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Oral Answers to Questions
(7 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)
Alistair Strathern (Mid Bedfordshire) (Lab)
Stephen Morgan (Portsmouth South) (Lab)
Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Education (Gillian Keegan)
We will all know somebody with special educational needs or disabilities and understand how vital it is to get a child with special educational needs or disabilities the right support early on. In recent years, we have seen a massive increase in special educational needs in our country, which is why we have expanded funding to a record level—at £10.5 billion, up by 60% in the last five years—and why we are reforming the system to deal with the increase in demand, including the biggest investment in building special educational needs school places in our country’s history.
Janet Daby
Children in Lewisham are waiting on average two and a half years to get an autism diagnosis. This is wrong and unacceptable. It is also a national issue, but it is made worse by a shortage of clinical staff. The Government are failing to recognise the seriousness of the shortage of educational psychologists. Can the Secretary of State tell me why they have failed and what is being done to recruit more educational psychologists as well as to tackle education, health and care plan waiting times?
Gillian Keegan
I thank the hon. Lady for her question. Around half of new EHCPs were issued within the statutory time limit of 20 weeks, and some local authorities are delivering over 90%, but of course we recognise that the system is under pressure, post both the pandemic and the massive rise in demand for special educational needs support. That is why we have increased the budget and put an improvement plan in place. With regard to her question about educational psychologists, we are training 400 more, which is a big increase.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
I have a constituent—it could be many of the constituents who come to me—who has a child with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism and other severe learning difficulties. She had to wait an awful long time for an EHCP for her child and, in the end, the plan listed the very school that says it cannot cope with the needs of the child. This happens routinely—a school that says it cannot cope is still listed on the EHCP. What is the Secretary of State doing to ensure that councils and other people who do the EHCP are not just ignoring what the school says and are actually putting down the schools that can cope with the needs? My constituent’s child now has only one hour a week of education. That is surely not good enough.
Gillian Keegan
We need to do all we can to support children with special educational needs; they are vulnerable and need the support as early as possible. We have programmes in place to support local authorities, but the biggest thing that we are doing is increasing the number of special educational needs school places. This will be the largest increase in a generation—60,000 more school places—and it is in stark contrast to when Labour was last in power, when the number of places reduced by 4,000. That is something we are very focused on doing. Many of those have already been delivered, some are work in progress and some will be in the hon. Member’s area.
Alistair Strathern
Far too many families know what a battle it can be to secure an EHCP assessment for their child, but for forces families this battle can become a recurring nightmare, as they are forced to restart the process all over again if required to move base before it completes. It cannot be right that those who sacrifice so much for our country are so let down by the current assessment system. How can we put this right?
Gillian Keegan
Of course, we are always looking to improve the system and we do have an improvement plan in place. I will take away the hon. Gentleman’s specific point about people who move around from place to place, but the most important and fundamental thing is that we have increased the budget, which has now gone up to £10.5 billion—a 60% increase in the last few years. We are also investing in building the right provision, the number of educational psychologists and the workforce. We have a thorough plan in place and we are working to deliver it.
Stephen Morgan
Parents in Portsmouth are rightly concerned that fewer than half of the primary schoolchildren in the city are achieving the expected standards in reading, writing and maths, while, under the watch of the Lib Dem-run council, waiting lists for SEND support continue to rise. Does the Secretary of State agree that families in Portsmouth deserve better than a council that is failing children and failing families?
Margaret Greenwood
The Royal College of Psychiatrists has found that autistic children are 28 times more likely to think about or attempt suicide than other children. Not getting the support they need can affect autistic children into their adult lives. This is a matter of extreme concern, as is the fact that more than 9,500 Wirral children were persistently absent from school in 2022-23, which is double the pre-pandemic figures. I note the Minister’s earlier comments, but what assessment have the Government made of the percentage of children in Wirral and across England who are missing from school and who have special educational needs and disabilities? What specific measures will the Government take to address their needs?
Gillian Keegan
The hon. Lady is right to identify the crossover between special educational needs and absence from schools. This can sometimes result in poor outcomes, which can lead to mental health issues later. That is why it is important that we get early help to children as quickly as possible. We have a special educational needs and alternative provision improvement plan, and in terms of workforce, which is the most important thing on top of the places, we are training more special educational needs co-ordinators; we have changed the training for new teachers; we are making sure that we invest in a new national professional qualification to upskill teachers; and we have more educational psychologists—400 more in training—and more speech and language therapists. There is a huge workforce element in the plan to improve our special educational needs offer.
Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)
I welcome what Secretary State has just said about the workforce, and it is vital that we get that into place, but a week on from the publication of the Buckland review and two years on from the Education Committee’s call to bolster careers support for children with SEN, can she update us on what Ministers and the Department are doing to work with the Department for Work and Pensions to provide wider opportunities for young people with autism?
Gillian Keegan
We all know that most people with learning disabilities want to work, and with the right support they can work. The SEND code of practice is clear that all children and young people with special educational needs should be prepared for adulthood, including employment. We are investing £80 million in a supported internship programme, which is very successful, and we will be doubling this by March 2025. We are working with the DWP on a number of programmes and, following the Buckland review, the DWP is setting up a task group to consider all the recommendations.
Dr Neil Hudson (Penrith and The Border) (Con)
With a 60% rise in complex needs funding over five years, reaching £10.5 billion in 2024-25, with £105 million of funding for special free schools in the spring Budget and with the special educational needs and disabilities and alternative provision plan to support everyone with needs and disabilities to age 25, does my right hon. Friend agree that it is this Conservative Government that are working hard for the life chances of every child in our country?
Gillian Keegan
Absolutely right. My hon. Friend is also right to say that we should take no lessons from the Opposition on supporting children with SEND: let us not forget that the number of children benefiting from being in special schools fell, probably because there was no specific high needs funding at all for local authorities to support people with special educational needs. In contrast, we are investing record funding and we are obviously building more places than we ever have in our country’s history. Only the Conservatives have a plan to support children with SEND.
Caroline Ansell (Eastbourne) (Con)
In all my years in teaching, before I came to this place, I experienced only one episode of violence at the hands of a student when they hurled a chair at me across the classroom. I was six months pregnant then. Only one episode in all those many, many years. But increasingly, teaching staff are telling me that this is becoming more and more commonplace. In fact, they expect it. My most recent conversation about this was on Saturday, when a teaching assistant said that they had finally been forced to retire because they could not cope with the stress any more. Some of this will be due to unmet or unrecognised special educational needs, and I thank the Secretary of State for outlining all the provisions that are being made—indeed, I have a new special school in my constituency—but some are not. Will she meet me to discuss some specific local concerns?
Gillian Keegan
Yes; I am sorry to hear about the situation of the teacher in my hon. Friend’s constituency. Of course, good behaviour is the bedrock of schools and school standards. We are investing more in behaviour hubs, which are helping schools that need help with the behaviour of children. We are also investing more in alternative provision schools. We are building 77 new ones; 51 are already open and the rest will be opening in the coming years.
Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)
In Essex, it has been taking far too long for children to get their education health and care plans, so I was pleased to hear that the county council had just recruited 46 additional members of staff. It is also building new special schools, including two more in Chelmsford, but what can make a difference is specialist hubs within mainstream schools, helping children from that school and from neighbouring schools. Given that we have large numbers of schools being rebuilt in Essex due to reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete—RAAC—does the Secretary of State agree that this could provide an opportunity, and that we should look at all the schools that are due to be rebuilt and consider putting specialist hubs into those rebuilding programmes?
Gillian Keegan
My right hon. Friend mentions the considerable investment that is going into special educational needs and high needs budgets. There is also provision for capital to build new free schools and school places. As we look to rebuild some of the schools affected by RAAC, which has now all been identified—every school has its budget details—we urge local authorities to consider what will best meet the needs of young people in their area. There is flexibility on free school places as well: those schools look at what to come forward with as regards provision that is needed to address local need.
Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
Coram’s 2024 childcare survey found that just 6% of local authorities are confident that they will have enough childcare places for disabled children. High-quality early years education is essential in ensuring that children’s needs are identified at the most important time for their development. The children’s Minister, the hon. Member for Wantage (David Johnston), did not give a clear answer on this last month and his statement last week made no reference to disabled children. Is the Secretary of State really confident that every eligible family with a disabled child has been able to access a childcare place as part of the April expansion—yes or no?
Gillian Keegan
I will expand on the yes or no, as the hon. Lady wants a clear answer and obviously has not heard the clear answer that she been given before. Local authorities have a statutory duty to provide places for all children, including those with special educational needs, but we are working with organisations such as Dingley’s Promise to review special educational needs inclusion, and to see what more we can do to encourage providers to further consider what they can do to provide places. However, we will work with local authorities to make sure that we improve this.
Ms Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)
The Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education (Luke Hall)
The proportion of apprentices who achieve their apprenticeship standard rose to 54.3% in 2022-23, which is up 2.9 percentage points on the year before. We are taking action to ensure that every apprentice has a high-quality experience. We are reviewing and improving standards where there are poor achievement rates; we are investing £7.5 million in the provider workforce development programme; and Ofsted will be inspecting all providers by 2025.
Ms Rimmer
Giving all young people a good education is key to levelling up our country, yet the number of apprenticeship starts has fallen by a third over the last decade and there are 3% fewer completions than three years ago. We have improved on last year, but we are not there yet. Why have the Government let the number of offered and available apprenticeships slide, and why does the Minister think that young people are not qualifying at the rate they were three years ago?
Luke Hall
We want all young people to have access to good, high-quality apprenticeships because they offer a valuable experience and an opportunity to upskill at the start of their career. We have seen a 4% increase in apprenticeship starts by young people under the age of 19 so far this year, and 57% of all starts have been by those aged under 25. Last year, we saw a 21% increase in apprenticeship achievements in the hon. Lady’s constituency. That is welcome news but, of course, there is always more to do. I am very happy to work with her on the issue.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
Is it not the case that apprenticeship achievements have gone up by 22% over the past year, that over 90% of apprentices who complete their apprenticeship get good jobs or good skills, and that starts are going up, too? Is it not also the case that we now have more than 690 quality apprenticeship standards in everything from aeronautics to zoology, and that any attempt to dilute the apprenticeship levy would not only destroy the number of starts but harm achievement? It is this side of the House that is building an apprenticeship and skills nation.
Luke Hall
During his time as a Minister, my right hon. Friend helped to completely rebuild the apprenticeship system, introducing higher-quality standards. Apprenticeships are now longer, better and have more off-the-job training, with proper independent assessment at the end. They are more valued by employers and we have seen 5.8 million starts since 2010. He is an incredible advocate for further education. Following him in this role, I learnt very quickly that I had big shoes to fill. I look forward to working with him to ensure that we continue delivering in this area.
Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)
The truth is that not only have apprenticeship starts plummeted since 2017, but new data shows that the overall achievement rate has dropped since 2020, with level 2 apprenticeships hit hardest. Almost half of apprentices do not complete their courses, which is simply not good enough. Employers are calling out for reform, but this Government have their head in the sand. Is this not yet more evidence that, far from tackling barriers to opportunity and boosting Britain’s skills, the Government are failing our young people and our businesses, and that only Labour has a plan to turn this around?
Luke Hall
We have made apprenticeships more rigorous. They are now more credible. They are designed by employers and have proper robust assessments. The only plan Labour has, without more funding, is to cut the number of apprenticeship starts in our country by 60%. Obviously, the hon. Member missed the figures published last week, which showed a 2.5% increase in level 2 attainment rates. We are delivering high-quality standards with more off-the-job training and that should be welcomed across the House.
Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (David Johnston)
Having undertaken a review of the special educational needs system, we published our improvement plan last year. Provision is regularly reviewed through school and local area inspections by Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission. We also collect and review data on education, health and care plans, including on timeliness and volumes, and on capacity in special schools, SEND units and resourced provision.
Tom Hunt
Last week, I met the chief executive of a chain of independent schools, which includes a lot of independent special schools—approximately 40% of the children there have special educational needs. She was concerned about any proposal to put VAT on school fees—she feels all this will do is put up school fees and a lot of parents who are just about managing to send their kids to independent special schools will take them out, putting more pressure on the state education SEND system. Does the Minister share my concern that, although people may think that this policy is smart politics, it may be people with special educational needs, including those on low incomes households, who pay the price for this short-sighted policy proposal?
David Johnston
My hon. Friend is a great champion of children with SEN and he is absolutely right. Labour’s ideological obsession with private schools means that it will even charge children in an independent special school 20% VAT for their needs. That will make it harder for those families to afford the provision they need and drive up demand for places in state special schools. It is just another example of the mess Labour would make of our education system.
Rachael Maskell
The inequality in the funding formula is driving inequality for children with SEN. In York, we are seeing not only the lack of placements that are needed, but staff being laid off because of an inadequacy of funding. We know that the number of children with SEND is growing exponentially in York, so will the Minister not only review the funding formula to ensure that it is fair, but give local authorities the power and provision to provide for the future needs of our city?
David Johnston
York is in our safety valve programme to provide support with the financial challenges it has. It has seen a 27% increase in per-head funding in the last three financial years. We review the funding formula every year. The biggest complaint people have is the historic factor, which is difficult to reduce quickly because there are children receiving that provision at the moment.
Mark Garnier (Wyre Forest) (Con)
Wyre Forest School, a special school in Kidderminster, has been doing a fantastic job for a number of years, but it has been running way past its maximum capacity for some time. There was potential for relief when its next-door neighbour, Baxter College, secured funding from a generous grant from the school rebuilding programme for a mutually beneficial rebuilding to expand capacity on both sides. However, with that project being in phase 3, Wyre Forest School and Baxter College may have to wait until 2032 before they can see any beneficial reliefs. Will the Minister or the Secretary of State meet me and the heads of the two schools to discuss how we can expedite getting this rebuilding programme under way?
Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)
On Saturday, I met a lady who has moved within Shropshire but into North Shropshire, and it took 10 weeks for her year 9 son with SEN to be placed in a school. It is one without any one-to-one support, which is a big downgrade on his previous situation. His parents reported to me that all he has received from the school is detention for not completing his work fast enough. We are desperately short of SEN places in Shropshire. Can the Minister reassure me that the Government are looking at Shropshire and working to provide proper provision for those children, who are being so badly let down?
David Johnston
Obviously, I cannot comment on that specific case, but I can tell the hon. Lady that we are in the process of creating 60,000 more special school places; there 108 schools already open and 92 approved to open.
Craig Tracey (North Warwickshire) (Con)
The Minister for Schools (Damian Hinds)
It is well and widely recognised that PE and sport support children and young people’s health and general wellbeing. The school sport and activity action plan update, published in July 2023, sets out how we will support all young people to participate in PE and sport in school.
Craig Tracey
I recently hosted an event here in Parliament with Nick Dougherty, the golfer, and the Golf Foundation to kick off their Unleash Your Drive programme, an amazing initiative providing young people with the life skills they need to survive in the modern world, including mental resilience. The scheme has been rolled out to over 500 schools since September last year, with fantastic results. Will the Minister meet me and the Golf Foundation to discuss this success and how we can encourage more schools to teach mental toughness skills through sport, as part of the school sport and activity action plan?
Damian Hinds
I know about the good work of the Golf Foundation, under the leadership of Brendon Pyle. I would be very happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss its work, specifically the Unleash Your Drive programme.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
Sport, PE and outdoor education have a huge impact on building resilience among young people, helping them to gain a love of learning as well as the outdoors, which can be great for them for their whole lives. Does the Minister agree that it is a great shame that just the other week the Welsh Senedd voted down by a single vote the Bill proposed by his colleague and my friend Sam Rowlands which would have made outdoor education an experience that every young person in Wales could access? Will the Minister go one further and back my equivalent Outdoor Education Bill, which will receive its Second Reading on 21 June, so that this place ensures that every young person in primary and secondary schools has the ability to access an outdoor education experience for free?
Damian Hinds
The hon. Gentleman has been entirely consistent for some time in talking about the importance of outdoor education, about which I am happy to agree. I am not sure it is always necessarily a case for law, but it is certainly important for young people to get outdoors, to be in touch with nature and to see the countryside, as well as running around enjoying PE and sporting activities.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
The Minister for Schools (Damian Hinds)
I have been horrified and appalled to see the rise in antisemitism in education since 7 October. It is unacceptable and it cannot be tolerated. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has written to all schools and colleges reminding them of their duties under Prevent, and we are investing £7 million to help tackle antisemitism across education.
Bob Blackman
My right hon. Friend is clearly right that the rise of antisemitism in schools—or anywhere—is absolutely unacceptable. One of the causes is the failure of schools to teach children about the history of Israel and the fact that Jewish people have occupied Israel for over 3,000 years. Indeed, the Balfour declaration set up the creation of the modern state of Israel. As that is not communicated, there is widespread ignorance and people do not believe that Jewish people have occupied that land for so long. Will my right hon. Friend conduct a review of the curriculum to ensure that young people are properly educated about the history of Israel?
Damian Hinds
I appreciate what my hon. Friend says. History is a very important subject for many reasons. Learning about Israel and the wider region can be covered in history, for example in the “challenges for Britain, Europe and the wider world since 1901” theme. In general, we do not specify individual historical events in our national curriculum, with the sole exception of the holocaust, as he will know.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Minister for his positive and helpful response. What discussions has he had with counterparts in the devolved nations, in particular in Northern Ireland, where the two different groups—the nationalists and the Unionists; the Protestants and the Catholics—have been able to develop an understanding on education? They are able to look at each other without the suspicion that may have been there 20 or 30 years ago. Has the Minister had a chance to talk to the devolved nations to ascertain whether introducing compulsory education on the importance of combatting antisemitism is possible, taking the Northern Ireland example as one that works?
Damian Hinds
I always value opportunities to speak to colleagues and counterparts in the devolved Administrations. I believe that we will have another opportunity relatively soon to speak to the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues in Northern Ireland, and I have no doubt that that will be one thing that we will wish to talk about.
Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)
It is right that young people can recognise and denounce antisemitism and it is also right that they know something of the history of the region, including the continued expansion of illegal settlements. But I hope the Minister agrees that right-wing rhetoric and Islamophobia also pose a threat to our young people. What steps are being taken to ensure that both antisemitism and anti-Muslim hate are treated with equal severity, especially given some of the Islamophobic remarks that have been made by Members and former Members of his own party?
Damian Hinds
The hon. Lady is right to call out the wickedness of Islamophobia. There have been Islamophobic incidents in schools as well, and Tell MAMA is an important resource in that regard. We will not tolerate anti-Muslim hatred in any form and we will seek to stamp it out whenever and wheresoever it occurs.
Mr Speaker
Ms Anum Qaisar is not here to ask the next question, but will the Minister give an answer so that I can bring in the Opposition Front Bencher?
Ms Anum Qaisar (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)
The Minister for Schools (Damian Hinds)
Ministers normally meet colleagues from the devolved Governments, as we were just discussing a moment ago. The Education Ministers Council was due to be hosted by the Scottish Government in late 2023, but, although we have been watching our doormats, no invitation has arrived. The UK Government are providing £108 billion over 2022-23 to 2024-25 to help with the cost of living.
Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)
On the cost of living, among concerns raised by parents in response to the most recent National Parents Survey by Parentkind, the cost of school uniforms, trips and food came up the most. Labour has a plan to cut the cost of school uniforms by limiting the number of branded items, and our free breakfast clubs in every primary school will put money back in parents’ pockets while improving attendance and attainment. We have done the Government’s homework, and they are still failing families. Will it take a Labour Government to give every child in this country the chances that they deserve?
Damian Hinds
I appreciate what the hon. Lady says, but I am afraid she needs to keep up: we have done the things that restrict the cost pressures on uniforms. We regularly survey how much uniforms are costing, and some of those results are encouraging. We also survey regularly the number of schools that have a second-hand uniform facility available, and I am pleased to report that that has improved. We are also very clear that, when a school trip is part of the national curriculum—an essential thing to do—there should be no charge. In addition to that, way many schools make sure that they are providing inclusivity for all pupils, and of course the pupil premium that we introduced shortly after 2010 is one of the things that facilitates that.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
The Minister for Schools (Damian Hinds)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question. I thank him for his ongoing support for this new school, including his personal work to make sure that there is provision for boys and girls. We are working with his council and sponsoring trust to agree a provisional opening date for Hanwood Park Free School as soon as possible.
Mr Hollobone
The new Hanwood Park Free School is a key part of the future educational infrastructure in Kettering and will be located at the heart of the Hanwood Park development, which, with 5,500 houses, is one of the largest housing developments in the whole country. Will my right hon. Friend please facilitate a meeting in Kettering with the Department’s regional director for the east midlands, me, the local educational authority, the Orbis academy trust and the Hanwood Park developers so that together we can ensure that the school build is co-ordinated as best as possible?
Damian Hinds
Again, I commend my hon. Friend for his work. I also appreciate the importance of the provision of local services—none is more important than education—where there is housing development. I would be very pleased to convene such a meeting as he requests.
Sir David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Education (Gillian Keegan)
Since 2010, we have completely transformed how we teach reading in England, expanding the evidence-based methods of phonics across all of our schools. In the 2011-12 phonics screening checks, only 58% of our children met the expected standard of reading. Thanks to those reforms and the hard work of our brilliant teachers, not only is that number now 79%, but our primary schoolchildren have been ranked fourth best readers in the world. We are sticking to our plan, delivering higher reading standards across our schools.
Sir David Evennett
I thank my right hon. Friend for that very positive response. In 2011-12, only 63% of children in my borough of Bexley met the expected standard of reading. Now, after the evidence-based reforms from this Conservative Government, that number is 81%—a real achievement. There is still much more to be done, but does she share my disappointment that the Labour party opposed those reforms at every opportunity?
Gillian Keegan
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Conservatives’ plan to reform our reading standards completely and expand phonics across our schools has meant that our primary schoolchildren are now the fourth best readers in the world. What was Labour’s response? It said that phonics would not work, that our literacy drive was “dull”, and that free schools were “dangerous”. What is dangerous is the risk of a Labour Government who would collapse educational standards, as Labour has done in Wales.
Chris Clarkson (Heywood and Middleton) (Con)
The Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education (Luke Hall)
We have seen year-on-year growth in degree-level apprenticeships. Starts at levels 6 and 7 increased by 5.8% this year. There are now more than 170 employer-designed degree-level apprenticeships, and we are providing an additional £40 million over two years to support providers to expand their offers.
Chris Clarkson
Last week, I had the pleasure of hosting Members of this House and representatives of industry and of the education sector to discuss how we could leverage the resources of the private sector to support further education through a lecturer reservist programme. I particularly thank the Minister and his predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), as well as Hayley Pells of the Institute of the Motor Industry, for all their hard work in making that meeting a reality and for their positive engagement. I would not be doing my job properly if I was not cheeky enough to ask whether the Minister would be willing to join us for our next meeting, when we will flesh out the proposals that we discussed.
Luke Hall
I thought we had an excellent meeting last week. We had really positive discussions about the exciting lecturer reservist pilot that will run in the west midlands, bringing together regional employers, colleges and providers. I look forward to working closely with my hon. Friend as the pilot progresses, and not just to meeting him again but to visiting the pilot when it is up and running.
Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)
The Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education (Luke Hall)
Our reforms make the student loan system more sustainable and fairer for graduates and taxpayers. Tuition fees have been frozen until 2024-25, and it was this Government who acted to cap the interest rate on student loans, because we believe that everybody in our country should have access to world-class higher education.
Yasmin Qureshi
In January, the number of applications to study nursing fell by 7.4%. The Royal College of Nursing said that that could be a direct threat to patient safety. Surely the Government should be doing everything they can to boost recruitment in nursing, but instead last September they introduced a tuition fee system that means that future nursing graduates will pay an extra £48 per month. Why is the Secretary of State penalising people who choose to work in our vital public services?
Luke Hall
The system that we introduced is a progressive one, because lifetime earnings now correlate with the amount that somebody contributes. The highest earners make the largest individual contributions, and the lowest earners contribute the least. For example, someone who leaves university in 2026 earning £26,000 a year will now pay just £7 a month repaying that loan. Crucially, the new interest rate is reduced from the retail prices index plus 3% to RPI plus 0%, which makes it more affordable too. It is a progressive system that we think is fairer for students and taxpayers.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
I welcome the Minister to his place; it is good to see him in his new role. Of course, we miss the former Minister, the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon). As my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) put it so eloquently, we are in real danger of dissuading and disenfranchising so many young people from getting into the sorts of careers in which they are interested, and particularly into roles such as nursing. I reiterate that point, because we have seen a 7.3% decline in the numbers of applications for nursing. At a time when we desperately need more in our health service, what is the Minister doing? Does he really think this system, which was introduced ahead of his joining the education team, is a fair one?
Luke Hall
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his words welcoming me to my post. The point I would make is that the 2023 cycle shows numbers rebalancing and returning to a trend of normal growth in applications following the pandemic. He should also look at the big impact nursing apprenticeships and nursing degree apprenticeships are having on the system. I am always happy to meet him to discuss these issues, but we do think it is a fairer and more affordable system for both students and taxpayers, and will result in more people being able to access a world-class higher education in our country.
Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (David Johnston)
Ofsted outcomes are strong for the five special schools in Bournemouth. Departmental officials continue to work with the council and other services to support rapid improvements, including £16.4 million of higher needs capital funding between 2022 and 2025. The funding allocation this year is £60.9 million, a 27% increase per head compared with 2021-22.
Mr Ellwood
I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. He speaks about increased funding, but there is growing anger from headteachers and parents alike in Bournemouth about the mismanagement of the dedicated schools grant over the past couple of years by Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council. School heads have now taken the unprecedented step of writing open letters of concern to the council. The council is not following the required guidance and is demanding unaffordable sums from schools which, if implemented, would see the loss of teaching assistants. I ask the Department for Education to investigate the council’s decision making, to ensure that correct guidelines are followed in the future and that the right levels of funding stay with the schools.
David Johnston
My right hon. Friend has done an excellent job of raising with me repeatedly the frustration of parents and headteachers in his constituency with BCP Council. I and officials continue to monitor that closely to ensure that schools and children in his area get the provision they deserve.
Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
How many children in schools in Bournemouth have relied on special educational needs and disability provision because they have had an acquired brain injury in the last five years? If the Minister does not know the answer—he might not know it today—will he be able to write to me? If his officials are not able to provide him with an answer, will he ensure that the Department establishes precisely how many children, in all our schools across the whole country, have had an acquired brain injury in the last five years?
David Johnston
I did not know the hon. Gentleman’s constituency was so close to Bournemouth. As he suggests, I do not have the precise answer to that question; I will write to him.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (David Johnston)
Early language skills are vital for children to thrive. That is why we carried out landmark early education reforms, investing up to £180 million in training, qualifications and support and providing a range of evidence-based interventions, from home learning to working with local health services.
Wera Hobhouse
There is growing evidence of how important it is to provide support for speech and language development in nurseries and for preschool-aged children. Programmes such as Language for Life, which is supported by St John’s Foundation in Bath, underpin the work that schools are doing. To demonstrate how well they are doing it, the percentage of children needing additional language support in schools that participated reduced from 84% to 29%. I am sure the Minister will want to congratulate the schools and St John’s Foundation on the work they are doing, but will the Government prioritise speech and language programmes such as Language for Life?
David Johnston
What the hon. Lady sets out sounds very encouraging and I look forward to hearing more about the Language for Life programme. We have been very pleased with the findings of the Government-funded Nuffield Early Language Intervention, which is different, but has also focused on language development. The NELI has been found to help children to make four months’ additional development in their oral language skills, and disadvantaged children to make seven months’ additional progress.
Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)
Will the Minister give us an update on this month’s delivery of the first phase of the free childcare entitlement, and may I urge him to ensure that we deliver phase 2 on time in September?
David Johnston
I am delighted to tell my right hon. Friend and the House that the first phase of the roll-out went very well indeed. Some 200,000 children are now benefiting from the first stage of the roll-out, which Labour Members doubted could happen—we have shown again that we have a plan while they have absolutely none.
Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)
The Minister for Schools (Damian Hinds)
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her question, but I am afraid there is a flawed premise within it. School funding is, at £60.7 billion, the highest it has ever been in real terms per pupil. There has been a real-terms increase of 5.5% per pupil nationally compared with 2010-11.
Nadia Whittome
I thank the Minister for his response, but what he says about the state of school funding is not the full picture, and he knows it. Schools’ costs have increased much faster than funding. In fact, analysis by the National Education Union shows that every single school in Nottingham East had less real-terms funding last year than 14 years ago—that is £1,266 less per pupil on average. If the Government really cared about the future of children and young people, should they not be funding high-quality education instead of whipping up culture wars?
Damian Hinds
We are funding high-quality education, and the quality of that education is seen in the results, be they the performance of 15-year-olds in mathematics, English and science, or the results of primary school children, which have improved dramatically since 2010. On the NEU “analysis”, I am afraid that it is flawed in multiple respects: it does not include a number for the high-needs budget, which has grown so much, and ultimately it does not use real numbers for 2010.
Dame Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)
On the subject of school budgets, will the Minister join me in welcoming the letter that I received from Malvern College in Worcestershire this week? Not only is that independent school one of the largest employers in Worcestershire, but it contributes £28 million to the local economy, and if its 300-plus fee-paying pupils had to be educated in local schools, that would come at a huge cost to the public purse.
Damian Hinds
My hon. Friend is exactly correct. If the Labour party got into government, there would be a hike in the cost of going to private schools, which would push a number of families out of that provision. We do not know how many, Labour does not know how many and nor does anybody else, but we do know that some— possibly very many—would come into the state-funded system, causing great strain and possibly cuts that would affect other children.
Sir David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Education (Gillian Keegan)
With your permission, Mr Speaker, I start by sending our thoughts and prayers to the whole school and the community in Ammanford in Wales.
With exams season nearly upon us, I wish all our students and teachers the very best of luck over the coming months. We should be very proud of all the progress that our students and teachers have made, with 90% of schools now rated “good” or “outstanding”—up from 68% under Labour. In the internationally renowned programme for international student assessment, our secondary school children have rocketed up the rankings from 27th and 25th in the world for maths and reading under Labour to 11th and 13th now. The establishment of the Education Endowment Foundation, which has conducted nearly 20% of all randomised control trials in education in the world, is adding to that success. That fantastic progress is testament to the hard work of our schools and the evidence-based reforms that we have undertaken since 2010.
Sir David Davis
On a personal level, may I thank the Secretary of State for sponsoring my charity event yesterday for disabled children with SYNGAP1? Of course, I welcome the Government’s funding of 60,000 new school places for children with special educational needs, but we need a fairer funding formula for those resources, and we need a further £4.6 billion just to prevent the crisis in special needs from getting worse, so what steps are the Government taking to ensure that funding is allocated according to need, not postcode?
Gillian Keegan
I thank my right hon. Friend, who is doing exceptional work to raise awareness of the impacts of SYNGAP1, and has so far raised over £29,000 to support vital research. As he has pointed out, we are investing record amounts in special educational needs and disability funding. We review that funding and look at the formula every year; it has gone up by 60% over the past five years—to £10.5 billion—but I am very happy to meet my right hon. Friend, and look forward to doing so. We said we would have a cup of tea to talk about this important topic, and I will get that date in the diary soon.
Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)
I associate myself with the Secretary of State’s comments, and send my thoughts and best wishes to all those in the school community of Ammanford at this very difficult time.
“The extension does not achieve its primary aim or demonstrate value for money”.
That is a damning line from the National Audit Office’s report into the Government’s childcare expansion. For months, the Secretary of State has told parents and providers that they were wrong to be concerned, yet now we learn that even her own Department considers delivery to be “problematic”—her own failure exposed. Why has she not listened and got a serious plan in place, or is she simply waiting for Labour to publish ours so that she can steal it? [Laughter.]
Gillian Keegan
I do not think anyone in the country is waiting for Labour to publish its plan. This is serious, because of course we are ambitious; delivering the largest expansion of childcare in our country’s history is not an easy task, but that is the job of Government, and that is what we are doing. Thanks to the expansion, over 200,000 more children are getting childcare support. We are already delivering, and have put that deliverability into three phases to make sure we continue to deliver.
We know what we need—we need places, we need workforce, and we need the children—but Labour has absolutely no plan. First Labour Members criticised our childcare model, then they said they would scrap it, and now they are saying that it is not their job to have a plan. It is time for Labour to stop talking down our childcare sector and commit to supporting our plan, which is clearly working.
Bridget Phillipson
Nonsense, Mr Speaker. What people right across this country want is a general election, and it cannot come soon enough.
It is not only on childcare that the Secretary of State is in a total mess; school leaders, teachers and staff have been dismayed by her failure to reform Ofsted. She simply refuses to listen to staff, to the Education Committee, or indeed to parents. I am clear that under Labour, the days of one-word judgments will come to an end, so when can we expect the Secretary of State to follow Labour’s lead and commit to ending Ofsted’s headline grades?
Gillian Keegan
We will not follow Labour’s lead, because in 2010 only 68% of schools were rated “good” or “outstanding”; now, thanks to our reforms and hard work, that figure is up to 90%. We have already delivered a number of changes to improve the way Ofsted carries out its inspections, but the answer to these challenges is not to water down standards by abolishing Ofsted, as Labour has twice proposed to do. That accountability is one reason why 90% of our schools are “good” or “outstanding”—up from just 68% under Labour. In the past year alone, over 200,000 more children are attending “good” or “outstanding” schools because of the work that we do to improve standards, and Ofsted is an important part of that.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
The Minister for Schools (Damian Hinds)
We expect that schools will follow the guidance, because it is guidance to help them carry out their existing statutory duties, including safeguarding. If they did not take those guidelines into account when delivering those duties, they would be at risk of breach.
Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)
I thank the Secretary of State for mentioning exam season. I am sure she will include the Scottish young people sitting their exams, whose exams started last week—they are already in the throes of it.
Deepfake images and nudification apps pose massive threats to the mental health of girls in particular, and therefore their educational outcomes. I am pleased that the Government have taken steps to criminalise the creation of such images, but how is the Secretary of State working with Cabinet colleagues to put pressure on internet companies to take the radical action necessary to remove such images, which can have such an impact on girls’ education?
Damian Hinds
The hon. Member is of course right that the lead is taken by a different Department, but we are very conscious of the pressures, including from social media, in relation to pornography, deepfake and nudification, as she rightly identifies, and we are working right across Government to make sure those pressures can be eased.
David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (David Johnston)
My hon. Friend makes two important points. There was a 6% decline in the number of nought to four-year-olds between 2015 and 2021, and we are providing £242 million in this financial year to support schools with managing that. He is also right that although some children will always need a special school place to have their needs met, many can have their needs met in a mainstream school. Through our SEND and alternative provision improvement plan, we are making sure that schools are inclusive and make that happen.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)
Gillian Keegan
I was actually referring to the fact that parents did not feel they were receiving the best service from the system, the schools did not feel they were giving the best service and the Government felt they were spending a lot more, which is why it was very important that we got a grip and fixed the system. Of course, we know that there has been a massive increase in demand over the last few years—not even 14 years—so we have had to put in place the special educational needs and alternative provision improvement plan, which is very thorough. I believe that the result of that plan will be: win, win, win.
Andrew Lewer (Northampton South) (Con)
The Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education (Luke Hall)
I thank my hon. Friend for his question, and for all of his work on this area. I know that he has been integral to the “I am a Housebuilder” campaign to encourage more women into the building sector. Our apprenticeship diversity champions network is supporting gender representation among employers, and it is good news that STEM starts continue to increase year on year—up 7.5% in the last year—but there is more to do, and I look forward to working closely with him on the issue.
Neale Hanvey (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (Alba)
Damian Hinds
I would encourage our friends and colleagues in the Scottish Government, whoever they may be at the time, to pay close attention to Hilary Cass’s report. I think her work has injected some much-needed common sense into the debate, and we are very grateful to her. This Government will always put the safety of our children first, and that is why the gender questioning guidance we have produced in draft is underpinned by the important principle of parents always being involved in decisions about their children.
Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton) (Con)
The Liberal Democrat-run council in Rutland has announced that it will close our specialist—and “outstanding” rated—SEND nursery, the Parks School. This comes with the further news that it is also going to close our only leisure centre. The community is rightly devastated, especially parents who want their children to get the best and most expert support. Does my hon. Friend agree that specialist provision must be protected and is absolutely vital, and that the need for this kind of provision is only going to increase?
David Johnston
I thank my hon. Friend, who is absolutely right. We have been hearing negative things about Lib Dem councils from both sides of the House this afternoon, which, sadly, is not surprising. She is absolutely right to be championing the needs of those parents and children, and I hope the council will listen to her campaign and do the right thing.
Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab)
Damian Hinds
I will look into the details of the case and write to the hon. Lady.
Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)
Research by London Economics and the Association of Colleges highlights that in recent years there has been a significant drop in level 2 apprenticeship starts. Will my hon. Friend the Minister outline the specific work being carried out to reverse this decline in an area that is so vital in promoting social mobility and levelling up?
Luke Hall
At levels 2 and 3, apprenticeships make up 65% of all starts so far this year and there are almost 140 apprenticeships at level 2. We published data last week to show that level 2 apprenticeships rose by 2.5% in terms of attainment. We will do everything we can to make sure people have access to high-quality apprenticeships, and we have also invested £50 million over two years to boost starts in growth sectors including engineering and manufacturing. I am always happy to meet my hon. Friend.
Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)
Damian Hinds
We have increased the amount of money going into condition funding. We are also, of course, rebuilding 500 schools under the school rebuilding programme. I will look into the specific case the hon. Gentleman mentions and come back to him.
Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)
My hon. Friend will be aware of my campaign to improve literacy across the country by improving children’s access to libraries in their schools and communities. Much can also be done by parents, grandparents and carers in the years before children start school. What is the Department doing to improve access to books and audiobooks in particular, as well as other literary materials, for pre-school children?
David Johnston
My hon. Friend raises an excellent point. Reading is one of the most important things children can be doing at a young age. Our Little Moments Together campaign provides free resources for parents to encourage a positive culture of reading at home, and we also fund the National Literacy Trust, which does great work to promote reading.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
David Johnston
As it happens, I am meeting the director of the Youth Endowment Fund in the morning. We have a quarterly meeting to review progress and make sure it is on track.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
In regard to the worrying topic raised earlier of antisemitism and Islamophobia in schools, will Ministers please bear in mind sections 406 and 407 of the Education Act 1996? The former bans political indoctrination in schools, and the latter says that when political subjects are brought to the attention of pupils, they must be presented in a fair and balanced way.
Damian Hinds
My right hon. Friend issues a timely and important reminder and we are very clear on that with schools. We also, of course, part-fund Educate Against Hate, which has materials available, and I know that schools also seek to go to lengths in most cases to make sure that when tackling controversial current affairs, they are doing so in an entirely impartial way.
Alistair Strathern (Mid Bedfordshire) (Lab)
David Johnston
Again, the first stage of this roll-out has gone incredibly well, with more than 200,000 children now benefiting. Labour MPs should spend less time criticising our roll-out and more in asking their Front Bench what their plan is, because it is supposed to be like the creation of the NHS.
Suella Braverman (Fareham) (Con)
St Francis School and Heathfield School are two excellent special educational needs schools in Fareham, supporting a variety of children with conditions ranging from Down’s syndrome to epilepsy, but around the country there are 95,000 children at independent special educational needs schools. Does my hon. Friend agree that Labour’s misguided attack on independent schools will be harmful and punitive to vulnerable children all around the country?
David Johnston
My right hon. and learned Friend is absolutely right. This is a policy to tickle the bellies of the left of the Labour party. The Opposition did not think it through, and they are now going to whack families trying to get the right support for their children with special educational needs with 20% more in fees.
Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)
In 2024-25, Scottish students living away from home will be entitled to a minimum of £8,400 in student maintenance, whereas English students living outside London will only be getting a minimum of £4,767. Given the current cost of living crisis, which is undoubtedly a factor in the withdrawal of almost 16,000 undergraduate students in England last year, will the Government commit to providing the same encouragement and reinforcement to students in England as students in Scotland enjoy?
Luke Hall
We are trying to deliver a system that is fair not just to students, but to taxpayers, too. That is why we are taking action to support students with the cost of living in England, including freezing tuition fees. We have increased loans by 2.8%, and we have made sure that if someone’s family income falls by 15%, they can have their loans reassessed. It is also important that we support people from lower income households, which is why we have made a further £10 million available, including for hardship funding, in 2023-24. This system is fair not just to students, but to taxpayers more widely.
Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
The Sir Robert Pattinson Academy in my constituency is a great school providing an excellent education to children. However, it is struggling with the challenges of aged infrastructure, and an urgent bid for it to rectify the heating and wiring challenges has been refused. An urgent meeting on Friday with officials was unproductive, not least because the data they were looking at was out of date. Can I ask the Secretary of State to please ensure that the senior leadership team gets an urgent meeting with senior officials and that she personally ensures that this bid is looked at properly and quickly?
Damian Hinds
I will indeed do that. My hon. Friend has brought up this subject with me and with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. There was that meeting with Mr Hardy on Friday. I know there are two separate cases around the condition improvement fund bid and the urgent capital support bid. We will continue to work with the school, and I will ensure that my hon. Friend gets that high-level meeting that she asks for.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
Among other cuts, the Department for Education has quietly slipped out the announcement that it is slashing funding for Now Teach, which has supported more than 1,000 people to switch careers and retrain as secondary teachers in shortage subjects such as science, maths and modern languages. Why on earth are the Government withdrawing funding when they are missing their teacher training targets by 50% in some of these subjects, and when Now Teach has had such a brilliant track record in getting people to retrain as teachers?
Damian Hinds
First, I must say that the statistics the hon. Lady just gave on missing recruitment targets are incorrect. They are frequently repeated, but not right. We do think that career changes are an important part of people coming into this noble profession, and we are continuing with our career changes programme. We are not axing Now Teach; we are not re-procuring it, so we are not extending it again. To put it in perspective, it is roughly about 200 to 250 people in a typical year, out of about 7,000 career changes coming into teaching. We are reassessing the best way to attract more of them, because we want to grow the number of career changes coming into teaching and make sure that we go about it in the best and most productive way.
Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)
The Secretary of State is well aware of the issues we have with Academies Enterprise Trust and Maltings Academy in Witham town. She will know of the stories of children missing out on school time because of exclusion and bullying. Some are even self-harming. What assurance can she give to pupils and their families, who have very little choice as to which schools they go to locally, that their concerns will be heard and that they will have greater educational choice over which school their children go to?
Damian Hinds
I know we have corresponded on this recently, and I know my right hon. Friend is taking a close personal interest and has been involved directly and personally in multiple cases. In my most recent letter—I am not sure if it will have arrived yet—I have said that we will as a Department work with her.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)
I thank the Secretary of State and the shadow Secretary of State for their comments about the incident at Ysgol Dyffryn Aman in my constituency last week. There is obviously now a criminal investigation ongoing and a charge of attempted murder, so it would not be wise to speculate, but as education is devolved in Wales, will the Secretary of State pledge to work with the Welsh Government to ensure safety measures, following the various investigations having completed their work?
Gillian Keegan
Yes, and I can assure the hon. Gentleman that I am always willing and ready to work with anyone from the devolved Administrations.
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)
Businesses—those in manufacturing in particular—speak about the challenge in filling vacancies. The solution can often be in the existing workforce, but older workers can be reluctant to take up apprenticeships. What work are we doing to encourage more older workers into the apprenticeship system?
Luke Hall
Working with employers is central to success on that point. That is why we are delivering the local skills improvement plans to ensure that we are matching the needs of businesses and employers with the workforce they need. We are working with over 5,000 employers, with over 700 different occupations, including on skills bootcamps, which bring different demographics to the workforce, to ensure that we have intensive training where industries have those skills needs. Engagement with businesses is at the forefront of our mind on that point.
Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)
This weekend, The Times reported that some Conservative MPs want to see graduate visas banned. Will the Minister ask the Home Secretary to quash that damaging rumour, given that international students provide the UK with a £42 billion boost?
Luke Hall
We are home to some of the world’s top universities, which benefit from strong international ties. We think it is right to try to prevent any potential abuse and to protect the integrity of our higher education system, but it is true that international students make significant economic and cultural contributions to our education. We believe it is possible to balance a fair and robust migration policy with maintaining our place as a top destination for students from around the world.
James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con)
I thank the Education Secretary for all the support that her Department is giving to Bracknell Forest, particularly the £16 million safety valve programme and other SEN initiatives. Given the high number of good and outstanding schools in Bracknell and the focus on apprenticeships and T-levels at Bracknell and Wokingham College, might I tempt her please to visit?
Gillian Keegan
It is tempting. We are proud of the safety valve programme, which is being used across 38 local authorities, and I would love to see it in action as I know it is providing a lifeline to many councils.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
For 14 long, weary years I have been arguing for an end of the faith cap, which is preventing the opening of new Catholic schools and has no proper effect. Does the Secretary of State think that I should keep campaigning and be patient for a bit longer?
Damian Hinds
I have also had an opportunity to speak to my right hon. Friend on occasions about this. The Catholic Church, the Church of England and other denominations play a central part in our education, typically having high-quality schools and typically being popular with parents. We are keen to extend our academies and free schools programme, which has underpinned the huge rise in quality and children’s results that we have seen since 2010. No doubt, before too long, we may wish to put the two things closer together.
UK Armed Forces in Middle East
(7 months, 3 weeks ago)
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John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make a statement on the role of the UK armed forces in the middle east.
The Minister for Armed Forces (Leo Docherty)
The Prime Minister and Government Ministers have regularly provided updates in Parliament on the recent role of the armed forces in the middle east through written and oral statements, in addition to responding to written questions. As has been said previously, publicising operational activity to Parliament in advance could undermine the effectiveness of operations and risk the lives of armed forces personnel involved.
The UK has provided assistance to our allies and partners in the region. The Ministry of Defence has provided support to facilitate the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s response to the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza, and we continue to work with the FCDO. Our armed forces personnel have played a critical role in working to establish more routes for vital humanitarian aid to reach the people of Gaza and in the delivery of support, in co-ordination with the US and our international allies and partners. To date, the UK has conducted nine airdrops as part of the Jordanian-led mission, dropping more than 85 tonnes of vital humanitarian aid of prepackaged halal meals, water, flour, baby milk formula and rice to Gaza.
UK military planners have been embedded with the US operational team to jointly develop the safest and most effective maritime humanitarian aid route. RFA Cardigan Bay is sailing from Cyprus to support the US pier initiative to enable the delivery of significantly more lifesaving aid into Gaza. The UK Hydrographic Office has also shared analysis of the Gazan shore with US planners to support the initiative. The RAF also sent additional aircraft to the region to protect our allies and support de-escalation, culminating in the UK armed forces shooting down a number of Iranian attack drones. The House will understand that for operational security reasons, I cannot comment on the specifics of that activity.
As stated by the Prime Minister on 15 April,
“Our aim is to support stability and security because that is right for the region, and because although the middle east is thousands of miles away, it has a direct effect on our security and prosperity at home, so we are working urgently with our allies to de-escalate the situation and prevent further bloodshed.”—[Official Report, 15 April 2024; Vol. 748, c. 23.]
We are directing all our diplomatic efforts to that end. I will not comment on media leaks and speculation, but I can assure the House that the Government are taking all measures to support our allies and partners in the region. We are pressing for a sustainable ceasefire that will enable the release of hostages and provide the people of Gaza with the essential assistance and humanitarian aid that they need.
John Healey
I welcome the Minister back to the Department in his new post. Of course, the Defence Secretary should be here; he has made only one oral statement on the middle east in more than two months.
As the Minister said, our UK armed forces are reinforcing regional stability, protecting international shipping, defending partner countries and delivering desperately needed aid to Gaza. We are proud of their professionalism, and across the House we pay tribute to their work, but the agonies of the Palestinians in Gaza are extreme. Children are starving, families are dying, and famine and disease are taking hold. Humanitarian help must flood into Palestinian hands, so we welcomed the ninth RAF airdrop last week, but why has there been only one sea shipment of UK aid in more than six months, and none this year? What are the Government doing to open up Ashdod port?
We welcome the new role for RFA Cardigan Bay in helping to build the temporary pier. The Royal Fleet Auxiliary is demonstrating that it provides vital naval support. Is it protected from new civil service cuts? Have Ministers resolved the issue of the potential strike action? What is the Defence Secretary doing to raise rock-bottom morale in the RFA? Weekend reports suggest that UK troops could be deployed to deliver aid on the ground in Gaza. Will the Minister confirm those plans? How will the Defence Secretary report to the House, and ensure that Parliament has a say, on any such deployment?
The Defence Secretary seems to be doing the bare minimum on the diplomatic front. Why has he made only one visit to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories since 7 October? We need an immediate ceasefire now, hostages released now, and unimpeded aid now. We need a political route to securing a long-term two-state settlement. Where the Government pursue these aims, they will have Labour’s fullest support.
Leo Docherty
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his questions and his warm welcome. He asked a series of pertinent questions, which I will seek to cover off. He asked about our efforts on maritime delivery. Clearly, the deployment of RFA Cardigan Bay is leaning into the prospect of a far greater flow of maritime aid through the Cyprus humanitarian corridor, which will seek to substantially uplift that delivered so far. That will have an important impact on the extent to which Ashdod can come into play. We make the point regularly to our Israeli colleagues that opening Ashdod would be a critical enabler of a dramatically increased flow of aid, which is seriously needed.
The right hon. Gentleman asked about the Royal Fleet Auxiliary Cardigan Bay. Colleagues will have noticed in last week’s statement to the House that there has been a very substantial uplift in defence funding. An additional £75 billion over the next six years means that morale across all three services and the Royal Fleet Auxiliary will be resilient, and higher than before. That uplift is a vote of confidence in our capabilities, of which we should all be proud—I certainly am.
I will not comment on speculation that there might be a ground role for UK forces. It would not be right for me to comment on speculation. We are very clear about the current remit. RFA Cardigan Bay is there to provide living support for the US troops involved in the construction and operational delivery of the JLOTS—joint logistics over the shore—platform.
The Defence Secretary will, as is his wont, continue to report frequently to this House, and to make oral and written statements. I am very pleased to hear that the right hon. Gentleman would like to see the Defence Secretary at the Dispatch Box more often. I will relay that desire to him when I see him. He is a busy man, but he knows that his first duty is to be in this House. His visit to the Occupied Palestinian Territories was important; his is a global role. To categorise his one visit as disproportionate, or a lack of interest, is uncharitable to say the least.
In all earnestness, we share the right hon. Gentleman’s view that a far greater flow of aid and humanitarian support is contingent on a sustainable ceasefire. This House will know that we call on Hamas to lay down their arms and release the hostages; that is the surest route to finding that sustainable ceasefire.
Sir Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con)
I commend the Government’s determination to get aid into Gaza, and I commend the work of the RAF, RFA Cardigan Bay, UK planners and the Hydrographic Office. As the Minister is aware, I would not expect him to comment on speculation, but some of the best laid and best intentioned plans can run into problems. Can he assure the House that we would only ever contemplate putting UK boots on the pier if appropriate force protection was in place?
Leo Docherty
I am grateful to the Chair of the Select Committee, who speaks with characteristic expertise. He is absolutely right that it would be improper for me, as a Government Minister, to comment on that speculation.
Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)
Can the Minister confirm that the US maritime humanitarian aid corridor is required only because the Israeli Government will not allow the port of Ashdod to be used to receive the appropriate amount of aid for northern Gaza? Are the UK Government content with that stranglehold over the people of Gaza? The working assumption is that a nation will be driving trucks of aid across this American facility, but will that nation be the UK? If it is, what is the risk assessment if UK troops potentially step up for an operation that goes where American troops fear to tread? Getting aid into Gaza to alleviate the unspeakable torment of the Palestinians must be a good thing, and the professionalism and capability of UK troops is beyond question, but are Ministers seriously suggesting that the best that Euro-Atlantic allies can muster is British troops? Have Ministers forgotten how British forces operated in Palestine in the Arab rebellion of 1936? The Palestinians have not. Any risk calculation must command more robust analysis, rigour and humanitarian ambition, not simply UK Ministers’ ambitions for positive headlines.
Leo Docherty
Well, Mr Speaker, that was a mixed bag of questions. I will answer in the spirit of sincere debate. We should say that we are leaning into the Cypriot and Jordanian humanitarian efforts. That is very important, because those efforts need to be grounded in the region. Solutions to the problems of the region lie in the region, but clearly we have a key enabling role, along with the US. The hon. Gentleman invites me to comment on speculation in the media, which I will not do. Nor will I dwell on his reference to the history lesson from 1936. We should be upbeat and proud of the way we have significantly leaned into the delivery of humanitarian aid. That is a key component of stabilisation, and of any prospect of peace in Gaza.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
One of the main strategic aims of Iran, Russia’s ally, in supporting what Hamas did in October last year was to suck western powers into the middle eastern theatre, thereby diverting them from Russia’s existential conflict with Ukraine. May I urge the Minister not to comment on the suggestion that we might have British boots on the ground in the Gaza strip, but to take the message back to the Secretary of State that this would be a completely insane idea? It would be far better to have moderate neighbouring Arab states deal with any distribution of aid that we have facilitated as a result of the viable RAF and sea power that we have rightly exercised.
Leo Docherty
My right hon. Friend is right: the answers to the humanitarian and political challenges in the region lie within the region. I entirely agree with his analysis. He made a relevant and good point about the requirement for us to maintain focus on our efforts to support our Ukrainian friends in defending their sovereignty. That is why last week we announced an additional uplift in our annual support for Ukraine to the tune of £500 million, bringing this year’s support to £3 billion—a record amount.
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
From our work on the Defence Committee, I know that the armed forces are running hot. Obviously, the events in the middle east over the last six months or so have put much greater strain and pressure on our armed forces. What is the Minister doing to ensure that our armed forces get proper rest and recuperation, and that we improve the resilience of our assets?
Leo Docherty
We are increasing funding for defence to record levels, which increases the armed forces’ capacity to train, rest, and attend to all the areas of their lives other than operations. That is a huge vote of confidence in the esprit de corps of our armed forces. We are taking defence investment to 2.5% of GDP by 2030. It is a tremendous boost, which will filter down and improve retention and effectiveness right across the board.
Suella Braverman (Fareham) (Con)
I was in Israel earlier this year and met senior Israel Defence Forces personnel, who assured me that they are doing everything in their power, and are working with allies, to increase aid to Gaza. It is the right thing to do, and we must continue those efforts, but it is patent that Hamas are obstructing the distribution of aid within Gaza—another reason why we need to support Israel in defeating Hamas. Will the Minister assure the House that if and when Israel goes into Rafah, where several Hamas battalions remain, and where senior Hamas operatives and the hostages are based, UK support will remain resolute and steadfast, as we support Israel in finishing the job and eliminating Hamas?
Leo Docherty
We are clear-eyed in our assessment of Hamas: we regard them as a terrorist organisation that has prosecuted an atrocity. We call on them to lay down their arms and to release the hostages. That is the precondition for any kind of meaningful and sustainable ceasefire.
Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)
The Government have so far resisted having a proper debate and a vote on British military engagement in the middle east this year. The engagement of the British Army in Bosnia in the 1990s started out as being for the purposes of humanitarian aid, but was subject to mission creep as British soldiers were attacked by the warring parties. In 2006, John Reid said:
“We would be perfectly happy to leave in three years’ time without firing one shot”.
Will the Minister assure us that if the Government proposed using British troops on the ground in Gaza, they would first grant this House a debate and a vote on the matter?
Leo Docherty
The lessons of Bosnia are interesting, and are not lost on Government Members. The hon. Gentleman should have no doubt that Ministers and the Government will remain fully accountable to this House.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Ind)
May I declare an interest? Members of my close family have been, and are, involved in military operations in the middle east.
Bearing in mind my experience in Northern Ireland—seven tours—I am slightly worried that if our armed forces open fire in the middle east, which they have done, a foreign country will, at some future date, put them before an international court and charge them. I hope the Minister will declare that such a thing will never happen.
Leo Docherty
I am grateful to the right hon. and gallant Gentleman for his questions; he speaks from a position of knowledge. He should be assured, as should the House, that our forces in the region operate with the full force of the law behind them on the basis of collective self-defence.
Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)
Israeli media are reporting that the International Criminal Court could be about to issue an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu and other top Israeli officials for the litany of war crimes committed by Israel in Gaza. It is further reported that the United States Government are working to prevent justice from being done and to stop the ICC issuing arrest warrants. Does the Minister agree, after more than 34,000 Palestinians—women, men and children —have been slaughtered in Gaza and Israeli bombings have obliterated and decimated entire Palestinian neighbourhoods, that Benjamin Netanyahu should be held to account for his horrific crimes?
Mr Speaker
Order. We have to be careful: the question is quite framed. I am sure the Minister might want to pick part of that to answer.
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)
Hamas are a terrorist organisation that hate the United Kingdom and everything that we stand for. It would therefore be deeply unwise for the UK to commit British servicemen and women, whether on the ground or on the pier in Gaza. It is for precisely that reason that the White House has categorically ruled this out. Will the Minister take the opportunity to do the same, so that we can reassure our constituents that we do not make an inadvertent mistake, and that British troops will continue doing what they should be doing, which is facilitating the complete eradication of Hamas?
Leo Docherty
I agree entirely with my right hon. Friend’s analysis and his comments about Hamas. Other than that, of course I will not comment on speculation in the media.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
What discussions has the Minister had regarding UN security forces accompanying trucks to enable them to move into Gaza in the light of the impediments they are facing, and also rebuilding infrastructure so that trucks can travel across the country to deliver crucial medical and other humanitarian aid?
Leo Docherty
A great deal of energy from Ministers and officials is going into the ongoing discussion about how to operationalise the greater flow rate of humanitarian aid going into Gaza, so the hon. Lady asks a relevant question.
James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con)
The Minister is rightly reluctant to discuss the roles, dispositions and locations of British forces in the middle east, but could he again confirm to the House that the requisite force protection will be factored into all operational level planning, and also that it is not beyond the realms of possibility that the UN could be coerced into taking a more active role in Gaza?
Leo Docherty
My hon. Friend also asks a relevant question, and I can give him that assurance in relation to the deployment of RFA Cardigan Bay.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)
Some 34,000 people are already dead in Gaza, many are dying now in Rafah from wholly preventable conditions such as measles because of a lack of sanitation and medical care, and the Israeli bombardment is still going on. That is the biggest problem for getting aid in. What pressure is the Minister putting on the Israeli Government to cease the bombardment of Gaza, to ensure the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, and to ensure that we will not be deploying British troops anywhere on the on the ground in Gaza, the west bank or any other part of the region and that instead we will search for peace and for justice for the people of Palestine?
Leo Docherty
The right hon. Gentleman asks about the protection of civilians. We continue to make the point to our Israeli friends that they must seek to protect civilian lives, but of course the root cause of this is the atrocity committed by Hamas. For peace to be secured, all that would have to happen is for Hamas to lay down their arms and release the hostages.
Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)
Iran continues to present one of the most pressing and dangerous threats to the middle east and to global stability. With the increasing emphasis on the need for an integrated defence strategy comprising different nations of the region, does my hon. Friend agree that there is an ongoing, vital role for British forces to play, as they did so ably on the night of 13 and 14 April?
Leo Docherty
I wholeheartedly agree, and we should pay tribute to those who courageously played an active role in that defence of our collective security. Undoubtedly, British armed forces have a sustained and hugely important role to play in bringing peace and stability right across the region.
Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)
The UN reports that 80% of all those in the world facing imminent famine are located in Gaza. With over 200 humanitarian workers killed by Israeli forces since October, a ceasefire is essential for the effective delivery of aid and for preventing famine in both the short term and the long term. How can the Government justify their continued refusal to back calls for an immediate and permanent ceasefire?
Leo Docherty
The hon. Lady is correct that a ceasefire is needed, as it is the way to assure the flow of aid that Gazans need. The precondition of that ceasefire is for Hamas to lay down their arms and to release the hostages.
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
I was in Israel on the night of the Iran attacks, and I saw the jets in the sky, David’s Sling and Iron Dome dealing with the ballistic missiles as they came in. I felt very proud to know that our forces were involved, and the Israelis were very grateful for our activity.
One group of people in Gaza who are not being provided with aid or proper medical checks are, of course, the hostages. Last Monday, I spoke to the parent of 23-year-old Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was last seen on 7 October being bundled into the back of a truck with his arm and hand missing, having had a grenade thrown into his shelter. A video was released on Wednesday, and it was the first sight of him. He looked in a very distressed state. Can the Minister assure me that we will continue to do everything we can, militarily and through intelligence, to help Israel to locate these hostages?
Leo Docherty
I can, of course, give my hon. Friend that assurance. It is a highly sensitive subject, and if he would care to raise the case with me individually, we will do what we can to follow up.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
Two months ago, the House passed Labour’s motion calling for an immediate ceasefire. We believe that Hamas must immediately release their hostages, but Israel must also look at releasing its prisoners. There has to be an immediate and unimpeded supply of aid into Gaza, but I am really concerned about UK forces getting involved. We should rely absolutely on aid being delivered by the charities and voluntary organisations on the ground. What is the Defence Secretary doing with our allies and regional partners to secure an immediate ceasefire?
Leo Docherty
We continue to make the point that Hamas must lay down their arms and release the hostages. That is the precondition for peace.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
The key problem, as my hon. Friend will know, is that Hamas and Islamic Jihad are appropriating aid meant for the Palestinians. What steps are our armed forces taking to ensure that aid gets to those who really need it, not the terrorist networks? What steps are they taking against Hamas’s terrorist tunnels under the Egyptian border? British armed forces could play a significant role in working with Israel to dismantle the tunnel networks.
Leo Docherty
My right hon. Friend asks a very good question, and a huge amount of effort is going into this. We are energetically leaning into the prospect of a greater degree of aid flowing through the Cypriot and Jordanian humanitarian corridors, and the JLOTS temporary pier capability could be an absolute game changer.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Ind)
The Government continue to provide huge sums of taxpayers’ money for arms and weapons for Ukraine, but minimal funding for humanitarian aid for Gaza. Does the Minister believe that the UK public share the Government’s spending priorities?
Mark Logan (Bolton North East) (Con)
Despite some positive noises coming out of the middle east about a truce, for my constituents in Bolton it is deeply worrying to see reports of an increasingly likely ground offensive in the southern city of Rafah. The Minister spoke about not wanting to see any more bloodshed, but if there is a ground offensive, more blood will be shed. What are our Government, the Ministry of Defence in particular, doing to avoid bloodshed happening in Rafah and to prepare for different scenarios?
Leo Docherty
We always make the point to our Israeli colleagues that the protection of civilian life is imperative. We acknowledge that Israel has an absolute right to self-defence, and we hope that Hamas will recognise that the path to peace lies in laying down their arms and releasing the hostages.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)
My understanding is that the British Government do not support the ground offensive by the Israeli military in Rafah. Will they therefore use all the leverage at their disposal, including withdrawing arms export licences, if the Israeli Government act against British policy?
Leo Docherty
We have one of the world’s toughest arms export regimes, of which we should be very proud.
James Wild (North West Norfolk) (Con)
On the middle east, it is a decade since this House voted to support the UK’s joining the global coalition against Daesh. Although territory has been liberated, does not the recent strike by the RAF against a rocket launcher being used to target coalition forces underline the need for a sustained, long-term commitment to defeat and destroy terrorism?
Leo Docherty
My hon. Friend is absolutely right about that, and we should be grateful for the role played by the RAF. It is a reminder that the price of peace is eternal vigilance.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Minister for his responses. I very much welcome the Prime Minister’s announcement last week about the extra defence spending. It is important that we support innocent victims who cannot protect themselves. The UK’s role in the middle east is much appreciated, acclaimed and respected. Does the Minister agree that in response to recent increased Iranian threats, for instance with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps being responsible for Hamas terrorist attacks across Gaza and the broader middle east, we must do whatever we can within our budget to encourage de-escalation and to try to prevent further attacks by Iran and its supporters?
Leo Docherty
I agree with the hon. Gentleman; he rightly says that putting in 2.5% of GDP by 2030 will provide that boost and ensure that we have the operational capability to achieve that global response that we need to keep our country safe.
Mrs Flick Drummond (Meon Valley) (Con)
We talk about 500 trucks a day because that was the pre-war number, but that was when Gaza had a relatively functioning economy and an agricultural sector to back it up. Therefore, more than 400 trucks will be needed, by land and sea, and so I thank the armed forces for their help in delivering aid and in helping to build the pier. What pressure are we putting on Israel to get more aid quickly delivered by land, which is the best and quickest way of doing it, and on the use of UNRWA in northern Gaza, as it has the most effective system to get aid to the right places quickly?
Leo Docherty
My hon. Friend is correct: we do need to increase that flow. What would be a game changer is opening the port of Ashdod, and we continue to make that point forcefully to our colleagues.
Sir Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that His Majesty’s armed forces could be providing any humanitarian support, now or in the future, only with Israel’s total co-operation and that it should be recognised for that? Has he noted also that Israel’s Iron Dome and Arrow 3 defensive systems, among other things, would, in effect, be part of the protection of His Majesty’s and other allied forces? Does he agree that that makes even more nonsense of the anti-Israel interests’ call for an arms embargo against Israel, because if allied forces, including His Majesty’s forces, were to be acting in the region, they would be looking for support from Israel itself?
Leo Docherty
My right hon. and learned Friend makes a very good point.
Checks on Goods Entering UK
(7 months, 3 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs if he will make a statement on the introduction of checks on goods entering the UK under the border target operating model due to be live on 30 April 2024.
The Minister for Food, Farming and Fisheries (Sir Mark Spencer)
Under the border target operating model, tomorrow the Government are introducing documentary and risk-based identity and physical checks on medium-risk animal products, plants, plant products and high-risk food and feed of non-animal origin imported from the EU. Checks on high-risk products, currently conducted at destination, are moving from destination to border control posts and control points. Recent media reports suggesting that the introduction of these controls will be delayed are incorrect.
Documentary checks will happen at all risk levels. Physical checks will initially focus on the highest-risk goods, with some also taking place on medium-risk commodities. We will build up to full check rates to both protect biosecurity and minimise disruption. We will continually review our enforcement approach as we track compliance and trade flow, and will adjust our approach accordingly. This pragmatic approach will support traders as they adjust to the new regime.
The Government have worked closely with industry, inspection agencies and the Animal and Plant Health Agency, known as APHA, to ensure we are ready for the introduction of these controls. We are confident that border control post infrastructure has sufficient capacity and capability to handle the volume of checks expected under the border target operating model. We are confident that our systems are robust, dynamic and effective, and that the inspection authorities are appropriately staffed and trained.
I close by emphasising that the introduction of these biosecurity controls is not optional. Now that we have moved away from the EU’s rigid biosecurity surveillance and reporting systems, we are responsible for protecting our own biosecurity against threats such as African swine fever.
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
Let us start by saying this is not about Brexit because, whether Members supported or opposed Brexit, nothing proposed here is inevitable or unavoidable. Having left the EU, we need border controls, but what is proposed will not be controlled—it will be chaos.
The EU brought in checks in 2021, but this Government have delayed doing that five times. In that time, they could have negotiated a sanitary and phytosanitary deal to avoid the mess that is about to happen. Instead, from Wednesday, for the first time, 2.7 million lorries will need to be stopped at Dover so their contents can be checked, and another 4 million will require a health certificate for the animal products they carry. On top of that, 5 million of them will have to pay a common user charge for the privilege of importing goods deemed medium or high risk, whether or not they are inspected. The costs to business, which we know will be passed on to consumers, are horrendous and chaotic, and the charges were confirmed only on 18 April.
The Government have admitted that the checks will cause inflation, but they claim it is only £300 million—0.2%—over three years. Independent analysis shows it will be 10 times that amount, or £8 a month on the average food shop. If the Minister wants to dispute that figure, will he finally publish the modelling that the Government have refused to disclose so we can see how they have come to their numbers? We know their numbers are wrong because, while they have confirmed that the common user charge—the direct cost to each lorry—will be about £145 a time, they admit they have not calculated how much the new veterinary checks will cost, with some running to hundreds of pounds. They cannot make those calculations because they told European countries to set their own standards and charges, so how can Ministers tell us we can be confident when we do not know what will be passed to be healthy in Hungary, Germany or here?
If food standards matter to people, they will be disappointed because the Minister has just admitted that only “some” checks will happen on medium-risk goods from Wednesday. Will he put a number on how many checks will happen from Wednesday? Medium-risk goods are anything of animal origin that are not alive, but could also be beetroot or sweetcorn. What a mess.
Small businesses are going to be clobbered for a fee for a service they will not even get. On top of that, Sevington has not even been declared a border control post to carry out any of the checks. Where will goods coming into Dover be checked on Wednesday, especially if they are high risk? What about the other ports around the UK that can set their own charges? And who is going to enforce any of this? The Government told industry to be prepared, but there will not be any checks after 7 pm, so people can say goodbye to those just-in-time supply chains for perishable goods. People coming back from holiday have no idea what their “personal use” is, so they could be stopped for carrying gorgonzola.
With 36 hours to go, we need some straight answers. Our constituents cannot eat the paperwork or afford the price rises these checks will create. Corner shops, delis and restaurants will go bust and our ports will be bunged up. I say to the Minister that there is still time to cancel the Brexit border tax, so will he please listen to concerns from across the House and do so?
Sir Mark Spencer
The hon. Lady either chooses not to understand what is happening, or deliberately tries to inflame a situation that will be of great benefit to the UK moving forward. She deliberately picked the highest figure available. For low-risk goods, there is a £10 charge for products, capped at a maximum of five products, so the maximum amount that can be charged on a lorry load of low-risk goods would be £50.
The hon. Lady is right that we have calculated that over three years that will lead to an additional 0.2% on food inflation. In comparison, an outbreak of foot and mouth disease cost this country £12 billion, not taking into account the impact on international trade and our reputation as a country, so these checks are a small price to pay for ensuring we are safe and protected for phytosanitary and sanitary goods coming into the UK.
Mr Speaker
I call the Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee.
Sir Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)
Obviously, as part of the European Union and the single market, we could not impose checks to ensure that diseases such as African swine fever did not come into the country. The Minister has said that there will be a graduated approach to the introduction of the checks. What is the timescale for ramping them up to a level that he believes will be satisfactory? If consignments are diverted to Sevington, what measures will be in place to ensure that those trucks or vans actually arrive at Sevington and people do not dump what is on board in a layby or transfer it to another vehicle?
Sir Mark Spencer
I thank my right hon. Friend for his question and for the scrutiny that his Select Committee has undertaken.
It is important to distinguish between those goods that come into the country through approved routes, via approved importers on traditional lines, and those people who may seek to import goods into the UK illegally or without that documentation. There will still be border control checks by Border Force at the port of Dover to catch those who are trying to do something illegal, but those who are operating within the system will move to Sevington. To stop halfway and avoid those checks would be a criminal act and those goods would not be able to be sold within the UK marketplace.
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
We recognise the need to ensure the UK’s biosecurity, but I echo the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy). What a mess. It is 29 April and the new checks are being introduced tomorrow, but the businesses involved are unclear about how the system is supposed to operate—and that is after the five delays that we have heard about and huge sums wasted on border control points. Perhaps the Minister can tell us how much has been wasted on Portsmouth, for instance.
We want these checks to work. I have been to the London and the Dover port health authorities and been extremely impressed by the work that they do, but it is baffling that, in the battle against Asian swine flu, at Dover, the Minister is taking away vital funding, as the Government move the checks 22 miles up the road to Sevington. Can he tell the House how food vehicles will be controlled on that journey, as Dover Port Health Authority tells me clearly that they won’t?
The Government have admitted that the cost will be an extra £330 million annually. Others say it will be more. What definitive figures can the Minister provide for the inflationary impact that this Government’s border measures will create for food supplies in the UK? What assessment has been made of the savings and efficiency that would be made if we were to achieve a better veterinary agreement with the EU?
In conclusion, the British chambers of commerce says that DEFRA has failed to listen to industry over these changes. Others say the same. Many businesses are exasperated by the endless delays and the repeated and continual lack of clarity and certainty in the implementation of the new system. Why have the Government left businesses and even border chiefs in a position where they simply cannot plan properly and are left in the dark, as one put it, at one minute to midnight in terms of being told about the essential features of the new system? What is the Minister going to do to sort out the mess?
Sir Mark Spencer
I thank the shadow Minister for his questions and his interest in this topic. What is clear is that there is a distinction between those goods that are coming into the country illegally, which will still be inspected at the port of Dover by Border Force, and those that are coming in via legitimate routes, by legitimate trade links, from areas that have been inspected by their own country’s equivalent of the Food Standards Agency to make sure that those port goods are safe to come into the UK with the correct documentation. Those goods will go to Sevington. But if someone tries to do something illegal, they will be picked up by Border Force at the port of Dover, via inspection, including intelligence-led inspection. [Interruption.] The shadow Minister says that there is no money, but we are in conversation with Port of Dover to resolve that.
The other challenge that the shadow Minister put to us was that we have delayed this a number of times. That has happened because we have been in conversation with those people and hauliers who have had comments on how to improve the system. We have listened to those concerns and now have the model that will operate, given the advice and liaison we have had with those companies.
Dr Neil Hudson (Penrith and The Border) (Con)
As a veterinary surgeon, I am passionate about biosecurity. I am reassured that our Conservative Government are taking this matter very seriously indeed. I thank the Animal and Plant Health Agency and everyone at our borders who do so much in this regard. Prior to leaving the EU, we did not have the opportunity systematically to check animal and plant products coming into the UK. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we now have the opportunity to strengthen our biosecurity and that the introduction of the border target operator model will protect animal, plant and, ultimately, human health in the UK moving forward?
Sir Mark Spencer
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his work in this area and his expertise in it. Moving forward, we will be in a much stronger place in terms of our phytosanitary and sanitary protections. That is the right outcome. We will continue to ensure that we are safe in the UK and that we protect our borders proportionately.
Steven Bonnar (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (SNP)
The continual uncertainty being caused by these border checks is not only disgraceful but highly damaging for industry and consumers. There have been five delays by the UK Government, accompanied by a complete failure to communicate those delays effectively. Does the Minister accept that the significant disruption being faced is a symptom of not only the Government’s disastrous delivery of the checks but Brexit itself? Any suggestion to the contrary is frankly for the birds. Secondly, will he apologise from the Dispatch Box to the businesses that have been diligently preparing for the changes, only to be left utterly in the dark by his Government?
Sir Mark Spencer
The hon. Gentleman’s characterisation is simply untrue. We have been working closely with the sector, with hauliers, and with companies that want to import food into the UK. We are approaching this in a pragmatic, proportionate way. We have taken our time to get it right. I do not apologise for taking time to ensure that the system that we will introduce tomorrow is proportionate and pragmatic. We have listened to the companies that will use the systems to ensure that we get it right and it works. We are ramping this up at a pace that is slow but steady to ensure that we get to the right place in the right time, to keep the country safe from any disease.
Damian Green (Ashford) (Con)
My right hon. Friend makes the point that there have been delays, and he makes no apology for them. Given those delays, will he accept my assurance, since Sevington is in my constituency, that the team working there, whom I have spoken to about this in great detail, are absolutely prepared and well trained to do the checks as well as they could possibly be done? People can be assured of the safety of import checks at Sevington, because the team there are absolutely across everything that needs to be done.
Sir Mark Spencer
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his support, and the reassurance that he gives the House. We will continue to listen, and to work with those who want to import goods into the UK, to ensure that we remove as many barriers to the operation of free trade as possible, but at the same time keep ourselves safe.
Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
Our trade intensity has fallen to the lowest level in the G7, and ITV’s Joel Hills has stated that the estimated costs of the new model are 10 times the Government’s estimate. I hope that the Department will publish its detailed workings soon, but surely the bottom line is that the cost of living crisis has not gone away, and the Minister is basically introducing a system that will cost UK consumers more to check on imports coming from the EU to standards that are exactly the same as the UK’s, and which of course meet EU standards in the first place. Does he seriously think that voters will forgive him?
Sir Mark Spencer
The right hon. Gentleman says that there will be extensive costs. As I said, for low-risk products they are £10 per product, limited to a maximum of five products per common health entry document. That means that the costs are reasonable. We calculate that there will be a 0.2% increase in cost over three years. He says that these goods are coming from within the EU under the same regulations. African swine fever is moving across Europe. It is already present in Italy. Were that disease to get to the UK, it would be devastating for the UK pork market and the UK pig population. It would also damage our ability to export pork products around the world if we lost our credibility as being free from African swine fever.
Mrs Natalie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
The Minister is absolutely right about the devastating impact of not having proper checks and the risk of African swine fever, so can he explain why Dover Port Health is having its costs slashed for essential checks at the border? Will he accept that the existing checks should be maintained in full at Dover Port Health; that Dover port of is the right authority, with its state-of-the-art facility, to do these important checks, in respect of which it is the most experienced body across the entire channel; and that we should not risk having these checks at some new, untested, supposedly trained facility 22 miles away in Ashford? That is a risk to this country.
Sir Mark Spencer
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend’s tenacious campaign on behalf of her constituents and the port of Dover, but I hope she will not mind my drawing attention to the fact that these are separate regimes: goods coming in legally, via legal channels, with the right documentation will move to Sevington, but the port of Dover is the right place for Border Force to ensure that we are protected from illegal imports, and those checks will still take place. The conversations with the Port of Dover over funding continue, and we want to see Port of Dover continue to help to keep us safe and intercept any illegal imports that people may attempt to bring into the UK.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
Those of us from rural communities, particularly those like mine in Cumbria that had to live through the horror of the foot and mouth outbreak in 2001, know how vital it is to have biosecurity at our borders—but intelligently applied, so that we do not damage supply chains and have excessive red tape. Does this issue not shine a spotlight on the fact that we are now, sadly, increasingly reliant on food imports? Britain produces only 60% of the food we eat. Does that not remind us that the Government’s agricultural payments scheme, which actively disincentivises the production of food on good-quality, productive agricultural land, is extremely foolish and should be reversed if we are serious about our security as a country?
Sir Mark Spencer
I am familiar with the beauty of the hon. Gentleman’s constituency; as he knows, I was there on Saturday with the shadow Minister. He gives the figures for what we import in total, but for the food we can produce we are at 72%. The Prime Minister has also recognised that challenge, and we will introduce a food security index so that we can monitor this issue, to make sure that the Government’s policies do drive farmers to increase their productivity and their production. I have full confidence in the ability of our farmers to continue to produce top-quality British food, to continue to expand their productivity and to keep the country well fed.
James Wild (North West Norfolk) (Con)
These changes are required under World Trade Organisation rules and are about keeping us safe from disease threats, but in practical terms, how will it work for mixed loads in particular, to reduce the cost to business and therefore to consumers?
Sir Mark Spencer
My hon. Friend asks an important question. That is why we have capped the maximum charges to five per load, particularly to support SMEs. As I say, for those of medium risk the charge is £10, or a maximum of £50 per load. That cap is specifically aimed at helping and supporting SMEs that are importing food into the UK.
Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
What do the Government have against the £6.2 billion floristry industry in this country, which employs 240,000 people—seven times as many dentists as we have in this country? Many of them work in small family businesses on very small margins. Why did the Government do absolutely no impact assessment when they increased the costs for those bringing in chrysanthemums, dianthus, solidago, orchids and gypsophila to £500 and introduced severe delays on products that need to be at market by 9 o’clock in the morning? Weddings, funerals, Mothers’ day and Valentine’s day—is there any family event that will not feel the dead hand of this Government?
Sir Mark Spencer
The hon. Gentleman is right to highlight how important that sector is to the UK economy; that is why we want to protect those growing flowers here in the UK from any diseases that may be imported via products that have not come through the right channels with the right documentation. We want to keep the growing sector in the UK safe from any of those diseases; that is why we are introducing these checks.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
The border operating model will not apply on trade between Northern Ireland and Great Britain; those trade routes are exempt. However, given the record of dodgy products being manufactured in the Irish Republic and brought through Northern Ireland to GB, can the Minister give an assurance that, should that route be used either by Republic of Ireland producers or other EU producers, he will not be installing checks on Northern Ireland to GB trade, which is so important to the Northern Ireland food industry and economy?
Sir Mark Spencer
Of course, we recognise the importance of the Northern Ireland economy, and we want to ensure that Northern Ireland feels part of the United Kingdom. We will do everything we can to limit any impact. As the right hon. Gentleman identifies, there is currently no timescale for the introduction of the way in which we will monitor and work with those who are moving goods across from that part of the United Kingdom. We want to ensure that that does not become a back-door route, and we will continue to have conversations with the authorities in that part of the world.
Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)
On the subject of back-door routes, can my right hon. Friend tell us when the border control points for the Welsh ports that connect to the EU through the Republic of Ireland will be operational?
Sir Mark Spencer
I cannot give my right hon. Friend a date at this moment in time, but we are in detailed conversations—particularly with those at the port of Holyhead, which is an important UK port—and as soon as we have a date, I will update him from the Dispatch Box.
Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab)
The Minister says that this policy will benefit Britain, but the Centre for Economic Performance says that our food prices are already 30% higher because of Brexit, and independent analysis shows that the Government’s approach will cost another £2.9 billion. Why is he ignoring British business estimates on this issue and hitting British customers with another Tory tax at this difficult time?
Sir Mark Spencer
As the hon. Gentleman will be aware from my previous answers, we are working hard to ensure that we keep UK food producers free from plant and animal diseases. That is why we are introducing these checks in a proportionate way that does not impact on business, it is why we have limited the amount of charges that can be introduced to five per lorryload, it is why we have ensured that those fees are set at only £10 for medium-risk products, and it is why we will continue to work with industry to ensure that we have a proportionate approach that does not take cash away from businesses and only recovers the cost of keeping us safe as a country.
Gen Kitchen (Wellingborough) (Lab)
Why have the Government refused to implement a tonnage-based approach, as the EU does, which would support small and medium-sized importers, particularly in Wellingborough? Not doing so risks putting them out of business. To avoid that, will the Minister adopt measures such as ensuring that all small and medium-sized importers can join the trusted trader scheme?
Sir Mark Spencer
We did look at different models. Of course, we could have adopted the model of third country to the EU, but that would have created significant cost for those wishing to import food across the channel. We also looked at adopting the EU’s model, which, again, would have cost way more than the model that we are introducing. The model that we are rolling out tomorrow is the best and most pragmatic model that we have been able to develop through working with and listening to the advice of those in the sector.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
Food prices are 30% higher than they were three years ago, and independent estimates reckon that new border checks are equivalent to adding a 10% tariff to imports. What assessment has the Minister made of the impact that border checks will have on living standards in Welsh households, in which one in every four adults has been skipping meals to make ends meet?
Sir Mark Spencer
Actually, on increased food prices in Wales, the biggest danger is taking 20% of land away from Welsh farmers and out of production and imposing a top-down approach to those farmers. I hope that the right hon. Lady will rethink her support for the Welsh Government’s disastrous proposals, which will drive thousands and thousands of people out of Welsh agriculture.
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
As a direct result of all these changes, small businesses will close, jobs will be lost and consumer choice will be reduced. That is the exact opposite of what Brexit was supposed to achieve, is it not?
Sir Mark Spencer
I do not accept the hon. Gentleman’s characterisation. This is a pragmatic approach to keeping the country safe from animal and plant diseases while allowing the free flow of trade via a model in which people can get certification away from the ports to ensure that they can import products, and stamping down on those who want to act illegally.
Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)
Obviously, these controls will introduce additional logistical steps, which are problematic for time-critical products. I recently met people from Maincrop Potatoes Ltd in my constituency. It trades potatoes to producers, so it has a deadline to hit on those production lines, and it will be importing more this year because of the disastrous potato harvest. Can the Minister provide any reassurance that that process will be streamlined enough to enable that business to continue to move its goods around in a timely way?
Sir Mark Spencer
I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. What the hon. Lady has described is exactly what we want to try to achieve: making sure that trade, particularly in goods such as potatoes, flows across the channel as freely as possible, but that we protect ourselves from diseases such as brown rot that could be devastating to the UK’s potato production.
Stephen Farry (North Down) (Alliance)
Could the Minister set out the Government’s current policy towards a comprehensive UK-EU veterinary agreement, and what negotiations—if any—are happening in that regard? That would surely be a huge win for consumers and producers right across the UK, and would have the added bonus of further reducing the level of checks required on agrifood movements across the Irish sea.
Sir Mark Spencer
I do not think that if we were to reach that agreement, it would include veterinary medicines, but of course we continue to have conversations with our friends in the EU to remove as many barriers as possible. We have a strong interest in making sure that the farmers and vets in Northern Ireland continue to get adequate supplies of medicine, and we will work with our friends in the EU to unblock as many of those barriers as possible.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)
My understanding is that the Minister was opposed to Brexit in 2016, and I presume one of the reasons for that is that he opposes red tape. Do this measure and others not indicate that, as feared, Brexit is turning into the biggest chapter of red tape in UK economic history?
Sir Mark Spencer
I am a strong believer in democracy. The Brexit debate was one that was settled by the great British public. They voted to leave the European Union, and now I want to embrace the opportunities that that brings for the UK. As a Government, we will continue to work tirelessly to make sure that we make Brexit work for the UK and seize those opportunities that come our way.
Mr Speaker
I am now going to have to suspend the House. I suggest that we suspend for 10 minutes in order to allow the Front Benchers to read the statement.
Health and Disability Reform
(7 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. The sitting is now resumed. The reason for the suspension was because the statement, which under the ministerial code should have been delivered at a minimum of 45 minutes prior to the statement being made, was delivered late; I know the Secretary of State will want to look into the matter and report back to the Speaker.
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mel Stride)
First, may I apologise profusely to the House that a copy of my statement was not provided to Mr Speaker and indeed those on the Opposition Front Benches sufficiently in advance of my statement? May I also take this as my first opportunity in the House to say how saddened I was by the passing of Frank Field, a true champion of welfare reform who was always prepared to work across party? While we did not always agree on all matters, I share and admire his belief that welfare means transforming lives.
With permission, Mr Deputy Speaker, I shall make a statement on the consultation we are launching today on the changes to the personal independence payment, which aim to create a benefits system that can best support disabled people and people with long-term health conditions to live full and independent lives.
This Government’s priority is to make sure that our welfare system is fair and compassionate: fair on the taxpayer by ensuring that people of working age who can work do work; and fair on those in most need of the state’s help. Welfare at its best is about more than just benefit payments; it is about changing lives for the better.
In recent years the Government have delivered successive reforms to create a system that is fairer and more compassionate while providing value for the taxpayer. We have reformed an outdated and complex legacy benefits system and introduced universal credit—a new, modern benefit that ensures people are better off in work than on benefits. Last year we published a landmark White Paper announcing significant reforms to focus the welfare system on what people can do rather than what they cannot. We are delivering our £2.5 billion back to work plan, substantially expanding the employment support to help more disabled people and people with health conditions to start, stay and succeed in work. Our reforms to the work capability assessment will better reflect the opportunities in the modern world of work and ensure that more people get the support they need to move into employment, while protecting those unable to work, and in February we published the disability action plan to make this country the most accessible place in the world for people to live, work and thrive.
In addition, the Government have provided unprecedented help for the most vulnerable, including by implementing one of the largest cost of living support packages in Europe, which prevented 1.3 million people from falling into absolute poverty during a time of global inflationary pressures. We have increased benefits by 6.7% and raised the local housing allowance, benefiting 1.6 million households by an average of around £800 this year.
Our approach to transforming the benefits system for disabled people and people with long-term health conditions is guided by three important priorities: providing the right support to the people who need it most; targeting our resources most effectively; and supporting disabled people to reach their full potential and to live independently.
Although we have made significant progress, the disability benefit system for adults of working age is not consistently providing support in the way that was intended. It has been more than a decade since the introduction of the personal independence payment. The intention was that it would be a more sustainable, more dynamic benefit that would provide better targeted support to help disabled people with the extra costs arising from their disability. However, the nature and understanding of disability and ill health in Britain has changed profoundly since then, and the clinical case mix has evolved in line with those broader changes, including many more people applying for disability benefits with mental health and neurodivergent conditions.
Since 2015, the proportion of the caseload receiving the highest rate of PIP has increased from 25% to 36%. Some 7% of working-age people in England and Wales are now claiming PIP or disability living allowance, which is forecast to rise to 10% by 2028-29. In 2022-23, the Government spent £15.7 billion on extra costs disability benefits for people of working age in England and Wales, and the Office for Budget Responsibility has forecast that the cost will rise to £29.8 billion in nominal terms by 2028-29. There are now more than 33,000 new awards for PIP per month. That figure has almost doubled since the pandemic.
With almost a quarter of the adult population now reporting a disability—up from 16% in 2013—I believe that now is the time for a new conversation about how the benefits system can best support people to live full and independent lives. Today I am launching a consultation to explore changes that could be made to the current PIP system to ensure that support is focused where it is most needed. These options include: making changes to eligibility criteria for PIP; redesigning the PIP assessment to better target it towards the individual needs of disabled people and people with health conditions, including exploring whether people with specific health conditions or disabilities can be taken out of PIP assessments all together; and reforming the PIP assessment so that it is more linked to a person’s condition. We are also consulting on whether we should make fundamental changes to how we provide support to disabled people and people with a health condition.
We know that any additional costs arising from a disability or health condition, which PIP is intended to help with, can vary significantly and are unique to the individual’s circumstances. Some people on PIP may have relatively small one-off costs, such as walking aids or aids to help with eating and drinking, or ongoing additional costs related to their disability or health condition, such as help around the home or running a ventilator. Some claimants’ costs will be fully covered by their award, while others may find the current system does not provide enough support to meet their needs, yet the current system operates a one-size-fits-all model and does not channel people towards bespoke support tailored to an individual’s needs. We recognise that better, more targeted support could be provided by other local services.
Our plans include exploring how the welfare system could be improved with new approaches to providing support, such as: moving away from a fixed cash benefit system, so that people can receive more tailored support in line with their needs; exploring how to better align the support PIP offers with existing services and offers of support available to disabled people and people with health conditions; and exploring alternative ways of supporting people to live independent and fulfilling lives, which could mean financial support being better targeted at people who have specific extra costs, but could also involve improved support of other kinds, such as respite care or physical or mental health treatment, aiming to achieve better outcomes for individuals.
Crucially, we want to explore whether we can achieve our aims within the current structure of health and disability benefits, or whether wider change is needed. We are consulting over the next 12 weeks to seek views from across society, including disabled people and representative organisations, to ensure that everyone has a chance to shape welfare reforms that will modernise the support provided through the benefits system.
We know that these reforms are significant in their scale and ambition, but we will not shy away from the challenges facing our welfare system today. We owe that to the millions of people who rely on it and to the hard-working people whose taxes underpin it. That is what the next generation of welfare reforms is all about. These proposals will help to create a benefits system that can better support disabled people and people with long-term health conditions to live full and independent lives, and they are a crucial part of my mission to ensure that the welfare system is fair and compassionate and that it provides the right help to those who need it most. I commend this statement to the House.
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for his comments about Frank Field. Both I and my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Dame Angela Eagle), who is sitting alongside me on the Front Bench, thought the world of Frank. I thank the Secretary of State for his tribute to a person who was completely unique in every way.
With regards to advance sight of the Secretary of State’s statement, I say: apology accepted. Labour will carefully review the detail of the Green Paper, because the country that we want is one where disabled people have the same right to a good job and help to get it as anyone else. We will judge any measure that the Government bring forward on its merits and against that principle, because the costs of failure in this area are unsustainable. The autonomy and routine of work is good for us all, for our mental and physical health—and more than that, for women, work is freedom, too.
I have read the Secretary of State’s gibes about Labour. He says that he does not know what our position is on a set of reforms that he has not set out. The Prime Minister made a speech about this issue two weeks ago, but every single day since then the Government have failed to publish the Green Paper. The Secretary of State wants my views on his, until this moment, unpublished thoughts. What was the problem? Was the printer jammed? Rather, was it that the Prime Minister and Secretary of State realised that, as soon as they published the Green Paper, everyone would realise the truth about the Government: like the Prime Minister who leads them, they are long on questions and short when it comes to the answers?
The Green Paper is not a plan; it is an exam that the Secretary of State is hoping he will never have to sit. The reason he wants to know Labour’s plan is that he suspects he will be long gone before any of these proposals are a reality. Will the Secretary of State tell me where the Green Paper leaves the Government’s earlier half-baked plan to scrap the work capability assessment, given that the idea behind that was to use the PIP assessment? He said that some health conditions can be taken out of PIP assessments. Which conditions was he talking about?
PIP was the creation of a Conservative Government, so where is the analysis of what has gone wrong? PIP replaced DLA, and now we are hearing that PIP is the problem. How many more times will we go around this same roundabout? Do the Government’s plans involve treating people’s mental and physical health differently? Can he explain the legal basis for doing so? Importantly, on health itself, is this Green Paper not a huge admission of the Tory failure on the NHS, in that it takes as its starting point the fact that people today simply cannot get the treatment and care they need? What will the costs of any new system be, in particular those of any extra support of the kind he mentioned? Will we see a White Paper before a general election?
I am standing in today and for the next few weeks for my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall), who believes that health and work are two sides of the same coin. That is the insight that the Government are missing today. I ask myself how we got here. The country today is sicker—that is the legacy of this Government. NHS waiting lists are longer than they have ever been—that is the legacy of the Secretary of State’s party. If he does not know how bad things are in mental healthcare, he needs only to ask my hon. Friend the Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter). There are 2.8 million people who are locked out of work due to long-term sickness. That is the Conservative legacy: like ice on our potholed roads, the Tories have widened the cracks in our economy and society, making them all much worse.
With respect to mental health, in recent weeks the Secretary of State has decided to speak out of both sides of his mouth. On the one hand, he says,
“I’m grateful for today’s much more open approach to mental health”,
but with the same breath he goes on to say,
“there is danger that this has gone too far.”
He wants it both ways. He thinks that openness about mental health is good, but then he says the very thing that brings back the stigma.
Every time the Secretary of State speaks, he makes it less likely that people will be open about their mental health. On behalf of all of us who have ever had a panic attack at work, or worse, can I say that that stigma stops people from getting treatment, it makes getting help harder, and it keeps people out of work, not in it? A Labour Government will take a totally different approach. We will not only ensure more appointments but have an extra 8,500 mental health staff. The last Labour Government delivered the highest patient satisfaction on record, and that is the record on which we will build.
The issue that we are discussing is bigger than just health; it is also about work. Because of our commitment to serve working people, we will make work better, too. We will have the new deal for working people, improving rights for the first time in a generation, and we will drive up employment in every region because we will devolve employment support and end the tick-box culture in jobcentres. We will tear down the barriers to work for disabled people and provide help for young people. That will get Britain working again.
Harold Wilson said that unemployment, above all else, made him political. Those of us who grew up seeing people thrown on the scrapheap in the ’80s and ’90s feel the same. Every young person out of work today will never forget whose hand was on the tiller when these Tories robbed them of hope. It is time for a change, and a general election.
Mel Stride
I thank the hon. Lady for her response and the gracious manner in which she accepted my apology, which is much appreciated.
The hon. Lady said that she cannot be expected to comment on the PIP proposals, but I remind her that the work capability assessment proposals went through a consultation, and we still do not know where the Labour party stands on those. We have spoken about fit note reforms, we are setting up WorkWell, and in the autumn we will trial some of those fit note possibilities. We do not know where the Labour party stands at all on those matters.
One would have thought that given the central role that PIP plays in the welfare system in our society and country, the Labour party would have some kind of view on that benefit. But we hear precisely nothing on that matter because the Labour party has no plan. The consequence of that will be that, as under previous Labour Governments, the welfare bill will continue to spiral out of control. That will fall to hard-working families up and down the country to pay, by way of higher taxation.
The hon. Lady asked about the abolition of the work capability assessment, which, as she said, is set out in the White Paper. Those measures will not be due to come into effect until 2026. We will take into account the conclusions that may be drawn as a result of this consultation when we consider that matter. She raised numerous other questions, many of which are included in the consultation. I am sure that she will actively take part in the consultation as we work towards the answers to those questions.
I was rather surprised that the hon. Lady raised the NHS. This party is spending more on the national health service than at any time in its history, with a 13% real-terms increase in spending over the last couple of years, 21,000 additional nurses and 7,000 more doctors in the last 12 months alone, and from next year £2.4 billion additional spend on mental health services, to which she referred. That is on top of the additional £4.7 billion that the Chancellor previously set aside for more mental health treatments and, at the last fiscal event, 400,000 additional talking therapies within the national health service.
The hon. Lady concluded by referring to Harold Wilson’s comments on unemployment. I simply refer her to the fact that under every single Labour Government in the history of this country, unemployment has been higher at the end of their term of office than at the beginning.
Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)
A constituent who has cerebral palsy has been in touch with me this afternoon to outline how he currently uses PIP. It gives him the freedom to live independently and work full time, as he uses it to buy mobility aides such as hoists and wheelchairs. His concern is that any changes to PIP might push those costs on to the NHS and reduce his flexibility to choose what to spend the money on and when. He does not want to be pushed into a cycle of renewal that may be too rapid and therefore cost the NHS more money. What reassurance can my right hon. Friend give that this consultation will enable those sorts of concerns to be highlighted and that, in the long term, it will give more choice and not restrict my constituent’s freedom?
Mel Stride
I thank my right hon. Friend very much indeed for that question and for raising the issue of her constituent. The reassurance I can give her is that we are aiming for the best outcomes. There will be a number of ways in which those best outcomes may be achieved—that is the purpose of the consultation—but it is reasonable to at least explore the issue of whether cash transfer payments are always the right solution, particularly given the growth in mental health conditions we have seen in recent times. The final point I would make is that we are absolutely interested in examples of situations where people have lifelong regressive illnesses from which, unfortunately, they are not going to recover, and to ask whether, under those circumstances, it is right to require them to go through re-assessments.
Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)
Following today’s statement, the announcement made a couple of weeks ago and all the proposed changes, people are scared. They are scared because they rely on these payments, which have changed their lives. They have been able to access support that they otherwise would not have been able to get. It is very clear that the announced changes are not being created by disabled people, with disabled people at their heart of the decision-making process. This is a Government consultation and then people are being asked to input into it. It is totally different from the situation in Scotland, where the adult disability payment was created with disabled people in the room talking about the best way to make the payments work and the best way to have assessment processes. Basically, the answer that came back was, “Do not do them anything like the assessment processes for PIP.”
Everybody should have the income to live with dignity, whether or not they are able to work. I am massively concerned by the comments that the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister allegedly made about people with mental health difficulties only facing the “ordinary difficulties of life”. It is very clear that anybody who is able to say that has not suffered from depression, and has not felt that absolute energy-sapping that comes alongside suffering depression or anxiety. These are real conditions. These are real things that people are struggling with. And the lack of the ability to work is just as serious for people with mental health conditions as it can be for people with physical health conditions.
I have a couple of specific questions. In relation to universal credit, it is a gateway benefit. Will the Secretary of State assure us that any changes that might be made to eligibility criteria around universal credit will be fully consulted on and fully discussed, particularly with anybody who administers benefits that are allowed through those gateway benefits?
Has the Secretary of State spoken to the Scottish Government about the creation of the adult disability payment with disabled people in the room, ensuring that at the forefront of every decision is dignity and respect? Those are the two key columns of the Scottish benefits system. The Secretary of State could learn a lot from that approach.
Mel Stride
I thank the hon. Lady for her response to my statement. I reassure her that disabled people will be very much involved in the process and the consultation. It will be a 12-week consultation and of course we will take them, their comments and representative organisations extremely seriously.
The hon. Lady’s comment about the importance of recognising that many, many people unfortunately suffer from very serious mental health challenges is extremely well made. I am absolutely determined that whatever conclusions we draw from the consultation, they should lead us to a position where the Government are better able to support people who are in those circumstances.
On whether there will be questions in the consultation on the passporting of PIP into other benefits, the answer is yes. That is something we are most certainly consulting on.
On the Scottish equivalent of PIP—this is, of course, a devolved matter—yes, the Department has been in discussions with the equivalent officials in the civil service and the Scottish Government. We are looking forward to considering, as I know the Scottish Government will be, the independent review of that benefit, which is being conducted at the present time.
Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)
May I ask the Secretary of State about his comments on the one-size-fits-all model not working if people incur very different costs from their disabilities? Surely he is not expecting people to send in invoices to prove how much support they need, so is he looking at having more tiers of award? For example, disability living allowance used to have three tiers, rather than two. Is that one of his options for trying to reduce costs?
Mel Stride
By mentioning “one size fits all”, I am saying that we should explore whether the approach we have at the moment has the best outcomes. We have much to learn from the experience of countries around the world that have a similar benefit but go about its organisation and application in a different way. New Zealand makes payments based on invoices for equipment submitted by those who receive the benefit. Norway does not have assessments in the way that we do; it relies more on evidence provided by medical practitioners. We should go into this with an open mind. Bear in mind that there has been no fundamental review of PIP for over a decade.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I call the Chair of the Select Committee.
Sir Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
PIP assessment providers confirm that worsening delays in NHS treatment are a big factor in the increase in the number of people applying for PIP. The Secretary of State has confirmed this afternoon that the work capability assessment is to be scrapped and replaced by PIP assessments. There are people who are too ill to work, but not disabled, and so not eligible for PIP. How will their support be assessed in the absence of work capability assessments?
Mel Stride
As I have set out, we will need to look at the conclusions that can be drawn from the consultation in the context of the replacement of the work capability assessment and PIP becoming the gateway to future universal credit health benefits, as the right hon. Gentleman mentioned. These are questions that are being asked in the consultation.
Ruth Edwards (Rushcliffe) (Con)
In the spring of 2019, before I was elected, I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. I was extremely ill with it, and could not work for several months, so I know for myself how debilitating that can be, but I also know that with treatment and support, you can lead a fulfilling career and a normal life that is extremely rewarding. I would have been devastated to have been out of the workforce for the long term. How will the reforms in the Green Paper help anxiety sufferers to get the treatment and support that they need to return to work, and also to take back their life?
Mel Stride
I thank my hon. Friend for a powerful and moving contribution to today’s statement. I am pleased that she is in such fine form nowadays, knowing her as well as I do. The answer to her question lies in the consultation, and the recognition that the one-size-fits-all approach is not necessarily right. Those whom she describes may well be better served by receiving treatment, rather than cash transfer benefits. That is not a preconceived outcome that I have in my mind, but it is one of the possibilities on which we are seeking opinions.
Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
The charity Sense has criticised the Government’s narrative around disability benefits, highlighting the divisive and deeply damaging language used, which further stigmatises some of the most vulnerable people in society. Disabled people have told Sense that they are sick with worry about whether they will lose their personal independence payments, which are vital—a lifeline—for them. Given the Tory cost of living crisis that we have been living through for multiple years, does the Secretary of State not think that disabled people need more support, not dangerous rhetoric that casts them as undeserving?
Mel Stride
We are certainly not stigmatising anybody—far from it. Indeed, in the consultation, it is explicitly recognised that there might be some disabled people who need additional help, beyond the help that they are getting at the moment. I made reference earlier to those who have lifetime progressive illnesses and conditions that, sadly, are not going to improve. The question is being asked: do we need to ask those individuals to attend reassessments and jump through bureaucratic hoops, with all the anxiety that may go with that, or should we have a better system that better looks after them?
Dame Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)
I totally agree with the Secretary of State that everyone gets dignity from being in work, but he will be aware of the very high levels of unemployment experienced by those with learning disabilities and autism. Bearing in mind that able-bodied people over 50 struggle to find work, let alone those with a disability or long-term health condition, what does he propose doing to change the attitude of employers, so that they recognise that everyone has a skill and a role to play, and that everyone is an asset?
Mel Stride
I thank my hon. Friend for that really pertinent question. She will be familiar with the Buckland review, which has reported. I was very keen to pursue that review when it came across my desk, and I made my officials and the necessary infrastructure available to ensure that it was able to go ahead. It addresses many of the issues to which my hon. Friend rightly points, in terms of employers accommodating and benefiting from those who have autism and other conditions.
Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
Can I start by commending the hon. Member for Rushcliffe (Ruth Edwards) on her comments? They really went to the heart of some of what we are discussing. One of the challenges for the Government in talking about PIP is that they started this whole conversation by referring to the back to work plan, which makes many disabled people feel that this is about getting them back to work and reducing the overall welfare budget, when PIP is supposed to be about ensuring that they get the right support for their disabilities. On PIP, a big challenge that all MPs deal with is the number of errors in the system, and particularly the number of cases that end up at a tribunal. If we are looking into having a system that targets support better, what assurances can the Secretary of State give that it will actually be a better system, with fewer errors?
Mel Stride
There were two points there. First, errors in the benefits system—overpayments, underpayments and so on—are relatively rare. Secondly, on how we approach those who have long-term sickness or disability, the hon. Lady will see, if she refers to the back to work plan, that we are giving the 2.8 million people on those long-term benefits the opportunity to try work without fear of losing those benefits at all. We have made that extremely explicit. That is simply freeing up the system, and trying to get rid of some of the barriers that those people otherwise face.
Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)
I need to read the detail, but on the face of it, there is much to be welcomed in the Secretary of State’s statement. However, there are 2.6 million DLA and PIP working-age recipients and their families who will no doubt be concerned about the future of their support, so can my right hon. Friend assure the House that he will tread carefully and think really carefully about tone and the language that we use, and that we will listen to those with lived experience and the charities that support them?
Mel Stride
I thank my hon. Friend; he has done a great deal in the important area that this statement and consultation are addressing. As he knows, my door is always open to him, at every step along the way, so that I can listen to his thoughts. I can assure him that questions of tone, language, and treading carefully are absolutely at the forefront of my mind.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
There are 4,500 people in Newcastle Central who are out of the workforce and economically inactive due to disability or ill health. The Government have failed them when it comes to the benefits system, failed them when it comes to supporting them to work, which is so important, and failed them when it comes to the NHS. How will the £46 billion black hole in the Government’s plan to abolish national insurance payments enable the Government to fix their failings?
Mel Stride
On the hon. Lady’s political points, I should point out that economic inactivity is lower today than in every single year of the last Labour Government—that is our record, compared with her party’s. She will know full well that reducing the £46 billion national insurance figure still further, and finally eliminating it, is a very long-term aspiration. I understand why the Labour party tried to make it more than that. What is more than that is the £28 billion that her party suggests will be made available through its energy and net zero offering, which it is still talking about to the electorate.
Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)
I commend the Secretary of State’s approach as being entirely realistic, given that the disability benefits system is not consistently providing support in the way that it was meant to. He is also right to take a strategic look, because he is correct that the understanding of disability and ill health has changed quite significantly in Britain, in some ways for the better, and there is an imperative to consider that, in the light of our labour market and the broader economy.
The Secretary of State is also correct to be comprehensive in his approach in today’s Green Paper, the prior White Paper and other connected work. Will he also be comprehensive in delivering on those measures, across Government? Can he give us assurances about the way that he is setting up for the work that will need to be done if this is to be a success, including with the NHS and local authorities, for those who need support with their disability or ill health? It is my understanding that the NHS perhaps knows less than it could about how to help people, holistically and individually, to move back into work, or with the things that they need and care about.
Finally, how is the Secretary of State working with employers to ensure that we unlock the workforce productivity needed in this country?
Mel Stride
I thank my right hon. Friend for her very astute comments, which are built on her great experience of the exact issues that we are discussing, both as Secretary of State and, before that, as a very successful Minister for this area in the Department for Work and Pensions. She is absolutely right to recognise that society has changed a great deal in the 10 years since this benefit was fundamentally reviewed. I will, of course, continue to work very closely with my colleagues in the national health service and the Department of Health and Social Care. We collaborated on setting up WorkWell, which will be rolled out in 15 of the 42 health areas of England this autumn, bringing together the world of work and healthcare.
The White Paper specifically invites thoughts on how local authorities could be more involved in PIP or any successor. My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to mention employers, and I have no doubt that she is aware of the two consultations we have run on increasing occupational health, in which employers have a particularly important role to play.
Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
The Secretary of State questions the need to reassess certain groups. After visiting my local Motor Neurone Disease Association support group, I can tell him that those with motor neurone disease are one group who absolutely do not need or deserve reassessment.
On the wider point about mental health conditions, I hope that the Secretary of State will talk to his colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care. I have had many experiences of constituents waiting months, if not years, for the assessment of neurodivergent conditions or mental health support. We clearly cannot address the issues that he wants to address in the consultation if we do not fix the NHS workforce crisis.
Mel Stride
The hon. Gentleman raises a very important point about mental health, and I can reassure him, as I reassured my right hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith), that we will continue to work very closely with the DHSC on the proposals as they emerge. In response to an earlier question, I mentioned that the Chancellor has brought forward funding for 400,000 additional NHS talking therapies, for example, which may be an important part of what we develop.
Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)
Compassion has to be at the heart of this consultation. I have seen patients who had to be reassessed repeatedly, which does not seem fair, but I have also seen patients who do not engage with services and do not take medication, yet are signed off, which is not compassionate either. One practical way forward is to bring DWP closer to GP surgeries, so that people can have their hand held when they get to a diagnosis, whether it is of anxiety or a physical complaint, or whether they are recovering from an operation. Will the Minister consider that in the consultation? DWP joining up with primary care would be a fantastic way to help GPs help their patients—and to help the DWP.
Mel Stride
I thank my hon. Friend for a sensible set of questions. He refers to the importance of bringing GPs together with advice and support to get people into work. That is very much the focus of our fit note reforms, upon which we have a call for evidence at the moment.
Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I am grateful to the Minister for his swift response to my request earlier this afternoon for support for the people at Everest in Treherbert, who look likely to lose their jobs in the next few days.
Depression and anxiety are real, are they not? It is not just a question of people pulling up their socks, as some in the crueller parts of the commentariat have suggested. All too often, talking therapies are least available in the areas with the highest levels of economic inactivity, so how are we going to change that?
On the intersection between mental health and physical health that is acquired brain injury, does the Department even know how many people who have had an acquired brain injury are in receipt of PIP or of universal credit? If the Minister does not know the answer today, will he write to me? If both he and his Department do not know the answer, as I bet is the case, will he make sure that the Department finds out before it implements something that could provide even more problems for people who are trying to get their lives back together?
Mel Stride
First, I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments about the jobs situation in his constituency. Let me reassure him that my Department will do whatever it can to assist with those circumstances.
The hon. Gentleman rightly points out that depression, anxiety and mental health conditions are very real, and in many cases extremely severe, which is why I am absolutely determined that we should do whatever we can, where appropriate, to provide as much support as possible to people. As for his question about acquired brain injury and how many PIP recipients are in that situation, I do not think he would expect me to know off the top of my head. It would be rather impressive if I did know. I will, as he has suggested, write to him.
Sir Chris Bryant
You have never impressed me before, and I have known you a very long time!
Mel Stride
That is probably fair. As the hon. Gentleman points out, he has known me for a very long time, and I recall that when we were at university together he was a young Conservative, as I was. How things have progressed, or perhaps I should say regressed, since then?
Dean Russell (Watford) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that my proposals over the past few years to improve support in the workplace for mental health are essential as part of this programme of work? Does he also agree that one aspect of that, which I have raised repeatedly in my work and suggestions, would be to make sure that physical and mental health are given firm parity in the Health and Safety Executive guidelines? I believe that would help both employers and employees, both in my constituency and nationally.
Mel Stride
We are considering the issue of parity that my hon. Friend has raised. He is absolutely right to raise the issue of mental health support—occupational health support—within businesses, which is why we have consulted on that matter. I am particularly keen to see what we can do not just for large companies, but for small and medium-sized enterprises, to make sure that they engage more fully in that respect.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
A considerable number of constituents have already contacted me because they are worried about what the Government are proposing; the key message they want to get across is that having disabilities or a serious mental illness is not their choice and not something they have control over. The Secretary of State mentions tailored support an awful lot in his statement. My experience is that when people with disabilities have engagement with the system and have to go through the process of making an application, being assessed and so on, that is a cause of great anxiety and often the decisions are wrong. If he is proposing more tailored support and more engagement with bureaucracy, particularly for people with fluctuating conditions such as myalgic encephalomyelitis, how is he going to get it right? He has not managed to get it right so far.
Mel Stride
I am absolutely determined that we are not going to be seeing more bureaucracy. Indeed, I set out that one question we are exploring in the consultation relates to those who, sadly, have conditions from which they are not going to recover or improve. In those circumstances, I want to see less bureaucracy and a system where we are not having to reassess people in a superfluous way, causing anxiety and putting them to that inconvenience. The other points that the hon. Lady raises are of course exactly the kind of questions we are asking in the consultation, and I urge the constituents who have written to her to engage in that consultation process over the next three months.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
My right hon. Friend is right to emphasise the importance of focusing on what people can do, rather than what they cannot, and it is worth noting that there are 2.2 million more disabled people in work than 10 years ago. However, as he mentioned, the benefits system is not just about work; it is about ensuring people live full and independent lives. He said that during the consultation there will be engagement with disabled people and their representative organisations, which is critical, but each individual’s needs are personal to them, so how will he ensure as many voices as possible are listened to during the consultation?
Mel Stride
The consultation will be very thorough. It is available in accessible formats to ensure we cater to the greatest extent that we can, and that we get the best possible and most universal feedback. I am pleased that my hon. Friend spoke to the issue of the employment of disabled people. In 2017, we set a 10-year target of a million more disabled people in employment; we broke that target in five years rather than 10.
Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)
Announcing that disabled people suffering from certain conditions will no longer receive support payments, but instead get improved access to treatment, is one of the most absurd policies to have come out of this Government in the past 14 years. The Government plan relies on imagined brilliant mental healthcare support being available. Is the Minister even aware how long people have to wait for treatment after being referred? After 14 years of this Tory Government gutting our NHS and our mental healthcare, even basic access to treatment does not exist, let along the improved access the Minister is relying on in the fantasy world he lives in.
Mel Stride
I simply do not recognise the comments the hon. Gentleman has made about our national health service. There are more people working in the national health service than at any time in its history: 21,000 more nurses and 7,000 more doctors in the past year alone. We are spending a record sum on the national health service. I will not give chapter and verse, as I did earlier, as to the other things we are doing, but we are completely committed to the health and mental health of people up and down the country. There will be new ways of doing things. If we do not have a grown-up conversation, as I describe it, about those matters, we will not discover those new ways. WorkWell is a completely new way of addressing issues, such as mental health, and encouraging people to stay or go back into work. It did not exist 18 months ago; it came about because we consulted people and came up with a solution.
Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con)
I would like to give the Secretary of State the benefit of the doubt, and he has made a number of important points, but those 2.6 million people and their families who will have heard his statement will be absolutely terrified. A lot of them will feel that the reforms are just about providing some kind of cuts to services. I believe that we need to try to support those people and put compassion at the heart of our welfare system. There are reports of up to 2 million people waiting for mental health treatment at the moment, so does the Secretary of State believe that in this “compassionate” review, where we are going to have a “grown-up conversation”, we will be able to see more money invested to ensure that those 2 million people can get more mental health support?
Mel Stride
My hon. Friend raises important points that are core to the consultation that is being carried out. The corollary to my hon. Friend’s argument is that we should not do anything and stay with a system that has not been revisited for over a decade, despite the fact that the terrain has changed substantially, not least in terms of the increase in those suffering from mental health conditions. I say no to that. We need to have a grown-up conversation about these matters if we are to provide better support for the people whom hon. Members across the House care about.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
The Minister is right: economic inactivity rates have soared because of ill health, and where possible we want those people to get back into work. It is for their own good. It is also for the good of the hard-working taxpayers to have those costs minimised. However, given that these proposals come at the tail end of a Government, who have just weeks or months to go, I doubt very much that the measures will become a reality for many people. I have one question for the Minister: as this issue is devolved to the Northern Ireland Assembly, has he had any discussions with the Executive about these proposals? If he has, what response did he get? Should the Executive go in a different direction, what will the economic consequences be for the Northern Ireland Executive’s budget?
Mel Stride
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to talk about the importance of work in the context of mental health. That is my strongly held belief. He is also right to raise the issue of the fiscal sustainability of our welfare system. If the public are to continue to have confidence in that system, we must get the balance right between the requirements of the taxpayer and our absolute determination to support those most in need of help.
The right hon. Gentleman asked a specific question about the Northern Ireland Executive. He is right: it is possible for Northern Ireland to decide to manage its benefits in a different way to England. That is not traditionally what has happened. Traditionally, Northern Ireland has followed the moves that we have made. As to discussions, absolutely, there are always close, ongoing discussions between my Department and our counterparts in Northern Ireland.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
The Secretary of State has said that the Government’s approach is fair and compassionate. Can he tell me what is compassionate about the language used by the Prime Minister over the past fortnight, when he has referred to a “sick note culture”, implied that people who are forced to rely on benefits do so as a lifestyle choice, and, today, talked about the arrests, seizures and crackdowns on benefits claimants? The Disability Poverty Campaign Group, which comprises the major charities that we have all worked with, described the speech as “chilling”, “threatening” and “stigmatising”. Does the Secretary of State not realise that the language that the Prime Minister has used increases prejudice against disabled people and contributes to the escalation of hate crime against disabled people?
Mel Stride
The Prime Minister shares my view, which is that it is really important that we achieve the best possible outcomes for the people whom we are discussing in this statement. He cares a great deal, and I think he said at the end of his speech that he wanted to help many people, some of whom are watching the screen flickering away while their opportunities drift off into the distance—or words to that effect. That speaks from the heart. That says that we have a Prime Minister who cares deeply that opportunities in our society should be made as widely available as possible. That is a view, a characteristic and a quality that I admire and that I share with him.
Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab)
The Secretary of State has upset many disabled people and organisations with his clumsy, negative and juvenile approach. Mind, for example, has asked for a grown-up conversation. Furthermore, the Secretary of State said at the Dispatch Box today that there has never been a review of personal independence payments, but there have been two independent reviews commissioned by the Department, so perhaps he could correct the record when he gets to his feet. PIP is not an out-of-work benefit, so when will the Department publish its assessment of the impact of these latest cuts on disabled people using PIP to support themselves in work?
Mel Stride
It is the case that there has not been a fundamental review of PIP on the basis that that has subsequently led to a change in that benefit. Therefore, it is the case that that benefit has remained fundamentally the same for more than decade—it actually came in in 2013, as the hon. Gentleman will know. On what assessments may or may not be made available, I think they will come at a point when the Government arrive at their conclusions having conducted the consultation.
Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)
Members of this House may remember that I had to take a leave of absence from this role three years ago because I have post-traumatic stress disorder. I can tell the House that the insinuation that mental health conditions are not debilitating, do not affect people’s ability to go about their daily life or to go to work, and do not incur additional costs could not be further from the truth. The Prime Minister’s comments about so-called “sick note culture” and the changes that the Government are proposing will do nothing to help people with mental illnesses, and will just make their lives harder. Why are the Government setting back the clock on the acceptance of mental illness as a disability instead of truly tackling the crisis in mental health support?
Mel Stride
I am at pains to say this: every time I have come to the Dispatch Box this afternoon, I think I have made it extremely clear that serious mental health conditions are very real. I take them very seriously, as I think does everyone in this House. I say to the hon. Lady—[Interruption.] This is where we need a grown-up conversation. [Interruption.] This is really important. We need a proper conversation about this, because if at every stage, whenever a Minister suggests that we need to look at a particular area, their motives get impugned in the way that the hon. Lady has—[Interruption.] She inferred that I am actually saying that mental health conditions should be trivialised in some way. I am definitely not saying that.
Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)
My constituent Elizabeth has been a very hard worker, but also someone who has suffered from ill health. She came to see me at my surgery on Friday to express her alarm about the Prime Minister’s speech on 19 April, his proposals for sick notes, and what she sees as his lack of respect for the professionalism of general practitioners. If the issue came up in the Chamber, she asked me to ask the relevant Minister this question: how can a random DWP assessor, faced with a complete stranger, based on the briefest of interactions, be relied upon to produce a more accurate and objective assessment of a patient’s condition than her own general practitioner?
Mel Stride
I know the Prime Minister shares the view that we owe a huge debt of gratitude to our GPs, right up and down the country. They have a highly pressurised job, and they do it extremely well. DWP assessors are highly trained individuals, and there are very clear guidelines on how assessments should be fairly conducted. They are, as the hon. and learned Lady will know, open to appeal where that is necessary. She mentions GPs. As part of the assessments, which are concluded by a DWP team member, rather than the assessor themselves, taking into account all the evidence, it may well be that GPs have an input into many of the decisions.
Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)
The Secretary of State must understand that the rhetoric coming from the Government over the past few weeks has been brutal, divisive and inducing unimaginable terror in the two thirds of people already in destitution who have a chronic health condition or disability. The prospect of further cuts is making the situation worse. Can he confirm whether he expects overall Government PIP spending to be reduced and, if so, by how much, and what assessment he has made of how his proposals will affect those who are already in material deprivation?
Mel Stride
The presumption that the hon. Lady makes is that the alternative to consulting on a different and potentially much better way forward is to do nothing at all. To me, that is unacceptable. In terms of ensuring that we truly support all those who need support, I have already given that reassurance from the Dispatch Box. It is made very clear in the consultation that we recognise that there will be people who need more support than they are receiving at the moment, but we need to have that conversation in order to get the best outcomes.
Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)
Language matters, as we have heard, and the Government have been warned that the language and rhetoric—perhaps not from the Secretary of State himself but from others—risks minimising the impact of mental health conditions, which are real and serious. What are the Government’s plans to ensure that proper treatments are available—not just talking therapies but whatever treatment is appropriate—to ensure that people with mental health conditions are treated appropriately?
Mel Stride
The hon. Lady raises an extremely important point: the prevalence of mental health conditions in our country has grown. There are many reasons for that—I know the Labour Party like to say it is all about the NHS, but it is about many other things, not least social media among young people. There are many causes. The consultation will look at exactly the question she quite rightly raises. She mentioned the NHS talking therapies; I think that, particularly for some less severe mental health conditions, combined with work, they can make a real difference. I was very pleased when my right hon. Friend the Chancellor brought in 400,000 more of those talking therapies at his last fiscal event.
Alistair Strathern (Mid Bedfordshire) (Lab)
Back in 2018, a bad concussion left me out of work for several months. Over time, I became deeply depressed, worried and anxious that I would never get back to full-time work at all. I was lucky that my employer was able to find and to pay for me to get the support I needed to get back to work, and I am lucky enough to be here today. However, for many across the country that simply is not the reality they face. Why are the Government not focusing on making sure everyone has the support they need to get back into work, rather than falling back into the kind of political posturing that will only add to the stress and anxiety that thousands already feel?
Mel Stride
If I may say so, first, I am very pleased that the hon. Gentleman is now fit and well and I am sorry he went through the difficult time that he describes. We are doing a huge amount; he may or may not be familiar with universal support, which is there not only to place the kind of people he has described into work, but, critically, to stay with them for a period of up to 12 months to make sure they have the support to hold that job down. We know that work is good for those with mental health conditions. I have already referred to WorkWell, which brings together those who have mental health challenges and work coaches who are able to see how work can fit within their recovery programme. We are very much doing those things. If he would like to see me at some point after this statement, I would be happy to sit down with him and talk him through some of the other approaches we are taking.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Ind)
Today’s statement has been made necessary by the huge deterioration in the nation’s health and mental health since the pandemic. I think the whole House has to take responsibility, because this House voted for draconian lockdowns that devastated mental health, particularly among the young. This House voted to mandate untested experimental treatments, threatening people that they would lose their jobs if they did not take them, while giving immunity from prosecution to the manufacturers for their dangerous and defective products. Will the Minister do the best thing he can for public mental health by assuring the British public that these mistakes have been learned from and will never be inflicted upon them again?
Mel Stride
I am afraid I simply do not subscribe to the theories that the hon. Gentleman promotes. I think it is probably best to leave it at that.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement and for responding to questions.
Points of Order
(7 months, 3 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. During the urgent question on the humanitarian situation in Gaza on 17 April, the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, the hon. Member for Macclesfield (David Rutley), speaking on behalf of the Foreign Secretary, said that the Government wanted an “independent review” of the terrible killing of British aid workers by the Israel Defence Forces. That followed the Foreign Secretary himself posting on X that “a wholly independent review” was required.
However, in response to my written question, the Deputy Foreign Secretary said that the Prime Minister had called for a “transparent investigation” into that terrible attack. A transparent investigation is not the same as an independent investigation. Given that the whole point of my question in the Chamber was to highlight that investigations conducted by the IDF into its actions are not independent, this answer troubled me. Given also that the Foreign Secretary refuses to come to this Chamber to be held accountable, can you advise me, Mr Deputy Speaker, how I can clarify whether the Minister did not accidentally mislead the House in saying that the Government wanted an independent investigation when they are only calling for a transparent investigation? All those who seek accountability for the actions of the IDF want to know what the Government’s position is.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I thank the hon. Lady for giving notice of her point of order. Clearly the Chair is not responsible for the answers of Ministers, but those on the Treasury Bench will have heard the point of order and will make sure that the Minister is able to respond to her.
Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I seek your advice on how we in this House can ensure that the National Security Online Information Team investigates the Facebook groups that Greenpeace exposed at the weekend, of which the Tory mayoral candidate, Susan Hall, is a member. People have put on this group that they plan to kill our current Mayor, Sadiq Khan. How can we make sure the Government are investigating that?
Mr Deputy Speaker
I thank the hon. Member for her point of order and for giving forward notice of it. I am sure she could make contact herself with any organisations that can investigate the serious allegations she has just made.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Earlier today the Minister for Schools said that the statistic I quoted on secondary teacher recruitment targets was “incorrect”, often repeated and “not right”. I am afraid it is the Minister who is incorrect. The Department for Education’s own website states—in bold—that 50% of the initial teacher training recruitment targets for secondary teachers were reached in 2023-24, which is what I said. In raw numbers, that is 13,102 secondary school teacher trainees recruited on to courses, out of the 26,360 the Government said were needed. We do not need maths to 18 to work out that that is less than 50% of the target.
Furthermore, I said in my question that some subjects were missing those targets by 50%, yet in many subjects they are missing them by way more—for instance, physics only met 17% of its target. Have you had any indication, Mr Deputy Speaker, that the Minister plans to correct the record? If not, how do you suggest I go about securing a correction?
Mr Deputy Speaker
I thank the hon. Lady for her point of order and for giving forward notice of it. Again, the Chair is not responsible for ministerial responses, but those on the Treasury Bench will have heard her remarks, and of course we would expect any alterations or corrections to be made as soon as possible. I will now hand over to Dame Rosie Winterton for the rest of the business.
Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Bill (Programme) (No. 2)
Ordered,
That the Order of 20 March 2024 (Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Bill (Programme)) be varied as follows:
(1) Paragraphs (2) to (5) of the Order shall be omitted.
(2) Proceedings in Committee of the whole House, any proceedings on Consideration and proceedings on Third Reading shall be completed in one day.
(3) Proceedings in Committee of the whole House shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment of interruption.
(4) Any proceedings on Consideration and proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption.—(Robert Largan.)
Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Bill (Instructions)
(7 months, 3 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
18:58 - The House divided: - Ayes: 42 / Noes: 265 - Question accordingly negatived.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Before the House resolves itself into Committee, I draw the House’s attention to the instruction motions on the Order Paper. They are subject to selection by the Chair, and Mr Speaker has decided to select the motions in the name of Secretary Kemi Badenoch, to allow the Bill to extend to Northern Ireland, and in the name of Marion Fellows, to allow the Committee to make provision in the Bill for it to make provision relating to Scotland.
Motion made, and Question proposed,
That it be an Instruction to the Committee on the Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Bill that it has power to make provision in the Bill for it to extend to Northern Ireland.—(Robert Largan.)
Stephen Farry (North Down) (Alliance)
On behalf of the Justice Minister, First Minister and Deputy First Minister, and indeed Northern Ireland MPs, I want to put on record briefly our gratitude to the Minister and the Government for listening to the arguments we have put forward and for including Northern Ireland in the Bill. It has made an enormous difference and we are extremely grateful. I just wanted to make sure that that was properly placed on record.
Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)
I agree with the hon. Member for North Down (Stephen Farry) and thank the Minister for reaching this point. There has been considerable effort and collaboration across the House and across parties. The hon. Gentleman mentioned most particularly the First Minister, the Deputy First Minister, the Justice Minister for Northern Ireland and, indeed, all Northern Ireland MPs, who are all agreeable to the aspiration of the instruction to the Committee. It is right that Northern Ireland be included in a UK-wide system, and the outcome should benefit our constituents who have been most deeply affected by the Horizon scandal.
Question put and agreed to.
Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)
I beg to move,
That it be an Instruction to the Committee on the Bill that it have leave to make provision relating to Scotland.
At the outset, let me say that if I cry this afternoon, it is not because I am upset; it is because I am angry and feel got at by other parties in this place, which are determined not to bring Scotland into the Bill.
This morning, Robert Thomson, Chris Dawson and Keith Macaldowie—three sub-postmasters—travelled from Scotland to be here to listen to the reasons that Scotland should not be included in the Bill. Unfortunately, there were two urgent questions, a statement and a train break-down, so they have had to go back and could not be here to watch the people in this House hold the fate of their exoneration in their hands.
There are huge legal misgivings about and potential constitutional implications to the Bill, as legal authorities across the United Kingdom have said. However, to use the words of the Minister of State, Department for Business and Trade, the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake):
“We recognise that this is an exceptional step, but these are exceptional circumstances.”—[Official Report, 10 January 2024; Vol. 743, c. 302.]
Postmasters across the United Kingdom want this exoneration Bill to succeed, as do those of us on the SNP Benches. It must succeed; we need to get the exoneration through this place in order that convicted sub-postmasters across the United Kingdom can claim compensation and redress for what they have suffered.
I have before me the witness statement from Robert Thomson, who, during his court case, had to sit down with his two young sons to tell them of the real possibility that he would have to go to prison. How awful is that? How awful it is for all the other sub-postmasters who have had to go through the very same experience?
Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
My hon. Friend talks about going to prison. My constituent lost her liberty, her good name, her house, her marriage, her family—her whole existence—because of this situation. She has had to move to my constituency —a life on her own. The Government are denying my constituent the justice she deserves. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is utterly shameful?
Marion Fellows
“Utterly shameful” does not even begin to describe it.
Right up until quite recently, the Government said that they would include Scotland in the Bill, but they have decided not to do so for spurious reasons. Today, I have been talking to sub-postmasters, and I have invited Scottish MPs to come and speak. The main reason some Scottish MPs, whether they are Liberal Democrats or Conservative Ministers, did not want to include Scotland was that the First Minister said that he did not want to see criminals exonerated when they were guilty. No one wants that—[Interruption.] I have heard the Minister himself say that previously in this House.
Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)
I admire the passion with which my hon. Friend is speaking on behalf of sub-postmasters. Does she agree that part of the sense of insult upon injury is that there is no proper explanation as to why Scotland cannot be included, so it looks like petty partisanship? And I have to say, Madam Deputy Speaker, that that is borne out by the chuntering, sniggering and laughter going on behind me as my hon. Friend speaks.
Marion Fellows
My hon. Friend is right: I am passionate about this. As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on post offices, I have deliberately worked on this issue, across parties, for years—I have worked with everyone. Indeed, when I wrote to the Prime Minister at one point, I had signatures from every party, including from a Member of Sinn Féin, a party that does not attend the House.
I have also heard it said today that the Lord Advocate does not want this. Well, at no point has the Lord Advocate taken a view on proposed legislation either in Westminster or in Holyrood. The Lord Advocate is not responsible for bringing cases of miscarriages of justice before the court of appeal in Scotland.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
I have worked with the hon. Lady in her role as chair of the APPG, and I commend her for her work over many years. The point about the Lord Advocate is surely that the route to justice must go through the Scottish Parliament, because the route to prosecution went through the Scottish Parliament. That is where the route of accountability lies. [Interruption.] There was some talk about chuntering earlier, but it seems to go in more than one way. I refer the hon. Lady to the comments of the Lord Advocate in the Scottish Parliament on 16 January. If the Lord Advocate really wants the Bill to proceed, she could say so in terms herself. [Interruption.] Chunter on, boys.
Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)
Will my hon. Friend take an edifying intervention?
Joanna Cherry
Is my hon. Friend as surprised as me that the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), a former prosecutor, does not understand that prosecutions do not go through the Scottish Parliament? The prosecution service in Scotland is completely independent of Parliament. That is a fundamental aspect of our constitution. Is she as shocked as me that the right hon. Gentleman does not understand that, and does she agree that the fact that he misses such a fundamental point rather undermines the force of his argument?
Marion Fellows
I thank my hon. and learned Friend for making that point. The body responsible for bringing miscarriages of justice before the court of appeal in Scotland is the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, which is not under the spell of the Lord Advocate. That argument is spurious to say the least.
Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Is she aware of the evidence given by Professor James Chalmers of the University of Glasgow to the Justice Committee a couple of weeks ago? He was asked this very question, and he said that in his view, it was better that the legislation goes through this place with legislative consent motions in the Scottish Parliament, because it is tied directly to the UK compensation scheme for this area.
Marion Fellows
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. Yes, I am very aware that the regius professor of law at the University of Glasgow made that very point to the Justice Committee. There has been widespread disquiet; I think the Chair of that Committee, the hon. and learned Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), would agree that no one in the legal profession really wants this Bill. It is breaking all precedent, but for a really good reason.
Postmasters have suffered. Robert Thomson, the postmaster who was going to be sitting in the Gallery, was convicted in 2006 while his mother was still alive. He is the man who had to talk to his sons and tell them, “I might not be here tomorrow.” He did not go to prison, but he could not get a job that gave him the income that he had when he was a postmaster. He has been in penury, his life has been turned upside down, and his children have suffered enormously. That is the case for so many sub-postmasters across the United Kingdom: they did nothing wrong, yet people were pointing at them in the street and whispering. Another sub-postmaster who was going to be in the Gallery watching us all today had to move back to his hometown because, five years later, he heard people in the supermarket saying, “There’s the guy who stole from the Post Office.” This kind of thing never leaves those victims—they will carry it to their dying day. Robert Thomson’s mother died before her son spent two years going through the Scottish courts to be exonerated.
Every time I have been in this place when any legal issue comes up, I am told that this Parliament is sovereign. Well, prove it: put the provisions of this Bill into Scotland-wide use as well. [Interruption.] Members can stand at the back, smile and snigger, but I mean it—it is absolutely disgraceful that you are saying to Scottish sub-postmasters who were convicted that they cannot get justice at the same time as their English, Welsh and Northern Irish counterparts. This is a Westminster problem. Westminster must and should sort it out, and it is easily done. Ask for a legislative consent motion, and you will get it. The Scottish Parliament will put a Bill through to exonerate these postmasters, but it cannot do it—it cannot mirror exactly what is done in this place—until this Bill has gone through all of its stages.
Joanna Cherry
Having regard to the evidence of Professor Chalmers, who of course is regius professor of criminal law at Glasgow University—that addressing this problem would be best done in this place—does my hon. Friend agree that we often hear sanctimonious lectures from the UK Government about how Scotland’s two Governments should work together to benefit Scotland? This legislation deals with a problem made on the UK Government’s watch; is it not the perfect example of an issue on which Scotland’s two Governments should act together, with the UK Government taking the lead in the same way that they have done for Northern Ireland and the Scottish Government consenting, so that we can get justice done swiftly for Scottish postmasters and postmistresses in the same way as it has been done for other people in this glorious Union that Tory Members are always telling us about?
Marion Fellows
Yes. I was appalled, upset and disturbed by the fact that the Scottish Government had been trying to contact Westminster Ministers to get this Bill to cover Scotland as well, and there was no comeback and no correspondence—nobody bothered. One afternoon, within a two-hour period, the Minister—who I greatly admire, as he knows; I have a very good working relationship with him—was able to phone the Northern Irish First Minister, Deputy First Minister and Justice Minister.
The Minister of State, Department for Business and Trade (Kevin Hollinrake)
I thank the hon. Lady for giving way. I have met the Scottish justice Minister twice online; the reason I met the Northern Ireland Ministers physically is that they came here to Parliament to meet us.
May I push back on something that the hon. Lady said a few moments ago? She said that this Parliament is sovereign. Absolutely, it is sovereign, but on these matters, her Parliament is also sovereign. [Interruption.] Clearly, as she said earlier in her remarks, there is legal controversy on these matters—she has admitted that herself. This Parliament is taking the legal risk in that area, but is the hon. Lady aware of her Lord Advocate’s position on this particular matter? These are her actual words:
“It is important to recognise that, in Scotland, there is an established route of appeal in circumstances such as this…and that due process must be followed.”—[Scottish Parliament Official Report, 16 January 2024; c. 14.]
Does the hon. Lady not believe that in that situation, her Parliament should act to overturn these convictions?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I am quite anxious that we do not have too many long interventions so that, if hon. Members want to catch my eye, there is plenty of time for debate.
Marion Fellows
Madam Deputy Speaker, I hate to disagree with you—as you know, I do not do that—but there will be no more time for some Members to speak on this Bill if it does not include Scotland. In his intervention, the Minister said that the Scottish Parliament is sovereign—well, there is a surprise. We on the SNP Benches all want Scotland to be sovereign, but it is the people who have sovereignty in Scotland, not the Parliament.
We are dancing on the heads of pins, Madam Deputy Speaker, which is not my intention. It is very clear—so clear that it is transparent— that party politics is involved in all of this. Six days ago, the Secretary of State for Business and Trade described the Scottish Parliament as lazy, and asked why it did not put through its own legislation. Believe me, it can and it will if it has to, but why should Scottish postmasters wait longer for justice? On Second Reading in this place, I said that there was likely to be to-ing and fro-ing, and that it would probably be July before this Bill is passed.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
On behalf of my constituents who have been affected by this scandal, I thank my hon. Friend for the astonishing amount of work she has done in this area. Is it not the case that, while it would certainly create issues for the legal officers in Scotland if Scotland were included in this Westminster Bill, a Bill in the Scottish Parliament would create exactly the same issues for them? The concern for legal officers on both sides of the border is that they do not like it when parliamentarians overturn the decisions of the courts, but it has to be done this time, because some of the postmasters will not live to see their compensation if we do not get on with it soon.
Marion Fellows
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I heard the Minister chuntering from a sedentary position that Scottish Ministers should take responsibility for this.
Marion Fellows
They will, but they did not cause the need for this Bill. This is a Westminster issue and should be sorted out here.
Madam Deputy Speaker, I am incensed—people may have realised that. This is not fake anger: this is a real issue for those men who came down here today. They were representative of the 100 sub-postmasters and mistresses in Scotland, and we have not even started to talk about the effect on their families and those who have died. Two years it took Robert Thomson to go through court, during which time his mother died, and it is the same story right across all the postmasters who have lost family members, and postmasters have committed suicide. This has to be sorted.
I go back to my original point. Scottish postmasters will be behind the curve when it comes to applying for the due compensation they are entitled to if they are not exonerated at the same time as the rest of the postmasters in the UK. This is a piece of nonsense. Get it done for Scotland. The Government have done it for Northern Ireland. Get it done for Scotland.
The Minister of State, Department for Business and Trade (Kevin Hollinrake)
I thank the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) for her remarks and her engagement. It has always been a pleasure to work with her both in the Chamber and in other areas. Yes, we have worked cross-party, and I have been very keen to do that all the way through on these matters, but that does not of course mean we always agree.
I was very grateful to have the opportunity to meet the hon. Lady earlier with the Scottish postmasters she referred to. I am sorry that they have not been able to attend this debate. However, at that point I was able to explain to those postmasters why the Government oppose this motion, as our position remains unchanged that this Bill should not be amended to include Scotland.
Marion Fellows
I just want to ask the Minister: what did the Scottish postmasters say to you—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. The hon. Lady knows she must not refer directly to the Minister in that way, but do so through the Chair.
Marion Fellows
I beg your pardon, Madam Deputy Speaker. What did the Scottish sub-postmasters say to the Minister this afternoon? Were they pleased, were they happy and did they feel they were getting justice through this action?
Kevin Hollinrake
I listened to the postmasters very carefully, and of course they would prefer us to legislate in the way the hon. Lady describes. I set out very clearly the reasons why we would not do so, and I think they heard the concerns we raised about how we think we should proceed.
Scotland has a historically separate legal jurisdiction, and the Lord Advocate and the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service have a unique role in prosecutions in Scotland. We feel it is more appropriate for the Scottish Government to bring forward proposals to address prosecutions on this matter in Scotland, and for those to be scrutinised by the Scottish Parliament. The First Minister has previously made public comments suggesting that the UK Government’s approach to the criteria in our legislation was too broad in relation to the convictions it would quash. He is reported, in The National on 27 March, to have said that he wanted
“to make sure that people who have genuinely committed a crime…do not then have access to…compensation.”
We have been clear from the start that there is a real risk of that happening with our approach.
Joanna Cherry
Has the Minister taken the time to read the evidence taken at the Justice Committee when Professor Chalmers said that the purpose of the Bill is to make sure convictions can be quashed so that innocent people can be compensated? The scandal originated with a faulty computer system and dubious investigatory procedures within a UK-wide institution. The scheme for compensation is to be UK-wide, so the paving legislation should be UK-wide, too. That is the opinion of the regius professor of criminal law at the University of Glasgow. Has the Minister given that any thought, and can he tell me why it is wrong?
Kevin Hollinrake
I thank the hon. and learned Member for her point, and I heard the points she raised earlier. It is very clear that all that is required for someone to access the compensation is the overturning of a conviction, and that can be done by means chosen by the Scottish Parliament or the means that have been chosen by the UK Parliament. There will be identical access to the compensation schemes: it makes no difference by whatever mechanism those convictions are overturned.
As I said earlier, the Lord Advocate has said very clearly that
“It is important to recognise that in Scotland, there is an established route of appeal in circumstances such as this…and that due process must be followed.”—[Scottish Parliament Official Report, 16 January 2024; c. 14.]
She is of course entitled to that view. These are difficult political choices, which we have taken in defining the cohort criteria, and it is right that responsible Ministers remain accountable for those decisions. The buck stops here, and it must also stop with the Scottish Government.
Chris Stephens
I am confused at the inconsistency here, so perhaps the Minister could help us. The Government are putting through a Criminal Justice Bill that impacts on Scotland, which has required the Scottish Parliament to pass a legislative consent motion for that Bill. So if it is good enough for the Criminal Justice Bill going through this place, why is it not good enough for this Bill to go through this place?
Kevin Hollinrake
As I said earlier, Scottish Ministers have the responsibility and the means to be able to form this legislation. We think it is important that they take responsibility for their decisions in this area, given the nature of these issues.
Kevin Hollinrake
I will make some progress, if I may.
I note that the First Minister stated on Thursday 18 April that the Scottish Government are prepared to introduce legislation to the Scottish Parliament to overturn convictions—I understand from the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw that that legislation has actually been drafted—and I believe it is possible and necessary for the Scottish Government to do so swiftly. Our position on Scotland’s inclusion in the Bill is very clear. The Government made a statement on 22 February to that effect, and I have written to the Scottish Government on this point. Indeed, the First Minister’s comments, together with the proposed draft amendment to the UK Bill that the Scottish Government have published, suggest that they should be in a position to do so.
The UK Government remain committed to supporting the Scottish Government to progress their own approach to their legislation. I have met Scottish Government Ministers multiple times since this Bill was introduced, and officials at the Department for Business and Trade and the Ministry of Justice hold weekly meetings with officials in the Scottish Government to discuss these issues.
In conclusion, I remain of the view that the Scottish Government should introduce their own legislation to quash convictions in their jurisdiction. As such, the Government oppose this motion.
Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
The Horizon scandal is one of the most egregious miscarriages of justice in British history, and it has robbed sub-postmasters of their lives, their liberty and their livelihoods. We welcome the Government’s inclusion of Northern Ireland in the territorial scope of this Bill following our representations, including on Second Reading.
We agree that sub-postmasters in Scotland who have been victims of this devastating scandal need urgent exoneration and compensation as much as cases in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. I want to commend the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) for her work in tirelessly campaigning for victims across the United Kingdom, especially in Scotland, and her work in the APPG. However, the case of Scotland’s inclusion provides a unique set of issues. Unlike in Northern Ireland, there has not been united support for Scotland’s inclusion in the Bill. Both the Scottish judiciary and a number of MSPs have publicly opposed this course of action.
Marion Fellows
Does the hon. Lady agree with me that many people in England, Wales and Northern Ireland have vociferously opposed the Bill, but actually understand, as people do in Scotland, that it is necessary and that it is a pragmatic solution to a situation that has been going on for far too long?
Rushanara Ali
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, but the reality is that this is a very unusual Bill, and there are serious issues, which we will go on to debate, about the separation of powers between the legislature and the judiciary.
In a context where, as I have said, there is disagreement between the judiciary and the legislature in Scotland, we believe it is not appropriate for the United Kingdom Parliament to overrule the Scottish judiciary. It should be for Holyrood to make that call and pass a mirror Bill. Therefore, we intend to abstain on this motion to include Scotland.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
I thank the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) for organising the briefing for us today. I attended it; I think there was only one sub-postmaster and one solicitor present at the time, but it was useful to hear from them. I pay tribute, as I have done before, to her for the work that she has done.
I suppose it is a consequence of the motion before the House that we have emphasised its procedural aspects more heavily than the outcomes, but the House today needs to focus on the best possible outcomes for sub-postmasters. If there had been insistence on the Northern Ireland Assembly drawing up legislation, that would have required a 12-week minimum statutory consultation period, and that would have produced a worse outcome for sub-postmasters in Northern Ireland. For that reason, I thought that the direction in which the Minister moved was absolutely sensible.
I am afraid that I do not take the same view on the position in Scotland. Including Scotland in the Bill would leave unresolved issues, and the Bill would therefore leave Scottish postmasters in a poorer position than those in the rest of the country.
Mr Carmichael
Will the hon. and learned Lady let me explain why I take that view? On 16 January, the Lord Advocate made the following observations, and I think that she is quite right:
“The vast majority of the cases that may be affected by the issue were cases in which the accused pled guilty to the offence. Often, those pleas were tendered under legal representation. Although it is impossible to comment on every case, prosecutors do not mark cases to proceed in the absence of corroboration—they simply do not do that. Defence solicitors do not advise clients to plead guilty in the absence of corroboration. In cases that proceed to trial, the sheriffs do not convict in the absence of corroboration. As a result, it is reasonable to infer that, in cases that resulted in a conviction—whether by guilty plea or conviction after trial—other evidence was available that was capable of supporting the finding of guilt…As I have explained, not every Horizon case will involve a miscarriage of justice. In some cases, there was sufficient evidence to support a criminal conviction.”—[Scottish Parliament Official Report, 16 January 2024; c. 22-27]
That is the view and analysis of the Lord Advocate. Essentially, what she is saying—I have always believed that this is right—is that because of the way that the laws of evidence and procedure operate in Scotland, and in particular because of the need for corroboration, qualitative safeguards that bring better outcomes are available to people who are before the Scottish courts. The presence of corroboration is an important part of Scots law, and the Lord Advocate is right to highlight that. As she has raised these issues, I believe that it is better for legislation to be made in the Scottish Parliament, where the equivalent to this stage would take place in a committee, and not in the Chamber, as is the case here; again, that is preferable.
Joanna Cherry
Does the right hon. Gentleman not appreciate that the concerns that the Lord Advocate has expressed are similar to those expressed by lawyers from across these islands about this legislation? Ultimately, it is Parliament’s decision whether to exonerate. Has he read the evidence given to the Criminal Justice Committee, and does he disagree with Professor Chalmers, who said that the purpose of the Bill is to make sure that convictions can be quashed, so that innocent people can be compensated quickly; that the scandal originated with a faulty computer system and dubious investigating procedures in a UK-wide institution; and that the scheme for compensation is UK-wide, so the paving legislation should be UK wide? That is not my opinion; it is the opinion of one of Scotland’s most pre-eminent criminal lawyers, the regius professor at Glasgow. Can the right hon. Gentleman tell me why he is wrong?
Mr Carmichael
The hon. and learned Lady has said herself that this is a matter of opinion. I put great confidence in the opinion of Professor Chalmers, but I come to a different conclusion, because the route to conviction lay through civil servants employed by the Scottish Government—[Interruption.] As the hon. and learned Lady reminds us, almost three decades ago, I was one of them, so I understand perfectly how the system works, and I also understand that if I ever got it wrong—incredible though that suggestion may seem—the accountability for my mistake would be through the Lord Advocate.
Peter Grant
I note that nobody has challenged the very important point that because the Scottish legislation has to mirror UK legislation, it cannot be passed until this Bill has had Royal Assent. The right hon. Gentleman has experience of the system; in his experience, once the Scottish Parliament can start considering legislation, what would be the minimum delay before Scotland caught up? Secondly, does he agree that it would be outrageous for anyone to try to shut down the Scottish Parliament in the meantime, to build in further unnecessary delay?
Mr Carmichael
I am intrigued to know what that final question about shutting down the Scottish Parliament is about, but it is open to the Scottish Parliament to deal with such matters through an emergency procedure. That would be sensible, and it would bring sub-postmasters across the whole United Kingdom to exactly the same place at the end of the day. That can be done in a matter of days, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman is aware. We have heard from others that the legislation is drafted and ready to go, so as a matter of politics, what is it that the Scottish National party does not want to admit?
Marion Fellows
As far as I am concerned, and as far as the SNP is concerned, politics does not come into this. It is about getting justice for Scottish sub-postmasters and postmasters across the rest of the United Kingdom at the same time.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I want to make it clear that interventions need to be questions to the person making the speech.
Mr Carmichael
The hon. Lady knows that I agree with her a lot more than either of us would ever admit, but on this matter, there is clearly a difference of opinion. The decision on whether the route to exoneration should be through the Scottish Parliament or through this place is a political choice.
Joanna Cherry
I sense that the right hon. Gentleman is reaching his peroration, and as we are both Scots lawyers, I wonder if he will join me in correcting the Labour party spokesperson, the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali). She said repeatedly that the Scottish judiciary did not want this legislation. The right hon. Gentleman will know that the Scottish judiciary, like the English judiciary, would never comment on the desirability of legislation. Does he agree that the hon. Lady was getting mixed up with the Lord Advocate? Perhaps she should have a chance to correct the record later, because it is very important that the House does not give the impression that the Scottish judiciary have been criticising Parliament when they have not.
Mr Carmichael
I say gently to the hon. and learned Lady that the Scottish judiciary would never comment publicly because, in my experience, they have ways of making their views known. But she is right to point out that on this occasion, the Opposition spokesperson confused the office of the Lord Advocate with the judiciary. I would say to the hon. and learned Lady, however, that that in itself demonstrates to me the need for this matter to be dealt with where the expertise lies, which is the Scottish Parliament.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
I find myself in the unusual position of supporting an SNP motion. It is probably the first time; I suspect it will be the last. The hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) has shown her dedication to the people whom she represents. I have sat in Committee with her, and I have listened to her in debates, and I know how passionately she feels about this matter. She is not, in my view, just making a political point; she honestly believes that postmasters and postmistresses in Scotland who have been wronged by the Post Office, which carelessly dealt with her cases, deserve the same justice as those in Northern Ireland, England and Wales.
I appreciate the fact that the Minister listened to voices from Northern Ireland. Since coming into his position—this matter has gone on for a long time—he has been dedicated to resolving the issue, and I praise him for that, but we have one last part of the jigsaw that needs to be dealt with. It could be dealt with by including Scotland in the Bill, as Northern Ireland has been included.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
Like others who have spoken, I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) for the work that she has done. We all feel for the postmasters throughout Scotland, but does the right hon. Gentleman accept that a lot of people in Scotland watching this are wondering why the SNP’s argument is not with the Lord Advocate, the person responsible for this delay? Why are SNP Members bringing it here? Why are their Government not taking this up with the Lord Advocate?
Sammy Wilson
I do not know about the relationship between the Lord Advocate and the Scottish National party, but I do know that a remedy is going through this House today that could dispense with whatever differences there might be in Scotland, and deal with an issue that all of us in this House are agreed needs to be dealt with quickly.
I have listened to the argument made by the Minister and others that due process needs to be followed. Indeed, I have listened to the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), who said, “You have to remember that the Scottish system is different. The level of proof in Scotland is different. There was greater information available.” The implication is that when the Scottish Parliament considers this, it might come to the conclusion that some of the convictions were safe, and some postmasters and postmistresses would not be exonerated at all. We have not taken that view for the rest of the United Kingdom. Indeed, some judges have argued that not all the convictions were unsafe, but we have decided that given how the whole Horizon situation was dealt with, it is fair that we take the view that the problems may affect some people who were rightly convicted and do not start going through each case. I remember that an argument made by a number of Members here was, “Why don’t we do this case by case?”
Douglas Ross (Moray) (Con)
The situation is different in Scotland; the Lord Advocate’s position is exactly that she does not want to risk one person who was rightly convicted being exonerated. It is therefore impossible for Scotland to follow the same route as us at the moment. As was detailed in the Scottish Parliament earlier this year, the Lord Advocate is against mass exoneration. Until she changes her position and the advice that she gives to the Scottish Government, it is impossible for them to follow what we are doing in the House of Commons through this Bill.
Sammy Wilson
I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman was not listening to me, but I made the point that although there may be cases in other parts of the United Kingdom that are in the same situation, given the exceptional circumstances, we are prepared to exonerate. If the Lord Advocate’s position is as he says, fair enough, but Parliament is making this decision for people in England, Northern Ireland and Wales. As the Bill is available to us, we should apply it to people in Scotland as well.
Peter Grant
I am grateful to be given the chance to make possibly the only supportive intervention I will ever make on the right hon. Gentleman. Does he not agree that if the possibility of a single guilty person walking free was really such a barrier, we would never have the requirement for guilt to be proven beyond reasonable doubt not only in Scotland, but in England, Wales and Northern Ireland? In a judicial system, we accept that it is better for a guilty person to go free than for an innocent person to go to jail.
Sammy Wilson
I will move on because Madam Deputy Speaker is catching my eye.
Sammy Wilson
I will not, because I just want to make two more points. First, the Minister has said, “It can be done quickly through the Parliament in Scotland.” The Scottish Parliament cannot start the process until the law has gone through here. I think I can say this, although some SNP Members might not be able to: the situation in Scotland at the moment does not look good for getting legislation through quickly for any reason, because of the uncertainty around the leadership, what will happen and what support there will be. There is a parallel with the situation we had in Northern Ireland. One of the arguments we made was over special circumstances, with the Assembly just being set up again and the delay that might cause. The Minister’s argument could mean further delay in getting justice for postmasters and postmistresses in Scotland.
Kevin Hollinrake
May I just point out that the legislation apparently has already been drafted for Scotland? There is no requirement for Scotland’s legislation to mirror our legislation; that would be up to the Scottish Parliament, and it is clear that is the case. Will the right hon. Gentleman accept that it is not just the Lord Advocate who is against what we are doing? The First Minister himself said, as I said earlier, that people with safe convictions should not have access to compensation. We are clear that the route we are taking raises that likelihood. It is therefore only right that the Scottish Parliament takes this decision.
Sammy Wilson
That has been the Minister’s position throughout the discussions we had earlier. I am still arguing for including Scotland, on the basis of consistency, fairness, speed and the political signal we should be sending to people in Scotland. No SNP Member will make this point, but I will. We have already heard in this debate that this is more of a political decision. The Scottish National party feels that it is being got at—sometimes it deserves to be got at—but my point is this: when there is a mechanism to avoid it, why create a sense of victimhood? People feel they have been got at and have been treated differently when they could have been treated in the same way as the rest of the United Kingdom. I do not think there is any political merit in excluding Scotland from this legislation. For the people who have been wronged in the Horizon scandal, for the people who have had their reputations damaged, and for the picture of this Parliament as a fair Parliament, dealing with people right across the United Kingdom who have been affected by a United Kingdom problem, I believe this motion should be passed today and Scotland should be included along with Northern Ireland.
Michael Shanks (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab)
I start by paying tribute to several people across this House from a number of different parties. When I arrived here last year, I could tell they had already been working hard on this issue, including my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) and the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows). There is consensus across the House that this huge injustice must be righted. The question, as we have heard from a number of people, is how that is done in Scotland, and that is what I want to speak to briefly.
I want to make two points. First, there is the question of speed, which we have heard about a number of times, but more importantly, there is the question of accountability. Accountability is important. The Scottish Parliament has responsibility for justice in Scotland. Scotland has always had a separate legal system—since long before the Scottish Parliament was re-established—and, as we have heard, there are the questions of the Lord Advocate’s position, of how convictions were taken forward not by the Post Office by but by the Crown, of the basis of evidence used—
Michael Shanks
May I make a bit of progress? I will then give way.
There is also the question of the evidence used around corroboration. There are differences in the convictions.
More importantly, the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw spoke about one of the organisations involved—the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, which she rightly said was the body that brought cases for review in Scotland—but she did not mention the accountability aspect. The commission was created by an Act of the Scottish Parliament, is responsible to the Scottish Parliament and gets its budget from the Scottish Government. There is a clear line of accountability between the Scottish Justice Secretary, the Scottish Government and the bodies responsible for reviewing these convictions, so the accountability is clearly with the Scottish Parliament.
Joanna Cherry
May I put it to the hon. Gentleman that he is completely misunderstanding what we are dealing with? We are dealing with absolutely extraordinary legislation that is quashing convictions as a gateway to compensation. Giving us a lecture of dubious accuracy on the lines of accountability of the Crown Office in Scotland does not address that. This legislation is going over the head of the Crown Prosecution Service in England, just as it would go over the head of the Crown Office in Scotland. Why cannot he appreciate that point? Is it because he is playing politics with the issue, like his Front-Bench colleagues?
Michael Shanks
The suggestion of dubious lectures coming from the Scottish National party is slightly misguided. I accept the point that the legislation goes above normal legal precedent, but there is no reason why the Scottish Parliament could not invoke its emergency Bill procedures as it has done in the past, recognising that this is an extraordinary situation.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
The hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) clearly does not understand how prosecutions are done in the UK—sorry, in England. [Interruption.] Well, not in England. In England, the Post Office took the prosecutions—they never went through the CPS. In Scotland, they did actually go through the Crown Office and the Advocate General. That is the difference. In terms of where decisions were taken and the people who reviewed cases before they went to court, the cases are not similar.
Michael Shanks
That is absolutely right. The key point is that there is no question about the Post Office being held to account for the institutional levels of cover-up—
Michael Shanks
May I just make the point and then I will give way? The Post Office must be held to account for that institutional cover-up, and it is the responsibility of this place and the inquiry to look into that, but the prosecutions in Scotland were taken forward by the Crown Office, which is responsible to the Scottish Parliament. That is the point that I am making about accountability.
Marion Fellows
Would the hon. Gentleman agree that accountable for all of this is Post Office Ltd, which is wholly owned by the UK Government as its single shareholder, and that the UK Government took their eye off the ball, did not follow through, and took years to admit that there was a problem in the first place, and that if the UK Government caused this, they should fix it?
Michael Shanks
I am happy to agree with the hon. Lady about the responsibility of Post Office Ltd—I said that a few moments ago—but the prosecutions based on that Post Office evidence were taken forward by the Crown Office. There is responsibility to go around here. [Interruption.] I will just answer the point, if that is okay.
The evidence absolutely came from a flawed system, and Post Office Ltd must be held to account. That does not deal with how prosecutions in Scotland were taken forward not just on evidence from Horizon but with corroboration from other sources.
Patricia Gibson
I wonder whether the hon. Member shares my distaste at some of the things said in the Chamber today, including that we cannot bring this legislation forward in Parliament today because some of the postmasters in Scotland might indeed be guilty of theft and that we have to tread carefully. That bar has not been placed on postmasters elsewhere in the UK.
Michael Shanks
I would share that distaste, but those comments were reflecting what the Lord Advocate has said. I have letters from the Lord Advocate in my hand that repeat that point a number of times. Of course, the Lord Advocate sits around the Cabinet table with, I think—I will need to check—the current First Minister, Humza Yousaf.
Michael Shanks
No. I have taken a lot of interventions and am going to make a bit of progress.
My second point is about timing. I do not accept the SNP’s argument at all that the timing is an issue. I have heard the Minister make the point on a number of occasions that the compensation regime will be available to people who have been exonerated—by whatever means that is—at the moment they are exonerated, so there is no question about that.
On the point about the Scottish Parliament not being able to rush through legislation, it does not have the same processes as the Northern Ireland Assembly—it does not have to go through a lengthy consultation process—so it could introduce a Bill tomorrow and have it passed before there is a vote on any of the confidence motions on Thursday. Indeed, in 2020, the Scottish Parliament passed an emergency Bill on covid—a considerably more difficult piece of legislation, stretching to 138 pages—in just two days, and the idea that this Bill is somehow more complicated than that is ridiculous.
There is no reason why the Scottish Parliament cannot take responsibility and introduce a Bill now. Indeed, if there was a question about not being able to finalise the Bill until the UK Bill had passed, the Scottish Parliament could take it all the way to the final amendment stage and amend it as necessary. But actually, again, the Minister has said that the Scottish Bill does not have to mirror directly the UK legislation for people to have access to the same compensation, which is what the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw and I both want to see.
If the SNP is unwilling to act in the Scottish Parliament to introduce the Bill, my colleague Michael Marra MSP has already drafted a Members’ Bill and will introduce that Bill this week.
Michael Shanks
If the SNP is unable to act, there will be no more dithering and there will be no more delays, because Labour will act. For that reason, I will not be supporting the SNP motion.
Marion Fellows
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. At no time have the Scottish Justice Secretary or the Scottish Parliament said that they will not pass legislation—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. The hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Michael Shanks) has finished his speech. If the hon. Lady would like to make a few comments, she can. She does not need to do so through a point of order.
Marion Fellows
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have here the Justice Secretary in Scotland’s remarks. She said:
“We remain crystal clear that the best way to achieve parity for the sub-postmasters across the UK who were convicted on the basis of tainted evidence from the Post Office Horizon system is for the UK Government’s Bill to be extended to Scotland, as it has been for Northern Ireland, just as we have been clear if this isn’t the case we will bring forward a Scottish bill that mirrors the UK bill as quickly as possible.”
Question put.
Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Bill
Monday 29th April 2024
(7 months, 3 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Act 2024 View all Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Act 2024 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Committee of the whole House Amendments as at 29 April 2024 - (29 Apr 2024)
The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I remind Members that in Committee they should not address the Chair as Deputy Speaker. Please use our names when addressing the Chair. Madam Chair, Chair, Madam Chairman or Mr Chairman are also acceptable.
Clause 1
Quashing of convictions for relevant offences
The Minister of State, Department for Business and Trade (Kevin Hollinrake)
I beg to move amendment 25, page 1, line 6, at end insert—
“(za) the conviction took place before the coming into force of this Act,”.
This amendment makes it clear that clause 1(1) will quash only convictions occurring before the coming into force of the Act.
The First Deputy Chairman
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 1, page 1, line 9, leave out paragraph (b).
Government amendments 27 to 28.
Clause 1 stand part.
Government amendments 29 to 33.
Clause 2 stand part.
Government amendment 34.
Clause 3 stand part.
Government amendments 35 to 41.
Amendment 3, in clause 4, page 3, line 34, at end insert—
“(4A) Notification under subsection (4) must include a written summary of—
(a) the compensation schemes available to a relevant person following a quashed conviction under section 1(1);
(b) the relevant heads of loss under which a relevant person may claim compensation; and
(c) a tariff of compensation available relating to each of the heads of loss mentioned in paragraph (b).”
Amendment 4, page 3, line 34, at end insert—
“(4A) Notification under subsection (4) must include a written commitment from the Secretary of State that—
(a) the period of time between a full and valid claim for compensation and an offer of compensation will not exceed four weeks; and
(b) if the offer is not made within the four week period mentioned in paragraph (a), a fixed penalty amount will be added to the ultimate compensation sum for each day by which the four week period is exceeded.”
Amendment 5, page 3, line 34, at end insert—
“(4A) Notification under subsection (4) must include a written commitment from the Secretary of State to use reasonable endeavours to ensure that the period of time between a full and valid claim for compensation and an offer of compensation will not exceed four weeks.”
Government amendments 42 to 44.
Clause 4 stand part.
Government amendments 45 and 46.
Amendment 6, in clause 5, page 4, line 18, at end insert—
“(3A) Notification under subsection (3) must include a written summary of—
(a) the compensation schemes available to a relevant person following a direction to delete a caution under section 5(1);
(b) the relevant heads of loss under which a relevant person may claim compensation; and
(c) a tariff of compensation available relating to each of the heads of loss mentioned in paragraph (b).”
Amendment 7, page 4, line 18, at end insert—
“(3A) Notification under subsection (3) must include a written commitment from the Secretary of State that—
(a) the period of time between a full and valid claim for compensation and an offer of compensation will not exceed four weeks; and
(b) if the offer is not made within the four week period mentioned in paragraph (a), a fixed penalty amount will be added to the ultimate compensation sum for each day by which the four week period is exceeded.”
Amendment 8, page 4, line 18, at end insert—
“(3A) Notification under subsection (3) must include a written commitment from the Secretary of State to use reasonable endeavours to ensure that the period of time between a full and valid claim for compensation and an offer of compensation will not exceed four weeks.”
Government amendment 47.
Clauses 5 and 6 stand part.
Government amendments 48 to 51.
Clause 7 stand part.
Government amendments 52 and 53.
Amendment 70, page 5, line 39, after “as” insert “Pathway,”.
This amendment would provide additional clarity by ensuring that the application called Pathway, which was rolled out as a pilot version of Horizon, is explicitly referenced as a Horizon system for the purposes of the Bill.
Government amendments 54 and 55.
Clause 8 stand part.
Government amendment 56.
Amendment 71, page 6, line 26, at end insert—
“(3) This Act expires at the end of the period of 2 years beginning with the day on which it is passed.”
Clauses 9 and 10 stand part.
Government new clauses 2 and 3.
New clause 1—Provision relating to Northern Ireland—
“(1) The Secretary of State must consult the First Minister and deputy First Minister about making provision for quashing any conviction in Northern Ireland for an equivalent “relevant offence” (see section 2) alleged to have been committed in Northern Ireland.
(2) The Secretary of State may make regulations to apply the provisions of this Act, with any necessary modifications to take account of the law and legal system in Northern Ireland, to secure the quashing of any conviction in Northern Ireland for an equivalent “relevant offence” (see section 2).
(3) Unless the First Minister and deputy First Minister acting jointly advise to the contrary, the Secretary of State must lay before Parliament a draft of regulations to be made under subsection (2) no later than one week after the day on which this Act is passed.
(4) Regulations under this section are to be made by statutory instrument and may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before, and approved by resolution of, each House of Parliament.
(5) Subject to subsection (4) of this section, section 7 of this Act applies to other regulations made under this section.”
This skeleton clause would require comparable provision to be made to quash convictions in Northern Ireland on the same basis as in England and Wales.
New clause 6—Statement on quashing convictions relating to Capture software—
“The Secretary of State must, no later than 30 days after the day on which this Act is passed, make a written statement to Parliament outlining action the Government intends to take to secure the quashing of convictions of persons carrying on a Post Office business while using the Capture software from 1992 onwards.”
Government amendments 23 and 24.
Kevin Hollinrake
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Dame Rosie. Given the nature of this debate, in moving the Government amendments, I will also use my speech to discuss the other amendments that have been tabled.
First, I will address the Government amendments in the name of the Secretary of State relating to Northern Ireland: 23 and 24, 26 to 44, and 46 to 56, as well as new clauses 1 to 3. I am grateful to the House for agreeing to the Government’s instruction motion to enable debate on these important amendments. The Government have listened carefully to representations across the House regarding the extension of the Bill to Northern Ireland. We recognise the unique challenges faced by the Northern Ireland Executive in bringing forward legislation to quash convictions to a similar timeframe as the rest of the UK.
Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)
I just want to put on record, in Committee, the Democratic Unionist party’s sincere and personal appreciation of the Minister for how he has engaged with us, the pragmatic way he has approached these issues, and the can-do attitude he has extended to Northern Ireland. We have met on a number of occasions. He has received the thorough representations of my right hon. Friend the Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) and colleagues across the House, not least Ministers in the Northern Ireland Executive. We are indebted to him. We recognise that this is a huge step forward for the sub-postmasters in Northern Ireland who felt there would not be light at the end of the tunnel. He has extended the Bill very purposefully for all those affected in Northern Ireland, and we thank him for it.
Kevin Hollinrake
I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his kind words. It is a pleasure to work with him and his colleagues from Northern Ireland. We were always sympathetic to his arguments and are delighted to have been able to move forward as we have.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Following on from my right hon. Friend the Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson), it is fair to say that a week ago or even a month ago, the 23 sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses in Northern Ireland had little hope. Today, they have hope and that is due to the Minister’s endeavours on their behalf, pushing this issue and the Government’s acceptance. On behalf of the 23, we would like to say a big thank you to the Minister and the Government.
Kevin Hollinrake
I am very grateful. The hon. Gentleman is right to address the point about the 23 sub-postmasters. They are why we are here and why we are keen to act in this way. We recognise that there were specific circumstances in Northern Ireland that would have delayed the exoneration and compensation to those individuals, and that is why we are acting as we are today. It is always a pleasure to work with him, as I have on many different issues over the years.
Issues include the Executive’s recent restoration and additional public consultation requirements, which the House debated on Second Reading. In deciding to take this step, the Government recognised the extent of cross-community support for the extension of the Bill to Northern Ireland. For those reasons, we have decided to put forward Government amendments which would extend the scope of the Bill to Northern Ireland. I am very grateful to have cross-party support from Members representing Northern Ireland constituencies in co-signing Government amendments, specifically the right hon. Members for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) and for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson), and the hon. Members for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell), for Strangford (Jim Shannon), for North Antrim (Ian Paisley), for North Down (Stephen Farry), for South Antrim (Paul Girvan), for Upper Bann (Carla Lockhart) and for Belfast South (Claire Hanna).
The amendments, which have been drafted in consultation with the Northern Ireland Executive, empower the Northern Ireland Department of Justice to implement the legislation in the same way as the Secretary of State will in England and Wales. The amendments would modify the criteria for the convictions which are overturned to ensure that the relevant convictions from Northern Ireland are captured within its scope. Specifically, they would add those secured by the Public Prosecution Service for Northern Ireland and refer to distinct Northern Ireland offences. Additionally, this group of amendments would ensure that the relevant cautions will be deleted in Northern Ireland, as they will be in England and Wales. The amendments have the same intent as new clause 1, tabled by the hon. Member for North Antrim, so I hope he will be happy to withdraw it on that basis.
On amendment 1, in the name of the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne), I thank him for his continued engagement on the Bill and on wider Horizon matters. It is vital that we stay true to our objective of bringing justice to wrongly convicted postmasters, but it is also important to keep in mind the constitutionally sensitive nature of the Bill. We should legislate in a way that respects the separation of powers and the independence of the judiciary. This amendment would widen the scope of the Bill to include convictions that have been upheld by the Court of Appeal. It would automatically quash such convictions, thereby overriding decisions taken by the senior judiciary. These cases are excluded from the Bill because the Government believe that it should tread very carefully where judges in the senior appellate courts have considered a case on its merits. We do not consider it appropriate for Parliament to interfere with such decisions.
Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way on this point and, indeed, for the way he is approaching it. The Chairman of the Justice Committee sent him an excellent letter last week in which he underlined that almost all the witnesses before his Committee agreed that it was unfair for the Bill to take a restrictive approach, in the way the Minister has, while taking a rather expansive approach elsewhere. I know the Minister has written back to the Chairman of the Justice Committee, but his letter did not touch on this point. I wonder whether he will take the opportunity to wrap that up for us.
Kevin Hollinrake
I thank the right hon. Gentleman and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) for their work. We take these matters and the independence of the judiciary very seriously. Where the Court of Appeal has upheld a conviction and declared it safe, we think that is a material concern. There will always be different opinions in these areas, but we think we are striking the right balance between overturning convictions that we believe to be unsafe in the main and ones that have been before a senior judge.
Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
I, too, pay tribute to the Minister for the extremely constructive way in which he has engaged with everybody on this matter. My initial position was entirely supportive of the Government, but I must say that the evidence given to the Justice Committee causes me to think again. It is usually right to be very wary indeed about trespassing on decisions made by the courts. However, we have chosen to do that because it is thought desirable for the greater good in respect of the bulk of convictions.
The point that needs to be emphasised is that we have perhaps not appreciated that, in cases where convictions were upheld by the Court of Appeal, it applied a narrower test to the relevance of the Horizon evidence. In Hamilton and related cases, it said that the test was whether the Horizon evidence was essential to the conviction. We do not apply that test as a result of a policy decision. That could lead to a bizarre situation whereby someone who did not get to the Court of Appeal because the Criminal Cases Review Commission did not refer the case would have their conviction quashed, whereas someone who the commission thought had an arguable case and who went to the Court of Appeal but who was rejected on a narrower test than Parliament is now creating would not benefit from having their conviction quashed. That is the unfairness that we need to think a little more about, and it is the thrust of what the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) is getting at.
Kevin Hollinrake
There will, of course, always be different legal opinions on these matters. As my hon. and learned Friend expressed, he has had two different opinions on what we should do in this regard, and I know that his view is based on further submissions of evidence that he has received. Of course, we consider these matters very carefully. My right hon. and learned Friend the Justice Secretary is here and listening to my hon. and learned Friend’s comments. We will always continue to reflect on this legislation to make sure that we are getting to the right place, but I understand the points that he raises.
Sir Robert Neill
There were certainly differences of opinion as to the appropriateness of the measure as a whole, with Dr Quirk being in a minority of three who took a different view, but there was not a difference of opinion on the factual point that the test applied by the Court of Appeal in Hamilton is different from that which is in statute. That was a matter of unanimity.
Kevin Hollinrake
I understand and accept that point, but a decision has to be taken on whether to include these cases. There is definitely a difference of legal opinion on that point, because I have had different representations made to me.
We recognise that this approach may leave a small number of individuals concerned about the way forward for their cases. In cases where the Court of Appeal has upheld a conviction, the usual routes of appeal remain available to them. Those affected can apply to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which can review their cases.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
The Minister knows that we on the advisory board have discussed this issue at length. Given what has come out of the inquiry over the last few weeks, does he agree that there is evidence that may have a bearing on some of these cases? I accept why he does not want to include them in this Bill, but we need to look at some of these cases to see whether there are grounds for appeal.
Kevin Hollinrake
Of course, and I am listening intently to the evidence before the inquiry. It is true to say there are some shocking revelations. As the right hon. Gentleman illustrated in his work with the advisory board, there was a maliciousness about some of the prosecutions, which is of great concern, as is the flawed Horizon system. Part of the reason why we are legislating as we are reflects that, but we will continue to look at the evidence that emerges.
Liam Byrne
If that is the approach that the Minister is going to take, could he tell the House a bit more about how his Department will support individuals who find themselves in this egregious position? As my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) said, evidence will now have come to light that was not available to the Court of Appeal or, indeed, to courts that may have refused leave to appeal. Those individuals will be in a terrible state now. What can his Department do, and on what timetable, to support them through the process that he proposes they take?
Kevin Hollinrake
The right hon. Gentleman makes the point himself: as more evidence emerges, it may be that the CCRC takes a different view of cases that are brought forward. People who have presented their cases can revisit them by making an application to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which can make recommendations as it sees fit. Clearly, we are happy to provide any information that we possess, and the Post Office will do the same. As I say, the inquiry’s revelations may bring information that would help in some cases. The CCRC may refer cases to the Court of Appeal if it considers that there is a real possibility that convictions would not be upheld. With the constitutional sensitivities in mind, I hope the right hon. Member will agree to withdraw his amendment.
I turn now to amendments 3 and 6, tabled in the name of the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill. These amendments would require the Secretary of State to include details of available financial redress in notifications to people who have had their convictions quashed, or cautions deleted, by this Bill. The amendments come as part of a number of recommendations by the Business and Trade Committee, to which the Government have since provided our response. I can reassure the right hon. Gentleman and the whole Committee that we will include information about redress in the notifications that we send to postmasters when their convictions are overturned. Our aim is that the redress process will follow seamlessly from the process of overturning convictions—there is no need to legislate for this. Those with cautions may have already sought financial redress via the Horizon shortfall scheme or the group litigation order scheme. We will provide them with the necessary guidance to identify the appropriate route to claim financial redress, if they have not done so already.
Liam Byrne
I am grateful to the Minister for clarifying these points as we go along. He will know that many sub-postmasters have not applied for the full extent of their potential claim because they are unsure about the case law involved, and I understand that the Department is using some guidance in making judgments—for example, the Dyson judgment, which is not publicly available, for perfectly good reasons. There is a bit of creativity going into how we solve this problem. The Post Office wrote to me last night to say that, on the Horizon scheme, it is recording the heads of loss and the averages of claims that are being agreed, which could be one of the ways in which sub-postmasters are given a sense of what the tariff is. Could the Minister say a bit more about how we absolutely guarantee in the notification that we maximise the chance of sub-postmasters claiming the maximum possible amount that they should be entitled to?
Kevin Hollinrake
We have tried to design the schemes in conjunction with the legal firms that are advising most of the claimants on claiming redress. We will continue to work with them, as we do with the advisory board, and there are different mechanisms that we can use to make this process simpler, more transparent and easier to navigate. Clearly, cases will differ, despite similarities, so if we go down the full assessment route, it is important that all claims be assessed individually, which obviously takes time. If there are mechanisms that we can use—for example, the tariffs that the right hon. Gentleman describes—to expedite the process, we would be happy to look at them. We will continue to work with the advisory board on that.
Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)
I had hoped that my hon. Friend was going to speak to amendment 70 as well. I just so pleased that we are going through the legislation today, because it is so important for so many people. I have written to him about my constituent who came to see me about her husband, who was a sub-postmaster. He had been written to by the Post Office, who had told him about his exceptional bookkeeping. He then discovered an unexplained loss in the amounts. He called the auditors; they came in, and they locked him out of his business. They searched his home. They did not find any evidence, but they took away his business, his home, his livelihood and his reputation. We have heard that so many times. The only difference is that this happened in 1992, under the precursor system to Horizon. Amendment 70 mentioned the Pathway system. My constituent was using something called Capture. Fortunately the case was dropped before it got to criminal court. I know that the Minister is looking at whether there were more of these Capture cases. When the legislation comes before the other place, can we make sure that, if needed, it can also quash any criminal convictions due to Capture, or other precursor systems, as well as Horizon?
Kevin Hollinrake
I will speak to amendment 70. I wrote back to my right hon. Friend about her case, and we are looking at this. I am sure that the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) will have something to say about this issue. We have agreed to instigate an independent review of that software. There are some fundamental differences. For example, it is not networked, so no remote access is possible, whereas that is a major feature of the issues with Horizon. I am happy to continue to engage with my right hon. Friend on the issue, and I congratulate her on the way she has dealt with it on behalf of her constituent.
My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst’s amendment 71 would also sunset other parts of the Bill. This would not give victims of the scandal the justice that they deserve. We are clear—there has been agreement across this House on this—that this exceptional legislation does not set a precedent, and I hope, especially with the reassurance provided by Government amendments 25 and 45, that he will withdraw amendment 71.
Sir Robert Neill
I understand where the Minister is coming from, and of course he has provided a deal of reassurance, but I want to test this a little. Are we really assuming that it will be necessary to leave open-ended people’s ability to come forward to have their conviction quashed? After all, if they cannot reasonably be traced, there is provision for the Secretary of State to notify an appropriate person. For example, if we cannot find the person—or their next of kin, if they are dead—there is a catch-all provision about notifying an appropriate person. Why could that not include the criminal records bodies? Would they not be notified anyway? I just wonder why we have to leave the provision open-ended to that extent. There will come a point when the provision has been exhausted. Also, I am interested in how my hon. Friend envisages a process working through which people can get a document that shows that their conviction is quashed—for example, if they need a visa or work permit, or have to undergo Disclosure and Barring Service checks.
Kevin Hollinrake
As I said, the legislation expires on the day that the provision is brought into effect. My hon. and learned Friend is talking about the ongoing marking of the records of people who may come forward at a future date. We do not know what that date would be. I am happy to have a conversation with him about what the cut-off would be, but the effect of this legislation, in terms of quashing convictions, expires on the day it receives Royal Assent.
Sir Robert Neill
I understand that, and I can see my hon. Friend’s point, hence the two amendments. My point is that he is praying in aid, as another reason for not having a sunset clause, the provisions for notifying people about applying to have their convictions quashed. What is the mechanism to make sure that does not hang around indefinitely? We will eventually want to bring things to a conclusion—not only getting convictions quashed, but, quite separately, paying out the compensation fund. One day, all the compensation that can be claimed will have been claimed. What do we do then? How do we wrap up the process? That is what it comes down to.
Kevin Hollinrake
As I said, I am happy to have a continuing conversation with my hon. and learned Friend on that point. I feel that it would be a serious injustice if we set, say, a three year cut-off period and somebody came along a day later. Those are the challenges that we have to meet.
Liam Byrne
In a way, this is the core of the debate about where the four corners of the Bill should stretch to. The hon. and learned Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) makes a very good point: at some point, there should be a sunset on such unprecedented legislation. At the moment, there are no limits to its expansiveness in terms of time, but the Minister has set a limit on its expansiveness in terms of the individuals involved, because he is ruling out those who have gone through the Court of Appeal. The Bill would benefit from further discussion, perhaps in the other place, about precisely where the four corners should be pinned down.
Kevin Hollinrake
I would welcome that discussion, and I will follow it closely in the other place.
The controversial element of this unprecedented, exceptional legislation is the overturning of the convictions, because we are interfering with the courts by legislating in this way. The convictions expire on day one. All that happens further on from that is the marking of the records, which is not the controversial part. The controversial part is the interference with the courts. Again, I am happy to have a continuing conversation with the right hon. Gentleman.
New clause 7, in the name of the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), would require the establishment of an independent intermediary body to administer financial redress to individuals whose convictions are quashed by the Bill. I also acknowledge the Business and Trade Committee’s recommendation on a similar point.
I assure the Committee that we are building independence into the process of making financial redress. Final decisions will, if necessary, be made by an independent panel comprising a King’s counsel, an accountant and a retail expert. The panel will have a case manager, who will ensure that cases are settled fairly, swiftly and in a non-adversarial manner. I have been clear throughout my work that we should put the victims of the scandal back in the position that they would have been in, and that we should move as quickly as possible. We feel that it would take months to set up an independent intermediary, and that it would add additional steps to the process and risk creating unnecessary bureaucracy.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
If my new clause had been selected for debate, I would probably not seek to press it. I am not in a position to do anything more, but I thank the Minister for his assurances on independence.
The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Dame Rosie Winterton)
As the new clause was not selected, we probably should not be discussing it.
Kevin Hollinrake
My apologies, Dame Rosie. I will move on with pleasure.
Penultimately, I turn to new clause 6. I thank the right hon. Member for North Durham for all his work seeking justice for the former sub-postmasters and, indeed, on the Horizon compensation advisory board. My officials have been working closely with him, as have I, and he will be aware that we have set in train the process of appointing an independent forensic investigator to look into the Capture software, now that the Post Office has addressed concerns about it. Obviously, this relates to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford), who is no longer in her place.
This follows on from the useful meeting that the right hon. Member for North Durham and I had with a sub-postmaster and his wife who wanted to talk to me about his experiences. My officials have spoken to other affected sub-postmasters, too. New clause 6 would require the Secretary of State to make a statement within 30 days of Royal Assent. As the Committee knows, we aim to complete the Bill’s passage very quickly, so a statement may be due quite soon. In practice, we feel it would be too soon, and time is needed to identify and appoint the right person for this role, and for the investigator to complete their work and offer an independent conclusion.
Mr Kevan Jones
Clause 2(2) mentions 23 September 1996. Is the Minister saying that any ICL Pathway system installed in post offices, even prior to that date, will be captured by the Bill?
Kevin Hollinrake
Certainly, if we regard it as a pilot system of Horizon, that would be the case, as drafted.
Mr Kevan Jones
So is the date irrelevant? I have spoken to one person whose prosecution might have been 1996, but there is evidence that the Pathway system was in place before that date in 1996.
Kevin Hollinrake
That is not what we understand from the Post Office, but I am happy to continue our discussions, as I always do, to make sure that every relevant person affected by Horizon or its pilot systems is covered.
Several hon. Members rose—
The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. Before I call the next speaker, I remind the Committee that this debate has to finish at 9 o’clock. I know some of the points are very detailed, but I am conscious that I have the four Members who are standing and the shadow Minister to get in. Colleagues should bear that in mind, because I cannot impose a time limit. It is about making sure that everyone has a chance to speak.
Liam Byrne
Thank you, Dame Rosie. It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship.
I will be very brief, because some of my points have been covered through interventions. There has been good progress since the Bill was published, which is testament to the Minister’s leadership and his officials’ support. As my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) said, the more that we have heard in the inquiry and through the media since the Bill’s publication, the more horrified and more determined we have become to hold individuals, including the former chief executive of the Post Office, to account. It is pretty clear to many of us that the evidence she gave to the Select Committee on 3 February 2015 and 24 June 2020 has been flatly contradicted by the Channel 4 revelations that were published on 27 March. I hope the Select Committee will be able to bring options for the House to consider as soon as possible.
I wish to touch on three points quickly: the speed of redress, the stress of redress, and the scope of this scheme. The point about speed is lit up by a single fact: the total budget for compensation is about £1.2 billion, but as of last Wednesday £196 million has been paid out. The implication of that is that 80% of the compensation budget has not been paid out, after all this time, and all the heartbreak, trauma and scandal. This Bill will correct that imbalance substantially; about £780 million of the budget is earmarked for overturning convictions and this Bill allows us to move that money much faster. However, I remain concerned by what the Minister said today about the lack of any service level agreements for paying more out for the overturning convictions scheme. I would have expected a timetable for paying out that redress alongside this Bill today.
We should be concerned about that because the track record of making payments is not good. For example, if we look at the claims in the Horizon shortfall scheme submitted by the original deadline in November 2020—three and a half years ago—we see that 362 people have still not been paid, which is a sixth of applicants. If we look at the late claims, all 667 of them, we see that three quarters of them have not been paid. That is why the Select Committee looked hard at how we could introduce some strictures to ensure that people were paid much faster.
Since then, my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), who has more experience in this House than pretty much anybody else, and indeed the Minister, raised serious and wise concerns about the risks of putting a legally binding deadline on the entire timetable. I have listened to those concerns with care, which is why the way that my amendment on this has been drafted takes aim at one part of the process: the timeframe between a legitimate claim being submitted and a first offer being made. The Minister’s target is four weeks and we are getting close to that now, but the reality is that a significant number of people are still not being paid within that timeframe.
In some of the anonymised evidence the Minister provided to the Committee, we can see that 13% of claimants in the GLO scheme are waiting more than 40 days, with 2% waiting more than 100 days. If my amendments, as I have drafted them, are not right and still run risks, I appeal to the other place to work harder on this to ensure that there is some legally binding stricture on the Department that means that when, God forbid, the Minister is no longer in his position, and we do not have his emollience and tenacity to rely on, his successor, whoever that may be, is bound by some kind of timeframe that ensures we are not still having this debate in years to come.
To check the point, I contacted a number of Select Committee witnesses this morning and found that there was some evidence that the speed of claims was improving. However, new issues were emerging; I am told that the time taken to table a second offer when the first is rejected is, frankly, not fast enough. There have been delays of up to three months or more in offering dates through remediation hearings, so the process is still running too slow. If I have failed to persuade the Committee today, I appeal to the other place to help us to find some legal mechanisms to ensure that there is stiffer timetable to which the Department must adhere.
My second point is about the stress that many people will face when putting claims in. Many people will not put claims in because legal assistance is not available before the claim is submitted. Many people, such as Christopher Head, are going out of their way to provide pro bono assistance to people in putting claims together, but often it will take hours and hours of work to get a claim form in and many people simply will not be up for that, as they do not have the patience and they want to put this behind them. They certainly will not have the legal assistance available to them. That is why I hope the Department will consider publishing some kind of tariff to help people ensure that they are claiming for the full amount. The Minister may well say that there is a risk that people will then under-claim, but I checked that with some of the lawyers this morning. Their response was expressed in rather unparliamentary language, I am afraid, Dame Rosie, but the upshot was that such an objection was utter nonsense.
I know that a lot of thought is going on in the Department about the way to do this, and I welcome the letter from the Post Office publishing average offers around the heads of loss that have been set out. Obviously, there will be bandings that are more appropriate, and perhaps that is a way to publish these things. Obviously, there is a judgment the Department is relying on—the Dyson judgment—and the neutral evaluation, which is not publicly available, for good reason. However, my plea to the Minister is this: let us try to make much clearer to claimants the full measure of redress that they should have available. If there are issues in people needing extra help before the claim form is put in, please let us make sure that that help is available right at the beginning of the stage and not simply made available once the claim is in and a contest is under way about what should be paid.
My final point is about scope, which we have already got into. There is a case for the Government to think again about the cases that have already gone to the Court of Appeal and were refused or were not given leave to appeal. The best evidence for that is the Chair of the Justice Committee’s excellent letter, in which he says:
“The Bill is in effect treating cases where the CCRC had credible evidence that Horizon data might have been essential to the prosecution case less favourably than those that the CCRC considered had no credible evidence and therefore no basis upon which to refer to the Court of Appeal.”
That is an extremely important point.
I can see what the Minister is trying to do. He is conjuring here with very radical legal remedies, and that is not something we want to be expansive, but the risk we are running is that we leave an injustice that takes years and years to work through. He has addressed some of the points the Chair of the Justice Committee made in his letter, but he has not addressed that one in writing. The objection and the goal of my amendments still stand. I will not press my amendments to a vote, because we are trying to maximise the spirit of collegiate working. I accept that my amendments, particularly on the issue of speed, may not yet be at the state of perfection that they would satisfy everyone in the Committee, especially those Members with more experience of working on these cases than I have.
However, the problem is there: people are not being paid fast enough; they are not being supplied with the right amount of information up front at the beginning of their claim; and the scope of the Bill has been drawn too narrowly. I look forward to working with the other place to try to get amendments in place that can improve the Bill and commend the consent of Members from all parties.
Sir Robert Neill
I, too, hope that I can be brief, Dame Rosie, because we have covered a deal of the ground in the interventions. However, I wish to make a few short additional points to those that have already been ventilated. They are all contained in the transcript of the evidence of the Justice Committee’s hearing with four distinguished witnesses, three senior academic lawyers and, in Mr Rozenberg KC, arguably the most distinguished legal journalist of recent times. Interestingly, the Government will perhaps take comfort from the thought that three of those distinguished witnesses were prepared, despite some of my misgivings, to say that this may be the least worst way of dealing with the position. Equally, however, all of them thought that more things need to be done with the Bill, which is what I ask the Minister to bear in mind.
I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) for referring to the letter that I wrote to the Secretary of State on 24 April. It broadly encompasses what I think are the key points, and I hope that the Secretary of State will be able to respond in writing, so that we can then publish that, in addition to the transcript of our evidence and the letter, for completeness of the record before the Bill goes to the other House.
I come to the other issues we flagged up. A small but perhaps important one relates to the conditions that must be met before the conviction can potentially be quashed. In particular, condition D in clause 2(5) requires the offence to have been committed
“in connection with carrying on, or working for the purposes of, the post office business”.
The Government’s explanatory notes say that the provisions of the Bill are “intended to be unambiguous”, but the debate we had in the Justice Committee suggests that there is potential ambiguity there. Take, for example, the position of a post office worker who, during the course of the operation of the Horizon system, is convicted of theft of stock for personal gain. Is that in the scope of the Bill or not? It is not in relation to a deficiency. In reality, that means that the Secretary of State will have to be advised by officials, perfectly properly, as to whether any individual case comes within the scheme and therefore within the scope of the requirements of clause 4. Some judgment will have to be made, and it would be interesting to know on what basis.
Liam Byrne
The Chair of the Justice Committee is making a brilliant speech. The Minister characterised the decision and the conundrum here as a legal conundrum, but in a way it is in fact a political conundrum, because we are taking a political decision about the where the scope of the scheme should start and stop. Does the hon. and learned Gentleman have any insight into how long it might take those who are currently left out of the scheme to secure justice if we do not amend the Bill to improve the scope?
Sir Robert Neill
The right hon. Gentleman is right about the policy choice that ultimately gives rise to this issue. I pray in aid a quotation from Dr Hannah Quirk, who, of all the witnesses who gave evidence to the Justice Committee, was the most sceptical, but she conceded, in reference to people whose cases have gone to the Court of Appeal,
“If we are taking an expansive approach, it seems unfair to exclude them. The Court of Appeal might have been applying different criteria at that stage—the full extent of the scandal had not come to light.”
That is an important point to bear in mind. The Court of Appeal would have been considering a mixture of evidence and law at that stage. Professor Chalmers, who has also been mentioned, said:
“I obviously think it is unreasonable. I can certainly see the argument for cases from Hamilton onwards, but if someone had appealed at the time when the problems with Horizon were not documented, it seems to me to be entirely unfair to exclude them from the Act on that basis.”
Mr Kevan Jones
Does the hon. and learned Gentleman agree that much has come out since those cases were looked at? The public inquiry evidence about the way the Post Office investigated those cases showed that a text-book aggressive style was used in every case. That had an impact on some sub-postmasters pleading guilty when they were not, and in the way in which some of them were harangued to the court.
Sir Robert Neill
The right hon. Gentleman makes a perfectly fair point. That is why I hope we can find a formula to revisit this issue as the Bill makes progress. Given the expansive policy decision the House has taken, I do not think any great extra constitutional outrage is caused by including those who have been to the Court of Appeal within scope. It is rather as Keynes said:
“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”
As the right hon. Gentleman points out, the facts may well have changed.
There may be an alternative formulation to that set out in amendment 1. It might be that a provision could be added to the Bill—I am thinking almost de bene esse at the moment—when it goes to the other House to automatically mandate the Criminal Cases Review Commission to refer those cases. At the moment, someone is required to go to the CCRC to seek the reopening of their case and apply to the Court of Appeal for leave to appeal out of time, if the case has been dismissed, and for it then to be reconsidered. As the Lady Chief Justice said in evidence to the Justice Committee, I have no doubt that the Court of Appeal would move very swiftly if that were to occur—she was very clear on that point—but there has to be a trigger mechanism, which is absent at the moment.
To come back to the point made by the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill, the current working processes of the CCRC could not guarantee speed. Some provision to mandate the CCRC to refer such cases swiftly might be a means of achieving justice, without upsetting any more constitutional apple carts. Perhaps that is the sort of discussion we could usefully have as the Bill goes forward.
A point linked to that is the position of someone who has appealed. I notice that clause 3 sets out the various circumstances in determining when a conviction has been considered by the Court of Appeal. Clause 3(4)(a) says one such circumstances is where
“a single judge of the Court of Appeal has refused to give leave to appeal against the conviction,”
and leave to appeal has not been given by the Court of Appeal thereafter. People can appeal the single judge’s leave to the full court, but that does not always happen. The point to make there is that, although in some cases we do not know, a suspicion was strongly raised by witnesses to the Justice Committee that the single judge may have refused leave simply on the grounds that an appeal was out of time, because there are strict time limits on bringing an appeal. If that has been the case, because it never got to the full court, the single judge and the full court would never have considered the merits; leave would have been refused purely on the basis that technically the case was out of time and there was no evidence put forward to justify at that stage why there should be a granting of leave to go beyond time. Again, that might have been because the full facts of the scandal were not yet know. I would hope that that sort of anomaly could be addressed without too much difficulty.
Dame Eleanor, I hope constructive things can still be done on the margins to improve the Bill in relation to those matters and, as the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill rightly said, to get the shape of the Bill into proper form. I will not press my amendment, because we want to take things forward constructively, but I hope that the Minister, in the exceptionally helpful spirit that he has adopted throughout, will continue to engage with those of us who, whatever our misgivings, realise that this is a route that the House has chosen to take. We want to get it working to the best possible extent for those who have been affected by this horrendous scandal. That will lead to ramifications in the prosecutorial process, the disclosure process and many other things beyond.
Mr Kevan Jones
First, may I declare my interest as a member of the Horizon compensation advisory board and take some responsibility for why we are here today? It was the advisory board that recommended this course of action, but this suggestion was down to the tenacity of the Minister and of the Law Officers, who he worked with closely.
When the idea was first muted at the advisory board, we thought that, possibly, this would not be acceptable to the Government, but the persuasive powers of the Minister, who I have come to admire, clearly worked their magic within Government. None the less, this was the only path to take; many individuals would not have come forward without this approach, which the hon. and learned Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) has described as unique.
May I also put it on the record that I am pleased that the Northern Ireland cases have been included in the scope of the legislation? Although there is only a small number, it would have been wrong to have held them up, through no fault of their own, because of the way that the consultation had taken place. Again, I congratulate all parties in Northern Ireland on how they have come together to take this united position for the victims.
Let me refer to amendment 70, and the ICL Pathway. Although the Minister has given some assurances on this, let me explain why I tabled the amendment. ICL Pathway was introduced in 1996, and the purpose of my amendment is to get some clarification on it. It was a stand-alone pilot, but the legislation refers to the “Horizon pilot”. I am quite convinced by the Minister’s assurance that this will be in the scope of this legislation. That is important, because there are a number of individuals, certainly in the north-east of England, who used the ICL Pathway—it was not called the Horizon pilot at that stage—who were subsequently prosecuted and will now be brought into the remit of the Bill. That is important, because it will mean that at least one individual I have met, who originally thought they would not be included in this legislation, will be.
Let me turn now to new clause 6 on the Capture cases. The Minister will not be surprised that I have tabled this clause, because—given the anorak that I am in terms of the Horizon scandal—I think we have potentially discovered another scandal that predates Horizon. For the benefit of the Committee, I would like to provide a little bit of background. As the Minister said earlier, Capture was very different from Horizon; it was developed by the Post Office itself from 1992 onwards, and it was not a linked or networked system like Horizon. It was sold as a quick way of
“producing cash accounts quickly and accurately.”
It was a computer-based system, but was not networked, and it is quite clear that there were huge troubles, with it generating shortfalls. With each upgrade of the software, new bugs seemed to have grown on the system. According to the analysis that has been done on the upgrades, the Post Office identified at least 123 bugs in the Capture software.
Once we had the publicity around the Horizon scandal, a lot of people came forward and talked about experiencing shortfalls, including someone I went to visit in the north-east who described exactly their experience with the Post Office. I initially thought, “Well, this is a Horizon case.” It involved a computer, and the aggressive way in the way the Post Office prosecuted that individual. But it was only when I looked at the dates that I realised that they did not match up; it could not be Horizon or ICL Pathway, because it was before then. Since then, 35 individuals—36 from today, I think, because the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) has raised another case—have come forward. We are talking about a long time ago, so a lot of these individuals will have sadly passed away, but more people are coming forward. I heard of someone this week who is now on the other side of the world; they had moved away from this country because they had been made bankrupt by the Post Office.
Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
Like other Members, I will not speak for very long. In this instance, I actually mean that. I will speak to new clause 1 in my name and those of my colleagues, and new clauses 3 and 2 in the names of the Secretary of State and my colleagues. The Minister will really have an opportunity to dine out on all the thanks and gratitude. It is not given lightly. He has shown something that the public constantly tell us is absent from this place: honour. He has been completely honourable with the people of Northern Ireland in this matter.
Whenever my right hon. Friends the Members for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) and for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) raised the matter in the Chamber, they consistently asked for Northern Ireland to be included. From day one, the Minister was consistent in saying that he would use his best endeavours to do that. Sometimes we hear those words and it is only acknowledged in the breach, but he was absolutely clear that he was going to do it. There were ups and downs in the process, but every effort was made to ensure that, on a cross-party, cross-ministerial and cross-legal-jurisdiction basis, the consistent message came back to the Minister that this was the way to resolve the issue. Accepting the instruction this evening was a clear indication that that would happen.
New clause 1 is now superfluous to requirements. It has been incorporated in the Government’s own new clauses. We welcome that and thank the Government for it. Sub-postmasters across Northern Ireland will know that they are being treated exactly the same, with the same opportunity for fairness and to receive compensation, as their colleagues in England and Wales. I hope it is not inappropriate to thank the Clerks’ office. I really want to draw attention to how, frankly, brilliant they are in helping us to ensure that new clauses are drafted correctly. That made it easier for the Government’s team to then accept what we had tabled. Without the Clerks’ help, we would not have been as successful. It is only appropriate to acknowledge that.
I know from speaking to some of the victims that they are extremely grateful. They were wound up a bit from time to time by the media, who told them, “Northern Ireland is being excluded. You’re not going to get it,” even after we had the commitment from the Minister. Thankfully, tonight postmasters in Northern Ireland will see justice, and I thank him for that. I will therefore not press new clause 1 in my name.
Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
It cannot be repeated often enough that the Horizon scandal remains one of the greatest miscarriages of justice our nation has experienced. It is a scandal characterised by abuse of power, the mistreatment of innocent people and the wholesale failure of the entire system. We might blame it on a failure of IT, but that is not the whole story. It is human failure on a grand scale—a failure to listen, and a failure to learn. It is a failure by the powerful to listen to sub-postmasters, and it has had a catastrophic cost in reputation, income and suffering on hard-working, innocent sub-postmasters and their loved ones.
Sub-postmasters are people we rely on, at the heart of our communities—the people who serve us, help us and hold our communities together. Without the tireless campaigning of people such as Alan Bates, the relentless efforts of parliamentarians across the House, and the work of journalists and filmmakers, perhaps justice would have never been done. To them I pay tribute, and I extend my gratitude to the Minister for the work that he has done, from the Front Bench as well as from the Back Benches. We have heard horrific stories of sub-postmasters who took their own life because of the suffering, and stories of shame, pain and suffering for sub-postmasters, as well as their families and friends.
Labour supports this unprecedented Bill, and we believe that it must pass into law with the necessary urgency, given the gravity of the situation. This has been said already, but it is crucial that this Bill should not set a precedent. It is an exception. We must understand the weight of this action, so that it is never even considered again. The legal solution in this Bill is a wholly exceptional and isolated case. These necessary actions are being taken to match a miscarriage of justice unprecedented in both scale and impact. The Bill must not set a precedent.
Kevin Hollinrake
I will tackle the points that have been made as briefly as possible. The Chair of the Business and Trade Committee, the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne), is right to say that £196 million has been paid out so far. This legislation will open the door to a lot more compensation, and it should go out rapidly to victims of prosecutions. Also, we expect that number to rise significantly with the introduction of the fixed-sum award of £75,000 for Horizon shortfall scheme claimants. To be clear, around 70% of claims submitted in time have been settled, following the final settlement for those individuals, so we are making progress, but we are determined to make more. Certainly, we are working with the Horizon compensation advisory board to ensure that that is the case. We are very happy to get into the weeds and nitty-gritty of this; we do that daily. The right hon. Gentleman said that, for whatever reason, I may not always be the Minister with this brief. I am very happy to help whoever takes over the brief when that happens, should more help be needed.
Yes, we are keen to accelerate the timescales right across the piece for the GLO scheme. As I say, we are hitting our target of making 90% of first offers within 40 days, but we will come forward with more service-level agreements for other schemes. I am very happy to work alongside the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill on that.
Liam Byrne
I am grateful for that reassurance. Does the Minister think that he will have the service-level agreements for the overturned convictions scheme on the table before the Bill is sent for Royal Assent?
Kevin Hollinrake
Yes. The right hon. Gentleman asked about tariffs. We are keen to do whatever we can to make the process quicker, easier, clearer and more transparent. We are taking that away and looking at it right now.
Of course, legal advice is available prior to the submission of a claim to the Horizon overturned convictions and compensation scheme, as it is in the GLO. It is only in the HSS, which was seen as non-adversarial, that that does not apply prior to the offer being made, but legal advice is available after that point.
We are obviously keen to continue discussing the cases that are before the Court of Appeal. We will certainly respond in due course to the letter from the Chair of the Justice Committee, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill).
Liam Byrne
I am grateful to the Minister for taking a final intervention. It is maybe a non-adversarial process, but it is none the less an intimidating one that involves a complicated 16-page form that takes several hours to fill in. That is the equivalent of several thousand pounds-worth of legal assistance. At the moment, such assistance is being provided pro bono by those with some experience, but I hope that the Minister will look at the matter again.
Kevin Hollinrake
I am happy to look at that. I should point out that a lot of the 16-page form is legalese. Only about four pages of it is actually stuff that needs to be filled in, but I understand the right hon. Gentleman’s point, and the advisory board has made a recommendation for an independent appeals process for this scheme as well, which we are looking at.
I thank my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst for his work on the issue with the Justice Committee. I agree that what is before us is the least worst option, and I am glad that the legal fraternity is coming to the same opinion. We will respond to his letter of 24 April, particularly on the Court of Appeal cases. There are 13 cases—seven before the Court of Appeal, and six that have been refused leave to appeal—and I am very happy to look at them, and to continue our conversations. I understand the potential injustices around those cases. We will also have a look at his point about subsection (4)(b) of clause 2, to make sure that there are no unintended consequences from the legislation.
I thank the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) for all his work on the advisory board. He has talked about my persuasive powers; I think the ITV series was far more persuasive than I was in moving things on and getting us to where we are today, but certainly, following his recommendations, which were made before the series aired, we were looking at ways to expedite the overturning of convictions, and some of the Bill is based on those recommendations. As I say, we are looking at the Capture software through the independent review. We have both met with Mr and Mrs Marston, and their story, like many others, was compelling.
The right hon. Gentleman raised the issue of the date range, which is dealt with in subsection (2)(a) of clause 2, under which the offence has to have taken place between 23 December 1996 and the later date. If an offence was committed at an earlier date, it would be excluded under the legislation. We need a conversation with the right hon. Gentleman about that, but the independent review should inform our debate going forward. It is easier to include Horizon than other things that were not directly connected to Horizon, as the court has found convictions unsafe on the basis of Horizon evidence. That is why we are able to legislate in this way.
I thank the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) for his kind words. It is important to recognise that all of us are here to do the right thing, and it is a pleasure to have the opportunity to do so in this way, on a cross-party basis. We are very pleased to be able to agree with the DUP’s wishes that Northern Ireland be included in the legislation, particularly for the sake of the 23 postmasters in Northern Ireland who have suffered as a result of Post Office actions.
I also thank the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali), and her Front-Bench colleagues for their support. We are very keen to make sure that Fujitsu contributes—it has agreed to do so, and has a moral obligation to do so. My Secretary of State, who has been massively supportive of all my work on these issues, has met Fujitsu’s global chief executive officer, and we expect to provide more news to the House in due course.
With that, I commend the Government amendments to the House.
Amendment 25 agreed to.
Amendments made: 27, page 1, line 9, after “Appeal” insert “in England and Wales.”
This amendment is consequential on amendment 26.
Amendment 26, page 1, line 9, at end insert—
“(2A) This Act also applies to a conviction in Northern Ireland for a relevant offence where—
(a) the conviction took place before the coming into force of this Act,
(b) the offence was prosecuted by the Police Service of Northern Ireland, the Director of Public Prosecutions for Northern Ireland or the Public Prosecution Service for Northern Ireland, and
(c) the conviction has not been considered by the Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland.”
This amendment provides for convictions in Northern Ireland for relevant offences to be quashed.
Amendment 28, page 1, line 12, at end insert
“in England and Wales or in Northern Ireland.”—(Kevin Hollinrake.)
This amendment is consequential on amendment 26.
Clause 1, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 2
Meaning of “relevant offence”
Amendments made: 29, page 2, line 32, at end insert
“or section 17 of the Theft Act (Northern Ireland) 1969;”.
This amendment, and amendments 30 to 33, add the equivalent offences for Northern Ireland to the list in clause 2(3).
Amendment 30, page 2, line 35, after “1968” insert
“or section 15 or 15A of the Theft Act (Northern Ireland) 1969”.
See the explanatory statement for amendment 29.
Amendment 31, page 2, line 37, leave out “that Act” and insert
“the Theft Act 1968 or section 19(1) or (2) of the Theft Act (Northern Ireland) 1969”.
See the explanatory statement for amendment 29.
Amendment 32, page 2, line 41, at end insert
“or section 21 of the Theft Act (Northern Ireland) 1969;”.
See the explanatory statement for amendment 29.
Amendment 33, page 3, line 1, at end insert
“or section 1(1) of the Theft Act (Northern Ireland) 1969.”—(Kevin Hollinrake.)
See the explanatory statement for amendment 29.
Clause 2, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 3
Determining when a conviction has been considered by Court of Appeal
Amendment made: 34, page 3, line 15, at end insert—
“(6) In this section “the Court of Appeal” means—
(a) in the case of a conviction in England and Wales, the Court of Appeal in England and Wales;
(b) in the case of a conviction in Northern Ireland, the Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland.”—(Kevin Hollinrake.)
This amendment is consequential on the extension of the Bill to Northern Ireland.
Clause 3, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 4
Identification and notification of quashed convictions
Amendments made: 35, page 3, line 17, leave out “Secretary of State” and insert “appropriate authority”.
This amendment, and amendments 36 to 43, provide for the functions of the Secretary of State under clause 4 to be exercisable in Northern Ireland by the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland.
Amendment 36, page 3, line 18, at end insert—
“(1A) In this section “the appropriate authority” means—
(a) in the case of convictions in England and Wales, the Secretary of State;
(b) in the case of convictions in Northern Ireland, the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland.”
See the explanatory statement for amendment 35.
Amendment 37, page 3, line 19, leave out “Secretary of State” and insert “appropriate authority”.
See the explanatory statement for amendment 35.
Amendment 38, page 3, line 20, leave out “Secretary of State” and insert “authority”.
See the explanatory statement for amendment 35.
Amendment 39, page 3, line 25, leave out “Secretary of State” and insert “appropriate authority”.
See the explanatory statement for amendment 35.
Amendment 40, page 3, line 26, leave out “Secretary of State” and insert “authority”.
See the explanatory statement for amendment 35.
Amendment 41, page 3, line 32, leave out “Secretary of State” and insert “authority”.
See the explanatory statement for amendment 35.
Amendment 42, page 3, line 36, leave out “Secretary of State” and insert “appropriate authority”.
See the explanatory statement for amendment 35.
Amendment 43, page 3, line 37, leave out “Secretary of State” and insert “authority”.
See the explanatory statement for amendment 35.
Amendment 44, page 3, line 37, leave out “in England and Wales”.—(Kevin Hollinrake.)
This amendment is consequential on the extension of the Bill to Northern Ireland.
Clause 4, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 5
Deletion of cautions for relevant offences
Amendments made: 45, page 4, line 3, after “has” insert
“before the coming into force of this Act”.
This amendment makes it clear that clause 5 applies only in relation to cautions given before the coming into force of the Act.
Amendment 46, page 4, line 5, before “criminal” insert “UK”.
This amendment is consequential on amendment NC2.
Amendment 47, page 4, line 27, before “criminal” insert “UK”.—(Kevin Hollinrake.)
This amendment is consequential on amendment NC2.
Clause 5, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 6 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 7
Power to make further consequential provision
Amendments made: 48, page 5, line 7, leave out
“an Act of Parliament passed”
and insert
“primary legislation passed or made”.
This amendment is consequential on the extension of the Bill to Northern Ireland.
Amendment 49, page 5, line 8, at end insert—
“(2A) But regulations under this section may not make any provision which is transferred Northern Ireland provision for the purposes of section (Power of Department of Justice to make further consequential provision).”
This amendment is consequential on amendment NC3.
Amendment 50, page 5, line 15, leave out “an Act of Parliament” and insert “primary legislation”.
This amendment is consequential on the extension of the Bill to Northern Ireland.
Amendment 51, page 5, line 20, at end insert—
“(6) In this section “primary legislation” means—
(a) an Act of Parliament, or
(b) Northern Ireland legislation.”—(Kevin Hollinrake.)
This amendment is consequential on the extension of the Bill to Northern Ireland.
Clause 7, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 8
Interpretation
Amendments made: 52, page 5, line 23, at end insert—
“(a) in the case of England and Wales—”.
This amendment is consequential on amendment 53.
Amendment 53, page 5, line 30, at end insert—
“(b) in the case of Northern Ireland, any caution (including a restorative caution) given to a person in Northern Ireland in respect of an offence which, at the time the caution is given, the person has admitted;”.
This amendment makes provision about the meaning of “caution” in relation to Northern Ireland.
Amendment 54, page 6, line 9, after “Wales” insert “or Northern Ireland”.
This amendment is consequential on the extension of the Bill to Northern Ireland.
Amendment 55, page 6, line 21, at end insert—
“(c) Article 6 of the Criminal Justice (Northern Ireland) Order 1996 (S.I. 1996/3160 (N.I. 24)).”—(Kevin Hollinrake.)
This amendment is consequential on the extension of the Bill to Northern Ireland.
Clause 8, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 9
Extent and commencement
Amendment made: 56, page 6, line 25, leave out “only” and insert “and Northern Ireland”.—(Kevin Hollinrake.)
This amendment provides for the Bill to extend to Northern Ireland (as well as to England and Wales).
Clause 9, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 10 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
New Clause 2
Deletion of cautions for relevant offences: Northern Ireland
“(1) If it appears to the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland (“the Department”) that a person has before the coming into force of this Act been cautioned in Northern Ireland for a relevant offence, the Department must direct the Chief Constable to delete details, contained in relevant criminal records, of the caution.
(2) As soon as is reasonably practicable after receiving a direction under subsection (1), the Chief Constable must delete the details of the caution.
(3) Where the Department gives a direction under subsection (1) in relation to a person’s caution, the Department—
(a) must take all reasonable steps to notify the person, or, if the person is no longer alive, the person’s personal representatives, that the direction has been given, or
(b) if it is not reasonably practicable to give a notification under paragraph (a), must take all reasonable steps to—
(i) identify some other person whom the Department considers it is appropriate to notify, and
(ii) notify that person that the direction has been given.
(4) For the purposes of this section, the Department must, in particular, consider any representations made to it which claim that a person has been cautioned in Northern Ireland for a relevant offence, whether or not made by that person.
(5) In this section—
“the Chief Constable” means the Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland;
“the Northern Ireland criminal records database” means the names database maintained by the Department for the purpose of recording convictions and cautions;
“relevant criminal records” means—
(a) the Northern Ireland criminal records database, and
(b) the UK criminal records database;
“the UK criminal records database” means the names database held by the Secretary of State for the use of constables.”—(Kevin Hollinrake.)
This new clause makes provision for Northern Ireland corresponding to that made by clause 5.
Brought up, read the First and Second time, and added to the Bill.
New Clause 3
Power of Department of Justice to make further consequential provision
“(1) The Department of Justice in Northern Ireland may by regulations make provision that—
(a) is consequential on any provision made by this Act, and
(b) is transferred Northern Ireland provision.
(2) For the purposes of this section “transferred Northern Ireland provision” means provision that—
(a) would be within the legislative competence of the Northern Ireland Assembly if it were contained in an Act of that Assembly, and
(b) would not, if it were contained in a Bill in the Northern Ireland Assembly, result in the Bill requiring the consent of the Secretary of State under section 8 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998.
(3) The power to make regulations under this section may, in particular, be exercised by amending or modifying any provision made by or under primary legislation passed or made before, or in the same session of Parliament as, this Act.
(4) Regulations under this section—
(a) may make different provision for different purposes;
(b) may contain supplementary, incidental, consequential, transitional or saving provision.
(5) The power to make regulations under this section is exercisable by statutory rule for the purposes of the Statutory Rules (Northern Ireland) Order 1979 (S.I. 1979/1573 (N.I. 12)).
(6) Regulations under this section that amend any provision of primary legislation may not be made unless a draft of the regulations has been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, the Northern Ireland Assembly.
(7) Any other regulations under this section are subject to negative resolution within the meaning given by section 41(6) of the Interpretation Act (Northern Ireland) 1954.
(8) In this section “primary legislation” has the same meaning as in section 7.”—(Kevin Hollinrake.)
This new clause confers power on the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland to make consequential provision as a result of the Bill.
Brought up, read the First and Second time, and added to the Bill.
Title
Amendments made: 23, line 1, after “Wales” insert “and Northern Ireland”.
This amendment is consequential on the extension of the Bill to Northern Ireland.
Amendment 24, line 4, after “Wales” insert “or Northern Ireland”.—(Kevin Hollinrake.)
This amendment is consequential on the extension of the Bill to Northern Ireland.
The Deputy Speaker resumed the Chair.
Bill, as amended, reported.
Bill, as amended in the Committee, considered.
Third Reading
The Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Kemi Badenoch)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
Hon. Members will need no reminder of the significance of this Bill. This legislation will, I hope, bring some much-needed relief and closure to those caught up in one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in our nation’s history. For the postmasters wrongfully accused of, and convicted and punished for, crimes they never committed, this Bill means hard-won exoneration, with their convictions wiped clean from the slate.
A wrong is finally being put right but, as hon. Members know, these postmasters will also receive the fair compensation they deserve through the Horizon conviction redress scheme; this will be delivered by my Department rather than the Post Office. While the scale of the Government’s response in this case is extraordinary, I am keen to remind hon. Members that it does not set a precedent for our involvement in other judicial matters. I know this sentiment has been echoed across this House during debates on the Bill. We have chosen this path because the sheer extent of the Post Office’s prosecutorial misconduct is an affront to justice in and of itself. It demanded an exceptional response from Government.
That is why I was glad to see this Bill being welcomed on both sides of the House on Second Reading. There is, I believe, a unanimous consensus that the provisions of this legislation are needed to bring justice to postmasters who have suffered too much for far too long.
Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)
I am sorry to intervene on Third Reading. The Secretary of State is talking about justice for postmasters and mistresses, which is completely right, but I want to ask one question about the policy aspect of this. I and other Members have had postmasters who have written to us who have not been prosecuted but found that the Horizon system was working badly and had to top up out of their own money when Horizon was reporting losses due to faults in the system. What is their redress route if they are now saying, “I was hundreds of pounds out of pocket because I was having to make up the difference”?
Kemi Badenoch
We have devised the Horizon shortfall scheme to deal with those specific situations and if my hon. Friend writes to the Department we can look at some of the cases brought to him as a constituency MP.
I know the debate to date has centred around calls to extend the Bill to Northern Ireland, and the Government have been supportive of them. So, in consultation with the Northern Ireland Executive, I was pleased to see the Government amendments in my name accepted by the Committee of the whole House. As a result of the House’s support, postmasters in Northern Ireland who suffered the same injustices as those in the rest of the UK will now also see their good names restored, with proper financial redress.
As has been noted during recent debates, the speed of that redress could not be more important. Because of the Horizon scandal, people lost more than just their jobs; they were pursued for non-existent losses, they racked up legal bills, and they suffered enormous financial and personal strain because of the Post Office’s actions. It is therefore entirely right that victims do not wait a second longer than necessary to have that money paid back to them—with interest—to reflect what they have lost. I am determined that this legislation complements the ongoing work to hasten redress across the existing schemes. Here we are already making good progress, with payments allowing postmasters to finally move on with their lives.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Opposition, especially the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) for his constructive and supportive approach to working with the Government on this Bill, and so many Members across the House who have engaged with us over and again to deliver the right result for postmasters. I would also like to thank the officials of both my Department, Business and Trade, and the Ministry of Justice who have been working hard behind the scenes for some time to ensure that postmasters affected by the Horizon scandal are supported and compensated fairly. But most of all I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) for his exemplary work as Post Office Minister and in taking through this Bill and dealing with the issue in a very sensitive manner and helping to create confidence in the scheme.
This Bill is a major step forward in that mission. After years of campaigning and fighting to clear their names, postmasters are now receiving the justice they deserve. No Bill can fully undo the damage that has been done or remove the scars the Horizon scandal has left on its victims, but through this legislation we are doing our best to right the wrongs of the past so that every postmaster caught up in this scandal can begin to rebuild their lives. I commend the Bill to the House.
Rushanara Ali
I thank the Minister and the Secretary of State for their remarks. Today’s Bill, as has been acknowledged, provides an important step forward in bringing justice for sub-postmasters. They have suffered more than we can imagine, as the Secretary of State has pointed out. That has included unjust prison sentences, bankruptcy, ostracisation from communities, family breakdown and homelessness. Tragically, the scandal has led to some sub-postmasters taking their own lives. Today by no means makes amends for what they have been through and the suffering their families have endured, but it is an important positive step.
We welcome, as I have said previously, the fact that today’s Bill will bring particular relief for the 27 Northern Ireland cases and ensure that they receive exoneration. The many stories we have heard of those affected, whether in this debate or in previous statements and debates, are just snapshots of the scale of suffering that the Horizon scandal has caused. It has been a scandal defined by the abuse of power, secrecy and delay. As others have acknowledged, we have seen the inquiry revealing yet more challenges and yet more issues, whether those relate to the cases referred to today, non-disclosure agreements, the speed with which action is taken, the particular abuses that we have seen or much else. While this Bill has a particular focus, it will not be enough.
As I said earlier, I welcome the actions the Minister is taking to address the concerns on Capture. I welcome the clarification he has made on Pathway and the assurances he has given to Members on both sides of the House on the speed of providing the necessary compensation and on ensuring that this Bill remains a unique provision, given the unique and extraordinary situation that sub-postmasters have experienced and the injustice they have faced.
We look forward to seeing progress on the action that will be taken to deliver the compensation that sub-postmasters desperately need. We look forward to working with the Government to make sure that the Post Office is fit for purpose, because frankly what we have seen from this scandal and what has been uncovered over the period that the Post Office has presided over it and its implications has exposed major failings that we urgently need to address. We must ensure that the institution is fit for purpose, that further scandals do not hit that institution and that more people do not suffer. What we have seen does not inspire confidence, and action must be taken. I look forward to working with Ministers to help achieve that.
Mr Carmichael
I am pleased to give this Bill my support and that of my party on Third Reading. It shows what is possible when the House comes together and works collegiately, as we have done. It must surely remain a concern to us all that it is necessary in the first place.
I pay warm tribute to the Minister for how he has handled this matter, not just as a Minister but in his time before he came into office, as well as to the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) and the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows), although she is not in her place at the moment. I would say only that I hope that the Scottish Government can bring to the Scottish Parliament the legislation that has been prepared so that we can all come to the same place at the same time, because the important thing here—we have to come back to this time and again—is the outcome for the sub-postmasters themselves. For the Post Office as an institution, this is an important step in restoring its trust and its standing in the communities that we all represent.
I leave the House with this final thought. There is a temptation to think that when the Bill passes and its provisions are implemented, somehow or other that is it—job done. I caution the House against that. We are here tonight because of a head of steam that was built up because of the nature of the Post Office as an institution, the standing of sub-postmasters in our communities, the sheer number of cases and the remarkable way in which the ITV programme caught the mood of the nation.
What happened to sub-postmasters is different from what happens to people all the time only in one respect: the sheer scale of it. In my time as a Member of Parliament, I have come across so many examples of people with good, reasonable cases who were squeezed out of what they are entitled to because of the inequality of arms. Public bodies have deep pockets—the taxpayer is behind them every step of the way—to pay for the best legal representation and to stonewall in cases where people would otherwise have good justice.
I will be back in Westminster Hall on Wednesday morning to deal with a case about the accountability of the Financial Conduct Authority, where it acted in respect of claims made by constituents of mine who had been the victims of a Ponzi scheme only because it was eventually forced into doing so by people who, as with the Post Office, were brave enough to take their case to court. Ultimately, they lost, but in the process of taking their case to court, they put the FCA in a position where there was no alternative but to pay out to all the victims through the financial services compensation scheme.
The brave 95 people who took the legal action in the first place are left £2 million out of pocket. Everybody gets something because they were brave enough to stand up, but they are left to pay at the end of it. That might be the law, Madam Deputy Speaker, but you will never persuade me that it is justice.
Gavin Robinson
Like others who have spoken, I indicate the Democratic Unionist party’s full support for the Bill at Third Reading. The Secretary of State was kind enough to thank the Minister. As she was not present to hear all our tributes to him throughout the course of the evening, I want to repeat them for her benefit.
The Minister has thoughtfully and doggedly worked through the issues on the inclusion of Northern Ireland. We are incredibly grateful to him. He used to sidle up to me weekly and suggest something else that I needed to do to allow him to advance the case for inclusion, and every time I satisfied what he had asked of me, he presented another challenge, and then another. He requested that I speak with people who are really uncontactable for politicians because they are too impartial for such work. But my colleagues and I genuinely appreciate the way in which he has engaged with us.
Tribute was paid to the Northern Ireland Executive and the way in which they have engaged in this issue, but as the party leader it would be remiss of me not to put on record my appreciation for the work of my right hon. Friend the Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson), who took an interest in the issue long before the restoration of the Northern Ireland Executive. He has recognised the deep injustice that has been at the heart of the Horizon scandal and doggedly pursued resolution and justice for those affected in Northern Ireland.
Our friend, the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), has always been a champion for Northern Ireland’s inclusion in the legislation. We are grateful not just for his interest in us, but for his commitment to the issue over many years and the thoughtful way in which he has engaged in it.
It serves to prove the impact that Back Benchers can have in the parliamentary process that there is no frailty to the pursuit that we have. Though we may not have sufficiency of numbers to provide the opposition in and of ourselves, we have been able through effective relationships to ensure positive progress in the Bill. However, that can work only if there is reciprocation. For that, throughout the course of the last weeks and months, and longer relationships on other issues, we are grateful.
Mr Kevan Jones
This is a historic, unique and very controversial Bill. It is another small step in the justice for sub-postmasters campaign, which has been going on for decades. I pay tribute to Alan Bates and all his campaigners. They said no to the people who were telling them to go away. They kept at it, and they are the heroes in all this.
I pay tribute to the fellow members of the advisory board, Professor Chris Hodges, Richard Moorhead and James Arbuthnot. We proposed this solution for overturning convictions, but did we expect it to be accepted? No, we did not. That is down to the Minister’s work. I also want to put on record my thanks to the Attorney General and Justice Secretary, both of whom not only engaged with the arguments but saw the logic of this controversial way of doing it—the only way of doing it. Without their help, it could not have been done.
Let me put on record my thanks to the Minister’s long-suffering officials. They have to put up with not just him but me and the other advisory board members. They worked tremendously hard on this, as did the officials in the Ministry of Justice. We are into civil service bashing again this week, but I must say that without them, we could not have achieved what we have in this Bill. I heard what the Minister said on the issues around Capture. Hopefully, given the constructive way in which he has approached the issue, we can get justice for those affected.
Finally, our thoughts should be with all those people who are no longer with us, such as Tom Brown, my constituent who originally got me involved in this scandal. June Tooby’s forensic cataloguing of the Capture case will hopefully lead to some justice for those victims, too. This is an important step forward. Let us hope that it gives families some comfort to know that their loved ones will be exonerated as part of this process.
Sammy Wilson
Let me also put on record my thanks to the Minister for his work on this issue. I first came across it when I witnessed the anger, frustration and despair of people who knew that they had done no wrong, yet had their reputations sullied, lost their business and faced the suspicion of their friends and even their family. They felt that they were beating their heads against a brick wall of bureaucracy—they were against people who had standing, and who were believed, regardless of the evidence that mounted against the case that they were making. The Minister has done a great thing by giving hope and exoneration to people, many of whom felt that they would never get justice. Now they have found it.
The Minister knew about the scandal before he took his position, and he made it clear at the very start that he intended to see this through. He has used his position to do a good thing. It is important to recognise that this place has been the vehicle by which justice has been delivered. A committed Minister was determined to use his position to do the right thing for individuals.
When the issue of Northern Ireland was first raised with the Minister, there was a reluctance; there is no doubt about it. When I put questions to him on the Floor of the House. and in my conversations with him, there were always reasons why legislation should be introduced in Northern Ireland. Here is a good thing: the arguments were listened to, over time.
As my right hon. Friend the Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) said, the Minister did not just roll over. He expected us to do something as well, and make the case—that is the job. I am thankful for the fact that he listened, and that Northern Ireland was included.
I thank the Clerk for his advice. Many of us are not really aware of all the parliamentary procedures, even though we have been here for I do not know how long. We do not always know the best of way of going about things. The advice and the support that was given was very important in getting this over the line.
Unfortunately, even though people will be exonerated as a result of this legislation, there are many who died with this shadow on them, and with the shame of what was done to them by people who, as the inquiry now shows, were cynical, manipulative and calculating in how they pursued them through the courts. This is not for debate today, but I hope that once the inquiry is over, there will be accountability for those who knowingly put sub-postmasters through this, quite apart from the embarrassment some have had during the inquiry, when they have forgotten matters, shown arrogance, or claimed that they were just doing their job. As I say, some sub-postmasters died without their name ever being cleared. We can do nothing about that, but I hope that their families will at least feel some reassurance as a result of this legislation.
Once the Bill passes into law, sub-postmasters will be exonerated from a legal point of view, but I hope that the compensation that they are due will be paid out quickly. The Minister outlined some of the ways he intends to ensure that compensation claims are dealt with quickly; I hope that they are.
I hope that other Ministers learn from this experience. Do not forget that even when the evidence was piling up, and the issues had been pointed out, and suddenly sub-postmasters and sub-mistresses across the country were common thieves, Ministers turned a blind eye, or accepted the explanation given by their officials. As I mentioned at the very start, the frustration that people feel when the state denies them justice, or tells them that they have done something that they have not, causes them to have no confidence at all in Government and its institutions. We could go through a number of issues. I look at the evidence that is building up on the loan charge. I ask myself whether, in five years’ time, we will find the same kind of issue there, with programmes put in place, and Ministers embarrassed and unable to explain why they did not take action when all the evidence was there. I hope Ministers take heed of this sorry tale, in which they believed people in power, rather than the victims of those in power.
Mr Jonathan Lord (Woking) (Con)
I was elected in 2010, and was an MP of just a few months’ standing when my constituent Seema Misra approached me, saying that she had just been sentenced to jail. She was pregnant and her sentence came down on her son’s 10th birthday. With the help of James Arbuthnot, now in the other place, within a few days I realised that there were other colleagues who had similar cases, and it all pointed to the Horizon system. I wrote to the Post Office Minister at the time and I was rebuffed. There must have been other colleagues who did the same thing. A Back Bencher of just a few months’ standing was able to see right to the heart of the problem with the help of the internet and a couple of fantastic colleagues, yet a Minister of the Crown was not. Now, Ministers in our system have surgeries—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. This is not a Second Reading speech. We are at the very end of the Bill and the hon. Gentleman should be making an intervention, but that was very much a speech. We all have sympathy with the point he is making, but this is not the time in the proceedings when such points are made. I believe that the right hon. Member for East Antrim was just about to conclude the entire debate on the entire Bill.
Sammy Wilson
I was indeed, but the intervention shows that Ministers need to listen. I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) for giving us great support for the case of Northern Ireland, and to others who persisted in raising this issue. I know that a lot has been said about the TV programme, but even before it aired there was a realisation, because of the persistence of Members, that something had to be done. I am glad it has been done, and I hope that this will be a great relief to many people who have lived under the shadow and the cloud of the things that happened to them over a number of years.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.
Business without Debate
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
With the leave of the House, I will put motions 4 to 6 together.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),
Companies
That the draft Accounting Standards (Prescribed Bodies) (United States of America and Japan) (Amendment) Regulations 2024, which were laid before this House on 21 February, be approved.
Sea Fisheries
That the draft Sea Fisheries (International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2024, which were laid before this House on 14 March, be approved.
National Crime Agency
That the draft National Crime Agency (Directed Tasking) Order 2023, which was laid before this House on 7 December 2023, be approved.—(Joy Morrissey.)
Question agreed to.
House of Commons Members’ Fund
(7 months, 3 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate
Sir Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)
Madam Deputy Speaker, may I briefly speak as a member of the Members’ Fund? Would that be in order?
Sir Charles Walker
Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker.
As we can all see from the Order Paper, the increase is very moderate. The sum deducted from our salaries on a monthly basis goes towards the Members’ Fund, which is distributed on occasions to former Members and their dependants who are in straitened times. It is a hugely important fund and is staffed by amazing officers of the House, who also staff the parliamentary contributory pension fund. We are very grateful for their support and for the support of trustees.
The only thing I would say—I hope I do not put myself in contest with other trustees—is that the sum taken from our monthly salary is still very small. At some stage in the very near future, it should be incumbent on this House to look at a more generous monthly contribution from Members. A figure of perhaps £10 would not be too onerous on Members, but it would certainly help the Members’ Fund to support many former colleagues of all parties who, through illness or just bad luck, find themselves struggling once they are no longer in this place.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
The hon. Gentleman has spoken for the whole House.
Question agreed to.
Speaker’s Committee for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority
Motion made, and Question Proposed,
That, in pursuance of paragraph 2A of Schedule 3 of the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009, Ms Tina Fahm be appointed as a lay member of the Speaker’s Committee for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority for a period of five years from 6 May 2024 to 4 May 2029.—(Penny Mordaunt.)
Question agreed to.
Petitions
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
Having spent the day dealing with the injustice of the Post Office Horizon scandal, we move to the injustice of the infected blood scandal. I join a number of right hon. and hon. colleagues in presenting a petition on behalf of constituents who are seeking justice, and I pay tribute to my constituent Joyce Donnelly, the chair of the Scottish Infected Blood Forum, who is the first signatory on the petition.
The petition states:
The petition of residents of the constituency of Glasgow North,
Declares that people who received infected blood and who have suffered as a consequence have, along with their families, waited far too long for redress.
The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to implement the recommendations in the Second Interim Report of the Infected Blood Inquiry without delay.
And the petitioners remain, etc.
[P002962]
Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)
I rise to present a petition on behalf of the residents of Linlithgow and East Falkirk in relation to the recognition of Peter McLagan MP. I would like to pay tribute to local historian David Main, who alerted me to the legacy of Peter McLagan and who has done some tremendous work on keeping his memory alive. In case Members do not know, Peter McLagan was Scotland’s first ethnic minority MP. He was also the longest-serving MP in Scotland during Queen Victoria’s reign, serving from 1865 to 1893. Members might have noticed the pioneers display in the Admission Order Office corridor, but they will not have seen any reference to Peter McLagan, who has sadly been missed off the list. We have been trying for some time to have that rectified. The petitioners therefore request
“that the House of Commons urge the Government to act to ensure the omission of Peter McLagan MP from ‘The Pioneers’ display is rectified at the earliest opportunity.”
Following is the full text of the petition:
[The petition of residents of the constituency of Linlithgow and East Falkirk,
Welcomes that the temporary display “The Pioneers: The First Asian and Black MPs” has been moved to form part of the permanent display that is located in the Admissions Order Office Corridor; acknowledges the permanent recognition of these groundbreaking MPs; regrets that permanently honouring them has taken so long; and further regrets that Scotland’s first mixed-race MP, Peter McLagan, who served the Constituency of Linlithgowshire from 1865 to 1893 and was the longest serving Scottish Member during the reign of Queen Victoria, is not included in “The Pioneers” display.
The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to act to ensure the omission of Peter McLagan MP from “The Pioneers” display is rectified at the earliest opportunity.
And the petitioners remain, etc.]
[P002965]
Post-16 Education: Isles of Scilly
(7 months, 3 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)
I thank Mr Speaker for granting this debate on the cost of post-16 education for families on the Isles of Scilly. I have yet to stand up in this Chamber unless it is to raise an issue that has been raised directly with me by a constituent, and today is no exception. I rise to raise an issue that has been raised by not just one but several constituents. They are all parents, and they met me last month to set out their concerns.
The Isles of Scilly are unique in so many ways. They are situated just off Land’s End, and they are a beautiful part of the UK and a fantastic part of my constituency. I have often spoken in this Chamber about the unique environment on the islands, but the people of Scilly also face unique challenges—or almost unique. As I prepared for this debate, I found that there are in fact two local authority areas in this country with no sixth-form provision. One is the Isles of Scilly; the other is the City of London. So the situation is not unique; the consequences, however, are. Young people in the City of London can walk to a sixth form college or pay 85p for a bus ride; the buses are rarely cancelled because of stormy weather or high seas and, unlike the Scillonian ferry, they run all year round. More to the point, those young people can go home to their families at the end of each school day.
That option is not open to the families I met on Scilly. They know that they have to send their young people to stay on the mainland to fulfil the statutory requirements but, as one of my constituents told me,
“the decision about where to go was based on accommodation, not educational preference”.
The lucky ones could stay with family or friends on the mainland—I should perhaps say “the lucky one”, if the council’s unofficial survey is accurate—but everyone else had to choose between staying with a host family or in a boarding school. Last year’s Ofsted report on Scilly’s children’s services stated:
“To access…post-16 education children must live away from home on the mainland. This adds the potential for social, emotional and mental health challenges and additional safeguarding risks for some children.”
It is not surprising, but still shocking, that 20% of 16 and 17-year-olds from Scilly are not in education, employment or training, which is four times the national average and infinitely more than the City of London’s 0%. This is despite the fact that students from the Isles of Scilly consistently outperform students on the mainland in GCSE attainment.
The Council of the Isles of Scilly is responsible for the provision of compulsory education until the age of 18 and, like all local authorities, is expected to meet the costs of delivery from its own budget. The council is supported by post-16 travel and accommodation grants administered by the Education and Skills Funding Agency. The funding is currently £6,365 per student, which can go towards travel to and from the mainland and accommodation while studying. The actual costs are considerably more, and I am grateful to the parents of current students who have prepared very helpful figures that show just how much more they have to fork out for their children’s education.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I commend the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate. Does he feel it is immoral and wrong for a parent to have to pay for their children’s education when sixth-form education is free across the rest of this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland? It is wrong that the parents and children of the Scilly Isles cannot have the same advantages as we have elsewhere.
Derek Thomas
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I will be covering that injustice and how equality and levelling up really should apply, but I am pleased to know that there is someone else in the Chamber who also takes an interest in the Isles of Scilly. I appreciate that they are not everyone’s area of interest or expertise, but they are beautiful, remote islands. I am sure they are a holiday destination for many, but visitors do not always consider the challenges that people face.
As I was saying, the cheapest option for sixth-formers is staying with a host family, but even this costs more than the £6,300 grant, and it is increasing. That is without factoring in the cost of travel, with six return journeys a year, including transport on the mainland, costing £1,750 for each student on average. This does not include contingency for overnight stays when travel is disrupted, despite the high risk of the weather scuppering travel plans. And this weather disruption is not limited to the winter. Everyone in the Chamber will appreciate the difficulty of finding accommodation in a wonderful destination like Penzance at the peak of the tourist season. There are obvious safeguarding issues with young people staying on their own when their journey is disrupted.
Many parents are understandably reluctant to entrust their children to host families, who are currently unregulated. At an age when most young people are living with their parents, 16 and 17-year-olds from Scilly are living in digs. They lack the structure and support they need, in the absence of family and friends. Some hosts become like second families, but other parents have chilling stories.
One constituent told me that their child became very ill while living in host family accommodation. Nobody was aware, because nobody had pastoral oversight. Nobody noticed the student lose 1½ stone over a six-week half term, and he ended up with one A-level, having started doing five with top grade predictions. There are other cases where vulnerability, loneliness, isolation and naivety have placed students at risk that I cannot, of course, divulge in such a debate.
Colleges such as Truro and Penwith College, our excellent further education college in west Cornwall, and the main post-16 provider for Scilly, have concerns. They see how often this lack of support is reflected in poor attendance and work at school, and it can lead to students failing to complete their studies. According to the informal survey I mentioned, less than two thirds of children attending post-16 education completed their courses successfully.
Although colleges take seriously the challenges facing students who are required to leave Scilly to learn, their pastoral care is limited to their statutory role, which covers only the school day. Outside that period, which may be only 18 hours during a typical school week, students are left to their own devices. They may not have access to the support and extracurricular activities, such as sport and social clubs, that young people take for granted in the rest of the country.
For all those reasons, homestays are becoming less popular with families on Scilly; nearly half of students did this just three years ago but now just over a quarter do. The other option available to families is boarding school, where these young people have supervision and support. There are a number of state boarding schools in the south-west, but, as was hinted at in the intervention, although the education is free, the board and lodging is not. According to the parents’ figures, the shortfall can be as much as £13,000, including travel costs, per child. Again, that does not include contingencies or incidental expenses; many students never see their sixth forms until they arrive for the first time in September, as the cost of visiting beforehand is not covered by the grant and is just not achievable.
The cost of living is already high on Scilly, because of freight costs, and salaries are lower than average, yet families on Scilly are forced to pay for their 16 and 17-year-olds to have the same opportunities as anyone else. Furthermore, when their children have finished their A-levels and are thinking about higher education, families are already saddled with debt and reluctant to take on more. I am aware that the Department for Education is already reviewing the policy on Scilly post-16 education, but it is my understanding that a robust equalities impact assessment has not yet been undertaken by Government. It is, however, clear that families on Scilly do not have an equal access to post-16 education.
The Isles of Scilly Council, with which I have been working closely on this issue, has suggested a grant of £15,000 per student per year is required to ensure financial parity with those on the mainland and to meet the additional increased costs to enable the students to continue in their education or training. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm that he will direct his officials in the Education and Skills Funding Agency to take Scilly’s unique challenges into consideration when assessing the size of the grant and to hasten a decision, as the next academic year is just four months away and decisions about the next stage of a child’s education are needing to be made imminently.
When I corresponded with the Minister’s predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), he made the point that young people all over the country have options to study in diverse and widespread locations, and it would not be “financially feasible” for local authorities to fund all the costs this involves. But families on Scilly do not have options: they have a straight choice between sending their children to a potentially unsafe environment or racking up thousands of pounds in debt. A number of parents told me they were considering leaving Scilly purely so that it was financially feasible to educate their children as the law required. The one thing everyone on Scilly would like to say to this House is that when families leave, it becomes difficult to maintain the services and all the things that are required to keep a community of about 2,200 people viable and going on a remote island setting such as Scilly.
The cohort over the next few years fluctuates from 15 to 32 students, so I submit to the Minister that it is not financially infeasible for the Department for Education to look seriously at the figure of £15,000 that the council has identified. We know that money allocated for Scilly in the Government’s levelling-up fund is not now going to be spent as intended; this would be an ideal opportunity for the Government to show their commitment to these unique islands and to their future as thriving communities.
Although the subject of this debate is the cost of post-16 education to families on Scilly, there are wider issues about how to ensure the welfare and wellbeing of Scilly’s young people so they can fully and appropriately engage with their education. The council needs the capacity to commission packages of support for students on the mainland where it is necessary. That could be through bespoke packages enabling them to return to mainstream tuition after a period of absence; or through the Future Foundations programme, which, as the Minister will know, empowers students to aim high and achieve their potential. The council aims to work with the multi-academy trust, of which the Five Islands Academy is a member, to provide opportunities for students to engage in extra-curricular activities. It also wants to work with voluntary organisations such as Action for Children and Young People Cornwall to improve the offer for post-16 students outside the hours of formal education. As I have hinted, there needs to be some money set aside for contingency.
These are not outlandish requests. All the officers at the Council of the Isles of Scilly want is to enable students to remain safe in an unfamiliar environment; to remain gainfully and safely occupied outside the times of formal education; to have and to maintain good mental health and wellbeing; and to thrive socially, emotionally and academically. These are not unique requirements—they are what we all want for our children and young people. There is no reason why parents on Scilly should not want the same. I look forward to the Minister’s comments on how he plans to ensure that the families on Scilly can have the same.
The Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education (Luke Hall)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) on securing this debate on the extremely important subject of education on the Isles of Scilly. While they are a beautiful place, I appreciate the argument he made that residents face a number of different issues and challenges because of the size, location and population of the isles. He is a passionate advocate for them in this House.
My hon. Friend clearly and eloquently set out one such challenge: there is no post-16 education for young people on the isles. The people of the isles are extremely fortunate to have him batting for them in the House today and making that case so strongly. From what he has described, many parents face difficult decisions about the next steps in their children’s education. Young people have to face the difficult situation of going to the mainland for education and training opportunities. As he said, that involves travel and living away from home at a relatively young age, which must be extremely daunting and creates a number of challenges. He set out eloquently and with force the emotional and wellbeing issues that young people on the isles face. That set of issues is no doubt difficult for parents and young people, and, after listening to my hon. Friend’s strong arguments, I sympathise with them.
All young people in the isles, in common with those across England, have to continue in education and training until they are 18. Young people can choose to participate in full-time education, have a job or volunteer combined with part-time study, or can undertake work-based training, such as an apprenticeship. The Government provide funding for a range of education and training opportunities for young people. Continuing in education and training means that young people are given the opportunity to develop skills and qualifications that open doors for them to future employment, helping them to make the most of their potential and to earn more over the course of their lifetime.
Empowering young people to gain the skills they need to climb that ladder of opportunity into successful careers or further study is a top priority for us at the Department for Education, and across wider Government. It is to the immense credit of all the residents on the Isles of Scilly that they are determined to overcome all the unique and challenging barriers they face so that their children can continue into post-16 education and training. At that point, they have many more diverse challenges than those on the mainland, including challenges accessing the benefits and opportunities that people on the mainland often enjoy.
To support our commitment to ensure young people across England—wherever they live—get high-quality educational opportunities, we are boosting 16-to-19 funding by an extra £1.6 billion in 2024-25, compared to the financial year 2021-22. We made a further investment of £185 million in 2023-24 and £285 million in 2024-25. Overall, in the academic year 2023-24, nearly £7 billion was allocated to institutions in programme funding for 16-19 education to help ensure that every young person has access to an excellent education. Young learners in Cornwall, including learners from the isles, will benefit from that extra funding through receiving a high-quality teaching and learning experience in high-quality facilities.
The Department provides a range of financial support for students who need it, including those from the Isles of Scilly, to enable them to participate in post-16 education. That includes free meals and bursaries to help with the cost of education, whether that is travel, books, equipment or trips, plus support for childcare and residential costs where required. Students can speak to their education institution about accessing those funds. We of course recognise, as was powerfully articulated just now, the unique situation of young people from the Isles of Scilly and understand that the normal provision of funding in 16-to-19 education does not fully fit with their circumstances on the isles. In addition to receiving full funding for their learning, like other young learners across the country, for many years we have provided extra funds to help them meet the cost of travel to and from the mainland, and for accommodation on the mainland where they are staying.
In the current year, as my hon. Friend has said, the per student funding was increased by more than 11%—that is now £6,365. The number of students has grown, which means that we have increased the total quantum of funding by more than 40% this year compared with last year, but my hon. Friend has made a powerful case that families on the island believe that the current level of support—£6,365 per student—is not sufficient and should be increased. As I said, the figure has increased by 11% from last year, but I do understand the point my hon. Friend makes about the challenges that families face with increasing costs, and particularly with the reduced availability of host family accommodation; they feel that this funding does not cover the total cost of support for their children to travel for their post-16 education.
I know my hon. Friend and his constituents feel extremely strongly about the issue, so we will consider carefully any request from the council to provide additional funding for the scheme as part of the spending review. My hon. Friend has made that case eloquently and, as the Minister responsible, I will be watching the matter closely. I am very happy to meet him—and perhaps his council—to talk about the proposals in more detail at the appropriate time, because I understand the point he has made, and the pressures and challenges faced by families in his community.
My hon. Friend also raised the issue of student wellbeing. He spoke powerfully about the health and wellbeing of young people who are under 18 and living away from home, and about the impact on them. I appreciate that students from the Isles of Scilly and their parents need to make difficult choices about where they live when they study. We heard that some families decide to place young people with host families on the mainland, while some opt to take more expensive options such as state boarding schools; I agree with my hon. Friend that that is not a situation that lots of parents want to see their family in, and I understand the concerns he has raised. As a parent myself, I felt it very keenly when he made that argument.
I know that the council publishes a model accommodation agreement for students and their parents to ensure that the accommodation options are safe, including making sure that any adults within a host family that a child is placed with undergo a Disclosure and Barring Service check. The colleges also provide general support for their students’ wellbeing, including help with stress and anxiety, and advice and support on study and careers. As we know, this situation is a unique one. It is important that students and families feel that the accommodation and travel arrangements are safe and secure, and help them to succeed in their post-16 education. That is why we keep the scheme arrangements under review. My officials are in regular contact with the local council about how it is working, but my hon. Friend has made his points powerfully and well, and I am very happy to discuss the matter further.
My hon. Friend also talked about post-16 education and training opportunities. He was right to raise that point. The council estimates—I think he quoted this number in his speech—that there are around 48 students aged 16 to 19 who will take part in education or training this year. Of course, a cohort of that size makes it difficult at this stage to deliver face-to-face post-16 education on the isles themselves, because of all the logistical challenges that it would create. To undertake face-to-face education, young learners have to travel to the mainland. There are a number of sixth-form colleges, sixth forms and other options—I think he referenced a couple in his speech—but the most popular are Truro and Penwith College and Cornwall College, which between them provide a range of post-16 provision. Those providers offer a wide variety of options, with the colleges working increasingly well together to avoid duplication of the offer to students from the Isles of Scilly, and to ensure that the widest variety of high-quality options are available to learners in the area, including those from the isles.
It is of course not ideal that learners from the isles have to travel so far and live away from home, despite the support that is available, and all the help with costs that the colleges provide. My hon. Friend spoke passionately about that, and about the collective challenges. This is not just a challenge about post-16 education; there are lots of different elements of life for people on the isles, and this is just one challenge they face. That point was made very well. I assure my hon. Friend that we are open to considering other approaches, if parents and education institutes have workable alternatives—for example, if some courses could be accessed via distance rather than face-to-face learning. I am very happy to have that conversation.
My hon. Friend has made a strong case. I know that he has raised the issue before, and that he is a strong advocate for reform and doing more in this area. I thank him for bringing this debate to the Floor of the House. He made some important points about post-16 education for young people on the Isles of Scilly, and the difficulties that both they and their families face with the provision of this type of education and access to these opportunities. It is clear that students from the isles are in quite a unique situation in this regard—and no doubt a range of others. I appreciate the challenges they face. We will keep the scheme arrangements under review. My officials and I are in regular contact with the council on the isles and will listen to any other suggestions or alternatives that the council or my hon. Friend wish to talk through.
I pay tribute once more to the people of the Isles of Scilly. It is a huge credit to them that they are determined to overcome all the logistical challenges they face in trying to access post-16 education and training like many other people across the country. Through my hon. Friend’s tireless campaigning, he is ensuring that the issues are being heard at the top of Government, and I very much thank him for it.
Question put and agreed to.