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Business before Questions
Oral Answers to Questions
(7 months ago)
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Kenny MacAskill (East Lothian) (Alba)
The Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Claire Coutinho)
My Department attended the Grangemouth industrial just transition leadership forum alongside Scotland Office Ministers and representatives of Unite the union on 28 March. We remain in close contact with the Scottish Government and the owner Petroineos. My hon. Friend the Minister for Energy Security and Net Zero met Scottish Government counterparts and Petroineos management on 15 May and raised the importance of working with the unions.
Kenny MacAskill
Warm words are one thing; tangible support is quite another. If Grangemouth closes, Scotland faces the possibility—indeed, the probability—of being the only major oil producing nation without refinery capacity, yet €700 million has been found by the UK Government to support an Ineos plant in Antwerp while not a penny is available for Grangemouth. Is it to be a Brexit bonus for Belgian workers and a P45 for those Scots at the refinery?
Claire Coutinho
We are working with the Scottish Government and Petroineos to understand all possible options for the future of the refinery. I remind the hon. Gentleman that the Conservatives are the only major party who are backing the North sea, the biddings it brings in each year and the hundreds of thousands of jobs that it supports, while a new report last week showed that Labour’s plan could lose as many as 100,000 jobs in the next five years.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Claire Coutinho)
We are on track to reach net zero by 2050, and we will do so in a way that brings the public with us. We overachieved on our third carbon budget by 15%, and we announce today that we will not be rolling that over as we think that we will be able to overperform on carbon budget 4 as well.
Henry Smith
I congratulate the Government on us being one of the first major economies in the world to set out the ambition for net zero carbon emissions by 2050. What discussions has the Secretary of State had with the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Transport with regard to a revenue support mechanism for sustainable aviation, as well as ensuring that feedstock for sustainable aviation fuels takes priority?
Claire Coutinho
I know from experience that my hon. Friend is a doughty champion for his local area and for the aviation sector. My Department is in regular contact with the Department for Transport and the Treasury on aviation decarbonisation and the important role for sustainable aviation fuel in that transition. On 25 April, DFT published a consultation on options for a revenue certainty mechanism alongside details of the SAF mandate, which together will support both decarbonation and the growth of the sector.
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (Ind)
Tapadh, Mr Speaker.
There are many criticisms of the Government—I am sure they are aware of them—that they are too slow and indecisive about giving signals to the market for particular technologies, which means that, when they need to commission new energy, they are stuck with only one option: gas, which, as we know, is not exactly the way to net zero. What will the Secretary of State be doing to move things a bit quicker and give the market signals as to which energy path the UK will be taking?
Claire Coutinho
I remind the hon. Gentleman that we have one of the most remarkable records when it comes to renewable energies. The only country that has built more offshore wind than us is China, we have set out the largest expansion for nuclear, and we are at the forefront of cutting-edge technologies such as fusion, hydrogen and carbon capture.
Dame Andrea Jenkyns (Morley and Outwood) (Con)
Meeting our net zero targets, which will be extremely difficult and eye-wateringly expensive, has been enforced on my constituents. Does the Secretary of State agree that we must be more honest and open about the enormous costs of net zero on the British taxpayer? Will the Government commit to publishing a detailed analysis of those costs in advance of my Westminster Hall debate?
Claire Coutinho
There is a balance to be struck, which I believe we are striking, in ensuring that we can make the most of the jobs and opportunities of the energy transition, which will support up to 480,000 green jobs in 2030. But, yes, when it comes to additional costs, we are taking a measured approach because we want to protect households.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
In the Climate Change Committee’s latest progress report, it was made clear:
“There continues to be an overly narrow approach to solutions, which crucially does not embrace the need to reduce demand for high-carbon activities.”
So when the Secretary of State goes back to the drawing board to revise the Government’s carbon budget delivery plan, as she now must, will she finally reduce the reliance on unproven technofixes and look instead at demand reduction measures—or, following the recent embarrassing judgment from the High Court, is she aiming for a hat-trick, with her Department’s climate plan declared unlawful for a third time?
Claire Coutinho
I would find the hon. Lady’s questions more credible if she would at least once welcome the fact that we are the first country in the G20 to have halved emissions. On our progress, I am proud that one of the reasons that we have come so far is technological fixes, because of the remarkable progress that this country has made in renewable energy. That is why we overshot on our first, second and third carbon budgets, and we are on track to overshoot on our fourth.
Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)
Two weeks ago the Government were found, for a second time, to be in breach of the law over their climate targets. That failure will mean that families across the country will pay higher energy bills. The Court found:
“The Secretary of State’s conclusion that the proposals and policies will enable the carbon budgets to be met was irrational”.
Last time, the Government claimed that their breach of the law was just on a technicality. What is the right hon. Lady’s “dog ate my homework” excuse this time?
Claire Coutinho
Let us be clear: the Court did not question the policies that we have set out, which we have done in more detail than any of our peers. It did not question the progress that we have already made, as the first G20 country in the world to halve emissions, and it did not question the ambition of our future targets, which are among the most ambitious of our peers. If the right hon. Gentleman wants to look at what would smother the transition and private investment in this country, he need only look at his own mad, unachievable 2030 target.
Edward Miliband
With a defence like that, I can see why the Government lost in court not just once but twice. Buried in the court documents is the confidential memo that reveals the real reason they lost the case—officials were telling Ministers that they had low or very low confidence that half their carbon reductions would be achieved. That is why they were found unlawful. The right hon. Lady comes to the House each month with her complacent nonsense, but the court judgment exposes the truth: the Government are way off track, abysmally failing to meet the climate emergency and pushing up bills for families as a result.
Claire Coutinho
I have learned in this role that the right hon. Gentleman likes to call people who disagree with him names. Last week, representatives from the Tony Blair Institute said that his plans would raise bills and harm our energy security. Are they flat earthers? An industry report said last week said that his plans would see up to 100,000 people lose their jobs. Are those people who are worried climate deniers? When will the right hon. Gentleman admit that his plans are based on fantasy and ideology and are the last thing that this country needs?
Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)
Liz Twist
Every family in Britain is paying the price for the Government’s failure on energy, with bills through the roof while oil and gas profits have soared. A publicly owned clean energy company would allow us to take back control of our energy, cutting bills and creating jobs across the UK. Why are the Government letting their ideological stubbornness get in the way of supporting families, when they could follow other, successful countries and set up a publicly owned clean energy company like Great British Energy?
Justin Tomlinson
I thank the hon. Lady for her question, but I do not think that consumers will. The TUC itself has highlighted the potential £61 billion to £82 billion cost that will be landed either at the taxpayer’s doorstep or directly on to consumers’ bills, which is nothing to be thankful for.
Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)
In 1985, just before privatisation, 4.2% of total consumer spending was on energy bills. Between 2000 and 2020, that dropped to between 2% and 3%. Even last year during the war in Ukraine, it only hit 3.6%. Does my hon. Friend agree that, as he has already said, the suggestion from the hon. Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) would wallop consumers?
Justin Tomlinson
We have to work with businesses to secure investment. We have secured £300 billion for low-carbon technologies since 2010, as we boost UK energy production, our energy security and, ultimately, deliver cheaper bills for consumers.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
When it comes to who controls and benefits from our energy system, why does the Government refuse to put the British people first? As we have heard, foreign-owned firms, whether France’s EDF or Denmark’s Ørsted, reap the rewards of energy produced in Britain. As they benefit British people pay the price, exposed to sky-high energy bills and beholden to volatile international prices. Why is the Minister so opposed to putting power back into the hands of the British people?
Justin Tomlinson
There is not a single country around the world that thinks Governments alone can deliver increased energy security. By working with businesses, we can unlock the private investment to do it. And talk about irrational: imagine a career politician, the shadow Secretary of State, running UK energy. Consumer bills would rocket.
Kerry McCarthy
The Minister is completely missing the point, so I will use a real-world example. In Bristol, we have set up the 20-year Bristol City Leap project with Ameresco and Vattenfall, a partnership between the public and private sector that will help the city to cut carbon dioxide, bring down bills and deliver green jobs. Actually, the Government are piloting a similar project in York, because it has been such a success in Bristol. But why should it be Vattenfall, a 100% Swedish state-owned firm, rather than a British equivalent, such as Labour’s GB Energy, that benefits? Why can Swedish taxpayers profit from investing in our future, but British taxpayers cannot?
Justin Tomlinson
Politicians with zero business experience are high risk. It was not so long ago that the shadow energy security Minister highlighted the success of Robin Hood Energy, backed by Nottingham City Council, which delivered a £38 million loss.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Ind)
The Minister for Energy Security and Net Zero (Justin Tomlinson)
Our pragmatic, proportionate and realistic approach to meeting net zero will capitalise on the opportunities of the low-carbon transition, creating jobs and investment across the UK.
Andrew Bridgen
The cost of net zero is being borne by our hard-pressed constituents, at the same time as China increases its carbon dioxide emissions by more than the UK’s total emissions every year. Wholesale electricity prices are currently £65 per megawatt, but we are paying £102 per megawatt for fixed offshore wind, offering £246 for floating offshore wind, £89 for onshore wind, and £85 for solar. Can the Minister explain whatever happened to plentiful, cheap renewable energy?
Justin Tomlinson
The hon. Member and I agree that we must champion the importance of delivering cheaper bills for consumers. This does not have to be a binary choice between tackling climate change and delivering cheaper consumer bills. By investing in a cleaner, more efficient energy system, we can do both.
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
The benefits of renewables cannot come at any cost. In that spirit, I welcome the commitment of the Secretary of State and in particular the Minister to protect food security through the additional protections of versatile and productive agricultural land. Will the Minister also affirm the Government’s determination to protect areas that are particularly affected by energy infrastructure—pylons, wind and solar—such as the Lincolnshire fens, the Somerset levels and Romney Marsh? Food security matters just as much as energy security in the national interest for the common good.
Justin Tomlinson
We are proud to have taken renewables from just 7% under the last Labour Government to 47% today, but my right hon. Friend makes a powerful point about the need to tackle clustering. The Secretary of State reiterated clear guidelines and advice for local authorities and planning committees up and down the country to make sure that we safeguard, wherever possible, our key agricultural lands as part of our commitment on food security.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
Communities in Westmorland cannot afford for us not to be reducing carbon emissions. I think of communities such as Kirkby Stephen, Appleby and Kendal, all of which are listed as energy crisis hotspots. That means they have below average incomes, but above average energy prices. There are over 10,000 homes in need of loft insulation and 6,940 homes in need of cavity wall insulation in my communities. Will the Minister give resources to the excellent Cumbria Action for Sustainability to meet that need and decrease bills, and also perhaps revise the rules for ECO4 so the scheme better fits older homes in rural areas such as ours?
Justin Tomlinson
I thank the hon. Member. As on football, we agree on the principles. The Government are proud to have taken energy-efficient homes from 14% to 50%. Local initiatives can play a key part in that and I would be interested to learn more about the project he highlighted.
Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
Decarbonisation is welcome, but it must be achieved in a way that balances the country’s other priorities, such as food security. I welcome last week’s statement from the Secretary of State about the importance of protecting our best and most versatile farmland, but can the Minister tell me more about how he will ensure that we prioritise solar power on rooftops instead?
Justin Tomlinson
The Government are proud to have delivered an additional 43 GW of renewable energy since 2010 alone. We have also introduced planning changes to make it easier to install solar panels on rooftops, including those of industrial buildings, and we can thank consumers for leading the way: an average of 17,000 households a month added solar panels to their roofs last year.
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)
Steve Tuckwell (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Con)
Simon Baynes (Clwyd South) (Con)
Mrs Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Amanda Solloway)
The price cap has fallen by 60% since the start of last year, and the Government are taking a comprehensive approach to bring down future energy bills for consumers. That includes reforming electricity markets to make them more effective, investing across the energy system to make it smarter, and investing in energy efficiency to reduce costs for households.
Andrew Rosindell
I thank the Minister for her answer, but I want her to understand that for constituents such as mine in Romford energy prices are becoming completely unaffordable, and the Government need to do more. My constituents are also very concerned about the cost of net zero, and we need to know what that will cost them in years to come. Surely the Government need to take the British people with them on these policies, but at present there is a great deal of scepticism.
Amanda Solloway
That is certainly one of the Department’s aims. We are very conscious that we must get that energy security while also helping all the vulnerable households—and non-domestic businesses—that need our support.
Steve Tuckwell
A significant number of households in my constituency who are experiencing the continued impact of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine and unrest in the middle east have received help in the form of the Government’s cost of living support payments. Those payments are welcome, but does the Minister agree that this important support should continue, along with more information about the help that is available and how to gain access to it?
Amanda Solloway
My hon. Friend is a great champion for his constituents, and of course I agree with him about the importance of ensuring that householders know where to obtain information about what they may be able to receive, especially as we are providing them with £108 billion between 2022 and 2025. I recommend that they visit the Help for Households web page on gov.uk to find out what support they may be entitled to.
Simon Baynes
Many rural properties on the Welsh borders—including those in Clwyd South and in neighbouring north Shropshire—are not connected to mains gas and therefore use oil or liquefied petroleum gas for heating, and many of the residents are unaware of the support that is available to help with their energy bills. Can the Minister tell the House what support the Government are providing for those residents?
Amanda Solloway
My hon. Friend has raised an important issue. We are, of course, helping all those households. The Government supported about 3 million households using alternative fuels with the £200 alternative fuel payments in the winter of 2022-23, and although energy prices, including alternative fuel costs, have fallen significantly since then, we are nevertheless committed to supporting all households with that £108 billion package between 2022 and 2025.
Mrs Murray
I have just had some solar panels fitted to my roof and I am pleased to report that they are reducing my bills, but what more are the Government doing to encourage people to produce their own electricity by means of renewables, in order to reduce the pull on the grid and also reduce bills?
Amanda Solloway
I am delighted to hear that my hon. Friend has had those solar panels fitted. She will be interested to hear that the Government are considering options to facilitate low-cost finance from retail lenders to help households with the up-front costs of installation, and to drive rooftop deployment and energy efficiency measures.
Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)
I know of too many cases in which people whose properties are connected to heat networks are paying extremely high energy bills. I welcome the Department’s response to the consultation on heat networks, but the Energy Act 2023 only allows for Secretaries of State to introduce a price cap, at their discretion. Some of my constituents are paying bills that are 13 times the level of the cap. Will the Minister consider a mandatory cap to ensure fair prices for heat network customers?
Amanda Solloway
The hon. Lady makes an important point. Of course, the price cap is an issue for Ofgem. However, I would be interested to hear some of her suggestions and I am always happy to have a meeting on that particular subject.
Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)
Fuel and extreme fuel poverty across the highlands and islands is higher than anywhere else in the UK, yet families there are forced to pay the highest electricity standing charges in the UK—50% more than in London, for example. That is despite the region exporting in excess of six times the amount of renewable electricity that it uses. When will the Government introduce a highland energy rebate to ensure fairness for people across the highlands and islands?
Amanda Solloway
The hon. Gentleman will know that we have had many conversations about this subject. One of the things that the Secretary of State and I have been doing is talking to Ofgem to make sure that it is looking at the standing charges. That has led to a call for input, which has recently had over 30,000 responses.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
My constituent Beverley Scott, who has cancer, suffered from poor work carried out under the Government’s ECO4 scheme. This included leaving her without heating and damaging her internet. She eventually had to go to the small claims court to get redress for shoddy work, and I know of other people who have had to follow the same route. Given that provider companies, enabled by Government strategy, leave vulnerable householders with no option but to go to court, does the Minister not agree that there should be better oversight and a simpler remedy for people like Beverley Scott?
Amanda Solloway
The right hon. Lady makes an incredibly important point. Of course, one of the things that we are determined to do is make sure that those installations are carried out in the correct manner. In fact, we have new regulations in place to make sure that that happens going forward.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
The Minister will know that I am concerned about the level of standing charges in my constituency, as I have discussed this issue with her before. One of the problems is that people with pre-payment meters often find that, when they go to add the payment, the standing charges wipe everything out. Can the Government and Ofgem find a way to provide more support for those on pre-payment meters to avoid that problem?
Amanda Solloway
The hon. Lady and I have had many conversations about this issue. One of the things that we have done is make sure that people who are on pre-payment meters are not unfairly penalised.
Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)
The Minister and her colleagues have repeatedly said today that they care about cutting bills for families, but a recent report by the Resolution Foundation found that the onshore wind ban has hit the poorest households’ income six times harder than that of the richest. Such households have been forced to pay additional electricity bills as a result of the total failure to build onshore wind in England. How on earth can Ministers continue to sit there and claim that they stand up for working families when they continue to block the cheapest form of clean energy there is, which could cut bills for families who desperately need help? Before she leaves office, will the Secretary of State pledge to put this right so that onshore wind can be built again and customers can save money on their future bills?
Amanda Solloway
That is absolutely not the case. We stand here incredibly proudly as Ministers in the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, and we have made a commitment. We are doing more than has ever been done on renewables and offshore wind, and we have done more to help people with the affordability of their bills.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Amanda Solloway)
The social housing decarbonisation fund is upgrading to EPC C a significant amount of the social housing stock that is currently below that standard. We have already committed over £1 billion of Government funding, with a further £1.25 billion already committed for 2025 to 2028.
Sir Desmond Swayne
By how much has the Minister increased the level of insulation, and what significance does she attach to it?
Amanda Solloway
I thank my right hon. Friend for his brevity, as always. The amount of social housing that is well insulated has gone up from just 24% in 2010 to 70% today. For housing overall, we have gone from just 14% in 2010 to 50% today.
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)
I welcome, through the Minister, the admission by the Secretary of State last week finally that this flagship scheme is failing, although the words she used were that it has been
“a bit slow on the uptake”.
They have had 14 years to devise the most cost-effective way of reducing carbon emissions and people’s bills, making homes warmer and creating good new skilled jobs. When will we have a scheme that actually works?
Amanda Solloway
I respectfully say to the right hon. Gentleman that we do have schemes that are working. I remind him that the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero has launched a £1 billion Great British installation scheme, which aims to upgrade around 300,000 of the country’s least energy-efficient homes.
Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)
The Scottish Government are working at pace to replace polluting heating systems and improve energy efficiency in Scotland’s building stock, with £1.8 billion being invested in this parliamentary Session towards heat and energy efficiency measures and £600 million towards new affordable housing. With the Climate Change Committee stating that the Scottish Government’s heat in buildings Bill could become the template for the UK, helping Scotland to decarbonise faster than anywhere else in the UK, would the Minister like to visit the Scottish Government in Edinburgh? I can arrange that for her, so that she can see climate leadership in action.
Amanda Solloway
I reiterate that energy efficiency is incredibly important to us on the Government Benches and to the Government. I would be happy to come on a visit to Edinburgh. Indeed, I have already visited there.
Dave Doogan
Slightly more enthusiasm might have been welcomed by people living in England in cold and draughty houses. Nevertheless, it is not simply our extensive ambition that leaves the UK behind Scotland, but our delivery, too. Since 2007—[Interruption.] Those on the Government Benches might want to listen to this. Since 2007, per person, the SNP has built 40% more homes than Tory England and 70% more homes than Labour Wales and ensured 65% of the Scottish social rented sector has an energy performance certificate rating of C or above. Insulation levels in Scotland are way higher than in England. It is clear that the UK Government have materially failed to abate the demand side of the energy system to any meaningful extent. What will the Minister do, in the few weeks they have left in office, to atone for this glaring betrayal of bill payers?
Amanda Solloway
Unlike the hon. Gentleman, we have not abandoned our targets, and there has been good progress and improved household energy efficiency. Around half of our homes—48% in England—have now reached the Government’s 2035 target of achieving an EPC rating of C, up from 14% in 2010.
Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
The Minister for Energy Security and Net Zero (Justin Tomlinson)
Britain is the first major economy to halve emissions, while growing the economy by 80%. We have more ambitious targets for 2030 than the EU, with the UK aiming for a 68% reduction in emissions, compared with its 55%. We have over-achieved on all carbon budgets to date and remain on track for the next.
Afzal Khan
At COP28, the UK, alongside nearly 200 countries, agreed to the transition away from fossil fuels. Since then, the Government have recklessly granted new oil and gas licences and pushed legislation through this House to max out North sea fossil fuels. Will the Minister meet the 50 cross-party parliamentarians who last week signed a letter urging the Government to show climate leadership and join the Beyond Oil and Gas Allowance, which aims to phase out oil and gas production ahead of COP29?
Justin Tomlinson
I thank the hon. Member for raising that important issue. That is why we are proud that we have already taken 70% out of the oil and gas sector.
Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)
Hydrotreated vegetable oil is a good alternative to ripping out heating systems that already exist in rural homes. We have heard today about the cost to rural homes as we try to address the impact of using less fossil fuels. Will the Government get behind the opportunity for HVO in rural communities to give householders a chance to contribute to reducing harmful emissions in their homes?
Justin Tomlinson
My hon. Friend has always championed his local constituents to ensure that they get value for money. We must explore all potential options, local or national, to find the best way to deliver energy security and lower bills in future.
Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East) (SNP)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Andrew Bowie)
The evaluation of our energy support schemes will conclude in summer 2025. To ensure their bills were fair, supported heat network customers received an average of £1,200 via the energy discount scheme, which closed last month.
Tommy Sheppard
That is rather disappointing. I have more than 100 constituents in the Greendykes area of Edinburgh who get their heating and hot water from a communal district heating scheme. The Government have refused to offer them price protection, saying instead that this should be regulated by the business regulation scheme, but that ended on 31 March, leaving those people with no protection at all and facing increases of up to 500% in their energy bills. My constituents want to know: why did the Government wait until the business scheme finished before considering alternative protection for these domestic customers? Why take a year to get them protected and what compensation are the Government going to offer in the meantime?
Andrew Bowie
I hear the passion with which the hon. Gentleman stands up for his constituents, and rightly so, given the circumstances that they find themselves in. We are introducing regulations with Ofgem powers to investigate and intervene where prices for consumers appear to be unfair, and to ensure that all heat network consumers receive a high-quality service from their providers. I am happy to meet him to discuss this in greater detail.
Richard Fuller (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)
District heating networks are a good innovation and the Government have a good record of stimulating these projects around the country, but the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard) is right to say that the regulation in this area needs looking at. Can I reassert what he has just said and ask the Minister to carefully come forward with protections to ensure that consumers on shared heating networks are not at a disadvantage compared with people who pay their bills directly?
Andrew Bowie
I am pleased to give that assurance to my hon. Friend. As I have said, we are talking to Ofgem right now about introducing regulations to make this much fairer and simpler and to ensure that consumers on heat networks get the service that they deserve.
Michael Shanks (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Andrew Bowie)
The planning decision is devolved to the Scottish Government. Officials will work together to resolve cross-border matters. The UK Government are committed to effective co-operation with the Scottish Government on this and other issues, supporting our shared energy security and net zero objectives.
Michael Shanks
I thank the Minister for his answer and for the promise that officials will work together, but he will be aware that this is a 4.1 GW renewables project that could be the largest offshore wind farm in the world, delivering over £8 billion to the UK economy. The only reason that it is not eligible for this year’s contract for difference auction is the Scottish Government’s failure to make a decision on consent for the project. Has the Minister or anyone in his Department spoken to Scottish Ministers about the impact of this decision on investment in our economy, and to ensure that the consenting for offshore wind process is sped up so that we do not miss out on the tens of billions of investment and the thousands of jobs that a project such as this would deliver?
Andrew Bowie
The UK Government work closely and collaboratively with the Scottish Government on a whole host of areas, especially energy security and net zero. However, this is a live planning issue, and whether it is in the jurisdiction of Westminster or Holyrood, we do not comment on live planning cases given their quasi-judicial status.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Andrew Bowie)
The civil nuclear road map reconfirmed the Government’s ambition to deploy up to 24 GW of nuclear power by 2050. The road map sets out plans to make investment decisions concerning 3 GW to 7 GW every five years between 2030 and 2044.
Bob Blackman
Clearly it is important to have a mixed economy in terms of energy production, and nuclear has to play its part. What action is my hon. Friend taking to ensure that the development of small modular nuclear reactors is enhanced and brought forward, because that is the fastest way to get nuclear energy into our network?
Andrew Bowie
I completely agree with my hon. Friend. The small modular reactor technology selection process—the fastest of its kind in the world, I might add—continues to progress quickly and is currently in the tender phase, allowing vendors to bid for potentially multibillion-pound technology development contracts. Companies will have until June to submit their tender responses, at which point Great British Energy will evaluate bids and negotiate final contracts. The aim is to announce successful bids later this year.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
The Minister is always quick and keen to ensure that all parts of this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland have advantages. When it comes to the technology to which the question refers, when will Northern Ireland get the same advantage?
Andrew Bowie
As the hon. Gentleman knows, I am keen to ensure that every part of our great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland benefits from the expansion of nuclear power and the benefits that it can bring, not only for meeting our net zero objectives but for the economies in which these small modular reactors will be built. I would be happy to meet him at any time to explore what benefits can be accrued in Northern Ireland from the expansion of our nuclear capacity here in the UK.
Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)
The Minister for Energy Security and Net Zero (Justin Tomlinson)
The Government are immensely proud of our record on climate change. We have cut emissions faster than any other G20 country over the last decade. The judgment contains no criticism of our detailed plans or the policies themselves, which will keep the UK on track to meet net zero by 2050.
Nadia Whittome
The Government have a legal and moral duty to meet our carbon emissions target. Failure to do so would consign my generation, and generations after mine, to a future of climate catastrophe, so it is beyond a joke that the Government’s carbon budget delivery plan has now been ruled unlawful, not just once but twice. When will the Minister tell the flat earthers sitting behind him to stop trying to make net zero a culture war issue, and instead deliver a transition that both meets our climate obligations and improves people’s living standards?
Justin Tomlinson
Our carbon budget delivery plan has over 300 detailed policies. We are recognised as a leader internationally, having already cut emissions by half—the first major economy to do so—with a further ambitious target to get to 68% by 2030, compared with just 55% for the shadow Secretary of State’s beloved EU.
Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Amanda Solloway)
The energy suppliers are responsible for paying compensation. They have carried out 150,000 assessments so far, with 2,500 customers due compensation. A total of 1,502 payments have been made, with 1,000 more planned.
Dan Carden
Despite the energy ombudsman ruling that one of my constituents should not have been placed on a prepayment meter due to her vulnerabilities, she has not been awarded a penny of compensation under the scheme. As the Minister has just outlined, only 1,500 people, out of 150,000, have had any compensation awarded at all. That is 1%, so why is the number so small? Could it be that the energy suppliers themselves, overseen by Ofgem, are deciding who is entitled to these payments? Both sat idly by as agents forced their way into people’s homes to install the prepayment meters.
Amanda Solloway
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question and for the opportunity to provide clarity. The forced installation of prepayment meters is clearly unacceptable, and the Government have done everything we can to counteract it. However, I reiterate that 150,000 investigations were carried out, in 2,500 of those cases compensation is due and, instead of 1%, the actual figure on compensation is 60%.
Keir Mather (Selby and Ainsty) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Amanda Solloway)
The policy on fuel poverty is devolved. Statistics for England estimate that 3.17 million households were in fuel poverty in 2023, which is more than 1.5 million fewer than in 2010.
Keir Mather
The best way to cut fuel poverty is through a nationwide home upgrade scheme, but the Secretary of State seems unaware of the reality when it comes to home upgrades. Her officials said in recent documents given to the High Court that progress to decarbonise the UK’s building stock has been slow, that policy gaps remain and that the Government are lagging behind. Why will she not admit in public what her Department tells her in private?
Amanda Solloway
This Government are committed to making sure that we not only get energy efficiency but support people with their energy bills.
Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)
Thanks to Government grants, a social housing provider in my Chelmsford constituency, CHP, has made some great investments in social housing to help energy efficiency, reduce bills and lower fuel poverty, but it would like to go further. Will the Minister discuss with me the ways in which we can help to share the benefits of those savings so that some of them can be invested in improving energy efficiency and lowering bills in even more homes?
Amanda Solloway
My right hon. Friend makes the important point that energy efficiency is crucial to lowering bills. That is why we have the social housing decarbonisation fund, which supports local authorities and housing associations in upgrading social housing stock below energy performance certificate level C.
Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
The Minister for Energy Security and Net Zero (Justin Tomlinson)
Our Department’s ministerial team meet regularly with industry, for example through the hydrogen investor forum, the Offshore Wind Industry Council, the solar taskforce, the green jobs delivery group, and the cross-cutting Net Zero Council.
Justin Madders
Last week, Stellantis, the owner of the Vauxhall car plant in Ellesmere Port, announced that it would import electric vehicles, despite the fact that we produce some great electric vans in Ellesmere Port and want to move on to producing cars there as well. Does the Minister think that, over the long term, reaching our net zero targets through the import of cheaper Chinese vehicles will be a good or bad thing for the UK car industry?
Justin Tomlinson
The hon. Member raises a very important point. One of the Opposition’s main pledges, which is to fully decarbonise the grid by 2030, could be met only by opening the floodgates to cheap Chinese imports—the exact thing he is opposed to.
James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
Many unwelcome applications for large-scale solar farms, such as Lime Down in my constituency, are funded by offshore companies such as Macquarie, which is most famous for letting Thames Water fall to pieces. What meetings has the Minister had with these speculative investors to ensure that the people who build solar farms will be there in 40 years to make sure that they are removed?
Justin Tomlinson
My hon. Friend and constituency neighbour raises an important point about speculative development. As part of speeding up the grid queue, in which we have somewhere in the region of 700 GW of power capacity coming forward, we wish to prioritise shovel-ready schemes, not speculative schemes.
Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Claire Coutinho)
Since I was last at the Dispatch Box, we have been building up Britain’s energy security. We have taken the next step in the biggest expansion of nuclear in 70 years, making Britain a producer of advanced nuclear fuel and pushing Putin out of the global energy market. Just today, Rolls-Royce announced that it will invest millions of pounds in bringing new jobs to Sheffield to manufacture small modular reactors. We have overachieved in our third carbon budget, which is keeping us on track to reach net zero, and we are building on our proud record of being the first major economy to halve emissions. We have invested over half a billion pounds to help cut energy costs and bills for schools and hospitals, and we are taking our next steps on PumpWatch to protect motorists from unfair prices.
Liz Twist
Latest figures by National Energy Action show that there are still 1,875 homes in my constituency with legacy prepayment meters. What action are the Government taking to remove this costly burden on families?
Claire Coutinho
I thank the hon. Lady for her question. During my career, I have looked at the issue of prepayment meters for a long time, and one of the things that I am proudest of is our taking out the premium that people on prepayment meters were paying.
Dr James Davies (Vale of Clwyd) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Amanda Solloway)
My hon. Friend makes an important point and is right to pick up on this matter. I reassure him that I have encouraged and pushed Ofgem to do more on this issue. Electricity standing charges include network costs, which reflect the cost of maintaining and upgrading the transmission and distribution networks across the country. I am of course happy to meet him to discuss this subject further.
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
The National Infrastructure Commission said that the Government have reversed some progress on net zero. The right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) said that the Government’s roll-back on net zero has put off investors. A member of the Climate Change Committee has said that we are “not ready at all” for the impact of extreme weather on our national security. Mad, bad and dangerous. Will the Secretary of State finally back Great British Energy and the national wealth fund instead of lurching from crisis to crisis, not having a plan and selling out Britain?
The Minister for Energy Security and Net Zero (Justin Tomlinson)
We absolutely will not be backing putting the shadow Secretary of State in charge of UK and British energy companies, piling misery on to consumer bills. We have unlocked £300 billion of public and private investment in low-carbon technology since 2010, with plans for £100 billion more by 2030. Last year alone, we saw an investment of £60 billion; that is up a staggering 71% on the previous year.
Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Andrew Bowie)
My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we need to protect the best and most versatile agricultural land in this country. Unlike the Opposition, we respect the views of communities up and down this country, and we will not countenance the industrialisation of our countryside. However, solar power remains very important. We are committed to our 70 GW target. In our forthcoming solar road map, we will set out exactly how we will incentivise the development of rooftop solar, and development on brownfield and other sites.
Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)
Justin Tomlinson
That is simply not the case; we are leading internationally. Last year alone, there was £60 billion of funding for low-carbon technology; that is up 71% on the previous year. That is why other countries turn to our businesses and supply chain for their expertise—and to us, as we are leading with our policy framework.
Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)
Justin Tomlinson
The Government have invested in the Faraday battery challenge, a £541 million programme to support the research, development and scale-up of world-leading battery technology in the UK. Since 2022, all new homes and homes undergoing major renovation in England have been required to have a charge point installed. That is why we welcome the year-on-year 49% increase in charge points.
Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)
Amanda Solloway
A social tariff means lots of different things to different people, but what it ultimately means is ensuring that we support all vulnerable people. The hon. Member will be aware that the Government are doing many things to support people; there is the warm home discount, the cost of living payment, which is £900, and a variety of other measures.
Mark Eastwood (Dewsbury) (Con)
Andrew Bowie
As my hon. Friend has heard me say already today, solar power is important, and we remain committed to our 70 GW target. However, food security is as important as energy security when it comes to national security. That is why we are protecting the best and most versatile farmland in the United Kingdom. Unlike the Opposition, we respect the views of communities up and down the country; we will ensure that our countryside is not industrialised, and incentivise companies, individuals and organisations to invest in rooftop solar, and solar on brownfield, not greenfield, sites.
Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
Amanda Solloway
We are ensuring that energy businesses are able to survive, and not just through the price caps. This is also a matter for Ofgem.
Chris Clarkson (Heywood and Middleton) (Con)
My constituency is home to Scout Moor, one of the largest onshore wind farms in Europe, but the north-west also has amazing potential for offshore wind; an example is the Morgan and Morecambe development off the coast of Lancashire. Such projects require huge amounts of infrastructure to be realised. Notwithstanding the reassurances that my right hon. Friend has already given, will she ensure that community consent is part of any infrastructure projects of this kind?
Justin Tomlinson
My hon. Friend raises an important matter. Absolutely; that is part of our forward planning in making sure that we can unlock the huge potential in every region of our United Kingdom.
Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)
Amanda Solloway
The hon. Gentleman’s question covers a few issues. One of the most important things is to look at how the standing charges are made up. That is why we have encouraged Ofgem to answer our call for input. Insulation schemes are incredibly important as well, which is why the Government are committed to supporting so many of them.
Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)
Hydrogen is the only viable alternative to natural gas for a balanced, reactive and carbon-zero electricity grid. The UK has 32 gas power plants, all of which could be cheaply and easily retrofitted to burn hydrogen as a natural gas. What is the Department doing to encourage this sort of retrofitting, so that we can allow technologies to decarbonise electricity generation and take advantage of the many benefits of hydrogen?
Andrew Bowie
I thank my hon. Friend for that rather surprising question on hydrogen. The Government recognise the value of hydrogen in supporting a decarbonised and secure power system. We intend to publish soon our response to the December 2023 hydrogen-to-power market intervention consultation, and we will soon legislate for decarbonisation readiness requirements, so that new-build or substantially refurbished combustion power plants are built net zero ready.
Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)
In the last 12 months, one in five households, or one in four young households, in energy debt have turned to illegal money lenders to help pay for bills and everyday essentials. The End Fuel Poverty Coalition has stated that the crisis could mean that young households spend years at the mercy of these loan sharks. What assessment has the Minister made of the merits of working with Ofgem and energy suppliers in order to introduce support to alleviate this record-high energy debt?
Amanda Solloway
The hon. Member makes an incredibly important point, and I have had many conversations with her on this matter. I can reassure her that I meet Ofgem regularly to discuss this, as the issue is very close to my heart—hence the call for input. To give her further reassurance, I can tell her that earlier this week, I met energy suppliers, and I also have ongoing meetings with Citizens Advice and other stakeholders.
Sir Jeremy Wright (Kenilworth and Southam) (Con)
Like others, I welcome what the Government have already done to extend the permitted development rights for rooftop solar and car park canopies, but may I encourage my hon. Friend to tell others in Government who have responsibility for planning that there are considerable benefits to car park canopies, particularly in hotter summers?
Andrew Bowie
I thank my right hon. and learned Friend for his question. I urge him to bide his time and have patience, because in the next few weeks we will publish our solar road map, which will expand on exactly how we will work with other Government Departments, and indeed industry, to ensure that we benefit from the huge advantages that we have in the number of rooftops available for the deployment of solar capacity across the UK.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
There has indeed been a significant increase in domestic insulation schemes in recent years. However, will the Minister agree to increase the number of conversations with devolved institutions, so that we can see a genuinely nationwide revival of insulation schemes that, individually, can do more to reduce the dependency on high energy costs for those at maximum risk, in social housing and elsewhere?
Amanda Solloway
Clearly, energy efficiency is incredibly important, which means that making sure that we get the correct insulation schemes is also incredibly important. I give the hon. Gentleman my assurance that we are doing everything we can to ensure that that insulation takes place.
Cherilyn Mackrory (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)
Given the floating offshore wind manufacturing investment scheme funding recently awarded to Wales, can the Minister please advise me on when A&P Falmouth, which is to be a vital part of the supply chain for the only successful project in allocation round 4, will be put on the reserve list? The Minister has promised to meet me on several occasions. Can I ask that we expedite that much as possible?
Andrew Bowie
I would be delighted to meet my hon. Friend to discuss this matter. Indeed, I am determined to ensure that ports that were not successful in the FLOWMIS process can take advantage of the huge increase that we expect in the deployment of floating offshore wind capacity off the coast of the United Kingdom. I am happy to meet my hon. Friend and, indeed, any other Member of Parliament who represents a port that was not successful through the FLOWMIS procedure to discuss how we can move this forward.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
Community energy can deliver so many renewable energy products and save on energy bills. Last year in Bath, a community energy project putting rooftop solar on schools saved schools £130,000. When will the Government remove the barriers to community energy?
Andrew Bowie
As a result of the Energy Act 2023, we launched a consultation and a multimillion-pound fund to help to support the expansion of community energy across the United Kingdom. It would be great to have the Liberal Democrats’ support in the effort that this party and this Government are making to ensure that the benefits of community energy are felt up and down the length and breadth of the country.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
As we go to net zero, surely we also need to retain our sense of human rights. Polysilicon mostly comes from Xinjiang, where it is mined using slave labour. To what extend are we prepared to say that net zero trumps slave labour, and are we checking on slave labour products in the arrays?
Andrew Bowie
I can assure my right hon. Friend that we are indeed ensuring that the extent to which slave labour is used is kept very much at a minimum, if at all, in the supply chain of any of the components coming to advance us towards net zero. The solar road map, as referred to earlier, will set out in greater detail how the Government will work with industry to ensure that there are no slave labour components to any of the parts we are importing to develop our renewable technology.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
My constituent from Govanhill is being passed backwards and forwards between Utilita Energy and the Department for Work and Pensions. He receives income-related employment and support allowance and should be entitled to the warm home discount, but neither Utilita nor the DWP is able to give him the money he is entitled to. He applied in September last year. Will the Minister intervene and make sure he gets the money he is due?
Amanda Solloway
I encourage the hon. Lady to write to me on this particular issue and I will look into it.
Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton) (Con)
I put on record my heartfelt thanks to the Secretary of State and the Minister for Nuclear and Renewables for the action they took last week to put food security, alongside renewable energy, at the heart of local planning decisions. What are the Government doing to ensure that all councils immediately enact that policy, because it is both for local councils and for Government? Will existing soil assessments stand for nationally significant infrastructure projects, or will they be redone?
Andrew Bowie
I thank my hon. Friend for her question and her kind words. I am pleased to confirm to the House that my hon. Friend the Minister for Housing, Planning and Building Safety has written to all local authorities to draw their attention to the statement last week, which underlined our robust policy on solar farms on our best and most versatile agricultural land. Local planners should know this Government are serious about solar being put in the right places, and not on the best and most versatile agricultural land.
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (Ind)
Tapadh leat, Mr Speaker. Zonal pricing has the potential to lower bills for households from Sussex to Shetland, from Stonehaven to the great town of Stornoway. Of course some vested interests will be concerned, such as energy generating companies that are benefiting from the constraint payments raised from customer bills. What are the Government doing to stimulate debate and knowledge about zonal pricing?
Justin Tomlinson
It was a pleasure on my return as a Minister to attend the hon. Gentleman’s Select Committee, which he chairs so well. This is part of stage 2 of our wider consultation under our review of electricity market arrangements, and we take on board his and his Committee’s constructive suggestions in that meeting.
Simon Fell (Barrow and Furness) (Con)
A key tool in our arsenal against climate change must be sequestering carbon. It was a pleasure last week to see the Morecambe bay net zero peak cluster vision launched, which could decarbonise 40% of our cement and lime industries, securing a gigatonne of carbon under Morecambe bay. Can I encourage my hon. Friend the Minister to meet me to discuss the project further?
Andrew Bowie
I would be delighted to meet my hon. Friend at any time, and I am happy to discuss this and any other matter relating to the subject.
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Speaker. Now that the Government have recognised the importance of versatile and productive agricultural land in respect of solar, will they recognise too the threat of a monstrous string of pylons stretching right down the east coast of England? We either care about our green and pleasant land or we do not—for, as Keats understood, truth is beauty and beauty, truth.
Justin Tomlinson
My right hon. Friend will know that we value taking communities with us and working with them. I am having a number of meetings on this very subject to look at new technologies to see what additional options there could be to support local communities as we rapidly upgrade our national grid network.
Infected Blood Compensation Scheme
(7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Speaker
Before I call the Minister, I should say that he will take longer than is usual for a statement, and I totally agree with the extra time. I am just letting the other Front Benchers know that there will be some extra time.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (John Glen)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement following the final report of the infected blood inquiry.
Yesterday, the Prime Minister spoke about the anguish that the infected blood scandal brought to those impacted by it. I want to reiterate his words and apologise again today. I am sorry. The Prime Minister also spoke, on behalf of the whole House, of our gratitude to Sir Brian Langstaff and his team for completing his comprehensive report—seven volumes and 2,500 pages—and of our appreciation of all those who came forward as part of the inquiry.
It was the greatest privilege of my ministerial career to meet over 40 representatives of the infected blood community, in Cardiff, Edinburgh, Belfast, Birmingham and Leeds, as we finalised our response to compensation for this appalling tragedy. The whole community’s bravery through immense suffering is what has enabled justice today. I know that many of them will be watching from the Public Gallery. I want to honour their fortitude through their unimaginable pain, as I lay out a more detailed response to Sir Brian’s second interim report on compensation. We will provide the House with a further opportunity to debate the inquiry’s full report after the Whitsun recess. The Government will also respond to each recommendation in full, as quickly as possible, within our comprehensive response to the report.
The Prime Minister confirmed yesterday that the Government will pay comprehensive compensation to those who have been infected and affected as a result of this scandal. I will now set out to the House the scheme that the Government are proposing, and of course, more details of the scheme will be published online today. We are establishing the Infected Blood Compensation Authority—an arm’s length body—to administer the scheme. A shadow body has already been set up, and an interim chief executive officer has been appointed. Today, I am delighted to announce the appointment of Sir Robert Francis at the interim chair of the organisation. The experience and care that Sir Robert will bring to the role will ensure that the scheme is credible and trusted by the community. His support in delivering the scheme will be invaluable.
Those who have been infected or affected as a result of this scandal will receive compensation. To be crystal clear, if you have been directly or indirectly infected by NHS blood, blood products or tissue contaminated with HIV or hepatitis C, or have developed a chronic infection from blood contaminated with hepatitis B, you will be eligible to claim compensation under the scheme, and where an infected person has died but would have been eligible under those criteria, compensation will be paid to their estate. This will include where a person was infected with hepatitis B and died during the acute period of infection.
But, Mr Speaker, Sir Brian could not have been clearer: it is not just the harm caused by the infections that requires compensation. The wrongs suffered by those affected must also be compensated for, so when a person with an eligible infection has been accepted on to the scheme, their affected loved ones will be able to apply for compensation in their own right. That means that partners, parents, siblings, children, friends and family who have acted as carers for those who were infected are all eligible to claim. I am aware that being asked to provide evidence of eligibility will likely be distressing, so I am determined to minimise that distress as much as possible.
I am pleased to confirm today that anyone already registered with one of the existing infected blood support schemes will automatically be considered eligible for compensation. I also give thanks for the dedication and hard work of Professor Sir Jonathan Montgomery and the other members of the expert group, who were critical in advising on how the Government could faithfully translate Sir Brian’s recommendations for the purposes of the scheme. In line with our previous commitments, we will publish the names of those experts today.
In his report, Sir Brian recommended that compensation be awarded with respect to the following five categories: an injury impact award, acknowledging the physical and mental injury caused by the infection; a social impact award, to address the stigma or social isolation resulting from the infection; an autonomy award, acknowledging how family and private life was disrupted during this time; a care award, to compensate for the past and future care needs of anyone infected; and finally a financial loss award, for past and future financial losses suffered as a result of the infection. The Government accept this recommendation with two small refinements, informed by the work of the expert group and designed for simplicity and speed, two other principles that Sir Brian asserted.
First, the care award will be directly awarded to the person with the infection, or to their estate. Secondly, the financial loss award will be paid either directly to the person with the infection, or—where an infected person has tragically died before the establishment of the scheme—to their estate and to affected persons who were dependent on them. Sadly, many people have links to multiple individuals who were infected, or were both infected themselves and affected by another’s infection. As such, multiple injury awards will be offered to reflect the scale of the loss and suffering. The scheme will be tariff-based, and we will be publishing an explanatory document on gov.uk, including examples of proposed tariffs.
However, this is not the end: over the next few weeks, Sir Robert Francis will seek views from the infected blood community on the proposed scheme before its terms are set in regulations, to make sure the scheme will best serve those who it is intended for. Sir Robert has welcomed the Government’s proposals as positive and meaningful, and he will set out more details on engagement with the community shortly.
The inquiry recommended that the scheme should be flexible in its awards of compensation, providing for either a lump sum or regular payments. We agree, which is why the awards to living infected or affected persons will be offered as either a lump sum or as periodical payments. Where the infected person has died, estate representatives will receive compensation as a single lump sum to distribute to beneficiaries of the estate, as is appropriate. We will also guarantee that any payments made to those eligible will be exempt from income, capital gains and inheritance tax, as well as disregard them from means-tested benefit assessments. We will also ensure that all claimants are able to appeal against their award both through an internal review process in the Infected Blood Compensation Authority and, where needed, with a right to appeal to a first-tier tribunal. Our expectation is that final payments will start before the end of the year, and if you permit, Mr Speaker, I would like to return to the House when the regulations are laid later this year to make a further statement with an update on the delivery of the compensation scheme.
I know from my discussions with the community just how important the existing infected blood support scheme payments are to them. I recognise that many people, sadly, rely on these payments, and they are rightly keen to understand what the Government’s intentions are. I want to provide reassurance to all those out there today that no immediate changes will be made to the support schemes. Payments will continue to be made at the same level until 31 March 2025, and they will not be deducted from any of these compensation awards. From 1 April 2025, any support scheme payments received will be counted towards a beneficiary’s final compensation award. This will ensure parity between support scheme beneficiaries regardless of whether they were the first or the last to have their compensation assessed by the Infected Blood Compensation Authority. We will ensure that no one—no one—receives less in compensation than they would have received in support payments.
I recognise that each week members of the infected blood community are dying from their infections. There may be people—indeed, there will be people—listening today who are thinking to themselves that they may not live to receive compensation, so I want to address those concerns, too. Today, I am announcing that the Government will be making further interim payments ahead of the establishment of the full scheme. Payments of £210,000 will be made to living infected beneficiaries—those registered with existing infected blood support schemes as well as those who register with a support scheme before the final scheme becomes operational—and to the estates of those who pass away between now and payments being made. I know that time is of the essence, which is why I am also pleased to say that they will be delivered within 90 days, starting in the summer, so that they can reach those who most need it so urgently.
Before I conclude, I would like to turn to the matter of memorialisation. Many of those who were infected by contaminated blood or blood products have since died—died without knowing that their suffering and loss would be fully recognised either in their lifetime or at all. The lives of most of those who have died remain unrecognised. I note Sir Brian’s recommendations on memorialisation across the UK, and the Government will address those recommendations in detail as part of our wider response to this report.
In conclusion, I know that the whole House will want to join me in thanking Sir Brian and the inquiry for the work that they have done, and pay tribute to all those who have been caught up in this terrible tragedy and who have battled for justice for so long. Yesterday was a day of great humility for everyone implicated in this inquiry, and today I can only hope that, with the publication of the inquiry report and with our firm commitment to compensate those touched by this scandal, the infected blood community know that their cries for justice have been heard. I commend this statement to the House.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
Order. Lots of Members want to get in, and all Members will get in. I now come to the shadow Minister.
Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)
The infected blood scandal is one the gravest injustices in our history, and a profound moment of shame for the British state. Yesterday, the Leader of the Opposition apologised on behalf of Labour Governments of the past, and the Prime Minister did the same on behalf of all Governments and the country. I join them today in saying a deep and heartfelt sorry.
The scale of the horror that was uncovered by Sir Brian Langstaff’s report almost defies belief. That is why I pay tribute to the victims of this scandal, who fought so hard for justice. We thank the charities, and the remarkable campaigning work of my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), as well as the Father of the House, and the journalist Caroline Wheeler, whose work and book, “Death in the Blood”, did so much to drive this issue forward. I also recognise the significance of the decision made by the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), in establishing the public inquiry. I thank Sir Brian Langstaff and all his staff for their forensic work. I also thank the Minister for regularly briefing me, and for his work in government ahead of today.
One of the most powerful conclusions in this report is that an apology is meaningful only if it is accompanied by action, and it is that I turn to now. I welcome the further interim payments that the Minister has announced, and I repeat our commitment to work on a cross-party basis, and help to deliver the compensation scheme and get the final money to victims as soon as possible.
I welcome the further details that the Minister has given, including the appointment of the interim chair. Sir Robert Francis is saying already that he is seeking the views of the infected blood community, and that is welcome, but does the Minister agree that continuing to hear that voice of victims is crucial?
I also welcome payments being made under the five heads of loss to the infected and the affected. Will the Minister confirm that estimates of the total cost have now been made, and that there will be no undue delay in those final payments reaching victims? Time is of the essence: one victim dies every four days. Will the Minister set out more detail about how the personal representatives of estates will be handled as part of the scheme? Will he also confirm that plans are in place to trace additional people who might be eligible for compensation? Will he say a little more about when we can expect a progress report on Sir Brian Langstaff’s other 11 recommendations, beyond the establishment of the compensation body? I add my support, and that of all Labour Members, to the consideration of appropriate and fitting memorials across the different parts of the UK and, as Sir Brian Langstaff recommends, for victims who were treated at Treloar’s.
On potential criminal charges, will the Minister ensure that all relevant evidence is made available for consideration by the prosecuting authorities and any other necessary support provided? Sir Brian Langstaff’s findings on institutional defensiveness, and on putting the reputation of people and protecting institutions above public service, follow on from other scandals such as Hillsborough and Horizon. That is why we must deliver a duty of candour and the political leadership that we need to replace that culture of defensiveness with openness and transparency. Sir Brian Langstaff’s report challenges us all to make progress on his recommendations. That is what we must now come together to do. The victims deserve nothing less.
John Glen
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his collegiate tone and for the constructive approach he has taken throughout our conversations and in his response this afternoon. I totally embrace the need to continue the dialogue with victims. That is why I was pleased that Sir Robert Francis agreed to take on that role, having done the study into compensation. We have obviously met a number of times, and I have explained to him what Jonathan Montgomery and the experts panel did. I am pleased that he has got to a point where he is sufficiently satisfied to move forward in this way.
As the Prime Minister made clear yesterday, there is no restriction on the budget, and where we need to pay we will pay. We will minimise delays and address the recommendations of Sir Brian Langstaff with respect to speed and efficiency, removing as much complexity as possible. The right hon. Gentleman asked about the representatives of different estates and tracing additional claimants. Those will be matters that the interim chief executive and interim chair will look at carefully. I envisage through the month of June an exercise to engage meaningfully with representatives of the communities, to look at some of the assumptions in the work of that expert panel, which will inform the regulations that we are duty bound to bring to the House within three months of the Victims and Prisoners Bill receiving Royal Assent.
Some of the other matters about appropriate memorialisation, criminal charges and duty of candour, on some of which progress is being made in different ways, are probably best left to some of my colleagues at a subsequent point. As I said, I anticipate that we will have an early opportunity to discuss those matters in full, in a debate soon after the Whitsun recess.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
The House will understand that my remarks will be subsidiary to those of the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson).
It is 36 years since I was with the first of my friends who I knew had been infected, and 33 years since that person died. Friendships got fractured, and families were changed forever.
One point that I hope my right hon. Friend the Minister will put to his fellow Ministers in the Department of Health and Social Care regards whether those who are still infected in some way can have a kind of national health service passport, so that when they go to get medical attention they are not asked the same questions that my constituents were asked every time: “How much have you been drinking? Why is your liver the way it is?” and all the rest. It is important that young clinicians understand that when they see haemophilia or a whole blood infection, they can take for granted a lot of things that do not need to be asked. That humanity needs to be spread.
I recognise that my right hon. Friend has built on the work of our right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Sir Jeremy Quin), and perhaps I may say in a cross-party way that Sue Gray deserves respect for when she led civil servants in that, as do her successors in the civil service who are putting things right.
My final point is this: people are not being awarded lottery sums, although in some way they make up for some of the losses and recognise some of the hurt. For some families who may not have been used to having much money around—indeed, most of them are used to having very little money because of the consequences of infection—there may need to be mediation services in case they do not agree. It would be a good idea if Sir Robert, or others, could consider whether such services could be made available, in the same way that other people who have suddenly come into some degree of money can get some kind of help. Families sometimes do not find it easy to decide how money should be shared.
John Glen
I thank my hon. Friend for his comments, and I pay tribute to him for the work that he has done and for his constructive engagement with me over the past six months, and over many previous years. He made the point about his friend and the stigma that some of the victims have had to endure, which is why injury and social impact are reflected in the heads of loss under the scheme. He also made some observations about how better awareness of some conditions can be taken forward. I will discuss that with ministerial colleagues—several from the Department of Health and Social Care are in their places today.
My hon. Friend mentioned my immediate predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Sir Jeremy Quin), but I am aware that a large number of Paymasters General—including my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, who is sitting alongside me today—have done an enormous amount of work to get us to this point, along with many officials, including James Quinault, who has led the work latterly. I want to acknowledge their contribution; this is not about me.
More broadly, my hon. Friend made some wise observations about the need to ensure that, for the communities who will be given significant sums of money—rightly so, and in line with what they would be entitled to if they went through a legal process—the appropriate framework of support is in place to assist them to receive that money in a way that is not destructive to their lives.
Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
Yesterday was an emotional day for many of us. I am privileged to be at Central Hall with my constituents Cathy Young and her two fantastic daughters, Lisa and Nicola. I join the Minister in paying great tribute to the infected blood community. That community gave Sir Brian Langstaff a standing ovation yesterday—a sight that will never leave me. May I echo the Public Gallery’s reaction to the appointment of Sir Robert Francis? It is an excellent appointment. Will the Minister confirm that Sir Robert Francis will be able to meet the all-party parliamentary group on haemophilia and contaminated blood as well as others in the House?
With regard to the composition of the board of the compensation authority, will the Minister guarantee—I have already raised this with him—that it will include representatives of the infected and affected, and that they will have what we believe is their rightful representation on the board? I welcome his comments in relation to hepatitis B. That has always been one of the issues of contention, and some people with hepatitis B have been missing out on the existing schemes. Will he look to find a way so that those with hepatitis B can access the existing schemes? I know that the Scottish Infected Blood Forum has asked him that question.
On interim payments, the Minister mentioned the living. Will he clarify whether interim payments will be made to the estates of those who have sadly passed away? Some people will raise eyebrows about the fact that the interim compensation is less than that for those in the Post Office scheme. Will he give some explanation as to how the £210,000 figure came about?
I echo the comments of the shadow Minister on looking at criminal charges and a Hillsborough law, and I very much welcome his comments on memorial. Does the Minister agree that there are two other lessons: first, Members of this House, regardless of political persuasion, can get together to deliver justice; and secondly, for the general public the key lesson, as shown by those in the infected blood community, is never, ever to give up fighting injustice?
John Glen
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his engagement and for the points he has made today. I was there yesterday for the two hours of Sir Brian Langstaff’s presentation of his report, which was a moving moment for all of those who have suffered and waited for so long.
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his endorsement of the appointment of Sir Robert Francis, which seemed to be welcomed in the Gallery. I recognise that what is absolutely critical for the scheme to be successful is full engagement with the communities and that the explanation of how the scheme has been constructed and any concerns about the wider support that is needed are interrogated fully before the regulations come back to the House. Throughout, the scheme has been about reconciling speed and efficiency with consultation, which is why it has been done in such a way over the past few months.
The hon. Gentleman made a point about hepatitis B and access to schemes. I will be happy to correspond with him separately on that—obviously, there are lots of technical issues. He asked about the £210,000, which he can see is an irregular amount. That is because I was trying to get the maximum amount that could be universally paid, as quickly as I could, to those who are infected and alive without any risk of paying the wrong amount, and that is the amount that I was advised. What is really important is that we get to the examination of entitlements and what that balancing payment is, and get that payment out as quickly as possible. This is not a stalling tactic; it is about trying to reconcile the competing priorities of responsible stewardship of taxpayers’ money and getting payments made as quickly as possible for the most vulnerable in our community.
With regard to memorialisation, on these matters there will need to be wide engagement and I do not want to make binding commitments today. I have said what I have said, and I or another Minister will return to that in due course.
Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)
I thank the Minister for what he said and how he said it. I know that he, the Prime Minister and, in particular, the Chancellor, who is sitting next to him, will make this right. Clearly, the majority of Sir Brian’s recommendations are for the health and social care sector, and the Health and Social Care Committee, which I chair, will play its part, working with the Health Secretary—I see her in her place—and NHS England to ensure that all the recommendations are implemented, unlike with some previous accepted patient safety recommendations. May I ask the Minister about the five loss categories? They make every sense, and I note his two small refinements, but will the financial loss award reflect the reality that many infected blood victims, to give just one example, cannot access life insurance?
John Glen
I thank the Chair of the Select Committee for his comments. I also thank the Chancellor for his unwavering commitment to resolving this in a timely way, both when I was Chief Secretary and now in this role.
With respect to the five loss categories, my hon. Friend makes a legitimate point about a specific additional burden that is a consequence of these conditions. That matter will no doubt be raised by some in the communities. The structure of the scheme is based around: injuries, social impact, autonomy, care and financial loss. Clearly, social impact and autonomy capture a range of unspecific things—a basket of goods, if you like—that people will not have been able to procure at the same cost. I cannot give him a specific answer on that, but Jonathan Montgomery and his team of experts have done everything they can to look at the law, consider what the entitlement would be in different circumstances and give their best assessment, and those sorts of conversations will happen with the communities in the coming weeks.
Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
I welcome the Minister’s statement today. Reflecting on the fact that he has talked about those infected and affected being fully engaged, I gently remind him of the maxim “No decision about us without us”, and of the lack of transparency so far in the expert panel. It is only today that we will learn the names of the people who have been advising the Government.
May I also welcome the appointment of Sir Robert Francis as interim chair of the infected blood body? It is worth reflecting on what Sir Brian put in his report yesterday about the Government’s failure to respond to Sir Robert Francis’s compensation framework document, which the Leader of the House commissioned when she was Paymaster General, and which the Government promised several times to respond to. That was never published.
Because we have also not had a proper written response to the second interim report from Sir Brian last April, will the Minister set out whether all 18 recommendations are being accepted by the Government? If not, why not? Will he confirm how the Government will ensure that the compensation authority is accountable directly to Parliament, as recommended by the infected blood inquiry?
John Glen
I thank the right hon. Lady for her observations and for her ongoing engagement since my appointment. I take seriously her point about having no decisions without full engagement. I made a decision, in order to get to this point where we would, in principle, accept the recommendations of Sir Brian Langstaff and move forward with the independent expert panel. As I have said to her previously, I was always prepared to reveal the names of those individuals, but I did not want them to be distracted while they did urgent work to make progress quickly. Their names will be available shortly—today.
Sir Robert Francis and I had a number of conversations about the interaction between Government and the expert group, and the logic that I used to get to the heads of loss and the scheme today. I am delighted that he is prepared to facilitate engagement with the communities.
I have also been mindful of the principle of the Government managing public money while also recognising Sir Brian’s imperative to set up a body that is at arm’s length from Government, in order to generate some trust with a very vulnerable community. Reconciling those two has not been straightforward. The right hon. Lady asked about the accountability of the arm’s length body. These matters will need to be discussed further with respect to the regulations that we must lay before the House.
A number of my predecessors have done a lot of work on this issue. I am pleased that we have made significant progress, but there is an intense amount of work to be done to deliver this over the next three months. I look forward to working constructively with her, as Sir Robert Francis does, to ensure that we get this to the right place as quickly as possible.
Mr Speaker
I call the Chair of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee.
Dame Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)
We have heard descriptions of institutional defensiveness today, but we should be clear about what we are talking about: this was a grubby secret kept by the Department of Health. The people who suffered as a consequence were treated as an inconvenience to be managed. It flies in the face of what we are required to do in this House: hold Ministers accountable for what happens in their Departments. We need to learn from this, to improve how we behave and to hold the Executive to account in future. If we do not, this incident will shame us all—not just those directly responsible. We need to properly establish a duty of candour for civil servants in the advice they give to Ministers, and a requirement that Ministers must satisfy themselves that they are giving appropriate challenge and consideration to the advice they receive, so that everyone involved in delivering services in future can be held directly responsible, and this place does not continue to be a charade.
John Glen
I thank the hon. Lady for her comments, and I agree with her instinctive reaction to what Sir Brian said about the duty of candour. It will be for the Government more widely to determine how we respond to that in a formal and coherent way. When my right hon. Friend the Chancellor was in a previous role, he moved quite a lot of things forward in the Department of Health, as the hon. Lady knows. When someone spends that amount of time, with that depth of evaluation, and gives a number of insights and recommendations, it is important that the Government look at them very carefully. Sir Brian makes wise observations about how we do government in this country, which we must listen to, heed and apply.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
I, too, welcome today’s statement, which has been a long time coming. This is a poignant day for many of my constituents, their families and friends. Reassurance has been called for by organisations such as Haemophilia Scotland that the recommendations will be adhered to, as perhaps they have not been in the past. Does the Minister agree that having the involvement of various groups of infected and affected people will help ensure that happens?
John Glen
I agree. When I went to Edinburgh I was keen to meet a representative group of Scottish infected blood campaign organisations. I had a very candid conversation with them, in which I set out where we were as a Government and what we were planning to do on this day at a high level. Those conversations need to continue. As I said, the immediate priority is under Sir Robert Francis’s guidance. That engagement will continue throughout June, so that the regulations are informed by the wisdom, experience and views of those we are seeking to support.
Sir David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
Let me start by commending my constituency neighbour, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), for her courage, determination and persistence in relentlessly pursuing this matter over the years. I wholeheartedly support her call for the rapid payment of compensation before any more sufferers die, and I know the Minister has that in mind.
The Prime Minister said that a travesty like this should never be allowed to happen again. Like the PACAC Chair, I think that rests on the duty of candour that Sir Brain Langstaff recommended. That means a legally enforceable duty of candour for the entire public service, not just some promise. As it turns out, the Minister has in front of him the opportunity to do that. On Report today in the Lords is the Victims and Prisoners Bill, which includes a clause that imposes a duty of candour in a very limited way. Can my right hon. Friend look at that clause and expand it to cover the whole public sector under all circumstances?
John Glen
I defer to my right hon. Friend’s considerable experience and wisdom on many matters. I recognise his points, but to move on this matter in that way in this short timeframe would not be the right step. However, it would be right for us to urgently engage with him, the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee and others to ensure that the Government come up with the right complete response, to deal with a sensible point that Sir Brian made.
Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)
I pay tribute to my constituents whose lives were changed for ever and the many campaigners affected by this scandal, who have fought for so many years for truth and justice. From Hillsborough to the Post Office, the infected blood scandal and many more, we have watched the state and institutions cover up wrongdoing and blame the innocent, with no accountability. How long do we have to wait for those in this place to finally act and rebalance the scales of justice, and to deliver a full Hillsborough law? Yesterday’s events show how necessary that law is to begin to end the culture of cover-ups that is shamefully hardwired into our institutions.
John Glen
I very much respect the hon. Gentleman’s points about Hillsborough. I am not able to answer his question on that, as my remarks are about the compensation scheme, but a number of points have been made about the incidence of public inquiries on a range of issues, and what that says about our state and its failure in different ways. As he said, considerable effort was required of individuals—which it should never have been—to apprehend the state for what has happened. These are wider matters that we will need to come to terms with, but I do not think I can do justice to his remarks today.
Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)
I appreciate that today’s statement is about compensation, but there was no opportunity yesterday nor much today to ask specifically about Lord Mayor Treloar College in Hampshire. My constituent Mike Webster sent his son Gary, a constituent of my hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Paul Holmes), to Treloar back in the late ’70s and early ’80s. He wrote to me last month to tell me how distraught he was that the school is now trying to paint itself as a victim, when we know that it was in receipt of funds to conduct experiments on children. Will my right hon. Friend give me some assurance from the Dispatch Box that the Government are considering very carefully how the Helsinki declaration may have been breached, and some guidance about what future steps may be taken?
John Glen
My right hon. Friend very eloquently makes a very important point. In the course of my engagement, I met a number of former pupils from Treloar. I believe that in Sir Robert’s report, one full volume pertains to what happened there. So many individuals underwent medical treatment that was not envisaged by their parents and where consent appears not to have been secured. This is a massive aspect of the work of Sir Brian Langstaff. The Government will need to examine it very carefully, including the implications for who is culpable and how we should most appropriately respond to avoid anything like that happening again. I hope that what I have said today with respect to compensation will give some modest measure of comfort to those I met and those like them who are not here today.
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
There are not words enough to pay tribute to all the campaigners, infected and affected, including my constituent Lin, who lost Bill, and the Smiths. I also pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) and journalists such as Caroline Wheeler. The Smiths lost Colin, aged just seven years old, to AIDS, having been given infected blood from an Arkansas prison at 10 months old. We now know from the inquiry that the risks of giving that blood were known. Lin and the Smiths want “sorry” to turn into something today, for those who die every week. On their behalf, I say to the Minister: make sure we have a proper timeline and that we stick to it; implement the recommendations as fast as possible; put the victims at the heart of decision making; and no more delays. This group of people have waited far too long and have been through far too much already. Finally, the Smiths want their son to have his name back, although they have always made sure that we have never forgotten it. So can I say it today? Colin John Smith.
John Glen
The hon. Lady makes a moving tribute to her constituents. I can assure her that the Government have heard the pleas that have been made. We have set out today a clear timetable on the journey to the regulations. I will, with Mr Speaker’s permission, update the House in early autumn on where we have got to and the timeline for further detail, subject to the advice of the interim CEO and the interim chair. She makes a point about stigma, which is a massive part of this for so many people I met and for her constituents, including the Smith family. We recognise that as part of the scheme, but the memorialisation process must also recognise in particular those who were so badly stigmatised in the ’80s and ’90s.
Paul Bristow (Peterborough) (Con)
The Minister talks about stigma. When I met some of the affected community in Peterborough, I heard about the discrimination they faced and about their lack of trust in public institutions. This all leaves a very long legacy. With that in mind, how confident is he that, despite that long legacy, the scheme will capture and benefit everyone affected or infected? How confident is he that everyone who should be compensated will come forward?
John Glen
I thank my hon. Friend for his question. I am confident that the scheme will work, and that it will work as quickly as it possibly can. I mentioned today the interim payments of £210,000 to the infected who are alive. The speed with which we process the applications of those affected and infected is very much on my mind as we set up the shadow arm’s length body. I will continue to work with my officials to do everything we can to move the timeline from the right to the left, conscious of how long people have waited.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
First of all, I welcome the fact that the Minister has moved so quickly. The sorrow expressed yesterday had to be translated into action. The fact that the authority has been set up, a chairman who will have the confidence of the victims has been put in place, and the payments—at least interim payments—will be made quickly is good. But for people like my constituent Trevor Marsden, who was used as an experiment by people who described children as “cheaper than chimps” and more readily available, justice will be given only when the elite in the civil service and the professionals who cynically abused their position—devised experiments, denied they were happening, tried to destroy the evidence and defended their actions—know they will face criminal charges. That is what they are. Will the Government make sure that all the evidence is made available, so they can be brought to justice?
John Glen
The right hon. Gentleman makes a very powerful representation on behalf of Trevor Marsden and more generally with respect to some of the conclusions Sir Brian made in his remarks. What happened with respect to experimentation was truly shameful. As he will be aware, I am speaking today to the issue of compensation, but it is an urgent matter to isolate who knew what and when, take that from the report and establish what courses of action, across the range of issues raised here in the House today, are the most appropriate to deal with all of those things.
Sir Jeremy Wright (Kenilworth and Southam) (Con)
I welcome what my right hon. Friend has set out, particularly the efforts that he and his predecessors have made to remove friction from the process of getting the victims of this unforgivable episode the compensation they clearly deserve. But he will recognise that as the system beds down and begins to operate, there is always the risk of that friction creeping back in. Can he make sure that he and his ministerial colleagues keep their eyes on the process and work with Sir Robert Francis to make sure it continues to be without friction, so that people continue to be able to easily access the compensation they need?
John Glen
Absolutely. My right hon. and learned Friend makes a very wise point. The need to swiftly expedite payments in full to as many qualifying people as possible is the imperative that has guided me to this point, and will be the imperative that Sir Robert will take forward in his conversations. We must not introduce unnecessary complexity to establish people’s qualification to receive a payment, when that is unnecessary. There is a tension, but we must resolve it to get the payments out. That is why the arm’s length body will need to prioritise in particular the groups who are infected, alive and suffering the most, many of whom I met recently.
Dame Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
Does the Minister understand that as well as a duty of candour, we really need, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) has consistently put before this House, a public advocate to make certain that victims in future scandals have somebody to look after them and take them through processes? That would stop this happening ever again. Will he say something about when he expects all the payments to have been made? He talked about an interim scheme which goes on to the end of this financial year, but also about full payments being made going further forward. When is his deadline for getting this done?
John Glen
The hon. Lady talks about a public advocate. I am not in a position to respond to that today, but it is clearly one option that is available and I think will be part of the wider response to the report. To be clear, the interim payments of £210,000 to the infected alive which I announced today will be paid within 90 days, starting in the summer. The full payments will begin by the end of the year. I am constrained somewhat because we are setting up an arm’s length body. There is an interim chief executive and I think there will be 20 people employed in that organisation by the end of next week. I cannot account for the processes and the way it will be established, and therefore how quickly, but everything I have said to David Foley, the interim chief executive, is designed to impress on him the need for speed to expedite as many of these claims as quickly as possible in full.
Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)
I commend the Minister for his statement. I know from our conversations how seriously he takes his moral duty on this issue. However, I also know from the work done at the Cabinet Office in the summer of 2022 in getting the first interim payments out that one of the most fraught areas of consideration will be wider eligibility, and that is not just a function of complexity but a function of capacity. The Minister mentioned that the arm's length body would have 20 employees in the next couple of weeks, but can he reassure the House that, if Sir Robert Francis comes back in a few months and says, “In order to make quick decisions, I need more capacity and therefore more people”, there will be no quibbling on adequate resource in that organisation to fulfil the Minister’s rightly identified priority of getting the money out as quickly as possible to as many people as possible?
John Glen
I thank my right hon. Friend for what he did when he was in office to bring forward interim payments and to make progress. As for the business case for the arm's length body and the plans for the number of employees needed, I expect Sir Robert and the interim chief executive to be iteratively working up plans to expedite this as quickly as possible, and to assert what resources they need for it to be delivered as quickly as possible. I will do everything I can to prioritise swift delivery in the decisions that I make.
Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)
The timeline in Sir Brian’s report highlights the litany of failures, delays and cover-ups over decades which resulted in the exposure of even more patients to hepatitis C and HIV. While several countries accepted liability and set up compensation schemes in the mid-1990s, UK victims have had to spend another 30 years of their lives not just dealing with ill health but fighting for justice. I welcome the vast majority of what the Minister has announced today, and I am sure that everyone in the House does as well, but the members of the infected blood community who are here today will have been greatly concerned to hear his comments that implied a threat to the ongoing support payments. Does he accept that it is not just a matter of saying that the infected blood community will be involved in the compensation scheme? Will their wishes be listened to?
John Glen
They will, absolutely. When I was in Edinburgh I had long conversations about the need to understand the integration of the existing infected blood support schemes, which present in a different way and offer meaningful psychological and other support services to the communities in different parts of the United Kingdom. We are talking about two parts of the heads of loss—about past and future care costs, and loss of income past and future. We are consolidating those into a lump sum, but I have made an absolute commitment that no one will be worse off. There are a couple of categories in which there is a potential risk of that, but we will make sure that no one will be worse off. However, the sensitivity in the delivery of this scheme, in terms with which the various communities across the United Kingdom will be comfortable, is at the top of my mind, and will be instrumental in determining the form of the regulations that will guide this into law in the next few months
Sir Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
I commend my right hon. Friend for his statement and, indeed, for the tone that the Government have taken in respect of this most grave scandal. It is striking, is it not, that the chair of the inquiry, Sir Brian Langstaff, has said that his job is not yet done, that he will only regard his terms of reference as fulfilled when the Government respond, within 12 months, to his recommendations, and, importantly, that he will only regard his job as done if he feels that there is nothing more he can do to prevent delay? Given that the Government have to respond to the second interim report and, now, to this final report, can my right hon. Friend assure me and the House, and indeed the wider public, that he and the Government will do everything they can to ensure that Sir Brian’s role is fulfilled as swiftly as possible?
John Glen
I can certainly reassure my right hon. and learned Friend of that. Today’s announcements about compensation, and the documents that will flow through, will constitute substantive responses to meet the expectations of many in the communities, and I will consider the formalisation of those responses very carefully to bring clarity to the matter.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
Could I put on record the thanks of, I think, all of us not only to the campaigners, but to my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson)? As someone who campaigned for many years on postmasters, I know how lonely it is at times when you are taking on the state and no one believes you.
I welcome the Paymaster General’s announcement of a compensation scheme based on tariffs, but can I tell him, from my experience as a member of the Horizon Compensation Advisory Board, that the big work starts now in terms of agreeing the levels of those tariffs? Will the Government pay individual claimants’ legal bills, because they will need some legal advice on that? Could I also echo what the Father of the House, the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), said? A lot of money is going to be paid out to people. We will get unscrupulous individuals trying to prey on people. Can I suggest that we ensure that they get financial advice and support when those payments are made?
John Glen
Not for the first time, the right hon. Gentleman has made some wise points, and I am grateful to him for doing so. I accept much of what he has said about the concern surrounding tariffs, but these tariffs have not been set up with financial constraints; they have been set up with the input of a range of experts to reach a judgment on what would be appropriate versus what would be a legal entitlement. The assumptions behind those bandings—severity bandings, for instance—now need to be explained and scrutinised, and that is what is going to happen.
The right hon. Gentleman made a very reasonable point about claims by unscrupulous people; the question here is how we can put safeguards in place while expediting the claims of those who have qualified. He also made a reasonable point about the professional support of lawyers and financial advisers. That, too, is at the top of my mind as I learn from some of the other scandals with which I became familiar in my role as Economic Secretary to the Treasury. I will take those to heart in future.
Dr Kieran Mullan (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con)
Let me begin by paying tribute to my constituent Paul Bloor for his campaign. Paul started at Treloar College in 1974, and was infected with hepatitis C from contaminated blood products. I regret that I personally had not grasped the full horrendousness of what has gone on, and I thank Sir Brian for ensuring that we do all now understand. Paul welcomes the compensation, but he asked me to raise with the Minister the issue of accountability. What work is being done to ensure that we can now pursue any avenue towards personal accountability for those who deserve to have their conduct looked at?
John Glen
I completely understand why Paul would want that point to be raised. Those matters go beyond my brief when it comes to compensation, but I think the whole House will recognise that this matter is urgent and that Ministers in other Departments will need to address it properly and in full. I hope that the debate after Whitsun will give us an opportunity to open up all these matters as a House, and that the Government can then respond appropriately as quickly as possible.
Some of the things that happened were completely against the values of the institutions that those individuals were part of. We need to examine this fully and come to terms with it, and make sure that it can never happen again.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
Can we accept that institutional defensiveness has not gone away, and will only go away when we in this House act to make it go away? For the past few years I have been working with constituents who were victims of a Ponzi scheme. They lost millions of pounds. They were failed repeatedly by, first, the Financial Services Authority and then the Financial Conduct Authority. They have been left out of pocket to the tune of nearly £2 million in legal fees, in which the FCA has no apparent interest. Will the Minister meet me, along with other Members whose constituents have been affected and some of the victims themselves, to see what can be done to deliver for them the good intentions that he has expressed today?
John Glen
I am very sorry to hear about the right hon. Gentleman’s constituents. I know from my prior experience that the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami), is best placed to address any issue related to the FCA. I understand the problems of jurisdiction of the FCA, particularly when it comes to unregulated activities, but I do not think I can help the right hon. Gentleman, and, with respect, I think he should address that question to my colleague in the Treasury.
Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)
I am glad that my right hon. Friend the Minister has done a diligent job, which is reflective of his attitude towards the overall need and this gravest of situations. However, it all ought to have been done earlier, and I hold in mind my former constituent Annie Walker, who died in 2016. I wish she had been able to see this before she passed away, because she told me that she was tired of having to keep campaigning.
I also have in mind a current constituent, whom I will not name and with whom I work regularly on this issue. He has asked me to point out that the support schemes are, as per the Minister’s statement, due to change. He and I would be very grateful for as much clarity as possible on those schemes, which will be needed by many of the people involved.
Finally, may I urge the Minister and his colleagues in the Government to bring forward the regulations as soon as possible? If I understand it correctly, Sir Robert Francis may take a number of weeks. He has mentioned the month of June, and we have heard the figure of five weeks, so can I take it that we may see the regulations in July, which would allow, I hope, all Members—not just a selected Committee—of this House to do their job in scrutinising those regulations and get the job done as fast as possible?
John Glen
I thank my right hon. Friend for her questions, and for her personal engagement with me over recent weeks. The fact that she refers to an unnamed constituent provokes me to acknowledge that so many people have been so traumatised by their experiences and the stigma associated with their conditions that they have not been able to be as open as they would like.
With respect to the timeframe, the Government submitted to a three-month obligation to bring those regulations forward from Royal Assent of the Bill, which will happen, I think, in June or July. Of course, there will be time where we have to lay them before the House. I want to make sure that we do that in the most timely way possible. The purposeful intent, with the engagement under Sir Robert’s leadership, is to make sure that that is meaningful but also addresses the imperative around time.
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)
The very welcome appointment of Sir Robert Francis, who did such an excellent job in chairing the inquiry into the scandal in mid-Staffordshire, is a reminder that we are very good at inquiries in this country, but we are terrible at implementing their recommendations. I would like to make a suggestion to the Minister, and it is just as applicable to those on my own Front Bench. We might be able to reduce the chances of this kind of thing happening again by asking every permanent secretary in Whitehall how many recommendations from previous inquiries are still on the books and have not been implemented. Let us have the list, and let us have a good reason—a very good reason—why they have not been implemented.
John Glen
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question, and I echo his tribute to Sir Robert Francis. One of the reasons I was keen to secure his ongoing work is that he did excellent work with the study into compensation, which has obviously been important in moving us forward to this point. The challenge to permanent secretaries on recommendations that have not been dealt with is very reasonable. I am not quite sure how best I can take that forward, but I will seek advice and let the right hon. Gentleman know how we are getting on with it at the next opportunity.
Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)
Yesterday, I spoke to an emotional constituent, Paul Jewels from Braunton, who wanted to express to Sir Brian his gratitude that the truth has come out. He contracted hepatitis C following a blood transfusion during chemotherapy in 1983, and he now trains therapy dogs to give hope and support to others. Can my right hon. Friend give him hope that compensation will be rapid and simple to enable him and others to finally reach closure?
John Glen
Yes, I certainly can. That has been driving the Government over recent months. As we make progress, I am sure that we will give more detail on exactly how and when the work of the arm’s length body will play out in the coming months, the remainder of this year and beyond.
Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
The thing is, this will all happen again unless we change the way we do our parliamentary politics, because Parliament failed, as did the whole of British politics. Of course, there are some notable exceptions. Frankly, I think of my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) as a Companion of Honour with a capital C and a capital H.
The truth is, Parliament was misled repeatedly over decades. In all those decades, there was not a single Select Committee report into infected blood. We did not do our job properly, so is it not time that we do have change in the way we do our parliamentary and Government politics in this country, perhaps with a bit more power in Parliament, rather than always in Government? Would it not be a good idea if it was always the people first, not the Government first; and the people first, not the institution or the Department first; and the people first, not the party first? Does not that require placing a legally enforceable duty of candour not just on Ministers through the ministerial code, which I think should be in statute, but on all our civil servants?
John Glen
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his thoughtful assessment, which chimes with what I thought yesterday when I heard Sir Brian speak to the 1,200 people in Methodist Central Hall. What was striking was the range of institutional failure. Yes, it involved the Government and politicians, but it also involved civil servants, doctors and many people in positions of authority. The hon. Gentleman makes a clear suggestion for rebalancing across different institutions, and I recognise the specificity of Sir Brian’s challenge and recommendations. As I said earlier, the Government will need to respond powerfully to that, and we will, in due course.
Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con)
I welcome today’s statement and my right hon. Friend’s setting out the five heads of harm, and I also welcome Sir Robert Francis as the interim head of the new authority. It has taken a long time to get here, and one of the biggest harms has been the delay in seeing this day. A lot of people will be feeling that really acutely. We need to avoid this happening again, and that is partly about addressing the cover-up culture in so many of our organisations. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we need a change in our legislation to ensure that, right across the public sector and our society, we have a desire for openness and transparency, and get rid of the cover-up culture once and for all?
John Glen
My hon. Friend puts it very well, and I agree with her assessment. We need to come to terms with the fact that there are flaws in the way we operate. They have been powerfully and vividly depicted in Sir Brian Langstaff’s report, and the Government must respond in a suitably comprehensive way.
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
I want to recognise the valuable and incredible work of many of the campaign groups, not least the Scottish Infected Blood Forum, chaired by my constituent, Joyce Donnelly, whose husband Tom was infected and passed away from hepatitis C. Joyce was in the Gallery yesterday and earlier today, and she and others have acted as convenors and advocates for the wider community at great personal cost; there is not just the financial cost, but the time and effort put in by those in those roles. Will that effort and cost be taken into account in the calculation of compensation, or is there other ongoing support that the Government can provide to the campaign and advocacy groups? Joyce described her forum as “stony broke”.
John Glen
The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful representation on behalf of Joyce Donnelly, who I believe I have met. The purpose of today’s announcement is to bring an end to the need for campaigning as quickly as possible, and to provide comprehensive compensation to all those who qualify as quickly as possible. However, as the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) said, we need to ensure that the different communities are comfortable with what is being proposed, and are familiar with the details of how tariffs have been calculated and how they will work. Rather than my prescribing, as a Government Minister, what should happen, I am trying to facilitate the process by giving someone whom the communities clearly respect the opportunity to lead the engagement, urgently, that will inform the regulations that underpin the new body.
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)
I very much welcome the Minister’s statement on ensuring that compensation is paid quickly. I pay real tribute to all the campaigners who have fought day and night to get where we are today, including the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson). It was a pleasure to support her amendment on this important matter to move the situation to where it is today. In an email from my constituent Colin Midgeley in 2015, he said:
“How many more of us will have to go to the grave before a full and final settlement is achieved?”
Sadly, his father passed away in 2018. He then said:
“My dad had to jump through hoops”
to get help; people came to assess him regularly. That cannot be right. The Minister said that the assessment will be done as quickly and as widely as possible. May I ask that the test for qualification be as wide as possible, and that things be done as quickly as possible, so that people get the justice they need?
John Glen
I am happy to give my hon. Friend the assurance he asks for. It was clear in the conversations that I have had that speed is of the essence. I know that colleagues from all parts of the House have had many conversations that have informed the representations made in this place. There have been a number of ad hoc schemes over the years. Various Governments—to be fair, of all parties—have amended and sought to upgrade those schemes, but this compensation scheme is qualitatively very different. It is an admission of culpability and responsibility by the state, and it marks that responsibility. We need alignment of the different schemes on getting the journey of assessment done as quickly as possible. That is what we will do.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
I represent five individuals or families infected or affected by the NHS infected blood scandal. One constituent was infected with hepatitis C as a child through contaminated blood products used at Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital, but he was forced to use all his stage 2 payment of £50,000 to pay for the treatment Harvoni when he developed cirrhosis of the liver. He should not have had to do that, and I hope that there will be redress for that. Another constituent, a single mother, died aged 47 after being infected with HIV after a routine blood transfusion. She had to keep her condition secret, due to the stigma and ignorance that existed at the time. As she was a single mother, her family have never had any compensation. On their behalf, can I ask the Paymaster General to clarify what sum has been allocated for compensation? What is the size of the package? Will it be open-ended, because we know that people are still developing conditions? He confirms that new interim compensation payments will be made within 90 days, but he seems unable to say what the timeline for full compensation payments will be. I underline the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) about the need to ensure that the compensation authority is accountable to Parliament. We must have that. Finally, I commend my right hon. Friend on all her work on this campaign.
John Glen
I thank the hon. Lady for her points, which I will address. The first that she makes is that everyone who has been impacted by this scandal is an individual and has had a different pathway, in terms of vulnerability, financial obligations and difficulty accessing the schemes. That is why it is important that I reinforce the fact that the Infected Blood Compensation Authority will have an appeal mechanism, and people will have the right to go to tribunal if they believe that the tariff-based system does not reflect the circumstances that individuals may have experienced. There is no restraint on people using the legal system as well, if that is what they wish to do.
I did say that the interim payments of £210,000 would be paid within 90 days, starting this summer. I also said that the full payments will start by the end of this year; I confirm that is the calendar year, to remove any ambiguity. The Chancellor and the Prime Minister have been clear that we will pay whatever it costs. I cannot tell the hon. Lady what that number is, because we have not yet finalised the severity bandings and verified the work on the tariffs. That is the meaningful engagement we are having with the communities, supervised by Sir Robert Francis. As for the numbers affected, there is obviously a wide range. We are talking about the number who qualify by virtue of the qualification of the infected person. Exact numbers do not exist. I set out who can access the scheme; the principal is that the scheme is accessible to them, and the Government will pay whatever it costs to meet those obligations.
Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)
I welcome what my right hon. Friend about paying whatever it costs. It is essential that we be prepared to do that. The Government accepted moral culpability some time ago, and have now accepted financial liability. Can he assure all those constituents for whom justice delayed has been justice denied that he will move as swiftly as possible to deliver for them? Will he bear in mind the lessons of the Northern Ireland victims compensation scheme, which we were able to get through this House in a single day, when there was the political will? Will he continue to engage with, listen to and support Robert Francis in his engagement with the infected and affected, to ensure that the scheme delivers for everybody?
John Glen
My hon. Friend makes wise and sensible points, built on a lot of experience of Government and as a constituency MP. I endorse all that he has asked. There will be a “Dear colleague” letter going out to all MPs, and a “Dear stakeholder” letter, as well as a number of other documents giving details of the schemes I have mentioned today. There will be an attempt to move things forward as quickly as we can, using cross-party consensus on what we are trying to achieve.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
Christopher Thomas of Pen Llyn was one of the first patients with haemophilia to be treated by Professor Arthur Bloom of Cardiff. Christopher died in 1990 aged 46. His wife Judith described the family’s feeling that the haematologist was a friend, because they often visited him in hospital for treatment, yet Professor Bloom is mentioned repeatedly in Sir Brian Langstaff’s report as somebody who “disastrously…over-influenced” the Department of Health and Social Security in the ’70s and ’80s. The Minister has mentioned a range of institutional failures. Surely he must agree that today we should hear more details of how legislation relating to duty of candour will be brought forward. If he cannot give us details today—I appreciate that it is not his Department that we are talking about—can he let us know when he will?
John Glen
The right hon. Lady makes a sensible point. I, too, was struck by the reference to Professor Bloom and the role he played in different ways over the years. Doing justice to the report’s 2,500 pages and seven volumes, and coming up with a serious response, will take a bit of time. I recognise the Government’s collective determination to address this matter as quickly as possible in the right way, having listened to the will of this House. The first opportunity to do that will be a debate sometime after Whitsun, which I intend to open—someone from the Department of Health and Social Care will wind up—so that we can begin to outline, in policy terms, how these things can be properly addressed.
Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)
I thank the Minister for the thoughtful and thorough statement, which is so clearly informed by his extensive discussions with the community. I have spoken to him many times about my constituent Sally-Anne and her family, and how this devastating scandal has affected them. I hope that much of what the Minister has said today about compensation will provide Sally-Anne and others with comfort, but we all know that with the best will in the world, and even with the most planning, there will be difficulties in implementing such a massive, complex compensation scheme.
When the Minister said that compensation would not impact means-tested benefits, I felt a sense of relief, but we also know that there will be difficulties when Departments and computer systems have to speak to each other. Can I push the Minister to confirm that the community’s voices will continue to be heard by the arm’s length body, and that we will be able to adapt and change the scheme where necessary to ensure that it works on the ground, because I know that he has worked so hard for that to happen?
John Glen
I thank my hon. Friend for her remarks and for her constructive point around how the arm’s length body needs to evolve and fit the communities’ expectations. I am absolutely committed to that. She mentioned her constituent, Sally-Anne. Every individual is a priority to me as the Minister, and we want to deliver this as efficiently as we possibly can. She talked about benefits disregards, and I have also mentioned tax disregards. The systems need to recognise what we are doing with these payments to individuals. We have tried to address everything we can think of to make this flow as quickly as possible, and I hope that that will be the case. My hon. Friend is welcome to speak to me again if there are other issues she wants to raise.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
We are indebted to Sir Brian Langstaff for the comprehensive work that he has undertaken. However, it leaves many questions about the transparency and accountability of Government—to this place and to Committees but also to the public. Can we ensure that those infected and affected are involved in co-producing the outcomes of the recommendations? Can we also ensure that the separate Departments are held to account, not least the Department of Health and Social Care, given that so many of the recommendations will fall on that Department, and that the Secretary of State for that Department is directly accountable, in this new spirit of transparency to this House and beyond?
John Glen
Of course, many of these events happened over a very wide timespan going back 40 or 50 years, but the issue is what we can do going forward. The hon. Lady makes a reasonable point about involving the infected and affected communities in this process. One of the things that I have mentioned is the arm’s length body having sufficient distance from Government to give confidence to the community. We need to get that right, and we need to ensure that the appropriate governance is in place so that the representatives of those communities can have meaningful influence in how they engage, and on the wider issues that she mentioned.
Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)
I really welcome this detailed and thorough statement, and I welcome it on behalf of two of the victims in particular. The first is an unnamed constituent who came to my first-ever advice surgery back in 2010 at Huddersfield town hall. He told me how, during a blood transfusion, he had been infected with HIV, hepatitis C and CJD. The second victim is Mel McKay, who is not a constituent but lives on the east coast of Yorkshire. We have become friends over many years while campaigning on this issue. As well as delivering the compensation rapidly, can the Minister also confirm that there will be no time limits at all on when the victims start applying and completing their applications for compensation?
John Glen
We will be having a review after three years to look at what the lifespan of the arm’s length body should be. I acknowledge the challenge for people with multiple conditions, and that is why I mentioned multiple awards in my statement. That was one of the issues that the independent expert panel grappled with. We want to make this accessible to everyone who is entitled, and I do not want to have unnecessary artificial cut-off points, but we also need to ensure that we have an organisation that is fit for purpose to deliver this quickly.
Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
My constituents, Della Ryness and Ruth Spellman, have been active in coming to Parliament and talking about the distress experienced by their families for many, many years. Will the Minister and the shadow Ministers pay tribute to their work? Also, does the Minister envisage any criminal convictions or manslaughter charges for individuals who might have really done the wrong thing?
John Glen
I am very happy to pay tribute to the work of Della and Ruth. Many of these individuals have been campaigning for 20, 30 or 40 years, and I pay tribute to all of them today. With respect to criminal charges, I am not in a position to make a comment today, but work will be done to examine the report fully and make an assessment of that at a future point.
Caroline Ansell (Eastbourne) (Con)
I welcome the Paymaster General’s statement today. I would also like to put on record my thanks to Sir Brian and pay tribute to the campaigners who never gave up. I pay tribute to one campaigner in particular in my own constituency, whom I will not name but she will know that I am speaking of her. She lost her mother and can never be compensated for that, but she also gave up her job and her income. She does not regret that for a moment, but it has left her financially fragile in these later years, to the point that I have advocated with her mortgage lender for a stay of execution—breathing space—ahead of any potential compensation. I know that my right hon. Friend cannot comment on individual cases, but can he restate that, as a child of a victim, she has been affected? I believe that she qualifies on multiple measures, but can he restate that today, for the lender, for her confidence and for my satisfaction? I also add my voice to those saying that there is a dire need for swift action. Time is precious.
John Glen
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her sensitive portrayal of the individual circumstances of her constituent. The financial vulnerability that impacts so many of the affected because of the impact on the infected is the reason that we are bringing forward the scheme in this way. I am happy to confirm that the affected individual will be able to claim in their own right, informed by the qualification of the infected individual and the estate of the infected individual. Again, I recognise that a tariff-based system will inevitably have limitations, and that is why, beyond getting the parameters absolutely right in terms of the severity bandings, care costs and so on, there must also be an appeal mechanism and a mechanism to challenge, such that we can ensure that everyone receives justice in an individual way.
Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) (Lab/Co-op)
Earlier this year, on 18 January, I raised the case of my constituent, Nigel Winborne, a victim of infected blood. As a result, Nigel developed various health issues, including renal failure and liver cirrhosis. I said that Nigel wanted a
“faster resolution to the infected blood scandal compensation before it is too late for myself and others to see full and final resolution”.—[Official Report, 18 January 2024; Vol. 743, c. 1016.]
Sadly, Nigel was too ill to contact me again, but his sister mentioned that she did not want him to be the latest statistic in this horrible affair. Nigel passed away on 9 March. He was just 63 years old. I spoke to his partner earlier this morning, and he is absolutely devastated. They had lived together for over 20 years and he dedicated his life, giving up his career, to be Nigel’s full-time carer. That 90 days will seem like 90 years for them, so on his behalf, I ask the Minister: can this timeline be expedited as soon as possible?
John Glen
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her tribute to Nigel and his life, and I am very sorry to his family for the loss. I recognise the frustration of even one day’s delay. I have done everything I can to move these payments forward as quickly as I possibly can, recognising all the different dependencies. If I could write the cheques myself personally, I would, but I cannot. I will continue to do all that I can. I said that these payments would begin in the summer, and I want them to happen as soon as possible. The 90 days is not a deadline, and it is not an obligation, but we want to get them out as soon as possible, and where we can, we will.
Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)
I welcome the statement today, just as I welcomed the Prime Minister’s statement yesterday. My constituent, Alan, has been campaigning for justice for 37 years. He himself was infected as part of this scandal. The more I find out about this, the more chilling it becomes. Frankly, sometimes it reads like a plot from a horror movie—maybe one day it might even be one, because that is how bad and chilling this scandal is. But of course we know that this is not the only example of public organisations failing the people they are there to serve. Will the Minister confirm to me that transparency and accountability, when it comes to our public service, will be the key tenet and will rule the day?
John Glen
I absolutely can. My hon. Friend makes a very wise point and, not only in the conduct of this exercise but more generally, we need to be as transparent as possible. Yesterday, Sir Brian spoke about an insidious conflation of failure across multiple institutions that, over time, resulted in catastrophic outcomes. We need to come to terms properly with that to ensure that we put in whatever it takes to stop these things happening again.
Paul Girvan (South Antrim) (DUP)
Before today’s statement, I found it ironic that we had to wait for a public inquiry to try to get things moving. It is difficult to see why it took so long to find that we have a culture not just within our Government but within Departments, especially the Department of Health and Social Care, whereby whistleblowers are targeted and clarity is not brought out.
In saying that, I want to ask about Sir Brian’s 12 recommendations. The timeline for implementing all of the recommendations, which go across Departments, will mean taking this to the Cabinet to ensure that all Departments address the aspects of this report that affect them. I want to see a timeline for the date by which we will ensure the implementation of all 12 recommendations.
John Glen
The hon. Gentleman is right to assert the need for a timeline. I am not in a position to provide one today, but I have set out that the House will have an opportunity to debate the report soon after Whitsun. That will be an opportunity to give some initial clarity on the steps that are going to be taken. As the hon. Gentleman and the whole House will appreciate, there is a lot of complexity and we do not want to give a timetable that we cannot honour and deliver.
Holly Mumby-Croft (Scunthorpe) (Con)
I again draw my right hon. Friend’s attention to the issue of tracing all those affected and supporting those who may not be known to the inquiry, who may not be registered with one of our really good support organisations and who may not be on any list. Today, I have had contact with a family in my constituency, one of whom is very unwell with an illness that they believe they contracted from transfusions they had in the 1970s and ’80s. What advice would the Minister give to them on the steps they should take to determine whether they are eligible for this compensation?
John Glen
As ever, my hon. Friend makes a very sensible point. As time goes by, verifying what it takes for a person to qualify, if they are not currently registered, is something that the new body will need to clarify. Through the process of meaningful engagement in the coming weeks, I hope that some of these issues will be satisfactorily resolved.
We want to be as accessible as possible to all those who qualify, and we want to make the verification process for those who qualify as straightforward as reasonably possible. That is the guiding principle. I cannot give the details here today, but I will return to my hon. Friend’s point in future.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)
I pay tribute to my constituent Mark Ward, who is here today. He contacted me soon after I became a Member of Parliament and, like many, has continued to be a dogged campaigner. This report is some vindication, but justice will not be served until the campaigners have seen all aspects of the report being implemented.
I want to ask a few specific questions. The Minister said that he could not set the interim payments above £210,000 because of a fear of the safety of those payments. Is he therefore implying that £210,000 is the potential minimum payment that he expects? It is lower than the minimum interim payment for sub-postmasters, so I would like some clarity on what that means.
The Minister also says that he expects the payments to start within 90 days. Does he mean 90 days from now, to be completed by the summer, or a 90-day period in the summer? That was not quite clear.
Finally, public inquiries are at the gift of the Prime Minister. There is no formal way of agreeing to an inquiry, apart from campaigners and Members such as my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) forcing the Prime Minister to take action, which does not seem like a coherent way to right wrongs in this country. Will we start to think about a proper public inquiries reform that includes a duty of candour, a public advocate and a way for Committees of this House to launch such inquiries when serious matters occur?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. Before the Minister answers those questions, I make it clear that, after a statement of this kind, each Member has the opportunity to ask a question. I am very anxious that everybody who wishes to ask a question should be able to do so on behalf of their constituents, but it really has to be one question per Member. I have been lenient with the hon. Gentleman, and I suspect that the Minister will want to answer all his questions.
John Glen
On the £210,000, I took advice on the largest sum I could comfortably secure. The hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) will see documents published today on the schemes for different conditions, and I hope things will become clearer for him. I am happy to correspond with him on that.
On the timing, I said that the payments will happen within 90 days, beginning in the summer. I cannot say which day of the summer, but 90 days is the time period.
The hon. Gentleman, like Sir Brian, spoke about how public inquiries are initiated. How that would be implemented is a matter for further conversation in subsequent weeks and debates.
Paul Howell (Sedgefield) (Con)
Like many others, I obviously welcome yesterday’s statement and today’s comprehensive follow-up. My Sedgefield constituent David Farry has been in touch to ask me to thank the Prime Minister for his apology, to thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) for initiating the public inquiry, and to thank Sir Brian for his work. I am sure David will have been pleased to hear the Minister’s words earlier.
I add my voice to those calling for this to be a watershed moment in public transparency. On behalf of David, can I ask for real progress as urgently as possible, so that David and others can start to think about moving on from these appalling events?
John Glen
I can assure David, and every individual affected, that we are doing everything we can to deliver this scheme as quickly as possible. We will also address the wider challenge to the culture of government and institutions in this country, and there will be an opportunity to discuss that in the coming weeks.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
I pay tribute to all those who fought so hard for justice for so long. It is impossible to imagine the pain and harm done to so many, including to some of my Brighton constituents who have shared with me their deeply harrowing stories.
The setting up of the Infected Blood Compensation Authority is very welcome, and I echo those who have called for the body to be made accountable to Parliament, but will the Government consider going further and potentially setting up an independent body to monitor and follow up all such recommendations and inquiries? Without such a mechanism, without such a body, there is a risk of a significant accountability gap, because no one is directly charged with the effective oversight of the implementation of all these recommendations.
John Glen
I thank the hon. Lady for her representations. That is certainly something that needs to be carefully considered in the context of all that Sir Brian has said.
One of the challenges on accountability is when recommendations made outside this place encounter the need for delivery. Sometimes that means that things have to be done slightly differently, but they meet the spirit of the recommendations. We need to make sure that, in the accountability mechanism, there is sufficient scope to recognise that challenge, otherwise we will be in a position of making false judgments. The spirit of what the hon. Lady says needs to be taken forward, and the Government need to reflect on that thoughtfully.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
In 2010, my then constituent Andrew March, a victim of contaminated blood since the age of nine, succeeded in a judicial review that found that payment of compensation by the UK Government was flawed. He said:
“We hope that the Government will now consider the whole issue of compensating those so tragically affected by the contaminated blood disaster, instead of making token, derisory, ex-gratia payments.”
It has taken a further 14 years for Government to follow the lead of the courts, and now the inquiry, in calling for justice for Andrew and the thousands of other victims. From 2010 we attended countless meetings, debates and briefings, and heard warm words from a succession of Health Ministers. Nothing happened for years, then matters proceeded at a glacial pace. What mechanism will be enforced to ensure that the scheme announced today is implemented with rigour and urgency?
John Glen
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. We can go back to the Governments of Heath, Callaghan, Wilson, Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron and Theresa May; all of them come under criticism. Theresa May initiated a public inquiry with significant input from numbers of people across the House. We on the Government side have all been clear that we wish things had happened sooner, but I am doing everything I can to move this forward today, and I am resisting any attempt to politicise it.
The hon. Gentleman makes points about accountability. We have an obligation within three months of Royal Assent to make regulations that will activate the arm’s length body. We have a shadow entity in place, an interim CEO and an interim chair, and engagement is planned for the coming days, with 20 people to be employed by the end of next week. I will continue to work with anyone and everyone across the House to ensure that we meet expectations.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Just for the record, I know that the right hon. Gentleman meant to refer to the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) as such. [Interruption.] There is no need for an apology. The right hon. Gentleman is answering very fully and correctly, and I did not want to interrupt him.
Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)
There was much to welcome in what the Minister said today, but can I take him back to the issue of existing support schemes, which are of course incredibly important for so many? In the second interim report, recommendation 13 says that
“current annual payments under the support schemes should be continued…and guaranteed for life”
and that such payments should only be taken into account
“in assessing awards for future financial loss or care provision”.
It was not immediately clear to me that what the Minister said today is consistent with that recommendation and its implementation. Could he provide that clarity now, because this is very important for people listening?
John Glen
Yes I absolutely can—I have been very clear about the Government’s continuing commitment on existing support schemes. However, there is a point at which the assessment for compensation entitlement is made under the new scheme, and there will be an interaction with schemes that have come before. Options will then be set out. I want to provide reassurance on that today; the detail of how that will work out must be done with the consent and approval of the communities involved.
Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)
I want to build on a point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) earlier about the risk of unscrupulous financial advisers swooping in. It is appalling even to think that it might be possible, but we have a lot of experience of that from dealing with the British Steel pension scheme, and I would be happy to discuss any of those lessons learned with the Minister.
My constituent David Farrugia tragically lost his father 40 years ago due to this appalling scandal. Can I press the Minister for more detail on the specifics of how the scheme will work for bereaved children and parents of victims? How and when will they be able to register for compensation?
John Glen
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. We have previously engaged on the British Steel matter and the unscrupulous exploitation of people moving from defined benefit to defined contribution schemes. That is at the top of my mind and I am applying it to my consideration of these matters.
The hon. Gentleman asked about his constituent David and bereaved children. The principle is that affected and infected individuals qualify in their own right. The passporting of affected individuals to qualify, based on the infected and the estates of infected, is clear. The details of how that process will happen will become very clear very quickly. We will make resources available through a website, and people can register for updates so that they can receive them as quickly as they wish. Forgive me, I cannot say more than that today, but I think I have set out the principles of how this will operate. The operationalisation needs to happen quickly, and I will provide updates on that in due course.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Ind)
I would like to pay tribute to my constituent Robert Angwin, who has campaigned for justice for himself and all others who have been affected by this scandal for decades.
Yesterday and today, from both sides of the House we have heard the line, “Lessons have been learned. Action will be taken.” I imagine that that is exactly what we would have heard if we were here in 1972 when the thalidomide scandal broke. Since then, we have had OxyContin, Vioxx and Primodos—the list goes on and on, all the way to the experimental covid-19 vaccines today.
Does the Minister agree that the only real lesson that has been learned has been learned by the public—that they cannot trust any Government to protect them from unsafe medicines and treatments? Crimes have been committed. It is a crime to cover up a crime. When are the arrests going to start? If they have to include current and former Members of this House, so be it.
John Glen
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. Sir Robert makes clear some very profound challenges to the British state that need a profound response from Government, and that will happen in due course.
Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)
My constituent Linda Cannon lost her husband after he received a blood transfusion that infected him with hepatitis C. My constituent Vera Gaskin has stage 2 chronic cirrhosis of the liver from contaminated blood. She spends her life explaining that she is not an alcoholic. What guidance or comfort does the Minister have for my constituents that anybody overseeing compensation and justice will be fully transparent and will not end up in the mess in which the expert panel of the Primodos scandal ended up?
Will the Minister give a cast-iron guarantee that the general election due to be held this year will not delay any part of this process? We cannot have a situation where the structures and procedures of this place, which have so long protected those in power and allowed them to do harm, will thwart the justice in progress for all our constituents.
John Glen
The hon. Lady makes a powerful representation on behalf of Linda, Vera and so many others. I can assure her that speed is of the essence. In all circumstances I am trying to move forward, with the will of the House as it is. I cannot account for when electoral events will be triggered, but I can say that the points about sensitivity to the individual experience and the stigma and trauma associated with engaging with officialdom in all aspects need to be properly addressed through the way that the arm’s length body is operated.
Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)
I want to put on record the tenacity of my constituent Steve Bartram, a victim of the blood scandal. He contracted hepatitis when he was seven after being experimented on. He was driven out of his home because people believed that he had an infectious disease and had to be run out. He then came to my constituency. I say to the Minister that Steve welcomes what has been said but is anxious, like thousands of others, that it will not work out. I guess he could look at a compensation scheme like the one for the Windrush scandal, where less than 10% of those who are owed compensation have received anything. Steve and many others, with good reason, are extremely anxious that the Government will follow through on this. Can the Minister ensure that they do?
John Glen
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. It is a reasonable characterisation that this is welcome but that there is anxiety. It is my job to meet that anxiety with practical steps that secure confidence in the passage to full delivery. I have set out those in some detail. There will be a number of documents that the hon. Gentleman can send to his constituents to support what I have said, as can all colleagues across the House. I hope that will be helpful and informative and will remove some of the anxiety that exists.
Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)
It is vital that we not only thank the campaigners who have struggled through pain and loss to get to this situation but appreciate the deep public service they have carried out in exposing this outrageous scandal. Although I welcome what seems to be a comprehensive statement on compensation today, this scandal has gone on too long and should be concluded quickly for compensation to be paid. However, that is only part of the issue of justice for the campaigners. I appreciate what the Minister said about his ability to talk about future events, but will he at least commit his Government to the principle of ensuring that those involved in deliberate cover-up, adding to delay and suffering and causing death, will face justice themselves?
John Glen
I cannot speak for the collective will of Government, but the hon. Gentleman makes a completely reasonable and logical case. I support the principles in what he says. We need to respond the report’s recommendations specifically, coherently and in full, and that is what we will do in due course.
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
Yesterday’s apology and the compensation announced today is the beginning of justice for the thousands of lives lost and ruined. The Minister will know that Sir Brian Langstaff found “downright deception” and “an attitude of denial”, and that he was clear that the scandal has been no accident. Public service is an honour that comes with great responsibility. Individuals and organisations have failed in that responsibility and betrayed that honour. I heard the Minister’s earlier responses, but will he at least indicate to us when the Government will express a view on criminal charges?
John Glen
I thank the hon. Lady for her powerful representation on that matter. I cannot give her a categorical assurance, but by setting out the clear opportunity to discuss the report in its different dimensions, hopefully in a few weeks’ time, I hope we will start that process. Other Ministers will lead on some of the matters and where the evidence leads us will determine our options, but she speaks for many hon. Members across the House when she says that these are serious matters that need a serious response from different elements of Government.
Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)
I want to acknowledge three of my constituents who have been in touch over the past few weeks: one lost her brother and her cousin as a result of treatment for haemophilia; and two, including Karen Pearce, have suffered lifelong health problems as a result of being infected. I have been in this place for rather less time than many of my colleagues—less than two and a half years—but, just in that short period, I am struck by the number of scandals involving huge institutional cover-ups. I echo the comment, made by colleagues from all parties, that we must have a duty of candour, because we will repeat mistakes again and again until we have that.
John Glen
I thank the hon. Lady for point about a duty of candour, which several hon. Members have made. The Government will reflect very carefully and respond in due course.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
I welcome the Paymaster General’s statement, but many of us have been coming here for the past year asking for a response to Sir Brian Langstaff’s interim report from last April. We have been told that the Government are moving at pace, but there is no evidence of that, even with today’s statement. Sir Brian Langstaff has made some clear recommendations about how he wants oversight of the recommendations going forward. That must involve the victims, because that is why we are here today. The victims, who have doggedly and determinedly demanded that they have justice in this affair, have brought us to this point, where the Paymaster General is making a statement, and they must have oversight of how we respond to Sir Brian Langstaff’s report, just as the House must have. Members from across the House have been trying to hold the Government to account. The Horizon scheme has an advisory body to oversee compensation, which includes hon. Members from this House and the other place. Does the Minister envisage having a similar advisory body for this compensation scheme?
John Glen
I do not think the hon. Gentleman can characterise what I have announced today as not making significant progress. I am not here to claim credit for it or to say what it is attributed to, other than the work of Sir Brian Langstaff and those who have campaigned. The immediate next steps will be the work of Sir Robert Francis—this is at the core of what I have said—to engage with the infected and affected community, and to define the regulations that the Government are rightly obliged to bring to the House within three months of the Bill receiving Royal Assent. The hon. Gentleman makes another point about how the House can be involved in the accountability of that arm’s length body. I am happy to reflect on that and come back at another point.
Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
May I put on the record my absolute admiration for the victims, their families and loved ones throughout the process? I pay tribute to my constituent Susan Hallwood and her partner Dave McCall. Susan had three sons, all of whom had haemophilia. Two received contaminated blood, and both contracted HIV and died of AIDS: Brian aged 16, and Stephen aged nine. Susan gave evidence at the inquiry, and I thank her for doing so. It is right that they are receiving an apology and compensation, but of course that will never be enough. I ask the Minister to address the issue of individual accountability, for those culpable of doing wrong, and organisational accountability. What can he do to ensure this is not another example of compensation without accountability to add to Hillsborough, Windrush and other scandals we have seen?
John Glen
The hon. Gentleman speaks powerfully about his constituents Susan and David and their family. He also makes the point that compensation by itself is clearly not enough. With respect to the wider accountability of institutions, hospitals and civil servants, and the interaction between civil servants, Government Ministers and the NHS, there is a lot of complexity about how we respond appropriately and thoughtfully, both on the cases taken together and individually. I hope he will respect what I am saying and that we can engage on this in the Chamber at a future point.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
I was contacted this morning by a constituent who, to the best of my knowledge, has never come forward before; I am still trying to establish that. As a 12-year-old girl, she received a blood transfusion that was infected with hepatitis C. She has lived with that infection for 70 years, because she was infected not in the 1970s but in the 1950s. Will the Minister give an assurance that the compensation and other support that has been outlined today will be available to all victims, regardless of how long ago they were infected? Will he outline what he is doing to ensure that others, such as my constituent, do not miss out simply because they did not realise this applies to them?
John Glen
The eligibility is clear: people who were infected by NHS blood, blood products and infected tissue qualify. The only challenge is how to verify that from records from a long time ago. However, such challenges can be met and we need to find ways of doing so.
Beth Winter (Cynon Valley) (Lab)
I pay tribute to all those infected and affected in my constituency of Cynon Valley, in Wales and beyond, in particular Lynne Kelly, the chair of Haemophilia Wales, who has campaigned tirelessly, over many decades, for justice. The inquiry’s compensation report recommended that an interim payment be made to
“recognise the deaths of people to date unrecognised”,
including to bereaved parents, children and siblings. The Minister met with Haemophilia Wales a fortnight ago and will be aware there are 28 such cases in Wales. In his statement he made reference to interim payments, but will he clarify that interim payments for previously unrecognised deaths, including those in Wales, will be made? Will he be specific about when individuals will receive those payments? Will they be paid through the Wales infected blood support scheme, or will they have to wait for the UK compensation scheme to be established?
John Glen
The hon. Lady is right to pay tribute to Lynne Kelly, whom I met in Cardiff. To clarify, I have been talking about two interim payments. We have put one payment into legislation to provide £100,000 to the estates of the deceased infected, where previously they have not received that payment. We are working through how that will work with the infected blood support schemes. I cannot update the House on that at this moment because we are working with the schemes to determine that.
The second interim payment for the living infected is £210,000, building on the £100,00 at the end of 2022. That will happen within 90 days, starting in the summer, and it will be given through the existing infected blood compensation scheme’s interim payments in order to expedite it as quickly as possible. Then we will update in the autumn with respect to the balance in payments, which, as Members will recognise, is part of a bigger payment that people will be entitled to, and how that works according to the journey of work and engagement with the communities over the next few weeks.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
For more than 20 years, I have supported constituents caught up in this unprecedented scandal and tragedy. I wish to mention just two of them: Bill Wright, whom the Minister knows, who has led Haemophilia Scotland with such energy and enthusiasm for the past three decades; and Tricia Titheridge, who introduced me to the scandal back in 2001 when I was first elected. Unfortunately, she cannot be with us because she died of AIDS-related conditions in 2013.
I wish to say well done to the Minister, because I think he has delivered. He has answered questions and reassured people genuinely well about some of the outstanding issues. I had suspected that I would be called last in this statement, so I will just say to him that he will know what is now required. I think he has the compensation side of it right, but it is the responsibility and accountability side of the equation that now has to be addressed. He has talked about a debate when we come back after Whitsun. He has hinted that other Departments will be looking at all of this, but we need to know what tangible effort and energy will be put into this to ensure that the people responsible are held to account for the decades of obfuscation, of not taking responsibility and for the lies that came to us as Members of Parliament from Ministers and officials. When will we hear about the solid action that will be taken to address all of this?
John Glen
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind words, particularly his words about Bill Wright, whom I enjoyed meeting, and who has campaigned on this so hard and for so long. Bill and his colleagues engaged with me in a constructive way, asking me reasonable but tough questions, and I hope that I have answered some of those today. The hon. Gentleman draws me from the compensation to other elements, and I am frustrated that I cannot offer him more clarity today, but he puts on record the need for a substantive response on a number of other elements beyond compensation. He can be assured of my continuing commitment to deliver on that journey to full implementation of compensation, as I have set out.
Michael Shanks (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab)
Twenty years ago, the late former chair of the Scottish Infected Blood Forum, Philip Dolan, said that, for years, every time we have reached the top of the mountain, the cloud lifts and there is another mountain to climb. I think, from the Minister’s statement today, there is some sense that there might not be another mountain to climb, but there is a need for some transparency, particularly in what he has said about eligibility, tariffs, the appeal process and, crucially, timelines, so that people can have confidence about when this will happen. Will people have access to legal aid if they wish to appeal their case?
On the point about existing compensation schemes, there has been some concern from a number of people about what has been announced today. In answer to the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald), the Minister said that they would be shaped by people, and that these schemes would not simply be abolished, but he has put a firm deadline of 31 March 2025, so can he outline exactly how people will be part of that process so they do not feel that they have lost out once again in this process?
John Glen
The hon. Gentleman asks a number of questions. I have not said that the existing schemes will stop on 31 March 2025. What I have committed to is that thereafter there will be a process, uncertain at this point, with respect to when individuals will have their full assessment made, and I have made some assertions on how that needs to work. I have not set out some of the other things around accountability, transparency and so on, because they need to be informed by the communities, through the process that Sir Robert Francis will be leading in the coming weeks. I hope it will be a constructive, iterative process with the Government in order that the output of that work will subsequently lead us to the right position in terms of the regulations that we bring before the House.
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)
May I start by paying tribute to two of my constituents here today? Rachel and Justine Gordon-Smith have fought an extraordinary battle on behalf of their father over many years. I pay tribute to their strength and ability to continue in the face of what sometimes looked like intransigence from the Government. They and the infected blood community will, I know, welcome much of what the Minister has announced today, but they are understandably wary of Government after the deceptions and delays of the past. Can he guarantee full transparency in the deliberations of the arm’s length body, and does he agree that appropriate governance, as he says, would be achieved by including representatives of the community as members?
John Glen
I thank the hon. Lady for her question. Indeed, I have met Justine Gordon-Smith, who, having lost her father, has been a tenacious campaigner on behalf of so many. I can confirm that we will do everything we can to ensure that we find a way to work with all infected and affected communities—there are considerable differences between them in their views on how things should be conducted—as these regulations are formed, and also to ensure that the right oversight takes place so that this arm’s length body will be something that they can rely on and have full confidence in, wherever they are in the UK.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
Six constituents have been in touch with me who have been infected and affected by this awful scandal. Many of them still want to maintain anonymity, such is the stigma that persists today about the illnesses that they have contracted, but I was very pleased to see that my constituent Maria was there yesterday. She first came to see me in December 2015. Eight-and-a-half years, on top of the long time that she already had to wait, is a long and arduous journey. I am glad and I hope that she and all those infected and affected got what they wanted from Sir Brian Langstaff’s report yesterday.
I wish to ask the Minister about what he said in his statement about interim payments. I am not clear whether the six constituents who have been in touch with me will be eligible for those because he said that interim payments will be made to living infected beneficiaries, and to the estates of those who passed away between now and payments being made. It is not clear to me whether, if somebody tragically passed away yesterday, their estates would be eligible for that; nor is it clear from the interim report whether all such people would be eligible until the final scheme is in place. It would be perverse, would it not, if children whose parents have died or adults who have tragically lost their children might not be eligible for these interim payments. Can I ask for some clarity on that eligibility because there are people who should not be losing out—they have already suffered too much—and they should be eligible for these payments as soon as possible.
John Glen
I thank the hon. Lady for her question. I noted her presence there yesterday, alongside me. I am happy to engage with her to clarify the position for her individual constituents. I am reluctant to make binding assertions on individuals on the Floor of the House because I do not want to mislead her or anyone else. But I would be very happy, if she writes to me, to respond to her as fully as I can.
Jim Shannon
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is a real pleasure to ask a question. First, may I thank the Government for their apology and for their compensation? I thank the Minister for his tone and his words, which were very humbly spoken, and which I think encouraged us all across this Chamber. That is not easy to do, given all the questions that are put forward.
Victims have highlighted what they deem to be a lack of recognition and a lack of accountability. Today, there is a recognition, yet I feel that within the accountability there must be safeguards to ensure that similar medical experimental methods cannot be permitted to take hold and bring these devastating results ever again. Does the Minister not agree that, while we cannot put right the wrong, we can and must safeguard future children and adults and that this dreadful family-destroying, heartbreaking, life-changing lesson is one which we have all unwillingly and, indeed, shamefully learnt?
John Glen
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his thoughtful question, and I put on record my satisfaction at being in Belfast as part of the engagement exercise I undertook. In some ways, some of what Sir Brian Langstaff spoke about we could not envisage happening again, because of changes that have happened in the health service and the way things operate 40 or 50 years on, but what he talks about is much deeper: it is about the culture of transparency, dependency and candour between civil servants, the NHS and Government. That is a much more complicated set of issues to meet appropriately and fully. If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I will not be able to respond to his specific point today. However, he articulates the challenge that we need to meet as a Government, and I look forward to playing my part, whatever that is, in meeting it.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
That concludes proceedings on the statement. I thank the Minister for having taken a very large number of questions, for having remained at the Dispatch Box for well over two hours and for having answered every question thoroughly and carefully.
Point of Order
(7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker, this morning a Home Office-commissioned report from Lord Walney was presented in Parliament using the motion for unopposed return procedure, effectively protecting it from any kind of legal challenge. However, the report reads as a highly political document and includes proposals, for example, for very serious restrictions on civil liberties and human rights. I understand it is not in order for Members to criticise a member of the House of Lords in the Chamber, and Lord Walney’s interests as a paid adviser for the arms and oil industry are registered in the Register of Lords’ Interests. However, could you advise the House on whether, when a report is given legal cover by this House, it would be at least healthy for scrutiny to have an additional requirement for any relevant interest by a report’s author to be specifically flagged to this House as well?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
I thank the hon. Lady for her point of order. I can confirm that the effect of this morning’s motion is that the report was published by order of the House. She asks about the financial interests of members of the House of Lords, which of course is not a matter for the Chair of the House of Commons, but I appreciate that she makes a serious and valid point about the way in which the matter has been presented to this House. If she has concerns about the content of the report, I would advise her to discuss with the Table Office how she might pursue the matter further. There are various lines of action open to her.
Children (Parental Imprisonment)
Tuesday 21st May 2024
(7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Children (Parental Imprisonment) Bill 2023-24 View all Children (Parental Imprisonment) Bill 2023-24 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate
A Ten Minute Rule Bill is a First Reading of a Private Members Bill, but with the sponsor permitted to make a ten minute speech outlining the reasons for the proposed legislation.
There is little chance of the Bill proceeding further unless there is unanimous consent for the Bill or the Government elects to support the Bill directly.
For more information see: Ten Minute Bills
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require the Secretary of State to establish national policy guidelines in respect of children with a parent in prison, including for the identification of the children of prisoners at the point of sentence and for accountability for providing support to the children of prisoners; and for connected purposes.
I want to start by saying what this Bill is not about. It is not about prisoners, although there is some good and important work being done with prisoners and their families. We know there is often a value in maintaining family ties: it helps prisoners to cope with their sentences and makes it less likely that they will reoffend when they are released. However, this Bill is not about them. It is about their children, some of whom will have contact with their parent in prison and many of whom will not. If the parent is inside for domestic violence or for sexual offences involving children, or, indeed, if the child was the victim of the parent’s crime, there might not be contact. If there has been a long history of criminal behaviour, of addiction or violence, or if there was never much of a family unit in the first place, there might not be contact.
Therefore, we do not start with the prisoner’s wellbeing; we start with what is in the child’s best interest—and we start from a difficult place, because we simply do not know how many children have a parent in prison. We do not know who they are, where they are or who is looking after them, or at least not in any systemic way. They are the invisible children. Sarah Burrows, who is here today, is the chief executive of Children Heard and Seen, a charity that does excellent work to identify, mentor and support children with parents in prison. She is fond of saying that we know exactly how many Labradors there are in this country, yet we do not know how many children have a parent in prison. That is why this Bill is needed.
I am not going to prejudge now what a statutory mechanism for identifying and supporting children with a parent in prison would look like, although I pay tribute to Sergeant Russ Massie of Thames Valley police, and the work he has led on Operation Paramount, and I think that the unique child identifier number that is being proposed by Labour’s education team might play a role. In 2019, Crest Advisory estimated that around 312,000 children a year were affected by parental imprisonment, and for 17,000 of them it was their mother. The Ministry of Justice has now commissioned a BOLD—better outcomes through linked data—report, which will use Government data to measure the scale of parental imprisonment and estimate how many children have a parent in prison. Those statistics will be released on 13 June. There has been a lot of work behind the scenes to get to this point, and I particularly thank the hon. and learned Member for Eddisbury (Edward Timpson) for his help, the Children’s Commissioner, who has backed this Bill, and the various Ministers who have met us over the years.
However, we need more than just a snapshot of how many children are affected. We need a statutory mechanism so that, at the point when an adult is sentenced to imprisonment, someone finds out whether there are any children involved and someone is then responsible for making sure that those children are okay. We know that at the moment that is not always picked up. Sometimes the question is not asked. Sometimes a prisoner does not want the authorities to know because they are worried the kids will be taken into care. Often schools have no idea. Children Heard and Seen has seen cases where children have simply been left to fend for themselves, and I want to mention a few.
A man went to prison for sexual offences, and it was only after the house was targeted by vigilantes that a Victim Support caseworker found his 15-year-old daughter living there on her own. A criminologist conducting research in a women’s prison was told by a prisoner that her two daughters were living on their own, without any money for food or sanitary protection. A 16-year-old boy was arrested at the same time as his parents. He was released shortly afterwards and left to be the sole carer of his eight-year-old brother. An employer requested a welfare check after a woman had not shown up to work for two months. When the police went to the address, they discovered her 15-year-old son living on his own. There was no gas or electricity, and he had been getting up and going to school every day without anyone knowing that his mum was in prison.
Kinship carers—grandparents, aunts, uncles and siblings—often play an important role in stepping up when a parent goes to prison, and they need support to do so. However, there is also a real risk that children will end up living somewhere entirely unsuitable, with people who will abuse them, neglect them and exploit them. More often than not there is a parent, usually the mother, at home, but children can still be badly affected.
One of the bloggers on the Children Heard and Seen website says:
“We’re not victims, we are collateral damage.”
There is an emotional loss and a sense of abandonment. There is perhaps a sense of injustice if they feel their mum or dad has been wrongfully jailed, or anger that their mum or dad has chosen to commit a crime, not caring what happens to them as a result. On a practical level, it could mean a big change in the family’s financial situation, having to move house, move schools, or go on to free school meals, or having to change their names and leave town altogether because it has been all over the papers that their dad is a sex offender. I have met a family that happened to.
Perhaps most damaging of all is the stigma and the shame of being associated with a parent’s crime—being bullied at school or seen as trouble by the teachers. As one mother said:
“I’ve moved areas because I felt like I was being watched all the time—people were talking and we were being discriminated against, when it was not something that we’ve done.
Kids are innocent and I’ve had to move schools, which has just been more upheaval. It’s just a nightmare.”
Children Heard and Seen use the hashtag #itwasntme. The child has done nothing wrong, but in many ways the child is punished too.
The 2019 research from Crest Advisory that I mentioned earlier found that children of prisoners are at risk of significantly worse outcomes than children not affected by parental imprisonment, including lifelong mental health problems and being involved in the criminal justice system themselves later in life. It has been suggested that 65% of boys with a parent in prison go on to offend. Others say that a child with a parent in prison is three or four times more likely to get into trouble, although it is difficult to separate out other factors in a child’s upbringing—the same factors that might have led the parent to become involved in crime, such as poverty or family instability. It is clear that by supporting and mentoring children, it is possible to break that cycle. I have met many adults, from all walks of life, who are still deeply affected by the trauma of their childhood experience. We have met in this building; we have shared stories. It is striking just how difficult it is for them to talk about it, many years down the line. It is clear that by supporting and mentoring children, it is possible to break that cycle. I have met many adults, from all walks of life, who are still deeply affected by the trauma of their childhood experience. We have met in this building; we have shared stories. It is striking just how difficult it is for them to talk about it, many years down the line.
A few months ago, I watched “The Edge of Everything”, a brilliant documentary about Ronnie O’Sullivan, whose father was jailed for murder when he was 17. It was heartbreaking to hear him talk about that, and to see the pain writ large on his face some 30 years later. He has been world No. 1 and has won world championships, yet that experience still very much lives with him.
Other celebrities have also spoken out about their experiences. John Bishop was six when his father went to jail. He has said that visiting him
“was a dehumanising experience. We were treated like cattle… The injustice my dad suffered had a massive impact on the person I am.”
Romesh Ranganathan has also spoken about visiting his dad, who was serving a two-year sentence for fraud. He said:
“It was horrific. You just become numb to it. Those experiences definitely had a profound effect on me.”
Every child’s story will be different. Some children who have a parent in prison might be doing just fine, but the chances are that they are not, so we need to know who they are, where they are, how they are coping and who is looking after them. They are not to blame; it wasn’t them.
Question put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That Kerry McCarthy, Mr Clive Betts, Sir Robert Buckland, Andrew Gwynne, Ms Harriet Harman, Dame Diana Johnson, Tim Loughton, John McDonnell, Jess Phillips, Edward Timpson, Nadia Whittome and Munira Wilson present the Bill.
Kerry McCarthy accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time Friday 14 June, and to be printed (Bill 222).
Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill
Tuesday 21st May 2024
(7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 View all Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Manuscript Amendment as at 21 May 2024 - (21 May 2024)
15:57 - The House divided: - Ayes: 217 / Noes: 268 - Question accordingly negatived.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
I advise the House that Mr Speaker has selected the manuscript amendment in the name of Sir Chris Bryant. Copies are available in the Vote Office.
After Clause 308
Secondary ticketing facilities
The Minister of State, Department for Business and Trade (Kevin Hollinrake)
I beg to move,
That this House disagrees with the Lords in their Amendment and proposes Amendments (a) and (b) to the Bill in lieu of the Lords Amendment 104B.
The Bill will drive growth and deliver better outcomes for consumers across the UK. Both Houses have now reached agreement on digital markets measures relating to appeals, proportionality, the countervailing benefits exemption and guidance. However, the Bill returns to the House today as the need to agree on secondary ticketing remains outstanding.
Lords amendment 104B, tabled by Lord Moynihan, would introduce additional regulatory requirements on resale sites. In our view, new regulations should be considered only if they are necessary, proportionate and future-proof, and should not duplicate existing rules. Simply adding new rules and regulations that add little to what is already there is not the answer to the problems of the secondary ticketing market.
The first provision that the Lords seek to add to the Bill would require secondary ticketing platforms to obtain proof of purchase of the ticket from the reseller before listing the ticket for resale, but it is already a criminal offence—of unfair trading or fraud—for a reseller to offer for sale products that cannot be legally sold.
Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his work, as well as to Lord Moynihan, who has doggedly pursued this matter with the Government. My hon. Friend rightly points out that making additional regulations for the sake of it is not something that we as a Government would support, but can he tell me why the Competition and Markets Authority has prosecuted so few people under the current regulatory structure over recent years?
Kevin Hollinrake
We believe that the problem is about enforcement, not regulations. The reason why the CMA has not prosecuted anybody is that it does not have the responsibility or the right to prosecute sellers on ticketing sites. It has jurisdiction over the platforms, but not the sellers. We are giving the CMA that opportunity and those powers, which we think will make a profound difference.
Secondly, the Lords amendment requires that the ticket’s face value and trader’s details be clearly visible to the consumer, but likewise, existing legislation already provides that traders must make that information clear and comprehensible. The amendment would also prevent resellers from selling more tickets than can be legally purchased from the primary market. We agree with the principle, but believe that to be unenforceable. Many sources on the primary market sell tickets, and each has their own ticket limit.
Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)
The Bill could have such a significant impact in tackling the issues associated with secondary ticket sites, and could reduce instances of fraud and online scams. I do not understand why the Minister is so reluctant to commit to the recommendations made by the CMA. That is all we want implemented through the Lords amendment.
Kevin Hollinrake
The CMA report differs from the amendment proposed by the Lords. We believe that Lord Moynihan’s requirements relating to face value and the address of the trader are already covered. What is missing from the amendment is the ability to enforce regulations. There have been prosecutions only recently, a couple of months ago; there has been a four-year sentence and a £6 million confiscation order, so we are seeing prosecutions by National Trading Standards, but we believe that the CMA will have a more profound effect if it can tackle this issue.
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (Ind)
My question is similar to that of the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney). I just do not understand why the Government do not get involved with this. From what I have read of the Lords debate and what Lord Moynihan said, that is exactly what happened for the London Olympics in 2012. Ireland has got rid of the secondary market because it thought it very corrosive indeed. I also understand that fans are frequently in tears outside venues such as the O2 because they have bought the wrong tickets from the secondary market. As the political wing of the very noble tartan army, I would not want fans to be unable to get into games at the Euros in the coming weeks because of irregularities in the secondary market. If that happens, will the Minister commit to coming back and changing tack?
Kevin Hollinrake
The hon. Gentleman raises important points. Alongside what we are doing to give the CMA more enforcement powers, which we think are needed, we are also committing to a review of the primary and secondary market over the next nine months, in order to see what else can be done to ensure that the secondary ticketing process is fairer for consumers.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
The Minister is generous in giving way, and I appreciate it. Has he spoken to his counterparts in Ireland about what they have done in this area, why they have done it, and what the effects have been? That might be instructive.
Kevin Hollinrake
Yes, we are aware of what is happening in Ireland, where there is a complete prohibition on secondary ticketing sales. Our concern about that is obvious: secondary sales are then just driven underground into a black market. That is what we have seen in Ireland. Indeed, tickets to see Taylor Swift in Dublin are available on the internet at exactly the same, or a similar, price as tickets to see her in the UK, so we do not think that is a solution. We are looking for a practical solution that works across the piece.
A person could purchase multiple tickets from different sources on the primary market and resell them on a platform. That would make it nearly impossible for either the platform or an enforcer to calculate what the total limit of tickets should be. We must avoid the trap of thinking that we are solving problems simply by adding words to legislation. We should not be tempted to devise legislation that cannot be implemented.
We believe that the solution lies not in more regulations, but in regulation—in other words, enforcement. This House has already radically strengthened the CMA’s enforcement powers in part 3 of the Bill. That strengthening applies to all consumer law, including on secondary ticketing. The CMA will have civil fining powers, and fines could total 10% of the global turnover of firms breaking consumer law. New powers will mean that the CMA can process many more cases even more quickly.
However, the Government appreciate the strength of feeling in both Houses on the issue of secondary ticketing. We have therefore tabled Government amendments to further strengthen the enforcement powers. Amendments (a) and (b) in lieu of Lords amendment 104B will give the CMA new powers, first to enforce existing rules against unfair buying-up of tickets using electronic bots, and secondly to enforce existing rules on the information that platforms and resellers must present to consumers. That is in addition to the Government’s previous commitment to review the primary and secondary ticketing markets. That review will allow us to gain a deep understanding of how tickets flow from the primary market to the secondary market. It will also include consideration of the timeliness and effectiveness of the information that must be provided to buyers, and of what reassurance is necessary for consumers to be confident that ticket offers are genuine.
Taken together, the CMA’s new enforcement powers and the upcoming Government review represent a clear strengthening of consumer protections. They will help to ensure that further steps can be taken in future, in the light of the good practice that has recently been emerging in the market.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
I am again grateful to the Minister for giving way, but like the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney), I am still stumped as to why the Government are not the champion of the consumer—the small person or small family who face the disappointment of financial loss. I hear what the Minister says about laws being enforced—that could apply to any law—but laws also have a deterrent effect, and it would be quite useful to have that deterrent effect.
Kevin Hollinrake
The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. I agree with him about the deterrent effect, but to me, that deterrent effect is delivered through enforcement and prosecutions, which are making it easier to deal with the platforms. As for the Lords amendment, information such as the seller’s address is already required under schedule 2 to the 2013 consumer contracts regulations, and the face value of the ticket must be displayed under clause 90(3)(c) of the Consumer Rights Act 2015, so that is already covered. It is enforcement that we need to improve.
Sir Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
Does the Minister agree that the selling-on of tickets has always happened, and always will? It is important to reinforce existing safeguards, rather than making the secondary ticketing market unviable and pushing people into unregulated spaces where they get no protection at all. At the moment, they do get protection from most of the sites that sell tickets on the secondary market.
Kevin Hollinrake
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. The concern is that we would simply drive people into a black market; that seems to have happened in Ireland. The CMA has said that capping prices, which is what the Opposition want, would not reduce the incentive to resell, for exactly the reasons my hon. Friend has pointed out, so through the Bill, we are taking the pragmatic step of increasing the enforcement of current regulations, while also looking at the wider picture, in the review, to see whether improvements can be made. We think that is the right balance.
In conclusion, I encourage this House to agree with the Government’s position on Lords amendment 104B, and accept the Government’s proposed amendments (a) and (b) in lieu. It is imperative that Royal Assent be achieved without further delay, so that the legislation can be implemented and the Bill’s benefits realised as quickly as possible.
Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I beg to move manuscript amendment (a), leave out from “House” and insert
“agrees with the Lords in their Amendment”.
I confess that I am completely perplexed as to why the Government have adopted the attitude that they have taken today. The Bill could have gone through both Houses quite easily and have steamed ahead to Royal Assent if they had simply agreed to these very minor recommendations from the House of Lords. We do something very similar to what the amendment suggests in relation to Olympics tickets, partly because the Olympics’ organisers insist on such legislation for any Olympics, but we also do something very similar for sporting events. The question of why we do not do exactly the same for music, comedy and other events is legitimate.
Sir Chris Bryant
The Minister has only just sat down, but now he is intervening on me.
Kevin Hollinrake
I just wanted to address one of the points that the hon. Gentleman makes. He talks about the Olympics, for which there was a complete ban on resale. Is that what he is proposing?
Sir Chris Bryant
No. If the Minister will listen for a few more minutes, I will get on to precisely what we recommend. Indeed, he may remember that in the last debate on this issue, I said very clearly that we do not intend to ban all resale. If somebody has a ticket that they bought themselves, not through a bot, but is unable to use it and wants to resell it, that should be a perfectly legitimate process, but the price should be capped at a sensible level—at something like 10% or 15% above the original cost.
Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)
I just want to help the Minister correct the record. Through the Olympics legislation, we as a Parliament did not ban resale; we said that resale had to be authorised. I did not want him to have that wrong on the record.
Sir Chris Bryant
Indeed. I will come to authorised resale later, because it is a real problem with the way that the market operates. Fans are very unclear whether the ticket they have bought through the secondary market is authorised by the original vendor—that is, the venue or one of its authorised vendors—and therefore whether they will actually be admitted in the end. That is one of the problems: even when fans are paying very inflated prices, they are not certain that the ticket they are buying is a genuine ticket that will gain them admittance to the event they have paid for.
Over the years, Members have repeatedly given evidence—
Sir Chris Bryant
I ask the hon. Gentleman to let me make a little progress. I am still on the first sentence of my speech.
Over the years, Members have repeatedly given evidence that the secondary ticket market is not working: with tickets advertised with no declaration as to whether they are real, or of their face value; websites that only declare the face value of a ticket at the very last stage, with a clock ticking away and the fan already hooked; fake tickets being sold, leaving consumers out of pocket and completely in the lurch; tickets sold without evidence of proof of purchase, or of the seller’s title to the tickets; and websites circumventing artists and venues’ policies on the resale of tickets.
Taylor Swift tickets with a face value of £75 are presently selling on Viagogo for £6,840. If a Foo Fighters fan from the Rhondda wanted to buy a ticket to see them at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium, it would have cost them £95 direct from that stadium; on Viagogo today, that exact same ticket would cost them £395. If a child from the Rhondda who loves space and hopes to one day become an aeronautical engineer wanted to see “Tim Peake: Astronauts - The Quest to Explore Space” at Swansea Arena, they would have paid £48.75 face value; on Viagogo, they would have to find £134. This is about much more than just price gouging and ripping people off from their hard-earned money: it is robbing children of their chance to be inspired, to spark a creative idea, to see a career in our growing creative industries, or to learn from an expert. That is why I wish the Government were adopting the measure passed by the House of Lords.
Fans, the people who really create the value, are being excluded from live concerts. The UK’s secondary ticketing market is estimated to be worth £1 billion annually, but it is rife with fraud and scamming, which affects people every single day. I would not even mind if just some of the inflated price money went into the creative industries, and into training young people and providing them with a creative education, but not a single penny of it does. It is set to get worse, too: ticketing security expert Reg Walker has reported “a massive escalation” of harvesting using software. People who have long used bots to bulk-buy items such as iPhones are now turning to ticket touting because it is more profitable, and according to Reg Walker, there is a new generation of young, tech-savvy armchair touts
“smashing ticket systems to bits”.
It is a market that simply does not work, and Labour will fix it.
The Lords have given us a perfectly sensible measure. Their amendment establishes a legal requirement that secondary ticketing facilities must not permit a trade or business to list tickets without evidence of proof of purchase or evidence of title, a matter not mentioned by the Minister. It forbids a reseller from selling more tickets to an event than they can legally purchase on the primary market. It requires the face value of any ticket listed for resale, and the trader or business’s name and trading address, to be clearly visible in full on the first page on which a purchaser can view the ticket—I have had a bit of debate with the Minister about that proposal, so I will come on to the specifics later. It also requires the Government to lay before Parliament the outcomes of a review of the effect of these measures on the secondary ticketing market within nine months of Royal Assent. I cannot understand why any sane person would oppose such a measure, unless it was purely and simply for ideological reasons.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
On such ideological reasons, the Conservative party claims to be the party of Adam Smith, but if we read “The Wealth of Nations”, we see that the behaviour of the rentier class is not exactly praised by Adam Smith, and this is pure rent seeking. As the hon. Gentleman said, this is taking a ticket at £75, charging 90 times that and doing nothing to add any value at all. This is rent seeking, and ideologically it should be opposed by the Conservative party.
Sir Chris Bryant
The hon. Member makes a very good point. Indeed, in the main the market is a good thing—it can operate to produce good and efficient outcomes in society—but in this case the market is not working, and where the market does not work, the state has to intervene.
I cannot understand why any sane person should oppose such a measure, but unfortunately the Government have. Their amendment (a) in lieu is a weak sock puppet of a concession. It does not strengthen the rules; it simply leaves them in place. It does not prevent tickets from being sold without evidence of proof of purchase or the seller’s title to the tickets. It does not limit the quantity of resale tickets to the original number limited by the seller or artist. It leaves in place the current system for showing the face value of a ticket, despite the fact that section 90(8) of the Consumer Rights Act 2015, in my view and in the view of everybody who has spoken to Members about this, is very opaque and open to interpretation—or, I would argue, open to deliberate misinterpretation by the secondary ticketing market.
For instance, Viagogo does not say “face value”, but has a little box that says “FV”, which is not explained anywhere on the website, and people have to click on that. If Viagogo genuinely wanted to be open and transparent, it would say “face value”, and put the price at the very beginning. StubHub is similarly advertising tickets for Taylor Swift on 21 June at £711, but nowhere on the first page does it give the face value. I note that, if someone goes on to the second page, it says $75 there, but I am told that that is not the actual cost of the ticket. Seatsnet has tickets for Murrayfield—for Taylor Swift again—selling at £1,294.79 or £1,092.15 each, and nowhere does it give the face value of the tickets. Interestingly, AEG Presents and AXS, which are managing the tickets for the concerts at Murrayfield, say that tickets are strictly not to be resold:
“Any tickets found to be purchased via re-sale on the non-official secondary market will not be valid for entry into the concerts.”
In other words, it is completely in doubt whether the tickets being sold at £711 or £1,294 are tickets that will actually gain admittance for an individual.
James Wild (North West Norfolk) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman referred to Viagogo, and I have just gone on to its website. He mentioned the “FV” symbol, but when I click on it, it tells me the face value of the ticket. Did I misunderstand the point he made?
Sir Chris Bryant
Yes, the hon. Member did misunderstand the point I made. Why does it not just say “face value”, instead of “FV”, which would be perfectly simple? For that matter, why should people have to click on it? The point of the Lords amendment is very clear, and it is that people should know from the very first time they see the ticket what the face value of that ticket is. I am perfectly happy, if people want to be scammed, that they should be free to be scammed, but they should at least know from the very first point at which they seek to buy a ticket what the face value of the ticket is.
Sir Chris Bryant
I will give way to the hon. Member, although I am keen to move on.
Sir Philip Davies
I am very grateful. As the hon. Gentleman was struggling so much with the previous intervention, I thought I would intervene and give him a way out. If he gets his way, all that will happen is that all of these tickets sold on the secondary market will be sold by spivs outside the location of an event. Why does the hon. Gentleman think that consumers will be better protected by spivs selling these tickets outside the event than by their being sold on official secondary ticket markets?
Sir Chris Bryant
The secondary ticket market is the spivs: it is precisely the same set of people scamming the system and the public. They are taking advantage of people’s desire to get tickets, and thereby making the market simply not work in the interests of the creators of the art, the fans, or the stadiums and venues themselves. That is why we want to take action.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
The hon. Gentleman is quite right about the market not working. The point that has been missed hugely by Conservative Members is that a finite number of tickets are going on sale, and this finite number is being gobbled up by the spivs, speculators and whoever online. He mentions the guys outside a venue, but they can only hold so many tickets. It is the scale of this, as I heard the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) say from a sedentary position. Without the Lords amendment that has been proposed, this is being allowed on an industrial scale. Why are the Government and the Conservative party willing to see people ripped off? It is just unbelievable.
Sir Chris Bryant
I rather agree with the idea that some Conservative Members actually want people to be ripped off, and maybe that is what we have seen for the last 14 years when we have seen taxes rise, but what we get for the taxes has diminished.
The Minister says that he wants to give more powers to the CMA to be able to enforce the action. The problem with that is that the CMA itself gave evidence that, when it tried to take Viagogo to court, it came up against inherent weaknesses in the existing consumer protection toolkit, and the Government are not adding anything to that consumer protection toolkit whatsoever. Indeed, they are deliberately voting down precisely what they said they wanted.
Sir Chris Bryant
No, the Minister will get to reply afterwards, I am sure. [Hon. Members: “Oh!”] So the Minister is begging. I will give way to his begging.
Kevin Hollinrake
I beg the hon. Member’s leave, but can I draw his attention to the comments of the CMA before the Bill Committee? One witness said exactly this in response to the point he has just raised:
“We think that many of the changes in the Bill will address those weaknesses directly by giving us civil fining powers for the first time.”––[Official Report, Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill Public Bill Committee, 13 June 2023; c. 7, Q3.]
It is not right to say that the CMA is getting no more ability to oversee this regime.
Sir Chris Bryant
No, because I read that completely differently from the way the Minister does. If the Minister were right, why is it only at this stage that he has chosen to bring forward amendment (a) in lieu? Precisely as with every single step of the way on ticket touting that we have seen over the last 14 years, somebody moves an amendment in the House of Lords—quite often Lord Moynihan, wonderful man that he is—and the Government are dragged kicking and screaming to introduce sensible measures that have cross-party support, but that the Government object to for some bizarre ideological reasons.
Labour will strengthen the consumer rights legislation to protect fans from fraudulent ticket practices, restricting the resale of more tickets than permissible and ensuring anybody buying a ticket from the secondary market can see—clearly, easily, readily and absolutely unambiguously —what the original price of that ticket was and where it came from. All of this could have been done today if the Government had not rejected the Lords amendment, but supported Labour on the cross-party amendment from the Lords. However, they have put touts before fans, and profits before the public.
If Labour is given the chance to form a Government, we will also go further. We will restrict the resale of tickets at more than a small set percentage over the price the original purchaser paid for it. No more touts buying a £50 ticket and selling it on for £500; no more bulk buying of seats for Taylor Swift concerts that could go to a 13-year-old fan from Wigan, but instead go to a millionaire from the US. No more scalping of our creative industries and artists, who set reasonable prices for their tickets, only to find somebody else making money off their talent and hard work by reselling them at 10 times the price. Ministers say that the CMA will enforce more, but I doubt that anything will change as a result of anything the Government are intending to do with this measure.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
I call the SNP spokesman.
Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate, much as I wish we were not here, because we would not need to be here if the Government had done the decent, sensible thing and accepted the Lords amendment.
We have heard stories in interventions and substantive contributions, and in past debates, about the effect of an under-regulated secondary market that leaves fans paying over the odds for tickets, and places experiences beyond the financial reach of families. There is also a high risk involved that tickets purchased that way will not even grant entry to the events, and I had hoped that by this stage the Government might have read the room, understood that, and decided to respond in a meaningful manner. Let us be in no doubt: the Government amendment does little other than add the Competition and Markets Authority to the list of bodies that are able to enforce the already existing and inadequate rules on secondary ticket sales. As just about all Opposition Members can see, even if Government Members cannot, the existing rules are not working as well as they are intended to work.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
My hon. Friend makes a good point about the powers given to the CMA, and I wonder whether the Government can increase the ability to finance and give capacity to the CMA to deal with this sort of stuff, or is this just something that has been passed on in paper?
Richard Thomson
Perhaps the Minister will be able to deal with that question when he responds to the debate. Certainly the measure might bring a bit more resource, but it will also spread the resource for the CMA that little bit more thinly. The fact that the rules are not working as effectively as they need to has been evidenced in previous debates, when we have heard of obscure charging practices, of pressure to pay with countdown timers, and of the exorbitant end prices that often result.
The Government amendment is fine as far as it goes. It might bring a little more resource to the problem and a more strategic capability when tackling rule-breakers. I also gave two cheers when the Minister announced the promise of an inquiry at the tail end of the previous debate, but the Government are still not taking those practical measures that could be taken today with amendment 104B to clean up the marketplace for secondary ticketing.
Amendment 104B would involve measures such as a requirement to provide proof of purchase or evidence of title for the tickets for sale, which would forbid resellers from selling more tickets than they would legally have been able to purchase from the primary market. It would ensure that the face value and end price paid are clearly visible, along with the name and trading address of those doing the secondary vending. Crucially, it would also allow secondary legislation to be introduced, which could take account of and bring in anything from the inquiry that the Minister has announced, and it would compel the Secretary of State to have concluded that work within nine months. Contrary to what the Minister says, I believe that the measures in Lords amendment 104B are proportionate and add clearly to the existing Bill.
Lord amendment 104B is a bit like Lords amendment 104 which came before it. Indeed, it is almost the holy grail of amendments—it is popular, it does not cost anything, and more to the point it would be effective and do the right things in the right way for the right reasons. I do not think I am speaking out of turn when I say that hardly any Government in these isles, whether Labour in Wales, the SNP in Scotland or the Conservatives at UK level, are so overwhelmed with public support and good will at this time that they can afford to turn down good ideas when they are presented to them on a plate. It is therefore baffling that the Government would seek once again to steer these practical and effective measures off the road and into the ditch.
I will conclude my remarks by remarking on the “Dear Colleague” letter that was sent from the Minister yesterday, in which he expressed a clear desire to get the Bill on to the statue book without delay. Not a single Member of the House looking at the Bill in its totality would want it to be delayed, but we want it to go forward into legislation in as strong a form as it can be. That, for me, clearly means going forward in a way that can tackle the egregious abuses of people’s trust, and the reasonable expectations they have when they participate in the secondary ticketing market. Accepting the Lords amendment would allow everyone to do that, and I hope the Government will take heed of the genuine strength of view that exists on this matter, not just within this House or the other place, but outside and among the population at large, and that they will allow the Bill to progress as amended accordingly.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
I rise to support Lords Amendment 104B, which seeks to safeguard fans from the fraudulent abuse that is rife in the secondary ticketing market. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant), I am really disappointed that the Government have repeatedly refused to accept the amendments to the Bill tabled by Lord Moynihan. In fact, for many years before that, they have failed to act as advised by my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) and her colleagues on the all-party parliamentary group on ticket abuse, supported by FanFair Alliance.
The Lords amendment includes the minimum of protection that fans deserve. It would ensure that anyone reselling a ticket has to show evidence that they have bought the ticket in the first place. As we have been hearing, that is a big issue in the secondary market, where ticket touts often list tickets that they do not own. The Lords amendment also aims to stop touts from listing more tickets to an event than they can legally purchase from the primary market.
If the Minister looks at Viagogo’s listings for BBC Radio 1 upcoming Big Weekend, he will see that touts based in Germany are selling more than 10 times as many tickets as can legally be acquired. He has said that measures to do anything about that are unenforceable, but that should not be an excuse. We cannot be standing here in this House and saying that a law that we could pass is unenforceable—it is ridiculous.
Another important measure in the Lords amendment is provision for a review to be published within nine months of the Bill passing. That is an urgent issue, and the Government must be ambitious in acting to tackle it.
I point out again to the Minister that action to crack down on ticket touting has significant support from the music industry and fans. Regulating against exploitative secondary ticketing practices is part of the manifestos put forward by music industry bodies including Live music Industry Venues and Entertainment and UK Music.
Many promoters, artist managers, venues and musicians have been highly critical of the market as it currently operates and called on the Government for urgent action to tackle the problem, but it is not just a problem for the music industry; foremost, as we have heard, it is an issue for fans. It is now commonplace for fans to miss out on tickets to sporting and cultural events only to see those same tickets on sale on a secondary ticketing site for far more money than they can afford.
With about a third of UK ticket buyers in the lowest socioeconomic bands, those inflated prices are reinforcing inequalities. The price of a ticket can make a significant difference to social and cultural inclusion, in some cases enabling marginalised or disadvantaged groups the opportunity to access events.
It is important that many venues and artists now endeavour to widen access to tickets by through-ticket pricing to certain groups, but that approach is undermined when touts use software to restrict fans’ access to the primary market and then force them on to resale sites such as Viagogo, which charge prices at the top of what consumers can bear, as we have been hearing. For example—this is disgraceful—I have been told that touts will buy up discounted tickets intended for young people, for people in wheelchairs, for carers and for others, and sell them on at the going rate on the secondary market to increase their profit margins. That has a serious impact on those consumers, who are then refused entry at the door, as well as impacting on the venue or artists that had subsidised tickets, and on the people for whom the lower priced tickets had been intended and who can no longer afford to attend the show.
I have spoken about music so far, but touting also affects other live events such as sport. Most recently, we have seen Viagogo listing up to 100 tickets for the England versus Iceland friendly at Wembley on 7 June, despite the fact that listing football tickets is illegal on unauthorised platforms—including Viagogo’s platform—for reasons of the safety of fans. When The Guardian journalist Rob Davies highlighted the listings on social media, Viagogo took down the tickets straightaway. Resale platforms should not be waiting to be caught out before complying with the law, but that is what we are seeing.
Another example of a secondary resale site having to be pushed into acting by media coverage was a recent BBC “Watchdog” report that raised concerns that some customers have not been able to receive a refund from Viagogo after being sent invalid tickets. Beth from Salisbury told the programme that she had booked a trip to Singapore to see her husband’s favourite band Coldplay as a thank you to him for his unwavering support during her cancer treatment. The two tickets to the show were bought through Viagogo for £500, but when the tickets arrived, the piece of paper said
“this is not a valid ticket”.
When she tried to get a refund, she was refused, despite the fact that Viagogo has a guarantee, apparently. In fact, it only refunded Beth’s money for the faulty ticket after the BBC “Watchdog” report. Given the weight of evidence of market dysfunction, which we have heard here and in the other place, it is disappointing that the Minister insists that the Government are already doing enough. If that is the case, why not agree to the amendment and see what comes out in the review?
Sir Philip Davies
The hon. Lady is making a good argument for what the Minister said—ensuring better enforcement of existing regulations. That seems to be the thrust of her argument, and what the Government say that they are delivering.
Barbara Keeley
It is just not happening. As we heard the last time we debated this issue a few weeks ago, just six people have been convicted of ticketing fraud—four of them in the past week. The exploitative practices that my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant) and I have talked about continue to be rife on resale platforms. The Minister must accept that this derisory and dismal record must not continue. Labour has committed to a range of strong measures to crack down on ticket touts and fix this broken system for fans. Will the Government start to accept the weight of evidence and do the same?
Mrs Hodgson
I am thrilled to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley), who has done so much work on this matter in the past few years, especially since she took on the brief. She made an excellent speech.
Here we are again. I see that we have been joined by the hon. Member for Shipley (Sir Philip Davies), who back in 2011 did the terrible thing—he might not think it was, but I do—of talking out my private Member’s Bill, the Sale of Tickets (Sporting and Cultural Events) Bill. If it had been passed, we would not be here today, because we would have already fixed this broken market well over a decade ago. I welcome him to his place—I know he likes to keep an eye on his handiwork.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
It is a great shame that the hon. Lady was not listened to 13 years ago, but I have a feeling that, unfortunately, after the Euros, with a political microscope on this issue, we will be back here an awful lot sooner than we think.
Mrs Hodgson
Sadly, if amendment 104B is not accepted today, that might be the case.
I welcome the opportunity to speak in today’s debate, as short as it might be. I am sure that the Minister is aware that I am here in my capacity as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on ticket abuse, which has done some great work in this area. I support the Opposition’s manuscript amendment, and therefore support the revised Lords amendment 104B as it relates to the secondary ticketing market. As others have done, I thank the excellent Lord Moynihan for his continued efforts as co-chair of the all-party group to regulate black market resale sites such as Viagogo. He is right to do so, and I commend his tenacity and brilliant work over many years. I fully supported the original amendment 104, but I warmly welcome the difficult decision to reintroduce the amendment with some notable changes.
The Government’s reason for rejecting the original amendment was:
“Because protections for consumers in relation to secondary ticketing are adequately provided for under existing legislation.”
However, despite uncontrolled touting taking place on an industrial scale, with tickets resold through sites such as Viagogo, there has not been a single prosecution under the Breaching of Limits on Ticket Sales Regulations 2018, no convictions for using bots under the Digital Economy Act 2017, and only two major tout prosecutions, with six individual convictions, since 2017. I can hardly see how the Government can describe current legislation as adequate.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
The hon. Lady mentioned Lord Moynihan. For context, it should be remembered that he was a sports Minister in Margaret Thatcher’s Government. If a Thatcher Minister is anti-market—the charge made from the Conservative Benches against anyone who supports his amendment—either the world has gone topsy-turvy or the Tory party has gone so far to the right it has lost itself.
Mrs Hodgson
The hon. Gentleman makes exactly the correct point. Lord Moynihan was a highly respected Minister, and he is hardly a lefty—or whatever it is that people call people like me.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
The hon. Lady has touched on the industrial scale of this practice, and we have heard about touts outside venues. Families may be thinking of buying tickets, and committing themselves to travelling and spending money on hotels, and that is what is wrong. If that happens again, the Government should face those families and explain why it has happened.
Mrs Hodgson
That is a very good point. As much as none of us wants to see any unhappy, devastated fans at any of these venues, we will probably have to face those images, in the emails from those fans, on our television screens and maybe on the front pages of newspapers. We have to be prepared for that, and I am sure that the Minister would be sad to see it.
If the Government are truly committed to another review, I know that Lord Moynihan—as we have heard, a highly respected Conservative Lord and a former Minister—has already been recommended to them as a possible chair. [Interruption.] I hope that the hon. Member for Shipley is agreeing with me. I hope he agrees that that would be a very fair and pragmatic selection. It is one that I would wholeheartedly support.
I will conclude. On two occasions the Lords, having listened to evidence and the stated views of the CMA, have voted through these amendments, but Ministers seem hellbent on ignoring the views of the other place. The Lords have sent a clear message to the Government, asking them to look at the facts and think again. I ask the Minister once again: will he finally side with fans, artists and athletes, support Lords amendment 104B today, and not let this be another opportunity wasted by the Conservative Government? As I said in our last debate on this matter, they should either start putting fans first, or move aside so that we can.
Kevin Hollinrake
With the leave of the House, Mr Deputy Speaker, I will address the points that have been raised during the debate.
The hon. Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant) presented a cap on ticket prices as his solution to this problem, but that flies in the face of the evidence given by the CMA in its report. It said that such a measure would not significantly diminish the incentive, and the misconduct would therefore continue. However, it was good to hear the hon. Gentleman finally admit that the market is a good thing—that, coming from an Opposition Member, is a revelation.
There is a common factor between what was said by the hon. Gentleman and what was said by the other contributors to the debate. He said, for instance, that face value was not made sufficiently clear on the various secondary sites, but there is a key saying clearly what face value is on the first pages of the Viagogo and StubHub websites. All those points relate to one thing and one thing only, namely enforcement, because the requirements are there in the existing legislation. We are keen to bolster enforcement. He says that we are somehow kicking and screaming to do so with this amendment, despite the fact that this Government have unilaterally brought forward this legislation. Part 3 offers huge new powers that were not added through an amendment in the Commons or the Lords; they were on the face of the Bill from day one.
Sir Chris Bryant
The Minister knows that Taylor Swift tickets are being sold. The organisers of those concerts have said that tickets sold on unauthorised secondary ticket markets are not valid. Would he therefore encourage people to buy tickets only from authorised ticket vendors and not from those that are unauthorised, which include Viagogo?
Kevin Hollinrake
I would certainly advise any consumer to comply with the rules set out by the primary market. It is quite clear that the primary markets can do a lot more about restricting secondary sales, and we have been quoted examples of that today, including the way the Olympics was run, the way that football matches are run and the way that Glastonbury is run. All those things have very tight controls on secondary markets, which is in the gift of the primary market.
The hon. Member for Gordon (Richard Thomson) asked about resources, as did the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil). The CMA’s budget is £122 million, so we feel that it has the necessary resources available to it. The fines and penalties can be kept by the CMA for its enforcement activities.
The hon. Members for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) and for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) made similar points about the inappropriate resale of tickets—for England football matches, for example—and refunds that have not been processed properly. Only six people have been prosecuted for abuse in this sector, and we want to see more. Prosecutions for the use of bots have not been brought forward, and the amendment allows the CMA to do that. All the concrete action that the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South calls for is about enforcement, not more regulations. I absolutely agree with that, and we want to ensure that there is more enforcement in this space.
It is of paramount importance that we get this Bill on to the statute book so that it can start delivering for businesses and consumers as soon as possible. I thank all who have helped to get to this place, including the Clerks, the officials in the Department and the Bill team. I thank them for their hard work on this legislation, and I hope that all Members will feel able to support our position.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Constitutional Law
(7 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (John Lamont)
I beg to move,
That the draft Scotland Act 1998 (Increase of Borrowing Limits) Order 2024, which was laid before this House on 17 April, be approved.
I am grateful for the opportunity to debate this order, which is the result of collaborative working between the two Governments in Scotland and upholds the 2023 fiscal framework agreement. This order will increase the Scottish Government’s cumulative capital and resource borrowing limits to reflect inflation. The order is made under sections 67 and 67A of the Scotland Act 1998, which set out the amounts that can be borrowed under section 66. We are making this order with the Treasury’s consent, as required in those sections.
Scotland Act orders are a demonstration of devolution in action, and I am pleased to say that the Scotland Office has taken through more than 250 orders since devolution began. The 2023 agreement set out that the annual limits for capital and resource borrowing will increase in line with the Office for Budget Responsibility’s GDP deflator forecast at the time of the Scottish Government’s draft budget. The United Kingdom Government agreed, in the 2023 agreement, to amend the Scotland Act to increase these limits as necessary.
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (Ind)
What are the spending limits on the UK Government? Is it not the case that the UK Government have balanced their books in only 11 years since 1945, and have paid back only about 1.7% to 2% of the debt accrued, if that? It is entirely erroneous to try to put shackles on the Scottish Government and what the Minister often calls the most powerful devolved Parliament in the world. Scotland should be going in the same direction as any normal country, and towards independence.
John Lamont
This Conservative Government have prudently managed this country’s finances, unlike the Scottish Government, who continue to slash frontline public services across Scotland, despite a record-breaking block grant from the UK Government. Those spending choices were, of course, made by the SNP, rather than the UK Government. This order will increase the resource-borrowing limit by £29 million, from £1.75 billion to £1.78 billion, and the capital-borrowing limit by £50 million, from £3 billion to £3.05 billion. The exact figures are set out in the order we are considering. The timing of this order gives the Scottish Government certainty over the cumulative borrowing limits for the 2024-25 financial year. It is important to note, however, that the Scottish Government still remain accountable to the Scottish Parliament and the people of Scotland in how they choose to use these increased borrowing powers.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
Is it not a fact that had the recent blood scandal happened only in Scotland, the Scottish Government would not have had the means to do anything that might be asked of them, because of all these spending restrictions and the handcuffs put on them by Westminster? Are these real-world events not another reason that the Scottish Government should not be a hostage of the UK Government, as they or any Scottish Government are under the devolved set-up?
John Lamont
The hon. Member and his hon. Friends on the nationalist Benches continue to obsess about independence, but he seems to forget that the people of Scotland had their say back in 2014 and voted in record numbers to remain part of a strong United Kingdom. I suggest that SNP Members focus on delivering for frontline services in Scotland by supporting our NHS, schools and transport networks and get on with the day job of governing Scotland, rather than talking perpetually about referendums and independence.
In summary, the order amends UK legislation to increase the cumulative borrowing limits of the Scottish Government ahead of the next financial year. In doing so, the UK Government uphold their commitment to the 2023 agreement and deliver for the people of Scotland. It is positive to see both Governments working together. On that note, I commend the order to the House.
Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)
The fact that we are considering this statutory instrument on the Floor of the House, when such instruments are normally done in Committee, demonstrates that the Government have absolutely nothing left to bring to the Chamber. In fact, this debate was scheduled for a Committee Room upstairs but was subsequently cancelled and brought to the Floor of the House. It shows that the Government are desperate to try to fill time in this Chamber rather than send us all away early again. I know I speak for the Opposition and millions of people up and down the country when I say that this nonsense has to end: a general election must be called soon on this zombie Government. They may be able to run for now, but they certainly cannot hide. The people are fed up of 14 years of complete failure.
We are here to consider increased borrowing limits for the Scottish Government. I wonder whether the Minister could answer a few questions. As per the August 2023 fiscal framework agreement, which came two years late, can the Minister tell the House how the increase amounts have been calculated?
Secondly, the fiscal framework allows for £3 billion, and slightly more given this order of debt for capital purposes at £450 million a year. How much of that just over £3 billion has been drawn down to this stage?
Thirdly, the resource-borrowing powers can be drawn down by up to £600 million per annum up to a maximum of just over £1.75 billion. How much of that has been drawn down? The reason I ask that latter question is that at the Finance and Public Administration Committee of the Scottish Parliament this morning, the permanent secretary warned the First Minister that there is a looming £1.9 billion fiscal deficit in the Scottish Government, because of spending promises that have been made by the current Scottish Government, and that the First Minister will have to come to Parliament regarding the redrawing of those priorities to try to reduce that £1.9 billion fiscal deficit.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
Does the hon. Member agree that, notwithstanding the fact that the fiscal framework has brought the two Governments to the table, the problems we are seeing with spending and the constant arguments are not in the best interests of the people of Scotland? What they really need is two Governments who work more closely together and in concert for Scotland.
Ian Murray
I could not agree more. If the Prime Minister wishes to go and see His Majesty the King at some point soon, we might get at least one half of those two Governments working together after the general election.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
What do he and the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) have against the Republic of Ireland? It has one Government, which is doing very well and has a budget surplus, unlike the UK that has the mishmash and a mess, with a Scotland underperforming in the UK and looking at an Ireland that is overperforming having left the UK. There are lessons to be learned for himself and other colleagues.
Ian Murray
There are certainly lessons to be learned for the UK: not to have a Tory Government. If we had a Labour Government, things would be in a much better position. I am sure the hon. Gentleman will be encouraging all his constituents to vote Labour at the general election in order to make that change.
My fourth question to the Minister is that the fiscal framework of August 2023 suggests that these figures will be increased by inflation from 2024-25 onwards. Will the Minister confirm that is correct? What inflationary measure will be used to do that? Every household in Scotland, and up and down the UK, knows the impact the current Government have had on borrowing overall. Crashing the economy and trebling the national debt has had consequences for everyone. The interest payments on Government debt alone as a share of the economy are now the highest since in early 1950s.
Thanks to the former Prime Minister’s disastrous premiership, interest rates that homeowners are now paying have gone through the roof, taking away home ownership for many in this country. We are in the midst of a cost of living crisis that was made in Downing Street but is being paid for by working people all over the country. If it is possible to sum up this dreadful Government in one individual’s actions and behaviours, it is the crashing of the economy, accompanied by the highest tax burden on working people in 70 years, and the largest fall in living standards since records began in the 1950s. They are reckless, incompetent and unapologetic for the chaos they have wrought across the country.
But the Government seem to want to go further. They have looked at the former Prime Minister’s chaos inflicted on the country by the £45 billion unfunded tax cuts for the richest, and decided to trump that with a £46 billion unfunded tax cut to scrap national insurance, but will not tell us how they will pay for it. [Interruption.] There is chuntering from the Treasury Bench. Instead of chuntering, perhaps they will tell us how they will pay for that £46 billion unfunded commitment. When the Minister responds, will he take the opportunity of this rare occasion of a Scottish statutory instrument being discussed on the Floor of the House to answer my fifth question, about where the money for the £46 billion unfunded commitment will come from?
We have had three failed Prime Ministers in the UK over as many years, an embarrassing statistic the SNP could not help but match, with three First Ministers in Scotland in as many years. They have brought back former leaders to take charge, although the party in government in this Parliament have not done that for the top job, or certainly not for now anyway. Scotland is governed by a man who is responsible for many of the problems we face in the first place—he will have to take charge of these borrowing requirements—the Education Secretary who wrecked our education system, the Finance Secretary who decimated local government finance and the leader who led them to their worst ever election result.
Edward Timpson (Eddisbury) (Con)
I am very much enjoying the hon. Gentleman’s jousting, although I suspect he will have to wait quite a while before he gets to do it again for real in the general election, but will he be supporting that statutory instrument today?
Ian Murray
Yes, we will be supporting the statutory instrument, but it is worth putting it into the context of where these borrowing powers will have to be spent and the requirements of that. I know the hon. Gentleman would hardly wish to defend the Scottish Government’s record on spending; Members on the Opposition Benches certainly will not do that. What is happening in Scotland because of having two bad Governments needs to be completely exposed—[Interruption.] Oh, SNP Members are awake.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
The hon. Gentleman was making us nod off.
Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)
As we look towards a general election and the almost certain prospect of a Labour Government, with Labour Members switching places with those now on the Government Benches, would the hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) be prepared to commit a Labour Government to restoring the Scottish block grant?
Ian Murray
I would commit the Labour Government to the fiscal framework agreement that has already been put in place. It was negotiated and agreed in August 2023, and lays out the fiscal framework for the years ahead. When Labour Members move from the Opposition to the Government Benches come the general election, I am not sure if the hon. Member for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan) will be still be in his place. We have had 14 years of Conservative failure in this place and 17 years of SNP failure in Scotland too. That is the context in which these orders come forward. There is an enormous black hole in Scotland’s public finances, while one in six Scots are on NHS waiting lists. Real earnings in Scotland today are lower than they were in 2007. The only response to this crisis from either Government has been to increase taxes.
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
I wonder whether the hon. Member agrees with his shadow Health Secretary who said at the weekend that, right across the UK, every part of the NHS is in crisis. All roads lead back to Westminster, because, even though this is a devolved matter, decisions taken in Westminster have an impact on the NHS across the whole country.
Ian Murray
The conclusion is that all roads must lead to a Labour Government to resolve the issue. That is where we end up.
The only response to this crisis from either Government has been to increase taxes. [Interruption.] Those on the Treasury Bench are still chuntering. I wonder whether they can still chunter about where the £46 billion unfunded spending commitments are going to come from. Those on the Treasury Bench have presided over the highest tax burden on working people in 70 years, and the SNP went even further, with any Scot earning over £28,500 a year paying more tax than anywhere else in the UK—that is nurses, teachers, police officers, firefighters and council workers all paying for their Government’s incompetence.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
The hon. Gentleman earlier mentioned the previous Prime Minister and the high interest rates in the sterling zone. Will he apologise for buddying up with the Tories in 2014, wearing his Union Jack jacket, saying that Scotland should stick with the Tory Government, stick with the risk of a Prime Minister doing what she did, and stick with the risk of a currency zone that has hammered people’s mortgages and hammered people’s standards of living. He can apologise from the Dispatch Box if he wants.
Ian Murray
Mr Deputy Speaker, I am so looking forward to the hon. Gentleman bringing forward yet another financial perspective to what independence would look like, but it would absolutely trash our economy and make what is currently going on look like a picnic in the park. He cannot answer any of the basic questions about how that would work.
At the same time as hammering working people in Scotland with tax increases, the SNP has U-turned on its U-turn and, again, will not take any more money from the oil and gas giants’ excess profits, but will, instead, take more money from our nurses in income tax. Working people are paying the price and getting less. The truth is that this motion today is not what the people of Scotland and the UK are calling out for; they are speaking with clarity that they want change—change from a cruel and failing Conservative Government and change from a tired and failing SNP Administration. They want change. Let us get this general election and deliver that change.
Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East) (SNP)
I must start by reflecting how glad I am to see that this topic has captivated the imagination of the House with the participation here today.
Let me start by agreeing with the shadow Secretary of State on one point: if anything reflects the zombie nature of this Parliament, it is the fact that we are spending 90 minutes on the Floor of the House discussing something that usually would be decided by 12 people in the attic and, at best, go to a deferred Division.
Clearly, the Government are very thin when it comes to stuff to put before the House, but given that this measure is here, I am happy to debate it. Let me also say that there has been suggestion that there is nothing to see here—that all that is happening is a statutory instrument to give effect to an agreement that has been reached between the Scottish and UK Governments. That is not quite the case, though, is it? Of course, officials in both Governments have worked out agreements on how things should be calculated—how inflation and various other factors should be determined—and it is good to see that officials in both Governments are singing from a common hymn sheet when it gets to analysing the situation before them. But that is not to pretend that the quantum of money involved is the subject of consensus or agreement.
I would have thought that even Scottish Ministers would be a little concerned to suggest that this is an inflation-related increase in borrowing limits. The increase is 1.6% over seven years, for money that mainly goes to the construction industry where we have been looking at 40% or 50% inflation over the same period. I do not even know how they can keep a straight face in describing this as an inflation-rated increase.
The truth is that these borrowing limits are not a matter of negotiation between the Scottish and UK Governments. They are not subject to a legislative consent motion; they are something that is determined by the UK Treasury, and that is the statutory position. This UK Treasury has determined what the figures are, and, to be frank, it has the Scottish Government over a barrel because the only option is to agree to this proposed increase, or to get no increase at all. The Government have us over the same barrel, because we either agree to this 1.6% increase, or the status quo ante will prevail and there will be no increase at all.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
Further to the point made by the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) about the shadow Health Secretary pointing out that all roads lead to Westminster, and that the spending constraints and austerity that have been chosen were foisted upon everybody, it is a ridiculous situation, surely, when Scotland’s hands are tied like no other country in Europe. Spain does not decide its priorities for health spending based on what France is spending, so why should Scotland or Wales do similarly? Why also do the Barnett consequentials stem from only one of the nations of the UK? Wales probably has the greatest health needs, but we do not see money for England as a consequence of Welsh needs or Scottish needs. Why does it all stem from the one part? That is something those of the Tory-Labour “Better Together” agenda have never addressed: the imbalance of the UK, with one partner in the lead and the rest having to follow with the choices they make for us.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
That intervention was longer than many speeches I have given here.
Tommy Sheppard
I think I agree with the sentiments expressed by the hon. Gentleman. To come back to the discussion on capital borrowing requirements, the other important point that must surely be made, which reflects what he says about who is responsible, is that there is context. That context is a 16% cut—16.1%, to be exact—in the block grant available for capital funding of public services in Scotland. That is not my figure; it was provided by the House of Commons Library in an analysis done on figures provided by the Treasury. That is the real-terms cut that central Government are making, and it means that the borrowing limits available to the Scottish Government have then to be used to compensate for those cuts and to mitigate their effects.
There has been discussion about how these borrowing limits came about as a result of the Smith commission proposals, but this order is in direct contravention of the spirit of the Smith commission. The proposal from the Smith commission was not that UK capital spending that takes place in Scotland should be devolved to the Scottish Government and the Scottish Government should take control of it. That was not the proposal; I might have considered that and supported that, as somebody who supported full fiscal autonomy for the Scottish Government at the time, but that was not what we were discussing.
The proposal that came from the Smith commission was for a supplemental capacity for the Scottish Government to borrow additional moneys to fund particular projects and public services in Scotland if they had a mandate to do so. It was not meant to compensate for core capital funding. Therefore, as the Scottish Government are now being forced to do that, the cost of UK capital spending in Scotland is being incrementally transferred from the UK Exchequer to the Scottish Government. That, my friends, is a Union dividend in reverse. That is a Union penalty. That is the price we are having to pay for being part of these arrangements.
Alison Thewliss
My hon. Friend is making some excellent points on the impact of the budget cuts to capital funding. Does he appreciate that for constituents of ours there are direct consequences of that, combined with the inflation we have seen? The rebuilding of the quay wall at Windmillcroft Quay in my constituency is now facing real problems, because the shortfall in the project budget is in the region of £25 million as a result of the inflation in construction and other things. When the capital grant gets cut, there is no way of making that up.
Tommy Sheppard
I agree with that. I was just coming on to talk about the impact of these cuts and the fact that, even with increased borrowing by the Scottish Government, we are still talking in overall terms about a 9% reduction in the capital budget in Scotland. A 9% reduction means that some big projects are going to be delayed and some are going to be shelved. People who are looking for a new building or a new piece of infrastructure in their constituency should understand, when they are told delays are going to take place, that those are a consequence of what we are deciding here.
Of course, not all capital spending is to do with big, grandiose projects; a lot of capital spending is focused on improving the day-to-day operational delivery of public services, and therefore the consequences of cuts and delays will have an impact on revenue budgets as well. If we cannot improve the energy efficiency of a particular building through capital improvements, it will cost more to run that building. If we have to provide temporary facilities, that will cost more.
There is a double whammy. Not only is the capital budget having to be funded in part by a charge on the revenue budget to Scottish taxpayers, because of the borrowing the Scottish Government undertake, but the revenue consequences elsewhere in operational budgets will put them under considerable additional strain.
Tommy Sheppard
I will not, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind, because I am just about to—
Angus Brendan MacNeil
The hon. Gentleman is making a good point on capital spending. The Scottish Government and a small Scottish island cannot build a replacement hospital at the moment because of those capital constraints. Meanwhile, independent Ireland has so much money from its surplus that it is funding nurses and Erasmus students not just in its own territory, but in Northern Ireland, which is currently part of the UK.
Tommy Sheppard
Indeed.
This is the final point that I want to make. Let us remember that when we talk about Scottish Government borrowing—the entire thing that we are talking about here—it is borrowing with the permission of, and guaranteed by, the UK Treasury. It is not possible for the Scottish Government to do a deal with a private sector house builder and get some private finance to build more social housing as an additional project in Scotland. That is not possible unless it is agreed to by the UK Treasury and comes within these limits, so the Scottish Government, who are heralded as the most powerful devolved regional Government in the world, do not have the financial capital powers that even a medium-sized business has to manage its own affairs.
That is why, in the end, the argument should really be for a Government in Scotland who have the capacity to make decisions about capital spending and other aspects of our finances based upon the needs and requirements of the people of Scotland, rather than the needs and requirements of mandarins in the Treasury in Whitehall. That is why we should have independence for Scotland.
John Lamont
I am grateful to hon. Members for their important contributions to the debate. A number of Members expressed surprise that we are having this debate. I am surprised by their shyness and reluctance to come to the mother of Parliaments to debate this important matter. We are here on behalf of our constituents to talk about how additional resource will be allocated to people in Scotland. We should all welcome that rather than being slightly uncertain about it. I am certainly relishing the opportunity to talk from the Dispatch Box about the additional resource that the people of Scotland, including those in my constituency, will get.
Alison Thewliss
The Minister is talking about additional resource, but he cannot deny that there has been massive inflation in construction costs as a result of Brexit, covid and his previous Prime Minister. In that spirit, will he address the problems that have been caused by his Government, and will he commit to the extra £25 million needed for Windmillcroft Quay, the Citizens Theatre and the Govanhill baths in Glasgow, which have all seen huge inflation in construction costs?
John Lamont
I am grateful to the hon. Member for making that point, and I will come to some of the allegations made about Scotland’s budget shortly.
The hon. Member for Glasgow South made a number—[Hon. Members: “Edinburgh South!”] My apologies. The hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) made a number of points about how annual limits are calculated. Annual limits are calculated in accordance with the 2023 agreement and are based on the OBR’s GDP deflator forecast at the time of the Scottish Government’s draft budget. I can confirm that the GDP deflator used to calculate the new limits for this order was 1.677%.
Let me respond to the other questions asked by the hon. Member for Edinburgh South. Some £1.76 billion of the national loans fund long-term loan remains outstanding and counts against the £3 billion statutory limit, including the £300 million borrowed in March 2024. I will write to him on his other points. He made a general point about the levels of Government debt, but we should not forget that the reason we have such significant debt is the huge interventions that the Government made to support jobs and communities during the pandemic. Had we not made those interventions to support jobs, including in the hon. Member’s constituency of Edinburgh South, many people would be out of work and many more businesses would have struggled to survive the pandemic. If he and Labour Members are now saying they were opposed to those interventions, I think our constituents would want an explanation of why they would not want a Government to make those types of interventions to help during a pandemic. From my experience of my own constituency, I know that the furlough scheme, for example, and the huge amount of additional support that went in to support businesses were very much welcomed, but Labour Members now seem to be opposed to those things.
The hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard) suggested that this agreement has in some way been imposed on the Scottish Government. That is just not the case: it is a great example of both Governments working together, both at an official level and at a ministerial level. Again, the two Governments in Scotland working collaboratively to deliver for the betterment of our country is something that all of our constituents would expect to see, and would very much welcome.
Tommy Sheppard
All I am trying to establish is whether the UK Government are telling us that the quantum of these borrowing limits is to be agreed between the UK Government and the Scottish Government, or whether in law, that figure is determined by the UK Treasury. Which is it?
John Lamont
I could not be clearer that this is an example of both Governments working together to agree what is in the best interests of Scotland. It is now for the Scottish Government to decide how they use those additional spending and borrowing powers.
A number of hon. Members have suggested, both in speeches and in interventions, that the UK Government have in some way cut the capital budget for Scotland. The SNP has cut its own budgets by wasting so much taxpayers’ money on failed projects in Scotland. [Interruption.] Hon. Members scoff from a sedentary position, but the SNP spent more on trying and failing to build two ferries than it claims it would cost to set up a whole new state when it is proposing an independent Scotland. They have also suggested that the UK Government have cut Scotland’s overall budget, but Scotland’s block grant is at a record high. However, the SNP Scottish Government have hugely cut local government funding, which is impacting frontline services the length and breadth of Scotland—that is the cut that SNP Members should be talking about. A spokesman for the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities said that the SNP’s last budget was
“not a good budget for Scottish local government”.
I could happily put SNP Members in touch with that spokesperson, but I suspect that they are already in touch with that person, given that those were the words of an SNP councillor. Even their own side are complaining about the level of funding that the SNP is giving to local councils across Scotland.
To conclude, this order demonstrates the continued commitment of this United Kingdom Government to work with the Scottish Government to deliver for the people of Scotland and maintain a functioning settlement for Scotland. On that basis, I commend it to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That the draft Scotland Act 1998 (Increase of Borrowing Limits) Order 2024, which was laid before this House on 17 April, be approved.
Business of the House (Today)
Ordered,
That at this day’s sitting, the Speaker shall put the Questions necessary to dispose of proceedings on the Motion in the name of Secretary Mark Harper relating to the High Speed Rail (Crewe - Manchester) Bill: Instruction (No. 3) not later than 90 minutes after the commencement of proceedings on the Motion for this Order; such Questions shall include the Questions on any Amendments selected by the Speaker which may then be moved; proceedings on that Motion may continue, though opposed, after the moment of interruption; and Standing Order No. 41A (Deferred divisions) shall not apply.—(Penny Mordaunt.)
High Speed Rail (Crewe - Manchester) Bill (Instruction) (No. 3)
(7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
18:10 - The House divided: - Ayes: 323 / Noes: 7 - Question accordingly agreed to.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I inform the House that Mr Speaker has selected amendments (a), (b), (c) and (d) as listed on the Order Paper. I will call the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South to move his amendments formally at the end of the debate.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Huw Merriman)
I beg to move,
That it be an instruction to the Select Committee to which the High Speed Rail (Crewe - Manchester) Bill is committed to deal with the Bill as follows:
(1) The Committee shall, before concluding its proceedings, amend the Bill by—
(a) leaving out provision relating to a railway between a junction with Phase 2a of High Speed 2 south of Crewe in Cheshire and a point in the vicinity of the parish of Millington and Rostherne in Cheshire,
(b) leaving out provision relating to a railway between Hoo Green in Cheshire and a junction with the West Coast Main Line at Bamfurlong, south of Wigan, and
(c) making such amendments to the Bill as it thinks fit in consequence of the amendments made by virtue of sub-paragraphs (a) and (b).
(2) The Committee shall not hear any petition to the extent that it—
(a) relates to whether or not there should be—
(i) a railway between a junction with Phase 2a of High Speed 2 south of Crewe in Cheshire and a point in the vicinity of the parish of Millington and Rostherne in Cheshire, or
(ii) a railway between Hoo Green in Cheshire and a junction with the West Coast Main Line at Bamfurlong, south of Wigan, or
(b) otherwise relates to a railway mentioned in sub-paragraph (a).
(3) The Committee shall treat the principle of the Bill, as determined by the House on the Bill’s Second Reading, as comprising the matters mentioned in paragraph (4); and those matters shall accordingly not be at issue during proceedings of the Committee.
(4) The matters referred to in paragraph (3) are—
(a) the provision of a high speed railway between a point in the vicinity of the parish of Millington and Rostherne in Cheshire and Manchester Piccadilly Station,
(b) in relation to the railway mentioned in sub-paragraph (a) as set out on the plans deposited in January 2022 in connection with the Bill in the office of the Clerk of the Parliaments and the Private Bill Office of the House of Commons, its broad route alignment, and
(c) the fact that there are to be no new stations (other than Manchester Piccadilly and Manchester Airport) on the railway mentioned in sub-paragraph (a).
(5) The Committee shall have power to consider any amendments proposed by the member in charge of the Bill which, if the Bill were a private bill, could not be made except upon petition for additional provision.
(6) Paragraph (5) applies only so far as the amendments proposed by the member in charge of the Bill fall within the principle of the Bill as provided for by paragraphs (3) and (4) above.
That these Orders be Standing Orders of the House.
That the Order of 20 June 2022 (High Speed Rail (Crewe - Manchester) Bill: Instruction (No. 2)) be rescinded.
Mr Deputy Speaker
With this it will be convenient to discuss:
Amendment (a), in paragraph (1)(a), line 2, leave out from “vicinity of” to end and insert—
“Chainage 281+350 in the parish of Millington and Rostherne in Cheshire, including all structures relating to a junction with the now cancelled Phase 2b railway between this point and a junction with Phase 2a of High Speed 2 south of Crewe,”.
Amendment (b), after paragraph (1)(b) insert—
“() leaving out provision for the Ashley Infrastructure Maintenance Base - Rail, and”.
Amendment (c), in paragraph (1)(c), line 2, leave out “and (b)” and insert “, (b) and ()”.
Amendment (d), in paragraph (4)(a), line 1, leave out “high speed”.
Huw Merriman
The motion instructs the High Speed Rail (Crewe – Manchester) Bill Select Committee to resume its work of scrutinising the Bill. To put it simply, the Bill was always going to cover the 15 miles that form the key backbone of Northern Powerhouse Rail, and the motion asks the Committee to continue its work of scrutinising the Bill to deliver this first section of the Liverpool to Manchester railway—the 15-mile section between Manchester Piccadilly station and the parish of Millington and Rostherne in Cheshire.
The motion also requests that the Committee remove the sections of railway south of Millington, which were only required to deliver the now cancelled elements of High Speed 2. Members and constituents who have expressed concerns about the impact of this 15-mile stretch of railway on their property and livelihoods will be able to have their petitions heard. It is therefore crucial that the Select Committee continues its work.
Turning to the detail, on 4 October 2023 the Government announced Network North, a transformative transport infrastructure plan that will see £36 billion invested in hundreds of transport projects across the country. Every region is set to receive the same or more transport investment as they would have under previous plans in transport projects—projects that matter the most to communities up and down the country. At the same time, the Government confirmed an additional £12 billion of investment to enable Northern Powerhouse Rail to proceed to better connect Liverpool and Manchester.
The change before the House is a crucial part of the Government’s Network North strategy, allowing us to invest the money put aside for HS2 in projects that will transform transport within the region. Specifically on Northern Powerhouse Rail, this allows us to deliver it in full, bringing in Bradford and Hull. Network North will radically improve travel between and within our cities and towns and around the local areas, benefiting more people, in more places and more quickly than in previous plans.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the members of the Select Committee for their hard work up to this point. It is no small task that has been put before them, and they have all worked with a vigour that is to be admired, even if some of the work had to be paused while the Government refocused this agenda.
Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
As is well known, I have been opposed to the HS2 project since its inception, which goes back about 10 years or so. The Minister is giving us a bit of a eulogy about what is being done, and I am very glad that HS2 has been substantially changed and will not go beyond Birmingham. The question I put to the Minister is this: is an instruction the right way to go? Doing so in effect bypasses the Standing Orders, and it puts my constituents and those of my right hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Gavin Williamson) and my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) in an invidious position, to say the very least. I will come on to that later, if I may, but will he answer my question, please?
Huw Merriman
I had not really started the eulogy yet, but I do believe this is the right vehicle. The Select Committee on the Bill had already been set up, and it was set up to look at not just HS2 phase 2b, but Northern Powerhouse Rail. It was always on that basis that it was formed, so it makes sense to repurpose the Committee to allow it to continue to work on the one aspect that continues, and to take out the other aspects of HS2 phase 2b, which of course is no longer continuing.
I also want to mention my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), who has been a diligent, conscientious and highly effective Committee Chair over the past year and a half. I know he will be looking forward to getting back to the task, as will the other Committee members.
Sir Gavin Williamson (South Staffordshire) (Con)
My hon. Friend raises an important point in saying that we should repurpose the Committee. However, the amount of spend for Northern Powerhouse Rail is potentially quite different from what was agreed before, and he is almost depriving the House of the ability to have a proper view of it and to decide how much money is spent on the project.
Huw Merriman
My right hon. Friend obviously believes the point he makes, but almost two years ago—I think it was back in June 2022—after Second Reading, this House passed the motion that has allowed the Select Committee to sit, and its remit was to look at phase 2b and also Northern Powerhouse Rail. By definition, we are looking to strip out the elements that are no longer relevant because HS2 phase 2b is not going ahead, but in my view the Committee should continue to sit to consider the parts that are still going ahead.
Sir Gavin Williamson
I thank my hon. Friend for being so generous in giving way. There is potentially a significant difference in cost, and in terms of the impact on communities. By taking this process and railroading it through—excuse the pun—the Minister is not giving the House a proper opportunity to discuss the detail and make a decision on it, unless he accepts that there will be no difference in cost between the two proposals.
Huw Merriman
The route selected as the preferred route, which the Bill Committee was tasked with hearing petitions on, remains exactly the same route as was previously identified. With respect, I contend that the Committee has already started its journey. It has already received petitions from those who feel they are affected by this issue, and I contend that that is the right vehicle. I have said warm words about the Committee’s Chair, and as I see the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) in his place, I also put on the record my thanks for his hard and heroic work.
Sir William Cash
The question the Minister referred to is one of additional provisions. The real question—this is a technical question and not good for an intervention—and the bottom line is that additional provisions can be petitioned against. The manner in which the motion is constructed will effectively greatly inhibit, and/or completely prevent, additional provisions from being pursued by petitioners, both in the constituency affected by the Bill, and also for my constituents, who are affected by the fact that the two sections, from Birmingham to Crewe and from Crewe to Manchester, are interconnected. There is a vast amount of concern in my constituency about this issue.
Huw Merriman
To be clear, I give a commitment that HS2 will not be going through my hon. Friend’s constituency, and therefore any petitions that were going to be relevant should lapse. This is a matter for the Bill Committee, but that would be the logical extension. Any petitions already made on this 15-mile stretch, which will continue to be within the remit because it continues to be the preferred route, will be heard by the Committee if this motion is passed. If there are amendments, such as from an environmental statement or any that I may propose, that reopens the window for petitions. On that basis, if there is anything new a petition can be made, but if there is not, the petition should already be in. I feel that is the right outcome.
I shall make some more progress. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) made clear on Second Reading, and as I have mentioned, part of the Bill’s original purpose was always to deliver this section of Northern Powerhouse Rail, the first half of the line between Manchester and Liverpool. Following today’s motion, the Committee will be able to go back to considering petitions from people and organisations still affected by the scheme. The Committee will also assess any changes to the Bill that I may bring forward to adapt it to deliver Northern Powerhouse Rail.
The proposed changes to the Bill will, quite rightly, prompt a new environmental assessment that will consider how any new element in the scheme will affect local areas. Where possible, I will use this as an opportunity to further reduce the construction impacts on communities, and the changes will be provided to the House in the usual way. Although this is a rather technical motion, holding this debate demonstrates good progress in developing the Government’s long-held ambition to improve connectivity between Liverpool and Manchester.
Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)
Can the Minister tell the House when Northern Powerhouse Rail will be complete?
Huw Merriman
I cannot give the hon. Gentleman an exact and firm date, but I am seeking to put the Bill Committee back on track, rather than restart the entire process—something that has been championed and supported by the Mayors of Manchester and Liverpool, and others. By its very definition we will be looking to deliver the Bill back, so that we can crack on and give the hon. Gentleman an earlier date than he may perhaps believe will be the case.
Since the Network North announcement, we have been engaging local leaders and MPs about the form the connection between Liverpool and Manchester will take, and we have held many discussions with local leaders to establish what their communities want from such a link. Alongside that, we must ensure that the options being considered represent the best possible use of the £12 billion funding available. On 25 March I was able to deposit a written statement in this place on the outcome of those discussions. We have heard clear support for a railway with stops at Liverpool, Warrington Bank Quay, Manchester airport and Manchester Piccadilly. Local leaders also supported the plan that the new railway should follow the broad alignment set out in the 2021 integrated rail plan.
The section of railway that we are discussing today is part of the plan’s larger Northern Powerhouse Rail network. We will improve connections on both sides of the Pennines, both by building new lines and by upgrading existing ones. Trains on this line will go past Manchester and on to York via Leeds. We will also upgrade the existing railway between Leeds and Bradford to reduce journey times and increase capacity between those destinations. Stations will also be upgraded and made more accessible. The environmental impact of the network will be reduced by further electrification.
With this plan, towns and cities across the whole of the north will benefit from direct services to Manchester airport. Passengers travelling to the airport from Liverpool could see their journeys slashed by almost an hour, while passengers from Leeds could benefit from a 41-minute reduction. The new station at Manchester airport will unlock the potential to further promote the international airport, acting as a catalyst for growth across the north-west.
That is just one of the benefits that Network North—our new long-term plan for transport—will deliver. We are refocusing on the journeys that really matter to people, connecting towns, cities and rural communities in all regions of the country. Every penny of the £19.8 billion committed to the northern leg of HS2 will be reinvested in the north. Every penny of the £9.6 billion committed to the midlands leg will be reinvested in the midlands. Bradford will get a brand-new station and connection, reducing journey times from Manchester from 56 minutes to 30 minutes.
Sir Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op)
As the Minister knows, the commitment for Birmingham to Manchester was in three Conservative manifestos. What he is now announcing is controversial and breaks with the tradition of cross-party agreement that we have seen up to now. The offering in terms of east-west connectivity is laudable, but the fact that we cannot get a direct link and increased capacity—it is not just about speed—from Birmingham through to Manchester will affect the whole of the north-west and stop much of the wealth in the south from getting further north because of decreased business activity.
Huw Merriman
I take the hon. Member’s point. It comes down to choices, and the choice as led by the Prime Minister was to cancel the stages of HS2 north of Handsacre and dedicate those moneys to other parts of the north and midlands in particular to connect those cities, which would not have seen a direct benefit from HS2.
As an example, let us take Bradford, a city that felt sore that it had missed out from the integrated rail plan. That decision provides £2 billion for a new station for Bradford. The concern that Bradford would have had was that, as things had stood, it may have seen businesses relocate away to, say, Manchester, because not only was it not receiving anything, but Manchester was receiving a lot. Ultimately, it comes down to choices.
Several hon. Members rose—
Sir Mark Hendrick
I take the point that the Minister is making—it is an improvement for Bradford—but HS2 would also have gone on another spur up from Birmingham to Leeds. Improving connectivity between Leeds and Bradford, which is not far, plus the station improvements, would have been far more beneficial than what he is proposing.
Huw Merriman
We have committed to delivering a faster route between Leeds and Bradford that will bring the journey time down to 13 minutes; that commitment is there. Look, it comes down to choices, and we have been quite clear with our choice, which is to repurpose the moneys from HS2. I believe that Labour’s position is to do likewise, because the Leader of the Opposition went to Manchester and made the same point that the line would not be recommitted. The key point is this: is the Labour party committed to repurposing for those Bradford projects? I am sure that we will hear from its Front Bench spokesperson.
Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the Minister give way?
Huw Merriman
I will not give way again; I will finish so that others can speak.
We will be upgrading the connections between Manchester and Sheffield, between Leeds and Sheffield, between Leeds and Hull, and between Hull and Sheffield. We will reopen several of the lines closed more than 60 years ago by Dr Beeching, reconnecting areas such as County Durham, Burton, Stocksbridge and Waverley. We will halve the time that it takes to travel between Nottingham and Leeds by upgrading the track between Newark and Nottingham. We will increase our investment in the midlands rail hub to £1.75 billion, better connecting more than 50 stations, and we will improve journey times from north Wales to England, bringing parts of north Wales within an hour of Manchester by electrifying the north Wales main line. Network North is vital to our plans to level up the economy. It will connect labour markets across the north, expanding where people can work and where companies can recruit from. It will make it easier to deliver goods to markets and shorten supply chains in regions, growing the local economy. Instead of dragging investment towards London, we will contribute towards growth everywhere in the country.
As I said, although the motion is technical, this is still an exciting day for the north. We are taking a step towards providing the kind of infrastructure that people really want, connecting the great cities of Manchester and Liverpool, and making it easier to move around, work and invest in the region. I commend the motion to the House.
Stephen Morgan (Portsmouth South) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for outlining the detail of this motion. I thank all members of the Select Committee for their work to date on the Bill, and all hon. Members who are contributing to this debate.
Labour will back this motion because after years of delay by this Government, we back progress on finally delivering Northern Powerhouse Rail—even the limited progress that this motion appears to bring. I say “finally” because the Government first promised Northern Powerhouse Rail over a decade ago. It has been in three consecutive Conservative manifestos yet has not been delivered. Plans have been continuously chopped, changed and scaled back.
The impact of that dither and delay is becoming painfully clear. Just last week, the Government’s own infrastructure adviser, Sir John Armitt, warned that the Conservatives’ failure to boost rail capacity in the north risks undermining levelling up and constraining economic growth. Sir John pointed out that the UK is the only country in Europe where productivity is below the national average in the second and third biggest cities. What a damning indictment, after 14 years of Conservative chaos.
After more than a decade of stagnation, the window is closing in which to deliver the transport infrastructure that our country needs to make people’s lives better, boost growth and reach net zero. Because of the fiasco that the Government have made of the now staggeringly expensive High Speed 2 project, poor connectivity, high congestion and low capacity will continue to hold back the midlands and the north. It is therefore vital that today’s motion does not unintentionally restrict any future plans to address rail capacity between Birmingham and Manchester.
As we know, under the sponsorship of the Mayor of Greater Manchester and the former Mayor of the West Midlands, work has started with private partners to find a new solution to the capacity issue between Birmingham and Manchester caused by this Government’s mishandling of HS2. However, the detailed final plans have not yet been presented to the Government, and no public decision has been made by Ministers on whether to support the findings. I hope that the Minister can assure the House that today’s motion will not result in the proposals from that review being hampered or prejudged, or bind the hands of the working group before the consortium makes its full recommendations.
As we know, the Government did not consult local leaders or experts when they cooked up their error-ridden Network North plan. The shambles that we have seen play out since is an inevitable result. It is vital that Ministers learn from these glaring mistakes and do not fall into the same trap again. I hope that the Minister will make it clear that today’s motion is no substitute for a serious, detailed delivery plan for Northern Powerhouse Rail, or the credible and transformative programme of transport infrastructure investment that the north and midlands need and deserve.
The Government’s current approach of developing small sections of projects that are ignorant of each other is neither coherent nor sufficient. As a result, it remains unclear how the Government plan to achieve their supposed objective of levelling up all parts of the north. As stated, after years of delays, it is vital that we finally begin to make progress on Northern Powerhouse Rail, no matter how limited that progress might be, which is why we will support the motion today.
Let me emphasise again that the progress must be made in partnership with local leaders, and that piecemeal announcements should not be seen as a substitute for a credible plan for Northern Powerhouse Rail, which is desperately needed if we are to deliver for the north. I hope that the Minister has taken those comments on board. I look forward to hearing his response to my points and those raised by others in the debate.
Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)
I must say that the motion before the House is quite bizarre. Now that the hybrid HS2 Bill has been adapted to supposedly deliver Northern Powerhouse Rail, we are asking the Select Committee on the High Speed Rail (Crewe – Manchester) Bill to agree a Bill for a railway that ends in a field, with no connection to the rest of the rail network. This is effectively a railway to nowhere. The motion and the adaption of the hybrid Bill will not facilitate a functioning railway until a connection is established to the rail network at Latchford in Warrington. The Department for Transport is presuming that the remainder of the line will be approved through a completely separate planning process, but does not say what that process is and when it will be brought forward. That is a massive departure from what was experienced in phase 1 or even phase 2, in which a whole corridor approach was considered, with clear connections possible, in each phase, to the existing network. It is totally flawed to segment NPR in the way proposed, rather than looking at the whole corridor, or even a whole phase or section. The proposal does not even properly consider what could be thought of as the NPR core route. The House should not be asked to approve something that will not deliver a functioning piece of infrastructure.
Sir William Cash
The instruction states:
“The Committee shall, before concluding its proceedings, amend the Bill by—”
and then sets out certain arrangements relating to certain aspects of the railway. It then states:
“making such amendments to the Bill as it thinks fit in consequence of the amendments made by virtue of”
the previous sub-paragraphs. The words “as it thinks fit” are an absolute carte blanche. If the railway ends in a field, it is not a railway. That is just the starting point. Have the examiners been asked to look at the Bill using the procedures for a hybrid Bill? Effectively, it will not be a Bill, when it has been treated in this way, if the instruction goes through. Should we not put forward petitions, irrespective of the constraints imposed by the instruction, to test just how much this is a matter of principle? The Bill is also constrained by the fact that Second Reading is now effectively torn up, and a new principle is being inserted into the Bill.
Jack Brereton
I thank my hon. Friend for those very thoughtful points. I entirely agree that the instruction is wide-ranging. It is concerning to see those sorts of powers being put forward to the Committee. It really does show the abuse of the hybrid Bill process. If any services are to use the line, the railway would have to secure much wider enhancements and additional complex infrastructure, and there is no guarantee of that being delivered. As I said, the delivery of any services on this line will depend on permission being secured for the rest of the section, and that will be approved under a completely separate planning process. The approach being taken really is totally back to front.
Graham Stringer
As the hon. Gentleman knows, I have a principled disagreement with him on HS2, but I respect his position. He is making a powerful case for dividing the House on this matter. Will he divide the House on it?
Jack Brereton
We may come to that shortly, but I am very concerned about this. Certainly, we may consider dividing on the motion.
We should focus first on properly understanding the connectivity enhancement need, and then design the infrastructure to meet that need. Instead, we already have the infrastructure design, and are trying to make it fit with the improvements that we would like for connectivity across the north, because we do not want to spend time doing this properly and restarting the hybrid Bill process. It might have made sense to use the proposed route when the track would be shared with HS2, but it does not make any sense now that phase 2 has gone. It is neither the optimal route for benefits nor the most cost-effective to deliver. I am afraid that this really is an abuse of the hybrid Bill process.
Sir William Cash
May I refer my hon. Friend to paragraph 3 of the motion? It states:
“The Committee shall treat the principle of the Bill, as determined by the House on…Second Reading, as comprising the matters mentioned in paragraph (4); and those matters shall accordingly not be at issue during proceedings of the Committee.”
What the motion is actually saying, surely, is that the principle of the Bill as originally passed will now be replaced by a new principle, and that any petitioner or anyone else who gets up to speak about it in any context will be told, because of an instruction by the whole House on what I could describe as the misleading basis—I am not accusing the Minister of this; I am merely commenting on the wording of the motion—that the issue cannot be put, and indeed is not to be regarded as an issue. That is a contradiction of what is clearly going on.
Jack Brereton
My hon. Friend has made a powerful point. That, too, illustrates the failings of the hybrid Bill process. My hon. Friend and I know about this all too well because of the abuses of the process that we have seen in Staffordshire, which really have not guarded against some of the issues and challenges to which people have been drawing attention. It brings into question the fitness of the process in its entirety, and the way in which hybrid Bills have been enacted.
This Bill was designed and set out to deliver phase 2b of HS2. It was never about NPR alone, so its original objectives were very different. To try to adapt the Bill in this way is totally flawed. It would not afford the due process that is required for the decision in question. I believe we should abandon this phase 2b Bill, and come back with a new hybrid Bill that will deliver NPR properly. We should look at the whole corridor between Liverpool and Manchester, and at areas beyond, not just at the section in the middle, which does not go anywhere. We need a Bill that is capable of delivering the whole project. We cannot just deliver a partial scheme, and expect it to magically result in capacity being released to enable the promised enhancement of services.
There are constraints along the whole route. What about the complexities of crossing the M56, the M6 and the Manchester ship canal to connect with the rail network at Latchford, east of Warrington Bank Quay? What about the enhancements that will be needed between Warrington and Liverpool, including the upgrading of the Fiddlers Ferry line to facilitate services, and what about the capacity improvements that are needed at Liverpool Lime Street station? All these issues need far more detailed consideration and focus, as well as a proper process for approval—and we have not even mentioned how all this will be delivered within a tight £12 billion budget envelope; it is more likely to cost more than £16 billion. As for the point raised by the hon. Member for Preston (Sir Mark Hendrick) about connecting with the west coast main line, I am afraid that that will not be possible because of the challenges presented in the Warrington area; the Arpley chord cannot provide a connection with the west coast main line to serve west coast stations north of Warrington.
One might ask why we in Staffordshire are so interested in these matters. It is because we fear those who are seeking to reignite phase 2 of HS2 and all the horrors that it was set to wreak on our fine county. People in Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire have overwhelmingly welcomed the Prime Minister’s courageous and correct decision to scrap phase 2. They want the £36 billion released to be spent on projects that will truly deliver the improvements in local transport that will help to transform their lives, and not on remote “white elephant” pet projects.
It is disappointing that the eagerness to progress the plans set out in the motion has not been mirrored in the actions to wind down site compounds, fill in the thousands of boreholes that have been left, and return land to its rightful owners across the rest of the phase 2 route. Little to no progress seems to have been made yet, and the significant costs continue to spiral, even though the project has been cancelled. People in Staffordshire communities such as Swynnerton and Yarnfield, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), are still fearful, given that they have not yet seen any visible signs of unwinding. Motions like the one before us today do nothing to dispel those fears, and there are concerns that some people would like nothing better than to see phase 2 restarted. That is why I have tabled several probing amendments, because we need to know that all elements relating purely to phase 2 will be removed.
Amendment (a) would leave out the provisions relating to the entirety of phase 2b from the junction with phase 2a at Crewe to where it would have joined the line to share track with NPR—importantly, including the stub and junction for where the line would join NPR, which would otherwise remain part of the design. Clearly, following the cancellation of phase 2, the stub and junction are no longer needed, so they should be removed from the design. Removing them would help to reassure that phase 2 could not be restarted at a later stage.
Sir Gavin Williamson
I thank my hon. Friend for making such powerful points. Does he hope that the Minister will come to the Dispatch Box and give him those reassurances—maybe right now?
Jack Brereton
Absolutely. We need reassurances from the Minister to allay the many fears among our communities throughout Staffordshire.
Amendment (c) is consequential on amendment (b), and both relate to the “Ashley infrastructure maintenance base - rail”. This IMB-R was specifically designed to service phase 2 of HS2. Given that phase 2 has been cancelled and that the IMB-R will no longer be required, NPR will be served by other facilities on the wider network. Again, the removal of the facility would give much reassurance about the cancellation of HS2 phase 2, and confirm that the project will not be brought back at some future point.
Amendment (d) would remove references to “high speed” but retain the word “railway”. This would be an important change, given that the line will be a conventional railway, not high speed. The NPR route between Manchester and Liverpool cannot and will not be high speed, because it is too short, at 67 km. It has two intervening stations and involves the use of sections with very sharp bends at Warrington and south of Liverpool, so it would be impossible for the route to be high speed. Without phase 2, it makes no sense to design this short section to high-speed standards, which would end up being dramatically over-specified and incur huge additional and unnecessary costs—unless, of course, the intention is to reignite phase 2.
On NPR, I must make it clear that I fully support the intention to properly connect cities and communities across the north. I know the importance of improved rail connectivity for my own city of Stoke-on-Trent, and I have led efforts to reopen more of our local rail network. I am incredibly grateful for the Government’s support for projects such as reopening Meir station and the Stoke to Leek line, which were included as part of Network North. I know the transformative impact that improving such rail services can have on the opportunities available to our communities.
What has been set out today, however, will not deliver on the intention of Northern Powerhouse Rail and communities in the north—it will not even come close. As the Minister and the Secretary of State will know, we have presented the Department with far superior alternatives, which should be given more serious consideration. The alternative upgrade proposals for the Chat Moss route would not only entail half the cost, but deliver far greater benefits. Upgrading the alternative route could deliver a shorter route between Manchester and Liverpool that is capable of delivering a 26% quicker journey time than is proposed. That is 26 minutes, as compared with the 35 minutes in the proposals.
Additionally, due to the extreme complexity and over-engineering of parts of the proposed route, not only could our proposal be delivered eight to 10 years sooner, meaning that communities across the north would feel the benefits far earlier, but our proposals would allow connectivity of the NPR core route to a far greater range of destinations throughout the north-west, including Preston, Wales and even into Scotland. It would also release the budget needed to enable the delivery of the much-desired underground through-platform at Manchester Piccadilly, which would otherwise remain far beyond reach.
To conclude, I hope that the Government will give far greater consideration to how NPR can be delivered, which can mean greater benefits and better value for money for the taxpayer. The proposal before us today does not do that. It is not even capable of delivering a functional piece of infrastructure. I strongly believe that the only way that can be achieved is through the introduction of a new hybrid Bill that is capable of properly delivering on the aspirations of Northern Powerhouse Rail and properly divorcing the scheme from phase 2 of HS2. It is essential that we see greater clarity and reassurance of communities throughout Staffordshire. Most importantly, we must see far greater urgency in progressing the unwinding of phase 2. I hope the Minister and the Department will take on board those concerns and reflect them in the action we need to see.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. I just point out that there is a bit of interest here, and the debate must conclude by 6.13 pm. If Members could focus on pithy speeches, that would be useful for getting in as many people as we can.
Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)
I do not think I will detain the House long. I want to say two or three things. The first is that there is an element of unreality about this debate, as there has been about many debates on Northern Powerhouse Rail and HS2 phase 2b. Mr Deputy Speaker, you may remember this as a northern MP—I am sure the Minister will remember it, too—but almost exactly 10 years ago, on 23 June, George Osborne as Chancellor of the Exchequer went to the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester and announced Northern Powerhouse Rail.
Since that time, the rail system across the north of England has had three names: it has been HS3, Crossrail of the north, and Northern Powerhouse Rail. How much work has been done on it? There has been no design work, no land purchased and no money dedicated to it. Ten years later, we are here, and the Minister says, “We will crack on with it.” “Crack on”, if I may say, after 10 years of complete inactivity when it was a Government commitment, is a rum old phrase to use for Northern Powerhouse Rail, if the Minister does not mind me saying so. He has made a decent fist of a cackhanded decision by the Government on HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail.
At different times and for political reasons and for other reasons, people have counterpoised against each other the Crossrail of the north, or Northern Powerhouse Rail, or HS3, against HS2. That is a strange thing to do, because if we increase the capacity of the rail system with HS2, those passengers have to have somewhere to go. The same applies if we increase the capacity, as I hope we do, with Northern Powerhouse Rail. If we have a good system going from Manchester to Hull via Bradford and Leeds and York, those passengers have to go somewhere.
If we have a new station at Manchester airport, we want people to come through it in great numbers, not just east-west but from the south as well. So that is a mistake, as has been pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan). While I respect the hon. Members for Stone (Sir William Cash) and for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton), they have been consistently opposed to HS2 for constituency reasons and how they see the impact of HS2 on Stafford, for example. Many of us on this side have seen the economic and transport benefits of HS2.
What I do not accept at all is the Prime Minister, unselected by his own party and unelected by the people of the United Kingdom, turning up after manifesto commitments from both parties—all three parties, in fact, if we go back to the original decision in 2009 when all three parties supported HS2—and saying, “We will stop it.” Whether we are talking about Northern Powerhouse Rail or HS2, the economic development of the north of England has, in effect, been abandoned by this Government. I do not know if the Prime Minister has ever driven up—or been driven up—the M6, but it is at full capacity. The decision to not go ahead with HS2 will reduce not only the capacity of the rail system but the speed because the trains will have to be split and they will not tilt. So the Government have isolated the north of England, and Manchester in particular.
Incidentally—this is not the main point of what I was going to say—I hear the Minister using the pork barrel politics of this Government by saying, “Well, Bradford can get this, so therefore it will not be supporting HS2.” When I chaired the board of Manchester airport, people in Yorkshire, the north-east and across the north of England knew the economic benefits of transport coming to Manchester. There was a North of England regional consortium that supported both Manchester airport and better links to it. So it is completely wrong to juxtapose investment in Bradford—which Bradford needs, as it has been neglected by most of the north of England—against investment in HS2 going to Manchester airport and to Manchester.
Sir Mark Hendrick
I declare an interest, in that I was a director of Manchester airport as well, some years back, as a Salford city councillor appointed to that position. Many in the House—although not the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton)—will remember phase 1of HS2, and I sat on that Committee for the best part of a year and a half. The whole process was very elongated—I will try not to make my intervention too elongated—but what it boiled down to was that when members of that Committee, particularly those on the Government side, had constituency interests, they tended to be far more accommodating, and the costs spiralled because there were tunnels going here, there and everywhere instead of going direct. That inflated the price. The reason we are in this mess now is that the Government have realised that we are close to an election and they want to spend £12 billion of the £37 billion that should have been spent on phase 2. They are now scattering it around certain places in the north of England in the hope that they can use that promise to get more—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. This is a very elongated intervention.
Graham Stringer
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his very long intervention. He is obviously right. Cheryl Gillan did a fantastic job.She was opposed to HS2, and she increased the costs enormously by getting tunnels built under the hills in her constituency.
Another way of looking at the economic nonsense we have had from this Government is that we do not have a high-speed route for the nation; we have an extension of the London underground. We have tunnels leading out of London to Birmingham. I do not know the train times, but my guess is that the times going to Birmingham, going through the tunnels out of London, will be shorter than using the Elizabeth line to travel across London. HS2 is just part of the underground system. It is a London scheme now, not a national scheme.
Sir William Cash
At the moment, travelling from Stoke-on-Trent or Stafford down to London Euston, as Conservative Members do, takes just over an hour. I would have thought that most people regard that as pretty fast.
Graham Stringer
Indeed, but we are talking about major national infrastructure. I always hoped that HS2 would not just go to Manchester and Leeds but, for both political and transport reasons, would go to Scotland. As someone who believes in the Union between England and Scotland, I think that would help, and it would be very good transport policy, too.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for taking another intervention. Does he agree that cancelling the northern leg of HS2 has taken away capacity that is now ending up on the roads, and that we therefore have more congestion, more pollution and more environmental damage?
Graham Stringer
I agree with the hon. Lady, and I hope I have already made that point.
Jack Brereton
The hon. Gentleman mentioned Scotland. Of course, it was always intended that HS2 would be compatible with the conventional network that serves Scotland. Why does he think the Department for Transport specified HS2 trains that are not able to tilt and are not the right size to go on the classic network?
Graham Stringer
I cannot answer that question. It was a Government decision, and the Minister has indicated that he will answer.
I respect those who oppose HS2. This House has supported HS2, which has been in all of our manifestos. I think it is outrageous that HS2 to Manchester has been cancelled by an insulting edict from the Prime Minister. The most important point in this debate was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan), who said that the elected Mayors of the west midlands and Greater Manchester have put together a plan to consider alternative methods of funding HS2. I hope the Minister can reassure the House that the Government will not follow a “burnt fields” policy of destroying it to make it more difficult for an incoming Labour Government to resurrect it.
The Conservative Members present say that they will remain opposed to HS2, and I remain supportive, because HS2 is good for the country, good for the environment and good for the economy of the north of England.
Sir Gavin Williamson (South Staffordshire) (Con)
I am conscious of the time, and we have a number of Members to get through.
This debate is about fairness and scrutiny. For those living along the 24 km section of Northern Powerhouse Rail that is common with phase 2 and who will be blighted by this process, especially between Rostherne and Warrington, is it really fair that the route has not been defined? I do not think it is fair, because it will have a major impact on all the people in that area for an awful long time.
I think all of us in this House believe that it is right to be investing more in our railways and road networks, whether they are in Staffordshire and the wider midlands or in the north of England. I, like many Members in this House, find it crazy how much difficulty we have crossing from Yorkshire into Lancashire or vice versa and on infrastructure that has sadly been neglected over multiple generations. But we are not talking about small amounts of money here. We are talking, at the most conservative end of the spectrum, about £12 billion, and if one were to speak to less-involved individuals and rail experts, most of them would say that the current proposals on NPR are in region of £16.2 billion.
Surely on the basis of scrutiny and accountability, this House should be very interested and engaged in how such large amounts of money are going to be spent and properly purposed. Some of us across the House will have differing views, but we should be able to scrutinise the proposals properly and put arguments forward for our constituents and the communities we represent, as opposed to this just being shuffled off upstairs into a Committee. Though we are grateful to many members of that Committee and the former Committees there have been for the work they do, this issue involves significant amounts of public money and will not be properly debated.
Looking at this project in its purest form, we are giving permission for a railway that starts in a field in Cheshire and ends somewhere in the Pennines at a place called node 3. I am not quite sure where node 3 is, and I am not sure whether many constituents of mine or people in this House have expressed a particular desire to visit node 3. That is how ill-defined this all is. We are effectively giving a complete pass to a small group of—I am sure—well-meaning and well-intentioned Members of this House to determine so much, when there is much debate we need to have.
There may be a great amount of discord. There will be Conservative Members such as my hon. Friends the Members for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) and for Stone (Sir William Cash) and myself who have great concern about the HS2 project in its entirety and considerable concern as to whether what is being proposed will get the best value for money and deliver the best service for our constituents across the midlands and the north. There will be Members on the Opposition Benches, and perhaps those on the Government Benches, with contrasting views, but it is right that the project is properly debated and properly discussed. We are going to be blighting the lives of so many people across Cheshire and other parts of the north-west of England without having had a proper debate.
Sir Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op)
Is the right hon. Gentleman not missing the point by talking, as he has done for however many minutes, about process rather than outcomes? When other countries around the world do major infrastructure projects, they look at the whole picture, decide what they want to do, they get on with it and they finish it. They do not have all the hurdles we have in this country. The French, German, Japanese and Chinese look at this country and laugh. They laugh because the nimbyism that exists on both sides of this House is stopping economic progress and impacting the standing of this country.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. We must ensure interventions are brief because the debate has to finish at 6.30pm. Four more Members wish to speak, possibly, before I have to call the Minister, so I ask colleagues to be conscious of that.
Sir Gavin Williamson
I guess I agree with a lot of what the hon. Member for Preston (Sir Mark Hendrick) says. We are talking about a programme that will deliver something for some people in the mid-2040s, which does not seem to be much of a dynamic, outcome-driven process. The hon. Gentleman wants to drive the programme through so that his constituents, and all of our constituents, can get to node 3 in the middle of the Pennines. That is not necessarily the best form of process. He is right that we should be concerned about outcomes and how we deliver the best outcomes for people across the country, but we are shuffling the matter upstairs without having a proper debate. We are effectively abdicating democratic accountability and responsibility over a budget and moneys of over £16 billion. I think we should be interested in that.
Wera Hobhouse
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the Government should ultimately draw a line under the mess they got themselves into with HS2, start again and allow us all to start with a completely new process?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. I warn those who want to get in later that I will have to limit speeches to five minutes.
Sir Gavin Williamson
In light of colleagues wanting to speak, I will draw my remarks to a conclusion.
There is a serious question about whether we are in danger of spending a lot more money. Members of Parliament in Staffordshire are concerned that these measures are being used as a Trojan horse to ram HS2 through by the back door. There is also concern that we are trying to bend a scheme that does not deliver the best outcomes for people in the north, the midlands or across the country. When there is so much concern that a scheme is not delivering those outcomes, we should ensure there is proper scrutiny of the process. I urge the Minister to give clear reassurance about the concerns that my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South, other hon. Members and I have raised. If he does not, he may have to start afresh and anew.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. The hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) has indicated that she does not want to speak, but I urge colleagues to limit their comments to five minutes or so in order to get everyone in.
Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)
I welcome the debate so we can reflect on the importance of high-speed rail, the Northern Powerhouse Rail project, and connecting our towns and cities.
When we talk about connectivity, we always talk about the great powerhouses that are our cities, but our towns matter too. In many cases, towns have been the first to see cuts and the last to see investment. We need to use this opportunity to talk about our communities in the round. Generations to come will look back at this period in our history with regret at a missed opportunity to invest in the future of our country. When previous generations planned the infrastructure we see today, and in many ways take for granted, whether that is the canal, railway or motorway network that we enjoy, people had foresight. They planned well ahead, understood that in order to create a connected country they had to plan for a connected country, and took decisions for future generations, not only the current one. In that spirit, the cancellation of HS2 from the midlands to the north is a matter of serious regret.
The proposals have been pitched to say, “Well, the north of England can now have Northern Powerhouse Rail. Isn’t that good news?” Of course the £12 million investment connecting Manchester and Liverpool is welcome, but London did not have to choose between HS2 and the Elizabeth line, which cost £19 billion. If London does not have to choose, why on earth should the north of England have to choose on the same basis? Again, it is because the north of England has been shortchanged when it comes to investment.
Local leaders and Mayors across the midlands and the north have been working hard to try to rescue this decision and make some sense of what it can mean for future investment. We owe a significant debt of gratitude to our great council leaders, our Mayors and our transport authorities—particularly the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, Transport for the North and the local transport bodies—for the work they have done.
None the less, there are serious questions about the proposal on the table. Why do the Government seem to want to close the door completely on the idea that a midlands to Manchester link of HS2, funded by private finance, might be an option in the future? If the Government do not want to fund it today, why close the door for a funding model tomorrow?
Why has Manchester Piccadilly been told that it cannot have tunnelling that would take the platforms underground instead of overground, when the whole of the south of England is more or less tunnelled from the centre of London outwards? Why is a tunnel good enough for a field in the south of England, but not for one of our major cities in the north of England?
Manchester Airport station is a significant hub not just for Greater Manchester, but for the whole of the north of England, so why is Greater Manchester and its taxpayers being asked to make a local contribution to that scheme, when it is essentially a national project?
Why not use this as an opportunity to look at transport in the round? Heavy rail is important, and all the benefits of HS2 were well-rehearsed: they were about capacity, passenger transport, taking freight off the congested motorways, increased frequency and reducing costs. The whole project was also an opportunity to look at transport in the round—multi-modal transport, including bus, trams, trains and other airports. Why not use this as an opportunity to look beyond the cities to our towns? It is a significant frustration in Greater Manchester that most of our transport relies on the centre of Manchester to go in and out, because the cross-borough connectivity is so poor. Why not use this as an opportunity to bring forward plans to have an orbital tram for Greater Manchester—for the north-east of the conurbation—connecting the Bury line to Middleton and on to Chadderton and Oldham and through to the Ashton line, which, under these plans, faces a two-year closure during engineering works at Manchester Piccadilly. Why not use this as an opportunity for that?
Why not use this scheme as an opportunity to reinvigorate plans for reopening some of the lines closed by Beeching? It would be fantastic to reopen the Middleton Junction station on the Rochdale to Manchester Victoria line, serving new communities that have been rebuilt around the Foxdenton Lane area in Chadderton. Why not use it as an opportunity to have a joined-up transport system? FirstGroup, through the Lumo brand, has suggested a potential 2027 connection from Rochdale to London Euston. It will pass through Mills Hill in Chadderton and Moston, which serves Chadderton, without stopping to say hello. Why not look at that in the round and say that, since the light rail system was introduced in Oldham, there is no longer a heavy rail station for Oldham town centre. The nearest that we have is Mills Hill, so why not have that national connectivity at Mills Hill, joining up to Victoria and on to London Euston?
Sir Gavin Williamson
The hon. Gentleman is making an incredibly powerful argument, but he is also making an argument as to why this should be a wider discussion; it should not just be shunted upstairs. Does he agree that we need to open up this debate so that we can have bespoke, clear legislation to make this happen?
Jim McMahon
The problem is that there was no debate or legislation when the Prime Minister woke up one morning and decided to cancel HS2; it was done on a whim. All those manifesto commitments, all those promises to the business community and to the public that we would see this through, because we had a generational responsibility to plan for the future, were scrapped overnight. I have no faith that any further parliamentary process will ultimately deliver better transport in the north of England. In the end, it will be used by people who have another interest, which is to stop it entirely.
Jack Brereton
If we had a Labour Government—I hope that we will not—does the hon. Gentleman think that they would bring phase 2 back?
Jim McMahon
In the end, it would be for the Labour Government to assess what they inherit at that point, but does that not make the case for not having a scorched-earth policy of completely derailing what could have been HS2 by selling off the lands and the assets that were purchased to free up that route in the way this Government are currently proposing?
James Grundy
The hon. Gentleman calls it a scorched-earth policy. I declare my interest as somebody whose family farm is affected by the proposed route of HS2 phase 2b, but ultimately people such my own family and the community I live in have been suffering for over a decade with uncertainty about whether the project would go ahead. He calls it scorched earth, but is it not only fair that people get their life back after having that uncertainty for so long?
Jim McMahon
Any functioning Government should be able to balance the need to involve local people in decisions that affect their day-to-day lives, providing certainty about the future and being able to get vital infrastructure investments for the country off the ground. It should not be a trade-off between one or the other, where people’s livelihoods and lives are left in the air for years and years, only for the project to be taken away. In the end, nobody wins, do they? People cannot get the time back that they wasted being stressed about the impact because they were not properly consulted and engaged, only to have it scrapped overnight—and for what? It is about involving people in the right time in the right decisions, so that they have agency in the process.
I will bring my remarks to a conclusion with this: if London did not have to choose between its sub-regional investment and its national investment, why on earth should the north of England?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
In order to get the last two speakers in, I need to put on a time limit of six minutes.
Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker; I think I can do it a lot quicker than that.
I agree with the remarks made by my hon. Friends from Staffordshire and, in particular, my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton), who set out the practical side. I also agree with the scrapping by the Government of the Birmingham to Crewe section, but that does have consequences, both for my constituents and for those between Crewe and Manchester.
Having looked at the appalling behaviour of HS2 over the years, the mess over compensation that is still carrying on, and things like that—I have been into all that in the past, and it is not strictly speaking the subject of this particular debate, but it is a very serious point—I also agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South that the Bill should be withdrawn and reintroduced, to ensure that the petitioners by reason of valid additional provisions, as a matter of principle, can have it examined properly in all respects, ab initio.
As I said in my interventions, the sleight of hand of this instruction, which as I have already noted is self-contradictory and purports to provide for matters that are, in my opinion, unprincipled and, as a matter of law and procedure, are stating things to be so that simply are not so, is not the way to proceed. There is a lot of merit in the way the Government are reorientating the objects in order to improve the situation in other parts of the country. However, as regards those directly affected—and ultimately the hybrid Bill procedure and its principles are about protecting those petitioners injuriously affected by a Bill’s provisions—I believe the motion is morally unjustified, indefensible and damaging to the rights of petitioners, with respect both to the constituents between Birmingham and Manchester and to my constituents who will be affected between Birmingham and Crewe.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
As the hon. Gentleman has been admirably short, I will call Grahame Morris, but please remember that I need to bring in the Minister as well.
Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)
Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker—I will respect your wishes. I had not intended to speak in the debate, so I apologise for being late. I serve on the House of Commons Transport Committee, along with colleagues who spoke earlier from the Government Benches. I also served on the HS2 hybrid Bill Committee that dealt with the section from Crewe to Manchester Piccadilly.
Sir William Cash
Is the hon. Gentleman actually involved with a Bill that is currently in existence, or is he suggesting that something should be done in respect of a Bill that is not the same as the Bill that was introduced in the first place?
Grahame Morris
My goodness, that is a complicated intervention—I am not sure that I am suitably qualified to answer it. I just thought that I might share some of my thoughts having served on the Bill Committee, without any particular axe to grind.
I served on the Bill Committee because I was asked to do so as a servant of the House, in order to consider the merits or otherwise of the various petitions. I do not know whether Members are familiar with the process. I am not suggesting for a moment that it is perfect, and I know that there are arguments for revising the hybrid Bill procedure, which is quite lengthy, but some right hon. and hon. Members have suggested—perhaps through a lack of understanding of the process—that it is a mechanism for steamrolling through opposition, and I can absolutely assure them that that does not happen. In fact, if anything, petitioners—who may be individuals, businesses, environmental groups, local authorities or groups representing commercial interests, such as the National Farmers’ Union—are given ample opportunity to make representations to the Committee through petitions, and then to speak to those petitions and articulate their arguments for mitigation, compensation and route variation.
Jack Brereton
The hon. Member will know from Transport Committee visits that some of the commitments made in the hybrid Bill Committee have not been honoured. Does he share my concerns about that?
Grahame Morris
As well as having served on the hybrid Bill Committee, I serve on the Transport Committee, and part of that Committee’s duties is to scrutinise HS2 and hold the Rail Minister, who is responsible for the delivery of HS2, to account. Certainly, concerns were expressed to the Transport Committee that statutory undertakings and assurances were not honoured—at least not in the form in which they were presented to the Committee.
Jim McMahon
This was only separated out because, as in this debate, some tried to make out that residents were opposed to the project overall. However, my hon. Friend must have seen in the hybrid Bill Committee process that quite a lot of the opposition was about the operational performance of HS2 Ltd and the considerations for local people in construction traffic, delays and the rest of it, which probably could have been done much better.
Grahame Morris
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that perfectly reasonable point. Indeed, it is certainly true of requests for variations to traffic in locations of construction sites and so forth. However, I only have a couple of minutes, so I do not want to be tempted on to the wrong track, as it were, and will just share a couple of thoughts.
I am a bit of a buff. I might be an anti-node, but I am familiar with the locations on the route.
This afternoon, those of us on the Transport Committee have been involved in the pre-legislative scrutiny of the rail reform Bill, and have been listening to representations from representatives of the Welsh Government and the sub-national transport bodies. They were commenting on the new structure and the new draft Bill, and there is general recognition—not just from Transport for the North in my region; we had witnesses from Midlands Connect and Transport East, as well as the Welsh Government—that there is a major transport infrastructure issue. For many decades, we have concentrated on north-south connectivity—principally on connectivity with the capital city. We have done that for sound economic reasons, but the case for east-west connections is supported vociferously by the metro Mayors of Manchester, Liverpool and West Yorkshire, and there are sound economic and connectivity arguments for addressing the need for those connections.
This mechanism is far from perfect. As a separate matter, the House should look at whether the pre-legislative scrutiny process can be truncated in some way to speed it up, but we must give petitioners—Members of Parliament, individuals and businesses—the opportunity to raise their concerns. Imperfect though the mechanism may be, and imperfect though I may be in advocating for it, it does have its merits when it comes to scrutinising major infrastructure schemes such as this one, so I will support today’s motion.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Before I call the Minister, I think the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) opened his remarks by saying that he might have been late for the debate. I can assure him that I have been told he was certainly in the Chamber at the beginning of the debate. Otherwise, I would not have let him speak. I call the Minister.
Huw Merriman
With the leave of the House, I commend the motion to the House. As I said earlier, today’s debate marks an important step forward in improving travel in the north, and I thank all right hon. and hon. Friends and Members for their input. In the time I have, I will try to address as many of the contributions made as possible. Colleagues from across the House made important points, which I will do my best to address.
I will start with the amendments, beginning with amendment (a). My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) talked passionately about the need to reduce uncertainty for local communities. There should be no doubt that the result of the unamended motion will be solely to remove all elements of the scheme that need to be removed for the cancellation of the cancelled section of HS2—I hope that provides the reassurance that my right hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Gavin Williamson) asked for. I am sure that the House would agree that the Network North announcement was unambiguous in its commitment to stopping that scheme, and the Government have already started reinvesting the money that was saved in alternative projects across the country.
The Government agree that it would be ideal if we could announce the precise point of truncation now, but that point of truncation cannot be specified until there has been a full assessment of the works that will be needed to deliver this section of Northern Powerhouse Rail. However, I assure the House that the Department and the organisation are working to deliver that assessment, with an eye to securing the best value for money for taxpayers and reducing disruption for residents. The results of the assessment will be published in a supplementary environmental statement as soon as possible. As an aside, accepting amendment (a) as drafted would leave a hole in the railway in the event that the truncation was not as specified by the amendment, which would obviously not be an ideal way to build a railway.
Amendment (b) would remove a proposed maintenance depot from the Bill. That depot, which could be a temporary structure, in place during the building of the railway, is in Ashley in the constituency of Tatton. For clarity, I should add that all aspects of the scheme between Millington and Manchester are being reviewed to ensure that they are necessary. Whether there should be a maintenance depot at Ashley is a matter for petitions to the Committee, and if the motion is carried unamended, the Committee will have the opportunity to discuss the maintenance depot through petitions.
In general, we believe that the works at Ashley mentioned in amendment (b) will be needed to minimise road traffic in the area as far as possible, and that is why there is no proposal to remove it at this stage. Furthermore, some of the materials needed to build the railway are very large, such as sections of rail, and these very large items can only be brought in safely by rail. We will, however, assess whether the size of the site can be reduced. Amendment (c) is consequential on amendment (a), about which I have already spoken.
Finally, turning to amendment (d), removing the words “high speed” could have unfortunate consequences for the Bill. It would allow petitioners to argue for amendments that stipulate speed restrictions, which could greatly impede the eventual operation of the railway. It would also mean that the motion was less aligned with the current title and agreed purpose of the Bill. The Government’s aspiration for the Northern Powerhouse Rail project is to deliver the best for the north, including the fastest journey times possible. We want to bring the urban centres of the north closer together, driving economic growth by making it easier to live, work and recruit across the different parts of the region. The reference to “high speed” rail in the instruction to the Committee underlines this commitment.
Huw Merriman
I will not take any interventions because of time.
Let me touch on some of the other points raised. In reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South, just to be absolutely clear, the original instruction for the Select Committee was to consider HS2 phase 2b and Northern Powerhouse Rail, as was debated at length in June 2022, and I believe that was the mandate given. It was never the case that we were going to talk about phase 2b alone; NPR was very much part of the purpose.
Opposition Members have said that we should crack on—or I used those words—but let me make it clear that my advice is that it would take an extra five years to start this process all over again, as opposed to two weeks to repurpose the Committee, so if we want to see Northern Powerhouse Rail delivered, it makes sense to follow this mechanism. Having worked with officials in Parliament, I believe that this mechanism is correct, and I do not agree with the points made about how it is somehow not valid. We would not put something through the House if the House officials had not agreed that it was in order.
On Chat Moss, I have made the point time and again to my right hon. and hon. Friends—we have discussed this a lot; no one can say that we have not had a good, rigorous discussion—that the proposal would miss out Manchester airport and Warrington Bank Quay. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South knows, I do not agree with the points he makes, and he does not agree with the points I make; that is the beauty of democracy.
The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan), as well as the hon. Members for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) and for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon), spoke along the lines of the north being short-changed. I absolutely dispute that, and let me give them the example of the TransPennine route upgrade, because that is the start of Northern Powerhouse Rail. It is going on right now, and the electrification for Stalybridge will be ready for next year. On the points about Crossrail, more money will be invested by this Government or the UK taxpayer on the TRU—just that section, which is the backbone or precursor of Northern Powerhouse Rail—than on the entirety of Crossrail, so I do believe that we are investing in the north, and I support investment in the north.
As far as the plans for Birmingham to Manchester are concerned, I understand that the mayors are working on proposals. Those proposals have not been put to us, so we do not have anything to address. The Government have been clear—others may not agree with us—that we are not moving forward with phases 2a or 2b of HS2. Those are our proposals.
There was talk of pork barrel politics in relation to Bradford, which I think is a new one for Conservative Members, but I went there with the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame Morris), and the Government are committed to giving Bradford what it needs to regenerate the youngest city in this country. I fully support what we are doing to repurpose moneys from HS2 for Bradford, Hull and other parts of the north and the midlands.
On the point made by the hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton about an underground station in Manchester, the options available are being assessed, so the proposal is on the table to discuss and look at. I think there is only one London station that has an underground element, which is the Thameslink part of St Pancras, so London does not have a plethora of such underground stations. However, we want to work with the Mayor of Manchester to see what is possible, and that also applies to the Mayor of Liverpool.
The great man the hon. Member for Easington talked about the hybrid Bill Committee. He talks with experience, because he has been on it. I thank him for that, and I hope his work will start again in a couple of weeks’ time. He is absolutely right, and I have talked to the Chairman of Ways and Means to ensure that we can amend the process to make it faster, so that we can build this railway faster.
In conclusion, my officials and I will continue to engage with local residents, leaders and communities, and Members of this place regarding how we design the railway and how to minimise disruption from construction. I understand the differing concerns of hon. Members across the House, but I am keen, as always, to work with them constructively to try to address those points and move this project forward. I commend the motion to the House.
Question put.
Petitions
Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)
I rise to present the petition of residents of the United Kingdom in the parish of Winterbourne, in the constituency of Filton and Bradley Stoke, relating to the Hambrook junction and the prohibition of vehicles crossing the junction in all directions, as they previously did. An identical petition online that has reached almost 4,000 signatures also addresses this problem, which residents can still sign. That petition was started by local residents Mr and Mrs Gay, who are also the signatories to this petition.
The petition states:
The petition of residents of the constituency of Filton and Bradley Stoke,
Declares that petitioners object to traffic lights being disabled; further declares that motorists are forced to drive further to get to where they need to be.
The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to encourage South Gloucestershire Council to reinstate the status quo ante and turn these traffic lights back on.
And the petitioners remain, etc.
[P002991]
Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
I rise to present a petition on implementing the decent homes standard in the private rented sector.
Over a million households in the private rented sector are living with damp, mould and other serious hazards, with one in five private renters reporting housing issues making them physically sick. The introduction of a legally binding decent homes standard in the private rented sector will significantly increase the enforcement powers of local authorities and help to hold private landlords to account.
The petition states:
“The petitioners therefore request the House of Commons to urge the Government to introduce the Decent Homes Standard in the private rented sector across England.
And the petitioners remain, etc.”
Following is the full text of the petition:
[The petition of residents of the constituency of Manchester Gorton,
Declares that a decent home is warm, weatherproof and has reasonably modern facilities; further declares that everyone deserves to live in a home that is decent, safe and secure; notes that in the North West of England, a third of private rented homes fail to meet the Decent Homes Standard; further notes that hazards in the private rented sector cost the NHS £290 million annually; further declares alarm that over one in five private rented homes are not up to standard and as a consequence there are over a million households living with damp, mould and other serious hazards affecting their physical and mental health; and further notes that the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities published A Fairer Private Rented Sector White Paper in June 2022 which made provisions for a Decent Homes Standard and though the Government has committed to bringing such measures in, no details have yet been forthcoming.
The petitioners therefore request the House of Commons to urge the Government to introduce the Decent Homes Standard in the private rented sector across England.
And the petitioners remain, etc.]
[P002979]
Allergy Guidance for Schools
(7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton) (Con)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for granting this important debate.
For too long, allergies have been seen as a personal issue to be managed by the individual affected. That needs to change. Allergies in school-age children are rising quickly, and around 45,000 people born each year will develop an allergy. School should be a safe space for our children to grow and develop, yet for those with allergies and their families the joy of education is too often compromised by safety and medical risk. There are 680,000 pupils in England with an allergy, so every classroom has at least one or two living with an allergy. Tragically, anaphylaxis occurs in educational settings more than in any other public space, and that shows in and of itself that we need to take action. We need to address this today—it has already gone on for too long—to give parents and children the confidence of knowing that our schools are allergy safe. If we do not, the consequences are truly heartbreaking.
Benedict Blythe from Stamford was a gifted child. He was able to complete a 24-piece puzzle by himself aged just one. He could match number cards by 18 months and create pie charts by the time he was school age. His mother Helen recalls purchasing him a book of the complete human nervous system in an attempt to quench his thirst for knowledge. By aged four, Benedict was a member of Mensa and practising maths at the level of a 10-year-old. He was a truly talented child, but it was his compassion and care for his family, and his infectious energy that made him just so loved.
Despite all his strengths, his life was marked by challenges stemming from his asthma and his allergies. As he began to try a wider range of foods, as all children do, Benedict suffered allergic reactions, first to baby rice, then to baby porridge and then to whey powder. What should have been a normal part of growing up saw him hospitalised. His family, through careful planning and care, worked out what he could eat safely. But while they could guarantee his safety at home, they had to trust others with Benedict when he went on play dates, mixed with other children and, eventually of course, went to nursey and school.
He was aware of his allergies. Like my nephew and so many others, he learnt to ask what was in a product before he ate. He was so cautious about he could and could not eat, but he also had to rely on those around him to keep him safe. Aged two, a nursery worker poured cows’ milk over his cereal, causing a severe reaction. The worker claimed he had been given oat milk and only admitted the mistake once young Benedict’s lips and tongue had begun to swell, and he suddenly stopped being able to breathe. The delay in admitting the mistake and beginning treatment for the reaction could have been fatal. However, tragically, that repeated itself when, aged just five, Benedict ate something at school that caused him to collapse, and he died the same day.
I know that the whole House will join me in honouring Benedict and recognising his unique character and intelligence. He dreamt of becoming a doctor, and I am sure he would have achieved that ambition and so much more. His story is every mother and father’s nightmare: the loss of their child, the pain so profound as to be unimaginable; their child going to school and just never coming home. Yet despite that nightmare, Benedict’s mother has endeavoured to ensure that other children can go to school safely, and I salute her for her fortitude and her strength.
Alicia Kearns
I will happily give way to the hon. Gentleman, who has himself held debates on this important issue.
Jim Shannon
I commend the hon. Lady for raising the issue. She has told the story of young Benedict so well. She has honoured him and honoured his family, and we thank her for that. My second son is now a young man, but as a wee boy he had a number of allergies, so I understand the issue all too well: I understand the importance of controlling a boy’s diet and, indeed, the very life that he leads. Does the hon. Lady agree—in fact, I think she may be coming to this point—that given the increase in the incidence of allergic reactions, each school must have a trained member of staff on the premises at all times to know the signs and how to deal with them? Does she also agree—and here I look to the Minister—that the necessary funding uplift must be allocated in addition to existing school budgets?
Alicia Kearns
The hon. Gentleman is entirely right. The problem is that because the guidance is currently not mandatory, schools have completely different responses. At my nephew’s school, for example, there is a picture of every child with a severe allergy on the teachers’ board, so that every day when the teachers go in they know which children to be more alert to, and in an emergency they know exactly what to do because there is a commentary under each picture. That is the kind of response that we need, but yes, we will need more. We saw the Government act strongly and quickly in response to the need to install atrial defibrillators in schools, and I ask them to take the same approach in this regard. The number of children who have died of allergies in our schools is far higher than the number who have died of any sort of heart incident, so I really think that it is time for action.
Shailesh Vara (North West Cambridgeshire) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour on securing this important debate, and on the fact that although Adjournment debates are normally lonely affairs, others are present for this one. Does she agree that the cost the Government would incur in helping schools to provide, for example, adrenaline pens is, in the overall scheme of things, very small indeed, and should not be a barrier to supplying schools with a little bit of extra cash to procure a few adrenaline pens which may save lives?
Alicia Kearns
My right hon. Friend is right, and I pay tribute to him for raising this issue during Prime Minister's questions only last week on behalf of Benedict and his family. Other countries have taken action, and we have the opportunity to do the same.
The Benedict Blythe Foundation has worked tirelessly under Helen’s leadership to investigate the issues facing pupils with allergies, and—most importantly—to make policy recommendations to solve them. That work culminated earlier this year with the publication of the REACT report, and I want to summarise its findings; it is the first time that the House will have heard them. The authors investigated 2,198 schools across England, 10% of the total, and found, concerningly, that a third of them had no clear policy on allergies—not that they had a reduced or non-mandatory policy, but that they had no policy at all. Many schools did not record allergy incidents accurately, and, most worryingly, half of them did not have lifesaving medicine on site. Only two years ago, a young child died at school because another child had thrown a piece of cheese at his face. His reaction was so extreme that he died that day. If he had had access to lifesaving medicine, that child would still be with us.
Extensive research has made it clear that allergy provision in schools is a lottery. Some schools go above and beyond to create an allergy-safe environment, but the lack of an allergy policy in others is absolutely wrong. I ask Members to imagine being the parent of a child with an allergy. How would they feel about sending their loved one to school not knowing whether he or she would be safe? Too many parents are not confident about sending their child to school, which unfortunately means that we are seeing too many children with allergies miss days of school. That is a priority for us to tackle. Following the pandemic, we know just how damaging it is not to have our children in school.
I am afraid that the root cause of these issues is a lack of clarity in the Department for Education guidance, and a lack of accountability mechanisms to ensure that existing guidance is followed. In the previous debate on this matter, which was organised by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), we discussed the need for that to be part of Ofsted inspections, because it should be part of the mechanisms. The medical conditions statutory guidance currently given to schools does not mention allergies specifically, and there is evidence that some schools consider allergies to be a dietary issue, rather than a medical consideration. That is just not good enough and, frankly, it is dangerous. Some 70% of schools do not have the recommended allergy safeguards in place, which demonstrates that having well-meaning guidance is just not sufficient. I therefore ask the Minister to consider issuing new, bespoke guidance to all schools on how to be allergy safe. That would not be onerous; it would simply require an email to go out to every single school in the country.
Drawing on extensive research and expert opinion, the REACT report has produced a set of safeguards that would ensure that our education system is safe for all pupils. First, it argues that every allergic reaction should be recorded and reported. I am not surprised that the Department for Education may well under-recognise the importance of this issue, because that is not taking place. It would allow schools with a high number of pupils with allergies to get more support, and it would give decision makers the information they need to make informed decisions and ensure the intelligent distribution of resources.
Secondly, all schools should have a specific allergy policy, including an anaphylaxis plan. Allergies are potentially life-threatening and are so common that they should have their own bespoke policy, separate from those for other medical conditions.
Thirdly, every school should have an individual healthcare plan for every child with an allergy, and it should be reviewed with a doctor. Seemingly mild allergies can quickly morph into severe reactions, and attempts at distinguishing between children on the basis of allergy severity are misled and potentially damaging. Just because a child is assessed as having a low allergy risk does not mean that they will not have a severe reaction one day. Mandating individual healthcare plans for every child with an allergy would create a safe environment.
Fourthly, funding should be given for every school to train its staff in how to administer adrenalin auto-injectors in an emergency. Each school should also keep a spare inhaler and antihistamine as part of a bespoke, allergy first-aid kit.
Fifthly, all school staff should receive basic training in allergy awareness management and emergency response, which is also about a duty of care for them. If I were a teacher, I would not want to operate in that environment if I did not know how to respond should a child in my care have a severe allergic reaction. It is vital that we give teachers the tools they need, and that we ensure that best practice is learned from schools with comprehensive allergy plans.
Finally, accountability mechanisms should be established to monitor and support schools as they implement their allergy plans. Sadly, as we have seen, there is already a gulf between what the Government recommend on allergies and what schools are actually implementing. As we introduce better and clearer guidance, we must ensure that it is followed across the country.
Adopting those policies would ensure that children with allergies can go to school safe in the knowledge that they will not be exposed to danger. There is no way to eradicate all risks when it comes to allergies, but we can make schools as allergy-safe as possible. Every parent needs to know that their child’s condition is not being ignored, dismissed, misunderstood or played down, and teachers also deserve that surety.
As my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Shailesh Vara) pointed out, our international partners have shown that change is achievable. Sabrina’s law requires Canadian schools to provide allergy and adrenaline auto-injector training for all teachers and staff. Minnesotan law mandates that all allergic students have access to emergency medicine and an individual healthcare plan. The Allison Rose Suhy Act incentivises schools in Ohio to train both staff and students on allergy awareness. Elijah’s law ensures that daycare employees in New York are trained to recognise anaphylaxis and to administer adrenaline. Finally, Amarria’s law requires public schools in Virginia to stock adrenaline auto-injectors. There is no reason why children in the UK should face greater risks at school than their peers abroad. These allergy provisions have been common practice across the US, Australia and Canada for decades, and we now need to adopt them here.
The policies set out by the Benedict Blythe Foundation in the REACT report show how we can not just match international standards, but surpass them and make the UK the safest place in the world for pupils with allergies to attend school. This is a condition on the rise. More and more children have allergies, and we need to take action. I therefore ask the Government to commit to producing Benedict’s law, and to meet me to discuss how it can be implemented. We are not looking at significant costs or wanting to put more duties on teachers. We want to make sure that teachers feel that they are in a safe workplace where they can take the action needed to do what they care about most: protecting and supporting their children and young people to become strong adults with bright futures ahead of them.
In memory of Benedict Blythe and in honour of his mother Helen’s tireless advocacy, we should ensure that no pupil with an allergy and their family ever again have to choose between feeling safe and medical safety and taking up education. No parent should live in fear that their child will not come home from school one day as a result of a condition that can be prevented. There is no reason for any child to die in our schools of an allergy. We just need simple allergy policies, adrenaline auto-injectors and to take action. We can save lives by taking action now. I thank the Minister in advance for his consideration, and I look forward to hearing his response.
The Minister for Schools (Damian Hinds)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns) for bringing this debate to the Floor of the House. I greatly value the opportunity to hear her insights today and elsewhere on this important topic. I must first take a moment, as she did, in memory of Benedict Blythe, who died at his school in December 2021 aged just five years. I was saddened immensely to hear of that unimaginable tragedy, and I know that Members from all parts of the House join in offering our sincerest condolences to his family, to other families who have lost children in such circumstances and to those who have suffered what must be terrifying near misses. No parent should have to go through that.
Colleagues will appreciate that it would not be right or proper for me to comment on the details of Benedict’s individual case while we are awaiting the outcomes of the coroner’s inquest. I can confirm that last year officials from the Department for Education met Benedict’s mother, Helen Blythe, to hear about the important work she has led through the Benedict Blythe Foundation to raise awareness of how best to protect children with allergies. I echo the words that my hon. Friend used of Helen Blythe, speaking of her fortitude and strength. I commend Helen for those efforts and her commitment, and I commend parliamentarians who have supported this work—not only my hon. Friend, but my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Shailesh Vara) and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon).
When parents send their children to school, it is only right and natural that they expect them to be kept safe. For parents of children with allergies, there is that additional level of concern. Allergies can be complex conditions and can range enormously in severity. Although today we have been speaking mostly about food allergies, not all allergens are foods, which makes the issue more complicated again. Allergies themselves are therefore a highly individual and varied condition that require individualised responses. That is why the Government have put into place a number of pieces of legislation, as well as guidance to schools and parents covering a range of areas and circumstances. I have heard the calls to strengthen the law around allergies and references to voluntary approaches and voluntary guidance. I stress that section 100 of the Children and Families Act 2014 places a legal duty on schools to make arrangements for supporting pupils at their school with medical conditions, and that includes allergies.
Shailesh Vara
I know the Minister is diligent, conscientious and caring in all that he does, and the tone he is adopting clearly shows that. While he is absolutely right that there is legislation and guidance for schools as to how to deal with this issue, I and others would say that it is too general in nature, and it leaves much discretion with the schools as to what precisely they do in the event of a child having an allergic reaction. I urge him to reflect and to consider tightening the laws, so that they become mandatory. That should be in a limited way, but nevertheless we need some mandatory rules for schools, rather than them being left as general and vague as they are at present.
Damian Hinds
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, and I acknowledge the gravity of what he says. Of course, we are talking about conditions that can be very varied, and the responses that are called for can be quite different. Schools know their pupils almost best; they, working with parents, who absolutely know their children best, are in the best place to enact that. I want to be clear that the guidance that accompanies what I have just been outlining is statutory guidance supporting pupils with medical conditions. It is not voluntary, and governing bodies must have regard to it when carrying out their duties.
Alicia Kearns
I apologise for intervening on my right hon. Friend because I know that he wants to make progress, but this might be something that he could commit to today. The problem, as I set out in my speech, is that too many schools think that allergies are a dietary issue, not a medical issue. If the next mailer to all schools reiterated that we see allergies very clearly as a medical condition, and reminded them of their statutory duties, that could go a long way to forcing all schools to take the action that he rightly says that they can take. This would not be as top-down; it would reiterate the regulations, and allow schools to take the action that they need to.
Damian Hinds
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to talk about awareness and understanding, and the role of communication in that. I will speak a little more about communication, but there is always more that we will need to do. Of course, I would also be happy to continue the conversation with her about how best we do it.
The guidance makes it clear that schools should ensure that they are aware of any pupils with allergies, and should have processes in place to ensure that the allergies can be well managed. Practices to identify children with such needs could include wristbands, or, as my hon. Friend said, having a photograph of the child alongside details of their allergy in the kitchen or serving area of the school. I stress again that individual schools are best placed to work with parents to put in place the most effective responsive system.
In addition to the section 100 duty, schools are subject to other requirements. In the UK, food businesses must inform consumers if they use any of the 14 mandatory allergens as ingredients in their food. How allergen information should be provided depends on whether the food is prepacked, non-prepacked or prepacked for direct sale. This includes food provided by institutions such as school caterers, who have a responsibility to protect the people in their care. As colleagues may know, rules on the provision of food labelling are set out primarily in the retained 2014 regulations, and these include a requirement to identify the presence of any of those 14 mandatory allergens to consumers.
The Department for Education also works closely with the Food Standards Agency, which provides free food allergy and intolerance training online. This offers practical advice to local authority law enforcement officers and anyone wanting to learn more about food allergies, such as those working in the food manufacturing and catering industries. The FSA also offers a whole host of other training, technical documents and guidance.
Turning to auto-injectors, these can be vital when a child is suffering an allergic reaction. To support schools in meeting the needs of children with allergies, the Government passed the Human Medicines (Amendment) Regulations 2017, which allow schools to obtain and hold spare adrenaline auto-injectors for administration to pupils in an emergency. The Department for Health and Social Care has produced guidance on the use of adrenaline auto-injectors and emergency inhalers in schools, including the purchase of spares. The guidance makes it clear that any adrenalin auto-injectors held by a school should be considered a back-up device, rather than a replacement for a pupil’s own adrenalin auto-injector.
Beyond this, families have a vital role to play in managing their child’s condition. We are very clear with schools that no one will know a child’s needs as well as their parents, and that schools should work closely with parents. The parents of children with allergies will work with medical professionals and other organisations to plan for and navigate their child’s specific needs. Parents should be fully consulted and engaged in any discussions relating to their child’s allergy.
Schools will also need to ensure that the parents or carers of children with food allergies or intolerances are given information about the allergenic ingredients used in the foods available. Good communication between parents and schools on allergies and pupils’ needs is essential to keep children safe while in school.
My hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton referred to the role of Ofsted, further to the points made by the hon. Member for Strangford, and the importance of schools having a clear allergies policy and involving parents in discussions about the needs of their children. Ofsted inspectors gather a wide range of evidence to make their judgments, and evaluate the experience of individuals or groups of individuals, which can include the experiences of pupils with medical needs, if the issue is raised by parents or pupils. In an inspection, inspectors will assess the effectiveness of safeguarding at the school, which includes the extent to which pupils with specific needs and vulnerabilities are kept safe. The safeguarding culture is also explored by speaking to leaders and staff about their work and the messages that pupils receive through the curriculum.
During last November’s Westminster Hall debate on pupils with allergies, my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton informed the House that she would write to all schools in her constituency to ask them to adopt the voluntary schools allergy code, co-created by the Benedict Blythe Foundation, the Independent Schools Bursars Association and the allergy team. Taking her lead, Ministers in the Department for Education instructed officials to share a link to the code in our fortnightly email bulletin to schools issued on 1 March. That communication also reminded school leaders of their duties concerning pupils with allergies.
For younger children, the early years foundation stage framework sets the standards that all registered early years providers must meet for the learning, development and care of children from birth to age five. The EYFS states:
“Before a child is admitted to the setting, you must obtain information about any special dietary requirements, preferences and food allergies that the child has, and any special health requirements.”
Providers must have a policy and procedures for administering medicines, and they must have systems for obtaining information about a child’s medicine needs and for keeping this information up to date. Training must be provided for staff where the administering of medicine requires medical or technical knowledge.
Within all early years settings, there is a requirement for at least one person with a current paediatric first aid certificate to be on the premises and available at all times when children are present, and they must accompany children on outings. The PFA criteria are clear that the training should include being able to help a baby or child who is suffering from anaphylactic shock.
Last September, we changed the adequate supervision requirement in the early years foundation stage to be explicit that adequate supervision while children are eating meals means that children must always be in sight and hearing of an adult, rather than within sight or hearing. This will help practitioners to see the signs of an allergic reaction as soon as they are present, and it will allow them to act quickly.
The new early years educator level 3 qualification criteria will also come into force in September, ensuring that early years practitioners have an understanding of allergies and anaphylaxis. In April 2024, the Department published nutrition content on the “help for early years providers” online platform. The content includes a section on allergies and anaphylaxis to help early years providers prevent allergic reactions, to recognise the signs and symptoms of an allergic reaction or anaphylactic shock, and to know what to do if they occur.
On 22 April, the Department launched a consultation on the safeguarding requirements in the EYFS. One of the proposals is the inclusion of a safer eating section, which includes requirements for all staff to be aware of the symptoms and treatments for allergies and anaphylaxis, and to obtain allergy action plans for children with allergies. We plan to publish our response to that consultation in the autumn.
I have outlined the various pieces of legislation and guidance that cover allergies in school. Given the complexity and individual nature of food allergies, the Government’s view is that it would not be appropriate for the Department for Education to legislate for food providers to cater for all requirements. However, through legislation, the minimum standards for school food have been clearly set out. Beyond that, headteachers, school governors and their caterers are best placed to make decisions about their school food policies that take into account local circumstances.
Alicia Kearns
I think we find ourselves in absolute agreement that schools should own their own allergy policies. Perhaps the Minister can reiterate from the Dispatch Box his request for schools to bring forward allergy policies focused specifically on the children who have allergies. They need to hear a clear instruction from the Minister at the Dispatch Box. We are clearly in agreement: schools should be leading on allergy policies in their schools, but the freedom of information research done by the Benedict Blythe Foundation shows that not enough of them do so.
Damian Hinds
I agree. As I said earlier, understanding and awareness are vital, and communication is what gives rise to them. That is why, following my hon. Friend’s lead, we issued a communication by email. I totally accept that there will be more to do, and I am more than happy to carry on that conversation with her.
Overall, we feel that the existing mix of national requirements and local flexibility is the appropriate approach to this complex and extremely important issue, though we always keep the policies under review. We welcome feedback on how we can better support schools’ implementation of them. I am pleased that DFE officials now sit on the expert advisory group for allergy, convened by the Department for Health and Social Care, and the National Allergy Strategy Group, which recommends priorities for allergy policy across Government. I encourage stakeholders to feed any ideas and points on these issues to officials via that route. I conclude by thanking once again my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton for bringing forward this important debate.
Question put and agreed to.
Draft Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure (Security Requirements for Relevant Connectable Products) (Amendment) Regulations 2024
(7 months ago)
General CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister for Data and Digital Infrastructure (Julia Lopez)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure (Security Requirements for Relevant Connectable Products) (Amendment) Regulations 2024.
The draft regulations will be made under powers provided by the Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Act 2022. The PSTI regime comprises part 1 of the 2022 Act and a set of regulations made under that Act, the Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure (Security Requirements for Relevant Connectable Products) Regulations 2023. This world-leading regulatory regime came into force on 29 April this year, and it will better protect consumers, businesses and the wider economy from the harms associated with cyber-attacks.
The law now requires consumer connectable products—baby monitors, Ring doorbells and so on—that are made available to customers in the UK to meet baseline cyber-security requirements. For instance, manufacturers will be banned from using universal default or easily guessable passwords such as “admin123”. That will reduce one of the most commonly exploited vulnerabilities in connected products.
Subject to the approval of both Houses, the draft regulations will add three new categories of products to the list of excepted products in schedule 3 to the 2023 regulations. In the 2020 call for views for the regime, the Government indicated that products would be excepted from the product security regime if it was deemed inappropriate to include them prior to further investigation, they were already covered by robust legislation, or they would be covered by future legislation particularly relevant to that product category.
My Department has committed to except automotive vehicles, because the Department for Transport is working at international level to agree regulations setting cyber-security requirements for vehicles. That would allow the cyber-security of those products to be addressed by regulations specific to the sector and to their functionality. The DFT intends to mandate UN regulation No. 155 on cyber-security and cyber-security management system in Great Britain for all new cars, vans, buses, trucks and motorbikes. The requirements of that regulation are more appropriate as it was created in response to the expanding capability and connectivity of vehicle systems.
To avoid dual regulation and unintentionally placing undue burden on the automotive industry and trade, the Government are seeking to except specific vehicle categories from the PSTI regime. The products in scope of the draft regulations include cars, vans, buses, motorcycles, mopeds, quad bikes and tractors. Those products are already excepted from the PSTI regime when they are made available for supply in Northern Ireland.
Regulation 3 will correct a minor error in the language of the 2023 regulations. Adding the word “period” will ensure that the original intent of the relevant paragraph is preserved.
These measures will ensure that the regime works as intended and that the security of vehicles can be addressed through appropriate sector-specific regulations. I commend the draft regulations to the Committee.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Rees, I believe for the first time. I thank the Minister for setting out the draft regulations.
Before I start, I must declare an interest. I worked in technology for two decades before entering Parliament, the last six years of which I spent with Ofcom as head of telecommunications technology, which included internet security. I am proud to have been the first Member of Parliament to mention the internet of things—connected devices—in this place, in 2011 during a Westminster Hall debate I secured on machine-to-machine communications, partially as a consequence of my experience in the tech and regulatory sectors.
Over the years I have regularly called for better security for consumers with regard to this important enabling technology. Indeed, the exponential growth that I predicted in the number of connected devices in our homes, on our wrists and on our roads has taken place, and with it the need for robust protections has grown. We on the Opposition Benches are glad that the Government finally took action in 2022 and are building on that with these latest draft regulations, which will take the next steps towards a bespoke cyber-security regime for vehicles. Automated vehicles have the potential to create a market worth £42 billion by 2035, create 38,000 new jobs, and improve road safety and connectivity for all road users, including pedestrians and cyclists. It is right that this highly exciting sector is supported to grow with targeted pro-innovation and pro-consumer regulation.
Members will be glad to hear that I do not intend to detain the Committee long, but I want to address some of the fundamental concerns with the legislation. Above all else, safety is paramount. During the passage of both the Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Act 2022 and the Automated Vehicles Act 2024, which received Royal Assent this week, Labour was crystal clear that the first duty of any Government is to keep their citizens safe. Our cyber-security is a No. 1 priority, and Labour would never play fast and loose with it.
As such, we welcomed the security aspects of the PSTI Act, as well as Government concessions to put the highest standards of safety on the face of the Automated Vehicles Act. The Government’s “Connected and automated vehicles: process for assuring safety and security”, or CAVPASS, with which I am sure the Minister is familiar, is intended to provide Government assurance of the safety and cyber-security of self-driving vehicles by 2025—that is, at the end of this year. Is the Minister confident that the Government are on track to achieve that goal? What assurances can she give the public in the meantime—in the next six months or so, until CAVPASS bears fruit, if that is when it will bear fruit—that automotive products with connected capabilities are being sold secure?
Are the Government taking steps to address the national security implications of connected vehicles, which is an increasing concern for the public? In the debate on the 2023 regulations last September, I highlighted how cellular internet-of-things modules, or CIMs, power much of the consumer connected device landscape by enabling internet access. China is attempting to corner the global market in CIMs, which could have immense national security implications, since, for example, when they are embedded in cars, they transmit location, route and even passenger video. With Chinese firms such as BYD and Geely becoming major players in automotive manufacturing, is the Minister assured that the regulatory regime is strong and flexible enough to protect the British public as the technology adapts and evolves?
Lastly, I want to raise the need for ongoing dialogue in this space. It is right that the Government have communicated to businesses years in advance their intention for automotive vehicles to be exempted from the PSTI regime. I also appreciate the extensive work by organisations such as the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles and the Law Commission in preparing for the Automated Vehicles Act.
The explanatory memorandum to the draft regulations leaves open a few options for the Government to regulate further, such as mandating UN regulation No. 155 on cyber-security, as the European Union has already done for some vehicles from July 2022. Given that we export 600,000 cars a year, have the Government considered alignment with international partners on cyber-security—the Minister seemed to suggest that she had—through the UN and other fora, and the implications for trade and exports? Can the Minister explain what the Government are doing to keep businesses abreast of their plans? It is vital that businesses, particularly in our incredibly important automotive industry, which is undergoing so many changes, can plan ahead for the next generation of cars.
On that subject, it was disappointing that the Government did not accept any of Labour’s amendments during Committee stage of the Automated Vehicles Bill, which would, in particular, have established an advisory council to aid the Act’s implementation and strengthened the accessibility of automated vehicles for disabled people. Will the Minister commit to consult regularly with business and trade unions during the roll-out of the connected and automated vehicles security regime, and to embed accessibility in all the safety regulations from day one?
Innovation in road transport will create huge opportunities for our economy and society, and we must embrace them. But we must make sure that security and safety are built into these technologies from the outset. Labour and the British people will accept nothing less. I thank the Minister in advance for her answers to my questions.
Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)
I do not want to detain the Committee long, but I have two questions and possibly some congratulations.
My first question is whether we will see a more risk-based approach to this kind of regulation. I remember thinking when the PSTI Bill was going through the House in 2022 that if the Chinese really wanted to know what time I turn my central heating on, they would be pretty welcome to that information. Similarly, if I happen to have a connected oven and I have something in there for the evening, they can know about that too. I am actually not that bothered about them hearing my children vomiting in the middle of the night through the baby monitor, if that is what they want—they can listen to the screaming as much as I can. I hope the Minister will accept that a risk-based approach seems sensible in this area.
My second question is whether this deregulatory measure is likely to be replaced at some point with an even more regulatory system for some of the bits of equipment that we are removing from the scope of the legislation. I understand that there is something coming on vehicles, but on electric bicycles, for example, are we likely just to replace this measure with another set of regulations? Will another Committee be sitting in just a few months’ time to consider the Electric Bicycles (Telecommunications Safety) (No. 14) Regulations, or whatever it might be?
If that is not the case, I offer the Minister my congratulations. I have sat on dozens of Delegated Legislation Committees over the last decade, nearly, and despite promises by the Government, this is the first I have known to consider something mildly deregulatory. I just wanted to mark that special moment in my parliamentary career. I am grateful to her.
Julia Lopez
First, I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire for his speech. One of the rationales behind the draft regulations is to avoid double regulation. I cannot say that they are deregulatory; we are simply avoiding duplication.
Julia Lopez
I know—I do apologise. My understanding—I also apologise for not being an expert when it comes to vehicles and transport, which fall within the DFT’s remit—is that vehicle regulation is done at UN level on some of these matters.
I thank the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central for her support and for bringing to bear her considerable expertise in technology. I agree with a number of the points that she made. She is right to be concerned about whether the sector has been given due notice. We have been in touch with the sector throughout. It was made clear that there would be exemptions and exceptions to the regime, and we are bringing the draft regulations forward now so that the sector can have those exceptions as swiftly as possible.
On some of the questions about automated vehicles, as I said, the Department for Transport intends to mandate UN regulation No. 155, but the automotive industry and its supply chain are already beginning to comply with that regulation, as it has been mandatory for new types of passenger and goods vehicles in the EU since July 2022. I shall certainly ask DFT Ministers to get back to the hon. Lady on some of the specific points that she made about transport and vehicles. I very much agree with her about the need to make sure that accessibility is at the heart of these new regulations. I have responsibility for telecommunications, and she will be aware that we have brought in a number of new security requirements.
On whether there are certain types of risk-based approach that we should take to new technologies, that is certainly the case. These are baseline security requirements that are intended to give flexibility according to the type of product. We are also looking at which types of data we should seek to protect and safeguard and which we should not be too concerned about. I assure hon. Members that that work is under way. These are areas of fast-moving technological development, and we in the Department try to make sure that we have maximum flexibility so that we do not have to come back and legislate every time there is new technology in the market. Hopefully, that will mean that we can avoid bringing hon. Members into these Committee rooms too frequently.
I am grateful for the engagement by all hon. Members as this legislation has gone through the House. It is a couple of years ago now that we went through Committee stage of what became the PSTI Act—we felt the pain of it together. That Act is now on the statute book and implemented, and we are bringing forward the exceptions so that it works well for the automotive market.
Question put and agreed to.
Draft Human Medicines (Amendments relating to Registered Dental Hygienists, Registered Dental Therapists and Registered Pharmacy Technicians) Regulations 2024
(7 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Dame Andrea Leadsom)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Human Medicines (Amendments relating to Registered Dental Hygienists, Registered Dental Therapists and Registered Pharmacy Technicians) Regulations 2024.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. The Government are proposing changes that would improve patient access to medicines in both dental practices and pharmacies.
First, hon. Members will know the vital role that pharmacies play in communities across our country, and I am sure that they will join me in expressing enormous gratitude and appreciation for the incredible work of brilliant pharmacists up and down the country. Of course, pharmacists dispense prescription medicines to the public, but for many people they are also the first port of call for healthcare advice. Pharmacies can provide a number of different services, including vaccinations, blood pressure checks and contraception, and that takes pressure off hospitals and GPs while playing an essential role in safeguarding the nation’s health. Pharmacists are fully trained and qualified, and pharmacies in hospitals are a key source of advice for doctors, nurses and other clinical staff. As well as supplying basic healthcare products, they support the management of complex medication regimes.
Pharmacies are a priority for this Government, and of course for the Prime Minister personally. Indeed, I do believe that the Prime Minister’s own mother was a pharmacist—colleagues may have heard that. [Interruption.] Have they? I think they have. I thank her for her lifetime of service, and pay tribute to every pharmacist who is helping us to deliver for the British people by taking NHS appointments, day in and day out. In recognition of the clinical expertise and knowledge that pharmacists have to offer, this Government have invested in pharmacy as part of our primary care recovery plan. We have made significant funding available for more blood pressure checks and more contraception consultations, as well as for Pharmacy First, which launched in January 2024, enabling community pharmacies to supply prescription-only medicines for seven common conditions without a prescription from a GP. Together with the investment in more blood pressure checks and oral contraception consultations, Pharmacy First will save around 10 million GP appointments once fully rolled out. The sector has embraced Pharmacy First, with over 125,000 consultations delivered in February, which was the first month of the service. Data on Pharmacy First delivery will start to be published from the end of this month.
Secondly, hon. Members will be only too aware of how important dental practices are in local communities. Dentistry is a top priority for this Government, and that is why we published our dental recovery plan in February. I am delighted that the plan is already delivering results on the ground, with nearly 500 more dental practices now open to new NHS patients. Dentists not only deal with emergencies, of course, but play a critical role in prevention.
Although the draft statutory instrument covers two very distinct professions, it will enable both to use their full range of skills to supply patients with the medicines they need in a timely manner. Legislation already allows some registered healthcare professionals to supply or administer certain medicines as part of their usual clinical practice. These are called exemptions. Our proposed changes will put exemptions in place for dental therapists and dental hygienists to supply or administer a range of medicines that are already a part of their day-to-day jobs. The changes will mean that they can supply or administer those medicines to patients without first having to refer to a dentist, so that they can deliver care without the need to organise additional appointments or interrupt dental colleagues who are already busy with other patients. These sensible, common-sense measures will free up precious time for clinicians and patients alike. The medicines are listed in the draft regulations. Seven of them are topical or local anaesthetics, three are fluoride products, and there is one antibiotic gel and one antifungal medicine.
Healthcare professionals have a responsibility to carry out care only where it is safe to do so and they are competent to do so. Many already have extensive experience of using these medicines, but of course we will not be compromising on safety one inch. Dental practices will continue to be responsible for making sure that clinicians undertaking the procedures have the knowledge, qualifications and skills to carry them out safely, and training will be made available for all those who want to make use of the exemptions. That will help dental practices to safely deliver more care for their patients as part of our dental recovery plan.
Our proposals will allow pharmacy technicians to supply or administer medicines to patients using mechanisms called patient group directions, or PGDs, which are written instructions that allow some healthcare professionals to supply or administer specified medicines to patients with certain conditions, without the need for a prescription. They are developed by experts from a range of fields, who thoroughly kick the tyres of every PGD before they are passed. Pharmacy technicians will be responsible for assessing whether patients fit the criteria. Once implemented, PGDs are carefully monitored to check they are being used appropriately on the ground. It is up to local healthcare organisations to decide, following national guidelines, whether a PGD route is appropriate for a clinical service. Local clinical managers are responsible for permitting healthcare professionals to work under PGDs, while making sure they are trained to use them safely.
Hon. Members might have come across pharmacy technicians in their local hospitals without necessarily realising who they are or what they do. However, pharmacy technicians are well placed to take on these roles. In fact, they already carry out a wide range of tasks in many healthcare settings, including hospital and community pharmacies, GP practices, care homes, prisons, our armed forces and the pharmaceutical industry. In recent years, their roles have given them opportunities to work face to face with patients, making them highly adept at answering questions about medicines.
We are making changes to training for pharmacists that will soon mean they can graduate as fully qualified prescribers.
Richard Fuller (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)
I fully support what the Minister proposes, but I have a maths question for her. I know that she did not prepare the impact assessment herself, but she probably reviewed it. It states:
“We have discounted benefits to patient health and the NHS at 1.5% per annum and all other benefits at 3.5% per annum.”
Of course, that lower discount rate has the effect of making the later benefits look better—they are not discounted to a lower level now, so we can spend more money for the same amount of benefits later on. Is the Minister comfortable with those discount rates? Given where interest rates are now, will she put some questions to the people who made the impact assessment about why those particular discount rates were used?
Dame Andrea Leadsom
As always, my hon. Friend makes a very good point about the finances. I cannot answer his question immediately—I would have to refer back to the impact assessment—but perhaps I can write to him on that point. It is vital that we look at the longer-term impact of any change that we make. Without addressing his specific point, I can say more generally that in introducing these further flexibilities for pharmacy technicians, we are increasing capacity in the very important sectors of dentistry and pharmacy, and doing so will benefit patients and the national health service alike.
Let me conclude by pointing out that, together with the proposals we are debating, all these measures will expand capacity in pharmacies for the prescribing, supply and administration of medicines, providing patients with access to a wider range of clinical services delivered by healthcare professionals with the right skills, at the right time. That supports the Government’s ambition to improve outcomes for patients while reducing demand on other parts of the service. I commend the regulations to the Committee.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Hollobone. I want to start by echoing the Minister’s comments about pharmacies and pharmacists; I will even go so far as to thank the Prime Minister’s mother. We rely on our pharmacists to do an awful lot and Labour supports the concept of Pharmacy First. We think that pharmacies could and should play an even greater role in providing healthcare services in the closest places where people can most easily access them. In our towns, cities and villages, that is often on the high street, in our pharmacies. We would roll out more services to pharmacies and have proposals to do that, should we be fortunate enough to form the next Government.
I have to say, though, that the least said about NHS dentistry the better. I do not recognise the Minister’s description of her dentistry recovery plan. It does not go far enough for us. We want to see a proper, concerted effort in dentistry and in getting NHS dentistry back to where it should be. Even the professional bodies say that the dentistry recovery plan does not go far enough, and we echo their concerns. We can and should do more.
We support the overall terms of the draft regulations, particularly the measures on pharmacy technicians and dental hygienists. In particular, we think that dental hygienists are a useful tool to deliver timely and quality care to patients where it is safe and suitable for them to do so. The dental profession is supportive of the intention to enable dental hygienists and dental therapists to supply and administer the vast majority of the medicines listed in the regulations.
However, the inclusion of two medicines on the list—minocycline and nystatin—was not supported by the British Dental Association or the College of General Dentistry. These bodies tell me that for a number of reasons, including antimicrobial resistance and, in the case of minocycline, efficacy, they are not recommended in any national clinical guidelines and their use in dentistry is no longer accepted practice. Will the Minister be able to explain whether the concerns of key dental stakeholders were taken into account when the decision was made to retain these two drugs on the list? Will she also assure us that there has been full and proper consultation with both the British Dental Association and the College of General Dentistry on ensuring that the regulations are compliant with both national practice and existing clinical guidelines?
Efforts to increase the skill mix in our NHS dentistry workforce and across pharmacy more generally are welcome, but the Minister will forgive me for thinking that we need to go much further than technical tweaks if we are to reverse the crisis in which NHS dentistry finds itself. I know that she wants to do more—I want her to do more—but it will likely be left to the next Labour Government to fix NHS dentistry. We will support the regulations, and I hope that the Minister can reassure us about the medicines that are included in the list when they perhaps should not be.
Dame Andrea Leadsom
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his support for the measures. He is absolutely right to highlight that we all want to see greater capacity and more depth in these sectors, as well as more access for patients. It is a good thing to do and I can absolutely assure him that there has been full consultation, with views taken into account. I can also assure him that it is for professionals to decide which particular medicine can be used by which particular technicians and therapists in each case, so I do not think he needs to be concerned. Should there be views that a particular medicine is not effective or that it should not be used because of considerations of antimicrobial resistance, its inclusion does not necessarily mean that it must be used. I hope that I can reassure him that all views have very much been taken into account and the regulations are permissive, not compulsory, if I may put it like that.
Question put and agreed to.
Draft Recognition and Enforcement of Judgments (2019 Hague Convention etc.) Regulations 2024
(7 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Gareth Bacon)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Recognition and Enforcement of Judgments (2019 Hague Convention etc.) Regulations 2024.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. The draft regulations form part of the implementing framework for the 2019 Hague convention on the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil or commercial matters. They will amend the Civil Jurisdiction and Judgments Act 1982 to incorporate the convention into domestic UK law.
Following unanimous support in response to a Government consultation, the UK signed the 2019 Hague convention on 12 January this year. It was laid before Parliament on 25 March for treaty scrutiny, which was completed last week without objection. The UK Government are now preparing to ratify the convention to bring it into force between the UK and the existing parties, which will be the European Union, Ukraine, Uruguay and all European Union member states apart from Denmark. This legislation is instrumental to the UK joining the convention and needs to be in place prior to ratification to ensure that the UK can meet its obligations under the convention.
The convention will come into force for the UK just over a year after ratification. The Government aim to complete ratification as soon as possible this summer, which will allow the UK to start applying the 2019 Hague convention with the other parties a year later. The UK stands to be an early adopter of the convention, as a leader in the field of private international law.
I turn to the content and aims of the draft regulations, which will implement the 2019 Hague convention in UK law and facilitate the operation of the convention once it enters into force. The purpose of the convention is to establish a set of rules about whether a civil or commercial judgment made in the court of one country may be recognised and enforced in another. Without a uniform scheme, each country’s own domestic rules determine whether a judgment from another country will be recognised and enforced there. Those rules vary from country to country, which can give rise to uncertainty and a range of challenges for effective cross-border enforcement. The convention addresses many of those challenges by providing a uniform set of rules that all parties to the convention agree to apply with each other.
Joining the 2019 Hague convention will provide greater clarity and confidence for businesses and individuals in disputes, will reduce costs, will encourage international trade and will enhance access to justice. It will also provide greater predictability as to whether a UK judgment can be enforced abroad. This will encourage businesses to choose the UK’s world-beating courts for their international litigation, further increasing the attractiveness of the UK for international dispute resolution.
I turn to the detail of the draft regulations, which make implementing provisions for how the convention will operate in the UK. These comprise three key elements.
First, the draft regulations will create a registration requirement so that anyone seeking to recognise and enforce a foreign judgment in the UK under the convention has to apply to a UK court to register the judgment first. The applicant will be required to set out initial evidence that their judgment is eligible for recognition and enforcement under the convention. That will create a form of safeguard that enables the court briefly to assess whether the grounds for recognition and enforcement under the convention have been met, rather than its being automatic. However, it is designed to be as light-touch as possible; it is not akin to new proceedings. This is a well-understood, proven model with which legal practitioners and UK courts are already familiar. It is used consistently across the existing recognition and enforcement regime in the UK. Once the judgment is successfully registered, it will be treated as a judgment made by that court.
Secondly, the draft regulations will give either party the right, once a UK court has decided whether to register a judgment under the 2019 Hague convention, to apply to have that decision set aside if they do not agree with it. This provides an opportunity for either party to ask the court to reassess its decision in the light of any additional information. This is a form of recourse similar to an appeal. The setting aside route is well established for recognition and enforcement decisions, where the court will examine only a limited amount of information at the registration stage. This is deliberate, in order to make the process swift and not unnecessarily overburden the courts. However, there will be cases in which the court might not have had all the relevant facts. The decision can then be made again with further information provided.
Sir Liam Fox (North Somerset) (Con)
I am generally supportive of the Government’s case. If the aim is partly to bring parties in dispute to UK courts for dispute resolution, have the Government made any assessment of the impact that that will have on the capacity of our court system?
Gareth Bacon
We believe that we have sufficient capacity to cope. Actually, we are speeding up the process, because these cases would have to be taken to a UK court anyway. Taking this approach will mean that the rules have been agreed in advance; we believe that that will streamline capacity and make things easier.
Thirdly, the draft regulations will ensure that foreign judgments do not make their way into the intra-UK recognition and enforcement system in the Civil Jurisdiction and Judgments Act 1982. The 1982 Act’s rules govern the recognition and enforcement of judgments between the different jurisdictions of the UK; they allow judgments made in one UK jurisdiction to be near-automatically enforced in another.
The draft regulations will exclude judgments registered under the 2019 Hague convention from that mechanism. This is to ensure that courts in each jurisdiction— Scotland, Northern Ireland and England and Wales—can individually decide whether to recognise a particular foreign judgment. In practice, that means that although a judgment from a court in England can be near-automatically recognised and enforced in Scotland under the 1982 Act, a foreign judgment registered in an English court under the 2019 Hague convention will need to be registered separately in a Scottish court under the convention.
The 1982 Act also implements other conventions to which the UK is already a party, including the 2005 Hague convention on choice of court agreements. That convention includes recognition and enforcement rules for judgments given where an exclusive choice of court agreement was in place. This is an agreement stating that a dispute between parties will be determined exclusively by a specified court or by the courts of a specified country.
To ensure consistency with the UK’s recognition and enforcement regime and to avoid confusion for users, the draft regulations will make some amendments to the implementing provisions for the 2005 Hague convention, to bring them into line with the approach taken for the 2019 Hague convention. This includes amending the recourse route from a right of appeal to the application to set aside that I have described, as well as excluding the 2005 Hague convention from the same provisions in the 1982 Act from which we are excluding the 2019 convention: those that provide for the recognition and enforcement of judgments between the UK’s jurisdictions.
The draft regulations are an important step in implementing the 2019 convention. They will strengthen the framework for the international recognition and enforcement of judgments, giving UK businesses and citizens greater clarity, certainty and confidence as they work, live and operate across international borders. I hope that the Committee will join me in supporting them.
Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I thank the Minister for setting out the purpose and the detail of the draft regulations. As we know, the 2019 Hague convention was signed on behalf of the UK on 12 January this year, following the announcement on 23 November that the UK would join as soon as possible in response to a public consultation that the Government described as positive. The draft regulations will amend the Civil Jurisdiction and Judgments Act 1982 to give the 2019 convention force of law in the UK and to make further provision for the 2019 convention’s operation in the UK.
The Opposition support the draft regulations. We feel that in the post-Brexit era there are clear advantages that being a party to the 2019 judgments convention will bring to the UK. Labour has an iron-clad commitment to the rule of law, and it is upheld by the UK’s legal sector, which is worth £34 billion each year, which is a marvel on the world stage and second only to the United States.
It is welcome and perhaps unsurprising that all respondents to the consultation, from the legal sector to the public sector, thought that the UK should join Hague 2019. Having a uniform set of rules for a wide range of judgments between the UK and other contracting parties can increase confidence in the UK legal system. We agree with the Government’s stated belief that the convention will therefore benefit both businesses and consumers operating and living across borders between the UK and other countries. It will provide assurance that UK judgments in scope will be recognised and enforced by current and future contracting parties to the convention, and vice versa, which in turn will encourage trade and investment. We know that there are already 29 contracting parties for which the convention entered into force on 1 September 2023, with more to come.
Although we welcome the draft regulations, I am keen for the Minister to clarify a point about implementation and to answer a further question. The Hague 2019 convention was signed on behalf of the jurisdictions of Scotland, Northern Ireland and England and Wales, because the decision to join an international convention is a reserved matter, but the implementation of the convention is devolved to Scotland and Northern Ireland, as it relates to private international law, which is a devolved matter. The Minister touched on implementation in the devolved nations, but I would like a little more detail on the engagement that the Government have had and continue to have with the devolved Governments on the implementation process.
Several respondents to the public consultation that preceded the draft regulations identified some downsides to Hague 2019, although they did not consider that they outweighed the merits of joining. I want to highlight one such concern. One stakeholder’s submission said:
“A potential concern may arise if a state which does not have a reliable or fair judicial system, for example because judges are subject to improper political (or other) influence, became a party to the Convention, or if a state that was party to the Convention experienced a deterioration in the independent functioning of its judicial system or no longer upheld the rule of law. Whilst there are safeguards under Article 29 permitting a state to make a notification preventing the Convention from applying with another Contracting State, the notification can only be made at the time of ratification of the other state, and not subsequently, meaning this safeguard would not be available in the latter instance.”
I will be grateful if the Minister can assure the Committee that an appropriate safeguard is in place.
I conclude by reaffirming our support for the draft regulations. Seldom do we find such agreement in this place, but—and there is a “but”—there is a wider picture of an entrenched crisis across our justice system that we cannot forget: access to justice is dwindling, our crumbling court estate is buckling under the weight of unprecedented backlogs, and our prison estate is not fit for purpose and is hugely over capacity.
Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
I will not detain the Committee long, which I am sure will be a relief to the many Committee members who saw me walking in and thought they might be here for 90 minutes. They won’t be.
The Minister described very well the position as it relates to Scotland. He will be able to confirm, I am sure, that the Scottish Parliament has given legislative consent to the draft regulations, and that the Minister for Victims and Community Safety has written to the Convener of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee saying that Scottish Ministers intend to consent to this UK-wide statutory instrument. The regulations before the Committee appear to me to be fairly uncontentious, and I will not be opposing them.
Gareth Bacon
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth for her support. She asked for two clarifications. The first was about the engagement that has taken place with the devolved Administrations; I am happy to confirm that there has been more or less constant engagement throughout the process. I understand that formal consent was provided for Northern Ireland by the permanent secretary at the Department of Justice in January 2024, that the Scottish Government notified the Scottish Parliament of the instrument in March, and that the Scottish Parliament agreed earlier this month that it is content for the Scottish Government to give formal consent. The delay is simply a matter of the processes going through in both Northern Ireland and Scotland. I hope that that has answered the queries of the hon. Members for Brentford and Isleworth and for Glasgow South West; I am grateful for their contributions to this debate.
Ruth Cadbury
There was also a point about the subsequent weakness of judicial process in certain circumstances.
Gareth Bacon
I apologise to the hon. Lady for that oversight. As she correctly said, there is a provision under article 29 such that if the UK objects to a new country formally ratifying the treaty, we can apply for this not to apply, both in that country and in this one. For a country that is already subject to it, she is correct to point out that there is no formal mechanism for withdrawing from it. I would venture to suggest—I will correct this if I inadvertently mis-speak here—that what would then happen is that there would be a negotiation among the parties to the convention. If agreement cannot be found, the UK could unilaterally withdraw from it, albeit that that would take a 12-month period of notice.
I am grateful for hon. Members’ contributions to the debate. Joining the 2019 Hague convention as soon as possible is in the UK’s best interests. As I have said, it is an important step for the UK to provide greater clarity and confidence for UK businesses and citizens who work and live across international borders. I am eager to see the necessary legislation in place to facilitate that. I therefore commend this draft regulations to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Finance (No. 2) Bill
(Except clauses 1 to 4, 12 and 13, and 19)
(7 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Chair
I remind Members that Hansard would be grateful if they emailed their speaking notes or handed them to a colleague in the room, and to please switch their phones to silent.
The selection list for today’s sitting is available in the room. It shows how the clauses and the selected new clause have been grouped for debate. Matters grouped together are generally on the same or a similar issue. A Member may speak more than once in a single debate.
I call the Minister to move the programme motion standing in his name, which was discussed yesterday by the Programming Sub-Committee.
Ordered,
That—
(1) the Committee shall (in addition to its first meeting at 9.25 am on Tuesday 21 May) meet—
(a) at 2.00 pm on Tuesday 21 May;
(b) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 23 May;
(2) the proceedings shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at 5.00 pm on Thursday 23 May. —(Nigel Huddleston.)
Resolved,
That, subject to the discretion of the Chair, any written evidence received by the Committee shall be reported to the House for publication.—(Nigel Huddleston.)
The Chair
Copies of written evidence that the Committee receives will be made available in the Committee Room and will be circulated to Members by email.
Clause 5
Increase in thresholds to £60,000 and £80,000
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Nigel Huddleston)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Latham, and I thank all hon. Members for their participation in today’s debate. I also thank those who have submitted written evidence on a variety of the clauses we will discuss today, including the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, the Chartered Institute of Taxation, the Low Incomes Tax Reform Group and others, and all those who have contributed to consultations as part of this Finance Bill process.
Clause 5 makes changes to the high income child benefit charge, or HICBC, as it is commonly called. It increases the threshold at which child benefit begins to be withdrawn, from £50,000 to £60,000. The Government are also increasing the threshold at which child benefit is fully withdrawn, from £60,000 to £80,000. That means that 1% is withdrawn for every £200 of income that exceeds £60,000; previously, the rate was 1% for every £100 of income that exceeded £50,000, and child benefit was fully removed once individuals earned £60,000 or above.
The HICBC is a tax charge and was introduced in January 2013 for recipients of child benefit payments, or their partners, on higher incomes. It applies where the highest earner has an adjusted net income—that is, their total taxable income, less certain reliefs, such as pension contributions—above the threshold, which is rising to £60,000. For individuals with incomes above the top of the taper, which is rising to £80,000, the tax charge is equal to the full amount of the child benefit payment.
The changes will ensure that the HICBC continues to withdraw child benefit from high-income families, as it was designed to, without unfairly penalising those on middle incomes. By halving the rate at which HICBC withdraws the child benefit gain, the Government are improving people’s incentives to continue working or to take up more hours. The Office for Budget Responsibility estimates that, as a result of both changes, those already working will increase their hours by a total equivalent to those of around 10,000 full-time individuals by 2028-29.
The changes made by clause 5 will have a positive impact for around 485,000 families, who will gain an average of £1,260 in 2024-25, which they can put towards the cost of raising their children. That includes around 170,000 individuals who will no longer be liable for HICBC, and 135,000 individuals currently paying the HICBC who will have it reduced. The remaining 180,000 are the families currently not claiming child benefit or families opting out of getting child benefit payments who are now eligible to receive payments without incurring a tax charge.
The increase in the HICBC’s adjusted net income threshold reaffirms the Government’s commitment to rewarding working families, by allowing them to keep as much of their hard-earned money as possible in a sustainable way. I therefore commend the clause to the Committee.
James Murray (Ealing North) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve on this Committee with you in the Chair, Mrs Latham. I am pleased to respond on behalf of the Opposition in the Public Bill Committee stage of the Finance (No. 2) Bill.
As we have heard from the Minister, clause 5 increases the adjusted net income threshold for the high income child benefit charge from £50,000 to £60,000, with effect from the 2024-25 tax year. The clause also amends the rate at which the high income child benefit charge applies to individuals with adjusted net incomes of between £60,000 to £80,000 in a tax year, and contains an administrative easement to prevent backdated child benefit payments from triggering a charge in 2023-24.
As we all know, due to high levels of inflation during the current Parliament, families across the country have felt the impact of threshold freezes, particularly in relation to income tax. Millions of people will be paying income tax for the first time or paying it at higher rates as a result of high inflation and the frozen thresholds. Similarly, the fixed nominal thresholds for the high income child benefit charge mean that more and more people will have been affected by the charge as a result of inflation. The adjustment to the thresholds in this clause will therefore be a welcome step for many families, and brings the number of individuals affected by the high income child benefit charge closer to what Parliament envisaged when the policy was introduced in the Finance Act 2012.
Although we support the measures in the clause and will not oppose them, we would appreciate some clarification from the Minister on one point. In particular, we understand that subsection (2) effectively halves the rate of clawback in the calculation of the charge, so the child benefit is fully withdrawn when the relevant adjusted net income reaches £20,000 above the initial threshold —that is, £80,000. I am grateful to the Chartered Institute of Taxation for pointing out that, because the clawback happens across a wider range of incomes, some individuals will be caught out by higher marginal rates of tax and will therefore likely need to file a self-assessment return. Is the Minister concerned that that will introduce more complexity into the tax system, and if so, what is he doing to communicate these changes so that taxpayers are not caught out?
Finally, we understand that the Government will be moving the assessment of the charge to a household basis from April 2026. I would be grateful if the Minister confirmed when the Government will announce further details about the consultation on that change. Will he also set out the details of what he is doing to consult industry and professional bodies about it?
Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Latham. We will not be opposing the clause, but I do want to make some comments about this paltry measure, which will help very few people in a cost of living crisis that the Conservative Government are trying to pretend is over and done with—in fact, they are saying that that is the case. That is not the reality for people in their homes across the nations of the UK.
The Minister said that the intention of this provision —I think I am quoting him correctly—was to allow people to “keep as much of their hard-earned money as possible.” That reflects incredibly badly on the way that this Government have conducted themselves by artificially boosting the cost of living through reckless actions such as Brexit and, of course, the mini-Budget. If they wanted to do something that was meaningful to help families, they could have copied the Scottish child payment in Scotland, which has lifted 100,000 children out of poverty. But no: they have decided to do this. They have also decided to keep the two-child limit on universal credit. That should be scrapped, and the Labour party should be joining in calls for that to be scrapped. The rape clause has no place in our society, and this measure will not go far enough to help families.
Nigel Huddleston
I thank my opposite numbers for their comments. I respectfully disagree with several of their points, and I will remind my opposite number, the hon. Member for Ealing North—as I do on almost every occasion—of the significant changes to the income tax threshold that the Conservative Government have brought in. It was £6,475 under Labour; it is now £12,570. That is a significant increase and it has taken many people out of paying income tax altogether, which is something we are very proud of.
The hon. Gentleman will be well aware that, as we have discussed on multiple occasions, the reason why taxes are higher than any of us would desire is the level of intervention required to support households and livelihoods during the pandemic and, more recently, the cost of living challenges since the invasion of Ukraine and the energy price shocks in particular. I would make a similar point to the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey, who also made those points. I remind him that we have made interventions in cost of living support to the tune of about £100 billion. With respect, half a million people will benefit from the changes that we are introducing. HICBC is not a small amount. It is a meaningful amount of money for a large number of people, and it comes on top of the many other support measures that we have introduced.
I thank the hon. Member for Ealing North for pointing out the easements and the fact that there will be automatic backdating. Hopefully, that will be a relief and good news, and be positive for many families. Child benefit is normally backdated by three months, but because of the timing of the implementation, some could overlap two tax years. We are trying to make that simple and bring it into one tax year.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned the increase from £60,000 to £80,000 and the impact on marginal rates. The changes that were announced will reduce the total marginal effective tax rates, which includes income tax, employee national insurance contributions and HICBC, from about 64% to 53% for someone with, for example, two children. That is a good thing.
We recognise that high marginal rates introduce complexity to the tax system, but that needs to be weighed against other considerations when designing tax policy. The Government must ensure sure that they are committed to a fair tax system that supports strong public finances. Individuals will, as the hon. Gentleman pointed out, still be required to submit a self-assessment tax return to declare and pay their HICBC liability. However, the Government announced in July last year that we are taking steps to allow newly liable taxpayers to pay the HICBC through their tax code without the need to register for self-assessment. Further details on this improvement will be shared in due course.
The hon. Gentleman also mentioned the consultation on moving to a household basis. We will announce further details of the consultation in due course and, as with all tax policy, any changes would be considered as part of future fiscal events. The Chancellor announced that the Government will be consulting on moving the HICBC to a system based on household incomes, and that change will be delivered by April 2026. If the hon. Gentleman is patient, we will announce further details on that consultation in due course.
A point was made about communication. There have already been significant communications on the changes to HICBC. There has been a lot of online and offline activity from His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, various Government Departments and others. The campaign to raise awareness also includes working with, for example, parenting platforms such as Bounty and Emma’s Diary, and issuing emails through third party partners, including childcare providers. The hon. Gentleman raised an important point about not just making the changes, but ensuring that everybody is aware of them, so that everybody who is intended to benefit is able to.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 5 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 6
Reduction in higher CGT rate for residential property gains to 24%
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Nigel Huddleston
Clauses 6 to 11 are related to the property tax measures in the Bill. I hope that Members will forgive me, but this is a slightly longer speech, as I will talk through each clause. Indeed, it is the longest speech that I plan on giving today, although it is not too long—please do not have a heart attack; I will not be reading every one of these pieces of paper.
Clause 6 cuts the higher rate of capital gains tax, or CGT, charged on residential property gains from 28% to 24% from 6 April 2024. CGT is of course charged on the disposals of buy-to-lets and second homes. Main homes are exempt through private residence relief, which means for that the majority of residential property sales no CGT is paid at all. Where a disposal is liable to CGT, gains are taxed at a lower rate of 18% for any gains that fall within an individual’s basic rate band and at a higher rate for any gains above that.
The 28% higher rate was deterring some sales of residential properties, so the Government announced a 4 percentage point cut to the higher rate at spring Budget 2024. That will encourage more landlords and second home owners to sell their residential properties, making more homes available to the market for a variety of purchasers, including first-time buyers. The OBR forecasts that there will be around 60,000 more residential property transactions over the next five years owing to the cut. As more homes are bought and sold, the Exchequer is expected to raise an additional £690 million in revenue over that period. There will be no change to the lower rate of 18% for private residence relief.
Clause 7 concerns multiple dwellings relief, or MDR, which is a bulk purchase relief in the stamp duty land tax regime. The clause abolishes multiple dwellings relief from 1 June 2024. Multiple dwellings relief allows anyone purchasing two or more dwellings in a single transaction or in linked transactions to calculate their stamp duty based on the average value of the properties purchased, as opposed to their aggregate value. Multiple dwellings relief was introduced in 2011 with the intention of promoting investment in the private rented sector, but a recent external evaluation found no strong evidence that it has done so, meaning that the relief is not cost-effective and is therefore not acting as intended.
His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs has seen a high number of incorrect and abusive claims for the relief. Those have been driven by tax repayment agents, who often convince private individuals to make relief claims for the purchase of two dwellings when individuals have in fact only purchased one. One such example is somebody buying a large house with a separate indoor entertainment area, including a swimming pool and toilet, and that being counted as two properties when it is transparently one.
The changes made by clause 7 will abolish multiple dwellings relief for property transactions that complete on or after 1 June 2024. However, for contracts that were exchanged on or before 6 March 2024, relief will continue to apply regardless of when the contracts complete. The change will not impact those purchasing a single property. It will only increase the stamp duty payable by individuals or businesses purchasing two or more properties in a single transaction or as part of the same deal. Individuals or businesses purchasing six or more dwellings will continue to qualify for the non-residential rates of SDLT.
Clause 8 makes changes to ensure that first-time buyers’ relief from stamp duty land tax can be accessed by those purchasing new residential leases through a nominee or bare trustee, including victims of domestic abuse. A nominee is a person who holds the legal title of a property, while the beneficial ownership—the person who ultimately owns or controls the assets—is held by another person. A bare trust is a trust under which property is held by a person as trustee for another person who is fully entitled to all of the capital and income of the trust.
The measure also changes the definition of first-time buyers to ensure that individuals who use such arrangements cannot claim relief more than once. First-time buyers’ relief from SDLT is available where an individual who has not previously owned a dwelling purchases a home they intend to use as their only or main residence, but that is not currently available to individuals purchasing a new residential lease through a nominee or bare trustee.
The changes made by clause 8 will benefit certain first-time buyers of residential leasehold properties purchasing through a nominee or bare trustee, reducing the up-front cost of buying a home by allowing them to claim the relief they are entitled to. The changes bring those purchasers in line with purchases of residential freeholds and pre-existing leases using similar arrangements.
James Murray
Clause 6 applies to residential property gains by individuals, trustees and personal representatives. As the Minister set out, it reduces the higher rate of CGT that applies to such gains from 28% to 24%. The new rate will apply to disposals made on or after 6 April 2024. As we understand it, the lower rate is intended to remain at 18%, and the CGT rates that apply to carried interest gains remain unchanged.
The Government’s policy paper on this matter claims that the measure will be revenue positive for the Treasury and will generate more transactions in the property market, benefiting individuals who are looking to move home or get on to the property ladder. The Opposition will not oppose moves that reduce the rates of tax while also raising greater income. However, I would like to ask the Minister for more detail on the Exchequer impact of this measure. The Government’s policy paper reports expected spikes in revenue of an additional £310 million and £350 million in 2024-25 and 2025-26 respectively. That then falls significantly to an additional £45 million in 2026-27, and to just £5 million by the end of the forecast period in 2028-29. I would be grateful if the Minister set out his explanation for this pattern of expected income. Is he confident that there will be a permanently higher level of income as a result of this change after the end of the forecast period?
Clause 7 abolishes multiple dwellings relief—a relief from stamp duty land tax available on the purchase of two or more residential properties in a single transaction or linked transactions. The change will apply to purchasers of dwellings in England and Northern Ireland that have an effective date of transaction on or after 1 June 2024.
SDLT is a tax on the purchase of land or property, and ordinarily the amount of tax chargeable is calculated on the basis of the total amount paid for land or property. MDR, meanwhile, was introduced in 2011 with the intention of reducing a barrier to investment in residential property and to promote the private rented sector housing supply. We know that the Government evaluations have shown very little evidence that MDR achieved its original aims in a cost-effective way. We believe that clamping down on dubious claims and abusive tax reliefs is the right thing to do, so we will support the clause, but I have a few points of clarification to which I would be grateful for the Minister’s response.
First, I would like to ask the Minister about the reasoning behind the introduction of MDR in 2011. I understand that in September 2010, the coalition Government said in response to a consultation that
“the Government will not be taking these proposals forward at the present time”.
However, at the Budget of March 2011, a few months later, they announced that they would indeed introduce changes to the SDLT rules for bulk purchases of residential property. Does the Minister know why the Government at the time changed their mind?
Secondly, the Minister referred to abuse of the relief, so I would be grateful if he shared with us any figures or estimates of the cost of abuse of MDR since its introduction in 2011. Thirdly, we note that the Government said that they will engage with the agricultural industry to assess whether there are specific impacts of their changes to MDR that should be given further thought. Will the Minister let us know whether he is consulting with any other sectors?
Finally, the Chartered Institute of Taxation has indicated that for the domestic buyer in the build-to-rent sector, the divergence between the rates of SDLT applicable to residential property and those in the non-residential sector is large. There is a great deal of complexity in the system, so is the Minister aware of the potential for anomalies and for new behaviour to emerge around the acquisition and definition of property? I would welcome his assurance that he will work closely with relevant stakeholders to ensure there are no unintended consequences to the changes in the clause.
Clause 8 makes changes to the rules for claiming first-time buyer relief from stamp duty land tax in cases where the purchaser is buying a new lease via a trust or nominee. It applies to purchasers of dwellings in England and Northern Ireland, with an effective date on or after 6 March. We know there have been instances of first-time buyers using trusts or nominees to conceal their identities to protect themselves from behaviours such as domestic violence and stalking. The clause corrects issues arising over the eligibility of such claims. It provides an amendment to correct a defect in the relief in order to ensure that the underlying buyer, not the nominee, is eligible for SDLT, and we will not oppose it.
As we have heard, clause 9 amends out-of-date references and definitions used in legislation relating to the SDLT exemption for registered providers of social housing. As the explanatory notes make clear, that is to ensure that all registered providers of social housing that purchase property with the assistance of a public subsidy are not liable for SDLT. The measure seeks, first, to update outdated references following changes to social housing legislation; secondly, to extend the definition of public subsidy to include receipts from the disposal of social housing; and finally, to amend the definition of registered providers of social housing to confirm that certain entities such as English local authorities are eligible for the exemption, which removes an uncertainty.
The changes are set to apply to transactions on or after 6 March 2024, but we understand from stakeholder representations that there is some uncertainty relating to the “clarifications” set out in the measure. Can the Minister confirm whether purchases made before 6 March by local authorities will be treated as separate to this clause, or has any scope been given in the exemption for those purchases made before that date?
Clause 10 removes public bodies from the scope of the higher rate of SDLT of 15%. As the explanatory notes set out, that is consistent with the treatment of public bodies in relation to the annual tax on enveloped dwellings, which does not apply to public bodies. Given that this is a corrective measure, we will not oppose it, although the Chartered Institute of Taxation has pointed out that with the measure not being retrospective, there are concerns among stakeholders. We understand, again, that the measure will apply from 6 March, the date of the Budget when the measure was announced. Can the Minister clarify what the situation will be for a public body such as a local authority that may have incurred a 15% SDLT liability in the weeks immediately before this change was announced?
As the Minister set out, clause 11 restricts the scope of agricultural property relief and woodlands relief to property located in the UK. As the Government’s policy paper states, the former measure was put in place to ensure compatibility with EU law; it expanded the scope of agricultural property relief and woodlands relief to property located in the European economic area. Now that the UK has left the EU, this measure reverses those changes, so that property located in the EEA will again be treated the same as property located in the rest of the world. This is a technical measure, and we will not oppose it.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 6 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Nigel Huddleston
If I may respond briefly, I will answer the perfectly reasonable questions raised by the hon. Member for Ealing North in relation to several points in multiple areas. Regarding the overall impact, and if I may reference the change of the capital gains tax rate from 28% to 24%, the OBR estimates that this costing will have a positive impact beyond the current forecasting period and generate a small long-term yield, too. Of course, beyond the forecasting period, it is difficult to estimate the exact amount.
On the points that the hon. Gentleman raised about MDR and other measures, it is interesting that although there are examples of abuse, it is also the case that only 32% of businesses buying property to let said that this relief had an important influence on their purchase decision at all and only 45% were aware of multiple dwellings relief before making a purchase decision. That feeds into the overall picture of MDR not fulfilling the original intent and purpose, which of course was to support investment in the private rented sector. Again, it is building the picture that the relief is no longer cost-effective. The Government are continuing to engage with stakeholders in the build-to-rent sector and other sectors to ensure that we understand their concerns and we will continue to listen to representations made to highlight any exception or unforeseen impacts that the abolition of MDR could have in the future.
I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s welcoming of many of the other measures. He asked whether they would be applied before the April deadline. They will not be applied retrospectively—for example, the updates on the registered social landlord exemption will not be applied retrospectively.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned the number of public bodies that have paid stamp duty at the 15% higher rate. The number of transactions—of those impacted previously —has been very small, and we therefore do not anticipate a huge impact.
Clauses 7 to 11 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 14
Additional relief for low-budget films with specified UK connection
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Nigel Huddleston
Clauses 14 and 15 make changes to better support the UK independent film industry. That is in recognition of the sector’s cultural importance and its role in growing and supporting UK talent. The Government have heard from several representatives of the British film industry, including the British Film Institute, about the specific challenges that the independent film industry faces. The Government also recognise the vital role that independent film plays in incubating UK talent.
The changes made by clauses 14 and 15 substantially increase the level of audio-visual expenditure credit available to smaller budget films from 34% to 53%. This increased rate for qualifying films is referred to as the UK independent film tax credit. The 53% tax credit will be applied on up to 80% of a film’s production costs, up to a cap of about £15 million. That translates into £31.80 back for every £100 spent, after accounting for corporation tax at 25%.
Films will also need to meet the criteria of a new British Film Institute test, with the expectation that films will have either a UK writer, a UK director or be certified as an official co-production. Clauses 14 to 15 set out the bulk of the measure, but further detail, including on the additional test, will be provided in a statutory instrument in due course.
Productions that start principal photography from 1 April 2024 will be eligible, and companies will be able to make claims from 1 April 2025 on expenditure incurred from 1 April 2024. The UK independent film tax credit is a transformational, generous, enhanced tax credit, which will boost the production of UK independent films and incubate UK film talent.
James Murray
As we have heard from the Minister, clause 14 introduces a higher rate of expenditure credit for independent films, defined as films below a maximum budget that have either a UK director or writer, or are an official international co-production. As the Government’s policy paper on this measure makes clear, the basic rate of credit under the audio-visual expenditure credit scheme is 34%. Independent films will now receive a rate of 53%, with the amount of credit capped to relevant global expenditure of £15 million. The Opposition strongly support the UK’s creative sector as one of the areas of the global economy in which Britain is world leading. As such, we will not oppose any measures that provide certainty and greater opportunities for growth in that critical sector.
Clause 15 provides the administrative framework for the previous clause and sets out that the higher rate will be available only on expenditure incurred from 1 April for films that commenced principal photography on or after that date. We understand that claims can in turn be made from 1 April 2025, so I would like to ask the Minister about the role of His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, because we know that the new schemes will need to be properly explained through new guidance and may require new staff, as the Government’s policy paper makes clear. What is HMRC doing to ensure that the guidance remains timely and up to date for those wanting to make a claim? What will HMRC do to support those who want to apply for the credit so that they can understand how it operates? Similarly, what allocation of staff will be made to administer the measure?
Nigel Huddleston
I thank the Opposition for their support. I think there is agreement across the House on the vital role of the world-leading UK creative industries, and, in particular, our thriving film sector. In answer to the broad question put by the hon. Member for Ealing North, further information will provided by a statutory instrument that we will discuss in due course. His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs will have a role in that, and the precise resource allocation is an operational decision for it. As the Minister who oversees HMRC, I will pay close attention to the issue and I will ensure that it is properly resourced. This is a very important policy area and we want to ensure that it is successful. Again, I am afraid that I will ask the hon. Gentleman to be a little patient and wait for the details in the statutory instrument, but we are consulting key stakeholders on that.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 14 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 15 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 16
Increase in theatre tax credit
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Nigel Huddleston
We are powering through this— I have on my notes “tea break” by now, but it is not going to happen. That is no bad thing, and I appreciate the comments and input from hon. Members. I will repeat my thanks as well—a lot of work has gone into the measures that we are discussing today and many stakeholders have already contributed significant amounts, including through consultations.
One such area is what we are debating now: clauses 16 to 18 make changes to ensure that our world-leading theatres, orchestras and museums and galleries may continue to put on outstanding home-grown productions and attract inward investment. The orchestra, theatre, and museums and galleries exhibition tax reliefs have had rates of 45% for non-touring productions and 50% for touring productions and orchestral productions since October 2021, reflecting the unique challenges faced by those sectors during the covid-19 pandemic and the recovery period, which of course we are still in.
The rates were due to be reduced to 30% and 35% on 1 April 2025 and then return to their original levels of 20% and 25% on 1 April 2026. Clauses 16 and 17 change that so the tax reliefs will reduce to only 40% for non-touring productions and 45% for touring productions and orchestral productions on 1 April 2025, and will then remain at that level permanently. That was a key ask of the sector. Clause 18 removes the expiry date of the museums and galleries exhibition tax relief so that the relief similarly becomes permanent rather than ending on 1 April 2026.
The changes will benefit approximately 1,300 theatre companies, orchestra companies and museums and galleries that claim those tax reliefs on an annual basis. Our creative sector is vitally important to our national life and one of the fastest growing sectors in the UK economy. These clauses will bolster our theatres, orchestras and museums and galleries, ensuring that they remain among the best in the world. I commend the clauses to the Committee.
James Murray
As the Minister has set out, from 1 April 2025 the rates of theatre tax relief, orchestra tax relief, and museum and galleries exhibition tax relief will be set permanently at 40% for non-touring productions and 45% for touring productions and all orchestra productions. As we know, the so-called creative reliefs were previously set at 20% and 25% respectively. They were temporarily increased on 27 October 2021 to help the sector in its economic recovery from covid-19. As the Government’s policy paper notes, the rates were due to taper to 30% and 35% from April 2025. We welcome the fact that they will now be set permanently at 40% and 45% from next year.
We also note that, by way of these clauses, the Government are removing the 2026 sunset clause on the museums and galleries exhibition tax relief so that it becomes a permanent relief with no expiry date. In previous debates on earlier Finance Bills, I have asked the Minister to give clarity and certainty to the creative sectors, so I am pleased to say that that has been given to the UK’s world-leading theatres through these clauses. As I have said, we in the Opposition stand wholeheartedly behind the UK’s creative industries, and we will of course not oppose the measures set out today.
Drew Hendry
I briefly want to endorse the comments about these sectors requiring support. It is good to see some support for the sectors here, but we would like to see more in the future.
Nigel Huddleston
I do not have much more to add, other than to point out the strength of our creative industries in all four nations of the United Kingdom, which I am glad has been recognised across the Committee today. It is an incredible strength, and I am therefore pleased to hear today the very obvious cross-party agreement on continuing support for this vital sector.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 16 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 17 and 18 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 20
Collective investment schemes: co-ownership schemes
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Gareth Davies)
It is a great pleasure, as always, to see you in the Chair, Mrs Latham. Clause 20 begins the process of introducing legislation for a new type of investment fund—the reserved investor fund, which I will refer to from now on as the RIF. At Budget 2020, the Government announced a review of the UK’s funds regime, covering tax and relevant areas of regulation. The review had an overarching objective to make the UK a more attractive location to set up, manage and administer funds, as well as ensuring that UK investors can access a wide enough range of investment vehicles to suit their needs. In the years since, the Government have made a number of successful reforms. In order to build on these successes, the Government announced at spring Budget 2024 that we would be proceeding with the RIF.
The RIF will fill a gap in the UK’s existing fund offering by creating an onshore alternative to existing non-UK fund vehicles that are commonly used to hold UK real estate. Clause 20 provides a definition of the RIF and provides a power for the Treasury to make detailed tax rules through secondary legislation, consistent with the approach taken when introducing tax rules for other investment funds. A later statutory instrument will set out detailed tax rules for the RIF. The regulations will set out supplementary qualifying conditions for a RIF, entry and exit provisions, and rules that deal with breaches of one or more qualifying conditions.
The UK has a world-leading asset management sector. The RIF will play an important role in supporting that leadership by making the UK a more competitive destination for our fund management industry. Indeed, stakeholders from the financial services industry have already shown considerable support for the RIF. I therefore commend the clause to the Committee.
Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve on this Committee under your chairmanship, Mrs Latham. I am pleased to respond to clauses 20 to 24 on behalf of the Opposition. Clause 20, as the Minister set out, introduces the necessary powers to set the scope and design of the tax regime and rules for the RIF. Labour welcomes the introduction of the RIF, as it will add to the investment products available here in the UK, particularly for the UK commercial real estate sector. However, the trade bodies representing investment managers and real estate fund managers, the Investment Association and the Association of Real Estate Funds, have raised some concerns that I would like to put to the Minister.
There was a widely held expectation across the sector that RIF would broadly mirror the conditions of the existing authorised contractual schemes, or ACSs, but offer less regulatory supervision, freeing the RIF to become a more flexible investment vehicle for a range of more experienced investors. Due, however, to the Government’s decision to categorise the RIF as an alternative investment fund instead of a special investment fund, the RIF and the ACS will now differ in two key aspects. First, the supply of fund management services will be standard-rated at 20% as opposed to being VAT-exempt, and secondly, an alternative investment fund comes with a requirement to raise capital from a number of investors with a view to investing it in accordance with the defined investment policy for the benefit of those investors. That makes sense for large-scale, open-ended funds with an ongoing investment strategy, but it clearly is not designed for funds that do not have a specified investment objective, such as funds of one, joint ventures, co-investment vehicles and acquisition vehicles, which instead were created for a particular purpose such as repackaging and selling existing assets to new markets. Since they do not exist to raise additional capital, the requirements associated with alternative investment funds risk being an unnecessary burden and disproportionate when applied to the RIF.
Gareth Davies
I am always grateful to see the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn in her place in opposition in these forums, and I appreciate her comments. I will first set out the background to the establishment of the RIF, which was based on significant consultation with industry to fill a specific gap for an unauthorised, contractual-based vehicle. As such, it was based on specific feedback from the industry. The hon. Lady asked a very reasonable question about classification of the fund, and I can tell her that that was considered to be part of the consultation, but in the end we decided to proceed with the structure that we have gone with in the legislation. However, we will of course keep that under review and continue to engage with stakeholders, and we will issue a report on the progress of the RIF in due course. Although we have not established it in the way that some may have wished us to, it is based on consultation and will be reviewed in due course.
Tulip Siddiq
I thank the Minister for his response. He said that he considered the options and decided to proceed with it as an alternative investment fund, but he did not actually set out the reasons why. Was there any reason why he decided that it made more sense to do that as opposed to a special investment fund, especially in line with the international comparisons that I gave?
Gareth Davies
This is designed specifically to fill a gap that was previously or currently filled by things such as Jersey property investment trusts. Where there are unauthorised, contractual-based schemes, we do not currently have a vehicle that fills that gap. What we are introducing with the RIF fills that gap and satisfies a vast amount of stakeholders who fed into the consultation, and we are proceeding with that today.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 20 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 21
Economic crime (anti-money laundering) levy
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Gareth Davies
Clause 21 increases the economic anti-money laundering levy for very large firms, meaning firms regulated for anti-money laundering purposes and which have UK revenue greater than £1 billion per annum. The charge for very large firms increased from £250,000 to £500,000 with effect from 1 April 2024. There is no change to the charge for firms with revenue below £1 billion per annum. The levy was introduced in the 2022-23 tax year as a source of sustainable funding for measures to tackle economic crime and support the delivery of the Government’s commitments contained in the economic crime plan 2. The Government made it clear during the public consultation that levy charges may be adjusted periodically in response to new information, inflation or under-collection. The adjustment is made in response to receipts falling short of the levy’s stated £100 million revenue target.
The clause amends part 3 of the Finance Act 2022 to replace the current charge for very large firms with the new charge of £500,000 per annum. The change will impact an estimated 100 to 110 very large firms across the anti-money laundering regulated sector including, but not limited to, financial services, legal and accountancy firms.
No other aspects of the levy’s calculation or operation are changing and we therefore anticipate administrative impacts on affected firms to be negligible. This adjustment to the economic crime levy for the largest firms will put funding for measures to tackle economic crime on a sustainable footing, helping to protect UK citizens and make the UK a safer place to do business. Only the very largest firms will pay more and burdens will remain low. I commend the clause to the Committee.
Tulip Siddiq
We support the measures in clause 21 to raise the funds needed to tackle money laundering, fraud and other types of economic crime, but I cannot ignore the fact that the Government’s efforts to tackle economic crime have been a complete failure. Fraud and scams, for example, have rocketed under this Government, with at least £7.3 billion stolen directly from consumer bank accounts in the UK through fraud last year alone.
Last year, the Government published their fraud strategy to widespread criticism from industry for largely rebadging old measures and re-announcing existing national teams, such as the re-announcement on the replacement of Action Fraud from 2022. The consensus from experts in the industry is that the measures in the strategy will not significantly move the dial, as they do not establish a regulatory framework for tech companies and telcos to participate in the fight against fraud, including through data-sharing with financial services firms and enforcement agencies to enhance detection and prevention measures.
UK Finance, for example, has stated that it is increasingly difficult to understand the imbalance between the financial services sector’s contribution through the levy and that of other sectors that do not contribute but are known to be introducing risk into the same system. We also know that most scams originate on social media or via telecommunications networks yet those sectors do not face the same obligations regarding contributions, nor do they compensate victims defrauded through their platforms. Does the Minister agree with UK Finance? Does he accept that until the Government find a way to bring the tech giants to the table, efforts to tackle fraud and scams will continue to fail?
UK Finance has also raised concerns about the transparency of the levy and reporting on economic crime. On reporting for anti-money laundering purposes, I have heard from numerous City firms that, despite frequent requests, they receive little granular feedback on the impact their reports make. Does the Minister agree that better feedback and wider publicity around successes could help AML-regulated firms to see the value and importance of work in this area more clearly, keeping it at the forefront of their minds? What are the Government doing to ensure that happens?
Drew Hendry
This is a welcome move in principle and in targeting economic crime, but I would agree with the comments we have just heard—this does not shift things in the way that they need to be shifted in order to deal with the issue. It does not seriously tackle online crime, which is relatively rampant, with people being conned and funds being taken illegally. It does not really do much for fraud and economic crime and fails to tackle issues such as money laundering. There has still not been enough action on limited partnerships, for example, which continue to allow unknown individuals to funnel money through those mechanisms. Why are the Government not taking this issue more seriously than through these minor actions in the Bill?
Gareth Davies
I am grateful for the comments from Opposition Members. I think we all agree that we want to tackle these issues in the most serious way possible, with the most force. I am comforted by the comments from the Financial Action Task Force, which previously said that the UK has one of the strongest regimes when it comes to tackling economic crime. The levy specifically seeks to fund the tackling of anti-money laundering rather than fraud or sanctions, which I will come on to in a second.
It is appropriate to stress that the levy is a targeted measure on the anti-money laundering regulated sector, therefore the proceeds go towards tackling anti-money laundering. That is in the context of the economic crime plan 2, which covers up to 2026 and is backed by £200 million from the levy plus £200 million of Government investment. We are taking broader action on fraud in the technology sector specifically, not least through the online fraud charter, the Online Safety Act 2023 and the telecommunications fraud sector charter.
The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey mentioned sanctions evasion. We are cracking down on kleptocracy and sanctions evasion through the economic crime plan 2. The Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation actively monitors sanctions evasion every single day.
On corruption, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office leads our efforts to support companies to tackle corruption and strengthen governance across the world. The Government are actively working with partners across the world to strengthen international standards, not least through the UN convention against corruption. In the UK, we also have the National Crime Agency’s international corruption unit. There is significant action to tackle fraud and corruption as well as sanctions evasion, but of course we can always do more and we are vigilant about that.
On the reporting and transparency of the levy, there was a reasonable question from the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn and from the sector. There will be a report on the levy this year and it will be reviewed in 2027. We will engage with stakeholders leading up to that review.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 21 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 22
Transfers of assets abroad
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Nigel Huddleston
Clause 22 makes changes to ensure that individuals cannot use a company as a device to bypass anti-avoidance legislation, known as the transfer of assets abroad provisions. Those provisions are designed to prevent individuals from transferring ownership of income-generating assets, such as real estate or stocks, to an overseas individual or entity while still benefiting from the income that the assets generate. The provisions prevent the moving of assets into offshore structures outside the scope of UK taxation being a simple tax avoidance route for UK residents.
The clause has been introduced following a Supreme Court decision. Prior to the decision, HMRC considered that shareholders and directors who controlled a company could transfer an asset and were therefore in scope of the transfer of assets abroad provisions. However, the Supreme Court decision means that a shareholder cannot be determined as a transferor, which therefore opens up a loophole that can be exploited by shareholders transferring assets abroad via a close company to avoid UK tax. A close company is a company with five or fewer participators, usually shareholders or directors, who have ownership or control over the business.
The changes made by the clause will introduce a provision that deems an individual as the transferor where they are participators in a close company that transfers an asset to a person abroad in order to avoid UK tax. The amendment also applies to transfers by non-resident companies that would be treated as a close company if they were UK resident. The changes will have an impact on transactions only where the purpose of the transfer is to avoid tax and will not have an impact on transfers that are genuine commercial transactions. The changes will apply to income that arises after 6 April 2024, regardless of when the transfer took place.
In situations where multiple shareholders are involved in the transfer of an asset, any resulting tax charge will be apportioned between those individuals in proportion to their respective shareholdings. Further details will be provided in HMRC guidance. The measure is expected to affect a small number of individuals a year and will raise about £15 million in tax revenue over the forecast period.
This change was anticipated by external groups and demonstrates that the Government are quick to crack down on tax avoidance loopholes. This clause prevents tax avoidance by ensuring that individuals cannot bypass anti-avoidance legislation by using a company to transfer assets abroad while still benefiting from the income they generate. I therefore commend the clause to the Committee.
Tulip Siddiq
We believe that individuals or companies generating wealth in the UK should pay their fair share, so we are in complete support of the aims of this clause. However, we have heard concerns raised by the Chartered Institute of Taxation about the effectiveness of the Government’s proposals and I would be interested to hear the Minister’s views on those concerns.
First, the Chartered Institute of Taxation has argued that the clause adds complexity to the tax system, because it uses income tax legislation to tackle perceived corporate tax avoidance. Clause 22 extends provision within the Income Tax Act 2007 to cover avoidance of any tax through transfer made by a closely held company. Could the Minister explain the thinking behind the Government’s decision to tackle corporate tax avoidance in this way, rather than through the corporate tax regime? Does he agree with the Chartered Institute of Taxation that it could add unnecessary complication to the tax system?
Secondly, the Chartered Institute of Taxation made the case that the Government’s position that any participator in a company is deemed to be involved in a company’s decision to move assets abroad is unfair. For example, a company may have several minority shareholders who have no participation in the running of the company. What is the Minister’s assessment of the case made by the Chartered Institute of Taxation that only major shareholders, directors and shadow directors should be assumed to be involved for the purposes of this legislation?
Thirdly, the Chartered Institute of Taxation has warned that these changes could damage the UK’s international competitiveness, because the test as set out in the legislation leaves too much discretion to HMRC, which compounds uncertainty for businesses. For example, a UK holding company that provides a loan to an offshore subsidiary that in turn generates profits could be caught by the changes, despite that being a routine transaction. The Chartered Institute of Taxation argues that that could lead to an increased number of inquiries and appeals to the tax tribunals and could seriously undermine the UK’s attractiveness for international headquarters.
What does the Minister make of those concerns? What steps will HMRC take to ensure that involvement and objection defences under the clause are not ambiguous or uncertain, and to ensure that those charges do not prove to be increased excessively for taxpayers?
My final point is that the changes introduced by clause 22 appear to be retrospective, as no date is specified whereafter transactions are affected; the clause says only that income arising after April 2024 is caught by the regime. Can the Minister confirm whether that is the case? Will commercial transactions that were carried out many years ago, but from which income arises after April 2024, still be caught?
Nigel Huddleston
I thank the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn for her comments. We very much appreciate the input that we have received from stakeholders and interested parties, including the Chartered Institute of Taxation. Some of those points are about broader issues around the TOAA regime, rather than specific to this legislation, but we do hear what they have to say.
I will respond to the hon. Lady’s points about the changes that apply to companies when the TOAA regime is primarily about individuals. The transfer of assets abroad legislation is an anti-avoidance provision aimed at preventing individuals from avoiding a tax charge by transferring an asset to a person overseas while still being able to enjoy the income of that asset in some way. It would be easy for an individual to sidestep the legislation by transferring such an asset to a company that they controlled before the company then made the transfer abroad. The legislative changes are aimed at preventing that situation and ensuring that the TOAA rules are applied as intended.
On the point about the legislation being broad, let us not forget that it is being brought in in response to the Supreme Court judgment; we are trying to make sure that it acts as intended throughout. The intention of the legislation is to put the situation involving transfers by companies back to how HMRC considered it operated before the Supreme Court decision. The transfer of assets abroad legislation aims to stop that tax avoidance.
It is also important to remember that the legislation does not bring a tax charge when the transfer is for genuine commercial reasons or when tax avoidance was not the purpose of the transfer. The new legislation gives individuals the opportunity to exclude themselves from the tax charge if certain conditions are met. We respectfully disagree with the CIOT on some of those conditions. We have outlined some of those, and HMRC will produce further guidance in due course.
On the retroactive criticism, the clause has retroactive effect because if it did not, it would have allowed individuals to abuse the loophole between the date of the Fisher judgment and the enactment of the legislation. Again, we do not believe that there will be a significant increase in complexity. The purpose behind the legislation is primarily to ensure that the regime acts as intended.
I will not go into the weeds on HMRC’s determination process—further guidance will be given—but HMRC will review the facts of a case to judge whether someone is directly or indirectly involved in the decision making of a company. It will accept evidence that shows whether someone is involved or not. However, any arrangements that are put in place purely to be used as evidence that an individual is not involved in the decision making of a company will be disregarded and a charge will be levied if the other conditions are met. As I said, HMRC will issue guidance on how it will approach the matter in due course. Decisions will be made based on the facts of each individual case.
I hope that I have given the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn some assurance. We appreciate the concerns that have raised by key stakeholders, and further information and guidance will be forthcoming.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 22 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 23
Minor VAT amendments
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Nigel Huddleston
Clause 23 makes some minor, technical changes to VAT legislation relating to the DIY house builders’ scheme and VAT credit in the penalty reform regime, and allows for reform of the VAT terminal markets order. I will speak briefly about each measure in turn.
The DIY house builders’ scheme allows individuals building their own home, or converting a non-residential building to their own home, to recover VAT incurred on the cost. That puts individual house builders in the same position as property developers, who are able to sell new build residential property at a zero rate and recover the VAT they incur in the process of constructing new build properties. The scheme was simplified and made digital in December last year, which has significantly reduced the time taken for claims to be paid. Under the new process, only essential details are required on the claim form, eliminating the need for claimants to submit certain evidential documents up front. Based on the information provided on the claim form, HMRC can then request evidential documents to verify the claim.
Clause 23(1) will give HMRC a clear power under the DIY house builders’ scheme to require further evidential documentation, such as invoices, from the person who submitted a claim under the scheme. That will assist HMRC in verifying claims.
Clause 23(3) is a minor update to the existing powers that allow for reform of the VAT terminal markets order. The order reduces VAT administration burdens on commodities traded on specified markets, so the power will allow for simplifications to support businesses trading those commodities. The Government previously announced their intention to reform the order to reflect current market practices and to keep pace with market changes, such as trades in new products, including carbon credits. This clause takes that commitment forward.
Finally, subsections (4) and (5) make changes to ensure that VAT interest rules operate as intended. For most major taxes, the Finance Act 2009 requires HMRC to pay interest on amounts due from HMRC to taxpayers, and to charge interest on late payments to HMRC. Historically, that regime did not apply to VAT, which had its own interest rules. Harmonising the rules on interest was an important step in delivering the Government’s ambition to build a trusted, modern tax administration system. Changes made by the Finance Act 2021 brought VAT interest in line with taxes such as income tax from 1 January last year. In implementing the new interest rules for VAT, HMRC has discovered some minor defects in the legislation, which without correction would force it to act in a way that conflicts with policy intent.
Clause 23 will therefore make two changes to the interest rules. The first will address the situation in which interest ought to be repaid to HMRC because, following an assessment or amendment that reduces the amount of VAT credit, the repayment interest due is also reduced. It was always intended that HMRC could recover all these amounts through a simple automated process that does not add to burdens for taxpayers and HMRC alike. The IT system can already operate, but the legislation, mistakenly, does not always allow that automated recovery. The change will ensure that HMRC can do so in all cases instead of needing a different, onerous process for a minority of cases that the original legislation did not cover.
The second change will make sure that VAT-registered businesses are always protected by a provision that creates a fairer basis for the calculation of interest where they owed money to HMRC over the same time that HMRC owed money to them. The original legislation failed to extend that safeguard to all scenarios in which that could happen with VAT, undermining the fairness of the interest regime. To ensure that all VAT-registered businesses are treated equally, the changes will be given backdated effect to 1 January 2023, when the interest rules were introduced for VAT.
Clause 23 makes some small changes to ensure that policy works as intended and to further Government commitments on reforming the VAT terminal markets order. I commend it to the Committee.
Tulip Siddiq
The Opposition support the changes that will assist with compliance checks by making online applications equivalent to paper applications. Has the Minister considered adding the online application as a service to the agent services accounts so that an agent can prepare and submit the claim on behalf of their client?
We also support the provisions for modifying the application of VAT for terminal markets, as that will allow for further reforms such as bringing trades in carbon credits within the scope of the Value Added Tax (Terminal Markets) Order. We feel that is a vital and necessary step in developing this important market.
We support the changes to legislation that governs the interaction between late payment interest and repayment interest for VAT. Has the Minister given any thought to reinstating HMRC’s ability not to charge interest on VAT errors where the supplier did not charge VAT, with no loss to the Exchequer because the customer could claim in full?
Drew Hendry
On clause 23’s minor VAT amendments, there is very little to disagree with. VAT should be paid where it is due, and HMRC should pay interest where it should pay interest. That is to be welcomed.
However, on Second Reading I pointed out the paucity of thought and imagination that had gone into providing real help for people across the nations of the UK, and the kinds of thing that the Government could have done but have not. The clause title, “Minor VAT amendments”, just highlights the problem with the entire Bill. The Government could have taken some action to deal with the issues for people in hospitality by cutting VAT and doing something meaningful for tourism, but no: they have chosen to make these minor adjustments. They could have used VAT as a mechanism for helping our high streets to create economic zones that could boost life back into vital high streets and centres. Instead, they have taken to tinkering with the VAT rules.
My question to the Minister is why there is such a lack of ambition in his Government. Is it that this is a fag-end Government in a fag-end Parliament that has run out of ideas, or is it just that they do not care?
Nigel Huddleston
The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey has been charming until this point, and now he goes back to this. I know him very well; I am sure he does not mean it. First, he knows as well as anybody in this House that everybody who comes into Parliament cares: they care about their constituents and they care about the country. We are motivated to come here because we want to make the country a better place for our children and grandchildren.
I know that the hon. Gentleman occasionally gets rather vocal on some of these points, but I politely request that he be a little bit careful with some of his comments. I would never criticise the motivation, incentives or purposes of any colleague in this place. I may fundamentally disagree with some of their policies, but I will not disagree with their motivations. In saying things like “People don’t care” or “The Government don’t care,” I am afraid he is straightforwardly wrong.
Drew Hendry
I am very fond of the Minister, as he knows. We often have these back and forths, and I often have to rise to my feet to correct what he has said. I did not make any assertion about any individual; I was talking about his Government. I was very explicit about that. I just want to make that clear.
Nigel Huddleston
Yet again, I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s trying to clarify, but I am a member of the Government and therefore I am afraid that I do take offence, direct or indirect. But that is a side point to the matters under discussion.
The hon. Gentleman is making fair and valid points about the support that has been given, but I repeat that this Government, like every Government around the world, have had incredibly difficult circumstances to deal with. I do not think that there is any doubt whatever that the support measures that we have put in place to support lives and livelihoods have been incredible and stack up pretty well when compared internationally. That includes cost of living support, as I have mentioned.
I know that the hon. Gentleman is a huge supporter of the tourism, hospitality and leisure industry. We have spoken about that many times, and I know that it is particularly important to Scotland, where it is a disproportionately larger share of the economy than in England, for example, although it is important and large across every single constituency in the UK—and I do mean every single constituency. But the hon. Gentleman is being a little bit rich, because he knows as well as I do that there are other measures beyond VAT to support the hospitality and leisure industry. Of course, in England we have extended the 75% business rates reduction to the retail, hospitality and leisure sector, but that has not been done in Scotland, nor has it been done to its full extent in Wales.
Drew Hendry
I am grateful to the Minister for allowing a bit of back and forth on this. It is generous of him to do so. He fails to mention that in Scotland, 100,000 businesses are lifted out of business rates altogether through the small business bonus scheme. The record in Scotland shows that we are supporting businesses, and those businesses are very prevalent in the tourism sector.
Nigel Huddleston
I acknowledge the efforts made by the Scottish Government to support various sectors, but as I say, on that particular item, the hon. Gentleman will know as well as I do that it is a key ask of the industry in Scotland for the Scottish Government to follow suit with England and elsewhere.
The hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn raised several points. Some were slightly out of the scope of the specific measures under discussion, including IT systems and other considerations, but I take on board what she says, as does HMRC, because there is a constant need to review and assess the scope of IT systems and so on. We do so on a regular basis; I spend a lot of time talking to HMRC about this, so I can assure the hon. Lady that the points that she raised are constantly under consideration. I will probably leave it at that.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 23 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 24
Collective money purchase arrangements
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Nigel Huddleston
Clause 24 makes further provision for collective money purchase arrangements. CMP arrangements are a new type of pension that have the benefit of pooling individuals’ pension pots to provide better incomes in retirement while limiting the liability of employers.
These changes will enable the Government to authorise the transfer of benefits to a member’s beneficiaries, such as their dependants, in the unlikely event that a member dies while a CMP arrangement is being wound up. That will ensure that such transfers do not incur an unauthorised payment charge of 55%, and it will deliver the Government’s commitment to provide the correct tax outcome for CMP arrangements.
The Pension Schemes Act 2021 introduced legislation to allow collective money purchase schemes to operate in the United Kingdom. This measure authorises the transfer of survivor benefits in collective money purchase pension schemes. This will ensure that Royal Mail Group, the first provider of a collective money purchase pension scheme, can launch its scheme as planned.
It is a complicated title, but with a simple purpose. As a result of these changes, an employee of Royal Mail will be able to sign on to a CMP, with all the benefits, without the risk of transferring survivor benefits being put through as unauthorised transactions. I therefore commend the clause to the Committee.
Tulip Siddiq
This clause is so uncontroversial that we give it our full support. For the first time, I agree with everything the Minister has said, and the Committee will be happy to know that I have no further questions for him.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 24 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 25
Interpretation
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Nigel Huddleston
I will be very brief, because the clause is fairly straightforward. It provides for the use of abbreviations for a variety of Acts. For example, it provides for the use of “CTA 2009” as an abbreviation for the Corporation Tax Act 2009. I commend the clause to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 25 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 26
Short title
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Nigel Huddleston
The clause provides for the Bill to be known as the Finance (No. 2) Act 2024 upon Royal Assent. I commend it to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 26 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Question proposed, That the Chair do report the Bill to the House.
Nigel Huddleston
We have moved forward very quickly today. I thank everybody for their participation: you, Mrs Latham, all the officials in the House, the Clerks, and all those who have been working on the Bill at HMRC, HMT and other Government Departments. I repeat my thanks to the external stakeholders for their comments and to all those who have been involved in consultations. In particular, I thank the Chartered Institute of Taxation, the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, and the Low Incomes Tax Reform Group for their contributions to this Committee, including in written form, and all those who have participated today.
I look forward to the Bill progressing smoothly through its final stages. I thank everybody involved.
James Murray
I add my thanks to my colleagues in the Opposition: my fellow shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn; the Opposition Whip, my hon. Friend the Member for Gower; and, of course, the Back Benchers who have joined us for this lengthy Committee session. [Laughter.] I place on the record my thanks to all the House authorities and to third parties, particularly the Chartered Institute of Taxation, whose expertise is always greatly valued.
Drew Hendry
I, too, rise to pass on my thanks: to you, Mrs Latham, for chairing, and to all the staff and others who have been involved. Whether we agree or vehemently disagree—often, as we have seen today, there are big disagreements—we never forget those people who work hard to produce the documentation and supporting information in all the arms of Parliament, including the House of Commons Library. Thank you.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly to be reported, without amendment.
Football Governance Bill (Fifth sitting)
Tuesday 21st May 2024
(7 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Football Governance Bill 2023-24 View all Football Governance Bill 2023-24 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 21 May 2024 - (21 May 2024)
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 6 / Noes: 10 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Clauses 16 to 19 stand part.
New clause 8—Support to clubs—
“(1) The IFR shall provide reasonable and proportionate assistance to—
(a) regulated clubs seeking to obtain a provisional club licence;
(b) regulated clubs with a provisional operating licence seeking an full operating licence; and
(c) unregulated clubs which are reasonably likely to become regulated clubs in the next football season.
(2) The IFR shall provide reasonable and proportionate assistance to regulated clubs in their efforts to continue to comply with the conditions of a provisional or full operating licence.
(3) In fulfilling its duty under subsections (1) and (2), the IFR shall have regard to the factors listed in section 52(9).”
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Stuart Andrew)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. Starting with clause 15, one of the regulator’s main responsibilities will be to operate a licensing system for football clubs through which the majority of its regulation will be delivered. The licensing regime will cover all football clubs that have a team playing in any competition specified by the Secretary of State in regulations. It is proposed that it will cover the top five leagues of the English football pyramid, but that is subject to the Secretary of State’s discretion and parliamentary approval. I will use “specified competitions” as shorthand to denote those competitions covered by the regime. That means that football clubs will require a licensed, lawfully operated team in any of the specified competitions. A licensing system to enact regulation is not a new idea, with sectors such as communications, finance and healthcare all operating such a system.
The clause sets out the requirement for clubs to have a provisional or full operating licence, and the regulator’s power to grant those licences, subject to clubs passing the relevant tests, which are established in the following clauses. The licence will enable the regulator to regulate clubs through licence conditions set out later in the Bill. This will enable proportionate regulation tailored to clubs rather than a one-size-fits-all approach. An operating licence will specify which club the licence relates to, the team that the club is operating and any conditions attached to the licence.
I will move on to clause 16. The introduction of a football regulator into a previously unregulated sector will be a substantial change to the industry, but a necessary one to safeguard the future of English football. In order to provide for a graduate transition to being a fully licensed club, a club will initially apply to the regulator for a provisional operating licence. We see that as the natural first step to attaining a full operating licence. That will give clubs time to adapt to the regulatory system and make the necessary changes without being unfairly penalised for not being able to raise standards overnight.
The application for a provisional licence requires basic information on the club’s owner or owners, officers and senior management as well as a strategic business plan detailing things such as the estimated costs of the club and how they are expected to be funded. The regulator should look to make that process as simple and straightforward as possible, assisting clubs with their applications where necessary. It will be aware of the possible constraints on smaller clubs lower down the football pyramid. We envisage that the majority of clubs will meet the test for a provisional operating licence through the submission of basic information and documentation, and showing a readiness and willingness to work with the regulator to meet the mandatory licence conditions and free-standing duties.
Clause 17 outlines the granting of a provisional operating licence that will allow the club to operate for a time-limited period. That may be up to three years initially, although it could be shorter or extended depending on the circumstances. The provisional period will allow the regulator time to assess the current standing of the club and determine what steps it will need to take to obtain a full operating licence as well as giving the club time to take the necessary steps. The provisional licence will ensure that all clubs under the remit of the regulator meet basic fundamental requirements, in the mandatory conditions, that will help to safeguard the club’s sustainability and heritage.
There are three aspects of the test to grant a provisional operating licence. First, the club must operate a relevant team in a specified competition, which effectively means that the club must be in scope of the regulator. Secondly, the club will comply with the mandatory licensing conditions attached to the licence by the regulator. Full details of the mandatory licence conditions are in schedule 5 to the Bill, but they encompass a financial plan condition, a corporate governance statement, a fan consultation condition and an annual declaration condition. Thirdly, the club will comply with the duties on clubs as set out in part 5 of the Bill. If the regulator is not satisfied that the club passes all elements of the test, the clause gives a club the opportunity to engage with the regulator to rectify the issues identified. That collaborative approach will aim to ensure that clubs are given every opportunity to meet the requirements and gain a provisional operating licence.
Clause 18 states that in order to pass the test for a full licence, the regulator must be satisfied that a club is meeting the threshold requirements as set out in schedule 4 and that the club is complying and will continue to comply with the mandatory licensing conditions and free-standing duties on clubs set out in part 5. The regulator must also not have determined that any person who is an owner or officer of a club is unsuitable for the position they hold.
Clause 18 also details the power of the regulator to extend the provisional operating licence for a club. That will be done only if the regulator believes that the club does not meet the bar for a full licence at present, but will if given more time. As set out later in the Bill, the regulator will be able to sanction a club if it has to extend its provisional licence. Once a club has a full licence, it will not have to be periodically reviewed. Instead, the regulator would continue to monitor and supervise the club, and there will be an annual touchpoint in the form of the annual declaration, where the club will notify the regulator of any changes within the club over the past year that are relevant to the regulator. That is intended to minimise burdens while still ensuring that the club continues to adhere to the necessary requirements, including requirements that ensure that fans’ best interests are at the heart of the club’s decision-making process.
Clause 19 details the revocation of a club’s provisional operating licence for failing to progress to a full licence, as well as when the licence ceases to have an effect. For a provisional operating licence to be revoked, the regulator must satisfy itself of three things: first, that the test for a full operating licence is not met; secondly, that the club in question has persistently and without reasonable excuse failed to take reasonable steps to meet the test; and finally, that there is no reasonable prospect of the club meeting the test within a reasonable period, even if given more time. The regulator should be engaging with the club throughout that period, and we expect that through constructive dialogue, a solution that avoids that drastic step can be found in all but the most serious cases. The regulator must notify the club of its decision and provide its reasoning. To reduce as much as possible the regulator’s impact on ongoing sporting competitions, a revocation must not be before the end of the current season.
A licence will cease to have effect only if the club ceases to operate a relevant team. The most likely cause of cessation of an operating licence is that a club has been relegated from a specified competition and is therefore no longer in the scope of the regulator.
I understand the intention behind new clause 8, which would require the regulator to provide clubs with “reasonable and proportionate assistance” as they engage and comply with the licensing system. However, I can reassure the hon. Member for Sheffield South East that the Bill already achieves that in principle. It is already implicit that any good regulator should provide support and assistance to the regulated population as necessary, to aid their understanding and support compliance. But for the avoidance of any doubt, we have also explicitly codified that participative approach into the Bill through the regulatory principles. The regulatory principle in clause 8(b) encourages the regulator to
“so far as reasonably practicable, co-operate, and proactively and constructively engage, with…clubs”.
The regulatory principle in clause 8(c) encourages the regulator to be proportionate. Those two principles would encourage the regulator to provide clubs with assistance in engaging with the licensing system.
It is in everyone’s interest to maximise clubs’ compliance with the system and minimise burdens on them as much as possible. Indeed, ensuring a smooth transition and minimising burdens on clubs has been at the heart of our design of the licensing system. That is precisely why there is a two-step structure of provisional licences followed by full licences, with clubs given time and support to progress from one to the next.
Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Sharma. I am pleased to have reached the part of the Bill where we can discuss the content of the operating licences that will make up the regulator’s regime. As the Minister has said, clauses 15 to 19 set out the process for applying and granting both provisional and full operating licences. I would like to welcome a few things about these clauses.
First, I welcome the ability for clubs to gain a provisional licence first, with the conditions in this licence providing the building blocks for the full-time licence. This process recognises the importance of the transition period, allowing clubs to take the necessary time to understand the new requirements and get themselves in order to meet them if needed.
I also welcome that clause 16 clarifies that any club can apply for a provisional licence, allowing those expecting promotion to the National League to be proactive. Further, I am pleased that the process will require a personnel statement to be provided. That will be crucial in ensuring that the regulator is able to hold the right people accountable for the proper fulfilment of the licence at any given club.
The clauses allow for an advocacy first approach, where the regulator will provide an encouraging and flexible pathway for clubs to gain their licences. Coupled with the enforcement power in clause 19 to ensure that the regulator has the teeth it needs in the event of non-compliance, the process in this part of the Bill seems to offer a fair and supportive approach to getting clubs up to speed with the full requirements.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East is right to highlight in new clause 8 that clubs should be supported in their transition to becoming fully regulated. That is especially important for those clubs in the National League and the lower tiers of the English Football League. In his evidence to this Committee, Steve Thompson, the managing director of Dagenham & Redbridge told us he was
“really worried that the extra reporting…will be more than a lot of them can manage without taking on extra staff.”––[Official Report, Football Governance Public Bill Committee, 14 May 2024; c. 39, Q61.]
He also highlighted that most clubs at National League level operate on one or two full-time staff, with some working on volunteers alone.
I think the Bill has done a good job of ensuring regulation will be proportionate. Further, I believe reporting requirements have been minimised wherever possible and should in any case be balanced out by the benefits of good financial planning and governance. However, given the concerns of clubs, I understand why some may feel it is better to make it explicit that the regulator will support clubs that are or will be licensed.
I hope the Minister can use this as an opportunity to highlight some of the ways in which the Bill as it stands will adopt an advocacy first approach and offer clubs the assistance they need to keep up with the regime. I do not believe it is anyone’s intention for the regulator to have to use its enforcement powers on well-intentioned clubs that are genuinely struggling to comply.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Sharma. I thank the Minister for his positive comments on new clause 8, which are very much in line with what it is trying to achieve. I think the Minister said that the new clause is unnecessary because the essence and intention of it is already contained in other clauses, and the regulator would be expected to operate in providing assistance to clubs in line with the way described in new clause 8. I think I have got that right.
Mr Betts
The Minister is nodding on that point. On that basis, I will not push the new clause, because the Minister’s explanation, and the evidence we have heard, reassures me that clubs that are coming up from the National League and want that assistance will be helped in precisely the way the new clause would require of the regulator.
Stuart Andrew
I welcome the positive comments from the hon. Member for Barnsley East. She is right that we are trying to have a fair and supportive approach here and that clubs should be supported.
I want to reassure the hon. Member for Sheffield South East that we have tried to design the Bill so that it recognises that the level of activity at the top of the Premiership, for example, will be vastly different, and that, as we heard in the evidence sessions, many of the club officers in the National League will be volunteers and we would not want to overburden them.
Dame Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)
The Minister will have heard the concerns in the evidence sessions about duplication. Will he be kind enough to remind the Committee that it will be for the leagues, not the statutory regulator, to decide whether there is any duplication?
Stuart Andrew
My hon. Friend makes an important point. This will be the statutory regulator, and this will be where the reporting will need to happen. If the leagues add anything, it is for them to make that decision. As this process progresses, I hope they will see that there is no need for the extra layer of reporting and that the regulator’s powers will be sufficient to secure the future of English football.
Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)
On behalf of a National League club, Southend United, I welcome the light-touch approach set out in clause 8(c). I welcome the Minister’s comments that where the National League is already regulating itself well, there will be a proportionate, light-touch approach to any additional regulation.
Stuart Andrew
At the end of the day, we want to ensure a standard approach to regulation to ensure that we secure clubs in the future. As I say, I hope that as the regulator starts getting up and running, the leagues will see that there is no need for duplication and will make decisions accordingly. Ultimately, however, it is up to them to make that decision.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 15 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 16 to 18 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule 4
Threshold requirements
Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)
I beg to move amendment 4, in schedule 4, page 93, line 3, leave out from “has” to end of line 6 and insert—
“(a) adequate means by which to consult its fans about relevant matters, and
(b) structures and processes for effective engagement with its fans and takes the views of its fans into account in making decisions about the relevant matters.”
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 16, in schedule 4, page 93, line 4, leave out “consults” and insert—
“has structures and processes for effective engagement and consultation with”.
Amendment 8, in schedule 4, page 93, line 4, after “matters,” insert—
“including any proposal by the club
(i) to play matches in a competition to which the notice requirements in section 54(7) and (8) apply, or
(ii) to play home matches at a ground other than the club’s home ground, before giving notice of that intention to IFR under section 48(1),”.
Amendment 5, in schedule 4, page 93, line 17, at end insert—
“(4) The club’s establishment and continued delivery of such fan engagement must be independently assessed ahead of it being awarded a full operating licence and in the event of the breach of relevant licence conditions or provisions of this Act.”
Amendment 17, in schedule 4, page 93, line 12, at end insert—
“(2A) The IFR must—
(1) consult the Football Supporters’ Association on defining what constitutes effective fan engagement and consultation by clubs and,
(2) issue guidance on measures to be taken by clubs to ensure effective fan engagement and consultation and lay a copy of that guidance before Parliament within six months of this Act coming into force.”
Schedule 4.
Ian Byrne
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Sharma.
I welcome the line in the Bill that gives use the opportunity to secure the grounds. The Independent Football Regulator must grant approval for a disposal only when it is satisfied that the carrying on of the activity will not undermine the financial sustainability of the club. However, we would also like to see—certainly from the perspective of fans—a consultation of the supporters and the community.
I speak from experience: Liverpool supporters stopped the club relocating from Anfield to an out-of-town ground in Speke. That would have been utterly disastrous for the heritage of the club, as I mentioned to the English Football League chair, who was chair of Liverpool at the time. Also, Everton supporters stopped Everton moving from Goodison, again to an out-of-town stadium, in Kirkby, with a huge Tesco attached. Again, we are talking about something that would have been disastrous for the heritage of the football club, and we would not be seeing Bramley-Moore come into occurrence, potentially as one of the greatest stadiums in the world.
I am saying that to the Minister because that was football supporters changing the direction of travel. I warmly welcome that line on the Independent Football Regulator, but it would be fantastic if we could also consider what the amendment proposes, which is about ensuring that the community and supporters are talked to during any process about the movement of grounds.
Stephanie Peacock
Schedule 4 sets out the threshold requirements on clubs, which I will address before moving on to the amendments. The requirements cover sustainable resourcing—both financial and non-financial—and fan engagement. Before I address each of those areas in turn, I confirm that I welcome each of all the requirements as a whole.
The first condition is about financial resources. At this point, it is important to set out some context on football finances and regulation. As the Secretary of State said on Second Reading, clubs will not and should not be required to break even under the requirements. Ambition, investment and, indeed, a level of risk are fundamental to football and the pursuit of success. That is what makes the game so exciting and varied, something football fans never want to lose.
Owners Steve Parish and Tony Bloom emphasised that in their evidence to us, with Steve Parish saying of football,
“It is not a business with a profit principle…people’s desire to win will always trump their desire to make money.” ––[Official Report, Football Governance Public Bill Committee, 14 May 2024; c. 59, Q94.]
Ian Byrne
The issues addressed in amendment 8 are paramount. FIFA is already talking about opening the door to games being played in another country, and the league seems to be making moves to play games in the USA. Unfortunately, that is the direction of travel that could come to our doorstep. Consultation with supporters and supporter bodies through the IFR will be hugely important if the Premier League decides that it wants to start playing games abroad, because that is a slippery slope for the heritage of football in this country.
Stephanie Peacock
I thank my hon. Friend for those comments; I am sure that the Minister was listening. I will come to the issue of playing games abroad in future Committee sittings, but I hope that the deterrent of the regulator’s enforcement, as well as the fact that the prohibition will apply whether or not a club is licensed, will be enough to dissuade clubs from making such plans anyway. A club that is willing to participate in a prohibited competition is a club that is willing to risk losing its licence, which would release it from the fan consultation requirements anyway.
The amendment is right to highlight that fans are not currently given a say in the Bill on changes to where their home matches are played. We will come to that point later, when we look at further amendments that give fans a say on stadiums.
Mr Betts
On the point about playing games abroad, which we will come back to later, it is interesting that although clubs will have to consult their fans, if the competition organiser decides to move games abroad and requires the clubs to do so as part of the competition requirements, there is no requirement for the competition organiser to consult fans. That seems to be a hole in the provisions that we will have to address at some point.
Stephanie Peacock
I thank my hon. Friend for that comment, which I will talk about later. I am sure that the Minister also heard it and will respond if he feels able to. For now, I ask the Minister to set out his thinking on why fans are not consulted on the heritage implications of moving a home ground. Overall, I welcome schedule 4 but would welcome a strengthening of the fan engagement provisions.
Stuart Andrew
Schedule 4 introduces the threshold requirements that clubs will have to meet to be granted a full operating licence. These are the three main areas of the regulator’s club licensing regime, which build on the freestanding duties and the mandatory conditions. Meeting the threshold requirements will mean that the regulator is satisfied that the club can currently and will be able to continue to operate sustainably in its financial, non-financial and fan engagement areas.
Although the threshold requirements are principles set in legislation, what each club must do to meet those requirements will not be the same. For example, what constitutes appropriate financial resources for a Premier League club will be very different from a League One club. A club might already meet the threshold requirements—for example, through naturally good operations or by complying with competition rules—in which case, the regulator will not need to intervene directly. If a club does not, the regulator can apply discretionary licence conditions to bring it up to the required threshold. That structure will allow for a proportionate system with requirements tailored to individual clubs, rather than the approach taken by the industry to date of blanket rules catering to the lowest denominator but applying to all.
The threshold requirement for financial resources means that clubs need an appropriate level of financial resources to support their long-term financial sustainability, accounting for their circumstances and risks. For example, that might include which competition the club competes in, its financial relationship with its owners, and the wider economic context in which it operates.
In particular, the regulator should take into account the club’s financial plan and its contingency plans for dealing with financial shocks. For non-financial resources, a similar requirement and process applies. “Non-financial resources” refers to things such as internal controls, systems and policies, as well as the information and people that the club has at its disposal. Although not financial in nature, those are important resources for any well-run club, so they need to be adequate. When assessing whether the resources are appropriate, the regulator might consider the skills and experience of the senior management and its corporate governance arrangements.
The threshold requirement for fan engagement requires that clubs adequately consult and consider the views of fans when making decisions relating to certain specified matters. As we heard from the FSA on Tuesday, this is the first time that there has ever been a requirement for fan engagement to this extent. The relevant matters are listed in the Bill and cover key off-pitch decisions, which the fan-led review highlighted as important to fans across the specified leagues. The threshold requirement is designed to work in tandem with the fan consultation mandatory licence condition. Through that condition, all clubs must regularly consult a representative group of supporters to discuss the relevant matters listed in the Bill, and that must be in place by the time a club receives a provisional licence.
Appropriate fan engagement will look different at every club and will partly be based on the size and complexity of the club’s fanbase. The threshold requirement has been designed to allow the regulator to recognise the inherent variation between clubs while ensuring that standards are raised where necessary.
Ian Byrne
Is the Minister confident that independence will be hardwired into engagement? Regarding the fan advisory boards, there are several examples of Premier League clubs flooding them with club employees. For engagement to work, it has to be completely independent so that we can hold the powers that be to account.
Stuart Andrew
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right and I give that reassurance. If fans feel that the body that is currently being consulted is not truly representative, the independent regulator can have a look and, if necessary, apply discretionary licence conditions.
Fans, as everybody has said, are the foundation of any club. Putting in place a supporter engagement threshold requirement recognises that they must be consulted on key issues that affect their club. The requirement for clubs to have adequate means to consult their fans and to take fans’ views into account allows the regulator to consider the outcomes of fan engagement and whether the appropriate processes are in place at clubs and are being utilised.
Importantly, the regulator will be able to take enforcement action, such as censure statements, where it deems it appropriate following non-compliance with the licence conditions relating to the fan engagement threshold requirement. That is just one of the factors that results in a robust fan engagement requirement on clubs.
Amendments 4 and 16, however, seek to add something that is already captured in the legislation, with the difference in legal effect of “adequate” and “effective” being negligible. There does not seem to be a way in which a club’s fan consultation could be determined to be adequate without the structures and processes for effective engagement in place. Although the Government understand the intent to make sure that the fan engagement provisions in the Bill are strong, I can provide reassurance that that is the case already and I therefore hope that the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby will be able to withdraw his amendment.
Turning to amendment 8, I have been clear that the Government agree with the need for many clubs to engage with their fans on more issues. We expect that the issues of joining a new competition or not playing matches at their home ground would already be captured by the “relevant matters” of
“(a) the club’s strategic direction and objectives;
(b) the club’s business priorities;
(c) operational and match-day issues;”
and matters relating to “the club’s home ground”. It is therefore already implicit in the “relevant matters”, so to add this amendment would be duplicative.
Stuart Andrew
The leagues will have to report to the regulator if they are making changes to any of the competition rules—that is a requirement within the legislation. If changes to competition rules were to impact any of the “relevant matters” in the Bill regarding fan consultation, the club will be required to consult the fans on the related club decisions. However, where changes to competition rules do not have such an impact, it does not seem appropriate to mandate that consultation. Therefore, I hope that the amendment will not be moved.
Mr Betts
Is the Minister saying that if there is a requirement by FIFA, UEFA, the Premier League or any other league for clubs to play their home matches away in another country, the clubs would have to consult the fans about that issue and the regulator would take account of that consultation, even if it was a requirement on the club by the competition organiser? Could the regulator overrule the requirement of the competition organiser in line with the fan consultation that a club would have to engage in?
Stuart Andrew
I think I understand the hon. Gentleman’s question, but my understanding is that that will be looked at on case-by-case basis. I want to ensure that I have exactly the right line for him and I would not want to give any misinformation, so I will write to him, if he will allow it.
On amendment 5, the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby is correct that fan engagement in football clubs is an integral part of football and capturing that in the Bill is essential. Regarding the specific amendment, I assure him that the fan engagement threshold requirement and the wider licensing regime already captures what the amendment is describing. As the Bill is drafted, before a club receives a full operating licence, the regulator—which is independent—will assess if the club has adequate means to consult fans and to take their views into account on a range of issues in the Bill. The test for a full licence, which is set out in clause 18, is such that a full licence cannot be granted unless the club meets the threshold requirements, including those on fan engagement.
Once a licence is granted, the regulator will continue to monitor the club’s adherence to all the threshold requirements, including on fan engagement. For the avoidance of any doubt, the regulator’s general duties in clause 7(4) explicitly require that. If the regulator identifies that a club is no longer meeting the fan engagement threshold requirement, the regulator can take relevant action to bring the club back to meeting that threshold requirement. Given that those elements are already a feature of the licensing regime, I hope the hon. Member will not move his amendment.
On amendment 17, the FSA has been extensively consulted from the fan-led review until now. I am incredibly grateful to Kevin Miles and all those at the FSA for their support—the amount of help and support that they have given to this process has been extraordinary. The Government expect that the regulator will continue that engagement with the FSA, and it is often likely to be a relevant stakeholder on fan engagement. It is therefore not appropriate for the legislation to bind the regulator unnecessarily, but I hope that that makes it clear that we expect the FSA to be consulted where relevant.
As currently drafted, the Bill is future-proofed so that the regulator may always consult the most appropriate stakeholders in relation to and at the time of a particular decision. The regulator will be best placed to establish what adequate fan consultation looks like in practical detail, given its position of oversight and understanding of each club’s fan base. Adequate fan engagement is not a one-size-fits-all, as the hon. Member for Barnsley East mentioned, and limiting it to a strict definition would water down the intention for clubs to be able to take a bespoke approach. The legislation has deliberate, in-built flexibility so that fan engagement expectations can be tailored to a club’s size, fan base and individual circumstances.
On the topic of guidance on fan consultation, it will be for the regulator to determine the most effective course of action in relation to producing and publishing any formal guidance, the contents of guidance and the timing of publication. As we heard on Tuesday, this is a key area for the FSA, and the Government expect that the regulator will work at pace on any required formal guidance, working throughout with appropriate stakeholders, including the FSA. Setting a legislative requirement for that may risk rushing the regulator’s work in the space without sufficient time for necessary consultation with those stakeholders, or force the premature publication of guidance to the detriment of its quality. I therefore hope that the hon. Member for Barnsley East will withdraw her Bill—sorry, her amendment. [Laughter.]
Stephanie Peacock
We are all in agreement that one-size-fits-all is not appropriate, and that certainly was not the thinking behind the amendment. We certainly do not want to make measures more prescriptive; it is about ensuring that whatever means clubs choose to consult their fans are effective and focused on outcomes. We certainly do not want to rush the regulator; the text of the amendment says “within six months”. Although I am happy not to press amendment 16, I will push amendment 17 to a vote.
Amendment proposed: 17, in schedule 4, page 93, line 12, at end insert—
“(2A) The IFR must—
(1) consult the Football Supporters’ Association on defining what constitutes effective fan engagement and consultation by clubs and,
(2) issue guidance on measures to be taken by clubs to ensure effective fan engagement and consultation and lay a copy of that guidance before Parliament within six months of this Act coming into force.”—(Stephanie Peacock.)
Question put, That the amendment be made.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 19, in schedule 5, page 95, line 36, at end insert—
“8A Where a club’s fans have established legally registered Supporters Trusts, clubs must have regard to whether these bodies should become the appropriate representation in its fan consultation process under paragraph (8).” Amendment 7, in schedule 5, page 95, line 40, at end insert—
“(3) Persons selected as representing the views of the club’s fans should be appointed through a process that is democratic and independent of club control.
(4) Where the club’s fans have established a legally registered Supporters Trust, that body should have appropriate representation in the club’s consultation processes.” Schedule 5.
Stuart Andrew
Clause 20 requires the regulator to attach the four mandatory licence conditions to the provisional and full operating licences of all licensed clubs. These are basic and fundamental requirements of the whole regime, so apply to all licensed clubs, regardless of their individual circumstances. The mandatory conditions vary in what they attempt to achieve, and are set out in schedule 5, which I will discuss after amendments 19 and 7.
In our view the amendments risk undermining the key intention to implement a proportional and flexible system for fan engagement. Mandating specific forms of fan representation may lead to clubs being required to implement an entirely new way of engaging with their fans, even where existing frameworks are working well. Should it be deemed necessary, the regulator already has the power, established in schedule 5, to specify the means by which clubs are required to consult those representing the views of fans, which may include how a representative group of fans should be constituted. The regulator may specifically choose to require a club to implement a mechanism for the independent selection of fan representatives. On that basis, I hope that Opposition Members will not press the amendments.
The conditions set out in schedule 5 are related to core areas of financial management, corporate governance, fan engagement and reporting, and will form the foundations for the overall improved standards and sustainability of a club. Long-term financial sustainability is at the heart of the Bill, and is vital to make clubs more resilient to financial difficulties. The financial plan condition allows the regulator to understand the risk profile of the club and its plans for mitigating risks if necessary. To do this, the regulator needs detailed financial information about clubs. This allows it to establish the risk profile of a club and then, if necessary, to make a considered, proportionate intervention to reduce the risk of that club getting into financial difficulty.
As well as allowing the regulator to assess the risk profile of a club, a detailed financial plan will help clubs to establish their funding requirements over a period of time. Clubs need to have sufficient funds, or access to such funds, to support their intended level of spending. Clubs will need to model their financial plan against different scenarios and over different periods. They will also need appropriate contingency plans that they can enact if their finances worsen, in order to get them back to a sustainable state. This is to ensure that clubs can be ambitious and, equally, to prevent the failure to achieve those ambitions from putting the club’s long-term financial sustainability at risk.
Mr Betts
On corporate governance, I do not want to name names, but this relates to a club not too far from me. Is the Minister saying that in the future it will not be appropriate to regulate the corporate governance of a club if it merely has an owner who is the chairman, and no board of directors to run the club?
Stuart Andrew
The hon. Gentleman makes a really important point, which is why one of the mandatory conditions is good corporate governance. Some clubs do that extremely well, and he gives an example of one that may not be doing so well. For it to get a licence, the regulator would expect a minimum level of corporate governance.
Stephanie Peacock
Clause 20 and schedule 5 provide us with the building blocks of a licensing regime. The Minister set out the mandatory licence conditions that all clubs must comply with in order to obtain a provisional or full licence. That will ensure that base-level requirements are fulfilled on key areas such as finances, corporate governance and fan engagement. I will speak briefly to each area in turn, and then address the amendments.
The first condition relates to financial plans. I will not spend too much time on it as we have already discussed financial resources. However, I believe that the requirement to submit a financial plan would be fundamental for clubs wanting to exercise best practice.
The second requirement is on corporate governance. As we just discussed, good corporate governance can help to deliver better business outcomes, improve the efficiency of decision making and demonstrate to stakeholders that a club is well managed, to the benefit of both fans and investors. Furthermore, as the Government’s White Paper says, poor governance can exacerbate financial issues, allowing reckless decisions to be made without challenge or scrutiny. Many clubs already engage in good corporate governance, and for those that are not, the introduction of requirements should genuinely help to move them towards best practice.
However, I have some questions about the content of the corporate governance code of practice, which will be published by the regulator and reported against by clubs. In particular, Fair Game and Kick It Out have questioned whether issues such as equality, diversity and inclusion will be included in the code. Indeed, the Government chose not to pick up the recommendation of the fan-led review to mandate EDI action plans through the licence regime, pointing instead towards enhanced industry assessments in that area.
I understand the need to ensure that existing structures that are working well are not disrupted, and to give the regulator a well-defined scope. Given the explicit focus that the regulator will have on good governance, however, it seems slightly odd to divorce the concept from the issue of EDI. The fan-led review said:
“Aside from a clear moral case, improving diversity is also a key aspect of driving better business decisions by football clubs. Diverse companies perform better”.
A football that welcomes everyone, then, is a football in which clubs have the best possible chance of success. But change is needed at almost every level for that to happen.
Kick It Out’s reporting statistics from last season show that it received a record 1,007 reports of discriminatory behaviour across the professional game, including a 400% increase in reports of sexism and misogyny. Meanwhile, in 2019, the law firm Farrer & Co found that across all professional football clubs only 7% of board directors were female. Just one club met the 30% target set for other industries, and only 7% have a woman in a leadership position on the board. Work must be done to address the problem across the board. I am keen to hear from the Minister about how whether issues such as EDI will form part of the governance code will ultimately be decided, and whether he has a view on whether they should.
I have spoken about fan consultation in detail during our discussions on schedule 4, so I will save repeating how important it is. However, I would like to raise some further concerns. Namely, I am disappointed that the Bill makes no provisions regarding supporters’ trusts, as noted by my amendment 19 and amendment 7 tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby.
At the time of the fan-led review, 73 clubs had a community benefit society in the form of a supporters’ trust. Community benefit societies are incorporated co-operatives that conduct business for the benefit of their community. They must follow certain rules, including operating on a democratic basis and ensuring that any profits gained by a trust can only be reinvested into the club or returned to the community. Those minimum standards mean that CBSs in the form of supporters’ trusts operate with a broad level of consistency and reliability. Many of them have a long legacy of connecting with the local area, liaising with their club and organising on behalf of fans. Many trusts should therefore be viewed as an asset to the community that clubs can learn from and engage with positively. We saw that at first hand in our evidence sessions, with the insight that Action for Albion, Supporters’ Trust At Reading and Arsenal Supporters’ Trust brought us in respect of their clubs and the view of their communities.
I understand why the Bill has sought to ensure that fan engagement measures are not a one-size-fits-all. However, where trusts are established, I believe that clubs should consider them when forming their consultation processes. Amendment 19 would ensure that where a club’s fans have established a legally registered supporters’ trust, that body is considered for representation in the club’s fan consultation process. Clubs would not be bound by any hard-and-fast rules, but would be encouraged to consider the benefits of engaging relevant existing trusts.
That brings me to the broader issue of how fans will be selected for consultation. Amendment 7 suggests that fans are given a democratic mandate if they are to be consulted by the club regularly. That way they would have the backing of fellow fans, helping to avoid scenarios in which the fans are seen as a mouthpiece for the club directed at fans, rather than the other way round. I am keen to hear how the Minister thinks we can ensure that fans are both selected and treated fairly. Will there be standards or guidance on that specific issue?
Finally, I am pleased to touch on the annual declaration condition. Given that there is no requirement for licences to be renewed, it is right that there is a touchpoint for clubs with the regulator to ensure that everything is in order, but I have one brief question. The schedule outlines that the annual declaration must contain a summary of any “material change” at the club over the year. That phrase is used 11 times throughout the Bill, but its definition is not clearly set out. Will the Minister provide a working definition today, or write to me with one?
Overall, I am broadly happy with the contents of the clause and schedule, albeit with a few questions that I would like answering on governance code and on supporter involvement.
Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate on an important Bill. I would like clarification on a few points with regard to schedule 5, particularly—following the excellent remarks made by the shadow Minister, with which I wholeheartedly agree—paragraph 7(4), which states:
“Before publishing a code of practice or any alterations to the code, the IFR must consult…the Football Association, and…other such persons as appear to the IFR to be representative of persons likely to be affected by the code.”
Can I seek assurances from the Minister that fans and fans’ representative groups will be included as people who are likely to be affected by the code? They will take a deep interest in the corporate governance of their clubs, which is why we are here with this piece of legislation. Similarly, I would like to press for clarifications on reporting on equality and diversity and inclusion matters, which are a really important aspect of good corporate governance. Once again, I add my support to the remarks made by the shadow Minister.
Ian Byrne
I wish to support the excellent remarks by the shadow Minister, who gave a very comprehensive overview of why we need amendments to the Bill. There is a real worry, as I have outlined, that the clubs will seek to dilute the power of the supporter’s voice by filling the boards full of stooges, shall we say. We need some sort of system to ensure that boards are appointed through a democratic and independent process. Supporters trusts are a ready-made option. There are over 130 of them in the football world. They are democratic, independent organisations that have the trust of the wider supporter base, mainly. It would be foolish not to utilise that expertise and the system that is already in place.
If a club has not got a supporters trust we need to have some sort of oversight to ensure there are independent fan voices holding clubs to account, which will be a crucial part of the independent football regulator. We have got to ensure that those boards are fit for purpose and, as I said, not diluted by clubs that want to disempower supporters and supporter voices.
Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)
I want to repeat the point I made on Second Reading about the corporate governance statement, which is part of the licensing condition. I think this is incredibly important—indeed, it will be important for the regulator, because it is part of the conditions of issuing the licence.
My right hon. Friend the Minister has said that the regulator will issue of a code of practice. It is important that we are clear what, in passing this legislation, Parliament intends this code of practice should contain. Competition organisers already require clubs to demonstrate many of the requirements discussed in this debate. For example, the Premier League’s own governance statement says that the Premier League handbook acts as the rulebook for all member clubs, which includes the clubs having to demonstrate
“minimum standards of governance and operation on a wide range of areas, from safeguarding and supporter relations to broadcaster access, stadium infrastructure and club academies”.
By asking for this sort of information, the regulator would merely be repeating requests which the clubs have to fulfil for their competition organisers anyway. I agree with the evidence we received from Kick It Out, which said that it would be extraordinary that such a corporate governance statement would not include the club’s policies on equality, diversity and inclusion. I do not think we would necessarily be asking for the clubs to do more work than they do already. We would simply be asking that their own policies in these areas be clearly set out in the corporate governance statement they give to the regulator. That would mean that the regulator would have the power to hold the clubs to account for those policies. If necessary, the regulator could even audit or investigate clubs if it felt they were in breach of those conditions, which would almost certainly be a breach not only of the pledges they have made to the regulator but of the rules of the competitions within which they play.
Dame Tracey Crouch
Will my hon. Friend clarify something? Is he saying is that there is no need to change any part of the Bill? This needs to be reflected in the intent of the corporate governance statement, and some of these things can be included without amendment to the legislation?
Damian Collins
My hon. Friend makes a very important point. That is exactly correct. I think it is a question of being clear as to what the corporate governance statement should include, either in the Bill or at least in the explanatory notes. The explanatory notes already say that a description of all the operations of all the elements of the club should be included; it would be extraordinary if we thought that that did not include a statement on equality, diversity and inclusion, or on the welfare of the players. This has been requested throughout the passage of the Bill. In particular, we have heard that at present there is no requirement for an EDI statement, nor are players mentioned at all. As my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford says, without changing the structure of the Bill, or maybe even its wording Bill, we could make it really clear that these things are included through these important corporate governance statements.
Stuart Andrew
I thank hon. Members for their contributions. I agree with the hon. Member for Barnsley East that the guidance on corporate governance should be really helpful to clubs that are perhaps struggling with that, and puts it on a statutory footing. As my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe quite rightly points out, many of these clubs, by obligation of the leagues they are in, already have to provide a corporate governance code. However, as we go further down the pyramid, there are varying degrees of quality for that corporate governance code. That is why having a statutory requirement will, we hope, improve those standards. We recognise that some of those codes work well, but my hon. Friend is right: this will enable the regulator to hold those clubs to account for the way in which they are implementing those corporate governance codes.
Damian Collins
My right hon. Friend makes a good point. The requirements will differ at different levels of the pyramid. It would be wrong for us to require a club in League Two to meet the same corporate governance standards as a Premier League club. However, the provision could be worded to say that the corporate governance statements must set out how the clubs meet all the requirements they are expected to meet by the competition organisers for the competition in which they play.
Stuart Andrew
I expect that clubs would have to work closely with the leagues as well.
On the issue of EDI, I hope that it is clear this is an area that I personally feel very passionate about. We have made sure that the Bill and the regulator are tightly focused on the finances of clubs, the sustainability of the pyramid and fan engagement. We recognise the importance of equality, particularly, as the hon. Member for Barnsley East mentioned, in light of unacceptable abuses. I regularly engage with the Football Association and the leagues to put pressure on them and to work with them to do more to make improvements in this area. We also work with organisations such as Sport England and UK Sport, because it is not just football where this is an issue.
Dame Tracey Crouch
On the sports governance code, which I may have had a hand in helping to design and shape many years ago, is the Minister saying that when looking at the issue of corporate governance, he will draw on the experience of the sports governance code, which has specific EDI aspect it, or is it more about looking at the UK corporate governance code, which has elements of that but is certainly not as strong as the sports governance code?
Stuart Andrew
My hon. Friend makes a really important point, which I was just about to come on to. I am glad that she did so—it was a perfect introduction. She is absolutely right. The regulator can consider all of those, and I would expect that it would do so. It can draw on established principles such as, as she rightly points out, the code for sports governance and the UK corporate governance code. It can also draw on the Wates principles on corporate governance for large private companies, and it can also draw on the regulator’s own state-of-the-game reports. There is a whole host of information which I hope will address those issues.
I can confirm to the hon. Lady for Luton South that the phrase, “likely to be affected”, includes fans, so I expect that they will be consulted.
Damian Collins
My right hon. Friend’s response is helpful. If the Government are not willing to amend the Bill, and do not feel the need to do so, would he consider writing to the Committee, setting out the guidance which he would give to the regulator when preparing the codes of practice on what the corporate governance code should include?
Stuart Andrew
Yes, I would be more than happy to do that.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 20 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule 5 agreed to.
Clause 21
Discretionary licence conditions
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Clauses 22 to 24 stand part.
Schedule 6.
Clause 25 stand part.
Stuart Andrew
I will begin with clause 21. Where needed, discretionary licence conditions will be used by the regulator to bring a club up to the required level of compliance with the threshold requirements. That means that the regulator is satisfied that the club can currently, and will continue to be able to, operate sustainably in financial, non-financial and fan engagement areas, as per the regulator’s objectives. Those conditions will be in addition to the standardised mandatory licence conditions and, when applied, will be tailored to the club’s specific circumstances and identified financial risks. If a club already meets the threshold requirements set by the regulator, the regulator will not need to attach any discretionary licence conditions. That means that it can be light touch where appropriate, and need not directly intervene if the desired outcomes are already being met. Discretionary licence conditions could also be used to protect and promote the financial resilience of the football system. The conditions would be used to resolve risks that might not threaten any one club significantly, but their potential aggregated, correlated or multiplied effects may pose a significant risk to large parts of the football system, or the pyramid as a whole.
Clause 22 sets out the scope of the regulator’s powers to attach or vary a discretionary licence condition. Under the financial resources threshold requirement, discretionary conditions may only relate to one of four areas including debt management, liquidity requirements, and overall cost reduction, or they might restrict a club’s ability to receive illicit finance. The fourth area is integral and enables the regulator to restrict the club’s ability to access funding that it has reasonable grounds to suspect is connected to serious criminal conduct. It will empower the regulator to limit illicit finance, which is inherently unsustainable for a club.
Under the non-financial resources threshold requirement, conditions may only relate to one of three areas: internal financial controls, risk management, and financial reporting. As outlined in the previous clause, the regulator can also attach discretionary licence conditions to advance its systemic financial resilience objective. That objective is specifically to address systemic risks, or structural issues, by applying conditions to multiple clubs or even to all licensed clubs. Clause 22 limits the scope of discretionary licence conditions to only conditions that relate to debt management, liquidity requirements, and overall cost reduction.
To future-proof the regulated regime, the Secretary of State will have the power to amend the areas to which discretionary licence conditions may relate. However, that can be done only if the regulator makes a request in writing to the Secretary of State, having first held a consultation, explaining why an amendment is needed by reference to the purpose of the Act. That will limit the risk of unwanted, politically motivated scope-creep in the future.
Clause 23 sets out the procedure for attaching or varying financial discretionary licence conditions on clubs. The procedure outlined in the clause ensures that clubs and competition organisers are notified and given the appropriate opportunity to engage in advance when the regulator considers a discretionary licence condition is needed. Where appropriate, the regulator will seek to allow the relevant club and league to address identified issues and risks so that it does not have to intervene formally. That may produce a better regulatory response and outcome. The football industry may be best placed to address specific issues within the overall context of a league’s regulatory framework.
Ian Byrne
I thank the Minister for what he has said so far. I want to touch on a point for the clubs and, certainly, for supporters, having spoken to those of both Everton and Nottingham Forest, regarding profit and sustainability rules and the tariff that was served on them. At the moment, there seems to be zero confidence in the Premier League’s ability to govern that system and there are many calls—in fact, I got about 14 last night—from supporters right across the board who are asking why the independent financial regulator is not taking control of the whole profit and sustainability issue, any breaches and then levying the punishment to clubs in a manner that people think would be fair and transparent and, as I say, a process that they have a belief in. At the moment, they undoubtedly do not have that and that is a real worry.
It would be remiss of me not to touch on Manchester City winning the league yesterday and congratulate the club on that. However, there are 115 charges hanging over the club’s head and there is lots of disquiet around the whole process. It would have been welcome if the Minister had considered whether that should sit with the independent financial regulator to restore faith in the whole process, which, unfortunately, is not there.
Stuart Andrew
I understand what the hon. Gentleman says, but there is a balance about football having its rules and independence. We have to honour that in terms of relationships with UEFA and FIFA. However, we are ensuring that there is a regulatory regime that I hope will start to improve confidence among fans, as the hon. Gentleman describes. When it comes to the specific area under focus, if the regulator feels that the league’s proposition does not meet the objectives it needs to fulfil its duties, it can decide that it will still impose its own. The regulator will have to be satisfied that what the league is proposing will meet its required objectives.
Before any action is taken by the regulator, there will be a period where both the relevant leagues and clubs can make any representations and in which the relevant league, as a competition organiser, can also give a commitment to take action in lieu of the condition being attached or varied, as proposed by the regulator. Where the regulator is looking to attach financial discretionary licence conditions to a club, it must go through the relevant procedure to do so, as outlined in clause 23.
Clause 24 sets out further details on one key aspect of the procedure: a final, formal opportunity for competition organisers to offer a self-regulatory solution to a problem identified by the regulator so that the regulator does not have to step in. That is known as the competition organiser making a commitment in lieu of a financial discretionary licence condition. The clause is another important aspect of the regulator’s approach, which emphasises engagement and working with the industry to minimise formal intervention where possible. The regulator will still have powers to step in if the issue is not resolved, but it provides the chance for a competition organiser to present a football industry-led solution to an identified risk.
The regulator can accept a commitment if it concludes that that commitment should achieve the same results as the proposed discretionary licence condition and it does not conflict with the regulator’s objectives. If the commitment proposed by the league will not achieve the regulator’s desired outcome, the regulator can reject it—to repeat the point to the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby—and retains the power to intervene directly by imposing the discretionary licence condition.
Ian Byrne
For clarity, if the disquiet continues around the Premier League’s handling of the financial sustainability rules and the punishments it has meted out, and if the independent regulator believes it is not a fair and transparent system and that there are holes in the system, it can intervene.
Stuart Andrew
This is in relation to the mandatory conditions that all clubs have to meet under the regulatory regime. If the regulator identifies that a club is not meeting one of the mandatory conditions set out in the Bill on the financial side, it can apply its own discretionary conditions. If the league proposes a solution to the problem and the regulator believes that it will work, it can then allow the league to apply that. However, if the regulator feels that the proposal put forward by the league would not get that club up to the standards required, it can then impose its own rule. I hope that makes sense.
Schedule 6 outlines the procedure for when the regulator is minded to accept a commitment given by a competition organiser, and covers requests to vary an existing commitment. The schedule therefore expands on clause 24. As I say, if it does not accept the commitment, the regulator can impose the original conditions. The intention is that commitments could provide a less burdensome solution for all parties that still addresses the risk. However, for that to be the case, it is important that there is a clear procedure for the interaction between clubs, the relevant competition organisers and the regulator. Schedule 6 sets out that procedure in further detail. The notification processes and timings set out in the schedule allow clubs the opportunity to make representations before the regulator accepts a commitment or requested variation of an existing commitment from a competition organiser, and before the regulator releases a competition organiser from a commitment.
Finally, clause 25 sets out the procedure for the regulator to attach or vary non-financial discretionary licence conditions. Such conditions, set under the non-financial resources and fan engagement threshold requirements, will not be subject to the commitments procedure involving relevant leagues as outlined in the previous clauses. Instead, the procedure is that the regulator must notify only the club and give the club a period of no less than 14 days to make representations. As per previous clauses, this is an important safeguard to allow the club to make its case. However, the clause allows the regulator to take more immediate action in situations that are more urgent and serious. If the regulator believes that giving the club notice and allowing a period for representations will jeopardise or risk jeopardising one of its objectives, it can apply the discretionary licence condition immediately, without prior notice.
Stephanie Peacock
I will start by briefly addressing the broad provisions around discretionary licence conditions in clauses 21, 22 and 23 together, before moving on to a discussion on commitments in lieu of licence conditions, covering clauses 24 and 25 and schedule 6.
Looking first at the discretionary licence conditions, clause 21 allows the regulator to attach licence conditions that are specific to a particular club. This allows the regulator a mechanism to put the principles of proportionality and consistency into practice: every club will be required to meet the threshold conditions for a full licence, providing us with consistency, but where a club falls short, the regulator’s response can be bespoke, allowing for proportionality.
Clause 22 provides strict limits as to what the discretionary licence conditions can cover, ensuring that they are focused on the areas in which they are most needed. Finally, clause 23 requires the Independent Football Regulator to notify a club, as well as the relevant competition organiser, about a proposed financial discretionary licence condition before attaching it to a licence. This is a sensible provision, which allows for a club and the regulator to remain in conversation unless there is an immediate risk that further delay would threaten the club’s financial sustainability.
I will move on to the idea of commitments in lieu of discretionary licence conditions. This requirement, which was not initially proposed as part of the fan-led review or the Government’s White Paper, says that the regulator must invite the relevant competition organiser to give a commitment to make a rule of its own instead of the proposed condition’s being attached to the particular club’s licence. I understand that the reasoning behind that provision is to ensure that competition impacts can be reduced, allowing a competition organiser to try to ensure that one club alone does not have to face a rule that other clubs do not. Further to that, it exists to offer competition organisers an opportunity to improve consistency across clubs in following good practice. However, despite that, a number of concerns about these clauses have been raised with me, so I hope that the Minister can provide some further context in answer to some of the following questions.
First, it would be good to have confirmation that this provision cannot be exploited to delay the regulator from imposing licence conditions. Consultation will be incredibly important as part of the regulator’s functions, but the regulator must have the teeth to make an executive decision where needed. In that vein, it would be good if the Minister could provide some insight on what these commitments might mean for rule primacy.
I understand that the regulator will have the final say on whether a commitment in lieu is accepted, and that the discretionary licence condition must be dropped while a commitment is in force, but it still remains the case that any accepted commitment will mean that both the regulator and competition organiser will have oversight and scope in the same area. That could see clubs paying twice for two sets of overlapping rules. Who has ultimate power in these cases?
Another area where clarification is needed is on the topic of commercial sensitivities. Although the Premier League is in many ways representative of clubs, it is also a competitor to clubs when it comes to gaining big sponsorship deals. Can the Minister confirm that the regulator will be alert to the ways in which discretionary licence conditions are discussed with competition organisers, so that sensitive information is not disclosed? Indeed, in cases involving such commercially sensitive information, it seems slightly odd to think that the competition organiser, which will not have the full picture, would be better placed to create a rule than the regulator itself, which will be privy to more of the financial details.
Finally, it is welcome that the relevant club will be consulted about a commitment in lieu beforehand, as per schedule 6, but, for the other clubs competing in a relevant competition, who will also be impacted by the commitment, there is no right to consultation. That might seem strange to clubs that have done what is required of them to meet the threshold requirements; they face being subject to further regulation due to the specific circumstances of another club’s finances, without a fair say in the matter. I should be grateful to the Minister, therefore, if he would set out how the Bill will ensure that clubs are not ignored in the engagement process when the commitment in lieu being proposed will directly apply to them.
Stuart Andrew
The hon. Lady makes important points. The idea is that as we have a regulator on a statutory footing, which will improve standards, hopefully that will bring football along with those improved standards. However, she is right to highlight the point about sensitive information. The regulator will be on a statutory footing and will be able to look at that information.
That is why it is important for the regulator to allow the leagues and clubs to make representations. The leagues may be able to say, “We can offer a commitment in lieu that will address this and look at the detail of that,” but the regulator, having information from the club that may be sensitive and private, can work out that, “Actually, that commitment in lieu will not meet the objectives,” and therefore impose its own discretionary licence condition.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 21 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 22 to 24 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule 6 agreed to.
Clause 25 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 26
Part 4: overview and interpretation
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Stuart Andrew
The Government’s White Paper laid out several failings of the existing owners and directors tests conducted by the football authorities. The tests are conducted on a self-declaration basis, and have allowed owners with long histories of business bankruptcies and owners later imprisoned for crimes including money laundering. To address such shortcomings, the Bill includes strong statutory owners and directors tests, a vital part of the new Independent Football Regulator’s regime.
Part 4 gives the regulator the power to test the suitability of prospective new owners and officers of regulated clubs. In certain circumstances, it also gives powers to test incumbent owners and officers. The clause provides an overview of part 4, and signposts the rest of the clauses in this part.
One element of the regulator’s tests is the fitness criteria for individual owners or officers. They will ensure that custodians have the necessary characteristics to run or own an important community asset. Subsections (7) and (8) of the clause specify the fitness criteria: having the requisite honesty and integrity; being financially sound; and, for officers only, having the requisite competence for their role at the club. Alongside other elements of the test, ensuring that owners and directors are suitably fit for their roles will better protect each club against unsuitable custodians, ensuring the sustainability of English football over the long term.
Stephanie Peacock
I am pleased to have reached the part of the Bill where we can discuss the owners and directors tests. Football clubs are historical institutions with deep community ties; thus we must be careful to ensure that owners are people who view themselves as caretakers of an asset that has existed long before them, and we hope will continue to exist for years afterwards. As such, it is right that owners and directors are subject to fitness tests to ensure that the custodians of beloved football clubs meet certain standards.
At the moment, the tests are operated by different authorities depending on the league a club plays in. The Premier League, the EFL, and the FA on behalf of the National League all administer owner tests and have powers to disqualify unsuitable individuals. While those tests have been in place, many successful owners have been appointed, making selfless and sustainable investments in their clubs, which have brought about rewards on the pitch. However, not all owners have the same outlook, fortune, capacity or capability. Despite ownership tests, too many clubs and fans still have to deal with malicious, absent or incompetent ownership.
Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)
I commend what my hon. Friend is saying. She knows full well the issues of my local club, Reading, which sadly was bought by the current owner. He was disapplied from buying Hull City but went on to buy Reading, despite a history of being involved in two clubs that went out of business overseas. I hope the measures in the clause will address this and stop other football clubs around the country getting in a similar predicament; I would not wish that on anyone. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for speaking about the issue.
Stephanie Peacock
I appreciate my hon. Friend’s comments and his work with his local club. I have met its supporters, and that is one example, although not a lone one, because it has been confirmed, in another example, that both Bury FC’s owners, Stewart Day and Steve Dale, passed the EFL tests. The fan-led review took a number of such case studies into consideration, concluding that things needed to change.
Alongside other measures in the Bill, which will be vital in giving owners a better landscape in which to operate and invest, the review made some distinct suggestions regarding the owners and directors tests, such as: ensuring a consistent and independent approach across all men’s football; giving tests the backing of the regulator to enable access to information not otherwise available to competition organisers, such as that from the National Crime Agency; splitting the tests into two parts to recognise the difference in the obligations and duties of owners and directors; and strengthening the qualification criteria to ensure that prospective candidates have integrity and the intention of running a club sustainably. Overall, I think the clause and this part do a good job of achieving those aims and recommendations.
I have one brief question at this stage. The EFL has indicated that it will stop conducting its owners and directors tests once the regulator is running its tests. However, Richard Masters told the Committee that the Premier League would continue to run its tests alongside those of the regulator. Putting aside the issue of clubs paying twice for the same regulation and the lack of efficiency involved in duplicating structures, a dual system could pose a dilemma. If two tests yield different results, whose decision would ultimately be adhered to? That is difficult to tell from the Bill, and I hope that this is something that the Minister can confirm for us today, or that he will write to the Committee about.
Damian Collins
I asked Richard Masters that question when he gave evidence to the Committee and he was clear then that it would require two green lights, as he put it: a person has to pass the Premier League’s own test as well as the test set by the regulator.
Stephanie Peacock
That clarity is welcome, but I would still be interested to hear the Minister’s comments. Nevertheless, I am pleased to welcome the clause and I look forward to discussing it in detail.
Dame Tracey Crouch
I rise to speak briefly about this particular part of the Bill, because although the fan-led review—and indeed the Bill, the explanatory notes and the evidence that we have heard from fans—have of course referred to some poor owners in the Football League over many years, it is really important that we also recognise that there are a large number of very good owners in football. I do not think that they necessarily get the credit they deserve, because we so often focus on those who have not done the game any favours.
Personally, I often think that, despite my love of football, I would not dream of wanting to be an owner, because at the end of the day someone can be a fantastic owner who cares passionately about the long-term financial stability of their club, but if they do not actually buy that left back during the summer transfer window and ultimately the club does not do as well as fans expect it to—I speak as a lifelong Spurs fan—expectations and reality are very different.
Being a club owner can really be very stressful. I do not think that running a football club, wherever that club is in the football pyramid, is a particularly easy thing to do. I also think that most people purchase a football club with the right intention for the club, its fans and the local community, but we have seen some poor examples of ownership in the past and that has really driven the Bill. I just wanted to place on the record my sincere thanks to all those custodians of football clubs who have not driven away their fans, who engage with others regularly, who do their very best to support the local community and who very much have the best intentions of their football club at heart.
Mr Betts
The hon. Lady is absolutely right—there are many good owners of clubs in football. I refer immediately to Milan Mandarić, who came into Sheffield Wednesday when we were virtually bust, put the club on a sound financial footing, wrote the debts off, took the club forward and got it promoted, with Paul Aldridge as chief executive. They worked together. Mandarić then sold the club on, because he believed that he could not take it any further at that time.
There are other owners who do not necessarily have bad intentions—I think the Bill exists to stop those who have bad intentions—but just make mistakes. This Bill will not make every club successful and it will not make every owner make the right decisions, and we should always remember that. The Bill is to stop people from deliberately doing things that undermine the future of their club.
Dame Tracey Crouch
The hon. Gentleman makes a really important point. During the fan-led review, Mel Morris gave evidence to us. His is an example that illustrates the point that the hon. Gentleman just made. As a panel, we asked Mel Morris whether, if the Bill and the regulator had existed with real-time financial monitoring, he thought the same mistakes would have been made. He said that fundamentally he thought that if these interventions had been in place, Derby would never have got itself into the situation that it did.
Mr Betts
That is a really helpful point. The Bill is about stopping people from doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons, as opposed to stopping people from making mistakes because they are trying to do the right thing but get things wrong. We will never be able to stop that completely.
Damian Collins
I echo what my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford said. Part of the problem with the lack of oversight of spending, particularly in the Championship, is that club owners who go in with the best of intentions find themselves competing against other clubs that are spending over 100% of their annual revenue on salaries. They therefore make mistakes in trying to compete with someone else who is already trading in breach of the league’s rules.
Mr Betts
Absolutely. Trying to keep clubs in line with the league’s rules, so that others do not over-compete to match them, is vital. We will come on to parachute payments later, including how they can drive these processes.
We cannot go back and undo all the problems of the past. My concern about new clause 3 is about owners who, for whatever reason, have decided to separate the ownership of the club from that of the ground. I know that in future that will require proper consultation and approval from the regulator, but this is being done in some clubs. My own club, Sheffield Wednesday, is one. Derby County has done it, and I think Aston Villa and Charlton have as well—it has happened at quite a few clubs, for various reasons. For Sheffield Wednesday and Derby, it was a way to try to get round the financial restrictions on clubs. Wednesday just made a mess of theirs and got the timing wrong, so they got a points deduction anyway.
New clause 3 is an attempt to say that although we cannot go back and reverse that decision—we cannot force the owners to sell back the grounds to the same organisation that owns the club—we can say that if the club is to be sustainable, the owner has to demonstrate that the ground will be available. A club cannot play without a ground; if it does not have a ground, it is not sustainable. I hope that the Minister will take that point seriously. If he cannot accept the new clause, because there is some—
Anna Firth
I am very pleased that we have got to this important part of the Bill, which deals with owners and directors tests. I am conscious that we may be about to come on to the provisions that I am about to support. I would be grateful if I could say my piece now, and then not come back to it. Perhaps you could guide me, Mr Sharma.
Stuart Andrew
Everyone is obviously getting so excited that they are getting ahead of themselves. To be fair, I understand why. It is important to acknowledge what my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford said about the many people who put themselves forward to support their local football club to build and become competitive. They are hugely important to the local communities in which they are based. We should acknowledge that there are many who do that well and with the best of intentions—even those who make mistakes, as the hon. Member for Sheffield South East said. Their intention is right.
We are focusing on ensuring that owners and directors tests get to the heart of the detail that we need. The test will be much stronger with the regulator, which will have access to information from statutory organisations such as the National Crime Agency, as the hon. Member for Barnsley East mentioned. She asked about the Premier League continuing with its own owners and directors test. It can continue with it if it wishes. I note that the EFL has made a different decision, because it recognises that the tests that the regulator will provide will get much more detail and information than the leagues may be able to. Because the tests will be statutory, they will take primacy.
Stephanie Peacock
I appreciate that clarity. I also appreciated the intervention from the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe. Richard Masters’s comments to the Committee about two green lights are welcome, but it is important that the Bill is clear on this point and that we are clear about it in Committee, so the Minister’s comments are welcome.
Stuart Andrew
I thank the hon. Lady. I commend the clause to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 26 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 27
Duties to notify IFR of prospective new owner or officer
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Clauses 28 to 31 stand part.
New clause 3—Owner’s commitment to future use of a club’s football ground—
“(1) A person may not become or continue to be an owner of a regulated club unless they provide to the IFR a commitment to maintain long-term use of the football club’s grounds as a mandatory licensing condition.
(2) The IFR must codify the commitment.
(3) The IFR may only determine a person to be or remain a suitable owner of a club if the person has made a commitment under subsection (1).”
This new clause introduces a new licensing condition requiring an owner to provide a commitment to the future ongoing use of a football ground by a club.
Stuart Andrew
Clearly we have got to the bit that everyone is itching to speak to. Ensuring that new owners and officers of clubs have passed the regulator’s owners and directors tests is a key tenet of the new regime, and is designed to prevent unsuitable custodians from running or owning clubs. The regulator therefore needs to know who a club’s prospective new owners and officers are before they buy or join the club, so that they can be tested for suitability.
Clause 27 will place duties on a person to notify the regulator where there is a reasonable prospect of that person’s becoming a new owner or officer of a regulated club. The clause will ensure that the regulator receives advance notice of an application from a prospective new owner or officer, and will help the regulator to prepare to act quickly when it receives the application. The clause will place the same duty on regulated clubs themselves, as another means of ensuring that the regulator will be notified.
The regulator needs to know a person’s role at the club so that it can prepare to assess whether they are suitable to be an owner or an officer of that club. That is why, where the notification relates to an officer, it must state their proposed job title or job description, as well as any senior management functions that they will carry out. Enforcement measures such as censure statements or financial penalties are also available to the regulator if it determines that this requirement has not been complied with without a reasonable excuse. This will deter those who do not wish to comply with the regime.
Clause 28 will prohibit a person from becoming a new owner of a club unless the regulator has determined beforehand that they are suitable to own that club. It requires prospective new owners to provide an application containing information about how they propose to run the club, the estimated costs, how those costs will be funded and where that funding comes from. This will better ensure that prospective new owners are clear from the outset about their plans for the club and how they will deliver the resources to fund those plans.
Once a complete application has been provided, the regulator can pass the individual owner only if they meet the individual ownership fitness criteria, as defined in clause 26; they have the requisite honesty and integrity and are financially sound; they have sufficient financial resources; and the regulator does not have grounds to suspect that the individual has any source of wealth that is connected to serious criminal conduct, which is defined in the Bill by reference to part 1 of schedule 1 to the Serious Crime Act 2007, which includes crimes such as drug trafficking and fraud. This will mitigate illicit finance in the game.
Registered societies are one vehicle by which fans can collectively own clubs. They must be run in accordance with specific legal requirements regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Registered society owners are not assessed against the fitness criteria or the source of wealth test, but they still need to complete an application, including providing a plan for running and funding the club.
Dame Tracey Crouch
The Minister is setting out clearly the purpose of these clauses of the Bill. It is clear that the regulator has been designed to be as agile and as future-proof as possible. If a crime that we have not yet imagined is added to the Serious Crime Act, how will the regulator assess a potential owner who has committed that crime?
Stuart Andrew
My understanding is that if the 2007 Act is updated with a new crime, it will still be relevant to the Bill. However, I want to be absolutely sure, so I will write to my hon. Friend, and if I am wrong I will correct my homework.
By requiring new owners to undergo the regulator’s test, clause 28 will better mitigate harm to clubs by stopping unsuitable custodians.
Stuart Andrew
Well, the Bill identifies an individual as the owner, not a state, but we will come on to some of those points. I have heard some of these representations as we have been preparing the Bill. It would not be right for the regulator to be getting into foreign policy—I do not think any party would want a regulator of any sort to be setting the nation’s foreign policy—but I get that it is an area of interest, and we will come on to it later in our proceedings.
Football clubs hold unique importance to their fans and local communities, who are the ones who lose out when clubs are exploited or mismanaged by unsuitable officers. Clause 29 will prohibit individuals from becoming a new officer of a regulated club unless the regulator has determined beforehand that they are suitable to be an officer.
Once the prospective officer has provided a complete application to the regulator, it will assess them to ensure that they meet the individual officer fitness criteria, as defined in clause 26. They must possess the requisite honesty and integrity and the requisite competence and must be financially sound. If the regulator is satisfied that the individual meets these requirements, it must find them suitable to be an officer of the club; otherwise, it must find them unsuitable. When the regulator is making this determination, it will take into account the matters listed in clause 37. By requiring new officers to undergo the regulator’s tests, the clause will better mitigate harm to clubs by stopping unsuitable individuals from becoming officers.
The Bill requires prospective new owners and officers to pass the regulator’s owners and directors test before they join or buy a club. However, it is possible that someone might take up a position at a club without first having undergone those tests. This may be a blatant and deliberate breach of the requirement to undergo tests before joining the club. A prospective owner may act in bad faith, hoping that once they are in, the regulator will be more hesitant to fail them, but in some circumstances a person may fall into the definition inadvertently or have some other relatively innocent reason for the breach. This may occur, for example, if a person inherits significant equity in a football club or if a person disputes in good faith whether or not their actions bring them within the Bill’s definition of an owner.
Clause 30 will therefore provide the regulator with the powers that it needs to respond decisively but flexibly when a person has become a new owner or officer of a club without the regulator having first determined whether that person is suitable. When the regulator becomes aware that this has happened, it must either notify the new owner or officer that they are being treated as unsuitable automatically or require them to provide an application, treating them as though they were a prospective applicant. When deciding which option to take, we expect the regulator to assess the circumstances of each case carefully and consider whether the new owner or officer has an innocent explanation or whether they have deliberately breached the regime.
The regime cannot be allowed to be abused. The regulator must have the discretion and the teeth that it needs to address harm to the sector. Clause 30 is an important step towards achieving that aim.
When the regulator is minded to fail a new or prospective owner or officer, clause 31 will require the regulator to give that person and the relevant club an opportunity to make representations before the regulator makes its final decision. Affected persons can also require an internal review of the regulator’s decision and then can appeal the outcome of that review to the Competition Appeal Tribunal. The purpose of clause 31 is to allow a new owner or officer, or the relevant club, an opportunity to argue their case before the regulator finds them unsuitable, which will ensure that the regulator has all relevant information available to it, allowing it to make better decisions and ensuring the regime is more effective.
The Government recognise the intent behind new clause 3, which is to ensure that football continues to be played in a club’s home ground. The Bill takes account of a variety of ownership structures relating to home grounds that exist across the football pyramid. The new clause would capture only one type of ownership structure. Owners may not necessarily directly own the rights to the club’s ground; in fact, only about 40% of clubs own their stadium outright. The new clause would require owners to make a commitment about something over which they do not necessarily have complete control or influence.
Let me be clear: the intent of the new clause will already largely be achieved by the Bill as drafted. The Bill places duties on the club itself regarding selling the club’s home ground or relocating from it; clauses 46 and 48 will require clubs to obtain approval from the regulator before a home ground is sold or relocated. If that requirement is breached, the regulator can exercise its enforcement powers.
Mr Betts
The Minister refers to what the Bill will do in regard to future sale, but the new clause does not deal with future sale; it deals with something that has already happened. The Minister says that it does not cover all eventualities, which may be true, but surely there are eventualities that need to be covered. If the Minister does not think that the new clause goes far enough, is he prepared to table another new clause that goes further to ensure a sustainable future for a club with a ground to play on?
Stuart Andrew
The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. I will not commit to introducing a new clause, but I will commit to going away and having another look at the points that he has raised, if that will satisfy him.
The Bill also allows for senior managers to be held accountable if they are responsible for the club breaching the requirements. That means that enforcement action could be taken against an owner of a club who was also a senior manager of the club and responsible for the club failing to comply with clauses 46 and 48.
Matt Rodda
Further to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East, in some cases there may also be an issue with training grounds being separated from the main organisation of the club. The current owner of Reading was trying to sell the training ground separately from the ground itself and from the club. Can the Minister write to me on that matter? It does not currently appear to be covered by the Bill, and I would be very grateful if he could reassure local fans.
Stuart Andrew
I am happy to commit to writing to the hon. Gentleman. He is right that it is really the perimeter of the stadium, the car park and so on. I will happily give him further details.
When the regulator is testing the fitness of prospective new or incumbent owners of clubs, it must have regard to any action of a regulatory or disciplinary nature that is being or has been taken in relation to the individual. The regulator already has the power to consider that as part of an owner’s suitability termination. For those reasons, I cannot accept new clause 3, and I hope that the hon. Member for Sheffield South East will not press it.
Stephanie Peacock
This group of clauses begins to set out how the new tests for prospective owners and directors will work in practice. I broadly welcome the clauses and will begin—I am conscious of time—to speak to each of them in turn, addressing new clause 3 last.
Clause 27 will require prospective owners and officers, as well as the club, to notify the regulator. This is an important first step that will allow the regulator to start the work of conducting the test itself.
Clause 28 will ensure that a person cannot become an owner unless the regulator has decided that they are suitable. This decision is called a positive determination and will be given to a candidate based on their ability to meet three main standards.
First, the candidate must pass the ownership fitness criteria, which are based on the idea that an owner must have the requisite honesty and integrity and be financially sound. I understand that those criteria have been based on the work of the Financial Conduct Authority; I hope that there will be an opportunity to share learnings and best practice across regulatory organisations as the regulator finds its feet.
Secondly, a candidate must show that they have sufficient financial resources, judged on the basis of an application that must include proposals on running the club. As with the regulator’s enforcement of financial sustainability more broadly, it is important that this process does not deter investment or require clubs to break even. Rather, I trust that the test will seek to ensure that good practice and long-term planning are embedded in owners’ plans from the very beginning.
Finally, there must be no grounds to suspect that the candidate’s wealth is connected to serious criminal conduct. That will prompt a welcome due diligence search on an owner’s wealth sources with the backing of institutions such as the National Crime Agency. Taken together, those standards will provide a comprehensive analysis of a potential owner.
For applications made by registered societies, the regulator will have a slightly different process, making a determination on the basis of sufficient financial resources alone. I am pleased that this recognised route to fan ownership will be treated with a tailored, yet proper, process.
Clause 29 covers officers. As I have mentioned, it is right that officers face a slightly different set of crafted criteria—
Football Governance Bill (Sixth sitting)
Tuesday 21st May 2024
(7 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Football Governance Bill 2023-24 View all Football Governance Bill 2023-24 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 21 May 2024 - (21 May 2024)
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 6 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 6 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Chair
I remind the Committee that with this we are considering:
Clauses 28 to 31 stand part.
New clause 3—Owner’s commitment to future use of a club’s football ground—
“(1) A person may not become or continue to be an owner of a regulated club unless they provide to the IFR a commitment to maintain long-term use of the football club’s grounds as a mandatory licensing condition.
(2) The IFR must codify the commitment.
(3) The IFR may only determine a person to be or remain a suitable owner of a club if the person has made a commitment under subsection (1).”
This new clause introduces a new licensing condition requiring an owner to provide a commitment to the future ongoing use of a football ground by a club.
Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair this afternoon, Ms Nokes.
I will continue where I left off, looking at clause 29. I have a question for the Minister on behalf of the Football Supporters’ Association, which pointed out that fans are often privy to local information about owners and officers that might be relevant to a determination of the regulator. Does the Minister believe that the mechanisms in the clause are adequate for the regulator to take relevant input from fans and local communities when making determinations?
Clause 30 provides for cases in which a person becomes an owner or officer without the regulator having made a determination on their suitability. It is important that no loopholes allow owners to skip out of the new tests. Clause 31 gives clubs, and prospective owners and officers, the welcome opportunity to make representations to the regulator should it be minded to determine that someone is not suitable or has not passed the relevant test.
Finally, I am thankful to my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East for highlighting, through new clause 3, just how important it is that clubs have a guarantee about the future use of their ground. The Minister agreed to write to him about that, and I look forward to seeing the response.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
I am speaking in the right place this time. I was pre-emptive in my comments before the break, but that has given the Minister an opportunity to go away and look at the wording that he will come forward with to improve new clause 3.
I take the Minister’s point about the complicated circumstances for many clubs with respect to who owns the ground and what form they own it in, and that is understood. I hope that we can find a way of ensuring that, whatever the complications, the owner cannot simply put the club and the ground into different organisations—different legal constructs—but that in all cases there can be an assurance that the club will have use of the ground going forward, because otherwise the club cannot be sustainable by anyone’s definition.
I thank the Minister for agreeing to go away to look at the issue. I accept that new clause 3 is probably imperfect, and I very much look forward to a perfect clause coming back from him in due course.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Stuart Andrew)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Ms Nokes.
I thank hon. Members for their contributions. The hon. Member for Sheffield South East thinks I can work that quickly, just in the time we had during the break, but I have committed to write to him. Work is going on among colleagues in the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, for example, but I will write to him with further details.
On the specific question of the hon. Member for Barnsley East about local information, she made an important point. Fans and other sources are able to provide information to the regulator about the suitability of their owners or officers should they wish to do so. It will of course be up to the regulator to determine the relevance and significance of any information provided to it, but the mechanism exists.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 27 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 28 to 31 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 32
Determinations under sections 28 and 29: time limits
Stephanie Peacock
I beg to move amendment 12, in clause 32, page 24, line 2, at end insert—
“(2A) A determination period as specified in subsection (2) should have an end date which is as soon as is reasonably practicable.”
This amendment would ask the Secretary of State to propose a timely end date to a determination period.
Stephanie Peacock
I welcome the principle of the clause. I will discuss that first, before moving to the amendment.
That decisions on ownership should be taken within a reasonable timeframe is right. Allowing the Secretary of State to set maximum time limits, alongside allowing for extensions where a case is particularly complex, seems a sensible way to go about ensuring that decisions are made in good time. Indeed, although I hope that I have set out my belief that the owners and directors test should be comprehensive, the purchase of any club is likely to be time sensitive. Circumstances are subject to changing quickly on both ends of a deal, and in many cases the right takeover deal can be the difference between a club surviving and not.
Oldham Athletic was in trouble after a period of severe turbulence that saw assets sold, staff unpaid and its main stand unable to be used for certain games due to a lease dispute. After a successful takeover, its new owner, local man Rothwell, cleared Oldham’s debts. Birmingham City and Wigan Athletic also appear to have reversed their fortunes thanks to new ownership. Birmingham City is now one step closer to a new stadium as St Andrew’s falls into disrepair, a long-term project that owners have promised will not be affected by relegation this season. In Wigan’s case, local businessman Mike Danson has appeared to stabilise the club after a period of losses on and off the pitch. Those examples show just how crucial the timing of ownership change can be for clubs in financial distress.
I welcome what the clause is trying to achieve, but I wonder whether it could go one step further. It is of note that the time limits in the clause are not accompanied by a general duty on the regulator to make determinations as soon as is reasonably practicable. That is why I tabled amendment 12. As the English Football League has argued, it is crucial that owners are able to sell their clubs when needed, particularly in instances of financial distress. Protracted takeovers can impact a club’s finances further, and they are hardly an advert for potential investors in clubs.
Given the fear some have expressed about the unintended consequences of the Bill on investment, it is important that the clause is watertight in ensuring that the time limits are truly seen as a maximum, rather than as a target. That is of particular concern given that the clause says that if the regulator does not make a determination within the time limit, it is automatically to be treated as having determined that the prospective owner or officer has failed the test. Again, I understand why that measure is in place—it is dangerous to allow a takeover where a person cannot be approved by the criteria set by the regulator—but we must ensure that the provision is protected against misuse. A regulator working in good faith would surely not time-out a test just to ensure an owner or officer is prevented from being granted a positive determination.
Protections should be built in to the legislation to ensure that it cannot be exploited. Not only is it built into the principles of the regulator to work efficiently, but it is within its general duties to avoid any adverse effects on financial investment in English football. I hope that the Minister will carefully consider amendment 12, which would ensure that determinations are made as expeditiously as possible, and recognise it as in keeping with the underpinnings of the regulator.
Stuart Andrew
The Government recognise the intent behind amendment 12, which is to ensure that the determination period is set at the right level so that the regulator makes a timely decision. Clause 32, which I will turn to shortly, provides that the determination period will be set in secondary legislation by the Secretary of State, who will have to consult such persons as she thinks appropriate when setting the period.
The purpose of the determination period is to provide more certainty to the industry about how long the determination of a new owner or officer will take, to incentivise new owners and officers to promptly provide the information the regulator needs to assess whether they are suitable, and to keep the process efficient. It is important to get the length of the determination period right. If it is too long, it could result in a slow and bureaucratic process, as the hon. Member for Barnsley East said, which could have a negative impact on investment. However, if decisions had to be taken too quickly, there would be a risk of them being less rigorous, and investors might worry about being failed because the clock runs out before the regulator can gather all the relevant information to make a decision.
The Government do not believe that amendment 12 is necessary because the Secretary of State will already consider those trade-offs, as well as other matters, including existing deadlines for comparable tests in other industries and the views of appropriate stakeholders. For example, we expect that the regulator will likely be consulted when the determination period is being set in regulations. For the reasons I have set out, I am not able to support the hon. Lady’s amendment, and I hope she will withdraw it.
With regard to clause 32, football is a fast-paced industry, where clubs operate within constraints such as league seasons and transfer windows. Timely decision making about the suitability of new owners and officers is important for clubs’ financial sustainability. Without deadlines, we have seen league determinations drag on, with a decision unable to be reached.
The regulator will need to conduct thorough scrutiny of new owners and directors, but it will also need to make decisions in an appropriate timeframe to ensure that clubs are not unnecessarily impacted in this fast-paced industry. That is why it will be subject to a statutory deadline when it tests the suitability of prospective owners and officers. The determination period will start when a person provides a complete application to be a new owner or officer of a regulated club. By the end of the period, the regulator must find the applicant suitable or unsuitable.
As well as providing certainty to the industry, the deadline will incentivise new owners and officers to provide the information the regulator needs to assess suitability. If the regulator cannot decide before the initial deadline is met, it can extend the determination period. That will provide it with the necessary flexibility to gather more information to make a well-informed, but still timely, decision.
As I set out, the determination period, including the maximum amount of extra time, will be set by the Secretary of State in secondary legislation. That will ensure that the regulator is bound by it but that there is still flexibility for the deadline to be amended in future. If the regulator cannot make a decision about a prospective new owner or officer before the period expires, the person will automatically be determined to be unsuitable. That means that only owners and officers that the regulator is confident are suitable will be allowed to get involved with clubs.
Stephanie Peacock
The amendment was simply intended to ensure that decisions on owners and directors are made with time sensitivity in mind. I appreciate the Minister’s comments and I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 32 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 33
Duties to notify IFR of change in circumstances relating to incumbent owner or officer
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Stuart Andrew
It is important for clubs’ sustainability that their incumbent owners and officers continue to be suitable. That is why the Bill gives the regulator the power to test incumbents if it has grounds for concern about their suitability, to mitigate the risk of harm from individuals already in the system. To do so it needs to be aware of any material change in the circumstances of incumbent owners and officers that is relevant to their suitability.
The clause therefore places a duty on incumbent owners and officers, as well as regulated clubs, to notify the regulator when they consider there has been, or may have been, a material change in circumstances that is relevant to whether the individual is suitable to be an owner or officer of the club. For example, if an officer became subject to criminal or relevant civil proceedings that the regulator was not previously aware of, that would constitute a material change in circumstances.
The notification must include certain matters listed in subsection (3), including an explanation of the material change in circumstances and why it is relevant to whether the owner or officer in question is suitable. If that information gives the regulator grounds for concern about the incumbent’s suitability, it can test them using the powers in clauses 34 and 35. If they are determined to be unsuitable, the regulator has a strong suite of powers to remove them. By ensuring that the regulator is aware of relevant material changes, we will better enable it to ensure that incumbent owners and officers continue to be suitable.
Stephanie Peacock
The clause mirrors the notification requirements for prospective owners and officers, requiring incumbent owners and officers to go through the same process of notifying the regulator in the event of a material change that might affect their suitability. This is an important provision that will ensure that owners and directors cannot circumvent the standards set out in the tests after their appointment. I certainly think it is the intention that the tests should act as the beginning of an ongoing compliance with the standards by owners and clubs, rather than the end.
If an owner or officer becomes subject to criminal proceedings, or new information comes to light about a criminal source of their wealth, it is only right that their suitability should be reviewed by the regulator. For example, the owner and chairman of Fleetwood Town FC was recently found guilty of defrauding creditors, false representation and being concerned with the retention of criminal property. The multimillion-pound fraud operation, which duped firms into expensive energy contracts, earned him jail time amounting to 13 years. Of course, in that case, Mr Pilley resigned following his conviction.
Stuart Andrew
I welcome the hon. Lady’s comments and commend the clause to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 33 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 34
Incumbent owners
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Stuart Andrew
Clause 34 provides the regulator with the necessary powers to test incumbent owners who are already in place at clubs. It limits the regulator to testing where there is concern about an owner’s suitability. That will allow the regulator to tackle any risks to clubs from unsuitable owners already in the industry, while recognising that there are suitable owners already in the system who do not need to be tested. If the regulator has information that gives it concern about the fitness of incumbent owners, those owners can be assessed to ensure that they have the requisite honesty and integrity and are financially sound to own a club.
If the regulator has information that gives it grounds for suspicion, incumbent owners can also be tested on their source of wealth to establish whether it is connected to serious criminal conduct, including crimes such as drug trafficking and fraud. The regulator will not remove incumbent owners because of mere suspicion about their source of wealth; rather, an incumbent owner must be treated as unsuitable if the regulator is more sure than not that the source of wealth is connected to serious criminal conduct. The clause will ensure that the regulator has the appropriate powers to test incumbent owners where a risk of harm arises. Clauses 39 to 44 provide the regulator with the powers needed to remove unsuitable owners, allowing the regulator to address such risks. That will help ensure the sustainability of clubs over the long term, benefiting football now and into the future.
Clause 35 provides the regulator with the necessary powers to test incumbent officers who are already in place at clubs. It limits the regulator to testing where there is concern about their suitability. That will allow the regulator to tackle any risks to clubs from unsuitable officers already in the industry, while recognising that there are suitable officers already in the system who do not need to be tested. Again, if the regulator has information that gives concern about their fitness, incumbent officers can be tested to ensure that they have the requisite honesty, integrity and competence and are financially sound enough to continue in their role. The clause will ensure that the regulator has the appropriate powers to test those incumbent officers, and clauses 39 to 42 provide the regulator with the powers needed to remove them if necessary. That will help ensure the sustainability of clubs over the long term.
Finally, on clause 36, the regulator’s ability to test or re-test incumbent owners and officers will prevent unsuitable custodians from harming clubs over the long term, not just at the point of entry. The Government are aware that a finding that an incumbent owner or officer is unsuitable brings about significant consequences for that person and may cause concern for the club or fans. That is why, when the regulator is minded to fail an incumbent owner or officer, clause 36 requires it to give them and the relevant club an opportunity to make representations before making its final decision. That will allow an owner or officer an appropriate opportunity to argue their case before the regulator finds them unsuitable, ensuring that the regulator has all relevant information available to it and allowing it to make better decisions and ensure that the regime is more effective.
I commend the clauses to the Committee.
Stephanie Peacock
I have no major issues with the clauses, so in the interests of not repeating what the Minister outlined, I will simply welcome them.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 34 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 35 and 36 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 37
Matters relevant to determinations
Dame Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)
I beg to move amendment 1, in clause 37, page 27, line 30, leave out “must” and insert “may”.
Dame Tracey Crouch
This important clause will give comfort to many fans about the agility of the regulator. Of particular note overall is the reference to bankruptcy, which I know many fans will take a great deal of comfort from. My hon. Friend the Member for Southend West will speak on that part of the clause if she catches your eye, Ms Nokes.
I advised in my speech on Second Reading that I would table this amendment, if only to impress the importance of independence within the regulator. There has been much commentary on the independence of the independent regulator, and much of it has focused on the fact that it is a political appointment. To allay some of those concerns, I should say that there are more than 600 agencies in Government, of which the largest number sit within the responsibility of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. That is why the Minister always looks so exhausted: because of the number of stakeholders he must deal with. I have been there.
Some of the concern and criticism has focused on clause 37(2), which states that the regulator must
“have regard to the foreign and trade policy objectives”
of the Government. Throughout the passage of the Bill, there has often been confusion about what certain things within it mean, and the wording of clause 37 has set hares running. The Sunday Times this weekend had an interview with the Premier League’s Richard Masters, in which the journalist—not Richard—made reference to the clause, saying that it
“raised questions as to whether it could be forced to give state-backed clubs such as Manchester City and Newcastle United soft treatment”.
The piece refers to whether the regulator would have any say on the outstanding charges and, if it were to have a say, whether, due to foreign policy, there would be a softer stance on that.
Although we on the Committee understand that the clause relates to ownership, the wider world has somehow got it into its head that it also relates to the administration of the league rules, which is beyond the remit of the regulator. However, the clause would relate to the purchase of the club and, as the Minister will know from his own never-ending media round, also often relates to the public investment fund takeover of Newcastle. As the Minister has outlined, the ownership tests are set out in the legislation and apply to all potential owners and directors, regardless of where they are from, as long as they are not from a country where sanctions are in place.
However, my concern about clause 37(2) is that it adds an element of uncertainty into the test because of the fluidity of our foreign trade policy. For example—I use this with complete poetic licence—Donald Trump decides to add to his golf course portfolio and wishes to buy Arsenal. Concerns about his integrity are well documented, and yet our foreign and trade policy determines that we consider the USA to be one of our key allies and an absolute must for investment and trade in the future. Therefore, do we automatically give the keys to the Emirates to the former, and possibly next, President? Can the Minister confirm that the foreign policy test is just one part of the test, and would not overrule others where there is evidence that other matters might disqualify a prospective owner?
I am also concerned that the clause is not applied fairly across industries. Ofcom does not need to take into account foreign or trade policy when adjudicating on a takeover of a newspaper, but the football regulator does for the takeover of a club. I am not saying that subsection (2) should be removed altogether, although I am not sure I understand the value it brings. Many will be acutely aware that most of our Premier League clubs, and an increasing number of clubs elsewhere in the pyramid, are foreign-owned or owned by British people living in other countries, so it is essential that we have complete transparency in the process, including on at what point subsection (2) is relevant.
However, I fundamentally believe that if we are to truly value the independence of the regulator’s day-to-day decisions from the Government, the subsection ought to be reworded from “must…have regard” to “may…have regard”. In this morning’s sitting, in response to a question from the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby, the Minister said that we do not want the regulator to be involved in foreign policy. But putting subsection (2) into clause 37 does exactly that. A minor tweak to the wording satisfies everyone, but most of all retains the spirit of independence and removes some of the confusion about who is deciding who owns our football clubs. I am very interested in what the Minister has to say in reply.
Stephanie Peacock
Clause 37 has three main parts. It requires the regulator to have regard to determinations from competition organisers, requires the regulator to have regard to foreign policy and trade objectives, and provides the criteria for judging honesty, integrity and financial soundness. I will speak to each of those parts in turn and address amendment 1 with the second part.
On the regulator having regard to determinations from competition organisers, I have already raised the issue of conflicting outcomes and was reassured by the Minister’s explanation, so I will move on to the issue of the influence of Government policy objectives on the regulator.
The clause states that the regulator must have regard to the Government’s “foreign and trade policy objectives” when making determinations on ownership. That has caused concern across the board, including across football governance structures, which usually have a harder time finding consensus, and with fans. That almost unanimous voice tells us something important: everyone wants to see a regulator that is free from undue political interference. I agree. The Government should not be in a position where they can apply pressure to the regulator to make decisions on ownership just because they might be politically favourable. Club ownership must not be a tool used to reward those with which the Government have a positive relationship or penalise those with which they have a negative relationship. That is particularly so given that the Bill empowers the regulator to make decisions on incumbent owners and officers.
However, I understand that there may be circumstances in which national security and foreign policy objectives may be pertinent to the regulator’s decision making. The regulator should, and will want to, have an understanding of all relevant information when making a determination. That is part of the reason why the regulator was chosen as the location of the tests, due to its ability to access relevant information that would not otherwise be available. I therefore do not believe that the intention of the clause was to compromise the independence of the regulator, but to empower it where security or foreign policy objectives are concerned.
Whatever the intention may be, we must ensure that the clause is not open to abuse. I am therefore pleased to offer my support to amendment 1, tabled by the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford, which suggests that we change “must regard” to “may regard”. That amendment might help to provide some reassurance on the purpose of the clause and the independence of the regulator.
Some further clarification on how the measure will work in practice would also be helpful. In particular, there must be more guidance on how the regulator will be made aware of “foreign and trade policy objectives”. That is particularly important because transparency is a crucial tool for providing accountability, but may be difficult given that some information will naturally be confidential in line with national security considerations. Can the Minister provide any information on what good practice will look like in terms of striking the balance between accountability and security?
Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)
Second time lucky, Ms Nokes! I am delighted to talk about this part of the Bill and the important owner and director test, and I want to support clause 37(3) and (4). The current Premier League and English Football League owners and directors test requires that any prospective owner must not have been subject to two or more bankruptcy events—so the current position is that someone could have been subject to one bankruptcy event, and in theory still own a football club. I am pleased to see that the clause removes any minimum number of events; obviously, that will place further emphasis on sustainable management and stewardship, and is much to be commended.
For context, I should say that Southend United Football Club in the National League has had 19 winding-up petitions in the last 25 years; the last one was last Wednesday. During the course of this Bill, the club was in court and was given a further six-week adjournment—hence my interest in making sure that no other clubs in future suffer the same fate as Southend United and its loyal fans.
Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)
I want to carry on the debate about clause 37 and reflect on honesty and integrity as set out in subsection (3), on “matters relevant to determinations” of the “requisite honesty and integrity”, and subsection (3)(g), which talks about
“such other matters relating to honesty and integrity as may be specified”
by rules. I would be interested in a little clarity from the Minister about that. Some of the other prerequisites or matters to be considered, such as whether someone is financially sound, can involve hard evidence, and someone’s competence can be tested by qualifications; integrity, however, is a bit of a subjective matter. It is more about things that are not against the law but are certainly not in the spirit of the law, and it is often behavioural.
Does the Minister have any examples that he might want to see in those rules? Someone might have used poor employment practices, for example, as we have seen in other industries, some of which are regulated and some of which are not. The issue would not reach a tribunal so it would not be a piece of hard evidence, but it would bring into question why an owner or officers of a club, in a different business, deployed fire-and-rehire tactics, for example, that were detrimental to their workforce and local community. Similarly, in a positive sense, would there be any consideration of what high integrity might be: for example, owners and officers who championed equality and diversity—an issue that we have been speaking a lot about in this Bill? I would welcome the Minister’s comments.
Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)
I will be interested in the Minister’s remarks about amendment 1. I understand the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford is making, in seeking to create a bit more flexibility for the regulator. We would all hope that the integrity checks against an individual owner could ultimately “trump”—if she does not mind my using the word—any positive trading relationship. If the person were not considered a good and proper owner, the fact that we had a good trading relationship with their country should make no difference: they should not be able to avoid the checks simply because they come from a trusted trader nation.
However, on the other hand, I can see that having “must” would be helpful for the regulator in two ways. One is that if a would-be owner of a club met all the criteria and therefore should be allowed to acquire the club, but the only block on them was that they were a sanctioned individual, the regulator would have the certainty of knowing that it could not let the deal go through. There would not be grounds for challenge, say, at the Court of Arbitration for Sport over whether an appropriate judgment had been made. There would be no question of the sanctioned person’s suitability on any other grounds. In that particular circumstance, the provision could be helpful.
I imagine that it would be reassuring for the regulator to know that, as was the case when Newcastle United was acquired, if another Premier League club was acquired by a country that was not sanctioned—we did not have a trade embargo with it—but was nevertheless controversial, the regulator would not have to consider that, whether people wanted it to or not, because no Government policy would be saying that we could not trade with or allow investment from that country. The regulator would have the certainty of knowing that it was acting purely within the confines of its role.
I appreciate the intention of the amendment and the reasons behind it, but perhaps the Minister could give us some guidance on whether “must” may be better than “may”.
Stuart Andrew
The Government absolutely recognise the intent behind the amendment to ensure the independence of the regulator. We have been extremely clear that the independence of the regulator is vital. That is why the regulator will be set up as a new public body to ensure its full operational independence.
Clause 37(2) does not diminish the regulator’s independence. It does not mean that the regulator needs to consult the Government about the suitability of an owner, nor can the Government interfere with the regulator’s decision. If the regulator determines that an individual does not have the requisite honesty and integrity, or is not financially sound, or that the individual has any source of wealth connected to serious criminal conduct, that individual cannot be determined to be a suitable owner of a regulated club. Clause 37(2) does not override those fundamental requirements. Nor can any individual, fan, league, club or Government influence override them.
The purpose of clause 37(2) is to ensure that the regulator has to have regard to the UK’s foreign and trade policy objectives when it makes a determination about any new or incumbent owner. That will ensure that the regulator cannot make unilateral moral judgments on which countries it may consider unsuitable when it tests owners. We do not want to allow for a scenario where that happens and in effect a regulator, as I said this morning, sets the Government’s foreign policy.
The effect of the amendment would be to increase discretion for the regulator to decide when it will have regard to the UK’s foreign and trade policy objectives when making decisions about owners. The Government believe that their foreign and trade policy objectives are a relevant matter for the regulator to have regard to whenever it makes a determination about the suitability of any and all owners, not just some. Increased discretion for the regulator may risk it making unilateral judgments that stray into foreign policy.
To be clear, requiring that the regulator must have regard to the Government’s objectives does not mean that that must be a decisive factor. It might have limited relevance in a particular case and, if so, the regulator will not have to give that undue weight. The fundamental basis for a regulator’s determinations about owners will be honesty, integrity, financial soundness, source of wealth and, for new owners, sufficiency of financial resources.
I heard what my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford said and we will continue to reflect further, ahead of Report. But for the reasons that I have set out, I am not able to accept her amendment and I hope she will withdraw it.
Clause 37 lists the matters that the regulator must take into account when it conducts owners and directors tests, including what it must consider when determining whether an individual is financially sound and whether they have the requisite honesty and integrity and, for officers only, the competence needed to fulfil the role, and ultimately to determine whether they are sensible—sorry, suitable.
Stuart Andrew
Absolutely.
My hon. Friend the Member for Southend West and the hon. Member for Luton South made important points. As a public body, the regulator must act fairly when it makes decisions. As set out in the White Paper, it will make an evidence-based objective judgment to assess whether an owner or a director is a suitable custodian of a club, and it will apply its tests consistently and fairly to every person.
The fitness element of the test will assess an individual’s honesty, integrity and financial soundness, as well as, for directors, competence. That draws on the fit and proper person test applied by other regulators, including the Financial Conduct Authority, His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the Solicitors Regulation Authority. The regulator will set out in its rules and guidance further detail on how it will conduct its tests.
The factors I have outlined are specified because they have a real bearing on whether an owner or officer could have a significant detrimental impact on a club’s financial sustainability. Listing specific matters provides greater clarity to the industry about what will be tested. It also constrains the regulator. The matters listed in the clause are the only things that it will take into account when considering honesty, integrity, financial soundness or competence. To ensure that the fitness test remains effective in the future, the clause gives the regulator the power to use its rules to add further matters that it will need to take into account when considering someone’s honesty, integrity or financial soundness. Before using that power, the regulator must consult the leagues.
Dame Tracey Crouch
I have listened carefully to the Minister, as I always do, and I will withdraw the amendment. However, as I understand it, similar provisions do not apply to any other regulator, and other regulators are faced with very similar decisions on a day-to-day basis. We do not take unilateral moral decisions, as the Minister pointed out, but I am happy to discuss the matter further with him. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 37 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 38
Disqualification orders
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Stuart Andrew
The financial distress experienced by some of English football’s most historic clubs was partly down to unsuitable owners and directors. As discussed, the regulator will be able to conduct strengthened owners and directors tests to help to ensure that each club has suitable custodians.
Clause 38 ensures that when the regulator finds that someone is unsuitable to be an owner or officer of a particular club, it can disqualify that person from being an owner or an officer at any regulated club in future. In order to ensure sufficient protections, relevant parties will be allowed to express their views before the regulator makes its decision. Then, once the decision taking those views into account has been made, the regulator must publish a notice of the decision, including the rationale behind it. The process will help to ensure that key community assets have suitable custodians who run the club properly.
Clause 39 details the process that the regulator must begin to remove an owner from the club when it finds them to be unsuitable. In most cases, that will mean giving them a direction under the clause to take all reasonable steps to cease being an owner by a specified date. Those steps could include, for instance, selling their stake in the club. As I just mentioned, in order to ensure sufficient protections, the regulator must consult the unsuitable owner, the relevant club and the relevant league before issuing the direction.
Similarly, clause 40 ensures that when the regulator finds that someone is unsuitable to be an officer, it must either give the unsuitable officer a direction to take all reasonable steps to cease to be an officer of the club, give the relevant club a direction to take all reasonable steps to ensure that the unsuitable officer is no longer at the club, or both. Once more, to ensure that sufficient protections are in place, the regulator must consult the unsuitable officer, the relevant club and the league, as before.
Stephanie Peacock
It is incredibly important that if the regulator is going to take on responsibility for conducting the owners and directors tests, it is also given the teeth to enforce the outcome of those tests. I am pleased to have reached the part of the Bill where we can discuss those powers.
I will speak to each clause in the group in turn, starting with clause 38, on disqualification orders. In some circumstances, a test may reveal that not only is the person in question unsuitable to be an owner or officer of a particular club, but their record is such that they should not be considered for such a role again. I agree with the principle of the clause, which is to ensure that tests are not unnecessarily duplicated and to protect multiple clubs from the same issue.
On clause 39, if the regulator has determined an owner of a club is not suitable, it is right that it is bound to give a direction requiring that person to take reasonable steps to cease being an owner. That binds the regulator to the outcome of its test, rather than giving it discretion over whether a negative determination results in the departure of an incumbent owner. I have a few questions about what that would mean in practice. I am curious to hear the Minister’s take on what taking “all reasonable steps” to cease ownership might involve. It surely implies that a person needs to sell their shares, but what if they are unable to find a buyer? Would they be required to give the club away if there was no willing purchaser? Furthermore, if there is a buyer but they offer a price below market value, or a value that would result in big losses for an owner, would the person still be forced to sell?
The answers to those questions, and a clear direction on the application of the clause, is important for two distinct reasons. First, it matters because this process may have a knock-on effect on people’s willingness to invest in football clubs. Secondly, it matters for the sustainability of the club and its fans. It is important that the club is in the right hands for the right price, or this entire part of the Bill on owners will be undermined. I hope the Minister can today, or in due course, provide some further information on how clause 39 will work in practice.
Clause 40 largely mirrors the removal directions for owners, but applies them to officers. How the clause will work in practice is less complex, as the removal of officers is less likely to hinge on the finances of an outside party. I am also satisfied that the alternative officer arrangements in clause 42, to appoint an interim officer, might mitigate any problems with an officer’s removal.
Clause 41 provides an important protection against unsuitable officers or owners carrying out activities that might negatively impact the club in the long term. When it comes to actions that have an impact on a club’s future, it is right that anyone who has been identified as a potential harm to a club can be limited in those areas if needed.
Finally, I welcome clause 43, which gives the regulator the ultimate power to ensure that a person ceases to be an owner when they have failed to comply with orders given under powers in this part. That power is complimented by the safeguards and notice provisions in clause 44.
Stuart Andrew
I thank the hon. Lady for her comments.
As I said, if the regulator deems that a current owner is unsuitable, it would first direct them to leave the club in the specified timeframe. During that period, the regulator will have available several powers to safeguard the club from further harm. However, as the hon. Lady rightly said, there is a risk that an unsuitable owner does not comply with the directions. For instance, they may refuse to leave the club or may continue to use their position as owner to damage the club. In those situations, the regulator will have the powers to directly remove the unsuitable owner from the club.
The hon. Lady makes a point about cases in which there is a failed incumbent owner but no new prospective buyer for the club. By conducting strong statutory tests on prospective owners, the regulator will ensure that clubs are run by suitable custodians and that unsuitable owners can be stopped at the point of entry. That will help to reduce the risk of unsuitable owners entering the industry.
The wider regulatory system of financial regulation and improved governance will further put clubs on a more sustainable footing, which should ensure that clubs are attractive as investments for prospective buyers. If an owner wishes to sell, or is required to sell by the regulator, the club should therefore be a much more attractive asset.
Mr Betts
The Minister is almost assuming that the regulatory regime is going to make a perfect world, and that there are not going to be failures. The question being asked is: what happens when there are? When there is an owner who is required to sell, what happens to the club in those circumstances?
Stuart Andrew
The hon. Gentleman is right. I am not saying that this is going to be the panacea for all football clubs; they are businesses, and businesses go under at times. When the regulator is ensuring that the club has to be sold, its powers will minimise the risk of a bad owner further damaging the club, which adds to the pressure of finding a good new owner to take over. By having those powers, we are not drumming that club into the ground, as we have seen in other instances; it remains a positive and attractive prospect for investment. I hope that answers the hon. Gentleman’s question.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 38 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 39 to 44 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 45
Duty not to operate a team in relation to a prohibited competition
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 22, in clause 45, page 37, line 12, after “competition” insert
“and the full impacts of such a decision”.
Amendment 13, in clause 45, page 37, line 15, at end insert—
“(aa) professional football players,”.
This amendment expands the list of those whom the IFR must consult.
Clause stand part.
Mr Betts
Amendment 21 is quite simple, and I am sure that the Minister can accept it without much consideration. It simply applies where a team is prevented from going into a prohibited competition, which I think is absolutely right. The outrage of the European Super League in some ways triggered recognition of the issue and the need to regulate football more appropriately. There are consequences for people who make their living from football, whether they are players or staff members of clubs.
Ben Wright from the PFA very appropriately spelt out the fact that the Bill quite rightly, in many cases, highlights the need to consult and involve fans, but players are not mentioned anywhere. As Ben Wright said, there are only two groups of people who really matter in football:
“those who play it and those who watch it.”––[Official Report, Football Governance Public Bill Committee, 16 May 2024; c. 88, Q145.]
Without those two groups, football would not exist. I hope the Minister thinks about the amendment and comes to the conclusion that he could accept it without undermining the Bill in any way. I hope he might give careful consideration to that.
I am also happy to support amendment 13, which was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley East. It is very much along the same lines as my amendment, and the Minister might rather choose her wording if he cannot support the wording that I have put forward. I hope the Minister will reflect carefully on the amendments.
On amendment 22, having
“the full impacts of such a decision”
taken into account seems a fairly obvious thing. The Minister will no doubt tell us that that is the intention of the Bill and that there is no need to add in the extra words, but I am sure he will agree that the extra words are not in any way in conflict with what the Bill is trying to achieve.
Stephanie Peacock
I am pleased that we are making good progress in moving on to discuss part 5 of the Bill and the free-standing duties on clubs, which apply to clubs separately to the licence conditions. They are set out by the Bill directly and, in many cases, apply to a club regardless of whether it is licensed.
Clause 45 sets out the duty not to operate within a prohibited competition. I will briefly set out some context before discussing amendments 21, 22 and 13. The clause is clearly designed to prevent a repeat of the European Super League, which rightly prompted immense backlash from fans, clubs and governance structures throughout the English football pyramid when it was first announced over three years ago.
There were many reasons why the project sparked such outrage, and it is important to name a few directly. First, the European Super League was designed, at least to some extent, to be a closed competition. For many of the richest clubs, qualification would have been an automatic right, rather than being meritocratic. It would have taken an axe to one of the most important features of football’s success: the idea that any one team can dream big and become a winner. With qualification based on merit taken out of the equation, the entire structure, purpose and sustainability of football’s existing competitions would have been undermined.
Secondly, the European Super League was launched—
The Chair
Order. I remind the shadow Minister that this debate is meant to be about the amendments, not the clause. There is a separate debate coming on the clause; she might wish to reserve those comments.
Stephanie Peacock
I appreciate your comments, Ms Nokes. I can skip forward to the amendments. I have some separate thoughts on clause 45. I do think that the background is quite important to the amendments, but am happy to move on directly to address them.
Amendments 13 and 21 are on player consultation. It seems like a missed opportunity that the views of players are not to be taken into account by the regulator. That is why I tabled amendment 13, which would expand consultation requirements to include them. Similarly, amendment 21, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East, would require the regulator to seek the views of players and staff, so I will address both amendments together.
Players in both the clubs that tried to break away and the clubs that were left behind had an instrumental role in demonstrating against the ESL. For example, just 48 hours after the announcement, a group of high-profile Liverpool players issued a collective statement against the Super League. That clearly stated:
“We don’t like it and we don’t want it to happen.”
Meanwhile, Leeds players, while warming up for a game, wore shirts featuring slogans such as “Football is for the fans” and “Earn it.” Players in other clubs followed suit. It is clear from that that players feel passionately about the competitiveness and fairness of the competitions that they operate in, and have a view to share on these issues.
Dame Tracey Crouch
The shadow Minister is making a really interesting speech, but is she not actually making a speech against the amendment, because the players did that without there being a statutory requirement for them to do it?
Stephanie Peacock
That is a fair point, but I do not think we should have to rely on players having the bravery to make public statements. We are saying—this is a debate that we rehearsed earlier in Committee—that there should be an obligation on the regulator to consult them, and I will come on to make that argument.
Many players care about the fans and communities that they play for, and it is players who are likely to come under fire if they take part in competitions that fans oppose. At best, they will act as a vehicle for fans hoping to hold their clubs to account. At worst, when competing in closed competitions, players may become the face of the demise of the long tradition of the English football pyramid, without having had any say in the matter. At a time when there has been a particularly concerning rise in abuse of football players—albeit from a shameful minority of fans—that becomes even more concerning.
Robin Millar (Aberconwy) (Con)
We rehearsed this somewhat when the representative of the PFA came before us to give evidence. I made the point to him then that we had been told that it was an inability to control costs that was damaging football, but—this was the point I made—actually it is the inability to control wages that is damaging football. That is firmly within the control of players, so I am a little less sympathetic to the argument that the hon. Member is making.
Stephanie Peacock
I am not sure it is the case that the players control their own wages. When we look at this Bill, as other hon. Members have said—
Stephanie Peacock
Yes, that is true, and it is true for all of us and anyone who takes a wage, but I think it is a rather unfair expectation to put upon players. I am not sure that I accept the hon. Member’s argument, but obviously, if he has strong views on this issue, he can make a speech when I have concluded.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East set out, there are two main components in football, and they are the players and the fans. I think it is incredibly curious that this Bill does not mention players at any point. That is why I am making the case for these amendments.
I will draw my remarks to a close in a moment. I would just like to share a few other examples with the Committee. To give a troubling example, we will all remember that, following the penalty shoot-out at the Euro 2020 final, a wave of racist social media abuse was aimed at certain players. Ensuring a duty of care to protect players from abuse deserves its own conversation, but I think it is relevant to raise. It is not right that players are not given any say in relation to prohibited competitions, but could be told that they must compete in one—only to face the wrath of fans afterwards. Football is for the fans, of course, but it cannot exist without the players. I therefore encourage the Minister and members of the Committee to consider the benefit of player input on the regulator’s decision making in that area. Given that fans and the FA will already be consulted for their views, it would only require a simple change to the legislation. I hope that we can all get behind amendment 13 to strengthen the clause as much as possible.
Amendment 22, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East, would strengthen the duty of the regulator to understand the view of fans, so that the full impacts of any particular competition are considered. As the European Super League attempt showed, the consequences of a closed competition, where qualification is not based on merit, are plenty. It is therefore important that the full range of impacts is considered. Is the Minister satisfied that the current wording will ensure that, or is amendment 22 needed to require the regulator to take everything into account when gathering the views of relevant stakeholders?
Stuart Andrew
Amendments 21 and 13 would require the regulator to determine and have regard to the views of club staff and players, placing them on equal footing with the club’s fans for the purposes of clause 45. I do not believe that the inclusion of players and club staff is necessary here. The Bill is designed to protect and promote the sustainability of clubs so that they continue to serve the interests of their fans in local communities, who have been around far longer than any owners and will be around long after those owners have moved on. That is why clause 45 requires the regulator to determine and consider the views of fans.
A decision to prohibit a competition may also impact a wide range of other stakeholders, which is why the clause already requires the regulator to
“consult such other persons as”
it
“considers appropriate.”
That allows for consultation with a broad range of potential stakeholders. If the regulator considers players and staff of regulated clubs to be an appropriate group, it must consult them. It is right that the regulator has the discretion to make the judgment.
Amendment 22 seeks to draw out that when the regulator is determining the views of fans about a competition being prohibited, it must include their views on the full impact of the competition being prohibited. Specifying that in the Bill is unnecessary as it is already implicit that fans would consider the potential impacts as part of reaching a view on a competition’s prohibition. For the reasons I have set out, I hope the amendment will be withdrawn.
Mr Betts
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendment proposed: 13, in clause 45, page 37, line 15, at end insert—
“(aa) professional football players,”.—(Stephanie Peacock.)
This amendment expands the list of those whom the IFR must consult.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Stuart Andrew
The proposed European Super League in 2021 posed an existential threat to the English football pyramid. It was an attempt by a small number of clubs to set up a closed-shop league to benefit themselves at the expense of all other clubs and against the wishes of fans. Ultimately, the European Super League was stopped by the sheer will of fans around the country and the Government’s promise to consider legislation. However, the risk of a similar breakaway competition rearing its head in the future remains. The clause will prevent a regulated club or a club that has been regulated in the previous 10 years from entering a team into a competition that the regulator has prohibited.
Stuart Andrew
I understand the point that the hon. Gentleman makes. We have had this conversation several times on the replays, and I understand that point. As I have said before, not drawing on the merits of the decisions that have been made, I understand some of the challenges that those organisations have in terms of a very crowded field and in terms of competitions.
Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)
It is always a very crowded field in the FA cup replays. I am sure that the Minister has seen the news, today I think, about Tottenham players getting on the plane to go to Australia for their end-of-season friendly. Is that not a smack right in the face of player welfare and ensuring that players are okay? That is why the FA cup replays were allegedly taken off the table.
Stuart Andrew
As the hon. Gentleman knows, the purpose of the Bill has been tightly focused to feature those particular issues. We have a fine balance to ensure that we do not upset or get into challenges with UEFA and FIFA, and it is for football to make some of the decisions that it has made, but I would expect that, as the provisions in the mandatory conditions say, clubs will consult their fans on decisions on match days.
The extension to clubs regulated in the past 10 years will stop them circumventing the rules by withdrawing from existing competitions in order to join a new breakaway competition. The regulator is expected to prohibit competitions on the basis of the predetermined, proportionate and transparent framework based on the prescribed factors set out in legislation. That will provide up-front clarity to the industry and means that new competitions will not just be prohibited outright. That is important to ensure that the regulator does not unduly stand in the way of innovation in the market—for example, like when the old First Division became the Premier League in 1992.
The clause requires the regulator, when deciding whether to prohibit a competition, to consider several factors, including whether the competition is merit based, operates on the basis of fair and open competition, jeopardises the sustainability of English football’s existing competitions or the clubs in those competitions or harms the heritage of English football. Of course, football belongs to its fans, so the regulator will also determine and consider the views of fans in England and Wales before prohibiting a competition. As the national governing body for football, the FA will be consulted before the regulator prohibits any competition, and the regulator will also consult anyone else it considers appropriate. I commend the clause to the Committee.
Stephanie Peacock
Apart from my amendments, which I had hoped would strengthen clause 45, I am pleased to offer my support more generally for the clause. I will not repeat my remarks from previous debate, but given the fallout from the so-called Super League attempt, the Bill is absolutely right to make provisions around prohibited competitions.
However, I have three remaining questions on wording that I hope the Minister can clarify. The clause provides that a club will not be able to join a prohibited competition so long as it has been regulated in the last 10 years. However, that does not apply retrospectively, so if a club has never been regulated—as is the case now, before the Bill passes—the rules cannot be enforced. That has sparked concern that clubs might form a breakaway league before the Bill passes and the regulator will be left unable to enforce its own rules. Will the Minister confirm whether the regulator will have any power to act in such a situation?
Stuart Andrew
I thank the hon. Lady for her contribution. On the ruling that she mentioned, my understanding is that it will be considered, but I want to make sure I have that right, so if she does not mind I will write to her.
The regulator will not be able to take action until it is fully operational. It would be inappropriate to give it backdated powers in relation to competitions, as clubs cannot comply with preapproval requirements after an action has been taken, so I hope the hon. Lady understands the position we are in.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 45 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 46
Duty not to dispose etc of home ground without approval
Ian Byrne
I beg to move amendment 3, in clause 46, page 38, line 15, at end insert—
“(6A) Before the IFR grants an approval under subsection 6 it must—
(a) consult the supporters of the body in question, the relevant competition organisers and persons representing the local community with which the body is associated; and
(b) have regard to the views expressed by those consulted.”
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Clause stand part.
Amendment 29, in clause 48, page 39, line 20, at end insert—
“(4A) A regulated club must take reasonable steps to establish that the majority of the club’s fans in England and Wales do not consider the arrangements to constitute significant harm to the heritage of the club under subsection 4(b).”
Clause 48 stand part.
Ian Byrne
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Nokes.
Clause 46 is welcome, but I have real concern because, although we are again talking about supporter engagement, there is no mention of a requirement or even a power for the independent football regulator to consult any other parties about the disposal of the ground—often a community asset. If the Minister is not prepared to accept the amendment, which would allow supporters, local stakeholders and competition organisers to be engaged before any such disposal takes place, will he explain why? What powers does he believe are available to the independent football regulator to ensure that supporters, local stakeholders and competition organisers have a voice in any decision made about ground disposal?
Stephanie Peacock
Football stadiums have immense value. First, they have value to fans, who have precious memories going back generations of standing in the same spot watching their club through the lowest lows and highest highs. In many ways, a stadium is one of the strongest ties a club has to the local community. A club’s staff, players and owners might change, but the pitch remains.
Secondly, grounds also have a financial and fundamental value. They are often among the club’s most valuable assets. In well-run clubs, that is positive, but where a club is already financially unstable, home grounds can become vulnerable to sale in a way that seriously undermines the club in the long term. In some cases, they are sold in a desperate attempt to make a return on losses, and in others they are sold by those purposefully wishing to strip a club of its assets before leaving it behind to collapse. Indeed, there are numerous examples of clubs in financial trouble selling their stadiums to give owners some collateral on their investments or to circumvent profit and sustainability rules. Troubled Sheffield Wednesday sold Hillsborough to its owner for a profit of more than £38 million, covering its pre-tax losses of £35 million. Both Reading and Derby sold their grounds in a similar fashion. But a stadium can be sold only once, and without a stadium in their possession, clubs risk not being able to play at all.
We are familiar with the story of Wimbledon FC, whose home was forcibly moved to Milton Keynes in 2003, resulting in the club being renamed. Finances aside, that decision was devastating for local fans, who felt their club had been stolen from them and their community, as we heard in the evidence session. Given that the regulator is a body specifically established to both ensure the financial sustainability and protect the heritage of English football, it is right that it should have a responsibility to ensure that stadium sales do not undermine a club’s future.
There are of course many circumstances in which a club’s selling its stadium and relocating is a sign of progress and positive investment. Tottenham fans, for example, are now enjoying the benefits of a brand-new state-of-the-art ground, while the club is widely considered one of the best in the country. That kind of investment should in no way be discouraged, let alone blocked. The regulator must therefore be equipped to tell the difference between two very different kinds of proposed transactions—those that propel a club forward and those that seriously undermine a club’s long-term financial sustainability or heritage.
With the expertise the regulator will have, I understand why the Government have decided that it is best placed to grant approval on stadium sales and moves. However, I also acknowledge the concern that the FSA and many fans have about their lack of voice in the decision-making processes in both clause 46 and clause 48.
Amendments 3 and 29, tabled by my hon. Friends the Members for Liverpool, West Derby and for Sheffield South East, give us the opportunity to discuss the role that fans might play in understanding what a stadium change might mean in terms of the fans, heritage and local community. It is of course the fans who will suffer if their team no longer has anywhere to play, and it is fans who best understand the precious heritage and memory that grounds carry for them and their community.
Clause 48 seems to be based on an understanding of that point to some extent, given that the regulator is explicitly tasked with paying attention to whether a relocation of home games would cause “significant harm” to the heritage. However, as Fair Game points out, it would be curious if the regulator were able to understand the implications for heritage without consulting fans. Will the Minister explain how that might work? On what basis will the regulator make a judgment if it is not through understanding the impact on fans?
Combined with the lack of consultation rights in clause 46, the result is that fans are currently given absolutely no voice on matters to do with stadiums, even though they are the ones who will travel there, buy tickets and offer their support. I understand that the regulator is best placed to make a final decision, but it is unclear to me why fans cannot form one of the inputs that the regulator might consider.
The Government’s White Paper said that the regulator should
“have a remit to consider the implications for club heritage of any proposal, the views of fans and the club’s historical connection to its locality.”
Will the Minister share with us what has happened between the publication of the White Paper and the Bill to cause the Government to divorce the idea of heritage from fans? It must be clear why fans have not been given any say in this process. I hope the Minister will elaborate on that point today.
Finally, I want to examine whether the Bill will be able to prevent some home matches being played abroad if that damages heritage. This is not a purely theoretical proposition. Just a few weeks ago, Tim Howard wrote for a national newspaper about why Premier League games being played in the USA was “inevitable”. FIFA has also reportedly begun the process of allowing league matches to be played overseas. When Tim Payton of the Arsenal Supporters’ Trust gave evidence to the Committee, he warned that the movement of games abroad could be the next catastrophe the size of the Super League.
Clause 48 has the potential to provide assurances that this kind of action could only be taken by clubs with the approval of the regulator, should it be seen to damage heritage. However, the wording does seem to be geared more towards permanent relocation rather than the issue of clubs wishing to play single games, or a small subset, away from home.
Will the Minister confirm whether approval only needs to be sought by clubs wishing to play all of their home games elsewhere or whether it also applies to clubs wanting to play a handful of games elsewhere? In particular, will the regulator be able to have a say on league games being played abroad, and if so, would fans be given a say in the process? Given the salience of this issue with fans, it is important that we are clear on how the clause would apply.
Mr Betts
I rise to speak to amendment 29, which I tabled. We will move on to a debate on clause 49 shortly, to which it relates. It is interesting that fans will get a specific consultation, involvement and approval about changing the crests, shirt colours and names, as those are decisions that can be reversed quite easily. We know about the problems at Cardiff with shirt colours and at Hull with the name, but even if those mistakes are made by the owners, they can be changed the following year. A club cannot go back to playing on its old ground if it has been sold and is no longer an asset of the club. In some ways, the issue of where a club plays and its ground is more important for the heritage of the club, and it needs to take account of the interests and wishes of fans.
In clause 48, we have a regulator that will have to look at the significant harm done to the heritage of the club by moving ground. How does the regulator decide what is significant harm to the heritage of the club in isolation? The fans are the ones who understand that. They are the custodians of the club; they are the ones who go every week, whose families have gone to the club for years and whose children will go in the future for years. They are the ones who have a real stake in the heritage of the club, yet there is nothing in the wording that says they must be consulted.
All amendment 29 states is that in looking at the issue of significant harm to the heritage of the club, we should actually ask the fans what they think about it, so that they do not consider that the arrangements will constitute significant harm. I do not know how on earth the regulator will come to a view that is not a view derived from consulting the fans, so I hope that the Minister will give way on this amendment. At the heart of what we are doing here is ensuring that fans are listened to about the issues that are so important to them, and there is nothing more important for fans of a club than where their club plays, so I hope the Minister thinks that this amendment is in the spirit of the Bill and could be accepted.
Stuart Andrew
The Bill requires regulated clubs and clubs that have been regulated in the past five years, which I shall simply refer to as clubs, to notify the regulator where there is a reasonable prospect of either the club selling or otherwise disposing of its home ground or using it as security for a loan or other liability. The proposed transaction can proceed only if the regulator grants approval. Clause 46, which the amendment seeks to change, deals with only the narrow issue of a home ground disposal or the use of the home ground as security. Those matters do not necessarily threaten the heritage of the club in the same way as forcing a relocation. Where currently regulated clubs propose to relocate in parallel, which may impact on the clubs’ heritage, that is subject to a separate approval from the regulator under clause 48.
Clause 48 sets out that the regulator can grant approval to a relocation only if it does not undermine the financial sustainability of the club and does not cause significant harm to its heritage. Given that clubs will be required to consult with fans on matters relating to home ground, we expect that the regulator would consider that in reaching its decision on whether to approve a relocation.
Mr Betts
The Minister is therefore saying that a club makes a proposal, consults with the fans and comes to a view, then the regulator must accept the view that the club has come to. Why does the regulator not have a responsibility to ensure that the fans are comfortable with any proposal in the way that amendment 29 suggests? Why is it simply left to a club, which may have a vested interest, to consult with fans and report at second hand to the regulator?
Stuart Andrew
The regulator will be able to see whether that consultation was done properly, and the mechanisms that we are setting up for fan engagement are much strengthened from what they may be at the moment. That gives confidence that what the clubs consult on will be done through a mechanism that is much stronger than some of the examples mentioned earlier by the hon. Member for Barnsley East. By doing that, because it is about the club’s heritage—it is its home ground, and the club is going to move—the club must demonstrate that it has properly consulted with the fans in the way described by the Bill.
Stuart Andrew
The heritage of the club will include its home ground. Of course that is part of the description of heritage, so it will come under that aspect. Just selling the club to get a loan, for example, will not move the stadium, but if it is going to relocate, that is a change to the club’s heritage, so that will come under the heritage aspect of the Bill.
Stuart Andrew
As I said a moment ago, clause 48 sets out that a relocation can be granted approval only if it does not undermine the financial stability of the club or cause significant harm to its heritage. It will come under that.
Stuart Andrew
In schedule 4, paragraph 4(3)(a) on page 93, it says “the club’s home ground”. It is there.
The regulator will examine each transaction in the context of the regulated club’s individual financial circumstances. That should provide sufficient comfort for fans or other proposed stakeholders that the proposal does not adversely affect the financial sustainability of the club. The additional stakeholders to be consulted will not have a financial interest in the transaction. Amendment 3 would impose an additional level of bureaucracy and complexity to the process. It would also introduce a potential delay in completing a transaction, which is often time-sensitive, and it may have adverse implications, such as the buyer pulling out or renegotiating terms. That could undermine the sustainability of clubs. For the reasons I have set out, I am unable to accept the amendment.
Turning to clause 46, a home ground is often one of the most vital and valuable assets that a club can own. However, home grounds are sometimes used as collateral for debt or even sold off entirely to raise money. Although there can be sensible financial reasons for clubs to do that, both courses of action may result in a club’s financial position seriously deteriorating, or it having no ground to play at. Selling the home ground also potentially seriously weakens the club’s balance sheet. Likewise, using the home ground as collateral for a loan might make financial sense depending on the use of the cash raised, but it may also saddle the club with too much debt or high interest costs.
The clause therefore places a duty on clubs that own their home ground to obtain the approval of the regulator prior to any sale or use as security in a loan or liability. The regulator will consider the risk of the proposed transaction to the club’s financial sustainability and block any potentially financially damaging sale of a club’s home ground. The provision applies not only to regulated clubs, but we are also extending it further to capture clubs that are not currently regulated but have been within the last five years. The regulator must be satisfied that the club has taken reasonable steps to ensure that a team play their home matches at the ground prior to its sale or use in a loan—that is, that football club continues to be playing at the ground. That protects against potential bad actors who might otherwise choose to pull their team from the league and no longer be a regulated club so that they can asset-strip and sell off the ground to make money.
Turning to amendment 29, the Government believe that the safeguarding of club heritage and the voices of fans is vital. We expect the regulator to consider whether a club has adequately engaged with its fans in reaching its decision on whether to approve a relocation. However, there will be a number of additional factors for the regulator to consider when assessing whether a proposed home ground relocation will significantly harm club heritage. Those may include the history of the club, distance from the original home ground or the views of others in the local community. Although fan views will be an important consideration, the Government believe that the regulator should be able to take an holistic view of any proposal. I therefore hope that the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby withdraws his amendment.
Turning to clause 48, home grounds play an important role in the history of a club, and are often the club’s most valuable asset. Relocating home grounds permanently to areas that have no connection to the heritage and history of a club can have a significant impact on those supporters and the local area, as we saw when Wimbledon moved to Milton Keynes. This clause is aimed at stopping that from happening again.
However, the Government do not want to stifle development that brings value and aligns with the heritage of a club. The impact of a home ground relocation on both fans and the club is why we are legislating for the regulator to preapprove any proposal in this regard. As set out in subsection (4), the regulator must be satisfied that the proposed relocation would not undermine the financial sustainability of the club, or significantly harm its heritage. Clause 48 makes the important and necessary recognition of the vital role that home grounds can play in communities, and adds an extra layer of protection to them.
I commend the clause to the Committee.
Stuart Andrew
The regulatory framework is not a zero-failure regime. Therefore, it is possible that football clubs may enter administration despite the best efforts of the regulator. We would of course, hope that this is rare. There already exists a legal framework for companies—and that includes football clubs—to enter into administration, which is detailed in the Insolvency Act 1986, and in many cases this existing framework has enabled clubs to go into administration and re-emerge as solvent clubs. It should be noted that those clubs often re-emerge in a lower league as a result of the sporting sanctions placed on them by the competition organisers.
Given that the existing administration regime seems to work well in relation to appointments initiated by creditors, it is not necessary for the regulator to cut across that process. However, there are occasions where the administration of a club is not initiated by creditors but by the club itself. A club can appoint administrators directly, and so does not require a court to sanction the appointment in advance. In those circumstances, there have been occasions in which some stakeholders have had cause to question the relationship between the insolvency practitioner appointed as administrator and the football club.
That is why, in those specific circumstances, the appointment of an administrator requires the regulator’s approval to ensure that the process is transparent and to avoid conflicts of interest. Such approval should give all stakeholders, particularly fans, more confidence in the system and more confidence that the outcome is the best available, in the circumstances, for the individual club.
The requirement to seek approval from the regulator for the appointment of an administrator applies to clubs that have a licence, and those that should have a licence but for whatever reason do not, as well as clubs that were formerly regulated within the previous five years. That is included to ensure that clubs are not deliberately run so that they are no longer in the leagues that the regulator has oversight of, to then take advantage of being an unregulated entity to appoint an administrator without approval of the regulator.
I commend the clause to the Committee.
Stephanie Peacock
The clause sets out that regulated clubs and clubs that have been regulated at any point in the last 10 years must seek approval from the regulator before appointing an administrator. I understand that this measure is needed to offer protection against rushed insolvencies that end up having adverse effects. It is also needed so that club owners are not able to appoint firms or people they have connections to as administrators in an attempt to manipulate the administration. Although we hope that, with the regulator’s guidance, fewer clubs will face administration, it is important that, if the worst happens, proper administrators, without conflicting interests, are appointed to oversee the process. I therefore support the clause.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 47 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Mr Betts
I will reflect on what the Minister said. I will perhaps do so at a future date, but I will not move it at this stage.
Clause 48 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 49
Duty not to change crest, home shirt colours or name without approval
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Stuart Andrew
A club’s name, home shirt colours and crest are intrinsic parts of its heritage, and therefore the decision to materially change any of them requires considered thought and consultation. The clause requires a club to establish that a majority of domestic supporters approve any material changes to its badge or predominant home shirt colours. In practice, we expect that to take place through a formal survey of fan opinion, as happened last season when Bristol Rovers supporters opposed the final proposal put to them, resulting in the club halting the redesign of its crest.
The clause also requires clubs to get Football Association approval prior to changing the name their team plays under. The view of supporters is a significant factor in the FA’s final decision, but it may also need to balance wider considerations, such as the effects on other clubs in the pyramid, and the relationship between the club’s current name, the proposed name and the locality with which it is traditionally associated.
Ian Byrne
On the scope of the independent regulator, Liverpool football club tried to trademark the name “Liverpool”, which caused absolute outrage among Liverpool and Everton supporters and market traders. The local community fought back, and the supporters of both football clubs came together. Is something like that within the scope of the regulator’s ability to influence?
Stuart Andrew
That is a very good question, and I feel my officials thinking, “Not another letter!” If the hon. Gentleman does not mind, we will write to him. I apologise to my officials, who have enough on their plate, but I want to make sure I am not saying something that is not correct.
The existing FA rule has been used to prevent name changes that have been proposed in the past against the wishes of fans, as happened at Hull City, for example. Codifying that as a legal duty will mean that there are additional powers to ensure that clubs do not make changes without proper approvals and to respond to instances of non-compliance. I commend the clause to the Committee.
Stephanie Peacock
Heritage assets are incredibly important to a football club and its fans. They carry the history of where the club is based, what its identity is and the journey fans have been on through the years, in victory and loss. It is therefore pleasing that, in the light of the fan-led review, the FA has updated its rules on changes to club heritage assets. Those rules, supported by the clause, will hopefully ensure that a majority of fans are in favour of a change.
It is not just fans who will benefit from owners not being able to make unilateral changes to heritage items. There have been cases of clubs changing badges and crests without consultation, only to find that fans dislike them and will not buy replica kits or merchandise. Avoiding such situations is beneficial for people on all sides.
I know that some fan groups and Fair Game are disappointed that fans will not have a direct say over changes to a club’s name, because that is done via the FA. However, the FA told us in evidence that it consults fans as part of the name change process, so it would be good if the Minister can confirm whether he thinks that that is adequate.
The clause offers the bare minimum of fan engagement. Clubs can and must build on it through the consultation requirements in other clauses, forging ongoing listening exercises with their supporters on relevant matters. In many ways, therefore, this measure should be seen as a backstop, ensuring that a club cannot be stripped of its identity against the wishes of fans. In that context, I am pleased to welcome it.
Stuart Andrew
I absolutely have confidence that the FA rules will apply.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 49 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 50
Duty to notify of changes in circumstances relevant to the IFR’s functions
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Stuart Andrew
In order to regulate clubs effectively, the regulator will need the complete picture of each club. Complete transparency and timely updates will allow the regulator to stay abreast of any relevant changes. That is why clause 50 imposes a duty on all regulated clubs to notify the regulator of any material changes in circumstances relevant to the regulator’s functions as soon as reasonably practicable. For example, the club’s finances might have materially changed, or the club might no longer comply with the licence condition. The self-reporting will facilitate the regulator’s ongoing real-time monitoring of clubs.
Stephanie Peacock
Clause 50 ensures that a club notifies the regulator if there is a relevant material change in circumstances affecting the club and, again, we must be clear what “material change” means. However, it is absolutely right that if a shift in a club’s nature, behaviour or external context might impact compliance with its duties under the regulator, the regulator should know about that as soon as possible. I have no issues to raise with clause 50.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 50 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 51
Duty to publish a personnel statement
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Stuart Andrew
The owners and officers who control and run football clubs are vital for clubs’ sustainability. The regulator therefore needs to know who is running a club behind the scenes, so that it can implement the regime. The Bill requires licensed clubs to prepare a personnel statement and submit it to the regulator for approval. A personnel statement must outline each of the club’s owners and the club’s ultimate owner; officers and the job description of each officer; and senior management and their roles at the club.
Once the statement has been submitted, the regulator will review it and decide whether to approve or modify it. Any modification must be made in consultation with the club to ensure that the statement is accurate. Once the statement is approved by the regulator, clubs must publish it online, increasing transparency and accountability in football. Subsequent statements must be submitted to the regulator if an old statement becomes out of date, such as after the departure or hiring of an officer.
Stephanie Peacock
During our discussion of clause 16, I spoke about the importance of clubs publishing personnel statements. By identifying exactly who holds key positions, including owners and officers, the regulator will be absolutely clear who must be held accountable for the proper fulfilment of licence conditions at each football club. With that in mind, I am pleased to support clause 51.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 51 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 52
Duty to pay a levy
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Clause stand part.
Clause 53 stand part.
Mr Betts
This is a fairly simple clarifying amendment. As we have heard, smaller clubs feel that regulation must be proportionate and that there should be more requirements on very wealthy clubs, because they have the staff and resources to deal with that. Smaller clubs may find the whole issue of regulation very challenging, so amendment 30 simply says that the levy they will have to pay should be a percentage of annual revenue; in other words, a proportionate basis for the levy should be written into the Bill. The Minister may say that that will happen anyway—that that it is what the regulator will do—but the issue is a concern for smaller clubs, and the amendment 30 is an attempt to highlight and deal with it.
Stephanie Peacock
When the fan-led review first proposed the creation of an independent regulator for football, it suggested that the most logical way to pay for it would be through a levy on those who would benefit from it: the clubs. I agree with that conclusion, and I am pleased that the Bill confirms that the regulator will be able to require licensed clubs to pay an annual levy.
However, even though clause 52 is relatively detailed, there is surprisingly little on how the levy will be split between the clubs themselves. That is something that amendment 30, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East, has sought to rectify. If the regulator is given wide discretion to determine the extent of the levy, clubs further down the pyramid might be concerned that their payments will not be proportionate to their wealth and size. Of course, clause 52 states that the regulator should have regard to the financial resources of each club and the competition it operates in. That is promising, but it is worth clarifying today what that is expected to mean in practice. Will decisions be based on broadcast incomes, as per the fan-led review, or just on average total revenue, as per the White Paper?
There is broad agreement that the richest clubs should subsidise regulation for others. The majority of costs should, in this case, fall on Premier League clubs. The Government identified that these clubs could pay about 80% of the cost, with the six richest clubs taking on 50% of the total cost. The regulator will ultimately dictate the shape of the levy, but it should be under a clear direction to ensure that the levy is progressive and proportionate. It hardly makes sense for a regulator focused on financial sustainability to shackle struggling clubs to paying large fees. It is important that clubs do not fear the introduction of the new regime and view it as an opportunity, rather than being scared into thinking it will be a hindrance.
Clause 53 requires the regulator to consult before making the levy rules. That will include taking input on a draft version of the rules from the Secretary of State, the Treasury, regulated clubs and other appropriate persons. That welcome measure will hopefully shape the levy rules in a progressive way. It is also right that the regulator must publish information about the costs involved in calculating the levy charge before it starts charging in any given year. That transparency will be important, particularly for the clubs, which will want to understand exactly what they are paying for and why.
Overall, I welcome the levy and the method of payment, and I look forward to clarification on how the Minister expects the levy will be set.
Stuart Andrew
The Government understand that the intent behind the amendment is to create certainty about how the regulator’s levy charges will be distributed between clubs. The clause gives the regulator the necessary discretion to determine how the levy is calculated and the individual charges to be paid by clubs. The Government do not have the information or datasets required to determine the appropriate way to calculate levy payments, but those will be available to the regulator. Therefore, the regulator, rather than Government, will be best placed to determine how to distribute levy charges across clubs. Importantly, that reinforces the regulator’s operational independence.
I strongly support the objective that levy charges should be affordable to clubs, which is why there is already provision that should ensure that. However, requiring the regulator to be guided by a percentage of a club’s annual revenue in its levy calculations could undermine its ability to ensure that the charges are proportionate and affordable. In addition to revenue, the regulator should have the discretion to take into account clubs’ other financial resources when determining levy payments, which may be a more appropriate indicator of what a club’s charges should be. That could include resources such as owners’ funds, but also the offset of club expenditure.
Clause 52 already provides assurance that the regulator must take into account clubs’ differing financial circumstances. That includes clubs’ financial resources and the leagues that club teams play in, as that ultimately has a direct link to revenue. For the reasons I have set out, I am not able to accept the amendment from the hon. Member for Sheffield South East, so I hope he will withdraw it.
Robin Millar
On that point, I would be interested to know the Minister’s thoughts. As I understand it, the purpose of the levy is cost recovery rather than to be a redistributive mechanism. Is there a reason why a simple flat percentage should not be sufficient to achieve all that we described? It would offer certainty, but it would also make sure that those with broader shoulders pay more, and it would achieve the IFR’s objective of recovering its costs.
Stuart Andrew
The reality is that, to help it understand the specifics of club finances, the regulator will have at its disposal information that we do not have at the moment. If we set the levy by percentage, we may unintentionally cause a problem for some clubs and cause an unintended consequence. The regulator will be best placed to make sure that the levy is proportionate, which is why we want the regulator to determine it. My hon. Friend is right, in the sense that some clubs will pay more for a player than most clubs earn in a year, but we will make sure that the levy is proportionate. I understand the points the hon. Member for Sheffield South East made, and I have heard what some of the smaller clubs have been saying, but I am confident we will be able to achieve that aim.
Clause 52 will allow the regulator to charge a levy to licensed clubs that covers the regulator’s running costs, following the precedent of other regulators, such as the FCA and Ofcom. The cost of the regime will be paid for by licensed football clubs. By making football clubs more sustainable in the long term, the regulator will be providing a service to the industry. As the industry would benefit from regulation, it is logical that it, rather than taxpayers, should cover the cost.
The legislation puts robust checks and balances on the regulator, which will be limited to raising funds to meet its annual regulatory running costs. That includes the costs of ongoing regulatory activity, additional money for new activities, and costs associated with recouping set-up costs. In line with the principles of transparency and accountability, the regulator will be subject to “Managing Public Money” guidance, and its forecast running costs will be subject to review by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Treasury.
The clause also gives the regulator discretion regarding the method for calculating the levy and in setting the levy payment level for individual clubs. To ensure that the regulator takes into account clubs’ differing financial circumstances, and to prevent charges from being unaffordable for clubs, clause 52 requires the regulator to take into account a club’s financial resources and the league it plays in. Clause 53 imposes a statutory duty on the regulator to consult regulated clubs and the Government on its levy rules.
The levy is an operational matter that should be determined independently by the regulator, and it would not be appropriate for the Government to make the assessment. As I say, running costs will be checked by both the DCMS and the Treasury.
Stuart Andrew
I beg to move amendment 23, in clause 54, page 43, line 29, leave out “23” and insert “24”.
This amendment corrects a cross-reference in clause 54(1)(b).
Stuart Andrew
Amendment 23 will correct a cross-reference in the Bill, to ensure that clause 54(1)(b) correctly refers to section 24.
Clause 54 outlines the circumstances in which a relevant league must notify the regulator whether, for example, it believes or suspects that a club has breached one of the league’s own rules that is relevant to the regulator’s regime. The clause also requires that a relevant league consult the regulator when it is considering changing its own competition rules where a rule is relevant to the regulator’s regime. Just as the regulator is required to consult the industry in certain circumstances, these duties on relevant leagues will ensure appropriate notification and consultation in the other direction, too. If a relevant league has certain pertinent information, given its knowledge and understanding of the football industry, it must tell the regulator. Equally, if the relevant league is intending to take certain action that might impact on the regulator’s regime, it must engage with the regulator. That will allow for co-operative regulation whereby information is pooled and action can be co-ordinated. That should help both the regulator and the relevant leagues to deliver their respective regulations more effectively, and ultimately minimise the overall burden on clubs.
Stephanie Peacock
Clause 54, with the correction made by amendment 23, is one of the only measures in the Bill that directly places duties on competition organisers. As I have made clear throughout these Committee proceedings, I believe it is extremely important that the regulator has a constructive relationship with existing football governance structures where possible, and that they work together to ensure a coherent regulatory regime. This clause will ensure that by placing a clear duty on competition organisers to keep the regulator updated on the enforcement of its own rules, as well as on areas where they might have information that overlaps with the regulator’s remit.
It is good to see, for example, that competition organisers will report to the regulator on any risk to financial resilience, as well as on any breach of specified competition rules and any subsequent sanctions they are placing on clubs. Competitions will also have to consult the regulator before adding to their own rules; this, again, is a positive step which will hopefully prevent any such rules from undermining the regulator.
However, I do think there needs to be further consideration for how the respective regimes will work when rules and regulation overlap. Ultimately, although the regulator will be consulted on new rules, competition organisers have the final say. The Government’s White Paper says:
“Where rules of industry bodies stray into the Regulator’s remit, the Regulator would have oversight to ensure that regulations are coherent and effective.”
I would like to ask the Minister, therefore, whether he thinks that the regulator has all the powers it needs to make sure that the landscape is coherent and effective when there is crossover. This is important for all of those who enforce rules in football, as well as for clubs.
Stuart Andrew
I can confirm that I am confident.
Question put and agreed to.
Amendment 23 accordingly agreed to.
Clause 54, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 55
PART 6: OVERVIEW AND INTERPRETATION
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 31, in clause 55, page 45, line 3, at end insert—
“unless the IFR specifies otherwise in rules.
(2A) The IFR can only make such rules if it can be satisfied that their inclusion furthers its objectives under section 6 by protecting and promoting—
(a) the financial soundness of regulated clubs, and
(b) the financial resilience of English football.
(2B) The IFR should also have regard when making any rules under section 7 to act in such a way that avoids any—
(a) effects on sporting competitiveness of any regulated club against another regulated club,
(b) adverse effects on the competitiveness of regulated clubs against other clubs, and
(c) adverse effects on financial investment in English football.”
Clause 55 stand part.
Mr Betts
Could I ask for a bit of advice, Ms Nokes? I have a selection list that says that new clause 4, which I also tabled, should be debated with amendment 27, but another selection list says that it should be debated under clause 56. There seems to be some discrepancy. It would be helpful if you could provide an explanation.
The Chair
The suggestion is that you are looking at a previous selection list. New clause 4 will be debated with clause 56.
Mr Betts
Thank you for that clarification—I am sorry for mixing myself up.
Let us get down to the issue of parachute payments, which almost everyone spoke about on Second Reading, and which the Minister seems to believe should be treated as a given in their current form, with no change. I think he has the support of the Premier League—or some clubs in the Premier League, because it is by no means certain that the Premier League speaks with one voice on these issues. But it clearly is a very important issue.
I am calling for the removal of clause 55(2)(b), which stops the regulator, as the backstop, being able to consider removing or changing parachute payments in their current form. Under the regulator’s remit, they have to be treated as a given.
Dame Tracey Crouch
Is the hon. Gentleman talking specifically about parachute payments from the Premier League into the Championship, or is he talking about the smoothing process of the parachute payments to clubs that are relegated from leagues in general, indeed most probably from the EFL into the National League?
Dame Tracey Crouch
It is important to place on the record that National League clubs get 100% and then 50% of an EFL deal for League Two upon relegation, and a Championship club once relegated gets one eighth of the Championship deal for one season, and a League One relegation gets one ninth. This is not the same solidarity payment. It is important to remember that, when clubs are relegated to the league below, there is some sort of parachute payment in order to smooth out the process of losing the revenue received from being in that upper league.
Mr Betts
The point I was going to go on to make was that I am not suggesting that parachute payments should never be allowed under any income redistribution. That is not the case. My amendment does not say, “No parachute payments”. It says that parachute payments can be considered as part of the overall distribution of finances within the game.
The Bill as drafted states that parachute payments are exempt from consideration at the backstop stage—full stop, end of story. Everything else, including media income, can be considered, but not parachute payments. That seems strange, given that the Minister has repeatedly said that the independence of the regulator needs to be preserved and recognised, and yet on this key issue its hands are being specifically and absolutely tied. That just does not chime as an appropriate situation for the Government to get themselves into compared with everything else that they have said about the Bill. The regulator needs to be independent and have discretion, but on this issue it is not allowed to have the freedom to look at the situation, particularly with regard to the state of the game report. If the regulator believes that it is necessary to revisit the issue of parachute payments in order for income in football to be distributed properly and appropriately, and for it to be sustainable not just for individual clubs but for the whole of the football pyramid, this proposal is a significant mistake.
We must recognise that 80% of what the Premier League gives to the EFL is in parachute payments to a handful of clubs. When the Premier League talks about its generosity to the game, it is talking about generosity to a handful of clubs that have just been in the Premier League. That is not a real position. When we look at the distribution of the media money overall, we find that 92% goes to 25 clubs—namely, the Premier League clubs and five others that have been in and out of the Premier League in the recent past. That is not sustainable, and if a reasonable and fair distribution of money should be agreed in the future, the regulator must have the power to take that into account.
I have also said to the Minister that we ought to look at not just the importance of parachute payments to the clubs that receive them. I do not think that anyone I have met who has talked about this issue has said, “You cannot have parachute payments.” They say that it must be looked at in terms of the totality of the game and the distribution of money. I would understand, very quickly, that a club going up into the Premier League faces an enormous difference between the wage bill it had before being promoted and the wage bill it will need once promoted, and it must have some reassurance on what happens if it gets relegated. That is an understandable situation, but we must also take into account the impact on the finances of clubs in the same division as the relegated clubs and their ability to compete.
It has been said over and over again that Championship clubs are getting completely overstretched, because the holy grail of promotion to the Premier League means that clubs try to extend their budgets beyond what is reasonable. Owners put in large sums of their own money, often beyond what is reasonable and sustainable, in order to compete with clubs with parachute payments, and the difference is enormous. Parachute payment clubs will come down with budgets three times the size of those of many other clubs in that league, so in order to compete clubs often do fairly stupid things to try to ensure that promotion becomes a possibility.
My amendment says that the regulator ought to take account of those issues. It is not reasonable to say to the regulator, “The only thing that matters is parachute payments to protect clubs that get relegated and you should have no regard to the impact on the clubs already in that league.” I hope that the Minister will consider this seriously. It is obviously a concern across the House, as was reflected on Second Reading.
I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley East on the Front Bench has a slightly different way of addressing the issue, but the wording in her amendment 31 relates to what I have just said. Yes, parachute payments and the impact on the clubs that receive them must be taken into account, but the impact on other clubs that must compete with them must also be taken into account. The position under the Bill as drafted is that that cannot happen, because it is fixed as it is and cannot be changed by the regulator.
The Minister will probably say that the leagues themselves could come to an agreement and change it. What happens if they do not do that? There has not been much evidence of the leagues being able to reach an agreement for a long period of time now—that is why we are here debating this Bill. In the end, it is down to the backstop. That backstop, the regulator, needs to have the flexibility to address these very important measures.
Ian Byrne
Does the format of how parachute payments are directly paid not imperil the Independent Football Regulator’s key objectives, which are to protect and promote the financial soundness of regulated clubs and financial resilience? The imbalance in parachute payments is driving clubs into making decisions that they would not usually take.
Mr Betts
Absolutely. I just made the point about the enormous difference in budgets that Championship clubs now experience because of that. Of course, when we look at this season of the Championship, three out of the top four clubs have received parachute payments. Yes, other clubs, such as Ipswich, have done remarkably well without them, but clubs are always trying to compete with those clubs receiving the payments. Last year, two of the three clubs that came up had parachute payments, and it is now almost becoming a cycle of clubs getting parachute payments, going back up, then sometimes being relegated, and then getting another lot of parachute payments. That really is not a sustainable position for the clubs receiving those, for the clubs that are trying to compete with them, for the competitiveness of the game, or for the sustainability of the pyramid as a whole. I hope that the Minister will reconsider this because it is an issue that really needs addressing.
Stephanie Peacock
I am pleased to be able to discuss part 6 of the Bill, which provides a backstop power in the event that certain thresholds are met and football is unable to resolve the issue of financial distribution. Before I begin to explore this clause, it is important to set out that, in an ideal situation, these powers would never be used. As the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford set out during the evidence sessions, based on her experience with the fan-led review, a football-led solution to the issue of distribution has always been and remains the preference. I hope that can be kept in mind when discussing this part. Indeed, I welcome the powers but my hope is that their enforcement will not actually be necessary.
Clause 55 broadly sets out the process under this part but most importantly defines what might count as “relevant revenue”, which is money to which the backstop will apply. Relevant revenue is broadly defined as revenue received as a result of broadcasting rights, with the Minister given the flexibility to change that if broadcasting is no longer the predominant source of income. There are a couple of things to clarify. First, it would be good if the Minister could confirm whether such broadcast revenue is meant to cover domestic competitions only. Secondly, it would be appreciated if the Minister could clarify whether broadcasting revenue will still be considered relevant if the funding model changes so that it is paid directly to clubs, rather than through competition organisers. Broadly, though, I think this scope is generally accepted as being the right one.
Issues have, however, been identified with clause 55(2)(b), which is the part of the Bill that excludes parachute payments from the definition of relevant revenue. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East tabled amendment 27, and I will speak primarily to amendment 31 in my name. First, I would like to set some background to the issue, as it stems from the fact that there is an ever-growing gap between the Premier League and the EFL. Indeed, 30 years ago, EFL revenues were 75% of those of the Premier League; today they are just 6%. In real figures, that means that 30 years ago the gap was £11 million, and today it is £3 billion.
The Premier League’s approach to mitigating that gap is the so-called parachute payments to clubs relegated from the Premier League for up to three seasons. Those payments help to ensure competitiveness in the Premier League by providing clubs with the confidence to invest on promotion in the knowledge that they will be supported if they are relegated. For example, parachute payments might give the club the confidence to sign players on multi-year contracts, and that is incredibly important to consider. The Premier League’s competitiveness and the fact that any team, no matter their size or experience, can compete on any given day is what makes it the most beloved and exciting league in the world.
However, while they help to boost competitiveness in the Premier League, parachute payments—by the White Paper’s own admission—can distort competition in the Championship. In each of the last six seasons, two of the three clubs promoted from the Championship to the Premier League have been in receipt of parachute payments. The knock-on effect of that is that owners of clubs not in receipt of parachute payments are compelled to put ever greater levels of funding into their clubs to try to remain competitive. That overreliance on increasing owner funding has deeply exposed clubs when the funding does not materialise, as we have seen for Wigan, Bolton and Bury.
Further, the size of parachute payments has increased in recent years. Between 2010 and 2020, they have risen from £30 million to £233 million. That is an eightfold increase in a period in which player wages have only doubled. That means that, of the total distributable revenue of the English and Welsh professional game, the top 25 clubs—those in the Premier League—and the five in receipt of parachute payments in the EFL received 92% last season. That is £3 billion for 25 clubs, and £245 million for the other 67 professional clubs. Given the scale of parachute payments, therefore, it is notable that the Bill has definitively excluded them from the definition of relevant revenue. That is why I have tabled amendment 31.
4.30 pm
I want to be absolutely clear that the amendment is not about abolishing parachute payments; I believe that they provide clubs with the confidence that they need to invest, and they are a crucial tool in ensuring the competitiveness of the best league in the world. The amendment would simply give the regulator discretion to decide that, if certain criteria are met, parachute payments need not be excluded from the revenue to be distributed under the backstop provision.
Certainly, there is no reason to single out parachute payments. Whether people are in favour of significant parachute payments or not, they agree that they have an impact on club finances. As such, they will have a significant impact on the regulator’s objectives of protecting and promoting the financial soundness of clubs and the resilience of English football. Given that that relates to the regulator’s core role, the regulator should have the ultimate say on whether parachute payments are considered as part of the backstop provision.
Further, solidarity payments are explicitly linked to parachute payments. Solidarity payments are worked out as a percentage of the value of a year-three parachute payment. Championship clubs receive 30%, League One clubs receive 4.5%, and League Two clubs receive 3% of the value. The regulator, therefore, might find it difficult to look at one without looking at the other.
I emphasise again that the amendment does not predetermine whether the regulator includes or excludes parachute payments. If the regulator has a case, based on its objective evidence base, that excluding parachute payments from relevant revenue is more likely to make clubs financially sound and promote the financial resilience of English football, they will remain excluded. The amendment simply recognises that it should be the regulator that makes the decision, independent from any vested interests.
When making that decision, the regulator will have to pay explicit regard to the fulfilment of its core objectives and its secondary purposes: financial sustainability, financial resilience, competitiveness and investment. Taken together, those are the principles that should decide whether parachute payments are included—not the leagues and not politicians. Only then will we ensure that the regulator can fulfil the purpose of the Bill.
Damian Collins
I will make a few points on parachute payments. It is fair to say that they are not part of the redistribution mechanism between the Premier League and the Football League. They can be set as an amount alongside the redistribution that takes place, but, of course, they are not fixed. They are a contractual arrangement that the Premier League enters into with clubs that are in the league or when they get promoted.
For reasons that hon. Members have rightly set out, if the income of a Premier League club drops by at least half after being relegated, even with parachute payments, that will be a severe challenge to its sustainability. It is anyway and it certainly would be if those payments did not exist. Of course, if a club is promoted straight back up, as Leicester City has been this year, the year-two and year-three parachute payments are not kept by the Football League—the money never goes to the Football League—but goes back to the Premier League. Therefore, in many ways, the payments have nothing to do with the Football League; they are made by the Premier League to its member clubs in the event that they go down.
The question is then whether the existence of parachute payments has such a market-distorting effect that the regulator would have to intervene. It is difficult to see why the regulator would need to intervene on the basis of the impact on the clubs that have been relegated; they clearly need that support. From all the evidence that we heard as a Committee—I have not heard anyone this afternoon say anything to the contrary—there needs to be some compensating mechanism for clubs that go down, otherwise the risks are too great.
It is not always about clubs that have gone up and come straight back down again; it is often about quite large clubs—it was Leicester and Southampton last year. Everton could easily have gone down last season and the impact of such a relegation would have been catastrophic. The regulator would therefore have to take a view as to whether the existence of those payments has a distorting effect on the Championship.
Given the remit of the regulator, I urge hon. Members tabling amendments to be careful what they wish for. The regulator may well take the view that its job is not to have an impact on the nature of competition in the Championship, or to make it easier for more clubs to get promoted. Its interest is to promote financial sustainability, so it could easily take the view that parachute payments should stay because they are necessary for the clubs that are relegated.
Alongside that, there must be effective financial controls on Championship clubs. The question of whether a Championship club feels the need to compete against parachute payments is not necessarily one for the regulator. The regulator’s role is to ensure the financial sustainability of the league, so it might say that it can do that through the checks that it can put in place now, and therefore ensure that the situation created before does not happen again.
One could ask whether it is fair for the Championship to be run such that Championship clubs must compete against Premier League clubs, and cannot cook the books or rely on director’s loans because the regulator will stop them. Of course, in some ways the Championship is not competing with the Premier League. It is a league of clubs seeking to get promoted to the Premier League, but it is also looking to develop its own talent. It can buy talent from the lower leagues and from Europe, as it effectively does already. The TV revenue for the Championship, as it stands today, is already greater than for the top division in the Netherlands, Portugal, Belgium or Denmark, all of which are highly-competitive football nations whose pedigree in major international tournaments has been somewhat better than the home nations over the last few decades.
Mr Betts
Is it not one of the great strengths of the English pyramid that there is, or should be, the ability for clubs to move around? If there are massive differences in the financial capabilities of the clubs that come down from the Premier League with a view to going back up again very quickly and the other Championship clubs, that effectively removes the element of competition and removes the prospect of promotion from so many clubs that it changes the fundamental nature of the pyramid. Surely that goes against one of the objectives that the Bill is trying to achieve.
Damian Collins
I agree with the hon. Gentleman. The strength of the pyramid is one of the most important parts of the English game. It is probably the reason why the Premier League is such a commercial success—there is real promotion, relegation and competitive matches between the leagues. Parachute payments have come in out of necessity because of the requirement for clubs to jump up into a competition in which players are paid so much more and then to come out of it again. The regulator, as we are setting it up, would view the sustainability of the clubs in the Championship as important.
It is difficult to say that Championship clubs in England cannot recruit talent from other major European leagues and cannot develop their own talent. My concern is that, if all we do is push more money into the Championship, we will see a very large inflation of Championship player salaries. There will not necessarily be an improvement in the quality of players in the Championship but those players will be paid a lot more. There would also be even greater calls for bigger solidarity payments between the Championship and League One.
As the hon. Gentleman knows, League One club owners already complain that unless a big club happens to have been relegated into League One—a league that it is not normally in—getting promoted and sustaining a place in the Championship is becoming increasingly difficult because the Championship has largely become a division of former Premier League clubs. There are one or two exceptions—such as Preston North End, which have never played in the Premier League—but they are increasingly rare.
If the amendment were made and parachute payments were to be considered by the regulator, that might lead the regulator to demand much greater payments from the Premier League to the Championship. The logical argument that the Football League is advancing is that it wants more money for the Championship, not that parachute payments should go.
A question that was raised in the evidence session would also come into play: would it be fair for the medium and smaller clubs in the Premier League if the only method of distribution was UK broadcasting revenue, which the Premier League clubs receive equally? As we heard in the evidence session, that would place a much greater financial burden on clubs such as Brighton, Crystal Palace, Nottingham Forest and Everton than it would on Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool and Arsenal, for whom that money is a smaller part of their total revenue. Unless European money, other prize money and commercial gate money could suddenly be considered along with parachute payments, we are picking winners. We are saying, “We are going to favour the Championship side at the expense of the teams that play in the lower half of the Premier League.”
This is a highly complex matter with lots of moving parts. As we have heard throughout the debate on the Bill, the different parts of the football pyramid have different demands and income streams, and would make different cases. It is therefore right that parachute payments are kept out of the Bill, because they are a matter for the Premier League and the clubs that are relegated. Of course, the regulator will still be free to take wider consideration of the sustainability of the whole pyramid, which is purely about redistribution and where the money is drawn from. My concern is that—to use the phrase that we have used throughout the Committee’s consideration of the Bill—the unintended consequence of the amendment would be to create different winners and losers. The regulator has the power to look at all those things in the round.
Mr Betts
Is the hon. Gentleman saying that the Premier League’s objective in having parachute payments protected in this way is to ensure they that continue, while the issue of the pyramid and more competition lower down is met by even more money from the Premier League to the EFL, irrespective of parachute payments? It seems to me that that is not its position; it actually wants to hang on to as much money as it can for Premier League clubs and to protect parachute payments too. I accept what the hon. Gentleman says about the multitude of issues surrounding competition between clubs in different leagues, but the fact that we cannot solve everything with this amendment does not mean that we should not address one of the problems.
Damian Collins
One of the reasons why the Bill is important is that the biggest problem in the pyramid at the moment is the financial sustainability of Championship clubs. There are different pressures and the greatest financial risks are taken there; some of the biggest failures have been at that level. That is why it is important.
Parachute payments exist only because the Premier League wants a more competitive, more attractive league. It does not want a closed league where the same three clubs are going up and down all the time, and the clubs that come up are just cannon fodder for the teams that play in it regularly. It is incumbent on the regulator to take a view on the sustainability of the pyramid, but the Premier League would not wish for that outcome.
We can choose which seasons we want to pick, but I do not think it is proven that parachute payments are having that effect already. There is plenty of evidence of badly run clubs—Sunderland is a good example from not long ago—that have been relegated from the Championship while still in receipt of parachute payment money. A lot of clubs come down with players who are not worth what they are being paid, and are stuck with a Championship squad on Premier League money. That is a problem that many clubs face.
Many problems are about the poor decisions made by managers and owners in the Championship, and a lack of financial oversight. The regulator needs to fix that financial oversight first, alongside considering redistribution in the round. It is easier to do that if we do not confuse that with parachute payments, which as the hon. Gentleman says are a much bigger quantum than the amount of redistribution anyway. We need to get the financial oversight right and look at redistribution in that context. I am concerned that simply asking the regulator to recommend a transfer through the backstop of money from the Premier League to the EFL corporately without the right financial oversight will pour petrol on the fire and drive wage inflation in the Championship.
Stephanie Peacock
The hon. Gentleman is making a really comprehensive argument for parachute payments. I want to be clear that my amendment is not proposing to get rid of parachute payments; it simply says that they should not be ruled out. I appreciate that he is saying that we should get this right before we move on, but we are here now setting the regulation. Obviously, if they are excluded, they are excluded.
Damian Collins
I will draw my remarks to a conclusion. I appreciate that—the hon. Member for Sheffield South East makes a similar argument—it is not an argument for the abolition of parachute payments. My concern is that if we take that step, we would have to bring into scope all football money, not just the money that the Premier League pays in redistribution to clubs in the lower leagues and through parachute payments. That would be a much wider step and would require further consideration. If such recommendations are to be made in future, that should be done after the regulator is established and we have the state of the game report.
Dame Tracey Crouch
I find part 6 to be one of the most infuriating parts of the Bill, not because it is a bad aspect of the Bill but because it should not exist. The truth is that if there had been a deal between the two parties—the Premier League and the EFL—part 6 would look very different. We made it clear in the fan-led review that distributions are an issue for football and they should be able to resolve that issue themselves, but that it was important for backstop powers to be there to intervene if no solution was found. That is what part 6 is, and it has become a more controversial part of the Bill than was perhaps ever envisaged. We had hoped back in November 2021, when we published the fan-led review, that there would be a deal.
Damian Collins
Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a slight danger, if we go down the path suggested by the amendment, of creating an even bigger gap between the big six and everyone else? We would basically be saying to the rest of the clubs, “The parachute payments are not for us: they are for you—the other 14 clubs in the Premier League. If you want them, you can pay for them and pay for the solidarity payments for the football league as well”, because that is effectively what would happen.
Dame Tracey Crouch
I completely agree with my hon. Friend. I always refer back to that point in the fan-led review, and we mulled over that issue at length. The truth is that we did not come to a conclusion ourselves, because it is so complex. We have made it clear in the chapter on financial distribution that we hope that there will be reform to the system, but this was back in 2021, for goodness’ sake. I want to bang everybody’s heads together and send them to bed without any tea, because we are dealing with the failure of the leagues to reach a solution, and I hope that the message they get from today’s sitting and the evidence sessions that we had last week is to go away and come up with another solution. The Bill sets out the process if there is no deal on that, and ultimately if there is no amendment to the Bill, let that be an inspiration to people to come together and find a solution.
Stuart Andrew
I must say that I almost want to stand up, say what other Members have said and sit down again. I agree with everybody else: I wish we were not at this stage and that there had been a deal between the parties concerned, because it is in the interests of football for them to come up with a deal. I hope that the mechanisms we are talking about will enable us to encourage that deal to happen sooner rather than later.
On amendments 27 and 31, although the parachute payments can have the distorting effects outlined, they play a pivotal role in protecting clubs at risk of relegation from going bankrupt, as others have said, and certainly give certainty to clubs competing for promotion. As I mentioned on Second Reading, in the past, relegation from the Premier League often meant financial ruin, as teams such as Bradford City failed to adjust to the huge drops in revenue. Given the important role that parachute payments play in helping to ensure the financial sustainability of relegated clubs, removing them entirely could have significant adverse effects on the game, and we do not want to create an opportunity through the Bill’s distribution mechanisms to get rid of parachute payments by the back door. Including parachute payments in the Bill’s scope, as amendment 27 proposes, could do just that. It could mean the regulator accepting a final proposal from one of the leagues that removes those payments, and if the mechanism allowed for that, it could create significant financial uncertainty for clubs that could not confidently invest in promotion. My hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford also mentioned the commercial agreements that are in place.
An exciting, competitive and sustainable pyramid is at the heart of what makes English football the asset that it is, and we should not put that at risk. We have excluded parachute payments from the backstop, because it needs to be targeted and simple to work effectively. Including parachute payments in the backstop means that the regulator could be presented with two entirely incomparable final proposals, which could render decision making almost impossible, but it is important to remember that the backstop may never be triggered, and is only ever intended as a last resort. We expect the leagues to reach a football-led solution themselves and will continue to press them to do so.
I recognise there are also concerns about the potentially distortive effects of parachute payments, and that is why the broader regulatory framework is designed to address it. If the regulator finds that parachute payments are causing a structural or systemic issue, it could attach discretionary licence conditions to parachute payment clubs to address that. We are creating a financial regulator, and it is entirely right that we solve issues like this through financial regulation wherever possible.
Mr Betts
It would help if the Minister was clear on what he was suggesting the regulator should do to deal with the massive gap between the clubs with parachute payments and those in the Championship without. Is he suggesting that the regulator should come in and tell clubs with parachute payments, “You have got them, but you cannot actually spend them, or not all of them, because that is distorting competition”? It seems a very odd way to try to deal with the problem.
Stuart Andrew
The whole point is that the regulator can look at financial controls and make discretionary licence conditions if it wants to try to minimise that impact. However, if the backstop ever gets triggered, if two very different bids are put in, the regulator is put in an incredibly difficult position; in contrast, if those backstop payments are there, the two sides will be able to adjust their bid to address it in another way, such as by improving the solidarity payments to other clubs as a proposal to reduce that cliff edge. That is the point we are trying to make. As I say, I cannot accept the amendment that the hon. Member tabled and I hope he will withdraw it.
Mr Betts
Could the Minister explain what he has just said? I still do not understand how it is going to work. On the regulator’s powers to deal with the problem created by parachute payments, which he accepts could be created, what exactly are those powers? How does he expect the regulator to use them?
Stuart Andrew
As I mentioned, it can introduce a discretionary licence condition. There will be a range of options that the regulator may consider, but it will have discretionary licence conditions that it could put on clubs in receipt of those payments that will manage the amount of money they are spending while helping to keep clubs financially solvent and sustainable. That is the point I am trying to make.
By way of background to clause 55, the Premier League earns significant revenues from selling its TV rights. It then determines how much of its broadcast revenue is distributed within its own league, and how much is distributed to the rest of the game, including the EFL and the National League. These backstop powers have been designed to incentivise reasonableness, encourage industry solutions and tackle any bargaining imbalance between the leagues. The clause sets out an overview of those backstop powers and defines some terms that are important for setting their scope.
One key term defined in the clause is relevant revenue. It expressly includes broadcast revenue, which is the predominant source of revenue for the relevant leagues and of any redistribution. The clause allows the Secretary of State to specify other kinds of revenue to be included as relevant, which will future-proof the policy—for instance, if broadcast revenue is no longer the main source of income for the leagues. There are safeguards on the use of this power, as the Secretary of State must consult the regulator, the FA and the relevant leagues, and can use the power only when there has been a material change in circumstances.
The exclusion of parachute payments in the clause is to ensure that the two final proposals can be easily compared. That is based on detailed analysis and advice on similar mechanisms. However, as mentioned, the regulator will still be able to consider parachute payments through the licensing regime.
The clause also sets out several other definitions, including the idea of a “qualifying football season”. The effect of this definition, together with the operative clauses in this part, is that the backstop can be triggered only in relation to the current season and the five subsequent seasons. That ensures that the backstop powers are used only in a reasonable timeframe and not for the remote future. I commend the clause to the Committee.
Mr Betts
I am not convinced by the Minister’s arguments, I must say. I think that we will be giving further consideration to this, as I hope the Minister will, and that we will come back to this issue on another occasion. I just hope that, by the time we come back, the Minister might be able to better explain the powers of the regulator to smooth out the issues where there are problems for Championship clubs trying to compete with those clubs with parachute payments. I was not convinced about that point from his arguments, but we will consider that further at another stage. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendment proposed: 31, in clause 55, page 45, line 3, at end insert—
“unless the IFR specifies otherwise in rules.
(2A) The IFR can only make such rules if it can be satisfied that their inclusion furthers its objectives under section 6 by protecting and promoting—
(a) the financial soundness of regulated clubs, and
(b) the financial resilience of English football.
(2B) The IFR should also have regard when making any rules under section 7 to act in such a way that avoids any—
(a) effects on sporting competitiveness of any regulated club against another regulated club,
(b) adverse effects on the competitiveness of regulated clubs against other clubs, and
(c) adverse effects on financial investment in English football.”—(Stephanie Peacock.)
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Finance (No. 2) Bill
Tuesday 21st May 2024
(7 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Finance Act (No. 2) 2024 2023-24 View all Finance Act (No. 2) 2024 2023-24 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 21 May 2024 - (21 May 2024)
The Chair
I remind Members that Hansard would be grateful if they emailed their speaking notes or handed them to a colleague in the room, and to please switch their phones to silent.
The selection list for today’s sitting is available in the room. It shows how the clauses and the selected new clause have been grouped for debate. Matters grouped together are generally on the same or a similar issue. A Member may speak more than once in a single debate.
I call the Minister to move the programme motion standing in his name, which was discussed yesterday by the Programming Sub-Committee.
Ordered,
That—
(1) the Committee shall (in addition to its first meeting at 9.25 am on Tuesday 21 May) meet—
(a) at 2.00 pm on Tuesday 21 May;
(b) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 23 May;
(2) the proceedings shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at 5.00 pm on Thursday 23 May. —(Nigel Huddleston.)
Resolved,
That, subject to the discretion of the Chair, any written evidence received by the Committee shall be reported to the House for publication.—(Nigel Huddleston.)
The Chair
Copies of written evidence that the Committee receives will be made available in the Committee Room and will be circulated to Members by email.
Clause 5
Increase in thresholds to £60,000 and £80,000
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Nigel Huddleston)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Latham, and I thank all hon. Members for their participation in today’s debate. I also thank those who have submitted written evidence on a variety of the clauses we will discuss today, including the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, the Chartered Institute of Taxation, the Low Incomes Tax Reform Group and others, and all those who have contributed to consultations as part of this Finance Bill process.
Clause 5 makes changes to the high income child benefit charge, or HICBC, as it is commonly called. It increases the threshold at which child benefit begins to be withdrawn, from £50,000 to £60,000. The Government are also increasing the threshold at which child benefit is fully withdrawn, from £60,000 to £80,000. That means that 1% is withdrawn for every £200 of income that exceeds £60,000; previously, the rate was 1% for every £100 of income that exceeded £50,000, and child benefit was fully removed once individuals earned £60,000 or above.
The HICBC is a tax charge and was introduced in January 2013 for recipients of child benefit payments, or their partners, on higher incomes. It applies where the highest earner has an adjusted net income—that is, their total taxable income, less certain reliefs, such as pension contributions—above the threshold, which is rising to £60,000. For individuals with incomes above the top of the taper, which is rising to £80,000, the tax charge is equal to the full amount of the child benefit payment.
The changes will ensure that the HICBC continues to withdraw child benefit from high-income families, as it was designed to, without unfairly penalising those on middle incomes. By halving the rate at which HICBC withdraws the child benefit gain, the Government are improving people’s incentives to continue working or to take up more hours. The Office for Budget Responsibility estimates that, as a result of both changes, those already working will increase their hours by a total equivalent to those of around 10,000 full-time individuals by 2028-29.
The changes made by clause 5 will have a positive impact for around 485,000 families, who will gain an average of £1,260 in 2024-25, which they can put towards the cost of raising their children. That includes around 170,000 individuals who will no longer be liable for HICBC, and 135,000 individuals currently paying the HICBC who will have it reduced. The remaining 180,000 are the families currently not claiming child benefit or families opting out of getting child benefit payments who are now eligible to receive payments without incurring a tax charge.
The increase in the HICBC’s adjusted net income threshold reaffirms the Government’s commitment to rewarding working families, by allowing them to keep as much of their hard-earned money as possible in a sustainable way. I therefore commend the clause to the Committee.
James Murray (Ealing North) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve on this Committee with you in the Chair, Mrs Latham. I am pleased to respond on behalf of the Opposition in the Public Bill Committee stage of the Finance (No. 2) Bill.
As we have heard from the Minister, clause 5 increases the adjusted net income threshold for the high income child benefit charge from £50,000 to £60,000, with effect from the 2024-25 tax year. The clause also amends the rate at which the high income child benefit charge applies to individuals with adjusted net incomes of between £60,000 to £80,000 in a tax year, and contains an administrative easement to prevent backdated child benefit payments from triggering a charge in 2023-24.
As we all know, due to high levels of inflation during the current Parliament, families across the country have felt the impact of threshold freezes, particularly in relation to income tax. Millions of people will be paying income tax for the first time or paying it at higher rates as a result of high inflation and the frozen thresholds. Similarly, the fixed nominal thresholds for the high income child benefit charge mean that more and more people will have been affected by the charge as a result of inflation. The adjustment to the thresholds in this clause will therefore be a welcome step for many families, and brings the number of individuals affected by the high income child benefit charge closer to what Parliament envisaged when the policy was introduced in the Finance Act 2012.
Although we support the measures in the clause and will not oppose them, we would appreciate some clarification from the Minister on one point. In particular, we understand that subsection (2) effectively halves the rate of clawback in the calculation of the charge, so the child benefit is fully withdrawn when the relevant adjusted net income reaches £20,000 above the initial threshold —that is, £80,000. I am grateful to the Chartered Institute of Taxation for pointing out that, because the clawback happens across a wider range of incomes, some individuals will be caught out by higher marginal rates of tax and will therefore likely need to file a self-assessment return. Is the Minister concerned that that will introduce more complexity into the tax system, and if so, what is he doing to communicate these changes so that taxpayers are not caught out?
Finally, we understand that the Government will be moving the assessment of the charge to a household basis from April 2026. I would be grateful if the Minister confirmed when the Government will announce further details about the consultation on that change. Will he also set out the details of what he is doing to consult industry and professional bodies about it?
Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Latham. We will not be opposing the clause, but I do want to make some comments about this paltry measure, which will help very few people in a cost of living crisis that the Conservative Government are trying to pretend is over and done with—in fact, they are saying that that is the case. That is not the reality for people in their homes across the nations of the UK.
The Minister said that the intention of this provision —I think I am quoting him correctly—was to allow people to “keep as much of their hard-earned money as possible.” That reflects incredibly badly on the way that this Government have conducted themselves by artificially boosting the cost of living through reckless actions such as Brexit and, of course, the mini-Budget. If they wanted to do something that was meaningful to help families, they could have copied the Scottish child payment in Scotland, which has lifted 100,000 children out of poverty. But no: they have decided to do this. They have also decided to keep the two-child limit on universal credit. That should be scrapped, and the Labour party should be joining in calls for that to be scrapped. The rape clause has no place in our society, and this measure will not go far enough to help families.
Nigel Huddleston
I thank my opposite numbers for their comments. I respectfully disagree with several of their points, and I will remind my opposite number, the hon. Member for Ealing North—as I do on almost every occasion—of the significant changes to the income tax threshold that the Conservative Government have brought in. It was £6,475 under Labour; it is now £12,570. That is a significant increase and it has taken many people out of paying income tax altogether, which is something we are very proud of.
The hon. Gentleman will be well aware that, as we have discussed on multiple occasions, the reason why taxes are higher than any of us would desire is the level of intervention required to support households and livelihoods during the pandemic and, more recently, the cost of living challenges since the invasion of Ukraine and the energy price shocks in particular. I would make a similar point to the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey, who also made those points. I remind him that we have made interventions in cost of living support to the tune of about £100 billion. With respect, half a million people will benefit from the changes that we are introducing. HICBC is not a small amount. It is a meaningful amount of money for a large number of people, and it comes on top of the many other support measures that we have introduced.
I thank the hon. Member for Ealing North for pointing out the easements and the fact that there will be automatic backdating. Hopefully, that will be a relief and good news, and be positive for many families. Child benefit is normally backdated by three months, but because of the timing of the implementation, some could overlap two tax years. We are trying to make that simple and bring it into one tax year.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned the increase from £60,000 to £80,000 and the impact on marginal rates. The changes that were announced will reduce the total marginal effective tax rates, which includes income tax, employee national insurance contributions and HICBC, from about 64% to 53% for someone with, for example, two children. That is a good thing.
We recognise that high marginal rates introduce complexity to the tax system, but that needs to be weighed against other considerations when designing tax policy. The Government must ensure sure that they are committed to a fair tax system that supports strong public finances. Individuals will, as the hon. Gentleman pointed out, still be required to submit a self-assessment tax return to declare and pay their HICBC liability. However, the Government announced in July last year that we are taking steps to allow newly liable taxpayers to pay the HICBC through their tax code without the need to register for self-assessment. Further details on this improvement will be shared in due course.
The hon. Gentleman also mentioned the consultation on moving to a household basis. We will announce further details of the consultation in due course and, as with all tax policy, any changes would be considered as part of future fiscal events. The Chancellor announced that the Government will be consulting on moving the HICBC to a system based on household incomes, and that change will be delivered by April 2026. If the hon. Gentleman is patient, we will announce further details on that consultation in due course.
A point was made about communication. There have already been significant communications on the changes to HICBC. There has been a lot of online and offline activity from His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, various Government Departments and others. The campaign to raise awareness also includes working with, for example, parenting platforms such as Bounty and Emma’s Diary, and issuing emails through third party partners, including childcare providers. The hon. Gentleman raised an important point about not just making the changes, but ensuring that everybody is aware of them, so that everybody who is intended to benefit is able to.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 5 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 6
Reduction in higher CGT rate for residential property gains to 24%
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Nigel Huddleston
Clauses 6 to 11 are related to the property tax measures in the Bill. I hope that Members will forgive me, but this is a slightly longer speech, as I will talk through each clause. Indeed, it is the longest speech that I plan on giving today, although it is not too long—please do not have a heart attack; I will not be reading every one of these pieces of paper.
Clause 6 cuts the higher rate of capital gains tax, or CGT, charged on residential property gains from 28% to 24% from 6 April 2024. CGT is of course charged on the disposals of buy-to-lets and second homes. Main homes are exempt through private residence relief, which means for that the majority of residential property sales no CGT is paid at all. Where a disposal is liable to CGT, gains are taxed at a lower rate of 18% for any gains that fall within an individual’s basic rate band and at a higher rate for any gains above that.
The 28% higher rate was deterring some sales of residential properties, so the Government announced a 4 percentage point cut to the higher rate at spring Budget 2024. That will encourage more landlords and second home owners to sell their residential properties, making more homes available to the market for a variety of purchasers, including first-time buyers. The OBR forecasts that there will be around 60,000 more residential property transactions over the next five years owing to the cut. As more homes are bought and sold, the Exchequer is expected to raise an additional £690 million in revenue over that period. There will be no change to the lower rate of 18% for private residence relief.
Clause 7 concerns multiple dwellings relief, or MDR, which is a bulk purchase relief in the stamp duty land tax regime. The clause abolishes multiple dwellings relief from 1 June 2024. Multiple dwellings relief allows anyone purchasing two or more dwellings in a single transaction or in linked transactions to calculate their stamp duty based on the average value of the properties purchased, as opposed to their aggregate value. Multiple dwellings relief was introduced in 2011 with the intention of promoting investment in the private rented sector, but a recent external evaluation found no strong evidence that it has done so, meaning that the relief is not cost-effective and is therefore not acting as intended.
His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs has seen a high number of incorrect and abusive claims for the relief. Those have been driven by tax repayment agents, who often convince private individuals to make relief claims for the purchase of two dwellings when individuals have in fact only purchased one. One such example is somebody buying a large house with a separate indoor entertainment area, including a swimming pool and toilet, and that being counted as two properties when it is transparently one.
The changes made by clause 7 will abolish multiple dwellings relief for property transactions that complete on or after 1 June 2024. However, for contracts that were exchanged on or before 6 March 2024, relief will continue to apply regardless of when the contracts complete. The change will not impact those purchasing a single property. It will only increase the stamp duty payable by individuals or businesses purchasing two or more properties in a single transaction or as part of the same deal. Individuals or businesses purchasing six or more dwellings will continue to qualify for the non-residential rates of SDLT.
Clause 8 makes changes to ensure that first-time buyers’ relief from stamp duty land tax can be accessed by those purchasing new residential leases through a nominee or bare trustee, including victims of domestic abuse. A nominee is a person who holds the legal title of a property, while the beneficial ownership—the person who ultimately owns or controls the assets—is held by another person. A bare trust is a trust under which property is held by a person as trustee for another person who is fully entitled to all of the capital and income of the trust.
The measure also changes the definition of first-time buyers to ensure that individuals who use such arrangements cannot claim relief more than once. First-time buyers’ relief from SDLT is available where an individual who has not previously owned a dwelling purchases a home they intend to use as their only or main residence, but that is not currently available to individuals purchasing a new residential lease through a nominee or bare trustee.
The changes made by clause 8 will benefit certain first-time buyers of residential leasehold properties purchasing through a nominee or bare trustee, reducing the up-front cost of buying a home by allowing them to claim the relief they are entitled to. The changes bring those purchasers in line with purchases of residential freeholds and pre-existing leases using similar arrangements.
James Murray
Clause 6 applies to residential property gains by individuals, trustees and personal representatives. As the Minister set out, it reduces the higher rate of CGT that applies to such gains from 28% to 24%. The new rate will apply to disposals made on or after 6 April 2024. As we understand it, the lower rate is intended to remain at 18%, and the CGT rates that apply to carried interest gains remain unchanged.
The Government’s policy paper on this matter claims that the measure will be revenue positive for the Treasury and will generate more transactions in the property market, benefiting individuals who are looking to move home or get on to the property ladder. The Opposition will not oppose moves that reduce the rates of tax while also raising greater income. However, I would like to ask the Minister for more detail on the Exchequer impact of this measure. The Government’s policy paper reports expected spikes in revenue of an additional £310 million and £350 million in 2024-25 and 2025-26 respectively. That then falls significantly to an additional £45 million in 2026-27, and to just £5 million by the end of the forecast period in 2028-29. I would be grateful if the Minister set out his explanation for this pattern of expected income. Is he confident that there will be a permanently higher level of income as a result of this change after the end of the forecast period?
Clause 7 abolishes multiple dwellings relief—a relief from stamp duty land tax available on the purchase of two or more residential properties in a single transaction or linked transactions. The change will apply to purchasers of dwellings in England and Northern Ireland that have an effective date of transaction on or after 1 June 2024.
SDLT is a tax on the purchase of land or property, and ordinarily the amount of tax chargeable is calculated on the basis of the total amount paid for land or property. MDR, meanwhile, was introduced in 2011 with the intention of reducing a barrier to investment in residential property and to promote the private rented sector housing supply. We know that the Government evaluations have shown very little evidence that MDR achieved its original aims in a cost-effective way. We believe that clamping down on dubious claims and abusive tax reliefs is the right thing to do, so we will support the clause, but I have a few points of clarification to which I would be grateful for the Minister’s response.
First, I would like to ask the Minister about the reasoning behind the introduction of MDR in 2011. I understand that in September 2010, the coalition Government said in response to a consultation that
“the Government will not be taking these proposals forward at the present time”.
However, at the Budget of March 2011, a few months later, they announced that they would indeed introduce changes to the SDLT rules for bulk purchases of residential property. Does the Minister know why the Government at the time changed their mind?
Secondly, the Minister referred to abuse of the relief, so I would be grateful if he shared with us any figures or estimates of the cost of abuse of MDR since its introduction in 2011. Thirdly, we note that the Government said that they will engage with the agricultural industry to assess whether there are specific impacts of their changes to MDR that should be given further thought. Will the Minister let us know whether he is consulting with any other sectors?
Finally, the Chartered Institute of Taxation has indicated that for the domestic buyer in the build-to-rent sector, the divergence between the rates of SDLT applicable to residential property and those in the non-residential sector is large. There is a great deal of complexity in the system, so is the Minister aware of the potential for anomalies and for new behaviour to emerge around the acquisition and definition of property? I would welcome his assurance that he will work closely with relevant stakeholders to ensure there are no unintended consequences to the changes in the clause.
Clause 8 makes changes to the rules for claiming first-time buyer relief from stamp duty land tax in cases where the purchaser is buying a new lease via a trust or nominee. It applies to purchasers of dwellings in England and Northern Ireland, with an effective date on or after 6 March. We know there have been instances of first-time buyers using trusts or nominees to conceal their identities to protect themselves from behaviours such as domestic violence and stalking. The clause corrects issues arising over the eligibility of such claims. It provides an amendment to correct a defect in the relief in order to ensure that the underlying buyer, not the nominee, is eligible for SDLT, and we will not oppose it.
As we have heard, clause 9 amends out-of-date references and definitions used in legislation relating to the SDLT exemption for registered providers of social housing. As the explanatory notes make clear, that is to ensure that all registered providers of social housing that purchase property with the assistance of a public subsidy are not liable for SDLT. The measure seeks, first, to update outdated references following changes to social housing legislation; secondly, to extend the definition of public subsidy to include receipts from the disposal of social housing; and finally, to amend the definition of registered providers of social housing to confirm that certain entities such as English local authorities are eligible for the exemption, which removes an uncertainty.
The changes are set to apply to transactions on or after 6 March 2024, but we understand from stakeholder representations that there is some uncertainty relating to the “clarifications” set out in the measure. Can the Minister confirm whether purchases made before 6 March by local authorities will be treated as separate to this clause, or has any scope been given in the exemption for those purchases made before that date?
Clause 10 removes public bodies from the scope of the higher rate of SDLT of 15%. As the explanatory notes set out, that is consistent with the treatment of public bodies in relation to the annual tax on enveloped dwellings, which does not apply to public bodies. Given that this is a corrective measure, we will not oppose it, although the Chartered Institute of Taxation has pointed out that with the measure not being retrospective, there are concerns among stakeholders. We understand, again, that the measure will apply from 6 March, the date of the Budget when the measure was announced. Can the Minister clarify what the situation will be for a public body such as a local authority that may have incurred a 15% SDLT liability in the weeks immediately before this change was announced?
As the Minister set out, clause 11 restricts the scope of agricultural property relief and woodlands relief to property located in the UK. As the Government’s policy paper states, the former measure was put in place to ensure compatibility with EU law; it expanded the scope of agricultural property relief and woodlands relief to property located in the European economic area. Now that the UK has left the EU, this measure reverses those changes, so that property located in the EEA will again be treated the same as property located in the rest of the world. This is a technical measure, and we will not oppose it.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 6 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Nigel Huddleston
If I may respond briefly, I will answer the perfectly reasonable questions raised by the hon. Member for Ealing North in relation to several points in multiple areas. Regarding the overall impact, and if I may reference the change of the capital gains tax rate from 28% to 24%, the OBR estimates that this costing will have a positive impact beyond the current forecasting period and generate a small long-term yield, too. Of course, beyond the forecasting period, it is difficult to estimate the exact amount.
On the points that the hon. Gentleman raised about MDR and other measures, it is interesting that although there are examples of abuse, it is also the case that only 32% of businesses buying property to let said that this relief had an important influence on their purchase decision at all and only 45% were aware of multiple dwellings relief before making a purchase decision. That feeds into the overall picture of MDR not fulfilling the original intent and purpose, which of course was to support investment in the private rented sector. Again, it is building the picture that the relief is no longer cost-effective. The Government are continuing to engage with stakeholders in the build-to-rent sector and other sectors to ensure that we understand their concerns and we will continue to listen to representations made to highlight any exception or unforeseen impacts that the abolition of MDR could have in the future.
I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s welcoming of many of the other measures. He asked whether they would be applied before the April deadline. They will not be applied retrospectively—for example, the updates on the registered social landlord exemption will not be applied retrospectively.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned the number of public bodies that have paid stamp duty at the 15% higher rate. The number of transactions—of those impacted previously —has been very small, and we therefore do not anticipate a huge impact.
Clauses 7 to 11 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 14
Additional relief for low-budget films with specified UK connection
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Nigel Huddleston
Clauses 14 and 15 make changes to better support the UK independent film industry. That is in recognition of the sector’s cultural importance and its role in growing and supporting UK talent. The Government have heard from several representatives of the British film industry, including the British Film Institute, about the specific challenges that the independent film industry faces. The Government also recognise the vital role that independent film plays in incubating UK talent.
The changes made by clauses 14 and 15 substantially increase the level of audio-visual expenditure credit available to smaller budget films from 34% to 53%. This increased rate for qualifying films is referred to as the UK independent film tax credit. The 53% tax credit will be applied on up to 80% of a film’s production costs, up to a cap of about £15 million. That translates into £31.80 back for every £100 spent, after accounting for corporation tax at 25%.
Films will also need to meet the criteria of a new British Film Institute test, with the expectation that films will have either a UK writer, a UK director or be certified as an official co-production. Clauses 14 to 15 set out the bulk of the measure, but further detail, including on the additional test, will be provided in a statutory instrument in due course.
Productions that start principal photography from 1 April 2024 will be eligible, and companies will be able to make claims from 1 April 2025 on expenditure incurred from 1 April 2024. The UK independent film tax credit is a transformational, generous, enhanced tax credit, which will boost the production of UK independent films and incubate UK film talent.
James Murray
As we have heard from the Minister, clause 14 introduces a higher rate of expenditure credit for independent films, defined as films below a maximum budget that have either a UK director or writer, or are an official international co-production. As the Government’s policy paper on this measure makes clear, the basic rate of credit under the audio-visual expenditure credit scheme is 34%. Independent films will now receive a rate of 53%, with the amount of credit capped to relevant global expenditure of £15 million. The Opposition strongly support the UK’s creative sector as one of the areas of the global economy in which Britain is world leading. As such, we will not oppose any measures that provide certainty and greater opportunities for growth in that critical sector.
Clause 15 provides the administrative framework for the previous clause and sets out that the higher rate will be available only on expenditure incurred from 1 April for films that commenced principal photography on or after that date. We understand that claims can in turn be made from 1 April 2025, so I would like to ask the Minister about the role of His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, because we know that the new schemes will need to be properly explained through new guidance and may require new staff, as the Government’s policy paper makes clear. What is HMRC doing to ensure that the guidance remains timely and up to date for those wanting to make a claim? What will HMRC do to support those who want to apply for the credit so that they can understand how it operates? Similarly, what allocation of staff will be made to administer the measure?
Nigel Huddleston
I thank the Opposition for their support. I think there is agreement across the House on the vital role of the world-leading UK creative industries, and, in particular, our thriving film sector. In answer to the broad question put by the hon. Member for Ealing North, further information will provided by a statutory instrument that we will discuss in due course. His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs will have a role in that, and the precise resource allocation is an operational decision for it. As the Minister who oversees HMRC, I will pay close attention to the issue and I will ensure that it is properly resourced. This is a very important policy area and we want to ensure that it is successful. Again, I am afraid that I will ask the hon. Gentleman to be a little patient and wait for the details in the statutory instrument, but we are consulting key stakeholders on that.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 14 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 15 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 16
Increase in theatre tax credit
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Nigel Huddleston
We are powering through this— I have on my notes “tea break” by now, but it is not going to happen. That is no bad thing, and I appreciate the comments and input from hon. Members. I will repeat my thanks as well—a lot of work has gone into the measures that we are discussing today and many stakeholders have already contributed significant amounts, including through consultations.
One such area is what we are debating now: clauses 16 to 18 make changes to ensure that our world-leading theatres, orchestras and museums and galleries may continue to put on outstanding home-grown productions and attract inward investment. The orchestra, theatre, and museums and galleries exhibition tax reliefs have had rates of 45% for non-touring productions and 50% for touring productions and orchestral productions since October 2021, reflecting the unique challenges faced by those sectors during the covid-19 pandemic and the recovery period, which of course we are still in.
The rates were due to be reduced to 30% and 35% on 1 April 2025 and then return to their original levels of 20% and 25% on 1 April 2026. Clauses 16 and 17 change that so the tax reliefs will reduce to only 40% for non-touring productions and 45% for touring productions and orchestral productions on 1 April 2025, and will then remain at that level permanently. That was a key ask of the sector. Clause 18 removes the expiry date of the museums and galleries exhibition tax relief so that the relief similarly becomes permanent rather than ending on 1 April 2026.
The changes will benefit approximately 1,300 theatre companies, orchestra companies and museums and galleries that claim those tax reliefs on an annual basis. Our creative sector is vitally important to our national life and one of the fastest growing sectors in the UK economy. These clauses will bolster our theatres, orchestras and museums and galleries, ensuring that they remain among the best in the world. I commend the clauses to the Committee.
James Murray
As the Minister has set out, from 1 April 2025 the rates of theatre tax relief, orchestra tax relief, and museum and galleries exhibition tax relief will be set permanently at 40% for non-touring productions and 45% for touring productions and all orchestra productions. As we know, the so-called creative reliefs were previously set at 20% and 25% respectively. They were temporarily increased on 27 October 2021 to help the sector in its economic recovery from covid-19. As the Government’s policy paper notes, the rates were due to taper to 30% and 35% from April 2025. We welcome the fact that they will now be set permanently at 40% and 45% from next year.
We also note that, by way of these clauses, the Government are removing the 2026 sunset clause on the museums and galleries exhibition tax relief so that it becomes a permanent relief with no expiry date. In previous debates on earlier Finance Bills, I have asked the Minister to give clarity and certainty to the creative sectors, so I am pleased to say that that has been given to the UK’s world-leading theatres through these clauses. As I have said, we in the Opposition stand wholeheartedly behind the UK’s creative industries, and we will of course not oppose the measures set out today.
Drew Hendry
I briefly want to endorse the comments about these sectors requiring support. It is good to see some support for the sectors here, but we would like to see more in the future.
Nigel Huddleston
I do not have much more to add, other than to point out the strength of our creative industries in all four nations of the United Kingdom, which I am glad has been recognised across the Committee today. It is an incredible strength, and I am therefore pleased to hear today the very obvious cross-party agreement on continuing support for this vital sector.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 16 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 17 and 18 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 20
Collective investment schemes: co-ownership schemes
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Gareth Davies)
It is a great pleasure, as always, to see you in the Chair, Mrs Latham. Clause 20 begins the process of introducing legislation for a new type of investment fund—the reserved investor fund, which I will refer to from now on as the RIF. At Budget 2020, the Government announced a review of the UK’s funds regime, covering tax and relevant areas of regulation. The review had an overarching objective to make the UK a more attractive location to set up, manage and administer funds, as well as ensuring that UK investors can access a wide enough range of investment vehicles to suit their needs. In the years since, the Government have made a number of successful reforms. In order to build on these successes, the Government announced at spring Budget 2024 that we would be proceeding with the RIF.
The RIF will fill a gap in the UK’s existing fund offering by creating an onshore alternative to existing non-UK fund vehicles that are commonly used to hold UK real estate. Clause 20 provides a definition of the RIF and provides a power for the Treasury to make detailed tax rules through secondary legislation, consistent with the approach taken when introducing tax rules for other investment funds. A later statutory instrument will set out detailed tax rules for the RIF. The regulations will set out supplementary qualifying conditions for a RIF, entry and exit provisions, and rules that deal with breaches of one or more qualifying conditions.
The UK has a world-leading asset management sector. The RIF will play an important role in supporting that leadership by making the UK a more competitive destination for our fund management industry. Indeed, stakeholders from the financial services industry have already shown considerable support for the RIF. I therefore commend the clause to the Committee.
Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve on this Committee under your chairmanship, Mrs Latham. I am pleased to respond to clauses 20 to 24 on behalf of the Opposition. Clause 20, as the Minister set out, introduces the necessary powers to set the scope and design of the tax regime and rules for the RIF. Labour welcomes the introduction of the RIF, as it will add to the investment products available here in the UK, particularly for the UK commercial real estate sector. However, the trade bodies representing investment managers and real estate fund managers, the Investment Association and the Association of Real Estate Funds, have raised some concerns that I would like to put to the Minister.
There was a widely held expectation across the sector that RIF would broadly mirror the conditions of the existing authorised contractual schemes, or ACSs, but offer less regulatory supervision, freeing the RIF to become a more flexible investment vehicle for a range of more experienced investors. Due, however, to the Government’s decision to categorise the RIF as an alternative investment fund instead of a special investment fund, the RIF and the ACS will now differ in two key aspects. First, the supply of fund management services will be standard-rated at 20% as opposed to being VAT-exempt, and secondly, an alternative investment fund comes with a requirement to raise capital from a number of investors with a view to investing it in accordance with the defined investment policy for the benefit of those investors. That makes sense for large-scale, open-ended funds with an ongoing investment strategy, but it clearly is not designed for funds that do not have a specified investment objective, such as funds of one, joint ventures, co-investment vehicles and acquisition vehicles, which instead were created for a particular purpose such as repackaging and selling existing assets to new markets. Since they do not exist to raise additional capital, the requirements associated with alternative investment funds risk being an unnecessary burden and disproportionate when applied to the RIF.
Gareth Davies
I am always grateful to see the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn in her place in opposition in these forums, and I appreciate her comments. I will first set out the background to the establishment of the RIF, which was based on significant consultation with industry to fill a specific gap for an unauthorised, contractual-based vehicle. As such, it was based on specific feedback from the industry. The hon. Lady asked a very reasonable question about classification of the fund, and I can tell her that that was considered to be part of the consultation, but in the end we decided to proceed with the structure that we have gone with in the legislation. However, we will of course keep that under review and continue to engage with stakeholders, and we will issue a report on the progress of the RIF in due course. Although we have not established it in the way that some may have wished us to, it is based on consultation and will be reviewed in due course.
Tulip Siddiq
I thank the Minister for his response. He said that he considered the options and decided to proceed with it as an alternative investment fund, but he did not actually set out the reasons why. Was there any reason why he decided that it made more sense to do that as opposed to a special investment fund, especially in line with the international comparisons that I gave?
Gareth Davies
This is designed specifically to fill a gap that was previously or currently filled by things such as Jersey property investment trusts. Where there are unauthorised, contractual-based schemes, we do not currently have a vehicle that fills that gap. What we are introducing with the RIF fills that gap and satisfies a vast amount of stakeholders who fed into the consultation, and we are proceeding with that today.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 20 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 21
Economic crime (anti-money laundering) levy
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Gareth Davies
Clause 21 increases the economic anti-money laundering levy for very large firms, meaning firms regulated for anti-money laundering purposes and which have UK revenue greater than £1 billion per annum. The charge for very large firms increased from £250,000 to £500,000 with effect from 1 April 2024. There is no change to the charge for firms with revenue below £1 billion per annum. The levy was introduced in the 2022-23 tax year as a source of sustainable funding for measures to tackle economic crime and support the delivery of the Government’s commitments contained in the economic crime plan 2. The Government made it clear during the public consultation that levy charges may be adjusted periodically in response to new information, inflation or under-collection. The adjustment is made in response to receipts falling short of the levy’s stated £100 million revenue target.
The clause amends part 3 of the Finance Act 2022 to replace the current charge for very large firms with the new charge of £500,000 per annum. The change will impact an estimated 100 to 110 very large firms across the anti-money laundering regulated sector including, but not limited to, financial services, legal and accountancy firms.
No other aspects of the levy’s calculation or operation are changing and we therefore anticipate administrative impacts on affected firms to be negligible. This adjustment to the economic crime levy for the largest firms will put funding for measures to tackle economic crime on a sustainable footing, helping to protect UK citizens and make the UK a safer place to do business. Only the very largest firms will pay more and burdens will remain low. I commend the clause to the Committee.
Tulip Siddiq
We support the measures in clause 21 to raise the funds needed to tackle money laundering, fraud and other types of economic crime, but I cannot ignore the fact that the Government’s efforts to tackle economic crime have been a complete failure. Fraud and scams, for example, have rocketed under this Government, with at least £7.3 billion stolen directly from consumer bank accounts in the UK through fraud last year alone.
Last year, the Government published their fraud strategy to widespread criticism from industry for largely rebadging old measures and re-announcing existing national teams, such as the re-announcement on the replacement of Action Fraud from 2022. The consensus from experts in the industry is that the measures in the strategy will not significantly move the dial, as they do not establish a regulatory framework for tech companies and telcos to participate in the fight against fraud, including through data-sharing with financial services firms and enforcement agencies to enhance detection and prevention measures.
UK Finance, for example, has stated that it is increasingly difficult to understand the imbalance between the financial services sector’s contribution through the levy and that of other sectors that do not contribute but are known to be introducing risk into the same system. We also know that most scams originate on social media or via telecommunications networks yet those sectors do not face the same obligations regarding contributions, nor do they compensate victims defrauded through their platforms. Does the Minister agree with UK Finance? Does he accept that until the Government find a way to bring the tech giants to the table, efforts to tackle fraud and scams will continue to fail?
UK Finance has also raised concerns about the transparency of the levy and reporting on economic crime. On reporting for anti-money laundering purposes, I have heard from numerous City firms that, despite frequent requests, they receive little granular feedback on the impact their reports make. Does the Minister agree that better feedback and wider publicity around successes could help AML-regulated firms to see the value and importance of work in this area more clearly, keeping it at the forefront of their minds? What are the Government doing to ensure that happens?
Drew Hendry
This is a welcome move in principle and in targeting economic crime, but I would agree with the comments we have just heard—this does not shift things in the way that they need to be shifted in order to deal with the issue. It does not seriously tackle online crime, which is relatively rampant, with people being conned and funds being taken illegally. It does not really do much for fraud and economic crime and fails to tackle issues such as money laundering. There has still not been enough action on limited partnerships, for example, which continue to allow unknown individuals to funnel money through those mechanisms. Why are the Government not taking this issue more seriously than through these minor actions in the Bill?
Gareth Davies
I am grateful for the comments from Opposition Members. I think we all agree that we want to tackle these issues in the most serious way possible, with the most force. I am comforted by the comments from the Financial Action Task Force, which previously said that the UK has one of the strongest regimes when it comes to tackling economic crime. The levy specifically seeks to fund the tackling of anti-money laundering rather than fraud or sanctions, which I will come on to in a second.
It is appropriate to stress that the levy is a targeted measure on the anti-money laundering regulated sector, therefore the proceeds go towards tackling anti-money laundering. That is in the context of the economic crime plan 2, which covers up to 2026 and is backed by £200 million from the levy plus £200 million of Government investment. We are taking broader action on fraud in the technology sector specifically, not least through the online fraud charter, the Online Safety Act 2023 and the telecommunications fraud sector charter.
The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey mentioned sanctions evasion. We are cracking down on kleptocracy and sanctions evasion through the economic crime plan 2. The Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation actively monitors sanctions evasion every single day.
On corruption, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office leads our efforts to support companies to tackle corruption and strengthen governance across the world. The Government are actively working with partners across the world to strengthen international standards, not least through the UN convention against corruption. In the UK, we also have the National Crime Agency’s international corruption unit. There is significant action to tackle fraud and corruption as well as sanctions evasion, but of course we can always do more and we are vigilant about that.
On the reporting and transparency of the levy, there was a reasonable question from the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn and from the sector. There will be a report on the levy this year and it will be reviewed in 2027. We will engage with stakeholders leading up to that review.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 21 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 22
Transfers of assets abroad
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Nigel Huddleston
Clause 22 makes changes to ensure that individuals cannot use a company as a device to bypass anti-avoidance legislation, known as the transfer of assets abroad provisions. Those provisions are designed to prevent individuals from transferring ownership of income-generating assets, such as real estate or stocks, to an overseas individual or entity while still benefiting from the income that the assets generate. The provisions prevent the moving of assets into offshore structures outside the scope of UK taxation being a simple tax avoidance route for UK residents.
The clause has been introduced following a Supreme Court decision. Prior to the decision, HMRC considered that shareholders and directors who controlled a company could transfer an asset and were therefore in scope of the transfer of assets abroad provisions. However, the Supreme Court decision means that a shareholder cannot be determined as a transferor, which therefore opens up a loophole that can be exploited by shareholders transferring assets abroad via a close company to avoid UK tax. A close company is a company with five or fewer participators, usually shareholders or directors, who have ownership or control over the business.
The changes made by the clause will introduce a provision that deems an individual as the transferor where they are participators in a close company that transfers an asset to a person abroad in order to avoid UK tax. The amendment also applies to transfers by non-resident companies that would be treated as a close company if they were UK resident. The changes will have an impact on transactions only where the purpose of the transfer is to avoid tax and will not have an impact on transfers that are genuine commercial transactions. The changes will apply to income that arises after 6 April 2024, regardless of when the transfer took place.
In situations where multiple shareholders are involved in the transfer of an asset, any resulting tax charge will be apportioned between those individuals in proportion to their respective shareholdings. Further details will be provided in HMRC guidance. The measure is expected to affect a small number of individuals a year and will raise about £15 million in tax revenue over the forecast period.
This change was anticipated by external groups and demonstrates that the Government are quick to crack down on tax avoidance loopholes. This clause prevents tax avoidance by ensuring that individuals cannot bypass anti-avoidance legislation by using a company to transfer assets abroad while still benefiting from the income they generate. I therefore commend the clause to the Committee.
Tulip Siddiq
We believe that individuals or companies generating wealth in the UK should pay their fair share, so we are in complete support of the aims of this clause. However, we have heard concerns raised by the Chartered Institute of Taxation about the effectiveness of the Government’s proposals and I would be interested to hear the Minister’s views on those concerns.
First, the Chartered Institute of Taxation has argued that the clause adds complexity to the tax system, because it uses income tax legislation to tackle perceived corporate tax avoidance. Clause 22 extends provision within the Income Tax Act 2007 to cover avoidance of any tax through transfer made by a closely held company. Could the Minister explain the thinking behind the Government’s decision to tackle corporate tax avoidance in this way, rather than through the corporate tax regime? Does he agree with the Chartered Institute of Taxation that it could add unnecessary complication to the tax system?
Secondly, the Chartered Institute of Taxation made the case that the Government’s position that any participator in a company is deemed to be involved in a company’s decision to move assets abroad is unfair. For example, a company may have several minority shareholders who have no participation in the running of the company. What is the Minister’s assessment of the case made by the Chartered Institute of Taxation that only major shareholders, directors and shadow directors should be assumed to be involved for the purposes of this legislation?
Thirdly, the Chartered Institute of Taxation has warned that these changes could damage the UK’s international competitiveness, because the test as set out in the legislation leaves too much discretion to HMRC, which compounds uncertainty for businesses. For example, a UK holding company that provides a loan to an offshore subsidiary that in turn generates profits could be caught by the changes, despite that being a routine transaction. The Chartered Institute of Taxation argues that that could lead to an increased number of inquiries and appeals to the tax tribunals and could seriously undermine the UK’s attractiveness for international headquarters.
What does the Minister make of those concerns? What steps will HMRC take to ensure that involvement and objection defences under the clause are not ambiguous or uncertain, and to ensure that those charges do not prove to be increased excessively for taxpayers?
My final point is that the changes introduced by clause 22 appear to be retrospective, as no date is specified whereafter transactions are affected; the clause says only that income arising after April 2024 is caught by the regime. Can the Minister confirm whether that is the case? Will commercial transactions that were carried out many years ago, but from which income arises after April 2024, still be caught?
Nigel Huddleston
I thank the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn for her comments. We very much appreciate the input that we have received from stakeholders and interested parties, including the Chartered Institute of Taxation. Some of those points are about broader issues around the TOAA regime, rather than specific to this legislation, but we do hear what they have to say.
I will respond to the hon. Lady’s points about the changes that apply to companies when the TOAA regime is primarily about individuals. The transfer of assets abroad legislation is an anti-avoidance provision aimed at preventing individuals from avoiding a tax charge by transferring an asset to a person overseas while still being able to enjoy the income of that asset in some way. It would be easy for an individual to sidestep the legislation by transferring such an asset to a company that they controlled before the company then made the transfer abroad. The legislative changes are aimed at preventing that situation and ensuring that the TOAA rules are applied as intended.
On the point about the legislation being broad, let us not forget that it is being brought in in response to the Supreme Court judgment; we are trying to make sure that it acts as intended throughout. The intention of the legislation is to put the situation involving transfers by companies back to how HMRC considered it operated before the Supreme Court decision. The transfer of assets abroad legislation aims to stop that tax avoidance.
It is also important to remember that the legislation does not bring a tax charge when the transfer is for genuine commercial reasons or when tax avoidance was not the purpose of the transfer. The new legislation gives individuals the opportunity to exclude themselves from the tax charge if certain conditions are met. We respectfully disagree with the CIOT on some of those conditions. We have outlined some of those, and HMRC will produce further guidance in due course.
On the retroactive criticism, the clause has retroactive effect because if it did not, it would have allowed individuals to abuse the loophole between the date of the Fisher judgment and the enactment of the legislation. Again, we do not believe that there will be a significant increase in complexity. The purpose behind the legislation is primarily to ensure that the regime acts as intended.
I will not go into the weeds on HMRC’s determination process—further guidance will be given—but HMRC will review the facts of a case to judge whether someone is directly or indirectly involved in the decision making of a company. It will accept evidence that shows whether someone is involved or not. However, any arrangements that are put in place purely to be used as evidence that an individual is not involved in the decision making of a company will be disregarded and a charge will be levied if the other conditions are met. As I said, HMRC will issue guidance on how it will approach the matter in due course. Decisions will be made based on the facts of each individual case.
I hope that I have given the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn some assurance. We appreciate the concerns that have raised by key stakeholders, and further information and guidance will be forthcoming.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 22 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 23
Minor VAT amendments
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Nigel Huddleston
Clause 23 makes some minor, technical changes to VAT legislation relating to the DIY house builders’ scheme and VAT credit in the penalty reform regime, and allows for reform of the VAT terminal markets order. I will speak briefly about each measure in turn.
The DIY house builders’ scheme allows individuals building their own home, or converting a non-residential building to their own home, to recover VAT incurred on the cost. That puts individual house builders in the same position as property developers, who are able to sell new build residential property at a zero rate and recover the VAT they incur in the process of constructing new build properties. The scheme was simplified and made digital in December last year, which has significantly reduced the time taken for claims to be paid. Under the new process, only essential details are required on the claim form, eliminating the need for claimants to submit certain evidential documents up front. Based on the information provided on the claim form, HMRC can then request evidential documents to verify the claim.
Clause 23(1) will give HMRC a clear power under the DIY house builders’ scheme to require further evidential documentation, such as invoices, from the person who submitted a claim under the scheme. That will assist HMRC in verifying claims.
Clause 23(3) is a minor update to the existing powers that allow for reform of the VAT terminal markets order. The order reduces VAT administration burdens on commodities traded on specified markets, so the power will allow for simplifications to support businesses trading those commodities. The Government previously announced their intention to reform the order to reflect current market practices and to keep pace with market changes, such as trades in new products, including carbon credits. This clause takes that commitment forward.
Finally, subsections (4) and (5) make changes to ensure that VAT interest rules operate as intended. For most major taxes, the Finance Act 2009 requires HMRC to pay interest on amounts due from HMRC to taxpayers, and to charge interest on late payments to HMRC. Historically, that regime did not apply to VAT, which had its own interest rules. Harmonising the rules on interest was an important step in delivering the Government’s ambition to build a trusted, modern tax administration system. Changes made by the Finance Act 2021 brought VAT interest in line with taxes such as income tax from 1 January last year. In implementing the new interest rules for VAT, HMRC has discovered some minor defects in the legislation, which without correction would force it to act in a way that conflicts with policy intent.
Clause 23 will therefore make two changes to the interest rules. The first will address the situation in which interest ought to be repaid to HMRC because, following an assessment or amendment that reduces the amount of VAT credit, the repayment interest due is also reduced. It was always intended that HMRC could recover all these amounts through a simple automated process that does not add to burdens for taxpayers and HMRC alike. The IT system can already operate, but the legislation, mistakenly, does not always allow that automated recovery. The change will ensure that HMRC can do so in all cases instead of needing a different, onerous process for a minority of cases that the original legislation did not cover.
The second change will make sure that VAT-registered businesses are always protected by a provision that creates a fairer basis for the calculation of interest where they owed money to HMRC over the same time that HMRC owed money to them. The original legislation failed to extend that safeguard to all scenarios in which that could happen with VAT, undermining the fairness of the interest regime. To ensure that all VAT-registered businesses are treated equally, the changes will be given backdated effect to 1 January 2023, when the interest rules were introduced for VAT.
Clause 23 makes some small changes to ensure that policy works as intended and to further Government commitments on reforming the VAT terminal markets order. I commend it to the Committee.
Tulip Siddiq
The Opposition support the changes that will assist with compliance checks by making online applications equivalent to paper applications. Has the Minister considered adding the online application as a service to the agent services accounts so that an agent can prepare and submit the claim on behalf of their client?
We also support the provisions for modifying the application of VAT for terminal markets, as that will allow for further reforms such as bringing trades in carbon credits within the scope of the Value Added Tax (Terminal Markets) Order. We feel that is a vital and necessary step in developing this important market.
We support the changes to legislation that governs the interaction between late payment interest and repayment interest for VAT. Has the Minister given any thought to reinstating HMRC’s ability not to charge interest on VAT errors where the supplier did not charge VAT, with no loss to the Exchequer because the customer could claim in full?
Drew Hendry
On clause 23’s minor VAT amendments, there is very little to disagree with. VAT should be paid where it is due, and HMRC should pay interest where it should pay interest. That is to be welcomed.
However, on Second Reading I pointed out the paucity of thought and imagination that had gone into providing real help for people across the nations of the UK, and the kinds of thing that the Government could have done but have not. The clause title, “Minor VAT amendments”, just highlights the problem with the entire Bill. The Government could have taken some action to deal with the issues for people in hospitality by cutting VAT and doing something meaningful for tourism, but no: they have chosen to make these minor adjustments. They could have used VAT as a mechanism for helping our high streets to create economic zones that could boost life back into vital high streets and centres. Instead, they have taken to tinkering with the VAT rules.
My question to the Minister is why there is such a lack of ambition in his Government. Is it that this is a fag-end Government in a fag-end Parliament that has run out of ideas, or is it just that they do not care?
Nigel Huddleston
The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey has been charming until this point, and now he goes back to this. I know him very well; I am sure he does not mean it. First, he knows as well as anybody in this House that everybody who comes into Parliament cares: they care about their constituents and they care about the country. We are motivated to come here because we want to make the country a better place for our children and grandchildren.
I know that the hon. Gentleman occasionally gets rather vocal on some of these points, but I politely request that he be a little bit careful with some of his comments. I would never criticise the motivation, incentives or purposes of any colleague in this place. I may fundamentally disagree with some of their policies, but I will not disagree with their motivations. In saying things like “People don’t care” or “The Government don’t care,” I am afraid he is straightforwardly wrong.
Drew Hendry
I am very fond of the Minister, as he knows. We often have these back and forths, and I often have to rise to my feet to correct what he has said. I did not make any assertion about any individual; I was talking about his Government. I was very explicit about that. I just want to make that clear.
Nigel Huddleston
Yet again, I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s trying to clarify, but I am a member of the Government and therefore I am afraid that I do take offence, direct or indirect. But that is a side point to the matters under discussion.
The hon. Gentleman is making fair and valid points about the support that has been given, but I repeat that this Government, like every Government around the world, have had incredibly difficult circumstances to deal with. I do not think that there is any doubt whatever that the support measures that we have put in place to support lives and livelihoods have been incredible and stack up pretty well when compared internationally. That includes cost of living support, as I have mentioned.
I know that the hon. Gentleman is a huge supporter of the tourism, hospitality and leisure industry. We have spoken about that many times, and I know that it is particularly important to Scotland, where it is a disproportionately larger share of the economy than in England, for example, although it is important and large across every single constituency in the UK—and I do mean every single constituency. But the hon. Gentleman is being a little bit rich, because he knows as well as I do that there are other measures beyond VAT to support the hospitality and leisure industry. Of course, in England we have extended the 75% business rates reduction to the retail, hospitality and leisure sector, but that has not been done in Scotland, nor has it been done to its full extent in Wales.
Drew Hendry
I am grateful to the Minister for allowing a bit of back and forth on this. It is generous of him to do so. He fails to mention that in Scotland, 100,000 businesses are lifted out of business rates altogether through the small business bonus scheme. The record in Scotland shows that we are supporting businesses, and those businesses are very prevalent in the tourism sector.
Nigel Huddleston
I acknowledge the efforts made by the Scottish Government to support various sectors, but as I say, on that particular item, the hon. Gentleman will know as well as I do that it is a key ask of the industry in Scotland for the Scottish Government to follow suit with England and elsewhere.
The hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn raised several points. Some were slightly out of the scope of the specific measures under discussion, including IT systems and other considerations, but I take on board what she says, as does HMRC, because there is a constant need to review and assess the scope of IT systems and so on. We do so on a regular basis; I spend a lot of time talking to HMRC about this, so I can assure the hon. Lady that the points that she raised are constantly under consideration. I will probably leave it at that.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 23 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 24
Collective money purchase arrangements
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Nigel Huddleston
Clause 24 makes further provision for collective money purchase arrangements. CMP arrangements are a new type of pension that have the benefit of pooling individuals’ pension pots to provide better incomes in retirement while limiting the liability of employers.
These changes will enable the Government to authorise the transfer of benefits to a member’s beneficiaries, such as their dependants, in the unlikely event that a member dies while a CMP arrangement is being wound up. That will ensure that such transfers do not incur an unauthorised payment charge of 55%, and it will deliver the Government’s commitment to provide the correct tax outcome for CMP arrangements.
The Pension Schemes Act 2021 introduced legislation to allow collective money purchase schemes to operate in the United Kingdom. This measure authorises the transfer of survivor benefits in collective money purchase pension schemes. This will ensure that Royal Mail Group, the first provider of a collective money purchase pension scheme, can launch its scheme as planned.
It is a complicated title, but with a simple purpose. As a result of these changes, an employee of Royal Mail will be able to sign on to a CMP, with all the benefits, without the risk of transferring survivor benefits being put through as unauthorised transactions. I therefore commend the clause to the Committee.
Tulip Siddiq
This clause is so uncontroversial that we give it our full support. For the first time, I agree with everything the Minister has said, and the Committee will be happy to know that I have no further questions for him.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 24 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 25
Interpretation
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Nigel Huddleston
I will be very brief, because the clause is fairly straightforward. It provides for the use of abbreviations for a variety of Acts. For example, it provides for the use of “CTA 2009” as an abbreviation for the Corporation Tax Act 2009. I commend the clause to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 25 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 26
Short title
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Nigel Huddleston
The clause provides for the Bill to be known as the Finance (No. 2) Act 2024 upon Royal Assent. I commend it to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 26 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Question proposed, That the Chair do report the Bill to the House.
Nigel Huddleston
We have moved forward very quickly today. I thank everybody for their participation: you, Mrs Latham, all the officials in the House, the Clerks, and all those who have been working on the Bill at HMRC, HMT and other Government Departments. I repeat my thanks to the external stakeholders for their comments and to all those who have been involved in consultations. In particular, I thank the Chartered Institute of Taxation, the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, and the Low Incomes Tax Reform Group for their contributions to this Committee, including in written form, and all those who have participated today.
I look forward to the Bill progressing smoothly through its final stages. I thank everybody involved.
James Murray
I add my thanks to my colleagues in the Opposition: my fellow shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn; the Opposition Whip, my hon. Friend the Member for Gower; and, of course, the Back Benchers who have joined us for this lengthy Committee session. [Laughter.] I place on the record my thanks to all the House authorities and to third parties, particularly the Chartered Institute of Taxation, whose expertise is always greatly valued.
Drew Hendry
I, too, rise to pass on my thanks: to you, Mrs Latham, for chairing, and to all the staff and others who have been involved. Whether we agree or vehemently disagree—often, as we have seen today, there are big disagreements—we never forget those people who work hard to produce the documentation and supporting information in all the arms of Parliament, including the House of Commons Library. Thank you.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly to be reported, without amendment.
Westminster Hall
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Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
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Zero-emission Buses
(7 months ago)
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Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
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Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the introduction of UK-made zero-emission buses.
I thank the Backbench Committee for listing the debate. At the outset, I declare my membership of the all-parliamentary group for the bus and coach industry. The chairman of that group, the right hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Sir Robert Goodwill), should have moved the debate, but unfortunately, as he is the Chair of a Select Committee, his duties today find him elsewhere in the House. I want to put on the record his commitment and his desire to have been present on behalf of the group.
It is also important to put on the record that I have a major manufacturer of buses operating in my constituency. The UK is blessed with three major manufacturers—Alexander Dennis, Switch Mobility and Wrightbus—and each makes a significant contribution to the UK economy and to local employment around the entirety of the United Kingdom.
The debate is about the introduction of UK-made zero-emission buses. Why do I say “UK-made” and “zero-emission” buses? Across the whole United Kingdom, 40,000 buses are on the road; about 3,000 of those buses are zero-emission, so there is a huge opportunity. Government, obviously and rightly, want to get away from diesel-powered buses and on to zero-emission buses. That is a massive opportunity. That opportunity, however, is under threat.
In 2020, in a very important statement, the Government made a commitment to level up across the country with 4,000 “beautiful, British-built buses” that are
“cleaner, greener, quieter, safer and more frequent.”—[Official Report, 11 February 2020; Vol. 671, c. 712.]
What an ambition! It is an ambition that this House and the parties across this House got behind, and an ambition that I still hold to. I hope that we can deliver on it.
I am afraid, however, that the Department for Transport needs to look at how the policy is implemented, because I do not believe it is resulting in beautiful, British-built buses being purchased with the serious amounts of money that have been set aside for the zero-emission bus regional areas, or ZEBRA, zero-emission scheme. The original ambitions that drove the design of that policy to support UK bus manufacturers have been overlooked in the implementation and roll-out of the policy, resulting in many local authorities and transport authorities buying non-UK-made British buses.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. It is always good to support a colleague when they secure such an important debate. On the issue of UK-made buses—he has repeated “UK-made” several times, quite rightly—does he agree that that is all the more important now when we look at the challenge coming from China and the far east? More and more, a huge challenge is being made to the west and the UK. We have to meet that challenge and rise to it. As he indicated, that is what the Government need to respond to.
Ian Paisley
I was going to come on to that point later, but I will come on to it now, because it gets to the nub of the issue. The ZEBRA 1 and 2 schemes promised the United Kingdom £312 million of taxpayers’ money to fund the purchase of 2,270 buses. That is a major impact on the provision of zero-emission buses. I hope that Members are shocked by the next figure, however, because, according to the final purchasing decisions that have been made, 46% of those 2,270 buses will be manufactured outside the UK, principally by China.
On the one side, we have to giggle, because we are making zero-emission, green-energy buses, within our shores, for the home market, and therefore the footprint of the manufacturing of those things should also be green, but 46% of these buses are coming from what is, apart from Australia, the furthest away country in the world, and they are being delivered to us. I am not going to bash the companies that make them in China, but their buses have a shorter life cycle on our roads—almost a third less—and are therefore ultimately less efficient, yet 46% of the ZEBRA money is going overseas. What is that money doing? It is supporting overseas technology—cutting-edge technology. It is supporting overseas jobs. It is supporting cutting-edge, well-paid, highly skilled manufacturing jobs and it is supporting them in other countries, but we are crying out for that money to be spent on high-skill, green-energy, high-tech jobs across the entirety of the United Kingdom. Some 10,000 people are employed in the supply chain for manufacturing buses across the United Kingdom: electronics engineers, hydrogen engineers and manufacturers, engineers, of steel. All that is being undermined by a policy that was put in place to build beautiful, British-made, clean, green, better buses.
I am pleading, not on behalf of the companies, which are big companies, but on behalf of workers across the United Kingdom who are entitled to these jobs and who are entitled to bring stuff home to their wives and families and their husbands and families, to make sure that the jobs stay in British hands. I am not arguing that we buy an inferior product, but British-made buses, whether they are made by Switch, Wrightbus or Alexander Dennis, are the leading cutting-edge buses in the world. That is shown because they are manufactured not just for this country—other countries demand them. But we cannot go in and undercut other bus companies in countries that make buses. The countries that buy buses from us do not make buses, so we are competing in a fair market. Unfortunately, one of the largest countries in the world, the Chinese state, is manufacturing buses, subsidising their manufacture and the technology is coming here and undermining us. We have to take a good, long, hard look at that and ask the question: is that really where we want to be?
Every constituency in the UK benefits from British-made manufactured products. I do not say that glibly; it is based on fact. I have gone through a register of all the councils and local authorities across the whole United Kingdom that have received money from the ZEBRA zero-emission scheme, and have listed all the constituencies covered by that—it comes to about 180 constituencies, and those 180 constituencies benefit in some way from the manufacture of buses in the United Kingdom. They are getting ZEBRA money, but unfortunately 46% of the money is going outside this country and they are not buying the British product.
I will not do so, Mr Rosindell, but I could read out the name of every single local authority that has received millions of pounds. I have the information here and I am happy to leave it in the Library for hon. Members to study. It goes through every single local authority that has received millions on millions of pounds, yet some of those authorities are not spending that money on British-made products. A couple of examples stand out, and I will bring them to Members’ attention.
Last year in Blackpool, there had to be a complete retender after protests led by the chairman of the APPG, myself and other members of that group. We pushed the Government to retender the Blackpool order because it had gone to a Chinese company. It was an order for 90 buses, or about 30 million quid of manufactured goods. I am glad to say that the tender, which originally went to the Yutong company in China, was won following retender by Alexander Dennis. It was discovered that the social and economic benefit that flowed from the manufacture of those buses in the United Kingdom outweighed a slightly cheaper product being brought in from overseas.
Transport for London announced at the weekend the purchase of over 100 new double-decker electric buses. Unfortunately, that order was made to a Chinese company called BYD, further increasing the reliance on oversea supply chains. I want to deal with this matter of Transport for London. No matter which part of the United Kingdom we come from, no matter our passion about Ulster, Scotland, Wales or the north of England, London is our capital. It is the flagship. What happens in London, the world sees. It is the window into the United Kingdom. When I stand on the Terrace of this House and see bus after bus going over Westminster bridge, I know by the shape of them, “That one was made in Ballymena, and so was that one. That one was made in Scotland, and that one was also made in Ballymena.” I know by the shape of them that those buses are ours, and we are proud. That says to the workers in my constituency, “Look what you’ve done—isn’t that fantastic?” Their work is in the window to the world. People see them or jump on and off them and think, “These are fabulous advertisements of the skillset that is in the United Kingdom”.
I then hear today that a £40 million contract has been handed by TfL to BYD in China to make the next 100 buses for this city. There are thousands of buses in this city. People say, “You’ll hardly notice them”. That is not the point. The point of the matter is that that is where we are spending our money, and that will soon become the flagship. People say, “Well, they’re slightly cheaper.” That is penny wise and pound foolish if that is the way they are making the decision, because the situation is much more disturbing than it just being slightly cheaper.
I take the view that it is not green to buy the buses from so far away whenever we are manufacturing them at home. In 2021, the United Nations working group on business and human rights wrote to BYD, saying that it
“had received information that your company may be involved through your supply chain in alleged forced labour, arbitrary detention and trafficking of… Uighur [Muslims] and other minority workers”.
BYD did not respond to that inquiry from the United Nations. Whenever it was approached by the trade magazines to respond, BYD refused to comment. Our nation has a duty to ensure that if we are buying overseas products, we are not buying them from a country that uses slave labour or abuses its workforce. I will tell hon. Members one thing: our workforce in the United Kingdom is not abused. They are paid good wages, make good products and are proud of what they do. If that abuse is happening, it is a double offence on what we should be looking at and doing with this resource.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
My hon. Friend has underlined the crucial issue of human rights abuses and the persecution, trafficking and all sorts of things happening to ensure that China can produce a bus more cheaply. When it comes to our councils buying buses in the United Kingdom—it is brought up all the time in Parliament—is there not a need for central Government to ensure that if that is what is happening, those buses or, indeed, any product, are not bought?
Ian Paisley
That is a point I will come to whenever I make requests of the Minister at the end of my speech. I thank my hon. Friend for making that important point.
I have an appeal for Transport for London, which has been one of Northern Ireland’s most brilliant customers. It allowed us to come up with the new iconic London double-decker bus, which is a flagship—it has been brilliant. Whether the administration has been controlled by the Conservatives or by Labour, the respective Mayors have been absolutely brilliant about helping Wrightbus to go forward, but the decision by the current Mayor and Transport for London should be taken back and looked at again. It is totally wrong and scandalous that our nation’s capital should have a bus with a questionable reputation concerning its manufacture and £40 million of ZEBRA money.
I have some policy asks for the Minister. I am delighted that he is visiting my constituency soon. I hope he will visit Wrightbus and other manufacturers, and see the supply chain across the whole of our country, including all the other little companies—micro-companies—that rely on this manufacturing giant. I want to draw the Minister’s attention to a number of things about the impact of ZEBRA. First, the Department for Transport should ensure that no ZEBRA 2 funding is used by local authorities to purchase buses from outside the UK, which was a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). To support this, bus operators should be encouraged by the Government to place a greater emphasis, whenever they are evaluating tenders, on social value for the tender and the wider economic community impact.
I am not asking the Government to do anything illegal or to use any sleight of hand. I believe the law allows the Government to weight the tenders in such a way that there will be a successful outcome for British manufacturers. I am not proposing that the company in my constituency is the only one that benefits. Alexander Dennis, Switch and so on are all competing companies making brilliant products, and they should all be allowed to have a fair crack of the whip. One camp dominates the entire market, but I want those companies to have a fair crack of the whip. They cannot have a fair share in the market if they are outbid and outmanoeuvred by what is happening in another country.
Secondly, the Government need to give industry long-term confidence in what they are doing, by setting an ambitious plan to say that a quarter of all the buses on British roads—10,000 buses—will be emission free from 2025 to 2030. If the Government said that to those companies, they would gear up and scale up, and it would reduce the overall cost of the final product, so the potential of these companies would be realised. Going forward, we would see a vast array of new tech coming through British companies and manufacturers, because they would have the confidence in there being 10,000 orders to keep their companies in business for year after year. That would increase investment in those companies.
The Department for Transport should consider creating a Crown Commercial Service framework for zero-emission vehicles to supply and expedite the tender process. It should collaborate with other Government Departments to conduct a formal review of how other countries purchase buses and prioritise domestic content when evaluating their tender process.
The DFT and the Department for Business and Trade should provide further detail on the Trade Remedies Authority and support with the process of gathering evidence of unfair practices. There have been allegations that some of these orders have led to kickback through other companies. That should be investigated, and this should be totally transparent. I can tell Members one thing—there is no kickback through the three British companies. What is going on is clear and transparent. I hope that the Government will allow us to have confidence in how we view the future, and so that our British manufacturing companies can say, “We have turned a page today and we are going forward on a new footing. In future, the lion’s share—the overwhelming majority—of ZEBRA money will be spent on British manufacturing.”
Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. I congratulate the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Sir Robert Goodwill) on securing this important debate. I have worked on the subject of zero-emission buses for some time, both in my current role as Chairman of the Select Committee on Transport and in my previous guise as a Minister in the Scotland Office, when I had a number of dealings with Alexander Dennis in Falkirk.
I was particularly pleased when the Falkirk growth deal was agreed with Falkirk Council, the Scottish Government and local stakeholders. If memory serves me correctly, that included £10 million for a public transport net zero tech cluster that Alexander Dennis was closely involved in. This is a really important sector and I share the ambition of the hon. Member for North Antrim to have a vibrant zero-emission bus network, with the lion’s share manufactured by companies on these islands.
I want to put the issue in a slightly more balanced context. It is very easy to get into “Buy British” against “Buy overseas”. In reality, bus companies often work with each other. I am happy to be corrected if I am wrong, but I think Alexander Dennis, for example, has worked with BYD on part of the chassis. We have to be slightly more nuanced about what buying from a particular company means.
The hon. Member for North Antrim is absolutely right that we need fair competition. It is not in anyone’s interest to have an artificial purchase of buses, in whichever direction that is. It has to be good quality at a fair price. How that fair price is looked at is what matters; it is not just the headline price. I imagine bus showrooms are slightly different from car showrooms, but the sticker in the windscreen is not the full price. Wider issues have to be taken on board, such as the social value points the hon. Member identified.
The whole-life cost is important as well; this technology is still in nascent form. What does it mean when the bus comes to the end of its working life? Is there a second-hand market for it? What happens to the batteries, over what time? Those are important factors that need to be included when looking at the whole-life cost. If there are concerns about human rights, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said, those also need to be factored into the equation.
Hidden subsidies may or may not be present. This example is not from the world of transport, but I have a company in my constituency that is world-leading in making industrial lifts, pickers and so on. At a recent event, the chairman of that company told me, “Our products are the best in the world.” He would say that, because they are. “But we are being undercut by competition from China.” Chinese products are good quality—perhaps not quite as good—but they are considerably cheaper. When the chairman asked how the competitor managed that, the reply was, “Our Government is very helpful to us.” The cost of running the factory there is significantly subsidised. That is the point I am making.
I want to see open and fair competition, so that world-leading British products can thrive fairly. The true costs have to be highlighted and be transparent, so that a local authority, or whoever, purchasing these vehicles has to show workings for the full cost of one bus against another. The point about fair competition was also made in a slightly different area of transport last week, when my Committee hosted a session on private electric vehicles. One of the questions I asked witnesses was: given that in the previous 24 hours President Biden’s Administration had announced tariffs for the import of Chinese-made electric vehicles and other products into the United States, should the UK and, indeed, Europe more widely consider such a tariff? I was somewhat surprised by the answer, as I thought there would be a demand for that. However, the witnesses said that no, many motor manufacturers do not want that. What they want is fair and open competition because that is what drives innovation, a better product and greater reliability and a better price for the customer. That is absolutely right, but it has to be on the basis of fair competition, looking at the costs in the round and not just the headline sales figure. I am not sure at this point exactly how we ensure that local authorities and others are obliged to look at that whole cost, but I hope the Minister will take that away and reflect on it.
The Government are right; they are putting a lot of money into zero-emission buses. The UK sector is world-leading and has enormous potential to become a major player both here and by exporting those buses overseas. However, I think we need to step back a little and look at the issue in the round. I hope today’s debate will help further that cause, and I once again thank the hon. Member for North Antrim for making the effort to secure it.
Kenny MacAskill (East Lothian) (Alba)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. I start by congratulating the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) on securing the debate. I thought his speech was both passionate and spot on in terms of analysis and presentation. He and I may disagree on many aspects—in particular, on the constitution—but on his analysis of the requirement for these buses to be made in the United Kingdom, we are certainly in agreement. It is not that long since we were promised a Brexit bonus and it was branded on the side of a bus. The irony is that the bonus will be that the bus is imported from China, which is simply scandalous.
I am advised by Unite the union that there is a suggestion that the London buses bought from China will be £100,000 cheaper than those that can be manufactured at Alexander Dennis Ltd in Falkirk or elsewhere. There are two aspects to that. First, there is a great danger, as the United States has correctly acted on with regard to cars, that the market is flooded to create a monopoly situation, thus knocking out any competition. Then we are left with whatever those companies charge, because this is undercutting and buses are flooding in, as are manufactured motor vehicles. Secondly, if the factories that currently exist are lost, the costs to the taxpayer—as we see 40 years on from the miners’ strike, in terms of devastation to communities, unemployment benefit and all the accompanying social harms—are far greater.
It is on that basis that we have to ensure that orders stay in the United Kingdom. I would like to see them go to Alexander Dennis Ltd, but I appreciate that there are other factories in the United Kingdom, although not those that simply assemble buses made elsewhere. That is not acceptable and those that are simply a front for Yutong or whatever are not UK-made buses.
There is also a need to decarbonise, which should be about a virtuous circle. We have to change, because global warming is happening. Although huge progress has been made by the motor industry—I recall arguments in the city of Edinburgh over pollution from diesel buses, which has reduced significantly—there comes a time when we have to recognise that our vehicles have to transition as we change to renewable energy. I know that we are looking at electric buses, but I will come on to argue for hydrogen buses, which Alexander Dennis Ltd manufactures. There is good reason for that.
We know that electric cars are coming in, but that is one thing in the City of London and quite another in rural parts of Scotland. Travelling long distances in an electric car can cause considerable difficulty, not just in the highlands but in my constituency of East Lothian, where finding a charging station can be difficult.
Buses are also in a difficult situation. I recall a good friend of mine, the managing director of Lothian Buses, making the point that the company does have electric buses, but he was not particularly keen on them. They were double-axled, which made certain routes difficult—they certainly chewed up the road. Anecdotally and quite humorously, he pointed out that if every bus were charged at the Annandale Street depot at the top of Leith Walk in the heart of Edinburgh, nobody in Leith would be able to boil a kettle, such would be the drain upon the grid, so it is not so simple.
A particular point that my friend made that struck home with me was that his buses go out at 6 in the morning and return at 12 at night. The drivers change, but the buses keep operating. They do not want the buses off the road for two or three hours—they cannot afford that. They want those buses running. That is why hydrogen is the fuel that he wanted, but that requires an infrastructure, because the buses require to be refuelled.
Hydrogen buses operate in Germany, in Aberdeen and probably in the City of London. They certainly operate in Glasgow: Alexander Dennis Ltd is there. Scotland is decarbonising. Hydrogen is coming in. The National Grid electricity system operator tells me that it anticipates that 100% of the green hydrogen manufactured in the UK will be manufactured in Scotland. It is not rocket science to join the dots. Hydrogen is coming in. There is a plant going to Grangemouth, a stone’s throw from Alexander Dennis Ltd in Larbert.
A hydrogen plant is coming to my own constituency because there is decarbonisation going on in the whisky sector. When I spoke to the people bringing in the hydrogen factory, I said, “Will you have excess hydrogen?”. They said yes. I said, “Could we use it for fuel?” They said, “Absolutely.” I live in a more rural area, but it certainly makes smaller buses more affordable if we can have cheap energy that is being manufactured and would otherwise go to waste. That is why in the Orkney islands they are looking at hydrogen-propelled ferries: because they have so much hydrogen being manufactured on one island that they cannot get it off the island.
Hydrogen is the fuel, but we have to have a virtuous circle. We need to decarbonise and alter our society, but the new renewable future should not just be based on manufacturing. We need a just transition. We should ensure that the fuel that we are blessed with—cheap and available green hydrogen—is used to fuel buses that are manufactured here, preferably in Falkirk and certainly in the United Kingdom. That is a just transition. The purchasing of buses from China is an unjust transition. Like what is happening in the North sea, it is a selling out of those who have contributed to the economy of this country over years and who should be the basis of the new economy that we are required to enter into.
Ben Bradley (Mansfield) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. I thank the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) for securing this important debate. It was a pleasure to meet him and the bus manufacturers he recently invited to the House to discuss in more detail this hugely important issue for jobs and the economy in Great Britain.
I want first to touch on the positive impacts of the ZEBRA funding that has come our way in Nottinghamshire, particularly in Mansfield. In March, we brought forward a £13 million investment in 23 new electric buses that will serve the people of Mansfield. We previously had two, which were made by Alexander Dennis—we continue to prioritise that UK manufacturer. We delivered the Berry Hill Flyer, an all-electric service, a couple of years ago, and 23 further buses on the 1, 6, 7 and 16 services will be delivered over the next 18 to 24 months, replacing the older diesel buses, with £2.8 million of that £13 million investment coming from the ZEBRA 2 scheme and from the Department for Transport. We are grateful for the opportunity to deliver a better public service and a clean and greener transition in our public transport network.
There are still challenges around the infrastructure. My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) has touched on electric charging infrastructure in rural areas, an issue that I have recently spoken at great length about to bus companies in our part of the world. We are also developing significant hydrogen fuel technology in the east midlands through our hydrogen partnership, working with partners such as Toyota and the Trentbarton bus company on opportunities to deliver. Although there are challenges around the use of hydrogen in private vehicles, for bus companies it is a massive opportunity that we need to focus on and develop.
I am really proud to have worked in recent years on the new East Midlands Combined Authority, which will help to take that process forward and develop technology and skills in the industry. I am also grateful for the fourfold increase in transport funding locally that has been devolved down to our part of the world to help us to make a massive impact, deliver a better and more joined-up bus service, fill some of those gaps and support the transition to a cleaner service.
In addition to that investment and what it means for buses on the road, we are adding value locally through our partnership with Nottinghamshire County Council and Stagecoach, which is working with West Notts College in my constituency to support learners. Through the manufacturing scheme, learners are doing work experience with Stagecoach: they are working in engineering and manufacturing, working on vehicles, going out and learning the trade on the job, and getting relationships with employers and access to future job opportunities. It is fantastic that we are not only building buses in the UK, but supporting young people in my constituency to repair them, maintain them and work on them.
In any transport debate, it would be remiss of me not to mention that buses drive on roads, so it is also important that we continue to get investment in our roads around Nottinghamshire and around the country. We can shift as many people on to public transport as we like, but we still need that investment in our road network. There are huge challenges for us locally, after massive flooding and the wettest winter on record in Nottinghamshire.
We have had significant extra investment from Government, which is a step forward; it would certainly be much worse without that. We need to work with the new combined authority and the new Mayor to bring funding forward. A huge amount of funding is scheduled for 2025 onwards, which is a great opportunity for us, but we need it now. I urge the Minister to consider that point, as well as helping me to lobby our regional Mayor, who will have that funding, to bring it forward. I was very disappointed not to be elected to the role, as the House might imagine; I certainly had significant plans to bring that funding forward early and get the infrastructure investment delivered. I now need to lobby our Labour Mayor to deliver that, and I trust that Government will support me and colleagues in the region to do that.
Like the hon. Member for North Antrim, I want to see our new buses built in the UK. It is hugely important to jobs, skills and to young people looking to get into that sector, as I have described. We are massively short of skills, particularly in electric and hydrogen vehicles—just go down to any garage and try to get your car sorted! The other day, I went to a garage near where I live. When I said it was a hybrid, they said, “You can’t come here, mate, because we don’t know what we’re doing when it comes to hybrid vehicles.” We are massively short of those skills, so we need to develop them in our region, as well as working with colleges in the way that I have described.
I understand that procurement decisions are made locally by the bus companies—Stagecoach, in our case—working with us in partnership as a transport authority, and in the future with our regional combined authority as the new transport authority, but I want to know from the Minister whether the Government are doing everything in their power to ensure that we are taking full advantage of procurement rules and processes.
The hon. Member for North Antrim mentioned community and social value in the tendering process. It is pretty difficult to add value to a local community in the UK if we are building stuff in China. We need to ensure that we get added social and economic benefit here through fair competition, while making sure that the fair competition values the things that we value for our communities—the skills, investment, and jobs that are so important. Can the Minister reassure me that he and his Department will take all those steps to ensure that happens? What conversations has the Minister had with those local authorities that are bidding and seeking to deliver the investment to ensure that that is clear to them?
The Department for Transport might want to consider where the buses will be made when it decides where funding is given. The procurement process is one thing, but the Department will decide who gets access and who is granted the funding. That is another opportunity for the Government to assess and prioritise the question of where the buses will be manufactured. Although the procurement decisions are local, there are several ways and mechanisms by which the Department and its Ministers can ensure that we are getting the best value and that the majority of these buses can be built in the UK in future. Although there are no bus manufacturers in my constituency, there are certainly countless young people looking to benefit from the skills and career opportunities that working in automotive engineering and manufacturing can bring. Having high-quality, lower-emission vehicles on our roads will certainly bring huge benefits to my constituents.
As we look to push people towards using public transport and to deliver the new funding that I have worked to secure over recent years, a better and more joined-up public transport network will be a huge opportunity for us. I hope that the Minister can offer some reassurances about the Government’s commitment to British manufacturing. I certainly look forward to working with him and with our new regional combined authority, with its transport funding, to deliver a better network for my residents.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is an absolute pleasure to speak in this debate. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) for introducing it so well. This is something that he has done not just today, but for all his elected life, and he deserves a lot of credit for what he has done over years. In particular, his commitment to Wrightbus in North Antrim can never be disputed. I wish him well.
My hon. Friend said that the Minister would be coming to his constituency. I can tell the Minister that whenever he comes to North Antrim, he will never get the lemon drizzle cake that he got in Newtownards, so my hon. Friend has an even harder task to take on. He can always ask me to send up the same drizzle cake from Newtownards, and I will ensure that it is available for the Minister’s visit. It is good to see the Minister and the shadow Ministers, the hon. Members for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) and for Wakefield (Simon Lightwood), in their place.
The factory in my hon. Friend’s constituency is a source of pride to all Northern Ireland MPs. The world-class, groundbreaking research and development carried out there is something that we in this United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland can be immensely proud of.
I want to refer, as I did in my intervention, to Chinese buses. We are always looking for a fair and level playing field. There is something incredibly wrong not just with the purchasing and pricing of buses, but with the Chinese human rights abuses and persecution of ethnic and religious minorities, whether they be Uyghurs, Christians, the Falun Gong or any other ethnic group.
Consideration of human rights abuses, including the persecution of those with a religious faith, should be an integral part of all trade. My hon. Friend was right to set the scene; others have spoken about the issue as well. I feel incredibly strongly about it. I chair the all-party parliamentary group for international freedom of religion or belief, and it is always an integral part of our debate. Human rights and religious belief go hand in hand. If you take on one, you hurt the other. It is an important issue for countries across the world. China in particular seems to abuse and use people just because they are different and do not conform to what it wishes to see.
Like many others, I was delighted back in September when funding was announced for zero-emission buses. If we are ever to reach our global targets, this has to be a major part of our strategy. It was great to see that towns, villages and cities across England, including in the most rural parts of the country, were to benefit from zero-emission buses backed by £129 million of Government funding, which would also help to grow the economy by supporting green jobs at UK bus manufacturers. I particularly recall a point that was highlighted in the press release:
“To make sure more parts of England benefit from green technology, particularly remote areas where building the infrastructure needed for the buses is more expensive, the government has prioritised the first £25 million for rural communities.”
Hailing from the rural constituency of Strangford, I am very aware that we do not have infrastructure in place, and that this will take enhanced funding. The beauty of Wrightbus in my hon. Friend’s constituency of North Antrim is the capacity that it has for more. It has potential in terms of physical ability and skills levels, and it has a desire to press research further and deliver more. It is always innovative, looking to the future and going the extra mile to find its next potential track.
One reason why I supported Brexit—as most hon. Members present did, but not all—was solidified before 2016 when I heard that a contract for buses was outsourced to Germany rather than the Northern Ireland-based Wrightbus, due to scoring mechanisms. In other words, the criteria were weighted in favour of that company. I felt so much disappointment to be having that debate at the time. We are underscoring not a Brexit issue as such, but another issue of a bus company that has taken advantage.
I was therefore determined that our own businesses in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland should get first refusal. That is the foundation of this debate. I thank again my hon. Friend the Member for North Antrim for highlighting the need for a full Government commitment to British engineering, local jobs and the development of world-class facilities, which there are.
I wholeheartedly support my colleague, knowing that a rising tide lifts all ships. It equals the expertise, the staff skill, the research and development, the vision and the reputation that are in place at Wrightbus, and that should form a key component of any future view as to how we progress British industry and meet our environmental obligations. The then Business Minister, the right hon. Member for North West Durham (Mr Holden), said:
“It’s been fantastic to be at Alexander Dennis and see how our £129 million investment will impact British bus manufacturing.
This brings our total investment in new zero-emission buses to almost £500 million, helping to kick-start a new generation of bus manufacturing in the UK and create good, high-quality jobs from Scarborough to Falkirk.
We’re leading the way by ensuring that Britain can take advantage of high-skill manufacturing while delivering cleaner public transport for passengers across the country.”
We cannot and should not forget the jewel in the crown of bus-making, situated in the United Kingdom, and that is in Northern Ireland. I implore the Minister to ensure that Government strategy makes the best of what we have and can do. That is found in an engineering sector in Northern Ireland, an integral part—indeed, a great part—of this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. We are always better together.
Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
There was me, about to say that I agreed with pretty much everything that my DUP colleagues said, and then the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) made his final comment. I am sure he did so on purpose, as he always does.
I start by thanking the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) for introducing this debate and for bringing up this issue again, as he often does. As the hon. Member for East Lothian (Kenny MacAskill) said, it is uncomfortable to agree with pretty much everything that all the DUP representatives have said in the debate thus far, apart from the last sentence of the hon. Member for Strangford. That is not always a comfortable position for an SNP Member, but I thought the hon. Member for North Antrim set his case out extremely well to remedy the unacceptable situation in this country. He spoke of the three major bus manufacturers. I have visited Alexander Dennis in Falkirk and Camelon a couple of times and spoken to it many times. The hon. Gentleman spoke of the 40,000 buses, only 3,000 of which are zero-emission, and the 4,000 British-built green and clean buses that were promised by a previous, previous, previous, previous, previous Prime Minister—however many previous it is. They said that they would be manufactured in the UK. The initial aim of that commitment has been lost.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned imports, and that gets to the crux of the issue. Some 46% of those buses were manufactured outside the UK. The vast majority come from China. That is the case in my constituency. I will come on to say how good a job the Scottish Government have done in getting on with ordering zero-emission buses, but we have the same issue with the import of Chinese buses in Scotland. Renfrewshire, in my constituency, with McGill’s, has the highest concentration of zero-emission buses anywhere in the country outside of London, a fact of which I am proud. The fact of which I am less proud is that the clear majority of those buses are Chinese-manufactured. I wish to see that change.
Ultimately, these are highly skilled, highly paid jobs. They are the type of jobs that this Government—in fact, all of us—want to see not just retained, but increasing in this country. At the moment, we are in danger of losing some of those jobs.
The hon. Member for North Antrim spoke of the retendering of the Blackpool bus order, which was changed from Yutong to a UK manufacturer due to social and environmental benefits. In my mind, though, we should not be leaving it up to the operators or the local authorities to put those conditions in place—I will come on to that later. It should be for the Government to do so.
The Chair of the Transport Committee, the hon. Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart), made a far more balanced contribution to the debate. He spoke of the Falkirk growth deal, which I am well aware of, having visited ADL. He made a fair point on Alexander Dennis having previously partnered with BYD, which has been brought up. It used BYD chassis, but that is no longer the case; the new electric bus fleet is now manufactured entirely in-house.
The hon. Member for East Lothian spoke of the Brexit bonus that was plastered on the side of the bus; the irony is that we are not seeing the Brexit bonus in bus manufacturing in this country. He spoke of global warming, and how important it is that we decarbonise as quickly as possible. He made a very fair point that electric buses are not the solution—certainly at the moment—for many rural routes, particularly in Scotland: hydrogen may be a better alternative for those services. He also made the point that Scotland is almost uniquely placed in Europe to deliver the green hydrogen that would support such an endeavour—in fact, it is probably better placed to do so than anywhere else in Europe.
The hon. Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) spoke of the £13 million for the scheme towards a new zero-emission bus fleet, as well as the challenges on infrastructure, with which I think we all agree. He also spoke of his disappointment at not being elected Mayor—I suggest the hon. Gentleman is somewhat of a masochist, addicted as he seems to be to standing for election.
Of course, the hon. Member for Westminster Hall, West—the hon. Member for Strangford—who is always here assiduously, spoke rightly about the potential issues around human rights and religious freedom relating to some of these orders. The irony in all this, with all the contributions we have had from DUP Members today— I am not ascribing any blame to the DUP for this, incidentally—is that Northern Ireland has, by some distance, the worst charging infrastructure for electric vehicles in this country. This is an issue that the hon. Gentleman has brought up previously in debates in this Chamber. I will forget his concluding sentence and instead circle back to the sentence before, when he said that a rising tide lifts all ships, or all boats—you may choose the version you wish. I think that is entirely true.
I raised this issue in Transport questions last week. In his answer, the Secretary of State challenged the Opposition’s confidence in UK bus manufacturing. Given the DFT and wider UK Government’s delivery on this, I thought that was quite a brave challenge. We do have confidence in the bus manufacturing sector, but it is very difficult for that sector to compete on a level playing field with the significantly lower wages and the subsidies available in China.
The hon. Member for North Antrim was talking about TfL when he said that we are penny wise and pound foolish in this country, but I think we can say that in a wider context and in many ways when it comes to bus tendering or procurement in this country. To save a few per cent, we are sending hundreds of millions of pounds-worth of orders outside this country. I want the Minister to make it make sense, because it makes no sense to me. We are doing economic harm and losing jobs overseas. It makes no sense whatsoever.
In addition to the questions already asked by the hon. Member for North Antrim, I would like the Minister to directly answer these three questions. Does he think that highly skilled engineering and manufacturing in this country can compete with China on labour costs? What work has been done in Government to identify how other European countries that follow the same trade criteria obligations as us manage to support their domestic manufacturing sectors a hell of a lot better than we do? Lastly, particularly when compared to the Scottish ultra low emission bus schemes—SULEBS 1 and 2—and now the zero-emission bus schemes—ScotZEBs 1 and 2—would he agree that his Government’s ZEBRA schemes have been an unmitigated failure?
To conclude, the Minister also said in his response that those being awarded ZEBRA grants can put
“social value in their tenders”,
but there is no reason why the scheme itself cannot embed that social value in the conditions for getting Government grants in the first place. Bluntly, local councils and combined authorities in England are financially under the cosh enough from this Government. They fear expensive legal challenges from companies with deeper pockets than their own, and the UK Government simply do not have that problem. France just a few years ago began beefing up its social and environmental procurement roles, and from 2026 public contracts must include conditions that specifically relate to broader social needs and employment protections. To be honest, they are in a far better place already without the beefing up of those particular obligations in 2026.
It is no use for the Minister to wring his hands and say that it is up to councils to decide; the UK Government are ultimately the ones handing over the cash. At the moment, that cash is allocated with no thought given—or allowed to be given—to any industrial strategy or economic policy that might benefit bus manufacturing on these isles. They have just thrown £143 million at ZEBRA round 2, and not a penny of that will be conditional on its being spent on buses made using labour that is covered by humane employment laws or with any kind of environmental accountability. UK manufacturers play by those rules; their competitors overseas, who will be able to grab a share of that windfall, cannot say the same. We all know that to be true.
There are world-class bus manufacturers in these isles—Alexander Dennis Ltd in Camelon is one of the leading ones—but if the Government carry on with their current course, they will push bus-making down the same road as our counterparts in the rail manufacturing industry—going from crisis to crisis, with the barely remaining operations here all owned overseas and supply chains completely devastated. The Government have it in their hands to stop the rot now and guarantee a future for a high-skill, high-value industry right here in these isles. They need to grasp that opportunity quickly, before it is too late.
Simon Lightwood (Wakefield) (Lab/Co-op)
I am pleased to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell, and to respond to this debate on behalf of the official Opposition. I extend my sincere thanks to the Backbench Business Committee for facilitating this debate, and to the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) for securing it. The hon. Member is a vociferous and passionate advocate for UK manufacturing—not just for Wrightbus in Ballymena, which is in his constituency, but for all bus manufacturers across the United Kingdom; for that I thank him.
This is a vital issue, and it is right that we have had the opportunity today for such robust discussion. I place on record my thanks to the excellent, insightful contributions that we have heard from colleagues throughout this debate, including the hon. Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart), Chair of the Transport Committee. I share his desire for a vibrant zero-emission bus fleet in the UK, with the majority manufactured on these islands, and I agree on the need for fair competition and that the true cost must be highlighted. I also thank him for his mention of the end-of-life processes for those buses and how those should also be taken into consideration.
I am afraid the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) had me at lemon drizzle cake—I would love to sample that—but he also made the important point about the significant capacity for UK manufacturers to expand their capabilities, given the right conditions and the certainty that they need. The hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) raised the real importance of recognising social and environmental benefits when awarding those grants. I thank all hon. Members for their contributions.
Labour knows that decarbonising the transport sector is essential to achieving net zero. Decarbonising what is now the single largest source of the UK’s carbon emissions will be no easy feat, but Labour is crystal clear that with those challenges come enormous social and economic opportunities. Across road, rail and bus there are immense opportunities for secure, high-skilled green jobs to power our next industrial revolution. With bus being by far the most utilised mode of public transport, zero-emission buses are central to that.
Across the UK, operators and local transport authorities are already taking great strides to decarbonise their fleets, meaning that demand for zero-emission buses will only continue to rise. However, it is clear that the flagship decarbonisation scheme known as ZEBRA, which was announced with much fanfare two Transport Secretaries ago as part of bus back better, continues to be woefully off-target.
Bus back better promised 4,000 new zero-emission buses on the road, but it also promised to set a date for ending the sale of new diesel buses in the UK. Neither of those promises have been met. The Government continue to dither on the phasing-out date, leaving both manufacturers and operators in the dark. In July 2023, the previous Transport Minister—the right hon. Member for North West Durham (Mr Holden)—promised that a response to the DFT’s consultation would be forthcoming “within months”. Well, almost 12 months later, it is still the case that no Transport Minister is able to tell us on what date they will mandate the end of new diesel bus sales. The current Minister with responsibility for roads and local transport, who is here today, told the House in response to a written parliamentary question in January this year that more information would be provided “in due course”. Almost five months on, we are none the wiser.
In the absence of leadership on this issue from the Government, large operators have resorted to setting their own targets. National Express has committed to operating only zero-emission buses by 2030, and Go-Ahead, First Bus and Stagecoach aim to have fully decarbonised fleets by 2035. Although that is commendable, the continued silence from the Government on the end date for diesel bus sales will doubtless have the biggest impact on smaller and more rural bus operators.
The parameters of the Government’s consultation, which was launched back in 2022, could see a date for phase-out set “between 2025 and 2032”. Operators and manufacturers alike need certainty from this Government. It feels like a profoundly short-sighted, anti-business stance for the Government to refuse to grant that certainty, leaving it up to the sector to guess whether the phase-out could be as soon as next year or in eight years’ time.
As I mentioned, bus back better also pledged 4,000 zero-emission buses. I regularly quiz the DFT on the latest statistics about the roll-out of zero-emission buses funded by ZEBRA. The most recent statistics, which I was able to obtain last month, show that just 313 are on the road and 1,053 have been ordered using ZEBRA 1. That means that to date the Government have achieved barely a quarter of ZEBRA’s potential. The successful bidders in the next phase of ZEBRA—ZEBRA 2—were announced back in March, funding a further 955 zero-emission buses. But even if every single one of those buses is somehow on the road by the end of this Parliament, the Government will still fall considerably short of their target. Even the Chair of the Transport Committee said last year that “it seems increasingly unlikely” that the Government will meet their target.
Despite bold steps by operators, local transport authorities and manufacturers, it is clear that we have a long way to go before we decarbonise our bus sector. I would be grateful if the Minister could tell me exactly how many zero-emission buses he thinks he will be able to deliver on the road by the end of this Parliament. For the UK’s leading bus manufacturers—Alexander Dennis, Wrightbus and Optare, or Switch—the ambition and appetite for zero-emission buses is an enormous opportunity. Our bus manufacturing sector directly employs 3,500 staff across the UK and supports a further 10,000 across the supply chain.
Those companies are world-class, trailblazing manufacturers producing some of the most advanced zero-emission and ultra low emission buses anywhere on the globe. Not only are their products world-class, but they are vital employers, contributing millions to the UK economy. I regularly meet them and they frequently tell me about their fantastic apprenticeship schemes and training and upskilling programmes. But under the Government’s approach to decarbonising the bus sector, those companies are at risk.
Research undertaken by Labour and—commendably—by the office of the hon. Member for North Antrim shows that 46% of the money spent by the Government on funding ZEBRA 1 has been used to purchase buses built outside the UK. The Minister will be aware that in addition to recent reports of more Chinese buses being procured, funding from ZEBRA has already been used to procure hundreds of Chinese Yutong buses. In last week’s Transport questions, I told the Secretary of State that it had emerged that a major UK operator was preparing to procure tens of millions of pounds-worth of buses, not from Wrightbus, ADL or Optare, but from China.
Labour is realistic about the fact that, as demand for zero-emission buses increases globally, competitive manufacturers will be involved in the supply chain. However, we are at a crossroads. Britain under the Tories risks losing the global race for the clean industries of the future, losing jobs overseas and betraying communities across the country. The hon. Member for North Antrim is right to question whether taxpayer-funded schemes to support the introduction of zero-emission buses should be delivered in a manner that helps UK bus manufacturing industries more. We must remember that the Government have refused to adopt a full-scale industrial strategy since 2017. We should make no mistake: the lack of a strategy from the Government is putting home-grown bus manufacturers at risk. Alexander Dennis tells me that, with enough joined-up thinking from the Government, the company could spool up production to meet demand, but, in the absence of certainty, it may have to reconsider its future in the UK.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Guy Opperman)
I am listening to the hon. Member’s speech with interest. I want to clarify one point before I address the Chamber. Is the Labour party’s approach to continue to be part of the World Trade Organisation agreement on Government procurement rules made in 2012? Surely that goes to the heart of the debate.
Simon Lightwood
I do not agree with the Minister’s assertion. As others have said, the debate is about highlighting and acknowledging the important social and environmental benefits that UK manufacturing brings to these shores.
UK bus manufacturers are in a profoundly frustrating position when they should be leading our green transition. Support for them has not been sufficiently integrated into the national bus strategy from the start. It is a damning metaphor for the Government’s attitude that the front cover of the “Bus Back Better” document shows an image of a bus manufactured by BYD, a Chinese company.
Labour will always back British industry. A Labour Government will act as a strategic industrial partner, setting out clear priorities to provide the certainty that businesses and investors need to solidify the UK’s position as a leader in clean industry. That extends across the EV supply chain. Labour will accelerate domestic battery-making capacity with a national wealth fund to part-finance the new gigafactory capacity that we will need to support the green transition. Not only will that create thousands of good, green jobs in the supply chain and add billions to the UK economy, but it will provide the certainty that UK bus manufacturers desperately need to continue to play a leading role in the UK’s decarbonisation.
I will finish with a few questions for the Minister. On the battery supply chain, what is he doing to ensure that, as demand for electric bus batteries rises, so too does our battery manufacturing capacity? There are billions of pounds-worth of growth to be unlocked if Ministers get this right. The Government’s battery strategy is a welcome first step, but we are already behind the curve, and the scale of ambition in the strategy does not currently match the scale of the challenge we face to reach 100 GWh of capacity by 2030.
What steps will the Minister take to support UK bus manufacturers, in respect of everything that has been discussed today? In a similar Westminster Hall debate in 2022, the then Transport Minister, the hon. Member for Copeland (Trudy Harrison), was asked the same question. She said that she would look into going
“further to understand how we can support British-built buses.”
She went on to say she would explore the factors
“that may help to encourage competitive bids from UK firms”.—[Official Report, 5 July 2022; Vol. 717, c. 290WH.]
I would be grateful if the Minister updated us on whether that work has progressed, and whether he considers the current procurement regime sufficient to back British industry when it comes to bus manufacturing.
Labour stands ready to embrace the green transport revolution and knows that zero-emission buses are essential to that. The UK has a world-class bus manufacturing sector that can, with the right policies from the Government, deliver millions of pounds-worth of economic growth by leading the transition. We need more action from the Government to ensure that our home-grown bus manufacturers can continue to thrive.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Guy Opperman)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. I think it is the first time I have had the opportunity to do so since you returned to the House, and you are most welcome.
I congratulate the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) on securing the debate and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for recommending that it take place. I welcome it because it is an opportunity for us to discuss the successes and for me to set out the ways in which the Government are supporting the transition to zero-emission buses.
With respect, I welcome the nuanced way in which this debate has to be considered. Quite clearly, buses are at the centre of the public transport network; we are aware, are we not, that there are 4 billion bus journeys a year? It is utterly to the credit of this country that we have created and support a variety of providers.
The hon. Member for North Antrim is right that I am keen to visit Wrightbus, having sought to do so on several occasions in the past. I should, at the very outset, put to rest the cake rumours. Our former Prime Minister was famously ambushed by a cake in an incident that is well known to this nation. When I visited the constituency of the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) in a former role at the Department for Work and Pensions, I walked into the office and his assistant— I think her name is Claire—ambushed me with a lemon drizzle cake. I will not try the strong Strangford accent, but she said, “You’ll be needing a lemon drizzle straight away after the journey you’ve had, sir.” Sure enough, I was sat down with a large slice of cake before we had our meeting, in circumstances that I am quite sure will be matched, if not surpassed, when I visit Ballymena.
The UK has a proud history and particular expertise in bus manufacturing and it is right that we celebrate our successes. We acknowledge and accept that our bus manufacturers play a vital part in the UK automotive ecosystem, employing well over 3,000 people across England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. I suggest, with respect, that our bus manufacturers are very competitive. As has been outlined, Wrightbus has the first hydrogen-powered double-decker bus and Alexander Dennis continues to innovate with a new in-house series of electric buses developed with the knowledge and experience gained from working hand in hand with international partners. That has resulted in 2,300 zero-emission buses hitting the UK roads to date. The vast majority of the buses operating in urban areas are produced here in the UK and we are committed to continuing to make the UK one of the best places in the world for automotive investment as we transition to zero- emission vehicles.
There are certain frameworks that I want to try to address as a starting point.
Guy Opperman
Not yet. Let me try to set out the position and then I will happily give way to the hon. Gentleman.
The starting position is that the UK is part of the 2012 World Trade Organisation agreement on Government procurement and the related WTO texts. As the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart), set out, that is a basis upon which all such organisations have to work. Were there to be any breach leading to unfair competition —the technical term is “dumping”—then, as the Secretary of State set out last Thursday, it would be the responsibility of the Trade Remedies Authority, the independent statutory body, to look at the circumstances.
It is the case that the UK Government support various manufacturers in a variety of ways. I will try to set that out in detail, but before I do so, I will give way to the hon. Member for South Antrim (Paul Girvan).
Paul Girvan
I want to make a point about other countries that are major manufacturers. We will not speak about the elephant in the room—although we probably will; it is China—but some of our neighbours sometimes play fast and loose with what is termed state aid. Unfortunately, companies in those places get the benefit of the opportunity to export at a reduced rate because of help and assistance given to them either directly or indirectly. Unfortunately, the UK tends to be too good at abiding by the rules and does not see that many companies are sliding under the radar and getting our markets because of the shortcuts that they are taking.
Guy Opperman
I am told that the companies Yutong and BYD are not state-owned. That is the first key point. The second is that there is a degree to which we debate in this House the extent to which the state supports individual companies in their individual country. I take the hon. Gentleman’s point. Clearly, on one simple basis, a worker in China is not paid the rate or salary that a worker in this country is paid, with automatic-enrolment pensions and all the welfare support and other bits that come on top of that. That is clearly a difference in scale. But I want to try to address a couple of the key points.
Guy Opperman
No. I will try to address the point made by the hon. Member for South Antrim. As a Minister in a different Department, I brought forward ESG: environmental, social and governance regulations. Those apply across the City of London, all pension funds and, by and large, to how local authorities conduct their business. Those bodies must give due consideration to ESG in their purchasing. More particularly, under the Cabinet Office public procurement notice 02/23 they have to be mindful and cognisant of modern day slavery in the supply chain. Public sector suppliers must comply with all the applicable human rights and employment laws, as set out in the Modern Slavery Act 2015.
As was rightly set out, social value for the tender can be considered—and already is—by local authorities. There is a degree to which organisations seek for Government to say the local authority cannot do this, but it is for the individual local authority to look at the way it is commissioning. Matters of social value, ESG and the interpretation of modern day slavery and its impact are highly relevant when doing that. The fair point has been made by various Members that commissioning an environmentally friendly bus from somewhere 10,000 miles away seems an interesting call, given the consequences.
We must be aware that a lot of companies in this country also receive aid from the Government. I want to try to set that out. Members will be aware, I am sure, of the funding, research and development through the Advanced Propulsion Centre, which allows UK bus manufacturers to be supported by Government to seize opportunities for the future. Through the APC research and development competitions, the UK Government have awarded grants totalling £24.2 million for bus-related projects, with total costs of £52 million.
Those late-stage collaborative R&D competitions are an important part of the Government’s support for the UK automotive sector’s transition to zero-emission vehicles and provide backing for new market-leading technology to underpin battery and fuel cell electric buses. There is also £460 million in dedicated funding provided for the zero-emission buses this Parliament. The innovative technology is to be deployed, we suggest, at scale. More than 5,200 zero-emission buses have been funded across the UK since the Government committed to funding at least 4,000 this Parliament, and UK manufacturers are leading the way.
In March this year, we announced a further £142 million to support almost 1,000 more zero-emission buses. I look forward to UK manufacturers winning more orders. For example, I think Wrightbus has been named the fastest-growing and most successful business in Northern Ireland, having been struggling a few years ago, however one interprets the business as it was. On the back of Government funding for zero-emission buses, the company’s numbers have massively increased, from more than 1,000 to almost double that. Bus funding in this country has pretty much doubled in terms of Government subsidy and support over the past 14 years.
With respect, I suggest that the Government are fully supporting the bus sector, providing financial support, whether through Innovate UK or individual support in relation to hydrogen.
Gavin Newlands
The Minister talked about Government support. In fairness, it was before he was Minister, but he may remember a Transport Committee report that said that Scotland had ordered just over 10 zero-emission buses per 100,000 people, compared with 0.94 zero-emission buses outside of London. Does that highlight the success that the DFT has made of the roll-out?
Guy Opperman
There was pretty much nothing in the hon. Member’s speech with which I agreed, aside from his comments in relation to the hon. Member for Strangford. I, too, believe we are better together, in so many different ways. The long and the short of it is that I am proud to stand up and defend the UK bus industry. I am also proud to defend and support the degree to which this Government have supported the bus industry, and we have seen companies such as Wrightbus and others grow on the back of that.
Is everything perfect? No, of course not. Is there still work to be done? Yes, of course. Is there still work to be done to ensure that local authorities and commissioners fully understand their obligations under the Modern Slavery Act, the impact of social value and all the consequences of any commissioning purchase? Can the Government work harder with, for example, the Department for Business and Trade and the Cabinet Office to ensure those rules are then disseminated to the commissioners? I do accept that more can be done in that space.
However, as an example, £76 million in UK export finance loans and guarantees have been provided to UK bus manufacturers in the past few years, which is turbocharging exports. Wrightbus, as I understand it, is exporting to Hong Kong, right on the doorstep of China, and UK manufacturers are continuing to win orders around the world. Although we clearly want UK manufacturers to be commissioned in this country, it is most important, surely, that they can also take orders from around the world; my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South made that fair point. The argument is nuanced. We want our manufacturers to be able to compete worldwide, and I believe they can.
We are also providing certainty for manufacturers on the pathway to a fully zero-emission fleet. The final decision on diesel buses will be made shortly; part of the process is understanding exactly the capacity and capability of our UK bus manufacturing sector—if one sets a date that is too soon, clearly there are consequences, but if one sets a later date, there are also consequences. We are very much engaged with finding the sweet spot for a date, and we will be making a decision without a shadow of a doubt in the very near future. We believe that will provide a greater degree of certainty, allowing further focus on research and development lines, and also shifting production to producing more zero-emission buses at scale.
It is also clear that as a result of the Government’s action, air pollution has reduced significantly, both since 2010 and, more recently, since the introduction of zero-emission buses: since approximately 2016 or 2017, there has been a true ramping up—a massive reduction in CO2.
I want to finish on a couple of the key points that have been made. My hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) rightly made a variety of points. We clearly are working with local authorities, like his good self’s. The £8.3 billion for road resurfacing, redirected because of the HS2 second-leg decision taken by the Prime Minister in October, has benefited all local authorities, not least Nottinghamshire. I saw that when I visited there about three weeks ago and met my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Ruth Edwards). I actually visited the site and met some of the councillors and other individuals.
My hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield is clearly badgering me about a variety of roads and infrastructure projects. He is passionate about the A614, which, I assure him, is engraved at the very top of my to-do list. I will make sure that we get that project over the line, to the benefit of both his constituents and my right hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Sir Mark Spencer), who has been robust in his recommendations.
I have dealt clearly with the point about competition on labour costs, which is a fact that we cannot disagree with or ignore.
It is hard to disagree with anything that my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South said. I do want to restate the point, though, that this is a nuanced argument. We want our manufacturers to be able to export, as well as to supply in the local environment. That has consequences when it comes to being part of WTO agreements. But we also want to make sure that we, as Government, are supporting manufacturers as much as we possibly can. I have addressed the issues of modern-day slavery and will not necessarily take that any further.
I want to finish, to allow the hon. Member for North Antrim to wrap up the debate with sufficient time. I genuinely welcome this debate. It has been an opportunity for us to cite, laud and praise a growing business in the UK. In these tricky times, there is no doubt that bus manufacturing in the UK is growing substantially. The best evidence is Wrightbus, with its massive increase in numbers. I look forward to visiting and being ambushed by a lemon drizzle cake in the appropriate way, and I greatly welcome the opportunity to set out the degree of support that the Government have given it.
Ian Paisley
I thank all Members who participated in this debate. Some small friction has emerged here and there, but there has been a clarion call that we are all on the same page and want to see this industry flourish, and there is a vision of how it can flourish. Although the Minister was able to have his cake and eat it, I think our companies want to see more cake and get more slices of that cake; they are right to be ambitious about having that, and I hope that they can have it.
The hon. Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) quite rightly raised the point that he does not have a bus company in his constituency but that there is spin-out in terms of opportunities for young people, skills development and all the rest of it. If we get behind this skillset and opportunity and develop the best hydrogen bus, which we are already doing, we will then start developing the best hydrogen rail coaches, heavy goods vehicles, shipping facilities and aircraft. We will be in the midst of a technological revolution driven by these islands, but it will happen only if we get behind and push it. That will lead to jobs in the hon. Member for Mansfield’s constituency and to the tech and opportunities. It will lead to success, and it will be unrelenting, but it will happen only if we ensure that we actually deliver on the strategies being put in place and ensure that we are not lazy at any point and throw the odd bus order or manufacturing job here or there because we can.
We must get behind this and ensure that the outcome is in the interests of these islands, because unlike China we are not at the cutting edge of battery technology. We must buy practically every single battery from China. It has cornered that market, which is fair enough, but we are at the cutting edge of hydrogen; we could take over that market, but only if we see the vision.
I hope that the Minister gets behind us and replies to me in writing on the issues that I raised earlier. I plead with him and hope that we can see some of the success. When he comes to Wrightbus, I will ensure that Jenny Bristow, one of our local chefs, bakes him a cake that means that he will forget forever any other piece of cake he has had anywhere else.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the introduction of UK-made zero-emission buses.
Support for Bereaved Children
(7 months ago)
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Andrew Rosindell (in the Chair)
I would like to inform hon. Members that the parliamentary digital communications team will be conducting secondary filming during the debate for its series of procedural explainers.
I will call Andy Carter to move the motion and then the Minister to respond. As is the convention in 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.
Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered support for bereaved children.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for facilitating the debate. I want to talk about a subject that has affected almost all of us at some point or that will do so in the future: grief, and particularly the grief experienced as a result of being bereaved of a parent. Grief is unique; it is both an experience and an emotion, and it comes in many forms, whether it be for the loss of a family member, a friend, a colleague or even a beloved pet. In fact, the only commonality shared between people when they grieve is the pure uniqueness of that experience.
Like many colleagues, I know that it is difficult, to say the least, to lose a parent. It is something that we will all experience in our lives, so we can only hope and pray that it comes later rather than sooner. Tragically, for some people, that is not the case. They lose their mum or dad during childhood, and that is the area I want to focus on.
Bereavement is a complex challenge to navigate at any stage in life, but going through it during childhood has its own unique challenges. The raw wound of loss carries a heavy burden, and we must ensure that it is handled with delicacy and in the manner that best suits the grieving child.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I commend the hon. Gentleman for bringing this issue to Westminster Hall. It is certainly one we all are or will be affected by. Is he aware that the voluntary Barnardo’s advice line is available on Mondays and Tuesdays from 10 am to 1 pm and on Fridays from 10 am to 12.30 pm? It is for adults concerned about bereaved children, and we thank the charity for setting it up. However, a helpline for bereaved children does not go far enough, and I think the hon. Gentleman will be asking for Government action. Through the education system and the NHS, the Government must set up a statutory body to provide permanent, accessible support without people having to search that out.
Andy Carter
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for highlighting the work that many charities do. He is absolutely right, and I will come to his point shortly.
I want to put the issue into some context. The Childhood Bereavement Network provides statistics on the number of children bereaved of a parent every year. The figure currently sits at about 46,000 annually. To put that in context, it equates to a young person being bereaved of a parent every 20 minutes. However, we know that that figure is inaccurate, and we have tried to estimate the total number of bereaved children. That is because grief can come with so many types of loss, and the figure we have applies only to children who have lost parents. Crucially, we lack the statistics that charities and service providers need in order to ensure that bereavement support networks, schools and professionals can support children.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
I am delighted the hon. Member has brought this subject forward. As he probably knows, it is very close to my heart and I have been doing a lot of work on it. The figures he brings up for this problem are the tip of the iceberg, because although we know that children are bereaved every day, we do not know where they are and the charities do not know how to get in touch with them. That is why I have brought forward a private Member’s Bill—the Bereavement Support (Children and Young People) Bill—to create a protocol for putting children in touch with organisations and vice versa. Is that something the hon. Member thinks he can support?
Andy Carter
I pay tribute to the work the hon. Lady has done with colleagues on her private Member’s Bill. I absolutely support its aims, and I will talk a little more about it in just a second.
This debate is largely down to the experience of a young man called Dan Walsh, who I am pleased to say is able to join us in the Chamber today with his friend Finn and his teacher Alice. Dan is currently studying at Priestly College in my constituency, where I had the pleasure of first meeting him a few months ago during a visit. He gave me a heartwarming account of his experience of loss, how it impacted him and his family and how he not only overcame that terrible and tragic event at such a young age, but was empowered to become involved in campaigning to help others who, sadly, find themselves in the same position.
I would like to share the speech that Dan has written for this debate. He writes:
“Nearly five years to the day, I lost my father to a shock brain aneurysm. He was a fit and healthy man, and we had absolutely no warning of what was to come. At the time I was 12 and in Year 7, and little did I know that when I left school that day, my life was about to change forever in a way that I could never have anticipated.
The journey that followed was rough, my world had been turned upside down. At 12 I struggled to grasp the permanence of death. I let the guilt and anger consume and stop me from being able to properly process his passing.
Throughout that difficult time, I was reminded constantly that I wasn’t alone. My own family and school always made sure that I knew that they would always be there.
Yet it was at that point when I felt most alone.
Mark Lemon, an author, captured this feeling brilliantly when he wrote ‘grief is feeling lonely in a room full of people’. I knew full well that I was supported by loving and caring people, but nothing could ever stop me from feeling so isolated, nothing anyone could do would ever make me feel any different.”
Dame Andrea Jenkyns (Morley and Outwood) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend for bringing this speech to the House. I also thank his constituent—it is very brave of him to do this. My son, Clifford, was just five years old when he lost his beloved nana, my mum Valerie, who was like a second mum to him. A few months later, he lost his dog as well. We got through that with faith. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Church has an important place in helping with this issue, and that schools need more guidance on how to spot if a child is grieving and on understanding the stages of grief?
Andy Carter
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising those points, and particularly the role the Church can play in supporting families. I say to anybody going through grief that there are people out there they can reach out to. The challenge is knowing where to reach out, and this debate is about helping people to find places they can go when they need support.
I will return to the speech written by Dan:
“It was a cruel realisation, but necessary. It allowed me to begin the process of healing, because grief is a bittersweet feeling; whilst you’re suffering your own loss, you get to share each other’s love and compassion for the person that you lose.
After months of not being able to cope and agonising over the loss I was finally directed to a charity called Child Bereavement UK.
The months following my dad’s death I experienced a communication breakdown. I was unable to talk about him and felt completely overwhelmed. I sought relief in my own solitude but to no avail. Feeling trapped in this sensation of anguish.
The charity then became a lifeline for me. It was the only place where I could feel safe to express my own feelings and where I was able to begin that complex journey of navigating through emotion.
What counselling did for me was allow me to talk openly and freely about my dad; however, the most helpful aspect of my time at Child Bereavement was the group meetings where I could speak to young people who had also been through what I had. The groups offered a comforting presence and with their guidance I was able to acknowledge my own feelings of grief.
It gave me the opportunity to talk about my own experiences but also to console those who had similar experiences. In doing so it created a sense of solidarity between myself and other grieving young people.
I had one particular issue when first attending Child Bereavement and that was not being able to comfortably talk about my dad openly. For months I had suppressed my own feelings, but now I cherish the moments that I had with him and I’m always keen to listen to the impact that he had on everybody else.
I would go once a month to one-to-one sessions and a group for young people, yet after a few months I felt comfortable talking about the memories that I built with my dad and the struggle that followed his death.
Looking back at this time it gives me great self-pride to be able to talk about my own experience openly and to know that to have been able to do that I overcame the most painful time of my life.
No one should ever face this journey alone.
And, having experienced this first hand, I feel an obligation to make sure that young bereaved people across the country have the accessibility of these services and are able to secure the level of support that I did.”
Dan is only 17 years old, and he tells a story that is all too common for people of his age. Too many young people are unable to access what they need, as the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) said. For those who do lose a loved one, it is imperative that they know they are not alone and that they know where to turn.
Alistair Strathern (Mid Bedfordshire) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Member for sharing such powerful testimony from his constituent, which shows that young person’s bravery in not just getting through that experience but sharing it to motivate change. I am privileged to work with some fantastic kinship carers in my constituency, who look after young people who have gone through real trauma and often deep bereavement. Those carers are not always able to access the adoption support fund, which provides access to therapeutic care, if their young person has not formally been through the care system. Does the hon. Member agree that removing the looked-after status requirement for the fund would be a powerful way to ensure that every young person can access the therapeutic support they need?
Andy Carter
The hon. Member has eloquently taken one of the asks that I was going to put to the Minster, so I am grateful for his intervention.
The issues that Dan’s speech provokes allow me to make one or two requests of the Minister. Will he look at the steps the Government can take to ensure that much-needed data on children who have lost loved ones is collected and released to help bereavement support practice? Last October, the Department for Education responded to an e-petition calling for a proper record to be kept of the number of bereaved children, to ensure that they are supported, and for responsibility to fall to the General Register Office, which oversees the recording of deaths. I would be grateful if the Minister could expand on that and look into what other routes are available for recording information, separate from death registration by His Majesty’s Passport Office. I would also be grateful if he could comment on what further steps the Government are taking to ensure that young people who are unaware of the support services being offered are properly informed about where they can seek help and advice.
It cannot be beyond the Government, with today’s technology, to reach out to young people when they feel most lost and to ensure that those supporting them—those around them and looking after them—can give them guidance when they need it. To that end, I would be grateful if the Minister could outline what consideration the Government have given to the provisions in the private Member’s Bill from the hon. Member for Edinburgh West to expand the requirements for specified organisations and public bodies to inform young people of the local, national and online support services available to them following a bereavement.
I am incredibly grateful to the Minister for being here to respond to the debate today. I could not have asked for a better Minister to take up this debate. I am also grateful for his spending time with Dan just before the debate. I thank colleagues who have attended, particularly the hon. Member for Edinburgh West, who has been a real champion in this area. I am very happy to support her private Member’s Bill. I pay tribute to the many brilliant campaigners and charities that Members have mentioned, which do so much to support young people who experience bereavement at any age. Nobody should go through bereavement alone.
I congratulate and pay tribute to Dan Walsh, who I met and who talked to me about his deeply personal experience and showed great maturity. In that conversation, he talked about his interest in politics—he is studying politics at Priestley College —so I asked him to write this speech, which he did. I know his dad would be incredibly proud, and I encourage him to continue to pursue his political ambitions because I think he will go a long way.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (David Johnston)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter) for securing a debate on this important topic. It is typical of him to bring such an important and sensitive topic to the House. I am delighted that he has been joined by his constituent Dan from Priestley College, who wrote a considerable portion of my hon. Friend’s opening speech. It was an excellent speech—he might like to start writing speeches for other colleagues, perhaps myself included. I thank him for his courage in bringing forward his story. We had a chat before the debate, alongside his friend Finn. Dan spoke movingly about his experience, and he should be proud of the way that he has sought to bring what has been a very sad experience for him to this place to help other young people experiencing grief. He should also be pleased to have a friend like Finn.
We will all experience a bereavement at some point in our lives, and it can be most devastating for children and young people because it is not the order that we expect life to go in. Just as bereavement touches us all, we all have a role to play in how we support the bereaved. We—Government, parliamentarians, schools, health professionals, voluntary and charitable organisations, and everybody, really—have a responsibility to ensure that children and young people can access the support they need when they need it.
Responsibility for bereavement sits across different Departments, including the Department of Health and Social Care, but I will obviously focus on the work of the Department for Education. What I will say is the Department of Health and Social Care continues its work to address the recommendations in the “Bereavement is everyone’s business” report from the UK Commission on Bereavement. Following that, we established a cross- Government group with representatives from over 10 Departments to improve bereavement support and ensure better joined-up work across Government. We will keep working with the commission and the voluntary sector, including the Childhood Bereavement Network, to explore how their findings could inform policy.
Schools and colleges, which I will focus on most given that I am a Minister for the Department for Education, clearly pay a key role in supporting children, including through difficult times. We are grateful for the vital pastoral support provided by headteachers and staff. Although we cannot expect those staff to be specialists in mental health, bereavement or trauma, they know their pupils best and are well placed to determine the pastoral support that they might need. To support them, we are offering all schools and colleges a grant to train a senior mental health lead to help them put informed support in place, drawing on specialists where needed. More than 16,700 schools and colleges have now received a senior mental health lead training grant, including more than eight in 10 state-funded secondary schools.
In addition, we announced £1.3 billion of recovery premium funding for schools, which, on top of the pupil premium, can be used to deliver evidence-based approaches to support pupil mental health and wellbeing, and that can include counselling or other therapeutic services. We have also been rolling out mental health support teams in schools across the country. They offer support to children experiencing common mental health issues, such as anxiety and low mood, and they try to facilitate smoother access to external specialist support. As of April, the teams covered 44% of pupils in schools and students in further education in England, and we are extending the coverage to reach at least 50% of pupils by March 2025.
More broadly, we are providing record levels of investment in increasing the mental health workforce to expand and transform NHS mental health services in England. The NHS forecasts that, since 2019, spending on mental health services has increased by £4.7 billion in cash terms, compared with the aim of £3.4 billion that was in the NHS long- term plan. Some 345,000 more children and young people will have access to mental health support by March 2025.
What is taught through the school curriculum is clearly important, too. Through the mental wellbeing topic of health education, pupils are taught a range of content relevant to dealing with bereavement. That includes recognising and talking about their emotions and how to judge whether what they are feeling and how they are behaving is normal. It is important that young people know where and how to seek support, including who at home and school they should speak to if they are worried about their own or someone else’s mental wellbeing.
In addition, last week, we published our revised relationships, sex and health education statutory guidance for consultation, which specifically includes bereavement. The guidance sets out that all pupils should know that change and loss, including bereavement, can provoke a range of feelings; that grief is a natural response to bereavement; and that everyone grieves differently. It is designed to enable schools to deal sensitively with the individual needs of their pupils, and we are grateful for the support we have had from charities such as the Childhood Bereavement Network and the Anna Freud Centre in developing the guidance. Before this debate, Dan told me how helpful he had found support from Child Bereavement UK. It should be commended for that.
I appreciate that Dan, Finn and his classmates, along with thousands of their contemporaries across the country, are currently in the midst of exam season. Where bereavement has the potential to affect a pupil’s ability to attend exams, the Department has published guidance that includes examples of effective practice to support these students. Regular attendance at schools and colleges is, of course, crucial to both the development and wellbeing of children and young people, and bereaved pupils need time to grieve and may understandably find it harder than others to attend. Schools and colleges should work with pupils, parents and carers to remove any barriers to attendance and work together to put the right support in place. That should include having sensitive conversations, developing good support and considering whether additional help from external partners, including the local authority or health services, would be appropriate.
Dan, Finn and I had a good conversation about data collection, and my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South is quite right that the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) has been doing a huge amount in that area. We continue to talk to her and others about what to do regarding data collection. Candidly, in one sense, the simplest way to know the children who have been affected by a bereavement is for them to be recorded on the death certificate. However, we have a significant concern, as I explained to Dan, that anybody can buy a death certificate and that the information about who the children of the deceased were would therefore be accessible to everybody. That carries potential negative consequences that we do not want to facilitate. We may find that that causes other problems.
In response to my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South introducing this debate, I have had a conversation with officials about whether we might add a question to the school census regarding bereaved children. That partly requires schools to know. We recently added a question about young carers, and that has been helpful for us to begin to understand how many children are young carers. That was something that charities supporting young carers have wanted for some time. I am happy to commit to exploring whether that is appropriate to do in the case of bereaved children.
Andy Carter
I am very grateful for that comment; it is very much appreciated. My experience of registering a death is that someone goes to the registrar, they fill in some forms and they are able to record a number of details, but they do not receive a great deal back. So would the Minister also consider exploring opportunities for registrars in county council areas and unitary authority areas to provide people with information at the point that they register a death, especially when a parent is bereaved and the child’s death is acknowledged in that process? I understand the points that the Minister made about recording information on a death certificate, but is there a process whereby some information could be handed over at that point, when the death is registered?
David Johnston
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and I am happy to have a discussion with my colleagues in other Departments to see whether something like that might be feasible.
One of the things that we are keen to ensure—again, I had this conversation with Dan and Finn before the debate—is that we balance the need to ensure that children and young people receive support against the fact that some of them may not want certain people to know what has happened, including their school and teachers. We may feel that it is better that their school and teachers know, but it might be the case that, for a whole host of reasons, it is not something that they want to be known or to have discussed. Nevertheless, as I say, I am happy to take that suggestion away and discuss it with my Government colleagues.
Christine Jardine
Further to the point that the hon. Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter) just made, I agree that perhaps there is no need to put the information on the death certificate. However, when it comes to the school census, very often children will have moved from one parent’s house to another’s, if the parents have separated, or even to their grandparents’ home, so the school has no way of knowing. It would therefore be useful to inform the school, but we also have to take into account GDPR. So it might not be as easy as the schools being able to tell people. However, if the person responsible for recording the death could set the whole process in motion, that might be easier.
David Johnston
The hon. Lady makes a good and important point. These things always involve considerable practical challenges, so they often sound simpler than they are in reality. However, we will certainly see what it is possible to do, given the constraints that she just identified.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South again for securing this debate. Children and young people who lose someone close to them deserve all the support, help and love that they can get. Nobody experiences grief in the same way, but we always want to consider how we can best support children and young people in the toughest circumstances, and where support is needed the Government are committed to ensuring that it is available and accessible.
Finally and most importantly, I thank and pay tribute to Dan for bringing about this debate. It is not often that someone of his age secures a debate in Parliament, and I am very impressed by the work that he has done to turn his very difficult experience into positive change for other young people.
Question put and agreed to.
Bus Services: England
(7 months ago)
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Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered bus services in England.
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Vaz. Connecting communities through better public transport has been one of my top priorities since I was elected in December 2019 by the fine people of Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke. I am therefore delighted to have secured funding—with my hon. Friends the Members for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) and for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Jo Gideon)—for the return of the Stoke-Leek line, millions more to fix the potholes that drive us potty in the Potteries, and upgrades to Stoke-on-Trent railway station and Station Road. However, like other Members from across the House, I know that buses remain the most important and valued form of public transport.
Stoke-on-Trent’s road network harks back to the Victorian era. The city is made up of six towns in an unconventional layout, and fewer residents than the national average own or have access to a motor vehicle. Other major cities benefit from underground networks, and in some cases trams, but our city relies solely on its good-quality bus network. Buses are vital in connecting our communities across Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke. They enable people to shop, eat and drink, see loved ones, get to school or college, attend a local GP appointment or enjoy one of the many great tourist attractions our city has to offer, such as the Spitfire gallery in the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery.
Despite the large number of people who require or would like to use the bus, the local bus network across Britain shrunk by an estimated 14% between 2016-17 and 2021-22. The BBC reported in early 2023 that about 13% of bus services across England are supported by councils. That places heavier pressure on local authority budgets, which are more stretched than ever since covid and the cost of living pressures that resulted in large part from the post-covid global recovery and Putin’s illegal and immoral war in Ukraine, which spiked energy costs and fuelled inflation.
Bus demand plummeted during the global covid-19 pandemic, and is still recovering; reports show that passenger numbers across Britain, excluding London, remain about 20% below pre-pandemic levels. In Stoke-on-Trent, we have felt that more than most other areas. Across the city, bus services shrank by an estimated 50% between 2013-14 and 2021-22. However, it is important to caveat that: to a large extent, the reductions came not from the closure of entire routes, but from repeated timetable changes that, by sleight of hand, reduced how frequently buses arrive or how late into the evening they run.
In summer 2022, I hosted two well-attended meetings in Chell Heath and Smallthorne, at which local residents and I held First Potteries and D&G to account. We were determined to ensure that the operators stop slashing routes, which is making it harder for local people to get around. Residents told me that they need better and more straightforward routes to places such as Leek—passengers are currently required to change buses—and a direct link to Wolstanton retail park to do their shopping. Elderly passengers told me that the lack of routes made them isolated. Parents told me that their children could not get to their college or apprenticeship easily. Businesses told me that the lack of routes was a challenge for recruitment and retention, as many employers still work on shift patterns that do not work within existing timetables. Shops on our high streets felt that the poor quality of service meant that people were shopping outside Stoke-on-Trent.
That argument was reinforced by a survey I conducted of more than 1,000 local residents across Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke. Some 76% said they would use the bus to go shopping, and 57% said they would undertake more leisure activities, if better bus services were available. In addition, 64% said bus services could be improved by having better routes to get them to different parts of the city so that they can get out and about. Residents also expressed their desire for better services in the evening, with 49.6% saying bus services could be improved if they ran later. That is especially the case for women and girls, who might be concerned about getting home safely.
I have outlined the challenges we face nationally and in Stoke-on-Trent, but it would be unfair not to mention the unprecedented support and subsidy that bus operators have received since I was elected in 2019, particularly during the pandemic, when passenger numbers plummeted because people were staying at home to protect loved ones. Since 2020 the Government have announced more than £4.5 billion of funding for buses in England, outside of London. Between March 2020 and June 2023, over £2 billion of taxpayers’ hard-earned money was used in emergency and recovery funding to mitigate the impact of the covid pandemic on the bus sector. The Department for Transport also makes up to £259 million available every year for bus operators and local authorities to help operators keep fares down and run services that might otherwise be unprofitable and could be cancelled. Without that support, we would simply have seen services cease entirely, and bus operators go out of business. I therefore pass on my thanks to the Government for intervening. I also thank the many bus drivers who kept going into work, particularly in the early stages of the pandemic, when we had no vaccine. Simply by turning up to work, they were putting themselves in harm’s way.
In addition to the covid recovery grant, Councillors Abi Brown and Daniel Jellyman, my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South and I successfully campaigned for and received over £31 million for Stoke-on-Trent to improve our bus services through the bus service improvement plan, enabling us to start busing back better. We bid for new bus routes across the city, based on concerns we had heard from residents and businesses across Stoke-on-Trent. Our goal was to help thousands more people get around the city, while reducing congestion on our road network. We also campaigned for better bus stops and shelters across the city. I was recently on Chell Heath Road, where we can see investment to improve boarding kerbs, which will be particularly helpful for elderly and disabled residents. We want to improve the quality of bus shelters to encourage people on to the buses in bad weather and to have electronic boards to ensure that people can keep on track of the new and improved services.
To improve existing routes in Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke, the 8 and 36/36A services have been extended. The improved 36/36A service means the bus routes start earlier and finish much later, better connecting the three towns in Stoke-on-Trent North—Kidsgrove, Tunstall and Burslem. That means people can enjoy a day out at Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire’s award-winning indoor market in Tunstall, enjoy a pint or two at the Bull’s Head in Burslem, see the mighty Port Vale on match day at Vale Park, and visit the mother town of Stoke-on-Trent—Burslem—to enjoy the historic Middleport Pottery and a tour around Titanic Brewery.
The extension of the No. 8 route means that the people of Ball Green, Norton and Smallthorne will benefit from a weekend service, enabling them to get to and from the city centre, which needs to see increased footfall. It will also enable elderly relatives to see their family and friends more easily. For too long communities, particularly in wards such as Baddeley, Milton and Norton, have felt disconnected from the city and all it has to offer. Councillors Dave Evans and Carl Edwards have lobbied relentlessly with me to improve connectivity. There is still more to be done on the location of bus stops in the ward, but this is a good first step to better connecting communities.
It is not just Stoke-on-Trent that is reaping the benefits of bus funding. Bus funding for Staffordshire County Council has been used to introduce, for the first time in years, a bus service that connects Mow Cop and Harriseahead with the rest of Newchapel, Kidsgrove, Whitehill, Talke and Butt Lane. The brand-new 95 route enables residents to get down to Clough Hall Park or Kidsgrove Sports Centre to keep fit and active, or to enjoy a coffee or some shopping at the Affinity shopping centre. The conversations I have had on doorsteps indicate that the route, run by D&G, has been warmly received by local residents. I have been a passenger myself, and by hopping on at one of our nearest bus stops—the Butt Lane Co-op on Cedar Avenue—my family and I can enjoy a day out, such as seeing Jodrell Bank from Mow Cop castle.
This landmark investment also creates fairer fares for passengers. We have been able to cut bus fares by a third with a new £3.50-a-day flat fare, which has massively helped to drive up footfall and consumer confidence in our local bus service. On a recent visit to the First Potteries depot in Stoke-on-Trent, I spoke with staff about the impact of the Government’s £31.7 million investment in Stoke-on-Trent’s bus services. Staff told me that there has been an improvement since the funding came in, and that is backed up by research from Transport Focus, which reveals that Stoke-on-Trent is now ranked fourth for most satisfied bus users and second for value for money. Believe me, those are figures I did not think I would see when I was first elected.
I was also told of the positive impact of the £3.50-a-day fare cap and the £2 fare on single journeys, which supports over 5,000 routes across England, including those in Stoke-on-Trent, Kidsgrove and Talke. Transport Focus’s research has revealed that 11% of respondents are using the bus more thanks to the capped fare, with 80% agreeing that the £2 ticket has helped with the cost of living. That research is supported by Department for Transport statistics, which show that, following the introduction of the cap, bus fares in England, outside of London, dropped by 6.2% between December 2022 and December 2023, and by over 11% in rural and non-metropolitan areas. However, in Scotland, Wales and London—where buses are devolved—fares increased by 9.8%, 8.1% and 6% respectively.
In addition to the landmark £31 million to bus back better, communities across England such as Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire are benefiting from the Prime Minister’s bold new vision for the midlands and north, with a huge uplift in funding as a result of the cancellation of the northern leg of High Speed 2. The reallocation of £36 billion from HS2 will mean that Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire cumulatively benefit from over £200 million in additional funding for our roads and pavements, while Stoke-on-Trent will receive £19 million a year over the next seven years for transport from the local government transport fund. That unprecedented investment will help us compete with London and the south-east, which typically have better roads and transport links, in part because they generate more revenue from council tax and parking fees in comparison to northern towns and cities such as Stoke-on-Trent.
I am campaigning to support elderly and disabled residents to use their concessionary bus passes before 9.30 am. Research from the House of Commons Library shows that in 2020 almost a quarter of older persons across the country and just over a third of disabled people were allowed to use their bus passes before 9.30 am by local authorities. Not every concessionary bus pass user will need to travel early every day, but it gives vulnerable people security to know that, when they do, they will not be charged. We cannot put a price on giving those who need support the confidence to travel around Stoke-on-Trent and the surrounding area.
At Prime Minister’s questions on 29 November 2023, I was delighted that the Prime Minister supported my campaign to scrap the cap, saying that he “wholeheartedly” backed it. However, Labour-led Stoke-on-Trent City Council has so far failed to back it. In misleading comments given to the BBC, cabinet member Councillor Chris Robinson said Stoke-on-Trent City Council was not responsible for setting the timings for concessionary fares. I have therefore written to Councillor Robinson to make it clear that Department for Transport guidance states that free travel is at the discretion of local authorities, with the guidance stating:
“The national bus concession in England is available at any time on a Saturday, Sunday or bank holiday, and from 9.30 am to 11 pm on any other day.”
It goes on to say that travel concession authorities
“are able to offer concessionary travel outside these hours on a discretionary basis.”
Despite having written over 100 days ago, I am yet to hear back from any of the Labour councillors in the cabinet of Stoke-on-Trent City Council. However, with the backing of over 1,600 local people via my “Scrap the Cap” petition, I am determined to keep going and ensure that no excuse is used, particularly now that there has been such a substantial increase in Stoke-on-Trent City Council’s transport budget.
Lots of residents have written to me to say why they back the campaign. Pamela from Tunstall says:
“Many pensioners can’t afford to own a car and need buses to get to appointments. The older we become the more important it is to have access to the bus.”
Roland from Talke Pits asks:
“What is the point in having a free bus travel pass when it restricts people at a time when it is most needed not only for convenience, but to save money which in most cases these people can ill afford to lose.”
Roderick from Milton says:
“Being able to use the buses before 9.30 would mean that it would be a lot easier to make connections to other buses and to be able to get to Stoke Station to catch earlier trains.”
It is therefore vital that Stoke-on-Trent Labour listens and delivers for residents by backing my campaign. I hope the Minister will use today to join myself and the Prime Minister in calling on Stoke-on-Trent City Council to scrap the cap.
When visiting the First Potteries depot a few weeks ago, I spoke to Zoe Hands from First Bus about the exciting opportunity for a new electric bus fleet to come to Stoke-on-Trent. First Bus is ready and willing to invest £37 million in a brand-new electric bus fleet for our great city, but this ambition must be met with an around £11 million investment from Stoke-on-Trent City Council. These brand-new buses would not only encourage travel because they would be more modern and exciting but make a huge difference to improving air quality in Stoke-on-Trent. The fleet we currently have roaming around our city is old, and a more reliable, modern fleet would reduce the number of costly repairs, keeping buses on our roads and out of workshops.
I am therefore working with First Potteries and my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South to make sure Stoke-on-Trent City Council plays its part in facilitating this exciting plan and invests that £11 million to support a new, sustainable bus fleet. First Bus has made it clear that if the council can deliver the necessary investment and infrastructure, these new buses could begin carrying passengers in early 2025. The Government have already shown their ambition by allocating over £460 million in dedicated funding for zero-emission buses in this Parliament, of which Staffordshire County Council has already been a recipient. I have now written to Stoke-on-Trent City Council about these exciting plans, and I hope the council will deliver for people in Stoke-on-Trent and make this sensible investment to enhance the city’s bus network.
In conclusion, as I have laid out, good local bus services are so important for local communities. They help to drive people on to our high streets, to encourage growth and investment and to liberate the elderly and disabled, giving them more freedom to get out and about. They provide health benefits by reducing congestion and improving air quality, and they help people get to work or college, which they would otherwise have been unable to do. In short, buses are pivotal to achieving levelling up, which matters hugely. If we really want to transform communities such as Stoke-on-Trent, we must ensure that the infrastructure exists to empower and embolden their people and businesses. To do that, there has to be a reliable public transport network to help people get around. Buses are the most popular form of transport and serve as great liberators for millions of people. It is vital that we get them right.
Valerie Vaz (in the Chair)
I remind Members that there is the possibility of a Division in the House during the course of the debate.
Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)
It is an honour, Ms Vaz, to serve with you in the Chair. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) not only for securing this debate but for sticking up for his constituents by talking about the reasons why they need bus transport.
Let me read from an email that I received in October 2022, shortly after I was first elected to the House. It was a very pleasant read, and begins:
“I would like to invite you to brunch at Greendale Farm cafe on Sunday morning. My treat. The only stipulation is that we both travel there on public transport.”
I was obviously quite keen to take up that invitation, until I looked into it a bit further and found that Donna from Seaton was entirely right to predict that I would not be able to meet her at Greendale Farm café that Sunday morning for her treat. She knew all too well that buses do not travel there on a Sunday morning, because her son had started using that route. He had shown the get-up-and-go to get himself a part-time job over the summer, but unfortunately the bus route was withdrawn by the network provider partway through the tourist season. Donna went on to say:
“The government has a responsibility to provide a public transport system that is fit for purpose and it is failing.”
I will return to Donna at the end of my speech.
Outside London, almost a quarter of bus routes have been cut in the last 10 years, yet buses are the easiest form of public transport to flex. The service can be introduced, improved and expanded very readily, but of course that also means that it can be reduced or withdrawn just as quickly. For many people living in cities or other urban areas, buses are something that they can depend on. They are always there; they can be taken for granted. People living in urban areas probably do not pay too much attention to buses, because they know that if they miss one there will be another one along shortly. However, for the people I represent in rural mid and east Devon, not only are buses an essential part of daily life, but they are so infrequent that even a single delay or no-show can have a huge impact on someone’s journey.
Most of the villages and towns that I represent are served by a bus company called Stagecoach. Although that name might conjure up in the mind the idea of an 18th-century horse and a gilded mail-coach that rapidly gets the post from rural Devon to London, that is simply not the sort of image that bus users in Devon have today. In fact, it more probably brings to mind the potholes that the stagecoaches of the 1800s had to negotiate.
In recent years, bus routes in my constituency have been increasingly scaled back often with very little public consultation. Since I was elected in 2022, we have seen changes to the No. 1 service between Cullompton and Exeter, to the No. 55 service between Tiverton and Exeter, to the No. 9A, which connects Seaton and Exeter, and to several other routes that plug people into our towns, or at least used to.
As a regular bus user, I know it is not uncommon to have to wait up to half an hour after the allotted time for the bus to round the corner. That would not be such a big issue if it were a consistent bus that could be depended on, but it is not. I will give an example from about 18 months ago, when I was waiting at a bus stop in Uffculme to get to the railway station at Tiverton Parkway, to come here. I was waiting with a young lad who told me he was going into Exeter to sit his driving theory test.
We waited as the bus was 15 minutes late, then 20 minutes late. I could see he was getting anxious and jittery about missing his theory test. In the end, I gave up and called a taxi. I knew that Colin round the corner was reliable and would get us there. We gave this young lad a lift and he made it to his theory test on time. It occurred to me that we cannot depend on the bus, and should not have to depend on other bus users to call a taxi to get to an onward connection on time.
As this is a rural area, not only the buses but the trains are infrequent. If we miss our connection, we can be delayed for more than an hour, maybe for two. Young people trying to get to college, for example, are forced either to wait for those long periods or to depend on family, perhaps their parents, to run them into the city. That is affecting people’s working days. There is a material effect, as people have to leave their working from home jobs or perhaps take time out of their working day to run young people to college.
I imagine we might hear from the Minister about the benefits of the bus fare cap. I admit that that has been a welcome measure for regular bus users, but capping fares does not mean much if the bus does not arrive in the first place. A couple of years ago, the west country was right at the bottom of the league table for bus delays for the whole of England. Since then, the appointment of a new managing director, Peter Knight, has been welcome. I have met him several times and he has certainly improved the service from two years ago. He pointed out to me that an area such as Devon has a large population of older people, who have concessionary fares or may travel on free bus passes. That has a material effect on the bus company trying to operate the contract in the area. Making a bus route profitable can be tremendously difficult in an area where lots of people use concessionary fares or pay nothing for the service.
In conclusion, I come back to the original correspondence I had from Donna. She had a practical suggestion, on which I am keen to hear the Minister’s take. She writes:
“The country networks should be divided into routes, and their associated profitability, and then these routes combined into baskets, which group both profitable and non-profitable routes together. The Government determines the timetable”—
or perhaps local authorities could do that—
“The provider must deliver on that timetable, taking the good with the bad.”
Instead, we have the correspondence I received from a Government Minister, Baroness Vere of Norbiton, who wrote to me in October 2022. She said that since deregulation in 1985, bus services have been on a commercial footing, so I should write not to a Minister but to the bus company about my concerns, as that would be the most appropriate action. Listening to the concerns of constituents who cannot get to work on time, I am struck that this is not only a matter for private companies. It also needs to be a concern for Government.
Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Vaz. I congratulate my city colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis), on securing this important debate. Bus services are extremely important to everyone in the Potteries and right across England—notably for those in deprived and remote communities, but also for those who are wedded to their cars. Road congestion would be even worse for those people if bus services did not take some of that strain.
We all have a stake in bus services being attractive and successful. Of course, that does not mean that bus services are always the optimal solution to road congestion, because often local rail or trams will be more efficient than buses in that regard. However, it does mean that buses are a necessary part of the mix, and we need to ensure that they are attractive enough to tempt more people out of their cars.
I very much support the initiative proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North on the fare cap, which is causing severe issues for many of our constituents. I visited Strathmore College, in my constituency, on Friday. It provides education to young people with special educational needs, and college staff told me about the challenges of the 9.30 am start, and the impact on their young people’s ability to access education. I was talking to the principal there, Kate Ward, about some of the travel training that they are providing to young people, and the impact that the 9.30 am start has on them. I very much support my hon. Friend’s campaign to address that issue.
The focus of my comments in the debate will be on non-metropolitan areas of England, outside London. This particularly means north Staffordshire, which includes, but extends further than, the Potteries bus network, which itself extends further than the city of Stoke-on-Trent. If that sounds complicated, I should also add that the city is cut in two by Network Rail management areas, which all adds up to public transport solutions being harder to come by than public transport problems in north Staffordshire. The decline of bus services in our area over many years now is partly because we lack seamless public transport services and partly because we suffer some of the worst road congestion in Europe. We need to increase demand for bus travel in order to keep services financially viable in the future.
That gives me a welcome opportunity to plug my private Member’s Bill to preserve and enhance high streets through mandatory improvement plans. The Bill received its Second Reading in the other place last Friday, ably moved by my noble Friend Lord Whitby, the former leader of Birmingham City Council. Optimal accessibility by bus to designated and improved high streets under my Bill will surely be a part of any local authority’s considerations in its high street reviews. That will be particularly important in the market hub towns identified by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs that have high streets of importance to surrounding rural areas. In proximity to my constituency, these include Cheadle and Stone. Many residents living in villages throughout parts of north Staffordshire, such as Forsbrook, Tean and Alton, have raised with me the lack of effective bus services.
Locally, I am glad that the bus service improvement plan, on which we, as MPs, were active and contributing consultees and for which we helped to secure Government funding, is making it cheaper to travel by bus. The fare is £3.50 per day now—or £12.50 per week—in the Potteries “smart” area, which I think will be a massive bonus for attracting more people on to the bus network. The plan combines with work from the transforming cities fund, which we also helped to secure, making it easier to catch a bus, and more desirable to travel by bus.
However, unfortunately it has been painful for us, as MPs, to see how slowly our city councillors delivered on any of the funding that we worked so hard to secure. The package needs to be delivered with greater urgency. I thank the Department for its patience, and I hope Ministers will continue to press the city council to get all the promised and funded schemes over the line without any further watering-down of ambition by the current Labour council leadership.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Guy Opperman)
I hesitate to interrupt my hon. Friend, because I am aware that he is making a number of points, but I take his point about the council. I just want to make it very clear that we will continue to press the council to respond and produce the results that it clearly needs to produce. I also echo and endorse the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) that responsibility for concessionary fares absolutely lies with the local authority.
Jack Brereton
I thank my hon. Friend—actually, I think he is right honourable.
Jack Brereton
Well, he should be. I thank him for the work that he has been doing in the Department to push on some of these issues. That has been a great assistance, and I know he will continue to work hard for us in the Department.
On the TCF package, we were promised that if funding was won, the city council would deliver a more efficient bus-rail interchange at Stoke station. Works are starting on the site this week, but we need further action to reinstate some of those cross-city bus routes that serve the places that rail cannot reach without people having to change and wait at our city centre in Hanley.
It will be a betrayal if the city council fails to deliver effectively the package promised. Our local buses now routinely take card payments, in line with 93% of buses across England. In fact, the worry now is not that buses will not take cards, but that they will not take cash in the future. We must nip such fears in the bud, and I would welcome any comments from the Minister on ensuring that cash payment will continue to be accepted on buses well in the future.
Under BSIP and TCF, it is now far more usual for Stoke-on-Trent bus stops to be elevated above the standard kerb height so that wheelchairs, prams and so on can be more easily wheeled on and off services. Those who find the step up and step down from the bus more challenging no longer struggle so much—except, of course, when the bus cannot pull into the bus stop because someone has decided to park there, often hurling abuse at the bus driver who tries to move them on. Thankfully, it is rare that these things turn violent, but the range of antisocial behaviour we see on public transport, whether against drivers or against other passengers, seems to be widening. That is why I particularly welcome Government funding for new transport safety officers to help reduce ASB on buses and trains throughout Stoke-on-Trent.
London continues to dominate the bus statistics, accounting for 52.2% of all passenger journeys in the year to March 2023, but it is encouraging that non-metropolitan England has seen the strongest recovery in passenger journeys over the past two years, with the number up 133.4%. That beats metropolitan areas, where they are up 111.4%, and London, where they are up 106.3%. Over the past two years, bus mileage in non-metropolitan England is up 11.3%, which compares favourably with the 2.1% increase in metropolitan England and the decline of 1.3% in London. But—I pause deliberately, because it is a big but—all three areas saw declines in bus mileage in the latter year of the two-year period. I am afraid that reflects what we are seeing on the ground: some bus routes have been cut from, say, half-hourly to hourly, and rural stretches have been cut altogether.
However, the decline that we have seen over many years may be about to reverse because of the £31 million bus improvement funding that we have secured. We are seeking new and expanded routes, particularly in the evenings and at weekends, across the Potteries. Thanks to the funding, Lightwood, which has not had a service for many years, has just had one reinstated, with the extension of the No. 50. More services in the evenings and at weekends will help shift workers, who often struggle to get to and from their shifts. A number of other services have been extended: the No. 6 has an earlier start at weekends; evening services have been introduced on the No. 11; Sunday services of the No. 23 have been extended to Newstead; the No. 26 has an extra service every hour; and the new 36/36A service in the evenings for Meir and Meir Park will make a massive difference to those areas.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North said, local operators are starting to have a much more positive outlook, with First also looking to restore services to communities such as Sandford Hill and Saxon Fields, which lost its services some years ago. I very much also support my hon. Friend’s campaign to get the fleet renewed, because we need investment in new, zero-emission and sustainable buses throughout north Staffordshire. I join him in urging Stoke-on-Trent City Council to take seriously the proposals by First to invest in upgrading the fleet, which will help to attract more people back on to our bus services and help to address some of the serious air quality issues that we have seen in a number of parts of Stoke-on-Trent and north Staffordshire.
It is not just about buses; local rail should also be taking a bigger share of public transport demand in north Staffordshire. Sadly, in accordance with Beeching’s proposals, Stoke-on-Trent lost the entire loop line that served four of the six towns, leaving three with no town centre trains at all, while the fourth town, Fenton in my constituency, lost its stations on both the Crewe-Derby line and the Stoke-Leek line. The suburbs of Trentham and Meir in my constituency also lost their stations. Relying on buses to absorb the traffic, as Beeching claimed they would, has proven to be a great mistake—so notably so that Meir, I am delighted to say, is set to have its station rebuilt under the restoring your railway programme. I continue to push for it to be delivered with every urgency, and connected to local bus services too. Importantly, restoring your railway is a reversal of the Beeching mindset, not just the Beeching cuts. It has been accepted that bus services alone cannot solve the pressing issues of transport deprivation and chronic road congestion in Meir.
In Trentham, the effect of the Beeching axe has been compounded by the decision of the last Labour Government to close the nearby stations at Wedgwood and Barlaston. That very Beeching-mindset move very marginally speed up the west coast main line through the Potteries arc, but only for the benefit of people travelling between Manchester and London. Again, local buses have not filled the gap in the south of the city, and I am pressing the West Midlands Rail Executive and Network Rail to forge ahead with their work towards restoring a station in the south of the city to replace at least one of the three that have been lost.
In Fenton, again, the problem of road congestion and pollution is cannot be solved by buses alone. We need Fenton Manor station on the Stoke-Leek line restored—my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North has been a great champion of that, too. The station was closed to passenger traffic in 1956, but it is now advancing through the restoring your railway fund, and it was committed for delivery in the Government’s Network North Command Paper.
It will, of course, be crucial that those rail infrastructure projects are connected to bus services and that we achieve multi-modal public transport journeys that are as seamless as possible. That should include a station at Bucknall that offers easy interchange with existing bus services along the Werrington Road to places such as Tean, and along Dividy Road to places such as Parl Hall.
In 2022, on average, people in households without access to a car made over six times as many local bus trips as those with access to a car; the figures were 131 trips per person and 20 trips per person respectively. Local bus services account for over half of all public transport trips made by people in households without access to a car. Bus services will continue to be a lifeline, but more effectively so if we can marry them up seamlessly with a growing local rail network. I note that among people in households with access to a car, under half—45%—of all public transport trips are made by bus, which suggests that people with cars are more easily tempted out of them by trains than by buses. The mix needs to be right.
I conclude with a plea to local companies to add more bus services to the mix in north Staffordshire that do not involve having to change at Hanley. Restoration of a route from Trentham to Cheadle, via Longton, Blythe Bridge, Tean, and Forsbrook, is a top priority; in peak season, it could run to Alton Towers. Thanks to this Government, with TCF, BSIP and RYR, the progress and momentum are definitely there for north Staffordshire to enjoy a meaningful revolution, frankly, in public transport provision. We must keep the momentum going and make travelling by bus more attractive, more viable and more connected, seamlessly with local rail.
Paul Howell (Sedgefield) (Con)
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Vaz. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) for securing this incredibly important debate.
From 2022 to 2023, the number of bus miles travelled in County Durham dropped by 18% from 14.5 million to 11.8 million, and the number of miles supported by the local authority dropped by 25% from 2.6 million to just under 2 million. Durham also saw a decline in journeys per head of population from 33.8 to 32.6. What is happening is just a complete decline. The county is among the worst for buses running on time, with just 77% running on time in March ’23.
But those are just statistics; the real thing for all our constituents is the detail that sits underneath them. I have a list of bus changes, the first of which is to the No. 7, which has increased its frequency from half-hourly to hourly. Brilliant—now I will read out the rest, which go the other way. The No. 8A has been reduced, with the removal of Sunday services, and the No. 12 has been withdrawn completely. The No. 22 and No. 22B have been reduced, down from half-hourly. The hourly X21 service from Darlington to Peterlee has been scrapped, while the X22 is going to change. There is just this inconsistency. The Scarlet Band 112 has been lost completely, as has the 113 connecting Fishburn, Sedgefield, Ferryhill and Bishop Middleham. The Arriva 57, which connected Durham and Trimdon to Hartlepool, has been replaced with another, alternative service. This jumping just confuses people.
We also have the X12, which goes past Fishburn. Our residents told the Minister on a recent visit that the direction of the route needed to be changed, with just a slight deviation. On this occasion I give credit to Arriva, which has a consultation out on doing exactly that—although that is just about the only favourable thing I can say about Arriva at the moment. Arriva has also removed the X21, which has generated more constituent casework than any other service. It is the connection that would get my people from the mining villages, such as all the Trimdons—there are several of them—Fishburn and Sedgefield. These are deprived communities, with very low car ownership. What has Arriva done? It has removed the umbilical cord that gets them to Newton Aycliffe. Newton Aycliffe has an industrial estate with 10,000 jobs on it. There is everything there, from major organisations like your Hitachis, your Gestamps and your Husqvarnas, down to the myriad small and medium-sized enterprises.
This is a lifeline for those communities, but the Trimdons and Fishburn are places with low population density and low job opportunities, and now they face this commute. To compound it all, they are also places with incredibly low car ownership. In a survey of the Trimdons, which over 400 residents participated in, most complained that the lack of bus services severely restricted their lifestyle. Some 40% of residents have had to turn down employment or education opportunities because the transport connections did not exist to get them there. Stories have been posted in the local Facebook group about young people giving up jobs or turning them down due to these transport challenges. The jobcentre has said that transport challenges are the greatest difficulty in placing people into work. I am really pleased that the recent grant for Durham can be used for infrastructure, such as new buses, bus stations and road improvements, but it cannot be used as revenue support for unprofitable routes. I think we really need to look at kick-starting these situations, even if through something short term, just to pump-prime those routes.
I want to repeat something that I said recently, in a debate on miners and mining communities, about low connectivity. For me, social mobility can only come with physical mobility. If people cannot get to the jobs, it is very difficult for them to improve themselves, no matter where they are. We have so many wonderful employment opportunities in Newton Aycliffe and NETPark, but the bus services connecting them to the mining villages are just appalling. The single most crucial factor in enabling those mining communities to thrive will be better transport, because they have incredibly low levels of car ownership, as I have said, and they are far too isolated to walk or cycle from. The efforts to improve connectivity are more critical than just about anything else going on in my part of the world. It is not only the people trying to get to jobs; right here, right now, people are trying to get to the DWP to sign on. They cannot even get there to get to their appointments to get the development, to get them to—I think you know where I am going, Ms Vaz.
There have been some attempts at improvement. Durham has something it calls Link2work, which is a dial-a-ride situation. But it is so specific: it potentially gets people to a 7 o’clock shift, and that is it. I am currently working with it and we are hopeful of getting another proposal that will expand Link2work so that people can get to a nine-to-five job as opposed to a shift pattern job, or, with a bit of luck, go shopping or to education facilities. I am hopeful; we are seeing some movement in that direction.
I will digress a bit and endorse what was said by my hon. Friend from the other Stoke—I cannot remember which one—
Paul Howell
I endorse what my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) said about the importance of rail links. A restoring your railway project has been approved for Ferryhill station and is ongoing. It will deliver economic growth to the station and stimulate economic activity—all the things that make villages feel like we care and that people want to invest in them—but we need to connect the buses to the stations as well. It will be a long walk to the train if we do not deliver that.
I thank the Minister for his recent visit to my constituency to talk to residents in Fishburn. I also thank him for understanding the need for what we do and for encouraging our local providers and councils to deliver more—anything further that he can do to encourage their efforts will be appreciated.
Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. Before I thank the Minister, I will say that we on the Island are fortunate for many reasons, but one of them is that we still have a very healthy set of bus routes by rural standards. Even in my little hamlet in the Back of the Wight, in west Wight, where we are served by the No. 12 bus, we have eight services from Newport per working day and seven in the other direction, if my memory serves me. The last time I used the bus, and indeed our wonderful £2 bus fare, which I will come to shortly, was the week before last, when I needed to get to Carisbrooke castle for the wonderful Walk the Wight event in aid of the Isle of Wight hospice.
Being a Minister is often a thankless task, so it is nice to have a Minister who goes the extra mile for Conservative colleagues and, I strongly suspect, Members of Parliament on the other side of the House. I thank him for helping us to get the electric bus bid for the Isle of Wight over the line. We had to push quite hard, but I am delighted that, following a few conversations with my hon. Friend the Minister—he should clearly be my right hon. Friend —we could get it over the line. I am hugely grateful that he was able to support the excellent bid from Southern Vectis and Richard Tyldsley. It is a great little company. Bus drivers on the Island seem to be incredibly friendly and a decent bunch; it is always lovely to see them and I thank them for running such a friendly and reliable service.
Thanks to the funding that we are getting from the Minister, we have already started testing electric buses on the Island. We will soon have zero-emission buses covering route 1 from Newport to Cowes, route 5 from Newport to East Cowes and route 9 from Newport to Ryde. That will mean lower emissions and better air quality for the Island towns of Newport, Ryde, Cowes and East Cowes.
The Minister will also know, because we have talked about it on quite a few occasions, how popular the £2 bus fare is. According to Richard at Southern Vectis, it has undoubtedly got thousands more people a month using the bus network on the Isle of Wight. It was going to be a temporary scheme, but I was not the only Member of Parliament lobbying the Minister—many of us were, including, I am sure, my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis), whom I thank for organising this great debate, and my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton).
I am absolutely delighted that we have been able to extend the scheme because it is really important to help youngsters on the Island to get around. Pensioners get free bus passes—we know about that—but if someone is on the minimum wage or a young person is starting out in their first job and they do not have a lot of money, taxis on the Island are really expensive. We have a vibrant bus network, so having a £2 max fare in one direction—£4 there and back—makes a big difference.
Guy Opperman
My hon. Friend is talking eloquently about the £2 bus fare, which I utterly endorse. It is the simplest and most persuasive way of getting people back on the buses. The most important thing for me, certainly in my constituency and up and down the country where it has been brought in, is that the impact on people with a low income is off the charts. The ability in tough times, which we have clearly been living through for the last few years, to get to work for an understandable figure that is by far discounted on what it was previously is a genuine game changer.
Bob Seely
I thank the Minister for his intervention. The last time I had a school visit in Parliament, some of the kids said, “Why should we vote Conservative?” I could have talked about the amazing apprenticeships schemes, but the first thing that came into my head was the £2 bus fare. If someone lives in Wales or in Labour-controlled London, fares are going up. If they are in Conservative areas, for the most part there is a fantastic scheme that helps young people get around.
In conclusion, I thank the Minister for finding the money to make sure that the Isle of Wight was included in his electric bus scheme. It will make a big difference and help to drive down emissions and improve air quality on the Island. I also thank him for the £2 bus fare, which has made such a difference and is getting people back on the buses, not least me.
Valerie Vaz (in the Chair)
The Front-Bench spokespeople have 10 minutes each. I call the Opposition spokesperson, Bill Esterson.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to speak with you in the Chair, Ms Vaz. I thank the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) for securing the debate. I thank also the other hon. Members for their contributions. It is fair to say that the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North and I do not agree on much, but I have managed to identify some areas where we do. I join him in paying tribute to bus drivers and other public transport staff who, as he rightly said, served through the pandemic—before and after. They put their lives on the line and some of them died. He reminded us of the important role that people in public transport play.
We also agree about the importance of buses in England. Millions of people depend on them and they are by far the most used form of public transport. Regardless of our policy disagreements, we can at least agree on their significance in his constituency and mine, so I genuinely thank him for securing the debate.
England’s crumbling bus network is symptomatic of the scale of astonishing decline that the Government have presided over. The statistics say it all. The bus network was deregulated in 1985, and there were 1.5 billion fewer bus journeys in 2019 than there were in 1985. Since 2010, 300 million fewer miles have been driven by buses per year and thousands of bus services have been cut. In the hon. Member’s patch alone, bus miles have halved in the last decade—one of the highest falls in bus numbers in the country, as he acknowledged. Some parts of Stoke-on-Trent are barely served by buses at all.
Although I welcome the better news that the hon. Members for Stoke-on-Trent North and for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) shared about attempts to improve the service, this is a very serious story across the country. In 2023, an outspoken local politician in Stoke-on-Trent said that the state of the buses and the figures were
“damning on the poor performance of operators like First Bus”
and that
“we need to…let current operators know they’ve been put on notice.”
Those were the words of the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North. In fact, he has been an outspoken critic of his local bus operators on multiple occasions, even going so far as to lecture Ministers that
“First Bus continues to cut routes”
and it is
“time that First Bus does its bit”.—[Official Report, 13 July 2023; Vol. 736, c. 489.]
The experience that he describes demonstrates the reality of bus deregulation under the Conservatives, and completely exposes the failure of the Government’s sticking-plaster approach to address the problems of a creaking bus network.
Bill Esterson
The hon. Gentleman anticipates the second half of my speech, because I will come on to that. Before I do, the criticisms by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North are a tacit admission that we need bold reform. On the question of the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely), only Labour will be able to deliver that.
Despite the pleading of the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North, deregulation has not compelled First Bus to pull its finger out. Instead, it has robbed communities of a say over the vital bus services on which they depend. Micromanagement from Whitehall makes it ridiculously complicated for local authorities to access the kind of funding streams that he and Conservative Members were alluding to. It simply has not achieved results.
The current system has led to thousands of vital bus services across the country being axed. Bus services are a shadow of what they once were because unaccountable operators remain able to decide for themselves where services go and how they run. The Government preside over shockingly bad bus services. We have a Prime Minister who prefers to travel by helicopter and private jet, and who has no experience of the buses and trains that the rest of us use, so is it any wonder that public transport is in such a mess?
Turning to Labour’s plans for Government, we know that a reliable, affordable and regular bus service is the difference between opportunity and isolation for millions of people. Labour will give every community the power to take back control of their bus services and will support local leaders to deliver better buses and to do so faster. Labour’s plans will create and save vital routes and services, will end today’s postcode lottery of bus services, and will kick-start a revival of bus services across England.
Paul Howell
Will the hon. Member give more information about precisely how he will achieve those objectives?
Bill Esterson
I am enjoying these interventions because they are prompting the next stage of my speech, which explains exactly what Labour’s plans are for Government. In our first term, should we be fortunate enough to serve—I take nothing for granted; I am not complacent about it—Labour would pass new legislation to support local transport authorities to take back control of their bus services. We would do that through a better buses Act, which would remove the costly, time-consuming barriers that restrict the ability of local transport authorities to control their bus services properly.
Labour would also reform funding structures to give local leaders more flexibility over bus funding and to allow them to finally plan for the long term—no more short-term cliff edges. Such approaches would address the difficulties that Conservative Members identified in their speeches.
Paul Howell
I am interested to see how that plays out in terms of consistency. We have a new North East Mayor in my part of the world who has just said that she is going to look at franchising, but when I sat in the Transport Committee last week, the union leaders in front of us were absolutely against franchising. I wonder whether there is any consistency in Labour’s approach.
Bill Esterson
The short answer is that there is, because we recognise the need for flexibility and different options—[Interruption.] Hon. Members are reacting to what I say. Although we see the local franchising process as the presumed option, it is not the only option that will be available under a Labour Government.
Bill Esterson
I will finish the point rather than taking further interventions. At the moment, those powers are limited to Metro Mayors, but we will expand them to every local transport authority. We will also accelerate the franchising process, cutting it from the six-year slog endured by Greater Manchester down to as little as two years. We will introduce local network safeguards to provide more accountability over bus operators and ensure higher standards for operators wherever they are in England, whether they are under local franchising or not. We are going to end the nonsensical ideological ban on new municipal companies, which this Government introduced in 2017. Labour’s plans could save up to 700 routes, with local network safeguards designed to benefit profiteering at the expense of yet more devastating bus cuts. Our plan is to create up to 600 new routes by expanding franchising powers, totalling an extra 250 million passenger journeys per year.
Bill Esterson
I am going to finish answering the previous two questions by going through our plans, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind. Thanks to our trailblazing Labour Metro Mayors, we know how effective franchising can be. London under Sadiq Khan has one of the most sophisticated and best integrated transport networks in the world, and Andy Burnham’s Bee Network in Greater Manchester is already improving reliability and boosting ridership. We want to emulate that in the Liverpool city region with the Mayor, and we are already adopting the approach of local franchising.
After the fantastic election results in the West Midlands, North East England, York and North Yorkshire, and South Yorkshire, there is an opportunity for other areas to join the Liverpool city region and West Yorkshire, as their combined authorities take the steps to pursue local franchising. Labour in regional government is taking bold steps to deliver for its communities, while the only remaining Conservative Metro Mayor—in the Tees Valley—refuses to pursue franchising, even when bus journey satisfaction in the Tees Valley is among the lowest anywhere in the country.
On the point about options, franchising will not be appropriate for every local authority. Labour’s plans are specifically designed to empower local authorities to use flexible funding and strengthened powers to make decisions that affect their own back yard, not through diktat from Whitehall. Our approach will give local leaders the tools they need to improve their bus services, whether through new franchising models, setting up new publicly owned municipal bus companies or significantly strengthened enhanced partnerships. That point is crucial and goes to the question asked by the hon. Member for Sedgefield (Paul Howell). There are notable pockets across England where enhanced partnerships between local authorities and operators have led to commendable levels of co-operation, excellence and improved performance. Where bus partnerships are working well, we will encourage them to continue. Labour is unapologetically pragmatic—not dogmatic—in its approach. We want to find the best solutions to the terrible state of our public transport system. There is no “one size fits all” approach, in stark contrast to the Conservatives’ ideological obsession with deregulation and privatisation.
Bill Esterson
I am coming to the end of my speech. The Conservatives have presided—[Interruption.] Okay, I will give way.
Valerie Vaz (in the Chair)
I remind the hon. Gentleman that he has almost come to the end of his 10 minutes, but it is his choice.
Bill Esterson
The Chair has told me not—[Interruption.] May I seek your guidance, Ms Vaz?
Jack Brereton
I thank the hon. Member for giving way, but I am slightly perplexed, as to what it is we are hearing that is different from what the Government are doing. On franchising, very few to no Labour authorities have taken up those powers, despite the fact that they exist. Actually, those other authorities that are not mayoral areas can apply to the Secretary of State for authority to do franchising if they so choose. We have heard—
Valerie Vaz (in the Chair)
Order. We are shortly coming up to a vote and we have not heard from the Minister.
Bill Esterson
I think I have understood the question. We are going to speed up franchising and we are going to make it a lot easier for people to do. It took over six years for Andy Burnham to get through the various hoops and bureaucracies in his way, and we have seen a similar problem in the Liverpool city region. We need to speed up the process. It is going to be the presumed option for any local authority that wants to use it, and that is a fundamental shift. Again, we are not being dogmatic but pragmatic.
Labour stands ready to empower local communities with the tools they need to take back control of their bus services, which is in stark contrast to 14 years of shocking decline in our bus network. What Labour will do, if we are in government, is usher in the most ambitious reform to England’s bus network in 40 years.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Guy Opperman)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. You wait ages for a debate on bus services and then there are two in a day. It is understandable and appropriate that, for the second time today, I rise to my feet in Westminster Hall to address the state of the nation in terms of our bus network. I will briefly set out, before I am probably interrupted by a vote, some key thoughts.
I endorse the comment by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) that franchising exists already. Local authorities can do this already—[Interruption.] As the hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) chunters away, having been laughed out of court earlier on, the key point about Labour policy is that it is very keen to propose franchising but there not a squidge of an iota about money. The money that goes to the Mayors for the franchising is the key difference. What the Labour party is proposing is a franchise policy without any fiscal assistance. In reality that will result in a far worse system. If it was so broken, there were 13 years of Labour government when they could have changed it.
When the hon. Member for Sefton Central gets into government—if we were ever so misfortunate for that to happen—he will realise that what he is proposing is genuinely not a good idea without significant extra funding. Labour will not commit to this, as the funding will not follow, so a local authority would struggle to provide even the quality of the services that it is providing at present.
Enough of such claptrap. I move on. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) for bringing the debate to the Chamber. It is entirely right that he set out that the covid pandemic has had a massive impact and that slowly but surely the funding situation and take-up is improving. If we look at base funding as a starting point, we have doubled bus funding in this country since 2010. We are in a situation where the degree of support is off the charts compared with yesteryear. We all accept that operators and local transport authorities have been working in a challenging environment over the last few years, but the key point is that there is great collaborative work happening locally between local transport authorities, bus operators and passengers. The regulatory framework put in place by the Bus Services Act 2017 and the largest public investment in bus services in all time—we have announced over £4.5 billion of support to improve services since 2020—are significant.
Over £2 billion of this funding has been allocated to every single local transport authority in England to help to deliver its local bus service improvement plans, which help to deliver more frequent, more reliable, easier to use and cheaper bus services. I want briefly to talk about Stoke-on-Trent specifically. Clearly, the way the funding has been used is an example of the kind of change that we are seeing. Stoke-on-Trent City Council has been allocated over £33 million from the DFT to deliver its bus service improvement plan, including an extra £1.4 million this year in funding redirected from HS2 through Network North. I am pleased to see that investment bearing fruit, with a number of bus service enhancements being introduced across Stoke-on-Trent. That provides better, more frequent services to help people to get to and from work.
I am not going to go through all the villages that have benefited and all the changes also that have taken place in the other parts of Stoke, as they were outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, but the good news does not stop there. The local affordable fares scheme—the £3.50 scheme—is clearly something to be lauded. There is also the £2 single ticket, which is again subsidised and paid for by the taxpayer, arising out of the HS2 funding. There was talk today about funding, but not a word was said about whether that would continue under any Labour authority or any Labour Government. As my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) explained, this is the key thing to transform the ability of low-income people to get to work and get about in whatever community. It is such a transformational thing. That £600 million, again, arises out of and is continued by the HS2 funding.
I listened in great detail to all the speeches, and I noticed that many colleagues were keen to laud and be pleased about the zero-emission bus regional areas funding, known as ZEBRA 2. My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight, who has campaigned and repeatedly beaten a path to my door, managed to secure £4.5 million for zero-emission buses on the Isle of Wight with ZEBRA 2.
Self-evidently, colleagues were keen to extol the £3.1 million ZEBRA funding for Staffordshire, albeit that Stoke is not particularly affected. I am surprised not to be lauded for the fact that Devon County Council has received £5.3 million for zero-emission buses. I was genuinely stunned and amazed to receive no thanks from the local MP, the hon. Member for Sefton Central, for the fact that Liverpool City Council, the combined authority, received £9.4 million, and that the Government are funding zero-emission buses to a massive degree. As always, the glass is half empty and there is no laudable attempt to accept that a transformational difference has taken place with zero-emission buses.
We can also look at the local transport fund, which is utterly key for places such as Stoke. That is due to a decision by the Prime Minister in respect of the second leg of HS2. I am still unaware of the Labour position on that, as always, with no word on funding. That is £4.7 billion of extra funding, of which Stoke-on-Trent benefits to the tune of £134 million. I want to address some of the key points about Stoke on the issue of the cap. I entirely agree with the Prime Minister and not with the local authority leader, I am afraid. This is something that can be entirely addressed by local authority funding. As I am setting out in detail, there is a plethora of extra local authority funding that could be used in this way.
Guy Opperman
The hon. Gentleman talks about cuts in 2010. He does not seem to remember Gordon Brown selling the gold, bankrupting the economy, and a note written by a Labour MP that famously said:
“I’m afraid there is no money.”
Guy Opperman
The hon. Gentleman has a brass neck to come to this House and start saying that 2010 was about anything other than a disastrous Labour Government who were rightly voted out. We will move back to Stoke, if I may.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North will be aware that the local transport fund has been transformational. The £134 million can be used for buses and to improve bus routes. It could also build on the substantial investment the Government have put into local transport through the transforming cities fund, where Stoke has again been awarded £34.6 million, as one of the many beneficiaries. I have twice touched on the point about concessionary travel. I regret to say that I manifestly disagree with the local authority leader, and sincerely hope he has the guts to reply, after more than 100 days, to my hon. Friend’s letter.
I am conscious of time and the incoming vote. I have touched on discretionary fares and other key points. It is outstandingly the case that the zero-emission buses will make a huge difference to their areas. I welcome what has taken place on the Isle of Wight and in the other local authorities I have discussed. As my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight rightly said, it is not just in Conservative-run areas or where there are Conservative MPs; it is across the country. On the point about cash, we are aware of the importance of that and would encourage private operators to ensure that alternative payments continue.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Paul Howell) made a point about his constituency. It was a pleasure to go to the Fishburn Youth and Community Centre, where I enjoyed a delicious pancake on pancake Tuesday. Clearly, there is some positive news in terms of what Arriva is doing in relation to the X12, but I continue to want to see better work between Durham County Council and the individual provider.
This has clearly been a difficult time, with the covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine, but we absolutely believe that Stoke is doing better and that, with the record funding that is going in, a better future lies ahead for bus services.
Jonathan Gullis
I thank all hon. Members for taking part in today’s debate, and both the Minister and the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson), for their responses.
I extol once again the £30 million-plus for improving our local bus services in Stoke-on-Trent, as well as the £30 million-plus from the transforming cities fund. We are also getting over £100 million to improve transport, as well as an extra £200 million-plus across Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire to fix our broken roads and pavements. That is on top of what was done by the last Conservative-led administration in Stoke-on-Trent City Council, which put a record £39 million into fixing over 30,000 potholes and resurfacing over 1,200 roads and pavements. There is also the bus service improvement plan, and specifically the £3.50-a-day flat fare. An awful lot of work has gone on.
I thank the shadow Minister for his kind words about where we do indeed have views in common. He is right that I said to Goldenhill Community Centre that First Bus Potteries was on notice. I was sick to the back teeth of time and again seeing services cut, even after Ministers had arrived to hear about our bus service improvement funding. That led to more and more people feeling despondent, despite the funding having been secured. I am delighted to say that new services are now coming in, and we are therefore seeing improvements. Independent surveys are saying that Stoke is second best in the country for value for money and fourth for passenger satisfaction. First is still on notice—I gave it until the end of 2024—but the direction of travel is right.
The shadow Minister was kind to point out, to the Whip’s annoyance, that I have not always been a party boy. I am willing to say what I think, be outspoken and push the envelope more than I should. He has made it clear to the voters of Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke that if they want a true community champion—someone who will stand up for their beliefs and values, who is not willing always to take the party line and who is therefore independent of thought, unlike many of the Opposition opponents I will face in the general election—they should vote for Jonathan Gullis and vote Conservative in the next general election.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered bus services in England.
Knife Crime Awareness Week
(7 months ago)
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Valerie Vaz (in the Chair)
I would like to inform Members that the parliamentary digital communications team will be conducting secondary filming during today’s debate for its series of procedural explainers.
I will call Fleur Anderson to move the motion and then the Minister to respond. As is the convention for a 30-minute debate, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.
Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered Knife Crime Awareness Week.
It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Ms Vaz, for this important debate on Knife Crime Awareness Week, which is this week. It is important to raise the urgent need to tackle knife crime across the country. As a mum, it is a big concern for me every time my children walk around the streets. Every time we hear of a life lost so brutally—usually a young life—it breaks my heart.
Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. Indeed, it is a tragedy whenever any family loses a young life. Last month in Moss Side in Manchester, we lost Prince Walker-Ayeni, a 17-year-old boy who was stabbed and sadly later died in hospital from his injuries. Does my hon. Friend agree that the loss of any life to knife crime is unacceptable but particularly the life of a young person, and that this Tory Government are simply not doing enough to tackle knife crime on our streets?
Fleur Anderson
I thank my hon. Friend for remembering Prince in this debate. It is on behalf of Prince, and on behalf of so many young people who have lost their lives, that we are holding this debate. We do not want to see any more of that. I agree it is unacceptable.
Since 2015, knife crime has risen by a staggering 80%—some of the steepest increases have been in towns and suburbs—devastating families across the country. Despite promising more than 16 times to ban dangerous weapons from Britain’s streets, the Government have dragged their feet, and there are still gaping loopholes in their policy that have left lethal blades such as ninja swords available to buy legally.
There were nearly 50,000 police-recorded offences involving a knife or sharp instrument in England and Wales in 2023. Tragically, there were 244 murders involving a knife or sharp instrument in England and Wales in the 12 months up to March 2023—244 murders in just 12 months—and 78 young people aged under 25 were murdered with a knife or sharp object in the 12 months up to March 2023, 10 of whom were aged under 16. In their name, in their memory, we must take action.
I have been out for an evening with my local police violence reduction unit. I pay tribute to the police, who are tackling this head-on. Every time the door of that van opened, they did not know what they were going to face.
Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank my hon. Friend for making such a passionate speech on this important issue—an issue that we cannot afford to politicise. She has mentioned violence reduction units. We have fantastic VRUs in London working with communities, including those in my constituency. Those VRUs have been funded directly by the Mayor of London’s office. Does she agree that the Government need to keep working on and funding those VRUs, where we see youth workers essentially acting as a line of defence, mentoring our young people and turning them away from crime? That can only happen if our VRUs have adequate resources.
Fleur Anderson
I thank my hon. Friend and fellow London MP for raising that. Violence reduction units are really important, as is learning what works from the youth workers and police on the ground. I will talk about building on what works and using it to tackle knife crime later in my speech.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I commend the hon. Lady for securing this debate, to which I want to add a Northern Ireland perspective. Just this week, the Police Service of Northern Ireland warned of a surge in the illegal import of knives disguised as belt buckles, which has been happening since January. It is clear that there is a market for hidden knives. Does she agree that this needs to be addressed in a co-ordinated fashion in each constituency across the whole of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland—ever mindful that, while the Minister is responsible for England, all the regions have to follow suit?
Fleur Anderson
I thank the hon. Gentleman for bringing that up. I did not know about knives disguised as belt buckles. That just shows how legislation has to be good enough to keep ahead of every new device and new weapon that comes up. I hope that the Minister will respond on that issue in this debate.
When I was working in a youth centre before I was a MP, I worked with organisations across south-west London to look at what we can do as a community to learn from public health approaches to tackling knife crime. I have also been a youth worker.
Kate Kniveton (Burton) (Con)
In my constituency, the Streetwise Young People’s Project has had significant success in raising awareness among young people of the dangers of carrying knives. Does the hon. Lady agree that education plays a critical role in preventing knife crime? It is vital that we do all we can to support community-led initiatives that deliver vital education and mentoring to our children.
Fleur Anderson
I thank the hon. Lady for raising that. I absolutely do agree: education and prevention is crucial to this, and I will also be talking more about that.
I also thank the hon. Lady for mentioning the organisation working in her constituency. I pay tribute to the other charities working to tackle knife crime, which include the Ben Kinsella Trust—which is organising Knife Crime Awareness Week and has written a report on keeping young people safe—along with Lives not Knives, Street Doctors, the Damilola Taylor Trust, Justice for Ronan Kanda, and Triple P. They are just some of the many organisations working across the country to tackle knife crime. Often, education is the key.
Knife crime destroys lives, devastates families, and creates fear and trauma in communities. Labour has made it our mission to halve knife crime within 10 years of a Labour Government. It is right to be ambitious to change the current situation. For 14 years, the Conservatives have failed to grip this epidemic and take the action necessary to get these dangerous weapons off our streets. The Government’s response has been wholly inadequate. The serious violence strategy is more than five years out of date, the serious violence taskforce was disbanded, and everyone knows from their own communities that too little is being done to divert young people away from violence and crime.
Youth services are an essential part of that. I have spoken many times about youth services, and I wanted to use this opportunity to speak about them again. The YMCA’s research shows that real-terms expenditure on youth services has been slashed by 73% since 2010-2011, which equates to a £1.1 billion loss. The number of youth centres has been cut drastically, from 917 in 2011 to just 427 across the country in 2023. It is not enough. No wonder we are seeing this epidemic of knife crime.
Half of young people do not have access to a youth service. Too often, when teenagers are caught with knives, nothing happens; there is no action or support to stop a spiral into even more devastating crime. Too often, when there are signs that a young person is getting into trouble, being groomed by gangs or getting lost in a dangerous online world, nothing is done. There is not enough parenting support either. Too often, when teenagers say they do not feel safe or are struggling with trauma or abuse, no one listens and no help is provided. That is the reality of Tory Britain. Labour will change that.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)
There was a horrific incident at Amman Valley School, in Ammanford in my constituency, in which a pupil attacked two teachers and another pupil. Miraculously, nobody died, but one of the teachers sustained especially horrific injuries. Does the hon. Lady agree that there needs to be a focus on weapons in schools? For me, the fact that weapons are being produced in schools in somewhere like Carmarthenshire, of all places, is extremely worrying.
Fleur Anderson
I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that horrific-sounding incident. I agree that weapons in schools are extremely concerning and need to be tackled. We need a holistic approach; it cannot just be about weapons in one place or another, or education in one place or another, or about one particular service. We need to address the issue in the round, and weapons in schools are definitely a part of that.
Labour will extend the ban on zombie knives to ninja swords, establish an end-to-end review of online knife sales and close the loophole that allows online marketplaces to sell dangerous knives. Importantly, Labour will introduce a new young futures programme to establish new youth hubs, with both mental health workers and youth workers. The new young futures programme will draw on up to £100 million a year, based on combining existing commitments to fund youth hubs with mental health staff and youth workers in every community, and will be paid for by ending tax breaks for private schools. We will provide mentors in pupil referral units and youth workers in A&E, paid for by full cost recovery for gun licensing and a programme of public sector reform.
We will deliver a targeted programme in every area to identify the young people most at risk of being drawn into violent crime and build a package of support that responds to the challenges they are facing. That will be achieved by bringing together services at a local level to better co-ordinate the delivery of preventive interventions around the young person, rooted in a strong evidence base. We will develop a national network of young futures hubs and end the postcode lottery of youth services, which are better in some places than others. We will bring local services together and deliver support for teenagers at risk of being of drawn into crime or facing mental health challenges. Where appropriate, we will deliver universal youth provision, which has been cut so badly by the Conservative Government. We will also deliver youth workers in A&E units, custody centres and communities, as well as mentors in pupil referral units.
Under a Labour Government, there will be tough consequences for carrying a knife. A Labour Government will end the empty words and apology letters for knife possession, and will guarantee sanctions and serious interventions for young people who carry knives. There will be tough new laws to restrict the sale of knives. A Labour Government will implement a total crackdown on the availability of knives on Britain’s streets—no more loopholes, no more caveats and no more false promises. The Government have published 16 press releases about zombie knives since 2015, yet despite repeated promises to toughen the rules, a full ban is still not in place. Labour will urgently legislate to ban zombie-style knives, introduce tough criminal sanctions on tech executives who allow knife sales on their online marketplaces, and conduct a rapid review of online knife sales from the point of purchase through to delivery. In particular, we will strengthen ID checks and checks conducted by Royal Mail and Border Force for UK-bound parcels.
There are ways to take action. We can stop the increase in knife crime and see an end to this. I again thank the Ben Kinsella Trust, and recommend its report on keeping young people safe, in particular with regard to the need to work with young people in primary schools, which is where some of the belief systems about knife carrying start. I urge the Government to take more action to end knife crime.
Valerie Vaz (in the Chair)
I expect the debate to end at 4.47 pm, when I will move to the next debate.
Sarah Edwards (Tamworth) (Lab)
It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Ms Vaz. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) on securing this incredibly important debate.
When I speak to constituents in Tamworth, I hear how worried they are about increasing antisocial behaviour. I recently attended a town centre forum in St Editha’s church, meeting people from local businesses. They told me how their experiences of antisocial behaviour and crime in the town centre are impacting the local economy. Reports of knife crime continue to rise. In the last couple of months alone a serious stabbing took place in a Tamworth nightclub in the early hours of the morning.
With resources under strain, I am pleased to see Staffordshire Police’s DitchTheBlade campaign, as well as knife banks being located across the constituency in places such as St Editha’s church, St Martin’s church and Sacred Heart church. However, with cuts to the police it is becoming increasingly clear that such initiatives cannot succeed without a greater focus on tackling knife crime from a number of angles.
I am proud of organisations such as Changes Tamworth. This provides a lifeline to those in a mental health crisis and at risk of suicide but also, via referral from the police, now offers anger management courses and mental health support to recent offenders on their last strike. In doing so, it helps to reduce the levels of violence and reoffending in our community. They need support. Not enough is being done at the national level to combat what is becoming an epidemic of knife crime, with some of the steepest increases in towns and suburbs just like my constituency.
Since 2015, knife crime has risen by 77% and the Government have failed to act. I urge the Government to adopt Labour’s bold plan to tackle knife crime by rebuilding security on our streets and building confidence in the criminal justice system. This includes putting youth workers in our A&E units, as well as re-invigorating a national network of youth hubs to bring local services together and deliver support for teenagers. We could be building on the work done by groups such as Mercia Boxing Club, which successfully won funding to convert a community centre in Tamworth that had been left derelict by the Conservatives, leaving our young people with nothing to do. We could be making sure that groups like Tamworth Table Tennis have a long-term base, so ensuring that we have a wide range of activities for young people.
Labour will clamp down on knife sales and create a new law on the exploitation of children and young people by criminal gangs. It will also establish a new cross-Government coalition to end knife crime, bringing together those political and community leaders with a role to play in tackling knife crime and keeping young people safe.
The Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire (Chris Philp)
It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Vaz. I thank and congratulate the hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) for securing this debate and the hon. Member for Tamworth (Sarah Edwards) for managing to make her contribution as well.
This is an incredibly important topic; any of us who have attended the funeral of a young person who has been the victim of knife crime will know that. I very painfully recall attending the funeral of 15-year-old Elianne Andam, who was murdered in Croydon on 27 September 2023 at 8.30 am. Seeing the grief of her family, her parents Michael and Dorcas and her little brother Kobi is something I will never forget. All of us need to keep in mind the tragic stories of young people who have lost their lives and the importance, therefore, of the work we are doing in making sure that we protect as many as we possibly can.
It is worth setting out some of the facts. When we see reports on social media about knife crime and individual tragic incidents, it sometimes creates the impression that homicides caused by knife crime are more prevalent than they are. We need to keep in mind where we are with progress made. In the year running to March 2010, there were 620 homicides across England and Wales. Last year, there were 577—a reduction in the number of homicides over that period, even though the population of the country has grown.
Over the same period, the Crime Survey for England and Wales—according to the independent Office for National Statistics, the most reliable source of data on offending—reported that violent crime was down by 44%. Hospital admissions following injury by a knife is another measure used to get to the heart of how much knife crime there is. Since 2019, that has reduced by 26% for people under 25.
As those figures show, quite considerable progress has been made, with reductions in homicides since 2010, reductions in violence since 2010 and a reduction in hospital admissions following a knife injury in the five years that we have been tracking those, since 2019. Despite all that progress and all those improvements, more needs to be done because every single death and every single injury is a tragedy. That is why the Government are determined to do everything possible to end the scourge of knife crime up and down the country. Of course, part of that is ensuring that the police have adequate resources. We now have record police officer numbers across England and Wales. In March 2023, we hit 149,566 officers. That is more than we have ever had at any time before. The police funding settlement this year is at a record level. The frontline budget spent by police and crime commissioners went up by £922 million this financial year compared with the last one. The resources are being made available to the police, but we need to do more than that.
We heard reference to banning different kinds of knives. We have been progressively widening the scope of knife bans. Far more knives are banned today than was the case in 2010. The most recent tranche of bans will come into force on 24 September, which will ensure that all zombie-style knives and certain kinds of machetes will rightly be banned. Curved swords have of course been banned since 2008. Wherever we see evidence that a particular kind of knife needs to be banned, we will take action to do that, but I remind the House that possession of any kind of knife, even a kitchen knife, in a public place without reasonable excuse is itself a criminal offence punishable by up to four years in prison.
Jim Shannon
I must say how encouraged I am by the Minister’s response to the hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson). I mentioned in my intervention buckle knives, which the Police Service of Northern Ireland has indicated are something new that is coming through. The Minister is right that the law will encompass all those issues, but is it possible to contact some of the regional police forces to ascertain some of the issues they face? That would help in bringing forward better legislation.
Chris Philp
We are always open to consulting with police forces around the country, including Police Scotland and, of course, the Police Service of Northern Ireland, to ensure that we are quickly picking up those trends, as the hon. Member says.
We heard some discussions around the online sale of knives. The Online Safety Act 2023 passed through Parliament last October. When it is fully commenced—Ofcom is currently consulting on the codes of practice to implement that—it will impose obligations for the first time on social media platforms and online marketplaces, such as Facebook Marketplace, to ensure that they are applying the law to take proactive steps to ensure that, for example, under-18s cannot buy knives online. The Criminal Justice Bill, currently going through Parliament, will increase the penalty for selling a knife to an under-18 to up to two years. The Online Safety Act, which I worked on with my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) when he was Security Minister, will do a great deal to prevent the sale of knives online.
We heard some discussion around prevention, which is critical. That is why the 20 violence reduction units up and down the country are receiving about £55 million of funding a year. Next year we will increase that by 50%, and that 50% increase in funding will ensure that those preventative interventions are made. It will fund things like mentoring schemes, cognitive behavioural therapy, diversionary sporting activity and so on to ensure that young people at risk of getting on to the wrong path can be helped. We are doing that in partnership with the Youth Endowment Fund, which has £200 million to invest. The fund researches which interventions actually work, because some interventions sound like they might work but in fact have no impact. I was discussing those interventions with the fund’s chief executive Jon Yates just a few hours ago.
A new initiative that we will be pioneering with the Youth Endowment Fund this autumn is a piece of work starting off in four local authorities, but I hope it will be expanded to all local authorities, to identify in each area the 100 young people at risk of getting into serious violence. That is not youngsters who are already involved in serious violence, who are being supported already, but younger people, maybe in their early teens, who are at risk of getting into serious violence and where we can make an early intervention to stop them ending up on that path. If the pilots in the four local authorities are successful, as I think they will be, part of the extra violence reduction unit funding that I mentioned could support its roll-out nationally, which I would certainly like to see.
The prevention, the bans, the Online Safety Act 2023 and the violence reduction units are all preventive measures, but we also need proper enforcement action. That includes the use of stop and search, which I have not heard mentioned so far this afternoon. Stop and search is important. In London it used to take 400 knives a month off the street, but in London the use of stop and search has gone down by 44% over the last two years, whereas in the rest of the country it has been maintained. It might be no coincidence that knife offences in London have gone up at the same time as stop and search has gone down, which bucks the national trend.
I was very pleased that the commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, said that he would increase the use of stop and search—done, of course, lawfully and respectfully— because it does take knives off the streets and save lives. Victims’ families have said to me, “I wish the person that killed my child”—typically a young man—“had been stopped and searched before my son was murdered.” So stop and search is an important tool that needs to be used.
To support that, we are developing new technology. It is not ready to deploy yet, but I hope it will be ready to deploy experimentally by the end of this year. It is technology that allows police officers to scan someone at a distance of, say, 10 or 20 feet—perhaps the distance that we are standing apart now—and detect a knife in a crowded street, enabling officers to identify and remove knives from the people carrying them. We are investing about £3.5 million to expedite the development of that technology. I saw it demonstrated last week. It is not quite ready to deploy, but it is very close. As soon as it is ready, I want it to be trialled. I will certainly volunteer Croydon, the borough that I represent—
Chris Philp
Wandsworth might want to volunteer, and perhaps Tamworth also, and get those knives off our streets.
Also when it comes to technology, the use of both retrospective and live facial recognition is helping us to catch the perpetrators of knife crime and other crimes who would otherwise not be caught. We debated this a lot in the Criminal Justice Bill Committee. The technology is getting more powerful every day and is enabling the police to catch criminals who would otherwise not get caught. Facial recognition, obviously within guidelines and respecting privacy and so on, will help us take more dangerous people off our streets.
The other thing we are pushing is hotspot patrolling. In areas where there is antisocial behaviour and serious violence, all the evidence shows that hotspot patrolling helps stop criminal offences, so we have given police and crime commissioners additional money for the current financial year, over and above their regular budget. It totals about £66 million, of which London is getting about £9 million. That is to fund hotspot patrolling in areas where the police have identified a particular problem. The evidence from pilots last year shows that intensive hotspot patrolling reduces antisocial behaviour and serious violence. I expect that money to fund, in the current financial year, about 1 million hours of extra hotspot patrolling to keep our streets safer.
In summary, it is good that violence and homicide are lower now than they were in 2010, but there is more to do. Every single death is a tragedy and it behoves all of us to do everything we can. I have set out our plans in the preventive and law enforcement arenas. I am sure all of us would want to work with police forces in our constituencies to make sure they have the support that they need to catch perpetrators and keep the public safe.
Question put and agreed to.
Endometriosis Education in Schools
(7 months ago)
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Sir Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered endometriosis education in schools.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. I have been trying to raise awareness of endometriosis for several years now. I am proud of the work done by not just me but other colleagues across the House, not least our late, great friend Sir David Amess, on raising the issue of endometriosis—something that, surprisingly, so many people, men and women, still do not know about. In various debates, especially those about endometriosis in the workplace, we have started to raise the profile of the disease, and more and more people are speaking about it. But it is surprising how few people recognise the condition. An e-petition that closed in March 2023, “Include PCOS & Endometriosis education in the national secondary curriculum”, gained only 3,105 signatures. Yet the people who deal with endometriosis know that thousands—in fact, millions—of women are affected by the disease.
Today, I seek to address the issue by asking my right hon. Friend the Minister to prescribe the teaching of endometriosis in the national curriculum, hopefully for this September. I will start by re-highlighting the disease and its impact, because that is important. I will highlight some issues from a 2019 report by Keisha Meek of Northern Endometriosis Sisters Support, because she summarises things well:
“Endometriosis comes with many symptoms, these symptoms do not just occur at the time of a woman’s period.”
The most common symptoms are abdominal cramps, back pain, severe menstrual cramps, abnormal and heavy bleeding, painful bowel movements, pain urinating, painful sex, difficulty becoming pregnant, nausea and sickness. The impact that can have on women’s lives and relationships is enormous. The report says of relationships:
“Long term conditions can have a significant impacts on relationships between family, friends and partners. This can be due to various different reasons such as not understanding, lack of information, taboo around the illness, not publically understood or spoken about. Women who suffer with endometriosis are regular called liars, told it is ‘just a bad period’ and called dramatic. It is known in other long term illnesses that people also…struggle to understand.”
That first paragraph emphasises why I have brought this debate today. The report goes on:
“We have found many women within the endometriosis community have lost friends, this is due to them having to cancel plans due to severe pain and bleeding. Sometimes they have been bed bound, even when they have explained to their friends why they can be left out, not invited or treated like liars. It can be a very isolating experience for women or anyone living with a chronic illness.
As well as friendships we have found women have had issues with their families, resulting in family members no longer speaking to them or inviting them to events. Even after trying to educate their families, the taboo around endometriosis makes this difficult and lack of understanding/knowledge. This is also an issue within other long term condition communities.
We have many women with endometriosis who stay single to protect themselves due to issues in previous relationships. There are women whose partners have left them due to endometriosis, this can be due to sex, the woman’s psychical health and mental health, infertility and many other issues that endometriosis can cause. Women have unfortunately been victims of domestic abuse, their partners excuse being endometriosis or rape due to them saying they can’t have sex due to pain.”
Then, there are the issues at work:
“Many women work with endometriosis, however this can be a struggle and there is lack of understanding for endometriosis sufferers as this is not well known. They are also not protected under the disability act.”
The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) and I recently met some campaigners, along with the Disability Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Mims Davies), and we are trying to move that forward in a separate piece of work. This issue must be addressed through the work of a wide range of Departments.
Endometriosis results in people having to take a long time off work. In most cases, women find themselves on sickness plans that they are unable to adhere to, which can result in the termination of their employment. A lot of women find themselves moving around jobs trying to survive and pay bills. Due to sickness, many women have felt discriminated against. That is at the heart of why I want the disease to be part of the curriculum. This debate is not just about women who suffer from endometriosis; it is about society as a whole understanding this disease.
I give credit to Essex Police: shortly after my debate on endometriosis in the workplace, it contacted me to ask whether there was more that it could be doing. There are employers out there who are proactively moving ahead, but one reason why this should be on the curriculum is that it is important that everybody is taught about this disease.
Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
I pay tribute to the work that the right hon. Gentleman has been doing on this issue. I am slightly concerned about the latest sex and relationship guidance that the Government have published, because it removes a previous reference to menstruation on the curriculum in primary schools, with this “Not before year 4”.
Obviously, the average age for girls to start their periods is 12. However, data shows that some girls start aged eight and younger, so removing that reference means that some girls could be starting their periods before actually receiving any education on what periods are. The same guidance also removes the reference to males having the education at primary school. Surely the Government think that it is important for girls and boys to understand all about periods. Again, I pay tribute to the right hon. Gentleman’s work in securing this debate.
Sir Alec Shelbrooke
I am most grateful to the hon. Lady—my hon. Friend; we have done a great amount of work on this together. This is truly a cross-party effort, also involving the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon); I know the hon. Member for Livingston (Hannah Bardell) would want a mention of the work she has done.
The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle is right, and I am going to touch on some of that later on; I have also had representations from people to touch on that issue. The hon. Lady mentioned the reason why I am glad we are having this debate: it is highly relevant, based on the statement made last Thursday. I am glad that the Minister has been able to find time to respond to this debate, because it is absolutely right that we try to use this moment to highlight the point.
People with endometriosis also have a higher risk of the following diseases. That is important because we educate about those diseases, but we are not educating about endometriosis. Compared with the general public, sufferers have: a 37% higher chance of developing ovarian cancer; a 38% higher chance of developing endocrine tumours; a 26% higher chance of developing kidney cancer; a 33% higher chance of developing thyroid cancer; a 37% higher chance of developing brain tumours; a 23% higher chance of developing malignant melanoma; and a 62% higher chance of having a heart attack, and that is a direct result of blood loss and anaemia.
Another account I have is from a lady who contacted me after I went to the premiere of “Below the Belt” in 2022, which I recommend to anybody who has an interest in this subject. I am going to read her description because it paints the picture of why this is so important.
“I am a stage 4 endometriosis sufferer, in which it took over 15 years to be diagnosed, in which time my story, in brief, was:
Every month since I started my period I would spend the first day sat in the toilet holding my bin. So that I could be sick and completely empty my bowels. I would then 9/10 pass out in the bathroom or on the hall trying to get to my bedroom. If I wasn’t lucky enough to be out cold, I would have to take enough painkillers to knock me out. I would then spend two days in bed having hot sweats in a cycle of being in pain, throwing up and sleeping. When I hit 30 I started to have mid cycle pains and neurological symptoms and extreme fatigue, in which I struggled to stay awake, and I would have to take daily naps. I started to have blood in my poo, and bloated stomach, I was having upper quadrant pain, and getting these weird red dots on my skin, suffering with night sweats and random fast heart palpitations. I thought I was going to die.
From the age of 13 being called a liar, being shoved pain killers and anti depressants, being told that it is just a period and to get over it by GPs…several referrals to gynaecology from the age of 17. Being told I have a low pain tolerance and to just have a baby as that will sort everything out. Also reassuring me that nothing was wrong at all with my fertility (how wrong they were)…Being misdiagnosed with anxiety, depression, IBS, piles, querying bowel cancer and Crohn’s…Being told I had a tiny cyst on my ovary that meant nothing, and that I have dramatised and medicalised the situation as I know it is there.
Suffering early-stages miscarriages/chemical pregnancies…Handing my notice into a job I loved due to the lack of support and workplace ‘banter’ over me being sensitive…Passing out at work, being called lazy at work for having to sit down, getting into trouble for spending too long in the toilets/disappearing…Waking up in the uni toilets five hours later by myself, after passing out in pain. I had to pay over £100 to get a cab back from Eastbourne to London. A cab driver had to deal with my endometriosis flare-up on a motorway until I passed out in pain. When he got me home, I woke up to random people around me, as he started to bang on all the doors to get help/get to someone that I know.
I have lost friends due to ‘letting them down’, being ‘sick’ for no reason at all…Once I paid privately (over £5,000) to find out what was wrong with me and get me help, in which I was told I could lose my bowel, my womb and bowel are twisted, and my organs had been shoved to the left-hand side of my body. I then had a fight with my GP to get access to the help I needed. In which I was sent as a routine patient to a general gynaecologist who told me to have a baby and go on the pill. It then took me weeks to be asked to be sent to Guy’s endometriosis clinic, in which I was given an urgent appointment after I sent them through my scans. They then gave me an urgent MRI and told me that they believe that it is worse than expected and I would lose my tubes and ovary, and require a stoma. Although I would have to wait over two years for surgery and to go to pain management to help medicate the pain (this is a nine to 12 months wait list).
I paid over £15,000 for private robotic surgery to completely remove all the endo. Best choice of my life, I have my life back…I now have mild pain during my periods, which I can manage with exercise or occasional paracetamol…My periods do not rule my life…I have my life back.”
The reason I wanted to give those examples is that they describe the trauma of this disease. As many as 10% of women in this country have this disease. I have a report from a lady called Nel at Hey Endo!; I think the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle knows her quite well. I am exceptionally grateful for the information she sent me about what they are doing in schools. The statistics are quite shocking.
When asked, “Have you heard of endometriosis?”, 54% said no. “Have you heard of adenomyosis?”; 98% said no. “Have you heard of PCOS?”; 57% said no. “Do you talk to your family about period health?”; 52% said no. “Do you talk to your friends about period health?”; 60% said yes and 38% said no. “Do you feel like you can approach your education setting about period health?”; 54% said no. “Did you learn about periods in school?”; 16% said no and 82% said yes. That is important, because we are educating them about periods but not about the diseases. “Did you learn about endometriosis in school?”; 88% said no. Before the presentation, only 30 students could state a fact that they knew about endometriosis.
Emma Hardy
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. As he has pointed out, the figure is 10%. That means that in every classroom, three or four girls potentially have endometriosis, and yet the subject is still not covered. I strongly suggest that we look at covering it specifically, as mentioned, and as early as possible, because this has an impact on girls taking exams. It is exam season right now, when they are in the middle of their GCSEs. Some girls will be sitting their GCSEs now, suffering from endometriosis. It should stop being a taboo subject; it happens to lots of us. Let us make it more publicly known.
Sir Alec Shelbrooke
On the hon. Lady’s point, I am rather concerned about reports in the press about schools not allowing girls to use the toilets, saying that they have period passes and that they should plan around it. All those policies are set up around normal periods. That goes to show that there is a distinct lack of understanding throughout, not just in the curriculum but throughout the school’s policies. That is why it is vital to move this issue forward quickly.
I did some research, which I am sure the Minister is well aware of, about what happens at each key stage, and how physical health education is taught. At key stages 4 to 5, lessons on fertility and pregnancy choices include how an individual’s fertility changes over a lifetime, and where to seek medical help and emotional support. Key stages 3 to 5 include “The Truth, Undressed” lessons, in collaboration with Canesten—a set of four lessons promoting understanding of vulval and vaginal health. Key stages 3 to 4 include lessons on breast cancer, in collaboration with breast cancer charity CoppaFeel!, to encourage young people to get to know their bodies and adopt healthy behaviours from a young age. This lesson includes essential knowledge about breast cancer, information on healthy lifestyle choices that may reduce a person’s risk of getting cancer, guidance to help them get to know their bodies, and guidance on what to do if they find something that is not normal for them. Key stages 3 to 5 include lessons on testicular health, with information on testicular torsion, orchidectomy and testicular cancer.
I am sure everyone here agrees that that is highly important education, and that cancer is a terrible disease. That is the word: it is a disease. Endometriosis is a disease, and it should be getting exactly the same treatment in the curriculum as other diseases. I noted the Secretary of State’s comments about a range of diseases that are being looked at with a view to bringing them into the curriculum, but I am specifically talking about endometriosis today to push the issue forward.
As I have pointed out, it is vital that we teach this to boys and girls, as the information can be important to them later as adults when, for example, they might be bosses running a company or business. I genuinely do not believe that people are of bad mind. I do not believe that people want to be evil to people or to bully them. It always comes down to a lack of education and knowledge, and not understanding situations. Maybe I am a naive politician, but I do believe in the good in people. I do not believe that people want to treat others badly, but they just do not know anything about this, and that comes down to education and the curriculum.
I have received a note, drawing on what the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle has said, from Endometriosis UK, which asks whether I could raise these points in this debate directly with the Minister. The Government proposal is to remove a previous reference to covering menstruation in the curriculum in primary schools before the onset of puberty, and to introduce a not-before-year-4 age limit on when pupils learn about menstruation. Endometriosis UK is concerned that the proposed new age restrictions may prevent some children learning about periods before they start having periods, and it seeks further consideration of this matter.
The Government propose the introduction of a specific reference to children being taught the more appropriate language of “periods and menstrual products”, rather than “sanitary items” or “hygiene products”. Endometriosis UK fully supports that. Outdated language and a focus on “hygiene” and “sanitary products” feeds a myth that menstruation is dirty and unhygienic, rather than a natural and normal process.
The Government propose the removal of a previous reference to male pupils when learning about menstruation in primary school. Endometriosis UK would like to see all pupils, including male pupils, learn about menstruation in primary school.
The Government propose the introduction of a new requirement to cover gynaecological health for pupils and secondary schools, including what an average period is, period problems such as premenstrual syndrome, heavy menstrual bleeding, endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome—PCOS—and when to seek help from healthcare professionals. Endometriosis UK is extremely supportive. Endometriosis being on the curriculum for all pupils in secondary school would be a major step forward. Endometriosis UK is delighted to see plans for specific content focusing on when to seek help from healthcare professionals, which will help to drive down diagnosis times for endometriosis.
Finally, the Government propose the introduction of a new requirement to cover reproductive health, fertility and menopause to pupils in secondary schools. Endometriosis UK supports that.
To conclude, I have some questions to ask the Minister. This disease affects 10% of women. That is millions of women. Symptoms can be anything from mild to horrific. Tragically, dozens of women every year take their life over this disease because they cannot cope any longer with the pain.
It is a very difficult disease to solve, but knowledge of what the disease is at the start, may provide a head start in improving the eight to 10 years’ waiting time for a diagnosis. I believe that that is because people just do not know enough about it. I gave the example of that poor woman who experienced pain from the start of her periods. My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle spoke about menstruation now starting in nine-year-olds. One of the questions I have for the Minister is what work he will be doing with health professionals to consider when we should be putting endometriosis education into the curriculum. I believe it is important that girls know about the potential problems that could affect them before they start menstruation—maybe boys can be taught later. I seek the Minister’s guidance, and maybe he will need to take the question away, on what work he will do to find out when we can put that in the curriculum. There is obviously a lot of science about what the average age is to start menstruation. We heard the example of the woman who from the moment her periods started was in pain. Girls need to understand what it is.
I really want to push for endometriosis to be in the curriculum on sex education in the way that breast cancer is included in personal health education. Endometriosis is another terrible disease, and it does result in death. There is no getting round that. Everybody needs to understand the disease, which is where education becomes the responsibility of the Government. I will finish with this: if someone does not know a disease exists, how do they know they have got a disease?
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Sir Alec Shelbrooke) for highlighting the issue in this debate. He has done that in Westminster Hall numerous times, and more times again in the main Chamber. I have heard him on many occasions and I admire his determination to discuss this subject matter and to make people aware of it—I congratulate him on that. The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) made two significant interventions. Although she did not say so, I suspect they came from a place of personal knowledge.
As Members may be aware, while I am a father to three sons—my wife always wanted a wee girl, but it was just not going to happen—I work in an office with six female staff members and one male. I am certainly a lot more educated than I had been, and let us be honest, that understanding should not have taken that long. Gone should be the days of boys and girls being separated out to discuss those issues. The right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell mentioned that in both his introduction and summing-up. Those issues affect entire households and there should be a frank, honest and non-shameful understanding, which, frankly, does not take place at the moment.
The right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell referred to a story from one of his constituents which is like mine. When I married my wife, which will be 37 years ago on 6 June, the doctor told Sandra, “If you have a child, this will all go away.” Well, no it did not. Indeed, three boys later and it still had not gone away. My wife suffered with the condition over all those years, and only in the last three or four years, because of life-changing things, has it been slightly different.
I will refer to one of my staff members who suffers from endometriosis. I told the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell beforehand that I was going to tell her story. I am not going to mention her name, because that would be the wrong thing to do, but I want to tell her story. It is a terrible story that she has been through. She was diagnosed in 2019 at the age of 24, after having been referred to gynae in 2012, seven years earlier. It took seven years to get the diagnosis. She has not yet been able to see an endometriosis consultant and she is now 29 years of age. That is 12 years, and she is still on the waiting list.
She has been red-flagged on three separate occasions. Her GP, who is very good—I am not saying all GPs are not good, just to be clear—is one of the few to hold a gynae clinic at GP level and has instigated medical menopause, given oestrogen and implanted a coil all on the basis of her ultrasound. Her doctor has been incredibly helpful to her, but she has been through all sorts of problems. She has worked for me for a fair few years, and I am well aware of some of the problems she has, not from a personal point of view but from watching her and seeing how it affects her days as she works. Most GPs do not offer the facility that her GP does.
There are two specialists in Northern Ireland, and we are left with women who are in pain and afraid for their fertility potential. Their partners do not know how best to support and help with what they cannot see and perhaps cannot understand—I think that is part of it as well. People can offer sympathy and comfort and talk to their partner or wife, or perhaps friend, on these matters, but sometimes they do not really understand, because they cannot really feel what they are going through. I believe that the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell is right. We need an absolute shift in the narrative, away from closed doors, to understanding.
We need to stop the classification of “women’s problems”. My mother probably suffered from something similar to this. She is 92, going on 93. I remember that when she was younger, she had a number of miscarriages and other things that happened. My mother says that they were always referred to as “women’s problems”. That covers very generic subject matter, but it does not really illustrate the issue.
Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way and I apologise for my late arrival, Ms Vaz. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that this is one of the fundamental problems? When we describe things as “women’s problems”, we are actually shying away from giving conditions and diseases the proper names that they have and, in so doing, are effectively avoiding an informed, intelligent discussion.
Jim Shannon
Yes, I absolutely agree with that. When people refer to “women’s problems”, they do not bring into the open the painful issue; they almost push it aside. The right hon. Lady is absolutely right to make that point. It is an issue that deserves medical attention, and significant attention at some times. We need to encourage medical students to take up this speciality by providing help with tuition, as has been done in colleagues’ constituencies in Wales. I understand that Wales has done some of these things. There has been a shortage of physiotherapists and other things. Therefore the question I ask the Minister—I am ever mindful that he is always responsive to the questions we ask, and we appreciate that because it makes our job of putting questions to him a wee bit easier when we know we are going to get a decent answer—is this. How do we encourage medical students to take up this speciality? We do so by normalising the conversation around reproductive health and by removing boundaries to conversations. That must start in education, at the very beginning—at school level, secondary school level, and college level—and the conversation should then continue right through life. That is what the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell is asking for, and I support him.
I will finish with this comment. The NHS is failing young women, but more than this, it is failing families. We do a disservice by taking a silent stance. It is right that today we bring endometriosis out of the silence and into the conversation, but only if action follows.
Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Vaz. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Sir Alec Shelbrooke) on securing this incredibly important debate on this incredibly important topic. He has campaigned tirelessly on the subject over many years, and he spoke incredibly passionately today, sharing very painful testimonies but really shining a spotlight on endometriosis and, in particular, highlighting how workplaces, Governments and schools can all provide better support to those experiencing the condition.
As the right hon. Gentleman rightly set out, endometriosis can be an incredibly challenging condition to live with and can impact every aspect of a person’s life. There is no way of preventing it, and its cause is not yet understood, yet it affects around one in 10 women in the UK. As he rightly pointed out, that means that on average at least one girl in every classroom will go on to experience it. The symptoms can start very early on in adolescence.
Thinking of the disease primarily as a barrier to pregnancy or as simply making a girl’s or woman’s periods more painful is a gross oversimplification and, in many cases, incredibly inaccurate, which is why this debate is so crucial. The disease can vary widely in severity in the way it manifests. For example, 12% of endometriosis cases target women’s lungs and can cause symptoms beyond chronic pain—symptoms that can shatter a woman’s confidence and have a debilitating effect on her mental health. Endometriosis can also cause chronic bowel and bladder-related symptoms. That can lead to depression, which the right hon. Gentleman has also highlighted.
Sir Alec Shelbrooke
It would be remiss of me not to mention the fact that endometriosis continues for many people after the menopause. It is not a disease just for women who menstruate; it can continue after the menopause, and it can start before menstruation. As the hon. Lady points out, this disease is not restricted to gynaecology.
Catherine McKinnell
The right hon. Gentleman once again demonstrates how incredibly knowledgeable he is about this issue, and how much that knowledge is lacking among the wider public and in this place. We are grateful to him.
It is so essential that young people are taught about their bodies in school, and that they learn about not just relationships and sex, but health and wellbeing. That must include what is and is not normal throughout puberty, the menstrual cycle and hormones, to set young girls and young people up to live healthy lives, both mentally and physically.
Caroline Nokes
The hon. Lady makes an important point about what is and what is not normal. When the Women and Equalities Committee did some work on women’s reproductive health, we got the message from various witnesses that they simply had no comprehension that their periods were not normal, because the message that they got from medics the whole time was, “You just have to get on with it.”
Catherine McKinnell
The right hon. Lady makes an important point—her Committee has done so much important work in this area—and it points to the importance of our education system in combating misunderstandings and providing people with the knowledge that they need to be armed with in order to manage what they and those around them will experience through life.
Sex education has been compulsory in English schools since 2017 and initially covered broad elements of sexual and reproductive health. After many years of campaigning, it was revised in 2020, and since then both boys and girls in state schools have been taught about periods and menstrual wellbeing. Of course, as with the rest of relationships, sex and health education, resources need to be tailored to the relevant age group. They need to be sensitive to a young person’s maturity and their needs.
The Government website states:
“Educating all pupils and students about periods is crucial to tackling the stigma which surrounds it.”
Labour very much agrees, and the next Labour Government will ensure that the curriculum taught in all state-funded schools reflects the issues and diversities of our society and ensures that all young people leave school ready for life.
We have already pledged to deliver, in government, an expert-led curriculum and assessment review, which will learn from international best practice and research across all areas, from history to health, to make sure that our curriculum is as strong and relevant as it can be. I look forward to hearing more from Members in this place and from stakeholders when the review gets started, to ensure that we pick up on the issues that have been identified in the debate today.
Part of that will require having enough teachers in the classroom to improve children’s outcomes and ensure that the curriculum can be delivered to every child as intended. Over the past few years, we have seen dire statistics on teacher recruitment, especially in secondary schools. That is why we have made tackling the recruitment and retention crisis a real focus and announced fully funded plans to deliver 6,500 more teachers to fill the gaps across the profession.
However, I recognise that education will only go so far. This is very much a health issue too, and one on which far too many women are being failed. Nearly as many women in the UK have endometriosis as have diabetes, yet it is unseen in everyday life. Women are waiting far too long for treatment; gynaecology waiting lists have seen the biggest increase of all specialisms in the NHS since the pandemic. As the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell painfully set out, that leaves those experiencing endometriosis with years of unrelieved pain in the bowel or bladder, poor mental health, fertility problems—the list goes on.
I was glad to see the women’s health strategy published in 2022, but it must go further. We must address the NHS backlogs, bring waiting lists down and set out a plan to properly address the workplace challenges in the NHS. For those living with endometriosis who are impacted by poor mental health, Labour has committed to establish a mental health hub in every community. We will deliver mental health support in every secondary school and ensure that young people who are experiencing symptoms relating to such conditions, as well as all those struggling with their mental health, can access that support.
For too long, women’s health has been an afterthought. I am glad that debates like these are being held so that there is an opportunity to discuss these issues in Parliament. I reiterate my gratitude to the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell for bringing forward the debate and for all his contributions on this subject. I also thank all the other hon. Members who have attended for their contributions. We have to get the education right. We have to ensure that young people have the information they need to live a healthy life. I look forward to hearing from the Minister what steps the Government will take to improve our education in this important area.
The Minister for Schools (Damian Hinds)
May I say what a pleasure it is to see you in the Chair, Ms Vaz? I think this is the first time I have spoken under your chairship. I join others in congratulating my right hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Sir Alec Shelbrooke) on securing this important debate. I also thank everybody who has taken part, including the hon. Members for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon), my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes), and the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell), who spoke for the Opposition.
There is clearly strong cross-party support and drive to improve understanding of women’s health issues and ensure that young people are able to both navigate any issues they may face and, crucially, understand and support others. This has been an important follow-up to the debate that my right hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell led in this Chamber in 2022 on the importance of raising awareness of endometriosis and the support needed in the workplace, including to tackle the many everyday challenges it can bring for employers and staff, which he outlined so powerfully.
I have seen at first hand the excellent work that my right hon. Friend has been doing to improve information and education on endometriosis more generally. I applaud his dedication to keeping the issue in the spotlight. He made a prominent remark during the previous debate:
“It would take 20 days, at 24 hours a day, to name every woman in this country who suffers from endometriosis.”—[Official Report, 9 February 2022; Vol. 708, c. 394WH.]
That really brings home the scale of what we are talking about, as he said again.
Colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care are particularly engaged in these issues. The Government have made women’s health a top priority, and we are driving forward a women’s health strategy that is delivering a better standard of care for women and girls. Care for menstrual problems, including endometriosis, is one of the Government’s top delivery priorities for this year. We are investing £25 million to establish women’s health hubs, which will improve access to services for menstrual problems including endometriosis, contraception, menopause and more. Women’s health hubs will also take pressure off secondary care waiting lists.
Ensuring that women and girls have access to high-quality, trusted information is a top priority, too. We have created a women’s health area on the NHS website, which brings together over 100 pages of information, including on periods and endometriosis, and we have launched a video series on endometriosis on the NHS YouTube channel. In April, we ran a campaign in national media titles, supported by the women’s health ambassador for England, encouraging women not to suffer in silence if their periods or menopause symptoms affect their daily lives. That included a specific focus on endometriosis symptoms, and we are planning further campaigns across the year.
Sadly, we are all aware of the taboos and stigma that surround many areas of women’s health, with girls and women not feeling able to talk about issues such as periods. Too many girls and women are made to feel that very painful or heavy periods are normal and something they just have to get used to, rather than told about how they can seek help for those symptoms and understand what is happening to their bodies. Education can and does play an important role in complementing the women’s health strategy, and that of course includes education in schools. Ensuring that there is an early understanding of women’s health issues, including endometriosis, among boys as well as girls—I will come back to that point—can help in removing remaining stigmas and taboos.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell will be aware that last week we published for consultation updated draft statutory guidance for relationships, sex and health education. That is part of the Government’s plan to deliver a brighter future for Britain in which our young people are supported and given the right education at the right time, so they are safe, happy, healthy and equipped with the information they need to succeed.
The revised RSHE curriculum includes strong health education, which focuses on the core knowledge that children and young people need to thrive as they progress into the wider world. To get the RSHE guidance right, we have worked with stakeholders in the sector, faith groups, teachers, academics and young people themselves. We have also worked with colleagues across Government to ensure that the content is accurate and up to date, that the content of lessons is factual and appropriate, and that children have the capacity to fully understand everything they are being taught, including about puberty and menstrual and gynaecological health.
I am pleased to say that that has led us to make significant additions to teaching in this area, including improvements to teaching about health and, in particular, menstrual health. That is in addition to what is already in the national curriculum, in which the menstrual cycle is taught to pupils between 11 and 14 years of age as part of the key stage 3 science curriculum.
The updated draft RSHE guidance states that primary school pupils should be taught the key facts about the menstrual cycle, including physical and emotional changes, from year 4. The secondary curriculum includes more on menstrual and gynaecological health, now specifically including endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome, or PCOS, and heavy menstrual bleeding. Those areas are now specifically set out in the “Developing bodies” section of the guidance.
Sir Alec Shelbrooke
I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend the Minister for his response; he is outlining a very clear path to improvement. Will the education about endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome and so on in key stage 3 take place at the very start of year 7? I am concerned about taking it out of key stage 2, given that girls will have started their menstrual cycles; in the example I gave, the lady said that she was in pain from her very first period. I accept that he might not be able to respond right now, but can I push him on when the Department thinks it will be appropriate? Does it think it appropriate for girls who are getting ready to start their periods, or for girls who have started their periods?
Damian Hinds
That was a very important and clear question from my right hon. Friend, and I will note two important things in response. First, the guidance is a framework; it is not a week-by-week series of lessons. Earlier, he read out some examples of things that were closer to lesson plans and a sequenced curriculum, which is a further level of detail. The guidance sets out a framework, and then teaching materials are developed. He mentioned a couple of the third parties that are involved in that. We do not specify to schools which third-party material or self-created material they should use. We do not get into such a level of detail that we say, “From the first half-term in year 7, this is what should happen,” but we do not stop it happening either.
The second thing to note is that threaded throughout the RHSE guidance and, indeed, more broadly, is the flexibility for schools to respond to their own circumstances and their children, who they know better than anybody sitting in Whitehall ever could. The general point is that learning about menstruation from year 4 does not mean that teachers are unable to talk about it before year 4 if that is the appropriate thing to do because girls in the class are already at that stage. I hope that that helps to give a little more clarity, but, as ever, I would be happy to follow up with my right hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell separately, if he would like. The revised draft guidance sets out that curriculum content on puberty and menstruation should be complemented by sensitive arrangements to help girls prepare for and manage menstruation, including with requests for period products. In response to my right hon. Friend’s earlier point, schools should use appropriate language, such as period pads and menstrual products. The guidance also sets out how and when to seek support, including which adults they can speak to in school if they are worried about their health.
Rightly, the revised guidance supports young people to understand their changing bodies and feelings, how to protect their own health and wellbeing, and when a physical or mental health issue requires attention. We have introduced minimum ages in certain areas to ensure that children are not being taught sensitive or complex subjects before they are fully ready to understand them. But, as I was saying—this comes to the point made by the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle—when girls start menstruating earlier than year 4, schools have the flexibility to cover that.
The relationships, sex and health education guidance is statutory and part of the basic school curriculum, so schools must have regard to the guidance and can only deviate from it with good reason. I want to take this moment to be totally clear that we do not mean that the subjects should be taught only to girls or should not be taught to boys. It is true that in the previous edition of the guidance, that was there in the rubric. It not being there does not mean that that is no longer the case; it should be taken as read that this is for all pupils.
As the hon. Member for Strangford and others said, it is true that there has sometimes been a tendency—perhaps in generations past, sometimes in generations present—to use phrases such as “women’s problems” and to generalise things as if it is not important that everyone can understand and distinguish between them. That is what we need to move beyond. As I said earlier, relationships, sex and health education is not only about understanding what is happening to our bodies; it is also about understanding the people around us and what we may come into contact with in future.
In an analogous sense, I was pleased that in the 2019 edition of the guidance we included the menopause for the first time, which generations of boys in particular, but also of girls at that age, did not know about. It was not about saying that that was about to happen to them, but of course in our wider lives—remember that this is relationships education as well as sex and health education—it is important that we are all educated on these things.
Sir Alec Shelbrooke
I am grateful for the Minister’s response, but—there is always a but—will he specify whether endometriosis will be taught in schools? I cannot dig out whether he said that it will definitely be taught in schools, so I want clarification on that.
Damian Hinds
I did. Specifically, in key stage 3, in lower secondary school, yes, it should be part of the curriculum at that stage.
Caroline Nokes
Apologies for not having dug around in any great detail in the very recently released guidance, and I absolutely appreciate that this is a debate about endometriosis, but what we might call problem periods can cover a whole range of conditions. We heard evidence on my Committee from Vicky Pattison, who talked about her severe pre-menstrual stress—I cannot remember the precise acronym—and Naga Munchetty spoke of adenomyosis, which I have finally learned how to pronounce. Are both those conditions also included? Teaching young girls to have the language around what is normal and what is not, and giving them the confidence to speak about it, is about more than just saying, “And you might get endometriosis”. There is a whole range of conditions out there.
Damian Hinds
To come back to my earlier point, the secondary curriculum includes more on menstrual and gynaecological health, now specifically including endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome and heavy menstrual bleeding. Beyond that, I will have to ask for my right hon. Friend’s forgiveness and ask that I may write to her or that we can follow up separately.
Ofsted will inspect schools on their delivery of the RSHE curriculum. As part of their personal development judgment, inspectors will discuss with schools whether they teach RSHE in line with the RSHE statutory guidance. The guidance is now out for consultation for eight weeks and I have a feeling that colleagues in the Chamber or some of the outside bodies they are in close touch with might take part in that consultation. We will take all responses to the consultation into account in the final version of the guidance.
We are expecting a huge amount of interest in the updated draft guidance and I can confirm from the last time that we had a consultation on draft RSHE guidance that there is, understandably and rightly, a lot of public interest. We hope to analyse that over the summer and publish a final version soon after. Schools will then require time to implement any changes to the curriculum and to consult parents about those changes. It would not be fair to expect them to deliver new content without some time to prepare for it, but where they are ready to deliver new content, they can do so immediately. Indeed, I am sure many schools already cover endometriosis when discussing healthy periods and we have encouraged that.
Following a meeting with the chairs of the all-party parliamentary group on endometriosis in 2021—at the time they were the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle and our much-loved and much-missed late colleague Sir David Amess—the then Schools Minister agreed to update the Department’s teacher training module on the changing adolescent body so that it too included a direct reference to endometriosis. Once we have finalised the RSHE statutory guidance later this year, we will update the teacher training modules and consider whether any further support is required.
To date, we have invested more than £3 million in a central support package to increase schools’ confidence to teach such subjects, including teacher training modules, non-statutory guidance, a train the trainer programme and teacher webinars on domestic violence, pornography and sexual exploitation. They are all available on a one-stop page for teachers on gov.uk. Of course, there is always more to do to help schools and we will look at that after the publication of the guidance and when we have listened to school leaders, stakeholders and others.
The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North moved into some parallel important areas of mental health and her party’s concentration on mental health support in secondary school. I remind her that we are already in the process of rolling out mental health support teams across the country. We think that is important for primary as well as secondary schools and it has to be done at a pace at which we can recruit the people required for those teams. As she will know, we have also offered a training grant to all schools—primary as well as secondary—for training for a mental health lead within the existing school staff, with a high level of take-up already.
I am enormously grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell for his support in securing the debate. He has raised some very important concerns, as have others. I hope that he is pleased to see the Government’s continued work to improve menstrual and gynaecological health in schools today and for future generations of women. The steps we have taken so far to improve health education are extremely important and we really want to get them right. The Government will continue to make a commitment to support the policy area because it is the right thing to do. I thank my right hon. Friend once more for his continued drive on this important subject and for bringing this crucial debate to Westminster Hall today.
Sir Alec Shelbrooke
Clearly, today’s debate has shown that this subject is cross-party. There are no politics in this; it is highly important for young people’s health and the consequences that that will have through their lifetime. I am grateful for the Minister’s response and I am glad to see the curriculum is moving forward. However, he can rest assured that I will still be at his door, nagging to make sure we get exactly what we need to give young people and people the support and education they need throughout their lives.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered endometriosis education in schools.
Written Correction
Ministerial Correction
Transport
(7 months ago)
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Simon Lightwood
I will be brief. In my reading of the Department for Transport website and the “Low Traffic Neighbourhoods” research report, at no point is it mentioned that it is an interim or draft report. Will the hon. Member elaborate on that and explain, if it is an interim report, when the final report is expected?
Guy Opperman
I am afraid the hon. Gentleman has misinterpreted that. The final report will be this summer.
[Official Report, 20 May 2024; Vol. 750, c. 272WH.]
Written correction submitted by the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman):
Guy Opperman
I am afraid the hon. Gentleman has misinterpreted that. The final guidance will be this summer.
Written Statements
National Security and Investment Act: Statement for the Purposes of Section 3
(7 months ago)
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The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Secretary of State in the Cabinet Office (Oliver Dowden)
On 18 April I published the Government’s response to the national security and investment call for evidence, which sought feedback from stakeholders on how the Government can increase understanding of the National Security and Investment Act 2021 and the risks it seeks to address. As part of the Government’s response, I committed to publishing an updated section 3 statement setting out the factors I expect to take into account when exercising the call-in power under the NSI Act. I also committed to publish further guidance on a range of topics to help stakeholders understand how the Act works.
Today I have fulfilled both of those commitments by laying an amended section 3 statement before Parliament and publishing updates to the extensive market guidance the Government have published on www.gov.uk.
The previous version of the section 3 statement was published in November 2021, ahead of the NSI Act’s commencement. While this updated version has a high degree of continuity with the previous version, several key changes have been made to better explain how the Secretary of State has used, and will continue to use, the Act’s powers.
These changes include further information on the approach the Government take to assessing risk in relation to:
Trigger events—including the circumstances in which certain acquisitions could be considered under the NSI Act, including the incorporation of new entities, formation of joint ventures, and outward direct investment.
The targets of acquisitions—including how the Government may consider technology transfer risks when reviewing asset acquisitions.
Acquirers—including where the Government may see risk from UK acquirers or acquirers that have previously been cleared through the NSI system.
The control being acquired—including how the Government may consider control risk in cases involving passive and non-controlling investments.
How decisions are made—including improved examples of how the Government assesses target risk, acquirer risk and control risk.
Today I have also updated the guidance for the NSI system, which is published on www.gov.uk. This includes additional guidance for higher education institutions as well as new guidance on how the Act can apply to outward direct investment and how statutory timelines are calculated. A full summary of the changes is available on www.gov.uk.
I will place a copy of the updated NSI statement for the purposes of section 3 in the Libraries of both Houses.
[HCWS490]
UK Youth Parliament: British Youth Council Closure
(7 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Stuart Andrew)
The UK Youth Parliament was formed in 1999 and is made up of 300 Members of Youth Parliament aged 11 to 18, who represent thousands of young people from their communities across the UK. MYPs are elected to represent the views of their young constituents both to the Government and to national and local decision makers. They meet regularly to hold debates and plan campaigns at a local, regional and national level, which includes an annual debate in the House of Commons.
The British Youth Council, which had delivered the UK Youth Parliament since 2011, announced its closure on 21 March 2024. Since then, we have been doing all we can to ensure that the UKYP can continue with minimum disruption. In the immediate weeks following the announcement, I met with key regional delivery organisations, Members of Youth Parliament, interested MPs, youth organisations and other relevant parties.
Today, less than two months after the closure of the BYC and following extensive assessment of providers’ capability and capacity, the Government are announcing they have appointed the National Youth Agency to deliver the UKYP programme for the remainder of the financial year 2024-25, in partnership with a range of organisations based across the United Kingdom.
My Department will now begin a formal review of the UKYP to help inform the longer term future of the programme, and will work closely with young people throughout this process. In addition, my Department is exploring its role in supporting the delivery of other youth voice activities which were previously facilitated by the BYC. We remain open to proposals from organisations or sector bodies on how these might be delivered by others in the future.
I hope that Members of Youth Parliament will feel encouraged by this news and will continue to be involved in the UKYP.
[HCWS487]
Nuclear Test Veterans: Atomic Weapons Establishment Records
(7 months ago)
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The Minister for Defence People and Families (Dr Andrew Murrison)
On 28 November 2023, I made a commitment during the debate on Nuclear Test Veterans: Medical Records (Official Report, column 245WH) to personally review records held by the Atomic Weapons Establishment relating to nuclear test veterans. Having reviewed 151 records, I am today publishing those papers on www.gov.uk and also placing them in the Library of the House.
The titles of 151 records were promulgated in responses provided by the AWE to Freedom of Information Act 2000 requests on 5 July and 12 September 2023, following a search for records using the terms “blood” and “urine” within a database named Merlin.
The Merlin database contains over 28,000 records relating to historical technical and scientific documentation on the UK’s nuclear testing programme. It is held and maintained by AWE and was developed to store relevant factual documentary evidence considered during nuclear test veterans’ legal action for compensation.
The Merlin database does not contain, and AWE does not hold, any medical records for any former service personnel. Any medical records taken either before, during or after participation in the UK nuclear weapon tests should be held in individual military medical records in the Government’s archives, which can be accessed on request. A veteran, or representative acting on their behalf, can make a subject access request to gain access to records held on them. The records of deceased veterans can be requested by surviving family members through an FOI request. Guidance is set out on: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/requests-for-personal-data-and-service-records.
AWE does hold, and routinely responds to requests for, the dosimetry data of nuclear test veterans and will continue to do so. Further information on submitting a SAR or FOI to AWE for this data can be found here: https://www.awe.co.uk/freedom-of-information-act/.
Concurrently, the Ministry of Defence is also conducting a review of around 74,000 historic files in the ES and AB series relating to the UK’s nuclear weapons programme. There has been speculation that this work relates to the concerns of nuclear test veterans, which is not the case. The files were withdrawn from the National Archives to be reviewed due to emerging national security considerations. To date, approximately 68,000 files have been released back to public access. As this security review has progressed, those records which may relate to historic testing have been, and will continue to be, prioritised.
I would like to make clear that the Ministry of Defence, including its agencies and arm’s length bodies, does not withhold any personal data or medical records from nuclear test veterans.
[HCWS486]
Third Carbon Budget: Final Statement
(7 months ago)
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The Minister for Energy Security and Net Zero (Justin Tomlinson)
I am making this statement for the benefit of hon. and right hon. Members to bring to your attention the publication of the final statement of the third carbon budget today. The third carbon budget, which ran from 2018 to 2022, was set in 2009 according to what was considered an ambitious but technically feasible emissions reductions trajectory at the time. This statement confirms we have not only achieved, but also over-delivered on the target for this period by 15%.
By the end of the period in 2022, UK net greenhouse gas emissions were 50% lower than the base year emissions, and provisional data for 2023 shows we have gone even further. This makes the UK the first major economy to halve its emissions since 1990, while also growing its economy by around 80%.
The Climate Change Act was passed in 2008 and amended in 2019 to increase the ambition of our 2050 target to net zero. The Act sets out the legal framework to keep us on track to net zero, with carbon budgets setting interim targets over five-year periods. It also includes flexibilities to support the delivery of carbon budgets, such as the use of international carbon units and ability to carry forward over-performance from one carbon budget period to the next to incentivise early delivery of emissions savings. The statement published today confirms that we have not relied on international carbon units to meet the third carbon budget.
When the Climate Change Act was being passed, the then Government insisted that the option to carry forward over-delivery was essential to incentivise early action. I am also pleased to confirm today that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Claire Coutinho) has decided to forgo the option to carry forward any over-performance from the third carbon budget to the fourth carbon budget. We are already on track to over-deliver once again in the fourth carbon budget without the need to carry-over.
The performance and the decision I have announced today demonstrate this Government’s unwavering commitment to meeting our ambitious emissions targets, including the legislated carbon budgets and net zero by 2050, as well as our delivery on emissions reductions, which go well beyond what any other major economy has achieved, all the while taking a pragmatic, proportionate and realistic approach to doing so, easing burdens on families and businesses.
[HCWS484]
Expanding the Sustainable Farming Incentive Offer
(7 months ago)
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The Minister for Food, Farming and Fisheries (Sir Mark Spencer)
Today, the Government will publish the details of the expanded sustainable farming incentive offer, providing significant improvements and expansion to the scheme, so that they work for farmers and their businesses.
In six months, almost a quarter of all farmers have applied to join the SFI. This is the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ most popular agri-environmental scheme to date. This level of interest underscores the importance of schemes that are flexible and straightforward, qualities we have worked to incorporate based on the direct input of the farming community.
From July, farmers and land managers will have the opportunity to access an expanded offer, bringing together and enhancing the SFI and countryside stewardship mid tier. This will simplify and streamline the application process, allowing farmers to focus on what they do best: producing food. For the first time, the SFI is available to those who did not receive basic payment scheme payments.
The expanded SFI offer will increase the number of actions to 102, covering a wide range of themes. The 102 actions comprise of all the actions currently available in the SFI offer, 23 new actions including agroforestry, precision farming and no-till practices for the first time, a new and improved offer for upland farmers, a much wider range of actions accessible to tenants, and 57 improved versions of actions currently in countryside stewardship mid tier, including one endorsed action initially—species-rich grassland—which will come online when the offer opens. New actions will support flood and water management, helping businesses to become more resilient to the changing climate and challenging weather conditions. We are developing even more actions to be added to the expanded SFI offer later this year, including 16 more actions that were announced in January’s agricultural transition plan update.
To safeguard domestic food production, in March 2024 we placed limits on the amount of land farmers can enter into six SFI actions. In the expanded SFI offer, we are placing limits on an additional four actions to further safeguard domestic food production.
We are doubling the management payment, recognising the work farmers do to enter these schemes. From summer, those with existing agreements will receive up to an additional £1,000 in the first year of their agreement, paid quarterly. The management payment will pay £40 per hectare for up to the first 50 hectares entered into an eligible agreement and £20/ha for the first 50 hectares for years two and three.
On average, farmers taking part in the SFI are receiving more money than they would have done through the BPS. The average value per hectare of applications so far is £147. Alongside delinked payments for small farms this year —£115/ha—this adds up to more than the value of BPS per hectare. Farmers received £233/ha through BPS but are receiving an average of £262 through delinked payments and the sustainable farming incentive.
We have designed the SFI so that it works for small farms. In addition to the increased payment for the management payment, which favours smaller farms, we have extended eligibility to new entrant farmers and smallholders and quadrupled the number of actions available.
Our aim is to provide farmers with the necessary tools, funding and support to navigate the challenges posed by the changing climate, such as the recent prolonged wet weather. This will ensure their businesses remain resilient and productive while delivering environmental benefits. The expanded sustainable farming incentive offer and the protection of the farming budget at its current level is a clear indication of our dedication to the agricultural sector, and we are confident that it will contribute positively to both our environment and food security.
DEFRA invites all eligible farmers and land managers to explore the new expanded offer and take advantage of the benefits it provides.
This summer, we will publish information on countryside stewardship higher tier, including details of each higher-tier action, eligibility, how to apply and how to request specialist advice. From later this summer, farmers will be able to start working with Natural England or Forestry Commission advisers to prepare to apply. Online applications for higher tier will open in the rural payments service this winter. Applications will then stay open on a rolling basis, so farmers can choose when to apply.
[HCWS491]
Lord Walney’s Report into Political Violence and Disruption
(7 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (James Cleverly)
The Government appointed Lord Walney in 2019 to advise the Government on political violence and extremism. During his review, he has engaged Government, public bodies, international partners, academia, civil society and those personally affected by violent disruption and extremism, and has thoroughly explored the evidence. The report he has provided to Government is extensive and compelling.
The report has been laid before Parliament today and it will also be available on www.gov.uk.
Lord Walney’s timely report identifies a rising extremist trend in this country. Its central finding is that political intimidation and the incitement of hatred by extremist groups and individuals are inhibiting the essential rights and freedoms of the general public and their representatives in politics. In recent months in particular, we have too often seen intimidatory and aggressive protest activity, with frequent disruption to our peaceful democratic process: be that protests outside MP’s home addresses, council meetings interrupted, or speaking events shut down.
Unfortunately, this has a very real impact on the elected representatives who choose to serve in public life. Lord Walney highlights a 2023 Local Government Association survey finding that 70% of local councillors
“felt at risk at least some of the time while fulfilling their role”.
We must be prepared to stand up for our shared values in all circumstances, no matter how difficult.
As Home Secretary, I will take every possible step to safeguard the people and institutions upon which our democracy depends. The Government recently committed an additional £31 million to bolstering the protection of elected representatives and our democratic processes, an investment which will be used to enhance police capabilities, increase private security support for those facing a higher risk, and expand cyber-security advice. This investment is underpinned by the defending democracy policing protocol, agreed with police chiefs, to ensure a robust policing response to disruptive activity, including the provision of dedicated, named police contacts for all elected representatives and candidates to liaise with on security matters.
As Lord Walney sets out, it is vital that we take action to manage and limit the impact of protests that descend into violence and disruption. In recent months, we have seen too often vile displays of antisemitism on our streets and aggressive, disruptive tactics deployed by some protesters. That’s why, over the coming weeks, the Government will look at Lord Walney’s recommendations on public order and changing the thresholds for imposing conditions on protests and the way in which they are applied. This includes amending the threshold to prevent protests from going ahead on account of the cumulative impact of serious disruption, or where there is the threat of intimidating or abusive conduct based on the persistence of previous arrests. In addition, we will consider his recommendation for greater responsibilities being put on the organisers of protests to limit disruption, and to allow the police to account for demands on their resource in setting conditions to ensure wider public safety in their jurisdictions beyond protests. I will be considering the merits of these suggestions across the coming weeks.
I am already introducing measures through the Criminal Justice Bill that will crack down on dangerous disorder, many of which were inspired by close working with Lord Walney over recent months, as well as ensuring that the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and Public Order Act 2023 are implemented at pace. The Government have also introduced serious disruption prevention orders to allow courts to place requirements or prohibitions on an individual aged 18 or over which they consider necessary and proportionate to prevent that individual from causing serious disruption.
We must go further in tackling the root causes. In this vein, the Government have updated the definition of extremism to be used by Departments and officials, alongside a set of engagement principles. This is to ensure they do not—inadvertently or otherwise—provide a platform, funding, or legitimacy to groups or individuals who attempt to advance extremist ideologies that would deny our fundamental rights and freedoms.
I thank Lord Walney for his tireless effort in bringing the report together and will continue to work with him to ensure his report informs ongoing policy development. I will update Parliament on the Government’s progress on the issues raised in Lord Walney’s report in due course.
[HCWS492]
Post-legislative Scrutiny of the Criminal FinancesAct 2017
(7 months ago)
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The Minister for Security (Tom Tugendhat)
The Government have today submitted a memorandum to the Home Affairs Committee regarding post-legislative scrutiny of the Criminal Finances Act 2017.
The Home Office has carried out the post-legislative scrutiny, which includes an assessment of how the Act has worked in practice, and set out its findings in a Command Paper to the Committee.
The memorandum has been laid before the House as a Command Paper (CP 1088) and published on www.gov.uk. Copies will also be available from the Vote Office.
[HCWS489]
Tackling Illegal Migration
The Minister for Countering Illegal Migration (Michael Tomlinson)
The Government’s No. 1 priority is keeping the UK safe and our border secure. Illegal migration reduces our capability and capacity to help those who most need our support. It puts lives in danger by placing vulnerable people into the hands of smugglers.
We are tackling the evil people-smuggling gangs behind the deadly small boats crossings. We are utilising a range of activity: legislative, operational, and diplomatic. I want to provide an update on key operational lines of effort where we are delivering on our promise to tackle illegal migration.
So far this year we have already returned over 10,000 people who were in the UK illegally. As of 19 May, provisional data shows 10,789 returns in 2024. This is over 2,000 more returns than the same point last year. This includes the removal of 1,708 foreign national offenders from the UK, which is over 400 more than the same point in 2023.
Returning people with no right to be here is only one part of our plan and we continue to deliver on wider enforcement action.
The Nationality and Borders Act 2022 gave the Government new powers to tackle criminality, secure our borders and deter people from making dangerous journeys to the UK. Provisional data shows that:
The Home Office Immigration Enforcement Criminal and Financial Investigation teams have arrested over 1,000 persons in connection with various offences under the Act.
Of these, over 750 have been charged and over 540 have been convicted, resulting to date in over 460 years sentencing in total.
This includes the arrest of over 190 individuals identified as small boat pilots. Of these, over 160 have been charged and over 110 have been convicted, resulting in over 75 years in sentencing in total.
In 2023, the NCA conducted the biggest ever international operation targeting networks suspected of using small boats for people smuggling with 136 boats and 45 outboard engines seized. In total, over the last year over 352 boats and 113 engines have been seized by the NCA and international partners.
This comes as an additional £25 million is given to the National Crime Agency to sustain, and scale up, these efforts to disrupt people smugglers and their operations.
The Government doubled the funding available to the National Crime Agency in 2023 to prevent the supply of boats and engines.
Our work across all of these fronts will continue to stop the boats and tackle illegal migration and all of the harms it causes.
Official Statistics:
The Home Office regularly publishes data on immigration on gov.uk. Quarterly statistics can be found in the immigration system statistics quarterly release, and irregular migration to the UK statistics releases. The next update to these publications will be on 23 May 2024.
Additional data is available in the migration transparency data and statistics relating to illegal migration.
[HCWS488]
Prison Safety: Wet-shave Razors
(7 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Edward Argar)
Safety in prisons continues to be of paramount importance, and we remain committed to tackling violence against both staff and prisoners. When the Government launched the Prisons Strategy White Paper in 2021, we pledged to look at alternatives to the use of wet-shave razors in prisons, which can be used to self-harm and to carry out assaults. Recent serious assaults on prison staff illustrate the potential danger posed by wet-shave razors in prisons.
With this in mind, over the past six-month period we have undertaken pilots of electric shavers as an alternative to wet-shave razors at HMP Leicester and HMP Swansea, with a view to eliminating razor attacks on staff and prisoners.
Following these pilots, I am pleased to announce that my Department has decided to implement a phased removal of wet-shave razors from the adult male closed estate. This phased removal will start with 30 prisons in the adult male closed estate with the highest levels of violence, with the intention of a subsequent roll-out across the whole adult male estate, subject to available funding.
We will initially invest over £1.5 million this year for the first tranche of 30 prisons to provide prisoners with alternative electric shavers, which have been developed specifically for the Prison Service. We will work closely with key stakeholders, including trade unions, on the planning and implementation of this work.
My Department is committed to delivering on the promises we made in the Prisons Strategy White Paper and to tackling violence and self-harm in our prisons.
[HCWS493]
Move to Universal Credit: Delivery Update
(7 months ago)
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The Minister for Employment (Jo Churchill)
Universal credit supports over 6 million people, providing critical financial support and tailored Work Coach services that meet the needs of individual customers. It removes the “cliff edge” for those working up to 16 hours, allowing customers to increase their earnings, while supported by a generous taper rate. This ensures that it pays to work and gives customers increased financial security as they move into work.
In April 2022 we estimated that there were 2.6 million households on legacy benefits in scope to “Move to Universal Credit”. Since July 2022, we have smoothly migrated over 275,000 households from legacy benefits, predominantly tax credit households, to universal credit. By the end of March 2024, we had issued migration notices to over 540,000 households—exceeding our ambition to send 500,000 migration notices by that point.
On 19 April, the Prime Minister announced that we would build on this strong delivery and accelerate the movement of the remaining employment and support allowance and ESA with housing benefit customers to universal credit. Our exact delivery approach and timelines will be informed by detailed planning and ongoing engagement with stakeholders. Backed by additional funding from the Treasury, we expect plans to be agreed by summer 2024. Our current planning assumption is that we would begin notifying this group in September 2024, with the aim of notifying everyone to make the move by December 2025.
Department for Work and Pensions officials have already written to all chief executives of local authorities and members of the well-established universal credit stakeholder network comprising over 200 representatives across the charity, welfare rights and social rented sector landlord community. We also wrote to officials in the devolved administrations and to Citizens Advice given its important role as a delivery partner for Help to Claim.
We estimate that around half of ESA customers will receive over £100 a month more on universal credit, as well as benefiting from the improved work incentives and better labour market support it provides.
The Government have given a commitment that, at the point of transition, no eligible customers who are invited to “Move to Universal Credit” and whose circumstances remain the same will have a lower entitlement to universal credit than they had to legacy benefits. Where necessary, eligible customers will be awarded transitional protection.
Accelerating the “Move to Universal Credit” allows us to build on the strong progress to date, utilising the expertise and knowledge of key programme and operational staff, to transition these households.
The Department has also developed and tested a new “enhanced support” journey for income support and ESA customers who require additional assistance. This process is now in place for these customer groups and involves outbound telephony, system checks and home visits, tailored to individual needs.
The Department has full confidence in its ability to successfully move the final group of legacy benefit customers to the simpler, more effective support system that is universal credit.
[HCWS485]
Office for Nuclear Regulation Corporate Plan 2024-25
(7 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Paul Maynard)
Later today I will lay before this House the “Office for Nuclear Regulation Corporate Plan 2024-2025”. This document will also be published on the ONR website.
I can confirm, in accordance with paragraph 25(3) of schedule 7 to the Energy Act 2013, that there have been no exclusions to the published documents on the grounds of national security.
[HCWS483]
Grand Committee
Arrangement of Business
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Watkins of Tavistock) (CB)
My Lords, if there is a Division in the Chamber while we are sitting, this Committee will adjourn as soon as the Division Bells are rung and resume after 10 minutes.
Higher Education (Industry and Regulators Committee Report)
(7 months ago)
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Baroness Taylor of Bolton
That this House takes note of the Report from the Industry and Regulators Committee Must do better: the Office for Students and the looming crisis facing higher education (2nd Report, Session 2022-23, HL Paper 246).
Baroness Taylor of Bolton (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the members of the committee, who put so much work into compiling this report, and our staff, who were extremely helpful. The noble Lord, Lord Hollick, was the chair of the committee when we started this report in March last year, but we also had a lot of help from our special adviser, Mike Ratcliffe, and from the committee staff of Dom Walsh, Dominic Cooper and Itumeleng Osupeng. I should also mention Alec Brand.
As I say, we started our inquiry into the OfS and higher education in March 2023, a time when we felt that the higher education sector was facing a whole raft of challenges. They have intensified since then, and I think we were right to decide that this should be our priority at that time. The challenges that higher education is facing pre-date but were exacerbated by issues such as Covid. It is important to remember that some of these are very long-standing challenges that higher education has been trying to deal with for quite some time. We had the raft of difficulties, and we have had issues such as the loss of EU research funding that have challenged universities even further. There have, of course, been industrial disputes, which have not helped, but I think that all the issues such as inflation, the cost of living and the lack of funding have made industrial action more likely.
The committee’s overarching finding was that the Office for Students was performing poorly; it is important to make that basic point. We did not choose our title casually—in fact, we had many alternatives that could have been a bit more colourful, shall we say. We said it “Must do better” because this is an important institution that regulates a very important sector of the British economy, and for it to be performing poorly is extremely important and a very real problem for us all. I think that this report is one of the strongest of recent House of Lords committee reports, and therefore should be taken seriously.
The name of this organisation, the Office for Students, was chosen deliberately by the Government to imply that it would put the interests of students before the interests of providers, yet our investigations found that neither students nor providers of higher education have confidence in the OfS. There were poor relations with both providers and students, and a very clear perception of a lack of independence of the OfS from government.
I will talk about several of our conclusions; I know that colleagues will venture more widely. My overriding concern as we went through this inquiry was the complacency on the part of the OfS about what we described as “the looming crisis” in higher education. There is more discussion of it now—just recently we saw some alarming figures—but even when we were taking evidence more than a year ago, we could identify severe difficulties in the whole sector, not just the odd institution.
The freezing of tuition fees for so long meant that many universities were in real difficulty. The Russell group has suggested that its universities are losing £4,000 for every domestic student. Perhaps not surprisingly, that has pushed universities to become increasingly dependent on cross-subsidisation from international and postgraduate students, whose fees are not capped. That has been a feature for many universities, not just one or two. On the other hand, recent statements and comments from Government Ministers that there should be a reduction in the number of international students are causing real concern and may already be impacting international applications.
We raised alarms about the information we had on the financial challenges but, at the time, the OfS gave very general assurances about the health of the sector and did not share our concern about the direction in which things were going. However, in its most recent financial sustainability report, published just last week, the Office for Students says that 40% of HE institutions are expected to be in deficit this year. That is after many institutions have made severe efficiency savings— or cuts, as they are probably better called. In many institutions there is little leeway for further cuts without significant consequences, and this could affect the quality of the education they offer.
I have a couple of specific questions for the Minister. What action are the Government taking in relation to the looming—indeed, current—crisis facing the HE sector? What is the Government’s attitude to international student recruitment? Clarity on that point would be very helpful all round. I wonder whether the Government really understand the danger of institutions collapsing and/or a decline in the quality of the education provided.
One of my main memories of the evidence we received was that of a vice-chancellor who said that, were his institution to see financial problems looming, he would not talk to the OfS about possible solutions and long-term viability because he thought that its attitude would not be supportive but combative, and that it would look for problems and criticisms of the institution. It is really worrying that the reputation of the OfS is so bad within the sector.
I have heard anecdotally from some in higher education that our report has prompted some change in tone and that the OfS is sometimes using different language in its visits and contacts. If that is the case, it proves that the House of Lords can have a positive impact.
I said earlier that the name OfS was deliberately chosen to imply that it was on the side of students. The committee found that, despite its name, it was unclear how the OfS defines student interests. Indeed, it was said that there was a suspicion that the term was used as a smokescreen for the political priorities of the Minister. We were given the example of free speech, which we heard was not a priority concern of students. We took direct evidence from students on the concerns about OfS engagement. We particularly heard allegations that the OfS issued veiled threats over the future of its student panel when individual students on it were making their concerns known. The OfS responded to our criticism and said that it would expand its plans for a review of its approach to student engagement. That is to be welcomed, as is the fact that it will take up our recommendation to report annually on student engagement. Does the Minister have any information about when we might see a report on that?
There is another area of real concern and puzzlement. Why has there been such a breakdown in the relationship between the Office for Students and the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education? The QAA, which assessed quality and standards until 2023, was widely accepted as a significant and independent body doing a very good job. Things are now being changed, and this is possibly going to result in a move away from European standards. This in turn could damage the international reputation of some of our universities, which have such a high reputation historically. The Minister needs to clarify this because I am not sure that the OfS has the capacity to assess the quality of all HE institutions. The OfS has completed only eight such studies and reports so far. Can it do it for the entire sector and in a timely way? Will it be as professional, comprehensive and reassuring as the system we had with the QAA? What happens there really matters.
Other concerns that we had were about the burden of regulatory compliance. We needed some clarity on the OfS’s priorities. UUK says that in each university 17.6 staff, on average, are involved in compliance. Those people are having to deal with the bureaucracy that the Government often say they wish to reduce. It would be good if the Minister could comment.
I must also say a word about political interference. There is clearly a concept throughout higher education that the OfS is there to do the wishes of the Government, rather than act as a totally independent body. I am sure that the Minister is well aware of the criticisms that have been made—the idea that if there is a headline in the Daily Mail, the Minister will tell the OfS to go hard on that particular issue. That is the perception, and it rings true in many respects. I must also mention other issues because the perception of interference is not helped by the fact that the chairman of the OfS takes the Conservative Whip in this House. The all-party committee as a whole thought that anybody in such a significant role should not be taking any party Whip when it came to activities within Parliament.
Our report has shed light on the very widespread concerns that exist. The challenges in HE are intensifying and are very real indeed. The OfS is now beginning to recognise that some of the issues we raise are pertinent and need attention, but the challenges facing the sector are very significant. I have long believed, and have said for many years, that pre-legislative scrutiny is helpful to Parliament and to government in getting things right. What we have never done is sufficient post-legislative scrutiny; I have now suggested to our committee that we should do post-report scrutiny to see whether our committee’s report has had a real impact and made a difference. I think it is beginning to, but the committee will return to this issue to try to make sure that the OfS improves its performance.
Lord Wharton of Yarm (Con)
My Lords, I draw attention to my registered interests. Clearly, as chair of the board of the OfS I am also bound by the Addison rules, so I cannot reply directly to observations that noble Lords may make or to committee reports in this House. I am rather restricted to making what will be a short contribution to this debate and I am here to speak as a Member of this House, rather than as the chair of that body. That said, there are some things that I can say. While I should not stray into comments on the day-to-day operations of the OfS, I wanted to be here to make a few general points.
Any public body must have regard to its stakeholders. There must also be a robust and honest two-way conversation and communication. A regulator cannot always be appreciated by the regulated, and one of the challenges in higher education in England is that, until recently, it did not have a regulator at all. This has been a significant transition, and a large number of people have worked extremely hard to bring it about. I pay tribute to all those who worked diligently to register providers after the Higher Education and Research Act 2017 came into operation. It is particularly good to see the noble Lord, Lord Johnson of Marylebone, here; I particularly recognise the role that he played in creating the accountability and protection that exist today.
Since the initial creation of the OfS, the pace of registrations has of course slowed. There are, though, still new entrants to the higher education system in England, and it is more important than ever, given some of the challenges that the noble Baroness mentioned, that we have a robust and thorough approvals process in place. The Office for Students regulates more than 400 higher education providers. Put another way, there is more than one higher education provider for every two noble Lords in this House. Given the range of activities they undertake and the importance of what they do, the task of regulating them is not a small one, but I think it is generally accepted that regulation of some form is much needed, even if there is debate about the shape that the regulation should take.
Any regulator must undertake a significant sector engagement programme, in this case including ongoing dialogue with students and providers. This does not mean that everyone at all times necessarily likes what needs to be said, but openness and engagement matter to any public body or regulator—and, of course, this is no exception.
We live in challenging times for higher education. Events have highlighted a range of issues for the sector and the outlook for the financial sustainability of higher education has worsened, though the sector itself predicts some, albeit limited, improvement in the short term. This is a topic on which I have had a number of conversations with the noble Lord, Lord Willetts. I do not know what comments he plans to make today, but his advice to me and ongoing support are much appreciated and I recognise his quite exceptional knowledge of the workings of the higher educational sector.
The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act means that matters of free speech at higher education providers will fall under a new regime and, for the first time, student unions will also be regulated. This comes at a time of increased debate over issues such as current events in the Middle East, in particular, which can lead to quite passionate views being held and expressed. They can also lead to tensions, and it is no small task getting the balance of that regulation right. It is important that the will of Parliament is reflected, given that the Act was passed by Parliament and the requirements created in legislation, and that the correct approach is taken.
I look forward to the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Mann. I do not know what he plans to say today but, if he touches on some of his excellent work in the area of anti-Semitism, I am sure that will be of interest to noble Lords and certainly to me. Similarly, protection from harassment and sexual misconduct is a live topic and must be seen in tandem with the free-speech debate changes that are to come. The student interest is central to all this and must of course remain so in the future.
I have to be careful not to stray into what may breach convention. As much as I would like to say a lot more, these brief points are very general as a result. It is for the Minister to respond and I look forward to her contribution. It is, though, reassuring to see the continued interest in the future of higher education from across this House. I know that many in the broader higher education community will be listening to what is said today with interest, and that the words of noble Lords in here will certainly have an impact outside this place.
Lord Parekh (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the Industry and Regulators Committee on its excellent report, which raises some important issues. Precisely because it ranges over a large number of issues, different people will pick up on different bits of it. I thought I would pick up on an aspect that may not be picked up in a gathering such as this, a conversation on what is happening to the higher education system in general; on the problems that the higher education system faces; and on what we can do about it. This issue requires a national conversation about what we should be doing.
I want to contribute three ideas to that conversation today. First, it is clear that our universities are passing through a difficult phase. Some 40% of England’s universities have budget deficits. Courses are being closed. Staff are being retrenched and so on. We know all this, but I think there is a danger of panicking and creating a situation where we end up following courses of action that we might regret. It is important to bear in mind that this is happening mostly with universities in England. For universities in Scotland, the score is slightly different; it is therefore difficult to arrive at a single homogeneous national perspective.
Secondly, this kind of crisis is not new. We have been hearing about it for the 40 years that I have been in this country. It is important to note that, happily, the crisis we are facing is financial, not intellectual—as I discovered when I went out to India as a vice-chancellor of one of the finest universities, where the crisis is intellectual. Teachers have few commitments. Academic pursuits are not valued. Happily, our crisis is largely financial; I say “happily” because it is in contrast to the academic and intellectual crisis that countries such as India and even China face. On the financial level, it is worth bearing in mind that we are not bankrupt: nearly £40 billion is contributed to universities from public funds. I say all this not to calm things down but simply to suggest that there is no need for immediate action. There is a need for immediate reflection. We need to look at ourselves and ask where our universities need to go.
With that in mind, I start with the three ideas that I want to propose. First, it is important to bear in mind that we need to find new sources of revenue. I will talk about overseas students in a minute. I do not like the category of overseas students, and I find the division between domestic and overseas dangerously colonial. I have objected to this in the past in writing and shall do so today, but that is a different story.
The first thing is that we need to find new sources of revenue. This can come from not only going out and getting new sources of revenue but cutting down on our expenditure. I must say that some universities—some of those that have gone bankrupt or have been talking about passing through a budget deficit—have not been administratively competent. We need to look at ourselves and ask whether universities have been administratively competent and whether university salaries have been manageable. I hate to say all this but, when vice-chancellors collect about £350,000, I ask myself, “Is this the real world in which I live?”. When I went out to India as a vice-chancellor, I did not get a penny because the vice-chancellor was supposed to be sinecure. They are retired professors and eminent people so they serve for free. Here, vice-chancellors fatten themselves off the backs of their university colleagues. The first question to ask ourselves is this: is there no room for reducing our expenditure before we talk about ways to raise revenue? That is point number one.
On point number two, higher education is a basic medium for structuring the relations of power and status between different social groups. It is through higher education that one acquires a certain status, money and power. There are people in any society—certainly in our society—who have never been to university, who are poor and marginalised. The question then is: what is being done about them? In any fair system of higher education there must be a provision for the poor, the marginalised and those who have never been to university.
Therefore, the fees we charge students should be progressive, in the sense of being proportionate to the parental capacity to pay. This is how things happen in many parts of the world, including provision for the blacks in the United States. It should be possible for us to say that people earning less than a certain amount of money or who have never been to university do not pay any fee or maintenance fee. As for the rest, they can be taken care of by the loan system that we operate, provided it is opened up in such a way that the period for repayment is extended over a period of time and the conditions of return are not so harsh.
This second point is important. I really want to emphasise this: there are people in any society for whom it should be possible for us to give a complete freeship—no tuition fee, no maintenance fee. That kind of provision has to be made in a society, otherwise you have a society that is totally unfair.
The third point I want to make is on the distinction between domestic and overseas students. I do not know how it came to be made. In many countries there is no such distinction. The noble Lord, Lord Willetts, will correct me if I am wrong, but I think there is no differential fee between domestic and overseas students in Germany; it is the same fee. There are other countries where the same fee is charged to domestic and overseas students.
In the mid-1970s, we introduced this distinction between domestic and overseas students. I may be mistaken, but that seems to be when it came into our vocabulary. What does it mean? It means “ours” and “theirs”. These are our students; we look after them. Over there are “they”, whom we do not have to look after; they come to us. The stereotype is that they are rich and loaded with money, so we can raise their fees. There is no limit to how much we can raise their fees, whereas with ours we have to be careful. The Government have to make sure that our students’ fees are not increased beyond a certain point.
This distinction between ours and theirs—between domestic students, which we even call home students, and overseas students—is dangerously similar to the colonial distinction between our country and one over there. If I may say so, it smacks of the spirit of some degree of mean nationalism: that our people will benefit at the expense of them, so when we have overseas students we make sure they pay the salary of the redundant staff. I have been told that five overseas students means one lecturer. When I first heard this I was alarmed. I was asked by my vice-chancellor at the University of Hull, “Look, can you not recruit five students? You’ll save the job of one university lecturer”. I almost felt that I was being blackmailed into saving the job of a young lecturer by recruiting five students. We need to be careful.
The other thing is that we have become so harsh. Our attitude to overseas students is totally ambivalent and confused. At one level we want them, because one student means a fifth of a lecturer’s salary or whatever. At another level, we put overseas students in the category of immigrants. We put all kinds of restrictions on visas for graduate students coming to us. We say, “They can work” or, “They cannot work”, and create all kinds of wretched complexities. On the one hand we seem to resent them, while on the other hand we are anxious to have them. Where do we stand?
I go to India fairly often every year, and I am confronted by Ministers and others who ask me, “What is Britain’s attitude to overseas students?”. Do we want them, as the Americans do—or did until recently—when the doors are open and all kinds of facilities are thrown open? The Australians do that; Australia is now taking many of our students. What is Britain’s attitude? Do we want them or not? If we do, are we being hospitable to them or are we going to be mean in terms of not wanting them, putting all kinds of restrictions on the number of visas and increasing the minimum amount of money that they should earn before they can qualify? All these categories with which we play around have been dangerously obnoxious, and I very much hope that we can take a consistent attitude to overseas students, in the sense of welcoming them subject to certain conditions. Certainly, whatever attitude we take, it has to be one on which the nation is agreed, not resentful.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Parekh. I declare an interest as chair of the council of Queen Mary University of London. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, for her comprehensive and very fair introduction to our report. I thank her too for her excellent marshalling of our committee, with the noble Lord, Lord Hollick, and I add my thanks to our clerks and our special adviser during the inquiry.
I will speak in general terms rather than specifically about my own university. In higher education, there have been challenges aplenty to keep vice-chancellors and governing bodies awake at night: coming through the pandemic, industrial relations, cost of living rises for our students, pensions and research funding, to name but a few. But above all there are the ever-eroding unit of resource for domestic students, which was highlighted extremely effectively by the noble Lord, Lord Johnson of Marylebone, on the “Today” programme last week, and the Government’s continual policy interventions, including, above all, their seeming determination to reduce overseas student numbers.
In the face of this, I have to keep reminding myself that in 2021-22 Queen Mary University delivered a total economic benefit to the UK economy of £4.4 billion. For every pound we spent in 2021-22, we generated £7 of economic benefit. Universities are some of our great national assets. They not only are intellectual powerhouses for learning, education and social mobility, making a huge contribution to their local communities, but are inextricably linked to our national prospects for innovation and economic growth.
The committee’s report was very well received outside this House. Commentating in Wonkhe, the higher education blog—I do not know whether there are many readers of it around; I suspect there are—on the government and OfS responses to our report, its deputy editor noted:
“If you were expecting a seasonal mea culpa from either the regulator or the government … on any of these, it is safe to say that you will be disappointed”.
For him, the four standout aspects of our report were:
“the revelations about the place of students in the Office for Students … the criticism of the perceived closeness of the independent regulator to the government of the day … the school playground level approach to the Designated Quality Body question … and the less splashy but deeply concerning suggestion that OfS didn’t really understand the financial problems the sector was facing”.
As regards the DQB question, which the committee explored in some depth, the current approach being taken by the OfS is extremely opaque. We clearly need a regulatory approach to quality to align with international standards. It is clear that the quickest way to get the English system realigned with international good practice would be to reinstate the QAA—an internationally recognised agency. Most of us cannot understand what seems to be the implacable hostility of the OfS to the QAA.
It is notable that the OfS, perhaps stung by the committee’s report, has now belatedly woken up to the fragility of the sector’s financial model and the fact that the future of the overseas student intake is central to financial underpinning. In its 2023 report on the financial sustainability of HE providers, the OfS confirmed that the
“overreliance on international student recruitment is a material risk for many types of providers where a sudden decline or interruption to international fees could trigger sustainability concerns”
and
“result in some providers having to make significant changes to their operating model or face a material risk of closure”.
Advice that they need to change their funding model and diversify their revenue streams is not particularly helpful, given the options available.
The Migration Advisory Committee’s Rapid Review of the Graduate Route, published last week—which recommends retaining the graduate visa on its current terms and reports that the graduate route is achieving the objectives set for it by the Government, finding
“no evidence of any significant abuse”—
is therefore of crucial importance. There is absolutely no doubt about the importance of the work study visa to the sector and the broader UK economy. In answer to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, we want it, and I hope that the OfS will play its part in trying to persuade the Government to retain it.
The Wonkhe blog also asks the fundamental question about the Government’s response regarding the regulatory burden on higher education. I hope the Minister can tell us: do the Government think it necessary and acceptable to keep ratcheting up regulation on universities? We are going in the wrong direction. Additional resource is required to monitor and provide returns in a whole variety of areas, such as the new freedom of speech requirements.
With the extraordinary contribution that universities make to society, communities and the economy as a whole, will university regulation benefit from the proposals set out in Smarter Regulation: Delivering a Regulatory Environment for Innovation, Investment and Growth, the Government’s recent White Paper? We will discuss this in a future debate on the response to our subsequent report, Who Watches the Watchdogs? For instance, the White Paper proposes the adoption of
“a culture of world-class service”
in how regulators undertake their day-to-day activities, and the adoption by all government departments of the
“10 principles of smarter regulation”.
It says:
“All government departmental annual reports must also set out the total costs and benefits of each significant regulation introduced that year”,
and says that the Government will
“strengthen the role of the Regulatory Policy Committee and the Better Regulation Framework, improve the assessment and scrutiny of the costs of regulation, and encourage non-regulatory alternatives”.
It says:
“The government will launch a Regulators Council to improve strategic dialogue between regulators and government, alongside monitoring the effectiveness of policy and strategic guidance issued”.
Finally, it says that
“it is up to the government to better assess its regulatory agenda, to try to understand the cost of its regulation on business and society”.
What is not to like, in the context of higher education regulation? Will all this be applied to the work of the OfS?
That all said, I welcome some of the way in which the OfS, if not the Government, has responded to our report. There is an air approaching contrition, in particular regarding engagement with both students and higher education providers. I welcome the OfS reviewing its approach to student engagement, empowering the student panel to raise issues that are important to students and increasing engagement with universities and colleges to improve sector relations.
As regards the Government, a dialling down of their rhetoric continually undermining higher education, a pledge to ration ministerial directions given to the OfS, and putting university finances on a more sustainable, long-term footing would be welcome.
It is clear that continued scrutiny and evaluation— I very much liked what the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, had to say about post-scrutiny reporting—will be essential to ensure that both government and OfS actions after their responses effectively address the underlying issues raised in our report. Sad to say, I do not think that the sector is holding its breath in the meantime.
Lord Norton of Louth (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interests as a serving academic at the University of Hull and as chair of the independent Higher Education Commission. The commission produced a report in 2013 on regulating higher education that included a recommendation for a protection or insurance scheme to insulate institutions against possible future financial difficulties or failure.
However, my starting point today is that regulators need a mindset of existing to get the best out of the bodies that fall within their responsibility. It is not just a mindset but an issue of how regulators are trained. The same applies to administrators within universities. They are trained in a particular set of skills related to their area of responsibility. They are not necessarily trained in what the body they regulate or work within exists to achieve. In terms of this debate, they are not grounded in what universities are for, which is to teach and research. Administrators need to focus on what they can do to ensure that universities deliver the best. That means going beyond a narrow focus on tick-box exercises, and concentrating instead on how regulations and rules can be utilised to facilitate, not constrain.
Doing so is important at all times but it is especially so now for the reasons advanced by the Industry and Regulators Committee in its excellent report. As it says:
“The higher education sector faces a looming crisis”.
That crisis is already upon us, having worsened since the report was published. As the report states, given the problems facing universities,
“it is … vital that the sector’s regulator is fit for purpose.”
I should stress that that is necessary but not sufficient. The conditions giving rise to the crisis also need to be addressed. The committee’s recommendations need to be seen as part of a wider strategy for enabling universities to thrive and remain world class, and to produce graduates who are essential to a healthy and vibrant society. If we are not proactive in addressing the problems, we will be left behind by other nations. It is not sufficient to say how many of our universities are in the top 20 globally; it is the trend that matters. The higher education sector is under threat.
On the OfS, the committee has produced a powerful and hard-hitting report. As it in essence argues, and as we have heard, the Office for Students has not lived up to its name. However, as the committee also recognises, there has been “a proliferation of regulators”—a virtual alphabet soup of bodies—in the sector, which has just added to the regulatory burden. The more regulators there are, the greater the chilling effect on universities, not to mention the demand on resources. As the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, mentioned, research commissioned last year by Universities UK found that, on average, a university has almost 18 full-time equivalent staff dedicated solely to regulatory compliance. That is bigger than many university departments. Universities are meant to be autonomous institutions and are encouraged to be innovative, but they are notably risk averse and tend to treat guidance from regulators as fixed law, which some will then gold plate. Like the committee, I welcome the fact that the Government recognised the problem and intend to tackle it. I look forward to the findings of the review due this summer.
However, the principal value of the report is in demonstrating what is missing. The OfS lacks the power and, arguably, the mindset for enabling universities to thrive. That mindset may change but the OfS cannot expand its own powers. As we have heard, it has just published its report, in which it recognises the crisis facing universities. It is pressing them to have realistic funding models but it lacks the capacity to do much beyond that, not least in terms of protecting students in the event of some institutions failing. The Government have the power to help universities but appear to have gone AWOL. The Government constitute a significant part of the solution but they first have to recognise that they are a major part of the problem.
The report before us is hard-hitting and I endorse its recommendations. I very much agree with the argument on accountability. There need to be clearer lines of accountability. It may benefit government that the lines are not too clear, enabling it to eschew responsibility. I also very much agree with the recommendations on quality assurance. As we have heard, that is a task for the QAA or a similar body, not the OfS. We cannot continue with a situation where England, unlike the rest of the UK, is not aligned with internationally recognised standards.
I welcome the recognition that the OfS and government adopt narrow means of assessing the value of degrees. There remains a tendency to see graduates as economic units, with metrics that fail to reflect the value to the individual and to society, as well as the fact that it is difficult to measure economic value when we do not know what form future jobs will take.
The principal problem, though, is to be found in the Government’s response to the report. There is a tendency to ascribe responsibility to the OfS for problems that require action on the part of government. The OfS does not have the capacity to deal with the problems that it recognises now face the sector. Its recent report highlights the risks and the fact that some HE institutions have been overly optimistic in their planning assumptions. It also acknowledges the decline in the real-term value of income from UK undergraduates. Universities are having to subsidise the teaching of home students with income from overseas students.
In their response, the Government recognise the value of overseas students. As the response says, they
“bring significant economic and social benefits to the UK”.
The response welcomes the fact that universities are seeking to diversify their recruitment of international students. It then goes on to say:
“The UK continues to be an extremely attractive destination for international students, with an array of world-class universities, a competitive post-study work offer in the Graduate Route and a welcoming environment”.
That no longer bears a relationship to the reality. The Government have contributed to a chilling environment for overseas students based on presumption rather than fact regarding the graduate visa route. This has been exacerbated by the comments of some Members of the other place. The Migration Advisory Committee found little evidence of abuse of the system and that it was not undermining the quality of the UK higher education system.
It is not just universities that benefit from attracting overseas students, in terms of funding and contributions to research, but local economies; many local businesses are dependent on student patronage. There is also the long-term effect on trade. The export of higher education contributes significantly to the UK economy as well as to the UK’s global reach in terms of soft power. Overseas students are not taking the place of home students. The benefits are substantial—a fact recognised by the public. A recent Survation survey found that the public recognise the value of recruiting overseas students and support the retention of the graduate visa route.
People appear to recognise what separates overseas students from people who migrate to the UK. First, they pay to be here; secondly, they go home. Most return to their home country and contribute to its development. The UK benefits all round: the Treasury, the Foreign Office and the Department for Education all appear to recognise the value, but that benefit is disappearing. Applications from overseas students are declining. The Government are sending out completely the wrong signals.
The Government say there is overreliance on overseas students but make no acknowledgement of the fact that they are in large measure responsible for that situation. Despite inflation, the student fee has remained unchanged, so overseas student fees are needed to subsidise home students. The decline in recruitment of overseas students puts HE institutions in a difficult situation. Yet the Government act as if entirely detached from what is happening, putting responsibility on the OfS to monitor what is happening. That is unfair on the OfS.
The OfS can be more resilient and supportive in its approach, but it is the Government who need to act, and swiftly. Their response to the committee’s report is dripping in complacency. Basically, they are monitoring the situation, saying:
“The government keeps the HE system under review … and … plans to consider”
the funding position
“ahead of the next Spending Review”.
There is no self-reflection and no active recognition of their responsibilities to maintain a healthy HE sector.
I trust that my noble friend Lady Barran will not take up time telling us how good the HE sector is—we already know that—but instead devote her time to saying precisely what action the Government are taking, in relation to not just the Office for Students but the second part of the title of the committee’s report: “the looming crisis facing higher education”. Recognising that there is a crisis is necessary but it is not sufficient. What will the Government do, that otherwise they would not have done, because of this excellent report? That will be the measure of what my noble friend says.
Lord Freyberg (CB)
My Lords, it is a huge pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Norton, with his wide and extensive experience in this area. I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, for giving us the opportunity to discuss this critical report. My contribution today will focus on the urgent need for a review of higher education funding and student outcome indicators for creative arts students.
I start by echoing the calls of several noble Lords for an urgent review of higher education funding. The near 10-year tuition fee freeze for domestic students is jeopardising the sector’s long-term viability, particularly at post-1992 universities. Substantial job cuts and forced course closures are, unfortunately, becoming commonplace. The report warns that if the domestic undergraduate funding freeze continues, some universities will have to merge or, in the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, exit the sector. This is completely unacceptable and entirely preventable. At the very least, fees should rise in line with inflation. Here I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Johnson, in his comments on the “Today” programme last Friday.
In addition, substantial evidence shows that the financial hardship that students have faced in recent years has been a real concern. Joint research in October 2023 by student housing charity Unipol and the Higher Education Policy Institute indicates that rent consumes nearly the entire average loan, leaving students with just 50p per week for all other expenses, including necessary resources such as textbooks. The National Student Money Survey 2023 states that the average monthly shortfall between maintenance loans and student living costs is £582. The Sutton Trust’s 2023 student maintenance analysis report found that median loans of £8,500 in London and £7,000 in the rest of England do not cover the median essential spending costs of £17,287 and £11,400 respectively.
This financial strain impacts on students’ education and university experience. Many students, facing significant gaps between their loan income and expenses, must work to subsidise their costs, often taking on more hours than recommended or feasible for full-time study. Opinium’s 2023 poll of 1,000 university students across the UK found that seven in 10 students have considered dropping out of higher education since starting their degree, with nearly two-fifths citing rising living costs as the main reason. Research by COSMO—the COVID Social Mobility and Opportunities study—also shows that young people from working-class families are more likely to forgo university because they cannot afford it. Here I echo the second point from the noble Lord, Lord Parekh.
Maintenance grants, which provided non-repayable financial support to students from lower-income households and helped mitigate financial barriers to higher education, were abolished in 2016. Under the current system in England, the poorest students incur the highest level of debt. England is the only UK nation without some form of maintenance grant provision for students. As Victoria Tolmie-Loverseed, assistant chief executive at Unipol, said:
“We risk excluding those from poorer backgrounds, forcing middle-income students to take on unsustainable debts, and damaging the student experience for all”.
Another issue identified in the committee’s report was the OfS’s method of evaluating value for money through its student survey results, which was described as “simplistic and narrow”, particularly due to its focus on employment outcomes. This focus on employment outcomes—specifically the jobs that graduates hold just 15 months after finishing their studies—disadvantages creative degrees. The regulator uses these outcomes to measure a degree’s value for money but, as noted in the House of Lords Library briefing, the current measure fails to reflect the value of creative degrees.
Outcomes are important, and it is crucial that universities equip students with the skills they need to succeed. However, this narrow focus overlooks a wide range of valuable outcomes and fails to recognise the unique nature of the creative industries, where many creative graduates find employment. The creative sector is characterised by a high proportion of start-ups and micro-businesses, with graduates often experiencing non-linear career paths, frequently working freelance or on short-term contracts. Graduates may also work part-time while pursuing creative endeavours or building portfolios. Self-employment accounts for 32% of creative industry employment in the UK, compared with 16% for the economy more broadly. Therefore, measuring employment outcomes at a fixed point shortly after graduation is ineffective for determining the success of creative degrees.
This narrow measure has also contributed to the perception of creative higher education as offering low-value and poor-quality courses, despite these degrees being crucial to the UK’s creative industries and the economy. The University of the Arts London, which nurtures the largest talent pipeline to the creative industries, with 22,000 students from 130 countries, advocates for a change in how the Office for Students measures high-quality provision, suggesting a broader approach beyond just graduate outcomes. This should involve a sector-wide dialogue with the Government and the regulator to develop a more holistic way of measuring the value of higher education. At the very least, the context of the non-linear careers of creative graduates should be considered.
The Government urgently need to review higher education funding. Additionally, they should embark on a major reform of the student maintenance system, and rapidly improve how student outcomes are measured by undertaking and publishing a review of this area.
Lord Johnson of Marylebone (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg. I echo the points he just made about the creative industries and the need to measure properly value for money in that respect. I declare my interests as a visiting professor at King’s College London, chairman of FutureLearn, and someone who, in my previous ministerial role in the other place, was very much involved in the creation of the OfS and the high-level regulatory framework it is now implementing. I come at this with a certain baggage, and I lay that on the table; your Lordships do not need me to be clearer about it.
I very much want to defend the OfS rather than join the chorus of people seeking to bury it and condemn it for problems which, by and large, are not its responsibility but the responsibility of government policy. It is important that we are very clear in assigning responsibility correctly in this debate as we consider this report.
As the noble Lord, Lord Norton, said in his excellent speech, we have in the UK a world-class higher education system. It is one of our greatest national assets. However, it has some faults: some resistance to accountability, a quickness to take affront at suggestions that there are areas for improvement, and occasionally some short-sightedness in the way it opposes legitimate demands for reform. I fear that the report resulting from this inquiry is to some extent evidence of that phenomenon, because the inquiry and the report that came out of it were in part—probably quite a considerable part—the result of some very self-interested lobbying by university mission groups whose universities have over the years been very well represented in this place.
I am not saying that there is not room for improvement in the way the OfS operates—of course there is. However, it is also important that we do not lose sight of what this report is in part—not in totality—all about. We have to be honest that the report and the inquiry that led up to it are in part a continuation of battles that many in the sector and in this place waged against the very creation of the OfS in the first place.
Just to take us back a little, the fight about the OfS was actually about the change from a funding council acting on behalf of providers to an independent market regulator looking out for the student interest. This shift, as the OfS’s brilliant first chair Michael Barber noted in his evidence to the committee, was very much overdue given the massification of the sector and the change in the tuition and maintenance funding regime from one of government grants to income-contingent loans. My view is that for as long as we have a mass higher education system, as we will have, and this system of funding—to my mind, these two things are very closely and inseparably linked—we will need an independent market regulator rather than a funding council model.
Many in the sector and perhaps in this place might romanticise the Higher Education Funding Council for England. Indeed, there was a lot that was great about it, including its formidable last chief executive, Madeleine Atkins. But of course, by the middle of the last decade it had long passed its sell-by date as a mode of regulation for the sector. Indeed, in some senses it did not even recognise itself as a regulator. It came out of the University Grants Committee model, which was suited to a very different world of very small, limited tertiary participation and a much smaller, narrower system of university providers.
HEFCE was good for a world that had passed, but it was no longer fit for purpose for an era of mass higher education. Its function was very limited: to spread available grant funding around the providers in the system to ensure that everybody got a fair crack at the funding that the Treasury was making available. What HEFCE was not effective at was acting as a regulator to promote quality, choice and competition in the student and taxpayer interest. It is not going too far to say that there is a general consensus that, by the end, HEFCE had become essentially captured by the sector and urgently needed reform.
That is the backdrop to why the OfS was set up. Of course, this was not a popular change in the sector. The battles leading up to the passage of the Higher Education and Research Act 2017 were ferocious. It was one of the most heavily amended bits of legislation in recent memory. We should not ignore all that history, including the way the sector and its outriders lobbied hard against the new accountability regime that the Office for Students represented. To some extent, there are undertones of all that lingering around today at the five-year to six-year mark.
The creation of the OfS represented a move away from co-regulation to something that is much sharper and has greater consequences for institutions that deliver poor quality and poor student outcomes. All the stuff about co-regulation and how it is a better approach is, to my mind, a thinly disguised plea for self-regulation—a stance that I do not think any party in government will return to. As I said at the start, as long as we have a mass higher education system funded by a system of income-contingent loans—we will have this for the foreseeable future because it is the least bad system and is the only game in town from a fiscal perspective—we will need an organisation such the OfS acting in the student and taxpayer interest.
As Michael Barber told the committee, many universities thought that, notwithstanding the clarity of its legal duties, the OfS would be HEFCE under another name. They were very wrong and were surprised to discover that it was different. Some in the sector might think that, if they undermine the OfS enough and throw enough mud at it, they will suddenly get nice old HEFCE back, with its big pot of grant money administering the teaching grant and a system of student number controls that constrains competition and choice and allocates students to providers on the basis of government quotas. That is highly undesirable as an objective and highly unlikely to arise as government policy.
Even in the unlikely event that a future Government did want to replace our current funding system of income-contingent loans and return to a world of grants, they would still want an independent regulator to ensure value for money for taxpayers and hold universities to account for quality and outcomes in a mass higher education system in pretty much the same way the Office for Students does. Although the student focus of the regulator might change in such a scenario, I do not believe that any Government will return to the funding council model of the past.
Respectfully, I disagree with the report’s main contention that the Office for Students is performing poorly. To be honest, I think that Michael Barber and Nicola Dandridge did a brilliant job in leading the establishment of the new regulator in very difficult conditions, which their capable successors are continuing. I remind Members that its initial priority was to set up the new organisation. It managed the considerable task of registering a large numbers of providers at pace and putting in place the new regulatory framework in its first strategy. It then coped admirably with the challenges of the pandemic, suspending some of its regulatory requirements while providers adapted to the changed environment.
In its second strategy, the OfS has moved on to focus on quality. This has seen it reset the TEF, toughen up the B3 outcomes metrics, and reset the indicators for non-continuation, completion and progression. Again, that has generated a fair amount of angst in the sector, but this is absolutely necessary in terms of both the student interest and upholding quality and standards in the sector.
I do not want people to think that I am just a lackey praising the OfS without any self-awareness or criticism. I recognise that it has problems and is not in all respects operating as well as it might. I will be brief: there are three areas that I would focus on. The first is the question of distance from government. The problem here is not the OfS but the DfE—I say that with all respect to the Minister. The problem is clearly Ministers. It is also about where universities sit in government. The mistake is to have universities in the Department for Education, which does not understand institutional autonomy and treats universities like failing schools. My noble friend Lord Willetts made the point before.
In his great report on higher education sometime in the early 1960s, Lionel Robbins warned against moving universities to the education department because he feared that such an interventionist department would not understand or value the autonomy of universities. His warning has proved sadly accurate. The DfE treats universities like poorly performing secondary schools and now intervenes in them so much that the Office for National Statistics may well propose bringing universities back into the public sector.
When I was working on the HERA legislation, I was lucky enough to be Minister for both universities and science, like my noble friend Lord Willetts was when he was in the other place, with responsibility for both aspects of government policy towards the sector. That coherence has to some extent been lost by the move to the DfE and the splitting of ministerial responsibility in that way. It would be preferable to have universities back in a growth department of government, such as the business department or the new DSIT, where universities would be reunited with the rest of the research base.
The layering on of ever more conditions of registration has become slightly crazy. Ministers should adopt a self-denying ordinance of one in, one out—or better still, one in, two out.
My second area for improvement is that the Office for Students has to do much more to support innovation and promote new forms of provision. Now that it has established its bona fides as a tough and independent market regulator it has space to address parts of the role that Parliament has given it that have been neglected in the first five years. New providers—I have been intimately involved with a number—have been stunned by the bureaucracy they encounter in trying to get on to the register and establish new modes of provision. The consultants they have to recruit to advise them tell them that to succeed with the OfS they must, above all, look as much like an established university as possible. This is hardly the recipe for innovation that we want in our system.
My final point is that the Office for Students must make a real go of the lifelong learning entitlement. This policy is flailing at the moment. I think the name of the Office for Students should change to the office for lifelong learning, and it should grip this policy urgently so that it has a fighting chance of delivering the skills revolution that Ministers say they want for it. The detail of how that might work is for another day but that is an urgent priority.
I urge anyone in this Room who believes that the solution to the sector’s troubles is to attack and dismantle the Office for Students to think again. A strong regulator that enjoys the confidence and trust of the sector and of government is vital to the future of our HE system. Everyone should focus on working hard to that end.
Lord Mann (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I begin by referencing my entry on the Register of Lords’ Interests: I am the unpaid and independent adviser to government on anti-Semitism. I was warned on coming in by my advisory team—a small one—that I should attempt to persuade, not to berate. My independence may come through a little bit, but I want to reference one page only in this report of 104 pages, page 17. There is a current Office for Students consultation on draft regulatory advice arising from the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023, which is due to be enacted on 1 August. My suggestion to the Minister and the Committee is that the currently proposed guidelines appear to remove crucial and hard-won safeguards for Jewish students, potentially allowing anti-Semitism to grow on university campuses.
The OfS was directed to produce regulatory guidance on the free speech Bill. It released it at the end of March but, as of today, several questions remain unanswered about how the guidance will work in practice. It is my understanding that there are only two weeks left in the consultation process. If the proposed advice proceeds as it currently stands it will be acceptable to do and say the following things in our universities, leaving them with no power to intervene. I shall give three examples. The first is to have “intifada until victory” posters on approved university noticeboards. The second is to have a Holocaust denial society registering at a university freshers’ fair, having followed the correct registration processes. The third is to have “free Palestine” graffiti on a Jewish society poster on an official noticeboard.
All three are quite separate and distinct and are serious issues that are not conducive to the establishment of good relations on university campuses, which universities are, of course, legally bound to foster. I suspect that the Government and Parliament would both be horrified to discover that, in just over two months’ time, it might be possible to defend Hamas’s “inalienable right” to commit the 7 October attacks, or to argue that the Holocaust never happened, in one of our universities—not just to say such things but to do so by citing the Government’s own legislation on free speech, as passed by Parliament.
Over the past 30 years, we have driven Holocaust deniers out of any legitimate space for debate. The current flaw in the guidance that is circulating risks throwing away that agreed rejection of the falsification of the murder of 6 million Jewish men, women and children, and many more Nazi victims. When this legislation was going through, the Minister at the time stated that there would be an explicit—I repeat the word “explicit”—rejection of Holocaust denial, but that has not been forthcoming from the OfS. That is contrary to the promises made by the Government, in all good faith, to the House during the progress of the freedom of speech Bill.
It is not legitimate to intimidate and harass Jewish students in the name of free speech. The OfS’s director for freedom of speech and academic freedom, Professor Arif Ahmed, has been one of the leading critics of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, which this Government were the first in the world to adopt in 2017, and which has been adopted by all political parties represented at Westminster to great impact and positive effect. The current proposals are likely to lead to some universities revoking their use of the IHRA definition as a reference point in looking at anti-Semitism. Jewish communal organisations in this country united in supporting the Government when they adopted the IHRA definition in 2017. It is a globally agreed definition, and there are no credible examples at all—not a single one—of its use in our universities prohibiting or restricting in any way any freedom of expression or of academic study, but it will fall foul of the guidance as it currently stands.
The advice as it stands will also stop the mandating of most forms of training on anti-Semitism, despite the fact that the Department for Education has tendered such work for contract in recent months. It will impede universities’ ability to take action against those who intimidate, ostracise and harass Jewish students and staff. The crux of the problem for universities will then be that this approach of purist free speech, to which the guidance currently works, will lead to aggressive legal actions against universities. This will distract universities from their core role and divert their attention away from safeguarding and strengthening intercommunity relations in the university population, which become more important and more prescient by the month. I put it to the Minister that the proposed regulatory advice is not fit for purpose and that the negatives that will impact will be detrimental to Jewish students.
I listened to the noble Lord, Lord Johnson. One of the purposes of the Office for Students was to be for students. Jewish students are entitled to that right alongside—no more than but no less than—any other group of students. The safeguards that universities are using at the moment are needed now more, not less, than ever before, and have generally been working. This current draft, on which consultation is about to end and which is to be enacted by 1 August, needs a fundamental rethink. Jewish students across the country have indicated in great detail their serious concerns about how the guidance will operate. I endorse their concerns. I suggest that the Government pause the enactment of the free speech Act until these issues have been resolved.
I offer my services, as well as those of others who have worked in this field in great detail over recent years, to try to ensure that government policy on the equitable treatment of Jewish students and the objectives of the OfS can be brought together in a way that has practical application and does not undermine the good work that has gone on in universities in challenging the scourge of anti-Semitism and protecting both Jewish students and Jewish staff.
Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)
My Lords, I refer to my interests in the register, which include being a member of the Industry and Regulators Committee that produced this report. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, for her highly effective stewardship of the report to publication.
I have spent the last 14 years involved in primary and secondary education, but there are many who would tell you that there is no connection between this and tertiary education. I respectfully disagree and will try to show noble Lords why in the next few minutes. I should probably issue a trigger warning to those noble Lords who will disagree profoundly with many of my points today.
First, there are still people out there who think that the British university system is wonderful. I am sorry to be blunt but, other than a few exceptions, these people are living an illusion. The OfS was set up in 2018 to provide better governance. Perhaps it was just bad luck that it received the hospital pass, but the main outcome has been to see the future prospects of so many of our young people simply benighted.
The sixth sector hides behind the financial constraints that it suffers from. Of course, it is tough to live off the same £9,250 a year that has been the settlement for several years, but have a look at the secondary sector. I set up an academy trust in 2012. Today, we have 17 schools with 11,000 pupils and dozens of ageing buildings, many that pre-date university campuses. In our sixth forms, per student funding is £6,073 in Norwich for the so-called elite subjects of maths and science and £5,421 in Thetford.
Time and again during our inquiry, I was told by university luminaries that it was much more expensive to educate young people a year or two older than those for whom I have responsibility. This is despite a sixth-form phase providing 24 hours a week of face-to-face education in small settings of 20 or so students. How many undergraduate courses provide even two-thirds of that? Of course, the academic year of a university is substantially shorter, so why are there such differences in the operating model?
First, universities have indulged in a binge of building. Their buildings are funded on cheap debt, but they have to be maintained and interest rates have now normalised. Secondly, there is a vast bureaucracy. Vice-chancellors are broadly overpaid, in my view; they have recently awarded themselves another 5% pay rise, on average, while of course the people doing all the work at the front line—the lecturers—are underpaid. Universities have created a Ponzi scheme based on growing student numbers. Not one of the university managers we interviewed was able to provide a clear financial model of how their institution worked, other than relying on foreign students.
This year, my academy trust will receive an increase in its general annual grant of about 1.5%. The local LEA has taken a larger chunk to fund SEND. Despite this, we provide an extended school day to every secondary school pupil, costing about £1 million a year but adding a whole year of education over their five years in that school. We spend £400,000 subsidising musical instruments for pupil premium children and a further £500,000 hiring reading mentors to deal with a post-Covid literacy crisis. We have found that we have 1,500 pupils with reading ages between three and seven years behind their chronological age. Yes, we receive some odd capital sums to build a new school block, which is additional to those funds, but from September this year we will be educating around 270 children for free. So-called lagged funding means that we will not get the £1.7 million per pupil settlement that would have operated if we were paid for all those children on our campuses.
How do we achieve this? We achieve it through relentless and ruthless cost control at every level. Every photocopier is tracked for excess output of colour printing; every light bulb has been replaced with LED; every invoice has to be pre-validated via a central electronic purchase ordering system; every head teacher has to learn the principles of curriculum-led financial planning to control timetabling and resource allocation. I heard none of this during our inquiry.
No one could tell me why an undergraduate needed three years to complete a degree with six hours of contact time a week, why it was acceptable to take six weeks to mark and provide feedback on an essay or why, during the lecturers’ strikes, they did not use the money that they were not paying in wages to provide alternative mechanisms for those abused young people who could not get their degrees to apply for their jobs. This is before I get going on foundation years—a cynical way of luring young people for an additional paid year of study, having failed their A-levels—or unconditional offers, removing aspiration from young people as they knew they could glide in whatever happened, or offering lower grades for pupils in so-called areas of deprivation, even though they were in private schools. This happened to my own son and the next year to the daughter of the noble Earl, Lord Leicester, at the same institution. All this is for £50,000 of debt that hangs over them for up to 40 years. There were no solutions, just an agonising moanathon about how difficult everything is.
I turn to the vexed issue of overseas students. The idea that our universities have been hoovering up the world’s best and brightest is one of the most blatant sophistries of modern times. I am grateful to my honourable friend Neil O’Brien for his detailed research on this. Using data from the Migration Advisory Committee review of the graduate route to visas, he has shown that the median person on the graduate route earns about half of what the median full-time worker does. A staggering 41% earn less than £15,000 a year. Put that against the minimum wage of £24,000 and the threshold of a work visa at £30,000, and the whole grisly story unfolds.
On the point of the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, about colonialism, there is an unpleasant truth emanating from the MAC’s report. Since 2005, the number of overseas post-study visas issued to the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan has been almost utterly consistent at around 20,000 a year. However, since study visas were reintroduced in 2019, visas for India have increased by 900% and for sub-Saharan Africa by 700%. Should students from these countries really be paying a huge premium compared to domestic fees, and then earn less than the minimum wage?
I challenge the statement of the noble Lord, Lord Norton—I paraphrase—that overseas students then return to their home countries. The MAC’s statistics show that, although only 6% of US students stay, that figure rises to between 25% and 35% for Pakistan, Nigeria and Bangladesh. The OfS claims, of course, that it has no remit on any of this. It seems that its energies are directed into meddling in a performative way on second-order and third-order issues, such as insisting that artwork from degree courses be stored for five years. So the full-size papier mâché Brontosaurus has to lurk in a basement serving no purpose to anyone. If the OfS had focused on demanding proper accountability in the financial management of the sector, it is possible that we would not be faced with upwards of 60 higher education institutions facing serious financial challenges.
I read today that my noble friend Lord Cameron, straying from his international brief, warns of widespread closures. Well, that is what happens if organisations are mismanaged. The problem should not be solved by dragging in hundreds of thousands of migrants and dependents to prop up a failing system. The current crisis represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to repurpose many HE institutions into training institutions that reflect the needs of today’s British society and economy —think my noble friend Lord Baker on steroids. The public debate agonises about our decline in productivity and lack of economic growth but we hear virtually nothing emanating from these organisations to lead the charge.
I have only one question for my noble friend the Minister—I know that this is not her day job—and would prefer a written answer. How aware is the DfE of the impending financial collapse of dozens of our universities, and what is it doing about it?
Viscount Chandos (Lab)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, who is a stimulating and enjoyable colleague on the committee—even if he probably classifies me as one of the madmen who believe that the British higher education system is something that we should be proud of and do everything to protect.
Being privileged to be another member of the committee, I am very grateful to my noble friend Lady Taylor for her incisive introduction and for her leadership of the committee, now and during the inquiry, along with the noble Lord, Lord Hollick. Noble Lords have already heard from other members of the committee and can judge the strength of both the individual views and the consensus that was reflected in the report. I will try not to repeat the many excellent points made by all speakers this afternoon. I will leave it to my noble friend Lady Taylor to respond, if she wishes, to the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Johnson, that the committee has been captured by providers, just as HEFCE allegedly was in the past.
I draw the attention of your Lordships to my entries in the register of interests, in particular as a vice-chair of LAMDA and as a co-opted member of the investment committee of Worcester College, Oxford.
If the crisis in higher education was looming at the time of the report’s publication, it has well and truly arrived nine months later, although the Government are doing their best to exacerbate the crisis with new measures, most of all through the threatened change to the visa regime. We cannot, as a committee, claim paranormal levels of foresight in predicting the crisis; the evidence that we heard and received, as well as the data that we analysed, told us only too clearly that all was not well in the state of higher education. It was deeply frustrating that, in our interactions with the OfS at the time of the inquiry, it seemed to be in denial. It is hard to judge whether this was complacency —a smoothing snooze at the wheel—or a regrettable lack of transparency.
Of course, the OfS is not responsible for setting government policy. We should be careful not to attribute failures on the part of the Government to the regulator, even though, as the committee found, there was a worrying lack of distinction between the Government and the OfS—a subject to which I will return.
In its report published last week, Financial Sustainability of Higher Education Providers in England, the OfS writes that it
“has an important role in monitoring and reporting on financial sustainability, and intervening to protect the interests of students, as far as is possible, if a provider is at risk of closure”.
It goes on to note that it does not
“have the powers or remit to intervene … in support of sustaining the system as a whole”.
However, has it given, on a timely basis, firm, clear and objective advice to the Government as to the threats to the system? I do not know what may have been said behind closed doors but what the OfS said to our committee—a committee of Parliament to which it owes a duty of transparency—did not instil confidence in either its grasp of the situation or its willingness to speak truth to power.
Here we come back to the strong discomfort felt by the committee about the independence of the OfS from government, or the lack thereof. If the OfS’s financial sustainability report shows belated recognition of the developing crisis, the accompanying document, Navigating Financial Challenges in Higher Education, is not encouraging. It says:
“A focus on cash management may help with short-term resilience but, in the longer term, more significant mitigating action is likely to be required”.
That is fair enough. So, what might the mitigating action comprise? This could involve, says the OfS,
“rethinking an institution’s business model, for example rebalancing the resources spent on teaching and research, phasing out some courses, or seeking to recruit different students to different types of course”.
That prescription manages to combine the banal with the ominous.
My noble friend Lady Taylor referred to cuts already implemented. At Oxford Brookes University, the music and mathematics departments are being closed outright, while staff cuts are also taking place in English and creative writing, history, film, anthropology, publishing and architecture. These are not departments failing to deliver high levels of education, nor are they training for industries in which the UK is not a leader. In a dynamic society and economy, change is inevitable and to some degree desirable, but the cuts at Oxford Brookes are damaging to the institution and the sector and are a deeply worrying trailer of what the OfS is advocating in rebalancing resources.
If the OfS will not fight the higher education sector’s corner, Parliament can. The committee’s report challenges the Government as well as the OfS. Financial sustainability in the HE sector cannot be achieved through cuts alone; funding must be increased in real terms, whether through an increase in the cap on fees or, as I would prefer—whatever pressures on the Exchequer the next Government face—a return to the hybrid combination of fees and direct grants that existed before the Conservative-led Government, in place from 2010 onwards. Or do the Government actually agree with that profound political thinker, Rod Liddle, who argued this Sunday that the number of universities should be reduced by two-thirds and that the proportion of young people going to university should be reduced to 15%? Can the Minister reassure the Committee that that is not the Government’s objective? If not, does she agree that, to avoid this happening accidentally, significant real increases in funding must be put in place?
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the committee on an excellent report. However, as someone whose life revolves around schools—as in the Good Schools Guide—and parents, noble Lords will not be surprised if I find myself in many aspects standing, as well as sitting, beside my noble friend Lord Agnew.
I am a fan of the Office for Students. For a couple of decades, I have been trying and failing to get universities to take suicides seriously and to involve families in dealing with the problem. The OfS succeeded where I had failed. I am immensely grateful to it, as are many parents. I am pleased to see that the OfS is taking up cudgels on freedom of speech. As Jo Phoenix, the professor who was so disgracefully driven out of the Open University, said today:
“Imagine a world where those who go to university are taught to value diversity of viewpoints and what knowledge and evidence are”.
I do not have to imagine—I went to a university like that—but that is not the university my daughter is at, and nor is it the university that many of her friends are at. It is disgraceful how their ability to think, talk and discuss is depressed—and, in some subjects, absolutely excluded. We need to do something about this. I am proud of the Government for having taken steps in this direction but that has not been supported by the university sector as a whole, with some honourable exceptions, in the way that I should have hoped.
Look at the latest decision by UCAS to show for university courses the grades that people who got on to the course in the previous year achieved. I have been asking for this for 20 years. Not to provide that information is outright lying. It is misrepresenting what the course is, and this has been supported all the way through by UCAS. It has been absolutely defended, because UCAS is owned by the universities and is not independent of them. The great virtue of the Office for Students is that it is not the university’s creature. That is immensely important in looking after the interests of students.
I therefore hope that the Office for Students will carry on down that course. The first thing that I would like it to focus on is getting universities to provide real information on the value of their courses. What do students who follow a particular course go on to do? When they look back, two or five years later, what do they think of the education they received? That is absolutely basic, vital information that the university should be wanting in order to improve its courses and to do better, and to understand what it is doing and achieving.
The noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, hymns UAL. It is absolutely hopeless when it comes to that. When one looks at the education it is providing, in what way does it fit its students for the life that the noble Lord describes? There is so much that universities can do to improve what they are offering students, and it will take a vibrant Office for Students to persuade it to go in that direction. However, it will be a much better place for universities. They will be selling what they really do and will be appreciated for what they achieve. Their place in all our hearts will be much stronger, and that is something really to aim for.
Another area where I hope the OfS will make improvements in universities is in their relationship with schools. Why do universities not pay attention to the references that schools give their students? Schools have looked after these children for seven years; they know and understand them. There is a whole load of information about how to help, respond to and educate each of these students as individuals, which universities just discard.
In the early days of this discussion, I asked whether universities could employ modern technology to really get under references, understand what they are saying, and, to help schools make better references, feed back to schools what they thought of the students. The response was, “We never get to know our students well enough; we couldn’t do that”, to which my answer is, “Yes, but you ought to have a duty of care. You ought to be doing that. You ought to be looking after students and you ought to know them well enough”. If they did that, they could also help schools make better A-level predictions. At the moment, it is well known that schools are rubbish at making A-level predictions, but the universities do nothing to improve the matter.
What do universities learn when students are with them about what they could have been taught better at school so that they would succeed more at university? How is that information fed back to schools? If it is not collected, it does not get back to schools. What should universities do to influence the examination system? At the moment, they are absolutely rigid in what they expect. They expect a particular pattern of examinations; they are really narrow in what they are prepared to accept. However, when it comes to what they will take from overseas students, they will look at anything. In essence, the flexibility that universities have to respond to the way that students learn and to their differences and individuality is just not extended to our children, and it is important that it should be.
Lastly, I hope that the Office for Students will pick up on the real need to look after the interests of individual students when a university ends a course. It is not satisfactory just to offer them another course. Does that suit them? Is it right for that student? No; they are just offered the package: “We aren’t doing archaeology any more. Go on to history”. That should not be enough. Universities—and, in particular, we, the Government—should take responsibility for looking after the interests of these people. We need to do better than we are.
There are things that the Government should do, too. The state that we have got ourselves into on immigration is ridiculous. Collect proper data; take proper decisions. I have never won an argument with the Home Office—although I once managed to get it to collaborate with Imperial College, which took a lot of effort—but, for a university, this is a really important part in knowing where it can go, what it can do and how it can run. As the Government know, it makes a big difference to our country; they just have to run it properly. The continued impression of running around blindfolded and bumping into trees is not what we should be doing. We need to do a lot better, and I hope that that will happen soon.
On a more minor point, I hope that the Government will look at enabling co-funding of degree apprenticeships so that there is some blend between the debt that a university student takes on and the complete lack of debt that happens in degree apprenticeships. We need to expand degree apprenticeships much more than we are. I really hope that the Government will look seriously at lifelong learning and really involve universities in it. Obviously, the Open University is there, but the world is moving so fast that we all need to keep learning and adding to our knowledge. My university seems to think that, having spent three years studying physics, that was the end of my interest in the subject—just because I went to become a chartered accountant. It has made no effort in the past 50 years to keep me up to date. I would have paid for that. I think that most people who go to university would like to keep learning and extending their knowledge, but the sector does not seem to respond to that at all.
It is not an easy time for universities. There are many politicians, like me, who are out of love with them and extremely reluctant to burden our children with even more debt. As my noble friend Lord Agnew says, one of the first things we need universities to do is to be open about their costs. How can it cost 50% more than a sixth form? They are providing so much less. What is the reality? Be open about it. Let us see what is going on and really understand how these costs are made up: “You are asking us for more money; how do you justify it?”. It is not just words; we want some figures and an understanding. Really collaborate with Alumni UK. This was something I asked for when my noble friend Lord Johnson was taking his Bill through—that universities work together to support their international alumni, make a group out of them and make them a joined voice for this country and for working with this country.
The British Council has at last launched something like this. It has some support from universities, but much less than it should have. This ought to be the universities’ contribution to our national effort. They will talk to us a lot about soft power, but when it comes to providing it and sharing it, they do not seem so keen. I really hope that they will change their minds on that, get behind Alumni UK and embrace the idea of being self-critical, self-improving organisations, collecting the data they need to do that, so that they do not find it necessary to close courses in panic but close courses in the ordinary course of business when they are not doing what they should do. They should evolve new courses and be constantly trying to improve, change, evolve and—to come back to something I said to the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg—really focus on the needs of their students and make sure their courses are really fitted to that.
I enjoyed and benefited from university. I want as many of our young people as possible to do that, but we really need the universities to improve.
Lord Willetts (Con)
My Lords, it has been a very interesting debate, stimulated by this excellent report. I declare my interests as a visiting professor at King’s College London and a member of the council of the University of Southampton. There is a lively debate about universities going on, particularly on this side. Let us have a proper debate about what is going on.
I want to comment on some of the interventions, particularly from some fellow Conservatives in this Committee. I very much agree with the key point by the noble Lord, Lord Johnson, that we need a regulator. I do not actually think that the old regime was as bad as is sometimes made out. HEFCE was the regulator, in reality, but its regulatory power was the power of the purse, because it was handing out grants. As the grants disappeared, so its capacity to exercise authority by attaching conditions to the grants was going, which is why, right from early on, I said that we needed a new legislative framework. I congratulate the noble Lord on bringing that in. In today’s world, the HEFCE model of regulation was very discretionary. The regulatory regime needs to be more explicit, rules based and clear, so that people know where they stand. A rules-based, transparent regulator was another of the prizes we all wanted to see from the new regime.
Also, one of my frustrations was that, having to deal with an agenda of trying to promote new players coming in, it was incredibly frustrating that they were not properly regulated. A regulator extends the capacity to regulate new arrivals. The noble Lord eloquently made the case for the OfS, but where I think I part company from him is that one reason why this report is interesting and important is that it is not the old lags who always turn up and we all enjoy our debates on higher education. This is a committee of experts on regulation who are looking at the OfS from the perspective of people who look at how regulatory regimes operate in other sectors, in other contexts. I attach some weight to their assessment, as fellow Members of this House who devote their committee time to studying regulation in different places, of how it is working in the world of HE. I understand the frustrations of my noble friend who chairs the OfS that because of this previously unknown Addison rule, he was not able to engage directly with the points that the committee makes. I am sure that there are good answers on many of them, but having this perspective from a committee that specialises in looking at regulation is a good thing.
The funding model has come up: it came up at the beginning with the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, then with the noble Lord, Lord Johnson, and from others in referring to debt. The new funding model is here to last. It was begun under the previous Labour Government. I will turn later to some of the things that we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, but from the tone of the remarks it is absolutely clear: the Department for Education is never going to find a large public budget to fund higher education. In my experience, almost every Education Secretary who turns up cares about early years and primary school. They have no desire, in any battle with the Treasury, to say, “I’m not going to ask you for more money or primary or secondary education. Please can we have more money for universities?”. They just do not, so we need another way of funding it. We have that, and it is not debt in the sense of commercial debt.
For me, it was a low point, when the argument was being made that we needed to have some increase in fees, to hear the then Minister say that we could not put up fees because it would contribute to the cost of living crisis, pandering to a deep and dangerous misconception that somehow this is money that students pay up front. It is not; what matters is the repayment formula, which of course ensures—I look again at the noble Lord, Lord Parekh—that people on low incomes do not pay back. In reality, they do not pay for their higher education; the generality of taxpayers pay for the higher education of people who are subsequently not able to afford to pay back. That is the right and progressive way of doing it.
As to how this funding compares with the money going into primary and secondary schools, I will make some quick comments on what the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, said. I can remember the negotiations with the Treasury. There used to be capital grants for higher education, in the same way as there are for schools. When people compare the figures of £6,000 for schools and £9,000 to universities, that schools figure does not include capital spend, which is a separate and substantial line item in the DfE. I remember the negotiations, and one reason why we put the fees up to such a high level was that the Treasury said, “We’re getting rid of all capital grants for higher education. In future, institutions will finance capital by borrowing on the commercial markets, and one reason for the fees is to cover the interest payments on the capital now that we are stopping having a public capital budget for HE”. That is part of the logic of the system. Their borrowing money to fund development is the new model; it was another form of expenditure saving.
Secondly, that £9,000 includes £1,000 of access spending, which is an absolute social mobility challenge but is not there to pay for the cost of educating a student. It is money to meet a social mobility objective. There are other extra costs. One of my regrets is that we call them tuition fees; they are university fees, for all the other activities that are provided for at a university.
When you look at the historical trends, as measured by organisations such as the Institute for Fiscal Studies, it is clear that in the English system the long-term trend, over 20 or 30 years, has been for public expenditure on primary and secondary education to rise relative to expenditure on students in higher education. That is the underlying long-term trend, so it is not a soft option for higher education.
It is, however, certainly the case that universities need to account for how they spend the money. This was done most recently in the Augar report, which was quite tough-minded. It commissioned an accountancy firm—I think it was PwC—that estimated the costs of higher education and provided an estimate which showed, even in those days, five years ago, that something like the £9,250 fee was barely sufficient to meet what an independent accountancy firm assessed as the cost of higher education. So the fee is looked at, and needs to be looked at, from time to time.
On data, one of my frustrations with the OfS is partly because of the flow of letters and requests that it gets from Ministers on every subject under the sun. Again, my noble friend Lord Johnson made a good point: a great self-denying ordnance would be a restriction in the number of ministerial letters so that there is some sense of strategy and capacity to get on with things. It is the basic information that students rightly care about that matters, as my noble friend Lord Lucas said. In every engagement that I had with students they made practical points. They want more contact hours but they did not want all them to be in incredibly crowded lectures; they had some views about the amount of direct contact that they had. They wanted their academic work back promptly with some kind of useful academic feedback. That is the kind of information that they wanted.
In the old days—looking back, it was perhaps a naive hope—we actually got the NUS to talk to the Consumers’ Association about the kind of data that it and the NUS could obtain to provide to prospective students by working together. There was then an outbreak of anxiety that thinking of students as consumers and working with the Consumers’ Association was ideologically incorrect. That is the kind of information that students should have good access to, and we can still do better on it. Incidentally, if one needs more information about what happens after one leaves university, the Student Loans Company is a hidden and unused resource from which the data should be liberated to make that kind of information possible.
Briefly, I have some final observations on how this argument has gone. There is an issue about promoting innovation. Again, my noble friend Lord Johnson made that point. For example, I hear that an exciting new model for engineering education in Hereford will say that showing that it has a plan for each individual student if it goes bust—it has to be a plan based on the innovative education model it is operating—is quite a barrier to it getting through the regulatory process, becoming fully entitled to give any degrees and, one hopes, getting a university title. This should be a regulatory regime that promotes innovation. That is an issue.
I turn to my noble friend Lord Agnew and his obvious unhappiness about higher education. If only some aspects of the school agenda were transported to higher education. Academies, such as the Mossbourne academy, have thrived and newcomers have come in, but the DfE assesses higher education in a different way. A Mossbourne academy higher education institution would get nowhere in the Department for Education’s model because it takes prior attainment as a measure of the quality of a university. It does not use that with schools: it looks at value added. It is prior attainment that counts for status in the world of higher education, which rewards incumbents.
That model even has a specific measure of school performance in terms of getting students through to the Russell group. I love the Russell group—it is a set of research-intensive universities—but it is massive producer capture to allow a self-organised club to become a measure of performance of a school. One goes to universities that say that the prospective students turned up and rather like what they saw but the school was keen for them to go to a Russell group university. This is a system that rewards incumbency. That is completely different from the agenda at the school level.
Of course the Russell group is excellent and research intensive, but we need to be a bit more relaxed about the different missions of different types of university. Of course many of them will deliver training, and a university can do so. We should not have our view of universities totally shaped by the Oxbridge model. The technical Hochschule in Germany that we all love are actually universities and increasingly take the title “universities of applied science”. In the Republic of Ireland, the university title is being spread. I sometimes think that if people—even, dare I say it, some on my Conservative Benches—could ritually humiliate some of these institutions and say, “You’re not really a university”, they would feel so much better about it. The truth is that those institutions are legitimate universities in almost every other western country. We should accept them and welcome them to the diversity of missions that we have in higher education today.
The OfS is doing a necessary and important job. It needs to be liberated from some of those ministerial letters and to be able to focus on the data that really matters to prospective students. I hope that the OfS will understand the importance of the context of the students that it recruits and I very much welcome this important report from the committee.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, it is a great privilege to follow so many colleagues who have, or had, positions in universities. I have enjoyed listening to their detailed knowledge. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor. In a sense, her opening remarks absolutely hit on my understanding of the situation. I was slightly concerned when she used a one-word judgment about the Office for Students—I have written it down somewhere and forgotten it. I thought we were against one-word judgments and that, like Ofsted, we did not want to go down that route. I am just teasing. All the issues were very carefully and considerately focused.
We have world-class universities and we ought to be proud of them. They have amazing leadership and staff, but that should not blind us to the fact that there are major problems in some of our universities. There is a great danger that we wallow in praise but do not tackle some of the issues happening around us. One has only to look at the private higher education sector to know that there are big problems, or to listen to students talk about their experiences of simple things such as chasing up and trying to get back a thesis or assignment, or their complaints of there being hundreds of other students in lectures. Those issues may be small and insignificant to noble Lords in this Committee, but to students themselves they are really important.
I have a background as an ordinary primary teacher and headteacher. I did a certificate of education and then went on to university because I realised that I needed a university degree if I were to get a promotion. Like probably everybody in this Room, I thoroughly enjoyed my time at university. University is not just about learning; it is about playing as well. How sad it is that, these days, many students cannot afford, for example, to go to university away from their home. Students increasingly stay in their own locality. I do not know the exact figures but at Liverpool University the students increasingly come from Liverpool, Merseyside or the north-west. When I went to teacher training college, my friends came from the north-east, Northern Ireland and all over the country. I gained so much from that experience of talking to people from different regions and cultures. We have lost that. Universities also provide the opportunity to learn different things and offer extracurricular activities. We talk about the importance of extracurricular activities in schools but they are equally important in universities.
I will come to the issue of funding in a moment. I want to single out a few comments that I feel must be addressed at some stage. The noble Lord, Lord Agnew, was either bonkers or brave—or both—to raise those hugely important issues. Somebody has to address them. We cannot just say, “He would say that, wouldn’t he?” I want to know the answers to his questions. Similarly, the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, went on and on, quite rightly, about linking higher education, schools and student satisfaction, but we never get any answers on that. At some stage, I would like to hear the answers. Finally in my general comments, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Johnson, that yes, I like the title, “office for lifelong learning”, so let us try to make that happen. It seems to be the right phrase.
When student loans were introduced—we remember all the furore about them; I had forgotten that they were introduced by a Labour Government, of course, although the coalition Government increased them enormously—my party leader and others signed pledges that they would abolish them. However, I thought to myself, “Do you know what? If students are getting a loan and paying for their university education, they will be in the driving seat. They will actually have a say in what is going to happen”. Similarly, when the Office for Students was established, I thought to myself, “Ooh, this is good: it has ‘students’ in its title. It will mean, again, that students are in the driving seat”.
The report is quite worrying but, actually, I can look at it in a positive way. You have to know where you are to find out where you are going. Remember, the Office for Students has as its mission
“to ensure that every student, whatever their background, has a fulfilling experience of higher education that enriches their lives and careers”.
I can tell noble Lords that, as a city councillor, I have referred three cases to the Office for Students. The first was that of a PhD student who was awarded only a master’s degree, not a PhD. She complained and said, “Hang on a second. I didn’t see my supervisor for three years. Covid came along and nobody from the university contacted me”. The university was not at all interested. I contacted the Office for Students and it was very proactive for that young woman. It ensured that she got a year’s extension and was paid some compensation. That would not have happened without the Office for Students, I guess.
The second case involved a mature student who had special educational needs and wanted another year. She had already delayed her degree by two years, and she wanted a third year. The university said no. The Office for Students sorted it out.
The final case was a failure. It involved a student at a Russell Group university. On the day of her final exam, her father died. Imagine that. The university said, “Well, we’re very sorry about that”, but nobody contacted her; I mean, nobody actually said that. Her personal tutor did not contact her. What is that all about? That is another complaint from students when you talk to them. She was told that she could sit the exam in the summer. How crazy is that? She was not given a date; she just had to wait until summer came along. Then, sometime in August, she was allowed to re-sit the exam. That is not the way to treat a young woman whose father has just died. I contacted the Office for Students but, sadly, nothing happened on that occasion.
As we have heard from so many colleagues, the higher education sector faces a looming crisis. It is mainly to do with long-term financial sustainability, compounded by Covid; the freezing of student fees; inflation leading to higher costs for institutions, staff and students; a lack of EU research funding; and ongoing industrial action, as we have heard from a number of colleagues. The financial sustainability of the funding system for the higher education sector clearly needs to be sorted. Has the Office for Students paid sufficient attention to this challenge? It should be questioned on a number of issues. Has it lived up to its promise? Is it trusted by the providers it regulates? Has it acted in the real interests of students? On the last point, my experience is that it has. Have the Office for Students’ duties been applied consistently and equally? Should it focus more on communicating with institutions, rather than relying on data from those institutions?
The freezing of the cap on tuition fees for domestic students and the loss of EU research funding have led to higher education providers becoming reliant on cross-body subsidy from international and postgraduate students. This dependency comes with huge risks. It will be interesting to read Robin Walker MP’s inquiry into university funding’s reliance on international students. As Simon Marginson, a professor in higher education at Oxford University, says:
“If today’s decline in the real-terms value of fees continues … then within a decade even the UK’s most elite institutions will find themselves diminished. This could be further exacerbated as countries such as China … pour money into their own higher education systems”.
Vivienne Stern, the chief executive of Universities UK, says that there is a
“need to have a … conversation about how universities are funded”.
Over 100,000 more young people will be seeking university education by 2030, when there is little space or incentive to accommodate them. Let us get to the real issue. Political parties, particularly in an election year, are unwilling even to acknowledge or to face up to the problems in this field. At the moment, they would rather keep quiet. Can you blame them? “Well, Mr. Starmer, Mr. Sunak and Ed Davey, how are you going to deal with the matter? Are you going to put the funds or the loans up?” Of course they are not going to say anything now. Once the election is over, whoever is in Government, whether it is a coalition Government or whatever else, I hope that those political parties will have the honesty and the integrity to realise that the funding issue is crucial to the continued success of our universities. If they do not do something about it, we will see our world-class universities become second-class universities.
We can already see how this lack of action is affecting universities. Just one recent example, if your Lordships remember, was the University of Essex, which forecast a £13.8 million shortfall, blaming the 38% drop in applications from overseas students for its plans to freeze pay and promotions. In response, the plea for more government assistance puts universities at odds with government. It is argued that the sector has become bloated, providing too many courses that do not offer a return on student investment. But we cannot just leave silence to rule. Perhaps we need to find a new funding model. Is it increasing the level of fees or allowing universities to charge what they want, or do we just let the weak wither and close, and the strong and successful prosper? Do we look—dare I say it—at Vince Cable’s idea of a graduate tax? I do not know, but we have to do something about it. I hear only one or two voices, and they are not from political parties, saying, “Universities need more money”.
Returning to the Industry and Regulators Committee report, I hope the Minister in her reply will want to comment—I am sure she will—on some of the quite concerning conclusions of that report. The Office for Students
“does not engage with its stakeholders”,
whether students or providers; its approach to regulation seems
“arbitrary, overly controlling and unnecessarily combative”;
and,
“there have been too many examples of the OfS acting like an instrument of the Government’s policy agenda rather than an independent regulator”.
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
My Lords, I commend my noble friend Lady Taylor for securing this debate on the report of the Industry and Regulators Committee, and all members of the committee. Like the noble Lord, Lord Storey, I felt privileged to hear from such well-informed contributors.
Having reread the report in preparation for this debate, its title, Must Do Better, felt like an understatement. The committee was damning in its criticism of the Office for Students, and, as my noble friend highlighted in her opening speech, the committee’s overall finding was that it is performing poorly. I am not sure that many positive points were raised in the report, besides those attributed to the noble Lord, Lord Wharton, the chair of the Office for Students, although the noble Lord, Lord Johnson, provided a defence of the regulator in his contribution, as did the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. The examples which the noble Lord, Lord Storey, just provided in his speech gave context, with the engagement he has had with real-life examples, which was helpful.
I look forward to the Minister’s response to the many points that have been raised and, in particular, to hearing what has changed in the interim since the committee’s report was published. It was clear from many contributors to the debate, including my noble friend Lady Taylor, the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and others, that over recent years universities have faced many issues, from having to deal with the pandemic to research funding being limited and pressure on the funding model.
The “looming crisis” the report cites is, as a number of noble Lords have stated, clearly already here. The Office for Students appears, unfortunately, be part of the problem whereas it should be a major part of the solution. A regulator should do what it says on the tin. This is a regulator that, as the noble Lord, Lord Norton, said, has not lived up to its name. It should not be rocket science: indeed, the mission statement for the Office for Students says:
“We aim to ensure that every student, whatever their background, has a fulfilling experience of higher education that enriches their lives and careers”.
However, despite the good intentions described by the noble Lord, Lord Johnson, the Office for Students has not delivered for students yet, or for the sector, and lacks clarity over even what it defines as a student interest.
The noble Lord, Lord Wharton, highlighted the freedom of speech Act, and its implications are significant for universities. As the noble Lord, Lord Mann, made starkly clear, the regulatory guidance proposed by the Office for Students on freedom of speech has led to a situation that, as Labour warned it could and would, will allow Holocaust deniers and their ilk to potentially spread hate on our campuses. Will the noble Baroness commit to intervene to ensure that the rollout of the regulatory guidance described by the noble Lord, Lord Mann, is paused until such time as it is fit for purpose and has appropriate safeguards for all students, not least for the protection of Jewish students? Moreover, will she explain how the Government will ensure that the Office for Students will reset its work to be less simplistic and narrow in its approach? Will the Government require the Office for Students to refresh its approach to student engagement? Will they insist that the regulator defines what it sees as student interests?
The noble Lord, Lord Willetts, spoke about the social mobility aspect of universities, which I would hope would be among the key issues that should be promoted and measured by the OfS. The committee recommended that the OfS should take on the role of providing students with clear and digestible information on costs, outcomes and contact time, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, said, is a real concern to prospective students. As the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said, there needs to be a key focus on what students want, including getting their essays and assignments back quickly. Students deserve to get the information they need to make what is a significant life decision. What conversations has the department had with the regulator to ensure that this now happens?
The noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, spoke powerfully about the impact of the cost of living on students, which leaves them with a shocking shortfall. Many have to work, and prioritise work, in order to get by, and the pressures can cause students to drop out. Surely an office that is genuinely for students must address these concerns. Labour believes that regulation matters, and questions of what regulation should look like have come up throughout the debate. As my honourable friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington, Matt Western, said in a Westminster Hall debate last year, we need
“good, fair-minded, proportional regulation, which is needed in any sector, especially the higher education sector. For a sector that benefits from £30 billion in income from public money, educates over 2 million students and contributes £52 billion to our GDP, supporting more than 800,000 jobs, the need for regulation is clearly self-evident”.—[Official Report, Commons, 26/4/23; cols. 427-28WH.]
The need for proportionate, appropriate regulation was a point made succinctly by a number of speakers today, including the noble Lord, Lord Norton, who stated that the starting point is that regulators need a mindset that gets the best out of bodies. I welcomed the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, that this committee’s view on regulation should be taken seriously because it knows what it is talking about and this is its area of expertise. The committee report found that the regulatory framework has become overly prescriptive over time, and the OfS is too willing to direct higher education providers’ operations and activities, showing little regard for the need to protect institutional autonomy.
Of particular concern is the lack of co-ordination by the OfS with other regulators in the HE space, in particular in relation to degree apprenticeships. The committee recommended that the DfE should reconvene the Higher Education Data Reduction Taskforce—although a better acronym could probably be found—to address duplication and unnecessary burdens on providers. Can the Minister confirm whether the DfE will be doing this? Is she satisfied with the quality assurance agency now also being the regulator? Does she agree with the committee, and a number of speakers today, that this is a concern?
A thread through this debate has been the growing concern over recent weeks and months about the financial instability of the sector. This was also the subject of a Question that raised cross-party concern in your Lordships’ House this afternoon, following the recent report published by the Office for Students. My noble friend Lord Parekh spoke of an ambivalence towards overseas students, and a number of noble Lords —including, among others, my noble friend Lord Parekh and the noble Lords, Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Norton—spoke about the sector’s overreliance on international students, where their fees currently act as a subsidy for domestic students; the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, likened this model to a Ponzi scheme. What conversations has the DfE had with the Home Office on the implications for our HE institutions of further limits on international students? Even the rhetoric around limits on international students appears to be having an impact already.
The noble Lord, Lord Norton, said that the Government are sending out all the wrong signals on overseas students. Does the Minister agree with that point? Is she concerned by the fact that the Office for Students did not share the committee’s concerns on the financial health of universities just over a year ago but now judges that, as my noble friend Lady Taylor said, 40% of universities are expected to be in deficit? Can the Minister outline what more the Government are doing to ensure that the unsustainable financial situation facing many higher education institutions is resolved? Does she agree with the Office for Students’ report that we might see some changes to the shape and size of the sector, for example through mergers, acquisitions or increased specialisation? Does she agree with the noble Lord, Lord Johnson, that the Office for Students should be doing more to promote innovation and new forms of provision?
During today’s debate, there were varied views on how universities’ financial management is in practice but it is clear that cuts alone are not the solution. Many higher education institutions have already made fairly drastic efficiencies. Labour will reform the higher education funding system. It is looking at ways to make the system fairer and more progressive; it will change the system to give students, graduates and universities the support they need.
My final point is that an independent regulator must have the trust and respect of the sector in order to succeed. It was clear from most of those who gave evidence to the committee that the Office for Students does not have the respect of the sector and is not giving students the voice they need. There is considerable suspicion of the OfS’s relationship with government; this appears to be in large part down to the belief among the sector and other stakeholders that the OfS is too close to government and is, in effect, acting at its direction. The noble Viscount, Lord Chandos, described this as a lack of distinction between government and the regulator; he also referred to a lack of transparency. I appreciate the fact that the Government’s response to the committee indicated their view that there are already established and sufficient protections to ensure that the OfS operates independently of government; none the less, I ask the Minister to take this view seriously and ask the department not simply to dismiss this view as erroneous or unfair.
The regulator cannot succeed unless vital relationships are reset as a matter of urgency, trust is restored, and it is seen and believed to be delivering for both students and the sector as a whole. I welcome my noble friend Lady Taylor’s commitment that the committee will return to this subject in future. This was an enlightening and hard-hitting report demonstrating the value of the work of the committees in your Lordships’ House. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, for securing this important debate, and all members of the Industry and Regulators Committee for their work and scrutiny of the vital issues linked to the higher education sector and the Office for Students as its regulator. If I may, I also thank my noble friends Lord Johnson of Marylebone and Lord Willetts for their ministerial insights into the sector.
My noble friend Lord Johnson gave an incredibly helpful analysis and synopsis of the issues which led to the creation of an independent regulator with a focus on quality, competition, choice and value for money. I recognise some of his criticisms in relation to the way that government is structured, with part of the responsibility for the university sector sitting in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and part sitting in the Department for Education. I absolutely share his enthusiasm, and that of my noble friend Lord Willetts, for a real focus on innovation in the HE sector and on the lifelong learning entitlement.
I also thank my noble friend Lord Lucas for highlighting some really practical suggestions, which he brings from his experience of listening to students and parents, and the noble Lord, Lord Storey, for the examples of his interactions with the OfS in practice. It was extremely helpful for all of us to hear that.
Before I go into the report itself, I want to touch briefly on the independence of the OfS. I can honestly say that, in my experience within the department, I do not recognise the picture that noble Lords painted of political priorities driving the work of the OfS. If I may say so, I felt a tension between the calls for real independence on the part of the OfS and calls for the Government to influence its direction even more, which is, perhaps, something for all of us to take away and reflect on. I asked colleagues to check how many guidance letters we sent to the OfS in the past 12 months. We have issued four guidance letters to it: two related to the expansion of medical places and two related to funding. I am not sure quite what the threshold is for the number of ministerial letters, but that does not feel too oppressive to me.
I turn not so much to the Government’s response to the committee’s report, which your Lordships have obviously seen, but rather to providing updates to show the progress made against its recommendations. The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and others, dwelled on the importance of the relationship between the Office for Students, the students themselves and providers. I am pleased to see that the OfS has reflected on the committee’s recommendations regarding student interest in engagement. It has made sound progress in reaching out to students and inviting them to engage in its work, including work to reframe the OfS student panel, which I understand is now playing a key role in the development of the OfS’s new strategy for 2025 and beyond.
I know that the OfS has hosted numerous round tables and webinars, inviting students to contribute on its new freedom of speech and academic freedom functions to help inform proposals and consultations. Last month, the first meeting of the OfS’s new disability in higher education advisory panel—fondly known as DHEAP—took place, which will review how universities and colleges currently support disabled students and will make recommendations to improve their experience.
The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, asked me about annual reports on student engagement. We are not aware that a commitment was made in that regard, and I am not aware that those reports are planned, but if there is a misunderstanding I am happy to pick that up with her afterwards.
Regarding the relationship with the sector, I hope that your Lordships will be pleased to hear how the OfS reflected on the committee’s recommendations to enhance—
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)
My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the Minister so near the end of the debate, but I am afraid that a Division has been called, so the Committee will have to adjourn. I advise members of the Committee that there are likely to be two or three votes back to back, so it will be not a 10-minute adjournment. It will be substantially more, probably more like half an hour. I advise members of the Committee to keep their eyes on the annunciators, particularly after the second vote has been completed.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, I was just starting to talk about the relationship of the OfS with the sector, which was a matter of concern to a number of your Lordships. The OfS has both reflected and acted on the committee’s recommendation to enhance its relationship and engagement with the sector. Senior OfS staff have visited over 80 universities and colleges across England as part of its new sector engagement programme, as well as hosting numerous online and in-person events for vice-chancellors, finance directors, institution staff and students alike to raise awareness and understanding of its regulatory work. The OfS recently commissioned a new piece of voluntary research to gather provider views to help improve how it works with the sector.
One of the key recommendations in the committee’s report was around clarity about the OfS’s duties and decision-making. The Government believe that the OfS’s statutory duties are clearly set out in legislation, through the Higher Education and Research Act 2017. In particular, we believe that it is right that institutional autonomy as an important principle should not always be prioritised above other important matters: for example, driving quality improvement.
The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, talked about the new powers and duties that Parliament has given to the OfS and suggested that those were perhaps not always the priorities of students, if I followed her remarks correctly. We believe that the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act is critical to protecting academic freedom. Issues around the tragic events in the Middle East give us a very recent example of that, as the noble Lords, Lord Wharton of Yarm and Lord Mann, pointed out.
Additionally, we have asked the OfS to focus on tackling harassment and sexual misconduct, in response to evidence of a serious problem in our universities. The noble Lord, Lord Mann, asked for specific reassurances. We are still in the process of the consultation. We need to let that conclude, but I would be more than happy to meet with the noble Lord if that would be helpful. To enhance the OfS as an effective regulator that safeguards students’ interests, the Government announced an independent review of the regulator in December 2023, which is being conducted by Sir David Behan. It is due to conclude shortly and the Government will carefully consider its findings and recommendations.
A number of your Lordships, albeit from slightly different perspectives, talked about issues of financial sustainability in the sector, including the noble Baronesses, Lady Taylor and Lady Twycross, my noble friends Lord Norton of Louth and Lord Agnew, the noble Lord, Lord Storey, the noble Viscount, Lord Chandos, and others. It is crucial that we have a sustainable higher education funding system that meets the needs of the economy and is fair to students and to taxpayers. We keep the funding system under continuous review to make sure that this remains the case and that it offers diverse opportunities for learners to acquire vital skills.
The noble Lord, Lord Parekh, who is not in his place, was the first to focus on the cost side of universities, which is more within their power to control. I will comment on that also in response to my noble friend Lord Agnew’s remarks, even though he asked me not to respond—it is an irresistible opportunity. A number of your Lordships used the term “financial crisis”, and I understand why, but we should remember that in 2022-23, the total income for the higher education sector in England was £43.9 billion, up from £29.1 billion in 2015-16. Of that, approximately £16.3 billion, or about 37%, was provided by the Government. Over the current spending review period, the Government have also invested £1.3 billion in capital funding to support teaching and research through the Department for Education teaching grants and the DSIT research grants.
A number of your Lordships cited the figure of 40% of the sector being in deficit. That was cited in the recent OfS report as an expectation for this current financial year, 2023-24. The noble Viscount, Lord Chandos, asked if it was government policy to see the Rod Liddle projection of two-thirds of the sector disappearing: clearly that is not the case. That is important, I say in response to my noble friends Lord Agnew’s and Lord Lucas’s remarks. I think my noble friend used the term “impending financial collapse”. This is a sector that has grown 50% over the past few years. The OfS report projected a surplus of £2.1 billion for 2026-27, and a margin of 3.9%. Average borrowing in the sector is 30%. While the Government absolutely recognise some of the pressures and in particular some of the risks that the sector faces, that is not the typical picture of a sector facing impending collapse.
We also need to be careful in talking about 40% of providers, or roughly a third of providers this year. I talk here about the UK rather than England only: the aggregate deficit of those providers that were in deficit was just over £330 million; the aggregate surplus of those in surplus was £3.3 billion; and 50% of the aggregate deficit was accounted for by 10 providers. There really are outliers, in both surpluses and deficits. Making sweeping statements about the whole sector is not helpful but I will, of course, write to my noble friend as he requested.
A number of your Lordships, including the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Twycross and Lady Taylor, asked about the sector’s dependency on international students and the Government’s position on that. Our international education strategy is absolutely clear that diversification and the sustainable recruitment of international students remain a key strategic priority. This is a core focus of the work of Sir Steve Smith, the UK’s international education champion. We are pleased that the latest figures show that providers are diversifying their recruitment of international students, with many increasing their intake from priority countries that were outlined in the International Education Strategy.
My noble friend Lord Norton of Louth asked me not to talk about how good the sector was, but if he will permit me just one sentence: as your Lordships noted, we have a world-class higher education sector, with four universities in the top 10 and 17 in the top 100. We have also educated 58 current and recent world leaders, and we continue to have an education system that is the envy of the world. We expect the UK to remain attractive to international students from across the globe.
In response to the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, about our work with the Home Office, we have regular conversations with the Home Office about this issue. I think it is fair to say that my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth was critical of the Government’s position in many areas, including this one. We are very clear that it is important that we have a competitive offer for international students that aligns with our strategic priorities for our economy, but we also need to keep the prestige and the brand of UK higher education.
I turn to the issue of value for money, which the committee’s report acknowledged could be measured in a number of different ways. I note the concerns expressed by my noble friends Lord Lucas and Lord Agnew in this regard. My noble friend Lord Lucas stressed the importance of making sure that students understand the value of and the outcomes from their courses. The noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, was concerned about a graduate’s future earnings being too crude a metric and that creative degrees might get marginalised as a result. I hope he would accept that the Government have had a huge focus on our creative industries. We recognise how important they are for the economy and our well-being as a society, and the great demands for skills that there are in those industries. I hope it will reassure him that we have commissioned the Institute for Fiscal Studies to research a new way of measuring the impact that courses have on a graduate’s future earnings, which we hope will be more sophisticated and incentivise the kinds of behaviours that we heard discussed today.
The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, questioned the OfS approach to quality. We believe that the OfS has introduced a more rigorous and effective quality regime. It regulates quality by monitoring adherence to its conditions of registration, and of course condition B3 sets out minimum thresholds for student outcomes.
The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, talked about the quality assessments that the Office for Students is carrying out. I think she quoted a figure of eight, which might have been the figure published; actually, 32 have been completed in the first cycle and the office is in the process of publishing all those reports. We hope very much that they will have a real impact and provide valuable information for students and providers alike.
How can I have only two minutes? Turning to the regulatory burden, again raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, and the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, the Government acknowledge the need to reduce regulatory duplication in the HE sector. We have established a new provider data forum, with the OfS and the Education and Skills Funding Agency, to identify and tackle data burden and duplication issues. We are also commissioning independent research to gain an understanding of the nature, scale and cumulative impact of data collection requirements across the sector.
The noble Lords, Lord Freyberg and Lord Parekh, talked about social mobility. I think the Grand Committee will have heard me say before that 18 year-olds in England from the most disadvantaged areas were 74% more likely to go to university in 2023 than they were in 2010.
In closing, I am grateful for the thoughtful contributions that all of your Lordships have made during this debate. There is an extraordinary amount of expertise in your Lordships’ House on both regulation and higher education. The Government are absolutely committed to making sure that we continue to have a higher education sector to be proud of, and to supporting the OfS to deliver regulation that enables that sector to remain world class.
Baroness Taylor of Bolton (Lab)
My Lords, I think Members here will be pleased that I intend to be brief and not detain them too much longer. It has been a very wide-ranging debate and, as the Minister has acknowledged, we have a high level of expertise in the Room, which has been very useful and constructive. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Johnson, will acknowledge that the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, prove that the committee was not captured by providers. I reassure him that we took evidence from Michael Barber and Nicola Dandridge, and have followed through on all the written evidence. The weight of evidence that we had backs up what our report actually said. It was not a subject that we entered into lightly, nor did we with the criticisms.
I wish that we had more time, because I would very much like to have discussed further with the noble Lord, Lord Johnson, some of the phrases that he used, such as “mass HE sector” and “poor-quality student experience”. Terms like that are bandied around far too freely, when in fact the vast majority of students get a very good experience and a worthwhile qualification at the end of it.
In fact, if we are talking about how we judge those qualifications, I chaired the council of the University of Bradford for several years and I was always frustrated because very often the quality is measured by how much graduates earn once they leave the courses. In Bradford, we wanted our graduates to stay in Bradford and the region and help to raise that region, yet, if you look at the earning potential in Yorkshire compared with London, we were always going to be at a disadvantage, which did not actually reflect the value added. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Norton, would say the same for Hull.
No one who gave us evidence, no one we spoke to and no one on the committee is against regulation. Everybody knows that if public money is involved, there have to be elements of accountability. The question is: what is the balance between accountability and interference? That is the main area where we did not see a situation that we would want. We produced another report recently about who regulates the regulators. That is also something we are going to come back to because it is a very significant point: there is a need for more parliamentary accountability of regulators. Actually, I think that if we had had an ongoing drumbeat of accountability of the OfS to Parliament, we might have avoided some of the problems that have emerged more recently.
As for the “looming crisis”, the Minister wants us to be cautious. I think we are seeing a trend here, and it is worrying. There are many universities that are concerned about their financial position this year and many that are looking to the future and seeing a very precarious situation in years to come, so I do not think that we can be complacent about this at all. The funding of higher education is a very difficult political issue for everyone: this is not just difficult for one party but for everyone, because it is very hard to resolve.
I still have some concerns about the marginalisation of the QAA and it being pushed out of this situation. The international reputation of our universities is desperately important and one of the reasons they are such big earners for this country. We have had some reassurance today about better relationships in the future and about a better role for students in terms of consultation, and those are to be welcomed, but there is a very long way to go before we have a satisfactory situation here. As I said in my earlier remarks, I am very keen that the committee should return to this subject and monitor what is happening in the future. That would help in having better regulation and a better balance and partnership between universities and those who are regulating. In the meantime, I beg to move.
Water Companies: Failure
(7 months ago)
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Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb
To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they have a plan for Thames Water and other water companies if they fail.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Douglas-Miller) (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interests as in the register. As set out in statute, if a water company became insolvent or were in serious breach of its principal statutory duties or an enforcement order, it would enter special administration. The statutory purpose of special administration is to ensure that the company continues to operate and that customers continue to receive their water and wastewater services.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
I thank the Minister for his Answer, but it does not sound like much of a plan—there is not much detail there. I declare an interest as a member of the advisory board of River Action. I will put a plan forward; I am happy to share it with the Government because it is better than that one. The plan is that, as soon as any water company fails—and several are looking as if they are on that path now—we take it back into public ownership. We do not make taxpayers and bill payers pay extortionate amounts—we would keep it very cheap; I can explain how—and we stop the pollution as soon as possible, because we have all had enough.
Lord Douglas-Miller (Con)
I thank the noble Baroness for her very comprehensive plan and look forward to talking to her in detail. In the meantime, I assure her that the Government and Ofwat, the financial regulator of the water sector, carefully monitor the situation. Ofwat continues to engage with Thames Water to support it in improving its resilience within the context of its licence and broader statutory obligations. Fundamentally, it is the companies’ responsibility to continue to raise capital, and they should continue to explore this while fulfilling their statutory obligations of providing water and wastewater services to their customers.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
My Lords, the noble Lord referred to the statutory instrument that sets out the action to be taken when water companies are teetering on the verge of bankruptcy, which was debated on 19 February and subsequently passed in the Chamber. The mechanisms are there, so why are the Government havering over implementation and allowing inadequate management of this vital asset to degenerate on a daily basis?
Lord Douglas-Miller (Con)
My Lords, there is a high bar for the imposition of a special administration regime. A variety of options remain available to Thames Water in securing additional finance and it is vital that all of them are fully explored. The Government are prepared for a range of scenarios across our regulated sectors. If it becomes clear that any company will become insolvent or can no longer fulfil its statutory duties, we will not hesitate to use our powers to request the court to place it into special administration.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, the wording of the Question is “if they fail”. Does the Minister agree that on seeing on our television sets the excrement coming into our streams and rivers so frequently, most people in the country would say that the water companies had already failed?
Lord Douglas-Miller (Con)
I do not actually agree with the noble Lord fully. I accept that a number of the water companies are not performing to the right standard. The Government have been very clear that what is going on is unacceptable, but there is a huge legacy issue here. Simply renationalising water companies or stopping their chief executives from getting their pay, bonuses and all the other things—as is now in place—is not going to solve that problem straightaway. It is a long-term legacy issue which the Government have a fully funded plan to address.
Lord Sikka (Lab)
My Lords, in 1990, Thames Water had net assets of £1,329 million. By 2023, they had increased to £1,435 million, which is a paltry increase of 8%, or a total of £106 million, mostly due to accounting abuses. This means that, over 33 years, Thames Water shareholders have provided little or no new equity at all, which is a major reason for its financial instability. Everyone knows that Ofwat is negligent and incompetent; what is the Government’s excuse?
Lord Douglas-Miller (Con)
The noble Lord cited a number of very detailed figures, which I know he is prone to doing, so forgive me if I do not know the detail on that. Since privatisation, the private water sector model has unlocked about £215 billion of investment. This is the equivalent of around £6 billion annually in investment—almost double the pre-privatisation level. This has delivered a range of benefits. Our bathing waters continue to improve—in 2023, almost 90% were classified as good or excellent. Water companies have invested £25 billion to reduce pollution from sewage and water company investment in environmental improvements has been scaled up to over £7 billion since 2020.
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
My Lords, could the Minister reassure the House that should any of the water companies fail, the ongoing monitoring of, for example, run-off from agricultural land—which is devastating many of our rivers, including the important chalk streams in Hertfordshire in my diocese—will continue, that we will continue to seek to find improvements, and that no momentum will be lost?
Lord Douglas-Miller (Con)
I absolutely assure the right reverend Prelate that this would be the case. If a water company were to go into administration, the special administrator would take control of the company and it would be regulated in exactly the same way as any other water company and subject to all the same environmental rules and regulations.
Lord Grade of Yarmouth (Non-Afl)
My Lords, we have reached the end of a long period of very low interest rates, during which the regulated utilities have taken on a great deal of debt. That was not a problem when interest rates were so low but, now that interest rates have risen, does the Minister think it time that the regulators of those industries took a keener interest in the balance sheets of the regulated utilities?
Lord Douglas-Miller (Con)
The noble Lord raises a very good point. Undoubtedly, mistakes were made in how water companies reacted over the past 10 or so years, when interest rates were very low. Now that interest rates have risen, so have the costs of the borrowings, which have created a number of difficult financial implications for them. However, we all hope that interest rates are falling.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Dubs mentioned contaminated water, and there is now evidence that faeces-contaminated water has been detected in 10 areas of England and Wales. Is the Minister absolutely certain that nobody here today has drunk contaminated water?
Lord Douglas-Miller (Con)
I will just drink this glass of water—bottled water. I assure the noble Baroness that it is very good.
Lord Douglas-Miller (Con)
The noble Baroness raises a very serious point, despite all the laughter. One recent example of contaminated water has been extremely challenging, but the water company has responded pretty well. The Defra team went down there, and we have been in constant contact with South West Water. As noble Lords might expect, we have launched an investigation into the cause, and I hope that we will have the answers soon.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, the Minister cited a number of figures, but one he did not cite is that, since privatisation, the shareholders of 10 water companies have withdrawn £85 billion that could and should have been invested in the water industry. Whatever happens, can he undertake that those shareholders will not benefit further from the catastrophe happening to our waterways across the country?
Lord Douglas-Miller (Con)
The noble Lord makes a very good point, which was touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Grade, on the behaviour of some of the previous shareholders and owners of water companies. I apologise for their behaviour—as do the Government—because I wholly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Fox, that it was not well done. I very much hope that the controls put in place since then, and the lessons learned, will satisfy him going forward.
Carer’s Allowance
(7 months ago)
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Baroness Pitkeathley
To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they plan to review their policy of fining carers who inadvertently break the earnings limit rule when claiming Carer’s Allowance.
Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and draw attention to my interests as set out in the register.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Viscount Younger of Leckie) (Con)
My Lords, while fully recognising and valuing the vital contributions made by carers every day in providing significant care and support, claimants have a responsibility to ensure that they are entitled to benefits and to inform DWP of any changes in their circumstances that could impact their award. Where benefits are overpaid, it is our policy to recover that money, where reasonable, and to set affordable and sustainable repayment plans that do not cause undue hardship.
Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)
My Lords, talking of undue hardship, I hope the Minister will now confirm the figures, which were finally released last week, that more than £250 million is being clawed back from more than 134,000 carers. In 2019, the DWP promised that its new automated system would stop overpayments and warn carers in time. Does he agree that it is unacceptable that carers are being prosecuted in this way? Does he also agree that what is needed is, first, an amnesty for carers who have been overpaid through no fault of their own and, secondly, a thorough review of carer’s allowance, so that carers are neither prosecuted nor persecuted for trying their best to combine paid work with their caring responsibilities, thus propping up the whole social care system on behalf of us all?
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
I think I should just reiterate that the Government thoroughly recognise and value the vital contribution made by carers, but it is also the case that, if a claimant incurs an overpayment due to payment error or fraud, this overpayment will need to be repaid and, in some cases, as the noble Baroness will know, a penalty will be charged. However, we carefully balance our duty to the taxpayer to recover overpayments and safeguards are in place to manage repayments fairly. Some overpayments will attract no penalty at all, and I can certainly expand on the safe- guards that we have in place.
Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)
My Lords, is the Minister aware that the chair of the Work and Pensions Select Committee has written to the comptroller of the National Audit Office asking the NAO to conduct a second inquiry into carer’s allowance overpayment, five years after the initial investigation in 2019? Would the Government welcome such an investigation and how quickly could it be set up?
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
I have to say that the gist of the argument that came from the noble Baroness’s question is, “What is going on?” I can tell her that around 1 million people are in receipt of carer’s allowance and that the vast majority of them—around 95%—were paid correctly. I do not entirely accept the statistics that the noble Baroness mentioned: the total overpayment rate for carer’s allowance was 5.2%, which represents about 60,000 people. About half of them ended up being given a penalty of £50—the basic civil penalty.
Baroness Andrews (Lab)
My Lords, on the statistics, can the noble Viscount tell us how many people owe more than £20,000? When he talks about responsibility, will he agree that the problem is that we have another instance where the information technology system has got away from human judgment? The IT system does not trigger action, so carers may wait months and months to be told that they owe significant amounts. The evidence now suggests that one of the effects of this is that some carers are not going to claim carer’s allowance because it is too risky. They are facing so much stress and this is one element of stress that they simply cannot handle.
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
Although I do not have the figure to pass on to the noble Baroness, I can say that the other main category for overpayments comes under the title of “conditions of entitlement”. That represents 2.8% of the total. This is when claimants have stopped caring and neglected to tell us, or when the claim has been fraudulent from the outset. I am aware of some extreme cases highlighted in the press—which, by the way, have been building up over many years—where the amount of repayment is particularly high. That amount is not particularly high, but I will certainly get the figure to the noble Baroness.
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, let me give an example. Carer’s allowance is a cliff-edge benefit. If you are caring for 35 hours a week and you earn £151 a week or less, you get the lot. If you earn £1 more, you get nothing. So the people the Minister is talking about include someone like Helen, who cared for her parents for 10 years. She breached the earnings rule because she worked in a hospital. They used to dock her wages automatically to pay for her parking. When they stopped doing that, her net pay went up. She was over the earnings limit by an average of £2 a month for two years, and she was told to pay back £1,700. DWP has known about this for years. Why is it not telling carers before they get into this kind of debt?
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
I think the noble Baroness will know that, each year, there is an uprating letter, so the communication is there for individuals. However, it is fair to say that we are looking at what more we can do to help our customers. I say again that it is their responsibility to tell us whether they exceed the earnings limit. Equally, we are looking to see whether, for example, under the RTI, the information that we receive instantaneously from the HMRC can be utilised so that we can send a text to customers. This is something that we are looking at very seriously— so her point is well made.
Baroness Buscombe (Con)
My Lords, I have great sympathy with what the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, has said in terms of communication. Every department can always do better in that and use every form of technology and so on to make sure that people know where they stand. However, would my noble friend not agree, and in support of what my noble friend is saying, that the Government have to be vigilant? We will get an income tax take in this country this year of only around £279 billion, and the bill just for the Department for Work and Pensions will be £300 billion. That is one department. It is vital, is it not, that the Government are vigilant and really crack down on those people who genuinely should not receive—
Baroness Buscombe (Con)
No, I am sorry, I am talking about those who should not receive. I did not say “carers”; I am saying those who should not be in receipt of benefits.
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
Indeed. I think I have made it clear already that we need to be fair. We need to balance carefully our duty to the taxpayer to recover the overpayments with safeguards in place to manage the repayments fairly. I am the first to say that some carers are among the most vulnerable people in society. Where they have got themselves into difficulty and gone over the limits, it is their duty to tell us and we have an important job to do in these situations to help them with their repayments. We have made some very good progress on that, but I have made the point that in terms of communications there is more to be done.
Baroness Smith of Llanfaes (PC)
My Lords, I myself was a young carer for my late father and I understand how such additional responsibilities can limit your options for a stable income. Does the Minister acknowledge that unpaid carers are disproportionately affected by poverty? Will he explore longer-term solutions to bring more unpaid carers out of poverty, such as reforming the much-needed carer’s allowance?
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
The noble Baroness makes a very good point. Each carer has his or her own responsibilities, some of which are very great, involving permanent lack of sleep. However, it is very important that, if they can, they should lead for themselves fulfilling and rewarding lives. That is why we have a number of initiatives to encourage carers to do some work. We think that it is good for them, and they acknowledge that. Clearly, this is a very important part of what we do in our department.
Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)
My Lords, we all acknowledge that caring is an extremely stressful occupation and that it is really good if carers can spend some time at external work. We know that it is good for their mental health. The responsibility of paying something like £1,500 back in a short period is more than stressful; it tips some people into becoming so mentally ill that they can no longer go to work. Can the Minister go back to the department and agree the number of people who should have their debt written off and that those not in that category should pay no more than £5 a week?
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
We certainly do not agree with the idea that any of the debt should be written off; we think that the debt is there to be repaid. However, as I have said, we have a number of plans in place on a one-to-one basis to help each individual who has got into difficulty, to help them to repay that debt. That is a very important point.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley called for a fundamental review of carer’s allowance, as has the Work and Pensions Committee. We need a review that looks not just at the cruel rules but at the purpose of carer’s allowance, all the eligibility rules and the level of carer’s allowance, which is one of the lowest benefits of its kind.
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
The noble Baroness will know that we keep these matters under constant review and that the carer’s allowance is a non-means-tested benefit, with no capital rules, in England and Wales, which means it does not depend on the payment of national insurance contributions but is funded from general taxation.
I would also say that, for the claimant to be able to earn up to £151 per week, we need to take account of the allowable expenses. So that £151 can be stretched, in effect, by taking account of national insurance, tax and other allowable expenses.
Internal Drainage Boards: Levies
(7 months ago)
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Baroness Taylor of Stevenage
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of increases in internal drainage board levies on local authorities.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Baroness Scott of Bybrook) (Con)
The Government are aware of the pressures that certain councils have experienced due to the increasing internal drainage board levies. In 2023-24, we assessed the impact of the levies on local authorities and provided £3 million in additional grant funding to the 15 that are most severely affected. Having listened to local authorities, the Government have announced a further £3 million of support in 2024-25. We are currently assessing the impact of this year’s increase in levies on local authorities and will announce the distribution of funding in due course.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, the £3 million does not touch the sides. Councils are charged this levy to manage water levels in their area. Since 2016 they have been expected to fund it through council tax. The financial impact shows that it has increased by almost £11 million in two years, beyond the council tax capping limit of 30 authorities involved, such as Boston, where the levy consumes 58% of the council tax, and Great Yarmouth, which saw 91% of its council tax increase consumed. Councils have been told repeatedly that the Government are looking for a long-term solution, so where is that solution, when is it coming, and will the Government meet the representatives to determine a solution before the end of the financial year?
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
Yes, I am very happy to meet those people with the noble Baroness. If she gets in touch with my office, we will arrange that.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interest as vice-president of the Association of Drainage Authorities. Does my noble friend agree that the drainage boards play a crucial role in low-lying areas to alleviate the flood risk? Given the unprecedented weather events of the past 18 months—the wettest on record since 1836—will she commit the Government to undertaking a comprehensive review of water management and flood risk resilience to ensure that low-lying areas are not placed at greater risk in the future?
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
DLUHC has already committed to work with the sector and with Defra to implement, as my noble friend quite rightly says, what needs to be a long-term solution. Both departments recognise the importance of the issue and will continue to explore options. I welcome the sector’s views on this and will undertake data gathering as part of the work.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
Internal drainage boards perform an essential function in geographically managing flood water—and this comes at a cost. If this is borne locally, other essential services will be depleted. Can the Minister comment on whether the Government would be prepared to spread this cost across all councils, not just those that habitually suffer flooding?
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
I understand where the noble Baroness is coming from, but that is not what the Government had envisaged. We are looking at the data and those councils that are under the greatest pressure because of the issues of water in their areas. That is how we will continue to do it this year—led by data.
Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interests on the register. Up until May last year—as some noble Lords and certainly the Minister will be aware—when the electorate unceremoniously but quite wisely decided I should have more time in my diary, I used to lead a council that suffered the unfairness of the way the drainage board levies are currently raised. Over 50% of our council tax increases used to go to pay the drainage board and over 50% of council tax in total used to go to pay the drainage board. In the last two years, over 100% of what we collected in council tax increases went to pay the drainage board. Obviously, I do not blame my noble friend’s department for that, but does she agree that this is cost shunting from Defra to DLUHC and that, perhaps, a joint meeting between Defra and DLUHC to get a resolution would probably be best for the sector?
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
That is exactly where we are going. As my noble friend said, it is up to DLUHC and Defra—and local authorities—to get together and work out the future of this funding.
Universities: Financial Sustainability
(7 months ago)
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Lord Young of Cookham
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the financial sustainability of universities in England.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)
My Lords, the Government recognise that the sector’s financial position has become increasingly challenging. The financial health report from the Office for Students makes clear that the business models for a significant number of providers must change to ensure that they are financially sustainable. Indeed, all providers must continue to adapt to uncertainties and financial risks. Ultimately, providers are independent from government and, as such, it is for them to decide how they manage their finances.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
I am grateful to my noble friend. As she says, the universities are independent, but the Government set the framework within which they operate—freezing student fees for seven years and controlling student visas. Government has an overall responsibility to make sure that students get a good-quality education at universities and that they remain competitive internationally. What is my noble friend’s response to the rather worrying report from the Office for Students last week, which basically said that we need to review the business and funding model of universities if they are to continue to maintain their quality?
Baroness Barran (Con)
The Government recognise the importance of having a thriving higher education sector which is responsive to the needs of the economy and funded in a way that is fair to taxpayers. We have demonstrated that commitment via our £1.3 billion of capital funding that was announced in this spending review, which is to support universities with teaching and research in key STEM areas and supporting roles in the NHS. As my noble friend said, the Office for Students was clear that providers need to review their business model and that there are very different business models across the sector.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, has the Minister seen that even the Foreign Secretary contacted the Prime Minister to say that a curb on graduate visas could be devastating for universities? Next time she bumps into the Foreign Secretary, could she whisper in his ear that it is easier to cross the Floor of this House than it is down there?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I think the noble Lord is aware that the Government do not comment on leaks.
Lord Cromwell (CB)
If the Minister is not too busy whispering on the Front Bench, could she confirm whether, if a major university—say, one of the Russell group—were to fall over financially, it would be too big to fail, or would the Government bail it out?
Baroness Barran (Con)
If the noble Lord looks at the recent data that has been produced on the financial health of our universities, he will see that larger universities, such as those in the Russell group, are in very good financial health and continue to show significant surpluses. Of course the Government have a role to play in making sure that student interests are protected in the case of a university failing.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that international students have a positive impact on our skills base, future workforce and international influence? Businesses recently said that they agree. If this is the case, why do the Government want to axe the graduate visa programme? Could it be that they are pandering to the right wing of the Conservative Party rather than thinking of the greater good of our country?
Baroness Barran (Con)
The Government recognise the value of international students and are very proud of our international education strategy and what it has achieved. However, the Home Secretary commissioned the Migration Advisory Committee to write a report, which it published very recently, and the Government are considering its recommendations with care.
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
In light of the recent report from the Migration Advisory Committee—itself no pushover—can my noble friend reassure us that the Government will allow recent changes to postgraduate visas to work through the system before they make further changes, such as severely restricting graduate visas to particular subjects or universities, either of which could severely impact the already precarious financial status of some of our universities?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I recognise my noble friend’s concerns. We are committed to retaining the prestige and brand of UK higher education, which has been so successful in attracting international students. I repeat that the Government are reflecting on the findings of the MAC report. However, I point out that it found no widespread abuses of the system but pointed to specific concerns, including the use of recruitment agents.
Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)
My Lords, the system is not working for students or universities. The issue with the Office for Students is clear, and the Government have worn down relationships with universities by ignoring this impending crisis. Does the Minister believe that there is a clear duty on the Government to step back and look at the approach that they have been pursuing?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I just cannot agree with the noble Baroness. Our universities are tremendously successful. Student numbers, both domestic and international, have risen year on year and funding has increased—for English universities by 50% since 2015-16. Clearly, the report was very helpful, constructive and nuanced in the way that it set out some of the risks for the sector, which need to be worked through.
Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)
My Lords, I declare my interests at Cambridge and the Oxford International Education Group. Could the Minister explain to the House how the Government can say that they feel that higher education and its reputation is very important, and yet the Home Office keeps changing policies? Does that not send mixed messages to potential international students? Could UK plc not be doing a rather better job in terms of international higher education?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I remind the noble Baroness that our international strategy has been incredibly successful and hit its targets several years early, with 679,970 students in 2021-22. We have made some changes to the graduate route, for reasons that I think have been well articulated.
Lord Grabiner (CB)
My Lords, does the Minister not think that perhaps the time has come to increase the cap? The £9,250 has been in place now for many years, and the only way that many universities are able to make it work is by charging some extortionate fees at the graduate non-regulated level.
Baroness Barran (Con)
I appreciate that, but the noble Lord will also understand the pressures that students face. We also have a responsibility to students to make sure that university is affordable.
Lord Johnson of Marylebone (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interest as a visiting professor at King’s and chairman of FutureLearn. If the Prime Minister goes ahead with curbs to the graduate visa, would my noble friend the Minister say how we will replace the £12 billion in economic benefits that international students bring to priority category 1 levelling-up areas, including towns such as Stockton, Middlesbrough and Darlington, which receive £240 million of benefits every year from international students at Teesside University?
Baroness Barran (Con)
With respect to my noble friend, he makes a very speculative statement, which makes it pretty hard for me to comment on it.
Viscount Hanworth (Lab)
The Minister is doubtless aware that the pension fund of university lecturers is mainly invested in Thames Water. Traditionally, the munificence of the university pension scheme was regarded as a compensation for penurious academic salaries. Is the Minister aware of how difficult it will now be to attract people of talent into the profession, given the collapse of the pension scheme?
Baroness Barran (Con)
Obviously, the pension scheme is an element, but I am not aware that the entitlement of university lecturers is changing. Clearly, it is up to individual institutions to make themselves as attractive as possible to academic staff.
Baroness Andrews (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Lord opposite asked a legitimate question—how poorer areas, which are benefiting hugely because they have universities in their midst, are likely to be affected if the number of overseas students drops and the university becomes in a more precarious and even more fragile state. This morning, on the radio, one university was cited as having a drop of 40% in its overseas students over the past year. How will that affect the university and the community it serves?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I think that the noble Baroness, on one level, knows the answer to her question, which is obviously that if there is less money going in, it will have a negative effect. But that is not the real question. The real question is: what are the Government doing to make sure that there is significant investment in those areas? There absolutely has been significant investment in all of the areas the noble Baroness cites, not just in relation to universities but also in colleges and institutes of technology, building the skills pipeline of the future.
Israel and Gaza
(7 months ago)
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Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs what assessment he has made of Israel’s compliance with the summary order regarding Gaza issued by the International Court of Justice on 26 January, and what assessment he has made of the implications for the United Kingdom’s obligations, particularly with regard to arms exports.
The Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton) (Con)
We respect the ICJ’s role and independence; it is up to the court to monitor Israel’s compliance. We have noted our concerns previously about this case, which we do not think is helpful in the goal of achieving a sustainable ceasefire. While there has been some progress in some areas of humanitarian relief, Israel must do more to make good its promises, and I am pressing them on this, directly.
I regularly review advice about the situation in Gaza. Our position on export licences remains unchanged but, of course, we keep this under review.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
I thank the Minister for his Answer but of course, events have moved on since my Question was laid. The ICC prosecutor has made applications for five arrest warrants, alleging war crimes and crimes against humanity by senior Hamas leaders, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Israel’s Minister of Defense. The prosecutor was advised to do so unanimously by an independent panel of experts—our own noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of the Shaws, among them—which has set out why it thinks there are reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Netanyahu and Mr Gallant have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Surely it now obvious that the UK should immediately at least suspend arms exports licences to Israel, given the clear risk that continuing them would put the UK in breach of international law. Surely the Minister will confirm here that the UK accepts the jurisdiction of the court in this case, under the Rome statute that the UK helped to write and, of course, agreed to.
Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)
What I would say to the noble Baroness is that the last time I was asked to make a political declaration outside our normal process of reviewing arms export licences, and to simply say that we would not sell any more arms to Israel, just a few days later Iran attacked Israel with a hail of over 140 cruise missiles. That position of acting outside our normal processes would have been completely wrong.
Let me answer very directly on the ICC’s announcement yesterday. I do not believe for one moment that seeking these warrants will help get the hostages out, help get aid in, or help deliver a sustainable ceasefire. As we have said from the outset, because Israel is not a signatory to the Rome statute, and because Palestine is not yet recognised as a state, we do not think that the court has jurisdiction in this area.
I would go beyond that and say that, frankly, this is mistaken in terms of position, timing and effect. To draw a moral equivalence between the Hamas leadership and the democratically elected leader of Israel is just plain wrong. It is not just Britain saying that; countries all over Europe and the world are saying that.
On timing, I point out to your Lordships’ House that the ICC was about to embark on a visit to Israel, which some of us had helped to arrange, and at the last minute decided to cancel that visit and simply go ahead with its announcement. It is not normally for the ICC to think about the effect, but as it clearly thought about the timing, maybe it should also think about the effect. As I have said, it will not help get the hostages out, and it probably makes change in Israel less likely.
Lord Robathan (Con)
I am very pleased with what my noble friend has just said. Does he also agree that if we and the rest of the West were to suspend arms sales, it would allow Hamas to regroup and return to the destructive and ghastly behaviour we witnessed on 7 October?
Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)
I thank my noble friend for that question. Britain and America are obviously in completely different situations in terms of arms exports to Israel. Our exports are less than 1% of the total, so not a meaningful amount, whereas the United States is a far bigger provider. As I said, I think acting outside our proper processes and guidelines —we have a process of going through Israel’s commitment, capability and compliance with the rules laid out in our export criteria—would not be the right thing to, for the reasons I have given.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
Does the Foreign Secretary recall that in the 2014 conflict between Israel and Hamas, during which there were just over 2,000 Palestinian casualties, he agreed with us on these Benches? As Prime Minister, he decided to pause military equipment licences to Israel on the basis of a disproportionate response by the Israeli military. That was the normal procedure, which he has referred to. Do we take it now that his view is that the current Israeli military response is proportionate?
Will the Foreign Secretary reassure me that, notwithstanding any of his opinions about the ICC, we will honour every obligation that the United Kingdom has signed up to in the Rome statute? These are treaty obligations when it comes to those who would be arraigned by the ICC.
Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)
There is a bit of a difference between 2014 and now.
Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)
I will tell you why. Today is day 227 of the hostages still being in captivity, including British citizens. All of this relates to what happened on 7 October. There was no “7 October” in 2014, so we are in a different situation. Of course we respect the independence of the ICC, but just as we respect its independence, it should respect the independence of politicians in not suddenly losing their voice and all their opinions about these things. I have a very clear view about what has happened, and I have been happy to share it with your Lordships’ House.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
I welcome the fact that the noble Lord is supporting the independence of the ICC, which is vital, but I hope he can truly find his voice. The UK supported UN Security Council Resolution 2417, which states that
“unlawful denial of humanitarian access”
and the act of “wilfully impeding relief supply” should be condemned. The noble Lord said on the BBC that
“Israel has not had a clean bill of health”
on allowing humanitarian aid to enter Gaza. Does he accept that Israel is in breach of that resolution, and if he does, does he not think that is a breach of international humanitarian law?
Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)
The noble Lord is right: I absolutely did say, and I repeat, that we have far from given Israel a clean bill of health on this issue. Not enough has been done to get aid in. We have had some recent promises, which are encouraging, about 500 trucks a day, about the opening of Ashdod port, and about the new pier adjacent to the beach in Gaza. Some of those promises are being fulfilled: Ashdod is open, the pier is working, and aid is being delivered, including British aid. But some of the promises are not being kept, and no one has been tougher on the Israelis than me in direct call after call and message after message about having to meet their obligations.
We have not given them a clean bill of health, but there is a world of difference between that and issuing arrest warrants at the same time as you are doing so for Hamas, and drawing this moral equivalence. It is not just the UK that takes this view. The Germans have said that simultaneous applications for arrest warrants gives the false impression of an equation. The Americans have called it outrageous. The Italians have called it totally unacceptable. The Austrians have said:
“The fact however that the leader of the terrorist organisation Hamas whose declared goal is the extinction of the State of Israel is being mentioned at the same time as the democratically elected representatives of that very State is non comprehensible”.
The Czechs have said that it is appalling and completely unacceptable. I do not want to get too political in your Lordships’ House, but the odd man out, in many ways, is the party opposite, which seems to be saying that it supports the ICC in every way.
Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)
While fully supporting Israel’s right to defend itself and fully supporting its desire to degrade Hamas’ military capacity, would the Foreign Secretary not agree that there is a legitimate worry about the use from the very beginning of the campaign of these 2,000-pound bombs, which, in a very densely populated area, are so difficult to use in a way that is both discriminate and proportionate?
Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)
I agree that, while Israel has the right to defend itself, to try to deal with Hamas and to prevent 7 October happening again, it is important, as we have said throughout, that Israel complies with international humanitarian law as it does so.
Lord Swire (Con)
Does my noble friend the Foreign Secretary share my concern that the continuing withholding of the now $430 million under the Israel-Norway Accord, which is largely from Palestinian tax revenues, fatally undermines the authority of the Palestinian National Authority? What more can he do to ensure that money gets to them, and quickly?
Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)
My noble friend is absolutely right. One of the most important things we can do in trying to bring this conflict to a conclusion is to work on the political measures that are going to be necessary to deal with these problems. One of them is to strengthen the Palestinian Authority, which needs the money that Israel is holding back from it. We have pressed the Israelis about that again and again. I would still say to the Israelis that you cannot fight something with nothing. You may not think the Palestinian Authority is ideal; you may think that it fails in many respects; but you need to find a partner that is not Hamas that you can work with in Gaza on the West Bank, and that partner should be the new technocratic government run by the Palestinian Authority.
Russia: Sanctions
(7 months ago)
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Lord West of Spithead
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of UK sanctions on Russia, and in particular on the number of tankers and other ships trading in Russian oil despite those sanctions.
The Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton) (Con)
My Lords, sanctions by the United Kingdom and G7 partners have cost Russia an estimated $400 billion, equivalent to four years of war funding, and contributed to a 30% fall in oil tax revenues in 2023. In many ways, the existence of the shadow fleet is a sign that sanctions are working. They are forcing Russia to spend billions to try to circumvent them. The UK is investing in the Joint Maritime Security Centre to track shadow fleet activity, and we are finalising new powers to sanction individual vessels.
Lord West of Spithead (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Foreign Secretary for his Answer. There is no doubt that sanctions are having an impact. Indeed, you only need to look at the Russian-flagged tankers languishing in harbour; that is why Russia has to have this shadow fleet. My question relates directly to the shadow fleet. Thousands of these ships are being operated, many of them under flags of convenience. They are not properly insured or maintained, and they are at the bottom end of the spectrum. Many of them are going through the Great Belt without pilots, coming down the North Sea and through the channel and doing transfers in the Atlantic. It is a recipe for a disaster which will not be properly covered. We have huge clout in this country because we run merchant shipping, really: we have the insurance, all of the lawyers who work in this area and the IMO. Is there more that we can do to screw this down to put even more pressure on Russia? The Chinese are careful because of secondary sanctions. Could we do more to try to stop this?
Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)
The noble Lord is absolutely right to raise this. As he knows, we have invested money in the Joint Maritime Security Centre, and that is making a difference. We have sanctioned Turkish and Emirati shipping company owners involved in facilitating this shadow fleet. We deploy our diplomatic network to deter third countries where we can, and we are working through the IMO. We are going to have the power to sanction individual vessels and their owners. However, the noble Lord is right to say that there is more we can do. Fundamentally, these are mostly uninsured, leaky, unsafe, environmentally unsound ships, and we should be going after them whenever and wherever we can. It is possible to do more, particularly when they potentially threaten environmental disasters in the countries they are going past. One of the things we want to do at the forthcoming European Political Community meeting is to work with partners to see what more we can do to take this weapon out of Putin’s hands.
Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)
My Lords, what assessment have His Majesty’s Government made of the fact that oil is being sold through China and India and then being resold, so in many ways circumventing the sanctions? The fact that other ships having been sanctioned and subject to secondary sanctions does not seem to have stopped those oil sales. Is there a way of further strengthening sanctions so that they really bite?
Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)
The noble Baroness makes a good point. There has been an effect on Russian revenue because of the price cap, but a lot of sales are still going through, using shadow tankers, and into other markets. One thing we are trying to do here to make sure that refined product does not leak back into the UK is to make sure that all importers of oil and oil products into the UK provide proof of origin to relevant enforcement authorities to demonstrate that the goods are not of Russian origin. We will do that, but, as I said in my earlier answer, there is probably more we can do with other countries and allies to chase down this shadow fleet wherever we can.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
It is of course true that the revenues for Russia from all fossil fuel exports are down considerably. However, against that, crude oil on the high seas is going up, for the simple reason that Russia cannot export processed products and therefore is concentrating on crude oil. Would it be possible to get directly at the swarm of ships on the high seas that the noble Lord, Lord West, pointed out to us by pressing to reduce the price cap from $60 to $30? That would at one stroke reduce Russian revenues and reduce the possibility of these leaky and dangerous ships wandering around the globe.
Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)
The noble Lord with all his experience makes a very good point. I will certainly take it away and discuss with colleagues across government whether there is more we can do to bear down on the price and whether that would be effective. It is worth remembering that we are talking about 600 ageing oil tankers transporting predominantly Russian oil around the world. They do not have the support of any G7 services, such as insurance, so whether it is insurance, sanctions, environmental measures or the price cap, we are looking at everything we can.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
My Lords, I return to an issue that we have raised before, which slightly leads on from sanctions: the efforts that have been made—I think they have accelerated—to get interest from frozen Russian assets that we can then channel into Ukraine. The Foreign Secretary has pointed on numerous occasions to the importance of international collaboration on this issue. Can he say something in that regard about today’s developments in Brussels and the upcoming meeting of the G7 Finance Ministers? How quickly could this become operational, and will there be any need for primary legislation to ensure that we can implement it?
Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)
What I can say to the noble Baroness is that good progress has been made. To be frank, we would perhaps have gone for a more maximalist version of trying to use the frozen assets themselves, but the idea of taking the interest from the assets and using that for Ukraine to pay the interest on a larger loan—which could be as much as £50 billion—is the lead proposal at the moment, and is being discussed by Finance Ministers in the G7. I am confident that we will get there, but, as we do, it is very important to say that we do not rule out taking further action on the frozen assets themselves. We may well get to a time when Russia is, or should be, paying reparations to Ukraine for the damage that has been done. At that point, those underlying assets that we still hold could be very important.
Lord Sentamu (CB)
My Lords, last week, in a debate on Ukraine, the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, and I asked the Minister about the greatest idea produced by the Foreign Secretary, which we felt was very creative, of using the assets that we have seized from Russia and turning them into money to help the war effort in Ukraine. His answer was that he agreed with us but that we would have to ask the Foreign Secretary about it, as it was his idea. Can the Foreign Secretary tell me what he has done about it?
Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)
What I have done about it this. We have had discussions with the G7 Foreign Ministers, where I have been talking to all our allies about why we should be doing this—the economic case, the moral case, the political case. I think that is widely accepted, but there is nervousness, particularly in some of the European countries where a lot of the assets reside—a lot of them are held in Euroclear, for instance—about using the underlying assets straight away. That is where this idea comes in, using the windfall interest from these assets to roll into something that is given to Ukraine so that it can pay the interest on a much bigger loan. That is the lead idea. We must not let the best be the enemy of the good; let us try to get the money out of the door and into the hands of Ukrainians so that they can pay for the war effort against Russia at this vital time. As I have said, that will not rule out looking at the underlying assets, which will of course still be frozen and will not be going back to Russia. We can look at those again later.
Lord Dobbs (Con)
My Lords, connected to that question, I congratulate my noble friend the Foreign Secretary on his success in getting a long-term British commitment to Ukraine in military aid for its defence against Russia; I think we have committed something like £3 billion per year until 2030. On its own, of course, that will not be enough. We need other countries to make the same sort of long-term commitment. What can this Government do to persuade other Governments to back what we have done?
Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)
The best thing we have done is to announce that the £3 billion— the noble Lord is right about that figure—is not just for this year and next year but for as many years as Ukraine needs it. That gives us the ability, just as with the 2.5% spending pledge, to go to other partners in NATO and elsewhere and say, “We have made this pledge. If you make this pledge too, we can give Ukrainians the certainty they need that the money will be there to support not just the munitions but the vital economic measures that they need as well”.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, in previous debates on sanctions I have raised questions about the ability of Ministers to exempt British Overseas Territories from the shipping components of our sanctions. Can the Foreign Secretary reassure me that not one single member of the shadow fleet will be able to get a landing licence into a British Overseas Territory?
Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)
That is an excellent question. I will double check, but my understanding is that we are trying to track this shadow fleet wherever it goes, and use that information so that countries can use environmental legislation, insurance legislation and other legislation to confiscate shipments and stop them moving. That must be the case in our overseas territories, but I will double check that it is so.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)
The Secretary of State is quite wrong that it is in other capitals that the Russians have the greatest investment. The greatest Russian investment is here in London; it is in property, and in Abramovich’s sale of Chelsea FC—all that money is here. The Secretary of State said at the previous Question Time, as he has said before, that he wants to do something about this, but he is doing nothing about it. The European Union is calling for action; at the last meeting of the Council of Europe, I took part in a debate where the Council of Europe almost unanimously asked the United Kingdom to do something about it. Why is he not doing it? What legal obstructions or impediments are stopping him taking real action?
Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)
We have taken real action: we have sanctioned 2,000 individuals and entities under the Russia sanctions regime, over 1,700 of which were sanctioned since the full-scale invasion. We have taken huge steps. The point I would make is that there is a difference in scale, even with the riches of Abramovich—and we will come on to that—between the individuals who we have sanctioned and the Russian sovereign assets that are invested in things such as Euroclear and central banks in Europe and elsewhere. There is a difference in scale, and that is why the windfall interest from them is so important. On the issue of Abramovich, we are doing everything we can to try to make sure that this massive amount of money, which is in trust, can start flowing into Ukraine for the benefit of Ukrainian people and Ukrainian charities. It is a complicated issue—I can go into more detail if the noble Lord would like—but we are working very hard on it.
South Africa
(7 months ago)
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The Lord Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs what are his priorities for working with the government of South Africa after their forthcoming general election.
The Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton) (Con)
The United Kingdom enjoys a long-standing and close partnership with South Africa. In November 2022, His Majesty the King welcomed the President of South Africa to London for the first state visit of his reign. We look forward to continuing this relationship after South Africa’s elections on 29 May. Priorities would include boosting trade links, which are already worth £10.4 billion; tackling climate change and energy security; and working together to promote democracy and peace as South Africa looks forward to its G20 presidency in 2025.
The Lord Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham
I thank the Secretary of State for his Answer. In recognising South Africa’s significant role and potential as a global partner, does he agree that with a new Government there is an opportunity to renew momentum and engagement through existing aid programmes in supporting NGO and important strategic church partnerships, particularly as they further their endeavours in ongoing reconciliation and bridge-building? Is it also an opportunity for His Majesty’s Government to find additional ways to support South African aspirations for economic equality, especially in light of the extreme hardship arising from financial disparities in the country?
Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)
Every new Government is an opportunity to start the partnership afresh and see what more can be done. We have to wait for the outcome of the elections in South Africa. The most promising avenues are in trade and, particularly, climate change and energy, where the Just Energy Transition Partnership is in place with South Africa. Having been to South Africa relatively recently, I think the other area where we need to help it is in the fight against corruption and state capture and the problems in its energy system that have led to the blackouts and difficulties that it has been having.
Lord Polak (Con)
My Lords, at the United Nations, in stark contrast to South Africa politics under Nelson Mandela, South Africa has increasingly voted with the so-called axis of resistance as it relates to the wars either in Ukraine or in Gaza. The signing of the co-operation deal between South Africa and Iran last year shows a clear shift towards Russia, Iran and China. Will the Foreign Secretary ensure that HMG make it clear to the South African Government that this shift is both undesirable and unhelpful?
Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)
As I say frequently in speeches, we are living in a competitive and contested world, so it is even more important than ever that Foreign Ministers and our diplomats get out there and compete and make the arguments for why Ukraine is in the right and Russia is in the wrong, and why investment in South Africa and elsewhere from the United Kingdom and western partners should be an alternative to that from China. I agree with the noble Lord about some of the recent South African stances. Any comparison between the liberation movement in South Africa and what Hamas represents in Israel is well wide of the mark. I cannot believe that Nelson Mandela would ever have supported anything like what Hamas did on 7 October. When he is prayed in aid, it makes me wonder.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
My Lords, 30 years ago when South Africa had its first free democratic elections, most of us watched those scenes on TV with huge emotion as people queued for hours outside polling stations to exercise their democratic vote. Many of us are quite envious that they have elections in May this year and we may have to wait a little longer. Can I put it to the Foreign Secretary that the relationship between the two countries—whether we agree or disagree—transcends elections and Governments and we should have in place a framework that allows for honest, genuine dialogue whichever Governments are in power?
Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)
The noble Baroness is absolutely right. We have a framework of co-operation and a close partnership, and I met my South African opposite number in February this year. The point I was making was that when we think about how we try to build those partnerships, it is often more difficult to build them in the run-up to an election. Obviously, the South Africans are very close to their election. Waiting for that election and the new Government—whatever it may be—would be a good opportunity to re-engage on our shared agenda.
Lord Oates (LD)
My Lords, does the Foreign Secretary share my regret that, notwithstanding the state visit by President Ramaphosa, over recent years the relationship between the UK and South Africa, both politically and economically, has declined significantly, with the value of UK exports less than a third of what it was when he was Prime Minister? Will he take steps to show that we value the relationship with South Africa by urging the Prime Minister to visit South Africa following its elections and by accepting the invitation himself to attend the service of thanksgiving and commemoration for 30 years of democracy in Westminster Abbey on 16 July?
Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)
I will certainly look at my diary for 16 July. However, that might be the week of the EPC so I think we will be extremely busy welcoming about 50 Heads of State and Foreign Ministers to the UK. We work hard at this relationship. Obviously, where it went into reverse in some regards was during the period of President Zuma and the problems of state capture when, quite rightly, Britain sanctioned a series of individuals involved in that episode. President Ramaphosa has been trying to recover from that. That is why I said in my answer to the right reverend Prelate that we should try to help South Africa deal with some of the things that took it backwards under President Zuma.
Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee (Non-Afl)
My Lords, the Foreign Secretary will no doubt have noted with concern the growing relationship between South Africa and Iran. What is his assessment of the potential threat from that axis?
Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)
When we look in Iran’s region, it is obvious that it supports Hamas, the Houthis, Hezbollah and a whole series of malign actors that are responsible for terrorist attacks or attacks on navigation for destabilisation. While it is important that we try to have a dialogue with Iran and deliver some very tough messages to it, it is quite clear that its influence in the region is malign, and we make that clear at every opportunity.
Lord Morgan (Lab)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to address the former MP for Witney. I taught in South Africa, in Witwatersrand, and I think that one of the important aspects of this is not so much diplomatic or political but our soft power. The links between South African universities and British universities were very powerful and people were well aware of them when I was there. For reasons we heard in an earlier debate, the number of graduate and undergraduate students from South Africa has declined and I wonder whether the Foreign Secretary has thought about how this could be improved.
Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)
The noble Lord is right that soft power and people-to-people links are incredibly important. I caught the end of the previous debate. The point I would always make, even before the introduction of the graduate route with the ability to stay on for two years, is that Britain has an incredibly clear offer to international students from around the world. If students have an English language qualification and a place at a British university, there is no limit on the numbers that can come. While we have important debates in this House about the rules we should put in place, that message needs to go out loud and clear to every country, including South Africa, with which we have so many great links.
Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)
My Lords, soft power is a very important aspect of how Britain projects its power across the world. We have mentioned the remembrance service at Westminster Abbey and the links between South African and British universities. This may sound like a superficial point, but it is not. When I went to the Chelsea Flower Show yesterday, I asked a gardening expert which garden was the best to visit. She said, “It’s the South African garden. It’s the first time they’ve been here for four years”. It may sound odd for me to say it, but I suspect that the Foreign Secretary would get the best headlines in South Africa this year if he went to visit that garden with the South African high commissioner. Is this not an example of how, while there are hard issues we have to debate with our friends and allies across the world, soft power also goes a long way in enabling those conversations?
Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)
I am embarrassed to admit to my noble friend that I have already been. Indeed, I enjoyed a very nice glass of South African white wine while looking around it.
Lord Sentamu (CB)
My Lords, the noble Lord was right when he said that we are living in a contested world. In Africa—I come from Uganda—Russia and China are the greatest investors; they build hospitals, schools and roads. A lot of money used to be spent by people in this country, but I am afraid that Russia and China are taking over. I suspect the reason is that some of the new Governments and their politics find it easier to deal with the two new colonial powers. What do we need to do to reawaken ourselves? “Made in Britain” used to be great when I was growing up as a little boy in a village in Uganda.
Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)
That is a very important question. In fact, I discussed this with the Gambian Foreign Minister this morning, who made the point about how much more democratic and equal the Commonwealth was than the Francophonie, and how much he enjoyed the Gambia being back in the Commonwealth. That is one of the frameworks we can use.
Larry Summers famously quoted an African leader saying, “The trouble is that when you come, you give us a lecture and when the Chinese come, they build us a road”. I think there is sense in that; we have to demonstrate that we are a willing and effective partner. Perhaps particularly on the Russian threat, we need to show that the UK can be a very effective security partner in helping to build capacity in countries that want it. Particularly in the Sahel, that could be an approach we can give some attention to.
Conflict-induced Food Insecurity
(7 months ago)
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Lord Browne of Ladyton
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs what diplomatic steps he is taking to address conflict-induced food insecurity, and to hold accountable those violating international humanitarian law through the deliberate use of hunger as a weapon of war.
The Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton) (Con)
We use all our levers to address the issue of hunger during conflict. We use our diplomatic efforts, including in countries such as Sudan and in Gaza, where we push for humanitarian access. We use our funding and expertise as a development superpower, with £365 million of bilateral overseas aid spent on food security-related sectors. We also work through multilateral organisations, including at the United Nations under Resolution 2417, to call out the perpetrators of conflict-induced food insecurity.
Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)
My Lords, most conflict-related starvation occurs in internal and not international conflicts—most recently in South Sudan and Gaza. On 15 April, warning of famine in Sudan, the Foreign Secretary wrote that anyone
“supporting those responsible … must be held to account”.
What mechanism of accountability was he referring to? Given the ICC prosecutor’s action in seeking warrants, partly on the grounds of causing starvation as a weapon of war, that question is pertinent. In 2019, Article 8 of the Rome statute was unanimously amended to include deliberate starvation as a war crime, even in internal conflicts. Why, given the increasing prevalence of such acts and the UK’s support for the amendment five years ago, have we not yet ratified it?
Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)
The noble Lord is absolutely right that we supported the Article 8 amendment but have not yet put it in place. It is still under discussion, and we want to get it right. That does not prevent us from taking action, including in Sudan, where we are trying to restart the Jeddah process between the combatants and make sure that we get aid in. Those are steps we can take now.
Lord King of Bridgwater (Con)
Does my noble friend agree that the reality is not just conflict-induced starvation? The world faces an increasing shortage of food, which will become an increasing challenge with the interaction between population explosion and climate change. Just look at one continent: Africa, in part of which crops are totally destroyed by drought and in another part of which they are totally destroyed by floods. That is replicated on other continents. Is it not clear that hunger and starvation will now be a major issue as the population increases and the weather becomes more erratic?
Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)
My noble friend is completely right about that. We can see from the statistics that acute food insecurity is at a five-year high. The Global Report on Food Crises this year indicated that over 281 million people worldwide faced high levels of food insecurity. I agree that climate change has an impact and population can have an impact, but what is driving this insecurity at the moment across Africa and elsewhere is conflict. Trying to unlock some of the peace processes in those conflicts is where we could have the biggest influence.
Baroness Northover (LD)
My Lords, the ICC chief prosecutor has said that there are reasonable grounds to accuse the Prime Minister and Defense Minister of Israel of a potential war crime, as we have heard. That war crime is the:
“Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare”.
I note that the noble Lord said that he will respect the ICC process. Does he agree that 90 trucks via the sea bridge hardly matches up to the 4,500 trucks prevented from entering via Rafah? Does he agree that, as a first step, funding must be restored to UNRWA, on which the aid agencies heavily depend for logistics and delivery capacity?
Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)
I will answer both parts of that question. On the entry of aid into Gaza, it is absolutely right that Israel has not met some of its promises, like the 500 trucks a day, but there are other areas, like having this new pier on the beach in Gaza, from which aid, including British aid, has been distributed. That is a step forward, as is opening Ashdod port, where flour for bakeries has been delivered. Those do not look to me like acts of a nation embarked on genocide and war crimes, but of course we must keep up the pressure elsewhere.
I totally understand and respect the fact that UNRWA is vital for the onward distribution of aid—I discussed this with the head of the World Food Programme just last week—but we have to be cognisant that reports that UNRWA staff were involved in 7 October need to be properly investigated and properly dealt with. Two reports have been commissioned, but we have had only one. I want to see that second report and I want really strong undertakings from UNRWA so that we know our money is going to the right cause.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My noble friend mentioned Sudan, and the Secretary of State is absolutely right to talk about conflict and food insecurity. One area is Tigray in Ethiopia: that conflict has spread much wider than Tigray, and food insecurity is running extremely high in Ethiopia. Certainly from the figures I have seen, 60% to 70% of pregnant and breastfeeding women in the north are experiencing malnutrition, which will affect those children for many years. Can the Secretary of State tell us exactly what we are doing with the Ethiopian Government to halt that extension of something as evil as malnutrition, which is affecting women, girls and children?
Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)
We co-hosted a humanitarian pledging conference in April in response to the rapidly escalating needs in Ethiopia. The conference mobilised $610 million towards the $1 billion we think is needed. At that conference, the Deputy Foreign Secretary announced £100 million in humanitarian funding. He has travelled to the region and meets and speaks regularly with President Abiy.
Lord Bellingham (Con)
My Lords, I will follow on from what the Foreign Secretary said about Sudan. This is truly a forgotten crisis, with 25 million people displaced, 25 million needing humanitarian aid, and 1.8 million fleeing into surrounding countries. Does he share my concern that the crisis moving from Darfur to Sudan’s arable farming area in the al-Jazirah province will lead to even more food insecurity and refugees? With Europe facing its own refugee crisis, including the channel crossing disasters, does he agree that this underlines the need for these migrant crises to be dealt with upstream and at source? Will he redouble our diplomatic and humanitarian efforts?
Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)
The noble Lord makes an extremely good point. Something like 9 million people have been displaced in the Sudan conflict, the scale of which puts other refugee crises into perspective. Eighteen million people are acutely food insecure, 5 million of whom we believe to be in an emergency situation. We need the Jeddah political process to get going; the SAF and the RSF are both at fault in their attacks on each other and the destruction they are bringing to that country. He is completely right to say that all our efforts to stabilise these situations, to provide aid and to help are good and right in themselves —they are moral acts by a country that believes in playing a moral role—but also help our own security by preventing large-scale movements of people. It is very important that we frame this in both contexts.
Baroness Blackstone (Lab)
My Lords, does the Foreign Secretary agree that the other countries that initially blocked funding for UNRWA have now restored it, with the exception of the United States? Why will the UK not restore funding as well, given the urgency to get UNRWA working again and delivering the aid so desperately needed by starving members of the Gazan population?
Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)
Our past pledges to UNRWA already take us up to something like the end of May, so it is not short of money on our account and has had additional funding from other countries. I want us to be meticulous on behalf of our taxpayers and all those—including myself—who are concerned about the fact that UNRWA staff took part on 7 October. We have seen the Colonna report, but we have not seen the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services report. I want to see that, and I want Philippe Lazzarini, who runs UNRWA, to make very clear statements about how that organisation will be run in future so that we can have confidence that our funding will not just deliver aid but help to deliver an organisation that is truly impartial.
Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)
My Lords, the noble Lord talked about food entering Gaza. Month after month from that Dispatch Box, he has said that Israel must do more. We have seen that it has not done more. He referred to the temporary port that has been built and there have been droppings by sea. We have seen that they are not fit for purpose; people have been killed trying to access food dropped from the air. The Rafah crossing, which is vital for the majority of aid to get through, has now been closed for 17 days. There are thousands of trucks just kilometres away waiting to deliver food. What pressure is he putting on and what diplomatic efforts are taking place to ensure that some of these crossings happen, so that people do not starve to death waiting for food that is on the other side of the crossing?
Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)
I say two things to the noble Baroness. First, the Rafah crossing closed when the Israelis took over the Gazan side of it. There is a dispute now between the Egyptians, who have closed it on the other side, and the Israelis on the Gazan side. I do not want to apportion blame; all I know is that they are talking to each other and that the Americans are working extremely hard to bring them together to get a solution. We need Rafah open.
On the second point, I take issue with the noble Baroness. Yes, I am the first to say that Israel has not done as much as is needed, but it is not true that it has never responded to pressure. We asked it to open Kerem Shalom; it opened Kerem Shalom. We asked it to open a crossing in the north; Erez is now open. We pushed it again and again on the opening of Ashdod port; that is now open. There are not as many ships as I would like, but we have UK involvement in the Cyprus maritime corridor. Also, the Americans, others, and ourselves said that if it would accept a pier on the beach, we do not think it is necessarily the best way of doing things but it means that the aid goes directly into Gaza. That is now there. It is not true or fair to say that action has not been taken. It just has not been enough, and we will keep pushing. I am speaking to Minister Gantz in about half an hour, and I will have another good go then.
Procurement Regulations 2024
(7 months ago)
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Baroness Neville-Rolfe
That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 25 March be approved.
Relevant document: 21st Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Considered in Grand Committee on 20 May.
Securitisation (Amendment) Regulations 2024
Lord Roborough
That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 18 April be approved. Considered in Grand Committee on 20 May.
Agriculture (Delinked Payments) (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2024
(7 months ago)
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Lord Douglas-Miller
That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 16 April be approved.
Relevant document: 23rd Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Considered in Grand Committee on 20 May.
Contracts for Difference (Sustainable Industry Rewards) Regulations 2024
(7 months ago)
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Lord Callanan
That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 21 March and 15 April be approved.
Relevant document: 21st Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Considered in Grand Committee on 13 May.
Victims and Prisoners Bill
Tuesday 21st May 2024
(7 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Victims and Prisoners Act 2024 View all Victims and Prisoners Act 2024 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 57-IV Fourth marshalled list for Report - (17 May 2024)
18:50 - Division on Amendment 132 - Ayes: 211 / Noes: 208 - Amendment 132 agreed.
19:02 - Division on Amendment 133 - Ayes: 203 / Noes: 198 - Amendment 133 agreed.
19:19 - Division on Amendment 149A - Ayes: 91 / Noes: 192 - Amendment 149A disagreed.
Lord Bellamy
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on my amendment of Clause 44, page 45, line 4.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Bellamy) (Con)
My Lords, as noble Lords will recall, there is a power created in Clauses 44 and 45 of the Bill that will allow the Secretary of State to refer release decisions made by the Parole Board to the Upper Tribunal. When we debated this issue in Committee, I said that we were satisfied at that time that the Upper Tribunal has the necessary skills and powers to deal with these referral cases, having consulted the Judicial Office on that matter last summer.
However, the Government have listened carefully to the arguments put forward for this amendment by noble Peers in Committee, including by two former Lord Justices, and, in the light of that debate, I asked the judiciary to reconsider this matter. The unanimous view put forward was that, given how the intervention power in the Bill has evolved over the time, the High Court is the most appropriate venue to hear referred parole cases. I therefore tabled amendments that will make that change.
I take this opportunity to put on record my thanks to the members of the Upper Tribunal Administrative Appeals Chamber for their work with my officials on the measures in the Bill and to make it clear that this decision does not, in any way, reflect on the important work of that chamber; it is simply a matter of deciding where this power should best reside within the upper judiciary system.
There are two other technical amendments related to the referral power—my Amendments 122E and 122F —which will ensure that there is clear, lawful authority to detain a prisoner while the Secretary of State decides whether to refer their case to the High Court. As the decision-making process cannot be fully undertaken until the board has directed the Secretary of State to release the prisoner, it is essential to have these interim protections, so that there is a proper authority to detain the prisoner in the meantime. I beg to move.
Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)
I am very grateful to the Minister for what he said and the amendments he has put forward. For reasons that would be boring to explain, they achieve exactly the same result in practice as the amendments put forward by myself and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett of Maldon. I am delighted that the Government have accepted this and I concede that their amendments are simpler.
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)
My Lords, I simply say that we support these amendments; we argued for them in Committee. A view I expressed then was that it was bizarre that the Bill provided for the Upper Tribunal to determine Secretary of State referrals from the Parole Board of release decisions, with the High Court involved only in cases with sensitive material.
We also agree that releases should be suspended pending decisions on such referrals by both the Secretary of State and the divisional court. The only further point I will make is that I hope that the Minister will be able to indicate from the Dispatch Box that such referrals should generally be dealt with as expeditiously as possible, to minimise the anguish of people waiting and the risk of prisoners having their time in custody unjustly extended by the delay.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)
My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for the government amendments in this group. The Government have listened carefully to the two previous Lord Chief Justices and decided that the High Court is the most appropriate place to hear parole referrals. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, said that the Government’s amendments in this group were better than his, which has circumscribed the debate.
The noble Lord, Lord Marks, raised an interesting point about how the courts should deal expeditiously with parole-type matters, and I will listen with interest to what the Minister has to say on that.
Lord Bellamy (Con)
My Lords, on the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Marks, once referred to the court, the timetable and listing will be a matter for the court, but I am sure that it will take account of the need for expedition and the remarks made in the Chamber just now.
Lord Bellamy
“(5) In section 32ZZA (imprisonment or detention for public protection: powers in relation to release of recalled prisoners) (inserted by section 48 of this Act), after subsection (3) insert—(3A)The Secretary of State must not be satisfied as mentioned in subsection (3) unless the Secretary of State considers that there is no more than a minimal risk that, were the prisoner no longer confined, the prisoner would commit a further offence the commission of which would cause serious harm (and section 28ZA(4) applies for the purposes of that assessment).”The Secretary of State must not be satisfied as mentioned in subsection (3) unless the Secretary of State considers that there is no more than a minimal risk that, were the prisoner no longer confined, the prisoner would commit a further offence the commission of which would cause serious harm (and section 28ZA(4) applies for the purposes of that assessment).””Member's explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on my amendment of Clause 48, page 52, line 27, inserting new section 32ZZA of the Crime (Sentences) Act 1997.
Lord Bellamy (Con)
My Lords, I am very grateful to all noble Lords who spoke in Committee to these matters affecting IPP prisoners and to all those who have continued to engage in constructive debate with us in preparation for Report. I fully share the desire to use this opportunity to do all that we reasonably can to help offenders serving the IPP sentence to progress towards release, where that is safe to do so. To that end, we have brought forward four substantive government amendments and are taking other important measures as well. Indeed, progressing IPP licence termination and swiftly considering cases for release remain one of the top priorities for HMPPS and this Government, and I emphasise that.
The first amendment, Amendment 139A, applies where the Parole Board directs the re-release of an IPP prisoner. The amendment grants the Secretary of State the power to decide that the recall should have no effect for the purpose of the two-year automatic period, which is the period before the licence automatically terminates. Under the current measures in the Bill, the two-year clock will be reset when an offender recalled during the automatic period is subsequently re-released by the Parole Board. This would mean they would be required to serve a further two years in the community before the licence would be terminated automatically.
However, the Government’s amendment would enable the Secretary of State to decide that the recall should have no effect on the automatic period if he considers it to be in the interests of justice, much as the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere, has proposed in his amendments to introduce a power of executive re-release, which I will come on to shortly. In these circumstances, if the recall is disregarded for the purposes of the automatic period, the clock will not reset on their release from prison and the offender would then be required only to remain on licence for whatever time remained of the two-year automatic period. I must stress, however, that this discretionary power would not apply to all IPP recalls in the qualifying period; it would be a matter for the decision of the Secretary of State in the light of all the circumstances.
The Government’s second amendment concerns the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Carter—Amendments 137 and 146—to grant the Secretary of State the power to re-release a recalled IPP offender without the need to go through the Parole Board process at all and for the offender to benefit from the automatic period as if the recall had not occurred. Our Amendment 139B will permit the Secretary of State to re-release recalled IPP prisoners and mirrors a power that the Secretary of State currently has to re-release offenders serving determinate sentences—now referred to as risk-assessed recall review, known colloquially as RARR. This is an executive power, and it will be for the Secretary of State to decide if and when to use it. We have also included an amendment to enable the Secretary of State to impose licence conditions in a recalled IPP offender’s licence if the Secretary of State uses this power to re-release them on licence.
This amendment also, again, includes a parallel power for the Secretary of State to decide that the recall of an IPP offender should have no effect for the purposes of the two-year automatic period, again where it is considered in the interests of justice. This will ensure that the Secretary of State has the same discretionary power regardless of whether the decision to release a recalled IPP offender is taken by the Parole Board or by the Secretary of State using the RARR power. The noble Lord, Lord Carter, made a compelling case for his amendments in Committee. I hope that he will agree that the amendment introduced by the Government achieves the objectives of his amendments and that he will not press Amendments 137 and 146.
The Government’s third amendment concerns the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett—Amendment 141—to put the IPP action plan on a statutory basis and require the Secretary of State to lay an annual report before Parliament. I fully recognise the noble Lord’s intention and I am particularly grateful for his significant engagement on this and other matters relating to this part of the Bill. We have therefore tabled Amendment 139C to require the Secretary of State to lay an annual report before Parliament about the steps taken by the Secretary of State in the reporting period to support the rehabilitation of IPP and DPP prisoners and their progress towards release from prison on licence termination.
The Bill includes a non-exhaustive list of the issues that it should address, including support for female offenders, those sentenced to detention for public protection and the engagement undertaken in the reporting period. The Government are committed to ensuring that the IPP action plan delivers tangible change by safely reducing over time the IPP population in custody and in the community, while still prioritising public protection. Through the IPP action plan, HMPPS is putting in place further measures to boost the support of those serving IPP sentences in custody and in the community, including a new policy to deliver multi-disciplinary progression panels to oversee cases at critical points, such as that early period following release or the period following a recall to custody. Delivery of the action plan is overseen by a senior IPP progression board chaired at a senior level which meets quarterly. I have asked that quarterly reports be supplied to Ministers, to ensure that the action plan is effective.
Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)
My Lords, I rise to address the amendments that stand in my name. The purpose of these amendments can be briefly stated. It is to try to achieve a measure of justice for those on whom IPPs were imposed during the limited period 2005 to 2012. It is important to bear in mind what Lord Lloyd of Berwick, then Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, and then Lord Judge all did to try to right the problems that had been caused by this sentence. It was a sentence that Lord Judge described as the most draconian on the statute book, apart from a discretionary life sentence. I am extremely grateful for all that the Lord Chancellor and the Minister have done to try to deal with these issues, but we are side- stepping a fundamental issue: the way in which we release those who are subject to this sentence. We should not do that, and this House has a responsibility.
Of the amendments that stand in my name, in the time available, I wish to speak to only one: Amendment 149A. It is an attempt to compromise; to do at least something to give hope and provide justice. It leaves the release test as it stands but requires the Parole Board to take into account the concept of proportionality and other factors in making its determination. It is designed to give hope and a sense of justice to those who are behind bars under IPPs, and their families. There are three reasons I wish to highlight.
First, although a few were given IPPs who might have been given the most draconian sentence—a discretionary life sentence, under pre-2003 legislation, as a result of decisions of the Court of Appeal in the Kehoe and Wilkinson cases—the vast majority would have been given determinate sentences if the IPP sentence had not been put on to the statute book, or would have been released long ago without any risk assessment. The way our system worked historically and works today is what would have happened to them. Given that the vast majority of those under IPPs would have had that, how can it be just that, eight years later, we have done nothing—that is, in effect, what has happened —to revise this and put the Parole Board in a position to permit their release?
Secondly, if one looks at those who were sentenced in the period up to 2008, some were imprisoned who would have received a sentence of under four years. It is incredible to think that we are now releasing prisoners who have been sentenced to under four years because the prisons are overcrowded. Why can we not have regard to that? Again, this is unjust.
The third reason is that there can be little doubt— I referred to the evidence when I spoke in Committee—that the mental health of many of those who are still detained or have been recalled has suffered as a result of this sentence. The evidence is very strong and the effect on them is a matter on which we ought to reflect. The vital factor here is state responsibility—and, fortunately, we are beginning to live up to our responsibilities as a state. The position can be very briefly explained.
There is significant agreement that, if you do not know when you are going to be released, a long period of detention causes huge mental health problems. It is quite different for those who receive discretionary life sentences for the most serious crimes, described by Lord Bingham as sentences of a
“‘denunciatory’ value, reflective of public abhorrence of the offence, and where, because of its seriousness, the notional determinate sentence would be very long, measured in very many years”.
Such sentences are deserved in those cases—you can understand why people receive them—but how can it be just to keep in prison those who, during this specific eight-year period, committed something for which, before and today, they would have had a determinate term? It is no wonder that they and their families feel injustice.
I am sure that, if this point were put properly to the British public, as it is now being put in the media, they would understand. Therefore, I find it difficult to follow why people cannot go along with a measure of reform.
The crux of this amendment is to require the Parole Board to take into account proportionality—that is, looking at the length of term served as proportionate to the original offence, and some of these offences were not that serious—together with other factors, when determining whether the test of public safety has been met. It is vital to appreciate that the overwhelming majority of these people would have been released without any risk assessment. Looking at the position today, how can it be just that they should be kept there?
Now, the Minister might say that there is a provision in the Act that could be relied on. It is difficult to know precisely what the Minister will say, because he has not said it, but I am sure that is no answer to what I have said, because the difficulty is that what is in the current Bill does not require the Parole Board to do what this amendment requires it to do, which is to have regard to proportionality and other factors that affect the position. To my mind, there is a very simple question. It is 11 years after the abolition and I pay particular tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, who has led on, and accepted responsibility for, dealing with this. It is a great shame that others will not do the same. We should, as a state, accept responsibility and bring about at least one step towards reform. It is not what I believe we should do, but I put this forward and support it as a measure of compromise.
Lord Blunkett (Lab)
My Lords, I know that we have had extensive debates on the range of issues on IPP and DPP. I will try to be brief, because everyone will want to reach the Statement on the infected blood scandal.
I want to pay tribute to those on my own Front Bench for their support in some difficult and tricky issues, and for their understanding, and to Peers from every corner of this House who have worked tirelessly together to work out how we can make progress and how we can help both those caught up in prison, those on licence and in fear of recall, and of course the families and campaigners. I too pay tribute to UNGRIPP and those who have been campaigning tirelessly alongside them. It has at last reached the public ear—in broadcast, print and online media there is now real attention to this issue, and a sympathetic hearing. That is a very good thing.
I want to say thank you to the Minister. Thank you for being prepared to engage with those committed, and for the concessions that have been outlined this afternoon in terms of my amendments. Government Amendments 133B, 138ZB, 139A, 139B and 139C deal substantially with my Amendments 41, 42, 134, 138A and 144. I am very grateful for both the sensitivity and understanding, and the ability to give, in a period leading up to a General Election, which is difficult for any Government to do on issues such as these, which are often toxic in the public arena. Together with the current Under-Secretary of State and his equivalent in the Commons, some progress—not as much as we, or those campaigning, would like, but some—has now been made on the Bill.
My Amendment 149—I have agreed with the Minister that we might come back to this when we debate the Criminal Justice Bill—is about a technical readjustment of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act so that IPP and DPP prisoners are not disadvantaged. This afternoon we have made progress on the action plan and how it will be updated and implemented; the progression board and its transparency and reporting; the challenge group that will be overseeing and, as it says, challenging what is happening administratively; and the commitments in relation to parole.
I just want to make one comment about probation. There is a new head of Probation—Martin Jones—who was the chief executive of the Parole Board. He understands these issues very well. I have real confidence in him, as I do in the head of the progression board, Chris Jennings; they get what we have been talking about and will move heaven and earth to make the system work. But the Probation Service has to change its outlook and risk aversion, because we have a situation at the moment, because of the enormous pressure on the Prison Service and the lack of rehabilitation that that brings, where the Government have felt it right to release people early and to slow down prosecutions, while the Probation Service recalls people on licence all the time, filling the places that the Government are unfilling. It is like having a washbasin with the tap on and the plug out.
We have to make urgent progress in both getting release, making those spaces available, and not returning people to prison—not least because Ian Acheson, a former prison governor who has been working with the Government over a number of years, said recently that 50% of those currently in prison are taking illegal substances. When they are adjudged to have taken an illegal substance, their likelihood of being able to get parole is immediately reduced. Should they revert when they are on licence, having been subject to illegal substances while they were in prison, they are brought back into a place where illegal substances are readily available. We have got to stop the cycle and we can do it only with the good will of Ministers, future Ministers and those working in the service, who need to be brave —so thank you for what has been done so far.
I turn to Amendment 149A, in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, who has just spoken. I want to draw attention to a court case that took place on 9 May this year, overseen by Lord Justice Popplewell. This was the case of Leighton Williams, who was sentenced in 2008 and who, until 9 May, was in prison under an IPP because he was at the time 19, not 18 or younger. It was judged in that case—and these are all technically difficult cases—that the original judge had misunderstood and applied an IPP inappropriately when the sentence should have been for five years in a young offender institution. That having been decided, Lord Justice Popplewell released Leighton Williams immediately. This cannot be a precedent, but it indicates that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, is right in relation to the test of what is appropriate and proportionate in the work of the Parole Board. I hope that the task force that is now going to be established within the Parole Board will help provide focus. While understanding entirely the position of my own Front Bench and Whips, I feel obliged to vote for this amendment, having added my name to it, believing that it is right that there should be a better proportional test.
I repeat that the campaigns have made a difference to the work that has gone on in relation to worries about mental health and who deals with mental health provision in the service. Is it the provider or the NHS? How do we get it right for individual prisoners who really need intensive support? The campaigners have raised all those issues with all of us, and they deserve credit for it. We are not entirely there yet, but we have made some progress. I am very grateful to the Minister for his understanding and collaboration in making that possible.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and in particular to follow him in expressing a very large degree of gratitude to the Government. Although one is going to end up disagreeing with them on certain narrow points in the course of this short debate, the Government have introduced amendments in the Commons which are extremely helpful to IPP prisoners who are out on licence, and today amendments have been introduced which deal with the very good points made by the noble Lords, Lord Blunkett and Lord Carter of Haslemere, allowing them to withdraw their amendments.
I do not think it is at all an exaggeration to say that more has been achieved, both operationally and legally, for IPP prisoners in the past few months than in the preceding 12 years. I am sure that a great deal of that is due to the personal efforts of the Lord Chancellor and my noble and learned friend Lord Bellamy on the Front Bench. I wish to express my gratitude and a degree of congratulation.
I also want to say—here I find myself again echoing the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett—that I am very impressed with the effort and determination of the officials charged with taking responsibility for clearing up this scandal; they really wish to do something. I wish them well, and I hope that that continues for as long as it needs to, whatever the character of the Government in power.
Before I turn to Amendment 145 in my name, I wish to say that there are some amendments in this group tabled by Back-Bench Peers which have not found favour with the Government. My Amendment 145 is one of them, and so is Amendment 140, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Burt of Solihull, and Amendment 147, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Blower. It is not for me to make their speeches advocating their amendments; I simply wish to say in advance of their doing so that I am very supportive of what they are trying to do in those amendments and of their aims.
Amendment 145 in my name was not actually drafted by me. As noble Lords who were present in Committee will remember, it was in fact drafted by the late Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, who felt passionately about this and, coincidentally, whose memorial service is happening later this week. On social media, it has been dubbed the “Simon Brown Memorial Amendment”, as testament to the passion that he brought to this topic and the efforts that he made.
Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)
I would like to say a few words about Amendment 141 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, to which I have put my name, and also, briefly, about Amendment 145 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, to which, again, I have put my name.
Before making those remarks, I join both noble Lords in paying tribute to the noble and learned Lord the Minister for all the work that he has been doing to find a way of progressing this deeply damaged group of prisoners towards safe release. I use the words “deeply damaged” because, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, has reminded us, there is a grave effect on them of being detained for so long under preventative sentences with no prospect of release. This has had the result that many of them suffer from a variety of conditions that make the process of releasing them so much more difficult than might have been expected to be the case when they were sentenced. They have faced the trauma of detention in overcrowded prisons without the support they needed, mental health problems, substance issues and various other points that the Minister himself told us about in Committee.
It is impossible for us, who have not seen and studied the files that have been kept on the cases of each of these prisoners, to appreciate the magnitude of the problem that the prisoners themselves face and that faces the Parole Board too. All we have are the numbers: the number of those in the various groups who have never been released, the time they have remained there in comparison with the tariff which they would have faced had they been given a determinate sentence, and the number of those who have been recalled to prison because their licences have been terminated.
The bare statistics are as depressing as ever, with no end in sight for so many of them. That is why so many of your Lordships, including the two noble and learned Lords who are no longer with us, have been pressing for so long for things to be done to enable the situation to be reformed. The various amendments that the Minister has introduced have gone a long way towards mitigating the problem that these preventive-sentence prisoners have been facing for so many years. The changes that have been made to the process for the review and termination of their release from prison on licence are also especially welcome.
Amendment 141 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, seeks to put the Government’s existing action plan for this group of prisoners on to a statutory basis. I will not go over the details, but I draw attention to the wording of one provision in the opening subsection of the proposed new clause, which sets out in clear language the purpose of the action plan proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. It says that its purpose is
“to ensure that all possible steps are taken to ensure the earliest possible safe release and progression”
of this group of prisoners, so it flags up at the outset what this action plan is designed to do.
When we were in Committee on 12 March, I asked the Minister whether there was some way of getting that purpose clearly identified in the existing IPP action plan and of communicating that purpose to the prisoners who are subject to the system, so that they know what the plan is designed to do. The Minister was kind enough to say that this was certainly something that he would take away when considering the Government’s position. The amendment to which I was referring then was about review—not the action plan that Amendment 141 is now talking about—but the need for a stated purpose is the same point. So I would be grateful if the Minister could say whether the Government’s plan as now proposed states what its purpose is, and, if not, whether he would be willing to include a purpose to that effect before the plan is finalised.
As far as Amendment 145 is concerned, I really do not need to say very much, in view of the very thorough way in which the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, has discussed the subject and plainly explained his reason for not pressing the amendment. I appreciate and agree with the various points he has made. I agree with him that Amendment 149A of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, should be preferred, because it focuses on the key issue of proportionality. It preserves the existing test but highlights proportionality as a crucial point that must be addressed. For these reasons, if the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, does test the opinion of the House, I propose to vote in favour of it.
Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)
My Lords, I am going to speak to four amendments in this group: Amendments 137 and 146 on executive release, on which I can be very brief; a new amendment in my name, Amendment 148; and a few words about Amendment 149A, which was tabled by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, to which he and others have already spoken.
Starting with executive release and Amendments 137 and 146, I am delighted and grateful to the Minister for bringing forward his Amendment 139B, which incorporates neatly into one clause those two amendments, which I will now obviously not press. I have just one question on the Government’s amendment: as regards the licence being treated as having remained in force following executive release if it is in the interests of justice, what sort of cases are covered by the “interests of justice”, a phrase which was not in my original amendment? I would be grateful if the Minister could say a few words about that.
As I seem to be on a bit of a roll as regards my amendments being accepted, Amendment 148 is a new amendment but on the same theme of helping to reduce the time spent in prison following a recall. This is about ensuring that IPP cases will be referred by the Secretary of State to the board within 28 days, or earlier if the prisoner makes written representations about the recall. This 28-day deadline already exists in statute for determinate sentence prisoners, and my amendment simply requires the same thing for IPP prisoners, not unlike executive release. There is no reason for any difference. Many recalled determinate sentence prisoners will involve more preparation before referral to the Parole Board than IPP prisoners, so why treat them differently? Since it is currently MoJ policy, as I understand it, to refer recalled IPP prisoners to the board within 28 days, let us be consistent and make it a statutory duty, as with determinate sentence prisoners.
Your Lordships may ask what difference it will make, given that it may be many months, if not years, before the board then considers the case. On paper, it is perhaps only a little, but it is only once the case is referred to the board that the process towards a paper or oral hearing can be initiated. It is easy to forget that every day in prison matters hugely for the prisoner concerned, particularly just after the psychological trauma of a recall, with all the frustration and despair that involves.
Although this amendment is only a small step when set against the unfair delays that currently arise at the board stage, it should make some difference for IPP prisoners to know that there is at least a statutory time- table governing the immediate aftermath of a recall. A statutory deadline would also mean the Secretary of State would have to ensure adequate resources were put into ensuring that a properly documented referral can take place within that timescale. I make no apology for that. Every day in prison matters hugely to the prisoner concerned. So I very much look forward to the noble and learned Lord saying, as he did with my executive release amendments, that he sees force in that one.
Baroness Blower (Lab)
My Lords, I will briefly repeat some of the remarks I made in Committee about the issue which is now dealt with in Amendment 147. The cases the noble Lord, Lord Carter, mentioned demonstrate amply why many serving and recalled IPP prisoners have simply lost hope of ever being properly released. The purpose of Amendment 147 is to create, on a statutory basis, a mentor and advocate scheme to add to the support which may be available to IPP prisoners.
When I spoke about this in Committee, I was quite gratified by the Minister’s response, notwithstanding the fact that such an amendment has not found favour. The Minister said, having listed the kinds of support that exist for IPP prisoners:
“That is not to say that there could not be better organisation of voluntary agencies or, despite what I have said, some other route to consider whether there are ways of strengthening the support of prisoners on some non-statutory basis”.—[Official Report, 12/3/24; col. 1966.]
Since the amendment, in its current form as Amendment 147, has not found favour with the Government, I urgently ask both the Minister and the Government to look at offering the kind of additional support which would have been offered in an advocate and mentor scheme.
It is clear from everything that has been said from all sides of the House about the current situation of IPP prisoners that it is incumbent upon us to do everything we can. Although I understand that a scheme like this will not end up being statutory, it could provide added support for those prisoners and perhaps some small measure of hope that they may ultimately be treated somewhat more fairly than hitherto.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I am very pleased that the Government and the Labour Front Bench have improved this Bill, because it was quite a difficult one when it was first presented. However, it would be so amazing if they both accepted this last little tweak of Amendment 149A. Although it applies to very few people, this is an issue of justice and of unfairness that could be put right. I know it is very late, but that amendment is very worth while.
Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 140, which is in my name, although I support all the amendments tabled by noble colleagues in the IPP group.
I thank all the groups involved in this that have supported us. I also thank the Minister himself for the huge efforts he has made on behalf of IPP prisoners, and the Government for the immense distance they have travelled so far in repairing the damage done by this sentence on the psyches and futures of the remaining rump of unfortunate individuals left serving IPP sentences. We all want to help them progress and leave this torturous situation, but we all know that it must be done in a safe way that will not endanger the public. Amendment 140 would go a huge distance towards achieving this for those the system has damaged the most: those stuck in prison three or more years after their tariff has expired, whether or not they have been released and recalled in the meantime.
Under the current law, any prisoner who is being transferred to hospital will be entitled to the same level of aftercare as any other individual who has been in hospital under qualifying sections. This is an estimated 600 prisoners out of the almost 3,000 still in the system. Section 117 of the Mental Health Act 1983, on aftercare, provides wraparound care, which can include forensic psychiatrists working with police, probation, victim liaison officers, and local health and social care practitioners, as appropriate, under MAPPA auspices in their local areas.
For prisoners who have been sectioned, the duty means that multiagency planning starts before release and that prisoners come to their parole hearings with a package of support and care ready for them. This will enable them to live safely on the outside. It is hugely successful and throws a light on a path that would lead to many more successful releases. Over 90% of IPP releases by the Parole Board of prisoners who have had Section 117s between November 2021 and August 2023 would have had aftercare plans before release. This is double the percentage of IPPs who did not have Section 117s.
If you speak to any practitioner involved in the parole process, they will tell you that the number one problem preventing the release of people stuck in prison on this sentence is the lack of a package of support in the community to give the Parole Board confidence that they can safely be managed. With an aftercare package provided by health and social care, in consultation with probation, much more care is taken to ensure that the basics—the scaffolding on which the individual can rebuild their lives—are covered. This scaffolding may include suitable accommodation and support as needed from an allocated psychiatrist, working with police, probation, victim liaison officers, local health and social care practitioners, et cetera. Arguably, all prisoners should be entitled to this, but sadly we know that the system often lets them down.
I will give two real-life examples. Their names have been changed for obvious reasons. I am calling them John and Peter. John was sentenced when he was 15 for a minimum term of under a year, and he spent 15 years in prison. Peter was sentenced at the age of just 13. He had a DPP with a minimum of 12 months, and he spent 17 years in prison.
John had a traumatic childhood, which included abuse and being put in care. His first 10 years in prison were chaotic. Over time, it became clear that he had developed a serious mental disorder in the form of a personality disorder. In one prison, the prison psychologist suggested that he should be assessed for a transfer to hospital. He consented and was duly transferred under the Mental Health Act 1983, so he was entitled to the support afforded by Section 117. He said that
“for the first time ever I was able to go to the Parole Board with a really good and supportive release package on the table”.
It has not been all plain sailing for John since his release. He was rearrested for a breach of conditions several months later, but he knows that the support is still there to help him face the Parole Board again and to succeed when he is released. The support package will last for as long as John needs it.
Contrast this with Peter’s story. Peter initially did very well in custody and was first released when he was just 17. He has had long periods of stability, but then things broke down and he has been recalled five times. He now lives in a constant state of anxiety that he will be recalled to prison. He says that living at an endless risk of recall is “like living on eggshells”, and that his sentence has
“given me bad anxiety and paranoia—even when I am the victim I am the one who gets arrested whenever I contact the police— I fear going out and getting recalled because something might happen”.
On his latest release, Peter went to a special mental health approved premises, but was discharged from prison without his medication. After 12 weeks in a hostel, his accommodation entitlement was up and he had nowhere to go. His last recall followed a significant deterioration in his mental health and a spell of time as a voluntary patient in a mental health ward from which he was discharged without suitable accommodation and support. He said he was glad to be back in prison because at least he “couldn’t be recalled”. Because he has never been sectioned under the Mental Health Act 1983, he is not entitled to the same wraparound care as John. But why should he not be?
Lord Garnier (Con)
My Lords, I wish I could speak as eloquently as a number of those who have already spoken—I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, will do so in a moment. We have travelled quite some way over the last few weeks, to a large extent due to the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, and other colleagues of his on the Cross Benches, and my noble friend Lord Moylan, who has been our shop steward in our discussions with my noble and learned friend the Minister.
I hope I will not embarrass my noble and learned friend by repeating what others have said about him, but it is clear that without his willingness to listen and his understanding of the deeply serious problems that IPPs present, we would not be where we are today. I salute him for his patience and kindness in listening to me and in understanding the plight of IPP prisoners. As a Government Minister—particularly one in charge of the justice system and the prison system—the most important phrase that concerns you when you get up in the morning, or go to bed at night, and think about a Bill such as this is “the protection of the public”. We have heard him use that expression any number of times during our discussions. The great advantage we have had in talking to him is that we have had discussions, not rows. The whole temper of the debate this afternoon demonstrates that, across the House, we want a discussion because we want to reach a just and fair answer to this very difficult problem.
I have co-signed a number of the amendments on the Marshalled List, but I want to concentrate, reasonably briefly, on Amendment 149A, to which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, and others, have spoken. It seems to me to encapsulate the essence of what we are trying to do: yes, to ensure the protection of the public when it is necessary to do so, as the Minister wishes to do, but also to bring a degree of proportionality into the decisions that have to be taken by the Parole Board. There are no double negatives in this proposed new clause; there is a straightforward fixation upon doing what is just and fair.
Many noble Lords will have read the terms of the noble and learned Lord’s proposed new clause, but really one has to read carefully only subsection (2) of it to see that it allows for the Government—any Government—to protect the public, but also allows for our justice system to end the monstrosity which is the injustice and the unfairness of the IPP system. We have had two examples from the noble Lord, Lord Carter, and two more examples from the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, but there are many, many more. Those are the prisoners who have survived, but bear in mind that there are a number of IPP prisoners who have died by their own hand because they have run out of hope. The one thing that a justice system must provide is the ability for a prisoner to get better, to rehabilitate, to return to society and to make his or her way in the world.
Subsection (2) says that
“the Secretary of State must by order pursuant to section 128 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 … direct that, following the prisoner’s referral to the Parole Board they will not be released unless the Board is satisfied that, having regard to the proportionality of the term served to the seriousness of the offence or offences of which they were convicted”.
Come back to the 18-month tariff, come back to the two-year tariff, and see that these men are in prison 18 years after being sentenced, nearly two decades after that tariff has expired. Importantly, the subsection also refers to “any other relevant factors”. The Parole Board is not required to just open the door and release them regardless because they are still there 20 years later, well beyond their two-year or 18-month tariff. It can take into account any other relevant factors. That could be the mental instability of the prisoner concerned or any number of characteristics or behaviours that the prisoner demonstrates, which demonstrate to the Parole Board and those who advise it that this particular prisoner—albeit he has served 20 years beyond his two-year tariff—is still, none the less, unsafe to release.
The burden must surely be on us, as representatives of the state in your Lordships’ House and as makers of legislation, to do things which promote fairness and justice, in a way that is transparently sensible. If I may say so, Amendment 149A speaks nothing but common sense, justice and fairness. Even at this very late stage of the Bill, I urge the Government to have one more think. This is not a matter of Labour against Conservative, Cross-Benchers ganging up on the Government, or the Liberal Democrats ganging up with the Labour Party against the Government. It is not even a matter of a couple of lily-livered, pinko Conservative drips ganging up on their Government and trying to engender a rebellion.
Lord Garnier (Con)
It is a cross-party justice question. If I cannot stand up and speak for justice as a Conservative, I am in the wrong business. I will be voting with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, this evening.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, how do I follow those words about pinko commie Conservatives? Quite easily.
Perhaps we would not start from here, but as we are here, I too warmly welcome the Government’s concessions. They show that the Minister has been listening in Committee and at all the meetings. I hope that his listening continues, because there are many very fine amendments in this group, as reflected by the many very fine speeches. Even if the amendments are not voted on, I still think that they are worth considering, and I hope that the officials and the department will take on board what is being said.
All the amendments in this group tackle very specific, and sometimes seemingly technical, matters that remain outstanding in trying to tackle the IPP issue. It strikes me that all these fiddly, piecemeal issues could have been dealt with historically in one fell swoop, and once and for all, by a resentencing amendment. Although I know that that is off the table for now, it will need to be brought back by some future Government. For all that, this group of amendments adds up to more than the sum of its parts, which is why I hope that the amendments will still have an impact, even if they will not all be voted on.
Before I speak to the amendments that I put my name to, I want to show my support for Amendment 145, which the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, said he cannot now press because of a lack of support. The notion of reversing the burden of proof when applying for parole made for one of the most important amendments in this group, not least because it would have had a material impact on the 3,000 IPP prisoners still in jail and it presents the most hope of the amendments here. A lot of people have rightly congratulated UNGRIPP and Donna Mooney on the work that they have done. She reminded us why she wanted Amendment 145 in particular to pass: she is worried that the IPP prisoners who are still incarcerated feel doubly abandoned by this Bill, because it does so little for them as a group. I concur, and I wanted to see that rectified.
That is why it was so gratifying in Committee to hear the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, welcome what the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, had described then as a “nudge” to the Parole Board that would make a significant difference. Indeed, as we speak, the words of the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, from the Dispatch Box are being echoed and cheered on widely in a clip featuring them in Peter Stefanovic’s latest short vlog, which has had over 1 million views in a matter of days. It is interesting that those words are being cited as a positive example of cross-party co-operation on an important matter of principle about criminal justice. I hear that the Labour Front Bench is now unable to support this amendment.
I want to counter something that the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, mentioned. He said that, in the build-up to an election, this is a toxic topic. I understand the nervousness about law and order, but I will challenge that. I do not think that it is as toxic as we in this House or the other place sometimes suggest to the public. In fact, I think that public opinion can be won over—and is being won over—on IPPs. The fear that politicians have of the public and public opinion is sometimes an underestimation of the public’s sense of fairness and justice, as we have seen with the range of scandals over recent weeks and months—there have certainly been far too many.
The principle behind Amendment 145 is still important to consider, because if the state insists on retaining the power to continue incarcerating people for decades after their original tariff is spent, using a sentencing regime that the state itself has abolished as not fit for purpose, it is only right that the burden of justifying such extraordinary power should then lie with the state.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)
My Lords, I added my name to Amendments 138A, 143 and 144 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. These amendments are concerned with DPPs—with people who have been detained, as opposed to imprisoned, for public protection. I listened very carefully to the Minister when he explained Amendments 139A, 139B and 139C and the very sympathetic way he has addressed the issues that we raised in Committee.
All I wanted to say at this advanced stage of the Bill is that we need to remember that DPP prisoners were, when they were first detained—“detained” sounds very straightforward; when they were first convicted—under 18. We need to think very carefully about that. They are people who have had—it is almost certain—the most appalling life chances. Members of your Lordships’ House who have worked in this area will have appalling stories about how these people have been unable to get their lives together. We surely have a special responsibility to people who have started out like that, and, in thanking the Minister for the changes he plans to make in procedure for this terrible situation, I hope that the fact that they were children at the outset will not be overlooked.
The Lord Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow noble Lords—and noble and learned Lords—and to benefit from their considerable wisdom on the matter at hand. I do not wish to repeat all that has already been said, but my right reverend friend the Bishop of Gloucester has added her name to several amendments in this group. She is sadly unable to be here today, but I know that, like many other noble Lords, she is dedicated to seeing the reform of the criminal justice system, particularly in respect of our prisons, for which she is the lead bishop for the Church of England.
I will reflect briefly on Amendment 140. As has already been said, we know that many IPP prisoners are stuck in the system, and appropriate psychiatric care in the community is not in place to manage their high-support needs. It is clear to anyone who visits prisons and meets IPP prisoners that they suffer great mental distress, reportedly more so than the wider prison population. This sentence—arguably more than any other— disrupts relationships and leads to hopelessness, anxiety and alienation, as we have heard so much about. In many cases, it can be said that the sentence itself is the very cause of that mental distress, as is reported by many chaplains in our prisons.
The changes proposed through this Bill are welcome and, as we have heard, much progress has been made; but, for the sake of both the prisoners in question and the wider community, I submit that the extended aftercare arrangements proposed in Amendment 140 are needed. Like other noble Lords, I ask the Minister to think again on this important matter.
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)
My Lords, it has long seemed strange that, having abolished IPP sentences during the coalition in the LASPO Act, we still have nearly 3,000 prisoners, many of whom had relatively short-term tariffs, in custody or recalled to custody many years after their tariffs have expired.
In this House and elsewhere, there is unanimity that IPPs have been and remain a stain on our justice system, and that they are an inhumane mechanism, unjustly withholding from prisoners a date of release, routinely depriving them of any hope of freedom and causing them serious mental health problems. This is a fact highlighted by the noble and learned Lords, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, Lord Hope of Craighead and Lord Garnier. The IPPs were frequently in the wake of offences that were not of themselves the most serious.
This is all against a background of a Government taking strange measures, almost impossible to justify, to keep down the prison population. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, pointed out, we have prisoners on determinate sentences being released up to 93 days early, for no good reason apart from that there is no space for them. With Operation Early Dawn, we have hearings of criminal cases being delayed to avoid using up prison space by convicting and sentencing offenders expeditiously. We have a prison building programme that even on the most sanguine projections for planning and construction cannot possibly keep pace with predicted increases in prisoner numbers.
Yet we have a Government who have already been the cause of increasing prisoner numbers—with longer prescribed sentences and legislation increasing times in custody—setting their face against doing more to relieve a significant part of the pressure by releasing IPP prisoners faster and more humanely. Certainly, they have moved some way, and I join my noble friend Lady Burt in welcoming the Government’s movement and in her call in Amendment 140, supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, and the right reverend Prelate, for much more and far better aftercare and support for these damaged prisoners who have suffered so much from IPPs. The action plan, so far as it goes, is welcome, as are the other government amendments, in which the Government have accepted the spirit of amendments moved by others throughout the passage of this Bill. I join those others, notably the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, who has been mentioned and who has spoken, in appreciating the discussion and co-operation that we have all had with the Minister. However, one suspects that it has been despite the Minister’s best efforts that the Government have not moved far enough.
Amendment 149A, tabled by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, and noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and powerfully supported today by the noble Lords, Lord Moylan, Lord Carter, and others, with its requirement for an approach that embodies proportionality, is a modest amendment. Why the Government cannot accept it I cannot imagine. The noble and learned Lord’s amendment is designed to give IPP prisoners the hope that they need. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, expressed powerfully the effects of the loss of hope for IPP prisoners in the context of this amendment. If the noble and learned Lord does test the opinion of the House, we will support his amendment. I hope only that a good number of Labour Peers and Conservative Peers, in the cross-party spirit shown by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, will do the same. It would be very welcome if the Government would heed his plea to have one more think.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)
My Lords, I too acknowledge the work done by the Minister on IPP and the significant movement that there has been through the government amendments.
It is right that IPP sentences were abolished. We share the concerns that lie behind many of these amendments. We have always sought to work constructively on a cross-party basis on this issue, which is why we are supporting the government amendments to bring forward a statutory action plan. Our default position will always be, where possible, to secure the safe release of IPP prisoners. However, public safety must be at the centre of our approach. It is not possible to make assessments of public safety responsibly and confidently from the opposition position without the necessary evidence on the individual needs of these offenders. In government, the Labour Party will work at pace to make progress and will consult widely to ensure that the action plan is effective and based on the evidence available.
Government Amendment 139C, the annual report amendment, is a government concession to Amendments 141 and 142 tabled by my noble friend Lord Blunkett. It places an obligation upon the Government to report annually on the progress and rehabilitation of IPP and DPP prisoners through the enhanced work of the progression board and to outline those whom they have consulted in supporting such progress. There is clear intent of prisoner release and support and progress on licence while being monitored and advised by the scrutiny panel—currently known as the external challenge group. The Minister mentioned the members of this group. Nobody could doubt their credibility.
Lord Bellamy (Con)
My Lords, I first thank noble Lords for their contributions. To those who were kind enough to refer to me personally, I respectfully say that I simply speak on behalf of the Government, not on my own behalf. This Bill, these amendments and the matters we are discussing are government-sponsored matters. It is the Lord Chancellor and my right honourable friend Mr Argar in the other place, and the Government as a whole, who have put forward this Bill and these amendments for your Lordships’ consideration.
I gathered from the most eloquent speeches we heard today that a number of amendments are not going to be moved. For the record only, I will therefore touch only briefly on those amendments and then turn in more detail to those that remain in contention.
Amendments 134 to 136, proposed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, would permit offenders to apply to the Parole Board for licence termination after at least a year had elapsed. The Government’s view can be briefly stated: the relevant offenders have to complete only two years on licence, so we are talking about only one possible application to the Parole Board during that two-year period. By the time the Parole Board has determined the application, one would be very close to the end of the two-year period anyway. In the Government’s view, it is not unreasonable to expect an offender to fulfil the required two-year period; that is a clear and certain test. We should not overburden the Parole Board—even more than it is burdened already—with these further applications. That is the brief answer to that point; I will not elaborate further.
On the noble and learned Lord’s Amendment 138, which addresses what are described as inappropriate recalls, I simply point out that, in his recent report of December 2023 on the Probation Service and the power of recall, the chief inspector found that the power was being used in a necessary and proportionate way. I associate myself with the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, bringing to bear his experience as a magistrate, about the importance of recall and the circumstances in which it happens. It is very important that the Probation Service is not criticised for the way in which it makes recalls. Be that as it may, in the Government’s view, these amendments, including Amendment 138, are now overtaken by government Amendments 139A and 139B, which provide, in effect, for re-release and for the release not to count if that is in the interests of justice.
I was asked by the noble Lord, Lord Carter, whether I can give any examples of what might be in the interests of justice in that instance. My official advice is that I cannot, because that would pre-judge particular circumstances. I can say in my personal capacity, however, that one could imagine, theoretically and hypothetically, that a recall made rather close to the expiry of the licence term, when the effect might be to restart the two-year clock—or a recall made in circumstances where there had been an arrest but subsequently there were no charges, or nothing was done to pursue the matter that led to recall—might be instances where this kind of power could be useful. I think that is as far as I can go on that matter.
Amendment 139 concerns the power in delegated legislation to change the qualifying period, which at the moment could be either reduced or released. That is a standard provision. The Government cannot imagine the circumstances in which anyone would ever want to increase the qualifying period, but one never knows. Therefore, we are not in favour of changing the statutory power to change the qualifying period.
Lord Sentamu (CB)
In a debate on public bodies, protests and funding, we wanted to use the word “reasonableness”, and the Government still stuck to proportionality—in government circles, on that particular Bill, they knew what proportionality meant. Moreover, I was in the debates on the Human Rights Act; it was very clear that part of the human right is whether the decisions that have been taken are really proportionate. The Act spells this out, so I do not understand why, in this particular case, the Minister is relying on case law, particularly on the Human Rights Act. I do not see why that cannot be applied in this particular instance.
Lord Bellamy (Con)
My Lords, I cannot do better than simply refer to what I have already said: the Government think that there should be a very clear, simple test of public protection, and that the way to get these prisoners out is to work in a way that enables them to meet that test, so that they and the wider community are safe. My respectful submission to this House is that that is a reasonable and responsible approach, because otherwise we run terrible risks in relation to releasing this cohort, who have already been found several times not to be safe to release. That is the Government’s position.
I turn briefly to Amendment 147, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, which relates to other support for IPP prisoners through the use of independent monitors, and in addition to the support I indicated on the last occasion. The Government will look at additional support, as the noble Baroness asked me to do, and consider whether that would be a further element that we can build into the action plan. I respectfully say to the noble Baroness and to other noble Lords who have made this point that, for prisoners who have lost hope, the Government’s actions should be the start of restoring hope. We are in the business of restoring hope for this cohort of prisoners.
Lord Bellamy
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on my amendment of Clause 45, page 47, line 28.
Lord Bellamy
“ScheduleInfected Blood Compensation AuthorityPart 1ConstitutionMembership
1 (1) The IBCA is to consist of—(a) a Chair (who is to be a non-executive member),(b) at least 3, but not more than 6, other non-executive members,(c) a chief executive, and(d) at least 2, but not more than 5, other executive members.(2) The members are to be appointed in accordance with paragraphs 2 to 4.(3) A person exercising a power of appointment in accordance with those paragraphs must when doing so ensure, so far as practicable, that the number of non-executive members is at all times greater than the number of executive members.Appointment of non-executive members
2 (1) The Chair is to be appointed by the Secretary of State or the Minister for the Cabinet Office.(2) The other non-executive members are to be appointed by the Chair except for the first three who are to be appointed by the Secretary of State or the Minister for the Cabinet Office.(3) A person may not be appointed as a non-executive member if the person is a member of the IBCA’s staff.Appointment of executive members
3 (1) The chief executive and the other executive members are to be appointed by the Chair.(2) The executive members are to be members of the IBCA’s staff.Appointments of members: eligibility
4 (1) The Secretary of State or the Minister for the Cabinet Office may by regulations make provision about criteria which must be met by persons in order to be appointed as members of the IBCA.(2) The regulations may make provision for a person to cease to be a member of the IBCA if the person no longer meets those criteria.Terms of membership
5 (1) A member of the IBCA holds and vacates office in accordance with the terms of the member’s appointment (subject to this Schedule).(2) A member may resign from office by giving notice to the appropriate person.(3) A member may be removed from office by notice given by the appropriate person on the grounds that the member—(a) has without reasonable excuse failed to discharge the member’s functions, or (b) is, in the opinion of the appropriate person, unable or unfit to carry out the member’s functions.(4) A person ceases to be—(a) a non-executive member of the IBCA upon becoming a member of its staff;(b) an executive member of the IBCA upon ceasing to be a member of its staff.(5) In this paragraph “appropriate person” means—(a) in the case of the Chair, the Secretary of State or the Minister for the Cabinet Office;(b) in the case of any other member of the IBCA, the Chair.Non-executive members: payments
6 (1) The IBCA must pay, or make provision for the payment of, such remuneration, pensions, allowances or gratuities as the Secretary of State or the Minister for the Cabinet Office determines to or in respect of a person who is or has been—(a) the Chair, or(b) a non-executive member appointed by the Secretary of State or the Minister for the Cabinet Office under paragraph 2(2).(2) The IBCA must pay, or make provision for the payment of, such remuneration, pensions, allowances or gratuities as the Chair determines to or in respect of a person who is or has been a non-executive member appointed by the Chair under paragraph 2(2).(3) Sub-paragraph (4) applies if—(a) a person ceases to be the Chair or a non-executive member appointed by the Secretary of State or the Minister for the Cabinet Office under paragraph 2(2), and(b) the Secretary of State or the Minister for the Cabinet Office determines that the person should be compensated because of special circumstances.(4) Where this sub-paragraph applies, the IBCA must pay the person compensation of such amount as the Secretary of State or the Minister for the Cabinet Office may determine.(5) Sub-paragraph (6) applies if—(a) a person ceases to be a non-executive member appointed by the Chair under paragraph 2(2), and(b) the Chair determines that the person should be compensated because of special circumstances.(6) Where this sub-paragraph applies, the IBCA must pay the person compensation of such amount as the Chair may determine.Staffing
7 (1) The IBCA may—(a) appoint employees, and(b) make such other arrangements for the staffing of the IBCA as it determines.(2) The IBCA must pay its staff such remuneration as may be determined in accordance with this paragraph.(3) The IBCA must pay, or make provision for the payment of, such pensions, allowances, gratuities or compensation as may be determined in accordance with this paragraph to or in respect of any person who is or has been a member of staff of the IBCA.(4) Members of staff of the IBCA are to be appointed on such other terms as may be determined in accordance with this paragraph.(5) A matter is determined in accordance with this paragraph if—(a) in the case of a matter which relates to an executive member, it is determined by the Chair; (b) in the case of a matter which relates to any other member of staff, it is determined by the IBCA.(6) Before making a determination as to remuneration, pensions, allowances, gratuities or compensation for the purposes of sub-paragraph (2) or (3), the IBCA must obtain the approval of the Secretary of State or the Minister for the Cabinet Office as to its policy on that matter.Interim chief executive
(1) The Secretary of State or the Minister for the Cabinet Office may appoint a person as an executive member to act as chief executive of the IBCA (“an interim chief executive”) until the appointment of the first chief executive by the Chair under paragraph 3(1).(2) An interim chief executive may incur expenditure and do other things in the name of and on behalf of the IBCA until the appointment of the first chief executive by the Chair under paragraph 3(1).(3) In exercising the power in sub-paragraph (2), an interim chief executive must act in accordance with any directions given by the Secretary of State or the Minister for the Cabinet Office.(4) Paragraphs 3, 5 and 7 do not apply to an interim chief executive.Committees and sub-committees
9 (1) The IBCA may appoint such committees and sub-committees as it considers appropriate.(2) A committee or sub-committee may consist of or include persons who are neither members, nor members of staff, of the IBCA.(3) The IBCA may pay such remuneration and allowances as it may determine to any person who—(a) is a member of a committee or a sub-committee, but(b) is not a member of staff of the IBCA,whether or not that person is a non-executive member of the IBCA.Procedure
10 (1) The IBCA may determine its own procedure and the procedure of any of its committees or sub-committees.(2) The validity of any proceedings of the IBCA, or any committee or sub-committee of the IBCA, is not affected by any vacancy among its members or by any defect in the appointment of such a member.Exercise of functions
11 (1) The IBCA must have regard to the need to exercise its functions effectively, efficiently and economically.(2) The IBCA may delegate any of its functions to—(a) a member of the IBCA,(b) a member of the IBCA’s staff authorised for that purpose, or(c) any committee or sub-committee.(3) A function may be delegated to the extent and on the terms that the IBCA determines.Funding
12 (1) The Secretary of State or the Minister for the Cabinet Office must pay to the IBCA—(a) such sums as are required to meet payments made by the IBCA under the infected blood compensation scheme, and(b) such other sums as the Secretary of State or the Minister for the Cabinet Office considers are reasonably sufficient to enable the IBCA to carry out its functions.(2) Payments under sub-paragraph (1)(b) may be made subject to conditions. (3) The Secretary of State or the Minister for the Cabinet Office may by regulations make provision about what the IBCA must do with any sums repaid to it by virtue of section (Payments)(5) (which may include provision requiring the sums to be paid to the Secretary of State or the Minister for the Cabinet Office).Annual report
13 (1) As soon as reasonably practicable after the end of each financial year the IBCA must prepare a report on the exercise of its functions during that financial year.(2) The IBCA must send the report to the Secretary of State or the Minister for the Cabinet Office.(3) The Secretary of State or the Minister for the Cabinet Office must lay the report before Parliament.Accounts and audit
14 (1) The IBCA must—(a) keep proper accounts and proper records in relation to them, and(b) prepare a statement of accounts in respect of each financial year in the form specified by the Secretary of State or the Minister for the Cabinet Office.(2) The IBCA must send a copy of each statement of accounts to the Secretary of State or the Minister for the Cabinet Office, and the Comptroller and Auditor General, as soon as practicable after the end of the financial year to which the statement relates.(3) The Comptroller and Auditor General must—(a) examine, certify and report on each statement of accounts, and(b) send a copy of each report and certified statement to the Secretary of State or the Minister for the Cabinet Office.(4) The Secretary of State or the Minister for the Cabinet Office must lay before Parliament a copy of each such report and certified statement.Meaning of “financial year”
15 In this Schedule “financial year” means—(a) the period beginning with the date on which the IBCA is established and ending with 31 March following that date, and(b) each successive period of 12 months.Provision of information
16 The IBCA must provide to the Secretary of State or the Minister for the Cabinet Office such information relating to the IBCA’s functions as they may request.Status
17 (1) The IBCA is not to be regarded—(a) as the servant or agent of the Crown, or(b) as enjoying any status, immunity or privilege of the Crown.(2) The IBCA’s property is not to be regarded as property of, or property held on behalf of, the Crown.(3) Service as a member, or a member of staff, of the IBCA is not service in the civil service of the State.Seal and evidence
18 (1) The application of the IBCA’s seal must be authenticated by a signature of—(a) a member of the IBCA, or(b) another person authorised for that purpose by the IBCA.(2) A document purporting to be duly executed under the IBCA’s seal or signed on its behalf—(a) is to be received in evidence, and(b) is to be taken to be executed or signed in that way, unless the contrary is shown. (3) But this paragraph does not apply in relation to any document which is, or is to be, signed in accordance with the law of Scotland.Supplementary powers
19 The IBCA may do anything it thinks appropriate for the purposes of, or in connection with, its functions.Part 2Transfer schemesPower to make transfer schemes
20 (1) The Secretary of State or the Minister for the Cabinet Office may make one or more schemes (“transfer schemes”) for the purpose of transferring to the IBCA such property, rights and liabilities of a relevant person as the Secretary of State or Minister considers appropriate for the purposes of enabling the IBCA to carry out its functions under or by virtue of this Act.(2) In this paragraph “relevant person” means—(a) the Secretary of State;(b) the Minister for the Cabinet Office;(c) a Special Health Authority established under section 28 of the National Health Service Act 2006;(d) the Welsh Ministers;(e) a National Health Service trust established under section 18 of the National Health Service (Wales) Act 2006;(f) a Special Health Authority established under section 22 of the National Health Service (Wales) Act 2006;(g) the Scottish Ministers;(h) a person who has at any time been appointed by the Scottish Ministers under section 28(4)(d) of the Smoking, Health and Social Care (Scotland) Act 2005 (asp 13) to manage a scheme under that section;(i) the Department of Health in Northern Ireland;(j) the Regional Business Services Organisation established by section 14 of the Health and Social Care (Reform) Act (Northern Ireland) 2009 (c.1 (N.I)).(3) A transfer scheme may not be made—(a) in relation to a relevant person within sub-paragraph (2)(d), (e) or (f), unless the Welsh Ministers consent;(b) in relation to a relevant person within sub-paragraph (2)(g) or (h), unless the Scottish Ministers consent;(c) in relation to a relevant person within sub-paragraph (2)(i) or (j), unless the Department of Health in Northern Ireland consents.(4) The things that may be transferred under a transfer scheme include—(a) property, rights and liabilities that could not otherwise be transferred;(b) property acquired, and rights and liabilities arising, after the making of the scheme;(c) criminal liabilities.(5) A transfer scheme may make supplementary, incidental, transitional or consequential provision and may, in particular—(a) create rights, or impose liabilities, in relation to property or rights transferred;(b) make provision about the continuing effect of things done by a relevant person in respect of anything transferred;(c) make provision about the continuation of things (including legal proceedings) in the process of being done by, on behalf of, or in relation to, a relevant person in respect of anything transferred; (d) make provision for references to an interim compensation authority in an instrument or other document in respect of anything transferred to be treated as references to the IBCA;(e) make provision for the shared ownership or use of property;(f) make provision which is the same as or similar to the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 (SI 2006/246);(g) make other supplemental, incidental, transitional or consequential provision.(6) A transfer scheme may provide for—(a) modifications by agreement;(b) modifications to have effect from the date when the original scheme came into effect.(7) For the purposes of this paragraph—(a) references to rights and liabilities include rights and liabilities relating to a contract of employment;(b) references to the transfer of property include the grant of a lease.(8) For the purposes of sub-paragraph (7)—(a) an individual who holds employment in the civil service is to be treated as employed by virtue of a contract of employment, and(b) the terms of the individual’s employment in the civil service of the State are to be regarded as constituting the terms of the contract of employment.Tax treatment of transfer schemes
21 (1) The Treasury may by regulations make provision varying the way in which a relevant tax has effect in relation to—(a) anything transferred under a scheme under paragraph 20, or(b) anything done for the purposes of, or in relation to, a transfer under such a scheme.(2) The provision which may be made under sub-paragraph (1)(a) includes in particular provision for—(a) a tax provision not to apply, or to apply with modifications, in relation to anything transferred;(b) anything transferred to be treated in a specified way for the purposes of a tax provision;(c) the Secretary of State or the Minister for the Cabinet Office to be required or permitted to determine, or specify the method for determining, anything which needs to be determined for the purposes of any tax provision so far as relating to anything transferred.(3) The provision which may be made under sub-paragraph (1)(b) includes in particular provision for—(a) a tax provision not to apply, or to apply with modifications, in relation to anything done for the purposes of or in relation to the transfer;(b) anything done for the purposes of, or in relation to, the transfer to have or not have a specified consequence or be treated in a specified way;(c) the Secretary of State or the Minister for the Cabinet Office to be required or permitted to determine, or specify the method for determining, anything which needs to be determined for the purposes of any tax provision so far as relating to anything done for the purposes of, or in relation to, the transfer.(4) In this paragraph references to the transfer of property include the grant of a lease.(5) In this paragraph— “relevant tax” means income tax, corporation tax, capital gains tax, value added tax, stamp duty or stamp duty reserve tax;“tax provision” means any legislation about a relevant tax.Part 3AmendmentsPublic Records Act 1958 (c. 51)
22 In Part 2 of the Table in paragraph 3 of Schedule 1 to the Public Records Act 1958 (definition of public records), at the appropriate place insert—“The Infected Blood Compensation Authority.”Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Act 1960 (c. 67)
23 In the Schedule to the Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Act 1960—(a) in paragraph 1 (bodies in England and Wales to which the Act applies), at the end insert—“(q) the Infected Blood Compensation Authority.”;(b) in paragraph 2 (bodies in Scotland to which the Act applies), at the end insert—“(g) the Infected Blood Compensation Authority.”Parliamentary Commissioner Act 1967 (c. 13)
24 In Schedule 2 to the Parliamentary Commissioner Act 1967 (departments subject to investigation), at the appropriate place insert—“The Infected Blood Compensation Authority.”House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975 (c. 24)
25 In Part 2 of Schedule 1 to the House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975, at the appropriate place insert—“The Infected Blood Compensation Authority.”Northern Ireland Assembly Disqualification Act 1975 (c. 25)
26 In Part 2 of Schedule 1 to the Northern Ireland Assembly Disqualification Act 1975, at the appropriate place insert—“The Infected Blood Compensation Authority.”Freedom of Information Act 2000 (c. 36)
27 In Part 6 of Schedule 1 to the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (other public bodies), at the appropriate place insert—“The Infected Blood Compensation Authority.”Equality Act 2010 (c. 15)
28 In Part 1 of Schedule 19 to the Equality Act 2010 (authorities subject to the public sector equality duty), under the heading “Health, social care and social security”, at the appropriate place insert—“The Infected Blood Compensation Authority.””Member's explanatory statement
This amendment makes provision about the constitution of the Infected Blood Compensation Authority, for the transfer of property, rights and liabilities to and from the Authority and for various enactments to apply in relation to the Authority.
Lord Bellamy
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on my amendment of Clause 44, page 45, line 4.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on my amendment of Clause 44, page 45, line 4.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides for the High Court to determine all prisoner release cases referred by the Secretary of State under section 32ZAA of the Crime (Sentences) Act 1997 inserted by Clause 44.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on my amendment of Clause 44, page 45, line 4.
“(2A) The requirement for the Secretary of State to give effect to the Parole Board’s direction to release the prisoner is suspended—(a) during such period, beginning with the day on which the direction is given, as the Secretary of State reasonably requires to determine whether to direct the Parole Board to refer the prisoner’s case to the High Court under this section, and(b) if the Secretary of State gives such a direction, pending determination of the reference under section 32ZAC(1).”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment suspends requirements to release a prisoner while the Secretary of State is considering whether to refer the prisoner’s case to the High Court and until any such reference is determined.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on my amendment of Clause 44, page 45, line 4.
Lord Bellamy
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on my amendment of Clause 44, page 45, line 11.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on my amendment of Clause 44, page 45, line 4.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on my amendment of Clause 44, page 45, line 4.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on my amendment of Clause 44, page 45, line 4.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on my amendment of Clause 44, page 45, line 4.
Lord Bellamy
“(b) in subsection (3), after “subject to” insert “—(a) section 32ZAA(2A) (suspension of duty to release prisoner pending referral to High Court or decision whether to refer), andMember’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on my amendment of Clause 44, page 45, line 11.
Lord Bellamy
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on my amendment of Clause 45, page 47, line 28.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on my amendment of Clause 45, page 47, line 28.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides for the High Court to determine all prisoner release cases referred by the Secretary of State under section 256AZBA of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 inserted by Clause 45.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on my amendment of Clause 45, page 47, line 28.
“(2A) The requirement for the Secretary of State to give effect to the Board’s direction to release the prisoner is suspended— (a) during such period, beginning with the day on which the direction is given, as the Secretary of State reasonably requires to determine whether to direct the Board to refer the prisoner’s case to the High Court under this section, and(b) if the Secretary of State gives such a direction, pending determination of the reference under section 256AZBC(1).”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment suspends requirements to release a prisoner while the Secretary of State is considering whether to refer the prisoner’s case to the High Court and until any such reference is determined.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on my amendment of Clause 45, page 47, line 28.
Lord Bellamy
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on my amendment of Clause 45, page 47, line 34.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on my amendment of Clause 45, page 47, line 28.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on my amendment of Clause 45, page 47, line 28.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on my amendment of Clause 45, page 47, line 28.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on my amendment of Clause 45, page 47, line 28.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on my amendment of Clause 45, page 47, line 28.
Lord Bellamy
“(b) in subsection (3), after “subject to” insert “—(a) section 256AZBA(2A) (suspension of duty to release prisoner pending referral to High Court or decision whether to refer), and Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on my amendment of Clause 45, page 47, line 34.
Lord Bellamy
“(2) In subsection (3), before paragraph (b) (and the “or” before it) insert—“(ab) in accordance with subsection (3A),”.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendments of section 31 of the Crime (Sentences) Act 1997 made by my amendment of Clause 48, page 50, line 31.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendments of section 31 of the Crime (Sentences) Act 1997 made by my amendment of Clause 48, page 50, line 31.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on my amendment of Clause 44, page 45, line 4.
Lord Bellamy
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on my amendment of Clause 45, page 47, line 28.
“Licence conditions for serial and serious harm domestic abuse and stalking perpetrators under Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements(1) A condition of the release and licence of serial and serious harm domestic abuse and stalking perpetrators is that they must be included in the Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements.(2) The Criminal Justice Act 2003 is amended as follows. (3) In section 325 (arrangements for assessing etc risk posed by certain offenders)—(a) in subsection (1), after ““relevant sexual or violent offender” has the meaning given by section 327;” insert ““relevant domestic abuse or stalking perpetrator” has the meaning given in section 327ZA;”;(b) after subsection (2)(a) insert—“(aza) relevant domestic abuse or stalking perpetrators,”.(4) After section 327 (Section 325: interpretation) insert—“327ZA Interpretation of relevant domestic abuse or stalking perpetrator(1) For the purposes of section 325, a person (“P”) is a “relevant domestic abuse or stalking perpetrator” if P has been convicted of a specified offence or an associate offence and meets either the condition in subsection (2)(a) or the condition in subsection (2)(b).(2) For the purposes of subsection (1), the conditions are—(a) P is a relevant serial offender, or(b) a risk of serious harm assessment has identified P as presenting a high or very high risk of serious harm.(3) An offence is a “specified offence” for the purposes of this section if it is a specified domestic abuse offence or a specified stalking offence.(4) In this section—“relevant serial offender” means a person convicted on more than one occasion for the same specified offence, or a person convicted of more than one specified offence;“specified domestic abuse offence” means an offence where it is alleged that the behaviour of the accused amounted to domestic abuse within the meaning defined in section 1 of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021;“specified stalking offence” means an offence contrary to section 2A or section 4A of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997.(5) Within 12 months of the day on which the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024 is passed the Secretary of State must commission a review into the operation of the provisions of this section.””
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)
My Lords, in rising to speak to Amendments 132 and 133 I take the opportunity to apologise to the House. I asked a supplementary question at Question Time that related to university funding and I did not refer to my interests in the register.
The amendments are the same as those that we moved in Committee and they are similar to amendments that we have moved to other Bills, but the Government have not acted and women continue to be attacked and killed as men with violent histories are allowed to escalate their behaviour by moving from victim to victim.
In Committee, the Minister said, as many Ministers have said before, that the Government agree that the robust management of perpetrators of domestic abuse and stalking is crucial to keep the public safe and that they completely agree with the spirit of the amendments, but that the objectives can be met through current provision and policy.
I beg to disagree. All the evidence demonstrates that this is not enough. Various initiatives have been, and are being, piloted, and countless letters are written to police forces urging them to make proper use of Clare’s law and stalking protection orders, but still it is clear that offences on a discretionary basis are not being treated with the same seriousness under MAPPA 2 and MAPPA 3. Where lives are at stake, a postcode lottery—which is what we have at present—is not acceptable.
This year a new report was published, following a national domestic homicide project and a Home Office-funded research project led by the National Police Chiefs Council—the NPCC. It showed that domestic abusers who went on to kill their partners were known to police in 80% of cases. Some 60% of those had been reported to the police specifically for domestic abuse, and a third of offenders were known to other agencies. The NPCC said that this highlighted the need for a
“multi-agency approach to effectively safeguard victims”.
The victims and perpetrators are known by many agencies and the most dangerous and serial perpetrators must be managed by MAPPA in order to close down opportunities for them to reoffend, and to ensure that their history is captured on the violent and sexual offenders register. This must be accessible whenever and wherever they move, just as with sex offenders.
The Minister might refer me to Clare’s law, which is certainly welcome, but it is simply not working in the majority of cases. It leaves the onus on potential victims to protect themselves, instead of placing positive obligations on the perpetrators. It affords no protection when the abuser leaves prison, moves address and targets a new woman—or when they change their name, which many serial perpetrators do.
Women repeatedly report they have been sent away or told by police that they are not a vetting agency. Clare’s law is failing because there is no duty on police to proactively identify, assess and manage serial perpetrators, or to record information about them and share it. NPCC data from October 2021 to March 2022 reveals that at least 56% of criminal background requests made by women were denied. This is truly shocking and demonstrates why the amendments are necessary.
I could cite so many examples that demonstrate the urgent need for these two amendments, but I will limit myself to six cases. I mentioned Zoe Dronfield in Committee. The man who nearly murdered her was released on 2 May. We have had to continuously push to ensure that he is managed at category 3 of MAPPA, when this should have been automatic. There are concerns about future women that he might target. We know that he has changed his appearance, but Zoe is not allowed even to see a photo. Why is it that his rights are being protected?
Chloe Holland was coercively controlled and abused by Marc Masterton. She died in hospital in March 2023 after trying to take her life because of him. Before doing so she reported him for domestic abuse and gave a two-hour video interview. He was sent to prison last year. Hearing of Chloe’s case, another victim, Zoe Castle, had the courage to come forward. Masterton has just been convicted for coercively controlling her and was sentenced to a further three years and seven months.
Zoe had just turned 18 when she moved in with Masterton and she lived in constant fear of him. She had to bend to his will and was fearful that she would lose her daughter. He hit over the head with a glass bottle, threw her into a wardrobe and, in another incident, picked her up and placed her in a freezing cold bath. When he comes out of prison, this serial perpetrator will do it again—he always does. He should go on a register, with stringent conditions.
“Danielle”—a pseudonym used to protect the victim’s identity for safety reasons—met her ex-partner through work in 2022. About six months into the relationship, it became clear that her new boyfriend had an alcohol problem. She thought she could save him, or that he would change for her, but he turned out to be abusive and attacked her twice in her own home. In a drunken assault, he grabbed her by the throat and hit her head against a wall, leaving only when she managed to reach the front door and scream for help.
Danielle said that she had never heard of Clare’s law when it was mentioned by her social worker soon afterwards, but she agreed to an application for information about her partner being made on her behalf. When the police arrived a few days later, she was shocked by what they told her. Her partner had a record of violent assaults on 20 other women.
In breach of the restraining order issued after the first assault, he broke into her home, seriously assaulting her again. He was sentenced to 10 weeks in prison for common assault and was released earlier this year. Naturally, she is terrified.
Holly Bramley met serial perpetrator Nicholas Metson in 2016 and they married in 2021. Holly had no idea about his previous convictions for offences against former partners in 2013, 2016 and 2017. Twenty-six year-old Holly decided to leave him and on 17 March last year he killed her, cutting her body up into 200 pieces and depositing it in a river.
Holly had a right to know about Metson’s serious and serial offending history.
Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, I am very happy to add my name to both these amendments, and I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, for the many years that she has pursued this subject—seemingly to no avail but cumulatively, the more people hear about it, the more we might finally get something done. As I was listening to the powerful examples she was giving, I was mindful of the maiden speech of my noble friend Lady Casey of Blackstock, which some noble Lords may have heard recently, where she repeated the litany of women, mainly, who have died at the hands of their male partners which Jess Phillips MP normally gives every year. The litany will go on and on until we have the moral courage to face up to this and to the fact that what we have currently is not working.
Why do we persist? I draw your attention to Hansard of 26 February of this year, which was our sixth day in Committee, and I will read directly from the words of the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Roborough:
“The Government agree that robust management of perpetrators of domestic abuse and stalking is crucial to help keep the public safe. We completely agree with the spirit of these amendments; however, we believe the objectives can already be met through current provision and policy”.—[Official Report, 26/2/24; col. 860.]
We then go to the Minister again, who gives us an example of how well the current system is working:
“The VAWG strategy confirms the Home Office will work with the police to ensure all police forces make proper use of stalking protection orders. Among other actions, in October 2021, the then-Safeguarding Minister Rachel Maclean MP wrote to all chief constables whose forces applied for fewer orders than might have been expected to encourage them to always consider applying for them. In February 2023, the former Safeguarding Minister, Sarah Dines MP, did the same”.—[Official Report, 26/2/24; col. 862.]
It goes on and on. The evidence is that the current system does not work.
In a meeting which the Minister kindly had with us to discuss some of the issues around stalking, we referred to the voluminous evidence put forward by the Suzy Lamplugh Trust in its super-complaint to the Government. This super-complaint will have a response from the Government, probably within the next two months, and in that meeting we exhorted the Government to look carefully at its evidence. Given the opportunity we have in this Bill to try and put it right now, rather than go through the charade of having the Government’s reaction to the super-complaint, more discussions about it, and then perhaps more discussions about what might be done, why do we not actually pull our finger out and do it now?
I entirely agree with the two amendments that the noble Baroness has put forward and I ask all noble Lords in the Chamber to consider very carefully supporting them when, as I think she will, she divides the House to see how we feel.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, and the noble Lord, Lord Russell. I also thank Laura Richards, Claire Waxman—the Victims’ Commissioner for London —and the Suzy Lamplugh Trust for their consistently helpful briefings for us. I am very moved by the powerful examples that the noble Baroness gave us and I agree with everything that she and the noble Lord said.
I just want to reiterate the point that we as a group keep making, which is that the government arrangements often mean that stalkers are missed out. They are often mischarged with other crimes, such as harassment or malicious communication. It is common for the National Stalking Helpline to see high-risk stalking cases managed as low-level nuisance behaviours or even as isolated incidents, and as a result fewer perpetrators are convicted and even fewer sentenced to 12 months or less.
There are also some concerns. The Minister has told us that the Home Office domestic abuse and stalking perpetrator intervention fund for last year was made available for PCCs to commission services covering all forms of stalking, including non-DA. However, there were a disproportionate number of funds apportioned to DA-specific stalking services or even DA services that do not address stalking at all, or claim to address stalking but without any stalking expertise. Some 65% of awards in this grant were solely for domestic abuse interventions, with no stalking provision. The problem is that whatever we say here is not ending up on the front line, so can the Minister tell us how the Government propose to manage a more comprehensive approach for stalking perpetrators?
The Suzy Lamplugh Trust has provided plenty of evidence over the years, and indeed in its super-complaint, about how investing in perpetrator management saves money. It saves money because there is no constant repeat of crimes committed by these obsessed and manipulative stalkers, and it helps the state as well. On that basis, from these Benches we support the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, if she wishes to call a vote on these two amendments.
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
My Lords, I shall be brief. My name is on this amendment, and indeed, I spoke to similar amendments in Committee. It was a great pleasure to do so, but I regarded myself, as I said at the time, as a substitute for my noble friend Lady Royall, who indeed has the most tireless record of championing this cause and taking every opportunity to remedy the problem. We are presented with an opportunity here. Guidance is not working. That is the problem. We have to put these modest amendments into the Bill because we know that guidance is not working. It is not good enough, and it means that it is a postcode lottery as to whether action is taken in the way that is necessary, and it makes a hit and miss system for whether or not women’s lives are saved. That is not good enough. It is time. We need to put both these amendments in the Bill. We owe it to the victims of stalking to ensure that the police everywhere will see stalking for what it is: often a stepping stone to something worse. It is time we did that.
Lord Roborough (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon, for her amendments relating to the Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangements —MAPPA. Before addressing the amendments, I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton and Lady Newlove, and the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, for making the time to meet me and my officials on this matter.
The Government agree that robust management of perpetrators of domestic abuse and stalking is crucial to help keep the public safe. We are in agreement with the spirit of these amendments. However, we believe that the objectives can already be met through current provision and policy and through separate legislation that we are taking forward. As the noble Lord, Lord Russell, kindly commented, that remains our view.
I will address Amendment 132 first. Under existing legislation, individuals who are convicted of specified violent and sexual offences and are subject to notification requirements and/or sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment or more are automatically eligible for management under MAPPA. These offences include offences which are committed in the context of domestic abuse, such as threats to kill, actual and grievous bodily harm, and attempted strangulation, as well as stalking, including fear of violence. The list of offences is kept under review and, in recognition of the seriousness of the offence, we are legislating in the Criminal Justice Bill to ensure that offenders convicted of controlling or coercive behaviour and sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment or more will automatically be managed under MAPPA. This will mean that many of the most serious domestic abuse offenders will be subject to stringent multi-agency management.
MAPPA in the 42 police force areas of England and Wales are delivered by independent strategic management boards. As well as representatives from the police, probation and prison services, SMBs will have representatives from other agencies, such as local authorities and health providers. To encourage consistency, SMBs must have due regard to guidance issued by the Secretary of State pursuant to his permissive power under the Criminal Justice Act 2003, while also responding to local needs.
As we committed to do during the passage of the Domestic Abuse Bill, we strengthened the Secretary of State's MAPPA guidance to include a chapter dedicated to domestic abuse and stalking. This mandates that all domestic abuse and stalking offenders who do not qualify for automatic MAPPA management must be considered for discretionary management, known as category 3. We have also worked with MAPPA agencies to improve practice, including the publication of additional guidance setting out the thresholds to be met for the various levels of MAPPA management to assist practitioners making these decisions, and, if we find that cases of domestic violence and stalking that need to be managed under MAPPA are still not being identified and referred for MAPPA management, to take further remedial action.
In response to the six harrowing cases that the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, mentioned earlier, while we cannot comment on individual cases, I express my and the Government’s sincere condolences to all individuals and families who have been impacted by domestic abuse or stalking. The MAPPA framework is available only for convicted offenders. All individuals with convictions for domestic abuse and stalking behaviour, where not automatically eligible, must already be considered by the responsible authorities for management under MAPPA. The statutory guidance makes this clear. MAPPA is not available in cases where individuals do not have convictions, but there are other measures that are either already in place or are due to be piloted shortly that serve to protect a victim; for example, the statutory domestic violence disclosure scheme, often referred to as Clare’s law, which provides a mechanism for the police to disclose information about an individual’s past abusive or violent behaviour, or civil orders, such as stalking protection orders and, later this year, domestic abuse protection orders.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his response, and to the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton and Lady Thornton, and the noble Lord, Lord Russell. I have to say that I am not content. I have heard the word “guidance”, “guidance”, “guidance”, and that the current provision and policy will make everything work. They will not. I repeat: they will not. Why are so many women dying? The reason is that they do not work. Pilots, guidance and Clare’s law are simply not working; they are not enough. We should take the moral courage as was suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Russell, and vote in favour of this amendment. As the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, said, it is not just about doing something that is right and protecting lives; investing in perpetrator management also saves money. What is not to like? I intend to test the opinion of the House.
“Relevant domestic abuse or stalking perpetrators’ register(1) A condition of the release and licence of serial and serious harm domestic abuse and stalking perpetrators is that they are subject to notification requirements in accordance with this section.(2) The Sexual Offences Act 2003 is amended as follows.(3) In section 80 (persons becoming subject to notification requirements), after subsection (1)(a) insert—“(aa) they are a relevant domestic abuse or stalking perpetrator”.(4) After section 80, insert the following new Clause—“80A Interpretation of relevant domestic abuse or stalking perpetrator(1) A “relevant domestic abuse or stalking perpetrator” under section 80 means a person (P) who has been convicted of a specified offence or an associate offence and meets either condition in subsection (2)(a) or subsection (2)(b).(2) For the purposes of subsection (1), the conditions are—(a) P is a relevant serial offender, or(b) a risk of serious harm assessment has identified P as presenting a high or very high risk of serious harm.(3) An offence is a “specified offence” for the purposes of this section if it is a specified domestic abuse offence or a specified stalking offence.(4) In this section—“relevant serial offender” means a person convicted on more than one occasion for the same specified offence, or a person convicted of more than one specified offence;“specified domestic abuse offence” means an offence where it is alleged that the behaviour of the accused amounted to domestic abuse within the meaning defined in section 1 of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021;“specified stalking offence” means an offence contrary to section 2A or section 4A of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997.(5) Within 12 months of the day on which the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024 is passed the Secretary of State must commission a review into the operation of the provisions of section 80 of this Act.””
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)
My Lords, I wish to test the opinion of the House. I beg to move.
Lord Roborough
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment clarifies that the amendments made by Clause 48 all relate to Chapter 2 of Part 2 of the Crime (Sentences) Act 1997 (life sentences).
“(1A) In section 31 (duration and conditions of licences)—(a) in subsection (3), after paragraph (a) (but before the “or”) insert—“(aa) in accordance with subsection (3ZA),”(b) after subsection (3) insert—“(3ZA) The Secretary of State may include a condition in a life prisoner's licence on release under section 32ZZA.””Member's explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on my amendment of Clause 48, page 52, line 27, inserting new section 32ZZA of the Crime (Sentences) Act 1997 and enables the Secretary of State to impose a condition in a prisoner’s licence on release under that new section.
Lord Roborough
(i) for the definition of “preventive sentence” substitute—““preventive sentence” means—(a) a sentence of imprisonment or detention in a young offender institution for public protection under section 225 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (including one passed as a result of section 219 of the Armed Forces Act 2006), or(b) a sentence of detention for public protection under section 226 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (including one passed as a result of section 221 of the Armed Forces Act 2006);”;”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment amends the definition of “preventive sentence” in section 31A(5) of the Crime (Sentences) Act 1997 to clarify the effect of previous amendments.
(a) if the prisoner was not at any time in the period of two years beginning with the date of the prisoner’s release serving any preventive sentence in respect of an offence for which the prisoner was convicted when aged 18 or over, that two year period;(b) otherwise, the period of three years beginning with the date of the prisoner’s release.””Member's explanatory statement
This amendment provides for a shorter “qualifying period” for prisoners only serving preventive sentences imposed in respect of offences for which they were convicted when aged under 18.
Lord Bellamy
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on my amendment of Clause 48, page 52, line 13, which provides for a shorter “qualifying period” for prisoners only serving preventive sentences imposed in respect of offences for which they were convicted when aged under 18.
“(b) after subsection (5A) insert—“(5B) Subsection (5C) applies where the Secretary of State releases, under subsection (5) above, a prisoner to whom section 31A (termination of licences of preventive sentence prisoners) applies.(5C) The Secretary of State may determine that, for the purposes of paragraph (c) of section 31A(4H) (automatic licence termination), the prisoner’s licence is to be treated as having remained in force as if it had not been revoked under this section.(5D) The Secretary of State may only make a determination under subsection (5C) if the Secretary of State considers that it is in the interests of justice to do so.(5E) Where the Secretary of State makes a determination under subsection (5C), the Secretary of State must notify the prisoner.””Member's explanatory statement
This amendment enables the Secretary of State, when the Parole Board directs the re-release of a preventive sentence prisoner who is recalled to prison, to disregard the revocation of the prisoner’s licence for the purposes of automatic licence termination under amendments made by Clause 48(2).
“(4) After section 32 insert—“32ZZA Imprisonment or detention for public protection: powers in relation to release of recalled prisoners(1) This section applies where a prisoner to whom section 31A (termination of licences of preventive sentence prisoners) applies—(a) has been released on licence under this Chapter, and(b) is recalled to prison under section 32.(2) The Secretary of State may, at any time after the prisoner is returned to prison, release the prisoner again on licence under this Chapter.(3) The Secretary of State must not release the prisoner under subsection (2) unless satisfied that it is no longer necessary for the protection of the public that the prisoner should remain in prison.(4) Where the prisoner is released under subsection (2), the Secretary of State may determine that, for the purposes of paragraph (c) of section 31A(4H) (automatic licence termination), the prisoner’s licence is to be treated as having remained in force as if it had not been revoked under section 32.(5) The Secretary of State may only make a determination under subsection (4) if the Secretary of State considers that it is in the interests of justice to do so.(6) Where the Secretary of State makes a determination under subsection (4), the Secretary of State must notify the prisoner.(7) In this section, “preventive sentence” means—(a) a sentence of imprisonment or detention in a young offender institution for public protection under section 225 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (including one passed as a result of section 219 of the Armed Forces Act 2006), or(b) a sentence of detention for public protection under section 226 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (including one passed as a result of section 221 of the Armed Forces Act 2006).”” Member's explanatory statement
This amendment enables the Secretary of State to re-release a preventive sentence prisoner who is recalled to prison and to disregard the revocation of the prisoner’s licence for the purposes of automatic licence termination under amendments made by Clause 48(2).
Lord Roborough
“Imprisonment or detention for public protection: annual report(1) The Secretary of State must, as soon as is reasonably practicable after the end of each reporting period—(a) prepare and publish a report about the steps taken by the Secretary of State in the reporting period to support the rehabilitation of preventive sentence prisoners and their progress towards release from prison or licence termination, and(b) lay the report before Parliament.(2) For these purposes, in relation to a preventive sentence prisoner—(a) “release from prison” means the prisoner’s release on licence under section 28(5) or 32(5) of the 1997 Act or unconditional release under either of those sections as modified by section 31A(4G) of that Act;(b) “licence termination” means an order, under section 31A(2) or (4H) of the 1997 Act, that the licence on which the prisoner was released from prison is to cease to have effect.(3) The report must in particular contain details of the steps taken in relation to the following—(a) preventive sentence prisoners who are female;(b) preventive sentence prisoners who at any time in the reporting period were serving a sentence mentioned in paragraph (b) of the definition of preventive sentence (detention for public protection for serious offences committed by those under 18).(4) The report must also contain details of the persons the Secretary of State has consulted in the reporting period in relation to the matters mentioned in subsection (1)(a).(5) In this section—“the 1997 Act” means the Crime (Sentences) Act 1997;“life sentence” has the meaning given by section 34(2) of the 1997 Act;“preventive sentence” means—(a) a sentence of imprisonment or detention in a young offender institution for public protection under section 225 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (including one passed as a result of section 219 of the Armed Forces Act 2006), or(b) a sentence of detention for public protection under section 226 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (including one passed as a result of section 221 of the Armed Forces Act 2006);“preventive sentence prisoner” , in relation to a reporting period, means a prisoner who—(a) was serving one or more preventive sentences at any time in the period, and(b) was not serving any other life sentence at any time in the period;“reporting period” means—(a) the period beginning with the day on which this section comes into force and ending with the 31 March following that day, and(b) each successive period of 12 months.” Member's explanatory statement
This new clause requires the Secretary of State to prepare, publish and lay before Parliament annual reports about the steps taken to support the rehabilitation of preventive sentence prisoners and their progress towards release from prison or licence termination.
Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd
“Imprisonment or detention for public protection: release test II(1) This section applies to a prisoner serving a sentence of imprisonment or detention for public protection who has served a period of imprisonment or detention—(a) in excess of the maximum determinate sentence provided by law for the offence or offences for which they were convicted, or(b) 10 years or more beyond the minimum term of their sentence.(2) In the case of a prisoner to whom this section applies—(a) the Secretary of State must by order pursuant to section 128 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (power to change test for release on licence of certain prisoners) direct that, following the prisoner's referral to the Parole Board they will not be released unless the Board is satisfied that, having regard to the proportionality of the term served to the seriousness of the offence or offences of which they were convicted, and any other relevant factors, it is no longer necessary for the protection of the public that they should continue to be confined;(b) section 28ZA of the Crime (Sentences) Act 1997 (public protection decisions) does not apply.”
Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)
My Lords, I wish to move this amendment. I thank all who participated in the debate we had a little while ago, but I am moving it because it is necessary to confront and deal with the problem that has occurred by reason of the imposition of IPP sentences and the effect it has had on prisoners, particularly their mental health, of which examples were given during the debate.
The Parole Board can be trusted to make proper decisions. The test will remain the protection of the public, but anyone who has experience of judging risk in relation to prisoners knows it is not an absolute and it is right to give the Parole Board guidance to take proportionality and other factors into account. I therefore wish to test the opinion of the House.
Lord Harlech (Con)
My Lords, I beg to move that consideration on Report be adjourned until not before 8:15 pm.
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
My Lords, there is a reason my noble friend has said that. It is in case the debate finishes early.
To be helpful to the House, I will outline the procedure. Given that we are combining two Statements into one today, the length of the Statement repeat has been extended to one hour. That does not take away from what my noble friend has just said. My noble friend Lord Howe will repeat both Statements before 20 minutes of questions from the Opposition Front Benches. The Minister will then respond to 40 minutes of Back-Bench questions. My noble friend Lord Harlech said what he did just in case the debate runs a little short.
Infected Blood
(7 months ago)
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Earl Howe (Con)
My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat in succession two Statements delivered earlier in another place. The first was made yesterday by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister. The second was made earlier today by my right honourable friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office. The first Statement, by the Prime Minister, is as follows:
“Mr Speaker, Sir Brian Langstaff has today published the final report of the Infected Blood Inquiry. This is a day of shame for the British state. Today’s report shows a decades-long moral failure at the heart of our national life. From the National Health Service to the Civil Service, to Ministers in successive Governments, at every level the people and institutions in which we place our trust failed in the most harrowing and devastating way. They failed the victims and their families, and they failed this country.
Sir Brian finds a ‘catalogue’ of systemic, collective and individual failures, each on its own serious, and taken together amounting to ‘a calamity’. The result of this inquiry should shake our nation to its core. This should have been avoided. It was known that these treatments were contaminated. Warnings were ignored, repeatedly. Time and again, people in positions of power and trust had the chance to stop the transmission of those infections. Time and again, they failed to do so.
Sir Brian finds ‘an attitude of denial’ towards the risks of treatment. Worse, to our eternal shame, and in a way that is hard even to comprehend, they allowed victims to become ‘objects for research’. Many, including children at Lord Mayor Treloar College, were part of trials, conducted without their or their parents’ knowledge or consent. Those with haemophilia or bleeding disorders were infected with HIV, hepatitis C and hepatitis B through NHS treatment, through blood clotting products such as factor 8, including those who had been misdiagnosed and did not even require treatment. Many were infected through whole blood transfusions. Others were infected through their partners and loved ones, often after diagnoses had been deliberately withheld for months or even years, meaning that these infections should easily have been prevented.
I find it almost impossible to comprehend how it must have felt to be told that you had been infected, through no fault of your own, with HIV, hepatitis B or hepatitis C; or to face the grief of losing a child; or to be a young child and lose your mum or dad. Many of those infected went on to develop horrific conditions, including cirrhosis, liver cancer, pneumonia, TB and AIDS, enduring debilitating treatments, such as interferon, for these illnesses—illnesses the NHS had given them.
Many were treated disdainfully by healthcare professionals, who made appalling assumptions about the origin of their infections. Worse still, they were made to think that they were imagining it. They were made to feel stupid. They felt abandoned by the NHS that had infected them. Those who acquired HIV endured social rejection, vilification and abuse at a time when society understood so little about the emerging epidemic of AIDS. With illness came the indignity of financial hardship, including for carers, those widowed and other bereaved family members.
Throughout it all, victims and their loved ones have had to fight for justice, fight to be heard, fight to be believed and fight to uncover the full truth. Some had their medical records withheld or even destroyed. The inquiry finds that some government papers were destroyed in
‘a deliberate attempt to make the truth more difficult to reveal’.
Sir Brian explicitly asks the question:
‘was there a cover up?’
Let me directly quote his answer for the House: ‘there has been’. He continues:
‘Not in the sense of a handful of people plotting in an orchestrated conspiracy to mislead, but in a way that was more subtle, more pervasive and more chilling in its implications. To save face and to save expense, there has been a hiding of much of the truth’.
More than 3,000 people died without that truth. They died without an apology. They died without knowing how and why this was allowed to happen, and they died without seeing anyone held to account.
Today, I want to speak directly to the victims and their families, some of whom are with us in the Gallery. I want to make a wholehearted and unequivocal apology for this terrible injustice. First, I want to apologise for the failure in blood policy and blood products, and the devastating—and so often fatal—impact this has had on so many lives, including the impact of treatments that were known or proved to be contaminated; the failure to respond to the risk of imported concentrates; the failure to prioritise self-sufficiency in blood; the failure to introduce screening services sooner; and the mismanagement of the response to the emergence of AIDS and hepatitis viruses among infected blood victims.
Secondly, I want to apologise for the repeated failure of the state and our medical professionals to recognise the harm caused. This includes the failure of previous payment schemes, the inadequate levels of funding made available and the failure to recognise hepatitis B victims.
Thirdly, I want to apologise for the institutional refusal to face up to these failings—and, worse, to deny and even attempt to cover them up—the dismissing of reports and campaigners’ detailed representations; the loss and destruction of key documents, including ministerial advice and medical records; and the appalling length of time it took to secure the public inquiry that has delivered the full truth today.
There is layer upon layer of hurt, endured across decades. This is an apology from the state to every single person impacted by this scandal. It did not have to be this way. It should never have been this way. On behalf of this and every Government stretching back to the 1970s, I am truly sorry.
Today is a day for the victims and their families to hear the full truth acknowledged by all and, in the full presence of that truth, to remember the many, many lost loved ones. But justice also demands action and accountability, so I make two solemn promises. First, we will pay comprehensive compensation to those infected and those affected by this scandal, accepting the principles recommended by the inquiry, which builds on the work of Sir Robert Francis. Whatever it costs to deliver this scheme, we will pay it. My right honourable friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office will set out the details tomorrow.
Secondly, it is not enough to say sorry or pay long-overdue compensation and then attempt to move on. There can be no moving on from a report that is so devastating in its criticisms. Of course, in some areas medical practice has long since evolved, and no one is questioning that every day our NHS provides amazing and life-saving care to the British people. But Sir Brian and his team have made wide-ranging recommendations. We will study them in detail before returning to this House with a full response. We must fundamentally rebalance the system so that we finally address this pattern, so familiar from other inquiries such as Hillsborough, where innocent victims have to fight for decades just to be believed.
The whole House will join me in thanking Sir Brian and his team, especially for keeping the infected blood community at the heart of their work. We would not be here today without those who tirelessly fought for justice for so many years. I include journalists and parliamentarians in both Houses, especially the right honourable Member for Kingston upon Hull North, but most of all the victims and their families, many of whom have dedicated their lives to leading charities and campaign groups, pouring their own money into decades of running helplines, archiving, researching and pursuing legal cases, often in the face of appalling prejudice. It is impossible to capture the full pain and injustice that they have faced. Their sorrow has been unimaginable. They have watched loved ones die, cared for them as they suffered excruciating treatments or provided their palliative care. Many families were broken up by the strain. Hundreds of thousands of lives have been knocked off course, dreams and potential unfulfilled.
But today, their voices have finally been heard. The full truth stands for all to see. We will work together across Government, our health services and civil society to ensure that nothing like this can ever happen in our country again. I commend this Statement to the House”.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Howe, for repeating both Statements. The infected blood scandal is, of course, one of the gravest injustices in our history and a profound moment of shame for the British state. Yesterday, Keir Starmer, leader of the Opposition, apologised on behalf of the Labour Governments of the past. The Prime Minister did the same on behalf of all Governments and the country.
The scale of the horror uncovered by Sir Brian Langstaff’s report almost defies belief. As well as the apology, I repeat Keir Starmer’s commitment
“to shine a harsh light upon the lessons that must be learned to make sure that nothing like this ever happens again”.—[Official Report, Commons, 20/5/24; col. 668.]
The institutional defensiveness identified by Sir Brian is a pattern of behaviour that we must address. We must restore the sense that this country is a country that can rectify injustice, particularly when carried out by institutions of the state.
I am sure that all noble Lords join me in paying tribute to the victims and campaigners who have fought so hard on this issue, including Dame Diana Johnson and Peter Bottomley, and to Sir Brian Langstaff and his team for all the work that they have done on the independent inquiry into this scandal. The publication of Sir Brian’s final report is an incredibly important moment for the victims of this injustice. Keir Starmer said yesterday that his
“experience of running a public service has made”
him
“less interested in political partisanship and more focused on getting things done”.
My right honourable friend Nick Thomas-Symonds said earlier in the other place:
“One of the most powerful conclusions in this report is that an apology is meaningful only if it is accompanied by action”,
as the noble Earl said. I repeat my right honourable friend’s commitment for us
“to work on a cross-party basis”
to
“help deliver the compensation scheme and get the … money to victims as soon as possible”.
We welcome the further details in Minister John Glen’s Statement, and the appointment of an interim chair, Sir Robert Francis. The Minister’s response, that Sir Robert and the expert panel will also focus on hearing the voice of victims going forward, is crucial. We welcome the payment under the five heads of loss to infected and affected persons, and the Minister’s confirmation that there is no budget restriction. Time is of the essence, with one victim dying every four days. I therefore welcome the Minister’s comments that there will be work throughout June on tracing additional claimants.
The Minister confirmed that the Commons will have the opportunity to debate and consider progress on Sir Brian Langstaff’s other 11 recommendations beyond compensation, including, as the noble Earl said, consideration of appropriate and fitting memorials, which—I add—we strongly support.
On potential criminal charges, I hope the Minister will be able to confirm that all relevant evidence will be available for consideration by the prosecuting authorities and that any other necessary support will be provided.
As I said in my opening remarks, the institutional defensiveness identified by Sir Brian is a pattern of behaviour we must address. We must deliver a duty of candour and the political leadership to replace that culture of defensiveness with openness and transparency. I hope the Minister will be able to confirm that this House will be given the same opportunity to debate these issues as was given to the other place.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, from these Benches, we echo the apologies made by both the Government and the Labour Benches. We are truly sorry for what has happened. We pay tribute to everyone in the infected blood community. I particularly want to thank those watching us, whether in the Public Gallery here or online. Talking to people at Central Hall yesterday, I discovered that a number of people have watched every single time this House has debated infected blood. We may not see them, but they see us.
From these Benches, we also pay tribute to Sir Brian and his team for a truly remarkable seven-volume report which speaks truth to power for the infected blood community, and we pay tribute to the parliamentarians in both Houses who have fought for justice over the decades, including Dame Diana Johnson, who currently leads them. We also pay tribute to the many charities and organisations who have worked with the IB community, be they infected or affected.
From these Benches, we will continue to hold government to account until everything is resolved. Having said that, we certainly welcome both Statements. We echo the points made from the Labour Front Bench: we believe that there are issues relating to criminal charges for corporate manslaughter and other possible crimes, so can the Minister say whether Sir Brian’s report is being forwarded to the police and the DPP for consideration?
There is one person who is not in her place today, the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton. She was exhausted by yesterday. She is one of the affected people in this House—but not the only one. She told me that she welcomes the government apology; her sorrow is that it took decades of personal hardship and relentless campaigning to arrive. She is delighted by the appointment of Sir Robert Francis KC, as are we; he is someone in whom the IB community has considerable trust. Finally, she said that she wants to listen hard to the community responses over the coming weeks to the events of yesterday and today in respect of the compensation intentions. Everyone will need time to process the inquiry’s findings. She and many others are completely exhausted, and that is why she is unable to be with us tonight.
Today’s compensation Statement sets out much welcome detail. As the Minister knows, from these Benches we welcome the establishment of the arm’s-length IB compensation authority, the announcement that Sir Robert Francis is the interim chair and the clarity about who is eligible, especially the inclusion of those affected, not just infected. We also welcome the different categories of tariff. Ministers have heard repeatedly in both Houses that it is vital to recognise how people’s lives have been affected in so many ways.
However, the Statement also raises some questions that are not quite so clear. First, have the Government understood that people with lived experience of infected blood must be represented at all levels on the IBCA, including the board? Both Statements were silent on that, so I wonder what guidance Ministers will give Sir Robert on involving people with lived experience.
Secondly, the Statement confirms that anyone already registered with one of the existing support schemes will automatically be considered for compensation under the new scheme. But what about those we have discussed repeatedly in debates on the Victims and Prisoners Bill: those who are known about but whose claims have not yet been recognised and therefore are not registered? The Statement yesterday talked about documents going missing and even being destroyed. I have heard today from a victim who says that her claims, made over five years ago, are stuck because the NHS has lost two or three key pages from her records, so she cannot move forward. Can the Minister say what will happen to cases such as hers? She asked, “How can we fight a machine that is still protecting itself?”
There is a second group of people who are harder to reach, as they have not yet been identified; they may have only just become aware that they are infected with hepatitis. What arrangements will there be for them? Not only are they outside the timetable for the main compensation scheme, given what the Minister said, but they appear not to be referred to under the interim scheme arrangements as announced. What is the timescale for each of those two groups? The Minister knows about them, because we have talked about them before, so it is no surprise to him that they remain concerned about their position.
It is also good to see that those receiving compensation will be disregarded from means-tested benefits assessments, but I return to my old question: can the Minister confirm that there will be no clawing back of past benefits as new compensation payments are made? That was not at all clear in the Statement.
The Statement outlines support schemes especially for widows and how they will fit into the new scheme. I thank the Minister for making sure that they will not lose out. We look forward to seeing the details of the scheme.
Finally, the increase in the interim scheme payments of a further £200,000 is welcome. As with the main scheme, what are the proposals and timescales for ensuring that those not yet registered will get speedy support, registration and payments? That is not mentioned, either, in the timetable.
Sir Brian’s report is a wake-up call to government, including the Civil Service, the NHS and the Department of Health and Social Care, and to Parliament. We must give thanks to all who have relentlessly spoken up from the community, the press and the media and in Parliament; but for them, we would not be here today. Only through fulfilling Sir Brian’s recommendations —all of them—will there be vindication for the victims and corporate and state changes in culture in the future. We must all ensure that we never have to face a scandal like this again.
Earl Howe (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Collins, and noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for their supportive comments. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Collins, that if ever a cross-party approach was warranted, it is now. I have no doubt that, going forward, his party, as well as mine, will wish to see justice fully done in the way that we—I hope—are agreed on.
Lessons must indeed be learned. The Prime Minister’s Statement yesterday expressed the shock and shame that all right-thinking people will feel in response to Sir Brian Langstaff’s report, the implications of which are profound. It is important that the Government take time to digest fully the gravity of its findings. The wrongs that have been done are devastating and life-altering for so many individuals, so ensuring that nothing like this can happen again is a priority. We will provide a comprehensive response in due course.
A number of questions were raised by both the noble Lord and the noble Baroness. First, the noble Lord, Lord Collins, asked about a debate in the House of Lords. I know that this proposal is currently under active consideration by the usual channels, and I would personally welcome such a debate.
Secondly, both the noble Lord and the noble Baroness asked me about the possibility of criminal charges and whether relevant evidence would be made available in such circumstances. I can certainly give that assurance, but it is a little early to say whether the report will be sent to the police or the Director of Public Prosecutions. We will consider the report in depth over the coming days and weeks, and it is no part of the Government’s wish to stand in the way of justice being done across the piece.
I am delighted that Sir Robert Francis has been welcomed as the interim chair of the compensation authority. He is trusted by the community, and I know that he wishes to work very closely with representatives of the community on both the way that the scheme as proposed is validated and the way that the compensation authority is established and is working. In other words, the provision that we have made in the Victims and Prisoners Bill for committees and sub-committees to be set up within the compensation authority will allow Sir Robert to populate those committees as he wishes, and as he is asked to do, with representatives of the infected and affected communities. I have little doubt that there will be arrangements at board level to ensure that the views of those committees and sub-committees are reflected in the board’s considerations going forward.
The noble Baroness asked whether there would be any clawing back of past benefits. I can assure her that there will not be.
As regards those who are not known about and who may feel that they have a claim—some, perhaps, lacking the evidence to prove a claim—we will address situations of that kind in the guidance that comes forward, and provide a means for those people on a page of GOV.UK to feed in their interest and their claim to entitlement in as simple a way as possible. The application scheme that we are setting up will be electronic; the aim is to make it as simple and as user-friendly as possible. Support will be provided for those who need it, and I will be happy to write to the noble Baroness with more specific details of how different groups of people will be able to access the compensation authority in due course.
Baroness Meacher (CB)
My Lords, I will say just a few words from these Benches—we are a little depleted this evening. I strongly support the words of the noble Lord, Lord Collins, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. They were very constructive and helpful. I also want to say how much I personally appreciate the fact that the noble Earl, Lord Howe, is responsible for this area of work. We are incredibly lucky to have such a committed and devoted Minister who, I feel absolutely confident, will pursue this and ensure that the compensation is properly provided to the people who so desperately need it. The noble Earl will, I know, collaborate; he had a very good meeting with a small number of us and it was very clear that he will welcome continued collaboration, and I certainly look forward to that. I give a special welcome to the Front Bench for the noble Earl, Lord Howe.
Earl Howe (Con)
I am, as ever, very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, for her kind words. I can assure her that it has been a privilege for me to be involved as a House of Lords Minister in working through these proposals and to be standing here today to announce them. I am more than ready to continue that work as we fashion the compensation scheme, together with Sir Robert Francis and those impacted by this scandal.
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, as a former Secretary of State for Health, I very much share the sense of failure that was forcefully expressed by the Prime Minister in the other place yesterday. From my personal point of view, I want to say how deeply sorry I am for the pain and misery that so many of the victims and their families have experienced.
I remind my noble friend that that is exactly the same expression of regret that I made in another place on 10 January 2011, and which my noble friend at this Dispatch Box repeated on the same day. At that time, as my noble friend will recall, we had conducted a review over some months, following Lord Archer of Sandwell’s independent inquiry. We believed, on the basis of the ministerial review of Anne Milton, the Member of Parliament for Guildford, that we were substantially meeting—and enhancing—the level of support payment for relief that would be provided to victims and their families and meeting many of their needs. Clearly, it was inadequate, and the Prime Minister has expressed that view.
Can my noble friend say whether the Government will now focus very hard on the question of why I, he, our ministerial colleagues, and other Ministers and other Secretaries of State—I heard Andy Burnham say more or less exactly the same thing yesterday—believed that we were doing what was needed and what was right at that time but did not share the view that we needed to make compensation payments on the scale of those that were made in Ireland because we did not share the same liability as had been accepted in Ireland?
That was clearly not true. Ministers were repeatedly advised that something was true which was not true. That is not to absolve us, because we take responsibility as Secretaries of State for our departments and for what has been done or has failed to be done during our time in office, and collectively we must accept that responsibility. However, this must be a case of never letting the scale of that failure within government be repeated in the future in any other circumstances. I hope that my noble friend can say that that internal examination, based on the inquiry, will be proceeding forthwith.
Earl Howe (Con)
I am grateful to my noble friend and well remember the Statement that he refers to, which I repeated in this House in January 2011. He is exactly right. Both he and I were advised at the time that there was no comparability between the situations in the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom—that they were entirely different. That was not true, but it was the advice that we received. We did as much as we could, I am sure my noble friend will agree, to honour the spirit of the late Lord Archer’s report, which was at the time a very thorough piece of work, although he did not have access to all the evidence, as we now are aware. So it does raise the question of how successive Secretaries of State for Health in the Labour Government, the coalition Government and no doubt beyond were advised in the way that they were by officials. This is a question that merits the closest scrutiny and I undertake that that will be done.
Baroness Featherstone (LD)
I was not going to speak, because I find it very emotional. For anyone in this Chamber who does not know, my nephew died aged 35. He was a haemophiliac. He was infected with hepatitis C and exposed to CJD. He left a 10 month-old daughter. But I wanted to put on the record my admiration and heartfelt thanks to Sir Brian Langstaff. It was an absolute miracle that he chaired this inquiry, because he did not hold his punches yesterday, did he?
I also want to put on record my thanks to Theresa May, whom I worked with in the Home Office and whose ear I bent regularly. She was the first politician to do things right by commissioning this inquiry. Although it has taken five years and has been agonising for all those people—including my sister, who lost her son and now has Alzheimer’s—yesterday felt at last like a day of reckoning when justice was finally done. She campaigned for 40 years for that day, against all the odds. She was treated by civil servants and Ministers as if she was dirt on their shoes, quite frankly. I cannot even begin to express it.
There is so much that I would like to say, but, as this is meant to be questions, I will just say that I had evidence. I met Sir Chris Wormald. He lied to my face then apologised in writing afterwards. This was all given in evidence to the inquiry. Yes, all the things that the Minister has said will be done must be done, but there are so many of these situations. Denial and cover-up seem to be systematic, whether it is Grenfell, Bloody Sunday, Hillsborough or any of those things. This duty of candour has to really mean “never again”. I am sick and tired of hearing “never again” after all these inquiries. If it is not “never again”, there will be some recompense to those who were affected but it will not change anything. In this country, when it feels like everything is going to hell, this is an opportunity to perhaps turn it around and make sure that we become the good, honest Government and citizens that we always should have been.
Earl Howe (Con)
My Lords, I very much identify with the remarks of the noble Baroness and extend my personal sympathy to her with regard to the death of her nephew.
She referred to the duty of candour. It is perhaps not surprising that Sir Brian Langstaff has made such a recommendation. We need to think about it very carefully. As the noble Baroness will know, this House passed an amendment, proposed by the party opposite, to consider a duty of candour as part of the Victims and Prisoners Bill. I am still not sure that Bill is the right place for it; I think we need to take a longer run at this issue in the light of the full dimensions of Sir Brian’s recommendations.
However, it is not an issue that is going away. Nothing can ever compensate those who have lost loved ones or had their lives ruined by this terrible disaster. However, we can create a scheme that delivers monetary compensation speedily, efficiently and accessibly, in a way that is consistent with the proper management of public funds. Above all, the scheme must treat people with the kind of respect, dignity and compassion that the noble Baroness says was singularly absent along the way for those who required help and support.
These are basic rights which too often people impacted by the scandal have been denied. They need to feel that there is a system there to support them that is collaborative, sympathetic, user-friendly and as free of stress as possible. I know that that is the aim that Sir Robert Francis has at the top of his mind as well.
Baroness Finn (Con)
My Lords, Sir Brian’s report highlighted within government a culture of evasion, chicanery and half-truths that has perpetuated the anguish of victims and relatives for decades. I was particularly disturbed to read in volume seven of Sir Brian's report his conclusions on the destruction of several key documents by civil servants that were central to both his inquiry and earlier civil litigation before the courts. He found that it was,
“more likely than not that the authorisation to destroy the files was because the documents contained material dealing with delays in the UK to the introduction of the screening of blood donations for Hepatitis C, which was anticipated (or known) to be a live issue at the time. If this is right, it was a deliberate attempt to make the truth more difficult to reveal”.
Does the Minister agree, first, that it is to be condemned that civil servants sought to destroy evidence that potentially hid their own complicity in events; secondly, that it is disturbing that not a single official has been able to recall who gave the order to destroy these documents, or why; and, thirdly, that it is a great shame on the Civil Service that not a single individual has been held accountable for destroying evidence in this way?
Earl Howe (Con)
My Lords, I share my noble friend’s profound disquiet and shock at some of the facts that Sir Brian Langstaff has uncovered—not only as regards the actions of civil servants but also his exposé of moral failings on the part of individuals and institutions at every level of our system of government. These failings, and in some cases cover-ups, over decades raise profound questions about how in the future we can ensure integrity, honesty and transparency in the business of government—as the Civil Service Code and the Ministerial Code currently require.
The recommendations that Sir Brian Langstaff has made, particularly in the area of learning lessons and ending what he called the “defensive culture” of the Civil Service, will receive the most serious consideration across government and we will publish a comprehensive response to all his findings in due course.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)
My Lords, my own profession is covered in shame with the findings in this report. The noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton, should really be with us tonight. She went through everything with her first husband, who died; I remember his funeral well and the whole story was a tragedy. There will be recommendations that affect clinicians, as well, coming out of this. The Prime Minister’s Statement says:
“Of course, in some areas medical practice has long since evolved”.
I wish it was in every area of practice. To hear that people have been treated with disdain is frankly shameful.
I know there is a review by the Department of Health and Social Care going on at the moment. The review is taking evidence—it is on the website—on the duty of candour. I hope that that will be looked at very carefully, particularly in the light of the report. In terms of records, we have heard about Civil Service records but also patient records being lost, with patients being unable to access their own records and having to go through complex processes even today. That is something that at a personal level I feel needs to be considered as well, in order that people can access information.
I would like to ask the Minister what plans there are to work with the professional bodies to ensure that the findings here mean that there is proper candour, that whistleblowers are empowered to say what they need to say, that open conversations do occur over diagnosis and where people want access to the records, and that it is recognised that clinical studies do not need more regulation on top of them but need to be freed up to be really open and honest, because we move things forward in medicine through clinical studies and it would be really sad if the concept of trials fell into disrepute because there has been disrepute in the past and because things have been badly conducted. Some aspects, particularly of medical research, have changed and improved, but it is essential that people benefit from better care.
I know that my noble friend Lady Campbell of Surbiton welcomes the appointment of Sir Robert Francis, whose background and experience are exemplary. On behalf of her and the rest of your Lordships, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Howe, for keeping his door constantly open, seeing every one of us and managing people with great compassion.
Earl Howe (Con)
I am grateful to the noble Baroness for those remarks, and I associate myself with all that she said about the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton. She, of all our colleagues, has been personally affected by this awful scandal, and has lost a husband in the course of it. I am by no means alone in having enormous admiration for her. Although I well understand why she cannot be with us today, following an exhausting day yesterday, we are all sorry not to see her.
The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, was right to express a view about how we should not inadvertently turn off the tap on innovation and medical advances in the health service by adopting an overly risk-averse approach. That would be the wrong thing to do. At the same time, it is fair to remind ourselves that, since the 1990s, there have been huge changes in the way that the NHS is regulated and the checks and balances that exist for clinical trials and the like.
Certainly, our blood supply is now one of the safest in the world. Over the last decade, the Government and system partners have delivered major initiatives to advance patient safety across the NHS. They include the patient safety strategy and the Patient Safety Commissioner —thanks to my noble friend Lady Cumberlege. The NHS is subject to greater oversight and regulation today—some have said that it is perhaps excessive, but I do not agree—but with a modern focus on patient safety and on evidence-based medicine, with a constitution brought in by the last Labour Government that sets out the rights of all of us to care and to treatment free of charge.
While I am the first to echo the guilt expressed by the Prime Minister yesterday, I think that we can look forward to a period of greater transparency and openness and greater patient safety in the light of the changes that have been made in recent years.
Victims and Prisoners Bill
Tuesday 21st May 2024
(7 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Victims and Prisoners Act 2024 View all Victims and Prisoners Act 2024 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 57-IV Fourth marshalled list for Report - (17 May 2024)
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)
My Lords, the amendments in this group, Amendments 150 to 153, objecting to Clauses 49 to 52 standing part of the Bill, fall into two slightly different categories. The first three amendments, in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, who I am grateful to for her support, would remove the proposals in the Bill that Section 3 of the Human Rights Act be disapplied in relation to three pieces of legislation.
First, by Clause 49, the disapplication would apply to Part 2, Chapter 2 of the Crime (Sentences) Act 1997, which concerns life sentences and sentences of detention at His Majesty’s pleasure, release on licence for prisoners serving such sentences, and their release on licence, recall and removal from the UK, and will include all those amendments to be introduced by Clause 41 of this Bill. Secondly, Clause 50 would disapply Section 3 to Part 12, Chapter 6 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, which concerns the release on licence, supervision and recall of certain fixed-term prisoners, and will include all those amendments to that Act to be introduced by Clause 42 of this Bill. Thirdly, Clause 51 would disapply Section 3 to Section 128 of the LASPO Act, or any order made under that section. That is the section which, as we have heard in debate at some length in Committee and earlier today, permits the Secretary of State to change the release test for certain prisoners, importantly including IPP prisoners, to shift the balance so that if conditions are met, an IPP prisoner must be released.
As will be familiar to the House, Section 3 of the Human Rights Act requires that:
“So far as it is possible to do so, primary legislation and subordinate legislation must be read and given effect in a way which is compatible with the Convention rights”.
The ECHR is fundamental to the protection of human rights in this country. That is and has long been an article of faith for my party and the Labour Party, which was responsible for enacting the convention as part of domestic law by the means of the Human Rights Act. Indeed, it is important for many but not all in the Conservative Party; we have all seen the fault-lines on this issue over the tenure of this Government. However, the present Secretary of State for Justice is a keen advocate for the convention.
The architecture of the Human Rights Act has been widely and, I suggest, rightly praised for striking the balance between the sovereignty of Parliament and the convention. That architecture has at its heart the combination of Section 3—the section I just read—which requires convention-compatible interpretation and application of legislation where possible, and Section 4, which provides for a court to make a “declaration of incompatibility” where a legislative provision is found to be irrevocably incompatible with the convention right. The making of such a declaration leaves it to Parliament to legislate so as to comply with the convention and remove the incompatibility.
It follows that the proposed disapplication of Section 3 represents an invitation, almost an instruction, to courts to disregard convention rights when interpreting or applying the legislation. This is not a purely academic point; in relation to IPPs, for example, the European Court of Human Rights found in the case of James, Wells and Lee v UK in 2012 that the applicants’ IPP sentences were a violation of their Article 5 rights to liberty and security because the unavailability of rehabilitative courses meant that their detention after the expiry of their tariff terms was “arbitrary”.
As the Prison Reform Trust put it, in its helpful briefing for this debate:
“The introduction of specific carve-outs from human rights for people given custodial sentences contradicts one of the fundamental principles underlying human rights—their universality and application to each and every person on the simple basis of their being human. Moreover, it is precisely in custodial institutions like prisons that human rights protections are most vital, because individuals are under the control of the state”.
These carve-outs represent an insidious threat to the effectiveness of the convention in this country and, I suggest, a stalking horse for future legislation, undermining the balance between parliamentary sovereignty and the convention that I spoke of. They should be resisted.
I am bound to say that I find it very disappointing that the Labour Party is not whipping Labour Peers to support these amendments. The Human Rights Act was one of the Labour Party’s finest achievements. For Labour Peers to be instructed to condone by abstention the disapplication of Section 3 to these provisions is a sad portent for the future.
Before closing, I turn to Amendment 153, which seeks to remove Clause 52 from the Bill. Clause 52 does not seek to disapply any part of the convention, but it seeks to skew the court’s decision-making process on the application of convention rights in a way that is underhand and unacceptable. It would provide that, in making a decision as to whether a person’s convention rights have been breached in relation to a release decision:
“The court must give the greatest possible weight to the importance of reducing the risk to the public from offenders who have”
been given prison sentences. In other words, risk reduction is to outweigh all other factors. But what does the instruction to give “the greatest possible weight” say to a judge? The answer is effectively that no other factor is to count. There is to be no careful judicial balancing exercise, because if the risk reduction factor can be outweighed in the balance, a judge cannot, by definition, give that factor “the greatest possible weight”. Judicial discretion is to be removed; judges are to be compelled to reach decisions that they would not otherwise make, because they may not judge for themselves what weight to give to competing factors. That is not acceptable.
I fully intended to divide the House on these amendments, but given the Labour Party’s decision not to support them but to abstain and the fact that it is now late, I have decided not to. Nevertheless these amendments raise an important point of principle for all those who believe in the convention.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I was very disappointed by the Minister’s response in Committee, so I felt that I ought to have another go in support of the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, aided by the British Institute of Human Rights and Amnesty International, which were also very disappointed.
First, the Minister said that this clause is not about disapplying the Human Rights Act. Well, of course it is not about disapplying the whole Act—but not just Amnesty, the BIHR and the Howard League, but also the EHRC, the chair of the JCHR and the Law Society take the view that it is disapplying Section 3. It feels like one of those occasions when the Government is the only marcher in step.
The BIHR challenges a number of the Minister’s arguments—first, his reassurance that it is still possible to plead any breach of human rights in the usual way and to seek a declaration of incompatibility. It points out that the point of the Human Rights Act was to bring rights home and provide an accessible, practical and immediate remedy. The excision of Section 3 makes access to human rights harder. He said it was a “difficult section to apply”. The BIHR argues the opposite, pointing out that it is used by lay front-line workers who see it as having given them a clear legal framework for arguing for the protection of people’s rights.
Lord Pannick (CB)
My Lords, I associate myself with the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Marks, and the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. I am unclear whether the Government accept, as I think they must, that the reason why they wish to disapply Section 3 of the Human Rights Act is because they recognise that, without such disapplication, the substantive provisions of this Bill would plainly contradict Britain’s obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)
My Lords, Section 3 of the Human Rights Act requires courts to interpret legislation compatibly with rights under the European Convention on Human Rights as far as is possible. Clauses 49 to 52 would disapply Section 3 to prisoners as a group when it comes to legislation about their release. It is disappointing to see this Government wasting parliamentary time and public money to remove human rights from prisoners.
There is no evidence of the Human Rights Act 1998 limiting the Parole Board from making decisions about prisoners. These clauses appear to be trying to solve a problem that does not exist, while the Government ignore the many critical problems across our criminal justice system. We in the Labour Party are proud that it was a Labour Government who brought about the Human Rights Act in 1998, and a future Labour Government will continue to be a bastion of justice and hope, unlike this current Government, who cannot bring themselves to focus on the real issues affecting the public.
The noble Lord, Lord Marks, and my noble friend Lady Lister spoke about the lack of support from the Labour Party if he were to press this matter to a vote. He said—I wrote it down—that he thought this was “a sad portent for the future”. That is a harsh interpretation of our stance. I have just reiterated our commitment to the Human Rights Act. We would not have chosen to support him if he had pressed the matter, but the statement I have read out reaffirms the Labour Party’s commitment to the Human Rights Act. Having said that, I think the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, has put his finger on the central question. If the Government see no diminution of the Human Rights Act, why are they disapplying Section 3 within this Bill? Do they believe that it would breach the Human Rights Act if they failed to disapply the Act in this case?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Bellamy) (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, for his amendments, which seek to remove Clauses 49 to 52. I am extremely sorry to disappoint the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and others, but the Government laid out their position in Committee and nothing the Government have heard since or this evening alters that position.
As I think I have said previously, Section 3 of the Human Rights Act is a procedural, not a substantive, provision. Clauses 49 to 51 effectively disapply Section 3 in relation to prisoner release legislation. Let me start by reiterating that nothing in these clauses removes or limits any convention rights enjoyed by prisoners. If I was asked, as I think I was, to confirm that the full range of substantive rights under the ECHR remain: yes, of course they do. Nothing in these clauses removes or limits any convention rights enjoyed by prisoners. A breach of human rights may still be pleaded before any domestic court or in Strasbourg in the usual way, and we would not want to prevent such action by prisoners where it is warranted.
I respectfully respond to the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, by saying that this provision does not represent either an invitation or still less an instruction to the courts to disapply the Human Rights Act; nor does it imply, as suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and perhaps by the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, that the Government believe there is any breach of the European convention in relation to this legislation. That is not the case. The Government do not accept that there is any breach whatever in this legislation. It is the Government’s position that a matter as important as the public protection test should be for Parliament and that it should not be open to the so-called writing-in or reading-down provisions of Section 3, which is an interpretive position which means that the courts may be required to go further than usual in interpreting legislation that would otherwise be compatible with convention rights. Although this has happened less often in recent years, it can require courts to stray from Parliament’s original intention, and the Government do not think that that is appropriate in this context. The real issue is the balance between the courts and Parliament from a procedural point of view.
Lord Pannick (CB)
I am puzzled by this because it is an unusual thing in legislation to say that Section 3 is disapplied. Is it not the inevitable inference from the inclusion of that provision disapplying Section 3 in this legislation that the Government are seriously concerned, at the very least, that the substantive provisions would breach the substantive provisions of the Human Rights Act?
Lord Bellamy (Con)
My Lords, that is not by any means the Government’s position; nor can that inference be drawn. The Government’s position on this clause is, as I understand it, in effect, that which the noble Lord himself is reported as expressing to the independent review on human rights because Section 3 requires the judge to perform a remedial function which legislation does not on its proper construction conform to convention rights. Such a role is inappropriate under our constitution and unnecessary because Section 4 provides an effective means by which Ministers and Parliament can amend the legislation. That is the Government’s position on this provision.
So, totally hypothetically, if anything in the legislation from which Section 3 has been disapplied was found to be incompatible, it would be for the court to make a declaration of incompatibility under Section 4. It would then be up to Parliament to decide how to rectify it, rather than the intermediate rewriting process of the courts. It does not remove or limit convention rights. It is simply saying that in this case that is the right balance between Parliament and the courts. That is the Government’s position on that.
This group of amendments also seeks to remove Clause 52, which sets out that, when considering a challenge, the court must give the greatest possible weight to the importance of reducing risk to the public from the offender. Of course, the courts already consider risk to the public. This clause does not mean that public protection will be the exclusive or only factor to be considered. The matter will be up to the judges, who are very capable of doing their independent part in construing the legislation. What the clause does is to ensure that due weight is given to the important consideration of public protection.
So, on behalf of the Government, I beg to move that Clauses 49 to 52 stand part of the Bill.
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)
My Lords, I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 150.
Lord Bellamy
“(1) Section 239 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (the Parole Board) is amended as follows.(2) In subsection (5)”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on my amendment of Clause 53, page 54, line 21.
Lord Bellamy (Con)
My Lords, for convenience, I will start, if I may, with Amendments 154B to 154D, which relate to the role of the chair of the Parole Board. The Government have taken note of the debate in Committee regarding the original proposals affecting the Parole Board chair and the power of the Secretary of State to dismiss the Parole Board chair.
Strong leadership of the Parole Board is essential. It appears that a mechanism already exists, in the unlikely event that it is needed, for the Secretary of State to ask an independent panel to consider dismissing the chair if there are concerns about their ability to do the job effectively. On balance, the Government have decided that this existing mechanism is sufficient, so we will not be proceeding with the original proposals in the original Bill.
We have also listened to feedback that the judicial functions of the chair, including deciding whether a hearing can be held in public, would most appropriately continue to be held by the chair. It has become clear that, to lead the board effectively, the chair should retain these functions, including their ability to take part in individual cases. For these reasons, I have tabled these amendments to remove all provisions relating to the chair of the board from the Bill.
I turn next to my Amendments 153A and 154A, which seek to amend Section 239(5) of the Criminal Justice Act 2003. These amendments enable the Secretary of State to create procedural rules via secondary legislation which the Parole Board must follow when carrying out its statutory duties.
These amendments will allow the Secretary of State to create new rules that will allow the Parole Board chair to delegate certain functions, including some judicial functions, from board members to staff in its secretariat. The Government intend for this provision to be commenced immediately on Royal Assent. This is the subject of Amendments 162A and 162B, to which I shall refer briefly in a moment.
Other courts and tribunals typically have provisions in primary legislation to allow for rules permitting the delegation of certain functions but, to date, we have not had comparable provisions for the Parole Board.
The Parole Board has approximately 320 members and 200 staff in its secretariat. Its members are public appointees, including judicial members, specialist members and independent members, the specialist members typically being psychologists or psychiatrists.
The purpose of the amendment is to give the Parole Board greater flexibility in how it manages its workload. I have to say that delays in the Parole Board process are currently serious and must be tackled. Each review that the Parole Board carries out will include a range of case management decisions, such as varying or revoking certain directions, agreeing deadlines or timelines, adding or removing witnesses, or adjourning or deferring cases that are not ready to be heard. At present, these decisions are taken by Parole Board members, but that is not always necessary. There are efficiency savings to be made if some case management decisions could be delegated to appropriate staff, and the Parole Board supports this amendment, which is dedicated to improving the overall efficiency of the board and reducing delays in the system. That is particularly important in relation to IPP prisoners, whom we discussed earlier, since we can anticipate an increasing flow of IPP decisions to the Parole Board and an increasing workload accordingly.
Lord Pannick (CB)
My Lords, I need some guidance. Today’s list indicates that in this group are contained the government amendments to Clauses 55 and 56, which are the amendments relating to marriage and civil partnership. Today’s list also indicates, in the next group, that we have already debated my opposition and that of other noble Lords to Clauses 55 and 56. I am very happy to delay my comments on Clauses 55 and 56 until the Minister deals with them, but I thought I should just mention where we are.
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)
If I may help advance this, our understanding is that the Clauses 55 and 56 stand-part debates are the subject of group 6. I do not know whether that is the Minister’s understanding.
Lord Bellamy (Con)
My Lords, that is my understanding. I am in a slight panic at the moment—the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, having raised this matter—and I hope I have not proceeded in the wrong order. I think this is group 6, according to my instructions.
Lord Pannick (CB)
I am simply referring to today’s list, which is what I am working from. If the Minister looks at today’s list, he will see that this group includes, for example, government Amendment 156ZB, which is an amendment to Clause 55, and government Amendments 156ZC, 156ZD, 156ZE and 156ZF. I do not mind at all whether my amendments are in another group, but I do not want to be told later that I have missed my opportunity.
Lord Meston (CB)
My Lords, I associate myself with those remarks. I stayed late, expecting to debate the question of the marriage of long-term prisoners, and was a bit concerned to see that the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, appeared to be described as “already debated”, which I do not think it can possibly have been.
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)
My Lords, I will try to help once again, because I have in front of me a copy of the groupings that were sent out. The noble Lords, Lord Pannick and Lord Meston, are absolutely right that some of the consequential government amendments have been put into group 5, but group 6 certainly includes—as we were told by the Government Whips’ Office—Amendment 165ZDA and Amendment 156ZI, which is the prisoner marriage substantive stand-part amendment. If we could proceed, that would be most convenient.
Lord Pannick (CB)
I am very happy to proceed on the basis that group 6 will deal with these matters.
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
I have to say that I decided to ignore those and will discuss them in the next group, because they were in the wrong place.
Lord Bellamy (Con)
It is also the Government’s wish and position that we discuss that in the next group.
Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)
Would it be possible to say something about what I think is common ground in this group—namely, the amendments dealing with the composition and functions of the Parole Board? This is dealt with in government Amendment 153A and Amendments 154, 155 and 156, in my name and those of the noble Lord, Lord Bach, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett.
I thank the Government for what they have done. I entirely associate myself with that, and thank the Minister and the Lord Chancellor, and anyone else from the Government who accepted all of this. I am very grateful.
However, I now want to be slightly churlish about the new chair of the Parole Board—a very important position. A new chair is to be appointed, and looking at the website I see that the deadline for the applications was 24 February, sifting was 31 March, and interviews are expected to end on 31 May. I assume that the competition is largely done but current. Maybe the Minister cannot answer this now, but the provisions in relation to the Parole Board have been significantly changed as a result of this amendment.
There are two things. I imagine there are a number of people who would never contemplate taking on a quasi-judicial position; they would not touch it with a bargepole on the basis that you could make a decision that the Secretary of State thought affected public confidence in the board. No one would become a judge if you could be removed on the whim of a government Minister; it seems equally clear that no self-respecting person could agree to be chairman of the Parole Board if they could be removed on the whim of a Minister, as was in the Bill when this competition was run.
More seriously, the role of the Parole Board chair was crafted to remove the chair from the core work of the board—that is to say, deciding cases. Everyone knows that if you sit as a judge it is critical that you are not an administrator—you cannot lead and you are not respected. It seems to me very clear that the position of the chairman of the Parole Board has to be looked at in the light of the amendments that we are about to make.
I find it somewhat disappointing that this competition has been rushed ahead with without the position of the chairman being clear. I very much hope that the Minister can give some reassurance that more time will be taken to consider this in the light of the changes to the Bill, and that the competition will not go ahead without a further opportunity for people to apply and a proper assessment made of whether the persons who are in line are competent to deal with sitting on cases.
I do not know how this has happened. I am sure it has absolutely nothing to do with the Minister, but it is very disturbing that an appointment should be made on the basis of something in the Bill which has now been radically changed. I feel very churlish to be raising this point in the light of the Government’s acceptance of these amendments, but it seems to me that, as the chairmanship of the Parole Board is so critical, as the Minister and all of us accept, we must get the right person to do it. I am not certain that it is possible to have the right person without taking into account the new qualifications. I apologise for being churlish and for asking this question, but it is rather important. Otherwise, I warmly welcome this and thank the Government for what they have done.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
My Lords, I concede that I am the amuse-bouche of this debate, rather than the main course, as alluded to by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. If your Lordships’ House will allow me a few minutes, I will develop my remarks on Amendment 156ZA, tabled in my name, on Parole Board hearings. I thank my noble friend Lady Lawlor for originally moving this amendment so ably in my absence—I was unavoidably detained on parliamentary business—in Committee on 25 March. Naturally, I read my noble friend Lord Howe’s response on that occasion with great care.
The amendment seeks to establish the presumption that Parole Board hearings will be open to the public, but with exceptions. It endeavours to improve public faith and trust in the criminal justice system. This is both a probing and a permissive amendment. It is a natural progression that consolidates the reforms undertaken by Ministers over the last six years.
As we know, this was prompted by public disquiet over the proposed release of serial rapist John Worboys in 2018, which resulted in a review of the parole system and a public consultation, which was published in 2022. There was a finding in the High Court that the Parole Board’s rule 25—a blanket ban on transparency and details of the board’s deliberations—was unlawful. The Government have rightly moved to address the very serious failings identified by the Worboys case by allowing summaries of Parole Board decisions to be provided to victims and other interested parties, and to allow a reconsideration mechanism introduced in 2019. This allows a prisoner and/or the Secretary of State for Justice within 21 days to seek reconsideration of several decisions taken by the board. Victims are now also permitted to seek a judicial review on the grounds that decisions are procedurally unfair or irrational. Most significantly, the Parole Board’s rule 15 was amended by secondary legislation in 2022 to enable public hearings to be facilitated, upon request to the chair of the Parole Board, “in the interests of justice”—a test utilised by the Mental Health Tribunal.
This amendment is nuanced and heavily caveated in proposed new subsections (5) and (7). It presumes no absolute right to open Parole Board hearings on the most serious cases, but it nevertheless presents a balance between the interests of the victim, prisoners and the wider criminal justice system. It imposes a statutory duty on Ministers to take note of the importance of rehabilitation, reducing recidivism, fairness and due process.
I accept that the Parole Board discharges a quasi-judicial function, but secret justice is not justice as most reasonable people would regard it. Open and transparent judicial proceedings are one of a few fundamental principles in the court system of England and Wales. Furthermore, other jurisdictions across the world, such as those in Canada and the United States, have a more open and transparent hearings regime, especially regarding the right of victims to attend and participate in such meetings.
I am not entirely convinced of the Minister’s comments in the previous Committee debate: that the changes made in the 2022 regulations definitively precluded all but a few hearings from being held in public. My amendment specifically addresses concerns about sensitive evidence, and the concerns of the victims. It permits such matters to be raised as a rationale for proceedings to be held in camera.
Finally, may I respectfully disabuse the Minister of the notion that every one of the 8,000 parole cases would be held in public? This is not the aim of the amendment, the permissive nature of which means that there is an expectation that the powers will be only lightly exercised in a minority of the cases by the Secretary of State, with checks and balances in place to protect the operational independence of the Parole Board, and a requirement to publish a review of the efficacy of the policy as it affects the interests of justice test, as well as public confidence in and support of the criminal justice system.
I look forward to hearing my noble and learned friend the Minister address these issues and explain why it is not possible to go further, in the commendable programme of reforms already undertaken, by allowing public hearings to become the default position. I thank him for engaging so positively on this important issue.
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for explaining his amendments, which accept a number of points made in Committee. On the point raised by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, about the position of the chair of the Parole Board—he raised this with me a little earlier, so I have not considered it in great detail— I am bound to say that I take the view that he is exactly right: you cannot possibly proceed with a selection procedure and take it to a conclusion when you have completely changed the job description. I hope the Government will take that point away.
I will speak to my Amendment 156ZAA, which remains on the Marshalled List and remains unresolved. It is intended to reduce the trauma caused to bereaved families and victims by repeated unmeritorious applications to the Parole Board for parole by the perpetrators of crimes who are serving life sentences. The restriction of such applications would be implemented without in any way diminishing access to the Parole Board for applicants who have a genuine reason for making, after an earlier refusal, further applications that may, in the right circumstances, be made as little as a year after a refusal. I am grateful to the London Victims’ Commissioner for her help with this amendment.
The present provision in Section 28(7)(b) of the Crime (Sentences) Act 1997 provides that a prisoner serving a life sentence may not require the Secretary of State to refer the case to the Parole Board until after they have completed their minimum tariff and after the lapse of two years after any previous reference was completed. However, in practice, the Parole Board can, and frequently does, consider parole more often than every two years. Indeed, in the case of Chris Cave, stabbed to death at the age of 17 in 2003, there have been nine parole hearings after the earliest release date. His mother describes the repeated trauma of facing those parole hearings for her son’s murderer as torturing and as sometimes allowing only six months’ respite before the family has to prepare psychologically for the next parole hearing and prepare further victim impact statements.
This amendment would enable the Parole Board to direct a waiting time of between 12 months and four years before a further reference could be made—so the Parole Board could make the direction. However, if there were a direction for a waiting period of more than two years, the Parole Board would have to have a reasonable belief that the prisoner’s release prospects were unlikely to change over the period, and that decision would be reviewable.
The parole process is lengthy and is a potential time of stress for bereaved families and for victims and their families. Although such victims and bereaved families appreciate the opportunity to make impact statements and have them considered by the Parole Board, the strain of making them often is considerable and can often be retraumatising. This amendment is primarily aimed at preventing victims being subjected to that frequent stress when it is clear that nothing has changed.
We have considered concerns, which the Minister raised in Committee, that the rights of prisoners to reviews of their detention under Article 5(4) of the convention might be infringed. But we are satisfied that the flexible provisions in this amendment, including the review provision, are compliant with the convention and strike a fair balance between the rights of prisoners and those of their victims and their families.
At the same time as making this relatively modest change, we invite the Minister to say a bit more about what extra support can be offered through a perpetrator’s parole process to make that process more manageable and less frightening for the victims and bereaved families. With more public parole hearings and the trialling of victims’ attendance at closed hearings expected, the need for that support—and for sufficient resources to be allocated to providing it—is increasingly important.
The provision of further information to families is also very important and we would be grateful if the Minister would say something about the future provision of information to victims and bereaved families, either through the victim contact scheme or otherwise. Better information about the parole process is important, but such information is also needed about moves of prisoners to open conditions and their progress towards rehabilitation. That information would make the perpetrators’ process towards release much less painful for the families of their victims. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about that.
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
My Lords, I am very glad that we have managed to sort out which are the right amendments in the right place through a collective effort across your Lordships’ House.
Noble Lords will recall a discussion on this matter in Committee, which is presumably what has led to these government amendments. Like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, I welcome them, but his questions about the appointments process are absolutely legitimate and feed into what we said in Committee—that the Government need to recognise the independence of the Parole Board and understand the risks of politicisation. The original Bill seemed to be government proposals in search of an actual problem to solve. The decision on the composition of the board should be a decision for the board.
The 2019 Ministry of Justice review of the Parole Board Rules stated:
“Restrictions on which panel members can hear particular types of case have gradually been lifted over time … to allow greater flexibility and timeliness in listing the right cases for the right panel members and we do not wish to undo the improvements this has achieved”.
That was echoed by Martin Jones, the chief executive of the Parole Board, when he gave evidence to the Commons committee.
So we are in a better place than we were at the beginning of this Bill, but the issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Marks, are very legitimate and require the Government’s attention and an answer. The noble Lord, Lord Jackson, raised some very interesting points about how the board operates and its accessibility. That is a difficult issue, because it sometimes deals with sensitive and controversial matters. I will be interested to hear what the Minister has to say about that, because its decisions by their nature are sensitive and controversial and the Government should keep the new additional power in sub-paragraph (2C) inserted by Clause 54 under review. Removing the chair because a decision in an individual case is unpopular, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, said, would influence the panel’s decisions and I think is not the way the committee and the House wish to see this go.
Lord Bellamy (Con)
My Lords, I begin with the amendments proposed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas. It was not in the least bit churlish to raise this point about the process for the appointment of the new chair of the Parole Board. I have no reason to believe that this is not a fully effective appointments process, but I am not informed of the detail at this moment, and I will write to all noble Lords to set out what the position is.
I take it that the amendments proposed by the Government remove the need for the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, to move his Amendments 155 and 156. I was not entirely clear on whether the noble and learned Lord is still moving Amendment 154, which relates to the law enforcement members of the Parole Board. In response to the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, I simply emphasise that nothing in the government amendments decides which individual members sit on which panel in individual cases. That remains the responsibility of the board, and that is right and proper. So I will not say anything further about that group of amendments.
I then come to Amendment 156ZA, proposed by my noble friend Lord Jackson. I thank him for the amendment because, as has been pointed out, it does raise some interesting and important issues. Once again, it is effectively a question of balance between all the various interests: victims, prisoners, confidentiality, details of health, et cetera. To recap, the provision for public parole hearings was introduced in 2022, allowing any hearing to be conducted in public if the chair of the Parole Board decides that it is in the interests of justice to do so. That changed the previous position, where all hearings were held in private. The amendment proposed by my noble friend would change that position so that all hearings would be in public by default, and a private hearing would take place only in exceptional circumstances.
The Government’s position on this amendment has not changed since it was explained in Committee and, if I may put it colloquially, the Government feel that we are still in the relatively early stage of developing and gaining experience from how the Parole Board manages public hearings. We are not yet ready to go as far as my noble friend would like us to go at this point. That is the essential answer to his point—but I do not close off the question at all. As has also been pointed out, it is part of a consideration of the continuous process of updating and reviewing the workings of the Parole Board as circumstances evolve.
To respond to the specific 8,000 hearings point raised by my noble friend, the Parole Board holds more than 8,000 hearings a year. This amendment would require the Secretary of State and the Parole Board to consider the merits of having a public hearing in every case. Victims would need to be contacted in every case, which would potentially add to their trauma. It is more complex and takes longer to have public hearings, and that may well delay proceedings further. To date, the Parole Board has published decisions for just 32 public hearing applications since 2022, eight of which have been granted. That suggests to the Government that the demand for public hearings is not, in fact, especially high, but I again emphasise that the situation is still evolving and that we need to continue to learn from the practice of the day. I very much understand the desire to create more openness, transparency and trust in the parole system, but I would not wish to create new administrative burdens on the system, potentially slowing it down. On the other hand, I do not feel that this amendment can be pursued at this point in time. I therefore urge the noble Lord to withdraw it.
Amendment 156ZAA, tabled again by the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, concerns the interval between hearings and seeks to allow the Parole Board to direct the period of time. It aims to deal with the problem, as he would put it, of repeated applications. The Government are not able to change their position from that set out in Committee. The current system already provides for flexibility in the time set for the prisoner’s next parole review, and it is HMPPS—not the board—that currently sets that interval. HMPPS considers a range of factors in deciding when to refer the prisoner to the Parole Board on behalf of the Secretary of State. Reasons must be given for the length of the interval between reviews, including the Parole Board’s reasons for declining to direct the prisoner’s release at the conclusion of the last review and the interventions required to allow them to progress. The closer the interval length is to the two-year limit, the greater the justification required for the time between reviews.
Lord Bellamy
“(2) After subsection (5C) insert—“(5D) Rules under subsection (5) may also make provision for functions of the Board (including judicial functions) to be exercised by employees of the Board, other than any function so far as its exercise involves—(a) making a public protection decision in relation to a prisoner within the meaning of section 237A(2) of this Act or section 28ZA(2) of the 1997 Act;(b) giving a direction for the release of a prisoner on licence under this Chapter or under Chapter 2 of Part 2 of the 1997 Act;(c) making a decision or giving a direction under subsection (4) or (4F) of section 31A of the 1997 Act (imprisonment or detention for public protection: termination of licences);(d) reconsidering a decision or setting aside a decision or direction under provision made by virtue of subsection (5A).””Member's explanatory statement
This amendment allows for Parole Board Rules to provide for functions of the Board (including judicial functions) to be exercised by employees of the Board, subject to exceptions.
Lord Bellamy
“(1) Paragraph 2 of Schedule 19 to the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (membership of the Parole Board) is amended as follows.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on my amendment of Clause 54, page 55, line 1.
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on my amendment of Clause 54, page 55, line 1.
The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Finlay of Llandaff) (CB)
If Amendment 154D is agreed, I cannot call Amendments 155 or 156 due to pre-emption.
Amendment 154D
Lord Bellamy
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment leaves out provisions relating to the appointment, resignation, dismissal and functions of the chair and vice-chair of the Parole Board.
Lord Roborough (Con)
My Lords, with the permission of the House, I suggest that we de-group this amendment and begin the next debate with Amendment 156ZB, as today’s list is not giving the correct information.
Amendment 156ZB
Lord Bellamy
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on new subsection (3A) of section 27A of the Marriage Act 1949, inserted by my amendment of Clause 55, page 57, line 19.
The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Finlay of Llandaff) (CB)
For the convenience of the House, as we have just agreed to de-group the amendments, it would be helpful if the Minister could introduce this group.
Lord Bellamy (Con)
We are now on what was group 6. In any event, the Government are bringing forward Amendments 156ZB to 156ZD and 156ZE to 156ZH. These are technical amendments and do not change the policy, which remains as set out on previous stages of the Bill. The amendments make minor revisions to the drafting of Clauses 55 and 56. Importantly, they ensure that registrars have all the information they need at the point they consider an application to marry or to enter into a civil partnership. The information needed is whether an applicant or their intended spouse or civil partner is a whole-life prisoner and, if so, whether they have been granted an exemption from the Secretary of State. They also make some minor changes to clarify the procedure and to update related legislation in line with the reforms. For the reasons that I have just given, I ask that Clauses 55 and 56 stand part of the Bill and invite noble Lords to support these government amendments.
Lord Pannick (CB)
My Lords, I have tabled my opposition to Clauses 55 and 56, which noble Lords know will prohibit a prisoner serving a whole-life tariff from entering into a marriage or a civil partnership with another person without the written permission of the Secretary of State, with that permission to be granted only if the Secretary of State is satisfied that there are exceptional circumstances. I am very pleased to be joined in my opposition to these clauses by the noble Lords, Lord Bach and Lord German—the latter of whom unfortunately cannot be in his place tonight—both of whom spoke very powerfully on this topic in Committee.
I am also very pleased to be joined by the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere, whom I first met when he was a legal adviser at the Home Office from 1989 to 2006. We used to travel together to Strasbourg to defend the United Kingdom against allegations that it had breached the European Convention on Human Rights. Our record in court was mediocre at best, but the lunches were excellent, and I have great admiration for his expertise and judgment. I very much look forward to what he has to say on this subject.
Why have we brought this matter back on Report? It is not because I have any expectation of changing the Government’s mind, and it is not because I intend to divide the House, particularly at this late hour. My motive is simply to ensure that we record why this is an objectionable measure which has no conceivable justification. There are three reasons why I express such a critical view of these clauses. First, the Government’s reason for conferring this power on the Secretary of State and imposing this disability is so weak. In Committee, the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Roborough, suggested that these measures will
“drive up public confidence in the justice system”.—[Official Report, 25/3/24; col. 491.]
I can think of many reasons why confidence in the criminal justice system has been undermined: the unacceptable delays in hearing trials in which defendants are accused of serious offences; the fact that so many courtrooms cannot be used because of their poor state of repair; the low rates of pay for prosecutors; and the low rates of legal aid renumeration for criminal barristers and solicitors, which has substantially reduced the number of lawyers available in criminal cases. What I have never heard anyone say is, “My confidence in the criminal justice system has been undermined because whole life prisoners are able to marry”. It is preposterous.
My second reason for objecting to these provisions is that they are wrong in principle. We all know, and the Minister emphasised in Committee, that whole life orders are reserved for those who have committed the most serious crimes—awful crimes of serial or child murders involving premeditation or sexual or sadistic violence. However, this does not mean that we deny such prisoners basic rights. However repellent their crimes, whole life prisoners are allowed to eat more than a crust of bread; they are allowed to exercise; they are allowed to read books, to watch television and to send and receive letters. The right to marry another consenting adult is also a basic right. National law may limit the exercise of that right—you cannot marry your brother, a 12 year-old or your dog—but what the state cannot do, consistent with human rights, is impose restrictions so extreme that they impair the very essence of the right to marry. That is the test repeatedly stated in the consistent case law of the European Court of Human Rights.
The Minister in Committee suggested that the Government consider that Article 12 of the European convention allows for a restriction on the right to marry to be in the public interest. However, that does not assist the Government because there is a judgment of the Strasbourg court in a case concerned with prisoners. It is Frasik v Poland in 2010. The court recognised at paragraph 91:
“Imprisonment deprives a person of his liberty and… some civil rights and privileges. This does not, however, mean that persons in detention cannot, or can only very exceptionally, exercise their right to marry”.
The court added, at paragraph 93, that the state cannot prevent a prisoner exercising the right to marry because of the view of the authorities as to what
“might be acceptable to or what might offend public opinion”.
That is precisely the basis on which this Government purport to justify Clauses 55 and 56 of the Bill—public opinion, public confidence. I ask the Minister, how can the Government maintain the statement, made by the Secretary of State for Justice on the front of the Bill, that Clauses 55 and 56, like the rest of the Bill, are compatible with Convention rights?
Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)
My Lords, it is a real privilege to support my noble friend Lord Pannick in this debate on whether these clauses should stand part of the Bill. As he has said, back in the 1990s, in another life, he and I used to travel to Strasbourg together to fight prisoners’ cases on prisons law. It is no exaggeration at all to say that I acquired most of my public law knowledge from working with and learning from my noble friend on these and other issues.
Prisons issues back in the 1990s were at the very cutting edge of the development of human rights law. Here we are again, about 30 years later, discussing basic human rights for prisoners such as the right to marry and to form a civil partnership. But it is about much more than that. It is about how as a society we treat those we lock up. Someone said, it may have been Gandhi, that the way we treat those we imprison is a measure of how civilised we are—
Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)
It was Winston Churchill; I am corrected—both great names.
If we have progressed at all from the way prisoners were treated in the past, we should be enabling whole-life prisoners to find some meaning and purpose in a life that is certain to end in prison. This includes providing opportunities for them to have some social interaction and build relationships, even though they can never expect to be released—in fact, especially because they can never expect to be released. This reflects the long-standing legal position. It is trite law now that prisoners enjoy basic human rights, such as respect for their private and family life, their religion, freedom of expression and access to a lawyer etc. Under Article 12, prisoners have the right to marry and form a civil partnership.
My noble friend Lord Pannick has already referred to the case of Frasik. I will quote again that passage from the court’s judgement, because it is so powerful. Imprisonment, the court said, does not mean that those detained
“cannot, or can only very exceptionally, exercise their right to marry”.
Yet is that not exactly what Clauses 55 and 56 say? The ECHR memorandum conveniently sidesteps that by saying that marriage by whole-lifers
“undermines public confidence in the Criminal Justice System”.
We have just heard from my noble friend Lord Pannick on that one; it is, in effect, code for “offends public opinion”. But the Frasik judgment, as my noble friend said, says that the Bill cannot do that—it cannot automatically prevent prisoners forming marital relationships.
It is not all about the law either. Compelling legal points, such as those we have mentioned, often arise from a rotten policy, which is what we have here. The Government’s justification seems to be the case of Levi Bellfield. Awful as that is as an example of the right to marry being abused, it is one case of about 70 whole-lifers in the system. They have all committed terrible crimes, but their whole-life tariffs are the punishment for that. Even Ministers have recognised that we send people to prison as punishment, not for punishment. Automatically denying prisoners, even whole-life prisoners, the right to marry or enter a civil partnership amounts to nothing more than the state imposing additional, entirely gratuitous punishment on this cohort of prisoners for no reason other than to show the public that it is tough on crime.
The noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, expressing his personal views at Second Reading, put it well when he described it as a “petty measure”. The noble Lord, Lord German, who unfortunately cannot be with us tonight, rightly called it cruel. It also punishes prisoners’ partners, who are entirely innocent in all this. It punishes them emotionally, of course, but it may also affect their entitlement to, for example, a widow’s pension on the death of a whole-life prisoner or a spouse’s exemption from inheritance tax. Has any consideration been given to the effects of this policy on partners? I would be most grateful to know the answer to that.
There is a simple solution to the Government’s wholly justified concern about the Levi Bellfield case, which would deal with all the legal and policy objections that have been mentioned. The existing law entitles a prison governor to refuse an application to marry or form a civil partnership only if it would create a security risk to the prison. Why not ditch Clauses 55 and 56 and legislate to widen the basis for refusing such applications to include cases where there are reasonable grounds for believing that the application is not made in good faith but from some improper motive? This could easily be made legally watertight to minimise the possibility of unfounded legal challenges.
In conclusion, and at this late hour, in the dying breaths of the Bill, I urge the Minister to ignore the word “reject”, which is in his briefing notes in capital letters, underlined, in bold type. Why not surprise everybody, not least his officials, by agreeing now to remove Clauses 55 and 56 and adopt the more proportionate, but no less effective, solution that I have just proposed?
Lord Bach (Lab)
My Lords, I do not intend to say much, for the very good reason that I do not have to. The arguments put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere, and particularly by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, are overwhelming. I do not want to put the Minister, for whom I have huge respect, on the spot, but I have a suspicion that he has more than a bit of sympathy for the arguments that have been put.
The only point I want to make is this: commentators have said that, when the Minister and the Secretary of State came to their positions, there was likely to be a different attitude towards issues of this kind than there was under some predecessors. The evidence is that that is true, and we have seen examples tonight and this afternoon of the Minister no doubt using his influence in persuading the Secretary of State to have sensible views and change the Bill where it needed to be changed.
This is exactly a case of a clause that is both against the European legislation we have adopted and against all common sense; it should be removed. It would be a real shame if this Bill, which contains some really excellent stuff on both prisoners and victims, has at the tail end of it, as the noble Lord said, this rather ridiculous and very anti-British way of dealing with this issue—so I do ask the Minister to please think again.
Lord Meston (CB)
My Lords, I raised questions about Clause 55 and how it might operate in practice at Second Reading that were really not answered. I make no criticism; the Minister had a lot to deal with. I regret not being able to participate in Committee. But I have devoted quite a lot of my professional life to the formation and validity of marriage, and therefore in the context of this Bill I would like to point out that the question of whether and to what extent certain marriages should be restricted or governed by statute faces two underlying problems.
First, it is generally not necessary for anybody otherwise qualified to marry to have any good or creditable reason to do so. I mention that in the context of my noble friend Lord Carter’s suggestion that possibly in these circumstances prison governors should question the motives and have the ability to do so, and that that may be the way through this problem. I have to say that research suggests that the decision to marry is rarely reached on rational grounds—and indeed the same research revealed that 3% of those surveyed did not know why they were getting married at all.
Secondly, and altogether more seriously, there is the fundamental right to marry, stated in Article 12 of the ECHR. That is a right that long predated that convention in this country. However, it was Article 12 that underpinned the Marriage Act 1983, which allowed for marriages of those detained in prison, for essentially pragmatic reasons. It was legislation that did not attract criticism—indeed, only newspaper headlines such as “Get Me to the Jail on Time”. Article 12 also led to the extension of the Marriage (Prohibited Degrees of Relationship) Act 1986, which I had a part in, believe it or not, and which set mankind free to marry their mothers-in-law.
The restrictions proposed in this Bill on specific marriages were understandably prompted by the attention-seeking attempts by particular convicted prisoners to marry—something that many people, no doubt including their victims and their victims’ families, will have found grossly offensive. Nevertheless, the underlying points emphasised by all noble Lords who have spoken so far simply cannot be ignored.
If Article 12 rights are to be curtailed and qualified simply by reference to the nature of the sentence being served or by vague concepts of public interest, the Government really should spell out more clearly the justification for the proposed restrictions and should clearly indicate the circumstances likely to satisfy the Secretary of State that they are “exceptional circumstances”. At Second Reading, I suggested that they might include terminal illness, but I can see that it ought probably to go wider than that. Otherwise, we are simply going to be storing up problems and litigation for the future.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, from these Benches, and in the absence of the noble Lord, Lord German, I want to say that we have had a fascinating, amusing, witty, but actually very important debate. We on these Benches completely support everyone who has spoken so far. I know that there is no question of moving to a vote, but it is something that we fundamentally believe in.
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
My Lords, from these Benches I express irritation that we have these in the Bill at all. We have spent the last two or three months working across the House, improving and building a new framework for victims. It is, let us just say, very puzzling that these are in the Bill.
Lord Bellamy (Con)
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, for tabling his amendments, and of course I thank the noble Lords, Lord Carter, Lord Meston, Lord Bach and others for their eloquence. I can well understand the feelings expressed. I of course recognise that the noble Lord, Lord Carter, together with the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, has spent many hours in Strasbourg defending the United Kingdom, and in that context, although the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, was modest enough—probably inaccurately—to say that his results had been mediocre, in fact the United Kingdom has, if not the best, at least one of the best records in Strasbourg of respecting human rights.
The question of the compatibility of this particular provision with Article 12 of the ECHR has been very carefully considered—otherwise the Secretary of State would never have given the certificate in the first place.
The Government’s arguments were set out in Committee and I am not sure it is particularly useful at this late hour—especially as it is 10.01 pm—to repeat them. In the Government’s view, the measures are proportionate and apply to a very small cohort of the most serious offenders who have committed the most serious crimes. As of last December, there were 67 whole-life prisoners in England. Because they will never be released, their ability to enjoy anything resembling normal married life is already lawfully and legitimately restricted in a very significant way.
In the Government’s view, the measures are justified on the basis of public interest, as already set out in Committee. The public’s confidence in, and respect for, the justice system is a matter for which any elected Government must have regard—and that of course includes the feelings of victims. The one cause célèbre that has been mentioned did have an important impact in that regard.
I would add only that the measures do not prevent whole-life prisoners benefiting from supportive relationships while in custody, in the same way as other prisoners. We are simply talking about being married or in a civil partnership, and not being able to do that does not have any practical impact on an individual’s ability to maintain a relationship with a prisoner, and does not provide any additional rights or detriments in terms of visits or communications.
I am very sorry to disappoint the noble Lord, Lord Carter, in particular. I do not have any authority to simply drop these clauses, nor am I able to indicate in any way what my personal views may or may not be. I hope I have provided at least some reassurance and I respectfully suggest that the noble Lord withdraws his amendment.
Lord Pannick (CB)
I thank the Minister. I also ask him to give a very modest undertaking this evening that, before Third Reading, he will ask the Secretary of State to consider the proposal from the noble Lord, Lord Carter, as a way of solving the perceived problem, without including in the Bill a clause that so many of us regard as objectionable. I ask him to kindly give that undertaking—with of course no commitment whatever.
Lord Bellamy (Con)
I can and will and do give that undertaking.
Amendment 156ZB agreed.
Amendments 156ZC and 156ZD
Lord Bellamy
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on new subsection (3A) of section 27A of the Marriage Act 1949, inserted by my amendment of Clause 55, page 57, line 19.
“(1A) In section 27ZA of the Marriage Act 1949 (circumstances in which a notice of marriage is not to be recorded in the marriage register), in paragraph (a), at the appropriate place insert—“section 27A(3A);”(1B) In section 27A of the Marriage Act 1949 (additional information required in certain cases)—(a) in subsection (3) (case where marriage intended to be solemnized at detained person’s residence)—(i) omit the “and” at the end of paragraph (a);(ii) at the end of paragraph (b) insert “; and(c) stating whether the person is serving a life sentence and, if so, whether the person is subject to a whole life order.”;(b) after subsection (3) insert—“(3A) Where the relevant person is a detained person who is serving a life sentence and is subject to a whole life order, each notice of marriage required by section 27 of this Act must also be accompanied by a statement made by the Secretary of State not more than twenty-one days before the date on which notice of the marriage is given under section 27 stating that the relevant person has the permission required by section 2A(2).”(c) in subsection (6), for “or (as the case may be) (3)” substitute “, (3) or (3A)”;(d) in subsection (7), before the definition of “medical statement” insert—““life sentence” and “whole life order” have the meanings given by section 2A(5) of this Act and section 2A(6) (persons treated as being subject to a whole life order) applies for the purposes of this section; and””Member's explanatory statement
This amendment makes provision about notices of marriage in consequence of Clause 55 (whole life prisoners prohibited from forming a marriage).
Lord Bellamy
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on my amendment of Clause 56, page 58, line 20.
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on new subsection (5A) of section 19 of the Civil Partnership Act 2004, inserted by my amendment of Clause 56, page 58, line 20.
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on new subsection (5A) of section 19 of the Civil Partnership Act 2004, inserted by my amendment of Clause 56, page 58, line 20.
“(5) In section 9F of the Civil Partnership Act 2004 (recording of information in the register: compliance with requirements), at the appropriate place insert—“section 19(5A);”(6) Section 19 of the Civil Partnership Act 2004 (detained persons) is amended in accordance with subsections (7) to (9).(7) In subsection (4) (supporting statement)—(a) omit the “and” at the end of paragraph (a);(b) after paragraph (b) insert “, and(c) states whether the person is serving a life sentence and, if so, whether the person is subject to a whole life order.”(8) After subsection (5) insert—“(5A) Where the detained person is serving a life sentence and is subject to a whole life order, each notice of proposed civil partnership must also be accompanied by a statement made by the Secretary of State not more than 21 days before the day on which the notice is recorded stating that the detained person has the permission required by section 3(1A).(5B) The fact that the registration authority to whom a notice of proposed civil partnership is given has received a statement under subsection (5A) must be recorded in the register.”(9) After subsection (7) insert—“(7A) “Life sentence” and “whole life order” have the meanings given by section 3(3) of this Act and section 3(4) (persons treated as being subject to a whole life order) applies for the purposes of this section.””Member's explanatory statement
This amendment makes provision about notices of proposed civil partnership in consequence of Clause 56 (whole life prisoners prohibited from forming a civil partnership).
Lord Bellamy
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment enables regulations to be made amending other legislation in consequence of provisions in Part 1, 2 or 4 of the Bill other than those currently listed. The affirmative Parliamentary procedure is required for amendments to primary legislation.
“(1A) Each of the following may by regulations make provision that is consequential on, or on regulations under, Part 3—(a) the Secretary of State or the Minister for the Cabinet Office,(b) the Welsh Ministers,(c) the Scottish Ministers, and(d) a Northern Ireland department.(1B) Regulations under subsection (1A)—(a) made by the Welsh Ministers, may contain only provision which would be within the legislative competence of Senedd Cymru if it were contained in an Act of the Senedd;(b) made by the Scottish Ministers, may contain only provision which would be within the legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament if it were contained in an Act of that Parliament;(c) made by a Northern Ireland department, may contain only provision which—(i) would be within the legislative competence of the Northern Ireland Assembly if it were contained in an Act of that Assembly, and(ii) 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.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment confers power to make consequential amendments relating to Part 3 of the Bill on the Secretary of State or the Minister for the Cabinet Office, the Welsh Ministers, the Scottish Ministers and a Northern Ireland department.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment enables legislation passed or made after the current session of Parliament to be consequentially amended by regulations under Clause 58.
Earl Howe (Con)
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 156BA and to the three further government amendments in this group. Yesterday’s publication of the infected blood inquiry’s final report has laid bare the devastating tragedy and suffering that far too many people have endured as a result of the infected blood scandal. I trust and hope that the House is assured of the Government’s commitment to compensate victims of this dreadful scandal, and to do so as quickly as possible. Noble Lords will have seen that I have withdrawn government Amendments 162 and 165, which would make early commencement provisions for the establishment of the infected blood compensation authority and interim payments to the estates of deceased infected people. Having done so, I am now proposing to replace those amendments with government Amendment 162AA, the effect of which is to ensure that all provisions under Part 3 will be available to government on Royal Assent. This will ensure what I know is the wish of all noble Lords: that there will be no unnecessary delay to implementation of the infected blood compensation scheme.
This group also contains further consequential amendments—government Amendments 157CB and 157CC—which allow for consequential amendments of other legislation to be made to ensure that the legislation operates as intended. I beg to move.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, from these Benches, we are very grateful that the Government have agreed to move forward with these amendments. It is extremely important that things move at pace. Obviously, there is always a bit of concern about a regulation that can revoke primary legislation, but given the circumstances, it is completely understandable. Given the lateness of the hour, I will stop there.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)
My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. We welcome these amendments.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the regulation making powers conferred by my amendments to Part 3 of the Bill and my amendment to clause 58, page 58, line 31.
“(2A) For regulations made under section 58(1A) by the Scottish Ministers, see section 27 of the Interpretation and Legislative Reform (Scotland) Act 2010 (asp 10) (Scottish statutory instruments).(2B) The power of a Northern Ireland department to make regulations under section 58(1A) is exercisable by statutory rule for the purposes of the Statutory Rules (Northern Ireland) Order 1979 (S.I. 1979/1573 (N.I. 12)).”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on my amendment to clause 58, page 58, line 31.
“(2A) A statutory instrument containing (alone or with other provision) the first regulations made by the Secretary of State or the Minister for the Cabinet Office under section (Infected blood compensation scheme) must be laid before Parliament after being made. (2B) Regulations contained in a statutory instrument laid before Parliament under subsection (2A) cease to have effect at the end of the period of 28 days beginning with the day on which the instrument is made unless, during that period, the instrument is approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.(2C) In calculating the period of 28 days, no account is to be taken of any whole days that fall within a period during which—(a) Parliament is dissolved or prorogued, or(b) either House of Parliament is adjourned for more than four days.(2D) If regulations cease to have effect as a result of subsection (2B), that does not—(a) affect the validity of anything previously done under the regulations, or(b) prevent the making of new regulations.(2E) Any other statutory instrument containing (alone or with other provision) regulations made by the Secretary of State or the Minister for the Cabinet Office under section (Infected blood compensation scheme) may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides for the first regulations about the infected blood compensation scheme to be subject to the made affirmative procedure, and subsequent regulations to be subject to the affirmative procedure.
“(2A) A statutory instrument containing (alone or with other provision) regulations made by the Secretary of State or the Minister for the Cabinet Office under section (Payments to personal representatives of qualifying infected persons)(10) (unless it is a statutory instrument to which subsection (2A) applies) may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides for regulations under subsection (10) of my new clause about payments to personal representatives of qualifying infected person to be subject to affirmative procedure, unless subject to made affirmative procedure under the subsection (2A) inserted by my amendment to clause 59, page 59, line 8 inserting subsections (2A) to (2E).
“(2A) A statutory instrument containing (alone or with other provision) regulations made by the Secretary of State under section (Disclosures by victims that cannot be precluded by agreement) may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment replaces my amendment 157 with revised provision to enable a statutory instrument containing regulations under Clause (Disclosures by victims that cannot be precluded by agreement), which are subject to the affirmative Parliamentary procedure, to include consequential provision.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment enables a statutory instrument containing regulations under Clause 58 that amend, repeal or revoke primary legislation, which are subject to the affirmative Parliamentary procedure, to also contain the regulations on which they are consequential.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides for regulations made under clause 58(1A) (inserted by my amendment to clause 58, page 58, line 31) to be subject to affirmative procedure if they amend primary legislation.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment disapplies affirmative procedure to regulations which amend primary legislation if they are subject to the made affirmative procedure under the subsection (2A) inserted by my amendment to clause 59, page 59, line 8 inserting subsections (2A) to (2E).
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the regulation making powers conferred by my amendments to Part 3 and to clause 58, page 58, line 31.
“(4A) A statutory instrument containing regulations made by the Treasury under paragraph 21 of Schedule (Infected blood compensation scheme) is subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of the House of Commons.(4B) A statutory instrument made by the Welsh Ministers containing regulations under section 58(1A) that amend, repeal or revoke primary legislation (within the meaning of section 58) may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, Senedd Cymru.(4C) Any other statutory instrument made by the Welsh Ministers under section 58(1A) is subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of Senedd Cymru.(4D) Regulations made by the Scottish Ministers under section 58(1A) that amend, repeal or revoke primary legislation (within the meaning of section 58) are subject to the affirmative procedure (see section 29 of the Interpretation and Legislative Reform (Scotland) Act 2010 (asp 10)).(4E) Any other regulations made by the Scottish Ministers under section 58(1A) are subject to the negative procedure (see section 28 of the Interpretation and Legislative Reform (Scotland) Act 2010 (asp 10)).(4F) Regulations made by a Northern Ireland department under section 58(1A) that amend, repeal or revoke primary legislation (within the meaning of section 58) may not be made unless a draft of the regulations has been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, the Northern Ireland Assembly.(4G) Any other regulations made by a Northern Ireland department under section 58(1A) are subject to negative resolution within the meaning given by section 41(6) of the Interpretation Act (Northern Ireland) 1954 (c. 33 (N.I.)).” Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment specifies the procedures for regulations made by the Treasury under paragraph 21 of my new Schedule and regulations made by the Welsh Ministers, Scottish Ministers or a Northern Ireland department under clause 58(1A) (inserted by my amendment to clause 58, page 58, line 31).
Lord Bellamy
“(da) Part 3;”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment provides for Part 3 of the Bill, dealing with infected blood compensation, to have UK extent.
“(5) His Majesty may by Order in Council provide for any of the provisions of Part 3 to extend, with or without modifications, to—(a) any of the Channel Islands;(b) the Isle of Man;(c) Gibraltar;(d) the Falkland Islands.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment confers power to extend Part 3 to the Channel Islands, Isle of Man, Gibraltar or the Falkland Islands by Order in Council.
Lord Bellamy
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment and my other amendments of Clause 61, page 59, line 27, provide for the provisions of the Bill specified in those amendments to come into force on Royal Assent
Lord Bellamy
“(a) section 53(1) and (2);”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment provides for the amendment to the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (which allows Parole Board Rules to provide for functions of the Board to be exercised by employees of the Board) made by my amendment of Clause 53, page 54, line 21 to come into force on Royal Assent.
“(a) Part 3;(b) this Part.” Member's explanatory statement
This amendment provides for all of Part 3 (infected blood) to come into force on Royal Assent. It replaces my amendments 162 and 165, which provided for certain provisions of Part 3 to come into force on Royal Assent and the rest to be brought into force by regulations.
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Beith) (LD)
If Amendment 162B is agreed to, I cannot call Amendment 163 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, by reason of pre-emption.
Amendment 162B
Lord Bellamy
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on my amendment of Clause 61, page 59, line 27 that provides for provisions about the Parole Board rules to come into force on Royal Assent.
Lord Bellamy
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on my amendment to Clause 61, page 59, line 29.
Lord Bellamy
“(a) Parts 1, 2 or 4, or(b) this Part.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on my other amendment to clause 61, page 59, line 31.
“(3A) The Secretary of State or the Minister for the Cabinet Office may by regulations make transitional or saving provision in connection with the coming into force of any provision of Part 3.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment provides that the Secretary of State or the Minister for the Cabinet Office may by regulations make transitional or saving provision in connection with the coming into force of any provision of Part 3.
Lord Bellamy
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment adds a reference to the infected blood compensation scheme to the long title.