined competences, but there can be no silos. I consider we need an attitude framed by constitutional partnership rather than constitutional stand-off. With that change of culture, we shall strengthen and safeguard the union. Even political regimes driven by separatism understand a positive partnership and that culture can deliver mutual benefit for their devolved territories.
Do we have the necessary engagement frameworks across the United Kingdom to facilitate a partnership attitude? The early frameworks were fairly rudimentary and they were not required to be stress-tested. At Westminster there was a Labour Government, in Cardiff a Labour Government, and in Edinburgh a Labour/Liberal Democrat Executive. The Labour boys—because mostly it was the boys—simply picked up the phone and spoke to each other, so it all worked fine. For understandable reasons, Northern Ireland was different.
Let me focus on Scotland. In 2007 it elected a devolved SNP Government with a fundamentally different political objective from the Westminster Government’s. I was leader of the Scottish Conservatives at the time, and I had to work with the minority Government to get policies I supported delivered. Alex Salmond had to work with me. I believe there was a mutual respect, a relationship born out of pragmatism. The SNP entrenched its position in 2011 with an overall majority, which led to an unsuccessful referendum. That devolved SNP incumbency starting in 2007 threw up something unexpected about political and personal relationships, which I shall shortly come to.
The frameworks that structure the intergovernmental engagement have been modernised and are very different to what we started with. Importantly, the new version includes a dispute resolution mechanism. Further than that I shall leave to the Constitution Committee and to the deliberations of this House.
What constitutes a threat to the union? Obviously, it is political parties that want separation. They are visible and their arguments audible. We can manage that political and if necessary electoral pressure—we have done it in Scotland. That is not the threat that I fear. There is a more insidious and less visible threat: failing to understand that our constitutional structures do not exist in aspic. They evolve and breathe life into devolution. They need usage and, like any machine, lubrication. Unless they are approached with sensitivity, respect and, as I argued earlier, an attitude of constitutional partnership, we may by default preside over a systemic weakening of our constitutional structures, corroding the very union that I and others so strongly support.
Knowing the threat, how do we counter it? A partial answer is the engagement frameworks and structures. The remainder of the answer, without which the frame-works and structures are meaningless, is relationships. They are the lubricant, and they are pivotal.
In the other place, the Scottish Affairs Select Committee is conducting an inquiry into 25 years of devolution. Alex Salmond gave fascinating evidence to the committee, which I shall paraphrase. As First Minister in 2007, for the short time that he overlapped with Tony Blair, he was unable to have a single conversation with him. When Gordon Brown became Prime Minister, he spoke to him on his first day in office, and the joint ministerial plenary was re-established, as were other meetings. Alex Salmond went on to say that the situation improved again under David Cameron—all of which confirms that having different political parties with deeply diverging objectives in government, whether at Westminster or in a devolved Government, is not per se a bar to relationships.
My final question—perhaps the most important—is how we construct and nurture these relationships. They need to be cross-government in the inter- governmental sense, but they can also be cross- Parliament. As an MSP, I would have welcomed more UK Government Ministers appearing before Scottish Parliament committees. They could share experience and enhance knowledge. In my opinion, Westminster committees should not be shy about reciprocating that facility. In an intergovernmental sense, from Westminster they can involve the Prime Minister, territorial Secretaries of State and Government Ministers across Whitehall, but none of this will work without personal investment in taking the time to get to know devolved counterparts and regularly engaging with them. That is how you sense and pre-empt trouble.
In the MoD, I was the Minister responsible for engagement with the devolved Governments in relation to defence issues. I had a very constructive call with Wales’s First Minister, Mark Drakeford, and very useful engagement with Minister Hannah Blythyn. For Scotland I engaged constructively with Ministers Graeme Dey and Keith Brown. We had different political objectives, but with the importance of the MoD to Wales and Scotland in terms of economic contribution, jobs and skills, we had compelling common interests to discuss, and they delivered mutual benefit. I was not interested in what rank of Minister I spoke to; all that mattered was who had the knowledge to inform our conversation. Now, for all I know, maybe Mark, Hannah, Graeme and Keith thought I was an imperious old bat—but it did not come over that way.
I had a very constructive visit to Northern Ireland last year, meeting senior civil servants and business leaders and visiting Harland & Wolff to better understand how we in the MoD could make a positive contribution to Northern Ireland in the post-Troubles era.
We are living in a new age of devolution. Partnership is not inimical to the political objectives of parties with deeply divergent views. Indeed, they are much more likely to gain respect from the electorate for demonstrating that maturity and pragmatism.
Of course, it takes two to tango. I want to see our new partnership attitude deliver devolution’s own “Strictly Come Dancing”, a ballroom swirling with facts, opinions and views, exchanging observations. If we do not work to create these relationships, we will never get asked to dance: a bunch of political wallflowers perpetuating constitutional standoff. The union deserves better; I support the Motion.
Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee (Non-Afl)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, particularly since she mentioned “Strictly Come Dancing”—I thank her for that. I declare my registered interests as the chair of Together UK Foundation. I thank the noble Lord, Lord McInnes of Kilwinning, for bringing forward this debate, and congratulate him on the pronunciation of Aghadrumsee, which he has done very well. One of his colleagues has now taken to introducing me as the noble Baroness, Lady Foster of unpronounceable—which is fine.
I will talk about Aghadrumsee but, before I do, I also welcome the Minister to his place. No doubt he will reflect on his beautiful part of the United Kingdom when he speaks. I welcome him to this House as a fellow unionist and wish him well for his time on the Front Bench.
I come from what some people call the edge of the union. When I was appointed to this place, there was never any doubt as to which title I would take. Aghadrumsee is a townland near the Fermanagh-Monaghan border. In Irish it means field of the ridge of the sallows, but for me it was my whole world growing up. It was where I was baptised into the Anglican faith at our small church, St Mark’s. It was where I attended the little primary school, and where I attended children’s parties at the local Orange hall.
It is now 45 years since the IRA upset the tranquillity of my home when it came to murder my father at our home just a mile from Aghadrumsee. He was, you see, a legitimate target because he was a police officer serving in the local RUC station in Rosslea. He survived, despite the IRA’s best efforts, but as a result he was advised to move to a safer part of the country, and so we moved. This was the strategy of the IRA: to target the eyes and ears of the Brits in the area, and to move them out of the area to create a buffer zone along the border for their nefarious criminality.
My father was one of the lucky ones. He lived for another 32 years, dying at the age of 81, and is now buried at Aghadrumsee parish graveyard. My sister and her family live in our homestead. Many did not survive the sustained attack on the union, and I pay tribute to their service and dedication.
Despite its intent, the IRA did not succeed, and now the title of the little townland of Aghadrumsee—taken to honour my late father and to bring a little bit of south-east Fermanagh to Parliament—is seen on the annunciator and in the Hansard of the House of Lords. It is as much a part of the union as it ever was.
The IRA did not succeed in its terrorist campaign to take us out of the union but, despite this, republicans in Northern Ireland, and indeed in Scotland, now tell us that a united Ireland or an independent Scotland are inevitable, so we should get with the project. They even have a few useful fools, who should know better, helping them to make that claim. There is nothing inevitable about a united Ireland or an independent Scotland. Nationalists continually push this narrative, just as they claim that all the ills of society will be solved by independence. That is a comfortable belief for the followers of republicanism across the United Kingdom that allows each generation to think that with one last heave, or one last push, independence will happen. We in Northern Ireland have retained the United Kingdom against fierce opposition for more than 100 years, so the historicism or inevitability argument has not worked.
In fact, both the assertions—that all problems will be solved and that it is coming around the next corner—are nonsense, but they are allowed to gain traction. The narrative from media is that we should engage with the conversation because change is coming.
We should always push back against that narrative, and instead move to a narrative of why the United Kingdom is good for all its citizens. The opinion polls in Northern Ireland, which have been referenced, show strong support for the union, so do not be fooled by the pro-nationalist press trying to push their agenda of a united Ireland, or indeed of an independent Scotland.
Unionism for its part should not pretend to be simple but rather be multi-faceted and address many questions. Unionism, as the noble Lord, Lord McInnes, referenced rightly, is not narrow or reductionist but broad and diverse, and that is its strength. It is true that the challenges unionism faces will evolve with each generation. The benefits of the union likewise will show themselves in different ways over the years. During the pandemic, for example, we saw the strength of the union in a very practical way through the financial schemes and the rollout of the vaccinations. I was able to get my vaccination in Enniskillen at the same time as people in Devon and Cornwall. In Northern Ireland we also had the expertise and advice available to the devolved Administrations from the centre, which was vital in moving ahead.
The union and the United Kingdom is a rational political ideal, and as such the majority of people in Northern Ireland will, I believe, continue to support it—yes, for different reasons, but that is okay. Some are cultural and constitutional unionists, like myself; others are economic unionists; others, as the noble Lord, Lord McInnes, said, are just content with the status quo. As unionists, we need to understand that not everyone will vote for the union for the same reasons—the important thing is to get them to vote for the union.
For my part, I am hugely proud to be British. Our Britishness is about much more than the passport we hold. It cannot and should not be reduced to a name or a badge. It is about shared history going back generations and pride in having ended the slave trade, being the home of the Industrial Revolution, and founding the welfare state. It is about the institutions that, as the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, has said, we cherish and are the envy of others. Our allegiance to our shared institutions—whether cultural, through the historic ties that bind us, or in wider society—also gives us that sense of togetherness that is important for our emotional connection to the United Kingdom.
When I stepped down from politics in Northern Ireland, I set up the Together UK Foundation to set out the positive value of the four parts staying together and thriving together. That foundation continues to advocate for the holistic view of the United Kingdom. We have pride in our role for good in the world, something which is tangible—not just two world wars and the struggle against communism in the past but the battle for freedom and democracy today, particularly in Ukraine.
Our place in the world is important to us in the UK, but it is also, from a defence, security and intelligence point of view, important for countries such as the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand—our allies in the Five Eyes intelligence community. If the United Kingdom was broken up by separatists, what would happen to our safety and security and that of the wider western alliance?
Recently, Policy Exchange published an excellent paper called Closing the Back Door; I commend it to your Lordships’ House. It shines a light on the strategic importance of Northern Ireland and its assets, particularly its ports, to the defence of the UK and indeed wider Europe. With Ireland as a neutral state, it is important that Northern Ireland is kept as a base for when threats occur, and that is the case made by the paper.
The union has allowed people from all parts to make a contribution in political, social and cultural life. I know that some people like to present Northern Ireland’s relationship to the rest of the UK as one of more “take” than “give”. Certainly, in an economic sense the UK has allowed the sharing of wealth and prosperity not just between people but across the country, and Northern Ireland has been a huge beneficiary of that. This pooling of resources across the UK is one of the great attractions, but it is not just about financial support, even though that is particularly important.
My belief in and support for the union does not depend on economic arguments, although it is overwhelmingly the case that we are better together. Northern Ireland’s businesses and people pay into the Exchequer like their counterparts in every part of the kingdom, but our contribution is not just about pounds and pence. It is much broader than that.
I fully support this Motion. I thank the noble Lord, Lord McInnes, for bringing it to the Floor today. Our safety, stability, security and success depend on the union. We must continue our work to safeguard it for future generations.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord McInnes of Kilwinning, on bringing forward this debate, and in advance I congratulate my noble friend the Minister on the maiden speech he is about to make. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Foster of Aghadrumsee. Two sorts of speeches are made in this sort of debate: one is, like hers, consistent, coherent, flowing and logical in argument; the other consists of vaguely relevant but disconnected points. Mine is going to be more of the latter character, so I hope noble Lords will bear with me to some extent.
My first two points are connected. We need to remember that this union we are discussing has always been a voluntary union and a union of Parliaments. What happened? Back in 1706 or thereabouts, the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland voted democratically to unify into a single Parliament. It was not a union of monarchies. The union of the monarchy had happened 100 years earlier. It was a parliamentary union, made on a voluntary and democratic basis. In 1800, the same pattern was followed in regard to Ireland. It may be objected that the Parliaments of those days were not representative of the whole population, but these were the representative bodies that functioned—full enfranchisement was not achieved until barely 100 years ago. Some things flow from that that are really quite important.
First, we do not sufficiently appreciate how unusual we are in that regard. The United States of America was a voluntary union until people tried to leave—which resulted in a civil war in which more lives were lost than the United States has lost in all the wars it has subsequently fought. Germany is a federal union, but there is no provision in the German constitution for a federal land to leave the union. The thought that part of France might leave France is an almost inconceivable thought in French mentality.
Secondly, I do not think other countries appreciate how unusual we are, and we do not really understand how they think. The response of the Spanish state to the attempt to secede in Catalonia not so very long ago—a quasi-military response on the streets followed by imprisonment and exile; the leader of that revolt is still in exile today, even though there are attempts to bring him back—is inconceivable in the United Kingdom. We have accepted, as in the Good Friday agreement, that if the people of Northern Ireland wish to vote by a majority to unite with the Republic of Ireland, that is what is going to happen. It is inconceivable that anything else would happen. There would not be the sort of response we saw in Catalonia. Similarly, although it is not subject to an international treaty, we accept that if there was a majority in Scotland for leaving the union, however sad we might be about seeing Scotland depart, as we would be for Northern Ireland, we would have to respect that decision and deal with it.
The second part of my thesis—that we are a parliamentary union—means that the deep devolution settlement that we entered into at the beginning of the 21st century was much more radical in its constitutional effects than it was presented as being at the time. It was not simply an administrative arrangement or the creation of a new tier of local government, which would be consistent with a parliamentary union; it was a breaking up of that parliamentary authority, which we have not fully incorporated into our thinking even today. We say that we regard it as a stable and enduring settlement, but it is not a stable and enduring settlement in the eyes of nationalists; in their eyes it is merely a stepping stone to something else. We must always be aware of that and stay ahead of it.
What is not the answer to our current constitutional confusion, however, is the adoption of federalism. This has been proposed by Gordon Brown as a means, he would say, of saving the union. It would not save the union; it would destroy the union as it exists and replace it with something wholly new, untested and ill thought out.
Despite all that, we remain a voluntary union that is essentially based on affection: we are attracted to each other. The fact that we choose to stay together is because of the affection that exists—not the coercion but the affection. That is our strength and what we need to build on—but none of this means that we should be insouciant about the continuance of the union.
Here I turn to the sensitive subject of language. It is a sensitive subject, but we should not be too sensitive about discussing it. There is no doubt—and Sinn Féin fully appreciates this—that the use of language is a tool for promoting nationalist sentiment. When I look at Wales and see the almost linguistic fascism that now exists in parts of it, I am deeply concerned that we will find ourselves, on some occasion in the future, in a situation rather like we were with Scotland in 2014, when, half way through the referendum campaign, we realised that unionism might lose the referendum, so out of touch we were. I do not want to see something like that happen in Wales.
Finally, I turn to Northern Ireland. There is very little for me to add to what was said by the speakers who come from Northern Ireland, but I will second what was said about the Northern Ireland protocol and the Windsor Framework. I speak about them from the point of view not of Northern Ireland but of the United Kingdom. It is not the trade aspects that concern me directly—they have an effect on the lives of people in Northern Ireland, which has already been addressed by the noble Lord, Lord Dodds of Duncairn —but the constitutional implications of the fact that part of the United Kingdom is subject to laws made in the European Union by a foreign Parliament with no democratic say by the people who have to live under those laws. This is a classic definition of colonialism. It is a humiliation to this country that we tolerate it; I cannot think of any other democratic country that lives under such arrangements, and it is now explicitly acknowledged to be a constraint and impediment on the way in which we govern the rest of Great Britain. I believe that the Chancellor himself said only the other day that he was constrained from altering VAT rules by the fact that he was not allowed to do so in Northern Ireland, even though he had the power to do so in Great Britain, as that would create a disparity and he was prevented from making the change.
The Northern Ireland protocol was negotiated by a Government with no majority on their principal policy—the Brexit policy—and no majority in Parliament. Their principal negotiating tool, the right to walk away, had been taken away by Parliament. It is not—I second the noble Lord, Lord Dodds of Duncairn— a stable arrangement; it will have to be addressed at some point if the union is to survive and if the United Kingdom is to thrive as an independent country.
Lord Godson (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord McInnes of Kilwinning for securing the debate. He is part of both the physics and chemistry of our union and, when the history of these times comes to be told, his own distinguished part in the Scottish referendum will, I hope, have a bright place in the history books. I also join other noble Lords in welcoming my noble friend the Minister, whose distinguished forebear, who has already been alluded to, was known as “the gentle Lochiel”. His courtesy in the previous Parliament in which he served was legendary in this House, but I hope that he will not be too gentle on foes of the union, whom we may be discussing today.
My purpose is to discuss the security dimensions of the union, particularly the union between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The recent Command Paper made welcome reference to the defence and security aspects of the union in appendix B, relating both to the defence and strategic significance of Northern Ireland and to integrating Northern Ireland’s significant defence industries into the rest of the defence structure of the United Kingdom. It is worth taking a second to consider the historical dimensions of the Command Paper, because it is a very pro-union statement of principles. Much has been discussed about repudiating the doctrine of the Ireland economy, forged for ideological purposes—but it also goes into some depth, perhaps more than any other comparable paper, into the security dimensions.
Last December, we celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Downing Street declaration, in which the then Prime Minister John Major and the then Taoiseach, the late Albert Reynolds, forged the foundational pillar of what became the Northern Ireland peace process. Crucial to the consensus-building objectives of the agreement was the British Government’s declaration that they had “no selfish strategic interest” in Northern Ireland, thus signalling their commitment to a lasting and equitable peace on the island of Ireland. The ensuing peaceful decades have been to the lasting benefit of both sides of the Irish border and indeed across the Irish Sea—I think there is no disagreement in this House or the other House on that point.
At this moment it bears repeating—as others have pointed out before—that “no selfish strategic interest” never meant “no strategic interest at all” for the United Kingdom Government. Indeed, Northern Ireland has always retained vital strategic importance to the United Kingdom. As we find ourselves in an ever more dangerous and sharpening international climate, we must question whether the present security arrangements on the island of Ireland, on both sides of the border, now pose a wider threat to British security.
I think that almost all of us in this House are rightly focused on supporting Ukraine’s gallant self-defence on the European continent as Russia seeks alternative means of weakening our collective security in NATO and wider Europe. In the pursuit of asymmetric advantages against Ukraine’s backers—ourselves included —the Kremlin is probing the critical undersea infra- structure that, by carrying our digital communications and energy flows, undergirds our security and prosperity. Russia makes no secret of its ambitions in that regard. It has a military doctrine, known as SODCIT, for degrading the West psychologically and materially by targeting our critical infrastructure and that of other friendly countries. Suspicious incidents in recent years, such as successive cable cuttings in the Baltics last year, suggest that those fears may not be unwarranted.
Defence of this infrastructure is necessarily a collective effort, and the UK and its partners have rapidly bolstered their joint capabilities. That was most recently witnessed in the UK-led Joint Expeditionary Force’s maiden seabed warfare mission, conducted by nine NATO member states across the north Atlantic this past January.
However, it needs to be said that the Republic of Ireland is still not playing its part but rather chooses to continue to freeload on the security guarantees of others. Although some 75% of the undersea fibre optic cables linking Europe to the United States pass through Irish waters, the Irish Naval Service remains entirely ill equipped to police and protect them. It lacks the radar and the acoustic monitoring systems for satisfactory maritime situational awareness, it remains without a fleet of underwater surveillance vessels and it suffers from a chronic staffing shortage which renders just one-quarter of its fleet serviceable at any given moment.
Although the Republic is now slowly engaging with more EU multilateral defence initiatives, it still does not participate in the one tasked with critical seabed infrastructure protection, and it is hard for many of us to understand why. Perhaps it is because it has little else to offer. As damage to this critical transnational infrastructure harms our national security, we must ask what we need to do to mitigate the risk. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Foster of Aghadrumsee —I hope I am the victor ludorum for the correct pronunciation of her townland—for saying that we have to consider what remains to be done. I am grateful for her tribute to Policy Exchange’s work on our paper Closing the Back Door: Rediscovering Northern Ireland’s Role in British National Security.
One of the solutions is to restore the United Kingdom’s naval and air presence in Northern Ireland by rebuilding our capabilities for maritime patrol in the Atlantic, perhaps in Londonderry, which played such a definitive role in allied victory in the Battle of the Atlantic and in our operations in the Cold War—as has been attested to by the noble Lord, Lord West of Spithead, who was briefly here earlier and who I think served there early on in his naval career. The UK must use any such revived facilities to deter future Russian snooping around undersea cables and pipelines.
I note with pleasure that, whatever the various opinions within unionism over the recent Windsor Framework, this is one area which unites all shades of unionist opinion. The recent exchanges between the right honourable Sammy Wilson MP and the Secretary of State for Defence and the Minister of State for the Armed Forces in the House of Commons and between the right honourable Jeffrey Donaldson MP and the Prime Minister at Prime Minister’s Questions indicate the tremendous potential for such a revived role for UK national security and defence structures in Northern Ireland.
There is a further dimension to our national security concerns on the island of Ireland: the growing Russian, Chinese and Iranian presence in the Republic. The soft border—a consequence of the common travel area, a core element of the British-Irish relationship—raises the prospect of a “back-door” threat to the rest of the United Kingdom. Russia has long viewed the Republic as a strategically positioned hub for its clandestine intelligence activity in Europe. In 2022, the Russian embassy in Dublin reportedly had 30 members of staff, second only in size to its embassy in Washington DC. While the Irish Government subsequently expelled four Russian agents masquerading as diplomats, there are concerns that Moscow has implanted illegal espionage networks which are far harder to trace.
Furthermore, in 2015 Russia successfully applied for planning permission to vastly expand its Dublin embassy, with a new underground operational “nerve centre”. It was only after the proposal came under media scrutiny that in 2020 the Government of the Republic intervened to revoke that permission on national security grounds at the behest of allies. Links between Irish organised crime and Iranian-backed terrorist organisations are also well established. Some of them are currently under investigation by the United States Administration for assisting in the illegal financing of Hezbollah and Iran.
Meanwhile, we know through the comprehensive report of the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament last year that China is engaged in an expansive array of interference activities inside the United Kingdom. The markers are there that it is employing the same tactics in the Republic. Chinese investment is soaring, which has forced the Irish Government to introduce additional screening measures. At last count, there were 13 Confucius Institutes in Irish educational institutions, known to be controlled by the Hanban organisation which is affiliated to the Chinese Communist Party. A so-called Chinese police station in Dublin was shut down two years ago. The target of these is not any individual country, but the systems which service the transatlantic community, ourselves and the order which all that infrastructure upholds. Amid all this, fears are mounting that the Irish security agencies are overstretched, a concern raised by the independent Commission on the Irish Defence Forces set up by the Irish state in 2022.
Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord McInnes, for introducing this debate and offer my congratulations to the Minister. I do not think anybody with any sense of history can fail to be affected by the penumbra of Scottish Jacobitism which surrounds him. I hope he will accept my congratulations as an English Hanoverian borderer. One of my family was the Bishop of Carlisle at the time of the Forty-five, who recorded in his diary that in early 1746 he went up to Carlisle to see his successor hanged. I do not know what the Bishops’ Benches would think about that sort of thing these days.
I am a unionist because I believe the union is and can continue to be to the material economic, cultural and social advantage of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, individually and taken together. It gives added value. However, as a number of noble Lords have said, it is not an inevitability and has no guarantee for eternity. It must work to survive.
I will approach this debate from the perspective of the county of Cumbria, which is the most economically self-contained area in England. I have lived my life there. I am hefted to it, as we say. I chair the local enterprise partnership, I am the vice lord-lieutenant and I represented it in the European Parliament for 10 years. In my capacity as chair of the LEP, I arranged for the commissioning on its behalf of an analysis prepared by Metro Dynamics of the possible impact of an independent Scotland on our bit of the north-west of England. It probably speaks volumes about my political acumen that it was delivered on the day that Nicola Sturgeon resigned as First Minister.
Perhaps hardly surprisingly, it pointed out that such a step was very likely to damage the county’s economy, but it subsequently emerged from the discussion that the implications would almost inevitably be similar if some of the proposals for devo-max and greater regional devolution took place in England. We reached the conclusion that that might equally disadvantage us and damage our economy. It is further English devolution that, in today’s political climate, seems more probable to me. I do not believe that the union means homogenous rules over the piece, as a number of noble Lords have said. Rather, I believe in and subscribe to the desirability of local decision-making and local ways of delivering policies, tailored to the communities in which they are intended to take effect. It should be local electorates who hold those decision-makers to account.
Yet the context here appears to be that, unless there are some compensating measures, economic damage may be visited on some of the economically weaker and less resilient parts of England as part of that wider process. Do not get me wrong: it is not as if Cumbria is on its knees—it is not. In a variety of ways, it has a great deal going for it, but there are a number of pockets of real deprivation outside the orbits of BAE Systems and Sellafield where the economy performs less well and productivity is below the national norm. We need to be clear that this economy suffered significantly from Covid and Brexit and that the evolution of greater devolution/the independence of Scotland and various possible forms of devolution in northern England, which might be of economic benefit to others, does not look as if it will be a help to us.
We also know that the Barnett formula, as it has evolved, works less beneficially for those areas which have many similar characteristics to Scotland but happen to be in England. In the context of the economic characteristics of this area over the last 50 years, Cumbria, as part of the north, suffered from the mid-20th-century collapse of traditional industries. They have not been fully substituted with the new ones, which principally took root and were turbocharged by the European single market in the south of England. On top of that, we suffered from Treasury policies that got in the way of the full implementation of the European structural funds because they were not implemented in Britain quite as they were on the continent because of the rules about budget rebate.
Levelling up, which is a great catchphrase, has been a bit of a disappointment, possibly because it was oversold to perhaps over-sanguine people who were seduced by electoral rhetoric. What is needed is a recalibration of the economic relations between this and other similar parts of England and the centre in London, given the changes that are anticipated in Scotland and a number of other places in the wider north which are distinct from this particular area. For example, traditional cost-benefit analysis in the centre shortchanges big areas with low populations and low productivity. This is ironic, since increased productivity and output is exactly what is needed to bring about central government policy aspirations. This has been the subject matter of central government consideration.
I also want to ask the Minister about the Government’s proposals for the Borderlands initiative—I am a member of its economic forum. The Scottish side of this unique and worthwhile Anglo-Scottish initiative gives the impression of being more proactive than its English opposite number, although I am not clear how much real enthusiasm there is for it from either Whitehall or Edinburgh. I would be very grateful if the Minister could reassure me about these things.
The purpose of these comments is not parochial; rather, the issue is systemic. There is a real risk that, as proposals for various forms of devolution and domestic autonomy within the United Kingdom as a whole proceed, there will be collateral damage elsewhere in the country—possibly in those areas which are in the greatest economic difficulty. The UK Government need to recognise this and commit to responding fairly to that if it occurs.
Finally, will the Government unequivocally commit to doing just that? It really matters that all parts and components of the union are treated fairly and even-handedly, because fairness of that kind is the glue that is needed to keep the union together and to strengthen it, as the noble Lord, Lord McInnes, so lucidly advocated in his opening remarks.
Lord Udny-Lister (Con)
My Lords, I welcome this important and timely debate and, like every other speaker, thank my noble friend Lord McInnes of Kilwinning for bringing this topic to the Floor of your Lordships’ House and for the way in which he so eloquently made the case for why the union of the United Kingdom must always remain at the forefront of our thinking. I welcome my noble friend Lord Cameron to his place at the Dispatch Box and look forward to hearing from him in due course.
The union of the United Kingdom has been forged through centuries of shared history and culture. Today, the union represents a mosaic of identities and traditions of a united people who are bound together under one flag, in peaceful union, for the greater good. This union has endured domestic trials and tribulations and international wars and conflicts. It has endured, as it is a union that is built on the shoulders and sacrifices of an ever-resilient people who have adapted and evolved to the changing tides of time.
Today, we face immense global insecurity. We have wars waging in Europe, instability in the Middle East and global economic uncertainty. We cannot afford to underestimate the gravity of these challenges and the potential issues that may lie ahead. Against this backdrop of global uncertainty, when it comes to our national security there is not a clearer case for why the nations of our union are stronger together, and we must continue to make this case. The illegal war that has been waged by the Russian state against the people of Ukraine demands that we must now focus on strengthening our internal security arrangements to ensure that we are able to stand up against the aggression of rogue states.
As an island nation, our history tells us that our first line of security is the waters around us. We must now ensure that our naval capacity and capability is equally distributed around the shores of the union. With Russia and other aggressors posing a threat to the western approaches of the British Isles, so eloquently explained earlier by my noble friend Lord Godson, now is the time for the Government to expand our naval and air presence in Northern Ireland. Does my noble friend the Minister agree that it is time for us to look at an enhanced, one-union approach to national security? Can he comment on the need for the Government urgently to reconsider the role that Northern Ireland plays in the wider defence and security of the United Kingdom?
I raise this point, as have the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, and the noble Lord, Lord Godson, in considering a report published recently by Policy Exchange, Closing the Back Door: Rediscovering Northern Ireland’s Role in British National Security. It highlights why we cannot be reliant on the Republic of Ireland for the defence and security of the Irish Sea and our own national security. As others have done, in drawing this report to the attention of your Lordships’ House, it is worth highlighting the grim reality that, after years of underfunding, the Republic’s defence forces are wholly inadequate to face up to the challenges that we face today. With this in mind, it is vital that we consider an enhanced security role for Northern Ireland in the immediate future.
Some will argue that the Good Friday agreement necessitates that we have a separate approach to security in Northern Ireland. I remind your Lordships’ House that the agreement acknowledges the need for security co-operation across the entirety of the UK. If ever there was a time to strengthen and equalise that co-operation, it is now. An enhanced security role for Northern Ireland, built on trust and mutual respect, has the ability to strengthen the fundamental principles of the Good Friday agreement while ensuring the security of our United Kingdom. I therefore politely request that my noble friend the Minister, if he has not done so already, considers the recommendations made in the report. If the Government are serious about wanting to strengthen and safeguard the union, we need a one-union approach to defence and national security.
The union of the United Kingdom is not merely a political arrangement that has withstood the test of time. Foremost it is our security guarantee. It is a union of people who, while being distinctly different, can come together in heart and mind for these principles. This makes us collectively a force and a beacon for good in an ever-dangerous world. We should and must do more to promote this. It is our duty, as the custodians of the union, to move heaven and earth to ensure that the union of the United Kingdom is strengthened for generations to come. I am assured that this Government remain committed to that duty.
Lord Keen of Elie (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord McInnes of Kilwinning for securing this debate and welcome my noble friend Lord Cameron of Lochiel to the Front Bench for his maiden speech. I express my regard for the late Lord McAvoy, who was always the most congenial and approachable of colleagues in this House.
If we want a stable and sustainable union then we require a stable and sustainable devolved settlement. It was helpful to hear from so many noble Lords of Northern Ireland, because their experience of devolution goes much deeper than that of those of us from Scotland and Wales.
It is worth remembering that Northern Ireland had a devolved Parliament for 50 years, up until 1972, and managed during that time without either a territorial office or a Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. During that period, the sovereign Parliament at Westminster exercised a self-denying ordinance: although a sovereign Parliament, it did not seek to interfere in the domestic affairs of Northern Ireland, although, from time to time, it was sorely tempted. And that reflects other developments at the time, one of which was the Statute of Westminster in 1931, where this sovereign Parliament declared that it would no longer legislate for the Dominions. Just a few years later, in the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords, it was argued that the sovereign Parliament could and would continue to legislate for the Dominions. The then Lord Chancellor responded, somewhat dryly, “That might reflect the legal theory of sovereignty, but it does not reflect political reality”. Today’s devolved settlements must reflect political reality.
In 2016, we passed Section 1 of the Scotland Act that stated that the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government would be permanent features of our constitutional settlement. The theory of sovereignty tells us that this Parliament could depart from that, but we know political reality is different. That brings me on to the condition of the present devolved settlement and a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Bew, about the impact of Brexit. Nobody designed the devolved settlement for Scotland or Wales with Brexit in mind. Nobody anticipated the reshoring of vast legislative rights and obligations in both devolved and reserved areas. We find it very difficult to cope with those events, and the consequence was that what we refer to as the Sewel convention became something flexible. We began to see primary legislation passing without legislative consent Motions from either Scotland or Wales. We saw secondary legislation increasing, which is not subject to the Sewel convention, and we saw the use of Henry VIII clauses that again are not subject to the convention. All this undermined people’s belief in the sustainability and stability of the devolved settlement.
To address that, I suggest that one step we should take is the abolition of the Sewel convention and the substitution of it with a very clear and unambiguous provision that states that this Parliament will not pass legislation in devolved areas without the express consent of the devolved legislatures. That would give us stability, sustainability and a safer union.
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)
I agree with the noble and learned Lord. My point can be put much more succinctly. I warmly welcome the Minister and look forward to his remarks, and would be grateful if he could convey to the Leader of the House the point that I am about to make.
As a Scottish unionist, I believe that our debates in this Chamber would be much improved if the SNP took part. I would also, of course, like to hear from Sinn Féin, but I know how unrealistic that is. However, the SNP is in the other place and makes an important contribution there; its objections to being here must therefore be of a different nature from Sinn Féin’s and are possibly less adamantine.
A dozen years ago, a group of us from all sides of the House wrote to the then Prime Minister suggesting that this issue should be raised with the First Minister in Edinburgh. The then Prime Minister decided not to pursue that initiative, and it might have gone nowhere, though in fact the pitch had been very well rolled in Edinburgh. I think, with the changes of personnel in London and Edinburgh, it would be worth trying again, and I ask the Minister to consult the Leader of the House and consider whether, on a cross-party basis, the suggestion might be revived.
Baroness Humphreys (LD)
My Lords, I am grateful the noble Lord, Lord McInnes of Kilwinning, for securing this debate, which has afforded us the opportunity to examine the state of our union.
Before I carry on, I will add my tributes to Lord McAvoy. He was the Labour Chief Whip when, 10 years ago, I became a Lib Dem whip. I must admit that he terrified me until I began to understand his sense of humour—which was a really different sense of humour.
We have had a fascinating, informative and wide debate and it has been good to hear voices from across the UK, from Scotland, Northern Ireland, England and the north-west of England. Before I bring some comments from Wales, I will highlight two or three speeches that I have heard today. I thank the noble Lord, Lord McInnes, for his reference to Wales so that we did not feel left out; and his emphasis on the fragility of the union because of the situations in Scotland and Ireland was an excellent analysis of the situation in both nations. He did say that, in opinion polls, 50% of people are still in favour of independence in Scotland and I concur with the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, that it is a pity that those voices are not represented in this Chamber—we need to see and hear them.
I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Foster of Aghadrumsee, for the lesson in the pronunciation of her home town—I hope I attempted it rightly—and for her really moving speech about her background, her father being a police officer and his shooting resulting in them having to move house. This of course was the background to her setting up the organisation Together UK. I thank her for that speech; it was wonderful.
I will also comment on the speech from the noble Lord, Lord Moylan. I really object to the term “language fascism” and I thank Members in the Chamber for their response to that comment. People fail to understand that Wales is a bilingual nation, and people have the right to use their first language, whichever language that is, or both languages, if they want to.
I will now turn to the subject of the debate. From my point of view, and perhaps from many people’s point of view, the United Kingdom’s greatest weakness is that it is an unequal, or asymmetric, union. We are union of four nations: three smaller nations and one which is much larger in terms of land mass, population, wealth and political power. And each nation has a different vision for the future of its people. But it is in the area of political power, however, that the disparity between the four nations became increasingly obvious. For many of us in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, there was a desire to see government from a dominant and distant London replaced by a Government in our own country.
The first 20 years of devolution and our National Assembly brought a feeling of relative stability, for possibly two main reasons. First, the area of north Wales and the valleys qualified for EU funding because its GDP was among the lowest in the regions of the European Union. Secondly, and most importantly, the Welsh Government and consecutive UK Governments worked collaboratively to honour the Sewel convention and protect the Welsh devolution settlement. I concur fully with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, when he spoke in the gap.
All that changed with the 2019 election. The new Government’s desire to strengthen the union and bind it together led to a more cavalier approach to the Sewel convention and to increasing financial and work pressure on the devolved Administration as they struggled to defend their settlement, all resulting in a fraught, fractured relationship between the two Governments. Engagement between the UK Government and the devolved Administration at ministerial level became less frequent, and of great concern to Members in this House and in the Senedd. It is clear that, if the relationship between the nations of the UK is to be strong, it must be based on mutual respect and co-operation. The leadership for that must come from the strongest nation. Constant attacks on the powers of the devolved Parliaments are counterproductive and give rise to resentment and sometimes enmity.
As your Lordships’ Constitution Committee report, Respect and Co-operation: Building a Stronger Union for the 21st century, pointed out,
“the failure to develop a modern form of ‘shared governance’ which recognises central and devolved governments have distinct statutory responsibilities that often intersect, has undermined the strength of the Union”.
Do the UK Government have plans to develop such a modern form of shared governance, or do they have any other plans to develop the union in future?
The Welsh Government have indeed considered the future, and a recent report of the Independent Commission on the Constitutional Future of Wales included 10 recommendations for reform which focused on both strengthening and protecting devolution. The report included an analysis of three options for the constitutional future of Wales:
“enhanced devolution, Wales in a federal UK, and an independent Wales”.
It concluded that “each option is viable” and that
“each offers strengths and weaknesses, risks and opportunities”.
As a Liberal Democrat, my preference, of course, would be for a federal system whereby power is devolved to the regions of England as well as to the three devolved nations. We really do need to solve the “English question”. England has no Parliament of its own, and its county councils, many of which represent areas larger than Wales, do not have the executive power our devolved Parliaments have—another disparity which will require attention over time.
I will end by referring to the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Bew. He reminded us that during the Brexit campaign, there were thoughts that Brexit might well destroy the union. It actually showed how difficult it is to leave the union. That is a lesson we all need to take from this: that it is difficult to leave the union. Perhaps, the words used during the campaign—as a Remainer, I would remember this—that we are “stronger together”, might apply here too.
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
My Lords, it is a real pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Humphreys; her comments on strengthening and protecting devolution were thoughtful and very helpful. I thank the noble Lord, Lord McInnes, for securing this debate, and echo his words of welcome to the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Lochiel, whose maiden speech I look forward very much to hearing.
This has been a helpful and interesting debate. Our union is precious to many of us. For some, that is because of our shared historical ties, common bonds and family ties. For others, there is an economic reality that we are more prosperous as a united group of nations. We believe in and respect our differences and our often-overlapping identities, and think that by pooling aspects of our sovereignty, we are better off and more secure. Prosperity, security, and opportunity: that is the promise of our union.
The noble Lord, Lord Lilley, invited us to celebrate the union, sharing his personal affection for it, but I would say that we must guard against the perception of support that relies too heavily on—how can I put this—a whimsical historical reference, as this can be at times alienating to some. I think the noble Lord, Lord McInnes, warned us of that in his introduction.
Most speakers in this debate have referred, at least in part, to the risks or threats we face, and they are right to do so. The noble Lord, Lord Bew, reminded us of the importance of public service delivery and demonstrating continual improvement. His analysis of the improving situation in Northern Ireland was positive; I hope that can be sustained. I warmly thank him for his kind words about Lord McAvoy, which were echoed by the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, and the noble Baronesses, Goldie and Lady Humphreys. I did not know Lord McAvoy as well as many noble Lords did, and I really feel, having listened to their comments this afternoon, that I missed a treat. I am sad about that.
As many have said, our union must never be taken for granted or assumed to have a God-given right to exist. Respect and care must be taken, especially by the UK Government. The call by the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, for an attitude of partnership was spot on. Her insight about respect, pragmatism and the importance of personal political relationships was valuable and very well made. It is sensible to acknowledge that the past decade has presented its challenges. Brexit, nationalism and, at times, the approach of the UK Government have all put the union under stress. The noble Baroness, Lady Foster of Aghadrumsee, reminded us that independence is not inevitable—of course she is right about that—but neither is the safeguarding of the union, hence this debate.
I was sorry to hear the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, refer to “linguistic fascism” in Wales. I invite him, gently and with a great deal of respect, to consider his use of language and whether the tone that he deployed in that remark, which I think could be perceived as high-handed, serves in the longer term to strengthen or weaken the union. He referred to Gordon Brown. The central tenet of Gordon Brown’s report for the Commission on the UK’s Future is that our constitutional arrangements and our economic success are inextricably connected. He points out that the UK is one of the most politically and economically centralised countries in Europe. This leaves us stuck with great inequality between different regions and an economy that is less competitive.
Whitehall has failed to manage relations with the devolved Administrations well, sometimes interfering in areas it should not, while at other times pursuing a rather laissez-faire approach when agreed UK-wide joint approaches would have been much more effective. The UK’s different Governments have to work together. This is what the noble Lord, Lord McInnes, referred to as the physics of the union. It is widely recognised that the present Joint Ministerial Committee system has long struggled to be effective and has virtually been allowed to fail under the present Government. At the same time, there are no mechanisms for the voices of the cities and regions of England to be heard at the centre. The UK needs new and much more effective mechanisms for co-operation between regions and nations. These must respect local and regional voices as well as those of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Sadly, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, reminded us, there is a sense in the devolved Administrations that the UK Government have at times been happy to ride roughshod over devolution and do not trouble themselves over disrespecting convention. During the passage of the EU withdrawal Act in 2020, the UK Government overrode the Sewel convention but said at the time that it was a singular, specific and exceptional necessity. The problem is that the Government have proceeded to breach Sewel subsequently without even seeking to offer a justification. This is not a recipe for a strong union. For example, the shared prosperity fund, the levelling up fund and the widening levelling-up agenda have left the Welsh Government excluded from any meaningful involvement in the decision-making processes for these funds. Engagement between the UK Government and the Welsh Government was, it appears, superficial, late and limited in scope. Return of control of these elements of economic devolution to the Welsh Government, where it belongs, would be an important first step in improving this situation.
The decision to bypass Ministers in the Welsh Government is an overt and deliberate disregard by the UK Government of the constitutional settlement approved by the people of Wales in successive referenda and opens the door to progressive, incremental repeal of the devolution settlement with no debate and no consent from the people of Wales. Support for the union cannot be a thing of romance or nostalgia. It is about making sure that every citizen benefits and that power, wealth and opportunity are shared. As support for the union waxes and wanes, it is vital that those who believe in it and think it the best way to secure the future of all regions and nations continue to make the case for it. That is how the union will be protected, not for its own sake but for the sake of all those whom it exists to serve and protect.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Scotland Office (Lord Cameron of Lochiel) (Con) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, it is a very great honour for me to be standing here before your Lordships and to be delivering my maiden speech in a debate secured by my noble friend Lord McInnes of Kilwinning. I thank him not just for his guidance in the past few weeks but for his stalwart service to Scotland and the United Kingdom in this past decade—service that has been far more pivotal than many people realise. I also express gratitude to my two noble kinsmen who acted as supporters at my introduction last week, the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, and my noble friend Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton. Having turned back with the rest of the Jacobite army at Derby in 1745, it has taken Clan Cameron only another 279 years to reach the capital. To the noble Lord and my noble friend, to Black Rod, to the Clerk of the Parliaments, to the doorkeepers and to many others who have given me invaluable assistance, my heartfelt thanks.
I believe it is customary before turning to the substance of the debate to say a few personal words. In terms of my own career, having studied history at university, I practised law in Scotland as an advocate, before being elected in 2016 to represent the Highlands and Islands in the Scottish Parliament. That too was a great honour as an MSP representing my home region—a place of wild and staggering beauty but inhabited by communities often challenged with depopulation, lack of connectivity and a frail local economy.
The task for any elected representative is of course to try to improve the lives of people within those communities. As someone who has now been given the huge privilege of serving as a Minister, the question for me becomes: what can government do to assist in that endeavour? Perhaps the answer lies in the islands of the west, if your Lordships might allow me to explain. If one travels along the main road that runs up the spine of the Western Isles, one uses a number of small stone causeways to make one’s way from island to island—causeways that many would never notice, given the majestic views offered on all sides, framed in the ever-changing light for which those islands are renowned. But those slight structures are important in the long, rich story of the Hebrides, and the tides of history that brought cultures and peoples to and from their shores: Gaels from Ireland, Vikings from Norway—waves of men and women sweeping in and sweeping out.
It was the last ebbing away of people from the islands in the 20th century as a result of eviction, world war and emigration that pre-empted the causeways’ construction. Quietly, steadily, they were built from the 1940s onwards in a bid to stem depopulation, linking tiny, fragile communities and so ending the isolation of centuries. That was a small accomplishment at the very edge of this country, achieved amid the crashing waves of the Atlantic and the cry of the oystercatcher, and far removed from the cut and thrust of metropolitan politics here in the capital.
However, those causeways are just as much part of our great country as the busy thoroughfares of London, and they represent one example of what government should be doing everywhere; namely, building the causeways for our citizens to walk safely over, both literally and metaphorically. A Government should connect their citizens and communities and allow them to realise their own potential. A Government should enable and empower, end isolation and ensure that every citizen feels entirely connected to, and part of, our joint efforts. No man is an island, indeed.
I turn to the substance of today’s important debate, which also supplies one argument for the union, and the role of the United Kingdom Government in strengthening that union by connecting the nations of the UK through strategic interventions, and thus bridging the gaps between us. It will not surprise your Lordships to hear me say that this Government have few higher priorities than strengthening and protecting our enduring union. In a moment, I will respond to various issues that have been raised here today, but I will begin by setting out why our union is of course worth safeguarding.
This Government believe that each part of the UK is stronger by being part of it, and the UK is stronger because of the immense contribution of each of its nations. When we work together as one United Kingdom, we are safer, stronger and more prosperous. We are better able to draw on the institutions that unite us, including our Armed Forces, our common social security safety net and our National Health Service, and we are better able to tackle the big problems, from supporting families with the cost of living to leading the international response to Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine. The UK Government are committed to delivering on the issues that matter most to citizens: driving down inflation, growing our economy and maintaining the UK’s energy security.
In the UK, our internal market is the basis on which thousands of businesses are able to trade freely across the whole of the UK, minimising red tape and maximising opportunities. In Scotland, for example, the majority of outgoing trade is with the rest of the UK, more than with the rest of the world combined. I firmly believe that the UK provides the best platform for Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England to thrive.
This Government are steadfast in our mission to level up all parts of the UK. To date, UK government investment in levelling up across the country has included over £3 billion of direct investment in Scotland, more than £2.5 billion for Wales—plus a further £500 million to secure the future of Port Talbot’s steel industry—and just over £1 billion for Northern Ireland.
In practice, levelling up means working with local partners across the UK to regenerate our town centres and high streets. I am delighted that last week the Chancellor announced £20 million over 10 years for a further 20 towns across the UK as part of the long-term plan for towns. Those towns include Arbroath, Peterhead and Kirkwall in Scotland, Rhyl in Wales, and Derry/Londonderry and Coleraine in Northern Ireland.
Levelling up also means spreading opportunity more equally across the country, be it funding the first fully licensed UK spaceport in Shetland, committing £2 million to boost global investment and trade in Northern Ireland or launching an agri-food launchpad to grow innovation clusters across mid and north Wales.
The Government are proud of our work with the devolved Governments. In that spirit, we welcome the return to power sharing in Northern Ireland and the positive impact that the re-establishment of the Northern Ireland Executive will have—a point I will return to in a moment.
This Government are also proud and respectful of the devolution settlements, which strike the right balance between allowing decisions to be taken closer to the communities that they affect, while still benefiting from the shared resources of the United Kingdom. I am delighted that, over the course of the debate, your Lordships have recognised and highlighted this important balance. I am particularly grateful for the contributions from those with experience of each of the devolved legislatures. I pay tribute to the experiences of my noble friend Lady Goldie and the noble Baronesses, Lady Foster of Aghadrumsee and Lady Humphreys.
My view, from almost eight years as a Member of the Scottish Parliament, is that the significant powers that each of our devolved institutions possesses provide great opportunity to deliver on behalf of people in every corner of the UK. In my career, I have been proud to play my part in a number of initiatives; for example, promoting the Gaelic language as a part of the shared heritage of people in the Highlands and Islands and beyond.
People across this country rightly expect their Governments to work together, dedicating attention and resources to the issues that matter to them, their families and their communities. The UK Government engage with the devolved Governments regularly in a variety of ways, including through the formal intergovernmental machinery. Since the beginning of 2023 alone there have been more than 200 ministerial meetings between the UK and devolved Governments, underpinned by constant official-level engagement. In the very short time that I have been a Minister, I have already seen that at first hand.
This Government are committed to making devolution work by conducting positive and effective working across all levels of government, using the respective levers at our disposal to deliver the best possible outcomes for people, businesses and communities, and to tackle the challenges we collectively face. Such collaborative working is at the heart of important initiatives such as freeports, city and growth deals, and investment zones.
In relation to the last of those, the UK Government are also committed to engaging, via the east-west council, on the scope to extend Northern Ireland’s enhanced investment zone benefits to the Stranraer/Cairnryan area in Scotland, recognising this vital union connectivity route and boosting growth. In my experience, we are at our strongest when we work together, delivering on the priorities that matter the most to people across the UK.
I will now respond to some of the very important points raised today. Following a former Dean of the Faculty of Advocates, the former director of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party and a former party leader in Scotland, this is very much like a trip down memory lane. They are all prominent figures in my past, which is intimidating and reassuring in equal measure.
I begin with my noble friend Lord McInnes of Kilwinning and thank him for his very kind words. In his powerful and incisive speech, he cited John Buchan and the contradiction between unionism and nationalism —perhaps that provided a template for the future of the union. He is correct; the union is one of diversity. I suggest that the union flag itself reveals that; with its jarring symbols and clash of colours, it operates in the plural not the singular. Having said that, as he accepted and I think we all acknowledge, we of course celebrate the crucial UK-wide institutions and our British identity, and we adhere to those.
My noble friend Lord Lilley was the first of many English voices in this debate. It is so welcome to hear those voices because they have traditionally been quieter than those of the slightly louder Celtic contingent. He was right to celebrate the union. He spoke about the range of things that unify us: language, culture, history, ancestry and, perhaps most powerfully, sacrifice in war. My noble friend also spoke about the need to be positive and enthusiastic and to celebrate the union.
The noble Lord, Lord Bew, spoke about the upheaval of the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union and how much greater an impact sundering a much older union would have—how right he is. He spoke about being careful about using Ireland as a model for an independent Scotland, especially in economic analysis. On behalf of the UK Government, I say that we of course welcome the return of the Executive and devolved government in Northern Ireland, after two years without an Administration. This deal has ensured that power sharing is up and running again, as people in Northern Ireland want and need.
The Government still provide the Executive with an unprecedented £3.3 billion spending settlement, with a new approach to support stability, prosperity and sustainable public services. This underlines Northern Ireland’s integral place in our union, fulfilling the Acts of Union and affirming that we will not countenance any diminution in that position without consent. Lastly, it safeguards the UK internal market, guaranteeing unfettered access for Northern Ireland firms and supporting trade across the United Kingdom, enabling all parts of the UK to benefit.
The noble Lord, Lord Dodds of Duncairn, spoke about his belief in devolution and made an important distinction between party-political support for the union and the support of the populace for the union. He asked for the UK Government to be robust. I reassure him and will give a brief exposition of the UK Government’s position on Northern Ireland’s place in the union. In accordance with the Good Friday agreement and the principle of consent, Northern Ireland will remain part of the UK for as long as its people wish. The Government recognise and respect the legitimacy of different constitutional ambitions, as long as they are pursued peacefully and democratically, and we are steadfastly committed to upholding the Good Friday agreement in all its dimensions. None the less, this Government are proud of Northern Ireland’s place in the union. We firmly believe that Northern Ireland has the best of both worlds, with the Northern Ireland Executive backed by the support and strength of the UK Government.
The agreement is explicit that any change to the constitutional position of Northern Ireland would require the consent of a majority of its people, and there is no clear basis to suggest that a majority of people in Northern Ireland presently wish to separate from the United Kingdom. The overwhelming consensus in Northern Ireland, rather like in Scotland, is that it needs a strong Executive or Government to deliver on the issues that really matter to people day to day—health, jobs, the cost of living and education—and that will remain our focus.
My noble friend Lady Goldie has long experience in the Scottish Parliament, and serving as a Minister in the UK Government here in your Lordships’ House. She posed various questions that she answered using this experience and expertise. I will reflect on them more broadly. The theme underlying her contribution was partnership and personal relationships, and I reassure her that they exist in government. There has been mention of the intergovernmental relations review, which proposed various levels of engagement. In my few short weeks at official level, I have seen that working as a reality. I also point out to my noble friend initiatives that the UK Government have brought forward such as the Islands Forum. Personal relationships are key, as she said, and, from a personal perspective, having been in the Scottish Parliament with colleagues who serve as Ministers in the Scottish Government, I hope I can play a small part in fostering those relationships.
The noble Baroness, Lady Foster of Aghadrumsee, gave me a warm welcome, for which I thank her. She spoke about her part of the world in Fermanagh, and that reminded me that, as an MSP, I would often drive down the Kintyre peninsula to Campbeltown and be able to gaze across to the Northern Ireland coast, a visible reminder that the Scottish highlands and Northern Ireland are close physically, geographically, emotionally, culturally and politically. There are so many ancient links between our two parts of the world.
The noble Baroness spoke about the rollout of the Covid vaccine across the United Kingdom. It was, of course, one of the greatest achievements of this Government. My noble friend Lord Moylan spoke coherently about the union of Parliaments, the voluntary nature of this union and how unusual it was. He spoke cogently about the affection binding the union together.
In relation to the Welsh language, I will be clear: the UK Government fully support the Welsh Government’s aim for there being 1 million speakers of Welsh by 2050. The Welsh language is devolved, but the UK Government are committed to supporting its promotion and use in Wales. Languages belong to everyone and, as I said earlier, I have taken a long interest in promoting the Gaelic language. I hark back to the UK Conservative Governments of the 1980s and 1990s and their contribution to Gaelic broadcasting.
My noble friend Lord Godson likewise gave me a very generous welcome. He might not remember, but the first time I met him was at a Policy Exchange event about the union. I recognise and pay tribute to his own interest in these issues over many years. In relation to security and defence, I point to the good working between the Police Service of Northern Ireland and the Irish Garda. There is an embedded culture of collaboration there. They co-operate in the context of terrorism—I accept that it is not a state threat—but, on the more specific questions on defence and security, I commit to writing to my noble friend on these issues. They are very much in the domain of my noble friend Lord Minto, whom I will make aware of these matters.
The noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, spoke of being Hanoverian—another important English voice—and about Cumbria and its similarities to Scotland. I of course defend the levelling-up programme. It is a government achievement that occurs across the United Kingdom. Many towns in England have benefited, as well as in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. I commit to writing to him in relation to the borderlands.
My noble friend Lord Udny-Lister spoke about issues relating to national security. I reiterate the same commitment to him to write to him in due course. I acknowledge his long interest in the union and recall meeting him in Edinburgh a few years ago.
My noble and learned friend Lord Keen of Elie spoke about Sewel. I am anxious not to step on the toes of your Lordships’ Constitution Committee, which I know is looking at this at the moment. The United Kingdom is committed to the Sewel convention and the associated practices for seeking consent. The United Kingdom Government seek legislative consent for any Bill that legislates for a devolved matter or alters devolved competence. We can and do take account of devolved Administrations’ views on those issues, including in reserved policy areas.
In relation to the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, I will indeed take the point about the SNP and this House to the Leader of this House. I just point out today that the objection to taking part in your Lordships’ House is the SNP’s, and effectively it is a red line for it as a political party.
The noble Baroness, Lady Humphreys, was a welcome Welsh voice. She asked about the Independent Commission on the Constitutional Future for Wales. That report was, of course, commissioned by the Welsh Government, and it is for Ministers in Wales to respond directly to it. People and businesses in Wales want to see all tiers of government working effectively together to tackle the issues that matter to them. Delivering on what matters to people and communities is exactly what the UK Government are focused on doing.
To the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman of Darlington, I reiterate the points I made about working together and repeat that I have already seen that happening in practice. The review of intergovernmental relations is up and running. All four Governments are jointly responsible for upholding the spirit and content of the IGR structures and ensuring productive governmental relations. Since the review was published in 2022, we have established 16 interministerial groups. The interministerial council has met six times; the interministerial financial standing council has met five times; the council has met once, and the secretariat has been established. There will always be evolution, and it is vital through scrutiny such as this debate that we can help mature that system.
I will conclude with some words of assurance. This Government will never cease to be a Government who put the safeguarding and strengthening of our union at the centre of our work. As I have set out, I am honoured to be able to champion this mission in this place as a proud representative of the Scotland Office. However, we must never be complacent. We must always remember that safeguarding our union is an ongoing mission and not simply a short-term response to temporary political turbulence.
All parts of our great nation contribute to the strength of the United Kingdom, which remains the most successful political and economic union the world has ever seen. Under this Government, that will always be the case.
Lord McInnes of Kilwinning (Con)
My Lords, it is a great privilege to be able to congratulate my noble friend on the tour de force of a maiden speech we have just witnessed. To be asked to deliver a maiden speech from the Front Bench is a challenge indeed, and he has done it brilliantly. It was formidable content, delivered in the erudite way we would always expect of him, demonstrating well the intellectual heft that the Scottish Parliament has lost and we have gained.
My noble friend Lord Godson referred to a forebear of my noble friend Lord Cameron, Gentle Lochiel; I want to refer to another: Sir Ewan Cameron of Lochiel, who was a century before Gentle Lochiel, but was known and written about as a gracious master, a trusty ally but a terrible enemy. I am quite sure that noble Lords will take full notice of the last of the triplet in how they might wish to deal with my noble friend, but it is a great privilege to have him in your Lordships’ House and we look forward to all that he is going to add to debate in this Chamber.
In the minute I have left, I want to thank all noble Lords for bringing forward what has been an exposition of all the arguments that can be made for the union. That we have had detailed suggestions for government on security issues, on Sewel and on other measures is also important for our debate. While my sunny disposition might have been topped up today by lots of good unionist talk, it is very important that government continues to act on that and deliver for the union and strengthen it as we move forward.
Gas-fired Power Stations
(8 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
My Lords, it is fair to say that there has been some scratching of heads as to why exactly this announcement was deemed necessary. There is general agreement that gas-fired power stations will be needed during the transition to net zero. However, there is disquiet at the emphasis on this aspect of policy rather than on alternative approaches such as ramping up investment in renewables.
If new-build plants are needed, it is essential that they are capable of converting to hydrogen or are connected to functioning carbon capture and storage. May I seek assurance from the Minister that this is indeed the Government’s view? Can he also inform us what estimate has been made of how many of these new gas plants will be needed, when they will come on stream and how long reliance on them is expected to last?
Earl Russell (LD)
My Lords, this announcement comes out of the blue and fuels doubts that this Government are on track to meet their own target of fully decarbonising power generation by 2035. So far, instead of progress we have seen repeated failures to prepare; the offshore wind auction collapse; an effective ban on onshore wind; nuclear power projects delayed; slow or no progress on battery storage, hydro-generation and tidal projects; and a lack of investment in overall grid capacity. I ask the Minister to confirm that the Government are still committed to fully decarbonising power generation by 2035 and that these will be the last ever carbon-based power generation plants to be built in the UK.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (Lord Callanan)
I thank the noble Baroness and the noble Earl for their questions, especially the noble Baroness, although I am slightly perplexed. If she thinks that this announcement was unnecessary, why did the Labour Party ask for it to be repeated in this House today, given that it makes the same point? However, essentially, I accept the point that the noble Baroness has made. We think that this capacity is necessary; it is all about security of supply. The estimate is that in 2035, it might account for only 1% to 2% of all of the capacity that might be required. We are looking forward a decade, with uncertain projections of what the demand will be, how much renewable capacity will be available and even what the weather conditions will be like that far ahead. So, this is sensible contingency planning.
On the questions from the noble Earl, we very much hope and expect that these will be hydrogen ready or capable of having CCUS fitted. Indeed, some gas plants are already taking part in the CCUS cluster sequencing process. This announcement is entirely compatible with our net-zero obligations. Indeed, this is net zero: there will be some emissions but those can be abated, eliminated or captured, or the power stations can run on hydrogen.
We are very proud of our record. We have one of the fastest rates of decarbonisation in the G20, and we announced before Christmas that we have reduced our emissions by 50%. We have the five biggest wind turbine farms in Europe, and that capacity continues to be rolled out. This is sensible contingency planning to make sure that the lights stay on at those times when, as we all know happen, the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
My Lords, I welcome this announcement because it seems to have a strong element of realism and honesty in this whole advance towards net zero, which I personally welcome.
If the aim is to ensure that when we get to net zero, although there will be fossil fuel burning, carbon is captured from that—indeed, there will be gas burning, as there is now, as part of our existing electricity generation —does this not have to go hand in hand with dynamic development of cheaper, simpler and more efficient carbon capture and storage systems, which, if applied to gas burning, will enable us to say, “Net zero is roughly there”? That seems to be the key question, and I hope my noble friend will elaborate on it.
Lord Callanan (Con)
I thank my noble friend for his question. He is, of course, absolutely right, and his extensive knowledge of the power and energy system, based on his previous career, is well respected in this House. I can tell him that we are rolling out CCUS at pace. We have allocated £20 billion for support for CCUS clusters. We are progressing our two initial track 1 clusters: HyNet and the East Coast Cluster. We are in final negotiations with the transport storage systems and the emitter projects, some of which are gas power stations, within those cluster projects.
We again intend to be European and world leaders in CCUS. We have massive storage potential in the seas surrounding us; they have powered this country for many years and will help us to store emissions in the future as well. It is something that could even become a net revenue earner for the UK. We are indeed fully committed to that.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee yesterday released a timely report, which I am sure the Minister is aware of, on long-duration energy storage. It stresses the importance of that, rather than relying on expensive gas and the deeply uncertain technology of carbon capture and storage. The report points out that the Government have said that they plan to have enough storage to balance the system and that the cap and floor mechanism has worked very well with interconnectors to deliver that. A key point of the report is that the Government have not set a minimum target for long-duration energy storage. Will the Government now set a target for this clearly preferable alternative for long-duration storage?
Lord Callanan (Con)
My Lords, the essential misunderstanding of the energy system from the noble Baroness continues apace. The answer to the noble Baroness’s question is that we need both. We need long-duration energy storage, long-term battery storage, pumped storage and long-term hydrogen energy storage—all of which we are progressing. We have the most ambitious plans in Europe in all those areas. However, all independent forecasters who have looked at this, including the Climate Change Committee, agree that, in addition to that, we may need gas-fired generation, of relatively short duration and maybe only 1% or 2%—obviously, the Greens would prefer the lights to go out in their yurts before the rest of us progress in an advanced industrial society. This is essential contingency planning, and we make no excuses whatever for saying that the energy security of the UK is our priority. We can do that in a net-zero scenario, and we will progress that.
Lord Redesdale (LD)
My Lords, I have a question about baseload capacity. Under the present Government, the number of larger generators on the grid has fallen quite considerably. Due to that, we will obviously need gas-fired power stations in the short term. However, there is a problem there, because the Minister is talking about short-term capacity. Can he say whether those investing in gas power stations would see a return on investment? The reason why gas-fired power stations have failed to be built over the last 10 years is that, because of the CfD, it has been almost impossible to make the financial case for building those power stations.
Lord Callanan (Con)
The noble Lord is right in that the number of larger generators on the system is falling, with the elimination later this year of coal generation —we will have phased it out completely. He is right, again, that the gas generators that we are talking about—which will be some refurbished existing plants, but also a few new ones—will be able to take part in the capacity market auctions. These are essentially auctions for back-up capacity that may be required in certain scenarios.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
My Lords, I wonder if my noble friend the Minister can enlarge slightly on the question posed to him by the noble Baroness on the Labour Front Bench about hydrogen adaptation. I very much welcome the Statement; it seems to me important to tackle this issue in the proportionate, affordable and measured way, rather than in a millenarian spirit. Can my noble friend the Minister outline a little bit of what the Government’s hydrogen strategy is as part of that solution?
Lord Callanan (Con)
I thank my noble friend for the question; I am very happy to do that. We are progressing a very advanced hydrogen strategy, which I will try to summarise in a few words. We let the first 11 electrolytic hydrogen contracts before Christmas, offering £2.1 billion-worth of long-term support for the development of electrolytic hydrogen. We have a few blue hydrogen projects that are currently taking part in the CCUS negotiations. We are currently putting in place business models for a transportation and storage system and hope to progress that later this year, as well as the first couple of storage projects. We have a very ambitious hydrogen project; we think that hydrogen has a very important role to play in the net-zero scenario, both in terms of long-term energy storage and in decarbonising some elements of industry that are particularly hard to decarbonise. We should of course electrify where we can, but we will still need hydrogen power to generate power in some of those sectors.
News Broadcasting: Regulation
(8 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Lord McNally
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the regulation of news broadcasting companies.
Lord McNally (LD)
My Lords, one of the most satisfying experiences during my time in the Lords was to serve, in 2002, on the joint pre-legislative scrutiny committee prior to the 2003 Communications Act, chaired by the now retired and much missed Lord Puttnam. One lesson which came from that experience is that communications Bills do not come along that often, so it is important that we get things right, because correcting a mistake is not always that easy.
The 2003 Act created Ofcom as the regulator of the broadcast media. I remember at the time some people said that Murdoch’s lawyers would have Ofcom for breakfast. They did not and, in the main, Ofcom has proved an effective regulator, although, as I will explain later, I have some real concerns about how Ofcom has recently interpreted the mandate given it by Parliament.
We are about to give Ofcom some widespread discretionary powers. In doing so, it is important that the marching orders Parliament gives are clear and precise. For example, Ofcom must understand that for 100 years, under successive Administrations, Parliament has intentionally distorted the market to ensure that we have quality and choice in our broadcasting ecology.
Initially, that was done by putting broadcasting in the hands of a public corporation, protected by royal charter and guided by Lord Reith’s original mission statement to inform, educate and entertain. Since its early days, the BBC has set the gold standard for impartiality and accuracy.
Parliament made it clear, when plans were being drawn up for commercial channels in the early 1950s, that it expected exactly the same standard from the BBC’s new competitors, not least in their provision of news. So, when ITV opened its doors in 1955 and then Channel 4 followed in 1982, they were subject to exactly the same regime as the publicly funded BBC. As a result, ITN has gone toe-to-toe with the BBC in the quality and range of its reporting.
Then, in 1989, along came Rupert Murdoch with his satellite TV stations, including Sky News, beamed directly into our homes, and we wondered how long it would be before Britain had its own version of an opinionated news channels. We need not have worried; our rules on impartiality and accuracy, robustly overseen by the Independent Television Commission from 1990, made sure that Sky News was insulated from undue ownership pressures and continued the legacy of high-quality, independent television news that continues to this day under its new ownership. In perhaps the greatest tribute to the strength of our regulatory system, Murdoch once described Sky News as “BBC lite”—I do not think he meant it as a compliment.
When the broadcasting regime was overhauled in 2003, Sections 319 and 320 of the Communications Act cemented our commitment to impartiality in broadcasting by placing a statutory obligation on the regulator to ensure that due impartiality is preserved when dealing with
“matters of political or industrial controversy; and … matters relating to current public policy”.
Ofcom interprets its statutory duty through its Broadcasting Code. The code is clear that:
“Views and facts must not be misrepresented”.
Ofcom rightly affords licensees some flexibility by emphasising the notion of “due impartiality”, which allows for some discretion. It is on that basis that it has been able to license news channels with different perspectives from outside the UK. It is equally clear that one newcomer, GB News, has been testing to the limit how far it can go in ignoring impartiality rules by its choice of presenters and lines of questioning. These have been dealt with by Ofcom, at best by a tap on the wrist, often after a lengthy time of procrastination. Even more worrying are the decisions that conclude that there has been no code breach, or that complaints are not even being pursued.
We had some insight recently into Ofcom’s thinking from its chief executive, Dame Melanie Dawes. When interviewed at an Oxford conference recently, she said that the BBC, ITV and Sky News should be “held to a higher standard” than channels with smaller audiences, such as GB News. This is a doctrine far from what Parliament has asked Ofcom to do. It opens the way for a weakening and undermining of standards for which there is no parliamentary authority, and it leads us down an already well-trodden path. In the United States there is no impartiality governance framework round the media. The abolition of the fairness doctrine in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan paved the way for the fractured and polarised media environment we see today in the USA.
Of course, the technological and communications revolution through which we are passing is going to involve great changes to what we watch and how we watch it, but we should not be bamboozled into throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We must retain a strong, resilient, well-funded BBC as the iron pole around which we maintain the highest standards in delivering the information on which an informed democracy can make its decisions.
We know from repeated surveys that UK viewers and listeners have trust in news and information provided by our public service broadcasters. In an era of social media disinformation and misinformation, where citizens in a democracy need to have confidence in the information they are receiving, this is more important than ever. If the Conservatives have plans to water down regulations governing broadcasting standards, they should put that in a manifesto and fight a general election on the matter.
Because of restrictions on time, I refer the Minister to the article in the Guardian by two very experienced former Ofcom executives, Stewart Purvis and Chris Banatvala, who set out in very clear detail the dangers, particularly in a general election year, of Ofcom being able to change its remit by the back door.
Our broadcast journalism is not only trusted but underpins the values of our liberal democracy. They are the values that the BBC World Service delivers to the wider world, often with great individual courage, adding greatly to our reputation and soft power. Some say that the tsunami of information now available through digital and social media means that impartiality rules for broadcasting and the trust they instil in the public are no longer necessary. I say they have never been more important, and I hope the Minister will say so today.
Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord McNally, on securing this important debate on the regulation of news broadcasting companies. The role of due impartiality in broadcasting is an important issue to discuss.
I should say that I have skin in the game, as I have a regular Friday night show—7 pm to 10 pm—on Times Radio, where I normally cover culture. I always have an MP on the show: sometimes I am interviewing a Labour MP, sometimes a Conservative MP. I also cover shows. I covered Mariella Frostrup’s show recently, where we changed the section “Meet the Member” to “Meet the Peer”. I was lucky enough to have the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, on that section, but I did not feel that at any point we strayed beyond the rules of due impartiality in discussing his distinguished career. The noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, has been on as “my frenemy” on a Sunday show hosted by Alexis Conran. And of course, I should say that the Minister has been a guest on my show as well.
But enough about me; let us talk about due impartiality, because it is important that we discuss it. Obviously, we need to think back: as the noble Lord, Lord McNally, pointed out, this has been around for 100 years. There is a reason why we have due impartiality rules, and there is a reason why we need to debate them now. We had them then because the BBC was by far the most dominant broadcaster, along with ITV and, to a certain extent, Sky News when it came into being. Most people got their news from linear television news, and it was important that they got it in as unbiased a fashion as possible. We have never worried about due impartiality from the rich newspaper ecology that we have in this country.
Now we face a very interesting landscape, where we have a plethora of new media companies able to launch because of technology—not just Times Radio but GB News, LBC and TalkTV. And we have streaming. If you decide that flat earth is your thing, you can spend 24 hours a day, seven days a week, looking at flat earth conspiracy videos on YouTube. Amazon and Netflix are coming within Ofcom’s remit, but there is now a plethora of media.
We all know why we are talking about due impartiality. We want to avoid what we think we saw in the US, which was the rise of Fox News on the right—with its heavily biased programming and positions dictated to a certain extent by the management team—and CNN on the left. It is perhaps ironic that, if you examine the rise of President Trump, you might actually see that CNN played a bigger role, because, frankly, Trump was box office and got wall-to-wall coverage on CNN anyway.
When we discuss due impartiality, we need to be cautious. We need to have this debate not because we dislike GB News—although it does often air questionable content—or another right-wing broadcaster, because there are plenty of other stations that you could accuse of potentially breaching impartiality. LBC has David Lammy and James O’Brien—he is a broadcaster I admire, but nobody can pretend they do not know where his politics lie. The BBC has in fact today reappointed Robbie Gibb, a Conservative activist, to its board for another four years. Interestingly, in this Conservative Government, the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, himself is investigating the BBC for due impartiality.
Nevertheless, I do support the thrust of what the noble Lord, Lord McNally, said in his remarks, which is that it is important, as much for Ofcom’s sake as for ours, that it is not left to develop policy on its own without some oversight from Parliament, some indication from Parliament, about which direction it should travel in—and I absolutely agree with him that Ofcom is an excellent regulator that has proved itself time and time again able to navigate distinctly choppy waters where people have very strong opinions. I thought the remarks from Melanie Dawes, the chief executive, about holding broadcasters with a higher audience to a higher standard, was an interesting adaptation of doctrine, a bit like a papal bull, which deserves to be discussed in Parliament.
I sat on the fence when I raised the issue at Second Reading of the Media Bill—and guess what? I am going sit on the fence again and simply come to the position that we need to debate what we mean by “due impartiality” in a fragmented media world. Having said that, I will get off this fence and say emphatically that we need to continue to regulate broadcasters and we need the essence of due impartiality to continue.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord McNally, for this important discussion. Already, it has raised meaty topics. Yesterday, in the debate on the opposition of the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, to foreign state ownership of the media, even those antagonistic to the politics of the Telegraph and the Spectator spoke passionately in support of media plurality.
While newspapers cover a wide range of political stances, in broadcasting there is a lot less viewpoint diversity, I would say, and we must ensure that any regulation does not narrow choice further. I am especially thinking of attitudes to three-year-old GB News. Love it or loathe it, the channel is surely a valuable shake-up of the media landscape, yet it has attracted a disproportionate hostility from influential voices. It is, however, popular with growing audiences, 60% of whom are based in the north. Some 3.5 million viewers watch the TV channel monthly; a further 3.5 million access its social media and 20 million its website. This month, GB News has had more views than Sky News 48% of the time and more than BBC News 29% of the time. So why are some so determined to scupper a popular channel?
Even before its launch, a liberal NGO, Stop Funding Hate, lobbied advertisers to boycott the channel, using corporate cash as a tool for censorship. More recently, big-name media players all over X have constantly urged their followers to complain about GBN to Ofcom, seemingly keen to regulate the channel out of existence. A year ago, GBN comprised 1.3% of total broadcast complaints to Ofcom. Now it is 11.3%. That is merited less by content than by politicised malice.
One complaint is the use of MPs as presenters. I am not sure how I feel about that, but some perspective is required. The channel has 30 main presenters who host their own shows, of which only two are serving MPs, appearing collectively for five hours a week out of a total of 126. What is more, as the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, explained, GBN did not invent the model: LBC has been doing it for years. Beyond David Lammy, in the past there has been LBC’s “Call Clegg”, “Ask Boris” and even “Phone Farage”.
I am not a cheerleader for GB News but a critical friend. Programmes such as Andrew Doyle’s “Free Speech Nation” and Michael Portillo’s culture show are the very best of UK public service broadcasting, but some shows are less to my taste. I am also a critical friend of all other broadcasters, such as the BBC; I have just been on “Politics Live”, but I have a love-hate relationship with much of the Beeb’s political output. We should not hold back from criticising channels when it is deserved, but that is not the same as trying to destroy them. I want a level regulatory playing field; otherwise, double standards might distort the focus of regulation.
In January, Jewish staff working for the BBC lodged formal complaints about anti-Semitism internally and including on coverage of the conflict. We have had BBC newsreaders ludicrously avoiding calling Hamas a terrorist organisation. As the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, noted in the Chamber on Tuesday, there are serious concerns about anti-Israel bias in the World Service Arabic division—never mind that one-man challenge to impartiality, Gary Lineker, who retweeted a bigoted demand that FIFA should ban the whole Israeli football team from international tournaments, with no consequences.
In contrast, the former BBC senior broadcast journalist Cath Walton recently wrote in the Critic about how BBC managers demanded that she delete a tweet criticising the term “cis women” within an hour of it being posted, followed by a lengthy disciplinary process in which her gender-critical views were treated as wrongthink. Ms Walton’s article was prompted by recent instances where the BBC’s lack of impartiality on sex and gender has led to seriously misleading audiences. Recently, BBC viewers were informed that men can breastfeed—spoiler: they cannot—with a non-binary identifying expert alleging, unchallenged, that the hormone-induced discharge from a trans woman’s nipples is better for babies than a mother’s breast milk. What misogynistic claptrap. Where are BBC Verify and Ofcom when you need them?
Sometimes, in the name of impartiality, facts are described as opinions due to institutionalised ideological partisanship. The BBC recently upheld a complaint against Radio 4’s Justin Webb which ruled that he broke impartiality rules when explaining a story with the factually accurate and true remark,
“trans women, in other words males”.
Finally, there are the sins of omission. Why has the BBC been absent and silent in covering the scandal of the safeguarding risks associated with puberty blockers for the young? Now that NHS England has banned them for teens, the BBC commissioned its LGBTQ+ correspondent to tell the story, not the science reporters to discuss the medical scandals. I am glad to say that GB News has been following, covering and leading on this for years.
Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)
My Lords, I declare my interests as laid out in the register. I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord McNally, for tabling this important debate.
I am aware of how careful Ofcom has been in the past about enforcing impartiality in broadcast media. The gold standard is its 2009 ruling against George Galloway’s presentation of two weekly programmes on the Iranian-based Press TV. Ofcom ruled that he had breached the Broadcasting Code on impartiality for failing to reflect a wide range of significant views and give due weight in each programme or linked programmes. That is especially important where a presenter such as George Galloway, who is known to have strongly held views, is being discussed.
The ruling added that, to comply with the code, when discussing
“matters of major political … controversy and major matters relating to current public policy”,
a broadcaster must have a range of significant alternative views in the programme. I have watched a series of programmes on GB News which did none of those things. The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, said that GB News puts out some of the finest public service output. I disagree.
Andrew Doyle gives an opinionated monologue which then in most cases is supported by the studio guests and followed by questions from the audience which also support those views. In one episode, the audience asked questions of major public policy such as the Church of England’s support of critical race theory and Lee Anderson’s attack on the Mayor of London for being under the control of Islamists. There was no alternative view. In the case of “Dewbs & Co” on the night of the Budget, the programme was almost entirely critical; there was only one audience member who was a bit happy with the Budget. Otherwise, everybody in the audience attacked it and they were supported by the studio guests. I thought that maybe the presenter, Michelle Dewberry, would restore the balance the following night but instead she doubled down with an attack on the Chancellor for opening the Budget with a statement on his plan for a Muslim memorial. She then went on to discuss the threat of wokery.
Ofcom has launched a series of investigations into GB News, including Neil Oliver’s conspiracy theory about turbo cancer being linked to the Pfizer Covid vaccination. The complaint against Oliver was not upheld. In defence of Ofcom, it has investigated and found against GB News for breach of impartiality in one case, but in others it has not upheld complaints because the programme was defined as current affairs. This comes down to the difference in definition between “news programme” and “current affairs programme”. In paragraph 1.8 of the regulator’s guidance, there is a definition of the news genre:
“news in whatever form would include news bulletins, news flashes and daily news magazine programmes”.
That seems to cover many of the GB News programmes I am worried about. As if to reinforce the point, when Ofcom issued a warning of breach to BBC “Newsnight” presenter Emily Maitlis over a partial monologue, it classified “Newsnight” as news.
Apart from a small reference to current affairs in the code on sponsorship, there is no definition of current affairs programmes in the Broadcasting Code or the guidelines. This lacuna was filled by a small blog from former Ofcom executive Kevin Bakhurst, which described current affairs programmes as
“a more long-form programme … extensive discussion … interviews with guests”.
This is vague and has been included in neither Ofcom guidelines nor the Broadcasting Code, so we are left with impartiality requirements for “news in whatever form”. I do not regard it as a defence for Ofcom to say that these GB News programmes are current affairs. Even if they are not, they are certainly discussing:
“Matters of major political … controversy”
or
“major matters relating to … public policy”,
which are covered by the requirement for diverse views.
The noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, raised the issue of politicians being presenters. The code is clear that presenters must not use the advantage of their regular appearances to promote their views in a way that compromises the requirement for due impartiality. To err on the side of free speech, Ofcom has left the interpretation to individual broadcasters. On LBC, there have been politicians such as David Lammy and Nigel Farage and presenters who have a partial political view such as Nick Ferrari. While broadcasting on LBC, Nigel Farage was impressive in his tough questioning of interviewees. He talked to a range of people with diverse views and asked them difficult questions. However, in his appearances on GB News, his trenchant views when discussing matters of major political controversy are supported in almost every case by interviewees who agree with him. Where is the range of alternative opinions demanded by the code and why has Ofcom done so little to enforce it?
I generally have huge respect for Ofcom, which does a great job of treading the tightrope of balancing free speech and enforcing the code in an increasingly polarised society. I would argue that maintaining that balance is the bulwark against increasing political polarisation, which we have seen in the USA with its editorialised news channels. However, I call on our regulator to look very carefully at channels presented by politicians or people with well-known political views. It needs to police them so that people with alternative views feel safe to express them and contribute to the free speech which is so crucial to a functioning democracy.
Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord McNally, on bringing this debate forward. He has been an indefatigable campaigner on this subject for many years. I also declare my interests as a trustee of Full Fact and the Public Interest News Foundation. An awful lot of what I would have touched on has already been said, so rather than go over it again I will make a series of slightly generalised points which may seem slightly separated from each other but, I hope, hang together coherently.
The underlying reality is that the media world is an ongoing, permanent revolution. What is appropriate, correct and accurate today may not be tomorrow or next week. As the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, said, you cannot have a properly working free country with universal suffrage if those who live in it do not have a reasonably accurate understanding of what is going on in the public realm—subject to the obvious caveats. If that is the case, you must get the information to the public. This is something that we spend insufficient time thinking about, because it requires money; it cannot be done for nothing. How you get it and how it is deployed is very important. Within that framework, pluralism is very important, because to answer Pilate’s question “What is truth?” is much more difficult than saying what is not true. Hence there is a real need in the broadcasting landscape for as much truthful pluralism in the national debate as you can achieve.
As somebody who chaired a local newspaper company for over a decade, I say that we must not overlook the problems and issues covering news in the smaller local areas around the country. In some ways this is a much greater problem than the question of national and international news. While the development of local democracy reporting is something that I support, I am not sure that we have cracked the problem.
The world that we live in is defined by the Government of the day. As a basic proposition, I suggest that the Government of the day should be kept as far as possible from news gathering and the national Executives of this country and other government agencies should in general have as little as possible to do with setting the terms of reference or the modus operandi of news gatherers. As has been said already, it should be left to Parliament and the courts and independent regulators to do that within a framework of an independent judiciary.
I have considerable sympathy with the journalists’ basic proposition that you must keep government as far as possible from this aspect of public life. Furthermore, it is almost axiomatic that the very rich should not be able to provide “their news” as opposed to “the news”, and they should not be able to gag the news media or stop them from distributing material that is in the public interest. I am not quite sure whether we have got the balance right in this country.
In the age of digital communications, we cannot control everything outside our own jurisdiction. We must watch what techniques there may be for dealing with aspects related to that, but we must recognise this as a truth. Equally, along the same lines, it is not appropriate for foreign Governments to control and own media coming into our country, for the simple reason that, by definition, we cannot be their priority.
At Second Reading of the Media Bill, I made the point that the world is changing so fast, and we do not have an appropriate legislative framework for dealing with the changes as they come into effect. As I said, this is a permanent revolution, and a decennial Act of Parliament is not a relevant means of keeping on top of the matters that are so important. We in this Parliament spend a considerable amount of time debating and thinking about these things, which is right and proper and must continue because, as Thomas Jefferson said, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. We must not cease to be vigilant. One of Parliament’s most important roles as part of the checks and balances in our system is to establish the framework within which our fourth estate works.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, and to sincerely thank him for the work that he does in attempting to provide some clarity and oversight, which is very obviously and urgently needed, coming from a civil society perspective. To reflect on the noble Lord’s speech, the rate of change and the difficulty of regulation highlights the need for us to have education on media literacy and critical thinking. The public need to have the tools; young people going through our education system need to look at something and see where it is coming from and understand it from a critical perspective. It is important that we stress that.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord McNally, for securing this debate on such an important subject. I declare my position as a former newspaper editor with the Guardian Weekly; I also worked for the Times, the Independent and the Telegraph. I just want to mention that, unfortunately, I was not able to take part in the Second Reading of the Media Bill, but I plan to take part in the further stages. To respond to the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, I have also taken part in Times Radio’s “Political Frenemies”, along with the noble Lord, Randall of Uxbridge, and the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter. That is the kind of case where you can get politicians talking with a neutral adjudicator in the middle, which is very different to politicians talking to each other. I mention to the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, that there are more than two parties around if he wants to invite more parties on to his show.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
Okay—the noble Baroness is a third party.
In preparing for today’s topic of debate, I looked back at a press release that I put out in 2012—a dozen years ago now—in immediate response to the Leveson report. Boy, there has been a lot of water under the bridge in our media since then. I said then that I welcomed what Leveson offered—most of it has not subsequently been delivered—and I criticised the report for its lack of tackling the issue of media ownership. We do not have the kind of plurality that we need—the kind of issues I addressed yesterday around overseas ownership, and in particular the ownership of the Telegraph. An issue there is whether and how mergers and acquisitions are referred, and that has not been dealt with.
I also want to come back to the rather fraught point of the potential for Leveson 2. My understanding is that in December, the Observer reported that Sir Keir Starmer was not intending to revive the second stage of the Leveson inquiry into press standards should he form the next Government—it was abandoned by the Conservative Party in 2018—nor would Labour oppose the plans to weaken the press regulation regime in the Media Bill. It is worth noting that under previous leaders, Labour was in favour of reviving the Leveson process. In May 2018, the former party leader, Ed Miliband, said that axing the second stage was “contemptible” and
“a matter of honour, of a promise we made”—[Official Report, Commons, 9/5/2018; col. 724.]
to the victims of phone hacking. I know that a lot of things have happened, and a lot of water has gone under the bridge since then. However, that scandal is still very much alive and present, as we saw recently in a court case.
It was suggested to me that this debate would be all about GB News; I will just take a minute on that. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, that civil society campaigns, taking a stand, doing politics, HOPE not hate saying it thought that what GB News is doing was unacceptable and that brands might not want to be associated with it, are all part of the right of a free society for people to campaign and call for boycotts—that is another issue that we are tackling the Government on in another Bill. However, there are some serious questions that the Government must provide guidance to Ofcom on. Will Ofcom allow senior party officials to present election programmes as long as they are not candidates? Can a channel host party loyalists from only one side who deliver nightly polemics and try to direct the results of election campaigns? As a professional journalist myself, I can see that GB News has taken a pattern where, in the daytime it tends to be relatively straight and have ex-BBC presenters, but in the evening, when it is likely to have more impact, there is a very different tone. Therefore, when we are thinking about balance, surely Ofcom needs to look at the impact as well as just the content that is spread over 24 hours.
Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury (LD)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord McNally for this debate, and also for his role in the Communications Act 2003, when he and others, notably Lord Puttnam, paved the way for the last 20 years. I declare an interest; I was a TV journalist and an executive working for the PSBs—at the BBC, alongside the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, at ITV and at Channel 4. How lucky I was. How lucky the country is to have this cornucopia of public service broadcasting. Take Channel 4: the incubator of our independent production sector, but also the broadcaster of “Channel 4 News”—one hour of independent news and current affairs at the heart of peak time, giving us more choice of outstanding television journalism, all subject to the same standards of impartiality and accuracy as the BBC. An hour of peak-time news on a commercial channel: that is unheard of anywhere else.
A central part of the new regime 20 years ago was the introduction, as we have heard, of a new and powerful regulator, Ofcom. It was given a very clear duty to serve the interests of citizens as well as consumers. I can think of few more important elements of that duty than to uphold the rigorous traditions of impartial and accurate journalism that have served us so well for over 100 years. Of course, as the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, said, we are in a very different world from when Ofcom was established. I am glad that the Minister shares concerns about what should be in Ofcom’s regulatory scope in relation to online news channels, and that his department is consulting on the risk of unregulated content appearing on television. That is very timely, because of the Media Bill and also because TalkTV has decided to go online. Can the Minister say when we will be able to see the results of this consultation? Does he agree that there should be a level playing field with the Ofcom-regulated traditional broadcasters?
As my noble friend has said, as well as the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, we have concerns about how Ofcom is dealing with GB News. A year ago, in advance of last year’s Budget, we saw two sitting Conservative MPs interview the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It was not a challenging interview; it did not include a wide range of views. But it took Ofcom six months to decide that it breached impartiality rules. Timely investigation is very important, as is timely remedy—falsehood travels faster than the truth. And that case is not the only example of a tardy response from Ofcom. Does the Minister think Ofcom has the capacity to investigate such matters?
More worrying, as my noble friend mentioned. is when complaints are not even pursued. Last September, the then deputy chair of the Conservative Party, Lee Anderson, interviewed the then Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, about immigration. Ofcom received 1,500 complaints, but declined to pursue it. When asked by the Guardian last September about the propriety of a Conservative deputy chairman interviewing a Conservative Home Secretary, Ofcom’s CEO said that rules around impartiality
“require us to prioritise freedom of expression”.
But the idea that impartiality and free expression are somehow not compatible is wrong. The whole point of an impartiality regime is that it obliges channels to present all sides of any controversial public policy issue, so that citizens can make up their own minds after hearing a range of diverse opinions. Impartiality actually promotes plurality. Does the Minister think Ofcom’s current leadership understands this?
At a gathering of GB News staff pre launch, CEO Angelos Frangopoulos allegedly told them they were working not for a broadcaster but for a tech company—a disruptor. That is wrong. They should be regulated as any other broadcaster; there should not be a two-tier system. We saw the first disruptor, Rupert Murdoch, off. He wished Sky News was Fox News—something he told my noble friend Lord Fowler when I was sitting on his committee.
To conclude, more than ever we need news that can distance itself from the partisan. This is provided by the BBC and our other great PSB outlets. Others should not be allowed to act differently.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord McNally, and all noble Lords who have contributed on this very topical issue. Having watched obviously biased TV news programmes from around the world over the years, I say that it is worth reminding ourselves that in the UK we can be rightly proud of our access to a range of high-quality, trusted and impartial news broadcasters. Central to those high standards are our public service broadcasters, which, in Ofcom’s words have
“a long and proud tradition in the UK, delivering impartial and trusted news”.
This is why we are committed to securing the future of the BBC as a universally owned, public service broadcaster holding, as it does, a well-deserved place at the heart of our national life.
As noble Lords have stressed, impartial, accurate, fact-checked news is vital not only to debate but to our democratic system. This is particularly important in this election year, when the distortions of social media campaigns and deepfakes threaten the very heart of our democratic decision-making. So we are hugely reliant on Ofcom stepping up to the mark and providing a robust defence of our broadcast news standards.
Of course we recognise that the broadcast landscape is changing, with a number of new TV networks entering the market. This has to be good for consumers, but the rise of new media moguls with high-profile political agendas underlines the need for clear rules and standards. This is why Ofcom needs to tackle breaches of the Broadcasting Code with determination.
Noble Lords have quite rightly asked what progress is being made with multiple investigations into potential breaches of the Broadcasting Code by GB News. While I am sure the culture programme hosted by the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, does not cross the line, clearly news programmes hosted by the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg, Nadine Dorries, Nigel Farage, Esther McVey and Philip Davies are not going to be impartial. They frequently interview each other or their colleagues from the Tory Benches—and they have been recruited precisely because they have strong views on one side of the political spectrum.
Ofcom’s rules say that politicians are not allowed to be newsreaders, interviewers or reporters in news programmes
“unless, exceptionally, it is editorially justified”.
It is hard to imagine what the justification might be in the case of GB News. As the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, said, if there is a blurred line between current affairs shows and news programmes, it is important that Ofcom clarifies that distinction with some urgency.
All this matters because the world of broadcast news and journalism is changing. As the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, pointed out, the media world is in permanent revolution. The rules we design now have to be future-proofed to adapt to a changing landscape. What guarantees can we give to future audiences so that they can remain as proud of our broadcast output as we are today? The Media Bill gives us a chance to ensure public service broadcasters remain prominent in a digital age, but how can they remain a trusted source of news when AI and fake news threaten to undermine their output?
There is a lot riding on the shoulders of Ofcom, but as legislators we also need to play our part in setting future broadcast standards. Can the Minister say more about the department’s expectations of how broadcast media will change and how the Broadcasting Code is being reinterpreted for a modern age? What discussions have been held with Ofcom about its capacity to deliver an ever-widening role? Does it have the capacity, resources and support from Ministers that it needs to make difficult decisions and fulfil its remit? Can the Minister shed some light on the investigation processes of Ofcom? What is the practical impact of a broadcaster being found to have been in breach of the code and what sanctions are available? Is there a cumulative effect in the behaviour of a broadcaster? Are breaches considered to increase in significance if they are the second, third or fourth example of the code being disregarded? Finally, Ofcom announced last summer that it would conduct research into audience attitudes towards politicians hosting shows. When can we expect the conclusions to be published?
These are serious issues and I hope the Minister can provide reassurance on Ofcom’s role going forward. I look forward to his response.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay) (Con)
My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord McNally, for securing today’s debate and join in the commendation paid to him on his role in the Communications Act 2003 and the important work that it ushered in for the regulation of our media and broadcasting landscape over the last two decades. This is an important issue that he has been involved in not just for those 20 years but before as well. I agree with him that the issues that he puts before your Lordships’ House today are as important today as they have ever been. They are timely, too, with our debates that are taking place on the Media Bill.
We are very proud of the UK’s world-renowned broadcasting sector, through which British-made programmes are enjoyed by audiences both at home and across the globe. The regulatory framework that underpins that landscape is also looked to internationally as the gold standard for proportionate, fair and independent regulation. It is that framework which means that UK audiences know that they will be appropriately protected from harm and that they are able to complain to the independent regulator, Ofcom, if they have concerns.
Quality broadcast news has a long and proud history in this country and is an essential element of our media landscape. It supports our global reputation as the home of outstanding news journalism. Our regulatory system for broadcasting, put in place by Parliament, supports this. It ensures that audiences can encounter a diverse array of voices and perspectives, just as we have had in this short debate, and that they have access to fair and balanced sources of news. That is particularly important when we consider the influence that broadcast news can have on those who watch it, and the huge reach of TV content across the UK.
Recent Ofcom research shows that broadcast television is the most used platform for news content, watched by 70% of all adults in the UK. UK audiences also consistently rate television news as more accurate and trustworthy compared to other sources of news such as social media. The significant place that broadcast news has in our television and news landscape is what makes its regulation, and indeed debates like this, so important.
The Government are strongly committed to a pluralistic media. It is essential that audiences are able to access news from a range of sources, not just broadcast news, to allow them to form opinions in a considered and nuanced way. There is an important balance to be struck here to ensure that the protections in place for audiences are strong and effective but that those do not have an undue impact on the UK’s free and independent media, on which we rightly pride ourselves.
I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, that it is important to arm those who consume our news with the critical thinking skills that they can get from learning subjects at school such as history, art and English literature. That is an issue that we discussed on the Online Safety Act and which we are looking at as we work on our cultural education plan. It is important to equip future generations to consume the news in a critical and thinking way.
It is in the context of a free and independent media that we consider Ofcom as the regulator of broadcast news content. Ofcom’s independence is an underlying principle of its function, and by law it carries out its duties independently of the Government. Ofcom is accountable to Parliament, with its duties and enforcement powers set out in statute, and we are confident that it has the resources it needs to carry out its important job.
As noble Lords are aware, Ofcom is required by legislation to draw up and enforce a Broadcasting Code for television and radio to ensure that audiences are adequately protected from harm. The code sets out rules so that these protections for audiences, including rules specifically to protect children, ensure that audiences are protected from harmful or offensive material and that broadcast news, in whatever form, is reported with due accuracy and impartiality. Ofcom regulates programmes as broadcast against the code. It is for Ofcom to determine whether there has been a breach of the code and whether to take any action.
The noble Lord, Lord McNally, and others raised the comments made earlier this month made by the head of Ofcom, Dame Melanie Dawes. Ofcom has been clear that its rules requiring due impartiality apply equally to all broadcasters. Under its code, Ofcom takes into account a range of factors when considering complaints, including the nature of the subject, the type of programme and channel, and the likely expectation of the audience regarding the content.
Importantly, in making any decision, Ofcom is required by legislation to strike a balance between ensuring an appropriate level of freedom of expression and adequate protections for audiences from harmful material. There are a number of sanctions available to Ofcom where a breach of the code has been found, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, said. This includes levelling a fine and, in extreme cases, amending or revoking a broadcaster’s licence to broadcast, as has been done.
The Government consider that the enforcement powers given to Ofcom are appropriate and sufficient to provide a deterrent to organisations from breaching the rules. There are numerous examples of Ofcom using these enforcement measures to ensure that Broadcasting Code rules are upheld. It is rightly for Ofcom to determine the timing of its investigations and what sanctions, if any, are appropriate. While I understand the concerns raised by noble Lords about the length of time this can take, I hope they would also agree that it is important that Ofcom follows the requirements in legislation to make careful and nuanced judgments, and to take the time to do that and hear representations from all parties concerned.
Ofcom also has a duty to keep the Broadcasting Code under continual review. This is to ensure that the code remains up to date and continues to reflect the current viewing and broadcasting landscape. In this way, the regulatory framework is designed so that Ofcom can ensure that its regulation of content can adapt to the shifts in technology and audience expectations that we see in broadcasting today.
I will also touch on the regulation of the providers of news broadcasting, rather than just the content that appears on these channels, as I have discussed so far. Ofcom has an ongoing duty to be satisfied that the person holding a broadcasting licence is fit and proper to hold it. If any evidence came to light and Ofcom ceased to be satisfied that a licensee was fit and proper, Ofcom would move to revoke that licence, as it has in the past.
I also recognise the vital work of the Communications and Digital Committee of your Lordships’ House, expertly chaired by my noble friend Lady Stowell of Beeston, and of which the noble Lord, Lord McNally, is a valued member. The committee is currently undertaking an inquiry into the future of news, which recognises the challenges faced by news providers in the current landscape, where we are seeing new technology, shifts in the ways that audiences access information, and concerns about trust and impartiality. This is a very important and complex topic, and one that is essential to consider if we are to face these challenges head on and work to maintain the delivery of trustworthy and well-respected news media in this country. My department has submitted written evidence to the committee on this subject, which I hope will be of use to it in the inquiry. We look forward to its report and the recommendations it may have.
With renewed thanks to the noble Lord, Lord McNally, for the opportunity to discuss the debates today and recognising that we will continue many of them in our deliberation on the Media Bill, I thank him for bringing forward this Question for Short Debate.
Post Office Legislation
(8 months, 2 weeks ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord McNicol of West Kilbride (Lab)
My Lords, as we have said many times before, the Fujitsu/Horizon scandal is truly shocking and one of the most egregious miscarriages of justice in British history. The scandal has brought blight and devastation to the lives of thousands of falsely convicted sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses. Over 20 years on, they and their families still suffer from the consequences and trauma of all they have been through. I pay tribute to them for their determination in pursuing justice, especially those who took the very courageous and difficult step of challenging the Post Office. Without their bravery and perseverance, the campaign would not be where it is today.
We of course welcome the legislation that has been laid before Parliament. Before giving a full verdict on it, we will need to properly scrutinise the detail and analyse its potential impacts. In the first instance, the legislation still leaves a series of outstanding issues, including the question of when justice and compensation will be delivered and to whom.
I ask the Minister: what steps have he and Ministers in the other place taken to prevent this rightly exceptional piece of legislation being used by government in a nefarious way in future? How are we protecting against the abuse of this legislation further down the track? The flip side of that is that there are many other scandals that courts, reviews and government are working through. Could the principle of this legislation be used by them?
As I have said before, I seek assurances on the territorial scope of the legislation, which currently applies only to England and Wales even though the Post Office is not devolved and the Fujitsu Horizon system and the impacts of the scandal are UK-wide. Approximately 30 cases need overturning in Scotland and Northern Ireland but a series of outstanding questions remain as to when sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses in Scotland and Northern Ireland in particular will receive their justice. I welcome the Minister’s assurances that there will be regular dialogue with the devolved Administrations, given the different legal processes, but I will be a bit more specific: can the Minister update your Lordships’ House on what conversations his department has had with colleagues in Northern Ireland, who have expressly requested that the cases there be included in the scope of this legislation?
This is probably harder to deal with but can the Minister also update your Lordships’ House on what conversations the department has had with colleagues in Scotland about the progress on exonerating sub-postmasters there? As we know, 80% of the redress budget is yet to be paid out and considerable uncertainty remains about when sub-postmasters will receive their full compensation. We all agree, I am sure, that they have waited long enough and that the delays are causing only further financial distress and suffering.
The Commons Business and Trade Committee recommends that there be a “legally binding timeframe” for the period between an offer first being tabled and a settlement being reached. Would the Minister care to comment on that recommendation? If those legally binding targets are not adopted, what assurances can the Minister give that Minister Hollinrake will meet his target of ensuring that all compensation is out of the door by the end of the year? I know that the Minister here and the Minister in the other place are committed to ensuring that there are no further delays but sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses will want to know when this will actually happen.
Given the recent chaos in the Post Office’s leadership, we welcome the decision to take it out of the redress process. In fact, last week, the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, and I called for this. Redress must have independent oversight; I thank the Government Ministers and their teams for implementing this. Financial redress alone cannot come close to repaying sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses for their suffering, although it is important that we get it right. As we have previously discussed, some of those impacted by the scandal have sadly passed away; they did not live to see this legislation and their innocence proven, nor to receive the compensation that they rightly deserved. Can the Minister clarify the process for those who have passed away so that their families can receive closure?
On the families, especially children and partners, we see today in the news that a number of children of sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses are looking to take legal claims against the Post Office. Can the Minister inform your Lordships’ House of the Government’s attitude towards this? It is vital that the Government act with the urgency and speed that are needed to correct this injustice. We on these Benches stand ready to work with the Government to ensure the speedy implementation of this Bill.
I have just one question regarding the Explanatory Notes. On page 7, paragraph 41, the sentence just trails off. It starts:
“Clause 2 gives the meaning of ‘relevant offence’ with reference to several conditions set out in the subclauses”.
That is fine, but it continues:
“All of the conditions must be satisfied for an alleged offence to”.
It just stops. Can the Explanatory Notes be updated? I understand that this was rushed through, and that is absolutely fine, but it would be helpful if we could have just a bit of clarity of what the end of the sentence is meant to be.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, the Liberal Democrat Benches echo the comments of the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, about the consistent and determined efforts of the wronged postmasters who still are fighting for the redress that they deserve. I thank the Minister for the Statement. We on these Benches are pleased to see that legislation will start to correct the fundamental wrongs done to most of the postmasters convicted as a result of the Horizon scandal.
However, the Statement says that
“this legislation will quash all convictions that meet a clear set of conditions”.
These are defined in paragraph 11, on pages 3 and 4 of the Explanatory Notes for the Bill, which was introduced yesterday in another place; the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, referred to those Explanatory Notes just now. Can the Minister explain how these criteria were decided upon? How many of the convicted postmasters are excluded from this redress scheme as a result, and why? I appreciate that all this has been done in a hurry, but even if my questions cannot be answered now, please can the answers be clearly articulated to those who will speak on this Statement so that we can understand why? At the moment, it is not clear who is and is not included as a result of Clause 2 of the Bill.
As I mentioned in a number of previous interventions on this issue, we know that software issues were reported in the predecessor systems to Horizon. Indeed, in 1997, when the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, was Paymaster-General, there was a steady stream of complaints during the pilot rollout. The i newspaper has also revealed the problems with the Capture scheme, under which a number of postmasters were also convicted. It said yesterday:
“Steve Marston … was using Capture, an IT system rolled out by the Post Office in the early 90s when he suffered unexplained shortfalls of around £79,000. He insists he never stole ‘a penny’ from his branch at Heap Bridge, Greater Manchester, but felt pressured into pleading guilty in 1998 in order to avoid a prison sentence, a tactic the Post Office has admitted was widely used by investigators to secure convictions”.
Can the Minister explain why this group of postmasters, who were using Capture when there were complaints, are also excluded from this Bill?
The Minister says in the Statement that the Bill only covers England and Wales; the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, has already covered this. It specifically excludes Scotland and Northern Ireland. The Statement says:
“However, we are fully committed to working with the Scottish Government and the Northern Ireland Executive through regular, weekly official-level engagement to progress their own approaches”.
If that is the case, why has the Justice Minister in the Scottish Parliament, Angela Constance, expressed her real concern that Scotland is not included? She said:
“We, along with the Northern Ireland Executive, urged the UK Government to introduce UK-wide legislation as the best way to ensure there is a quick, fair and equal solution for all the affected sub-postmasters, particularly as the Post Office is reserved to Westminster, so this announcement is extremely disappointing”.
Given that, in that same paragraph, the Statement goes on to say
“The financial redress scheme will be open to applicants throughout the UK, once convictions have been overturned”,
why on earth has the decision been made by the Westminster Government to exclude Scotland and Northern Ireland, when neither of those devolved Governments want that?
The Statement made it clear, at last, that the Post Office will no longer have responsibility for redress and should be subject to independent oversight. My noble friend Lord Fox and I, and others from these Benches, have also raised this as a fundamental problem of trust for many postmasters, so its removal is welcome. However, I ask whether the Department for Business and Trade is truly independent of the process, not least because of the debate about the speed of processing of claims that happened in January following the differing statements from the Prime Minister, Kevin Hollinrake MP and the Secretary of State, Kemi Badenoch. The Government are responsible for the payments—I shall come on to that later—but this gives them some skin in the game and one thing has to happen now, which is to give postmasters confidence that oversight is truly independent. Can the Minister therefore describe how independent the independent panels or independent individuals will be? Who will appoint them? Will there be a departmental official on the panel? Will departmental staff clerk the panels? Will the independent panels include a postmaster?
The Statement says that there will be legislation to make sure that the payments are exempt from taxation. A regulation on taxation exemption under the compensation arrangements for both the Horizon and infected blood schemes was presented to Parliament in December 2023. Is this a further simple amendment to that regulation, or is it further, separate secondary legislation, or is it a new Bill? How will it differ? Can the Minister explain?
The final section of the Statement refers to the Select Committee’s recommendation of a legally binding timeframe for redress—here, I echo the questions from the noble Lord, Lord McNicol—but I think there is some sympathy for ensuring speed wherever possible. However, the Statement said that it would be impossible without imposing penalties on forensic accounts. That seems to be an extremely narrow focus. There is a balance to be struck between ensuring as swift as possible processing of payment and debate between postmasters and forensic accountants about what is due to postmasters. The critical reason for independence is to ensure that postmasters are afforded a truly fair debate, which many say has been denied them in the initial offers received from the scheme when it was run by the Post Office.
Finally, I have been going through the central government supply estimates for 2023-24 and obviously looked at the Budget papers. I am still struggling to find the compensation payments—in total, approaching about £1 billion—in either the department or Treasury tables. Can the Minister help? I have raised this matter now with, I think, three Ministers and would be grateful if the Minister could write to me and point me in the right direction for the figures. I know that Liam Byrne has also raised these points in the Select Committee he chairs.
The Minister of State, Department for Business and Trade (Lord Johnson of Lainston) (Con)
We will come to the noble Lord shortly, although it is right to be hasty.
I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for their input and will try to answer their questions as we go through. On the noble Lord’s wise point about why the sentence in the Explanatory Notes trails off, I think there is a typo. If I remember rightly, it should say “extinguish criminal convictions” at the end of that sentence. I am grateful to him for pointing that out.
Perhaps I may cover collectively the broad themes raised. The noble Lord, Lord McNicol, asked how we prevent the misuse or abuse of this measure. I was interested to hear a noble Lord speak in a previous debate about the quashing of convictions of soldiers in the First World War. This was a group conviction-quashing measure that was considered unique and was specifically designed for special circumstances. There was great concern that the process might be misused at a later date—I cannot remember exactly when; it must have been 20 years ago or more—and, clearly, that has not been the case. I think we are all apprised of the need to make sure that such constitutional situations are handled with extreme sensitivity and delicacy. In this instance, the Government, like Peers on all sides of this House—indeed, those in both Houses of Parliament—believe sincerely that it is only through this measure that we can be sure that people’s convictions are quashed. To confirm: this is an active statement of quashing of convictions; people are not required to apply to have their convictions quashed.
The issue of trust in the Post Office and the independence of the system and of the court processes has been raised, and this is the most effective way to ensure that we do the right thing by people who we believe have been wrongly convicted using evidence that we feel is clearly unreliable.
I would like to just cover the point the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, made about the criteria in the Bill. The criteria governing who will qualify to have their convictions quashed are well laid out, and I am sure there will be a debate about the specifics when the Bill comes to this House. However, it is right that this applies between a set period of dates, that it relates to certain types of crimes linked to the Horizon computer system, that having used the Horizon system has to be part of the process of the conviction, and that, obviously, the person in question was working for the Post Office at the time. We are making, in my view, a series of pretty clear statements about what we are trying to achieve here. It is perfectly reasonable to raise the point about Capture. It was not felt appropriate to bring those cases into this process. However, Horizon trial periods, or the periods of beta testing for it, are included, as I understand it. If that is not the case, I will provide the House with a correction, but I believe that is right.
There has been a significant debate about the territorial scope of this Bill. The reality is that we operate different legal systems, and justice is devolved in Northern Ireland as it is in Scotland. This is not a question of the Government trying to get out of our responsibility or pass responsibility off. As the noble Baroness rightly said, the Government’s redress schemes cover the whole of the United Kingdom. There is no advantage to not having a system that covers the entirety of the United Kingdom. I am sure that many people believe that to be highly preferable, and it would make logical sense, but we have been especially careful to keep returning to the need to be sensitive to the constitutional realities of the unique action we are taking. It is right that, instead of looking at this stage for a complete UK-wide Bill, we allow this to be devolved to the common-law authorities in Scotland and Northern Ireland. I reassure the noble Lord and the noble Baroness that we are in regular contact. In fact, as we speak, a meeting is going on with the devolved nations about how to achieve this. Everyone has the same goal. I have not heard the comments made by the Scottish Justice Minister, but if anything, that continues to point to a high degree of collaboration.
We want justice to be done for these individuals as quickly as possible, across the whole United Kingdom. I have spoken to my colleague, Kevin Hollinrake, who has done a fantastic job in driving this process forward. We are all of the same opinion. Whatever measures are required to do this in the most appropriate and speediest way, we will certainly take. We will look into any way in which we can help the devolved authorities achieve their goals, in line with ours.
The principle of a target timeline for settlements, which was mentioned in the report cited earlier, was rightly raised. I feel strongly that it makes a lot of sense superficially, but the reality is that these are complex processes. We have already delayed having a cliff edge, which we did not think would be helpful. Some of these cases will take time to assess.
We agree on many things, but I am afraid that I do not agree with the idea that there is a huge amount of unpaid compensation, as if it is sitting in a bank waiting to be paid out. It does not work like that. In fact, over three quarters of the claims filed under the HSS scheme have been paid, a large proportion of those under the GLO scheme have been paid, and a large number of overturned convictions have been settled. We are working very fast. I can reassure this House that it is not in the interests of any member of this Government to delay in any way. We have made very good progress.
Importantly for noble Lords listening today, we have raised the fixed-rate payments so there is equality between GLO and HSS schemes, and I believe we have also raised the interim payment received. As soon as you submit a claim, you get £50,000 if you do not take the minimum £75,000 pay, and there is a £450,000 interim payment for overturned conviction compensation. That is important. We want to get money immediately into the pockets of people who need to be compensated. Clearly, there is a margin for discussion and debate, and it is absolutely right that that be done carefully. I hope that we can get the right outcomes. Of course, there is no limit to the compensation that can be paid.
The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, asked about the accounts of the Department for Business and Trade and how this is accounted for. I believe that it would be too soon for last year’s accounts, but our next year’s accounts close in April and will be filed in July or August. I assume some element of the accounting will appear there. In terms of the billion or so that has been set aside, I am told by the Treasury that it does not sit in a ring-fenced account; it is part of the reserves that have been estimated as required. Of course, we also expect contributions from other areas as well. I am very comfortable coming back to noble Lords who will clearly ask in more detail how the accounting process works. I would be delighted to report to Parliament on that and I am sure that there will be plenty of discussions and question around it.
I hope that I have covered the main points, but I would like to return to two final questions. In terms of postmasters who have passed away, the estate is entitled to the compensation. There are also issues where families who have lost joint homes, or where there are additional complications around that, can receive compensation as well.
The question of independent oversight is absolutely to be raised, particularly regarding how these schemes are run. I am delighted to report that the overturned convictions compensation scheme will be run by the Department for Business and Trade, which I think was demanded by the postmasters. It is very important that people feel a sense of independent oversight, so we have therefore appointed a number of senior judges to provide us with that.
I do not have an answer on whether a postmaster will be included, for example, on the oversight board. I think that is an extremely good idea and I am sure that my colleague Kevin Hollinrake would agree that it is an excellent idea. I cannot commit to that now, but these are all very reasonable policy points to make sure that the postmasters who have been affected feel a sense of confidence. It is not just a question of having their convictions overturned and receiving financial compensation; they need to feel respected by the system that treated them so badly.
It is very important that all sides of the House feel able to make contributions in terms of how we can make the system work more effectively to achieve these goals. I am grateful for the ability to have this debate. I think we have made extremely good progress under the leadership of my Secretary of State, and particularly Minister Kevin Hollinrake. Clearly, there is more work to be done and we cannot move too fast to give these people redress. I hope that I can count on the support of all Peers in this House to bring this legislation through so that we can have these convictions quashed in July.
Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interest as a member of the Horizon Compensation Advisory Board. I pay tribute to my noble friend the Minister; to Kevin Hollinrake, the Minister in another place; to his impressive team of civil servants; to the Government in general; to Alan Bates; to ITV; and especially to Alex Jennings, of course. But, before this turns into an Oscars speech, we must acknowledge that there is much to be done.
I just want to raise one matter: those excluded from this legislation. I understand that the Government do not want to go head to head with the Court of Appeal, but some people have been excluded through the accident of fate—they have been refused permission to appeal or have had their convictions not turned down by the Court of Appeal. Will the Government encourage and, if necessary, resource and facilitate, those people who are expressly excluded for those reasons from this legislation? Will the Government encourage them to go back to the Court of Appeal for their convictions to be reconsidered? It would be quite wrong if these sub-postmasters were, through that accident of fate, the only sub-postmasters in the country to continue to have convictions against their name.
Lord Johnson of Lainston (Con)
The noble Lord will have his moment; he will definitely be next, I am sure of it.
My thanks go to my noble friend Lord Arbuthnot. As we all know, a huge amount of thanks should go to him for his tireless efforts over many years. It is a huge lesson for all of us who want to make a difference in public life to see someone like him battle away at the forces of the machine. He has given me personally a great deal of inspiration and I am grateful to him also for the way that he has handled debates such as this and for the sensitive and thoughtful way that he has approached these complex subjects.
On the matter of claimants who have had their appeals refused or who, not being part of this scheme, have been unable to go forward to appeal, I have listened to that comment and will have further conversations with my colleagues about what we can do to ensure that the right level of information is given to those people to enable them to assess their position in the process. Noble Lords must forgive me, I am not a lawyer and there may be some specific issues around this, but I am told that those who have not been able to go through to appeal are not prevented from appealing again. It would strike me that, given the situation around this whole process, the system would certainly bear this in mind. I cannot speak on behalf of the courts; it is essential that they retain their independence on that front.
I was interested to hear my noble friend’s suggestion of support for those individuals, in terms of legal advice, or whatever it may be. I will certainly take that back to the department and I would have thought it would receive a very sympathetic hearing. My noble friend is absolutely right that it would be very unfair if there was a small section of individuals who lost out on this process simply because they had tried to appeal before their peers had done so. That would not be right and it is worth looking into in some considerable detail.
Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)
Third time lucky, my Lords.
First, I concur with everything that my noble friend Lord McNicol said from the Front Bench. I am not going to repeat all those points; he covered the waterfront. I share some of the concerns expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. I also need to declare an interest because I was a junior Minister at the time. I was not dealing with this issue; I was dealing with what seemed a bigger issue at the time—the privatisation of Royal Mail, which never actually took place then.
Before I go on with my contribution, I pay tribute to somebody who I know wanted to be here today, but ill health prevented him: my noble friend Lord Clarke of Hampstead, whose track record on involvement with the Post Office and Royal Mail is second to none. I saw him last week and he was hoping he would manage to make it, but, clearly, he could not—that is for the record.
I come to paragraph 33 in the Statement, which says that
“we will exonerate those who were so unjustly convicted of crimes that they did not commit”.
Of course, I welcome that, but the people I want to focus on are those who did commit crimes; what are the Government going to do about them?
We heard recently that Fujitsu, unbelievably, was still being involved in government contracts, although it has given back some of the money. There are other people who ought to be held responsible for what turned out to be crimes: deliberate attempts to conceal a system that they knew was faulty. That includes Fujitsu itself. So I would welcome the Minister making some statement about when this particular aspect is going to be dealt with.
I understand that there will be some aspects of this that might be considered sub judice or whatever, but I would welcome an initial comment on when and how the Government are going to deal with this situation. The idea that Fujitsu should continue to be seen as a reliable contractor, working with the Government, is in my view somewhat doubtful. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.
Lord Johnson of Lainston (Con)
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Young, for his comments. I wholeheartedly agree with him about how the order has come out. Our first priority is to make sure that the victims are compensated and justice is speedily done.
The second part—which, I am afraid, will take longer—is a thorough analysis of what actually happened and why, over many years, there was a persistent type of activity and a culture in an organisation that was classified as an arm’s-length government body: who should have done what, and at what time. Of great importance is the role of the “state”—and I say that in inverted commas, because I am not trying to play party politics here. I am afraid that many people in this House over many years had positions of responsibility that should have enabled a higher degree of inquiry than clearly took place.
How do we make sure that these organisations function properly, and how can we make sure that government officials, Ministers, and so-called independent directors and other directors of these organisations behave in the right way to ensure that they are run properly, and we do not see a repeat of these activities? It is very important that we have a broad and wide debate. That is why it is always very important that we regard the untrammelled power of the “state” with great suspicion.
I refer briefly to the noble Lord’s comments in relation to Fujitsu. As I understand it, we are looking to work with Fujitsu on how it can assist in compensating victims. I think that conversation is ongoing, but at the end of the day, it is the inquiry that will allow us to decide what to do next. It is absolutely without question that there are people who need to be held to account for these actions over the past 15 or so years. I am grateful for this prompt; this will continue to be a part of the process.
Baroness Buscombe (Con)
My Lords, I join my noble friend Lord Arbuthnot in paying tribute to my noble friend the Minister and other Ministers in another place, along with all those in government who have got us to where we are so far. It has been a hard and difficult road, and it has been too long. The Minister is quite right that whatever happens, we must see that justice is done, and we must do all that we can in our power to ensure that this kind of abuse never happens again.
However, I am curious. I am probably being a little premature, but I do not understand why there has been no question, so far, about the role of the board directors who came and went through this appalling scandal: Tim Parker, Adam Crozier, Ken McCall, Carla Stent, Zarin Patel, Allan Leighton, Alice Perkins, and Susannah Storey—who I gather is now the Permanent Secretary at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. What role did these people play? Is this being looked at thoroughly in the inquiry?
We do have something in our power: corporate manslaughter. That might sound extreme, but four people committed suicide because of what was done to them over a period of years, while this stellar list of, as Private Eye would call them, “City slickers” came and went, well paid as directors of the Post Office. Do they get off scot free? Is the inquiry going to take so long that it gets thrown into the long grass? Does my noble friend agree that we should at least consider how these people should perhaps be charged with corporate manslaughter, so that they can prove their innocence at their own expense?
Lord Johnson of Lainston (Con)
I thank my noble friend for raising the salience of these very important issues. It genuinely would not be helpful or appropriate for me to make a comment on any specific case. The inquiry itself is, in my view, extremely well led and very detailed. We are going to draw a number of conclusions from the extremely forensic amount of investigation that is being undertaken at the moment.
On a broader point, my noble friend is absolutely right: the principle around the leadership of these organisations, how they function, how they report to their boards, the independence of various directors on those boards and how those boards interact with government departments and Ministers, is absolutely something that I believe everyone in this House wants to look more closely at. The principle of arm’s-length still being within the reach of Ministers and responsible entities is also extremely important. I hope that while that may not be the specific outcome of the review relating directly to the Post Office, it will be the next stage in the investigation by Ministers and Parliament.
Housing: Young People
(8 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Lord Young of Cookham
That this House takes note of the housing needs of young people.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the usual channels in my party for selecting this debate, as my contributions on this subject have sometimes caused distress. I am also grateful to those who have put their names down to speak on a subject whose salience is rising up the political agenda, and I look forward to an informed and constructive debate.
I want to outline what steps might be taken in the next Parliament to improve housing outcomes for everyone, but particularly for young people. They have been one of the principal casualties of the housing market, which the Government themselves admitted in their White Paper seven years ago was broken and which is now, at best, convalescing. The foreword to that White Paper said:
“Soaring prices and rising rents caused by a shortage of the right homes in the right places has slammed the door of the housing market in the face of a whole generation”.
In 1989, more than half of those aged 25 to 34 had a home of their own; now that figure is about a quarter. The most common form of living for those of that age is with their parents. Shelter tells me 45% of renters aged 16 to 24 spend half or more of their income on rent. Many would spend far less with a mortgage on the same property, but the high rent means that they cannot afford a deposit—and, not always mentioned, they are now getting much less space within each flat.
There are wider political consequences from this. That generation of young people have parents and grandparents who share their concern—and may indeed be sharing their home—and will be looking for solutions when they vote later this year.
I was lucky enough to have done nine years as Housing Minister, in four Parliaments, under seven Secretaries of State—counting the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, twice—and with four Permanent Secretaries, confounding the usual “Yes Minister” caricature of transient politicians and permanent civil servants. I draw on that experience in my contribution to this debate, recognising that I got many things wrong.
The first job of the Prime Minister after the election is to make it clear that the Housing Minister will be there, barring accidents, for the whole of that Parliament. That was not unusual. In my first nine years in the other place, there were two Housing Ministers, each lasting the whole Parliament, and both were highly effective. Since 2010, there have been 16. It is important to understand why this is a serious mistake.
An effective Housing Minister who will drive through the radical changes that are needed must build a strong personal relationship with the key players: the National Housing Federation, Homes England, the LGA, the Chartered Institute of Housing, the Town and Country Planning Association, the Home Builders Federation, and many others, including the think tanks. You cannot subcontract the building of those relationships to civil servants. That takes time.
Those relationships will be crucial in getting a picture of the challenge, but also later on when one needs to draw on trust and good will to get reform through. You need to know which go-ahead directors of housing are making the weather, which housing associations have some interesting solutions, and which group of talents is turning around a difficult-to-let estate. There are some really good people in housing today.
More than that, you need to understand the complexities of public expenditure—you need to know your AME from your DEL—and you need to watch the Treasury like a hawk. That requires an understanding of Treasury theology as well as economics. If the Housing Minister is ever in doubt about what to do, he should consult the person who knows more about housing and has done more for housing than anyone else: the noble Lord, Lord Best. To make my point about continuity: who has been the most successful Cabinet Minister in this Parliament? Ben Wallace—he was there for four years.
The key word in the White Paper I mentioned, Fixing Our Broken Housing Market, was “market”. A market is where buyers and sellers meet and where supply matches demand. A good market would make it easier for people to move, promote mobility and make it easier to buy and sell. The group that would benefit most from this extra mobility are those waiting for their first home.
There are 3.6 million homes with two or more spare bedrooms. Many older people want to trade down or to rightsize, freeing up their homes for young families. Professor Mayhew estimated that we need 50,000 homes for older people who want to rightsize, but we are only producing 8,000. An older person rightsizing triggers a chain of movements, promoting labour mobility and making better use of the stock we have. The planning system should be more proactive in securing the right mix of new builds. The best way to help younger buyers is to help older buyers.
Stamp duty is an important impediment to the market—£15 billion of friction—and then there is the hassle of house purchase. Last year, I sold my car. I took a photo, uploaded the details on a website and had an acceptable offer within hours. Later that day, a flat-bed truck arrived and, as the car was driven up the ramps, the money arrived in my bank account. What comparable progress has been made using modern technology to simplify house purchases? None, since I bought my first home 60 years ago.
Many young people have to rent, but private landlords are leaving the market, due to high interest rates, fears about impending legislation, a less attractive tax regime and new energy efficiency standards. The NRLA says that private landlords are more than twice as likely to sell properties than they are to purchase them, exerting upward pressure on rents. We should say to private landlords that, if they sell to their tenant, no capital gains tax or stamp duty will be payable—not a right to buy but an incentive to sell. That would have a dramatic effect on home ownership for young people, almost certainly lowering their housing costs and enabling them to move up the ladder.
I support the Renters (Reform) Bill—by the way, what has happened to it?—but it will reduce supply. The Bill should have been accompanied by measures to increase supply and put the private rented market on a more sustainable basis. Other countries have a different model, which we should progressively adopt. In Europe, long-term institutional finance provides secure, well-managed rented accommodation; in this country, it provides 2% of the rented stock. We need to progressively reduce the overdependence on the private landlord, who can release capital only by selling, and get the pension funds and insurance industry to invest in what, historically, would have been a better investment than equities. The next Minister needs to get those institutions in the room with the Treasury and unlock the barriers to that investment.
I mentioned selling to the tenant, but what about the deposit? I read in the Times that there is £2.5 trillion tied up in housing equity. That is £2,500 billion, money will eventually end up with children and grandchildren, but not when they need it. I understand all the caveats about equity release and the need to take advice, but the product today avoids any negative equity on death and can reduce inheritance tax. People are cautious about it because of the unknown care costs. Many more would take that option, and help young people buy, if the next Government implement the recommendations of the Dilnot commission in 2011 and cap care costs. Again, focusing on the older generation helps the younger ones.
Many young people will not be in the fortunate position of having that help and will need access to social housing, adding to the 1.2 million people on the waiting list. My party needs to overcome its residual resistance to social housing. The old norms that trade unionists and council tenants voted Labour while home owners and professional people voted Tory have been blown out of the water by Brexit and the 2019 election. In 1953, 250,000 council houses were built and my party won the next two elections. What regime encouraged the local authorities, now going bankrupt, to invest in speculative shopping centres and office blocks when they could have been building houses?
A new Administration should look at the role of social housing for young people. Forty years ago, a young couple could put their name on the waiting list and be reasonably confident that, in due course, they would get to the top. Today, if that young couple are sharing with in-laws or living in rented accommodation, they are not likely to have that ability.
Social housing is focused, rightly, on priority groups: those threatened with homelessness—increasingly under Section 21—threatened with domestic violence, in poor health or living in very poor conditions. Then there is additional pressure from those from Ukraine, and as the Home Office stops using hotels for asylum seekers. Access to social housing has become an accident and emergency service. This raises the sensitive question of life tenancies. If a family face a crisis and then, thanks to social housing and the support that goes with it, rebuild their lives and other options become affordable, should they make way for another family who face the crisis that they once faced? I am not suggesting making them homeless again, but perhaps some nudges.
This is relevant because, the last time I looked, a young couple on the waiting list is eight times more likely to be rehoused through a re-let than through a new build. Increasing the flow through social housing will help them. There is a role for an expanded tenant incentive scheme to help families move on, securing a re-let for those on the waiting list at a fraction of the cost of new build and far quicker.
We need to build more new homes of all tenures to meet demand from first-time buyers. Veterans of the LUR Bill will know my views about planning, confirmed by last month’s CMA report, which referred to a
“complex and unpredictable planning system”
with “under resourced” planning departments. There is no need to increase public expenditure to unblock the system—just allow planning departments to recruit the staff they need and cover their costs with application fees.
Then my party has to confront the nimbys within our ranks. Yes, we may lose a few votes to the ever-opportunistic Lib Dems if unpopular development goes ahead, but we will lose far more if we do not have a coherent housing policy. We should recognise that the green belt is not sacrosanct and should reinstate local authority targets. You cannot rely on the good will of local government to provide the homes we need.
I do not have time to mention all the relevant factors: the tension between second homes and first homes, skill shortages in the building sector, the dominance of large builders, slow buildout rates and getting the balance right in social housing between new build on the one hand and maintenance of existing stock on the other. I hope other noble Lords will fill the gaps. Nor have I mentioned the many good things this Government have done, a deficiency that I know my noble friend, whose commitment to good housing I applaud, will remedy.
Finally, the next Minister will need what I call a following wind—public opinion. In 1966 “Cathy Come Home” did for homeless young families what “Mr Bates vs The Post Office” has done for sub-postmasters. It mobilised public opinion, drove housing up the agenda so that political parties had to respond, and gave birth to Shelter.
My most formidable opponents—Des Wilson and Sheila McKechnie of Shelter—were also my greatest allies. Their tireless, well-targeted and well-informed campaigning was deeply uncomfortable, but it strengthened my bargaining position with the Treasury and more broadly within the Government. We will need that following wind to open the door that was slammed in the face of a whole generation. I beg to move.
Baroness Donaghy (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, for initiating this debate and for his comprehensive presentation. I am afraid this is going to go from the sublime to the gorblimey now.
This debate is one to which my noble friend the late Lord McKenzie of Luton would have probably been first to sign up. His knowledge of all aspects of housing need and his understanding that dealing with it was an integral part of tackling poverty were second to none. He was gentle and forensic in his questions to Ministers, seemingly diffident, but a towering force in his campaigning for more social housing and safeguarding jobs in the construction industry.
I had been in the House for only two or three weeks when, on 8 July 2010, there was a debate on social housing, in which the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner of Kimble, made his maiden speech, on rural housing, and my noble friend Lord Touhig made his maiden speech, on housing in Wales. The noble Lord, Lord Best, participated in that debate, and I am so pleased that he is here for today’s proceedings. Lord McKenzie gave the usual comprehensive speech that you would have expected. He was proud of the fact that the Labour Government had launched the largest council house building programme for almost two decades. He regretted the fact that the coalition Government were about to sweep away proposals for a national register of landlords—does that sound familiar?—the regulation of letting and managing agents and the requirement for compulsory written tenancy agreements.
Today, in a debate on housing initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Young, with the noble Lord, Lord Best, and my noble friend Lady Taylor of Stevenage, all genuine experts, putting my name down feels a bit bold. Plenty has been written in Lords reports on intergenerational fairness and the impact of student loans and consequent debt, so I will not be concentrating on those aspects.
I do not think that there was any golden age for housing for young people. I was 38 when I bought my house in London, after 13 years in four bed-sits, only one of which was en suite, as we call it nowadays—we would not have known what that meant in those days. The difference now is that someone on my then equivalent salary would not be able to buy a house without financial assistance from the bank of mum and dad or some government wheeze. The other difference, in the 1960s and 1970s, was that there would not have been so many banks of mum and dad available, and we were used to a lower standard of housing—at least, some of us were.
London is a different world from the rest of the UK when it comes to housing. For instance, there has always been a tendency for young professionals to move out of London when they start raising a family. It used to be when the children were approaching secondary school. Now, they move out when the children reach primary school age. This may explain why so many primary schools are closing in London. Most public sector workers in London with childcare expenses to pay would not be able to buy a house in London. This impacts on the ability to recruit and retain the best staff in London, particularly in Westminster and Whitehall.
The Home Builders Federation has stated:
“The UK is a very unaffordable place to buy or rent a home, and increasingly so”.
It echoed what has already been said:
“House prices in the UK have been growing faster than incomes and this disparity is greater than when compared to the EU benchmark”.
Belgium and France have seen house prices fall slightly as a proportion of income, and Finland has ensured that both rental and buying are more affordable.
In the UK, owner-occupiers aged 25 to 34 have dropped by 12% in 20 years. The average age of first-time buyers is increasing—last year, it was 33.5 years —while 58% of first-time buyers were among the highest earners. Research from the Resolution Foundation found that lower home ownership rates among young people mean that
“millennials spend longer in the private rented sector … a typical private renter spent over a third … of their net income on housing costs, more than three times the proportion of net income that a typical mortgagor devoted to their mortgage interest payments”.
I spoke to some of my neighbours when they moved in—young professional women sharing a rented house. Their rent was such that they would never be able to save for a mortgage. It is not a house in multiple occupation; a common feature, particularly in London, is that landlords sidestep HMO requirements and let the house to one name only, so they do not have the safety requirements. That is all too common, and there are not the resources in local government to ensure that it is stopped. If councils were properly funded, they would have an important role to provide accommodation for young people; the GLC, for instance, had a scheme for hard-to-let dwellings.
However, since 2010, councils have had a 60% cut in spending by central government. Government Ministers, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, has said, encourage councils to be more entrepreneurial and raise their own funds. In 2015, the Government abolished the Audit Commission, which kept a check on local government spending; this was an appalling act of irresponsibility.
This week’s New Statesman contains an article about the dire financial state of local government. It gave the example of Hastings in East Sussex as
“a borough full of Airbnbs and Londoners moving in and pushing up house prices”.
Hastings is spending nearly half its annual budget on temporary accommodation. The council leader has called for a Ukrainian refugee-style scheme to house local people in spare rooms.
The director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies has indicated that house price rises since rates were last set mean that the average property in the Westminster council area is taxed at 0.06% of its value, while a far cheaper property in Hartlepool is taxed at 1.3%. We all know that it would be a brave Government that did something about rateable values.
What difference do the various government schemes make? The Home Builders Federation has indicated that the closure of the Help to Buy equity loan scheme has exacerbated the challenge facing aspiring home owners. It states that the scheme supported a third of a million first-time buyer households to purchase a new-build home with an equity loan. It claims that it produced “a doubling in housing supply” and generated an estimated £65 billion in economic activity. What it does not say was that Help to Buy benefited those who could probably have afforded a house anyway, and the resulting inflation of house prices made it impossible for the lower-paid to put a foot on the housing ladder. This was taxpayers’ money, which would have been better spent on social housing.
My only question to the Minister is about the First Homes scheme, which was launched in 2021. Is there any information she can give us about how the scheme is going, and is there any consideration of expanding it?
Finally, I mentioned to the noble Lord, Lord Young, the other day that I am a fan of “Homes Under the Hammer” on television, and I like to think I can guess the price of a house anywhere in the UK. Key factors are whether it is in the north or south, whether it has transport links, the presence or absence of higher education institutions and the increasing numbers of younger entrepreneurs in the south who are buying houses in the north to refurbish and rent or sell off —or “flip it” in the jargon. Skills shortages and the steep cost of raw materials are slowing things down. Solving the issue of housing for young people is not a one-dimensional issue, therefore, and the Government’s record on local government, infrastructure skills, support for refurbishment schemes and controlling the cost of living is pretty woeful. This debate is an important opportunity to air these matters.
Baroness Thornhill (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy for her contribution. I know how she feels: when one is speaking after the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, and with the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, and the noble Lord, Lord Best, in the wings, one knows that all the bases will not only have been covered but covered very well.
One of the most powerful cultural myths over the past century has been the belief that if you work hard, you will earn enough to buy yourself a house and start a family. For a long time, it held true. Between the end of the First World War and the turn of the millennium, rates of home ownership climbed rapidly, topping out at about 70%, as young adults flew the parental nest and set up homes of their own. It was what we did.
We now know that in most respects this is no longer true; the myth has been well and truly busted. There is a powerful and growing body of evidence from a wide range of academics, think tanks and charities working in this area that the opposite is in fact true; the breakdown of the housing conveyor belt has already happened, and is already causing huge and diverse impacts. Studies show that the inability to afford a home causes people to postpone starting a family or not to have children at all. High housing costs also divert individuals away from productive places and activities, and dramatically increase inequality in wealth and between regions. Housing affordability—the ratio of what you earn to what you can afford to rent or buy—was last as bad as it is now when Queen Victoria was on the Throne.
In 2021, the Resolution Foundation did a crucial stocktake of generational differences, and found that millennials were far less likely than previous generations to own their own home and more likely to find themselves in the private rented sector. They are the first generation who are in a worse position than previous cohorts in terms of home ownership, obtaining social housing or finding a secure, affordable, private rented home wherever they might live. It makes depressing reading.
Interestingly, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the biggest shift has been with millennials on middle incomes—the people who hitherto would have expected to own their own home. Student loans, high deposits and higher interest rates have locked many into the rental market. The sector has seen increasing rents, making it difficult to save a deposit, as the percentage of income taken up with rent also increases. Recent data shows that people under 30 are spending more than 30% of their gross income on rent, more than any other group—30% being defined officially as unaffordable.
This has put pressure on the rental market; one estate agent described it to me as a beauty parade. Landlords can and do pick and choose; in the circumstances, who can blame them? Rents are rising and demand is growing. A recent Generation Rent survey showed that bidding wars and mass viewings are much more common. An anecdotal comment from estate agents is, “There’s always competition for rentals now”.
At the same time, we also hear that landlords are leaving the sector, or will leave if the Government remove Section 21 evictions. But are they? We have mixed messages. It is clear that they are moving to more lucrative short-term lettings such as Airbnb. The question for policymakers is: how do we actively incentivise landlords to move from short-term letting back to long-term, more secure tenures? I believe that this needs both carrot and stick, but I feel that government policy is concentrating on the stick. All the trends show that we need more private rented accommodation.
If even renting is not an option, young adults are back at home trying to save for a deposit, which in some areas is likely to take many years. This figure has also increased significantly. Results from the 2021 census found that more adults were living with parents in England and Wales than a decade previously. The ONS reported in 2021 that this equated to 4.9 million young adults—dare I say, young voters.
For me, a worrying trend is that we now seem to have a divided population of young people, and the inequalities between them are growing, as is their discontent. If you live in an affluent family, you will be fine. You will probably be helped with your deposit and regard it simply as getting your inheritance early. For those comfortably off, you might take equity release to give the youngsters their deposit or raid your retirement cushion that you have worked so hard to save, which now is not looking quite so plump.
Time was when low-waged young couples, such as the bus driver—my dad—married to the care assistant, might have been eligible for social housing, but no longer. The reduction in socially rented homes over decades has meant that a secure home to rent and put down roots in the community where you were raised is no longer possible for many, and it has changed the nature of social housing. In my home town of Preston, people were proud to have a council house. If you were on the Larches Estate, close to a beautiful park and rubbing shoulders with the posh parts of Ashton, you had hit the jackpot of affordable rent and secure tenure.
In a recent government survey of tenants, it was shocking to see that tenants now feel shame and stigma for being a social housing tenant. Bold solutions are needed. There is widespread clamour for more social and affordable homes; I would add shared ownership homes. In my view, mixed tenures and mixed estates are a positive way forward. Economic think tanks have also waded into the debate, pointing out the economic benefits of a significant increase in building these homes. It is win-win.
What worries me is that, shockingly, young people are the group most likely to experience homelessness. According to Centrepoint, more and more young people are approaching their local council for housing: 112,000 in 2021, an increase of 8% on the previous year. The data shows that unless they are afforded priority status by the local authority—for example, because they have come out of care—young people are frequently locked out of an already limited social housing supply. This means that they have to turn to sofa surfing, the unaffordable private rented sector, temporary accommodation or risking homelessness.
Government, housing providers and charities must work together in the long term to build a lasting coalition that aims to reinvigorate the social rented market and deliver new youth-specific housing products, which include one- and two-bedroom flats. My residents in Watford used to say, “Who wants to live in them?” Noticeably, as soon as they are erected, they are all filled. This should also be part of any mixed-tenure community.
Simply building more homes is not the answer. We need to build more social, affordable and shared ownership homes. The current emphasis on targets and numbers is demonstrably not working. Lots of expensive market-rate housing will not bring housing costs down to an affordable level for millions of people trapped in poverty by sky-high rents. Politicians are in a target-setting bidding war which perpetuates the myth that we can build our way out of this if only the planning system would improve, or this or that. But ramping up housebuilding will take many years to deliver and many more years to impact on house prices. In reality, nobody who wants a home wants that to happen, and the large housebuilders’ financial model will not let that happen. They build what they know they can sell in places where they know it will sell, not where it is needed or at a price that locals can afford.
We need to build and fund this housing differently, with much more diversity. We need to be braver and bolder and at least try to take the public with us and change the conversation towards those who are the future. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Young: in my experience, when it comes to opportunistic campaigning, no party has a monopoly on exploiting nimbyism.
My fear is that we have created a whole generation who increasingly feel politically isolated because their needs are not being met and their aspirations are unfulfilled. In short, they are being ignored by politicians because they are not home owners, and it is home owners who vote. They are yimbys, but the system forces politicians to listen to the nimbys, so no one is hearing their voice. Politically, that is a dangerous place to be. That is a subject worthy of its own debate.
Lord Lilley (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, on whose remarks I will comment a bit later. Above all, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Young on securing this debate on one of the most important topics affecting the country.
We live in a property-owning democracy. That has been the objective of the Conservative Party, and probably shared by other parties, for many decades. The main form of property that most people can hope to own is their own home. We aspire to be a home-owning democracy, and we were achieving that. Before the First World War, only 15% of the population owned their own home. That rose to 70% by 2001. However, that was the peak, and from there it has declined to about 60%. Whereas each generation had been becoming home owners younger, the trend has reversed even more strongly: in 1997, 55% of 25 to 34 year-olds had got on to the home owner ladder, but that was down to 35% two decades later in 2017.
It is not just that young people cannot afford to buy. Many cannot afford to rent either, because rents and prices are inevitably linked and both reflect shortage. In the last two decades, the number of 25 to 34 year-olds living with parents has risen by 1 million. One-quarter of people in that age group still live at home with their parents. It is not surprising that, if young people cannot hope to join the property-owning democracy, they should begin to lose faith in democracy, which is what we hear from the opinion polls.
Let us be clear: this is not a problem that can be solved by manipulating mortgage terms, freezing rents or tinkering with the terms of tenure. That is just rearranging the deck chairs on the “Titanic”. As long as there is an imbalance between the number of dwellings and the number of people wanting to live in separate households, some of them are going to be disappointed. They will have to share properties, by staying at home with their parents, cramming together in bedsits or subdividing existing dwellings into smaller sub-units. We already have the smallest average size of home of any country in Europe, and we will be making them smaller. All the measures that I have heard about so far in this debate, such as a different form of tenure, would help one group, but if you help one group to get some of a fixed supply of housing then that means other people are not getting it. It does not solve the problem.
What about the long term? We had a debate on 29 February in the Moses Room on a long-term strategy for housing. Apart from my noble friends Lord Jackson and Lord Bailey—who is not here today—every single contributor said that their long-term strategy was to have a long-term strategy. They did not tell us what it would consist of, and it certainly did not deal with the problem.
All those speakers reminded me—I make no apology for repeating this—of the challenge that is laid down by Zen masters to their disciples. The Zen master asks his disciples, “Describe the sound of one hand clapping”. All these debates are the sound of one hand clapping. We heard the sound of supply—we will allocate it differently or even build a few more, although of course we all admit to being nimbys—but no mention of demand. I am afraid it is a simple matter of arithmetic. The supply is not adequate. If there are, say, 30 million dwellings and 33 million wannabe households, then 3 million wannabe households will not be able to live in separate dwellings; they will have to share, subdivide or stay at home. There are two possible solutions: build more homes or stop adding to the number of households. Those are the only two solutions which will resolve it in the long term.
Before the 2015 election, I was challenged by my local Liberal Democrats to attend a public meeting in Harpenden and oppose the subdivision of gardens and people building extra houses in their gardens. They had a public meeting, so I went along. They had a big, wonderful slogan that said: “Harpenden homes for Harpenden people”. I asked the audience of several hundred people how many were born in Harpenden. There were 14 of them. “All right,” I said, “You are the only people the Lib Dems will house and the other 180 had better leave”. We must not go for these cheap nimbyist slogans.
In the 2015 election, I was presented with an ultimatum by the civic society in Harpenden—much influenced by the Lib Dems—that, unless I opposed all new housebuilding in and around Harpenden, they would either run a candidate against me or support any candidate who would make such a promise. I naturally refused, but I did attend a big public meeting, where I passionately argued that it is a moral issue. We have to build more houses, including in places such as Harpenden. If we do not, then young people in this country will not be able to get on the housing ladder and our children and grandchildren will not be able to live nearer to us than several hundred miles away, such as in the Orkneys.
I began studying this issue back at the beginning of this century because my constituency and all constituencies in Hertfordshire were continually facing higher and higher targets for the number of homes they had to build. That struck me as very odd, because the number of people being born in Hertfordshire was less than the number of those dying, so the population should have been going down. Of course, it was not going down because people were moving out of London, which they were doing because people were moving into London. All 17 statements made by the Government on the subject said or implied that they were moving into the south-east of England from the rest of the United Kingdom. When I looked at the figures, I saw they were actually moving out of the south-east of England because prices were so high and they had to move further away from London. The inflow was all from abroad, but no one dared mention it.
At that stage, we were importing the equivalent of the population of Birmingham every decade. I wondered how we would house an extra Birmingham and still provide extra homes for our own young people and people born here. A few years later, it was the population of Birmingham every five years and then every three years. Over the last two years alone, we have imported the net equivalent of the population of Birmingham. Does anyone seriously imagine that we can meet their needs and the accumulated, pent-up and unsatisfied needs of the young people for whom we have not built any homes over the last few decades? We cannot. But will anyone in this debate mention it? No. Perhaps on this side there will be some. I would be delighted if they did.
There will not be any mention of it on the other side; there never is. They should be deeply ashamed, because it is such a serious problem. Unless they can explain and justify why they support continuing mass immigration before they have met the needs of the people of all colours, races and sizes who are already here—who were born and grew up here—they should be deeply ashamed. I fear that, once again, we will have a debate that, with the exception of noble Lords on this side, reflects the sound of one hand clapping—some talk about supply, but nothing about demand. Until we do something about demand, we have an insoluble problem.
Lord Best (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, not just for securing this debate and getting it off to a brilliant start, but for his decades of highly distinguished policy action in addressing key housing issues. As usual, I agree with his words of wisdom so eloquently delivered today.
This debate is very timely: the housing crisis for those with nowhere to go represents a national emergency that demands our urgent attention. It is gratifying to hear just how much we all agree on the urgency of the situation. I declare my housing interests, as on the register. Currently, I chair the Devon Housing Commission. Noble Lords may think that acute housing shortages are a problem for London and the big cities, but they could hardly be more extreme than in the beautiful county of Devon. Fewer and fewer young people brought up in the county are finding it possible to buy a home of their own—and, over recent months, they have found it almost impossible to secure a rented home they can afford. The numbers of young households having to be placed in unsuitable temporary accommodation have increased by 100% and more over the last couple of years. Nationally, the dire situation is replicated in every locality, and there are now over 140,000 children in insecure, often highly unsuitable, temporary accommodation. This is becoming an increasingly significant part of the financial troubles afflicting so many local authorities.
A fortnight ago, many of your Lordships expressed support across party lines for a national strategy to get us out of this mess, as was championed in the Church of England’s report last year. A national strategy would set a broad vision for ending the housing crisis. It could be brought together and sustained over time by a statutory national housing committee, along the lines of the Climate Change Committee. The new committee would hold government—and, no doubt, a succession of Housing Ministers—to account.
In supporting this call for creating and monitoring a long-term housing strategy, I suggest that policymakers must prioritise the housing needs of younger households in two overarching ways: first, of course, by increasing supply overall and, secondly, by ensuring that the supply reaches those with modest incomes. Supply is the problem—
Lord Lilley (Con)
I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. Will this body dealing with a long-term strategy also consider the demand for housing? Will it have any control over the massive increase in demand coming from abroad? If not, what purpose will it serve?
Lord Best (CB)
Is this a debate about immigration or housing? There are two debates here. We are dealing with people who live and breathe and need a home, whom we face and talk to and meet on a daily basis. We are doing something for them, and questions of immigration are for a different debate.
It is unsurprising that there is not enough to go around when the Centre for Cities has found Great Britain to have a housing deficit of 4.3 million homes, compared with the European average. Our current arrangements for achieving a sufficient supply—at least meeting the Government’s target of 300,000 homes a year—have failed. The model used for the last 30 years has relied on a handful of volume housebuilders. These developers, irrespective of the delays caused by ridiculously underresourced planning departments, will build out only at a pace that ensures that prices need never be reduced. This means cutting production now, when higher interest rates have curbed price rises, just when we need to ratchet up supply.
We are all familiar with the well-known flaws of the housebuilder model: poor design and quality; betrayal of promises for affordable housing, green spaces and amenities; building on greenfields and avoiding brownfield sites; failing to train the workforce or to innovate; et cetera. The most recent Competition and Markets Authority report is the latest voice to support the quite different approach promoted by the Letwin review. Sir Oliver advocated that, to speed up and deliver the homes we need, local authority-owned but arm’s-length development corporations should be created, with CPO—compulsory purchase—powers to assemble and buy land on reasonable terms. These corporations would adopt a comprehensive master plan, borrow privately, fund the infrastructure and parcel out sites to social landlords, SME builders, specialist players and so on. In other words, to boost the quantity and quality of supply, Letwin recommends establishing publicly accountable development bodies that take back control from the oligopoly of major developers.
Let me turn to the ways of ensuring that the supply of new homes benefits those on average and below-average incomes—the half of the population who currently can access only a fraction of new housing supply. Top of the list comes direct development of so-called “social rented housing”: this part of the housing mix has been in decline for years. Social housing is down from 34% of the nation’s homes to just 17% because of sales of council housing and the low-level programme of new build.
On 6 February, when Secretary of State Michael Gove appeared before the Lords Select Committee on the Built Environment, he said:
“We need to aim to have a net addition of 30,000 for social rent every year”.
He noted that some would regard this as unambitious, but it sets a far higher target for social rent—for the housing associations and councils—than has prevailed in recent years. What is needed is government investment to actually make this happen.
Currently, the sector faces headwinds from higher interest rates, building safety remedial work, the decarbonisation and upgrading of older stock, and management and maintenance costs rising by more than rents. But this country now has a highly professional social housing sector that is very fully regulated and can respond to the opportunities whenever government comes forward with the necessary resources.
Increasing supply by building new homes is going to take decades to achieve availability and affordability for all. In the meantime, we need a shortcut both to tackle the temporary accommodation emergency and, over time, to enlarge the social housing pool. The Affordable Housing Commission recommended a national housing conversion fund for the purchase and modernisation of run-down, privately rented accommodation. This fund would pay for itself by avoiding the huge costs of temporary accommodation in the private sector and, in the long term, would help a rebalancing between the much-diminished social sector and the greatly expanded private rented sector. I detect signs that the Government are recognising the value of this approach: a fund mostly for refugees is operating on this basis.
Investment in social housing—including the regeneration of some existing council estates and older properties—has a big payback in reducing health inequalities, alleviating fuel poverty, saving housing benefit and homelessness costs, cutting carbon emissions and supporting education and employment objectives. The National Housing Federation’s latest report shows how investing in a really major expansion of social housing is self-financing in a relatively short timescale, so boosting affordable social housing—largely ignored in the Budget—does represent incredible value for public money.
All this is not to say that the desire of younger households for home ownership should be ignored. Owner occupation means a secure home where you can put down roots and do your own thing. Acquiring and accumulating a capital asset for your later life is a big bonus, but, most significantly, your housing costs as an owner will reduce over time as your mortgage is paid off, whereas, as a renter, your housing costs will keep rising inexorably. No wonder the Department for Work and Pensions is expressing alarm at the prospect of a massive increase in housing benefit payments when a much bigger proportion of renters retires and their incomes fall, while rents keep going up.
How can the drop in home ownership levels be reversed so fewer people fall on the wrong side of the dividing line between tenants and home owners that can last a lifetime? This inequality in life chances is particularly unfair for those young people who are paying rents in excess of the cost of a mortgage but who cannot also afford to raise tens of thousands of pounds for a deposit without parental funding.
Shared ownership—with some important tweaks—provides one solution. Government mortgage guarantees can be effective and are almost cost-free, although the latest arrears figures, following interest rate rises, show some concerning increases. To underpin first-time buying in these difficult times, restoring the safety net of support for mortgage interest to its former, more generous position would be sensible.
Meanwhile, there are huge advantages for young people of planners requiring a proportion of new homes to be designed for older people. By addressing the pent-up demand for attractive, affordable homes for downsizers—“right-sizers”—two goals are met. First, older people can move to warm, accessible, convenient and companionable accommodation, achieving huge savings for the NHS and for adult care services. Secondly, this triggers a whole chain of moves, making family homes, not least precious social housing for families, available for the next generation, helping the young people with whom we are particularly concerned in this debate.
Polls tell us that almost two-thirds of 18 to 34 year-olds say that they are more likely to support a political party that invests more in affordable and social housing. Manifesto writers, take note. Let all of us in this House recognise the crisis facing younger people today and resolve to be part of the solutions we all want.
Earl Attlee (Con)
My Lords, I speak as an observer rather than as an expert. Your Lordships will be aware that I do defence, engineering, transport and things like that and do not normally get involved in housing, so it indicates that something is going seriously wrong if I have to intervene.
The purpose and effect of the UK’s planning system is to resist development, keep the rich rich, the poor poor, and the rest where they are. Before explaining why that might be, I should declare an interest as my wife is on the planning committee of the local parish council, and it is her duty to operate the system as she currently finds it.
In my opinion, since 2010 the Conservative Party has absolutely skewered the younger generations by making it impossible for them to buy their own house. Where they can, they must take out a mortgage with an imprudent multiple of salary and far too long to pay, as many noble Lords have already observed. Very frequently, they must rely on the bank of mum and dad to find the deposit and keep the payments affordable.
In the Thatcher era, a property-owning democracy was created, as my noble friend Lord Lilley, among others, observed. Even people with modest occupations could own their own house, and ordinary families could develop deep financial resources as a result—I think the noble Lord, Lord Best, touched on that. That ability to have deep financial resources was no longer confined to rich, landed classes.
We have now created a precariat. Apart from the employment uncertainties, many of our people cannot be confident of their accommodation as they are obliged to rent. In some cases, they are discouraged from working. As the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, touched on, there is an effect on the fertility rate, because they simply cannot have a family. It is no good my noble friend the Minister pointing to the sticking-plaster policy regarding Section 21 evictions, because it will probably make matters worse and not address the underlying problem of the lack of housing.
We have artificially restricted the supply of housing by means of the planning system and increased housing demand by means of immigration, but done nothing to restrict the supply of finance. What did noble Lords think was going to happen with the affordability of housing, even for people with good-quality employment? The planning system has become increasingly difficult to navigate and generally requires very deep pockets. This is not a problem for big organisations—ultimately they can appeal to the Secretary of State regarding their development, they can go to judicial review and they have all those tools—but for small developers it is hopeless. Therefore, the planning system keeps the rich rich.
I apologise for going slightly off-piste. There are multiple causes of our inability to improve the UK’s productivity, but one must surely be the malign effects of our planning system. Not only do we not build the housing that we need but we do not build, or allow to have built, sufficient small industrial premises. I live between Petersfield and Portsmouth. A few years ago I wanted to buy a small industrial unit of 1,300 square feet, below the small business exemption for rates. I needed it for my charitable engineering activities. I had the cash in the bank to pay for it, but I had to give up because there was nothing available to buy within 15 miles of where I lived. Interestingly, I detected from the Land Registry that a unit in a nearby industrial estate had been sold but had never even come on the open market. It all seemed to be by word of mouth.
When I look at SMEs local to home, I see that they are packed into units that are far too small and therefore internally poorly laid out. Furthermore, they are unable to invest in more equipment because they lack the space. This means that certain production processes must be undertaken elsewhere, but that uses transport with its associated emissions and other adverse effects.
Following on from the remarks by my noble friend Lord Lilley, we are increasing our population by about 1 million people per full Parliament, but we are steadfastly refusing to bring more and sufficient land into development, both for housing and for industrial use. It is all down to planning. The noble Lord, Lord Best, who I hold in very high regard, was very keen to keep this debate about housing and not immigration, but the fact of the matter is that the two are inextricably linked. If we keep increasing the population by 1 million every few years, we are bound to need more accommodation, both for people to live in and for industry. There is no getting away from it. It is no good talking about brownfield sites. The old industrial sites have already been turned into retail parks and housing estates up and down the country, but retail parks do not provide high added-value jobs, nor opportunities for improving productivity.
With all this, no wonder the support for my party among graduates of less than 50 years of age is apparently in single figures. I am very pleased to see that the party opposite regularly promises to reform the planning system. I hope the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, will be able to say a bit more about this. My noble friend the Minister will tell us what the Conservative Government have been doing to improve the planning system. The output that I have seen is our local plan. That plan seeks to measure the requirement for land for housing and employment, and then possibly meet the requirement—but, of course, it never does. We certainly never hear about any desire to create a slight glut of housing or employment premises. If there was a slight surplus of both housing and industrial units, employees and businesses could be ideally accommodated because something would be available immediately when required. Much has been said about affordable housing. What would happen if, in any particular area, there was a slight glut of up-market and more profitable-to-build housing? It is obvious that developers would move on to building affordable housing without any intervention from government or the planning system.
I go back to where I started. The purpose and effect of the UK’s planning system is to resist development and keep the rich rich, the poor poor, and the rest where they are.
Baroness Valentine (CB)
My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Lord for introducing this debate. I have been aware of housing challenges, particularly in London and Blackpool, for a long time, but the subject of this debate has encouraged me to look more intensely at the challenges facing the young and at the associated need for wraparound support for our most vulnerable. I work part-time for Business in the Community, focusing on regenerating forgotten places, and have served on the Peabody board.
Let me begin with the problem. There is a crisis in the provision of temporary accommodation. This adds to the financial woes of our local authorities, which are unfairly bearing the brunt of cost of living and post-Covid mental health challenges, with too little money. I have been conscious for a long time of the need to build more houses and bring costs down in London, and I am more newly aware of the shocking state of the housing available to poorer people in Blackpool. This failure to achieve both quantity and quality, as ever, hits the poorest in our societies worst. The latest data from Demos shows that 130,000 children are living in temporary accommodation, double the number in 2011. Councils in London are spending £90 million per month on temporary accommodation as a result of increased numbers and inflation, up 40% from last year. Of these London homeless people, roughly half are children—equivalent to at least one child in every classroom. A particular concern are care leavers, of whom around one-third become homeless in their first three years.
What does this mean for children living in substandard or temporary accommodation? These young people will have disrupted school lives and lower educational attainment, as around half of homeless children have to move school. Young homeless will then be significantly less likely to have a job—around half of Centrepoint users are NEET. Life expectancy will be drastically reduced, given the prevalence of mental and physical health problems. According to Shelter, over half of parents report that temporary accommodation is harming their children’s health. Research has shown that nearly half of the young homeless have mental health challenges.
In Claremont ward in Blackpool, the concentration of families in HMOs converted from old B&Bs gives rise to a subculture where, for instance, many youngsters will not leave their bedrooms post-Covid. There are shocking health statistics, partly caused by the quality of accommodation. In a ward of just 9,000 people, 2,500 have mental health problems, 1,400 have respiratory issues, 900 have diabetes and 600 have asthma. Blackpool hospital reserves 19 beds every single day for unplanned admissions from Claremont, costing £11 million a year.
At this point, I would like to call out the Department for Work and Pensions. I have a great deal of respect for much of its work; for example, I have worked jointly with the department on careers fairs. In Blackpool, however, two things are wrong. First, housing benefit is paid to landlords whose housing is slum standard, with some failing category 1 standards, which means risk of death. Secondly, the help given to jobseekers is given in person, but these youngsters will only engage online at the moment and the DWP does not offer an online interview option for them.
So where are the glimmers of hope? First, there needs to be an urgent focus on providing long-term funding to local authorities to deal with the temporary accommodation crisis in a way that is cheaper, better quality and better suited to the inhabitants. Part of this needs to be linked to wraparound services for these youngsters, who will otherwise end up costing the public purse a great deal more—quite apart from the moral case for doing so. Too often, the housing crisis and challenges in public services are spoken about as separate policy issues, but vulnerable young people and families are in such a difficult housing situation that it has a negative impact on their quality of life and increases their need for other services. We have gained a lot from specialisation of our public services; practice has become more professional and more evidence led. Bradford, in particular, has an impressive research project called Born in Bradford, which follows 13,500 families over 10 years. We know, however, that a failure to join up public services is costing the Government between £1.5 billion and £5 billion a year, according to Demos.
Right to Succeed works in left-behind communities to support the transformation of children and family services, bringing together services to focus on the most vulnerable families. In the process, it becomes clear that different services have different addresses for the same family, but Right to Succeed now has an evidence base for the success of this approach.
In this vein, I would like to mention Element, the social enterprise founded in London by my daughter, and Positive Transitions Pathway in Blackpool. Both these approaches involve focusing on the needs of the care leaver, providing life coaching and being available for support for as long as it takes. Blackpool Council also provides tailored tenancy management. The Element experience of care-leaver accommodation is that it comes in all shapes and sizes; some is public sector, some third and some private, and the quality differs between different providers across all sectors. The lack of regulation of private landlords tends to provide less good accommodation and weaker support. I am aware that some supported accommodation in Blackpool provides feeble support, despite being paid to provide support. In both places, there is an urgent need to introduce decent home standards in the private sector, especially if they are being paid by the public sector for that accommodation.
Let me end on some high points. Following what is known as a “seeing is believing” visit to Sheffield last year, led by Business in the Community, IKEA has offered to provide beds for the hundreds of local children who do not even have a bed to sleep in. Here are two quotes from the youngsters themselves. Fatima, a care leaver, says:
“Before going into Element, things were very difficult. I was struggling with idea of socialising with other people. However, from the beginning, I felt at ease and loved spending time with some amazing staff and young people. Element really helped build my confidence in speaking in front of people. I wouldn’t be where I am today without them”.
Finally, a young Blackpool homeless person said:
“My Positive Transitions officer has helped with loads of different things, and also encouraged and supported me to apply for an internship. I got the job, which has made a massive difference to my finances. I have been able to pass a training course and get a small motorbike. They really helped my transition to adulthood and made living alone a lot less overwhelming”.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to participate in this debate, and I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham, whom I have known for over 30 years, for his persistent and indefatigable approach to campaigning on housing.
I will talk about two specific macroeconomic societal issues, and then focus on planning and some possible solutions. I will talk first about quantitative easing—I draw noble Lords’ attention to an excellent article in the New Statesman of 1 March—and how it impacts young people. Essentially, the policy of quantitative easing, developed by the coalition Government in 2013 and euphemistically described by George Osborne as “active monetary policy”, actually created an asset price boom and had very significant distributional implications, making asset owners richer, as my noble friend Earl Attlee said, and leaving many young people locked out and relatively poorer. There is a reason, of course, why the polls show that only 8% of 18 to 24 year-olds intend to vote Conservative at the election. You cannot extol the virtues of capitalism if your target market cannot eventually own capital.
In 1979, the right-to-buy policy of the Conservative Party gave ordinary working people a real stake in their future and those of their families and communities. Over the last 10 to 14 years, we have failed to develop policies which similarly deliver for working people. We have seen a collapse in home ownership over the period of the last two or three Parliaments.
On the second issue, immigration, we absolutely have to look at demand. I am afraid that I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Best. Of course, I pay tribute to his expertise. If we are going to have a debate based on empirical evidence and honesty, and in good faith, we cannot ignore the implications of, and the massive changes wrought by, uncontrolled, unfettered immigration, whether it is illegal or, more likely, legal.
Last year, we built 204,000 homes against a target of 300,000. The French regularly build 400,000 to 500,000 homes. The Migration Advisory Committee says that a 1% rise in population generates a 1% rise in house prices. Uncontrolled immigration has a big effect on the rental market too. Net migration of 672,000 is something that cannot just be dismissed from the housing debate. In 15 years, that trend—
Baroness Valentine (CB)
On the subject of migration, as far as I recall, a very large number of migrants are students. I wonder whether the noble Lord would like to comment on student housing in that context?
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
I am going to develop my argument in terms of numbers. We are looking at an increase to the population of 6.6 million people, to 74 million by 2036. The indicative figures are that in 15 years, we are going to have to build another 5.7 million homes, or 550,000 homes per annum.
In London, 20 people are chasing every flat. Some 40% of foreign-born individuals are in the private rented sector, as are 75% of new migrants, and 48% of all social housing in London is headed by someone who was not born in the UK. That is an issue that goes to the heart of fairness. I do not think it is defensible, and it is certainly not sustainable. It is about equity and community cohesion.
I want to talk about planning. I believe that the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, although very much lauded, was a missed opportunity. The promise contained in the consultation on the National Planning Policy Framework of 2022 did not come to fruition; it was a missed opportunity. As my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham said, the Government capitulated, regrettably, to the nimby, short-termist tendency in the Conservative Party. Robert Colville of the Centre for Policy Studies was quite right when he described that decision, or the decision to reject any housing targets, as “selfish and wicked”.
We have a situation in which scores of local planning authorities have paused, reviewed or abandoned their local plans. That has rendered obsolete previous commitments to local housing targets. It has given a green light to planning committees to block development across the country. The five-year land supply test was dumped, green-belt reviews stopped, and the housing delivery test watered down. This has exacerbated the problems of capacity: many principal authority planning departments have a shortage of well-qualified, experienced and commercially savvy planners in particular, and of properly resourced planning departments.
Reference has been made to the CMA report into the state of the housebuilding industry, published on 28 February. I am glad to say that it put to rest the persistent accusation that major housebuilders are land banking; there was no empirical evidence to support that. But even if they were, surely the broken planning system is logically inherently to blame. The CMA actually said that
“the planning system is exerting a significant downward pressure on the overall number of planning permissions being granted across Great Britain … insufficient to support housebuilding at the level required to meet government targets and … assessed need”.
It made particular reference to the impact on small and medium-sized builders.
I share with the House the observations of the former Mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, James Palmer, who was also formerly the leader of East Cambridgeshire District Council. He says, quite rightly:
“Over the past 50 years the Local Plan system (or derivations of it) has failed to deliver the number of homes needed in England, yet we steadfastly refuse to change the way we plan for growth. Local Plans can create the illusion of promoting growth while simultaneously restricting housing development. A carefully drawn line in a town hall can turn landowners into lottery winners. Where developers don’t bring forward housing, landbanks arise. When landowners decide not to sell, new lines need to be drawn. What’s more, local authorities need only throw a cursory glance at what their neighbours are doing, which leads to disjointed and incoherent planning across wider geographies”.
That is a very important point.
The construction industry is still suffering a very difficult hangover from Covid, the Ukraine war, the rising costs of materials and energy, higher interest rates, and skills shortages. In my own area of the east of England, 17% of all business is construction-related—with £18 billion of output, according to the Construction Industry Training Board. Policy changes, especially in planning, have slowed down the construction of new houses, and this was predicted by the Home Builders Federation in March 2022. Professor Noble Francis, the economics director at the Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction, commented:
“There was a sharp fall in house building in December 2023 as house builders continued to focus on cost minimisation and completions for the subdued level of demand rather than starting new developments after the rise in mortgage rates in 2023 that priced out many new buyers, especially first-time buyers”.
Another issue, which we have discussed in your Lordships’ House on a number of occasions, is quango overreach. As your Lordships will know, in August 2023, the Government announced that they would legislate on the impact of defective EU laws intrinsic in the nutrient neutrality regulations. Despite a promise of a £280 million investment over seven years to ameliorate these issues, protect precious habitats, tackle the issue of run-off from agriculture and upgrade wastewater works, your Lordships’ House decided to kibosh that legislation and force the Government to abandon it. We are now in a position where 120,000 homes, according to the Home Builders Federation, have been subject to a moratorium on new builds. That means an unelected and unaccountable quango, Natural England, has stopped 41,000 new houses being built in Norfolk and 18,000 in Somerset, just as an example. In what other advanced, liberal democracy would such a ridiculous and incoherent policy be tolerated?
I welcome some of the things the Government have done in the long-term plan for housing announced last month around SME builders; refocusing on repurposing public sector land and brownfield development; giving greater weight in the NPPF to the benefits of housing delivery in areas of residential housing shortages; and other areas, such as permitted development. But I am not convinced that it is radical enough.
We need to look again at residential estates’ investment trusts. We need tax breaks for supported living for older people. We need to repurpose planning fees to sufficiently resource planning departments. We need to bring back local plans that are up to date to deliver housing. We need to introduce a presumption in favour of development in small sites. We need to abolish stamp duty for all purchases of homes with an EPC rating of B or above. Housing is a national emergency. We also need a Cabinet Minister specifically focusing on housing, as well as a housing ministry. This and previous Governments have, regrettably, failed young people, but it is not too late to begin to develop a vision and an ambition to deliver both for them and for our country more widely.
Lord Shipley (LD)
My Lords, I pay tribute to the enormous contribution that the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, has made to the cause of housing over so many years. I jotted down a number of things that he said, and I will mention the top three in order of importance.
First, watch the Treasury like a hawk. For issues such as how you convert the very high amount paid to the private rented sector in housing benefit to construct homes for social rent, which would be a much better use of the money and increase the housing supply, that kind of debate needs to be had with the Treasury. Secondly, the best way to help younger buyers is to help older buyers—that is so true, for this should not become an intergenerational issue. Thirdly, we need more planners. That is quite clear. It must be done through enabling local planning authorities to charge and set their own fees. The noble Lord will remember the debates we had on the then levelling-up Bill, when the Government gave a little ground but nothing like enough to deliver what is needed.
A number of things have been said about net immigration by two or three noble Lords. What is being said is a misconception, because our housing problem has been developing over 30 years and the increase in immigration to its current level is comparatively recent. There is much published evidence to show that, over the last 30 years, we have built around 2 million homes too few. There has been a spike in net immigration figures in the last couple of years, one of the key reasons for which is the fact that the Government insist on counting overseas students in them. Many of those overseas students—
Lord Lilley (Con)
They also count them when they go out. So, if they come in and go out, they account for zero in total.
Lord Shipley (LD)
The noble Lord is absolutely correct, but the Government, through deliberate policy over the last few years, have been increasing the number of overseas students. The result is that there are more coming in than going out. Statistically, the number is currently in decline, as we were told in a debate a few days ago, so I think he needs to take a slightly longer-term view. As the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, said, many of those students are in the student accommodation units that have proliferated in many of our university towns and cities. When we debate housing, we need to be a little more measured about what the cause and effect actually are.
A key reason why the population is rising is that people are living longer. Another reason why we need more houses is that our housing stock is poorer than those of a number of other countries. We absolutely have to increase the supply overall, as the noble Lord, Lord Best, said. I am not sure whether the Centre for Cities estimate that we have a deficit of 4.3 million homes is right—it may be.
This debate is about the first-time buyer. I remember owning my own home at the age of 25. My wife and I bought our first home on a 95% mortgage, worth 2.5 times my income. Many more young people were able to buy or to secure rented accommodation at an affordable price in those days. That is what this debate is about: in recent years, the number of young adults who own their own home has fallen. As we have heard, more young adults are living at home. Too many are priced out of ownership and into the high rents of the private rented sector, because investment in social housing has been so low. Had those homes been properly replaced between the Government’s decision to sell council homes and now, we would have many more homes than we currently do.
Housing has become so expensive at a time when incomes are under greater stress. The number of first-time buyers fell to a 10-year low in 2023, partly due to the cost of mortgages. I find these facts disturbing. It is particularly disturbing when you realise that the people who are suffering most are those young people who are not graduates. A lot of research evidence has been published on this. We have to increase the supply side, and in that the noble Lord, Lord Best, is absolutely correct.
The Government have tried a number of initiatives that we should support. I think we need more long-term, fixed-rate mortgages and more gradual home ownership schemes, and not just for new build. It is a worry that last week’s Budget lacked so much real substance on housing. It did not address the basic problem of high house prices caused by high land costs leading to insufficient supply. We have had this shortfall in new homes being built year after year, with the Government counting conversions from business premises to homes as new homes. These are often flats and quite small. The real problem is the need for more homes that families can use.
There has been a lot of discussion around brownfield sites. I have believed for a long time that we have to move to a brownfield presumption. I am quite content with the views of the Secretary of State on that matter. Lichfields says that 1.6 million homes could be unlocked on brownfield sites. Homes England has just published its plans for the next five years and it is really good that its top key performance indicator is the amount of brownfield land reclaimed. However, are there enough brownfield sites? The Northern Housing Consortium said in a report published two weeks ago that there is an 82% shortfall of brownfield capacity in the north of England. If the Centre for Cities is correct that we need more than 4 million new homes and Lichfields is correct that only 1.6 million can go on to brownfield sites, there is a gap which can be filled only by better planning, proper housing supply policies and faster building on the brownfield sites that we can build on.
I see much to recommend the proposal that we should move towards a rules-based system. I am very taken by the report from the Competition and Markets Authority which recommended a streamlining of the planning system, with more homes built and more homes that are genuinely affordable. The regulator has called for significant intervention, which I welcome.
However, I am very surprised to learn that nearly half of local planning authorities lack a five-year housing supply; of the 72 northern local planning authorities, 23 have no five-year housing supply. As a number of noble Lords did, I listened on the “Today” programme this morning to the experience of a community-led housing initiative in Bristol which plans to have 100 units of 100% affordable housing. It has been months in the planning system, unable to get its applications through. One application had a six-month wait simply to get a case officer. The solution is exactly what the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, said: let local authorities set their own planning fees. The solution of going straight to the inspectorate is not adequate.
In conclusion, a number of noble Lords have said that we need more small construction companies. Post Covid, this really matters. We cannot just rely on the big housebuilders. The small construction companies are building only 15% of homes today; they used to build 40% before the housing crash. If Homes England could look at how it gets smaller construction companies back into the market, it would help enormously with solving some of the problems of first-time buyers.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, for tabling this most important debate and, as always, for sharing his very considerable expertise and for all the work that he has done in the past and in your Lordships’ House to champion housing and the many issues related to housing and planning. As usual, he does not clap with one hand. He raised some important issues around downsizing incentives, incentivising to sell properties from the private rented sector and institutional finance, especially pension funds. That is something we definitely have to look at. It would resolve some of the investment issues that were raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill. I am not so sure about his idea on lifetime tenancies, but we need to have a look at more issues around tenancies.
I thank my noble friend Lady Donaghy for her words and for reminding us of the inspirational Lord McKenzie, who I knew very well. It is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Shipley. I agree with him on the right-to-buy issues. Just this week we learned that the retention of right-to-buy receipts at 100% has been cancelled by the Secretary of State—a completely incomprehensible decision.
It is shocking to realise that this year we have over 136,000 young people aged between 16 and 25 who are approaching their councils as homeless. This represents a 5% increase on the year before. Even worse, this is the very tip of the iceberg. The median age of people presenting as homeless is just 32, with many being much younger. There is also a gender issue: for females presenting as homeless it is even younger, at just 25. With homelessness increasing dramatically across the country, as we have heard in so many recent debates in this House, it is worrying to see the evidence that those who become homeless at a young age will be far more likely to face multiple long-term challenges.
I hope that noble Lords will forgive me for starting with two anonymised stories from my casework which illustrate some of the many issues that lead to homelessness and to hidden homelessness. The first is Alison, a qualified nurse working in the NHS. She came to my surgery and asked very calmly whether we thought that it was reasonable that she had been sleeping on the sofa at a friend’s house for seven years. She patiently explained the issues that this caused in relation to her shift work. As a single working woman in her late 20s, she was very low priority for social housing, but her low salary and the scarcity of affordable private rented accommodation excluded her from those options. She was too concerned about the pressure on her finances to seek a mortgage and had little enough money left at the end of the month to save for a deposit anyway. Alison was one of the hidden homeless, which I will talk about more later. Her case illustrates just how skewed allocation policies have become, in terms of homelessness prevention, for all but the most extreme cases.
Shannon also came to see us. She had been thrown out of the family home when she told her dad that she was gay. He had attacked her with a whisky bottle and told her never to come near the house again. Shannon had a pet dog which gave her emotional support in this awful situation. Although keeping him excluded her from much of the emergency hostel-type accommodation, she could not bear to part with him. She was working full-time in a restaurant, so she slept outside the restaurant in the bushes and then washed and changed in the restaurant before starting work.
This illustrates one of the many types of family breakdown that can lead to young people becoming homeless. We all know that there are multiple potential causes of homelessness among our young people and that the chronic undersupply of housing—of all tenures but particularly affordable rented and social rented homes —makes matters far worse for them. For some of our young people, it is simply the lack of support networks from family or community that would help them navigate the complexities of securing housing in this country. Family breakdown because of parental conflict, as in Shannon’s case, divorce, abuse or neglect, domestic abuse or bereavement, can all lead to homelessness, as can their own or a carer’s mental health issues.
We had a powerful debate in your Lordships’ House recently on poverty, led by the noble Lord, Lord Bird. We all know that poverty is the major driver of homelessness. For young people, this can mean their parents can no longer afford to have them living at home, and with over 1.2 million families now living in poverty, this brings an enormous impact. Financial deprivation stays with those young people. While for some, the bank of Mum and Dad will help with housing or rental deposits, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, and the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, for others whose early life may also have been marked by housing insecurity, no such facility exists.
There are other groups more at risk too, including those from black, Asian and other minority ethnic groups, young people from the LGBT+ community and young asylum seekers and refugees. There are also regional disparities: the north-east has the highest level of youth homelessness in the UK. The noble Lord, Lord Best, often refers, rightly, to the disparities of housing availability in rural areas. Every year, as the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, mentioned, 100,000 young people leave local authority care, and this group are particularly at risk of homelessness. Some 14% of them will have slept rough and 26% will be sofa surfing. It is vital that the corporate parenting role undertaken with looked-after children does not hit a cliff edge when they reach 18. Most parents will know that young people making the transition into adult life is the point at which they need more support, not for it to come to an end. Can the Minister tell us whether the Government have given thought to how this transition may be better managed and housing policy designed to support young care leavers?
We saw the considerable efforts made to tackle rough sleeping during the pandemic, and more can be done to learn the lessons from this, including considering the “invest to save” impact of schemes such as Housing First, where emergency accommodation is provided alongside a package of support for complex needs. Are the Government looking at schemes like this around the country to help prioritise funding decisions and what comparative assessment has been done with some of the initiatives being developed in Wales and Scotland?
Rough sleeping is the tip of the iceberg: many people will be living the precarious life of sofa surfing, hostels and temporary accommodation. That can be entirely unsuitable for vulnerable young people: just imagine a vulnerable young female care leaver in a shared house with violent ex-offenders. This hidden homeless issue continues to get worse as there are few statistics collected, either on the numbers or on the impact this has on the lives of young people. Can the Minister tell us whether any work is going on in government to address this?
As usual, many local authorities—including my own, through Herts Young Homeless—have stepped up, despite the financial situation, with a range of interventions to tackle homelessness among young people. These include: prevention and early intervention to provide mediation to resolve family conflict; talking to young people in schools about housing and homelessness; crisis support which ensures that young people at risk of homelessness can access advice and guidance quickly and that, where necessary, they can access other support such as for emergency mental health needs; independent living support for young adults who do not have that support from friends or family; and advice on funding the housing, setting up bill payments, managing money, cooking, jobseeking and how to manage independent living.
The best local areas have Future Roots programmes, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, that provide tailored transition for vulnerable young people with supported living accommodation until they are ready to live independently. Although these approaches are best practice, they are not universal. Are the Government taking more steps to promote and share this best practice, preferably incentivised with some funding, and has any analysis been carried out of the long-term benefits of such preventive steps?
At the heart of this problem is the wider problem of the crisis in housing supply of all tenures. Noble Lords have referred to many of the interventions that will be needed to address that. The record on housing is simply not good enough. If the situation continues as it is, we will see further generations of young people whose life opportunities are limited by poor housing, with consequential impacts on their education, health and employment. That is why my party’s plan to build 1.5 million homes over the course of the next Parliament is at the heart of the surge we need to kickstart a housing recovery plan. We must restore the targets removed by the Secretary of State last year, as other noble Lords have mentioned. If we do not have targets locally, how will we ever achieve a national target? For young people it is social homes that often provide the start in adult life that they need. Last week, the outstanding report by Cebr for Shelter and the National Housing Federation showed conclusively that building 90,000 social homes each year would have a combined socioeconomic value of around £50 billion—last year, we built just 9,000.
Young people are disproportionately affected by practices in the private rented sector and leasehold markets. Some of them move very frequently, at a cost estimated by the Renters Reform Coalition of around £1,700 each time they move. We hoped that the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill and the Renters (Reform) Bill would scrap the tenure of leasehold and end the injustice of Section 21, but we now find that both those Bills have been watered down. I hope we will get the chance to reinstate some of those promises in your Lordships’ House.
My parents were given the start they needed for their married and family life by opportunities presented in Britain’s first post-war new town, Stevenage. That is why I was so delighted to hear my party’s pledge of a new generation of new towns, based on sustainable principles and with communities enjoying a quality of life that balances economy, environment and social aspects with high-quality housing, including a new social housing renaissance. We need a long-term housing strategy that gets the houses built that we know we need, through a planning system designed for the builders, not the bureaucrats. Labour will undertake a complete reform of planning to unblock it and get Britain building. I do not have time to go into the detail today, but I think we should have another debate on that. For our young people, what we need within that housing strategy is a national plan to tackle young homelessness, before we undermine the potential and opportunities of another generation of young people by failing them on housing.
The noble Lord, Lord Young, is right to point out that there have 16 Housing Ministers since 2010; that does not help. This Government have had 14 years to address the chronic housing problems this country faces, which are still getting worse. Is it not time we had a general election, to give these young people their future back?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Baroness Scott of Bybrook) (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham for bringing forward this important debate, and also for the continued passion and knowledge that he gives to this House about the sector. I appreciate his challenge, as I am sure many others in the Chamber do. This is an important debate about the needs of young people within the overall housing market and I thank all other noble Lords who have spoken today for their considered and insightful contributions.
Throughout the debate, we have heard about the challenges the younger generation of this country face in achieving home ownership, and in accessing affordable housing to rent. Securing affordable, decent and stable homes is critical to ensuring young people can meet major life milestones, move for career opportunities, and start a family. The Government are committed to delivering the warm, safe, decent and affordable housing needed to support them through their life journeys.
Young people are part of a housing market significantly different from the one experienced by previous generations. Children of home owners are over twice as likely to be home owners than children of renters—an issue raised by the noble Baronesses, Lady Donaghy and Lady Thornhill. The dependence on the bank of mum and dad, as mentioned by my noble friend Lord Attlee, to afford a home shows the difficulties in accessing the housing ladder. This is reflected in how the historic home ownership rate for those aged 25 to 34 has fallen from 51% in 1989 to 28% in 2019.
The Government have worked hard to reverse these historic trends with our long-term housing strategy. We have made huge strides since 2010 to increase home ownership, provide stability and security for those renting, and improve the quality of houses young adults own and rent. This will ultimately improve their life outcomes and quality of life. The hundreds of thousands of new homes we are delivering will create the homes young people need now and in the future. I am proud of the progress this Government have made to deliver on these priorities, but we cannot stop. We will therefore continue to press ahead in meeting these challenges.
First, almost all noble Lords brought up the planning system. We have built more homes in places young people want to live, and at prices that they can afford. Since 2010, over 2.5 million additional homes have been delivered, and the four highest rates of additional housing supply in over 30 years have all come since 2018. Increasing housing supply is at the heart of solving our housing challenges; crucial to that is reforming our planning system. Not only must we have enough homes in the right places, we must also have homes suitable for those with a range of needs, including those with disabilities and special care needs, and the vulnerable.
My noble friends Lord Young of Cookham, Lord Jackson of Peterborough and Lord Attlee raised important questions about how we are unblocking the planning system to deliver the houses that we need in the places where we need them. Building on our work since 2010, in December 2023 the Government revised the National Planning Policy Framework in response to the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act. The framework sets out the Government’s planning policies for England and how we expect them to be applied. While the Government’s standard method for assessing local housing need is used to assess the total number of homes needed in a local area, the framework makes it clear that local authorities should assess the size, type and tenure of housing needed for different groups, including young people, young people with disabilities, care leavers and students.
Government housing targets have not changed. We remain committed to our ambition to deliver 300,000 homes a year. The Secretary of State’s Written Ministerial Statement of 6 December 2022 confirmed that the standard method for assessing local housing need will be retained. The Government have made it clear that every local authority is expected to progress their local plans. If sufficient progress is not made, the Secretary of State will consider using his powers of intervention to ensure that plans are put in place. We also recently consulted on proposals to implement reforms to plan-making processes to ensure that plans are prepared in 30 months. The reason for that is that we know that local authorities that have up-to-date local plans deliver more houses.
The Government have in place a strong programme of support to upskill the capacity and capability of local planning authorities, as raised by my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough. This includes a £13.5 million “planning super-squad” of leading planners and other experts that will deploy teams of specialists into planning authorities to accelerate development and a £29 million planning skills development delivery fund to help planning authorities deal with the backlog of planning applications ahead of the forthcoming changes to the planning system through the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act. To ensure that local authorities are doing everything they can to build the homes that are needed, in February this year the Secretary of State set out clear expectations for every council in England to prioritise building on brownfield developments —a key point raised by my noble friend Lord Jackson.
However, it is not enough just to build more houses. The Government are committed to ensuring that the planning system creates more beautiful and sustainable buildings and places everywhere, as raised by the noble Lord, Lord Best. The duty introduced through the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act for all local councils to produce a design code at the spatial scale of their authority area will give design codes significant weight when planning applications are determined, and the establishment of the Office for Place will support the creation of healthy, beautiful places. This Government will not compromise on quality and beauty.
Turning to housing supply, an area raised by the noble Lord, Lord Best, with regard to the 300,000 target, I recognise the significant challenges faced by the housebuilding sector in the current economic climate. The Government continue to prioritise support to the industry and local areas as part of our commitment to deliver 1 million new homes over the lifetime of this Parliament, which we are on track to deliver. This is critical in ensuring that housing across that the market is affordable—a crucial topic raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill. We are investing billions to support housebuilding and achieve that commitment, including through our £1 billion brownfield, infrastructure and land fund, and to manage different drivers of demand, such as migration—an important area raised by my noble friend Lord Lilley. Our £1.2 billion local authority housing fund is providing capital funding directly to councils. It will provide capital funding to local authorities to obtain better-quality temporary accommodation for those owed homelessness duty and to provide safe and suitable homes for those on the Afghan resettlement schemes—an extremely important point noted by the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine.
As my noble friend Lord Jackson mentioned, ensuring that we are facilitating institutional investment in housebuilding in this country is of paramount importance. The £1.5 billion Levelling Up Home Building Fund leverages institutional investment from both private capital and pensions to achieve our ambitions.
My noble friend Lord Jackson and the noble Lord, Lord Best, raised the recent Competition and Markets Authority report on housebuilding. I welcome the report. The Government will carefully consider the findings and the recommendation to formally respond to it within 90 days of publication.
I want to note where we have made substantial progress through our delivery of affordable homes, an issue raised by the noble Lord, Lord Best, in particular. Since 2010 we have delivered almost 700,000 new affordable homes, making it easier for young people to access the housing ladder. We have scaled up the delivery of affordable housing by investing £11.5 billion through the affordable homes programme, working ambitiously towards meeting our target of a quarter of a million new affordable homes.
At the same time, we have taken steps to reduce demand competition. Although the expansion of the short-term lets market has brought a range of benefits, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, we want to ensure that housing continues to be affordable. That is why the Government have announced a mandatory national short-term lets registration scheme to provide valuable information to local authorities in supporting the application and enforcement of planning changes. The Government also introduced higher rates of stamp duty land tax in April 2016 for those purchasing additional properties.
The noble Lord, Lord Best, raised the issue of the Church of England’s report Coming Home, which argued that an ambitious approach is needed to solve the housing challenges facing this country. As he said, it was debated in detail on 24 February, when the Government set out the comprehensive long-term housing strategy in responding to those challenges.
Turning to home ownership, the Government have a robust programme of interventions. My noble friend Lord Young, the noble Lord, Lord Best, and the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, raised the important question of how we are making it easier for young people to buy their own home. One key programme to note, shared ownership, is a unique scheme targeted at first-time buyers. It allows young people to purchase a share of a home through a mortgage while paying rent at below-market value on the rest of the home. Over time, young people can buy more shares, until they have bought the home in its entirety. I have seen many schemes like this and how pleased young people, particularly young families, are when they feel they are getting towards owning that home of their own.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
Many young people who have gone into those schemes are now having incredibly high service charges imposed on them, and we need to come back to that issue when we look at the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill. In a case I saw today, the charge had gone up from £94 a month to over £600, and as a result that young couple cannot sell the property or afford to live in it. The colloquial term for this is “fleecehold”. We need to think very carefully about those schemes.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
The noble Baroness is right, and I have heard similar stories. That is why we have the leaseholder Bill coming through, which we will be debating in just a few weeks’ time.
In 2022-23, of those reported to my department, an estimated 77% of shared ownership purchases were made by first-time buyers and 33% of those purchases were made by buyers under the age of 30—a testament to the effectiveness of the action of this Government. Furthermore, our First Homes scheme offers first-time buyers under the age of 40 a minimum 30% discount on the price of an eligible new home, helping the younger generation get a foothold on the property ladder. The noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, asked for further detail on what the programme has delivered. I have only the top line, which is that there were 1,250 completions through the First Homes early delivery programme to the end of September 2023. If the noble Baroness wants more detail, she is welcome to come and ask me.
Through our lifetime ISA scheme, we have helped more than 56,000 account holders to become first-time buyers. More recently, we have recognised and responded to the challenging market conditions for lenders and buyers alike through the introduction of the mortgage guarantee scheme. This supports participating lenders to continue providing 5% deposit mortgages. We have extended this until June 2025 so that we can continue providing this vital support.
My noble friend Lord Young raised the question of stamp duty, land tax and cutting capital gains tax when landlords sell to sitting tenants. The Government have already taken action by cutting stamp duty during the pandemic, up to March 2025. This is reducing the financial burden on first-time buyers across the country, but particularly in and around London and the south-east, where these pressures are felt most acutely. On cutting capital gains tax for landlords’ sales to sitting tenants, this is not a policy the Government are currently considering. Taxation is a matter for the Chancellor and any decisions he takes on tax are considered, obviously, in the context of the wider public finances.
On the work of government on preventing homelessness and rough sleeping, as raised by the noble Baronesses, Lady Thornhill and Lady Valentine, I want to set out the measures we have prioritised to prevent vulnerable people—young people particularly—such as care leavers ending up homeless. In 2022 we published our cross-government strategy Ending Rough Sleeping for Good, which recognised that young people face particular challenges accessing and maintaining accommodation.
For young people with disabilities, my department, alongside the Department for Health and Social Care and the NHS, provides capital grant funding to subsidise the delivery of a new supply of supported housing, including for disabled people. Young people with disabilities who satisfy needs-assessment eligibility criteria and a means test benefit from a wider statutory duty to provide home adaptions. There are powers to provide adaptions for those who do not qualify under that duty. Under this Government, the disabled facilities grant has risen from £220 million in 2015-16 to £625 million in 2024-25—a more than doubling of the grant. This has been well received by disabled people.
When young people do find themselves homeless or at risk of homelessness, within the next 56 days they are owed a homelessness duty by their local authority. Our single homelessness accommodation programme will deliver over 650 homes and support services for young people in this situation. This is in addition to other support, including the £109 million top-up to the homelessness prevention grant for councils and an initial £6 million for rough sleeping winter pressures.
Many of our young people want to be free to move to places where they can connect their talents with economic opportunities before choosing to settle down. This is where the private sector steps in. Increasing security and quality in the private rented sector requires ambitious reforms and the Government have stepped up to deliver. We have introduced the Renters (Reform) Bill, which will support tenants with a raft of measures, including applying the decent homes standard to the private rented sector for the first time and abolishing Section 21 evictions. The Bill is awaiting Report in the other place, which is subject to parliamentary scheduling, and it will be announced in the usual course of business management. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, that the proportion of private rented sector households has remained relatively stable for nearly a decade, and the number of renters has doubled since 2004.
For those in the social rented sector, we have enshrined in law, through the Social Housing (Regulation) Act, a rebalancing of the relationship between landlord and tenant. We are ensuring that landlords are held to account for their performance—an important step in improving the quality of houses across the market, which was an issue raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine. We are creating a housing market fit for the future.
The Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill will reform the outdated leasehold system in this country. From 2025, the future homes standard will future-proof our homes, ensuring that new homes produce at least 75% less CO emissions than those built to previous standards. We know that making long-term changes takes time to deliver, and the Government are doing all they can against a challenging economic background to ensure that the younger generation can access affordable, safe and high-quality housing.
Following the £188 million allocation to the housing projects in Sheffield, Blackpool and Liverpool at the Convention of the North on 1 March, last week’s Spring Budget allocated over £240 million to housing projects in London, an area where affordability is challenging, particularly for young people, as we have heard today.
The noble Lord, Lord Best, my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham and others brought up intergenerational housing. I totally agree with them that we need better older people’s housing and more choice for older people because, if we give them better housing and more choice, we can start to move the housing stock around. Some local authorities are doing that really well, but more can be done. The Government’s independent older people’s housing task force is looking at housing for older people, and it will make its final recommendations to Ministers this summer.
I hope I have answered as much as I can—
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
There is consensus across the House, among Members of all parties and none, that we should reinstate the local housing targets. Nevertheless, 65 local planning authorities have frozen their local plans. Is my noble friend in a position to explain or tell the House when the Secretary of State is likely to invoke his statutory powers to force those local planning authorities to come up with local plans?
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
I cannot say when he will do that; all I can say is that the Act is now in statute. The NPPF is now being updated, so we will encourage and support those local authorities to get the local plans in place as soon as possible.
I am being told I have run out of time, so, in conclusion, we fully recognise the unique housing needs of young people and the importance of homes to their lives. The Government are absolutely committed to ensuring those needs are met, whether that be through home ownership, the private rented sector or social housing. This debate has served as a valuable reminder of the critical responsibility we share in supporting the next generation and making sure that the housing market works for all. I once again thank my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham for bringing forward this debate and all noble Lords for their contributions today. I look forward to continuing discussions and working with noble Lords on issues relating to the housing needs of not just our younger generation but the whole of our communities.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to all those who have taken part in this debate. It could go on until 6.26 pm, but the House will be relieved to hear that I plan to speak for just a couple of minutes.
The noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, quite rightly mentioned Lord McKenzie of Luton, who shadowed me when I was on the Front Bench and asked the most difficult questions with the utmost courtesy. We all miss him. She rightly pointed out the illogicality of current ratable values and the HMO loophole, which does need to be looked at.
I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, for her comments, particularly on the need to arrest the drift from long-term lets to short-term lets. There are a number of provisions in the pipeline, and I know she will be keeping a close eye on that.
My noble friend Lord Lilley raised the issue of demand. He was right to do so if one is talking about the housing market, where supply and demand are relevant. Where I think I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Best, is that one needs to raise housing in immigration debates as well as raising immigration in housing debates. I know he and I will both pursue that.
The noble Lord, Lord Best, was also right to mention the disenchantment of young people at the current housing position: it is feeding into disenchantment with politics as well as disenchantment with housing. I am grateful, as always, to the noble Lord, Lord Best. I thought the point he made about the public expenditure benefit of home ownership because it reduces the housing benefit costs of older people was a valid one. I hope the Treasury can feed that into its computer when it looks at future expenditure plans. The noble Lord also rightly mentioned the Letwin review, which had a whole lot of worthwhile policies which I think should be pursued.
We welcome my noble friend Lord Attlee to housing debates, with his robust common sense. We learned that the planning system was a conspiracy to keep the rich rich, but I agree with him on what he said about some of the complexities of the planning system.
I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, who focused on temporary accommodation and its huge cost to local authorities; and on the disruption to the families who are caught up in the moves, including the disruption to education. She was right to mention housing benefit. I think she was the only person in the debate to mention housing benefit, which is highly relevant to any debate on housing. She also reminded us of the good people who are doing heroic work in voluntary organisations on the front line.
I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Jackson. On nutrient neutrality, I was slightly surprised after the defeat in your Lordships’ House that the policy was not overturned in the other place, but my days of party management are now way behind me, so I will not go too much into that.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, for endorsing the need for the planning departments to have the resources that they need, the need to have up-to-date plans and, of course, the need to increase supply.
The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, reminded us of Housing First and what we could do when we really had to and how we got everybody who was sleeping rough off the streets. That was a fantastic response by local authorities and voluntary organisations. She agreed with me on the need to reinstate local authority targets.
Finally, I am very grateful to my patient noble friend the Minister, who provided an important balance to our debate by setting on the record the Government’s many achievements. She dealt, as helpfully as she was able to do within the confines of her brief, with all the issues that were raised.
In conclusion, this debate has been a rich quarry for material for party manifestos. I beg to move.
Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023 (Consequential and Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2024
(8 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Scott of Bybrook
That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 18 January be approved. Considered in Grand Committee on 12 March.